The Company of Demons

by Michael Jordan

  23

  “There, there.” The Butcher’s voice was soothing. She stroked my hair, and my skin quivered at her touch. I was repulsed by her grotesque red lips. “Sometimes, when we traveled, we’d meet Daddy and enjoy the game together. You know to whom I’m referring, don’t you?”

  The stub of my toe throbbed, blood pooled beneath my foot, and my balls shriveled. The children of the Torso Murderer, taught by him, belonging to him. A son and a daughter, raised in the family business of slaughter. For Daddy.

  She studied my face and smiled. “You’re not as stupid as I thought.”

  My God, had he kidnapped the Butcher and Billy, did he have a lover—or had he snatched an innocent woman and forced her to bear his children?

  “Daddy never wanted to leave Cleveland. He loved the Indians, the Browns.” She shook her head, breaking the reverie, and her tone dropped an octave. “But then someone saw his face. We had to move.”

  Jack Corrigan, the night of the fight in the lumberyard.

  “We played the game all our lives. For a long while, I was what we referred to as bait. As a child, a little girl lost. Later, a pretty young thing in an alley. Then … well, like tonight. People are so predictable, especially men.”

  She cackled, and my skin crawled. “I’m going to remove another piece of you, Mr. Coleman.”

  There would be no escape for me, no quick and merciful death—only the same protracted torture that had been meted out to Oyster and Barbara Nichols and all of the other poor bastards. Heavenly Father, please let me live to see my little girl grow up. I’ll turn my life around, I swear. But that hellish basement bore no trace of anything holy.

  The Butcher extended a hand toward Billy, and he obediently handed her the bolt cutter. “Symmetry, remember?” She leaned forward until her face was inches from mine. Her bright lips clenched in a grimace and her tone dropped to a low, even whisper. She reached down and placed her hand against me again. “So what do I do about this, since you only have one?”

  She straightened and turned, patting her hair with one hand and clutching the bolt cutter with the other. Shaking her head, she paced deliberately around me, pausing to lightly stroke my back with her fingers. Jennifer had last touched me like that, but the Butcher’s touch was unnerving. And my memory of the night with Jennifer, of the games we’d played, seemed surreal. Far more vivid were images of Cathy and Molly, of an outing to the zoo, of my daughter pedaling her bike. Or just the two of them, with me, at our breakfast table.

  The Butcher halted in front of me and patted her hair again. Working the blades around my toe, she turned to her brother and grinned. Billy was expressionless as she snapped the bolt cutter shut.

  I quivered violently, that disgusting bolt of cloth wedged into my mouth, again muffling my screams. The Butcher reached down and picked up the bloody digit. Waggling my toe in the dank air between us, she then held it under my nose, forcing me to inhale my own pungent, bloody scent.

  They would cut and chop and saw pieces of me, until only a raving shell of a man remained.

  “What should we play with next, Mr. Coleman? More toes? Fingers? Maybe thin slices from your buttocks?”

  The Butcher drew the toe away from my sickened nostrils. The joy of the game made her eyes gleam.

  “Did you know that the ancient Chinese were capable of making twenty thousand precision slices before a man would die? You could apparently watch his heart beat through a thin membrane of tissue. After all these years, I’m still not that proficient, but we all need aspirations.”

  My thoughts focused on Cathy and Molly, forcing my mind to another place and willing the nightmare to end. But I knew the pain, whether twenty cuts or twenty thousand, would snatch me back to reality and the sound of my own muffled cries.

  She dropped my toe; it plopped onto the floor. “Maybe I should maximize the pieces, like I did with the penis from the Shaker Heights trophy. Allow me to consider that.”

  I prayed that Cathy would be okay, even find someone else, and that Molly would grow up strong and tough. And without nightmares. Even Jennifer was included in my prayer; I hoped that she would understand why my thoughts were of them, not of her. There was a memory of her sister, Martha, of how she’d been hurt. But none of my sins, not even lumped all together in the crumbled paper bag of my life, justified a death like the one I was going to suffer.

