A Killer Among Us

by Rhys Stalba-Smith

  Charlie was at his desk. Looking at the prescription he’d just written for the student seeing him. A mild sedative that would help her anxieties and mild hallucinations. A small dopamine kick. He’d just made a copy of it for himself. He could check out medication on her behalf, with the pretense of giving it to her. But he wouldn’t do that. No, that’s why he was thinking.

  Sarah sat on the couch where he had patients lie. Will you do it? she asked.

  He was staring at the prescription. He could get the pills on the way out. Stop seeing Sarah. Stop his madness. Get his life back on track. He suspected Eve was starting to think things about him. He’d muttered replies to Sarah a few times when she was near, thought him talking to her. The real problem the other day, when he’d mistaken Eve and the hallucination of Sarah out of the corner of his eye.

  Who’s Sarah? Eve asked sharply. She’d stopped cutting the tomatoes immediately.

  Huh, what? Charlie tried to fein misunderstanding.

  You just called me Sarah.

  Did I?

  Charlie, who is Sarah? She’d turned around now, knife cocked out from her waist. Unintentional threat. Who’s Sarah? Are these the ‘late’ nights you’ve been having?

  Charlie stuttered a long for a bit then stopped himself. Took a breath. He’d never told Eve anything about his sister. As far as she knew he’d grown up alone. In a way he had. When I was younger, he began. When I was young, sorry. I’ve never told you, but I had a sister. Do you remember the unsolved Burke murders, years ago? Eve nodded, a look of anger still on her face.

  Well, when the Burke’s were murdered, their babysitter was at home with them. They didn’t find the boy, but after they murdered the parents, they found the girl. My sister was that girl. They kidnapped her for five days. Charlie went to say what had happened, but he decided against it. He didn’t need those dreams again. When we got her back, well, well she wasn’t really the same. He paused, watching the reactions of Sarah listening to him tell Eve. She only lasted another few years before she killed herself.

  Jesus Charlie. You’ve never said. I never knew, Eve said. I’m so sorry.

  It’s okay, Charlie said. It’s just in that moment you reminded me of her I suppose. I didn’t mean to say her name.

  Eve came towards him and gave him a hug. He inhaled her deeply, telling himself that she was Eve, not Sarah. That he was married to Eve, not Sarah. That Sarah wasn’t real. That maybe if he doubled the dose he was taking, she’d disappear. But Sarah stood there smiling, shaking her head slightly. Knowing that it not only been just that one time he’d mistaken her. For Charlie, he’d been living with Sarah for the last year.

  Charlie was trying to shave but his hand kept shaking. Sarah watching him by the tub. He was on the strongest medication he could get. It had taken some doing, and he’d had to find the right patient so as not to cause suspicion. Clozapine was a serious dopamine hit and anti-hallucinogen, but he’d done it. And it had worked for about two weeks.

  Then Sarah came back. This time more vivid, so real he believed he could touch. His brain couldn’t tell otherwise. She’d told him there was only one way to get rid of her now. A series of memories flashed through his mind that he’d tried to forget. He kept trying to shave.

  His thesis on family trauma had been well received. His work out at the prison was going well, he felt a breakthrough coming for the Mullins girl. Maybe today.

  Harper was clattering down the hallway, running away from her mum. Charlie had the touch with her, she’d chose him to listen to for some reason. Eve was a constant battle. It did nothing for her motherly confidence.

  You know it’s today, right? Sarah said.

  Yeah I know it’s today, Charlie replied.

  Just at that moment the door burst open. Charlie scooped his razor out of Harper’s reach and put it in his pocket.

  Charlie woke, clarity upon him. He was starving, knew that he was dying. That he’d been kidnapped from an aged care facility where he’d been living for the last twenty years since the car crash that killed his family. Took his legs. He was experiencing his brain flooding itself with enzymes. Terminal lucidity, he remembered it being called. He’d come across it at uni, reading about it in regards to Sarah. It was the only way he could explain her return at the end.

