Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  He tore his eyes away from the clouds and got up, dragging Bethany over towards the center of the wooden raft to make sure that she was not washed overboard, and then, because there was nothing else he could do, he leaned over the side of the wooden raft and began to paddle with his hands, away from the coming storm. The waves and water bucked the raft, tossing it around like a toy. The paddling was futile, he knew, but at least he felt like he was doing something.

  A large angry whitecap moved toward the fragile wooden raft, lifting it easily and crashing it down to the slate gray water with a loud SNAP, like the sound of someone being popped with a wet towel in gym class. David grasped the logs and held Bethany with every ounce of his strength, holding her, cradling her. The raft bobbed and weaved for a long moment like a dazed boxer before righting itself.

  David forgot all about paddling - it was pointless. Instead, he turned and sat in the middle of the raft, holding Bethany’s head in his lap and watching as the storm came for him.

  Lightning forked its way across the darkening sky above him, loud and electric. The waves grew, the whitecaps slashing and beating a froth that might have been pretty under other circumstances. Now, it looked like a white milky cataract on the water’s surface.

  The hurricane was gigantic, taking up the whole world, and it sounded like a fleet of locomotives coming at him. The wind was like a hand slapping at him, and it whipped the water into peaks and troughs of innumerable marching waves. And behind these smaller waves, when they parted for a moment, David saw yet another wave coming. This one was really too big to be called a wave; it was huge and gray and menacing, like one of those tsunami’s he had read about in high school. It towered high over the choppy water beneath it, and even with no points of reference, David knew it had to be at least two hundred feet high. It looked and moved like a huge liquid mountain, rumbling like a freight train a hundred cars long, coming, unstoppable. Even this gigantic wave was dwarfed by the massive hurricane behind it. On all sides of the huge wave flew birds of all descriptions, diving in and out of the massive wall of water. Their screeches were a horrible symphony of pain and sadness.

  Inside the mass of water, he could see things moving around, things he could not readily identify - these were the things the birds were interested in. To his dawning horror, he realized that he was looking at people, scores, a hundred or more bodies, swept up by this incredible liquid force, trapped inside it. The people moved about in a hypnotic dance inside the towering tidal wave, their arms and legs flailing uselessly for purchase in the gray water. Sometimes their legs or arms would emerge from the prison of water, if only for a moment. When that happened, one or two or even more of the birds flapped in and tried to grab them out.

  The people looked like they were trying to get out.

  The top of the tidal wave arched like a tilting gray mountain over David‘s head, impossibly high, blocking out the masses of moving, whirling clouds.

  The raft jolted roughly and tipped over, falling away into a pit of nothingness as a huge trough opened up in front of the approaching wave. David could clearly see the shiny blackness of the ocean floor far below, exposed to the air for the first and probably the last time. Creatures, dark and glistening, crawled and moved on the rocky bottom.

  The water arched and crashed down onto David and the raft.

  He was swept overboard like a leaf in a storm. It felt like a huge wet hand had picked him up and casually tossed him into the salty air.

  Kicking through the air, he lost his hold on Bethany and felt himself plunged deep into the black water. It swirled around him like a cyclone, cold as ice, and he had no way of knowing which way was up or down. His ears started to ring, impossibly loud, a huge buzzing sound that knocked around inside his head, threatened to deafen him. He was buffeted by water on all sides. His head felt as if it would burst if he did not get some air soon, but he had no idea which way was up.

  David opened his eyes underwater and looked in the direction that he thought might be up. Hazy light dappled the rough surface above him, but the light looked very far away, a murky, wavering line high above him. He began dog paddling upwards, but he knew it was useless. He couldn’t swim. He was too deep. Maybe if he knew how to swim, he could...

  His oxygen-starved brain screamed for air as he pawed at the water, and the buzzing rang again in his bleeding ears. His mind began to go. He realized that he would die here in this unknown ocean, a salty unnamed grave. His frantic paddling slowed and as he felt his energy drain from him, he realized that something floated in the water above him.

  A hand grabbed him from above, roughly. His head moved around, not because he turned it but because the water moved his head around for him, and he saw Bethany facedown in the water above him, her body floating on the surface. Her eyes were open and she was looking down at him, one blistered arm stretched out towards him, beckoning him to help himself and help her, to come up to the surface where they could be together, where they could be safe. And he had almost made it.

  She yelled at him, sounding impossibly loud in the water, but the sound that came out of her mouth was not the screaming, watery voice that he expected but the ringing, buzzing sound he had heard before. He could see her eyes clearly and they looked scared, deathly scared, scared enough to die from sheer fright, but of what he did not know, and then he saw her open her mouth and heard the buzzing sound again, impossibly loud in his head.

  He woke up.

  David Beaumont was in his bedroom, a junky room with clothes and books and trash and old food all fighting for space on the floor around his bed.

  The phone was ringing, right next to his bed.

  He moaned and reached for it, already knowing who it was. He slapped away a few magazines and an old TV Guide and picked up the phone, knocking a half-empty bottle of warm beer off of the bedside table at the same time. The bottle fell onto a pile of dirty clothes and rolled away. A glance at the clock told him it was 4:20.

