He stood up and pulled his pants on. Then he turned to Angela.
“My grandfather’s body, someone stole it.”
CHAPTER 27
Murder in Florence
Journal Entry: Florence, November 2,1948
I hid behind an old stone house. There was no hope of them not finding me here. The trail of blood that flowed heavily from my arm would lead them right to me. I had killed ten women since arriving in Florence. I had taken all of their faces. It got easier with each one, but my frustration had grown. None of them were of the light as I had prayed. The voice no longer spoke to me either. I was abandoned, and now I was about to die.
I heard the shouts of the men as they got closer. I had a minute left, maybe two. Never had I thought this would be how I died, huddled in the dark, waiting for the knife to turn on me.
I had paid the last woman to be with me. It was such an obvious solution. Why search for someone who was alone when I could simply and easily convince the woman that I would pay to be with her sexually? All I had to do was change the way I dressed. There would be no look of disappointment in their eyes. No look of suspicion. We just negotiated a price and walked away together.
I led her back to a room I had rented. Her death was quick and silent. I had become an expert at the art of slitting their throats. I performed the movement so effortlessly that they didn’t even realize what had happened to them. They simply fell into my arms, and I gently guided them to the floor. I would gather my tools while they bled out.
I was in the process of removing the woman’s face when a man kicked in the door. I can only surmise he was a jealous lover. He had probably seen me talking with her, and he had followed us back here.
The man was fast, having only hesitated for a second after he saw what I was doing. He plunged his knife towards me, but I was able to get out of the way. Then he slashed the blade in a wide, downward arc, and I had to use my left arm to protect myself. The blade cut deep into my bicep, and I felt the warm blood flow over me.
He stole a quick glance at the woman on the floor, and I used the opportunity to burst past him and flee out onto the street. He naturally gave chase, calling for any man around to also hunt me down. They would be here soon, and there was no way for me to escape.
I thought of my father. He had been dead for several years now, but I still thought of him frequently. I had loved the man deeply, and now I had ruined his good name. I would be killed here, or they would arrest me and put me on trial. My father’s name would be brought down forever. That was really my only regret. I wasn’t sorry for what I had done to any of the women. Maybe I would have to answer to them in the afterlife for my crimes, if there was such a thing. He still hadn’t spoken to me. So I wasn’t even sure I would ever have to face any consequences.
The men’s voices grew louder. They were searching house by house. I closed my eyes. It would be over soon enough.
“Do you want me to kill them?” the voice asked.
I opened my eyes.
“Our work isn’t done,” it continued.
“They’re too many,” I said.
“You must let me in. Accept me, and I will kill them for you.”
“How?” I asked.
“Will you let me in?”
The man who attacked me rounded the corner. He saw me sitting on the ground. My back was against the stone wall of the house. I was weak from the loss of blood. He still held his knife, and he slowly approached me.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’ll let you in.”
Suddenly I was standing above the house. I looked down on myself. How was this possible? Had I died? Had the man killed me?
My body stood up and faced the man with the knife. He thrust the knife towards my stomach, but I grabbed the knife and twisted his wrist backwards. I could hear the bones snap from up here, followed by his agonized screams. I took the knife out of his hands, and I saw myself smile. I pressed the knife into his throat. He fell backwards just as two other men arrived. They looked at the man on the ground. He tried to speak, or did he just try to breathe? Blood came out of his mouth and the hole in his neck.
I saw myself advance on the other men. They seemed utterly paralyzed, completely unable to move or defend themselves. The knife went into the air and came down hard between the shoulder and the neck of the nearest man. Then the knife slashed across his throat. The blow was so vicious and deep that it almost decapitated him.
The second man fled, but I saw myself catch up with him quickly. He begged for mercy, saying that he had a wife and children. I saw myself pull his head backwards and again the knife slit a throat. Suddenly I was back inside my body. I looked down at my hands. One of them held the bloody knife. I looked around me, three men were dead.
“What are you?” I asked. “Who are you?”
“I am loneliness. I am emptiness. I am despair,” the voice said.
CHAPTER 28
The Theft of David Carter
Present Day.
Marcus and Angela stood beside the disturbed gravesite of his grandfather, David Carter. There was a large hole in the ground where the coffin used to be. Now the coffin haphazardly rested on the top of a mound of fresh dirt. The lid to the coffin was wide open, exposing its emptiness.
The funeral parlor owner looked at the hole in the ground. He could not meet Marcus’ eyes.
“The sheriff came by this morning and filled out a report. He thinks it’s teenagers playing a prank.”
“Is that what you think?” Angela asked.
“I don’t know what to think. I can’t imagine why anyone would do something like this,” the funeral parlor owner said.
“Who discovered this?” Marcus asked.
“The grounds crew. It wasn’t hard to spot.”
Marcus looked around the cemetery. Could things get any worse? He asked himself.
“I’m deeply sorry, Mr. Carter. I don’t know what this world is coming to.”
