Her Final Victim

by NJ Moss

  “Sorry for smiling. I was actually going to ask if you wanted egg and bacon for breakfast, but now I don’t think I’ll bother.”

  He chuckles and races over to the bed, dropping the towel. We wrestle and we laugh. We kiss. We toy with the idea of having sex, but Jamie doesn’t have the time.

  As he starts to get dressed, I pick up my phone and stare at my follower count.

  Eleven more have abandoned me.

  35

  Before

  The dolls had been perfect once, but now they were burnt and parts of their insides were showing. They were like regular people in that way: like the Comrades and the parents who wished they weren’t parents, like the lady in the supermarket who’d forgotten half her shopping list. They wore their smiles and their kind eyes and they whispered their saintly words, and they bowed in the right places and knelt and stooped and laughed, and they were people – people like these dolls were people – and they were all hiding something.

  All of them, the little girl thought as she ran her fingernails up and down the dolls’ bodies. She was in the corner of her bedroom and it was dark and it was night-time, and she leaned over her dolls and tortured them subtly with her nails, digging harder and harder the louder her parents became.

  “Don’t pretend there’s a point,” Constance snapped. “We both know what this is.”

  “Keep your voice down, woman,” Comrade Charles snarled, and he sounded like Master, the name he’d earned for these godly displays of rightful rage.

  “I’m right,” Constance hissed, a little quieter.

  Millicent listened closely. She was nine, and some people thought that made her silly and gullible, but no, she was learning. She was a huntress now, and she would hurt them all, every last demon who’d taken his nick of her flesh.

  She’d hurt kind in kind, and the severest punishment would always wait for whoever harmed her worst. Kneeling there, she felt certain it would be her father. Who else could scar her as he had? It was Charles who insisted Mother never be allowed to mother her. He must’ve told Philip and Moonie to take her to the Rainbow Room, because nothing happened in the cul-de-sac without her father’s say-so.

  In the years to come, she would learn her mistake. Somebody could cut her far deeper.

  “Would you have us live like everybody else?” Charles said.

  “Listen to yourself. You say that like they’re cattle.”

  “They are cattle. They live as they’re told to live. I refuse to stoop to that.”

  “Oh, God, listen to yourself.” Constance hadn’t been smoking the pipe and Millicent detected the change in her voice. This was Strong Mummy, who Millicent had seen less and less since she was very little. “Nothing you say makes any sense. Good and bad, black and white, blah-blah-blah, Charley. Don’t pretend this is about your fucking cause.”

  “I am trying to change the world.”

  “And that involves fucking your friends’ wives, does it?”

  “This again? Get a grip, Connie. You sound psychotic.”

  “I’ve seen you dancing.”

  “Dancing? It’s part of the ritual, but you’d know that if you spent less time smoking crack, you druggie whore.”

  Millicent picked up her father and her mother and she mashed them together, and she hit her father hard, harder, until Mother was on top and he was pinned beneath her. “That’s how you speak to me.” Mother sounded like she was fading. Hiss-hiss-hiss. “The mother of your child.”

  Millicent knew what the hiss-hiss-hiss was, but she thought maybe she could think it was a snake. There was a snake in the wardrobe and she had to protect all three of them, and that was the hiss and the hiss and the hiss. It wasn’t what she knew it was: the pipe, the sucking, the inhaling, the fading. She was fading, and Millicent wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “You can’t even go in the garden like we discussed,” Father said. “You really are pathetic.”

  “Call me a crack whore and I might as well act like one.” Hiss-hiss-hiss. “Mmm, this is scrumptious.” Hiss-hiss-hiss. “I was right, you know. About this. About this life.”

  “Sit down, Connie, for fuck’s sake. You need to slow down. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “You knew how to handle a naïve girl like me. Give me a pipe and then give me your pipe, eh, you handsome pervert.”

  “Connie, you can barely move. Stop it.”

  “Why? You like it.”

  He did like it. Millicent noted it down. Her mother was using her body to make Charles talk how she wanted, to soften, to take the sharpness off his words. Millicent didn’t quite understand it, but she knew she could use it, one day, the same way everything she did was a rehearsal. She was training. Nobody knew how clever she was. Nobody knew how much stronger she was: than her parents, than the Comrades, than everybody.

  “You can’t say things like that, Connie.”

  “What? It’s bullshit. It is.”

  “No… it’s—”

  “You had an idea. But you can’t quite put it into words. Which is strange, hmm? Because you used to write about it academically. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the drugs. And now you’ve got a lot of mindless goons working at factories because it’s humbling work. They give you their wages, which don’t amount to much on their own, but pay you a nice salary when they’re stacked together. You get to fuck all the enthusiastic wives and daughters you want, and poor Connie has to lie around begging for your oh-so-impressive cock.”

  Her father was growling. No, he was chuckling. His laughter rumbled through the walls and Millicent clasped her hands to her belly and pretended it was her laughter booming bigly.

  “When you describe it like that, I sound like a criminal mastermind.”

  “Oh, you are. Now come and mastermind me, Master.”

