Walking to school alone sucks. I miss you, RayRay, says one post with a picture of a lonely pair of too-small shoes on a sidewalk.
Who’ll be the yin to my yang? asks another, wearing a black crescent costume and holding a matching dot in her hand. Halloween will never be the same!
Hard to cheer, but I know that’s what you’d want, says another, accompanied by a picture of two skinny tweens in green-and-gold cheerleader outfits, BROOKLINE BOBCATS stamped across their chests.
I find a more recent post on the Facebook page of the Halloween friend. On the anniversary of the deaths, she’d stopped by the house to visit Footloose, bringing a basket of homemade snacks, unaware he’d found a less healthy way to fend for himself in the seven years since losing his family. She shared a photo of the two of them standing in the front yard of the same pale-yellow house that was featured in the earlier pictures. In this one, the number 45 is visible over their shoulders.
I do a quick online search for the Bobcats, confirming they’re the mascot for Brookline Middle School in the neighboring town of Westchester. If Rae-Anne walked to school, that means their house is somewhere in the vicinity, and so forty-five minutes later I’m driving in slowly widening circles around the school, scanning the houses like a stalker. It takes another half hour, but I find 45 Poplar Street, comparing the yellow house with white shutters with the images on my phone, confirming it’s the same one. A string of dark Christmas lights dangles along the edge of the roof, and a wreath hangs askew on the front door. A silver SUV is parked in the driveway.
I check the time. It’s almost 6:00 p.m., night settling in fast, cloaking the street in darkness. I drive a few blocks and park before jogging back, the silver 45 winking at me in the light from the streetlamp. The house is black and still when I knock on the door, prepared to bolt if someone should answer. There’s nothing. I ring the bell, hear it chime inside, and count to ten. Still nothing. Things are going according to plan, but I’m still terrified by what I’m about to do.
It’s freezing, and my only company is my breath hanging in the air like a ghost, telling me not to go through with this. But I have to. Eventually, someone will notice that Daniel Nilssen hasn’t shown up for his volunteer shift or that his car—not his murder car, apparently—hasn’t moved from the driveway or that his Christmas lights are still up in February. That someone will knock on the door or call the police, and they’ll go inside and find…something. I don’t know what, but if Footloose was recording me at home and his victims in the cabin, there could be evidence here, and I didn’t survive his creepy date night just to be caught on camera admitting I helped my sister bury thirteen bodies.
I glance around, but the street is empty. Lights are on in the house to the right, but the house on the left is dark, so I go around that way, the frozen grass crunching under my feet. There’s no fence, and the backyard is compact and tidy with a little deck and a door flanked by two windows, very similar to mine. I pull the keys I’d saved from my pocket, trying three before one slides into the lock and turns. The sound of the tumblers falling into place echoes too loud in the quiet night. I wait for a dog to bark or someone to demand to know what I’m doing, but the neighborhood is silent, and after a second I ease the door open and slip inside, closing it behind me.
This isn’t the first time I’ve entered the home of a serial killer, but it’s the first time I’ve been so afraid my knees are quaking. He’s dead, I remind myself, over and over again. You killed him. But it doesn’t matter. Becca’s been gone for weeks, and I can still feel her. Evil lingers.
I use the light on my phone to peer around the tidy kitchen, the counters clean. There’s a pot and a pan on the stovetop, and when I open the fridge, it’s full of normal things, like milk and orange juice and eggs and a rotting head of lettuce. No severed feet. I check the freezer, just in case, but its only occupants are a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a bottle of vodka.
Next to the kitchen is a small home office with a desktop computer and a large whiteboard that functions as a calendar, noting what I assume were Footloose’s volunteer shifts. He has a standing appointment at eight o’clock every Monday morning to take someone to the Westchester Hospital for dialysis. He’s missed two shifts so far.
I proceed down a short hallway to the living room at the front of the house. I turn off my phone, using the light from the streetlamps to see a couch, two chairs, and a television. A set of stairs occupies the wall in front of the door, and I peer around for the dining room he’d set up for my failed test, but there’s nothing more on this level.
