Innocent Monsters (23 page)

She could hear that voice in her head again, the voice of doubt...
Think, think about it. Even Brown knows...
And she kept telling herself there was no reason to worry, none at all, that everything was going to be fine soon. Fine and clear.

IT WASN’T a matter of trust. It didn’t matter how much she loved him. It was the voice in her head. It kept telling her things she didn’t want to hear, things she didn’t really believe; it made her see deception where she never noticed it before, it talked and talked and the only thing she could do to make it stop was prove it wrong. Or prove it right.

That evening William asked her to go back to his place again and she went along. And waited. They ate dinner, she did the dishes and waited, they had some tea, she massaged his shoulders and waited, one hour, two, until he fell asleep on the sofa with an arm dangling down the floor and the other around her waist. Jessica laid quietly on top of him, her chin on his chest, looking up at him, at the ginger beard growth on his chin. She had never met anyone whose beard and hair were of two different colours.

The house was quiet, the evening darkness only broken by the light coming from the floor lamp by the side of the sofa, and all she could hear was his heavy breathing.

How much she loved him already, how much she wished she could stop time somehow, make this moment and its stillness last an eternity, preserve both of them from what was bound to happen, from the inevitability of it all. But she couldn’t. She needed to know. So she moved his arm off her waist and carefully moved away from him, slowly, little by little, and once off the sofa she squatted next to him for a while longer to make sure he was still asleep. His breathing was deep, like that of a person who still has hours of rest ahead so she stood up and walked upstairs.

She went straight for the trunk.

Earlier that evening she had started searching the house in her mind, trying to think of places where he might keep something hidden and at first she couldn’t really think of anywhere. The whole house was incredibly uncluttered; every piece of furniture, every drawer, absolutely everything seemed to be there for an obvious reason. Drawers in the kitchen only contained cutlery, tea towels and napkins. The sideboard in the sitting room only contained cds and DVDs, the cabinet in the toilet only contained medicines and plasters, the airing cabinet only towels and sheets. She hadn’t spent much time in the bedroom, but she could already bet that the wardrobe would only contain clothes and shoes. But then she remembered noticing a large trunk in there and suddenly she was sure that if William was even capable of keeping anything spare, he would have kept it in there. Suddenly she was sure that in there she would find whatever it was she was looking for.

Jessica groped in the dark looking for the switch for one of the lamps on the bedside tables. It was ridiculous, she knew that the light of a single bulb would never be bright enough to disturb William sleeping on a different floor, but as soon as she turned it on she stared at the door anyway, for several seconds, half expecting to see him standing there, outraged by her intrusion. When it was obvious that nothing was going to happen, she kneeled on the floor and lifted the lid of the trunk. Unsurprisingly, it was nearly empty apart from a couple of portfolio folders, a squash racket and an empty sports bag, but under the bag she found a large black box which she pulled out and placed on the floor in front of her.

Jessica felt like a thief with a full house to burgle and only five seconds to do the job; she couldn’t tell if she was feeling hot or cold anymore but she had to do this, she had to open it, go through his things, stop the voice in her head. She had to put things right.

What she found at first was a few printouts, online articles throughout which William had highlighted words and entire phrases, and she started reading through them, unable to stop herself.

...John Wayne Gacy... executed in 1994 for the rape and murder of thirty three boys and men...

...
Arthur Gary Bishop... child molester and serial killer... Somehow I became sexually attracted to young boys and I would fantasize about them naked... All boys became mere sexual objects…

...
Westley Allan Dodd... executed in January 1994... Dodd began sexually abusing children when he was 13 years old... some of them as young as 2 years old... sentenced... death for molesting... should be punished to the full extent of the law, as should all sex offenders and murderers...

Dodd’s face was staring at her from the mug shot printed with the article, black hair, thick mustache, the remorseless look in his eyes making it impossible to keep reading, too disturbing. Was this just a morbid obsession with serial killers? Or was it part of a side of him he had kept hidden from her?

She left the papers on the floor and went back to the contents of the box. Next she found photographs: an old couple, maybe his parents, maybe his grandparents, a dog, a school picture, rows of boys’ grainy faces faded by time; a toddler and a little girl with a large jumper on, the legs sticking out of her skirt nothing but a pair of chopsticks, her face too small to make out, writings on their back reading
Helena 7 months, Helena 7 years old – Lafayette – Maine
. And another picture,
William 18 months
, and she smiled at him, smiled at his big blue eyes. Then she thought she heard William cough and all she wanted to do was stand up, throw the box up in the air and run away, but her body stood right where it was, petrified for a couple of seconds, until her hands started moving again and fished out another photograph. It was the girl, the one from the pictures all over his study’s wall, the one in the poster, his ex-girlfriend. She was standing in a meadow with a bunch of yellow flowers in her hands, a dark dress with puffy sleeves and a delicate, invisible smile on her lips. She looked awfully young, her brown hair long and thick, her eyes green, her skin pale and so similar... Almost a spitting image of herself.

He always goes for the same kind of women.

She turned the photo over to find a blurred dedication in pen scribbled on the top left hand corner.
March ’79. To my life, my sadness, my joy, my madness, my love, my brother. Helena.

Helena...

Helena was his sister...

Helena was his girlfriend...

I guess you could call her that.

Jessica could picture them, she could see them naked, together in the same bed, making love, brother and sister and she felt disgusted and nauseous, shocked. But then she saw something else just underneath the photographs, something that not only stopped the queasiness growing in her stomach, it numbed her altogether. Dozens of newspaper clippings were piled at the bottom of the box: an article about her brand new contract with the Jefferson, her interview for
The Word
, reviews of her book, pictures and pictures of herself. Her sister obituary from the
Southern Journal
; a small article about her father drunkenly driving through the glass wall of the supermarket, parking right in front of the tills; half a page dedicated to his trial and conviction. Even the short story she had written for the Longfellow school competition fifteen years ago. How the hell could he get hold of all these things? Where?
Why?

