by John Hunt
She squeezed the phone in her hand, her frustration turning her fingers white. She should call Dave, the man in charge of the surveillance of Lucy and Olivia. After they arrested Darcy, they pulled the incredibly expensive security. She had been under enormous strain to keep justifying the expense. All she ever had to do to stifle their questions and quiet suggestions was to mention Jen but that wouldn’t last forever. She asked them, could they afford not to have the remaining girls watched? The media and the public were openly critical over Jen’s death. Mary thought they had every right to be but kept the opinion to herself.
She would have to get Dave and his men back on the security detail, especially after the shitty news of Darcy maybe not being their guy. It was late, almost four in the morning. Darcy had been in their custody for hours now. She didn’t want to wake up Dave, but she had to. She called him. Dave answered, groggy, and with disappointment colouring his words, said he would get the team back out there.
She hung up the phone feeling positive about the decision. She crept back into bed beside her snoring husband wanting to squeeze in another hour before the alarm brayed in her ear. She fell asleep not knowing that she had made the call too late. They never should have pulled the surveillance.
-36-
The Jackal almost shit his pants. Not quite, but something might have touched cotton. He had driven over to Lucy’s place, doing laps near her home, looking for the cops he thought might be there like they were at Olivia’s. Lucy wasn’t as fearful as Olivia. He hadn’t had enough time to teach her to be. The Jackal knew if Lucy went out her dad would follow. Especially at night. He didn’t care about the dad. He looked soft, weak. A jiggle gut and a rounding back, the Jackal didn’t think he would pose a problem. He would have to kill him, to have more time before the cops discovered her gone. If they found out before, the police would go into full panic mode and it would ruin his chances of taking Olivia too. He had considered taking Olivia first but in the end decided against it. He wanted to leave the best for last. The Jackal was nervous though. This was sloppy and so much could go wrong. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit it excited him as much as it scared him. If they got him, he would never get out. It would be an ironic end to him considering what he and Shawn had done to the girls. But no, he couldn’t go to jail. He wouldn’t last the week. Even though he kept his girls in little more than cells, he couldn’t see himself in one. Couldn’t even picture it in his head. It didn’t seem possible.
He parked on a side street, turned off the van and moved to the back out of the driver’s seat so it would appear unoccupied while he still had a view of Lucy’s house. He didn’t know how he would do it, not like he did with Jen. Hers had been all planned out. Lucy’s abduction would depend on her leaving the house. If she didn’t, he didn’t think he could pull off creeping in her window and snatching her. It could be problematic. Unless he crept in and killed the parents first. He could punch a knife in their throats, let them bleed out and then snag Lucy. He trembled at the thought. A night of blood.
In the van watching the yellow lights in Lucy’s kitchen wink at him from behind the curtains, he ran through his options and that is when he saw the police. Two of them crept past his van. They were crouched low, duck-walking along the hedge and staying in the shadows and the Jackal ground his teeth, thinking this is it, they got me with his guts gurgling and the need to crap twisting his insides and he was making ready to jump in the driver’s seat and drive off with squealing tires and then the two police sprinted away from him. A black sedan flew down the street and squealed to a stop. Two more cops, with Police emblazoned on their backs in reflective yellow, jumped out of the car and tackled a man on the sidewalk. Four cops piled on top and the Jackal could see the man’s arm at the bottom flailing about. More cops spilled onto the street from marked and unmarked cruisers, blocking the road. All of this was occurring less than a block from Lucy’s front door.
The Jackal, watching, muttered, “What the fuck?”
The man was picked up, hands cuffed behind his back and led to a black and white OPP cruiser. The Jackal couldn’t pick out the man’s features but from the way he swung his head back and forth, twisting in the officer’s grip, he was confused and scared. He was stuffed in the back of the cruiser and it drove away with its befuddled package in the back, a long line of cars following behind.
Two unmarked cars remained in the street and four plainclothes officers stood in front of their headlights talking. One of them pointed to Lucy’s house. Two of them high-fived each other and then they all piled into their cars and left. The neighbourhood returned to quiet in an instant. No one stood on their porch watching. No one had noticed the drama on the street. It had happened too quickly for a crowd to gather.
