Chapter 23 #3
“When I was six,” I say slowly, my voice cracking. I pause and take another deep breath, a poor attempt to calm my nerves. “I had a really bad nightmare about my mom. My dad was the only one who could calm me down, so I ran into their bedroom, looking for him, but he wasn’t there.”
My heart races as the memories from that night trickle in. I’ve worked so hard over the years to suppress them. My brain never allowed me to forget them, and it took years before I could go a day without thinking about it.
“I was panicking, and Mom said he left, so she tried to console me instead. I only panicked worse. My dad had a really large shed he converted into a man cave or whatever, and he was in there all the time, so that’s where I went looking.”
I inhale another deep breath, images flashing through my mind’s eye.
My tangled blonde hair sticking to my sweaty nape.
The pink nightgown I wore, princesses printed over the chest, as I ran outside into the muggy summer air.
Tears streaked down my cheeks, and my lungs were tight, as if the bathwater still clogged them.
“Mom was at the back door, yelling for me to get back inside, but I kept running to the shed. I thought if I didn’t find my dad, didn’t hear his soothing voice telling me everything’s going to be okay, I would never breathe again.”
I look down at my fidgeting hands, shifting in discomfort from Dread’s scrutinizing stare. It feels like nails raking down my skin.
“He told me before to never go in there without him, to never go in without knocking. He said there were dangerous tools in there, and I could hurt myself, so it was a huge rule. But I was panicking and couldn’t breathe, let alone think straight, so I just barged in.”
I glance at Dread, and if not for the subtle movement of his chest, I’d think he was cast in stone. He’s devoid of all emotion, eerily still as he listens to me.
I drop my gaze again as a new image sweeps me away. My voice turns almost robotic as I rehash the memory, yet I feel everything I felt when I was six. An indescribable horror, a terror unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
“He had just finished sawing through the woman’s head, wearing this white plastic suit, a clear mask covering his face.
He was absolutely just… drenched in blood.
He’d already cut up the rest of her body.
Her torso was in two pieces, each limb severed from it, then those cut at the elbows and knees.
Even her ankles. And they were all just scattered, none of her body parts where they were supposed to be.
I saw her face, but I couldn’t make sense of it because it was…
it was frozen in this expression of absolute terror.
She almost didn’t look real, but her insides were coming out of her and—”
“Stop.” The sharp, hoarse command startles me out of the memory, and I look up to meet Dread’s haunted stare. The tears in my vision blur his face, but it does nothing to soften the torment carved into the lines around his eyes and mouth.
And then, it hits me: I'm also describing his mother. The guilt is a punch to the chest, and I lower my head and cover my eyes, both mortified and so angry with myself.
“Shit, Dread. I’m so fucking sorry,” I say quietly, dropping my hand from my face to look up at him, my brows pinched with regret. “I'm such an idiot. I wasn’t thinking, and I-I shouldn’t have told you any of that.”
The muscle in his jaw pulses, his eyes blackened with a darkness I understand all too well. But he doesn’t respond—doesn’t move—for several long moments.
“Just… just skip over that part,” he says finally, his voice hoarse.
I nod, rolling my lips as I stare down at my fidgeting fingers, taking a second to gather my thoughts.
“I… I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad so enraged before,” I mumble.
The pit of anxiety in my stomach yawns, widening until it's all-consuming.
“His eyes were black, and he looked…” My throat closes, remembering his face as if it were yesterday.
It takes several attempts at swallowing to loosen it again.
“He looked so fucking evil. Inhuman. I-I’ve never seen anything like it before.
Just… just pure evil.” My throat tightens, forcing me to pause and swallow a few times.
“I went to run, but he screamed at me not to move. I just froze in terror, and I remember wanting to run so, so bad. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to be like her.
” My voice cracks on the last word, and I struggle to swallow down a sob.
I sniffle and quickly swipe at a few loose tears trailing down my cheeks with trembling fingers.
“He took off the protective mask and crouched in front of me, but all I could focus on was the smell of blood. It was so strong, I could taste it. He demanded to know why I broke his rules, and I told him about my night terror. So he took my hand and led me over to her body. I-I started crying and freaking out because the closer I got…” I trail off, forgoing the gruesome details of her mutilated body.
