The Scrubs (5 page)

Keeler tore at his face, trying to clean it of the corpse-polluted water.
 
He ripped off his shirt and scrubbed at his face.
 
But no matter how much he tried, the pond’s touch never left his skin.
 
He forced himself to spit up every last drop of liquid in his throat until he dry heaved.
 
He blew his nose over and over again.
 
He didn’t want any part of the pond on him.
 
He knew what this place was.
 
This was where the bodies were kept.
 
Jeter had never revealed where he’d hidden them, but here they all were, in a soup of lost souls.
 
He threw his shirt down in disgust.

“Do not fear us.”

A woman had spoken to Keeler.
 
She stood atop the corpses at the center of the pond.
 
A water-soaked, sheer nightdress clung to her slim figure.
 
She was somewhat older than the blonde who had touched his face, somewhere in her twenties.
 
Although she’d spoken to him, she was quite dead thanks to an ear-to-ear gash across her throat.
 
Keeler had no idea how she had spoken.
 
Her mouth, like the gash in her throat, had been stitched shut.
 

This was too much for Keeler.
 
He scrabbled away from the abomination of corpses, his feet struggling to find purchase in the soft soil.

“Please, don’t run.”

The sadness in the dead woman’s voice halted Keeler.
 
Her sorrow cut through him like a bitter wind.
 
He no longer feared her and he slowly rose to his feet.
 

“Thank you,” she said.

The woman remained unnaturally still, as if suspended by unseen puppet strings with no puppet master at the controls.
 
Pond water dripping from the hem of her nightdress was the only sign of animation.
 
The dead woman’s unblinking gaze and unmoving lips unnerved Keeler.
 
He couldn’t maintain eye contact and he wondered if she noticed.
 
How horrible for her
, he thought and forced himself to look at her.
 
Keeler walked as far as the water’s edge, drawn by her ability to communicate, but he made sure he wasn’t within arm’s length of any of the corpses.
 

 
“Who are you?” he asked.

“One of Jeter’s victims.”

Keeler realized she was speaking through the slash in her throat, the words passing through the stitches.

He felt uncomfortable asking the next question.
 
“When did you die?”

“In ninety-eight.
 
August sometime, I think.
 
I’m not sure exactly.
 
He kept me locked up for some time before he eventually put me out of my misery.”

“And you’ve been here ever since?”

“Yes, I think so.
 
It’s hard to tell.
 
Time has no place here.
 
Days have no beginning or end.”

While she talked, Keeler tried to recall Jeter’s victims.
 
Her face was no help in death—she resembled none of those murdered.
 
Suddenly, a name shoved its way into his head.

“Are you Rebecca Morrow?”

“Yes.”
 
A smile filled her reply.
 
“I am Rebecca Morrow.”

He smiled back, happy to have brought her a taste of happiness in Jeter’s manufactured hell.

“It’s good of you to remember.”

Keeler remembered a lot about her from the news coverage.
 
He remembered the holiday snap most newspapers had shown in their stories—a happy and tanned Rebecca squinting against the
Corfu
sun.
 
She looked a hell of lot different when a tabloid had run an autopsy headshot after the police found her naked body in Epping Forest.
 
It was that grisly image which had helped Keeler remember.

“Can you help me?” he asked.

“If I can.”

“I’m looking for two other men.
 
Their names are Lefford and Allard.
 
They would have come this way a couple of months back.”
 
Keeler stopped himself, remembering what Rebecca had just said about time having no place here.
 
“Have they come this way?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Have you spoken to them?”

“No, but I sense people exist here who shouldn’t.”

Keeler swallowed hard.

“I can’t tell you where they are, but I can tell you they are still here.”

The tone of her voice told him something had happened to them.
 
He wasn’t up to asking what yet.

“Is there anybody else here,” Keeler indicated to this make-believe world with its sunshine without a sun, “who could possibly tell me where I could find them?”

“You need not worry about that.
 
Everybody here senses those who should not be here.
 
Have no fear, these men will find you.”

He did have fears.
 
He feared Rebecca and the lake of corpses she stood on.
 
He feared Lefford and Allard and what had happened to them.
 
Any amount of time spent inside Jeter’s world was bound to distort the mind.
 
He could feel himself changing already, nothing severe, just a low level disturbance at the back of his brain, a whisper telling him what to do.
 
He wondered if it was a permanent change and if it was too late for him already.
 
He wondered how long it would be before O’Keefe sent another inmate after him.

“What is your name?” Rebecca asked.

“Keeler.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Michael.”

“You should leave before it’s too late, Michael.”

Keeler wished he could, but there was no going back—no pardon waiting for him with his name on it.
 
Even if he made it out of this thing alive, O’Keefe wouldn’t let him rejoin general population with what he knew.
 
Whether Rebecca liked it or not, this was Keeler’s new home.
 

“I gotta go,” Keeler said, turning to leave.
 
“Thanks for your help.”

“You can still save him.”

“What?”

“The child.
 
You can still save him.”

