Chapter Fifty-Seven

Despite the dim light, Garcia could clearly see the two people to the left of where Russell was standing. They were both sitting down, both in wheelchairs… just like Garcia was, but neither of them seemed to be tied down to their chairs. They were just sitting there, quietly observing what was happening in the room.

‘What the fuck?' Those words rode on a deflated breath.

Garcia was staring back at a man and a woman. Both of them appeared to be somewhere in their eighties, but Garcia could easily be wrong. It was impossible to tell for sure because they both looked almost mummified. Their scaly skin clung oddly to whatever flesh they still had left on their bodies. Their faces looked sunk-in and ghostly white, as if they hadn't seen the sun in years. There were odd scratches all around their almost cloudy eyes, and the stare in them seemed completely lost… catatonic, even. Their lips were cracked, their fingernails were broken, their skeletal-looking hands were covered in liver spots, and their teeth and gums were dark… possibly rotting. The man had already lost all of his hair and the skin on his head was blotchy and flaky. The woman wasn't doing much better, with only a few unraveled strands left on her head.

As the dim ceiling spotlight shone down on them, they blinked a couple of times. The man winced once, as if the light hurt his eyes. These two clearly weren't Russell's accomplices, like Hunter and Garcia had suspected… they were his victims.

‘Let me introduce you to my mom and dad,' Russell said, gesturing at the old couple.

Garcia's gaze shot to him, followed by a long moment of hesitation.

‘These… are your parents?' he asked, eyes wide, brow furrowed.

‘One and the same,' Russell said in reply. ‘You can thank them if you like.'

Garcia's expression gave away his confusion.

‘A moment ago you called me a monstrous sonofabitch,' Russell explained, as he shrugged. ‘Well, everything I am… everything I became, I owe it to them. They created me.' He smiled at the old couple. ‘And I do mean created.' He started to slowly unbutton his shirt.

Garcia wasn't quite sure of what was really happening right then.

‘Do you actually have any kids, Detective?' Russell asked.

‘No, I don't.'

‘But you understand the premise of being a parent, right?' Russell didn't wait for a reply. ‘As they say, it's supposed to be a labor of love. Your parents bring you into this crazy fucking world and they are supposed to be the first people you come into contact with… your first experience with another human life on this planet. They are the ones who are supposed to bring you up and care for you… the ones by whose side you are supposed to feel safe, protected from harm… the ones who are supposed to be there for you… to support and defend you, regardless.' He undid the last button on his shirt. ‘In essence, you're a part of them… an extension of who they are. You share the same flesh… the same DNA… the same blood. Family. That sacred word that's supposed to mean so much.'

His stare moved back to Garcia and Garcia could swear that he saw fire burn in his eyes.

‘They're supposed to love you unconditionally.' Russell stepped into the light so Garcia could better see him. ‘Well… let me show you how much my parents loved their only child, Detective. How much the word "family" meant to them.' He took off his shirt, allowing it to drop to the floor.

Garcia's eyes widened, as his jaw dropped open. It was hard to make sense of what he was looking at.

It looked as if Russell was made of scars – thick, ugly, leathery scars that covered most of his torso – from the base of his neck, down to his lower abdomen: small scars, large scars, scars over scars, scars crisscrossing scars. His body was a tapestry of cruelty. Some of them – the larger ones – had been stitched up, as the stitch scars were clearly visible, but it was easy to see that the stitches had been crudely applied by an amateur. There was no symmetry in them, no precision… just a crude ‘this will do' kind of job. Under his belly-button, Garcia could see what looked like cigarette-burn scars, and his right nipple seemed to be missing. In its place, all that Garcia could see was a leathery and corrugated patch of skin, clearly scorched by fire.

Russell turned around so that Garcia could see his back.

‘Jesus fucking Christ!'

More scars – tens of them. Just above his hips, two of the scars dipped into his flesh, almost like bullet wounds, but not as deep.

