Chapter 7

7

Voss

Nola Tensley is a twenty-eight-year-old single mother, whose husband was murdered in what was deemed to be a drug-related incident. Though, aside from some meth-head they picked up nearby, they really didn’t nail down too many suspects. Nola Tensley graduated top of her class and was accepted to a number of universities, all of which she rejected—likely due to pregnancy at a young age, I guess. She’s a long time waitress at Duli’s Diner, and dabbles in ceramics as a side gig.

Nola Tensley is also fucking delectable—a potential distraction I didn’t anticipate when I first stumbled upon her ad for a renter. With brown hair and those chestnut colored eyes Carl apparently wants to add to his hobby room of horrors, she’s not at all what I expected. A little spitfire who stirred my blood the moment I saw her in that too-tight T-shirt.

I toss her file onto the worn-down coffee table in front of me. The paisley patterned couch beneath me is surprisingly intact, and doesn’t smell particularly old and moldy, like the rest of the place. The outdated décor may lack the luxuries and technology I’ve grown accustomed to, but I wouldn’t have passed it up for anything. It’s here that I’ll track down and find what I’m looking for.

And so long as Nola Tensley minds her own business, I’ll not pose any threat to her, or her son. I’ve killed for lesser infractions than going through my things, and I won’t hesitate to guard that identity with my life.

After all, I’ve spent a lifetime in both the military and working for The Gallows, keeping below the radar, concealing my true identity. As far as the world is concerned, Rhett Voss is a highly successful stock trader in New York, visiting Chicago on temporary business.

I asked Jackson to find as much information on the woman as he could possibly gather—a request he was happy to oblige in, in order to keep me from hunting him down after fucking up my last job. Turns out, though, there isn’t a whole lot on the woman, and her file came back surprisingly thin. Of course, Jackson hasn’t always been the most thorough at gathering information, which will leave me to do some of the work on my own. Mostly, I like to know what I’m dealing with when it comes to the people I encounter, even if its not all business.

Unlike half the women her age, who’ve already bled the majority of their lives into social media, Nola hasn’t logged into her Facebook account in a year, nor is she listed in the White Pages online. No speeding tickets, or overdue library fines to speak of. Not even those annoying public records sites that claim to possess all I want to know about Nola Tensley have her shit right.

She’s kept herself off the radar, too.

Progress notes from Insight Outpatient Psychiatry, the only source of information available on her, lay strewn over the table, detailing Nola’s six consecutive sessions with her psychiatrist. Nothing more than breadcrumbs of information she was willing to divulge, during her appointments, that don’t add up to much of a picture about the woman. I’m left knowing very little about her, including why she stopped seeing her psychiatrist a few months back, and why she wakes up from nightmares every night. Doesn’t make much sense that she’d step outside of her airtight little box to allow a total stranger into her carefully guarded world, but I’m guessing her need for cash outweighs her desire to remain unnoticed.

Most times, Jackson’s findings are sufficient enough for me to piece together the missing parts, but all his research has done is leave me with more curiosity about the woman. Unfortunately, she’s not the only reason I’m here.

The chime of my cellphone draws my attention to a message notification on the screen. I open it to the same encrypted address as before.

If you wish to play, follow the link to your first clue. Doing so will trigger release of the funds into your account.

He can’t be foolish enough to think clicking on the link will provide access to my IP address, unless he believes I’m a total idiot. I click on the link as instructed, which opens to a blank page. An image begins to load, slow and tediously, as if the file is too large. It’s a picture of my mother, who must’ve been eighteen at the time, given the youth of her eyes. A cloth is draped over her shoulder, where she sits on a crushed red velvet couch that I remember from childhood, and my tiny feet are sticking out of the right side of the cloth as she breastfeeds me. It’s a photo I recognize from the thick album of baby pictures she kept in the closet. As the picture loads from the top down, more details come through in remarkable clarity. The wallpaper behind her, covered in cowboys and stagecoaches, that I used to stare at during long hours of punishment.

Frowning, I stare back at the screen, trying to tease the ways a baby picture might be a clue.

And?I type back to him.

