Darker Still (7 page)

“Why would he be sending a message to her? Do we have evidence that he has ever contacted family members of his victims before?”

John looked over his shoulder to make sure the forensic specialists were not becoming privy to their theory.

“Chief, do you think we need to at least tell the rest of the unit what is going on? We know who is doing this. It is just a matter of time before he gets restless and kills someone else.”

“I am planning to make an announcement at the morning briefing tomorrow. Now we have some proof we can make stick,” the chief said.

John looked around at the other officers on the scene and most of them appeared to be freaking out like there was no tomorrow. They were holding it together for appearances only, but he saw the fear in their eyes. He had seen that way too many times before for them to fool him. He appreciated the strength of character it took for them to hold up without bursting into tears or barfing all over the place. But these guys were in way over their heads. They had never seen anything like this before. He was going to have to lead the troops through this.

John had been trying to lay low a little bit and not be too much of an overbearing gung ho type of guy since he arrived on the force here in Belpre, but he was tired of holding back and acting like he didn’t deserve to be chief. He respected Michaels a lot but even he was in over his head with this business. The chief had a lot of experience, but most of it was book experience when it came to the things that John had seen. What he had dealt with on a regular basis made the chief seem like a mall security guard by comparison. He hated to think of it that way, but he knew that when the time was right he was going to have to take the
reins and take control of the situation.

“Was it my sister?”

Cheryl’s voice was masked by tears and John felt his heart breaking as he had to tell her that the match was confirmed by the lab. The lab had put a rush on it and got the results back ASAP. Those were definitely Theresa’s eyes.

Cheryl broke down into tears and began to sob. John felt utterly helpless right then even as he tried to console her. He knew it was no use. There were some things that only time would fix.

John decided that Cheryl should stay with her friend Alex for a while. They would keep a few officers stationed outside of her house, and she would be monitored for her safety. It was not a good idea for John to see her right then. She was going to be in danger and now she realized exactly how much danger she was going to be in. John saw the change in her eyes when he told her this time. She had now seen up close and personal what kind of a dangerous sicko they were dealing with here. She was going to have to continue to be understanding. No matter how much they wanted to be together, the timing was just not right.

She agreed, reluctantly and John kissed her goodbye before he left. He was going to find this son of a bitch if it killed him to do so.

*

It was all too easy.

He watched as the cops mulled around the crime scene with their thumbs up their asses. They were all so afraid and they were all so sure that they were dealing with some maniac. He was going to be easy to catch. He would make a mistake and then it would be all over. No one who was so violent and crazy could ever last long doing this sort of thing.

They were all such imbeciles. They had no idea how sane and rational he really was. He had evolved past all of them, but they were fun to play with from time to time. Being so supreme did have its disadvantages; the biggest of them was loneliness, but the loneliness he had would never be cured. He was unable to connect with or relate with any of these sheep and peasants. They were all filth and he was the garbage man taking them out one by one. He by no means wanted to kill them all; there wouldn’t be enough time in the world for him to do that by himself. But he wanted to take his time and just hand pick a select few to die by his blade.

He stood up from the couch, stretching his legs finally. He had been sitting in the same spot watching news reports all day long. He had recorded them and stared at them repeatedly until he knew them all by heart. Finally he had decided to burn them to a DVD and add it to his collection.

He grabbed the newly burned DVD out of the player and labeled it with a black Sharpie. He loved the way the disc seemed to come alive as he did so. It was now a piece of history—
his
history. One day the fools that be would find his trophy collection and his archives that he had kept of his work all of these years.

They had found a good bit of his stuff when he had been forced from his original house all those years ago, and for that he was forever tortured. He had lost so many valuable memories and mementos. It was all a shrine to his perfect work.

Of course they would never understand what he was doing or why he did what he did. It was beyond their comprehension. It was beyond any sort of understanding that they could even hope to achieve. He had to laugh when he thought of how dumbfounded they had to have been stumbling over his work. He wished he could have seen it and studied it more closely, but he had been on the run. They had no idea that he did not really live in such filth and squalor. What they had found had only been his workshop. It was nothing more than that.

He had to laugh at the bumbling fools trying to figure him out and his heinous crimes. They thought that they had stumbled upon the find of the century--the monster in their midst. Little did they know that he was still right there and he had continued to do his work the way he had always done. He had just found a new work shed.

He had decided long ago when he first realized the vision that would become his life’s work that it would be wise to not shit where he ate. Therefore he went ahead and found the perfect spot for his seclusion. It was a spooky looking house that no one ever wanted to come near and the old lady who had lived there had never left the house. She was a very unpleasant person and had basically already laid the ground work for him before he arrived on the scene to make sure that no one ever came to that house. Children were afraid of it and their parents had also been afraid of it since childhood. The little old bitch had lived there for almost fifty years by the time he acquired it. It was almost too easy.

But his new spot was pretty inconspicuous as well. And adding that to the fact that no one had seen the real him, and there was nothing there at his old playhouse to tie him to the crimes he had gotten away scot free. It was only a minor setback because he had to invest time and energy into securing a new work space. That had only taken a few months to find the perfect spot and to acquire it using his special skills.

That little shit John Anderson had ruined everything. If it wasn’t for him he would not have lost all of that beautiful work he had created. It was sad and it depressed him every time he thought about it. But life moved on and he realized that he had to continue on as well.

