Mercy Killer

by T S Paul

  There’s something peaceful about people when they sleep. My mother has the sweetest smile. But not this guy. His face was slack and wrinkled as much as his clothes were. A trail of drool pooled on the half-rotten wooden step.

  Caw! Caw!

  The sudden sound made me look up at the dark sky. Dark clouds hung low over the town blocking much of the full moon from sight. It was so dark out that I doubted any of the neighbors saw me outside.

  Reaching out without a care in the world I took the kitchen knife and slit the John’s throat. Like chopping up a chicken, the blade slid through his skin like butter. Blood sprayed and bubbled out of the drunken man. Like a moth to a flame I watched as it joined the puddle of drool and like a waterfall spilled out onto the ground.

  Calmly, I walked back into the house. Mom was still passed out drunk, so I didn’t worry too much about noise. I straightened up the house, dumped the ashtrays, and filled the sink with hot water. It was late, but I wasn’t tired at all. I didn’t know it at the time, but adrenaline was surging through my veins. My first kill, and I’d enjoyed it. A lot.

  The bloody knife lay on the table where I’d dropped it. Nothing about it seemed all that real. Gathering the dinner dishes, I added them to the sink. My weapon went in as well, the blood mixing with the water. Careful to not cut myself I drained the sink and refilled it several times, adding soap at the last refill. Washing the dishes felt cathartic, a way to cleanse myself of the rage I’d felt. How dare “Uncle” John try to treat me like my mother. The gall of the man. I cleaned the kitchen until it gleamed, then started on the laundry. My blood splattered clothes got the same treatment as the knife. Hot boiling water and a good scrubbing with lye took the blood right off. Dressing in my pajamas, I crawled into the hall closet where my bed was. It was the only room in the house where the door locked from the inside. My dreams were filled with red fountains and waterfalls of blood.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Someone pounded on the front door like they were trying to bash it in! My eyes popped open even as I heard squeaking from Mom’s bed. Whispering, she said as she passed my door, “Stay quiet, child. You’re safe in there.”

  The pounding continued as a voice began to shout, “Hannah? Miss Vogel, you alive in there?”

  I could hear it as my mother threw back the deadbolts and jerked the door open. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Miss Vogel, do you know this man here?” a loud man’s voice asked before she had a chance to say anything else.

  Cracking my door open so I could hear better, I heard her say, “Yes, it’s Luther Neal. He’s sort of a client.”

  “Hannah, you’re going to have to come down to the station. Is Genevieve here as well?” the booming voice asked.

  “She’s...She’s in her cubby. Sheriff, Jeff, I didn’t do this. Last thing I remember was him leaving. I swear to you!” my mother cried out.

  “Hannah, Luther Neal, prick that he was, might have been a bastard, but he’s a dead bastard now. The good folks of Dickerson will want resolution, and you know it. I can’t go light on this one,” the sheriff explained.

  Sheriff Jeff Smith, known as Bear in many of the town’s watering holes, was a large man and one of the very few Uncle Johns that I liked. Not a frequent visitor, but a steady one, nonetheless. He always brought me a sucker from the five-and-dime.

  “Girl, young Gen, come out here, please,” Bear called for me.

  Crawling to my feet, I ducked a bit to not wrinkle the clothes hanging on the closet pole above me. Still in my pajamas, I opened the door and stepped out. “Yes, Bear?”

  My mother was off to one side with Griff, one of the deputies, standing next to her. I tried to run to her, but Bear stopped me. “I’m sorry, child, but she’s gonna have to go down to the station with us. One of my boys will take you out to your grandmama's place. So I need you to get dressed and pack a bag. Can ya do that for me?”

  All I could do was stare at him. This was my chance to tell all and clear my mother of any punishment that might come, but I couldn’t do it. A tiny voice inside of me told me to wait and see it through, search for more justice and pain to meter out to the world. Opening my mouth, I changed my mind to pay attention to that tiny voice in mid speech. “Yes, sir.”

