The Forgotten Child

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Mindy wiped a tear away quickly. “He pinned my arms behind and underneath me, holding them there with his hand and the weight of my body, then yanked my shirt up with his free hand. His hands were grabbing at my breasts so hard it hurt—pinching, smashing. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing.

  “It’s like … I knew he wanted me on a base level, but he didn’t know what that meant?” She swiped away another tear. “I screamed. As loud as I could. Just … I’d managed to avoid anything like that at the shelters. I don’t know how I did, because so many of the girls I knew had been raped. I just snapped. I’d never made sounds like that before.

  “I lost it so completely that it scared him, and I was able to knock him off me. I was tangled up in the sheets and hit the floor trying to get away. I was literally crawling to the door when Orin came in.

  “He figured out pretty quickly what was going on. He grabbed Hank and pulled him out of the room. Whatever you were told by spirits or whatever vision you had about someone getting beaten up—it was from that night. It wasn’t another girl who had the shit kicked out of them. It was Hank. It was the beginning of the end, that night.”

  Frances. But … a boy, not a girl. Francis.

  Mindy tucked her hair behind her ears with both hands. “Orin pulled Hank out and locked the door but didn’t tie me up like usual—that part of the story was true. I was too scared to try and leave, though. Plus, I heard Hank screaming downstairs—I was totally freaked out.

  “I didn’t sleep a wink, and when my door was unlocked in the morning, it was Hank—face a swollen, bloody mess—who brought me my tray of food, not Orin. Orin stood in the doorway watching him. He made Hank tell me that the patients were to be respected and that he’d never touch me inappropriately again.

  “Orin took away his keys and restricted his ability to roam the grounds like he used to—he could have picked the lock on my door whenever he wanted, but he didn’t. I could tell even then how mad Hank was.”

  Riley hugged her arms to her body.

  “Once a week, Orin made us scrub the cellar. So, a few days later, Hank and I were down there cleaning up—Janay had died the day before—when Hank told me he was really and truly sorry and he was going to get me out. I didn’t believe him.

  “He even told me he loved me.”

  Riley’s face screwed up.

  “I know,” she said. “Orin, a couple nights a month, left the ranch. I don’t know why. I’m guessing to troll for more kids to snatch. But he was usually gone for hours. Orin was gone that night. A lot of the time, he took Hank with him, but Hank was under house arrest.

  “It was still light out when I heard crashes down the hall—Hank had managed to kick his door down. Orin had locked him in too.

  “But then I heard him go down the steps, so I figured he’d decided to make a run for it and left me there to rot. I heard the front door open and close. Heard Hank losing his shit outside. He already was a little off, but he really went off the deep end after Orin beat him.

  “I just lay there waiting. After what happened with Hank, Orin stopped tying me to the bedposts. He felt bad for me, I guess. Which was weird, given everything.

  “I woke up out of a dead sleep hours later. It was dark out. Footsteps were pounding up the stairs. I had no idea if it was Hank or Orin, but I was scared out of my mind of them both.

  “I was curled up in the corner when Hank picked the lock on my door. His face was covered in this red stuff, his eyes were swollen, and he had scratches on his face like he’d just gotten attacked by a cat or something.

  “I got ready to scream, but Hank said, ‘No point in screaming when no one can hear you but me. Now’s our chance.’

  “He told me that he’d ‘done something’ and needed my help. Last time that little shit lured me somewhere, I ended up at the ranch, so I sure as hell didn’t want to help him. But I was thinking maybe Orin came back and Hank ambushed the guy and needed me to help him hide the body or something.

  “When we got outside, Orin’s car was still gone, so I knew that wasn’t it. Hank yelled at me to follow him and then he started running for the forest.

  “He was crazed—like worse than I’d ever seen him—and he was muttering to himself about how ‘she shouldn’t have done that.’”

  “She? She who?”

  Mindy frowned, gaze focused on the table. “I don’t know. I’ve felt guilty about it ever since.”

