Everyone Dies in the End

by Brian Katcher

  As he dabbed at his eye with a napkin, I tried to think of a polite way to phrase my next question. Then I decided to just be blunt.

  “Denton, what—and I mean this both in specific reference to our current conversation, and generally applied to everything you’ve ever said to me—the hell are you talking about?”

  “You say Saberhagen is running some kind of business out of an office building, right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “And that the Synod owns some scrap yard here in town?”

  “Go on.”

  “Saberhagen has been out of the loop since the mid-sixties, when everything was still done with a handshake and a man’s word. He has no idea the scope of today’s bureaucracy. Andrews, what do you suppose would happen if we sicked the IRS on him?”

  This was going nowhere. “We’re talking about the physical embodiment of evil!”

  “Versus Saberhagen.” Denton grinned. “This is someone who can only operate from the shadows. Once people start to get wind of what he really is, he vanishes. Well, what would happen if the taxman showed up at his door, asking him all kinds of questions about where he was born and the source of his income? What if the EPA barged in, demanding he clean up all the battery acid that’s draining into the water table under his junkyard? What if someone hit him with a class action lawsuit about his violations of the OSHA rules?”

  I wanted a beer. “That’s your plan, Denton? Annoy Saberhagen back through the gates of hell?”

  “They got Capone on income taxes. Trust me, I worked the system for years. If we bring Saberhagen to the attention of the right people, he’ll have too many eyes on him to accomplish anything. What time is it, about three? Maybe I’ll take a stroll over to the courthouse. See what I can find out about his office building. Maybe lodge a noise complaint, get the ball rolling.”

  The sad thing was, I couldn’t think of a better use of his time. “Well, I’m going to swing by the police station.”

  Denton awkwardly stood. “I think we’re headed in the same direction. Give me a moment, I’ll meet you in the parking lot.” Before I could object, he stood up and passed through the men’s room door, under the huge bell ominously labeled DID NOT WASH HANDS.

  I slipped outside, wondering if I should leave without him. He was knowledgeable, yet very unstable, which wasn’t comforting.

  “Hey, Chuckles. Got a light?”

  Dan Cooper had been leaning against the wall of the adjoining Missouri Theater and I’d nearly walked by him without noticing. He wore workman’s coveralls and had an unlit cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Someone had been giving him a rough time; his lip was split and there was caked blood in his misshapen nostrils.

  The last time we’d met, Dan had threatened to castrate me, so I felt it prudent not to allow him to press the advantage. Grabbing him by the shoulders, I slammed him bodily against the brick building.

  Dan grinned and the fight drained out of me. That was not the smile of someone about to have his brains dashed out. It was the smug look of someone who held all the cards.

  Slowly, so as not to invite a sock to the jaw, Dan reached into his breast pocket and handed me a folded piece of paper.

  “Mr. S sends his regards, Sherman.”

  There was no note on the paper, no strange powder, no small pile of diamonds. Just a lock of hair. Kinky red hair.

  Dan lit his cigarette with infuriating deliberation. “Feel like a drive? C’mon.”

  He didn’t even need to force me. The crippling fear and guilt frog-marched me towards a septic-green four-door pickup. I didn’t see Denton anywhere.

  Dan held the rear door open for me before climbing in after. Insultingly, the automatic locks did not snap shut when he closed the door.

  I could not see the face of the woman who was driving, only her bushy brown hair. Without a word she pulled the truck out onto Elm Street, then over to Ninth.

  “Where’s Charlie? What did you do to her?” I meant for the question to come out as brutal interrogation, not meek supplication.

  Dan produced a handkerchief and ejected a huge wad of bloody snot out of his nose.

  “She’s fine, Andrews. And provided you don’t play the hero, she’ll stay that way.”

  “You didn’t hurt her?”

  We had stopped at the intersection of Ninth and Broadway. The driver spoke for the first time. “He didn’t say that, did he?”

  Dan shrugged at my look of raw hate. “I maybe had to take the wind out of her. She wouldn’t go quietly.”

