Neither could Tooth. He was watching with tears streaming down his cheeks, his puffy eyes beginning to slit open just a little. The smell of charred flesh was so awful it made me want to stop breathing, but the rag was so full in my mouth that if I didn’t try to use my nose I would die. Which meant I was forced to smell her body cooking. Tooth started screaming. I started screaming.
We all screamed. We all flailed. We were in Hell.
Then one of the chains gave. I couldn’t believe it. It just went slack. Skinny Man must have left a kink in it which she pulled loose. Not missing a beat, Tooth was yelling at her to move, quickly, to pull at the chain. I doubt she heard him but her gyrating, twisting body instinctively tugged away and pulled free from the slack. She slithered out from her binds, leaving a sickening trail of melted flesh and blood on the floor like snail mucus. Tooth was screaming at her, “Get up! Get up and untie us!”
But she wasn’t listening; she was out of her mind in pain. She flopped on the ground like a wind-up toy that had fallen over, her feet kicking slowly, and lay with her back against the wall so I couldn’t see what damage had been done. Tooth kept yelling through his swollen, purple face. I couldn’t stand it. She wasn’t getting up, and I fucking hated her for it.
“C’mon! Bitch, move!” I screamed.
Unbelievable, this was our chance to escape and it wasn’t going to happen because this poor woman, who by all rights should have been dead by now, who was suffering beyond all human endurance, wouldn’t listen to us. Still, I pleaded because what option did we have? “Get up! Please get up! Please, please, please!”
I kept chanting the “get up” mantra for several minutes before I heard Tooth’s voice. “Enough, Roger. Enough.” He must have been saying it for a while because he was very calm, and the room was hot as a car engine fresh from a circuit race. I got the feeling I’d been yelling for longer than I realized. “Enough. She’s dead.”
She was motionless, that was for sure. Her eyes were closed. Blood coated the entire floor; I looked down and saw I was standing in it. “She’s not dead,” I replied. “Look, her chest is moving.”
Like a light breeze, her chest moved up and down. You had to look hard to see it but it was happening.
“Holy shit. How can she take that much abuse and not die?”
“I want to go home,” I said, my adrenaline finally seeping away.
“I think my jaw is broken. Oh, man, it fucking hurts.”
“He’s going to kill us. We’re going to die and he’s going to torture us and kill us. Oh God, I don’t want to die.”
“Listen, my car is still parked out there. Someone will see it and call the cops if we can just last-”
“Lot of good that’ll do. We’ll be dead by then or at least wish we were.”
He hung his head down and sighed.
“We should have gone shooting at the other place.”
That pissed me off. Was he blaming me for this? I never expected this to happen. Hell, he was the freak with the arsenal. We’d never have been out here if he hadn’t gone Rambo while I was at college. “Fuck you, Tooth. Why did you have to be a hero? Why did you need to find this woman? What did you have to go and shoot the dog for?”
“Because it was trying to eat me. Fuck, Roger, I’m not blaming you.”
On the floor, our burnt cellmate started groaning. She actually sat up and rubbed her head.
“Easy,” I said. “Can you hear us?”
She looked up at me and I felt a renewed sense of hope. Maybe she could get us out of here after all. Maybe I’d shit gold bricks and marry Nicole Kidman, but still. . maybe. She looked like a giant slab of half-cooked bacon covered in ketchup, and I couldn’t believe I was even looking at her without puking. With a bewildered expression on her blood-soaked face, she put a hand in the gooey skin-fat-blood mixture around her ass and sat still. Her shirt, now burned away in back, hung loose around her.
“What’s your name?” Tooth asked her.
Her eyes drifted over to him and her mouth muscles attempted to form words but nothing came out.
“You need medical attention,” he said.
Medical attention? Shit, she needed a priest.
“If you can unchain us we can get you to a hospital,” Tooth continued. “Can you move?”
Her answer consisted of spit dribbling down her chin and some feeble rocking. It was hard to tell if she was trying to stand up or if she was just having a breakdown. It was an infuriating moment and I kept thinking she was trying to help us but somehow I knew she wasn’t going to do jack shit but sit and die slowly.
