Sardis was too young for all the activity, just a baby, happily tossing the sand with three others of similar age in the square sandpit. The four babies huddled in the centre while the mothers sat on the raised paved fringes brushing their bare feet in the sand and flapping their dresses to keep cool in the midday sun. They chatted among themselves and followed the goings on around them. Suzanne had a full view of the park, although most of the attention was on the babies. Each child was similarly dressed for the sun in bright flowery hats and bandanas and short-sleeved and sleeveless tops and dresses with their faces, arms, shoulders, and legs thickly covered in factor fifty sun creams. They sat happily playing with the texture of the sand by absently moving their little hands and legs back and forth through the surface, blissfully unaware of the abundant sand sticking to their creamy skin. None of the mums appeared concerned; there were ample bottles of water on hand to wash them down afterward.
Alex couldn’t be far away, probably sparking up one of the barbeques and secretly eyeing up the competition for the daddy race a bit later on.
Suzanne sat with her legs dangling into the sand pit. Her arms were stretched out behind her with the palms of her hands firmly planted on the stone surface. She closed her eyes into the sun and smiled at the joys of a motherhood she never thought possible. Great days out, just like this, providing Sardis with new experiences and sharing stories with the other mums. She was pleased that Sardis’ fingernails went unnoticed. If any of the mums did see them, they didn’t comment on them or seem to care. She suspected the camouflage of the sticking sand played a part. They never questioned Sardis’ food, either, the way the formula stained the inner plastic of the bottle a murky brown.
Suzanne could not remember the gossip among them and although the park teemed with vitality and buoyance, it was as though the volume had been turned down beyond the sandpit. Hustle without the bustle. And that made the scream all the more terrifying when it rose up out of the sandpit and burst in the air like the revved-up engine on a Harley Davidson. The sound was so unexpected it seemed to paralyse the park. A football rolled the surface of the grass without chase and came to a gradual stop. A tennis ball bounced in the court to a standstill. Some of those tied together fell over.
The scream came not from hunger, a soiled nappy, or an irritation of itinerant sand underneath the elastic. It was too sudden, too loud, and too persistent to suggest something so trivial. Something serious had just happened. The concern on each Mum’s face was palpable. Suzanne watched them simultaneously move in to see whose infant let out the chilling cry but it was difficult to tell—like a contagion, they’d all began to bawl.
Another scream, and another, and another, louder, more grown up. Suzanne gawked into the mouth of the mum sitting opposite. Her tonsils vibrated back at her like a rattlesnake’s tail in the back of her gullet. The three mums wailed in unison like three teary-eyed Banshees, unfeasibly wide open mouths joining the screams of their babies. The noise was deafening, like fighter jets taking off in front of her, their breath roaring in her face. Suzanne found she couldn’t cover her ears. People started to descend from all corners of the park but didn’t appear to be getting any closer. Others mouthed to children, warning them to stay put or stopped them in their tracks with the stern wag of a finger. Others ran in the opposite direction toward the exits of the park. Some grownups stood where they were looking quizzically at each other, content to let the brave, the bold, and the inquisitive do the investigating on their behalf.
Suzanne looked back at the faces of the three mums. Their wide open mouths now had eyes to match. They had darkened and grown to the size of saucers, and in the black void of each dilated pupil, Sardis’ calm reflection looked back at her.
Suzanne broke her stare and stared into the sandpit. Sardis had her back to her and was holding the chubby wrist of the overfed baby to her right. The baby’s left hand dangled limply and the swell of skin between Sardis’ taloned fingers demonstrated the firmness of a stubborn grip. The child’s hand was covered in a hive of sand that made it difficult to see any clear injury, but what trickled onto the fabric of the infant’s flowery white dress was unmistakeable: A puddle of red, trapped in the fabric, spread along the fibres like tributaries from a river that changed the colour of white to sodden red as it coursed across her lap.
