Revelation

by Wilson, Carter;

  Coyote had sprung from the house and pounced on his prey, delivering a forceful blow to Harden’s face. And then?

  Pain in my arm, Harden remembered. Sharp. Brief.

  Needle.

  Harden looked down and saw the puncture wound in his forearm.

  He’d been expecting me. Just waiting. Watching. Knowing I would come.

  “Fast acting,” Coyote said, as if following the events in Harden’s mind. “Doesn’t have to go in a vein. More like a muscle relaxer, really. Not nearly as strong as what we used on you before taking you to Iowa.”

  Harden could feel his adrenaline overcoming the effects of the drug. He was alert but confused, like waking up and not remembering where you are.

  “I knew everything,” Coyote said. He offered one of his winning smiles, but this time Harden didn’t see his mask. Coyote’s face offered no sense of comfort or assurance. It was ugly and evil. “I wrote the end of the story for you. I knew how it was going to end the whole time.”

  “What . . . what are you talking about?”

  Coyote gripped the back of Harden’s chair and swung him around to face Emma, then Coyote moved to stand directly between them.

  “I knew exactly how this was going to play out. I knew Vincent would find you and have you come here.” He smiled down at Harden. “Did Vincent go into the whole honey badger thing?”

  Harden nodded, and Coyote chuckled. Then the smile turned into something else. Something dark.

  “He killed my mother, you know. My father killed her. Staged it as a car accident.”

  Harden kept his voice level and calm. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s obvious, looking back on it. She wanted to leave him—I knew that for sure, even as a kid. And she knew too much. She was a liability, so he killed her. Which is why I knew he’d have no problem getting rid of me, either. Which is why I told them where I was.”

  Harden looked at the veins bulging from Coyote’s arms. “Because you wanted to die?”

  Coyote smirked. “Because I knew he’d send you to find me. You don’t think I let you out of that cell just to be a nice guy, do you? I didn’t want it to end there.” He looked around the room. Emma’s face was streaked in sweat. She looked as if she was losing her struggle with sanity. “I wanted it to end here.”

  “Why?”

  Coyote turned and looked at Emma as he spoke. “Because I wanted to be right. I knew you would come for her, and predicting a person’s decisions made of their own free will is a drug I can’t get enough of, Harden. I could have killed you both in Iowa. But that’s not much of a game.”

  Emma started screaming beneath the tape. It sounded like she was being strangled.

  “It’s okay,” Harden said, craning his neck to see her around Coyote. “You’ll be okay.” Though that wasn’t remotely true. She had already lost a finger to Coyote.

  Coyote placed his hands on his knees and leaned into Harden’s face. “Maybe she will be,” he said. “That’s going to be up to her. It’s you I’m more worried about at the moment.”

  Harden looked at him. “I called the police,” he said. “They’re coming.”

  “Really? With what? You have a car phone in that old Challenger of your father’s?”

  He really does know everything, Harden thought.

  “Twenty minutes ago. Before I came here. I used the phone at another house here on the lake.”

  “Oh, yeah? Which house? What did it look like? Describe the person who opened the door.”

  He didn’t even give Harden time to answer, which didn’t matter because Harden already found his throat locking up searching for a response.

  “You’re transparent, Harden. And you know what? That’s the beauty of you. You’re pure and transparent. You’re a good guy. You would’ve made a great husband someday. A great father. But now that’s not going to happen, because you wanted to be the hero. You didn’t tell anyone you were coming here, mostly because that’s what Vincent probably told you to do, I’m sure. And that’s what you do, Harden. You take orders.” Again he ran his fingers though Harden’s hair, which made him shudder. “But you also wanted to be the one to kill me, didn’t you? Here I am, the man who opened your eyes to the world, and you want to kill me.”

  “You didn’t open my eyes to anything. You nearly killed me already.”

  Coyote shook his head. “No, Harden. In that cell, you became alive for the first time in your life.”

