Nature of Evil

by Robert W. Stephens

  Marcus leaned forward and stroked her breasts. They were large and firm, and he liked the fact they were the real thing. He thrust harder and harder, trying to go deeper each time. She was so tight, and he could feel the pleasure rushing through every part of his body. He knew he couldn’t last much longer. Eva moaned again, this time louder. His body shuddered, and he came.

  Marcus backed away. He walked over to the nightstand and grabbed a piece of tissue from the Kleenex box. He pulled the condom off and wrapped it in the tissue, then tossed it into the garbage can.

  Marcus walked over to the worn chair in the corner of the room. He grabbed his underwear off the chair and slipped them on. He looked over at Eva who was watching him dress. She still had a beautiful face, despite the hard life she had no doubt lived. He always felt tremendous guilt immediately after being with her. He had used her, added to her soul’s pain. But he also knew that she had used him. So he figured they were both equally to blame.

  After Marcus pulled on his jeans, he removed his wallet from his back pocket and counted out two hundred dollars. He placed the money on the nightstand and walked into the bathroom to finish getting dressed. He shut the door behind him. He knew she would be gone when he exited the bathroom in a few minutes. There were never any words spoken between them once they entered the motel room.

  Eva exited Marcus’s motel room and walked down the second floor walkway towards the rusty metal stairs that led to the parking lot. He had always taken her to this motel. She was glad it was within walking distance of her apartment, and she would not need to spend the money on a bus or ask him to give her a ride.

  He had never given her any problems. For that she was grateful. But he was ultimately just another man who used her. He always removed his wedding band before screwing her. So many of them did that. What a joke. Did that somehow make them less guilty for fucking another woman?

  She pulled her phone out of her bag and searched the call menu. Her roommate hadn’t called, but she saw a voicemail from a number she didn’t recognize. She called the voicemail and punched in her four digit passcode.

  “Eva, it’s…Mike Henderson. I’m hoping we can get together tonight. I’m at the Omni Hotel on Waterside Drive. Room 415. Give me a call.”

  He started to leave the phone number for the hotel when she deleted the voicemail. Mike Henderson. He had paused before saying his name,

  probably couldn’t remember the last name he had used with her before. It didn’t matter. She recognized the voice. He liked the sex rough, had bruised the shit out of her. She had no intention of ever seeing that bastard again.

  She looked through her phone again and found the number for her roommate and called it. After several rings, her roommate’s voicemail picked up. Eva ended the call without leaving a message. She must be working. Eva would get a return call when she was done.

  Eva debated whether to stop on the way home and get something to eat. Then she decided to save her money. She could afford to skip a meal too. The extra weight was starting to show.

  Then Eva heard the footsteps on the sidewalk behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the teenage boy about thirty yards away. He was large, much larger than she was, and he was walking, just half a pace below jogging, in the same direction she was. The young men always scared her the most. They were more desperate and had less control. She had been raped twice by teenage boys. One had even beaten her to the edge of death.

  She picked up her pace but tried not to appear scared.

  Marcus walked out of the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed. Eva was gone, as expected.

  He was well aware of the classic five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. But he didn’t give this psychological theory much credence. After all, he had skipped over denial completely when his wife first told him she had the cancer that had also claimed her mother and her grandmother before her. Marcus had been angry at the world for the longest time. Even at her funeral there was a fury burning behind his eyes. He should have been sad, depressed, and mournful. He was none of those things. He was enraged, ready to kill the god who had bestowed this fate on his beloved wife. But he couldn’t kill something that didn’t exist. He had long ago stopped believing in a higher being. The case for one couldn’t be proved, not even close. Marcus had seen too many innocents harmed by the evil in this world to ever believe there could be a kind and merciful god watching over his creation.

  But his anger finally went away. Perhaps it was from sheer exhaustion. Perhaps he no longer had the energy to keep the rage burning. She had been gone for years when the anger finally disappeared. Of course there was no bargaining now. She was already dead. So Marcus had been stuck in the fourth stage of grief, depression. He would probably never reach acceptance. The fact is he didn’t want to ever reach that place. Yes, his wife was dead. But he still loved her. Somehow it would be a betrayal for him to accept she was gone.

  Marcus reached into the front pocket of his jeans. He pulled out his wedding band and just stared at it resting in the palm of his hand. Was it strange to remove it before having sex with Eva? No. He didn’t want to merge any part of his marriage with the actions he now committed. Marcus placed the ring on the nightstand. He didn’t want to wear it again just yet. He was still tainted.

  The black phone on the nightstand rang, and it startled him. It was more of a shriek than a ring, and the sound seemed to echo off the thin walls of the motel room. Who could be calling him here? Was it Eva? He calmed down when he realized someone must have dialed the wrong room. He didn’t answer the phone. No point. Finally the ringing stopped.

  Marcus bent over and slipped on his shoes. He began to tie the laces when the phone rang a second time.

