The King of Plagues

“Shhhh,” cautioned the whisperer. After a long moment the man patted Plympton’s shoulder. “Good. Now … I have two more pictures to show you.”

“No,” sobbed Plympton. He closed his eyes, but then the whisperer’s lips were right there by his ear.

“Open your eyes or I’ll cut off your eyelids, yes?”

Plympton mumbled something, nodded.

The whisperer placed two more four-by-six photos on the desk, arranging them in the center and above the line of six photos. A strangled cry gurgled from Plympton’s throat.

The photos were of his wife and daughter.

In the first photograph, his wife was wearing only a pair of sheer panties and a demi-cup bra as she leaned her hips against the sink and bent close to the mirror to apply her makeup. Her face wore the bland expression of someone who believed she was totally alone and who was completely absorbed in the minutiae of daily routine. The picture had been taken from behind so that she was seen from the backs of her knees to above her head, with the front of her from hips to hair in the mirror. Plympton’s heart sank. Laura looked as pale and beautiful now as she had when they’d first met twenty-two years ago. And he loved her with his whole heart.

That heart threatened to tear loose from his chest as he looked at the second picture.

His daughter, Zoe. Fifteen years old and the image of her mother, except that instead of mature elegance Zoe had a lush coltish grace. In the photo, Zoe was naked, her young body steaming with hot water as she stepped out of the shower over the rim of the tub, one hand raised to push aside a shower curtain that had a pattern of swirling stars. Plympton saw his daughter in her unguarded nakedness and it awoke in him a hot fury—an inferno of murderous rage that flooded his arms with power. His whole body tensed, but then the whisperer said, “We have someone watching them both right now. We are watching them every minute of every day. We have their cell phones tapped. We’re in their computers. We know their passwords, their travel routes, all their habits. Six times each day I have to make calls to tell my people not to kill them.”

As fast as the rage had built in Plympton it was gone, leaving only a desolated shell of impotent anger.

The whisperer said nothing for a whole minute, letting those words tear through the chambers of Plympton’s mind and overturn all the furniture and smash out every window. Then the whisperer reached past Plympton and slid two of the photos out of the line of six. He placed one next to the picture of Laura, the other next to the picture of Zoe. The woman in the first picture was about Laura’s age; she had the same basic coloring. The same for the photo of the girl next to Zoe’s photo. He did this without comment, but the juxtaposition was dreadful in its eloquence.

“Now,” said the whisperer after another quiet minute, “tell me again what I told you.”

Plympton licked his dry lips. “Unless … I do exactly what I’m told you’ll kill my wife and daughter.”

“You believe me, yes?”

“Yes.” Tears broke and fell, cutting acid lines down Plympton’s cheeks.

“Will you do what I want?”

“Yes.”

“Anything? Will you do absolutely anything that I want?”

“Yes.” Each time Plympton said the word he lost more of himself. All that remained now was a frayed tether of hope.

“Good.”

“If … if I do,” Plympton said, dredging up a splinter of nerve, “will you leave them alone? Will you leave my family alone?”

“We will,” promised the whisperer.

“How do I know that you’ll keep your word?”

There was a pause, then, “Are you a man of faith, Mr. Plympton?”

It was such a strange question, its placement and timing so disjointed, that Plympton was caught off-guard and answered by reflex.

“Yes,” he said.

“So am I.” The whisperer leaned close so that once more his breath was a nauseating caress on Plympton’s ear. “I swear before the Almighty Goddess that if you do what we want—and if you never talk about this with anyone—then I will not harm your wife or daughter.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Plympton snarled, and heard the man chuckle at the sudden ferocity in his voice. “You said ‘I.’ I want your word that none of you will ever come near them. Or harm them in any way.”

“I so swear,” said the whisperer. “And may the Goddess strike me down and curse my family to seven generations if I lie.”

Goddess? The word floated in the air between them. Even so, as weird and grotesque as the promise was, Plympton—for reasons he could not thereafter understand—believed the whisperer. He nodded.

“What … what do you want me to do?”

The whisperer told him what he wanted Plympton to do.

“I … can’t!”

“You can. You promised.” There were no more blows, no grabs or taunts. The photos and the value of that strange promise were enough now to have established a strange species of trust between them.

Even so, Plympton said, “If I did that … I’d be arrested. People could die—”

“People will die,” corrected the whisperer. “You have to decide if they will be people you work with and patients whose names you would never know, or if they will be your lovely wife and daughter.”

“They’d never let me … That facility is too well protected.”

“Which is why we came to the one person who is positioned to bypass that security. You weren’t picked at random, Mr. Plympton.”

The whisperer touched the photo of Plympton’s daughter, drawing a slow line along the curve of her thigh toward the damp curls of her pubic hair.

“All right! God damn you! All right.”

The whisperer withdrew his hand. “I’m going to put the hood back on your head. Then I’ll cut you loose. You will sit there and say the names of your wife and daughter aloud one thousand times before you remove the hood or stir from that chair, yes? I will know if you betray our trust. You know that we’re watching. You know that we can see what goes on inside this house. If you move too soon, then I will know, and I will not make the calls that I need to make in order to keep your loved ones alive.”

Plympton sat there, weeping, trembling.

“Tell me that you understand.”

“I understand.”

“You are the architect of your own future, Mr. Plympton. Like the Goddess Almighty, you can decide who lives and who dies. It feels glorious, doesn’t it?”

“Fuck you.”

The whisperer laughed.

Then he pulled the hood over Plympton’s head.

Trevor Plympton sat in an envelope of darkness and despair and said the names. When the knife cut through his bonds he flinched as if he’d been stabbed but otherwise did not move.

“Laura and Zoe.”

He said their names one thousand times. Then he said their names another hundred times. Just to be sure.

After that he removed the hood. The apartment was empty. The ugly photos were gone. The photos of his wife and daughter were gone. The hood and plastic cuffs were gone. Except for the Taser burn on his neck and the aches from the torture, this might all have been a dream.

He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

“God help me,” he whispered.