  Millicent crawled to the other side of her bedroom. She moved like a cat, silently, making her feet and hands into paws and not letting her knees or elbows or body touch the ground. She was even quieter than a cat.

  She crawled through the moonlight-blue section of the room, the floorboards glowing like they were coloured-in. She liked to pretend – and she liked to believe – the moonlight was hunting her.

  She sat in the corner and hugged her knees and moved her head down between her knees, and she gripped hard so she was covering her ears: flattening her ears. She didn’t want to hear the next bit.

  She listened to the silence and the echoing bone of her skull, like a seashell, and she could hear the sea, beckoning. She’d get there one day. She’d walk onto the lighted shores and show them all how exceptional Millicent Maidstone really was.

  In the afternoons she would often sneak away from the enclosed hell of their cul-de-sac, running through the fields until she came to a small collection of hills that overlooked some houses: some magic, impossible houses where crazy things happened. She would sometimes bring a book or sometimes just sit there, gazing as mothers pushed their children on swings, as whole families laughed and bounced on trampolines, as a big sister picked her little brother up and wiped at his chin.

  She watched this little boy and girl for many weeks, gazing in amazement as they traipsed around the garden together, always watching out for each other. The girl was older, but she was scared of insects, so her courageous little brother would march in there and paw at the air whenever one appeared. Millie doubted he ever got one, but he was trying to protect her.

  Or was he just pretending?

  Maybe when they went inside he threw her to the carpet and kicked her in the stomach, screamed she was a druggie slut and always would be: dragged her to a hidden room and bent her over and—

  Her thoughts stampeded like this, and she lived in the agony of not knowing, of never knowing if the person she saw was a façade or the truth. She stopped going to those houses after a while, certain she’d do something silly and wonderful if she kept returning, like slit the girl’s throat and take the boy for herself.

  36

  Ja
mie

  Hazel’s already left by the time I reach the front door this morning. She’s been hitting the gym like a madwoman these past couple of days.

  When I walked in to find her grinning at me from the bed on Tuesday, with tears in her eyes, looking downright mental, I knew Millicent had told her. I knew it was all crashing down.

  But then we bantered and laughed and everything was normal. Except she’s become even more obsessed with her social media stuff than usual.

  Normally, I’d tell her to calm down. She tends to get more worked up about this stuff than she needs to. But this is good for me. I need her distracted. At least until I can get this Millicent stuff sorted. I don’t like thinking like this. I wish I could be there for Hazel. And I will be, once this is over.

  I type in the security alarm code carefully, priming it. I’ve been more on the ball with the alarm than usual lately. The last thing I need is an unexpected visit from Millicent goddamn Maidstone.

  Still, it’s not all bad today. I woke up this morning to a text from Ray.

  It’s time to see Mr Brown again. Same place. Nine o’clock.

  Leaving it until Thursday – four days before I’m due back in Cardiff – is a dick move. There’s no way I can head to Wales and leave Hazel here alone with her new friend, Millie. I’ll have to think of some excuse to stay in Bristol. Or handle it before then.

  I climb into the Range Rover and glance at myself in the rear-view mirror. I look tired and worn out and older than my dad.

  I hope Tom Brown’s got something for me. I can’t go on like this.

  “She was raised in a cult.” Tom leans against the wall with his arms crossed. It’s darker in here than last time, no sunlight shining through. “They didn’t have an official name, but the locals called them the Freaks. Not very inventive, I know.”

  I sit on the floor, legs crossed, with the folder open on my knees. The man is thorough. He’s given me names and addresses of the ex-cult members, as well as some info about her childhood and her history.

  “Father was a famous academic,” I say.

  “Infamous, more like. He was born into money but didn’t touch it for years. And then, one day, he decides he wants to set up a little getaway in the back-arse of nowhere.”

  “To do what?”

  “Whatever it is cult leaders enjoy doing. Millicent’s mother had a criminal history: drug possession. She was seen by the locals from time to time, but then she disappears. I can’t find any sign of what happened to her. I probably need to do some more digging. Her father, on the other hand, now there’s something interesting.”

  “Suicide,” I say, flipping the page.

  “Not just suicide.”

  “Suicide in suspicious circumstances,” I go on, reading. “What’s so suspicious about hanging yourself? Grim, all right, but suspicious? People do it every day.”

  “Keep going.”

  “What. The. Fuck.”

  “Yep.”

  “He made a noose from his daughter’s clothes.” I shake my head as I read. “He cut his arm and used the blood to write… She said that to me. She said I should cut my wrists and write sorry on the wall. This was her. I’m telling you.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it was some weird cult stuff. We don’t know.”

  “She said it to me, Tom.”

  “That doesn’t mean she did it. She could just be trying to scare you.”

  Or both. But he doesn’t have all the information. He didn’t see the photos of her victims and I’m not going to risk telling him. He might insist we take it to the police, and then Millicent will release the video of me and Julia.

  “What happened to the cult after her dad died?”

  “It disbanded. It started falling apart a decade before his death though. Something happened in the mid-nineties that shook things up. Nobody had ever left, but whatever this was, it seems to have dampened the hippie vibe.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to any of the cultists yet, and if they’ve discussed it publicly, I can’t find a record of it.”

