by Derek Murphy
Struggling to make sense of everything, he thought to himself, "This isn’t real. The house can’t have this long, fucking hallway in it; it’s only four-thousand square feet! And it’s all supposed to be open!"
Starting along the corridor, his steps quickened and he began calling for Harry and Deanna. At one door after another, he stopped, peering inside at dark, stone walls, bare as scorched earth and less forgiving. He began to run as he neared the end of the corridor, his spatial sense telling him that it was at least the direction in which lay his office, even if it was at least three times the distance from the kitchen.
Entering the door, he was puzzled to find a circular pit filling the floor space with a stairway spiraling down to the floor around the walls. The floor was at least twenty feet down, and ill-lighted by torches thrust into metal rings that projected from the walls, but that wasn’t what caused him to stop and gape. Jaime lay spread-eagled on a wooden table with her wrists and ankles chained at the corners. A tall man in rough pants of a loose type he hadn’t ever seen except in movies, stood over her, muscles bulging from a sleeveless, leather vest that hung down to his knees. All his clothing was black and a black, leather hood covered his head, giving him an appearance of menace that just screamed ‘executioner’.
Jaime’s head lolled to one side, telling him that she was unconscious, for unconscious she would have to be for her not to be screaming her lungs out at what the man was doing. Her clothes lay scattered about the floor, ripped and cut from her and the man had inserted a metal appliance into her vagina. A large, wing-nut kind of screw was affixed to it, making the thing look like some kind of obscene piece of medical equipment and the man had just begun turning it. From his vantage point, Ron saw that whatever was on the end of the screw was being inexorably forced outward to the sides with each turn of the screw.
He thundered, "Get your hands off her!"
The man paused to look over his shoulder at Ron before turning back to apply himself to the appliance again and Ron began to hurry down the stairs. His state of mind prevented him from being nervous at the lack of any sort of handrail on the stairs and he was soon on the floor, dashing across it toward the man.
As he neared, the man stepped back, a large ring of keys jangling at his waist, depending from a wide, leather belt. His hand came up, a strange, flat hatchet with a wide blade in his fist and with astonishing speed; he swung it at Ron’s head. Ducking, Ron leaned to one side, the horror of the situation lending him strength and speed that he hadn’t known he possessed. His foot came up from the floor, thunking into the man’s abdomen and causing him to bend at the waist. Ron’s other leg came up as he crashed his knee into the man’s face. As the man straightened, Ron grabbed him by the hood and swung him by main force in a circle, smashing his head into the edge of the table. Before the man finished collapsing to the stone floor, Ron leapt to remove the strange appliance from his office manager’s vagina.
A simple pull was fruitless and at his first attempt, Jaime groaned and writhed uncomfortably on the table. Desisting, he turned his attention to trying to figure out how to make the thing retract so he could remove it more easily. At last, he found a spring-loaded catch that removed the tension from the device and he quickly slid it from her body, shuddering as he got a good look at the cruel projections that protruded from the thing. Throwing it across the room, he moved to the head of the table and studied the cuffs that encircled her wrists. Finding a simple latch on the first one, he removed the cuff and moved on to the others, quickly removing them as Jaime regained consciousness.
Even before her eyes opened, she moaned in pain and her hands went to her groin, cradling her mistreated flesh as she curled up into a ball on her side. Ron slid her to the edge of the table and got an arm under her knees and the other behind her back. He lifted her and started to hurry toward the stairs. Halfway there, he looked up and saw Harry a few feet above him with a heavy hammer, like those once used in blacksmithing, in his hand. Ron ducked as Harry hurled it seemingly right at him and turned his head to look behind him when he heard the sound of a body falling to the floor. The man that Ron had attacked had risen and been running at Ron’s back with the hatchet upraised. The hammer had taken him in the head and a welter of blood and brains seeped from the leather hood where the leather had been split by the hammer.
Harry reached him and took Jaime from his arms, saying, "Hurry! I still haven’t found Deanna! There are more of those guys all over the place!"
It was then that Ron noticed the streak of blood that ran down the side of Harry’s face from a scalp wound. Ron returned to the dead man and picked up both the hatchet and the hammer. Sticking the hammer in his belt, unmindful of the mess, he held the hatchet tightly in his hand and started up the stairs with Harry close behind him, burdened by the girl. She kept up a steady moaning mixed with a few words and Ron thought that he heard her say, "…kept saying it was punishment for past crimes." She sobbed then and said plaintively, "But, I didn’t do anything!"
At the top of the stairs, the floor plan of the house seemed to have changed, making it more difficult for them to find their way out. Turning to a doorway he couldn’t remember seeing on his flying trip down the corridor, Ron plunged through it and heard the sound of screams ahead of them. He was sure the screams were made by Darla and Deanna and hurried down a short hallway that turned to the left. On the other side of the turn, the hallway branched and he thought the screams came from the right. Barely aware that Harry followed, he plunged on ahead and followed the new hallway to a room that he was totally familiar with. It was his office, and a fire blazed in the fireplace.
