“Strange man, escape this spell and bethink thee now of thy native land, if it is fated for thee to be saved . . .”
The quote finally came to mind, and he said it to himself again and again alone in the dark. His hands found his chest. Ran along the scar tissue rigid and embossed beneath his T-shirt.
He thought of getting up. Tossing on the light. Waking the boy up. Someone to talk to.
But the boy wasn’t a boy.
He was a clone.
And the clone of Jeffrey Dahmer.
A monster. And it was best to let monsters sleep.
Castillo checked his watch. 2300. He’d only been asleep thirty minutes. He needed another couple hours at least. He lay back down. Focused on his breathing.
Sleep. Shake off this trance . . .
The nightmares almost never returned twice in the same night.
Almost never.
EMILY
JUNE 06, MONDAY—UNITY, OH
Emily led Allison into the apartment slowly on purpose. She didn’t want her little sister to miss a thing. It smelled musty, like sex, like a dirty gym locker room. Like too many boys. Allison had paused in the doorway, and Emily took her arm to gently lead her beyond her warning instincts. The door shut behind them.
It had been a couple months since she’d last seen Allison. Ever since Emily’d moved out of the house, or been tossed out, or whatever it was that had happened, they weren’t that close anymore. But a simple phone call was all it had taken. A big sister inviting her old pal over to watch a video and grab some pizza. Allison said yes almost immediately. She was a nice person that way. Always had been. Pretty, too. Even prettier than Emily remembered. Grown her hair out long and straight, which the boys would like, for sure.
Two of them, Al and Jeffrey, were watching TV again. Al liked to bite. Jeffrey was the only one who hadn’t yet done her, or her roommate, actually. He liked boys, it seemed. So he, John, and Ted had gone across the hall one night. Surprised the thirty-something chode who lived there. That had been too funny. The nurse, Ms. Stacey, sat between them on the couch, the head tilted slightly to one side. Her eyes were bare, dark slits, the whites behind still fluttering wildly. They’d opened her stained button-down shirt all the way again so that both her tits hung out freely.
None of the three seemed to have noticed when Emily entered the room. “That’s Jeff and Al. Ms. Stacey,” she introduced her sister to them anyway. “And John, of course.”
Slumped in the room’s other chair was a boy dressed as a clown. His red and blue makeup was smeared and patchy, his collar stained a dark red where his chin rested on the top of his chest. A bag of Doritos rested on his crotch. A huge, red, puffy ball dangled over one eye from his lopsided hat. He turned sluggishly as they entered the room and tracked their movement deeper into the apartment, his red lips listlessly forming into a moronic smile.
“Emily?” She felt her sister tugging her arm.
“Hey.” A low voice from the kitchen behind them. “You’re late. This her?”
“Allison,” Emily said, smiling and leading the girl forward. “My baby sister. Ain’t she the sweet sweetest li’l thing?”
“Sweet, sweet.” The boy laughed. He looked older than the others by a few years. Long, wavy dark hair and incredible blue-green eyes. Like turquoise almost, and always changing depending on the room’s light. “But she ain’t no baby, is she?” These incredible eyes roved unhurriedly over her sister while he bit at his lower lip. “What up, Allison?” he said. “I’m Ted.”
Allison had lowered her head.
The dried blood on the kitchen floor looked like any other stain.
“You being mean to my friends?” asked Emily.
“No, I . . .” Her sister’s voice trembled. “I . . . nice to meet you.”
“That’s better.” Ted stepped closer, grinning with a distinct, and totally fucking hot smile Emily had grown to recognize. This was gonna be fun, fun, fun. How they’d come together was simple enough. Some kid named Al had friended her on Facebook six months before. Another smartass on the web who liked sending her dickpic Snapchats and private IMs about wanting to rape soccer moms while their daycare brats ate Happy Meals and waited for him to finish. Joked about blowing up a mall, sending body parts flying in an unholy rain of Payless shoes, Abercrombie boxers, and blood. ROFL.
