I have to get out of here.
It’s hard to find the strength to move. My body feels like I just completed a triathlon. It’s a mixture of exhaustion and aching muscles. But I’m still alive and I need to keep it that way. The only way I can guarantee my survival is by getting out of this motel room.
I glance to my right. The desk has a phone on it. All I need to do is reach that.
I can imagine myself standing up and dragging the bed frame with me using the handcuffs, but every time my mind snaps back to reality, I haven’t moved at all.
I need to take baby steps.
I slide my cut leg off the bed. My toes touch the carpeted floor. I inch my other leg off the bed. My ass falls off, taking the rest of my body with it, so I’m just hanging from the bed frame by the handcuffs. They cut into my wrists and I grunt in pain. Now, I just need to stand up.
As I concentrate on putting my feet underneath me, I see the flash of two lights hitting against the back wall. She’s back.
I stumble onto my feet enough to get my ass back on the bed, and slide back onto it just as she opens the door.
She’s disguised herself again. This time she’s wearing a black Victorian mourning dress with a heavy veil that appears to be made from black crêpe, which still makes her face unrecognizable.
“How many costumes did you steal from Costume Artillery?” I ask. “This look really doesn’t suit you. You don’t seem like the type to mourn over anybody’s death.”
“It’s sweet that you think I’m so removed from my emotions,” she says, sitting back down at the desk. “Are you thirsty again?”
“No,” I lie.
“I would focus on telling me the truth,” she says. “You never know how long I’ll disappear for.”
“I’ll tell you the truth if you tell me the truth,” I say. “Why are you so obsessed with John? Is it daddy issues? Maybe both your parents? Did your boyfriend break-up with you in a brutal way?”
“My relationship with my parents is just fine,” she states, though there’s a note of annoyance in her voice. “And…I killed my boyfriend, so…it was indeed a brutal break-up, but not in the way you imagine. You’ve clearly never been truly in love. There’s this feeling when you see their true self and you realize…this is the only one I could spend my whole life with and be happy. This is the one person who could understand my true self.”
“I don’t believe in that whole one-true-love theory,” I say. “I think there are certain people you’re more compatible with and you just need to find one that you’re happy to be with. I’m sure there’s even someone out there for you—maybe someone who thinks he’s God or believes that butterflies are sending him secret messages from aliens.”
She cups her chin in her hand, the veil folding under her chin. “You’re a fascinating character, you know that?”
“Oh, God, you aren’t going to turn me into a character too, are you? I have enough writers bothering me. Write about yourself. I’m sure you’re dying to write about your murders.”
“Are you saying that John has written about you?”
“Not yet, but he has his thoughts down,” I say. “Why? Does that make you jealous too? Because, trust me, I’m sure he could write a bestseller about you.”
“No, I don’t think he writes about the people he’s most attached to. Just the ones that he finds interesting,” she says. “You still don’t understand. I’m not killing people out of jealousy. I know John and I are meant to be together. There’s just certain people who can’t be around in order for him and our relationship to work at its best. I haven’t quite figured out how you play into this yet. I thought I should keep you alive, but maybe not. It is getting tiring putting on costumes every time I’ve come by and I’ve only come here twice to see you.”
“Trust me—we both wish I had better guests,” I say. “But you can’t keep drugging me. I could start screaming bloody murder right now.”
“By my guest,” she says. “I could decide to kill anybody here to take care of any witnesses. Besides, I’m sure they’re used to hearing all kinds of noises here. Also, if you scream, it may annoy me pretty quickly and I could just decide to get rid of you. I’m sure John will forget you in a couple weeks and move on to a new muse. It really doesn’t take much for him to move onto a new person. But he always cared about me. He always wanted what was best for me, even if it took away from his private time. He’s a good man—I just plan on making him better. I’m sacrificing everything because that’s what he deserves.”
I really just want to rip that veil off her face.
“Come on,” I say. “Just…let me go. I’ll deliver whatever message you want to John. If you didn’t want to do anything to me or get any information from me, why are you even here?”
“I thought you’d want a drink or something to eat.” She shrugs off a small black purse that I hadn’t noticed her wearing because it blends in with her dress. She pulls out a burrito. It’s the antithesis of her costume. She throws the burrito over to me. It lands on my thigh.
“How am I going to eat when my hands are chained up?”
“I’m sure you can do it if you put your mind to it,” she says. She grabs the glass of the end table and fills it up with water again in the bathroom. I refuse to drink from it this time. She shrugs, putting it back onto the end table.
“Was it hard to kill Alex?” I ask.
She turns her head away from me. “Yes. But it had to be done.”
“I’ve worked on a lot of cases,” I say. “You can try to convince yourself as much as you like that you’re doing this for someone else, but I know the truth. You just want to hurt me because you like it. You’re a sadist, a murderer, and insane. Do you realize how likely it is that you’re going to be caught? You’ve killed too many people and now you’ve kidnapped two people. They’re going to track you down.”
