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Daniel felt suffocated. He began to breathe in quick, shallow pulls.

  “I was hoping you would come back.”

  “Where’s Eve?” Daniel managed.

  The boy’s voice changed from a sweet child’s to a rasping growl midway through the second word. “I am Eve,” he said. But his smiling face did not change with this voice.

  Daniel took a step back. He’d heard the low voice before, once, just before being pulled back into the land of the living the first time he’d left it. Staring into those black eyes, that stretched mouth, his blond hair hanging loosely around thin shoulders—Daniel wanted to scream.

  “Do you want me to poke your eyes out?” the boy said, voice now innocent again. “I can, you know.”

  “No,” Daniel said.

  “Then why did you break your promise?”

  “I didn’t. What promise?”

  Beat. Now in a low, crackling voice, snarling mouth, leaning into each word: “The first time you met me, when he shot you. You don’t remember—too bad—but you promised me you would back off, let me continue killing. I allowed you to come back because of that promise, otherwise you’d be in a pine box, six feet under. I let you live.”

  A twisted grin split the boy’s tight face, revealing black teeth. “Now I’m going to poke her eyes out.”

  Heather.

  Daniel tried to protest, but he couldn’t speak. A small voice in his own mind within this mind was asking him if he was speaking to himself as a child. Who was the boy? Eve . . . but who was Eve?

  “What’s the matter, you a dumb mute now?” the boy asked. He stood and waddled toward Daniel on bowed legs.

  Daniel stumbled back, horrified. He hit the wall, shivering with fear. The boy stopped just beyond arms’ reach.

  “Is . . . is this my mind?” Daniel asked.

  The boy cocked his head, amused. “Foolish doctor.” A foul stench carried his voice. “You can save her. One last chance to keep your pincushion alive, foolish doctor. I’m gonna stick her like a pig from the inside out.”

  “Please . . .”

  “Southhhhhhh.” The boy spread his lips. “Only you.” Daniel couldn’t pull his eyes away from the grotesque face staring him down.

  In a child’s voice again, “If you tell that little sow, I’m going to make mama scream for a long time.”

  The boy lifted one hand and motioned Daniel with his index finger. “Come here.”

  Eve wanted him to lean down? Daniel might throw up. Surely the boy could say what he wanted from this safe distance.

  “Come here!” The boy’s voice cracked like a whip.

  Daniel bent.

  The boy placed his clammy cheek against Daniel’s right cheek and whispered slowly.

  “We’re going to be best friends, Daniel.”

  Something soft and wet touched his ear. The boy’s tongue.

  Daniel recoiled. His heart was pounding and his chest was heaving. He was having another heart attack. His arms and legs began to jerk through a frightening convulsion that he could not control.

  The room blinked off. Light blinded him. Voices: “We have him . . . That’s it, Daniel. Easy, easy.”

  Only half-aware of Lori and two other emergency staff who stood around the bed.

  Fully aware of a child’s smooth, tarry voice.

  I see you, Daniel.

  He bolted up and screamed.

  MAN OF SORROW:

  JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS

  by Anne Rudolph

  Crime Today magazine is pleased to present the seventh installment of Anne Rudolph’s narrative account of the killer now known as Alex Price, presented in nine monthly installments.

  November 23, 1991

  JESSICA UNLOCKED the door to the apartment on Holly Street, eager to unburden herself from the secret she’d held for all these months. If there was ever a time when Alex was prepared to learn that she’d fallen in love and planned to move out, that time had come.

  She quietly closed the door behind her and locked it. Turning to the living room, she dropped her coat and looked around the apartment. As always, the room was immaculate. Every wall hanging was perfectly squared, every knickknack properly positioned. A rocking chair now sat in the corner that her mattress had filled for so many years.

  She was about to call out for Alex, figuring he was in his room working on his book, when she saw the red smear on his door. Her first thought was ketchup. But Alex hated ketchup. And he would never be so sloppy.