  Riley wanted to ask more questions but told herself to shut up.

  “We kept running through the forest, off the path, and I got the worst feeling. He kept looking behind him to make sure I was still there. Said we were close.

  “When his back was to me again, I found this small log. When he turned to check on me, I swung, hitting him square in the nose. The bones cracked, he screamed and hit the ground. Blood poured out of his face like a waterfall. I whacked him again on the side of the head and boom—lights out. That’s when I ran for the road.”

  Riley’s mouth hung slightly open. This all brought Riley back to the same question: why had Mindy pulled back on saying someone else had been out there? The same person Orin had tried to incriminate. Especially if he’d “done” something to someone else.

  “Before you get all judgy,” Mindy said, “I didn’t even know until after I got out what Hank’s last name was. He was just Hank when we were at the ranch. Second, I didn’t tell police about him in any detail because I was honestly scared I’d killed him. I hit him so hard and then ran—I didn’t know what happened to him. What if after everything, I ended up in jail? I was a kid and I was scared.

  “So after … everything … I really wanted something like a normal life. I just wanted to pretend none of it happened. I was living with a foster family when school started back up. A few days after I started going to school again, I was walking to my foster parents’ house when Hank rounded a corner.”

  “Oh hell.”

  Mindy nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. “I was so scared, I didn’t even think to run. At least his stupid face didn’t look perfect anymore, since I’d broken his nose.”

  Riley offered a faint smile despite feeling sick to her stomach.

  “Hank asked if anyone knew about him. I said I’d mentioned him to my lawyer and my lawyer was looking into finding him—mainly ’cause I’d been scared I’d killed him and my lawyer figured it could hurt my case some if I murdered a kid.

  “But my lawyer couldn’t tell the police about Hank ’cause I asked him not to and he was bound to that because of client confidentiality. My lawyer couldn’t find a Hank Gerber who fit the description anyway. Hank told me to call off the search. I guess some guys who looked like private eyes were following him—but I think he was just super paranoid.

  “Hank ambushed me on my walk home several more times over the next few months. Even when I changed routes, he’d find me. I’d ask my foster mom to pick me up for a couple weeks—didn’t tell her why—and then the day I started walking home again at a totally different time, he’d pop up. One day he grabbed me and pulled me into an alley—slammed the back of my head into the brick wall. He said people were after him and it was my fault, and if I didn’t get them to back off, he was going to kill me. He pulled a pocket knife on me and held it to my throat and said Orin taught him tons of ways to kill a person slowly. I didn’t doubt for a second that he was bluffing.”

  “Jesus.” They sounded like two peas in a pod, Hank and Orin. “So … was it you who requested the formal interview?”

  “Yeah … well, my lawyer. He thought it was a good idea. Said it would help bring me closure. But I’m assuming it was about him getting publicity since he was interviewed, too.”

  Riley remembered him as a skinny, bald man. “And Hank stopped harassing you after that?”

  Mindy shifted in her chair. “Kind of. Still saw him randomly around town, but he didn’t talk to me that often. Like he just wanted me to know he was watching. But it was enough to drive a girl crazy. Always worri
ed I’d run into him. Always looking over my shoulder. Always wondering if it would go from just watching to something … else.

  “After high school, I moved to Los Angeles for a little while. I went for college but also to see my mother’s family. I think I just needed a change of scenery—needed to get away from Hank.”

  “What’d you study in school?”

  Her shoulders relaxed a little. “Random stuff. I ended up with an AA in humanities. I figured out I loved music, too. I turned into a total cliché and joined a garage band.”

  Riley grinned. “What kind of band?”

  “Rock,” she said. “I was the lead singer and played a little guitar. We called ourselves the Crooked Horseshoe.”

  Riley cocked her head. “Wouldn’t that just be a straight line?”

  Mindy laughed. “We thought it was edgy.”

  “I love it.”

  “We went on a tour across the country for a year or so. Made garbage money, but it was amazing, experience-wise. I just bounced around for a while. Went to Korea for a bit, too.”

