Gil stared up at his son, glancing from the murderous gleam in the boy’s eyes, eyes that looked just like Gil’s, to the power tools he held in his hands, and questioned how much control he really had over the kid. Even through his own rage he knew there was something wrong with Kai. The boy seemed eager to make Eddie suffer. Is that normal? Is he just angry? Is he just doing what anyone would want to do in this situation? After all, Gil had been about to strangle the man to death himself. But torture? Gil couldn’t help but wonder at this sadistic streak emerging in his only son. Justified or otherwise, it was troubling. Gil reached up and took the tools from his son’s hands.
“Go back in the kitchen, Kai.”
“I want to watch. I want to see what you do to him. I want to see his ass suffer for hurting my little sister.”
“I said go back in the kitchen, Kai! You don’t need to see this shit.”
“I’m not going anywhere! She’s my sister, Dad!”
Gil looked back at Eddie, whose eyes were now clear and focused on him.
Gil’s shoulders slumped and his head dropped. He nodded. “Okay. Okay, then help me hold him down.”
Together they wrestled Eddie back onto his stomach and pulled his arms behind his back. Kai held his arms while Gil duct taped his wrists behind his back and then his ankles. Finally he rolled him over and put a strip of tape over his mouth.
“Do you know how many times I’ve thought about what I would do to a motherfucker if he ever hurt my kids? I even talked about it with you, remember?” Gil said to Eddie, whose eyes were wide in terror. Eddie shook his head and tried to speak through the duct tape. Gil ignored him.
“What did you say you would do? You said you would castrate the guy and shove his own cock down his throat. You remember saying that?”
Again Eddie shook his head violently, and this time he began to scream for help, his cries muffled by the tape.
“Do it, Dad. Cut his fucking balls off!”
“Didn’t I tell you to watch your damn mouth?”
“Sorry, Dad. Sorry.”
“I’m not cutting his damn balls off. That’s what he said he would do. That’s not what I said I’d do. I said I’d take the guy somewhere and torture him for hours, days, weeks. And that’s what I’m going to do to this motherfucker. We’ve got to get him out of here before Amy comes home. She didn’t do anything. No reason she should have to see this. Besides, we’d wind up having to duct tape her too to keep her from calling the police, and that wouldn’t be right.”
“How do you know she’s not involved?”
“Selma would have said so. Besides, Amy wasn’t even here. It probably wouldn’t have happened if she’d been home. They’ve babysat before. That’s why we have that rule. I fucked up. I should have never left her here with him. I broke the rules and now my little girl—my angel—this son of a bitch raped her!”
And I allowed it to happen. I put her in his hands. I broke the rules. This was all my fault, Gil thought.
“I should have never trusted you, Eddie. Natalie was right. You can’t trust men around little girls. And now I’m going to hurt you, just so I feel better about myself. You’re going to help absolve me of my guilt, Eddie. I know. That shit’s fucked up. But this is how it’s got to be. Kai?”
“Yes, Dad?”
Gil tossed him the keys to his F-150 and then began looking around for Eddie’s keys. He found them on the kitchen island, shook them in his hands like loaded dice, and then shoved them into his pocket.
“I want you to drive my truck over to the WalMart parking lot and wait for me. I’ll be driving Eddie’s car. It’s going to be a while. I need to carry him to his car and clean this place up.”
Gil watched Kai leave and then began cleaning. He removed a mop and bucket from the closet in the laundry room and scrubbed the floor, washing away Eddie’s blood. A small end table had been knocked over at some point during his brutal beating of Eddie, and Gil set it back in place. He knew where everything in the house went. He knew Eddie’s home as well as he knew his own. He’d always felt at home here. Never again. That was all ruined now.
He walked toward the front door and removed Eddie’s keys from his pocket. Eddie lay on the ground bleeding and moaning. Gil squatted down and lifted the man to his feet.
“You can walk or I can drag your ass. You gonna fuckin’ walk?”
Eddie nodded and then began whining and pleading incoherently through the tape around his mouth. Standing next to Gil he looked even smaller than usual, bleeding and crying.
