The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset Page 5

  Ackerman sat down, twisted the timer to six minutes, and placed it back on the table’s mahogany top. She stared at him in confusion. She couldn’t comprehend that this was actually happening.

  Ackerman raised his eyebrows. “You better get going,” he said. “Time’s running out.”

  *

  Maureen leapt up and ran from the kitchen. She fell over a small table in the hallway and crashed to the floor. She popped up, caught her breath, and willed herself to be calm. I have to think clearly if I’m going to make it out alive. She grabbed a cloth from the small table and wrapped it around her bleeding hand. With her wound contained, she collected her thoughts and contemplated where to hide.

  As she moved from room to room, the spaces of her own home looked as dark and alien to her as the surface of a distant planet. She racked her brain for a spot where the madman would never find her, but she could think of none. And, as the killer had stated, time was running out.

  Then, an idea for the perfect hiding place burst into her mind—a spot where she would be concealed and the killer would never notice her.

  Trying to be as quiet as possible, she moved up the front stairs. With each step, the stairs issued loud creaks in protest to the placement of her weight. She had never noticed how badly they squeaked before that moment, but she had also never felt the need to sneak through her own house. Every time that her foot fell upon one of the stairs, it issued a moan and pop that sounded like nails being driven into her own coffin. After moving a quarter of the way up, she dropped all attempts at stealth and bounded forward.

  Once on the second floor, she resumed her attempt at discretion and tried to mute each footfall. The boards of the hallway creaked, as well, but not nearly as bad as the stairs. She moved down the hall to her bedroom with at least some feeling that the killer may not have been alerted to her exact location.

  She turned the knob, entered, and shut the door behind her. Once inside, she stood on her bed and reached up to the ceiling where a concealed panel could be pulled down. A foldout ladder used for easy access to the attic sat atop the panel.

  She climbed up the ladder and pulled the panel shut behind her. In order to conceal the attic entrance, for aesthetic purposes, her late husband had covered the panel with drywall in such a way that only a tiny seam and a thin pull chain would alert anyone to the panel’s presence. She prayed that the killer wouldn’t notice.

  She had no real reason to think that he would leave after the time had elapsed—but what choice do I have other than to believe that he will? If the madman didn’t play by the rules of his own game, then only a miracle could save her.

  *

  Maureen lay motionless on the attic rafters. She searched her mind for something that she could use as a weapon if the killer discovered her hiding place, but the attic was almost empty. The only item contained in the small space was a large trunk in which she had placed many of her husband’s belongings after he had passed on. It mostly contained old clothes, photo albums, picture frames, home movies, and other assorted keepsakes. She thought about breaking the glass on one of the picture frames, but that would alert the killer to her position. And she wouldn’t know how to use a makeshift knife, even if she had one.

  She wondered how much time had passed. It felt like an eternity. She quieted her breathing and waited.

  A few seconds later, she heard a sound that conjured images of a freight train tearing through the house. She knew the source of the sound, however, and it wasn’t a train. The sound was that of a man running at full speed up the stairs and down the hallway.

  She heard the door to the bedroom, only a few feet below her current position on the other side of the ceiling, slam open with a loud crash.

  Her heart thundered. She couldn’t breathe. How has he found me so soon?

  She bit down upon her knuckle with crushing force in order to keep from issuing a sob or a scream. She trembled all over and felt colder than she had ever been in her entire life.

  She prayed for God to save her, or at least make her death quick, but then she reconsidered her prayer when she remembered that God doesn’t make life easy for his followers. He merely gives them hope that through faith, a greater plane of existence can be attained. Upon consideration, she changed her prayer and prayed instead for strength, something that with God’s help she had found at many difficult points in her life.

  She tasted a strange, coppery liquid in her mouth and realized that she had drawn blood from her knuckle. At this point, it hardly mattered. She bit down harder and tried to lose herself within the pain.

  With a creak, the killer pulled down the panel and said, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  She heard him unfold the ladder and begin his ascent toward her.

  Tears flowed like rain down her cheeks, and she realized that she didn’t want to die. There were many times after her husband was taken that she had wished to join him, but now, all she wanted was another chance to live.

  In that moment, the realization that once again she had wasted the time she had been given engulfed her mind. When her husband had been alive, they had squandered their present on the hope of a better tomorrow. But after his death, she had not found a greater appreciation for life. Instead of devoting herself to some pursuit or enjoying all the time she could with her children and grandchildren, she had spent most days moping around the house.

  In that moment, she cried out to God for one last chance.

  Then, like a lightning strike on a clear, blue day, a thought struck her with great force. A possible hope for salvation sprang into her mind, and she leapt into action.

  She grabbed hold of the large trunk containing her old memories, and using all of the might she could will into her muscles, she hurled it down the stairs and onto the ascending killer.

  *

  Maureen peered down into her bedroom and saw the madman sprawled out on the floor, his eyes closed. Nearby, the trunk lay on its side, its contents scattered. She could see a small rivulet of blood on the man’s forehead, and she hoped that he was dead.

