Page 64 of Requiem & Reverie

Nola lies on a bed, and I realize the fan is actually a vacuum, shrink-wrapping latex to her body, which has been propped in a way that makes my fucking blood boil. Legs spread, she lies on her back, and a hole is cut where the white cotton of her panties shows through.

With a quick scan, I check to see her chest is moving up and down in the plastic and spot her feet squirming about.

Simon is probably banking on my momentary distraction of trying to figure out how to get her out of that contraption.

I’m done giving the little prick the upper hand.

Ignoring her for now, I keep on toward a room just past a utility sink, which stands adjacent to shelves of flowers, and a pot containing a single blooming Queen of the Night flower. I have to find him first, and Glock leading the way, I pass by what I recognize from Nola’s studio as a kiln. Waves of heat hit my face like a warm curtain, telling me something is inside of that thing. The scent on the air is greasy, like meat that hits the back of my throat. At this point, I don’t want to know. Whatever it is, or was, is dead now.

I crack the door open just enough to allow some light inside an adjacent room. A recliner is positioned before a wall of morbid pictures and jars, the second of which are filled with fluid-suspended eyeballs. As I step inside, a shine flickers from my left, where the shadows come to life, and a wet spray hits my face.

What starts as a tingling sensation over my eyes turns into a full-on burn, and I shoot blindly into the darkness. The bullet pings somewhere inside the room. Swinging my gun around, I open my eyes to search for him, but all I see is a blur. As if I’m viewing the world through too big of a lens, the objects stretch and soften.

“I read your shooting skills were unmatched in the military. Top of your class.”

At the sound of his voice, I aim again and listen carefully for any movement.

“So, naturally, I thought, should I ever meet this excellent marksman face to face, I’ll be sure to take out his eyesight first.”

Again, I shoot into the darkness, and the bullet ricochets off metal somewhere, while the room gets blurrier with each passing second.

A burn streaks across my back, and I twist around, firing another shot. The sound of shattered glass and splashing liquid tells me I nailed one of his eyeball jars.

“Fucking idiot!” The fury in his voice reverberates off the walls. “That’s my prized collection.”

“Who are you?” I grit out past clenched teeth, furious that I can’t find him. I back myself out of the room, in hopes of drawing him into the light. The brightness only adds to my irritation, though, as I stand aiming at nothing, while he remains concealed in the obscurity of that room.

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Who is the elusive Sandman?”

“Tell me.”

“I could. But then I’d have to kill you.” The sound of his chuckling grates on my spine, and I grit my teeth in frustration.

The burn intensifies, watering my eyes. “Why cut out their eyes and stuff them with bone meal?”

“You’re right. It’s not polite to take credit for something I didn’t think up on my own.”

“Who did?”

“It was something my father always did. Or so I was told.”

Of all the unholy fucking things in the world, my bastard uncle spawned a bastard son? “You never met him?”

“Never. My mother was one of the prostitutes he raped and discarded. Only, he made the mistake of getting her pregnant.”

The burn in my eyes feels as though it’s traveled into my sockets, producing more tears, which I can’t see past as I attempt to quell the stinging with the heel of my palm.

“Turns out, my father disappeared about seventeen years ago,” Simon prattles on from the other room, and I wait for him, backing myself behind a shelf, so I’m not some sitting duck. “There’s nothing on him.”

As far as I know, Carl’s body was never identified and found. Skeletal remains were discovered on the bank of the river not far from the estate, a few years after, but the degradation and loss of DNA made them impossible to identify. Worst of it was, my grandfather never bothered to report him missing.

“I decided to seek out his father, who happened to be dying. Your grandfather.”

After I left, I didn’t bother with the son of a bitch. Didn’t even know when, or why, he died. Didn’t care.

“It was while visiting him at the Jansen estate that I stumbled upon my father’s journal.”

I finally catch sight of a figure emerging from the room, but it’s nothing more than a shiny black blob, indiscernible through the tears gathered in my eyes. I lift my arm to fire a shot and realize the blob is wider than it should be, my sight distorted enough to see two of him.