“Did you hear that, Uncle Ed?” Casey laughed. “He called me a troll doll!”
“In a do-rag,” I droned in my best aggrieved monotone, “Don’t forget the do-rag. It’s what gives her that special Raggedy-Ann-as-a-gangbanger charm.”
She tried to put on a wounded look while simultaneously suppressing a giggle and failed spectacularly. What she accomplished was half choking herself before emitting the most profoundly unfeminine gag/snort/wheeze imaginable.
“But it’s her exquisite ladylike demeanor that ties the whole ensemble together,” I sighed, utterly ruining her attempt to catch her breath.
“That’s okay, hon,” Ed patted her on the back with a chuckle of his own. “Don’t listen to him. You will always be a princess in my eyes…do-rag or no.”
His eyes had a twinkle matching the half smile on his face, and I like to think he was feeling good right then. I admit I felt pretty good myself…nevermind the fact we were now walking through a graveyard during the most apocalyptic night of our lives.
I guess that’s one of the things that makes us human; our weird ability to laugh and make jokes, even in the worst of circumstances. We’ve done it in foxholes, trenches, prisons, and forced marches. It’s just something we sometimes do. Maybe it’s a form of escape, or maybe it’s simply our way of cheating death, by taking away a bit of its sting when we feel it nearby. As WC Fields once said, when asked why he read a Bible on his deathbed, “I’m looking for loopholes.”
Personally, I think it’s one of mankind’s better aspects. One of our charms, so to speak.
So maybe that silliness was only our turn at giving the Grim Reaper a poke in the eye. If so, good for us.
But unfortunately, humanity has other faces as well.
And we were about to encounter one that leers up from the deepest, blackest pits of our collective psyche.
###
“Wait…stop…” Casey gasped. “There’s something ahead.”
That brought the festivities to a quick halt.
The nightmare world of the past few hours reasserted itself with grim force, reminding us that death in a thousand guises lurked out in the darkness. We were still a far cry from safe. Not to mention, our numbers had been whittled back to their original three.
The fact we stood in a nighttime graveyard now made itself felt as well. Suddenly the nearby tombstones and mausoleums reacquired all their unhappy associations.
Ed raised the lantern and I adjusted the grip on my spear as Casey squinted her eyes at the darkness before us. Not being able to see into the darkness as far as she could, I focused on listening for any approaching threat instead.
There wasn’t much to hear.
As a matter of fact, things had gone noticeably quiet. Even the alien sounds of earlier seemed sparse and distant. It made for an unnerving return to reality, and once again I got the impression of us being tiny little lives traversing the darkness. Only this time the darkness felt close and oppressive, as if we were under a bowl that now walled us in with whatever awaited nearby.
“What is it?” I whispered. “Can you make it out?”
“Not exactly,” she frowned ahead. “The path makes a ‘T’ up there, and I think…I think there’s a bench at the juncture, facing back this way. And there’s a big statue behind it.”
“And?” I prompted. Now squinting myself, I could barely make out the beginning of the intersection.
“I think there’s somebody…or something…lying on the bench. I can’t be sure.”
Somebody? Another person? And they hadn’t called out or otherwise notified us of their presence?
This started to sound familiar, and my stomach sank as I edged past Casey a bit with my spear at the ready. I had already started to suspect what we were going to find. We couldn’t have been the only people to think of using the graveyard as an exit, and I had a feeling we were about to meet an unlucky earlier arrival. But while I didn’t look forward to seeing another body, there always existed the chance it might yield important clues about whatever threat lurked nearby.
“It’s a person,” Casey whispered as we edged closer, “but I’m having a really hard time making out what I’m seeing here.”
The bench now began to fade into view, and behind it a large concrete Mother Mary statue gazed down with her hands spread, as if presenting the bench and its contents for our approval. But it was the dim and confusing shape on the bench that seized my attention. It had just begun to resolve itself in the gloom, and as it did, something horrible began to form in the back of my mind…
I knew this.
This looked familiar.
And my gut curdled with the sudden feeling things had gotten a whole lot worse than I originally feared.
Maybe I made the connection due to it still being on the very edge of our lantern’s reach, and all color being washed out by the faintness of the light. Or perhaps I recognized it because of the poor visibility making it devoid of fine detail at this distance. Maybe those conditions made me suddenly recall that ancient black and white photograph and superimpose it on the scene emerging before us. I guess it really doesn’t matter what caused me to make the association.
What mattered was the fact it instantly fit.
The dim reclining figure. The head turned toward us with no identifiable features. One leg straight, the other bent with the knee pointing upward, the pale gleam of what I knew to be an exposed femur, and the arm bent so the hand should be resting on her stomach but disappeared into what would surely turn out to be a hollow abdominal cavity. The rumpled sheet she lay on must have been acquired from a nearby house.
I had seen this before…and we were in bad trouble.
“Oh no,” I whispered. “It’s Mary Kelly.”
“Who?” Casey hissed back, as she leaned forward to see better. “You know her? How can you tell? I still can’t make out her face.”