  People died all the time in Dickerson. It wasn’t the largest town in North Carolina, but it was sandwiched between Greensboro and Raleigh. What my mom called the armpit of the state. Usually when a body was found, it was written off as a vagrant or accidental, but this time it was right out in the open on the steps of a house. Our house.

  People!

  What looked like half the town was standing in and around our house! Cameras flashed as we stepped outside. One of the deputies led me around the bloody steps while urging me to not look down. Seeing the gleaming liquid would have been nice, but it might have given me away, so I complied. Mom wasn’t in handcuffs, yet, but she was being gripped by Sheriff Smith. They had allowed her to put on something other than a robe. Many of the women in the crowd cried out at her bruised and battered appearance, so much more noticeable now, in the light of the day.

  “Don’t give them any pause, child. Just hop right on into the car there,” the deputy told me.

  Nodding, I did as I was told and climbed into the police cruiser.

  Months later, Grandmother told me Luther’s murder was the biggest thing to hit Dickerson since old Allan Towers drove his tractor through Steve Riddle’s barn, killing half his chickens. Stuff like this didn’t happen in small town America.

  My last glimpse of Mom was as we drove off. Bear was putting handcuffs on her. It would be many weeks before we were reunited again.

  Three

  “Come here, child,” my grandmother exclaimed. She and Grandfather were waiting for us when the sheriff deputy pulled in. Small towns like Dickerson were extremely close knit. Someone had alerted her we were coming.

  Very cautiously, I exited the car, dragging my bag of clothes with me. Deputy Kuck backed the car up and almost burned rubber down the driveway.

  “Traitor,” I muttered, almost under my breath. Deputy Corey was nicer than Griff, but not by much. Since I was so young, he’d tried to make me laugh by telling me how just about everyone in town either misspelled or mispronounced his name. It was supposed to be spoken like you would say “cook,” but everyone called him “Kyook” or “Kook”. He told me he was half tempted to change it to Cook just to adapt.

  I couldn’t blame Kuck for leaving so fast. My grandmother Mary Kay Stickley-Vogel was a force to be reckoned with in Dickerson. The family was once part of North Carolina high society until my grandmother’s father lost it all during the Demon War. Not trusting the American banking system, he’d invested heavily in Europe. When the war came to its complete destructive end, he was a broken man. Everything was gone. All records, all the buildings, and especially all hard assets like gold and silver. In some cases, entire towns were wiped clean of everything. They only existed on maps and in people's memories. That didn’t stop Mary Kay, though. She married up as far as she was able and steamrolled the rest. Mom called her the church lady, a name I vowed to continue to call her.

  Forcing a smile, I climbed up the steps and into my grandmother’s embrace. Even as she squeezed me to her breast, I cut my eyes to Grandfather. Ernest Vogel had been a man of wealth and industry before he ran into Mary Kay. Now he just worked on cars and things in the barn out back. The church lady controlled everything now.

  Pulling me away from her, Grandmother looked me over, her beady eyes searching my face then giving me the once over. “You’re too skinny. That mother of yours didn’t feed you right. That’s the first thing we’ll fix.”

  She turned away from me and made to move into the house. I picked up my bag and she froze. Pointing a finger, she directed the first of many orders at me. “Leave it there. We’ll be getting you all new things. That ratty stuff isn’t even good for stuffing.”

  I looked to Grandfather for support bu
t didn’t find any. Twenty-plus years with her, and he’d lost most of his will. He really only spoke to me in the barn. When surrounded by the things he loved, Grandfather was a different person. If Ernest had been more forceful with Mary Kay, my mother might not have needed all the uncles to survive.

  The family home was typical for the south. Two front rooms that no one ever sat in. A main living area and fancy dining room in the center of the house with stairs to bedrooms. The kitchen and prep areas took up the entire back of the house. Mary Kay had both a maid and a cook.

  I started for the stairs first thing. Both times Mom and I’d come here when I was small, we’d used her old room, so I did know the way.

  “Stop! You aren’t sleeping up there. We’ve fixed up a cot for you downstairs,” Grandmother announced before I’d taken a single step up.

  Downstairs? The basement? The last time I’d been down there it was dark, dank, and filled with old furniture and boxes.