Then, like an infant, she struggled to her feet and stood, teetering. My heart leapt. Was she going to free us? Were we saved after all? Wonder Woman had nothing on this lady. This was the strongest female I had ever seen. She took a step toward us and wobbled.
“That’s it,” Tooth cooed. “You can do it.”
That’s when the door flew open and Skinny Man stepped into the room waving a shovel in his hand. It was a satanic stage entrance, our screams providing the background music. He ran in and kicked her in the stomach, shattering our hopes, and from the sound of it, some of her ribs as well. She landed in the goo and lay still. Then he hefted the shovel and turned his attention to us.
“This is for Sundance,” he sneered, and swung the shovel into Tooth’s thigh.
The blade slipped right through the flesh and bit into the bone, sticking there with a clunk. Tooth let loose with a scream that was pure blood and hatred. Dizziness washed over me, steering me toward a fainting spell, but I remained conscious somehow. Skinny Man left the shovel protruding from Tooth’s thigh and went and dragged the woman to the center of the floor in front of us.
“Now,” he said. “We’re gonna play a little game. It’s called-” And he started to sing. “The arm bone’s connected to the shoulder bone. The leg bone’s connected to the hip bone.” He flipped her onto her stomach and exposed a back so grotesque, so extensively burned, I couldn’t tell where the muscle ended and the skin began. Her entire lower-middle half glistened with third degree burns, and there was a small glint of white bone visible through it all. And the blood: so much of it I felt like I was looking through rose-tinted glasses.
“The hip bone’s connected to the-will you stop screaming?” he said to Tooth.
But Tooth had gone from screaming to blathering. It was an angry, cursing nonsense filled with a lot of “kill you” and “fucking die” phrases. Blood trickled from the shovel blade and ran down his leg and soaked into his white sock. I prayed it hadn’t hit the artery, but until it was pulled out we wouldn’t know for sure. Now neither of us could run.
Skinny Man gave me an I’m-not-playing-around kind of look and pointed at Tooth. “If he don’t shut up, I’m gonna put that shovel in your neck.”
I knew he was serious; hell, he was hoping for it to happen. I wanted to purge my tear ducts of everything inside but was too afraid of the consequences. “Tooth, please,” I mouthed around my gag, “I don’t want to die.”
I don’t know how, but he stopped making noise and composed himself. Tooth wasn’t so much tough as he was just crazy, a lost soul with nothing at stake. Right now, the look in his eyes would send Hannibal Lecter running. But he was also in tremendous pain and the fact he was able to calm down said a lot about his will power. He was going to live through this. I, on the other hand, was going to die like a bitch.
“That’s better,” Skinny Man said. “Noise makes me crazy, hurts my head. And stop calling me names! Acting like you didn’t have that coming, killing my dog and all. Lucky I didn’t shove it up yer ass. I done a girl that way once, split her right up the middle. Oh yeah, the asshole is a pretty flimsy invention, rips like tissue paper.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” Tooth said.
“I don’t think so. You’ve got a penance to pay. You shouldn’t have hurt my Sundance! He didn’t do nothing but try to protect me.”
“You’re a half wit.” Tooth’
s mouth was full of phlegm and spit.
“No, I’m not. I’m an animal lover is all. I had that dog since he was a pup. Watched him grow up, him and his brother both. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“Why don’t you untie me and I’ll kill the other mutt, too, make everything even-Steven.”
Skinny Man didn’t like that. He gleefully wrenched the shovel from Tooth’s thigh and put it in the fire, the handle sticking out the little iron door. Not a peep came from Tooth.
“Boy,” Skinny Man said, “you in a lot of trouble.”
“We won’t tell,” I pleaded. “Just let us go and we-”
“Shut up, you twit, you’re not going anywhere.”
I glanced at Tooth’s thigh and saw blood gush out like a fountain. The artery had definitely been sliced, and without aid he would drift off into sleep and never wake up. Tooth knew it too; he was looking at his leg with panicked eyes.
