Frostbitten: The Complete Series

by Bera, Ilia

  Philip grew up in a poor, but happy family. When he first moved out, he worked his ass off to make a career for himself. After a few years of hard work he made his first million dollars. The day he looked at his bank balance and saw that seventh digit was the same day he realized he was a happier person when there were only a mere four digits on the screen.

  Philip was blessed with intelligence—the real kind of intelligence—not the textbook kind. He never actually finished high school. But he knew his way around life—and he knew his way around the economy. When he started giving to charities, he cleverly involved major corporations—gaining public support and urging the companies to match his donations. He knew exactly what to say to big-shot CEOs to get them on board. When Philip Riley donated one hundred thousand dollars to a charity, his persuasive influence turned it into a million.

  Philip and Deborah were happy, wealthy and kind people. When the baby twins, Peter and Kyle turned two, Deborah gave birth to their third child—Vanessa.

  Then, the recession hit.

  Half of Snowbrooke lost their jobs. The bank Philip worked at was hit hard—but managed to stay open. The CEO of Philip’s bank pressured him to let a few employees go. Instead, Philip hired three more, including my father. He kept the hires secret, and he paid them under the table with money he made trading stocks from his personal computer—and money from his savings.

  Philip and Deborah assumed they would be fine—but the recession was worse than they’d expected, and it didn’t seem to end.

  When Peter and Kyle turned five, the Rileys found themselves pinching every penny they could—using coupons to buy cheap food. Deborah wanted to tell Philip to let his secret hires go, but she knew that Philip would have rather gone himself than to have to fire good, hard-working people.

  So he did.

  Philip quit his bank manager job and decided to return to trading. With technological advancements, he didn’t have to spend entire days and nights in an office—instead he could stay at home. It seemed perfect.

  But the recession continued to worsen. Soon enough, Philip was actually losing money with his trading.

  Somehow, things only continued to get worse.

  Peter and Kyle had grown out of their cute kid stage, and were old enough to go to school. They didn’t talk much—except when they spoke with one another. Philip and Deborah started getting weekly phone calls from the school about the twins’ misbehaving.

  At first, it was things like, “Hello Mrs. Riley. Peter and Kyle drew all over the desks today,” or, “Mr. Riley? How are you doing today? I’m calling to let you know that Peter and Kyle were sent to the office today because they kept disturbing the class. Every time I tried to speak, they would make this loud, annoying sound.”

  What seemed like fairly innocent childish behaviour got worse every year—and it became more frequent. The weekly phone calls became daily phone calls.

  “Hi, Mrs. Riley. I’m going to need you to sign your sons’ office slips before school tomorrow. They were caught urinating on another student’s school bag.”

  Philip and Deborah were noticing the strange behaviour at home as well. By the time the boys were eight, they wouldn’t even speak to their parents. They had no friends at school, and they had no interest in making any. Philip and Deborah’s friends stopped coming over because the little twins “freaked them out”.

  On the other hand, Vanessa was a totally normal girl, whom everyone loved.

  They started to exhibit strange, sociopathic behaviour. After they killed and mutilated the family cat, their parents brought them in for a psychiatric evaluation. There was no question that something was wrong with them.

  And there was.

  They were both diagnosed with having “severe antisocial personality disorder”. The psychiatrist explained that their brains weren’t capable of associating right from wrong, good from bad. When they did something bad, not only did they not understand what they did wrong—but also they didn’t understand why they were being punished. Their twisted, faulty brains released a certain type of endorphin into their body every time they did something wrong—the same endorphin that gets released in normal people when they do something righteous—something like volunteering, or giving unconditionally to a charity. The twins simply weren’t capable of learning the good from the bad.

  What seemed like a situation that couldn’t get any worse, managed to take a terribly tragic turn. The next five years in the Riley home were as bad as bad could possibly be.

  I shall spare you the dreadful details, and tell you only what must be told.

  Philip and Deborah were exhausted. Philip had gotten a new job as a cook in a kitchen—still waiting for the economy to lift back up so he could return to managing the bank.

  Deborah was working as a waitress—at least that’s what she told her husband. Deborah was actually working as a stripper at the strip club in the next town over, where no one recognized her.

  Without the money she made stripping, the Riley’s would have been living off of food stamps.

  A once happy and lively woman, Deborah had become depressed and jaded. There were many days that she considered ending her own life—but then she was overwhelmed with the guilt that she would be leaving Philip with three children and a lousy minimum wage kitchen job.

  At twelve years old, the Riley twins committed the worst act they would commit in their lives. They had their way with their little sister.

  When Vanessa finally told her parents months later, Philip and Deborah were naturally shocked and devastated.

  Philip, for the first time in his life, struck his sons. He wanted to kill them—but he knew it was wrong. Instead, he disowned them. He reported the act and had them committed to juvenile hall. The judge considered sending them to an adult prison—but ultimately decided against it, given their diagnosed disorder.

  Philip tried his best to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. It took months, but he was eventually able to sleep again, and he was eventually able to look his wife in the eyes without seeing his psychopathic sons.

  Philip held onto his life by a thread, but Deborah had given up.

