Darker Still

by T. S. Worthington

  “I know it sounds stupid, but it really is like a passion. There is something that gives me a rush like nothing else in the world when I close a case. I just love knowing that I helped put a bad person behind bars where they can’t hurt any other innocent people.”

  Cheryl touched his hand right then. “That is very sweet,” she said. It almost sounded flirtatious but he didn’t think she meant it in that way.

  “So, how are you holding up with everything?” John asked.

  “I’m doing about as well as I can,” Cheryl replied. “I feel so sorry for my parents. They have just been destroyed by what happened to Theresa. Mom has hardly left the house since it happened. I was going to have them stay with me for a bit while everything is going on, but they decided that they wanted to bury Theresa back in Lancaster. So I’ll be going up there for the funeral.”

  “I’m so sorry,” John said. He looked deep into Cheryl’s eyes and hoped that she was as strong as he thought she was. He admired strength in a beautiful woman and he could tell that Cheryl was one of the strongest women he had ever met.

  “So, you don’t have any leads about this guy at all?” Cheryl asked. A solitary tear rolled down her face and John brushed it away. He took a deep breath and thought about telling her who the killer was and about what had happened to him. He decided that she needed to know. The Chief had told him to keep it all under wraps, and he had fully intended to do that, but with Cheryl that didn’t seem at all important.

  John told her everything. From what happened when he was a kid to the letter he had just received. When he was done it felt like a big weight had been lifted off his chest. He had tried not to get too caught up in Cheryl’s response to this, but she was obviously becoming very emotional. It had to be a huge thing to hear and now that it was out John was not so sure that he should have told her.

  “Oh, my God. So, this guy is a serial killer? He is going to keep doing this? You guys haven’t been able to catch him for thirty years?”

  “It isn’t quite as cut and dry as that, “John started. He wanted to calm her down. She was getting a bit hysterical and he poured her a glass of water, which she gulped down quickly.

  “What is it then? You don’t have the faintest idea who this man is? He killed your sister and God knows how many other people since then. Now he killed my sister. Did he kill my sister as a message to you?”

  John looked at Cheryl right then and stared deeply into her eyes. He had actually not thought of that before now, but he didn’t think so.

  “No, he is driven to kill. That is all this man does. He takes and takes and takes. The fact that he is now playing games with me is just something he is doing because I’m back in town and he is bored.”

  John hoped that Cheryl bought his reply. It would be terrible for her to think that her sister was killed just to send a message to him as part of some sick game this guy was playing. Although he was playing a very twisted game. That was what all serial killers did. They played games and screwed over people’s lives. It stretched so far beyond just the killing of the victim. That was just the beginning of a chain reaction that would terrorize an entire family and even a community. It was all part of their grandiosity and narcissism.

  “I can’t imagine how scared you must be,” Cheryl said. “I’m terrified, but if this guy was actually after me I would change my identity and move to the Antarctica or something.”

  John smiled. He liked that she was feeling up to cracking jokes and having an easy conversation, but she did prove a valid point. He was terrified, but he was used to it. You had to get used to dealing with fear or else it would paralyze you at exactly the wrong moment.

  “I am scared. I’m not going to do the macho thing and I say that I’m not afraid of anything. I’m a little beyond that age, but the fear is a good thing.”

  “How is that good?”

  “Well, it is a powerful motivator if you use it the way it is supposed to be used. I used the fear that I feel to move me to action, instead of letting it cripple me to inaction,” John said. He hoped that made sense. The rum and cokes were starting to give him a rocking good buzz also.

  “I can see that. I never really looked at it that way,” Cheryl said.

  “Well, most people don’t because they don’t have to deal with the levels of fear that someone in my line of work has had to. But people who have very dangerous jobs where their lives are on the line on a regular basis have to develop that sort of edge. It’s the edge our ancestors had in caveman times because there was possible death around every corner, every tree, cave, or blade of grass. There was something somewhere that could kill you. We have evolved away from that in recent years I think,” John said.

  He was aware that he was starting to wax way too intellectual and made a mental note to try to reign that back a little bit before he started to sound stupid.

  “You are incredibly insightful John Anderson,” Cheryl said. The way she said his name like that sent chills up his spine. He was starting to like this girl a lot and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It felt like it should have been great and he was a bit excited, but he was afraid for her to get too close to him since he had a psychopathic serial killer targeting him for sport.

  “I have my moments,” he said and before he realized what was happening he was kissing her. All of the memories of what it was like to be with a great woman came back to him all at once. It was an odd mix of newfound excitement and nostalgia. She was soft and sweet. Her lips were moist and sensuous, the way they caressed against his sent sensations of lust rolling through his body. He needed this, but he could not shake the feeling that he was doing something terrible by placing her in danger. He had to back off.

  He pulled away and took a drink.

  “What’s wrong?” Cheryl asked.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” John said.

  “Why?”

