by Pamela Crane
Clearly rage had subsumed any vestige of humanity.
Was it safe to answer? Was it safe not to? I had come too far to strike out this late in the game. I had to know for sure. “Let me guess what happened. When Evan saw you show up at the car accident, you were covered in blood, weren’t you?”
Not-Landon gave a mock laugh. “Why would I be covered in blood?”
“Did you make a deal with him that if he cleaned up your mess, you’d clean up his?”
The question must have pushed him too far, for at that moment he lunged at me, cornering me on the couch between his muscular arms.
“I know what you’re insinuating. How dare you accuse me of killing Landon’s sister! I loved Alexis, but she was losing her innocence. Much like you’ve lost yours. She was no longer a sister. And likewise, you are no longer a friend. Your words, not mine.”
I never saw it coming—the knife sitting on the end table, his swift movement, the blade now pressed firmly against my throat. All of my time searching for Alexis’s murderer would be in vain if I died. I was supposed to give Alexis peace, set the memories of all the victims free, give closure to the families and myself. I felt overwhelmed with regret for not fixing things with Brad, for not being a better daughter, for being ashamed of my past. Thirty-four years I had to grow and learn and live, and I squandered them with regret.
This moment was my biggest failure yet. I had finally realized my purpose for living—to actually live! And here I was, dying just when I’d discovered this. It felt Shakespeareanly tragic.
“You may feel that way,” I said, gulping, “but no matter what I said, I still care about you. I have Alexis’s heart, and I feel all the things she felt for you when she was alive. Admiration. Respect. Sisterly love. Dependence. You can’t erase the past by using the present, but you can face it, Landon.”
“Maybe I can’t delete it, but I can keep it hidden. And as I said, don’t call me by that name. I don’t know Landon anymore. He’s not here.” He tapped his forehead with a wicked sneer.
A moment later, I felt a pinch as the knife’s steel edge sliced across the flesh of my neck. It stung, but it wasn’t deep enough to bleed me dry. An icy chill slithered down my neck. He was going to torture me first.
I debated trying to reason with him, but it would have been futile. He wasn’t in his right mind. Logic and crazy go together about as well as pickles and ice cream. There was nothing I could say to reach the void where his brain once was.
“Can you just answer one question before you kill me? A final request, please?” I begged, hoping to buy more time—enough time for maybe Jennifer to waltz down the stairs carrying a plate of cookies and thus come to my rescue, or for Landon to return to his body.
“Sounds reasonable,” he answered calmly.
“Why? Why Alexis? You say she was losing her innocence, but how?”
At least I could die finally knowing what made him tick.
“Isn’t it obvious? Look around you, Mia. Look at the clothes these young girls wear. Look at the pressures they face to grow up too fast. Look at the television shows that turn virgins into whores. They become victims of their own fleshly desires, leaving their purity behind. It’s a shame, Mia. A damn shame. All I want is to protect them from themselves and from the society that corrupts them. Make them wholesome again—unpolluted. Don’t you think that’s a worthy cause?”
He scraped the blade against my cheek as he spoke using another man’s gritty voice.
I contemplated his explanation for a moment. In his dementia he had become a self-styled crusading avenger obsessed with righting a societal ill—albeit in a most deadly and unorthodox fashion. Every killing had purpose, each one perfecting his craft and achieving his goal of “making them wholesome.” Each murder was well planned and precise in preserving the child’s innocence. It’s why he stabbed them in the abdomen instead of randomly killing them in a myriad of ways. A gunshot to the head would demonstrate violence and mutilate them, but Landon’s alter ego wanted order and perfection.
And that’s when it hit me. I knew he couldn’t kill me—not like this. Not by marring me. He was methodical. I just needed to wait for the right moment, and I’d know it when I saw it.
“I think it’s noble what you’re trying to do, but killing doesn’t seem like the way to fix things. Isn’t showing them another way toward purity a better solution?” I was grasping at straws here, and I hoped he didn’t ask me to elaborate, because I hadn’t prepared that far ahead for a discussion of morality versus social norms.