“They think Alex killed all those students by himself, that you killed Alex, and they’ll think that you killed Kiona as well,” she says. “I’m not concerned. But, even if I am caught, I’ve started a kind of…manifesto. I don’t want to be killed by an officer of the law and not leave an explanation behind for John.”
“John isn’t worth all this,” I say.
“You know that’s not true.” She smiles at me. “You’re here, after all. You’ve spent all this time chasing after a person you know is a dangerous serial murderer and you began this search after only knowing him for a couple days. You know what he’s like. He’s a Siren—luring you in until you’re just a shipwreck on his island. You might as well stay at that point.”
She leaves the room, locking the door behind her. I want to start screaming for help, but I know she’s right—I’ll just be putting everyone else in danger. I have to stay here long enough to figure out who she is.
“I don’t think she knows…she can’t find out. If she finds out…she’ll tell the police. I know. I know. I’ll deal with it…if it comes to that. But…I don’t know. After Alex, it feels like this has gone too far. I just need to talk to him and explain everything…of course, not everything, but…I feel like I’ve done enough. I know. Okay. Okay. But—hello? Hello? Fuck.”
The killer opens up the motel door, wearing her black Victorian dress and veil, and notices that I’m awake. The night had gone slowly. Or maybe it was only a few hours. I’m losing track of time.
“Good morning, Mira,” she says. “Will you let me look at your leg or are you going to let it get infected?”
“I’ll let you look at it, but you should know I have a natural reflex to kick serial murderers in the face. Repeatedly.”
“That’s your choice,” she says, picking up the glass of water from the nightstand. “Now, since you haven’t drunk or eaten what I’ve left you, how about you have some water now?”
“What am I not allowed to find out?” I ask. “What don’t I know?”
She frowns. “You were listening to my phone conversation.”
“It’s not li
ke I could get away to give you some privacy.”
“No matter. The call wasn’t about you,” she says. “It’s about a friend. It’s so nice that you’re concerned about my personal life, but you have bigger problems.”
“And you don’t?” I ask.
“Why do you think I’m doing all this?” she asks with a smile. “I’m solving my problem. It’s actually John who helped me identify my problem. My very first class with him, he gave us this assignment where we had to write down our biggest fear. I wrote down that I was afraid of not being valued. I was afraid that I would go through life without anyone seeing me as important. John made me feel important, talented, cared for. But he also did that for other people. It cheapened the feeling. I know it sounds terrible and childish, but I need someone to lift me up and someone to lift up. Without that, I’m just wasting my time on Earth. I’m a passerby in everybody’s life—a meaningless entity that should have just strangled myself with my umbilical cord while I was in the womb.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” I say. “But it’s good to know you’re selfish enough to kill others instead of killing yourself.”
“Self-preservation is natural,” she says, smirking. “You think I don’t know my actions are selfish? Most people’s actions are. People have babies, but those babies don’t want to be brought into the world. People have them because they want fulfillment in their lives, to please their parents, which makes their own lives better, to just experience another milestone in life. And what about you? You aren’t helping John just for the sake of helping John. You want something out of it. Whether you want him to fall in love with you or to achieve some standard you’ve set for yourself for your ideology, it’s still selfish.”
“I haven’t killed anybody.”
“I’m sure it’s crossed your mind though,” she says. “Wouldn’t you kill me at the first chance?”
“To save innocent lives, certainly.”
“No. I don’t think that’s true. You’d do it out revenge. But even if it was to save innocent lives, it would still be to complete your idea of morality, your ideology. Terrorists kill for the same reason.”
“Tell me: is it part of your ideology to talk to people until they decide to kill themselves? Because I can’t do it with these handcuffs on,” I say. “And if that isn’t your ideology, it would be nice if you just did what you came in here to do because you can’t rationalize your actions to me.”
“Fine.” She pulls a syringe out of her bag. “I hope you don’t mind needles.”
Blood is—on average—seven percent of a person’s weight. It feels like the killer has taken half of mine, although I know it can’t be true or I’d be dead. She doesn’t need to drug or threaten me because I’m too tired to do anything drastic. My heart rate has increased and I feel colder than I did before, which is normal when a person is hemorrhaging more blood than the body can deal with.
Time comes in ripples. A few minutes of consciousness, followed by blank spaces that I either can’t remember or I’m not conscious. I don’t dream, I don’t feel rested. I’m not even sure if I wake up every time she takes blood.
Over a day has passed, but I can’t be certain exactly how much time has passed. I just know that the killer walks in while the sun is still shining through the window. She’s not in costume this time, but in her black clothes and ski mask. She unlocks the handcuffs, and my arms drop down beside me.
“It’s time to go,” she says.
“What?”
“It’s time to go.”
Images of a dug-out grave and being shot in the head fill my mind. She smiles at my expression.
“No, I’m not going to kill you,” she says. “I’m setting you free after some arrangements are made.”
“What arrangements?”
“I’ve told you enough,” she says. “You should just go on with your life. Meet a man, have children, exercise everyday so that you don’t die from heart disease.”
“Heart disease isn’t always caused by a person’s lifestyle,” I mutter, my mind barely grasping what’s happening.