  “What about those nipples, Mr. Coleman? Quite symmetrical. Or testicles?” She tapped a finger against her chin. “Daddy always said to be patient and wait for inspiration.” She sidled up to her brother. “What do you think, Billy? What next?”

  He trudged forward and stared into my eyes before pressing a pudgy index finger into my nose.

  “An interesting choice. He usually likes the head intact, and we really can’t maintain symmetry with a nose, can we?” The Butcher strolled to her workbench and spoke to me over her shoulder. “Daddy was so pleased that we continued our craft, as he phrased it, in Cleveland. And he was so proud of our success. Of course, your father knew all about that, our first time around. You can ask him.” She turned to me. “Oh, wait—no, you can’t!”

  Despite the cuts, despite my naked vulnerability, I surged toward her, and the manacles bit into my wrists.

  She just smiled, amused, and held up a fillet knife. “Daddy has considered returning to Cleveland for one more game. He so enjoys my stories about the Coleman family.”

  I reacted as though Billy had struck me again.

  “Why, you look surprised, Mr. Coleman. Delicious. Let me assure you, our daddy is very much alive.”

  24

  “This will bleed a bit, Mr. Coleman. You’ll want to keep your head down to prevent the blood from trickling into your throat. I’ll cauterize everything in due time, to help you enjoy the game for as long as possible. I have a very precise butane torch.”

  Billy stepped behind me and applied a vise-like grip to my head, locking it in place. He’d had practice, no doubt. I peered down and watched his sister scrutinize my nose. She ran the blade along my right nostril.

  “This will be more painful than when I removed your toes, Mr. Coleman.”

  She squeezed my nostrils together and shoved my nose left, then right.

  “So many options. I can grasp your nose with a pair of pliers and cut from the top down. Or I can make a deep, vertical incision and slice away each half. Hmm … hmm.”

  I was fixated on her every movement. I prayed again, asking forgiveness for my sins and the comfort of death. For Cathy and Molly to live long, safe lives. And for the Butcher and Billy to die in the most excruciating manner that God could contemplate.

  She changed her grip on the knife and steadied the blade, poised for an incision.

  The doorbell rang.

  The sound was muted and indistinct. The door at the top of the steps was obviously thick enough to muffle noise, but the faint ringing seemed to me like the resounding peal of a church bell.

  The Butcher froze, and Billy’s vise-like grip tightened on my skull. Even if I didn’t deserve saving, I renewed my prayers and promised absolute faith, fidelity, and total devotion to Cathy and Molly.

  Neither of them moved. As the silence lengthened, I watched the Butcher visibly relax. She looked at me, cocked her head to one side, and opened her mouth to say something. Then came a persistent knocking, dull thud after thud, and again, the stifled ding, ding, ding of the bell.

  As the ringing faded, I pictured my final chance for salvation giving up, turning, and walking away. The Butcher smiled, and the last trace of hope squirmed out of me—until the ringing resumed, seconds later, followed by another round of banging on the door.

  This someone wasn’t leaving. The Butcher scowled and rested the fillet knife on the floor, between my feet. She returned to the workbench, picked up a wicked-looking cleaver, and waved her brother toward the wooden wall adjacent to the staircase. He released his grip on me and trod away, those massive arms dangling at his sides. As he positioned h
imself by the wall, she handed him the weapon and patted his shoulder.

  “Stay here.” The Butcher spoke as though she were giving a command to a pet. Smiling through the garish lipstick, she turned to me. “Be right back!”

  The measure of cheer in her voice was disquieting. I listened to her clack, clack, clack up the stairs. Billy’s face twisted into a harrowing, moronic grin.

  I surmised that there was a landing at the top of the steps, probably an entrance from a driveway. Although no aspect of my life warranted divine intervention, I begged for whoever was at the top of the steps to do something, anything to release me from the meat hook. Billy flattened against the wall and examined me, his gaze wandering from my face to the raw stubs on my feet.

  The voices above were indistinct and barely audible. Oddly, it struck me that I didn’t even know what time of day it was. I discerned a man’s voice, then a woman’s—not the Butcher’s. There was a sudden crack, as though the door had been flung open and banged against a wall. Shouts and curses filled the stairway, and heavy footfalls thudded down the steps. Bernie Salvatore emerged at the bottom of the stairs, his Glock gripped firmly in both hands. Wendy Coufalik rushed after him. She held her weapon in one hand and clutched the handcuffed Butcher by the scruff of her neck.

