Blood in the Water (Kairos) (6 page)

2000

The scream echoed around the empty barn.  The man who had released the unholy screech was dangling from one of the beams. His wrists had been tied behind his back and then a length of rope looped around those bonds and then thrown over a beam so that the body could be hoisted up and down at will.  Currently, as the man was hoisted up, his shoulders were slowly dislocating under his own weight.  That in itself was painful enough, but he’d stopped screaming about that pain long ago.  Or maybe he was still screaming about it, but the fact that he was missing some fairly important facial features which now lay in a pitiful bloody pile in front of him was probably what he was screaming about now.  He was definitely screaming about the fact that the man with the big knife was getting closer again.

“See now, Paul, if they’d’ve taught this shit in history class you’d’ve gone to school.”

Paul moved around the body so he could see the area that Maguire was going to work on next.  He didn’t actually need to respond.  Maguire was often quite conversational when he was working someone over, but quite happy for the conversation to be one-sided, especially if he was in lecture mode.

“According to the books, they used to take the eyelids fairly early on.  Me, I prefer not to.   It’s up to you.  Either it’s bad ‘cause you can’t see what’s coming, or it’s bad ‘cause you can.  Do whatever you think works.”

Maguire brought his knife up and carefully sliced around the man’s left ear until he had cut it away from the skull.  The blood flowed freely from the wound over the man’s neck and chest as the ear was dropped onto the pile to join the right ear, the nose and a pair of lips.  The first couple of pieces had sent up little puffs of dust when they landed.  Subsequent pieces had made more of a wet splat as they’d hit the ground.  The man’s body odor was strong and rank, completely eclipsing the dry, dusty smell of the long-disused structure.

“Can’t believe the fucker’s still screaming after the lips.  That must sting some.  Anyway, I’m fuckin’ tired of this shrieking shit.  Hold his mouth open for me.”

The man’s chin was slippery with gore from the gaping nasal cavity and the open flesh around his exposed teeth and gums.  Paul struggled a little to get a good grip.  Eventually he gave up trying to squeeze the jaw bones open and pried his fingers between the man’s teeth, pulling the upper and lower jaws apart.  The man’s struggling increased, and two wet pops announced the full dislocation of both his shoulders.  The weakened body was no match for Paul’s strength, though.  Paul hadn’t been small since well before his sixteenth year; now he was positively massive.  Thanks to a brief and foolish fling with steroids, he had mass that he couldn’t lose; he was just a little less insanely ripped and a lot less irritable since he’d stopped the shots.  At six foot six inches and still around two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, he towered over just about everybody he’d ever met.

Maguire moved in with the knife.  The tongue plopped onto the heap on the floor and the man’s screams became throat-tearing grunts and squeals.  It was a gruesome sight, no doubt.  Paul thought that maybe he should feel sick at the sight of the meaningless, mewling lump of flesh that they’d reduced a fellow human being to, but he didn’t.  They were pulling him apart systematically.  To Paul’s mind, it was a little like working on an engine without having drained the oil first, but instead of fixing it, they were breaking it.  It had all the relevance to Paul of taking a carburetor apart.   Maybe that made him a psychopath or something.  He didn’t give a flying fuck.  He loved his brothers; he’d lay down his life for them. He figured that made him human enough. 

That’s why they were here in the first place.  The whimpering mess dangling in front of them had given information to some rivals.  Paul and his brothers had been expecting to ride to a location near the Mexican border to pick up a consignment of drugs and illegal immigrants, which they would transport to the border with Louisiana.  They’d been met by men wielding semi-automatics, who’d killed two of Paul’s friends and injured five others.  The death of the worthless shit in front of them was assured, but he was enduring this pain as a message to anyone else looking to make a fast buck by selling the club out.

Paul had started on his current path by begging a job in the garage owned by the Rabid Dogs MC when he’d finished his last stint in Juvie.  He’d done anything they’d asked, cleaned tools, fetched sandwiches, swept and mopped, anything.  He’d started prospecting with the club after his eighteenth birthday, along with his friend Charlie.  Charlie had moved to Louisiana with his dad before they patched in.  Paul had stayed.  Sure Charlie was his friend, but it didn’t mean he had to chase him across the state.  He was comfortable where he was.  He’d been awarded his full colors not long after he turned nineteen and the club had been his whole life since.

