17
Cruel God
Grove tried to move. His body was sluggish, flooding with cold concrete from the sudden blood loss and trauma, making movement excruciating.
The dark figure started toward a silver object gleaming on the stone floor maybe ten feet away:
the .357 magnum
.
“Ackerman . . .
Ackerman!
”
The shadow continued slowly yet steadily edging across the cave toward the gun.
It was too dark to get a good look at the man, but it was clear he was moving in a strange mannerâstiffly, jerkily, as though electric current were running through his tendons. That low, hyperventilating noise emanating from his lips had coalesced into something that sounded like an incantation or a litany in some unidentifiable foreign language.
“Ackerman, listen to me, okay? Listen now, just for a second, focus, okay? Focus and listen, listen, listenâ”
Grove tried to scoot backward toward the deeper regions of the cave, tried to buy himself time, but his body was as heavy as a block of ice, slimy with blood. His legs shrieked, perforated by the mauling. His hands were greasy with blood. He could feel his pulse in his neck, and his vision was beginning to blur. Hypovolemic shock can quickly indicate paralysis, disorientation, even hallucinations.
The figure was less than ten feet away, kneeling down by the gunâonly inches away from the great, steaming carcass of the dead bear. At this close proximity, Grove could see the man's quiver of arrows hanging off the back of his ragged nylon raincoat, the hunting bow dangling, the hooded face partially obscured in shadow, a pale, creased visage of teeth and crow's-feet. The man's head shivered convulsively as cryptic words spewed out of him very quickly and very softly, echoing in the darkness: “
Aaahhh-baal-sssahh-geeee-utu-utu-ssssuh-hoooolnamm-nin-ssssahhhâ”
Grove tried to say something else, but his words got clogged suddenly when he saw Ackerman pick up the gun. Grove's mind raced:
I'm not going to look away, I'm not, I'm not going to cower for the son of a bitch, he can damn well kill me now, but I am not going to look away!
Across the cave Ackerman stood up, brittle knees cracking. He raised the gun and aimed it at Grove.
Lightning flickered again, and Ackerman tossed his head in victorious, primal bloodlust, reminding Grove of a wild dog in a feeding frenzy. The cave flashed. All at once the hood slipped off Ackerman's cranium, and for a brief instant the killer's face was visibleâa ruined map of wrinkles and leathery skin, eyes shimmering like glass embers.
Grove was gagging on his own blood, simultaneously weeping and roaring:
“Go ahead and do it! Do it already! Get it over with!”
Something unexpected happened then: in that terrible split second of flickering light, Grove saw the man's face spontaneously transformâthe flesh sagging like an air bladder shriveling, all the fire immediately going out of his eyes. The brutal rictus of a grin melted into mortified horror. “OhhhhâG-Gawdân-noâ” the killer stammered suddenly, trying desperately to communicate something to Grove.
“What! Talk to me, Ackerman, what? What the hell do you want!”
The gun wavered, the tall man flinching as though inner forces were battling over control of his body, and Grove instantly recognized the signs in some deeply buried compartment of his embattled mind: the classic dissociative movements of an MPD,
a multiple personality disorder
. But something deeper, something more significant lurked beneath the realization like a vast, black, underwater leviathan.
“D-don't l-let him,” the killer stammered, a tear like a diamond on his cheek, the gun hanging at his side now, eyes furrowed in utter agony.
“Don't let himâwhat! Do what!”
Grove boiled in rage and pain, his legs deadweight, glued to the stone. The dark returned, deeper now. Absolute blackness. Grove gasped for breath, tried to see his assailant.
The broken voice in the darkness: “Don't let him k-kill you . . . y-you're the one he wants . . . it's you . . . it's
always
been
you
.”
