13 Nights of Horror: The Disappearance of Rose Hillard (8 page)

“The right thing?” He paused, briefly feeling a breathless sense of panic in his chest before managing to get himself under control. “Sure,” he said finally. “You absolutely did the right thing. I’m sure Rose will be home soon.”

Today

His cane tapped heavily on each step leading up to the Hillards’ front door. The rain was falling harder than ever now, and as he knocked on the door Gorman couldn’t help but turn and look back toward the forest on the other side of the road. He half-expected to see Rose out there, watching him, but there was no sign of her. Hearing movement inside the house, he turned just as Michael swung the door open.

“You got news?” he asked. “Did you -”

Before he could finish, Gorman stepped forward and grabbed him by the neck, swinging him around and slamming his head into the wall. Dropping his cane, he turned Michael toward him and landed a punch straight in the center of the man’s face, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Reaching to his waist, Gorman removed his gun from its holster.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Michael spluttered, as blood flowed from his broken nose.

“Carey and the kids are downtown,” Gorman replied, flicking the safety catch off. “I told them to stay there for a while. I didn’t tell them exactly why, although I suppose they’re gonna have to learn the truth eventually. Then again, I think Carey probably already guessed.”

“What are you -”

“I know, Michael.”

“You know what?”

“I know that you lied to me that night.” He aimed the gun straight at Michael’s face. “I’ve always prided myself on being a good judge of character,” he continued, “but in this case I couldn’t have been more wrong. You see, it never occurred to me that a man might lie about the circumstances surrounding his own daughter’s torture and murder. I guess I just couldn’t comprehend the idea that so much pure evil could exist in one man’s heart, but you manipulated me, didn’t you? You treated me like a goddamn idiot and I fell for it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Michael replied cautiously, edging back along the hallway as he stumbled to his feet. “Ben, why don’t you come through and we can talk about this? You’ve obviously got something all mixed up here…”

“Ricky wasn’t the third man,” Gorman continued, with the gun still in his trembling hand. “I don’t know why he was there. Maybe he was trying to help Rose, but whatever, the third man who never showed his face on the video, that was you.”

“Are you serious?” Michael asked, his face filled with shock. “You think I’d do that to my own daughter?”

“I
know
you did it.”

“Jesus, I…” Michael paused, still backing away. “Ben, you’re making a huge mistake.”

“You were doing it to her all her life, weren’t you?” Gorman continued, as tears gathered in his eyes. “That poor little girl never knew a time when her own father wasn’t… So what happened that night? Did you accidentally go too far? Did you push her a little too deep, cut her too much, and she died? Or did you intend for it to happen that way? Had you got tired of all the old thrills and found you needed to actually murder her while you were -”

“Stop!” Michael shouted.

“Your own daughter!” Gorman shouted back at him.

“It was an accident!”

Silence fell for a moment, as the rain continued to fall outside.

“Go on,” Gorman said finally.

“She enjoyed it,” he continued. “I know that might be hard for you to believe, but she really liked it. She got off on that kind of thing. We tried it vanilla a few times, but she was always the one who was pushing to take it to the next level, to make it more dangerous.”

“You’re still lying,” Gorman replied.

“I swear I’m not,” Michael told him as he backed all the way to the wall. “I told her we should slow down, but she was the one who wanted to use the battery, and the one who wanted to get other people involved, and the one who wanted it all filmed so that she could, I don’t know, get off on it later or something…”

“Liar!” Gorman shouted.

“You weren’t there,” Michael continued. “You don’t know what she was really like. I mean sure, everyone thinks Rose was this sweet girl, but she had a dark side. She was all over me, she was always the one who initiated everything. That girl was insatiable. I know I should have been stronger, I should have held back and handled things differently, but I just wanted her to be happy. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s that I indulged her desires. I should have known that it could only end one way.”

