by Terry Towers
Oh no! Daddy!
I didn’t give it any more thought. Opening the door, I ran in, and the first thing my eyes fell on was a steel table in the center of the room with woman with no clothes on laying on it. She was screaming, and her screaming hurt my ears, so I put my hands over them to try and stop the sound. My eyes widened as I stared at her and my daddy standing over her.
“Daddy?” I looked up at my father, and he stared down at me. He didn’t say anything at first.
Was he mad at me for leaving the car?
“Who is that, daddy?”
I took a step into the little room and then another.
A smile spread across his lips, and he somehow looked different to me. I don’t know why, but he looked like daddy, but kinda didn’t.
“Come here sweetheart…” Instead of yelling at me, he motioned for me to come closer.
I wasn’t sure. “What are you doing?” I took a couple steps and saw there was lots of red stuff on her.
The woman lifted her head from the table and started to open her mouth, but my dad put his hand over her lips and made her put her head back down. She was trying to say something or maybe scream some more, I wasn’t sure.
“Come here, Rebecca.” He motioned to me with his other hand, but it had a knife in it. You weren’t supposed to play with knives, because you could get hurt or hurt someone else. I was told that many times. Daddy shouldn’t be playing with this lady with knives.
“Rebecca!” he used the stern voice, and I ran to his side, putting my arms around his waist and holding onto him. I didn’t understand what was going on.
“Don’t you touch anything, okay?”
“Yes, daddy.” That was a big rule for me. No touching other people’s stuff until told I could touch. “What are you doing, Daddy?”
“Do you know what a proverbs 31 woman is, honey?”
I nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Okay, what is it honey?”
“It’s a woman, like Mommy.”
“And what is Mommy?”
“A good and du-du- ” I frowned. I couldn’t remember the last part.
“Come on, honey. You can remember.”
With his coaching, the words came to me. “A good and dutiful wife. A woman who cares for her husband and family above everything else.”
My father’s smile returned, larger than ever. “Very good, honey.” He turned back to the woman on the table who was struggling against his hand and the things around her arms and legs. She was trying to escape.
“Is she a proverbs 31 woman, daddy?”
My father’s expression became dire, and he shook his head. “No, she’s not honey, and so she needs to be punished.”
I scrunched my nose up at him. “Punished. Like going to her room?”
He nodded. “Sort of. See, women like her need to be punished in a very special way. They need to be used as a sacrifice so other women will know their place. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but I really didn’t understand.
“Are you scared Rebecca? Do you feel bad for this woman?”
This was a hard question… I was supposed to feel bad… I think. The lady on the table was sad, very sad and scared. I should feel sad too. My sister would feel sad when she watched some movies. I never got sad. Not really.
After a moment of consideration, I shook my head. “I don’t know her daddy. Should I feel bad?”
When he looked down at me again, I saw pride in his eyes and expression. He seemed so happy by my answer. I was happy he was happy. “No sweetheart. You shouldn’t.” He turned towards the woman. “Back away honey. There is something I have to do, and it will be messy.”
The lady on the table began to thrash. She was trying to scream, but my daddy’s hand kept her quiet. He reached up and plunged the knife into her. I jumped back when I saw the blood. Daddy would be mad if I got my clothes dirty. After a minute, the lady stopped moving. Then daddy marked on her with the knife. I don’t know what it said, because the table was way too tall for me to see onto it.
“Go out to the car. I’ll only be a minute, honey.” Daddy smiled at me again, and I nodded.
“Yes, Daddy.” I left the shed and got back into the car. Getting in, I settled into my car seat. I was a big girl. I don’t know why I was stuck still using a car seat. My sister didn’t have to sit in one. That wasn’t fair. Car seats were for babies! I was four, almost five, I wasn’t a baby anymore.
I was almost asleep when I heard my father get behind the steering wheel. “Are you all done?”
He turned around in the seat and looked directly into my eyes. “For now. We need to have a little talk though, okay?”
I nodded.
“Are you a big girl?”
I nodded again.
“Okay, I believe you. We need to have a big girl talk.”
“Okay, daddy. Is the lady all right?”
He smiled. “She’s in a different place now.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what that meant. I think he meant heaven, but I didn’t want to ask because I was a big girl, and this was a big girl talk.
“What happened in there didn’t frighten you?”
I shook my head. “No, Daddy.”
“How do you feel now? Are you feeling sad now that the lady is gone?”
“No, Daddy. I don’t know that lady.”
He smiled and nodded.
Daddy seemed happy with me, so I decided to ask a question I’d been thinking about for a little while. “Is there something wrong with me?”
He cocked his head to the side and eyed me. He looked concerned.
“Emily would be sad for the lady. Emily is sad a lot. Mommy too. They get sad when they watch some movies on TV. And they get scared too. And they’re always worried they might hurt people’s feelings. But I don’t feel like them. I pretend I do, sometimes. I pretend really good, and they believe me. But I don’t.”
I paused my confession to judge his reaction. I hoped he wouldn’t think I was weird.
“Is there something wrong with me?”
