Perish, p.7
Perish, page 7
I glanced around again. No one was there. But I needed to hurry.
A crack appeared, a little black amid the white. I shined the thin flashlight at the crevice, leaning in until my bruised stomach muscles screamed, and I scraped more of the mortar away.
When I tugged the brick free, money immediately erupted, like feathers exploding from a slashed pillow. I snatched the cash, pushing green bills and gray ash into the black bag I had brought with me. The few that I missed dropped into the center of the fireplace, and I grabbed those too.
The night improved, finally going the way it should. My heart swelled, feeling whole again, rather than fractured and in desperate need of rest. I relished the energy, closed my eyes, and smiled.
Click.
That wasn’t me. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. I had been privy to that particular sound many times before. The cocking of a gun.
I inhaled one steady breath before the lights beamed around me.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
The voice boomed deep. His words rumbled firm and controlled, but they did not conceal his fury.
I raised my hands and turned. I studied him. He loomed large and stout. Silver streaked his hair and beard, and he wore a white undershirt. He resembled a truck driver. Tightly, he gripped a shotgun. I stared at the barrel. In less than a second, if he wanted, he could end me. My shitty night would disappear, and the world would vanish, if his right finger moved barely an inch.
“Hitting the fireplace jackpot,” I said as a cold sweat flooded my entire body. “Would you like some?”
“What are you talking about?” He raised and aimed the weapon. I lifted my hands higher.
“You broke into my house!” he said, his volume and fury growing. “You are breaking into my house!” His face reddened; his chest pumped up and down like a piston. I shook my hands at him to interject.
“Let me show you,” I said. I looked up at him, my expression inquisitive and soothing.
The man cocked his head, narrowed his eyes, and waited.
Slowly—cagily—I reached into the bag and retrieved a handful of bills. I dropped them, allowing them to slip to the floor, each a paper airplane. I grabbed more from the fireplace and let the ash and green drift to the floor like snow. Hundreds of dollars. Tens of hundreds.
Tens of thousands.
The man’s expression shifted from fright to surprise. His blue irises glimmered in delight.
“It’s all yours if you let me go and promise you won’t call the police.”
He looked at me, his gray wife beater stretched across his protruding belly. He asked, intensely curious, sounding more human than predator, “How much is there?”
“Fifty grand.”
He steadied the shotgun against his shoulder and adjusted his stance. Eventually, he seemed to make a decision. He suddenly swung the shotgun up on his shoulder, the muzzle facing the ceiling.
Breathe deep. Aim well.
Without hesitation, I reached in my pocket and withdrew my .38. I shot the man five times. His body jerked with each shot, and he collapsed to the floor, inert and bleeding. Death would follow.
With a deep breath, I returned to the fireplace and collected all the money from within its walls. As the man bled out, I retrieved my knife. Now that I had time, I dug into the mortar and removed more bricks. I reached inside the hole I’d created, felt along the back, and discovered the other item Patrick had mentioned. The rosary was cool against my hand, like the skin of a snake, and I wrapped my fingers around it and freed it from its cage. The odor of brick dust arrived with it. I coughed and slipped the rosary into my pocket.
I searched the cubby again, discovering a few other small items inside. I brought those out as well and tucked them into my other pocket.
I picked up the full bag, swung it over my shoulder, and left. At the edge of the door, I searched within myself for my power. It bloomed in my veins, and the true me returned with it, like the night had never been, like my childhood had never been. Like I had never heard of Infinitum or Cyrus or even Patrick. My mind was all resurrection. All the dents in me that the world had made didn’t exist. I reveled in the sensation like I was swimming in liquid lightning. I smiled and thrust the surge of power out to the body.
With hardly a shiver, the homeowner lived and breathed again, healed—the blood-soaked floor the only residue of his death.
In a few short seconds, I departed the house, walking on the stiff grass in the night, dreaming of sugar cubes.
A safe distance from the old home, I called a taxi and waited. I withdrew everything from my pockets and peered at the fragments in the light of my phone. The rosary necklace was in two pieces; a few stones had fallen out. Even broken, it put other jewelry to shame. Blues, reds, and greens streaked and shimmered within the white stones. The colors tasted like candy. I wondered why Patrick had ever hidden it in a fireplace to begin with, how he had broken it.
When I looked into the rosary beads, I didn’t hear the word soul. The glow reminded me of mountain goats that are so white they are rumored to practically glow, and something about the soft pallid color illuminating the night brought to mind something beyond, unfathomable. A red box with a golden shelf. A gramophone with a gold bell. White from skin to core. A white war. I shivered.
I knelt and set the rosary pieces down. My own necklace hung safely beneath my gray cotton shirt. I lifted the long chain without opening the clasp and held the necklace out, beneath the light. Then I placed it on the ground beside the rosary. It swiveled, threatening to plummet down the sloping concrete, before it finally stilled. It looked like a shriveled windowpane, so black and charred that it appeared absolutely worthless next to the opal beads.
Like Patrick, I knew what it was like to live with a cross.
I knew what it was like to miss the one who had gifted it.
