Dark Screams, Volume 1 (6 page)

“Don't disturb him,” Katy whispered, obviously very scared. “He might get nasty if he's woken up.”

“Get nasty? He's already nasty.”

She nodded. “That's why we've got to get out of here.”

“I agree. The question is: How?”

A voice answered me that wasn't Katy's.

“What's more, we need to do it before sleeping beauty wakes up.”

“Who's that?” I asked.

“Over here. Behind you.”

I looked back to see a young man with curly hair peering out of a recess in the brickwork.

“I've been listening to you,” he said. “My name's Nev.”

He was a captive, too, chained to the wall. Like Katy, Nev wasn't shackled to another prisoner. Apparently I was the only one to get buddied up with someone else. He explained that he'd only just woken and hadn't seen either of us being brought in here. He told us that he worked at night, riding a pizza-delivery scooter. When he'd left an apartment block after making a delivery he thought he'd felt a pain in the back of his shoulder, but he wasn't certain.

“Even so,” he said, “I think I was injected with something that knocked me out.”

“I don't remember being injected,” I said.

“Nor me,” added Katy. “But what if the drug caused short-term amnesia as well as rendering us unconscious?”

“You mean the drug actually erases memory of the injection?”

“It's possible.”

Nev peeped out from his recess. “Katy's right, you know? What she said earlier? You've got to kill big feller there before he kills us.”

“How?”

Nev leaned out a little more, revealing the manacles on his wrists. “Kick him as hard as you can, John. Kick him in the head. Keep on kicking.”

“That guy's head will be as hard as granite. If I don't knock him unconscious with the first kick he'll tear me apart.”

“I'd do it, if I was as close as you.”

“I bet you would.” The way I said it plainly sang out:
I bet you damn well wouldn't!

Nev got all twitchy as excitement fizzed inside him. “Choke the bastard to death. Use the chain.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Stick your fingers in his eyes. Blind him.”

“Why don't you just ride over him on your pizza-delivery scooter?”

“Don't argue, you two,” Katy whispered. “John, please, we must do something. If we don't, he's going to hurt us.”

“Okay. Okay. Let me think.”

“Stand on his throat.”

“Nev, shush—just shush, all right?”

What if I could drive my fingers into Goliath's eye sockets? Maybe I could gouge away until he couldn't see? I'd have the advantage then. Sighted vs. Unsighted = no contest.

I took a deep breath. “Okay, both of you stay quiet. Here goes.”

I took a step toward the sleeping killer. He didn't move, so I took another step.
Now…if I
jab both my thumbs into his eyes at the same time…
Then disaster struck. A loud clank reverberated around the chamber. This was followed by the hum of electric motors.

“The claw!” Nev shouted.

Goliath's eyes snapped open and he was up on his feet in a heartbeat. Instantly Nev and Katy vanished from sight. They didn't want the psycho spotting them.

His fierce gaze raked the place, searching for the source of the clanking sound. When he saw the huge steel claw, which must have been big enough to hoist a car, he immediately marched toward it. He dragged me along without even noticing I was there. I grunted as the collar painfully jerked me forward. All I could do was follow. He approached the pile of detritus that must have been dumped by the claw on earlier occasions.

Goliath watched the machine at work. Cables lowered the claw into the water, so that it clunked up against the metal grille that covered the river's exit tunnel. Sticks, branches, plastic bags, bottles—all kinds of junk had accumulated there, after being washed into drains by rainfall earlier in the day. There was even a child's sit-on tractor made from bright red plastic. Goliath carefully watched as cables lowered the open claw from the ceiling until it splashed down into the river. Now cogs spun as they closed the massive claw around debris that had accumulated in front of the grating. This was like a gigantic version of those machines found at funfairs where children use a claw to try and grab toys from inside a glass case. A moment later, the cables hoisted the claw upward. Water cascaded from its booty that had been grabbed from the river. The claw then trundled along a rail that hung beneath the basement's ceiling until it was over the concrete deck. There the claw opened. All kinds of debris fell from the claw to hit the concrete with a splattering sound. Branches, cans, rags, massive clumps of green riverweed, the child's tractor. Then something else hit the concrete with a loud slap.

