Son of a Serial Killer (9 page)

29

Ben stood on the doorstep of his mother's house, the house he grew up in, the house where all he knew was innocence and love and joy and happiness. How things had changed. He didn't really want to face her just yet, but she’d left a couple of messages after he’d ignored her calls, so felt obliged.

He
also didn't want to hear more about his father but knew he needed to. To be told that the man he grew up admiring, learning from and trusting more than anybody else, was a cold-blooded killer. To be told that his father had in fact passed on to him this sickening disease that was now penetrating his every thought, every waking moment. How could the man he loved, and who loved him unconditionally let this happen?

Ben put his key into the lock and let himself in.
He went straight to the kitchen, which is where his mother would usually be, reading a newspaper or listening to the radio, but she wasn’t there.

‘
Benjamin?’ she called from another room.

Ben headed
towards the voice of his mother and entered the red room, his dad's old office. His mouth dropped wide open.

W
hat the hell had happened here? He thought.

He stood in the centre of the room and let his gaze wander from wall to wall, mentally absorbing the redness from everywhere, except where dozens of framed pictures and newspaper clippings
now hung. He glanced at his mother, who sat behind the desk with a glass of wine cupped between her two hands, smiling at her son.

Ben didn't say a word, but glanced at the ceiling, red also,
and then he took a step towards the picture frames and quickly recognised that all the information and pictures hung on these walls were relevant to The Phantom, or the victims, or the police not having a clue as to who was responsible for these sickening murders.

Ben was in a daze.

‘Close the door, Ben,’ said Mrs Green. ‘We need to talk’.

Ben was
speechless. He turned slowly and pushed the door shut, then his eyes widened. On the back of a door hung a mirror, and with the lighting in the room and the redness, Ben didn't know anything anymore. Was he in hell? Was he the devil himself?

He turned to face his mother, and for the first time noticed her red hair and bright red lipstick.
Ben slowly stepped towards her and sat down in the seat his side of the desk, a chair that she had dragged in from the kitchen; she had been expecting him.

Mrs
Green took a newspaper clipping from her side of the desk and placed it in front of her son. It was from the local newspaper, describing how two youngsters had been brutally murdered the day before, less than a mile from where they both sat at that moment.

Ben looked
his mother in the eyes.

‘
It's true about dad?’ he asked.

His mother nodded.

‘And I'm the same,’ he said, as he pushed the news article back towards his mother.

Ben suddenly felt a wave of ease flow through his body. It was the first time he had admitted
out loud what he was, the first time he had admitted to someone what he had done. His mother saw the burden lift from Ben's shoulders and the frown lines retire from his tired face.

She smiled.

‘That feeling,’ she said to him, ‘that's acceptance.’

His mother,
the woman from whom he had recently been trying to keep his distance, knowing that her madness was worsening and that she was very difficult to deal with at the best of times, was now the only person who he could confide in, the only person who would not judge him, and had lived through this very experience with his father for the last few years, or however long she had known that her husband was a killer.

S
he even seemed pleased, which was something Ben couldn't quite get his head around. Was it due to her illness? Or was her illness a result of discovering her husband to be The Phantom? That has to be a shock to anyone, and a reaction to news like that could play all sorts of havoc on the mind. She chose to stay with him, to support her husband through the good times and the bad, the highs and the lows.

Or was it her idea?
Did she lead him astray? Mrs Green had done nothing to condemn Ben, not said one word about handing himself in to the police nor even asked why it had happened. In fact, he had the feeling that she openly encouraged his recent behaviour.

He was right.

Mrs Green moved her glass to the side of the desk and gestured for Ben to give her his hands. Slowly he placed his murdering hands into the palms of his mother. Their eyes were locked and she spoke softly to her son, her last remaining family.

She told him that she knew about his father from the first time he had committed mu
rder, and contrary to what Ben was probably thinking, it was what made Mr Green the kind and generous and loving husband and father that he was before he passed away.

She explained she knew about the voice in the head, and the man in the mirror, and t
he only way to take back control of the mind was to release the pressure from time to time.

‘
You know who you are now, Ben,’ she said.

She passed him the glass of wine and he took a large gulp, large enough to finish the glass. He put it down on the desk.

‘I can't kill people, mum,’ he replied. ‘I can't do that. I'm scared, mum.’

‘
We know you can, Ben, you already have,’ she said, sounding so calm, almost hypnotising him when she spoke. ‘It's in your blood. You need to commit to this life, Ben.’

Ben sat back in his seat.

Commit? He thought to himself.

‘
What do you mean?’ he said.

‘
You can try and hide your feelings, learn to live with the man in your head dictating your every mood, owning your every thought, or you can take control. Every now and then, release the pressure. Give in to your will. Let your nature take over for just those few moments, then bury those feelings until the next time.’

‘
I… I can't control this,’ Ben replied. ‘He's too strong, mum.’

Mrs
Green shook her head and once more took Ben's hands in her own.

‘
You will listen to me. If you want any sort of future, you must listen to me. If you don't let nature takes its course, you will go mad. He will not let you think, he will not let you choose your path, he will ruin everything from here on in,’ she said, passionately, convincingly.

As shocking as it was to be having this conversation with his mother, Ben had himself realised that since the murders, the voice in his head had quietened down. Sure, the man was still in his head, and in the mirror, but he hadn't been as nasty, or as forceful as the last few weeks.

He wondered if his father had sat down with his mother and had a similar conversation all those years ago when the bad things started to happen. She wasn't all there in the head, his mother, but she was a strong woman and this was now becoming very clear to Ben.

