“Need to clear the room,” he answers. “It’s my job. Please step back.”
Not wanting to be at the wrong end of his gun if it accidentally goes off, I do as instructed. It’s what I do after all, listen, obey, and be subservient. Father has made it crystal clear that men are the generals and women are their soldiers.
I stay out of his path as he marches into the room of horrors—as I appropriately dubbed it. There’s a lot of screaming and begging from his friends when they visit and when I have to go in and clean it up, it always looks like a crime scene. Lots of blood coat these walls, even after I’ve bleached them and scrubbed until my fingers are raw. I know the evidence of what Father’s done to them is still there.
Like I’ve said, I’m not dumb and am observant. I know Father’s a bad man who’s done some terrible things to the women he’s brought home, but I have not seen what those are because he keeps what he does to them locked behind closed doors.
I hear the chains rattle and furniture being rearranged as he rummages through the room. Everything must be put back into its place before Father gets home or I’ll be denied food—again.
Fear of starvation swamps me and I shout, “Put things back where you found them!”
“Why? What happens if I don’t?” He’s asking things that he shouldn’t know to ask.
Does he know what’ll happen to me if that room isn’t in its prior condition?
Everything has a specific place! Father has mapped out that room to precision, he knows if something is even a quarter inch out of line.
Sister begins sobbing, choking on her spit. “Do what she says! Please.”
When the sounds of furniture being dragged across the linoleum floor hits my ears, my heart sinks into my chest. I’m going to have to go back in after he leaves and reorganize everything. He’s making my job much harder than it needs to be. He could look at things without touching them. Have I been that irrational with him that he wants to see me punished?
“Everything is back where it belongs,” he calls out. “Could you come in here and tell me what you can about what goes on in here?”
Biting my bottom lip, I steel my shoulders and go inside the room that makes me want to cry. What nobody but me and Two knows is that this is the chamber of death. I’ve never seen a person leave here alive unless Father takes them for a drive. Where they go, I don’t know for sure, but what Idoknow is that we never see them again. So whereas I have my suspicions about what happens to them when they leave this room, I’ve never asked any questions that could have me going for a ride in Father’s car myself.
Like a good little girl, I stay dutiful and keep my lips tightly sealed. We don’t know if this man belongs to Father and is here to test us or not. Without that confirmation, my plan is to stay true to that tradition.
I will not speak.
CHAPTER
NINE
NOVA
The girls haven’t yet grasped the concept that they won’t be staying here—it’s a crime scene. Upstairs didn’t hold any clues about his victims, but I’m convinced that I’ll find a plethora of it down here in the dugout basement. Not many homes in Texas have cellars of any kind, it has something to do with the red dirt and the fact that it doesn’t pack right to construct them—it’s crumbly and unforgiving. The ones that do have them aren’t officially reported because they’re frowned upon by the building inspectors who are known to condemn them because they can fall in on themselves and turn into nothing but rubble.
I shake my head and clear that thought because right now, how he managed to keep this level from being discovered by the state doesn’t matter. What does is the fact that there are more victims out there that we haven’t uncovered seeing as these girls are in their late teens or early twenties. How long has this piece of shit been kidnapping and murdering women? And why has nobody seen the signs or connected the missing person reports?
When the oldest of the two comes in, dragging her feet, her face is stoic and she has her lips tucked in between her teeth. Me moving furniture around must’ve triggered her, and I need tofigure out how to get through to her, because if not, Stella could pay the price for it. There’s been enough death at their father’s hands and his reign of terror needs to come to a stop. The only way that can happen is if his daughters cooperate with me.
Saying what she perceives as her name makes me sick to my stomach, but I do it anyway because I need her to stay focused on me and what I have to tell her. “Girl One, what do you know about your father?”
She sends me the evil eye, but outside of that, she says nothing.
“Alright, if that’s the game you want to play, I’ll do all of the talking.” She still doesn’t say anything, not even a hum escapes her lips in response. It’s frustrating, but in a way, I get it. She hasn’t yet seen the light, but when I finish talking, she will. She’s fixing to get one helluva wakeup call. “You may already suspect this, but your father is a serial killer.”
“What’s that?” Girl Two peers around the corner, staying far enough back that she isn’t in the room, but we can see and hear her.
“A serial killer?” I ask for clarification.
“Yes,” she sheepishly answers, biting her bottom lip.
Internally sighing, I try to come up with a rational explanation that’s easily understood, because whereas these girls are smart as a whip and digest things they see and hear, they are ignorant when it comes to things you learn while roaming the streets. My instincts screaming at me that they’d rather read the definition straight from the internet, I pull out my phone and look the term up. When I find one on Wikipedia, and scan over it, I’m satisfied that the words they use are clear and easy to interpret.
Girl One audibly reads it out loud to her sister.“A serial killer, also called a serial murderer, is an individual who murders three or more people, with the killings taking place over a period of more than one month in three or more separate events. Their psychological gratification is the motivation for the killings, and many serial murders involve sexual contact with the victims at different points during the murder process. The Federal Bureau of Investigation states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, attention seeking, and financial gain, and killings may be executed as such. The victims tend to have things in common, such as demographic profile, appearance, gender, or race. As a group, serial killers suffer from a variety of personality disorders. They are often not adjudicated as insane under the law. Although a serial killer is a distinct classification that differs from that of a mass murderer, spree killer, or contract killer, there are overlaps between them.”
“That’s what you think our father is?” Girl Two asks, her face gaunt with sadness. “I don’t know what all those words mean, but I’m getting the picture that it isn’t anything good.”
