Going Through Hell

  Connie Corcoran Wilson

“If you're going through hell, keep on going .” (Winston Churchill)

Kerry Strait struggled against the handcuffs that bound her to the concrete block wall. She knew she'd been half-propped, half-hanging here, a prisoner, since yesterday. Yesterday, the day before All Hallow's Eve, a night that, according to ancient custom, is a feast of the dead, a day when the dead can return to the land of the living to celebrate with their families.

Kerry wasn't dead yet. And she sure wasn't celebrating. Her wrists were numb and bleeding, her face bruised from the unsuccessful struggle with the assailant who had carried her to this hiding place. She was tired, dirty, petrified. She smelled of her own urine and perspiration. The basement, itself, reeked with a cold damp moldy odor; small chirping scuffling noises convinced her rats or mice were her sole companions.

Kerry was freezing. She was clad only in a pink lacy size 38C Victoria 's Secret bra and matching panties, the underwear she'd been sleeping in when kidnapped. She was too tired after work to walk to the bathroom where her nightgown hung on a hook. She had removed her uniform and shoes, thrown them on the closet floor, and fallen into bed and deep slumber.

Just a few hours , she told herself at the time. Then I'll get up, clean up, write. Writing was what had gotten her into this predicament in the first place. Her own fault. Who did she think she was? Mary Shelley? The female version of Joseph Wambaugh? What made her think that her single year on the force, or being editor of her high school newspaper, made a potential novelist of a ninety-five pound size four rookie policewoman? Visions of “Hill Street Blues” or “NYPD Blue” must have been dancing in her head.

All that was dancing in her head now were horrifying images of the Jack-O-Lantern killer's twelve previous victims killed precisely at midnight on Halloween over the past twelve years. It was her case. She'd been poring over the photos in the station house for months. Gory. Mesmerizing. Was she to be the unlucky 13 th victim? Was Jose Ramirez the perp she'd been tracking for six months? Stellar police work, Kerry , she thought. You'll surely get a Mayoral Citation for this crack bit of Sherlock Holmes sleuthing.

It had all started when she'd answered an ad in “Writer's Review:” “Writers wanted to develop seed ideas. Payment in advance for writer selected. ” A phone number followed. Foolishly, Kerry the Cop answered the ad. Then, she committed an even bigger error. She revealed she was a woman writer who lived alone. She didn't mention her police background, but stressed her writing credentials. Some would say exaggerated her writing credentials. A man who called himself “Jose” told her a tale so weird it had to be true.

“My mother used to be electrologist,” he said on the phone in heavily accented Spanish-influenced English. “Do you know what thees is…this electrologist word?”

Kerry thought she did. To be sure, she answered, “Why don't you tell me?”

“She remove unwanted body hair from customers. Many years she do thees in Mexico City . The customers, they tell her things. Some of the things…they very weird. Sexual. Kinky. You are not offended writing about thees?” asked Jose. “The writer we want will have to write about sexual stuff, because, these customers, they tell my mother many tales. Sometimes the tales, they very weird. Sometimes homosexual. You're not offended by gays? You don't mind writing about those who like to be dominated? Some of the stories she knows, they are about alien witchcraft rituals. My mother, she believe in this very much. Mama was taken up in a spacecraft once. Horrible alien witchcraft rituals…they were performed on her. She was just a young girl at the time.”

“I'm open-minded.” What else did you say to someone telling you about alien abduction, his mother, electrolysis and sex in the same conversation? Kerry was spooked by Jose's weird frankness on the phone. But he offered her a lot of money to write. It checked out that he had been a surgeon in Mexico City . For an unsuccessful writer who could paper her bedroom with rejection notices, a solid offer to write anything for a substantial sum of cash was tempting.

Now that Kerry was Jose's prisoner, it was clear that Jose Ramirez had been in to some nasty shit for years. From Kerry's study of the Jack-O-Lantern Killer as one of the investigating team, she knew he carved women up, doing so with surgical precision. Jack the Ripper had nothing on Jack-O-Lantern. The only victim who had ever escaped, Jane Leslie, told police that her captor wore a mask and did not speak to her while she was imprisoned. He had enjoyed humiliating her and making her humiliate him. While raping her, over and over again, with a variety of objects, he chanted, “May I, Mommy? May I, Mommy?”

