S
TONE WATCHED THEM
go inside. He was standing on Cypher Street, a half block down from the little house at the end. He stood there for several minutes, debating what to do. The tension that had run through him when he first laid eyes on the strange man hadn’t left yet. If anything, it had gotten stronger.
After a while, he wandered down the street, ambling as though he’d been drinking. When he arrived at the last little house on the right-hand side, he slowed his pace even more. The lights were still off inside, giving it a deserted look.
He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching him. There wasn’t a soul. The houses around him were shut tight against the darkness, drawn up from the dangers of the urban evening. Blue light from televisions flickered in many of the upstairs windows, and a few soft reading lamps cast a warmer glow, but these were the signs of lives turned inward, unconcerned with what might be happening beyond their doors.
He looked around one more time and, seeing no one, strode up the front steps of the house. Now the shadows of the small covered stoop gave him a feeling of protection against prying eyes, and he leaned up against the door, straining to hear any noises within. It was hopeless, he realized. The seal on the door was tight, and no sound escaped the dark little house.
He leaned over the railing and tried to look in one of the windows. Old lace curtains hung from the window tops, and cheap blinds were drawn all the way down, so he could only see a crack through the gauzy material. In the darkness, it was futile. He could make out almost nothing inside, just a lone chair next to a table with a plain white lamp on it. There was no detectable motion at all, and he found that odd. If the couple were having sex, he’d surely have seen some sign, a light going on upstairs, the rustle of a curtain. But there was nothing; just a dark, empty silence.
He looked at his watch. It had been nearly a half hour since he’d observed them going inside, and there’d been no sign of life since they stepped through the door. Something was wrong; he knew it. In the bottom of his heart, he had never been surer of anything. He looked around again at the quiet street. He’d have to make a decision soon. Otherwise the issue would become moot, and if another woman died without his doing something to stop it, he’d never be able to live with himself.
Stone sighed and shook his head. “To protect and to serve,” he whispered as he pulled out a leather case the size of a cigarette pack. He unzipped a flap and pulled out a tool that looked like a tweezers and a long metal toothpick. When they taught the class at the academy on how to pick locks, it had seemed silly. Most of the boys he’d grown up with in Southie had mastered that art early. At the same time, it was good that the department encouraged him to stay in practice. He slid the tools into the lock, playing them back and forth as he pulled them out slowly. When he heard the tumblers click into place, he used the leverage between the two tools to turn the lock, sliding back the deadbolt. Then he repeated the same procedure with the lock on the door handle. The process took him less than twenty seconds.
He turned the handle, holding his breath as he listened for any disturbance inside. He heard nothing, so with great care he pushed open the door, wincing as the hinges let out a quiet squeak.
Still holding the door, he reached behind him and pulled his gun out of a holster hidden in the small of his back. Because he was working undercover, he had no flashlight, so he was going into the house virtually blind, but he was determined to go in nonetheless. It was too late now to retreat. He took a deep breath and stepped into the house like a swimmer slipping into water, letting the darkness swallow him entirely.
This was to be his masterpiece. He’d worked hard with each of the prior girls, searching for the type of pain that would best please the Lord and stop the screaming in his ears, but the relief had always been temporary and incomplete. Now he believed he’d found the key.
She was strapped down on the table, naked to the waist, as the chemicals in her blood pushed their way around her body, paralyzing her, carrying away the last of her ability to struggle. Only her eyes moved, wheeling around in terror. They spotted him at the counter, pouring sulfuric acid and other chemicals into a steel spray can, his own eyes full of excitement and satisfaction.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord who judges her.
When the kings of the earth who committed adultery
with her
and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning,
they will weep and mourn over her.
He looked at her again over his shoulder. Her eyes, now un-blinking, strained to close. It was a last attempt at escape, but the potent cocktail of anesthetics had taken from her even that ability. So she stared unwilling at her tormentor, and from the corner of her left eye he saw a single tear trickle down the side of her cheek.
And then, almost as though to comfort her, he smiled and began reciting from the final prophecy:
Blessed is the one who reads the words of this
prophecy,
and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart
what is within it,
for the time is near …
Yes, he knew he would enjoy this.