  Every day got harder. The idea of sex made her nauseous—which wasn’t helped by the fact she was secretly working as a stripper.

  One day, after a dirty old customer refused to leave her a tip, she decided that she had reached her limit.

  In the desk drawer, in the manager’s office was a handgun.

  When the manager went out for his smoke break, Deborah ended her tragic life.

  Receiving the news that your wife has secretly been a stripper for years on the same day you receive the news that she killed herself was a tremendously hard pill to swallow.

  Philip’s broken life fell into little pieces, and he wasn’t able to pick them back up. He slipped into a deep depression and started to drink heavily. The liquor helped him forget his pains.

  Naturally, the liquor quickly became an addiction, and the addiction quickly turned to hard drugs. Philip knew that he’d failed his wife, and all of his children. He couldn’t bear to look his daughter in the eyes.

  Philip begged his older sister, who already had a few children of her own, to take Vanessa in.

  During a rare moment of sobriety, Philip set up an appointment with Walker Realty, and he met with Andrew’s father and instructed him to sell his house, and give all of the money to his daughter when she turned eighteen.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  IDLE NO MORE

  After seeing Kane crying behind the dumpster, The Riley twins held the young, broken and bruised boy down against the pavement, far from the juvy staff. Using a knife they stole from the kitchen, the twins cut Kane repeatedly—Over thirty deep and bloody abrasions.

  Kane covered his face during the attack. Before the twins could pull Kane’s hands away, they were pulled to the ground by the juvy guards.

  Kane should have been rushed to the hospital, but yet again—he wasn’t. Instead, h
e spent nearly two weeks in the little facility medical room, with poorly administered stitches to his cuts.

  Kane dreaded the thought of returning to his little room, and having to face the horrible delinquents again. He needed to find some way to shed his title of “public punching bag”. He was sick of being used as a way for misguided teenagers to prove their dominance.

  He needed to do something big—but he didn’t have the heart to hurt anyone. He needed to escape.

  On the wall, next to the emergency portable defibrillator was a key on a hook. It was the key that opened the medical room, as well as the supply room and the offices. It wasn’t a key he could use to get out of the facility, but he figured that there might be another key in one of the offices—or some sort of tool in the supply room he could use to pick the lock.

  Kane took the key and hid it in a little hole in his pocket.

  When Kane was released, the facility’s young inmates were already preparing their next attack. As the guard walked Kane towards his cell, the Riley twins smiled at him, letting him know that they weren’t finished.

  Luckily for Kane, the day he was sent back to his cell was the same day the facility received a new intake of young delinquent inmates. Before the testosterone driven criminals made their way to Kane, they needed to make sure the new kids knew their place.

  Kane began to plot his escape. Everyday, the guards switched shifts at the end of recess—at five minutes to four. Kane quickly figured out that he had about one minute each day to carry out his getaway. Each day, he quickly searched a different room using the key he stole from the medical room. He started with the offices, but found nothing useful. Then, he tried the storage room, where he was only able to find a screwdriver. Finally, he tried the staff bathroom—which had a small window, but not one that Kane could fit through.

  After he’d exhausted his luck with the inside rooms, he started to work away at a small corner of the outdoor fence—scraping the metallic wire with the head of the screwdriver. For only a couple of minutes each day, Kane sat, squished in the little hidden corner where the fence met the wall. There was a thorn bush on the other side of the fence, which left sore cuts all over Kane’s hands. It took him about four days to cut through one wire—and he needed to cut about a dozen to be able to make the squeeze. When he finally got through, he would have to push his body through the sharp thorn bush and endure the pain and cuts in order to escape—but it was nothing compared to the pain he received from a beating.

  At the end of each sawing session, Kane bent the wires back into place—giving the fence the appearance that no damage or alteration had been done.

  Kane was close—very close. His hands were ripped to shreds from the thorns, and he was painfully sick with the flu from sitting on the icy cement every day. Kane was only a single day away from being able to fit through his hole when he saw Tanner and Jacob, the young black brothers for the first time.

  Jacob didn’t take well to the hierarchy in the youth prison. He was quick to defend himself, and he was quick to defend his young brother.

  The Riley brothers didn’t like that the first thing they heard Jacob say was “Stay the fuck away from us.” They were determined to teach Jacob a lesson.

  One day, during recess, the sociopathic brothers found Tanner crying behind the same stairwell they found Kane behind just weeks before. With their trusty kitchen knife in hand, they held the young boy down and prepared to leave their marks.

  “Jacob!” Tanner screamed for his brother.

  Jacob came running before the psychopathic twins could make their first cut into Tanner. Jacob threw Peter violently to the ground, and then began to repeatedly punch Kyle in the face, breaking his nose and his cheekbone.

  The fight was happening just around the corner from where Kane was sawing away at the wire fence. As Kane poked his head out, he saw Peter pull himself to his feet and pick up the kitchen knife.

  Kane froze—unsure of what to do. Tanner was crying on the ground, and Jacob was completely oblivious to the armed Peter behind him.

  Moments later, Peter was stabbing Jacob repeatedly in the back with the kitchen knife. Jacob’s body tensed up and he dropped down hard to his knees. He screamed out loud as pain overtook his young body.

