Ch. 1 and Prologue The Izard County Incubus
Prologue
The room smelled of bleach and sweat, a cocktail that hung heavy in the air. Mr. Hanks was slowly blinking his eyes open, the remnants of a drug-induced haze still clouding his vision. His chair creaked as he jerked awake.
“Mr. Hanks, nice of you to join us,” Hilrey said, as the man tied to the chair, his own homemade wooden chair, looked up from his slumber blinking out the fuzz. The smell of cedar graced our olfactories while the moon lit the room. “Ya know, not many people would notice a hebephile. Hell, I doubt very many even know what it is.”
“I… I don’t even know what that is,” Mr. Hanks replied. Realizing he’d been restrained, he made an attempt at gaining freedom, jerking but unable to flail or kick, as the duct tape dug into his naked flesh. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“My friend here,” Hilrey said, referring to me. “She figured out what you were doing. Watched you for a good while. Not a terrible idea you had, pretending to be your son that you sent off to live with his mother. The kids had no way of knowing you weren’t him. It’s crazy how much you two look alike, and crazier still that you actually look younger than him.”
“I never hurt any of them,” he pleaded, beginning to cry. “I just-”
“Hung out at high school parties and accidentally raped the drunk ones?” I snipped. A slight growl crept in. “Or maybe the roofies you brought with you accidentally made it into their drinks?” I asked as I pointed to the box Hilrey was filling with various vials and boxed push pills.
“You’re the one I saw standing outside my house! Don’t kill me! Please! I’ll do anything!” the forty-one-year-old man begged.
I never got out of my car. I guess I wasn’t the only one interested in him.
Still, he was convincing as a teenager; short kempt hair, clean shaven, thin but athletic, and our surveillance had shown he had quite the personality to back up his facade, often hanging out with groups of boys or girls in the evenings after he was off work. He’d been using the cell phone he confiscated from his son when he sent him off for setting fire to a neighbor’s storage shed. Maybe he never intended down this path, but whenever he started, he went full send, assaulting fourteen pubescent teenage girls in the past two months with no end in probable sight. Rohypnol has an amnesiac effect, but rape victims often feel too embarassed or ashamed to report anyway. The loss of memory would be a blessing.
“You’re already dead, Steven,” I said, as calmly as I knew how, placing the saturated surgical face mask over his head, ensuring a harsh pop of the rubber bands as I let go, causing a little painful flinch from our sex offender. “It’s soaked with rohypnol. Do you know what happens when you breathe it in?” I asked, pretending as if he didn’t. “Oh, and you ate some about ten minutes ago.” My smile betrayed my intention, but served the purpose all the same. Fear. “Hilrey, would you mind explaining it to him, just in case? You tell it better than me.” I smiled, taking the now full box of partially used vials from my mentor.
Mr. Hanks squirmed, doing everything he could to move the chair, but it wouldn’t budge. He’d done a good job building his little dungeon chair in his basement. It was made of oak, one of the harder woods, and he’d fashioned the bottom of the legs with metal clasps to bolt into the floor using lag bolts. I suppose the next question was what he was going to do with such a device, but I think we could all imagine. Thus, there we were.
“You really shouldn’t struggle,” Hilrey began. “The more you breathe the faster the effects will set in. See, you’ll be essentially paralyzed but still able to feel pain. The nausea will be unbearable if you don’t pass out. Then, there’s the breathing, which will become more and more difficult and especially worse once you’re-” He turned and smiled at me before he finished. “-under.”
“Under what?” Mr. Hanks muffled through his mask. We both ignored him.
“This idea of yours is great,” Hilrey complimented as he began gathering anything that may be considered evidence in a missing persons case. “Wish I'd thought of it.”
“I’m a sharer,” I responded, looking at my watch. “We’d best get going. The sun is almost down, and Mr. Wilkinson is being buried in twelve hours.”
Chapter 1
Observation #119:
Grief is inefficient. Panic, however—panic is an engine. The body does not mourn; it performs.
