The Impaler

that greaseball guinea a sweet deal; got him back in the Witness Protection Program despite the stupid fuck’s narcotics rap. And he certainly couldn’t be a friend of the Colombian. Yeah, the Colombian’s buddies hacked up their enemies with machetes and fed them their own testicles. But the eighties music? The hieroglyphics all over his body? It didn’t add up. No, even though he hadn’t gotten the Colombian off, he’d prevented his family from being deported—and the motherfucker loved him for it!

“Look for my light in the nighttime; I’ll look for your dark in the day.

Let me stand inside your doorway and tell you who you are.”

Donovan heard the sound of hammering coming from the next room, and all at once he felt the panic beginning to overwhelm him again—felt his chest tighten and his breathing quicken.

“You thought you heard me calling. You thought you heard me speak.

But tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

The spoken part was coming up again—“Your body is the doorway”—and Donovan was about to call out, when a voice in his head said, It’s pointless. Just count the papers and time your breathing to the counts.

Yes, that had helped calm him before. How many times before? He wasn’t sure.

“One … two … three …” he began, inhaling slowly between each number as the chorus asked over and over: “How could you think? How could you think?”

The walls were completely covered with newspaper and magazine clippings of various shapes and sizes— some with headlines and grainy photographs; others just shadowy scraps of paper. There were also some large numbers tacked to the wall directly ahead of him—9:3 on one side of the door, 3:1 on the other. Donovan could see the numbers clearly. They had been all but burned onto his retinas. But during his days in the chair, he’d also discovered that he could read some of the articles if he focused long enough and blinked in time with the strobe—stuff about the war in Iraq; an archaeological find outside Baghdad; something about astrology and meteor showers. Sometimes the clippings rustled in the breeze from the open door—from the darkened hallway where yellow light often flashed—and Donovan sensed movement.

“How could you think? How could you think?

Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away …”

The chorus began to fade, the hammering stopped, and the songs transitioned again for what had to be the millionth fucking time!—the distorted synthesizer, the popitty-pop-pop of the electric drums threatening once more to drive him insane. Donovan lifted his head, wincing from the pain, and for a split second thought he saw light, a passing shadow outside the doorway.

“I know you’re there!” he shouted. The song’s intro was the quietest part; the best time, he’d learned, to call for the man in the ski mask. “Think about my kids, goddammit! They’re eight and six. Zach and Amber are their names. The best kids in the world. Zach plays baseball and Amber takes dancing lessons. We got her a tutu last Christmas. Jesus Christ, don’t do this to them!”

Like the Depeche Mode or New Order or whatever-the-fuck song it was, Randall Donovan had played this tune many times, but he hadn’t seen the man in the ski mask since about twenty versions of the song ago.

“Will you know him when he comes for you?” the man in the ski mask had asked.

“I already told you, yes,” Donovan whined. “You want me to say it, okay, yes, I understand my mission. The equation, the nine and the three as written in the stars—I get it! How many more fucking times can I say it, you son of a bitch?”

The man in the ski mask simply left him after that. Yes, that last time had to have been almost two hours ago now. And Donovan was running out of ideas. Sure, he’d already tried the tough-guy routine; tried the taunting and the name-calling and even thought for a moment about doing it all again. But then the hard-driving guitar of the cover version kicked in and he was silent—his throat dry, his voice hoarse, almost gone.

He closed his eyes and gave in to the music; had learned that it was better just to take it, to just let it pass through him rather than to try to block it out. He had slept little during his days in the chair, but he had slept. He would try again—would close his eyes and just focus on his breaths. And he was doing quite well—had succeeded in steadying his breathing by about the halfway point in the song—when suddenly the dentist’s chair tipped backwards.

Donovan let out a cry of surprise and opened his eyes, but the flash of the strobe blinded him momentarily.

Then he felt the seat cushion drop—felt it peel away from his sticky buttocks.

Donovan fought the pain at the base of his skull and raised his head just in time to catch the man in the ski mask tightening the straps around his legs, which were now raised and spread apart at right angles from his torso —just like his wife’s had been when she gave birth to Zach and Amber!

“What the fuck are you doing?” Donovan shrieked.

An icy chill hit his body, his muscles flash-frozen in terror. The man in the ski mask had stopped, stood gazing down at Donovan from between his legs. He now wore gloves and a sleeveless white robe cinched at the waist with a thick leather belt. Around his massive biceps were matching leather armbands, and the robe was open in a V that partially exposed his tattooed chest. Donovan couldn’t make out the tattoo, and was about to try reasoning with him again, when something else caught his eye.

The man’s white robe was spattered with blood.

Jesus Christ! Donovan thought. Whatever he’s about to do he’s done before!

The man in the ski mask disappeared through the darkened doorway.

“Please don’t do this!” Donovan called after him—cry-ing, his mind racing. “Please, God, seriously, I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll give you all my account numbers right now. My Bank of America PIN is the birthdays of my kids: five-two-three, six-two-eight. Zach is May twenty-third and Amber is June twenty-eighth. It’s the same for my credit cards, my ING account, Franklin Templeton and Vanguard and my—they’re all on the uptick! And we have a house out near Asheville, too. Zach and Amber, they—oh my God, my—listen! Can you hear me? You’ve got some big money coming if you play this right. I swear I’ll help you link all the accounts. Tell me how you want to do it. Blindfold me and take me to the bank. No! Just get me out of here and we can get on the computer and I’ll dump everything off to you! Set up an offshore account in a phony name. I know how to do all that. I’m not fucking with you. I mean it. I won’t even look at your—”

FACE!

In the pulse of the strobe the man returned—this time, without his ski mask.

Donovan gasped in horror.

The man’s face!—no, not a face, but a terrifying, gaping mouth with fangs as long as fingers. And his eyes— floating fierce with yellow fire as they flashed down at him like lasers between his legs. Donovan’s mind began to crack, began to scream that this couldn’t be happening.

“But I didn’t do anything!” he cried, the tears beginning to flow.

Then he saw the long wooden stake in the man’s right hand.

Donovan shrieked—struggled against his bonds and tried to move his hips—but the man only leveled the stake and ran him through.

The pain was excruciating, incomprehensible in its brutality, but Donovan was silent, his breath ripped from his lungs as the stake tore him apart inside.

“Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

Mercifully, in the flash-flash-flash of the strobe, Randall Donovan went insane— watched his own death through the eyes of a madman before the stake finally burst from his neck and drained his life onto the floor.

PART I

ENTERING