Suzanne retched when the injured infant’s head turned toward her. The child no longer appeared to suffer pain, quiet among the noise, staring her in the eye, calm and still like a photograph. The skin of her face was firm and tight as one would expect in one so new, as to be without wrinkle, ripple or crease. But the eyes remained unnerved and then the skin began to change. It buckled and shifted and morphed into creases and lines where there should have been none. The corner of the lip tightened and raised on one side, the eye directly above narrowed, and the eyebrow tilted in a downward curve.
A taste of hysteria coated the inside of Suzanne’s mouth when she realised the child’s face, this infant face that should do nothing but goo-goo and cry, now looked at her with an expression of contempt. And without knowing what else to think, except to get out of the park as quick as possible, to run and not look back, she reached for, grabbed, and then pulled Sardis up toward her with stout force.
Sardis’ hand broke free from the contemptuous infant’s wrist, whose lips now reverted to a spine-chilling smirk that should only be conjured by a grown-up with evil intent. The jarring affect caused Sardis’ head to flex in whiplash fashion. Sardis sounded a heave and a gag and a choke. Suzanne quickly turned Sardis in her arms to face her. She wanted to cry for help, scream for Alex to come and get them, but the sounds and words wouldn’t leave her mouth.
She held Sardis outstretched in front of her, unsure of what to do. There was little time to act, only to get away. Then a cough, splutter, and spit, and Suzanne watched the horrific mix of bloodied sand spurt from Sardis’ mouth and dribble down her chin. And the little finger, torn clean from the base knuckle of that once-screaming chubby infant child who now sat smiling at her, slipped from the cavity of Sardis’ gritty mouth. And before Suzanne could flee, the demonic chubby infant waved a sardonic goodbye with three fingers, a thumb, and a tell-tale grin.
Suzanne opened her eyes with a muffled gasp to see the pillow she’d been clutching tumble away from her and disappear off the edge of the bed.
38:
“Who’s your daddy?”
Suzanne should have slept soundly between feedings with the insecurity about Alex’s reaction to Sardis’ imperfections finally out in the open. He responded well, happy to keep her, it seemed. The empty space beside her and the bassinet gone from the room told her he was with her again now.
She couldn’t recall Sardis’ cries moments ago, only the cries in her dream and that’s why the screams sounded so real, why she slept through. Ingrained images muddled her mind; the three mums with wide-open, wailing mouths and rattlesnake tails for tonsils, and eyes the size of black saucers with shades of shadow for hair. Mindless, screaming mannequin mums. The finger wiggling itself free from Sardis’ mouth was still very raw.
Thoughts Suzanne thought she’d banished away last night had never gone anywhere. Her head lay paralysed to the pillow, not blinking. She recalled the huge strawberry welts on Helen’s thighs, six, and seven, possibly eight of them. Ruthless chunks of skin and muscle torn indiscriminately out of her and the head surgeon, usually full of chat, had remained sombre throughout the procedure. The comment he made from behind the mask when he raised her drapes now boomed in her conscious: “She looks like somebody’s leftovers, God help her. This won’t be the last we see of her.”
And Suzanne’s mind began to run. Somebody did that, somebody consciously cut her up and chewed on her like a sparerib. And now dreams of Sardis doing the same. Like father, like daughter. Sleeping dreams don’t come true, do they?
Her mind dithered when her ears picked up the
soft hum of the liquidiser coming through the door from the kitchen. With new sentiment, she visualised Alex pouring the stinky contents through a sieve and then into the bottle, putting the bottle to Sardis’ lips, the liquid staining the inner plastic a murky brown while flowing back and forth from the nipple to the base, a cocktail of bodily fluids and bits of pieces.
The reality of what they were feeding her was beginning to sink in. It was okay when Sardis rejected the formula (she still might) when Suzanne went into survival mode and didn’t think twice about feeding her what was necessary to keep her alive. Now it made her queasy to know that she was feeding her daughter, born of cannibal seed, human or animal parts, probably both. Another cannibal cocktail strained through a sieve.
