Breath bated, I watch as he scours nearly every inch of the room, becoming more frantic with each passing second. Finally,when he falls to his knees and claws at his hair, that’s when I see it. “Oh, my god,” I mutter.
From above, thick black cables descend into view. I squint at the scene, thinking about grabbing my glasses as I try to figure out what’s dangling from the cables, and a prickling sensation crawls over my skin as I notice the heavy shackles—and the harness.
Pulse firing, I reach into my pocket and grab the string I keep at the ready. I wind the thread around my index finger, drawing it tighter with each pass, until I no longer feel the ache at my temples.
I halt all movement as a deep, garbled voice sounds out.
“Brandon Harvey, you have a chance to free yourself from the prison you’ve created. You’re guilty of molesting children. Although you’ve beaten the system and you’re a free man in the eyes of the law, it’s now time to pay for your sins. The eyes of justice are not blind.”
“Fuck you—” the man shouts.
“Secure yourself in the harness,” the voice orders. “Then cuff your wrists and ankles with the shackles.”
The man flips off the room, screaming obscenities, until a loud buzz blares over the speaker system. One by one, panels along the walls flip over, revealing the faces of children—youngchildren—in a domino effect that covers the room.
Oh, god. I stumble backward, awkwardly finding my seat, my legs unable to hold my weight.
“The faces of your victims will be your reminder,” the voice says. “This is your only chance to redeem yourself. Choose. Redemption or death.”
I try to reconcile the man in my office from just hours ago with the figure hidden behind the camera, straining to hear his smooth, accented voice in the distorted words echoing around the chamber. It shouldn’t be difficult to draw the connection, considering Grayson’s sadistic tendencies—yet all I can conjureis the intensity of his pale blue eyes as they hold mine, the smile that almost breaks at the corner of his mouth.
Grayson is an expert manipulator.
I unspool the thread from my finger and reach for my journal, jotting down my observations and thoughts. A loudclangcaptures my attention, and I’m forced to watch the screen—I can’t look away.
The man in the suit does as instructed, cursing the whole time he shackles himself into the harness and cuffs. When he’s effectively restrained, the cables snap taut, lifting him off the ground. The hollow noise sounds again, and a hatch in the floor slides away to reveal a stool slowly rising into the room.
No…it’s not a stool. I lean closer to the screen, muttering a breathy curse about forgetting my glasses as I try to discern the pyramid-shaped seat, and suddenly, I’m mortified as the realization dawns. Some distant memory from a history class resurfaces to give me the name of the torture device.
“Jesus,” I breathe. “It’s a Judas Cradle.”
A mediaeval torture device that seriously has no business being in this century erects from below the struggling man, its pointed tip aimed directly between his racked legs.
Shit, I know what’s about to happen—but I still can’t look away.
At some point, I must have grabbed my string, because the thread is now wound around my finger so tightly it’s cutting off circulation. The throb in my fingertip pulses in sync with my increasing heart rate as the cables start to expand. He’s stretched and lowered, his limbs pulled at every angle.
He struggles uselessly as he’s dropped onto the pointed metal tip. His shouts turn into cries of anguish as the torture device makes contact with his rectum.
Grayson is absolutely a sadist.
“Pass this trial,” the distorted voice says, “and you can go free. You’ll have suffered as your victims suffered. All you haveto do is last twelve hours—one hour for each of your victims—to be redeemed.”
My eyes close briefly.Twelve hours. I grab the case from the table and read over the evidence label, noting the duration of the film. There’s six hours of recorded footage.
“I can’t takeit,” the man shrieks. “Let me go—I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry.”
A rope drops from the ceiling, dangling close to the man’s face. “You can stop the torture at any time,” the voice announces. “But to end your suffering, you have to be willing to end your life.”
The humming grows louder, competing with his screams. The cables rack his body as gravity takes hold, forcing him down onto the stool. I’m morbidly transfixed by the scene, wondering if Grayson watched the entirety of the torture.
Grayson is extremely intelligent. His file states genius. With an IQ of 152, he sees the world differently than the average person. He sees people differently—he seesmedifferently.
I hold the remote outstretched, ready to skip to the end, but I hesitate. To know my subject—to really get inside his head and understand him, learn his motivations—I have to experience his traps.
In most cases, I’m limited by how close I can get to a patient. Grayson recording his “sessions” with his victims presents a unique opportunity to peel back the layers and study his impulses. This is what I tell myself as I force myself to sit through hours of footage.
Beneath my professional curiosity, I’m still human, and I cringe at the atrocity on screen. But when I look at those young faces, I admit, I feel little sympathy for this man. Do I believe a life sentence is a just punishment for his crime? Honestly, I’m not sure I do. Is Grayson justified in meting out punishment where the law failed? That’s for someone else to decide. It has no bearing on his diagnosis.
