The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,29

goon Joel recognized from TV as the governor. The mayor towered over him; he was a robust man, tall and muscular beneath his suit, with a finger-combed mop of salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard just starting to go gray. Joel stared at him. He’d never seen him outside of the fuzzy photos in the newspaper or waving distantly from a convertible in the Veterans Day parade. He looked…odd. Handsome and smiling, yet the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. His eyes were soft and brown, but something about them seemed flat and emotionless, almost glassy. Like the eyes of the moose in the other room. Dead and cold.

“Can I help you?” Joel looked away from the picture to see Mrs. Carver staring at him. She was twisting her diamond wedding band.

“I need to get to the basement,” he said.

She nodded and pointed to a plain door at the end of the hall. “Light switch is on your left.”

Joel descended into the musty darkness, nearly bashing his forehead against a beam before reaching the landing. The dim bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling lit a pathway through piles of old furniture and moldy cardboard boxes. He pulled the flashlight off his belt and shined it into the dark corners, scaring up a few spiders, searching for the entrance of the cable into the house.

Though his eyes searched the dusty beams above him, his mind was on yesterday. On the group. The sensitives. He wondered what kind of work some of them did. It was difficult to imagine any of them in a factory or teaching school; some of them, like Barry and Joseph he was fairly sure, had no jobs at all.

He headed for the corner of the basement where he thought the cable entrance should be, playing the light at the mass of wires and cables tacked onto the crossbeams. Just as he found it, the toe of his shoe caught against the leg of an old kitchen chair, and the pile of newspaper clippings on its seat spilled into the floor. Spitting out a curse, he knelt and began picking them up.

Then he saw it. Just below a window encrusted with dust, out of his line of sight when he had been standing, was a break in the drywall where pulsing light was spilling through. There was a door built into the wall; he could see the hinges. Curious, he stepped over to it and felt around until he got a grip on an edge, then pulled it open.

Behind the door was a small room, about eight feet square, no more than a closet, really. Its walls, floor, and ceiling were upholstered in red vinyl. Light came from four strategically placed recessed strobe fixtures that illuminated the only other object in the room: a sort of leather sling that was suspended from above by shiny chrome chains. The strobes pulsed slowly and monotonously, like the flash of some insane phantom photographer.

He stared, dumbfounded. He had an idea, of course, what the sling was for, and a smile played at the corner of his mouth. He tried to picture the mayor’s wife strung up in here like a slab of meat, naked and sweating. Give it to me, Larry! A dry laugh escaped his lips. Without thinking he brushed his fingertips against the sling.

Instantly a flood of visions and emotions crossed before him and was gone. He reeled a bit, looking at the thing. Then he reached out and grabbed it.

What he saw was a mass of writhing, tangled bodies locked together in sexual bliss beneath the flashing lights. Images swam on top of images, dark indistinguishable faces dissolving from one to another. Voices moaned and screamed—some in pleasure, some in pain, most a combination of both. Once he saw Larry Carver’s face vividly, his features pinched and distorted in ecstasy.

But it was the thrill shooting through him that would not allow him to let go of the sling. The sexual energy pounding in his chest, his loins. He had never felt anything like it. It felt so strong, like a jolt of electricity. Wave after wave flowing through him. An orgasmic spark that began in his groin and spread through his limbs like a shock of lightning. It was sheer, undiluted lust of a magnitude he never knew could exist.

Only the sudden weakness in his legs made him let go, and he steadied himself against the vinyl wall. His breath was heaving, and a viscous sweat had