As the argument intensified, Landry moved the ladder to the hole in the ceiling. The captors seemed to have forgotten about them, and it might be their only chance to escape. He placed the ladder and prepared to spring up the rungs, when the woman let out a screeching yell. A second later the hole turned dark, and something large fell onto Landry.
Landry crawled from under his bulk as the old woman muttered, “Can’t even depend on family these days,” and slammed the trapdoor. She moved the debris back over it and walked away.
“Capturing you wasn’t my idea,” Julien said as they sat on the ground, their only light coming from Phil’s phone screen.
“You expect me to believe that? I listened to what you said. You kidnapped April and you’re going to kill her. I can’t wait to testify against you. The death penalty’s too good for you. At least you’ll burn in hell for eternity.”
“This isn’t what it seems.”
“Bullshit. How many people are you holding captive? There are at least four — the three of us and April. Where’s Andy Arnaud? Did you kill him, or is he in another dungeon like this one? And this guy you keep in a box with the lid locked. What’s that about? He’s Noah Proctor, I’m sure. Why is he your captive too?”
“It’s Mother. It’s all her fault.”
Phil had had enough. He flew across the room and hit Julien squarely in the chest. He pummeled the man with his fists until Landry pulled him off.
“You lying bastard,” Phil said as he stood. “You’re a damned piece of shit!”
Julien said, “I’ll tell you everything. It’s too late now. The best we can hope is she never comes back and we starve to death. She’s killed so many people…”
Landry turned on his phone’s recorder. If they died, someone would find the bodies and learn what had happened. “Where’s April?”
“She’s safe. When I get out of here — if I do — I’ll set her free. I never intended to kill her. I took her for her own good. Mother wanted her to die because she was a psychic. She was learning too much. Now that Mother has you, I can let April go.”
Landry couldn’t believe anything the man said, but he was in no position to bargain or argue with him. Instead, he wanted to keep Julien talking. “Who the hell are you? You’re no college professor, that’s for sure. Who is this serial killer mother of yours? Is it Mary Girard?”
“No. The Girards raised me from birth,” he said. “My real mother refused to deal with a child. It wasn’t her fault; she was mentally ill. It was really far more than mental illness. She was a homicidal maniac. Nobody suspected anything because when it got bad, my father locked her up in a cage. We saw it that day Henri took us on the house tour. I didn’t reveal it then, but I should have directed the tour through Proctor Hall that day. Hell, I was born there, although my parents gave me to the Girards that same day.”
“I don’t get it. The house belonged to the Proctors. You said earlier you aren’t a Proctor. Was that a lie?”
“No. The Proctor Hall Massacre happened in 1963, four years before I was born. Another family occupied the house by then. I’m not a Proctor. I’m a Trimble. I’m Ben and Agnes Trimble’s only child.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Landry said, “You’re the child of the caretaker and his wife. Everyone thinks they moved away and took Noah with them.” He pointed to the box. “Noah’s right there, so they never left at all.”
Julien said it wasn’t as simple as that. “Agnes — my birth mother — has been mentally ill her whole life. From what I’ve learned, she seemed normal when Ben married her, but things spiraled out of control over the years. He built that cage and locked her up at night. He freed her during the daytime, thinking it safe because they had no visitors. The supervisor, Mike, stopped by occasionally, but no one else came. Even then, Ben kept a close eye on her. She was unpredictable and capable of horrific things.
“At around eleven I learned the Girards weren’t my birth parents. To most kids, it would have been a shock, but I felt grateful. As a child, we rarely visited Proctor Hall. Each time we did, Agnes screamed and ranted from somewhere upstairs. My stepmom called her crazy and refused to allow me to see her. That’s when I learned her husband locked her in a cage.”
“That must have been a surprise.”
“Not as much as it would seem. Things at the house were always bizarre. Every time we visited Proctor Hall and my stepmom went upstairs, they got into some big argument that ended in a screaming match.”
Landry interrupted. “If she was insane, why did the Girards continue visiting her?”
“Family. Mary Girard was my aunt — Agnes Trimble’s sister. We just lived down the road in Lockhart, and my stepmother felt obligated. I was fifteen the last time we visited as a family. That’s when my life changed forever. From that day on, I learned to hide my family’s and my insanity behind a I.”
“What happened?”
“Ben didn’t secure the lock, and his wife got out. She snuck down the stairs and found us all in the music room. When she heard her brother-in-law, Joseph, ask about why she had to be in the cage, something snapped. She flew into the room, jumped on Joseph, and clawed his eyeballs out. Within seconds it got worse. She snatched a pair of scissors from a table and stabbed him to death.