As a kid he’d wanted nothing more than freedom and control over his own life, to be just like Han Solo.  He’d found his Millennium Falcon in his Harley.  He could ride for days, only stopping to undertake basic bodily functions and to assuage the need to eat and sleep.  Riding felt like flying; it was the closest thing he knew to being weightless both metaphorically and physically.  Out on the road on his own he had no responsibilities, no cares, no worries, no stress.  With membership of the MC came responsibilities and duties, but since it was something that he’d chosen, Paul embraced it all with a joyful heart.

Maguire had taken on the role of tutor in the art of torture when it became apparent Paul didn’t balk at this kind of work like some of his weaker-stomached brothers.  Maguire might be nearing sixty, but he kept himself in excellent condition.  Only a loosening of the skin over his muscles gave any indication of his age, and that was hard to see past the ink that covered almost every inch of his body from his neck down.  Only his palms, the soles of his feet and his genitals were bare of art.  Maguire’s complete lack of inhibitions ensured his brothers were all far more aware than they wanted to be about the extent of his body art.  It seemed that sometimes he forgot that his tattoos weren’t actual clothes.

“The trick is not to go too fast, or too slow.  You wanna get the pace just right or the shock brought on by pain’ll kill ‘em.  It’ll kill ‘em anyway, but you want to be the one to decide when that happens and if you want to speed it up some.” 

As he was talking, Maguire added toes to the growing grisly pile.  “The trick with this bit is to get the tip of your knife in between the joints.  It’s easier than just hacking away and blunting your blade on the bone.”

The remnants of the human being swaying on the rope seemed to be cycling through stages of unconsciousness without fully coming to by the time Maguire had finished with its feet.  They couldn’t repeat the process with the hands as they were in an awkward spot, but from the dark, mottled purple color of the skin, it looked as though the restricted circulation was doing a dandy job without their help.

“We gonna speed this fella up?”

“Fuck no!  This little girl won’t last much longer, but he’s goin’ hard all the way.  Or not, as the case may be.  Move over, son.”

Paul stepped back to give Maguire room to start working the knife around the flaccid penis of the condemned man, who flinched back into almost full awareness.  The animal-like noises picked up in frequency and pitch, melding into one continual sound as the man’s crown jewels joined his facial features in the dust.  This was standard for Maguire’s method of instruction.  The first time he would show Paul how it was done.  The next time he would stand back and observe Paul as he put what he’d learned into practice. 

Blood flowed freely in feeble spurts from the three small arteries which were just visible, peeking from the newest wound.  Paul was fascinated by the different shades of red of the blood in the human body, from the vivid scarlet of arterial blood, to the deep crimson of the blood that came from veins to the black blood that signified liver damage.  The huge loss of that vital fluid caught up with the hunk of flesh that had once been a person.  A final breath rattled out from the disfigured mouth as the heart pumped itself empty.  Riding the wake of that last breath was the foul stench of the bowels releasing what little they hadn’t already given up.

Paul helped Maguire to wrap the body in a tarp, along with the excised bits and pieces.  It would be hauled into the boot of the stolen car waiting outside and then dumped on the edge of a small town near the border, where it would be found, but not for some hours.   The message would be loud and clear, or at least it would be once the body was identified.  Having loaded their macabre cargo, Paul and Maguire utilized the cold water that still trickled from a rusty tap in the barn to wash the worst of the blood away.  They’d been wearing gloves and none of the cuts that Maguire had made had resulted in any sort of spray.  Most of the mess had been spread by the thrashing of the body during the first few slices.  Once they’d delivered the body they planned to abandon the car and then find a cheap motel, the kind that dealt in anonymity, where they could rent a room for an hour, just long enough to wash up before calling the club to collect them.  All in all, Paul considered it a very satisfactory day’s work, considering it was his twenty-fifth birthday.

2007

Ashleigh didn’t recognize the woman staring back at her from the mirror.  The lady in the glass was beautiful.  Her reflection was so perfectly put together she looked like a china doll.  She looked cool, calm and collected.  Ashleigh felt like her heart was about to beat out of her chest, or at least it would if it could get past her ribs, which were almost painfully constricted by the tightly laced, fully boned corset of her wedding dress. 

