NightWhere

Chapter Thirty

In the Darkest Hour…

The alley smelled like stale piss and old garbage. The sour scents reminded him of more desperate days. Back when he’d been a single guy, he’d come down into the seedy parts of South Chicago to take care of business here. Sometimes a guy had to cum, and if he didn’t have a woman at home waiting to accept it…well, he came here.

Literally.

The neon sign out front read Dreams in electric-blue light, only the D was unlit. So instead it was reams. That worked too. Guys went in there and got reamed in the video booths downstairs. And there were reams of bad sex videos lining every inch of the upstairs.

The entry door was glass but had been obscured by paper taped on from the inside. It had one message, just above the handle. Adults Only.

He pulled the door open and stepped inside. It was a whole ’nother world there. The walls were lined with porno DVDs and the glass case at the front of the store where the cash register sat was filled with imitation penises. Mark didn’t waste any time. He walked straight up to the cashier, a thin man with grey disheveled hair and a mustache that did its best to hide his lips. Mark had decided to be direct this time and simply come right out and ask everyone in the adult scene that he could find.

“Have you ever heard of NightWhere?” he asked, and the man looked back at him blankly. But in the overhead mirror, Mark saw that his question had interested someone. A head had popped out of the DVD aisles as soon as he’d said the name NightWhere.

Mark turned and stared down the aisle towards the man who had shown interest. The guy faded back as Mark approached, ducking around the aisle and disappearing. But Mark wasn’t fooled. He quickened his step and poked his head around the Bisexual aisle and found him. And the him turned out to be a familiar face.

“Kendrick,” he said. “What a lucky break-long time no see!”

The man pursed his lips and nodded, all of his body language saying that this wasn’t a lucky break in any way.

“How are you?” Kendrick asked, eyeing the end of the aisle nervously.

“Been better,” Mark said. “Rae hasn’t come home since she went to NightWhere last month. I’ve been looking for someone to help me get back to the club. I need to find out what happened to her.”

“I’m sure she’s okay,” Kendrick said. “You know Sin-D, she takes care of folks.”

“It’s not Sin-D I’m worried about,” Mark said. “I’ve seen some of what goes on in the back of the club.”

Kendrick shrugged. “Well, if you get an invitation next month, I guess you should go and check it out.”

“I don’t want to wait until next month to see my wife,” Mark spat. “I want to go see her now. And I need help. You are one of the in-crowd there. Help me get back to the club.”

“Can’t do that,” Kendrick said. “You know that. If I took you there, I’d never get invited myself again. I could get in big trouble just for talking about it with you.”

“Come on, man,” Mark begged. He struggled to keep his voice low. “You know the way. I need your help.”

“No,” Kendrick said. “And if you don’t want to end up chained up in one of the back rooms for the rest of your life, I’d suggest you stop asking people about the club. They don’t like publicity. And they will do just about anything to stop it. I promise you.”

Kendrick raised an eyebrow pointedly. His mouth was a thin line, his eyes flashed with something near anger. None of the laid-back, party-boy humor Mark remembered in the man was evident.

“Listen to what I’m saying,” Kendrick said. “Now, if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to ask the cashier to call the police. Get away from me. Now.”

Mark put his hands up in the air, exaggerating abdication. “Fine,” he said. “But what if it was your wife out there? What would you do?”

Kendrick looked at him in total, cold seriousness. “I’d divorce her and find a nice girl,” he said. “But that’s me.”

Mark backed away from the man, who seemed totally different than the guy he’d had drinks with at Sin-D’s bar just a few weeks before.

But Mark wasn’t done with Kendrick. He had stumbled on Selena and had failed to pry any information from her. Now he had found another denizen of NightWhere. He didn’t expect that he’d be lucky enough to walk into the supermarket and “just happen” to find Sin-D or one of the handful of others he knew from the sex club.

No.

This was it, right here. There was a good chance that Kendrick was his last chance to find Rae.

