Phase 1

The Rain Begins To Fall

 "...Travel not to go anywhere, but just to go...
The great affair is to move."
-Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"...And in a short space the generations of living creatures are

Changed and like runners pass on the torch of life."
-On the Nature of Things, Lucretius (99-55 BC)
 PROLOGUE: (Tampa, Florida)

Friday, August 16, 1985

The terror, which would not end for another fifteen years—if it ever did
end—began with a storm that struck on the night the guests arrived at the
house on Tinsel Road, there was a strangeness about the weather that people
would remember for years.
A few minutes past ten o’clock the night of August 16th a hard rain fell without
warning, no thunder acted as a precursory to the monsoon, no breeze. The
brusqueness and the fierceness of the deluge had the urgent quality of a perilous
storm in a dream.
That day however was sweltering, blue, and bright; reaching a temperature of
over 90 degrees around eight that morning, just as Jonathan Franklin sat at the
breakfast table, reading the Friday edition of the Tampa Tribune. As he read the
Business section, he learned of financial states within the Florida economy. At
his advanced age of fifty-eight and his wife a year younger, he was looking to
retire within the next six months. Having a minor stroke the previous year made
him unable to consistently perform the duties of a surgeon. Though it was all he
knew, its daily duties were becoming more and more physically taxing. In what
began as a weekly trip to the physical therapy center in downtown Tampa,
became a solace for him. It was there that he began forming the foundation of
the next phase of his life, that being a teacher of medicine. While his body had
suffered from the effects of his disability, his mind remained as sharp as it had
twenty years before.
“Want more coffee, John?” Marie asked him, startling him slightly. He looked
up from his newspaper and smiled at his wife who was still as beautiful as she
had on their honeymoon thirty-seven years prior. She poured them both a fresh
cup and took the seat next to him.
“You going to be reading that when Richard and Heather arrive?” She asked
him, referring to their adult children, only a few hours away. Their son Richard
and his wife Janet had been traveling by car from Dayton, Ohio. Richard,
twenty-six, worked at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Janet,
twenty-eight, was in her second full year as a fifth grade math teacher.
Heather was twenty-four, married to Jeffrey Reinholt, and tired as she arrived
in Florida. She had done all the driving since leaving their Atlanta home the day
before.
“Of course not,” he said before asking, “Did Helen finish the bedrooms?”
“Yes and I gave her the weekend off, which she appeared grateful for.”
Helen Burrows had been the Franklin’s housekeeper for the past five years with
the departure of Annie Curtis, after Richard and Heather had gone off to college.
Helen had been recruited by Annie and enjoyed the job for five years, forming a
relationship with the couple from the start.
 Annie Curtis had been a longtime friend of Marie Franklin and was like a
second mother to the children, though her role of assistant decreased since the
departure of the children to college. Initially she had rejected her friends offer so
she could pursue an acting career, but Marie offered her good money and led her
to considerable wealth. Though she never envisioned her life, especially at the
age of twenty, to be a housekeeper, she soon found it inside of her and she put
her acting on hold.
In 1969 she gave up acting altogether and instead focused her attention on
philantrophy, organizing charities supporting breast cancer. Her mother having
died of the disease, Annie organized benefits and started up groups to make
others aware of the illness, culminating in her receiving local awards. Marie
Franklin used her position as school principal Hillsborough High to help assist
Annie's efforts in spreading information. Marie had been school prinicpal from
1967 until 1984 when she retired and was ready to pursue a more leisurely life.
“I have finished the bedrooms and the rest of my chores, would there be
anything else?” Helen asked standing in the doorway with her purse and other
belongings, apparently ready to leave.
“That appears to be all, but we will need you to come on Monday as originally
planned” John answered, smiling.
“Same time?” She asked.
“Yes and thank you for the job done on the garden windows,” Marie answered.
As Helen departed out the living room door, Marie informed her husband that
she wanted Annie to attend the family gathering as their in-laws had never met
her.
“Think she will show up?”
“I don’t know, last time I spoke to her she seemed to be very busy.”
“Well call her again and ask her, I am going to shower after finishing this cup of
coffee”
“When will they all be here?”
“About two hours, right after Cinderella loses her sleeper.”
Jonathan nodded and then returned to his paper, while Marie dumped her
coffee in the sink and went to make the phone call. He understood Marie’s
difficulty in this meeting, though she was happy for the success of her children,
she was still nervous of retiring. Teaching gave her happiness and while
Jonathan had been the model husband right from the start of their marriage,
she could not see spending her final years in the same house she no longer
loved.
Marie was also troubled by her daughter’s husband, Jeff Reinholt; though he
had appeared to be nice on their only other meeting, her mother instinct told her
he was not the same way to Heather. She also felt it unfair since she showed
such affection towards Janet, her daughter-in-law. But Janet had been such a
devoted and peaceful woman, which made Richard happy. Marie did not blame
her husband for not understanding her dissatisfaction, since she had told him
the news their daughter had told her. Heather had told her mother about Jeff’s
sometimes erratic behavior and while he was never abusive or adulterous, she
was suspicious of him. So Marie would be constantly uneasy around her
son-in-law though she did not know why, in part because Heather didn’t really
know how to explain it.
She did understand why Robert and Janet were excited to be arriving, Janet
had told her via a long-distance call two days previously that she was making
Marie a grandmother. She made Marie promise not to tell anyone, so she did not.
Even her own husband was in the dark, instead letting Janet have her precious
moment of child expectancy announced by her.
As the couple went about their day inside the house that sits at the cul-de-sac,
which ends the mile-long road, the day was bright, warm and inviting. The sky
was clear, no indication of the incoming rain...
The Rain...
 CHAPTER 1
Franklin (Rhodes Rock, Florida)

1) Thursday, August 22, 1985

2:01 - 2:03 PM

The yellow sun balanced itself high in the heavens that day, the genesis of
everything. In its vivid light the flatlands appear ablaze. A cool breeze blew down
and waft through the dry grass, which steams like waves of golden fire all along
the rich prairies.
It was just past two o’clock in the afternoon when a hard rain fell without
warning. No thunder acted as a precursor to the monsoon, no breeze. With the
fierceness of a deluge, it had the urgency of a perilous storm in a dream.
Lying unconscious in the passenger seat of a moving car, a normally attractive
woman awoke in a morbid state from the sudden cloudburst. The voice of the
thunder was like an angry crowd chanting in a lost dialect. Torrents pounded
and pried at the roof of the car, at the windshield, as if seeking entrance.
First laying completely still from being unable to move but growing increasingly
fidgety as she listened to the rush of rain, trying to make out the vineyards that
appeared to be at a standstill. The vines were pruned during the summer, the
current growing season was in full force, but to the woman she saw death.

2:01 - 2:07 PM

In the peculiar sea of gleaming red light, the black shadows of overhanging
trees flickered shark-swift across the windshield. On the winding two-lane
blacktop, Judith Cassidy handled her and her husband Jason’s Mustang with
an expertise that Jason admired, but she drove too hasty.
"You and your hooligan foot," Jason said.
"Better than a big giant ass," Judith replied and grinned.
"You’ll get us killed."
"Just do not want to be late for the shuttle."
"I’d rather be late than be dead."
"You know how my dad is, mister hell on rules."
"So are the Florida highway patrol."
Judith laughed. "Sometimes you sound just like him."
Bracing himself as Judith took a curve too fast, Jason said, "One of us has to be
a responsible adult."
"You going to berate me on our anniversary?" Judith asked playfully, grinning.
"Keep driving this way and it will be our last," Jason replied.
They had left Dade City under a hard blue sky, taking a four-day cruise for their
anniversary; a gift from Judith’s father. The visit to Bradenton Florida’s most
dainty destination would be the closest vacation that they had in over a decade.

2:03 - 2:10 PM

The young woman finally found the energy to take a deep breath, though it
caused a blinding cramp in her abdomen. The older woman at the wheel looked
in the rear-view mirror at the man in the backseat, reaching for the kit.
She recognized the area, the long stretches of nothing but highway to her right.
Interstate 4 and the decrease in numbers written on the quarter mile marker
signs indicated the direction of travel as west. She knew where they were taking
her, knew what awaited. Having decided that prayer was worthless — it never
helped before — she instead silently wept, learning from past experience that the
inclusion of such a raw emotion helped wear off the effects of the drugs. After six
years of use, her tolerance to it having grown.
The young woman blinked several times, trying to make the rest of the world
come into focus, but the only thing she could see is faint light from some
unknown origin and the rain slamming against the passenger side window. She
contemplated jumping but noticed her lack of strength to unlock the door.
“Leave it, she will make it,” the older woman said to the man in the backseat.
The young woman started scratching at the center of her chest; the ache
increased as each second passed. Breathing was coming harder at times then
with surprising ease at others, as if her brain and body could not make a
consistent decision.
Then as the interstate gave way to the Lee Roy Selmon expressway the woman
began to shake, not from fear however, but from anger. She had felt this rage
before, had felt it every day for the past six years. Had felt it the first time her
father never returned home and the answer why came from a policeman.
She let out a long wail of anguish towards both the pain in her chest and the
thought of her father. As in an act of defiance towards the situation, she wailed
again and turned for the first time towards the older woman at the wheel. The
older woman looked at her and told her to shut up but she moaned again, trying
to awaken the rest of her drugged mind and body.

2:07 - 2:23 PM

From Dade City, Judith had followed US Highway 301 through Zephyrhills
and across the south eastern end of Pasco County. Blue heron had stalked the
shallows and leaped gracefully into flight: enormous, eerily prehistoric, and
beautiful against the cloudless heavens.
Now scattered clouds burned in the sky, and Hillsborough County unrolled like
a radiant tapestry. Judith had departed the highway for US Highway 41 in favor
of a scenic route; however, she drove so fast that Jason was seldom able to take
his eyes off the highway to enjoy the scenery.
"Man, you know how I love speed," Judith said.
"Yes I do know and I hate it."
"You know I am a good driver, Jay."
"I know."
"Then relax."
"I can’t."
Judith sighed with fake exasperation.
"When I sleep," Jason said, and she nearly jammed her feet through the
floorboards as the Mustang took a wide curve at high speed.
She, thanks to her husband, hadn’t been delayed in her education by the need
to earn her tuition and living expenses. She had attended Ohio State University
where she had earned master’s degrees in psychology. Jason had worked as one
of Cleveland, Ohio’s most successful and sought after building contractors,
while Judith worked from their home as a young adult psychologist. They had
married, raised two children and made a small fortune.
“Remember Miss Johansson?” Jason suddenly asked and Judith needed no
time to think back. It was one of her patients three years prior that was dealing
with depression over having killed someone while speeding. She had been
charged with vehicular manslaughter, but the Ohio and Florida laws were
entirely different.
“I am not going to kill us,” Judith said, not needing to elaborate on why she
knew he brought the patient up.
“Does not have to be us,” Jason said.
Judith opened her mouth to reply but decided it was pointless. She did not
want an argument on this special day and Jason was more than justified in his
complaints. Hurry was not necessary, so she slowed down.
Beyond the narrow graveled shoulder of the two-lane, the land sloped down
through wild mustard and looping brambles to a row of tall green alders fringed
with summer buds. Beyond the alders lay vineyards drenched with fierce red
light, and Jason was convinced that the car would slide off the blacktop, roll
down the embankment, and crash into the trees, and that his blood would
fertilize the nearest of the vines.
Instead, Judith effortlessly held the Mustang to the pavement. The car swept
out of the curve and up a long incline.

2:31 - 2:32 PM

Maybe it was just the rain smacking against the pavement, coupled with the
disturbance of the precursors in her impacted brain that caused her to hear a
voice. But the voice, rather real or imagined, was unmistakable. Also without
question were the words it spoke; Run!
She took one last look at the lifeless body and let out a groan; one not only of
sorrow but freedom. This was what she had wanted, what she had spent six
years praying for, and now it was here. So what now?
Her heartbeat, already fast, became frantic. The breath that was snagged in her
throat flew free a shrill scream, and she lunged forward as if in pursuit of the
pathetic sound that had escaped her. She must have run past the car and out of
the parking lot, though she could not remember having done so, and then she
was out on the busy street, in the sweltering August heat index of 104. The
traffic on the street — car horns, rumbling engines, the hiss-sigh crunch of tires
— was to her right, and building windows flashed past the left as she ran.
Thereafter she was oblivious of everything, for the world around her faded
completely away, and she was plunging through a featureless grayness, legs
pumping ha,her torn clothes flapping, as if fleeing across an amorphous
dreamscape, struck dumb by terror. There must have been many other people
on the sidewalk, people whom she dodged or shoved aside, but she was not
cognizant of them. She was aware only of her need to escape. She ran deer-swift
though no one pursued her, with her lips peeled back in a grimace of pure terror
though she could not identify the danger from which she fled.
Running like crazy, temporarily blind and deaf, but most of all, lost. The only
thing she was aware of was the thunder in the darkened sky and the
continuously pouring and smelly rain.
The Rain…

2:28 - 2:32 PM

“Got to love Tampa,” Judith said as she stopped at the red traffic light on the
corner of US 41 and Hyde Park Avenue, Jason had relaxed finally when Judith
had ceased to drive like a maniac, one of the only aspects of her he did not
approve of.
“I love you,” Jason said and glanced at her, but before Judith could reply the
same words lightning struck. Sitting in the front of a long line of cars, the nose of
the Mustang barely touching the white lines of the crosswalk, the sudden bolt of
lightning hit close by, illuminating the interior and jolting the vehicle.
“What the hell,” Judith said and Jason laughed, but it was drowned out by the
roaring thunder, then by the hard rain that fell so suddenly and without
warning that both of them rushed to roll up the windows. It was not fast enough
as the immediate side of her seat got wet. While cranking the shaft to raise her
window, she could see the car next to her doing the same. Judith switched on
the windshield wipers and sat back with a long exhale.
“Well this certainly puts a damper on plans,” Judith said and Jason nodded.
“It could be small and quick, this is Florida.”
The windshield wipers flogged back and forth, back and forth, with a short,
shrill squeak that made Judith grit her teeth. She hunched forward a bit, over
the steering wheel, squinting through the streaming rain.
The streets glistened; the macadam was slick, greasy looking. Dirty water raced
along the gutters and formed filthy pools around clogged drainage grids.
Now, at two thirty PM, she knew she had to hang back a little, watchful and
cautious. The light, after what seemed an eternity, finally changed green and she
pulled away from the intersection. Her caution proved justified, but it still wasn’t
enough to avert disaster.
Without bothering to look for oncoming traffic, a very tall and lanky man with
black hair stepped out from between two vans and directly into the way of their
Mustang.
“Holy Shit!” Judith screamed, ramming her foot down on the brake pedal so
hard that she lifted herself and Jason up off their seats. The man did not move
out of the way.
Although the Mustang was moving at only twelve miles an hour, there was no
hope of stopping it in time. The brakes shrieked. The tires bit — and skidded
because of the rain — on the wet pavement.
God, no! Judith thought with a sick, sinking feeling.
The car hit the man and lifted him off the ground, tossed him backwards onto
the hood. The rear end of the Mustang began to slide around to the left, into the
path of an oncoming Cadillac. The Caddy swerved, brakes squealing, the driver
blaring his horn as if he thought a sufficient volume of sound might magically
push Judith safely out of his way.
For an instant she was certain they would collide, but the Caddy slid past
without scraping, missing her by only an inch or two — all in just a few seconds
— and at the same time the brunette man rolled off the hood, toward the right
side, the curb side, and the Mustang came to a full stop, sitting aslant the street,
rocking on its springs as if it were a child’s hobby horse. Only once the vehicle
stopped moving and both occupants watched the man roll off the hood, onto the
side of the road, did Judith quit screaming.
Instead she stared out the windshield at the pouring rain, her hands tightly
gripping the steering wheel. She was breathing as heavily as a horror movie
victim in hyperventilation, and she was crying. Jason looked out the window and,
past the pouring rain, could see the man laying face down in the gutter.
 2) Thursday, August 22, 1985

The tall man lay in the gutter, on his stomach, one arm out at his side with
hand slacked, palm up, the other arm draped across the pavement. His dark
hair was muddy. A three-inch-deep stream of water surged around him,
carrying leaves and grit and scraps of paper litter toward the nearest storm drain,
and his long hair fanned out around his head and rippled silkily in those filthy
currents.
Judith and Jason exited the car and ran over to help him.
“I’ll check him,” Judith said and knelt beside him. Judith gasped for two
reasons that moment. As she rolled him over, she was shocked to see that the
victim’s facial features were unrecognizable as male or female. Her shock only
deepened when Judith looked down at the chest. Judith knew that Jayson was
six-foot-two and the victim was about the same height, she deduced the victim
was underweight for their height. So if it were a man, he would not have the
average sized breasts the victim had. Judith was staring at a woman.
Her age was unrecognizable through the scars, but Judith deduced that she
had to be at least eighteen. It was hard to tell rather she was pretty, because
what could be seen of her face was frighteningly pale. The woman’s right eye was
swollen completely shut, her nose was obviously fracture, both lips were split
and jaw appeared to be fractured as well. Blood ran from the woman’s mouth
and Judith, afraid of her choking on it, elevated her upper body and placed her
head against her chest.
When she took her hand away from the top of the woman’s head, it was covered
in blood. The crimson fluid ran from the woman’s head with the same rapid
departure that it did from the rain washing Judith’s hand.
She was also inadequately dressed for inclement weather. No shoes or socks,
dressed only in a pair of shorts and a long but shredded t-shirt. The only part of
the woman’s chest that was covered was the majority of her breasts. Her
stomach could be seen and revealed a big deal of malnutrition but also jagged
wounds that were so fresh they seeped blood, a few contained small pieces of
gravel. She had neither a raincoat nor an umbrella. With trembling hands,
Judith lifted the woman’s right arm and felt the wrist for a pulse. She found the
beat at once; it was not overly strong but it was steady.
“Thank God,” Judith said shakily.
“It will be okay sweetheart,” Jason said, placing his hand on her shoulder.
She began to examine the woman’s bleeding, which was when the situation
took a serious turn for the worse. There were numerous serious injuries, a
myriad of serious cuts and abrasions. From Judith’s experience as both a
mother and the few of her clients with past cases of abuse, she was certain that
the woman was bleeding internally. The driver of the Cadillac, a tall man with a
goatee, stepped around the end of the Mustang and looked down at the injured
woman. Judtih gently thumbed back the woman’s left eyelid, the one not been
swollen shut.
 “Is anyone calling an ambulance?” Jayson asked him and then urged him to.
He hurried away, splashing through a puddle that was deeper than his shoes.
Judith pressed down on the woman’s chin; the jaw was slack, and the mouth
fell open easily. There were visible obstructions, blood that might choke her, but
her tongue was in a safe position. A gray-haired woman in a transparent plastic
raincoat, carrying a red and orange umbrella, appeared out of the rain. “It wasn’t
your fault,” she told Judith and Jason.
“I saw it happen. I saw it all. He darted out in front of you without looking.
There wasn’t a thing you could have done to prevent it.”
“I saw it, too,” said a portly man who didn’t quite fit under his black umbrella. “I
saw him running down the street like he was in a trance or something. No coat,
no umbrella. He stepped off the curb, between those two vans, and just stood
there for a few seconds, like he was just waiting for someone to come along so he
could step out and get himself killed. And by God, that’s what happened.”
“It’s a woman,” Judith told the gathering crowd. Then, to her husband, unable
to keep the tremor out of her voice, “She’s not dead.”
“You need the first-aid kit from the trunk?”
“Yes,” Judith answered her husband and he turned toward the Mustang. The
first-aid kit contained, among other things, a packet of tongue depressors, and
Judith wanted to have those handy. Because the unconscious woman appeared
to be headed for imminent convulsions, Judith was prepared for the worst.
A crowd had begun to gather.
A siren sounded a couple of blocks away, approaching fast. It was probably the
police; the ambulance couldn’t have made it so fast.
“She must have been hurt before the accident,” the gray-haired woman said,
staring down at the stricken victim, and other onlookers murmured agreement.
A tangled strand of raven hair had fallen across her face, and Judith carefully
pushed it aside for her. The young woman’s skin was hot to the touch, fevered,
in spite of the cold rain that bathed it. Suddenly, while her fingers were still
touching her cheek, Judith felt dizzy and was unable to get her breath. For a
moment she thought she was going to pass out and collapse on top of the
unconscious woman. A black wave rose behind her eyes, and then in that
darkness there was a brief flash of silver, a glint of light off a moving object, the
mysterious thing from her nightmare.
She gritted her teeth, shook her head, and refused to be swept away in that
dark wave. She pulled her hand away from the girl’s cheek, put it to her own face;
the dizzy spell passed as abruptly as it had come. Until the ambulance arrived,
she was responsible for the injured girl, and she was determined not to fail in
that responsibility.
Just then the woman let out a choked bleat of pain and terror. Everyone froze
as the young woman began to shake in Judith’s hands, obviously trying to grasp
what happened. Judith held onto the large but incredibly weak woman while she
tried to swing her arms up at her.
“What the hell,” one of the onlookers said, barely audible over the rain or the
continued grunts of the woman.
 “It is okay, you are going to be alright,” Judith was trying to say in between the
repeated attempts at trying to get away. Finally after a few more moments the
woman collapsed back into Judith’s chest, weeping loudly. Judith was afraid to
touch her in the head but placed her hand on the back of it anyway and rocked
her like she had both of her kids years before.
“It is going to be okay,” Judith said again and a pang of grief struck her heart.
Combined by the words of the man earlier about her waiting for a car to arrive
and the poor woman’s sudden outburst she seemed frightened to be alive. But
nothing seemed logical to explain this or the massive injuries.
Huffing slightly, Jason hurried back with the first-aid kit and took one of the
tongue depressors out of its crisp cellophane wrapper. Judith grabbed the
woman’s wrists just as Jason grabbed her shoulders. Calming the woman was a
slower procedure because she was beyond panic.
“What is she — a retard or something?” A young teenage boy with rings in
various orifices on his face asked.
“I can’t believe you actually said that,” Judith said, astonished and angry.
“Well, she doesn’t act normal,” the teenager said.
“Oh?” Judith said scathingly. “She got hit by a car. What’s your excuse?”
“Sorry,” the woman said, lifting her battered face to them, thunder roaring.
“Don’t talk, just relax,” Judith said, returning her attention to the woman who
continued weeping loudly.
“I killed her — ,” the woman said and then began to cough. Blood spurted from
her lips and landed on Judith’s chest. She looked at her husband who had a
look of horror on his face. For the first time in their relationship Jason was
completely without knowledge on how to help his wife, whom he knew was
taking the situation harder than normal.
When the woman stopped coughing she squeezed Judith’s left hand but it felt
like a little kids despite its size. The knowledge of this scared Judith, as she
knew the woman’s strength was draining and would not survive if she continued
this.
“I killed her — ,” the woman said and again lifted her head to Judith.
“What?”
“I had to — I — had to,” the woman said.
“What?”
“I killed, — killed her."
“Who,” Judith asked, trying to keep a tremor from her voice.
“My mom,” the woman said and after taking another breath mixed with coughs,
lost conscious. Her head once again fell onto Judith’s breasts.
A police car rounded the corner and stopped behind the Mustang. It’s revolving
emergency beacons splashed red light across the wet pavement and appeared to
transform the puddles of rainwater into pools of blood. As the squad car’s siren
died with a growl, another, more distant siren became audible. To Judith, that
warbling, high-pitched wail was the sweetest sound in the world. The horror is
almost over, she thought.
 Judith wanted to ride to the hospital in the ambulance with the injured woman,
but she knew she would only be in the way. Besides, the first police officer on the
scene, a curly-headed young man named George Matthews, needed to get a
statement from her and Jason. She sat with him in the front seat of the patrol
car, which smelled like the peppermint lozenges on which Matthews was
sucking, while Jason stood by the open passenger door. The rain had ceased
moments before while the police radio sputtered and crackled.
Matthews frowned. “You’re soaked to the skin. I’ve got a blanket in the trunk.
I’ll get it for you.”
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” Her green knit suit had become saturated. Her
rain-drenched hair was pasted to her head and hung slackly to her shoulders. At
the moment, however, she didn’t care about her appearance or about the
goosebumps that prickled her skin.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
“Well . . . if you’re sure you’re okay.”
“I’m sure,” she said as he turned up the thermostat on the car heater.
“By any chance, do you know the kid who stepped in front of your car?”
Matthews asked.
“Know her? No. Of course not.”
“She didn’t have any ID on her. Did you notice if she was carrying a purse when
she walked into the street?”
“I can’t say for sure.”
“Try to remember.”
“I don’t think she was.”
“Probably not,” he said. “After all, if she goes walking in a storm like this
without a raincoat or an umbrella, why would she bother to take a purse? We’ll
search the street anyway. Maybe she dropped it somewhere.”
“What happens if you can’t find out who she is? How will you get in touch with
her parents? I mean, she shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”
“She’ll tell us her name when she regains consciousness," Matthews said.
“If she does.”
“Hey, she will, there’s no need to be concerned about that. She did seem
seriously injured but we have some of the best doctors here.”
Judith worried about it nonetheless. For the next ten minutes, Matthews asked
questions and they both answered them. When he finished filling out the
accident report, she quickly read over it, then signed at the bottom.
“You’re in the clear,” Matthews said. “You were driving under the speed limit,
and three witnesses say the girl stepped out of a blind spot right in front of you,
without bothering to look for traffic. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have been more careful.”
“I don’t see what else you could have done.”
“Something. Surely I could have done something,” she said miserably but he
shook his head.
 “No. Listen, I’ve seen this sort of thing happen before. There’s an accident, and
somebody’s hurt, and nobody’s really to blame — yet one of the people involved
has a misplaced sense of responsibility and insists on feeling guilty. In this case,
if there is anybody to blame, it’s the kid herself, not you. According to the
witnesses, she was behaving strangely just before you turned the corner, almost
as if she intended to get herself run down, Dr. Cassidy.”
“You know something, you are the first stranger to call me Mrs. Cassidy,” she
said and George Matthews looked at her strangely, unaware of how to respond.
“We just got married three hours ago or so,” she said and George frowned.
“I’m sorry then that this would have to be included on such a special day.”
Judith sighed and clasped her hand in Jason, whom held a look of complete
sadness in his eyes and face.
“But why would such a pretty girl want to throw herself in front of a car?”
Judith asked after a few moments of silence.
Matthews shrugged. “You said you are a psychiatrist. You specialize in
teenagers, right?”
“So you must know all the answers better than I do. Why would she want to kill
herself? Could be trouble at home — a father who drinks too much and makes
heavy passes at his own little girl, a mother who doesn’t want to hear about it. Or
maybe the kid was just jilted by her boyfriend and thinks the world is coming to
an end. Or just discovered she was pregnant and decided she couldn’t face her
folks with the news. There must be hundreds of reasons and I’m sure you’ve
heard most of them in your line of work.”
What he said was true, but it didn’t make Judith feel better. If only I’d been
driving slower, she thought. If only I’d been quicker, maybe that poor girl
wouldn’t be in the hospital now.
“She might have been on drugs, too,” Matthews said. “Too damned many kids
fool around with dope these days. I swear, some of they’ll swallow any pill they’re
given. If it isn’t something that can be swallowed, they’ll sniff it or stick it in a
vein. This kid you hit might have been so high she didn’t even know where she
was when she stepped in front of your car. Now, if that’s the case, are you going
to tell me it’s still somehow your fault?”
Judith leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes, and exhaled with a shudder.
“God, I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is . . . I feel wrung out.”
“That’s perfectly natural, after what you’ve just been through. But it isn’t
natural for either of you to feel guilty about this. It wasn’t your fault, so don’t
dwell on it. Put it behind you and get on with your life.”
She opened her eyes, looked at him, and smiled. “You know, Officer Matthews,
I have a hunch you’d make a pretty good psychotherapist.”
“Or a terrific bartender.” He grinned and Judith laughed.
“Feeling better?” he asked and she shook her head yes.
“Promise me you won’t lose any sleep over this.”
“I’ll try not to,” she said. “But I’m still concerned about the girl. Do you know
which hospital they’ve taken her to? I’d like to go talk to the doctor who’s
handling her case. If he tells me she’s going to be all right, I’ll find it a whole lot
easier to take your advice about getting on with my life.”
Matthews nodded, picked up the microphone and asked Ida, the police
dispatcher, to find out where the injured girl had been taken.
 3) Thursday August 22, 1985

