by Abbie Roads
Their faces were wet from tears, or maybe sweat—didn’t really matter—and splotchy red and pale. The child grunted.
“Do you want to sing along?” He used a soft tone, the same as he would if he were cajoling a whipped dog. “I will let you, but you must sing it properly. No mistakes.”
More tears slicked the girl’s face and dripped on the drop cloth underneath her. A bubble of snot blew from her nostril and hovered there waiting to pop. She shrank from him. The female seal-humped herself up and over the girl as if to hide the child beneath her body.
Oh well. He wouldn’t allow them to destroy the pure freedom of this moment. He turned back to his task, losing himself in his song once more.
Save pomegranate seeds
as payment for the ferryman,
Offer red, red wine
as payment to the bar man.
Carve some red, red meat
as food for the hungry man.
Show some courage, young man,
Find your calling, young man.
And then the wall was done, the completion of it sneaking up on him like a surprise party. He stepped off the ladder, moved it to the side to have an unobstructed view, and then unzipped his painter’s coveralls and let them slide down his body.
The cool air whispered over his naked flesh like an endearment, the sensation wonderful after the confines of the material. His head fell back on his shoulders, and he stood there absorbing and savoring. Everything from this moment to his finish would be carefully recorded in his memory. No matter what happened, no one could erase his memories. They were his alone—safe and untouchable—to be lovingly replayed until his death.
The female sobbed, deep throaty sounds similar to gagging. He faced the ones on the floor and used a gentle voice. “I do understand this is distressing for you, but I”—he dropped his tone a couple of octaves to show his seriousness—“Need. Complete. Silence.” He took his time, meeting and holding each one of their gazes before he continued. “I need to rest now.”
Only when they all quieted did he sit on the couch he had moved to face the wall. The material he’d spread over the cushions—couldn’t risk leaving DNA when he left—scratched against his ass and testicles, but that couldn’t be helped. He lay back and stretched out, waiting for his body to relax.
The blank canvas before him was a beautiful thing. All the potential in the world was right here. A picture waiting to be born.
He emptied his mind of all thoughts and feelings and stared at the wall. He stared, unblinking, until his vision yellowed and then darkened into something that looked akin to an X-ray. He stared until tears watered his cheeks and his eyes burned like hot coals in their sockets. Only then did he catch a flash of what needed to be created—all he needed was a glimpse.
Wings. He saw wings.
He was about to create a masterpiece in blood.
A sense of timelessness came over him as he killed and painted. Painted and killed. He lost himself in his work. Not thinking about anything, just letting his hands wield the brushes, mindless of the image he produced. When the blood in his paint container was nearly gone and an image had been born upon the wall, he came back to himself.
He stepped away from the wall, taking more and more of it in with each footstep until he stood on the other side of the room, taking in the full magnitude.
The color contrast of blood on white was as breathtaking and beautiful as a flock of cardinals against the brilliance of snow. Tears burned his eyes. His face stung, and a wild freedom he’d hadn’t experienced in years surged through him. He recognized the feeling. In this moment he was God. The author of destruction. And creation.
The image he’d painted was so… No words existed to convey the gloriousness. Words were small and meaningless compared to this wall.
On the wall—a man knelt, head bowed, hair falling forward, shielding his face from view. Even in that supplicant’s position, supremacy and authority radiated from him. He looked like the strongest of warriors after a great battle—exhausted, but not weak. No, never weak. There wasn’t an ounce of vulnerability in his sinew, muscle, and bone. Nor was there any delicacy to the lacework of scars marring the skin of his arms. And on his chest, directly over his heart, were two crisscrossed slashes that dripped blood down his torso.
Surrounding him was a magnificent pair of wings. Not the kind you’d see on a sparrow or even on a chubby cupid, but the kind of wings that conveyed power and strength and utter indestructibility.
He loved the picture as he loved himself.
An incandescent flash and Cain returned to reality, to the stench of decomposing blood smeared over his face.
His brain recategorized everything that he’d just seen and done into the it-wasn’t-really-me file. But that didn’t take the feelings away. The awe spreading through his chest at what he’d seen. The guilt sinking into his gut because he’d had no remorse.
A dull thumping started behind his eyes. Usually when he did his blood work, he was there for only a few seconds before skipping on to the next images and the next. Those flashes gave him a migraine every time, but seeing entire scenes like this… The migraine was gonna be a badass bitch today. He had maybe ten minutes before the pain ratcheted up to the level of ax-buried-in-his-brain.
Mac handed him a black towel—black disguised the blood better than any other color.
“You back?” Mac knelt next to him, his face full of concern, but Cain could see the concealed disgust in the way Mac’s mouth turned down at the corners, like he was fighting an outright grimace.
That look—especially when it was aimed at him—always took him back to the moment Mac had found him. Cain had been covered in snot and blood and shame. He had to give it to Mac. The guy had tried to hide his horror, tried to pretend Cain was just a kid, when he’d never been a kid. He’d been more monster than anything else.
Cain scrubbed the material over his face, his arms, wiped his hands. The blood on his body—so thick and dry it smeared into his skin—would only come off after a good scouring down in a scalding shower.
