The Butterfly Effect

by Luis A. Santamaría

  "Hi, Freddy," Alyssa said in an expressionless tone, but deep down she found it hard to hold back her tears.

  Alfred Horner watched his victim with the same absent gesture.

  "Hello, Aly," he said in a harsh voice. “We meet again.”

  Alyssa noticed that the ship's door was still open, and she started to rise.

  "Don’t move from the chair," Horner commanded. Then he pulled a pistol from the back of his belt and aimed it at her handcuffs with disgust. “Wow, it looks like someone has done the dirty work for me!”

  A cold smile widened on his face like a worm that stretches then shrinks quickly.

  He wanted to tease her, to have fun with her. Otherwise, Alyssa deduced, he would have killed her. She tried to relax, to think more coldly. She was in the worst possible conditions, so all she could do was wait and force a mistake. Would the police arrive before the next ship sunk? Before he killed her? She could not count on it, for Henry probably walked away and wouldn’t participate in anything else. In such circumstances, however, relying on her old friend's instinct was her only alternative.

  "Fuck, how well you've developed!" Horner commented, drawing circles with the tip of the barrel around Alyssa's chest. “I hope you remember some of the details when I fucked you.”

  Alyssa stared at him.

  "But I still have time to repeat it." Horner was speaking just as naturally as if he were considering a beer in some corner bar. “What do you say?”

  Without stopping to point, the police officer went to the nearest window and looked outside, specifically at the other ship. From where she was, she could not see the boat, but she saw no change in his gesture. One of two: Freddy had not realized that it had begun to sink, or that was just what he wanted to happen. Alyssa wondered if the man was distracted enough to allow a jump from the couch to his neck. Probably not. Would she have another opportunity later? When Horner ran back the curtain and returned to his initial place, Alyssa addressed him:

  “I’m going to kill you!”

  He laughed, and she said nothing else. She looked at the tip of the pistol in the hope that he would divert attention for a moment.

  "It was very clever to send me that menacing video, honey," Horner said, and took two steps toward the couch. “That zombie costume was very successful. I admit that you managed to spook me a little, although the fact that you painted my car... damn, that wasn’t funny at all.”

  That's it, get mad and throw yourself at me. Make a mistake.

  “Tell me, were you really there when I killed that man on Cowley Road?"

  Alyssa didn’t answer.

  "Damn, how small the world is," he said, with increasing euphoria. “And I suppose you were the bitch that was eating a kebab in front of the house, right?” With each swaying of the ship, Horner shifted awkwardly back and forth, and Alyssa judged whether she could reach him in one of his movements. “I read in the papers that you're a drug and sex-addict. I can’t say I'm surprised.”

  Alyssa's eyes gleamed as black as oil.

  "What were you doing at Oxford that night?"

  She continued in silence. She thought anything she said would hurt her.

  The flood that was falling outside resounded inside the ship with a metallic hue that made it difficult to understand the murmur with which Horner expressed himself.

  "Tell me something I've been wondering for days," Alyssa dared to say at last, for there were things that still didn’t make sense. “Why were you investigating for days a murder that you committed yourself?”

  “Good question!” He exclaimed, as if the prey had reached the point of the exact conversation he was expecting. “The answer is that the superficial part of my complex brain didn’t keep a single memory of that night.”

  Alyssa raised her eyebrows like a cartoon.

  "Are you saying you don’t remember killing Lennard?"

  The subtle madness that dominated Horner's eyes disappeared, and was replaced by a gray haze.

  "I didn’t even know his name... Come on, I'll explain," he said with the laziness of someone who has to go down to walk the dog in the snowstorm. “Three years ago I was assaulted and beaten at night while walking through Headington. It was a fucking nightmare. That guy broke my bones, but I'm sure his goal was to kill me. He disappeared like a ghost, and I didn’t hear from him until the other day. I felt him like a flash. I was enjoying my day off downtown, when I saw him. A young woman accompanied him, I recognized him immediately. My path had crossed again with that bastard. I felt a whirlwind of fury so identical to the one I experienced four years ago, when I lost my temper and I did what I did to you, which I imagined what was now was then, and who I had seen was not my aggressor, but Nacho Conde; and that I was not at the Bodlelian bookstore, but in a luxurious villa in Marbella where a university party was being held, and that the man was not accompanied by a young woman, but by my fourteen-year-old girlfriend.”

