He took cover in the only place he could, the spot where the railing of the stairwell curved upward. The area was just wide enough for him to hide behind.
He looked up to the place from which the body had fallen, but he didn’t see anyone. He looked back down at the body and recognized Lewis Foster, the Sheriff’s right hand man.
Foster was bare-chested, his abdomen split open by a deep gash. The deputy looked like a surgery patient who had gotten up in the middle of an operation and walked off.
Marcus couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man. No matter who he was or what he had done—enemy or not—no one deserved to die that way. Then again, he could think of one person who did.
Foster’s dead eyes stared at him and burned into his soul. He had seen that look of death too many times. People died every day without the aid of a killer like Ackerman, but he couldn’t do anything about those deaths. He could, however, make sure that no one ever died at Francis Ackerman’s hands again.
An eerie voice echoed down the stairwell from somewhere above. “Marcus, come out and play.”
He looked up but saw no signs of the killer. He ascended the stairs, staying low and keeping his weapon fixed on the next floor.
When he reached the top, he found the madman standing in the middle of the hallway with his arms stretched out at his sides. In his right hand, Ackerman held a small object, but from Marcus’s vantage point, it wasn’t clearly discernible.
Their eyes met. One set of eyes shined with madness while the other shined with determination.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Marcus. I’ve been waiting a long time.”
“Don’t move a muscle,” Marcus said. His voice and mannerisms were calm and collected. His breathing was steady, his hand like a rock.
The storm raged outside, and the rain struck the roof above them like a billion tears falling at once. It created a constant roaring whisper, adding to the dread that permeated the moment. Lightning continued its periodic illuminations, accompanied by the roar of thunder.
In the past, Marcus had found the sound of falling rain to be soothing, even tranquil, but now it sounded like a thousand dark entities whispering with beastly intent. Judging by the day he was having, he wondered if this would be a storm that raged for forty days and forty nights, washing the world away.
He moved forward.
“Don’t come any closer, or the girl dies.”
Fear flashed in his eyes, his composure faltering. “Where is she?”
“She’s safe for now. She’s wired to an explosive device. In my right hand, I hold the detonator for that device. I quite literally hold her life in my hands, which is quite intriguing really. With a simple press of a button, I could end her life as easily as flipping a light switch. Such a fragile thread that holds us together, isn’t it? Everyone scurrying around like cockroaches leading pointless, little lives, never taking the time to stop and consider why we’re here or what it all means. Then, one day, someone like me comes along. Then and only then, at the end of life, do we realize how blindly we’ve wandered. Only then do we realize what we’ve lost. I almost provide a service. I speed along the process. I help people to realize what they have by taking it all away.”
“Even though I find your philosophy totally fascinating, why don’t you speed along the process for me and get to the part where you tell me what it is that you want. Then, you can write me a whole book about your world views and the meaning of life from prison.”
“We both know that you’ll never get me in a prison cell—not alive, anyway.”
“The morgue it is. It makes no difference to me how, but one way or another, this ends tonight.”
“You talk the talk, don’t you? Your voice carries the proper cold determination, but your eyes tell me a different story altogether. Your eyes are telling me that you don’t have the balls—not yet.”
A righteous anger flowed through Marcus, but he kept his composure. He had wondered whether he would be able to pull the trigger when the moment came. He didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to go down that path. It cost him too much. “You go ahead and test me if you really wanna find out. But don’t be disappointed if I blow a hole in your head without blinking an eye.”
“Oooh, scary. We might as well get on with it then. We’re going to play a little game. If you don’t play by the rules, I’ll push this button and blow your precious Maggie into oblivion. The rules are sim—”
“You wanna play a game? That might be a problem.”
With a tone of surprise and piqued interest, Ackerman said, “Why is that?”
“Because I don’t play games.”
With a swift and strong movement, he kicked Ackerman in the center of his chest, knocking him toward the floor.
