The Second Coming

by J. Fritschi

  Mike rang the doorbell and then stepped back as he looked around to see if anyone was watching them from a distance. There were no parked cars on the tree lined street and the only sounds were the birds chirping in the rustling breeze.

  Suddenly the door opened and a middle aged man dressed in khaki slacks and a blue button down shirt with a black belt and shoes stood so that his broad body was blocking the entrance as if he was going to slam the door in their face. A look of disbelief drooped on his pudgy face as he glanced up at the two men.

  “My brother isn’t here,” James said with an irritated tone.

  “Actually, we’re not here to see your brother,” Big Pete corrected him politely. “We’re here to see your father.”

  James expression receded into his face with surprise. “Why do you want to see my father?” he asked perturbed. “Does this have to do with my brother and the Sterling Killer?”

  Mike glanced at Big Pete with an amused smirk. “It’s not what you think,” Mike assured him patiently. “We just want to ask him a few questions about his association with the Oakland Children’s Orphanage.”

  “The Oakland Children’s Orphanage?” James repeated confused. “What does the orphanage have to do with the Sterling Killer?”

  “The body of the Sterling Killer’s first victim was found in your mother’s church,” Big Pete explained evenly. “We just want to ask him a few questions.”

  James glared at the two men with disgust. “I know what you are trying to do,” he said agitatedly. “You think my brother has a split personality who’s is committing these crimes. You think he is the Sterling Killer.”

  “We don’t think your brother has a split personality or that he is the killer,” Mike replied non-confrontationally. “That’s why we’d like to talk to your father. We want to clear your brother’s name.”

  James’ face went soft. “My brother isn’t a suspect?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Big Pete chimed in. “Another victim was killed while your brother was under surveillance so we know he can’t be the Sterling Killer.”

  “We just want to ask your dad a few questions to see if he knows if there is any connection between the first victim and the orphanage,” Mike assured him kindly.

  James peered at Big Pete and Mike, examining them as they stood on the front stoop with their hands at their sides and then he let out a sigh. “You’ll have to be quick,” he told them shaking his head with his eyebrows raised in disbelief. “I need to give him his medication and he won’t be much good to you after that.” He stepped back and invited them in.

  Mike followed Big Pete into the foyer and James quietly clicked the door shut behind them.

  “Please, follow me.” He led them up the stairs with the ornate banister and then down the hall to his father’s bedroom door. “Please wait here while I check on him.” He disappeared into his father’s room.

  Mike and Big Pete waited anxiously in the dark hallway listening to the beeping and sucking of the life support machines.

  “There are two detectives from Oakland homicide here to see you,” Mike heard James say to his father through the crack in the doorway.

  “What are they here for?” his father replied with a feeble voice.

  “It has something to do with the Oakland Children’s Orphanage,” he said calmly. “Do you want to see them or should I tell them you are not well.”

  “I’m fine,” his father replied. “Help me sit up and take this mask off my face.”

  Mike and Big Pete glared at each other and listened to the rustling of James helping his father get situated until James appeared and escorted them into his father’s bedroom.

  The withered old man was sitting up in his light blue pajama top, with the covers pulled up to his navel. The shades were drawn and he squinted in Mike and Pete’s direction as they walked over and stood by the foot of his bed.

  “These are the detectives I was telling you about,” James said in a clear loud tone over the breathing sound of the machine.

  “What can I do for you gentlemen?” Mr. Carpenter asked in an unsteady voice.

  “We’re sorry to bother you sir,” Big Pete said diplomatically. “We were hoping you would answer a few questions for us.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Can you tell us what your connection is with the Oakland Children’s Orphanage?” Mike asked.

  “I served on the board of directors and was a fundraiser and donor for the orphanage,” the old man struggled to reply with a look of concern on his emaciated face.

  “When did you become involved with the orphanage?” Mike inquired.

  A look of contemplation spread across his ashen face. “That would have been in 1966,” he replied hesitantly. “After my wife passed away.”

  “What was your interest in the orphanage?” Mike probed carefully.

  “My wife had a life insurance policy and I didn’t need the money,” the old man recalled. “I thought it would be nice to give the money to those unfortunate children.”

  “Is that why they named the church after your wife?” Mike asked with an inquisitive tone.

  “That’s right,” The old man confirmed. “It was a rather substantial sum of money and they wanted to name the church in her memory.”

  “Why the orphanage?” Mike asked skeptically. “Why not some other charity?”

  A disturbed grimace came over the old man’s face. “After my wife passed away, I felt as though my children had been orphaned,” he replied as if he said it a hundred times before. “I could relate to the tragedy of those poor kids and wanted to do something to help them.”

  Mike glanced at Big Pete with a discouraged frown and then looked back at the old man. “Are you aware of the Sterling Killer murders?”

  “I am not,” the old man confused.

  “The Sterling Killer is a serial killer who is stabbing women in the heart with a sterling silver knife shaped like a cross,” Mike explained as he removed a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. “The first victim’s body was found at your wife’s church. The killer left this symbol smeared in the victim’s blood on the wall.” He handed a photo of the symbol to the old man.

