OCTOBER 3, 2017

Bzzzzzzzzz.

The guard gave Lisa an expectant look as she stood smack dab in the middle of the metal detector, and she almost shot him back the exact same look, wanting to say, what, I already gave you my gun. After all, he was holding it in his hand, a 9mm Sig Sauer locked, loaded, and ready to go. Fortunately, she didn’t, because when she looked down at her own hand, she remembered the small metal token she’d been rubbing between her thumb and her middle finger. One hundred days.

With a half-apologetic half-shrug, Lisa took a step back, tossed the token in a little plastic basket, and sent that through the x-ray machine before stepping through the detector again. No buzz, no muss, no fuss. She took both token and pistol back from the guard, who merely grunted and gestured towards the armored door leading to the maximum security wing.

Bzzzzzzzzz.

The door swung open as Lisa holstered the Sig Sauer at her hip. Dr. Wasserman stood behind it to greet her, smiling the same pleasant smile as he did for every visit, ever since that first one she’d agreed to make seven years earlier. His hair – what he had of it – was thinner and whiter, but otherwise he looked the same as he had the first time she’d met him, the first time she’d agreed to this lunacy.

The two guards with him always looked the same, too, even though their faces constantly changed. But big. Tall. No-nonsense. Black jumpsuits and caps, armed with automatic rifles. Expressionless faces. The names never mattered. They didn’t even acknowledge Lisa’s existence as she shook Dr. Wasserman’s hand.

“Good to see you,” said Dr. Wasserman, as they started down toward the interrogation room. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come back this time. I appreciate that you did.” It was the same thing the psychiatrist had said every time since Lisa’s second visit. Sometimes she felt like she was rehearsing a play. Or in that Bill Murray movie with the Cher song, whatever it was called.

“I’ll keep coming as long as you keep asking,” Lisa replied, just as she did every time as well. “And as long as he keeps asking, too.” “Speaking of him asking, has he spoken yet? Or did he just write it again?”

“Everything’s written. As usual.” Dr. Wasseman gave a sad shake of his head. “We don’t have a recorded instance of him speaking in the past thirteen years, and no one kept track of such things before that.” He rubbed the white stubble on his chin thoughtfully. “I’d like to examine his vocal cords to see how much they’ve atrophied, but with the Allenwood incident, the warden’s said that’s off limits.”

“Trust me,” Lisa said. “Don’t.” She shuddered, thinking of Allenwood, and how that debacle ranked high among the dumbest ideas in the history of mankind. Even though what she was doing wasn’t really all that much different. “Look, I know you’re aware of how dangerous he is. But unless you’ve seen him at work, you won’t understand. He’s more vile than you can ever imagine.”

“I see,” Dr. Wasserman said, in that bland, bemused way that clearly indicated that he didn’t. “But, well, I think I could understand better if we could, well, do what we’ve talked about before. If you’d be willing to talk about your experiences on the record –”

“No.” There was not an ounce of give in that flat, heavy word. “Never. I’ll talk with the creep, because I know it helps your studies. But what happened back then stays buried. I’m not digging those times up again, for you, or for anyone.”

There was a long, awkward silence. They made their way in that silence to the end of the hallway, and another armored door.

Bzzzzzzzzz.

“I see,” Dr. Wasserman finally said again. Lisa knew he didn’t see, he didn’t come within light years of seeing, and she didn’t expect he ever would truly understand. Lisa knew of only exactly seven people in the world who ever would understand, and three of them were dead, two by killing themselves. She suspected that an in-depth conversation about her experiences being stalked and almost killed by a deranged psychopath might help the good doctor understand a little better … but not by much.

Not unless you’ve seen him with a knife in his hand, Lisa thought. Not unless you’ve felt his hand on your shoulder, right when you think you’re finally safe from him. Not unless you’ve heard that awful laugh, muffled by that stupid rubber devil mask of his.

The new door led to the support facilities for maximum security. Medical, the camera room, supplies, and interrogation. Lisa knew that last one was technically supposed to be called “the visitation room”, but honestly, nobody in the solitary confinement area got friendly visits. Everything that happened in that room was an interrogation, in one form or another.