The visitors' sprawl at Tampa General Hospital looked like an explosion in a

clown’s wardrobe. The walls were canary yellow; the chairs were bright red; the
carpeting was orange; the magazine racks and end tables were made of heavy
purple plastic; and the two large abstract paintings were done chiefly in shades
of blue and green.
The lounge — obviously the work of a designer who had read too much about
the various psychological mood theories of color — was supposed to be helpful,
life-affirming. It was supposed to lift the spirits of visitors and take their minds
off sick friends and dying relatives. To both Judith and Jason, however, the
determinedly cheery decor elicited the opposite reaction from that which the
designer had intended, It was a frenetic room; it abraded the nerves as effectively
as coarse sandpaper would abrade a stick of butter.
She sat on one of the red chairs next to her husband, waiting for the doctor who
had treated the injured girl. When he came, his stark white lab coat contrasted
so boldly with the flashy decor that he appeared to radiate a saint like aura.
They rose to meet him, and he asked if she was Mrs. Cassidy, and he said his
name was Steven Townsend. He was extremely tall, husky, square-faced, and
florid, in his early fifties. He looked as if he would be loud and gruff, perhaps
even obnoxious, but in fact he was soft-spoken and seemed genuinely concerned
about how the accident had affected Judith both physically and emotionally.
It took her a couple of minutes to assure him that they were all right on both
counts, and then they sat down on facing red chairs.
“You look as if you could use a hot bath and a big glassful of warm brandy.”
Townsend said, raising his bushy eyebrows.
“We were soaked,” she said, “but pretty dried out now. How about the woman?”
“Cuts, contusions, abrasions,” he said.
“Internal bleeding?”
“Nothing showed up on the tests.”
“Fractures?”
“Her jaw, collar-bone and right wrist were the only broken bones. She came
through it amazingly well. You couldn’t have been driving very fast.”
“I wasn’t. But the way she slipped up onto the hood and then rolled off, I
thought maybe . . ." Judith shuddered, unwilling to put words to what she had
thought.
“Well, she is in okay condition now. She regained consciousness in the
ambulance, and she was alert by the time I saw her.”
“Thank God.”
“Though there is indication of a concussion, I don’t foresee any lasting effects.”
Relieved, Judith sagged back in the red chair. “I’d like to see her, talk to her.”
“I am afraid that cannot be done right now, she is resting,” Dr. Townsend said.
“I don’t want her disturbed at the moment. But if you’d like to come back this
evening, during visiting hours, she’ll be able to see you then.”
 “I’ll do that. I’ll definitely do that.” She blinked.
“Good heavens, I haven’t even asked you what her name is.”
His bushy eyebrows rose again. “Well, we’ve got a small problem about that.”
Judith tensed up again. “What do you mean? Can’t she remember her name?”
“She hasn’t remembered it yet, but — ”
“Oh, God.”
“ — she will.”
“You said concussion — ”
“I swear to you, it isn’t serious,” Townsend said. He took her left hand in his big
hard hands and held it as if it might crack and crumble at any moment.
“Please don’t excite yourself about this. She is going to be fine. Her inability to
remember her name isn’t a symptom of severe concussion or any serious brain
injury; not in her case, anyway. She isn’t confused or disoriented. Her field of
vision is bad of course because of the injuries to her face but that will heal in
time. We tested her thought processes with some math problems — addition,
subtraction, multiplication — and she got them all correct. She can spell any
word you throw at her; she’s a damn good speller, that one. So she’s not severely
concussed. She’s simply suffering from mild amnesia. Its selective amnesia, you
understand, just a loss of personal memories, not a loss of skills and education
and whole blocks of social concepts. She hasn’t forgotten how to read and write;
she’s only forgotten who she is, where she came from, and how she got to this
place. This sounds more serious than it really is. Of course, she’s disconcerted
and apprehensive. But selective amnesia is the easiest kind to recover from.”
“I know,” Judith said. “But somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Townsend squeezed her hand firmly and gently.
“This kind of amnesia is only very, very rarely permanent or even long-lasting.
She’ll most likely remember who she is before dinnertime.”
“If she doesn’t?”
"Then the police will find out who she is, and when she hears her name, the
mists will clear.”
“She wasn’t carrying any ID.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve talked to the police.”
“So what happens if they can’t find out who she is?”
“They will.” He patted her hand one last time, then let go.
“I don’t see how you can be so sure.”
“Her parents will file a missing-persons report. They’ll have a photograph of her.
When the police see the photograph, they’ll make a connection. It’ll be as simple
as that.”
Jason frowned. “What if her parents don’t report her missing?”
The doctor looked at him, confused and asked, “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Well, what if she’s a runaway from out of state? Even if her folks did file a
missing-persons report back in her hometown, the police here wouldn’t
necessarily be aware of it.”
“The last time I looked, runaway kids favored New York City, California, maybe
Las Vegas — just about any place besides Tampa.”
 “There’s always an exception to any rule.”
Townsend laughed softly and shook his head. “If pessimism were a competitive
sport, you’d win the world series.”
She blinked in surprise and then said, “Sorry for being excessively gloomy.”
Glancing at his watch, getting up from his chair, he said, “Yes, I think you are.
Especially considering how well the woman came through it all. It could have
been a lot worse.”
Judith got to her feet, too. In a rush, the words falling over one another, she
said, “It bothers me so much is because I deal with disturbed children every day,
and it’s my job to help them get well again, and that’s all I ever wanted to do
since I was in high school — work with sick kids, be a healer — but now I’m
responsible for all the pain this poor woman is going through.”
“You mustn’t feel that way. You didn’t intend to harm her.”
Judith nodded. “I know this is not rational but I cannot help how I feel.”
“I have some patients to see,” Townsend said, glancing at his watch again. “But
let me leave you with one thought that might help you handle this.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“The woman did suffer some major physical injuries. I won’t say they were
substantial injuries, but they were damned close to it. So you’ve got nothing to
feel guilty about on that score. As for her amnesia... well, maybe the accident
had nothing to do with it.”
“Nothing to do with it? But I assumed that when she hit her head on the car or
on the pavement — ”
“I’m sure you know a blow on the head isn’t the only cause of amnesia,” Dr.
Townsend said. “It’s not even the most common factor in such cases. Stress,
emotional shock — they can result in loss of memory. In fact we don’t yet
understand the human mind well enough to say for sure exactly what causes
most cases of amnesia. As far as this girl is concerned, everything points to the
conclusion that she was in her current state even before she stepped in front of
your car.”
He emphasized each argument in favor of his theory by raising fingers on his
right hand.
“One: She wasn’t carrying any ID, Two: She was running around in the pouring
rain without a coat or an umbrella, as if she was in a daze. Three: From what I
understand, the witnesses say she was acting very strange before you ever came
on the scene.” He waggled his three raised fingers. "Three very good reasons why
you shouldn’t be so eager to blame yourself for the kid’s condition.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I still — ”
“I am right,” he said. “There’s no maybe about it. Give yourself a break, Dr.
Cassidy.”
A woman with a sharp, nasal voice paged Dr. Townsend on the hospital’s tinny
public address system.
“Thank you for your time,” Judith said. “You’ve been more than kind.”
“Come back this evening and talk to the girl if you want. I’m sure you’ll find she
doesn’t blame you one bit.”
 He turned and hurried across the gaudy lounge, in answer to the page’s call;
the tails of his white lab coat fluttered behind him. Judith turned to Jason with
tears brimming in her eyes and shimmering on her cheeks and clasped his
hand.
“When I was holding that woman I could not help but think it was Valerie,”
Judith said.
“I understand but you need to get a hold of yourself. I know the injuries are bad
but, as the doctor said, she is going to be okay.” Jason said and stood up,
stretching his long body.
“I am unwilling to leave this place and go on a cruise now,” she said and Jason
nodded.
“I lost my enthusiasm for that as soon as I saw her face on the windshield. Even
if I wanted to I would not ask you too. I want to see if she is okay as much as
you.”
Judith knew Jason was concerned, it was his compassion for human life and
sensitivity at moments that mattered that she found loving about him, even after
twenty years together.
“I just cannot help it, the look of her was so disturbing,” Judith said and began
to weep loudly. Jason took her hands and she stood. She rested her face into her
husband’s enormous chest and thought of the events of the past two hours. How
their day of matrimony and happiness had been shattered. When she felt
Jason’s chest heave and the sound of sobbing, she hugged him tighter and for a
moment they comforted each other.

After calling Judith’s parents and explaining the situation to them, they
checked into a small motel four blocks from the hospital and decided to come
back later that night. They had showered and ate a small diner, trying to collect
themselves, before returning to the hospital.
Now, at ten minutes after nine, they entered the hospital through the automatic
door, the gust of cold air slapping them in the face. Jason approached the desk
and asked for Dr. Townsend. The receptionist paged the doctor and they both
waited.
A minute later Dr. Townsend opened the door and noticed the couple standing
at the communal coffee dispenser. He approached them and they seen that his
eyes had a subdued look about them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy,” he said and looked at the floor. Immediately Jason
knew something was wrong and decided to ask the questions.
“Is everything okay doctor?”
The doctor stared for a moment at the floor. It seemed to last a lot longer than it
was and a cold chill managed to creep into their blood. Judith grabbed her
husbands hand and trembled, when at last the doctor looked up from the floor.
“The woman, she — she . . .”
“Oh no,” Judith gasped.
 “Is she dead?” Jason asked, the abruptness and forwardness of his question,
giving the circumstances, would seem almost disrespectful. But after the last
seven hours, patience was beginning to thin even for the general contractor.
“No, but her situation has worsened.”
“How so?”
“Sir, it is not polite to speak out here, will you please walk with me?”
As they walked in silence behind him, Judith kept seeing the woman’s battered
face.
“You okay,” Jason asked his wife.
“Just cold,” she lied and he knew it but needed no further explanation.
He led them to the girl’s room. The corridors were deserted, except for a few
nurses gliding about like ghosts. The hospital was preternaturally silent for the
hour of the day.
As they walked, Dr. Townsend spoke in a soft voice, almost a whisper. “She was
fine earlier, well as fine as one could possibly be. As I said before, she could read
and write. She mentioned a single wo,which has to be a name. Then one of the
nurses told her that two detectives were here to see her and she went entirely
cold. She has remained unmoved since then.”
“What do you mean, unmoved?”
“I mean like comatose, a daze.”
“She is in a daze?” Jason asked.
“Not exactly a daze,” Townsend said. “No confusion, really. She was more like
someone in a trance.”
Matching the physician’s quiet tone but unable to keep the anxiety from her
voice, Judith asked what had nagged her all evening. “What about ... rape?”
“I could find several indications that she’d been abused.”
They rounded a corner and stopped in front of Room 256. The door was closed.
“She’s in there,” Dr. Townsend said, jamming his hands in the pockets of his
white lab coat. Judith was still considering the way in which Townsend had
phrased his answer to her question about rape.
“You spoke about indications of abuse but that isn’t the same as rape.”
“No traces of semen were in her vaginal tract,” Townsend said. “But there was
bruising and bleeding of the labia and vaginal walls. Which means that, yes…”
“She was raped,” Jason finished and the sad heaviness deepened. Bleakness
settled over Judith as she saw the pity in the physician’s eyes.
With a voice as sad as it was quiet, Townsend said, “She was subjected to
intercourse and her throat shows scarring of it, but ... well, I can’t say for
certain.” He cleared his throat.
Judith could see that this conversation was almost as much of an ordeal for the
doctor as it was for her. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she had to hear it all,
had to know, and it was his job to tell her. He finished clearing his throat and
picked up where he had left off. “I can say for certain there was also
untraditional penetration.”
A wordless sound of grief escaped Judith’s lips as Jason took her arm and she
leaned against him slightly. She wanted to see her, ached to see her. But she
was afraid to open the door and step into the room. A certain future waited
beyond that threshold and she was afraid that it was a future filled with only
emotional pain, despair. A nurse went by without glancing at them, pointedly
avoiding their eyes, tuning out the tragedy.
“I’m sorry,” Townsend said. He took his hands out of the pockets of his lab coat.
He wanted to comfort her, but he seemed afraid to touch her. Instead, he raised
one hand to the stethoscope that hung around his neck and toyed with it
absentmindedly.
Fighting back tears, Judith said, “Maybe that was why she ran into the street.”
Townsend looked curiously at Jason Cassidy. “This must be a strange case.”
“Very,” he said.
Suddenly, Judith was no longer afraid of opening the door to the room. She
started to push it inward.
Halting her with a hand on her shoulder, Dr. Townsend said, “One more thing.”
Judith waited apprehensively while the doctor searched for the least painful
words with which to convey some last bit of bad news. She knew it would be bad.
She could see it in his face, for he was too inexperienced to maintain a suitably
bland expression of professional detachment.
He said, “This state she’s in ... I called it a "trance" before. But that’s not exactly
right. It’s almost catatonic. It’s a state very similar to what you sometimes see in
autistic children, when they’re going through their most passive moods.”
Judith’s mouth was exceedingly dry, as if she’d spent the last half hour eating
sand. There was a metallic taste of fear as well. “Say it, Doctor. Don’t mince
words. I’m a doctor myself. Whatever you’ve got to tell me, I can handle it.”
Speaking rapidly now, words running together, anxious to deliver the bad news
and be done with it, he said, “Autism, mental disorders in general, they really
aren’t my field. Evidently, they’re more yours. So I probably shouldn’t say
anything at all about this. But I want you to be prepared when you go in there.
Her withdrawal, her silence, her detachment — well, I don’t think this
condition is going to go away quickly or easily. I think she’s been through
something more traumatic than just a bump from a car. She’s turned inward to
escape the memory. Bringing her back is going to take ... tremendous patience.”
“And maybe she’ll never come back?” Judith asked.
Townsend shook his head, fingered his red-brown bea,tugged on his
stethoscope. “No, no, I didn’t say that.”
“But it’s what you were thinking,” She said and his silence was confirmation.
“By the way, what was the word you said she uttered?”
“Amelia.”
“What?”
“That was the wo,seemed to be a name. Amelia.”
Judith stared for a moment and finally pushed open the door, entering the
room, with the doctor and her husband close behind her. Rain beat on the only
window. The sound seemed like the wings of nocturnal birds beating in frenzy
against the glass. Far off in the night, out toward the unseen ocean, lightning
pulsed twice, three times, and then died in the darkness.
 Of the two beds, the one nearer the window was empty, and that half of the
room was dark. A light was on above the first bed, and the woman lay under the
sheets, in a standard-issue hospital gown, her head resting on a single pillow.
The upper end of the bed was tilted, raising and angling the woman’s body, so
her face was entirely visible when Judith entered the room.
Though she had been operated on for hours and her face was cleaned, it still
looked haunting and depressing. She had exceedingly long black hair. Her nose
was bandaged and the fracture of her delicate jaw line was clearly visible. Her
eyes were the same shade of green as Judith’s but deeply set.
The woman resembled one of those children in advertisements for international
hunger-relief organizations or a poster child for some rare and debilitating
disease. Her face was gaunt. Her skin was pale, with an unhealthy, grainy
texture. More gray than pink, her lips were cracked and peeling. The flesh
around her sunken eyes was dark, as if it had been smudged when she had
wiped away tears with an inky thumb.
The eyes themselves were the most unnerving evidence of her ordeal. She
stared at the empty air above her, blinking but seeing nothing in this world. Fear
and pain were evident in those eyes, but so was desolation.
Judith said, “Amelia?” But the woman didn’t move and her eyes didn’t flicker.
“Amelia?” She repeated but again there was no response.
Hesitantly, Judith moved toward the bed where the woman was oblivious of
her.
Judith put down the safety rail, leaned close to the woman, spoke her name
again, but again elicited no reaction. With one trembling hand, she touched the
woman’s face, which felt slightly fevered, and that contact shattered all her
reservations. A dam of emotion broke within her, and she seized the woman’s
hand, lifted it away from the bed, held it close, and squeezed.
“Is your name Amelia? If it is, well… everything is okay, you’re safe now.”
As she spoke, tears burst from her, and she wept with a lack of
self-consciousness and control that she had not experienced since she had been
a child herself.
If only the woman had wept too. But she was beyond tears. She didn’t return
Judith’s embrace, either. Her hand hung limply in Judith’s: a pliant body, an
empty shell, unaware of the love that was hers to receive, unable to accept the
succor and shelter that Judith offered.
Distant, in her own reality, lost.
 4) Friday August 23, 1985

At one o’clock, when Judith drove their blue Mustang to Tampa General, a
uniformed policeman at the entrance to the main parking lot barred the way. He
directed them to the staff lot, which had been opened to the public "until we
straighten out the mess here." Eighty to a hundred feet behind him was a cluster
of TPD cruisers and other official vehicles, some with emergency beacons
rotating and flashing.
As she followed the patrolman’s directions and headed toward the staff lot,
Judith glanced to the right, through the fence and saw Detective Margaret Lee.
She was the smallest and shortest cop among those at the scene. She suddenly
realized that the commotion might have a connection with Amelia and their
accident the day before. Margaret Lee was one of the two officers who had
reached the hospital just before the woman they all knew as Amelia had gone
into her trance.
By the time she slotted the Mustang between two cars with MD plates and ran
back the hospital driveway to the fence that encircled the public parking lot,
Judith had half convinced herself that Amelia was hurt, missing or dead. The
patrolman at the gate would not let her through, not even when she told him
who she was, so she shouted to Detective Margaret Lee.
She hurried across the macadam, favoring her left leg. Not much, only slightly.
She might not have noticed if her senses hadn’t been sharply honed by fear. She
took her by the arm and led her away from the gate, along the fence, to a spot
where they could talk privately.
As they walked, she said, “What’s happened to Amelia?”
“Nothing, she’s in her room. Just the way you left her.”
They stopped and she stood with her back to the fence, staring past Margaret
toward the pulsing emergency beacons. She saw a morgue wagon with the patrol
cars.
Tightness in her chest, a throbbing in her temples.
“Who’s dead,” She asked.
“I’ve tried calling your motel — “
“I want — “
“ — trying to get hold of you — ”
“ — to know — “
“ — for the past hour and a half.”
“ — who’s dead!” she demanded.
“It’s not Amelia. Okay?” Her voice was typically soft, gentle and reassuring for a
woman her size. She always expected a purr and got it. “Amelia is fine. Really.”
Judith studied her face, her eyes. She believed Officer Lee was telling her the
truth. Amelia was all right, but Judith was still scared.
Margaret said, “I didn’t get home until seven this morning, fell into bed. Eleven
o’clock, my phone rings and they want me at Tampa General. They think maybe
there’s some link between this homicide and Amelia because — “
 “Because what?”
“Well, after all, she’s a patient here. So I’ve been trying to get hold of you — ”
“I was out shopping,” Judith said. “What happened?”
“There is a guy next to his Volvo over there. Dead right next to the passenger
door. According to his ID, his name’s Stan Goldstein.”
She leaned back against the chain-link fence, her pulse rate gradually slowing
from the frantic beat it had attained.
“You ever heard of him?” Margaret asked. “Stan Goldstein?”
“No.”
“I wondered if maybe he was an associate of your friend’s.”
“Not that I’m aware. The name’s not familiar. Why would you think she knew
this Stan guy? Because of the way he died? Is that it? Was he beaten to death or
something?”
“No. But something odd came into focus Mrs. Cassidy.”
“Tell me.”
She hesitated, and from the look in her blue eyes she could see that it was
another particularly brutal homicide.
“There was a battered older woman at the scene too. She was unconscious and
left for dead.”
“That may be sick Detective but how is it odd,” Jason inquired.
“Well, she looks exactly like your friend, Amelia. Granted she is older but the
resemblance is surely there. Same hair color, eye shape and color.”
Judith gasped and squeezed her husband’s hand, remembering the words
Amelia had uttered while she held her in the pouring rain after the accident. She
was glad that Margaret was looking away and hadn’t noticed her reaction as it
was bound to raise questions. She knew the interrogation would begin since it
felt to her like she was holding back a deadly secret, but she couldn’t shake the
feeling that if Amelia had indeed murdered the man and battered the woman
that she had reason to.
Maybe it was her condition or the fact that a part of her injuries her lack of
paying attention to the road at that moment had been a factor. Judith Cassidy,
whom had never hurt a single soul in all her years, stood at a great precipous
and her endearing husband knew it.
“His throat was crushed, as if someone gave him one hell of a whack with a lead
pipe, caught him right across the Adam’s apple. More than one whack. Lots of
damage”
“Okay,” she said, dry-mouthed. “We get the picture.”
“Sorry. Anyway, it’s not like the older woman’s body that is currently in ICU,
but it’s unusual. You can see why we might figure they’re connected. In both
cases, there was an unusual degree of violence. The woman’s case was not as
bad as the man’s because she survived, but nevertheless ...”
She pushed away from the fence. “I want to see Amelia.”
Suddenly she had to see Amelia. It was a strong physical need. She had to
touch her, hold her, and be reassured that the woman was all right.
 She headed away from the parking lot, toward the front entrance of the
hospital.
Lee walked behind her, limping slightly but apparently not in pain, while Jason
walked at her side.
“Listen, there’s more about the guy in the Volvo, Stan.”
“What?”
“He had an attaché case with him. Inside, there was a white lab coat, a pistol
fitted with a silencer, a stethoscope and two syringes.”
“He shot his assailant? Are you looking for someone with a bullet wound?”
“Nope. The piece wasn’t fired. But do you see what I’m driving at? The lab coat?
The stethoscope?”
“He wasn’t a doctor, was he?”
“No. What it looks like to us is that maybe he was going to go into the hospital,
put on the lab coat, hang the stethoscope around his neck, and pretend to be a
doctor.”
She glanced at her as they reached the curb and stepped up onto the sidewalk.
“Why would he do that?"
“From a preliminary look, the assistant medical examiner thinks Stan was
killed between one and two o’clock yesterday afternoon, though he wasn’t found
until nine-forty-five this morning. Now, if he was figuring to visit someone in the
hospital at, say two o’clock in the afternoon, he didn’t need to try passing himself
off as a doctor, because visiting hours start at one in the afternoon. If he tried to
get on one of the medical floors in civilian clothes at that hour, there’s a good
chance no one would stop him. He didn’t need a lab coat, with a stethoscope to
breeze right through.”
They had reached the front entrance of the hospital. Jason stopped on the
sidewalk. “When you say "visit" you don’t mean "visit".”
“No.”
“So you believe he intended to go into the hospital and kill someone.”
“A man doesn’t carry a pistol with a silencer unless he means to use it. A
silencer’s illegal. Law comes down on you hard for that. You get caught with one,
you’re in deep sh ... deep soup. Besides, I haven’t learned any details yet, but I’m
told Stan has a criminal record. He’s suspected of being a freelance hit man for
the past few years.”
“A hired killer?”
“I’d almost bet on it.”
“But that doesn’t mean he came here to kill Amelia. Could be someone else in
the hospital ...”
“We already considered that. We’ve been checking the patient list to see if
there’s anyone here with a criminal reco,or maybe someone who’s a material
witness in a case that’s going to trial soon. Or any known dope dealers or
members of any organized-crime family. We haven't found anything so far.
Nobody who might’ve been Stan’s target ... except Amelia.”
“Are you saying maybe this Stan beat the woman and left her for dead — then
came here to kill Amelia because she saw him do the others?”
 “Could be.”
“But then who killed Stan?”
Margaret sighed. “That’s where the logic falls apart.”
“Whoever killed him didn’t want him to kill Amelia,” Jason said and Margaret
shrugged.
“If that’s the case then I’m glad,” Judith said.
“What’s to be glad about?”
“Well, if someone killed Stan to stop him from killing Amelia, it must mean she
doesn’t only have enemies out there. It means she has friends too.”
With unconcealed pity, Margaret said, “No. That isn’t necessarily what it
means. The people who killed Stan probably wants Amelia just as much as he
did — except they wants her alive.”
“Why?”
“Because she knows something. I have been a cop for almost a decade madam
and I have seen the scenario before. However there are far too many
coincidences too say Amelia is not involved with this.”
“If she saw something then they’d want her dead too, just like Stan.”
“Unless there is no they and Amelia is who killed Stan Goldstein.”
“How is that possible, detective?” Jason asked. “She has been in near
comatose state for an entire day.”
Margaret sighed and looked at the pavement. It was becoming obvious that
while she had seen a ton of murder cases in Tampa before, this one was
troubling her deeply.
“Because of the one fact that I was not planning on disclosing to you.”
“What fact is that?”
“Well, how the older woman survived is anyone’s guess. But having seen
murder cases in the past an officer develops an eye for what is called time of
death. While forensics has not been here long enough to determine it, everyone
is quite certain the man was murdered about twenty-four hours ago.”
Both Jason and Judith looked at each other, wondering what type of bizarre
puzzle they had been accidentally forced into. Because of the emotions they had
invested and had planned to invest further before this bizarre and sickening
turn of events, neither of them could walk away from it. Both felt they had an
obligation to find out who had done what to whom.
Everyone wanted it to be over and done with. She wanted to take Amelia out of
the hospital, bring her to her home, and release her from her current state,
because if anyone on earth deserved peace and happiness she felt it was that
woman. But now "they" weren’t going to allow it. "They" were going to try to
snatch Amelia from them. "They" wanted the woman for reasons and purposes
that only "they" understood. And who in the hell were they" anyway? Faceless.
Nameless. Judith couldn’t fight an enemy she couldn’t see or, seeing, recognize.
They stood at the front doors to the hospital now and studied the traffic moving
on the street, as well as the shops and offices on the other side of the avenue.
Sun shining in big plate-glass windows. Sun glinting off the windshields and
chrome of the passing cars and trucks. In all that revealing sunlight, she hoped
to spot someone suspicious, someone Margaret could chase and catch, but there
were only ordinary people doing ordinary things. She was angered by their
ordinariness, by the enemy’s failure to step up and identify himself.
Irrationally, even the sunshine and the warm air angered her. Margaret had
just told her that someone out there wanted Amelia dead and that someone else
wanted to snatch her back into whatever it was that had driven the woman to a
bizarre suicide attempt. Someone had beaten the woman beyond recognition,
had sadistically raped her and she had the scars all over her body to prove it, but
for God knew what purpose. For that kind of news, the atmosphere was all
wrong. The storm shouldn’t have passed already. The sky should still be low,
gray, and full of churning clouds; rain should be falling, and the wind should be
cold and blustery. It just didn’t seem right that the world around her was balmy,
that other people were whistling and smiling and strolling in sunshine and
having fun, while she was plunging deeper into a bleak, dark, living nightmare.
She looked at Margaret Lee. A breeze stirred her sandy hair, and sunlight
sharpened her pleasant features, rendering her more attractive than she really
was. Even disregarding the flattery of the sun and shadow, however, she was
good-looking. The parallel of her petite physique and gentleness lent her a
certain mystique.
“Why were you so eager to reach us?” she asked. “Why were you calling our
place for an hour and a half? It wasn’t just to tell us about Stan. You knew I’d be
showing up here. You could’ve waited till then to give me the bad news.”
She glanced toward the parking lot, where the morgue wagon was pulling away
from the crime scene. When she focused on Judith again, her face was lined, her
mouth grim, her eyes direct and dark with worry. “I wanted to tell you to call a
private security firm and arrange for an around-the-clock guard at your house,
for after you take Amelia home.”
“A bodyguard?”
“More or less, yeah.”
“But if her lives in danger won’t the police department provide protection?”
She shook her head.
“Not in this case. There’s not been any direct threat against her. No phone calls.
No notes.”
“Stan — "
“We don’t know if he is involved with Amelia. We only suspect.”
“Just the same — “
“If the state and city weren’t always going through a budget crisis, if police
funding hadn’t been cut, if we weren’t chronically short of manpower, maybe we
could stretch a point and have your house put under surveillance. But given the
current situation, I couldn’t justify it. And if I arrange the surveillance without
my captain’s approval, he’ll sell my butt to the Alpo people, and I’ll wind up in
cans of dog food. He and I don’t get along so well to begin with. But a security
service, professional bodyguards ... that’s as good as any protection we could
supply you even if we had the men to do it. Can you afford to hire them, just for
a few days?”
 “I suppose so. I don’t know how much something like that costs, but we’re not
poor. If you think it’ll be for only a few days — ”
“I have a hunch this one’s going to unravel fast. All this killing, all the chances
someone’s been taking — it indicates they’re under a lot of pressure, that there’s
a time limit of some kind. I haven’t the faintest goddamned idea what they’ve
been doing to poor Amelia or why they’re so desperate to get their hands on her
again, but I sense this situation’s like a giant snowball, rolling fast down a
mountain, fast as an express train, getting bigger and bigger as it goes. Right
now, already, it’s real big, gigantic, and it’s not far from the bottom of the
mountain. When it finally hits, it’s going to bust into hundreds of pieces.”
As a pediatric psychiatrist, Judith was self-confident, never uncertain as to
how she should proceed with a new patient. Of course she deliberated before
choosing a course of therapy, but once she had decided on her approach, she
implemented it without hesitation. She was a successful healer, a mender, a
repairman of the psyche, and her success had given her the confidence and
authority that generated more success. But now she was lost. She felt small,
vulnerable, and powerless. That was a feeling that she hadn’t known for several
years, not since she had met Jason and became a mother and wife.
“I ... I don't even know how a person goes about finding bodyguards,” she said.
Margaret pulled out her wallet, fished in it, withdrew a card.
“We’re not supposed to make recommendations. But I know these guys are
good, and their rates are competitive.”
She took the ca,looked at it:

FLORIDA PALADIN, INC.

