In the vision, the girl had been discussing her heritage, mostly listening while the older woman held court, occasionally asking questions, occasionally displaying flashes of anger. It was righteous anger, Milo could tell, and that was another thing that pissed him off. Who the hell did she think she was, the goddamned righteous beautiful bitch?
Another wave of bilious rage swept over him and he went with it, closing his eyes and envisioning what he would do if (when) he ever caught up with her. He would hurt her, he would torture her, he would make her wish she had never been born, he would do things to her that would make this pliers activity with Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker seem like child’s play, like Arts and Crafts time for a preschooler.
Milo realized his eyes were screwed tightly shut and water was leaking from them. He was crying like a fucking baby while picturing all of the things he would do to the unknown and unnamed girl from his vision. He sniffled and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and realized he needed to blow his nose.
That realization made him think of his houseguest and her snot-covered face. He was going to have to clean her up before he could play with her again. He glanced across the room and saw that she had awakened and was watching him. Her eyes were filled with the fear he had come to expect, as well as with the terrible pain that must be radiating outward from her yanked-out fingernails and especially from her broken, mangled pinky finger.
But there was something else as well, Milo thought. In her eyes a hint of laughter shone through, a hidden smile, a mocking contempt for the weakness she had caught him displaying. It was like the time his mother had caught him jerking off in bed when he was twelve. She had been shocked and angry, there was no doubt about that, but Milo had also glimpsed the same barely masked contempt he was seeing here.
There had been nothing he could do back then. He was twelve and his mother was…well...something, he wasn’t really sure how old she was, but she had been a hell of a lot older than he, and had held all the power along with his asshole father. That was not the case now, though. Milo Cain was in charge now, and if this Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker bitch thought she could get away with mocking him, he would make good and goddamn certain she would never make that error in judgment again.
He rose to his feet with renewed vigor. As much as he was going to enjoy the upcoming session with Rae Ann, it would now have a little added meaning thanks to her arrogant disregard of the power structure in their burgeoning relationship. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his trusty pliers, snap, snap, snapping them absently as he approached her chair.
CHAPTER 21
Cait stared at her mother, again rendered speechless by a statement that had taken her completely by surprise. She realized her mouth was hanging open and she closed it. “I must not have heard you correctly. I thought you said my twin brother would have murdered me by now if we had grown up together.”
“You heard me,” Virginia countered. Now that she had come out with the words which had obviously been eating away at her, she seemed calmer, more in control of herself and her emotions.
Cait, on the other hand, felt much less so. She stood suddenly, her calves shoving the wooden chair back on the ancient floor with a loud squeal. She began pacing in the tiny kitchen. Kevin started to rise and she motioned him back down in his seat.
“I have to tell you,” Cait said, choosing her words carefully. “If you thought that statement was somehow going to clear everything up, to answer all of my questions, you were very much mistaken. Why would my own brother—my own twin!—murder me? What possible reason would he have? And furthermore, how can you say such a thing when you only knew us for a couple of hours years ago? When we were only infants?”
Virginia seemed unruffled by the outburst. “You remember what I told you about the frequency of twin births occurring throughout this family’s history, and how it is a statistical impossibility?”
Cait nodded, saying nothing.
“Well, in every instance of twin births into this bloodline—and when I say ‘every instance,’ I’m talking about a history going back hundreds of years—one of the twins has wound up dead at the hands of the other. Every single instance. Bar none.”
Nobody moved and the kitchen was silent.
“What? Why? How is that possible?” The questions sounded hopelessly insufficient to Cait as she asked them. She trudged back to her chair and sat, stunned and confused.
“I believe, and your father believed as well, that the cause of this tragic history is related directly to the quirk of genetics that allows you to see the flashes—Flickers, as you call them—into the lives of others. When a single child is born with the gift, as I was, for example, the normal notions of right and wrong—what we know as ‘conscience,’ for lack of a better term—are as fully developed as they would be with any other human being. This is important, because it means that each time I, for example, receive a Flicker, there is no natural inclination to use the information gained from the vision in a destructive way.”
“You make a choice to behave in an acceptable manner.”
“Exactly. It’s like walking into a candy store and seeing no one behind the counter, but all the candy is placed out in the open where it is easily accessible. You are faced with the choice of doing the right thing or the wrong thing—waiting for the proprietor and paying for the candy, or shoving it into your pocket and leaving the store.”
“I understand the concept of conscience and choosing to do the right thing,” Cait said, realizing she sounded harsher than she intended but not caring. “I just don’t see what all this has to do with twins and the ability to receive Flickers.”
“I’m getting to that,” Virginia said patiently. “So you agree that we all face situations in our lives where we must choose between right and wrong?”
“Of course,” Cait replied with a shrug. “We face those choices daily, both large and small.”
Virginia nodded. “Yes, we do. Now, let me ask you a question. Can you ever recall a time in your life when you received a Flicker and were tempted to use the information you received in a destructive way? With malicious intent?”