Russell indicated his torso. ‘Three of my ribs have been fractured.' He lifted his left hand. ‘Two of my fingers broken.' He pointed to his feet. ‘As well as four of my toes.' He pointed to his left ear. ‘A punctured eardrum and a fractured orbital bone.' He bent down to pick up his shirt. ‘No, I was never in the military and I've never been to war. My war was fought in here.' He broadly gestured at the house. ‘And in here.' He pointed to his head. ‘I was beat up, almost every day, from a very early age. I can't actually remember when it all started, but I was still a little boy – all the way to the age of eighteen.' Russell began re-buttoning his shirt. ‘I wasn't allowed to have any friends. I wasn't allowed to go out. If I ever did anything that they didn't agree with – spoke without being spoken to first… had a drink of water without having their permission… fell asleep at the table because they never allowed me to sleep more than six hours per night – anything I did that they didn't agree with, was a reason for a beating. Discipline, they called it. Any situation, no matter how gentle, no matter how innocent – a different tone of voice, a smile that they thought to be out of context – could trigger a rage attack that I could never understand. And there was no escaping from them. I tried at first. I would run and hide – under the bed… behind the sofa… inside a cupboard…' He shook his head, as he remembered. ‘I would pray that monsters that hid under beds really did exist, and that they would take me instead of me having to face another beating.'

Garcia had also been an only child, but he couldn't even begin to envisage what Russell's childhood would've been like. Just a little boy, locked inside a horror house, bursting with anxiety and absolutely petrified of both of his parents. A kid forced to keep all his fears, all his pain, locked inside because he had no one to tell… no one who would listen.

Russell turned to face his parents before continuing.

‘And that was how I learned that monsters – the ones that can really hurt you – do exist.' His tone was so placid, it sounded like he was reading a story out of a children's book. ‘But they aren't shadows lurking behind your clothes, at the back of the wardrobe. They don't hide under beds, or in cupboards, or in the woods. They don't spring out of your nightmares, and they don't only come out at night. No. Real monsters – the ones that can really hurt you… the ones that can truly scare you – are a lot closer than we think. They're all around us. And in my case, those monsters turned out to be the very same people I came to call "Mom" and "Dad".'

No reaction from Russell's parents.

He turned to face Garcia again. ‘As a little boy, I was only hand-spanked, but it soon moved to belts, wooden sticks, shoes.' He shrugged. ‘As I grew older, the beatings got more severe – whips, chains, wire cords… anything that could break skin and create another beautiful scar, as if they were sculpting me to look like this. So if you're wondering, Detective, yes, I already looked like a freakshow by the age of eighteen. Every time my parents left the house, they would lock me down here… chained to a wall. Sometimes I'd be here for days.'

There was so much pain in Russell's words that even Garcia got goosebumps, but he wasn't surprised. He understood that we, as human beings, begin developing our personalities at a very early age – while we are still babies, actually… before real memories are formed – and that personality is heavily influenced and shaped by our relationships with others… the people closest to us: namely, our parents. In Russell's case, from what Garcia had heard, that would've been a total catastrophe from the get-go. The psychological devastation that he received as a child clearly manifested itself as severe trauma in his adult life. In short – if a person grows up surrounded by monsters, there's nothing else that that person can turn out to be, but a monster.

‘But all that ended when I turned eighteen,' Russell continued, a smirk finding its way to his lips. ‘That was when, for all intents and purposes, my parents passed away, conveniently leaving me this house, complete with my dad's secret cellar.'

So that's where we are,Garcia thought. Locked inside the cellar under Russell's house.

As Russell mentioned the passing of his parents, Garcia saw the lady in the wheelchair, Russell's mother, turn her head to look at him. If Garcia had seen fire burn inside Russell's eyes just a moment ago, in hers, he saw nothing but pure, unadulterated sadness. His father, on the other hand, didn't move a muscle.

‘So,' Russell continued. ‘Like I've said, they created me… they made me the person I am today. So if you think I'm a monster, Detective, you can thank them for that, because I am a made monster. I am the monster they created.' He spread his arms wide – crucified position – and turned to face his parents. ‘Aren't you proud of me, Mom and Dad? Aren't you proud of your son? Wasn't this what you wanted me to become? Like father, like son, hey, Dad?'

Russell's mother looked away from her son, her stare settling back on Garcia.

Russell breathed out and walked back to the table of instruments. ‘It was a good thing that my dad had his own business and worked from home. My mother never worked a day in her life. She'd always been a lazy bitch.'

