Original Sin

by Greta Cribbs

  That I was not my father.

  But at that moment Joanna finally broke through the barricade of my trousers, and she put one of those eager hands on that most personal part of my anatomy.

  A part of me that no one had ever touched before.

  No one, save Mother, of course. And Mother had only touched me there as a form of punishment, accompanied by a threat to do harm and the intention of showing me just how vile and disgusting I was.

  At some point all of the thoughts that were churning inside me, the yearning for Joanna, the disgust with myself for wanting Joanna, and the need to show Mother that I was capable of rising above such base desires, coalesced, causing a hurricane to swirl in my mind where before there had only been a scattering of smaller storms.

  All of that energy, all of that fear and disgust, had to come out of me somehow. If it didn’t come out, it would continue to grow until it killed me.

  I looked at Joanna. Why was she doing what she was doing? Couldn’t she see I was a good boy? Couldn’t she see I wasn’t the type to take advantage of a young woman in the front seat of a Buick Roadmaster?

  Couldn’t she understand that I was not my father?

  Did she sense his shameful legacy within me? Was she trying to force me to be like him? To do to her what he and his companions had done to my mother?

  No. I would not do those things. I was never going to turn into him. I was going to become a man who made Mother proud.

  I pushed Joanna’s hand away, but a second later, it was back. I felt myself answering her touch and there was nowhere to hide. I know she could see it. Could feel it.

  Do you think I don’t know what’s going through your mind?

  But it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to think those thoughts.

  It was Joanna. She wanted me to feel all those horrible feelings. She wanted to turn me into the evil thing Mother always said I would be.

  I had to stop it. I was stronger than this. Stronger than my carnal urges.

  And I was stronger than Joanna. There was no good reason why I had to sit back and let her perform such disgusting acts on me.

  I grabbed her hand. The hand that had been touching me. Tempting me. I squeezed her wrist and she muttered a faint, “Ow!”

  Then I took hold of a wad of her hair and pulled her head back so I could look her in the eye.

  “Ouch, Duane! What the hell are you doing?”

  What the hell was I doing? What the hell had she been doing for that past ten minutes?

  Keeping my hold on her hair, I maneuvered the car door open and stepped out onto the damp ground, pulling Joanna behind me.

  The next few moments are hazy in my memory. I remember forcing her onto the ground. I remember my hands around her neck. Her pathetic protests and attempts to get away.

  Primarily, I remember my conviction that what I was doing was absolutely the right thing to do.

  The next thing I knew I was standing over her inert form, feeling quite pleased with what I’d accomplished.

  I had resisted temptation. I had risen above it.

  Mother would be so proud.

  Chapter Eight

  “And then what happened?” asked Meredith.

  Tolloch narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you know?”

  “Your story in your words, remember?”

  He leaned back and smiled. “Of course. Well, I hope you haven’t believed what all those awful tabloid articles said about me.”

  “That you raped your victims?”

  “So you have been reading the tabloids.”

  “It wasn’t just in the tabloids. It was everywhere.”

  “Everywhere except my confession.”

  “So you didn’t rape them?”

  “No.” He paused and looked down at his clasped hands for a moment before continuing. “I did not touch Joanna in that way, either before or after I killed her. But I did...” He shook his head and swallowed.

  “You did what?”

  “I...when I was out there in the woods with her...she was on the ground and I...I lifted her shirt to expose her breasts and...”

  “And what?”

  “I...relieved myself.”

  “You mean you masturbated?”

  Tolloch’s eyes did not meet Meredith’s as he nodded and murmured a quiet, “Yes.”

  “After you killed her?”

  His head snapped up and something blazed behind his eyes. “That’s the point, isn’t it? She was dead. I wasn’t doing anything wrong because she was already dead. Nothing I did at that point could hurt her.”

  Meredith sat back and regarded Tolloch for a time. This was the closest thing to a show of emotion she had seen in him since the interview began. The first indication that the man in front of her and the damaged boy in the story he had told were in fact the same person. Maybe he wasn’t trying to shift blame after all. Maybe he actually believed his own rhetoric.

  She shook away the thought. Nothing excused what he did to those young women. Nothing.

  “But you had already hurt her,” she said.

  That flame still burned in his eyes as he said, “And what about what she was doing to me? Wasn’t she hurting me, too? Or do you think I misunderstood her intentions the way I misunderstood Donna Marie’s?”

  “I don’t think you misunderstood. If the story you just told is what really happened...”

  “It is.”

  “Then she was obviously attempting to seduce you.”

  “So...”

  “So what? You encountered a liberated woman at a time when women weren’t supposed to be liberated. A woman who embraced her sexuality at a time when such things were frowned upon. That doesn’t mean she deserved to die.”

  Tolloch glanced down again and took in a deep breath. When he looked back up at Meredith, his expression had softened somewhat. “Dr. Bowen, have you ever been the recipient of an unwanted sexual advance?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “And how did it make you feel?”

