by Bryan Smith
Shit!
Anguish exploded inside her as her hands tightened around the steering wheel in a death grip. Of all the things she had ever done, this was maybe the worst, and it had happened entirely by accident. A voice somewhere inside her said she should stop and see if there was anything she could do. But Jessica never actually slowed down, the cold pragmatism that dominated her life now asserting itself the way it always did. The girl was dead. She was just a little thing. No way had she survived a high-speed collision with a vehicle this size. And even if, by some miracle, she had survived, what could she do?
Nothing. That’s what.
So she kept going and soon she reached the barricade blocking the way out of Hopkins Bend. She slowed to a crawl and guided the F-350 around a side of the barricade. The big truck pushed through the low-hanging branches and vegetation, breaking off many of the branches in its wake.
And then, at last, she was through to the other side and speeding away from the place that was the source of so many of her life’s sorrows—and on her way to a last encounter with the man responsible for the rest of them.
30.
Daphne started screaming again when Horst inserted the blade into her hip, pushed it in approximately one inch, and began to slice toward her knee. The pain was excruciating and so far beyond any level of pain she had ever imagined that it instantly drove her right up to the brink of insanity. It only got worse as he continued to dig the blade in and slice. Her lungs strained and began to hurt from the force of her screaming. Horst focused with some considerable intensity on his work, but he took a moment now and then to smile at Daphne and savor her agony.
She didn’t doubt vengeance was the main thing driving the man’s actions, but the bulge in his pants suggested there was more to it than that. He was a sadist and a sexual deviate like the rest of them, only he was apparently even more deranged than his cohorts had been. The man had killed his own brother. There could never be anything like mercy residing in the heart of a man like that. By now Daphne understood she was going to die on this table. And it was going to be a drawn-out and inconceivably agonizing death. There would be no divine intervention. No rescue team was going to come crashing into the room. Miracles like that only happened in movies. She couldn’t even console herself with the delusion that she was on her way to see Adam again in the afterlife. It really sort of sucked that even the pain of the blade slicing through her flesh couldn’t banish her atheistic beliefs from her mind. It would be nice to have some little thing to hold onto.
The blade stopped a few inches short of her knee. Horst then began cutting back in the opposite direction, slicing through the meat and muscle as he began to pull the long strip of flesh from her hip. He cut the strip free and dropped it on the grill.
Then he reached for the power switch to turn the grill on.
Daphne screamed. “NOOOOO!”
Horst laughed. He had turned the grill off shortly after strapping her to the table. It was still hot initially and she suffered some burns to her backside, but the layer of charred flesh Kate had left behind had afforded her some small temporary protection from the heat. Of course, that wouldn’t have lasted long at all if Horst hadn’t cut the power and allowed the grill to cool.
His forefinger hovered over the switch a moment, prodding lightly at it rather than actually flipping it on. “Maybe I cook you now, but perhaps I could change my mind.” He grinned and fondled the bulge in his pants. “What would you be willing to do to make that happen?”
Daphne forced out a breath and struggled to think through the pain. The blood pooling against the underside of her thigh alarmed her. It seemed like there was altogether too much of it already. But she had to set that concern aside and focus on making Horst believe she was worth saving. He was toying with her. She knew that. But she had to fucking try.
“You’ve already seen some of what I’ll do. There is literally nothing I won’t do to keep on living. Take me out of here and stick me in a box for the rest of my life. Make me your fucking slave. Fuck every hole I’ve got ten times a day. I’ll be everything you’ve ever wanted and then some. I don’t care. Just please don’t kill me.”
Horst cocked an eyebrow and chuckled. “You paint a tempting picture.”
Daphne gritted her teeth against another spasm of agony. “I’ll be worth it, I swear. You won’t ever regret taking me out of here.”
The humor faded from Horst’s features with shocking swiftness. His eyes bulged as he whipped a hand across her face, his big knuckles roughly gouging her cheek. “What do you know of regret, you murdering bitch!?”
The pain from this blow was briefly so intense it distracted Daphne from the misery of her throbbing open flesh wound. This moment of relative respite lasted barely longer than the space of a single deep breath, but it was enough to allow her to channel her energy in another direction. “Why did you kill all these people?” she asked, forcing herself to meet the butcher’s livid, insane gaze. “Why kill your brother? Why ruin your own life?”
The purpose here was distraction. She wanted to get him thinking about anything other than finishing his business with her. He struck her as the kind of guy who harbored a sore ego perpetually in need of expressing itself. The always angry, mad-at-the-world type. He would want to talk about his rage. Guys like him always did.
Horst sneered. “I have not ruined my life.”
“But won’t you have to run? Go into hiding?”
“Of course not.”
“But--”
He backhanded her again. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” His hand went to her throat and squeezed hard, making her gasp for air. “Your feeble attempt to distract me won’t save your life. Nothing will.”
He let go of her.
