Semblance (29 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Despite the shitty quality of the tablet’s speakers, the true voice of Sinister was unmistakable. With the voice scrambler removed, we ended up listening to Calisto’s delicate falsetto instead of the deep baritone drone of Sinister.

“I wish I could say I know what you’re thinking at this very moment Shadow,” she said in the pre-recorded video, “But the truth is, I don’t. But God, I wish I was there to see the look on your stupid face.”

Calisto removed the mask and revealed herself to us. She had a smug look on her face.

The three of us congregated on the helipad, huddled over the screen, absolutely dumbfounded. I turned to Shadow and saw the hurt on his face.

I reflected on my own emotions and discovered only hate for Calisto. She had murdered Justin and for that, I wanted her to die.

“The first question that must come to mind is regarding the death of mommy and daddy,” she continued. “Yes, I take full credit for that one, though I know it’s probably hard to believe. How could a ten year-old girl have the mental capability to commit murder that has baffled police—and my stupid brother—for over thirteen years? The answer is simple.

“I’m smarter than all of you. I always have been. But seeing as how mom and dad invested all their time on you, Shadow, I was always on the outside looking in—like a forgotten puppy left out in the cold on Christmas Eve, staring through the windows while everyone else feasted on their fat Christmas turkey.

“
I
was the one deserving of their attention.
I
was the one that was always smarter, and
I
was the one that listened to everything that our parents told us.
I
should have been groomed to be the next leader of the Midnight Society but because I was born with no balls between my legs, I was regulated to the sidelines like a second-rate hack.

“No matter what I did, it always failed to impress mom and dad. While you were drawing stupid stick figures on snot-stained pieces of paper, I was composing ballads on my violin. But did mom or dad care?

“No, of course not; they ogled over your imbecile drawings and told me to hush my playing so you could concentrate on studying the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and Pablo Picasso. Do you know how I felt being second to you Shadow? Do you know how it felt being second to someone who was mentally inferior?

“It’s pretty amazing how much hate a ten year old can develop. Let that be a lesson for all parents—don’t neglect your kids because you’ll never know when they’ll murder you for being an asshole parent.”

“This brings us to the night that has altered the shape of your life forever, Shadow. You were asleep, if I recall. Dad was in the study; deep into his after dinner drink. I remember him passing out in his favorite arm chair; his head tilted back, neck exposed while Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody played. It was easy to sit in his lap and stab him in the jugular with the box cutter.

“Oh the blood, you should have seen the blood. It was brilliant. It was magnificent. What really made my day however was watching his eyes loll over to me in complete and utter disbelief. I stabbed him again, and the gurgling sound deep in his throat was the true music in the room, overshadowing Franz Liszt.

When dad was dead, I decided to saw his neck open with the box cutter. I didn’t know why at the time, but it felt like the right thing to do.

“Daddy’s death deserved to be gruesome. It deserved to be horrific in every sense. After all, he was an asshole. After I was finished with dad, it didn’t take long for mom to enter the study to investigate what my crying was all about. She screamed like a banshee when she saw dad lying in a pool of blood. She completely ignored me—as she always did—and ran to dad, cradling him in his arms.

“I surprised her with the blade from behind, giving her the same treatment I had given dad.

“
When the deed was done, I hid the box cutter along with my blood-stained clothes in the large stuffed bear our grandma had given me on my fifth birthday. I hated that bear, by the way. It always reminded me that while you got the shiny new bike, I got that furry oversized piece of shit—though it did come in handy in disposing the evidence.

I cleaned myself up along with any evidence that I had been in that study that night, and then I went to bed and slept peacefully for the first time in a long while.

“The next morning, you found their bodies. I thought it was ironic, yet sweet how you were trying to protect me from seeing the crime scene, despite the image already engraved in my photographic memory. I created the masterpiece after all.”

“My God,” Lincoln whispered out loud.

Shadow said nothing and continued watching the monitor.

Calisto sighed. “After killing our parents, I thought it was the end of my blood lust. I had tried my hand at murder once and once was enough for me. Soon it became a fond memory, one I occasionally would replay in my mind and smile. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, all those times you caught me in a daydream smiling and I told you that I was thinking about some cute guy I had met off the streets. Well that was a lie Shadow. In reality, I was thinking of mom and dad’s blood-soaked corpses.

“So while I moved on from that night, you were possessed by the incident. I have to admit, I didn’t think it would haunt you as much as it did, but at the time I was young and I didn’t understand the concept of emotions as much as I should have, and I underestimated just how much like our father you truly were. Whereas father obsessed over Julia’s death, you obsessed over father’s demise. It was very poetic.

“To this day, I sometimes find it hard to understand the emotions of others. I guess that makes me a sociopath doesn’t it?” she paused. “So this is the part where my confession gets a little sappy. Believe it or not, I care about you Shadow, and I never wanted to hurt you—physically that is. While mom and dad treated me like I was some bastard worth forgetting, you treated me like family. The only reason I discovered love was because of you. Yes—though you may not believe me after all that has happened—I love you Shadow. You are my twin after all and we share a bond that only other twins can understand.

“I’m still smarter than you, apply myself much better than you—but I’ll never hate you because of your stupidity or naivety. You’re probably wondering why I decided to do all of these things to you if I loved you so much.

“It’s because I wanted to recreate you; give you a new life. Let’s face it, the murder of our parents turned you into an empty shell—and I seriously felt guilty about it. I couldn’t just sit here idly and watch you waste your life away, trying to bring their killer—me—to justice.

