In the Woods

by Farrar, M K

  “Here lies Sonja Holland. She was my first, and my messiest. I wasn’t so sure what to expect, and she was a fighter,” he shot her a glance from the corner of his eye, “like you. She had the silkiest, jet black hair I’ve ever run my fingers through, and her skin was pale. She was beautiful. It was a shame to have to bury her.”

  Her eyes filled with tears of fear and sorrow for those who’d come before her. He must have brought them here, just as he had done to her, and then killed them and buried them here. She was no longer aware of the constant drone of insects, or the twittering of birds in the treetops. Her world had narrowed down to herself, him, and the possibility she was surrounded in bodies.

  He took about ten paces forward and paused again at another spot where the earth had been disturbed.

  “This is Becky Dawson. She was a high school cheerleader and prom queen. One of those all-round rich bitches who think she’s better than everyone else. I showed her, though, didn’t I? You should have seen her at the end. She pissed herself and begged and cried, just like everyone else.”

  The way he spoke was strange. Even though she imagined killing someone and recounting their last moments would be highly emotive, his voice was dead and flat, as though he was reading from a sheet of paper and had no connection to the words. Perhaps that was how he was able to do what he did—he cut himself off emotionally.

  Cass pressed her lips together, her nostrils flaring as she shook her head. She didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t want to know. Because the next time he brought a woman out here to kill, her name would be joining the list. What would he say about her and the way she died? Would he tell the next woman that she’d screamed and fought, or would he say she’d begged and wet her pants, just like poor Becky?

  He moved on, nodding down at the third pile of dirt. “And this is—”

  “Please, stop,” she interrupted. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “But this isn’t about what you want, is it? None of this is. You will hear my story, and then, after I’ve taken what pleasure I can out of you, I will kill you.”

  He didn’t have anyone else he could boast about his conquests to. That was why he insisted on telling her. He probably wanted to tell every person he came across on a daily basis who he really was. Wanted to lean across the till at Walmart and hiss into the face of the woman on checkout that he was a murderer and had killed seven, soon to be eight, women. If someone cut him off in traffic, he must have wanted to scream about how he’d killed and would do it again. He wanted others to know his power, but by telling them, he would destroy everything for himself. It must have been his biggest frustration to not be able to own who he truly was, and have everyone fear him.

  He ignored her pleas for him to stop.

  “The third girl was called Susie Banks. She was older, like you are, but not so old that she’d lost that innocence. That naivety where you think you’re invincible and going to live forever. She was doing a law degree, which I thought was ironic. Perhaps she dreamed of putting people like me into prison for a very long time. She used her knowledge before she died. Tried to convince me that by letting her go, and confessing and telling the police where the other bodies were, that they’d give me a lighter sentence. Of course, I never had any intention of doing any of those things, but I enjoyed watching her trying to talk her way out of her situation. That’s what they like to do, isn’t it? Lawyers, I mean? They like to talk. Unfortunately, she couldn’t talk her way out of this one.”

  Cass stared around in horror at the mounds of earth that were now easily distinguishable from the rest of the forest floor. How had she not seen it before? They were all here, each of the girls he’d made ‘vanish,’ all buried in shallow graves after, she assumed, dying right in the spot she was in now. Russet streaks marked the tree trunk—layers of blood from seven different women, soon to be eight. The top layer of bark had been worn away in grooves, revealing lighter wood beneath, where the girls had clearly tried to get away, yanking on the chain in the desperate hope it would give.

  Oh, God.

  He was going to tell her the stories of each of the women he’d murdered, and then he was going to kill her. She didn’t want to hear the details of how they’d died, but if he was talking, it meant he wasn’t killing her. Perhaps she should encourage him and get him to tell her more.

  It was too much, bile rising up the back of her throat.

  She swallowed it back down, not wanting to throw up. It was stupid, but she didn’t want that to be her story. She didn’t want this monster telling the next girl that Cassandra Draper had been so frightened she’d thrown up everywhere. She knew her vanity was pointless. What would she care when she was dead? But she discovered her pride still meant something, and besides, she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear, knowing he would derive pleasure from it.

  The Magician wasn’t done with his stories.

  “Number four was a screamer. A crier, too.” He gave a small wistful laugh, as though in his head, he was going right back to the time with her. “If there was anyone around to hear you girls, she’d have certainly been the one to bring another person here investigating. Oh, I didn’t tell you her name, did I? It was Meaghan Brunner. She had beautiful skin, so soft and smooth. Her blood looked incredible against it.”

  Cass squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, not wanting to look at the mound he squatted beside. How long had they been dead? Months? What would their bodies look like now beneath the dirt? Though she didn’t want to think of these things, she couldn’t help it, imagining rotten corpses filled with maggots and worms.

  She recognized some of the girls’ names. Perhaps she’d caught them on a news channel, or seen them on the internet. She wished she’d paid more attention now. They hadn’t seemed real to her at the time. So much horror occurred in the world, day after day. School shootings, child abuse, atrocities occurring in far off countries. It was difficult not to become callous toward it all. If she let it all into her heart, she wouldn’t be able to function.

