Anonymous Caller (Chapter 8)
“Amy, it’s for you!” her mother called from downstairs.
“I’m not here!” she shouted back. She was stomach-down on her bed, composing a letter to him. A deep, intimate note confessing her love, and her hate; admitting her longing, and her disgust; and imagining how they’d make passionate love when they reunited, or how his face would contort in fear and regret as she ran him over in her dad’s SUV.
She’d never send it, of course, any more than the three others hidden at the bottom of her sock drawer. But somehow it made her feel better.
Her door opened. Her mother was holding the phone. “It’s Mrs. Shimkus, Bobby’s mother. You should talk to her.”
“Bobby?” She accepted the phone skeptically. Her mother stepped out while Amy scrutinized the Caller ID at arm’s distance. One mistake, she knew, and she’d be at Tim’s farm, at his feet, swearing life long fealty and begging him to take her back. Part of her even wanted it.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hi Amy. This is Bobby’s mother. Do you happen to know where he is?”
“Mrs. Shimkus, Bobby and I broke up weeks ago.”
“I know,” the woman said. “I just thought he may have confided in you. He’s been gone every day. He told his father and I that he’s been volunteering at the Goodwill with his friends. But I stopped by today to surprise him, and he wasn’t there. They haven’t heard of him.”
Amy stood. “Have you tried Tiffany?”
“I spoke to her parents. She told them the same story.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about it. But I’m sure it’s okay. Maybe he has a job somewhere, and he’s planning to surprise you.”
The woman sounded doubtful, but she thanked Amy and hung up. Amy stared at the phone in her hands, certainty growing in her gut that she knew exactly where Bobby and Tiffany were.
Karen shook her head as she leafed through Tim’s drawings. The victims from the ice cream parlor were right there, crystal clear. The switchboard operator too. And others she didn’t know about. The sketches would be ironclad evidence in court. But Karen was doubtful they’d be needed. She didn’t know how this was going to end, but she was certain it wouldn’t be in a trial.
Tim stood beside her, staring off into space.
“Have you ever been on the other end of that machine?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Hm. You’re going to be. I’m going to need you to undo what you did to me.”
Panic and confusion filled his eyes. “B-but, I’ll do it,” he stammered. “You don’t have to—”
“I don’t have to use it on you? You’ll understand if I don’t entrust my mind to the mercy of your eleventh-hour remorse.”
“What about Rob? You can trust him.”
“Thanks to you, I can’t,” she said. “No, you’ll help me, and that’s all you’ll do to me. Don’t worry. It only hurts for a minute.” She grabbed his arm firmly and guided him into the hall.
She took him down the stairs and back out to the road to retrieve her camera from the car. There was another car parked behind hers: a clean and generic-looking compact with a rental car sticker on the bumper.
“Who’s this?” she demanded. “Another one of your slaves?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I really don’t. But it’s not one of mine. They’re all in the basement.”
“Could it be those men you were talking about?”
He shook his head. “They don’t park in front. And they don’t use rental cars.”
She unlocked her car, grabbed the camera from the glove box and put it in her jacket pocket. As an afterthought, she unsnapped her shoulder holster. “You’d better hope you’re not lying to me. C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”
They walked with shared unease around the house and toward the back of the farm. The cornfields on either side rustled in the wind. After a few minutes, she spotted the gatehouse, so harmless looking.
The front door was wide open. She slowed, tugging on Tim’s handcuffs to slow him with her. Her ears strained, and she kept her eyes on the entrance as they neared. At 100 feet away, a figure appeared in the door. It was Rob.
“What’s he doing here?” she murmured.
Rob stepped outside, and another man followed. He was holding a rifle at his side. It took a moment to recognize him, the last person on Earth she expected to see here. “Spickle.”
“Spickle? Who’s Spickle?” Tim asked.
Her hand darted to the gun under her jacket, as the wind carried Rob’s voice to her ears. “Don’t move!” he yelled.
Her muscles froze. Tim twisted out of her petrified grip. Spickle fired a shot into the air, and Tim stopped.
The two men approached them. Spickle smiled at Karen predatorily, then addressed Tim. “Don’t try anything, young man. I’ve really come to admire you, and I’d hate to have to shoot you before we’ve had our fun.”
Karen was alone with Spickle in the gatehouse, the noise from the machine pounding her ears. Rob had left them to wait outside, after ordering her to take his cell phone, then making her answer Spickle’s call.
