The Christmas Killer

by Jim Gallows

  ‘I can’t. I didn’t kill Fred. I should have, but I didn’t.’ His mother was pleading now.

  Jake knew she hadn’t killed him in the same way he knew that it was Fred Lumley’s blood on the blade.

  ‘Liar!’ Father Ken yelled. ‘Confess your gravest sin!’

  There was a scream, this one piercing.

  Jake could listen no longer. He turned the corner and took in the scene at a glance. They were in a basement about sixty feet long, with an arched stone roof. The stone floor was bare. Against one wall lay three tombs. Against the other wall were lumber, ladders and old paint pots. It was half storeroom, half catacomb. His mother was kneeling in the centre of the floor about twenty feet in front of Jake. Her head was trapped in the murderous head crusher.

  Her hands were raised in prayer, but Jake could see that they weren’t bound together with rope or leather or anything else. She was praying voluntarily.

  Jeanette’s face was ashen and was beginning to distort near the jaw line. Father Ken was standing above and behind her, his hands on the screw. He was in his white alb with a purple stole around his neck. Jake had a flash of a memory from his childhood: purple was the colour of penance.

  Father Ken seemed ready for another turn of the screw.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Jake, drawing his gun and aiming at the head of the priest.

  Father Ken looked up and nodded as he saw Jake. ‘The confessional is normally private,’ he said, ‘but I think, under the circumstances, we can allow you to stay and listen to the sin and then the absolution.’

  ‘Step away from her,’ Jake ordered.

  Father Ken had a determined look. ‘Well now, I think we have a problem,’ he said. He leaned forward deliberately, grasping the handle of the screw.

  Jake cocked the pistol and squinted down the barrel, lining up the shot he didn’t want to take unless he had to. ‘I’m giving you one chance, you sonofabitch. You really do not want to fuck with me today.’

  The evil priest kept his eyes on Jake’s mom. ‘If you shoot me, Detective, you might kill me. But it won’t save Jeanette, because the force of my body falling will turn this screw. I might die, but I will still win. If you want to save your mother, you will drop the gun and kick it across the floor to me.’

  Jake held his gun hand steady, then slowly brought his other hand up, settling his aim. He had a clear shot, even in the darkness, across the basement. He could take the priest out. But even as he thought it, he had to ask himself how tight was the screw already turned? How much more could his mother’s fragile skull take?

  ‘Be a sensible boy, and drop it,’ coaxed the priest.

  ‘Do as he says,’ said his mother. Her voice became a scream as Father Ken turned the screw. Only a little, but it was enough … ‘Please, Bruce!’

  His mother’s mistake drew Jake’s eyes briefly to her. She did not have her hands bound; why wasn’t she doing something to free herself? Why was she accepting this? It was like the priest had some kind of power over her. She had knelt willingly before his infernal machine and now was silently praying. He could see her lips moving with the words.

  Jake turned his gaze back to Father Ken, who was glaring at him with a look that seemed to be half-warning him to obey his command and half-desperate for him to justify using the crusher. Slowly Jake lowered his arm and, bending low, put the gun on the floor. He kept his eyes on the priest the whole time.

  Jake straightened. His body tingled with annoyance at himself – he had not followed a basic rule of training for hostage situations. Dismantle your weapon. Neutralize your opponent’s advantage as best you can.

  ‘Kick the gun over here,’ said the priest.

  Jake did as he was told, all his senses on alert, his muscles poised for one lunge. If the priest bent to pick up the loaded gun, he would have to take his hand off the screw … and if his hand was off the screw …

  ‘Relax, Jake,’ said Father Ken with a smile. He didn’t move for the gun. Jake tried not to let his disappointment, his rising panic, show. ‘There are things you need to hear. Isn’t that right, Melanie?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Jake’s mother.

  ‘Speak up. I don’t think he heard you,’ said the priest.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Melanie?’ whispered Jake.

