The Scream Catcher Read online

  Jude swings wildly, hitting the beast again and again.

  “Scream!” he shouts. “You fucking motherfucker, scream for me!”

  Lennox smiles.

  He spits blood into Jude’s face. He beast smiles and works up a gurgled laugh while swinging his right arm around so quick, Jude never sees the rock that slams his skull.

  In the end, all Jude knows is that suddenly the tables have reversed themselves. Now, it’s he who is on his back, left side of his head pounding in rapid pulses of sting.

  Jude gazes up at the little green eye and the muscle bound animal it’s attached to.

  “Kill me now fucker!” he cries. “Just kill us all now.”

  That’s when the air goes abruptly still. The rain, the wind, even the lightning seems to halt their fury as if God himself has pressed a Pause button on the world.

  Lennox wipes his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, does it without the least bit of effort as though impervious to the pain in his foot and mouth.

  He spits another wad of blood and spittle.

  Reaching into a pocket on his body suit, he pulls out his iPhone, depresses the app.

  Coming from the speaker, a scream.

  Jude’s scream.

  “Gotcha,” Lennox laughs.

  From down on his back, Jude stares into the green eye, at the rain water that drips down off the bald head, down onto bloody lips. He tries to speak. But no words will come. Only the silent motion of a mouth opening and closing.

  As if responding to the silence, Lennox rears back with his left leg, snap-kicks Jude in the rib cage.

  “The Player’s got twelve minutes to secure its first objective,” adds the beast, before once more shooting off into the night.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 2:05 A.M.

  Down flat on his back, Jude sucks wet air through an open mouth, makes a survey of his body, tries to work up a damage assessment.

  Hurts to breathe, the pain in the ribs worse than what’s coming from my nose. Maybe worse than my right hand . . .

  Opening his eyes, he digs into his shirt with a still good left hand, pulls out the topo map. It’s soaked through with rain water, the thin plastic having torn down the center. Multi-colored ink mixed with blood and rain, running down off the paper.

  In the deep night, the map proves impossible to read anyway.

  He rips the compass off his neck, tosses it over the cliff edge. Does it out of frustration, out of anger and hate. Does it in defiance of the demon.

  He pushes himself up off the ground, onto his feet, flips the useless map over the edge along with the compass. Stuffing a damaged left hand into his pant waist, he approaches the tree line.

  Only minutes left to save Rosie’s life.

  Bushwhacking through the thick greenbrier and second growth saplings, the sound of rushing stream water grows louder with each step forward. Jude has no choice but to swallow the pain, focus instead on the anger, on the determination to reach his first objective in the time allotted. He knows that Lennox has the upper hand, knows the Black Dragon will kill Rosie if he doesn’t get to her inside twelve minutes. He knows that no time can be spared focusing on anything but saving the lives of his family.

  Trekking blindly through the thick growth, he comes upon a small clearing. It’s then that the weather takes a turn for the better. The sky opens up not with another downpour but with moonlight. The yellow-white moon glow suddenly emerges from out of a split in the cloud cover. Just like that, it’s as if Jude were standing on the bow of a ship as it enters into the calm eye of the storm.

  For the moment, he is amazed to find himself standing in the middle of the clearing, staring up at the waxing August moon. The moon is brightly lit and more inviting than the sturdiest of shelters. It’s the first natural light he’s been exposed to in hours.

  Pulling eyes away, Jude gazes back down at the clearing before him.

  That’s when he spots a yellow flag attached to metal pole that’s been shoved into the ground in the center of the treeless area. How insane is this? A pin marker from a putting green placed all the way up there in the middle of the mountain forest. One of the flags, no doubt, Lennox documented on the topo map.

  Jude approaches the marker with a renewed sense of confidence brewing inside his bruised chest. At the base of the pin marker, he discovers a shoebox wrapped in translucent plastic Saran Wrap. Taped to the box-top beneath the Saran Wrap is a white four-by-five inch index card. Written on the white card in thick black Sharpie are the words, “Ten Life Points.”