He became pensive for a moment, then shook his head.
“There is no other way. They’re too tainted to come back. But you, you could have changed the world. And now I have to kill you.”
With a tsk-ing sound he swiftly raised his arm up to strike me in the stomach, but my reflexes had been waiting for this moment. A sliver of space opened up between his chest and mine, just enough for me to kick him hard enough to propel him backward into the entertainment system, sending framed photos crashing. As he slumped on the floor in a heap, shaking off bits of glass, I jumped up and ran like hell for the stairs.
A hand coiled around my ankle. I fell with a fleshy thud onto the unforgiving concrete with Not-Landon’s full weight on top of me. Kicking and gouging, I squirmed out from beneath him and crawled to the stairs. When I glanced back, I saw droplets of blood trailing me and I grew woozy.
With another tackle he pinned me face-first to the floor, and I felt a rib or two break under the impact.
“Bad move, sis,” he hissed in my ear.
All I could hear was his heavy breathing against my neck and my grunting as I fruitlessly attempted to kick him off of me.
“Now you’ll finally get to meet Alexis face to face.”
A dull thump battered the back of my head with such force that I nearly bit into the concrete under my jaw. Then everything faded into black oblivion.
Chapter 36
I double-checked my outfit in my full-length bedroom mirror, hoping that the ensemble would meet Luke Perry’s approval. In two-dimensional form, he watched me with those dreamy eyes from beside my bed, next to my door, and above my dresser. Landon argued that no twelve-year-old should have posters of boys, but rather horses, but give me Luke Perry on horseback and I’d settle for that.
Landon didn’t find that funny.
My best friend Sammie had loaned me the super-short acid-washed skorts and tie-dyed midriff top, and I added my own suspenders just like Jennie Garth’s outfit in last week’s episode of 90210. I even curled my hair using my mom’s curling iron, which I could never let her find out about. She’d kill me if she saw me with it, I’m sure. Not that she ever noticed where I was or what I was up to.
A knock at my door startled me. “Come in,” I said.
It was Uncle Derek, which didn’t surprise me, since he had a knack for showing up when he needed money, which was all the time.
“Wow, don’t you look all grown up,” he said in a crude tone I’d become all too familiar with. Uncle Derek often said sleazy things to Mom, and sometimes said things to me that made Dad threaten to kill him. Plus he dated girls way younger than him, but the comment still made me feel uncomfortable.
“Um, thanks,” I said. I didn’t really know what else to say to him, so I said nothing.
“So, uh, your mom around?” he asked, each word smearing the next. “I, uh, need to talk, um, to … uh, to her.”
“She’s at work. Should be home soon, though.”
He nodded slowly, taking another shaky step forward, and I suddenly felt really creeped out. I moved away from the mirror and started toward my dresser to widen the space between us. The alcohol on his breath and the slurred speech scared me.
One more step forward, and he closed the bedroom door. Another step toward me, then a stagger, then another step. He was less than a foot away from me, and his breath reeked of pot and beer.
My eyes started to tear up, and panic seized me. I a
ttempted to walk around him, but a vice grip that belied his drunken state stopped me in my tracks.
“Um, I gotta go,” I pleaded.
“You’re not going nowhere, pretty girl. I mean, woman.”
He grabbed me near my collarbone and leaned forward, lips puckered. I shook my head and faltered backward, until the wall blocked me.
“Please, Uncle Derek, don’t!” I shrieked.
“You know you want it,” he insisted, fumbling with the straps of my suspenders.
I shoved his hands away, but that only egged him on as he ripped one strap undone, then the other, with a brutality I was no match for. A moment later his lips smashed up against mine, silencing my cries for help. When the waistband of my shorts and weekly “Tuesday” underwear began to slip downward, I threw my knee up against him, hitting the meat of his thigh.
Bad move.