  With this lucidity his brain was starting to work like it had used to. He could remember things from his past, his youth. Without him being trapped there. The period of darkness was a blur, but the definites throughout that period had remained more as shadows than real life. It was all a time of foreboding to him. Paranoia and anxiety. Anger and frustration. Misunderstanding. It was like he’d been in a coma, but had woken to a worse nightmare. The real nightmare was his past though. He remembered it all. The year leading up to the crash. It was horrible. A time when a killer had been menacing Adelaide. A killer that had been taunting and calling him. A killer he knew. A killer that—

  The door opened, blinding light streaming in. A light coming on. Charlie could only moan in defense. His eyes pained him. The man came over, blocking the light, standing over him. With time the pain in his eyes allowed the light to ease. For him to see. Charlie looked up at him, at the killer, at Ethan Burke. I remember, Charlie whispered. I remember it all.

  Good, Ethan replied, the smile on his face twisting. Then let’s remember.

  CHARLIE

  VI

  CHARLIE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Charlie sat in the trash alley watching his house. It was just after ten o’clock at night. He’d had a very long afternoon since receiving the phone call from Detective Davidson at Frank’s pub. The call had sent him into panic, running out as quick as he could. He headed for the overpass at the highway and crossed between the locked traffic. Slipped the phone underneath one of the cars, hoping it to get crushed once cars got moving.

  He managed to make it to the city on a stolen little girl’s bike, ditching it when he made it to the parklands. Once at the parklands perimeter he headed for an area with avid growth. Found a dense bush and crawled inside. He spent a tense few hours watching and waiting. Expecting someone to come for him. To spot him. But in the three hours of heightened paranoia not a single person passed. He only had a few lizards come and investigate. As the afternoon headed towards sunset his fatigue wore at him. He was asleep before he realised.

  He awoke in darkness. Lights running through the park on and burning yellow. He had a wicked sense of deja vu cross his mind, but thanked God that no note was upon him. He couldn’t bear thinking that Ethan had been able to stalk him even like this.

  Once it was dark, he’d made easier progress heading north. After only a few hours he’d been able to get to their street. As everyone was settling down to sleep, he began crawling down back alleys and one way streets to the back of his house. By midnight, he was peering over his back fence at his own home.

  It had been completely ruined.

  Once he saw the damage, an anger swept over him and he forgot all pretenses of sneaking. The doors had been kicked in, the house turned over and spray painted. Threats adorned each wall. Enormous crude drawings of what would be done to him. In the kitchen, with the chef’s knife stabbed through to keep it in place, was an animal heart of some sort. A note below it said that next time it’d be his.

  He came into the front room, keeping to the shadows he peered out the front window. Saw a number of cars he didn’t recognise, guessed they were a mixture of journalists and police. Maybe even some pissed off citizens looking for vigilante justice. He’d been made into a scapegoat. No real evidence connected him in anyway. Yet—

  He stopped, choking on the foul air. He pulled his shirt up and headed down the hall, peering and sniffing every so often. The stench became stronger as he neared their bedroom. He pushed the door open and found a gutted pig on his and Eve’s bed. A large gash running along it’s stomach. The entrails had been caught and had spilt all over the sheets. Now he knew where the heart came from. Charlie le
ft trying not to vomit.

  He went into the girls bedroom. Thankfully, it had remained untouched. The people had enough compassion in them to understand that they weren’t guilty in all this. His heart went out to Eve, Harper and Rachel then. A deep longing to be with them. He still had been unable to call them. To know if they were okay. He moved to the kitchen quickly and searched for the phone. Found it ripped from the wall, the cord severed, receiver melted. A note was scrawled on the floor in lipstick. Can’t call for help now. He returned to the girls bedroom.

  He lay on Harper’s bed. Stared around the room. He was exhausted. Fatigue overcoming him, wishing he could just sleep. He’d been here before. Depression and depth. He looked up at the ceiling instinctively and imagined the black mass he used to put his thoughts into. The dripping tar that poisoned his body. But he couldn’t do it not anymore. He couldn’t picture it or even remember it vividly. Maybe it was because the tar was inside.

