TO WAKE THE DEAD Page 8

  Not that they would.

  This is just between me and you two goats, he thought to himself, grinning. I won’t tell if you don’t. Scaring each other in the middle of the night, huh? What a trio of saps.

  Easier in his mind now, he kept on walking, this time with a hand casually in his pocket and sometimes whistling a few notes from a song. The air was still. There wasn’t a sound, and the moon still burned with a bright cold witch-fire in the sky.

  The road leveled out. Soon the boulders were gone, and then it was scrubby bushes. Half a mile after that came the trees which crept closer to the road, shutting it in until only a split full of stars showed over head.

  He glanced at his watch. 1 A.M. His parents might have woken up and realized he wasn’t at home. But they treated him like a mature adult. They trusted he wouldn’t do anything stupid. So maybe they wouldn’t worry yet. He hoped not.

  His feet whispered across the road surface. He was maybe averaging four miles an hour. He guessed eight miles separated him from home. If he kept up this speed, then two hours from now would see him slipping his key into the front door.

  That didn’t seem so bad.

  Ed Lake heard the whisper of leaves.

  Then he heard another whispery sound.

  This was someone breathing.

  Someone close by.

  He sensed a presence right behind him.

  Turning, he saw a shadow there.

  The shadow swung an object.

  One that hurt far more than the hurt of being dumped by Janey.

  He just had time to clutch the side of his head before the shadows swamped him.

  Ed Lake opened his eyes. There were bars. Bars going up and down with thinner bars running from left to right. It looked like a fisherman’s net made out of steel.

  The first phrase that went though his mind was Holy shit!

  He reached out to touch the bars. Bad move. Any kind of movement made his head hurt like hell. He touched his temple. Felt crisped stuff there. It matted his hair.

  Dried blood. He figured that much.

  This time he kept his head still and allowed his eyes to do all the moving.

  Still hurt his head, though.

  But he persisted.

  Through the bars he saw white painted walls. Light came from fluorescent strips in the ceiling. So he was in a room.

  In a cage.

  Holy shit. I’ve been knocked unconscious and dumped in a freaking cage. Now what?

  His mouth tasted like a hog had crapped in it. His watch was gone from his wrist… mugged… but why put me in a cage?

  Fresh meat for the tiger.

  This thought made Ed sit up. His mind spiraled. He wanted to vomit. The pain rocketed through his skull… but he had to check.

  See that there weren’t any hungry tigers in the cage with him.

  Already he could feel their teeth in him. Chomping down. Tearing. Ripping. The pain…

  “Yeee-ow! Take it easy.”

  “What?”

  “You got yourself a nice whacko on the skull there, buddy. You should lie down for a while.”

  “W-what’d y… ya do that for?” Ed’s words came stuttering out as his head spun.

  “I ain’t done nothing, buddy. I’m just your roomie.”

  “Where…”

  “Here. Next pen to yours.”

  Ed took a deep breath. The room slowed its spinning. His eyes focused and he found himself looking through the bars of the cage at an another cage identical to his. Eight by four, maybe six feet high. Steel bars. Objects dangled by cords from the roof bars. His eyes located its occupant.

  A guy of around twenty with blue eyes and blond dreadlocks grinned back at him. The guy lay on his side, one elbow propping him up. There was a match gripped between his teeth.

  The blond guy lay grinning at Ed for a while, and then he said, “Well, buddy… welcome to the beast house.”

  “Beast house?”

  “We’re the beasts.”

  “I don’t understand.” His head ached so much he wanted to vomit. “Beast house?”

  The blond guy leisurely slapped the bars of his cage. “We’re in the pens, buddy, so we must be the beasts.”

  “Shit.”

  “Head sore?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.” Groaning, he sat up.

  “It’ll pass.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did for me.” He used his fist to mimic a clubbing motion against his blond head. “I got double-whacko. Here and here.” He pointed. “They had to stitch my scalp. You got off lightly, pal.”

  “Yeah, feels like it.” He retched.

  “Clean it up with toilet tissue and dump it in the bowl.”

  “Huh?”

  “The plastic bowl there in the corner of your penthouse suite, sir. That’s the bathroom facility.”

  “You said ‘they had to stitch my scalp.’ Who are they?”

  The blond guy didn’t answer. “Speak a little lower. Sleeping Beauty gets grumpy if you wake her.”

  Still dazed, Ed looked around. Another cage around three feet away from the end of the one he occupied was separated by a walkway of sorts. Angling his head, he saw a mound beneath a red blanket. A hand attached to a slender wrist protruded. From one end coils of heavy red hair spilled over the foam mattress and onto the floor. Ed looked at the contours of the blanket, guessed there was a curving hip under there that shaped it.

  Girl, he told himself. A girl with exotic red hair.

  I wonder what she looks like…

  He pulled back from his own curiosity.

  Inappropriate or what, Eddie? You’re in a cage. It’s not the time to think woman, it’s time to think out!

  “Don’t call me Eddie,” he murmured to himself.

  “What’s that you say, buddy?”

  Ed looked at the blond dreadlocks. They reached down the guy’s back to his rump. Dazed, Ed shook his head.

