Masked (3 page)

Their definition of honeymoon
suite was a room furnished with a heart shaped bed and a lot of red. When I
turned on the light I was bombarded with red everything, curtains, carpet, bed,
etc… Maybe it was the fact I was there alone, but the sight didn’t bring up emotions
of love and passion, but more of kitschy sadness. Of course I’d lost the only
one I ever remembered loving. I had only an empty space left where those
feeling once resided.

I walked over to the bed and set
my bags down, took off my jacket and put it on the back of the desk chair on my
way to the bathroom.

In the dingy little bathroom, I
took a second to look at myself in the mirror. As I ran my hand up and down the
three or four days of scraggly beard growth, I couldn’t remember which it was,
I noticed how worn out I looked. My small blue eyes looked distant and
exhausted.

“Smoky blue? Maybe?”

I turned on the faucet, splashed
the cool water on my face and patted it dry with the hand towel folded next to
the sink. The water was incredibly refreshing.

On my way back to the bed, I closed
the faded, dusty red curtains over the faint traces of daylight that were
starting to creep in. There was an old TV in the corner and I walked over to
turn it on, stopping at the first news program I came across.

“Today the high will be 65 and
the low 45 degrees. Wind will be blowing out of the northwest at fifteen miles
per hour,” the meteorologist said as I turned to the station.

Settling down on the edge of the
bed, I grabbed one of the sandwiches and the bottle of water out of the plastic
bag. I took a long pull from it. The water was still cold, so refreshing as it
flowed down my dry throat. I put the cap back on the bottle, set it back on the
bed and opened one of the sandwich packages. It was ham with swiss on wheat.
The sandwiches weren’t ideal fare, but were the best the small store had to
offer.

I was working my way through the
second sandwich when the story I’d been hoping to catch came on.

The search for a missing Idaho girl ends last
night with an anonymous call and the arrest of a monster.

Hannah Summers, a fourteen year-old girl from
Troy Idaho was found still alive last night after having been missing for close
to three weeks. Local authorities said she was found after receiving an
anonymous call to the address of Ted Samuels, a well-known business owner and
long-time resident of Troy. When the authorities arrived, the girl was found in
the house and Mr. Samuels was unconscious and bound in the basement. Not much
is known at this time about Hannah’s ordeal but what we do know is Mr. Samuels
held Hannah against her will in his home for the three weeks she was missing.

Hannah has told the authorities last night a
man wearing a dark ski mask came to the house. The man was able to overpower
Mr. Samuels and free her. She said he never removed the mask and she didn’t
recognize his voice. This stranger was the one who phoned the authorities. When
the police arrived on the scene, the masked man was gone. Right now the
authorities have no leads to who this mystery masked man was.

She didn’t give them my description.

When the police found Mr. Samuels bound in
the basement of his house, there was a note attached to his shirt. We haven’t
seen the note ourselves, but what we’ve been told is it said “I am a sick
bastard. I have done this before. The others are in the backyard. I deserve to
be castrated and ...” We can’t read what the rest of the note said on live
television.

This note led authorities to start an
immediate search of the backyard of Mr. Samuels’s house. So far the searchers
have found two bodies buried in the yard. The bodies appear to have been there
for some time, and there is no way yet to identify who these other victims
were. There is speculation one could belong to Lindsey Parker, another young
Troy resident who went missing two years ago and was never found.

Mr. Samuels is being held without bail and
we’ve been told he hasn’t said a word since he was apprehended. In this quiet
town, it is a day of celebration and horror.

We’ll continue to bring you more as the story
develops. Hannah is lucky to be alive and that there was a hero in town last
night. This is Sonia Kim reporting.

I thought the note was a nice
touch.

I’d seen my share of horrific
things over the past year, but the things he had done to her… That one
definitely left a mark on me. He was a vile puddle of slime and as far as I was
concerned deserved to first have his man hood removed and then hit by a train
after a few hours suffering.

Once the story was over, I got up
and turned off the TV. With a groan I stretched my sore back side to side. It
cracked with both motions and I did the same to my neck.

I sat back on the bed, bent down
to unlace my boots and pulled off each. The freaking headache would not go away
and the motion caused an increase to the pain. After scooting up further on the
bed, I fell back onto the mattress. The large heart was a cloud of cotton and
marshmallows. My sore tired body melted into it. I closed my eyes and was
asleep.

“She’s ready to see you now,”
a pleasant woman’s voice said.

I jerked my gaze up in
response. I hadn’t seen her approach. My full attention had been fixed on the zigzag
pattern of the dingy industrial carpet in the waiting area. I took a deep
breath and rose from the seat. My legs were lead as I tried to force them to
follow the round middle-aged woman in green scrubs. I was terrified.

“Are you coming?” the woman
asked.

“Yes. Sorry.”

I followed her down a grey
sterile hall, around a few corners and through a couple doors. The walk was a
blur of motion through a nondescript space, passing people and things I didn’t
take notice of. The woman stopped and opened the door to a room. She stuck her
head in and after few seconds passed she turned back to me.

“She’ll be ready for you in
just a minute.”

