Legacy (Anathema #2)

by Nick Roberts

She looked like a silver mummy.

She wasn’t going anywhere this time, and she knew it. All she could do was rest in her own blood and urine and wonder whose basement she was currently being held captive in, and for what purpose.

the physical manifestation of dread.

She looked in the dark bathroom and caught a quick glimpse of the other woman. Her blood ran cold. Yes, she was dressed like the princess in the picture, but she was no beauty, just a crude façade that would only work on a child. The golden locks of hair held up by a pink bow was clearly a wig, and the struggle to hold Christine had managed to make it come slightly loose, revealing strange, pale skin underneath. But it was the face that shook her to her core. Daisy had no face. No, that wasn’t right. Something was tightly pulled over her face like a robber wearing pantyhose. Except this material looked thick like a sock and had the same princess face from the drawing painted on it. It was as if a two-dimensional cartoon stepped out of a storybook and tried to exist in the real world. With one angry jerk, Daisy ripped Christine’s grip from the door and continued dragging her down the hall. She pulled back, lifting Christine’s feet off the ground

and carried her the rest of the way. May disappeared from view as soon as she was in the bedroom. The adrenaline charging her system gave her enough strength to leap up, press her feet against the wall, and push back as hard as she could. The two of them stumbled backwards.

Christine followed her gaze to see May pointing her Pawpaw’s pistol at her. “May, where did you get that?” Tears streamed down the girl’s face. “Daisy gave it to me. She said you would try and kill her and make her go away forever because you don’t want me to have any friends.” “Angel, that’s not true. Daisy is a bad, bad woman.”

“Hey, Wrenley. It’s Derrick.

If she had a face in that black abyss beneath her matted mane, it was concealed by darkness. The way she sat there like some kind of gargoyle on the edge of a building with her legs spread and her hands placed on the floor between them made Wrenley feel like she was some feral beast, ready to pounce at any moment. As she inhaled again, she caught a whiff of feces and rotten body odor and realized the woman’s crotch was a foot away from her face.

And what she saw made her physically recoil. The woman held a flashlight—Wrenley’s police-issued flashlight—in her hands with the end of it resting on the floor. The beam shot straight up at a white, skeletal face. This was no mask. Her eyes were sunken in so much that her forehead seemed to jut out like a ridge. The parts of her pale flesh

that weren’t mutilated in some way looked borderline translucent as if some creature from the deepest parts of the ocean had swum up through a sea of razor blades to breach the surface of our world for the first time. Her eyes were jaundice yellow with milky centers. The end of her nose had been burnt, and the bridge had short, symmetrical gashes leading up the tip of an inverted cross carved into her flesh that started between her eyes, stretched in both ways across her forehead, and then continued along the top of her skull, disappearing under the black wig.

The scars of ages of abuse covered her neck as well. If the woman were to remove her clothes, Wrenley had no doubt that the grotesque body modifications would continue and probably increase in severity.

She felts the woman’s claws dig into the back of her skull as she jerked Wrenley’s face to meet hers, and then she was staring into those horrid eyes. And for the first time, she spoke.

“You’re dead, and you don’t even know it, Officer Wrennnnnnnn-ley.” The woman’s demonic voice growled as she said her last name, and then she let go of her head and stood up.

Why did she do that? She’s psychotic. Yes, but she’s calculated. She said you had a purpose. What the fuck is she going to do with me…?

and what she saw shattered her heart. It looked like an old dog kennel for larger breeds like bloodhounds or German Shepherds. The little girl inside of it rested on her side with her thumb in her mouth and her eyes wide open. She cradled herself and started to weep.

“Shh,” the girl said, putting her finger to her pursed lips. “You have to whisper, or the Demon will come back.” Wrenley’s blood ran cold. “Okay. I’ll whisper. It’s hard for me to talk anyway.”