  Father Ken’s lips curled in a grim arrogant smile. ‘And you seemed like such a close family …’ He loomed over Jake’s mother. ‘The floor is yours … Melanie.’

  Jake’s mother turned her eyes as far as they would go, so that she could look at Jake. ‘My name is Melanie. Melanie Sands. I was a patient at the Chase Asylum.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the priest encouragingly. ‘Go on.’

  There was a haunted expression on Jake’s mom’s face, an expression that was caused by more than the pressure on her skull.

  ‘I knew about Fred Lumley,’ she whispered. ‘We all knew. He was abusing the children. And we did nothing about it. Forgive me, Father.’ Her voice was low. Jake strained to hear.

  ‘There’s more,’ urged the priest. ‘There’s more sin to be confessed, Melanie.’

  ‘Some of the children disappeared. And we knew he had killed them. But we were too scared of him to do anything about it.’ Tears were streaming down her cheeks now, and her voice was strangled – as though she was forcing the confession physically out of her mouth.

  ‘He killed them?’ asked Jake, hearing the pain in his own voice echo back at him, as though the walls of the crypt were rejecting him, rejecting his pain. As well they should – his biological father was a child abuser and a murderer.

  ‘Oh yes, he killed them, all right,’ said Father Ken. ‘Daddy was an evil man, Jake.’

  Jake was stunned. He’d got the answer to a question he’d been asking his whole life, and was now wishing he hadn’t.

  ‘I will never forgive myself … for not doing anything …’ said Jeanette. She looked hard at Jake. ‘I tried to stop him. I tried to help you. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough.’

  Jake’s words were hoarse, barely audible. ‘What are you talking about, Mom?’

  ‘I couldn’t keep him away from you,’ she said, face crumpling and her voice collapsing to a wail. ‘He said you were his son and he could do what he wanted …’

  Jake felt his stomach lurch like he had gone over the top of a roller coaster. His mind pulsed with vague flashes of memory, and he tried to push them aside.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bruce,’ said his mother. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Mom …’ Jake said, but he couldn’t finish the sentence. The words were choking him. The memories were flooding back now, memories of a young boy and a man who scared him. Jake had thought the shadowy spectre in his dreams was a figment of his imagination, the product of a naturally skewed and twisted mind. The kind of mind that made him a unique and effective cop. But now he knew – his mind was twisted because he had inherited that trait.

  And there was something else he knew, another explanation for why he had turned out the way he had. Why he had the ability to anticipate criminal behaviour, second-guess the moves of psychopaths.

  How else could he have turned out after having grown up inside Chase Asylum?

  88

  Sunday, 12.45 p.m.

  ‘I’m so sorry, dear, that I did nothing to stop it,’ said his mother.

  ‘But you did stop it,’ said Father Ken in triumph. ‘Confess to the warden’s murder, and I will absolve you of your sins before you meet your creator.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Jake’s mom cried. ‘I saw him beat Bruce, and I was paralysed and did nothing. I only wish I had had the courage to take his life, Father. I swear to you, I’m telling the truth on this. I was a patient, but I had privileges. I did some work in the office, and they gave me some spending money. I went down into the basement to give some documents to Mr Lumley. I heard a noise in the office, and I walked in …’

  Yes. Jake could remember it all now. He could finish his mother’s story for her
.

  I was looking down at the floor, trying to squeeze my mind out of my body and into a gap there under my feet. It would help me block out the pain of what my father was doing to me.

  My head was filled with rage, and also with shame. How could he hurt me so much?

  And then she walked in. She saw me in a position of complete humiliation. I wanted the gap between my feet to open up and let me drop away. I imagined it happening. But it didn’t. It never did.

  I was never so lucky.

  I was crying and in extreme pain. He had promised I would get used to it in time, but I never did. Through my pain, though, I now felt joy – hope. Melanie had caught him, and that had to mean that he would stop. Or at least lay off me for a while, and go after someone else. Melanie had bought me some time, even if it was only a little. I loved her so much at the moment. She seemed like the bravest, most heroic person in the world.

