Dreams and Reality Set 3: Cannibal Dreams and Butchered Dreams

by Hadena James

  “And the MO?” Gabriel asked.

  “Michael and I were keeping it secret. If Aislinn had found it in the database, she would have known her grandfather was The Butcher. The powers that be are in the dark about it, as well. There are things about our jobs that they neither want nor need to know. With Aislinn, it was a matter of protection, she questions her humanity enough without having to wonder how many killers her family has produced. His favorite targets are pedophiles. He really doesn’t like pedophiles.”

  “Tennyson couldn’t abuse you sexually, so he did it physically.” Lucas said slowly.

  “Yes,” Malachi answered. “Aislinn doesn’t need to know that, either.”

  “Aislinn doesn’t like secrets,” Lucas said. “With good reason.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Malachi agreed. “And she’s about to get more answers than she ever wanted.”

  “Why?” Xavier asked.

  “Patterson Clachan is about to make his final stand,” Lucas looked at Xavier. “He told me he had a list, when he finishes the list, he’ll let Malachi take him into custody. He won’t turn himself into us, he’s afraid of what Aislinn will do. Nyleena was an accident, but one that Aislinn is going to have trouble ignoring, even when Nyleena wakes up.”

  “Do we know any of his other targets?” Malachi asked.

  “I think we can safely add Joe Clachan, August Clachan, and Gertrude Clachan to the list. Can you think of anyone else that has slighted Aislinn or her family?”

  “That’s a long list considering what Patterson sees as a slight. You can add John Bryan.” Malachi looked at them. “As a matter of fact, with the exception of Nyleena, Ace’s mom and her immediate family, and us, I’d say everyone is a potential target.”

  “Patterson felt guilty for shooting Nyleena in the face like he did. He said he didn’t mean to do it,” Lucas told everyone. “He says it was supposed to be a through-and-through to her shoulder. She was going to bleed, maybe have a broken collar bone, nothing more, but she turned and Patterson fired into her face by accident. He specifically shot Nyleena with a .22 though and Nina with a .9mm. His intentions were obviously different.”

  “A psychopath with a conscience.” Gabriel sat back down.

  “It gets worse,” Malachi told him. “Patterson doesn’t really have a conscience like you do, he has one like Aislinn does. It’s fake, completely created by Nina and Lila. He feels bad about Nyleena because he knows he is supposed to, because Nina and Lila would have told him to feel bad about it. Now, they’re both dead and he’s wounded, because he’s lost his connection with Ace and Nyleena.”

  “Wounded?” Lucas asked.

  “If Aislinn were ripped out of my life, I would suffer some serious side effects. He killed Lila, sure, but not because he wanted to, I think he wanted to kill Gertrude, but Lila was there. That’s why he disappeared. It wasn’t fear of going to jail, it was fear of never getting revenge on Gertrude. Nina always stopped him. Nina’s gone. In a perfect world, Aislinn and Nyleena would fill the void, but it isn’t a perfect world and with the loss of those women, so goes his grip on whatever control he had.”

  “So, he didn’t just kill his sister, he killed his touchstone,” Lucas said.

  “Yes,” Malachi answered. “He wouldn’t have killed her if she hadn’t made him promise to do it.”

  “Psychopaths need contact with their touchstones,” Lucas said.

  “No, they don’t. They just need to know they are around if they need them. I don’t have to talk to Ace. I can hear her voice in my head. Ace hears Nyleena’s. Ace requires more contact than I do, because I am not trying to be a sociopath. I just need to know that Aislinn Cain is alive for me to keep some of the darker parts in check.”

  “Like the urge to kill,” Xavier said.

  “I’m not a killer,” Malachi answered. “Death is interesting, the power of life and death is a thrill, and I have no problems making the decision, but that isn’t what my psychopathic urges are about.”

  “You’re a sadist,” Lucas said.

  “I don’t torture people because Ace tells me it’s wrong, even if they want it.” Malachi admitted. “Pain is my world. Death would be accidental in that situation. And before you go over thinking that statement, mixing pain and pleasure does not always mean sex. Sometimes, it’s about control and feeling invincible.”

  “You’re a true sadist, not a sexual sadist,” Lucas gave a soft whistle. “That is truly rare.”

  “You would have made a great inquisitor,” Gabriel said.

  “I would have been one of the best,” Malachi answered.

  Butchered Dreams

  Hadena James

  Copyright

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.

  Copyright © Hadena James 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Blood

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Friends

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Missing

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Transporter

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Watching

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Mazes

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Patterson Clachan sat in his car. The motor had been turned off for over an hour and the cold was seeping into the vehicle. His mind wasn’t thinking about the cold seeping into his bones, it was concentrating on his newfangled phone. Someone in the retirement community had suggested he get a new smartphone. Always intrigued by shiny new gadgets, he’d immediately gone to the nearest cell phone store and bought one. The kid that sold it to him had said it was the top of the line.

