By Al Bruno III
October 27th: Sue Charney was on the good side of thirty and the bad side of an impending financial apocalypse. Many would say that at her age, she should have known better than to sink her remaining savings into a direct selling organization in the hopes of making a quick fortune, but they might have done the same after sitting through one of Emblazon Unlimited's free recruitment seminars. Pyramid scheme or not, they make one hell of a recruitment video.
From the day her $300 sales kit arrived, Sue zealously pitched Emblazon Unlimited's dollar 'store quality' product line to her coworkers and friends, at parties and family gatherings, and even door-to-door through her apartment complex.
Her hard work generated few sales but plenty of reactions. Her neighbors complained, getting her in trouble for violating her lease's 'No Soliciting' clause. The break room at work emptied whenever she walked in. Her friends stopped returning calls, and her calendar became barren of family gatherings and parties. By April, Sue faced a decision: pay her rent or shell out more money for Emblazon Unlimited's seminars and stock management fees.
That was what sent her out to that secluded house on the outskirts of Ghent for what she had been told would be intense one-on-one sales coaching. Even now, I'm not sure why she and several others agreed to visit the residence of a man they had never heard of or met. Was it foolishness? Desperation? Or the lingering effects of that star-studded recruitment video?
A light shone in every window; the front door was unlocked. An earlier text message had told her to just go in and make herself at home.
So that's just what Sue Charney did.
And it was the last thing she ever did.
###
… I'll spare you the specifics of how I pieced together Sue Charney's final night. Let's just say it involved hard work, patience, and some serious online skullduggery.
I had my incredibly shady cousin Roy create a fake ID for me; he chose the name 'Nathaniel Blades.' That's Roy for you. Despite the name sounding fit for an action hero or an adult film star, it served its purpose. I used it to become an Emblazon Unlimited distributor. My initiation into the world of direct sales happened through emails and conference calls. There was a credit check, contracts to sign, and promises of a financial empire built on generic soaps and toilet paper.
Even for a newbie, my sales numbers were pitiful. Giving away stock to the needy will do that to you. There were more conference calls and increasingly insistent suggestions that I buy more sales training DVDs. I pleaded poverty and began talking about leaving the flock.
That's when they offered me a free consultation with their Northeastern Sales Coach, Davis Sawney. Imagine my surprise—they'd never mentioned a Sales Coach before. They sent me an address and an appointment time, naturally at night, so I put on my semi-good suit and shiniest shoes and made the hour-long drive to Ghent. As I was 'in disguise,' I left my straw fedora home.
There isn't much to say about Ghent; it's a quiet little town, the kind of place people move to if they find Utica too exciting. Davis Sawney's home wasn't all that fancy, but compared to some of the rural homes I'd passed on the way, it was practically a mansion.
No wait. That isn't fair. But as I've said many times before, I have been and probably always will be a city boy. Rural environments make me feel vulnerable, and rural people always make me feel like a nerd at football practice. When Joe Redneck looks at me, he knows he's looking at a guy who can't survive without fast food and Google Search; he knows that when civilization collapses, he and his kin will survive while I if I'm lucky, will have to earn food by selling my hiney to groups of feral rodeo clowns.
Wow. Now, that's what I call going off on a tangent.
My AMC Pacer made its way up the dirt driveway of the Sawney house, flecks of dirt spattering everywhere, even up onto the windshield. I parked near the house and walked up to the front door.
Knocking first yielded no response. Then I rang the bell, the sound echoing faintly inside the house, but no one answered the door or shouted a hearty "Come in!"
The longer I stood there, the more exposed I felt. That old familiar instinct to run began to settle into place, but I always ignored it. A strange feeling of being conspicuous came over me, that and the urge to run. I tried knocking and ringing again. Still nothing, I changed it up by ringing the bell and then knocking.
Still no answer.
My phone bleeped. I checked it and saw a text message from the same number that had sent me this address and directions. It said, "On conference call. Door unlocked. Come in and make yourself at home."
