Nature of Evil

by Robert W. Stephens

  “The sins of the father, Marcus. Why can’t you see?”

  This time the voice was clearly coming from the front room now. He moved towards it.

  Angela pushed open the door to Charlie’s bedroom. The light from the master bathroom was on and it threw a shaft of soft light across the bed. She could see a large shape under the white bed sheets. It had to be her brother.

  “Charlie,” she said softly.

  But there was no answer. She slowly moved towards the bed and stopped when she saw a large red stain on the sheets near the head of the bed. Fear flowed through her body. Was her brother under those sheets? It had to be. She was too late.

  Angela thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye and turned. A tall man dressed in black stood in the shadows in the corner of the room. She lifted her gun and aimed it at the man.

  “Hands in the air!” she screamed.

  The man just ignored her. He didn’t make a threatening move either.

  “Why won’t you find me?”

  The voice seemed to be coming from outside. Marcus had left the front door open, and he now stood in the doorway looking out into the heavy rain.

  He could see Leah Grey. She stood in the center of the street. She looked up at him, her eyes pleading with him to finally understand.

  “The sins of the father are passed to the son. Over and over again,” Leah said.

  Angela tried to steady her hand as she aimed the gun at the man in black. She would not be paralyzed this time. She was ready for him now. She was more than willing to take his life.

  “I said ‘hands in the air,’” she repeated.

  But the man did nothing.

  Angela took a quick glance back at the bed. It seemed like the red stain on the bed sheets had gotten larger since she last looked a few seconds ago. It had to be her brother. He was dead, at the hands of MAI. The monster had taken so many lives. He had murdered her sister-in-law and Marcus’s father, and now he had killed her brother as well.

  But she had him. He would go to trial and no doubt he would be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Or maybe he would be found not guilty by lack of evidence. He had outsmarted them to this point. Who was to say he would not continue to outsmart them in the future?

  Angela was about to do something she would never have thought she would do. There really was no other choice though. There was no hesitation in her movement. No second guessing her intentions. She pulled the trigger, over and over again. She fired until her gun was out of bullets. The man in black had fallen after the first two hits. He had fallen face first onto the carpet. His body had remained motionless, and she continued to shoot him while he lay on the ground. He made no sound either.

  Angela turned her attention from MAI and ran to the bed. She pulled back the covers, expecting the worse.

  She got it. Charlie’s face had been removed. It had not been done with the surgical like precision of the others. But it was gone nonetheless. She felt for a pulse, knowing she wouldn’t find one. She had to check though. There was nothing. Charlie was gone.

  She walked over to MAI, who was still lying on the floor. But there was no blood on the carpet. How was that possible?

  “Are you all right?” Marcus asked.

  Angela turned and saw Marcus standing in the doorway. She didn’t answer him. She went to turn MAI over so she could see his face, but there was something wrong with his body.

  Angela turned him over. His body was stiff and considerably lighter than a man. She pulled back the black hood and saw her brother’s mutilated face staring back at her. She recoiled and almost fell over.

  Marcus had walked across the room, and he caught her.

  He looked down at the face of Charlie Darden. The eyes were white and looked like plastic. He bent over and studied the face. There was no doubt it was Charlie. He hesitated, not wanting to touch the skin. But he had to. He slowly pulled the face mask off. A mannequin’s pale face stared back at them.

  “Marcus.”

  Marcus looked down at Angela. Tears were forming in her eyes.

  “The other room is empty,” she continued.

  Marcus had seen it too. There should have been a little girl in the room, but the bed was empty.

  “Christie’s gone. He has my niece.”

  Marcus looked back at the mannequin. He had seen it before.

  CHAPTER 37

  The Cabin in the Woods

  The young boy finally ran out of the cabin, terrified the faceless woman on the table would jump up and chase him. He ran as hard as he could. When he was about a hundred yards from the cabin, he slowed and glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see anyone, just the white mannequins that surrounded the trees.

  His legs were exhausted by now, but he kept running. He didn’t dare stop to catch his breath.

  Eventually he reached the edge of the woods, and he could just barely see his grandfather’s house in the distance. He finally cleared the woods and collapsed on the grass. He rolled over to his back and stared up to the sky. It was still gray and flat. His chest heaved up and down as he sucked the cool air into his lungs. His heart was still racing. He would have to tell his father about the cabin. Who did it belong to? Who could have done such a terrible thing to the woman?

  The young boy got to his feet and ran inside the house. He searched the house for his father, but he was nowhere to be found. The boy did the only thing he could think to do. He ran to one of the bedrooms and locked the door. He climbed onto the bed and curled up in a ball. He closed his eyes to try to block out the world. Eventually he fell asleep, and the woman came back to him in his dreams. This time she was standing in the center of the cabin instead of lying on the table. The boy was on his hands and knees, trying to escape again. But the faceless woman grabbed his arm at the last second and prevented him from reaching the door.

  She leaned towards him and was close enough for him to make out the various muscles where her face should have been. He could see them tighten as her eyes flared with anger.

  “The sins of the father,” she said. “You can’t make him stop.”

