by Lucy Auburn
A murmur. I look to my lawyer, who seems just as flummoxed as me. The last thing I expected was to see my whole life flash before my eyes, entirely ruined, only to have it back in an instant—all because of Palm Sweat's stupid fucking cough.
Maybe I should've nicknamed him Poor Timing or Snotty Nose.
"I can't believe it," I say to my lawyer, who looks like he can't quite believe it either. "Does this really mean I'm free?"
"It does." Grinning, he claps me on the shoulder, while all around us people who had been cheering at my guilty sentencing look stricken, and those who were disappointed before are starting up a chant. "You're really free, Ellen. You can go home now."
"Wherever that is."
Behind us, the chant becomes my name, and the judge yells for order again, banging her gavel. Everything is turning into chaos—I'm pretty sure Jack's mom is muttering a Pagan curse, and my mom looks like she had a heart attack and came back from the dead with a bit of her wits missing.
It's all over.
Which means it's just beginning.
"This is it." Unlocking the door, my stepdad swings it open, and I find myself staring into what's going to be my new home—for a while. "It's not much, and you only get it until Bernard is back from college, but it should help you get back up on your feet."
"Thank you," I tell him, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the old gym sock and dirty trash can smell that wafts in my direction as I walk inside. My stepbrother Bernard is still a teenage boy, and this place smells like it. "I don't know what I'd do without you and Mom."
Mom pipes in. "You'd have to live with one of those crazed fans of yours. Probably get stabbed to dea—oh, er, I mean, sorry."
"It's okay," I throw back at her, striding into the garage apartment that's about to be mine. "Stabbing people to death is the one thing I'm comfortable with."
Though I mean it as a joke, they both recoil at my words, and even Mom looks more than a little horrified. Grinding my teeth, I tack on, "Sorry—jail block humor. Guess I'll have to adjust now that I'm out of the pokey."
My stepdad Herb—yes, that's really his name—clears his throat and walks into the little apartment, running his fingers across the formica countertops. "You won't want to talk like that on your job interviews, Ellen. People don't take kindly to blue humor."
Job interviews. My resume consists of a bachelor of fine arts in the performing arts, several months part-time at a theater, and a long stretch of being unemployed and abused, or unemployed and in prison. Somehow I doubt I'll be getting any job interviews at all.
"Maybe I should change my name," I observe. "Ellen Arizona isn't exactly doing me any favors."
Mom frowns at me. "You can't do that! You're the last of the Arizonas."
"I think the state will keep on going long after I'm gone."
"You know what I mean." She clucks her tongue at me. "Your father didn't die in service to his country for you to leave his legacy behind."
Herb looks uncomfortable, pulling at his tightly buttoned collar, which is how he always acts when my father comes up. He's been married to my mother for ten years, but he'll never quite leave the shadow of Vincent Arizona, Air Force pilot and hero, who my mom loved more than life itself. She still keeps a shrine to him in her closet—a memorial if you ask her, but it looks more like something a teenage girl would build to worship her favorite boy band member. Even I think it's creepy, and I'm related to the dead guy in the photographs.
"I guess I can go by my middle name," I decide aloud. "Natalie Arizona just doesn't have the same ring to it. Hey Herb—maybe I can borrow your last name. Just for job interviews. Ellen Partridge sounds like an upstanding citizen."
Herb says politely, "Whatever you need to do to get back on your feet, Ellen."
Back on your feet. He's said that phrase at least a dozen times since driving me home from the courthouse. Beneath it lives a little Herb-sized worry: that I'll never get back on my feet, and wind up living with him and Mom until I'm old and decrepit. He'll never say it aloud, just like he would never kick me out of the house—he's too passive aggressive for that, not to mention enamored with my mother, who's never really loved him as much as she loved the late great Vincent Arizona. So instead we're in this strange stalemate where he pretends like I'm welcome and I pretend like his son hasn't turned his garage apartment into the inside of a jock strap. I'm pretty sure I just stepped on a Dorito ground into the beige carpet.