No reaction from Russell's mother.

‘Neither of them ever had many friends, so the story of their death wasn't that hard to weave.'

‘You've kept your parents alive,' Garcia asked, ‘and locked in your cellar since you were eighteen years old?'

‘Seventeen years.' Russell practically sang that last word.

‘Holy shit!' Garcia whispered. It was impossible to comprehend the amount of anger, the dedication that it took to keep your own parents as prisoners for seventeen years. This was the kind of hatred that just wouldn't dissipate, no matter how much time had passed. This was the kind of hatred that left no room for remorse, no room for mercy, no room for regrets. Russell was thirty-five years old and it seemed that he'd never – not even once in his life – experienced love… from anyone. If his body showed that many scars, there was no telling how truly fractured his mind really was.

Coming from his right, Garcia heard the woman in the animal cage cough a breath. She too had been listening to Russell's accounts, as if they were attending another support-group meeting.

‘Hold on, Detective.' Russell lifted his hands. ‘I'm not that cruel, if that's what you're thinking. I've kept them locked in here, yes, but I've never once touched them. I've never hit my father, or my mother. After all, they're my family. And family is sacred, remember?'

A bead of sweat pearled on the back of Garcia's neck before slipping down along his spine.

‘At first, I thought I would,' Russell revealed. ‘Physically hurt them, that is. I thought that when I finally got them down here, I'd chain them to the walls, like they did to me, and beat the shit out of them. Make them pay for every little scar they gave me… every nightmare that haunts me… every tear I cried… every lost day of my life.' He paused, his gaze distant, clearly taking him back to years ago. ‘It took me years to build up the courage to finally do something. I used to be so terrified of them, so scared of fighting back, that there was a time when I believed that I would never be able to break free… I would never get out of this house.' The pause came with a smile. ‘But I did that night. The night before my eighteenth birthday.' Russell turned to face his parents. ‘Do you remember that night?'

Once again, there was no reply from Russell's mother, but Garcia saw tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

‘They always had a drink before going to bed,' Russell explained. ‘So it was easy… a lot easier than I had imagined. Just a few drops in each glass and that was it. When they fell asleep, I dragged them down here and chained them to the walls, but when it came to hurting them… I lost my nerve. I just couldn't do it. They were still my father and mother.' Russell took a breathing pause. ‘So instead of hurting them, I went out. I just wanted to get out of this house… out of the hell that I had lived in for so long. I walked for hours, until the sun came up. In the morning, I sat in a park somewhere and just watched people walk by, not knowing what the hell I would do… trying to dig deep inside myself to find something… some hope, maybe. Hope that things would get better. Hope that I wasn't too fucked up already.' Russell shrugged. ‘But there was no hope inside of me. There was no love, no compassion… no feelings at all. All I really had locked inside was sadness and what I was given by my parents. The one true thing that I found down in this cellar. Do you know what that is, Detective?'

‘Anger?' Garcia ventured.

‘Darkness,' Russell corrected him. ‘All I could find inside of me was darkness. A darkness so deep that I felt like I was drowning in it. So, on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, sitting alone in that park, I decided that that was exactly what I would do – drown. I decided that I wouldn't come back to this house ever again… that I would just leave my parents chained to the walls in this godforsaken cellar, and that I would get up from that bench and go see the ocean.'

The question inside Garcia's eyes didn't go unnoticed.

‘I'd never seen it before,' Russell explained. ‘I was eighteen years old. I'd lived all those years in a city where there are several different beaches. And I'd never once seen the ocean. My parents never took me to the beach.'

Garcia's gaze scooted over to Russell's parents, but there was no reaction from either of them.

‘So I decided that as my last act in this life,' Russell carried on, ‘my own eighteenth birthday present to myself, I would go see the ocean and then simply walk into it. For someone who was already drowning in darkness, the ocean sounded like a much better option.'

‘But you didn't,' Garcia prodded. He had no escape plan, but he knew that he had to somehow keep Russell talking until he thought of something… if he thought of something.

Russell shook his head. ‘No, I didn't. Thanks to a little girl and her father.'