Forty-seven
How did she know about Jessica Bates? Karen’s
mindless rantings, he decided. Of no relevance to the moment. He picked
away at the last of her clothing and watched the play of light and shadow
across her body as she writhed in muted agony. Lust ate at the core of
his soul like an acid, like the flames of hell itself, unquenchable,
always this unbearable pleasure, ecstasy beyond measure to endure, but an
uncontrollable torment as well, because he sensed it would destroy him in
the end.
Too much pleasure. Too much
seething anger and hatred. How did it get
mixed all together like this? He ached to watch a bare foot try to pull
free of the leather cords he generally used, but he needed no restraint
this time, not for a women so badly injured. Instead, he lost himself in
thoughts of philosophies of love and hate. Dimly he wanted her to love
him. Him, the defective, the repulsive. Unlovable, hurt, and angry
beyond simple rage and hatred. Far beyond that.
Lovely little creature, this feisty mother of two.
Her scream in the night earlier in the year had thwarted his designs upon
her and had somehow set in motion a course of events that would have
destroyed him. No other woman had posed a challenge of such magnitude.
This night would be the culmination of a course of events began when
Jessica Bates had taken the wife of the deputy in the isles of Carl
Adler’s store. He had know then, although he had buried the thought as
best he could, that her foolish choice of victims had set in motion their
inevitable destruction.
Pink animals move along a conveyor, hogs hanging
by their heels, flowing by one after another, screaming. From the shadows of the
slaughterhouse, a disturbed girl child watches their desperate writhing and
listens to their shrieks of panic with rapt attention. Knives flash, blood
flows, and within her, a dim, twisted passion catches fire and begins to
burn.
Ben closed his eyes, knowing Jessica’s history, not
wanting to see it in his mind’s eye so vividly. Where had those images come from?
It was enough that his guts knotted with memories of her seduction,
night after night of passion and captured women subjected to her hunger for pain
and fear, and then his own. Jessica’s soul, rotted to the core.
His soul-mate. How had she seen her own disease festering in him as
well? If she had seen it, who else might see it and expose him for
the monster he was?
A memory of his own ran through his mind,
a memory of installing
the sound-proof tile over the cement blocks in the basement of the
deserted farmhouse. The two of them, laughing and joking as they worked.
Nathan dead at that time, murdered by Carl Adler who had discovered Laura
Scarelli’s death and who had thought the secret nightmare forever ended
when he killed his sick cousin. Jessica had already replaced her husband
and was
already drowning a new disciple in the depths of her gruesome bloodlust.
But she had been a butcher, like her father, lacking in finesse and
subtlety.
Laura Scarelli had died without making a sound. It
had been the one death that had chilled him as deeply as the chill of the
earth within which he had committed her remains. He had tortured her, and
she would not cry out. In her eyes, he had seen no fear, only the anguish
of the waste and the tragedy of his and Jessica’s sickness. It was the
one death that should never have happened, and he had sensed the error in
which they were involved even as it unfolded, as if none of them had any
volition in the matter, as if events were going to unfold of their own
accord and show them aspects of their being that would never have been
otherwise exposed to the light of day.
He had blamed Jessica for
Laura's death, and had then taken the first step in undoing the damage by tossing Jessica’s
semiconscious body to the ravenous hogs. His sense
of freedom had been overpowering, all the dangers to himself hidden away
in one fell swoop. Free of Jessica, free of Karen as he chipped away at
what remained of her sanity, implicating her in deaths mirroring her
darkest nightmares. He had pinned the hapless deputy in a corner by
taking his lovers as victims, implicating him in the death of his own
wife. Nobody would ever be able to say for certain that Carl Adler had
been free of guilt.
Ending the life before him would
forever seal his past from
prying eyes. Ronnie had been the one factor that had slipped by him
entirely, almost until it was too late, but here lay the opportunity to
divert the eyes of the world in every direction other than his own.
He would leave this body to be found and watch in glee as the sheriff
uncovered evidence that would implicate half the town of Sorrel in her
death, regardless of whether or not Karen Radcliff and the boy had died in
the fire he had started. His
own son’s fate was of no more concern to him than the bloody fragments of
flesh the lovely creature before him would soon become.
And Maggie Shire, of course.
Gone. Eliminated.
But where, he wondered, had the
deputy gone?
Tears came to Lori's eyes. "You
can't us hide from the world," she said so softly that Ben was forced to lean close to hear.
“We see it through your dreams. We know who you are now and your
victims will know your name before you know theirs. You're coming to
us, Benjamin. We're waiting for you."
He glanced wild-eyed into the dark corners of the
store in search of an intruder who may have overheard her incriminating
whisperings. This place was not as safe as the torture chamber beneath the
farmhouse. This death would serve utilitarian purposes only. He snatched
the curved blade from the table with which to silence her before the
unthinkable happened and he was found out by the world for the vile
creature he was. He positioned the knife at the pit of her stomach, and
all of creation paused in unbearable tension. Her body went rigid in
response as well, her breasts stilled in that critical instant. Teetered
on the razor edge of the frenzy of wanton destruction to come, he closed
his eyes to bask in the final moment before consummation, and then pressed
the knife to gently part the flesh of her body.