—
12:40 a.m. I had just gone to sleep. I sighed as I reached for the demonic department issued device.
“Diaz,” I answered.
“Sorry to call, Dakota, but we need you to come talk to a young lady at the Sheriff’s Office.”
“Ashley,” I started, inhaling fully and exhaling in what must have been the most dramatically annoyed way possible. “Why?”
“It’s…” She paused, mumbling but not using any real words, not from any dictionary I’d ever heard of. “Well, it’s just weird.”
“More words.”
“She has blood on her and says a demon came to her house, murdered her entire family, and thinks it raped her. Robbie’s on his way out to do a welfare check on the family.”
My brain, still half asleep, considered the predicament. On one hand, it would be more practical to wait until Robbie figures out if the murder claim is valid or not, then I’d have something to work with. On the other hand, the longer I waited to speak to her, the less likely she would be to remember and the less time I’d have to get a rape kit done. God, I hate rape kits; it just revictimizes the victim, but there’s no better way. Whatever mental state she was in, dissociative or high, wasn’t going to help either. Regardless, it sounds like our local stalker may have finally acted.
“Thinks?” I asked. Only incoherent stuttering came as a response. Whatever this was, it had my dispatcher at odds with her beliefs. “Alright. I’m on my way.”
Getting out of bed wasn’t as easy as usual. Preparing for Quantico was kicking my ass. Prior special forces training was just that, prior. In the past and not of much use to my atrophied muscles so many years later. I’ve always kept in shape, but haven’t timed a run in over a decade. My back ached, just above my butt, and my butt felt like I lost an ass kicking contest against a soccer team. The legs were the worst, lactic acid at a maximum, not only making it nearly impossible to walk, but each step felt as if a thousand hot lighters were being pressed against the muscles under my skin. Sneaking through the house was impossible.
I wasn’t worried about waking Carly, she’s always slept without a care in the world, even after all that had happened. Hilrey, however, was the lightest sleeper I’d ever known, but, luckily, he was still awake, reading a book at the kitchen table.
“Coffee in the pot,” he said without looking up.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Still can’t sleep?”
“I’ll try again in a bit.”
“They make medicine for that, ya know.”
“They also make caskets for guys my age. Doesn’t mean I want one. I bet Mr. Wilkinson’s was nice. Kinda feel bad for giving him that sort of company.”
I rolled my eyes, not that he looked up to see it. Weird, I don’t remember doing that before meeting him. “Have you tried a fan?” I asked while filling my go cup with the deifying nectar.
“I don’t think cooling is the issue.”
“It’s the noise. Helps with tinnitus.”
He looked up and tilted his head slightly. “Really?”
I nodded, smiling with a sarcastic eyebrow raise to boot.
“Do we have one?” he asked.
“You can use the one in my room, or just sleep in my bed. Not sure how long I’ll be gone.”
“I’ll borrow and see how it goes.” He placed his mark and set his book down. “What’d they call ya for?”
“A girl with a wild story. She’s waiting on me as we speak.”
“Suppose you should get dressed then.”
“I’m dressed enough.”
“You’re not wearing shoes,” he said, then hesitated, looking away. It was awkward. “Or a bra.”
Hilrey was a sort of surrogate father for Carly and I. As I looked down to notice my headlights were shining through my very thin tank top, I nearly spilled my coffee trying to cover myself. My cheeks burned instantly as terror struck. “Note taken. I’ll be right back.” I set down the go-go juice and crossed my arms over my chest headed back down the hallway to my room.
As reluctant as I was, in the end I put on the full pants suit. Professionalism does have its uses, and I’d already taken a shower after the evening’s adventure. A quick brush and ponytail, right as rain.The drive in these little towns is always peaceful at night, void of any traffic, as if the road was built just for me, and Ash Flat was as small a town as anyone is likely to come across. The solace was short-lived as the radio chimed. “Sharp 12 to County,” the man said, a shake in his voice that gave notice. “It’s legit.”