by Mark Lukens
Tara didn’t really want more wine right now – she’d had enough last night – but she didn’t want to be rude. And if this news was as bad as it seemed to show on Aunt Katie’s face, then maybe she needed a glass of wine.
Aunt Katie sipped her wine and opened the sliding glass door that looked out onto a small balcony. From the third floor, the buildings of downtown Tampa and a partial view of the bay could be seen. She slid the door closed and locked it. She poured another glass of wine and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t want you to be upset with me for not telling you this sooner.”
Tara stared at her aunt – she looked miserable.
“What is it?” Tara asked. She sat in one of the plush chairs that was wrapped in a gaudy, flowery fabric. She took a sip of her wine from the red plastic cup and waited.
“That scar on your neck, you didn’t get it from a fall. You got it from your half-brother.”
3.
Half-brother?
I have a half-brother?
Aunt Katie continued quickly.
“Your father and mother never told you about Jeremy, your half-brother. They had their reasons. Your father had a child, a boy, with a woman before he met your mother. The woman, her name was Hannah, was a little crazy and your father always swore that she’d gotten pregnant on purpose to try and keep him with her. But the more he got to know her, the crazier she became.”
Aunt Katie sighed and took a big sip of wine. “I’m not trying to make excuses for your father – but that’s the fact. He had a child with another woman. He said he hadn’t planned to stay with Hannah, and he definitely hadn’t planned on having a child with her, but he wasn’t going to turn his back on his son.”
Tara didn’t say anything. She had a million questions racing through her mind, but she just sat there in the chair. Her aunt had always had a flare for the dramatics, not only with her fashion, but with everything in her life. And she knew that her aunt would drag this information out as dramatically as she could.
“Jeremy lived with his mother, but he visited your father every so often. When Jeremy was a baby and up until he was about two years old, everything seemed okay. I’d only met him a few times. I didn’t really visit much … I was always roaming. You know me.”
Her aunt gave Tara a small smile.
Tara nodded. She knew her aunt. She knew how much she used to like to party and live life to the fullest. But she had changed that part of her life in an instant when she had to take Tara in.
“But when Jeremy was older,” Aunt Katie continued, “four and five years old, your dad began to notice some odd things about him. He seemed to have a mean streak in him a mile wide. He was always trying to hurt animals. He was always talking about killing things and people and then giggling about it. And that can be a normal stage that boys go through, but Jeremy never seemed to grow out of it. Your father let Jeremy come over less and less to his house.”
Tara nodded, still clutching the plastic cup of wine in her hand.
“After you were born, your parents were nervous about having Jeremy around, but your father still wanted to make an effort, he still wanted to try and be a part of his life. When you were a year and a half old, Jeremey was over staying the night. I think he was about eight years old at that time. He was over for some kind of holiday. It might have been Thanksgiving or Christmas, I’m not sure. I know it was snowing. Anyway, I was visiting and we all woke up in the middle of the night from your horrible screams. Jeremy had gotten up in the middle of the night and grabbed a kitchen knife and tried to slash your throat.”
Tara stared at her aunt in silence.
Aunt Katie drank down the rest of her wine and then continued quickly. “Your dad ran into your room and pulled Jeremy off of you. He told me later that Jeremy was stronger than he had expected, incredibly strong; like he was possessed. Of course, your mom and dad weren’t really religious people, but he told me later that he saw something in Jeremy’s eyes, a bottomless blackness, an evil that seemed to burn inside of him. Your dad said he’d felt this sudden oppressive force trying to smother him, and it took all of his willpower to keep from killing his own son that evening.”
Tara exhaled. She felt like she’d been holding her breath the whole time.
“Your dad watched Jeremy while your mother and I rushed you to the hospital. Your dad wanted to go, but he was too afraid to leave either one of us alone with Jeremy. He called Hannah and told her to come get her son. He told her he didn’t want to see Jeremy again and he didn’t want him around his family. He told me later that those few hours in the house with Jeremy were some of the scariest moments of his life. Not only was he afraid of Jeremy, he was afraid of what he might do to Jeremy. He said it seemed like there were voices in his mind trying to push him to do something. He said it seemed like the voices were coming from Jeremy.”
Aunt Katie got up and went to the kitchenette and poured another cup of wine.
“Do you need some more wine?”
Tara looked down at her plastic cup. She had barely sipped it; she’d just been holding the cup the whole time her aunt had been talking. She shook her head no.
Aunt Katie went back to the edge of the bed and sat down. Her face had fallen now. She wasn’t smiling anymore, and for the first time to Tara, she looked older, she actually looked her age, like she’d been burdened with a weight all these years. She looked like she was about to cry.
“Your father asked Jeremy why he had tried to hurt you, his own sister. He stared at your father, he had the darkest eyes then, like two black coals. He said that he needed to kill you. He couldn’t let you live. It didn’t make any sense to your father, and after a while he stopped trying to talk to him and just waited for Hanna to pick him up and for the police to get there.