  A loud crack followed by a sharp cry reached past his door. She stood frozen by the front door, trying to come to grips with what she’d just heard. The sound came again.

  This time a chill shot through her. She couldn’t mistake that sound, not in a million years, not after hearing it so many times as a child. It was the crack of a whip followed by a cry of pain.

  Memories of Alice weighed her down to the floor. Had she not been immobilized by terror, she might have fled the apartment. Her mind flashed back to dark nights, strapped to a table.

  Alice had found them!

  Or had Jessica just awakened from a long nightmare to find that she and Alex had never escaped their hell in Oklahoma? Then another possibility crossed her mind.

  Alex, not Alice, was whipping someone.

  “Alex?” She took several steps and stopped at the end of the couch. The door to Alex’s room swung open, revealing a man standing naked in front of her. His hands were bloody. Several long cuts on his chest leaked blood. He wore a mask of red; he’d smeared the stuff on his face.

  Alex.

  Jessica couldn’t speak. Alex stared without expression for a few seconds, then told her what he’d done in three simple words. “I fixed it,” he said.

  Then tears snaked down his face and his shoulders began to shake. He rushed out and fell to his knees, grabbing her hands before she could pull them back. “I’ve done it, Jessie. I’ve done it.”

  She could see his back now, covered in fresh cuts, and she knew that only a whip embedded with glass or metal could account for such damage. She stared, horrified, and all the while Alex kept sobbing, telling her he’d fixed it.

  Jessica came to and jerked her hands from his. He dived for her feet and wrapped his arms around her ankles. Lying prone and naked at her feet, he wept.

  “Debates about the existence of Satan and God are the stuff of foolish children who are arguing about whether the world ends at the tree line in their backyard. An afternoon adventure into the woods would settle the matter for them. Take a trip with me, sir. I’ll show you the forest. And when you start to scream, I promise to hold your hand.”

  —Father Robert Seymour Dance of the Dead

  She stood over him, torn between competing emotions. On one hand, her fingers trembled with relief at finding that Alice had not found them and that this was not the nightmare she most feared.

  On the other hand, her fingers trembled from the realization that Alice had found them, and this was a nightmare she feared more. Alex was Alice, and he’d brought the nightmare to life.

  Then again, Alex wasn’t Alice at all, but her wounded little doll, stripped and whipped to appease the demands of her holy coven. Jessica felt revulsion and pity at once, and she didn’t know whether to join Alex on the floor or kick him in the head.

  “I’d never felt so angry at him,” she recalled. “Frustration, sure, but not the kind of bitterness that I felt standing over him. I felt sorry for him, but I was more angry at him for doing this to himself the way Alice might have.”

  Something snapped in Jessica’s mind as she gave in to the anger and rejected her empathy for the man at her feet. She tried to pull her feet away, but he clung to her with strong arms. So she grabbed a white pillar candle off the end table and smashed it against his head.

  Stunned, Alex let go. His sobs quieted and he looked at her, stricken. Slowly he stood, dazed and confused. Jessica finally recovered her voice. She asked him if he’d whipped himself. He just looked at her. When she pressed him, he nodded
.

  Why? she demanded. Why had he done what only Alice could possibly do to him? Why had he brought Alice back into their lives?

  He said nothing and headed back into his room, leaving the door open to the black blanket that hid his private world. When he emerged five minutes later, Jessica had cleaned up the carpet, and he’d wiped most of the blood from his face and body, but some of it was seeping through the blue shirt he’d put on.

  For a long time neither spoke. Finally she asked again why he’d done it. Why had he brought Alice’s sick sewer of religion into their home after so many years?

  He looked away. “She was wrong,” he said. “God and Satan do not exist. They are in the mind.”

  “That’s what she used to say,” Jessica retorted.

  Although Jessica found it much easier to remember her years in California than her years as a child living with Alice, she was able to draw at least an outline of the convoluted beliefs that drove Alice and Cyril to the brutal abuse of such young children.

