“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 turneddad-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, EdKemper, 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 terrorgripping 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.
CHAPTER FORTY
EBONY
“How proudly you wear your warrior wound,” he hisses, spittle hitting my cheek as I recoil from his touch - the calloused pad of his thumb dragging harshly over the scar across my cheekbone. It was his show of dominance and his sick depraved notions of love that spilt my skin that day when I had decided enough was enough - when I finally listened to the little voice in my head, that told me I deserved more than the cage he had kept me in. He had dangled an unobtainable freedom in front of my face for too long, expecting me to just bow down and take it, hoping I wouldnt see the true monster that lived beneath his surface.
I found my strength, recognising what true love was when I sought out the brothers for the comfort I needed. My ‘warrior wound’ as Caleb had called it when he stiched me up, the sentiment he had also used the night they hadheld me in my dorm room. It was the match that lit the fire all those years ago, the push I needed to get our plan in motion. They swore they would go to any lengths to protect me. They didn’t hesitate to keep that promise.
Nathaniel Turner has been watching us all this time.
“I have waited so long for this moment.”
I would give anything to smack that smug smile off his face right now. “So, what was the plan? We’d live happily ever after, or do you want to chop my head off too?” I snarl with a chuckle that masks the unease clawing at my insides.
‘Goading the psycho feels like a bad move—if you were wondering what my opinion was on the matter.’
