Robin continued looking, and she soon found the diaries that belonged to the Butcher. There were so many that Robin barely had time to read it all. She remembered the diary that the child had stolen for her, and she flipped through them all until she found the one. The same childlike writing greeted her, and she slowly started to read it.
“My mother hates me. She really does. I hate her too, and I told her today, but she told me that to hate was to sin. She beat me up, and she locked me in the cupboard and told me that I must suffer for my sins. I begged her to let me out, but she said that my screams would purge me of my sins. She said I must repent, and I must suffer to earn my redemption. She says I am a sinner. Just a sinner. A dirty, filthy sinner. I believe it now. I am a sinner and need to be purged. The devil inside me is too strong. After all, it makes me hate my mother. She says I am a foul, nasty boy. She tells me I am filthy and dirty and I will burn in hell. I don’t like hell. It scares me. I don’t want to go there. This is my fault. I am the sinner.”
Robin flipped past the pages, each of them filled with the tales of his abuse by his mother. As a strictly religious woman, it seemed that she used God as a reason to torture her own child. The mother lived a secluded life, deserted by her husband and mentally ill. The only one she loved was her own twisted version of God, and the Butcher was the one who had suffered.
Chapter Four
The story of the Butcher’s past was perhaps one of the most twisted, convoluted, and disturbing stories Robin had ever heard. As she read through the passages, she pitied the child that used to be the Butcher. With the cruelty he had endured as a child, it was hardly surprising that he had grown up to be a serial killer. Robin thought of all the families whose lives had been ruined. Parents who would never be the same again, husbands who have lost their wives forever, and most of all, children, cruelly torn from their mother by the Butcher.
Even after ten years, she was sure that all those families still hadn’t recovered from the trauma of losing their dear ones to the Butcher. And to think it all started with an overzealous religious mother and a lack of love. As Robin read through the pages, she realized it was all the child ever wanted. The Butcher had only ever wanted to be loved. He had strived for love but only felt abuse at the hands of his mother and the rejection of others.
Years of being told that he is a sinner and years of brainwashing had shattered the Butcher’s mental stability. He truly started to believe that he was a sinner and would have to suffer in fear and pain for him to be free of it.
“Mother beat me up today. She used my belt because she wanted to see me bleed. She said she was doing this because she loves me. She wants me to be free of the sins that bind me to this earth. She told me about heaven and how you could have everything you want there. She said she just wants me to go to heaven.
I had to go to school all bruised up, but Mr. Fore didn’t care about me. He was angry that I was late for school. He took a ruler and hit my hand for being so late. One day I am going to get him back. One day, I am going to cut his head off and each one of his arms and hands. And I will do it while he is still alive.
Mother is right; I am evil. I get such bad thoughts all the time. I go to bed dreaming of torturing my mother to death. I am evil. I need to be purged of these dark thoughts. I need to be purged.”
Robin flipped through the following few pages and then stopped when she came across a chilling entry.
“I did it. I finally did it. Mother constantly tortured me because she wanted me to be free of my sins. Well, I decided to return the favor. After all, isn’t my mother a sinner? If she were pure, she would be in heaven, wouldn’t she? I asked her about it before I knocked her out and tied her up. She begged me for forgiveness. She said that the one who purges the evil out of others is also freed of their sins. Well, mother, today you were freed of your sins, and I will continue your noble task of freeing others from theirs until one day I am also clean.
Today, I purged my mother. She is now gone. Gone. Gone!”
It seemed that his mother was such a recluse, that when she died, no one noticed that she was missing. Living in a slum, no one really cared about each other. And he had gotten away with it.
This was soon followed by another murder, this one of Mr. Fore. The teacher was brutally murdered, his limbs chopped off, and then fed to the dogs. Robin almost didn’t want to continue reading this anymore. She wanted to throw up as she read the sick and twisted entries in his diary. Every bit of this was horrible, and Robin shuddered as she read it.
“I think I am in love. I found her. I found the one who is meant for me. She and I will work together, and together we will purge this world of evil. She and I will be saints who will rule this world and ascend to heaven as one!
She hates me and won’t look at me or talk to me. She is cruel and vicious, just like my mother. But maybe it’s because she doesn’t understand me. Perhaps because she doesn’t realize how much I love her. If I manage to convince her that she is mine and show her our destiny, I know she will say yes to me.
I got her. I have her in my basement. She is crying and screaming, but she doesn’t understand. She will realize soon, though. I will show her I love her. I will show her she is meant to be mine, and then everything will be great.
That wench. Why won’t she love me? Why? Why doesn’t she love me back? She only begs me to let her go. She just wants to be freed! She doesn’t see how our destinies are intertwined. She doesn’t see how much we are meant to be. My beautiful flower, don’t leave me! Don’t!”
