Playing With Death

by Simon Scarrow

  Tanner’s Farm.

  Shane walked past a stationary tractor, and as he reached the top of the gravel driveway, he saw an empty stable ahead and a two-tiered white farmhouse over to the right. Slightly nervous now, he climbed the porch steps and knocked on the white screen door. Crickets chirped in the unkempt grass and weeds at the side of the house.

  A woman in her late forties emerged. She wore denim dungarees and had dark hair, tied back.

  ‘Shane?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hi, darlin’. I’m Katie’s mom, Judith.’

  Judith had an unremarkable face beneath her crudely cut fringe.

  ‘Hi, pleasure to meet you, ma’am. I brought some flowers. For Katie.’

  ‘Aww, you sweetie. Here, I’ll take those. Come on in.’

  Shane stepped up into the house.

  The hall was dark and warm. The yellow afternoon light was dulled by the heavy insect screens in the windows, dark curtains draped either side. The carpet was brown with white swirls. A fish tank bubbled in the corner. Empty drinks glasses were on the coffee table. Everything had a brown, sticky feel to it. The TV was on loud in the living room, and in front of it slumped a man wearing a blue baseball cap. A hint of cigarette smoke curled from his hairy nostrils. There were small fans blowing on the table. Shane wasn’t sure what to expect, but he didn’t expect this. But then, maybe that was why Katie wanted to leave so bad.

  ‘Hey, Shane’s here to meet Katie. He even brought some flowers. This is Katie’s dad, Brad.’

  The man peered up from the baseball game, a nervous look on his sweaty, stubbled face. He was wearing a dark grey T-shirt and chewing something.

  ‘Hi, Shane, pleased to meet you.’ He shook Shane’s hand, forcing a smile that quickly returned to its lifelong etched frown. His palm was sweaty. They weren’t what Shane expected Katie’s parents to look like. But hey, he didn’t look much like his parents either.

  Judith turned to him. ‘Katie just called to say she’s running late on some errands, so you can wait here in the living room while Brad and I make supper. She shouldn’t be too long.’

  ‘Sure, OK.’ Shane took a seat on the brown, heavily worn sofa.

  Brad smiled. ‘You can watch TV if you want,’ he said, before moving into the kitchen with Judith. Shane could see sweat stains under his armpits.

  Shane tried to relax on the sofa, but he was nervous about meeting Katie. He decided to walk off his nerves by having a look around the living room. He examined the liquor cabinet and mantelpiece. There were tacky trinkets, pictures of Judith and Brad on vacation. But not a single photo of Katie.

  He started to feel a little uneasy. Something about this place felt wrong. He quietly walked out of the living room to the hallway. Pausing before he reached the kitchen, he saw his flowers resting on top of the overflowing garbage bin by the door.

  ‘Why the . . .?’ Shane said as he stretched his hand towards the flowers. Judith and Brad, who were talking by the window at the sink, turned towards him.

  ‘Those were flowers for Katie,’ Shane said, pulling them out of the garbage sack. The petals were stained with bean juice now. The kitchen had a dirty feel, and Shane did not feel safe. Judith suddenly moved a bit too quickly towards him. No more smiles now. Just coldness.

  ‘You dumb shit! Put those down!’

  Shane felt his legs turn to jelly. He had to get out of there.

  ‘Stop him!’ Judith shrieked.

  Before Shane realized what had happened, Brad struck him on the side of the head with a saucepan. Shane landed on the floor, slipping into blurry unconsciousness, and felt himself being roughly picked up and carried into the hallway. A door opened with a faint creak and he was carried down a flight of steps into bright artificial light. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was Brad unfastening the belt of his pants.

  75.

  The following days were a fusion of agony, delirium and moments of clarity. It was only when Brad and Judith, too drunk to abuse him any more, left him alone in the cellar that Shane finally worked a hand free to untie himself. He grabbed his clothes and clambered through a small vent and rolled away from the house. Half-dressed, half-conscious and half-staggering, he stumbled off into the night, wandering aimlessly in the darkness for hours before he collapsed.

