Authors: Mark Nykanen
He looked away, and began to search for
her
face. He felt like a man who’d been led to a morgue, and now had to make the grisly identification. His eyes moved along each shelf, left to right. He saw every manner of visage, some beautiful, some not, but all twisted by seizures of agony. Why does he hide them here? As soon as he asked that question, Jared knew. Jared knew that Ashley Stassler hid the faces because Ashley Stassler really was a killer, and that every one of his sculptures was a sepulcher, in spirit if not in flesh. That whatever he did with the bodies was an afterthought to the man, because it was their lives he had stolen, and their bones, their skulls, and all of their blood were the waste matter of his work.
Jared, who hadn’t prayed in years, who had only a vague memory of the Methodist service, offered words to God that would have made sense to all who had fallen here, because they, too, had come to prayer, to seek its soft embrace in a brutal world. And this is what it had earned them: these shelves, these walls, from which to stare vacantly for all eternity. This was their hell, deep in the earth. Yours too, he whispered to himself. The corrosive fear of dying in such absolute darkness pierced him the moment he became aware that the motion light might well be an alarm.
Still, he forced himself to search the last of the shelves, but before he could finish his grim task the light went off, and only the beam from his headlamp cleaved the darkness.
What’s going on?
His head whipped from side to side, but he found no answer. Neither could he glimpse where the shaft continued,
if
it continued. But his beam landed on an old cart on the rails. It was pressed against a rock wall. That’s it, he realized.
The end of the line.
He rushed over to see if an axe, a pick, any tool with lethal points or sharp edges had been left to rust, but the cart was empty. Then he heard the first of the footsteps, as distinct as hammer blows, resounding from the shaft where he had crept so quietly.
He snapped off his headlamp and listened intently. Those footsteps were moving closer, as deliberate as the rise of day. No rushing. No hurry. And then another noise, like a stick thumping the earth. Or was it the ceiling? It sounded sharp, provocatively so. Made by someone who didn’t know Jared’s fear, who didn’t care if he heard him. Who walked without a light.
Step, step, thump. Step, step, thump. Step, step, thump.
Jared dug out his Swiss Army knife, unfolded the biggest blade, which couldn’t have been more than a few inches long. Nevertheless, he held it in front of him like all the knife fighters he’d seen in movies and on TV. But he felt weak with fear, not strong; vulnerable, not invincible. More so as the footsteps grew louder, and that stick, or club or whatever it was, began to thump madly, gaining a horrible rhythm of its own, a staccato
thump-thump … thump-thump-thump-thump
.
It had to be Stassler. Jared wanted to hide, but where the hell could he hide? And wouldn’t it be better to face off with him? Kerry had said Stassler was about his size, but he was a lot older, and probably not as quick or strong.
As the footsteps grew louder, nearer, and the
thump-thump-thump-thump
…
thump
madness began to beat in his brain, the young man took little comfort in his own counsel. He even considered climbing into the rail cart. Then he thought of placing himself behind it. He pulled it from the wall with a plan to roll it right into Stassler.
He was imagining the damage it could do when the lights came back on, all but blinding him with their brightness. He didn’t see Stassler until the sculptor stood several feet away wielding a baseball bat. Jared couldn’t even push the cart into him: Stassler wasn’t on the rails. It was a stupid plan. All Jared could do was try to keep the cart between them, and even this idea, as hopeless as it was, failed when Stassler pointed a gun at him.
“You are an idiot,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Jared said.
“For what? Your idiocy? Or for violating my property rights and destroying my work?”
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to.”
“Oh, you didn’t mean to. Well, in that case, go on. Leave. Come on, get moving.”
Stassler tried to wave him out from behind the cart, but Jared was having nothing of the man’s game.
“You don’t want to leave? You want to stay down here with all of my friends?” Stassler looked at the bronze faces. “How do you think they died?”
Jared risked a glance at the shelves, and at the family standing to his right. He wondered if he could push them over and crush Stassler.
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me, Brilliance, do you think they had a good death? Do you think they died happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re being obstinate, Brilliance. What is your name anyway?”
Jared told him.