PRIVATE INVESTIGATION
Personal Security

A phone number was provided at the bottom. Judith looked at the card and felt
like crying.
“What’s wrong,” Jason asked and both he and the detective stared at her.
Instead of answering her husband, she turned to Margaret.
“I am sorry Officer Lee but we cannot use this. With all that has gone on I guess
we never mentioned that we are not from Florida. We came down four days ago,
on the nineteenth. We were on our way to Bradenton for, of all things, a
honeymoon.”
Margaret looked at her strangely and Judith realized that it was the first stare
of that reasoning she would be getting for a while.
“Jason and I renewed our vows earlier today and this would be our second
honeymoon right now. I guess our honeymoon present was poor Amelia in the
hospital room.”
“Sorry this all happened on what is otherwise a happy moment. But I don’t
quite understand about the card.” Margaret explained.
“I think what my wife is trying to say is that when Amelia is released to us; we
are all going back up to Ohio. If it is a recommendation for a bodyguard detective,
we certainly appreciate and will continue to consider that avenue. But it would
have to be one in Ohio.” Jason said and Margaret nodded.
Judith handed her the card back.
Just as Margaret began to say something else, a younger male officer appeared.
“Officer Lee?”
“Yes?”
“Romero is here, he needs to speak to you at once.”
“Okay, tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”
As the officer walked away and Margaret returned her gaze to the couple, they
saw a glint in the officer’s eyes. She seemed excited to exit the conversation
without having to search for a polite way to do so.
“Sergeant Romero is my boss and even though I know you two do not care to, he
will wish to speak with you regarding all of this. But I will persuade him to wait
until everything is ironed out with Amelia. He is a great man and will hold no
objection but it is the duty of the precinct to have every officer involved in a case
the understanding of what is going on. You understand?”
“Of course,” Jason replied, still holding his wife’s hand.
“I will see you two later and will be present when you speak to my superior.”
“Thank you,” Judith said and watched the officer turn away.

Dr. Rafael Ybarra, chief of pediatrics at Tampa General, met with the Cassidy’s
in a small room near the nurses" station, where the staff took their coffee breaks.
Two vending machines stood against one wall. An icemaker chugged, clinked,
and clattered. Behind Judith a refrigerator hummed softly. She sat across from
Ybarra at long tables on which were dog-eared magazines and two ashtrays full
of cold cigarette butts.
The pediatrician — dark, slim, with aquiline features — was prim, even prissy.
His perfectly combed hair seemed like a lacquered wig. His shirt collar was crisp
and stiff, tie perfectly knotted, lab coat tailored. He walked as though afraid of
getting his shoes dirty, and he sat with his shoulders back and his head up, stiff
and formal. He surveyed the crumbs and the cigarette ashes on the table,
wrinkled his nose, and kept his hands in his lap.
Judith decided she didn’t like the man.
Dr. Ybarra spoke with brisk authority, biting the words off: “Physically, your
friend’s in good condition, surprisingly good considering the circumstances. She
is somewhat underweight, but not seriously so. Her right arm is bruised from
repeated insertion of an IV needle by someone who wasn’t very skilled at it. Her
urethra is mildly inflamed, perhaps from catheterization. I have prescribed
medication for that condition and that’s the extent of her physical problems.”
Judith nodded. “I know. We’ve come to take her home.”
“No, I wouldn’t advise that,” Ybarra said. “For one thing, she’ll be difficult to
care at home.”
“She’s not actually ill?”
 “No, but — ”
“She’s not incontinent?”
“No. She uses the bathroom.”
“She can feed herself?”
“In a fashion. You have to start feeding her, and then she’ll take over. And
you’ve got to keep watching her as she eats because after a few bites she seems
to forget what she’s doing, loses interest. You have to continue urging her to eat.
She needs help to dress herself too.”
“I can handle all that.”
“I’m still reluctant to discharge her,” Ybarra said.
“But last night Doctor Townsend said — “
At the mention of Townsend, Ybarra wrinkled his nose. His distaste was
evident in his voice. “I am the head of pediatrics, and it is my opinion that your
friend should stay here.”
“How long?”
“Her behavior is symptomatic of severe inhibited catatonia — not unusual
in cases of prolonged confinement and mistreatment. She should remain here
for a complete psychiatric evaluation. A week ... ten days.”
“No.”
“It’s the best thing for the woman.” His voice was so cold and measured that it
was hard to believe he ever gave a thought to what was best for anyone other
than Rafael Ybarra.
She wondered how kids could possibly relate to a stuffy doctor like this.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” Judith said. “I can evaluate her condition and give her the
proper care.”
“Be your own friend’s therapist?” He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s
wise.”
“I disagree.” She wasn’t going to explain herself to this man.
“Here, once an evaluation is completed and a course of treatment
recommended, we have the proper facilities to provide that treatment. You
simply don’t have the right equipment at home.”
Judith frowned. “Equipment? Exactly what kind of treatment are you talking
about?”
“That would be a decision for Doctor Gehagen in psychiatry. But if Amelia
should continue in this severe catatonic state or if she should sink deeper into it,
well... barbiturates and electroconvulsive therapy — “
“Like hell,” Judith said sharply, pushing her chair away from the table and
getting to her feet.
Ybarra blinked, surprised by her hostility.
She said, “Drugs and electric shock — that’s part of what she going through for
however long.”
“Well, of course, we wouldn’t be using the same drugs or the same kind of
electric shock, and our intentions would be different from — “
“Yeah, sure, but how the hell is Amelia supposed to know what your intentions
are? I know there are cases where barbiturates and even electroconvulsive
therapy achieve desirable results, but they’re not right for her. She needs to
regain her confidence, her feeling of self-worth. She needs freedom from fear and
pain. She needs stability. She needs ... to be loved.”
Ybarra shrugged. "Well, you won’t be endangering her health by taking her
home today, so there’s no way I can prevent you from walking out of here with
her.”
“Exactly,” Judith said.
 5) Saturday August 24, 1985

Alone in the hospital room, Amelia, the battered young woman, awoke. She
sat straight up in bed, trying to scream. Her mouth was open wide, the muscles
in her neck were taut, the blood vessels in her throat and temples throbbed with
the effort that she was making, but she couldn’t produce a sound.
She sat like that for half a minute, her vast fists full of sweat-soaked sheets.
Her blue eyes wide. She wasn’t looking at or reacting to anything in the room,
since the terror lay beyond those walls.
Briefly, her eyes cleared. She was no longer oblivious of the hospital room.
She realized for the first time that she was alone. Remembered who she was.
She desperately desired company, someone to hold, human contact, and
comfort.
“Hello?” she whispered. “S-s-somebody? Somebody? Daddy?”
If people had been with her, perhaps her attention would have been altogether
captured by them and drawn permanently away from the things that so
frightened her. Alone, however, she could not shake the nightmare that had its
talon in her, and her eyes glazed over again. Her gaze fixed once more on a scene
elsewhere.
Finally, with a desperate, wordless whimper, she clambered over the safety
railing and got out of bed. She tottered a few steps. Went down on her knees.
Breathing ha,wheezing with panic, she crawled into the darker half of the room,
past the untenanted bed, into the corner where friendly shadows offered
consolation. She put her back to the wall and faced into the room, knees drawn
up. The hospital gown bunched at her hips. She wrapped her arms around her
thin legs and pulled herself into a tight ball.
She remained in the corner only a minute before she began to whimper and
mewl like a frightened animal. She raised her hands and covered her face,
striving to block out a hideous sight.
“Don’t, please, please, please.”
Breathing rapidly and shallowly, with ever-increasing panic, she lowered her
hands and squeezed them into fists. She pounded her own breast, ha,harder.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” she said. Pounding hard enough to hurt herself, yet she
couldn’t feel the blows.
It wasn’t the hospital-room door or the door to the adjoining bath that
frightened her. She was looking at neither. She was dimly aware of the world
around her, but she was focused instead on things no one else could have seen
from any vantage point in that room.
She raised both hands, held them out in front of her, as though pressing on the
unseen door, frantically attempting to hold it shut.
“Stop!”
The meager muscles in her frail arms popped up, and then her elbows bent, as
if the invisible door actually had substantial weight and was swinging open
against all her protests. As if something big pushed relentlessly against the
other side of it. Something inhuman and unimaginably strong.
Abruptly, with a gasp, she scrambled out of the shadow-shrouded corner and
across the floor. She went under the unused bed. Safe. Or maybe not. Nowhere
was safe. She stopped and curled into the fetal position, murmuring, hopelessly
trying to hide from the thing beyond the door.
With her arms crossed on her breast, her fingertips pressing hard into her own
bony shoulders, she began to weep quietly.
“Help me, help me,” she said, but she spoke in a whisper that did not carry to
the hall, where nurses might have heard it.
If someone had responded to her cry, Amelia might have clung to him in terror,
unable to cast off the cloak of autism that protected her from a world too cruel to
bear. Nevertheless, even that much contact with another human being, when
she wanted it, would have been a small first step toward recovery. But with the
best of intentions, they had left her alone, to rest, and her plea for solace and for
a reassuring voice went unanswered.
She shuddered. “Help me. It is coming and it is going to kill me.”
The last word faded into a low moan of pure black despair. Her anguish was
terrible, bleak.
Eventually her breathing grew less agitated, less ragged, and finally normal.
The weeping subsided.
She lay in silence, perfectly still, as if in a deep sleep. But in the darkness
under the bed, her eyes were still open wide, staring in shock and terror. She
knew something was in that room with her, too evil to identify itself beyond its
presence. All she could see were dead bodies, half pulverized and she cried
harder. She could feel whatever was with her smile in happiness, or at least she
interpreted it that way.
She could see the door that led to the house. The horror that Amelia could see,
was coming.
 CHAPTER 2
Rain House 1 (Tampa, Florida)

1) Friday August 25, 1985

Deputy George Matthews never thought he’d get the call that changed his life
three days before his second wedding anniversary. He had just pulled out of a
convenient store parking lot and sipped his coffee when Ida Cattlemen’s voice
came across his radio.
George never understood the need for a homicide department in Rhoads Rock;
it was the most uneventful town he had ever known. His esteemed colleagues
had initially informed him the force was more for the city of Tampa that sat right
outside the town. Though most days he found himself spending time in Tampa
unless specifically assigned to a certain duty.
He had never as much given a driver a ticket in the town, which he found
amazing considering the close proximity to Tampa, which had its fair share of
crime. Only two days prior, there had been a gruesome assault on a woman and
her male companion a block from the hospital.
Despite this lack of distance, it seemed like criminals were afraid to step over
the county line, as if some Good Samaritan would view an evil in them and turn
them away. So when Ida phoned his radio he felt a chill as it seemed a threat had
made it over that threshold and was ready to throw the town in chaos.
“Yes Ida”, he asked.
“Where is your location George?”
“I just passed Armenia, heading south,” he answered her.
“You need to turn around and visit 1914 Tinsel Road, their neighbor just
reported them missing.”
“That is strange,” was the only word the Sheriff could mutter, as some invisible
force was choking back the words of acknowledgement.
“1914 that is Mr. and Mrs. Franklin’s residence,” He revealed, and then asked,
“Was there anything else?”
“Said she heard some screams coming from the place, coupled with the fact
that she hasn’t seen them in a week.”
“Well I am about eight minutes away,” he said and made a U-Turn to head back.
Then just as he was ready to put back his microphone back to his radio, Ida
made a very strange statement.
“Be very careful George,” she said, trying to hide concern but her emotions
betraying her. Though George understood, he felt a very strange presence, not
just within the confines of his cruiser. But as he rolled throughout the town he
looked at the houses on the streets and he realized that if he found anything bad
at the Franklin residence, the town would never be the same. Maybe criminals
would see the place as now having the ability to spill blood in.
 “These people have no idea what is in store,” he thought to himself, though he
didn’t either. While he did his best to believe that it was just a mistake on the
part of the neighbors, he couldn’t shake the feeling that a mysterious evil had
just dropped onto their town, promising to change the lives of everyone forever.
The street was seriously upper-class, just like most of the town itself, with
perfectly kept green lawns, most with their sprinklers on. The houses were all
large in the eye of the out-of-towner until they got sight of the Franklin house,
which looked a house straight from a two generations and cultures. With its four
story structure, very unusual for Florida, tan colored sandstone walls and dark
clouded windows, it looked like a seventeenth century from somewhere in New
England. Because the house was less than a half century in age, the materials
used to build such a complex yet livable environment rivaled the mansions of
Beverly Hills in price.
Beyond the massive pines and intermingled oaks that were almost equally
enormous as the ancient evergreens, rose a brick wall the color of old blood,
between seven and eight feet tall, capped with black slate and black iron spikes.
The wall was so long that it seemed to delineate the property line of an
institution — a college, hospital, museum — rather than that of a private
residence. But in time George came to a place where the brick ramparts curved
in on both sides of a driveway, flanking it for twenty feet and terminating at a
formidable iron gate.
The cross-supported bars of the gate were two inches thick. The entire
structure, which was flanked and capped by intricately wrought scrolls and
fleurs-de-lis of iron, was impressive and elegant and beautifully crafted — and
seemed capable of withstanding any number of bomb blasts.
Though the house looked like it belonged in a horror movie, everyone knew and
loved the Franklin’s, mostly for different reasons. Marie was a teacher in the
same University that George’s wife Debbie had attended and graduated from last
year.
As he pulled into the large drive way his law enforcement background and
instincts ignited within him, and he instantly put out of his mind his problems.
The first thing he noticed was the five vehicles in the driveway and the stack of
daily newspapers scattered across the front pavement. He also noticed an
attractive middle-aged women standing by the shrubs separating the Franklin’s
property and what must be her own.
“Let the show begin,” he said aloud to himself and parked in the drive way,
killed the engine and exited the cruiser.

“Are you Mrs. Mitchell,” Deputy Matthews asked, knowing it was a formality.
The attractive brunette woman responded yes and he revealed his badge.
“I’m Deputy George Matthews,” he stated. After introductions the Deputy
produced a tab of paper and a pen while asking the neighbor to disclose the
story.
 “Well I haven’t seen the Franklin’s for a week,” Joyce Mitchell explained while
the Deputy took notes.
“The last I seen of the Franklin’s was last Friday, I think their kids were arriving
to celebrate something.” Mrs. Mitchell said and the deputy thought, “Which
would explain the multiple vehicles.”
“I didn’t think it was weird to not see them over the weekend, but after three
days during the week, it made me feel suspicious.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I see them almost everyday and it struck me as odd come Wednesday
but I figured it was because their kids were visiting that they kept to
themselves.”
“So about thirty minutes ago, I heard what I swear were a scream and then the
sound of glass breaking. I went to the window and saw someone leaving the
house. It was dark so I couldn’t make out anyone.”
Mrs. Mitchell let out a deep breath and sighed, and then continued. “I awoke
my husband and we ran downstairs and over to the house. I knocked on the
door but got no response. Neil was trying to tell me that it was probably nothing
but I couldn’t shake the feeling of something wrong.”
Deputy continued to write down the statement from the obvious distressed
neighbor, when she pointed to a window to the left of the enormous front door. “I
looked in the front window and there was stuff on the floor.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Things that shouldn’t be there, a coffee table and a lamp knocked over and
what looked like garbage…”
“Well I better check the house. I want you to stay here and I will go check it
out,” the deputy said with more command in his voice than planned.
As George made his way to the front door, that cold feeling from earlier crept
back into him. He had forgotten all about it until then. He felt compelled to walk
away, that an imminent danger awaited him beyond the front door. He stopped
and turned around, glancing at the worried face of the neighbor. His face
reddened slightly as he found himself trembling a little, unsure as into why he
felt so panicked. He straightened his shirt and continued to the house until he
reached the steps. The black wooden door suddenly seemed dark and ominous
to him, like it was the only thing stopping him from meeting his maker behind it.
Like Hell itself was ready to pounce on this small section of Florida once he let
it in by opening the door. He fought back these instincts, swallowed hard and
found himself at the front door. He gazed up at the door frame, half pretending to
look for any signs of foul play, but also to marvel at the sheer size of it. The house
had an apparent charm to it from a distance, but Deputy Matthews found
standing at its presence, intending to go inside or not, to be almost as
bone-chilling as working in a crime-filled section of Tampa Bay.
He understood that he might be more at ease with the crime filled streets than
this, for in those streets you had a better chance of knowing the perpetrator or
their intentions. What he stood before was like standing in front of a crazed
maniac who was pervious to pain but remained unknown in every other fashion.
Swallowing ha,as if choking down his feelings of dread, he knocked his balled-up
fists against the wooden door three times. The reverberated sound sent another
chill down his spine, it was loud and menacing. He received no response to his
inquiry, so he proceeded to knock again, a little harder.
Instead of knocking again he vacated the steps and went to the window the
neighbor had reported, and saw what looked like the scene that had been
described. It was at that point when his trained eye noticed spots of what
appeared to be blood on the inside of the curtain.
These spots, the knocked over furniture, statement from the neighbor and lack
of response gave him the probable cause to enter the home. First he crossed the
yard and informed the witnesses to stay as put, then returned to his cruiser and
picked up the radio.
“Ida?” He requested into his radio.
“George,” she responded.
“I’m here at the Franklin residence, took the statements and found a cause to
enter. So I will be entering the property, looks to be nothing but a 719.”
After returning his microphone to the cradle he shot the neighbor his best
glance of softness, and walked up to the house. He knocked on the door again,
hoping for easier entrance but with another lapse of time without a response, he
reached for the door handle. Opening easier and quieter than he imagined, he
was instantly met with the dark foyer and what sounded like a crackling noise.
“Hello, Tampa police, anyone home?”
He called out, hoping for a response that would erase the feeling of dread
getting deep in his bones, but no response came with the exception of the
constant crackle from the distance. Knowing he had probable cause with what
appeared to be blood on the curtain, he opted instead to investigate further.
He made his way into the first hallway, which had stairs to the right, leading to
the first of three more stories. He noticed, despite the darkness, several outlets
from the wall leading to obvious rooms. He felt so tiny and fragile in what
appeared to be an enormous house.
He continued down the hallway completely alert with pistol drawn, the sound of
the crackling noise getting louder and louder. He reached the first room, what
appeared to be a living room. He entered and let out a startled grasp.
Lying face down on the floor was the lifeless body of rotting human flesh, the
head in the stone fire place, which had been producing the crackling noise.
“Oh my God!” George said, shocked and wide eyed. He immediately covered his
nose at the smell of decaying flesh, which became more enclosed by the second.
Deputy Matthews fought back the urge to vomit and approached the body. Lying
on the floor was a large mullet styled hammer covered in blood and a knife in
similar fashion. The skin of the nude body had begun to turn black, suggesting
the moment of death had occurred at least twenty-four hours prior.
George snapped out of his thoughts and reached for the radio on his chest,
barely finding a voice to speak into it.
“Radio?” He said, his voice cracking.
 “George, what is new?” The sound of Ida’s voice gave him small comfort,
knowing she was alive, as if he believed by the sight of this one dead body that
everyone in the world had died.
“This has become a 187, I have one victim deceased by what appears to be
blunt skull trauma. I am going to check the rest of the house; I need back-up
and an ambulance right away.”
“Okay, Proceed with caution, back up is on its way.”
After ending the transmission, Deputy Matthews raised his gun back to firing
motion and intended to continue through the house, unaware of what or who he
might find.
Before he could make his way through the rest of the house though he heard
the brakes of a vehicle roaring just outside. Just then a hard rain fell without
warning. As if the sudden thunder storm had brought with it more violence in
the span of two minutes than the town had ever known, a shrill but quickly
interrupted scream came from outside.
 2) Friday August 25, 1985

“Baby’s crying,” he mumbled.

“Wake up.”
“Honey, it’s your turn to get the kid.”
“Carl, for God’s sake. It’s the phone, not the baby, and it’s for you.”
Carlton Romero’s wife, Jorje, elbowed him in the ribs. Then she tossed him the
phone and burrowed back under the covers, pulling the down comforter over her
mocha colored head. Jorje wasn’t a middle-of-the night sort of person.
Unfortunately, neither was Romero. Sergeant Detective, Major Crimes, Tampa
Office of the Florida State Police, he was supposed to be prepared for these sort
of calls. Sound intelligent. Commanding even. Romero hadn’t gotten a good
night’s sleep in nearly eight months now, however, and was feeling it. He stared
sulkily at the phone, and thought it had better be damn good.
Romero sat up and attempted to sound chipper. “Hell-oh.”
A trooper was on the other end of the line. Had gotten called out by a Deputy
Matthews to the scene of a brutal multiple murder at a property in Rhodes Rock
County. The Deputy had found a deceased body and the owner of the home was
missing. Romero listened a minute longer.
“Any signs of danger still in the property?”
“Deputy said the house is empty.”
“Well get the DA rolling, buckle up the scene and I’ll be there in — ” Romero
glanced at his watch, “thirty five minutes.”
“Yes sir.”
The trooper hung up; Romero got moving. Romero had been with the FSP for
the past twelve years. He’d started as a trooper, spent some time on a gang
taskforce, and then transferred to Major Crimes. Along the way, he’d acquired a
beautiful wife, a big black mutt, and of eight months ago, a bouncy baby girl. Life
was going according to plan, if you included in that plan that neither him nor his
wife had slept or chewed their food in nearly half a year. Kids kept you hopping,
so did Major Crimes.
He could hear the rain coming down in sheets off the roof. What a bitch of a
night to be pulled out of bed. He kept two changes of clothes in the trunk of his
take home car. Night like this, that would get him through the first hour. Shit.
He looked back at the bed with a pang and wish it’d been the baby crying after
all.
Moving on autopilot, he dug through the dresser and starting pulling on
clothes. He was just buttoning up his shirt when his wife sighed and sat up.
“Bad one?” she whispered softly.
“Sounds like it. A family over in Rhodes Rock.”
“Baby, what’s that got to do with you?”
“The father is missing and there are multiple bodies.”
“That’s weird.” She frowned but otherwise sat motionless on the bed, her arms
wrapped around her legs and her chin resting on her knees. Carl noticed the
sudden change in his wife’s complexion. Her colored skin was as pale as the
walls during the hours of sunlight, which illuminated the ivory plaster. Then a
cold feeling, like that of a draft started to creep into him. Whatever this invisible
force was, it had him feeling extremely uncomfortable.
“Jorje, are you okay?”
“Baby, I just hate the weird cases.”
Romero pulled on his sports coat, crossed to his wife and planted a big kiss on
her full lips. “Love you, honey. Be home soon.”

Rhoads Rock, Florida was a small coastal district of Tampa, located on the
southwestern outskirts of the city. Nestled in the shadows of the enormous bay,
it featured endless acres of prestigious homes, miles of beautiful beach, and
from a detective’s point of view, the most boring town in the country. Pretty place
to live if you were into honky-tonk and cheese. Not much else to do if you weren’t,
and didn’t the local kids know it.
It should have taken Romero twenty minutes to reach Rhodes Rock. On a
morning like this, with zero visibility, slick hillside passes, and driving sheets of
rain, it took Romero an hour. He pulled onto the lit-up site, breathing hard and
already feeling behind the eight ball.
The first thing Detective Carl Romero thought upon his arrival at 1914 Tinsel
Road was how the property appeared far more decrepit than when he had last
seen it. He remembered its majestic height, the large but seemingly tinted
windows. Aside from standing four stories from the pavement, its intricate detail
of first period architecture inspired any architect. The rise of five gables stood
with a very ominous look, but the one directly in front of the house was the one
which grabbed most viewers’ eyes. The unidentified spire stood at least fifty-five
feet from the pavement and the best guess was that of face, seemingly from the
portion which looked like eyes.
Detective Romero never had the feeling of negativity from it; he was usually
drawn to it by contrast of that. He loved architecture and the house, in his eyes,
was a thing of beauty. It could be viewed as a gift of architecture brilliance or the
ego of its owners, but Carl chose the former. He had heard of nothing but
positive things about Johnathan and Marie Franklin, the Franklin family being
the only owners the house had ever known. Yet now as he parked his white
Crown Vic in the driveway and killed the engine he had the very opposite feeling
of the residence he usually got.
“Some scene, huh?” Fellow detective Margaret Lee asked.
“It looks like it is going to be a weird one.” Romero answered.
“I hate the weird ones.”
“Then I have a feeling you are going to be enraged.” Romero replied, referring
to the feeling he had that whatever transpired was just the beginning of
something ominous.
 He grabbed his umbrella and made his way out into the rain, viewing the
almost two dozen vehicles parked on the property. Margaret made her way out of
the car more slowly, the rain slamming down on her umbrella. Romero eyed the
medical coroner entering the house with three photographers following close
behind.
The first respondents had done their job; three strategically placed spot lights
glared into the night, high-powered beams slicing through the ribbons of rain.
Yellow crime scene tape roped off a decent sized perimeter, outside of which the
vehicles were starting to pile up. Romero noted a deputy’s truck, then the
sheriff’s, then a slick black SUV with all the bells and whistles, which he figured
belonged to the Hillsborough County DA. They would need more bodies if they
decided to launch a full-scale search, and they would need the forensic lab and
latent prints to process the scene, but those would be his calls to make.
An hour and ten minutes after the first call out, they were still covering the
basics, but it was most certainly a heinous crime. Most taxpayers probably liked
to think the police went into these situations full bore. Notify the crime lab, bring
in the National Gua,and call in the choppers. Yeah, well, those same taxpayers
kept hacking away at the FSP’s budget, until Romero now had three and half
detectives working for him instead of the original fourteen. Real world policing
meant all decisions came attached to dollar signs. For better or for worse, these
days he was operating on the cheap.
Trooper Blarney trotted over, black Danner boots splashing through the muck.
A good doobie, he was wearing full department-issued rain gear, included a
black and blue FSP jacket that looked like a biker coat gone bad. No one really
cared for the jacket. Romero kept his stashed in the trunk for the rare occasions
the press was around — or a superior officer. Blarney had obviously been
standing outside a while; his coat looking slick as glass beneath the
high-powered lights, while beneath the cover of his wide brim hat, the water ran
in rivulets down his square-jawed face and dripped off the end of his nose.
Blarney stuck out his hand; Romero returned the favor.
“Trooper.”
“Sergeant.”
The Hillsborough County sheriff and a deputy had followed in the trooper’s
wake. Blarney made the introductions as they all stood in a rain-soaked huddle,
teeth chattering, and arms tight against their sides for warmth.
Deputy George Matthews had been the first responder. Kid was young, farming
stock, but trying hard. He didn’t like the look of things — the five dead, no sign of
a B & E and the missing father. Seemed kind of Hollywood to him. So he’d called
Sheriff Atkins, who hadn’t been wild to be pulled out of bed on such a night, but
had headed down. The sheriff was a bit of a surprise. For one thing, he was a she
— that would be Sheriff Susan Atkins. For another, she had a firm handshake, a
no-nonsense stare, and apparently didn’t feel like beating around the bush.
“Look,” she interjected halfway through her deputy’s energetic spiel, “Tom’s
waiting,” she jerked her head toward the DA, who Romero now saw was tucked
back inside his SUV.
“We got a search warrant for the car and the house, and per your trooper’s
instructions, we’ve confirmed this is public land. Now I don’t know what the hell
happened here, but judging by the items found in the front room and the house
not being locked, someone left that house in a hurry, but stayed long enough to
kidnap the witness, and that’s a source of concern for me. So let’s get this ball
rolling, or there won’t be anything left to find but a bunch of soggy police
reports.”
“Detective Romero, I assume” She said as he shook her hand.
“Yes,” he replied then pointed to his partner, “This is detective Lee.”
After shaking her hand as well, Romero inquired on the nature of the crime, for
which the Sheriff went through the details.
“Well sir, we have a puzzler here. We have just discovered a sixth body, we can
only now identify two men, and both seemed to have been killed by a single
gunshot. We also have three other bodies and they are in bloody pieces, the only
one of the three intact appears to be an older woman but she is missing...”
Romero saw how the usually tough-minded Sheriff was having trouble revealing
what the body was absent of, and he also noticed a slight tremor in her voice.
Trying to persuade the conversation to other aspects of the crime, he asked,
instead of probing, about the car.
“Well sir, it is at that point when we lose pieces in the puzzle.” Sheriff Atkins
started, looking calmer now, obviously relieved to not have to disclose what the
one body was missing.
“You see a woman called dispatch over an hour ago, Deputy George Matthews
answered the call and went inside. Inside he found the first victim but before he
could go farther he heard a scream outside and the car belonging to someone
was sitting there idling. When he walked up to the house the woman lived the
real neighbors claimed to not know the woman.”
Romero had noticed how she emphasized the word lived in her statement and
found he was even more perplexed than upon arrival. But he did the math in his
head, and abruptly spitted out. “So we have six dead bodies inside and a missing
woman from outside.”
When the Sheriff replied, Romero felt as if she hadn’t told him everything, so he
inquired for what was being left out.
“Well Detective . . .” Sheriff Atkins started but he implied that he wished to be
called by name, that informal was gone thus far. Sheriff smiled weakly and
continued…
“Well Carl, the real neighbors said they hadn’t seen the Franklins for over a week,
in which time their grown children and in-laws arrived. Their maid was also
reported to have been inside, which put seven people here at the scene with the
last acknowledgement of being seen. That gives us seven potential victims or . . .”
“Or six dead and one suspect.” Margaret continued for the Sheriff.
“Yes madam, only we have combed the entire house, and not found the seventh
body. The first guess between us is that the perpetrator was in the house and
when Deputy Matthews entered he left elsewhere and abducted the woman.”
No one could argue with that logic, so their little scrum moved toward the car,
edging carefully toward the open door.
The vehicle was a late-model Toyota Camry, white exterior, blue clothe interior.
Nice, but nothing fancy. The driver had pulled well over, conscientiously trying
to get off the road. To the left of the drivers door was the winding backwoods lane.
To the right, was a steep embankment leading up into a heavily shrouded forest.
As the trooper had reported by phone, the driver’s side door was slung wide open,
tip of the door scraping the edge of the asphalt. Romero’s first thought was that
most people didn’t open their doors that far. Maybe if they had really long legs.
Or maybe, if they were loading something in and out of the car. Something to
think about.
From this angle, Romero could make out the shape of a brown leather handbag
sitting in the passengers’ seat.
“Did you check the purse?” he asked no one in particular.
“I picked it up,” Deputy Matthews reported, already sounded defensive. “To
check for ID, you know. I mean, it just seemed strange to find the car, lights on,
engine running, door open wide as day. I had to start somewhere.”
“Did you find a wallet?”
“No sir. But I opened the glove compartment and found the vehicle registration.
I pulled the name off that.”
“Purse was empty?”
“No sir. Lots of stuff in the purse, cosmetics, pens, PDA. But at least I didn’t see
anything that looked like a wallet. I placed the purse back just how I found it.
Swear to God I touched nothing else.”
“Except the glove compartment,” Romero said mildly, but he wasn’t really angry.
The deputy was right — you had to start somewhere. The car’s engine had been
turned off; the trooper had done it to preserve the tank of gas. Always useful
when you found an abandoned vehicle, to see how much gas was left in the tank.
But the engine had been running fine when Deputy Matthews had arrived
outside, and at a glance, there was nothing wrong with the tires. Seemed to rule
out pulling over due to mechanical issues.
Romero walked to the rear of the Camry, eyeing the fender. No sign of dents or
scrapes, though it was hard to tell with everything so wet. He made a
half-hearted attempt to look for other tire tracks or footprints. The driving rain
had destroyed the ground, leaving nothing but shallow pools of muddy water.
Sheriff Atkins warning had been on the money, but a dime too late. He moved to
the interior of the vehicle, careful not to touch.
“Owner a woman?” he asked.
“According to the registration,” Trooper Blarney supplied, “the name is
Josephine Conner from here in Rhoads Rock. Same name as on the vehicle
registration. Sheriff Atkins sent a deputy to the house and that is where
everywhere changed. At first no one answered, but then a couple came to the
door, they were apparently engaging in activity during our arrival and said they
never heard of that person.”
“What about Deputy Matthews, he who found both crime scenes?”
“Said the woman who had called in the report on the house, claimed to live next
door. Said it started raining and then heard screaming. Ran out and found the
car.”
“Sounds like spotty police work to me”
“Well sir we have reason to believe he is telling the truth”
“And how is that?”
“Well, forgive my ignorance Sergeant but I am going to assume here your next
question would be if we have a physical description of the suspect.”
“As a matter of fact it was."
“Well according to Deputy Matthews and the DMV records they match.”
“So what is the physical description?”
“Well she’s five six, one hundred and twenty pounds, brown hair, and blue eyes,”
Romero eyed Sheriff Atkins.
“Five, five,” she supplied. “I didn’t want to touch anything just yet, but at a
glance, the seat looks about right.”
That’s what Romero thought, too. Seat was fairly close, about what he’d expect.
He needed to check the mirrors, of course, steering column, too, but that’d have
to wait until after the lab rats and latent prints were done. According to Blarney,
the gas tank had registered half-full before he’d shut down the engine, so while
they’d canvas the local gas stations just to be safe, Josephine probably hadn’t
fueled up recently.
He straightened, blinking his eyes against the rain while the wheels of his mind
started to turn. Romero had spent his first three years as a trooper working
along the coast. It amazed him how many of his reports had started with the
discovery of an abandoned vehicle. The Tampa Bay seemed to draw people,
speak to them one last time. So they’d drive out to the coast, catch that final
glorious sunset. Then they’d lock up their vehicle, head into the woods, and blow
out their brains.
But in all of Romero’s years, he’d never seen anyone get abducted from a car like
this — engine idling, windshield wipers beating, headlights beaming. All of it
happening with a Deputy Sheriff just having discovered one of multiple
massacred bodies. Deputy Mitchell had been right. The scene was too Hollywood.
It felt wrong.
“All right,” Romero said. “Let’s pop the trunk.”
Deputy Matthews didn’t understand the contents of the trunk at first. Romero
could see the awareness finally penetrate as the deputy turned various shades of
the green.
“What the hell…” the deputy stumbled back, his arm going up as if to block out
the image.
Romero reached in a hand, and carefully lifted the first page of photos. His gaze
shot to Sheriff Atkins. “You don’t know the name?”
“No, but I just started the job last month. Is that what I really think it is?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Sweet Jesus.” She stared at the abandoned car. “This is not going to end well.”
“Not likely,” Romero said and got out his phone to make the call.
“Okay Sheriff, let’s see the bodies.” Detective Romero said looking up at the spire
atop the front gable, as much transfixed by the architecture that the Sheriff had
been. It was inspiring but also left both officers with the feeling that something
completely debauched and corrupt had entered the township. Whatever it was
appeared to have taken out its first victim or victims in this case, which was the
most puzzling of all. Everyone knew Jonathan and Marie Franklin, most
watched their kids grow into fine sophisticated young adults, and no one would
wish them dead. Though whoever the psychopath was, knew something the
police didn’t, and as the three joined the other officers of different ranks in the
house, Romero felt the answer was beyond their most horrid imaginations.
 3) Friday August 25, 1985