“A few years ago I read how the Incata, an aboriginal tribe living in the remote rainforests of South America, believed that the sins an individual committed over their lifetime possessed your spirit and your body, transforming a person into a walking monster. The only way to be cleansed was to be stripped of everything you owned and take a pilgrimage deep into the center of the rainforest where a certain purple plant grew. This plant acted as both a powerful hallucinogen and a strong poison with its beauty being its defense mechanism.

“The sinners were to pick this plant and bring it back to their village as the first part of their absolution. Many of them ended up dying in the jungle from starvation, dehydration, or killed by the wildlife inside. Only a few returned back to the village, where the final step of the cleansing involved ingesting the plant and dying for a brief period of time. During the transition between life and death, the village elders resurrected the sinners by some voodoo magic, which suspiciously looked like CPR to me. If a person survived, only then were they were deemed fully cleansed and alive again.

“Shadow, this is what I have done for you. In order for you to be born again, I needed to strip everything away from you, which I have done. The leadership of the Midnight Society has been destroyed and all its past members now belong to me. It wasn’t difficult convincing them that under your leadership, the Midnight Society was going to crumble. After all, you broke a sacred tradition and allowed a common whore—Ms. Aria Valencia into our organization.

“I anticipated you choosing her far in advance. How? Well for the past year, I’ve been fucking with your mind. Before you went to sleep at night, I drugged you and with a little help of some subliminal cognitive hypnotherapy, I
was able to mold the ideal woman in your mind—every single detail including her height, her weight, her characteristics, her interests. I even went down to the finest details such as her speech and her mannerisms. For the past year, I’ve been constructing your dream girl, and that girl was Ms. Aria Valencia. She was someone I chose at random while enjoying a free piano concert at the University one evening. I admit, I will miss her lovely music.

“Oh yes brother, your love for Aria was programmed into your little walnut brain. Naturally when I brought Aria Valencia to your birthday party and had her play the piano for you, you immediately gravitated towards her. The desire for the Golden Virgin was too strong to resist. So when it came time to choose your life partner, you defied all logic and reason and you chose Aria. It was an artificial true love at first sight, and it pissed the hell out of everyone.

“If there’s one thing the mindless sheep in the Midnight Society respect, it’s tradition. They’re afraid of anything new and revolutionary. Your decision to have a commoner join the ranks of our prestigious organization was a massive slap in the face. Everyone was already unimpressed by your utter disregard for the responsibilities of being the Midnight Society’s leader, spending every waking second trying to solve the mystery of mom and dad’s gruesome murder.

“But don’t worry Shadow, with the way things turned out, you’re no longer burdened with the responsibility of leading a powerful secret society. I am.

“I know, you’re probably thinking that I must be the greatest sister in the world for taking on this heavy burden of leading all these idiots and assholes, but don’t worry. I’ll do it for your benefit. As of this moment the Midnight Society ceases to exist, and instead is replaced by the Order of the Revenant—named after that beautiful flower I was talking about.

“Presently the first step of your cleansing should be complete. Everything you own has been stripped away from you. The estate and all your money now belong to me. Your best friend Lincoln—who mistakes my vagina for a heart—should be dead; though I’m sure he’ll surprise me and find a way to survive. It’s the nature of a cockroach.

“By now, you would have also killed your new love, Aria, and chose to save your loving sister from having her throat slit by…your loving sister. It’s irony at its finest isn’t it?

“You have nothing left Shadow, nothing. You are now ready to go out into the harsh nature of the jungle alone, to be hunted by the predators. Every single cop in the country will be coming after your ass. After all, you just killed a prominent senator, along with a wealthy Japanese businessman and a devoted black Christian as well—well the prints on the gun from my rigged game said you did. Oh yes Shadow, the game was rigged. There was no way for you to lose, especially since pistols given to Brevin and James were tampered with.

“Welcome to the beginning of your rebirth Shadow. I anticipate you’ll be searching for the Revenants, and more specifically, me. I can’t wait to see you again brother, however don’t be sad if I have to kill you, because only then can you truly be reborn.”

I watched in confusion as tears began to stream down Calisto’s face. She truly was a psychopath.

“Goodbye Shadow, with all my love.”

The video ended and we stood on the helipad in complete silence, bathed by the morning sun. I could only imagine what was going through Shadow’s head, and what bleak emotions he was feeling.

As for me, my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces at the revelation that Shadow’s love for me was engineered by Calisto for her twisted little game.

We were not meant to be; the video made that abundantly clear. My life had been manipulated by Calisto for her personal game and if it weren’t for her brainwashing of Shadow, he would have never given me a second glance.

“So what now?” Lincoln asked; his voice cracking.

The tablet fell from Shadow’s hands and smashed onto the ground. He turned to me and was about to say something. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it.

Sometimes you could read a person’s face and just know that the news wasn’t going to be good.

“Aria, I don’t-” he began, but I shook my head and cut him off.

“Whatever you want to say, don’t say it,” I said. “If it will break my heart, please just don’t say it.”

Shadow paused for a moment, and then nodded. That nod felt like a bullet tearing through me. I wanted him to tell me that he would never break my heart, that the love we shared was real and had nothing to do with Calisto’s sick, twisted games.

But he didn’t. He nodded.

“I’m lost Shadow,” Lincoln said. “For the first time in a long time, I have no idea what to do.”

Shadow turned to him. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do Lincoln. We’re going to rebuild the Midnight Society,” he said with a fiery resolution. “And then I’m going to find my sister and kill her.”