From Jane's account, Kerry knew it was her role in this charade to say, “Yes, you may, Jose.” This would minimize the use of foreign objects. At least, according to Jane it would be more likely that Jose would penetrate her primarily with his penis or a dildo, rather than some of the gruesome artifacts he employed on Jane before she escaped. Kerry had been slapped repeatedly until she could repeat the phrase without sobbing. Her police training helped her. She found herself able to analyze her situation and do what Jose asked. Don't panic. Always try to survive, rape victims were told. Try to remember every detail of your attacker. Don't struggle if you're helpless. Don't beg for mercy. That's exactly what the rapist wants: control. Jose wanted her to beg for mercy. Kerry wouldn't beg. There was some connection, in Jose's warped mind, anyway, between the murders and alien witchcraft rituals. Maybe raping me is one of those alien rituals? Kerry thought through the haze of pain and hunger. Her sense of humor kicked in. I'll bet Jose really is an illegal alien.

Jose had continued, during that initial phone conversation. “My mother and I…we need to know, from a writer, whether these stories, whether they are short stories? A collection? Or, maybe longer. Maybe a novel? Mama always want to write about what she say happened to her as young girl in Mexico . Aliens practice witchcraft on her, take her in their space machine? Can you advise us? If you can, and we like you, we hire you and sign a contract: six figures, plus a large advance. You will take my mother's life stories and write them? I was a doctor in Mexico City . I have money.”

Why had this sounded plausible at the time? Actually, it had not. Aliens? Witchcraft? Kerry had checked, however, and a Dr. Jose Ramirez, a surgeon, was listed in Mexico City . (She wondered if that name was as common as Smith in the US ?) Six figures was a lot of money to a Chicago cop. From there, she assumed that Dr. Ramirez really did have the money. She humored him, even though torn between laughing at his offer and crying that her writing career was reduced to this. But she couldn't afford to offend Jose, so she said, “Tell you what, Jose. I can't offer my professional judgment until I know what some of these stories are. Why don't you send me one or two of your mother's most interesting stories by E-mail? I'll get back to you.” This seemed a good solution to the problem and, after all, what harm could looking at his mother's rough drafts do?

“We do not have a computer, Ms. Strait. My mother, she ees old-fashioned. You must geeve me your mailing address.”

How dumb could one wanna-be writer be? Pretty damn dumb , she thought, struggling against her restraints for the thousandth time, mind reeling. I should've gotten a post office box. Yeah. Right. I get soooo many offers from psychotic guys wanting my address to hire me to work on their writing, she thought. Happens all the time.

Once he knew her home address, Jose came to her ground floor condo apartment in the dim hours of dawn. He picked the lock, entered, chloroformed her as she slept, carried her off to a roller skating rink. Physically removing the slight girl wasn't that difficult for a full-grown man. Imprisoned now, the far-away sound of skaters overhead and the merry music wafting downstairs made the entire experience even stranger. This is surreal as hell , she thought. How she wished she could take back the moment when she had actually given this pervert her real home address.

Whenever Jose came downstairs to check on her, the smell of hot buttered popcorn wafted down the stairs to the hungry prisoner. The smell made her empty stomach feel emptier still. The greasy buttery smell sickened her. She hadn't eaten in over forty-eight hours, nor slept during that time, either. Time was running out. The old battered school-style black clock mounted high on the wall opposite Kerry told her it was 11:00 p.m. Halloween night. She felt as nauseous as if she'd actually eaten buckets of the greasy canola-oil coated popcorn she could smell. An inner voice warned: Time is running out. You've got to make your move. You've got to get out of here. Now!

But Jose wanted to talk. His first visit to her dank dungeon, in broken English Jose told her the sad story of his life. How he had once been a successful surgeon in Mexico City , until a car accident took his right hand, leaving him with a gleaming metal prosthesis. His move to Chicago . He opened the skating rink because the Ramirez family had relatives here.

“I love to skate,” Jose told Kerry. “A person can still skate with just one good hand. You no do surgery with a hook, but I skate good,” said Jose.

Kerry nodded, not wanting to piss off the pervert. Nothing worse than a pissed-off pervert , she thought, inwardly amused by the alliteration.