  The kid was probably right, but Patterson had figured out everything except how to make a phone call. And a phone call was what he really wanted to make at the moment. It was a few minutes after seven in the morning and he needed to check on the condition of Nyleena.

  Despite shooting her in the face, for which he was indeed sorry, he felt a compulsion to check on her. Besides, Aislinn was taking his very brief calls to update him. He found this strange and didn’t know if she was using the calls as a way to plot against him or allow him some peace of mind. Either way, the contact was not unwelcome.

  After several more minutes, Patterson realized he did not want to make a call to Aislinn using this phone, he had a special burner phone that he kept replacing to talk to her on. He put the fancy gadget on the seat next to him.

  A tall black man got out of his car and began walking towards the house. The phone call would have to wait. Patterson watched him with interest. His gait was affected by a slight limp, so slight, you wouldn’t have noticed it if you weren’t paying attention.

  Patterson had done his research. James Okafor had been a soldier in The Congo Wars. He was positive he’d been one of the men involved in the Rwandan Genocide. He’d seen a lot of death in his world. It had started during The Great Depression and continued to present day. There were some he couldn’t abide; pedophiles and men convinced that genocide was the solution were at the top of
the list. He’d heard “I was only following orders” so much that, the very thought of it made him ill.

  On the other side, Patterson understood the man’s rage. He’d come to the US with his wife and daughter. His daughter had died at a county fair, when the announcer’s box collapsed while she sang The Star Spangled Banner. She had been the runner-up to the fair queen. If she had been the queen, she wouldn’t have been in the box. It was a tragic accident, but for a man on the edge, Patterson knew why he killed the queens.

  That didn’t excuse him from trying to shoot down Aislinn’s helicopter as she was transported to the hospital. Nor did it excuse him from firing into the restaurant, nearly killing Aislinn and managing to kill Michael.

  While Patterson really liked to slice people open, he thought the punishment should fit the crime. In this case, slicing open his victim seemed too easy. This man was killing teenage girls who had won pageants, and federal agents eating dinner.

  He waited for the lights to go out in the house. While he waited, he picked up the fancy phone again. He flipped through the photo album until he found the picture he wanted; Donnelly, Myrna, Eric, Isabella, and Aislinn were in it. They were smiling. Aislinn was about six years old. It was the last thing that Donnelly, his son, had ever given him. He’d scanned it in a few years earlier so that he could carry it around with him.

  His finger touched the face of his dead son and he dug out the burner phone.

  “She’s still alive,” Aislinn answered without a hello.

  “That’s good, she’s a fighter,” Patterson answered. “How are you?”

  “Not willing to talk to you,” Aislinn’s voice was stoic. Not a quiver, not a tremble, nothing to indicate her emotions.

  “Aislinn, you do know that I meant to shoot her in her shoulder, not her face.” Patterson pleaded his case again.

  “You say that like it makes it better. You shot her. You shot your own granddaughter. I get your sister, I found her note, but Nyleena did not ask you to shoot her.” Aislinn hung up.

  Patterson sighed as he put the phone away. He’d leave it here for the Marshals or FBI to find. The light went off in the bedroom and Patterson got out of the car. He’d already been in the house several times and he had a way in. He went to the backdoor and inserted the key he’d lifted from James at the bar a few weeks earlier.

  He carried the cane into the house, instead of walking with it as was his usual custom. The stick was made of gidgee wood from Australia, one of the hardest woods in the world. It was coated to make it easy to clean. The handle was ornately molded carbon steel with a flattened end. While the cane was fully functional as a cane, it worked even better as a club.

  Patterson crept into James bedroom. The man was already asleep. Patterson tried not to become agitated. He had rules. Killing an innocent while they slept was about mercy, their deaths were quick and painless, but evil deserved to know it was going to die. Those rules were why Nyleena had been shot in the face. He couldn’t shoot her in the back, no matter how much easier it would have been for her. When she’d turned, he’d just fired, accidentally aiming too high.

  “What the fu...” James rolled over, reaching for something. Patterson flipped on the light and interrupted his profanity.

  “Now, now, we’ll have none of that,” Patterson said to him. “I’ve been watching you for a while James. You seem like a decent enough fellow, aside from killing teen pageant queens and computer geeks working for the US Marshals.”

  “Get out of my house,” James growled.

  “I would, but I wasn’t done. As I said, you seem like a decent enough fellow, but I have a feeling you aren’t. Even without killing the pageant queens, I think you are probably a monster. I’ve been doing my homework and you served as a soldier during the genocide in Rwanda. So, I checked and you are indeed a Hutu and not a Tutsi. See, I considered letting this minor detail slide, but the more I thought about, the more I realized I couldn’t. This is a problem for you.”