Sitting there, waiting for the taxi, examining the pieces of jewelry, one from a mother, one from Roland, I realized it was kind of nice to view them as a pair.
The taxi arrived at my apartment. I swung out the bag with fifty grand happily, eager to secure it in the small fireproof safe I had recently purchased and already drilled into the floorboards of my closet. The day, which had started off so miserably, had a good ending. I took a good swig from the blue bottle of laudanum, and it seemed to kick in. I was sleepy and glowing.
I quietly shut the taxi door, and it drove away. I crossed the street toward my building, absentmindedly fingering the rosary in my right hand, the bag of money in my left.
The air wafted, crisp and cool, across my skin, and I shivered and smiled, despite myself. The empty lobby beamed back at me through the clear glass windows.
As I stepped up the curb, something brushed against my face, and then a sharp pain jabbed my throat. My head jerked back so quickly I thought my neck would snap. I fell backward and hit something hard.
I grabbed for my neck. My fingernails scraped against thin wire. Panic pierced me.
Something shoved itself into my mouth and cut into the corners of my lips. It wound around my head. My hands were jerked and pinned behind me. I opened my eyes and gasped.
I saw three figures in the dark before my vision went black, my eyes covered in cloth. The strangers carried me some distance and dropped me. I didn’t hit concrete, something slightly softer. My bruised back reignited in pain. Hands pushed my legs toward my chest, and then I heard a thud. I was in the trunk of a car.
Soon we were silently moving. I thought of Cyrus. Of his followers. My kidnappers must be them. They had emerged from their Victorian cave, away from the safety of their gramophone.
There were no cackling birds to help me this time.
CHAPTER 10:
A DIFFERENT BREED
In the trunk, I began to imagine in excruciating detail what would happen to me. The next moments felt long, horrible.
I tried to pull the cuffs up, but they bound my arms to my waist. I feared I might suffocate from the cord in my mouth.
When the trunk finally opened, I psychically reached out for cool air as hands seized me and dragged me out. They grabbed my hair and held it, pushing me forward so that I walked. They jerked me to a stop. Footsteps echoed against close walls. I had entered a room—a small one. A finger pushed me backward, hard enough so that I fell. I collapsed into a chair.
The bag over my head lifted off, and the gag left my mouth. I tasted blood.
I looked wildly at them, peering into eyes, eyes, everywhere. Five pairs of them, none I recognized. They were cold, numb, experienced eyes. They were unfeeling, but they were not Infinitum’s type of unfeeling.
I relaxed and looked dead center.
A square dark wood table stood between me and a trim, graying man. He registered as older, maybe in his forties or fifties. His face was heart-shaped, his perfectly cut hair wavy. He looked crisp, more solid than the table. A black leather jacket zipped to his throat. He laid his hands on the table, like a card reader. A file lay between them.
“Manage your breathing,” he said.
I noticed my heaving breaths, and I tried to control them, deepen them, slow my heart. I looked at the floor and leaned back against the chair, attempting to return my perception to normal. The floor didn’t help, so I glanced at the ceiling and noted exposed pipes.
One of the men walked forward and unbuttoned my jacket. He slipped his hand inside my left inside pocket, searching, and he retrieved my.38. He popped the revolver open and removed the bullets in one quick motion before he laid the gun and bullets on the table in front of the man across from me.
From my bottom left inner pocket, he retrieved my cigarettes in their golden case, as well as my gold lighter, my cell phone, and the bottle of laudanum. He placed these items to the right of the weapon.
The man continued to search my pockets. He retrieved Roland’s cross and Patrick’s mother’s rosary. His hand returned and grasped the several remaining rosary pieces and placed them on the table. Finally, he found my keys.
He tapped my jean pockets and checked my shoes.
While he worked, warm liquid ran down the center of my bottom lip and chin. It dripped into my lap, onto my black wool coat. I barely registered the red tinge before it disappeared into the fabric.
The man patting me down finished. The one who sat across from me scanned my face. “Your lip is deeply torn. Not us, though, was it?” He resumed his scrutiny. “That bruise on your cheek is old.”
Roland’s withered cross stopped rolling and found a sturdy position near the point of a bullet.
After glancing at the items on the table, he nodded to another man, who set down a full pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Would you like a smoke?”
I gave the barest of nods. “The whole pack.”
His laugh thundered velvety and deep. “We have liquor too.”
There was a thump, and sure enough, a glass appeared in front of me, as well as a very small unopened bottle of whiskey.
“James, remove the cuffs. I don’t think we’ll have any problems with...you go by Jack?”
I nodded.
I leaned forward, and, with a little effort, James unbuckled me. I pulled my hands around to the front and lit a cigarette that had appeared alongside a lighter. Blood from by lip soaked into the cigarette tube. I wiped away as much as I could with my palm.
I smoked and smoked. The man stared at my scraped hands.
He finally said, “You didn’t scream.”
I nearly laughed. Of all the things for him to say. “No.”
“Why?”
“It never occurred to me.”
“Hm,” he said. “Are you sure that’s why?”
“What else would it be?”
