The Face of Death (20 page)

20

“
I NEED YOU TO WATCH, SARAH, AND I NEED YOU TO LISTEN.
This is the start of something.”

They were in the living room. Mommy and Daddy sat on chairs with handcuffs around their wrists and ankles. They were naked. Seeing her father nude embarrassed Sarah and added to her terror. Doreen was lying on the floor, watching them all, unaware that anything was wrong.

Stay stupid, puppyhead, Sarah thought, and maybe he won’t kill you like he killed Buster.

Sarah was seated on the couch in her nightgown, handcuffed as well.

The Stranger, as she thought of the man, was standing. He had a gun in his hand. He had panty hose pulled over his head. The panty hose stretched and twisted his features, made it look as though his face had been melted by a blowtorch.

Her fear was still there, still strong, but it had moved away from her. It was a scream in the distance. It was a waiting, a terrible waiting, the executioner’s axe frozen at its apex.

Her parents were terrified. Their mouths were covered with tape but their eyes showed their fear. Sarah sensed they were more afraid for her than themselves.

He walked over next to her daddy and leaned forward so that he could look into Sam’s eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking, Sam. You want to know why. Believe me, I wish that I could tell you. I wish it more than anything. But Sarah’s listening, you see, and she might tell others, later. I can’t have my story being told until I’m ready.

“I can say two things: It’s not your fault, Linda, but your death is my justice. It’s not Sarah’s fault, but her pain is my justice. I know, you don’t understand. That’s all right. You don’t need to understand, you just need to know that these things are
true.
”

He stood up.

“Let’s talk about pain. Pain is a form of energy. It can be created, like electricity. It can flow, like a current. It can be steady or it can pulse. It can be powerful and agonizing, or weak and just annoying. Pain can force a man to talk. What a lot of people don’t know is that pain can also force a man to think. It can form a man, mold a man, make him who he is.

“I
know
pain. I
understand
it. It’s taught me things. One of the things I’ve learned is that while people fear pain, they can tolerate much, much more of it than they think. If, for example, I tell you that I’m going to jam a needle into your arm, you’ll become fearful. If I actually do it, the pain will seem excruciating. But if I do it again, every hour on the hour, for a year, you’ll learn to adjust. You’ll never like it, but you’ll no longer fear it. And that is what this will be about.”

The Stranger turned his gaze on Sarah.

“I’m going to stick that metaphorical pin into Sarah. Over and over and over, for years and years and years. I’m going to use the pain to sculpt her, like an artist. I’ll make her over into my own image, and I will call her what she’ll become:
A Ruined Life.
”

“Please don’t hurt my mommy and daddy,” Sarah said. She was surprised to hear her own voice. It sounded strange, far away, too calm for what was happening.

The Stranger was surprised as well. He seemed to approve, nodding and smiling with his melted face. “Good! There it is: love. I want you to remember this moment in the future, Sarah. I want you to think back and mark this as the last time you were without real pain. Trust me, it will sustain you in the coming years.” He paused, examining her face. “Now, hush, and watch.”

She watched as he turned toward her parents. Things still felt dreamy to her, all hazy and indistinct. Fear was there, horror was there, tears were there, but they were pinpricks in the distance. Things shouting at her from the horizon. She had to strain to hear them, and her reluctance to do so was heavy, crushing, a weight she couldn’t lift.

She’d looked into Buster’s dead eyes, she’d screamed, and then her heart had gone away. Not for good, and not far, but far enough that she didn’t have to listen to it shriek.

Buster…

There was anguish waiting in that word, a pain powerful enough to suck a soul under forever. At some level, she knew Buster was only the beginning. The Stranger was more than a black tide, he was an ocean of darkness. A huge, empty
nothing
in human form with a gravitational presence strong enough to bend light waves and laugh sounds and goodness.

The correct instinct of a civilized society is to protect the young from evil, but in doing so, society sometimes loses sight of a basic truth: A child is always ready to believe in the existence of monsters.

Sarah knew The Stranger was a monster. She had accepted this as a totality the moment he’d thrown Buster’s severed head onto her bed.

