Michael Prescott - Shiver

“Of course I’m afraid of you. What kind of question is that? My God, who wouldn’t be afraid?”

A third voice mingled with the others in an unreal chorus.

“… never done anything to deserve this. It’s not fair, not right, not right at all…”

Wendy felt the Gryphon’s hands at the sides of her face. The blindfold was lifted. She gazed straight ahead.

The white sheet that had draped the cabinet was gone. In its place were four heads displayed in a neat row. Four pale staring faces, each in its own jar. One was Jennifer’s, and one was Elizabeth Osborn’s. The other two were new to her, but she knew them too; she’d seen their pictures in the newspaper after the Gryphon’s first two kills. Julia Stern and… Rebecca somebody. But those photographs had been of living women, young and vital and intelligent, women who bore only a passing resemblance to these surreal laboratory specimens, these freak-show exhibits with their bulging eyes and swollen tongues.

Every candle in the room had been extinguished, save two that had been placed on the cabinet. Their dim flickering glow trembled on the waxen features of the women in the jars.

But it was not the faces that held Wendy paralyzed with disbelieving horror. It was the voices.

Of the four women, Jennifer alone remained silent, speaking of her terror only with her wide staring eyes. The other three were pleading for mercy, whispering and moaning, their cries emanating-it seemed-directly from their open mouths.

“… promised you’d let me go if I said those things.” The words were spoken by Julia Stern, the first woman in line, a brunette with sharp, clear features that reflected the fear and indignation in her voice. “You promised…”

“Reasons?” asked the redhead beside her, Rebecca somebody-or-other. Girlish freckles were scattered across her nose and cheeks. “Of course I have reasons to live.” Dead Rebecca made a sound that might have been a laugh or a strangled sob. “For God’s sake, I’m only thirty-one…”

“And I want to get married again,” Elizabeth Osborn said. “The first time didn’t work out. I want to have a family before it’s too late. What else? I want to travel. The Grand Canyon, the Rockies. There’s so much out there, so much to see…”

Speaking. They were speaking. Dead, but alive. Their spirits bottled along with their flesh.

Then Wendy’s shock cleared, and she understood.

Behind the first three jars, nearly invisible in the dim wavering light, were pairs of detachable stereo speakers connected by long wires to the three cassette players on the nearest table.

Tape recordings. That was all the voices were. Recordings of the pleas and confessions the Gryphon extorted from his victims before he pulled the circle of wire taut. Recordings that had been edited to remove the killer’s threats and lying promises, leaving only the voices of the dead.

“… can’t do this,” Julia breathed. “You just can’t.”

Rebecca groaned. “I’m asking you… if you have any mercy… please…”

Elizabeth was sobbing. “I’ll do anything, anything at all…”

He must have recorded what I said too, Wendy thought numbly. When he has my head in a jar, he can make it talk. Can make me beg forever, beg and reveal my secret hopes. He’ll sit here in this chair, and he’ll listen to me babble about going to Santa Barbara and falling in love and wanting to live. And he’ll laugh.

A shudder rippled through her body and left her feeling ill and dizzy.

The voices grew louder and took on a tinny quality. She looked at the table where the cassette players were displayed. The Gryphon had moved over there. He was adjusting the volume controls and fiddling with the equalizers to boost the treble. Perhaps he fussed constantly with the knobs and levers, customizing each performance, raising the volume ever higher till the trailer rocked. No wonder he’d lined the walls with cork.

It occurred to her that she was hearing some of the same words for the second time. The tapes must have been spliced into loops. They would play forever, the agonies they preserved never to end.

“… you’re so powerful,” Elizabeth whispered, “you’re a god, more than a god, more than anything I’ve ever imagined…”

“Think of my baby,” Julia moaned.

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Rebecca said tonelessly. “I know you are.”

Suddenly the Gryphon was laughing, a cheerless rasping sound. Wendy saw that he’d turned away from the cassette players and was watching her, thrilling at the horror that must be written on her face, drinking it in like blood.

“Well, what do you think, Wendy? Aren’t they talented, my four beauties? Don’t they put on a wonderful show?”

She looked at him, candlelight sparkling on the blank lenses of his glasses, and then at the pickled heads, gibbering and weeping, and suddenly she was shaking all over, shaking and wanting desperately to be anywhere but here, in this trailer in the desert, this den of death.

Desperately she twisted her wrists, still trying to loosen the tape that bound them. She lurched sideways in her chair, and her struggling hands banged the corner of the card table beside her. The table rattled. It was metal.

And the corner felt sharp.

“I do love to watch them, Wendy,” the Gryphon said loudly, almost shouting to be heard over the keening voices. “Sometimes I come here at night and stay till dawn, when the batteries have drained and the tapes are playing at one-quarter speed. The happiest moments I’ve ever known have been spent here, in my special place, with my beautiful friends.”

Carefully, hoping she would not be seen in the weak fluttery light, Wendy lifted the vinyl tablecloth and folded it back to expose the corner of the table. She touched it. Yes, it was sharp, all right. Sharp enough to cut through the tape binding her hands. If she had time.

She began to rub her wrists against the corner. Up and down. Up and down.

“Soon you’ll join my friends, Wendy. You’ll be one of them. I’ve got a jar all ready for you.” The Gryphon went on laughing, laughing, while the dead women whimpered and groaned. “I’ll put you in the place of honor. Just think of it, my dearest. Why, soon you’ll be the star of the show!”

A Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, painted with the blue and white color scheme of the LAPD, swooped down on Van Nuys Airport less than three minutes after Delgado arrived. He was running toward it even before the skids touched the tarmac. Ducking under the overhead rotor, he climbed into the backseat behind the two Air Support Unit officers-pilot and observer-in the cockpit.

“Take me north!” he shouted over the engine roar. “To the Mojave!”

The pilot pulled up on the collective-pitch lever. Engine noise increased as the throttle opened. The airport shrank to a dark irregular stain, then glided away as the pilot’s feet worked the yaw pedals to steer the chopper north.

“Follow the 405 to the 5,” Delgado ordered. “Give me all the speed you’ve got.”

“Yes, sir.”

Delgado looked out the side window, staring down at the wide white streak of the San Diego Freeway five hundred feet below. On either side of the freeway, the rooftops of shops and apartment buildings glided by, some darkened briefly by the copter’s oblong shadow. Parking lots, open jewel cases at this height, glittered with shiny treasures that were cars. Lawns and public parks gleamed bright and fuzzy, squares of green velvet.

The chopper took less than ten minutes to reach city limits, where the Valley ended and the high desert began. Delgado spent the duration of the trip considering where best to look for Franklin Rood. The man might have gone anywhere, of course. Might have traveled fifty miles into the desert. Might still be driving, perhaps headed for Bakersfield or San Francisco-or the Canadian border, for that matter.