“Save your strength, Eddie. I can’t hear you anyway. And you’re going to need every ounce of it.”
Gil half-dragged Eddie to the car, who did his best to hop along beside him even with his legs duct-taped together. Each time he began to fall, Gil caught him and dragged him forward until they reached Eddie’s car. Gil popped the trunk.
Eddie adamantly shook his head, refusing to get in. Gil punched him in the gut, doubling him over. He had aimed for the solar plexus, and by the way the air expelled from Eddie’s lungs in one big whoosh, Gil was pretty sure he’d hit his target. Eddie’s body folded around Gil’s fist. Gil watched his best friend wilt and drop to his knees. He knelt down beside him.
“I can keep you right here, Eddie. It doesn’t matter to me where I do it, but I am going to hurt you. I have to. That’s just the way it’s got to be. The question is what I’m going to do to Amy when she gets home or to Little Eddie. You saw how Kai looked. I know you did. Well, I don’t know if I can control him. And if Amy sees us, well . . . you know what I’ll have to do to her. It’s probably best for everyone if we’re as far away from your family as possible, don’t you think? Now get the fuck in the goddamn trunk!”
This time Eddie complied. Gil lifted him to his feet and met no resistance as he hefted him into the trunk.
“I can’t say this will all be over soon. You and I both know it won’t. I’m going to hurt you until I get bored or you die. Enjoy the ride, my friend.”
Gil slammed the trunk and walked back into the house to find Little Eddie. “Eddie?” Gil called as he walked into the kitchen where Kai had left him. The boy was nowhere to be found.
“Eddie!”
He rushed into the living room, looked outside in the yard, and then dashed upstairs to check the bedrooms.
“Fuck! Where the hell did he go?”
Then Gil had a dark, terrifying thought. Kai, what did you do?
Gil retraced his steps, checking the house room by room, but this time he checked smaller places where a little scared boy could hide and even smaller places where the body of a dead child could be folded up and stashed. Then, feeling guilty, he checked even smaller spaces where body parts might fit. He checked the walls and floor for blood spatter and was relieved when he didn’t find any. But strangulation doesn’t draw blood, Gil thought. If Kai strangled him and hid his body . . .
Kai took him with him. Of course.
That made Gil feel only slightly better. He didn’t want to think about what Kai might do without him there to intervene. Kai had a scary temper. It was one of the things he was working on in counseling. He’d been sent there after breaking a kid’s leg in a fight. He said the kid had been bullying him. He had been jumped by three boys and was defending himself. That wasn’t why he was in counseling. The fight was over. Two of the boys had run away and the last boy was lying on the ground holding his face that Kai had split open with a rock when Kai walked over and stomped on the kid’s kneecap, deliberately breaking it. He’d been suspended, and therapy had been strongly recommended. Gil had gone along with it, even though he didn’t believe in shrinks, because Natalie had been concerned. Now he was sure he’d done the right thing. In fact, he was worried he hadn’t done enough. Kai needed serious emotional help. Gil pulled out his phone and dialed Kai.
“Hey, Dad. You on your way?”
“Is Little Eddie with you?”
There was a pause.
“Y-yeah, Dad. You didn�
��t want me to leave him there by himself, did you? Then Amy would have definitely called the cops right away. She knows Eddie wouldn’t leave his son alone. Besides, what if he got into something? Drank ammonia or bleach or something or got out of the house? And this way Eddie won’t get out of line either. He’ll be too afraid we’ll hurt Little Eddie.”
“You haven’t though, right?”
Another long pause. “Haven’t what, Dad?”
“You haven’t hurt Little Eddie, right?”
“Of course not.”
“You sure?”
“Dad, I wouldn’t hurt a kid. I’m not some pervert like Eddie.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a few. I’m leaving now.”
