by Rosie Walker
‘Oh my God,’ Zoe whispers, and silent sobs wrack her body as she realises that no help is coming. Whoever she is, the woman in the room watching her through the darkness, she was never going to help Zoe.
Zoe remembers the woman’s words, hours ago in the caravan: He doesn’t work alone. He likes to share.
She knows why he hasn’t raped her, like she initially feared. As if that was the worst thing that can happen. She knows better than that, now.
And why he took her to the caravan and left her there, like it was a waiting room. Because it was a waiting room: waiting for something far, far worse than she could imagine. Something was there, all along, lingering on the other side of a flimsy partition wall in that caravan, listening to her wail and struggle and cry. She knows why that man only taped her eyelids, and did not slice them.
The real threat is standing next to her in the darkness, digging the burning end of a cigarette into her ribs.
Then she remembers the woman’s other words: the man didn’t kidnap Zoe for his own use. Zoe is an offering.
The woman’s voice pierces the darkness. Gone is the weak whisper of a kidnapped woman:
‘My boy brought something for me to play with.’
Retraction: How to get away with murder
By Urban Dark Reporter
Author of fake ‘murder advice’ article suspected liar!
We have been flooded with emails and comments since last month’s publication of ‘Anonymous: How to get away with murder’. Although some complained that we would publish something so incriminating and ‘evil’, many were complimentary about the article’s entertainment value, and others were downright creepy. We know you’re out there, creeps. Thanks for tuning in.
The interesting letters, however, were those which cast doubt on the veracity of the author’s claims. Full disclosure, folks: ‘Anon’ is unlikely to be a murderer, despite his claims to be a cold-blooded killer / hunter / predator / whatever else he called himself. We’re a little bit immoral, but not so immoral that we’d knowingly provide a platform for a serial killer to boast about how great they are. That’s a bit much even for Urban Dark Reporter.
As one of our creepier emails stated: ‘That writer has never killed anyone. There are small nuances and insights one gathers from taking a life, and the article featured none: no new detail, only repetitive and incorrect information about existing killers and common-sense detail like “clean up after yourself”. Anyone with a knowledge of true crime could write this. The writer is a fiction writer with no experience of actual serial killing, just a posturing wannabe trying to prove himself.’
Despite how much ad revenue the viral post has provided, in the interest of reputability we will remove the article and double-check our sources next time. Apologies for any entertainment you might have experienced while reading this site.
Comments:
1488-HH: Thank you. Jesus. If I wanted to read fiction, I’d go to the library.
Rogersmith52: Knew it. All that talk about disposing of bodies, but he never wrote about actual killing. I knew he was full of shit, never murdered anyone in his life.
Combaticus: Glad to hear it. The McVitie stuff was getting interesting, that’s the kind of stuff I keep coming back for, not this pseudo-fiction weirdness.
Him
I am important. Fear me. Learn from me.
He strides along the upper landing, aiming his headtorch into each dark corner in search of the source of the noise. Nothing stirs; nothing unusual stands out as the origin of the noise he heard. Everything is as he left it. He’s searched throughout the building, just as she expects; if he doesn’t find anything on this floor, everything is untouched. Then he can return to the basement and continue his work. Make her proud. Prove himself to her.
I am the pinnacle of power and danger. Hear me. Run from me.
The upper levels of the building feel different to the ground floor, less solid. The floorboards creak and the windows rattle in their frames when the wind blows. He doesn’t understand how she stands to live like this, dividing her time between this cold room and the damp caravan in the woods, alone night after night.
I bring death and destruction. Worship me.
He understands her need for solitude – he’s similar to her in this way – but not ready for this stark existence with no comfort. She’s so self-sufficient, everything she needs is in her head, guiding her like a witch’s familiar. She needs nothing else, and one day he will be the same. She eats the food he brings and lights a fire in an old grate to keep warm. He doesn’t know if she bathes. She wouldn’t appreciate him asking her that.
She taught him everything he knows.
Together, we are the King and the Queen. Nothing rivals our power.
