by Tillie Cole
She shook her head and brought her hand back to my chest. “The people of Wonderland lead strange lives. They go to balls, wear princess dresses and crowns to celebrate leaving school. They join their bodies under the stars, quiet and soft, only a blanket beneath them.” She shook her head and then, smiling at me, said, “They are all entirely bonkers, Rabbit! Completely off their rockers! What strange creatures they all are!”
I nodded in agreement, but inside my head was thick with a heavy fog. Dolly’s smile fell, and I saw straight through her charade. She was sad about the way the other people were. How they were different to us.
Placing my hands on her cheeks, I pulled her to my mouth. Before our lips touched, I met her eyes. She blinked, but I saw the tears building regardless. Tears for something she had never had. The dresses. The stars. The declaration of . . . love? That perplexed me most of all.
Clearing my mind, I pressed my lips against hers. But this time I did it softly. Gently . . .
When I pulled back, Dolly sighed and her eyes flickered open. She stared at me, wordlessly, regarding me strangely.
“We must go,” I said.
“Okay.” Dolly climbed from my lap. I put on my shirt and vest, and zipped up my pants. I stared at Dolly as she dressed, her ruined, blood-soiled blue dress back on her body. When she turned to me, my breath was swept from within me.
She was mine.
She was all fucking mine.
I held out my hand. Dolly walked to me and slipped her hand into mine. I led her through the back door the guard had told us about. The skies were clear, save for a sea of stars, as we got into the car and pulled back out onto the country roads. I had placed my jacket over Dolly to keep her warm. Her responding smile seared my black heart. Another brand on the tally of how many times she made my chest ache.
I left the lights off as I drove. A ballad came through the speakers as we sailed through the silent night. Dolly’s words spun in my head. About the man and woman in the movie. About the stars and the blanket. The lack of blood and roughness . . .
Glancing across at Dolly, I saw she was fast asleep. A small smile was on her lips as she dreamed, wrapped up in my coat. Black covering color. Exactly how we were. My darkness polluting her light.
But there was no other way. I couldn’t be without her. I would never let that happen. It was just the way it now was.
Taking my cell from the console, I brought up Chapel’s number. He answered on the third ring.
“Young Dapper Dan,” he said. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“How do people fuck?” I asked, careful not to wake Dolly from her sleep.
Silence greeted me. Then, “Mostly not as you do, I would hazard a guess.” I frowned. Chapel sighed. “Romantic gestures, young squire. Most intimacies are born from romance. Soft touches. Kisses. Gentle strokes of hair.” I listened in silence. “One would start by gifting the lady with a present, something that will make her happy. Bring out a smile. Then romance—a meal, a night out . . . a slow dance.” I looked at Dolly again as I turned right onto another road. Onto the path of the man who hurt my girl most of all. “Clothes would be removed by the other, savoring each touch from their lover. They would take it to their bed, or some other place that was comfortable for what was to come.” I swallowed as Chapel continued. “Then they would make love, Dapper Dan. Not fuck. No aggression. Nothing untoward, just him and her. Joined. Intimate. Slow. Sweet kisses and sensuous strokes until they are brought to climax.” My hand tightened on the wheel as I tried to imagine how that could be. I couldn’t even conjure up the image.
“Then the man, being the gentleman that he is, would hold her close in the aftermath. And if his heart so felt it, tell her that he loves her.”
I froze, completely froze.
“Dapper Dan?” Chapel said. When I didn’t speak, he asked, “You do love your little Dolly darlin’, do you not?”
“Love?” I questioned.
“Cannot imagine your life without her in it? Would kill if anyone hurt her? Would die if you ever lost her? Can’t breathe or sleep without seeing her face?”
My pulse thundered in my neck as I looked at her again. All of them. I had all of those. What was Rabbit without his Dolly?
Chapel spoke. “You should tell her, young squire. That is something young women tend to enjoy hearing.” A pause. “You are on your way to the penultimate kill?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“The ace in the pack, if I remember correctly?”
My lip lifted in disgust. “Yes.”