Eyes collect the truth that the mind chooses not to see.

I click on the photograph again, realizing there’s something in it I’m just not picking up. Everything is as I remember in the photograph. The walls. The coffee table that always held magazines and the TV Guide. The couch. My mother. Me. That’s it. Zooming in on each detail fails to reveal anything out of the ordinary.

I refuse to let him believe he’s stumped me on the first clue, so, for now, I click out of the image and resign myself to come back to it again later.

Tell me what happens in three weeks.

I win the game.

How?

You see? You remember how to play this one. You die a relatively benign death. Afterward, I watch you sink to the bottom of the river.

There was a time threats like that would scare the absolute shit out of me. Back when he was so much bigger than me and my world was so much smaller. I’ve seen too much death since, to be rattled by his words. Gruesome demises that make me wonder just how different the two of us really are.

Funny, I say in response. It was you I watched sink the last time we played.

His lack of reply tells me I’ve pissed him off. Last thing an egotistical psychopath like him wants to hear about is how the weak and gangly kid he inherited grew up to be a worthy opponent. The thought puts a smile on my face as I swipe out of my messages, giving one last mental tease of the image he sent to me.

Carl works in puzzles starting from the middle. He doesn’t frame the image in a way that’s helpful, or obvious, and I can only imagine the answer will hit me at some random moment, so no point dwelling on one piece when I have an entire jigsaw to figure out in the next few weeks.

It’s a shame police aren’t smart enough to track him down, but I suppose that’s what makes him such a formidable rival, what sends a jolt of excitement through my veins. He doesn’t make himself an easy kill.

I gather the file into a pile and dump Nola’s medical records into my briefcase, then lock it up and slide it beneath the coffee table.

Inside the fridge are three days of meals that I ordered from a chef in New York who prepares clean, organic foods. It’s enough until I find a suitable replacement here, or do the cooking myself. I eat a goat cheese and prosciutto sandwich with the basil pesto included in a small side cup, before I head out to the one place I’ve avoided since the night I escaped seventeen years ago.

The house where I grew up.

* * *

The dilapidated fascia board dangles from the massive roof, slamming against the worn-down, chipped brick of the home, whose interior walls kept me imprisoned most of my teenage years. The Jansen estate was something of a landmark, years before my grandfather took over, having inherited it from his father, who made a fortune in the meatpacking business. The once-stately tudor mansion might’ve belonged to me after my grandfather died, if he hadn’t been such a selfish, greedy prick. Instead, millions of dollars went to the state, and the property went to shit, it seems.

The surrounding neighborhood is quiet and dark, not as active these days, judging by the unkempt yards and rotted exteriors that haven’t been properly maintained for the kind of money these houses boast.

Beyond the busted iron gate, I flick my cigarette away and make my way up the cracked driveway, over the weeds sticking up from the slivers in the concrete. High gables slice up toward the night sky, through the looming canopy of a nearby beech tree, like two silent opponents fallen into an eternal rest.

Place is still creepy as shit after all these years.

The kids had a rhyme they used to sing about it after my mom died here. Something about the monsters inside pulling you in, never to be seen again.

I’m pretty sure they had no clue my mom died, as my grandfather only reported her as missing to police, and so began the rumor that she was placed in a mental institution, to coincide with their cute little songs about the house.

The times I went to school, I got teased relentlessly about how she lost it after I was born. “One look at your ugly face, and she went bonkers,” they said. If only it had been that simple. I’d have preferred that end, in lieu of her suffering.

If only they knew the truth was far worse than what they imagined.

Lies are so much easier, though. Not as cold and bitter. Terrifying. Lies don’t slither down your throat, into your belly, eating you from the inside out, the way the truth does. Instead, they remain at the tip of the tongue, loaded and ready spew at the first police officer who asks what really happened that night.

I didn’t tell them what I witnessed, for fear my grandfather would see to it that I became the next victim buried in the woods behind the property.

The screen door, half-cocked on its hinges, creaks when I open it with steady hands. Sometimes, I wish my pulse would race, that my body would tremble at the thought of facing so many horrific memories. At least then I’d feel human. When a man has lived his entire life as a monster, though, nothing really scares him anymore. Not even the darkest demons from his past.