“Well, often the Flicker is pretty nonspecific. A lot of the time, the information isn’t anything that could be used for good or bad.”
“Understood. But there are times when the opposite is true, and you see things in your head that could be used either in a positive or a negative way, correct?”
“Of course.”
“Well, in those instances, have you ever been tempted, even a little bit, to use the Flicker in a negative way, to turn the information to your advantage somehow?”
“Of course not!” Cait flushed and drew her head back as if she had been slapped. “That would be wrong!”
Virginia smiled. “It’s never occurred to you that even though you face the same struggles with right and wrong—good and evil, so to speak—as everyone else in the world, every day, you’ve never once had to do the same thing with a Flicker?”
Cait furrowed her brow, her indignant reaction of a moment ago suddenly forgotten. She was silent for a long moment. “I—I guess I’ve never thought about it in that way.”
“Of course you haven’t, dear, because doing the right thing when you receive a Flicker is the most natural thing in the world to you. It’s like breathing, or blinking. When was the last time you gave either one of those things a conscious thought?”
“Never.”
“Exactly. And that’s my point. It goes against your very nature to use a Flicker negatively or destructively.” Virginia stopped talking and Cait sat unmoving, absorbing this strange revelation. Kevin sat next to her, saying nothing, spellbound by the entire bizarre conversation.
“Then my twin brother…” Cait’s voice drifted off as she digested the implications of what she had just learned. A sense of dawning horror wormed through her.
“That’s right, your twin—in this case it’s a brother, by the way, but it didn’t necessari
ly have to be, you could just as easily have been born the same sex—has undoubtedly been receiving Flickers his entire life, just like you. But in his case, the natural reaction is to misuse the information he receives. Seeking a negative, destructive outcome with Flickers comes as naturally to him as taking a positive path does to you.”
Cait sat back in her chair, thunderstruck. She felt like Alice after falling through the rabbit hole. Suddenly reality was warped and reflected in ways she would never have imagined just an hour ago. It was like looking at life through a fun house mirror. “But…why?”
“Well, as I said before—and keep in mind, this is only conjecture, the best theory your father and I could come up with after spending months thinking about it once we discovered I was pregnant with twins—we theorized this dichotomy is somehow related to whatever psychic ability we possess that allows us to receive these Flickers. Or maybe everyone has the ability, but the average person is unaware of it. In any event, your father and I guessed that this psychic ability must be somehow incompatible with twin fetuses as they develop in the womb, that the sense of morality that accompanies the deciphering of Flickers cannot be split. Thus—”
“One of the twins reacts to Flickers as good and one as evil,” Cait interrupted, so caught up in following her mother’s chain of logic that she was unable to stop herself from blurting it out.
“That’s the conclusion we came to.”
“But it still doesn’t explain why one twin would murder the other.”
Virginia smiled. “You’re quite the sharp cookie.”
Cait said nothing, concentrating on trying to puzzle out the mystery.
“Now we’ve descended into a realm so far removed from normal behavior patterns that it becomes difficult even to hazard a guess, but the best theory we could come up with is that the psychic ability that allows us to receive Flickers is similar in some strange way to the positive and negative polarity of a magnet. If you place the two oppositely polarized sides of a magnet together, they cling to one another, but if you place the two similarly polarized sides together, they reject one another, making it impossible for them to occupy the same space.”
“You’re saying I’m the same as some maniac who wants to kill me.”
“Only in the sense that you have the same psychic ability, an ability containing a moral component that is impossible to split equally, so one side—the good—receives the morality gene, if you will, while the other side—the evil—gets, unfortunately, passed over. Through no fault of his own.”
“So, my brother—the one I’ve never met and wasn’t even aware existed until this morning—and I are similarly polarized psychic magnets. We can’t coexist in the same space.”
“That was the theory your father and I were working with, a theory backed up by centuries of real-world history. That was why we knew we had to surrender the two of you for adoption. We had literally no choice.”
“But why do it illegally?”
“Because it was the only way to ensure the two of you would end up in different areas of the country, thousands of miles apart. We never knew where either of you went after leaving our house that horrible night—that was part of the agreement—but we were promised you would be separated by a minimum of one thousand miles, so the odds of you ever settling down close enough to each other to put you at risk were infinitesimal.”
The conversation dragged to a halt, three people lost in their own thoughts. Cait felt overwhelmed, like she had been exposed to Einstein’s theory of relativity in one grueling session and now had to figure out how to absorb and understand it. She glanced at Virginia Ayers, the mother she had spent a lifetime wondering about, and the woman appeared lost in a sea of regret. She also seemed to have aged appreciably during the conversation, which clearly had taken a heavy toll on her.
Cait didn’t remember having sat back down and wondered how long ago that had happened. She lifted the ceramic cup to her lips automatically, more to occupy her time than because she was thirsty, and was surprised to discover the tea had grown stone-cold.
