Highland Cove

by Dylan J. Morgan

  “My God, Codie.” Kristen’s voice wavered, driving fear deeper into his core. “What’s happening in there?”

  He had no idea, but he had to stop whatever made Liam scream with such intense agony.

  “Liam!”

  Codie took a half step back, lowered his shoulder and lunged forward, bracing himself for the impact. The door barely moved, immediately striking whatever blocked the entrance. The barricade shifted slightly, the sound of wood scraping over tiles piercing his friend’s cries. It gave him hope that he’d be able to break through, but he feared they’d already be too late. Someone else spoke in the darkness, the tone almost comforting and reassuring; as though the hunched figure tried to soothe Liam’s terror. Codie didn’t recognize the words, didn’t pause to identify the voice, before slamming his shoulder into the door once more.

  Wood scraped over the floor as the blockage moved further. Hope flashed through him in a hot flood; perhaps they could shift the obstruction quicker than he thought. He could almost pass his hand all the way through the gap, his fingers brushing over the timber frame of a heavy object.

  “Help me, Kristen,” he said.

  She came up beside him, arms outstretched, adding her weight to the door. While she leaned into the heavy oak he stepped back and crashed into the entrance with his shoulder once more. He winced, but ignored the pain, a fresh surge of adrenaline urging him to continue forcing the gap wider. Kristen groaned with exertion, and the next time he slammed into the door, the obstacle skidded further along the floor. This time he could get his arm inside the entryway, and Codie leaned sideways to force his head and shoulder through. Two cupboards were wedged behind the doors; probably filled with debris from the room to weigh them down.

  He looked into the surgery room, now able to see a small ring of lamps positioned on benches surrounding one of the operating tables. A man stood in the light, his back to the door, a white lab coat draped over his shoulders. Codie didn’t recognize him, couldn’t see his face, but the person on the table was agonizingly familiar. Strapped to the table, Liam’s arms and legs were secured with leather belts. Another band looped over his head, but that wasn’t what induced the rise of nausea in Codie’s stomach. The white-coated man gripped a metallic instrument, the blunt end in his hand, the point buried inside Liam’s eye socket.

  “Liam!” Codie got no reaction from his friend, other than the sound of an anguished groan. His hand clenched and unclenched, shaking uncontrollably against the strap securing his arm. Codie backed away, squeezing out of the gap, and into the hallway. “We have to hurry, Kristen, someone’s trying to kill him.”

  She kept her weight pressed onto the door as Codie lunged forward again, the timber shuddering under the impact. The cupboards shifted a little more, and Codie slammed his shoulder against the door again, hoping to maintain the momentum he’d generated. Liam’s groan morphed into a whimper, and the other voice drifted lazily from the room, an almost musical tone offering comfort.

  What the fuck is going on in there? What the hell is that guy doing?

  Liam’s moan faded into nothing and for a horrifying moment Codie feared he’d lost him as well. Then Liam sobbed a desperate breath that urged Codie to press into the door once more. Kristen had tired, he wasn’t sure she even provided assistance to removing the barricade, but he wouldn’t give up. Leaning through the opening, Codie grabbed the cupboard, now able to use both hands to dislodge its position and push it across the old floor. Something heavy slid through the cupboard’s interior, the sound of stone on stone cutting through Liam’s whimpers, the unit purposefully weighted down. Kristen put more effort into her pushing and with a creak the weight inside the cupboard spilled through the doors and the unit toppled forward. It remained in front of the doors, impossible to shift any further.

  Codie scrambled over the unit’s back and into the darkened room.

  ~~

  Blood flooded onto his eyeball, immediately filling the open lids and blocking his vision. Intense pain exploded through his head; surging into his brain with greater force than the electricity splitting the clouds outside. Alex brought the mallet down again and the orbitoclast cracked through bone and sliced into Liam’s frontal lobe.

