The Impaler

Chapter 76

Bradley Cox felt as if his head were about to spin off his neck—the deafening pump of the Clone Six song over and over again, the flash of the strobe light threatening to drive him insane.

He was naked and strapped to a dentist’s chair in the man’s cellar—the cold, the writing all over his body, the newspaper articles taped to the wall. And his nose still hurt from where the man rammed him with the rag. However, along with his feelings of encroaching madness, Bradley Cox’s senses were sharp. And, despite the swelling, his nose still worked fine; could smell the chemicals and taste the bitterness in the back of his throat. He could also smell Pine-Sol and something else—something faint, but foul and rotting underneath it all. He found that focusing on the smells helped him keep it together. He would need to have his wits about him when the motherfucker in the ski mask returned.

“How could you think? How could you think?

Tell me how could you think, I ’d let you get away?”

Despite the ski mask and the bloody tattoo on his chest, Bradley Cox knew who’d come for him—knew it as soon as he woke up and the son of a bitch asked: “Will you know him when he comes for you?”

Cox had recognized that slow Southern drawl at once—but somehow, amid his growing terror, he was able to heed the advice of a voice inside his head. Stay calm, Bradley, it whispered. As long as he thinks you can’t identify him to the police you still have a chance.

Cox had pleaded to be let go—repeated over and over that he had no idea what the man in the ski mask was talking about—but the dude had kept asking:

“Will you know him when he comes for you?”

“Yes,” Cox had said finally, exhausted. “Whoever you want me to know I’ll know, okay? Just let me go!”

“And do you accept your mission?”

“What the fuck are you—”

“Do you accept your mission?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

“The nine to three,” the man had said, pointing to the large numbers on either side of the chamber’s doorway. “The three to one. Do you see them?”

“Yes,” Cox had whimpered, “but I—”

“You are the nine, I am the three. You are the three and I am the one. Your destiny is written all around you, in the stars. The equation is in everything and always was. It is why you must accept. Do you understand?”

“I’m not accepting shit, you sick motherfucker!”

The man in the ski mask had deflated for a moment, seemed to sigh, and quickly left.

A minute later he returned with the razor blade.

Bradley Cox gritted his teeth as the searing pain in his chest reminded him what the man in the ski mask had done. The man in the ski mask—a.k.a Edmund Lambert, a.k.a Vlad the Impaler. The fucking symbols he’d written all over his body, just like the ones on the Internet—it had to be him!

However, through all his hours of screaming—even through his ordeal with the razor blade—Bradley Cox had not let on that he knew the identity of his captor. A childhood spent watching countless episodes of America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries with his father had taught him that.

As long as Lambert doesn’t know I’m on to him, he kept repeating to himself, I still have a chance.

But Cox hadn’t seen Edmund Lambert for hours, and sensed that he was gone now not just from the cellar, but from the house above it, too. About twenty versions of the song ago, he heard an alarm go off briefly upstairs. Shortly afterwards, he saw a figure standing in the darkened hallway. He wasn’t exactly sure when the figure disappeared, but in the transition between the eighties version and the Clone Six cover he heard the alarm again and a door slamming. Everything upstairs had been quiet in the transitions since then. And thank God there were no more sounds of hammering and power tools coming from the other room; no more flashes of yellow light and little breezes coming from the darkened hallway, either.

Bradley Cox had read all about Vlad and his victims on the Internet, and knew damn well what Edmund Lambert had in store from him when he returned. And there was no doubt that Edmund Lambert would return—the blood, the stinging pain in his chest where the Impaler had carved him up made that abundantly clear.

That had been another lifetime ago, it seemed, and the pain in his chest was nothing compared to the pain in his left wrist where the leather strap bore into it. But Bradley Cox had himself to blame for that. He’d been twisting and pulling on it for hours now; and as he gave his wrist another strong tug, the young man felt his thumb pop out of its socket.

He howled in agony, but paused only briefly to catch his breath before he began pulling again, twisting and squirming as the wounds on his chest cracked open. He could feel the blood trickling down to his naked groin, but rather than cry out, Bradley Cox began to laugh.

“How could you think? How could you think?

Tell me how could think I ’d let you get away?”

Perhaps he was going insane; perhaps his senses weren’t as sharp as he’d thought they were. But through all the pain, he could swear the strap around his wrist suddenly felt looser.