The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare Page 14

  There was room to be happy though. He needed 33 more people, and he would have them in less than a month. Then this would all be over.

  “Why you keep going on and on like that? It’s ridiculous.”

  Matthew didn’t turn his head to the right; he didn’t need to. He knew who was there, knew it as soon as he heard her voice. The old woman, Sheeb. How long had it been since he’d seen her? A week? It was different than Rally’s voice or Morgant’s, both of which stayed inside his head and only gave their opinions on what was going on—Rally’s on how he should repent and Morgant on how he should rape.

  This old woman though, she popped up looking as real as anyone Matthew had ever seen.

  “What do you mean?” He asked aloud.

  “I mean why you keep thinkin’ so negatively. This will all be over and things like that. Don’t you get tired of thinkin’ like that? I know I did back when I was worryin’ ‘bout raisin’ Arthur. It finally got to the point that I just had to understand the boy was gonna do what he wanted and I didn’t have much choice in that. But you, always sittin’ here thinkin’ about dyin’ and how you don’t have much time, it just gets on my last nerve.”

  Matthew looked over, his eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry to not keep your thoughts in mind when I’m dealing with my own life, given that you don’t exist.”

  “You’re talkin’ to me. I exist. I saw what you did back there with that old woman a few days ago. How’d that feel? Arthur liked it a lot, I’m sure.”

  Matthew looked back at the road. Such a long road. Eighteen hours of drive time one way, every two weeks. If the FBI was going to find him, it would be on these trips. He would hit a roadblock, or get pulled over because one of his tail lights went out, and they would find twenty women gagged in the back of his van and that would be it.

  Matthew hadn’t thought once about the old woman in the lumber store. He had thought about his brain deteriorating. He had thought about Morgant coming back, about him taking over. He considered the likelihood of Matthew not achieving his goal because of this new mental restraint. He had not thought about raping the woman at all, though. Until now.

  She hadn’t woken the whole time, and he had looked down on her as he pumped in and out, Morgant not letting him close his eyes. Matthew didn’t want to look, felt his stomach turning and only finished Morgant’s business seconds before he vomited next to the woman’s head. Morgant had wanted to grab, to feel the old woman’s tits as Matthew went up and down, but somehow—and thank God—Matthew managed to keep his hands on the floor. Suicide had never been an option for Matthew, but he thought if he had been made to grab the woman’s breast while he raped her, he might have had to light himself on fire with the rest of the building.

  “You ‘on’t want to talk ‘bout that, do you?” Sheeb asked.

  Matthew only stared forward.

  “Well, you ain’t got to, but it’s going to keep happenin’. Arthur ain’t done here. Arthur just gettin’ started. You woke him up with that little piece of ass you gave him and he wants more, believe me. Arthur always wanted more, even when I told him he had to be careful. I couldn’t control it back then, hell, can’t control it now, but he wouldn’t listen to me at all. You need to just let him come on and get it, ya know? Just let him come to the top, put yoself in the back there, and let him have his way with this world. You ain’t gone blow nothin’ up anyway, and ya know it. None of that even make any sense, just craziness you done dreamed up. I need to talk to Arthur though and the longer you keep puttin’ him off, the longer it gone take. Let go of all this stuff you got goin’ on and let my grandson have control of his body again. I can at least try to talk him outta all the awful things he wantin’ to do. You ain’t gone be able to talk him outta nuttin’.”

  The girl sat huddled in the corner, naked, her knees to her chest, her head buried between her knees and her arms wrapped around all of it as if trying to protect herself.

  Arthur Morgant sat on the bed, naked too, looking at the girl.

  That had been a lot more screaming than he planned for. That had been a lot more of everything than he planned for. It only lasted maybe forty seconds, and then the semen flowed from him, but even in that time the girl made a racket. He just hadn’t expected all that to happen. Grandma had to have heard, there wasn’t any way she didn’t, and Arthur was really regretting having tried to do this here. He wasn’t regretting what he did, not that at all, but just that he brought her back here and now his Grandma probably knew what was going on.

  He heard his Grandma’s feet on the stairs, knew that she was coming to his room. The only thing keeping her from being up here right now was her age. Ten years ago, she would have climbed the stairs two at a time and been up here after the first scream. Back then though, she couldn’t have imagined what the scream was about—now, she probably had a good idea, even if this was Arthur’s first time.

  The girl whimpered in the corner as his Grandma opened the door.

  “Oh dear God in heaven,” Sheeb said. “You done went ahead and messed everything up, hadn’t ya?”

  Arthur didn’t look at his Grandma. He didn’t really care too much what she thought about it; he just didn’t want to get in trouble for it. His penis was still semi-erect and he made no attempt to cover himself. People might make a big deal outta all this, but he didn’t really see the reason why. He’d done what felt natural and he couldn’t help it if it didn’t feel natural for anyone else.

  Sheeb walked across the room, ignoring Arthur.

  “What’s yo name, girl?” She asked, her voice not tender, but as rough as it had ever been with her Grandson.