  But then Dad twisted around and shouted at her. He was in a rage because she had just barged in. She hadn’t knocked. He called her names, names I didn’t know the meaning of, but I knew they were bad words. I could tell because they made Melanie cry. And I hated my father even more.

  He said he would make her life a living hell. He said no one would take the word of a lunatic like her over that of a respected …

  ‘… medical man like him.’ Jake’s mom was telling the story while the scene played through Jake’s mind. ‘I tried to back out, but he followed me and pulled me back into his office. He held me against the table and pushed my legs apart …’

  Jake’s mom let that last statement hang in the air, the way Jake had seen abused women do in countless interviews. Nothing else needed to be said.

  Father Ken, however, did not feel that way. ‘He raped you,’ he said. ‘And that’s when you killed him. Confess, and it will be over.’

  I can see Dad’s body there on the floor, and all the blood. All the sticky blood, and it’s everywhere. It’s on my shirt and my shoes, and splattered on my face. On Melanie’s face too, and her clothes. There was so much blood. Who would have believed one man had so much of it inside him?

  Melanie was standing over the body with blood on her hands and was leafing through the phone book. She was picking up the office phone. I guessed she was scared. Then she was talking to someone, and I could hear what she was saying, but not what he was saying.

  ‘Father, he’s dead. You have to come. I don’t know what to do.’

  Then she turned to me and told me that it would all work out because the priest was a good man, and he would know what to do for the best.

  And finally Jake knew where he had met Father Ken Laurie before, had the explanation for why he could visualize the younger face on him. Father Ken had come when Melanie had called him. He was the kindly man who had come in and said that everything would be fine. It would all work out for the best because God had a plan that was bigger than them all.

  ‘You were there that day,’ Jake said to Father Ken.

  ‘We all were,’ he replied.

  Now Jake could remember it clearly.

  Father Ken had rushed down the stairs to the basement. He had surveyed the carnage and run to Melanie, who was sitting near the desk.

  ‘Is he dead?’ she asked.

  The priest nodded.

  ‘He was a bad man,’ she went on. ‘He was evil. You have to help me. What will I do? I have to get the boy out of here.’

  ‘For the sake of the boy, I’ll help you, Melanie,’ said Father Ken. ‘He deserved to die because of his sins.’

  Father Ken had put the body in a thick canvas sack he got from the maintenance room. And then he had found cleaning fluids and a bucket of water and instructed Melanie to get down on her knees and begin scrubbing.

  When the room was clean, he took the knife and put it in a small bag.

  ‘You need to get far away from here,’ he said to Melanie. He looked around the office and saw some papers on the desk. They were the employment papers of one of the nurses on the staff: Jeanette Austin.

  ‘Melanie Sands must disappear for ever. Take the boy with you. Pretend he is your son and you are a nurse called Jeanette Austin. God knows you’ve spent enough time here to know how to act like one. This deed has set you free.’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ she said.

  ‘Go now, while it’s quiet. I’ll handle the body,’ said Father Ken.

  He bundled them out of the building and pushed them gently in the direction of the gate.

  ‘Go as far away as you can,’ he said. ‘Bruce, this nice lady will look after you and take care of you now.’

  He had taken Melanie aside and whispered something in her ear, but Bruce had listened in, and he had heard what Father Ken said.

  ‘Melanie, I tell you that this is your penance. Raise that boy well, so that you may atone for the sins you have committed today.’

  Bruce knew then that he wouldn’t be living at the asylum any more.

  It was the first time in his life that he had ever felt safe.

  89

  Sunday, 1 p.m.

  Father Ken’s hand was still steady on the screw handle.

  ‘I have never stopped being grateful, Father. I raised Bruce like my own,’ said Jake’s mom, her words coming in pained gasps, short and sharp.