  He pulled harder to get away from her, but her grip was crushing. How could she be so strong?

  “You can’t make him stop,” she said again.

  This time blood from her skinless face dropped on him, stinging his own face like acid.

  The young boy woke when there was a loud knock at the door. His immediate fear was that the woman was trying to get in the room. Then he realized it was probably his father or grandfather, no doubt wondering if he was okay.

  He jumped off the bed and ran to the door. He unlocked it and threw it open. The figure in front of him was even more frightening than the woman. It was a tall man, dressed all in black with a black hood hung low over his head.

  But the young boy could see the face underneath. It was the mask of flesh he had found in the woods. Suddenly he realized with horror what he had held earlier in the day. The man in black was wearing the face that belonged to the woman in the cabin.

  CHAPTER 38

  The Test

  Journal Entry: Outside Rome, November 6, 1948

  I built the box out of old pieces of wood I found in a scrap yard. I built it around a tree deep in the woods. I was quite winded by the time I carried the woman out to it.

  I had seen her near the river where I first spoke with Bianca. She looked about the same age, and her hair was about the same length. But that was where the similarities ended. Her face was round, whereas Bianca’s had been thinner. And her eyes were harder, or at least that’s how they appeared to me at the time.

  She studied me for several seconds before she spoke. We negotiated a price. I found that if I agreed too quickly they suspected something was wrong, so I always haggled with them. I told her my home was only a few blocks away, and when we were safely out of sight I turned on her.

  I had to strike her twice before she fell unconscious. She went to the ground after
the first blow, but she still stirred. I kneeled down beside her and hit her again with the butt of my largest knife. I had been prepared to slit her throat if she screamed, but she had her back to me when I first struck her and she didn’t see anything coming.

  I kept her body hidden until the sunset. Then I carried her out to the woods. I was certain I would be caught a dozen times over, but I saw no one. I thought of the voice. Had it somehow made my path clear?

  I dragged her over to the tree and dumped her into the wooden box. I sat on the ground on the outside of the box until she woke up. It took at least two hours, and I kept checking her pulse to make sure I hadn’t killed her with the two blows to the head.

  I had placed the mannequin near us. After I removed her face, if I removed her face, I would place it on the mannequin for study. Would I be able to see her light, or was she of the darkness?

  Eventually she woke up, and I was the first thing she saw. Then she looked past me at the mannequin. It seemed to frighten her even more than I did. She tried to scream, but I had wrapped a piece of cloth over her mouth. I had also tied her arms behind her and then tied her entire body to the trunk of the tree.

  I reached down and picked up a canvas bag I had brought with me. I held the bag upside down over the box, and the serpent fell out of it, landing just a few feet from her. She tried to move away from it but couldn’t.

  I watched the snake for several minutes. It didn’t do anything. It just curled up in the corner of the box. Its eyes were closed tight, and it seemed to have no interest in either me or the woman.

  “If he lets you live the night, I’ll set you free,” I told her.

  I stood up, assuming that the serpent needed time to make its determination, and started to walk away when something told me to turn around. I looked back into the box and saw the serpent moving towards her. It seemed to study her for several moments, and then it struck. It bit her on the forearm, and I could hear her cry out through the cloth in her mouth. I thought I could almost feel the hot venom going into her body. Her eyes flared, and I smiled. She was of the light indeed. The serpent had seen that. He had a gift that I did not. The voice had been right. This was the test that I needed.

  The serpent slithered away from her and looked up at me. It had done its job. I extended my arm into the box, and the snake wrapped itself around me. I placed the snake back into the bag and gently placed it on the ground after tying the opening shut.

  I stepped into the box and untied the woman. She was still alive, but her body was already starting to convulse. I laid her on the ground several feet from the box and gathered my knives while I waited for her to die. Her death came quickly, much faster than I expected. The serpent was powerful.

  I stripped her naked, as I had done to the other victims, and removed her face. Then I placed her face on the mannequin. I studied it for the light. I couldn’t see what the serpent had seen, but I had to trust it for now. I removed the face from the mannequin and placed in on my own. I stood there in the woods for several hours. I heard nothing. He didn’t talk to me. Neither did the voice. The serpent had lied.

  I rushed over to the canvas bag and yanked the snake out. I cut off its head with my knife and threw its body on the ground beside the dead woman. It continued to slither across the dirt, headless.

  I took the largest of my knives and dug a large hole in the ground. Then I pushed the bodies of the woman and the snake into it. I covered their bodies and made the journey back home.

  I opened the door to my room and found Father Moretti kneeling in front of my trunk. The lid was open, and he was looking at the skinned faces of my victims.

  “What have you done?” Father Moretti asked in horror.

  I knew he had been getting suspicious of my movements, and I should have taken greater care to hide the faces.

  I shut the door behind me and entered my room.

  “What have you done?” he repeated.

  I saw no reason to talk to the man. He was the one who had made the mistake, not me. He entered the darkness and was unwilling or unable to accept what he saw. Finally he would know my agony.

  I pulled my knife from under my coat. The man was weak and offered very little fight. Perhaps he knew his life was about to end, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. He didn’t even pray. He just laid there on the floor, whimpering like a helpless child. I sat on the ground and watched the blood flow from the slit in his neck.

