Page 14

Kali

T he tangy, metallic scent of blood permeated every nook and cranny of the basement. It was hot, acrid, and stifling. I couldn’t escape it. It had been one of the worst parts of my own torture, forced to endure the scent of the blood of all the girls before me, mine dripping down to soak into the concrete, mixing with theirs. It was a foreboding precursor to when I did join them, my body rotting away beside theirs in the dirt behind the cabin.

It was yet another method that Blake used to taunt me, to prove that I wasn’t getting out of this basement alive.

You’re just like them, Kali. You could have been so much more, but you just had to poke your nose where it didn’t belong, and now you’re nothing more than a bloodstain blending in with all the others.

Sometimes I would forget that those were his words to me. Lately, my mind had been adopting my own voice whenever I remembered them with increasing frequency. Some part of me had always agreed, even when I reminded myself that it wasn’t my fault my husband was a killer. I’d only followed him that night because I thought he was cheating on me. Never in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined he’d been kidnapping, torturing, mutilating, and murdering girls in the basement of a cabin he’d secretly acquired before we had even married. Still, he’d bought it sometimes during our years together.

It was why I was still so suspicious of his family’s involvement. Surely, at least one of them had to know about his psychosis. Chance was my first guess. Mallory had always doted on Blake, oftentimes leaving Chance out of their family bonding moments because Calvin had never really liked the fact that he wasn’t his own flesh and blood. A reminder of Mallory’s love and loss from before him.

Ergo, my second guess was Calvin. While Blake and Chance had always been close, Calvin exuded the sort of calm, simmering anger that never really went away. It was always present, in the background of every interaction, every business deal, every disciplinary action taken against anyone who had stepped out of the net of control he had painstakingly woven.

It had been hard living up to his ideal of the perfect wife for his favourite son. One of my biggest regrets from the life I’d lived was pandering so much to the man when I could have been living my life the way I’d wanted to. Mallory wasn’t the only one of my in-laws who micromanaged. Even down to the way I wore my hair or my career. Eventually, I’d given up on my dreams to support Blake through his.

I’d thought that was enough for me, which was one of the biggest reasons why my suspicions that Blake was cheating had hurt so much. I thought I’d given up everything for a man who hadn’t respected me enough to remain faithful.

Not for the first time did I wish I’d run in the opposite direction.

The girl’s screams drew me out of my thoughts, and I turned back in just in time for the begging to start. Blake ran the tip of one of his knives over the curve of her neck, nicking a small cut just above her collarbone. He watched, enraptured by the little bead of blood that welled to the surface. It was too small to drip, a tiny mark of colour against her alabaster skin. He had a type, it seemed. All of us were as pale and close to pure white as we could get. Our skin tones, our hair, even our eyes. He wanted to dirty us up, destroy our purity, starting with our looks.

I had always suspected he did this to them because of me. I was almost certain the killings began after we had started dating as teenagers. It was like he was killing these girls because he couldn’t kill me, not without drawing too much attention to his after-dark activities. I assumed he only made me one of his girls because I’d given him no choice, but I hadn’t been able to confirm my theories. He never let any of us know why he was this, or why us. It was merely a conjecture I had made through piecing together the pieces of the puzzle I had managed to collect. There were still large chunks missing, but it didn’t really matter, did it? He was going to pay, regardless.

‘Please, don’t do this,’ she begged, tugging on her restraints and pulling herself closer to the wall, but there was nowhere to go. Nothing could save her from his evil now. ‘I swear I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go, please. I promise, I won’t be any trouble. I won’t say a thing. Please.’

Blake merely tutted in response and sliced a larger, though still shallow, cut in her shoulder.

‘Please, I have a family. My boyfriend will be wondering where I am. I have a little sister who relies on me, and sick parents who need me to care for them. I’m a person. I have a life. I’m needed. Please, don’t do this. Let me go. Please .’

