The Caller

Forty-Six

Mr. J had expected to see the chisel driven into Cassandra’s brain in its entirety, but instead, not much more than a centimeter had managed to penetrate. The demon had controlled the strength of the hammer strike with the perfect precision of a master sculptor — one single blow, nothing more, because nothing more was needed.

As the demon finally moved his hands away, thick, sticky blood dripped from Cassandra’s head on to her face, creating an uneven red path past her temple, her cheek, and all the way down to her chin.

Mr. J held his breath, grinding his teeth with the wrath of a thousand gods.

Cassandra’s eyelids fluttered erratically for seconds before they stabilized again. Her eyes came back from her head tortured and overflowing with pain.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’

The distorted laugh caught Mr. J by surprise and he lurched in place once again.

‘Did you think that I would just nail the chisel deep into her head with a single blow?’ the demon asked.

No reply.

‘You did, didn’t you?’

Silence.

‘That would’ve been no fun. No, John. We’ll keep on going until you either get another correct answer, or your wife dies. Every wrong answer, I puncture a new hole into her cranium. I’m not really sure how many it will take before she’s gone, but I don’t think that it will take too many, do you?’

‘You sonofa—’

‘You know the rules,’ Mr. J was interrupted again. ‘We cannot move on until you give me a correct answer. So let’s try it again. Your wedding date. You have five seconds.’

The gears inside Mr. J’s brain didn’t know which way to turn. Anger collided with fear, which collided with doubt and despondency, all of it wrapped up in a feeling of total emptiness.

On the screen, Cassandra blinked again, this time slowly. Behind her eyelids, her eyes seemed lost.

Blood dripped from her chin on to her shoulder.

‘Four...’ the demon counted down.

March seventh. The date returned to Mr. J, but he now knew that that was wrong, so how come the date was still hammering his thoughts? Had he gotten the whole thing wrong or only the day? The month?

‘Three...’

On the mantelpiece, in Mr. J’s living room, there were at least a couple of photographs from his wedding day. He and Cassandra were standing outside the church, sporting larger-than-life smiles. Was that how this psycho had gotten the idea for his question? From the photographs?

That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking about, John. Think, goddamnit, think.

‘Two...’

For just an instant, Cassandra’s eyes regained focus and she looked back at her husband with purpose. The despair she had seen in his face seconds earlier had intensified exponentially.

‘One...’

‘April seventh?’ Those words left Mr. J’s lips totally lacking in conviction and sounding more like a question than a statement. All they were was a guess, nothing more. His psychological distress was so intense, it would probably take him a few tries to get his own birthdate right.

As those two words reached Cassandra’s ears, she blinked and, even through her tears, Mr. J saw her eyes abandon hope once and for all.

‘Wrong again,’ the demon said, as calm as a priest giving his opening remarks on Sunday mass. He brought the chisel and hammer back to Cassandra’s head. This time he positioned the chisel just a little left from center, and only about an inch up from her forehead.

Mr. J wanted to plead again. He wanted to beg, get on his knees, cry, but what good would any of that do? The demon wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t stop.

Up went the hammer. Down it came.

BANG.

Another perfectly controlled blow, sending only the tip of the chisel into Cassandra’s skull. Once again, she jerked on her seat viciously and her eyes disappeared into the unknown, but this time her head frighteningly convulsed for a full second, as if a large insect had somehow crawled up her nose and stung her brain.

Mr. J felt life lose its meaning. His wife, his rock, his world, was dying in front of his eyes, and not only was there nothing he could do to protect her, but she was dying because of his stupidity. Because he couldn’t remember his own wedding date.

Blood began oozing from her new wound, dripping over her temple, and running down her left cheek. Her eyelids moved, but this time they paused halfway. She had no strength left in her to fully open her eyes.

The soul-destroying pain of watching his wife being tortured in front of him, together with the suffocating guilt he felt inside, caused Mr. J to feel faint, and for the quickest of instants he took his eyes off the screen.

The demon saw it.

‘You looked away,’ he said.

Immediately, Mr. J looked back at his phone.

‘NO,’ he called out, shaking his head. ‘NO.’

‘You know the rules, John. You look away, she gets punished again.’

Once again, the demon repositioned the chisel, choosing to place it right at the center of Cassandra’s skull this time.

