Authors: Mark Nykanen
I see her stumbling. We’re closing in on the compound, maybe two, two and a half miles. She’s tiring. No more than a hundred feet separate us. I want so desperately to shoot her, to
wound
her. I want this so powerfully that I can see the bullet’s damage, the ripped organs and shattered bones, as I have seen my hands crushing her windpipe.
But I’ve wasted three bullets, and that has left me with only three more. I thought I’d shot her back by the river. That bullet came so close. I saw her head snap back, but then she was running again. Thirty feet was all that separated us, but thirty feet is a great distance with a handgun, and I have never been sure with its aim. I’ve had no need. I’ve always worked up close and personal. For this creature I need a deer rifle and scope.
So I’m keeping the gun in my belt and forging ahead. We’re so close to the compound now that I can see the light above the entrance to the guest quarters, like a single star in the vast black firmament.
What does she think she’s going to do once she gets there? This is like the spider chasing the fly into its web. It’s too easy, but just as I’m taking delight in the image of myself as an eight-legged creature that devours its prey, she deviates from the path. We’re but a mile from the compound, and she’s heading right. It looks like she’s planning to parallel the road. This is a smart move, a very smart move. It forces me to stay on her track or risk losing her. I want nothing more than to herd her into my lair, shove her filthy wretched body into my cellar where I can begin to extract my vengeance, balancing as I will, my need to destroy the mine and all the evidence it holds with my desire to destroy her with my hands, to bludgeon this nympho media whore with my bruised flesh.
But this is strange. She’s cut back again toward the compound. And now I see why. There’s a man under the light by the guest quarters. It’s that goddamn idiot, Ring Ding.
I
must
catch her. I’m driven by the inescapable need to reach her before she warns him. I already have one loose end unraveling over the land. I have no need of another. And then I notice my Jeep is gone, and know that Diamond Girl has taken it from me, has logged the first leg of her journey in it. Under normal circumstances, I’d want to leave Diamond Girl rigid with remorse; but Ring Ding has arrived, and that means his equally anonymous Land Rover is moored around here somewhere. It’s precisely what I need to set off on the first leg of my own journey, the one that I had thought would eventually lead me back to Her Rankness and nympho media whore, the only witnesses with eyes that still see and words that still speak.
But I won’t have to wait so long for the whore, now will I? She’s barely fifty feet from me, and still a quarter mile from him. She’s shouting, but I can barely hear her, so he won’t hear anything at all. The wind and the rain muzzle her as furiously as the hard rubber ball that I’ve rammed into the pleading mouths of so many, whose smooth surface long ago grew pitted with bite marks upon bite marks, little pictures of pain for the album of their final anguish. I have often considered casting that ball, and the strap that holds it so securely in place, for it would speak so clearly of the alginate, as the alginate speaks so clearly of them. If I fail in this regard, if I don’t find a way to preserve the gnashings that I alone have gathered, then the work that I have recorded on that marvelous ball will have no more meaning than the hoofprints of a herd on a long dusty trail.
I’ve got it down to thirty feet, two car lengths. That’s all that separates her from my furious hands. She’s so intent on him that she doesn’t even hear me closing in. She’s waving her arms, which slows her down even more; but she’s still a couple hundred yards from Ring Ding, and he isn’t even looking this way. No, Ring Ding, that cur, is too busy trying to jimmy the lock on my door.
She looks back, startled to see me
so
close. She’s wild-eyed, and starts to backpedal. Her hands are up, no longer for him. For me! To stop me. I tackle her. I drive my head into her belly as hard as I can and slam her into the muddy earth. I can’t restrain myself, I savage her face. There are only dull wet sounds escaping us. Her own screams, though eager, are muffled by the force of my fists. Little grunts, that’s all. Like a piggy. Are you a piggy, nympho media whore?
She’s unconscious. She lies there like a lump. I smack her face. Blood flies loose from her lips. Both of them are split, but I have yet to knock out any teeth, and strangely her nose looks straight. I’m dearly tempted to perform some cosmetic surgery on her right now. In fact, my hand is already on my knife; but Ring Ding is shaking the handle on the door, and I’m forced to accept that there’s no time for play. I must go about my chores as soon as possible, all the cleaning up that I have to do before leaving. People, possessions, the like.
