Chapter 4
Quinnly
He was here last night, I could feel his presence the moment the air shifted. The room above my parents’ old bedroom has always been my space. I hardly let anyone in here, yet his presence makes it feel… alive.
My shadow has been watching me for as long as I can remember. It’s not always, and he’s only watched me a few nights while I’m sleeping. I’m careful not to give away that I’m not sleeping, because my shadow seems… hesitant. Plus, I’m not sure what he wants from me, at least not yet anyway.
I heard Naomi leave early this morning, her squishy clogs she has to wear to work make funny sounds against the hardwood floors.
Sometimes it still hits me that Paps isn’t going to get up to run his daily mile.
He won’t smile and hug me fresh out of the shower smelling like spring water, with an orange juice in his hand for me.
Though, near the end he was mostly bedridden.
My heart feels like it’s going to pump out of my chest when I think about Paps being gone, and I don’t really know how to process it.
Therapists have told me I should work out my emotions in a healthy way, but really, what fun is that?
I think my way is much more realistic, and what better way than to cross the country to visit fifty or so states so I can find the piece of me that’s been missing since Paps died?
All of us are murderers in one way or another.
Some are more moral than others, but me?
Well, I’m not sure where I stand. Other than never being caught, and being sought after by more than one mob boss for my “special skills” as they like to call them.
I’ve met a few other serial killers, but most of them get on my nerves, especially the ones who give out looks like candy at halloween because they perceive themselves as superior.
Throwing on some clothes, I check my computer for any emails I might have missed from my boss. My job is more or less a hobby for me since I don’t need the money. I think Conall Hemlock felt sorry for me the first time we met, and decided I was too weird to have a ‘normal’ job.
I don’t think too much about it, but he sends me a few emails asking for favors, and I deliver. It’s the easiest money I’ve ever made, and I get to carry out his requests at my own discretion. He doesn’t care how, just as long as nothing is traced back to him.
These encrypted emails give me a headache, but at least once Conall explained why he sent them that way, I no longer gave him a hard time over it.
He’s a cautious guy, I guess. I think it’s cute.
Either way, I get to roam the globe on his dime and do what I enjoy.
After entering approximately a million passwords, I have his correspondence for my current house guest who’s still–I think–in the basement. I forgot to check on her last night after Naomi and I crafted... oops.
[11:34PM @HEM]
Green
Glee fuels my body and excitement bubbles up out of my throat at the one word on my screen. Seems Mr. Hemlock doesn’t need whoever the ol’ bitch–possibly still living–in my basement is. Which means I get to play, and Naomi won’t be home until later.
I glance at my suitcase. I already started packing, kind of. Clothes are laying halfway on top of the open luggage. I should finish that first, right? But leaving her in the basement for Naomi to deal with seems like a bad idea… for our sistership, I mean.
I would also like to get all the anticipation jitters out before going to the airport. Sometimes when I’m too amped up I act… rash, or so Naomi says. Plus, Hemlock told me I could get rid of her, and I do love a bloody good mess.
Pulling my scissors from under all the stuff I piled on top of them, I skip out of my room and down the stairs into the kitchen.
The door to the basement is one way, Paps built it specifically with the intentions of this house being his forever home.
He used it often until he met Gran and they had my mom.
It stayed sealed up for a while after that.
I remember Paps used to tell me that although he would do anything for Gran, he was happy to open his basement back up.
Especially since after he lost Gran he seemed…
sad. Then when Mom and Dad moved in, since they worked so much and weren’t the hovering type–regardless of thinking he was incompetent–he spent more time down there.
I didn’t know why for a long time.
He didn’t tell me what he did for a safe kill zone during that time, and I never got it out of him. I guess everyone needs their secrets, but I found this one shortly after my parents funeral and he finally fessed up.
Adrenaline rushes through my body as I pull the fridge out from the wall. The cabinet it’s built into is actually a hidden door, while the cabinet is a shallow spice rack. The door pops open once I press the numbers that took me fucking forever to decode and memorize.
Musty cold air rushes out of the crack to smack me in the face. Pushing the door in further, I step across the threshold of the hardwood onto packed dirt. Chains rattle in the distant darkness, and I can hear her breathing.
Well, that’s a good sign.
The way she wheezes from going too long without water and access to filtered air is super gross. The dank earth shifts beneath my feet as the walk turns into a decline.
“Did you miss me, Claudia?” I call to her as I navigate the dark. I’ve been down here so many times I don’t need to have a light. When I draw closer she coughs, and I hear a wet smack connect with the earth. “Well, that’s not very ladylike.”
Laughing at my own joke, I strike a match against the whetstone Paps put in here to sharpen his own blades.
For a while he didn’t trust anyone to do it after his knife guy died, so he did it himself.
