“Recovering.
Understanding.
Repenting.
You were right to do what you did to
me.
I hope you don’t regret it.”
“Are you
being serious this time?”
“Of
course, I am.
I’ve come
around.
You told me to lose the
sarcasm, so I’ve lost it.
I
understand why you did what you did and I want to thank you for it.”
He
studied her for a moment, then decided that maybe she was telling the
truth.
“I only did it for your own
good, and also to send a message to the rest of the whores in Texas.”
“I think
you were successful.”
“I wish
that was the case.”
“Oh,
come on.
Look at the press you’ve
received.
You and your friend are
national celebrities.
Everyone
writes about you.”
“If Ted
and I were that successful, we wouldn’t be going back to Texas to make an
example of another woman when this job is done.
We’re thinking Dallas this time, not
Austin.”
“Dallas
is filled with whores.”
“That’s
right, but you’d know that, wouldn’t you?
And that’s why our work will never be finished, Meredith.
There are too many others like you out
there.
Too many others who
interpret the Bible for their own means and ignore God’s will.
We’ll never get them all.”
She
leaned against the tree trunk and lifted her long blonde hair off her
shoulders.
She pulled it behind her
head and seemed oblivious to the fact that it was clotted with blood and brain
matter.
“You
know,” she said, “I liked it when you raped me.”
“Most
do.”
“Are you
going to rape Cheryl Dunning?”
If she’s
alive.
“Of course, I am.”
“Now,
I’m jealous.”
“You
shouldn’t be.”
“But you
were fantastic.”
“I know
I am, but that’s not the point.”
“What is
the point?”
“The
point always has been to teach people like you a lesson.”
She
cupped her breasts with her hands and cocked her head to the side.
The hatchet didn’t move.
It remained fixed in her head, as if the
bone had somehow grown around it.
“Teach me a lesson, Kenneth.”
She pulled up her dress, and exposed herself and her bloody thighs to
him.
“Just like you did
before.
Teach me a lesson.
Come on, baby.
Mommy needs a lesson.”
So,
she’d been lying to him.
Fucking
with him.
Quietly laughing at
him.
“What you need to do is leave.
Until you fully repent, your soul is
going to rot in hell.
You’ll never
be free of it, Meredith.
You’ll
never understand the beauty that awaits you in heaven.
It’s there for you, but you’ll never
reach it until you fully repent.”
“Do you
ever think of me?”
He was
growing irritated with her.
“I
don’t.”
“Not
even a little?”
“How
about this?
Not at all.”
“I don’t
believe that.
You told me you never
got hard like that.
You told me I
was special.
You said you could
fuck me all night long with that big, thick cock of yours.”
“You’re
a liar.”
“About
your cock?”
He just
stared at her and said nothing.
She
frowned and dropped her dress.
Had
she learned nothing from him?
Was
his work in vain?
He was about to
run past her to catch up with Ted before he killed Cheryl Dunning, if he hadn’t
already done so, when he saw, just behind Meredith, another woman walking
toward them from within the nest of trees.
“Kenneth,”
she said.
It took
a moment for him to place her.
Who
was she?
There were so many he’d
sent into the dark that he sometimes struggled to place a face.
And then
he remembered.
This was one of the
ones they found in Vegas, right?
Three years ago?
When he and
Ted took six, because the area essentially was a candy shop for their
cause.
What was her name?
He couldn’t remember.
Mia?
Something like that.
He remembered
how he killed her, though.
And how
she suffered.
And how she screamed
at him when he screamed verses from the Bible at her.
And the moment life left her with his
arms around her throat.
He could
see her bulging eyes, her bulging tongue.
“It’s
me.
Maria.”
Maria
Fuentes―of course.
The
stripper he and Ted targeted for death along with three other strippers and two
prostitutes when they were in Vegas over the course of those three eventful
days.
They
offered her five hundred dollars for a threesome, she took it without
hesitation because that’s the kind of person she was, and each took turns
strangling her in their hotel room at the Circus Circus within minutes of
arriving there.
When they were
finished, they dumped her body in the bath tub, wiped their prints from her
throat and anything else they might have touched in the room, which they paid
for in cash, and moved to another hotel to continue their work.
Now, she
was wearing the same stripper costume she wore when they killed her.
Bedazzled pasties winked and blinked
over the nipples of her otherwise naked breasts.
A pink feather boa sloped around her
neck like some kind of serpent.
And
a scant, bejeweled undergarment covered her private parts in ways that
suggested one should pay absolute attention to them.
Her neck was thick with bruises, but
otherwise, with the exception of that and her dilated eyes, she looked normal
to him.
“You
won’t get Cheryl,” she said to him.
“She’s too smart.
She’s a
Maine girl.
She knows these woods.”
“You’re
wrong,” he said.
“I’m
not.”