Skinny Man cracked his knuckles and looked down at the woman. “Now, where was I?” There was renewed pleasure in his voice. “Oh yeah, our game.”
He went back out the door, up the stairs, and came back a moment later with the saw in his hand and his dog at his heels. The dog came over and sniffed at Tooth’s leg then started licking the blood from the open wound. His dog collar jingled as his tongue flicked up and down.
“Butch, leave him alone and come lay down.”
The dog looked back and forth from his master to the wound a few times, as if deciding which was of greater importance, and finally went and lay down near his bowls. Skinny Man took the saw and cut into the woman’s arm at the shoulder.
“The fuck!” I screamed.
“You son of a bitch!” Tooth said.
With a shit-eating grin, the man hacked through her bone, the sickening zzz zzz echo of the saw filling the sweltering room. I closed my eyes and muttered some kind of prayer even though I wasn’t sure I was even speaking English. Butch started barking, and through all the noise I heard the dog get up and start padding about. I heard Tooth screaming profanities. I heard Skinny Man grunt like he was having trouble getting through the bone. And when I opened my eyes, I saw the arm separate from the body.
I choked back bile. A numbness floated into my mind, a drunk co-pilot taking the helm. My brain just couldn’t wrap around what it was seeing. It just wasn’t real; I would wake up soon. I knew I would because this stuff only happened in dreams.
Skinny Man took the arm and licked the blood flowing from the hacked shoulder. It dribbled down his chin and he laughed like a goblin. He rushed at me and grabbed my face and kissed me, smearing blood all over my mouth. His slick tongue lapped thick, bloody saliva on my eyes. Every bump on his tongue, every whisker on his chin, scratched itself across my face.
Butch was going wild, running and jumping up to get a taste of the arm. He tried to snatch it out of the man’s hands and got a smack for his troubles. “Hold on two secs, will ya?”
Taking the saw again, the madman cut the arm in two and put the pieces in Butch’s dishes. The dog tore at the flesh, shaking his head back and forth until the chunks of flesh pulled away. Then, like a vacuum, he inhaled the meat.
“That is a nasty wound you got there,” Skinny Man said to Tooth. “Lucky for you, I fancy myself a bit of a doctor. Got my first aid badge in the Cub Scouts.”
He bent down and yanked the ax from the woman’s head. It came loose with a gurgling fart as the pressure from the internal bleeding escaped.
And that was enough for me, my brain pulled the plug.
The last thing I saw before I passed out was Skinny Man taking the glowing shovel out of the stove and placing it flat against Tooth’s wound. I heard a sizzling pop of flesh, Tooth’s bloodcurdling scream, and then all was black.
CHAPTER 13
When I came to all was quiet. The rag was in my mouth again, swollen from my drool, or my tears, or both. I sucked it out and swallowed it. The smell hit me next, an eye-watering stench of decomposition, worse than the time I found a dead raccoon in the garbage out back of my house. That raccoon had been in that trashcan for weeks and when I lifted the lid the rot had hit me hard as a punch and almost knocked me over. Fucking-A if this wasn’t a hundred times worse.
My neck ached like I’d been kicked in the esophagus, and my chest felt constricted. When I’d fainted my body had fallen forward and been caught by the collar. It’s a wonder I didn’t snap my neck or choke myself to death. As I stood up, I could feel fresh cuts under my chin from where the collar had cut in.
The macabre realization that I could have died somewhat peacefully washed over me and I didn’t know if I was happy or sad.
The jingle of chains next to me meant Tooth was moving around. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the faint glow coming from the stove door. The wood had burned down to embers but their light was enough to make out the shadow of my best friend.
“Tooth?”
At my voice, the chains stopped. “You awake?” he asked.
Our words were muffled by the rags, but Tooth and I had that connection, that ability to understand each other.
“Yeah,” I replied. “What happened?”
“Oh God, Roger, he cauterized my leg. He burned it shut. This guy is crazy. We have to do something.”