“That day I saw the ghosts for the first time. The moment my mother killed her brother-in-law, a groan echoed through the house — more of a piercing sound than a noise. It entered my brain like a needle. Three shadows rose from the floor and encircled Agnes within seconds. Formless at first, they developed into phantoms with human forms — a girl, a man and a woman. The Proctors.
“When they first appeared, Agnes had a crazy grin on her face, but we all watched them push closer and closer, tightening their grip around her, and she uttered a hellish cry of terror that still invades my dreams at night. When she fell to the floor, they disappeared. The entire episode took maybe ten seconds, but it dramatically affected my mother. She whimpered and became submissive, allowing Ben to drag her up to the cage.
“I was only a teenager, but when I watched my mother kill the man who raised me, I was exhilarated, not disgusted.” He paused and chuckled. “I can’t imagine what you two are thinking right now. What a demented individual this man is. How deranged and sadistic he must be.”
Landry and Phil said nothing.
Julien continued, “I realized that the madness was genetic. I worried that I would become like her. My stepmother, Mary, was crazy too. Her sister murdered Mary’s husband before her eyes, but instead of being repulsed, she seemed fascinated. It ran in her genes, just like in mine.”
“My God,” Phil said. “No wonder you’re…” He stopped short of finishing.
“Go ahead — say it. Crazy? Demented? A murderer in my own right? They all apply. I’m just like my mother. Until now, I hid it better. In one way it’s sad, but in another, confession is cathartic.”
Astounded at the man’s calm description of the horrors, Landry wondered if Julien could ever be rehabilitated. It was moot if they died in this chamber, but he still wanted answers. He asked what Noah did while Agnes killed her brother-in-law.
“I guess he sat on the stairs. He was so quiet, nobody ever paid any attention to him. Agnes fed him three times a day and made him go to bed and get up, but other than that, he just sat there.”
Julien looked across the room at the pale man sitting in the box. “Noah, tell them how it affected you when Agnes killed that man,” he taunted. “Don’t want to talk right now? That’s fine. I’ll tell them what you did that day. Noah sat on the fourth stair on the stairway. He could hear everything, but he didn’t make a move to help. I often wonder what’s inside that mind of his. Does he process like we do? What went on inside his mind the night his entire family died? Did he get a rush like I get?”
Landry glanced at Phil. Wacko, he communicated with a roll of his eyes.
He asked what happened to Joseph’s body.
“Ben said nobody else neede
d to know about this. It was a family matter, and he’d take care of the problem. I lived with Mary Girard in Lockport for three more years, and she never even asked what happened to the body. But after that day we never went back to Proctor Hall.”
“Didn’t people in town wonder what happened to your stepfather?”
“We were loners. People may have asked — I don’t remember — but Mary would have told them to mind their own affairs.”
Landry pushed harder. “You said you’re as maniacal as your mother. What do you mean by that?”
“When I was eighteen and at the house with my stepmother, she did something or said something that set me off. It’s odd that I can’t remember what it was. Something clicked in my head — something palpable. I felt a switch turn on, and negative energy flowed through my entire being.
“I turned on her, grabbed a frying pan, and beat her to death with it. Once it was dark, I dragged her body to the bayou and tossed it in. The water began churning and splashing, and I knew the gators had found her. That was that. I went back into the house and finished my supper.
“The feeling I experienced was a bizarre thing hidden inside me since birth, I suppose. It felt good to let it out, although I knew how powerful and dangerous it was. If I were to live any semblance of a normal life, it must stay hidden deep in my psyche.”
The words came from a man with no soul. Others might call his actions reprehensible, but from then on Julien didn’t care. He wasn’t like the others. His mind was infested with maggots — not literally, but his DNA, or brain cells, or something, were missing the ingredient that kept humans on a moral track.
Landry’s own mother always said the test of a man was what he would do in a situation if nobody would find out. Such a test would be useless for Julien Girard. He had no sense of guilt or accountability for his actions.
“Will your mother come back and kill us?” Phil asked, and the answer was chilling.
“Us? I doubt that. You, absolutely. She intends to kill both of you. Probably Noah too, since she’s delayed doing that for so many years. She’s old and tired. I can’t see her caring for him any longer.”
“Did she keep him alive because he’s a maniac like her?”
Puzzled, Julien said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“He’s a homicidal killer. He decapitated his entire family.”
Julien chuckled. “Noah? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Noah didn’t kill his family — he would never have done that. They loved each other. Family was all he had, and they cared for him every minute of his life.”
“So what are you saying?”
The answer never came. There were footsteps above, and then something slid across the floor. The trapdoor opened and a shaft of light pierced the darkness. Agnes Trimble shouted down, “Son, have you killed them yet?”
“Let me out, Mother,” Julien said. “We’ll leave them down here to die. No one will ever find them.”
Phil grabbed Julien, but the man whispered, “Play along. I won’t lock the trapdoor and I won’t block it. You’ll be able to escape.”
