Mr. 8

Chapter 20: The Third Shift

The two words felt like a punchline to a bad joke. He might have been tempted to burst out laughing, if it wasn't for the fiery look in the boy's eyes and the deep crease between his brows. Danny was dead serious.

He had formed his guerrilla army to fight aliens. Very carefully, Denton said, "I see."

"Do you? Do you really?" Danny was breathing so hard through his nose, he was practically snorting.

The expelled air was warm and Denton's imagination provided a sickening spray on his skin. He pressed back into the chair eager to create some distance, but he couldn't budge it. Stuck there with the psychopath mere inches away, Denton forced himself to return the glare.

Eddie placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Forget about it, Dan," he said. "So, he's clueless. It's not our problem. What are we going to do about this Sherman guy?"

Danny stood there, smoldering with rage. No one in the room moved. After what felt like several minutes, he straightened up and pulled his shoulder away from Eddie's placating hand. He swept his hair back with both his hands and stepped over to the wall of photos. "Nothing we can do until morning." The fury that consumed him only a moment ago had vanished.

"And what do we do with him." Alvin stuck a filthy, gnawed fingernail an inch from Denton's face.

"Nothing for now," Danny said, in a business-like manner. "I may have more questions for him. Until we can locate the new target, he's not going anywhere. We'll watch him in shifts. I'll take the first one. You two get some sleep. It looks like we're going to have a busy day tomorrow."

Without a word, Eddie and Alvin headed up to the bedrooms on the second floor. Denton watched as Danny made a tour of the downstairs. He threw a few more logs on the fire and turned out every light, except for one by an old leather easy chair.

Denton was tempted to ask him about the aliens—probe him to see how deep the delusion went—but then he thought better of it. Danny was too volatile. A wrong word could cause another blow up. And without the others around, it might not end so well. For now, keeping quiet might be the best way to keep the madman calm and keep himself alive. There was nothing to gain from being curious. The details of the boy's fantasies were not important.

The night dragged on without any sleep. Denton zoned out a few times and everything disappeared into a forgotten dark haze, but real slumber never came. The pain from his jaw had spread and filled his entire head with a skull splitting throbbing. The chair was rigid and uncomfortable. His body grew increasingly sore with each passing hour sitting in it. And when he did start to doze off, he would slump down and the cords would cut deeper into his skin, or else his mind would whisper a new unwelcome thought to rekindle his terror.

In an attempt to stave off the burning sensation growing in his eyes from strain and fatigue, he tried to keep them closed as much as possible. But even that was a challenge during the first two watches. His guards were not easily ignored.

For most of Danny's shift, he sat in the chair by the lamp, playing with his revolver. Whenever he grew bored or the whim took him, he'd release the cylinder, slam it back into place, and spin it. The noise of its turning, filled the room with an ominous tick-tick-tick sound, like a ghoulish game of chance.

When it was his turn, Alvin spent the entire time pacing. His feet fell heavily on the floorboards as he thumped from one end of the room to the other. He carried on this monotonous path, as though he were a sentry on patrol.

To distract himself from his fears and the pain, Denton tried to work out the psychology of his captors.

Danny was the dangerous one. He was a paranoid schizophrenic and unquestionably delusional. He was also a narcissist and was very likely a sociopath. He had an absolute certainty about everything he did or said. Despite this, or perhaps specifically because of these traits, he possessed a fair amount of charisma, at least enough to sway others to his will. He was their natural leader. He was their own personal Jim Jones.