  Then I picked him up and placed him on my bed. I removed his face and placed it along with the rest of the faces in my bag. I took one last look at my room. I had lived here for several years, and I was about to walk out the door for the last time. I would leave this place, leave this country, get as far away as possible. I had no choice now. Father Moretti’s absence would be noticed, and there was no sensible way for me to remove his body.

  I didn’t know where I would go. But I didn’t really care at the moment. I kept thinking about the voice. Would it follow me? Did I want it to? It had lied to me, just like the serpent. I had taken so many faces, worn so many faces. One of them had to be of the light, yet he never spoke to me. I was still dead to him, like I had been my entire existence. Everything I ever believed was a lie.

  CHAPTER 39

  The Revelation

  Present Day.

  The man in black carried the little girl through the woods. Christie was unconscious, and her hair hung across her innocent face.

  The man passed by several of the white mannequins near the trees until he came to the wooden box that surrounded the large tree in the center of the small clearing. The little girl’s mother had been the last person to stay inside the box. He had not planned for Christie to be the next. It had just happened that way. The truth was he didn’t want her to die. He desperately hoped the serpent would spare her. But in his heart he knew that would never happen.

  He laid the girl down inside the box and then stood above her, just watching her sleep. He had given her a powerful dose. She would not be awake for several hours.

  The man in black reached above him and untied the rope that held his burlap sack, which was tied to a low hanging tree limb. He opened the bag and reached inside. He heard the hiss, but he wasn’t afraid. He grabbed the snake just below its head. It wrapped itself around his arm. He pulled the snake out of the bag and held it above the wooden box.

  Marcus couldn’t remember driving to his grandfather’s house. His mind was in a haze. It wasn’t until he turned down the long driveway and drove under the tunnel of trees that he realized where he was.

  It was like he had dreamed seeing the mannequin at Charlie Darden’s house. It couldn’t be true. But there it was. He had touched it, felt the coolness of the white plastic against his fingertips. He had seen the mannequin in the stone tunnel at the fort. But it had not affected him like the one in Charlie’s bedroom. He had not felt the deep terror since that day in the woods many years ago. The pale skin made of smooth plastic horrified him. It was just an inanimate object, yet it still had the power to send fear racing through every muscle in his body. The flesh of Charlie Darden’s face was wrapped around the head of the mannequin. Was there another face on it when Charlie was killed? Was it the face of his wife, and if so, had Charlie seen it before MAI killed him? Undoubtedly that had happened. Marcus would make MAI pay for what he had done. The man would not escape, not now that Marcus knew where he was hiding.

  He parked the car and raced to the front door. He fumbled for his key ring and had a difficult time getting the right key into the lock of the door because his hands were shaking so badly. He already suspected what he would find inside, and he desperately didn’t want to go in.

  Marcus finally got the front door open, and he entered the house. Everything was quiet, as he expected it to be. He saw his breath in the air as he walked across the great room and headed for the stairway. He had turned down the heat on his last trip to the house, but he hadn’t turned it off completely. The inside was freezing, thou
gh, almost as cold as outside. The system must be malfunctioning.

  He hurried up the stairs, anxious but also cautious. He saw a warm glow coming from the open door of his grandfather’s bedroom. He carefully made his way down the hallway and turned into the room.

  He saw a large white square drawn on the wooden floor. There were over a dozen burning candles placed around it. Inside the square were several tall objects covered in dirty sheets of canvas.

  He couldn’t contain his fury, and he ran inside the boundaries of the square, tearing off the sheet that covered the object closest to him. He tossed the sheet to the side, and it slowly caught on fire from the burning candles.

  Under the sheet was a white mannequin like the one he saw in the Darden house. Its face was burnt and hideous, though, and the melted plastic had run down its face like plastic tears. He ran to the next object and ripped off the sheet. Underneath was another mannequin with a melted face. He continued to tear off the canvas sheets until all six of the mannequins were revealed. By now, half of the bed sheets he had thrown off had caught fire from the candles. But Marcus didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “Why are you so lost, Marcus?”

  Marcus turned and saw the eyes of the first mannequin had opened. The deformed face had come alive.

  “You know who he is,” the second mannequin said.

  “The little boy lost in the woods,” the third mannequin said.

  Marcus turned in a circle and saw that all of the mannequins had come to life. Their melted faces were hideous, and the flames from the burning sheets began to spread to the rest of the room. Marcus began to sweat from the intense heat. He had to get out of there.

  “The little boy finds the mask of death,” the fourth mannequin said.

  “The little boy trapped in the woods,” the fifth mannequin said.

  Marcus fell to his knees and covered his ears with his hands. The mannequins laughed at the futility of his actions. He looked like a desperate, pathetic little boy, trying to wish a ghost away by pretending it wasn’t really there. He remembered hiding in the bedroom after escaping the cabin. He had felt small and vulnerable. Now he was an adult. He had prepared for this moment. He would be strong. But now the time had arrived, and he felt anything but strong. He was the little boy all over again, hiding under the sheets and praying the monster would go away.