The first thing Sergeant Romero noticed when entering the crime scene was
how polished and well kept the property was. He half expected to walk into a
scene from any low-budget horror film. But the walls were all that pretty beige
and the furnishings revealed just how hefty the bank accounts were, or had
been, for the Franklin family. Upon entering the living room though Detective
Romero noticed the vile smell of burnt and badly decomposing flesh.
The Medical Examiner and Forensics team were photographing the body whose
head lay within the smoldering fireplace, which remained crackling. Despite the
brutality of the crime, the crime was surprisingly bloodless. The Forensics lab
was currently packaging a mini sledge hammer that lay close to the body, which
appeared to be an obvious murder weapon.
“Making any progress?” Romero asked the coroner.
“I can’t be sure here, but it appears this body has been dead for a while”
“Too decomposed for I.D. right now, I assume”
“Actually sir, I can be pretty sure the body here is of Mrs. Franklin. The corpse
appears to be in her mid-to-late fifties. But whoever did this crime didn’t care
much for the victim.”
“Why do you say that?” Detective Romero asked and the ME explained the
hammer on the floor was likely used to bludgeon the victim to death; the head
was then put into the fire.
After a few moments of not speaking, he continued, “now where we are buffed is
how the fire consumed the upper portion of her skull in only a day if the
perpetrator had left.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well you’re the expert detective, but the bodies in the back all appear to have
been deceased for several days, making this one here the last victim killed. From
what we know now, the fire would have to have been so hot that it melted -” the
ME was unable to continue.
“So if the other bodies were killed before, why didn’t she leave?” Detective
Romero finished the coroners statement.

Each fall surprised Carl. In the years since he’d come to Florida he remembered,
from year to year, how pretty fall was compared to the west coast. He stood now
among the smell of rotting flesh and dried up blood, looking at a dead man,
suspended from a rafter in the depiction of crucifixion, overlooking the mansions
backyard.
Detective Lee was taking pictures; Sheriff Atkins was at the crime-scene tape
outside and shooing away onlookers.
“Doesn’t look like his neck is broken,” Romero said.
Detective Lee nodded.
 “Hands are free.”
Detective Lee nodded.
“Nothing to jump off of,” Romero said. “Unless he went up on the bed and
jumped two feet.”
Detective Lee nodded, and then said “Open his coat.”
Romero opened the coat and the argyle sweater beneath the coat was dark and
stiff with dried blood.
“There goes the suicide theory,” Carl said.
“M.E. will tell us,” Margaret said, “but my guess is he was dead before he got
hung.”
Romero walked around the area, looking at the floor. At one point he squatted
on his heels and looked at the hard wood.
“They had already shot him.” Romero said, “And dragged him over . . .”
“Sometimes I forget you grew up out west,” Margaret said.
Romero grinned and walked toward the beam, still looking down.
“And looped the rope around his neck . . .”
Romero looked up at the corpse.
“Tossed the rope over the arch beam, hauled him up, and tied the rope around
the trunk.”
“Good sized guy,” Margaret said.
“About two hundred,” Romero guessed.
Margaret looked appraisingly at the corpse and nodded.
“Dead weight,” she said.
“So to speak,” Romero responded.
“Maybe more than one person involved,” Margaret said and Romero nodded.
Carl reached up into the mans back pocket after noticing the wallet was there.
“ID?” Margaret asked upon seeing the wallet.
“Twenty-six year old male named Richard Franklin.”
“Son of the residents.”
“Body was killed and a great amount of effort put in, yet his wallet is intact, no
money or credit cards taken out.”
“So no robbery, like the five-thousand dollars worth of jewelry in the master
bedroom.”
“Jesus,” Romero said, “I was hoping for robbery. That would at least explain
something.”
Margaret Lee only nodded solemnly, she understood her partners worry.
Whoever committed the heinous crime in the house was still at large and the
chance of any trace forensic evidence was beginning to look scattered. Though
she had been running in her brain the possibility of a bet with her partner,
Margaret saw that Romero was too mortified by the dead bodies to be so callous
towards the cold-blooded atrocities. Sheriff Shelly Atkins strolled up beside the
two detectives, stared at the corpse and asked, “Suicide?”
“I wish,” Romero answered, and then added. “Margaret will fill you in.”
 Detective Romero continued throughout the house, passing the Medical
Examiner overseeing the paramedics bringing the living room body to the
ambulance. He turned sharply and headed deeper into the house, and the
mystery. Passing several cutouts that lead to fully furnished and stocked rooms,
which despite the condition of the two found bodies, the place is remarkably
kept. After passing three empty rooms, Romero was joined by Sheriff Atkins
suddenly.
“Sergeant, that room over there is bad,” she said, pointing to the room he was
heading towards.
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
As Romero entered the room of what is now officially his fifteenth homicide case,
an internal urge overwhelmed him. An urge he was able to suppress since his
days as a Trooper, but he could not control it this time. The smell of death
swirled all around him and the sight of the most mutilated corpse he had ever
seen lay not ten feet from him. The urge to vomit he had to fight back and control
himself, so he turned away from the victim.
The room was a bedroom, a brown wooden dresser sat along the left wall, with
an eloquent old-fashioned mirror perched atop it. A few items lay atop the
dresser top; brush and comb sat together appearing to not have been touched in
several days. Lip-gloss and a pair of nail clippers sat in the middle. Also atop the
dresser was a neatly folded pair of clothes, belonging to a female of the smaller
build size, a pair of slippers sat on the floor in front of the dresser.
The same burgundy hardwood floors made up the flooring, which lead to a door
with a fully stocked bathroom behind it. To the right lay the bed and the victim.
What used to be a yellow comforter had turned to a shade of red, like that of a
tomato or strawberry. The skin of the victim had already turned black from
decomposition, suggesting death had occurred at least seventy-two hours prior
to discovery.
Edward Nicholls joined beside Romero and Shelly Atkins. His first urge was the
same as Romero’s had been. Nicholls has held his profession for thirty-five years,
he believed he could withstand the sight of the victim, but his lack of a strong
stomach only reinforced the grotesque nature of the crime.
The victim was wearing only a chemise, but the condition of the murder is what
shocked the three officials the most. The body was lying naked, with the
exception of the aforementioned chemise, in the middle of the bed, with the
shoulders flat but slightly tilted to the right. The head was lying on its right
cheek, as if to stare at the officers who stared at the body. The left arm was
perched from the floor to the side of the right side of the body, two fingers
missing.
The right arm was slightly ripped from the body and rested mostly off the
mattress. The elbow was bent, the forearm upward with the fingers clenched,
indicating a violent struggle moments before death occurred. The legs were
spread wide apart, attached to two ropes at the baseboard. The whole front
surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity
emptied of its intestines. The breasts had been sawed off, the arms mutilated by
several serrated wounds and what was left of the left cheek was lacerated
beyond recognition. The victims eyes were missing, and dried up blood had
seeped from the sockets where the optic nerves were exposed. All four layers of
subcutaneous fat of the neck were severed and a butchered Esophagus was
exposed.
The internal organs were found in various parts: the uterus was positioned at
the entrance of the mangled vaginal opening. The kidneys were under the
victim’s head, while one breast lay upon the victim’s knee. The other breast
hung intuitively on the headboard of the bed. The liver was between the
spread-eagled knees, the intestines by the right hip bone and the spleen was
stretched across the torso. The flaps of flesh removed from the abdomen and
thighs lay on the top bed posts as a trophy.
The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, and on the floor
beneath was a pool of blood covering about six feet square. The wall by the right
side of the bed and in a line with the neck was marked by arterial spray where
blood had struck it in a number of separate splashes.
The face was gashed in every direction, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears
being mostly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions
running implicitly down to the chin. There were also an abundance of cuts
extending irregularly across all the features.
Most of the neck was cut right down to the spinal column, the fifth and sixth
being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct
ecchymosed. The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the
Arytenoids cartilage.
Both breasts were removed by circular incisions, the major and minor pectoral
muscles were still attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the fourth,
fifth, and sixth ribs were cut through and the contents of the thoracic cage
visible through the openings. The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the
costal arch to the pubes were removed in large flaps. The right thigh was
denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of
generation, and part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin
fascia, and muscles as far as the knee.
Romero turned away from the mutilated woman and for the first time in fifteen
years was overcome with grief and sickness. The condition of the body and
situation was more sickening and disturbing than any of them had ever
witnessed.
 4) Friday, August 30, 1985

Sherry Cooper studied the wooded area dubiously, but could not deny they
were alone. Though not too deep into the woods, the solitude was equally
unnerving as it was dangerously erotic. She sat next to her boyfriend, Josh, a
hundred yards from the road in his "71 Chevy.
The windows had been rolled up with clothes partially removed for both.
Sherry had heard a crunching sound, the unmistakable noise of leaves being
trampled on. Josh had not heard it, his head in a position for which hearing was
not required, perhaps even impossible.
Josh had been the kind young man to get out and search but was now in the
car, looking white.
“Josh?” Sherry yelled at him. Unaware she had tugged on his arm and called
his name six times before finally turning to her.
“What’s wrong baby?” Sherry asked but Josh only stared, wide-eyed, and
bottom lip quivering.
“Josh, you’re scaring me.”
“We need to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“Get dressed, I’ll explain on our way there.”
“Where?”
But Josh was already turning the key in the ignition and did not respond.
Sherry had put her clothes mostly back on while Josh was gone for about five
minutes. His weird behavior was scaring her; while his somewhat crazy driving
made her think she was going to die.
“Josh, you can’t drive that fast.” Sherry yelled but Josh simply couldn’t hear
her. Wherever Josh was going could not wait, as if he was running from
whatever he found outside the car.

“The police station?” Sherry asked when the car pulled into the parking lot.
“Josh?”
“Sherry,” Josh said his first words since telling her to be quiet during the six
minute drive from the woods.
“We are safe; nothing was out there except what I saw.” Josh said and shivered.
“What was…?”
“It? Well… I’m scared Sherry, but we need our stories straight.”
“What?”
“Listen to me closely Sherry,” Josh started but had to stop and quit shivering.
“Josh, what was it?”
“A body,” Josh said and Sherry’s eyes widened.
“A body but it looked like skin. Everything but the eyes was on the face, but it
was just the woman’s skin. Everything else was missing.”
 “Oh God,” Sherry said and fought back her gag reflex.
“We need to tell the police that we were out in the woods being teens and just be
truthful.”
“Did you touch the body?”
“Not with my hands but I did with a stick.”

“May I help you?”

“Yes, who do we see about reporting a crime?”
 CHAPTER 3
Mysterious Door (Tampa, Florida)

1) Sunday, September 1, 1985

Before talking to Dr. Ybarra, Judith had called the security service that
Margaret Lee had recommended. By the time she had spoken to Ybarra, two
nurses dressed Amelia in jeans and a blue-checkered blouse and sneakers, and
signed the necessary release forms, the agent from Florida Paladin had arrived.
His name was Earl Benton, and he looked like a big old farm boy who had
somehow awakened in the wrong house and had been forced to clothe himself in
the contents of a banker’s closet. His blond-brown hair was combed straight
back from his temples, fashionably razor-cut — by a stylist, not a barber —
but it didn’t look quite right on him; his blocky face and plain features would
probably have been better served by a shaggy, windblown, natural look. His
seventeen-inch neck seemed about to pop the collar button on his Yves St.
Laurent shirt, and he looked awkward and slightly uncomfortable in his
three-piece gray suit. His huge, thick-fingered hands would never be graceful,
but the fingernails were professionally manicured.
Judith could tell at a glance that Earl was one of those tens of thousands who
went to Los Angeles every year with the hope of moving up in life, which he’d
probably already done. He would most likely climb higher too, once he wore off
some rough edges and learned to feel at home in his designer clothes. She liked
him. He had a nice, wide smile and easy manner, yet he was watchful, alert, and
intelligent. She met him in the corridor, outside Amelia’s room, and after she
explained the situation in more detail than she had given his office on the
telephone, she said, “I assume you’re armed.”
“Oh, yes, madam.”
“Good.”
“I’ll be with you till midnight,” Earl said, “and then a new man will come on
duty.”
“Fine.”
A moment later, Judith brought Amelia into the hall and sat her down in one of
the chairs. Jason hunkered down to her level. “What a pretty girl you are.”
Amelia said nothing.
“Fact is,” he said, “you remind me a lot of my sister, Emma.” Amelia stared
through him.
Taking the woman’s slack hand, which engulfed his in her enormous hands,
Jason continued to speak directly to her, as though she were holding up her end
of the conversation. “Emma, she’s nine years younger than me, in her junior
year of high school. She’s raised up two prize calves, Emma has. She’s got a
collection of prize ribbons, probably twenty of them, from all sorts of
competitions, including livestock shows at three different county fairs. You
know anything about calves? You like animals? Well, calves are just the cutest
things. Real gentle faces. I’ll bet you’d be good with them, just like Emma.”
Watching him with Amelia, Judith thought back to when he had first walked
into her life when Rachel was less than a year old. How much of a wonderful life
companion he had always been. But as she watched him she loved him even
more than she had on their first meeting.
He said, “Now, Amelia, don’t you worry about anything, okay? I’m your friend,
and as long as old Jason’s your friend, nobody’s going to so much as look
crosswise at you.”
Amelia seemed utterly unaware of his presence. He released her hand, and her
thin arm dropped back to her side, limp.
Jason stood and rolled his shoulders to settle his jacket in place, and then
whispered to his wife, “You say her mother was responsible for making her like
this?”
“She would have to be responsible,” Judith said.
“Now, madam — Doctor Cassidy, I guess I should call you — when we leave here,
I’ll go out the door first. I know that’s not gentlemanly behavior, but from now on,
most times, I’ll be just a couple feet ahead of you wherever we go, sort of scouting
the way ahead, you might say.”
“I’m sure no one’s going to start shooting at us in broad daylight or anything
like that,” Judith said.
“Maybe not. But I still go first. I’m sure everything will work out just fine. Now,
are you two ladies ready to go home?”
They headed toward the elevator that would take them down to the lobby. At
least a thousand times over the past six years, Amelia had dreamed about the
wonderful day when she could return home. She had imagined that it would be
the happiest day of her life. She’d never thought it would be like this.
 2) Wednesday, September 4, 1985

After brewing coffee for Jason and for herself, she made hot chocolate for
Amelia and carried it into the den, where the teenager waited. Judith had made
arrangements to take an indefinite leave of absence from St. Mark’s and to have
her private patients covered by an associate for at least the upcoming week. She
intended to begin therapy with Amelia right away, this afternoon, but she didn’t
want to conduct the session in the same room with Jason, due to distraction.
The study was small but comfortable. Two walls were covered with
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were filled with an eclectic collection of
hardcover titles ranging from exotic volumes on highly specialized areas of
psychology to popular fiction. The other walls were covered with beige grasscloth.
There were two Delacroix prints, a dark pine desk with an upholstered chair, a
rocking chair, and an emerald-green sofa with lots of pillows. Soft amber light
came from a pair of brass Stiffel lamps on matching end tables; Jason had
closed the emerald-green drapes at both windows.
Amelia was sitting on the sofa, upturned hands in her lap, staring at the palms.
“Amelia.”
The teen gave no indication that she was aware of her friend’s presence.
“I brought you some hot chocolate.”
When Amelia still did not respond, Judith sat beside her. Holding the mug of
cocoa in one hand, she put her other hand under Amelia’s chin to lift her gaze
and look into those haunted eyes. They were still disturbingly empty and Judith
could make no connection with them, elicit no awareness.
“I want you to drink this. It’s good, tasty. I know you’ll like it,” she said.
She put the rim of the mug to the teen’s lips and by way of ample coaxing,
managed to get her to sip the cocoa. Some of it dribbled down her chin and
Judith wiped it away with a paper napkin before it could drip onto the sofa. With
more encouragement, the teen began to drink less sloppily. At last her frail
hands came up and held the mug firm enough that Judith could let go. Once she
had hold of the mug, Amelia drank the remainder of the hot chocolate quickly,
greedily. When it was all gone, she licked her lips slightly.
In her eyes there was for the briefest moment a flicker of life, an indication of
consciousness; and for a second, but no longer than that, her eyes met Judith’s,
didn’t stare through but at her. That precious instant of contact was electrifying
but, unhappily, Amelia sank back into her secret inner world, eyes glazing over
again. It demonstrated to Judith that she was capable of returning from the
self-imposed exile; therefore, there was a chance, however small, that she could
be brought back permanently.
She took the empty mug out of Amelia’s hands, put it on one of the end tables,
and then sat sideways on the couch, facing her. She took both of Amelia’s hands
and said, “I know you’ve done no wrong and have hurt no one. We barely know
each other but I desperately want to help you ... maybe you aren’t exactly sure
who I am. My name is, Judith Cassidy.”
 The girl didn’t react.
She spoke softly, reassuringly, taking the teen step by step, because she was
sure that, at least on a subconscious level, she could understand her.
“I brought you here to our home, wasn’t easy, because I want to help you. The
most important thing is to make you well, to bring you out of that hole you’re
hiding in. I’m going to do that, I’m going to make you well. Help you get well.”
The teenager said nothing.
Her blue eyes indicated that her attention was far away. Judith sat directly in
front of the woman, put her arms around her, and held her. For a while, they
just sat like that, being close, giving it time, because they had to establish bonds
of affection in order for the therapy to have a chance.
After a few minutes, Judith found herself humming a lullaby, and then
crooning the lyrics almost in a whisper. She smoothed her friends" forehead,
used fingers to comb the girl’s hair back from her face. Amelia’s eyes remained
disturbingly distant, glazed, but she raised one hand to her face and put a
thumb in her mouth. As if she was a baby.
Tears welled in Judith’s eyes. Her voice quivered, but she kept crooning softly
and running her hand through the woman’s crimson hair. Then she
remembered how hard she had tried to break her own daughter’s
thumb-sucking habit sixteen years ago, and it seemed funny that she should be
so pleased and moved by the gesture now. Suddenly she was half crying and half
laughing, and she must have looked ridiculous, but she felt wonderful.
In fact, she felt so good and was so encouraged by the woman’s thumb-sucking,
by the instant of real eye contact that had followed the drinking of the hot
chocolate, which she decided to try hypnosis today, rather than waiting until
tomorrow, as planned. In Amelia’s conscious but semicatatonic state, the
woman was withdrawn into deep fantasy and was resistant to being brought up
from those sheltering depths of her psyche. Hypnotized, she would be more
malleable, more open to suggestion, and might be drawn back at least part of the
way toward the real world.
Hypnotizing someone in Amelia’s condition could be either much easier than
hypnotizing an alert person — or nearly impossible. Judith continued softly
singing the lullaby and began to massage the girl’s temples, moving her
fingertips around and around in small circles, pressing lightly. When the
woman’s eyes began to flutter, Judith stopped singing and said, in a whisper,
“Let go, Amelia. Sleep now, sleep, that’s it, I want you to sleep, just relax ... you
are settling into a deep natural sleep ... settling down like a feather floating down
and down through very still warm air ... settling down and down ... sleep ... but
you will continue to listen to my voice ... down and down like a lazily turning,
like a drifting feather ... down into sleep ... but my voice will follow you down into
sleep ... down ... down ... and you will listen to me and answer all questions I
ask ... sleep but listen and obey. Listen and respond.”
She massaged even more lightly than before, moving her fingertips more slowly,
until at last the woman’s eyes closed and her breathing indicated that she was
sound asleep.
 Pepper slunk through the doorway and regarded them with evident curiosity.
Then she crossed the room, jumped onto the rocker, and curled in a ball.
“You are all the way down now, deep asleep. But you hear me and you will
answer me when I ask you questions.” Judith said, still holding her friend.
The woman’s mouth was slack, lips parted slightly.
“Can you hear me, Amelia?”
The girl said nothing.
“Amelia, can you hear me?”
She sighed, a sound as soft as the light from the amber-shaded brass lamps.
“Uh ...”
It was the first sound that she had made since Judith had known her.
“What is your name?”
The woman’s brow furrowed. "Muh ...”
The calico cat raised its head.
“Amelia? Is that your name? Amelia?”
“Muh ... muh.”
Peppers ears pricked up.
Judith decided to move to another question. “Do you know who I am, Amelia?”
Still sleeping, the woman licked her lips. “Muh ... muh ... it ... ah ...” She
twitched and began to raise one hand as if fending something off.
“Easy,” Judith said. “Relax and be calm and sleep. You’re safe with me.”
The girl lowered her hand and sighed.
When the lines in the girl’s face smoothed out somewhat, Judith repeated the
question. “Do you know who I am?” Amelia made a wordless
murmuring-whimpering sound. “Do you know who I am, Amelia?”
Lines of worry or fear returned to the woman’s face, and she said, “Umm ...
uh ... uh-uh-uh ... it ... it...”
Taking a different tack, Judith said, “What are you afraid of, Amelia?”
“It ... it ... there...” Fear was in her voice now as well as carved into the pale flesh
of her face.
“What do you see?” Judith asked. “What are you afraid of, honey? What do you
see?”
"The ... there ... the...”
Pepper cocked her head and arched her back. The cat had become tense,
watching the girl intently. The air was unnaturally still and heavy. Although it
wasn’t possible, the shadows in the corners of the room seemed darker and
larger now than they had been a moment ago.
“It ... there ... no, no, no, no.”
Judith put one hand on her friend’s creased brow, reassuring her, and waited
expectantly as she strove to speak. A strange, disconcerting feeling came over
her, and she felt a chill creeping like a living thing up the length of her spine.
“Where are you, Amelia?”
“No ...”
“Are you in another room?”
 The girl was audibly grinding her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, fisting her
hands, as though resisting something very strong. Judith had been planning to
regress her, take her back in time to what she was unaware of, hoping Amelia
would speak and reveal what hat traumatized her. Hoped she would reveal the
secrets of why she slept into her trance, but it seemed as though Amelia had
drifted back there without encouragement, as soon as she’d been hypnotized.
But that didn’t make sense: Judith had never heard of spontaneous hypnotic
regression. The patient had to be guided, encouraged backward to the scene of
the trauma.
“Where are you, Amelia?”
“N-n-no ... the ... no!”
“Easy. Be still. What are you afraid of?”
“Please ... no ...”
“Be calm, honey. What do you see? Tell me, sweety, tell me what you see.”
Judith had no idea that what Amelia was seeing was in fact the room that was
made to be a tank, a deprivation chamber. The beginning of the horrific things.
But that wasn’t what frightened Amelia. Judith’s reassurances didn’t calm her.
“The ... the ...”
She was not afraid of the aversion-therapy chair or the electric chair, where she
would be sadistically shocked repeatedly to return her to her senses. It was
something else that terrified Amelia. She shuddered and began to strain against
Judith, as if she wanted to get away, run.
“Honey, you’re safe with me,” Judith said, holding her tighter than before. “It
can’t hurt you.”
“Opening ... it’s opening ... no ... it ... coming open...”
“Easy,” Judith said, as a chill climbed all the way up her back and reached the
nape of her neck. She sensed that something of terrible importance was about to
happen.
“No!” Amelia said, still in a hypnotic state.
“Amelia, honey, take it easy, take it easy now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
The girl tossed her head, drawing the quick shallow inhalations indicative of
panic. A half-born wail of fear and dread was trapped in her throat and issued
only as a thin, high-pitched eeeeeeee. She squirmed and tried to push herself off
her friend’s lap.
Judith held her. “Stop struggling, Amelia. Relax. Be still. Be calm.”
Suddenly the girl struck out at an imaginary assailant, flailing with both hands.
Unintentionally she struck Judith on the breast, then on the face, two hard and
painful blows.
For an instant Judith was stunned. The blow to the face was hard enough to
bring involuntary tears of pain to her eyes. Amelia rolled off her friend’s lap,
onto the floor, and began to crawl away from the couch.
“Amelia, stop!”
In spite of the posthypnotic suggestion that required the girl to respond to and
obey Judith’s commands, she ignored her. She crawled past the rocking chair,
making pitiful animal sounds of pure, blind terror.
 The calico cat stood on the rocking chair, ears flattened, hissing fearfully. As
Amelia scrambled past the chair, Pepper leaped over the girl, hit the floor
running, and streaked out of the study.
“Amelia, listen to me.”
The girl disappeared beyond the desk.
Her left cheek still stinging where the woman had struck her, Judith also went
behind the desk. Amelia had crawled into the kneehole and was hiding there.
Judith stooped down and peered in at her. The girl sat with her knees drawn up,
arms locked around her legs, hunched, chin against her knees, peering out with
wide eyes that, as before, saw neither Judith nor anything else in that room.
“Honey?”
Gasping for breath as if she had run a long way, Amelia said, “Don’t let it ...
open. Keep it ... shut ... tight shut.”
Jason stepped into the doorway. “You okay?”
Judith looked at him over the top of the desk. “Yes. Just ... Amelia, but she’ll be
okay.”
“You’re sure? You don’t need me?”
“No, no. I need to be alone with her. I can handle it.”
Stubbornly, Jason did not retreat from the room.
Judith looked under the desk again. Amelia was still breathing ha,and now she
was shaking violently too. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Come out of there, honey,” she said but the girl didn’t move.
“Amelia, you will listen to me, and you will do what I tell you. Come out of there
right now.”
Instead, the woman tried to draw farther back into the kneehole, though she
had nowhere to go.
Judith had never known a patient to rebel so completely during hypnotic
therapy. She studied the girl and at last decided to allow her to remain under the
desk for the time being, since she seemed to feel at least marginally safer there.
“Honey, what are you hiding from?” Judith asked but got no answer.
“Amelia, you must tell me — what did you see that you wanted to keep shut?”
“Don’t let it open,” the girl said miserably, as if responding to Judith for the first
time, although her eyes still remained focused on some horror in another time
and place.
“Don’t let what open? Tell me, Amelia.”
“Keep it closed!” the girl cried, and she squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip so
hard that she drew a small spot of blood. Judith reached into the kneehole and
consolingly put one hand on her friend’s arm.
“Honey, what are you talking about? I’ll help you keep it closed if you’ll only tell
me what you’re talking about.”
“The r-r-room,” Amelia said.
“What room?”
“The room!”
“What room?” Judith asked, unable to hide the frustration in her voice.
“The room with the tank. It’s coming open, its coming open!”
 “No,” Jason suddenly said sharply from the door.
“Jason, what — ,” Judith started but Jason continued.
“Listen to me. You have to listen to me and accept what I tell you. The door isn’t
coming open. It’s shut. Tightly shut. Look at it. See? It’s not even ajar, not even
open a little crack.”
“Not even a crack,” the girl said. There was no doubt that some part of her could
hear Jason and respond, even though she continued to gaze through them both
and even though she remained, for the most part, in some other reality of her
own making. Judith watched in amazement. Jason had never interrupted a
session of hers before and even if he had, she never knew of a hypnotized person
communicating with anyone else.
“Not even a crack,” Jason repeated, greatly relieved to be exerting some control
at last. The girl calmed a little but was trembling. Her face was still lined with
fear, but she was not biting her lip anymore. Instead a crimson thread of blood
sewed a curved seam down her chin.
Jason said, “Now, the door is closed, and it’s going to stay closed, and nothing
on the other side will be able to open it, because I’ve put a new lock on it, a heavy
dead-bolt lock. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Amelia said weakly, doubtfully.
“Look at the door. There’s a big shiny new lock on it. Do you see the new lock?”
“Yes,” Amelia said, more confident this time.
“A big brass lock. Enormous.”
“Yes.”
“Enormous and strong. Absolutely nothing in the world could break through
that lock.”
“Nothing,” Amelia agreed.
“Good. Very good. Now ... even though the door can’t be opened, I’d like to know
what’s on the other side of it.” Amelia listened and said nothing.
“Honey? Remember the strong lock. You’re safe now. What’s behind the door?”
Amelia’s large hands pulled and patted the empty air under the desk, as though
she were attempting to draw a picture of something.
“What’s behind the door?” Jason asked again, while Judith sat closeby,
watching ... hoping. Amelia’s hands moved ceaselessly, while she made wordless,
frustrated sounds.
“Tell me, honey.”
“The room...”
“Where does the room lead? What kind of room is it?"
“The room to...”
“To where?"
“To ... to ... 1914,” Amelia said. Her fear broke under the crushing weight of
many other emotions — misery, despair, grief, loneliness, frustration — all of
which were audible in the wordless sounds that she made and in her
uncontrollable sobbing.
Then Amelia looked directly into the direction of Jason and called out in an
ironic cheerful voice, “Daddy? Daddy?”
 “You are going to be okay,” Jason said, both startled to hear her referring to
Jason as father.
“Daddy?”
“Right here. Come to me. Come out from under there.”
Weeping, Amelia did not come but cried, again, “Dad?” She seemed to think she
was alone, far from Jason’s consoling embrace, though they were only inches
apart. “Oh, Daddy!”
Staring into the shadowy recess beneath the desk, watching the poor woman
weep and gibber, reaching back in there, touching her, Judith shared some of
the feelings, especially grief and frustration, but she was also filled with a
powerful curiosity. The Room to 1914?
“Papa?”
Jason looked at his wife with confusion written across his handsome face.
Wherever the woman’s father was, his memory was sure etched in her mind. For
the briefest of moments both Judith and Jason felt guilty. Guilty from the
possibility of robbing the woman of her father. But if the two had been close they
remained separated by a mysterious gulf.
 3) Friday, September 6, 1985

