The Murderer: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by Paul Smith

  There was a knock at the door and the guard that took my id was standing there. “May I come in?” he asked, but walked right in without bothering to wait for a response. He pulled the wooden chair over in front of me and sat down.

  “Where is your husband?” he asked, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. He was uncomfortably close – in my space, as they say. I figured this was some kind of control tactic, so I chose to ignore it. In fact, I decided to lean forward, also. My face was about five inches from his.

  “In Jim’s house asleep,” I lied, not blinking an eye and holding eye contact with him.

  “No, he’s not,” he replied.

  “Well, that’s where I left him,” I said. I noticed his eyes were a cold gray color. He had taken his hat off, and he had a short military-style haircut. His hair was salt and pepper gray. I guessed his age to be about fifty years old.

  “Tell me where he is,” he ordered.

  This time, I was able to answer truthfully, “I have no idea.”

  He stared at me for a moment. Then leaned back.

  “Just so you know, your car will be discovered in a few hours, wrecked off a farm-to-market road. It was totaled, I’m sorry to say. It looks like you both wandered away from the accident. They’ll find your body in the woods nearby in a few days.”

  So they were going to kill me. I didn’t take my eyes of his face. “Brent is going to be really angry that you did something to his car.”

  He laughed. “I would be, too.”

  There was a knock at the door. It swung open and a younger man handed a folded note to the guard. He took it and the door closed. He then opened the note, smiled, and turned to me.

  “It looks like they’ll find your husband with you.”

  He was bluffing and I knew it. If Brent were dead, I would know it. Somehow or other I would know it. My sarcastic side took over.

  “Well, that’s nice. We’ll be together again.”

  The guard smiled at me. “So tell me, is there anything you would like to know?”

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “You are in the guard house of the Dogwood Estates Gated Community.”

  “This is no gated community. Where am I?” I responded.

  “Oh, I see. You are in the Experimental Massive Mind Control Campus, funded entirely by grant money from Homeland Security and run by some of the most brilliant minds in academia.”

  Dark minds is more like it, I thought. At least I was right about one thing: this was not your average gated community. I started to ask more questions, and he answered them quite openly.

  It turned out that Dogwood Estates was built from the ground up to provide a controlled environment to study how effectively people’s thoughts, and, as a result, their reactions could be controlled. Their original goal was a lofty one: in the case of a national disaster, a system could be put into place that would make crowd control much easier. Its creators reasoned that if they could enforce curfews and rules without facing questions or rebellion, they could keep people safe.

  The residents had been practically handpicked. The NSA compiled a list of people who met the academics’ requirements for ideal test cases. From there, special advertising was targeted at them. The idea that only a handful of people were being invited to move in appealed to the targets pride. When they came in for a tour and a sales talk, their meal and drinks had been drugged in such a way to make them quite susceptible to the sales pitch. In short, once the NSA had picked them out they were destined to be here.

  To my surprise, it turned out that after they had decided to buy a lot in Dogwood Estates, drugs played only a minor role in the mind control process. The altering of the residents thought patterns and actions was primarily accomplished at a massive level using various combinations of electromagnetic frequencies. The researchers behind the technology had practically developed a remote control for human behavior. The people in this community had been modified to accept rules without question, such as the gates locking to keep residents in after a certain time, or the strictly enforced curfew. This was actually the latest first second level of mind control that they had achieved during this project.

  It had a semi-permanent effect. As long as the residents were not outside of the confines for more than 96 hours, the effects lasted at full strength. From 96 hours to a week the effects experienced a steady decline. However, as soon as the individual was once again brought within the compound and exposed to the electromagnetic waves, the effects were activated again. For both those exposed for the first time, and those that had been exposed before, it took a full twenty-four hours for the modification to take place.

  One of the key aspects of the program was to keep the residents wanting to come home at night, and discouraging them from wanting to go on trips or vacations. Again, this attitudes could all be set via the electromagnetic waves. They were now working to see if they could successfully keep the residents cut off from their families all together. According to the researchers, the results looked promising. They also controlled when they woke up and when they went to bed. As long as they were in the community, the group could easily be controlled.

  I asked what happened if, say, someone was in a severe accident outside the compound and was in the hospital long enough for the effects to wear off. The guard coughed, and said that they were eliminated from the program. As I pressed him further, he told me that they would be discreetly killed so as to not leak the secrets of this program to the general public and in turn to our enemies.