“It’s okay. We just have to wait for Princess Daisy to come back.” Princess Daisy? She thought about the last conversation she had with Derrick Stockton. He’d mentioned that he was staying with his AA sponsor and his family, and the little girl said she had a friend named Daisy. That was the name of the princess friend Derrick said he had as a kid, a persona that was just a front to gain his trust and turn him against his parents.

He slept on the couch, and I saw Daisy looking at him while he was asleep. That’s when Daisy told me she had a surprise for me, but she wouldn’t give it to me if I kept talking about her.” “May, where’s your Mommy? Why are you here all alone?” May rolled over and faced the wall. “I don’t want to talk about Mommy. She was bad.” “May, it’s okay. I’m a police officer, remember? You can talk to me about anything. I can help make things better again if I know more about what’s happening.”

That puts Daisy’s first appearance after Derrick went to the hospital. While he was in there, Daisy was busy grooming May to be her puppet like she did to Derrick when he was a kid.

Holy shit. Everything he said really happened. “May, does your Mommy know where you are?” “I don’t know if she’s awake yet. She was asleep when we left.” “When you left from where?” “My Pawpaw’s house.”

“Daisy took you away while you two were at your Pawpaw’s house?” “She had to. Mommy was being bad and hurting her. Daisy gave me Pawpaw’s special gun and told me to pow-pow Mommy if she acted bad. Sh...

Mommy fall asleep for a little bit. She’l...

but the absolute evil needed to corrode an innocent child into killing her own parents was a new level of sick. She thought of Derrick and the doubts she had regarding his story of being manipulated into shooting his father, and she felt awful.

She’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. She’s so mean and bloody and stinky. I screamed and cried when I saw her. That’s when she took me to the basement and put me in this cage.”

“Wait, this is your basement? We’re in your house?” “Yes.” “What’s your address?” “We live on Lee Street.” “What city?” “Gallipolis.” Wrenley breathed a sigh of relief that was short-lived. Yes, she

in the same city as Derrick Stockton, but she was obviously part of some sinister plan. Why would this Maren woman go to Charleston to abduct her and bring her an hour and a half to Gallipolis only to throw her in some basement. Her brain was functioning at half-capacity, but she pressed on, anything to take her mind off the pulsing pain of her dismantled jaw and the stench in which she was covered. “We have to get out of here, May.”

When the figure came into view, it took her breath away. It was Maren; there was no doubt about that, but gone were the wig and clothes. Her pale, hairless skin had a bone-white hue in the moonlight. She moved like a jungle cat slowly approaching its prey. As she came closer, Wrenley noticed the deep gashes on both sides of her

ribcage like gills made with a hacksaw. They were only the start of an intricate design of scars. A row of screws had been drilled down her spine from the back of her neck to her tailbone. She pressed her rotten face into Wrenley’s and whispered, “You talk too much.”

“Just bleed or I’ll disembowel her in front of you.”

spanking and would do anything to prevent it from happening again. “Good. Dinner will be ready soon.” The sudden shift in demeanor was as jarring as the woman’s physical appearance. She placed the drill on the floor and picked up something Wrenley hadn’t seen when she first came down. It looked like a pen or a… The needle plunged into Wrenley’s neck. She refused to look at the woman. If she was going to die, she wanted to focus on something pure. Her swirling vision found May still in her cage in the corner, curled up and covering her eyes. “It’ll be okay, May,” she said, and slipped into the quicksand of unconsciousness.

It doesn’t matter. She knew you were going to be here, and she found you. And the worst part is that she wanted you to know.

“Well, shit, when you put it like that it seems like you just wasted a good five minutes bullshitting with me.”

“You don’t need to worry about her whereabouts, Derrick.” “Seriously? That’s exactly what we need to be worried about! What if she’s with Wrenley right now?” “She’s not.” “How the fuck would you know?”

“Because she’s right over there,” Hoffman said, looking behind Derrick at Mitchell’s house. A jolt of fear shocked his system. “What?” he said and turned around. What he saw paralyzed him.