  Alyssa's heart sank like an anvil in her chest, as she understood Freddy's words. The man he had really wanted to kill was not Lennard, but someone identical to him. Everything made sense now. Charley! What did you do...? Apparently, a few years ago, very angry that his pretty girl had been raped, Charley had looked for Freddy and left his face like used tin foil. So, when Freddy saw Lennard, he must have actually believed that it was Charley, his true assailant, and took his revenge.

  Alyssa had found the connection, and it was one she didn’t expect. If the tragic events in Marbella had a different ending, Mike Lennard would still be alive.

  "That feeling of rage lasted very little," continued Horner, "just the time it took to locate that son of a bitch's house and shoot him in the forehead. Then I got drunk, and the next day I didn’t remember anything I had done, so I kept chasing the killer of that poor guy, (I mean myself) until it came back to me.”

  The uncomfortable intervals between each phrase were strangely accompanied by the murmur of rain and the monotonous piano playing jazz through the radio.

  "I was in bed with Ania this time. I wanted to fuck her, of course. It was not going to be difficult, because she was handcuffed and was completely helpless.” He bit his lower lip as he relived the hot moment. “No! I told myself; who was handcuffed and drunk up to her eyebrows was my college sweetheart, that is, you,” he said, and turned his wide eyes to where Alyssa was, as if he had just discovered that she was sitting there. “Suddenly I knew it all! That thought of causing indiscriminate harm by avenging the pain caused by others was already gone, and I was feeling the same as then.”

  Alyssa nodded apologetically.

  "I understood that if I raped her, Ania might get pregnant and be forever unhappy, just as you were. They didn’t tell me that it was me who got you pregnant, but now I'm sure it was. Just as I'm sure it was I who killed Lennard!”

  The storm brought a heavy sway that forced Horner away from the chair and he stood next to the window.

  "My sickly nature defended myself from the horror of knowing that I had raped and impregnated my fourteen-year-old girlfriend. My conscience refused to accept the evidence, but the subconscious knew it.” He frowned and concentrated on that word. “The subconscious.”

  "But how could you possibly have been ignorant until today, and suddenly the truth burst inside your head like a bomb?" Asked Alyssa, who, despite her interest in the neuronal performance of her captor, kept her eye on the revolver.

  "I suppose the secret that I kept in my interior was like a tree that extends its roots underground and can’t grow up outside because something prevents it," he replied. “These four years I tried to forget, not to think about that night, but those roots kept pushing to appear in the visible area. Perhaps, when I saw on the street the person I believed to be my aggressor and I managed to avenge myself, I was about to discover the truth, and then my anguish arose as a defense. A threat (to believe that someone had come into my house and was threatening me with death with graffiti and recordings) replaced another still greater threat:
to know that I had raped and killed innocent people.”

  Horner looked like he had entered an alternate universe, where soups ate people with spoons.

  "My conscience had grown accustomed to hiding such actions, damn it, I didn’t want to know! And I allied myself with an accomplice, my fucking fear, to keep the deception. I don’t know how scientific my explanation is, but I only know that I have discovered that the sensation of pleasure that revenge brings is the only thing that makes me feel alive.” At the end of the sentence, he lifted the revolver to Alyssa's throat. “It’s obvious that I am a damn neurotic. We have to learn to accept ourselves as we are, honey.”

  "I understand," she said, feigning a sobriety that was beginning to end, for now she was clear that she was not only in the hands of a rapist, but also of a madman. Horner was acting as if he were with her like a cat watching over a mouse that has no chance of escaping.