  Agony flowed away from his eye, spilling over his face and along his scalp. Pressure built up inside his head as the instrument pushed into his brain, pressing the matter against his skull. It felt as if Alex had shoved a broom handle into his head. Liam stared through the unaffected eye, desperate to blink, frantic to escape this situation and get out of the room—to get as far away from Alex as possible. The mallet cracked onto the instrument once more and sent it further into his brain. He lay helpless, trapped, while someone he thought he knew chiselled a surgical instrument into his skull. The drugs in his system maintained their grip, making his mind sluggish.

  His eye throbbed like a bitch, fear engulfed him, but all he felt in his brain was an expanding pressure.

  Someone shouted his name, the voice so comforting that it seemed out of place in the callous grip terror had upon him. It came from the surrounding darkness, loaded with tantalizing familiarity, sparking a flash of affection in his emotions in spite of his predicament. He tried to call back, to ask for help, but the words wouldn’t form.

  “Looks like lover boy is here,” Alex said, his voice calm and composed. “Not that it’ll matter, of course.”

  The sight in his eye had gone, blood cloaking his vision. Yet the other eye remained open, flicking back and forth as Liam looked from the manic face above him, to the brightness of the lamps surrounding the room. The drug weakened him, continued to hold him in place on the table with as much force as the strapping did. He wanted to reach up and rip Alex’s hand away, remove the instrument from his head and hurl it into the room’s corner. But his muscles were unresponsive.

  “Keep talking to me, Liam,” Alex said. “I need to know when the connections to your prefrontal cortex have been properly cut.”

  Liam groaned, the intense force throbbing inside his head rendering him unable to find words. A forceful clamour shuddered from the darkness, like furniture scraping across the floor. He tried to focus on the noise, on the call of his name from the same direction; needed to hang on to the thought of one man coming to his aid.

  “Okay, Liam,” Alex said softly. “I’ve driven the orbitoclast about two inches into your right frontal lobe. Hold tight, I’ll now cut about forty degrees towards the nose.”

  The instrument moved inside his brain, slicing through tissue, its thin body pressing against his bulging eyeball.

  “Now I’ll bring it back into its normal position,” Alex said.

  The mallet thudded into the orbitoclast, sending it deeper into Liam’s brain.

  He screamed; certain his brain would squeeze through his ears or out of his mouth. He wished that shock would suck him under and drag him into a peaceful abyss—or perhaps Alex would drive the instrument too deep and kill him. Gasping for breath, fighting against rising nausea, Liam almost yearned for the black comfort of death.

  “And hammer it about two centimetres deeper before we make the next cut.” Alex placed his hand on Liam’s shoulder, seemingly oblivious to the commotion raging at the doorway behind them. “Are you okay, Liam? I think you’re doing great.”

  The orbitoclast moved once more, pressing into the mass of Liam’s frontal lobe. Fresh waves of nausea crashed within him, forcing him to gulp down his sickness and hold it in his guts. He called out for Codie, but the name materialized as a gurgled whimper.

  “That’s a cut twenty-eight degrees to each side.” Alex paused, and then the instrument pressed upwards, the pressure making Liam think his head would explode. “And finally a deep frontal cut.”

  The instrument slid slowly back into its previous position, the pressure easing in his head. His breath exited in shallow gasps as he hyperventilated. His muscles went into spasm, limbs pulling uncontrollably against the bonds securing him to the table. Blood continued
to leak into his eye, its blackness as deep as the death he wished for.

  “Nearly done,” Alex said in a reassuring voice. “Just the other side to do and then we’ll be finished.”

  Something crashed in the depths of the room, and in Liam’s mind he remembered the time he’d climbed onto his dresser as a young boy and inadvertently caused the unit to tip over. He’d been lucky to escape injury, and all the toys on the dresser’s surface scattered across his bedroom floor. He’d not said anything for the remainder of that evening, shock rendering him mute. Words escaped him now, too, although for an entirely different reason. Something in the depths of his subconscious told Liam that his nerve endings had been severed. And his thought process struggled to make sense of his situation.

  With dimming comprehension, Liam realized his mental capacity was deteriorating.