S
TONE MOVED WITH DELIBERATION
, placing his rubber-soled shoes carefully to avoid any sound as he made his way around the first floor of the little house. It was dark inside. The shades were pulled on all of the windows, blocking even the pale filter of moonlight from the neat, uncluttered interior. The heat was unbearable as he moved from room to room, slipping silently along the walls with his gun drawn. All of the windows were closed, and he could feel the sweat pouring down his forehead, dripping off his nose.
When he came to the stairway leading to the second floor, he paused, listening for the characteristic muffled cries of sex coming from upstairs. There was no sound at all, though, and he began moving up the stairs. There were only three rooms on the second story—a bathroom and two small bedrooms. Stone stole into each of them, panning his gun around, edging it into the closets to make sure there was no one there. Once he’d satisfied himself that the upstairs was deserted, he crept back down to the ground floor.
He was at a loss. He knew that the strange man had brought the girl into the house, and he knew they hadn’t come out. So where were they? He checked the back door. It was bolted from the inside and opened onto an enclosed patio with a couple of rusted chairs stacked against a high fence. It didn’t look like anyone had been out there in years.
He walked back into the living room and stood still for a minute or two, his ears straining for any sign of activity.
That was when he heard it. It was a high-pitched whine, pulsing with a sick, familiar rhythm he couldn’t place. He held his breath, trying to get a better fix on the sound. It was so thin it almost blended into the faint ringing in his own ears, but after a moment he guessed it might be emanating from back toward the kitchen. He moved there, stopped, and listened again. The noise sounded like it was coming from the far corner, behind a rack of coats. He tensed as he crossed the room, his palm opening and closing on the handle of his gun, which he now held tight to his side.
When he reached the coats, he brushed them aside and stared hard into the dark corner. At first it looked like nothing but a wall, covered in cheap faux-brick wallpaper, but as he peered closer, he could see the outline of a doorway. With his right hand, he leveled his gun, ready to open fire at anything that might come screaming out. With his left hand, he traced the sides of the door, looking for a handle or a doorknob. It took a minute or two, but he finally found a latch set flush to the door’s surface. He dug his fingernails into the edge and worked it loose, hooking his finger into the small metal loop that protruded from the door.
He could hear his heart beating now, so loud that it drowned out the ringing in his ears and the high-pitched whine from behind the door. His breath came too quickly, and he steadied himself against the fear, forcing his chest to expand and take a full breath. Then, in one quick, silent motion, he swung open the door.
The tiny entryway flooded with bright light, and Stone had to shade his eyes for a moment as his pupils adjusted. Once they had, he could see a narrow stairway leading down to the basement. He was surprised at how bright and clean the stairway seemed, as though it was whitewashed on a regular basis. It almost reminded him of a hospital or a doctor’s office, and for a brief moment he thought that perhaps he’d been wrong. Maybe there was nothing sinister about the strange man, or about the dark little house in which he lived.
Then he heard the high-pitched whine again.
It had stopped for a moment or two, he realized, but now it started up again. It pierced the air with its pulsating cry, mechanical and unrelenting. Something was definitely wrong here, he knew, and he stepped slowly down the stairs.
The first thing that hit him was the stench. It hovered in the air, and he passed into its grasp within a few steps from the top of the stairs. It was the foul odor of decaying flesh mixed with the sharp, acrid smell of chemicals. Stone was already feeling light-headed from the adrenaline coursing through his veins, and this new noxious smell was almost enough to keep him from moving on, but he steadied himself against the wall and pushed forward.
The second thing he noticed was the chanting. It was low and droning, overlaid by the endless whine. Stone couldn’t make out the words, but it rambled on in singsong fashion, like the prattle of a small child fixated more on the sounds of phrases than their meaning or importance. It filled him with a new sense of dread.
But Stone didn’t appreciate the full horror of what he’d stumbled on until he was nearly at the bottom of the narrow stairway, where he could see the entire room and take in the nightmare that was unfolding.
There was a steel medical-type table bolted to the center of the floor, and she was lying on top of it—at least what was left of her. She was entirely naked, and her arms and legs were strapped to the sides. A wispy mist of smoke drifted up off her extremities, which were stripped of their skin, as well as much of their muscle and soft tissue, as if they had been burned in a fire of such intensity that it had literally melted the flesh. The same was true of much of her torso and head, which no longer held any hair, and had lost most of its skin as well, so that the top of her skull reflected the white of the sterile room around her. Only the skin around her eyes seemed to have been left intact, and from beneath that small stretch of living tissue, the girl’s eyes stared out in an agony too indescribable to comprehend.