“You just carry on doing what you’re doing, missy, and sleeping dreams will come true.”
Suzanne broke her paralysis and buried her head into the pillow, her concerns valid. She contemplated the very real possibility that Sardis might have already inherited the BAD gene, his genes. The colour of her hair, her height and bone structure, everything physical about her was predetermined by genes at the moment of conception. So what of her mentality, her personality, her needs, her desires, levels of aggression, what if they, too, were predetermined at the moment of conception?
What if Sardis holds the same encoded genes that gave him the impetus to carry out actions beyond most people’s comprehension? Could Sardis have a taste and a talent for mutilation, like him? Was the dream a warning, even worse, a premonition, perhaps?
“Thank you for coming into the school on such short notice: Your daughter just ate another child’s finger.”
Try explaining that one, why don’t you?
“Well, ever so sorry about that. She really didn’t mean to. She has a predisposition, you see, due to uncontrollable genetic impulses. It runs in the family, not my family, you understand. She’s adopted, you see. Maybe her diet contributed a little as well; we should have done more about that.”
Okay, stop it. Stop it, she warned herself. Her nails need a close eye, give them a good clipping when they grow a bit more, become more obvious. She can’t wear those mittens forever. And her teeth, what to do about those? They’ll fall out at five or six and she’ll have new ones, normal teeth. Can we wait that long?
“Enough already, take a break, missy.”
Suzanne finally exhausted the battery to her runaway mind and the pressure in her head began to settle. She knew it wasn’t as simple as that, and besides, she could just as easily have her mother’s genes. The pressure and dread almost disappeared when she considered the positives and life experience played a role, too.
Sardis was born with a clean slate, her mind a blank canvas, and therefore she could be taught to develop and behave in certain ways. Ways conducive to Suzanne’s moralistic and behavioural way of thinking, teach right from wrong, nurture her to be respectful and gracious to others, and under no circumstances to bite the finger off any child. Nature verses nurture they called it, and nature wasn’t getting anywhere near her daughter.
The desire to stop her exceptional diet felt paramount. It was likely to take some time, and then the red bags would be gone, and the tank, and the stink. It all had to go.
An aftershock of anxiety trembled over her when she sat up in the bed and knew she would worry. But she would also do everything within her power to ensure Sardis turned out nothing like him. Like her biological father.
39:
“Whoops-a-daisy.”
Tony received the photographs from Hunt on his phone earlier that morning.
Hunt was now in Tony’s office and had brought it with him to gather Tony’s thoughts. An encyclopaedia from the shelf marked with the letter D on the spine sat on the desk, along with handwritten notes Tony had taken. Hunt also recognised a copy of the letter sent to Ms Dooley and absently shook his head.
“It was addressed to me and sent to the station. It came in a standard envelope and this is what was inside,” Hunt said. “We’ve cleared it for prints, nothing, no surprises there, but it is from him.” Hunt handed a small envelope over the desk to Tony.
Tony recognised it as a seed card, often attached to gifts of flowers or bottles of vino to give messages of thanks or love, though he suspected few were received with opaque stains of blood on the envelope.
“Whose blood?”
“Tanya’s.”
Tony opened the generic envelope and took out a handmade card. The detail was more noticeable than what was depicted on the photographs. The front cover showed a bright yellow background with a darker shade to border. In the centre of the card sat a flower of delicately placed white paper petals that overlapped and a golden centre of tiny disk flowers made of carefully placed dots of yellow paper. Above the flower were the handwritten words:
Whoops-a-Upsy-
Tony understood the connotation. He opened the card and read the familiar five neatly written lines.
I am he, you won’t find me.
For I am invisible, strong, and cunning.
Reach you might, with all you’re might.
I am he, you won’t find me.
The Ice Scream Man, “he, he, he.”