  “I find you unbelievably attractive Cheryl but with the way things are right now I feel like I would be putting you in danger by getting too close to you,” John said.

  Cheryl nodded as if she had already weighed the pros and cons of this. “I understand, but I really don’t care.”

  “Well, you should care. I do care.”

  “I know you want to protect me, but honestly I would feel better protected by having you by my side than being left alone. Right now I just feel like the world is coming down on me and I have no one to lean on. You are so sweet and I can tell that you are a vessel of hope in a world that is totally devoid of it,” Cheryl said. A tear fell from her eye.

  John felt his heart melt a bit at the sentiments she had just expressed so poetically. She was speaking from her sweet heart and he knew that she really wanted to be with him. He understood that she did not feel safe and it was possible that she wasn’t, but by being with him it would place her in direct danger. He wasn’t sure he could live with himself if something happened to her because she was with him.

  “That was beautiful, sweetie. But I’m not sure I can be that selfish to put you in harm’s way because I want to be with you.”

  “You aren’t. I’m putting myself there because I want to be with you. This is not on you; it is my decision. I know what I want.”

  John smiled and kissed her sweetly.

  After they finished making love John slept better than he had slept in months. He felt peaceful at last.

  Chapter 4: “Bitter Pill”

  The scream shattered his dreams and threw him from the comfort of sleep. His eyes were instantly open and his body was rushing out of the bed before his mind had even made a connection to it. He stumbled several times before finding his footing and running towards the screaming.

  It was Cheryl. She was screaming at the top of her lungs. A million insane images filled his mind as he rushed towards the kitchen of what he might find when he got there. He could see the killer standing over her with a large knife gutting her with glee while s
he screamed her final breaths and left her entrails splattered all over the floor.

  He would not lose someone else he cared about to the hands of this bastard. It probably only took him about five seconds to run from the bedroom to the kitchen but it felt like he was running around the block. It was taking forever to get to where he needed to be. She needed him and he was not there. Why was he not there? Because he had fallen asleep. He had allowed himself to fall asleep. Why would he do that? Why? He had no time to sleep when this psycho was on the loose. He knew better than that.

  A million idiotic thoughts raced through his mind as he wanted to blame himself for every little thing that he was or was not doing right. That was not helpful, but for some reason his mind always went there first. It was stupid; plain and simple. He needed to calm down and assess the situation like the John of old would have done. Somewhere along the line he had allowed himself to become so numb to it all that he had ignored his basic conditioning and his fundamental instincts on everything in life. He had become completely desensitized. He had to find a way to bring himself back.

  As he entered the kitchen he saw Cheryl on the floor backing up as far as she could. Her back was pushing against the table and chairs behind her and she was still trying to back up faster and faster. Her face was a total look of sheer terror as she continued to scream. Her eyes were filled with panic. John had seen that look too many times over the years as people arrived at crime scenes to see their loved ones who had been viciously killed by someone else’s depravity. He would never get used to seeing that look on people’s faces.

  John grabbed Cheryl and tried to hold her tight to him, but she was ignoring him completely. She was lost in the trance of total terror as she continued to space out and stare at the open refrigerator.

  John almost didn’t dare follow her gaze. He was afraid that he would see what she was seeing and he would break apart much the same way that she was. He had to be strong for her. She was relying on him and his protection. She was counting on him to know what to do and to do the right thing no matter what and he was damned if he was going to shatter that illusion and let her down.

  He willed his head to turn towards the fridge. What he saw churned his stomach and he felt his whole body lurch in a mini spasm as he fought back the urge to vomit.

  There sitting on the top shelf of the fridge on a fancy plate were a pair of eyeballs.

  John knew who they belonged to. He knew it without calling it in and without waiting on the lab to analyze the DNA. He knew it.

  He knew they were Theresa’s eyes.

  He wanted to calm Cheryl down. He wanted to tell her everything would be ok and that it was not as bad as it seemed, but everything that popped into his head sounded totally ludicrous. So he said nothing. He just held her tight and tried to get her to her feet and away from the kitchen.

  As soon as he had her somewhat stable he called it in.

  “I don’t believe this,” Chief Michaels said.

  He rubbed his eyes and tried to get rid of the image that was burned into his brain. John knew the procedure because he had tried to do the same thing. It was to no avail. In fact it was downright stupid.

  John told the chief the whole story and waited for his reaction that never really came. The chief just stared into space in that way of his that said he had seen too much in this world to really be affected by much and it was time for him to move on and see if he could salvage just a little bit of the human being that he used to be. But that day was not coming any time soon apparently.

  John watched as the techs took the eyeballs and placed them in a secure evidence bag and put that on ice. He hoped that they were still able to get a positive ID on them since they had been above temperature for a while. Cheryl had wanted to go to a friend’s house so she had called her girlfriend who picked her up about an hour ago. John had been reluctant to let her go, but they sent a couple of officers to keep an eye on the girls. It made John feel a little better, but not much.