“True,” she says. “Sometimes it’s caused by abnormal conditions.”
Abnormal conditions: where all things terrible and all things pure are created.
The killer parks near the college. It’s dark out, so maybe a day hasn’t passed by. How much blood could she have taken from me within a day?
She loops her arm under me and pulls me out of a car. I don’t think she owns the car—the backseat had a child’s car seat, cereal littering the seat, a stuffed monkey, a duffle bag with a soccer ball patch sewn onto the front, and a pamphlet that makes me think of the pamphlets Jehovah’s Witnesses give out. Then again, it could be her car. I haven’t really figured out any details about her except her obsession with John.
She helps me walk to the greenhouse. It’s lucky that she’s strong. My feet barely graze against the grass that has grown a little too long. With the school previously on lockdown, maybe none of the employees were allowed to mow it.
She helps me sit down on the grass in front of the greenhouse and pulls out a handgun. I can’t see well when there’s just moonlight and I can barely keep my eyes open, but I’m still wary of being shot.
My body slumps over and I close my eyes. Time begins to jump all over the place again. In a half-dream state, I imagine that I’m a time traveler, and I can’t remember anything I changed in the past because that would disrupt some time continuum. What would I change?
I would save my sister. I would save Andre. I wouldn’t have gone into my parent’s magic shop alone. Or maybe I would have, in order to not endanger anyone else, but I would have been more prepared for an attack. I would have believed John sooner, and I wouldn’t have been afraid of caring for him…or maybe loving him. I would have written down my life story in order to prevent people from walking down the same path I did. The killer is right in a way—my actions have been selfish. Maybe she would have stopped killing after Alex if I had just disappeared. I could be living in Mexico or some island far away. The police would never find me and she would…
She would have found a way to kidnap John.
John—there he is, his footsteps soft in the long grass.
It’s as if the thought of him has beckoned him here to the greenhouse.
“I’m alone,” he says. “You don’t have to worry.”
“I always have to worry,” the killer says. “You’ve been a lot more proactive than I thought you would be. It’s not like you’re a murder-mystery writer.”
“Well, my apologies for caring about who’s killing off my students,” he says. “Am I allowed to know who killed them off yet? Or are you going to stay hidden all this time?”
“I know you’re angry, but this will all make sense—”
“I’m well past angry at this point,” he says. “You have killed all these people and for what? To get my attention?”
“Let’s just go,” she says.
“I’m not going to go anywhere until you explain things to me.”
“That wasn’t our deal,” she says. “You said you would come away with me without resistance or any secret plans if I brought her back here alive and left everyone else alone. That’s it. That’s all I had to do. If you break your side of the bargain, make no mistake that I have no problem breaking my side of the deal.”
“No,” he snaps, his voice cutting through the air like a blade. “We’ll go. She’s not part of this. She never should have been. But we need to…we need to call someone or something. You can’t leave her out in the cold like this.”
“We’ll use one of the campus emergency phones,” she says. “Let’s go already.”
As I open my eyes—barely, seeing only a tiny slit of the world—I can see the shadow of the killer and John. I want to get up, to tackle the killer, to yell to get someone’s attention, but my mind goes blank again.
Chapter Eight
The Killer
I climbed
into Alex’s window. He was pacing back and forth, his movements so jerky, it looked like he could have been an android.
“What was so urgent?” I asked. “Why did you need me here so quickly?”
“You lied to me,” he snarled, continuing his frantic pace. “You shoved a note into that forensic scientist’s mouth? Tell me, just fucking tell me why you would do that? She has nothing to do with your anger over these students. She can’t impede your success. Why would you attack her? The only reason is that you were jealous of her for spending time with Dr. Zimmer. You lied to me. You are in love with him.”
“We’ve already talked about this,” I said, my thoughts racing to find the perfect explanation. The perfect lie. “I’m not in love with him. The only reason I did what I did to the forensic scientist is because she was investigating us a little too closely. It was to protect you.”
“You didn’t need to assault her to protect me,” he said. “You could have left misleading evidence or called in with a false tip. There was a thousand easier ways, but you acted like a savage bitch. The only time you’re irrational is when you’re emotional, so don’t try to make this about me. You’re in love with him. You’re a hormonal bitch that can’t stop humping his leg.”
“Did you ever think it is about you?” I hissed. “Maybe I was emotional because I was afraid they would track the poison back to you.”
“No,” he stated. “You would have told me if you were afraid. You would have told me to be more careful. You would have involved me in your plans. This was personal for you. You may see me as some stupid frat boy that you can manipulate, but you should know by now that I’m so much more than that. Have you read the papers? They refer to us as the Shadow because they don’t know how people are getting killed. I can do the same thing to you and nobody would know what happened to you. You’d just be victim number four and quickly forgotten. I’m the only one who truly cares about you. Your parents don’t care, you don’t have friends, and let me assure you right fucking now that Dr. Zimmer could not give two shits about you. You have nothing except for me.”
Particles of Obsession (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Book 2) Page 8