  Eva’s scuffed high heeled shoes clicked and clacked as she walked down the sidewalk, her body growing more and more tense with each step she took. The large teenager behind her was getting closer. She could hear his breathing. Maybe he had a cold for the breathing seemed labored, and there was a faint wheeze with each intake of frigid air.

  She heard the car before she saw it, that unmistakable squeal of brakes as a car driving too fast entered a tight turn. The old sedan spun around the corner and was driving towards her. It was on the opposite side of the street, but then it veered and crossed the middle line dividing the road into two parts. It came straight towards her. Was the driver drunk? Did he know the thug behind her, and this was part of their plan to snatch her off the street? She thought about running, but she knew they could easily catch her. She had survived the rapes before. She would probably survive this one too.

  The car drove past her, though, and screeched to a halt against the sidewalk. The back door swung open, and Eva could hear the distorted music blaring from blown subwoofers inside the car. The thug who she thought had been following her jogged up to the car and jumped inside. The car door slammed shut, and the old Chevrolet took off. Eva watched it drive away, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  It was time to go home and climb into her bed and dream of a better life that she knew would never come.

  The ringing phone was annoying Marcus. Why didn’t they hang up? He took the phone off the cradle and held it to his ear. He did not say hello or anything else for that matter. He just listened.

  The music on the other end of the line was unexpected. The classical tune sounded sad, depressed even. It sounded like it was coming from an old record player because the music cracked and popped and occasionally he heard the record skip.

  Who was on the other end? Why were they playing this music? Had they called this room intentionally because he was here or was it some random call?

  Eva was a block from her apartment. She had not seen a car for the last several minutes, nor had she heard a sound except for the distant and faint blare of a police siren. She knew it was the police and not the fire department. There was a slight difference in the siren.

  Eva turned the corner and stopped abruptly. Somethi
ng was blocking her path. It was black and large, and she couldn’t quite make out what it was since she was in the shadows. She looked up and thought it was a man because of the size of the shoulders. He wore a black sweatshirt and the hood was pulled low over his forehead and partially covered his eyes.

  He lifted his chin slightly, and she could make out a few of the details of the face. She had been wrong. This person was female, an old woman probably. The face was wrinkled and the skin sagged badly, almost falling off the bones of the cheeks and jaw. Then she realized it was a mask, the face of a dead woman.

  Eva was paralyzed. She was too frightened to move, to scream, to even process a thought. The man in black extended his hand and grabbed the back of Eva’s neck. He yanked her towards him, pulling her into a powerful and terrifying embrace.

  Eva tried to break free, but the man was too strong. He pressed a dark cloth against her face, fully engulfing her mouth. Eva instantly became dizzy. What was happening to her? Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed completely into his arms. The man in black pulled her farther into the shadows like a lion dragging away its prey.

  No one had seen or heard anything.

  Marcus hung up the phone. It had to be a wrong number, but this would be the last time he would use this particular motel. He couldn’t afford to take the chance.

  Marcus looked at his silver wedding band on the nightstand. The depression flooded back. His wife was gone and was never coming back. Everything she was, everything she knew, all the lessons she had learned, were gone forever. There was only blackness for her now, her body decaying in a box in the ground.

  He often woke from nightmares where he was lying in the box beside her. Her eyes had sunk into her head, and the skin of her face had fallen in. Her beauty that had first attracted him had completely vanished. Marcus would pound on the lid of the coffin, desperate for someone to hear him and set him free. But no one ever came. He was trapped until he inevitably woke from the dream bathed in a pool of sweat.

  Marcus picked up the wedding ring but didn’t slip it on to his finger. He just squeezed it tightly in the palm of his hand.

  Eva woke at the crack of the thunder. A second later, the rain appeared. She could hear the fat droplets hitting something above her. Whatever it was offered a small amount of protection against the rain.

  Suddenly the terror of what had happened to her came flooding back. She tried to move but found her arms had been tied behind her. She couldn’t even stand. She looked up and saw the thick trunk of an oak tree reaching towards the black sky. She was obviously tied to it. She looked around her and saw nothing but trees in every direction she could manage to turn her head. She also saw that the tree she was tied to was surrounded by a small wooden box, if you could even call it that. It was only a couple of feet tall and it had been crudely built with rotting boards.

  Lightning struck again, and Eva caught a quick glimpse of a tall white object standing in the distance. It was in the shape of a man, but now it was enveloped in darkness again. Was it the man who had grabbed her? What did he want with her and why had he chosen her? Eva finally found the strength to scream. It was a loud, primordial scream, but it was totally lost in the sound of the pouring rain and thunder. Lightning struck again, and this time she noticed the white figure was a mannequin. It wore a mask of flesh. She couldn’t tell if it was the same mask as the one her attacker had worn. But it was terrifying nonetheless.

  The storm prevented her from hearing the man in black approach.

  Eva finally noticed him as he got closer. He was still wearing the black hooded sweatshirt. She couldn’t see if he was still wearing the flesh mask, but this time he was carrying a burlap sack in one hand.

  The man stopped just outside the wooden box. He looked down at Eva.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  Eva didn’t know, and she was too scared to even shake her head.