The Jackal frowned. What were they doing here by Lucy’s house? Why did the one cop point to Lucy’s house? It never occurred to him that the police thought the man they just arrested was him, the Jackal. His ego wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he pulled out the binoculars and pointed it at something he saw on the sidewalk. He focussed the lens until the object became sharper. A black hat with a yellow letter ‘P’ on it.
He checked his watch: 9:43pm. He would settle in and wait. Maybe Lucy would come out on her own. If she didn’t, he would go in and get her. And kill anyone in his way. It could prove to be a very interesting night. He would wait a while and watch. He had time.
-37-
Lucy’s parents pestered her with questions she didn’t have the answers to. In hindsight, maybe she should have asked Detective Davis more questions but she was too excited and wanted to take advantage of the Jackal’s capture by going out without her dad following. They got him, right? Wasn’t that the important part?
They wanted her to call Davis back and ask more questions but she could tell when he called her he had been busy and wanted to get off the phone just as much as she did. She did try calling him back, just to get her parents off her back and when his voice mail message came up for the fifth time, her parents shook their heads, muttering about the lack of communication with the police. They let her be after realizing there was nothing new to learn and her dad reluctantly handed her the keys to the car. She texted Trevor but he didn’t reply. Did he finally give up on her and was even now out on a date? A woman without a psychotic, over-protective father wanting to go along? Lucy knew she was cute but how long could she expect a guy to wait for her? Catching sight of her reflection in the kitchen window, knowing she looked good, she thought Trevor should have waited a little longer. She was worth it. Oh well. She didn’t want to pass up the night of freedom so she decided to go to Tim Horton’s, get a coffee and something sweet, like a cherry danish. By then, Trevor, if he wasn’t on a date, might see her texts and get back to her.
She sighed. A waste for someone as pretty as her to be going out alone on a Friday night. She should be partying it up with friends, doing shooters at the bar and picking out the man with the best abs to dance with. Although on the surface it wasn’t obvious, the time she had spent in the basement had changed her. There was no doubting it. And her friends felt it when she returned home and they came by to see her and talk to her. It was different. Her oldest friend, Gwenn had asked her about the basement with wide eyes and a smile threatening to tilt the corner of her mouth, like she were hungry for it and wanted to slurp down all the delightful humiliations Lucy suffered at the hands of the men. Gwenn had tried to hide the smile, tried to stuff it down but Lucy saw it and it killed something inside her. Lucy saw through the feigned empathy and was disgusted by it. Was that how she used to be? Or still was?
Lucy’s captivity to her friends was something to gossip about, something to revel in behind false smiles while they drank in the torment of another. Callous and shallow, they could not see past how Lucy’s abduction affected them or how they could garnish reflected fame from
it. They didn’t see how cruel their fake empathy was or, even worse, didn’t realize that they were fake. The mirror of introspection never penetrated past the skin.
She lived every day and night in fear of a visit. She would hear the door open and see the two men enter with their horrible masks. Sometimes they would show up and disrobe and other times they would walk in wearing nothing but the masks before they went to work on her. She didn’t fight them. She learned early on the futility of it. She thought the Gorilla man had dislocated her jaw with one punch the time she had the nerve to resist. Under their violent tutelage, she became a realist. If she played nice, she got to keep her teeth. They would pinch the tender parts, pull on even more tender places and if she offered up the proper squeal, they would let her keep her nose. She thought, considering her choices, it was a fair trade.
But how do you tell your friends that? And worse, to know your friends, who haven’t had to learn such harsh lessons, could never relate to such an experience? To them, it was something interesting that happened to someone else. She soon realized she didn’t like her friends. They represented who she used to be and Lucy no longer had time for vacuous gossip mongers. Not anymore.