  The first phase of the program was more old school, but still quite effective: hypnotism and trigger words. When they wanted someone to go to the gates to pick up some hapless visitor caught after the gates closed, someone would either call her or walk by one of the hypnotized residents and say the trigger word. Mary Lee was one of their first to be setup this way. When she heard the trigger word, she would immediately insist that her husband go walking with her to the gates. Fortunately, this command wouldn’t override commons sense: if she were cooking, she would still have enough understanding to take care of the stove or oven and prevent a fire. In short, she would head to the gates as quickly as she could safely manage.

  Everything worked well until Jim became the first resident to develop dementia. It seems that the use of electromagnetic waves for mind control doesn’t work on people with dementia. At one point someone higher up suggested that Jim be killed so that an immediate autopsy could be performed. This order met with great resistance from the employees of Dogwood Estates.

  The guard explained to me that everyone that interacted with the residents of Dogwood Estates were employees of Homeland Security. When the residents initially signed up with Dogwood Estates, they agreed to only use landscaping and repair services provided by Dogwood Estates. That means that all the landscape crews, pool care crews, repairmen, etc. were all employees of the project.

  Since Jim was retired, they were exposed to him quite a bit during the day. Although he had dementia, they found him charming, kind, and thoughtful. In short, they became very attached to him. When they caught wind of management’s plan to eliminate him to study his brain, they made it clear that they didn’t approve. One of the landscape crew managed to get access to one of the scientists in charge of the project and convinced him that Jim was more useful to them alive than dead. They could learn a great deal about the human mind and its ability to be shaped by studying how he reacted differently from everyone else. Jim was spared.

  The guard also explained that Jim’s dementia kept anyone from taking his stories too seriously. They were simply viewed as the delusions of an old man.

  “Why did you put any stock in what Jim said?” the guard asked me.

  “Because my father had dementia, and I helped my mother with his care for several years. I learned through experience that it was a good idea to go ahead and check into what my dad claimed rather than dismiss outright,” was my reply.

  I then asked about the face
less masks. The guard laughed. “That is so the residents won’t know that it was the pool boy that tackled you tonight, on the off chance that someone looked outside.” I didn’t think it was very funny.

  I next asked why there were no children. He said they weren’t studying children yet.

  “What about kids that come to visit?” I asked.

  “We have them trained to discourage visits that last more than one day. We have tracked kids after they have been here a day or two, and didn’t see any serious effects. Our scientists believe that they would require a different frequency of electromagnetic waves. They are actually building a day care in another state to test this theory out, but we aren’t privy to the details.”

  Honestly, my head was spinning at all this information, and probablh from the effects of whatever they had injected in me. I had another question, though.

  “What about visitors?”

  The guard replied, “Most visitors are encouraged by residents to leave well before it’s time to close the gates and start the curfew. However, there are random people like you guys who seem to wander in from time to time. As I mentioned earlier, we have Mary Lee or one of the other residents take them home. This has only happened once before.”

  I remembered what Jim had said about the security guard at the front gate shooting someone. “They were shot, correct?”

  He nodded his head. “If you are wondering if Jim and Mary Lee will miss you, Jim will but Mary Lee will be convinced that you left this morning. We’ll send in a clean-up crew to gather up your belongings. She will be about to wake up when they get through. One of them will hypnotize Mary. Jim is usually out walking this time, so it will be easy to clean up.” He looked rather pleased. I was disgusted.

  Chapter 6

  Someone knocked on the door again, and the same young man handed the guard a sheet of paper. As the door closed, he read it and cursed. Angrily he wadded it up.

  “So your husband is a news anchor for a small station in another state?” he asked.

  I smiled back at him. Maybe this meant that Brent had escaped!

  “This is going to require a massive cover up. I’m afraid that we can’t wait until later to eliminate you.” He reached for his holster.

  There was a loud sound outside, like a shotgun blast. I heard running and footsteps, then the door swung open. The first thing I saw was the muzzle of a double-barrel shotgun.

  “She’s coming with me,” said the voice. I recognized it immediately: Jim had come to my rescue! “Take his gun, Missy. Check his boot for an extra.” I retrieved both. “Now come with me.” As I stepped out, he locked the door and shoved a chair under the handle for good measure.