Ah, bargaining as well as pleading. She was trying to appeal to a side of him that would see her as more than a victim, but it was clear to see she was only making things worse. He liked that he was taking her from the people who loved her. He liked that she was begging because it gave him a sense of power. The control he wielded over her life was a drug to him, singing to him like a siren’s song. Her words only made him hard inside his jeans.

She noticed.

‘No, please. Please, don’t. Please .’

‘I’m not going to fuck you, pretty girl,’ he whispered against her ear, then licked up the blood that had bubbled to the surface beneath his blade. She whimpered and tried to pull away from him, tears cascading down her cheeks to mix with the blood on her neck and dampen her hair. It clung to her now, both with her tears and the sweat from her efforts to escape. It would only tangle and eventually matt, and I didn’t think hers would be combed like mine had been. Despite his efforts to torture me physically, his tender, almost loving care was another method he used to get inside my head. To confuse me. To break me.

She should count herself lucky he wouldn’t do that to her. That was the type of psychological torture you could never come back from, apparently even in death. Still, I continued to find myself searching for that elusive sign that what we’d had was real, some acknowledgment that I hadn’t completely fucked up my entire existence because I fell for this shithead. However, after however long it had been, there had been none. That ring still glinted on his left hand, taunting me, evidence that I was nothing but a ruse to him. A cover. It was finally beginning to sink in that it had all been in my head.

‘Stop,’ I begged her, tired of the show. ‘You’re only egging him on. Give it a rest and die as peacefully as you can in this shithole.’

When Blake passed the knife over that life-sustaining artery on the side of her neck, something clicked inside of her. Suddenly, she was gasping and gaping for an entirely different reason as her eyes locked onto me.

‘Please, help me. Don’t let him do this. Please, I’m begging you.’

Holy. Fucking. Shit. She could see me.

Blake froze, confusion twisting his features as he followed her gaze to where she was pleading with wide, terror-filled eyes for me to save her. He scanned the room, finding nothing, and I was both relieved and disappointed. I wanted him to see me. I needed him to see me coming and be completely helpless to stop me. But I wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t strong enough.

He turned back to the girl and dragged the knife from the side of her neck to the hollow beneath her throat, dipping the tip into it with enough pressure for her blood to start pooling. She stayed perfectly still, the only sign of movement coming from her trembling. It rippled in the blood, vibrating it in a way that caught Blake’s attention, until his phone rang and cut through the moment. He wrenched his gaze away with visible effort and took a few deep breaths through his nose to calm himself down, already redonning his nice-guy mask.

The girl released a heaving sigh of relief that she choked on as she sobbed, her eyes still latched onto mine. Blake placed the knife back in its place on his wall of weapons, peeled off his gloves, and reached into his back pocket to pull out his phone. One glance at the caller had him cursing beneath his breath and thundering up the stairs to take it. He’d walked right through my incorporeal form to get to the stairs, and I took a small amount of pleasure from the way he shivered like he’d walked into a freezer, his skin pebbling with goosebumps that he rubbed away with one hand. I heard him answer the phone, and the reinforced door between him and his ensured that the girl could make as much noise as she wanted, but whoever was on the other end of the call wouldn’t hear a peep.

I could still hear him, though, and I was grateful that sound on the other side of the veil travelled differently without solid objects getting in the way. It was his wife calling, something about him not knowing where he was, if he was okay, and wondering when he was coming back. I could even hear Mallory, Calvin, and… was that Florence in the background? What the fuck was happening there?

No. Nope. Not my problem. Let the living do what they would. That was no longer my business.

The girl was still staring at me, the helplessness clear in her gaze as her brain slowly processed what she was seeing. ‘Y-you… you’re… one of… them .’

‘His past victims? Yes.’

Her lip wobbled as she accepted that information. ‘W-w-why?’ she stammered.

‘Why what? Why you? Why now? Why me?’

‘Y-yes.’

‘Something about our pale features. I don’t know his timeline. I’ve lost track of time now, anyway. It no longer matters. But he got me because I caught him. He was my husband.’