  “John!” Bernie gasped. “What the—”

  I jerked my head violently toward Billy. The cleaver, backed by every ounce of Billy’s mass, was already arcing toward Bernie. Catching my gesture at the last possible moment, Bernie dove to the floor and spun onto his back. Curling forward, he trained his handgun on Billy. The sharp blade of the cleaver bit into the wall, but Billy yanked it free in one motion.

  Coufalik roughly shoved the Butcher to her knees and, training her handgun on Billy, radioed for backup.

  “Drop it!” Bernie rose to a knee and then stood. “On the floor! Now!”

  Billy looked wildly about the room. He was grunting, his mouth agape. This was not some dark alley, some unsuspecting victim.

  The Butcher crawled to the refrigerator and huddled against the wall. Coufalik holstered her radio and joined Bernie in ordering Billy to drop the weapon, their commands blending into one strident torrent.

  I twisted to see the Butcher, and her steely eyes were focused on her brother. I wanted to scream at her to tell him to surrender, to drop the cleaver and lie on the floor. But she shrieked, “Kill them for Daddy!”

  Billy straightened to his full height. With a guttural roar, he brandished the cleaver above his head and stormed forward. Bernie fired once into the giant’s chest, the harsh shot reverberating against the thick walls, and Billy staggered backward. Amazingly, he didn’t fall but regained his balance and stood, weaving, never losing his grip on the cleaver.

  The silence in the room was broken only by the cackle of the radio and a gurgling sound from Billy’s chest as blood and air seeped from the wound. My ears rang, and the sharp stench of cordite burned into my nostrils. Billy’s uncomprehending eyes settled on the Butcher.

  She nodded and mouthed the words, “For Daddy.”

  He lurched forward, hefting the cleaver and grunting with each dogged step. Bernie and Coufalik fired in unison, one shot striking Billy dead center in the chest and the other zipping into his forehead. His entire body shuddered, and he dropped the cleaver, the blade clattering against the concrete slab. Despite the deafening gunshots, I heard his head crack on the harsh floor when his immense body collapsed.

  “Thank you for that, although I must say that your initial shot displayed rather shoddy marksmanship.” The Butcher’s words were distinct, even though my ears seemed to be swathed in cotton. “Given his mental state, I expect that he would have avoided prison, but I am well aware of the misery he would have endured in a state institution.”

  “Then you know what the fuck you can look forward to,” Coufalik snapped.

  Bernie checked Billy’s pulse and radioed for a meat wagon.

  “As they say, profanity is the effort of a weak mind to express itself.” The Butcher chuckled, fucking chuckled. “My, my, I think we’ll have some enjoyable interrogation sessions.”

  Coufalik ignored her and, stepping to me, stooped to pick up my severed toes. She spoke over her shoulder to Bernie. “I’ll find some ice upstairs and get the kit from the car.”

  “Medics will be here soon.” Bernie holstered his radio and said to me, “Let’s get you the fuck outta here.”

  I dangled from the manacles as he tore at a strip of tape from my mouth. Nothing would be sweeter than a breath of fresh air, and I was eager to spit out the goddamn chunk of stinking cloth. I wanted to be with Cathy, to cradle my wife and whisper to her every staunch promise made while dangling from the wooden beam in that basement of nightmares. I was going to live.

  Once Bernie worked the gag free, I couldn’t stop from crying. “Jesus, Bernie, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus …”

  He cradled my face in his gruff hands. “You’re safe. It’s okay now. Safe.”

  But the Butcher chuckled again. “You’ll never be safe, Mr. Coleman.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Bernie jammed a pointed finger in her direction, then took long strides to the workbench and rummaged through the clutter to find the keys to my metallic cuffs.

  Coufalik hustled back downstairs and immediately went to work bandaging the stubs of what had been my toes. I was conscious of my nakedness but didn’t care. That she’d once been pissed at me for looking at her ass struck me as ironic.