  “I guess if Hank was trying to stalk you, he’d have a hard time tracking you down.”

  Mindy nodded. “I get occasional blocked calls on my cell. Hang-up calls on the house phone started a couple months ago. Could be telemarketers. But some part of me always wonders if it’s him. It happened a lot at my aunt’s place in L.A. when I first moved there. It’s part of why I panicked when you called. Usually the true assholes—the obsessive people—find my cell number somehow. I’m pretty sure someone doxed me while I was in L.A. I was getting bombarded with calls. I’ve changed my cell number about a dozen times.

  “I rented out the house I got from my dad until I was ready to come back. Which was about two years ago. Just in time for the airing of that goddamn show.” Mindy shot her a look.

  Riley winced. “What made you come back?”

  Mindy gave a full body shrug. “I don’t know. This place holds nothing but bad memories for me, really. But it’s also all I have. Nowhere else ever felt right.”

  Riley wanted to say there were countless places she hadn’t seen yet. But maybe Mindy was drawn here, was stuck in the city, just like Orin and Pete were trapped at the ranch. Something kept her tethered to this place.

  “Hank hasn’t contacted you at all since you’ve been back?”

  Mindy shook her head.

  Suddenly, Riley’s phone blared, her alarm warning her that she now only had half an hour to get to work. “Shit.” Had over an hour already passed? Neither one of them had touched their food. “I’m going to go pay the bill then pee. I’ll be back.”

  After taking care of both things in under ten minutes, and armed with two to-go boxes, she went back to the patio. Mindy had inhaled her sandwich.

  Shoveling her slightly soggy Cobb salad into a box, Riley said, “I can’t thank you enough for talking to me.”

  “Not sure how any of that would be helpful.” Mindy stood, both hands awkwardly gripping the strap of her messenger bag again. Her face grew bright red.

  “Hey,” Riley said. “You okay?”

  “I didn’t … I really didn’t plan to tell you all that,” she said, her gaze focused on the tips of her combat boots. “It just kind of poured out and I couldn’t stop.”

  “I’m glad you felt comfortable enough.”

  Mindy shrugged. “I guess I figured you might know a lot of it anyway, because psychic.”

  Smiling, Riley said, “Will you keep in touch?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not a hugger, but …”

  The embrace was fierce, but short.

  After collecting her stuff and calling a quick goodbye, Riley bolted for her car.

  1980-1983

  Orin couldn’t pinpoint what it was about Hank Gerber that drew him to the thirteen-year-old boy, but there was an immediate kinship. Orin had never gotten along well with his little sister Beverly and never connected with his classmates. The moment Bev was old enough to leave home, she did so without looking back. Not even after their mother died. Orin thought it might be connected to the time he’d tied her to a tree, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Perhaps Hank was the brother he never had, or the son he assumed he’d never create. Women complicated things too much. He couldn’t possibly bring a woman into his life when his devotion to anatomy was sure to make her jealous. Besides, they were such fragile things. He couldn’t have a woman around who fainted at the merest sight of blood.

  He knew his methods for procuring specimens were unorthodox. He didn’t need the stress of a woman focusing on the how of his studies rather than the why and alerting authorities.

  No, when he became a renowned surgeon, and the general public learned the brilliance of his methods, then he’d be able to devote his time to finding a proper wife.

  John Hunter had married, but Orin thought the surgeon’s brother, William, came closer to the truth: the lives they led, ones devoted to anatomy and the exploration of biological sciences, were wholly incompatible with marriage.

  When Orin needed his carnal itch scratched, he’d drive into town and pay for a prostitute. They didn’t care who he was or what occupied his time. They both got what they wanted and then Orin could go back to his house alone with only his patients. Just as he preferred it.

  So it was a surprise to even himself when he found Hank—not because he fancied the boy as a patient, but because he thought he might be the start of his team of recruiters. He had admired this too about John Hunter. His idol had his Resurrectionist crew bring him corpses, so why shouldn’t Orin enlist the assistance of someone like-minded to assist in his own endeavors?

