Chris Carter - The Caller

Even through all the blood, Cassandra’s facial features were clearly identifiable — the petite nose, the high cheekbones, the full lips, the rounded chin. She no doubt had been a very attractive woman.

Hunter had already noticed that the victim’s fair hair was completely caked in blood, with the biggest concentration at the very top, which indicated that that was where the blood pour had originated from.

‘She obviously bled from the head,’ he said. ‘But I can’t see any major cuts or blunt-force trauma wounds.’

‘That’s also what puzzled me,’ Dr. Slater agreed, ‘because it doesn’t look like she was bashed over the head with any sort of blunt or sharp instrument. As you’ve said, there are no visible cuts to her scalp. No depressions to her cranium either.’

Hunter regarded the top of Cassandra’s head again, and, though he couldn’t see past the thick cluster of blood and hair, an image began forming in his mind.

‘Small breaches.’ Hunter didn’t phrase it as a question.

Dr. Slater’s eyes followed Hunter’s gaze as she nodded, looking a little impressed from his deduction. ‘He killed her by puncturing small holes into her skull.’

Less than two hours earlier

Suddenly, the demon’s gloved hands appeared above Cassandra’s head.

They weren’t empty.

His right hand held a regular, household-type metal hammer. His left, a six-inch-long masonry chisel with a nail-sharp tip.

Cassandra couldn’t see what was happening behind her. She couldn’t move her neck. She couldn’t turn around. All she could do was stare straight at her cellphone’s screen and into her husband’s eyes. This time, it was she who saw something that she had never, ever seen in them before — total and utter despair.

‘Don’t do this. Please don’t do this,’ reflexively, Mr. J pleaded, but his voice carried no conviction.

He had lost count of how many times he’d been in the demon’s place before, his mark helpless before him. They all pleaded. They all begged. They all offered him money, excuses, promises. It had never worked. Mr. J was never there to negotiate or to forgive. He was the last stop. The ultimate consequence to whatever mistake the mark had made. And Mr. J had recognized the same determination he carried with him in the demon’s words. In his actions. From his hotel room, miles away from his home, Mr. J knew that there was absolutely nothing he could do or say that would stop the demon from doing what he was about to do. He blinked at his wife again, and just before her vision was completely blurred by a new explosion of tears, she saw the anguish in his face. The sorrow. The helplessness.

Behind Cassandra, the demon placed the tip of the metal chisel on her head. He positioned it about three inches up from her forehead, and a little right from center.

Feeling the sharp tip touch her scalp, Cassandra’s desperate eyes shot up as far as they would go, as if she was trying to look at her own eyebrows.

The demon lifted the hammer.

Cassandra’s eyes came back down and she returned to doing the only thing she could do — look at her husband through her cellphone screen. His lips moved, but no sound came out of them. His diaphragm lacked the strength. All he could do was mouth the words: I’m so sorry.

BANG.

The demon brought the hammer down on to the chisel. As its tip ruptured through Cassandra’s skull, fracturing her cranium, her eyes rolled up into her head and her whole body jerked violently. Despite the paralyzing drug she’d been given, her body was still responding to motor nerve impulses.

In silence, and shaking with rage, Mr. J jolted in place. He found himself lost in a void so deep inside of him, he could feel his soul being consumed.

Then came the surprise.

Mr. J had expected to see the chisel driven into Cassandra’s brain in its entirety, but instead, not much more than a centimeter had managed to penetrate. The demon had controlled the strength of the hammer strike with the perfect precision of a master sculptor — one single blow, nothing more, because nothing more was needed.

As the demon finally moved his hands away, thick, sticky blood dripped from Cassandra’s head on to her face, creating an uneven red path past her temple, her cheek, and all the way down to her chin.

Mr. J held his breath, grinding his teeth with the wrath of a thousand gods.

Cassandra’s eyelids fluttered erratically for seconds before they stabilized again. Her eyes came back from her head tortured and overflowing with pain.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.’

The distorted laugh caught Mr. J by surprise and he lurched in place once again.

‘Did you think that I would just nail the chisel deep into her head with a single blow?’ the demon asked.

No reply.

‘You did, didn’t you?’

Silence.

‘That would’ve been no fun. No, John. We’ll keep on going until you either get another correct answer, or your wife dies. Every wrong answer, I puncture a new hole into her cranium. I’m not really sure how many it will take before she’s gone, but I don’t think that it will take too many, do you?’

‘You sonofa—’

‘You know the rules,’ Mr. J was interrupted again. ‘We cannot move on until you give me a correct answer. So let’s try it again. Your wedding date. You have five seconds.’

The gears inside Mr. J’s brain didn’t know which way to turn. Anger collided with fear, which collided with doubt and despondency, all of it wrapped up in a feeling of total emptiness.

On the screen, Cassandra blinked again, this time slowly. Behind her eyelids, her eyes seemed lost.

Blood dripped from her chin on to her shoulder.

‘Four...’ the demon counted down.

March seventh. The date returned to Mr. J, but he now knew that that was wrong, so how come the date was still hammering his thoughts? Had he gotten the whole thing wrong or only the day? The month?

‘Three...’

On the mantelpiece, in Mr. J’s living room, there were at least a couple of photographs from his wedding day. He and Cassandra were standing outside the church, sporting larger-than-life smiles. Was that how this psycho had gotten the idea for his question? From the photographs?

That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking about, John. Think, goddamnit, think.

‘Two...’

For just an instant, Cassandra’s eyes regained focus and she looked back at her husband with purpose. The despair she had seen in his face seconds earlier had intensified exponentially.

‘One...’

‘April seventh?’ Those words left Mr. J’s lips totally lacking in conviction and sounding more like a question than a statement. All they were was a guess, nothing more. His psychological distress was so intense, it would probably take him a few tries to get his own birthdate right.

As those two words reached Cassandra’s ears, she blinked and, even through her tears, Mr. J saw her eyes abandon hope once and for all.

‘Wrong again,’ the demon said, as calm as a priest giving his opening remarks on Sunday mass. He brought the chisel and hammer back to Cassandra’s head. This time he positioned the chisel just a little left from center, and only about an inch up from her forehead.

Mr. J wanted to plead again. He wanted to beg, get on his knees, cry, but what good would any of that do? The demon wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t stop.

Up went the hammer. Down it came.

BANG.

Another perfectly controlled blow, sending only the tip of the chisel into Cassandra’s skull. Once again, she jerked on her seat viciously and her eyes disappeared into the unknown, but this time her head frighteningly convulsed for a full second, as if a large insect had somehow crawled up her nose and stung her brain.