“I thought so. I would have been disappointed if you’d been anyone else. Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
Stassler smiled. “And who might you be looking for?”
“Kerry Waters.”
“Kerry Waters? Tiny tits? Hard round butt? Red hair? Used to be my
intern
,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
Jared offered a barely perceptible nod.
“Come on, I’ll take you to her, but first I want to know how you got here.”
“Got here?”
“Yes, how you arrived. Did you walk, flap your wings and fly? How did you do it, Brilliance?”
“I drove. And I rode my bike.”
“You drove
and
you rode your bike?”
Jared stared at him.
“Where’s your car?”
“Out by the river, in a cave. One of those big sandstone caves.”
“Did you park it in there?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your bike?”
“It’s behind your foundry, maybe a half mile.”
“Who knows you’re here?”
“Everyone.”
“You’re such a bad liar, Brilliance. The truth is, no one knows you’re here. Do you want to know how I know? Because I listen to the police band, and they’re looking for you right now. They have a warrant out for your arrest. As far as they’re concerned, you’ve disappeared. Get in there.” Stassler smacked the rail cart with the baseball bat. The noise made Jared jump. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“No.” Jared shook his head firmly.
“You don’t have a choice, young man. You’re either going to climb in there, or I’m going to shoot your balls off.”
Jared climbed in the cart.
“It works ever time,” Stassler said, as if to himself. “Now kneel, with your head by your knees.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I told you, I’m going to take you to see Kerry Waters.”
Jared did as he was told, holding his knife close to his chest, waiting for a chance, any chance, to use it.
Stassler pressed the gun barrel to the base of his skull. He never made an effort to push the cart, never so much as touched it; but the old wagon began to rattle on its iron wheels, rattle like a bag of bones from the boy shaking inside.
“What did you do to her?” It took the last of Jared’s courage to ask.
Stassler laughed. “What did I do to her? What do
you
think I did to her?”
“I think … maybe … you …”
“‘I think … maybe … you … ’ Really, try to speak in sentences,
please
. If I understand your mutterings correctly, the answer is yes, I
do
have her somewhere. We call her by a special name. Would you like to know what that is?”
Jared tried to nod. The cart shook even more loudly.
“Her Rankness. She smells so bad that that’s what we call her. What should we call you?”
“I … don’t know,” he blurted out.
“Should we call you Brilliance? Or should we call you Dead?”
Jared heard a metallic click.
“Please don’t … please?”
“You really don’t think you’re going to die, do you? Admit it. That’s okay. Nobody does. Every last one of you thinks that something, or someone, is going to intervene. Am I right?” He prodded him with the muzzle, but got no reply. “You all think that some deus ex machina will descend from the ceiling or the sky or walk out of the shadows and save you? I know that kind of thinking. There’s far too much of it nowadays. I blame it on the culture. It’s sad, all this gusto for garbage. Do you want to say a prayer? I advise it, buys you some time. More than that Boy Scout knife you’re holding.”
“They’re going to figure it out,” Jared said in a voice barely above the rattling cart. “People can’t keep disappearing out here.”
“But you’re not ‘out here,’ Brilliance. You’ve fled this jurisdiction, and you’re the number one suspect in the disappearance of Kerry Waters.”
Jared started to speak, opened his mouth to say something, but the horrible truth of Stassler’s words stunned him into silence.
“Flummoxed, aren’t you? Try prayer. It really does buy you some time. But do it out loud. I love to hear these things. Maybe if you pray hard enough, your God will save you, your own little deus ex machina.”
“I’m … Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy—”
The gunshot echoed up and down the shaft. If it had been a beam of light, it would have crisscrossed the tunnel a thousand times and left brilliant zigzagging trails behind. But it wasn’t light. It was darkness, and it left only a dead boy.
When the echoes fell silent, the cart began to roll up the shaft, and a creaking filled the void.
D
EAD WEIGHT
. B
RILLIANCE HERE IS
the very definition of it. I’m guessing he’s a hundred sixty, a hundred seventy pounds, and I’m definitely not a power lifter. But I’ve got to get him out of this cart.