The false detonator flew from Ackerman’s grip. In midair, the killer’s hand swung behind his back to produce Lewis Foster’s gun.
Marcus already had his gun trained on his opponent. He should have been able to fill Ackerman full of holes before the madman could have pulled his weapon, but he hesitated.
Ackerman sent a spray of bullets toward him.
He dove into the doorway of a nearby classroom, not even registering that one of the bullets had grazed his shoulder. He regained his composure and returned fire.
Ackerman rolled for cover and leapt into the women’s bathroom.
~~*~~
From behind cover, Ackerman said, “How did you know I was bluffing?”
“It wasn’t your style.”
“But you couldn’t know that for sure.”
There was a long silence. “I just knew.”
Ackerman smiled as he leaned against the cold bathroom wall just inside the doorway. Everything was coming together, the culmination of his entire life. And the farther he walked down this path, the more he knew that it was the right one.
Marcus knew…he knew.
The man truly was his other half. But in that moment, he also realized that Marcus, although formidable, wasn’t ready for the main event. He had hesitated. He had yet to embrace his true self.
Ackerman’s wheels began to turn.
Time for Plan B.
In order to keep Marcus pinned, he sent a string of shots in the direction of his adversary’s hiding spot. Then, he moved to a small closet beyond the bathroom’s last stall. He threw open the door to reveal Maggie’s lifeless form and retrieved a few items that he needed for the next little game.
With a couple of hard slaps, Maggie’s eyes rolled open.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty. Your prince has arrived.”
Marcus heard movement in the hall. He was about to fire but stopped abruptly when he realized that Ackerman was not alone.
As he moved backward down the dark corridor, Ackerman held Maggie as a human shield.
She’s alive.
He felt a wave of relief rush over him. From the moment that Maggie had gone missing, he had felt like Atlas, condemned to hold all the sky upon his shoulders. Now, some of the weight lifted.
She was still in danger and in the clutches of a madman, but she was alive. He still had a chance to save her. “Let her go, Ackerman. This is between you and me.”
Ackerman answered with bullets, driving him back into the classroom. “You’re right,” the killer said. “She is between you and me.”
He could hear the killer’s voice growing farther away as he spoke. It was just like in his dream when Maggie slipped away from him and into the dark waters. He knew that if he let Ackerman leave with her, she was dead for sure. He had to stop them here and now.
He swung into the hallway, gun at the ready.
They were gone.
He frantically scanned the hall as he moved forward.
Where could they be? What if Ackerman had this all planned and has a secret escape route? What if I’ve lost them?
He swung his weapon through the doorway of the first classroom. Pale runs of illumination swept across the ceiling like bony fingers with each lightning strike. Empty desks lined the room, and the blackboard still showed signs of chalk dust.
He felt like he was in the schoolhouse of a ghost town and half-expected to see spectral children appear at the desks with each flash of lightning. But he didn’t see any ghostly apparitions, nor did he see any sign of Ackerman or Maggie.
He moved toward the next room. With each second that passed, his despair and sense of urgency grew, but he couldn’t just rush after them and into whatever trap Ackerman had planned. If he died, then Maggie died with him.
As he swung into the next classroom, a cool breeze stung his face. The gust he felt had carried across the room from an open window that led onto the fire escape.
The world beyond the window possessed an eerie luminescence and gave the impression that to walk through was to step into another dimension.
He didn’t care if it was another world. He would follow her to the ends of the universe and back again, if that’s what it took.
Outside the window, he heard Maggie scream.
As Marcus stood in the open window, the rain pelted him as if some unseen supernatural force willed him to turn back. He knew, however, that he could never run away. He didn’t run. He didn’t back down. He never had.
He didn’t see anyone running from the building, and the ladder that allowed someone to reach the ground was still raised. The only direction they could have gone was up.
He inched forward onto the fire escape. The term fire escape seemed funny to him at that moment, considering that he was jumping into the fire rather than escaping from it.