Mitchell waited in his front yard with his hands on his hips with an impatient look on his face. A princess stood behind him, holding a long wooden handle in her hands. It wasn’t until the moonlight gleamed...

Mitchell turned around just in time for Daisy to bury the ax in his chest. Derrick heard the wet thunk from across the road. The Marine dropped to his knees. Daisy wiggled the blade free and looked at Derrick as she raised it above her head. “No!” he pleaded.

Hoffman had rolled the window all the way down and held out a black, single-barrel shotgun pointed straight at Derrick’s stomach. “Move one inch and I’ll blast a hole the size of a watermelon through your fucking stomach.”

Derrick only stood there in shock. He noticed Officer Black still leaned against the window with his eyes closed. It was only then that Derrick realized if the man had been breathing, then his breath would’ve been visible against the glass.

“What’s going on?” he finally said. “Why isn’t he breathing?” A woman’s voice came through the cruiser’s radio. “Unit 237, come in.” Without taking his eyes (or the gun) off Derrick, Hoffman picked up the radio. “Unit 237 here,” he said. “Status update on surveillance duty, please.” “Still all ...

“It’s been a quiet night. Just checking on you boys.” “And we appreciate it. Over and out,” Hoffman said and put the radio back on its holder. A loud clang came from behind Derrick. He whipped his head around to see that Daisy had opened the door to the truck bed. She turned around in her pink dress and disappeared into the darkness. “Hey!” Hoffman sho...

“In fact, I bet you’re under strict orders not to kill me.” “And what makes you think that?” “She wouldn’t go through all this trouble just to have some over-the-hill corrupt piece of shit like you shoot me in the street. No, Maren has some grand design for me.” “Yes, she does,” Daisy whispered in Derrick’s ear as a gloved hand

covered his mouth and a needle pierced his neck.

Derrick watched as a gloved hand shot forth and gripped Hoffman’s windpipe. The man didn’t dare fight back. He just stood there, gasping for air as the woman squeezed his trachea. “If you break the rules of the game again, there will be punishments,” she said. Hoffman nodded his head. She released him, and he coughed as he caught his breath.

Even though the drugs were pulling him into unconsciousness, the sight of her face shocked him. Something like white pantyhose

covered her head, and a smiling, cartoonish face had been drawn on with what looked like markers. Her blonde wig had specks of Mitchell’s blood on it, and Derrick felt a rage in him that would’ve propelled him forward to kill the bitch if he wasn’t so sedated. She kissed his forehead, and he drifted off to sleep.

Officer Black, though a good man, was not part of the plan and had to go. He looked over at the rigid corpse in the passenger seat, still leaning against the window. Black had a wife and two kids. He’d met them several times and had dinner with them when the two men were officially made partners. They were lovely people. It was a shame that their lives were going to be derailed as soon as they got the news about Black.

Hoffman felt some sympathy for them. He wasn’t a monster, he managed to convince himself. Twenty years ago, he’d lost his older brother, Ron. Technically, Ron was his stepbrother, but their parents married when Hoffman was four and Ron was thirteen, and despite the age gap, the two of them only grew closer over time.

Although they’d grown apart in adulthood and had their own families as siblings often do, the men made an effort to call one another and get together on holidays. But something changed in the last few years of Ron’s life. He’d grown distant, even more than before. The phone calls were few and far between, and when they did speak, the only topic Ron seemed interested in talking about were abstract con...

The last two holidays before Ron’s death, he’d canceled plans, either saying that he and Holly were having marital troubles or one of them had come down with a case of the flu. No matter what the reason was, it set off alarm bells in Hoffman’s mind, who was still a relatively new police officer at the time. He knew his older brother, and something was off. Ron was a proud intellectual—a respected professor of law—and a decent family man....

they spoke. The last time he talked to him, there was a tone in his voice that sounded like he knew he was about to die. It was a placid acceptance, ...