I slip my hands under his greasy armpits, tighten my stomach muscles to protect my lower back, and give him the old heave-ho. He’s almost as sluggish dead as he was alive. He’s certainly not thinking any less clearly. He was
such
a cretin.
There, I’ve got him about halfway out, but I have to stop for a breather, get ready for the next move. I want to swing him over to the shaft as smoothly as possible. The more he bounces around, the more I’m going to have to clean up. As it is, I’ll have to come back down here with a broom, dust pan, and a rag and bucket for the blood drips. But I must say I’m feeling good, almost giddy, despite all the setbacks and adversity.
This young fool’s appearance and predictable demise make me feel like I’m doing a high-wire act without the net.
Actually, he’s the one who could do with a net right about now. I’ve moved him right to the edge of the shaft, right under the steady gaze of Harriet from Mineola, New York.
Family Planning #3
. Say hello to Harriet, Brilliance, she’s the last face you’re ever going to see.
I give him the boot, and as he falls I listen to his body bouncing off one wall and then another. I’m guessing it’s a hundred-, a hundred-fifty-foot drop. Not a straight shot by any means, and he smacks off the walls the whole way down.
There, I heard him land. Land? No, I don’t think so, but I do hear his flight, let’s say, suddenly arrested. Satisfying to the ear. Richly so. Like the snap of a stem when you pluck a flower in full bloom.
I dust my hands and head up to the foundry. So much to do, so little time, and I need to get some sleep.
The first hint of the sun wakes me, and I’m up and about in seconds.
It doesn’t take me long to find his bike, but I’m lucky: I literally stumbled upon it. It could have taken an hour or more to troll through all the desert a half mile behind the foundry. I have to hand it to him, he did a commendable job of coating it with mud; it could easily have sat out here unnoticed till the first rain.
I ride it back to the foundry, take off the wheels, the handlebars, and seat. I feel like I’m running a chop shop, but it’s the only way to fit that bike through the hole that goes down into the mine. I lug the parts down to Harriet, and return the bike to its rightful owner. No thief am I.
Now I’m faced with the far more daunting task of dealing with his car. There’ll be no taking that apart and stuffing it down a mine shaft. No driving it away either. Better I should write “I am guilty of murder” on a Post-it note and stick it to the end of my nose. Neither can I afford to have his car sitting around in the open anywhere near here.
I’m going to have to ride my bike all the way to the mouth of the canyon, a conclusion I am loath to endorse. I dread the toil, but if I do have to move his car to a less obvious site, if that pestilential little twerp was lying about leaving it in some sandstone cave, then I can’t have my Jeep out there begging the most uncomfortable of questions from anyone who happens by.
Before departing, I run upstairs to check on the monitor. Look at them, cuddling like a couple of kittens. I’m sorely tempted to wake Her Rankness with the news about dispatching her boyfriend to the bottom of a mine shaft, but frankly fear this would upset the delicate balance of these two young bodies. I’ve no time for her grief when she delights me so by cavorting with Diamond Girl, who sports her basest desires with the abandonment of the determinedly doomed.
Reluctantly, I drag myself away from the sight of their mostly unclothed but chastely clutching bodies. This means turning from flashes of thigh and hips and back so luscious that I am all but driven to run down there and lick them. But I can’t do that. I can’t even afford to dally for the lavish memories that fire my fantasies.
It takes an hour and a half of hard pedaling before I arrive at the mouth of the canyon. I’m dripping with perspiration, and I’ve chafed myself where it hurts the most.
The good news is that Brilliance did not lie about where he parked his car, which is actually a behemoth SUV. I filched his key fob first thing, but I won’t need it; he drove the Comanche or Trail Smasher or whatever it’s called all the way into the cave. Only the back remains partially visible, and I can cover that up much as he camouflaged his bike.
This too is work, make no mistake about it. I have to use my shirt to haul mud from the riverbank. It’s a healthy hike back to the cave, and I have to tread this path six times before the exposed flank is completely smeared. The entire time, mind you, I’m worried about helicopters and planes. What would I tell them? That I’m taking a mud bath? It would appear that I have, but appearances at a time like this do not equal plausibility.