  “I am loneliness. I am emptiness. I am despair.”

  The man looked down at the burlap sack and then back to Eva.

  “If he lets you live the night, I’ll set you free.”

  He held the bag over the short wooden box and turned the bag upside down. A long, dark snake fell out of it and landed just a few feet from Eva.

  Like most humans, Eva had an instinctive terror for the reptile. She tried to back away but couldn’t move more than an inch or two. The ropes tying her to the tree dug into her chest and wrists, causing her even more pain.

  The snake slithered across the dirt, seeming to ignore Eva for the moment.

  Would she survive the night? Would the man in black even keep his word if she did survive? Eva knew the chance of her living was next to nothing.

  How had it come to this? She knew she had not lived a good life, but no one deserved to die like this. She always thought she had time to turn things around. Now she finally realized how wrong she had been.

  The pipes knocked and rattled whenever Marcus turned the shower on. It took a good three to four minutes for the hot water to kick in. Marcus always swore to himself that he should find another apartment. But the rent here was next to nothing, and he didn’t want the aggravation of another move. It was too much work to pack and unpack and no place ever seemed ideal after living there a while.

  He exited the bathroom and walked over to his bed. He pulled his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them on the nightstand. He then removed his watch and the wedding ring he had finally placed back on his finger after leaving the motel. Marcus pulled off his clothes and tossed them into a broken plastic container he kept beside the closet door. His wife never would have approved of his new living conditions. They were filthy. But he simply didn’t care anymore.

  Marcus walked back into the bathroom and was surprised to see the mirror above the sink had already steamed over. The water never got this hot that fast. He turned to the shower, and that’s when he saw her. He could see her alluring shape clearly through the opaque shower curtain. She was running soap across her body. She turned her back to Marcus, seemingly oblivious to his presence. Was this Eva? Had she followed him home? How had she gotten into the house without him noticing?

  Marcus walked up to the shower and pulled the curtain back. She was washing the shampoo out of her dark hair. It must be Eva, he thought. She turned slowly towards him. Marcus recoiled in horror when he saw she had no face, just muscle and tendon and blood.

  Marcus didn’t bolt upright in bed like they do in horror films. He simply opened his eyes and a second later realized he was having a nightmare. The source of the dream was obvious. He had seen the woman with the missing face many times. In fact he had seen several women with no faces. He had seen them at the crime scenes and in the medical examiners surgical suite. He had studied their photographs hundreds of times at his work desk. There was no erasing their images from his mind. They would be with him until he died and if there was a hell he had no doubt they would be with him there too.

  Marcus rolled over and looked at the digital clock on his nightstand. It was six a.m. He should get up now, but he closed his eyes, hoping to steal another twenty minutes of sleep. His cell phone rang just a few moments later. It was going to be that kind of day.

  He answered the phone, assuming it would be Angela. He wasn’t wrong.

  “They found another one,” she said. “First Landing state park.”

  Marcus didn’t have a response. What could he say? A state park. It fit the pattern. Popular place. Body found easily by a member of the public. Just like all the others. The killer wanted them found quickly.

  Marcus knew exactly how the day would unfold. He would get dressed, go to the crime scene, see another faceless victim and add her image to his collection of horror.

  “You there?” she asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “I’ll pick you up in twenty.”

  “I’ll be out front.”

  Marcus hung up and rolled onto his back. He looked up at the long crack that ran almost the
entire length of his ceiling. How many times had he stared at the crack, wondering if he could ever get back to sleep?

  He heard the noisy car drive down his street. Then the annoying blast of the car horn from the asshole who always insisted on announcing his presence to whatever jerk he was giving a ride too. The guy always blared his horn at this time of day. He was Mr. Consistent, so why use the horn?

  Marcus yanked the covers off and swung his legs out of bed. Yes, it was going to be a difficult day.

  CHAPTER 6

  Pale Eyes

  Journal Entry: Outside Rome, October 12, 1948

  Father Moretti came by my bedroom minutes before I had planned to leave. He seemed to have no particular reason for his visit. We talked of nothing important, and I had great difficulty ending the conversation. When we finally did, I forced myself to lay there for several minutes before I started on my journey. I was worried he would hear me and want to know where I was going. The man was an annoyance. Didn’t he realize what I had to do that evening? Of course he didn’t, and a smile came to my face when I realized I could probably have told him and he would have just gone on talking, as if my comments were of no shock at all.

  Alda lived about an hour’s walk from the city. It had been several years since we had spoken, and I was delighted to see her in the church. But her face had changed much. The war had aged her tremendously, as had the loss of her husband. She said he had died in Anzio at the hands of the Americans. She had made the journey to the church, she said, to ask for forgiveness for the hatred in her heart. She couldn’t forgive them for what they had done to him.

  She also told me that most of the homes around her had still not been rebuilt. Her whole world was in ruin, and she didn’t know what to do anymore. We prayed together, but I don’t think it gave her much comfort. We said goodbye, and I promised her I would see her again soon.