Instead of releasing me, he only pressed and pulled harder, squeezing my arms with such vengeance that I was sure they’d break.
I felt Uncle Derek’s disgusting tongue in my mouth, tasted the rotgut whiskey. My body shook with silent sobs. I prayed that God would just let me die before “it” happened … before he took me and left me a cracked shell time could never mend.
God must have heard my prayer.
The sound of a creaking door jarred us both, and when it swung open to reveal Landon, I seized the chance to break free, darting into the hall where I could hide behind his lanky frame.
“What the hell is going on in here?” my brother, my savior, bellowed. He quickly sized up the situation, noting my suspenders dangling to the floor and my shorts near my knees.
“Your sister’s what’s goin’ on,” Uncle Derek retorted. “She made a pass at me. You got yourself a little whore for a sister, all’s I’m sayin’.”
“What? Alexis, what’s happening to you?”
I couldn’t believe Landon was taking Uncle Derek’s side and protested, “I swear, Landon, I didn’t do anything!”
“Dressed like that, I don’t believe you, you little slut! He’s our uncle, for God’s sake. Who else have you been screwin’?”
“No one, I promise.” With tears streaming down my hot cheeks, I begged for him to listen.
“You look and act like a tramp. I don’t know you anymore,” he said, looking away from me with disgust.
“You gotta get your sister in check,” Uncle Derek warned as he barged past me and Landon. On the way to the stairs, he glared at me, then pressed his finger to his lips, the universal sign for me to keep quiet. He ran his thumb across his neck and I knew exactly what that meant too.
I vowed to myself never to speak of it to anyone.
As Uncle Derek descended the stairwell with heavy footsteps, Landon pushed me hard against the wall, his eyes penetrating me.
“I don’t know what really happened in there, and I don’t want any details.”
“You have to know it wasn’t me, Lan—”
“I know you didn’t do anything wrong—in this instance. But something’s gotta be done about the way you handle yourself. Look at your clothes! And the garbage you watch. You lost your purity, Lex. I’m your big brother, supposed to take care of you, but I have no idea how to do that anymore. You act like a woman, but you’re only a kid.”
“I’m not a kid, Landon. I can take care of myself.” I burst past him, heading toward my room.
“You think you’re grown up, do you? Then why did you need me to save you from Uncle Derek? If you’re not going to protect yourself, then I’ll have to do it for you, since I’m your brother and I love you. Unless you want to end up like Mom—a whore.”
A lump throbbed in my throat—not from sadness but from anger. “I’m nothing like Mom!” I insisted. “I just wish you’d stop treating me like you own me, cuz you don’t.”
“If you’re not going to save yourself, I guess I’m going to have to do it for you, Alexis.”
Alexis—he used my full name, which meant he was acting parental and serious. Instead of arguing in circles with him, I slipped into my bedroom, wondering what he meant.
I couldn’t pin down what changed in him that day, but it was there, underneath the mask. A darkness brooded as black as his eyes when he walked in on me and Uncle Derek. I sensed the vigilante within him growing, evolving, but the justice he served was no justice at all.
It was murder.
**
The dreamy fog drifted over me, then slowly dissipated, leaving me helpless in my current reality. Facts bumped together in my mind in a frantic rush, like bumper cars at a carnival. It all added up to one thing: I was about to be killed.
Pinned to the floor on my stomach with Landon’s bony knees in my back, I waited for the final stab to my abdomen, just like I’d witnessed too many times in my dreams. Then I waited a second longer. Why was he hesitating? A moment later I discovered why.
Both hands were holding me down.
Only one thing could explain why there was no blade tip piercing my side. He must have dropped his knife during his fall and hadn’t realized it yet.
“Any last words?” he offered with mock courtesy.
Nothing witty came to mind. I was too focused on finding a way to get to the knife or call for help, but my mouth was planted against the concrete, muffling any sound I could make. Besides, my chest was so constricted beneath his bulk that I doubted I’d have enough air to bellow loud enough for his mom to hear me upstairs. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard the commotion and come to investigate, but I guess she was preoccupied with entertaining the friendly neighborhood child molester.
