Bad Thoughts (32 page)

      
“It was going to be similar. I was going to show up in your dream and tell you I was with your wife. I was going to give you an address. Same as what I’ve already done. Except the address was going to be for a young, sweet little coed and FBI Agent Swallow would be fervently waiting there for you. The reason he’d be waiting for you is because I’ve been visiting him in his dreams, telling him that you’d be killing this sweet, little girl next. Of course, by then, he’d also know the carving knife used on your redheaded bitch therapist came from your apartment.

      
“The whole case would be circumstantial, but you’d be found guilty of my murders. And you’d spend the rest of your life in prison, or at best, an insane asylum. And I’d be there every night, visiting you in your dreams.”

      
“Too bad the case against you broke,” Shannon said.

      
“Not really. Because what I’ve improvised is really much sweeter. Have you figured it out yet?”

      
Shannon didn’t answer. As his hands shifted, the rope pulled tighter around his fingers, driving the imaginary nails deeper into his bones. His body stiffened as the pain immobilized him.

      
A smugness twisted Winters’s small, bloodless lips. “I think you got it. Any questions before we get started?”

      
“Go to hell.”

      
“Come on. You must have some curiosity. Haven’t you at least wondered how I slip into your dreams?”

      
“Okay, I’ve wondered about that.”

      
“It’s because I’m a god. At least, spiritually. My body might bleed and break, just like Herbie’s did, but inside I’m a god. And tonight you are going to suffer my wrath like no one ever has.”

      
Shannon couldn’t keep from laughing. “A little full of ourselves, are we? You, a god? Jesus. You’re nothing but a freak.”

      
The skin around Winters’s mouth tightened and a light pink flushed his cheeks. He moved quickly out of his chair, slapping Shannon hard across the face with an open palm. The blow sent Shannon and his chair tumbling to the floor. Winters reached down and grabbed him by both his hair and his broken fingers and jerked him to his feet.

      
“Enough chitchat,” Winters whispered from behind. “We got a busy night ahead of us.”

      
Winters forced Shannon back to the kitchen and to the table Susan was tied to. Using the carving knife and holding Shannon’s broken fingers, Winters cut the rope tying Shannon’s hands together. He then twisted Shannon’s broken fingers until he heard an audible gasp, and then he slapped the knife’s handle into Shannon’s free hand.

      
“You know what you’re going to do,” Winters breathed into Shannon’s ear.

      
Shannon tried swinging the knife around, trying to get at Charlie Winters’s thick body, but Winters simply applied more pressure on the broken fingers until Shannon collapsed against the table, the side of his face resting on Susan’s stomach. He couldn’t help noticing how cold her skin felt. As he was pulled away from her, he saw the fear in her eyes, the wetness around her cheeks. Anger swelled up within him. He tried to swing the knife around and again was forced to collapse against the table.

      
“Is that the best you can do?” Winters asked. “Gawd, are you a weak, little shit.”

      
“I’m going to kill you,” Shannon breathed through the pain.

      
“Is that so?”

      
More pressure was applied to his injured fingers. The pain sucked the breath out of him. From behind he could hear a wheezing laugh ooze out of Winters. The pressure continued. The pain seemed to build on itself, becoming something unbearable.

      
Shannon looked into Susan’s eyes. He told her that no matter what was done to him, he would not hurt her. “And I won’t let this sack of human garbage hurt you, either.”

      
More wheezing laughter came from behind. The pressure increased.

      
“I would take the dish rag out of her mouth so the two of you could talk, but I’m afraid she would scream. Even though she’d know I’d have to kill her, she’d still scream. I don’t think she could help it. But you can talk, Billy Boy. Why don’t you tell her how my cousin had you whimpering like a baby and pissing in your pants?”

      
Winters raised the pressure a notch.

      
“Come on, Billy,” Winters breathed in his singsong voice. “You can do it.”

      
“I was thirteen at the time,” Shannon said, trying to keep his eyes level with Susan’s. It was a struggle, though, the pain forced him to look away. “My mother was already dead before I got home. They broke my fingers and tortured me. I don’t know how long it went on for. I don’t remember too much about it. Even at the time I don’t think I was fully conscious of what was happening. I think I was in shock. Now, it’s nothing but a blur in my mind.”

      
“I think you’re a liar,” Winters said. “I think you remember every little detail of what happened.”

      
More pressure. Constant, continuous. The imaginary nails driving deeper into his bones.

      
“One thing you didn’t lie about,” Winters said, “is that pain will make a weakling like you do anything. But you can stop it if you want.”

      
He gave the injured fingers a harder twist.

      
“All you have to do is cut her,” Winter said. “One drop of blood, that’s all. You cut her and show me a single drop of blood and I stop. After all, how much could a cut like that hurt her? I’m sure she’d want you to. I mean, trading all that pain for only a single drop of blood. You pick the spot, sport.”

      
“You killed Janice Rowley—”

      
“That’s right, bright boy.”

      
“You framed Roper.”

      
“Of course I did. Weak little shit. One little dream visit and he smothers himself. Come on, sport, show me the blood.”

      
The pressure continued. Winters’s singsong voice droned through it, mixing with it, intensifying it. Shannon’s hand shook as he held the knife against Susan’s thigh. A small cut was made, drawing blood.

      
The pressure stopped. “You broke your promise,” Winters said. Then to Susan, “He’s really quite a liar. I don’t know who he’s trying to fool with this gallantry crap. He doesn’t love you. The person he pines away for, who he dreams about every night, is his therapist. A real cute piece of meat, although a bit pale for my taste, and probably at this point a bit too stiff.”