The crystal-encrusted bodice caught the light and sparkled fiercely.  The layers of tulle that formed the princess-style skirt could have been spun from a fluffy white cloud.  Her golden hair had been arranged in a cluster of artful curls at the nape of her neck and studded with tiny silk flowers, with a few carefully placed ringlets left free to frame her face.  A silver and crystal tiara was nested in the curls, part of the elaborate construction of accessories which included a chapel-length veil.  Makeup had been shaded carefully to appear all but invisible, but it made her topaz blue eyes look larger and even more brilliant than normal.  Altogether the effect was fanciful and ethereal, something stolen from a book of fairy tales, something not of this world.

The person staring back at her from the mirror bore almost no relation to the person that stood in front of the glass, or at least Ashleigh didn’t think so.  She hadn’t wanted all of this pomp and ceremony.  After Matthew had proposed they’d discussed what they would like for their wedding.  She’d thought they had agreed on something small and intimate, immediate family and close friends.  That was not what was waiting for her.  Her mother-in-law and Aunt Dolly had descended with every bridal magazine known to man.  They’d inundated her with pictures and suggestions and samples.  She’d struggled to keep up with it all but had fought to keep to the ideal that she’d discussed with Matthew.  But then it had gathered momentum like a boulder rolling downhill, and Shirley and Dolly had started booking things without consulting Ashleigh.  The wedding had been arranged before she’d known it and there was no chance of canceling everything without appearing churlish and ungrateful.  Matthew hadn’t understood why she was so upset, as far as he was concerned she should have been grateful for the help, an opinion shared by her mother.  In the midst of the whirlwind of preparations for what should have been the happiest day of her life so far, she had felt unreachably alone.

The thought of all those people waiting patiently for her in the
First Baptist Church filled her stomach with frantic butterflies.  There were so many people, most of whom she hardly knew.  Everyone seemed to have been invited, at least on Matthew’s side, down to his cousin’s sister’s aunt.  Even her own family hardly seemed real today.  They’d unilaterally decided, or had been instructed, not to tarnish the ambience of the event.  None of the club members were wearing their kuttes; they were all in pressed trousers or at least dark jeans, polished boots and dress shirts.  They looked like neat, clean civilians but with more ink and facial hair.  She’d seen several of them during the morning and they’d never looked more uncomfortable, but no one had uttered a word of complaint.  It was just one more thing in a whole avalanche of details that she didn’t like.  She suspected Aunt Dolly had been behind it, but her father must have backed it up to some extent. 

It was all wrong.  They were her family; she loved them and saw no reason why they couldn’t be true to themselves, to what they were.  Matthew had known almost everything about her background before he’d proposed.  The smell of leather and motor oil at her wedding should have been inevitable, not a problem.  For better or worse she was a part of them and they were a part of her.  All this fuss and nonsense and prettying up of things seemed so pretentious, like she was starting her married life on a lie, and that feeling did not sit well with her.  The feeling of brittle illusion cast a black shadow over her day like a bad omen.

The only thing in the image before her that bore any link to the actual figure was the necklace; a simple silver Figaro chain that circled the base of her throat.  It had been a present from Jason on her sixteenth birthday.  He’d presented her with the black velvet box while they’d been sitting on his bed in the trailer he called home while his father was at the clubhouse continuing the drinking that the adults had all started at her party that night.  Her parents had thought she’d been tucked up safely in her own bed. In reality she’d spent the night in Jason’s, scrambling through her bedroom window in the early hours before they realized she’d been missing.

Now, at twenty-three, she was marrying her college sweetheart.  She and Matthew were supposed to be embarking on a long and happy life together, if Ashleigh could shake off this feeling of foreboding.  Once upon a time she had hoped that she’d be marrying Jason Palmer. But Jason wasn’t the person he used to be anymore, and he’d never be that person again.  He’d been out of the hospital a little over a year now.  He’d signed up to the Marine Corps straight out of high school, scant months before the attacks on the Twin Towers ensured he would see plenty of active duty.  He’d been on tour in Afghanistan when he’d received a head wound from part of a mortar round.  He’d been in a coma for months.  Even now his speech still slurred when he was anxious or angry and his mood swings were dizzying.  He’d almost overcome the weakness in his limbs and the balance problems, so much so that he was back on his Harley, but he wasn’t the young man she’d known and loved, although their friendship still ran deep.

