I understand him better than ever, and even though there has been a monumental shift between us, it’s almost like we’ve gone back to who we used to be in some ways. Hunter and I used to lie under the lilacs and daydream about escaping our podunk town, about exacting revenge on those who had harmed us. The five years that lapsed between then and now hardly matter. It is just one long path leading us back home-- to each other.
And right now, it’s also leading us to a more physical, literal home.
Early this morning, I rose out of bed to find Hunter already in the shower. Without a word, we cleaned up, got dressed, ate a simple, quick breakfast, and assured Sage we would be okay. We left her with Flora, which is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Flora was so sleepy, but she knew something was up. She’s always been way more perceptive than anyone gives her credit for. She cried, begging for me to stay and play with her while Sage looked on helplessly. I promised her I would be back as soon as possible to play with her, and that promise is what’s hanging on my mind. I know we are about to drive straight back into the gaping jaws of the beast we left behind years ago. I know it will be dangerous. I know there is a great chance that something will go wrong.
But I have to survive this. For Flora’s sake.
So we headed out, getting on the road as early as we could manage. The first few hours were tense, but we still spoke occasionally, our tones hushed but full of love and promise. There’s a heavy sense of camaraderie between us. We’re partners in crime. Bonnie and Clyde, but with a much more positive mission. We’re going to rid the world of one seriously fucked-up evildoer. And with every passing hour we inch closer and closer to the place where it all began. Every mile of Highway One fills me with dread.
“I haven’t been back in five years,” I murmur suddenly. “Not since my parents moved us to New York.”
“I haven’t been back either,” Hunter replies. “Too many dark memories. You were the one bright spot in my time back in Weston. Once you were gone, well, there was nothing to tether me to the place.”
The surroundings are beginning to look familiar now. The wide expanse of fields and trees, the rivers and lakes alongside the highway. The occasional cottage or rundown house set far back from the road on hills, as though they’re glaring down at the highway with disgust. We pass by the sign for Weston, which still lists the population as just over two hundred. We see a sign for an old summer camp, probably long defunct by now. I feel sick to my stomach when the car whizzes past the entrance to the street where my childhood home probably still stands. I don’t want to see it, I realize. I’ve left those memories far behind me, and that is exactly where they belong. I don’t want my past to poison my future anymore.
“Do you know the way?” I ask quietly.
Hunter nods. “Yes. I could never forget--believe me, I have tried.”
“So, let’s go over what we know about our...our target,” I suggest. “You start.”
“Well,” Hunter sighs, “I’ve kept loose files on my past foster parents and abusers over the years, just to keep tabs on them. A few years back, when I finally got enough information and courage together, I called social services and presented a case to have each and every one of my failed guardians removed from the foster service. I was successful, to my surprise. They all had their foster licenses revoked. Including Ronald.”
“That’s incredible, Hunter,” I tell him honestly. “You didn’t have to do any of that, because of your hard work, now other children won’t be harmed by those assholes.”
“Yeah. I only wish I could’ve nailed them sooner. Too many broken children passed through those homes. Far too many,” he laments, shaking his head. “Anyway, I tried to keep an eye on the worst of them, just to make sure they didn’t try anything else too horrific. But I guess I wasn’t watching closely enough. Ronald slipped through the cracks. Probably because I’d done such a good job of repressing most of my memories regarding him. I wanted to just shove them so far down that they could never creep back up and hurt me again. But if there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that no matter how deeply you bury a bad seed, it will eventually sprout up again.”
“And when that happens, what do we do?” I ask him as the car turns down Dark Cove Road. We ride along in quiet for a moment as Hunter tries to regain his composure. I know he’s rattled by how close we are to our destination.
Finally, he answers in a grim tone, “You have to reach down deep and rip it all out. Down to the very roots. You can’t leave a single leaf or bud behind. Evil is like a weed. It grows fast and wild wherever you leave it, and it’ll choke out all the good around it until you do the job right. That’s what we’re here to do tonight, Blossom. We’re going to do the job right.”