Daphne opened her mouth wide and sucked in precious air. Her jaw was sore from the blows it had absorbed, but at this point it was just one pain among many. The psychological impact of it was almost as bad. Until today no one had ever raised a hand to her. She had never even been spanked as a child. Not once. The deference she’d been treated with at all stages of her life had ill-prepared her for this. She yearned for a return to her pampered, protected existence, but there would be no getting it back. That life was over. The fact that she was still breathing was just a temporary technicality.
But Horst surprised her by taking the bait she’d dangled, after all. “I’m not going anywhere, child. Your mistake is in thinking I’m just a butcher. I’m so much more than that.” He dug a thumb into the trench he’d carved in her hip, making her squeal and beg him to stop as he roughly massaged exposed nerve endings. “I’m also not some other, more powerful person’s pawn. Vivian Hunt was no more my master than you are.”
Horst jabbed a fork in the wound and wiggled it around.
Daphne screamed.
The torture continued with no further comment from Horst for several more minutes as he experimented with several different methods of abusing her shredded flesh. This included much more of the expected jabbing with sharp instruments. He also poured some of the oils and spices Klaus had used to marinate Kate into the wound. Her hip felt like it was on fire. And then he actually did burn her flesh, applying the flame from a Zippo lighter to the wound. Her eyes bulged so hard as her flesh begin to blister and blacken it felt like they would pop out of their sockets.
Then Horst snapped the Zippo shut, shoved it into a pocket, and resumed talking, taking up where he’d left off, as if the torture interlude hadn’t happened. “My position here is what you would call ‘bulletproof’. I am not truly an employee of Mama Hunt’s diner, nor was my incompetent brother. I am a scientist specializing in the area of behavioral research, as was Klaus, though he was my underling. Our actual employer, though that’s not precisely the right word, is the U.S. government.”
This claim was so odd it cut through the pain engulfing Daphne’s consciousness and focused her attention again. “What? But that’s crazy. What would you be researching out her
e in the middle of nowhere?”
Horst chuckled. “The so-called ‘middle of nowhere’ is the perfect place for this kind of research, which many in mainstream society would consider barbaric. What we’re doing is conducting an ongoing social experiment, creating conditions in which a local backwoods population with a long-standing tradition of cannibalism is allowed to thrive unchecked. There is much we can learn and utilize in foreign adventures from the ways in which such a society functions.”
Daphne stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. What he was saying was outlandish, but his tone was confident and free of the agitation he’d evinced throughout the bulk of this ordeal. And, really, was it any crazier than the things she had already seen and experienced?
No, it wasn’t.
Holy shit, Daphne thought. I’m being tortured by a mad fucking scientist.
This was definitely the sort of thing that should by rights be restricted entirely to the land of nightmares. It wasn’t the kind of thing that could ever happen in real life. And yet here she was. And she knew too well this was no dream.
Horst’s features shifted in a way that indicated he knew her thoughts. “You believe. Good. Many people in your position would never be able to get beyond kneejerk denial of the truth. No one wants to believe the worst about the powers ostensibly entrusted with their protection. Public knowledge of our operations here would, of course, result in an absolutely earth-shattering scandal, one of a magnitude so extreme it could feasibly topple the administration, perhaps even foment revolution.” He smiled and caressed the inside of Daphne’s thigh, clearly enjoying the way she trembled at his touch. “Fortunately, the major media outlets are largely under our control, rendering that prospect unlikely.”
“I think I get it now.”
Horst raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Tell me what you think you know.”
She winced as he moved his hand higher up her thigh and slid a finger inside her. Wincing, however, was all she did. He was looking for a particular reaction, something more dramatic, but she refused to give it to him. That was one thing she could do, at least. If he wasn’t causing her actual physical pain, she wouldn’t scream or beg. She would cling to any fragile little piece of dignity left to her as long as she could.
Daphne looked him in the eye, striving not to react visibly as his finger probed deeper. “You’re not worried because you’ve been given license to act with impunity. You feel free to kill whoever you want, indulge in whatever sick act you please, because you know there will be no consequences. There isn’t anything you can’t cover up or justify as necessary to advancing your research.”
He nodded. “Smart girl. Uncommonly smart, in fact, especially compared to my usual subjects. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hasty to kill you.”
Again, Daphne tried hard not to react outwardly. It was possible he was only toying with her. She didn’t want to betray even the slightest flicker of hope. She was convinced that would get her killed as quickly as anything else.
So she shifted gears a bit with her next conversational gambit, which involved another calculated risk. “There’s something else I don’t understand.”
“Yes?”
“Was Lexus really your daughter?”
This question got to him. It was obvious in the slight flare of his nostrils and the brief tightening of his jawline. He took his finger out of her vagina and reached for a knife. Daphne had time to suck in a breath before he punched the knife into her wound. This time it wasn’t possible to suppress outward reaction. She screamed and strained against her bonds. Horst pushed the knife in farther, until it was lodged deep inside muscle. And he left it there. Daphne stared at the sliver of steel protruding from her flesh and began to weep.
Was there no limit to this horrible man’s cruelty?