Ashleigh shook herself physically as well as mentally.  The limo would be waiting; she’d have to get moving.  Today was a day for hope, for aspiration.  She should be looking forward, not back.  Today was the start of the plans that she and Matthew had made.  They had their house, they were doing well in their studies and careers and they intended that children would be part of their near future.  Just for today she’d paint a smile on her face, hold her head up high and do her best to enjoy it all.  She might even make it through without murdering Shirley and Aunt Dolly.  The only reason they weren’t hovering now with their instructions and chivvying guidance was that she’d been getting so flushed she was in danger of ruining her makeup, and the only thing that had calmed her down was emptying her parents’ house almost entirely of people.

She had been still and silent so long that the soft knock at the door made her jump.  It opened to reveal her father, but he pulled up short before he’d made it all the way into the room.

“It’s time, sweetheart.... Oh!  Oh, baby bird.  Oh, you are a sight.  You’re so beautiful.  I love you, darlin’.”

Ashleigh blushed at the expression of wonder on his face.  “I love you too, Daddy.”

Her daddy coughed, and she realized his eyes were wet.  “I’m so proud of you.  I’ve always been proud of you.  You haven’t always had it easy bein’ my daughter.  I know it was hard for you when I was in prison.  I know you didn’t have it easy at school.  I’m so goddamn proud you’ve come through all that and built a good life for yourself.”

Ashleigh didn’t really want to think about those dark times in her childhood, but now that he’d brought them up she couldn’t shove the emotions that came hand in hand with those memories back down.  Everything was too raw today, too near the surface, her hold on it all too tenuous for her not to let it all out.  The best she could do was to keep her eyes wide to try and stop the tears from smudging the mascara and eyeliner.

“I was so mad at you sometimes, Daddy...” 

Her father looked stricken.  “Baby bird...”

Ashleigh cut him off with a shake of her head, feeling the weighty pull of her pinned hair.  “No, it doesn’t matter now.  I never wanted you to know ‘cause I love you so much and I was so happy when you came home, but I was mad at you for a long time for leavin’ us.  It felt like that guy you hurt was worth more to you than us. That you were prepared to leave us all that time just to beat him up.  That really hurt me, Daddy.  It was so hard sometimes with those girls at school always sayin’ how you were a deadbeat and a criminal and I knew you weren’t an angel but I hated to hear them say that.  And they only ever wanted to come round to the house to be nosey and then they’d make fun afterwards.”

She felt the release of finally letting go of the pain of all those years, but doing so cut her like a knife as she knew that her words would bring agony.  Ashleigh had to stop to swallow the sobs that were building.  Her father, however, was letting his tears run freely down his face as he stepped over to her and folded her in his arms.  The effect of the embrace was lost a little by his attempts not to crush this delicate thing they’d dressed her up as and that made Ashleigh’s soul hurt just a little more.

“I never realized how much that hurt you, baby bird.”

“It’s fine, Daddy.  I got over it a long time ago.  At least once Mama and Aunt Dolly stopped tryin’ to force me to find friends that weren’t somethin’ to do with the club.  It’s fine.  I’m happier for not havin’ those sorts of friends, Daddy.  Tanya dropped out of high school when she got knocked up, and Melody married Thomas and spends her days gettin’ drunk on vodka and orange juice before lunch while everyone pretends they don’t know about it.  I’m better off bein’ me, Daddy. I never needed them and I’m better for not ever havin’ had them.

It took her father several attempts to be able to speak.  When he was finally able to force the words out, they were little more than a hoarse whisper.  “You’re so strong, baby bird.  You really do make me so proud.  I know I’ve not always done it right, but I’ve always tried to be the best daddy I could for you.”

Ashleigh had to pull away and scramble for a tissue.  She was in danger of walking down the aisle looking more like Alice Cooper than a radiant bride.  “You always have been, Daddy.  I’ve never not loved you.”

She handed her father a tissue as she sniffed and dabbed at her own eyes, trying in vain to save her makeup.  Shirley and Aunt Dolly would likely have a fainting fit when they saw her.  Her father was going to speak more, but the brash honk of the horn from the waiting limousine split the quiet.

“That’s our call.  We better go.”  Ashleigh made a few final dabs and tossed the crumbled, stained tissue into the wastebasket under the dresser. Her father, unable to speak, balled up his own tissue but shoved it into the pocket of his dress trousers.  He held out his crooked elbow and Ashleigh slipped her hand through it and, lifting her skirts with the other, allowed him to escort her out of the house to the beginning of a new life.