by West, Sam
Edward’s voice was back, narrating the grisly scene of the rapidly decomposing bird:
“I always knew I was different, even before my mother finally told me the truth. One of my first memories is of a bird just like this one. I killed it, and I watched it die. And it felt so good. I was too young to experience sexual arousal, but I guess you could say it was precursor of what was to come. Death holds much fascination for me. Or rather, dying does. How similar the throes of ecstasy are to death throes. Dying is a beautiful thing. It intoxicates me, enraptures me, thoughts of dying consume me. Nothing in the world can even so much as hold a candle to the beauty of the final moments that comprise the end of a life.
“I am a film student. I live my life behind the lens, I strive to capture these moments of extraordinary beauty. Even before I found out who my father was, these desires consumed me. And now, knowing who my dad was, it makes them all the sweeter. A sweetness tinged with the sharper edge of self-awareness. A self-awareness born of pure genetics. I was born this way. My mother’s paranoia that I would turn out a killer was entirely founded. I still firmly believe that, unbeknown to her, she hastened the process. It was her fear of me, not her love for me, that turned me into the man that I am today. At best, her love for me was animal. Primitive. She did what she had to do in the way that a female monkey will carry its offspring on its back in the early years of its life. Some instinctive, maternal bond that pushed aside rational thought and screamed at her to nurture. To feed and to clothe, to protect and to shelter. But love? No. Not love. Just like any boy, all I wanted was my mother’s love. So should we perhaps call my story a cautionary tale? That this is what happens to all little boys when Mummy doesn’t love them anymore? Why don’t you watch and listen and make up your own mind?”
Somewhere during his diatribe, the image of the decomposing bird had been replaced with the footage of the woman tied to the chair in the basement. Familiar, classical music played in the background, slow and ominous. Beethoven? Bach? She didn’t know and realised that she had been holding her breath the entire time Edward had been speaking. The camera zoomed up close to the woman’s face, peering in under the curtain of hair. The woman looked like a ghoul with her black-ringed, puffy eyes and mascara streaked cheeks. There was duct tape over her mouth. The camera panned back out and stayed still.
When Edward stepped into the frame, she gasped and went rigid. Just the sight of him stole her breath and twisted in her guts. He looked much the same as he had looked those few short hours ago when he had intruded on her home. When he had stolen the lives of her friends. It felt like a million years ago. She had been a different person then. Innocent. Self-absorbed. Trivial.
Boy oh boy, had she grown up fast.
Again, her full attention was drawn to the film and she watched the events unfold on screen like her life depended upon it:
Edward slowly circled his mother, trailing the tips of his fingers over the trembling woman’s hair. Without warning, he ripped off her gag of silver electrical tape and she flinched, a high-pitched sound escaping her lips like an inhaled scream. Edward kneeled down before her, casually resting his hands on her knees.
“I think we need a little talk, Mummy dear. I would say it’s long overdue.”
“I should have had an abortion,” the woman said between sobs.
Edward stood upright and slapped the woman hard across the face. “That wasn’t a very nice thing to say. Many millions of people are going to watch this film. You wouldn’t want everyone thinking you’re a bitch now, would you? Even if it is the truth. Even if you are a heartless cow that never loved her dear little boy.”
“You’re a monster.”
“You made me when you opened your legs to my father.”
“When I was raped.”
“You weren’t raped. You loved it.”
“Go to hell, Edward,” she said, her eyes shining with defiance.
“Maybe one day. But not today, because today, dear Mother, it’s your turn. There’s a place there specially reserved for you. A place for mothers that don’t love their children.”
“Fuck you, and fuck your father. The biggest mistake of my life was going against every sane instinct in my body and bearing the child of a rapist and murderer.”
“But you did though, didn’t you? You must have known whose kid I was.”
“How could I have known for sure? I wanted you to be Edward’s. Not his.”
“There is such a thing as DNA tests, you know.”
“I didn’t want to know. In my naivety, I thought it wouldn’t matter, that if I believed you were Edward’s and brought you up with love, then that was good enough.”
“But you didn’t love me, did you?”
The silence between the two figures on the screen, the boy on bended knee before his mother, seemed to stretch on interminably.
“No,” she said eventually.
“Let’s talk about Daddy. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
The woman was unresponsive, her head lolling forward slightly. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said without lifting her head.
Edward’s demeanour changed in a heartbeat, one second he was cool and detached, almost caring in a nonchalant way, the next he was on his feet, whipping back her head by her hair and snarling into her face, his own visage one of twisted cruelty, every line of his lean body taut with rage.
“I want to talk about my dad, Mummy. You owe me that.”
“This is disgusting. You are disgusting, Edward. You are an abomination.”
Edward slapped his mother hard across the face and her head snapped sideways.
“How do you think it made me feel, when I had to find out the truth through your bloody letter to a fucking dead man?”
Jazmine flinched. “You read it. What else is there to explain? You know why I didn’t tell you.”
“But I don’t understand how you could lie to your only child. I suggest you talk, if you want to live.”