“You fooled me once,” Gorman replied, “and I will never, ever forgive myself for that, or for allowing you to persuade me to go along with your plan to hide the truth, but this ends today. You’re going to come with me to the -”

Before he could finish, Michael lunged at him, knocking his arm against the wall with such force that the gun fired once as it fell to the ground. Kicking Gorman in his bad hip, Michael slammed the Sheriff’s head into the door-frame before pushing him away and grabbing the gun. Turning, he aimed straight at Gorman’s chest and fired four times, sending the Sheriff sprawling back onto the floor.

Aiming the gun straight at Gorman’s head, he paused for a moment.

“Well,” he said breathlessly, lowering the gun as he stared down at Gorman’s bloodied chest, “I guess this will have to do.”

With blood pouring from holes in his upper chest and shoulder, Gorman tried desperately to get up, but the pain was intense and he was already having trouble breathing. He opened his mouth to say something, but as he fumbled for his phone he felt Michael reaching down and snatching it away.

“The sixth bullet is for your head,” Michael muttered, “to put you out of your misery quickly. I have no desire to make you suffer unnecessarily.”

“You’re sick,” Gorman gasped as he winced with pain. “You’re…”

“She was good, you know,” Michael replied, leaning over the Sheriff. “Rose, I mean. She had this hot little body, and when she was on fire, she was really just so goddamn good. The things that girl could do… I guess it helped that I’d been training her for so long, but my God, she was sensational. I guess that’s why I couldn’t resist, even after she got a little older than I usually like them.” He paused, as if he was enjoying the memory. “You want to know something else? She tasted so good, I swear, she ruined me for life. And when she was in pain, she’d just keep going, no matter what I did to her. Honestly, I thought she was unstoppable.”

“You…” Gorman tried to say, as he made another attempt to get up. “You… are… the most…”

“I’m a lucky man? I know. That final night, though, I knew I was going to lose her, that she was growing up and she wouldn’t be Daddy’s little princess for much longer, so I figured I could indulge the one final fantasy that had always escaped me. Electrocuting her was fun, just nudging her closer and closer to death, and then I made damn sure she was looking right into my eyes as I finished her off. But that wasn’t even the end of it. She was still warm, so I made sure the cameras were still running. Did you ever watch the whole video, Sheriff? Did you see the very last act? I always wondered if the real reason you kept that disc was that you found it kind of hot yourself.”

“Go…” Gorman winced, and then suddenly he looked over Michael’s shoulder, as if he’d spotted something a little way back. “Go… to hell…”

“I knew I couldn’t hide the crime scene completely, so I figured I needed to trick you into going along with me. It wasn’t too hard, given your longstanding determination to protect the people of this town. I shouldn’t have left the disc for you to find, that was a mistake, but I covered it pretty well. I should probably admit that I’m kinda responsible for your hip, though. That hit-and-run was my attempt to shut you up for good, but later I realized there was no harm in having you around. You’d already fallen hook, line and sinker for your own legend.”

Gorman shook his head, before trying and failing to get to his feet. As he fell back down, he let out a gasp of pain.

“I’m going to have to think of a story to explain this latest development,” Michael continued. “I guess I’ll just have to say that you went mad and I was forced to kill you in self-defense. It’s a bit of a tall story, but it’s so bizarre it might actually -”

Suddenly he heard a noise nearby and he paused. Listening for a moment longer, he realized there was a faint clicking sound, as if someone was standing right behind him. He waited for a few seconds, worried that his wife had come home unexpectedly, and finally he turned.

He stared in horror at the sight before him.

Rose was standing in the hallway, wearing the same torn clothes he’d stuffed into the grave when he buried her. Her hair was soaking wet from the rain, and her skin was discolored and – in places – completely missing, while several of the injuries he’d inflicted on her five years ago were still visible: the missing teeth; the burns to her neck; the split fingers with their nails torn off. Most striking, however, was her face, where her nose was completely missing, revealing part of her skull. Her eyes, having partially rotted, were staring straight at him, while a section of her lips had fallen away to reveal part of her lower jaw.