Every Halloween for the past twelve years, Jose had carved a jack-o-lantern from a young female victim, claiming that alien witchcraft rituals required that it be done. Each U.S. victim had come to him from an ad placed in the writing magazine. There was really no other connection among the dead girls. He picked the smallest ones, who could be carried more easily. Coincidentally, they were all brunettes. Since some of the victims had been killed in Mexico City , before Jose moved north, that was logical. The police had not figured out the connection between the United States victims. A few dead Mexico City victims didn't merit their attention. If I live, I can fill them in , Kerry thought. I'll get a gold star and a citation. Big whoop. She spit coppery blood from her thirsty aching mouth.

One year, when he was still in Mexico City , Jose had used only the poor girl's skull for his handiwork. He placed a flashlight inside Janice Ravera's hollowed-out skull, which made for a totally eerie police find. His first year in Chicago he carved a happy face in Judy Booth's abdomen, the grin oozing bloody gore downward towards her mons pubis. One year, he cut a frown face in Brenda Womack's chest, removed her heart and cut the rib-cage with the same surgical saw he had once used performing open-heart surgery in Mexico . Brenda provided a canvas for his creativity. This was when the police knew that their serial killer had some medical training. But the cops weren't looking for doctors hiding out in roller skating rinks.

After Jose lost his hand in Mexico City in the auto accident, his descent into madness and perversion, fueled by a fondness for sado-masochistic sex, accelerated. He liked whips. He liked chains. He liked whips AND chains. He told one victim, “It is better to geeve than to receive,” as he forced her to beat him with a studded whip until he bled. Pain was pleasure; pleasure, pain.

Jose had control issues and Mother issues. When he used his mother's electrolysis stories, he was fabricating, but Jose's relationship with his mother was definitely not normal. Jose was about as normal as the Night Stalker. Tales of alien witchcraft rituals dominated his earliest childhood memories, related to him by his deranged, drug-addled mother and internalized by the young boy from age five on.

Now it was Kerry receiving hourly beatings, imprisoned, pinioned on this hellish wall, a live butterfly squirming on a pin. She'd been chained in this dank basement for hours, listening to the deranged music from the roller skating rink above, fearing the return of the swarthy man who planned to kill her at midnight on Halloween, just as he had killed all the others before her. He'd leave her body in some remote location for the police to find. Kerry was a police officer; the Jack-O-Lantern Killer had been her case. She knew all the gory details. Ironic.

Just out of reach on a nearby table Jose's surgical instruments awaited. The instruments with which he had carved and cut and laid bare flesh and sinew, leaving human jack-o-lanterns in place of beautiful young girls. All the victims were petite brunette would-be writers who never lived to write another word. Kerry planned to live to write this story. Great material for a horror novel here , she thought. Probably be rejected: too far-out. She could imagine the rejection notice now: “Do serial killer guys really spend this much time talking to their prisoners? I doubt it. Now, if you could work on something more believable. Perhaps a roller-skating clown trips, falls downstairs, and comes to Kerry's rescue?” Kerry smiled to quell her fear.

With the beacon of survival and her urge for self-preservation spurring her on, Kerry wriggled her right hand until it cramped violently. Her right wrist was double-jointed, an old intramural basketball injury from high school. She could wriggle her right hand out of the restraints, but she knew she could not do so with her uninjured left hand. She worked against the pain until, crying aloud, her wrist slipped from the shackles. Wriggling it to restore the circulation, she realized that her left wrist remained imprisoned, firmly pinioned against the cold, pebbly concrete, the metal handcuffs and circular chains attached and imbedded in the concrete block wall.

Kerry saw the gleaming instruments on the table. Arranged, waiting for midnight when the roller skating rink would close. Jose would descend; mumble words of ancient alien witchcraft rituals. Then he would slice her to shreds. She remembered the way the light glinted crazily off the hook where Jose's right hand had been as he violated her, again and again, with every imaginable implement, not just his own sometimes-inadequate penis. Every hour of her imprisonment was a living hell. The clock's hands ticked towards 11:15 p.m.

The horror of Jose's metal hook gave Kerry an idea, an idea just crazy enough to save her life, if she had the resolve, the constitution to follow through on it. Kerry remembered the young mountain climber who had amputated his own arm, tied a tourniquet around the stump, and climbed down a mountainside to safety. If she could reach the table on wheels that held Jose's hellish surgical instruments, she, too, could cut off her own left hand, tie a tourniquet, and escape out the basement window to safety. All that was required was the desire to live and the resolve not to pass out from pain. She was sure she could reach the instrument table on wheels with her left foot. Her right hand was now free. Her bra could serve as a tourniquet.