“That’s because there’s no face to make out.” I put out a warding arm to keep her from approaching closer, while at the same time desperately trying to peer past the carnage into the graveyard beyond. But it was futile. The darkness now seemed closer than ever, almost suffocating. “Casey, back up. This is something you really don’t want to see better, okay? She’s dead, that’s all that matters. We’ve got bigger problems.”
“Who’s dead?” she demanded. “Who the hell is Mary Kelly?”
“She was the last victim of Jack the Ripper.” I now slowly eased away while urging Casey back from the scene as well. “Her body is featured in one of the world’s oldest crime scene photos…and somebody who knew we were coming this way has recreated it for us to find.”
“You mean…” her eyes widened and she stared back at the desecrated corpse again.
“Yeah, we just found Darla,” I gulped, then continued in a rush, “Ed, change of plans. We’re getting our asses out of here and back to Deer Ridge. Believe me, we don’t want any part of this. We’ll take our chances heading for the front and kicking out the boards of a back yard fence or two.”
“I’m with Mark,” Casey hastily added, now backing away without any urging from me.
She had obviously seen enough, and wanted out of here as well.
Unfortunately, things weren’t destined to work out that way.
“Too late,” Ed replied softly. “He’s here.”
We both turned to see Tommy emerge from behind a small mausoleum about twenty-five feet behind us, laying a freshly lit torch in the arms of a praying angel before he stepped onto the small road. He carried his favorite weapon at his side, but with an arrow knocked and held ready by two fingers of the same hand holding the bow itself.
His movements were unhurried, and he walked with the calm assurance of someone completely in control of the situation. But it was when he stopped in the middle of the track and faced us, that I truly understood how bad things were.
Tommy Murchison had fallen into the abyss…and then made himself right at home.
###
There was so much blood.
It dripped down his legs from the fur loincloth that could have only come from the leg of the goatman.
It spattered his chest, making dark counterpoints to the sparkling necklace fashioned from Darla’s rings. He had made it by wiring together the severed fingers still wearing them.
Crusted lines of it ran down his face from the flesh colored headband covering his brow. I didn’t need to get any closer to know the dark line in the middle of that strip would match the long knotwork tattoo that once ran down Darla’s spine.
And his eyes…
They had already seemed empty before, but nothing like this. Now they were pale voids that almost appeared to glow in his gore drenched face without a single shred of anything human remaining. He reeked of madness. He stank of death, and violence hung in the air around him like a sweltering heat.
And the worst part was, as I stared at this horrorshow the pieces finally slid into place and I realized how things had come to this…and how I had helped it happen.
“Oh Christ,” I groaned, “you really didn’t mean to hit Ashlyn, did you.”
How many people out there walk that line between abnormal and insanity? How many lie in bed at night wondering why the horrific thoughts and ideas that come to them are so tempting, although they will never act on them? They know better. Even if they can’t muster the normal horror and aversion to such things, their sense of survival reins them in. Most of these people probably go through the world without harming a fly, and their neighbors and coworkers never have any idea what really stands beside them.
But sometimes, when they wander too close to the line, they get spotted at a young age. Some are forever separated from the world, while others are given treatment, medications, and then released. They continue on through life, clinging to whatever keeps them on the right side of that line.
Ashlyn had said it herself…he had done nothing but help all night.
What she didn’t understand was he was being the good Boy Scout…and she had been the worst person in the world for him to stumble across. She was nice, pretty, kind, clean cut, empathetic and funny. It must have been love at first sight, or at least whatever passed as love for him. Not that he ever intended to act on it. He probably wouldn’t know how. I doubt he ever even entertained the thought of actually being with her…at least not like that. He had simply adjusted his role to include that of a guardian, which explained why he had stayed with her and the others, when he could have continued out of the neighborhood by himself with one of the best chances of making it.
But then something awful happened, and instead of rescuing his lady in peril, he killed her.
Like Darla pointed out, he couldn’t have had much practice shooting at a distance and angle like that. He had probably been trying to put the arrow close to her, maybe in order to startle the creature into loosening its grip. But possibly, without realizing it, he let the light from the glow stick draw his eye. Or maybe he had simply missed.
It didn’t really matter, because despite the fact it was an accident, Tommy had suddenly stepped on a line he of all people could never afford to cross. And then I came down from that tower and told him he had already crossed it anyway.
He probably had been frustrated when she wanted him to stay behind. She was making a dangerously bad choice and he knew it. He might have even sensed the real motives behind her decision. So when I accused him of being angry at her, it must have felt uncomfortably close to the truth. He had already been shaken, unsure, and there I stood laying out a scenario saying he had murdered her and it fit all the facts before him.
And that’s why he killed Ethan.
He needed to know. Tommy needed to know once and for all who he really was. He had probably always wondered to one degree or another. His knowledge of the Mary Kelly crime scene gave evidence of that. But now it had become crucial.
The Boy Scout had killed the little damsel in white. Now he needed to know if he had done it because the Boy Scout was a lie.
