Monstrous (Blood of Cain Book 1)

by J. L. Murray

  “I killed him,” I said, unable to catch my breath. “He wasn’t even him. The wraiths didn’t tell me to kill him, but I did it anyway. I killed him anyway.”

  Dekker held my arm as I staggered, keeping me upright.

  “If you didn’t kill him, I would have,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Murder,” I said. “They offered me salvation. But I killed him. Just like before. It just happened. Just like before. Just like before.”

  “He had it coming,” said Dekker, and there was something cold about his voice that made me shudder. “He was a cop. He was supposed to protect the people, not cover up murders.”

  “I killed him,” I said.

  “Now,” said Dekker, his voice soft, coaxing, “we have to talk about your mother.”

  “She’s not my mother,” I said.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling suddenly lost. “I don’t know what to do, I never did. I didn’t plan to kill Becky, it just happened. Just like...” I looked down at the sheriff, covered in his own blood, his face so pale it took on a ghastly greenish tint.

  “Frankie,” said Dekker, snapping his fingers.

  “Don’t snap your fingers at me,” I said, and felt a little more like myself again.

  “There you are,” he said.

  “I don’t know if I can kill her.”

  “It’s okay,” said Dekker. “I can do it for you.”

  “Kill her?” I said.

  “She wants you dead, Frankie,” said Dekker, and again his voice was cold. “I can’t stand by and wait for that to happen. I can’t take the risk. Do you know what I’m talking about? The reflection, the mirror. When you were gone, I was starting to go a little crazy. I just...I don’t know what would happen if I lost you for real.”

  “You want to kill my mother so you won’t go crazy. You realize that is crazy, right?”

  “Look around you,” said Dekker. “Does any of this look sane to you?”

  He turned and pointed his gun at where Ruth Mourning had been unconscious on the ground.

  “Well, shit,” he said.

  We heard a car door, an engine turning over, and the crunch of gravel, the cloud of dust as the car sped away. A green Cadillac, I saw now. Dekker was pointing the gun at the bloodstain on the ground, coughing a little at the dust.

  “I should have killed her,” I said. “All those years ago. I walked away. I thought they both died. I should have checked. I should have burned my mother alive in that fire along with my sister.” But looking down at the sheriff, remembering the pain and shame I’d felt when Becky died, the nightmares of fire and burning, I wasn’t so sure.

  “It’s her face,” I said. “I can’t get past her face. Would you be able to kill your mother? Even if you knew it wasn’t really her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “But if she had a gun pointed at my head, I might let my strong, handsome lover do it.”

  I sighed, looking down at the sheriff. “Do you think they killed Beatrice? My...Ruth said that if I didn’t comply she’d kill her. That means she might be alive.”

  “Ruth?”

  “That’s her name. Ruth Mourning. I can’t keep calling her my mom.”

  “Makes sense. Let’s go find out if your friend survived.”

  I tore my eyes away from the sheriff to look over towards Bea’s house. The house where she might be lying dead. She had believed in me. She thought I was a good person, that I still had my soul. But I had just killed the sheriff without being told. And I had liked it. That never happened before, even though I talked a big game. I’d felt satisfied after killing someone, relieved, but this euphoria, this tingle that was still buzzing through my veins, this pleasure was something new.

  I couldn’t decide if I should run away from it or toward it. I helped Dekker lug the sheriff’s body into his car and push the cruiser off the road. We got into the Charger, the mist and fog now encompassing the car and the countryside as far as the eye could see. I turned over the engine, looking at my hands, blood-caked fingernails, red dried to a flaking brown on my skin.

  “You okay, Frankie?” said Dekker, concern in his voice.

  I smiled at him. “I’m fine. Totally fine. Let’s go.”

  But the truth was, I was almost looking forward to throwing myself into that lake.

  chapter eighteen

  I

  walked up the steps to Bea’s cabin with a weight like a boulder in my belly. The door was open, the door frame smeared with a dark stain.

  “You don’t know if it’s blood,” Dekker said from behind me.

  “It’s blood,” I said.