“Sam and Linda Langstrom,” The Stranger spoke, “please listen carefully. The thing you need to understand is that death’s inevitable. I’m going to kill you both. You need to dismiss any hopes you might have that you’re going to live. Instead, you need to focus on what you can control: what happens to Sarah.”

Linda Langstrom’s heart had sped up when the man said he was going to kill them. She couldn’t help it; the desire to live was visceral. But when he told them that Sarah’s fate was still undecided, her heartbeat had actually slowed. She’d been looking at Sarah, worrying, only half-listening to the man. Now she turned her eyes to him, forced herself to focus.

The Stranger smiled. “Yes. There it is. That’s one mix of love other than the love of God that comes close to having real power—mother to child. Mothers will kill, torture, and maim to save a child. They’ll lie and steal and prostitute themselves to feed a child. There’s a certain divinity to it. But nothing is ever as strong as the strength achieved when you give yourself over to God.”

He leaned forward until his eyes were level with Linda’s. “I have that strength. Because of that, I get to kill you. Because of that, I get to do my work with Sarah. Because of that, I never have to apologize. The strong don’t have to be sorry. All they have to do is continue to breathe.” He stood back up. “So, what does that kind of strength do when it’s defied by a lesser love? It demonstrates its power by forcing choices. And now I’m going to give you some choices, Linda. Are you ready?”

Linda looked at The Stranger’s face, examined the panty-hose-twisted features. She realized that trying to bargain with this man would be like bargaining with a rock, a block of wood, a rattlesnake. She was nothing to him, nothing at all. She answered his question with a nod.

“Good,” he replied.

Was it her imagination, or was he breathing faster now? Getting excited?

“Here is the scenario. Sam, you need to listen to this as well.”

He didn’t need to demand Sam’s attention; Sam had never taken his eyes off the man. Sam had been staring at The Stranger, his heart filled with a hate so pure it was almost unbearable. His desire to murder this man was excruciating.

Just let me get these cuffs off, he raged inside, and I’ll tear you apart. I’ll slam your head against the floor until your skull cracks and I see your brain…

“Sarah will live. You are both going to die, but she will live. If you’ve had concerns, that should allay them. I’m not going to kill her.” He paused. “But I could decide to hurt her.”

He transferred the gun to his left hand, reached into his back pocket with the other and came out holding a lighter. It was flashy; a mix of gold plating and mother-of-pearl, with an inlaid picture of a domino tile on one side, the two-three piece.

He flipped the lighter open, and flicked the wheel with his thumb. A small flame lit, blue at the bottom.

“I could burn her,” The Stranger murmured, looking into the flame. “I could torch her face. Turn her nose into a lump of melted wax, fry off her eyebrows, blacken her lips.” He smiled, still looking at the flame. “I could sculpt her literally rather than figuratively, using flame as my knife. Fire is strong and ruthless. Absent of love. A living representation of the power of God.”

He snapped the lighter shut in a sudden motion and returned it to his pocket. He moved the gun back to his right hand.

“I could burn her for days. Please believe me. I know how to do it. How to make it last. She wouldn’t die, but she’d beg for death in the first hour, and she would lose her mind long before bedtime.”

His words, and the certainty with which he delivered them, terrified Linda. A raw and ragged terror. She didn’t doubt him. Not even a little bit. He’d burn her baby, and he’d smile and whistle as he did it. She realized that she feared this more than dying, and for a moment
(just a moment)
she felt relief. Parents like to think that they’d die for their children—but would they? When a gun came out, would they step between it and their child? Or would something more primal and shameful take over?

I would die for her, Linda realized. In spite of what was happening, this made her proud. It was freeing. It gave her focus. She concentrated on what The Stranger was saying. What did she have to do to keep him from burning her baby?

“You can prevent this,” The Stranger continued. “All you have to do is strangle your husband.”

Sam was startled from his reverie of rage.

What did he just say?

The Stranger reached into a bag near the couch, pulling out a small video camera and a collapsible tripod. He placed the camera on the tripod and positioned it so that it was pointing at her and Sam. He pushed a button, there was a musical tone, and Linda realized they were now being filmed.