But that was a question that hardly warranted asking, the answer was so obvious. Of course there was no limit to it. This man was a modern equivalent to someone like Josef Mengele, reveling in cruelty under the guise of science. Only in this case the mad doctor’s abominable deeds would never be exposed. He was apparently insulated from any risk to his personal well-being. A man this monstrous given that kind of latitude had no limits at all in anything he did.
Horst reached behind him and untied the apron strings knotted at the small of his back. He pulled the apron off, folded it neatly, and set it on a corner of the table. Some of the severity was gone from his expression when he spoke again. “Lexus was a special girl, but you are right, she was not my biological daughter. You really are amazingly perceptive.”
Daphne struggled to concentrate. The foreign object buried deep in her flesh was making it difficult. She let out a slow breath and delayed replying until she was sure she could speak in an even tone. “Wasn’t hard…” She grimaced and stopped a moment to wait out another surge of agony. “It wasn’t hard to figure out once I knew the truth about you. No offense, but Lexus really didn’t seem like a research scientist’s daughter. Who was she to you, really?”
Horst pulled out his shirttail and began to unbutton the shirt down the front. “She was one of the early subjects to return from our facility in Maine, where some of my associates test new drug therapies and perform all manner of experimental surgeries. I had Lexus sent there as a child after taking her from her real parents. When she came back, she was something less than the bright, precocious child I’d sent away. It’s fair to say her brains had been rather thoroughly scrambled.”
“What kind of parents would let that happen?”
Horst pulled off the shirt and began to fold it. “The mysteriously found dead kind.”
“Oh.”
Horst placed the shirt atop the folded apron and stood there bare-chested, leering at her as he again fondled the bulge at his crotch. His brutish, muscular physique made him look more like a Viking displaced in time than a scientist. “I thereafter raised the girl as my own, though as far as she knew she grew up the adopted daughter of a simple butcher.” He unbuttoned his pants and began to slide them down his legs. “I’m going to mount you now.”
Daphne whimpered. “Please don’t.”
Horst smiled. “First I will mount you. Then I will cook you.”
Daphne began to shiver uncontrollably. “No. No. Please.”
The big man lifted a leg and began to climb up on the table. Daphne tried to brace herself for the terrible thing that was about to happen, but there was no way to keep the terror and revulsion she felt in check. She was about to start screaming again when something went wrong for Horst. Before he could finish climbing up on the table, his body went rigid with shock and his face registered a severe level of pain.
Daphne might have derived significant satisfaction from this had the development not come as a shock to her as well. She watched in stupefaction as Horst’s right leg slid off the table. His face twisted again and he unleashed a howl of agony as whatever it was that happened the first time happened again. He braced his palms flat against the table’s surface in an apparent effort to keep from being dragged to the floor. The muscles in his arms shook with the strain of the effort. It was then that Daphne realized he was being attacked by someone or something at floor level. She felt hope for the first time since Horst gunned down Vivian’s dinner party, because someone, either one of Vivian’s guests or a member of the waitstaff, had survived the assault, after all. Whoever it was had been playing dead, biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike back—and that moment was finally here.
Horst twisted his head around to get a look at what was happening to him. He started screaming again an instant later, the sound so shrill it was almost womanish. He twisted his hips and tried to kick out at his attacker, but this wound up working against him. His rigidly braced arms buckled and he slid to the floor, banging his head against the edge of the table on his way down. Once he was out of sight, Daphne heard more cries of pain and sounds of struggle. There was also a strange slavering sound, a moist slurping, as if…as if…
Bu
t Daphne couldn’t credit the idea that danced through her head then. It made no sense at all, less even than any of the other wild shit that had happened today. What she was hearing had to be nothing more than the ragged breathing of a very badly wounded person engaged in a fearsome struggle to stay alive. Horst was a huge man and it was difficult to imagine him being easily defeated, even after being taken by surprise, but she had to hope his adversary somehow got the best of him. It was the only way she might get out of here alive.
After a few more frenzied moments, Horst stopped shrieking and the sounds of struggle ceased, but that slavering sound continued. Daphne soon became aware of other sounds, a ripping noise, followed by something that might have been mastication. The crazy thought she’d had moments ago recurred, but this time it refused to go away. She began to be afraid again and wished whatever was happening wasn’t happening out of her limited field of vision.
A bloody hand reached up and slapped the edge of the table.
Daphne looked at it and screamed.
Another hand covered in blood appeared and groped at the edge of the table. Daphne saw a wedding ring on one of them. The only person she recalled seeing with a wedding ring was Ambrose Prescott, the guy whose wife led him around on a leash. It was hard to imagine a guy like that subduing and possibly killing Horst. But then a head appeared above the edge of the table and she saw it was indeed Ambrose.
Only he wasn’t quite himself anymore.
Ambrose held on tight to the table’s edge and hauled himself up to a standing position. The rich submissive made a guttural, groaning sound as he stood canted at a weird angle, like a man who had forgotten how to use his legs properly or was having balance issues. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood and bore evidence of multiple bullet wounds, all of them concentrated around center mass.