We have been driving all day, and dark is settling in around us as the car slowly, cautiously approaches the cabin Ronald treats as his headquarters. Clearly he doesn’t spend all his time here, since he’s been in Albany stalking Flora and me lately. But it’s still his home. And Hunter is certain he’ll be here. Like a beast retreating back to its lair.
“We’re here,” Hunter says softly. “The last foster home I ever lived in.”
“Are you okay?” I ask, truly concerned. He shakes his head, still staring straight in front of us at the darkened property.
“No. I’m not,” he admits. “But I will be. The second I know that evil son of a bitch is dead, I will be.”
Hunter
I never thought I would be coming back to this place.
Blossom and I crouch on a wooded hillside on the outskirts of the ragged house, staring at it from afar. One of the lights is on upstairs, and all the ones on the ground floor are out. It’s late, so my guess is that he’s upstairs either getting ready for bed or doing some other unsavory part of his evening ritual. I was never allowed upstairs. It was forbidden. When Ronald had me in his clutches, I was just starting to enter my teenage rebellion stage, one I’ve never really grown out of. But the one time I dared venture upstairs anyway, he caught me halfway up and gave me such a beating that I never thought about it again.
I look over to Blossom. Her face is shrouded in darkness of the moonless night, but I can tell she’s staring out at the house with a still, uneasy face. I reach over and squeeze her hand, and she looks to me.
“You okay?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “It’s just...Flora almost ended up in this place. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but I get a really bad feeling around here.”
“Like the air is angry,” I say, nodding. “I felt it too. It kept me awake at night for weeks. The nightmares didn’t leave me for a while, even after I left.”
“What about you?” she whispers. “Are you okay?”
I’m silent for a few moments.
“This is my last kill,” I say. “I can feel it. Even if you hadn’t asked for it, there’s a kind of finality to it. I feel like I’m tying up the last loose end. This...it’s my past. They’re the demons that haunted me when I was small. I’m ready to put them away for good.”
“Hell yeah,” she says, squeezing my hand.
“Hell yeah,” I say back, squeezing hers. I nod toward the house, and we start moving forward.
I have my knife out. I never saw a gun in Ronald’s house while I lived there, and he always struck me as the kind of guy who doesn’t change his habits, but I can’t be too careful. I almost tried to shake off Blossom, thinking it’s too dangerous to have her here, but then I remember that this is closure for her, too. I wouldn’t let some other asshole go and take care of this for me, so I can’t expect Blossom to do so, either.
Besides, I know how to take care of my girl.
I stalk forward across the dark excuse for a yard in complete silence. Blossom is right at my side, just as skillful at moving quietly across the damp ground. I have to say, I’m impressed. She’s a natural at this kind of thing.
But I stick out an arm to stop her as we get closer, and I look
down under the faint light from the window up above to see the shining metal wire stretched out before us. It’s a tripwire alarm. After pointing it out to Blossom, I carefully step over it and help her do the same. After that, I keep my eyes glued to the ground, scanning for any other traps he has in mind.
Once we get to the wall, I lead Blossom to one of the windows and peer inside. I see only darkness. The door to the upstairs room must be closed and locked. No light makes it down to the ground floor. If he’s upstairs, that must mean he’s busy. Any time he went up there, I couldn’t hear a thing he was doing. That works to our advantage.
He never had alarms put in, thanks to his paranoia about anyone coming over to the house, so I feel confident as I carefully move the window back and forth until I get the latch open, and I slide it up as slowly as I can. It takes me almost a full two minutes to get it up quietly enough. After that, I use my knife to just as slowly and quietly cut open the screen.
I have a small flashlight in my pocket, and I decide to take a risk.
