He asked me for my version of events starting all the way back to the night Robin had died.
So, I told him, and then he told me the version of events he believed to be true, and it differed greatly from mine. Still, I did not protest as he painted a picture of a soulless murderer, a heartless monster. I just let him talk.
“You can of course call your attorney to be present with you while we do this. In fact, I’d recommend it at this point,” he told me, but I declined. I might have countered that I had nothing to hide, except, if I gave his story more credence than my own, it appeared I’d been hiding a lot.
My neighbors, the Deans, had been busy, it seemed.
They told the police I’d been drinking a lot in the days leading up to Robin’s death, that I’d been frustrated with the restrictions put on me by an unplanned child who never stopped crying, that exhaustion had started making me seem a little off. Said they heard our fights through the walls. I was short-tempered, haggard, irritable. I’d lost weight, and although nobody thought that I would ever intentionally kill my own child, well, given all that had happened since, wasn’t it the most reasonable assumption? Worse, they claimed that the night I went to try and save Lexi, I didn’t tell them to call the police as I raced to my car. They said I was enraged and drunk and threatening to “make that fucking bitch sorry she ever left me.” They say that’s why they called the police.
I must admit, that doesn’t sound at all like me, but then, how many times have I written in this very narrative that I didn’t feel like myself. From seven years of being with Lexi, I knew her parents liked to retire early for the evening. I knew that they were heavy sleepers. I also knew where they left the spare key. I suppose it’s not entirely far-fetched to think that a grief-ridden husband addled by drink might want to take his frustration out on the woman who abandoned him to his suffering. Maybe if I’d received a video that night of her choking to death on Blanky, I could have gotten myself off the hook. But there’s no video. Just a record of her call. Even if there had been a video, I guess I could have filmed it myself. It’s truly amazing how distorted events can seem through other people’s eyes.
And then of course, there’s the old man.
One of the first questions they asked me when I regained consciousness was where I had been all night. Marcy had seen me load the blanket into the trunk, had seen me stalking out to my car. Worried that they were now living next door to a murderer or a madman, they’d called the police on me again. When I showed up covered in blood, well, that did nothing to dissuade anyone.
So I told them I went to see the old man from the market and that I knew he had killed my wife and child by selling us a cursed blanket so I went to make him answer for it, and when he wouldn’t, I gave him a taste of his own medicine. Despite the seriousness of the matter and the sincerity in my voice, I couldn’t restrain a laugh at how ridiculous it all sounded when I said it out loud. The looks on the faces of the detective and his fellow officers only heightened the hilarity for me.
I was the only one amused.
WHEN I WAS BACK ON my feet, they took my shoes and my fingerprints, and sent me to jail.
FOR THE RECORD, I DON’T believe their version of events. I may have lost my mind for a time, but grief makes everyone crazy. Losing someone makes you lose yourself, makes you yearn for the impossible: one more day with the lost, an end to the pain, a cure for the spiritual malaise that eats you alive every morning you wake up alone. It makes you believe in wishes and other places. In suicide.
I believe I did the right thing. I know I loved my wife and baby daughter. Yes, she cried a lot; yes, Lexi left me when I needed her, but I loved them and would never have hurt them, even if I never really knew how to be a father, or a good husband, but I’m hardly alone in that. Turn on the TV any day of the week and you’ll see countless examples of people who should be locked away for the sake of their loved ones.
The world is full of evil.
I’m not that person.
My time spent here, caged in a cold dank cell alone with my thoughts, has only bolstered my belief in other worlds and the things that exist there. I have come to think of it as the ultimate escape, and I no longer fear it.
I’ve been having the dreams again. They’re much more vivid than before.
So tonight, I expect to hear a soft whisper against the bars as Blanky comes to find me from wherever the police have it stored. I imagine I will feel the warmth of it as it crawls up my chest, those teeth pressed against my lips as it forces them open. I will embrace the temporary agony as it the dirty cotton fills my throat, and then...
And then I imagine I will find myself there, with her, down on my knees before the witch who was never a witch at all, but The Goddess of Grief, my face upraised as my false façade shatters in pieces to the floor, exposing the hollow that has tormented me my whole life. There will be no blame there, no judgment, only love.
Because I may not always know who I am, but she does.
MURDER SUSPECT FOUND MISSING IN CELL
By Geraldine Archer
The Columbus Dispatch
Posted at 2.36 p.m.
Updated at 5.22 p.m.
IN A SCENE BETTER SUITED to a Hollywood movie, triple homicide suspect Steven Brannigan was found missing from his cell at the Tri-County Regional Jail in Mechanicsburg, Ohio in the early hours of this morning. Brannigan had been awaiting trial for the murders of his 11-month old daughter, his wife, and a retired professor. According to one of the attending officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, there was no obvious sign of the method Brannigan used to escape. The doors were locked and there were no structural faults within the cell that could have been exploited. It remains, he said, “an absolute puzzle.” The administration is currently considering the possibility that Brannigan worked with a staff member inside the jail to facilitate his escape. Adding to the mystery are the only clues found at the scene: a sixty-page document handwritten by Brannigan in which he details an alternate version of the events of which he stands accused, the stub of a pencil, and a single baby’s tooth. Authorities maintain Brannigan must have smuggled the tooth in with him, as, according to our source, there is “no other earthly reason for it to be there.”
Thank you for reading Blanky, and for your support of this author. If you liked this story, why not try out some other titles by Kealan Patrick Burke?
The Timmy Quinn Series:
The Turtle Boy
The Hides
Vessels
Peregrine’s Tale
Nemesis
Novels:
Kin
Currency of Souls
Master of the Moors
Novellas:
Sour Candy
The Tent
Midlisters
You In?
Jack & Jill
Seldom Seen in August
Collections:
Ravenous Ghosts
The Number 121 to Pennsylvania & Others
Theater Macabre
Secret Faces
Milestone: The Collected Stories
The Novellas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BORN AND RAISED IN a small harbor town in the south of Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke knew from a very early age that he was going to be a horror writer. The combination of an ancient locale, a horror-loving mother, and a family full of storytellers, made it inevitable that he would end up telling stories for a living. Since those formative years, he has written five novels, over a hundred short stories, six collections, and edited four acclaimed anthologies. In 2004, he was honored with the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy.
Kealan has worked as a waiter, a drama teacher, a mapmaker, a security guard, an assembly-line worker at Apple Computers, a salesman (for a day), a bartender, landscape gardener, vocalist in a grunge band, curriculum content editor, fiction editor at Gothic.net, and, most recently, a fraud investigator.
When not writing, Kealan designs book covers thro
ugh his company Elderlemon Design.
He is represented by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House Agency and Kassie Evashevski at United Talent Agency.
Visit him on the web at www.kealanpatrickburke.com, on Facebook, or on Twitter (@kealanburke)
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Also by Kealan Patrick Burke
Dead Seasons
Dead Leaves
Dead of Winter
Milestone
Milestone: The Collected Stories
The Timmy Quinn Series
The Turtle Boy
The Hides
Vessels
Peregrine's Tale
Nemesis: The Death of Timmy Quinn
Stage Whispers: The Collected Timmy Quinn
Standalone
The Novellas
Kin
Currency of Souls
Jack & Jill
Master of the Moors
The Number 121 to Pennsylvania & Others
The Tent
Theater Macabre
Sour Candy
Caramelo Ácido
Secret Faces
Blanky
We Live Inside Your Eyes
Watch for more at Kealan Patrick Burke’s site.
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