  My new room was an old single bed and a dresser right at the foot of the stairs. I’d nodded to both the maid and the cook as I passed through the kitchen, but neither of them looked at me or spoke.

  Sitting on my new bed, I gazed off into the darkness of the basement for a moment, contemplating my new situation. I could still speak up. Mom would come home, and I would take her place at the jail house. Wouldn’t that stick in the church lady’s craw. The little voice in my head kept telling me that Mom was much safer there, though. None of the Johns could reach her there. With that thought in my head I drifted off, still staring into the dark.

  It was the voices that woke me the next morning. The maid and cook were talking right above my head. I wasn’t sure which voice was which, since I couldn’t really even remember them speaking on the other times I was here.

  “That poor cub. Her mother’s fall from grace wasn’t her fault at all, but that woman will make it so. Being attacked as she was. Trust the wrong person, she did. Mark my words, this will end badly for the child,” the first voice remarked.

  “Rebecca, it’s not our place and you know it. What the family does isn’t our concern. Worry about the Pack first. We need these jobs to support them. Especially if we’re to get out of here,” the other voice replied.

  “The Pack leader claims it won’t be much longer. Public opinion has changed. The humans fear us less now,” Rebecca said. “We just need to hang on.”

  There was a snort from the other woman. “Hang on, she says. You're not the one that has slaved away for these people for longer than the youngling has been alive. I was master Stickley’s cook when he was a child. There was a human that treated our kind well. His daughter, not so much.”

  “Sybil, the Pack leader says–” Rebecca started to say.

  “The Pack leader this and the Pack leader that. Is he here with us? We toil too much in subservient positions for these creatures. I’m half tempted to leave and go to Kentucky. There’s a free hidden colony under a true leader there,” Sybil replied. “Robert Moore is a true Alpha.”

  “No. You will be outcast if you do that. Please don’t,” Rebecca whined.

  I shifted on my cot so I might hear better, and the frame squeaked.

  “Hush now, I think the cub is awake,” Sybil directed. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  Silently, I cursed my bed. Hearing their conversation clued me into the Weres’ situation. We’d learned about the other species of man in school. Not that they called them that. According to my mother, the paranormal races saved humankind and were repaid in hatred.

  Grandmother and her family hired the ladies upstairs from the local reservation. As sort of a work release program, some Weres worked amongst humans with heavy restrictions for very low wages.

  Still dressed in the clothes I’d worn yesterday, I climbed the stairs, and stepped out into the kitchen.

  “Are you hungry, child?” the woman whose voice I recognized as Sybil asked.

  “Yes,” I stuttered out. Cutting my eyes to the left I watched the maid, Rebecca, as she pretended to clean the room. A small prep table sat in one corner. Pulling out a chair, I sat down.

  A brief look of shock passed over both women. If I hadn’t been looking at them, I might have missed it. They weren’t used to members of the family sitting amongst them.

  Sybil brought me a bowl of porridge, which I dug into like it was the last bowl on earth. I’d barely eaten anything the day before. Pausing for a moment and pointing skyward, I asked, “What time do they rise?”

  “They’ll be at least another hour. You are up very early, Miss Genevieve,” Sybil replied.

  I shook my head. “Gen. Please call me Gen, Sybil. You too, Rebecca. Call me Gen.”

  At the use of their names, the women froze. If Grandmother even knew their real names, she’d not use them. To her, servants were beneath notice. Cook and Maid were the only names she or Grandfather used.

  “At least when the church lady isn’t around. Is that better?” I corrected.

  “Oh, of course, Miss…I mean of course, Gen,” Rebecca said with a little smile on her lips. “We were sorry to hear of your mother’s issues…”

  “Thank you. She didn’t do it, just so you know,” I replied to them. “He just...died there. We were asleep.”

  It was my first attempt at what I considered a true lie, telling an untruth as if it were true. Weres could smell a lie.

  Both of them nodded.

  “Can you prove it? We know little of human law, but proof is needed. That much I understand,” Sybil answered.