  “Nothing.”

  The guy gave an easy wave. “The name’s Marco. You?”

  “Ed Lake.”

  “Yo, Eddie. Welcome aboard.”

  With a groan, Ed lay down on the foam mattress. His head ached.

  “You best get some rest while you can, Eddie boy,” Marco told him.

  “Why? We going somewhere?”

  “Nope.” The guy grinned. “But you’re sure to get a visitor soon.”

  “What kind of visitor?” Ed didn’t like the sound of that.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So rest. Get your strength back.” The grin widened. “Believe me, you’re gonna need it. You’re gonna need every drop.” The last sentence amused the guy and he began to chuckle.

  He was still chuckling when the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The dog howled at the moon. Every night the old man had come to the parking lot, called softly, “George… where are you, boy? Here, George. See what I’ve got for you.” The dog would speed out of the shadows across the lot, by the single car that still carried the odor of the old man, and to the foot of the fire-escape steps.

  There the old man would open up a bag. Inside would be chop bones, the remains of cold cuts, or even raw hamburger. This had gone on longer than the dog could remember.

  Night after night. The old man smelling of strange odors like ancient bones. The man would feed him there at the back of the museum, make a fuss over him. But he wasn’t there tonight. There were more lights in the building than usual. The dog’s keen ears picked up voices where there were usually none. Even though the big brown dog could clearly make out the voices of the strangers, he couldn’t understand the words.

  Certainly none of the all-important words in his vocabulary.

  George. Food. Walk. Play. Here boy. Good boy. Roll over.

  Instead:

  “They’re paying us to do what?”

  “See that no one makes off with some old dame in the coffin.
”

  “Jesus H… Amara? That her name?”

  “Search me.”

  “This place is like a tomb anyway.”

  “Say that again. Those stone statues are creeping me out.”

  “Did you know the guy?”

  “Who?”

  “Guy who took a dive down the stairs.”

  “Uh-huh, Barney Quinn.”

  “Wasn’t he on the force?”

  “Sure, but they kicked his sorry butt out.”

  “So, what’d he do?”

  “Got careless.”

  “What? Poked the police chief’s wife?”

  “Nah, not even the chief’d do a thing like that.”

  “That ugly?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “What’d this Quinn do then?”

  “Accepted a little cash here and there in return for turning a blind eye to some whorehouses.”

  “Hard darts.”

  “Could happen to anyone.”

  “Whoa, Beckerman, sounds close to home.”

  “None of your business. Go check on the Greek room again.”

  “I was only—”

  “Yeah, only poking your great bazoo in deep where it doesn’t belong.”

  Tilting his head to one side, the dog out in the lot heard the voices recede with the footsteps. Two men walking in the building. One small and thin. One thickset and limping.

  The dog padded up to the rear doors, put his nose to the crack between door and jamb, and sniffed hard, pulling in the cool air from inside the big stone pile into his sensitive nostrils. George smelt the musty odors again. Ancient bones. Stone and wood artifacts from faraway places. Far-away times. Handled by many different hands.

  George smelt the two strangers patrolling the museum in place of his old friend who’d appear every night with food. The strangers smelt of the tortillas they’d wolfed down before the start of the shift. The dog even smelt the scent of woman on the fingers of one of them where he’d rolled his wife’s sister during a little afternoon delight.

  George’s sense of smell was keen, picking up the scent of three-thousand-year-old goatskin on which was inscribed verses from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. His hearing was phenomenal. Heard the tick of the clock in Blumgard’s office. Heard the two guards’ footsteps on the upper floor. His eyesight was good too, far better than humans allowed. He could see the flutter of tiny moths against lighted windows three stories above his own shaggy brown head.

  But there was more.

  Much more.

  A sense humans could only guess at.

  Not identify. Not prove.

  George possessed a sixth sense. Inside the building he sensed something stir. Something dark. Something terrible. Something vengeful. Something with the capacity to terrify, maim. Kill.

  He sensed it stir again. Sensed dark purpose. He sensed it ready to move again soon.

  The dog threw back his head and howled at the cold moon.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Don’t waste your time. They’re set in concrete.”

  Ed Lake glanced up at Marco as the blond-haired man shook his head.

  “They’re set in tight. The doors are double-padlocked. All the bars are welded together—”

  Ed heaved at a bar.

  “—so you won’t be able to even bend one.”

  Damn. The man was right. But it wouldn’t stop Ed from trying.

  After a while Marco shook his head. “You should listen to me.”

  “Why? I want out, don’t you?”

  “You should save your strength like I told you, buddy. You’re going to need it.”

  Ed tried kicking at the bars, but whoever had dumped him here had removed his shoes. All he did was hurt his toes. The bars didn’t budge.

  “Save your strength,” Marco repeated, then sat down with his back to Ed.

  In frustration Ed slammed the cage door with his hand. It made a ringing sound. Fuming, he stood for a moment, but could only straighten so far because of the height of the cage ceiling. He had to stoop. His back began to ache. The pain started in his head again too, where he’d been struck.

  Ed took stock.