He turned his attention to the image on the wall. But…there was no image. Instead, the wall had been painted gold, perfectly coordinated with the rest of the room. Mac must’ve called him back from his vision before the killer covered up his work with the paint.
Holy.
Fucking.
Christ.
Cain’s legs wobbled when he stood. His hand shook like an alcoholic in need of his jolly juice, but he pointed at the wall. “He painted a picture.” His brain bashed against the backs of his eyeballs. He wanted to press his hands to his eyes to keep them from exploding out of their sockets, but his hands were smeared with the family’s blood. The pain was only beginning.
“I-I don’t know what you mean.” Mac’s tone was full of question.
“He painted the wall white—made a blank canvas. Then he created a portrait, using the family’s blood, of some guy…” Cain closed his eyes, seeing on the back of his lids the scars lined up and down the man’s arms, the slashes over his heart, just like the ones on his—
“Fuck!” His lids popped open. His gaze automatically sought the wall, hoping to see the actual image again, but gold paint pulsed in his vision from the thumping inside his head. He held his arms out in front of him. Underneath the thin coating of blood on his skin, a network of white slashes ran from his wrists to his shoulders.
The wounds had healed decades ago, but the scars still remained. He pulled his shirt up high and looked down at his chest stained with drying blood. A thick, white crisscrossed scar rested over his heart—cut into his flesh by his father. Every scar on his body, placed there by his father.
“What is it?” Mac’s tone was full of question, mixed with a bit of suspicion. “You’ve got to talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Cain’s h
eart galloped up and down his rib cage, but he forced himself to speak slowly and quietly—in deference to the ax beating against his skull. He told Mac everything he’d seen and everything he remembered about the artwork in blood. “It’s there. You can’t see it, but it’s there. I’m there. Underneath that gold paint.”
It took a lot to catch Mac off guard, but score one for Cain—he’d just done it.
Mac’s mouth was slightly open, lips twitching like they were trying to form words, until one finally spilled out. “Infrared.” The word came out soft and hesitant. “We might be able to see the image using infrared photography.” Things went quiet for a moment while Mac stared at the perfectly painted gold wall. “Why paint you? Why not paint Killion? I mean, people are obsessed with you both, but why choose you over him? And this guy made it clear it was you he painted. Without those scars, we would’ve thought it was Killion.”
Yes. Cain was cursed with looking too much like his father—like one of the world’s most horrendous killers. It usually took a double take and some head-scratching before people realized he wasn’t Killer Killion.
Mac shook his head. “But then our guy covered up what he’d painted. Probably thinking we’d never know the image was there.”
“He even fucking signed it.” Cain didn’t realize until the words exited his mouth that he had seen a signature.
“He put his name on it?”
“Not his name. A symbol.” Cain wiped his hands harder on the towel, then dropped it on the floor. He yanked his cell from his back pocket and tapped on the ArtPad app. The white light from the phone lasered into his skull. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open and not groan out loud. He drew a Christian cross, then put a hook on the bottom of it that looked like an upside-down question mark. “You’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this before.”
He showed the image to Mac and watched the guy’s face turn pink, then tomato with recognition.
“Yeah.” Cain voice was straight as a line. “It’s from my father’s last kill. But he didn’t do this. Not unless Petesville Super Max allows weekend furloughs.”
Mac snorted. “Only way he’s getting out of there is in a body bag.”
Couldn’t happen soon enough. His father was a stain on humanity. “So we know he didn’t do this.”
“But…” Mac’s words disappeared for eight thumps of Cain’s brain. “The girl—Mercy Ledger—made that mark on the wall as she was bleeding out from your father cutting…from her throat being cut. It didn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Didn’t mean anything until today. That symbol was at that scene twenty years ago, and it’s here now.”
Mac shook his head slowly, like an old dog with neck problems. “No one ever questioned her about it. The prints on the wall were hers. Jesus, we need to find Mercy Ledger.”
Mac didn’t say it, but Cain knew how the man’s brain worked. Mac thought Mercy must’ve done this. “She didn’t do this. She’s been locked down in the Center of Balance and Wellness for the past few years.” The words popped out of Cain’s mouth before he censored them. And he really should’ve censored them.
He lifted his arm, pressed his eyes against a clean patch of material near his shoulder, and spoke without looking at Mac. “I…” Yeah. Just what was he going to say? It wasn’t like he could confess that he’d been checking up on Mercy Ledger for the past twenty years. That would make him sound like a damned stalker. And stalking was considered the gateway drug to killing. “Liz told me.” Bold-faced, flat-out, flaming-bright lie. And Mac would know it. The guy was trained to spot a lie at thirty paces. And yet Cain would rather endure the cost of the lie than spend the truth. Call him chickenshit—he would own it. He kept his eyes closed against his shoulder.
“Isn’t that a violation of confidentiality or something?” Mac worded it as a question, but it sounded like a statement. “Liz could lose her nursing license.”