I eyeball the stairs and then blow out a shaky breath. Even as common sense urges me to sprint back outside and give up this desperate plan, I know I have to go up there. I have to make sure the past stays in the past.
The worst thing about the house is that it’s so creepily similar to mine. Older but well maintained, with all the dusty traces of his family. Pictures line the wall as I climb the stairs, starting with Rae-Anne as a baby, watching her grow into a young girl, gap-toothed and smiling widely for school photos. There are the expected staged family pictures, featuring the beaming Nilssens wearing matching sweaters or tacky Christmas pajamas. They’re the things you would expect to see in a normal home. We had them in our house, too, when I was growing up. They’re the things you use to mask the truth.
The upstairs has two small bedrooms and a bathroom. The tiny lilac bedroom smells like lemon furniture polish, and my light reflects on the buffed nightstand and headboard. Stuffed animals lie neatly along the pillows on the bed, waiting for Rae-Anne to return. There’s a matching collection of toys and dead flowers tucked into one corner of the room like a makeshift shrine. I creep closer, finding glittery cards and sequined homemade picture frames sitting in a pool of dried rose petals, showcasing a smiling Rae-Anne. He saved it all.
Unlike his daughter’s meticulously preserved room, the master bedroom has obviously been lived in. The bed is unmade. The evidence that he’d lived here, slept here, and plotted here makes me want to retch. It proves he was real, not a figment of my imagination. The single closet is still divided down the middle, men’s clothes on one side, women’s on the other. The floor shows the same arrangement with shoes, his wife’s heels and strappy sandals organized by color, each pair standing obediently upright, like she might return any minute to pick a pair to wear out dancing.
I blink back tears, thinking of Becca’s apartment, flash-frozen in the last moments of her life. The dishes in the sink, the open tube of toothpaste, the dirty clothes scattered on the floor. I still haven’t decided what to do with her things. She’s not officially dead, just missing, but holding on to them, clinging to the hope and fear she might return, seems wrong. More wrong now that I’ve seen this place. This is what happens when people continue to live in the worst moment of their lives, letting those broken feelings slice through their humanity, creating wounds that fester and rot them from the inside.
I return to the living room, the steps creaking under my feet. If Footloose had indeed brought me to his home for dinner—if he cooked the steak and potatoes and paid for the electricity—then the dining room has to be here. But where?
The front door waits at the base of the stairs, and kitty corner to that is another door. The winter coat hanging from a hook on the back made me assume it was a closet, but now I knock the jacket to the floor and turn the knob. Locked. Pulling the keys from my pocket, I try the smallest one. The door opens with a loud squeal, revealing a dark staircase.
A terrible smell wafts out, like it’s been waiting for me. It’s sweet and rotten and makes my eyes water. My brain begs me to run even as my hand reaches for the string attached to the ceiling, tugging on it, a bare bulb flickering to life and illuminating the narrow space. My feet start the descent, moving of their own volition. Narrow wooden planks serve as steps. Footloose must have dragged my unconscious body up and down them on the night of our failed dinner date, explaining some of my heretofore i
nexplicable bruising.
The basement is divided into two parts. One is the stereotypically creepy furnace room found in most old houses with unfinished concrete walls and floors, exposed ductwork, and cobwebs in the corners. The other half has yet another door, propped open by a wooden chair, likely because Footloose’s hands were full of my newly drugged body as he carted me out of the house and off to his murder cabin. The light from the stairwell stops just inside the room as though it, like me, can’t bear to enter. The smell of rot and decay is strong.
I aim my phone inside the room, my eyes squeezing shut in self-defense. I force them open and then slump with relief. This is indeed the source of the odor, but it’s just the decomposing remains of our untouched steak dinner, not a pile of dead bodies.