  Meredith shrugged. “Annoyed.”

  Tolloch cocked one eyebrow. “Just annoyed?”

  “Yes. Just annoyed. I told the guy to get lost and he stopped. Never once did it occur to me that I needed to punish him in any way for his actions.”

  “And if he hadn’t backed off..?”

  “Mr. Tolloch...”

  “Yes?”

  “If the story you told is what really happened...”

  “I’ve already told you it is.”

  “Then you never told her to back off. My understanding is you went from annoyance to murderous rage without making any of the usual stops in between.”

  “I never felt rage.”

  “What did you feel?”

  Tolloch folded his hands and placed them on top of the table. “I felt...justification.”

  “Justification in killing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your other victims? Did you feel justified in killing them?”

  “I...” He shook his head. “I felt...”

  “What about Bridget Boswell?”

  “What about her?”

  Meredith glanced down at her notes, then back at Tolloch. “In your testimony, you clearly stated that Miss Boswell never made any advances toward you. That you approached her. You lured her out to those woods with the intention of killing her. So tell me, did you feel justified in doing what you did?”

  “I...why are you asking me this?”

  “I’m here to get your story, remember?”

  “Bridget...Bridget was...”

  “Bridget was something of a turning point for you, wasn’t she?”

  Tolloch nodded.

  “How so?”

  “She...it’s...” He scratched the back of his head as his gaze flicked around the room. “You have to understand my mindset after...after Joanna.”

  “You mean after you killed her.”

  “Yes.”

  “So tell me.”

  Tolloch picked at hi
s thumbnail for a few seconds before answering. “You remember how it was then. The world was changing. Women were changing, especially since that awful book came out.”

  “Awful book? You mean The Feminine Mystique?”

  He grimaced. “Yes.”

  Meredith sighed.

  “I take it you don’t agree?” said Tolloch.

  “I’m one of the people whose life was changed by that book. I owe a good portion of the success I’ve had in my career to Betty Friedan.”

  “Yes, but you’re...” Tolloch shook his head and did not continue.

  “I’m what?”

  “You’re not...”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not one of those women. You’re not like Joanna.”

  “Was Bridget like Joanna?”

  Tolloch’s eyes darted around the room again. “While...” He cleared his throat. “While I was in college, I got to know the type pretty well. Bridget may not have made advances toward me, the way Joanna, and then Linda, had, but I knew she was that kind of girl. I watched her on campus. The way she flirted with men. The way she seemed to have a new boyfriend every other week. She was part of that new breed of woman. The kind...” He returned his attention to his thumbnail and did not speak for several seconds.

  “Go on.”

  “The kind...well...listen, you being a woman yourself, I don’t know if you can understand this, but there’s a certain response that we...men, I mean...have when we see a woman like that. We can’t stop it. We can’t help ourselves, and I think the women knew that. They knew it and they did those things anyway.”

  “Those things? Like flirting?”

  “Flirting. Short skirts. Birth control. All of it.”

  “So, it’s your opinion that these women...these sexually aware women...were intentionally preying on innocent, unsuspecting men?”

  “I...” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at his lap. “I know I very much felt that way when I asked Bridget to go for a drive with me that night. But after...when she was dead...I...”

  “Mr. Tolloch?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you tell me the rest of the story?”

  ***

  Yes, I was the one who approached Bridget.

  Yes, I knew what I was doing when I took her out to the woods that day.

  But I didn’t really know. Didn’t understand.

  It did not start to become clear until I stood over her lifeless body, as I had with Linda and Joanna before her.

  Something was different this time.

  I’m sure you’ve already guessed what it was. I had been the instigator of this encounter, not the other way around. What I’m not sure you’ve guessed at yet is why it had such a profound effect on me.

  With Joanna, there had been no guilt. No regret. I mentioned feeling justification, but it was a bit more than that. The reason I felt that I had done nothing wrong in killing her is that, at that time, I believed I had done it in self-defense. She had been attempting to make me do something unthinkable. Something vile. I had to stop her and, once I had, I was left with this sensation that I had made the world a more moral place by taking her out of it.

  My date, if you will, with Linda followed much the same pattern, though by that point I was a bit more educated in the ways of the world, thanks to the lovely Joanna, so I felt none of the shock or the panic which had accompanied that previous encounter.

  All I felt while I was with Linda was disgust. That and a need to put things right.

  That sincere belief that what I was doing was having a positive impact on the world is what caused me to take an interest in Bridget. Caused me to follow her around campus. Learn her habits. Her favorite haunts.

  And it is ultimately what caused me to ask her into my car on the evening of October 13.

  But once it was done I felt...different.

  The reality of it is that I felt nothing. No feeling of satisfaction. No sense of a job well done. I stood looking down at her lifeless body, waiting for that assurance that all was right with the world, but the feeling never came.

  I remained motionless for a time, as though frozen in place. What should I do now? I had already killed her. There was no turning back from that. But there seemed to be no going forward, either.