The sooner I get out of here, the better.
I just have to hope someone in my fan club owns a small business looking to hire. One thing's for certain: my life is never going to get back on the track it was on before I stabbed Jack seven times in the chest.
Grad school is a pipe dream. At this point, all I want is a simple life and a little bit of safety.
There's no rest for the wicked.
I've slept for months in a jail cell waiting for my trial, back sore and aching from the stiff mattress, breathing through my mouth when the smell of mold got to my head. But for some reason sleeping in the garage apartment is worse, even after I've scrubbed and washed everything that can be scrubbed and washed.
It takes me a few hours of tossing and turning to realize that the reason why I can't sleep is because I'm alone. All my life I've shared a roof with other people, and in recent years I didn't have a bed to myself—even if it was a bunk bed in jail. Now there are no sounds of snoring nearby or even the deep breathing of people in slumber. Just me and my thoughts, going round and round in my empty head with nothing to stop them and nowhere to go.
When the glowing digital numbers on the alarm by the bed read 1:32 AM, I admit to myself that I won't be sleeping here tonight. My body still hasn't come down from everything that happened, and didn't happen, today in the courtroom. I need familiar surroundings and the sound of people nearby to fall asleep.
So I grab my pillow, fold up the old quilt on the bed—courtesy of Herb's sister Angelica and one of her quilt retreats—and sneak down the steps to the garage, then through the attached breezeway into the kitchen. The only one awake is Cheesecake, Herb and Mom's little maltipoo dog, who raises her head from her spot on Herb's recliner and makes little growling noises at me.
"Grrr-rrrrr, ruff! Ruh-ruh roo."
I shush her, wondering idly if dogs know what killers smell like, and make my way to the sofa. It's lumpy, old, and a little frayed in places where Mom's old cat had his way with the fabric, but it's familiar. It smells like family, and most importantly, it's close enough to the master bedroom that I can hear Herb's deep snoring—and Mom's little hiccuping snorts—through the door.
Reassured that I'm no longer alone in the world, I put my head down on my pillow, shush the little dog one more time, and fall asleep.
I wake up what feels like a mere moment later to the sound of high-pitched barking—only for the barking to end suddenly and without warning.
Confused, I roll off the sofa onto the ground, barely able to get my legs up under me. A haze fills my head, and cobwebs seem to cover my eyes. The world seems to be at a distance, slightly separated from me by an opaque glass pane. It feels like I'm drunk or sleepwalking.
Trying to shake the strange sense off, I pinch my arm until the pain clears my head. Herb's living room comes into focus for a moment, and I spot Cheesecake lying on the dark brown carpet, blood on her silky white fur.
Impossible. Letting go of my arm, I walk towards the pile of fur, my steps oddly heavy. Already the cobwebs are reforming in my head. It's almost as if the air is filled with a strange otherworldly scent. Some kind of presence that wants to slow me down, make me stupid, and keep me from figuring out what's going on.
I fight it by tapping into the pain. My right shoulder aches when I press down on just the right spot, a memory of the day I killed Jack. It never quite healed right. Now I use that to my advantage by grabbing the sore area and biting down with my thumb and index finger until pain flares, sharp and strong, enough to last for a while and keep m
y mind clear.
Kneeling down on the carpet, I reach out and touch the blood still spilling out of the little white dog. It's warm still, but cooling—as if I've been asleep or in a trance for a while without noticing. I don't know what I'm dealing with, but I do know that whatever it is, it killed Cheesecake. And now it's just... gone. Like it was never there at all.
Dark things walk in the dead of night.
I hear my mother scream.
The sound of it pierces the dark and yanks me out of my stupor all at once. It's a primal sound, a mother's scream. There's a wrongness to it.