Dandy, just dandy.
A blast of unseasonably frigid air conditioning hit me as I let myself inside. It was so cold that I half expected to see sides of beef hanging from the ceiling. Instead, I found gentle lighting and tasteful colonial décor. Impressive-looking sliding doors blocked access to all the rooms and hallways except for one. Voices and music echoed towards me; I followed them, trying not to feel like a mouse in a maze or, to return to my previous metaphor, a cow in a slaughterhouse.
Either way, I made sure I tiptoed every step.
The hallway led to a wide receiving room, where a widescreen TV burbled and flickered with the latest Emblazon Unlimited promotional video. Plush, expensive-looking chairs were arranged in front of it. The walls of the room were eggshell white and decorated with tall oil paintings depicting cowboys being cowboys and bullfighters being assholes. In the center of the room was a wide table heaped with refreshments—sandwiches, fruit, and an impressive selection of alcoholic beverages.
I could imagine new arrivals making a beeline right for that table, so I didn't. Instead, I casually wandered around, looking for anything suspicious. After a few minutes, I realized the most questionable thing was the hairpiece the guy in the promotional video was wearing.
But this had to be the room where it all happened, the room where Sue Charney and at least a half dozen others had met their demise. I had tried to tell the state police what my investigations had revealed and what I suspected, but they dismissed me as always. As far as they were concerned, an ordinary run-of-the-mill serial killer was responsible for the desiccated bodies they were pulling out of Iron Fen Pond every six weeks or so.
Ten minutes went by, and still, no one had come into the room to meet Nathaniel Blades, aka Yours Truly. The promotional video must have been in a loop because it started playing again from the beginning. I brought up the "On conference call. Door unlocked. Come in and make yourself at home." message and tried to text back, only to get a number-not-in-service error.
"Hello?" I called out, "Is there anyone here?"
Nothing.
My eyes followed the path a normal person would take upon entering the room—I mentioned before they'd head straight for the refreshments. Briefly, I wondered if the bagel sandwiches had been spiked, then I saw it.
A square shape on the hardwood floor caught my eye, about a yard to the right of the table. It was barely noticeable, easily dismissed by anyone else as a flaw in the carpentry.
But 'normal' hasn't been part of my life for years. It didn't take much imagination to picture what came next: an unsuspecting soul enjoying free food, TV drowning out the sound of a trap door snapping open.
So, I lifted one of the plush chairs as gingerly and quietly as possible, setting it over the square on the floor. With that done, I decided to explore.
Each sliding door was locked, so I chose one at random and started picking the lock—a skill I've honed over the years, useful when dealing with the forces of darkness who rarely invest in high-end security.
After a few moments, the door slid open, revealing a narrow, twisting stairway. Climbing it induced serious vertigo. Twenty-four steps later, I faced a metal door. The lower floors of the house were chilly, but the upper floor was humid and thick. The hall had plenty of doors, but only one caught my attention, a thick, robust steel barrier resembling a meat freezer door. I crossed the hall and touched Its thick metal handle; it felt warm and clammy, like the skin of a sick man. As it swung open, I was hit by a gust of foul air.
The room revealed was not a freezer, but it had smooth, metallic walls that reflected the glow of the overhead fluorescent lights. A single window on the right side of the room was thick with condensation, matching the layer that coated every other surface—except for the altar.
And no, I wasn't surprised to find an altar on the far wall of the room. What else could there be in a place like this?
The altar, adorned in silver and gold, held an open-faced diorama of a yellow house. Within its central room stood a playhouse where seven wax figurines with wicks protruding from their heads were placed. Despite the heat, the only signs of melting were evident near the wicks of these figurines. My scowl became a mask of abject horror. I knew what those wax miniatures represented.