“The police came and talked with your father and with Hannah. They even talked with Jeremy. It would’ve looked bad for your father, but Jeremy admitted to trying to kill you with the knife. He wouldn’t say why he wanted to do it, just that he needed to. They let Jeremy go with his mother and she promised to get some help for him. Later on, your mother and I both made statements to the police.”
Aunt Katie paused for a moment. She looked over at the sliding glass door for a few seconds. The drapes were drawn back and bright sunlight invaded the room.
“Your father was dead to Hannah after that. Hannah blamed him for everything; she was always sticking up for her sweet little Jeremy. She wouldn’t let your father see him or talk to him anymore, but your father didn’t want to see Jeremy anyway, not unless Hannah got him some kind of psychiatric help, which Hannah swore she would never submit her baby to.
“She moved Jeremy out of Ohio. They moved to somewhere in the middle of Indiana. I’m not really sure where exactly. But five years later Jeremy killed his own mother.”
Tara gasped – she hadn’t been ready for that.
“He stabbed her to death with a kitchen knife. He practically decapitated her. From there the state took over. Last I heard, he was going to be placed in a mental institution until he was an adult.”
“So what happened to him?”
“I’m not sure,” Aunt Katie said and shrugged her shoulders. She shook her head. “Hannah had Jeremy’s last name legally changed from Simmons to her own last name – Miller. I’ve tried to inquire about him at hospitals in Indiana, but nobody at the hospitals will talk to me because I’m not family. I don’t know if they released him when he was an adult. I don’t know if he was moved to another hospital in another state. I don’t even know for sure if he was ever released.”
Tara looked away as a chill ran through her body.
“I’m sorry, Tara. Your father made me promise never to tell you about your half-brother. He did it for your protection. After that night he was so scared that Jeremy would hurt you, maybe even kill you. And he never wanted you around him until he was sure it was safe. He had planned on telling you about Jeremy when you turned eighteen, but …”
Aunt Katie let her words trail off and she looked away as she wiped at a tear in her eye.
But they were murdered before I turned eighteen, Tara wanted to finish for her aunt, but she didn’t.
Tara still didn’t say anything at all for a moment. She felt numb. She needed time to process this information.
Then a thought occurred to her. She looked at her aunt. “What if they did let him out of whatever psychiatric hospital he was in when he was eighteen or twenty-one?”
Her aunt didn’t reply. She just stared at Tara like she already knew what Tara had thought of; it was something she’d considered a long time ago, a possibility she’d had to live with all of these years.
“What if he came back for me that night?” Tara said and she could barely get the rest of the words out. She could feel emotions choking her up. “What if he killed my mom and dad to get to me?”
Tara imagined Jeremy knocking on the front door. She imagined her father answering it and seeing his son there. Maybe her father had been shocked or even repulsed by the sight of Jeremy, but maybe he would’ve opened the door for him. That’s why there was no forced entry. No warning.
Aunt Katie was crying now. She got up and hugged Tara fiercely. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
Tara got up and tore herself away from her aunt’s embrace. She shook her head. “Somebody should’ve warned my parents,” she said. “If Jeremy was released from the mental hospital, then somebody should’ve let my parents know.”
Katie nodded as more tears spilled from her eyes. “Yes, baby. But they don’t do that. And your dad wasn’t even considered family anymore.”
But I had been warned, Tara thought. She had felt the fear in her nightmares. She had felt the panic in her night terrors as she ran out of the house that night, away from the evil that was coming to kill her parents.
Tara burst out crying, a gut-wrenching sob as the guilt racked her mind. Why had she run away that night? How come she couldn’t have warned her parents? Why did this half-brother she never even knew she had want to kill her so badly?
Tara fell to her knees and hugged herself as she sobbed. Aunt Katie sank to her knees beside Tara and held her. She wasn’t going to let Tara push her away this time.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Aunt Katie whispered to her. “And don’t you dare blame yourself. You were just a child. That’s all. And you had a night terror; you were still asleep when you ran away. Even if you had woken up and stayed, you couldn’t have done anything about it.”
Tara shook her head back and forth, her mouth open, a breath caught in her throat. For a moment it felt like she couldn’t breathe. The loss of her parents ached her heart all over again like she was suddenly reliving that terrible night.
Oh God, I miss them so much! Why did he take them from me?
4.
A little while later Tara washed her face in the bathroom. She came out and drank another glass of wine, chugging this one down in a few gulps.
Aunt Katie had apologized again about keeping the secret all of these years, but she had made a promise to Tara’s parents. And she told Tara that she wasn’t certain that Jeremy killed her parents; for all she knew, he could still be in a mental institution somewhere in Indiana. Or he could’ve died. Who knew?
But Tara knew. It was like she’d discovered a missing piece of the puzzle that she’d been looking for all these years, and now she saw the whole picture clearly and everything fit together perfectly. Her half-brother, Jeremy, had gotten out of the mental institution and he’d gone right to Ohio looking for her. And she knew that he had the same metal powers that she had, something passed down in her family that had skipped a generation, skipping over her father. But she and her half-brother shared some kind of psychic link and he had used that link to home in on her signal. He had come looking for her, and he killed her parents when he didn’t find her.