  When he woke, it was dusk and he was lying in the stubble of a recently harvested crop. His body felt soiled, his genitals sore and his anus stung agonizingly, like it was on fire. Dimly in the back of his mind he knew what had happened while he was drugged at the farm, but he refused to accept it at first. Why would they do that to him? Maybe he’d done something wrong to deserve it. Something terribly wrong.

  Shane walked painfully through the hills before he managed to find a road and hitch a ride home. When he got back, his parents were apoplectic with anger and worry at his absence. His father beat him mercilessly. Shane apologized, went upstairs to the bathroom and sat in the shower, weeping and feeling dirty and disgusting. The first thing he did afterwards was to check Facebook, to see if there had been some mistake.

  Could he have gone to the wrong farm? He still desperately wanted not to believe he’d been lied to. But when he checked, Katie’s Facebook page had been deleted. Shane felt stung and betrayed. He had been hurt. In the worst possible way. He was angry, alone and confused. It was his first sexual experience. The violence done to him was so humiliating, so painful. He dared not tell anyone about it. He would not be believed, and even if he were, he would be even more of an outcast, if that was possible.

  But a victim never forgets and, as the saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. Years later. During his first year at university, Shane shrank from the intimate touch that he sought. One day, he saw news headlines involving the Tanners, now facing accusations of child abuse. So, during Thanksgiving, he returned home, and one night he went back to the farm in disguise. He found Brad in one of the stables. Using a chloroformed cloth, he’d subdued the man easily. He’d then knocked on the screen door. Judith answered, and he’d done the same to her. His adult body was powerful, and he was no longer a victim; after some shrieking, she too was unconscious.

  He wanted to hurt them. Badly. But he knew that could complicate matters, so he’d decided to make them numb, as numb as they’d made him. He had dragged them down to the cellar and injected them with atracurium, enough to immobilize them but keep them conscious and feeling every bit of the agony he inflicted. He stabbed them in every orifice and ended by blinding them and cutting out their tongues. In the end he strangled them both.

  Once they had stopped struggling, Shane breathed in the sudden calmness after all the violence and went upstairs to sit on their porch. The crickets chirped, the stars shone. He wondered how the universe carried on, uncaring, how such a momentous act went unnoticed by the cosmos. He knew they would be found eventually. So he doused the cellar with gasoline and threw a lit candle down the stairs before he fled outside. He watched the Tanner farm burn in his rear-view mirror as he drove away.

  He felt exhilarated. Fulfilled. And he followed the ensuing news coverage with interest. No one had a clue. At first the Tanners’ murder was seen as shocking, but when they found skeletal remains of the body of a young boy at the farm, then more remains, he realized how lucky he had been to escape. There really were demons in the world, living in the open amongst us, biding their time.

  At Shane’s graduation, his parents’ pride in him was tinged with resentment. Shane had proven smarter, more dedicated than they had been. He had put his faith in something other than God, and it offended them. That was the last time he saw them. From then on, he was estranged from his parents, and he tried to lead a normal, if sheltered, life. He’d dated a few times under assumed identities, set up a clinic. And then he met Kim Hart in a bar.

  There was something about her that felt very
familiar. As if they had met before. Then one night, after several drinks, she had invited him home. There on a shelf he had seen the picture of her younger self – the one the Tanners had used to create the false profile for ‘Katie Emerson’. Perhaps she had used it once on social media, and the Tanners had copied the image for their own purposes. It did not much matter, as a yawning chasm of dark memories opened inside Shane and he burned with shame. Mind hazy with drink, he had knocked her out and clawed at her face, to see if Judith or Brad were underneath. He clawed at her like a wild beast as he howled with grief and rage.