  The girl only let out a soft cry, keeping her head buried in her knees. Sheeb walked closer, put her hands down to the girls face and lifted it up. Arthur saw then what he’d done. He hadn’t really been able to pay attention to it during the act, everything felt like a blur, and now the memories were fading quickly. He hated that. It happened when he masturbated too, and that was why he took this step. He hoped that when he had a real girl here in front of him, he would be able to remember better. But just like when he used his hand, the memories made with the girl now sitting in the corner were rapidly disappearing.

  Blood dripped from her nose, her upper lip swollen, and a blue patch growing on her right cheek.

  “Oh, Arthur, they gone come for you now, boy. They gone come and they gone string you up. You know dat right?” Sheeb didn’t turn around and look at Arthur, just kept her eyes directed on the girl in front of her.

  How old was the girl? Arthur couldn’t remember. They were in the same class at school and he lured her over here by saying they were going to study, but he never asked her age. He’d failed twice so he was seventeen now. Maybe she was fifteen.

  “What we gone do?” Sheeb asked, bent over, forcing the girl’s face to look up.

  Arthur didn’t say anything. He didn’t have the slightest idea what came next, and didn’t really care too much either. While the memory was fading, a sense of peace was taking hold, a sense of not needing to do anything, to care about anything. He could. Just. Be.

  His Grandmother nodded to herself as he lay back on the bed, his erection almost completely gone, his flaccid penis lying against his leg.

  “Alright, lil’ girl. You gone listen to me real good. You ain’t gone go tell no one, and to make sure of it, why don’t you come downstairs with me for a bit?”

  Arthur heard his Grandmother lead his classmate out of the room, the girl not struggling, not making noises, but following like a cow. That was good. That was much better than how he thought it might go. Maybe his Grandmother would raise a stink about it later, but not now, and good, because Arthur just wanted to get some sleep.

  The door was open and Matthew saw thirty eyes looking at him.

  He couldn’t remember anything except the little girl being led from the bedroom, except a teenage Arthur Morgant lying back on the bed, his eyes closing, completely obtuse to what he’d just done. Matt
hew couldn’t remember getting out of the front seat and coming to the back of the van.

  Matthew looked around him. The sky was dark, the road two lanes with no cars on it, and he had pulled off to the shoulder. The only light around him came from the moon above, and it twinkled off the dark eyes in the van, all of them looking at the man who spent a million and a half dollars for them.

  Come on, come on. We’re so close now. Just let me have a couple. Just let us have a couple. You remember the last time, how fun it was.

  Morgant, in his head, looking out at the womanly bodies, bound and lying on top of each other.

  No, Matthew answered.

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. The voice wasn’t like anything Matthew ever experienced before, not the rationality of Rally or the at least somewhat clear mindedness of Sheeb. This was rage and hurt and madness—all of it rolled up into a longing for flesh. Longing for any flesh that Morgant saw. There were two boys in the van and

  They’ll work, they’ll work if you don’t want to touch the girls you don’t have to just give me the boys just sink into them.

  The words spun together almost like a soup, hard to siphon out the complete ingredients.

  And Matthew felt himself wanting to step up, to climb inside, to take the women. One by one. To take the two boys and defile them as well. Maybe it wasn’t Matthew, maybe it was Morgant taking over, but either way, Matthew felt the urge—felt it as strong as ever, only this time the heat from murder wasn’t on him as well.

  He stepped up into the back of the van and squatted down over people he’d purchased.

  “Why not?” The old woman said from behind him, standing outside. “Why not go ahead and have them? You ain’t got no wife and you ain’t got no woman you pokin’ on regularly, and you gone just kill them anyway. So what sense does it make to sit out here in the middle of the road and argue with yoself ‘bout it?”

  Matthew couldn’t handle both of them at once, couldn’t listen to both of them telling him to rip the clothes of the women in front of him and then plunge inside them. He closed his eyes. He could smell the stench of his captives, the smell of stale urine, of blood, of sweat, all of it mixing together to form what should have caused a wave of nausea for Matthew. Perhaps Morgant’s personality was holding that back, was not letting Matthew feel the full disgusting nature of what lay before him.

  “Why not?” The woman pestered from behind. “You just gone kill ‘em all anyway.”

  Matthew carried the last body out of the van, draping the girl over his shoulder and walking the ten feet to the open lighthouse door. He lay her down on the floor, perhaps more gently than he might have two weeks ago. The girl’s eyes followed him, alert, not deadened like some of the others he had brought in.

  The sun would rise in another hour.

  His body was a wreck. Even Morgant’s near super human strength was fading now. Had this been Matthew’s original body, none of this would be possible; he would have had to devise some other plan. As it stood, he had one more body to hang on his rings, and then today’s work was done. He would head home and he would sleep as long as he could. As long as the voices would let him.

  The other fourteen bodies all hung naked, wires through their eyes, and rough metal poles shoved through their hands and feet. Blood dripped down, pitter-pattering on the ground below. Soon their bodies would close up the wounds and the blood leakage would stop. The only difference between the newest bodies and the others he had hung previously was that the new comers possessed a doping agent flowing through their blood streams. The fourteen he had already hung tonight didn’t feel anything. They were in a coma, more or less, unaware of their surroundings. Unaware of the holes in their body, unaware of their blindness.