  The driver glanced sideways, revealing a gauze pad taped over her eye and several deep fingernail slashes across her hatchet face. “The fat bitch nearly tore my eye out. She’s lucky I didn’t cut out her smart tongue.”

  “You hush up, Wanda June,” said Dan in a mock Southern accent. He turned to me. “She’ll be fine,” he said, almost sympathetically. “She’s just an insurance policy.”

  I would’ve have gotten down on my knees if we weren’t in the truck. I would have submitted to torture. Charlie was at the mercy of Saberhagen, thanks to me. My mind refused to turn off the slide show of Charlie’s brutal kidnapping, rape and murder.

  “Dan, I’ll do anything to save her.”

  He tossed his sodden handkerchief to the floor. “Yes, you will. You can start by giving me your phone.”

  Meekly, I passed it over. He opened the sliding rear window and tossed it into the truck bed. He then extracted a toolbox from behind the seat. From within Dan removed a stoppered bottle and syringe. He rolled up my sleeve, not even considering I might resist. “This will put you out for a couple of hours.”

  I barely felt the prick. I braced myself, but nothing happened. It seemed self-defeating to call attention to the fact.

  Dan seemed to read my mind. “You watch too many movies. Give it a second…there you go.”

  His head seemed to swell like some misshapen carbuncle. He leaned in, his bruised face swimming before my blurring vision.

  “Sleep, Andrews. Things are about to get interesting.”

  – Chapter Twenty-Two –

  I was in a coffin. That was the only explanation. Pitch black, reeking of decomposition. Dan and his friend had buried me alive.

  I scraped blindly at the unyielding lid. How long had I been out? Everything was confused. I had awoken gradually, realizing, to my horror, that the blackness and confinement were not the results of my drug-induced stupor.

  Don’t panic. Conserve air. How long did I have? A day? An hour? The stench in here was unbearable. I recoiled in horror at the idea that I might not be the only occupant of this casket.

  Slowly, still groggy and disoriented, I groped through the darkness. My terror of touching whatever was rotting in here soon diminished. I was alone.

  Something wasn’t right. What I had attributed to dizziness was actually a loss of equilibrium. I wasn’t lying on my back, but sitting up. Sitting on something. Some sort of a seat. In fact, it felt like…

  This wasn’t a coffin. I was in a Johnny on the Spot.

  I experienced a sense of relief unlike any I’d ever had in a public restroom. Scrabbling for the door, I yanked at the handle. It refused to yield, blocked from the other side, somehow.

  Where was I? Was Dan outside? Figuring I had nothing to lose, I kicked and pounded at the door. No one answered. I might have been able to tip the outhouse, but decided the results would be much worse than premature burial.

  After about five minutes I heard the noise of a key in a lock, followed by the sound of a chain unraveling. My captors had returned.

  I tried to brace myself to pounce, but stumbled. The drug hadn’t totally worn off and I was in no position to wrestle. Whatever Dan had in store for me, I’d have to go along with, at least for a while.

  When the door opened, I feared that my previous theory had been correct and I was looking into the blackness of an underground vault. As my vision cleared, I realized I was only seeing the darkness of night. A distant streetlight diml
y illuminated some sort of parking lot or car dealership.

  Dan’s female companion had opened the door and I got my first clear look at her. She would have been no great beauty, even without the damage Charlie had inflicted to her face. Her hair was brown and unkempt, she was underweight, and would have greatly benefited from orthodontic braces in her youth. Lines of stress radiated from her eyes and mouth, pulling her face back into a permanent look of desperate anger.

  I was used to seeing her type at Wal-Mart, hollering at a gang of unruly children. She certainly did not belong in this outhouse doorway, waving a cheap pistol at me with a shaking hand.

  “Move,” she snapped. “They’re ready for you.”

  During my unpleasant encounters with Dan, I always felt he was in total control of the situation. Even when Charlie threw her drink at him, he didn’t lose his cool. This woman, however, showed fear. She constantly glanced to the side and held the gun unsteadily. That was not a good thing. Nervous people tend to make mistakes. Like accidentally shooting the hostage in the stomach.

