by Amy Cross
“You…” Gorman tried to say, as he made another attempt to get up. “You… are… the most…”
“I’m a lucky man? I know. That final night, though, I knew I was going to lose her, that she was growing up and she wouldn’t be Daddy’s little princess for much longer, so I figured I could indulge the one final fantasy that had always escaped me. Electrocuting her was fun, just nudging her closer and closer to death, and then I made damn sure she was looking right into my eyes as I finished her off. But that wasn’t even the end of it. She was still warm, so I made sure the cameras were still running. Did you ever watch the whole video, Sheriff? Did you see the very last act? I always wondered if the real reason you kept that disc was that you found it kind of hot yourself.”
“Go…” Gorman winced, and then suddenly he looked over Michael’s shoulder, as if he’d spotted something a little way back. “Go… to hell…”
“I knew I couldn’t hide the crime scene completely, so I figured I needed to trick you into going along with me. It wasn’t too hard, given your longstanding determination to protect the people of this town. I shouldn’t have left the disc for you to find, that was a mistake, but I covered it pretty well. I should probably admit that I’m kinda responsible for your hip, though. That hit-and-run was my attempt to shut you up for good, but later I realized there was no harm in having you around. You’d already fallen hook, line and sinker for your own legend.”
Gorman shook his head, before trying and failing to get to his feet. As he fell back down, he let out a gasp of pain.
“I’m going to have to think of a story to explain this latest development,” Michael continued. “I guess I’ll just have to say that you went mad and I was forced to kill you in self-defense. It’s a bit of a tall story, but it’s so bizarre it might actually -”
Suddenly he heard a noise nearby and he paused. Listening for a moment longer, he realized there was a faint clicking sound, as if someone was standing right behind him. He waited for a few seconds, worried that his wife had come home unexpectedly, and finally he turned.
He stared in horror at the sight before him.
Rose was standing in the hallway, wearing the same torn clothes he’d stuffed into the grave when he buried her. Her hair was soaking wet from the rain, and her skin was discolored and – in places – completely missing, while several of the injuries he’d inflicted on her five years ago were still visible: the missing teeth; the burns to her neck; the split fingers with their nails torn off. Most striking, however, was her face, where her nose was completely missing, revealing part of her skull. Her eyes, having partially rotted, were staring straight at him, while a section of her lips had fallen away to reveal part of her lower jaw.
Michael opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.
“I waited,” Rose said after a moment, taking a step toward him. “For five years, in that muddy pit where you buried me, I waited for someone to do the right thing. Finally I realized I couldn’t leave it any longer. The twins are getting to the age where you’re going to start taking an interest in them, and I can’t let that happen.”
“Rose…” Gorman whispered, trying to roll onto his side.
Raising the gun, Michael fired straight at his daughter, hitting her in the shoulder but not even causing her to flinch. He pulled the trigger again, but this time the gun merely clicked. Stepping back, he stared in horror as she edged ever closer.
“I loved you!” he shouted. “That’s all! I loved you too much, Rose!”
“You couldn’t keep your hands off me,” she replied calmly.
“Is it a crime for a man to love his daughter?” he continued, wincing as he clutched his left arm. “Is the…” Gasping, he leaned back against the wall. Sweat was pouring down his face now and he was clearly struggling to breathe. “I loved you too much,” he whimpered. “I wanted to love you in all the ways a man can love his daughter, I wanted to protect you from the rest of the world!”
“Is that why you tortured me for four hours?”
“You liked it!” he shouted, before letting out a grunt of pain and dropping to the floor.
“You taught me to like a lot of things,” Rose replied, staring down at him.
“Rose…” He tried to get to his feet, but the pain was too much and he simply collapsed back against the wall while taking several deep, desperate breaths.
“Goodbye, Daddy,” Rose said finally. “I know where you’re going, and it’s not going to be very nice for you.”
For the next few minutes, she simply watched as Michael gasped for air. As the heart attack overwhelmed him completely, he tried to crawl away, only to collapse and fall still. Rose waited, able to sense his heart still struggling until finally she turned to look over at Sheriff Gorman.
“It’s done,” she said after a moment. “He’s dead.”
Gorman tried to sit up, but he’d lost too much blood and he couldn’t even get a word out. Rolling onto his back, he stared up at her.
