“I’ve never had that feeling,” I say.
“Perhaps not, but many people do. And when the victim survives, the fascination deepens. And for a small number of people, that fascination sucks them in and doesn’t let go.”
Brenda’s voice, cool and distant. “I cut myself because of you, Alice.”
Jack continues. “The crime against you ensnared many of these people. They read the story and wonder, What was that like for her? What was going through her mind the moment those little girls began stabbing? And, most of all, they wonder, What’s her life going to be like now? They want to know what it’s like to be Alice, all these years later.”
“It’s a nightmare,” I say. “Just one long, unending nightmare.”
“But not all the people who follow you are the same,” Jack continues. “It’s a diverse group—we have members from around the world. IP addresses from Turkey, Indonesia, Japan. Most just want to watch you, study you, follow you as if you’re a character on their private stage, which, in a way, you are.”
“Why?”
“Because you fascinate them, Alice. You’ve experienced horror like very few ever have—as a mere child, no less—and now you’re trying to lead a normal life, push away the past. Perhaps that’s not very interesting to most people, but to members of our website, the life of Alice is the best show around.”
I don’t want to ask, but I need to keep them talking.
“So, why…why this? If everyone just wants to watch me, why are you doing this to me?”
Brenda purrs. “Some of us want more.”
“She’s right,” Jack says. “Not everyone has the same motivation. Brenda has a hunger for you that cannot be sated by simply chronicling your life.”
Oh God, I knew I didn’t want to ask. I keep facing the screen, afraid to look over to Brenda.
“And what about you, Jack? What is it you want?”
“You’ll know the answer to that soon enough,” he says.
The room falls silent, and my head spins, trying to think of more questions, anything to stretch the time. Time represents hope, and I sense both are quickly fading.
Just as I’m about to speak, Jack says something that rips away any remaining hope.
“Go get the knives, Brenda.”
Fifty-Two
If I’m breathing, I’m not aware of it. I’m not moving, not even shaking with fear. I’m scared frozen.
Go get the knives.
My catatonic moment lasts a year, or maybe five seconds. All I know is when my brain snaps back into a functioning mode, my only thought is:
Not like this. It can’t end like this.
It’s easy to think of bravery in theory. But when you’re strapped in a chair and the man who’s been stalking you for fourteen years tells his partner in crime to go get the knives, any sense of bravery evaporates. Raindrops on sizzling desert asphalt.
I can’t help it. My bladder just releases, and the hot urine filling the seat of my jeans is almost a welcome relief. Maybe if I can let go of my bladder, I can let go of my mind. Maybe death will feel as strangely relieving as soiling myself.
“Stay with me, Alice,” Jack says.
It’s just him and me. Brenda has left the room.
“I don’t deserve this,” I say.
“We are all dying, Alice. Just at different rates.”
The internet connection stammers, and Jack’s face blinks into a digital void for a second, then reappears.
Tears well in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.
“Are you really my father?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Then how can you let this happen?”
Before he can answer, Brenda reappears. She carries a soft piece of rolled velvet, which she places on the top of the drawing table. When she unrolls it, three pieces of metal catch the light of the lamp. A cutter’s tool kit.
“No,” I say.
I don’t add please. I’m not going to beg. I’m covered in my own puke and piss, but I’m not going to fucking beg for my life.
I struggle against the tape and realize there’s no way I can get my hands free in time. The binds dig into my wrist, and I almost relish the pain.
“If you kill me,” I say to Brenda, “then what? You’ll have nothing left. You’ll be all alone. No purpose.”
Brenda removes and holds up a blade. A scalpel. An instrument meant for cutting, not stabbing. For carving.
I gag, but there’s nothing left to come up.
Then I scream. I scream as loudly and as frantically as I can. Maybe if someone is outside, they’ll hear me. I’m hysterical, my voice screeching until it hurts my ears.
Brenda slashes my forearm with the scalpel, and the skin immediately opens. I stare down at the wound in horror, and Brenda has succeeded in silencing me. As I watch, I think for a moment that it’s not too deep. There’s no blood.
And then there is.
It pours from my forearm, slicking my skin. More blood than seems possible from the little cut. I can’t look any more.
“I know how to cut without pain,” Brenda says. “I’ve done it for years. Stop screaming, and I’ll make this as painless as I can. Or, I can put tape over your mouth, and take out pieces of you one by one. Then you can scream all you want.”
Close your eyes, Alice. Go to another place. A soft, warm place. A place where you can’t feel.
As I close my eyes, I’m aware of the word that escapes my lips.
“Daddy.”
Then, Jack’s voice.
“I’m right here, Alice.”
“You’re not my daddy,” I whisper. Over and over. I say it until I have a thought. Maybe my daddy is out there telling me what to do.
I thrash in the chair enough that I ultimately tip over onto my left side, pounding my shoulder into the floor. Brenda immediately kicks me in the ribs. Pain roils me, but I can take a million kicks. Anything but the blade.
“Goddamn it,” she says. I catch a glimpse of her looking at the screen.