  I nudged the door open with the toe of my boot and stepped inside. The mirrors, which stood in a circle the night before, were all tipped on the ground, the glass shattered. The chairs that the twins had been tied to were on their sides as well, the rope cut and lying on the floor. I reached past Dekker and flicked on the light switch.

  “Fuck.” I rushed over to the body on the floor, covered in pieces of mirror. But when I rolled her over, I could see it was Julia. The front of her dress was covered in dark blood, her face frozen in a grimace. The middle of her chest had been blown away. A shotgun blast, probably more than one. She was warm but dead, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, just starting to go filmy.

  “Frankie,” said Dekker, nodding to the opposite corner of the room, behind the overturned chairs and mirror frames. Someone was on the floor, legs sprawled, but trying to push herself up onto spindly arms.

  “Bea?” I said, bounding across the room and falling to my knees beside her. “Jesus, are you alive?”

  “Fucking right I am,” she rasped weakly, pushing herself to sitting and spitting bloody phlegm onto the floor. She was still holding her shotgun. She smiled at me, her small teeth bright red with blood. “You missed the excitement.”

  Dekker helped her up, lifting gently from behind as Beatrice used the shotgun as a cane and walked shakily to a chair, which I righted for her. She rested her elbows on her knees. One side of her face was swollen and becoming purple where someone had struck her hard. I eyed the shotgun.

  “You killed Julia,” I said. “She was one of them. The reflections.”

  “How did you know that?” Bea looked at Dekker. “Bring a glass of water, make yourself useful.”

  Dekker shot me a look, but he walked into the kitchen where he started rummaging for a cup.

  “You were inside,” said Bea. It wasn’t a question. “What did you see?”

  “Julia was there. The real Julia. And Roo.”

  “Well, I knew that,” she said, laughing humorlessly. “I saw you. I prayed at the mirror and I saw you, Frankie.”

  “You prayed?” I said.

  “I tell you I had a vision and that’s your question?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s been a long...Jesus, is it still morning?”

  “It’s 12:45,” said Dekker, handing Bea a glass of water. She took a long sip.

  “Yes, I prayed. To my own chosen goddess.”

  “What happened here, Bea?” I said. “Did the twins do all this?”

  “The twins,” said Bea, stricken. The glass slid out of her hand and shattered on the floor, splashing our shoes with water. “Those girls. Frankie, we have to help them.”

  “I don’t know how to help them. Sit down, Bea. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “I saved them,” she said. “I saved them both. I prayed at the mirror and...something happened. They went still. And then Julia changed. She started screaming at me, raving, calling me the worst sorts of names. She picked up a knife from the kitchen and came at me. That’s when I saw her in the mirrors. I saw her reflection screaming, crying, banging on the other side of the glass. I didn’t hesitate, but that doesn’t mean I liked doing it. It felt like my veins were filled with ice. I shot her again and again as she ran at me with that knife.”

  “And the kids?” sa
id Dekker.

  “I put my palm on the mirror then,” said Bea. “I prayed harder and deeper than I ever have before. And I saw you, Frankie. I saw you, but you were different. Like you’d been drained of color, like an old photograph. You were standing on top of the water. I think it was Mirror Lake. And you had a bird on your shoulder. A raven. Then I felt very cold and the mirror cracked with ice.”

  “Then what?” I said. I crouched down to look up at Bea. I took her hand in both of mine. She was still cold, shivering.

  “The girls, they were screaming. That was nothing new. They’d been screaming off and on all night. But it was different, this scream. Like they were in pain, or scared. And when I looked at their reflections in the mirror, well...”

  “Well?” said Dekker.

  “The mirror started to move,” said Bea. “Like there was something pushing on it from behind. Those reflections, the real Kroger twins, they had their faces all pushed into the glass, and it was bubbling, like it was something liquid. Then it started to snow.”

  “Snow?” I said. “It’s July.”