Leaping into action, I run towards her bedroom door and reach for the knob only to find it already unlocked and wide open. The inside is dark, but I find the edges of figures by the bed, focusing on them in the sliver of moonlight that comes through the drapes. There are three figures: my mother, Herb, and someone standing over them both, back curved, hand raised and holding a sharp blade.
"Hey!" I shout, advancing on the standing figure. "Get away from my—"
Before I reach him, just as I'm about to put my hands on him and tear his body into pieces, he turns into fog in my hands.
No. Impossible. People don't just—disappear. Whirling around, I look for him, and spot a black shape leaving through the open window, the drapes billowing at his sides. With a snarl, I start for him—only to be stopped by a slick hand reaching for mine.
My mother's hand, I realize, as the open drapes let more light in and my eyes adjust. It's slick with blood.
"Ellen." She takes a breath in, struggling, and I see that her arm, chest, neck, face—all of her is coated in blood, from a dozen stab wounds. It's a familiar sight. This is what Jack looked like before he... "Ellen, you need to listen to me."
"Don't talk, Mom." Tears in my eyes, I fumble for her nightstand until I find the cell phone charging by the lamp. "Save your energy. I'm calling an ambulance." In a louder voice, I call out, "Herb! Get some—"
He's already dead.
"Nevermind," I mutter, trying to focus on the cell phone screen through tears gathering in my eyes. Belatedly I realize that I can make an emergency call without unlocking it, so I do that. "Don't worry Mom. Help will come soon."
As a voice on the other end of the line dispassionately says, "911, what's your emergency," my mother speaks, and every word she says is spoken with so much effort that I know she's trying to tell me her dying wishes.
"You have to understand." A breath. "I didn't know how to tell you about your father." Her hand flutters to her throat, and she presses down on a shallow cut there, which seems pointless since she's bleeding from a dozen deeper, longer cuts on her body. "Ellen, you have to know, you're just like him."
"911?"
"My Mother was stabbed," I say, and rattle off the address, then lower the phone to stare at Mom. "What do you mean?"
"He was a killer too." Her eyes flutter closed, and she jerks them back open, urgency in the weak fingers grabbing onto my hand. "Whatever comes next, it's okay. It's all gonna be okay. Oh, Ellen. My precious little girl."
The voice on the other line is asking questions, but I don't even bother to try to answer them. My mother's hand slips from mine. She closes her eyes again, and this time they don't open back up.
Watching her blood-soaked chest rise and fall, I count the breaths.
One.
Two.
Three...
Four never comes, and I realize that I forgot to tell her how much I love her.
Chapter 4
I can't believe she's dead. Even as the EMTs arrive and usher me out of the room, even as the police cars roll up, it still doesn't seem real. I need her still. I wasn't done learning from her, wasn't anywhere close to done loving her. Mothers aren't supposed to die right when you need them the most.
She's not the only one who died. It's just that her death is impossible for me to reconcile. For some reason I can believe Herb is dead—as much as I appreciate the man, he's never been much of a live one, even when he was, well, alive. Mom is a different story. She beat cancer, for fuck's sake. But she couldn't beat a man with a knife who entered the house without being seen or heard and disappeared into fog.
I checked outside the window while I waited for the emergency responders to arrive, pacing back and forth in the ornamental bushes, looking for some sign of anything. There were no footprints, no bits of cloth or hair caught on the branches of the ivy he slid past. No sign at all that there was anyone here—not even the treads of tires from the car he surely drove away from the scene of the crime.
It's as if he appeared on foot and vanished the same way. Like he was a ghost in the night, some kind of voodoo murderer who could go anywhere, do anything, without being caught.
But if that's the case, why didn't he kill me?
More importantly, who was he, and why would he murder someone as unassuming as my parents?
All questions I have the feeling the police won't be able to answer, even as they approach me with their badges and uniforms to question me about what I say. The truth is stranger than fiction, and I just got out of jail for stabbing someone to death. Telling them that I saw no one break in, heard nothing, and the only suspect is a mysterious figure in black—well, I have the feeling they're going to be doing anything they can to tie me to this crime.