I waited for what seemed an
infinite amount of time. I didn’t want to go in that room. That room scared the
hell out of me. At the same time though, I wanted it to be over with. My heart
pounded faster and harder with each passing second.

“Are you okay? You don’t look
well?” the woman asked.

I didn’t feel well. “I’m
fine,” I lied.

The door opened and a man and
woman came into the hall. They were both middle-aged and well dressed. The man
had dark hair peppered with grey. His face and arms showed evidence of many
hours in the sun, probably on the golf course. The woman’s platinum hair framed
a smooth lean face. The crow’s feet near her eyes gave a hint at her real age and
I knew her buxomness was a new addition to attempted youthful preservation.

The couple paused when they
saw me and stared with cold eyes. The man urged the woman forward. She
hesitated, but began to move. I watched them walk down the hall and disappear
around a corner. It was time. I took a deep breath and stepped towards the
door.

The hospital room was small
and cramped, adorned in blue and pink pastels. In the corner was an assortment
of flowers and balloons. I fixed my attention on the colorful bouquets and
moved to take a seat in an empty chair. Some time passed as I sat in silence. I
didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to look at her, at them. It was so much
harder than I’d thought it would be.

“Your mom says they look like
you did in your baby pictures,” a young female voice said.

I closed my eyes, took a deep
breath, and looked up.

Lying on the bed was a girl,
my age. Her features were much like her mother’s, slightly rounder, and more
natural in their beauty, unmarred by attempts at artificial youth. Her emerald
eyes sparkled. I cared so much for her, for some reason, even more so right
then.

“They are so cute. I can’t
believe we made them together,” the girl said.

I looked over towards the foot
of the bed, at the two carts that held the two newborns, wrapped tightly in
white blankets, like large burritos. I began to shake. It was too much. I was
their father. She was their mother. How could we just give them to someone
else? They were ours to take care of. We made them.

That was just it though. We
couldn’t take care of them and I knew it. We still had two more years of high
school and then college. We made a mistake and now we were parents. My rational
mind knew the best thing for the babies was to send them to a home with parents
who could provide for them. They could have a shot at a good normal life. I
couldn’t give that to them.

I continued to stare at the
sleeping bundles. “They’re beautiful. How are you?” I looked up at the girl. I
had some composure back now.

“I’m fine. Sad,” the girl
said, her eyes wet.

I couldn’t watch her cry. I
was barely holding on as it was.

“How did it go with your
parents?” I asked.

“They’re ready for it to be
over. They don’t understand why I’m sad. They say I should be glad we found
such a nice couple willing to take twin newborns. They’re right. I know it’s best
for the babies, but they’re ours. I’m sad.”

“When will they be here?” I
asked.

“Soon.”

It was a closed adoption. I
wasn’t going to see the babies again.

“Do you know what they’re
going to name them?” I asked.

“No. But why don’t we name
them before they come, so they’ll always have a name to us?” she suggested.

“Okay. Any ideas?” I asked.

She blushed. “Okay, maybe I’ve
already named them.”

I smiled. “Let’s hear them.”

“Logan and Landon. I’ve always
liked those names,” she said.

“Those are good names,” I said.

I walked over to the sleeping
babies. “Logan and Landon. I don’t really know what to say. You’re both
beautiful. I’m sorry we can’t take care of you. We’ll miss getting to see you
grow. You’re in good hands though. Your new parents will take good care of you.
I love you,” I said. It took every ounce of control to not break down. It was
so hard.

There was a knock at the door.
I looked up towards the girl. Our eyes met. I didn’t want to give them up. We
could make it work somehow. I loved their mother and I loved them. Wasn’t that
all that mattered? Didn’t they need their mom and dad?

The door opened and a young
couple walked in. They greeted us and went to the babies. They looked really
happy. If we had just been a few years older, we could’ve been happy like that.
It wasn’t fair.

The couple chatted with us for
a few minutes before the nurse came in. We said our final goodbyes before the
nurse took the babies and the couple followed. Everything at that point faded
to black.

It was later that evening. I was
running on a dark suburban street.  It was a cool night, a pleasant evening,
perfect for running. My head was clear. I felt good. Every few minutes a car
passed, but other than that, the night was very peaceful. As I ran, I sang some
fast-paced punk song in my head I only knew half the words to. I think it was
something by the Ramones, but the tune wasn’t all that clear to me.

As I sang, there was a light
coming up from behind me, another car. There was no sidewalk on that stretch of
street, but I was all the way over to the side and unconcerned.

The light got closer, and I
continued on, singing to myself. The singing kept real thoughts out. I was fine
as long as I didn’t think. As the light got even brighter, it seemed like the
car should have passed already. I heard the constant hum of an engine and got
the feeling the vehicle was keeping pace with me. I turned my head to make sure
I was out of the vehicles’ path and was blinded by the light. A sharp agonizing
pain flooded my body.

I woke up screaming, my eyes wide
open. An echo of the pain I felt in the dream was still pulsing through my body,
but fading some with each second that passed. Cold dampness covered my head and
I sat up to see the pillow was soaked. The room was dim, lit by spots of sunlight
escaping from behind the closed curtains. When I noticed the large red heart I was
laying on I remembered where I was.