“Then, if memory serves, a declaration of love may be welcomed after Dolly darlin’ takes him on. Meeting the ghosts of the past, especially one that was more than instrumental in your demise, can play havoc with one’s emotions.” He exhaled heavily. “Just a thought.”
I hung up without saying goodbye. Chapel’s explanation of fucking throbbed in my brain. I looked up at the stars above. It was under the stars. The moon was so big. And . . . and he told her she had his heart. He told her he loved her . . .
Fuck the stars, I thought when my eyes fell back to the girl beside me. The only one worthy of my attention. Of my eyes.
They are all entirely bonkers! she had said on a strained laugh. But I knew my little Dolly. If they were “bonkers,” she wanted to be bonkers too.
The ballad ended, so I rewound the cassette and played it again. Romance. The slow, soft song playing seemed appropriate to Dolly’s wants. To how I felt about her.
I drove until the sun began to rise, cresting over the horizon, the word “love” still playing havoc with my mind.
Cannot imagine your life without her in it? Would kill if anyone hurt her? Would die if you ever lost her? Can’t breathe or sleep without seeing her face?
Love, I thought. A word so alien to my vocabulary, yet it seemed I had lived with it in me since the age of nine. Love. Not deep enough to describe my feelings for Dolly.
But it would have to do.
I had no other word as mighty or as strong.
Chapter 13
Eddie
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered as I walked over to the pile of bodies. The maid was shaking, wrapped in a blanket.
“They just walked in?” my uncle asked her.
She nodded. “Walked in like they were invited. The woman—no, more a girl—sat down there”—she pointed to a chair in the center of the table—“and started pouring tea and eating cakes.” She shook her head. “They were insane. They were both insane.”
My uncle rested his hand on her shoulder, and then allowed the sketch artist to sit beside her and draw the killers from her descriptions. My uncle came over to me. “Male and female. Seem to be in their early twenties.”
I nodded and moved away from the bodies as forensics began their work. The same tag had been written on the wall in the same pink lipstick.
My uncle put his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “They’re escalating. Each kill more deadly than the last.” He leaned his head closer to mine. “I have a lead I want you to follow up on.”
I raised my eyebrow in question.
“What we found with Clive, the third body . . . the children he’d abused. I decided to dig deeper.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I found out that the former chief of the Rangers was a close friend of Earnshaw.” Shivers ran down my spine. Something just didn’t feel right. “Turns out, several years ago a complaint was brought to him. A young man who claimed he had been abused when he was a kid. A kid in foster care. Claimed he was taken to the Earnshaw estate, along with others, and raped. That his social worker got money from Earnshaw and his associates to fuck him, and others in the same situation.” I felt the blood trickle from my face, drop by drop.
My eyes widened and I shook my head. “Not possible,” I said, imagining Mr. Earnshaw in my head. He wasn’t that kind of man.
My uncle shrugged. “The case, for whatever reason, was squashed. Classed as a false report a
nd filed away so deep you would never know it had ever been made, unless you were looking . . . hard.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “When I get it through here, I’ll have you look it over. Could be nothing, but the guy could be worth talking to.”
“Smith?” The sketch artist’s voice cut through our silence. I followed my uncle back to the maid and the artist. He held out a piece of paper. My focus had drifted again to the tag on the white wall. The lines were getting neater. It suggested their confidence was growing. By the acceleration of their kills, and the manner in which the murders were carried out, that much was obvious.
“What the hell?” my uncle remarked as he studied the picture. He turned to the maid. “They were dressed like this?”
She nodded slowly.
I took the picture from my uncle and looked down at it . . . If my blood had trickled from my face on hearing about the false report of Earnshaw’s abuse, it positively drained in slews on seeing the faces staring back at me. And not just their faces. Their style of dress.
Outfits and faces I knew very well.
“Eddie?” My uncle’s voice burrowed into my ears. His hand hit my shoulder and squeezed. “What is it, son?”
Swallowing to lubricate my dry throat, I whispered, “Ellis.”