  He swung his legs around and sat up. “Yeah?”

  “Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”

  It was Mel, his boss. David was usually late, five or ten minutes, and Mel was usually cool about that. This was too late for Mel to be cool about. The big guy sounded like he might burst.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know, I was supposed to work at four. Look Mel, I ain’t feeling too well. Can somebody else cover for me?” David noticed out of the corner of his eye that the bottle of beer was chugging out onto a stack of old papers and unpaid bills on the floor by the bedside table, and with one bare foot he kicked the bottle away towards the open doors of the closet.

  Mel sighed loud, loud enough for David to hear it. “No, David, no one can cover for you, just like nobody could cover for you last week, remember? I got tickets to the Depeche Mode concert in D.C., and I shoulda already left-I’m gonna be late as it is. Mike is still in Florida, and Bethany ain’t trained enough yet to close the store by herself, especially not on a Saturday night. Now get your butt in here, or you’ll have all the time in the world to get better.”

  David shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes, with his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah, Mel, I got it. Just let me change and I’ll be right in.”

  “Well, don’t take too long. Its 4:25 now, and I’m leaving at 4:45, whether you’re here or not. And if anything gets screwed up, it’ll be your butt.” David got the earpiece of the phone away from his head in time to avoid being deafened by the phone being slammed down.

  He hung up the phone and slid out of the bed, already regretting the day. He stumbled over to the closet to pick out some clothes; nothing was ironed, but it would have to do. He stooped and picked up the bottle of beer. It was warm and flat, but he drained the bottle anyway, trying to chase that odd, salty taste from his mouth.

  Jack carefully slit the pale skin open with the serrated tip of his long knife. Slowly, he began pulling the skin away from the tenuous connections to th
e tissues beneath. The skin came away cleanly, easily. Blood seemed to seep from everywhere inside the wound, and Jack held it away from himself to avoid getting any if it on him.

  He knew how difficult it was to get bloodstains out of clothes.

  Jack looked around for a stick or a piece of wood big enough, spotting one across the clearing. He retrieved the stick, and soon afterward, when he had used the knife to sharpen it enough, the rabbit was spitted over the fire, cooking.

  Jack Terrington had parked his van in a wooded area near the beach, and he could hear the slow rumble of the breaking waves beyond the trees. He was just off the road a little west of Carabelle, a small town on the gulf coast of Florida south of Tallahassee, and Jack was busying himself by making dinner. He had become quite adept at catching and cooking his own meals after 20 years on the road, and he was particularly proud of himself tonight. He rarely caught a rabbit, and it was a special treat for him. Properly cooked, the meat would be juicy and tender.

  Well, he really hadn’t spent 20 years on the road, not exactly. More like 20 years of wandering, sometimes aimlessly and carelessly, sometimes full of purpose. His was a life of drifting, like a leaf on the late-autumn wind, a life absent of family or friends or a steady job or a permanent place to live. His residence consisted solely of the large, dusty Dodge Van parked behind him, its twin rear windows covered with a pair of unfriendly black curtains, its interior he had had customized to suit his own purposes. He had no address, no credit cards (and maybe one of the only people in the country without a credit rating), no responsibilities to anything or anyone but himself. He imagined himself to be something like a modern day equivalent of the depression-era hobo, endlessly wandering in search of something.

  He got up when he saw that the rabbit was beginning to blacken, and he removed it from the fire and gingerly began to eat it, carefully holding it by the stick it was spitted on. The meat was very hot and tasted good, smoky and tender.

  When he was finished, he burned the bones from the rabbit along with the small bundle of her clothes, and then kicked the fire out with one of his dusty rattlesnake-skin boots, the short chains jingling as he kicked sand over the dying embers. He’d kept her Seminoles sweatshirt but had burned everything else, just in case. After taking one more long careful glance around the clearing to make sure he had left no evidence, he took one long breath of the salty ocean air, climbed into his creaky white van, and drove off, heading east.

  The road was a pleasant one that hugged the quiet coastline, weaving in and out of large stands of trees and an occasional small town. It was easy to find a quiet clearing on a rural road like this. A hundred miles west on the two-lane road and he would’ve been back in Pensacola, the biggest city on Florida’s gulf coast. He’d come from that direction, passing through New Orleans and Mobile, working his way east, and now he was planning on heading up to Tallahassee and over to Jacksonville before heading south. Florida was one of the few places in the country that he’d never visited before, and he was looking forward to one more long stretch of indulging his habit before he returned to Los Angeles and, hopefully, relative obscurity. The panhandle of Florida was a long and skinny stretch of country, dotted with small towns and pleasant fishing villages and beautiful stretches of ocean views. He loved it, but it was time to move on.

  He glanced into the back of the van to check on her. The girl was still there, tied up on the floor, her arms and legs bound together in front of her with pieces of thin rope. She was completely naked. She looked ragged, dead, but she stared back at him with cold, humorless eyes. Three days on the cold vinyl floor in the back of his van, and she had yet to be broken.

  This one was tough.

