Then, he saw the pretty woman in the jeans and sweater. She was already inside the house. He thought he saw Jenny, too, but he wasn’t sure.
He heard glass break from somewhere inside.
Then, he thought he saw something that made a shower of red water come out of Jenny’s face, and it scared him so much he peed in his shorts. He couldn’t help himself—he held tight to Teresa’s hand, and jumped up, drawing her with him.
The woman in the house looked out across the patio.
She moved swiftly. Mark thought it was like the nature film he saw once where a lion went after a gazelle.
She was coming for him and his sister.
Chapter Forty-Three
Teresa screamed, “Run! Marky run!” She tugged at his hand, but his body was hard as stone. Mark couldn’t move. Something about the pretty woman coming towards him had made him feel terribly cold. He felt like he wasn’t even in his body, but was looking down at himself. At himself and the lady who moved so fast it was like she was running, only it was more like she was bounding towards him. He wondered why he couldn’t make himself go. His feet felt like they were sunken into the concrete of the pool. He tried to scream at himself from inside his head to move, but nothing happened. Even his lips couldn’t move.
Teresa pushed at him, and went running. There was a break in the hedge behind the cottage which led to another street. Mark couldn’t even turn around to see if that’s where his sister went.
Mark didn’t feel he could budge an inch. He was frozen. He tried to tell his body to run, but nothing moved.
He wished his sister had stayed with him, but she was scared, too, and she would get help.
The woman came to him and leaned over. Her face was inches from his own. He could smell her sweet breath.
She put her hands on his shoulders.
She looked deep into his eyes, as if she were looking for something else inside him.
“You’re his son,” she said. Her voice was light. “You look like your father. You have his eyes. You have beautiful eyes.”
There was blood on her teeth.
She brought her lips to his forehead.
Chapter Forty-Four
Agnes closed her eyes, still kissing his son. Tasting the fear on the boy’s face.
Lightning thrust a spear into her brain. She was pushed into the past body.
Her head throbbed with pain as she opened her eyes again.
She was there, in the nest she shared with Jack.
Looking at the locket that had been pinned to his cloak.
Seeing the picture inside it. The lock of hair.
The woman with the dark hair and pale skin.
She went to the corner of the room to gather more coal.
All she could think of was betrayal.
All she could think of was that he had betrayed her for all eternity.
Something wild and uncontrollable was released from deep within her.
It was as if a sleeping beast were awakened.
Chapter Forty-Five
At six p.m., Trey sat alone on a bench outside an ice cream shop in town while Carly got a scoop of peppermint ice cream on a sugar cone. They’d wandered the hills and rocks, avoiding any humans they happened to spot. It had been their day to be completely alone together. He was happily bored with the early evening. Bored and still a little hungry even after they’d gotten a couple of burgers an hour before.
It seemed that the entire town was overrun with tourists at this point, and he attributed this to the fact of the Fourth of July celebration coming up the next day. His backside ached from riding, and the top of his forehead was bright red from sun. Carly got her cone, and walked down the block, window-shopping.
He could see the docks and beach from his seat, and was mildly surprised to see a medium sized powerboat with the letters: L.A.P.D. stenciled in white on its navy blue prow.
Several cops got off the boat, and walked up the docks.
Carly came over and sat down next to him. “I spy with my little eye a hat and some sandals that I want to buy.”
Trey pointed to the dock. “Look what I spy.”
“Oh. Cops on vacation?” she said, fanning the air. “God, it’s hot.”
“I wonder what’s up.”
“Well, it’s not because the dreaded axe murderess is after you.”
“Now I feel bad,” he said. “She’s dead. Poor thing. She never had a chance in life.”
“Neither did her victims. Remember that next time you feel sympathy for a sadistic killer.” Carly had a way of expressing herself which always seemed to override whatever mood he was feeling. He appreciated that about her.
