Nine, Ten ... Never Sleep Again (21 page)

Anna was
looking at
herself in the mirror of the hotel
bathroom. In the room next door, she could hear Michael chatting with the woman
he had just picked up in the bar downstairs after his dinner in the restaurant.
Now they were going at it and she recognized his moans and dirty talk from back
when she had been with him. Sex with Michael had always been rough and she
didn't miss it one bit. She looked at the iPad, then wrote something in the
chat room.

Love the thrill of waiting.

I know,
Andreyer
wrote back.
It's the anticipation, the
expectation of what is about to happen that is so exiting. But not as exiting
as the actual kill. Enjoy it Bill.

I will.

Anna looked up from the iPad and at her own
reflection. She was wearing green surgical attire, the same uniform the doctors
at the hospital used when operating on a patient. She had stolen that and a
mask, along with the equipment she had in her briefcase from the hospital where
she worked as a nurse. She opened the briefcase and looked at the various
scalpels, the syringe filled with the sedative drug. This time she had chosen a
drug that would leave the patient sedated, but still conscious. She wanted him
to see everything, but not be able to move. As a nurse anesthetist, she knew
everything there was to know about sedative drugs and which ones to use. It was
also very easy to get a hold of them.

Almost too easy.

Anna listened to the voices behind the wall,
waiting for them to be done with the sexual act. It was always the same. They
would have sex and then the woman would leave. They never spent the night. It
was perfect.

Cheating bastards.

Listening to Michael's voice through the wall
only made her anger rise. Oh how she loathed this man. More than anything in
this world, she hated everything about him. But that only made her revenge that
much sweeter, didn't it?

Anna closed the briefcase as she heard the door
to the room next door close. She looked at herself one last time.

Showtime.

She walked out into the hallway, then found the
dry erase marker and pushed it into the bottom of the lock with a little smile,
thinking of Valdemar. Destiny's cruel irony had laughed at her once, now she
was the one laughing back. It was kind of ironic that it was Valdemar's
invention that now helped her avenge his death.

She walked inside and found Michael sleeping in
the bed. He was snoring slightly and she watched him for a few seconds, before
she found the injection needle and emptied it into his arm. The poke to his
skin woke him up. Michael gasped and stared at her. At first scared and
confused, then relaxed.

"Anna?" he asked.

She nodded, then pulled the mask down so he
could see her better. She wanted him to see her, to face her and realize what
he had done and what she was now going to do to him.

"What are you doing here?" He asked
when he realized where he was. "Why are you here?" He tried to sit up
in the bed, but his arms refused to cooperate. "What is this?" He
said and saw the syringe in Anna's hand. "What have you done to me?"

"I have sedated you Michael. Now you can't
move."

"But … but …" If he was trying to get
up again, Anna could no longer see it. She imagined he was and the frustration
going through his mind right now. And she enjoyed it.

"What do you want from me? Why have you
done this to me?"

Anna tilted her head and smiled. "I'm
taking your heart, Michael. It's okay. You never used it anyway."

Peter dragged
me up
the stairs. I followed unwillingly, but for the
sake of my daughter, I thought I'd better obey. Besides, Peter was right. There
was no way we would be able to get out of here in this storm. And there was no
way anyone would come here. Not even Mrs. Holm. We were stuck. Isolated. And
worst of all, my dad was in the hospital and I had no idea how he was doing,
whether he was going to survive or not.

"Peter, why are you doing this to us?"
I asked.

He slapped me once again across the face with a
grin. "Because I can."

Then he dragged me up another set of stairs.
"Where are you taking me? I don't want to get up there."

"Go."

I did as he said and climbed up the small set of
stairs that seemed to get narrower and narrower the higher we got. "What's
up here, Peter?"

"My studio," he said and pushed me
through an old wooden door.

"What about Julie? She might be
scared."

"Julie is fine. She's staying in her room.
Now go," he said and pushed me inside a huge room under the roof. It was
light and very open. If it wasn't for what met me there, I would have thought
it was a nice place to be. I got up and looked around, feeling like I was in
some sort of torture chamber. The walls were plastered with pictures of people
in pain. Dead bodies swimming in tanks with some strange liquid, body parts
everywhere and organs in jars.

"What's all this?" I asked.

"Isn't it glorious? It's my
exhibition," Peter said.

"What do you mean, exhibition? What is all
this?"

"They are all masterpieces. Contributions
from killers all over the country. They send me either their first kill or
parts of it or some other sort of contribution. I, in return, help them kill
and not get caught. I'm sort of a consultant. Soon all of this is going to be
an exhibition. Won't be open to the public naturally, only for the inaugurated.
And the ticket prices are, naturally, going to be sky high. I think killers
from all over the world would want to come here and see this, don't you? It
might even give them new ideas. Be inspirational."

I stared at Peter completely freaked out. What
kind of a monster was he?

"Look at this one," he said and
pointed. "He's new. I haven't prepared him properly yet."

I looked at the sign underneath the body in an
open body bag. "Martin Damsgaard," I read out loud. I looked at
Peter. "That's the guy who had his liver removed and died from it. You
stole his body? Why Peter?"