He looked up and saw two shadowy forms on the fire escape’s upper most platform. They weren’t moving. They were waiting. A bottomless pit opened in his stomach. Ackerman had something up his sleeve.
He slowly moved up the metal-grated stairs toward whatever madness awaited him.
Ackerman stood against the back railing of the platform and held Maggie as a human shield. He couldn’t get a clear shot. Even if he saw an opening, the killer would take Maggie over the edge with him when he fell.
Marcus was a few stairs shy of the platform when Ackerman said, “That’s far enough.”
He stopped and stood with his gun trained upon the killer.
His eyes locked with Maggie’s. Fear had replaced the usual warmth he felt from her gaze. “Everything’s gonna be okay,” he said to her.
“Do you believe in destiny, Marcus?”
He moved his eyes back to the killer and chose his words carefully. “I believe that we’re here for a reason…that our lives mean something.”
“Meaning. That sums it up, doesn’t it? It’s what everyone from a priest to a serial killer is searching for. Meaning. I never even knew I was truly looking for meaning until it found me… until the realization came.”
“What realization?” he said, playing along, waiting for an opportunity.
“My meaning. The purpose of my existence. You see…I am the darkness.”
He didn’t know what Ackerman meant by that, and he didn’t want to know. Trying to understand the philosophy of the insane sometimes meant sacrificing a piece of what made you sane in the first place. He knew from experience.
“I’m the villain, the dark half, or even more simply put… I’m the bad guy. I was meant to be who I am. Without evil, how do you define good? Without darkness, how do you know the light? Without a villain, there can be no hero. And when I met you, I knew. That is my purpose.”
Ackerman’s eyes gleamed with passion as he spoke. “It takes a fire or a disaster to create some heroes, but there are also myself and others like me who force ordinary people to realize that they are capable of extraordinary feats of bravery and courage. My purpose is to make you realize your own purpose. We’re two sides of the same coin. So you see, Marcus, I am the darkness, but you…you are the light.”
Marcus hated to admit to it, but at least a small portion of what Ackerman said had made sense. Without a villain, a hero was just an ordinary man or woman, no different from anyone else. The way that a person reacted to a villain was how he or she became a hero. He had always been afraid of his abilities, but maybe he possessed them for a reason? Maybe he was meant for something more?
“If you have everything all figured out, why don’t you tell me how this ends?”
Ackerman chuckled. “You kill me, of course. You are the hero, after all.”
“This is the real world, not the movies. Good doesn’t triumph over evil. There is no riding off into the sunset, and happy endings are few and far between.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. You can shine the light into the darkness, but you can’t shine the darkness into the light. In the end, good triumphs.”
“If that’s true, then things aren’t looking up for you. I hear Hell is warm this time of year.”
A moment of silence passed. “Do you believe that anyone can be forgiven?”
The question caught Marcus off guard. He had often wondered the same thing. After a moment, he said, “You’ll find no forgiveness from me or from the people you’ve hurt. But…I like to think that God is wiser and more forgiving than any of us. So…maybe. I don’t know.”
Ackerman’s face turned somber. “I have just one more question. Nothing really important in the grand scheme of things, but something I was curious about. I overheard the Sheriff say that you used to be a cop in New York. Why aren’t you one anymore?”
Silence.
Ackerman grabbed Maggie’s throat with his free hand and began to crush her larynx. She issued a sharp scream before the breath left her.
“I asked you a question!”
“Because I murdered someone!”
Ackerman released his grip and let Maggie breathe again.
She looked up at Marcus with shock born not from the attack, but from his response.
He wanted to explain, but he said nothing. He couldn’t change the past. He could only ask forgiveness for it.
Ackerman didn’t seem surprised by his declaration. Somehow, the killer had known his answer before asking. “One of the only lessons of value that my father taught me was that you always finish what you begin. I’m leaving now, but keep in mind that if you think like my father, then you’ll know where to find me.”
Marcus stepped forward. “You’re not going anywhere.”