  “No,” said Bea, fixing me with a hard look. “It was snowing inside the house. And when I looked back at the girls, they weren’t screaming anymore. They were scared, breathing hard, their eyes wide with tears sliding down their cheeks. And the mirror stopped bubbling. Their reflections, I could see what had happened. I knew right away the real twins were back in the world, and their reflections were on the other side of the glass.”

  “So you cut them free,” said Dekker, nodding to the ropes.

  “No,” Bea said, her voice now strong again. She narrowed her eyes at Dekker as if it had been his fault. “I didn’t have time.”

  “Bea, what happened to your face?” I said.

  “She was here,” said Bea. “I was so surprised, I didn’t have time to reload the gun.”

  “Ruth. My mom.”

  She nodded gravely. “Ruth Goddamn Mourning. With Roo at her heels. That Roo. I didn’t figure her for one of them.”

  “I saw her in the mirror,” I said. “She didn’t even know me.”

  “Should have caught that one. She’s the one who hit me. Smacked me up the side of the face with a goddamn cast iron kettle of all things. Laid me out.” Bea nodded to the object in question, lying on its side on the floor.

  “And when you woke up...”

  “You were here with that boyfriend of yours, asking me all kinds of stupid questions.” Bea smiled, a little shaky, but back to herself. She stood up, as if to prove it. “Why are you covered in blood?”

  I looked down at my hands. “I killed the sheriff.”

  “Good,” said Bea. “He was a bad egg.”

  “See?” said Dekker.

  I sighed. “Well, if you’re okay, Bea, I have to be somewhere.”

  “You are not going to that lake,” said Bea, iron in her voice. “Not yet, anyway. I can’t stop you, of course, but you have something to do first.”

  “The thing to do is to stop this shit,” I said. “I might be able to stop all these reflections if I do what they say.”

  “Don’t be stupid. We have to get the girls back.”

  “Bea, I have to go.”

  She snorted. “Not before you help me get those little girls back to their daddy,” said Bea. “You’ve seen Kevin. This will kill him if they die. He’s barely surviving Alyssa being gone. How is he going to handle his entire family?”

  “Some of us get through it,” I said.

  “Bullshit. You didn’t. Besides, those girls...” Bea lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply, blew it out. “They remind me of you and Becky, when you were little. They’re innocent, Frankie. Are you going to take a gamble on the lake when you don’t know if Brianna and Kyra will survive?”

  “Frankie...” said Dekker.

  “It’s what I’m here to do,” I said, aware of how stubborn I sounded, how I was proving her right.

  “And what about him?” said Bea. “Am I supposed to console him when you die?”

  “Frankie.” Dekker’s voice was strained. I looked at him, my eyes widening as I saw what was happening.

  Roo was standing behind him, a rifle held in front of her, aimed right at Dekker’s back. He had his hands up.

  Bea was standing, the shotgun leveled at Roo’s face.

  “It's reloaded, you duplicitous bitch,” said Bea.

  “You’d kill him to get to me?” said Roo. “That’s sweet. Now drop your big gun, old woman. I have something to say.”

  I looked at Dekker, his eyes strangely calm as he met my gaze. I was gripping my knife, not sure when I’d pulled it out of my belt. It still felt sticky.

  “What do you want?” I said. “We know what you are now. Bavuah. I’ve seen the real Roo.”

  “I just want to talk,” she said. “No one needs to get hurt.”

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  “She sent me,” said Roo, irritation in her voice now. “Harishona.”

  “Harishona?” said Bea.

  “My—Ruth. That’s what she was calling herself,” I explained to Bea.

  “You hurt her bad, I saw it,” said Roo. “She left me here. I’m to kill everyone but little Frankie. She’s saving the best piece of meat for herself.” Roo smiled unpleasantly.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said. “Just give the real Roo her body back. You don't belong here.”

  “I know that,” hissed Roo. “You think I don’t know? I have no choice.”

  “Wait, what?” I said.

  “I can’t just walk back across. You brought the little girls back,” Roo said, turning to Bea. “Tell me how you did it. How did the bavuah get back home, beyond the mirrors?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “you could have fucking asked her before you cold cocked her with a kettle, psycho.”