  When Bernie released my arms, I collapsed against the cold wall, the concrete abrading the skin on my back. He handed the keys to Coufalik, and she loosened the biting clasps around my ankles. They helped me shuffle a few steps forward, away from my blood, and lowered me to the floor. I was a body’s length from the Butcher.

  “She said their father was the Torso Murderer.”

  Coufalik looked skeptical, like I was bullshitting her, despite my condition.

  Bernie’s jaw dropped. “No way.”

  “He’s telling the truth, you know,” the Butcher said calmly.

  “And he’s still alive.”

  “Now you are delusional, Mr. Coleman. Probably the loss of blood. My father’s been dead for years.”

  “Bullshit,” I snapped, glaring at her. “I heard you.” I lowered my gaze to my ruined feet. The blood seeping from my toes had mostly congealed, but there were thin red trails on the concrete. “And that … that fridge, they kept Oyster’s head in there.” I gestured in its general direction, my eyes lowered. They’d find me damn credible when they popped open the Frigidaire.

  Bernie nodded to Coufalik and snapped on a pair of gloves. They reminded me of the ones worn by the Butcher and Billy, and a shudder went through me. Bernie strode to the refrigerator and swung the door open. From my position, I still couldn’t see inside, thank God. He stood there for several long beats before closing the door carefully, maybe reverently. “Sweet Jesus Christ, it’s full of skulls.”

  The Butcher giggled, or maybe that was my imagination.

  Then a wave of blue uniforms washed down the steps, radios crackling and guns drawn. I felt light, nearly buoyant, and I began to weep uncontrollably, unashamed. I’d see Cathy again, make it right, and we’d cuddle on the sofa in the living room. Molly would wrap her arms around me, the aroma of familiar shampoo in her hair.

  Someone tossed me a blanket. I draped the cloth over my shoulders and sat there, weeping, naked in my blood.

  25

  “I got here as soon as I could, John.” Cathy’s eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked exhausted.

  A sedative given to me by the ambulance drivers had knocked me out for a while. I came to in the recovery room, groggy but aware of my surroundings. The logos on the tidy white uniforms told me that I’d been admitted to a hospital with an excellent reputation for patching up people who have unfortunate encounters with guns or knives. My feet had been swaddled.

  Cathy walked to my bed and took my extended hand. She wore an outfit that wa
s perfect for an elementary school teacher—a brown dress drawn at the waist with a white belt—and had never looked so beautiful to me.

  “The surgeon said that they couldn’t reattach your toes. Too mangled and contaminated from the floor.”

  “Where’s Molly?” I wanted them both. Life would go on without toes.

  “With Alison. I just wasn’t sure how you’d be, whether she should see you …”

  She’d made the right call. When the police told her that they’d found me naked in the Butcher’s basement, hanging from the ceiling, she had to wonder about my state of mind. “Yeah, but … soon. Is she okay?”

  Cathy released my hand, put her purse on the nightstand, and dropped into an orange plastic chair near me. “What happened is all over the news. Even Molly’s a little freaked out. She said to tell you that she loves you.”

  I shut my eyes to block out the oddly disquieting room—all white and barren and sterile. “I want us to be together.”

  When she looked at me, her eyes welled with tears. “Will you get help, John?”

  “Cathy—”

  “Let me finish. In a way, I’m not surprised about this.” Her fingers reached for an earlobe. “How you’ve been acting … I warned you that there’d be trouble.”

  I settled into the stiff mattress, the firm pillow. Under the sheets, I felt for my dick, just to make sure. “What happened to me down there … every thought was about you and Molly, that you’d be lost to me, forever. I prayed for the chance to make it right, Cathy. Please, give me that.”

  “John …”

  “This won’t be like before, I promise. The psychiatrist, the drinking, I’ll handle everything.”

  “Whatever happens between us, if you want Molly as part of your life, you need to quit.”

  I was letting those words sink in when a young black woman in a crisp white uniform came through the door and interrupted our conversation. She strode to the bedside, checked a couple of monitors, and asked brusquely, “How you feeling?”