  Jude understands the significance of the card. His son is a video game fanatic, after all. Jude knows the meaning of Life Points. Life Points equal extra game minutes. Jack is always going on about racking them up, saving them, storing them on memory cards so that his video game characters do not die. So that they stay in Play!

  What’s about to be Game Over is now Pause.

  By discovering the flag, Lennox is affording Jude ten additional minutes with which to rescue Rosie.

  The ex-cop bends down, picks up the box with his good hand. The wet plastic feels cool and soggy between the fingers. He pulls it off, tosses it to the ground. Yanking back the box lid, he peeks inside, finds himself knocked over by what he discovers: a tube of antibacterial cream, a bundle of white bandages, some pre-wrapped dressings, a small bottle of Betadine antiseptic, alcohol pads, a pair of forceps, and a roll of thick medical tape. There is also a bottle of spring water, three sticks of plastic wrapped mozzarella cheese and a single foot long Slim Jim. Finally, located at the bottom of the box, he finds a brand new four-pack of size D Alkaline Batteries.

  Silver and black Energizer Batteries.

  Jude rips open the package of batteries before clumsily reloading the Maglite.

  Rigging the heavy black flashlight, it gives off a powerful beam of white light.

  Just in time.

  Because Mother Nature is once more turning tail. The moon and its rays are again being consumed by the thick cloud cover.

  Swallowing a mouthful of water, Jude quickly eats one of the cheese-strings and the Slim Jim. He does it not out of hunger, but out of a need for energy; for body heat. He shoves the food in, swallowing after barely chewing. Then without thinking about it, he cups the broken nose inside his two hands. Supporting the fleshy nostril portion between opposing thumbs, he sucks a deep breath, cracks the cartilage back in place.

  He releases a strained shriek that shoots off into the valley.

  But when the sting finally abates, he rubs some of the antibacterial ointment onto the nose ridge in the place where the skin split. He rubs a dab onto the lacerations that pockmark the top of his left hand, wraps the badly bruised hand with bandages and tape, drops everything back into the box, including the wrappers. Closing the lid, he sets it back down onto the soggy ground.

  Making his way to the far tree line, Jude enters the thick woods towards the sound of rushing water.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 2:15 A.M.

  The rain pours down in sheets.

  It comes down with such force, it penetrates the thick tree cover, raindrops shooting and scooting between the now illuminated leaves like tracer bullets. The rain smacks against Jude’s face, sinks into the antibacterial ointment he’s applied to his broken nose. The diluted ointment oozes down the center of his face like syrup. It tastes bitter on his tongue, on his lips. For the first time since having been dropped in the mountain woods, Jude must come to grips with his exhaustion.

  He is dead tired.

  Tired and wired.

  He is living a very bad dream and all is as much surreal as it is the real deal.

  Branches slap and jab at his face. It’s like the trees have eyes. The trees see him coming. They are his enemy because they hurt him. But Jude does not feel the pain and the sting anymore. He feels only the urgent need to get to Rosie before her time runs out. With that life or death mission accomplished, he will then be allowed to go afte
r his son.

  He will save the boy’s life according to the rules of the kill game.

  Jude breaks through the tree-line, the trembling beam of Maglite shining ahead of him.

  He spots the stream.

  It runs downhill, fast and wide, on its way to the pool and beyond that the cliff face. He scans the beam of bright flashlight over the surface of the stream, searches for a way to get across without being consumed in the white water. He looks for a bridge of boulders, one rock succeeding the other. Or maybe a lightning struck tree that’s fallen across the stream’s width. If he can’t locate anything, perhaps he can count on an area of streambed shallower than the rest; a place that will afford him the chance to wade across.

  If I try to swim it, I’ll drown.