  What had I done? Had I needlessly taken a life? An innocent life?

  I stooped down and worked my hands underneath Bridget’s body, and as I lifted her into my arms, her skirt slid up her thigh, exposing smooth creamy flesh and causing that familiar ache of desire to spread through me.

  Perhaps not such an innocent life after all.

  I cradled her against my chest, as I had with her two predecessors, and carried her to the top of the falls.

  I eased her limp body into the water, then stood and watched the current sweep her away.

  I stood for a long time, watching. Her pale flesh made such a contrast against the darker waters that I could easily make out her form right up until the moment when she rounded a bend far in the distance and passed out of my world forever.

  Not really forever, of course. They would all come back to haunt me in the end, wouldn’t they? But I didn’t know that at the time.

  All I knew was that some kind of change was happening in me.

  Change seemed to be happening everywhere that year. It was 1967, you see, and the world was still reeling from the influence of the Summer of Love. Maybe that was somehow the catalyst for what was happening to me. Maybe Western society’s sexual awakening in some way heralded my own.

  Because the world had begun to embrace its sexuality. That thing, which had been kept in the shadows, shrouded in guilt and shame, had finally stepped out into the light and people were coming to the realization that there was nothing to be afraid of. Sex was nothing to be afraid of.

  Nothing to be ashamed of.

  And yet I had been made to feel ashamed. Every day of my life, with every step I tried to take toward some form of sexual maturity, I had been reminded that I was naughty. Dirty. A bad little boy.

  But I was not a bad little boy. I was just a boy, going through what all boys go through.

  The world was finally coming to understand these things, and suddenly I understood them too. But my understanding came too late for Bridget. And for Linda and Joanna. Too late for all of them.

  You want to know if I felt justification for what I did to Bridget? The answer is no. The only thing I felt as I stood watching the swirling waters carry her away, though I did not recognize it at the time, was regret.

  I had been so determined not to turn into my father. Not to do to any woman what he had done to my mother. My pride in having accomplished that feat had blinded me to the fact that I had turned into someone much worse.

  My desire to please Mother had blinded me to the fact that her fear of what I would grow up to be had practically ensured that I would become the monster I am today.

  Bridget’s death opened my eyes, and suddenly everything became clear.

  It was autumn in Crimson Falls, and a whisper of winter was borne on the breeze that accosted me while I stood looking down the river and contemplating the wisdom of my recent choices. I turned up the collar of my coat and shoved my hands into my pockets, finding that my fingers had clenched into fists without my bidding and could not be persuaded to relax.

  Mother. She had done this to me. She bore just as much culpability in the deaths of those girls as I did. Perhaps more.

  I barely looked where I was going as I tramped over roots and under low-hanging branches on the path back to my car. My hands shook as I fumbled with my keys, and by the time I pulled out onto the road it was clear to me what I had to do.

  It was time to pay one final visit to the little house behind the motel.

  To perform one final act that would make everything right. Would avenge the deaths of Joanna, Linda, and Bridget. Would avenge the thousands of tiny deaths my soul had endured throughout the eighteen years I spent living with th
at woman.

  I was on the road less than five minutes, then the gravel was crunching under the Buick’s wheels as I skidded to a halt in the motel parking lot.

  I didn’t need to see the orange glow of the lamp in the cottage window to know she was home. It was getting dark, and she never went anywhere after dark.

  And it was October 13, after all. A significant anniversary for Crimson Falls, and an even more significant anniversary for Mother. No, she would not have ventured outside. Not tonight.

  I know that Everly Jean, working late in the motel office, saw me slam the car door and start off walking toward the house. I know she testified at my trial that I walked with a certain energy and conviction that she referred to as “unnerving”.

  But I don’t remember any of that. Don’t remember getting out of the car or walking to the house. I was too much in my own thoughts at that point.

  I don’t even remember picking up the heavy rock that I used to smash the lock. My first recollection is the look on Mother’s face when I burst through the door.

  “Duane...what...?” She stood from the chair where she had been sitting in front of her small, flickering television set, and regarded me with large, round eyes.

  She seemed to be afraid of me. That was good. I wanted her to be afraid.

  God knows I’d spent enough time being afraid of her.

  “Surprised, Mother?”

  She tried to step away from me, but I closed in and pinned her against the wall.

  “Duane...” Tears gushed from her eyes. “Please...” she whimpered.

  Whimpered. One might even say she sniveled.

  For God’s sake quit your sniveling.

  Now she was the one pinned to the wall, and I was the one wielding the broom handle. I had all the power now and she couldn’t intimidate me anymore.

  “What?” I said. “Can’t handle the fact that your little boy grew up to be exactly what you always said he would be?”

  “Please...don’t...”

  “Don’t what? Don’t hurt you? Did you ever stop and think about how you hurt me?” I curled my fingers into her hair, put my face close to hers, and shouted, “Did you?” I banged her head against the wall, much as she had done to me all those years ago.