Tales of Sin and Madness (5 page)

Where did you come from?
she wondered, placing the photo against her chest. It felt hot, hotter than her skin, yet she didn’t take it away. There was something calling her, something or someone, she was sure of it, and just as she was about to open her eyes to see if it was coming from outside…

There were fairies and elves and wands everywhere, only they were tainted now by evil. The room was dark except for a solitary candle, and it not only flickered against the dirty old mattress with the horrible smell, but something else, something small and shaking. A human form, with long golden hair and dirty clothes. The person’s head was buried in the mattress – seemingly asleep. Then a sound, a thumping sound, and the candle wavered, as if something moved very close, causing the light to flicker over the fairies and elves and wands. A man. Tall, large, hairy. He enters the room, holding a bag, smiling and then the person with the long golden hair wakes up, looks towards the man and starts to scream. It’s a girl and she screams and tears are flowing down from her eyes as the man starts forward, eyes glowing with evil lust…

“Julia!”

Julia awoke, body bathed in sweat, breathing in quick gasps, unsure if the person calling her name had been part of the dream.

Dream? Fuck, that wasn’t a dream, that was a nightmare
.

“Julia! Hey you up there!”

Julia sat up and the photo fell off her chest.

It was Cindy.

Hopping out of bed, Julia walked over to the window and pulled aside the curtains. Two stories down standing on the sidewalk were Cindy and Belinda.

“We’ve been trying to reach you all night,” Belinda called. “What’s up?”

“I’m not feeling too well guys. I’m going to have to give tonight a miss.”

“Okay, suit yourself,” Cindy shouted.

“Say, this isn’t a peep show hon,” Belinda said. “We all know you’ve got a great body, but you don’t have to make us feel bad.”

“And you’ve got a tattoo now? When did that happen?”

Julia looked down and saw the blotch had grown again. It was now double the size of a matchbox.

Oh Christ.

“What is it?” Cindy called. “A love heart?”

“A Unicorn?”

“I know – the Stars and Stripes?”

“I have to go, sorry guys. Have fun.” She shut the window, pulled the curtains closed then dashed into the bathroom. She switched on the light and gazed at the blotch that covered half her chest. “Oh God,” she whimpered. “What’s happening to me?”

She stepped closer to the bathroom mirror and examined the growth more intimately.

She suddenly felt dizzy.

“It can’t be possible.”

She saw the photo reflected in the mirror – a faint and blurry image, but there was no mistaking the house and the trees and the three people and dog. They were all there, smiling at her, the man and mutt broken by the crease.

She dashed out of the bathroom and over to the bed, to the photo that lay on the sweat stained sheets. She picked it up. The picture was almost entirely faded.“What’s happening!” she cried and fell to the floor, clutching the photo to her chest, the photo folded on its crease as it was meant to be.

The phone rang.

Not Belinda or Cindy this time.

Julia got up and staggered to the phone. With an unsteady hand she picked up the handset. “Hello?”

“Jules it’s me. Are you okay? You don’t sound too good.”

As much as she wanted to tell her sister everything, she just choked back tears and answered, “I’m fine.”

“Okay. Listen, I’ve got something really amazing to tell you.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Julia said. The photo was hot in her hand. All she wanted was to savour its energy, be with it and nothing else. She didn’t want any distractions.

“But Jules…”

“Just leave me alone!” She dropped the phone, the receiver dangling off the coffee table by its cord. “No more,” she sobbed and fell to her knees.

Am I going crazy?

She wanted answers. Needed them.

The image on her chest meant something. It wasn’t just some cancerous growth or mutant bruise – it was a sign, it had to be.

“Tell me, please. What do you want?”

Clutching the photo to her heart, as if it were her lifeblood, she saw…

 
The little girl screams and tears are flowing down from her eyes as the man starts forward, eyes glowing with evil lust. “I have something for you,” he croaks. He digs into the bag and pulls out an old rag and a knife. The little girl screams and begs the man to leave her alone. She tries to run, but the man grabs her by her golden hair and punches her in the face. Sobbing now, the little girl lies still on the mattress, while the man shoves the rag into her mouth. He clutches the knife in his hand and with his free hand, undoes his pants, freeing his erect penis. “I have something else for you. Something you’ll really enjoy.” He grins and laughs and kneels down, pulling the little girl’s nightgown up around her waist. “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt. Just stay quiet and it’ll all be over soon…”

She is the girl. She’s hurting, scared and afraid. She knows the bad man that’s been hurting her and touching her. But she doesn’t want to think about that now. As the bad man presses down on her, she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks of Mommy and Daddy and Sammy and, yes, even her rotten brother Craig. Of last summer when they all went to the beach and swam and played volleyball and Mommy kept on hitting the ball into the water. She made Daddy go in and get it. Sammy was running around chasing the gulls, silly doggy.

As the pain rips through little Amanda, she keeps a firm hold of her photo and tries to block everything out. Everything except the good memories. Like the day she took the photo. The one she managed to grab before the bad man had taken her. The one that he hasn’t found yet, because she keeps it hidden, keeps it folded and hidden so the bad man won’t find it and tear it up. She clutches the photo hard and tries to remember the day, the very first time Daddy let her use his camera and Daddy and Mommy and Craig all stood outside their house while she waited for them to stop kidding around so she could take the picture. Even Sammy managed to stay still long enough for her to take the picture. “Cheese,” she had said, then pressed the little button. After they had gotten the photos back, Daddy had said that hers was the best one out of them all and he let her keep it in her room, beside the bed, which is where it stayed until the bad man came. But she still has it and keeping it close to her heart makes her feel that Mommy and Daddy are close and that everything is going to be okay. They are going to come and take her away, because the mattress stinks and she wants to go home, away from all the fairies and elves and magic wands…

Julia was awoken by a soft rocking and somebody speaking her name. When she opened her eyes, she at first saw only darkness. Then a light, shining down upon her.