The hallways in this section of the prison were smaller, more claustrophobic. The walls gleamed pristine white, as did the floor tiles, as did the ceiling … like a hospital had a baby with an IKEA store, Lisa mused. She’d spent a fair amount of time in hospitals over the years, so she supposed she would know. Except the insides of the Peineforte State Correctional Facility – the Big Pain, as most people called it – seemed more sterile to Lisa than a hospital. Cold. And claustrophobic. Even with the tall ceilings of the hallways, she felt like she was drowning in the light of the relentless fluorescent lights overhead.

Another armed guard, standing by a door, along with a burly young man in a hospital orderly’s outfit. A wheeled cart was by the orderly’s side, with various syringes and resuscitation paddles laying on top of it. Lisa briefly wondered if the stuff on the cart was for Devlin, or for her.

We’ve arrived, Lisa thought, as the guard gave her a quick nod of acknowledgement. This was the moment where the guard – any of the guards, honestly – needed to relieve her of her firearm before heading into interrogation, if protocol was to be followed. It wasn’t, and the nine millimeter stayed by her side. Lisa liked to think that was just a sign of respect between officers of the law, but deep down she knew better. A sheriff’s badge wasn’t why they were really letting her carry.

Besides, after the whole interview debacle with Devlin years ago, it was understood what would happen if there was a problem after the door closed behind Lisa. There would be body bags, probably two of them. And lots of lying, and missing video feeds.

And Lisa was perfectly okay with that.

“Ready?” Dr. Wasserman asked.

Lisa took a deep breath. “Ready.”

The door to the interrogation room swung open. It was sparse, two chairs facing each other on opposite sides of a metal table bolted to the floor. A long mirror ran across the wall behind the table, and two small black cameras hung up in the corners, whirring away. The chair closest to the door was empty.

Devlin sat at the other side of the table, wrists double-manacled together, his ankles chained and secured to the legs of his chair. A pad of lined paper and a big, soft black marker lay on the table in front of him. His face was stone, his blue eyes dull and fixed upon some imperceptible spot in the corner. Lisa sat down in the chair across from him, hands folded together and resting on the table before he even turned to look at her.

Lisa stared across at him, eyeing the man who had tried to kill her so many times with disdainful contempt. She certainly wasn’t afraid of him – wary, yes, but not afraid. She had been the first time she’d accepted Dr. Wasserman’s invitation to come visit Devlin at Peineforte. But she’d visited enough times now that she didn’t see him the same way she had as a terrified teenager. The man in chains was not the man in the rubber devil mask.

Oh, sure, Devlin basically looked the same – long, greasy black hair had given way to a cropped gray crewcut, and if anything he’d gotten skinnier over the years, no doubt from his daily prison diet of nothing but baloney sandwiches and applesauce. But the mad, wild fire that once blazed beneath the eyeholes of the mask was long extinguished. And after several years of uneventful, often boring visits with her would-be murderer, Lisa had learned not to fear him anymore.

Lisa, however, still did not trust the son-of-a-bitch in the slightest.

“Hello,” Lisa said to Devlin. “You wanted to see me again?”

A slow nod of that shaved, skeletal head.

“Why?”

An almost nonexistent shrug of the shoulders.

“Fuck you, then.” It always felt good saying those words to Devlin now. There was power in them. When she’d said those same words to him as a teenager it’d been more of a desperate, empty cry, spat at a demon who meant to take her life. Now? It wasn’t much, but it was the only way she was allowed to hurt him. And God, she loved hurting him.

Another almost nonexistent shrug.

“Fine. Then I’m out of here. Have fun staring at the walls of your cell again.” Lisa stood up to go.

Hands held up slightly, fingers spread wide and palms facing Lisa. A plea to stop. To wait.

It’s as close as I can get him to beg, Lisa thought with grim satisfaction. Good. She settled back in her chair.