Her hand gripped the phone, pressing it to her ear so hard it hurt. She willed her arm to pull away, but it wouldn’t budge. She tried to persuade her fingers to unclench with equal futility.
Spickle smiled at her from the small desk. “Let’s try this again, Agent Maura,” he said, his voice a green slime oozing from the phone and into her ear. “How do you feel about me?”
“I... loathe you,” she heard herself answer in a monotone. “You’re a sick man. You’re patheti—
“That won’t do,” he interrupted. “You love me. You worship me.”
The thought wriggled in her head. She closed her eyes and squeezed it out. “Fuck you,” she said.
I’m going to beat him, she thought. She beat Spickle last time when she saved the girl and kept him from his ransom. She was stronger and smarter than him. She opened her eyes again and gave him a defiant look. “Fuck. You,” she repeated.
“Oh, you will.” He reached for the dial protruding from the machine. Her heart sank when she saw the indicator was pointed straight up. It was only at 50 percent. He turned it clockwise to the quarter-past mark: seventy-five percent power. The roar from the machine grew, and the soles of her feet started to itch.
“You worship me,” he said again. “You love me, you desire me, and will do anything to please me.”
The command put slender roots in her mind, here, there. She pushed them out, but they kept coming, faster and deeper. Breath. Sweat cooled her face. Her contempt for Spickle was melting; she could feel it. She remembered him at his kitchen table, so smug and condescending while miles away the girl he’d kidnapped was alone and scared in a locked room. He was so callous. So unfeeling.
Irresistible.
Godlike.
“N—no,” she managed to say.
He flicked his wrist and spun the dial all the way clockwise The machine roared and sputtered, sparks flying from deep inside.
She moaned as an icicle stabbed her behind her eyes, puncturing her mind and letting her thoughts drain out.
“You worship me,” he said again. “You desire me, and will do anything to please me.”
His words fell over her like a trickle of water on a parched desert floor. They beaded on the surface, then soaked in deep, disappearing into her. Oddly, though, it was Spickle who transformed. His features shifted without moving, becoming preternaturally beautiful. Beyond handsome. Beyond erotic. Beyond any dream of human perfection.
Her pulse pounded in her ears. He smiled at her, and her knees nearly buckled.
She was gaping at him, she realized, embarrassed at herself. She was sweating like a dirty little animal, sex juices soaking into her panties. No secrets now; bare-ass naked in front of him, even fully clothed.
She loved him. She wanted him. He was everything.
Tim coughed in the gasoline fumes and tested the cuffs again. He was secured to an old irrigation pipe rising from the ground at the rear of the gatehouse. It was rusted, but not enough to break through.
Then the roar of the machine died and the air cleared. He heard the door open and low voices escape, then Rob rounded the corner. He squatted next to Tim and unfastened a cuff. Tim tried to roll free, but the large man grabbed his arm and twisted him head down in the dirt, re-cuffing his wrists together. He yanked Tim to his feet and guided him to the front of the gatehouse and inside.
It took a moment to interpret what he was seeing there: behind the desk, where he expected to find Spickle, loathsome and ugly, there was a slender, graceful curve of cinnamon-toned flesh glistening with sweat.
It was the FBI agent, he realized. He was looking at Karen’s naked back as she straddled a fully clothed Spickle on the chair. Her toned arms were clenched around his head, and she was kissing his neck with animal fierceness. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulder blades, her spine flexing as her ass writhed and squirmed on his lap.
Karen’s clothes were scattered on the floor, along with the buttons from her blouse. The chair creaked. Spickle leaned to the side to look at Tim past Karen’s hair. “Have you ever tried the machine on its highest setting?” he asked.
“No.”
“It’s... quite spectacular,” he said, rolling his eyes like a gourmet. “I thought for a moment she was going to lose control of her bowels.”
Tim didn’t know what to say. He stared, dumbfounded, while Karen turned her attention to Spickle’s left ear, kissing it hungrily with an open mouth and thrusting her tongue inside.
“That’s a little wet, my love,” he said with a grimace. “Turn around.” Obediently, she spun on his lap. Her eyes were glazed with arousal, her mouth open and gasping for breath. Tim managed to catch her eyes, but there was barely a trace of recognition in her gaze. She was in her own world. Spickle’s, actually.
Her rounded breasts were larger than they’d looked in the confines of her jacket, and Spickle grabbed them now and squeezed. She gasped, and pulled her hair back from her forehead with one arm. The other moved to her legs where she stroked her thigh.
