Chapter 10
Doctor Ang, Igor thought. The man must be a mad scientist, and he was hiding in the house somewhere. That was the only possible explanation to the bizarre turn of events.
He looked more closely at Boris’s injuries and tried to make sense of them.
His upper arm was almost completely eaten to the bone.
“What did this to you?” A dog? A wolf? He’d heard of coyotes and bears in the region.
But none of the doors or windows were open to the exterior.
There had to be an animal in the house somewhere. Perhaps a rabid pet dog.
No, he thought with disbelief. A mere dog couldn’t do this to a man. No. Someone here, inside the house, had done this to Boris.
With a firm grip of the poker, he considered his options. He looked at the wall of windows.
Just jump out and run as fast as you can.
The thought of running away from two helpless females was repugnant. He was a man. A strong man. A man who had seen battle.
He looked once again at Boris.
Damn.
And back at the windows again.
What about the girl, the precious cargo that could be worth millions? Not to mention the weapons he could get his hands on.
He licked his lips and headed to the door, determined to deal with the two women. On his way out, he found a knife lying on a shelf.
How handy, he thought as he picked it up. Luck appeared to be on his side. Between the sharp knife and the heavy poker he should be able to defend himself quite well.
He walked out into the hall and, with silent steps, made his way to the next open door; the red room.
Mesmerized by the strange room, he entered and looked around with genuine curiosity.
Thoughts of a mad scientist came back to him.
Clearly experiments of some sorts were conducted here.
Viles of liquid, test tubes and beakers were everywhere.
Then he noticed the red leather dentist’s chair, with its singular leg that allowed the chair to swivel and pivot as desired.
Tilted back, it was brightly lit from above with a large lamp like what he’d seen in an operating room.
But what really intrigued him was the long needle attached to a mechanical arm above the chair.
A single droplet of thick blood clung to the tip of the needle. Igor approached the unusual scene. The needle, only three feet above the headrest of the chair, was in perfect alignment to the eye of whomever sat in the chair.
The thought sent a chill up his spine.
Coming closer still, he saw a slip of paper on the red seat and picked it up.
Get ready, Igor. You’re next!
He gasped. His hands trembled, so much so that he dropped the knife. Scrambling to pick it back up, he jumped with a start when the door to the room suddenly slammed shut.
“Who’s there?” Igor said.
The answer came by way of the muffled sound of a mechanical saw revving.
He looked around to try to find the source of the sound. In the wall adjacent to the room he’d just left, a door with densely frosted glass gave access to the other room. Through it he saw vague motions.
With a desperate need to make sense of everything, he let his curiosity get the better of him and approached the glass door.
Someone was in the other room; the room he’d just left. They flicked on a strong light making their silhouette clear and unmistakable as they held the mechanical saw up, ready to get to work.
The silhouette was small, delicate and petite. There was something about them that was so fragile and frail, and yet... the mechanical saw was everything but.
April? Sonya? Perhaps even Doctor Ang?
The saw came down, cutting through the body that lay on the table... Boris? Or were there other victims to this horror house?
The sound of the saw changed as it reached the bone but finally the job was done. The petite person set the saw down beside the body and raised the dismembered arm up, admiring their handiwork before...
“Oh, my God.” Igor gagged as he took a step back, horrified by what he’d just witnessed. He blinked to clear his vision; certain he’d imagined it. It couldn’t be. He looked again through the frosted glass.
It wasn’t his imagination. The person was eating the flesh of the arm they’d just severed.
He had to get out. He rushed to the door but found it locked from the outside.
The windows. He ran to open one of them.
Locked.
Break it.
“Yes. Yes. Smash the window and run the hell out of here,” he urged himself. He swung the poker as hard as he could into the glass. It barely cracked and the vibration from striking the unyielding glass shook his arm all the way up his shoulder and reverberated in his head.
“Damn.”
He swung again. A tiny chip flew off.
Again and again, he hit the glass with the poker. “Come on. Come on! What the hell are you made of.”
But it was futile. The glass was too thick, too strong. Then, to his dismay, he realized that the glass of the windows was reinforced with a metal mesh.
“Great,” he said as he looked around the room a little dejected.