  I was walking along the woodland road. Someone slugged me. Out cold, I was brought to the building, dumped in the cage. When I came to I talked to my roomie, who looks a little kooky to me. Then the lights went out. I slept. I woke hours later when the lights came back on. How many hours, I don’t know.

  So, I’m looking at the cage again. It’s around eight feet by four. Six high. Welded steel bars set in concrete. Sawdust bowl for a toilet. Foam mattress is a bed. Otherwise, bare as a rhino’s butt. Hanging from cords tied to the cage roof bars are your fundamental toilet items: hairbrush, toothbrush, mirror (the kid’s kind made from harm-free plastic); also, there’s a water bottle (also plastic), mouthwash, deodorant, talcum powder, a facecloth, and a Bible.

  All those items tied to the cords made Ed think of fruit hanging on vines.

  When he crossed the cage he had to push them aside, so he left a path of toiletries and the Holy Bible swinging backward and forwards.

  He looked up. A narrow walkway with a handrail ran around the wall some six feet off the ground. That would allow a person to simply step from the walkway onto the roof of the cage.

  The cage ceiling was strange as well.

  Half of it, where there were no bars, was clear Perspex. Very thick.

  Certainly couldn’t put my fist through it. Probably bulletproof.

  “Wasting your time, Eddie… no way out.”

  “At least I’m trying, Marco.”

  “Your funeral, bud.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Should save your strength.”

  “Why?”

  “S’ gonna be put to the test soon.”

  “How?”

  Marco shrugged and went back to examining the end of the match he chewed.

  “What’s going to happen, Marco?”

  “You don’t listen to my advice, bud, so why should I waste my breath?”

  Restless, Ed examined the cage again. He’d not noticed earlier, but there was a section of false Perspex ceiling. This lay just a few inches beneath the roof proper of the cage. This chunk of Perspex was maybe two inches thick, seven feet long, and just over two wide. It was suspended from the cage roof by what looked like a substantial bolt in each corner. Looking at them more closely, he saw something like windlasses connected to each bolt. The windlass mechanism sat on top of the cage roof. He recalled the windlasses he’d seen on his uncle’s sailboat. You turned the handle to raise and lower the mainsail.

  “Hey… hey, Marco can this section of Perspex be raised and lowered by turning the handles.”

  “That’s what you figure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You figure right, Eddie.”

  “And what’s this aperture in the roof of the cage?”

  “Figure it out.”

  “I’m asking you, Marco.”

  Marco said nothing, but sat with his back to Ed, his spine up against the cage bars.

  “Marco… Marco?”

  Marco didn’t reply.

  Just kept that broad back of his turned to Ed.

  “Marco, why won’t you answer? Marco?”

  “He won’t answer because he’s saving his strength. He might be next.”

  Ed turned to see who spoke. He saw that in the next cage a figure had partly emerged from the red blanket. He found himself looking at a high-cheekboned face. Green eyes gleamed at him, while tumbling down over shoulders—bare shoulders—was thick red hair.

  Ed caught his breath. Sheesh, the woman was beautiful.

  Around twenty-five years of age, he guessed. There was something about the firm shape of her lips that suggested experience. The directness of her gaze reinforced that line of thought.

  She stared back at him. “You ask questions. You rattle the bars of the cage. You don’t give anyone a chance to get some shut-eye, do you?”

&nb
sp; “Who are you?”

  “More questions.”

  “You’d be the same. I—I mean what are we doing here? Who brought us here? What—”

  She touched her lips. “Shh. You should listen to Marco. Get some rest.”

  “But why? What’s—”

  “Why, what, when? There you go again.”

  “But what is—”

  “Listen to me. It could be your turn next. You’ll need your strength.”

  She lay there raised up on one elbow, the blanket covering her.

  Ed walked to the end of the cage that was nearest to hers, squatted down. The eyes burned back into his: beads of green ice. “But how long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Hard to tell. We’ve no way of telling the time. Can’t tell night from day.”

  “But you’ve seen who’s holding you here?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Jesus.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “This is kidnapping. They can’t do this.”

  “I know.” She spoke casually, almost disdainfully. “The cops would arrest, the courts would convict. But until they’re caught, what’re we gonna do?”

  Marco spoke up. “What we gonna do? I’ll tell you what we have to do. Play their game the way they want it played, otherwise we’re dead.” He lay down on the mattress, covered himself with a blanket.

  “Marco’s right,” she said. “Play along.”

  She moved on the mattress to get comfortable. The blanket slipped down exposing the top of her breast. Ed saw the smooth, milk-white mound. Found himself trying to catch a glimpse of nipple. She looked great. Even in this deepest of deep crocks of shit, he saw that. She saw Ed’s interest. He blushed, looked back up into her face. Her eyes searched his, appraising him.

  “You ever acted in a play?” she asked.

  Strange thing to ask in a situation like this.

  “Ever been in play?”

  He nodded. “Dracula. We staged it in school last year.”

  “Good. If you can act you’ve got a chance to survive when it’s your turn.”

  “Chance to survive? Why? What’s going to happen?”

  “Questions again. We’re not here as schoolteachers. We’re victims. Do you understand that? We’re—”

  “Please tell me,” he said. “If I’m going to get through whatever this is, I need your help.”