Angel Killer (34 page)

I pound the side with my fists until they bruise. There’s no secret panel. I’ve been nailed into a real coffin.

I feel the impact as I hit the bottom of the lake. We measured it at twenty feet. If I’d done this in the ocean I’d keep sinking until the coffin imploded. That’s small satisfaction, knowing I can just as easily die in two feet of water. The coffin is supposed to be airtight, but it’s not. Water is filling up the interior . . .

I’M JARRED FROM THE DREAM
as I feel a bump. My head hits something like carpet over metal. I’m in a trunk. I know that it’s been a common safety feature for years to put a release on the inside of a trunk in case someone gets accidentally trapped inside. I have no idea how an adult could get accidentally trapped that way, maybe a child. But here I am.

My arms are behind me. I twist my body over and reach my fingers out to where I think the back of the car is. I feel the thick plastic handle and pull on it. It yanks free. Someone has severed it from the mechanism.

I bring my knees up and start kicking toward the top of the trunk. I know the driver will be able to hear me. I don’t care. I’d rather pop it open in a busy highway than wait for him to park somewhere isolated and try to sneak away from the vehicle.

After three kicks I feel the car stop. This isn’t a good sign. It means we’re probably someplace secluded. I swivel around so I can kick him in the face if he opens the trunk. A minute goes by of me waiting. I wish I’d brought my hands in front of my body by sliding the cuffs around. I’m too afraid to do it now in case I’m caught in a vulnerable spot.

I wait for the sound of the key in the lock. It never happens. Instead, I hear the click of the trunk being opened remotely. The lid pops up a few inches. It’s dark out. I see a sliver of moon through tall trees.

Then the trunk flies open and a figure standing behind the trunk, near the back door, shoves a canister in my face and sprays me again. I see stars and clouds, then nothing.

M
Y FAMILY KNOWS
I have at least an hour’s worth of air if the coffin stays airtight. On television they say only ten minutes. The plan is to raise me up after twenty. But I’m not going to make it five if I don’t do something. I’m going to drown.

I race through my options. Hidden under my costume I have a small knife. A gift from my uncle. Using it to carve through the wooden lid would take years. Instead, I feel for a weak spot in the sides using my fingers.

I touch a spray of water coming through a small gap between the planks to the side of me. I shove the knife blade through to force a bigger opening. Water squirts into the coffin and my fingers slip as I work the blade between the crack.

The coffin is filling up faster. I’ve made things worse.

I keep sliding the blade back and forth anyway. The edge catches on something. It doesn’t feel like a nail or another board and only gives slightly as I push into it.

I imagine the outside of the coffin. This must be the canvas strap holding the weights that keep the coffin from floating back up to the surface. I force the knife into the material. I only manage to bend it backward. I switch to a sawing motion, but nothing gives.

Water is up to my chest. I only have a few minutes left.

I’m desperate. I pull the knife out and move it a few inches farther down. I repeatedly jab at the strap from the inside, hoping to puncture and weaken it.

I want to cry. I want to scream. I do neither. My world is the strap. That’s all that matters.

The blade snaps through something and I feel a sharp vibration like a string being plucked. I saw at it again. I can hear the sound of something sliding free. I’ve cut the strap!

But I’m not moving.

I take a deep breath.

My grandfather once told me about doing a similar escape from a packing case in the Hudson River. It got stuck in the mud and a vacuum formed, keeping him from pulling the box free after he exited through the secret panel.

I throw my weight against the side of the coffin to rock it back and forth. It’s hard with all the water inside. It sloshes around in the darkness.

I’m afraid I’m already too heavy. I’m exhausted and just want to wait it out. I feel the water coming in through a gap in the lid and wonder if I can use a stocking to plug the crack. Maybe it could give me another few minutes of air.

I reach down to rip it off my leg and bump my back into the side of the coffin. I feel everything tip to the side. The coffin keeps turning.

I’m floating up! It’s a gradual ascent, but definitely in the right direction. An eternity later I hear shouting. Men pull the coffin from the water and drag it to the shore. Crowbars pry open the top. I see my grandfather and uncle looking down at me. Their faces are white.