He said nothing. Then, “You should learn how to scream. It might save you one day.”
I didn’t respond.
“Jack, do you live at the Alexan?”
I glanced at the deep lines beside his eyes. “Yes,” I said tentatively.
“Expensive place, isn’t it?”
I looked at him and the other men. “I manage.”
He smiled but did not press me. “And...you are friends with Patrick Flannigan?” He glanced up.
The silence between us seemed impenetrable until I responded, “I just met him tonight. How do you know about him?”
“I try to be someone who knows everything about my targets.”
That set a million questions buzzing in my brain. I inhaled another drag.
“I’m a target?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“You’ll soon find out.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat burned, sticky, and saliva refused to come. “And you know all about me…”
“Well, not all. But some, yes. And what I do know makes me want to know more. You...interest me. When I was first told about you, I Googled every story I could find about Cyrus Harper and Infinitum, searching for any mention of you, but none arrived. The oddity, though, the sheer oddity, of what I was told about you made me want to meet you. Now that I have, I find you just as intriguing as I’d imagined.”
As I stared at the man before me, reality landed its blows, left and right. Someone had contacted him about me, perhaps because they needed his help in dealing with me. Apparently they had told him everything.
Perhaps it was even worse than that. Perhaps this was another cult of some sort, a rival cult. “Who are you?” I said, an unwelcome hint of fear in my voice.
“Let’s keep the focus on you.”
I took another shaky drag.
He slid the folder from his side of the table to mine. “I want you to read this.”
I took it.
On a white sheet of paper, black print outlined a set of instructions. A recipe of sorts. “Take her. Behead her. With black charcoal, draw Xs on her eyes and an upside-down cross on her lips. Place her head on a pike...”
I didn’t read the rest. I didn’t need to. I knew what came next. Dismemberment. I had seen it before.
I looked toward the man in front of me.
“We were supposed to do something very similar to you tonight,” he said. “We were paid two hundred thousand to do so.”
My mind returned to the night at the dark Victorian home, where I had been dragged across the cement, up the stairs, nearly eaten alive by some white, gooey tongue climbing out of a gramophone. People like that would want this to happen.
“Are you going to read the rest?” he asked.
“I know what it says.”
He said, “Yes. So you are familiar.”
I waited for him to say more, but nothing arrived. “Are you going to do it?”
“No.” He said this simply, and as he did, he closed the file. The way he pursed his lips reminded me of a college professor who had decided not to fail me out of his class.
He picked up Patrick’s mother’s rosary with the tips of his fingers. He held it carefully up to the light, gazed at it as though it were a kaleidoscope, and then set it back down. He spread the stone fragments out on the table.
“Why not?” I whispered.
“Our employer is far less interested in who these instructions were intended for and far more interested in who gave them.”
“You don’t know?”
“Why would we? Jobs like these are anonymous. Always anonymous. We defend that anonymity.”
Jobs. Anonymous jobs. He wasn’t part of a cult, at least not in any ordinary sense. His job was to kill people, just like mine had been when I worked for Cyrus. But I was betting that he made a lot more money and had a lot more freedom; he did not serve some man who called himself a god. For some reason, that made his choice more respectable in my eyes. No manipulation. Simply death.
“I would expect you to...have some resources,” I said. “To find out about me.”
He flipped his hands toward the dank walls beside us. “These are our resources.” He smiled.
I paused, crushed the cigarette out on the table, and lit another one.
“Do you know who wrote the letter?” he asked.
“Why does your employer want to know?” I doubted he would answer.
“Someone he knew was murdered this way. Recently.” The man tapped the table such that he pointed to the file before me. “We are having trouble finding out who is responsible. This, you understand, was lucky...for you. Very lucky. It means you get to live, at least for a little while. And if we do kill you, it won’t be so ornately.”
Ornately. The word reverberated in my head and made me shiver. I took a drag off my second cigarette and held in the nicotine until I sweated.
“So do you know who wrote it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“Who?”
“A very sadistic blond-haired, blue-eyed boy by the name of Alexander Harper.”
“Cyrus’s son, then?” the man asked. “The one who tortured animals in the woods, including the old family pet?”
I peered at the man through the cigarette smoke. “How do you know all that?”
He smiled serenely, but he did not answer.
Closing my eyes wearily, I could come up with only two answers. “You are either in a rival cult or you know someone who followed Cyrus. That person knows about me, has told you all about me and my brother.”
I opened my eyes and waited for an answer. All he said was, “We are not part of any cult.”
“Then what do you care?”
“I told you. You interest me, Jack.”
I swallowed against the dryness in my mouth. “But why?”
“Because you killed a man no one else was able to, and, despite what I understand was a rough upbringing, you are not insane. You are not a follower. You were raised your whole life to be one, and yet you are not. You took down someone the police now believe was the greatest terrorist threat to the nation. And you are what? Eighteen? So you are young, and a killer and not insane. And, perhaps, you have respect for life, or at least for children. You didn’t kill Cyrus to take over. You killed him to save lives. All of this means, to me, that you are perfectly on the border.”