Jessica kept blinking, looking at the inside of the box and the picture of Helena still in her left hand, until the voice of her brain spoke to her calmly, as if coming from another person, someone who wasn’t even in the same room, someone who wasn’t feeling scared or mystified.

See Jessy, the clues are all here: the man was so attached to his sister he actually thought he could replace her with you. He was so obsessed he would have done anything to have you, to have her back. Think. Think about it. Anything, Jessica. Anything... He WAS at the Windsor Hotel, he WAS there waiting for Kaitlyn. Lisa was right and he lied to you. Why do you think? Why do you think he lied?

Brown was right. Kaitlyn had been killed and William was the man he had been looking for.

“Jessica, what are you doing?”

William’s voice didn’t startle her much, as if she’d been waiting for him to wake up and find her going through his things all along. “You did it.” Her voice was shaking.

“You did it, you son of a bitch.”

“Did what?”

How could he sound so innocent?

“You killed her, didn’t you? You killed my sister. You did know her and you killed her because...”
Because he had to go through her to get to you.
“...Because she knew what kind of a pervert you are and she wanted to warn me and if she ever did you would never fuck your sister again.” She was hurt, more than she could remember ever being before, yet she found she couldn’t shed a single tear. “It wasn’t me. It was never me you wanted.”

William stood in front of her shaking his head, all the muscles of his face contrite in a sad expression. She saw two single heavy tears coming out of his eyes as if squeezed out with a syringe.

“You don’t understand.” His voice was calm, his eyes fixed on the black in the trunk behind her. “I knew you wouldn’t. I never fucked her. It wasn’t me who fucked her. I loved her, you can’t fuck someone you love. My father, he was the one who fucked her, he fucked us both. Me and her. He fucked us up. You think I liked it? You think I enjoyed it?”

Jessica was scared, confused and furious but the voice of her brain still managed to sound calm.
Any idea what he’s talking about
, it was asking, and then it stopped. All she could hear was silence. In that precise moment she looked at William and she understood, she knew what he was talking about, she knew about his hurt, about his pain, about the fear and the violence. She knew about his father. She could feel it. She could read it on his face. And she found she couldn’t shout
You did it
anymore, but...

“Tell me you didn’t do it. Tell me it wasn’t you who killed her... Did you? Did you know my sister?”

She walked towards him until they were face to face, inches from each other and his eyes where still lost somewhere behind her.

“Talk to me! Did you do it William? Look at me for Christ sake...”

Her hand rose hard and firm and she slapped him across the face. Now he was looking.

He was looking at her but he couldn’t see her. He could only see his father, right before his eyes. How long had it been? How many years since he had let the last man pay to molest his son? How many years since he had done it himself? How many years had William wished for and opportunity like this, him and his father finally face to face, finally the same height, the same size.

He had grown, that frightened skinny boy that never fought back, he had grown into a frightened man who couldn’t function, who was different from everybody else because of what his father had made him do and all he wanted to do was hurt him, hurt him, hurt him....

William only pushed him at first, a vigorous shove with open hands against his shoulders. He watched him sway backwards, looking up at him in confusion, and the look in his eyes irritated him, it was something that didn’t belong to his father’s face, something that had never been there before. So he took a step closer to him, slapped him, hit him, again and again as hard as he could, trying to take that hurt expression off his face, but the more he hit him the more distressed and bewildered his father looked. William punched him in the stomach, watched him double over with both his arms tight around his waist, heard him trying to catch his breath and hoped he would stop breathing altogether.

For a second, it looked as if his father was about to straighten up, fight back, instead he started crawling, moving quickly towards the door in a bizarre position, his legs bent, the rest of his body strangely erect, trying to make himself small and run at the same time. William followed him out of the room, watched him running down the stone staircase in amazement for a while then ran after him, chased him inside the sitting room, around the piano, around the sofa. The fear in his eyes was the most beautiful thing he’d had the pleasure to admire in years and William stopped to get a better look, panting, laughing with satisfaction, laughing at him, at the weakness he could see in this old man at last, at his confusion.

When his father made a run for the door again William stopped him, clutched an arm around his neck still laughing at him, laughing at the way he struggled against him, at the way his hands tried to pull the arm away from his throat. His father kicked and moaned and fought, bit him and elbowed him between the ribs, right above the diaphragm, so hard William couldn’t breathe anymore and let go of his grip, stood motionless for a few seconds, bent over his knees waiting for his lungs to fill up again.

When he lifted his head again his father wasn’t there anymore. The only person in the room was Jessica, frightened, dark red marks across her cheekbones and forehead, around her eye, a dribble of blood by the side of her mouth.

...Jesus...

William tried to hold her, tried to speak, to tell her how sorry he was, how everything was mixed up in his head, but as he moved to close his arms around her she pushed him away, as hard as she could and he let himself go, he let himself fall on the floor like an old rag doll.

What happened next only lasted a few seconds, yet everything seemed to unfold in slow motion before her eyes, so slowly Jessica had enough time to notice and memorize every single detail.

She watched William fall heavily backwards, his head and shoulders hitting the marble cross behind him as he collapsed to the floor; she felt the vibration ripple across the floor around them; she watched William looking up at her in bewilderment as the Jesus Christ moved off the wall, standing tall by itself instead of leaning against it. She watched William crawling on all four trying to stand up while the cross oscillated forth and back ever so slightly, picking up momentum with every shift until finally it fell forward.

She wasn’t sure if she screamed or said anything at all, but when the Jesus sculpture hit William, Jessica she was sure she’d seen tears coming out of its marble eyes.