He looked at the door with the frosted glass. He would have to go through that adjacent room to get out. Taking a deep breath, and with a firm grip on his poker and knife, he rushed into the room, hoping to catch whoever was in there off guard.
Instead of being greeted by one of the feeble women, he was met with the face of his beloved leader, Stalin.
He immediately stopped running and saluted. “Supreme leader... Ah!”
As searing pain throbbed up his leg, he dropped the poker and fought to remain upright. He’d been struck in the leg and before he could find the source, he was struck again at the back of the head with a heavy, blunt object.
Crumbling to the floor, he passed out.
But his reprieve from the pain was brief. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on a stainless steel table, a bright light directed straight into his eyes. He tried to sit up, but the restraints at his wrists prevented him from moving freely.
He looked around for his knife and saw it lying there on the nearby table, far, far out of reach.
The mechanical saw revved up again, close... too close.
“Who are you?” he cried out as someone came to stand at the side of the table.
“Does it really matter?” came the calm and amused response. The voice was definitely that of a woman. But her face was obscured by a gasmask, one that he’d seen many men wear during the war.
“Who are you?” he asked again. “Why are you doing this?”
She ever so briefly raised the mask from her face and winked at him before setting the mask back down.
Sonya. The prim and proper teacher. How was this possible? How had she found the strength to knock him out and to then pull him up on the table?
“What are you going to do to me? What have you done to Boris?”
“Nothing compared to the horrors that the likes of you have perpetrated on so many... so many innocent lives. Tell me, did you look into the eyes of those that you tortured or killed? Did you feel an ounce of empathy? Do you now feel any sense of regret at all? No. I’m sure that you don’t.”
She revved up the saw and slowly brought it down over his wrist.
“No! Please. Tell me what you want.”
The saw reached his skin, shaving off one layer at a time.
“Please. I’m begging. I’m begging for mercy.”
“Is that so?” Sonya said. “Tell me Igor, how merciful were you? How many lives did you spare?”
“I... I... I am a mere soldier,” he said through labored breaths.
“Right.”
She brought the saw down hard making quick work of detaching his hand from his arm.
He let out a blood-curdling scream. The pain was like nothing he could have imagined, all consuming.
“Here,” Sonya said with a chuckle as she grabbed the hand by the middle finger and tossed it onto his chest. “Let me give you a hand.”
He fought the urge to cry. Tears stung his eyes, and he just wanted to get out of there and go home.
Sonya pulled the gas mask up and leaned closer to him, bringing the saw close to his face.
“No! No!” Igor pleaded. “Please. Tell me what you want. Anything. Anything at all.”
“You are a pathetic excuse of a man,” Sonya spat. “All strong and brave when it comes to destroying innocent lives, but a whimpering fool when faced with true danger. Tell me, how many did you kill? How many did you gas?”
“It wasn’t me. I swear. Look at me. I’m barely a man. I’m only twenty-five years old. I’m innocent myself. I’m not a higher up. I’m not in charge. I was never in charge. All I did was follow orders.”
“That’s not quite what you were saying earlier, is it? You said everyone is an equal, no hierarchy, no leaders, no kings. Yet here you are, merely following orders. From whom?”
He frowned, not following her logic.
She leaned closer. “Is your leader as equal as you? You pretend to be German, a Nazi, which I despise, if you truly had anything to do with the horror of Nazi Germany during World War 2. Did you?”
Igor shook his head. “I’m not a Nazi. I may have pretended to be one. You’re the Nazi! Not I! You who does not think like me.”
Sonya shook her head. “Calling me a Nazi now just because I don’t think the same way as you, just because I am different than you? You know you’re lying, don’t you? What are you? If you tell me, I’ll let you know what I really am.”
Igor had to know who or what he was dealing with, or what. He was losing energy fast so maybe he can negotiate something before he lost all consciousness. “I wasn’t even old enough to be in the war. I am from the CoIntern Communist movement, Russia.”
“The ones who influenced my country China and changed it into the communist state that it is today.” Sonya said.
“Your movement destroyed the country. Millions died. The intellectuals were purged. Anyone who have any independent thought, who expressed any free will and free thinking was killed or ‘re-educated’.”
“How do you know of this?” Igor asked. “Were you there?”
“I was imprisoned,” Sonya said. “So much for everyone being the same. Only those who believe the same as your Supreme leader were let to live.”