  “I couldn’t ask her before,” Roo said. “She was there. She was watching me.”

  “She?” I said.

  “Harishona,” said Roo. “Cain gave her power to use in his stead, and she uses it. If we defy her, she won’t let us go back to Moledet. Home, beyond the mirrors,” said Roo.

  “You...want to go back?” said Dekker.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Roo said, prodding him hard with the muzzle of the rifle.

  “I can help you,” I said quickly. “Just put the rifle down, and I’ll tell you what to do.”

  “Fuck you,” she said. “Tell me now or your boyfriend’s guts are going to be all over the floor. You were there, weren’t you? In Moledet. I can smell it on you. How did you get back? How did you return?” Her voice was rising, angry.

  “Calm down,” I said.

  “Cain said if we died inside the humans that we would return,” she said. “He promised. But it’s not true. If we die here, we’re dead. We’re linked to the people who we reflect. If their bodies die, we die with them. Cain lied. Please, tell me. Tell me how to go back. It hurts here. My skin and teeth and eyes, they burn like fire. Everything feels like there’s ice inside of me. There was no pain before I came here, before I was...this. Tell me how you got out.”

  “Cain let me out.”

  “What?” said Dekker.

  “Cain doesn’t let anyone out,” whispered Roo.

  Bea, still leveling the shotgun at Dekker, glared past him at Roo. “Look at me. Don’t look at Frankie. I’m the one who can help you. I put the twins back.”

  “Can you do it again?” said Roo. I could hear her ragged breath, her eyes still hungry, desperate. “Can you?”

  “I...don’t know,” said Bea. “I didn’t even know I was doing it before.”

  “But, it’s possible?” said Roo. I took a small step sideways to see her better. I could see her hands on the trigger of the rifle. They were shaking, the gun steady only because it rested on Dekker’s back. “You could send me back?”

  “I could,” said Bea. “If you put that goddamn rifle down, you cowardly shit.”

  “Let him go,” I said, taking a step towards h
er. Dekker's eyes were still calm, watching me. I took another step, gripping my knife.

  “Stop,” said Roo, pushing Dekker forward with the rifle.

  “If you kill him,” I said, “I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen here, Roo. I’ve gotten used to him, and I might be very upset. I might not kill you right away. I might make it last a long time.”

  “What about her?” said Roo, her eyes going to the shattered bits of mirror on the floor. “Poor Delilah. She’s been on the other side so long, I wonder if she’ll ever be the same. That is, if you save her. Don’t look at it as helping me. Save her. Save Delilah Rooney.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Bea. “Let him go.”

  “You’ll kill me if I do,” said Roo. She almost sounded scared.

  “Did you even think about that before you came in here?” I said. “Did you think about what you were walking into?”

  “I want to go back,” hissed Roo.

  “I can’t send you back unless you come out from behind Dekker,” said Bea. “You have to look in the mirror.”

  “No!” said Roo. “I can’t. I won’t look at her. It hurts.”

  “You have to look at her for this to work,” said Bea. “That’s how it worked before. The only way I know.”

  “You’re trying to confuse me,” said Roo.

  “You’re doing just fine all on your own,” I said.

  “Get down on the ground,” Roo said into Dekker’s ear. He kept his hands up as he knelt, his knees crunching bits of mirror underneath him. “All the way!” screamed Roo. She was teetering on the edge of sanity, like the reflection that had taken Lucy. I’d assumed the brain tumor drove Lucy crazy, but maybe these bavuah were just more prone to insanity.

  Dekker put his palms on the floor. He was on all fours now and moved as if to lie down on his belly, but he flipped over fast at the last second, so quick I barely saw it. And suddenly Roo was on the floor and Dekker was turned, sitting, holding the rifle.

  Roo screamed in anger as Dekker got to his feet and shoved the rifle into Roo’s forehead.

  “Don’t kill her!” said Bea, but Dekker was somewhere else. His eyes shone. And as his finger pulled the trigger, even I screamed. But the click that echoed in the small cabin froze everyone where they stood.