  “I’ll give you one more warning because you’re an old man,” James sat up, he held a long knife in his hands, no doubt pulled from under a pillow. “Get out.”

  “Now, now,” Patterson said, “there will be plenty of time for knife fights later. At the moment, I’m just interested in talking. The killing comes a little later.”

  “The only one that’s going to die is you,” James growled again, his muscles tensing. Patterson watched all this and timed his swing perfectly. The knife skittered across the floor as several bones in James’ hand broke. James continued forward, weaponless, and Patterson hit him in the thigh with the heavy cane. James fell to the floor.

  “I suppose you would just like to get to the killing,” Patterson tutted. “That’s the problem with modern killers, they never want to talk. What ever happened to the days of civilized conversation? You must have questions about who I am and how I know about the Marshal and the pageant queens or your service in the Congo. Or how about the reason I intend to kill you? That should be of interest at the very least.” Patterson walked around James, who was still sprawled on the floor. “No? Nothing?” Patterson frowned.

  “Fine, I’ll play along,” James was moving now. He got to his feet. Unlike most people, he didn’t cradle his broken hand or rub at his sore thigh. He stood tall and acted like neither bothered him. Patterson’s frown relaxed, he was going to enjoy this. “Why are you going to kill me?”

  “Well, that depends. Do you want the honest reason or do you want some bullshit story that will make your death have more meaning?” Patterson asked.

  “Honesty,” James said.

  “Because I’m a killer,” Patterson answered. “Like you, I enjoy the hunt, I enjoy the pain, the blood, the screaming and crying and begging. Unlike you, I’m old and I’ve found random killing just doesn’t interest me anymore. It used to, don’t get me wrong. There was nothing I enjoyed more than slicing up a Nazi or two, before returning to the front lines with a gun and shooting them. Back then, Nazis were a dime a dozen and expendable. After all, they were evil and who was going to miss a few? When I came back to the States, after the war, I found killing didn’t have the same appeal. So, I stopped for a long time, had a family, a beautiful wife with a brilliant mind and strong will, then I lost all those and killing felt great again. Surprising how that happens.” Patterson stepped to the side as James rushed him, knocking the larger man with the cane on the back of his shoulder. “You should stop, you aren’t going to get hold of me. We will just continue to dance around until I decide I’m bored. Then the torture starts. The torture will last a long time, because I think you deserve it. If you’re lucky, you’ll die during the torture. If you aren’t, well, you would have my sympathy if I was capable of such a thing.”

  James showed his first weakness. His fingers found his bruised shoulder blade and touched it gently.

  “What did I do to you?” James asked.

  “Aside from try to shoot down a helicopter carrying my granddaughter? Not much. My granddaughter is an interesting person. She’s a killer too, but she controls the urges better. So, instead of being like you and me, she’s a US Marshal with the SCTU. You not only shot at her helicopter, but you killed a friend of hers at the restaurant while they ate dinner. That’s when I decided to kill you. Now, five months later, I’ve learned that you were involved in genocide and that, well, that just creates a bigger problem. My plan originally was to just kill you. Slice you open and pull out all your organs, let you die fairly quick, albeit painfully. But I just couldn’t fight off the images of my granddaughter at a funeral, crying of all things and you killing, raping, maiming innocent people just because they weren’t exactly like you and that made me change my mind. It made me realize that I was going to have to kill you slowly. So that is exactly what I intend to do.” Patterson swung the cane with a quickness that would have made a snake jealous. It connected with James’ collarbone. It snapped with an audible popping noise and James grabbed at it. With his attention on his collarb
one, Patterson swung again, gentler, hitting James in the head. The man fell to the floor.

  Patterson went to work. He heaved and shoved to move James to the bed. It took a few minutes to get the restraints in place, but once they were, Patterson took a break. James was still not moving. He’d have to hoist the larger man onto the bed. Another second and Patterson bent down, grabbing the taller man under the armpits, he lifted and James came off the floor as if he weighed no more than a small child. Once on the bed, Patterson put him into the restraints, then sat down to wait.

  James groaned. Patterson hit him in the leg with the cane, bringing a scream from the other man. He was wide awake now. The screaming would be a problem though. Patterson took something from his pocket and affixed it to James’ face. The sounds were instantly muffled. While Patterson liked the screams, he couldn’t have the neighbors alerted. James made strange noises through the gag. Patterson hit him again, bringing the cane down on a rib. The bone shattered under the blow.

  Patterson brought the cane down over and over again until blood began to soak into the bed. Several of the blows had broken the skin. Patterson smiled at his handiwork. James was still alive, although he was badly maimed. Several of the smaller bones had broken under the heavy head of the cane. But Patterson wasn’t done yet.