Page 13

5

DISPLAY

YARA

Iwant to give up.

If you give up now, he will win. He can’t win. Kat sounded furious. You know he can’t.

She was right. He would win if I let this break me. I wouldn’t give him that power. I steeled my heart; I nailed the remnants of sadness inside a box. It would stay right there until I had my hands around him.

“What should we do with…”

“We have to display her. I can’t burn or bury her,” I whispered. “That’s what the Strangler would want, but I need professional tools. It’ll be much easier for me to conduct a proper autopsy and forensic tests if she’s found by the cops.”

Calm and steady. My voice was strange even to myself.

“We need a letter then,” Ryden said as he studied Sister Serena. “But this… will make the cops question.”

“We would use the letter to send him a message this time. I’m going to write him a love letter,” I said with a smile.

“Go. I’ll take care of this.”

When I returned with the finished letter tied with the ribbon the Strangler had left behind, Ryden was almost done cleaning the blood from the garage.

“I’m sorry, Sister Serena. I will find him and hurt him, for you, for Kat and the others.”

Sister Serena would tell you to forget vengeance and settle with Ryden and two girls.

I winced. The world we lived in was too broken to bring innocent girls into. I was too broken for that.

We carefully wrapped Sister Serena in a plastic tarp before driving toward Palmer Park. The trees grew thicker around us as we drove, closing in on the road until we were swallowed by the woods.

“If I could just hide her… I would. I would hide her from myself, from this spectacle,” I said as we stopped in front of the park. The place was almost dark now, and empty. We sat her on a wooden bench under a hickory tree.

My stomach felt heavy as I took one last look at her.

“I wish… this isn’t how you had to go,” I whispered as Ryden posed Sister Serena just the way the Strangler did, with a bunch of red roses between her palms.

Sister Serena smiled.

“Darkness begets darkness. Don’t let your anger lead you down a misguided path, my child.”

I stumbled back.

It was too late to go back. My darkness was too big, too monstrous to run from. It was the only thing that kept me going. Without the darkness, I would have exploded in the light.

Ryden looked around, scanning the surroundings for one last time. When he was satisfied we hadn’t left any evidence that would lead back to us, he pulled back, motioning me to the car.

“Let’s go, love.”

“I hate it,” I whispered as he took my hand in his.

“I do too, but we have no other choice,” he said.

We walked toward our car. I stopped. I looked back at Sister Serena for one last time.

This game had gone too far, but the only way we could finish this was playing along with him, and showing the Strangler that he didn’t have the upper hand, that he didn’t break Ryden and me, that his little stunt made us even stronger.