  I tried to comply with her order, but, still weak, I stumbled at the door. My captor leapt back with a yell. I expected a bullet in the brain, but it didn’t come.

  “C’mon! Saberhagen’s waiting.”

  My surroundings began to come into focus. This was no car lot. Every vehicle here was pocked with rust and damaged. Of course. Columbia Salvage.

  The Silverado had been moved from its pentagram-inscribed slab and the hidden trapdoor lay open.

  “Walk in front of me.” The barrel of the gun jabbed me in the small of my back. “Stop when you get to that opening.”

  And three weeks later, hikers find my headless body in a culvert. However this turned out, I could not allow myself to be taken into that pit.

  Far down the empty street, tires squealed. This visibly upset my companion.

  “Now! Move your ass!”

  The car drew closer, but gave me little hope. We were too far from the road; the driver wouldn’t notice us. Helpless, I shuffled towards the hole.

  There was a crunching noise as the approaching auto made a high speed turn and ricocheted off the mailbox at the front of the lot. Headlights blinded us while the wheels kicked up gravel and the phantom vehicle barreled toward us. The woman screamed as it braked a few yards in front of her.

  Even before the car stopped, three figures burst from inside. One waved a baseball bat, another held a length of pipe. The glaring headlights made it impossible to see their faces. Only when the third figure exclaimed “Ypsilanti, Michigan!” did I recognize my saviors.

  My armed escort took this opportunity to lose her fear. One bony elbow snaked around my neck, while she jabbed the gun into my skull with her other hand.

  “Not another step!”

  My three friends paused. I could see them more clearly now. Aaron was smacking the pipe against his open palm, while L.J. tapped the ground with the tip of his Quidditch bat. John waved his tiny fists in a menacing manner.

  “Give it up, lady,” said Aaron, in his best drill instructor impression. “We’ve called the cops, they’ll be here any second.” Was that true?

  I felt myself being dragged backwards. The pistol never left my temple.

  “Let him go!” said L.J., in what I hoped was a calming tone. “You can still get out of here. We won’t stop you.”

  We had backed into something. Out of the corner of my eye I recognized the large pickup which had brought me here.

  The woman unwound her arm from my neck. Keeping the gun trained on me, she reached for the truck door.

  “Yoink.” It was a blur. Someone shot up out of the truck bed. With the ease of a grandfather pulling a coin out of a child’s ear, the apparition had snatched the Saturday night special.

  Denton trained the weapon on Saberhagen’s associate with ease. After a few moments it became apparent he wasn’t going to give her any instructions, so Aaron told her to back away from the truck.

  Denton looked as if he’d been rolling around in a grease trap.

  “Were you back there the whole time?” I asked, collapsing against the fender.

  L.J. gingerly approached the dark-haired woman, who stood in stunned silence. “Denton called me right after they picked you up. Sorry we took so long, but he had a hard time figuring out where you were going, and we kept losing his signal.”

  Denton grinned. “I tried to call the cops, but apparently my name sent up some kind of a red flag in their system. So I tried the last number you’d called.”

  Denton’s long-winded explanation caused him to forget he was holding someone at gunpoint. That’s all it took. The woman hurled herself at him.

  She may have been aiming for his face. The blow to Denton’s neck, however, was even more incapacitating.

  Denton made a noise like he was trying to spit out his tonsils as the gun slipped from his grip. The woman lunged for it, missed, and tore off across the neighboring vacant lot.

  Aaron grabbed the weapon and, with both hands, aimed at her retreating figure. He probably could have made the shot, but he stuck the firearm in his belt instead.

  Denton had collapsed back into the truck bed, breathing with difficulty. Aaron and I bent over him. I was horrified to see, even in the dim light, that his face was turning blue.

  Aaron vaulted into the back of the truck. Showing unexpected gentleness, he unstrapped the neck brace. With one hand on Denton’s forehead and the other on his jaw, Aaron tilted his head back a few degrees. Denton’s breath became more regular. He stared at us mutely.