He doesn’t pester her with trivial concerns; she’s a grown woman who knows what she wants, and he respects that and just helps how he can. She raised him to respect her and care for her as she deserves.
She’s lived here for many years, on and off. The doctors moved her here when he was young, her behaviour finally prompting the psychiatrists and lawyers to deem her a danger to herself, her son and others. But that wasn’t her first time in the Lune Hospital.
They don’t understand a highly evolved brain.
During her final long-term admission, she returned home to him at weekends. Mother and son would play escalating pretend games that she called ‘Lessons’: pretend it’s normal that Mum lives in the asylum; pretend that it’s acceptable to observe the world like a predator scanning for prey. Search, assess, pursue, kill. In a few short years, he didn’t feel like he was pretending any more: they are predators, a higher class of human than the rest.
Humans are divided into predators and prey. We decide which role to take.
His headtorch illuminates a dusty sign:
DANGER:
ASBESTOS
Smaller text below explains the grave warnings of respiratory damage, cancer and lung disease. He knows what the signs say: he ordered and paid for them years ago after the asylum closed. To protect her from intruders, and protect intruders from her.
This is how we succeed. We are the natural predators.
He climbs over a barrier and passes her room, shining his torch from the doorway, lighting the stark place she calls home. That smell invades his nostrils: the scent which seems to follow her everywhere. Damp, decay and a meaty body odour which oozes from her skin.
The parquet floors, once sanded smooth and carefully varnished, are scratched and dull, dust pooling in the corners. The wallpaper peels off in strips, and there’s an area over the bed covered in scribbles where she’s scrawled all over it in pencil. She writes obsessively, recording every thought and feeling. When the paper runs out, she moves her scrawls to the next available surface: walls, bedsheets, tables.
Moonlight shines through the window; one of the only windows still fully intact in the whole building, not one pane broken. But the wooden frames are warped and splintered; he estimates just one winter left before they give up and deposit their glass into the room, leaving empty holes through which the wind will invade.
Against the wall is a dressing table and mirror: the only thing in the room which is clean and neat. It’s almost exactly the same as its twin in her bedroom at home: rows of bottles and tubes of her lotions and potions, and a well-placed mirror so she can gaze at her reflection for hours.
And a bed: an old hospital bed with rails on either side, musty sheets and a greying blanket.
This is my hunting ground. No one can take this from me.
This was her home, the place where she learned everything she knows. And where he was born, to much scandal and outcry. When the asylum closed, she didn’t want to leave. So he worked in darkness for weeks to seal off part of the building just for her, surrounded by barriers and danger signs so no one would dare to enter.
And if they did, they’d be a fly wandering into a spider’s web.
He reaches the end of the west wi
ng corridor and turns back, satisfied that there are no intruders. The noise he heard earlier must just have been the creak of a door, or something knocked over by the wind.
Back to the basement. Maybe this time she’ll let him do more than just watch.
Nothing can hamper my control.
She taught him everything he knows. He hunts for her, protects her in her lair, and shields her from capture. He lays false trails, covers their tracks, destroys all the evidence. He finds victims for her. He’s an expert in the perfect murder, but he’s never taken anyone’s life. She has never let him.
But this girl is his choice. Not captured to order; she’s just for him. Normally they have to look a certain way, live a certain life. They must remind her of her youth – like she’s destroying a younger version of herself over and over again, trying to recapture that time by taking it away from someone else.
You’re not ready; there’s still so much for you to learn, my son.
He’s been patient, but he’s waited long enough. Now it is his time to kill.
Zoe
‘Everyone thinks that killers are men.’ By the light of an oil lamp, the woman paces in front of Zoe, spitting and rambling. ‘They’re paranoid about men, conditioned to believe that the threat is “he”, not a “she”.’
Her movements are quick and bird-like. She cackles. ‘It’s why he chose me, selected from all the other patients. I was young then, and so beautiful. “The face of an angel, the mind of the devil”, McVitie used to say. He chose me. He loved me.’