The open, empty parlor beyond the front door stirs my blood like ghosts rousing from dormancy to greet me. I can damn near taste the copper on my tongue, as I move deeper into the house, the stench of death still clinging to the air. Moonlight casts lines on the wooden floors, cutting through the metal bars across the windows. Security bars, thought to keep intruders from getting it, but I knew better, even back then. They were placed there to keep anyone inside from getting out.

The kitchen stands equally empty, its cupboards open with broken panels, which suggest it’s been raided at one time. I’m not sure what happened to the sparse furniture that once decorated the shithole, but it’s gone, including my mother’s upright piano—the only thing I regret leaving behind.

I’m surprised the place still stands after all these years. I’d have thought the neighbors would’ve burned it down, with all the negative gossip surrounding it.

Down the hall stands a closet, one I remember more intimately than I care to. A faded brass knob squeals with a slow turn, and I peel back the first layer of my fucked up childhood.

Pressure beats inside my skull, into my sinuses, like a water balloon about to pop. Everything is black, and the thin twine of rope bites into my wrists, dangling over my head. On the other side of the door, Carl keeps count. Six hundred twenty-three, six hundred twenty-four, six hundred twenty-five … My punishment for tattling about the dead cat in the shed is three thousand seconds upside down in the closet, blindfolded with my hands tied.

I hate when my mother leaves me home alone with him. I dread the nights she ventures into the city with grandfather until late, and I become Carl’s little guinea pig.

Six hundred thirty-nine, six hundred forty … he keeps on, ticking off the seconds of my life that don’t matter to him. Everyone says there’s something wrong with him, but Mother doesn’t care. He’s her baby brother, but only a few years older than me, which means I know more than my mom about what he does when no one else is around. How he skinned that cat alive and burned it with grandpa’s blowtorch. I can still hear it screaming inside my head, even now, over the irritating sound of Carl’s counting.

I only hope grandfather doesn’t come home soon, because if he finds me this way, he’ll beat Carl, which will only mean more torture for me the next time mother leaves. Carl’s afraid of grandfather. I am, too, the way he smacks my mom around. Makes me wish I was bigger, so I could punch him right into the wall. I’d punch Carl, too, since he tells me someday he’s going to kill all of us and burn the house down.

Not if I kill him first.

On the top shelf sits the old, dust-coated album, filled with the only baby pictures my mother ever took of me. Some nights, they were my bedtime stories, and she’d sit flipping through them, telling me stories behind each one. Her favorite was the Navy picture of my dad, who apparently died during one of his tours overseas. She told me of the letters she wrote to him, and continued to write even after he died, detailing my childhood milestones. She kept them tucked away in a shoebox, until my grandfather found them and tossed them into a burn barrel out back. I remember her sobbing over the small bits of ash and embers, cursing her own father for destroying her life.

Halfway through the book, I pause at the place where the image of my mother sitting on the crushed velvet couch should be. In its place is a pack of matches for a motel up on Kedzie that I slide out of the yellowing plastic sheath. Flipping it open reveals a number—room number, at a guess—and I tuck the matches into my back pocket.

Clue Number 1.

I should leave at this point, but the door at the end of the hallway taunts me to open it.

Don’t leave me here, a soft voice chimes in my ear, and I feel the first chill wind down my spine.

Album tucked beneath my arm, I stride toward it, the view flipping before my eyes, from the ruined and peeling paint, to the smooth dark brown that almost looked like a void there when I was a kid.

I can hear Carl’s record player, Master of Puppets by Metallica, one of his favorites that he only played when grandfather wasn’t around.

I keep my eyes on the door, praying he doesn’t catch me before I reach it. Turning the knob opens the void to the staircase that leads to the cellar of the house. I click my flashlight on, letting the arc of light slice through the darkness below, and close the door behind me as I begin my descent. Only Carl ever ventures down here, guarding the cellar as if he’s got the secrets to the universe locked away. Grandfather doesn’t bother with the stairs since his knees have gone out on him. Not like anyone in this house would call for help, if he happened to fall down the staircase.