"It was given to me by the one who killed
him. I helped him to be a killer and he contributed with his first kill. He
will bring in another contribution later this week. You see, all the organs he
stole from people weren't being sold on the black market. No, he lost his son
last year and has the remains of the body in his freezer at home. He's
replacing the boy's internal organs one by one and placing new, fresh ones in.
The body was in the ground for almost a year when he dug him out and took him
home. So, naturally, a lot had decomposed by then. Now he is building him again
and, soon, he will deliver him to me. It's going to look great here, don't you
think?"

"I … I have no idea what to think,
Peter."

"Oh, you have got to see this one as well.
You're going to love this." Peter grabbed my arm and dragged me through
what he referred to as his exhibition. I felt nauseated and fought the urge to
throw up. Peter stopped in front of a body that had been stabbed to death with
what looked like five knives going through his chest. I thought I had seen this
somewhere before, but couldn't recall where.

"This is the Michael Oestergaard
exhibition," Peter said. "You remember him, don't you?"

"The what?"

"Michael Oestergaard. You know the guy who
killed using the glove from the Freddy Krueger movies? Remember him? Most
unfortunate that you had to have him put away. This was his first kill using
the glove. Just to try it out and get past that first kill with it. The guy
meant nothing to him. It was random. Just to know how the glove worked, you
know. I helped him with all of his kills. I came up with the idea of using the
glove from back then. Neat right?"

"You know Michael Oestergaard?"

"We went to the same boarding school. You
know, Herlufsholm?"

"Oh my god. You've been … I can't believe
it … you've been … have you been behind this, behind him and others? Pulling
the strings like they were puppets?"

"Well, that is giving me way too much
credit, dearie, but yes, they come to me for advice and I give it to them. I
am, after all, a true expert in killing."

"I had no idea you were that insane. Peter,
this is so sick."

"Oh thank you. You're flattering me. This
one over here, I believe you know that one as well."

"The Christian Lonstedt contribution,"
I said.

"His first too."

"Let me guess the next belongs to Bjarne
Larsen from Arnakke?"

"I'm afraid that one worked on his own. Him
and that kid of his. Genius with the polonium, though. Couldn't have come up
with it better myself. I only wish I had some of his here. But can't have them
all, can we?"

"I guess not," I said and looked in
direction of the door. Peter had shut it, but I didn't know if it was locked. I
had to find a way out and get Julie out with me. Until then, I had to just
please Peter and pretend I wasn't frightened to death.

"But I do have one from Allan Witt. Several
as a matter of fact, but I only kept the one. He had a tendency to eat his
victims and send the remains to me. I did, however, really badly want the
princess, but he never gave me that. So I killed him. He was worthless in the
end anyway. Went completely insane," Peter said and chuckled.

"Oh my God, the chat room," I said.
"You're Thomas De Quincey, aren't you? You ordered me killed, didn't
you?"

Peter shrugged with a smile. "Guilty as
charged. Nice name, don't you think? He wrote the essay
On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
in
1827. He wrote about the
Society for the
Encouragement of Murder
and that's how I got my idea. De Quincey
wrote that the members of this secret gentlemen's club
profess to be curious in homicide, amateurs and
dilettanti in the various modes of carnage, and, in short, Murder-Fanciers.
Every fresh atrocity of that class which the police annals of Europe bring up,
they meet and criticize as they would a picture, statue, or other work of art."

"But Peter, his essay was satirical. It’s
fiction. It's a joke."

"I know that," Peter said. "But
he gave me the idea. Once I was back from Iraq, I missed the action, I missed
the war, so I kept going back either to Iraq or Afghanistan, but I was never
quite satisfied. It just wasn't as fun when it was war, you know. I needed
something new, so that's how I came up with my own club for killer artists like
me."

"Artists? What the hell are you talking
about?"

"The art of killing of course." Peter
paused and looked around. "Do try and keep up here, Rebekka. I hate having
to repeat things."

I remained shocked and speechless.

"Oh, you need to see this as well," he
said with pride. "This is what I think will make people want to come from
all over the world."

Peter grabbed my arm and dragged me again. I
followed him fearing what would come next.

"This one is quite impressive," he said.
"Look at all the gold on the caskets."

"Is that the remains of the two kings? You
are the one who stole the dead kings from the churches?"

"Yes. They're perfect for my purpose. You
see both of them were murdered. The murder of Erik Klipping is still unsolved
to this day. Fits right into my exhibition, I figured."

I shook my head, not understanding how I had not
seen how insane Peter really had become. He had fooled us all, hadn't he?
Pretending to have changed when, in fact, it was much worse than any nightmare
I could have imagined.

"Oh and the last part. The best part, well,
for me at least, since it's my contribution," Peter said and dragged me
again.

"It's empty Peter. There is nothing
there," I said and stared at the vacant wall.

"Yes, but imagine the entire wall plastered
with photos of someone who knows they are about to die, and then slowly dying …
documented with a picture each minute of their dying hours. Wouldn't that be
neat? I don't think the world has ever seen that before. Read the sign."

I looked at the wall again and found the small
metal plate. My heart stopped as I read it.

Rebekka Franck's dying
minutes.