  Alice’s unholy concoction, which she called Eve’s Holy Coven, appeared to draw on every major world religion, often in direct contradiction to the underlying premise of those religions, namely finding God. Throwing in some animism and a healthy dose of satanic ritual, what emerged was the gospel according to Alice.

  She demanded order and created rules. No exceptions. In the end, people’s judgment would be determined not by how well they served some omnipotent being called God, but by how much power they took from this life to become God.

  In Alice’s mind, she was God.

  It’s doubtful that Alice really believed in a God outside of herself at all. Or for that matter, a Satan. For her, the notions of God and Satan were merely instruments she used to invoke powers that ultimately resided only in her.

  The rules of the universe were crystal clear. One had to stay pure in order to maintain power in this life. And although she believed that she maintained an almost virginal existence in virtually every aspect of her life, there was always a little evil that slipped in and watered down that purity. Only a vessel truly pure could tap the power of evil rather than be contaminated by it. She simply had to maintain purity if she hoped to achieve the power she needed to stay pure. Hopeless circular reasoning. Secular humanism with an ugly mask.

  Borrowing sacrifice from Judaism and appeasement of the gods from ancient South American tribes, Alice found a way to deal with the impurity that threatened her. She needed an unspoiled lamb—which really meant an innocent virgin—to pay the required price for any lingering evil that would dilute her power.

  For this purpose she needed young children, kept pure through a vigorous system of rules and punishment. She then made them pay for her evil once a month, during the new moon.

  In Alice’s twisted mind, the only woman to truly accomplish perfection was Eve. Virginal and completely unspoiled in the garden, she was able to trick Lucifer into giving her his power, which she then passed on to the human race. All wars and sickness and every kind of evil came from Eve, who beguiled the snake. There has never been such a powerful woman since. Thus the name of Alice’s tiny cult, Eve’s Holy Coven.

  Satanic ritual was nothing more than a way for Alice to experiment with different ways to trick Lucifer the way Eve had.

  Of course, all of this was a metaphor for her own struggle against herself, because in the end good and evil, God and Satan, lived inside her. In every worthy person. Alice was God; Alice was Satan.

  Looking at a bloodied Alex in their apartment that night, it appeared to Jessica that he was following in Alice’s footsteps, punishing himself to find purity and power—as Alice had punished a much younger version of him to the same end.

  The fact that Alex had so quickly zeroed in on this central part of Alice’s philosophy alarmed Jessica. God and Satan do not exist. They are in the mind.

  She pushed Alex further, accusing him of embracing Alice’s religion. Instead of reacting with repulsion, as he had in the past when she suggested any lingering association with Alice, he sat down at the kitchen table, crossed his legs, and asked for her forgiveness. He calmly explained that he was simply proving to himself that he could face the pain of his past with defiance so that he could finish his book, Man of Sorrow. Shocking as it might seem, what he had done was only an experiment. A test that he’d passed. It wouldn’t happen again.

  But Jessica needed more reassurance, so she pushed even further. How could she know that he wasn’t regressing? And if he could whip himself as Alice had whipped him, what was to say he wouldn’t one day snap and try to whip her, the way Alice had?

  Alex recoiled at the suggestion, and for a few minutes he became the old Alex she knew so well. He stood up, shocked. Through misted eyes he asked her how she could ever think he’d hurt her. He would die for her! He nearly had, on several occasions!

  “He was just a wounded kid again. It was so sad. I couldn’t just ignore that pain.” Jessica recalled the defining moment through tears. “But for the first time, I was afraid of him.”

  She finally broke down and comforted her brother, and when he refused to go to the emergency ward for treatment, she cleaned and dressed his wounds. They agreed to keep the incident between them, as they did with all things related to Alice. Questions would lead to exposure for her as well as him. Neither was ready to expose their past to the world. News would leak. For all they knew, Alice was still out there, waiting for word.

  The next day, life in their apartment continued as though nothing had happened. But Jessica began to wonder more and more what life without Alex would be like.