  “I can’t figure out how he got in. There was no sign of forced entry,” John said.

  “And you checked the entire house before you entered with her last night, right?” Michaels asked.

  “Yea. I did. I searched it top to bottom; there was no one here.”

  “Did either of you use the refrigerator last night?”

  “Yea. I saw her open the fridge several times. There was nothing there. He did it in the middle of the night.”

  “Do you think this is a message to you or to her?”

  “It would appear to be both,” John said.

  “Why would he be sending a message to her? Do we have evidence that he has ever contacted family members of his victims before?”

  John looked over his shoulder to make sure the forensic specialists were not becoming privy to their theory.

  “Chief, do you think we need to at least tell the rest of the unit what is going on? We know who is doing this. It is just a matter of time before he gets restless and kills someone else.”

  “I am planning to make an announcement at the morning briefing tomorrow. Now we have some proof we can make stick,” the chief said.

  John looked around at the other officers on the scene and most of them appeared to be freaking out like there was no tomorrow. They were holding it together for appearances only, but he saw the fear in their eyes. He had seen that way too many times before for them to fool him. He appreciated the strength of character it took for them to hold up without bursting into tears or barfing all over the place. But these guys were in way over their heads. They had never seen anything like this before. He was going to have to lead the troops through this.

  John had been trying to lay low a little bit and not be too much of an overbearing gung ho type of guy since he arrived on the force here in Belpre, but he was tired of holding back and acting like he didn’t deserve to be chief. He respected Michaels a lot but even he was in over his head with this business. The chief had a lot of experience, but most of it was book experience when it came to the things that John had seen. What he had dealt with on a regular basis made the chief seem like a mall security guard by comparison. He hated to think of it that way, but he knew that when the time was right he was going to have to take the reins and take control of the situation.

  “Was it my sister?”

  Cheryl’s voice was masked by tears and John felt his heart breaking as he had to tell her that the match was confirmed by the lab. The lab had put a rush on it and got the results back ASAP. Those were definitely Theresa’s eyes.

  Cheryl broke down into tears and began to sob. John felt utterly helpless right then even as he tried to console her. He knew it was no use. There were some things that only time would fix.

  John decided that Cheryl should stay with her friend Alex for a while. They would keep a few officers stationed outside of her house, and she would be monitored for her safety. It was not a good idea for John to see her right then. She was going to be in danger and now she realized exactly how much danger she was going to be in. John saw the change in her eyes when he told her this time. She had now seen up close and personal what kind of a dangerous sicko they were dealing with here. She was going to have to continue to be understanding. No matter how much they wanted to be together, the timing was just not right.

  She agreed, reluctantly and John kissed her goodbye before he left. He was going to find this son of a bitch if it killed him to do so.

  *

  It was all too easy.

  He watched as the cops mulled around the crime scene with their thumbs up their asses. They were all so afraid and they were all so sure that they were dealing with some maniac. He was going to be easy to catch. He would make a mistake and then it would be all over. No one who was so violent and crazy could ever last long doing this sort of thing.

  They were all such imbeciles. They had no idea how sane and rational he really was. He had evolved past all of them, but they were fun to play w
ith from time to time. Being so supreme did have its disadvantages; the biggest of them was loneliness, but the loneliness he had would never be cured. He was unable to connect with or relate with any of these sheep and peasants. They were all filth and he was the garbage man taking them out one by one. He by no means wanted to kill them all; there wouldn’t be enough time in the world for him to do that by himself. But he wanted to take his time and just hand pick a select few to die by his blade.

  He stood up from the couch, stretching his legs finally. He had been sitting in the same spot watching news reports all day long. He had recorded them and stared at them repeatedly until he knew them all by heart. Finally he had decided to burn them to a DVD and add it to his collection.

  He grabbed the newly burned DVD out of the player and labeled it with a black Sharpie. He loved the way the disc seemed to come alive as he did so. It was now a piece of history—his history. One day the fools that be would find his trophy collection and his archives that he had kept of his work all of these years.

  They had found a good bit of his stuff when he had been forced from his original house all those years ago, and for that he was forever tortured. He had lost so many valuable memories and mementos. It was all a shrine to his perfect work.

  Of course they would never understand what he was doing or why he did what he did. It was beyond their comprehension. It was beyond any sort of understanding that they could even hope to achieve. He had to laugh when he thought of how dumbfounded they had to have been stumbling over his work. He wished he could have seen it and studied it more closely, but he had been on the run. They had no idea that he did not really live in such filth and squalor. What they had found had only been his workshop. It was nothing more than that.

  He had to laugh at the bumbling fools trying to figure him out and his heinous crimes. They thought that they had stumbled upon the find of the century--the monster in their midst. Little did they know that he was still right there and he had continued to do his work the way he had always done. He had just found a new work shed.