The paper shook. I realized my hand was trembling. My finger ran over her face. Her painted face, a hand-drawn clock circling her left eye. Then my gaze fell on the man beside her. The one who caused my blood to ignite. The one who took my best friend from me.
The one obsessed with death and corrupting Ellis’s goodness.
“Heathan James,” I said, my voice betraying my dislike. Shock soon replaced dislike. Heathan was alive? After all of these years he had surfaced. From where? And how?
“Son? You care to explain?” my uncle probed.
Slowly lowering the paper, I faced him. “Heathan James.”
Recognition sparked in my uncle’s face. “The kid you knew when you were young? The runaway? The one never found, presumed dead?”
I nodded and glanced down to see those eyes looking straight back at me, taunting me. Mocking me . . . laughing at me. They were gray and cold. Like steel bullets. No life in their depths. No soul.
And he had my Ellis.
He had corrupted her. Forced her to do evil things.
“He took Ellis. He is forcing her against her will.” Anger took hold of me. “He is making her watch him kill.”
My uncle ran his hand over his forehead. He was about to say something when the maid got to her feet. “No,” she said, head shaking profusely.
“What, dear?” my uncle asked.
She pointed at the picture of Ellis. “You’re wrong.”
“About what?” I asked.
“The girl.” The maid pulled her blanket tighter over her shoulders. She visibly shivered, although the night was hot and sticky. She was shivering at the memory of what she witnessed . . . at the killers.
The killers, who I knew personally.
The maid cleared her throat. “The girl is not innocent.” My breath became trapped in my lungs. Her blue eyes met mine. “She was the one who led them.” Her face drained of color. “The things she did . . .” She tapped her head. “She is insane. They both are. He is dark.” She choked on a sob. “He wanted to kill me. She spared me . . .” She shook her head, eyes closed. When they reopened, she said, “He does not control her. She is as much to blame for these murders as he is. More, in fact.”
“Ellis wouldn’t do this,” I argued, imploring my uncle to understand. “It will be Heathan. He will have brainwashed her, somehow.”
“Those weren’t their names,” the maid cut in. I stared at her. “They were called Dolly and Rabbit. I heard that loud and clear.” She pointed at the twin men on the floor. Men I had also known when growing up. “They called them Tweedledum and Tweedledee. You know, the characters from—”
“Alice in Wonderland,” I finished and closed my eyes, inhaling deeply through my nose. When I opened them again, my uncle was watching me. He wore a questioning expression on his face. “When we were kids . . . Ellis loved that book. She . . .” I imagined her blue dress. Glancing down at the drawing, I saw she wore one similar to the one she’d had as a child. But this one was more provocative. Much more revealing. I breathed deeply. “She used to pretend she lived in Wonderland.” A memory from our youth came back to me. “She christened Heathan James ‘Rabbit.’ She claimed he was the White Rabbit from Wonderland, come to take her on an adventure.”
“And?” my uncle said.
I fixed my Stetson. “She said I wasn’t one of them. That I was too clean-cut. Not ‘insane enough.’ That was when I lost her to him.”
I could still remember every part of that day . . .
“You can’t be the Mad Hatter, Eddie. It just doesn’t suit. You don’t belong in Wonderland . . .”
I looked over at the table. “A tea party.” I shook my head. “Ellis always loved tea parties.” I realized everyone was looking at me strangely. I hit the sketch. “This is all Heathan. He’ll be the mastermind behind this. He always was too smart for his own good. Manipulative. A true Machiavellian. Ellis was bewitched from the minute she met him. He had the ability to bend her to his every whim. She hung on his every word.” I clenched my jaw. “This is him. He came to get her, to rope her into this murder spree.”
“Son. I know you’ve always had a soft spot for this girl, but maybe you didn’t know her so well after all.”
“I did!” I argued. “She isn’t capable of this—”
“She’s evil,” the maid asserted, interrupting me. Her face was stone. “That girl is evil. Pretty, disgusting, a demon.” She shuddered. “She laughed as she killed. She welcomed their blood on her flesh.” The maid sat down, overcome by the memory. “That girl is made by the devil . . . they both are.”
