Suddenly, Vincent flung my body to the floor. I began to gasp for breath barely taking notice of the blood streaming down the back of my head. Vincent stood there, staring at me, and said, “Melanie, why did you make me do that? You know I love you.” I was sprawled out on the floor looking at him…silent…waiting for something to happen. He knelt down and, while feeling the wound on my head, said, in an almost comforting manner, “We are going to have a wonderful future together. You have that inner strength but still have some weak emotions holding you back – but that will go away. I think some of your progress has been held back by Bethany, but that too will go away.” I looked at him inquisitively and asked, “What do you mean?” He gazed into my eyes and smiled as he admitted to me, “Melanie, about two months ago I became absolutely convinced you were the one who would be my ideal partner. Bethany is weak, you are strong. Bethany lives in a dream world because she can’t handle the truth – you can, you are a realist.” A huge grin appeared on his face, “That’s why I switched her heart medicine for simple sugar pills. Yes, my dear, it is only a matter of time until her genetic weakness catches up to her. It’s not like I am murdering her really; I am just allowing nature to take its course.”
When he finished confessing to me that he was killing Bethany, the woman started getting more frantic as she seemed to be trying to call some name through her bound mouth. Vincent warned me, “You utter a word of this to Bethany and I swear your husband, and that black-haired woman he replaced you with, will meet a fate exactly the same as these people.” He grabbed my chin and looked at me the manner a child might examine a captured bug, “Wait right here. I have one last piece of business to attend to.” He stood up and went over to the woman. My rage had grown to the point of not caring anymore if I lived or died. I was angry before being strangled almost to death – but now I knew the meanings to his hints of my future with him. He was murdering a woman who really did love me and worshiped the ground I walked on. I looked around took notice of the baseball bat lying on the floor behind Vincent. I knew that if I failed in my quest to immobilize Vincent I would not get a second chance. I had faced death already and had no intention of doing it again. I knew that I had to act fast to save the woman’s life.
I slowly took a position that I felt I could spring forward and grab the bat. I knew I had to muster up all the strength I had to send Vincent to the grave. Yet instead of toying with the woman as I had expected him to do, he stood over her like a knight over a vanquished, yet still living, opponent in some movie. As she lay whimpering he merely leaned forward and pushed the machete into the woman’s back! She let out a muffled scream and her body stiffened in pain. The contraction quickly switched to her squirming about in an impossible fight to escape.
It was now or never. He put his foot on her struggling body to pull the machete out – apparently it had become stuck inside her rib cage. As his focus was on her, rather than me, I sprang up, took hold of the bat and, with every ounce of strength I had I smashed it into the side of his skull!
At that second of impact, unlike all the previous times I had taken someone’s life, I did not lose connection with reality or blank out in any way. I stayed focused. I could feel the slight reverberation travel through my hands as the instrument of his demise met the resistance of his cranium. I managed to steady myself after striking him and quickly took position for a second thrust. By this time he had fallen to the floor but he was still alive. He was moaning and even let out a scream of agony. He tried to lift himself up so I did not hesitate. I walked up to him and yelled, “Take that you bastard!” and swung the bat into his forehead with such impact that it lifted him off the floor and he flew back into a curled up lump of human flesh. I yelled, “Is that good enough? Did I pass your test you pathetic monster?” I rushed over to survey the damage and noticed that the impact had been so great his left eye had flown out of its socket and was hanging down over the side of his face. I was confident he was too messed up to threaten me anymore, but his arms and legs were jolting around in spasms so, just to make sure he could never hurt anyone again I took one more swing into his head. At this point it was over except for minor twitching of his hands.
The basement had been transformed into a scene of horror. Vincent was laying there with a pulverized skull, the man he had pushed off the gurney was in his last, futile, struggles to hold onto life; while he was still hogtied, blood streaming from his throat, he still managed to squirm around in the pool of blood. Then, within a couple of seconds of my focusing on him his body jolted and all movement stopped. I looked over to his wife. The machete was still partially buried in her ribs and she was moaning in agony. I ran over to her and yanked the tape off her mouth and quickly twisted the machete out of her and used it to cut the binds off her legs and arms.
Vincent had sunk the machete deep into her lung. She was gasping for air as blood was quickly filling the tissue and her body was trying to cough it out. There was no chance she could be saved so I tried to comfort her as much as I could. I cradled her in my arms. She struggled to ask, “My husband, my husband, where is he? Is he okay?” What could I say? I shook my head. She grabbed my neck with her trembling hand and asked, “The man…the one who did this!” I was startled! I quickly looked over at Vincent, afraid he had come back to life like some movie villain, but he was quite dead. I whispered, “Don’t worry. The creature who did this will never hurt anyone ever again.”
The next few minutes were extremely uncomfortable. She did not peacefully pass away, at least not her body. She fought to breath but it was a losing battle. She was coughing up blood so much that, by the time her body did just finally give up and go limp in my arms, I was soaked in her blood. I gently placed her down and again looked over the carnage. It may have been a relatively large basement but it seemed that I could barely manage to move without stepping on or over a corpse. And by now the blood of all three dead bodies was starting to pool together.
