Man of Wax (30 page)

“They amputated your own daughter’s finger,” I said. “God only knows what else they’ve done to her. Not to mention what they’ve done to your granddaughter.”
 

I leaned over and placed the barrel of the gun against his left kneecap.
 

“Beg me to stop, Howard. Beg me to stop like Jen begged them to stop.”
 

“Stop,” he said, or may have said through his pain—it was difficult to hear his voice over the wind and the machines beeping their rhythmic and innocuous noise and a new sound that should have been familiar but for some reason wasn’t.
 

I waited another moment, just watching his face, and then pulled the trigger again.
 

More screaming, more writhing on the bed, and still that new sound persisted, and after a few seconds I realized what it was.
 

A cordless phone lay on the table on the other side of Howard Abele’s bed. It kept ringing, and I knew who was calling and I didn’t want to speak to him but still I walked around the bed and picked up the phone, punched the talk button and placed the phone to my ear.
 

Simon said, “I figured you would come back to see Mr. Abele. It took me a moment to understand why you ditched the glasses, but then I remembered—there were only blanks in that gun. I’m actually surprised you figured it out. I’m guessing you came back now to finish the job?”
 

“I am finishing the job,” I said. “I’m doing to him exactly what you did to my family.”
 

“Your family—”
 

I disconnected the call, dropped the phone to the floor beside me.
 

“Do you want to play a game?” I asked the old man. “It will be fun.”
 

He didn’t answer me, still thrashing around in pain.
 

“Oh wait, that’s right,” I said, now turning away from him and stepping over Olivia Kemp’s body to inspect the machines surrounding his bed. “It’s not up to you whether or not you want to play the game. I’m the viewer, after all. It’s my decision and I want to be entertained.”
 

I followed the cords and found the one with the tube connected to it, the tube that was feeding Howard Abele his much needed oxygen. I started to reach for it but then something else caught my eye. A power strip on the floor, its little protection indicator light glowing red, all the outlets used up to keep these machines running.
 

The cordless phone I’d dropped on the floor started ringing again.
 

I ignored it and grabbed the power strip’s plug and then thought better of it, decided instead to press the red button glowing on the strip itself. The moment I hit it the red glow went dark and the machines stopped beeping.

“Here’s the object of the game,” I said, leaning close to Howard Abele so he could hear me. He was still crying and I had to slap his face a few times to get his attention. “It’s simple really, something anyone can do. Just press that button again so the machines start back up and keep what’s left of you alive. You do that and you win. You don’t and—well, you’re a smart guy. You know the nature of the beast, so to speak. I’m sure you can figure out how this system works.”
 

Howard Abele didn’t seem to hear me, instead focused on all the pain streaking through his body.
 

The phone continued ringing from its place on the floor. I stepped away from Howard Abele’s bed and picked it up.
 

The first thing Simon said to me was, “Don’t you want to save your family anymore?”
 

“My family’s already dead.” I walked to the door and turned around, just watched the old man twisting around on his bed. “The game’s over.”
 

“No, Ben, your family isn’t dead. And the game most certainly isn’t over. One last part and then it will be.”
 

“Are you
telling
me this? More Simon Says bullshit?”
 

“That portion of the game’s changed. This here has become much more ... well, entertaining.”
 

“Fuck you.” Still staring at Howard Abele, still watching him die. The little pain that had been in my shoulder was now gone. I felt nothing at that moment. Even the hope I’d been keeping alive in my heart and soul all this time had snuffed out. “They’re dead. I know they’re dead.”
 

“Oh really,” Simon said.
 

It sounded like he stepped away for a moment, then a new voice came on the line, Jen’s voice saying, “Ben? Oh God, Ben, is that you?” She sounded like she was about to cry, sounded like she was already crying. This was followed a couple seconds later by Casey’s “Daddy?” and I could actually see the tears in my little girl’s eyes, I could see them falling down her small and perfect face. “Daddy, please make the bad men stop.”
 

But then their voices were gone, followed by what may have been screaming, though it was impossible to tell for sure over the shrieking of Howard Abele and the wind. Then Simon was back, Simon who always had a grin in his voice, a grin on his imagined face, but who sounded completely and utterly serious right now as he asked:
 

“Do you want to see them again?”
 

I didn’t answer and continued watching Howard Abele.
 

“Well?” Simon said. “Do you?”
 

“Yes,” I whispered.
 

“Then follow directions like a good boy and you will. I know you don’t have the phone anymore—we traced it back to that off-ramp exit—but you still have the glasses, and that’s the only way we’re going to make this work. Remember, Ben, we’re friends now, and we trust each other. As long as you have the glasses on and I and everybody else can see where you are, that you’re coming in the right direction, then everything will be fine.”
 

“And what”—I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry—“what direction is that?”
 

“California. Smith River. Right back here to the Paradise Motel. It’s where Jennifer and Casey are. It’s where they’ve been this entire time.”
 

Howard Abele had given up trying to reach for his knees, had given up pretty much everything and just lay there now, tears all over his face.
 

“You’re lying,” I said.
 

“Am I? Well that’s just something you’ve got to decide on your own, because it’s the only way this game is going to end. You’re going to come here with Carver. I want him too. He and I have some unfinished business to work out, especially after tonight. You and Carver, nobody else, and we’ll know if you try to fuck around.”
 