With a shaky hand, Devlin picked up the marker on the table. He took a page out of the notebook, struggling to tear it away from its spiral binding. Lisa watched, not helping him at all.

He’s so … frail. Jesus. Oddly, Lisa found herself thinking of the Devlin she knew before all the killing sprees, before the deadly summers at Camp Matanto and he’d decided to wear the mask. He was a skinny, quiet kid back then who kept to himself. An artist, too. Lisa remembered him doodling the most intricate pictures in his notebooks in the back of their classes, stuff that seemed impossibly detailed. To see him struggling now to even hold the fat marker, when he’d once wielded a pencil – and, later, a knife – like a magician was startling.

The marker squeaked as Devlin began writing.

i hAd quEsToNs fOr you tODaY. lIsA.

“For me?” Lisa raised an eyebrow. “How come?”

Shrug.

“Come on. You have to do better than that.”

Squeak. Squeak.

i aLWaYs tELL you tHiNGs. you nEvER uNdER sTAnD. mAYbE I neED aSKiNg, iN sTEaD.

Lisa glanced towards the mirror. She understood why Dr. Wasserman never accompanied her into the room for these session – when he was around, Devlin basically was a store mannequin – but it was at times like these she wished she wasn’t flying solo. A dumb perp in her own interrogation room at county, that, she could handle. Devlin? Always a mystery.

“Okay, then.” Like it or not, Lisa had to admit to herself that Devlin had a point. Not once in seven years had she left Peineforte feeling like she understood anything more about the deranged killer or anything he’d ever done than she had before. “Shoot. Ask away.”

Squeak.

you sAw iT?

“Saw … what, exactly?”

Devlin tapped the paper insistently. For a moment, Lisa thought she saw that cloudy veil over his eyes flicker and fade, revealing an uncomfortably familiar burning blue lurking beneath them.

diD you seE thE liGhT?

Lisa stared at the paper. Well, she thought, this is definitely something new. “What light?”

Squeak. Squeak.

beNeaTh thE bLuE thAT mOVeS

Lisa stared harder, first at the paper, then at Devlin. “At the camp?”

A slow nod.

What the fuck is he talking about? “No.”

Devlin tapped the end of the marker on the table, and tore a new page from the notebook.

yoU aLwaYS aSk wHy. aLwaYS. thE liGhT is wHy.

Lisa pursed her lips.

“It took you,” she said evenly, “this long to say that? The light? That’s why you killed everyone?”

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

I tHOuGhT yoU kNEw aLL reAdY. thE liGhT. iTs poWEr iTs mAGEstY. iT peELs aWaY liEs tO sHoW trUTh.

“Majesty, huh?” Lisa reached across the table, plucking the latest page away from Devlin with her fingertips. Her hand trembled a lot more than she expected. “So what’s the truth?”

Another tear, another new page. Squeak, squeak.

yOUr aLL dEAd aLL rEAdY. jUsT liKE mE.

Lisa felt a tightness growing in her chest. “No,” she said in measured tones, “I’m afraid not. You had plenty of chances. I’m … I’m still here. I’m alive.”

The corners of Devlin’s mouth turned upwards ever so slightly, in the tiniest hint of a smile.

Squeak.

aRE yOu sUrE?

“Yes.” Lisa said. “Our dance, it’s done.”

She held up one hand, twirling a finger in a circle as she looked over Devlin’s shoulder at the mirror. She guessed Dr. Wasserman would be sorely disappointed by the brevity of the session, but she suddenly didn’t have much interest in talking with a lunatic anymore. Nor did she expect further sessions were in her future, either. The past few times she’d agreed to visit, as far as she was concerned, had been nothing but total wastes of time. She’d ask a few questions, try to have a conversation, and the best she ever got was a blank stare or a shrug. That, and crippling stomach pains all the way up from Rumley, and it was never because of the lousy coffee she’d get on the way.

And now, this ... this was too much. 

Too much stress, too much bullshit, Lisa thought, as she reached out to knock on the door. Maybe it’s time to tell the good doctor that I’m–

“One. More.”