“Jules, hey Jules.”

It was Claire, crouching down beside her.

The stench hit her next – a disgusting, but familiar odor of beer, piss and dust. But most of all it was the stench of death and decay.

She sat up and saw she was in the abandoned house, surrounded by fairies and elves and wands. She was on the mattress, her body covered with a jacket, but she was naked underneath.

“What happened? Why did you come here?”

Julia was startled by the unfamiliar voice. “Who’s there?”

Two people stepped into the beam of the flashlight. Two very familiar people.

“Jules, this is Amanda Waters’s parents – Heather and Sebastian.”

Julia gazed up at the two people. They looked different than the picture – older, not as attractive.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you on the phone. The photo you found, it was of Amanda’s family. After I got home from our lunch, I dug through some old articles and came across the one I recognised them from. I knew I had seen them somewhere before. They live nearby, so I contacted them and told them about what you had found. They wanted to meet you, see the photo, but when we came by your house and you weren’t there, well, I figured you had come back here. Hoped, really. You had me scared hon.”

“Do you have the photo?” Heather said, tears in her eyes.

Julia looked down to her right hand. She nodded. She unfolded the photo and handed it to Heather. Wiping tears from her eyes, she grabbed the picture and held it up to the light.

“What’s this?” Sebastian said, his voice more baffled than angry.

“What do you mean?” Julia said.

“Is this the picture you found here?”

Julia nodded.

“I thought you said it was the one Amanda took of us a few weeks before she…” Heather bowed her head and cried.

Claire and Julia frowned at each other. “I don’t understand,” Julia said.

Sebastian handed her the photo.

Instead of a family smiling in front of a weatherboard house there was a man. A hairy man with evil, lustful eyes.

“It’s Geoff Campbell.”

Julia gazed into the wrecked face of Sebastian Waters. “Who?”

“Geoff Campbell. He’s the janitor at Amanda’s elementary school. Why do you have a picture of him?”

Julia opened the jacket and looked down at her chest. The growth was gone. Completely and utterly gone – not a hint of the photo remained. Her body was blemish free again.

Julia handed the photo back to Sebastian. “It’s a gift to you. From Amanda.”

NOTES:

Believe it or not, this story came about because of the movie
8 Mile
. I was watching the movie one night, and there was a scene set at an abandoned house (or maybe it was a house after it had been gutted by a fire – it’s been a while since I’ve seen it).

As so often happens with stories, they just pop into your head seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes it happens while you’re driving, or taking a shower…or watching a movie. Just seeing that one scene sparked something inside my head, and the idea of the ghost of a murdered girl came to me in that moment.

While I like to think that the story was in me and would’ve come out eventually, I still wonder – if I had never watched that movie at that time, would I have ever written the story? While you’re all dwelling on that little mind-bending idea, I’ll just thank Scott Silver, Curtis Hanson and Eminem for the inspiration behind the story.

STOLEN LIVES

“Who was on the phone?” Jerry said.

Ray, standing by the entrance to the lounge room didn’t speak. He merely gazed at his friend, who was watching the television, beer in one hand, scratching his crotch with the other.

After a notable silence, Jerry pried his eyes away from the football game and looked at Ray. “So? Who was it? Kim?”

Ray shook his head. “Not exactly.”

Kim, Ray’s wife and his sixteen-year-old daughter Rebecca, hadn’t been home when Ray and Jerry arrived almost an hour ago. Ray had been desperately waiting for his wife to call since then.

“What the hell’s the matter, man? You okay?” Jerry had a goofy smile on his face. “They’ve been kidnapped,” Ray said.

Jerry frowned and took a swig of his beer. “Who has?”

“Kim and Rebecca.”

Jerry shook his head, his long greasy hair swishing about his gaunt face. “You’re a fucking riot, Ray,” he sniggered. “Kidnapped.”

“I’m not kidding,” Ray said and started crying. It wasn’t often he cried. He hadn’t cried when his father died. Nor when his brother died. Nor when his first wife died. Not even when…

But he had to in this instance.

After a short but forceful bout of crying, Ray finally managed to gain some control. He wiped the tears and snot and looked over at Jerry.

Jerry looked shocked, probably from seeing his best mate weeping more than hearing the news of the kidnapping. He stood, placed his beer on the table and walked over to where Ray was standing. “Who was that on the phone?”

“The kidnapper,” Ray said.

“What did he say?”

“That he has my wife and daughter.”

“Well what does this fucker want? Money? Jesus, you’re not exactly rolling in cash. You’re only one step up from poverty. You live in a shit-hole of a place, just like the rest of us. What can he possibly want?”

Ray shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

Jerry ran a hand through his hair. “Oh man. This is fucked. I can’t believe this is happening. So that was really him on the phone? Just then?”

“For Christ’s sake yes!” Ray cried. Jerry was his best friend, had been for over twenty years, but he could be an incognizant idiot sometimes.

“Do ya think we should call the cops?”

“No way,” Ray said and made his way to the couch. He sat down and hung his head. “He’ll kill ‘em both if I call the cops.”

“How will he know if we’ve called them?”

“Because,” Ray said. “Hand me a beer, will ya?”