Simon then went on to give me directions. It was over two thousand miles, but as long as Carver and I kept driving nonstop we would make it without any trouble. Also, he said, they were going to call off that press conference the FBI was supposed to have regarding my escape. They were going to change the story a bit, say how I did in fact try to escape and got killed in the process. They were even going to give the Anonymous Bomber a name, create him an identity, so anyone recognizing the blurry image as Benjamin Anderson could stop wondering.
 

“And as an extra bonus,” Simon said, “we’ve been rerouting the 911 calls for the past fifteen minutes. Should give you some extra time, but not much, so let’s not waste it.”
 

“That’s impossible. You can’t ... you can’t be that powerful. You just can’t.”
 

“It’s not me, Ben. It’s Caesar. He has more power than you could ever imagine. And right now he wants this game to come to an end. So yes, Ben, for your sake, I certainly hope it’s possible, because as of this moment you have forty-eight hours.”
 

“And then”—I had to swallow again—“then I get my family back?”
 

On the bed, Howard Abele turned his head to look at me, beseeching with me with his eyes to help him.
 

“Of course,” Simon said. “Only remember when I asked you before who you loved more, your wife or your daughter? I expect to have an answer by the time you arrive.”
 

Howard Abele, still staring at me with tears in his eyes, mouthed something I couldn’t make out.
 

“Why?” I asked, my voice cracking on that one simple word.
 

“Isn’t that obvious by now? Because when you get here you’re going to have to tell me which one you love more. The other one? Well, the other one you’re going to kill.”

Part Three

PARADISE LOST

53

It’s impossible to guess how many viewers there were at the beginning. Besides Howard Abele and all the rest of the Inner Circle, how many others had paid thousands and thousands of dollars to be given a direct link to watch my family’s suffering? One hundred? One thousand? Had they watched it all at home, in their dens while their wives or husbands read or watched TV or cooked in the kitchen, while their children did their homework or talked on the phone with their friends? Or maybe they’d logged onto this at work, knowing that their company’s firewall would never pick it up because this was a site that shouldn’t exist, a site that didn’t exist, and anybody catching wind of it wouldn’t find anything wrong if they were to try to look it up as well. Maybe they took their laptops and holed up in some hotel, where room service would bring them whatever they wanted. They put
DO
NOT
DISTURB
signs on the doors and logged onto the Internet and just watched and enjoyed the show while at the same time sneaking drinks from the mini-bar.

But once the Man of Wax supposedly shot a cop in Chicago and then was connected with an explosion down in Ryder, Illinois, how many more signed up? Those in the Inner Circle probably didn’t have time—or the money—to spend watching every game that took place, but there was just something about the Anonymous Bomber that was familiar to them, something that they had a hunch about, and so they contacted whoever it was they needed to contact. And what were they told? Sorry, as it always is with supply and demand, the normal price has gone up considerably, would you like to hear the new rates?
 

As my one-eyed escort—or Jerry, or the fucking idiot, whichever you prefer—had said, this had turned out to be one hell of a game.
 

So how many people across the country, across the globe, were glued to their computer screens when I raised the revolver loaded with blanks and started firing at Howard Abele’s head, I can’t say. Just as I can’t say how many people there were when I finally left Howard Abele’s room and walked back through the hallways, stepping over bodies and plaster and glass. As the Abele Mansion hadn’t been a known destination in the Man of Wax’s game, there hadn’t been any cameras around, no options to switch to a certain page to get a different viewpoint.
 

No, the only point of view was the one I saw, and for roughly fifteen minutes that point of view stayed constant. Staring at what was half a blank wall, half the stairs leading up to the second floor. Even now I wonder about those people logging onto the game right when that happened, having heard so many good things but then being forced to just stare at the wall and stairs. I wished I could have kept it like that, kept them watching it for hours (which no doubt a good majority of them would have done), but I couldn’t, not after my deadline of two days.
 

And so this is what you would have seen had you been one of those wealthy and powerful people in the world who had the dark desire to watch other people suffer; this is what you would have seen in the early hours of Sunday morning:
 

The stationary view of the wall and stairs shifting all of a sudden as the glasses are placed back on my face. Then the steady and constant bounce as I go looking for Carver.
 

I find him in the kitchen and explain to him about Simon, about the final part of the game, and how Simon wants him to come along too, demands it actually. And Carver, with the middle section of his body wrapped up, shakes his head, tells me no way. We argue about this for a little bit, the sound actually pretty good, the microphone in the front corner of the glasses picking up everything.
 

But Carver relents. He understands there is no choice in the matter. I’m going back to Smith River, California, regardless of what he does, and maybe Carver knows this and feels some kind of pity. He patches up my shoulder and then we’re headed outside. The wind is still cold but not as strong, not as brutal, as before. We walk down the long drive, listening to the silence around us. Just as Simon promised, the 911 calls are being rerouted, giving us the extra time we need.
 

We decide to take the sedan. I wait in it while Carver explains the situation to the rest of the men, how they’re not supposed to follow. Minutes later Carver’s in the car, doesn’t say a word, and we pull away.
 

We leave Ronny and David and Bronson and Drew (as well as Larry, dead) behind. We leave Howard Abele and Olivia Kemp and whoever else invaded the mansion behind. We leave everything behind, saying nothing to each other, just driving in silence.
 

The sun is already rising by the time we cross the Mississippi and enter Iowa, but it’s to our backs, chasing us like we’re in a race. I’m the first one to drift off, slumped over in my seat, not reclining back because Simon wants to constantly see where we’re going, not the sedan’s ceiling.
 

Continuous highway, cars and trucks and more cars. Buildings and billboards and lights and more buildings. Clouds in the sky, the sun as it passes over us, more clouds.