Said it gave him an appreciation he needed.
I didn’t understand it until I started sharpening my own blades after he died.
Then it clicked.
Too late for me to tell him I understood, but I think he knows.
“Well, Claudia, I’m not sure what you did, or… maybe it was didn’t do…” I can’t remember what the original email said, “but you really made him mad.”
She straightens her spine in an attempt to appear unafraid, but the smell of urine gives her away.
Pulling one side of my mouth out and stressing my throat, I click my tongue, “Not a good day for you, my friend.”
“I ca-”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all, and I’m on a little bit of a time crunch here, so I’d like to skip all the talky-talky and get to the stabby-stabby if you don’t mind.
” They always try to plead for their life by offering money, jewels, even notoriety.
I don’t need or want any of it, and frankly it’s getting irritating.
Scrunching my lips up to my nose I wait for her to start begging, or wailing, or…
something. She doesn’t do any of that, only stares at me, brown eyes wide open.
“Okay, well that was easier than I thought,” I chuckle, pulling the scissors from my back pocket and flicking my thumbs across the handles so they split open.
Their weight and coolness feel right in my hands, the blades are open as wide as they can go pointing in opposite directions ready to wield. She screams then, thrashing against the chains that circle her arms and legs.
“No! Pl-plea-”
“Now you choose to speak?” I ask, confused.
“I didn’t think you were serious!” Her voice is raw from screaming the first few days I had her locked up here. Come to think of it, I can’t remember giving her any water…
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I tilt my head and eye her again, trying and failing to understand what I missed.
“Do you know who I am?” She wails.
“Am I supposed to?”
“You kidnapped me! And you don’t even know who I am?”
I don’t know most of my bodies personally, so I don’t know what she’s getting at.
“No… Is this a trick question?”
“I’ve been kidnapped by an incompetent psycho, and no one has found me yet, fuck me.”
“You’re very pretty, but no thank you.”
She laughs and it doesn’t sound like the funny kind, and this whole conversation feels like I’ve missed something. Her voice breaks and I think she might be crying, but I can’t tell for sure. Either way, I know I’ve wasted too much time as it is.
Plunging the base of my right blade into her side, I enjoy the feel of her skin, tissue, and muscle ripping open to make way for my scissors.
Her blood wells up around the steel until it pools enough and flows over onto my hand.
Tearing the blade out of her flesh makes a squelching sound that sends delicious shivers up my spine.
She screams, her voice carrying over my skin in a hot wave that gives me a thrill. Her face pinches and pales as she tries to cover the bleeding wound, and fails because of the chains.
“I may be a psycho,” I whisper into her ear, sliding the left side of my blades between her collarbone and neck, “But I’m not the one who got herself locked in a basement…”
Her blood sprays the ceiling as her heart pumps harder and harder to keep up with the blood loss. The sight gives me butterflies, they take flight in my stomach as her face contorts into understanding.
“That’s right, who’s incompetent now, Claudia?”
Not too long after I’ve cleaned my blades, her body slumps to the dirt. I turn, watching blood leak out of her and pool around her head. I need to take her body to the garden, where Paps regularly disposed of his bodies.
There’s a long tunnel that runs into what I lovingly named the garden when I was nearly eighteen, because I couldn’t say cemetery out in public without Paps losing it on me.
Since we’re near the city, the cemetery isn’t that far away.
Add in that our family owns a crypt and well, it just makes this part so much easier.
Cleaning up really isn’t my thing. Most of my jobs are kill orders, this one’s the first in a long time that’s been a hostage situation. Then again, I’m not sure Mr. Hemlock trusts me enough to hold too many people for any length of time.
Dragging her body through the dirt seems a little rude, so instead I fold her up into the discarded wheelbarrow I’ve used for more than just body removal, and wheel her down the path.
A stone door stands at the end that opens with a foot pedal buried in the dirt that has to be stepped on with a certain amount of pressure, or it won't open.
The stone grinds and dust flies as the statue located inside the crypt turns to the side. I have to slide her body out of the wheelbarrow, and when it hits the stone floor with a thud I gnash my teeth together.
“Sorry,” I wince.
There’s a tomb that’s just a cover to an old well that’s been sealed off above ground for years now.
I call her the keeper of the garden. The front is covered in carved flowers, vines, and a lady who’s facing into the well.
Her hair flows down her back to her naked bum as if she’s free of restraints.
I think Paps just liked her carved ass and thought it would be funny to squeeze her stone rump in order to hide bodies.
Dragging Claudia over to the false tomb, I drop her, grab both of the keepers cheeks and push up.
The stone shakes and slides over revealing an empty void.
When I was younger I asked Paps how far down the hole went.
He told me he didn’t know, but to always be careful not to throw myself over with a body because I’d never, ever get out.