  He begged; his voice now a mumbled whisper.

  Pressure increased against his blind eye before Alex yanked the instrument from his head. It left behind an intense throbbing and he wondered how much blood he was losing. The vision in his other eye filled with the sight of the bloodied point of the orbitoclast as it rested against his eyeball.

  “Same procedure on this side,” a voice said.

  Liam had forgotten who was talking, and why such a commotion disrupted the room’s quiet darkness.

  Metal cracked upon metal.

  The instrument’s point smashed through his eye socket.

  Liam screamed again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Scrambling over the fallen cupboard, Codie righted himself just as the lunatic in the white coat smashed the mallet down onto the instrument. He stood paralyzed for a moment, watching in shocked disbelief as the point of the surgical tool pierced Liam’s eye socket and thudded into his brain. His friend jerked, a spasm rippling the length of his body. Blood pooled out from the wound in the eye socket, dribbling down Liam’s alabaster cheek. A mumbled groan escaped his mouth. That idiot was trying to murder Liam in the most callous way possible.

  Codie lunged forward, skidding through debris on the theatre floor in his desperation to stop this madness. Kristen called his name but he ignored her, intent on getting his friend out of there. Before Codie made the ring of lights, the man turned, bathing his face in the lamp’s glow.

  Shock stopped him, snatched his breath in a heartless punch to the gut. The man’s smile was as it had always been; the same grin Codie had seen countless times when they’d all been out drinking in local bars. His eyes were different, however: the same hue, but no longer containing the sparkle of young life. Now, Alex’s stare harboured a twisted malevolence. Codie glanced down at Liam, nausea kicking through his belly. His friend lay on his back, blood running over his face, a metal instrument protruding from his eye. An arm flinched against the bonds securing him to the table, a constant tremble gripping his body. Shifting his gaze from his friend, Codie glanced at Alex’s right hand, the knife’s blade reflecting light from the halogen lamps. A new illuminance flared, light erupting from the flashlight in Alex’s other hand.

  He directed the beam into Codie’s face, forcing him to shield his eyes from the glare. “You idiot, Codie. You’ve made me smash that thing too far in, now.”

  Behind him, near the doorway, Kristen issued a yelp of stunned fear.

  “Stay back, Kristen,” Codie said, holding up a hand in her direction, hoping she’d see it and stay near the doorway. He didn’t want her in here, not with Liam like that on the table—not with Alex holding a knife.

  “Come in, Kristen,” Alex countered. “She’s more than welcome in here.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Alex?” Codie said.

  “Fulfilling a legacy; at least I was until you barged in.”

  What the hell does he mean by that?

  Alex had directed the torch light across the room towards Kristen. With the light out of his eyes, Codie saw the sneer twisting the edges of his lips. When had this craziness overtaken his friend? Alex had always been an outsider when in school; his only true friend was Julian, which was how he’d come to meet the guy. When they’d first met, it hadn’t been easy to get along with Alex, but Codie attributed that to a number of things: growing up in a broken home; his difficulties getting a girlfriend—the man’s awkward sense of humour. Maybe there’d been something simmering in the depths of Alex’s mind all along but none of them had seen it. People often hid their dark sides, but Codie never expected anything such as this to morph from the guy.

  “What legacy?” It seemed a stupid question in such a scenario.

  Alex gave a quick look into the darkness surrounding the outer reaches of the operating room.

  “This, my good friend,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “The entire building in which we’re standing; the research that was done here—it’s all my legacy.”

  Liam’s body jerked in spasm on the table, the metal instrument wavering in his eye socket. Kristen whimpered and sniffed in a sob. Codie took a step forward.

  “I can see you’re confused,” Alex continued. “Professor Bukoski, the man who owned this grand establishment; the driving force of mental health research in this shitty little country, was my grandfather.”

  The revelation stabbed Codie deep in the gut, sucking the wind from his lungs. Alex had insisted they travel here to the island, it’d been his funds that had gotten them all here, and he’d been grateful to him for it. They were here because of Alex—but for what sickening motive, and at what cost?

