by Ken Douglas
“ I’m here, Donna,” Jim thought. “We can get through this.”
“ Can you feel it? Can you feel what I feel, like I felt what you felt?
“ Yes. You have to fight this. Be strong. We can fight it together.”
“ Come on Jim, just enjoy it.”
“ How can you say that?”
“ It’s out of our control. Right now I am completely in that man’s power. The last thing I want is the knife slicing across my throat. If that son of a bitch wants me to moan and enjoy what he’s doing, then I am going to moan. I’m going to keep my eyes closed and let him do whatever he wants and I’m going to do my level best to enjoy every bloody second, because right now my body is the only weapon I have, and I’m going to use it to try and keep myself alive.”
“ I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“ Well now that you are, enjoy yourself, you just might learn something.”
He took her advice, joining himself to her and they let the naked man send oceans of pleasure through her body.
“ Just a little Demerol in the IV. To make you enjoy it more. Demerol and marijuana, a wonderful combination, don’t you think? Nobody can resist it.”
“ Hmmmm,” she moaned.
His hands were back on her breasts. Jim quivered along with Donna, wanting more as badly as she. She arched her back against the restraints when he took a nipple into his mouth, offering him more. Every fiber of their entwined consciousness tingled in anticipation when they heard him turn on the vibrator.
And Jim moaned with her when he slid it between her legs. They arched her back, her body, and their twin desires wanting, needing more. They started thumping her buttocks against the bed, fighting the restraints, the two of them soaring to a sexual high neither had thought possible. Jim was with her, every pulse of the way, matching the thrust of herself against the vibrator, and he yelled along with her, a loud devil yell, “Yes, yes, yessssss,” when the orgasm finally struck, sending sonic booms of pleasure from her core through to their very essence. They were bound as no two had ever been bound. And they both knew that it was forever.
“ I think you might have enjoyed that even more than me.”
She opened her eyes.
He was still naked. He put down the vibrator.
“ You know,” he continued, his slitted eyes gleaming, “what Manfred is going to do to you when he gets here?”
“ When?” she whispered. She was exhausted. She could have asked, what? But she could well imagine. She was more concerned with when. How long did she have to win this man over? To get him to loosen her bonds. To get him to make a mistake, so she could get away.
“ Next Sunday, at midnight. He doesn’t want to see you before the sacrifice.” They watched as he picked up the taser. “You see he’s going to fuck you, burn you alive, then feed you to his pet.” He pressed the taser against her breast and they screamed, this time in pain, then everything went black.
It was quiet, when he opened his eyes, once more in control of what he saw. A cool breeze bathed his sweat soaked face. He was spent.
“ Are you okay?” Glenna asked. He saw the concern in her eyes.
“ I think so. It feels good to be back.” Out of Donna’s body, he no longer felt the combined effects of the two drugs. He just felt used. Raped and used. He was ashamed for having enjoyed it. He had been degraded. He vowed to find and kill that man, if it was that last thing he ever did. And, Manfred, whoever he was, the man that pulled the strings, he would kill him too. Slowly and painfully.
“ Sometime before next Sunday at midnight, I hope,” Donna thought.
“ You’re back?”
“ You didn’t think I wanted to stay with that maniac alone, did you?”
“ I thought you were going to die,” Glenna said, holding his damp head in her lap. “First you passed out, then you started moaning, and the moans started to get kind of loud, so I had to hold my hands against your mouth. I was afraid I was going to suffocate you. Then you started bouncing and moaning like you were having great sex. Then you tried to scream, but I held my hand tight, and then you went limp. I thought you were dead.”
“ She’s back.” He sat up, then told her everything that had happened while he had been away, leaving nothing out.
“ And you’re sure it wasn’t a dream? A strange nightmare? You’ve been through an awful lot.”
“ Tell her I know what it feels like to be tied down and abused. I’m not under the influence of any drugs now. Tell her how degraded I feel.”
He told her.
“ I want to believe you, I really do, but it’s all too fantastic.”
“ I think I know what he meant, when he said Manfred was going to feed her to his pet,” Jim said.
“ What?” Glenna gasped. “You mean-”
“ Yeah, that thing with the big teeth. I think that somehow it’s connected to her, or me, or both of us. It knows where we are. It can follow us somehow.”
“ That’s crazy talk, but I believe you. That thing is for real. That I know. And it followed us for over a hundred miles. It followed us and found us, but it was afraid of the cemetery. It wouldn’t come in after me. It’s not all powerful. We can find a way to kill it.”
“ Burn it. It’s the only way.”
“ She said it again, we have to burn it.”
“ How does she know?”
“ My mother told me stories about giant geckos and the underworld. They’re evil, and the only way to send them back to where they come from is to burn them.”
“ And you believe your mother’s stories?” Jim thought.
“ She’s Maori, she wouldn’t lie.”
“ She says she’s Maori and that her mother told her about giant geckos from the underworld. If you burn them, it sends them back.”
“ Then we’ll burn it,” Glenna said. “Us sisters have to stick together.”
“ Sisters?”
“ She’s Maori, that makes her black as far as I’m concerned. She’s a sister.”