“This is fucked. He sealed your wound? Why? So he can torture us some more?”
Tooth was quiet for a moment and I thought maybe I’d said something he hadn’t thought of. In a funny way, that made me feel bad. Both because I’d just scared him, and because, so far, he’d taken the most damage. But I knew that was just a momentary thing, I was going to get mine, too.
“The girl?” I asked
“He took the body upstairs. I think she was dead. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t moving or breathing or anything, and she’d lost a hell of a lot of blood. The dog ate her arm.”
There was another pause; neither of us knew what to do or say. I used the moment to begin working the rag out of my mouth. The good thing about the rags was that even though they cut off our ability to speak clearly when they were tight, with some tongue and jaw work the material would begin to stretch. They were a poor choice for gags-unless he was hoping the bacteria on them would give us e-coli or something and send us into a fit of poisoning that would have us wishing for death.
“Roger?”
“Yeah?” The gag was loosening a bit.
“Promise me if we get out of here, promise you’ll come to California with me.”
The moment was so unreal I started laughing. Right there in the middle of all this death and torture I just lost it. Imagine it, Tooth and me on the beach, smoking weed and riding the surf, talking to hot women in bikinis, laughing about the time we were chained up in some madman’s basement. I wanted that more than anything. I wanted to be so far away from reality I started to smell the sea and feel the breeze in my hair.
“Sure, I’ll go with you. You’re right, there’s nothing here for me,” I said.
“Except Lucy Graves’ tits.”
“Yeah,” I laughed, “those are pretty nice.”
He winced as he shifted his leg. “Someone’s bound to see the car. Rangers patrol there daily, right? All we got to do is make it through tomorrow and hope a ranger notices the car sitting there for two days and comes looking for us. I figure it’s got to be around midnight now. That psycho ain’t been back in a while and my guess is he’s sleeping. Let’s just make it through the day. We can do that.”
“But a ranger won’t hear us down here,” I said. The walls were concrete and even though the ceiling was made of cheap, rotting wood, with enough rugs and furniture over us our yells would go unheard. “Plus,” I added, “if he doesn’t have a warrant he can’t come in anyway.”
“He will if we’re loud enough. We just have to listen carefully, make as much noise as possible. Scream like crazy. I’ve made some calculations while you were blacked out. That door there in front of us is a stairwell, most likely the one we saw from outside. That mean
s the driveway is out that door and if someone were out there. . Remember when we heard the woman? The sound does carry. We can be heard if we yell loud enough. This door over to our left must go under the main part of the house. Under the living room and stuff. So if he lets anyone in the front door, they won’t hear us because he’s probably sound proofed it somehow. But if someone comes up the driveway, we’ll hear the car and can yell our asses off.”
“Have you heard any cars?”
“Not yet. I heard the door at the top of the stairs when he left. The hinge squeaks a little. And the ceiling above us connects to the whole house. Sometimes the dust shakes off it and I figure that’s him walking around.”
“But what does all that mean? How does that help us?”
“Not sure. But it gives us a heads up when he’s coming anyway.”
I watched the glowing stove in the corner of the room. The wan light from the slats in the door illuminated the nearby dog dishes. Something was in the dish though I couldn’t make out what it was. Then again, I didn’t need to. I knew it was the woman’s arm, or what was left of it.
“How’s your leg?” I asked.
“Hurts like a bitch. I think the bone is broken.”
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know. I can’t really wrap my head around all this. I keep waiting to wake up.”
Good ol’ Tooth; as usual he was on the same page as me.
The human brain has a difficult time rationalizing the absurd. It’s like watching aliens land in your backyard and take a dip in your pool. You think, “This is a dream, any moment now I’ll wake up.” And then you do wake up. And you laugh about it and go back to sleep.
Only we weren’t waking up.
“But did you see what he did to that woman?” I asked. “What kind of sick fucking maniac is this guy? Why did he do that? He’s not human. Do you hear him when he speaks? We or us or they. Is he talking about the dog or the voices in his head?”
The Summer I Died Page 8