So he had knelt by me in order to go through my pockets, while placing himself in a way to shield his other action from Darla’s sight. But what the kid didn’t understand, as he stretched Casey’s plastic rag bag over Ethan’s face, was he wouldn’t be “finding out” anything. He would actually be crossing the line for real this time—fulfilling my false scenario and his own doubts—and destroying himself in the process.
What had walked out that gate with Darla was no longer Tommy Murchison.
It had been a liberated psychopath, and a newly actualized serial killer of the worst kind.
While he may have chosen the work of Jack the Ripper to announce himself, the Tommy we now faced represented a monster of an entirely different breed. When you got past the hype, the real Jack was a craven wretch who ambushed helpless, unarmed women in the dark and fled at the first sign of trouble. Many profilers agree he would have meekly surrendered on the spot if ever confronted. We wouldn’t be so lucky. As “Skull” and the goatman warrior could attest, Tommy operated on a whole different level.
With Ashlyn gone and Darla dead, the bloody nightmare before us had come for Casey next. Now he simply waited to see if Ed and I intended to get in his way. It didn’t really concern him whether we did or not. He would react accordingly.
But the sight of his grisly headband and necklace also told me something else, and I realized I still had one last straw to grasp.
“That’s one hell of a necklace Tommy,” I breathed aloud, “but I’m not sure Darla would appreciate the arrangement.”
He turned his hollow gaze and studied me for a second.
“It doesn’t matter,” he monotoned, while stroking one of the fingers. “She’s mine. She’s with me now.”
Right.
Exactly what I had hoped for. I had read about this type of thing with some serial killers. Keeping certain souvenirs meant the same to him as having the victim herself available. He could use them again and again to relive whatever fantasies he wanted with her. To him they weren’t merely trophies. They were her.
And that meant I still had one more card to play.
It would be a bit of a long shot, but our only other choice would be to attack as a group, and I really didn’t like our odds of pulling that off. I had already seen how fast he could draw and fire that bow, and knew the likely outcome. I would go down first, then Ed, and then he would draw his knife and then…I could only hope Casey knew she would be better off cutting her own throat than letting him get his hands on her.
But maybe not if this worked.
“So at least you got Darla, huh? Not bad. She was pretty hot…but I’m betting she wasn’t your first choice. Right? Oh well, I guess you take what you can get.”
“Maaaarrrrrk,” Casey whispered, “the idea is NOT to piss off the blood covered maniac. Okay?”
“Pity about Ashlyn,” I continued, ignoring her. “She was the real deal. Sweet and perfect, and you drove that arrow home like a pro. You planted that baby right in there. You must have been the last thing on her mind when she died.”
“Mark?!” Casey now looked at me with dismay. “What the hell?”
I know it must have sounded grotesque to her, but I couldn’t worry about that at the moment. She had the standard slasher movie idea of serial killers, and I didn’t have the time to explain the situation to her. She didn’t know what the stakes really were. What mattered now was if I played this right, I could get her and Ed out of here alive.
“But you screwed up, didn’t you. Your heart wasn’t in it yet, and you messed up and let her go. Now she’s gone. The best girl of them all, and you’ve got nothing left of her to hold on to. She’s the one that got away.”
His face showed nothing, but the fact he continued to stare at me and hadn’t drawn his bow gave me a tiny bit more room for optimism. At least he still listened.
“Yet you still had one hope left, which is what you were really going through my pockets for. Not the glow stick.
You had seen me with that bloody strip from Ashlyn’s pajamas, and realized it would do just fine. But after you knocked me out it wasn’t in my pocket, and you thought you had lost her again. You probably figured I had tossed the thing in the fire-can and let it burn.”
His eyes were pale points of reflected light in the blood-filled pits of their sockets.
“But…” I held up a finger, took a step toward him, then halted as he started to raise the bow. His gore-lined face remained blank as ever, but I got the message. The next wrong move would be my last.
“But,” I repeated, “guess what? I didn’t do that either. I put it down in the shed so I could carry Ethan. Later, when we left, I retrieved it and put it somewhere I felt better about. Get it? Do you understand what I’m saying here?”
Still no reply, but I definitely had his attention.
“It’s still out there, Tommy. She’s still out there. And that means you’ve got one more chance at her. One last shot. But there’s only one way it’s going to happen…”
Now came the part I knew would not go over well,
“…and that’s for you and me to stand here and watch Ed and Casey leave.”
“Mark! Don’t you dare!”
I ignored her and kept my eyes locked with Tommy’s.
“Once they’re gone, I’ll lead you straight to her.”
“Dammit, Mark! You promised!”
I had. And I would do my best to keep that promise. But I damn sure wouldn’t let it put her at the mercy of this demon. This time he had merely used Darla to make a statement, and did it by sticking to the script of a previous killer. That meant she had most likely died right at the beginning, exactly like the original Mary Kelly. But the next time would be different. He would take his time and explore his own tastes and inclinations. I had to do everything in my power to see that either never happened, or it happened as far away from here and Casey as possible.
“It’s okay,” I assured her, while trying to hold Tommy’s gaze. “It’s not what you think. It will be okay. I’ll be fine.”
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