From here on, the entries were vague and barely made sense, but Robin managed to get the gist of it. He kept the woman a prisoner for eight years and then decided that there was no hope for her before killing her. Then he started his spree of kidnapping and torturing women before killing them. By this point, the entries were all just ramblings of a diseased mind. It was evident to Robin that the Butcher had been pushed past the point of sanity, where nothing was clear to him anymore.
She looked down at some of the other papers lying there, and she saw something that made her freeze – a piece of evidence that finally solved everything. This piece of evidence answered the question that had been nagging her all along. She knew who that child was.
Chapter Five
Robin looked at the child greedily drinking up the bowl of gruel the Butcher had left for her. She was starving since the Butcher had decided to limit her meals to once a day. It didn’t matter to her, though. The poor kid was so malnourished she could see his ribs under his skin. No child deserved to be treated like this. Her heart went out to the poor kid, so starved for love and affection. He would sit with Robin for hours, listen to her stories, or help her in whatever way he could. She could see that the Butcher’s cruelty was affecting him, so she tried harder to love him and remove the effects of the Butcher’s torture on the innocent boy.
“Who taught you how to speak?” Robin asked.
“Mama,” he said, gulping his food down. “She taught me to read and write too. She said I was a genius. That I wrote better than an adult even, and I was quick at picking everything up. She said once she got me back to the free world, she was going to put me in school, and I was going to do great things.”
So, he was the child of one of the victims the Butcher had captured? Robin mused to herself.
“Where did Mama go?” Robin asked softly.
It had been the wrong question, though, because the child’s face darkened, and he instantly clammed up.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Robin said quickly. “How about we play a game instead? How about we solve puzzles?”
“Mama loved me,” the child said softly. “Mama is gone.”
Robin looked down at the birth certificate in her hands, the memory flashing through her mind. The child was the Butcher’s. It was the Butcher’s son who was with her in the basement. He must have been born after the Butcher assaulted his very first victim, the woman he loved, but he didn’t want the child. Afte
r all, in his sick plan, a child had no place. The child was raised by the captive mother, the only source of love and warmth he had. This love and warmth had been contaminated by the hatred and abuse of the Butcher.
Robin shivered with horror as she realized that the child probably saw his mother getting killed. He must have been there, watching from that corner under the stairs as the Butcher killed his mother. The horror that child must have faced seeing the only source of love and warmth taken away from him.
Her heart panged with sympathy. No wonder the child was so traumatized by the terror he lived with all the time. No wonder he thought giving her a dead animal was a gift. This was all he had seen and learned. The vicious cycle continued. The Butcher’s mother abused him, and the Butcher became a killer. And now, the child might be the killer she was looking for. He was ruined as a result of the pain inflicted by his father.
The birth certificate had the child’s name, and the mother's name cut out. Clearly, the Butcher wanted nothing to do with either of them. But this also meant that there was a record of this somewhere. The Butcher must have had to take his victim to the hospital perhaps, and was forced to make out the birth certificate. Whatever the reason, this meant that there were legal records somewhere, records she had to find.
She scoured through the rest of the evidence, desperate for any leads of the child's identity. “Could this kid be the killer? Is it possible that he is doing all this? Had the Butcher’s twisted mentality darkened the child, too, sending him down the same path as his father?”
Robin closed her eyes and forced herself to remember. “What had happened to the child? Where had he been when she had escaped?” Her head started to throb and ache again as she forced herself to remember, and her eyes began to hurt. Her memory was still not back. There were still gaps she couldn’t fill in. “If the child had grown up to be the killer, then why was he so obsessed with Robin? Why did he want to ruin her? What had happened down there?”
With her head throbbing, Robin closed the diaries littered around her. Her mind was racing, and her heart was thumping in her chest. She needed answers. If this child was her killer, then his identity must be here somewhere. If only she had all her memories back so she could understand what he wanted from her. If only she knew why he was doing all this, she could stop him. Knowing the motive was crucial when dealing with serial killers. It helped figure out the pattern, and the pattern helped predict what the killer might do.
She needed to find legal evidence regarding this birth certificate, maybe even hospital records. This would prove the existence of the Butcher’s child, and then the Captain would be forced to listen to her. He couldn’t call the child a figment of her imagination anymore, not when there was proof.
Robin quickly collected the rest of the evidence. She couldn’t carry the diaries with her, so she stowed them back in the hiding place, taking the rest with her. She had already spent too much time here. Putting the papers and pictures into her pocket, Robin slowly started to sneak out of the house. She walked toward the window, slightly parting the curtain and gazing out.
It was calm and peaceful, and Robin got ready to raise the window and make her way down when something caught her eye. Hiding in the bushes, she got the glare of the sun reflecting off metal, and she soon spotted a bunch of policemen hiding, their guns at the ready. In the distance, she spotted the lights of a police vehicle, and she cursed silently.
Robin was surrounded.
Chapter Six
Robin darted from one window to another, realizing that policemen were stationed at each side of the house. They had probably had the house under surveillance, and Robin had been spotted when she snuck in. They must have gathered around, laying a trap for her. They were all waiting for her to come out so they could arrest her.