It’s been nearly three weeks since we were here, and the fire is out, the dining room full of the damp cold that comes with basements and old houses. I remember the chandelier and feel along the wall just inside the door, my fingers grazing a light switch and flipping it on. The room is illuminated, and I scan it quickly before stepping inside. A click and a whir make me freeze, looking over my shoulder, expecting Footloose or Becca or perhaps Detective Greaves to catch me in the act. But it’s none of them, I realize when I can breathe again. It’s a small black camera tucked into the far corner, its red eye welcoming me back.
I force myself to focus and step cautiously into the room, eyes scanning the floor for any obvious torture devices. There are none.
Unless Footloose stored all his videos and editing equipment at the cabin, this has to be his control center. The room is deceptively sparse and functional, but that camera filmed me confessing to my crimes during dinner, so there must be something saving the recordings, storing them for later manipulations. Something I need to destroy. Burning this place down has crossed my mind, but I don’t want to make arson a hobby. Setting fire to an isolated murder shack is one thing, but starting a fire in a family-friendly neighborhood is quite another.
Ignoring the flies buzzing on the rotten meat, I check the fireplace, shoving at the mantel, pressing on the bricks for a hiding space. Nothing. I look behind the television, but there’s nothing there. I pull the boat painting off the wall, expecting a safe of some sort, but it’s just a wall. I look under every chair and then peer beneath the table, feeling along its thick wooden legs for a hiding spot, a button, anything, but apart from the camera, there’s nothing obvious.
I think of Footloose’s cabin and his penchant for trapdoors and scan the floor more carefully, looking for anomalies in the wood. I’m on my hands and knees, pressing, feeling, hunting, and then finally, I spot it. Under one of the table legs are two pieces of wood with matching cuts that don’t flow with the otherwise-staggered pattern of the floorboards. I shine the light from my phone for a better look, and it’s definitely a hidden panel. Standing, I lean all my weight into the heavy table, moving it approximately an inch. I try again, gaining another inch. The table weighs a million pounds, and my already-stressed heart is working overtime.
Something shrieks, and I scream, jerking upright and banging my arm. It shrieks again and again, and I realize it’s my phone ringing, the sound too shrill in the quiet house. I bury my face in my hands and try not to cry, terror and adrenaline making my hands shake. I can hear Becca now, cackling madly. Who breaks into a house and doesn’t put their phone on silent?
Snatching the phone from my pocket, I see Graham’s name on the display. He’s supposed to be at a work dinner. I hope he’s not at my place, wondering where I am on a weeknight.
I try to sound composed when I answer, but I’m still trembling. “Graham?”
“Carrie? Hey.” There’s the murmur of voices in the background, dishes clinking. He’s still at the restaurant.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I just wanted to check on you. Are you okay? It sounds like you’re struggling to breathe. Do you need me to come over?”
“No,” I say, wiping sweat off my forehead. I’m definitely struggling. “No, I’m fine. Don’t come. I just, uh…I’m…” Oh God. Don’t say it. “I’m…moving furniture.”
A pause. “Which room? I thought your place looked fine the way you had it.”
“Yeah, it does. I just wanted to try out a new look.” Fuck. Now I’ll have to rearrange the living room when I get home, and I’m exhausted.
“Okay, well, I look forward to seeing it. Have a good night.”
“Thanks. You too.”
I hang up, grit my teeth, and shove the table with everything I have. The effort buys me another two inches, but that’s all I need. The hidden panel is exposed. I drop to my knees and feel around the edges. Prying with my fingernails, I can’t get enough leverage. I dig in with one of the keys, lifting the thin wooden panel just enough to lever it out. And there, in a nook the size of a briefcase and twice as deep, are three laptop computers, humming as they work. There’s also a box of labeled USB sticks and several colorful cords. I scoop everything out, replace the panel and the table, haul a chair to the corner to yank out the camera, and take everything with me upstairs. I find plastic bags in the kitchen to bundle up my stolen goods and then slip out the back door, down the dark streets, and make my final escape.