The air is colder, musty and thick with the scent of rot. My breaths arrive faster, sucking it into my lungs, as I fear what lies on the other side of the concrete wall ahead of me. With careful steps, I approach, but pause at a clinking sound, before rounding the wall brings me to a dark open pantry, where grandpa used to store his paint and tools.

Mostly empty shelves line the walls, and I scan the flashlight down to a silver bowl on the floor to the left of me, filled with water. Like a dog’s bowl. The concrete around it’s wet. My heart pounds inside my chest, more so when I lift my flashlight to the face of a girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, judging by her size. She’s propped against the wall, wearing what looks like my dead mother’s favorite dress. Over her eyes is a black blindfold, and I watch as her lip quivers, as though she might cry.

“Who are you?” I whisper in the darkness.

“Please. I want to go home. Please, let me go home.”

Whoever she is, she doesn’t deserve to be kept down here like some kind of animal “Sure. Just … follow me.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll remove your blindfold.”

“It’s not just my blindfold.”

It’s then I notice her arms resting at her side and her legs twisted oddly beneath her. “Are they broken?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t move them, though.” Her lip quivers beneath the blindfold. “I think … I think he gave me some kind of … drug, or something.”

I edge closer until crouching in front of her, and her trembling heightens. A small streak of red peeks out from the blindfold, and when I attempt to lift it from her eyes, she flinches, turning her head away.

“It’s okay. I’m just going to remove it.”

Head still wobbly, she turns back toward me, and I lift it up over her cheekbones to reveal a slice across her eye that’s red and bloodshot, making her pupils wide and evil-looking.

Dropping the flashlight to the floor, I kick back away from her, watching her fall onto her shoulder.

“Please! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

Eyes squinting, I peer around the empty room where I found the girl. All that remains are scattered water stains on the wall, and that lingering scent of mold. My flashlight scans over the windows, still blackened by the cloth Carl used to block out the view, tattered and hardly clinging to the glass anymore.

I didn’t even know the girls name, or how she ended up in the cellar. All I knew at the time was how sadistic my uncle had become, and how his therapists had grossly underestimated his level of fucked-upness.

A thump overhead steels my muscles, and I set my hand on the gun at my hip, listening to what sounds like movement on the first floor. I make my way back up the staircase, stepping light to avoid any sounds. Flicking off the flashlight, I tuck it into my pocket and stalk down the hallway, letting my Glock lead the way.

Adrenaline moves through me in waves at the thought of coming face to face with Carl again. I’ve damn near fantasized about this moment.

Stopping at the closet door, I peek around the corner to the kitchen, which sits approximately above where I stood in the cellar.

Empty.

Something brushes against my leg, and I aim my gun to the floor, but steady myself when a black mass scampers behind me. I reach down and lift a small, black kitten from between my feet.

“Where’d you come from?” I mutter over its soft meowing. Thing looks like it hasn’t eaten in a few days with its bones poking through patchy black fur. No tag, or collar, or anything. I set it back down on the floor and shove my gun back into its holster, with the photo album still tucked beneath my arm.

A pinprick needles my shin as the cat claws up my trousers.

“Hey, hey.” I detach him from my pants to keep him from snagging the fabric, and the little bastard just meows back at me, as I dangle him in front of my face. “I don’t have any food for you. You’re gonna have to wait for the next sucker who walks through the door.”

I pause at my words. The next sucker could be a psychotic prick, and if that’s the case, hunger will be the least of this cat’s worries. Last time I picked up a stray and brought it home, the thing was sacrificed and skewered, with its eyeballs bobbing in a jar as a memento.

“All right, here’s the deal. I feed you. I bathe you. And tomorrow morning, I’m letting you go. Got it?”

The cat meows again, still dangling by its scruff.

“Fucking bleeding hearts.” I exit the house, suddenly remembering the Audi’s upholstery, and stare down at the cat. “You put one hole in my leather seats, cat, and I’ll put one hole in your head.”