B00IZ66CZ8 EBOK Read online

  Violently she struggled to move, but she was confined to some kind of contraption. It was not a hospital bed. The contraption that held her prisoner was more like a medieval torture device. It was covered in rust. As she fought to free herself, all she heard was the squeaking and turning of metal parts. The device that restrained her whistled and howled like metal twisting in the wind.

  A constant and powerful gust of air from a vent above her blasted across her body. It carried warm steam.

  Jessica attempted to scream, but no audible sounds emitted from her, only mumbled whimpers.

  She struggled and turned her head down. She looked as far she could and winced in terror.

  The Woodsman had skinned her entire body. Every muscle in her body was exposed. All she could see was the bare, red tissue that made up her muscular system.

  The muscle tissue covered most of her skeleton, but she could make out her ribs. Underneath the splintery, white bones was her beating heart. It beat profusely like an engine with the hood up.

  The drugs, combined with her state of shock, paralyzed her nerves. And she felt nothing but the sheer terror.

  What Jessica hadn’t known was that she had been drugged and pumped full of a powerful sedative cocktail The Woodsman had created it. He called it M99.

  It was a two-part sedative.

  The first part was the sedative that he administered into her drink and later he injected it straight into her arm.

  The second part of M99 was the constant barrage of M99 in weaponized aerosol form. This vapor had blasted her from the air vent over her head.

  Jessica had had to be exposed to the weaponized drug for a few hours for it to take full effect. Of course, if she died in the process, the Woodsman would still continue with his plans for her.

  Her body looked like one of those skinless forms from the Bodies exhibits that toured all around the country.

  After the terror sank in, she realized that she was posed in an awkward position, like one of the displayed corpses from the exhibit, except she was not a corpse, not yet.

  She sat upright as if she were in a chair, except there was nothing underneath holding her up. Multiple steel rods protruded through her joints and limbs. The rods held in this upright position like a marionette.

  Suddenly, she realized that she was being watched.

  Steam rose from below her now. She peered upward, following the rising steam. Above her, gazing over the side of a steel catwalk, she saw him, a phantom.

  The Woodsman looked down at her. The steam combined with her blurred vision, contorting his shape. The only things that appeared finite were his black, soulless eyes.

  In the haze, she recognized that he wore something over his face. It was a black gas mask. The mask was only a mouthpiece. The goggles were not attached.

  The mask was attached to a black, rubber hose that ran past his chin and over his shoulder. The other end of it attached to a tank on his back. It reminded Jessica of her little brother who had similar equipment for treating his sleep apnea.

  The apnea caused him to stop breathing in his sleep and so he had to sleep with a special breathing mask.

  “Good. You’re awake. The others have died during the skinning process. Right in the middle.

  “You slept through it, most of it. I thought that you were going to miss it,” the Woodsman said.

  Jessica tried to mumble back to him, but still no sounds came out of her.

  “You can no longer make audible sounds. I severed your windpipe, then sewed your neck back together. Sorry,” he said.

  She felt as though she were going to start crying at any moment, but no tears came out. Then she realized that she had not blinked in quite some time. She tried, but her eyelids did not shut.

  They were gone, surgically removed.

  “Jessica! Pay attention! This is the best part. This is where I pose you like they do with mannequins.

  “After I discover a suitable position, I drop a chemical over your body. That chemical is in place just above your head there,” the Woodsman said.

  Jessica looked up at a large pot that boiled above her. Bubbles exploded on the surface of it, making a popping sound like water dripping from a faucet.

  Sheer terror now coursed through her body.

  “The pot above you contains a liquid that I created.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I am more than an architect. I dabble in chemistry.

  “But mostly, I like to think of myself as an artist.

  “Are you paying attention?” he asked, tilting his head to study her face.

  “The liquid is basically a liquefied wood-based substance. When I release it over your body, you will be frozen under a layer of wood, immortalized forever. Wood will now be your new skin,” he said.

  A grin slowly stretched across his face and he looked straight ahead of him like he was smiling at an invisible person.

  Jessica returned her eyes downward to her own body.

  She began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. It had been a long time since she had been to church, but she prayed as best she could.

  As the words formed in her mind, the Woodsman released the pot. The liquid gushed over Jessica’s body. In an instant it solidified her pose.

  The Woodsman glared down and smiled.

  As the wood dried, he relished in his creation. Jessica’s body became a wooden sculpture. She was frozen in the moment of fear. He had captured her perfectly in a new layer of wooden skin.

  “Now your old skin is gone. You have shed it,” he said.