  The old man held the piece of paper with shaking hands close to his eyes and squinted at it. James reached over and grabbed his reading glasses from next to all of the prescription bottles on the bedside table and placed them on his father’s beaklike nose. The old man stared at the photo and his face went blank. Mike knew he had him and pressed on.

  “When your son John told us he was having dreams about the murders and then we found out that the church where the first victim’s body was found was dedicated to your wife, I knew there had to be a connection, but I couldn’t figure it out. After we cleared John, Kate told me about Jimmy Jones threatening to kill her and I thought maybe he was the Sterling Killer, but I didn’t know what his connection to the orphanage was. I thought maybe he was adopted from the orphanage, but Big Pete told me his parents listed on his birth certificate were the same parents he grew up with. I told Big Pete that anyone who wanted to hide something could get a forged birth certificate and that’s when it dawned on me that if Jimmy’s family could get one, so could you.”

  The old man sat in his bed looking like he wanted to say something, but was afraid to. His eyes were filled with remorse as he glanced at James and quickly looked away. The life support machines beeped and ventilated.

  “That’s when I remembered that Father John was born on June 5, 1966 and according to your wife’s certificate of death, she died shortly after on June 6, 1966 and it got me to thinking; what if your wife gave birth to Father John’s twin before she died? I searched the orphanage list of names and found a name with a June 6, 1966 date of birth and realized it was true.”

  Mr. Carpenter closed his eyes and a tear ran down his cheek as his face trembled. Big Pete and James watched in disbelief.

  “After your wife gave birth to Father John, she gave birth
to his twin brother, didn’t she? He was your sixth son as are you and your father,” Mike said tauntingly. “You had a birth certificate forged for him and left him to be adopted at the orphanage because of the story of the Antichrist in the Satanic Codex.”

  The old man’s face turned red and contorted as he looked around at the men standing at the foot of his bed. “You have no right to judge me,” he told them as he shook his finger at them. “You have no idea what happened.”

  James gently placed his hand on his father’s shoulder. “It’s alright Dad,” he said calmly. “No one’s blaming you. Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  Mr. Carpenter’s face slowly eased as Mike and Big Pete waited anxiously for him to speak.

  “Soon after Mary became pregnant with our fifth son, I received a mysterious manila envelope with no name or address on it,” the old man recalled with a trembling voice. “When I opened it, I found a copy of the Satanic Codex with a warning attached to it.”

  “What did it say?” Big Pete asked intrigued.

  The old man stared off somewhere in the distance with a disturbed furrow of his brow. “It said that if my wife gave birth to a sixth son, he would not be allowed to live,” he told them remorsefully.

  “Why wouldn’t he be allowed to live?” Big Pete asked for clarification.

  “I am the 6th son of my family, as was my father before me,” he explained feebly. “According to the Satanic Codex, a child that is born a third generation 6th son will be the son of the Devil, the second coming of the Antichrist, who will rise up against God and Jesus and bring the Apocalypse with him.”

  The old man paused to catch his breath and James gave him a sip of water from the straw in his cup.

  “At first I didn’t take the Satanic Codex or the warning seriously, but then on the night of June 5th, 1966, someone broke into our house. I thought it was the people who sent me the Satanic Codex and the warning so I went downstairs with my shotgun ready to kill them, but when I got downstairs, I heard someone running up the stairs,” he paused to catch his wheezing breath and then continued. “By the time I got up to my room, there was a dark intruder at Mary’s bedside. I shot him as he climbed out the window. I watched the buckshot hit him, knocking him out the window. He fell two stories to the lawn in our front yard, but when I looked out the window he was gone,” he said as his voice trailed off. “I remember thinking that it wasn’t humanly possible to survive being hit with a shotgun blast, especially after falling two stories, but he was nowhere to be seen.”

  “What did you do?” James asked perplexed from his father’s bedside.

  “I checked on your mother and found her lying in a pool of blood with John’s purple head sticking out of her with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck,” he said as a tear ran down his wrinkled face. “I was able to get him free and got him breathing, but your mother had lost a lot of blood. Dr. Stevens from next door came over after he heard the shotgun blast and was able to deliver John safely, but we had to rush your mother to the hospital.”

  Mike couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was like something out of a movie. “What happened at the hospital?”

  The Old man glanced at Mike with a look of confusion and then turned to James. “A couple of hours later, on the morning of June 6th, 1966, your mother passed away while giving birth to John’s twin brother.”

  “6-6-66,” Mike said under his breath in amazement.

  “That is when I knew the prophecy of the Satanic Codex was becoming reality,” the old man said regretfully as he wiped a tear from his cheek with a shaky hand.

  “Why did you give your son up for adoption?” Mike asked incredulously. “You don’t actually believe your son is the Antichrist, do you?”

  “He gave him up for adoption because he was afraid of what the church would do if they found out he was a sixth son,” Father John suddenly said tenderly from the doorway. “He was trying to protect him.”