Zoe flinches each time the woman comes near. She recognises that name, McVitie. Something Max said in the pub the night she got kidnapped.
‘But you have no idea that female killers walk among you just like male ones, and the women don’t feature on your paranoid radar. We’re undetected, beyond suspicion. Even other women think like this: you, little Zoe, who believes herself so intelligent, insightful and a feminist – the mere fact that I’m female disarmed your primal fear. You didn’t think I was a threat. My femaleness deceived you without me even needing to try to persuade you.’
She’s holding a knife, waving it around as she paces. Her tread is slow, almost a limp: one foot is bare, dirt encrusted under the toenails. On her other foot is a little ballet flat. Her legs are bare but unshaved, the skin pale under a fine coating of dark hair.
‘They think I’m a man, you know. The police, the press. They call me “Mr X”.’
Mr X. Zoe remembers Max in the pub the other night, and how familiar that sounded when he talked about the serial killer who terrorised the city nearly twenty years ago. Suddenly, two parts of her memory slot together like jigsaw pieces. She remembers her parents and their whispered conversations when she was tiny: even though Dad had long moved departments and left the CID, he’d never been able to shake the nagging burden of the criminal he could never catch.
Everyone thought he was dead. Until recently, it’s been years since a murder went unsolved in the city; they thought it was over. But Mr X – that spectre of death that dogged her Dad and terrified parents of teenage girls – is standing right in front of her. Holding a knife.
The blade glints gold in the murky light. It’s the same one the man waved in front of Zoe’s face earlier; desperate to hurt her but holding back for some reason. Now she knows why.
‘I thought you might suspect, for a moment. When you talked about your friend Abbie, the one you thought was his accomplice. In that moment, I thought maybe you were different. That you knew women could be just as dangerous; sometimes more so.’ Her voice creaks like old floorboards, totally different to the quiet whisper of earlier.
Nausea rises in Zoe’s throat. Zoe shakes her head, tries to tell the woman that she doesn’t understand, that there must be a mistake, but the woman continues talking like Zoe isn’t even there.
‘You’re so naive. So … traditional.’ She sneers in disgust. The woman reaches up to her own cheek, running her fingertips across the filthy skin like she’s stroking the face of a lover. ‘I was always the most beautiful, you know. I’ve been so hated for it. And I didn’t ask for it.’
Zoe focuses on breathing in and out, tries not to think about what horror is yet to come.
The woman pulls a hand mirror from a shelf and gazes into it by the light of the oil lamp. She fluffs her matted hair, pulls her cheeks taut, bites her lips. She pulls her mousy knots back with both hands, twists it to the top of her head and turns sideways to admire her side view with a half-smile. She’s holding a new cigarette in one hand, its glowing tip waving close to the matted nest of hair. The skin on the back of her neck is brown with grime.
‘My sisters hated me. Even my own mother tried to harm me, tried to destroy this beautiful face. They sent me away, pretended there was something wrong with me. Those liars.’ She crosses the room to Zoe, walks right up to push her face into Zoe’s. ‘And now, girls like you.’
Her breath smells of rotting fruit. Zoe turns her face away.
The woman roars, her voice a screech. ‘You don’t see my power, but you are jealous. You’re threatened by my beauty, just like they were. But you will not damage me; you will not hurt me like they did. I’ll cut you first—’
‘I haven’t done anything to you,’ Zoe shouts, but the woman doesn’t hear. It’s like this woman is on stage, performing the same show night after night. Zoe’s the audience tonight, but the next crowd will hear the same lines, see the same movements.
‘He’s a good boy. But he gets carried away, and he’s not ready yet. I haven’t taught him enough; it’s not his turn. It takes a long time to learn to kill well. To do it so seamlessly that the authorities don’t even know a crime has taken place. They thought I was dead, didn’t they? They thought I’d stopped.’
Zoe nods.