  Her only thought was of escape. If the killer was merely unconscious, then he could awaken at any moment and finish what he had started. She needed to get as far away from the house as possible.

  With cautious steps, she descended. The killer’s limp body lay at the foot of the ladder. She would have to move over him in order to reach the doorway and freedom. She reached the bottom rung, took a deep intake of breath, and without exhaling, stepped over the killer. She took great pains in her movements, so as not to touch the man or even disturb the air around him. She didn’t want to take any chances of awakening the sleeping monster.

  As the killer had stated, time was relative, so it felt to her as if the climb down the ladder had taken minutes. In reality, she knew that only a few seconds had elapsed.

  As she cleared the madman’s body, she released her held breath. She reached out for the door and began to turn the knob. Before she could do so, a hard blow slammed her from behind and stole the air from her lungs.

  A silent scream came from her mouth, but only God could hear it, since she had no air to propel it beyond her mind. In her head, however, the shriek was deafening.

  The killer spun her around and smashed her against the wall. The blade of his knife pressed against her throat with enough force that she could feel it slicing slowly into her skin. Terror overwhelmed her beyond the point of rational thought, and she couldn’t even comprehend the need to fight back.

  She felt Ackerman’s hot breath on her face as he said, “Found you.”

  Behind the serial killer, a buzzing sound filled the bedroom. The baking timer lay on the floor where the killer had dropped it, and the device was going off.

  Ackerman turned to look at the small device but kept the knife firmly in place. He turned back to her and stared deep into her eyes, as if trying to invade the soul that dwelt within. “Time’s up.”

  4

  The dream always s
tarted the same. With the darkness, came memories and pain. Every night, Marcus Williams found himself trapped in a prison without walls. His recollections painted a dark portrait that didn’t simply reside somewhere deep within his subconscious. He had seen it with his own eyes. The world of his memories and the setting of his nightmares had left a stain on his soul and blood on his hands—neither of which could ever truly be washed away.

  Like countless others before him, he had begun his career as a young police officer with a head filled by ideals like justice will prevail and good always triumphs over evil. It didn’t take him long to discover that the old cliché of justice being blind was fairly accurate, and more often than not, evil was better funded than good. He had sat on the outside, looking in on a world fueled more by money and power than by the long-forgotten concepts of honor and virtue.

  During his time as a protector of the peace, he witnessed many atrocities. He beheld injustices that consisted not only of the acts that men committed, but also of the punishment, or lack thereof, that they received. He had seen good people, who had committed crimes out of desperation and necessity, sentenced to the harshest degree of the law. By the same token, he witnessed justice turn a blind eye to certain individuals because of the size of their bank account or the amount of power that they wielded.

  His time as a caretaker of chaos had left him not only haunted by painful memories, but also plagued by soul-shaking visions that tormented him upon entering the deepest recesses of sleep.

  His heart raced as the events of a fateful night from his past played out deep inside his mind. He knew that he was dreaming and that nothing could erase the events recorded forever upon the pages of his memory. The fact that it wasn’t real didn’t make the experience seem any less authentic. He could feel the same chill in the air. He could smell the same scent of the river nearby. And he could hear the same scream that called to him on that night; a scream that his dreams would never allow him to forget.

  Through the endurance of countless nights of restless sleep, he had learned that if he focused hard enough and screamed with enough ferocity inside his mind, the echoes from his subconscious triggered a reaction in the conscious side of his brain. Through the act of silently screaming, he could break the chains of sleep and save himself from reliving the painful events of his past.

  He awoke alone, drenched in sweat from forehead to rib cage. The clock read 5:15.

  He stumbled down the hallway to a room containing the device that would transport him from semi-consciousness to alert coherence. Entering the kitchen, he headed to his trusty coffee pot. Caffeine … every aspiring insomniac’s best friend.

  Moving to the living room, he flipped on the television and cycled through the channels. He sat on a folding chair. Unpacked boxes surrounded him. The television and the coffee pot had been the first items to be unboxed.

  Only five channels came in clearly, and he found himself forced to choose between a multitude of infomercials or a local news program. Since he had yet to come to the place in his life where he felt the need for knives that could cut through a tin can as easily as a tomato, a boxed set of the greatest country songs from the 60s, or a can of spray-on hair replacement, he switched to Channel Four News.

  As he sipped his coffee and watched, an image flashed onto the screen that drew his attention. He was certain that he had never seen the face that stared back at him, but he sensed a vague familiarity in the man’s features that he couldn’t pinpoint. He also recognized something in the man’s eyes that he knew all too well. The man’s gray eyes reflected a hunger that dwelled in the darkest regions of a tainted soul. He saw a raging fire inside the man and knew that neither food nor drink could quench his thirst or appease his never-ceasing appetite. He had seen a similar hunger on a night from his past that he could never remember to forget. He turned up the volume.

  “Most recently, Ackerman is believed to be responsible for the brutal murders of three men, including two Colorado State Troopers. But there was an unexpected twist to the story. Ackerman allegedly took one of the men’s family hostage and forced them to play a sadistic game. This is what a representative from the Colorado State Patrol, Major Christian Steinhoff, had to say at a recent press conference.”

