by Bryan Smith
Mike grunted.
Good? That’s all you’ve got to say to that? Fucking good?
“So you’ve accepted our generous second chance offer then?”
Mike shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I have.”
She pursed her lips for a moment and regarded him in a coolly appraising way that made him feel like bugs were crawling all over him. “Guessing isn’t good enough. You must be certain. You must be truly and fully committed to performing as required. Are you?
Mike gulped. “Um…yeah. I am. Definitely. Fully, absolutely, without reservation committed. No question about it.”
She smiled. “I’m pleased to hear it, Mike. It would be a shame to lose Marnie.”
This comment made Mike’s gut clench with sudden dread. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean your second chance is also a second chance for her. As you may understand by now, we take a tremendous risk every time we take the step of inviting a new member into our circle. An officer of the conspiracy never extends an invitation unless she is absolutely certain the prospective new member will unhesitatingly accept. Survival of the group means not allowing even the slightest possibility of exposure.”
“So when you said earlier that she would be punished…”
Nadia nodded. “I meant she would die.”
“Jesus.”
“By agreeing to do as required, you have given her a temporary reprieve.” Nadia leaned back in her chair and caressed the old book’s cover with her fingertips. “If you do what has been asked of you, she will live and continue to serve Satan.” She glanced down at the book and lightly ran one finger along the lines of the pentagram. “You asked what I was reading.” She looked up again and her eyes projected an inner hardness that belied her exquisitely sensual feminine exterior. “This book is The Satanic Bible. The real one, not that piece of fluff written by LaVey.”
Mike thought, Who the fuck is LaVey?
It was a question that went unanswered as Nadia continued: “It is one of only 666 copies produced long, long ago. Not many copies survive today. Perhaps only a handful. And this copy is the most sacred satanic relic in the Diabolical Conspiracy’s possession. Any one of us would kill or die to protect it and thus preserve the knowledge it contains. Killing a man tonight will only be the first of many ways in which you’ll prove you are worthy of being a member of our group. After tonight, you will be on probation. You will only become a full member when I am convinced you are as committed to the cause as the rest of us.” She held up the book, displaying the cover for him. The faint and fading outlines of a goat’s head were visible within the lines of the pentagram. “When I believe that you are truly willing to die for this book and what it represents, only then will you become our Thirteenth, thus completing the infernal circle.”
Mike’s frown deepened as he listened to her. The things she was telling him troubled him immensely. They still sounded insane to his ears. But he was trying very hard to comprehend the twisted logic behind the words. He had to find a way to believe what she believed--or at least convince them all that he did--because the alternative was not acceptable. Because he couldn’t--or didn’t want to--imagine a world without Marnie in it, regardless of how she had used him.
He made the frown go away and looked Nadia unwaveringly in the eye. “Then let me start convincing you. You say I have to kill someone tonight. So let’s get on with it.”
Nadia’s coolly appraising look gave way to another of her frosty, nearly invisible smiles. “As you wish.” She pitched her voice higher for her next utterance, making the words heard over the din of conversation at the rear of the garage. “It is time. Make the preparations. Bring out the sacrifice.”
The conversational buzz ceased immediately and was replaced by sounds of activity. Mike heard a clink of bottles as they were dumped into a trash can. He glanced past Nadia and saw cult members quickly disposing of paper plates and napkins. Most then returned to the circle of chairs, but instead of sitting right away, they pulled the chairs outward, widening the circle. Two male cult members--including Blake--went into the house. Mike assumed the sacrificial victim was stashed away in there somewhere. Just thinking about that made his guts clench again, so he tried to stay focused on what was happening out here. Once the circle of chairs had been widened, most of the remaining cult members immediately seated themselves and bowed their heads. They also folded their hands in their laps and closed their eyes. Again, he was struck by how mundane the scene seemed on the surface. They looked like members of a prayer group instead of Satanists. Or, considering the circle of chairs, like attendees of an AA meeting in a church basement.
It was a little weird.
Another of the male cult members--the genuinely ugly one, who looked like Adolf Hitler and Joan Rivers had somehow gotten together and produced a deformed lovechild meshing distorted elements of each of their most unattractive physical features--dragged a large block of wood into the center of the circle. There was a curious narrow groove through the center of the top part of the block. Mike puzzled over this until he saw the ugly guy return to the rear of the garage and reach for the heavy-bladed axe hanging from a peg on the wall.
Then he understood.
Oh shit…that’s a chopping block.
He had given no thought to how they expected him to kill this thus far unidentified person, but now that he was thinking about it, he realized there had been an unconscious assumption that it would be something much cleaner than this. As far as any method of murder could be called clean, that is.
But this…this was just…gruesome.
He realized he was shaking again--and was again very much doubting whether he could go through with this, regardless of the cost.
And then Blake and the other guy returned, dragging the bound and gagged intended victim along with them. It took every ounce of will Mike possessed not to scream during the shock of recognition that occurred then. Because the man he was supposed to kill was not a faceless, nameless stranger.
Mike knew him.
Knew him well.
I can’t do this, he thought. No fucking way.
5.