  He allowed his bag to slip from his shoulder, and he dropped it to the ground a few feet away from her. He was standing in the middle of the circle of graves, with the tree she was chained to like a sacrificial altar at its head. Reaching into the bag, he pulled out items he’d clearly brought for a reason. A small, slender knife that looked wickedly sharp, and a larger butcher’s knife. The metal caught the dappled sunlight filtering through the trees, flashing bright and white.

  She wasn’t ashamed to admit she was frightened of the pain. Even the idea of pain scared her. When, as a teenager, others had gone to get piercings and tattoos, she’d made jokes about not wanting to ruin an already perfect body. Needles scared her. Having to get blood taken or get a shot made her lightheaded.

  From the array of tools he’d brought, she guessed he intended to take his time killing her, and would enjoy every moment.

  This was going to hurt. A lot.

  Chapter Four

  The Magician continued talking as he prepared his tools for killing her in the same meticulous way a surgeon might prepare for a surgery. Carefully, he laid each item out on the dirt. A length of rope. A blindfold. A metal hook.

  “The fifth woman was called Maria Moore, and she was the mother of two children. They were only small—the boy was three years old and the girl just a baby. They won’t remember their mom when they grow up.”

  Tears filled Cass’s eyes at the thought of the brother and sister growing up with the knowledge their mother had been murdered. She knew how it felt to lose someone you loved and have such a devastating story go along with it.

  “How could you? You took a mother away from her children.”

  He flashed his cold, gray gaze toward her. “She was too young to be having children, anyway. She must have gotten pregnant when she was only a teenager. Little whore. Two different fathers, too. Didn’t she have any respect for herself? Those babies are better off growing up without her. They’d
have only followed in her footsteps if she’d been around to influence them.”

  The idea that this man thought he had some kind of moral high ground was ridiculous.

  “She begged for her children’s lives before she died.” He shook his head in disgust. “As if I’d hurt an innocent child.”

  Yet he’d been more than happy to hurt innocent women. But she guessed no woman was innocent in his eyes. He was probably one of those men who thought that because Eve committed the original sin, all females were tainted.

  He wasn’t done.

  “Number six was a cute eighteen-year-old called Keely Smith. I pretended I was lost and called her over to my car. She was all smiles and curves, leaning in my car window to look at a map on my phone. All it took was a rag and some chloroform over her mouth, and then she was mine.” He shook his head, a cold smile playing across his lips. “She cried for her mother. She was an adult, but she became like a small child needing their mommy for comfort.”

  He picked up the smaller knife, the blade long and thin, like a filleting knife. He placed it against the palm of his other hand and stroked it like a grandmother would stroke a baby’s cheek.

  “The last one is the freshest in my mind... Anna Whittle. Blonde, twenty years old. She smelled so good.” He glanced at the ground, to her right, where a spot was the most freshly turned, no grass or much of anything growing yet to disguise the area. “Of course, she won’t smell so good now.”

  Cass remembered her. It hadn’t been long ago. Only a couple of weeks.

  She realized the rate at which he’d abducted and killed the other girls had increased. The first two had several months between them, while she and poor Anna Whittle were only a matter of weeks apart. Did that mean as soon as he was done with her, he’d go straight back out and find someone else? Had he planned for her? Had he followed her to work, known her routine, been watching her before he’d taken her? If so, did that mean he already knew who he was going to take next? She wished she had some way of stopping him and saving any other women from going through what she was experiencing now, but how could she stop him when she couldn’t even save herself?

  “Please, you don’t have to do this,” she begged. “You don’t have to make me one of them.”

  He looked up at her, his brow furrowed. “You already are one of them. And anyway, you asked for this.”

  “No, no, I didn’t.” She shook her head, frantic.

  “Oh, I think you did.”

  He was crazy. He probably told himself all women asked for it. Like the way they dressed, even if it was something simple like the work outfit she had on now, was enough of a reason to be beaten and abused. He’d clearly been rejected when he was younger, and now he saw all women as something to hate.

  She stared around at the mounds of earth and gulped back a sob, her eyes prickling with tears. I’m so sorry, she wanted to tell each of the women. I’m so sorry your lives ended this way. You all deserved better.

  He must have buried them deep enough for this area not to stink of death. She guessed he didn’t want any wild animals coming along and disturbing the bodies. He’d created a kind of place of worship here, but it was himself he worshiped, his art of killing. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone or anything to come along and mess up what he’d worked so hard to make.

  She turned her attention back to the chains around her wrists. The depth of the grooves beneath the chain around the tree trunk worried her. She didn’t know if it had been caused by all the women yanking on the chain in the same spot, or if the depth was caused by the repeated struggles of one woman in particular. If so, how long had he kept her alive, hurting her, while she yanked on the chain hard enough to cause the grooves in the bark her desperate effort to get away?