  Harden looked over at Emma, who just stared back and forth vacantly between the two of them, a strand of sweat-stained hair pasted to her forehead.

  “Let her go. Take me instead.”

  “That’s how you really feel, Harden? Like you could just sacrifice yourself for her? Or is that what you’re supposed to say in a situation like this?”

  “I’ve never been in a situation quite like this.”

  Coyote swept around Harden’s chair. “True. Fucking invigorating, isn’t it? You see? This is life, Harden. Can you feel it pulsing through you?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”

  “Harden, I never asked you to understand me. I only wanted you to do every single thing I asked of you, but you didn’t. You should have, but you didn’t.”

  “That’s why you took me. Put me in the cell.”

  “You needed to learn.”

  Harden strained against the binds. “Why not kill me? Why go to all the trouble?”

  Coyote jabbed a finger at him. “Trouble. You’re right. It was a lot of trouble. I had to get other people involved. Drug and transport you, Emma, and Derek. It was a lot of work.”

  “So why—”

  “Because I had hope. I wanted you to write. That’s what you do, you know? You’re a good writer. You probably had a real future in it.”

  Had was the word on which Harden focused.

  “I wanted to see what you had to say, and then, in all truth, I was probably going to kill you. But . . .” Coyote wagged a finger at him. “You surprised me.”

  “Yeah?” Harden felt the energy slipping away from him and he shook his head to try to focus. “And how did I do that?”

  “You wrote about her.” Coyote stepped to the side and pointed at Emma. Harden tried not to look at her face; there was too much pain in it. “About the two of you,” Coyote said. “I’m the smartest person I know, but I have to admit I didn’t see that coming.”

  Just like you didn’t see how insane Bill was, Harden thought.

  Harden lowered his head and spoke to the ground. It gave him a momentary chance to rest, but more importantly he could avoid Coyote looking him in the eyes as he spoke. “I don’t think you’re nearly as smart as you think you are.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I think you’re a fraud with a lot of money.”

  “Fraud? I had no training in any kind of magic or illusions, and I practiced for weeks to get down the levitating act. That’s dedication.”

  “So you’re a dedicated fraud. Big deal. And the tree on that video you showed? Cheap camera tricks.”

  “Not cheap at all, actually.”

  Now Harden looked up. “And you have access to drugs. Not too hard to gather a large following if you drug all of them.”

  Coyote leaned in and Harden could smell his sweat. “Don’t underestimate me. Everything I did I earned. Drugs? Yes, I used drugs on some of them. Poor Jacob. He’ll never be the same again. But do you know how much studying and practice I had to do to figure out exactly the right methods to apply? Which people would be the most susceptible? Who would be the most likely to convince the others to listen to me? It wasn’t easy, Harden. And it’s not like I had any help or ample time.”

  “Yet you still failed.”

  “Failed? Oh, I don’t think so. What you didn’t know the whole time was the reason for it all. You thought it was because I was bored and needed a challenge.”

  Keep him talking, Harden thought. “So why did you do it? Why did you start the Revelation?”r />
  Coyote shook his head. “I think you know about all of that by now.” His voice dipped into a whispered baritone. “You talked to Vincent.”

  “He told me you wanted to play with the big boys, but you took things too far. He said you were a liability.”

  Coyote smirked as his neck muscles tightened against the collar of his shirt.

  “I’m not a liability.”

  “Yes, you are. That’s why you went into hiding. You’re scared of them.”

  “I told them exactly where I was, didn’t I?”

  “Because your need to predict my actions is greater than your concern for your own safety. Actually, that’s not even really true, is it? You’re not scared, because you think you’re in control of everything.”

  “I am,” Coyote said, though his expression betrayed the slightest hint of uncertainty.

  Harden continued. “Vincent said your father gave you a simple job and you fucked it up. He said Alastair was glad he didn’t tell you more about what he was really doing.”