This had been a mistake. Robin knew there was a risk that the police were keeping an eye on this place. Now, she was trapped. There was no way out of this. Grabbing her gun, safety lock off, Robin peeked from behind the curtain again. She had a clear shot of a few of the men from here, but she had no plans of harming or killing any of her own people. This is what the killer wanted. He had framed her to take the fall for his crimes. If she shot a single man over here, it would cement her fate forever.
She spotted the Captain in the distance, and James was right there with him. He was probably leading the entire mission. Robin wouldn’t be surprised if this were all his idea. An idea came into her head, but it was a very risky one. It could cost her heavily. She could lose her life, or worse, she could be arrested. But she had no other option left. If Robin wanted to get out of here without harming anyone, this was the only option.
Robin collected the things she needed knowing that they were going to patiently wait for her until she is forced to come out. Once everything was ready, she went into action. She threw one of the vases through the window, and it shattered into pieces. Hearing the police shouting widely, she threw another heavy ornament through another window, distracting the police.
“She is coming through here!” she heard one of the men shouting. “We need back up! Backup!”
“She is here!” Another voice shouted. “She is here!”
She could hear James shouting at them to keep their eyes on the house and stay in their positions, but he was too late. Robin waltzed through one of the crushed windows, not giving the police a chance to react, and instantly grabbed the closest one to her.
“Don’t move, or I shoot him!” Robin shouted, placing her gun to his temple.
Now, five guns were pointed at her, and she knew no one would dare to pull the trigger. She knew that more men would appear at her back any minute now, so she had to be quick.
“Please,” the man she had captured whispered. “Please don’t hurt me, Detective Matthews.”
Robin looked at the man she held, and she swallowed as she realized it was Andrews. The young detective looked at her with eyes filled with fear. For a second, she was horrified. In his eyes, she saw the reflection of a monster. The monster he thought she had become. Just a month back, they had been filled with admiration for her. Robin cursed internally. They would have her surrounded in a minute, and her hostage would offer her no protection then.
Robin was out of time. She could hear the footsteps behind her, and she knew she was surrounded.
“Robin,” she heard the Captain’s voice behind her. “Let him go.”
“Ready to shoot on your orders,” she heard an officer muttering.
“No, don’t shoot,” James said. “I repeat, don’t shoot! Get her alive!”
Robin looked around her, observing her surroundings, when she spotted something in the distance. Her mind reeling, she came up with a plan, this one even riskier than before.
There was a reason Robin was one of the best detectives on the force. One of them was how fast her reflexes were, and the other was her quick thinking, even under the pressure of a gun. She aimed her gun at the ground while pushing Andrew away from her; she shot a bullet on the grass. As the police force disrupted with chaos, a smoke bomb suddenly exploded, and she quickly made a run for it.
Her eyes started to sting as she realized that the smoke was tear gas. Barely able to see, Robin somehow stumbled to the back of the house. She could hear the police trying to clamber behind her and figure out where she was, but the gas prevented them from seeing properly.
“I got you,” she heard Kyle whisper near her, and he grabbed her hand. Barely able to see because of her watering eyes, Kyle led her through the field toward a car he had parked. By the time the police got some semblance of discipline back, Kyle had pushed Robin into the car, and they were gone.
“Here,” Kyle said, giving her a wet rag that she could place against her eyes. “I am sorry about that.”
“It had to be done,” Robin said. She had spotted Kyle hiding in the distance, and she had been quick to act. While Robin distracted the police, Kyle threw the tear gas. If he hadn’t been there, Robin didn’t know what sh
e would have done.
“Thank you,” she said after a pause. “If you hadn’t come, I would have been arrested. But you shouldn’t have. They will suspect you now.”
“They already do,” Kyle said. Robin’s eyes continued to sting and water, and she pressed the rag onto them again.
“They know I am the one that helped you escape. Or at least, they suspect it. I am officially suspended from the task force. They are doing an internal investigation on me. I am off the force until they can decide if I am guilty or not.”
“I am sorry,” Robin whispered. It was like a domino effect. Her actions caused more and more damage to those around her. It seemed as if it would never come to an end. She sighed and clenched her hand into a fist. She didn’t know what awaited her or what she was going to do next, but she knew if she didn’t end this soon, the damage would be irreparable.
“Don’t worry,” Kyle whispered. “I got your back, Robin.”
Now that she thought about it, he always did.
Chapter Seven
“How are you feeling?” Kyle asked.
“Well, I can finally see you again,” Robin said. Her eyes still stung, but at least she could keep them open now.
“What were you doing there, Robin?” he asked. “Why were you even there? Don’t tell me you didn’t suspect that they would be keeping tabs there.”
“I knew there was a risk,” she said. “In hindsight, I should have been more careful, but I had to go there. I needed evidence, and I had a feeling that I would find it there.”
The Child's Plan Page 2