Goliath stared at the objects. I stared, too. Because there were two corpses. A pair of women, with drenched hair sticking to their faces, and their eyes wide open. What I noticed more than anything else were their collars. They were chained together at the neck, too.

The giant lurched forward, those massive hands outstretched. He grasped the ten-foot chain that connected the two dead women to each other and dragged the corpses from the pile of wet junk that the claw had scooped from the river.

I started in horror.
My God. Those two women had been chained together, too, just like Goliath and me.
One of the women was probably in her twenties, with red hair and wearing a green silk dress. The other woman, forty or so, wore the uniform of a bus driver. Their faces were scratched, and their fingernails had been ripped from their fingers.

“They fought a battle before they died.” I was so shocked I actually uttered the words aloud, forgetting that I was trying to remain invisible to my chain buddy. “Did they fight each other?”

Goliath grunted loudly. The bodies interested him. Crouching down, he examined the steel collars, and fingered the padlocks that secured the chains as well as locking the collars in place. He slapped the face of the redhead, perhaps believing he could wake her.

No way,
I thought.
She's dead as a beached fish.
That's when the man paused with a thoughtful expression. He touched the collar on his own neck, grunting in a beastlike way (so far I hadn't heard him say a single word). He seemed to be understanding that he was chained in the same way. In fact, he did something that sent ice blasting through my veins. His eyes focused on the chain links closest to his own throat, then he followed the chain with his gaze. Soon his eyes would track all along the chain until they found my face at the other end.
What then? A smile and a friendly nod? Hardly. He's likely to rip my face off.
I'd seen how he'd mutilated his victim just minutes ago.

He began to grunt with excitement as his eyes followed the links toward my face at the other end.
Any minute now, he's going to—

“Hey, John! I found a screwdriver back here!”

My eyes darted toward Nev. The pizza-delivery boy leaned out from the recess, brandishing a screwdriver with a long shaft.

“John!” His yell combined dread and triumph. “I'll throw the screwdriver to you. Kill the psycho. Stab him! Stab his eyes and face! Kill the bastard! Here! CATCH!”

Nev tossed the screwdriver in my direction. What an absolutely useless, terrible throw. The screwdriver hit the concrete floor five feet from me, bounced once, and rolled over the edge of the channel into the river. My mouth dropped open in astonishment. The screwdriver had vanished.

Nev groaned. “Oh, crap.”

I expected Goliath to throw himself at me in nothing less than murderous fury. Instead, however, he sprinted toward the recess where Nev had been shackled. The chain snapped tight, and I nearly flew through the air after locomotive man in front of me. Wherever Goliath went I had to follow.

I wonder if Nev regretted what he did. Or if he had the chance to curse himself for such an inept throw that sent the screwdriver into the river. Maybe such musing is academic, because Nev died quickly. Goliath punched him in the face. After the second punch, Nev begged for his life. The third punch slammed into the side of his head. No blood came out of his nose or his mouth, but a gush of crimson liquid spurted from the kid's ears. A hemorrhage, I guess. Either way, he didn't live long after that. His eyes went dull, the eyelids drooped, and he flopped down in the recess. Only the wrist shackles kept him upright. Goliath kicked Nev so hard in the chest that I heard the kid's ribs give a loud SNAP! I don't know how old Nev was when he died, but he couldn't have been more than twenty.

Katy had seen everything. Now she couldn't stop herself. All self-control went. So overwhelming was her fear, she went berserk.

Even that mighty Goliath paused to watch her in surprise as she tossed her head, flailed her arms, trying to break the manacles, and screamed as loud as she could. Despite everything, the man still hadn't noticed me even though we were chained to each other. Once again, I realized that his psychotic mind considered me to be part of him, seeing as we were linked by those dozens of shining loops. In any event, he didn't appear to see me as he gave a powerful grunt of excitement. This was followed by such a leering expression of desire as his eyes feasted on Katy's beautiful face.