  Cass focused on her bindings, trying to figure out how to get herself free.

  There were two padlocks. One held the chain around the tree together, and the other secured the chains around her wrists. While the locks weren’t big—about the same size as the circle she created if she pressed her thumb and forefinger together—they looked solid. The one around the tree trunk was a little rusty, but she guessed that was from it being exposed to the elements.

  She yanked and pulled, praying something would give. Her skin was already red from the chains cutting into her wrists, but she ignored the discomfort, knowing there was far worse to come if she couldn’t get free.

  He seemed to have decided on the filleting knife as his weapon of choice. Holding it, with the blade pointed up, he stepped closer.

  “No, get away from me!” She couldn’t even kick out at him to keep him away. The chains between her ankles had a little give, but not enough for her to lift her foot more than a few inches.

  But if she slid to the ground, she’d be able to kick out at him. The chain around the tree trunk was loose enough to move up and down the girth, and while her hands were chained to the trunk, her legs weren’t. Maybe it would only buy her a matter of minutes, perhaps even only seconds, but it would be better than just standing there, helpless, while he carved off her skin as he was raping her.

  He palmed the knife, stroking it lovingly across his skin. “I think I’ll start with your face. Maybe those pretty lips.” He took a step closer, and then another.

  He’d almost reached her.

  Cass dropped to the ground, yanking the chain around the tree trunk down with her. Wanting to get as much power behind her as possible, her teeth gritted in rage and fear, she drew her knees back to her chest then kicked out both feet as hard as she could.

  The bastard hadn’t predicted the move at all. A flicker of confusion crossed his face when she’d dropped to the ground, and seconds later both her chained feet connected with his ankles, taking them out from under him.

  He went down face first, crashing to the ground like a toppled tree, his hands under his body. She’d never expected her kick to be so impactful. She’d thought maybe he’d move away again and curse at her, telling her he’d make her think twice about coming at him again. Instead, he was lying face down on the ground, and he wasn’t moving.

  He wasn’t moving at all.

  Chapter Five

  Cassandra sat frozen in one spot, breathing hard, staring at the inert form of the man who’d been about to kill her.

  The seconds passed, each one tripping over in time with her racing heart. Had he been knocked unconscious by the fall? She was frightened to move or even barely breathe in case he got up again and released his full fury on her as punishment for kicking him like that.

  But as she sat there, waiting, the seconds turned to minutes, and still he didn’t move. Cass stared at his back, trying to see if he was moving at all. Was his back subtly rising and falling with shallow breaths, or was he as utterly still as she thought he was?

  A strange combination of terror and relief flooded through her. Unconscious, he wouldn’t be able to hurt her, but she was still chained to a tree with no way of getting free.

  “Hey,” she tried, her voice a hiss. “Hey, you!” She didn’t even know his real name to be able to call it, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to wake him up anyway. If he was unconscious, she only had a limited amount of time where she might be able to get herself free, so she didn’t want him to wake up, did she?

  But what if he’s dead? What if he’s dead, and you’re stuck here, chained to a tree in the middle of nowhere?

  She shook the thought from her head. He couldn’t be dead, could he? People didn’t just die like that. She was still in the same sitting position, her back up against the tree. He hadn’t moved at all. Was this a trick? Some sick part of a game he was playing?

  With her heart pounding and her mouth running dry, she stretched out her toes. Her calf and thigh muscles strained as she tried to reach him. The tips of her sneakers brushed his shoulder and she quickly snatched her feet back again. Something was on the ground, seeping out from under him. Red stained the tips of her white sneakers.

  Oh God oh God oh God.


  She remembered the knife he’d been carrying so lovingly. It must have been under his body when he fell, pointing upward.

  This was a good thing, wasn’t it? If he was dead, he wouldn’t be able to hurt her.

  She didn’t want to even hope this whole thing could be over, that she might have survived him, despite everything.

  He had the key to the padlock in his jacket pocket. She’d seen him take it out and put it back in again several times. All she needed to do was get the key out of his pocket and she’d be able to unlock herself from this fucking tree and get the hell out of here. She would have to try to find some civilization and get to the police and report the murders of the seven women. It wouldn’t bring much comfort to their loved ones and families back home, especially those who were still holding out hope that the missing women were still alive somewhere. But at least it would bring them some closure, and they’d be able to take comfort knowing the sick son of a bitch who did this to them was dead.

  Dead. There was a dead body in front of her. A real one. Someone who’d once been a living, breathing human being.

  No, she needed to stop thinking of him like that. He hadn’t been a human being. Human beings had feelings and emotions and empathy. That fucking bastard had been a monster. He was responsible for the deaths of seven young women, and she would have been the eighth if she’d not acted.

  But she was out here alone in the middle of nowhere, and she was surrounded by the dead. The dead man who had taken her. And the seven dead girls who were buried and decomposing underground.

  Cass let out a scream of despair. She’d never felt more alone than she did in this moment, not even when she’d been younger, after everything had happened.