51. Nobody’s Fault but Mine

51

NOBODY'S FAULT BUT MINE

LESTER

In the time I've found out that Rosemary might be alive after I thought she had been dead since 1954, I haven't done much but try to make sense of it all.

How could she be alive? I saw her die. I saw her lifeless body on the ground after all those men used her up. When I close my eyes, I can still see it so clearly. Something so horrific and heartbreaking couldn't have been my mind playing tricks on me.

But then Daisy told me what she said and I started doubting myself anyway.

After I spent years trying to find him, you just swooped in before I got the chance to make him mine .

Could it be true? Could Rosemary have somehow survived? If she did, why didn't she find me sooner? And if she spent years trying to find me, how did she connect the dots? How did she find out that I'm the Sculptor?

Maybe I shouldn't give too much attention to the latter. Because after ten years of thinking I was one of the most invincible killers in the US, an eighteen-year-old girl―who was even younger back then―somehow found out the truth about me. Let's not even mention how pathetic that is.

But if Daisy could find out, I suppose someone else could, too.

I know exactly who he is and what he did for me.

If Rosemary has been alive all this time, she probably found out that every single man that laid a hand on her ended up dead. She would have seen it for what it was―I avenged her.

There was never anything between us besides companionship, a friendship that formed out of trauma. At the end, when we were fifteen, we had not so much as kissed. Physical touch was an issue for us both, though we did plan a future together. We planned to get away from it all and start a life. Us and Landon.

But then she died. And I died.

I don't understand how this could be true, but I somehow can feel in my bones that it is. Rosemary is alive and she's coming for me. She's not the threatening copycat I thought she was, because even after all these years, I know that she would never hurt me.

She does want to hurt Daisy. She has already tried to. So she may not go after me, but she will go after my heart. Because without Daisy, my heart will die.

I stare at the ceiling as all these thoughts swirl through my mind like a tornado. My little nymph sleeps next to me, her arms wrapped around my chest with her nose in the crook of my neck. She makes little whimpers of contentment as she floats around in dreamland, and despite everything, I can't help but smile.

We've only left the house to attend Jace Moore's funeral. Besides that, we've been holed up here.

Right when I'm finally able to quiet my mind enough to fall asleep, too, the phone rings. The sound is barely audible here in the bedroom, so Daisy sleeps through it.

I softly slip out of bed and make my way downstairs to the telephone in the kitchen. Picking up, I put it against my ear. "Hello?"

"Lester," a soft voice answers.

Every hair on my body immediately stands on end and I freeze completely as my heart erratically pounds in my chest. "Rosemary?"

"I knew you would remember me."

"Fuck," I choke out. "Is it really you? You're alive?"

"It's me," is all the says back.

"Prove it. What did I use to call you when we were younger? What nickname?"

A soft chuckle rings through the receiver and I fucking recognize it. I've never forgotten her laugh, because I cherished her slight moments of happiness with all that I was. "Bunny."

I squeeze my eyes, a tear escaping me. "I can't believe it. How? What―how the fuck can this be? I saw you die."

She hums. "Not yet, Lester. I'll explain everything, but I need to take care of our problem first."

I instantly know what she's getting at, and I wish I could reach through the telephone to force her to stop. "Our problem?" I ask anyway.

"I need her gone."

My hand wraps around the telephone so hard that I could crush it into tiny fragments if I let myself. "You can't hurt her, Rosemary. I won't let you." The fingers of my free hand tangle in my hair, pulling the strands. "I fail to understand why you would even want to. What happened to you? You would just murder an innocent woman?"

"What happened to me?" A humorless laugh escapes her. "Too much to even comprehend. I don't care that she's innocent, Chipmunk. No one ever cared that I was, either. Everyone always took what they wanted from me―from the world. I'll do the same."

"What do you think is going to happen if you kill her?" I ask, my voice rough and loud as anger pours through my veins like heroin. "I can't lose her."

She huffs. "You'll have forgotten the bitch in a week. It's always been us, Lester."

"We were kids ," I grit out.

"No, we weren't. And you fucking know it. We haven't been kids since that first party where those monsters tore us to shreds."

"Fuck," I curse again. "If you go after Daisy, you're giving me no other option than to kill you. And I won't hesitate, Bunny."

"She's nothing ," she lets out on a sob, and I can hear that she's sniffling her nose. "She's just some meaningless fling. She can't love you the way I do, Lester. She could never understand what we've been through together."

"She's everything," I counter. "If you kill her, you'll kill me . Is that what you want? Do you want to destroy the last remaining piece of my soul?"

"What about my soul?" she yells. "In all those years… Goddamn you, Lester. The only way I managed to survive was because of you. Hoping that you were waiting for me."

I take a deep breath. "Meet me. Face to face, so we can talk. Meet me―"

The line gets cut off before I get the chance to give her a location. I let the conversation sink in when I'm startled by Daisy's voice. "Was that her?"

I turn, meeting her eyes from across the room. Nodding my head, I swallow desperately. "You were right. It's Rosemary." I pause, taking a deep breath. "And she's not going to stop."