I slap her face hard. Then the backhand. Her eyes flutter. I smack her again, sparing my knuckles this round because her eyes have opened wide in gratifying fear. She also opens her mouth to scream, and I slam my hand over it.
“Shut up!” I whisper with more dignity than she deserves. “Shut up and listen to me. I want Ring Ding over here. You,” I jam my finger into her chest, “yes,
you
have to call his name. Do anything else but call his name and I will kill him
and
you. But first him. He’s dead if you betray me. Do you understand?”
She’s not responding. Perhaps she can’t breathe. Poor thing. I’ll admit to having enjoyed the suffocating spasms that have punctuated our little talk; but I do need her alive if I’m ever going to enjoy her death, so I slip my hand off her nose, and watch her suck blood and snot and the minutest amount of air into my favorite targets.
At that very moment, I look at my watch and see that if I hurry there’s enough time to melt all the bronze I’ll need. I’ll make Ring Ding help. It’ll speed up the cleaning immensely. But I need him under my control, not out there screwing around with my locks.
She snorts madly, and I keep my hand pressed firmly on her mouth. She’s getting some air, but nature’s own alginate is doing its duty handsomely.
I let this continue for another minute, so enamored am I of the efforts she makes to breathe. And it may be years before I can do this again. To set up a studio, to find such a cellar, all this takes time. I check my watch once more.
“Yell his name. That’s all. Do you understand?” And then I add the coup de grâce, the most compelling threat to any artist: “Or I’ll rip out your eyeballs.”
I form a wicked pair of pliers out of my thumb and index finger, and press the tips into the corners of her eye.
She’s all struggle now, to clear her nostrils for breath, to close her eyes to try to save her sight. She’s insane with fear. I recognize this, appreciate it greatly, but I have to bring her back to the land of the living. I take away my prying fingertips, and ease my hand from her mouth so she can suck in enough air to feed her lungs, her blood, her rabid brain.
“Okay, now. Are you ready?”
She nods.
“Just his name. Yell ‘Ry,’ and that’s all.”
Again, she nods. She’s a good girl.
I take my hand all the way off her mouth, and she screams, “Ry, run!”
I’ll kill her. I reach for her eyes but stop because Ring Ding has been startled from his hapless burglary, and is starting to run this way, toward us, lured by a wasteful, chivalrous impulse. I love this. This is so sweet. I take my hand away again and whisper, “Go, girl, go.”
“Run!” she screams again, as predictable as a windup toy.
It works like a magnet. He’s barreling toward us. Don’t stop. I give her another go, and she complies richly, hastening his effort. He’s bounding into the darkness, blind as a beggar in Bengal.
Come on, I whisper as I pull out my gun. Come on. I cock the trigger, release my hand, and she screeches, “Stop-stop.” It’s the most soulful beseeching. So … unselfish of her, isn’t it? So … self-sacrificing.
Her mouth widens as she starts to scream again. It’s simplicity itself to jam the gun into its warm, wet recesses, the barrel resembling in notable respects the organ upon which she bestows her most profane favors.
Here he comes. I can see him now, the wild animal panic on his face is a reflection of her raw fear, which I feel in my gun hand, in the squishy spastic tremblings of her tongue and gums and teeth and tonsils, the guttural protest of her gagging.
“Stop!” I yell at him.
He obeys. He sees me pointing to her face, her lips stretched wide, refusing the barrel as I imagine she’d refuse me. He puts his hands up, as if I have any need of his tedious sign of surrender. I want only his help, and I shall have it. I shall have his dutiful brawn and dumb willingness to take direction. There are tasks before us, and they’ll fill the length of the night. And when they’re done, I’ll smile at the dust drifting up from that mine, and the thought of her body glowing deep within its grasp. And then I’ll greet the dawn with the recognition of my own new day.
A
BURNING PAIN DEEP IN
Lauren’s throat clawed her awake. The gun. She remembered the barrel jammed into her mouth, the spasms before she’d blacked out.
Stassler was dragging her to her feet. Rain pelted her face. She felt herself shoved, caught. Words she couldn’t decipher floated past, thin as rumor. And then Ry gathered her in his arms, and they were trudging toward the compound, her eyes on the ground, studying the desert soil soupy with rain, and the way plants with stems no thicker than wires had fattened and stored what they could for the day so long in coming.