I shouted, “No! Leave her alone! Don't touch her!”

He didn't respond to my demands. The nightmare brute didn't even seem to hear me, let alone realize that I was there at the end of his chain. Straightaway, he lumbered back to the river. Katy tossed her head, convulsing with terror when she saw that the murderer had locked his evil gaze on her. Grunts of excitement blurted from his lips.

“Don't hurt her!” I shouted.

He didn't even hear me. Instead, he surged onward, following the line of the watercourse upstream. I held the chain in my hands so that the force of being dragged so ferociously wouldn't snap my neck. This battle tank in human form dragged me to where a pair of parallel iron girders spanned the river. I realized what my chain buddy intended. He'd use the girders as a bridge to cross to the other side. Katy, meanwhile, knew that she'd be the next victim. She stared at brute boy with absolute dread.
Is he going to kill me like he killed Nev?
I'm sure that's what she was thinking.
Or is he going to hurt me in other ways first?

For the next ten seconds I had to concentrate on maintaining my balance as I followed Goliath across the girders. Here the roar of the rapids seemed more concentrated. The sound bore deep into my head. The air was colder, too, and that black water far more pungent—smelling as if it had flowed from a pit full of dead and rotten things.

I scrambled up onto the far side of the river as Goliath raced toward the vulnerable woman that was chained to the machinery casing. She shouted for him to keep back. I yelled for him to stop. But Goliath knew what he wanted, and he wanted it now.

Pipes emerged from the floor like iron tree trunks. I tried to cling on to them to prevent the man from reaching Katy. Every attempt to even slow him down ended in failure. He simply kept moving, dragging me along as if I was nothing more substantial than a paper cutout of a man. Then I saw an object leaning against one of the pipes. It appeared to be a discarded iron bracket that had once been fixed to a wall. In sheer desperation, I grabbed it.

“John…oh my God.” She panted the words in terror. “John, please don't let him hurt me.”

This time I stopped allowing myself to be dragged. I ran toward Goliath. The chain dipped down between us as the tension left it. I sprinted up behind the killer, lifted the heavy bracket above my head, and swung it down as hard as I could. The deadweight of iron cracked against his skull. Momentum carried him forward, but his legs were buckling. He even glanced back at me in surprise, apparently noticing my existence for the first time.

Down he went. THUD. He lay facedown on the floor. His eyes were closed and blood streamed from a gash in his scalp.

“John, you did it! Thank God.”

“Katy…I think I've killed him.”

“Good!”

“He's not moving.” I crouched beside him. “I don't think he's breathing.”

Katy recovered her composure. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Can you use that metal thing you hit him with to break the chain?”

“I doubt it, but I might be able to force open the collar or the padlock.”

“Do it, then! Hurry!”

I moved in closer to Goliath. Blood pooled around his head. His skull leaked red stuff onto the concrete.

“Who do you think he is…was?” I asked.

Katy didn't care. “Try snapping his collar. Go on, it's not as if he'll feel any pain, will he?”

“This paper suit he's wearing…they give those to crime suspects when their clothes have been taken away to be examined in a laboratory. Do you think he might have escaped from prison? What if he's a famous serial killer? Or what if he was normal like us and he's been injected with a drug that's made him crazy?”

“Please, John, get me out of this dungeon.”

“He killed people down here.”

“And we'd have been next.”

“Katy, did you see the bodies of those two women? They were chained together at the neck like me and him. Do you think they were forced to fight each other?”

“This isn't the time for speculation. We need to focus on the living—us!”

“They must have been abducted, too. Could this be some kind of experiment?”

“John, snap out of it! Once you get that collar off, come and free me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I set aside those troubling notions and got down to work, pushing the sharpest end of the metal bracket into the collar where it hinged at the back of Goliath's neck.
Perhaps the hinge is the weakest part? I might be able to break it and open the collar up. Then I'll separate myself from this monster.
Those thoughts poured through my head as I worked, levering, then twisting the bracket, trying to snap the hinge pin. I still worked at the collar when I noticed that something had changed.