After giving myself a few moments
to let my confused state pass, I sat up and stretched my stiff back and neck, both
cracking with the movement. The dream was so real and it seemed to get more
real each time I had it.

The first time I had the dream
was over a year before, when I was still at the HUB. That first dream came as
fragments of the one I just had. Each new dream added more detail, like a lost
memory working to claw its way back and always ended with the light and pain. With
each new scene the full picture better coalesced. The cold glare of the girl’s
parents was new.

I didn’t know any of the people
in the dream, well at least I didn’t remember if I knew them. The only memories
I had were those of the previous eighteen months. All I knew of myself was what
I was told about the life I had before waking, which wasn’t much, and wasn’t
from a reliable source. Everything before was a blank void.

The dream always stirred up such
strong emotions, love, pride, and sadness. I knew in some way it had to be
real, that they must be real: a part of a past, a life I couldn’t remember. I
was only sixteen, I think. Could I have really been a dad to twins? I shook
those thoughts away. It didn’t matter.

The clock on the bedside table
read 3:02 pm in red flickering numbers. I’d been asleep for a while. I’d needed
the rest. Although reduced, the headache was still there and I decided I’d
better take something before it grew in intensity again.

Distant pain exploded back into
constant throbbing as I rose from the bed. I stumbled in reaction and went for
the duffle bag, found the small bottle inside, and took two of the large white pills,
popping them in my mouth. The now warm, energy drink helped to wash them down.

A few minutes later the caffeine had
cleared away some of the fog.  I made my way to the bathroom. The hot water that
sputtered from the shower head in the dingy tub was absolute heaven and by the
time I was out and drying off, the head pain was already beginning to recede.

Still wearing the white
not-so-soft towel around my waist, I found my small laptop in the bag and
powered it on. I stripped on a clean pair of jeans and black t-shirt before
taking a seat at the room’s small desk. The seat to the small chair creaked as I
sat in front of the computer and logged on, opening the browser.

The Rocky Ridge Inn was the type
of motel that gave you free HBO, but you were out of luck if you needed an
internet connection. I tethered my phone and was able to connect with no
problem and put on a little Sex Pistols for some background music. The first
song to come on was “Holiday.” I sang along as I navigated to a news search
engine.

I didn’t have a home. There were no
friends or family for me out there, at least that I was aware of. I tried for
some time to find any information about myself, about my past. My searches were
fruitless. With no name or really any frame of reference to go by, except for
the falsities I’d been told, it really was an impossible task. It didn’t take
long before I finally gave up the search to find out who I really was. It didn’t
matter anymore. Whoever I had been, no longer existed.

Circumstance created the person I
was now. I did what I did because it was the only thing that made any sense for
me. It provided some comfort to numb the pain I held inside. That pain was unfortunately
one of the few things I did remember, way too well.

Whenever I finished in one place,
I tried not to waste time before finding the next. Staying busy did just that, kept
me too busy to dwell on certain things: the pains of things I remembered and knowing
there was a life I didn’t. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the victims,
there were plenty of twisted people out there for me to help stop, plenty of
atrocities I could help end. Now the business in Troy was over, I was in
research mode, looking for where to go next.

I was looking for information
regarding missing persons and murder cases, taking notes of anything I thought I
may be able to help with. Usually I tried to limit my search to the Pacific
Northwest but had toyed with the idea of moving on to another region. It wasn’t
the time though; I wasn’t ready, not yet. Limiting myself geographically like I
did, didn’t really make any rational sense, but I guess the pain that tied me to
the area kept me from being able to move on.

There were a few missing person
cases and what looked like serial killings in both the Portland and Seattle areas
that looked promising. I noted the key information on a half-used complimentary
note pad. I would decide where to go later.

I looked up and saw it was close
to 6:30 pm. I opened the drapes some and saw the sun had set enough to allow me
to safely leave. Once I had everything loaded back into the bag I walked out
the door, leaving the key on the bed.

Outside, at the back of the truck,
I opened the squeaky rear door. I set the duffle on the ground and reached in to
pull a latch which revealed a compartment under the floor of the vehicle. The
compartment contained a selection of various handguns, a couple knives, and a sawed
off shotgun as well as other equipment I needed from time to time, including
the PTD secured in a small steel box. These were all tools of my trade, things
I had procured over the past year in order to be prepared for any situation I’d
find myself in. There didn’t seem to be anything missing from my small arsenal so
I closed the compartment and loaded the duffel inside.

My stomach rumbled as I turned to
the small café I’d noticed earlier, greedy for the delicious sustenance sure to
be inside. My greedy mouth salivated at the thought and the decision was made. I
would grab a bite to eat before heading out again. After that, I would decide
in which direction to head. 

Now, I like food, and when I
don’t get much of it for an extended period of time, I really start to like
food and a lot of it. That’s probably not too different from any other male
teenager, but show me anyone and I’ll eat them under the table. As I walked
over to the café my mind was full of gluttonous fantasies that reveled on all I
would eat once inside.