  “Did you kill Julian?” Codie asked.

  Alex smiled and ignored the question. “I should have been left this entire island, including the building, in my inheritance. When my grandfather died a tragic death everything should have come to me through my father. But what happened? The fucking government intervened, closed this place down, boarded it up and sealed it off. They stole what is rightfully mine, and I’m simply taking it back.”

  “Did you kill Julian?”

  “I didn’t want to,” Alex said, and took a step towards the ring of halogen lamps. “But you paired me up with him and that basically sealed his fate. His blood is on your hands, my friend, as I can see.”

  The smile he gave contained humour but Codie saw none of it. He looked down at Julian’s blood staining his hands and took another step forward. How had everything spiralled so far out of control so fast? Less than twelve hours ago they’d been a group of friends, walking through these halls trying to document paranormal activity, and now one of them was dead, another mutilated, and a third had lost his mind. Kristen had advanced deeper into the room, nearer to him: he felt her presence close in the room but he wanted her out of there—needed her somewhere safe. Glancing across at Liam, he felt sickness lurch into his throat. His best friend still breathed, but his hands twitched with involuntary spasms. How he could possibly still be alive with that thing protruding from his brain, Codie didn’t know. Rubble crunched in the darkness behind him as Kristen advanced another step.

  Without glancing over his shoulder, Codie spoke to Kristen. “Get out, sweetheart. Please, you need to leave.”

  “She’s not going anywhere.” Alex said.

  The anger rose on his voice, Codie hating the way Alex thought he could tell Kristen what to do. “She’s leaving; I’m leaving. I’m taking Kristen out of here and I’m going to the cops.”

  Alex laughed, and his demeanour softened as a wide smile lit up his face. For a moment, the madness drained from his eyes. “You’re not going anywhere. You and your girlfriend are going to stay and watch while I finish the procedure on our good friend here; a surgery that you so rudely interrupted. And then when I’m done with him, I’ll lobotomize you.” Staring into black shadows beyond Codie’s shoulder, Alex pointed the knife towards Kristen’s silhouetted form. “And then I’ll lobotomize her.”

  Codie took his chance and lunged forward, reaching for the hand holding the knife. His fingers curled around Alex’s wrist, Codie attempting to push the knife away and down.
With a growl of anger, Alex resisted, pulling back against the force. He was stronger than Codie anticipated, so he gripped harder and pressed his arm further down. Alex’s arm relaxed, allowing momentum to take over, jerking Codie forward and throwing him off balance. A yelp of surprise escaped him as he staggered headlong two steps. Alex’s other hand came up swiftly, out of the shadows, the torch connecting with Codie’s temple. Stars billowed in front of his face and a whine rang in his ear. His balance gone now, Codie sprawled forward and landed in a heap under the operating table.

  Stunned by the speed with which his attempt had failed, Codie shook his head and looked up. Alex stood over him, appearing the perfect mad doctor in his white laboratory coat.

  Unable to pull his gaze from the man’s face, Codie didn’t see the kick coming, Alex’s boot slamming hard into his gut. Breath left him in a pained whoosh, the agony curling him into a ball on the floor. Barely audible above the ringing in his ears, Codie heard Kristen’s scream, yelling at Alex to stop. Nausea surged through his abdomen and Codie’s stomach kicked. He moaned as bile launched up his gullet and he puked onto the operating room’s hard floor. Eyes closed, willing the sickness to subside, he was blind to the next blow. Alex’s boot caught him in the side of his face, jerking his head back, muscles straining under the force of impact. It sent him sprawling onto his back and sliding into the legs of Liam’s table. Codie’s vision blurred, swimming out of focus as unconsciousness threatened to swamp him. Reaching up he grabbed at the metal struts locking the table in place, desperate to haul himself to his feet. Alex had stepped backwards, seemed to be weighing his options; deciding whether Codie was finished or if he should kick him again.