‘But instead, I was just improving. I got so good it was undetectable. And now I’m passing on my skills, like McVitie did for me.’ She nods towards the door. ‘Did he tell you his name is Paul? I think that’s the one he’s on now. He picks a new one every few months, someone quiet and boring to get into trouble.’
Zoe tries again. ‘He’s a psychopath,’ she shouts, as loud as she can. ‘You both are.’
The woman stops pacing, freezes in place. ‘You do not talk about my son like that.’ Her voice is suddenly clearer, the crackle gone now she’s talking directly to Zoe.
Zoe’s mouth falls open. This crazed, monstrous being is someone’s mother. Those hooked claws of hands once held a baby, and presumably nursed it, loved it and cared for it. That wiry, spindly body carried a baby to full term, and raised that child into adulthood. And now, like any mother, she’s protecting him, this son she raised.
But the son she raised is insane, just like her. Both of them, roaming this derelict building, night and day.
She doesn’t want to provoke this woman, there’s no telling what she could do next. But it’s the only choice she has, to break out of whatever scripted performance this woman likes to stage, to derail her. ‘I’ll talk about your son however I like. You’re both freaks. And that creep McVitie, whoever he is.’ Zoe closes her mouth, a sinking feeling of dread pooling in her stomach.
As soon as Zoe insults McVitie, the woman screeches and runs at her, the knife held in an upraised fist. The woman’s eyes are wide open, whites bloodshot and staring. Unable to close her eyes, Zoe rears back, turning her head away from whatever is coming.
She remembers something she read in a magazine once, about rape. ‘My name is Zoe. I’m 17 years old.’ The article advised girls to say their name to an attacker, to reinforce that they’re a human being, not just a target. ‘I have a little brother and a little sister. They’re three years old.’
The woman starts to laugh, her bubbling cackle wild and untethered. ‘I’m Bertha. Delighted to meet you.’
Zoe continues, her voice starting to shake as she remembers Bennie and Lucy, their sticky hands outstretched like little stars. And her mum. Her poor mum. Alone, without Zoe.
It can’t happen. This can’t happen. ‘I like reading and going out with my friends. And hiking – walking up the Lune even when it’s raining. And there’s so much more I want to see and do. I’m going travelling, I want to see the world. You can’t take that from me—’
The woman shrieks, a crazed howling laugh bouncing off the tiled walls. ‘You will not tell me what I can and can’t do. No one gives me instructions. Especially not pretty little teenagers who think the world owes them something.’ The woman walks towards Zoe, the knife outstretched once again. ‘I was once pretty like you. All the boys wanted me.’
She trails the knife point along Zoe’s cheek, tugging at her skin. ‘I’m invisible now, but I’m still powerful. McVitie saw something in me. He saw it, he wanted it, and he broke me open.’ Still holding the knife to Zoe’s face with one hand, she jabs Zoe in the ribs with the fingertips of her other hand, knocking the air from Zoe’s lungs with each shove to punctuate her speech. She gestures around the room. ‘I was nothing when I arrived in this place. I was no one. I was weak and broken. Barely an adult.’
Zoe tries to breathe between the jabs to her stomach.
The woman’s voice gets higher, wilder. ‘He tore me apart and put me back together again. I hated him some days. Wanted to destroy him as he was destroying me. Yet I loved him too. It took years, but we had nothing else to do in here.’ Her voice softens. ‘But even great men must die. The only man who sees me and hears me now is my son. My legacy. He loves me so much. He just wants me to be happy. That’s what I deserve.’
Zoe watches the point of the knife as it dances in front of her eyes, just millimetres from her face. She freezes. Just one wrong move and that blade is going right into her face, she knows it.
‘I’m going to skin you alive. I’m going to flay that pretty little face until you look like a piece of bacon ready to go on the grill.’
Zoe starts to cry, her body racked with enormous sobs. This creature isn’t normal and it’s all futile: there’s no point saying your name or telling her anything to try and show her that Zoe is a real person with feelings and hopes. She drops her head, her shoulders sag. She pictures her Mum’s face, the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles, curly hair, the smell of her perfume: the smell of home.