Authors: Simon Janus
“What if I say no?” Cady asked.
He knew the answer already, but he wanted to see if O’Keefe would say it.
“I don’t think that would be a smart idea.”
O’Keefe didn’t have to elaborate.
What happened in the North Wing stayed in the North Wing.
Cady knew O’Keefe wouldn’t be crass and order his guards to shoot.
No, he was smarter than that.
Cady was sure a little accident would be waiting for him around the corner.
There might be an investigation, but nothing would or could be proved.
It looked like he was going along for the ride.
“I’m in,” Cady said.
“You’ve made the right choice,” O’Keefe said.
Cady watched Keeler enter a forest, which melted away to be replaced by a bank.
Keeler wasn’t alone in the bank.
It was filled with customers and employees.
A little boy charged Keeler waving a toy gun.
Chapter Five
When Keeler opened his eyes, he was alive, or so it seemed.
He was on his back in the forest.
Tim Mitchell and the bank were gone.
The bullets from Tim’s toy gun hadn’t killed him.
Nothing remained of the experience except a migraine throbbing behind his eyes.
He sat up and brushed off the leaf litter clinging to his head and back.
Struggling to his feet, he spotted three bullet-sized holes in his prison shirt, each one scorched at the edges.
Panic ripped through him and he tore open the shirt.
Scarred and puckered flesh lined up with the holes.
What the hell had happened?
Had the bank raid replay been a dream, a hallucination or as Rebecca warned, Jeter playing with his mind?
Who knew in this world?
“Help me,” the child’s voice whimpered.
Keeler hoped this wasn’t the onset of another of Jeter’s mind fucks.
He knew it wasn’t Tim Mitchell crying this time.
It had to be Jeter’s unfound victim.
He looked about him but couldn’t see the source of the voice.
“I can’t see you,” he shouted.
“Where are you?”
“Here,” the frail voice replied.
The voice came from directly in front of him.
Keeler saw nothing but an oak tree with a trunk at least five feet in diameter.
It was the only oak as far as he could tell.
“Where?” Keeler asked, but the rest of his request died in his throat when he glimpsed the blinking eyes buried in the tree’s trunk.
“Oh, my God,” he murmured.
Keeler raced over to the tree, clambering over the intestinal explosion of roots protruding from the soil.
He scaled the bottom three feet of the trunk, finding a foothold in a gap in the bark.
He’d found the boy.
“What has he done to you?” he whispered.
Keeler hadn’t seen the boy at first because he wasn’t simply enclosed by the oak; he was part of it.
Somehow, he’d been merged or absorbed into the tree, pressed against the oak back first.
His flesh had taken on the bark’s color and texture.
His hair had become a solid mass bonded his head, forever trapped in a permanent bowl cut that he’d probably had the day Jeter had taken him.
He was naked, but his flesh was the same color as the bark, preserving his modesty.
He wasn’t totally integrated with the tree.
His emerald eyes burned with an incandescence that Keeler found striking to the extreme and his mouth, although the color and texture of the oak’s bark, moved freely exposing clean, white teeth.
The boy’s existence in the tree reminded Keeler of those reports where people believed they saw the face of Christ or the Madonna in a tree stump.
Except this wasn’t some quirk of nature that offered some familiarity, this was real.
Jeter had cursed this child to this entombment.
“I’m going to get you out,” Keeler said but had no idea how.
If the child’s skin was bark, were his flesh and bones made of wood?
How did he breathe?
How did he eat?
Keeler assumed he received nourishment from the tree.
If any and all of this was true, could he separate the boy from the tree?
If their physiology was linked, then separating them could be like separating conjoined twins.
Many of them died during the operation.
He couldn’t have another child’s death on his hands.
This boy couldn’t be his next Tim Mitchell.
Keeler didn’t know if redemption existed for him, but if it did, it would come with the rescue of this boy.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he cooed and stroked the knot of wood that constituted the boy’s head.
The boy wept, but no tears came.
“Hey, don’t cry, son.
I’m here to help you get back home.
What’s your name?”
“Davey,” the boy managed between sobs.
“Nice to meet you, Davey.
I’m Michael, but my friends call me Keeler.”
“Keeler,” the boy said, the sobs drying up.
“Hey, you called me Keeler.
You must be my new best friend, Davey.”
The boy squeezed out a weak smile.
Keeler smiled back.
This prevented his own tears from spilling down his face.
The abomination was beyond his understanding.
What had possessed Jeter to do this to anyone, let alone a child?
Keeler couldn’t imagine the boy’s pain.
“I bet you want to go back home, yeah?”
The boy nodded.
“So you can be with your mummy and daddy?”
The boy’s mouth creased and the crying began again.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry.
I’m going to get you out of here.
You understand me?”
“Yes,” the boy sniffed.
“Good.”
Keeler smiled.
“Do you know how you ended up in the tree?”