“Sometimes,” Rose continued, staring at her dead father, “when something truly evil happens, and when no-one does anything to correct it, other ways are found to put things right. It’s almost as if the natural world broke its own rules, just to make sure that something was able to come and deliver justice. Rats chased and killed cats, beetles rose up from the chests of men, and even the trees themselves tried to grow back underground out of shame. I waited and waited for someone to do the right thing, but finally the laws of nature were broken just a little further and allowed me to come back and do it myself. That’s how evil this man was, and how much the world wanted to put things right.”
“I…” Gorman tried to say. “I’m… I’m sorry…”
“Don’t worry,” Rose continued, walking over to him and looking down at the wounds in his chest. “I need you to do one more thing for me, Sheriff. I think you owe me that much.”
***
Two weeks later, Sheriff Ben Gorman stood in the forest and watched as two of his deputies began to lift Rose Hillard’s corpse from the shallow grave where she’d been buried five years ago.
“This is going to destroy the town,” Karyn said after a moment, standing next to him. “People still had hope that she might be alive.”
“It won’t destroy the town,” Gorman muttered. “People will be shocked, they’ll mourn… But that’s no reason to hide the truth.”
He paused as he saw Rose’s dead face emerging from the mud. She looked exactly as he remembered her from a few weeks earlier, although there was still a part of him that wondered if the whole experience had really happened. Having always been the kind of man who dismissed the idea of ghosts, he was struggling to accept that she could have returned and sought vengeance on the man responsible for her death. Still, she’d told him where to find her body, and he was pretty sure she must have been the anonymous person who called an ambulance. According to the doctor, it was a miracle that he’d survived the shooting, and he felt Rose might have played a part in that too. After all, she needed him alive so he could deliver the truth to the people of Vantage.
“I can’t look,” Karyn said, staring in shock at the body as it was laid on a white sheet, “but I can’t look away either.”
“You and Rose were friends,” Gorman replied.
Karyn nodded, with tears running down her face.
“I used to think the people of this town needed to be protected from the truth about lots of things,” Gorman continued. “I was wrong. This should have…” He paused again. “Well, it’ll all be in my report, whether people believe it or not.”
“There’s something in her shoulder,” Joe called out as he leaned closer to the body. Using a pair of tweezers, he pulled a bullet from Rose’s body. “Boss, this looks like one of ours, but it can’t be. We changed suppliers recently, so how the hell did it end up in her if she’d been buried for five years?”
“That’ll be in my report as well.”
“But -”
“Bag
her up,” he added, staring at Rose’s dead face. “She’ll need to undergo an autopsy before we can release the body to the family.”
“I can’t help thinking about poor Carey,” Joe replied. “First Michael’s heart attack, then this… Do you think maybe we should, you know, keep things under wraps a little? Depending on what the autopsy finds, there’s still no need to let people know what really happened, is there? For her mother’s sake, and for the sake of -”
“No more secrets,” Gorman said firmly. “It’s people trying to protect other people that caused half this mess in the first place. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Carey had her suspicions. I guess she just couldn’t bring herself to recognize what was happening right in front of her.” Turning, he began to limp toward his car.
“Do you really think the people of Vantage can deal with this?” Karyn called after him.
“It’s not our job to hide the truth from people,” he replied. “Our job is to help them deal with it. Besides, the truth always finds a way to get out eventually, even if the laws of nature end up getting broken in the process. The truth breaks through in the end. It’s unstoppable. The world will only stand so much evil.”
Glancing at the nearby trees, he saw that although some were still bent down toward the ground, most were now starting to curl back up toward the sky again, as if the horror had truly passed.
Half an hour later, as he reached his office and sat at the desk, he switched on the computer and began to gather his notes, ready to write up a comprehensive report that would cover every aspect of the disappearance of Rose Hillard. He knew it would make for difficult reading, and he knew that parts of it would make people doubt his sanity, but he no longer felt like picking and choosing which parts of the truth to let people hear. He was simply going to record what happened and let the world judge. If that meant he had to retire early, then so be it. Besides, he wanted to rescue the concept of the ‘truth’ from gutter journalists like Deborah Culstone and their tabloids.
Spotting something under a nearby pile of papers, he pulled out a small envelope and found that it contained the missing disc. With a heavy heart, he slipped it into a bag labeled ‘Evidence’ and placed it next to the computer, ready to submit it once his report was ready.
He paused.
The room was silent.
Finally, he began to type a full report about the disappearance of Rose Hillard, so that the truth could finally be known.
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