Now is not the time for modesty , Kerry reasoned. What other choices do I have? I'm running out of time.

She strained, gritting her teeth. The table on wheels moved. Imperceptible, at first, it inched its way towards her. It almost toppled. Kerry held her breath. Sweat trickled down her brow, obscuring her vision. She gasped. A pent-up breath. She stretched toward the table. It seemed impossibly far away. The surgical steel knife was in her grasp, its metal cold in her sweaty fingers. Kerry took a deep breath and cut shallowly into her left wrist.

The pain was excruciating. She thought she would faint. Involuntarily, she screamed in agony. It was dangerous to make any excessive noise, but the loud music blaring in the roller rink above drowned out her anguished cry.

Must be careful. Must not bleed to death. Should have tied bra around upper forearm before I cut. Shit! Why didn't I think of the tourniquet earlier? Because I was in shock, naked, shivering from the cold, dehydration and fear? Forced to listen to some weirdo spout tales about aliens in his backyard performing witchcraft on his mother. You think that could explain it?

Kerry wriggled her right arm out of the bra strap. Using the sharp surgical steel knife, she sliced the bra strap on her left shoulder. With her right hand and her teeth, she tied the tattered pink elastic bra as tightly as she could around her upper forearm, to guard against fatal hemorrhaging.

The first cut is not the deepest , she thought. Grim humor. A good thing, since I was so stupid to cut before tying the tourniquet. When you're going through hell, keep on going! That was Kerry Strait 's goal: to keep on going.

Kerry made a second, less tentative cut where she had only nicked the skin before. She would need to break the hand at the wrist and saw through the cartilage. She tried with all her strength and determination, the smell of her own blood making her nauseous. By God I'm not going to be anyone's Halloween jack-o-lantern.

The sound! The sound of metal on bone, of knife on gristle.

She had once asked her good friend Bettie, a surgical nurse, “What was the worst surgery at which you ever assisted?” The response had surprised Kerry.

“A knee operation,” Bettie had answered.

“Why a knee operation? Why not open heart surgery. Something like that?”

“The sound. The sound was godawful!”

And now that same godawful cutting, ripping, cartilage-destroying sound filled Kerry's ears. The difference between Bettie's casual observation to her years earlier and now: this was personal. I'm attached to this wrist…in more ways than one. When she thought about what she was doing, she almost fainted. She tried to pretend she was watching this being done to someone else. Stand outside your body. Pretend it's someone else.

But, now, finally, she was done. She was free. She tottered away from the wall, towards the half window high on the basement wall. Outside, a dark alley.

Climb to that window. Use the stool. Wriggle to freedom. Can I do it? Do I have enough left? Hell, yes!

Blood was trickling from the bloody stump, coating her stomach, her thighs. Her body was covered in her own blood, her empty stomach queasy. Kerry Strait was determined to survive.

I'm not dying because of some psychotic weirdo. I am not. I will not . Hell, no!

Carrie balanced her spiraling thoughts like a juggler using bruised peaches. Drop one; ruin it. Already hurting Big Time, as she teetered on the stool to gain access to the window, she looked back at the shackle that still held her severed left hand. Can I take my hand with me? Should I climb back down and get it? She heard a little old lady's voice in her head, saying, “Why, certainly, dear. And while you're at it, run upstairs and get some popcorn to eat with your remaining right hand.” She shook her head to regain rational thought. Do you really think that gory lump you're looking at can be re-attached? Get real! You'll climb down there; he'll come back; it'll be curtains. Suck it up! You did an amazingly bad job removing that hand, by the way. It's toast. Get over it already. And get the hell out of here!

It was 11:45 p.m on Halloween night. At midnight her life would end. This is it. Now or never. This is my only chance. I'm not going to become anybody's jack-o-lantern. I'm going through hell, but I'm going to keep right on going.

Oozing blood, she continued her climb out the half-window high up on the wall of the dark basement. A collection of full garbage bags in the alley below cushioned her clumsy fall to the pavement. Adrenaline pumping, Kerry struggled up from the blood-slick vinyl bags, regained her feet and ran as though the devil himself were at her back.

When Kerry made book-signing tours across the country to publicize her best-selling novel, Jailing Jack, she'd describe her escape and rescue. Then she'd quote Winston Churchill one more time, “If you're going through hell, keep on going.”