Mr. 8

Chapter 18: The Three Killers

Pain pulsed through his jaw like a constant electrical current. A sharp ache filled the entire left side of his face. But even worse was the sensation in his teeth. They refused to line up properly. Each time his mouth closed, the bottom teeth clicked against the top, sending a disturbing signal to his brain that screamed something was horribly wrong.

He wanted nothing more than to rub the soreness out of his face and to try and massage the muscles back into alignment, but his hands were tied tightly to the arms of the chair. The cord bit into his skin. His hands were icy and his fingertips tingled.

Denton was alone in the main room of the lodge. The gallery of victims swam in front of him as one giant blur. Without his glasses, everything beyond three feet faded into murk. He could make out the box lantern on Aikman Field and a photo of Maggie Biscamp, but familiarity had more to do with it than eyesight. The rest of the ghoulish collage was devoid of details. It was just the sort of sick display that in the movies every serial killer kept. Articles and maps were taped up alongside all manner of photographs. Some were clearly snipped from the newspaper. Others were glossy and reflected the light where they curled at the corners or appeared to have been printed from a computer. From time to time, he glanced at all those hazy faces. Were all eleven victims there? There were so many. Did they have several photos each or did their numbers far exceed what was known?

He had no idea where Eddie Radcliff and the other two had gone. Denton had gained consciousness briefly, while they were tying him to the old cane backed chair. But by the time he was fully awake, he was alone.

He wasn't sure if they were in another room or gone for good. The insidious thought that they'd left him there to die of hunger took hold in his brain. He tried to think rationally about it, but that only brought about the realization he would die of dehydration long before he would ever starve.

And with that thought, the dryness of his throat became unavoidable. He found himself swallowing involuntarily, even while he consciously tried not to. It seemed as if he needed to swallow more than he ever had to in his life. And each one was accompanied by a raspy pain that reminded him of his possible fate.

He needed water.

The urge to scream out for help became overpowering. But the lodge was too isolated for anyone to hear him, other than those boys. It didn't seem to be the smartest idea to yell out to a bunch of murderers. Of course, he hadn't limited himself to smart ideas lately.

Time dragged on, and the only noises were the occasional crackle of the fire and the wind outside. He was completely on his own.

The restraints were too thick to break and too tight to slip. Fighting against them only rubbed the skin on his wrists raw and bloody. He decided his only hope was to break the chair.

Lifting it off the ground by leaning forward, he strained against the ropes that lashed him to the legs of the chair, until he managed to get up onto his feet. He then slammed it back onto the floor.

After the fifth attempt, he gave up and added sore ankles and a jarred spine to his ever lengthening list of pains.

The chair may have been an antique, but it was solid.

Did Hoover sit here? he wondered, with a perverse sense of the absurd.

It was night outside the windows. How long had he been there? Fighting back tears, he tried not to think what Linda was going through wondering where he was. And what she would go through, when they found his burned corpse in some farmer's field.

What an idiot he was. This is what he got for playing the hero. He belonged behind a lectern, not out in the woods hunting killers.

His self-pity was interrupted by the sound of voices approaching the cabin. The front door opened and icy air gusted against the back of his neck. It made his spine arch reflexively, but there was something soothing about it at the same time. Until then, he hadn't noticed how warm and stuffy the wood fire had made the room.