  Orin knew he wasn’t the most handsome of men. He couldn’t be bothered to keep up his appearance and this got no better as he aged. Young girls skirted around him when he was in public. Women in general gave him a wide berth. How could he procure patients if they were too leery to give him a chance? He’d never really known how to interact with young girls—his failed relationship with Bev was proof enough of that.

  Gabriella, the girl in his house now, had made quite the fuss when he’d snagged her. He had followed her down a deserted, dark street—finally alone, for once, rather than surrounded by her fellow homeless deviants—and when he cornered her down the dead-end street he’d chased her into, she screamed and thrashed. The eye she’d managed to land a blow to just before he finally knocked her out had purpled in minutes.

  It was the almost-escape of the girl that made Orin consider an assistant.

  Hank was a looker and charming to boot, but he’d been scrawny and ill-fed. Orin offered him a place to live and a small wage to help with chores. Hank clearly thought this would be a sexual arrangement—an arrangement Orin was sure the boy had agreed to before. But while he agreed to come back to Orin’s house with little convincing, the boy had been clearly relieved when Orin, horrified, had waved off the boy’s offer of fellatio. Though the boy had worded it in a much crasser fashion.

  After that, the two got along swimmingly. Orin grew frustrated at times—and even worried—when the boy would vanish for hours at time. But he always returned with snared rabbits and slingshotted birds and rodents. Some they cut up and skinned or defeathered to eat, but mostly they dissected the animals together. Hank seemed just as fascinated by the inner workings of things as Orin did.

  Orin thought he’d not only started his own Resurrectionist-inspired crew, but also found his own Edward Jenner—the young, like-minded pupil John Hunter had trained. The man who would later create the smallpox vaccine.

  Orin’s relationship with Hank was destined for things just as great, he knew.

  After Hank was given his first assignment—to slowly gain the trust of a blond-haired waif who frequented a shelter in Silver City—Orin was impressed that after only a few conversations with the young Alice, Hank was able to lure the girl to an alley with the promise of drugs and “a little fun.” Instead, Orin lay in wait, used a chloroform-soaked rag to in
capacitate her, and just like that, they had their first joint patient. The girl, well and truly surprised, hardly had a chance to make a peep of protest.

  But Orin could soon tell that Hank wasn’t nearly as fascinated with slicing open human patients as he was with their wildlife ones. They worked together to decapitate Alice—Hank holding the body still while Orin hacked through her neck—but Hank’s heart wasn’t in it. Yet, the boy continued to watch, take notes, and participate when needed. Maybe not as promising as Edward Jenner, but they’d get there.

  It was the capture of Janay—the dark-skinned beauty—that began to cause a rift between the two. Hank often requested to be alone with Janay. Orin refused. He wanted, Orin knew, to sleep with her. But these girls were patients, not prostitutes.

  Orin spent a small fortune buying time with hookers for the boy, but his appetite for sex seemed insatiable. Orin started locking the door to the girls’ rooms in addition to binding them to their beds, and only allowed supervised time with them after the night he found Hank skulking the halls near Janay’s room.

  But it was the arrival of Mindy that truly made Orin question his decision to recruit Hank to his cause. Orin could see the way he looked at Mindy was different. The way he talked about her. The way he talked to her during their supervised time.

  Orin hoped he could squash Hank’s desire for her before he had to put a stop to the boy and bury him out back with the others.

  PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 15

  Between replaying her conversation with Mindy, and wanting desperately to talk to Michael, Riley managed to screw up three orders. One of which resulted in a passionate lecture from an older couple who felt it necessary to let her know just what they thought of the work ethic of today’s youth.

  They were lucky she didn’t spit in their food when she brought back the correct order.

  Days passed in a blur, thoughts of Mindy, Hank, Orin, and Pete—who hadn’t materialized since the phone call with Mindy—taking up most of her time.