by Ethan Cross
Ackerman slammed his fist down on the table and screamed at the old man, “You’re lying!”
Maggie said, “Ackerman, calm down. I’ll handle this.”
But Ackerman didn’t listen. He grabbed the old man by the shoulders and said, “Tell me. Tell me why he did it.”
Louis said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Ackerman moved to a window and pulled back the curtain. He leaned a hand on the window frame and said, “I want you to tell me why. I know why I am who I am. I may not be able to justify it or easily quantify and categorize it, but I can trace back the roots of my psychosis and learn from it. But in the end, it all stems from him. He put the darkness in me, but how did it get into him in the first place? I need to understand why my father hated...why he did those things to me. Not just his psychobabble and his talk of research and understanding the minds of psychopaths. I want to know why he’s broken, and why he insisted on breaking me.”
Louis leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. His bearded face clenched up but small sobs escaped. Through the tears, he said, “I’ve asked myself that for years. Asked myself if I had done something differently could I have helped him, or at least stopped him. I really don’t think it was one thing. No simple explanation or singular event, but a thousand little things. Death by a thousand cuts. I suppose you deserve the whole story.”
The old man stood up and walked over to the wall of photos. He grabbed one off the wall and handed it to Maggie. “That’s Marcus’s grandmother. I guess it started with the day she died.”
Louis dropped back into his chair and continued, “I was drunk that day. I was drunk most days back then. The three of us were in my old pickup truck, and I think something was in the road, although, to be honest, I can’t even be sure if there was anything there or not. I might just have been too drunk to keep the damn thing between the ditches. Truck swerved and flipped. Landed on top of a guard rail. Thing rammed right through the passenger side of the truck. The crash knocked me unconscious and killed my wife on impact. Lord only knows how long I was out, but I do know that whole time my son was awake and staring into his mother’s lifeless eyes. He was only four years old.”
Maggie looked over at Ackerman. He slid down to the floor and stared off into space as his grandfather told his story. She thought that she saw moisture forming in his eyes.
“After that day,” Louis said, “he didn’t speak for nearly a month, and I could barely get him to eat or do anything. He screamed all the time. He would just sit there and shake and cry. I had one of those head doctors look at him, and they called it panphobia, the fear of everything. It was as if he thought that everyone and everything in the world was out to get him.”
Maggie shook her head. “That’s awful. Were they able to help him?”
“We tried all sorts of things, and some of them helped a little. At least they got him to the point where he wasn’t screaming and crying all the time. But you could still see it in his eyes, the fear. That constant dread. It killed me seeing him like that, but we weren’t rich. My shop was doing well, but the doctors were expensive. I started reading up on the treatments, studying the books. I thought that maybe I could treat him myself. And maybe that’s where it all took a turn for the worse.”
Louis ran his fingers through his snow-white hair and then tapped his fist on the table. “I had read that the most effective treatments involved forcing the person to confront their fears. So I started exposing him to things. Little things at first. Basically just forcing him to do all the normal things he didn’t want to do. When that didn’t seem to help, my methods got more extreme.”
Maggie wasn’t sure that she wanted to know what that meant, but she asked anyway. “What do you mean by ‘extreme’?”
“All the details aren’t important, but to give you an idea, I once locked him in a cedar trunk filled with snakes.”
Maggie’s left hand involuntarily covered her mouth at the thought of such abuse.
“I’m not proud of what I did, and I’m not trying to justify it, but to be honest, some of those things seemed to help him. But the biggest change came when I took him hunting up north. We killed a whitetail deer, and he helped me field dress it. I taught him how. He was scared to death at first, but by the end, he seemed to enjoy it. At the time, I thought it was a good thing. Until I started finding all kinds of other dead animals around. He would dissect anything he could get his hands on.”
Maggie nodded her head in affirmation. The torture and murder of small animals was a major warning sign identifying those individuals with the potential to grow up to become murderers. Nearly all the great killers were proven to share that characteristic. Budding serial killers, it seemed, were the arch-nemeses of alley cats everywhere.
