She thought of Mom, who’d given the same lecture to Kelly since she was four years old and skinned her knee.
“Be strong. You won’t help your situation by crying. Focus on what you need to do to fix it.”
Mom was right. I can cry about the pain. Or I can deal with it.
Kelly blew her nose on her sleeve, then asked Cam, “What situations?”
“What?”
“You said you’ve been in bad situations before.”
“It’s… tough to talk about.”
Kelly pressed her ear to the wall. “Please, Cam. I feel like I’m going to crack up. Tell me something hopeful.”
Cam didn’t answer.
“Please.”
“It happened when I was a kid. I was playing in an abandoned house up the street, with my best friend. A man, a drifter, he grabbed us. I was locked in a closet. My friend... the man hurt him. Bad. For a long time. It was so bad, he died. I heard everything. But I managed to get away. I escaped back then, Kelly. I’ll escape again. We both will.”
“That’s... awful, Cam.”
“Nietzsche said what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. I’m strong, Kelly. And I bet you are too. We’re going to get out of this.”
“Be quiet!”
It was a new voice. A woman. Coming from the opposite wall.
“Who’s there?” Kelly yelled.
“Shut up!” the woman said. “We aren’t allowed to talk! They do things to us when we talk!”
“Who are you?” Kelly asked. “What’s your name?”
There was a clanging noise, followed by the woman saying, “No! I wasn’t talking! I was telling them not to talk! Please don’t hurt me! I’m carrying a baby!”
It was followed by a scream so raw, so horrifying, that it was the single most frightening thing Kelly had ever heard in her life.
What could make someone scream like that?
Kelly hugged her knees and watched the door. Her nose was running again, but she didn’t dare sniffle. She wasn’t going to make even the slightest sound.
Please, don’t come in.
Please go away.
Please please please go away...
# # #
When Mal opened his eyes, he was lying naked on a cold, stainless steel table. He recognized the type from his cop days. It was sturdy, able to hold up to five hundred pounds, and had gutters along the edges to catch bodily fluids.
A mortician’s table.
He tried to sit up, but there was a strap around his neck. His wrists and ankles were similarly bound, heavy leather and tight buckles.
Mal remembered the shower, the bloody shampoo, then someone grabbing him.
What the hell is going on?
He looked around the room. It was small, but brightly lit, with a large florescent lamp overhead. Concrete walls. Two doors. A TV and VCR, resting unevenly on a cardboard box. They were plugged into an extension cord that ran along the dirt floor under the closest door.
Next to the table was a cart, piled high with medical instruments, none of which looked clean. Knives. Saws. Scalpels. Drill bits. Clamps. Needles. And a bowl of white powder.
“The time is ten fifty-two pm. We’ll begin the operation shortly.”
Mal followed the voice, saw a man standing at the foot of the table.
It’s an honest-to-Christ hunchback.
The hunchback wore a filthy white lab coat, his gnarled spine protruding up through a split in the back. The man also had clubbed feet, and one leg was several inches longer than the other, as judged by the high, clunky soles of his orthopedic shoes. His skull was bulbous, misshapen, hairless, and his cheekbones were uneven.
“What’s going on?” Mal said. “Who are you?”
The hunchback raised a camcorder to his chest, pointing it at Mal. He smiled, revealing several missing teeth. “I’m Jimmy, your surgeon. It appears the patient is awake. Let’s make sure.”
Jimmy raised a scalpel in his free hand, and before Mal could protest, the hunchback poked him hard in the thigh. The pain was instant and awful.
“Fuck! What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Indeed, the patient is awake, and responsive to stimulus.”
Jimmy pulled the scalpel free.
“Let me up, you crazy fucker!”
Jimmy set down the camcorder between Mal’s legs, then hobbled over to the television. It was an old CRT model with a pull knob for an on switch. Snow appeared on the screen, with the accompanying static hiss.
“I understand your concerns,” Jimmy said. “Surgery can be a traumatic experience. This tape should answer some of your questions.”
Jimmy pressed play on the VCR. After a few seconds of white noise and vertical flipping, an image came on.
It showed a woman, strapped to the very same table Mal was lying on.
Jimmy was using a hacksaw to cut off her leg.
Though the sound was turned low, the woman’s screaming stabbed Mal in the ears.
The scene cut to a different angle of a different person. An older man. He was begging, beating his bound fists on the table, while Jimmy had a hand inside his stomach cavity.
Next came a close-up of a woman’s breast, being filleted off as she thrashed.
“This next one is my favorite,” Jimmy said.
On the screen, he was using a spoon to pluck out a man’s eyeball.
“Did you hear the pop sound when it came out? I can rewind it if you didn’t.”
Mal squeezed his own eyes closed.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
“It’s not over yet!” Jimmy whined. He stuck Mal with the scalpel again. “Keep watching!”
Mal forced his eyes open, one nightmarish image after another searing itself onto his brain. Amputations. Organ removals. Procedures that weren’t even remotely medical, like the one involving a power sander.
“Dermabrasion,” Jimmy said. “It removes acne.”
“You’re insane,” Mal said. “You’re fucking insane.”
Jimmy switched off the TV, then stared over Mal’s head.
“You have a potty mouth, Mr. Deiter.”
Mal looked up, saw Eleanor had walked into the room. She was wearing a robe and a hairnet, a frown creasing her ugly face.
“Eleanor, what the hell—”
Eleanor clamped a hand over his mouth. “Any more foul language and I’ll have Jimmy sew your lips together. Understand?”
Mal saw she was serious, and he nodded. Eleanor let her eyes, and her hand, trail down his naked body.
“I see that you keep in shape,” she said, drawing a circle around his belly button with her finger. “That’s good.” Then her hand brushed over his penis, which was almost as awful as being stabbed with the scalpel.
Mal swallowed, biting back fear. “If you want money...”
“We have all the money we need, Mr. Deiter. But thank you for offering.”
“Applying styptic to control bleeding,” Jimmy said. Mal watched him take a pinch of white powder and press it into his thigh wounds.
He uttered, “Son of a...” but managed to stop himself before bitch came out.
“Self-control,” Eleanor said, tying a medical face mask across her mouth and nose. “I admire that in a man.”
“What do you want?” Mal said through gritted teeth.
“What I want, Mr. Deiter, is the same thing I’ve wanted for forty years, from the first time I felt my eldest child George kick inside my womb.” She leaned in closer. “I want one of my sons to become President of the United States.”