Then, one day, this guy sends an email and says he and a buddy are heading to Ohio. Would she be cool if they stopped by to party some? They’d bring some pot or X, he said. The kid was probably way younger than he was pretending, but she wasn’t past hooking up with a high school boy. Emily wrote back: SURE. WTF?
But it wasn’t just Al and a buddy who showed up at her door.
It was five guys.
And they’d taken their time with the two girls. Emily and her roommate, Kim.
Days.
“Nothing to be afraid of, right?” Ted was saying to Allison. “Your sister said you were pretty cool. She sure got the pretty part right.” He touched the side of Allison’s face. “Fourteen, huh? No kidding. You a party girl? You wanna party like your sister here?” He winked at Emily.
Emily liked Ted the best.
Ever since the first time he’d fucked her. Raped her. Made love. She didn’t know what to call it. His hands closing so tightly around her throat as he’d forced her to the living room floor. The life and air leaving her body as one. Her roommate’s frantic screams, muffled with duct tape, so very close, other shapes moving above them both.
Then Emily had looked into his eyes and seen it: Nothing. No rage, not even amusement. Nothing. Thrusting into her like a piece of machinery, the blackness of death spreading over more of her teary-eyed vision. The guy honestly didn’t care if she lived or died.
She’d never cum so hard in her life.
He’d known it when she had and laughed. Then he’d squeezed harder until everything went black. She’d awoken hours later when he was doing her again. “I thought you were dead,” he’d smiled.
Oh, yes. Emily liked Ted the best.
And Ted wanted more. Always wanted more. More than her or her roommate.
Emily knew who to call.
Allison. Her sister.
Pretty, perfect Allison. Ms. School Play, and Ms. Cheerleader Squad, and Ms. Honor Roll. Fourteen. Another fucking Taylor Swift clone. The good girl. Princess of the known world. At least according to their mother. Not the screwup. The stupid one, the druggie, the slut who’d had the abortion. College dropout. Nineteen years old and working second-shift food services at Walmart. Princess of Nothing.
Until now. Because now, now she’d finally found her King of Nothing.
She’d heard of Badge Bunnies and Buckle Bunnies, girls who got wet for cops and cowboys and such. A few, she now understood, got off on guys who hurt people. Killed. And these guys claimed to have some shit that would kill, like, thousands of people. She could hardly sleep, she was so fucking turned on. I’m a Blood Bunny, she thought. Grinned.
Oh, Mom, if you could see us now.
“What was that?” Allison asked, her eyes grown wide like one of those anime cartoon girls.
Emily giggled. They could all hear Kim in the bathroom again, thumping and mewling in the tub.
“Come on.” Ted put his arm against Allison’s back. “I’ll show ya.”
Down the hall, the sounds became more distinct. The strange gargling noise, the slow and steady THUMP of something hitting a wall.
“Emily?” said Allison.
The bathroom door was open a crack, and Ted pushed it back with one hand, positioned Allison to look within. It was dark inside, the hall light barely illuminating the smears of blood surrounding the bathtub, black against the shadowed tile floor, the wall.
THUMP. Movement in the tub. The body shifting back and forth in the darkness.
“Not sure how much she really feels,” Emily said behind them as she peeked in on her roommate. “She’s so far down the K-Hole.”
She’d been amaz
ed how easy it was to buy ketamine on the street. Totally like the boys told her. These guys knew about everything.
THUMP.
“The cuts are below the elbows and knees,” she told her sister, “so it was easy to stop the bleeding.”
“Easy?” Ted laughed. “Like hell.”
“Well,” said Emily. “Easy enough.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I guess it was.”
One of his hands held Allison against the door frame, keeping her from collapsing.
“What . . . what did . . .” Allison fought for the right words. “Emily?”
“Shhh, sexy. Don’t you worry about any of that,” Ted told the girl as the thing in the tub burbled and flopped. “We were just having a little bit of fun is all. You like to have fun, don’t you? No? Your sister told us you were a fun girl.”
“Fun, fun, fun. When did he take her lips?” Emily asked.
“I don’t know. After you left to get her, I guess.” Ted shook his head. “That crazy retard’ll eat anything.”