She learned life could be snatched at anytime and she intended to live hers to the fullest and without regrets. She refused to hide under a rock and let the threat of the Jackal keep her in a prison of her own making. Fuck that. That was no way to live. She scooped up the keys to her dad’s car and checked her phone. No texts from Trevor. She sighed. Tim Horton’s it was, then. At least it was in a public place. The Jackal would have to be an idiot to nab her in such a place. Especially wearing that mask. She chuckled at the thought. What the hell was she worried about? They got him, right? She hoped he would get his ass raped in prison. With a broken broom handle. And crushed glass glued to it. Yeah, that would be about right.
“Bye mom! Bye dad!”
Her dad said, “Be safe honey!”
She rolled her eyes, “I will.”
She stepped out into the night with the keys in her hand. There was a white van parked at the curb in front of her house. It was running. She frowned. The orange sodium street light illuminated the front seat area. There was no one inside. She slowed her walk, her heart moving from a walk to a sprint and then a voice behind her, a voice she knew so well called to her from the shadows.
“Hey Lucy-goosey. Daddy’s back.”
Lucy turned, opened her mouth to scream but he reached out and pain shot through her. She couldn’t control her body. Her legs wobbled and the ground rose to meet her. Her head cracked off the hard ground and she lost time, confused, and then she was slung over his shoulder and he was off with her. He yanked open one door and inside was darkness.
-38-
Olivia’s eyes popped open. Her pulse jumped, startled into action. She turned her eyes to the alarm clock. The green digital glow read 3:15am. Why was it dark in her room? Harry must have turned it off before he went to bed. He had done that before. But what had awakened her? Then she heard it. Brutus growling. She gripped the handle of the knife and slipped it from under the pillow. She sat up, peering at Brutus’ bed on the floor. After her eyes adjusted to the dark she realized he wasn’t in it. The growl sounded again, a low warning noise from deep in his chest. She turned to the noise and saw him sitting in front of the closet. He stretched his nose towards it and emitted another growl. There was someone in the closet, no, not someone, the Jackal. He was the bogeyman. He was the red-eyed demon in the closet. There was no escape. Olivia’s mouth dried out, as arid as any desert and she sought control against the growing tide of panic. Think! No alarm went off. What does all that mean, dear Sherlock? She whispered, “It means, Mr. Watson, there’s no one in the damn closet. There can’t be because no one can get in the closet without first getting into the house. Yes, elementary.”
So why wouldn’t Brutus stop growling at the closet?
“Brutus? Hey Brutus!”
Brutus acknowledged her with a twitch of his ears. He didn’t turn his head. Olivia frowned seeing a ridge of hair standing up on Brutus’ back in the moonlight. There was no way anyone or anything could get into the closet. Must be some animal under the house, scratching their way in to where they could smell food. Any other alternative wasn’t possible.
“Is that what it is, boy? You smelling an animal in there? Maybe a raccoon?”
That must be it. It couldn’t be anything else. Her hand loosened around the blade of the knife. She lay back down, determined to get back to sleep but it wasn’t so easy. This is the first time since Brutus came to live with them that he had acted this way. He wouldn’t even look at her, standing sentry over an empty closet. Why? Sweat drew a line along her temple. Goddamnit! Would this feeling of fear ever go away? Brutus was probably growling at a damn mouse, as dogs liked to do and instead of turning over and falling asleep like a normal person she imagined monsters in her closet, waiting for her to close her eyes and her breathing to deepen so they could creep out and consume her with wide salivating jaws. Olivia couldn’t equate herself with a normal person anymore. What happened to her forever changed her, physically and internally and what used to be a young, carefree girl, concerned with good grades and cute boys no longer lived within her.