“I confronted him about it. He said that he was just curious. He wanted to understand how their insides worked. He became curious about lots of things, wanting to understand how they worked. Again, I thought these were all good things. If you can understand something, then maybe you’re not afraid of it anymore. It seemed to work. He improved enough by junior high that he could start attending regular school, and he did well. He was a smart boy. Maybe too smart. I heard a lot of reports that he was a bit of a bully. The teachers said he liked to play with people’s heads, turn kids against one another, see what they’d do. Kid stuff mostly. When he wanted to go to college to study psychology, I thought it was a natural next step.”
Louis looked over at Ackerman. “I don’t think he started killing people until your mother left him. I think that was when he finally snapped. But honestly, for all I know, that could have just been when he stopped hiding it. He could have graduated to dissecting people long before that.”
Maggie asked, “So at that point you knew what he was doing to his son and to others? But you didn’t do anything to stop him?”
“I didn’t know what to do. He was my son. My flesh and blood. And I always knew deep down—I still know—that whatever he had become was because of me. I understand that he probably had some spark of insanity inside of him from the moment he was born, but I was the one who fanned those flames.”
Maggie added, “And that’s why you’re still protecting him? Please help us to make this right. You know something. Please, help us find him. Marcus has a son. His name is Dylan. Your great-grandson. And your boy has taken him too.”
Louis looked up into her eyes and swallowed hard. “I don’t know where he is, but I may be able—”
Ackerman cut his grandfather short. “Quiet.”
Maggie wanted to slap him. The old man had been about to open up. But when she saw the look on Ackerman’s face, she knew that something was terribly wrong. “What is it?” she asked.
He got to his feet. “It’s too quiet outside. The bugs have stopped their chirping.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’ve got company.”
And then the whole world exploded.
71
MARCUS HAD SPENT THE HOURS AFTER AUDREY’S DEATH LYING AGAINST THE COLD STONE FLOOR AND SOBBING. He prayed for death. He thought about committing suicide by biting into his own wrists. His first attempt at that had been thwarted by his father’s intervention, but the older Ackerman couldn’t be watching at all moments. Maybe this time his efforts would be more successful?
The light once again burned his retinas, and the implication made his stomach harden into knots and the tears to fall anew. He couldn’t watch helplessly as another innocent person died. He couldn’t go on like this.
His father stepped into his cell and said, “Same drill as before, Marcus.”
“No. If you want me to move, you’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming.”
“Okay,” his father said. Then he initiated a shock so strong that Marcus’s muscles were useless for several minutes. Ackerman Sr. dragged him into the next chamber, but Marcus didn’t have the ability to do any kicking or screaming. After replacing the apparently expended battery in
Marcus’s large collar, Ackerman Sr. propped him up in another chair, but this time a metal table rested in front of him instead of the previous torture device.
Once his paralysis had worn off, Marcus saw a woman sitting across from him. She was apparently a very recent addition. She still wore a coat and an elegant pants suit. Marcus could still smell her perfume. It reminded him of an ocean breeze and was the first pleasant scent that had reached his nostrils in months. She had been crying, and her face was bruised and bloody. A thick gag covered her mouth. Her hands were bound, but they rested on the table in front of her.
“Marcus, meet Heather. You may exchange greetings if you wish, but neither of you should get too attached. At least one of you will be dead in a few moments.”
Heather’s terrified gaze darted toward her captor and then back to Marcus. Those beautiful green eyes pleaded with him, but he could offer her no comfort.
Ackerman Sr. then placed the .357 revolver he had used to kill Audrey on the table in front of Heather and pulled out a black Beretta Px4 Storm pistol, which he kept for himself. “Here’s the game, Heather. All you have to do to win your freedom is to kill my son here. Pick up that gun and shoot him. Otherwise, I’ll shoot you both. Simple enough, right? The best games always are.” His father laid the pruning shears he had used previously on the table. “And before I kill you, Heather, I will separate all your little digits from your body. Starting with your left pinky. If I reach your right trigger finger, then you won’t be able to pull the trigger, and I’ll go ahead and shoot you.”