The man with his head on the chopping block was Donnie Wilkerson. Donnie and Mike’s father had grown up together. When Mike had been a kid, he would occasionally see Donnie having drinks with his dad out on the deck behind their house. He hadn’t been in the same room with the man in well over a decade, maybe closer to a decade and a half, but his memory of the man had not dimmed in the intervening years. The reason for that was that the man was rarely out of the public eye these days.
Mike’s incredulity was off the scale. He simply couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He looked at Nadia. “Oh, come on. You can’t seriously expect me to kill the mayor.”
Nadia’s expression was placid, her posture relaxed. She looked as serene as a woman watching the ocean from a beach chair. “That is precisely what I expect. You will do it…” She lifted her shoulders in a small, unconcerned shrug. “Or you will die. And then Marnie will die. Regardless of what you decide, the mayor will also die.”
“This is crazy.”
Nadia said nothing, just continued looking right at him with that perfectly composed expression of a woman who didn’t have a care in the world.
Blake and the other guy forced the mayor to his knees. Donnie Wilkerson was nude. He had the kind of ruggedly handsome face that projected an aura of strength and firmness of conviction. The kind of face voters liked. But the sight of his flabby, pasty middle-aged flesh exposed this way ruined that impression. He seemed vulnerable. Weak. Soft. Mike looked at him and was almost overcome with pity. His dad’s old friend regarded him with dazed, uncomprehending eyes. Mike guessed the man had been drugged and he felt some relief at the knowledge. It would obviously be better if he didn’t fully realize what was happening to him. Or know who was responsible. Though Mike doubted Donnie Wilkerson would have recognized him even if he hadn’t been drugged. A lot of time had passed since they had last see
n each other and Mike scarcely resembled the adolescent boy he had been in his mid-teens.
None of which made the notion of killing a man he knew--a man he believed was a good man--any less horrible.
Blake and the other man pressed Wilkerson’s head to the chopping block. He didn’t struggle. He just stared at the cement floor and breathed raggedly through the gag in his mouth. Mike stared at the sprinkling of age spots and moles on the man’s back and bony shoulders and felt another sharp twinge of pity. The ugly man who looked sort of like a diminutive Hitler stepped into the circle, approached Mike, and proffered the axe.
Mike’s heart hammered away in his chest as he stared at the heavy, razor-sharp blade. The beating of his heart seemed amplified, almost deafening. He knew this was a false impression, a product of intense stress, but that hardly mattered. In those moments, it sounded to him as if his heart might explode. Which, given the circumstances, might not be the worst thing that could happen.
He glanced around at the faces of the others. They were no longer in those prayerful poses. They were all watching him now, their expressions expectant and…hopeful? Yes, hopeful. They wanted to see him do this awful thing. And why? Because they were all equally eager to see him join the cult as its thirteenth member? Maybe that was part of it. Nadia had repeatedly emphasized how important it was to complete the “infernal circle”, whatever the hell that meant. But Mike suspected there was another layer to this and that was the simple, primal thrill of bloodlust. They wanted to look on as another human being met a grisly end right in front of them. Yes, he could see it in their eyes now, it was excruciatingly clear. These people were monsters. The worst kind of sadists. Suddenly he was seeing other things in a new light, as well. The chopping block, for instance. No one created or kept a thing like that around for a one-time use. They’d done this before. Maybe many times. And now he understood why they held their meetings out here in the garage rather than inside Nadia’s house--because hosing blood spatters off a cement floor was much easier than getting those pesky stains out of a living room carpet.
Nadia sighed. “We’re waiting, Mike. We understand this isn’t easy, but our patience is not infinite. Take the axe. Now.”
The ugly man pushed the axe at him and muttered under his breath, “Take it. You won’t get another chance.”
Mike reluctantly accepted the axe and held it loosely by the handle. It was heavier than he expected. He had chopped firewood some as a boy. That was the last time he had used an axe. They were primarily intended as tools, of course, not as weapons. This one’s axe head seemed heavier than normal, and larger. Of course. If these freaks really did make a regular thing of decapitating people, they would want to have the biggest, baddest axe available.
Marnie leaned toward him, touched his arm. “Do it, Mike. For me. For both of us. Render glory unto Satan.”
Fucking hell.
He was still stunned by how thoroughly Marnie was invested in this Satanism thing. Prior to tonight she had always seemed so intelligent and rational, but that had just been more role-playing. This was the real Marnie, this bloodthirsty devil worshipper. She believed in it all absolutely. Satan was her lord and she loved him. She had since childhood. The world was upside down. Nothing made sense anymore.
He looked at the mayor’s slack-featured, drugged face. He still wasn’t struggling.
Can I kill this poor bastard? Can I really?
Nadia cleared her throat. “You are out of time, Mike. Do it now. Or die.”
Mike heaved a breath and got to his feet. He felt detached from his body as he approached the chopping block. The eyes of the others followed him as he moved. But he felt like one of them, just another observer, watching and wondering how this would play out. Because he still didn’t know, not even as he raised the axe and placed the sharp edge of the blade against the exposed back of Donnie Wilkerson’s neck.
He looked at Nadia. He felt like there were still things he had to know before this could happen. “Why am I doing this? Why this man? Why tonight?”
