It was here. Out there somewhere. And he knew what he had heard earlier. It had been here all along. Waiting for him. Then he was blinded by light.
“ Don’t move.” The command was meant to be obeyed. “Stand, hands on your head, or die where you lay. Your choice.” The voice was thick with its German accent.
Jim stood, slowly, with his fingers laced on top of his head.
“ Come forward, toward the light.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Pain shot down his spine. His eyes were open but he was encased in black, unable to move. Paralysis was the first thought that struck him. The lights went on. He squinted against the intense white and his eyes gradually grew accustomed to it. The powerful light was directly overhead, its rays, reflecting off the bare white walls, showered the room.
The large clock on the opposite wall was the first thing that grabbed his attention. One-fifteen. He hoped it was 1:15 in the morning. Even so that left him less than forty-eight hours to find Donna.
He tried to get up and couldn’t. He dropped his chin to his chest, looked down the length of his body. He was naked, his arms spread down from his shoulders in an inverted vee and they were tied to the side of the bed. His legs made the same vee and were lashed to the bottom corners of the hospital bed. He was bound in the same way Donna had been earlier.
He tugged at his bonds, but they didn’t give. He was at his captor’s mercy. He remembered the feeling and he didn’t like it. His back was screaming. He had to fight for every breath. His head felt like it had been split open. His broken arm throbbed and itched under the cast. He was horribly thirsty and he had to piss, but none of this equaled the terror he felt at being confined again.
The door on the opposite side of the room burst open and one of the men in black walked in, dragging an IV stand. The man set it up by the side of the bed and grinned at Jim as he ripped the seal off the needle and held it up to his eyes, inspecting it. Apparently satisfied, he attached it to the plastic tube running off the clear bag.
“ I would have killed you last night, but Manfred wants you alive. He wants her to see you die before she burns. Great guy, don’t you think, Mr. Monday?” The man’s thick accent reminded Jim of all the concentration camp movies he had ever seen and he remained silent as the man slipped the needle into his left wrist.
“ Demerol and a little heroin, a special cocktail, to make you feel good and keep you quiet.” The man stayed in the room, watching until the drug started to work its magic. In minutes his back no longer hurt, his head felt fine, the itching stopped and he was beyond caring as he floated on a cloud of pleasure. The man in black could slice his leg off and he wouldn’t care.
“ I’ll see you in the morning. The lights are on a timer. They come on at 7:00 sharp.” The man turned off the lights and closed the door. Jim heard the sharp sound of a bolt clicking into place on the other side. He was locked in.
Overkill, he thought, because it was impossible for him to untie the ropes that bound him to the bed. And why would he want to? He felt pretty good right where he was. But there was a small part of him still resisting the drug, a part that remembered Donna and the danger she was in, a part that tried to fasten onto something the man in black had said, something that didn’t seem right, and then he drifted off, to sleep, and to dream.
But his dreams were not the drug induced dreams of well being and pleasure his captors counted on, instead they were dreams of concentration camps and terror. Even in sleep, he fought the drug, and in his tortured dreams he struggled with the problem. What did the man say that wasn’t right? He said something. A clue. He gave a clue. It was something for Jim to hang his mind on as he fought the drug and when the lights went on he was already awake and he knew what it was.
His name. The man knew his name.
And with the lights on he was able to study the room. As promised the clock said 7:00. His time was running out. He looked up at the clear bag and noticed it was still dripping the drug into his arm.
Movement. He spied movement, and he fastened his eyes on the far corner where the wall at the foot of the bed met the wall to his left. And on the ceiling, a blob of black. A blob of black that moved. It couldn’t be, but it was-a black widow.
It bounced up and down on its eight legs, a small black marble bouncing on the ceiling. Odd, he thought, black widows were native to the United States. What was one doing here, on a ceiling, indoors, in a warm room? They liked to be on the edge of things-in the dark, but near the light-in the dry, but near the damp. They were seldom seen and they seldom bothered anyone, but he had been bitten in the past and he couldn’t forget it as he watched the spider settle into the corner.
He had to piss like a race horse now, he wasn’t going to be able to hold it much longer.
“ Can anybody hear me?” he shouted. Nobody answered, nobody came. He shouted again and from the way the walls seemed to absorb the sound, he gathered the room was soundproofed. Since all the rooms in the front of the house had windows that opened onto the small ravine opposite, he figured that the room he was in, was built into the side of the hill. He could shout forever, nobody would hear.
He would hold it as long as possible, but if somebody didn’t come soon, he was going to piss himself. If the intention was to degrade him, it would fail, he had been degraded before, this was nothing.
More movement and he turned his head as something slid up the wall toward the spider. A small green gecko looking for lunch. The gecko stopped inches from the black spider and made a tiny sound, a kind of chattering laughter. The spider backed away.
The gecko moved forward an inch-and stopped. The spider backed an equal inch away-and stopped. The gecko moved up the corner toward the ceiling, but the spider held her ground. The gecko issued another chattering challenge, but its laughter had no affect on the spider, she still held her ground. The gecko inched closer and the spider jumped forward, attacking, but the gecko was a blur as it backed down the wall, the widow’s poison fangs missed by inches.
The gecko darted back, chattering and goading. It made no sense. The spider was no match for the reptile. It should have been over in an instant. Instead the gecko darted up the wall and on to the ceiling, coming close to the spider, then backing off. Jim didn’t understand, but the fight above captivated him and, as it drew closer, he found himself silently rooting for the spider.
When they reached the center of the ceiling, the spider backed up to the copper-colored light fixture, looking like she was going to make a final stand, and the gecko stopped, still chattering and snapping at it. The spider, with her back against the fixture, raised her front two legs and bared her deadly fangs, daring the gecko to come closer. The gecko remained only a sliver out of reach, like it was uncertain about its quarry, like it knew a head on rush could be fatal.
They stood facing each other, two lone soldiers locked in a fight to the death, each waiting for the other to make the mistake that would cost it its life. Jim wondered if the giant gecko with the shark’s teeth was hovering over Donna like the one above was hovering over the spider. Were they to be devoured like the black lady with her back against the light fixture? Was their fight as hopeless as hers? But the spider hadn’t given up yet, one second she was standing, back protected, fangs bared, facing her enemy, the next she was scooting around the light fixture, faster than Jim thought possible. The gecko took the bait and cautiously inched after her, but the spider had gone all the way around the fixture.
She came at the gecko’s back, front legs raised, but at the last instant the gecko darted across the ceiling. One second she was a breath away from victory, the next the gecko was five feet away. The spider moved back around the light fixture, like she thought she could hide from the monster that had been nipping at her legs, but the gecko was having none of it. It rushed the spider, then backed off, always dancing a whisker away from the deadly fangs, forcing her away from the fixture and back on her journey across the ceiling above. Jim watched fascinated and then he figured it out. The reptile was herding the spider the way a sheep dog herds sheep.