Albert had already taken so much. The hands, feet. Both breasts. An eye. Emily did not understand why. She just thought it was kinda funny. She did not yet understand that Al was a clone of Albert Fish, who’d fried in an electric chair way back in 1936. That he’d earned names like The Werewolf of Wysteria, The Brooklyn Vampire, and The Boogeyman sixty years before she’d been born. That he’d raped, murdered, and eaten as many as a hundred children. Sent letters to his victims’ parents describing every detail. “ ‘How she did kick, bite, and scratch,’ ” one letter reported. “ ‘It took me nine days to eat her entire body.’ ” Al’s Facebook profile had had none of this. LET’S PARTY, Al had written. SURE, she’d written back. And then she’d given her address. Now this.
“Kinda wish they’d left her alone,” Ted concluded.
“I like her like this,” another voice said behind him. “Better time. This the sister?”
“Yeah.” Ted turned. “Say hi to Allison.”
“Proof of God, she is.”
“Yeah, for sure,” Ted agreed. “Allison, this is Henry. He’s a good guy.”
“You going first?” the new boy asked.
THUMP.
“Nah,” Ted said. “Go ahead. A promise is a promise.”
“Cool.” Henry took hold of Allison’s arm.
“Back in one piece,” Ted reminded him.
Henry puckered his lips. “You got it, Captain America.”
Allison turned to her sister and started to speak, but no words came out of her mouth. A rasp of breath as Henry pulled her down the hall toward the bedroom. She struggled some, but not enough that it would matter.
“I’m gonna watch,” Emily said.
“Like hell. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Ted’s face looked frustrated, angry.
“Not a prob,” she said and pulled out her cellphone. “Gimme a sec.”
His pupils had dilated, eyes grown almost completely black. Like something dead.
“Hey, Mom,” Emily said into the phone, waving the boy away. “It’s me. Yeah, hey, listen. Yes, I know it’s late. But, hey, Allison’s over here. Yes. I don’t know. But she’s pretty upset about something.”
Ted grinned.
“No. You should probably come over.” Emily rolled her eyes.
Muffled screams trickled from the end of the hall.
My dear little sister. Another Princess of Nothing.
“Yeah, Mom,” Emily said. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
THE MURDER MAP
JUNE 07, TUESDAY—HARRISBURG, PA
McCarty.
It came with the afternoon list: One of seven more dead people discovered in the last twenty-four hours. But so very different from the others . . . Familiar. Castillo stepped to the desk, grabbed his phone. Scanned over a hundred images he’d taken until he found the right one.
“Got you!” The sudden sound of his voice like thunder in the small room. All morning had been silence: the boy watching the muted TV, Castillo at his laptop, distracted, the night’s events—the dream—still fresh in his mind.
“I got you, you son of a bitch.” Castillo pumped his fist at nothing, hurried across the room to the map. Happy to leave the brooding thoughts behind if even for a minute.
“Who?” Jeff sat up some.
“Don’t worry about it,” Castillo replied. “Just more dead people.”
“Oh.”
He felt like a dick the moment he replied, and the kid’s childlike response only added to the feeling. It was unfair to think of the kid only as a “monster.” Whatever the boy’s origins, he really needed to think of Jeff as a scared and abandoned fifteen-year-old.
Have to. Don’t I?
“A couple new names came in. I don’t know. But, it’s someone. And it’s somehow connected to this. Three new homicides in Delaware. Police found them a couple hours ago. I’ve got about an hour before it hits cable TV. Two different homes. Goddamn, I got you guys.” He grabbed his red pen and marked the map. “Husband and wife. A Mr. and Mrs. Nolan. Shot. Another woman killed in the house across the street. Want to guess her name?”
“No.”
“McCarty. Nancy McCarty. Chicken girl.”
“M. Carty.”
“Looks like. Want more?”
“No.”
“Seems her teenaged son is missing. And the prime suspect.” Castillo grabbed the remote. “Yes, yes. Now we’re cooking, kid. Let me see if it’s on goddamned Fox News yet. Shit. Wanna guess his name? The missing kid?” He put the television on. Found the news channels.