Michael opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

“I waited,” Rose said after a moment, taking a step toward him. “For five years, in that muddy pit where you buried me, I waited for someone to do the right thing. Finally I realized I couldn’t leave it any longer. The twins are getting to the age where you’re going to start taking an interest in them, and I can’t let that happen.”

“Rose…” Gorman whispered, trying to roll onto his side.

Raising the gun, Michael fired straight at his daughter, hitting her in the shoulder but not even causing her to flinch. He pulled the trigger again, but this time the gun merely clicked. Stepping back, he stared in horror as she edged ever closer.

“I loved you!” he shouted. “That’s all! I loved you too much, Rose!”

“You couldn’t keep your hands off me,” she replied calmly.

“Is it a crime for a man to love his daughter?” he continued, wincing as he clutched his left arm. “Is the…” Gasping, he leaned back against the wall. Sweat was pouring down his face now and he was clearly struggling to breathe. “I loved you too much,” he whimpered. “I wanted to love you in all the ways a man can love his daughter, I wanted to protect you from the rest of the world!”

“Is that why you tortured me for four hours?”

“You liked it!” he shouted, before letting out a grunt of pain and dropping to the floor.

“You taught me to like a lot of things,” Rose replied, staring down at him.

“Rose…” He tried to get to his feet, but the pain was too much and he simply collapsed back against the wall while taking several deep, desperate breaths.

“Goodbye, Daddy,” Rose said finally. “I know where you’re going, and it’s not going to be very nice for you.”

For the next few minutes, she simply watched as Michael gasped for air. As the heart attack overwhelmed him completely, he tried to crawl away, only to collapse and fall still. Rose waited, able to sense his heart still struggling until finally she turned to look over at Sheriff Gorman.

“It’s done,” she said after a moment. “He’s dead.”

Gorman tried to sit up, but he’d lost too much blood and he couldn’t even get a word out. Rolling onto his back, he stared up at her.

“Sometimes,” Rose continued, staring at her dead father, “when something truly evil happens, and when no-one does anything to correct it, other ways are found to put things right. It’s almost as if the natural world broke its own rules, just to make sure that something was able to come and deliver justice. Rats chased and killed cats, beetles rose up from the chests of men, and even the trees themselves tried to grow back underground out of shame. I waited and waited for someone to do the right thing, but finally the laws of nature were broken just a little further and allowed me to come back and do it myself. That’s how evil this man was, and how much the world wanted to put things right.”

“I…” Gorman tried to say. “I’m… I’m sorry…”

“Don’t worry,” Rose continued, walking over to him and looking down at the wounds in his chest. “I need you to do one more thing for me, Sheriff. I think you owe me that much.”

***

Two weeks later, Sheriff Ben Gorman stood in the forest and watched as two of his deputies began to lift Rose Hillard’s corpse from the shallow grave where she’d been buried five years ago.

“This is going to destroy the town,” Karyn said after a moment, standing next to him. “People still had hope that she might be alive.”

“It won’t destroy the town,” Gorman muttered. “People will be shocked, they’ll mourn… But that’s no reason to hide the truth.”

He paused as he saw Rose’s dead face emerging from the mud. She looked exactly as he remembered her from a few weeks earlier, although there was still a part of him that wondered if the whole experience had really happened. Having always been the kind of man who dismissed the idea of ghosts, he was struggling to accept that she could have returned and sought vengeance on the man responsible for her death. Still, she’d told him where to find her body, and he was pretty sure she must have been the anonymous person who called an ambulance. According to the doctor, it was a miracle that he’d survived the shooting, and he felt Rose might have played a part in that too. After all, she needed him alive so he could deliver the truth to the people of Vantage.

“I can’t look,” Karyn said, staring in shock at the body as it was laid on a white sheet, “but I can’t look away either.”