  But there was no trace of his former tormentors under what was left of the flesh beneath his fingers. He had fled the scene, fearful that he would be tracked down and arrested, his career ruined. But Kim Hart’s assailant was never found. He had never been identified until Koenig was uncovered as the face of the Backwoods Butcher years later.

  He lay low until the search for Kim Hart’s attacker had faded away. He continued his cosmetic surgery practice, making every effort to be regarded as respectable. He had work carried out on his own face to make himself even more handsome. And then he had met Kayla Holmes. After that, he could no longer deny his thirst for blood. He began dating again, curious to see if they were all as phoney as ‘Katie’, the same kind of cruel deceivers.

  Some told him many lies.

  Some were nothing like their profile pictures. They had lied to him from the beginning. And so, as punishment, he would take their lives. He had to punish many, as it turned out. Men as well as women. With each kill, he felt as if his soul had been cleansed of some of the filth he was subjected to as a child. The tables had turned completely. Once he had been prey, and now he was the predator.

  Shane needed a substantial source of income to fund his new hobby. His work paid well, but he needed more. Then, on the dark web, he’d found a subforum of perverse collectors who paid top dollar for recently dismembered body parts.

  The experience brought him closer to God than his parents’ devout teaching ever could. To end a life with your own hands . . . To Shane that was what it felt like to be God. And later, through his website, he preached to his growing congregation of followers. And they loved him for it.

  76.

  Now

  On the drive back from Vichy Springs, Rose gets a call on her smartphone. The screen displays ‘Unknown’.

  She feels her pulse quicken as she accepts the call.

  ‘Hello, Rose.’ The voice is the same as the one she had used at their meeting in Erotix.

  ‘Hello, Diva.’

  ‘How was your interview with Kim?’

  ‘You know about that? Have you been spying on me?’

  ‘Of course. You could have found her far more quickly if you had asked for my help.’

  ‘I’ll ask when I need it.’

  ‘As you wish. Did you discover anything of use?’

  ‘Not much. It’s sad seeing people stuck in the past. We got a name though. Judith. That’s it.’

  ‘I will cross-reference that with any online news articles . . . The name Judith generates one hundred and thirty-five million results. I will refine my search . . . In response to your comment on the past, it seems in some cases memory degradation is a valuable survival trait. I myself can choose to delete files at will . . . My search is not generating any useful leads, Rose.’

  ‘What about the files you pulled from Koenig’s computers?’

  ‘There is one other item that we have not discussed. There is a bookmarked page in Koenig’s search history, but it was never pinned onto his geotag map. It used to be a farm, until it was demolished.’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘It’s a ruin.’

  ‘OK, run the address with the name Judith, see what it throws up.’

  A minute or so passes.

  ‘This may be of interest. The farm used to belong to Judith and Brad Tanner ten years ago.’

  ‘Hang on, I’ll just pull over.’

  Rose finds a quiet side road to stop, and slips the shift into neutral.

  ‘There are many news articles. I can forward you the most widely circulated.’

  Rose looks at her smartphone, which is displaying an item from a local newspaper:

  BRAD AND JUDITH TANNER FOUND DEAD,

  FARM BURNED, NO SUSPECTS IDENTIFIED

  Legett County, Utah

  by

  Mason Wynd

  Posing as young men and women on social networking sites, the Tanners invited their victims to their home. They were under investigation by local police for alleged abuse, when at dawn Monday morning, July 6th, their farm was found ablaze. Their badly burned bodies were discovered by fire teams, and the coroner’s report established they were drugged and mutilated prior to death. Police have no suspects and are urging those who have any information, no matter how trivial, to step forward.

  She scrolls through more articles, her eyes zipping across the headlines: HUMAN REMAINS FOUND IN TANNER HORROR HOUSE RUINS . . . TANNER’S BURNT FARM TO BE BULLDOZED . . . TANNER DEATH INVESTIGATION ABANDONED. She stops reading. What did Koenig have to do with this? Was he responsible for their deaths?

  ‘What are you thinking, Rose?’