“It’s hard to understand that kind of mind, how it perceives things. She was kidnapped when she was barely Teresa’s age. She was tortured by this insane person. For years. She was almost seventeen when she finally broke free, but it was too late. She had murdered the man who had abducted her. Who could blame her then? He had tortured her, skinned her in places, kept her in a basement, chained like a dog. Bled her with small, sharp knives. And he created a monster himself in her. He had turned her from a girl with some problems into a creature from nightmares. She had a fairly unique pathology, which her abductor had apparently tortured into her. She believed that she was reincarnated, living through the problems of another existence and that this drove her to be who she was.”
“So, who was she?” Carly asked. He could tell she was trying to lighten things up a bit; her tone was facetious. “Cleopatra? Anastasia? The Iron Maiden of Nuremburg?”
But he couldn’t even raise a grin. It all seemed so sad to him. He had always felt that none of the patients at Darden were really to blame for their situation. It was as if the ancients were right: some were born under unlucky stars. “She was a girl, also named Agnes, who lived in London around the turn of the century. A prostitute.”
Carly seemed genuinely interested. “How much of her file did you see?”
“I didn’t. Her psychiatrist kept that under lock and key. Agnes Hatcher told me all of it. She believed that everyone from the current life also played a part in past incarnations.”
Carly’s jaw dropped, in mock-drama. She touched his wrist, leaning towards him. She whispered, “You were one of her past life clients?”
Trey finally grinned. It did seem a little funny to him. Quit taking yourself so seriously all the time. “Not quite. She believed I was the reincarnation of her lover. He was quite a character. A man who tortured her and degraded her, but who understood her. A man who taught her about life.”
Carly was silent. Then she said, “It sounds nuts but I’m actually slightly jealous. And I don’t even buy the reincarnation thing. Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Believe in reincarnation?”
Trey laughed. He glanced towards the beach, with its last stragglers still swimming or having evening picnics. “I really would hate to come back to earth and have to figure it all out all over again. But I do. A little.”
“I married a heretic,” Carly said. “A recovering Cathoholic like me.”
He stood up, stretching. He looked back, above the shops, to the western sky above the hills, the rays of the sun still glowing. “I’m not talking about any orthodox reincarnation theory, just the one that goes, you know, you die and then grass grows from your grave and some animal eats the grass, and so on…you know, the ‘no energy is lost’ theory. Fragments of what we are remain.” Trey felt a little exasperated trying to put this into words, since he was never sure of his exact belief system except in the most general terms. Since Carly was a lapsed Catholic, religion only came up in their lives when the kids were baptized and when the in-laws visited.
Carly brought her legs up on the bench, crossing them in a pseudo-yoga position. “I’ll be sure to remember to save on your funeral, then. Maybe I’ll use you as fertilizer to plant some grass in the backyard. How did a nice Episcopalian boy from Riverside ever develop such independent thinking?”
“It’s just a sense. It seems logical to me.”
“So maybe you were Agnes’ lover. We should go to one of those regression therapy hypnotists sometime and find out. Maybe I should be jealous,” Carly said, knitting her eyebrows in mock-worry. “Maybe she’s being reborn even as we speak, and in ten years some kid will come up to you and say, ‘hey, I’m Agnes.’ I’ll be jealous through eternity.”
“Well, you won’t be jealous when you hear who her lover was.”
“Queen Victoria?”
Trey laughed. “Not even close, except maybe by family ties. Apparently you are married to the reincarnation of a nice man named Jack who used to knife the odd hooker.”
“Jack the Ripper?” Carly’s eyes widened. “I wish I had never asked any of this. Yikes. She thought you were Jack the Ripper?”
“Her immortal beloved. I even had nightmares for awhile back then, she described it so vividly. She believed that I brought her into ‘the life,’ and then tried to destroy her. She told me that one day I would remember the Great Betrayal and then we would be united. One of those nice past lives.”
