Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
EBONY
The distant shrill ringing wakes me. The low thrum of Elvis’ ‘Suspicious Minds’ playing on an old beat-up radio.
My head pounds as the bright strip of overhead lights blind me.
I remember dancing in the kitchen back at the apartment, but everything after that is a blank.
The more I try to wrack my brain for the answers, the worse the headache gets.
I fight against my bindings, not because I’m trying to escape, but to drop kick that fucking radio.
The sounds, the smells, the monotony of the leaky pipework lining the dank green walls, my body is too wrecked to compartmentalise everything, and it’s overwhelming.
“Fuck.” I spit out the mouthful of bloody saliva building in my mouth, the coppery taste of it clogging the back of my throat. Tied to a chair with my hands in ropes attached to chains above my head, it doesn’t go very far. Just dribbling down my chin and onto my t-shirt.
Well, that’s just perfect.
“Where are we?” Megan jostles beside me. “And what is that ringing? I feel like I’ve been trampled over by a couple dozen horses.” She groans, moving her hair out of her face with her shoulder to get a better view of our new home.
“In purgatory if the stench is anything to go by.” The sulphur-tainted air that carries the scents of rotting egg and burnt matches clings to my skin like a rash, and the desire to scrub myself clean with bleach and a wire brush hits me.
I’ve spent far too many years held hostage, feeling unclean despite the hours of washing them from my body.
“Trust the process. Karma works in mysterious ways.” Positivity Princess to the rescue, I guess. If I didn’t love this girl so much, and I wasn’t hanging from the ceiling like a sacrificial lamb, I would slap this girl hard enough for her to see some sense.
“We are both currently strapped to chairs and being held hostage by a murderous psychopath. Maybe let’s not praise Karma too loudly just yet.
I don’t know about you, babes, but I feel like this whole situation is fucking me right in the arse, and not in the nice lubricated three-way scenario I’m used to. ”
The audible pop of her jaw draws my attention, and I want to swallow back my words.
“Oh my god, you had sex with them both at the same time?” She giggles wildly.
For the first time since I woke up, I’m grateful we’re tied up so she can’t clap excitedly like a performing seal as the joy of my revelation warms her cheeks.
“Seriously not the time, Megan. How about we find a way to escape, and then we can discuss my epic sex life later.”
“Sorry. Forgot where I was for a second there. I’m totally on board.” She grins wide, wincing around her split lip, one eye bruised and almost completely sealed shut. “Would it be pre-emptive to state this might not be the worst date I’ve ever been on?”
I don’t know how she’s making me laugh right now when death is so imminent, but I love her for the levity. I’m treating her to the best spa day money can buy and spilling every dirty secret of my time with the guys if we get out of this alive.
It’s the slight movement that catches my attention in my peripheral that alerts me to the fact we aren’t alone. A cloaked man sits with his back facing us, remaining silent in the shadows. The rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes evenly the only movement to note.
“What is it you want?” I snap, frustration tickling the edges of each word.
The creak of the stool as he swivels to face us is ominous as he lowers his hood. Of all the people I had thought would be sitting there, I would never have guessed it would be him.
“Mr Crane.” The surprise in Megan’s voice is echoed with the gasp that leaves my parted lips.
“Hello, ladies. Welcome,” he titters excitedly, that manic glint flashing in his cold gaze.
I’m dumfounded. Lost for words. And instead of giving us a suitable response to explain why he has us drugged and trussed up like cattle, this fucker grins wide and says, “Nice of you to visit.”
“You’re the Horseman?” My voice is small. Small enough I don’t know whether he’s heard me, until he stands to his full height and opens his arms wide. A magician presenting himself after the big reveal.
“In the flesh, my dear. I see my name precedes me.”
“You’re an evil twisted psychopath with a god complex.
I know the pay ain’t great, but personally, I would have stuck with the day job.
” I can’t help the words that fall from my lips, the shocking realisation that our teacher is a cold-blooded murderer completely severing the connection between my mouth and my brain.
“The years I spent looking for you… You were very hard to track down, Ebony. I realised I had to get you to come to me. It’s the reason why I started the scholarship.
” He puffs out his chest, proudly holding his palm across his heart as he declares, “To help students who have had traumatic beginnings find a new path with learning.”
“You should get that on a bumper sticker; it has a nice ring to it.”
“Sass me all you want, but my plan worked beautifully.”
“So you got me in, how?” I plan to keep this fucker talking until I can find a way out of these bindings. It’s that age-old ‘lull them into a false sense of security.’ How smart can one man be?
“Dean Rollins has been hitting it with rent boys in local motels since he was twenty-four; blackmail is often the simplest solution in a situation like this. I hadn’t expected him to research you.
I was kind of hoping he would just let you fly under the radar.
I had already murdered pretty Elisa Wren, so he was so scared of me outing him to his wife and the local congregation, he didn’t put the murders and me popping up together.
It’s amazing what I could get away with when I committed to the role. ”
“And Esther Worrel-Sayer, what did she do to get on your shit list?” I hadn’t realised until now, faced with their killer, that I had memorised the names of every one of his victims. Their last moments playing out in my head as I tossed and turned at night.
“She was meant to be my roommate,” Megan answers for him meekly, the deathlike pallor washing away the rosiness in her cheeks.
“That first day, you thought I was her,” I state rather than ask, remembering Megan’s confusion when I stumbled into her apartment at orientation.
“You had the same initials. Esther W. It was written on the roommate allocation sheet.”
“So why them? Why the others?”