I found a place by the door that was clean and I sat there, crouched on the floor, wondering what next to do. What was I going to tell Bethany and how was she going to react when she discovered that I had killed her husband of almost three decades? What choice did I have though? It seemed the truth was my best option.
I stood up, took a deep breath, and headed up out of the basement. I called out to Bethany as I opened the door. She did not immediately answer but when I raised my voice she came running to me out of the bed room. “Jennifer, what happened to you? Are you okay?” She frantically looked me over and, once she noticed I was bleeding from my head, she rushed me to the bathroom. She helped me remove the blood-soaked clothes and told me to get into the bath as she turned on the water. I was surprised of two things, first, when I tried to answer her about what had happened she interrupted and told me there was time for explanations later. The second thing was that she did not ask about Vincent. She wanted to get me cleaned off and make sure the wound was properly taken care of.
Once she administered alcohol, which hurt tremendously, she asked how I had been injured. There was no avoiding it now. As I sat in the blood-stained bath water I told her, “Vincent strangled me and threw me against the wall. And Bethany, he told me he was trying to kill you! He told me he was giving you fake heart medication!” Once I was finished she gave me a look of anger and said, “I will kill him for what he has done to you!” I was unsure how she would take the news but I admitted, “Vincent is dead! He tried to kill me but I killed him first.” I looked at her to determine if she was going to lash out at me. I feared she would become hysterical and drown me in the bathtub. Yet she remained knelt there with a distant stare on her face as if she were thinking about their life together and how it was now all over. But instead of crying she asked, “Can you get dressed and help me in the kitchen with something?” She stood and rushed out the door.
When I entered the kitchen Bethany was struggling to move the oven out of its place. I found it odd that she was so focused on moving a kitchen appliance h
aving just learned her husband was dead. Then I discovered why. She explained, “Just before you arrived in May I accidently spilt some of my heart medication pills behind the stove. Help me move it so I can at least compare them with the ones Vincent gave me in a month later.”
Sure enough, once we pulled the oven back, she retrieved five tablets from against the wall. Her focus only intensified as she put a newer pill on the table alongside that of one of the retrieved pills. They looked identical to each other in every respect. She took a butter knife and broke both in half and examined the insides intently. She put one to her tongue and then the other. Then she exclaimed, “That son of a bitch!” She ran over to the sink, poured a glass of water and dropped both in. Then her eyes grew huge with rage and she said, “Look!” One of the pills was fizzling and dissolving rapidly while the other was merely breaking apart, leaving a pile of residue on the bottom. They were indeed different!
Bethany then sat down and slouched over crying, “Oh my God, no wonder I have been so run down lately. Quick dear, grab me one of the older pills and a glass of water.” She took the medication and cried, “My doctor said without these pills my heart would have to work so hard that any stress would shut it down in two or three months. Jennifer you saved my life!”
The crying turned to silence until I asked, “Do you want to talk about anything right now?” She still had a stunned look on her face, but there were no tears anymore. She said, “We have a lot of work to do, don’t we?” I replied, “Yes. And Bethany there’s two other bodies in the basement as well.” She calmly asked, “Were they bad people?” I sighed, “No, Bethany in fact they were really good people.” She took my hand, “Jennifer I am so sorry for having brought you to this place. Vincent had brought up the idea and I had agreed because I knew the moment I looked at your picture that your spirit was the same as my daughter.” We both hugged each other until she asked, “So are you going to leave me alone now?” I looked at her and asked back, “Why would I do that?” She smiled, “Then we need to get started down there!” I volunteered to take care of the mess and urged her not to look at the carnage. She insisted on going down the stairs immediately. I took her hand, “Okay, if you are sure” and we headed to the basement.
I had supposed she would hesitate but that was not the case. She barged in and took immediate inventory of the situation. She walked around, trying to avoid bodies and blood puddles, but she showed absolutely no emotion as she looked over Vincent’s body. She asked, “How did you do it?” I responded to her that I had hit him with the baseball bat. All she said was “I see” and then asked, “Jennifer, can you go upstairs and fetch me some measuring tape from my sewing basket? And while you are up there get me a bottle of water. Quick!” I did as she said and returned. She had stretched out the woman’s body and asked me to hold the tape steady at the feet. She stretched the tape out and stated, “This is great! She’s five feet eight inches…just a little shorter than me.” Bethany held the woman’s head up and rinsed the blood out of her mouth out with the water. She twisted the head in various positions and then said, “This will do.”
I asked, “What are you doing?” She got up and said, “This poor woman will help us a lot. First, she is just a tiny bit shorter than I am. Second, she doesn’t have any major dental work except for a couple of fillings in her molars – which I can pull out.” I was pretty sure what she was getting at but I asked anyway. She explained, “She can easily be mistaken for me if I remove those molars, her left incisor and the back lower right molar. That way the two teeth that she had work on, and the two I have had fillings, will be gone. I’ll explain the rest of my plan soon.”