“To prove your worth, as you have already been told. And also because I fucking told you to do it. You don’t need any other reasons.”
The tone of her voice was sharper than it had been in a while and this was the first time she had seemed truly angry since her assault on Blake. It scared the crap out of him and he had to tighten his grip on the axe to keep from dropping it. He had the sense she wouldn’t put up with further delay much longer.
Still, he hesitated. “This man is an elected official, which means this amounts to an assassination. This won’t be the same thing as killing Nicole.” He noted Nadia’s look of surprise at the mention of that name and nodded. “Yes, Marnie told me about her. Nicole was a nobody. Just another citizen. This man’s death will be big news. There’ll be an investigation, possible risk of exposure. Surely--”
“Shut up.”
Mike closed his mouth, swallowing the rest of his argument. Nadia’s tone was more stern--and more laced with lethal, unforgiving intent--than ever. Saying anything else would be useless now. Everything he’d said had been useless. This woman couldn’t be reasoned with, nor could her mind ever be changed.
Her expression was fierce as she addressed him again. “This man stands in opposition to the cause of evil. His own actions brought him to this point. He must die. He will die. Do it now. Right fucking now!”
She was on the edge of her seat now and her hands were clenched into fists. She looked ready to launch herself at him at any moment. The memory of what she had done to Blake made that a chilling prospect. Mike lifted the axe from the mayor’s neck and propped the handle on his shoulder.
He looked at Marnie, saw her smiling and nodding her support.
And he looked around the circle one last time, at all those eager faces…at all these vultures masquerading as humans. One of the female members--a shapely blonde in a red party dress--had produced a gun from somewhere. Its barrel was aimed at his midsection. Insurance, he supposed, a safeguard should he abruptly snap and decide to wield the heavy axe on the cult members instead of the mayor.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
His course was set now.
He truly had no choice.
Mike gripped the axe’s handle tighter and lifted it high above his head.
Then he swung the axe down.
6.
Later Mike would realize he should have taken at least another moment to accurately line up the arc of his swing with the back of the mayor’s neck. The whole thing might have gone more smoothly if he had just done that. But he didn’t. So instead of chopping into his neck, the blade slammed into the back of his head, penetrating his skull but failing to instantly kill him. The shock to the man’s system overrode the effects of the drug. His body spasmed and Blake and the male cult member assisting him struggled to keep his neck pressed against the chopping block. People were yelling. Screaming. One voice was louder than all the others. Nadia, of course. Ordering him to extract the axe from the mayor’s head and swing it again, to finish the fucking job. Mike glanced at Marnie. She was screaming at him, too. In general, these crazy motherfuckers were making a hell of a lot of noise, which seemed odd for a bunch of people so worried about “exposure”.
Mike dragged his gaze away from Marnie and focused again on the mayor’s still-twitching body. About an inch of the heavy blade was buried inside the dying man’s skull. A lot of blood was leaking out around its edges. He pulled at the axe handle, but it didn’t budge. So he braced a foot on the edge of the chopping block and rocked the handle up and down until the blade came out. Then he repositioned himself and lined up the blade with the back of the man’s neck again. This time he took a couple of careful practice swings, making sure he had the arc right before he swung in earnest again. There was still a lot of frantic noise in the garage as he did this. Everyone seemed anxious that he get finish killing the man as soon as possible. By now he couldn’t blame them.
He let out a f
earsome yell of his own as he brought the blade down again. This second attempt was right on target. The blade met with some resistance as it hit Donnie Wilkerson’s spine, but the force of the blow rendered the effect of the resistance essentially nil. The blade passed through the spine and thunked into the chopping block, successfully separating Donnie’s head from the rest of his body. This time there was a lot more blood, a short-lived geyser of it shooting from the neck stump and spraying all over the cement floor. Now Mike understood why they had widened the circle of chairs. The body twitched another few times as the blood jetted, then finally went still.
A few moments passed before Mike realized all the screaming and yelling had stopped. But his ears were still ringing as he dropped the axe and staggered away from his own grisly handiwork. He was dizzy as he banged into one of the chairs and only managed to remain upright with assistance from the chair’s female occupant. Then he was out of the circle and stumbling over to a corner of the garage, where he braced himself against the wall with a forearm and hung his head as his stomach heaved and expelled its contents. Sweat formed on his brow and ran down his face as he continued to heave for a while. His teeth chattered and his body trembled. Tears stung his eyes as childhood images of Donnie and his father drinking on the deck again surfaced.
I’m a murderer, he thought. A goddamn, no good motherfucking murderer.
Inhuman scum.
A harsh assessment, but an undeniable truth. It was how he’d always viewed others who took the lives of innocents. No way could he give himself a pass on that count. And it didn’t matter that he had been coerced. The bottom line was he had committed an act of brutal murder. He was a killer. It was one of those horrible things that, once done, you could never take back. He would carry the label to his grave.
Then he felt a small hand at the center of his back. It was moving gently, stroking, caressing, soothing. Next he heard Marnie’s voice in his ear: “It’s okay, it’s okay. You did good. I’m proud of you, Mike. So proud.”