Which means I have to get out of this any way possible.
Even if someone else has to pay for what happened.
"Ms. Arizona. We're told you're the only surviving witness to this crime."
"Yes." Swallowing, I force myself to face the officers. "About that... I saw who did it."
"Who? We'll be very interested in arresting them for this right away."
Doing my best to sound convincing, I tell them, "It was the Black Serpent."
Everyone knows the legend of the Black Serpent. He's basically infamous around here—has been for decades. A serial killer whose only calling card was the giant, black-scaled snake he left behind at the scenes, still alive.
He killed sporadically: his most infamous year, the one that gave him his name, he killed three people. Then nothing for four years but false alarms and faked sightings. Finally he killed again, two bodies in two nights, back to back like it was nothing. His next break was seven years, after which he killed a whole family of people—something that has baffled investigators, the media, and true crime fanatics alike ever since, because it didn't fit his profile.
It's been almost nine years since his last kill. Most people have forgotten about him, except when the sporadic podcast series pops up, or someone unwisely tries to dress as him for Halloween. Nevermind that no one knows what he looks like—dressing in all black with a bloody knife in one hand and a fake snake around your shoulders makes it clear.
Conveniently for me, the Black Serpent always stabbed his victims to death. He fits this crime perfectly. And unlike a figure dressed in all black who drugs people with magic and moves in the blink of an eye, he's real. More importantly, unlike me, he's not around to take the fall for this double homicide and be put away in prison for life.
There's just one problem, which one of the officers articulates almost immediately. "The Black Serpent leaves snakes behind at his crime scenes."
"Yeah. About that..." I find myself wishing there was a snake inside the room, one they'll find any moment, but of course there isn't. "The snake..."
I search for a convincing lie, wondering if they'll believe that a tiny dog like Cheesecake ate an entire snake. Stranger things have happened, but the Black Serpent is known for the size of the Black Racers he leaves behind at the scene. They're non-poisonous, but in no world would a three pound dog be able to eat one whole. "So, the snake, it uh..."
Before I can come up with any kind of lie worth telling, a CSI unit comes out of the house with something very familiar dangling with a long, sturdy hook. "We got a snake!"
Another of the CSIs holds a white canvas bag beneath the snake, and the first one tips it into the bag. I st
are at the two of them, a strange feeling in my gut.
The snake wasn't there before.
I'm sure of it.
I checked every corner for a sign of the killer after he disappeared out the window. If there'd been a snake that big, I would've noticed it. It took a while for the emergency responders to come—plenty of time for a black snake to slither out from under the sofa and make itself known.
"It just...appeared." The CSI who found the snake shrugs at the officers, who are looking at the new evidence with a mixture of disbelief and awe. "I swear we swept the whole scene without finding it. Guess it was hiding somewhere."
The CSI with the bag, who's older, grunts. "Sloppy work."
I'm not so sure I agree. It seems strange—impossible even—but I don't think the killer put the snake there.
I think I did when I told the lie.
Looking back at the house, I'm struck by the idea that I summoned a whole snake out of thin air just because I needed someone to point the cops at instead of me.
"Ms. Arizona, if you could just come to the station and give a statement, we'd greatly appreciate it." One of the officers puts her hand on my shoulder and steers me away from the house, angling my body towards her. "Just come with me, and we'll take care of everything. Do you have someone you can stay with tonight?"
"I can stay in the apartment above the garage." The look she gives me is wide-eyed, and I realize she must think I'm insane to be okay with sleeping in a house that a supposed serial killer targeted. Hastily, I tell her, "I'm sure he won't come back to the same house."
"Of course. But if there's anywhere else..."
There's nowhere for me to go. I don't tell her this, though, as she steers me into her squad car.
It's not until the officers are driving me down the street that I realize the reason why she had her hand so firmly on my shoulder, keeping me facing towards her and away from the house, can only be because they were bringing the bodies out.