The words spilled out of Devlin’s mouth, like meat falling off the bone of a rotting carcass. He cocked his head, those steel blue eyes of his suddenly burning with an intensity that Lisa hadn’t seen in decades. His hands balled up into fists, and he banged them down hard onto the metal tabletop, smashing it with enough force to make dents in its shiny surface.

Lisa didn’t flinch. It’d was what she’d been expecting – what she’d been hoping for, actually – ever since that first time she’d stepped inside the interrogation room all those years ago, just her and the Devil himself. She stood up from her chair and unholstered her pistol in one smooth motion, training it right between his fucking eyes. She thumbed off the safety.

“What was that?” Lisa asked. “Didn’t quite hear you.” She hoped that Devlin didn’t hear her voice rising in her throat the way she’d felt it. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“One. More,” Devlin repeated. His smile grew wider, showing off what remained of his blackened, rotten teeth. “Last. Dance, with. You.”

“Sorry, don’t think so,” Lisa replied. “Like I said before, you had your chance. Not my fault you couldn’t get the job done.”

“You will.” His voice grew stronger. “You have no choice. Hell awaits you. It awaits us all.”

Devlin grinned, his eyes twinkling merrily. The veil he’d been hiding behind was totally gone.

This was the Devlin that Lisa knew. And feared.

He lunged across the table, the chains from his manacles jangling loosely.

Lisa screamed, and fired her pistol. Except in that instant she squeezed the trigger, she realized that she had completely fucked up. Yes, he’d lunged at her, moving with startling speed in her direction – but only an inch, maybe two, before his chains went taut, keeping him pinned steadfastly to his chair. He sure as fuck could scare her, but he was still completely restrained. There was no way he could actually hurt her. No way in … well, hell.

And yet, in the horrifying split-second after her gun went off, when she expected to see a wide, messy spray of wet red and gooshy gray splatter all over the two-way mirror behind Devlin … it somehow didn’t. The business end of the nine millimeter was less than three feet away from his face when she fired, and she was a trained marksman, one of the highest ranked in the Glasgow County Sheriff’s office. But instead of a crimson hole mushrooming between Devlin’s eyes, Lisa didn’t see anything different happening. Instead, it was what she heard that was different – a bouncing, sing-song ping, ping, ping of a wild ricochet, followed by a sharp, burning sensation as something hot grazed her ankle under the table. But she barely noticed the sting of the bullet.

There’s no way I could miss, not at that … no fucking way he could dodge that, no way at all … he’s human, he’s not …

“Missed,” Devlin said calmly to Lisa. Then he laughed, that same awful, haunting laugh he’d made decades before, the same as when he’d impaled the back of her leg with a pickaxe, the same as when he’d strung up her friend Becky from the camp flagpole and disemboweled her while she screamed and begged for her life … the same as he’d done for so many of his dozens of victims. Chuckling, as he hurt them. Tortured them. Killed them. For fun.

The door flew open, banging loudly against the wall as guards poured inside, swarming past Lisa. One of them grabbed Devlin’s arms, shoving him back in his seat. Another grabbed the back of his head, planting it hard into the metal tabletop with a loud crunch. From the dark puddle of blood pooling on the table, Lisa guessed that Devlin’s nose was broken, but that didn’t stop the grinning lunatic’s laughter from stopping.

And as his laughter continued, Devlin managed to raise his cuffed hands back up to the table’s edge, high enough so that Lisa could see them. Between his thumb and middle finger of his left hand, he held a reddish coin … no, not a coin. A token.

One hundred days, stained in blood.

And as Dr. Wasserman jabbed Devlin in the arm with a hypodermic syringe, sending enough tranquilizers coursing through the killer’s veins to knock out a rhinoceros, Lisa felt her pistol slip out of her fingers, hearing it clatter uselessly on the floor. Her hand slid into her pocket, the goddamn pocket where her token was supposed to be … and found it impossibly empty.

Lisa dropped on her knees to the floor, feeling dizzy and lost.

And scared.

Very, very scared.

Next Chapter: Chapter Three