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They reached the edge of the clearingâtwo tactical guys from Portland SWAT who had arrived only minutes earlier, as well as an ATF agent from the Olympia field officeâat the precise moment another volley of lightning lit up the place. Simms, the older of the two SWAT guys, took the right flank, his assault rifle gripped tightly in his gloved hands, eyes squinting into the flickering rain. The younger gentlemen, Karris, top-heavy with Kevlar and rain-soaked tac gear, took the left, signaling the ATF guy, Boeski, with a quick downward jerk of the fist, to bring up the rear and suppress as needed. Then Simms and Karris, like armored ballet dancers, simultaneously hopped over the stone lip and crouched on the rainy plateau. The downed special agentâthe one called Zornâwas immediately visible to Simms, who signaled Karris with a quick, flat slicing motion of the hand. Karris, the less experienced of the two, gritted his teeth in frustration, slamming his boot down on the moss, livid that they could lose the subjects in the woods so easily, the place lousy with tactical operatives, all messed up by the storm and the weird way sounds carry in the woods. But the luxury of feelings quickly passed because they were in a red-zone situation at the moment, and the clenching and pointing gestures from Simms twenty yards away on the windswept precipice told young Tactical Sergeant-Second Class Anton Karris everything he needed to know. Simms had made a quick trundle over to the body and discovered that the one named Zorn was gone, S-O-L, but the other one, Grove, as well as the suspect, remained at large, armed, and judging by the way Simms was wildly gesticulating toward the adjacent woods, both remained dangerously close and hot and immediately threatening. And all this happened in the space of instantsâa few seconds, actuallyâbefore a piercing noise rang out from the nearby columns of spruce and tamarack, making both officers duck involuntarily down into the muck, their backs up like startled animals, their weapons snapping up into the ready position drummed into their muscle memories. But neither could move because the soundâthe clarion noise that bellowed through the rainâwas virtually unrecognizable to human ears, and therefore had no precedent in any SWAT manual or training scenario.
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The New Richard roared in the darkness of the cave.
He had vanquished the last shred of the Old Richard inside him as though shitting out a parasitic bug, and now his victory cry erupted in the dark like a chorus of hellish voices as he raised the weapon and aimed it at the brown man on the floor of the cave.
The first shot sounded glorious, lighting up the cave with a flash of radiant yellow fire.
The hollow-point struck Grove in the hip, gouging a two-inch capsule of muscle and cleanly passing through the meat of his buttocks, imbedding itself into the moldering stone of the cave wall behind him.
Grove let out an involuntary gasp, jerking sideways in a thundercloud of cordite and dust, his body slamming facedown into the corner. The blast had just the disabling effect the New Richard had calculatedâa preamble to the ritual he had learned in dreams.
“Get it over with!”
Grove moaned on the ground, his face pressed against the cold stone, his tortured breaths raising little puffs of dust in the darkness.
The killer tossed the gun to the ground, the weapon clanging as it bounced across the stone floor. He reached up and, with one brittle movement of his right arm, plucked an arrow from the quiver, pointing the shaft heavenward as though it were a lightning rod.
“Laahhh-nahh-hammmmaahhhhh-nam-silig-akaaaahhh-sssu-zeeee-sahh-mahhhhh!”
The New Richard sang out the dissonant howl of words, secret phrases taught to him in nightmares, and the voice rose and ululated like a mad cantor in a register that strained Ackerman's vocal cords to the breaking point.
Grove, on the ground, in the dark, bleeding to death, face in the dust. He knew what was coming next, he just
knew
, the realization materializing in his brain like a photograph in a developing bath. He thought of Hannah, and then, for a brief instant, he thought of Maura County, and all that could have been. Then he closed his eyesâ
âbecause the iron vise of a hand was around his right arm. The pressure was enormous, as if a machine were grasping him around the forearm. Then a quick, terse
yank
. . . and now Grove's right arm was positioned in the familiar pose.
Next Grove felt the cold pointed tip of the hunting arrow kissing the back of his neck.