  All the Woodsman had to do next was to wait for her to completely dry. Then he could start on the next victim. Then he could finish his creation, his sculpture.

  |||||

  In the thick, consuming darkness, he clawed at the sides of the hole. Dirt built up beneath his fingernails. He huffed and panted. Sweat covered his forehead and chest. He fought the urge to scream.

  The hole consumed him. He felt as though he was falling deeper and deeper into it.

  The hole’s opening seem to grow farther away from him. Soon it would be completely out of reach as if it were miles away. Eventually, the opening into the hole became the end of a long tunnel.

  Shane’s breathing decreased. His ribs painfully straddled his lungs. Everything inside of his respiratory system tightened. He gasped.

  Shane focused his vision on the end of the tunnel. He heard an evil, echoing laugh. A pair of red eyes suddenly appeared above him from the edge of the opening as if his tormentor had just decided to look down at him. The eyes glimmered.

  They looked like a pair of large, blood-red Christmas lights. Shining through the darkness, the sinister eyes lit the walls of the hole.

  Then a shovel full of dirt fell across his face. Something was burying Shane alive.

  |||||

  “You belong only to me!” my devilish voice exclaimed from the darkness in his mind.

  I threw dirt over Shane’s grave. The particles of dirt poured onto him, covering his torso.

  In sleep, I controlled Shane’s dreams. Sometimes it was necessary to remind him of his master. I reminded him of why he should fear me. I reminded him of why he obeyed me.

  I gave him plenty of room to fill his own petty desires. To be whatever he wanted to be. And as long as he did it by day, I didn’t care. But the nights were mine.

  Shane exercised regularly. He read novels that bored me. Occasionally, he even dated a woman until I had had enough. Then he pulled the plug.

  I needed him to do these things. I needed him to live his life. All of the normal things that he did were necessary to our balance, to our cover. They protected us from suspicion.

  Shane was a visible guy.

  After his guardian, Terrance Graves, was dead and buried, the partners of his family’s law firm needed someone to run things. They asked Shane to step in as a temporary figurehead. He had to take over Terrance’s duties.

  This all turned out to be primarily superficial. What th
ey really used him for was to act as a symbol until they could find a new leader. Immediately, Shane found that they suspended most of the office’s powers until they found someone more qualified to step in.

  Apparently, they didn’t trust him.

  He slept in Terrance’s old bed in a New York City apartment.

  In his last will and testament Terrance Graves, the former head of Shane’s law firm and his benefactor, left us his estate. Terrance had no other family except for Shane. So Terrance willed everything to him.

  The official story read that a serial killer known as the StoneCutter had murdered Terrance Graves.

  The StoneCutter also attempted to murder the U.S. Secretary of State. He buried her alive on her own property up north.

  The media covered it for weeks. They said that the StoneCutter had kidnapped the Secretary and her lawyer right from under the noses of the Secret Service.

  One Secret Service agent was killed in the line of duty. Except for Terrance, no one else was harmed.

  They also reported that it was unclear how the Secretary had survived that attack.

  Terrance Graves wasn’t so lucky.

  According to the media, the StoneCutter had shot Mr. Graves multiple times and left his body in a shallow grave.

  They speculated that the Secret Service had rescued Madame Secretary and thwarted a double homicide.

  The authorities presumed that the StoneCutter was still at large.

  Shane and I knew different. We had killed the StoneCutter.

  Shane’s eyes opened abruptly. He’d slept well but a feeling of exhaustion lingered. For the last month, I had plagued his dreams. I grew restless. We killed the StoneCutter a year ago and now it was time for a new challenge.

  Shane’s new position at the firm gave us nothing to do. All he ever did was read and work out. It was like being in prison in a way.

  I felt bored.

  Shane fought the boredom as well. We spent hours studying new cases that the firm was involved in. We hoped to find something interesting, but no case piqued our interest.

  So, we worked out, sometimes in Terrance’s office and sometimes at home. At least, Shane was in top physical form. He’d packed on fifteen extra pounds of muscle.

  He read more and more. This kept both of us sharp. We read three or four books a week.

  Shane even took up painting. He took down all of Terrance’s rubbings and other artworks. He replaced many of them with his own. He was getting quite good at painting.

  Painting helped me more than Shane. It had become a temporary outlet for my dark fantasies to be put into images.

  The resulting paintings were strongly violent and twisted. Fortunately, Shane didn’t get a lot of visitors. No reason to hide any of his paintings.

  Which was good because they revealed far too much about me.

  In his will, Terrance also bequeathed his apartment to Shane. It overlooked Central Park. And it was a nice-sized apartment. Expensive moldings and fixtures brought it together in a New England Victorian style.