“What is it?”
“Al. Albert McCarty. Age fifteen. Fuck, yes. Albert Fish, maybe. Or Albert DeSalvo. Both names are in your dad’s notes. Good. Nothing on TV yet.” He put the set back on mute. “Where was that . . .” Back on his phone, flipping through the digital pics of Dr. Jacobson’s journals. “Pack up. We’re leaving for Delaware five minutes ago. M. Carty. You son of a bitch. McCarty. So . . . so, then what’s with this damn chicken?”
“It’s not a chicken,” Jeff said. “It’s a hen.”
“Chicken. Hen. What’s the difference?”
Jeff looked away, retreated, began to pack the book bag Castillo had bought him.
“Forget that shit,” Castillo said as he waved his hand. “You got something to say, kid, say it.”
Jeff dropped the bag. “You said they got . . . that those three people got killed in Delaware.”
“So?”
“They’re the Blue Hens.”
“What?”
“Blue Hens. The University of Delaware sports teams are called the Blue Hens.”
“What the hell is a—”
“It’s the state bird.”
“You’ve gotta be shittin’ me. How do . . .” Castillo stared at his phone. “Is that all this is? McCarty in Delaware. That’s the big secret code?”
Jeff shrugged.
“Maybe. So what’re these, then? These birds? This circle? The squiggle?” Castillo waved Jeff over and pulled up the next image, staring at the screen.
Jeff slid off the bed. Joined Castillo as he thumbed through the original images.
“Stop,” Jeff said.
“OK,” Castillo urged, “so what the hell is that?”
The teen stared. Tilted his head. “Could be . . .”
“What? Could be what, damn it?”
Jeff glanced briefly at the Murder Map.
“What? Go ahead . . .” Castillo turned and urged Jeff toward the wall with the map.
Jeff turned his head, studied the map. Stepped toward it, crossing the room like he was sleepwalking. He ran his finger across the red dots and half-formed lines. “What’s this?” He pointed to a small cluster of blue dots.
“Missing persons.” Castillo was up and standing beside him. “A mother and her two children last seen at a playground in Ohio. Little park right outside McArthur. Maybe a custody thing, husband. Maybe something else. Why?”
Jeff tur
ned and looked him in the eye for the first time in three days. “Because I think I know what the squiggle is.”
“Go. Yes. What?”
“A snake.”
“A snake?”
Jeff nodded.
“Why do you think this is a snake? It could be anything.”
“Now we know it’s places. The Blue Hens, Delaware. The pictures are places.”
“Maybe.”
“Then maybe it’s a snake. It looks kinda like Serpent Mound.”
“Kinda? What the hell is Serpent Mound?”
“Some old Indian burial site built in the shape of a giant snake. Something my . . . my dad took me to once.”
“Where?” Castillo’s eyes were wide.
Jeff dropped his finger on a spot in southern Ohio. “Right here.”
Castillo put his own finger over the missing family in McArthur, Ohio. A third person could have then drawn a line between their two fingertips. A straight line and less than a two-hour drive.
“It’s not Al Baum,” Jeff said. “It’s Albaum. Just like McCarty. And the picture is a hint to the location.”
“Yup,” Castillo agreed. “Goddamn.”
He snatched up his laptop, typed. Some database in Washington whirled. Spit out names and ages and addresses. Thank you, Homeland Security Act. “There are only two hundred Albaum families in America,” he reported aloud, still clicking.
“Better than twenty thousand Baums, huh?” Jeff commented.
“Hell, yeah,” Castillo answered. Kid has a quick mind. Smart. It’d been the exact same number Castillo’d stated days ago. He further refined his search on Albaum.
“How many Albaum families in Ohio?” Jeff asked.
Castillo turned, smiled. “One,” he said.
ANOTHER SON
JUNE 07, TUESDAY—FALLSBURG, NY
The man who finally came into the visiting area didn’t look like the guy from the pictures, the one with the dopey eyes and crazy hair. This guy was balding, with a slim gray mustache. Much older. He wore the same dark blue prison suits as the other guys. He smiled. Looked kinda nice.
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