“Now what?”
“Get her upright, and then continue,” he answers.
I don’t have any expectation of escaping just by falling to the floor. But I rock myself enough to direct the flow of blood from my forearm down toward my right hand. It works. Hot, sticky liquid oozes around my wrist, making it slippery. I yank my lubricated right hand, and a bit more of it slides out from the tape. I’m close. There’s a chance.
Brenda stops my rocking and yanks up on the chair, but she isn’t strong enough to lift me.
“Okay then,” she says, releasing the chair so I’m back on my left side. “I guess we’ll have to do this on the floor.”
“No,” I hear Jack saying. “I need to watch. It’s very important.”
She doesn’t seem to hear him. Brenda is in her own world, the world of a cutter making the intoxicating leap from the canvas of one’s own skin to that of another.
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” she says. “And now I get to have you.”
She’s sideways on the floor now, wedged in front of me in the clutter and filth of this tiny, dingy room. Her nose is close to mine, and when she breathes, it fills me. Now she wears the Brenda look, the one that makes you feel like you’re the only thing in the world that matters. For years, I’ve wondered if this look was sincere, and in this moment, I know it is. I am her focus. Her reason.
I pull and twist my right hand. Pull and twist. It’s looser within the tape. Just another few minutes. That’s all I need.
This can’t happen. Not like this. Keep them talking.
I twist my head toward the laptop screen, hoping I can get Jack to tell her to stop. I can only make out the top half of the screen from the floor, but one thing is very clear.
Jack is no longer there.
Back to
Brenda, who now holds the blade up to my face. Very slowly, she places the tip on my nose, and I go cross-eyed looking at it.
“I could start here,” she says. “Work my way up to your scalp, or down to your lips. Do you want to choose, Alice?”
This is it. Fourteen years ago, I didn’t see it coming. Now, with the blade hovering in front of me, I have a chance to control the moment. Control my mind. Steel it against the pain. If I can just shut my mind down for a bit, it’ll all be over.
I just need to make it to the other side.
One last yank of my wrist. It’s not enough. I can’t get my hand free.
I close my eyes. As I do, I decide not to scream.
“Daddy,” I whisper. I don’t ask him to save me. I think I’m telling him I’ll see him soon.
That will be wonderful.
There’s the slightest pressure on the tip of my nose.
Fifty-Three
Everything is gone in a moment, and all that exists is a singular memory. This must be death, because no memory has ever been as clear, as potent. Real.
I see, smell. Hear perfectly. Touch. I’m aware of my life as it is both now and as it was then. I am not reliving this. This is reliving me.
I’m in a twin bed wedged against one side of a very small room, a room I know. I grew up here. Thomas’s bed is next to mine, separated by a narrow nightstand holding a Winnie the Pooh lamp, Hundred Acre Wood. But Thomas is not there. He’s next to me in bed, the soft flannel of his pajamas rubbing against my arm.
He laughs, high-pitched and musical. He is maybe four years old and looks nothing like the man he will eventually become. I must be eight.
“And then what?” Thomas says. “Do they find the keys?” His little voice has a British accent, one that will disappear by his midteens.
“Well, I think that’s enough for tonight.”
I turn and look away from Thomas to the voice.
Daddy.
He sits on the edge of my bed, larger than life. He’s so young. Dark hair sweeps over his forehead, disheveled, wavy, and wiry. Stubble grows like moss on his narrow, pale cheeks, and his eyes, his light-brown eyes—the color of a melted chocolate bar—hold a weariness that’s more than just fatigue. His hand rests on my stomach.
“No, please,” I say, grabbing his arm. My voice also holds a high-pitched accent, a tone I haven’t heard in a very long time. “Just a little more, please, Daddy.”
“Yes,” Thomas says. “Do Alice and Thomas find the keys?”
“You’ll find out tomorrow night,” my dad says.
He’s telling us the story of Chancellor’s Kingdom, the epic adventure made up on the spot and revealed in little chunks every night over the course of several months. Little Alice and Thomas only wanted to find their way home but were continuously swept into the bizarre and alien lands of the Kingdom. Lands where creatures roamed.
“Please, give us a hint,” I say.
“I’m tired, love,” he says. “And sometimes telling this story takes more energy than I have. This is one of those nights.”
I smell the alcohol on him. Feel it on my eyes.
“I know what happens next,” Thomas says. “I think Mister Tender gives them the keys.”
My father looks down at him. “Is that so? Don’t you remember the story, Thomas? For them to get the keys, they would have to betray Ferdinand to the king. Do you think Alice and Thomas would do that?”
“Yes!” Thomas giggles. “Bye-bye, Ferdinand.”
“No,” I say, taking the question as seriously as my father intended. “They wouldn’t do that. They would have to find another way.”
“But what if there is no other way?” my father asks, shifting his gaze to me. I feel delighted and pained to see him, to feel him so close. I continue holding on to his arm, and if I could, I’d stay like this forever. Maybe that’s my heaven.