  ‘It wasn’t your right to kill Lumley,’ said Father Ken. ‘You are not the instrument of the Lord. You are still a murderess who would one day have to atone for your sins. You must confess before I send you to paradise.’

  ‘But, Father, I didn’t kill him.’

  And then the final memories came flooding back to Jake. All the pictures, the vague imaginings, the bad dreams, were beginning to make perfect sense.

  He was holding her against the table, and he was pushing between her legs. He had pulled her skirt up, had pulled his own trousers down. I knew what he was doing. I’d seen him do it to other girls and boys.

  He had also done it to me.

  Melanie was a nice lady. She had taken me into the woods one day and shown me a kingfisher by the river. And she had tried to come to my rescue tonight. I had to do something …

  There was a knife on the table. I picked it up. I only wanted him to stop. I hit him with the knife but it bounced off his back. He stopped what he was doing and turned around. He looked really angry and seemed to be taller and wider than ever before. He came at me. And I was frightened. I knew that look in his eyes. He came at me and grabbed for the knife, and I pushed it against him to stop him.

  This time it went in.

  My hand was wet with the blood.

  And then I hit him, again and again. And each time the knife went in, and my hand got wetter and wetter. He looked surprised when the knife first went in, and he stopped for a moment. Then he tried to take the knife from me, but I kept hitting him. And then he was weaker. The blood was coming out of him the same way I had seen water come out of a burst pipe in the shower room one time. His hands were no longer as strong, and I was able to hit him harder.

  He was on his knees, and then he fell on to his back. But I kept plunging the knife into him. I was enjoying it. He wouldn’t hurt me for a long time. Maybe never again.

  The knife was slippery with the blood, and I lost my grip. I cut myself, the blade giving me a scar that I could never explain …

  Until now.

  And then she was pulling at my shoulders. That’s why I stopped. And because my arm was tired and felt very heavy.

  He wasn’t moving. He was just lying there, his leg twisted under him where he had fallen. His eyes were staring up at the ceiling. The evil look was gone. There was blood on his face and on his arms. I could see a big gash on his cheek.

  I turned, and Melanie folded me into her arms.

  And I remember that I was smiling.

  90

  Sunday, 1.01 p.m.

  ‘Say it with me: O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins …’ Father Ken was chanting.


  Jeanette joined in: ‘… because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell …’

  They were both chanting it together: ‘… but most of all because they offend thee, my God …’

  Father Ken had a triumphant look on his face, and he was staring straight at Jake. Jake could see the priest’s shoulders tensing for the final turn of the screw at the end of the act of contrition.

  Jake let everything drain out of him, all the misery he felt at his discovery and all the questions he wanted to ask his mother – or the woman he had thought was his mother. He had to let it all go, just for now, otherwise he would never get the chance to sit down and ask her those questions.

  Jake suddenly threw himself at the priest. He covered the twenty feet in barely a second, driving a shoulder into his ribs and forcing him back from the crusher.

  Jake had timed it perfectly. Father Ken fell back without managing to apply any more pressure to his hideous device. Jake stumbled, falling on top of him.

  Father Ken was twisting, trying to get out from under Jake. And he was strong. Jake struggled to maintain his grip as the evil priest writhed and wriggled. He remembered his high-school wrestling days and tried to spread his weight, pushing down hard on Father Ken. He could hear the priest’s breath coming in wheezes, and knew he was struggling for air. Jake came up on his toes, forcing his shoulder down on the priest. At the same time his arms circled Father Ken’s head, applying a holding lock. The priest bucked another time, but Jake was tightening his grip. He was in control now.

  Then Father Ken got one hand free, and Jake could feel him reaching. Jake tightened his hold, but the priest wasn’t trying to get away. Too late Jake understood. Father Ken managed to grab Jake’s little finger. He yanked, and there was a crack as the finger broke. Jake yelled, helpless to stop his arms going limp and his grip relaxing. He felt Father Ken turning underneath him. Then the priest was struggling to his feet and running towards Jeanette.