  I followed him out of the guardhouse. Along the wall were five men in dark uniforms who did nothing to stop Jim. I gathered they were the employees of the compound, rather than the guards. Stepping out in to the darkness, I found myself almost blinded by the security lights shining on the gate. I had both guns in my hands, and Jim pulled me along to the closed gate.

  “Hope on the hood of this car and crawl over. I’ll cover you from here,” ordered Jim.

  “What about you?” I asked as I grabbed hold of the bars at the top of the gate.

  “I’d rather die at this front gate than see my wife and friends manipulated into staying in this evil place another day.”

  A gun shot rang out, but it wasn’t the shotgun. I hit the hard ground after the shot rang out, and I didn’t look back. I had the feeling that Jim had just died for what he believed in, and I needed to make a run for it. My track training was serving me well until I heard the sound of a dog.

  They were tracking me with a dog! I spent many weeks in a wooded area like this when I was a child visiting my grandparents. I used to play a game with my cousins were we would see how far across the woods we could go without touching the ground. I was a bit older, and not quite so agile, but at the same time I was much, much stronger. The dogs might be able to track me, but they couldn’t climb trees. It would be risky for the guards to be firing off their guns outside the compound without have something definite to aim at.

  I prayed and hustled. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of the road. I knew it was probably one of those back roads, but morning was dawning soon and maybe someone would be heading for work. I moved as fast as I could, and it seemed I was high enough in the trees for the dogs to be at least confused. I got near the end of the tree line, jumped down, and ran straight into the road. I could hear a car coming closer, so I stood in the middle of the road with my arms out. An old pickup truck came speeding around the curve. I could hear the dogs getting closer. The driver of the truck saw me and set down on his horn as he hit the brakes. Struggling to maintain control of the truck, I held my ground. As he came to a stop in front of me, I grabbed the passenger door (which was unlocked) and hopped in.

  “You’ve got to help me!” I told the startled teenage boy at the wheel. “They’re trying to kill me!”

  He stomped the gas and we flew down the road. When I looked back, one of the guards was in the road with a large German Shepherd on a leash, both of them staring after us.

  The young man, who I later learned was named Steve, had been heading to work when he saw me in the road. He took me straight to the sheriff’s office. I was a sight: my arms, hands, and face scratched to pieces, some pieces of bandage hanging from my scraped up arms, my hair disheveled, and mud caking my jeans up to my knees. The woman at the front desk simply said, “Oh my!” and called for the sheriff. She then pointed me toward the television. There was my brave husband, as big as life and not looking much better than me, being interviewed by one of the investigative reporters at his station. I noticed that this was a taped interview, and was being shown on the international news. He didn’t have all the information yet, but he was able to testify that we had been held against our will in Dogwood Estates.

  The sheriff walked in and handed me a cordless phone. One the other end was Brent. As soon as I heard his voice, I broke into tears. I couldn’t’ even talk. The sheriff took the phone and was informing him that I was safe and they had already called for an ambulance to pick me up. He would escort me personally to the hospital.

  Just as he finished that sentence, we heard a horrible explosion. Never in my life had I ever heard anything like it, and when it sounded, my second sense told me that it was the sound of death. It actually moved the floor of the sheriff’s office. The sheriff got off the phone, handed the young boy a rifle from the locked gun case, and told him to protect me with his life.

  I think I passed out. I awoke in a hospital room with Brent by my side, holding me hand. We were together again. “Did Jim make it?” I asked him. He looked down and slowly shook his head. “The explosion?” I asked. He nodded yes.

  Of course, I knew that Jim was dead before the explosion. He died to save my life, and his neighbor’s freedom. According to official reports, the explosion was caused by a severe natural gas leak beneath the cities. While they were doing some work on pipes beneath the ground, the released a large pocket of the gas which exploded a piece of the equipment sparked. Brent and I both know that the people involved were simply destroying evidence before Brent was able to publish the truth.

  Right now Brent and I are in another state, far away from this scene of this heartache. He is writing the story of what happened, based on what was told to me. A publisher has already picked it up to be published as a book. Brent and I are determined to do our best to make sure this never happens in out country again.

  Epilogue

  It’s been about 10 months now. We have a precious baby boy we have named Jim, our first born. I just saw some really impressive advertisements for a nearby preschool that has a two year waiting list. It was odd that none of my friends in this area had heard of it. Anyhow, I’m going to start filling out the paperwork today.

  “ The End”

  riller with a shocking twist