  “No, not really. Mom has a reputation and he was her last visitor,” I answered, continuing my fake story.

  Rebecca opened her mouth to say something but quickly closed it. Cutting her eyes to the entryway she whispered, “Your grandmother approaches.”

  Sybil snatched the bowl and spoon from me and busied herself at the sink.

  “Genevieve! In this house, you are not to sink to the level of servants. Not everyone is like your mother.” Looking me over, she frowned. “Have you nothing else to wear? A gunny sack would be better than that!”

  “You wouldn’t let me bring my other clothes in yesterday,” I informed her.

  The old lady that was my grandmother scowled at me. “We don’t talk back to our betters in this house, young lady. Come with me. Now!”

  I cast a doleful glance to the two Weres in the kitchen, but both of them were head down in their pretend work. Resigned, I followed after my grandmother to my doom.

  Four

  “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” Eryan Meyers gritted his teeth, making his face resemble that of a skull.

  The headmaster of my new school, Church of the Heavenly Offering, Meyers was taking his anger out on me, again.

  “You will learn to obey your elders if it kills me,” Meyers yelled as he took another whack at my backside. “No child of a whore is better than me!”

  I could hear the swish through the air each time he brought the paddle down. If it weren’t for my jeans, he might’ve broken the skin, he was hitting me so hard.

  Whack!

  “Go back to class! Tell your grandmother to expect a call from me,” the headmaster growled.

  I snorted but kept silent, for now. Like I was telling the Church Lady that! This guy was bad enough not to drag her into things.

  The CHO was the preeminent, and only, private school in Dickerson. Doubling as a church, it had attracted every well-heeled family in town. All my classmates’ parents were rich. I might have been the unwanted black sheep of the group, but my grandmother was the queen bee. Ignoring all the comments, hatred, and influence, she insisted that I get a good education.

  “We will wash the impurities from you as you join the light of God!” It was what the church lady had said on my first day of school. That was also the first day in a long line of beatings.

  Whack!

  “Do you promise to obey your teachers?” Headmaster Meyers asked as he drew back the paddle for another lash.

&n
bsp; Looking over my shoulder I smirked at him. “Why? Anything I say is useless, anyway.”

  As if in slow motion the paddle came down, striking my backside for the tenth time today. “Get your ass back to class!”

  Wincing in pain I never looked back at the man. Hypocrites and liars didn’t deserve my attention. Besides, I’d just now thought of the perfect way to kill him. Poetic justice, in a way. Walking back to class, I allowed a smile. Meyer would get his, just like Mrs. Spalding did.

  Onda Spalding. She was one of the oldest teachers at the CHO, and one of the meanest. Speaking out in class against her always involved a trip to the headmaster. I should know. I did it almost daily.

  It was my first year at the new school. Mom had been convicted and jailed for something I had done. Not able to speak out, I could only read in the paper about the trial’s outcome. Grandmother never allowed me to see my mother until she was sent to the state Central prison in Raleigh. Many of the inmates called the place Little Alcatraz.

  Children can be cruel, and the rich kids in Dickerson even more so. It didn’t help that many of their daddies had been some of the “uncles” visiting us. Their mothers were vengeful and rabid, telling their own kids hateful untruths about us. At every turn, I was beaten and taunted. That was until I started to fight back. Boys and girls that got too close to me might suffer a bloody nose or bruised ego.

  The sins of the mother shouldn’t be felt by the child. That was the thought of many of the teachers at CHO. They were the ones who had studied the case, read the reports, and witnessed the verdict. My part in things wasn’t even thought of or considered. I was a child. Mrs. Spaulding was different, though. Luther Neal was her cousin.

  “Miss Vogel, the headmaster!”

  “Miss Vogel, two hours of detention.”

  “You are the devil incarnate. Get out of my class.”

  On and on the abuse went. My word against hers. Many times, at the beginning, I actually tried to win her over. I answered many of her questions in class with the correct answers, but then she would accuse me of cheating, or talking out of turn. Depending on her mood, the accusations would escalate. Blasphemy, theft…the sheriff was called that for that one.