  Shane left Terrance’s decor the way that it was. Our tastes were for the more postmodern, dark styles, but we could survive in this new home for now.

  Shane rose from the bed and walked out onto the balcony. The railing covered his naked lower half from onlookers, not that people in New York ever looked around much. Or that they’d be surprised by a naked man standing on a balcony.

  He peered out over the horizon. The early morning sunlight trickled around the skyscrapers. Our new apartment was cast in shadow.

  Shane’s neighbors were mostly billionaires. Investment bankers and business owners occupied most of the apartments that overlooked the park. The real estate here was super expensive. Even millionaires like Terrance had problems getting in. Terrance had acquired this apartment as payment in a case that he personally took on.

  A wealthy hedge fund manager had swindled hundreds of investors into a scam. Terrance kept him out of jail, but the fund manager sacrificed his fortune, including this apartment and its incredible view.

  Shane stretched out his arms and let the chilly December air brush over his extremities.

  We were on the seventh floor. As Shane looked around, he noticed that most of his neighbors were outside on their balconies. They stared at the street below. A startled look swept over their faces.

  Shane followed suit and gazed down toward the street. Police lights filled his eyes. Uniformed cops, SWAT, and forensic units moved across the park in all different directions.

  Something big was going on.

  The police blocked off the streets surrounding Central Park. I grabbed tightly to the insides of Shane’s eyeholes like a passenger would grab the portholes of a ship. I peered out, trying to make out what happened, but we were too far up.

  Shane decided to skip breakfast and get a closer look.

  Before Shane could even get his pants on, the doorbell rang.

  |||||

  I twisted my head and peered into the back of Shane’s skull, where I stored his memories. Staring back into my wolf-like eyes were the faces of the dead killers that I’d murdered and shredded to pieces over the years. The FBI never found them. Because the FBI hadn’t known that any of them were dead.

  I wanted to keep it that way. In order to be sure that it stayed a secret, Shane had to play along with a certain FBI agent and a hostile cop ex-girlfriend’s scheme.

  Detective Sun Good, Shane’s sometimes girlfriend, had maintained silence for most of the time that he lived in New York. She called twice over the last year. And that was all.

  She called when he first arrived. Then she called to remind him about his deal with the FBI.

  A Special Agent Kirk Cutter wanted him to spy on the internal workings of Graves and Associates.

  Agent Cutter suspected that the firm concealed a dark secret. Only he had no idea what that secret was.

  Sun Good had told Cutter into the missing murder clients from our firm. Unbeknownst to either of them, Shane had killed these clients. Their bodies were burned to ash and scattered in different locations, never to be heard from again, or so he hoped.

  Shane never did contact Agent Cutter after Terrance’s funeral.

  Shane had nothing to report to him anyway. We found nothing. At least we found nothing that he wanted to share with the FBI.

  Studying the other partners in the firm seemed to be difficult since they rarely had board meetings anymore. Much of our business had been done by email and memos sent from the highest-ranking member of the board, Dylan Range.

  Mr. Range assumed most of Terrance’s day-to-day responsibilities after his death.

  When Shane arrived in the Manhattan office, he was disappointed that our new temporary role in the firm was ceremonial. Shane had become the face of his father’s firm and that was all. He participated in major meetings with new clients, but Range discouraged him from speaking.

  Dylan Range never ordered Shane not to speak. Instead, he kept Shane out of the loop as to the contents of each meeting until the last minute. This tactic prevented Shane from preparing for any of the meetings. So he appeared to have no knowledge of anything in front of potential clients.

  Range usurped Shane’s power in these meetings.

  I sensed that Range had a creature in him. All of the partners seemed evil, but I had no proof of any wrongdoings.

  The doorbell rang again, interrupting Shane’s memories.

  He turned and walked to the front door in the buff. His skin looked pale in the sunlit apartment.

  I need to hit the tanning bed, he thought.

  Shane opened the door so that his privates remained hidden behind it. A beautiful woman in a suit stood in the doorway. She had long blond hair and blue eyes. One of her ears seemed to stick out a little more than the other.

  Still, she was breathtaking.

  Not really thinking clearly, Shane opened the door, revealing his lower region.

  “Do I know you?” Shane asked.

&n
bsp; “Are you Mr. Graves?” the woman asked.

  “I’m afraid that he has passed on,” Shane answered. “What is this about?”

  The woman looked perplexed for a moment. Her eyes rolled up and down Shane’s chiseled torso and body. As her eyes gazed in my vessel’s lower regions, she let out a sigh. Shane followed her gaze and realized that he was more exposed than he had thought.

  Not being shy, he hadn’t cared. So he disregarded her leer.