Chapter 12
The next day, I drive to the outlet mall on the outskirts of town and park at the edge of the huge lot, at least a hundred yards between me and the next car. Here I do a cursory search of Footloose’s laptops and USBs, knowing that, no matter what I find, it will be horrible.
And it is. The labels are in some type of code or shorthand, so I can’t simply find my name or Becca’s, forcing me to fast-forward through each one to review the contents. They contain raw footage of the victims made to navigate Footloose’s house of horrors, all losing their lives in the end.
Finally, on the seventh flash drive, I hear Becca. “Do you know what your problem is, Carrie?”
I suck in a sharp breath. “It’s the two serial killers in my life,” my recorded voice replies.
“You’re too negative,” Becca says. “You never look on the bright side.”
I fumble with the laptop, pausing the playback. Hearing Becca’s voice is almost as painful as imagining her running the deadly gauntlet.
I look around the parking lot, the sun out, the sky bright and blue, belying the cold weather. In the distance, holiday shoppers rush back and forth to their cars, bags bursting with gifts and decorations. And here I am, watching murder home movies on a serial killer’s stolen laptop and hearing my dead sister’s voice.
I close the laptop, get out of the car, and line up the computers and USBs with my four tires. Then I get back in the car, put it in drive, and roll forward, hearing them crunch. I reverse over them. Then drive forward again. Then back again. I do it until I see a woman in a bright-red winter coat bustling toward the nearest car. I stop and feign interest in my phone until she drives away. When she’s gone, I get out and gather up the shattered equipment in two bags, confident the fragments can never be rebuilt. I take them to the dumpsters behind the mall and sprinkle them inside like confetti.
Footloose chose to dwell on the most awful moment of his life, let it grow bitter and rot and spread until it became the excuse to commit his unspeakable crimes. But I’m not going to repeat his mistakes. He’s dead, Becca’s dead, and I have no excuse. I’m leaving death behind me once and for all.
* * *
My house looks normal when I pull into the driveway, a snowman decal on the door, fake holly berries twisted around the stair rail, my lame effort to blend in. It’s already dark, and through the closed curtains I see the flickering glow of the television in the front window. Without fear of Becca’s unannounced visits, Graham has been spending more and more time at my house, and I like it. It finally feels like a home.
I wave to Mr. Myer across the street and jog up the steps. The welcome mat is skewed. I straighten it with my foot and then stick my key into the lock and turn. It doesn’t move. For
a second, I think the lock has been changed, but then I realize the problem: It’s already open. Everyone in Brampton locks their door now, even those of us who know the monster is dead.
I step inside and stumble to a surprised stop. Fiona sits on the couch, a glass of milk balanced on her lap, the television remote on the cushion next to her. She lifts a hand in greeting, like this is normal, like I haven’t spent a lifetime finding manipulative women in my home. I look around warily.
“Where’s Graham?” Having learned my lesson, I’d put my phone on silent while watching Footloose’s movies, and now I feel for it in my purse, cursing when I find a hairbrush and hand lotion and two tubes of lip gloss but no phone.
“He left to get takeout,” Fiona replies. “From that Indian place you like.”
I find my phone and yank it out, swiping my thumb across the display. One missed call and four unread texts, all from Graham.
Hey, are you hungry?
Fiona is here???
I’ll go grab some food. How about curry?
I’m getting curry.
“So,” Fiona says, muting the television. On the screen, a sitcom family gestures dramatically as they argue over Christmas decorations. She smiles, but I don’t smile back. Becca’s dead; I don’t need to pretend I buy the act anymore.
“How did you get my address?”
The smile disappears, and she shrugs. “Detective Greaves called you the other night. When we got to the station, I asked if I could use his phone. He said sure, and I checked the list of outgoing calls and copied the numbers. Then I reverse-searched them. And here I am.”
“You need to go.”
She heaves an exaggerated sigh. “I’m sorry for what I said.” She sounds like Becca when she’d insulted me in front of our parents and they’d mustered the energy to scold her. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
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