  He would do the same for the last woman.

  What are you doing, Matthew? Rally asked.

  Matthew didn’t answer her. He was tired of talking to ghosts for tonight. He had sat out on that road, the back door open, for an hour, his eyes closed and concentrating on the stench growing from the men and women. Not a single car had driven by, but Matthew didn’t have the ability to think about that potential disaster; he only had the capacity to keep from dropping his pants and moving legs until he found a hole he could enter. That’s it. Nothing else. And he sat there for an hour, fighting an instinct that he didn’t understand and could barely control, sat for an hour with his back to the world and the possibility of everything falling down with a single pair of headlights.

  And in the end, he stepped out of the van, closed the door, and rode home by himself—no ghost in the front seat, nobody lecturing him to go into the back and have his way so that their grandson could be a step closer to returning.

  So, with all due respect, Rally could fuck off for the moment, because she wasn’t going to have anything great to add to this conversation. Matthew was going to add the sedative to the woman, then hoist her upwards and mount her to his ring. Then he would sleep. He was going to sleep knowing that he managed to not fall completely, not yet.

  16

  “It has to be. What other way could he have found out?” Jake said.

  “Where’s the phone? Let me see it.”

  “Here,” Jake said, pulling it out of his pocket. He took the battery from his other pocket, laying both on the desk. “I didn’t want any chance of him listening if I wasn’t using it, so I removed the battery.”

  Art looked at the phone. How fucking dumb was he? If this had been going on, then it had been going on since the very beginning, since almost the day Moore showed up missing. If Jake was right, everything that Art knew, that Jake knew, Brand knew too. No wonder the homeless shelters weren’t panning out, no wonder the police presence in nearly every major city in Massachusetts wasn’t working. Nothing was working because Brand knew every step they were taking. He knew it as they were taking it, and all he had to do was make sure he wasn’t in their heavy-handed way. This didn’t take intricate planning on his part. This took their own stupidity and Art’s inability to move as intelligently as a fucking monkey. That’s all.

  “You haven’t had anyone look at it yet?” Art asked.

  “No. My dad called this morning and said something that got me thinking, so I brought it in immediately. I mean, Brand knows exactly where my father and mother are right now, knew from the moment I told them to go down there.”

  Art sighed and placed his head in his hands, looking down at his wooden desk. “Jesus Christ. This means everything we’ve done over the past few weeks, every single bit of energy put into every single direction has been a waste. None of it was ever going to lead to anything because he already knew what steps we were taking. That’s why the reports are empty every day, full of nothing but what was there the day before. He knew, he knows, and GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!” Art stood up and shoved his laptop off the desk, the cords taking pens and notepads with it, all of it falling to the floor. He stood, hands at his sides, breathing in and out of his mouth, looking at the mess.

  “Take that phone and you get it looked at. Get every single piece of it looked at, every single bit of possible technology inside and out of it examined, and you find out if that motherfucker has been listening. You tell those IT motherfuckers I want to know within the hour. Whatever else they’re doing, they stop it right now.”

  Jake didn’t say anything else. He picked up the phone and battery, then walked out of Art’s office.

  “Hello?” Brand answered sounding confused, asleep.

  “Wasn’t sure this would work,” Art said.

  “Brayden?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Every time you call a number pops up, and obviously it doesn’t trace to anything. I just decided to call it back and see what would happen. Looks like it leads to you, huh?”

  “Sure does,” Brand said, sounding a bit less confused. “What do you need, Art?”

  “Oh, I can’t just call to talk like you do? I have to need something.”

  “No. You can call to talk. You’re probably the closest thing
to a friend I’ve got left, so I wouldn’t want to put you out if you need an ear. What’s going on?”

  “Well. A lot actually. For the first time in a week, a lot is going on, and that feels pretty good. I think we might be able to actually stop this before you send us all into an icy oblivion,” Art said. The anger from ten minutes ago had disappeared. His computer still sat on the ground. His secretary had tried to come in and clean up, but he shooed her away. He had made the mess and he was going to be the one to pick it up. First though, he wanted to call Brand. All the anger had been misplaced. The anger was thinking about the past, thinking about the work they had put in, and how it had all been foiled by Art’s stupid fucking mistake. He overlooked the kid’s cellphone. Everyone else in his organization had their own, and yet, the kid was walking around talking on a private phone. That was in the past though. That was the reason they found nothing on Brand until he decided to call or blow up a building. Art understood the future wouldn’t resemble that. The future—once Jake returned and said, yes, the phone was being tampered with—would be completely different. The future would put Art in control of the situation.

  “That’s great,” Matthew whispered into the phone. “How are you going to do that?”

  Art couldn’t tell if Matthew was asleep or not; it sounded like he was walking a fine line.

  “I’m not sure that would be in my best interest. What are you up to? You sound tired. Your brain finally quit on you? Am I listening to your death rattle right now?”