I challenge him. “There has to be another way.”
“But what if there isn’t? What if the only way for them to get what they want is to betray the thing they love?”
“I don’t like that idea,” I say.
He pulls his arm from my grasp, and I feel panic rise in my little chest, a helpless sense of falling down, down. Forever. But he then moves his hand to my cheek and instantly grounds me. His energy flowing into my blood.
“I don’t either, Alice. Yet, there it is. Life is fragile.”
“What does fragile mean?” Thomas asks.
“Fragile is like an egg,” I tell my brother. “Easily broken.”
“Yes,” my father says. “Like that, Alice. Life can be like an egg. Beautiful, perfect, smooth. But it just takes one thing, one event. A little too much pressure, and that eggs breaks. And it’s never the same way, not ever again.” His voice is so sad, and it scares me.
“I don’t think I want the story if it doesn’t have a happy ending,” I say.
This seems to snap my father from his melancholy. He smiles down at me. In this moment, he is impossibly beautiful.
“I’ll do my best,” he tells me. “I’m sure Alice and Thomas will find a way. They just have to be very clever, and very careful. And they need to remember the very important thing Ferdinand told them.”
I hear myself whisper, repeating words like a Bible passage.
“If you get the sudden urge to start trusting someone, be smart and do away with it.”
“That’s right, Alice.” He strokes my cheek. “That’s right. Under the covers, then, and Thomas, back to your bed.”
Thomas scurries away and dives into his bed, yanking the covers up over his body. I worm my way under mine, going slowly, knowing the faster I move, the sooner my father will leave. I’m able to delay maybe an extra twenty seconds.
Then my father leans over me and kisses my forehead, and in my mind, I fight back tears I’m incapable of producing. This little girl knows nothing, and I know everything. I know all about the fragility of life, and how the three of us, this little family in this little room illuminated by a Winne the Pooh lamp, how each of us eventually breaks, after which we will never be the same. Cracked, spilled open. Forever changed.
“Good night, Alice,” he says.
“Good night, Daddy. I love you.”
Another smile. “I love you.”
He rises and kisses Thomas, then reaches down and pulls the cord on the lamp, sending the room into darkness. Footsteps to the door, and as he opens it, the light from the hall silhouettes him. He is long and slender, a shadow with no weight, a ghost of the night.
And I desperately, painfully, want to go with him, because if I don’t, I think this is the last I will ever see of him.
Fifty-Four
The vision doesn’t last, and my dream for death is denied long enough to feel myself pulled back into reality. Back to Brenda.
I’m still strapped to the chair, lying sideways on the floor. My stomach turns into rock, solid granite. Eyes squeezed shut. The sense of cool steel on my burning skin, the tip of my nose, no idea which direction the blade will travel.
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
A flash of a thought. A hope for a quick death. The knife across my throat, carotid artery. Bleed out fast, and then it will be over.
I don’t want pain.
No more pain.
Just let me die in peace.
I start to hyperventilate as the blade travels up my nose, splitting the skin. Hot blood spills sideways down my cheek, to the floor. I think of tears. So many tears for so long, and now everything pools beneath me.
Goodbye, Thomas.
Goodbye, Mom.
“Oh God,” I mutter.
But I don’t tell her to stop.
I won’t beg.
Soon, Dad. Soon.
She’s nearly to my forehead. I try not to imagine the sight of
me with my scalp untethered from my skull.
But I can’t do it. It’s all I can think of.
There’s no pain yet, but there will be.
Please just let me die.
Then:
A sound. Two sounds, actually.
Soft, like air puffing from a compressor.
Pop pop
A third sound. Wet, spongy.
Mist on my face. Something hits me in the chest, then falls to the floor.
The blade is gone. A dull thud.
I open my eyes.
Brenda is still on the floor next to me, eyes wide open.
The top of her skull is missing.
Fifty-Five
My brain is focused, clear. I can’t see the door from where I lie, but I know Richard has found me. He’s come and saved me. Or called the police and they came here, broke into the house, shot Brenda.
I start to cry, my tears mixing into the blood. God, there’s so much blood, and I can’t tell where my blood ends and Brenda’s begins. She stares right at me, and in death, she maintains her same look, like I’m the most important thing in the world to her in this eternal moment.
“Please help me,” I say. “I’m bleeding badly. My…my nose.”
Footsteps toward me. Not rushed. Calm, determined. Only four or five of them.
I sense someone behind me, leaning down.
Then, a voice. A voice with a British accent.
“That was close. I told her I’d let her kill you, but I was always going to save you. Then the video feed went out, and I couldn’t see what was happening. I was afraid I’d be too late.”
I crane my neck, and the blood flows up my face, into my eyes. My world becomes a blurred, wavy red. I’m swimming in it.
No, no, no.
He lifts the chair upright, and now the blood drips down my nose, onto my thighs. For a moment, my eyes clear enough to see him. Just as he was on the screen a moment ago.
This is Mister Tender. This is the father I never knew existed. This is Jack.
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