Just as Jose was about to sink the tip of the blade into the side of Needles’ eyeball, Needles moved and Jose jabbed Needles in the cheek just below the eye; the wound began to bleed immediately, the blood ran down his cheek and down the tape, the blood dripped down onto the cross hanging outside of his thermal shirt.
Jose backed away, suddenly angry. “Shit, man. You’ve got to hold him still.”
Cole dropped his hands away from Needles’ head and backed away. “I’m trying. He’s struggling too much.”
Jose sighed and set the knife back on the table. He pulled his gun out from the waistband of his pants and he walked around to the back of Needles.
“Struggling too much?” Jose asked, and then he wacked Needles on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, knocking Needles out instantly.
Needles’ head slumped forward and his breathing was even and steady out of his nose.
Jose stuffed his gun back into his pants and walked back to the table. He picked up the knife and a spoon. He looked at Cole. “Hold his eyelids open. I’m sure it doesn’t want these eyeballs damaged.”
Cole shuddered, but he moved in beside Jose. He pried Needles’ left eye open and the eyeball stared back at them, lifeless and unconscious.
“I’m going to cut it out and you get the bowl ready to put it in.”
“Just hurry,” Cole said.
Thirty minutes later, Cole and Jose sat at the dining room table, both of them exhausted. Needles was still unconscious and tied to the dining room table chair, his bloody head hung forward, blood-stained gauze and duct tape were wrapped around his face where his eyes used to be, but the tape was off of his mouth now to allow him to breathe more easily.
Stella and David were still in the bedroom. Cole was about to go and get them. He and Jose had cleaned up the mess around Needles as best as they could. They put his eyeballs in a bowl and left them out on the front porch – a gift for that monster out there.
Suddenly, Needles woke up. He lifted his head up and screamed. “My eyes! You took my eyes!”
Cole jumped to his feet and ran over to Needles. “Just try to calm down, Needles.” His own words sounded surreal to his ears, this whole situation seemed unreal to him.
“It hurts!” Needles howled. “It hurts so bad! Why did you do this to me, Cole?”
“You deserved it, you sick son of a bitch,” Jose said; he was still seated at the dining room table, a few feet away from Needles. “If you hadn’t shot that old man in the bank, we wouldn’t even be here.”
Needles wouldn’t stop crying and screaming. “Oh, God, where are you, Cole?” Needles rocked his head back and forth like he was trying to look around the room with eyes he didn’t have anymore.
“I’m right here,” Cole said from right beside Needles. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he looked at Needles, once his friend, now tied to a chair with his eyes carved out. What had he done? Cole asked himself. What had he become?
Needles still looked around as he moaned, like he couldn’t quite place where Cole was. “It hurts so bad!! I can’t take the pain!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Jose screamed at Needles, and then he got to his feet beside the table and glanced at Cole. “Shut him up again, please.” Jose paced away from the table, into the hallway, he needed to be away from Needles, he couldn’t take the crying anymore, but even in here he could still hear Needles screaming and moaning.
“Please, Cole. I can’t take the pain anymore. I … I can’t take – ”
Needles’ last words were cut off by a booming gunshot in the cabin.
Jose rushed back out from the hallway to see Cole standing behind Needles; Cole had his gun in his hand, still aimed at the back of Needles’ head. Needles was slumped forward in the chair as far as the rope and tape would allow him. His head was pitched forward and blood drained from the large wound in his forehead where the bullet had exploded out of his face. The gauze and tape over his eyes was stained dark red already, and a puddle of blood was forming on the floor in front of the chair.
Jose stared at Cole in shock. “What the fuck did you do?”
Cole shook his head no as he stared at Jose with a vacant look in his eyes. “I couldn’t leave him suffering like that. I couldn’t let him keep feeling that kind of pain.”
Jose paced around the living room, a rage building in him quickly. He ran his hand through his dark hair several times. “Did you stop to think that the thing outside didn’t want him dead?”
Cole watched Jose. “I don’t care. I wasn’t going to let him keep on suffering.”
Jose punched his fist at the air a few times in frustration, and then he turned to Cole. “Fuck! We needed Needles! What are we supposed to do if that thing out there wants another body part? We could’ve used Needles over and over again.”
Cole felt that now familiar wave of nausea washing over him again, but this time it was Jose that nauseated him. He could feel his own rage building up inside of him, that rage that had been just beneath the surface of him the whole time he’d been in this cabin. “Let’s get Needles out on the front porch, and then it can have all the body parts it wants.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
As the sun dipped down below the forest of trees in the west and the winter sky darkened in the east, Needles’ body lay on the floorboards of the front porch not too far away from his eyeballs which were offered up in one of Tom Gordon’s plastic cereal bowls. Both eyeballs faced the woods like they were looking at them. The freezing wind had picked up a little and the trees swayed, but there wasn’t any snow falling yet.
Inside the cabin Cole, Jose, and Stella sat at the dining room table. The area in the dining room had been cleaned up as much as possible, but the chair that Needles had been tied to was still stained with blood and it was pushed in at the table, the back facing the hallway. The wood floor still had dark smears of blood stained into it from where Cole and Jose had dragged Needles’ body outside. The coils of bloody rope and telephone cords were piled up near the freezer, and the duct tape and gauze that had been wrapped around Needles’ head and body was now in the trash can.
David sat on the couch and watched the three as they sat at the table. He had his spiral notebook near him, but he wasn’t drawing in it now – it seemed like he was done with the things he had drawn. Every few minutes David glanced at the front door like he was expecting someone to come to the door.
Jose sat at the table with his hands curled around the whiskey bottle. He sipped from the bottle every few minutes and he was beginning to get a little drunk. He was beginning to lose his control just a little. But he didn’t care; he needed the numbness that the whiskey brought with it, even if just for a little while.
Cole and Stella sat close to each other at the table. The cabin was silent; the only sound that could be heard was the whistling winter wind outside playing around the eaves. In the silence, Stella spoke.
“I’m an archeologist,” she said, and then she looked at Cole.
Cole nodded; she’d already told him that before. He was tired now, beyond exhaustion. He wasn’t sure how many nights he’d stayed awake, and he was pretty sure he’d had only about eight hours of sleep in the last few days.
“I specialize in the cultures of the Southwest Native Americans,” Stella continued, and it seemed like she was leading somewhere this time, like there was something she finally wanted to tell them, something she finally wanted to reveal. “Especially the Anasazi. The Anasazi were a group of people who lived in that region hundreds of years ago. They built massive cities all over the region. They built kivas and they constructed roads that went on for miles and miles. They built some of their cities right into the sides of cliffs, massive cities carved right into the solid rock. The only way to get up to the city was by ladders or hand and toe holds carved right into the rock.”