The Butcher and the Wren(30)



She cringes and tries to keep the sob from escaping her throat. He hears it tumble out in a choked whimper.

“It appears that you are my final girl,” he yells with a chuckle. “Have you located the perimeter yet?”

She can hear him coming closer. He is intentionally making himself known as she shuffles through the underbrush. This is his crescendo.

“Do you even know what direction you are running toward?” he laughs. “Well, don’t let me discourage you. Run, rabbit, run!”

In an unplanned show of theater, he shoots his handgun into the air, and Emily instinctively takes off. She runs through a stream, splashing loudly and allowing the thick mud to swallow her shoes whole. She leaves them behind as she bounds out of the water and through a wall of thicket. The sharp spines pierce and rip at her legs, arms, and face, but she keeps moving. He is running now, too, gaining on her. She serpentines to avoid a fate like Matt’s or Katie’s.

Suddenly, it appears. Like an oasis in the desert, she sees the perimeter. A metal fence that runs through the trees and clearly delineates Jeremy’s kingdom from freedom. It’s only about six feet tall, and all she needs is momentum to clear it. She stops briefly and then dashes forward, diving onto the fence, hooking the toes on her right foot and the fingers on her right hand onto the links.

All at once, searing pain. A jolt of electricity takes hold of every cell as her body stiffens and convulses before being tossed back into the nightmare behind her.

“I am a little offended that you didn’t think I would electrify my perimeter fence,” Jeremy condescends as he steps over a fallen tree and hovers over her.

She sputters out blood and furiously oscillates between blacking out and keen focus. She rolls onto her side and begins to crawl. She desperately claws at the mud and moss, propelling herself forward as best she can. She doesn’t have a plan. Her only thought is to place as much distance as possible between herself and the monster behind her. Jeremy slowly follows, slipping the bowie knife from its sheath and kneeling to loop his arm around her throat, pulling her up on her knees.

Before saying another word, he uses his forefinger and thumb to open her right eye wide as she struggles against him. He allows a couple of drops of tropicamide to hit her eyeball, and before she can register her blurred vision, he does the same to the left, keeping her still in a choke hold.

“Stop! What is that?” she yells, pulling her head back.

“Tropicamide eye drops,” he responds flatly, making sure to add a little extra to each eye. “Ever had an eye exam, Emily? Experienced blurred vision for several hours and been told to please not operate heavy machinery?”

He smiles, knowing she can still make out his expressions, though not clearly. She blinks rapidly to try to clear her vision to no avail.

“You ever hear the phrase ‘C5, stay alive’?” He looks into her eyes as she stares back at him.

“Just let me go, please. I won’t tell anyone if you just let me go,” Emily pleads.

The survival instinct that got her here has moved into the bargaining stage. Jeremy leans his forehead into hers, so they are touching.

“Don’t interrupt.” He winks and pulls his head back. “You see, if you sever the spinal cord above the C5 cervical vertebrae, then you will most certainly kill the person attached to it. Why is that?”

He mindlessly flicks a bug from Emily’s shoulder and waits for a response.

“Just stop. Please stop!”

His face twists into a look of disgust. “Nothing? A second-year medical student, and you can’t answer my basic anatomy question?”

Emily closes her eyes. “Please,” she whispers.

He ignores her pleas and continues, “The C1 and C4 vertebrae flank the nerves responsible for letting your diaphragm know how to breathe.” He points the tip of the bowie knife at her diaphragm as he says this. “If you sever that particular part of the spinal cord, then you will asphyxiate, and you will die. C4, breathe no more.”

“Why are you telling me this?” She is panicking now.

“I’m not going to do that to you, Emily. Relax,” he continues. “What do you think? That I’m a monster?”

He gets close to her face again and then looks at the knife, twisting it in his hand. She watches, too, as the small amount of light that has crept in from the moon bounces off the blade. Again, the bayou has bent to his will. It has given him a spotlight for his show. A sharp pain shoots through her lower back. The red-hot sensation is all she can feel, and she realizes too late that he has plunged the bowie knife into her back.

“If you sever the spinal cord anywhere below C5, you’ll likely stay alive. But you will also most definitely suffer paralysis in the portion of the body below that vertebra,” he continues and pats Emily’s leg. “I chose the lumbar region.”

She grabs Jeremy’s shirt with her hand, twisting the black fabric with her fist and looking around wildly.

“It’s a fucked-up little rhyme, huh?” He grins again and pulls the blade out in one swift motion.





CHAPTER 20





ST. LOUIS CEMETERY NO. 1 looms on the left. Dark secrets of the past contained within its white walls are newly invigorated with this present horror. Wren imagines rows of the dead watching this monster at work. He’s made each of them an involuntary witness to his crimes inside of this sacred city.

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