  He looked around the room from his new perspective. Often he’d slept in the bed with his girls, but his concern had always been with them. Now without them he could look around undisturbed. He saw the wheel marks on all the furniture from Harper. The boxes of toys and teddies. Memories dancing through his mind as he remembered the time playing with them. How quickly time had passed. How tainted the last years seemed. He’d been in such a deep depression that their memories seemed dim. He could remember Rachel’s first steps. Eve crying as they watched. But it was like viewing it through a pinhole. Like he remembered it how he was supposed to, not how it was.

  He looked at Harper’s painting table. Her favourite place. Despite what had been robbed of her, she still had great control of her left hand when painting. Was it a gift that the brain had wrangled out of the mess for her? He could only assume so. Everything else had slowly descended without hesitation, but the painting? It had remained strong. He went to the table, looking at the paintings. They were crude, as if by a five or six year old rather than a fourteen year old. But then that was the curse of her disability. A deeper sadness took him, how cruel for him to have this life and her to have one like that. They’d been told she would be lucky to reach twenty five. They’d been lucky that she could still do so many things. And he had brought so much pain upon the family. Like they hadn’t had enough as it were. Like he hadn’t had enough pain in his life. Yet he attracted it. He had it in him.

  He took the stack of finished paintings and sat back on the bed, looking at them from the street light bleeding through the window. There was their house, the cat she’d been wishing for. One of her and her sister. Her and her mother. Him. All of them as a family. Them and the house. Then a surprise. Painted blue with a black border. A stick man painted in the middle. Charlie sat forward. The man at the window. He went to the next one, again the house. A bit closer in so that the window was highlighted. Again a man there. Now a painting of the bedroom, showing the window with the man looking in.

  Charlie’s hands became weak. He looked at the window immediately, chills running through his body. Paranoia as if he were being watched. He got up and looked down the hallway. Edged down the corridor to the front door. Tried closing it, but the bolts had been kicked off. All he could do was close it and wedge the sideboard in front. He then went to the backdoor. Jammed a chair under the door handle. It would at least slow someone down.

  He returned to the untouched room, still feeling paranoid. Hoping the room was an island of protection. He brought the blinds down, moved slightly to the left so that he could peer out. He sat on Rachel’s bed now, a better view of the back fence. His heart knocking at his teeth. His breath like it deflated him a little each time he breathed. He felt nervous. Waiting.

  After watching shadows and nothing for an hour, he took the paintings up again. The man continued to feature in them. Coming closer to the house. Always the same window. Always the girls window.

  Then, the tone changed to an adult’s hand. A man inside the house. Walking around and moving freely. Then the next picture was of the man in the roof of the house. Charlie hands shaking uncontrollably. He could see the hatch to the roof in his mind. End of the hallway just before the kitchen. Right outside the girls door. He went to the next drawing. It was the hatch. In the opening had been drawn a face. Watching.

  Charlie scrunched up the paper and threw it away. Felt dirty. Oh shit shit shit shit, his mind was spewing. He felt sick. His mouth chattering. He couldn’t catch his breath. He had to bring his legs up to him, like he’d done when he was younger. He lay on the bed like that, seeing the hatch over and over. The peering face watching down. It was ghastly. He felt so vulnerable and weak. He tried to focus on breathing. On not thinking about it. On anything but it. But it was all he could think of. The hatch. The stick man in the roof. The face. He had to go up.

  He stood from the bed, suddenly aware of how much noise he made. His whole body numb, unfeeling. Felt like he was controlling a distant machine by remote control, not governing muscles. He walked without feeling to the doorway, wringing his hands in each other he looked up at the hatch. Expecting to see the face. But it wasn’t there. Just the hatch. Just waiting for him to ascend into it.