  Mike’s head snapped as he glared over at Father John dressed in his brown robe as he strode over to his father’s bedside. “Don’t tell me you believe in the Satanic Codex?”

  “This is the first time I have ever heard of it,” Father John replied as he looked at his dad with sympathetic eyes and then glared at Mike. “Who are you to cast judgment? What would you have done?”

  Mike couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I would have exposed the story for what it is,” Mike said indignantly. “Instead it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaving your twin brother at the orphanage didn’t protect him, it created the Sterling Killer.”

  chapter 68

  AS KATE DROVE down the freeway with the tip of the knife firmly planted in her side, she couldn’t help but reflect on when she was abducted by Jimmy. The only difference was she wasn’t really afraid that Jimmy was going to hurt her. They had shared an incredible experience together and she knew he was just scared and confused. The Sterling Killer had killed already and she was certain he planned on killing her. Where was he taking her and what was he going to do to her? Was she going to meet the same fate as his other victim’s? Her mind was racing as she tried to figure out what to do when the Sterling Killer spoke.

  “When I was a teenager, before the Satanic Codex showed up mysteriously in my mailbox, I was killing people randomly for the thrill of it,” he explained venomously. “I started out by killing people that I knew and who trusted me, always making it appear as though it was an accident. Anytime I was with someone and the opportunity presented itself, I would push them in front of a speeding car or off a ledge, but after a while that became too easy and I grew bored.”

  Kate couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was certain she was going to be next.

  “I realized I needed the killings to be more personal. I wanted to look the victims in the eyes and watch the look of horror as their life drained from them,” he explained with a menacing tone. “I began moving around the country working at construction sites during the day and stalking young ladies at night. I would find single women who lived alone because they were easy targets and follow them around until I figured out their schedule and what they liked to do,” he explained in a cold, calculating voice. “I would arrange it so that I would conveniently bump into them while they were out. I would politely introduce myself and if they treated me kindly and with respect, I would treat them the same way and move on to a different victim,” he explained reflectively. “I was testing their character and they were completely unaware that I was a murderer and that if they treated me rudely, they would be brutally killed.”

  Kate’s mouth was dry and she could barely swallow as she sped down the middle lane of the freeway in shock.

  “If they ignored me or acted like they were better than me, I would apologize for bothering them and leave to go to their house, where I would break in and hide in a closet or in the crawl space or attic,” he said with vengeful pride. “I would wait quietly until they got home and were asleep and then I would sneak out of my hiding spot, into their room and crawl on top of them in their bed and place a rag soaked with chloroform over their nose and mouth. The look of terror in their eyes when they awoke and realized what was happening to them was exhilarating.”

  Kate was speechless. All she could think about was all of the guys who tried to pick her up that she blew off and how she could have so easily been one of his victims.

  “Once they passed out from the chloroform, I would undress them, tie them to their beds and bring them back to consciousness. The sinking look of regret on their face when they realized I was the guy they so rudely dismissed was empowering. They didn’t think they were better than me anymore and I’ll bet they wished they had treated me with a little more dignity. Now I was the one with the power and control.”

  “Oh my god,” Kate thought to herself frantically as she tried to keep her eyes on the road. “Is that what he is going to do to me?”

  “I would beat and rape them until they were barely conscious and
then, like a cat playing with a mouse, I would bring them back to consciousness so that when I wrapped my hands around their tender necks and strangled them, I could watch the color fade from their bulging eyes,” he reflected sadistically. “Did you know your pupil slowly loses its vibrant color and turns to grey when you die?” He asked as he moved his face close enough to the side of Kate’s head that she could feel his hot breath on her neck. He smelled like death; like rancid meat. She gagged and almost threw up before he sat back in his seat with the knife still planted firmly above her hip.

  “When the Satanic Codex and a copy of the Carpenter family tree showed up in my mailbox, I knew someone had tracked me down and that they were sending me a message, but I didn’t know who it was or what they were trying to tell me. After I read the ancient text, I realized that my father abandoned me at the orphanage because he thought I was the Antichrist so I decided if that is who he thought I was, then that is who I would become.”

  The pain from the knife in Kate’s side was causing her upper lip and brow to perspire as her face twisted with in agony. She couldn’t think clearly. What was the Satanic Codex he was referring to?

  “I did research about the Devil and found out that he was a fallen angel that was cast out by God just like I was cast out by my father and I could relate to the Devil’s feeling of betrayal and envy,” he explained with a bitter hint of irony. “I learned that Satanists used human sacrifices when worshipping the Devil and often cut out the intestines of the victims and burned them as an offering inside an inverted pentagram. I began to study black magic and soon realized I have dark powers that I never knew about. That is when I started to believe that the story told in Satanic Codex was true and I took on the persona of the Antichrist.”

  Kate was trying to understand everything that he was telling her, but the only thing she could think about was him cutting her intestines out like he did with the other victims and then burning them in an upside down pentagram as an offering to the Devil. She needed to do something quick and she thought about crashing her car into a tree, but the piercing pain of the knife in her side reminded her that if the crash didn’t kill her, he would.