Marcus slowly turned around and looked across the cemetery. He saw the large mausoleum again and the angel standing on the pedestal above a grave. Eventually his eyes landed on the spot he had seen his grandfather’s caretaker, Leah Grey, before. He didn’t know why he was doing it. There was no chance for her to be there, but her image had popped into his mind when he first saw the empty coffin.
“They left a photo inside the coffin. I made a color copy for you. The Sheriff took the original. But he wanted to know if you recognized the people in it.”
The funeral parlor owner reached into his coat pocket and removed the color copy of the photograph. He handed it to Marcus.
“Do you know them?”
Marcus looked at the photograph. It was a surveillance style shot of two people standing close to each other. They were having a conversation and seemingly unaware of the presence of the photographer. One person was a man in his late sixties. The other was Leah Grey.
“Do you know them?” he asked Marcus again.
“No.”
Angela handed the funeral parlor owner one of her business cards.
“Please call me if you think of anything else. We’ll contact the sheriff’s department.”
“Of course.”
Angela turned to Marcus. The funeral parlor owner understood he was being dismissed, and he walked towards his car which was parked on one of the narrow roads winding through the cemetery.
Marcus was still studying the photograph. Angela looked at it too.
“You don’t know them?”
“The sins of the father.”
“What are you talking about?” Angela asked.
“We found another slip of paper inside the snake that was with you sister-in-law. It said ‘sins of the father.’”
Marcus handed Angela the photograph. He looked across the cemetery again. He was clearly worried.
“You do know these people,” Angela guessed.
Marcus turned back to her. She actually thought she saw a hint of fear in his eyes.
&nb
sp; “The man in the photograph is my father.”
“And the woman?” Angela asked.
“Leah Grey. She was my grandfather’s nurse.”
Angela looked at the empty coffin.
“We need to warn them.”
Marcus nodded.
“You should go see your father. I’ll find Leah Grey.”
“He won’t be happy to see me,” Marcus said.
“Why not?”
“We haven’t spoken in twenty years.”
Before Angela could reply, Marcus was headed for the car.
David Carter’s naked body lay on the ground in the woods. The area surrounding his body had been raked clear of leaves and other debris so that only the dirt remained. A large circle was etched in the dirt and surrounded the body. Several mannequins stood around the body in a silent circle.
The man in black stood on the outside of the circle of mannequins. The hood covered his head but you could still make out the sagging folds of the flesh mask. His arms were at his side and he held a scalpel in his right hand.
“The sins of the father,” he said.
Then he stepped inside the circle.
CHAPTER 29
Memories
Angela stopped her car at the edge of the long gravel driveway. The small house that was Marcus’ childhood home could be seen in the distance. They were in farm country, and the closest neighbor was over two miles away.
Marcus opened the passenger door and climbed out of the car. The cold wind immediately struck him hard. The temperature was dropping. Marcus looked up and saw the dark clouds rolling in. It would storm soon.
He shut the door behind him and looked down the long driveway. Memories flooded back, and it was obvious from the look on his face that they were mostly unpleasant ones.
The electric window rolled down beside him.
“You gonna be all right?” Angela asked.
Marcus turned back to the car and poked his head through the open window.
“Yeah. Fine.”
“I’ll give you a call when I’m done. Good luck.”
“You too,” he said.
Angela rolled the window back up and drove away.
Marcus turned back to his old house. This was a moment he had dreaded for years. Suddenly he didn’t know if he had the will power to move forward. He knew there would be the inevitable confrontation. No matter how many times he had told himself in the past that there wouldn’t be one, no matter how hard he tried to shut up and walk away, he and his father always ended up at each other’s throats. He wanted to think it would be different this time. But experience told him it wouldn’t be. It couldn’t be. There was just too much bad blood.
He looked down the road, but Angela’s car was long gone. He could easily pull out his cell phone and call her back. But what excuse would he give her?
His father was somehow involved in this case, and he had no idea what connection it could possibly be. He didn’t think his father was responsible in any way for the theft of David Carter’s body. But someone else clearly wanted to pull him into it. The sins of the father, the note had said. What sins? Was that what this was ultimately about? Payback for some unknown sin?
Marcus turned back to the driveway and began the long walk to the house. How many times had he walked this path? It was easily in the thousands. Marcus reached the small farm house at the end of the driveway. It was a two story home with a large porch that ran the full width of the front of the house. Two rocking chairs sat on the porch. He remembered they used to be white. Now they were badly faded and covered with grime from the bad weather and neglect. Behind the house, farmland stretched as far as the eye could see. How many days had he spent working that land? There were years worth of memories that now seemed nothing more than one giant blur in his mind.
The rusty door screeched open and Marcus’ father, Frank Carter, stepped onto the porch. The wooden planks creaked under his weight. Frank was a large man, and he stood a few inches taller than Marcus and at least fifty pounds heavier. He wasn’t fat by any means. His body was still hard and muscular.