Mark stepped out of the porn shop and into the shadows of the alley. When he was out of the immediate fan of the spotlight above the door, he stopped and leaned back against the cinder-block wall of the building. In his pocket, he toyed with the box cutter that he’d taken from the garage when he left home. He never came to this part of town without a little protection. The dark alleys here had always made him nervous, though aside from being propositioned by a drug dealer once, nothing had ever happened to him here. Still, Mark had always come downtown prepared for anything. Now maybe that would pay off in a way he’d never intended. He was going to become the guy he himself feared.

There was only one way out of the porn shop, and Kendrick was still inside. Mark rubbed his back against the rough wall and fingered the button on the box cutter.

He could wait.

He didn’t have to wait for long. The Adults Only door shuddered open about five minutes later, and Kendrick stepped out onto the broken asphalt of the alley, a black plastic bag in his hand. He looked to the right a little nervously and then turned to the left.

But his caution proved too little, too late.

Kendrick’s eyes opened wide when he felt the cold metal against his throat.

“One word and you’re going to bleed,” Mark said. “We’re going to take a walk. I don’t want to bother anyone else who might be trying to get into the store. Let’s walk.”

He pointed at the darkest corner of the alley. “If you try to run, I can tell you two things. Number one, I will cut you before you get away from me. This thing is razor sharp, and I’m pissed off. Number two, this alley is a dead end. So let’s just walk nice and quiet down the way, out of sight, so we can talk, huh?”

Mark kneed Kendrick in the ass, and the other man began to walk, slowly, away from the door of the porn shop.

When they had gotten twenty or thirty yards and stood near a rusting green garbage bin, Mark said, “That’s enough.”

Kendrick stopped and turned to look at his abductor. “You can’t make me tell you anything,” he said.

Mark smiled, but it was the smile of a man who had nothing to lose. Not a smile of humor in any way.

“You’re right, I can’t make you tell me anything,” he agreed. “But if you want to live, I’d suggest that you do.”

Kendrick rolled his eyes. “You’re acting like a nut job, you know that?”

“You fucked my wife, didn’t you?” Mark asked.

Kendrick looked uneasy. “Maybe,” he said. “But that’s what people do in NightWhere. You fucked Sin-D. I saw that. So why are you ranking on me? I have nothing to do with your issues.”

Mark nodded. “No, you don’t. But you can help me fix them. And you may be the only one who can.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Kendrick said. “I just go there to have fun.”

“Bullshit,” Mark said, pointing at the snake tattoo on Kendrick’s wrist. “The people who have that tattoo run NightWhere. You are not just some neophyte party boy there. I’m betting you’re one of their recruiters. Which means you know how to reach them.”

Kendrick shook his head. “I can’t do anything…”

Mark pushed the steel of the box cutter’s shank against Kendrick’s throat. “If I push the button up on this, you’re going to be breathing through a hole in your neck. I’m not normally a violent guy but…you know what? I don’t fucking care anymore. There’s only one thing that I want. I want to get back to NightWhere. That’s it. End of story. And you can help me. I know you can. And if you won’t? Well…I may very likely push this button because it’s been a long month and I’ve got a lot of frustration built up at the moment. I’m kinda sick of being pissed off.”

Kendrick’s eyes widened as Mark pressed him against the brick wall. “You know they’re prepared for this sort of thing,” he said. His voice cracked as he said it.

“Then let them deal with me,” Mark suggested. “All you have to do is take me to them, and your part is done.”

Mark pressed the box cutter harder against Kendrick’s throat. “I am going to count to three, and then I’m going to give you a new hole in your head,” he promised. “One, two…”

Kendrick shoved Mark hard, at the same time aiming a knee to his groin. The flash of pain didn’t slow Mark-it was more of the last straw that sent him into action. He threw himself at the man, catching Kendrick around his knees.

Kendrick tried to pull his feet free, but instead overbalanced himself and went down, hard on the asphalt. He let out an ooff as he hit the ground and then Mark was on him, sitting on his back.

“I was not kidding,” Mark said. He clicked the blade of the cutter out. “I don’t care anymore,” he said. “You can either help me, or bleed to death.”

