My back was against the wall and as much as I could be, I was ready for whatever the light revealed.
Chapter 56
No dark figures lurked in the room, no phantoms, no Arashk, but there was still plenty for my eyes to take in. As the largest object in the room, they instinctively went to the bed first. Stripped of a comforter or even sheets, a bare mattress sat awkwardly upon a thin wooden platform. On the floor beside it, a shattered ceramic lamp lay on its side, the wire and cloth shade crooked and torn. My first thought was of the crashing sound earlier. My second was to wonder where the nightstand was, and why the lamp had been on the floor in the first place.
“What the fuck?”
Wade’s breathy sentiment drew my attention first to him, then in the direction he was staring. My stomach dropped and my head started to spin. From where I crouched, I had to put my hand on the floor to steady myself until the moment passed, and I could focus again.
They were only words, not a physical threat, yet their power was undeniable. Written in a dark substance that I presumed to be dried blood, they stretched from one end of the far wall to the other. Someone had used their fingertip to write with, and it was painfully obvious that the blood had been fresh at the time. The letters dripped, running down the wall before they’d had a chance to dry...
For the hour to reap has come,
for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.
It was like the chalkboard in that makeshift classroom at the church, only on a much larger scale. Here, the words didn’t merely fill a chalkboard; they covered the entire wall, from side to side and from top to bottom. The amount of blood it required filled me with dread and made my heart hurt. I could only speculate as to how many Barnes had killed this time.
“Do you know what it means?” Wade asked, bringing me back to the present.
“Not specifically,” I said, rising to a standing position, “but I know what it represents. We’re about to find some bad shit.”
And I was right. This room was considerably more furnished than the other one, mostly because half the other room’s furniture had been brought in to be used as makeshift workbenches. Both dressers were against the wall, end to end, with white towels draped over the tops of each.
From behind me, I heard Wade swallow hard.
Laid out across the towels were bones. That much was obvious, even in the semi-darkness. Each of the clean, white bones had tiny pieces of paper tucked underneath. Pulling out one of the pieces of paper and holding it toward the light from the window, I saw that not only was the scientific name of that particular bone labeled, but also listed was the part of the body from which it had come.
Leg.
Arm.
Pelvis.
Suddenly, it all made sense. Not only was Barnes back in business, working out of this motel room, but he was training Arashk just like he’d trained his stepdaughter. The idea that there was someone else in the world just as sick and twisted as Barnes chilled me to my core. Call me naive, but I’d hoped he was one of a kind.
“Hey, there’s another lamp,” I heard Wade say, and from my left, a brilliant light erupted into the room. As soon as it did, I almost wished it hadn’t. There wasn’t anything pleasant worth seeing.
Leaning against one of the dressers was a stack of two-foot by three-foot sections of dark grey heavy foam. Resting on top was a blue caulk gun with a cartridge nestled within it. Looking around, it didn’t take long to figure out what it had been used for. Other than the wall with the blood-engraved saying, every other wall in the room was padded from ceiling to floor with the sound-proofing foam. Imagining the need for such precautions was enough to send chills down my weakening spine.
Putting those possibilities out of my mind, I continued my exploration of the room’s most closely kept secrets.
Three nightstands formed the shape of an L, the far end leading into the closet area beside the sink. On top of each nightstand was an aquarium, narrow and relatively short, about the size you might find in a child’s bedroom. Inside the closest of the glass boxes was another sight that was all too familiar, bringing back unwanted, yet inevitable, memories. A human skull sat nestled on a bed of sand while thousands of tiny black and brown beetles gnawed away at the few pieces of flesh that still clung to the bone.
Barnes was nothing if not consistent.
The second and third aquariums provided more of the same, only the collection of bones was different. One of them contained what looked to be either arm or leg bones and two perfectly intact hands, the finger bones roughly the same size as the ones I received in that first box.
The third aquarium held the most disturbing display yet. There were more bugs in this enclosure than the other two, probably due to the fact there was more flesh to devour. The rib cage appeared to be completely sound, with all of the half-moon shaped bones still connected to a section of knobby spine. The feeding was frenzied and plentiful and well underway.
If it had been the first time I’d seen the spectacle, it may have made me sick. But it wasn’t, and I was already preparing myself for the worst that I was sure was yet to come.
The door to the bathroom was closed, and a thin sliver of light cut along the bottom. Putting my ear to the door, the humming grew louder, most likely caused by an exhaust fan. Only it didn’t sound like your run of the mill bathroom fan. This one sounded like it was on steroids. And judging by what I’d already seen – and what I knew of Barnes’ tendencies – I doubted it was on because someone had eaten some bad Mexican food.
I looked back into Wade’s eyes and wasn’t surprised to see some fear in them. Even in the poor light, his face looked paler than I remembered. I don’t think he was prepared for what we’d discovered, and honestly, how could he have been? This wasn’t exactly what he’d signed up for. Although I’d never been through it, I doubted he’d seen anything like this during his military training. For me, though, what we’d stumbled onto hadn’t come as a surprise, and I found myself shockingly immune to its horror.