Suspended in front of the fireplace by chains that hung from the ceiling on heavy, iron hooks that he knew he hadn’t installed, Darla and Deanna swung by their wrists. Another man stood between him and them and alternated swinging them toward the fireplace, causing them to kick their feet against anything they could to keep from being plunged into the fire. Darla had lost her shoes and one still encased Deanna’s left foot, blazing with flames. The cuffs of both women’s slacks smoldered and smoked and Ron knew that it was only a matter of time before they burst into flames.
The man who tormented the two women wore a hooded cassock like some kind of perverted monk and turned at the sounds of his approach. What Ron saw caused his blood to freeze in his veins. The face shadowed within the hood was covered with suppurating sores and dripped blood and pus from which maggots crawled. The man’s teeth shone preternaturally white in the dim light and clashed together as he gnashed them at Ron. Heavy laughter came from him and Ron swung at his head with the hatchet with all his might, splitting the loathsome face. As the man fell backwards, his outflung arm pushed the two women further into the fire than before and Ron dashed forward, catching the women and pushing them away from the fire, despite the flames on the clothing that licked at him.
Harry laid Jaime on the divan at one side of the room and ran to help Ron put the fires out that had started on the two women’s clothes. He steadied their bodies as Ron stretched upward to release the catches that secured their cuffs. As they dropped into the two men’s waiting arms, the women cried and tried to tell them what had happened.
Darla said, "Ron! There are more of those things in the house! They caught us and brought us here. That one said we were a sacrifice! That we were all sacrifices!"
Seeing the burns on Darla’s legs and feet, a blind rage came on him and Ron stood, looking about him with a fury he had never felt before. His gaze fixed itself on the stone he had so shortly placed in the arch of the mantel and his hand unthinkingly went to the hammer at his belt. Lifting it, he stepped forward and smashed it time and again against the stone. With each blow, the house seemed to catch its breath and gasp. The sound of gigantic groans and sobs sounded through the house until Ron’s final blow smashed the stone into two pieces, the engraved lines marred and chipped away.
The sound of falling timbers brought him to himself and he grabbed Darla by the
hand, dragging her toward the door. Falling timbers and masonry struck the floor ahead and to either side of them. A glancing blow sent him staggering to the side, tearing Darla’s hand from his and another stone struck his head, dashing him into unconsciousness. He heard screams made by a throat that couldn’t have belonged to a human as he sank down into the darkness.
* * *
Ron’s hand found a human leg encased in scorched and burned cloth and he shoved a block of stone from atop it, following the leg up to a hip, bared by cloth that had been nearly torn from the flesh by a falling stone. Moving on up, he cleared more stones from the woman’s body and found that he was working to save Deanna. Once he had her clear of the debris, he made sure she was breathing and moved on. Shouts and calls drew his attention to the edge of the debris field and he saw the lights of a firetruck and several police cars. Men in uniforms and bunker-gear moved into the pile of stones and began searching for bodies just as he found Darla.
* * *
The three boxes lay before him, taped and ready to be mailed. Ron had chosen countries ruled by despots and affixed the addresses of those countries’ state departments. He decided that if there was any evil still living within the broken bits of the stone, it was better that evil people be forced to deal with it.
Jaime’s sister entered the office of his construction business, followed by one of the laborers with a hand-truck. In just a few seconds, the boxes were loaded onto it and the man left to take them to the post office. Ron had purposely put fictitious return addresses on the boxes, so if they were returned, they would not come back to haunt him.
Jennifer said, "Darla’s surgery is in an hour, Ron. You don’t want to be late."
"Thanks. How is Jaime doing today?"
"Matt’s with her, so she’s happy. She said that the doctor will release her next week and she can come back to work."
The girl hesitated a moment and said, "She was sorry she couldn’t make it to Harry’s funeral service. How was Deanna?"
"A few burns and the broken arm. She’s moving back to Missouri next week. I don’t blame her."
Gathering up his crutches, he moved toward the door tiredly. The architect had called to say he would be late for their meeting later that day. After the work he had done on Ron’s house, he couldn’t understand why Ron insisted on a simple, two-story farmhouse as a replacement.
Back to Table of Contents
Table of Contents
1…….The Empty Heart
2…….Cost of Passage
3…….Hammer Strokes
4…….Wild Weasel Wilson and the Banshee Chicken
5…….Like leaves of Gold
6…….The Flume
7…….Repetitions
8…….If Shadows had Voices
9…….Cold Feet
10……The Keystone
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Table of Contents