Dreams and Reality Set 3: Cannibal Dreams and Butchered Dreams

by Hadena James

  “But he did not die,” I pointed out.

  “No, like his brothers, he turned out to be a survivor. They all came back from the war a little off, but I understand that was common. Patterson and Bernard both served in companies that liberated a few concentration camps. The horrors they saw. Patterson wouldn’t talk about it, Bernard eventually did though.”

  “You’ve been in contact with all your brothers?” I asked.

  “Until their deaths, yes. For a time, I even stayed in contact with Patterson, but after the incident with Lila, the communications stopped. I figured he had gone off into the woods and killed himself. I was surprised to find out he didn’t. I think my brothers knew this though.”

  “You think your brothers knew?” Rollins asked.

  “Fine, I know they did. Patterson may be a killer, but he isn’t the only one. I’m not excusing what he’s done, I just know that under the circumstances, it’s more surprising the rest of us weren’t serial killers.”

  “Are you talking about Nina?” I asked.

  “No, Bernard killed our parents.” Virgil sighed and took a drink of a glass of tea. His hands shook just a little. “He came home on leave for some reason, probably mental health and realized our parents were Nazi sympathizers. That didn’t sit well with him. They argued and Bernard discovered that our father was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He lost it. After what he had seen in Europe, he couldn’t believe his parents were like that. So, he killed them. You can call it a mercy killing if you want. It saved Nina. It might have saved Patterson if it had been done a few years earlier. If Bernard hadn’t killed them, someone would have eventually. Our father was a brutal son of a bitch. During The Depression, Fritz had something to say about our diet and our father took him out to the barn and nearly beat him to death. After that, we never spoke about our food source again. We had a sister named Abigail. She got sick when she was a year old, the doctors were slow to make a diagnosis, so he threw her off the second floor landing. She died. He said it was to keep the rest of us from getting it. There was also another brother, one before Chub was born, that he killed because the boy was slow. Since our mother gave birth at home, with the help of relatives, most of us weren’t even registered as being born until we were a few years old. Back in those days, before the government decided to track us, less records were kept.”

  “Who was the oldest?” I asked.

  “Of those that survived or everyone?” Virgil asked.

  “Everyone,” I frowned.

  “Bernard, the slow boy, Chub, another boy, me, Abigail, Abigail’s twin who died at birth, Patterson, Gertrude and Nina, also twins, and another baby, but that baby died in the womb and mom had to have a hysterectomy afterwards.”

  “When was Bernard really born?” I asked.

  “During The Spanish Flu outbreak. However, his birth certificate was switched with the boy our father killed, so it looked like he was born in 1920. He was 20 when he enlisted, but his birth certificate said he was 18. Chub was born in 1921. I was born in 1923. Patterson in 1926. The twins in 1929.”

  “I thought Patterson was eighty-six.” Rollins stated.

  “That depends on who you ask,” Virgil answered. “He was born in 1926, but his birth certificate says 1928. Our father couldn’t keep track of time and didn’t register us until it was time for us to start school. He got the months, days and years wrong on all of us. You have to remember, Columbia might have been a city, but Hoop-Up was twelve miles from it. We didn’t own a car until after The Depression, the only one that did was one of my dad’s brothers. He took care of the stuff that had to be done in town. My father didn’t even like coming to Columbia. Hoop-Up didn’t have a registrar, occasionally someone came out to do the census, but that was it. It was still rural in the 1920’s and 1930’s.”

  “So Patterson is really eighty-eight.” I shook my head.

  “Yes,” Virgil answered. “My brother Fritz started using Chub when World War II broke out, because Fritz was a Germanic name. You know, there was another reason for Bernard to kill our parents. During The Depression, dad made Patterson do a lot of the killings. Bernard didn’t like that. He ignored the fact that we were eating people, but he didn’t like our father using Patterson as the killer. Bernard and he went at it, each landing blows. Our mother stepped in and Bernard accidentally hit her. She pulled a gun on him, actually shot him in the arm, and then dug the bullet out herself. Dad stuck a wooden stake through it, making sure it hurt as much as possible and told Bernard if he ever lashed out against either of them again, he’d kill him.”

