Chapter 10 (part 1)

Evan sensed that he was being moved. He also felt something very cold on his head and something wet touching his mouth. His lips recognized the wetness as water and he opened his mouth to receive it. He gulped at it greedily and when he swallowed, his head began to ache. He heard a door close somewhere behind him and he instantly thought of the bathroom door on the bus. That recollection brought to mind the horrible creature he had seen pulling itself out of the toilet and he began to panic.

Evan opened his eyes but his vision was incredibly hazy. He tried to scream but as soon as he opened his mouth to do so, his head seemed to explode. He could vaguely remember being hit in the head, but that seemed like a dream right now. As his vision swam in and out, he could imagine several of those horrible toilet-monsters scurrying around him and that made his panic intensify.

He felt himself being lifted and then felt solid ground beneath his feet. “Walk,” said a smooth yet demanding voice from beside him.

He then felt a hand grab each one of his arms. He was carried forward by what he thought was two men. They assisted him with the first few steps but then Evan’s disoriented mind seemed to remember what walking was and how to do it.

His vision finally settled down and he was able to see a small house in front of him. It was actually more like a shack than a house, its construction no more inspired than a ten year-old’s clubhouse. There were two windows on the side that he faced, both of which were boarded up. It’s roof sloped down in a sharp triangle, the shingles peeling and falling off.

Behind this shack, there were three other similar structures. The four buildings seemed to be connected by crudely built walkways that were barely boarded over. The construction was flimsy at best, but the almost symmetrical sloppiness of the buildings and the walkways as a whole seemed abstract in the open spaces of the desert.

The two men to his side remained quiet. They stopped for a brief moment as they approached the shack so that the man to his right could open the front door. Evan looked at both men and recognized the one to his left as the bearded man that had spoke to him on the bus.

“Stop looking at me,” the man said. He gave Evan a slight shove towards the open door. “Go inside.”

Evan did so without struggling. He was a fighter at heart and would normally have refused to follow the bearded man’s orders. But it seemed useless to fight in that moment. His head hurt too badly and the pictures from the night that were zooming through his head seemed like a nightmare. He saw the beheadings again, saw the little monster-type thing in the toilet, saw the fat meaty leg sticking out in the aisle of the bus.

Inside, Evan looked around and saw that the shack consisted of a single large room that was lit by several candles and two kerosene lanterns. All of these light sources sat on an enormous table located in the center of the room; the light was so abundant that it was almost as bright as natural overhead light. Scattered around the table there were a few empty chairs and stools. In the farthest corner of the room there was a thin entryway that most likely led out to one of the connecting walkways.

“Take a seat,” the man to Evan’s right said, pointing to the large table. As he pointed with his right hand, his left hand drew a large knife from the waist of his pants. “If you go along with what we say, I won’t have to do anything nasty with this,” he told Evan.

Giving this man an awkward glance, Evan did as he was instructed. He took a seat at the head of the table, noticing for the first time that all of the candles that sat upon it were black. Uneasy with this, Evan looked back to the two men that had carried him in. They were also taking their own seats at the table, sitting at the sides a good distance away from him.

The sight of the black candles made Evan incredibly uneasy. Just what in the hell had he stumbled onto here? Certainly, it was something more than Sam’s crazy drug-trafficking theory.

Before he could give this any thought, he heard footfalls coming from the entry-way across the room. The sound of the footsteps carried as if coming from the depths of some amplified cavern, a sound that added to the ache in Evan’s head. He looked to the entryway, awaiting the source of the footfalls with dread.

The man that finally came through the doorway was frail and looked slightly underfed. His white hair was all over the place and unmistakable. Evan stared at the man and his heart sank. It was the man that had sat in the back of the bus…the man with the electric white hair and the axes…the man that had beheaded those people. The only difference in his appearance as he approached the table was that he was now wearing a shirt and he was not holding his axes. That, at least, put Evan a bit more at ease.

“Good evening, Evan,” the white-haired man said.

He reached into his back pants pocket and withdrew a wallet. He hefted it in his hand and gingerly tossed it onto the table in front of Evan. He then followed the wallet’s progress and took the seat to Evan’s right. He hunkered down calmly, as if he were about to discuss something trivial. He seemed incredibly relaxed and this somehow bothered Evan more than anything else. There were no signs at all that he had just killed four people in the desert.

Evan eyed the wallet on the table and recognized it at once as his own. He then looked stupidly at the thin white-haired man as if to ask a question that he did not yet have the words for.

“I apologize,” the man said. “We never have guests on our bus, so I felt it necessary to find out who you were.”

“Did you come to that decision before or after you had me brained with a crowbar?” Evan asked, not caring if he angered the man or not. The black candles and the memories of the beheadings from earlier led Evan to believe that he was doomed no matter what he did or said.

“Before,” the man answered without a trace of sarcasm. “We wanted to make sure you were an innocent and that you were not sent to snoop around in our activities.”

Evan didn’t respond right away. He looked from this man to the other two that had led him into this room. His original two captors stared in the direction of the thin man with much admiration. The flames from the black candles pasted an eerie wavering light onto their faces.