She flinched away from me at that news, likely worried I was in on it with him. If she hadn’t seen him walk right through me like I didn’t even exist, perhaps she might have continued believing that.

‘How c-can I s-see you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘It’s been happening a lot lately, people seeing me. It’s a recent development. Although… the other guy is dying from brain cancer, and you’re not far off, so perhaps that’s the connection,’ I muttered, no longer talking to her but mulling my thoughts out loud.

‘Will you h-help me?’ the girl asked, her voice small but hopeful.

I faced her again, her eyes locking mine in place with her tears that she refused to let fall again. My lips tipped down in a sad grimace, and she flinched before I even uttered the words. ‘I’m sorry. If I could, I would, but I can’t interact with the living.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’ she asked, her voice stronger in her anger and frustration.

‘Can’t. I physically can’t even touch things. The best I can do is let you know when he’s coming back. Give you time to prepare.’

She nodded sullenly, her eyes losing focus as she was lost to her thoughts, so when she spoke, I jolted a little in surprise. ‘My name is Bianca. Bianca Devlin. I’m twenty-three years old. My parents were in a car accident, and both need a full-time nurse to care for them while they heal from their injuries, though most of the damage was in their brains, so they’re pretty much gone now, anyway. My little sister, Reina, she’s only ten. She has been struggling with seeing both of her parents turn into vegetables. She’s been acting out a lot, and I’m all she has, but now that I’m gone…’ She paused, catching her breath as her emotions clogged her throat. She cleared it a few times before she could get another sound out. ‘She’s going to lose everything. Her entire family… gone. She’ll be all alone.’

I didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t anything to say. She was a dead woman whether she liked it or not. All she could do was accept her lot in life, that her parents would no longer receive the care they needed, that her sister would end up alone, bouncing from house to house in the foster system. It didn’t sound like she had any family to take her in, but there wasn’t anything to do about it now.

I knew that sounded harsh, but that was reality. Life waited for no one. Death embraced us all.

‘Can you help me after he… you know?’ she asked, resignation dimming the hope in her tone, but it was still present. This woman… man, she had balls of steel. Blake really went all out with his victim choice this time. I legitimately felt bad for her, but my hands were tied.

‘I’m not sure how I can help,’ I admitted.

‘You said you talked to another guy, right? The one with the brain cancer?’

I caught on, but I was selfishly hesitant to broach such a topic with Rhodes. I liked the fact that he was unaware of my ghostly status. I was enjoying someone believing I was alive. Real. Tangible, even if maintaining the illusion meant avoiding his touch. It would have shifted right through me, regardless. A dead giveaway that I was… well, dead.

I didn’t want to completely crush her hopes, though. I wasn’t that cruel. So, instead, I tried to find some truth that I could tell her without completely destroying my own selfish wants and desires in the process. I had spent far too long when I was alive acting at the expense of myself, constantly putting others before myself. Now, I wasn’t going to do that. But maybe I could do something .

‘I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t make any promises. Even if I do manage to get a message to him, there’s no guarantee that he would even be able to help, or live long enough to do so.’

It didn’t upset me that Rhodes was dying. If anything, his impending death was brimming with potential. Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

Shadow man, withstanding.

Speaking of, I wondered where he had run off to. Not that I was complaining about the reprieve from the chilling sensation of his eyes constantly watching me from behind his little magic trick of shadows. That was one treacherous mystery I was sure I could do without, so I decided to continue what I was doing. Ignore him. No one could say I didn’t learn from my mistakes. Maybe he’d get bored and finally leave me alone, and then I wouldn’t have to feel so shitty about the risk I was taking every time I went to see Rhodes.

It was going to head over there again in the morning to try to catch him before he left for work, and hopefully, we would be alone. No shadowy visitors stalking us from the darkness. And certainly no declarations of possession like I was some kind of object to be obtained and kept. Fuck that. I’d married one asshole, I wasn’t about to let another one trap me. Never again.