Virginia stood and bustled around the kitchen in a false display of energy. She lifted the teacups off the table and carried them to the sink, where she made a show of rinsing them out in one basin and dropping them in the other with a clatter. Cait realized the woman’s hospitality had reached its end as Virginia said, “Well then, I don’t believe I can be of any more help to you. I’ve answered all of your questions and undoubtedly raised many more in your mind. Unfortunately, the questions you are left with are ones you will have to puzzle out for yourself.”
Cait and Kevin stood and began walking down the short hallway toward the front door. She grabbed his arm and held on tightly as he punched the cab company’s number into his cell phone. They reached the door and turned around to discover Virginia Ayers had followed and was now standing right behind them. “I have just one more question,” Cait said.
Virginia said nothing so she continued. “How did you know when we showed up here today that I was the twin that had been blessed with the good polarity and not the evil?”
Virginia laughed out loud, despite appearing ready to break out in tears. Her eyes watered and she blinked hard. “It’s as plain as day, sweetheart. Your goodness is written all over your face. I could see it the moment I laid eyes on you. You are no more capable of evil than I am of running the Boston Marathon.”
Cait had no idea how to respond, so she took half a step forward and wrapped her arms around her mother’s frail body, holding on tightly and squeezing until she was afraid one of the older woman’s ribs might snap. After a second’s hesitation, the hug was returned fiercely and in that moment Cait knew everything she had learned today was true. This was a woman who had torn her family apart and lived with an overwhelming sense of sadness and regret every day for the past thirty years, but she had done it to preserve the lives of her two children the only way she could think of. She had sacrificed everything for two people she barely knew.
As she pulled away after an instant and a lifetime, Cait realized she was crying soundlessly, tears running down her face. She looked up at Kevin and he was crying as well. So was Virginia. “Well,” she said with an awkward laugh. “Aren’t we a cheerful bunch.”
They opened the door and walked onto the tiny front landing. The door closed behind them and through the screen Virginia sniffled and said, “I have one request before you go.”
“Anything,” Cait said.
“You see this number?” she asked, pointing at a tarnished, brass-plated “7” screwed into the faded vinyl siding next to the front door.
“Of course, it’s the address of your home—Seven Granite Circle.”
“That’s right,” Virginia answered. “Now please forget you ever saw it. Forget you were here and don’t ever come back. I don’t think I could survive if I had to go through this again.”
Cait opened her mouth to reply, with no idea what words might come out. Her face flushed and tears filled her eyes again and before she could say anything, the storm door closed and she was left listening to the sound of her mother’s footsteps moving slowly down the hallway. They faded and then disappeared. She looked at Kevin in utter brokenhearted bewilderment as their taxi pulled to a stop at the end of the driveway.
CHAPTER 22
The amount of blood that could spill out of a relatively small injury was impressive, Milo thought. He had seen it before, but it never ceased to amaze him. He stood next to his homemade torture chair watching Rae Ann squirm and cry and beg for mercy into her duct-tape gag. Her words were indistinguishable, of course, but their intent was clear, as was the desperation behind them.
Just for fun, Milo had taken his pliers and smacked their heavy metal jaws against the backs of the fingertips on her right hand, where the nails would be if she still had any. The freshly crusted scabs had broken open immediately, and the blood once again began to flow, dripping in thick globs off her hand.
Each time he introduced
himself to a new girl, he celebrated the occasion by using a fresh tarp, unstained by the blood and bodily fluids of another. It was an expense he couldn’t really afford, but certain rituals demanded observance and this was one of them.
He watched the small, dark maroon rivulets spread slowly across the clear plastic and contemplated his next move. Breaking fingers and tearing off nails was enjoyable—he could do it all day long and on more than one memorable occasion had done exactly that—but he felt in this case it was time to move on. There were incisions to be made, flesh to be torn, impromptu surgeries to be performed on his cute little friend, and it would be nice to accomplish some of those things before she was so far gone from the pain she was unable to participate satisfactorily in the process.
Removing one of her pert little breasts might be nice. It would be a relatively simple procedure, not terribly time-consuming either, and would allow him to get his feet wet, so to speak, before moving on to more complex surgeries either tonight or tomorrow.
Rae Ann whimpered quietly, still recovering from the most recent explosion of pain in her mangled fingers, and she watched him with fearful eyes as he wandered into the kitchen to retrieve his surgical supplies. It was almost as if she could read his thoughts. Or maybe she had already reached the conclusion that all of his guests eventually tumbled to: Milo Cain was one crazy motherfucker, not to be trusted, and it behooved you to keep a close eye on him at all times.
Whatever the reason, her eyes were still trained on the kitchen door when he returned, clutching his supplies. He had assumed she would fail to immediately grasp the significance of the tools he was holding, but he was wrong. The moment he reentered the living room she began the now-familiar process of thrashing in her chair, straining against her duct-tape bindings and screaming—if it could be called that—into her gag.
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