Keep It in the Family

by John Marrs

Eventually, I make out a pair of bare feet. His soles are arched but they’re not connecting with the floor, so he must be standing on his tiptoes. He is likely being held upright by the rope attached to the ceiling hook.

He isn’t the first to be caught in their web and he won’t be the last. Most of them beg for mercy but they are all wasting their time.

They get away with what they do by hiding in plain sight and by being ordinary. Nobody sees in them what I see because they have no reason to look. Only I notice the hollowness of their eyes.

Everyone except their families soon forgets about a missing child. And me. I remember every one of them. Because I am the bait that lures them here.

Finn is the pragmatic sort, and possesses a natural talent for solving problems. I suppose that’s what makes him a good plumber and all-round handyman. He can look at an object and instinctively know how it works or how to repair it. I’m the opposite. I look at something and it falls apart.

We’ve always been 100 per cent honest with one another, but today I hold back on sharing what I’m really thinking – that we’ve made a bloody huge mistake and we are so far out of our comfort zone that we can’t even see it from where we’re standing now. But this is the only way to get what we wanted – a house in the country for a fraction of the price, and to escape living with his parents. He may be close to them, but I am most definitely not.

Perhaps I’m misreading my wife, but something tells me she’s not as into this place as she’s letting on. When she’s anxious or freaked out about something but doesn’t want to admit it, she rubs her thumbs and index fingers together. Today she’s moving them so quickly she’s in danger of giving off sparks.

Inside is an empty bedroom containing a hook screwed into the ceiling and a rope attached to it. It looks like a noose or something, which is a pretty dark thing to leave behind.

I also warned Debbie that if she doesn’t start trying to win Mia round and make her realise she’s not the enemy, then she will lose Finn.

How did the rest of the village react to what was later found inside? As you’d expect, with total shock. It’s worse than any of us could have imagined.

Finn and I began trying for a baby almost immediately. The first year passed unsuccessfully and it wasn’t until my doctor sent me for scans that a specialist diagnosed me with endometriosis in both ovaries.

My guilt over not being able to give Finn children was, at times, all-consuming, and I wondered if our marriage could withstand it.

‘I’m pregnant,’

I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC.

‘It looks like another room,’ says Finn, flashing his light into the hole. ‘And there’s something in there.’

There’s seven of them. It’s hard to tell under so much dust, but they appear to be different colours, though all are the same size. And there’s a red letter embossed on each of them, a P.

No wait, is that hair? Yes it is. And I see it’s attached to a skull. A human skull, only small. It’s then that I realise it belongs to a child. I’m looking at the mummified remains of a child.

Wtf.....

My swansong needed to be someone special. And when I saw a boy with dark-blond curls, a freckled nose and cheeks, walking home alone from school, I instantly knew I had found who I was looking for. He was the spitting image of my brother George. And for the first time in all these years, this child’s circumstances were of no consequence. I was not trying to save him from anything. His death was a selfish one. I killed him because I wanted to.

My attention returns to completing the task in hand. Rigor mortis typically sets in after three to four hours, so while he is still malleable, I take his limp, feather-light body and gently fold his torso and legs in half, bending his arms and neck so that he fits inside my suitcase. I hear the crack of his wrist as it snaps in two and I apologise to him. I close the lid, and for the final time, fresh air brushes across his skin. Then I leave his clothes stacked neatly in front of it and sealed in a shrink-wrapped bag.

‘He’s okay, darling,’ and smiles, and I feel a warmth radiating from her that I don’t recognise. ‘You’ve had a caesarean,’ she continues. ‘He’s only a wee thing at three pounds eight ounces, but the doctors say he’s healthy. Finn is with him now in the special-care baby unit.’

I hope Finn didn’t see me recoil at that suggestion. The last thing our fragile baby needs is me anywhere near him. I’m a risk to him. I don’t deserve him.

My brain is trapped in a moment it won’t let me leave. I obsess about those children more than I do about my own son. And Finn knows it.

In the darkness, I relive how I have helped the others, recalling each scene with clarity. However, it’s no longer enough. The need to deliver the worthy into a better world is like having rats under my skin. They claw at my insides and tear at my flesh until they break through the surface.

So he thinks hes doing the right thing???

You might not think it, but I possess enough self-awareness to question what I do. Many a time I have wondered if I’m fooling myself into believing I do it for the victims’ sake when it’s actually for my own satisfaction. I can’t deny there’s a small, selfish element to taking a life, a physical release that is hard to explain. But it’s a by-product of what I do, not a reason. In doing one thing, I am enabling another. It’s no different to giving money to charity. By helping someone in need, I feel better about myself.

All I can be sure of is that for the first decade of my life, they shaped me into the contradiction I am now. I am not like them yet I am them. I kill as they killed but not for the same reason. I kill to save others, not punish them.

Mum recently confided in me that she thought all wasn’t right with Mia. I dismissed it because, to be honest, mental health is a minefield and I’d have no clue where to begin in helping her. But I’m starting to agree with Mum. It’s more than just headaches and a lack of sleep that’s troubling her.

I remember how intense and exhausting those first months of motherhood are. And she has the look of a woman who’s really struggling.’

My particular type, Primary Lateral Sclerosis, is rarer and slower than other versions and I should be grateful that I might live ten years if I’m lucky. Now I have seven left.