The thin man habitually ran a hand through his wild white hair and then offered the same hand to Evan. “Well, it’s not fair of me to know your name and not introduce myself, now is it?” he asked. “The name is Lott.”

Evan blinked in surprise at the gesture. “I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t want to shake your hand,” Evan said, looking at the man with as much hatred as his fear would allow.

“I suppose so,” Lott said, withdrawing the offered hand and smirking. Evan was surprised to see that he actually looked a bit hurt at Evan’s response. “I hope you know that we had to bring you here. I know that you saw what we do. I’m not really worried about that, though.”

Lott drummed his fingers on the table and then eyed Evan with suspicion. “What interests me,” Lott said, “is how you knew about us.”

“I told your driver what happened to me when I got on the bus,” Evan said.

“Yes you did,” Lott said. “However, my driver is not stupid, nor am I. So I’m going to give you five seconds to tell me what I want to know. So, I ask again, how do you know about us?”

Evan didn’t know what to do or what to say. But he knew that if he were to change his story, the punishment for his lie might be rather painful. He didn’t have to look back to the man with the knife to be reminded of the blade that was waiting to do him harm.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Evan replied. “I got jumped and I needed a ride.” As the words came out of his mouth, he was achingly aware of how paper thin they sounded.

Lott leaned back in his chair a bit, considering Evan’s explanation. A good ten seconds passed before he made any sort of reply. When he did, it was to his partners. He gave them a simple nod and before Evan was completely aware of what was happening, all three of the men were in motion towards him.

Lott got to him first and did nothing more than grab his left arm. While Evan began to struggle against this, the other two came to assist Lott. The man with the beard wrapped an arm around Evan’s neck and held him in a sleeper-hold position while the other one helped Lott with his left arm. Evan squirmed against the seemingly mammoth arm that was firmly planted around his neck, but there was no resistance. In fact, the harder he fought, the tighter the hold seemed to grow.

Evan knew within moments that he was helpless. So, hoping that it might pay off in the end, he simply stopped fighting. He relaxed against the man’s grip and allowed Lott and the other man to have his arm.

The man that had pulled the knife out moments ago placed Evan’s left arm on the table, securing it by the wrist. It was a peculiar thing to do and Evan found himself tensing up in anticipation of whatever might come next. As he tensed, the vice-like grip at his neck flexed and Evan found that if it grew much tighter, it would be very difficult to breathe.

With his arm on the table, secured even tighter now by Lott’s henchman, Lott took a firm grip on the top half of Evan’s pinky.

“I tried to give you a chance,” Lott said almost sympathetically.

He then pulled Evan’s pinky hard and to the right. Before he was aware of what Lott was doing, Evan heard and felt his finger snap in two. He screamed in the chair even though his throat was mostly closed off by the bearded man’s grip. He tried to fight away from his three tormentors but to no avail. He shuddered in pain and finally relaxed his back against the chair in defeat, breathing hard and grimacing from the pain. The scorching ache in his hand was excruciating, but he knew that he would have to look past it if he hoped to get out of here alive. And besides that, he did not want to sob or whimper in front of these men.

Gasping for breath and in horrendous pain, Evan looked down to his left hand once Lott released his pinky. The finger was hanging onto his hand at a sick slanted angle and it made Evan sick to his stomach to see it. He whimpered against the pain as the other man released his wrist but Evan did not bother attempting to get out of the chair. What would be the point? One of them had a knife and Evan knew that there were axes around here somewhere. He also knew what these assholes were capable of when armed with those axes.

“I hate doing things like that,” Lott said. “But you forced my hand.”

Evan bit the remark before it left his mouth, but he thought, Yeah, breaking fingers is a huge step down from cutting off people’s heads, you crazy fuck!

“Now, Evan,” Lott went on. “I’m going to give you another chance. And here’s how we’re going to do it. I’ll keep asking you and you can keep telling lies if you want. But the next time you lie, I won’t break any more fingers. I’ll simply cut that broken pinky off. And I’ll do that to all ten fingers until you tell us the truth. So save us the time and trouble and save yourself the use of your hands by being truthful.”

The maniac was still speaking calmly and in a soothing tone, as if he were explaining the alphabet to a preschool class. Evan cut his eyes at him, trying to use his anger as a means to control the fear and the warm flashes of pain that were slamming through his left hand and head.

Somehow, Evan got a few words out beyond his trembling lips. What he said was true, but he didn’t think it meant much to Lott and his two helpers. “The truth,” Evan said, “sounds even dumber than what I just told you.”

“It often does,” Lott replied with a smile. “I can tell when I’m being lied to, so as long as you tell me the truth, you’re in good shape.”

Evan found himself feeling more exposed and vulnerable when he noticed the bearded man looking at his broken finger with interest. Evan withdrew his hand from the table slowly and cradled it carefully in his lap, trying not to wince at the pain that flared through his hand as he moved it. He found himself wanting to hide his pain from these three; it wasn’t because it seemed the macho thing to do, but because he knew that they would take him more seriously if he made it through this interrogation without crying like a baby.

“The truth, Evan,” Lott said. “Quickly, or we’ll cut that finger off.”