Dark, dried stains spattered the altar and its accessories. Blood had been spilled here, Sue Charney's specifically, but I'm sure every other corpse fished out of Fowler's Pond had started out here as a living being. I pulled out my phone and took some pictures.
The door hissed open behind me. I turned to see a short figure in a black suit that looked like a car salesman cosplaying as a high-powered executive. There was no anger or surprise in his voice. I snapped another picture.
"What is going on here?" I asked, "Why are you doing this?"
I've often said that I usually meet two kinds of trouble—stalkers and talkers. I'd expected Davis Sawney to be a talker, which was why I wasn't ready when he dove at me and brought me down.
Scrawny hands wrapped around my throat. I started choking and gasping.
We rolled across the cold floor. I pulled at the hands, but they wouldn't budge. I threw a few punches, but my attacker didn't react. When you're being strangled, you always find yourself staring into your attacker's eyes. They say the eyes are the gateway to the soul. If so, what kind of soul were those dull, emotionless eyes revealing?
I will probably never know because, at that moment, I jabbed my thumbs into them. There was no rewarding scream of pain and horror, but I could breathe again. I watched the black-suited stranger stagger and flail blindly. I'm not sure I can ever make you understand how much I wanted this murderer to make a sound. A curse, a scream, anything, but the only noise in that room was my gasping breaths and the shattering of glass when my assailant fell out the window...
###
"So, where are the pictures?" Sara asked as we sat on my couch. She spent almost every other night here so I could monitor her for further sleepwalking incidents. I think she would have preferred to stay every night, but that would have given her parents more to complain about. They believed she was spending time with an old friend from high school, and fortunately, that friend was willing to cover for her.
"It was broken in the fight," I said unhappily. "So I had to make an anonymous call to the police from a pay phone at a self-service gas station. I was surprised to find either, much less both."
She covered her smile with her hand, "How many phones is that for you?"
"I don't want to think about it." I also didn't want to think about whether I had left any usable fingerprints somewhere in that oh-so-elegant house of horrors. On my way out, I had wiped down both sides of the doorknob, but still...
Item: Forensics revealed blood traces of almost a dozen people on that altar, all linked to the bodies recovered from Iron Fen Pond. What they didn't find were the wax miniatures that had made me so justifiably nervous.
Item: As I suspected, Davis Sawney had been sacrificing his less productive underlings on a homemade altar for the last few months to appease whatever dark force had captured his interest. You might scoff, but the man amassed millions in cash and stocks, owning dozens of cars, a yacht, three mansions, and even an alpaca farm.
Item: What he didn't own was the house in Ghent, where he carried out his blasphemous acts. That house belonged to the corporate overlords of Emblazon Unlimited. It was loaned out to their top earners as a perk. No one in law enforcement or the legitimate press bothered to ask why this perk had trapdoors.
Item: While Emblazon Unlimited took no responsibility for the terrible crimes committed on their property, they did send heartfelt condolences, a year's supply of lavender-scented bath bombs, and the jerky-based treat called 'Beef Whips' to the families of the deceased.
And finally, as I said earlier, the body of Davis Sawney was never found. While some of you might think that means he survived his fall and slunk off like a movie maniac to kill again, I do not think so.
Why?
Now, you can take what I say with a grain of salt; after all, I had just finished being strangled. I told Sara, "When I ran to the window and looked out, I didn't see the yard or the driveway. I didn't see what I saw when I first arrived. I saw a swamp. It was night, but the sky was tinged green. The air smelled like stagnant water, but with just a trace of something else, like that odor you catch right after you blow out a candle. The trees were huge and twisted with branches that were tangled and thick with Spanish moss. Through them, I could just barely glimpse the silhouette of a tall, broken-looking building."
I hadn't realized I had begun to shiver until Sara took my hand. "What about Davis Sawney?" she asked.
There was a long pause before I told her, "I saw him. Just a glimpse. He was being dragged into the trees by a… a shape."
But what I didn't tell her was how very familiar that shape was.
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