“I was looking for the new you. You weren’t ready to be mine just yet. You had grown out of the skin of Ebony Vanvello. This was my way of honouring the new you. Ebony Winters in all her glory.”
I almost choke on air as I hear my father’s name said aloud after all these years.
“Dark hair, light eyes, curves, passion, dedication. Each of the girls had your essence, but none of them were you. Right down to their initials.”
EMMA WALKER
STELLA ‘ESTELLE’ FAYE WATERS
ERIN WRIGHT
ENID WROW-PETERS
MIMI WINTHORP
How had I missed that?
“Wait. Mimi Winthorp didn’t fit your little name game.”
“Esme Cordelia Winthorp. She was in my Intro to English Lit class last year.” Megan finds her voice, and I sort of wish she hadn’t.
Every time she shares, it feels like I’ve been wallowing in the dark alone since the moment I turned up to this damn university.
Glancing between me and our teacher, I watch as she toys with the idea to elaborate.
“You knew one of the victims?”
“I told you I didn’t like to talk about the murders; now you know why. Not to talk ill of the dead, but the girl was a massive bitch, like Grade-A sleep with your dad to win a bet bitch,”
“Did she sleep with your dad?” I press, struggling to sort through all the new information being thrown at me as the headache brutalising my frontal lobe rages on with vigour.
“Family visit week. Back before my parents decided I wasn’t worth the long haul flight.
I found them in the back of the gym locker room.
No-one should be forced to see their father in such an unnatural position.
” She visibly shudders, her restraints clanking.
“That slimy dad-shagger won my sweet sixteen corvette.”
“Family dramas aside, why didn’t you tell me?” I soften, seeing the sadness in her one good teary eye as her face dips.
“Hi, nice to meet you. I knew one of the girls who had their heads chopped off by a maniac. Please come and live in this small space with me for the next two years without a lock on your door.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” I offer, understanding only too well the need one might feel to hide the darkest parts of themselves.
“I don’t make friends easily. Those who do stick around either stab me in the back or sleep with my father,” she mumbles sadly.
I don’t press to find out if there were more friends turned dad-shaggers, as she so eloquently put it, because now doesn’t feel like the best time to delve into it.
“It didn’t look like you would have done either of those things, so I kept my mouth shut…
until now.” It’s the apology hidden beneath her revelation that guts me.
All this girl wanted was to be my friend.
“Well, they do say to repent all your sins before you die.” I chuckle uneasily. “Esme had blonde hair.” I’m clutching at straws, anything so this psycho might realise that he’s made a mistake.
“Not when she died. She was playing Desdemona in the play. She paid ￡450 for that dye job; she wouldn’t shut up about how much Daddy paid her stylist.”
“Rich and stupid are the easiest victims to manipulate; can you believe she jumped at my suggestion to dye her hair for the part?” Mr Crane chimes in. This little share circle wasn’t what I was expecting when I imagined our girly night earlier.
“I sadly can believe it. You may be crazier than a box of frogs, but you were a good teacher. Misplaced as the adoration may be, your students love you.”
He seems to preen and blush simultaneously at the compliment I hadn’t meant to give him.
“Just so we’re clear, I think you’re severely fucked in the head and the worst kind of human.
Chill the fuck out, Ed Kemper, this isn’t a bonding session,” I say in warning, gnashing my teeth together in preparation if he gets close enough.
I’d happily have a bite around in search of his jugular given half the chance.
Sick of the guilt churning in my gut at the realisation that all these girls died, and that it is indirectly my fault, I snap, “All this grandstanding, and you still haven’t told me why.
Why me? I’m no-one; I’m nothing. If you’ve read my file as close as you’ve implied, you’d know that.
So, Mr Crane, tell me…why me?” Genuine curiosity fills my voice as my brain struggles to come up with a plausible answer. It just doesn’t make sense.
“You were the one that got away,” he says simply, as though those seven little words magically explain it all.
Megan and I watch with bated breath as he saunters over to a dressing table with a Hollywood style mirror lit up with dusty bulbs.
I can see his profile as he begins to pull at his skin, tearing it away as though it’s nothing, without flinching.
Like a shedding snake being reborn. The glasses and his wig are the last parts of his disguise to go; the pieces of him that made him Mr Crane now in a neat pile on the table beside him.
The man behind all the glue and prosthetics finally revealed.
The burn scars ingrained in his flesh look red and angry. Each twisted knot of shiny skin individual in size and shape as they extend down his throat and up past his hairline. Bald spots where his mousy brown hair never grew back.
“There she is—oh how I’ve missed the fear in those beautiful grey eyes, Ebony.”
My tongue feels too big for my mouth as the fear he is admiring strangles me.
It’s impossible to hide the terror gripping my heart in a vice-like grip as I struggle to breathe.
I’d fought my demons in my nightmares; I never thought for a second that I would ever see the face of Nathaniel Turner again—yet here he is, sitting across from me, laying claim once again as though no time has passed at all.
“You…You died,” I flounder, and he just chuckles with glee in response.
“Still alive and kicking, I’m afraid. A little worse for wear after how you and your boyfriends left me barely conscious in that house, but still very much alive.
Everything was set in motion the day you stepped onto campus.
You just didn’t realise you were playing my game.
It’s amazing what bloodlust can do to invigorate a man when he has the hare set in his trap. ”
My chest swells with hatred for this man as all those years of repressed trauma come flying back to me. I swallow the ball of emotion and give him nothing else. He can torture me for an eternity; I’ll never give him that satisfaction.