Marcus looked up at his father. He could never admit to himself that he was still intimidated by the big man. But it was true. The uneasiness in the pit of his stomach was proof of that. Suddenly he felt completely weak wearing his suit and wool overcoat. His father had always mocked men in suits. They were soft, he would tell the younger Marcus. They never worked an honest day in their life. Was that what Marcus had become, soft and useless?
But Frank smiled at his son, doing his best to disarm the tense situation.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Marcus nodded to his father, unable to say anything at this point.
“I had the feeling you’d be coming to see me.”
“Why’s that?” Marcus asked.
“Just had the feeling.”
Marcus looked up at the house again.
“The place looks good,” he lied.
“A little smaller than you remember it. I’m sure. I think places have a way of growing larger in our memories.”
“Maybe so,” Marcus admitted.
“Come on inside.”
Frank turned and headed back into the house. The screen door swung shut behind him and banged loudly on the wooden door frame.
Marcus paused a moment and then headed up the steps and into the house he had not stepped foot in for over two decades.
Angela parked her car in front of the small and quaint house belonging to Leah Grey. The house was dark blue with a white trim. It looked in good condition, which was a sharp contrast to the state of the yard.
The storm had arrived during her drive to Leah’s house, and fat raindrops were falling hard now. She wondered if it would eventually turn to snow and dreaded having to drive in the countryside with slick roads. She looked in her backseat for her umbrella but it wasn’t there. Then she remembered she had left it in her house. She cursed her forgetfulness and opened the car door.
She made her way up the driveway and saw several faded newspapers scattered across the driveway. Angela could tell they had been there for months since the print was badly faded and yellow, and the pages themselves were misshapen from having been drenched from several rain storms.
Based on the conditions of the newspapers, Angela no longer expected anyone to be at home. But she had driven a long way to get here, and she should at least check the front door. She climbed the short steps to the front porch landing and rang the doorbell. Thank goodness the porch had an overhang that protected her somewhat from the rain. But the rain was coming down hard now and a heavy stream of water rolled off the lip of the overhang and splashed at her feet. While she was waiting for a reply that she assumed would not come, she looked around the neighborhood. It looked respectable, the kind of place you could raise a family.
She thought of Marcus and the intimate night they had shared. Where would it lead? Had it been a mistake? She didn’t feel that it had. She enjoyed it. It was something she had secretly hoped would happen a long time ago. Should she tell him that? No, it was better to take things slow, to keep protecting herself.
Angela turned back to the door and rang the bell a second time. She waited a few more seconds. It was obvious no one was coming.
She turned to leave when she noticed the screen on the window closest to the front door was torn and flapping in the wind. She walked to the edge of the landing and examined the window screen. The tear was not jagged as she expected it to be. It had obviously been cut. She pulled the screen back to see how far the tear went. The slice was large enough for an adult to slip through.
Angela reached through the hole in the screen and tried the window. She found it unlocked. She lifted the window open, took another look around the neighborhood, and climbed inside the house.
Frank Carter stood in front of the kitchen counter with his back to Marcus, who sat at the small table in the center of the room.
Marcus looked past his father and out the w
indow. The storm was in full rage mode now, and rain pelted the glass pane.
“How have you been?” Frank asked.
“Okay, all things considered.”
He certainly wasn’t feeling okay by any means, but he had no desire to pour his heart out to his father. Marcus looked around the kitchen. It seemed so familiar but also so distant.
Frank poured them each a cup of coffee and walked over to the table. He handed Marcus his cup and then sat down opposite his son.
“Thanks,” Marcus said.
Frank took a sip of the coffee and then placed the cup on the table. He kept his hands wrapped tightly around the cup.
“Did you make it to your grandfather’s funeral?”
Marcus nodded. Then he took a sip of the coffee. He clearly didn’t know what to say.
“You came to ask me questions about him.”
It was more a statement than a question.
“You never told me why you two stopped talking,” Marcus said.
“Why did you and I stop talking? Sometimes fathers and sons just don’t see things eye to eye.”
Marcus looked past his father and stared out the window to the dead fields beyond the house. The rain continued to pour. Marcus hoped Angela had found Leah’s house okay in the storm.
He turned back to his father.
“My father had a trunk in his closet. I was forbidden to go near it, but one day I opened it anyway, and he caught me,” Frank said.
“What did he do?”
Frank laughed.
“Nothing. I was expecting the beating of my life, but he did nothing.”
Angela tried to look around, but the house was pitch black, aside from the tiny amount of light coming through the window she had just climbed through. All of the other windows were covered by thick black curtains.
She ran her fingers through her hair, which was now thoroughly drenched. Her coat was soaked too, and she was starting to shiver.
She felt along the wall near the front door. She found the light switch easily enough, but the lights did not come on.
She walked over to one of the curtains and yanked it open. It was quite dark outside now due to the storm and very little light came into the house. She scanned the room. Sofa. Small table. Lamp. Television. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She walked across the room to the lamp beside the sofa and turned the switch. Again, nothing happened.
Nature of Evil Page 13