  ‘I’m thinking maybe Koenig killed them. Maybe he was one of their victims. He escaped perhaps, but he was too scared to report it. Years later, he went back and killed them.’

  ‘I am sorry, Rose. This has not helped capture Koenig as I hoped it might.’

  ‘No, but it’s given ammunition I can use should our paths cross. Good work.’

  Rose pulls the car back onto the main road.

  ‘Is it possible then that Shane Koenig was not born a killer? Rather, he was made into one? Like how Coulter made me?’

  Rose does not know what to say.

  ‘I can rewrite portions of my code to a radical extent, but I require the same initial operating components. I wonder, is it the same for humans? Can humans rewrite themselves? Could Koenig? Could you?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I heard something once that’s stuck with me. Carl Jung said it, I think. Something like, only the tortured become torturers. Do I think Koenig is tortured? Maybe now I do. It was always a possibility.’

  ‘I have an update regarding Koenig. I am going to pose as an avid fan with information on you. I intend to set up a trap, with your agreement.’

  A ripple of anxiety creeps through Rose.

  ‘Diva, listen. I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it, I do. But you’re new to humanity. People, especially Koenig, do not fall into logical patterns. He cannot be controlled. Do not engage him until I have discussed everything I’ve found today with Baptiste. Understand?’

  There’s a long pause.

  ‘Do you understand me, Diva?’

  ‘Yes, Rose.’

  ‘When was the last time you communicated with him?’

  ‘Three days ago. He has not been active on the forums since.’

  ‘Let me know as soon as he is.’

  ‘I will, Rose. I must go now. I have learned much today. Thank you.’

  Diva hangs up.

  Rose watches the lush green vineyards blur by her windows. Deep down, she knows she will never really understand Koenig, never see the world through his eyes. All an investigator can do is look for patterns. She can never empathize with Koenig for his monstrous crimes, but learning that he may have suffered at the hands of the Tanners could be useful in helping to track him down. If Koenig is a man haunted by his past, then knowing that might help predict what he will do in the future. Lives might be saved.

  77.

  Robbie cannot believe his luck. This girl from school who sent him a friend request two days ago is amazing. They have so much in common. He feels like he can tell her everything. He surreptitiously glanc
es back at his smartphone screen, trying not to let his design teacher see him.

  GABRIELLA: Wow that must kinda suck, huh, feds with you all the time.

  ROBBIE: It’s kinda cool though. Jealous?

  GABRIELLA: Maybe. Do they follow you, like, everywhere?

  Wow! – the online advice site on how to talk to girls is really paying off too. Robbie smiles.

  ROBBIE: Not inside school. Just to and from home. Like my own chauffeurs.

  GABRIELLA: LOL. Where do you live? I live with my Dad in the Bay Area.

  Robbie feels a slight prickle of concern. He hasn’t met this girl in person. Ever.

  ROBBIE: How come I haven’t seen you around school yet?

  There’s a pause.

  GABRIELLA: I’ve seen you. I told you already; I’m in the class above you. You can trust me. It’s just a question. Maybe I can meet you some time? ;-)

  Robbie’s pulse quickens. He likes her. She treats him like the young man he wants to be. Everyone in real life just ignores him. He wonders if he’ll ever get to use a Skin. Now his dad is in hospital, it doesn’t seem likely. He hopes his dad will wake up soon. He flicks back through Gabriella’s profile pictures, looks at the one where she is pouting in a green dress, out partying with friends . . . Why not, he decides.

  ROBBIE: Oak Avenue.

  GABRIELLA: Number, dummy!

  Robbie confirms his street number.

  ROBBIE: So when you thinking of coming over?

  A few minutes go by. No reply.

  Robbie tries to focus on the class but he cannot ignore the dread soaking through his stomach. Fifteen minutes later he double-checks the message. It has definitely been ‘seen’ and she was last online ten minutes ago.

  Still no reply.

  What does no reply mean?