At six years old, my brain was incapable of computing exactly what I was looking at, just that it was the worst thing I could ever—would ever—see. I was in too much shock to do anything but stare and panic. My body wanted to vomit from the sight, but I couldn’t even manage that.
“He told me to look at the woman’s face and imagine it was my mom’s,” I say, sniffling again.
“Then, he said if I told anyone what I saw, I’d be looking at Mom’s face next, and it’d be all my fault.
” My voice cracks at the end again, so I quickly tuck my head away from him, squeezing my eyes shut.
It takes several moments to swallow the rock back down my throat.
I sense Dread move, but I don’t look yet.
My mind splits between the six-year-old version of me and the twenty-two-year-old.
For several minutes, my brain can’t decipher which timeline I’m in.
I can feel Dread pacing in front of me, yet that potent copper smell is coating the inside of my nose and mouth.
I’m sitting on Dread’s bed, yet I still feel my dad’s rough, calloused palm squeezing mine.
Both versions of me inhale, panic strangling our lungs. When I open my eyes and turn back, it’s only Dread I see.
He’s turned away, both hands balled tightly into fists, his knuckles completely bleached of color, his skin mottled red and white. His chest pumps rapidly, and he seems to be glaring at the opposite wall.
“My mom terrified me,” I rasp. He probably doesn’t care about anything else I have to say, but the silence feels suffocating, and for whatever reason, I feel the need to explain why I didn’t want to see my mom dead.
“But I still loved her. It was just mostly at night, when I’d have those dreams, that I needed my dad, but in that moment, I was far more terrified of him than I ever was of her.
He went from being my safety to being the monster hiding under my bed, and my mom was now someone I needed to protect. ”
Again, he’s silent, and my anxiety heightens. That familiar hum returns, like hornets buzzing beneath my skin. I’m filled with a restless energy, with the overwhelming urge to just… run. But I don’t know if it’s the memories I want to run from, my guilt, or from Dread.
Maybe he’ll snap and kill me now. Maybe he’ll torture me first. The suspense is damn near sending me into cardiac arrest.
“He didn’t threaten to kill you?” he questions finally, turning his head just enough to give me his side profile. His voice is eerily quiet, his expression now smooth marble once more. “Why would he threaten your mom and not you? Especially if you were so scared of her.”
“He did,” I answer hoarsely. “But he said I’d have to watch him kill my mom first. Then, he told me not only did he know how to make sure the police found no evidence, he knew how to make someone disappear without a trace, make their death look like an accident.”
“I call you Angel because Mommy almost made you one, but this time, Daddy would have to be the one to do it. And there’d be no one left to save you.”
“Would it be scary, like last time?”
“It would be so much worse.”
“It didn’t really hurt before.”
“I would make it hurt, Angel.”
Dread’s hands flex, and he looks like he’s working himself up to ask the one question I’m scared of.
“Who was it?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper. He turns to me, agony written into his face, and it kills me because I know I’m going to make it worse.
“Georgia Farrell,” I answer quietly.
He stares as he processes that.
“The Locksmith’s third known victim,” he states robotically.
I nod, chewing on my lip while the gears in his head spin. Inevitably, I know he’ll reach the same conclusion that’s haunted me for sixteen years.
He steels his jaw again as realization dawns, and my heart sinks.
“Did you know he kept murdering women?” he asks quietly, his tone grave.
My face twists as I drop my gaze, my shame embedded in the marrow of my bones.
“I… I don't know how to answer that,” I whisper.
“At the time, I don't think I fully understood it.
I knew it was wrong and scary. But there were moments where he'd tell my mom he was going to the shed, and he'd…
he'd just give me this look like he was reminding me to keep quiet.
And I… I think I knew what he was going to do.
I just wasn't…” I shake my head, the words becoming harder to find. “I was terrified. That's what I knew.”
Dread steps forward, pulling my attention back up to him, fury melting the ice in his gaze.
“Did you see any of them? Like how you saw Georgia?”
I shake my head. “I never went into that shed again, so I didn’t see any others—”
“But you knew there were others,” he cuts in abruptly, his tone sharper now. I tighten my lips, having expected his reaction but still fucking hating it.