Judith Cassidy closed the door to the guest room, after momentarily
watching Amelia sleep. Laying on her side and sucking her thumb like a baby.
She was surrounded by a soothing blue light that gradually grew darker until all
it was all black.
After thirty minutes of silence, the cold and macabre dream that had gripped
her while in the hospital came roaring back. Amelia was now lying on her back.
Her arms were crossed over her breasts, and her hands were fisted. Her eyes
suddenly shot open, the muscles in her neck were taut, the blood vessels in her
throat and temples throbbed with the effort that she was making, but she
couldn’t produce a sound.
She sat up with her blue eyes wide with fear. She wasn’t looking at or reacting
to anything in the room, since the terror lay beyond those walls.
“No,” she moaned as the world of her reality came into focus before her eyes.
Realizing for the first time that she was not alone. Remembering where she was,
she desperately desired company, someone to hold, human contact, and
comfort.
“Hello?” she whispered. “S-s-somebody? Anybody? Daddy?”
In the blackness, one point of light appears: a soft yellow and blue glow. On the
far side of the room. Lower than the bed, near the floor. It resolves into a Donald
Duck night light plugged in a wall outlet.
In the retreat adjacent to her bedroom, strapped with bleak terror and
encumbered with memory, Amelia appeared oblivious to the real world. She
murmured as though she were a sleeping child. But she was still in a sleep filled
with tension and threatening shadows.
The bedroom door opened. From the upstairs hallway, a wedge of light pried
into the bedroom, waking her. With a gasp, she sits up in bed, and the covers fall
away from her, as a cool draft ruffles her hair.
She looks down at her arms, at her large hands, and she is fifteen years old,
wearing the disgusting semen soaked pajamas. They are flannel-soft against her
skin.
On one level of consciousness, Amelia knows that this is merely a realistically
animated scenario that she has created, actually re-created from memory, and
with which she can interact in three dimensions through the magic or curse of
her trance. On another level, however, it seems real to her, and she is able to lose
herself in the unfolding drama.
Backlighted in the doorway is a tall woman with broad shoulders. Amelia’s
heart races as her mouth runs dry.
“I don’t feel so good,” she says, rubbing her sleep-matted eyes, feigning illness.
But the woman, without a wo,closes the door and crosses the room in the
darkness. As she approaches, young Amelia begins to tremble. The woman sits
on the edge of the bed. As the mattress sags, and the springs creak under her,
Amelia remembers how big she was. Her perfume smelling of lime and spices.
 The woman is breathing slowly, deeply, as though relishing the teenage smell of
Amelia, the sleepy-middle-of the-night smell of her.
“I have the flu,” she says in a pathetic attempt to turn her away, but the woman
just ignored her and switched on the bedside lamp.
“Real bad flu,” she says.
She was only forty years old and her own crimson hair was long and thick. Her
eyes were dark, almost black and so cold that when she meets her gaze, she
trembles until it becomes a terrible shudder.
“My stomach aches,” she lied. Putting one hand to Amelia’s head, ignoring her
pleas of illness, she smoothed her sleep-rumpled hair.
“I don’t want to do this,” Amelia says, speaking these words not merely in the
catatonic world but in the real one. Her voice was small, fragile, although not
that of a child. When she had been a teen, she’d been unable to say no. Not ever
once. Fear of resisting had gradually become a habit of submitting.
Here she was retreating into the past. This was not the therapy Judith had
hoped for, and had she not gone to bed she may have heard of Amelia’s cries.
Instead the molested thoughts of the catatonic woman were now a program of
virtual experience, which her battered subconscious designed to both elevate
the terror but never remove it.
“Mommy, I don’t want to do this,” Amelia says between choked breath.
“You’ll like it.”
“But I don’t like it.”
“Well Stan does and in time you will too.”
“No, I never will, this is disgusting.”
“You’ll be surprised.”
“Please don’t.”
“Since when do you not do what mama says,” her mother insisted and slid her
right hand under her daughter’s pajama top to fondle her breasts.
“Please don’t.”
They were alone in the house at night, Hebrew was either sleeping or allowed to
scream in hopes that it would bother Amelia, while the evil Stan was out doing
what Amelia never knew. Amelia’s father has been dead more than four years
and she missed him more by the day.
Now, in this fatherless world, Amelia’s mother stroked her hair and says, “This
is what I want.”
“I’ll tell,” she says, trying to shrink away from her. But it was suddenly Stan
that spoke up, appearing to her left.
“If you try to tell, I’ll have to make sure no one can ever hear you, ever again. Do
you understand? I’ll kill you,” he said not in a menacing way but in a voice still
soft and hoarse with perverse desire.
Amelia was convinced of his sincerity by the quietness with which he makes the
threat and by the apparently genuine sadness in his eyes at the prospect of
having to murder her.
“Don’t make me do it, Mimi. Don’t make me kill you like I killed your father.”
 Amelia’s father died suddenly while driving one night in the rain; she
remembered hearing the detective tell her mother that he was drugged.
Now her mother said, “Slipped a sedative in his dinner that he took to work
since I knew he had a short day. Then to make sure it worked, I seperated the
wires in the engine. You understand me, honey? Drugs. A needle full of drugs. I
used to put drugs, the sickness, inside his bloodstream with a needle, like I do to
you. Virulent infection of the myocardium, hit him hard and fast...”
She was not young but had been in hell for over two years that she lacked the
understanding many of the terms she used, but she is clear about the essence of
her claim and senses that she speaks the truth.
Her mother knew about needles. She had learned from her husband who was
perhaps the best obstetrician for the money.
“Should I go get a needle, Sugar?” Her mother asked, but Amelia was too afraid
to speak. Needles scared her and her sick mother knew it. She knew how to use
them, and she knew how to use fear. Did she kill her father with a needle?
She was still stroking and squeezing Amelia’s large breasts through her bra.
“A big sharp needle?” she asked as Amelia shook, unable to speak.
“Big shiny needle, instead of in the spine like normal, how about I smash it in
your stomach?” she said.
“No. Please.”
“No needle, Sugarpie?”
“No. ”
“Then you’ll have to do what I want.” She said and suddenly stopped stroking
her breasts. Amelia finally met her gaze and when she did her mother put her
hands inside her bra and ripped it cruelly from her chest. Amelia yelled out as
the sharp metal in the back cut slightly into her back.
Then Stan smiled and straddled her beginning to viciously pinch her nipples,
which caused Amelia to flinch and yell in pain.
His dark eyes appallingly radiant, glimmering with a cold flame. This was not
just a reflection of the lamplight, his eyes resemble the eyes of a robot in a scary
movie, as though there was a machine inside of him, a machine running out of
control.
Stan’s hand moved down to her pajama bottom and began to tug on them.
Amelia begged her mother to make him stop but she pretended not to listen.
“No,” she says. “No. Don’t touch me anymore.”
“Yes, honey. Why doesn’t your God help you?” Her mother asked and knowing
the question was a direct slap in the face of her father’s Christian beliefs, it
angered Amelia more than anything else causing her to bite down on her Stan’s
hand.
The bed in Cleveland, five years later reconfigured itself much like a hospital
bed to match the position that Amelia occupied in the catanonic and violent
world, helping to reinforce the detrimental scenario that she was experiencing.
Her legs were straight out in front of her, but she was sitting up.
Her deep anxiety even desperation was evident in her quick, shallow breathing.
 “No. No. Don’t touch me,” she said, and her voice was somehow resolute even
though it quivered with fear.
When she was sixteen, just four frightened years ago, she had never been able
to resist her. Confusion had made her uncertain and timid, for her mother’s
needs were as mysterious to her then as the intricacies of molecular biology
would be mysterious to her now. Abject fear and a terrible sense of helplessness
had made her obedient. And shame. Shame, as heavy as a mantle of iron, had
crushed her into bleak resignation, and having no ability to resist, she had
settled for endurance.
Now, in the intricately realized catantonic reality, versions of these incidents of
abuse, she was a teenager again but equipped with the understanding of an
adult and the hard-won strength that came from that terrifying day in Tampa
where the ordeal led her to find her mother and surrogate father deceased.
“No, Mommy, no. Don’t ever, don’t you ever touch me again,” she said to a
mother long dead in the real world but still a living demon in memory.
The past skill she learned from her father as a creator in medicine made the
re-created moments of her past so dimensional and textured, so real that saying
no to this phantom mother was emotionally satisfying and psychologically
healing.
But how much better it would be, of course, actually to travel through time, to
actually be sixteen again, and refuse her for real, to prevent the abuse before it
happened. To have never agreed to go with her mother as they fled the city and
into a nightmare that had journeyed into the depths of hell. Wished she had the
ability grow up with self-respect, untouched. But time travel did not exist except
in this approximation on the virtual plane.
“No, never, never,” she said. Her voice was neither that of a sixteen-year-old girl
nor quite the familiar voice of the adult Amelia, but a snarl as dangerous as that
of a panther.
“Noooooo,” she screamed this time and slashed at the air with the hooked
fingers of one clenched fist.
Stan reeled back from him in shock, bolting up from ontop of her, holding one
hand to his startled face where she clawed at her.
She hadn’t drawn blood. Nevertheless, he was stunned by her rebellion. Amelia
was trying to slash at his right eye but only scratched his cheek.
His dark eyes went wide: previously cold and alien robot orbs of radiant menace,
even stranger now, but not quite as frightening as they were before. Something
new colors them. Caution. Surprise. Maybe even a little fear.
Young Amelia pressed her back against the headboa,adjusting her shirt and
stared in terror at them both, whom stood tall and looming. She fumbled for her
bra and threw it down on the floor.
Her hand was trembling. She was often surprised to find herself in the body of
a child, but these brief moments of disorientation do not diminish the sense of
reality that informs the experience. The silence between her and her mother was
louder than a scream. How she looms, but it did not end there.
 “You will pay dearly for that,” Stacey Franklin said to her, while she chewed her
bottom lip, before adding, “Stan has something for you now.”
The cold look returned to her mother’s eyes, the look she got whenever she was
horny, a state of her Amelia knew entirely too well.
“Noooo, not the rack,” Amelia screamed both in memory and the safe bedroom
seventeen hundred miles away from where it had occurred.
“Oh yes,” her mother said in a chilling voice. “You will fucking bleed more than
you ever have before.
Amelia screamed again in both worlds as her mother flicked off the bedrooms
only small light and slammed the door shut. The clicking of the lock could be
heard as Amelia was cast into complete darkness.
“Are you ready?” Stan asked, in the complete blackness, which made Amelia
lose her mind. She screamed in the real world just as hard as she had on that
day she was reliving. On that day the scream was in response of rape. Stan had
been slightly smaller then Amelia, but because of her terrified nature, she was
no threat.
The rape was long and brutal but Amelia did not scream at first. Se sucked in
her breath and held it, watching the horror unfold in vivid deatil in her mind.
She shook in utter disgust as she thought back to that terrible pain.
Somewhere inside, she knew she was ruined sexually for life. Even her young
mind understood that no person deserved what was happening to her.
Amelia had lost her virginity at fourteen to Stan, a man her mother became
attached to a month after arriving in Sebring. Since then, he had been to every
occurance of her as a Spiral Girl, the name of the victim in a BDSM sex club.
Containing an animalistic mind set and ruthless sex drive, Amelia was
delightful to him. But she was not delighted. She hated every second of the rapes.
Every scent, sound and visual that her mind was now forcing her to relive. Stan
was the embodiment of evil but she dared never fight him back.
She had only responded with any amount of violence once before that night.
That time, which occurred a year later, was very bad. Her disgusting mother had
videotaped the rape and then forced her to watch it.
She remembered how she once tried to get out of Stans grip and when she did,
her arm and hand struck him, hard because of her jerking, on the side of the
face. His head jerked in response before a look of pure evil was on his face.
“I’m sorry,” Amelia had screamed that moment, but failed to see the blow
coming. Stan had backhanded her so hard that she thought her eyes were going
to fall out of her skull. The pressure on her brain was so intense, she groaned a
sigh and collapsed against his chest. He sat her up straight and Amelia fell back,
blood running from her ears.
He had chained her up and assaulted her violently. With that animal mentality,
he twisted her body around, even despite the physical limitations, and raped her
that way. She felt her shoulder pop a few times as her face was pushed
ackwardly into the pillow. He would suffocate her until she was ready to pass
out and then let her take oxygen in slowly as not to choke on it.
 Amelia knew he did this to keep his erection for a long period of time and that
was just what he did. When Stan was finally done beating and raping her that
day, he had ordered her to stand and could barely do it.
He told her that if she ever hit him again, it would be worse.
So since she had scratched him in this memory, she remembered how scared
she was that the rape was going to be worse than that.
For reasons unknown to her, Stans stamina was off that day and he orgasmed
well before any type of physical abuse, other than slaps, could occur.
Amelia watched the entire rape, holding in her building anger. How dare she
have to live through this once, but again? How much more could her mental
state take?
She stared in her invisible world to the sight of Stan smiling because he had
orgasmed inside of her. She saw her twelve year old self get sick at the thought
and consequences.
He had told her that night that if she were to get pregnant, he would kill it and
left the room with a Holy Bible thrown at her. But before it could end, her mind
spun the vision into a whole new discipline.
She was back in the grey room of water, the removal of her senses and electrical
return to physical immobility. The sexual assault after the brutal removal of
sensory was somehow less painful, and she was grateful for that. The pain from
then on was purely psychological.
While the vision slowly faded, the irrational fear did not leave her heart as she
continued to cry out. Elsewhere in the house, Jason was the first to hear her
screams and jumped out of bed with a start. Judith was awakened by the
sudden movements and appeared startled.
“What is,” she started but stopped when she heard Amelia screaming from the
other room. Both of them darted from their own and raced down the hallway to
her room, panting and hearts pounding.
When they reached the room, Jason was first to arrive and opened the door,
expecting to see a grisly scene. He flicked on the light switch just as his wife
stepped into the room. Both sets of eyes surveyed the room until they noticed
the far corner.
They found Amelia there with her hands over her bowed head and legs curled
up to her chest. Her screaming continued and she was trembling uncontrollably.
“Amelia?” Judith said and took a step forward but Jason grabbed his wife’s
shoulder. She stopped and looked at him.
“Remember what happened the last time she freaked out?” He asked and his
wife nodded. Instead of protesting, she looked at Amelia and then back at her
husband with a look on her face that suggest what to do.
Able to read her expression like the good man he was, he seized the moment
and decided that if this woman was to hurt anyone it would be him. So he took a
step forward and put his index to his lips toward his wife to signal silence.
“Amelia,” he yelled over her cries and to the amazement of them both the
woman responded to someone outside of her own catatonic world. She looked
directly in the direction of Jason and her blue eyes no longer looked sunken.
 “Amelia,” he repeated and bent down to one knee in front of her. When she
didn’t protest he extended his large right hand and after a moment she looked
up at Jason.
“Daddy?” Amelia asked at him and the moment hung in the air. The words were
delivered with a voice full of hope and joy.
Unaware of what to say Jason decided it was best to say nothing and put his
extended out hand on the woman’s. Immediately she stopped shaking and
looked at his hand. It was shaken since he was truly scared and excited at the
breakthrough.
Just as the tears brimmed in Judith’s eyes at both the breakthrough and the
genuine love the woman had for her well-to-do husband, the moment died.
Amelia groaned horribly, and sunk back into the corner, eyes returned to that
forlorn look.
"What’s happening, Amelia?" He asked but she had changed in an instant. He
tried shaking her by the shoulders but she had returned to the safety of her own
reality, unaware of the anguish it was causing her friends before her. Friends
that were going out of their way to help her remove the terrible memories that
had all but shattered her existence. Jason hung his head in frustration as
Judith crouched beside him, holding his shoulders and the sunken glazed look
deepened to Amelia’s otherwise gorgeous blue eyes.
 4) Monday, September 9, 1985

Judith Cassidy awoke on Monday at her usual time of six-fifteen in the

morning, before the September sky could light up by the suns beautiful
illustrations, to the sound of the rather annoying alarm clock. After hitting the
snooze button, she turned over to feel the warmth of her husband but found his
side of the bed empty, this made her peculiar. Sleep always found him within a
minute of the moment when he put his head on the pillow. He seldom stirred
during the night; after eight hours, he woke in the same position in which he had
gone to sleep — rested, invigorated. They had only gone to sleep six hours before.
Judith rose up from the bed, slipped on her slippers and put on her robe to
cover her nude body. Tightened the belt on her robe and exited the room, her
slippers making soft sounds across the carpeted hallway. She walked
downstairs and into the kitchen to find a half full pot of coffee.
After making her a cup she walked back down the hallway until she came to the
guest room, and seen a faint light on. She opened the door and found her
husband sitting in a chair, five feet across from Amelia’s bed. He was intently
studying Amelia as she lay, face up and deep in a sleep. He was watching so
intensely that he hadn’t noticed the door to the room come in.
“Jay?” Judith asked him and he turned to look at her, putting his index finger
to his lips to signal silence and then motioned for her to join him. She watched
as she crossed the room, sipping her coffee and meeting her husband at his side.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to roam the house. I heard her yelling for her
father, so I came in here and seen her fidgeting in her bed. But for some reason,
once I came into the room, she stopped and fell into a sound sleep.”
“Jason — ” Judith started but he signaled for her to be silent once again.
“If were going to talk lets get out of here,” Jason answered in a whisper.
As they exited the room, they both looked towards the poor woman atop their
guest bed. She was laying face up looking more at peace in her slumber than
ever before, almost content.
Judith closed the door but not entirely, and they both walked down the hallway
until they reached the kitchen.
“Why don’t you tell me what is on your mind honey?” Judith asked and sat
quietly in the chair, looking into the cup of hot coffee.
“Well, you’re the expert but I have found myself thinking about Amelia more
than I should. Meaning she is your patient but I think I can help her.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well tell me Judith, what are the percentages of young girls get abused by their
parents, mostly their fathers?”
“Well the data we have says men are more naturally aggressive, now coupled
with already being abusive and you would have a monster.”
“Right, it is obvious that Amelia there was abused, more than normal. But I felt
a connection I cannot explain when I touched her in the corner two days ago.”
“I don’t understand,” Judith said but did finally meet his eyes.
 “Well let’s see if we can add these parts up together. First we have a rigorously
abused young woman who attempted suicide. Second, we have this same
woman who might not even realize she told someone else that she murdered her
mother. Thi,no previous patient of yours has ever disobeyed your orders while
under hypnosis, yet she does so with ease. Four, she constantly calls out for her
father. In the process of doing so, she refuses to answer your, a females,
questions yet as soon as she hears my male voice, she softens and answers.”
He paused to take a drink and Judith sat waiting to hear his voice, which was
very calming and firm, fitting his physique and nature. She already knew where
this was leading but wanted to hear another say it, if for no other reason than to
give what is an otherwise absurd thought some merit and strength. It might
have seemed illogical but it was far too evident and convincing than any other
explanation.
“We need to contact her relatives, the ones we met at the hospital.” Jason said
and throwing her brain from its track.
“Why?”
“We need to learn what happened to her father because I doubt he abused her.
He might be injured or worse. Granted, he might be an asshole and finding out
about him might lead to trouble but that is a feeling of worse case scenario that
I think requires both of us to insult our common sense.”
“So you don’t think he abused her?”
“I am going to go out on a limb here and say I know he did not abuse her. Like
I said though, you’re the expert. I just do not see that woman asking for her
father’s presence, and going calm at the sound of a male’s voice if he had.”
“I don’t see how it could hurt, makes sense.”
“So once the appropriate hour comes please make the call and find out all you
can because I think her father is the key, rather for better or worse.”

At twenty minutes after eleven Judith telephoned the only relatives of the
battered young woman. She felt a sense of dread as she dialed the Deland
Florida phone number and listened to the rings, almost wanting to hang up. She
was afraid that by placing the call, she could be putting their lives in more
danger than already. She had a fleeting thought of calling a bodyguard like
Officer Margaret Lee had suggested but instead just sat down.
She tapped her pen on the spiral notebook she had open, hoping to end the call
with plenty of helpful information from the relatives. Finally, after the sixth ring,
a woman answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello, may I speak to Mrs. Patterson?”
“This is her, who am I speaking with?” The woman’s voice revealed her age.
“Sorry madam, this is Judith Cassidy. I am the woman you met a week ago at
the hospital in Tampa regarding Amelia.”
“Yes dear, forgive my sharpness, my old mind is slipping.”
 “That is okay,” Judith said and chuckled softly, then sipped her coffee.
“How may I help you dear?”
“Well, if it is okay, I was hoping you could tell me anything you know about
Amelia’s father.”
“Dear, Kevin Franklin passed away several years ago.”
The words made Judith’s breath catch in her throat. Of all the things she had
planned to hear about the man, his demise was not one of them. A feeling of grief
passed through Judith’s bones and made the air in the room extremely thick.
Needing a moment to absorb the simple sentence she hea,Judith sat back in
her chair and closed her eyes. The grief she felt was not for herself or her
husband but for poor Amelia. She was now even further from understanding
why the woman would be calling out for a man she had to know was deceased.
“Are you okay, dear?”
“Yes madam, I’m sorry, I, I just was not expecting to hear that.”
“Well, we were all grieved by his passing. He was a wonderful man.”
“I’m sorry for the loss madam, but I was hoping you could tell me anything,
anything that might help us understand the situation better.”
“What information are you looking for exactly?”
“How and when exactly did he pass?”
“It was in November of "78 dear. I remember because it happened right after
Janet Reno had become attorney general. I am a stern supporter of the
Democratic Party and voted for her.”
“Do you recall how it happened?” Judith asked, afraid that the woman would
start rambling and forget the actual purpose of the phone call. Judith was not
interested in the political views of anyone and certainly did not wish to begin so.
“Oh, it was terrible dear. He had crashed his car that night and perished — ”
The elderly woman’s voice trailed off briefly before she continued to tell Judith
about the horror that began the Franklin family.
It had been freezing cold that night seven years prior when Kevin Franklin
perished before two dozen onlookers. The crash had ruptured the fuel lines in
his car and it erupted into flames quickly thereafter.
Kevin had been knocked semi-unconscious from the impact but the sound of
panic a little while later, along with the heat of the flames, had awoken him.
The standard issued seat belt, the object of protection, had proved to be his
demise. Working with a fractured neck and double vision, Kevin had been
unable to release himself from the smoldering car due to the seatbelt before the
flames engulfed him.
Even though an ambulance and fire truck was on the scene within nine
minutes of the crash and a dozen onlookers had attempted to help him before
the flames were too severe, no rescue could be done. Instead Kevin’s screams of
pain had echoed into the vast darkness of that cold frosty night, with the
pounding rain as deafening as the horror it seemed to bring with it. For just as
suddenly as it began to rain, Kevin’s brakes had ceased to work. His car had
spun out of control before coming to a crashing conclusion on top of a
non-working fire hydrant.
 The irony of the location saddened Judith as she absorbed and wrote down
recaps of the woman’s words in her tablet. Twice she had to fight back tears of
such a tragic event, but could hear that the elderly lady on the other end had
been unable to.
“That is such a terrible tragedy madam. Despite the time past, you and the
family have mine and my husband’s deepest condolences.”
“Thank you dear,” Rachel said and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief as the
two women shared a brief moment of grieving silence, despite the two thousand
square miles between them.
“Two years later Stacey took Amelia and disappeared. We had no idea where
she had gone until last month.”
“Could you please tell me how Amelia was after her father’s passing?”
“Oh sure dear,“ she said, her voice sounded happy to be changing the subject.
“She took care of her mother until they disappeared. No one could have
foreseen that she would fill Kevin’s shoes so quickly. She became an excellent
cook and I got to tell you, the first time relatives came for dinner after Kevin’s
death, we exclaimed over the food.”
The fonder memories, even with the connection of the phone calls purpose,
seem to cheer the elderly Rachel up and Judith was happy for the topic to have
shifted. Already, she could tell Amelia was highly respected in her Aunt’s eyes by
that brief description.
“She took care of Stacey, and she applied herself to that responsibility with
vigor and enthusiasm dear. Although she was only twelve, she learned to plan a
budget, and before she was thirteen she was in charge of all the household
accounts.
“So Amelia was fourteen or fifteen when she disappeared?” Judith suddenly
asked.
“It happened on Christmas two years later, so she was fourteen at the time.”
“Wait,” Judith stopped her, very confused. “Didn’t her high school report her
missing or something?”
“No dear, you need to understand. Amelia was valedictorian of her high school
class at fourteen, three years younger than her classmates. She had been
accepted by USF.”
“Wow,” was the only response Judith could muster. She had been just told that
the young woman who appeared to have the mind of adolescent was, at one
point, as smart as a college professor.
“So there were no signs of abuse from Kevin to Amelia?” Judith asked, thinking
of the first question she could.
“Oh no dear, not at all, you see, Kevin was a very beloved man and — um —
and,”
“And what?”
“Kevin was a Jehovah’s Witness for several decades before his death. We were
all raised that way and while a few of us stopped, he had stayed in the truth. It
would be a stretch for anyone to think that Kevin was capable of being vile like
that.”
 “I am sorry madam, I just had to ask.” Judith said stunned at the last bit of
information she had heard. Never would she have included religion of any kind
into the situation they were all stuck in.