I was pinned and definitely outmatched.
My only chance was to dig up any ounce of brotherly compassion left in the corpse that once was Landon.
“Alexis forgives you, you know,” I squeaked softly.
I sensed him budge, giving me a little more space to breathe.
“I don’t care. Why are you telling me that?”
“Because she still loves you. She misses you. And she knows why you took her life.”
Not-Landon cackled. “Oh, really. And why’s that?”
“Because of Uncle Derek. You saw what he did to her that day in her room, and you didn’t want her to live with the burden of that memory. And ever since that day you’ve tried to protect other girls from becoming sex objects.”
The grip on my neck softened, and I hoped I was reaching the heart buried somewhere within.
“Yes, you understand then? I’m protecting them from people like Jeremy and Derek—men who will use them and throw them aside. I’m saving them. You understand … you understand.”
“I do. You did save Alexis, in a sense, from her own downfall. Only you could see the signs, and you acted on it. You’ve accomplished your goal. But please don’t kill her again, because then everything would be in vain.”
A stillness enveloped us. A long moment passed. All was calm. Then something wet tickled the hairs on my neck. Landon was somewhere in there, and he was crying.
I strained to turn my neck around to see him, and his hold released when his hands covered his face as he wept bitterly.
“Hey there,” I soothed. I scooted upright and hugged him, my eyes searching behind him for the knife. There, under a fractured picture frame. The blade reflected hope back at me. And Alexis’s smiling face beneath the spider web of shattered glass gave me strength.
“I didn’t know how else to help her,” Landon sobbed. “But the other me, the me I can’t control, it knew. So I let it take over sometimes. For years I kept the bad me hidden inside, but I can’t stop him anymore. It’s overcoming me. I just … black out. Then wake up with vague recollections of events, but it’s not me. I promise it’s not me. Please help me stop him, Mia.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, calculating how I could retrieve the knife without him suspecting anything. “We’ll figure this out together.”
“I just don’t think so. I’m not fixable, am I? I’m a killer … ” As the words
slipped out, Not-Landon did the same—slithering out of my grasp and toward where the knife remained hidden.
“The knife,” he muttered. “Where’s the goddamn knife?”
I had caught a break—he hadn’t spied the knife yet. I could beat him to the stairs this time, but I knew better than to turn my back on him. I’d seen too many horror movies watching the naïve female attempt to flee, and the moment she looks away from her captor—dead.
As Landon kicked and pawed, searching for the knife, I glided my feet slowly backward, feeling for any obstacles that might impede me. I needed to get Jennifer’s attention.
Oh crap, he had found the knife. He looked at it oddly, as if he had forgotten its purpose.
“Landon,” I spoke loud and clear, “please put down the knife! You don’t want to do this!”
I hoped the volume didn’t give my scheme away, but Landon seemed too overcome with guilt or self-doubt at the moment to register what I was doing.
A couple of steps later I bumped into the bottom stair and sprinted up the staircase, tripping and fumbling my way to the top.
At the landing I threw open the door, screaming for Jennifer.
“Call the cops, Jennifer! Now! It’s Landon!”
Jennifer, trailed by Jeremy Mason, rounded the corner of the kitchen where a phone hung on the floral-wallpapered wall.
“What’s going on?” Jennifer demanded with a sternness I’d never expected from such a sweet old lady.
“He’s got a knife, and Landon, he’s not himself—” I tried to explain, but the words came out in a jumble.
“You’re bleeding!” she said with shock as she grabbed a cream-colored dishtowel with pansy trim from the counter. I held it to my neck, watching with a kind of fascinated terror as the fabric grew red with my blood.
While I was distracted by the red easing its way through the fibers, Jennifer snatched the receiver from the wall and dialed 9-1-1. “Please send an officer and an ambulance to 721 Willoughby Way. My son stabbed someone. Please get here soon.”