Mark pressed the open blade against Kendrick’s throat, and crimson bloomed against and around the blade.

“One, two…”

“Okay, okay,” Kendrick coughed. “I have a number you can call. I don’t know what they’ll do, but it’s all I can tell you to try. I can’t take you anywhere tonight.”

Mark pulled back and let Kendrick sit up to retrieve his phone. Mark wrapped one arm around the man’s neck from behind and kept the blade of the razor in place. Kendrick couldn’t move without being cut. Then Mark reached into a pocket and pulled his own phone out. He dialed the numbers as Kendrick read them.

The phone rang three times and then a cool male voice answered. “A snake can only eat its tail once, but a woman can give head a thousand times.”

“I’m looking for NightWhere,” Mark said.

“Aren’t we all?” the man on the other end of the line said. “Didn’t Kendrick tell you, we don’t want to be found?”

“He did,” Mark admitted. “But the razor at his throat made him reconsider.”

“Hmmm,” the man on the other end of the line said. “I trust you’ll let him go unharmed.”

“Sure,” Mark agreed. “As long as you tell me how to return to NightWhere.”

“I will send someone to show you the way,” the voice promised. “But it will not be tonight, or tomorrow, or even next week. The next meeting of NightWhere is October 18th. I’d be happy to have you there for that. Meet me there at Dreams in two weeks-on October 18th at 7 p.m. I will guide you into the hell you seek at that time. In the meantime, I want you to set Kendrick free.”

“How do I know you will keep your word?” Mark asked.

“You don’t,” the man said calmly. “But I will. You have my number now. And you have no choice really. You can’t keep Kendrick there for long, or someone is going to discover you and call the police. And I can’t come to you right now. I will be there for you on the night of October 18th.”

“How will I find you?” Mark asked.

“NightWhere finds you,” the man said. “That’s the way it has always been.”

There was a click, and the line went dead.

Mark released Kendrick, who pushed himself away on the asphalt, rubbing his throat with one hand as he did so.

“You’re going to get far more than you bargained for,” Kendrick said. “I hope you’re ready.”

“I’m ready to see my wife again,” Mark said, retracting the blade of the box cutter.

The man pushed himself up and off the ground, and shook his head at Mark. “Well, thanks to you, I’m not sure that I will ever be back at NightWhere again,” he said. “Asshole.”

“Sorry, man, I had no choice.”

“Word of advice? If you value your own life at all, you should give up your wife and start over. It would be better for both of you if you did that.”

With that, Kendrick sprinted towards the entry door of the porn shop. But when he reached it, he kept going, turning the corner with his fist in the air, his middle finger extended.

It might have been useful to follow him, to find out where he lived in case the man on the phone had lied. But Mark let him go. He had talked to someone at the club, someone who claimed that their next meeting was two weeks away. He hoped the man kept his promise. He hoped the man met him here.

A chill gripped Mark’s stomach then, as he thought…but how did the man even know where here was? The man had identified that he was at Dreams without Mark saying anything. Maybe Kendrick had called NightWhere after Mark had left the place?

He heard Kendrick’s voice in his head, “You’re going to get more than you bargained for.”

Who were these people, Mark wondered. It was as if he’d stumbled into a secret society that met in the catacombs and traded secret passwords and handshakes. And based on Kendrick’s warnings…potentially got rid of people who crossed them.

Permanently.

Mark swallowed hard and tried to tell himself that he was being ridiculous. The club was secret because it had to be-otherwise the cops would bust it. But NightWhere weren’t the Mafia. They weren’t going to kill him just for insisting they let him see his wife again. He just hoped that, when he did see her, Rae would come back home with him. He couldn’t imagine what he would feel like if she said no. If this really was the end.

He walked slowly back out of the alley and down the busy street to his car. The next two weeks were going to take forever to pass by.

Mark got in his car and started the engine. All he could see in his mind’s eye was an image of Rae gagged and chained against a rack.

He wanted to have the key to free her. To be the key.

To bring her back home with him.

Mark whispered to himself in the silence of the cab of his car: “I’m coming, baby. I’m coming.”