Judith hung up the phone and stared at the receiver for a few minutes. A large
set of emotions had set in during the call and was about to burst. Just before
she started to cry however, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi mom,” came her daughters voice from the other end.
“You know, you’re the second Rachel I’ve spoken to in as many phone calls.”

That afternoon, while Jason was working, Judith read over her notes about
Amelia, whom slept in her room peacefully and content. She dreamt of nothing,
but by the afternoon, the nightmares set it. Actually it was one long vivid one, as
she so often had.
She wished somewhere she could forget the negativity, but it did not seem to
happen. What was keeping her reliving her pain? What stopped her from just
moving on? She had to know it was clear that she was safe. How far could she
really be from reality?
As 1:53 PM read on the clock’s green numbers, Amelia sat up with her eyes
deeply glazed over and screamed a scream that might have woken the neighbors.
Judith, who was in the room adjacent to hers, had just picked up her glass of
tea to take a drink when she heard the scream. When she heard it, Judith
jumped from the couch and groaned, dropping her glass quickly.
Her heart was in her throat and she had to steady her breathing. It was so loud
and so intense that it made the air in the house heavy.
Amelia’s hands clutched her cover so tightly, the skin turned white. Panic set in
her throat, as she saw not the comforting room she was in. Instead, she relived
something from long ago. It was Stan and he was dead.
He was across the room from her, and so was Judith Cassidy. Amelia did not
see her, but did see Stan, who lay on the floor, bleeding. His throat smashed.
As if the tape was on rewind, Amelia soon found herself forced to watch the
vivid nightmare both on rewind and then over again.
Judith sat next to Amelia and tried to talk to her, but she did not respond.
Instead, she shook with fear of what she was really seeing. Judith wished she
could see what Amelia saw, but at the same time, she did not. Whatever
situation that had sent this woman a step away from madness maybe would do
the same to her. She felt however, that she had an obligation because she could
see Amelia shake in fear and realized that whatever Amelia was seeing, her mind
was forcing her to relive.
 What Judith Cassidy was unable to see was Stan, across the room from her,
but now he was alive and held a needle. That nasty smile that made Amelia
white, but feel green.
“Please don’t,” she said both in her nightmare and next to Judith, her eyes
fluttering.
“Please don’t make me,” Amelia yelled but showed no other physical signs of a
nightmare. She was not sweating profusely, though there were some, and she
was only shaken minimally. Her eyes told a different story though. Whatever she
was seeing, was so terrifying that it was keeping her trapped. Bound.
Amelia saw Stan grab her throat, while she choked out a scream in both worlds,
and then fell back onto the bed, forcing Judith off the bed.
While she watched, the horror before her eyes increased. Amelia began
spreading her legs out and then sucked in a sharp breath of air, as if she was
being laid on. Judith knew that sound and could not believe what she was
seeing.
“Amelia!” She screamed and shook her. To be that afraid of whatever she was
seeing, and then act in such a way, she knew the nightmare had to be about
rape. She did not want her to relive that, so she shook her as hard as she could.
Amelia suddenly responded to her but not in the way she had hoped. Just after
a chill past over Judith’s bones as she shook, Amelia grabbed her wrist.
With surprising strength, she twisted Judith’s arm around and shoved her. As
Judith stumbled back, Amelia rolled off the bed and under it.
Judith bent down to look and saw Amelia laying on the floor, curled up into the
fetal position. Shaking uncontrollably, tears falling from her eyes.
“Amelia,” Judith said and stuck her hand under the bed, “give me your hand,
sweetheart.”
“Leave,” Amelia screamed as backed up, the horror in her eyes saddened Judith.
She gritted her teeth and reached for Amelia, but she rolled out from under the
bed.
Judith quickly stood up and found Amelia scurrying under the desk in the
room. She knew this meant that Amelia could see her, so she kept trying and
walked over to the desk where Amelia had her hand over her mouth as if to quiet
her heavy breathing.
“Amelia, I’m not going to hurt you.” Judith said, but Amelia told her to go away.
She then tried to scoot away but bumped in the wall, trapped. She held her
hands out in front of her.
“Amelia,” Judith said and offered out her hand. “I am not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to…” was all Amelia said before she fainted. She grabbed her arm,
right where she had thought a needle had been forced in, just before she passed
out.
She fell forwa,her face smacking the wall and fell onto her side.
Judith sat for a moment and let the tears fall. This was all beginning to test her,
it was becoming overbearing. Judith wondered if Amelia was too far gone. These
violent nightmarish episodes were getting more and more bizarre.
 If only she had been able to say his name then Judith would have understood.
Stan had injected something in her arm, beat and assaulted her, before she
passed out from the drugs. The last thing she saw was her mother, smiling while
standing in the doorway, with keys in her hand. She had known in this dream
where she was going, on her way to the evil.
Judith picked up Amelia and drug her back to her bed. She was very fragile
despite her massive size. She wished Jason was here but he was not. She wished
more though for Amelia to be here. She smoothed out Amelia’s hair once she laid
her down. Fixed her fan so that it blew on her and held her hands.
“Amelia, I am alone. I’ve only known you for three weeks, but all I want is to
help you,” Judith said. She hoped that if she spoke those words long enough,
they’ll be heard. But poor Amelia did not hear her, she laid with her eyes closed,
fast asleep. Judith brushed back Amelia’s brow and left the room, quietly closing
the door.
 CHAPTER 4
Awakening (Cleveland, Ohio)

1) Saturday, October 14, 1985

Amelia felt the car stop in that parking lot and gripped the bed sheets,
preparing for another visual nightmare. This time of a scene she was all too
familiar with, but never this vividly.
Stan exited the backseat, needle in hand, and opened the passenger door.
Before Amelia could even protest, he grabbed her by a handful of black hair and
yanked her out of the car.
She fell onto her pavement. Her knees, regrettably for her, were not protected
and did scrape against the concrete when making contact.
Amelia tried to move away, but she had been too weak. Though her tolerance to
the drugs that were given was high, they still affected her in the way Stan and
her mother desired. She was practically immobilized by the sedative, but her
strength, unbeknownst to them both, was materializing.
Stan stepped forward while Amelia backed away. Though it was very slowly, it
was enough to prevent him from flipping her onto her stomach. Never again
would a needle with those drugs be put into her spine.
Suddenly though, Stacey grabbed her daughters arms and yanked them over
her head. She sat on Amelia’s hands while Stan sat on her legs, just above her
thighs, and ripped the bottom of her shit open. Amelia struggled as much as she
could, but it was no use. The needle made contact with her skin when luck
suddenly broke the thick cloud surrounding her life.
Because of her struggles, as the needle finally rested on her skin, ready to be
injected, she flung her torso to the right. This caused Stan to inject some of the
fluid onto her and then into his own left hand, in the section between the index
finger and thumb.
He grunted and quickly stopped the injection. Amelia drove her legs up and
made brief, but hardly effective, contact with his own legs.

Amelia sat up straight in bed, in Cleveland, 1,600 miles away from her
nightmarish visual memory. She had never seen this before. The afternoon of
August twenty-second was being shown to her, in full, this time. Amelia was too
choked up to cry out, but her blue eyes revealed the horror she was reliving. She
violently shook her head in denial but the vision would not dissipate. The small
clock in the real room that surrounded her read 1:30 AM.
 Stacey profaned her daughter more and lifted her weight by climbing out of the
car. Figuring Amelia for too incapacitated to move, she wanted to check on Stan.
He had exited the car as well and was holding his hand when Stacey grabbed it.
“Did you get any in you?”
“Yes,” Stan said and Stacey shook with rage. Before he could stop her, Stacey
dove for the car and yanked Amelia, by the ankles, from it.
Because of her anger and Amelia’s lack of strength, her much larger size than
Stacey’s became a moot point. She felt herself being pulled and could do nothing
about it.
Amelia’s head then hit the bottom door frame of the car and this stunned her.
While it intensified her blood pressure, waking her nerves, it also prevented her
from doing anything.
She grabbed her head and screamed in pain, while everything started to fade to
black. Before she could faint however, Stacey sat atop of her and punched her as
viciously as she could directly in the face.
Stan grabbed Stacey and pulled her from Amelia, who now held her nose and
head. Blood poured from between the fingers of both hands, as she groaned and
cried out. Her eyes watered from the broken nose, while her ears bled and rang
loudly from a concussion.
Stan calmed Stacey, assuring her he was fine before he knelt and stood Amelia
up, who fell against him, weak and vulnerable to them both, wearing just a pair
of short shorts and a ripped t-shirt. Stan held her already heavy arms down and
spit in her face.
When Amelia jerked away in reaction, Stan knew she was back from the
sedation enough to be a threat. Not wanting that to happen, he slapped her
cruelly across the face. Amelia fell back on to the car, clutching her very sore jaw
now.
Stan lunged at her, grabbed her nose and squeezed it wickedly, enough to
cause tears to burst from Amelia’s eyes.
Stan lifted her up and pushed her against the car, the back of her head hitting
it very hard. She began to sink to the ground in pain when Stan grabbed her arm
and proceeded to intimidate her psychologically even further.
“Fight me back bitch,” He said and grabbed her by the scalp. Lifting Amelia to
her feet, she swayed before he spit again directly in her face. This made her
deathly sick but his refusal to let her wipe it off made it even worse.
“Please,” she said, even though talking only caused severe pain in her face.
“Please, stop.”
“Oh that is right you can’t,” Stan continued, letting Amelia go. “I bet you find
your father really stupid now.”
Amelia’s head snapped up and whatever reservation she had about defending
herself dissipated with that comment. She would not allow this disgusting
subhuman Neanderthal criticize her and her fathers’ belief another time.
“Daddy — ” Amelia said, color and inflection leaving her voice.
 “You heard me bitch,” Stan said and struck her again. This blow landed not the
way Stan had intended because Amelia finally decided to avoid a strike. When he
swung his fist again, she brought up her right arm and blocked it. Then she gave
him a look that made him smile a sickening grin of ecstasy. He wanted her to
fight him back, he reveled on the abuse.
After she blocked the latest punch, he quickly grabbed her by the throat and
shoved her into the side of the car. He started punching her viciously like she
were a man.
After a few moments, Amelia ducked from a hit, but ended up being easy for
Stan to grab, who wrapped his arms around her chest and threw her back
against the car. She landed against the tire region, her right elbow smacking it
and forcing pain throughout her arm. She vocalized the pain and was dizzy, too
dizzy to stop Stan from picking her up and pushing her. Her dizziness made her
lose her footing and she went back down to the ground.
“I remember you like that before,“ Stan said and then yanked her to her feet by
the hair. Her scalp screamed and her eyes watered. He laughed sickeningly and
shoved her cruelly into the corner. The shove was so forceful that her neck
moved awkwardly and may have caused whiplash. Once she hit the door, Stan
rushed over and started to drill her once again in the face and chest but mostly
her arms because that is what she used to guard herself.
For some reason, at that moment, Stan’s words of disrespect for her father
echoed her mothers and an unknown rage to her boiled inside. She knew the
emotion of fear, horror and depression, but this was an entirely new one. Amelia
felt she could kill someone.
After continuously striking her and shoving her into the car, an opening
suddenly appeared. Amelia, who had been hunched over and grunting in
protection of the blows, saw the opening. She fought off his arms, screamed and
then took her right hand and struck Stan in the right side of his face as hard as
she could.
When the contact was made it made Stan’s head snap sideways and spit to fly
from his lips. His right eye was cut, bleeding and for the first time in his life he
was truly stunned. Stan backed up in shock, put his hand to his eye and once he
realized there was blood, he looked at Amelia, worried. Amelia had stood there
and watched when she saw was her mother bolt towards her. She moved as fast
as she could but was shoved into the rear passenger door that Stan had opened,
Stan grabbed her by the hair and yanked her forwa,attempting to put her into
the backseat. Amelia was not going so easily and fought out of his grasp and
yelled, “Keep your hands off of me!“
Stacey shoved her from behind and her knees buckled causing her to fall
directly into the car door. Amelia’s face made contact with the window, thankful
it didn’t break.
Stan yanked her to her feet, once again by the hair, and shoved her face-first
into the cushioned backseat.
Once Amelia fell forwa,Stan attempted to relieve the pressure in his loins by
way of her. He put his fingers into Amelia’s shorts and yanked them down.
Amelia yelled and tried to get away, but Stacey once again prolonged her
daughters brutality, by holding her arms down.
Stan bit Amelia hard on the back of her thigh, causing her to scream and him to
gain a physical advantage. He then put his fist at the back of her knee and lifted
her leg, causing pain to shoot through her body.
He grabbed her long hair and pushed her face into the seat, making it hard to
breathe.
Amelia tried to wiggle free, but Stan took his erect penis and shoved it as hard
as he could inside of her.
He may have put her face in the seat, but it could not stifle her intense screams.
Tears sprang from her eyes as he continued to push himself into her with vicious
thrusts.
The car began to spin around Amelia and Stan once again dissipated before her
eyes. In his place was all of the men and women in her past that had done the
same thing. She felt like puking at the thought of once again being reduced to
such a low place. She knew somewhere inside that Stan was still lower of a
human than she was, for she was not raping herself.
Stan then dropped Amelia’s hands and put his around the back of her neck,
squeezing very hard. He was trying to kill her and she knew this right then.
Amelia finally found a chance to do so and scratched Stan’s hand, digging her
nails into his fingers, deep enough to draw a small amount of blood.
When he released his grip from her neck, Amelia gasped for breath and was too
dazed to take advantage of her brief upper hand.

When he released his grip from her neck in the vision, Amelia suddenly lost all
connection to it, everything disappeared. She opened her eyes and noticed, for
the first time since unknowingly arriving, the comforting room in a Cleveland,
Ohio home. 1,600 miles away from her nightmarish visual memory. The
nightmare had faded before its conclusion but left its mark on her blue eyes,
which revealed the horror she had relived.
“The rain,” was all Amelia said before her wounded but mostly exhausted
physique gave way. Her mind could not keep her conscious as her eyes rolled
backwards and she quickly fell into a sleep.
 2) Friday, October 11, 1985

A few minutes past one o’clock in the morning, a hard rain fell without
warning. No thunder acted as a precursory to the monsoon, no breeze. The
brusqueness and the fierceness of the deluge had the urgent quality of a perilous
storm in a dream. Lying in bed beside her husband, Judith Cassidy had been
restless before the sudden cloudburst. She grew increasingly fidgety as she
listened to the rush of rain. The voices of the brouhaha were legion, like an angry
crowd chanting in a lost dialect. Torrents pounded and pried at the cedar siding,
at the shingles, as if seeking entrance. October in northeast Ohio had always
before been a dry month in a long season of predictable drought. Rain rarely fell
after June, seldom before November. In wet months, the rataplan of raindrops
on the roof had sometimes served as a reliable remedy for insomnia. This night,
however, the liquid rhythms failed to lull her into slumber, and not just because
they were out of season.
For Judith, sleeplessness had too often in recent years been the price of
thwarted ambition. Scorned by the sandman, she stared at the dark bedroom
ceiling, brooding about what might have been, yearning for what might never be.
Beside her, Jay snored softly, oblivious of the storm.
Judith called it the sleep of the slacker. Throughout their twenty plus years
together, they had conducted their lives by different clocks. She dwelled as
much in the future as in the present, envisioning where she wished to go,
relentlessly mapping the path that ought to lead to her high goals. Her strong
mainspring was wound tight. Jay lived in the moment. To him, the far future
was next week, and he trusted time to take him there whether or not he planned
the journey. They were as different as mice and moonbeams. Considering their
contrasting natures, they shared a love that seemed unlikely. Yet love was the
cord that bound them together, the sinewy fiber that gave them strength to
weather disappointment, even tragedy.
During Judith’s spells of insomnia, Jason’s rhythmic snoring, although not
loud, sometimes tested love almost as much as infidelity might have done. Now
the sudden crash of pummeling rain masked the noise that he made, giving
Judith a new target upon which to focus her frustration. The roar of the storm
escalated until they seemed to be inside the rumbling machinery that powered
the universe.
Shortly after two o’clock, without switching on a light, Judith got out of bed. At
a window that was protected from the rain by the overhanging roof, she looked
through her ghostly reflection, into a windless monsoon. Their house stood high
in the Lake Erie coastline, embraced by sugar pines, knob cone pines, and
towering ponderosas with dramatic fissured bark. Most of their neighbors were
in bed at this hour. Judith’s imagination had been engaged; she couldn’t easily
shift into neutral again.
Sometimes, in the throes of insomnia, she tossed and turned into the arms of
literary inspiration. Downstairs, in her study, were five chapters worth of notes,
which needed to be polished, about Amelia. A few hours of work on the details
might soothe her nerves enough to allow sleep. Her robe draped the back of a
nearby chair. She shrugged into it and knotted the belt. Crossing to the door,
she realized that she was navigating with surprising ease, considering the
absence of lamplight. Her sureness in the gloom couldn’t be explained entirely
by the fact that she had been awake for hours, staring at the ceiling with
dark-adapted eyes. The faint light at the windows, sufficient to dilute the
bedroom darkness, could not have traveled all the way from Harry Corrigan’s
house, three doors to the south. The true source at first eluded her.
Storm clouds hid the moon. Outside, the landscape lights were off; the porch
lights, too. Returning to the window, she puzzled over the tinseled glimmer of the
rain. A curious wet sheen made the bristling boughs of the nearest pines more
visible than they should have been. Ice? No. Stitching through the night, needles
of sleet would have made a more brittle sound than the susurration drumming
of this autumn downpour. She pressed fingertips to the windowpane. The glass
was cool but not cold. When reflecting ambient light, falling rain sometimes
acquires a silvery cast. In this instance, however, no ambient light existed. The
rain itself appeared to be faintly luminescent, each drop a light-emitting crystal.
The night was simultaneously veiled and revealed by skeins of vaguely
fluorescent beads. When Judith stepped out of the bedroom, into the upstairs
hall, the soft glow from two domed skylights bleached the gloom from black to
gray, revealing the way to the stairs. Overhead, the rainwater sheeting down the
curved Plexiglas was enlivened by radiant whorls that resembled spiral nebulae
wheeling across the vault of a planetarium.
She descended the stairs and proceeded to the kitchen by the guidance of the
curiously storm-lit windows. Some nights, embracing rather than resisting
insomnia, she brewed a pot of coffee to take to her desk in the study. Thus
stoked, she wrote jagged, caffeine-sharpened prose with the realistic tone of
police-interrogation transcripts. This night, however, she intended to return
eventually to bed. After switching on the light in the vent hood above the cook
top, she flavored a mug of milk with vanilla extract and cinnamon, and then
heated it in the microwave. In her study, volumes of her favorite poetry and
prose — Louise Glück, Dean Koontz, Robert Frost, Donald Justice, T. S. Eliot,
Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Stephen King, Charles Dickens — lined
the walls. Occasionally, she took comfort and inspiration from a humble sense of
kinship with these writers. Most of the time, however, she felt like a pretender.
Worse, a fraud.
Her mother had said that every good writer needed to be her own toughest critic.
Judith edited her work with both a red pen and a metaphorical hatchet, leaving
evidence of bloody suffering with the former, reducing scenes to kindling with
the latter. More than once, Jason suggested that Dahlia had never said — and
had not intended to imply — that worthwhile art could be carved from raw
language only with self-doubt as sharp as a chisel. To Dahlia, her work had also
been her favorite form of play.
 In a troubled culture where cream often settled on the bottom and the palest
milk rose to the top, Judith knew that she was short on logic and long on
superstition when she supposed that her hope for success rested upon the
amount of passion, pain, and polish that she brought to her writing.
Nevertheless, regarding her work, Judith remained a Puritan, finding virtue in
self-flagellation. Leaving the lamps untouched, she switched on the computer
but didn’t at once sit at her desk. Instead, as the screen brightened and the
signature music of the operating system welcomed her to a late-night work
session, she was once more drawn to a window by the insistent rhythm of the
rain. Beyond the window lay the deep front porch. The railing and the
overhanging roof framed a dark panorama of serried pines, a strangely luminous
ghost forest out of a disturbing dream. She could not look away. For reasons
that she wasn’t able to articulate, the scene made her uneasy.
Judith was startled by movement on the porch. She shifted focus from the trees
to the sheltered shadows immediately beyond the glass. Low, sinuous shapes
moved under the window. They were so silent, fluid, and mysterious that for a
moment they seemed to be imagined: formless expressions of primal fears. Then
one, three, five of them lifted their heads and turned their yellow eyes to the
window, regarding her inquisitively. They were as real as Judith herself, though
sharper of tooth. The porch swarmed with mountain lions. Slinking out of the
storm, up the steps, onto the pegged-pine floor, they gathered under the shelter
of the roof, as though this were not a house but an ark that would soon be set
safely afloat by the rising waters of a cataclysmic flood.
In this city, beneath Lake Erie and the plains to the west, mountain lions were
long extinct. The visitation on the porch had the otherworldly quality of an
apparition. When Judith realized that these beasts were mountain lions, their
behavior seemed no less remarkable than when she had mistaken them for the
larger creatures of folklore and fairy tales. As much as anything, their silence
defined their strangeness. In the thrill of the chase, running down their prey,
mountain lions often cry with high excitement: a chilling ululation as eerie as
the music of a Theremin. Now they neither cried nor barked, nor even growled.
Unlike most wolves, mountain lions will frequently hunt alone. When they join
in packs to stalk game, they do not run as close together as do wolves.
Yet on the front porch, the individualism characteristic of their species was not
in evidence. They gathered flank-to-flank, shoulder-to-shoulder, and eeling
among one another, no less communal than domesticated hounds, nervous and
seeking reassurance from one another. Noticing Judith at the study window,
they neither shied from her nor reacted aggressively. Their shining eyes, which
in the past had always impressed her as being cruel and bright with blood
hunger, now appeared to be as devoid of threat as the trusting eyes of any
household pet. Indeed, each creature favored her with a compelling look as alien
to mountain lions as anything she could imagine. Their expressions seemed to
be imploring.
This was so unlikely that she distrusted her perceptions. Yet she thought that
she detected a beseeching attitude not only in their eyes but also in their posture
and behavior. She ought to have been frightened by this fanged congregation.
Her heart did beat faster than usual; however, the novelty of the situation and a
sense of the mysterious, rather than fear, quickened her pulse. The mountain
lions were obviously seeking shelter, although never previously had Judith seen
even one of them flee the tumult of a storm for the protection of a human
habitation. People were a far greater danger to their kind than anything they
might encounter in nature. Besides, this comparatively dark and quiet tempest
had neither the lightning nor the thunder to chase them from their dens. The
formidable volume of the downpour marked this as unusual weather; but the
rain had not been falling long enough to flood these stoic predators out of their
homes.
Although the mountain lions regarded Judith with entreating glances, they
reserved the greater part of their attention for the storm. Tails tucked, ears
pricked, the wary beasts watched their silvery torrent and the drenched forest
with acute interest if not with outright anxiety. As still more of their wolfish kind
slouched out of the night onto the porch, Judith searched the palisade of trees
for the cause of their concern, and saw nothing more than she had seen before.
Faintly radiant cataracts wrung from a supersaturated sky, the trees and other
vegetation bowed and trembled and silvered by the fiercely pummeling rain.
Nonetheless, as she the night woods, the nape of her neck prickled as though
a ghost lover had pressed his ectoplasm lips against her skin. A shudder of
inexplicable misgiving passed through her. Rattled by the conviction that
something in the forest returned her scrutiny from behind the west veil of the
storm and Judith backed away from the window. The computer monitor
suddenly seemed too bright––and revealing so she switched off the machine.
Black and argentine, the mercurial gloom streamed and glimmered past the
windows, even here in the house, the air felt thick and damp. The phosphoric
light of the storm cast shimmering reflections on a collection of porcelains, on
glass paperweights, on the white-gold leafing of several picture frames. . . . The
study had the deep-fathom ambience of an oceanic trench forever beyond the
reach of the sun but dimly revealed by the radiant anemones and luminous
jellyfish.
Judith was struck by a disorienting sense of otherness that was familiar from
dream but that had never before overcome her while she remained awake. She
backed father from the window, edging toward the study door that led to the
downstairs hall. A creeping disquietude stole through her, nerve to verve. She
was anxious not about the mountain lions on the porch but about something
she couldn’t name––a threat so primal that reason was blind to it and instinct
revealed only it’s rough contours.
Counseling herself that she was much too mature to succumb to the easy fright
of childhood and adolescence, she nevertheless retreated to the stairs, intending
to return bedroom and awaken Jay. For perhaps a minute, she stood with one
hand on the newel post, listening to the drumming rain, considering what to say
after rousing him from sleep. Everything that occurred to her sounded to one
degree or another hysterical.
 She was not concerned about looking foolish in Jason’s eyes. During seven
years of marriage, each had been a fool often enough to have earned the last
forbearance of the other. She nurtured an image of herself, however, that
sustained her during difficult times, and she strove always to avoid
compromising it. In this self-portrait, she was tough, resilient, tempered by
terror at an early age, seasoned by grief, qualified by experience to handle
whatever fate threw at her.
At eight, she had endured and miraculously survived an episode of extreme
violence that might have left any other child in therapy for decade. Later, when
she was just twelve, an invisible thief called lymphoma, with quiet violence, the
life from her mother. For most of her existence, Judith had not shied from a
truth that most people understood but diligently suppressed: that every moment
of every day, depending on the faith we embrace, each of us continues to live
either by the merciful sufferance of God or at the whim of blind chance and
indifferent nature.
She listened to the rain, the downpour seeming not indifferent but purposeful
and determined. Leaving Jay to his sleep, she turned away from the stairs. The
windows remained faintly luminous, as if with the reflected glow of the aurora
borealis. Although her disquiet slowly gathered the force of apprehension, just
as a resolving hurricane spins ever greater winds around its dead-calm eye,
Judith crossed the foyer to the front door.
Flanking the front door were tall, French-paned sidelights. Beyond the
side-lights lay the porch onto which she had looked from her office. The
mountain lions still gathered in that shelter, as she drew near the door, some of
the animals turned one more to gaze in at her. Judith was inexplicably
convinced that she could open the door and move among them without risk of
attack.
Whether or not she was as tough as she believed herself to be, she was not
impulsive or reckless. She didn’t possess the fatalistic temperament of a snake
handler or even the adventurousness of those who rode rafts over white-water
rapids.
The previous autumn, when a wildfire churned up the eastern face of their hill,
threatening to cross the crest and sweep southward to the ocean, she and Jay
had been, at her insistence, the first among their neighbors to pack essential
belongings and eave. Her acute awareness of life’s fragility had since childhood
made of her a prudent person. Yet when writing a novel, she often shunned
prudence, trusting her instinct and her heart more than she did intellect.
Without risk, she could get nothing on the page worth reading.
Here in the foyer, in this false-aurora glow, under the anxious gaze of the
gathered canines beyond the French panes, the moment had a mystical quality,
more like fiction than reality. Perhaps that was why Judith considered
hazarding unto the porch. She put her right hand on the doorknob. Rather, she
found her hand on the knob without quite recalling when she had put it there.
The roar of the rain, escalating from a cataclysmic chorus until it became the
very voice of Armageddon, and the witch-y light together exerted a mesmerizing
effect. Nevertheless, she knew wasn’t falling into a trance, wasn’t being lured
from the house by some supernatural force, as in a band movie. She’d never felt
more awake, more clearheaded. Instinct, heart and mind were synchronized
now as they had rarely been in her twenty-eight years of experience.
The unprecedented September deluge and everything about the odd behavior of
the mountain lions, not least of all their uncharacteristic meekness, argued that
the usual didn’t apply. Here, providence required boldness than caution. If her
heart had continued to race, she might not have turned the knob. At the thought
of the turning it, however, she felt, a curious calm descend. Her pulse rate
declined, although each beat knocked through her with jarring force.
In some Chinese dialects, the same word is used to mean either danger or
opportunity. In this instance, as never before, she was in a Chinese frame of
mind. She opened the door and the mountain lions, perhaps a score of them,
neither attacked nor growled. They didn’t even bare their teeth. Amazed by their
behavior and her own, Judith crossed the threshold and stepped onto the porch.
As if they were family dog, the mountain lions made room for her and seemed to
welcome her company.
Her amazement still allowed a measure of caution. So she stood with her arms
cross defensively over her breasts, yet she felt that if she held a hand out to the
beasts, they would only nuzzle and lick it. The mountain lions nervously divided
their attention between Judith and the surrounding woods. Their rapid and
shallow panting spike not of exhaustion after a long run, but of acute anxiety.
Something in the rain-swept forest frightened them. Evidently, this fear was so
intense that they dared not respond to it with their customary snarls, raised
hackles and counterchallenges. Instead, they trembled and issued soft mewls of
meek submission. Their ears were not flattened to signal an aggressive response,
but remained pricked, as if they could hear the breathing and the subtle footfalls
of a fierce predator even through the crash of rain.
Tails tucked between their legs, flanks trembling, they moved ceaselessly back
and forth. They seemed ready, at any moment, to drop as one to the plank floor
and submissively expose their bellies in an attempt to forestall an attack by
some ferocious enemy. Brushing against Judith as they swarmed the porch, the
mountain lions appeared to take as much comfort from contact with her as they
did from their pack mates. Although their eyes were strange and wild, she saw in
them some of the hopeful trust and need for companionship that was qualities
common to the eyes of the gentlest dogs.
Her amazement gave way to astonishment as a humbling flood of emotions
never experienced before — or never experienced this strongly — swelled in her.
A sense of wonder, childlike in its intensity. An almost pagan feeling of being one
with nature.
The humid air thickened with the odor of damp fur and with the smoky
ammonia scent of musk.
Judith thought of Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, whom artists often
depicted in the company of wolves, leading a pack in pursuit of prey, across
moonlit fields and hills.
 A profound awareness of the interconnectedness of all things in Creation
seemed to arise not from her mind, not even from her heart, but from the
smallest structures of her being, as if the microscopic tides of cytoplasm in her
billions of cells responded to the mountain lions, the unusual storm, and the
forest in much the way that Earth’s oceans were influenced by the moon.
This extraordinary moment was supercharged with a mystical quality so
supremely grand in character and so formidable in power, so unlike anything
Judith had known before, that she was overcome by awe and trembled with a
peculiar exhilaration that was almost joy. Her breathing became quick and
shallow, and her legs grew weak.
Then, as one, the mountain lions were seized by a greater terror than the fright
that had driven them from the woods. With thin, desperate bleats of panic, they
fled the porch.
As they swarmed past her, their wet tails lashed her legs. A few looked up
entreatingly, as though she must understand the cause of their fear and might
be able to rescue them from the enemy, real or imagined, that had chased them
from their dens.
Fast down the steps, into the storm, they traveled in a tight defensive pack, not
hunting now, but hunted.
Their rain-soaked coats clung to them, revealing lean forms of bone, sinew,
and stringy muscle. Always before, mountain lions had looked aggressive and
formidable to her, but these seemed lost, unsure of their purpose, almost
pitiable.
Judith crossed to the head of the porch steps and stared after them. Although
irrational and disturbing, the urge to follow was difficult to resist.
As the mountain lions descended through the night, the forest, and the queerly
luminescent rain, they frequently glanced back, past the house and toward the
top of the ridge. Suddenly seeming to catch the scent of a pursuer, they
whiddled among the pines, as swift and silent as gray spirits. And were gone.
Chilled, hugging herself, Judith let out a pent-up breath that she’d not been
aware of holding.
She waited, tense and wary, but nothing followed the pack.
In these mountains, mountain lions had no natural enemies capable of
challenging them. The few remaining bears foraged on wild fruits, tubers, and
tender roots; they stalked nothing bigger than fish. Although bobcats had
survived human encroachment in greater numbers than had the bears, they fed
on rabbits and rodents; they would not chase down another predator for food
and certainly not for sport.
The musky scent of the mountain lions hung on the air after they departed.
Indeed, the odor didn’t diminish but seemed to ripen.
Standing at the head of the steps, Judith held a hand out past the protection of
the roof. In this cool autumn night, the glimmering rain slipping through her
fingers proved to be unexpectedly warm. The phosphoric water limned the
wrinkles of her knuckles.
 She looked at her palm. Head line, heart line, and lifeline shone brighter than
the rest of her hand, suddenly scintillating with mysterious meaning, as if some
previously unknown Gypsy heritage had manifested in her, complete with the
ability to foretell the future from creases in her skin.
When she withdrew her hand from the rushing rain and sniffed it, she detected
even more strongly than before the scent that she had attributed to the
mountain lions. Although not appealing enough to be called a fragrance, it was
not unpleasant, either, and was as rich with subtleties as the air in a spice
market.
She had never before experienced such a scent. Yet within the intricate matrix
of this unique smell, she detected a tantalizingly familiar substance, simple in
its nature. The more determinedly she strove to identify this core odor, the more
its slippery name eluded her.
Although it smelled like a complex mélange of essences and exotic oils, the rain
had the character and consistency of ordinary water. She rubbed it between
thumb and fingertips, feeling nothing unusual.
Gradually Judith realized that she was lingering on the porch in the hope that
the mountain lions would return. Standing among them, like a lamb among
lions, trembling on the brink of some revelation, had been such an awesome
experience that she longed to repeat it.
When the mountain lions did not reappear, an ineffable sense of loss overcame
her. With it arose anew the feeling of being watched that earlier had stirred the
fine hairs on the back of her neck.
Sometimes the forest appeared to her as a green cathedral. The massive pine
trunks were columns in a vast nave, and the spreading boughs formed groin
vaults and fan vaults high overhead.
Now, with the reverential hush of the woods replaced by the din of the
downpour, the gloom coiling among the trees seemed to be of a different
character from that on any previous night. The god of this cathedral was the lord
of darkness.
Disquieted again, Judith backed across the porch, retreating from the steps.
She did not for one moment look away from the encircling forest, half convinced
that something would fly at her from out of the pines, something that would be
all teeth and temper.
Inside, she closed the door. Engaged the deadbolt. Stood there for a moment,
trembling.
She continued to be surprised and disturbed by her emotionalism. Driven by a
kind of instinct, less of the mind than of the heart, she felt reduced from
womanhood to the overwrought reactions of a girl — and she didn’t like it.
Eager to wash her hands, she hurried to the kitchen.
Approaching the open door, she saw that the light above the cook top was still
on, as she had left it when she’d heated the mug of milk.
At the threshold, she hesitated, suddenly expecting someone to be in the
kitchen. Someone who had come in the back door while she had been distracted
by the mountain lions. More emotions and foolish though, for no intruder waited
for her.
She crossed the kitchen directly to the back door, and tried it. Bolted. Secure.
No one could have gotten in that way.
Coruscating curtains of radiant rain silvered the night. A thousand eyes might
have watched from behind that sequined veil.
She lowered the pleated shade over the window beside the breakfast table. She
dropped the shade at the window above the sink, as well.
After turning on the water and adjusting it to the hottest temperature that she
could tolerate, she lathered her hands with liquid soap from the built-in
dispenser. The soap smelled like oranges, a gratifyingly clean scent.
She had not touched any of the mountain lions.
For a moment she did not understand why she was scrubbing her hands so
determinedly. Then she realized that she was washing away the rain.
The curiously aromatic rain had left her feeling . . . unclean.
She rinsed her hands until they were red, half-scalded. Then she pumped more
soap and lathered up a second time.
Within that mélange of subtle but exotic scents had been a vaguely familiar
odor, smoky and ammoniac, that Judith had not quite been able to identify.
Although she had flushed the smell from her hands, it now returned to her in
memory, and this time she was able to name it: semen.
Under that spice-market variety of exotic aromas, the rain had exuded the
fecund scent of semen.
This seemed so unlikely, so absurdly Freudian, that she wondered if she might
be asleep. Or sliding into a neuropsychotic episode.
The inexplicable luminescence, the seminal rain, the cowering mountain lions:
From bed to foaming faucet, every step and moment of the experience had a
hallucinatory quality.
She turned off the faucet, half expecting silence when the water stopped
gushing. But the tremendous roar of the unseasonable rain was there, all right
— either real or the soundtrack of a singularly persistent dream.
 3) Friday, October 11, 1985