  He moves his way upstream for maybe thirty yards, then downstream until he comes to the edge of the pool. Despite the search, he comes up with nothing that would allow him an easy means of getting across the open water. No big rocks, no felled tree, no shallow land bridge.

  He makes his way back to original position.

  In the back and front of his mind, he feels the allotted time growing tighter with each passing second. Even with the additional ten Life Points, he guesstimates that the remaining minutes have dwindled down to six or five. Maybe less.

  Question: why am I wasting time?

  Answer: the demon.

  The time for thinking has come to an end.

  Jude knows there’s no alternative other than to go for it. Having made the decision, he stuffs the end of the Maglite into the waist-band of his jeans. He approaches the edge of the white water, gulps down his dread like bad medicine, jumps.

  Feet first.

  The swiftly moving white water acts like a giant hand that drags him downstream in a direct path for the drowning pool. He holds out his hands for anything he can grip. Body twisting and turning in the water, he grabs onto a rock with both hands and arms. For maybe a second or two, he manages to stop his downstream progress towards the pool. But it doesn’t take long for the smooth, moss-covered rock to betray him. As the frigid water pulls at his body and the rock slips out of his hands, Jude feels his body once more being carried away.

  But instead of panic, an explosion of anger erupts inside of him.

  It builds up inside his skull like steam inside a pressure valve. It builds up and up until nothing matters anymore. There is only the need to beat the stream, to beat his fear, to put an end to Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox and the kill game, to get his wife and son safely off the mountain.

  Despite the pull of the rushing water, Jude yanks the Maglite from out of his pants, flicks it on. He ducks under the stream’s surface, shines the light in the direction of the opposite bank. An instant passes before he locates a felled tree that’s been completely submerged by heavy water. A tree and a hand-hold he might have missed if he kept his head safely above the surface.

  As he comes upon the tree, he takes aim at one of its thick branches.

  With a quick but sure grip, he grabs hold of the branch, grasps it tightly. Pulling himself in towards the tree, he plants his right foot in the secure place where the branch meets the tree’s thick trunk. Then, with his last breath, he heaves his torso up and over the stream bank.

  He stands.

  Despite dwindling time and the water and sweat pouring off the body, Jude feels oddly proud of himself. He swears he must be smiling. He can feel the muscles in his jaws constricting, tightening.

  For certain a smile . . . despite everything. Damn his demon.

  At the same time his rain-soaked body shivers. He shines the light upstream, maybe sixty degrees to the right of the stream bank. Even from twenty-five or more yards he can make out the narrow, prone bundle that lay on the forest floor. The bundle reflects the bright white light—a human-sized bundle that has to be Rosie. From where Jude stands he can see that it is located in the center of a well worn trail.

  Just lying there, waiting for me . . . I’m beating this son of a bitch at his own game.

  He bursts into an all out sprint along the trail in the direction of his wife.

  For the first time since having woken up inside the forest, he feels home-free. He feels the adulation that comes from beating the kill game. Or at least, one of its levels. He is certain of succeeding; at winning his wife’s life back; at beating the demon.

  Not ten feet of trail separates Jude from Rosie when the earth beneath him collapses.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Friday, 2:21 A.M.

  Having pulled the black Chevy Suburban onto the gravel drive, Lino immediately spots a wide open front door. The open door confirms that the worst has occurred. Coming to a full stop, he draws his sidearm, bolts up the slate walk, enters into the large, three-story, split-level log home.

  With a black penlight Maglite gripped in the same hand as his .9mm Glock, he aims both barrel and light beam to his immediate left, in the direction of the living room. While at first the light shines on the big wood ceiling beams and then the big stone fireplace that makes up the entire opposite wall, it settles on the clear vase that lay on its side atop the coffee table in a pool of its own water. For a few seconds, he allows the light to remain on the vase as if waiting for it to do something—magically raise itself up maybe. Until he lifts the light just a little and spots a birdcage, its barred door sprung wide open, the little yellow bird lying lifeless on its back.