She steps closer and takes me in a tight hug. "What are we going to do?"

"I need to lure her away from Desdemona Hill. From you." I smooth my hand over her hair. "I need to stage a kill, with a message only she will be able to understand. It needs to be close enough to town so it makes it to the local news."

"And I'll just stay here?" she asks, looking up at me.

"No. She'll check the house, I'm sure of it. It'd be too easy. I think I need to get you on a plane. I need you as far away as possible until she's gone."

Her face turns melancholy. "Are you going to kill her?"

"I'll have to." A throbbing pain stabs into my heart, and it feels like I'm being swallowed up whole. "She's not the Rosemary I used to know. I'm not the only one whose soul died."

We spent all night trying to come up with a plan, and when the morning came, I booked Daisy a hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. We're both in disguise as I drop her off at the gate at the Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro―me with my hair slicked back so it looks short and her with a large hat covering her brown locks, both of us wearing different clothes than usual.

I'm on high alert as I look at all the people around us, keeping an eye out for Rosemary. I'm not sure what she looks like now, even though Daisy described her to me as best she could. Every woman is a suspect.

When it's Daisy's turn to have her passport checked at the gate, I give her a passionate kiss on the lips before I pull away.

"Be safe," she says, fear in her eyes. "I love you. Call the hotel as soon as it's done, okay?"

I nod. "I love you, too, little nymph. See you soon."

Pulling away from her is harder than I ever thought it would be, but I manage to do so anyway. She disappears from view and I stay back until every single person is let through the gate.

The last few people to pass are a black lady with her husband and a blonde woman with a little child that seems to be about five years old, holding her hand as they go in.

Once the gate closes, I walk over to a large window, where I can see the plane take off. It's only until it's high up in the sky that some of the tension in my shoulders releases.

At least Daisy is safe for now and I can fully focus on luring Rosemary to where I want her.

The plan is to stage a murder in Calantha, a town in the same region as Desdemona Hill and Aurelia. The local news covers everything happening in these cities and towns, along with a few others. My hope is that Rosemary will hear about it as soon as possible.

Luna is staying with the family down the block in case Rosemary decides to break into my house. I'm not risking her getting hurt. It's all set in place as I rent a car from a rental place next to the airport, giving them a fake name and ID. I drive to Calantha with aching hands around the steering wheel and a terrible sense of dread in the pit of my stomach.

Finding out that my childhood friend is alive should have been a miracle, something to be grateful for―celebrated. It's a shame that it can't be that way, and even a bigger shame that it has escalated so badly that my only option is to kill the girl I've spent years grieving for.

It's the only option. The only way to keep Daisy safe.

I'd do anything for her. Anything to make sure that she stays alive and never once gets hurt. I've killed Dr. Beaumont because he touched her. I'll have to kill Rosemary for doing the same. There is no other way.

Even though Landon and I agreed about never staging a kill too close to home, he understood my reasoning when I told him the big lines of everything that's happened with Rosemary. It didn't take him long to provide me with a name―Nathaniel Arnoult. He's a convicted felon who is guilty of the same crimes as a lot of my other victims―child abuse and sexual exploitation.

I kill him at his secluded house close to the forest, and because he's on the sex offender registry, he has no neighbors. He's not allowed to come within a certain radius of kids, which works to my advantage.

I don't take as much time to sculpt and carve into the corpse as I usually do because of my limited time, and frankly, I don't even feel the need for it right now. I do give his corpse enough characteristics of the Sculptor, because it has to be clear that it was me.

Stripping his clothes off his body, I skin the upper side of his arms and pierce hooks through the thick flaps of skin to hang him from. The hooks are attached to strong, bright red ropes, which I tie around the sturdy tree branches above us.

Once all that is done, I grab my knife and glide the sharp tip across his chest, carving letters into his still-warm flesh. Blood instantly leaks out of the cuts, painting his caramel skin in red.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Bunny, come to Chipmunk.

Only Rosemary would know that it's meant for her. It's from a song we used to sing when we were little, and she once told me that she would rather be eaten by real wolves instead of spending one more night with the men who hurt us.

I know that when she gets word of the message, she'll come here.

Making my way back to the rental, I drive it back to the airport and change into my own car after stopping at a phone booth to call in the murder. All in all, it will take the cops at least all night to investigate and it won't be till the morning that the press will know about it and make a report on the news.

All I can do now is wait. I'll drive back there tomorrow to wait for Rosemary.

By the time I get home, I still have so much adrenaline flowing through my veins that I know sleep is probably not going to happen for me tonight. I need to try, though, because I need to be sharp when I come face to face with Rosemary.

I dispose of my keys on the little table next to the front door and walk to the kitchen for a glass of water. It's there that I find something on the kitchen island.

"No," I choke out. "No!"

My plan was to lure Rosemary to me, but it seems that she has beaten me to the punch. My mask from my 1972 kill lies flat on the table, the hollow eyes staring up at me. I grab it and turn it around, finding a message carved into the wooden material.

Chipmunk, you know where to find us.