Amelia had been sleeping in the bedroom throughout the evening, but now
she sat upright in the bed and gripped the sheets. She was about to scream
when terror paralyzed her throat, making it sound like nothing but a tiny
squeak.
Unaware that she was in Cleveland, 1,600 miles away from the returning
nightmarish visual memory. She had never seen this before. The conclusion to
the afternoon of August twenty-second was being shown to her, in full, this time.
Amelia was too choked up to cry out, but her blue eyes revealed the horror she
was reliving. She shook again in terror.

Amelia bit down on the cushioned seat to stifle her screams, knowing the sound
of her panicked voices only made this worse. She knew they were in public, but
no passerby’s were around to stop the pain. Screaming for help was pointless.
Stan kept his two hundred pound frame sitting on the back of Amelia’s upper
legs, only permitting her lower leg and foot to move, while Stacey now pressed
her right knee down on her daughters back and held her right in place. She was
face down, unable to move, almost suffocated from the backseats leather
padding. Stan took the opportunity to inject the needle into the base of Amelia’s
spine.
Amelia screamed out but once she felt the prick but it was barely audible.
Stacey finally relieved her weight from Amelia’s arm, who immediately put them
towards the mark of injection. It would not take long for the paralysis set in,
again overpowered and forced to be theirs.
She knew the drugs would leave her susceptible to where she was going, where
they made all of that money. The entire two week excursion, their had been so
many previous times. It was only a matter of time before she would be…
Stan backed off of her, grabbed her arms and proceeded to flip her over, she
being no match for his brute strength. They had begun to have effect on her,
proven by the drowsy feeling swarming towards her skull and vision blurred as
he flipped her over.
Amelia put her arms up in self defense but was noticeably slow at it and it was
of no consequence anyway. Stan just forced himself down onto her and put his
strong hand over her mouth while Stacey looked down with a loathsome smile
on her face, and said, “Don’t worry beautiful, it’ll be all over soon.”
The words disgusted her and she tried to choke out words but Stan, in
response, wrapped his left hand around her throat while her mother forcefully
grabbed and squeezed poor Amelia’s already broken nose.
She tried to cry out but was quickly losing her battle with the drugs.
“When we get back to Sebring, you will have hell to pay,” Stacey said and
released her grip.
 Amelia tried to touch her nose as one does in response to the ending of an
example in extreme pain, but her efforts were slowed and Stan knocked her
hand away.
“I will give you a real reason to hate me,” Stacey said before standing up and
leaving the two in the car. No longer bothering to hold her down, they both knew
she was too weak to fight them off. She laid there and began to quit moving,
stopped responding altogether. Slowly her eyes closed and her hands fell to her
torso, the world going black.
Her left hand landed not on her, or the seat, but the floorboard and landed on
something cold and smooth. Something her drug induced brain could not
immediately recognize as metal. The last bit of light in was almost completely
faded away and Amelia was terrifyingly accepting her cruel miserable fate.
“If you do not go to sleep and keep this up, I will let your mom rip your fucking
heart out,” Stan said and then spit directly into her face, most of that disgusting
saliva getting into her eyes.
He had done that before. He had, after all, five previous years of winning these
types of brutal attacks against her, so he blindly continued his verbal disgust,
unaware of anything else around. Amelia did not try to wipe the spit off, but
stared at him with rage as her eyes opened back up.
“You heard what she said, I want to hear you yell, ‘Father’ while those people
fuck you.”
“You not my father,” Amelia choked out, the words barely coherent and her
voice labored.
“Yes I am. Kevin was a piece of shit and deserved his death,” Stan said and saw
no changes in the face of her, he swollen from the beatings face beneath him.
“I am your father and I might join them this time, that way I can see you cum on
your fathers dick.” Stan said and Amelia finally lost control of her emotions. In
the growing urban culture of Tampa, her moment could have been described as
blowing her stack. She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes and felt the final wall
explode.
“Well, you’re going to have watch that,” Amelia said, and then finished her
words to Stan - completely startling him with her defiant threat - by screaming,
pure hatred in her voice, “with only ONE FUCKING EYE!”
Stan looked confused in the split second in between her elevated voice and the
contact, but it’d be the last moment he ever saw out of his left eye. Soon all time
for him would come down to moments before death.
Stan screamed in agony as the contact was made and grabbed his eye. He sat
up, his head hitting the roof of the car. Amelia pushed him up with her legs,
driven by survival and the loss of all rationality.
When she did this and he lifted up, she drew back her long legs, her rising
right knee barely missing the promontory of his chin, and drove her bare feet out
again like pistons. The sole and instep of her right drove deep into the bowl of his
belly. The heel of her left smashed into his small erect penis. The contact was
direct and forced Stan’s groan several pitches up. Because of his erection the
contact was more intense then she could ever know.
 He rocked backwa,his butt coming down on his stout, hairless calves. He tilted
his head up toward the Styrofoam ceiling and voiced a high, wheezy scream.
Stan's eyes were gleaming, wide open, as blue as the flawless sky, and the
expression in them was an agonized glare she could hardly look at. Cords of
tendon stood out on the sides of his neck.
His scream began to fade. It was as if someone with a special Remote Stan
Control were turning down his volume. That wasn't it, of course; he had been
screaming for an extraordinarily long time, perhaps as long as fifteen seconds,
and he was just running out of breath.
Stan's pursed, puckered mouth continued to quiver soundlessly, as one of his
hands cupped his wounded genitals. Reduced to nothing but groans of defeat,
the real world around her faded and the rage quickly busted inside of her.
“Stan!” Amelia heard her mother yell and rush back to her side of the car.
Before she could get there, Amelia kicked Stan as hard as she could out of the
car. His head hit the top of the door frame, which stopped him at the door.
She cried a sound of furious anger and lunged directly at Stan’s face. With a
groan of pain, he fell back from her, defeated, holding his bruised testicles.
Amelia shoved him down and screamed a scream of aggression that was years in
the making. Before she could think another thought, they were falling.
Despite Amelia’s lack of muscle from all the abuse, drugs and malnutrition, she
was still one hundred and sixty pounds, only thirty pounds lighter than Stan,
but a full nine inches taller. When she landed on him, Stan’s head hit the
concrete, making him almost completely defenseless.
Amelia did not notice the contact his head made, she could barely see anything
besides his face. It was like something had covered her eyes with (thing for
cameras) and forced her brain to see nothing but the object of her hatred. The
same hate that was at an explosive boil.
Then after a brief seconds of silence, hatred turned to rage and it overtook all
logic and reason for her as she screamed out her bitter hatred and spit into his
face. The act was not natural for her and she would wear later that she could a
cold voice whispering in her mind, giving her the idea of spitting and then
encouraging the act.
It was perhaps to that unknown voice that her mind did not wish to contend
with that she punched him harder and harder and in just a few extra seconds he
was a mess beneath her. Nose broke, both lips busted, eyes were beginning to
swell. Amelia’s large hands gripped his throat even tighter and he kicked as he
gasped for breath.
His movements were so minimal she did not feel them, and his attempt to
remove her hands from his throat was laughable. Amelia let one of her hands go
as one of his made contact with her and a guttural sound escaped her throat,
nostrils flared and shaking with rage she continued to beat into his ugly face.
Just then Amelia was reminded of her mothers presence as Stacey dove onto
her back just then and forced her face first into the pavement, which it hit
roughly, dazing her.
 While Amelia recovered from being blindsided, Stacey stood and drove the toe of
her shoe directly into her daughters rib cage, which made her cry out in agony
and clutch her side. She rolled over, facing up in the pouring rain, and cried out
in pain.
Stacey turned, bent down and grabbed the pipe Amelia had used and looked at
Stan who she saw was likely already dead, as his chest did not heave. The fact
flashed through her mind that Amelia had beaten her lover to death.
“You fucking hell bitch,” Stacey screamed as she stood up and swung the metal
pipe as hard as she could at her daughter’s head.
Amelia managed to catch sight of the pipe in time, and put her hand up to block
it, but the hit still did damage. Though her fingers absorbed most of the blunt
force, her skull still was contacted, in the section above her right eye. A few
knuckles of her right hand cracked with that contact.
She screamed and, clutching her right hand, dropped to the ground. Her eyes
began to tear up from the pain and the ringing in her ears. Though her vision
was blurred, she could see her crazy and ballistic mother, whom she rolled away
from, while the pavement ate up her exposed skin.
Stacey rushed after her and started swinging the pipe wildly at Amelia,
wherever she could, as hard as possible. Though her lower back was being eaten
alive by the harsh rock beneath it, Amelia focused on the pipe.
“Mommy?” Amelia yelled out in both worlds, in protests over the pouring rain.
Her pleas in both places went unheard as Stacey continued her assault. The
latest swing landing on Amelia’s right bicep.
“I am going to murder you,” Stacey screamed at her. The rainfall was intense
that it made Stacey’s voice, the loudest it had ever been, sound quiet. The look
on her face was unmistakable and she crawled away until a sharp rock, even
sharper because of the rain, ate at her lower back. She stopped and bit at the
pain as her mother dove at her.
“Mommy, don’t,” was all she could say before Stacey was atop of her. A few
strikes landed on the backside of her arms, while one hit her elbow, causing the
pain to scream and cracks in the bone. Overpowering her daughter by sitting
atop her and delivering some vicious whacks with the pipe.
There were two more strikes after that, both directly at Amelia’s skull, who
made them unsuccessful by blocking, she finally grabbed the other end of the
pipe and the sound of everything but the rain disappeared.
As if the item that had been used to remove Amelia’s strength suddenly
electrified her as the women locked eyes. The moment hung in the air. Each felt
it, maybe even from the connection of mother and daughter, the metal was cold
and slippery. Confidence crossed Amelia’s eyes, fear crossed Stacey’s.
Stacey yanked the pipe with the force expected of Amelia hanging on but she
willingly let go, which Stacey did not expect. Yanking harder than needed to, her
body lifted up, leaving her vulnerable if such an attack would come.
For sure, Amelia had said earlier that she hated her mother, but did she, just
then, hate her enough to hit her? She had never hit her mother before. Had bit
her hand once, but felt it was wrong to do so. She was bigger now, an adult, and
she believed she was not wrong. Her mother or not, she had never held the right
to do what she had to Amelia.
Just then Stacey looked back at her, through the fallen rain, and raised her
hand back over the head. Amelia, seeing minimally through the rain and
swelling, threw her best punch directly to the front of her mothers face. Stacey
had not been expecting that and grabbed for her face, dropping the slippery pipe
by doing so, which Amelia caught.
Stacey cried out, fell back on the slick wet pavement and then backed away
from her armed daughter as fast as she could, blood pouring from her broken
nose. Amelia stood up and just like before with Stan, she saw a vague black
shape directly beside her. It was not tangible but it influenced her, she believed
then she heard it speak. Now in the visual of the crime months later she saw
something there but it did not speak. It had no form, was just a mass of
blackness but her mind could not make sense of what it was. She knew exactly
what it whispered in her mind, as if its hands - if it even had hands - was
somehow stroking her brain and controlling her movements.
She felt it was that black shape that made her feel it and then say it, but there
was some sick sense of joy in that moment, which Amelia could feel in her
comfortable bedroom thousands of miles away. Where she remained sitting
upright in the bed, seeing everything so vividly. She could see herself and saw
that, before swinging the pipe as hard as she could, she let out a cry.
“I fucking hate you,” was all Amelia said before attempting her swing. Stacey
was unaware of the impending blow. Her nose had been broken and she could
not see past the fallen rain and stinging pain in her eyes.
Unable to block the hit, it made perfect contact and judging by the sound of the
second whack a few seconds later, no amount of surgery would ever make
Stacey Franklin look the same.
Stacey fell backwards, onto the pavement, as Amelia stood and looked down at
her. The quantity of rain fall decreased drastically at that moment. Her mother
stopped moving as soon as she made contact with the pavement.
She fell with her arms tucked under and a rapidly growing pool of blood. Amelia
could see neither one breathing and dropped the pipe. She could see very little
and her head suddenly started pounding. Stan groaned and moved to the left of
her, indicating he was still breathing.
“You scum,“ Amelia said, shaking, her voice high as she voiced her frustration
in the words she screamed at him. “I’m going to kill you.“
She lunged for the pipe, retrieved it and then faced Stan, who looked on
pleadingly for his life. Amelia was crazy, she wanted him dead. She wanted her
pound of flesh, the revenge that stemmed from five years of being molested.
Just as she was about to deliver the pipes killer blow she heard a voice, gender
unidentifiable, scream her name. Stan was coughing at the time so it was not
him, Amelia saw that. The fact that it was not Stan scared her.
Amelia had just faced and won her biggest attackers, who was dying beneath
her. She had been ready to kill Stan and hearing something scream her name
forced her back into reality.
 She jumped in terror towards the scream, so loud and directly into her ear, her
head started pounding. She literally jumped three feet from where she was as
she heard the scream.
She scampered across the ground in pursuit of the rear-end’s sanctuary, and
screamed herself, “Oh my God,” before starting to shake. She felt something
purely evil was right by her, something she could not identify. She dropped the
pipe, buried her head in hands and shook as she began hyperventilating.
“Go away!” Amelia yelled, her head feeling ready to explode. Suddenly, she
grabbed her concussed skull and repeated her command. Though telling
nothing anyone else could see, she was more terrified by the voice than she was
by her attackers.
The heaviness started fading, as if the wings of the nightmarish phantom
character were flapping in the opposite direction. Still Amelia’s heart pounded as
hard as her head. It took several moments for the feeling to pass and she was not
sure what made her stand up and look. Whatever it was had just taken years off
of her life. If being scared to death were possible, she, at that moment, was as
close to it than she would ever want to be.
Maybe it was just the rain smacking against the pavement, coupled with the
disturbance of the precursors in her impacted brain that caused her to hear it.
But the voice, rather real or imagined, was unmistakable. Also not in question
were the words it spoke; Run or Die.
She took one last look at, what the real Amelia in Cleveland at that very
moment could see for the first time, two lifeless bodies and let out a scream, a
scream of not only sorrow but of freedom. Never again would she have to be
enslaved, never again would she have to care for that disfigured boy who would
creep into her room and scream at her. Never again would she have to bathe in a
tub full of bloody bathwater as the fresh flesh wounds turned the water crimson
with blood.
This was what she had wanted, what she had spent six years praying for, and
now it was here. So what now?
Her heartbeat, already fast, became frantic. The breath that was snagged in her
throat now flew free a shrill scream, and she lunged forward as if in pursuit of
the pathetic sound that had escaped her. She must have run past the car and
out of the parking lot, though she could not remember having done so, and then
she was out on the busy street, in the sweltering August Florida heat. The traffic
on this street — car horns, rumbling engines, the hiss-sigh crunch of tires —
was to her right, and the building windows flashed past on her left as she ran.
Thereafter she was oblivious of everything, for the world around her faded
completely away, and she was plunging through a featureless grayness, legs
pumping ha,her torn clothes flapping, as if fleeing across an amorphous
dreamscape, struck dumb by terror. There must have been many other people
on the sidewalk, people whom she dodged or shoved aside, but she was not
cognizant of them. She was aware only of her need to escape. She ran deer-swift
though no one pursued her, with her lips peeled back in a grimace of pure terror
though she could not identify the danger from which she fled. Running like crazy,
temporarily blind and deaf, but most of all, lost.
The only thing she was aware of was the thunder in the darkened sky and the
continuously pouring and smelly rain.
The Rain…

As the efforts made the dream world Amelia scream in terror, it made the real
her do the same. She had just found the final piece of memory to complete the
puzzle. It brought on her scream that had become all too familiar in the Cassidy
house, when she knew what it meant. She had murdered her mother and Stan.
Though she had mentioned it to Judith after the accident, that was before she
slipped into the catatonic state, and was reportedly in better shape one would
expect from her injuries.
But here she was now, still in her altered reality, seeing the unspeakable truth
and it tugged at her heart. She had murdered her mother.
Though it was genuine sadness that humid but rainy day in Tampa, seven
weeks prior, here she felt remorse. She felt nothing for killing Stan, she knew in
both realities that she had to do what she had to do.
She had murdered her mother and she was going to have to answer for that. It
broke her heart and while she was not crying when she told Judith, when she
first realizes in this reality of the awful truth, tears rolled down her face.
“I’m sorry,” was all Amelia said, before laying down like she had when was 13.
Back before everything became evil. Clutching her cold body, she curled up into
the fetal position. Her thoughts traveled back to her mother. In a torturous irony,
all she could think of now were the snapshots in time where her mother was
loving and doting with care.
“I’m sorry,” Amelia repeated, though no more than a whisper, her body still
exhausted from the mental workout. Tears streamed down Amelia’s face, the
first of such sorrow since arriving.
She opened her eyes one last time and saw the comforting Cleveland Ohio room,
with the Mickey Mouse nightlight, and fell asleep. She had reentered the sleep
world less than a minute before the Cassidy’s burst through the door.
 CHAPTER 6
A Tale Of Summer Horror (Tampa, Florida)

1) September 4, 1998

They weren’t all found. No; they weren’t all found. And from time to time
wrong assumptions were made. Some years went by with little to no horrors like
they did in the summer of that year. A summer where the streets were stained
with so much horrific tragedies. The newspaper clippings had all been stacked
neatly into the manila folder that aspiring novelist Janet Russo carefully kept
track of.
The situation in Tampa both intrigued and terrified her, something drew her to
the stories of absolute mayhem and macabre.
 2) June 21, 1989 - January 30, 1991

From the Tampa Tribune, June 21, 1989 (page 1):

MISSING BOY PROMPTS NEW FEARS

Finley L. Lawson, of 73 Charter Street, Tampa, was reported missing last

night by his father, Sebastian Lawson, and his stepmother, Natalia Q. Northrop.
The Lawson boy is ten. His disappearance has prompted new fears that Tampa’s
young people are being stalked by a killer.
Mrs. Northrop said the boy had been missing since June 19th, when he failed
to return home from school after the last day of classes before summer vacation.
When asked why they had delayed over twenty-four hours before reporting
their son’s absence, Mr. and Mrs. Northrop refused to comment. Police Chief
Salvatore Barton also declined comment, but a Police Department source told
the News that the Lawson boy’s relationship with his stepmother was not a good
one, and that he had spent nights out of the house before. The source
speculated that the boy’s final grades may have played a part in the boy’s failure
to turn up.
Tampa School Superintendent Irwin Naccarato declined comment on the
Lawson boy’s grades, pointing out they are not a matter of public record.
“I hope the disappearance of this boy will not cause unnecessary fears,” Chief
Barton said last night. “The mood of the community is understandably uneasy,
but I want to emphasize that we log thirty to fifty missing persons reports on
minors each and every year. Most turn up alive and well within a week of the
initial report.
This will be the case with Finley Lawson, God willing.”
Barton also reiterated his conviction that the murders of Henry Easton, Cathy
Shintom, Dominique Lamonica, Nathanial Clements, and Wendolyn Grogan
were not the work of one person.
“There are essential differences in each crime,” Barton said, but declined to
elaborate. He said that local police, working in close operation with the Maine
State Attorney General’s office, are still following up a number of leads. Asked in
a telephone interview last night how good these leads are, Chief Barton replied:
“Very good.” Asked if an arrest in any of the crimes was expected soon, Barton
declined comment.
From the Tampa Tribune, June 25, 1989 (page 1):