I once hired a private detective to try and locate George. But several months and a few thousand pounds later, there was no proof that he ever existed beyond my memory. Not even a birth certificate, even though I have one of my own. Sometimes I wondered if he was a figment of my imagination; if I’d made him up to make life at home bearable.

‘Why do you strangle them?’ This is just blurted, out of nowhere. ‘You’ve never told me.’ The question alone makes my fingertips tingle . . . the softness and pliability of their necks, the warmth of the blood flowing close to the surface, their palpitating, escalating pulse, their small, hopeless hands grabbing at mine . . . there is no feeling that will ever replicate it. ‘It’s clean, quite painless and you don’t need to rely on a weapon,’ I say instead. ‘And if you know what you’re doing, they can fall unconscious in seconds and stop breathing within just a couple of minutes.’

This is INSANE! Like WTF???

I know I’m a bad wife and mother for pushing a good husband and child away. But I can’t help it. Finn wants the woman he married to return but I don’t know how to be her again. I’m better on my own, away from him and away from his baby. Here, alone in my room, I can’t hurt anyone.

I question if we’d still be together had she not fallen pregnant. I hate to say it, but no, probably not. It was an accident, albeit a happy one.

Of course I want her to get better, but I didn’t marry her because I wanted someone I could manage. I married her because I loved her and I wanted someone independent so that we could both lead our own lives as well as share one.

To live the way I want to live means knowing everything about her life, even when she doesn’t have the first clue about mine.

‘You expect your son to be with you for the rest of your life. But when he’s taken away from you, it changes everything. All you once felt is replaced by fear and confusion and, above everything else, anger. Because the someone . . . the something . . . that stole him can’t see the boy that you knew inside and out. All they see is an object they want to destroy. And they have no right to do that, no right at all. I’m not a violent man but when they catch him, I will happily rip him apart with my own bare hands.’

Pat and Frankie Snr don’t have a second chance with their son like I do with mine. Being with them has made me understand just how much work I need to do to get out of this depression.

‘Take charge of your own destiny or somebody else will.’

‘She vanished at the same time as Abigail,’ Jasmine says so matter-of-factly that I think I’ve misheard. ‘Vanished?’ ‘Three days after the girls didn’t return from choir practice, my daughter was found by the side of the road with head injuries, a broken leg and pelvis. Hit and run, the police reckoned. She’d also suffered an extensive bleed to the brain, and when she came out of her coma, she was as you see her now. And she was never able to tell us what happened to her and Abi or how she ended up where she was found. Everything she knows is locked inside her head.’

‘That little boy looks like my father-in-law,’ I say. ‘Which one?’ Jasmine asks and I point to a child with a port-wine stain on his forehead and eyelid. ‘Oh, you know Davey Hunter?’

I’m thinking about my father-in-law, racking my brain to recall if Dave ever mentioned, when her name was released to the media, that he went to school with one of the missing children.

‘Well, if you’re sure you can handle it. It’s been a while since you’ve had him for a whole day. He can be quite demanding if you don’t know what you’re doing.’

Bitch... Its her kid

The last time I was here, I was thirteen years old. I remember it as if it was yesterday because you never forget your first premeditated murder. His name was Justin Powell and he was a year or two older than me and much bigger. He wasn’t somebody who needed saving – his death was to save someone else and redirected the course of the rest of my life.

As he slipped beneath the surface, I took one of the rocks lying by the footpath and held it above me. And the moment his head emerged from the water gasping for air, I brought it down upon him with all my might. I can still recall the crunch it made as it collided with his skull and how he disappeared again into the water. It was a good twenty minutes before he surfaced again, face down and motionless. It was too dark to see his blood in the water so I had to use my imagination instead.

But I’ve grown to realise that when I don’t have blood on my hands, they are uncomfortably dry.

Sometimes, and I hate to admit it, she behaves like she doesn’t love Sonny. I catch her staring at him like he belongs to somebody else. And that scares me.

Maybe that’s why she’s not the only girl in my life: subconsciously I keep a spare as I don’t want to be left on my own. Perhaps I’m the one who needs therapy, not Mia.

‘I think he kept this from us for a reason. He knows more than he’s letting on. Look how they reacted when we told them we wanted the house. They kept trying to talk us out of it.’ ‘You’re saying he knew there were bodies inside? Don’t be so ridiculous. You were there. They were as shocked as we were. I think there’s another underlying problem here.’

‘They were discovered buried in the garden, by the rear wall,’ Mark continues. ‘We believe them to be male and female, but they are missing body parts.’ ‘Which parts?’ asks Finn. ‘Their heads.’

I’m starting to develop these urges, you see. Cravings to do things that I can never tell another living soul about because they wouldn’t understand. I don’t even understand them myself. The person I’m about to spend the rest of my life with knows some of what goes on in my head, but only as much as I allow them to. The difference between me and my parents is that I can keep my urges under control, something they never managed. I’m counting on my spouse to help me become a better person. Once I’m married, they’ll keep me on the straight and narrow and the cravings will disappear.

Much like at home, George was encouraged to make friends in kids’ clubs or at the arcades. And after he brought one back to the caravan, we were sent out to play and the doors locked behind us. Before our new friends awoke, they’d be left unconscious somewhere like a roadside or car park and we were en route to our next location.