He opened the door to the basement and descended the stairs. He loved this old house. It was perfect for his special needs. He giggled a little bit as he reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner to move down the long hallway. He could already smell the fear from the girl before he even got close to her.

She was still adjusting to the idea of being a prisoner. He loved it when they were fresh that way, before they started to get too used to it. It took most of them about two months before they lost the will to live and basically gave up. Then it was tough to get any sort of expression out of them. They stopped being afraid and they were just over all unresponsive. Even when you caused horrendous bodily injury to them and they had to be feeling excruciating pain they would cease to make a peep. It was as if their mind and body had been completely disconnected from one another and their conscious self was just an echo of what once was. He did not know where they went when this happened. He often wondered and if they felt anything when they died.

He had learned to spot the beginning signs of this syndrome and he began to speed up his work and his playtime with them so that they died a painful death before they reached this catatonic coma-like stage. He had perfected it for the most part. Of course there were the occasional few that went into this stage almost immediately. It was always a letdown, but you could never really predict this.

It was just the way it was.

He unlocked the door to the hallway that led to another steel door. He undid the locks and opened the door slowly.

He smiled as he saw his newest toy. She was a beautiful eighteen year old virginal flower that he had enjoyed immensely for the past four days. He had found her on a routine hunting escapade. It was so simple. He would just be out and about running typical errands when he would spot the perfect victim. He would tail them to their car and then follow them home. This was a skill he had perfected hundreds of times as a teenager, long before he had taken the next step and planned the actual abduction, although he had always thought of this with the end game in mind.

He had been fantasizing about stealing young women since he was barely thirteen. It began as a fantasy to aid in the regular masturbation he had practiced, but it soon became an obsession. Soon he was not able to get aroused or finish the act of self-love without thinking about kidnapping and hurting some sweet, beautiful girl.

His teenage girlfriends had never really satisfied him because he really wanted to tie them to a tree somewhere in the woods and beat them until blood ran down every ounce of their flesh and then he could have this way with them in any way he chose. Their screams would echo in the night forever. This was the fantasy he thought about when he was engaged in normal sex. It worked and kept them thinking he was perfectly average.

He was not average by any means. He knew it. He had figured this out at an early age when he realized that he knew more than his teachers and his parents about pretty much everything. A lot of people would consider such ideas as his being arrogant or cocky, but he had actually thought of it as a burden. As wise as he was he realized there were many things in life that he did not know, but of course he was still smarter than most people. He had yet to find someone with whom he could have a real civilized conversation with who wouldn’t judge him for being above them. Everyone was so intimidated by him, even when he tried to dumb himself down for their benefit.

He had to do that all the time in his day job years ago until he decided it was a total waste of time to try to fit into the world that did not understand him. Thanks to the advent of the amazing internet he was able to make a good living online. He often wondered how differently his life would have turned out if he had not had the internet to disconnect him from the world while at the same time keeping him connected to the world.

The girl looked up at him with crippling fear in her eyes. She was so amazingly beautiful that he beamed with pride every single time that he looked at her. She was very special and one of a kind. He had enjoyed the first several experiences with her and he was sure that there would be several more with her before her time would come.

However, he was running on an unusually high schedule. He needed to speed up the process, since he was running out of time with Detective Anderson. If he dawdled around too much then the opportunity to drive fear into the heart of the community would pass him by.

They had already seen his handy work once, but they had no idea that he was still out there and that he would continue to do this and even make more ambitious statements as time wore on. They figured the first had been some kind of a fluke. He could not believe how gullible small town people were. They were just begging to become victims.

The girl began to scream and twitch beneath her restraints. She was tied tightly to a rope that was looped over a high reaching beam below the ceiling. He had installed it himself and it would hold almost 1000lbs before it would even begin to wobble. The pain that was caused by hanging from the arms like that was similar to the pain experienced by crucifixion where the blood can’t get to the extremities. The girl had tried valiantly to pull herself up as they all did and she failed as they all did. It was entertaining to watch on the video surveillance, which he did for hours from his upstairs control room. This way he was able to really watch the suffering in utmost comfort. He would often enjoy a pizza and a six pack during this time. It was part of his very special routine.

The girl’s gag muffled her screams as he entered the room. Her eyes grew wide with terror. He relished it. The power and the sweetness of her terror gave him joy like nothing else on the face of the planet ever could. It was like a drug that he just could not get enough of, but unlike most drugs it was sweeter every time he took it.

“There, there. Don’t be nervous. You look beautiful,” he said as he closed the door shut behind him and admired her sweet naked body. She was exquisite in every possible way.

He stepped closer and inhaled her scent, tasting the sweet succulence of her skin, mixed with her luscious fear. He could taste the fear, like adding sugar to a warm cup of tea. It completed the picture. He moved his finger up and down the center of her chest, laughing as she recoiled and screamed louder. She was being so overly dramatic.

“Now is that any way to treat your master?” He asked with a grin on his face but malice in his voice. Why did they have to resist him so and make him so angry? Why did they show such defiance and disrespect when they knew that he would punish them so severely? What was it about these bitches that continued to struggle against him?

He tried to remain calm for a moment, but the damage was done. His pride had been hurt and rage had risen in its place deep inside of him.

He curled up his fist and drove it into the whore’s stomach. She tried to scream in pain, but the air had left her body. Maybe that would teach her some damn respect. She needed to learn. They all needed to learn and he was the one to teach them.