  The image cut to a man at a podium who expounded upon the details of the incident with the family, describing the miraculous survival of one of the victims, a woman named Emily Morgan. A picture of the woman flashed onto the screen. Her pale features seemed luminescent.

  “Francis Ackerman Jr. is considered armed and highly dangerous. He is believed to be responsible for the brutal slayings of an undetermined number of men and women since his recent escape from a mental institution in Michigan and is wanted for questioning in several other ongoing criminal investigations. In an interview yesterday afternoon, a representative from the Dimmit County Sheriff’s Department told one of our reporters, Julian Harms, that this man will likely be remembered as one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history … In other news, presidential candidate and front runner, Paul Phillips, will be speaking in San Antonio...”

  In the last moment before politics replaced the killer’s image, Marcus felt frightened and yet curious in regard to the killer from the TV. What could drive a man to commit such terrible acts? He realized that the world was a vast sea of infinite possibilities. Any number of circumstances could account for an ordinary man’s departure from the world of the mentally stable and socially acceptable into the realm of the criminally insane.

  He considered that—sometime in the not too distant future—a scientist might discover that the root of all serial killers and violent offenders did not stem from a connection with an abused childhood or dark suggestion from the realm below. Perhaps, the root of insanity was actually yellow dye number five or red dye number forty, either of which could be found in the common Twinkie.

  The concept of Insanity by Reason of Twinkie brought a smile to his face and allowed him to stop thinking about the killer from the TV and, if only for a few precious seconds, the dark deeds of his own past.

  *

  After shutting off the TV and moving to the porch, Marcus decided to explore the large farm he had inherited from his aunt, Ellen, who to the best of his knowledge had never even seen a farm, let alone owned one. Ellen had raised him after the murder of his parents. According to a note left with her last will and testament, the ranch had been her dream.

  Now, it was his dream—a new beginning.

  As he sat on his new front porch, he stared awe-struck at the early morning sky. He wondered if anyone else ever looked at the sky with a similar sense of wonder. Was it a miracle of divine creation to them, or was it more like a priceless work of art that had been locked away, forgotten, and never looked upon with curious eyes? For the first time in a long time, he felt at peace.

  But his peace was short-lived. As a sense of awareness crept up his spine, it faded away like a mirage. I’m not alone. I’m being watched.

  Fear extended its cold fingers throughout his body, but he pushed the feeling away as best he could. A man like him wasn’t supposed to be frightened. He was supposed to be strong. He was supposed to be the protector, not the victim. He was supposed to be the shepherd, not the lamb. It was the worst kind of fear, a menace without a name. He had never been afraid of a danger that he could see and fight. The only thing that scared him was the unknown. When his time did come, he planned to go down swinging.

  He couldn’t help but remember the eyes of the predator from the television. Francis Ackerman Jr.

  He tried to convince himself that his dread was merely the product of an overactive imagination, but a former cop’s intuition told him differently.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he caught a glimpse of movement. With a quick look in that direction, he could find no trace of the beast that stalked him.

  A thousand questions raced through his mind. What are the killer’s methods? Does he carry a gun?

  In
his experience, men like Ackerman didn’t attain the same satisfaction from killing with a gun as they did with knives or bare hands. That could work in his favor, but it didn’t always hold true.

  He reasoned that remaining watchful and waiting for the killer to make a mistake might be the best plan, the best offense being a good defense. But he hated defense. He favored action over reaction, but only if the action was properly calculated.

  He thought that he heard a noise to his right, but his heart beat with such force that he wondered if the sound had really come from within his own chest.

  He watched.

  He waited.

  A few minutes passed, but nothing happened.

  He felt foolish. Maybe the only real threat is the impending danger of cabin fever? After all, he had grown up in a place where another person was seldom a stone’s throw away. Now, he was truly alone for perhaps the first time in his life.

  He pushed away the still-lingering sensation of dread and decided to continue with his planned exploration. He looked toward the horizon and spotted a small hill in the distance that would give him a better vantage point to see at least a partial layout of his new property.

  Upon arrival at the hill, he sat down and leaned against a lone tree, converting dry ground and tree trunk into a makeshift recliner. He gazed across the South Texas plain and realized for the first time why they called it God’s country. It wasn’t simply because only God could have made such beauty, but also because if he were to scream as loudly as his lungs would allow, God would be the only one to hear him.

  The memory of his aunt’s death crept into his mind and cast a shadow on his newfound peace. She was gone, but not forgotten. She could no longer laugh or cry or feel joy or pain, all of which were true tests of one’s verifiable existence. Yet, somehow, he couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the thought that he would never see her again. Never again would he tell her how much she meant to him. Never again would he wake up to the smell of pancakes and bacon—at least not ones that would taste as sweet as the ones she had made for him. Never again would he be able to ask for her advice and counsel and receive the small tidbits of wisdom that lightened the burdens of his past and gave his tired soul a few moments of serenity.