He shook his head and smiled again. Reaching across the seats, he took my hand closest to him and gave it a squeeze. “No. Not at all. You’re special, Rebecca.”
“Special,” I echoed, sitting up a little straighter in my seat and grinning. “Why am I special?”
“You’re special because you’re just like me.”
“I am?” This made me really happy because Daddy was my favourite person in the whole wide world. Everyone loved my daddy. My daddy was a preacher and hundreds of people, more than hundreds, would come just to hear him talk! And they’d repeat stuff he said and do stuff he told them to.
“You are?”
“Is Mommy and Emily special?”
His smile faded, and he shook his head. “No, Rebecca. They are not. They’re not strong like you and me. They’re weak. That’s why they cry and why they want to make people happy.”
“Oh.” I mulled it over a moment, and my father let me. “Why am I special? We, I mean.”
“Because we’re superior. God has given us a gift that makes us very powerful.”
“Ohh.” I didn’t understand fully, but I kinda did.
“But we need to keep this a secret. Okay?”
I nodded.
He nodded his head towards the cabin. “What you saw in there is a secret, just you and me. A special club.”
I nodded with more enthusiasm this time. I loved the idea of being in a special club with my father, because we were better. He said so, so it must be true.
“And what I told you about being better, superior, you have to keep that a secret too, okay?”
I frowned. Why couldn’t I tell people?
As if reading my mind, he continued. “Normal people, inferior people, they don’t understand people like us. And they get jealous of us. So we have to pretend that we’re just like them.”
“Even though we know it’s not true.”
He nodded and smil
ed, giving my hand a squeeze. “You’re exactly right. Even if we know it’s not true. What’s important is that we know and that makes us powerful.”
“Okay.”
“So, our secret.” He released my hand and stuck out his little finger and wiggled it at me. “Pinkie swear?”
I giggled, Daddy could be so silly sometimes. I hooked my pinkie finger with his, the woman in the shed already forgotten. “Pinkie swear.”
Chapter 16
Present
Rebecca
“You awake yet, Sleeping Beauty?”
“Kyle?” My head hurt, ohmygod, my head hurt so bad. I put my palms to my temples as I slowly opened my eyes. “My head hurts. Where am I?”
I looked around me.
“You passed out when we were talking in the living room.”
Slowly, I situated myself into an upright position.
Grabbing a glass of water from the night stand, Kyle passed it to me. Accepting the glass, I drank down the contents. “Do you have any aspirin?”
“I might. Do you remember what happened before you passed out?”
I did. I remembered everything, even things that were too insane to comprehend, but it all began to make sense to me. My entire life, and my entire being, all began to make sense.
“My father was a serial killer.”
He nodded. “Yes, he was.”
“I remember…” I wasn’t sure why I was confiding in Kyle, but he was there, and I needed to speak, perhaps to just make it all real.
“What?” He actually looked genuinely concerned. I didn’t allow myself to question it.
“All my life, I’ve been having nightmares periodically. They were dreams of me and my father and me walking in on him with one of his victims. I just thought they were nightmares, nothing more. But now, it hit me… It wasn’t. I remember it so vividly now, like it happened just yesterday.”
“Why do you think you repressed it?”
I shook my head, pushing back the stray strands of hair that fell into my face from the movement. “I’m not sure. But, I understand now.”
He frowned. “What do you understand?”
I looked up at him, and chewed at my lower lip in contemplation. “Why I’m different.”
Kyle seemed amused. “Why do you think you’re different?”
“Because I have the trait.” When he didn’t respond, I groaned out my frustration. “There’s been studies that show genetics play a huge part in psychopathy in people. It’s pretty clear my father was a psychopath. So that means…”
You’re superior… God has given you a gift… I could hear my father’s voice in the back of my mind.
Getting up from the bed, Kyle began a slow clap. “Very good, Rebecca.”
I wasn’t sure how this new discovery made me feel about myself, or the fact Kyle was applauding the revelation. Was it all that bad? Did it have to be a bad thing? Just because I had a lack of feeling didn’t mean there was anything wrong with me. It was society that put the negative connotation on the term.
Looking up at Kyle, I scowled at him. “No need for applause, asshole. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the situation you’ve put me in.”
He stopped clapping. “Situation I’ve put you in. You should be thanking me. Without me, you would still be wondering about yourself.”
“You hardly had anything to do with it. It was a repressed memory that events triggered, that’s all. It doesn’t change a thing.”
“Oh baby, but it does.” He leaned into me, his lips grazing the side of my neck. “You’ll see.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He straightened but didn’t answer my question. Instead he said, “I’ve got supper ready. Come on out. I’ll get you Aspirin while I’m at it.”
“All right.” I slipped my legs off of the side of the bed and gingerly tested the floor. After a moment of testing, I decided I was fine to stand and follow him out. When I reached the kitchen, Kyle had some macaroni and cheese sitting at the breakfast counter, and a bottle of Aspirin by my plate and a glass of water.
“The supper of champions,” Kyle waved to the bowl of macaroni and grinned.
