The Eye of Madness (6 page)

A whimpering sound came from outside his kitchen window. It was faint at first, but as he stopped to listen, it grew louder. Jack walked to his kitchen window and peered out. Dark shadows crisscrossed the yard from several elm trees. They made the yard seem as if it contained dark and surging tentacles. As he screwed up his eyes, he saw something that resembled a pile of laundry, until it started to move. An elderly woman was lying face down in a sunlit area, inches from a dark patch.

Jack stared, mesmerized. This had to be a sign. Everyone left town, or so he thought. It was his destiny to come back, to find this old lady crawling about in his backyard. Excitement leapt inside him when he realized what he must do. He grabbed a couple of high beam flashlights from a desk drawer and eased out the backdoor. He aimed the beams straight ahead and crept towards the old woman. The powerful light parted the shadows a little easier than he thought they would and he soon reached the old woman.

She stared straight ahead, whimpering and crying, taking no notice of his presence. Not until he knelt down and spoke to her.

“Are you okay, dear?” he asked.

She shrieked so loud he thought his eardrum might rupture. The poor woman began to scoot along on her belly as if the devil himself was after her. Jack managed to grab her by the hem of her cotton gown as she tried to scurry into one of the shadows. She screamed and writhed, but she was not strong enough to pull away. The woman was fortunate that the fabric in her gown was strong enough to resist their tug of war.

“Calm down … its okay!” Jack assured her.

She did calm down, but Jack wasn't sure if it was because of his reassurance or because she was tired. She was injured, as evidenced by the blood on her gown and deep gash in her right forearm. However, it wasn't until she tried to look at him before Jack discovered why she did not acknowledge him before he spoke. The old lady was blind.

“What's your name?” Jack asked.

She tried to focus on where she believed his face was, but she ended up peering over his shoulder. “Agnes,” she croaked.

“Well, Agnes, how did you wind up in my backyard?”

She shook her head, her eyes vacant and distant. “Crawled,” she whispered.

Jack noticed a gash in her arm as she shifted her weight onto her side. This was not the worst injury the woman suffered, not by a long shot. The skin on her lower legs from her knees to her ankles was one bloody mess. Exposed bone protruded from below her left knee.

“Can you walk, Agnes?” he asked. The answer should have been obvious.

She started to emit a high-pitched whine.

Jack got to his feet and scooped Agnes's tiny frame up in one fluid motion and threw her over his shoulder. She screamed in agony as his arm brushed over her legs, and then she passed out. He headed back to the house toting a ninety-pound payload, his ten thousand-candle power flashlight clearing the way.

Jack laid Agnes on his small vinyl sofa and then continued to gather miscellaneous items to take back to base. He stopped and stared at the old woman for several moments, as if he had forgotten his purpose. In truth, he hadn't forgotten. His purpose came into full relief. He was meant to come home today. No, it was more of a gift and he intended to appreciate it to the fullest. Life on the base had been dragging him down as of late, especially since the Impals arrived. He hadn't enjoyed the privacy he so craved. It was a little over two months, a couple of days before the storm arrived, since he had the alone time he desired. He didn't need to come back home, he kept everything back at the base, well … almost everything.

Jack walked into his bedroom and opened the door to a large walk-in closet. The closet had a motion-activated light and the five foot by six foot nook glowed with one hundred watt brilliance. The closet was empty except for one very strange thing. An iron cage occupied over half its volume. He smiled at the cage with satisfaction.

“Good, the bitch is finally gone,” he murmured through clinched teeth.

Jack caressed the metal bars as if its cold surface was the skin of a lover. He was lost in the moment; spellbound, enthralled, rapturous, at peace … remembering … remembering … remembering … what was that?

Agnes had awakened in the other room and was making her pitiful whining noise again. Anger welled up in Jack.

“The stupid old crone!” he raved. “Whining, like they all do. Whining and getting blood on my carpet!”

He patted the bars to the cage and then turned and strode into the other room. He found Agnes lying face down and moving her arms as if she were swimming. She had managed to move a few feet from the sofa and trailed blood behind her in crimson tire tracks.

