The Impaler

outstretched before him, his right holding a small ax high above his head. The General backed away at once—didn’t have time to wonder how Cox escaped and found the ax in the workroom—and moved his head just in time to avoid the downward strike. But the blade caught him on his right pectoral muscle—sliced through his shirt, the gauze, and took out a nice chunk of the tattooed 9 underneath.

The General let out a grunt but kept moving—ducked a sideward swipe to his head and then brought his fist up hard on Cox’s jaw. The young man cried out and staggered backwards—tried to swing the ax again—but the General caught his arm and hyperextended it at the elbow. A loud snap echoed through the kitchen, and Bradley Cox dropped the ax, howling in pain. The General grabbed him by the face and slammed him against the wall.

“I’m gonna kill you, Lambert!” Cox cried, slumping hysterically to the floor—but before he could recover, the General picked up the ax and swung it down hard. Cox raised his left hand just in time, and the General caught him on the forearm with the wooden handle. Another snap as the bones shattered, and the General brought down the ax again, this time on the young man’s right shoulder—chopped through his trapezius and split his collarbone like it was a stick of kindling wood.

Bradley Cox’s screams shook the entire house, both his arms useless now as he flailed about on the floor— but the General did not pause. He pulled out the ax and tossed it onto the kitchen table, the blood from the young man’s wound spraying his jeans as he picked him up by the hair and threw him headfirst down the cellar stairs.

Bradley Cox was barely conscious when the General reached him—but conscious enough, the General thought, to understand what was coming next.

“You will know him when he comes for you,” the General said as he dragged him down the darkened hallway. “You are part of the nine, and there is no turning back from your mission now.”

Chapter 84

Music—that song, “Dark in the Day”—and screaming. No. Not real. Something from a dream. Can’t see the pictures. Only silence now and big gaps of black behind me. Time. Moving forward. I have returned, but it’s raining….

Markham’s eyes fluttered open to a haze of yellow light. He was on his side; felt something hard beneath his right shoulder, and could hear the sound of running water.

Crappy hotel mattresses, he thought. Someone in the shower— Michelle?

He licked his lips and swallowed hard. His throat was parched and his mouth tasted like chemicals. He was about to reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, but in the next moment the pain kicked in at the base of his skull. He couldn’t touch it; couldn’t move his arm—his wrists for some reason felt glued together.

Groggily, he turned his head, and the yellow haze blurred into movement—into what looked like an arm and pair of buttocks pulsing out at him from the shadows.

What the hell is going on?

Then in a rush his vision cleared—his heart pounding instantly at his ribs as everything came back to him. The call from Schaap, the voice on the other end, the blow on the back of his head when he foolishly rushed out to his car.

He remembered it all.

Schaap, Markham thought. Where the hell is Schaap?

More body parts from the shadows. Yes, there, in the far corner of the room about fifteen feet away, Markham could make out a man’s muscular back; could see the water reflected on his flesh in the dim yellowy light.

The Impaler, Markham said to himself. The Impaler tricked me—

Suddenly, the man in the corner threw his head back and turned. Markham’s heart leaped into his throat as his eyes blinked shut. Surely he’d been caught, he thought—but the water continued to run and the sounds remained the same. He cracked open his left eye. In the shadows, he could see only a small portion of the man’s profile, the rest of his face obscured by his arm. He held a garden hose above his head, the water washing over him and down his chest. There was a large tattoo on that chest. Markham could see it clearly—what appeared to be two elongated rectangles, standing upright and side by side, one decorated with the number 9, the other with the number 3.

“His body is the doorway,” the Impaler had said on the phone.

The tattoo—a pair of doors! Nine stars in Leo, three in Leo Minor—

“I am the three, but you are the nine.”

His body is the doorway!

“Will you know him when he comes for you?”

Schaap! Markham cried out in his mind—but then the doorway on the man’s chest seemed to ooze something black—a thick line of goo between the 9 and the 3 that dis- appeared under the water, only to return again when the man hosed off his head. Markham could see a smaller gash through the top of the 9, too.

He’s wounded, he thought. Bleeding badly.

The Impaler turned his back again.

Daring to move only his eyes, Markham scanned what little he could. Yes, he had to be in the Impaler’s workshop. The tools, the unfinished two-by-fours propped against the wall. And he was elevated—Tied down on some kind of workbench—but still dressed. That was good. That meant the Im-paler hadn’t started on him yet. That meant—

Then Markham saw the chains. He followed them from the pulley that dangled above the Impaler’s head, up through the ceiling beams to a winch on the wall next to the slop sink. The sound of the water traveling down the drain seemed suddenly amplified, and Markham understood all at once what the chains were for—felt his stomach flip when he imagined Andy Schaap dangling upside down, his blood draining into the floor. He’d seen it before—the Morales case, pictures of what the drug cartels did to their enemies—but that might not have happened. Schaap might still be alive. There was nothing in the autopsy reports about the Im-paler bleeding out his victims—

I’ve got to find Schaap!

Markham told himself to stay calm; if the Impaler knew he was awake he was a dead man. And as if reading his mind, the Impaler shut off the water and began to turn toward him. Markham closed his eyes—could hear movement, the Impaler toweling himself off, he assumed—then silence, followed by what sounded like masking tape being peeled and snipped from a roll.

His wound, Markham said to himself. He must be bandaging his wound.

More movement now—the Impaler dressing—and despite his terror Markham had to fight the urge to steal a look at the man’s face. Oh yes, he wanted to get a good look at that face so, so badly!

Markham felt a cool breeze rush past, and after a moment heard a clanging sound coming from another part of the cellar. He cracked open his eyes and quickly scanned his body. He was tied up, but not down to anything; he could roll over onto his back if he wished. Yes, he had to be in the Impaler’s cellar—the cement walls, the trickling sound of the blood and water running down the floor drain.

But what to do, what to do?!!

Footsteps approached again and Markham shut his eyes—another cool breeze and the sense of movement behind him. His mind spun furiously; he was starting to panic, felt as if at any second he would open his eyes and try to bolt—when all of a sudden he felt the Impaler’s arms slipping underneath his torso.

Markham’s muscles tensed. He thought surely the Im-paler had to have felt them tense, too—but a moment later he was being lifted off the workbench.

I’m to be next, he thought. Whatever the Impaler did to the others before he skewered them he intends to do to me. I’ve got to make a break for it!

No! cried the voice in his head. Stay calm! The Impaler kept the others