But Liz hadn’t actually told him. He’d guessed. He’d known Liz long before he’d met Mac. In those dark days of childhood, his father had forced Cain to work with him at the Center. Liz had been a night nurse and the only person ever to show kindness to him. Even after his father had been caught, she’d remained a part of Cain’s life—babysitting him when Mac was away for work. She was one of the few people Cain considered a friend and the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother. And now he’d tossed her in front of the bus because he was a pussy.
The quiet closed in around him. His head felt like it was about to burst off his shoulders. His stomach started rolling.
“The Center?” Mac finally broke the quiet. “That’s a horrible irony.”
And it was. That Mercy Ledger had lived the past few years of her life among the same hallways his father had roamed as a janitor was beyond irony. It was downright wrong.
Chapter 2
In a recent online auction, the knife Adam Killion used in the Ledger family murders sold for a record-breaking $2.3 million. The Son of Sam law prohibits convicted felons from profiting from their crimes, but someone just made a fortune.
—J. C. Brown, www.criminalnewsinvestigations.com
Mercy Ledger sat in the therapy circle with eleven other crazies from Ward B. The pungent funk of unwashed bodies and rotting chicken—thanks to Bo Coray and his chicken fetish—hung heavy in the air. The suicidal, homicidal, or just plain psychotic didn’t care about trivial things like hygiene.
Dr. Payne wore his usual attire—three-hundred-dollar shirt, perfectly tailored pants, and shoes so shiny that when he stepped in front of her, she could see her reflection in them. He looked too GQ to be a psychiatrist in this underfunded, overpopulated dump of a mental hospital.
He handed her a sheet of paper. In what had once been bold letters, but now were more in the realm of fuzzy gray from over-photocopying, it read:
GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Practice an attitude of gratitude!
List three things you are grateful for today!
Gratitude? Seriously? After two years on Ward B, there wasn’t a whole lot to be thankful for.
Dr. Payne held out the box of crayons to her. They didn’t trust the residents of Ward B with pens or pencils. Guess no one had ever gotten shanked with a Crayola. “What color are you going to choose?” His words themselves were benign, but each syllable was threaded with judgment.
Her pulse pounded in her veins, her face got hot, and her hand holding the paper began to shake.
The vibe that came off Dr. Payne was something she recognized. Ever since that long, terrible night with Killion, she’d been able to sense people’s bad intentions as if she had an early warning system. It had to do with their energy—it connected with her differently than with most people. But then most people hadn’t survived what she’d survived.
Her mind’s early warning system flashed her snatches of tomorrow’s session with Dr. Payne. If she selected the yellow or orange crayon, he would say she was trying too hard to be cheerful. If she picked red, he would accuse her of having angry or violent thoughts. If she grabbed blue or gray, he’d declare her depressed. If she chose black, he’d claim she wanted to disassociate. Whatever the color, he would make sure she was wrong, forcing her to spend all of tomorrow’s session defending tonight’s color selection. And if she wasn’t successful in her defense, he’d use that as an excuse to have more private sessions with her.
“Mercy. Take a crayon.” Dr. Payne’s voice sounded like a calm ocean, but underneath the surface, hungry sharks swam.
Shit. She grabbed the purple crayon.
“I can stay after group to help you process your reluctance.” His tone was full of fake helpfulness.
“No. I’m sorry. I was just daydreaming.” Great. Now she was going to have to come up with a reason why she’d stared at the damned crayon box so long without choosing one. It wasn’t like she could tell him the truth�
�that she knew what he wanted and had been trying to outthink him. The level of control he had over her life scared her nearly as much as Killion had all those years ago.
He moved on to Bo, handing him the paper and giving him a crayon, but she still felt the burden of his gaze on her: watching her, assessing her, looking for an excuse—any excuse—to increase her meds and decrease her ability to think.
She settled her hand over the six-inch ridge of puckered skin scarring her neck. The old injury was always cold, and the heat of her palm soothed something inside her, reassuring her soul that she had already survived the worst of life—and she would survive Ward B and Dr. Payne too.
But she’d better get her hand off her neck before he decided she needed to talk about Killion again. Dr. Payne enjoyed her tragedy too much.
She moved her hand away from her throat, and the scar went cold. She held the purple crayon by the fingers of both hands.
“For tonight’s education group…” Dr. Payne used his Moses-parting-the-seas voice and took the empty seat next to her. He always sat next to her. “…we’re going to talk about happiness and some of the research being conducted in the field of positive psychology. A group of Harvard psychologists have found that happy people have a particular set of habits.”
None of the patients on Ward B gave two shits about happiness. They were all too damned crazy to care about such an elusive term. Now, if this evening’s group had been about how to score smokes, line up conjugal visits, or get extra pudding cups, most of the patients would have been taking notes.
“I’m already happy!” Bo let out a high-pitched little-girl giggle that sounded nine kinds of wrong coming from a three-hundred-pound guy. “I’m Bojangles! See!” He framed his face with his pudgy hands and smiled an open-mouthed, deranged clown smile.
He called himself Bojangles, partly because of his chicken fixation and mostly because the name sounded like a clown’s name, and that’s exactly what Bo thought he was—a clown. That crazy smile and his carrot-colored Afro only solidified the delusion.
