The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1) (29 page)

She hurried over to the weapons display.  There was a medium blade sword that looked sharp and strong enough to cut the thick ropes, so she took it off the wall.  As she hurried back to Janelle, she saw the post with the two rotted remains of the women in funeral clothes.  They were separated from the rest of the piece; they must have meant something even more personal to him.  Their positioning near the old trough and sink and the age of them compared to the Angels made her think they must have been part of his making.  Perhaps these were the two women he had been talking to in the house.  They were the ones who had, effectively, put him on the path that had culminated in this abomination.

Lara climbed the steps that led to the upper level to get next to the post where he had hung Janelle.

“Janelle, it’s Lara. I’m here. You’re gonna be alright,” she said, hearing the desperation in her voice and doubting herself.  She corrected her tone.  “I’m getting you out.  We’re going home.”

The ropes began to give under the razor sharp blade as Lara swung it repeatedly against the post.  Janelle slumped forward, slack and loose.  Lara dropped the sword and reached out to catch Janelle as she began to fall.  She got her arms round her just as the ropes fell away to the ground ten feet below and she thought she had her.  But Janelle’s limp body pulled Lara off balance and she lost her footing on the wooden steps and the sisters fell together, crashing to the hay strewn floor.

Lara got up, rolled Janelle gently over, saw her hair was matted to her face and specked with dirt from where they had fallen in the dirt.

“Janelle, it’s me.  Open your eyes.  It’s Lara.”

Janelle moved, her eyes struggling to open.

“That’s it, open your eyes.  Come on.  I’m here. You’re safe.  Open your eyes.”

Janelle’s eyes slowly opened, staring up at the black roof of the barn.  She moaned softly, dehydration having dried her throat out.  Lara wondered how he had kept these Angels alive for so long, barely inches away from death.  He would have had to have some system to feed them, giving them just enough to keep them alive.  Perhaps he had hand fed each of them.   Janelle’s eyes drifted down to the dirt floor and she saw what looked like a lawn sprinkler fixed in the earth.  She looked around and saw more of them around the area.  He had irrigated his Angels. 

Janelle looked confused, her eyes clouded from the enduring pain she had gone through.  She was in better shape than the other Angels because they had been captives longer.  Janelle was still healthy in comparison but she was exhausted, starved and likely about to go in to shock.

“Hey, stay with me.  You’re okay.  You’re fine.  I’ve got you.  Can you move?”

“Lara…” Janelle croaked and her mouth began to tease a smile of happiness.  Her eyes began to focus and find life again.

“I need you to move.  You have to get up. Now.”

Lara stood and helped Janelle up by the arms, pulling her to her feet.  She wondered if he had kept them drugged and fed them vitamins and nutrients intravenously to keep them in a docile state.  As she wondered how he had kept them there her mind snapped back to the website and she looked over to the walls and saw the CCTV cameras. 

Then she knew. 

The whole thing was an exhibition.  Nothing more than a living, breathing house of horror.  Guillotine’s version.  His art. This was the place that had made him and now he had taken it back, controlling it, doling out the pain on the world the way it had been doled out on him.  Only now he was in control.   This was his masterpiece, to take control and be in charge. He would never understand that whatever had happened to him in here was still controlling him.  He would be blind to that.  In his mind, he wanted the world to know what had happened in here and never forget it, just as he never could, even though now, however long ago it was, he was still under its control.  Lara’s eyes flicked back to the two corpses on the pole by the weapons array.  They were the key, the seeds from which his evil had grown and thrived.

Then she remembered he was still somewhere inside.  Locked in with them.  And then she heard the scream.

Chapter Sixty Two

He found Claude cowering in the far corner of the upper level.  The little man was clutching his shoulder and sniveling like a child.  Guillotine peered down at him like an elephant might stare at an ant.

“Please…” Claude begged.