Mr. J locked eyes with his wife one more time and, as he did, he went frighteningly quiet. Cassandra wasn’t there anymore. Behind her tearful and wondering eyes he saw nothing but a dark void. Her pupils had dilated. The white of her eyes had gone the color of cheap red wine. Even if right now he managed to remember his wedding date, and hoping that the demon would stay true to his word and leave her alone, the Cassandra he knew was gone. From what he’d seen, the chisel had penetrated deep enough to crash through her cranium. Her brain had probably already sustained irreversible damage. After God knew how many operations, if her life could still be saved, who knew what she would be like? Would she still be able to talk? Walk? Move her arms? Recognize anyone? And Mr. J wasn’t even factoring in the kind of psychological annihilation that the events of tonight would bring her. No matter what he did from now on, he had already lost Cassandra.

BANG.

The hammer came down again, but this time it sounded like the demon had used just a fraction more force in his blow then he had before, because Mr. J actually heard the bone fracture. A noise that sounded like someone stepping on crushed glass. A millisecond after that, he saw a fresh stream of blood surge from her new wound.

In her seat, Cassandra convulsed once. Twice. Three times. The demon let go of her head and, almost in slow motion, it collapsed forward clumsily.

Stillness before one more violent convulsion that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Cassandra’s mouth fell half-open and she began drooling from the right corner of her lips. Muscle spasm caused her shoulders to heave back and forth a couple of times before her body finally came to a complete stop.

This time, Mr. J was the one paralyzed. His eyes were glued to the small screen. His breathing was heavy and labored.

Letting go of the hammer and chisel, the demon allowed the image of a lifeless Cassandra to grace the screen for several seconds before he brought two fingers to the right side of her neck. A moment later, he tried the other side.

From his hotel room, Mr. J did the same. He extended two fingers and gently placed them on his cellphone screen, moving them around delicately, as if he were really touching his wife’s face.

‘I’m... so sorry.’ The painful words came in a murmur. ‘I’m so, so sorry, my love. I love you so much. Please forgive me.’

‘Congratulations, John,’ the demon said. He had already moved away from behind Cassandra. ‘You succeeded in letting your wife die.’

A single tear rolled down Mr. J’s face. He closed his eyes and breathed in hate. When he reopened them, they were as void of life as his wife’s. His hand moved away from his cellphone screen.

All of a sudden, in one quick movement, the camera panned again, left and up, and Mr. J’s screen was filled by something that he wasn’t expecting — the demon’s face — only it wasn’t a face, it was a mask. But despite how real and grotesque it looked, with its lacerated and melted flesh, its deformed, devil-looking eyes, its ripped nose, and its blood-smeared sharp teeth, Mr. J didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He didn’t look away.

‘Now that your little game is over,’ he said in a tone so calm and cold, he could’ve frosted the windows in his hotel room, ‘you and I are going to play a new one. A game in which I’m the best there is. A game that I’ve been playing for years and I have never lost. Are you listening to me?’

The demon said nothing in return.

‘Do you really think that hiding behind a camera,’ Mr. J continued, ‘hiding behind an ugly mask, will somehow keep you safe?’ He paused, holding the demon’s eyes. ‘Every single mark I’m sent to deal with is a runaway. They all make the same mistake you are making right now. They believe that if they run away, if they move cities, or states, or countries... if they change their names, their appearances... if they obtain new documents... whatever. They all believe that that somehow will keep them safe. They all believe that disappearing is the key to a whole new life and all their old problems will be left behind.’ A new, pregnant pause. ‘They are all wrong. Let me tell you something else you didn’t know about me, whoever you are. The first part of the job I do is to track these runaways down, wherever they might be...’ Mr. J leaned forward, getting closer to his cellphone. ‘And I am the absolute best at what I do. So know this. Wherever you go, wherever you hide, whoever you become after this. I will find you... and I will rip your heart from your chest. Do you hear me, you sick freak?’

Surprisingly, the demon kept the call connected throughout Mr. J’s entire speech.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha.’ The demon laughed. At first it was a subdued laugh, as if he was trying to control it, but it soon got louder. Much louder.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’

The horror-clown mouth of the vile mask twisted awkwardly out of shape as the laugh became almost hysterical.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’

As if hypnotized, Mr. J found it impossible to drag his eyes away from the small screen. He knew he’d seen things in his life that no one else had ever seen. Ugly, horrific things that would’ve unsettled the sturdiest of individuals, but he’d never seen anything like this before.

Suddenly, without any warning, the demon simply stopped laughing.

A split second later the call disconnected.