  “If your father was a killer why use Patterson?” Malachi asked.

  “Because if they’d been caught, they wouldn’t have given Patterson the death penalty because he was so young.” Virgil answered.

  “Why stay gone so long?” I asked.

  “Gertrude was a horrible child and grew up to be a horrible woman. She may not be directly responsible for anyone’s death, but she contributed to more than a few murders. She’s manipulative in ways you’d never understand.” Virgil answered. “That woman is about the most vile, evil bitch on the planet. Satan himself is more merciful.”

  I stared at the man proclaiming to be my uncle for a long time without saying a word. He didn’t look a day over sixty. He was physically fit with a slight limp. If he wasn’t a Clachan, I’d eat my hat. Exactly what Clachan was the part I couldn’t figure out. He wasn’t Patterson. Patterson didn’t have a limp or liver spots or the scar that I could see on this man’s face. My mother swore he wasn’t Virgil, but did she really know? Virgil had disappeared long before my mother married into the family. I’d gone to the funerals of Bernard and Chub, while I wasn’t close with Bernard, I did know him well enough to know that it had been his corpse in his coffin. He had a slight accent that reminded me of the west coast.

  “Ok, I think we’re done,” I stood up. “It was a pleasure to meet you Virgil. Good to see you again, Carl.”

  We walked out with something nagging at me. Something that gave me pause because I still couldn’t figure out what it was. I turned back and looked at Carl one last time before getting in the SUV. He looked like Chub, slimmer, but definitely a resemblance. As I climbed into the backseat, I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. He’d said I looked like Patterson.

  “Malachi?” I asked.

  “What?” He turned in the seat.

  “Do I look like my mom or my dad?”

  “Mostly like your dad. Your sister looked like your mom. Eric and you though look like Clachans.”

  “What about Nyleena?”

  “Nyleena looks like your mom.”

  “What would happen if we replaced Patterson’s nose and ears with ears more like mine?”

  “It would look odd. Maybe if we used your dad’s features or Eric’s, but not yours.”

  “Why not mine? Virgil said I looked like Patterson.”

  “And you might, to some degree, but your features are more feminine. Your ears are smaller, your nose has been broken a lot, and you’ve developed a small droop in your left eye from nerve damage. The nose is the only thing noticeable,” Malachi added quickly. “The eye thing is only perceptible when you’ve known you as long as I have.”

  “My memories of my dad are fuzzy. I remember Uncle Chub better, but all I can say is that he sort of looks like Virgil in my memory.”

  “Bernard, Chub, Virgil, they all looked similar, except the eyes. Bernard had hazel eyes,” Malachi informed me.

  “Huh,” I sat back and stared out the window. I wanted to call my mom again, but I was pretty sure that without torturing her, she wasn’t going to give me the information I wanted. I couldn’t torture my mother. Even I had lines that couldn’t be crossed.

  Sixteen

  Rollins was tucked into his bed, tired from the day. His snoring penetrated the flimsy walls of my motel room. Malachi was watching TV. It had taken twenty minutes for me to find the show on my own TV, Monsters and Mysteries in America
. I’d turned it off when I discovered the episode was covering the Dogmen of Michigan, the Beast of Bray Road and the wendigo. Normally, I would be curious by exactly this sort of thing, but after hearing Gabriel’s story, it bothered me.

  Besides, I had other things on my mind. Something about my Great Uncle Virgil had just been off. I had yet to figure out exactly what it was. I’d tried distraction, thinking if I took my mind off of it, it would come to me, but it hadn’t. So, now I stared at the ceiling, tucked under my own covers, snug in a pair of pajamas, with my house shoes still on and my hair still pulled up from the day. Despite being in bed, I wasn’t ready to sleep. My mind was still struggling over Virgil’s sudden reappearance.

