Stirred

It starts with one inciting event. The auto factory dies.

Then the steel mill follows.

People move away.

The retailers, unable to stay in business, go with them.

Finally the state cuts off services and utilities, and all that is left is the decaying, empty homes and buildings.

A perfect location.

He was so lucky to stumble across it. So lucky that his financial situation allowed him to tailor it to his particular needs.

After all this time, all this money, all this effort, it’s finally happening.

Jack is almost to the first warehouse.

Luther leaves the Bor under the tarp and heads down to the control room to watch her on flat-screen, realizing as he descends the stairs that everything in his life—the good, the bad, the pleasure, and the pain—has all been a ramp-up to this moment.

To the next several hours.

It’s not joy he feels. He’s no longer capable of true happiness. But there’s a feeling of peace watching this all unfold that remains unmatched in recent memory.

And though he’s lived long enough to know it won’t last, that this sense of satisfaction will fade and die like everything else in this fallen world, he’s also lived long enough to know to enjoy it while it’s here.

To be fully, unapologetically, in the moment.

He hopes to teach Jack this feeling.

Even if it takes years.

I punched in the code.

A green light blinked.

A deadbolt snicked open.

Standing outside the door, the noise on the other side was already loud, but when I finally pulled it open, it became otherworldly.

I paused in the threshold, coming fast to the conclusion that stepping inside couldn’t possibly be a good idea, but Luther was barking in my ear to move. I no longer feared him shooting me—it was terrifying to be fired at, but Luther had put in too much time and effort to kill me before I saw everything he wanted me to see.

But I had no doubt he’d hurt and kill my friends.

I stepped inside and the door slammed shut after me, coaxed in by a vacuum.

I shivered.

Total darkness.

Freezing cold.

Screaming wind.

Pellets of ice driving into my face.

I was in the thick of an indoor blizzard.

I spun back around, trying to find the exit, desperate to get out, already disoriented.

Stumbling into a wall, I groped for the door, felt it, but there was no handle on this side.

A jolt of claustrophobic fear shot through me—the panic of being trapped.

The noise became louder, the wind stronger.

I wasn’t alone. I heard moaning.

I took deep, slow breaths and willed myself to settle down. I couldn’t lose my head, my nerve. Must not let that happen.

There was a strobe in the distance—a cutting blue blink of light every few seconds that looked like electricity in a cloud.

When it flashed, I could see a wall of swirling fog ahead of me.

What the hell? How much money had he spent building this—whatever this was? Over the years, I’d had more than my fair share of encounters with monsters, and they all had warped fantasies that prompted their actions. But Luther’s fantasies were way off the charts. This guy had built his own psychopath Disney World.

I forged ahead into the storm, holding my left arm out to protect my face.

It reminded me of the worst Chicago winter storms—those handful of times when I’d been forced outside with the snow pouring down and the wind ripping through the trees, and nothing to see beyond five feet in front of your nose but the manic flakes.

I must’ve made it fifty or sixty steps into the warehouse—I lost count—before hands suddenly grabbed my shoulders.

I screamed and pulled back, but they didn’t let go, the cold, wet fingers digging through my windbreaker.

In the burst of strobe light, I saw a woman in a gaudy evening gown, her hair twisted up and styled as if she’d been on her way to a costume ball. Tears and the frigid water had drawn lines of the heavy mascara and eyeliner down her gaunt, pale face.

“Help me!”

A chain ran down from a leather collar with a metal box attached to it.

“Where’s the way out?” I shouted back over the roar of the wind.

“Get me out!”

“I’m trying! You have to tell me—”

“He’s go

“How many people are in here?”

“Four! There’s a girly in the cage!”

I got closer, caught a glimpse of her chest. Hanging around her neck was an engraved plaque, the writing edged with frost.

CIRCLE 2: LUST

You have to accept the fact that part of the SIZZLE of sex comes from the danger of sex. You can be overpowered.

I recognized the Camille Paglia quote, as I’d read all of her books, but I didn’t understand its significance in this case.

“What’s your name?” I shouted at the chained woman.

“Patricia Reid!”

“How did you get here, Patricia?”

“What?”

“How did you get in this room?”

“I was on the bus!”

“What bus?”

“The bus!” she said, nodding frantically.

I remembered Andrew Z. Thomas’s website, ALONEAGAIN posting in the forum.

Luther can do anything. He once swallowed a bus.

“What bus?” I screamed, but my words were drowned out by a sound that surpassed even the roar of the wind.

A deep, awful creaking.

Metal grinding against metal, like the sound of an old, rusty gate being opened.

Or a new, frozen gate.

A way out?

Patricia turned toward the sound, her face barely visible in the fleeting streaks of blue light that resembled lightning through the fog.

Up to this moment, the screams had been difficult to hear against the backdrop of wind and whatever machines were producing it. But the scream that rose up twenty feet away hit me loud and clear.

I’d never heard anything like it.

Human. Female. Beyond terror.

And so much pain in it.

A sharp, rusty taste coated the back of my throat.

I had started to open my mouth to ask Patricia if she knew the way out when I saw something slowly emerge out of the icy fog.

My first thought was Luther, but this couldn’t possibly be him.

This thing was huge, moving on all fours, lumbering like a bear…

Holy shit.

Not like a bear.

This thing was a bear.

The wide, waddling beast stalked toward us with strings of bloody drool escaping its jaws, which still chewed on something.

From fifteen feet away, it looked enormous.

No black or brown bear. This had to be a grizzly.

Patricia hadn’t said there was a girly in the cage. She’d said grizzly.

Luther had actually gotten a grizzly bear.

Patricia bolted off into the fog, the coil of chain at my feet unwinding, and then I heard a cry and a thump as it arrested her forward momentum and slammed her to the floor, the chain taut.

The bear took notice of her, its giant head swiveling her direction, and then rushed forward three steps and pounced.

It clamped its jaws around Patricia’s neck as her limbs flailed around her.

There was a terrible CRUNCH, and then Patricia was still.

The bear put a paw on her chest, tugging its head back, ripping her throat open. Then it stared back at me.

In the oncoming gust of wind, I could already smell the odor of its musk—wet fur and pungent urine and fresh blood.

I backpedaled into the mist, slowly at first, not wanting to incite a chase, but the bear accelerated to a lope, its great haunches pumping up and down, and I thought, I can’t believe I’m going to die like this. I’m from Chicago, for chrissakes.