“Damn you!” Jack shouted and grabbed her by the back of the hair. He jerked her up on her toes to where her neck supported the entire weight of her body. Her unseeing eyes flashed with terror and she tried to scream, but she didn't have any air left in her tired old lungs. He threw her over his shoulder and charged into the bedroom, banging her head on the doorframe in the process. He jerked open the door to the cage and flung her inside. She collapsed in a sobbing heap on the cold metal floor. Jack slammed the door and jingled it a few times to make sure it latched properly. He then sat across the room on the edge of his bed and watched.

Agnes was not the first elderly woman to pay Jack Abernathy a visit, over the years there were dozens. Some came as voluntary trusting guests, but most had been abducted and brought here. Some might say it was all for Jack's twisted amusement. Of course, Jack would disagree. He served a purpose, clearing society of old, weak, and dead weight. Jack believed this made the world a better place, pruning the demographic garden. Besides, they were not long for the grave anyway. His service also came with fringe benefits, he enjoyed every second of it.

To Jack, the elderly were a useless drain on society. Their weakened state and infirmities were a burden and what did they contribute? Not a damn thing. Old ladies were the worst. The putrid smell of age, mingled with a heavy scent of lotion and cheap dime store perfume was enough to make his head explode. Yet, it wasn't the worst of it. They all held an opinion. They all exuded a self-righteous attitude, damning anyone who didn't fall in line with their antiquated view of the world. They were selfish, they were gossips, they were burdens who begged to be removed like the malignant tumors they were. Jack was a social surgeon, he prided himself in this, but first and foremost he was a teacher. What good did it do to punish someone if they did not know what they were being punished for?

The cage was his classroom; a classroom where a captive audience of one could receive an education. They all learned the lesson of their inadequacy to society. His students always misbehaved though. The screaming, the pleading, and the crying was more than he could stand. Very few pupils got to hear Jack's entire lecture. Most were expelled on the first day, eternal expulsion to the murky depths of the nearby moors.

Some of his pupils had made the news, but not many. Most were forgotten by their families and society a long time ago. He was careful in his choices. Forgotten old ladies were the best candidates.

He prided himself in his neatness. No blood, no mess … just a slow suffocation with a thin link of rope. His favorite way was to lure them to the side of the cage with a false promise of release, or perhaps to offer them a drink of water. Then he would pounce and wrap the rope around their neck. Once secure, he would apply more and more pressure, and then release it. This gave them a second or two to pull air into their restricted airway. Then he would start the pressure again. Sometimes he would let this process go on for hours before ending it with one hard yank.

No, the real reason Jack returned home today was to see if his houseguest of two months was gone. An elderly woman named Gwenda Harcourt from Comstock was his latest pupil. He trailed her home one Sunday morning after worship service at the Comstock Presbyterian Church. Jack thought that church services were the best place to find aging parishioners. If they attended church alone, they likely lived alone, easy pickings.

Gwenda received her final lesson the morning the cosmic storm arrived. Before Jack had time to take her out of the cage and deposit her in the moors, he was shocked to see two Gwenda Harcourts in the cage. One was old, pallid and dead. One was young and beautiful with a shimmering luminescence like a lake on a sunny day. Jack fled from the house in terror, only to return later when he realized what was happening. He held the Impal, Gwenda, at bay with an iron bar as he dragged her body out of the cage. After disposing of the corpse, he returned to marvel at the being now inhabiting his iron classroom.

But Gwenda was no longer a member of his murderous demographic. She was a young version of her former self, probably as she appeared in her mid-30s. She seemed sad and frightened, yet she was not vengeful, even though she realized what Jack had done to her. She didn't qualify to be one of his condemned students. What good would it do to lecture her on the evils of the old when she was not elderly? Of course, she wasn't human either, but he couldn't let her go. She would leave and she would tell … he couldn't have that.