  "What are we waiting for?" Alyssa asked.

  "To finish the record." Horner pointed at the radio. “I never leave an unfinished jazz record. Then, when the last song has sounded, I'll kill you.” She looked puzzled, as if she were looking at a three-headed monster. “Then, once the woman of the ship next door has drowned, I will disappear.”

  Alyssa felt the pulsations grow more intense in the temple area.

  "By the way, how did you find me?" The policeman wanted to know.

  She shrugged. The handcuffs clinked around her wrists because of her shaking.

  "It was thanks to the Volkswagen guy, right? Spying was a very bad idea, honey.”

  Shit, he knows.

  "Henry knows where we are, you asshole!" Alyssa spat. Even before finishing the sentence she wondered if she had not made the fatal mistake. In that case, every second from that moment could be her last. “He is about to arrive, and you can bet that he will finish you off.”

  The worm's smile spread again, and this time it didn’t stop.

  “Of course yes!” Horner reacted with an amused tone that bristled Alyssa's skin. “In fact, he has already come. Say hello, he's on the bed.”

  What?

  Still aiming, Horner slid to the side with the poker player's face when he knows he has a full deck. He slid enough to free the line of sight between her and the bed.

  When Alyssa narrowed her eyes and looked closely, she knew that what was on the mattress were not cushions and worn sheets, but a lifeless body. Henry Dorian Millward was on his back and his sweater was covered with blood at his chest.

  A sound more like a wild animal than an eighteen-year-old girl came from Alyssa's stomach, an explosion of rage.

  "Surprise, Aly.” Alyssa felt that when he said her name, what he was actually saying was fuck you. At that moment, she seriously judged if it compensated to receive a bullet so as to put her hands around the throat of that bastard.

  A calm came over her.

  Outside, the street remained completely quiet. There was no indication that any policeman, or citizen, had noticed the contiguous ship sinking, or that, if anyone had, they would have realized what it meant. You could hear nothing but the torrent of rain striking the asphalt and the flow of the river, and, occasionally, some thunder. All of this meant saving her life would probably depend on what she could do to him in the next few minutes.

  That's when she realized what she had to do. It was crazy and a huge risk. Even suicide if it didn’t work. But it had to work.

  "You're an asshole," she said simply.

  There was a moment of misunderstanding in which Horner seemed to assimilate what he had just heard, such as the sound of a brick under the sea.

  “What did you say?”

  The fact that she was still alive convinced Alyssa that she was on the right track, even though she was not sure which way it was.

  "You're a piece of shit for a human being, honey." She uttered this last word with a sharp retort. “You take advantage of your police rank to kidnap two innocent girls, kill two other men in cold blood, and lure me to your dirty ship to torture me, but in fact you yourself have recognized that you have no fucking idea who you are or what it is you do. You haven’t even checked me, I could be pretending and actually have the handcuffs open. I could even have a gun inside my pants.”

  The cannon's direction lingered slowly on Alyssa's forehead as a roulette spinning on a wheel that stops. Never, even when that same man raped her four years ago, had she felt so close to death.

  Come on, a little closer...

  "You can’t even go to the bathroom without being sure you took a crap or you blew your nose. See how pathetic you are that you've been chasing after yourself and it took you over a week to figure it out.”

  Incomprehensibly for the policeman, the girl burst into laughter.

  Alyssa sensed a slight movement in the skin of Horner's forearm, which meant that his finger was tightening on the trigger. While praying that the bullet she was to receive wouldn’t be mortal, she threw her last poisonous dagger:

  "Deep down you're so tormented that you raped a poor girl, you don’t dare touch her again, now that you have her at your disposal." She was tempted to wink at him, but she thought that would be a mistake. “Come on, fuck me again if you’ve got the balls!”

  As Horner's finger curved over the trigger, two shadows moved behind the curtains. Horner had already altered the direction of his revolver when a man appeared through the doorway. A dry roar enveloped the wooden cabin.