“I’m
afraid you are.”
“You’ll
see.
I can feel her energy.
You’re no match for that one.”
“Bullshit,”
he said.
“So much
for Jesus,” Meredith sighed.
“I
wonder what he’d think of your language.”
To his
left, another woman appeared.
She
was wearing street clothes and she emerged from behind a fir tree.
She was tall, almost six feet, and
looked to be in her early thirties.
Her dark hair fell to her shoulders with a casual flip, and she had the
same dilated eyes.
She was wearing
a blue business suit, conservative shoes and almost no jewelry, save for the
diamond studs at her ears.
He
looked for a wedding band on her left hand, but there wasn’t one.
In the center of her forehead was a
hunting knife, buried so deep that it had caused blood to cover much of her
face, neck and clothing.
He
didn’t remember her.
He was
about to speak when before him, dozens of women who died at his and Ted’s hands
stepped out into the open.
Some
dropped from the trees and landed silently on the forest floor.
They stood motionless, their hands at
their sides, their dark eyes staring back at him.
Others seemed to emerge in front of him
like ghosts from the ether.
He
recognized most of the women, but not all of them.
What puzzled him is that he could see
faintly through some of them.
Worse, others were flickering.
Why?
That
part of his brain that hadn’t completely eliminated his past reminded him what
his therapist once said while they were in session:
“It seems as if you suffer from
hallucinations, Kenneth.”
But he
didn’t.
The day that he saw God was
real.
He knew that.
Later, when he was blessed by Jesus
Christ Himself, it was real.
He
knew that.
And what he saw in front
of him now was real.
He was certain
of that.
He
steeled himself against them and stood firm while Maria took off her pasties
and exposed her breasts to him.
The
woman in the blue suit pulled the hunting knife from her forehead and gripped
it in her left hand.
“You
think we’re whores,” they said, and when they said it, in unison, it was so
loud, it filled his head to capacity.
“But we’re not.”
Were
they joking?
Of course, they were
whores.
Every one of them.
That’s the reason they were targeted for
death.
He and Ted had watched each
of them before they decided to act.
Their choice wasn’t random.
It was based on the behavior they
witnessed.
And now, by challenging
him, they seemed to have no clue that they actually were challenging
Him
.
He was incredulous that they’d be so
brazen.
But
that’s why they’re in hell and not with Him.
“None of
you has repented, you haven’t heard the message of the Cross or the Gospel of
the Christ, and by the sound of it, you never will, which is why you never will
ascend into His arms.
All of you
are pathetic.
You don’t possess a
humble Christian spirit.
You don’t
understand that your souls are broken.
Worse, you don’t fear Him.
Instead, you sneer in the face of Him.
You’re going to burn in hell forever.”
He was
finished with them.
He sprang
forward and started to run past them, sometimes through them, which gave him a
chill because he didn’t understand how that was possible because they were,
after all, real.
He felt
their hands grasp him and tug at his clothing as he shot by them.
They were trying to bring him down,
trying to do God knows what to him, but he was strong.
He shook them off and pressed forward in
spite of nearly slipping on the damp earth.
He looked into their liquid black eyes as
he flew past them and what he saw were deep wells of hatred.
When he
finally was beyond them, one of them spoke out in a raised voice:
“You shouldn’t have killed us,
Kenneth.”
It was Maria
Fuentes.
“We’re here to help
her.
This won’t be the last time
you see us.
You’re up for the
challenge of your life.
May the
true God be with you, not the fake God you carry around in your fucked up
heart, because you’re going to need the real God if you’re going to survive
this time.”
And
then, right at his back, as if his relationship with Christ didn’t matter, as
if he wasn’t one of God’s Chosen Ones, each of them began to laugh in ways that
only made him run harder.
He’d
been through this with them once before, and he came out stronger and more
focused because of it.
He’d show
them.
If she wasn’t already dead,
he’d make Cheryl Dunning’s death an example of why you never, ever crossed
Kenneth Berkowitz.
CHAP
TER EIGHTEEN
Cheryl
Dunning knew that at some point, she needed to stop moving and remain in one
place.
That was the first thing her
father and grandfather told her she should do should she ever become lost in
the woods.
She should create some
kind of shelter for herself, just as they’d shown her how to do, and not move
until she was found.
If
I’m found.
She no
longer was running.
Instead, she
was walking softly and listening.
She saw the direction in whi
ch the madman ran―far off to her
right.
The bull moose had
frightened him enough that she watched him dart blindly through the woods,
which allowed her to slink low and keep to the left, along the wetlands, which
is where she wanted to be because at some point, she knew it was here that
she’d find some sort of water source.
Not the pools of ground water that were around her―drinking from
them would probably kill her.
She
was hoping to find a brook or a stream.
Something that was coming from a fresh sour
ce and,
more importantly, that was moving.