“I’m okay,” I tell them.

Grandfather doesn’t miss a beat. He turns to the camera, still several yards away, and shouts, “She’s gone!” He runs to the edge of the water and pretends to look for me.

When the bright light on the camera is pointed at him in the lake, frantically looking for me, my uncle uses the lid of the coffin to conceal me as I hide in the bushes. The television crew never sees me leave.

My uncle drives me back to the hotel while my dad and grandfather make a big show of the fact that I’ve vanished.

He gives me a sad look as he lets me out of the car. We both know they love me, but that’s the kind of people they are. Never ones to let a potential tragedy go to waste as publicity. I thank him for the knife and book a flight out of Mexico that night.

It is the last time I speak to my family face-to-face.

Now I realize that may have been my last chance.

M
Y FAMILY ISN’T WAITING
on the other side to spring me free. There is no secret escape hatch. I’m in a trunk of a car. Every few hours my captor stops the car and sprays me with a canister of a chemical that sends me into a lucid dream state. I retrace memories of childhood and occasionally feel like I’m flying. The FBI chemist explained that the chemical the Warlock used was similar to a drug that witches in the Middle Ages used to use to create the sensation that they were levitating.

I experience that feeling when I go in and out of the sleep. My head is numb; my mind is a television set turned to an empty channel. It’s hard to focus on anything for very long. I remember the coffin and my uncle’s knife. I try to find it on my body, but it’s not there.

I try to cling to the facts.

I need to focus.

My gun, my badge, everything has been taken from me. Even my shoes. I don’t feel like I’ve been touched. But I’m so disconnected with my body, I don’t know if I could tell right now.

The driver is taking me somewhere. I don’t know where that is yet. My last memory is of trees. Tall trees. Taller than what I saw in south Texas.

When we get wherever we’re headed, I’m going to die. He’s going to kill me. I know this because he said the Warlock is real. He believes this man is a higher being.

Damian had warned me that the Warlock might have accomplices. He went out of his way to make it look like he was acting alone. Many psychopaths like to use the word “we” to imply they represent more than one person. To pretend they’re not just one lone nut job baying at the moon in the middle of the night.

This man, my captor, is probably acting under the Warlock’s orders and not just some disturbed rogue who decided to honor his idol. I know this because he uses the spray we think the Warlock was using.

If I’m awake, that means he’s going to spray me again. I decide to pull my hands around my body before he does that. I want to feel around the trunk again. If I can find a tire iron or some kind of weapon and hold my breath, I might be able to fight back.

It’s harder than I anticipate to slide the cuffs to the front of my body. My arms feel like they’re made from rubber. I have trouble knowing where they are in the darkness. The effort takes an eternity. I finally bring the cuffs to my face and stick my tongue out to tell what they are. With the right tool I can pick just about anything.

I taste glue and plastic. He’s put plastic cuffs on me, then wrapped them over and over again with duct tape. It’s the kind of binding you put on someone when you know you’re never going to set them free.

There is no doubt he’s going to kill me.

I could try to slide them off against the inside edge of the trunk. But I’m afraid he’ll spray me again and it won’t matter. He’ll just add more tape. I feel around the floor of the trunk for anything to use as a weapon.

My hands touch soft fabric. It’s my jacket. I can use it to cover my mouth when he sprays me. That might help just a little. I’m still vulnerable here. As I slide the jacket across my chest I hear something crackle inside a pocket. It sounds like a pack of gum.

I stick my hands inside and feel the bag with the letter and the blister pack of pills that Damian gave me. That seems like an eternity ago. I would have preferred my uncle’s knife. I push them back into my pocket, then remember what the note said and what the pills are for.

They’re an Alzheimer’s medication.

I try to think through the fog back to the presentation by our chemist and the molecule on the screen.

My chemistry is rough, but I think Damian’s pills are some kind of inhibitor. An antidote of sorts?