  Charlie went to the kitchen. They kept the ladder behind the pantry door. He opened the door, unsurprised to see that the small room had been ransacked too, but ignored it. He took the ladder and went back to the hall. Jammed it against the side and lay it onto the opposite wall. The ladder now cut off the doorway, and he had an awkward climb onto the bottom rungs. But when he was on it, all he had to do was head up. Yet he couldn’t. He kept seeing the stick man. The stick man that had been in the roof. Probably while he slept, while his wife slept, while his kids slept.

  He climbed slowly. Each rung making his hands sweat more profusely. Each rung makes his heart skip a beat. Each rung bringing him to the brink of paranoia and insanity. Each rung opening up the cuts on his hands and wrists. But then he was at the hatch and all he had to do was push the fake panel up and enter the roof.

  He pushed slowly, feeling the cold air at his hands. Then his wrists. Then his arms. As he lifted himself upwards so that his head would enter the roof, he had the sudden feeling that this was a trap. That he would receive a blow to the face any second, but nothing came. Instead, he came up into the small space.

  It was dark. He stood there, allowing his eyes to adjust, began to see it. When they’d moved in he’d laid chipboard sheets across the beams so that more things could be stored up here than the tiny board that had been there originally. He’d managed to cover most of the space. It reached from above the kitchen all the way to the lounge room at the front of the house. Him and Eve had used it to put the kids stuff up here. Old clothing, first pieces of babywear. Some of his old psychology work and records. Technically he was meant to have destroyed it. It was all old case files and the notes he’d taken.

  He moved to the case files and boxes of notepads he’d used over the space of ten years. A well of nostalgia filling him, replacing the terror that had been pulsing in his veins. Seeing that there was no one, that up here had been a trick of fear on him, he suddenly felt very silly. It was probably some joke one of the intruders had played, he reassured himself. Just him and his paranoia—

  But then he saw the bed. Behind the boxes of files. A small camp mat, sleeping bag and pillow, torch on the pillow. His fear lit back up. If he’d stumbled backwards he would’ve fell down the hole, instead, he collapsed into the boxes and files. Everything pushing over and spilling out. He tried to push himself away from the bed as if it might burn him, but he kept slipping on the papers. He managed to struggle to his hands and knees and then backtracked into a space, so that he was looking over it all. He watched it, imagining someone there. Imagining Ethan there. Except in his mind Ethan was a boy. A teenager. A ghost.

  He needed to look over it all. He reached for the torch. It lit up the area well.

  Had Ethan been living up here? There could be no one else. No way other than this that he could’v
e known so much. He tried to not imagine him up here as they went about their lives. Up here as Eve was home alone with the girls. Instead he began looking at the bedding, seeing if there was anything else. Underneath the pillow he found an envelope, a small box. In the box was another phone. It shook in his hands as he turned it on. He opened the letter.

  Charlie,

  I’m so glad you finally found my abode. What a lovely home it has been. So informative. All of it. So interesting. Your journals, thoughts and quips, your case files! How very naughty of you, these were meant to have been destroyed or handed back to the government. Tsk tsk tsk! Of course I won’t tell, you know I’m good like that. Anyway, they’ve been great research for me over the years. Of course I haven’t lived up here for years, just on and off as I’ve planned. Because yes, Charlie, something like this does in fact take time. I wonder, have you connected it yet? Have you thought about these case files? Have you thought about who you generally treated? An uncanny resemblance to Sarah when you look at all the women collectively. They all have their quirks and hopes. You patronise more than you realise in your notes though as well. Another tsk tsk tsk from me. How terrible a psychologist you were. But nevertheless, your work gave me mine. So for that, I thank you.

  Adieu.

  Ps, You could save a lot of time and trouble by handing over these case files. It would identify the women so much quicker. But then it would implicate you. What to do???

  Charlie didn’t even finish the letter before he threw up. Years. Years he’d been up here on and off. It was all his fault. All of it. All the murders. Those poor women. He’d given Ethan everything. Where they lived, their tendencies and mannerisms. He could’ve manipulated them any way he wanted. He felt sick again at the scope that Ethan had been working on. But why? Why all of this? How was this revenge for Sarah’s death?