Clicking it on, I shine it into the house, just to be sure he isn’t waiting for us in the darkness with a shotgun. Not being ready for surprises is how people get killed or caught. Watching the light illuminate the living room is indeed like a shot to the chest, but a very different kind.
I pan over the musty old couch I see myself curled up on, the doorway to the front I always dreaded him coming through, the little crawlspace under the stairs I tried to hide under so many times...
I click the light off and put it away. That’s more than enough for now.
Carefully, I haul myself up and into the building as silent as a cat. Blossom comes next, and she’s much easier for me to help get inside. Once in, I make sure my knife is at the ready as we move through the ground floor. I have a pretty good mental map of the place from my youth. Everything looks so eerily like I remember. It’s like the place hasn’t aged a day.
Fear sneaks up on you, trips you when you least expect it. It’s devious, and it can turn the strongest of men into children again in the blink of an eye. I feel those daggers digging into the back of my spine as I make my way through the house with Blossom, entering the kitchen where so many yelling matches took place.
But I’ve had a lifetime of fear to train myself again. That’s how I survived. I made fear my weapon, knowing that one day, I might just be able to turn it against my abusers. Iron sharpens iron, and I’ve made myself into something sharper and deadlier than anything I’ve ever run into.
The kitchen is also empty. Every time we reach a corner, I press myself against it and shine my light ahead of me to make sure we aren’t about to run into a trap, and each time, it’s just empty. One the ground floor is secure, I know it’s time to head upstairs.
Leading Blossom over to the stairway, I steel my nerves. I stick to the side of the wall as I move up, remembering where each and every one of the creaky floorboards is. I reach the door take a deep, silent breath. Knife in one hand, I put my other on the doorknob, bracing myself. He lives alone now, so chances are that it’s unlocked. I’m going to have to bank on that, because trying to pick the lock will alert him anyway. I can be quiet, but not that quiet-- especially when the whole house is so silent.
In a voice that’s just barely above the faintest whisper, I count down so that Blossom is ready.
“Three...two...one.”
I turn the knob and throw the door open, storming inside with my knife at the ready.
I’m greeted by silence.
But the scene within makes my mouth fall open, and as Blossom follows me in, her reaction is the same. Ronald isn’t here. But everything else is.
This is his shrine.
The room is one big open square with no furniture but a single desk with a laptop on it. The walls themselves are far from empty, though. To the left and right, there are hundreds of pictures. All of them are of children, some clearly taken from social media, some taken in public. Each one of them is clustered together by person, each child with a dozen or so pictures. More disturbing still is just how many of them have large red Xs painted over each cluster.
Past victims.
“Oh my god,” Blossom whispers. Her eyes are fixed on the pictures front and center of the room, just above the desk, surrounded by still-burning candles.
It’s Flora.
There are more pictures of her up there than I can keep track of, some of them so recent that I recognize where they were taken. There are even pictures of the cabin where we stayed. I feel my hands shaking with anger as I step forward and look at her smiling face on so, so many of this maniac’s pictures. I don’t even want to touch the laptop. I want to drive a knife into it, but I know that it will be valuable evidence to use against him.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Blossom says, and I put a hand on her shoulder, checking behind us to make sure Ronald wasn’t just waiting for a dramatic entrance.
“Me too,” I growl. “And that’s not all.”
I point to the cluster of pictures of Flora, not far from it, I find the one cluster that doesn’t match the pattern of all the rest.
It’s me.
There are pictures of me from when I was a child, during the times I was living here under this monster’s thumb. Some are from the early days, before I knew just how terrible he was, but some were from later. I feel a chill run down my spine as I realize some of them are pictures of me after I was taken from him.
All of them have my eyes cut out. There are incomprehensible scribbles on some of the photos, and I can take a few guesses at the gist of them.
I hug a shivering Blossom to me as we look at the ensemble with still faces. How can anything in life prepare you for something like this? To see not just your own child, but you yourself up on some psychopath’s shrine?