She was damaged goods. She would be forever hiding her hands lest her missing fingers show. Or wearing her hair down in public to avoid eyes drawn to her missing ear hacked off by a maniac. Hell, she couldn’t even wear open toed sandals to the beach. She could never forget or put this shit behind her. The mirror wouldn’t let her. Any time she picked up a fork or knife, her missing digits would scream at her, remember me little lady? Don’t even pretend you’re normal, don’t even pretend you belong. She couldn’t see herself sitting at a table in a coffee shop while people around you talked of their ‘first world’ problems like they mattered. Like they were problems. They couldn’t comprehend what she had been through and they wouldn’t want to because it would disrupt the illusion of safety they had created. And Olivia knew safety was just that; an illusion. She reminded them of the ugly side of life, a side that would swallow them whole, a place where you crawled out of using murder to do it. They didn’t want her around as much as she didn’t want to be around their insipid mutterings. But oh, how she would love to be one of them. Then she could go back to sleep and ignore the growls and the strange posture of Brutus. She wanted a return to normal. Not this manic, anxiety ridden woman who had seen too much and had done too much to ever fit in. There were no do-overs in life. She couldn’t go back to before the time in the basement. This is who she was. Time to quit fucking around and get up to do what you know you have to do if you ever want to get back to sleep.
“Fuck it,” she muttered.
She placed her feet on the floor and with her knife in hand she padded out of her room towards the office where they kept the security monitors and controls. She would have to play back the night and watch it to convince herself nothing crept upon her while she slept.
She flicked on the light and sank into the chair in front of the screen. She turned on the monitor and the split screens revealed the outside world. Nothing moved except for the odd car. She reached down to pet Brutus. He wasn’t there. The realization caused a trickle of fear to skim across her skin. He always came with her. Even when she got up to use the washroom, she would hear the click of his nails on the tile behind her.
She exhaled and clenched her hand around the haft of the knife. It was a damn raccoon or something. No need to freak out. She exhaled and then fiddled with the controls.
Olivia went back two hours into the night on the video and let it run at 1.5x speed. She will see nothing and return to bed a little tired and let’s be honest, very annoyed with Brutus. It bugged her that he didn’t follow her to nuzzle her hand with his nose and coax some affect
ion from her. It felt wrong.
She clicked her nails against her teeth with one hand as the other was poised on the mouse button ready to pause it if something appeared out of place. The screen had been divided into four views. They covered all sides of the house with overlapping views so no spot on the property would be missed. She had been very specific about what she wanted. A good system, fairly inexpensive. She took her glance from the screen to peer down the hall. No Brutus. Was he still sitting in her room, growling at nothing? She had read somewhere dogs could sense the supernatural, like ghosts or demons but that was just hippy nonsense to her. Even if ghosts did exist, what did she have to fear from the dead? The living were the ones with the sharpest teeth and the pointiest claws. In her experience, the living were the ones to be feared.
On the screen, a shadow emerged. What was that? Her heart stuttered, as though it had been stun punched. She grimaced and she pulled the knife towards her chest like it were a pillow. She did see it though, it wasn’t a damn illusion. A shadow. Moving from the fence and disappearing at her house. She rewound the feed. She let it play, but this time in slow speed. She leaned forward, the glow of the screen bright on her face. Her breath came in sharp bursts. The pulse at her neck jumped under her skin. Please let it be an animal. Please, please, please.
On the other side of the chain-link fence stood a thick brush. She had long wanted it gone and thought of cutting it down in the middle of the night because it hid too much. Problem was, she was afraid of the night and she didn’t think her father would approve because the bush wasn’t on their property. It was the one spot without a clear view. It offered shadows and darkness. She had rid the rest of her property of obscuring foliage. The bush she couldn’t get rid of grew a man. Just below the bush was the sidewalk and then the street. The bush was on the top of an incline. So even though it looked like the man sprouted from the bush, it was just him walking up the hill, growing taller than the bush with every step. But going up the hill meant he was walking towards her property. The man hopped the fence, her fence, and approached the side of the house. He moved with confident stealth. He passed under Olivia’s bedroom window, close enough to reach up and tap on it if he wanted. Then he disappeared. She could feel her pulse in her eyes. She breathed out realizing she held her breath the moment she saw the man. He wasn’t wearing a mask but that didn’t matter did it? The Jackal wouldn’t walk the streets with it on would he? She rewound the video and watched it again wanting to catch a glimpse of his face. The streetlights shone on the back of him so his face was a dark hole. She continued to watch and noticed he didn’t pop up on the other camera. He had disappeared.