Anger flared inside Keeler.
 
The child—how did she know about the bank?
  
Was she reading his mind?
 
He whirled on Rebecca.
 

“What the hell are you talking about?” he snapped.
 
“What child?”

“There is a boy here.
 
The police captured Jeter before he could kill him.
 
The police learned of the boy, but never located him.”

Keeler’s flesh tingled as his rage subsided.
 
Images of Tim Mitchell’s bloody corpse clawed their way into his brain again.
 
He pushed Tim to the back of this mind in favor of this other lost boy.

“No one else can save him,” Rebecca said.

“That doesn’t make sense.
 
What do you mean the boy’s in here?
 
How can that be?”

“Come to me, Michael.”

He stared at the heap of mutilated bodies she was standing on.

“They’ll support your weight.”

“But they are…” Words failed him and he pointed at the knotted victims.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rebecca said with overwhelming compassion.
 
“We feel nothing.
 
You cannot do anything to us that hasn’t already been done.”

Keeler swallowed.
 
He eyed a decapitated man before him and placed a foot on his barrel chest.
 
The corpse squirmed against its neighbors, but it supported him.
 
His next step connected with the partially flayed face of a middle-aged woman.
 
She grinned up at him as his foot pressed down on her ruined cheek.
 
A wave of shifting flesh spread out from his footfalls.
 
The movement was disconcerting, but there was a rhythm to it and he could combat the ripple effect by waiting a brief moment before taking his next step.
 
With each step, his confidence grew.
 
His strides lengthened and his speed increased.
 
Rebecca encouraged him with words of support.

When he was halfway to her, he lost his footing after misjudging the ripple and went down with a wet slap.
 
Cold, wet, dead flesh touched his warm, living body.
 
He tried to get to his feet but he kept sliding over more corpses.
 
Out of reflex, he dug his fingers into the cadavers to stop his slide.
 
When he realized where his hands were, he yanked them free.
 
Even when he’d removed his hands, he still felt the sting of death.
 
His fear made his fingertips turn cold and the cold spread, worming its way into his flesh.
 
Death was invading him.
 
Getting to his knees, he rubbed his hands against his clothes to wipe away the death.

“Relax, please, Michael,” Rebecca cooed.

The pity and concern in her voice calmed him.
 
Breathing hard and heavy, he stared at the unmoving Rebecca.
 
Inanimate, her stare failed to meet his, focusing on a point well beyond him.
 
Whatever hell this was, it was nothing compared to the one she and her fellow victims had been forced to endure.
 
This Jeter-made nightmare would only end when the killer died, but Keeler even wondered about that.
 
A person fucked up enough to produce this world might be able to transcend death.
 
Somehow, he didn’t think this place could ever end.
 
Keeler spread his weight to steady himself and rose to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said.
 
“I’m not used to this.”

“None of us are, Michael.”

With careful steps, he made it to Rebecca.
 
Seeing her up close, he noticed things about her that he hadn’t been able to see from dry land.
 
There was a quiet beauty about her face.
 
Her good looks didn’t scream for attention.
 
Instead, if he looked past the throat wound and crude stitch work binding her throat and mouth, her delicate features and clear skin requested admiration.
 
This was the kind of girl he would have liked for himself, if he weren’t such a screw up and she weren’t a corpse.
 
How could he be having such a ridiculous pipedream at such a time?
 
He smiled without thinking.

“Why do you smile, Michael?” Rebecca asked.
 

“No reason,” he said putting the smile in a safe place, out of harm’s way where no one could see it.
      

“I told you that the boy is here and you said it doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes.”

“Well, look around you, Michael.
 
You’re talking to a corpse, standing on top of one man’s achievement.
 
Tell me how that makes sense.”

A flush of anger surged through him, fueled by embarrassment from being manipulated so easily.
 
“Are you telling me, you made me stumble over all these bodies just to prove a point?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“You have to understand that anything can and will happen here.
 
If Jeter wants a body he didn’t get the chance to murder in the real world, then he’ll create it here, so that he can finish what he started.
 
None of us should be here but we are.
 
Get used to the idea, because if you hope to leave here in the same fashion you entered, then you’ll have to believe you are capable of the unreal—just like him.”

Her wisdom cooled his anger.
 

“You’re going to have to wise up, Michael, because he knows you’re here.
 
He can feel you treading through his mind.”

He failed to hide the chill that rocked his body.

“Can’t you feel him, Michael?”

Keeler could.
 
He’d been too stunned to notice it before.
 
Jeter may have been strapped to the Throne, but he existed here too—not in body, but in spirit.
 
From the ground Keeler stood on, to the hazy sky and everything in between, Jeter was woven into its fabric, a component part of everything.
 
Like winter’s bite on an autumn day, Jeter’s presence touched everything, giving advance warning of rougher times ahead.
 

“If Jeter is the puppet master, then why try?
 
There’s nothing I can do to change anything.”

“Because you’re not like us.
 
He has control over the dead, but you’re not dead yet.”