He let go of her hair with an angry flick of his wrist, and her eyes locked with his.
“Maybe I don’t want to live anymore, maybe I don’t want to go on knowing that I have brought a monster into the world.”
“A monster you created.”
She shrugged, almost imperceptibly. “You’re here now, the deed is done.”
“Yes, I am, and I want to know why you didn’t tell me how I was conceived.”
“It’s all there, written down. There is nothing else to add.”
“I beg to differ, Mummy. If I had known how I came into the world, then maybe I would’ve understood why you hated me so much. I need to know why you didn’t tell me.”
A smile lifted the corners of her mouth, but there was no humour in it. “In case it turned you into a monster.”
For a moment Edward appeared to slump, his clenched fists uncurling and his shoulders drooping. Almost instantly he regained his composure, imperceptibly straightening up, his face a mask of indifference. He stood before her, as stately and self-important as a vicar addressing his congregation and pulled out a folded piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans.
“Let me read to you, Mummy dear, sometimes hearing one’s own words read back helps to clarify one’s thoughts…” Edward cleared his throat and began to read the letter in a monotone voice that positively dripped sarcasm and contempt:
“My dearest Edward. How I miss you. Not a day goes by when I do not think of you. Not a day goes by when I do not study our son’s face for traces of you. I say our son, as if that will somehow make it true. He may share your name but that is a decision I have come to deeply regret. In doing so I feel as if I have sullied the name of the dearest man in the whole world; the only man I have ever loved. Because he is not yours, is he, my darling Edward? For ten long years I have deluded myself that there was a chance he was, but I can’t lie to myself anymore. Never mind that he doesn't look like you, that fact is secondary. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve searched his
face for traces of you; for a hint of your easy smile or a glimmer of something intangible in his features that was quintessentially yours; like the way your clear blue eyes used to permanently sparkle with intelligence and wit and character. When I meet Edward’s flat, muddy gaze, all I see is my own terror reflected back at me. Oh Edward, there is something deeply wrong with my son. I am not a religious person, as you well know, but when I look into his eyes, when I see his essence, his very soul if you will, I see a vicious, stinking cesspit of corruption. Behind those eyes, all I see are unspoken infamies. He scares me, Edward. I wish I’d had an abortion all those years ago, I was a fool to unleash this bastard into the world, a child as every bit as depraved as his father.
“It is not the fact that he has tortured the occasional small animal as a very young child that troubles me the most. As bad as that is, it is his stillness that scares me. Oh, Edward, it is so hard to articulate my terror of him. He is so studied, so composed, almost reptilian in his cold watchfulness.
“I cut myself, not so long ago. Edward… (Oh, how I hate to call him that, so shall we perhaps just call him The Child, for the sake of argument and my sanity?) The Child was eight-years-old, at the time. Old enough to know better. So there I was in the kitchen, wrestling with one of those ghastly cans of corned beef when it slipped in my hand and lacerated my wrist. For a self-inflicted kitchen wound it was pretty bad; I had only narrowly missed opening up the main artery in my wrist. Blood poured from me and splattered on the floor as surely as a fully opened tap, and do you know what he did? He smiled. You have to understand that from The Child, a smile is a rare sight indeed. I remember I was wearing a white sundress and sandals and before I even had a chance to grab my car keys and drive myself to the hospital for stitches, my dress was a ruined, bloody mess. I’m sure I looked like Cissy Spacek out of that horror film Carrie. It was in that moment, when he grinned, I was transported right back to that hellish night. I felt as if I was there all over again, I saw myself being raped and tortured, I saw you, my darling, being murdered. Jason Jacks was before me in the very same kitchen in a child’s body. Which of course he was, wasn’t he? It was then, after nine lonely years without you, dear Edward, my bastard son and I moved to London and I decided to let out your beautiful childhood home once more as a holiday let.
“Since that day, it is fair to say I have withdrawn my motherly affections. I still provide shelter and food and a decent education but love? I can’t. I am hoping that a good education will be his saving grace, for he is bright, but I know in my heart he is beyond salvation with regard to basic human decency and morality. Can you believe that he even talks of studying photography when he grows up? It’s uncanny. It’s not as if he knows who his father was. Certainly not the brilliant man called Edward whom The Child believes died tragically of massive heart attack before he was born.
“Oh Edward, I don’t even know why I write this letter, for all the good it will do. You always were such a compassionate, brilliant man, only you could possibly understand the endless cycle of pain I have endured since you died that horrible night. The greatest pain of all, besides losing you, is being unable to love my only child. It rips out my heart and most days I wished I had died alongside you…”
Edward abruptly stopped reading and looked down at his mother. For endless moments the two stared at each other and even on the small screen of the laptop, the atmosphere between them was tangible, the undercurrents of recrimination, hurt and hatred flowing back and forth between them.
Jazmine was the one to break the spell.
“How long have you had that letter?”