Hunt waited for Tony to finish reading the lines and gave his opinion. “Now he feels the need to taunt us further. And he’s enjoying the nick name, The Ice Scream Man; the sick prick with the smiley fucking face. He’s creating a journalist’s fucking dream; what flavour will you be when I come for you? The public are going to shit themselves when they learn the details, and they will at some point,” he said with disgust.
“Yep, this is definitely meant to taunt,” Tony said, keeping his eyes on the card. “Whoops-a-Upsy-Daisy is his attempt at sarcasm. It’s an expression of surprise or dismay, specifically upon discovering one’s own error, and of course we know this was no mistake. “He’s also telling us cynical words of encouragement when referring to upsy-daisy, believing we are so inferior that he will never be caught.” He looked down at his notes. “Upsy-daisy is a variant of up-a-daisy, which dates to the early seventeen-hundreds, as an encouragement to a child who has fallen, to stand up, or as an exclamation upon lifting a child.” Tony looked back at Hunt. “It’s basically a nonsense phrase, presumably intended to amuse the little ones and take their mind off any pain they might have experienced, a cut hand or grazed knee, for example.”
“And we’re the little ones who need the encouragement?”
“Precisely. He wants us to know that he is watching us closely and keeping us informed of what is happening. The centre of the daisy is a collection of numerous tiny flowers which is often referred to as the eye. The daisy is not some random flower he chose because it’s easy to reproduce on a card. Everything he does has meaning and that includes what’s written inside, and it’s not just to do with confirming his pseudonym.”
Tony placed the open card and the letter sent to Ms Dooley side by side. Spread open on the table, looking over it again pressed heavily on his heart and mind. The agony of the reading experience would have paralysed Ms Dooley with a fear that must have turned her insides to liquid. She would have known it was from him, craving to provoke her anxiety and prolong his pleasure. He could smell his elation waft off the page. He could see him reading the sheet of paper in his hands, correcting it, re-writing it, reading it again and smiling when he eventually produced what now lay out before him. He could see him laughing to himself while he thought about her reaction to what he had written. It would please him to know the letter had the desired effect. How proud he must feel then to learn that she had taken her own life and ended Helen’s suffering. Now he would believe he had Helen all to himself. He managed to kill an entire family without ever setting foot inside the house. Oh, how very proud he must feel. The Thirteenth Zodiac, indeed, a work in progress, Tony thought and made an involuntary sigh when he checked over
the seed card, as if to be sure.
“Ifrit,” Tony said.
“Ifrit?” Hunt repeated.
“The first letter of each line I. F. R. I. T. It’s a name similar to a jinn, or genie. The three are almost indistinguishable from each other. Look, he uses it here, too.” Tony read a few lines from the letter: “’I have already told the police who I am, if they can figure it out, twice now, in fact.’ And then he ends with, ‘I finish respectfully in that.’ I. F. R. I. T.” Tony flipped the page over on his note pad. “Ifrit is a supernatural creature from Arabic and Islamic cultures. They’re supposed to be spirits below the level of angels and devils, noted for their strength and cunning. In early folklore, the Ifrit forms from the blood of a murder victim.”
“So he eats his victims to become them?” Hunt asked.
“He takes ‘the best part of them,’ adding to his cunning and strength. As he says in the letter he sent to Kate Dooley, Helen was with him, the best part of her. They are also said to have the power to assume animal form, and this brings us back to his rationale for the werewolf. The werewolf worked for him on many levels. The jinn also delights in punishing humans for any harm done to them, intentionally or unintentionally. The savagery with which he mutilates women, particularly their genitals, suggests a female close to him did him harm and most likely this included sexual abuse. Again, there will be evidence in his childhood.”
“And the good news is, if any?” Hunt asked with some sarcasm.
“The only good news is that we now have a rough idea of his timeline, eight months, a year, possibly more depending on the sophistication of his next fantasy. He takes his time; everything is maliciously planned and he enjoys the process. That gives us time to catch him.”
The Ice Scream Man Page 28