I bounce as the car stops. I pull them free of the packaging and swallow all of them. It’s hard. My mouth is dry and I haven’t had any water. They don’t want to go down my throat. The trunk is going to open any second.

He’s going to spray me.

The pills are starting to choke me. I have to do something.

I have to survive.

I bite the inside corner of my lip. It’s easier than I thought, given how numb I am. Blood rushes past my tongue. The dry pills become moist. I swallow and try not to think about what I’ve done so I don’t throw up.

I feel the pills go down my throat, finally. I don’t know what effect they’re going to have. All I can do is wait.

I move my tied hands behind my back. I don’t want him knowing I can do that.

The trunk opens. I see a figure standing several yards away. He’s holding a video camera with a light aimed at me. At first I think he’s talking to me, then I realize he’s talking to the camera.

T
HE LIGHT FROM
the camera makes it hard to see his face. I think he is the priest from the church, or at least the man pretending to be the priest. He steps closer to the car and keeps the camera light pointing toward me.

“As I promised you, Lord. There she is. Unharmed . . .”

He notices the blood flowing down my lip.

“Goddamn it!” He sets the video camera on the ground and walks toward me. He pulls a gun from his waistband and points it at my head. “I took the gag off so you wouldn’t choke back there. Now look what you’ve done!”

“Let me go.” I try to make my voice calm and reasoned.

He ignores me and brings the gun to my face. He uses his sleeve to wipe the blood free. If my hands were in front of my body and able to move more quickly, I could maybe knock it out of his hands. Then what? All I see are trees. I have no idea where I would run to.

He steps back and picks up the camera and starts over again. “As I promised you, Lord. There she is . . .”

So this video is supposed to be seen by the Warlock?

I scream as loud as I can. “He raped me!”

“I did not! She’s lying! She’s a lying whore!”

He lowers the camera and gives me an angry look, then storms over to the trunk with the gun in his hand. “I swear to God, bitch, I’ll hit you in the head with this if you say another thing.”

I need to keep him talking. “Let me go. I know it’s not your fault.”

He shakes his head. “He told me you’d say anything to get me to let you go free. Even try to tempt me.”

“He’s a fake and a liar.” I have to do something to disrupt his train of thought. He’s like a cult member repeating a line over and over again.

“You wouldn’t understand him. Your world is so small,” he says.

“I see through his tricks. He’s just a cheap magician.”

“Everything is a trick to you. You’re just a magic whore from a family of whores.”

“You’re not a murderer. This isn’t you.”

“You’re right. I’m not. I’m a temple priest about to perform a transformation.” He steps back with the camera and aims it at me again. “You were right, Lord. She’ll say anything. She’ll accuse me of anything.”

I can’t let him finish this video the way he wants. “This man violated me. He said I was his to play with.”

The man can’t decide if he should stop the camera or not. “Go on. Tell your lies.”

“He said he had doubts about you. He said that he was afraid of you and only doing this to protect himself. He asked me if I could help him.”

He drops the camera and runs toward me. He punches me on the jaw. The blood I’ve been swallowing flies all over my blouse. The subject of sex made him very uncomfortable. This is his weakness. This is how I humiliate him. I rip my blouse open on the edge of the trunk, revealing a black bra. “Video this, asshole. How’s he going to feel when he finds out you violated his sacrifice?”

He looks genuinely confused. He wants to hit me again, but he knows it will only make things worse. I watch a vessel bulge in his forehead, then fade away. He smiles. “It’s a test. He knows you’ll try this. It’s not working.”

He picks up the camera again and aims it at me. “Everything you said is true, Lord.” He spins around and aims it at a mountain in the horizon. “There she waits, my Lord.”

I don’t recognize the mountain, but its shape is unmistakable. Half of it is caved in. I’ve been asleep for more hours than I can count.

Have I been out for days? All I know is that I’ve been brought to one of a dozen volcanoes in the United States. I’m too numb to tell if it’s cold out. This could even be an active one in Alaska or Oregon.

The Warlock’s follower pulls the canister from his pocket and sprays me again. It’s a long spray. He does it until it’s empty. I’m pulled backward into a black lake.