He sat up and let the cool night breeze wash over his sweat drenched body.
“ We have to find my father,” Glenna said. “If anyone can find where she is and save her, he can. He’s the best.”
“ Isn’t he just an ordinary police officer?”
“ Would just any police officer have found you at that motel so fast?” She went on to tell him about her father and how he was the best homicide detective that ever lived. She thought a lot of him and if only part of what she said was true, then Jim wanted his help.
“ We need this man,” Donna thought.
“ I agree.”
“ How do we find him?”
“ He’ll go for Kohler. He’ll watch and wait. If we find Kohler, he’ll find us.” She stood up and offered him her hand. He gave it and she helped him up. “Did you get the keys?”
He nodded.
“ I can’t go back behind that garage, could you go and get my laundry bag? I have to change.”
“ Here? Now?”
“ I peed my pants when that thing was after me.”
He was gone less than half a minute. She took a pair of the jeans out of her bag.
“ Turn around,” she said, “so I can change.”
He turned away from her.
“ Okay, I’m ready,” she said after less than a minute. “Let’s go.”
“ We have to go back through the fence to get the car.”
“ But not behind the garage?”
“ Not behind the garage.”
“ What if it comes after us?”
He reached into his laundry bag, withdrew the forty-five and handed it to her. “Do you know how to use this?”
“ Of course. Daddy’s a cop and I’m Daddy’s little girl.”
He reached behind his back and brought out the other gun.
“ You took more than the keys?”
“ Yes I did.” He stood, listened to the night for a few seconds, then he walked the plank over the
drainage ditch and went through the gap in the fence, holding the gun in front of himself, the bag behind. She followed, copying his moves. They slipped along the side of the garage, like ninjas in the night, both aware that there were people in the house.
There were two cars in the driveway now. The red Miata and a Chrysler LaBaron. He dropped his gun in the bag and went through the key ring till he found what he was looking for.
“ We’ll take the Miata,” he whispered. He unlocked the door and they put their bags behind the passenger seat. “We can’t start it here. We’ll have to push it down the street.” He was still whispering. “You get behind the wheel and I’ll push.”
Five minutes later they were roaring out of town, headed toward the Interstate, with Glenna driving. He was thinking about Donna. Donna back in his head again. Donna strapped to a hospital bed halfway around the world. She was part of him now. However evil the intent of the man that abused them, he had fused them. They were one. He could no more live without her than he could his heart. He still loved Julia, but like a sister. What he felt for Donna was what great poets wrote about. And he didn’t even know what she looked like.
“ I’m terribly pretty and I love you too,” she thought.
“ Hey, those thoughts were private.”
“ I love you,” she thought.
“ I love you too, more than anybody’s ever loved anything,” he thought back.
“ I want to be with you always, Jim Monday, always. Come to New Zealand. Come and get me and make me yours.”
“ Not even death itself could stop me. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
“ No. First you must confront this man that killed your friend. I’ve felt your grief, this man must pay.”
“ We only have a week to find you. I can deal with Kohler later.”
“ No, if he’s the one responsible for your friend David’s death, your wife is in danger, too. If something happens to her and we could have stopped it, we couldn’t live with ourselves. Find this Dr. Kohler you hate so much and do what you must, but let’s do it quickly, because this man, Manfred, is coming soon. And who knows what else his wicked servant has planned for me.”
“ I hope her father’s half the detective she said he is and I wonder where he is now?” Jim thought, as Glenna braked for the stop sign by the Mobil Station just before the Interstate.
“ Penny for your thoughts?” Glenna said, interrupting his conversation with Donna.
“ I was thinking about your father. Wondering where he is right now.”
“ He’s in Tampico. I’m sure of it.” She popped the clutch, smoking the tires as she flew through the gears like a pro, making the Miata scream as they sped onto the freeway.
Chapter Sixteen
Hugh Washington rummaged in his pocket for his room key, his head still spinning from the drink. He keyed the door. The blast of hot air from inside caused him to flush. He’d left the heat on. He turned it off, flopped down on the bed and watched the ceiling move. He hadn’t sat in a bar till last call since before he was married, and the way he felt, it would be another twenty years before he did it again.
When he left the motel five hours earlier, he hadn’t intended on getting drunk, hadn’t even intended on going to a bar. Seeing Susan Spencer again after thirty years made him homesick, so he took the ten minute drive down Across The Way Road and found himself back in Palma.
The lazy main street of thirty years ago now sports two bars, three restaurants, a sporting goods store, two pharmacies, a bookstore, two banks, two gas stations and a few other small businesses. Not a big town by anybody’s standards, but not the one bar, one gas station town that he’d grown up in.
He parked in front of the bookstore. He wanted to walk the street. A few minutes wouldn’t hurt. Plenty of time to get back and watch Kohler’s place. Besides, he still needed a warm jacket, though he doubted he’d find anyplace open.
He moved up the street with an easy stride, curious as any vacationing tourist. He was reminded of the many vacations he’d gone on with his family and how he and Jane used to love window shopping, looking at things they couldn’t afford. He’d sense the longing in her heart and he’d say, ‘Someday I’ll buy you one of those,’ and she’d always answer, ‘You’re all I want. You and Glenna.’ But he always suspected she wasn’t being completely truthful, because she stared at the new dresses and the jewelry with a kind of burning intensity, like she was carving the image into her mind. If she couldn’t possess it physically, she would posses it mentally.