  L.J. and John had joined us. “He needs to get to a hospital,” said John.

  “We can’t move him like this,” said Aaron. “How long did the police say they’d be?”

  “Five minutes,” replied John. “But I’m not sure if they thought I wasn’t a crank call.”

  As soon as I realized Denton wasn’t in immediate danger, I ran over to L.J.’s car. Rummaging through the debris in the back seat, I found his flashlight.

  “Where are you going?” Aaron shouted.

  I had reached the opening in the ground. “They have Charlie. I think she’s down there. When the police get here, tell them what’s going on.”

  Aaron was still sitting in the truck with Denton. “The hell, you say! Wait for the damn cops!”

  I shone the flashlight into the hole in the earth. “I’m not going to make Charlie wait.”

  “Then I’m coming with you,” said L.J.

  “Steph’s dead and Charlie’s in trouble,” I barked. “I’m not risking you too.”

  Aaron and John had joined us. “Never leave a man behind,” said Aaron. “You don’t have a say in this.”

  “What about Denton? Someone has to stay with him and tell the police where we are.”

  “I’ll stay,” said John, looking at the ground. “I’m a coward by nature.”

  Aaron clapped him on the back. “If anyone else shows up, get him out of here.”

  I lowered my legs into the hole. “Aaron, you might want to have that gun ready.”

  Aaron drew the gun and sighted it at an old Mercury. “It won’t do us any good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a starter pistol.”

  Squatting in the dry ditch outside the Synod headquarters, Knowles remembered a myriad of nights sleeping in French trenches, his bedroll drenched with the brackish water that oozed into everything. It was not an experience he was anxious to relive.

  “See anything?” he whispered to Professor Roebuck, whose flabby figure stood just visible in the moonlight. He shivered behind his pair of antique field glasses.

  “There’s a couple of lights on. No one’s come in or out for about half an hour.”

  Sammy had found a pile of leaves and made himself comfortable, lying back and staring up at the stars. “So are we going to do this?”

  The three men turned to Reverend Gowen, their unofficial leader. He had been sitting on a stone for the past hour, stari
ng at his knees. When Sammy addressed him, he raised his head. Gowen had obviously been sweating. If any of his companions had been religious men, they might have been reminded of another clergyman who also spent a rough night waiting in a garden. He eventually smiled.

  Knowles knew the smile; he’d seen it on half a dozen captains and lieutenants who were about to send men off to die, but didn’t feel guilty because they knew they’d probably be among the dead themselves. The expression did not fill him with hope.

  “If any of you want to leave now, I understand,” said the minister.

  The three men shook their heads. “We’re all in this together,” said Sammy.

  A crow called somewhere and Gowen inexplicably laughed. “So are we just going to bust in the front door?”

  Knowles shook his head. “Someone should check the cellar. I doubt the body’s still there, but we should make sure. The professor and I will go through the front door and get pictures of whatever we can before they stop us. They’ll be less likely to attack Roebuck, he looks like someone important. You and Sammy sneak in the basement, see what you can find.”

  The four men shook hands. They then sprinted to their assigned positions.

  The cold metal rungs barely registered against my hands. I was still woozy from the drugging. Shining the flashlight into the engulfing darkness, it was impossible to see more than a few feet down the gloomy concrete hole.

  “This is probably why they locked you in the john,” whispered Aaron. “They couldn’t have carried you down unconscious.”

  We had descended nearly thirty feet, far deeper than your typical utility shaft. I wondered if my concern over Charlie hadn’t doomed us all; Dan Cooper could’ve been drawing a bead on us from below.

  I experienced the jarring sensation of attempting to step on a rung that wasn’t there. Water soaked through my shoes. I sloshed sideways in the muck to give the others a place to land.

  I swung the beam around, disclosing our surroundings. We were in a brick tunnel. The bricks were big, stamped with the name of the manufacturer, the kind that hadn’t been made in decades. Piles of loose blocks dotted the stagnant water while the roof of the sewer bulged unstably.