My uncle pulled me away. “What do we know about this Heathan James?”
“All I know is that his mama dropped him off to live with his papa at the Earnshaw estate when he was nine.” I cupped the nape of my neck. I was getting a headache. “She said he scared her. She couldn’t be tracked down after that. When his papa died in an accident on the estate, Ellis’s papa took him in.”
My uncle’s face was impassive. “Then maybe we need to find Mrs. James and ask her a few questions.”
I nodded. Just as my uncle went to move away, I said, “There are two more left.” I picked up the playing card that had been put in an evidence bag. “There’s her ‘Uncle John’ and her papa.” I blew out a breath. “And we have no idea where either of them are. But they have to be going for them next. They are systematically eliminating anyone who lived on the estate.” I added a fact I didn’t want to face. “And the kills are getting more gruesome. Emotion is playing a part. And by the way their killing is escalating in its intensity, the worst is yet to come.”
“We have everyone we can muster tracking them down. But one thing intrigues me,” my uncle said. “Why would such formidable businessmen seemingly go into hiding?” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Right about the time they were accused of abusing a child.” His eyebrow rose. “We must not rule out any possibility.”
When he walked off, I stared at the card in my hand. The drawing of the twins was so accurate I got chills. Then I remembered Heathan’s drawings as he sat with Ellis on the lawn. Sick and twisted pictures. Pictures of them killing.
I closed my eyes. Ellis . . . what the fuck has he made you do?
“Heathan?”
Mrs. James—now Mrs. Lockwood—paled as she uttered her son’s name.
“We just want to know more about him.”
Mrs. Lockwood’s gray eyes—Heathan’s eyes—fell on my uncle, and her hands twisted in her lap. Her husband took her hand. She cast him a grateful smile.
Mrs. Lockwood was a petite woman. Seemingly timid and weak. I couldn’t imagine Heathan being her son. But then, I was sure Heathan’s evil was innate, not learned.
Her husband rubbed her back and encouraged her to speak. Mrs. Lockwood brushed a piece of black hair from her face and said, “Heathan, from being very young, always displayed some . . . tendencies.” Her eyes grew distant. “He was always a quiet child. Lived in his head most of the time. Didn’t like to be touched.” She took a drink of water. Placing it down, she said, “To cut a long story short, I couldn’t cope with him anymore.” She inhaled deeply. “He . . . he scared me. Heathan was always a tall child. Well-built for his age. By the time he was nine, he was the same height as me.” She worried her lip. “There . . . there was an incident, and I knew I couldn’t have him around anymore.” Her head fell to her hands, and a sob ripped from her throat. “I feared that he would kill me.” She wiped at her tearful eyes, and said, “He told me he would. Told me that if I ever crossed him, he would kill me.” She sniffed. “My own son. My nine-year-old son. I was alone. A single mother, with a son I believed would do as he threatened. I feared for my life.”
“Why was he like that?” my uncle asked. “Was there a particular moment you can pinpoint?”
Mrs. Lockwood drained her glass of water, and her husband handed her a tissue. She nodded. “I was very young when I had Heathan. I foolishly believed his father loved me. He didn’t. Soon after Heathan was born, he left us.” She looked out of the window, eyes unfocused. “With no money, I had no choice but to move back in with my father. My mother had died years before from cancer.” Her husband gripped her hand more tightly.
“My father was a hard man. A taskmaster. With Heathan, he was particularly strict. Heathan never said anything, but I knew he hated him.”
I was tense as I listened to the story.
“One day, I came back from work to find my father on the floor of our kitchen.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Heathan was sitting beside him, soaked in blood.” She hiccupped. “There had been a break-in. The men were caught. But those men had come in and tried to take money from my father. All he had was a pocket watch, a family heirloom that he refused to give up. They later confessed everything to the police. My father was stabbed, ten times, right in front of my little boy, for not handing over that damn pocket watch.”