Marcus could see the abject horror in Heather’s eyes. His mind fought for something he could do to help her. Some way to escape. Some way to reason with his father. A way to save Heather. Anything at all.
He could devise no method of escape or way to stop what he was beginning to see as the inevitable. He could find no words to offer her comfort. He debated whether or not to speak at all. Maybe that was just playing into his father’s hands. Maybe the best course of action was to do nothing. But he couldn’t just sit idly by. It wasn’t his nature.
“Don’t do anything, Heather,” Marcus said. “Neither one of us can escape this. But we don’t have to play his game. We don’t have to give him the satisfaction.”
“He’s trying to save himself, my dear. But you have the power here. If you choose to seize it. I picked you because you are a powerful person. A strong woman with a bright future. Don’t throw that away. You can make it out of this. If you reach out and take hold of your own destiny. Shoot him. It doesn’t make you a killer. I’m forcing your hand. I’m giving you no other choice. Back in the parking garage, I watched as you spun around with that can of pepper-spray. Upon hearing a noise in that situation, most women would have started walking faster and tried to run from the problem. But not you. You turned to face it. You can do this. Shoot him.”
Heather snatched up the gun and aimed at Marcus, sighting down the gun’s barrel through the tears in her eyes.
“Don’t give in to him, Heather,” Marcus said, but he could see in her gaze that he had already lost her.
Her eyes seemed to say she was sorry, and Marcus closed his, making it easier for her and hoping that she was actually able to kill him. He heard the mechanisms of the gun as she pulled the trigger and the hammer fell. Then he heard a small explosion. He felt a wave of heat on his face, and some shrapnel struck his cheek.
He opened his eyes in time to see Heather gaping in horrified disbelief at a pair of bloody and charred stumps where her hands had been. She screamed beneath the gag. Thankfully, her suffering was short-lived as Ackerman Sr. used his gun on her and ended her shrieks.
Violent weeping shook Marcus’s body, and he laid his face on the metal table. Whimpering, he said, “Why are you doing this? What the hell’s the point?”
Ackerman Sr. laughed. “The point is that there is no point, Marcus. There’s no reason for anything. There’s no meaning to our lives. Heather’s death was just as meaningful as anyone else’s, in that it meant nothing. Thousands of women and children are being slaughtered over in some foreign land. Somewhere, right now, a mother is drowning her children. Is that part of a grand design? There is no higher power. There is no point to any of it. There’s only right here and right now. And we can’t waste the only precious moments that we have by being something that we’re not. The only way to give meaning to our lives is by giving in to our desires and living a life without fear.”
“I will never be like you. You can’t make me become a killer. If that’s what you’re trying to do, then just put a bullet in me now. It won’t work.”
Ackerman Sr. laughed and shook his head. “You’re still not getting it. I don’t want to turn you into anything. I want to take away your fear so that your true self can shine through. A great sculptor once said that his creation was always there inside the rock, he just chipped away the extra pieces, the excess, to expose what was beneath. I’m not trying to turn you into a killer. I want you to be what your heart desires. But I also know that a killer is what you are. And I’m trying to chip away the excess, so that the beautiful murderer inside you can finally be set free.”
72
THE BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT FLOODED HIS EYES, THE SHRILL EXPLOSION FILLED HIS EARS WITH AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING RINGING, AND THE SMELL OF BURNED EXPLOSIVE ASSAULTED HIS NOSTRILS. Ackerman instantly knew the source of the attack on his senses—a flashbang grenade, probably multiple flashbangs. He cursed himself. He had allowed the story of his father’s upbringing and the finding of his grandfather to temporarily break down his normal state of hyper-vigilance. He should have seen this coming. He should have been better prepared. But he had no contingency plans, no tricks up his sleeve. It made him feel naked and ignorant.