His flat had no neighbors within fifty yards and the walls of his home were thick cinder blocks. It would be difficult to hear the screams of an Impal closed up in the closet. Jack had become so confident in his seclusion; he began to have great fun every time he came home by prodding Gwenda with an iron bar. Her tinny, high-pitched scream gave him chills at first. After a while, he found it exhilarating. He was glad his unwanted house guest was now gone, but he also kind of missed her.

“It is okay,” he thought to himself. He had a new pupil now, something he desperately needed, a Godsend. It was over two months since anyone occupied his cage other than an Impal. He was craving another pupil. With everything locked down on the base, who knew how long it would be before another opportunity?

He didn't believe in God. Jack was not a religious man and church was nothing more than a hunting ground for him. Even so, he gave a silent prayer of thanks for this opportunity to make the world a little better place. His prayer was more an act of self-gratification than it was a profession of thankfulness to a deity.

When he finished his hollow prayer, he regarded Gwenda with a soul-freezing smile. She knew what was coming and there was nothing she could do about it. She pushed herself as far away from the door to the iron cage as she could, her arthritic legs drawn as close as possible to her body. Jack casually got up and strolled to his dresser where he opened a drawer and produced a thin link of nylon rope. He rolled it up and shoved it in his pocket. He then strolled back to the cage and knelt down. Jack put his nose and mouth through one of the narrow openings in the bars and puckered his lips as if he wanted to give her a big goodbye kiss.

He wanted to taunt her, but he knew he must move fast because there were only a few hours left until sunset. What happened next, Jack did not anticipate or even imagine in his wildest dreams. He saw a quick flash and then felt excruciating pain as something impacted his lips and chin. He flew backwards and hit his head on the seat of a wooden footstool. Consciousness left his body in a dissipating fog.

Jack did not know that Gwenda had very long legs for her small frame. Though injured, the leverage provided by the back of the cage made them formidable weapons. He also did not know her right fibula was shattered in the attack. She writhed on the bottom of the cage in pain. He would have enjoyed that.

Jack didn't know anything right now. He would not know anything for several hours, if and when he regained consciousness. The sunlight streaming in his large picture window would be gone by the time he awakened. The bedroom and the closet would be dark.

CHAPTER 7

ON BOARD

“Whoever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.”

~Francis Bacon

Dr. Winder lay in the woods for over an hour before the men could retrieve his body. They gathered every flashlight and built a small fire to cast enough light to cross the short distance to his mangled corpse. Cecil and Burt were not up to the task. They tried to assist, but they knew the man. Not to mention, he was not recognizable as his former self. No one knew for sure how high he climbed before his fatal dive, but every bone in his body was shattered. Cecil and Burt sat on the front steps of the cabin wiping tendrils of vomit from their chins.

Sam Andrews made the crude comment that he was like dragging a bag full of jelly. Cecil had to restrain himself from picking up one of Sam's discarded beer bottles and pelting him in the head. He wasn't sure whether they were glad Charlotte's father kept the cabin well stocked with beer or not. Andrews had been a violent and shorttempered ass at the Impal camp. All that time without a drink was enough to push any alcoholic to the edge. He was still an ass, but the alcohol seemed to have quelled his temper for now. The beer wouldn't last forever.

Cecil glanced over at the metal canisters of gasoline stored beside the house for the generator. There were twelve in all and they already went through two in a little over ten hours. He did a quick calculation in his head and figured the generator would be able to run another ninety-six hours. Only four days until the gas was gone. Of course, this was assuming the electric consumption remained at the same level, which he knew it would not. The nights would put a strain on their electrical needs. They could cut back during the daylight and spend time outside. Nevertheless, the increased need at night would knock about a day off their time. They had three days to find a safe way out of the woods or succumb to the darkness.

They would discuss a plan soon, but right now they had more pressing matters. As luck would have it, there was a tool rack mounted on the house next to the gas canisters. An assortment of rusty garden tools hung on its weathered pegs. Cecil and Burt each grabbed an old shovel and dug a grave in a well-lit area to the side of the drive. When they finished, Sam and Derek deposited Dr. Winder's body in the hole. Cecil did not want to see the doctor, not in this state. He handed his shovel to Derek and strode towards the house.