“Wanna draw straws?” I whispered, nodding my head in the direction of the bathroom door. As soon as the question came out, I realized it sounded like I was making light of the situation. The tossing and turning in my stomach assured me that I wasn’t.
“I can do it,” Wade said, seemingly regaining his confident composure. Looking into his eyes, I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth, or if he was just trying to suck it up and soldier on. Either way, it didn’t look like he was all that ready to face what might be on the other side of the door.
So without even acknowledging his offer, I turned my back on Wade and grabbed the handle. It was cold in my hand, and I prepared myself to duck down once I flung the door open.
I raised the gun and took a deep breath.
“Wait,” Wade said over my shoulder,
But it was too late.
The door was already swinging inward.
Chapter 57
According to plan, I ducked down just as the door slammed against the wall and bounced back a few inches. The gagging sound from behind me was instantaneous. Wade wasn’t yet vomiting, but I could tell he was struggling pretty hard not to. Considering the scene before us, I wouldn’t have blamed him. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that I wouldn’t yet be puking right along with him.
All four walls in the bathroom had been painted white at one time, but now, everything was coated with varying shades of red. The walls, the tile floor, it was everywhere I looked. A few small splashes of crimson had even reached the ceiling. I stood in awe of the brutally macabre display, but it wasn’t the type of awe that inspires you. The entire length of the bathtub was awash in blood, some of it long dried, much of it still glistening. And it was easy to see why.
Hanging by the wrists above the tub was a naked woman, much of her skin glistening with the same shade of red that both covered and filled the tub. Overhead, the large fan continued to hum.
“Oh, my God.”
This time
, the sentiment was mine. I spoke the words without even trying, and immediately heard Dallas’ voice in my mind from back at the church:
God had nothing to do with this.
I was also pretty sure God had nothing to do with the message left for me, scrawled in blood on the back wall.
Future sight of
Luke’s grand harvest
I shook my head. He was actually having fun with all of this. Unable to comprehend the notion, I put Barnes’ tongue-in-cheek intentions out of my mind.
Taking care not to slip on the blood, I took a few careful steps into the bathroom. It wasn’t until I was standing beside the bathtub that I saw what I hadn’t from the doorway, what the blood clinging to the naked body was trying to hide. The biggest cross I had ever seen hung around the woman’s neck, tucked between her breasts, all covered in red. Pain shot through my chest as I reached up and brushed the woman’s long black hair away from her face.
Mackenzie’s features were a mask of frozen anguish. Immediately, the sounds of Claire’s laughter coming from the front seat on the way to the club became the soundtrack playing in my mind. I’d only known Mackenzie for a few hours, but my heart broke right then, both for her and for Claire. I needed to get her down. To show her one last act of dignity. It wasn’t a fleeting desire, but a burning obligation like I’d never felt. She was already dead, but there was decency involved. Decency that, to that point, she hadn’t been shown.
“What are you doing?” Wade asked from just outside the doorway. But I ignored the question. I didn’t feel I had the time to explain. Nor the patience.
The twisted nylon rope was wrapped around a steel bar that jutted from the ceiling rafters. No way was it original, and the torn away ceiling tiles confirmed it. The steel bar had been installed strictly for reinforcement.
These guys thought of everything!
The knot looked fairly simple, like it had been tied in a rush. Still, the short end of the rope that I needed to pull was just beyond my reach.
I once again holstered the gun in the back of my jeans, and searched for a somewhat dry place on the edge of the tub to put my foot. Finding an area I thought was clear enough, I stepped up and leaned over to grab the end of the rope.
But I miscalculated. The blood that coated the side of the tub wasn’t completely dry and my shoe slipped in the greasy muck. It was only out of sheer reflex that I shamefully reached out for Mackenzie with both arms and caught myself to keep from falling. My arms wrapped around her slick torso and we swung through the air like a pendulum. There was a smacking sound as my face slapped the area just under her armpit. The sickening note it played brought to the back of my throat the beer I’d drunk only an hour ago.
Jerking my face away, I found that I now stood on steady ground, straddling the side of the tub. I let go and Mackenzie’s body swung gently back and forth. The deplorability of it all caused me to drop my eyes in shame. It took me doing that to notice that my right foot was nowhere to be found. I was standing on solid ground, but only because my foot had splashed down into several inches of ankle deep red blood. It had all happened so fast.
“Shit.”
With disgust flowing through me like a rogue wave, I lifted my foot and started shaking it free of gore.
I could feel the contents of my stomach rising up in protest when a wail of rage shattered the silence. Erupting from somewhere in the room behind me, it was like something out of a gladiator movie. Only then did it dawn on me that, while investigating all the secrets this sleazy motel room had been keeping, I’d completely forgotten about Arashk. I could tell by the startled shriek from Wade that his mind had also been preoccupied. My hand instantly went for the gun tucked in my pants.