Gil felt guilty for not trusting his own son, but something just didn’t feel right. Everything Kai said had made perfect sense, of course. Taking Little Eddie with them was probably the best move. Amy would think Eddie had taken their son to the park or the movies or something, which would give them a good head start. No one would be looking for him for several days, which meant no one would be looking for his car. Plenty of time to drive somewhere and stash the vehicle. A person wasn’t considered missing unless he or she was missing for more than forty-eight hours unless there was evidence of foul play or it was a child younger than fourteen. Little Eddie was with his father, as far as anyone knew, so there would be no reason for anyone to call the place for at least a day. After that, it would be at least another twenty-four hours before the cops did much of anything but take a statement and do a cursory investigation. They wouldn’t start taking it seriously until the second day that Eddie didn’t come home, and even then they were likely to treat it as a parent abducting his own child. They would send out an Amber Alert, but they weren’t likely to start going door to door or launch a manhunt. That would give Gil all the time he needed.
Gil walked back into the garage, opened the car door, and slid into the driver’s seat. After fastening his seat belt and starting the ignition, Gil took a deep breath, let it out in two quick, shallow exhalations, and then hit the garage remote to raise the overhead door. He backed out of the garage and down the driveway.
He could hear Eddie thumping around in the trunk. It sounded loud, so loud he worried people on the street could hear it, but he knew better. It was loud to him because he was nervous and because he was in the car. To people outside it would be inaudible over the sound of the engine and the normal car sounds. Gil worried about Eddie kicking out the taillights and then remembered it wasn’t possible to do that on most newer cars. There was nothing Eddie could do but make his feeble little noises.
Gil drove the short distance to where Kai waited for him in the parking lot. He spotted his black F-150 in the back of the lot, Kai’s head sticking up in the driver’s seat, and Gil looked frantically for a second head. Not seeing one, he began to panic, imagining the worst. He left the car running as he hopped out and dashed over to the truck. Little Eddie was there, strapped in the front without a car seat. His head wasn’t visible above the car door. Luckily there was a car seat in Eddie’s vehicle.
“Let’s go,” Gil said, opening the truck and taking out Little Eddie.
“Where’s Eddie?” Kai asked.
Gil looked around cautiously. Kai had parked far away from the other cars. There was no one within earshot.
“He’s in the trunk,” Gil whispered. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“I know a place. There’s an old warehouse in Austin by the airport. It’s abandoned. I used to work there. I still have the keys on my old key ring. It’s in the glove box. They never changed the locks.”
Gil buckled Little Eddie into his car seat in the back and then slid behind the wheel as Kai took shotgun.
“Buckle your seat belt, son. The last thing we need is to get stopped for some dumb shit like that when we’ve got Eddie in the trunk. It’s a twenty-minute drive to Austin.”
5.
The warehouse was full of old rusted machine parts, covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. There was a strong smell of mildew and motor oil along with animal scents, musk, urine, feces, and perspiration. The building had been abandoned for more than half a dozen years, yet still had the appearance of something recently abandoned. It hadn’t been vandalized. There was no graffiti on the walls and even the windows were still intact, which was rare even for an occupied building in this part of town. An old calendar from 2007 still hung on the wall. Here and there a rusted power or hand tool could be seen as if it had been casually discarded in some worker’s haste to put this building behind him. It was still daylight outside, but the few windows at the top of the nearly twenty-foot walls let in only a few scant rays of sun, so the room never got brighter than a dim twilight. Here and there a light bulb burned. The oddity of a building that had sat empty for so many years still having power was not lost on Gil. It made him nervous. He felt like they weren’t completely alone.
Gil didn’t know if he had the stomach for this, but he didn’t want to seem weak in front of his son. Even if Kai was a sociopath, as Gil was beginning to suspect, he was still his son, and Eddie deserved this. After what he’d done, Eddie deserved every ounce of pain and suffering they could conceive. And he was sure Kai had a pretty extensive imagination from all the violent video games he played, the graphic novels he read, and the cheesy, grade-B horror movies that were little more than torture porn. Gil wanted to prove himself just as creative, just as willing to take this thing to its conclusion. He just hadn’t yet decided what the conclusion would be. The punishment had to fit the crime. Eddie would have to feel it for a lifetime, just as Kai said Selma would. Even in this, Gil still wanted to be his son’s hero. He wanted his boy to be proud of him. And the only thing that would make him proud now, was hurting Eddie . . . hurting him really bad.
