by Hadena James
My eyes watched the ground as we walked. Not all defense mechanisms needed to be high tech. A trip wire worked as well as a landmine. Especially since people had a tendency to look straight ahead when they walked. Humans had been at the top of the food chain long enough we no longer looked for dangers at our feet or above our heads. This last one seemed like a good way to thin the herd since there were still quite a few dangers that lurked on the ground, particularly venomous snakes, and deadly insects. I didn’t think I had to worry about either of these in Maine, but I wasn’t as sure wolverines didn’t live in the area. Then again, I didn’t know much about Maine. It was possible there were all sorts of hidden dangers in these woods that had nothing to do with Raphael and the strange bunker.
“With how fast Raphael gets into the bunker, there has to be like a remote or something to disarm the defense systems,” I told Gabriel.
“I had thought of that, but I didn’t find anything on him or in the bunker that looked like a weapons system remote.”
“I know, but there still had to be something.” I told him walking a few more paces forward. I had no desire to go back and check since the only thing that could possibly been in the duct work is something that wanted to kill us.
“My gut is telling me I was shooting at my twin, but if you want to go back,” Gabriel stopped.
“Nope, not in the least, and I agree it was Raphael which means he will be free of the bunker sooner rather than later and hot on our heels.” I told Gabriel.
“That’s one of my concerns as well. Maybe we should split up, after all, he’s been wanting to kill me longer.”
“I’ve seen that movie and both of us die,” I told him. “Horror movie 101 says we don’t accept help from anyone we don’t know, we don’t go back to where the crazy killer was last seen, and we don’t split up in an effort to get his attention focused on just one of us so the other can escape.”
“The difference between a horror movie and real life is that Raphael isn’t supernatural and can’t just manifest in different locations to punch a machete through our guts.”
“I would almost agree, except your brother thinks he is possessed by a demonic spirit that makes people eat other people. I suspect it’s a delusion, but I’m not willing to bet my life on it.” I told him. “After all, demonic possession doesn’t seem like the least likely scenario we’ve ever dealt with.” I didn’t add that a woman had managed to breed rats until she found an extremely virulent strain of bubonic plague, he didn’t need that reminder since it had claimed his mother, but a few years ago I wouldn’t have thought that was possible without a state of the art laboratory where everyone was required to work in HAZMAT suits. Plus, I just didn’t know much about demonic possession, it was one of those subjects I hadn’t studied much because I found it unlikely I would ever encounter someone that was demonically possessed. I wasn’t even sure I would know what the symptoms of demonic possession were if their heads didn’t rotate and they didn’t vomit pea soup, because the Exorcist was pretty much the basis for my knowledge of demonic possession.
I did know a few stories about people who were suspected of being demonically possessed, like the guy in Canada a decade or so ago who claimed to be possessed by a wendigo, so he chopped off his neighbor’s head and stuck his body in the freezer to snack on during the winter months. The head had been his undoing as he had thrown it in the trash and the bag had busted open spilling the severed head into the street for everyone to see. Upon examination by the RCMP, they found evidence of seven bodies in his freezer and DNA had linked them to several missing person’s cases going back into the 1980s.
Or the woman in Ukraine who ate her mother after becoming possessed by a demon, but it turned out she was pregnant and suffering from pica and her mother had died of natural causes. Then again, being pregnant and being possessed by a demon were similar in my opinion. I knew women all over the world got pregnant and gave birth all the time without killing anyone, but I also didn’t like the odds when it came to female psychopaths; hormones were amazing contributors to violence when they were out of balance.
I was pretty sure that was why psychopathy was rarer in females. Xavier thought it had something to do with X-chromosomes, but I wasn’t as convinced although it seemed they somehow played a role in the expression of psychopathic behaviors. I was more inclined to think it had something to do with fetal development and hormones simply because psychopathology was becoming more common while the general average of male to female ratio for the planet remained the same. He had also discovered that female psychopaths were more likely to give birth to psychopaths of both sexes. My mother wasn’t a psychopath, but she had to be a carrier of some psychopathic genes, especially since she had a brother that was institutionalized for psychopathic behavior.
On top of that, Fiona was positive that Bella got her psychopathic personality traits from their mother. We’d gotten DNA samples from all members of her family including Bella and their mother, and Xavier was trying to have a laboratory do a comparison of all the chromosomes to see exactly which genes we had in common. However, I was of the opinion that psychopathology wasn’t a single gene or even a handful of genes. I believed genetics played a significant role in them, but expression almost had to be based on something more complex than just having the genes for it because the range of psychopaths were so varied, it wasn’t just a matter of whether a person was a psychopath or not. Functional versus dysfunctional versus hybrid psychopathology, there were psychopaths like Malachi who was very different than Caleb who were both very different from me, even though all of us expressed psychopathic personality traits, there wasn’t enough overlap between the three of us to just shove us all in the same box. Even the differences between Eric and I were significant. I had a wider range of emotions and I felt fear, but I was incapable of empathy or sympathy or guilt; however, Eric seemed to be able to at least fake those emotions while I knew for a fact that he wasn’t capable of fear and he didn’t understand it as a result.