He was feeling sorry for himself and he hated it. He stopped in front of Dewey’s Tavern. A drink might help chase the blues away and some of the cold as well. He went in. The tavern might have been transported from London. Even the smell was authentic. He bellied up to the bar and ordered a Guinness. When in Rome.
“ Mr. Washington, we are meeting again.” Hugh recognized the voice of Jaspinder Singh even before he turned around. He shook his hand. Singh was drinking a coke.
“ You live in Palma?” Hugh asked, making conversation.
“ Eleven years, since I bought the market Tampico side.” Tampico was on the north side of the bay, Palma the south.
“ You work Tampico side, live Palma side. You must know everybody in the area?”
“ Are you wanting more information?”
“ A little. I was wondering if you could help me put a couple of names to a couple of descriptions.”
“ I could try.”
“ The first fellow is a skinny little man, losing his hair, combs it over, right to left,” Washington swept his hand across his head to show what he meant, “slanty eyes, reminds me of a weasel.”
“ And the other,” Jaspinder Singh said, “Looks like an ape?”
“ Yep.”
“ They are Frank and Bobby Markham. Frank is the older brother, Bobby is as stupid as he looks. Not retarded. Just stupid.”
“ You can see it in his eyes,” Hugh said.
“ Yes, in his eyes. I am thinking these are not nice men. Very bad. As you must know, they work for Dr. Kohler. Where he found them, nobody knows, but many people are wishing he would send them back.”
“ Have they been into any trouble?”
“ No, I don’t think so. You would have to ask Sheriff Sturgees. It’s just that they look at you with contempt, like you’re beneath them. I could well imagine them as Gestapo working under a man like Kohler. They seem well suited for that kind of work.”
“ You wouldn’t happen to know where they live, would you?”
“ They live at Kohler’s.”
“ That’s cozy.”
“ The doctor is away most of the time. When he’s out of town you can find the Markham brothers Tampico side, drinking at the Long Bar, or here. When the doctor is in residence, they stick to him like shadows.”
“ One more question, not related. When I was a boy my dad used to take me Tampico side to Dewey’s Men’s shop. It was the only place you could buy Levi’s. This Dewey related?” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.
“ His son.”
“ And old man Dewey? Is he still alive?”
“ Very much so and still selling Levi’s in the same location.”
“ It’s good to see that not everything has changed.” Washington took a long pull on his beer.
“ Much here has, like the murders this morning.”
“ What murders?”
“ A woman was attacked on the beach early this morning, right in front of her son. Fortunately an alert passerby was swift thinking and ran the homeless beggar down in his jeep.”
Hugh felt sick. He was a trained cop. He should have stopped and made sure that woman was all right.
“ Is she okay?” he asked.
“ Oh yes, the man was stopped before he could cut her.”
“ He had a knife?”
“ Oh yes, a big knife, a Bowie knife.”
“ Very bad,” Washington said, glad the woman hadn’t been hurt.
“ But it looks like he killed a young family earlier, before he attacked the woman. We are getting too much like the big city. Soon I fear I will have to look for another place to bring up my children.”
“ Where? It’s getting to be the same all over.”
“ Out by Victorville maybe, the high desert, not much crime there?”
“ What kind of life can kids have out there?” Washington wanted to know.
“ I just want them to have a life.”
“ I understand that,” Washington said, thinking about Glenna and what America’s violent society had done to her.
“ I went to a lot of trouble to become an American,” Jaspinder Singh said, as if reading his mind, “but I want my kids safe. I might leave. Maybe Canada or Australia,” he paused for a few seconds, “or New Zealand. Someplace safe.”
He sat with Jaspinder Singh through three more beers, before bidding the man goodnight. He should have gone too, but he stayed, sipping beer and feeling sorry for himself, till last call. Never again, he told himself, as he went into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face.
Knowing he couldn’t sleep and feeling that he’d let Glenna down by not being on station in the thicket across from Kohler’s, he decided to go out there now. He changed back into the camouflage clothes he’d bought earlier, having to struggle into them. He wasn’t drunk, he thought, just a little tight, but deep down he knew that if he would’ve pulled himself over, he would’ve taken himself to jail. He grabbed his keys and went out the door.
He cranked the ignition, the starter motor whirred, but the car didn’t start. He tried again, nothing. The car was trying to tell him something, but he wasn’t listening. He pumped the gas three times, held the pedal to the floor, cranked the ignition a third time and the car sprang into life. He drove out of the parking lot, making a left turn on Mountain Sea Road, toward Kohler’s and that dirt road a quarter mile beyond.
It was a quarter to three when he turned onto the dirt track and parked the car. Once the headlights were off he was bathed in black. It was a dark night, the moon and stars hidden under a low, cloud-covered sky. Like last night, he thought, when he’d found the blood all over the walls. He had the unshakable feeling that the overhanging clouds and the bloody walls in that room were intertwined and he shivered, but he was too drunk to be afraid.