Guillotine reached down and dragged the man out of his hiding place and threw him in to the hay, Claude screaming as he was back under the red glowing light.  He rolled to a stop under a cage that hung from chains secured to a support beam high above in the dark of the roof.  He looked up and saw a pair of arms reach out desperately for some kind of solace or hope of rescue.  Somebody was in there, another captive like himself.  Only he wished he was up there now in that cage, away from Guillotine, who approached him with the pike in his hand and a gleam in his eye.

“Oh god…” Claude uttered.  He turned and began to crawl to the edge of the upper level.  He saw the long steel door that had Heaven on the other side.  The way out.  He had to get there.  Whatever sense of survival he had, it was kicking in now and he knew his only way out was to get back outside. He pulled himself to the edge of the platform and looked down and saw a woman down there, one of the Angels next to her, helping her over the dirt and hay to the door, to his escape route.  This shocked him in to stopping for a second.  A second too long.

Sharp searing pain shot up from his thigh as Guillotine pinned the pike through his leg, nailing him to the ground.  He screamed and saw the woman turn and look up at him.  He was crying now in desperation, his own arms reached out to plead for help like that poor Angel in the cage above him.

“Help me…” he said to her.  But the woman kept moving, taking the Angel with her towards the door.

Guillotine leaned down and took Claude’s face in his hands, using his thumbs to push his eyes back in to their sockets.  He screamed as Guillotine gouged his eyes, feeling a warm thick liquid running out of the sockets and down his cheeks.  The noise he made sounded like none he had ever heard before as Guillotine took him.

Then Guillotine looked up and saw Lara pulling Janelle to the door, headed for the lever that would open the shutters and release them from his realm.

“NOOOOOO!!!” he screamed, standing up, pointing as though power would flash from his fingers and pin them both to the wall and keep them here with him for eternity.  Claude was shuddering at his feet, twitching as his body shut down.  Guillotine pulled the pike from the little man’s leg and lanced it down through his neck, severing the spinal chord and putting the man finally out of his misery.  It was so satisfying, like a rich decadent desert that he was trying to savor- but Lara McBride was stealing his moment of victory.  He felt a fireball of anger burst through him as he saw Lara walking Janelle over to the door.  He leapt from the upper platform, arcing out in to the air, screaming a high pitched yell he didn’t even know he was capable of, landing on the other side of the pit that had been directly below him.  He rolled across the dirt and was on his feet, sprinting to the two sisters in the red gloom.

Lara heard him coming and pulled the lever on the wall, opening the shutters with a clang.  He was approaching fast, shrieking like a demon, trying to keep them in this personal hell he had created for himself and the world.  She pulled the pistol from her belt and fired.  Guillotine fell sideways and rolled across the floor to the wall beneath the weapons display.  He wasn’t moving.  A soft nosed round would have taken a good chunk out of his chest and put him down permanently.

Lara took Janelle’s arm and put it over her shoulder, helping her through the open doors.  She could smell the crisp clean air drifting in from outside now and it made her desperate to get out of the building and in to the fields, out of this insanity and back to some kind of reality.  She got Janelle outside and then stopped. It had to be done.  She had to be sure.  She couldn’t take another step away from this charnel house without making sure Guillotine would never hurt another soul.  It wasn’t about being a cop or justice or the law anymore.  The man had to be swept from existence like a plague. She gently placed Janelle on the grass, kissed her on the forehead and walked back inside the barn with purpose. 

Guillotine had pulled himself up from the dirt and taken an axe from the wall display.  He was bleeding, hurt, his breath coming in long desperate gulps but he was intent on getting his answer.  He would know if Heaven was stronger than Hell, if Angels could really save him.  He would destroy Lara McBride like he had done before.  Or, the Fates willing, she would be his Angel and save him from all this death and pain.

He ran at the doorway with full speed.  He was halfway there when Lara McBride came out of the dark and walked back inside the barn, her pistol up and aimed, a look of firm intent in her eyes.  The Angels came to life around him.  Their chains were rattling.  She saw the hanging cages were beginning to swing as though a storm wind had blown through the barn, the Angels inside the cages pulling on the chains like caged animals in a frenzy.  The Angels who were chained up were thrashing, their strength encouraged by seeing their captor fighting the only person who had given them hope of escape.  The sound rose to a crescendo, the chains blending in to a cacophonous rage of noise.

