Gregory Funaro - The Sculptor

“I wasn’t expecting this, Dr. Hildy. I hope you won’t think me rude.”

There was no click like in the movies; only the look of curious disappointment on The Sculptor’s face when he noticed his Sig Sauer-its clip spent-had locked itself in the empty position.

Cathy did not wait; in a flash she kicked the heel of her sneaker hard into The Sculptor’s naked testicles. The Sculptor howled in pain-his gun dropping on the steps, his hands instinctively going to his groin as his massive frame fell forward, blocking an escape route past him. Like a crab, Cathy pinwheeled her arms and legs backward, found her footing, and scrambled up the stairs-her disorientation, her terror carrying her right past the servants’ staircase which, unbeknown to her, would have brought her back down into the kitchen.

No, with The Sculptor fast on her heels, in a haze of red wallpaper and richly stained wood, Cathy raced down the upstairs hallway in the opposite direction.

Streaking past one of the bedrooms, out of the corner of her eye she saw the silhouette of a man sitting by a large window. Instinctively, she ran to him.

“Help me!” Cathy cried, dashing into the bedroom and slamming the door behind her. “Call the police!” But when Cathy caught sight of the man’s face, when she looked into the hollow eyes of the helpless, drooling invalid that was The Sculptor’s father, her heart sank into her stomach.

“Albert?” the man croaked, his eyes staring past her.

But Cathy did not have time to lament, for a split second later The Sculptor burst into the room behind her.

“Get away from him!” he bellowed, coming for her in a blur of naked flesh. Cathy backed away against the wall-her hands grasping a stainless steel IV stand just as The Sculptor was upon her. She flung it at him, the plastic bag and its metal arm hitting The Sculptor square in the face. The Sculptor’s hands went to his eyes, buying Cathy enough time to get away from him across the four-poster bed.

Cathy made a frantic dash for the stairs-had just reached the banister when she felt the meaty slap of The Sculptor’s hand on her back. Then suddenly she was flying backward-her feet grazing the top of the railing as she left the floor and sailed through the air. She landed on the hardwood floor with a thud. The pain in her knee, in her buttocks, and in her elbow was excruciating, but Cathy bounced to her feet and ran for the darkened doorway in front of her at the far end of the hall. She made it inside just in time, slamming the door behind her and closing her fingers around the lock just as The Sculptor’s shoulder smacked into the door from the other side.

Another smack and Cathy backed away from the door. The room was pitch black, and Cathy tripped-fell to the floor as something crashed beside her. It sounded like metal, but when Cathy reached for it, her hands closed around something round and rubbery-heavy, but also spongy like a Nerf football.

Then the door exploded open-The Sculptor’s massive leg still cocked as the light streamed in from the hallway behind him. He flicked the switch by the door, and Cathy gazed down in horror at the object in her hands.

It was Steve Rogers’s head-shaved and painted white as marble.

Cathy screamed and threw her ex-husband’s severed head at The Sculptor as she backed away on the floor. Then all at once she froze, her eyes finally taking in the totality of the room into which she had entered-a room with heavily draped windows and black painted walls. Dozens upon dozens of body parts were posed and displayed on pedestals and iron frames-hands; arms and legs; severed torsos, some with a head and an appendage still attached; while other heads stood like solitary busts on pedestals of their own. All the body parts were painted white, and had Cathy not felt her ex-husband’s Plastinated head herself-had she not known who owned the house through which she was being chased-the world’s foremost scholar on the works of Michelangelo would have thought the pieces around her to be made of marble.

Yes, Cathy Hildebrant had found The Michelangelo Killer’s sculpture gallery.

Cathy rose to her feet and stumbled backward. The terror was overwhelming her-the scene eerily quiet as The Sculptor approached, a single line of blood running down his cheek like a scarlet tear. The Sculptor paused briefly to pick up the iron stand on which Steve Rogers’s head had been mounted, and as her back slammed against the wall, Cathy watched in terror as he raised the iron stand high above his head.

She closed her eyes.

But instead of the blow she was sure would follow, instead of the pain, Cathy heard the stand drop to the floor-followed by the sound of giggling.

Cathy opened her eyes.

The Sculptor stood before her smiling, his eyes penetrating her own, yet at the same time flickering with the spark of an idea-his fingers resting deviously on his lips like a child who had just played a prank.

“Of course,” he said. “How very silly of me.”

Cathy could only stare back at him in numb confusion.

“The bullets, the empty gun-fate kept you alive, Dr. Hildy. Don’t you see? You were meant to understand, you were meant to be awakened, for only the sculptor’s hand can free the figures slumbering in the stone.”

And with that The Sculptor was upon her.

Cathy awakened to the sound of humming, of fingers tapping away on a keyboard. Her vision was blurry, but she could make out something square hovering above her-the light coming from her right accentuating its edges. And her neck hurt-her back and buttocks were cold against something steel-hard.

Then Cathy remembered.

The wrestling move; the way The Sculptor had tackled her when she tried to run past him; the way he wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed her from behind-Good night Irene, Steve used to call it when they played around on the bed. The Sleeper Hold . But there was never that choking feeling with Steve, never a room clad in black with white arms and legs and heads and torsos jumbling up and turning red, then breaking into snow like a UHF channel on an old TV.

Then Cathy understood.

She was naked, on her back-her head locked staring forward at what was clearly a video monitor; her arms and legs were immobile, strapped down against what she knew to be a stainless steel mortician’s table. And then all at once Cathy understood where she was. She was lying on the very same table that she had seen on The Michelangelo Killer’s DVD; the very same table on which she had watched her husband screaming in agony before what was to become The Sculptor’s Pietà.

The Pietà.

As Cathy thought about the fate of her husband-as she thought about what she knew lay in store for her, too-her mind simultaneously raced along with all the theories, all the knowledge about The Michelangelo Killer that she and Sam Markham had culled together in the weeks since she first accompanied him to Watch Hill.

Sam, a voice cried in her head. Where’s Sam?

Ssh! replied another voice. Stay calm. There’ll be time to sort it out later.

The Pietà, Cathy repeated to herself over and over amidst her rising panic. Sam knew that the answer lay in the Pietà-in The Michelangelo Killer’s interpretation of it through Slumbering in the Stone.

Yes, Cathy needed time to think-needed to stay calm, needed to focus on the moment at hand. Although she could not turn her head, Cathy knew that The Sculptor was close. She could hear his humming, the tippity-tippity-tap of his typing only a few feet away to her right.

The Pietà. Sam was right . The Pietà was his first-everything revolved around the Pietà. Everything BEGAN with the Pietà.