  JANUARY 3, 1992. The day was overcast, but the new year brought a thrilling surprise to Jessica. On New Year’s Eve, Bruce Halstron had taken her to the swings at what was known to the locals as Lovers’ Park, swung her high in the air, and told her that he wouldn’t stop until she agreed to marry him. Delighted, she agreed halfway through the first swing.

  Three days passed before Jessica decided she had to break the news to Alex, who was his normal brooding self. Her engagement to Bruce meant that she would be moving out of the apartment when they wed, probably in the summer.

  Nursing more than a little trepidation, she asked him to sit down and brace himself because she had a wonderful announcement. He grinned and asked her to go on. She was in love with a man named Bruce Halstron, she told him.

  He continued to smile in silence, but his grin now looked forced. When he didn’t react negatively, she decided to get the rest out quickly.

  And, she told him, she’d accepted Bruce’s proposal of marriage.

  Alex’s face turned completely white. “He’ll live here?” he asked.

  She sat down next to him, placed a hand on his knee, and explained her heart. “No. We have to move on, Alex. I’m getting married. That means—”

  But he stood and cut her off. “I know what it means!”

  As she’d half expected, he launched into a tirade, reminding her of their special circumstances. He didn’t have a job and couldn’t afford the apartment. He would be lost without her. His whole life revolved around her! Quickly his anger turned to fear and then to panic. How could she even think of abandoning him?

  But Jessica knew her brother well and was prepared. Again, she approached the subject with reason, explaining that she wasn’t a little girl any longer.

  Alex slapped her. Stunned, she sat back and lifted a hand to her stinging face. Seeing her shock, Alex dropped to his knees and begged her to forgive him. He didn’t know why he’d slapped her. She was his life, and the fear of losing her had made him crazy. He laid his head on her lap and cried his remorse.

  Rather than engage him, she pushed his head off her, walked to the kitchen, and poured herself a drink, knowing he would follow. He did, and now he told her that she had his full support. Of course she had to leave. She deserved her happiness. She couldn’t live the rest of her life in this pigpen with him.

  Did he mean that? Yes, yes, he really did. She w
as right, they weren’t children. They had to get on with their lives.

  Relieved, Jessica embraced him and thanked him. For a long time they just held each other. Their crazy life in the apartment was finally drawing to a close.

  Then Jessica told him about Bruce—how they’d met, where they went on their first date, how wonderful she felt around him. All the while Alex listened with a brave grin, forcing polite questions. Trying to live without her would be difficult, he said.

  “There was a hollow look in his eyes,” she recalled. “But I was used to it. He was being very brave, and I respected him for that.”

  Unable to hold back any longer, Jessica told Alex something else. Bruce had kissed her. And what was more, he’d seen her scars. He’d touched them.

  The look of horror on her brother’s face seared itself into Jessica’s mind. But Alex didn’t object. “He was just trying to make sense of it all. We never talked about sex. It was off-limits, you know, because of Alice. We just couldn’t go there.”

  The discussion ended shortly after her confession, and she excused herself, walked into her bedroom, and closed the door. That night Jessica fell asleep with a smile on her face. She’d finally taken the last step in finding freedom from Alice. Or, more accurately, she would, when she left Alex for Bruce.

  TWENTY- FIVE

  DANIEL LAY SHIVERING in Laramie, Wyoming’s Ivinson emergency ward, grappling with an acute awareness that he stood on a cliff with a hand on his back, pushing. The cliff being the boy’s demand that he head south on his own, despite his physical state. The hand pushing him being his motivation to save Heather.

  And at the bottom of that cliff, the concrete reality that a single slip of the foot would mean a bone-crushing demise for them both.

  Fifteen minutes had passed. The room was clear except for Lori, who checked his vitals yet again and, satisfied, settled on the bed next to him. She spoke in a near whisper.

  “You have no idea how close that was. They wanted to give up.”

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Two minutes, twenty-five seconds. Never again, Daniel. That’s it.”