“Listen,” Tim said, “whoever you are—”
Spickled shushed him. “You’ll miss the best part.” He pinched one of Karen’s erect nipples. Her eyebrows darted in pain. “Agent Maura, how do you feel about me?”
“I l-love you,” she said.
“What else?”
“I worship you. I worship you.”
He smiled at Tim. “I can assure you, she was not so affectionate when first we met.”
“What are you going to do with me?” Tim asked.
“With you? Nothing. I’d thought of putting you on the machine, but that seems like such a poor way to reward you for discovering this marvelous toy. And, anyway, I don’t need you now, thanks to that order you gave your regiment. What did you say again? ‘Do anything Agent Maura says.’”
He thought of the six people locked in the cellar. Tiffany and Margot, who’d grown up in this town and had never experienced evil, nor the depravities that surely must infest the mind of a man like Spickle. And poor Paige, who’d traveled thousands of miles to be his lover, only now to wind up a sociopath’s plaything.
Karen reached behind her to caress Spickle’s face. Tim cleared his throat. “Listen, how about you let them go. You have the machine now. You can get your own... subjects. Why be confined by my tastes?”
“Oh, I won’t be. I’m just going to experiment a bit first. The boys will join Rob here as my personal assistants. And I have something very special in mind for the girls.” Spickle stood up abruptly, dumping Karen on her ass with an “Ow!” She recovered and gathered herself into a kneeling position, staring up at him reverently, a nude supplicant from a Renaissance painting.
Spickle addressed Rob. “I saw a derelict tractor in the field outside. It’s close enough to keep an eye on him, and far enough so we won’t hear him bellyaching. Handcuff him there.”
Rob nodded. “Yes sir.” He yanked Tim out of the gatehouse and back into the wind and sun.
Fifteen minutes later, Tim watched helplessly from the cab of the tractor as a reclothed Karen exited the gatehouse like a sleepwalker and proceeded in the direction of the farmhouse. He tested the handcuffs. They were locked tight to the large steering wheel. After a few minutes, he saw Karen walking back at the same unhurried pace, leading Jenny, Tiffany, Margot, Paige, Bobby and Phil like the Pied Piper.
“Stop!” he yelled. “Don’t follow her!” But they couldn’t hear him across the field. They filed into the gatehouse one-by-one. “Shit.”
He strained to reach the glove box, not sure what he was hoping to discover; something to cut free with, maybe. Instead, he found the ignition key to the tractor. Useless. The machine hadn’t moved an inch for two harvests.
Except...
Except for Bobby and Phil. He’d had them working on the farm for two weeks, painting the barn and the grain silo, replacing the weathervane and fixing every mechanical device within the reach of their skill.
He jammed the key in the ignition and turned. After several attempts the engine sputtered to a start. “They did it.”
He put the tractor in gear, and it rumbled into motion, crushing the grass in front of it. The speed gauge showed five miles-per-hour, then ten, as he guided the machine in the direction of the road.
If he could get that far, he might flag down a passing driver. If nothing else, he could park the tractor lengthwise across the road and throw away the keys. That would surely draw a response.
Shouting erupted behind him. He glanced back to see Rob and Bobby burst from the gatehouse. Rob was carrying the old hunting rifle awkwardly in his hands.
He up-shifted, and the tractor coughed and died.
Tim swore and turned the ignition again, drawing a sick wheezing from the engine. Then they were on him. The butt of the gun slammed into his skull. His ears rang, and blackness crept at the edge of his vision. Bobby pulled out the keys and threw them into the field, while Rob unlocked the handcuff from the steering wheel and spun Tim out of the cab.
Bobby held him while Rob reattached the cuffs behind his back. They marched him to the house, through the back door and down the stairs to the cellar.
Bobby uncuffed him and gave him a hard shove that sent him crashing to the concrete floor. The door slammed behind him. He heard the lock turn.
Tim crawled to his feet and took inventory. There was an assortment of tools that would be useful if he was suddenly attacked by overgrown scrub brush, but nothing suitable for a jailbreak. He tried prying the door with a pair of hedge clippers, but succeeded only in breaking loose a few splinters.
He paced. He wasn’t certain how long it was before the door opened again. It was Rob and Bobby. This time they were holding Karen Maura by her arms. They shoved her in.
She leapt at the door as it closed and locked.
“Agent Maura?”
She turned and blinked at him with disbelief, like she was looking at a ghost. She was back in her pants suit, but without the jacket. Her blouse hung loose over her breasts. “Tim?”