Malachi and Eric shared a few more common traits than Eric and I did, which was proof that just lumping all psychopaths into a single category wasn’t exactly the best way to go about it. And that was even if I took into consideration that I was almost a serial killer in my own right. I didn’t know how to classify myself, I had three separate killings to my name, not all of them the result of my job, and they were all separate incidents which was part of the classification for a serial killer, and I had enjoyed all of them to a degree, but I wasn’t out in the general public looking for potential victims, and for some reason, that lack of the drive to hunt set me apart from a serial killer, at least in my own mind.
However, just because I didn’t consider myself a serial killer didn’t mean I wasn’t in some people’s minds as exactly that. I could see how my past could be linked together to create a serial killer profile. Most of them had been self-defense kills, but not all of them were and not having a signature or MO, which was mostly in movies and books anyway, didn’t rule me out as one. I even had a victimology, everyone I had ever killed had been a serial killer or mass murderer.
Thankfully, most of the people that made those decisions did see a distinction between my killings and those of serial killers. I imagined Peter West had kept my bacon out of the fire a few times in the past, but I didn’t know this for sure or how many times he’d gone to bat for me over things like this, which was part of the reason Xavier and I were working to figure out the biomechanics of psychopathology beyond just the mental and physiological diagnosis. If we could get to the basic building blocks of psychopathology, we would have a better understanding of what made psychopaths serial killers and mass murderers and why some of them were capable of contributing to society in healthy, meaningful ways.
There was an upside to being stuck with Gabriel. Unlike Xavier, he didn’t feel the need to fill any silences that stretched out between us. I was fine locked in my own thoughts and scanning the ground before we stepped on it, an
d Gabriel was fine being silent and searching for any hidden threats that might be at eye level or higher. If it had been Xavier in the bunker and now in the woods with me, he would have driven me nuts because Xavier did not appreciate long, drawn out silences. He was insecure, and he was sure every silence meant someone was angry with someone else, usually him, which I found more annoying than I was willing to tell him.
Chapter Thirteen
I REACHED OUT AND STOPPED Gabriel before he could take another step. Less than a foot in front of us was a line that was only a few inches above the ground and sparkled in the cold, fading sunlight. My eyes traced the line. I took a breath, holding it as I knelt down gently next to it. I couldn’t see where it ended, and I had to make sure I hadn’t mistaken a spider’s web thread for something more ominous.
I hadn’t. It appeared to be a thin metal string, like one would find on a violin or cello to produce the highest notes. One expected fishing line to be used as trip wires not actual steel strings. I couldn’t see where it originated from or where it terminated so I dared not touch it afraid of what it might trigger. Gabriel was walking the length of line we could see. It wrapped around two trees and didn’t seem to connect to anything other than itself at either spot. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the point of it was. Gabriel checked both trees from the ground but failed to see anything that was suspicious. If it had just been fishing line, I wouldn’t have been so concerned about the line. I would have written it off as a joke, the problem was that steel lines like this weren’t cheap. They weren’t the type of things you used as a prop in a practical joke. It had to have a purpose or why not use something cheaper and more readily replaceable.
Gabriel also seemed a touch confused and concerned by it. He was now running his hand over the bark of one of the trees it was connected to. He looked at me then bent down and clipped the cable with my knife. It floated gently to the ground and just lay there. We both held our breath and waited for something to happen. After a few minutes of nothing happening, I stood back up and walked over to Gabriel. I didn’t want to step on the ground on the other side of the now defunct cable. There was just a bad feeling about it deep in my bones. We skirted around the area keeping the trees where the cable had been attached in sight so that we could walk away from the area.
After about thirty steps, we found another cable. It too was strung between two trees and it didn’t seem to have a purpose; however, it was exactly in line with the previous cable. By now, both of us were sure we were missing something and that the cables signified something.
Gabriel motioned for me to move backwards, which I did, until he told me to stop. He came up and stood next to me, silently staring at the area that had been marked by the steel wire. In his hand was a rock and he motioned for me to cover my ears, which I did. He tossed the rock and the ground erupted in a storm of small explosions that sent dirt and debris into the air around us.
“I thought landmines would cause bigger explosions,” I told Gabriel.
“They do, that wasn’t a landmine or even a series of them. That was some kind of homemade explosive device,” Gabriel said. “I guess we know what the trip wires were about, they were marking the area and creating a situation for a person to fall into the box.”
“Fun,” I commented dryly and shook my head.
“Yeah, keep your eye out for more of those.” Gabriel said. “I figured while the entire area probably has a defense system, closer to the bunker the traps would be clustered together and less high tech.”
“You have put some thought into this,” I told him.
“Not really,” Gabriel shrugged. “But I grew up in a household where expressions of boyhood were encouraged, and I had a whole platoon of GI Joes. Most little boys think about ways to create booby traps because we all want to be heroes and Indiana Jones.”