Guillotine kept running at her, at his Fate.  His cry was inhuman, his tongue out in some bestial fashion that made him seem inhuman.  His cry could not be heard over the Angels’ chains.  His naked body was an offense to everything in the world and the bleeding red light clung to him like it was his own skin. 

Lara McBride fired.

The first bullet tore his cheek open.  He didn’t stop hurtling towards her.  She fired again, taking apart his groin.  Sheer momentum kept him going, and she fired three more rounds, taking out his right thigh and his lower left abdomen.  He fell to his knees, sliding on the dirt, coming to a stop in a position that looked like he was praying.  She walked to him and took him by the neck, surprised how light he was in her grip, pulling him up by the throat and walking him backwards to the pit just a few yards away.

“You want to see what hell looks like?” she said, her eyes focused on the long spike that reached up out of the pit.  “Take a good look.”

She put all her strength in to propelling him towards the pit, then let go, allowing momentum and gravity to do the rest.  He sailed across the mouth of the pit, his weight pulling him down inexorably to the point of the spike and she watched it pierce through his back and out through his chest, holding him there like a thrashing, bleeding trophy.  All he could do now was gurgle as the blood came up through his throat and out of his mouth.  She hoped it hurt.  She hoped it hurt the way the families of all the people he had killed or taken had hurt for so long while he had been out here free and constructing this abomination.

Lara watched him as he shuddered on the spike.  His eyes burned with hate as he tried to free himself, but he was locked in place by the spike, his eyes boring in to her soul with defiance.  He spat and hissed at her, writhing on the spike like an impaled insect, his arms and legs flapping, unable to speak or scream, unable to do anything but live and hate.

After a few moments, he seemed to come out of some kind of internal fog in which he had been lost.  He stopped thrashing and looked around at his surroundings as if for the first time.  The hatred melted from his face and was replaced with a serenity she had never seen before.  He raised a bloody hand, reaching out towards her.

“The Angels will save me…” he said and Lara McBride unloaded the clip in to his chest.

The noise of the chains was deafening.  She stood there for a long time, looking at the man who had taken her sister and stolen so many lives.  The darkest, most disturbed person she had ever encountered, the most dangerous man she had ever pursued and the second killer she had literally ended.  She felt no remorse, no guilt, only a great aching sadness that it had come to this, that his horror had exploded from his mind and in to the world and infected so many others, including her.

The Angels stopped their applause with the chains as their limited strength drained and Lara stood there looking at the bloodied face of the man she had just killed in the quiet of the barn.  She looked up at the cameras set around the place and knew now what that website was for.  He had streamed everything online, releasing his insanity further in to the world, where it could live on forever.  He had won, in that way, allowing his art an audience and putting it online where it would be seen.  He was immortal now.  And so was she, tied to him in his death as she would be for the rest of her life.

Chapter Sixty Three

Lara walked in to the workshop of the barn and saw the body on the table.  She recognized the clothes as Beth’s and she wiped her brow, numb now to the horrors this place held for her.  She ignored the blood on the ground, the body itself and went to the store cupboard.  She turned on the overhead light and saw the room was stacked high with canned foods and bottles of purified water.  This was how he had kept them alive.  She found what she was looking for near the door- a stack of blankets.  Guillotine would have wanted his Angels to be in too weak a state to fight or escape, but he would never have allowed his Angels to go cold or sick or die, so he had to have taken special care to look after them, which was what prompted her to find a blanket and water for Janelle.  She took a bottle of water and a blanket and walked out of the room, turning the light off behind her, plunging what was left of Beth in to the dark, where she felt it best belonged now.  She would prefer to remember he as a bright living being and not the hacked up remnants her killer had left behind in his wake.