“What are you doing here? I mean... What happened to Spickle?”
She advanced on him, her eyes flashing; Tim backed away and held up his hands defensively. “Listen, Agent Maura, you have to understand. I didn’t mean for any of this...”
She clamped a hand to the back of his head, and kissed him hard on the lips. Her tongue pushed greedily into his mouth. He twisted his head away and stepped back.
“What the hell’s going on? What did he do to you?”
She stared in his eyes, looking confused herself. “I don’t know. He put me back on the machine. But he made me forget.”
“And the others? What’s he doing to—mmmmfffff! Stop that! Why do you keep kissing me?!”
She strained to reach him with her mouth. “I... I think I love you. That must be what he did. I don’t know why. I need to kiss you, Tim. I need to make love to you.”
“That’s crazy. Why would he—" He lost his train of thought as the beautiful agent pulled her ruined blouse from her shoulders and let it drop behind her, revealing her bare breasts and slender waist. Her nipples were hard.
She followed him as he took another step back; his head hit the wall. Karen grabbed his hands, and for a moment he thought she was going to cuff him again. Instead she cupped his palms over her breasts, firm and yielding, then pressed in closer. Her eyes, a jumble of questions and conflict, bored into his. “I love you,” she whispered. “I don’t care what you’ve done any more. I just want you all to myself forever.” She kissed him again, passionately and deeply. Then she dropped to her knees.
He looked down at the top of her head as her hands found his fly, unbuttoned him and pulled out his erection. Her breath was warm and moist. Her tongue flicked against his shaft.
The door flew open. Karen jumped to her feet and covered herself with her arms. Tim stuffed his erection back into his jeans.
Margot stumbled into the room. The closed and locked behind her. The petite girl squinted in the gloom. Her swoop of dark hair was slightly disheveled, but she appeared unharmed, and she was still fully clothed.
“Margot? Are you okay?” Tim asked.
“Tim?” She blinked at him. “Oh, thank God, I was so worried!” She flew across the cellar and into his arms, embracing him tightly.
This was strange, he thought. He’d programmed Margot, like Tiffany, to be obedient and pliable, but not spontaneously affectionate. Behind her, Karen unfolded her arms and frowned deeply at the girl.
“Margot, did he do anything to you?” he asked softly.
Her lips brushed his ear as though she were going to whisper a secret, then she kissed his neck instead. He pushed her back. She was beaming at him. “Tim, I love you,” she said. “I realize now... I’ve been in love with you forever. Since the first time I saw you.”
“This isn’t right,” he said.
“It is right.” She did a little skip of excitement. “Kiss me.”
Without warning, Karen shoved the girl roughly from the side, sending her spinning. “Karen! Stop! What are you—?”
“Don’t touch him!” Karen spat. “He’s mine!”
The younger girl let out an animal growl and launched herself at Karen, who grabbed Margot’s arm and used her momentum to throw her to the floor. Tim grabbed the agent from behind. Margot bounded to her feet and slugged Karen in the stomach. She doubled over. “Ummf!”
Tim got between the girls, and managed to keep them apart for what seemed like hours as they clawed at each other, circling, eyes burning with jealousy. Then the door opened again. It was Paige, Tiffany and Jenny. At a glance, he saw they’d were afflicted with the same terrible passion. Rob and Bobby tossed them into the room, and Spickle appeared in the doorway.
“You wanted to be loved, Tim?” he said with a smile. “Well, be careful what you wish for.”
Spickle slammed the door. The three newcomers rushed towards Tim, only to be intercepted by Margot and Karen. There were shrieks and screams, hair-pulling and biting. Tiffany grabbed Karen’s bare arm, digging her nails in.
“Stop it!” he yelled. “All of you.” He searched for the right words. “If you love me, you’ll stop!”
They ignored him. Tim pushed his way into the mass of violent, female flesh and was knocked to the ground. The air rushed out of his lungs.
Tiffany and Margot squared off, their friendship forgotten, and the taller girl soon had Margot in a headlock. Across the room, athletic Paige managed to pin Karen to the ground, but the FBI agent bucked her off and kicked her feet out from under her. Jenny, still in Tiffany’s French maid’s outfit, momentarily escaped notice and began kissing Tim on the face franticly. The other girls saw and converged on her, pulling her off Tim. He wiped blood from his cheek; Jenny’s lip was bleeding.
They were going to kill each other, he realized. That was Spickle’s plan. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.