COURT ORDERS SURPRISE EXHUMATION

In a bizarre new twist to the disappearance of Finley Lawson, Tampa District

Court Judge Erhardt K. Moulton ordered the exhumation of Lawson younger
sister, Danika, late yesterday. The court order followed a joint request from the
County Attorney and the County Medical Examiner.
Danika Lawson, who also lived with her father and stepmother at 73 Charter
Street, died of what were reported to be accidental causes in May of 1988. The
girl was brought into the Tampa Home Hospital suffering from multiple fractures,
including a fractured skull. Natalia P. Northrop, the boy’s stepmother, was the
admitting person. She stated that Danika Lawson had been playing on a
stepladder in the garage and had apparently fallen from the top. The girl died
without recovering consciousness three days later.
Finley Lawson, ten, was reported missing late Wednesday. Asked if either Mr.
or Mrs. Lawson was under suspicion in either the younger girl’s death or the
older boy’s disappearance, Chief Sebastian Barton declined comment.
From the Tampa Tribune, June 27, 1989 (page 1):

NORTHROP ARRESTED IN BEATING DEATH

Under Suspicion in Unsolved Disappearance

Chief Sebastian Barton of the Tampa Police called a news conference

yesterday to announce that Natalie Q. Northrop, of 73 Charter Street, had been
arrested and charged with the murder of her stepdaughter, Danika Lawson. The
Lawson girl died in Tampa Home Hospital of reported “accidental causes” on
May 31st of last year.
“The medical examiner’s report shows that the girl was badly beaten,” Barton
said. Although Northrop claimed the girl had fallen from a stepladder while
playing in the garage, Barton said the County Medical Examiner’s report showed
that Danika Lawson was severely beaten with some blunt instrument. When
asked what sort of instrument, Barton said: “It might have been a hammer.
Right now the important thing is the medical examiner’s conclusion that this girl
was struck repeated blows with some object hard enough to break her bones.
The wounds, particularly those in the skull, are not at all consistent with those
which might be incurred in a fall. Danika Lawson was beaten within an inch of
her life and then dumped off at the Home Hospital emergency room to die.”
Asked if the doctors who treated the Lawson girl might have been derelict in
their duty when it came to reporting either an incidence of child abuse or the
actual cause of death, Barton said, “They will have serious questions to answer
when Ms. Northrop comes to trial.”
Asked for an opinion on how these developments might bear on the recent
disappearance of Danika Lawson older brother, Finley, reported missing by
Sebastian Lawson and Natalia Northrop four days ago, Chief Barton answered:
“I think it looks much more serious than we first supposed, don’t you?”
From the Tampa Tribune, June 28, 1989 (page 2):

TEACHER SAYS FINLEY Lawson “OFTEN BRUISED”

Henrietta Lamont, who teaches fifth grade at Tampa Elementary School on

Jackson Street, said that Finley Lawson, who has now been missing for nearly a
week, often came to school “covered with bruises.”
Mrs. Lamont, who has taught one of Tampa’s two fifth-grade classes since the
end of Vietnam era, said that the Lawson girl came to school one day about three
weeks before her disappearance “with both eyes nearly closed shut. When I
asked her what happened, she said her stepmother had ‘taken her up’ for not
eating her supper.”
When asked why she had not reported a beating of such obvious severity, Mrs.
Lamont said, “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen such a thing as this in my career
as a teacher. The first few times I had a student with a parent who was confusing
beatings with discipline, I tried to do something about it. I was told by the
assistant principal, Gwendolyn Rayburn in those days, to stay out of it. She told
me that when school employees get involved in cases of suspected child abuse, it
always comes back to haunt the School Department at tax appropriation time. I
went to the principal and he told me to forget it or I would be reprimanded. I
asked him if a reprimand in a matter like that would go on my record. He said a
reprimand did not have to be on a teacher’s record. I got the message.” Asked if
the attitude in the Tampa school system remained the same now, Mrs. Lamont
said, “Well, what does it look like, in light of this current situation? And I might
add that I would not be speaking to you now if I hadn’t retired at the end of this
school year.”
Mrs. Lamont went on, “Since this thing came out I get down on my knees every
night and pray that Finny Lawson just got fed up with that beast of a stepmother
and ran away. I pray that when he reads in the paper or hears on the news that
Northrop has been locked up, Finny will come home.”
In a brief telephone interview Sebastian Lawson hotly refuted Mrs. Dumont’s
charges. “Nati never beat Danika, and she never beat Finny, either,” he said. “I’m
telling you that right now, and when I die I’ll stand at the Throne of Judgment
and look God right in the eye and tell Him the same thing.”
From the Tampa Tribune, July 1, 1989 (page 2):

“MOMMY HAD TO TAKE ME UP ’CAUSE I’M BAD,” TOT TOLD NURSERY

TEACHER BEFORE BEATING DEATH

A local nursery-school teacher who declined to be identified told a Tribune

reporter yesterday that young Danika Lawson came to her twice-weekly
nursery-school class with bad sprains of her right thumb and three fingers of
her right hand less than a week before her death in a purported garage accident.
“It was hurting her enough so that the poor little girl couldn’t color her Mr. Do
safety poster,” the teacher said. “The fingers were swelled up like sausages.
When I asked Danika what happened, she said that her mother (stepmother
Natalie Northrop) had bent her fingers back because she had walked across a
floor her father had just washed and waxed.
‘Mommy had to take me up ’cause I’m bad’ was the way she put it. I felt like
crying, looking at her poor, dear fingers. She really wanted to color her poster
like the other children, so I gave her some baby aspirin and let her color while
the others were having Story Time. She loved to color the Mr. Do posters—that
was what she liked best—and now I’m so glad I was able to help her have a little
happiness that day.
“When she died it never crossed my mind to think it was anything but an
accident. I guess at first I thought she must have fallen because she couldn’t
grip very well with that hand. Now I think I just couldn’t believe an adult could
do such a thing to a little person. I know better now. I wish to God I didn’t.”
Danika Lawson’s older brother, Finley, ten, is still missing. From her cell in
Tampa County Jail, Natalie Northrop continues to deny any part in either the
death of her younger stepdaughter or the disappearance of the older boy.
From the Tampa Tribune, July 3,1989 (page 5):

NORTHROP QUESTIONED IN DEATHS OF GROGAN, CLEMENTS

Produces Unshakable Alibis, Source Claims

From the Tampa Tribune, July 9, 1989 (page 1):

NORTHROP TO BE CHARGED ONLY WITH MURDER OF STEPDAUGHTER

DANIKA, Barton SAYS
Finley Lawson Still Missing

From the Tampa Tribune, July 27, 1989 (page 1):

WEEPING STEPMOTHER CONFESSES TO MURDER OF STEPDAUGHTER

In a dramatic development in the District Court trial of Natalie Northrop for

the murder of her stepdaughter Danika Lawson. Northrop broke down under the
stern cross-examination of County Attorney Bradley Whitsun and admitted she
had beaten the four-year-old girl to death with a recoilless hammer, which she
then buried at the far end of her husband’s vegetable garden before taking the
girl to Tampa Home Hospital’s emergency room.
The courtroom was stunned and silent as the sobbing Northrop, who had
previously admitted beating both of her stepchildren “occasionally, if they had it
coming, for their own good,” poured out her story.
“I don’t know what came over me. I saw she was climbing on the damn ladder
again and I grabbed the hammer from the bench where it was laying and I just
started to use it on her. I didn’t mean to kill her. With God as my witness I never
meant to kill her.”
“Did she say anything to you before she passed out?” Whitsun asked.
“She said, ‘Stop mommy, I’m sorry, I love you,’ Northrop replied.
“Did you stop?”
“Eventually,” Northrop said. She then began to weep in such a hysterical
manner that Judge Erhardt Moulton declared the court in recess.
From the Tampa Tribune, September 22, 1989 (page 16):

WHERE IS FINLEY LAWSON?

His stepmother, sentenced to a term of five to fifteen years in Lowell

Correctional Institution for the murder of his four year-old sister, Danika,
continues to claim she has no idea where Finley Lawson is. His father, who has
instituted divorce proceedings against Natalie Northrop, says he thinks his
soon-to-be ex-wife is lying.
Is he?
“I, for one, really don’t think so,” says Father Frederick Bennett, who serves the
Catholic prisoners at Lowell. Northrop began taking instruction in the Catholic
faith shortly after beginning her prison term, and Father Bennett has spent a
good deal of time with her.
“She is sincerely sorry for what she has done,” Father Bennett goes on, adding
that when he initially asked Northrop why she wanted to be a Catholic, Northrop
replied, “I hear they have an act of contrition and I need to do a lot of that or else
I’ll go to hell when I die.”
“She knows what she did to the younger girl,” Father Bennett said. “If she also
did something to the older one, she doesn’t remember it. As far as Finley goes,
she believes her hands are clean.”
How clean Northrop’s hands are in the matter of her stepson Finley is a
question which continues to trouble Tampa residents, but she has been
convincingly cleared of the other child-murders which have taken place here.
She was able to produce ironclad alibis for the first three, and she was in jail
when seven others were committed in late June, July, and August.
All ten murders remain unsolved.
In an exclusive interview with the Tribune last week Northrop again asserted
that she knows nothing of Finley Lawson’s whereabouts. “I beat them both,” she
said in a painful monologue which was often halted by bouts of weeping. “I loved
them but I beat them. I don’t know why, any more than I know why Sebastian let
me, or why he covered up for me after Danika died. I guess I could have killed
Finny as easy as I did Danika, but I swear before God and Jesus and all the
saints of heaven that I didn’t. I know how it looks, but I didn’t do it. I think he
just ran away. If he did, that’s one thing I’ve got to thank God for.”
Asked if she is aware of any gaps in his memory—if she could have killed Finley
and then blocked it out of her mind—Northrop replied: “I ain’t aware of any gaps.
I know only too well what I did. I’ve given my life to Christ, and I’m going to spend
the rest of it trying to make up for it.”
From the Tampa Tribune, January 30, 1991 (page 1):

BODY NOT THAT OF LAWSON YOUTH, BARTON ANNOUNCES

Police Chief Sebastian Barton told reporters early today that the badly
decomposed body of a boy about the age of Finley Lawson, who disappeared
from his Tampa home in June of 1989, is definitely not that of the missing youth.
The body was found two hundred and ninety miles away in Baxley, Georgia,
buried in a gravel pit. Both Florida and Georgia State Police at first theorized
that the body might be that of the Lawson boy, believing that he might have been
picked up by a child molester after running away from the Charter Street home
where his younger sister had been beaten and killed.
Dental charts showed conclusively that the body found in Baxley was not that
of the Lawson youth, who has now been missing for nineteen months.
From the Alachua County Today, July 22, 1998 (page 3):

CONVICTED MURDERER COMMITS SUICIDE IN FALMOUTH

Natalie Q. Northrop, who was convicted of the murder of her four-year-old

stepdaughter nine years ago, was found dead in her small third-floor Falmouth
apartment late yesterday afternoon. The parolee, who had lived and worked
quietly in Alachula since her release from Lowell Correctional Institution in 1995,
was an apparent suicide.
“The note she left indicates an extremely confused state of mind,” Assistant
Alachula Police Chief Brandon K. Roche said. He refused to divulge the note’s
contents, but a Police Department source said it consisted of two sentences: “I
saw Finny last night. He was dead.”
The “Finny” referred to may well have been Northrop’s stepson, brother of the
girl Northrop was convicted of killing in 1989. It was the disappearance of Finley
Lawson which eventually led to Northrop’s conviction for the beating death of
Finley’s younger sister, Danika.
The elder boy has been missing for nine years. In a brief court proceeding in
1997 Finley’s father Sebastian had his son declared legally dead so he could
enter into possession of Finley Lawson’s savings account. The account
contained a sum of only forty-seven dollars.
 3) Thursday, June 22, 1989.

Finny Lawson was dead, all right.

He died on the night of June 22nd, and his stepmother had nothing at all to
do with it. He died as twenty-eight year old Harold Watson sat in his North
Carolina home watching TV, as nineteen year old New York city resident Iola
Montella’s boyfriend lifted a high-stepping kick into the her derrière and told her
“to get down and suck my goddamn dick like your daddy told you,” as
twenty-one year old Scarlett Tenadegiersken laid in the bed of the master
bedroom in her Palm Harbor house, as forty-two year old Marcel Travers—a lady
who bore, in appearance at least, a remarkable resemblance to Finny and
Danika Lawson’s stepmother—was being was engaged in a fierce session of love
making with her husband Nathan, as Carl Romero got yelled at by a pistol
weaving homophobic high-school boy who had just finished robbing and
shooting a fine upstanding homosexual couple, as detective Margaret Lee got
whistled at by three teenage boys passing in an old Dodge while she pulled
weeds out of the garden beside the small Lee home on Witcham Road, and as
twenty-three year old Amelia Franklin sat in an Ohio living room, revealing her
systematic abuse to the horrified disbelief of the Cassidy’s.
Although none of them would remember doing so later, all of them looked up at
the exact moment Finny Lawson died . . . as if hearing some distant cry.
The Tampa Tribune had been absolutely right about one thing: Finny’s
rank-card was just bad enough to make him afraid to go home and face his
stepmom. She and his father were fighting a lot this month and that made
things even worse. When they got going at it hot and heavy, his father shouted a
lot of mostly incoherent accusations. His stepmom responded to these first with
grunts, then yells to shut up, and finally with the enraged bellows of a boar
which has gotten a quiver of porcupine needles in its snout. Finny had never
seen the old man use his fists on her, though. Finny didn’t think he quite dared.
She had saved her fists for Finny and Danika in the old days, and now that
Danika was dead, Finny got his little sister’s share as well as his own.
These shouting matches came and went in cycles. They were most common at
the end of the month, when the bills came in. A policeman, called by a neighbor,
might drop by once or twice when things were at their worst and tell them to tone
it down. Usually that ended it. His mother was apt to give the cop the finger and
dare him to take her in, but his stepdad rarely said boo.
His stepmom was afraid of the cops, Finny thought.
He lay low during these periods of stress. It was wiser. If you didn’t think so,
just look at what had happened to Danika. Finny didn’t know the specifics and
didn’t want to, but he had an idea about Danika. He thought that Danika had
been in the wrong place at the wrong time: the garage on the last day of the
month. They told Finny that Danika fell off the stepladder in the garage—“If I
told her once to stay off’n it I told her sixty times,” his stepmom had said—but
his father wouldn’t look at him except by accident . . . and when their eyes did
meet, Finny had seen a frightened ratty little gleam in hers that he didn’t like.
The old man just sat there silently at the kitchen table with a quart of Rheingold,
looking at nothing from beneath his heavy lowering eyebrows. Finny kept out of
his reach. When his stepmother was bellowing, he was usually—not always but
usually—all right. It was when she stopped that you had to be careful.
Two nights ago she had thrown a chair at Finny when Finny got up to see what
was on the other TV channel— just picked up one of the tubular aluminum
kitchen chairs, swept it back over his head, and let fly. It hit Finny in the butt
and knocked him over. His butt still ached, but he knew it could have been
worse: it could have been his head.
Then there had been the night when Natalie had suddenly gotten up and
rubbed a handful of mashed potatoes into Finny’s hair for no reason at all. One
day last September, Finny had come in from school and foolishly allowed the
screen door to slam shut behind him while his stepmom was taking a nap.
Northrop came out of the bedroom in just her thin revealing panties, red pubic
hair visible underneath.
“There now, Finny,” she said, “I got to take you up for slammin that door.” In
Natalie Northrop’s lexicon, “taking you up” was a euphemism for “whipping the
shit out of you.” Which was what she then did to Finny until the boy lost
consciousness. He was a growing boy but when his large stepmom threw him
into the front hall - his father had mounted a pair of low coathooks out there,
especially for him and Danika to hang their coats on - these hooks had rammed
hard steel fingers into Finny’s lower back, and that was when he passed out.
When he came to ten minutes later he heard his father yelling that he was going
to take Finny to the hospital and she couldn’t stop him.
“After what happened to Danika?” his stepmom had responded. “You want to
go to jail, hon?” That was the end of his talk about the hospital.
She helped Finny into his room, where he lay shivering on his bed, his forehead
beaded with sweat. The only time he left the room during the next three days was
when they were both gone. Then he would hobble slowly into the kitchen,
groaning softly, and get his father’s whiskey from under the sink. A few nips
dulled the pain. The pain was mostly gone by the fifth day, but he had pissed
blood for almost two weeks.
And the hammer wasn’t in the garage anymore.
What about that? What about that, friends and neighbors?
Oh, the Craftsman hammer—the ordinary hammer—was still there. It was the
Scotti recoilless which was missing. His stepmom’s special hammer, the one he
and Danika had been forbidden to touch. “If one of you touches that baby,” she
had told them the day she bought it, “you’ll both be wearing your guts for
earmuffs.” Danika had asked timidly if that hammer was very expensive and
Natalie told him it was filled with ballbearings and you couldn’t make it bounce
back up no matter how hard you brought it down.
Now it was gone.
 Finny’s grades weren’t the best because he had missed a lot of school since the
lossx of his biological mother. The whore who had run off with a sixteen year old
student two months after giving birth to Danika.
Despite missing lots of school he was not a stupid boy at all. He thought he
knew what had happened to the Scotti recoilless hammer. He thought maybe his
stepmother had used it on Danika and then buried it in the garden or maybe
thrown it in the Canal. It was the sort of thing that happened frequently in the
horror comics Finny read, the ones he kept on the top shelf of his closet.
He walked closer to the Canal, which rippled between its concrete sides like
oiled silk. A swatch of moonlight glimmered across its dark surface in a
boomerang shape. He sat down, swinging his sneakers idly against the concrete
in an irregular tattoo. The last six weeks had been quite dry and the water flowed
past perhaps nine feet below the worn soles of his sneakers. But if you looked
closely at the Canal’s sides, you could read the various levels to which it some
times rose quite easily. The concrete was stained a dark brown just above the
water’s current level. This brown stain slowly faded to yellow, then to a color that
was almost white at the level where the heels of Finny’s sneakers made contact
when he swung them.
The water flowed smoothly and silently out of a concrete arch that was cobbled
on the inside, past the place where Finny sat, and then down to the covered
wooden footbridge between Cypress Point Park and Tampa High School.
The bridge’s sides and plank footing—even the beams under the roof—were
covered with an intaglio of initials, phone numbers, and declarations.
Declarations of love; declarations that So-and-so was willing to “suck” or “blow”;
declarations that those discovered sucking or blowing would lose their foreskins
or have their assholes plugged with hot tar; occasional eccentric declarations
that defied definition. One that Finny had puzzled over all this spring read SAVE
RUSSIAN JEWS! COLLECT VALUABLE PRIZES!
What, exactly, did that mean? Anything? And did it matter?
Finny didn’t go into the Kissing Bridge tonight; he had no urge to cross over to
the high-school side. He thought he would probably sleep in the park, maybe in
the dead leaves under the bandstand, but for now it was fine just to sit here. He
liked it in the park, and came often when he had to think. Sometimes there were
people making out in the groves of trees which dotted the park, but Finny left
them alone and they left him alone. He had heard lurid stories in the playground
at school about the queers that cruised in Cypress Point Park after sundown,
and he accepted these stories without question, but he himself had never been
bothered. The park was a peaceful place, and he thought the best part of it was
right here where he was sitting. He liked it in the middle of summer, when the
water was so low it chuckled over the stones and actually broke up into isolated
streamlets that twisted and turned and sometimes came together again. He liked
it in late March or early April, just after ice-out, when he would sometimes stand
by the Canal (too cold to sit then; your ass would freeze) for an hour or more, the
hood of his old parka, now two years too small for him, pulled up, his hands
plunged into his pockets, unaware that his skinny body was shivering and
shaking. The Canal had a terrible, irresistible power in the week or two after the
ice went out. He was fascinated by the way the water boiled whitely out of the
cobbled arch and roared past him, bearing sticks and branches and all manner
of human trash along with it. More than once he had envisioned walking beside
the Canal in March with his stepdad and giving the bastard a great big
motherfucking push. He would scream and fall in, his arms pinwheeling for
balance, and Finny would stand on the concrete parapet and watch him carried
off downstream, his head a black bobbing shape in the middle of the unruly
whitecapped current. He would stand there, yes, and he would cup his hands
around his mouth and scream: THAT WAS FOR DORSEY, YOU ROTTEN
COCKSUCKER! WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO HELL TELL THE DEVIL THE LAST
THING YOU EVER HEARD WAS ME TELLING YOU TO PICK ON SOMEBODY
YOUR OWN SIZE! It would never happen, of course, but it was an absolutely
grand fantasy. A grand dream to dream as you sat here by the Canal, a g—
A hand closed around Finny’s foot.
He had been looking across the Canal toward the school, smiling a sleepy and
rather beautiful smile as he imagined his stepmother being carried off in the
violent rip of the spring runoff, being carried out of his life forever. The soft yet
strong grip startled him so much that he almost lost his balance and tumbled
into the Canal.
It’s one of the queers the big kids are always talking about, he thought, and
then he looked down. His mouth dropped open. Urine spilled hotly down his legs
and stained his jeans black in the moonlight. It wasn’t a queer.
It was Danika.
It was Danika as she had been buried, Danika in her blue blazer and gray pants,
only now the blazer was in muddy tatters, Danika’s shirt was yellow rags,
Danika’s pants clung wetly to legs as thin as broomsticks. And Danika’s head
was horribly slumped, as if it had been caved in at the back and consequently
pushed up in the front.
Danika was grinning.
“Finnyeeee,” his dead sister croaked, just like one of the dead people who were
always coming back from the grave in the horror comics. Danika’s grin widened.
Yellow teeth gleamed, and somewhere way back in that darkness things seemed
to be squirming.
“Finnyeee . . . I came to see you Finnyeeeee. . . .” Finny tried to scream. Waves
of gray shock rolled over him, and he had the curious sensation that he was
floating. But it was not a dream; he was awake. The hand on his sneaker was as
white as a trout’s belly. His sister’s bare feet clung somehow to the concrete.
Something had bitten one of Danika’s heels off.
“Come to me Finnyeeee. . . .”
Finny couldn’t scream. His lungs didn’t have enough air in them to manage a
scream. He got out a curious reedy moaning sound. Anything louder seemed
beyond him. That was all right. In a second or two his mind would snap and
after that nothing would matter. Danika’s hand was small but implacable.
Finny’s buttocks were sliding over the concrete to the edge of the Canal.
 Still making that reedy moaning sound, he reached behind himself and
grabbed the concrete edging and yanked himself backward. He felt the hand
slide away momentarily, heard an angry hiss, and had time to think: That’s not
Danika. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not Danika. Then adrenaline flooded his
body and he was crawling away, trying to run even before he was on his feet, his
breath coming in short shrieky whistles.
White hands appeared on the concrete lip of the Canal. There was a wet
slapping sound. Drops of water flew upward in the moonlight from dead pallid
skin. Now Danika’s face appeared over the edge. Dim red sparks gleamed in her
sunken eyes. Her wet hair was plastered to her skull. Mud streaked her cheeks
like warpaint.
Finny’s chest finally unlocked. He hitched in breath and turned it into a scream.
He got to his feet and ran. He ran looking back over his shoulder, needing to see
where Danika was, and as a result he ran smack into a large elm tree.
It felt as if someone—his stepmom, for instance—had set off a dynamite charge
in his left shoulder. Stars shot and corkscrewed through his head. He fell at the
base of the tree as if poleaxed, blood trickling from his left temple. He swam in
the waters of semiconsciousness for perhaps ninety seconds. Then he managed
to gain his feet again. A groan escaped him as he tried to raise his left arm. It
didn’t want to come. Felt all numb and far away. So he raised his right and
rubbed his fiercely aching head.
Then he remembered why he had happened to run full-tilt into the elm tree in
the first place and looked around.
There was the edge of the Canal, white as bone and straight as string in the
moonlight. No sign of the thing from the Canal . . . if there ever had been a thing.
He continued turning, working his way slowly through a complete three
hundred and sixty degrees. Cypress Point Park was silent and as still as a
black-and-white photograph. Weeping willows draggled their thin tenebrous
arms, and anything could be standing, slumped and insane, within their shelter.
Finny began to walk, trying to look everywhere at once. His sprained shoulder
throbbed in painful sync with his heartbeat.
Finnyeeee, the breeze moaned through the trees, don’t you want to see meeeee,
Finnyeeee?
He felt flabby corpsefingers caress the side of his neck. He whirled, his hands
going up. As his feet tangled together and he fell, he saw that it had only been
willow-fronds moving in the breeze.
He got up again. He wanted to run but when he tried another dynamite charge
went off in his shoulder and he had to stop. He knew somehow that he should be
getting over his fright by now, calling himself a stupid little baby who got
spooked by a reflection or maybe fell asleep without knowing it and had a bad
dream. That wasn’t happening, though; quite the reverse, in fact. His heart was
now beating so fast he could no longer distinguish the separate thuds, and he
felt sure it would soon burst in terror. He couldn’t run but when he got out of the
willows he did manage a limping jogtrot.
 He fixed his eyes on the streetlight that marked the park’s main gate. He
headed in that direction, managing a little more speed, thinking: I’ll make it to
the light, and that’s all right. I’ll make it to the light, and that’s all right.
Bright light, no more fright, up all night, what a sight—
Something was following him.
Finny could hear it bludgeoning its way through the willow grove. If he turned
he would see it. It was gaining.
He could hear its feet, a kind of shuffling, squelching stride, but he would not
look back, no, he would look ahead at the light, the light was all right, he would
just continue his flight to the light, and he was almost there, almost— The smell
was what made him look back. The overwhelming smell, as if fish had been left
to rot in a huge pile that had become carrion-slushy in the summer heat. It was
the smell of a dead ocean.
It wasn’t Danika after him now; it was something with slimy green skin. The
thing’s snout was long and pleated. Green fluid dripped from black gashes like
vertical mouths in its cheeks. Its eyes were white and jellylike.
Its webbed fingers were tipped with claws like razors. Its respiration was bubbly
and deep, the sound of a diver with a bad regulator. As it saw Finny looking, its
green-black lips wrinkled back from huge fangs in a dead and vacant smile.
It shambled after him, dripping, and Finny suddenly understood. It meant to
take him back to the Canal, to carry him down into the dank blackness of the
Canal’s underground passage. To eat him there.
Finny put on a burst of speed. The arc-sodium light at the gate drew closer. He
could see its halo of bugs and moths. A truck went by, headed for Route 2, the
driver working his way up through the gears, and it crossed Finny’s desperate,
terrified mind that he could be drinking coffee from a paper cup and listening to
a Pantera tune on the radio, completely unaware that less than two hundred
yards away there was a boy who might be dead in another twenty seconds.
The stink. The overwhelming stink of it. Gaining. All around him.
It was a park bench he tripped over. Some kids had casually pushed it over
earlier that evening, heading toward their homes at a run to beat the curfew. Its
seat poked an inch or two out of the grass, one shade of green on another,
almost invisible in the moon-driven dark. The edge of the seat smacked Finny in
the shins, causing a burst of glassy, exquisite pain. His legs flipped out behind
him and he thumped into the grass.
He looked behind him and saw the Creature bearing down, its white
poached-egg eyes glittering, its scales dripping slime the color of seaweed, the
gills up and down its bulging neck and cheeks opening and closing.
“Ag!” Finny croaked. It seemed to be the only noise he could make. “Ag! Ag! Ag!
Ag!” He crawled now, fingers hooking deep into the turf. His tongue hung out.
In the second before the Creature’s fish-smelling horny hands closed around
his throat, a comforting thought came to him: This is a dream; it has to be.
There’s no real Creature, no real Black Lagoon, and even if there was, that was
in South America or the Florida Everglades or someplace like that. This is only a
dream and I’ll wake up in my bed or maybe in the leaves under the bandstand
and I— Then batrachian hands closed around his neck and Finny’s hoarse cries
were choked off; as the Creature turned him over, the chitinous hooks which
sprouted from those hands scrawled bleeding marks like calligraphy into his
neck. He stared into its glowing white eyes. He felt the webs between its fingers
pressing against his throat like constricting bands of living seaweed. His
terror-sharpened gaze noted the fin, something like a rooster’s comb and
something like a hornpout’s poisonous backfin, standing atop the Creature’s
hunched and plated head. As its hands clamped tight, shutting off his air, he
was even able to see the way the white light from the arcsodium lamp turned a
smoky green as it passed through that membranous headfin.
“You’re . . . not . . . real,” Finny choked, but clouds of grayness were closing in
now, and he realized faintly that it was real enough, this Creature. It was, after
all, killing him.
And yet some rationality remained, even until the end: as the Creature hooked
its claws into the soft meat of his neck, as his carotid artery let go in a warm and
painless gout that splashed the thing’s reptilian plating, Finny’s hands groped at
the Creature’s back, feeling for a zipper. They fell away only when the Creature
tore his head from his shoulders with a low satisfied grunt.
And as Finny’s picture of what the blackness was began to fade, the sky
promptly changed into overcast and rain started to come down.
The Rain