Spinning around, I saw Arashk’s face coming up behind Wade in the cutout of the doorway. His features were contorted into something any warrior would have been proud of. Arashk’s eyes were mere slits, the skin of his cheeks and nose wrinkled upward as his opened mouth showed every one of his thirty-two teeth. What I didn’t see, until it was too late to warn him, was Arashk’s arm swinging downward in Wade’s direction just as he was turning around.
They say that during moments of peril, time sometimes slows and events play out in slow motion. Well, they’re not lying, because that’s exactly how the next ten seconds went down.
A shiny steel claw the size of a baseball glove swung down and entered the top of Wade’s right shoulder. All four curved tines disappeared into him until only half of their length still showed.
The scream that burst from Wade’s throat blistered my eardrums and echoed off the walls in the cramped bathroom. His head tilted back in agony, providing me with an opportunity I prayed I had the nerve to take.
Without taking consequences into account, I raised the gun in Arashk’s direction and felt my finger squeeze the trigger. Considerably louder than Wade’s scream, the blast reverberated off the bathroom tile. Searing pain from the gun’s recoil stung my wrist, and through the modest cloud of white smoke, I saw Arashk’s head whip backward. A fraction of a second later, his body followed, releasing his grip on the claw he left embedded in Wade’s shoulder.
Chapter 58
Wade fell face first into the bathroom and was adding his own blood to the already vile scene. The claw-like instrument was still embedded in his shoulder, and he’d just about drawn some blood from me when I tried to pull it out. As it was, he was content for me to simply help him out of the house of horrors.
At this point, my psyche was pretty well shaken, if not downright fractured. Someone else’s blood covered the front of me, and I could still feel the cold, clammy skin of a dead person against my own. Not to mention the fact that, for the second time in my life, I’d taken someone else’s. Both out of self-defense. I needed a change of scenery and more fresh air than any bathroom fan could ever produce. No matter how powerful it was.
With my arm around Wade’s waist, and his good arm around my shoulder, we struggled through the bedroom. He was getting light headed from the loss of blood, making each step a wobbly task in itself.
One glance at Arashk’s motionless body and it was obvious a coroner would be needed. The bullet had caught him just above his left eye, and there was no coming back from the pool of blood that was spreading out beneath his head, soaking into the brown carpet. Still, until we were several steps away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to sit up and grab one of our ankles, despite assuring myself that things like that only happen in the movies. But then again, I’d thought I’d left Corwin Barnes dead a year ago.
As me made our way past the aquariums and dressers lined with the bones of who knows how many unfortunate souls, I saw where Arashk had been hiding. The mattress from the bed was cast aside, revealing the gap between the hollowed wooden platform and the floor. The opening was just large enough for someone to crawl out of.
Why hadn’t the guy hadn’t just taken off? The door to the adjoining room stood wide open. From where Arashk had been hiding, he had been only twenty feet away from the cover of night. But I guess it didn’t matter, and we would probably never know. I could only speculate that it had something to do with Barnes – either loyalty to, or fear of.
Wade didn’t want to sit on the chair or the bed in the next room, no matter how much I insisted. Despite growing weaker by the second, he refused to stop and rest until we were outside and breathing the cool night air. It wasn’t until I’d lowered him down onto the curb and taken a step back that I saw just how much blood he was losing. I never would have thought a shoulder would bleed so much. Looking back toward the open doorway of the motel room ignited a very real concern in me. A subtle trail of bright red splotches stretched from where he now sat all the way back to the room. Wade needed a hospital. The sooner the better.
“I have to grab my cell,” I said, leaving him slumped against the metal pole of a handicapped parking sign. “It’s time to hand this over to the cops, and I’m not sure we can depend on that squirrely owner t
o do it.”
I ran over to where my truck was parked, its front end slumped to one side. There would be time to deal with that later. I reached inside the cab and grabbed my cell phone off the dashboard. When I checked the screen, I got the feeling that later was going to be here real damn quick.
Thirteen.
That’s how many calls I had, and eleven of them were from Claire. Instantly, an alarm went off in my brain. Where was Barnes? I was making a habit of not keeping track of everything and everyone I needed to, and it wasn’t a habit I wanted to develop. Realizing time was probably very much of the essence, I decided to forgo the numerous voicemails, and brought up Claire’s name on the screen. With my stomach turning itself inside out, I punched the green call button.
She answered on the first ring.
“Luke! Where the hell have you been?” The urgency in her voice was not something I was used to hearing, and it did nothing to alleviate my growing concern.
“It’s a long story,” I said, shooting a glance over in Wade’s direction. He was still slumped in the same position, and I wondered if he was still conscious. “What’s going on?”
“I got a call from your friend tonight. Corwin Barnes.”
“What?” I said, anger exploding in my head. “How’d he get your number?”
“Heck if I know,” she said. “But he got it.”
“What did he say?”
There was a short pause before she answered, giving me even more reason to worry. When she finally did speak again, her voice was softer, cooler by a few degrees.
“He said that if you didn’t meet him you know where, he would be paying me a visit.”
I tried to control the rage erupting inside me, but I was failing miserably, and slammed my hand down on the hood of the truck. Not once, but twice.
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