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Karris saw the granite maw of the cave firstâa dull, sandy facade in the jungle of foliage, obscured by sheets of rain and columns of hemlock. A moment's hesitation, crouching down behind a fat spruce, wiping an arm across his wet face, realizing the howling noise had come from the cave, Karris clucked his tongue at Simms, who was duckwalking through the undergrowth thirty yards away. Simms froze. The two tac officers traded frantic hand gestures. Then Karris trundled toward the cave, Simms close on his heels, an Ingram M-10 assault rifle ready to rock, its thirty-round magazine locked. The two officersâtheir training ingrainedâslammed up against either side of the stone doorway. More hand gestures. Deep breaths. Muscles coiled. Wet fingers on the triggers. A lot of information still missing, a lot of questions flashing in their midbrains over the course of that brief instant: what kind of a cave were they about to enter? And maybe more critically: was it one of those old abandoned zinc mines that Karris had read about onceâthe interminable kind that went all the way through to the other side of the plateau?
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Grove opened his eyes in the darkness.
Still alive? I'm still alive?
Paralysis gripped the entire left side of his body, which was wrenched into the telltale position of the Sun City victimsâa cruel joke played by a cruel god. His vision blurred, essentially useless in the shadows of the cave. But he
sensed
something happening behind him, something happening to Ackerman. The sound of halted breathing echoed faintly, barely audible to Grove's ringing ears, a deeper shadow trembling in his peripheral vision.
He tried to crane his neck around, tried to see what was going on. He felt as though he were nailed to the deck of a sinking ship, the gravity of pain and blood loss tugging him down into the black depths. Shuffling footsteps echoed behind him. Ackerman was gasping.
Gasping?
Grove made one last heaving effort to lever his head around far enough to catch a glimpse of the killer. Searing hot agony shot down his spine as he peered over his shoulder, the pain forcing a yelp out of his lungs. Finally he managed to get a fleeting glance at the silhouette looming over him with the hunting bow and arrow still cocked in its cross-brace.
Ackerman had frozenâmid-strikeâthe arrow still poised only centimeters away from Grove's neck.
Tremors bolted up Ackerman's spine, straightening him as though a steel rod had just been thrust up his vertebrae. He shivered and winced. His facial features contorted. One eye began to blink fitfully, his jaw clenching as though high voltage were passing through him. Grove, delirious with pain, wondered if Ackerman's head was going to start spinning.
It was the penultimate thought that passed through Grove's conscious mind before the delicate black membrane drew down over him.
Ackerman began gasping for air, the tip of the arrow wavering away from Grove's neck. The gasping mixed with a moaning noise, an almost musical sound, squeezing out of Ackerman as he staggered backward now. One of Ackerman's big, gnarled hands grasped suddenly at his chestâa purely involuntary action.
On the cold stone floor, in the dark, Grove's last conscious thought before fainting dead away was one of relief, perhaps even disappointment. He had remembered something Helen Ackerman had said, and all at once he realized what was happening, and the realization brought with it an unsettling wave of dread that the course of events were being channeled by nothing more mystical than sheer coincidence and the vagaries of the human circulatory system.
The son of a bitch is having a heart attack
.
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Grove was unconscious by the time Karris and Simms penetrated the darkness of the cave. A pair of halogen beams pierced the shadows and landed on the profiler, who was slumped in a puddle of blood against the damp stone wall thirty feet inside the tunnel. The great pile of black fur and gristle that was once a bear lay against the opposite wall. By that point the New Richard had shambled away into the black depths of the cavern, dragging his numbed left leg along behind him like a rotted log.
The tactical agents made no immediate moves toward Grove. They didn't even bother making a visual assessment of the fallen profiler's vital signs. Procedure dictated that the officers secure the area first, which was problematic in such a confined space with such an absence of light. Was the bear dead? Apparently, yes. Frantic hand gestures and pinpoint choreography sent both men on a diagonal along either wall, barrels raised, aims fixed, muscles tense, fingers on the triggers, slender shafts of halogen light slicing through the motes of filth, the beams sweeping the empty reaches of the cave. The tac guys paused and listened, and heard no audible evidence of the cardiac arrest case lumbering through the uncharted shadows of the mine shaft.