  I flip through the remaining pages. There’s some stuff about Millicent’s freelance writing career, clients she’s worked with that might relate to Sunny Skies Recruitment, but the links seem tenuous at best. She has no connection to me or Hazel he’s been able to find. At least, nothing that would leave a paper trail.

  This is bloody absurd. The last time I heard the phrase paper trail was in this TV programme Hazel and I were watching on Netflix, bingeing it one hung-over Saturday, cuddled up on the sofa.

  I close the folder and stand up. “Why can’t you find the mother?”

  Tom frowns. Maybe he doesn’t like my tone. I’ve been losing some of my charm lately. I notice it at work, with the way people look at me, a little more impatient than usual. “She might have changed her name. She might have died in a manner not worth reporting on. These cultists didn’t take out obituaries. Maybe she left. Women do that sometimes. They disappear from their lives.”

  I almost swing on him. A vein throbs in my neck like it’s going to explode. Is he talking about Mum? Why the hell would he taunt me with that?

  His frown deepens.

  He’s not talking about my mum.

  I’m just pent-up and ready to blow because a serial killer is making my life miserable. She’s stealing my money. She’s threatening my marriage. She killed her father. And now, on top of this, I’ve got to deal with the fact she was raised in a cult. Which makes her even crazier than I thought. I’ve seen documentaries about cults. None of them made their followers saner.

  “When do you talk to them?”

  “To who?” he asks.

  I wave the folder. “Who do you think? Her old cult friends.”

  “We can certainly discuss that, Mr Smithson. But I would require additional funds.”

  “Ah, right.” I clench and unclench my fist. “Of course you would. And there I was thinking we were becoming mates. How much?”

  “Two per cultist.”

  “Two hundred or…” He shakes his head. “Two grand per person? That’s insane.”

  “It’s the price I’ve arrived at. You’re not my only client. The closest cult member lives in York.”

  “Elijah Wrigley,” I say, remembering from the list.

  “Yes, that’s right. It would take an entire workday to drive up there, interview him, and drive back.”

  “And your workday is worth two grand, is it?”

  “I may have to do some unsavoury things to these people to make them tell me what they know. You’re more than welcome to handle this on your own.”

  “What, talk to this Elijah bloke myself?”

  Every time I say the name, I feel like I should know it.

  Elijah-Elijah-Elijah, there’s something there, right at the edge of my mind. Maybe I used to know somebody in school called Elijah, or at work? I don’t know.

  “Why not?” Tom Brown says. “I’m sure a big bloke like you can make him talk. Otherwise you can pay me to do it. But I really need to get going.”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine.”

  I head out to my car, letting my head fall back on the headrest. This is progress, at least. There are people dotted all over England and Scotland who can tell me more about her.

  I ring Ray as I drive back through the industrial estate.

  “Yeah?” he says, voice husky. Slurred. He’s slashed. From last night, or this morning? “Kid, you there?”

  “On my way into the office. Are you all right, boss?”

  “Women, eh? Can’t live without ’em… No, what is it? Can’t live with—Ah, fuck it. Listen, I can’t come in today. I’m heading to London. Know a jeweller there, don’t I? Getting her a nice little piece. Then she’ll see. Then she’ll have to see.”

  “You’re driving to London?”

  “Nah, I’m on the train. Can’t have a tipple on the M4, last time I checked. Ha!”

  Okay, at leas
t he’s not behind the wheel. Not that it makes it much better.

  “Diamonds are forever… This one’s a keeper, I’m telling you. A nice necklace is what she needs. Something as beautiful as she is.”

  Fuck me. I wish somebody would jump in front of my car just so I could run them over. She destroys everything she touches. I need to fix this.

  “Boss, I know it’s not good timing, but I need to take the day off.”

  “What?” He suddenly seems more sober. “This better be a joke.”

  “It’s—”

  “It’s a joke, right, Jamie? Tell me it’s a fucking joke.”

  “I had a doctor’s appointment. But I can change it. To tomorrow. Tomorrow is the latest they can do.”

  “Doctor? What for? You’re not ill.”

  “No, it’s…” I grit my teeth. I’m going to make her pay for this. “It’s a downstairs issue. I’ve been having problems, you know, performing. The doctor said they can help. It’s a very expensive private service and they’re booked up for months.”

  “Ah, I see,” Ray says, like I knew he would. In his drunker moments, he’s confessed similar issues to me. “You can’t blame yourself there. It happens to the best of us. But it’ll have to be tomorrow, all right? I’ll be in then.”

  “Fine, tomorrow. And, boss?”

  “Yeah?”

  Run away from Millicent as fast as you can. She’s going to hurt you, bad. Everything you know about her is a lie. Every smile, every damn gesture, none of it is true.

  “Have fun in London.”

  37

  Hazel

  I sit in the sauna, staring through the clouded glass door at our garden. I normally love being in here when it’s raining. It feels Icelandic, boiling up when it’s cold and miserable outside.