She dropped the woman’s head and went over to the husband. She directed me to run upstairs and get a sheet. When I returned with it I saw that she had untied him. She sighed, “We need to get this body disposed of. The pigs will at least have a nice last supper.” I was about to ask what she meant but she quickly stated, “Please just do as I say. I said I’ll explain everything soon.” We wrapped the upper part of his body so tight in the sheet that any blood left in his body could not escape. Fortunately he was not a big man so we easily got him up the stairs and carried him to the pigs. Bethany untied the sheet and we dragged him into the pen as Bethany yelled at a large brown male, “Get back! Get back now! You’ll eat soon old man!” Once we left the pen and shut the gate the large boar lurched forward and began pulling at the man’s upper back thigh. The others followed his lead. Bethany signed, “I am sorry my friends. I am sorry for what I must do tomorrow.”
I was impressed with her attention to detail. Again, she seemed to shut off any emotional connections, even with her husband. Once we were back on the porch she noted, “We have to be certain the pigs finish every last bit of that body. In fact, we have to give their guts time to digest him. We can’t leave any traces behind when we leave.”
I did wonder what she meant by “leave” but I decided to not ask any questions until we were totally done with all our work. Bethany then said, “We’ll move that bastard’s body to the corner and then put the woman next to him.” Once completed with that task she began to rip pieces of the sheet these we had wrapped the man in. She asked, “Can you stuff these into both their mouths and plug that hole in her back? We need to clean up this blood in case my plan doesn’t work.” Upon finishing that she retrieved some sponges we used to clean the floor. It took two hours but when we were done the floor and gurney was entirely free of any blood stains.
I was impressed and amazed at the same time with how Bethany was handling herself. Even though she was working next to Vincent’s body, cleaning up his blood no less, she still showed no emotions – just a single-minded attention to cleaning up the mess he had left us with. It reminded me of Nicole’s attention to detail – but I suppose Bethany had once been involved intimately with Vincent’s killings. So perhaps I should not have been surprised that hidden under that normally light-hearted, sweet and submissive persona was a cold and calculating, and most importantly experienced, killer. I wondered if this might change Bethany into something different than I was used to though.
After we had cleaned the area thoroughly Bethany asked if I was hungry. Actually I really noticed it once she asked. She started taking her clothes off and asked me, “Can you please get those off? We need to clean ourselves off and make something to eat. We went upstairs and, after filing the tub, she invited me to get in. Then she joined me. It felt a bit weird sharing the tub with Bethany. A part of me had flashbacks to times where Nicole and I had cleaned up a crime scene and then, well, let our inhibitions go afterwards. In fact as she began to lather up her chest I became aware of her body on a more primal level. Gravity had taken its toll on her rather large breasts but maybe on some strange maternal level I found everything about her quite sensual. Yet I fought to repress entertaining any such thoughts. And I dared not share my feelings out of fear of how she might react. However I couldn’t help but wonder how things might evolve since Vincent was finally out of the picture. I decided to wait and see how the dynamics of our relationship turned out.
When we got out of the tub Bethany suggested not getting dressed until we were sure we were done getting things in order. I was not all that cold but I followed her into the living room and she built a roaring fire in the fireplace. She asked me to get a blanket out of the closet and when I asked which one she said it did not matter since she was not saving any.
I waited in front of the fire, just staring into the flames while Bethany prepared some home-made pizza. When she was done she came in with two beautiful crystal glasses and a bottle of champagne and sat next to me. At first she just looked at the flames with me in silence as we waited for the pizza to bake. I again had to wonder what was on her mind as this felt like an incredibly romantic moment. Yet at the same time I knew she thought of me as the reincarnation of her daughter; so that obviously could get in the way of anything physical happening.
Bethany then spoke, “Jennifer, I ha
ve to say this now, before anything else. I love you and would really miss you if you decided to leave me. You know that, don’t you?” I sat my glass down, “I love you too Bethany.” She smiled and continued, “Jennifer, I know you have a family, and I am not sure what you have in mind now that Vincent is no longer able to keep you here. But if you want to stay with me I will make sure you never doubt my devotion to you. I will do everything in my power to make sure our time together is filled with fun and adventure. I promise!” She looked down in silence, and looked back at me, the flames illuminating her face, even though the sun was still lighting up the house. I looked at her and asked, “Have you ever been to Fiji?” She shook her head. I took her hand, “Maybe sometime in the near future we should go there together. We can decide on where else to travel after that.” She caught what I was saying and gave me a hug. Tearfully she replied, “We have all the time in the world to make plans for the future! However, right now, our pizza is done!” She sprang up and ran to the oven to take out our dinner.
As I sat there waiting I ran my life options through my mind. There was a part of me that wondered if I should return to my family, but something seemed really intriguing about trying something new. And as much as I had always wanted everything I had been able to attain, it was the uncertainty of starting a new life that seemed to captivate me the most. For some reason that sounded more exciting than my family, as weird as that might sound.
Deliverance from Evil Page 21