  He’d beaten her. He’d raped her. He’d stripped her naked and gagged her and tied her to the rough bark of a tree and left her there all night last night. He had abused her in every possible way he could think of, and yet she had stubbornly refused to give him the satisfaction screaming for him to stop. He wanted her to cry out because then he would know that he had broken her. When they finally begged for their lives, he knew they were beaten.

  She would cry out; eventually, she had to.

  They always did.

  He would break her, just as he had broken the countless others before her. Tonight, he would find a nice, quiet, out-of-the-way place in the woods south of Tallahassee, and he would take her out into the woods and break her. He wasn’t exactly sure how, but he knew that eventually he would break her. He’d kill her too - that was a given, but the important thing was to break her will, to break her spirit. The important thing was to make her beg for her life before he took it from her.

  At his latest count, he had killed at least 194 men, women, and children. At least that was what the bottles in the racks of his van had told him, the last time he’d taken the trouble to take out all his trophies and count them.

  To those people he was Death, the Reaper, something that came with the silence of a chilly wind, a predator of man, seeking out and destroying those who crossed his path. He took them off, usually one by one but sometimes in a couple or a small group, and ended their pitiful lives, making room for the bigger and the stronger, making more room for powerful people, like himself.

  Jack noticed out of the corner of his eye that a car was following him, closely, as he passed the city limits, but he thought nothing of it. He drove into the small town of Carabelle, the town dark for the night, and Jack saw that the only lights on in the little town were the ones at the Fast Mart. As he passed the all-night gas and convenience store, it reminded him of the 7-11 where he had picked up the girl, convincing her to climb into his van with his charming smile and a pleading request for directions. He passed slowly out of town, thinking about what he would do to her, and didn’t notice the car that continued to follow him.

  Yeah. I’ll take her into the woods tonight and tie her to a tree. I could cut her, carefully and slowly, in a dozen places, maybe a hundred places, cutting her until she called out. If that didn’t work, I would rape her. Rape was an act that had broken the spirit of many men and women before, and a person, no matter how strong they thought they were, could only take so much. Those people who said that rape wasn’t a sexual act but one of power were absolutely right.

  It took power to break a person’s will, and Jack knew that he exuded power, and menace, and control. He was a reaper of the weak.

  And if that didn’t work, there was always the van’s battery.

  It had worked wonders on a few of his stronger victims, the really stubborn ones, in the past.

  the battery, a voice in his mind offered up like an offering.

  Just the thought of uncoiling the blue jumper cables made a smile steal across his rugged face.

  Blue and red lights splashed in his side mirror, catching him dreaming.

  LIGHTS, his mind screamed at him. LIGHTS! He hated police lights, always had hated them.

  His mind raced. Pull over? He would have to shoot one or two cops to get out of that one, for they would surely want to eventually inspect the inside of the van, something Jack could not allow. A messy business, killing cops. You had to be extra careful in getting rid of the bodies.

  or else you could face a posse

  Posse? No, they didn’t send out posses anymore to hunt down killers, did they?

  No, he reassured himself. They started manhunts, or they set up an organized search pattern, working outwards in concentric circles or something like that.

  no posses

  But why had that thought suddenly leapt into his mind?

  Outrun them? No chance. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like they were driving a late-model Ford Taurus. His van was strong and sturdy and he maintained it well, but a race car it would never be. They would catch up and overtake him in thirty seconds, sixty at the most.

  The police cruiser was now less than three or four car-lengths back, the lights still flashing brightly in the night, the siren wailing like an injured animal. J
ack tried to look closer but he couldn’t tell if there was more than one person in it or not. He checked his right side mirror (the view from his rear-view mirror was blocked by the twin black curtains), but it was just too dark back there. He just couldn’t tell.

  Jack shrugged his shoulders and eased the van slowly over towards the shoulder. It was useless to run, and now he had to handle it, deal with it. He didn’t like it, but it couldn’t be helped. He reached around behind the driver’s seat, feeling for one of his guns, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl, straining to see out of one of the curtained rear windows. The thin rope around her neck was stretched taut to where it was tied to the sidewall of the van, and her hands, tied together, were reaching for one of the black curtains, trying to open them.

  “Sit down, pig!” he hissed.

  She glanced around at him, one eye bruised and almost closed by the puffy blackness around it, and then she went back to trying to see out of the window. When he was finished with this business with the cop, he would have to teach her some respect - she was one of the most willful people he had ever met, and he needed to fix that before he took her life.

  The van rolled to a stop on the gravel shoulder and the police car stopped about two car lengths behind it, the headlights and flashing red and blue lights staying on. They were about a mile or two east of Carabelle.

  One patrolman slowly emerged, slipping his nightstick into the holster on his belt. There were no other cars in sight, and the policeman’s boots crunched on the loose gravel as he approached the van. The only other sound was the quiet rumble of the ocean, only a hundred yards to the south of the two vehicles.

  Jack strained his eyes to see if he could catch a glimpse of another policeman, one that might have gotten out of the patrol car and was walking up the other side of the van, or maybe just waiting patiently, still in the patrol car, waiting and watching his partner, but Jack saw there was no one else. He relaxed his left elbow on the window frame, eased the gun slowly around his chest, and cocked the hammer back, tucking the barrel into the corner formed by his left elbow.