After her parents’ death, Tara moved in with her aunt and they moved from place to place, like they were on the run. Tara had never really questioned the constant moving, but it all made sense now. Her aunt believed that Jeremy had been the killer all along. She believed that he would find Tara again, that’s why she kept them on the run. She had sacrificed her life and loves for Tara, to keep her safe, to protect her.
Tara couldn’t be angry at her aunt for too long.
What do I do now?
Tara paced back and forth in front of the two hotel beds and dialed Agent Woods’ number again.
And this time he finally answered his phone.
She assured him that she was okay, and she told him about her aunt’s sudden visit and that she was staying with her in a hotel room by the airport. She gave him the name of the hotel and the room number and waited while he jotted it down.
Just the fact that Tara wasn’t staying in her apartment seemed to make Agent Woods feel better – she swore she could hear it in his voice.
But Tara didn’t tell him about the secret her aunt had just told her. She would wait until she saw him tomorrow. She wasn’t sure if he could get any information out of the mental institutions in Indiana without a warrant. She didn’t have a description of Jeremy and Aunt Katie didn’t have any photos of him when he was little – Aunt Katie hadn’t been a picture-taking kind of aunt when Tara was a child.
After Tara got off the phone, she and Aunt Katie ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was a little pricey, but the food was better than they expected. They each drank another glass of wine and then they went back up to their room.
They talked into the night and Aunt Katie finally fell asleep on one of the double beds.
Tara stretched out on the other bed, lying on her stomach and staring at something on the TV but not really watching it. The drapes were pulled tight and the room was dark except for the flickering light of the TV. The TV’s light didn’t bother Aunt Katie at all, her aunt knew about Tara’s fear of the dark.
Tara had taken out her drawing pad, figuring she might doodle for a bit, but she got frustrated after a little while and gave up. She sort of wished she’d brought along the sketches she’d done in her sleep. Maybe she could see some kind of pattern in them or something. The random words and numbers had to mean something.
After ten more minutes she fell asleep on her stomach with her head laid down on her arms.
5.
Two hours later Tara sat at the foot of the bed with the drawing tablet in her lap, a pencil clenched in one hand, her eyes wide open and staring at the TV – but she was still asleep.
In Tara’s dream she saw herself on the bed with the TV in front of her, but everything else was shrouded in darkness. She couldn’t see the other bed with her aunt on it. She couldn’t see the drapes over the sliding glass door or the door that led out to the hallway.
She watched herself sitting there with the drawing pad on her lap and she was scribbling fiercely with the pencil, sketching something without looking down at the paper, drawing something over and over again.
From the darkness behind her, from beyond the head of the bed where the wall should have been, someone approached – a man draped in dark robes, his hands and arms sheathed in shiny black latex like a second skin. His head was covered with a mask made from a patchwork of human skin, pieces layered over each other and sewn together. Several sets of ears hung off the sides of his head and rows of human teeth were glued around where the mouth would be, making the mouth look like some kind of monstrous meat grinder. Clumps of hair were attached to the top of the head in various places and a set of what looked like bull horns were attached to each side of the mask.
Hanging around his neck was a necklace adorned with more body parts: fingers, toes, ears, bones, a dried-out tongue.
The Shadow Man pushed his way through the darkness, wading through the bed like it wasn’t there anymore, like it was dematerializing as he walked through it.
And Tara never stopped drawing on the tablet as the killer crept up behind her.
6.
Aunt Katie woke up to the sound of a pencil scribbling on paper.
She sat up and saw Tara sitting at the foot of her bed, her feet flat on the floor, her drawing tablet in her lap, a pencil clutched in her right hand. Tara was staring at the TV with wide eyes that were still asleep.
Tara scribbled on her paper, tracing a drawing over and over again.
Aunt Katie just watched her for a moment. She had seen Tara’s night terrors many times before. Usually she woke her up, but Tara wasn’t screaming right now and she wasn’t running away.
Katie got up and crept over to Tara. When she saw what Tara was drawing, she felt that it was important to let her continue with her night terror – she was getting a message that she needed, Katie was sure of it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1.
Aunt Katie stayed up the rest of the night after Tara’s night terror had ended. She watched until Tara simply stopped drawing, dropped the tablet and pencil to the floor, closed her eyes and crawled into bed and lay down on her side. Soon, she was sleeping deeply.
Katie picked up the drawing tablet and pencil from the floor and she took them over to the small writing table. She turned on the tiny lamp and studied the drawing more closely. It was a quick sketch and some of the lines were drawn so heavy that they almost went through the paper. Even though it was a rough sketch, Katie could tell exactly what it was.
She left the light on over the writing table – it wasn’t very bright. She got up and covered Tara up with a blanket. It was only a few hours until dawn, but Katie was certain that she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep now.
At six in the morning Katie went down to the restaurant in the lobby. It was already open and serving breakfast. Katie wasn’t sure if Tara would be hungry, but she ordered two French toast breakfasts with sides of bacon. She also ordered a thermos of coffee and two cartons of milk and two bottles of orange juice.
