The Nowhere Man

64 The Slender Man

The slender man always got excited as the hour neared. All the cues for arousal were there. The big cranes, the smell of diesel, the containers lined up like giant dominoes.

It meant that soon he would claim his prize.

Entering JAXPORT, he felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the bell. His heartbeat quickened as he took in the sights, breathed the muggy wet of the St. Johns River, which crept by in the background as dark and lazy as lava. He was perspiring through his dress shirt.

His Town Car purred along the roadway. He sat in the back, a bottle of champagne icing in a bucket. It was a celebration sixteen days in the making. Resting on the seat next to him were a set of fleece-lined wrist cuffs and a ball gag. Also, a chilled bottle of Fiji. Hector Contrell would have arranged nourishment for the journey, but the slender man found that they generally arrived parched.

His bodyguard and driver, Donnell, knew not to speak, not to say anything that might break the spell of this magical time.

The drive up, you see, even this was part of the foreplay.

Donnell turned off the main road to a rear cargo zone, the designated area where a series of under-the-table payments had determined that intermodular Container 78653-B812 would be set down. That was the beauty of it. Most everyone who worked at a port took bribes. No one had any idea what the container held.

It was there waiting, placed alone on an apron of asphalt.

Donnell got out first, his coat jacket shifting around his bulk, pulled tight across the holster.

The slender man emerged and took a moment there in the midnight silence. He tilted his head back and drew in a deep breath of fresh air. It was a starless night, the sky an impenetrable sheet of black, save for the moon, which beamed with an intensity that reminded him of the comic-book illustrations of his youth.

He recalled the photographs of her from the online catalog and reminded himself to lower his expectations. They didn’t always arrive in the best shape. But once they were cleaned and rested, they were usually restored to their previous condition, good for several months. Even then he could most often fetch a decent price selling them used. For people with lower standards, there was still value to be extracted.

The slender man nodded at Donnell, who produced a key, moved forward, and fussed with the massive cargo-door lock. Then he swung out the leverage handles, the lock rods clanking in their holds. He stepped back, a magician revealing the prestige. After so much planning, the theatrics were essential. Nothing could shatter the mood.

As the doors creaked open, Donnell eased farther back out of the sight line and stood beside the slender man, leaning against the driver’s door with his hands folded.

This was the slender man’s favorite part, when he let them out of the dark box they’d been living in for weeks. He was their keeper, their owner, their God.

But this time something was different.

The inside, it wasn’t pitch-black.

A rod of light dropped from the roof of the container unit. Had Contrell installed a light for her journey?

The slender man blinked but could make out nothing in the darkness beyond. It looked like a spotlight on a stage. The aesthetics rather suited him.

“Don’t be shy, my love,” he said. “Step forward.”

A rustling issued from the shadows, a form emerging.

She was bigger than he would have thought. Broad-shouldered.

She was also a he.

And the “he” was holding what appeared to be a nine-millimeter submachine gun of German design.

The slender man felt his throat clutch when he realized that the light on the ceiling wasn’t a spotlight at all. It was the golden light of the moon, shining through a hole that had been cut in the top of Container 78653-B812.

In the gleam of the muzzle flare, he saw the actual Ms. Siegler crouched in the back corner of the container behind the man, hair matted down across her eyes.

Beside him Donnell danced a little jig, the rounds jerking his limbs this way and that.

There came a moment of silence, a curl of cordite rising from the muzzle, during which the slender man grappled with the fact that the carefully curated mood was in fact shattered.

He tried to say something, but the sound he forced through his dry throat was an inhuman croak. He’d never known that terror could feel like this, a physical sensation running through every vein, inhabiting every cell, threatening to explode from the core of you straight through your skin.

The silence stretched out longer yet as the barrel drifted casually to face him, the bore waxing into a full moon to match the one above.

And then he sensed his body flying back against the side of the Town Car, the safety glass of the windows cascading around him, and he tried to make out the face of the man behind the weapon that was tearing him to shreds.

The face was nothing but a silhouette, as black as the darkness that surged up and claimed him.