      
“I’ll tell you what I do dream about,” Shannon forced through clenched teeth, “the way it felt cutting off your cousin’s head. It’s like I’m there again. Seeing him scared shitless, smelling him crap his pants. I shove the knife into his neck. And all I want is to do it again.”

      
“Now you know why I do what I do,” Winters said. He twisted Shannon’s injured fingers until the pain shot off like a fireball, firing deep into his brain. Then the red glare faded into blackness.

* * * * *

      
As Shannon regained consciousness, he heard Winters whispering things to him, his words slurred and nonsensical. After a while, he realized Winters wasn’t whispering but talking loud enough for Susan to hear. He was detailing what Shannon would have to do to stop the pain.

      
“You see,” Winters was saying, “you cut her after only ten minutes of pain. I can keep it going for hours, probably even for days. By then you’d be begging me to let you do these things to her. And in your heart you’ll want to do them. You’ll be dying to do them. So why go through all that when you know how it’s going to end up? We both know you’re nothing but a pissant weakling.”

      
Shannon shifted the knife so he was holding the blade and then flicked it over his shoulder. Winters dodged it and the knife clanked off the wall.

      
“You’re going to have to beg me to let you retrieve it,” Winters said.

      
The pressure was turned on. His fingers had swollen and the pain now was far worse than before. It seemed to fill him up, to push deep into his skull, hard against his eye sockets. Shannon begged to retrieve the knife. Winters ignored him. Shannon kept begging. It seemed an eternity before Winters moved him away from the table to where the knife had landed, all the while increasing the pressure. After Shannon picked it up, Winters moved him back to the table, back to Susan.

      
More pressure. Just as the room would start to slip sideways on him, just as his consciousness would start to fade into blackness, the pressure would be modulated down. Then it would be increased.

      
“If you want it stopped,” Winters said, “you’re going to have to push the knife into her throat. Not enough to kill her, or even do much damage, but enough to leave it bobbing up and down.”

      
Shannon looked at Susan and then at the knife’s blade. Through the pain he started laughing.

      
“I know what you’re thinking,” Winters whispered softly. “But it won’t do any good. If you kill yourself I’ll do horrible, horrible things to her. Far worse than what I’m asking of you.”

      
“That’s not what I’m thinking, shithead.”

      
His injured fingers were twisted violently. Consciousness flickered away for a heartbeat.

      
“Enlighten me,” Winters demanded.

      
“It was really pretty funny,” Shannon said, still laughing.

      
“Go on.”

      
“It was about, ha ha, you and your cousin.”

      
“Yes?”

      
“I was thinking how you must’ve been there while I cut his head off.”

      
Winters pushed his broken fingers back. Consciousness slipped away for a moment. Then Shannon started laughing again, harder than before.

      
“You were probably standing there watching. Ha ha, too chickenshit to do anything.”

      
“Your front door was being broken down. I thought the police were coming.”

      
“But they weren’t. It was just my neighbor. And you were too chickenshit to do anything with a thirteen-year-old boy with broken fingers and a forty-year-old tax accountant.”

      
“Shut up.”

      
Shannon’s broken fingers were jammed back. His consciousness faded for a moment. Then he was laughing again.

      
“What did you do, hide in the closet? Too chickenshit to move?”

      
“I said shut it!”

      
“What a fucking god. The god, ha ha, of chickenshit!”

      
There was a hard, violent twist. Then pain exploded through him. It seemed to blow him towards the ceiling. His body rising as if he were filled with helium. All pain was gone, all feeling was gone, any concern he had had dissipated. He looked down and saw both Winters and himself, or at least his body. It was like those other times with Herbie and his father. He had somehow detached himself from his body and was observing the events from a distance. It all seemed only vaguely interesting to him.

      
Charlie Winters’s face had become pinched. Thin, hostile lines pushed up from his forehead. He was straining as he used both hands to twist Shannon’s broken fingers. And Shannon’s own body just laughed harder through it all.

      
Then Winters stopped. He stood for a moment, confused, staring at what was in his hands, not quite comprehending that the two broken fingers had separated from Shannon’s body. Had, in fact, been ripped from the body.

* * * * *

      
It was as if Shannon were watching it all from outside of himself. Watching as his body turned and pushed the knife into Charlie Winters’s neck. Watching as the confusion drained out of Winters’s face, only to be replaced by wide-eyed disbelief and then fear.

      
From what seemed like through a haze, Shannon watched as Charlie Winters’s head was hacked from his body. Even as his head rolled free his lips kept moving, at least for a few seconds, screaming in panic the word “no” . . .

* * * * *

      
Shannon knew he was missing his two broken fingers. Even still, he could feel a throbbing ache from where they should’ve been. He stood up slowly and let go of the knife. Winters’s head had rolled a few feet from his body. Shannon tried not to look at it. He tried to stare straight ahead, trying hard not to even catch a glimpse of his mutilated hand.

      
He heard a muffled noise from behind. Susan’s small body was convulsing as she sobbed. Shannon stumbled over to her and removed the dish rag from her mouth.

      
“It’s going to be all right now,” he said, trying as hard as he ever had to smile.

      
“I’m so cold. Please get me something.”

      
“Sure. I’ll be right back.”

      
He made his way upstairs. A woman’s torn body lay in one of the bedrooms. He removed both the quilt and a sheet from the bed. The sheet was used to cover Winters’s head and body. He lay the quilt over Susan.

      
“Just another minute. I need to find something to cut these wires with.”

      
“Bill, you need to call an ambulance—”

      
“What else did he do to you?”

      
“Not for me, for you.”

      
“I’ll be okay. Just a minute . . .”