“The Great Betrayal,” Carly said. “Sounds like the Great Room those Spanish monks had.” Then, she snapped her fingers. “Capilla Blanca,” Carly’s eyes widened. “What a coincidence.”
“Huh?”
“Capilla Blanca—the original name of that Kirk In The Rocks place. It means ‘white chapel’ in Spanish. Whitechapel was the area of London where Jack the Ripper did his dirty work. Isn’t that weird?”
Trey caught his breath in mock-terror. “Yeah, it is. Very. But then again, Britain is an island, and we’re on an island, and Jack the Ripper killed in Britain…so, oh my god, we’ve both been on islands. What’s really weird is that you know where Jack the Ripper stalked his victims. Maybe you were there, too. Maybe you’re Jack.”
“Don’t mock me, bucko,” Carly said, “or you won’t get any kisses. I just think it’s weird that the day after she gets killed, we’re walking around a place called white chapel. Maybe you are the Ripper reincarnate.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“It feels like it never gets dark here,” Trey said.
They walked hand in hand along the promenade. The shops were all closed down, but a few of the restaurants were just serving dinner. “When is it going to get dark? I’m tired of daylight.”
“Since you’re calendar-impaired, I’ll remind you that it’s July, and we’ve only passed midsummer night by about a week. That’s why it’s not dark yet,” Carly said. “Try back in a couple of hours.”
“Oh. Right.” He grinned.
“Hey!” Carly said as if she just got the greatest idea in the world. “Let’s take the kids out tonight.” She paused, dragging him with her, to examine a menu on the wall by a small bistro. “If Mark’s gotten over his pout for the day, maybe he’ll behave himself for some paella or…mmm…this looks good. Scampi. That’s what I want.” She sighed. “God, that was a fun day.”
“Yep,” was all Trey said. “I am a lucky son of a gun.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. Closed his eyes. Blocked out poor dead Agnes Hatcher. Blocked out Darden State. Blocked out everything but the here and now.
For variety, they walked the narrow side streets up the hill, cutting over within several houses of their rental. The entire town of Avalon seemed silent, which matched the balmy weather. On the way back to the cottage, Trey noticed two policemen standing at the edge of the road. He and Carly exchanged glances.
“Don’t get paranoid,” she whispered, taking his hand. When they strolled near the two men, one of them held up his hand.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stop. We have an investigation in process,” one of them said.
“Excuse me,” Trey said. “Has there been some sort of accident? There seems to be a lot of police out tonight.” Carly leaned against a fence post to tie the shoelaces of her tennis shoes. The sky was becoming overcast, which for most of southern California in July was unusual, but not among the coastal islands. The clouds didn’t necessarily herald a storm, but perhaps there would be scattered showers that would come and go quickly. Noticing Carly, and the sky, and the policemen—these were his last moments of feeling safe in the universe.
The short cop said, “As a matter of fact there has been something of a mishap. Do you live up this road?”
“We’re renting a cottage. Right at the end. Number 224.”
He knew before they even said another word. It was in their eyes. He felt his heart rate accelerate suddenly, and he broke out in a cold sweat. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at Carly. He was afraid she would feel it, too. The fear. As if it were a living, breathing thing that he only let out of its cage when there was nothing to stop it.
Trey knew.
He knew in a gut-wrenching way, and before they could stop him, before they could speak, he was running up the road, towards the house, only thinking:
Let them be safe.
Please, God, let them be safe.
Let our children remain unharmed.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Later, it seemed like a nightmare. It seemed like the cottage was on the sea, adrift. Tables, chairs, walls, all seemed to rock slowly back and forth. His vision was limited, as if he were looking through a dark tunnel. Trey fought his way past the police. They were a blur of blue uniforms and gray suits. A woman in a black skirt and white blouse had a small baggie in her hand and was picking something off the floor with a pair of tweezers. A policeman made a grab for his arm as he stumbled across something on the floor—he couldn’t bring himself to look at the thing which he was afraid might be a human body. He heard shouts as if from underwater. The living room seemed to rock back and forth as if it were being slapped with waves. His body moved faster than his mind, for he couldn’t understand why there were so many policemen standing at the edges of the kitchen, using brushes and pen-flashlights on the counter.