“I think all kids want to be Indiana Jones before they grow up and realize archeology is dirty work,” I commented.
“Right, well, all I did was pretend the bunker is the Arc of the Covenant and that I wanted to try to protect it from the Nazis. The wire and the two trees were exactly in line with each other and there isn’t much growing in that small area, so I kinda figured there had to be some kind of explosive device buried there, it’s not the kind of thing you want tree roots to grow into or moose to run over, so the wire was there to keep large animals out and they did a good job of keeping trees from growing there,” Gabriel shrugged again.
“Good thinking, because while I realized there was something going on, I hadn’t figured out what,” I admitted. Of course, part of me was questioning the feasibility of such a trap in the middle of the woods with wildlife in the area that could run over it causing the devices to detonate and need to be reset.
I knew from experience that you didn’t need anything expensive or fancy like C4 to blow things up, our fair bomber had used household items to make bombs strong enough to cause carnival rides to become death traps. Also, gunpowder was fairly easy to get, not like Amazon easy, but easy enough and it had been the basic ingredient in explosives for thousands of years.
“You look lost in thought,” Gabriel told me.
“Not really,” I frowned at him. “I think I have some vague memories from the trip here and I think Raphael knows who Apex is, as in his real identity and name.”
“Why?” Gabriel asked.
“Because if it wasn’t a drugged hallucination, he called him my uncle.” I frowned harder. “The only problem with that is he doesn’t look like any of my dad’s siblings.”
“What about your mom?”
“She had sisters and a brother that was institutionalized, I doubt he would be capable of pulling off the feats Apex has pulled off.”
“Do you want to call him?”
“No, I want to get the hell out of the woods, I don’t mind a little nature, but I am not a huge fan of being in the woods where it would be easy enough to ensnare us and ruin our day.” I answered.
“Well, if we were in any other part of the world walking through woods, I’d consider that line of thought paranoid even for you.”
“Except about twenty years ago there was a serial killer doing exactly that. He had spring traps that grabbed people by the ankles and hung them upside down allowing him to take shots at them with a rifle, if he missed them and hit the rope, he’d hunt them like they were deer.”
“Ace, that was Christian Hunter’s father; I remember the case very well.”
“Oh, I guess it was.” I stared into the darkening woods. “I really don’t want to be out here after dark.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.” Gabriel said. “I considered setting fire to the furniture in the bunker before we left, just to ensure that Raphael had to get out of the ducts. Once out, we could probably have overpowered him and stayed in the bunker.”
“Only problem with that is your psychopath isn’t as strong as he is,” I commented. “I can say I met my match in your brother. Normally the only benefit I see to being tall is longer arms, but in your brother, I think he has all the advantages, meaning I don’t think I can take him.”
“You’ve gone up against guys his size before.”
“Yes, and been beaten to a pulp in the process. Here’s the thing, I don’t know exactly what it is about your brother that makes him different, but there’s something there and it makes me believe that it’s a fight I can’t win no matter what I do against him.”
“In all the time I’ve known you, I don’t know that I have ever seen you afraid of someone.”
“That might be what I can’t put my finger on. Most people are predictable, even psychopaths. Your brother isn’t. When I contacted him this morning to arrange for my own kidnapping, I didn’t expect him to go through with it. I thought he’d no show because he would expect me to not keep my word and be alone. After all, I do have a couple of scary psychopaths on speed dial. Caleb, Malachi, Patterson, Apex, the list could probably go on, so why did he trust me en
ough to show up.”
“Like at the hotel when he appeared just a moment or two after Malachi left me to go find Caleb.” Gabriel said.
“Yeah, like that. I get the message, he isn’t afraid of Malachi, Caleb, or myself, but still that was every bit as brazen as expecting me to be alone in that shack and going through with the kidnapping.”
“Most people, including psychopaths, wouldn’t consider Malachi scary enough to stop them from proceeding as planned.”
“Yep,” I agreed. Maybe Raphael really was possessed by a demon. Maybe that would account for why I considered him just a bit off kilter, even for a cannibalistic serial killer, and why he considered himself untouchable by the handful of very scary psychopaths that were around Gabriel and I all the time. I was including Patterson in that count simply because I had a feeling that Patterson kept tabs on me closely. It’d be nice if he’d pop up and rescue me from a night in the frozen Maine wilderness.
Because even with the layers, I was getting cold, and I would be even colder once I had to sit down and rest. Gabriel pulled out his phone and looked at the screen for a few moments. Shadows were starting to overtake the ground. If I had been the type that scared easily, I could think of all sorts of reasons not to spend the night in the woods that had nothing to do with Raphael or serial killers. I wasn’t a believer in most paranormal stuff, but I wasn’t a disbeliever either. It was part of the reason I hadn’t dismissed Raphael’s demonic possession outright. I knew there were things beyond our everyday perception. A woman in Central Park had once known that I attracted violent people to me, even though I was a nobody with fewer scars then I had now, and she had been blind. The event had reminded me that being closed minded wasn’t really useful and that if I kept my mind open to possibilities the world made more sense.