Trapped

“No tears yet, Tom. Save them for later. Besides, you three should actually feel pretty good about yourselves. You’ve defied all expectations, and done something productive with your lives. Something useful. Society always figured you would amount to nothing, but you’re the final pieces in this wonderful puzzle. Every ritual needs sacrificial lambs.”

Martin’s eyes drilled into Tom, and the man who counseled him, mentored him, taught him, and pretended to actually give a shit about him, winked.

“Now if you kids will excuse me, I have to go upstairs and torture my wife.”

The bureau was Sara’s height. It was black, which made the dark red sketch on the front hard to see, but as Sara got closer, she could make it out.

A human outline.

Scrawled on the side, in chalk, were the words:

Taylor’s Magic Box

In fact, it looked like one of those magician’s cabinets, the kind where a woman went in and then was pierced with swords and cut into thirds.

It also had the same little doors on the front, so the audience could see different parts of the woman’s body, to prove she was still in there.

But Sara didn’t think this was an illusion. And a sickening sinking feeling in her gut told her who was probably inside.

She reached for the top door, the one that would expose the face, but she stopped inches from touching it.

All across the surface of the cabinet were round black knobs. Dozens of them. They were also on the sides, and the back, from top to bottom. Sara touched one, gently.

Someone inside the box screamed, making Sara flinch.

What the hell were these things?

She looked around, stared down at the umbrella stand next to the cabinet.

But it wasn’t filled with umbrellas. It was filled with long things that ended in black knobs.

Suddenly understanding what they were, Sara grabbed the end of a knob in the middle of the cabinet and pulled.

Just like the magician’s trick, Sara removed a six inch metal skewer from the box.

Unlike the magician’s trick, this skewer was slick with blood.

“Oh, Jesus. Laneesha.”

Sara knew Lester was coming. Martin would be back soon, too. She and Jack had to get out of there. But she wasn’t going to leave Laneesha here with these monsters.

That posed a problem. There were dozens—perhaps over a hundred—of these skewers sticking in the cabinet. Did Sara even have time to remove all of them? And if she did, would Laneesha bleed to death?

She looked around for an answer, and saw two things on the floor that made her stomach churn. A car battery with jumper cables, and a handheld blowtorch.

She had to get Laneesha out of there.

“Laneesha, honey, it’s Sara. I’m going to help you, okay? I need to get these things out of your face first. Jesus, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”

Sara lifted her hands, hesitated, reached closer, hesitated, and then pulled the six skewers out of the outline of the head as fast as she could, Laneesha’s cries of pain scarring her soul. Then she opened the door to view Laneesha’s face.

“Kill me,” Laneesha croaked.

Sara recoiled in horror. The blood. The damage. The agony the girl must be in.

That’s when Sara sensed someone behind her.

She didn’t hear it. She sensed it. Like feeling a glance from across a room. Since the door Sara came through hadn’t opened, the person must have come from the other door in the room.

Not Lester. Not Martin. This was the one who had done this to Laneesha. This had to be Taylor, the owner of the Magic Box.

Sara spun around, tugging the utility knife out of her jeans, ready to stab.

It was a man. A fat, scarred man, naked except a black rubber apron that stretched from his chest to his thighs. He’d come out of the door—the bathroom door—Sara had been about to open. His greasy hair was shoulder-length. His pocked cheeks glistened with sweat over several days’ worth of stubble. His patchwork skin was lined with long, parallel scabs, like stripes, some of them still bleeding.

And in his crippled right hand he was clenching a meat hook.

Lester’s rage was a diesel engine in his chest, pumping and burning and threatening to blow. The pet was special to Lester. He came to the island with Martin, and Lester had bitten off some of his sensitive parts, but left him mostly untouched. He liked the funny uhhhnnnnnn sound the pet made. But he didn’t care for the begging, or the attempts to get away. So Doctor fixed him for Lester. Fixed his brain so he stopped talking. Fixed his arms and legs so he couldn’t run or fight back.

For years, Lester had taken good care of the pet. He was Lester’s friend.

But now someone had killed him.

The doctor was in the lab. Martin was out. The stairs were the only way up to Lester’s room, and he didn’t pass anyone while bringing the hay.

That left one person. The only other person on the second floor.

Subject 33.

Lester looked around for a weapon, wrapping his large hand around a filet knife. Razor sharp. Perfect for detail work.

He stormed out his room, heading down the corridor.

When Marshal Otis Taylor was a little boy, he wanted to kill people when he grew up. If his parents had known any abnormal psychology, they would have noted little Taylor wet the bed, started fires, and liked to hurt animals. These behaviors were documented precursors to psychopathy.

But they were too busy physically and sexually abusing Taylor to notice that he might be a little off- kilter.

Perhaps they should have paid more attention, because when Taylor turned twelve he turned on the gas stove, blew out the flame, and waited in the back yard while the carbon monoxide filled the house and poisoned them to death.

It was deemed an accident, and the neighbors corroborated that Taylor was a handful and his parents sometimes made him sleep outside.

Taylor did the foster home shuffle for several years, eventually running away at fifteen and joining a travelling carnival. He learned how to be charming there, and how charm was the key to deception. He was taught street magic, and the art of the hustle, and may other carny tricks. He also learned how to drive the double-clutch eighteen-wheelers used for hauling equipment from town to town.

By age nineteen his boyish good looks had bloomed into masculinity, and he’d saved and swindled enough money to buy his own truck.

The truck-stop hookers thought he was so cute, they often gave him freebies.

He killed his first one in Wisconsin. His second in Nebraska.

Over the years, Taylor’s route, and his hunting ground, encompassed the entire lower forty-eight. He killed one in every state, and after that lost count.

When they finally caught him, he was only charged with twenty murders, which wasn’t even a third of them.

Taylor received the death sentence, and he had memories of being strapped to the table, the prison doctor hooking up the IV that contained the lethal injection.

Then his memories got fuzzy.

He remembered snippets of things. Some sort of military training. A special forces unit. Foreign countries.