  My phone told me the time. It was after midnight. I dialed my mother anyway. She answered.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “I need to know why this cannot be Virgil Clachan.”

  “Aislinn,” my mother sighed. “Because Nina told me that Virgil had been killed by his father.”

  “That’s what Virgil told me too.” I sighed. “After Gertrude accused him of molesting her.”

  “Gertrude supposedly made those claims against all the boys. Nina said it was because Virgil was still trying to practice cannibalism after The Depression ended.”

  “Thanks mom, go back to bed.”

  I hung up. Virgil had still been practicing cannibalism. What the hell was wrong with my family? Serial killing cannibals seemed to be a common event, with the exception of Patterson. Patterson was so scarred from the experience that he couldn’t butcher an animal, let alone eat one. How that fit in with him being a serial killer was still in limbo, the two seemed contradictory. Malachi was right, my family was the poster child for monsters in the making.

  Was that it? Was it that simple? Was Virgil a psychopath and that was why he set off alarm bells? It definitely was part of it. However, I’d spent most of my life in the company of a psychopath. That shouldn’t have been enough.

  I kept trying to convince my overactive imagination that it was because he’d just reappeared after all this bad stuff had happened in the family. That was the most logical part of the entire thing though. I had rushed to Nyleena’s side. With Gertrude in custody, Nina dead, and Patterson a wanted man, he was the only one of his generation left. Also, he’d been donating money to the trust fund for years.

  It was one more thing that ruled out Patterson. Patterson hadn’t been in California in the 1940’s. He hadn’t gone on the run until a decade later.

  My memory replayed the meeting. Carl and Virgil’s faces were both gone, my memory unable or unwilling to remember them. They were faceless shadows of men in my mind.

  There it was, just a little thing. He hadn’t offered to shake hands with Malachi or myself, yet he had shaken hands with Rollins. Malachi and I rarely shook hands. I was a bit of a germophobe and Malachi was certain anyone who wanted to shake his hand was just looking for excuse to have him extend his arm so they could insert a knife between his ribs. To anyone else, this might seem paranoid, to me, it made perfect sense. However, in our society, a handshake had significance. To ignore the handshake was not just impolite, it was downright unacceptable.

  Malachi’s TV went off. Footsteps moved across his room. Obviously, being on the FBI’s budget wasn’t as good as being on the US Marshals’ budget. The motel was a dump. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out it rented by the hour. I’d heard rumors about it during my childhood.

  There was a knock on my door. I pulled my gun and went to the door. Opening the door with gusto was a specialty of mine. My mind conjured up horror images when I considered looking through the peephole; like someone stabbing me in the eye or firing a bullet into my brain. Neither of these were acceptable scenarios in my opinion, so I never looked through them.

  Malachi stood in front of it. His body obscuring the view behind him. I ushered him into the room.

  “You should be sleeping,” he told me.

  “So should you. What’s up?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow, we’re moving to a different hotel. This place is horrid. I can’t imagine what a forensics team would find if they came in with luminal and a black light.”

  “I have some Lysol with me. It stinks, but I do have some.”

  “Not everyone’s nose is as a good as yours.”

  “Is that why you don’t enjoy food like I do?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, one last question,” I began moving around, grabbing my bag and digging out the Lysol. “What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

  “What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know.” Malachi frowned. “I see a reflection. I know it’s me, but I don’t feel connected to it.”

  “Me either. Sometimes I look at it, confused for a few moments, thinking that maybe it’s not a reflection, but someone looking back at me from inside the mirror. Do you have trouble with dates?”

  “Like romantic dates or time?”

  “Time,” I clarified.

  “Yes. I have alarms set to remind me of important things like holidays and birthdays. I can’t even tell you what today is.”

  “Virgil or the man pretending to be Virgil, I have not made up my mind about that yet, said that my great-grandfather had trouble with dates.”

  “From that you think he’s a psychopath?”

  “No, it’s just another piece of the puzzle. He obviously had rage issues. The inability to keep track of time adds strength to the theory. How many mentally deranged humans do you think my family could create?”