Landry nodded — he didn’t trust Julien, but they had no alternatives. He doubted Agnes even cared if they killed her son.
Julien climbed the ladder and closed the door. Landry and Phil were in the dark once again, listening to faint words they couldn’t understand. Then came another sound — the familiar noise of something heavy being dragged across the floor above them.
“Bastard lied to us!” Phil exclaimed, but Landry held a finger to his lips and waited. After two minutes passed, then three, he went to the ladder, climbed up and pushed.
The door flipped up and fell back, wide open. Julien had kept his word.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
They crept up into the old mill, regretting having to leave Noah behind. They would return with tools to free him, but first they had to get away from the plantation. Landry’s phone dinged to life, and he saw a message from Cate. She’d also left Phil a voicemail, but their priority was to get away from the mill and out of danger.
Since Phil knew what direction the mill was from the house, he also had a good idea where the highway was. Using the phone’s compass, they walked through the tall stalks of cane for twenty minutes until they found the highway.
He called but reached Cate’s voicemail. He hadn’t checked in for sixteen hours and knew she’d be worried. Why would she not have answered? He learned the answer seconds later when Phil played Cate’s frantic voicemail. She hadn’t gotten a call from Landry and was driving to Proctor Hall to look for him.
“Oh God,” Landry cried. “She came to the house!”
He called Lieutenant Kanter’s cell phone, and the cop answered at once.
“Landry! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m on Highway 308 near Proctor Hall. Cate may be in trouble. How soon can you get here?”
“I’m at the house. Cate called me last night worried about you, and I brought two guys with me to check things out.”
Landry arrived at where he’d hidden his Jeep and said, “Thank God you’re here. Wait for me. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
His heart dropped as he saw Cate’s car parked next to Kanter’s black-and-white at Proctor Hall. He and Phil ran to the porch, where the cops waited. “They kidnapped Phil and me, and we escaped,” he blurted, “but Cate came up here last night. That’s her car, which means she’s here somewhere. We have to find her!”
Kanter drew his weapon, rapped on the door and shouted, “Police! Open up!” Five seconds later he gave a sign to another officer, who kicked the door in. With weapons drawn, the cops rushed inside and moved throughout the house. They cleared the rooms, and Kanter allowed Landry and Phil inside.
“Cate! Cate, are you here? It’s me! Where are you?”
From the barred cage upstairs, Cate listened to his shouts. She tried to answer, but the tape over her mouth turned her words into muffled moans. She had heard the officers talking in the hallway, and tried to kick at the bars, but the tape securing her body made it impossible. She heard them going back downstairs and cried.
Landry told them about Noah Proctor chained in a subterranean room at the old mill. Cate might be imprisoned somewhere near there, and they filed out to the porch to go search for her. Landry was last, and as he stepped through the door, there was a noise from inside — something faint and indistinct, but definitely a sound.
“Everybody, come back in the house and listen!”
There it was again — a knocking sound. Barely perceptible, but a real sound.
“Cate! Cate, knock again!”
Knock, knock, knock. From upstairs.
“Come on!” he yelled, bounding up the stairs. “We didn’t check the cage!”
It took the cops two minutes with a bolt cutter to break the chain that held the gate shut. Landry and Phil picked Cate up and carried her into the hall. When he removed the tape from her mouth, she gasped deep breaths of air.
Kanter removed her body tape with a knife. “Good thing you knocked,” he commented, and she said that was her last-ditch effort. She’d bumped her heels on the floor just hard enough to make a sound.
He asked who abducted her, and she said there was a phantom on the stairway, wielding a hatchet. When it approached, she blacked out.
Landry helped her downstairs and onto the porch. He said, “Let’s get you out of here. I’m taking you home. Phil, show them where Noah is and keep in touch with developments. Lieutenant, thank God you were concerned enough to show up.”
As they drove away, Phil led the officers through rows of cane. “To me, Proctor Hall isn’t ever what it seems,” he said. “We overheard Agnes and Julien talking about secrets. It pissed her off that he wanted to tell Landry, and she threw him down into the room where we were.”
The officer had his pistol in hand when he descended the ladder and found Noah sitting in the wooden coffin. One cop had the bolt cutter, and they made quick work of the chain. Noah se
emed confused when they helped him stand and climb the ladder. He squinted in the daylight he hadn’t seen in months, and the only flicker of recognition in his eyes came when they emerged from the sugarcane and he saw Proctor Hall just across the yard.
He broke away from the others and ran to the porch of the place that he called home. They were right behind him as he entered the hallway and sat on the fourth riser of the staircase, the spot where he’d sat on the night his family died. And when Marguey Slattery came. He’d sat here on that day too, because this was his spot.
The Proctor Hall Horror Page 14