“No.”
Not surprising
, Keeler thought.
How Jeter managed to place one of his victims inside his own head, let alone plant him inside a tree was beyond imagination.
Keeler examined the seam where the boy and the oak joined.
It was nonexistent.
The boy was truly an extension of the tree.
Simply cutting the tree away from the boy wasn’t an option, but what option did he have?
He had to give it a try.
He reached for his ankle and pulled out his prison-made knife from his sock.
Six months ago, he’d been part of a work detail that had dismantled a rusted wrought iron fence.
He’d bided his time and, when he wasn’t under a screw’s scrutiny, he’d sawn eight inches off from the spiked end of a fence post.
Although tipped, the spiked end was dull and he’d sharpened it.
It was good enough for self-defense purposes, but it didn’t possess the scalpel qualities necessary to remove the boy from the tree.
He would have to do his best.
As Keeler brought the shank up, the boy caught sight of the weapon and panicked.
His eyes widened and blazed and his sniveling escalated into an earsplitting wail.
Keeler stuffed the shank in his pocket and raised his empty hands to show the boy he meant no harm.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.
I’m not going to hurt you,” Keeler shouted over the boy’s wail.
The boy’s sobs subsided.
“I have to get you out of the tree.
Understand?”
The boy mumbled that he did.
“I want to try something.
Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
Keeler smiled.
“Now I want to cut you out of the tree.”
The boy started gibbering.
“Shh, now.
I’ve got to try.
You don’t want to spend forever trapped in there, do you?”
“No,” the boy replied after a long moment.
“If you feel any pain, let me know.”
Keeler retrieved his shank and prayed he was doing the right thing.
He pressed the shank against an area of the tree about a foot away from the boy’s shoulder and dragged the makeshift knife down to score the surface.
The boy screamed the moment the shank cut into the tree flesh.
Blood poured out from the six-inch gash.
Keeler tossed his weapon away and tried to staunch the wound by slapping his hand over the cut.
It was a feeble bandage and blood continued to pulse between his fingers.
“Oh, Christ,” Keeler stammered.
“I didn’t know.
I didn’t know.
I’m sorry.”
Keeler turned out his pockets to pull out a handkerchief and stuffed it into the slash.
It turned crimson immediately.
He couldn’t imagine the tree bleeding to death, but the boy’s scream sure made it seem that way.
“Relax,” Keeler said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
“You’re going to be okay.
Trust me.”
Keeler ripped off his denim shirt and tore at a sleeve.
The tough material put up good resistance.
He wished he hadn’t thrown his shank away now, but he couldn’t stop to search for it.
Eventually a worn seam broke and the sleeve came away.
He yanked out the sodden handkerchief and jammed in the makeshift bandage.
The denim absorbed the blood flow well.
He had to repack the wound twice with a fresh piece of the sleeve, but after several minutes, the bleeding stopped.
Keeler released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and his thumping heart slowed in time with the boy’s crying.
Sweat dripped into his eyes and he swept it away.
“I’m sorry, Davey.
I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
The boy just whimpered.
Keeler didn’t know what to do for the boy.
There seemed to be no way to extract him from the tree without killing him, but he wasn’t about to leave him inside this world.
Keeler stroked a hand over the boy’s gnarled head to soothe him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of there.
I’ll think of something.”
Too preoccupied with the boy, Keeler didn’t hear the grunting at first.
When he did, a chill raced through him.
He sensed danger and his fight or flight instinct kicked in, but flight wasn’t an option without the boy.
“Michael Keeler, as I live and breathe,” a familiar voice announced.
Keeler turned, careful not to make any sudden moves.
His mission was over.
He’d found Lefford and Allard.
Chapter Six
Lefford and Allard were only recognizable by the nametags on their clothes.
Jeter’s cancerous world had infected them, which sent a ripple of dread through Keeler.
Their fate was his fate.
Lefford grunted, but that was all he could do.
He was on all fours, no longer able to stand.
His spine was incapable of supporting a biped and his arms and legs had adapted to his four-legged needs.
His change hadn’t stopped there.
His head was boar-like.
He possessed a fearsome under bite courtesy of an elongated snout.
Tusks protruded from his upper and lower jaws.
The lower pair had been self-mutilating.
Fearsome and enlarged, the tusks had curled back into his face and stabbed out his own eyes.
Lefford snarled again and smacked his jaws together a couple of times.
Each time, the tusks found a comforting home in his bloody eye sockets.
Lefford snorted, sensing Keeler’s presence.
By comparison, Allard was relatively unharmed by Jeter’s manipulations.
He was upright and human except for one small defect.
A pair of snakes lived where his eyeballs had been.
They weren’t occupying the space left behind by his eyes.
They were his eyes, part of him, melted into his skull.
The snakes opened their mouths.
Fangs held his eyeballs in place and forked tongues flicked and cleaned Allard’s lenses.