  Tanner screamed at the top of his lungs as he watched the final moments of his fifteen-year-old brother’s life.

  Kane didn’t do anything. He didn’t know what to do. He simply stood motionlessly as the psychotic twins walked away, laughing at the young boy crying over his brother’s limp corpse.

  The prison staff pulled Tanner away from his brother and took him to an unused wing of the facility.

  Kane suddenly felt torn. Even though he didn’t know the young dark-skinned boy, he didn’t want to abandon him.

  After Kane pried the fence open, he decided to stay and wait for Tanner to be brought back to his cell. Prison staff were holding him in isolation while he grieved over Jacob.

  When Tanner was finally brought back to his cell, he looked like a feral cat. Every little sound made him jump and his eyes were glued open wide. He was timid, and scared. The other kids in the facility could smell the fear from a mile away, and were excited to exploit the young boy to improve their twisted social status.

  There was no question that Tanner would be killed if Kane didn’t do something quickly. Even the prison guards were hesitant to leave Tanner alone.

  The Riley twins, who were now serving three life sentences, instead of two, were especially excited to make their mark on the young boy.

  Peter Riley slipped into Tanner’s cell one evening.

  He started by grabbing Tanner’s mouth with his hand, muffling his screams. Then, with his free hand, he tried to grab onto Tanner’s arm with the intention to break it. Tanner was feisty—squirming and thrashing, making it difficult for the older sociopathic child to get a hold on him.

  Unfortunately, Tanner was no match for the older child, who was nearly twice his size. But luckily for Tanner, Kane had been keeping a close eye on the young child since he’d returned to the cell.

  Using a rock that he’d brought in from outside, Kane entered the cell and struck the twin on the top of the head with all of his force, knocking him unconscious in a single blow. The strike cracked Peter’s skull. The old medical supervisor couldn’t stop the child’s bleeding, so, for once, they sent someone to the hospital for immediate medical attention.

  Kane told Tanner about his escape plan, and Tanner agreed to leave with him.

  But then, Kane’s morality crept back up on him. Another new group of kids arrived at the facility—and some of them were as young and “fresh-faced” as he was. Kane knew he couldn’t help all of them, even if he stayed.

  But he had an idea—something that would make life in juvy a little bit easier for everyone.

  During recess, Kane used his little key to break into the medical room. He used his shirtsleeve to open the door, so there wouldn’t be any fingerprints. Carefully, he put on a pair of rubber gloves and took the portable defibrillator unit, which he snuck back to his cell, and hid it under his pillow.

  When everyone was asleep, Tanner carefully picked the lock to his cell, the lock to Kane’s cell, and then the lock to the sleeping Kyle’s cell.

  Kane, wearing his rubber gloves, fired up the defibrillator and set it to its highest setting. He stared down at the sociopathic young murderer while he waited for the defibrillator to warm up. He knew that what he was about to do was murder—but he didn’t care. The demented Kyle needed to be removed from the face of the earth.

  Using the defibrillator, Kane killed Kyle while he slept. Kane carefully returned the defibrillator unit to the medical office and disposed of his gloves in his cell toilet. Tanner locked Kane back in his cell before returning to his own cell.

  The official cause of death was “heart attack”. The murder was perfectly executed.

  A few nights later, Kane and Tanner made their escape. Tanner picked their cell locks,
and the two boys snuck through Kane’s fence hole and made their way to the desolate impound lot where the ‘69 Mustang was being held.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  IN COLD BLOOD

  It was becoming increasingly more obvious to Kane that Andrew was the killer behind all of the vampiric murders—his seemingly nocturnal lifestyle and his enrolment in the night class both supported the theory. Not to mention the death of the young British boy, Thomas just a few nights prior, after Andrew had gotten into a fight with him.

  As much as Kane didn’t want to believe it, he had little choice. As much as Kane didn’t want to kill Andrew, he knew it had to be done.

  But he wasn’t going to make the move until he was absolutely sure.

  He continued to follow Andrew down the cold, windy streets from a safe distance. It was late. There were no shops open, and no one in Snowbrooke was still awake. What reason could he possibly have for braving the cold at that hour?

  Andrew turned around a corner. Kane waited a minute before slowly creeping around the corner himself. He’d found himself in a familiar area of town—the street where he had found himself that very morning...

  Brittany’s street.

  A cold feeling crossed Kane’s body. Kane pulled his car over quietly, and idled while he watched Andrew.

  Andrew, with his hood up and his hands stuffed into his pockets, turned up Brittany’s driveway and walked up to her door. He was carrying a lot of nervous tension in his body. His shoulders were raised and stiff, and he seemed to be struggling to stand still. He knocked on Brittany’s door and waited.

  The thick snow made it difficult to see Andrew from the safe distance Kane watched from. A strong gust of wind picked up the freshest layer of snow and created a white wall between Kane and his suspect. As it died down, Kane saw Andrew suspiciously looking around and walking around the side of the house towards the back door.

  Kane had to act. Over the years, he’d gotten a lot of blood on his hands, and he carried a lot of guilt. But he knew that if Brittany died because of Kane’s reluctance, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.