Lauren had nothing she could store. She’d been emptied of everything but fear and hunger. The desire for food gnawed at her, even as she imagined the agony of swallowing.
Stassler forced them at gunpoint to the front of the barn, and threw on the lights. After so much darkness, she had to squint.
He herded them down to the last stall on the left, where the door to the cellar stood open from her escape with Kerry.
“Get down there,” Stassler ordered in a voice so calm it was jarring. “You’re going to work, and if you slow down for even a second, I’ll take you apart.”
Even his threat came softly to her ears, and it took Lauren a moment to register the overriding menace: not
I’ll kill you
, but
I’ll take you apart
. It’s what he’s done to the others. It’s what he’s going to do to us too.
Ry extended his hand, and helped her down the stairs. She saw the cage and wondered if Stassler planned to imprison them after they’d finished whatever work he had in mind. Then she spotted the stainless steel table with the straps, and lost all hope in bars and locks and old car parts.
Stassler pointed to the skeletons.
“You’re taking every one of them up to the foundry. Now move!”
Neither she nor Ry spoke. She couldn’t, her throat still throbbed from Stassler’s assault; and Ry seemed stunned by the ghastly collection that he was seeing for the first time.
Then he surprised her by turning to Stassler and saying, “I’ve reported about war criminals and murderers, and all of you come out of the same shitty mold.” Ry glanced at the skeletons, and his eyes widened, as if seeing the extent of the slaughter had become a physical challenge. “There’s nothing you do that’s worth any of—”
Stassler silenced him by placing the barrel of his gun against Ry’s head.
“One more word, and you join them. Now get moving.”
Stassler kept his gun level as Ry approached the skeleton of a little girl in a blue corduroy skirt and pink sweater. The sweater had the face of a teddy bear on the front. Toddler clothes. He carried it over to Lauren.
The soft details sickened her. She was terrified of touching it, of sensing the life it had known; but she clutched it to her chest, as if to comfort the child it had once been, and moved numbly back to the stairs.
Her legs were so weak that she had to focus on each step to keep from collapsing.
Stassler was extracting her last few ounces of effort, and for the first time the thought of death brought a glimmer of relief. The tide of pure horror had receded, and she felt drained of all hope.
She stepped up into the barn with no thought of fleeing. Hours ago she’d tried to run away, and the entire journey, with its vast inventory of fears and pain, had led back here. The physical impossibility of another escape was so thorough that she didn’t need to think it. It had become as real as air, darkness, and the deadening night.
Stassler must have known this too because he made her lead, and kept his gun on Ry, who bore the burden of two skeletons, one under each arm. Stassler carried only his gun.
They walked out into the rain. It had never stopped pouring. Through the fat pearly drops and gusty winds they crossed to the foundry, where Stassler showed them the opening to the mine.
Lauren realized that if she’d been a few degrees keener when he’d given her the tour, she could have died so much sooner. Her only solace was Kerry, believing the girl had escaped; but even Kerry’s survival seemed terribly compromised by Ry’s entanglement, as if no matter what Lauren did, someone was destined to die with her.
When she dropped the skeleton into the dark hole, the leg caught on the ladder about halfway down, and the little blue skirt bunched up around the hip bone. Ry had to reach down and yank it free. The sound of bones scraping against metal proved grisly. She looked at Stassler, and wished it was his skeleton they were stuffing into the mine. But even this sharp desire was dulled by the hard labor that followed.
When they walked back down for the last three skeletons, Stassler made them pause.
“These are the Vandersons,” he said with a theatrical sweep of his hand, as if Lauren and Ry had come to a grand party, and he had the honor of introducing them to their hosts.
“June the Cleaver, Jolly Roger, and Sonny-boy, I want you to meet nympho media whore and Ring Ding.”
So that’s what he calls me, she thought. But the name was confusing, it meant nothing. Then
all
the names took on meaning for her, the only meaning that mattered: he’d stripped each of them of their real identity, and replaced it with a cruel moniker. He’d probably done it to every person he’d ever abducted, dehumanized them long before he’d actually killed them. No different from naming his series,
Family Planning #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
, all those numbers that added up to no more than brute-naked anonymity.