  The L.G.P.D. Lieutenant raises his free hand, smoothes out his Wyatt Earp mustache handles with index finger and thumb, takes a couple of careful steps inside the empty room. Everywhere he looks he discovers thick white candles that have burned down to almost nothing, the wax having melted and hardened onto the flat wood surfaces that support them like lava from a volcano.

  The smell of smoke pervades the air.

  The acrid, toxic smoke begins to burn his eyes and the interiors of his nostrils. Still Lino turns, follows the acrid odor across the stone vestibule floor and up the short flight of stairs that lead to the upper floor. He enters the first bedroom on his left, sees right away that some of the room has been burned out, the bed completely destroyed, still smoldering.

  He leaves the room, makes his way into the master bedroom at the end of the hall. It’s there he makes out the now cutaway ropes that have been tied to each of the bed’s four posts. He can’t help but make out the pair of discarded panties that rest on the wood floor. They are the large panties of a pregnant woman.

  Just the sight of them gives him pause.

  When he steps inside, the pointy tip of his right cowboy boot butts up against the fat end of a baseball bat. Further on inside the room, he spots a wide open, empty rifle or shotgun safety case laid out, plastic-side-down on the floor, the double-barrel twelve gauge it stored lying only inches away, its breaches cracked, both live shells scattered beside it.

  It doesn’t take a whole lot of detecting talent for Lino to know precisely what has happened here. Standing up straight and facing the open door, he cups his mouth with both hands.

  “Parish!” he shouts. “Jude Parish!”

  But as expected, he gets no response.

  He resumes the check on the rest of the home’s interior anyway, does it quickly and efficiently, finds nothing other than a shattered cordless phone inside the kitchen. Heading back out front in the light rain to the Suburban, he sits his tall, wiry body half in and half out of the open driver’s side door. He’s about to close the door when out the corner of his left eye he spots the small, square-shaped piece of white paper floating in the middle of a rain puddle.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 2:29 A.M.

  Jude never saw it coming.

  The pit’s opening was carefully covered over with a Viet Cong style trap door camouflaged with dirt, pine needles and green leaves—disguised to appear precisely like a typical section of well worn trail flanked on both sides by forest floor. Immediately he yanks himself onto his knees, sucks a breath to fill
the diaphragm crushing void where the air has been knocked out of him. It takes maybe a couple of seconds for the breathless panic time to elapse. But when it does, he forces himself back up painfully onto his feet.

  Raising his head, he looks up and out of the roughly rectangular-shaped hole onto the rainy night. When he shines the Maglite against the sides of the narrow pit, he can plainly see that the four neatly excavated walls extend approximately ten feet above him on all four sides. He sets hands flat against the muddy clay walls, looks for something to grip, something that will allow him the chance to inch his way up and out. But the rain makes the walls a slick impossibility for climbing.

  There is nothing to grip other than mud—layer upon layer of wet clay.

  Jude feels an ever deepening frustration, flat out panic. He feels demoralized, defeated. Just when he’s come so close to rescuing Rosie in the time allotted, he’s failed her miserably.

  Jude presses chin against sternum.

  He releases a resigned breath as if it were his last.

  How can he possibly help his wife and son if he can’t help himself?

  Dropping to his knees, he collapses into a sitting position on the drenched, mud-covered floor. He presses his back up against the wall, makes a fist, raises it high, swings it down fast. But the fisted hand doesn’t slap against solid rock or wet mud pack as expected. Instead, the fist hits something that feels more like flesh and bone.

  Startled, Jude bounds up fast, shines the Maglite onto the flat pit floor.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 2:31 A.M.

  The severed head sends Jude careening back against the far pit wall. He doesn’t want to look at it. But then he can’t help but shine the light onto the lifeless white face, as if his curiosity is stronger than revulsion. The wide open eyes, the frowning, almost disappointed expression—it somehow calls him closer.