He felt dizzy, and was afraid he would fall—but he held onto his consciousness, his sanity. He worked as hard as he could to be strong as he ran down the hall, calling their names as if he expecting each to be in the bedrooms of the cottage.
Trey felt somewhere deep inside himself that whatever was happening here, that God would keep his children safe. That children didn’t deserve for anything bad to happen to them. Nothing like what he was afraid of.
He kept his mind racing, keeping the flame of hope alive.
Until he saw the spray of blood across Mark’s bedroom wall.
Chapter Forty-Eight
It wasn’t Mark or Teresa in the bed. It was the body of an older boy. Even this was difficult to determine. Trey felt sweat break out all up and down his spine. He began shivering uncontrollably. It was as if he had stepped into another dimension of existence. As if he had stepped into Hell.
Trey’s mind wiped clean, then, for the next several minutes. He took in the room with his eyes. He saw what was there to be seen. But his brain short-circuited, and he felt very cold. He felt for an instant as if he, himself, had the mind of the killer. As if he were stepping into the room, seeing the boy in the bed.
Seeing the terror in his eyes as the boy beheld the knife.
The curved knife held high and brought down in a slicing motion.
The ripping of skin.
The smell, from somewhere distant, of soot and mildew. The sound of clattering hooves on cobblestones. Beating of rain against shingles. The taste of blood in the back of his throat.
A human being lay on the bed, his skin sliced down the middle and peeled back, stuck with tacks to the bed. His face had been completely skinned. It was a mass of red pulp.
A cop turned around when he saw Trey and said, “Who are you?” He had something that looked like some bloody body part in a large plastic bag. The evening sunlight, through the long bedroom window cast a kind of rainbow across the blood-stained wall. The lampshade by the bed was spattered with something that had once been part of a huma
n being.
Trey felt a stab in the back of his head, as if just seeing this hurt so much that he was about to lose consciousness.
On the wall, finger-painted in blood, the word:
BELOVED.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Trey crumpled in a heap to the carpet. He closed his eyes. Please God don’t let Marky or Terry be hurt. Please let this be a dream.
Down the hallway, he heard Carly cry out. He stood up on shaky legs, grasping the doorframe. He saw her, down the hall. She was calling for their children.
Trey marshaled what little strength he had, and went toward the sound of her voice like it was his own heart beat. He wanted to hold her until they were one being, together. Until there were no more tears, only warmth. Only comfort.
When he found her, among the cops, she was shivering. He wrapped his arms around her. He held her as close as he could get. Normally, he would feel her warmth. Now all he felt was ice.
“Trey,” she wept against his shoulder. “My babies.” Trey’s mind couldn’t focus on any one thing. Random and scattered images flashed through his mind: Mark when he took his first brave dive, Mark when he was a week old, lying in the old Beatrix Potter blanket in his bassinette, Teresa at her fourth birthday party, Teresa dancing on her grandfather’s toes when she was six, the time when Carly miscarried…Images of Dr. Ballantine, the psychiatrist, his scalp sliced open, the blood on Agnes Hatcher’s face, the look in her eyes, at him, when she cried out, “Beloved! My only love!” The image of Agnes Hatcher, face covered, in her restraints, in the steel-doored room at Darden State…chess games, sitting across from her and trying to figure out how she would move her chess pieces…walking with her in the garden, and hearing her stories about her last incarnation with him…his babies, his little children, he couldn’t block the images, torn as if a wild animal had dug its claws into them. His thoughts: it can’t be Agnes Hatcher. She’s dead. I watched the news. It’s what was reported. She couldn’t have done this.
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