“Yummy.” Despite my sarcasm, I was actually looking forward to it. I was starved.
“Again, you’ve been kidnapped. You’re not having lunch with socialites at the Ritz.”
I looked around us. “You can say that again.” The cabin was quaint, and if we were here on a romantic getaway, I would actually kinda like it, but I wasn’t about to let him know that. “You know, for someone who’s supposed to be rich, you could have sprung for a better place to stash me.”
I sat down and grabbed my spoon. Not waiting for Kyle to sit down, I immediately spooned a heaping serving into my mouth.
“I wasn’t planning on being here with you long.”
“Well, to finish our previous conversation… Who killed my father?”
“Tanner. The story is that your father found out where Tanner had your sister located and went to kill her. From my understanding, your father had decided your sister was weak and a disgrace. She was going to be his next victim. Tanner stopped him.”
“Hmm.” That made sense. If I recalled correctly, the last time I saw my sister, she had a bandage on her chest. He must have marked her while she was alive but died before he could finish the job.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the situation now. I never did really like my sister and her holier than thou attitude, but then again considering the circumstances… Though she did take him from me. Regardless of what he was outside of the family, when it came to me, he was my father. He’d always favoured me, and now that I’d gotten back the memory of that day when I was four, I understood why. I was an extension of him.
“Now, you owe me some information.”
“Huh?” I was so lost in my thoughts I’d forgotten I was in the middle of a conversation with Kyle. Which gave me another dilemma… Now that I had gotten the information I wanted, what did I need to do to get out of this situation?
Of course escaping had been a priority, but I’d really wanted the truth, and now I had it. But why was he telling me this information? Or at least what seemed to be the true version. Wouldn’t he have been better off just fudging the truth so I’d hate my sister and be happy to give her up? No, I didn’t doubt Kyle’s sincerity, because he didn’t stand to benefit from this version of the story. Besides, I thought we both knew if he tried to lie, I’d see right through it. We were on equal footing now. The masks had been dropped, and there was nowhere to hide from ourselves.
“We had a deal. Now, where’s your sister?”
With a sigh, I dropped my spoon into my bowl and sat back in my chair. Our eyes locked. “What do you plan on doing with her once you find her?”
“I’m more interested in finding Tanner. Emily is just a happy bonus. The boss, however, wants them both.”
“Well, I don’t know where they are.”
He stopped eating and stared at me. “You don’t know where they are?”
I shook my head. “Not a clue.”
I thought he was going to explode on me. I saw his tempter flare up in his expression, but he cleared his throat and then nodded. “Fine. If that’s how you want to play it…”
A million thoughts rushed through my mind, second guessing going the honesty route. I could have attempted to lead him on, but he’d see through it. I had no doubt about that. He wasn’t just an average Joe Schmo off the street. Ironically enough, apparently, the truth is what he was refusing to believe.
“I’m not playing any games. They took off one night, and my mother and I haven’t heard a word from them since. Given the new information, I would assume they knew you were coming after them, and they hauled ass.”
“Seems hard to believe.”
“My sister sent my mother an unaddressed letter. Basically saying she couldn’t deal with the loss of my father and needed to break away from my mother and I. She apologized and begged forgivenes
s… And yada, yada, yada.”
“There was no clue to where they were going?” Despite his prior outburst, he seemed to be believing me. Not that there was anything not to believe, because it was the complete truth.
“My sister and I never got along. As you should understand given the circumstances.”
“Yeah.” Raking his fingers through his blonde hair, Kyle sighed. “Yeah, makes sense.”
“Besides, I’m going to assume your guy knew what he was doing, and I’m going to also assume he knows your techniques of gathering information, unless you employ idiots.”
“Tanner was one of the best. That’s why we wanted him back on our payroll so badly.”
I shrugged, spreading my hands to the side as if to say ‘well there ya go.’
“Yeah…” He stared down at what appeared to be some random spot on the floor. I could see he was mulling the new information over.
“So what happens now?”
He looked up at me and clucked his tongue off of the roof of his mouth. “I haven’t figured that out yet. If you’re no use to me, then I guess I deal with you now.”
* TT *
Kyle
Fuck, fuck and double fuck. I should have known it wouldn’t be as easy as getting the information from her. Tanner was too damned smart. He wouldn’t make a rookie mistake. Rebecca was the start of what looked like a very long road.
The next logical step would be to simply kill Rebecca, then track down her mother, and once I was done with her, get rid of her as well. But when it came right down to it, I believed Rebecca. Her mother wouldn’t know anything more than she did. Tracking down her mother seemed to be an exercise in futility – not that it would be that hard considering I already had the address.
As for Rebecca…
I stared at the dark-haired beauty across from me. She looked adorable in my t-shirt, which even with it being my smallest shirt was still too big for her. It seemed like it would be a waste to end her life.
No, I decided, I wasn’t done with Rebecca yet. Not by a long shot. As far as I was concerned, she was mine, and regardless of what Flynn had to say, that wasn’t going to change, unless of course I lost interest, but I didn’t see that happening any time soon.