‘
So what do I do?’ he asked.

‘
You take charge. Today,’ she said.

Mrs
Green reached into the drawer at the front of the desk and pulled out a large knife, she placed it on the desk between her and her son.

‘
What?’ said Ben.

‘
Either your girlfriend, or that bastard she's been sleeping with. Or even that man who sacked you from your job,’ she said. ‘Decide.’

Ben was taken aback, lost in the moment.
He was being told by his mother to choose someone to kill. Was this real? How did it get to this? He stood and looked beyond his mother, at his reflection in the window. When his father had died, had Ben inherited that dark part of his soul? Did Ben now carry the torch of death in his absence?

He checked his watch, and then picked up the knife.

‘I'll kill my boss,’ he said.

Mrs
Green stood, walked around the desk and hugged her son. They held each other, this mother and son who had just formed a more complicated relationship than any normal soul could imagine. Then she loosened her grip and looked into her son's eyes.

‘
Go.’

30

Ben
crouched down behind a vehicle in the underground car park. It was reserved for executives and managers and was below the office block that housed Cutting Edge Marketing. He had left his own car at his mother’s house and used the walk to psyche himself up and prepare himself for his first premeditated murder.

Charlie was the boss of the company and never stayed late at the office and was often the first the leave
by a good hour or so. Ben was hoping this would be the case today.

He had already been w
aiting for nearly an hour, constantly sweating and jumping out of his skin at the slightest sound. He could have sworn there was someone there watching, waiting to catch him red-handed, stood over the dead body of his ex-boss with a bloody knife in his hand. He would often stick his head up from behind the car where he was hiding, but nobody was there to be seen.

He'd cursed himself for bringing no form of camouflage, knowing that if anyone saw him that he would almost certainly be recognised. Fortunately, the rumour was that the car park security cameras were not working after an electrical glitch
and hadn’t been repaired, something to do with certain companies claiming that it was not in their rental contract to contribute to the uphold of the CCTV system, as this was not general upkeep of the building. Some had paid, some hadn't; but as it stood, it was believed that the firm managing the building were not willing to pay the remaining cost themselves. If this was true, this was good news for anyone planning to commit a crime in the area.

Finally, Ben heard footsteps, then a voice on a phone.

‘Yeah,’ said the voice. ‘Listen, I'll be there soon. Yeah, I'm gonna cut out, I'm in the... shit.’

Ben
heard the ‘BEEP’ of Charlie unlocking his car with the remote device then peeped over the car and saw him with his back to Ben and approaching his vehicle.

Adrenaline pumping, Ben st
ood and marched over to his chosen victim. Charlie heard the heavy footsteps behind him, and turned to see the man he had fired the day before.

Ben stopped on the spot, sweat running into his eyes.
He had run the sequence of events through his mind a hundred times in the last hour. Wait for Charlie, approach from behind, attack then leave. What he hadn't envisioned was Charlie to ever face him, to make eye contact, to ever know that Ben was there.

‘
What the fuck are you doing ‘ere?’ said Charlie, eyeing Ben up and down and shaking his head disapprovingly, ‘look at the fucking state of you! Jesus, Ben, you wanna get some fucking help. Go on, fuck off.’

And with that,
Charlie opened his car door, sat in the driver's seat and closed the door behind him, watching in the mirror as Ben spun on the spot and speedily walked off towards the car exit.

Charlie pu
t the key in the ignition, awkwardly pulled his phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the passenger seat before checking his hair in the rear-view mirror. He was interrupted by a tap on the window.

‘
What now?’ he muttered, under his breath.

Charlie half turned the key, held his finger on
a button and lowered the window.

‘
Can I help you?’ he asked.

Those were his last words.

A knife had already been plunged in and out of his neck three times before he had even realised what was going on. He tried to get to the passenger side of the car, out of harm’s way, but his attacker was almost in through the window, frantically sticking the knife into random parts of Charlie's face, neck and body.

Charlie had started throwing his arms towards the figure in the window and maybe connected once or twice, but it wasn't enough.
There was blood-loss, shock, fear and then death. Charlie lay slumped across the two seats. No more cockiness, no more arrogance, no more cruel words. Charlie was no more.

Ben stood a block away from his old workplace, bum against a wall, leaning forward and trying to control his breathing. He threw up.

He couldn't r
emember getting to where he was. He couldn't remember anything really. He checked his pocket and found the knife that he had taken from his mother's house. He remembered that now. Then he remembered waiting in the car park, then approaching Charlie but Charlie turning around telling him to go. Then he remembered the feelings of weakness, and hopelessness, and walking away then running out of the car park.

Was that how it happened?

He threw up again and wiped his mouth. When he looked at his hands, he noticed the trembling had calmed down. The adrenaline was fading, his heart returning to a normal beat. It took a moment to regain his composure, and then he walked across the street and looked at his reflection in a shop window.

He looked
ok, and the man in the mirror didn't make an appearance. Ben didn't know what that meant exactly, but thought it was significant.

He began walking, and ditched the knife at the first bin he came across, glad to get rid of it.
He crossed a bridge, and looked below at the canal, the same canal that further upstream he had taken two innocent lives. He got to the steps that led down to the canal pathway and didn't know why but decided to walk in the direction of his home. As if by coincidence, his phone rang and it was Natalie. He thought for a moment that maybe the unconscious decision to walk in that direction was a sign, and that now was the time to sort out that particular situation.

He answered the phone and regretted it almost instantly.
Natalie didn't waste any time in giving him some unexpected news.

‘
I'm pregnant,’ she said.