Within a few seconds, the mercenaries had stormed the room and had its three occupants on their knees near the back wall with their hands upon their heads. Ackerman’s senses were slowly returning, and he saw the blurry form of Craig enter and pull up one of the chairs from the table. One of the other mercenaries, a wiry Hispanic man dressed in black tactical gear like all the others, searched them for weapons and confiscated what he found. The man specifically seemed to admire the Bowie knife he discovered on Ackerman and stuffed it into his own belt. Ackerman growled at the sight of it hanging at the man’s side. In Ackerman’s mind, stealing another man’s knife was akin to groping his woman.
Craig waited a few moments for them to regain their faculties, probably reveling in his victory. Then he said, “I expected you to put up more of a fight, Ackerman. Further evidence that the stories about you are wild exaggerations. You just don’t live up to the hype.”
“How did you find us?” Maggie asked.
“Your friend Andrew told us where you were headed. After that, it was easy.”
Maggie gritted her teeth. “Is Andrew okay?”
“He screamed like a little girl. But he didn’t get anything compared with what I have in store for the two of you.”
Maggie tried to get to her feet and make a lunge for Craig, but one of his men walking back and forth behind the prisoners pushed her back down. She spat at Craig, and then she rotated her head to face Ackerman. She said, “You know what I said about not killing anyone? These bastards might be an exception to that rule.”
A grin spread across Ackerman’s face, and he felt as though a terrible weight had been lifted. He felt light as air, almost exuberant. He moaned as if he had just tasted something exquisite and whispered, “Finally.”
Then he twisted his foot to press the button on the switchblade concealed in his boot.
The six-inch blade slid out from the boot’s toe. At the same time, he dropped his left palm to the floor, pivoted his weight on his arm, and spun his whole body up and toward the mercenary behind them. He drove the exposed switchblade into the man’s crotch, doubling him over as the knife penetrated his flesh.
Using the momentum he had already built up, Ackerman rolled behind the injured mercenary and shot to his fe
et. The others raised their guns and opened fire.
Ackerman grabbed the injured man, using him as a shield, and back-pedaled toward the window behind them. The mercenary’s body shook with the impacts of his comrades’ bullets, but Ackerman kept pulling back, allowing his body to strike the window and fall through it into the yard.
He dropped to the ground on his back, the impact expelling the air from his lungs. The mercenary’s now-lifeless body was still stuck in the window, half inside the house and half out. The others were scrambling to pull their dead friend out of the way to get a clear shot at their quarry.
Ackerman rolled quickly to his feet, dizzy from the lack of oxygen. He half-stumbled, half-ran toward the waiting shelter of the swamp.
Bullets tore into the yard at his feet. He felt the burn of one graze his thigh, but he kept his legs pumping and didn’t stop as he entered the trees. Bullets slammed into the cypress and water elms that surrounded him, but he didn’t look back. He needed to put distance between himself and his attackers.
He kept pushing—his muscles burning, but the pain feeling wonderful and refreshing—until he was a few hundred yards into the swamp. Then, in the moonlight, he spotted a large oak with easy handholds and a top hidden behind the foliage of the surrounding trees. He quickly scaled it to a height of twenty feet and waited. He pulled off his boot and retrieved the switchblade from inside, crouching high in the tree with the blade extending from his fist like a set of talons, a bird of prey waiting for a mouse to scurry beneath its perch.
73
CRAIG YELLED FOR LANDRY TO STAY WITH THE PRISONERS AND THEN FOLLOWED THE OTHERS OUT INTO THE YARD. HE FOUND THEM AT THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP, SHINING THEIR FLASHLIGHTS INTO THE DARKNESS BEYOND. He joined them at the edge of the trees and noticed immediately that something was wrong.
“Where the hell is Morales?” he asked the others.
Washburn, a thickly muscled former marine, replied, “The dumbass was first out. He ran into the swamp after Ackerman.”