What did he just say?

“I want you to put your hands around his neck, Linda, and I want you to look into his eyes, and I want you to strangle your husband. I want you to watch him die. Do it, and Sarah will not burn. Refuse, and I’ll put the flame to her until she smokes.”

The rage had gone away, far, far away. Had it ever really been there? It didn’t feel like it to Sam. He was dazed. He felt like someone had just hit him in the face with a hammer.

It was as if his ability to comprehend had been ratcheted up to a superhuman level. He was thinking in fractals, seeing the interconnectedness of everything in strobe flashes. Truths arrived in rifle cracks of illumination.

This leads to this leads to that…and the sum is always the same.

He and Linda were going to die. He understood that with a sudden certainty.

Too sudden?

No. This man was implacable. He wasn’t testing them. He wasn’t pranking them, this wasn’t a trick. He was here to kill them. Sam wasn’t going to break free and save his family. There wouldn’t be any Hollywood-movie moment of sudden redemption. The bad guys were going to win and get away clean.

This leads to this leads to that…

Only one outcome wasn’t yet decided, the most important one: What was going to happen to Sarah.

He looked at his daughter. Sadness overwhelmed him.

What would happen to Sarah? He realized he’d never really know. His little girl, if she survived this, would go on. Sam would end here. He’d never know if any sacrifice made had saved her or not.

She looked so small. The couch was just a yard away, but it might as well have been a light-year. A new wave of sadness, choking and desperate. He was never going to touch his little girl again! The kiss he’d given her last night, the hug, had been the last of it.

He looked over at Linda. She was listening to The Stranger, her eyes intent. Sam drank in the image of her chestnut hair and her brown eyes, and then he closed his own and
remembered
her so hard that he could almost smell her, a scent of hand soap and woman, as uniquely Linda as her DNA.

He remembered her clothed and classy, and he remembered her naked underneath him, in her studio, covered in paint and sweat.

He remembered his daughter too. He remembered that the surge of love he’d felt when he first heard her cry was so strong it threatened to consume him. It was fierce, and it was huge, and it was larger than he could ever hope to be alone.

He remembered her laughter, and her tears, and her trust.

Last, he remembered them together, the wife and the daughter. Sarah asleep in Linda’s arms as a baby, after a long and colicky night.

He remembered and he felt sad and he felt angry and he wanted to fight, but—

The sum is always the same.

He opened his eyes, and he turned to Linda, and this time she was looking back at him. He tried to make his eyes smile, tried to show her the all of everything inside him, and then—he closed his eyes, once, and nodded.

It’s okay, babe,
he was telling her.
Do it, it’s okay.

Linda knew what her husband was saying. Of course she did—they’d talked without words, plenty of times.
We may be different in some ways,
he was saying,
but in those places where the rubber meets the road, we’re one person.

One tear slid from her right eye.

“I’ll remove his gag, and I will uncuff your wrists. You will put your hands around his neck and then you’ll squeeze until he’s dead. You’ll kill him, and Sarah will watch, and it will be terrible for you, I know, but I won’t touch Sarah when I’m done with the two of you.”

He cocked his head, seeming to notice for the first time that something had passed between Sam and Linda.

“You’ve already decided, haven’t you? Both of you.” He was quiet for a moment. “Did you hear that, little one? Mommy is going to kill Daddy to keep me from burning you with fire. Do you know what you should learn from that?”

No reply.

“The same lesson as before. Mommy is going to be ruthless, and it’s going to save you. Did you hear me, Sarah? Mommy’s ruthlessness is going to save you. Her willingness to feel pain for you is going to save you. Strength, finally, to support that mother-love.”

Sarah was hearing what The Stranger was saying, but they weren’t real words to her. She believed in monsters. In the end though, the monsters always lost.

Didn’t they?

God made sure that nothing truly bad happened to good people. This wouldn’t be any different. It was scary, it was terrifying, it was terrible that Buster had died. But if she could hold it together, The Stranger wouldn’t win. Daddy would stop him, or God would stop him, or maybe even Mommy.