  Coyote wagged a finger. “Now, Harden, you’re just trying to piss me off here.” His words were controlled, but there was an edge to them. “Dad wanted a tax-exempt entity, and we were so close to getting it.”

  Harden kept going, trying to push Coyote harder. “Yeah, until you turned into a murderer. I’m surprised your dad even gave a shit, considering your dad seems just like you. Rich, smart, and bat-shit crazy. Besides, why would you even want to help your father if he killed your mother? Or is that just another thing you think but don’t really know?”

  Coyote bent down and leaned into Harden’s face. “You don’t know anything about my family.”

  “I know your father wants me to kill you. He doesn’t give the slightest shit about you. Just wants you dead. Erased.”

  Coyote threw his right fist so fast Harden didn’t have time to brace himself for the blow, not that he could have done anything more than close his eyes. The knuckles connected on the left side of Harden’s jaw and snapped his head violently to the side. Pain seared through his face, and he was certain more teeth were lost, just like the first time he had met Coyote.

  “We’re not making progress here, Harden!”

  Harden spat. Blood spewed from his mouth, but no teeth. “Your dad was using you as a distraction,” Harden managed to say, “and getting a tax-exempt entity wasn’t even that important. You were just a decoy—something to turn the eyes of the feds off him long enough for him to do whatever illegal shit he had to get done. But you fucked it all up; you went too far with everything. Vincent said he called you a loser.”

  Another fist cracked across his face, and Harden felt instant burning and swelling.

  “You might want to consider changing the subject now, Harden.” He nodded toward Emma. “The next time you make me angry, I take it out on her. Now, you care to share with me what you think my father is planning? Aside from my own murder, of course?”

  Harden tried to shrug but couldn’t. His vision was blurred in his left eye. “I have no idea. You think Vincent would have told me that?”

  Coyote squinted, trying to read the truth off Harden’s face. “No, I don’t suppose he would. If my father didn’t tell me, he certainly wouldn’t have allowed Vincent to tell you. Not that I give a shit about the bullshit empire my father thinks he has. He’s small. Very small. And when I’m done here, maybe it’ll be time for me to tell him what I think.”

  Keep him talking about his family, Harden thought.

  “How do you know he killed your mother?”

  “Don’t try to distract me, Harden.”

  “Is that why you did what you did at the cemetery? With the girl in her car? Did you hope to kill someone there because that’s what your father did? Was she your . . .”

  “What?” Coyote nearly shouted the word. Harden looked over and saw Emma shaking her head, telling Harden not to goad him. “First deliberate murder? You must be confused, Harden. It was you who killed her, not me.”

  “You held my hand over her mouth.”

  Coyote grabbed Harden’s throat and squeezed just hard enough to limit—but not completely block—his air flow. “You’re not responsible for anything, are you? You’re happy enough to ride any wave, then you jump off whenever it suits you. Well, Harden, tonight you are going to take responsibility. You will claim the words you wrote. Here. Now.”

  Harden could see it in his eyes. The unhinging. The look of a mouse who’s run on a wheel for so long it’s on the verge of death, yet doesn’t know how to stop.

  A low moan came from Emma, and then a long, high-pitched hum came from her throat, like a bird stuck on a note. She was drifting away. Far away.

  Coyote lunged to the corner of the room and picked up the gun Harden had been carrying. Vincent’s gun. Coyote waved it above his head.

  Keep him talking.

  “All this so you could kill me here? I still don’t understand why you didn’t just kill me in the cell.”

  Coyote stopped his waving and kept his hands above his head. “Well, Harden, I’ll be honest with you.” Then Coyote pointed the gun at Emma, who didn’t react at all. “She saved your life.”

  Harden looked at her and tried to will her back into the realm of lucidity, but she was far gone. What had Coyote done to her?

  “That so?”

  “I wanted her to come with me. She said she would do it voluntarily if I let you go.”

  Harden squeezed the arms of his chair, testing the tape. It was tight. “She doesn’t look like she’s here voluntarily.”