Standing over those eyes was the man Stone had seen in the Kiss Club. A surgical saw was still whirring and whining and pulsating in his hand as it slipped through the girl’s ribs, opening a chasm in her chest that oozed and coughed and bled.
It took a few seconds for Stone to recover his senses, so grotesque was the scene that played out in front of him. Then all at once he remembered who he was and why he was there. His gun flew up, pointing at the man’s head.
“Freeze! Police!”
The man was startled. He’d been so involved in his work that he hadn’t heard Stone as he came down the stairs. His shock quickly turned to anger when he realized he’d been interrupted.
“You can’t be down here!” he yelled. “You shouldn’t be here, you must leave at once!” His voice was indignant, as though Stone had committed some sacrilege, rather than the other way around.
“Shut up, you sick fuck! Put down the saw and move away from the girl, or I swear to God I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
Now the man looked confused. “But I can’t,” he protested. “I haven’t finished yet.”
“I swear to God, I’ll shoot you!” Stone looked at the girl again and saw that a new look had come into her eyes—a look of hope. It was so pathetic and useless he wanted to tear out his own eyes to purge the image. She couldn’t survive this, could she?
“Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, Jesus Christ! What did you do to her? You sick, sick fuck.” Stone was beginning to lose it now. The horror of the scene was overwhelming whatever sense of reality he still clung to. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911, his gun still leveled at the man’s head.
“Nine-one-one,” came the operator’s voice.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, I need some backup,” Stone said. “I need an ambulance now! Oh, fuck! Please send someone now!”
“Calm down, sir. Where are you?”
“Cypher Street! I’m at 1027 Cypher Street in Southie. Freeze, motherfucker!” The man, saw still in hand, was bending down toward the girl again. Stone spoke back into the phone. “This is Police Officer Paul Stone, and I need backup and an ambulance, now!” He took in the scene in the basement again. “Oh my God, what have you done?”
“I did it for God!” the blood-covered man exclaimed. His voice was full of conviction. It was no longer angry or indignant, but calm and self-assured. “He is here with us now, and He wanted me to do this. He needed this to be done, and He needed you as His witness.”
“Shut up, you sick fuck, or I swear I’ll shoot you!” Stone wasn’t sure how much longer he could last. “I need backup!” he yelled into the phone again. He didn’t realize he’d already hung up.
“You know it’s true, don’t you? He told me to do this. He told all of us to do this. It’s been written in the scripture, and so shall it be. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to show His servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending His angel to His servant, John, who has testified to what he has seen—that is the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
“Shut up!” Stone’s hand was shaking now, and he was having trouble keeping his aim at the man’s head.
“Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near!”
The man’s voice was louder now, and clearer. It reverberated off the whitewashed walls of the sterile basement, booming out in a sermon of death and pain.
“Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are His judgments!”
“Shut up!”
“He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries!”
“Shut up!”
“He has avenged on her the blood of His servants! And again they shouted, Hallelujah!”
“I’ll blow your head off!”
“The smoke from her goes up forever and ever!”
“You sick fuck!”
“He has sent His angel to me!”
“No!”
“The time is near!”
“Stop!”
“The time is near!”
“Stop!”
“The time is near!”
With that, the man raised the surgical saw over his head, waving it with a flourish. His eyes were wide and staring, and he had a bright, toothy grin as he brought the saw down into the hole in the girl’s chest. He was shouting as his arm came down.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty!”
A fountain of blood erupted from the girl’s chest, and Stone saw her eyes go wide and then fade. It was a mercy, he knew in his heart, for she could never have lived. She might have held on to life for moments, or hours, or even days, but it would have been a thin life filled with an agony no one should endure. There was a part of Stone that wanted her dead, because he wasn’t strong enough to accept the possibility that her anguish would go on.
“No!” Stone screamed as the man raised his arm for a second time. He was still sermonizing, but the words no longer penetrated the howl that ripped through Stone’s head. As the man’s arm came down again in a broad, smooth arc, Stone pulled the trigger. He would never know how many times he fired his gun. It didn’t matter. As the gun sounded, adding a mere fraction to the white noise that swirled in the basement, his vision faded and he lost consciousness.