  Alfred Horner peered with horror at his latest victim through the smoke that ejected the cannon. It was the last thing he expected.

  Oh, no...

  His arm muscles locked, and the pistol danced around his fingers.

  The bullet had struck the heart of a man staring lifelessly through clear eyes. They seemed to shout why?

  Thomas Carroll's pale body fell to the floor like a sack of sand. Behind him came another man Horner didn’t recognize. He looked confused, blocked. Alfred raised his weapon and inserted his forefinger into the trigger. Just as he was exerting pressure, he felt something out of the corner of his eye that something was leaping toward him from the right. He twisted his body and fired.

  Chapter 24

  Monday, November 13, 2006

  Alyssa Grifero lunged at him and landed on the ground with Horner's back and head on her chest. The revolver unloaded a new bullet under Alyssa's body, and occupied the space around her with hot air. The bullet grazed her belly and shot out into the chair where she had been sitting. Grifero moved her body just enough to run her arms over the policeman's head, and moved back into the past. She visualized herself being dragged to a tree, helpless, and then she felt stripped of her pants and panties as if she were living at that moment.

  But now, she was not helpless and she was no longer a child. She squeezed with all her strength. The handcuff’s chain was embedded in Horner's throat while inside her head, four years before, he raped her. Tears of pain streamed down her cheeks, and her mouth began to spit from the effort. She kicked helplessly in the same way she did in the woods in the vicinity of Marbella.

  Alyssa still held on for several seconds after Horner's heart stopped beating. At that time, the radio stopped playing the jazz record.

  The muscles in her limbs began to suffer heavy spasms when Alyssa stopped pressing pressure on Freddy's throat. She had lost control of her body. It was as if another person inhabited her, an eighteen-year-old killer. Contrary to what she had thought during all this time, she was not relieved to have taken revenge on her violator. The feeling of having taken a person's life was not pleasant.

  With Horner's hot body still lying on hers, it was hard for her to breathe, and her hands danced uncontrollably before her eyes. She had a strong anxiety attack. Then she looked up and saw through her tears the shadow of a man who seemed to her, despite the shock somehow familiar. Unbelieving eyes had stared at her like an alien. Panicked, Alyssa took the pistol from Horner's hands and aimed at the man, who was approaching her. She could not let them catch her,
she had to survive.

  She tried to point to his forehead, but the spasms were strong and hardly controllable. Besides, she'd never fired a gun.

  Before she even laid her finger on the trigger, her sight cleared, and with it, her reasoning. The hands stopped exerting force and the pistol slipped and fell to the ground. Her whole body relaxed, and then she had the feeling she had always thought to have when she saw a guardian angel.

  Jaime looked horrified by the macabre stage he was in. When he bent down to take her in his arms, Alyssa suddenly received all his warmth. The tremors ceased, and also the terrible thought of believing herself a murderer. She wanted to caress his lips, to kiss him.

  She would never remember the sensation she felt when Jaime kissed her, for by now she had lost consciousness.

  Friday, November 17, 2006

  In one of the rooms that housed Oxford's Churchill Hospital the television was projecting an unusual image: in the Spanish city of Torrelavega, a young police officer was being honored live for his bravery during a rescue operation outside Oxford. The announcer explained how a peninsula agent named Marcos Tena had risked his life to help a young woman who had been found alive in a dry well.

  When the woman went on to the next news, Sara turned off the television with the remote control and settled under the sheets. She looked up at the ceiling of the room and snorted contentedly. If it hadn’t been for that boy's miraculous appearance in extremis, now she would be dead. She brought her good hand to her temple, where a large bandage covered the upper half of her skull. At least it no longer hurt. The bad hand, however, did. It turned out that the impact on the floor of the well had broken several bones around her wrist, so that it had to be rebuilt to a large extent. It now had a cast, and an intravenous analgesic partially alleviated the unbearable pain of the first day.