  “Dozens. Patterson, Virgil, and Gertrude were probably more nurture than nature, but Ian wasn’t. Your dad wasn’t. You were, to some degree. Some of your cousins have the hallmarks of having anti-social personality disorder. Is that what’s keeping you awake?”

  “No, Motel Hell is keeping me awake. I do not feel secure here.”

  “Do you want to bunk with me or vice-versa?”

  “Nope,” I answered. “I think I feel safer alone.”

  “Suit yourself,” Malachi looked at me. “How many sets of pajamas do you actually have?”

  “I do not know, they take up three drawers in my dresser.” I answered, closing the door on him. Malachi’s interest in my pajamas wasn’t all that unsettling. He slept nude, I imagined he didn’t understand sleeping in pajamas.

  With my room empty, I went back to thinking about Virgil. This was going to be a stumbling block for me. I needed to know what he knew about Patterson. If Virgil could give us some insight, it might help us find my grandfather. Just thinking about the word “grandfather” made me feel weird. Here I was, knee deep in blood and all because of my own grandfather. A grandfather who had become a stalker in order to be close to me. In some ways, his humanity was showing through that. I believed him about Nyleena, I believed he had not meant to shoot her in the face. This didn’t mean I wasn’t going to rough him up when putting him in a car, but it did mean I wouldn’t kill him. Besides, Malachi wouldn’t let me kill him anyway.

  Of course, I could use the super-Taser to put him out of commission for a few moments. It wouldn’t take but a few moments. After I thought that, I had to reconsider it. Patterson was strong. He’d taken out a sniper. He’d literally beat the man to death. It might take both Malachi and me to subdue him, and that would be nightmarish.

  There was only one thing I could do; take a nice hot shower. Few things could beat a hot shower and it was a great place to solve riddles. The noises from Malachi’s room had stopped. Like Lucas, he could instantly fall asleep and instantly become awake. I envied that ability. It was rare that I spent less than two hours falling asleep. Showers occasionally helped, but normally if I was going to fall asleep fast, it required an injury. I hadn’t been seriously injured in months. As a result, I hadn’t been sleeping well. For the last unknown number of days, I wasn’t sure I was sleeping at all.

  The shower might have lasted five m
inutes. The water never got hot. I wrapped up in a towel and flipped on the hair dryer. The blast of hot air felt good on my chilled skin. I was prone to cold-induced pain. Something about all the injuries creating nerve damage, not in my skin, but in my brain. As a result, it liked to think cold sensations were actually physical pain. Sticking my hand in a cooler was a form of torture.

  Flipping my hair forward, I dried the underside first. Cold induced pain could even be triggered by cold droplets of water. I didn’t know whether to classify my hair as long or short. It went below my shoulders but didn’t touch the small of my back. It did hold a lot of water and it would cascade in rivulets before beginning to drip down my flesh. It was these that I hoped to prevent with the hair dryer.

  With my hair mostly dry and my pajamas back on my body, I exited the bathroom. Instantly, I knew something was wrong. I hadn’t turned off the lights, but someone had. I reached for a gun and realized I’d left them on the table. I opened my mouth to scream and felt a jolt of pain run through me. My body went rigid. My muscles seized up. Maybe I didn’t like my new Taser all that much after all.

  Seventeen

  How many serial killers could exist in a town of 100,000 people? I was beginning to think it was a lot more than anyone had ever expected. Less than two weeks ago, we had taken one off the grid, putting him in federal custody. Patterson Clachan had claimed a second. Now, I was positive I was in the grasp of a third.

  There were several clues. I awoke in a basement, chained to an antique dental chair. There were copious amounts of dried blood on the cement floor. There were several jars of fingers in various states of decay. The place had a strong smell of death and I was guessing the floor was covered in more than just blood. I didn’t think about what was in the chair, I’d throw up. This killer wasn’t huge on hygiene. However, the final clue was the guy sitting in front of me in a folding chair. He clapped when he saw that I was awake.