  “But she came here willingly with me. I didn’t have to knock her out.”

  “What a gentleman.”

  “That’s not to say I haven’t had to do a little experimenting on her. She’s rather willful.”

  “Is that why you cut her finger off ?”

  Coyote held the gun up and studied it. “The finger was a lesson about vanity. When a beautiful woman loses a body part, she loses much of her identity. She becomes more inhibited. More subservient. I would have cut up her face, but that would have made the sex less enjoyable for me.”

  Harden felt a wave of nausea roll through him. “You raped her,” he whispered.

  Coyote did a two-step around him and then leaned in from behind and whispered in Harden’s ear. “Now that sounds more like your words, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You seem to have a thing for sexual abuse. First, your unfortunate childhood experience. Then all that business about me raping Emma on the night she broke up with me.”

  Harden wondered where this was going.

  “Only,” Coyote continued, “that’s not what happened, was it? Because I would certainly know, wouldn’t I? I was there. I never touched her that night. We didn’t even break up that night.”

  “It’s what she told me,” Harden said. “I just wrote what she said.”

  Coyote’s breath warmed his ear. “Or maybe you made it all up.”

  Made it all up. Those four words scared Harden more than anything else Coyote had said.

  Harden changed the subject. “Why did you really let me out?”

  “I told you.”

  “Emma wasn’t the reason. Not really.”

  Coyote crossed his arms and stared down at Harden. The gun’s nose bobbed loosely in the direction of Emma’s head.

  “You keep surprising me,” Coyote said. “Just when I think you don’t know anything, you say something smart. Okay, why do you think I let you out?”

  Harden spit a glob of blood on the floor then took a deep, long breath. As he exhaled, he tried to relax every muscle in his body.

  “I think you let me out to kill me here. You had no idea about Emma and me. You, the man who knows everything, who can predict people’s behavior from only knowing them a few minutes, had no idea his roommate was fucking his girlfriend.”

  He waited for another blow, and when it didn’t come, Harden kept talking.

  “You must h
ave been furious when you read my story.”

  “She means nothing to me,” Coyote says.

  “Of course she does. Maybe you don’t care about her, but you care about the concept of her. You see her as a possession, and the idea of someone taking something of yours was unacceptable.”

  Harden looked over at Emma and saw her close her eyes. He didn’t know if she was dying or passing out, but fear spiked through him. She was so close. Right there. And he was helpless to do anything. The only control he had was through his words, and he had no idea if what he was saying was doing anything but solidifying his and Emma’s deaths.

  The projector played on, the images silent.

  A shark attacking a seal.

  A still photo of a concentration camp.

  A circus car full of clowns.

  “You let me out to see if I would come for her,” Harden said. “Like you said, you wanted to control the end of the story. You knew I would come, and now that I’ve reenforced your power of perception, you’re going to kill us.”

  “You died a long time ago, Harden. You both did.”

  But Harden knew this wasn’t true. If he hadn’t written about their secret relationship, they’d both already be dead. And if Emma hadn’t pleaded for her lover’s life, Harden would have been killed back in that dirty farmhouse cell. They had bought themselves time, though that time looked to have finally run out.

  “You really love her,” Coyote said.

  Harden looked away from him and over to Emma. She was clearly drugged, though with what Harden had no idea. Drugged and forced into sex. Forced to watch this show, these images, the blaring sound, for God knows how many hours on end. And for what purpose? He could only assume to slowly suck all hope away from her, to make her some kind of zombie. To break her down into something that Coyote could completely control.

  But somewhere Emma was still in there. And Harden could find her if he could just get out of these restraints.

  “Yes,” Harden said. “I do.”

  Coyote lowered his head and shook it just a little, a parent disappointed—but not surprised—by his child’s actions. Then Coyote left the room, and when he returned a few moments later, he was carrying a buck knife, its long, charcoal blade smooth and sharp on one edge, serrated on the other.