“Obsessed is an understatement,” I say, stepping forward and examining some of the photos. “No wonder he’s been so relentless. Flora is the first time he’s had this much real resistance. Realizing the coincidence that I’m involved too must have sent him over the deep end.”
“He was already over the deep end,” Blossom says, her voice quivering with anger and rage just barely contained. “This just brought out what was inside of him.” Her eyes go wide, and she looks at me in a sudden panic. “We shouldn’t have left Sage alone!”
I put a hand on her shoulder, shaking my head.
“Don’t worry about that,” I say. “The door was unlocked and the candles are still burning. This was a setup. I should have known he wouldn’t be here. He just wanted us to see this. Wanted someone to see this. Hell, if he’s this unstable, he probably wants to get caught. That would explain why he got so sloppy. And we can use that to our advantage. We can end this.”
“But if he’s not here, where is he?”
I turn and look out the window, where I see the light cast on the only other place on the property: the shed, where the bunker entrance is. Blossom follows my gaze, and her face goes pale. She puts a hand over mine on her shoulder, looks at me resolutely, and she nods.
Five minutes later, I’m kicking the door of the shed open. I’m done sneaking around. I’ve seen our daughter on the wall of a serial killer’s lair, and I’m out for blood.
The shed is small, and there’s only one remarkable feature in the middle of the room: a hatch leading down to the bunker. And the hatch is open. Of course it is.
“He’s waiting for us,” I say, narrowing my eyes. I don’t bother to lower my voice anymore. Knife ready, I take Blossom’s hand and make my way down into what feels like the descent to the underworld.
The steps don’t creak. They’re made of solid concrete. There’s a light down below, and as I walk toward it, I get more confident that I know what I’m walking into.
“You already know it’s over,” I call down below. “Why even bother with all this?”
That familiar voice answers me as we see him, and it sends a chill up my spine.
“It feels right, somehow.
”
The bunker is hauntingly simple. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was just walking into someone’s legitimate hideout, somewhere a paranoid person might keep a little shelter tidy and prepared just on the off-chance of a nuclear apocalypse. There’s a bed, a lot of cabinet space for canned goods, and a little counter space with a can opener to make it come together. There’s also a table with a single chair at it, and sitting at that chair is a man I wish I’d never see again in my life.
Ronald is sitting there, wearing a big coat, sweatpants, and sneakers, looking smug and drunk. There’s a machete on the table, and his hand is on it, gently stroking the sharp edge before coming to a rest at the handle.
“Hunter,” he says, staring at me. His face is emotionless. No remorse, no fear, nothing. Blossom holds her ground beside me, glaring at him, and I can almost feel her blood boiling. Ronald’s eyes flick between us, and he cracks a smile.
“I really can’t tell you how glad I am you two happened to be together,” he says. “Pure serendipity. It made playing with you all the more entertaining.”
“How long have you kept this up?” Blossom hisses.
“Long enough,” he replies quickly. His eyes linger on Blossom, and I feel furious that he dares to even look at her. “How’s Flora?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl, stepping forward. He doesn’t budge. “One more word about her out of your mouth, and I’ll cut your tongue out.”
But his eyes are locked onto Blossom. “I like to think he gets that anger from me, you know,” he says. “It pleases me to know you got to see what he’s really like. Father of your child. Yes, I did the math. You two have quite a history together. I never had a child of my own, but now, I feel like something of a parent to Hunter here. It certainly wasn’t a happy upbringing that made him so good at avoiding my sights all these years. The one who got away,” he adds, smiling at me. “When he kills me, what difference do you think there is between the two of us, hm?”
“Save that crap,” Blossom says, stepping forward with clenched fists. “Hunter is nothing like you. I knew it before we got torn apart, and I know it now, even after everything I know about him. You think I don’t pay attention to the way monsters like you think? You’re narcissists who can’t get enough of playing with human life. I think you’re even jealous of the children you kill.”
Hunter’s Baby Page 15