“Oh, a few months. When I was home over the Christmas holidays I had a little shufty through your bedroom. Hiding it in a little drawer in your jewellery box is pretty stupid if you didn’t want me to find it. I can’t be bothered to read out the rest of it, it just goes over the same old boring ground. Christ, Mother, you’re not the only one who wished you’d had an abortion.”
Ever so softly, Jazmine began to sob.
“I want to know about my father,” Edward continued, “not the sap you were married to, but my real father. I want to know exactly what happened that night.”
“You already know, you read my private letter. Someone as sick as you must have heard of heard of the serial killer Jason Jacks. You must have been so proud to discover he was your father.”
“You bet I was, Mother, it explained so much. But I want to know why he targeted you and Edward. What was so special about you two? And of all the couples he killed, why was your story kept out the press? There’s no record of his final break-in anywhere.”
“Someone as bright as you should be able to work it out. All the details about Jason Jacks were kept out the press for as long as possible, as with all extreme cases like that. By the time it came to light, it turned out I was pregnant. The police did everything in their power to protect my anonymity as the sole survivor of a serial killer. And the anonymity of my unborn child.”
“How touching,” Edward sneered. “But you still haven’t answered my question. I want to know exactly what happened the night I was conceived. And why the hell did he choose you and your drippy husband?”
“Because we were in love!” she all but shouted at her son. “I loved Edward so much. He was my life, my heart, my everything. Jason Jacks was a sick man that wanted to take that love and destroy it. He was a wedding photographer, but you know this. Edward and I hired him for our wedding. I guess he saw something between me and Edward, something strong. It was something he wanted. And then he wanted to kill it.”
Her voice broke off into sobs and Edward regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, scratching his chin.
“Tell me what games he played with you, Mother.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you.” He took a swing at her, slapping her hard across the face again. “Tell me about the games he played with you. I’ll kill you if you don’t. But first I’ll go on a killing spree and drop human corpses at your feet until you tell me.”
Jazmine slowly lifted her head to meet his gaze. Something in Edward’s eyes must have told her that he wasn’t messing around, for in a haltering voice choked with tears, she began to speak:
“He raped me while my husband watched. He played his sick, twisted little games. Pathetic, juvenile games. He gave Edward the choice… He, he…”
“He what, Mother?”
“He said that if Edward didn’t flay Linda, then he would rape me. He tried to flay her back with the kitchen knife, he really did. But he couldn’t. Edward was a good man, a kind, good man.”
“I didn’t know there were others there. I thought it was just you and Edward. I thought Dad just worked on couples.”
“Normally he did. But his final home invasion got messy. There was this girl there called Linda and her boyfriend Boris. Linda had gone to school with Edward and they had been childhood sweethearts. She was still madly in love with him, even after all those years. I guess your sick, twisted cunt of a father thought it would be fun to include her in the game.”
“Don’t you ever talk about my father like that, you bitch. His mind is too complex for a simpleton like you to understand. Now, I want to know the full names of the people that were with you that night. I want to know everything about them. You’d better start talking, Mother…”
The screen suddenly went black. Hazel had been so engrossed in the conversation unfolding on the laptop that she flinched and let out a small scream. She heard the door open behind her, and suddenly there Edward was, light spilling out all around him like he was the angel of death.
Hazel was so shocked, she pissed herself. Hot urine burnt rivulets down her leg, completing her humiliation.
“Keep away from me!” she screamed in a cracking voice.
“The rest is a bit tedious. It needs a good edit,” he said, as he descended the stairs.
Hazel scrambled to her feet from the awkward, crouching position she had been in. Helplessly s
he watched his approach, pressing her back against the wall and hugging her goose-bumped arms to her chest.
Oh God, I don’t think I can take anymore…
“I would have been embarrassed if you’d seen the rest of that conversation in its un-edited state. Mum does drip on rather. I have plans to superimpose bits of that conversation over other images and stuff. Anyway, after a bit of gentle persuasion I managed to get the information I needed for the final chapter of my documentary.”
Hazel wasn’t cold, but she couldn’t stop shivering. His words didn’t make any real sense, and she knew for a fact that she didn’t want to understand. All she wanted was for this whole nightmare to stop.
“You and me, baby. We’re going to avenge my dad’s death.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Hazel didn’t think her nightmare could get any worse. She was wrong.
After he had ‘escorted’ her up the basement stairs with a knife pressed into her lower back, Hazel found herself in a spacious and bright hallway. Even though there were no windows, it was obviously daylight now. They passed an open door that lead into a living room and that was also clean and bright. She glimpsed more pine flooring and white-washed walls; décor that was deeply incongruous with the man that had kidnapped her. She expected to see mould and damp. Something rotten, just like him.
“Don’t scream,” he said when they reached the foot of the stairs that led to the second floor.
The knife dug through the flimsy material of the sundress; a warning to obey. He needn’t have worried, Hazel was too shellshocked to attempt any heroics.
Together, they climbed the stairs. Again, Hazel was struck by the beauty of the home, the pine fresh scent emanating from the gleaming stairs and the clean, white walls.