He picked up the drill and saw that disturbing gleam in Kai’s eyes. He tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t deny it. He immediately looked down at his son’s pants and saw an unmistakable bulge. Kai was aroused. He was getting off on this. Gil’s stomach did a little flip.
Oh, God. I can’t do this!
He felt like he was going to vomit. His hands and legs trembled. Gil felt hot. The saliva in his mouth dried up. Sweat bulleted down his face. He swallowed hard. Eddie looked terrified.
Eddie’s my boy. I can’t do this to Eddie. I can’t fuck my boy Eddie up like this.
But Eddie fucked up your daughter, some cold and vengeful part of Gil whispered back. He fucked your daughter! You gonna let him get away with that? You gonna let Kai see his father act like a little pussy? So what you kicked Eddie’s ass? What’s that gonna do? He’ll be raping some other kid tomorrow. Even if you call the cops, he’ll get out of jail in a few years and be back at it. These kinds of perverts don’t ever stop. You know that.
And a new thought came to Gil’s mind. What would he say to his wife? She had been through sexual abuse. She knew what it felt like to wake up to recurring nightmares of being powerless before some pervert’s lust. She counted on Gil to protect her. She was confident that if anyone ever tried to hurt their family, Gil would make him rue the day. Rue the day. Gil laughed. He didn’t even know what those words meant, really. Not literally. To him, they meant that whoever hurt his family would suffer. What would she say if he didn’t punish Eddie? He’d seen the look in her eyes when he left. She wanted Eddie dead. What would she say if she knew he’d let the man who raped his daughter off the hook? Eddie wasn’t the only person Gil had boasted to about what he’d do to anyone who hurt his daughter. He’d told Natalie as well.
“I’ma get medieval on his ass!” Gil had joked in his best Marsellus Wallace voice. “I’ma call a couple of hard pipe-hittin’ niggas to go to work on homes with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch!”
They had laughed, and their laughter had eased the tension. But there had still been pain in Natalie’s eyes. Pain and anger and something that hurt Gil to his core. Her eyes were distant and afraid
, remembering her own abuse. He had felt helpless then, unable to protect her from her past or avenge her. But he had the chance now. He could avenge his daughter. If he didn’t do this now, how could he ever face his wife again? How could he look his daughter in the eye?
Protect and provide. It was the sole purpose of the male species. That was the responsibility a father and husband was imbued with by nature. It was instinctual. When he was arrested, maybe he’d bring in experts to testify to that, biologists or anthropologists or some shit. They would tell the courts that Gil had no choice. It was his paternal instincts that made him do it. Maybe they’d try to pack the jury with fathers and his lawyer would ask them what they would do if someone molested their child. That would at least make them think. It might make them hand down a lighter sentence. Maybe he’d get probation. Gil could almost see himself getting acquitted. What father wouldn’t understand? If he were sentenced, there would be protests outside the prison. He imagined his case spawning a movement. It didn’t matter either way. Even if he was caught and sentenced to death or life in prison, he had to do this. He had failed to protect his daughter. The least he could do was avenge her. He would make sure she never had anything to fear from Eddie again. That she knew Daddy had made Eddie pay for what he’d done to her. That he would hurt anyone who ever tried to hurt her. At least that was something.
Gil tried to steel his nerves and quiet the pounding in his heart, the shaking in his hands. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and took a deep breath. He reminded himself that he wasn’t doing this just for Kai. He wasn’t doing this for himself, so he’d feel like some kind of big man. He was doing it for his daughter and all the other unknown girls Eddie had molested and was likely to molest in the future if he wasn’t stopped.
The drill whirred and Eddie’s eyes widened to the size of golf balls.
“I’ma get medieval on your ass,” Gil said.
Something Terrible Page 3