Novels 11 Adam Page 33

She glanced up at Daniel. “Is that what you want, Daniel?”

  The priest spread his hands and closed his eyes. His voice was strong. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

  “Is that what you want, Eve?” Her voice a little stronger.

  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

  “Is that what you want, you old whore? To finally kill me?”

  “More than you can possibly imagine,” Eve said in a low growl.

  The priest’s voiced rumbled on under them. “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and shall be forever and ever.”

  Alex seemed to have fallen into a trance, staring at Jessica without expression. She looked at his glazed eyes and stepped forward. “Is that what you want, Alex? To finish what Eve started when we were children?”

  “Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me.”

  “I love you, Alex. I love you.” Jessica leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

  “To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.” Heather recognized the prayer from Hostage to the Devil—it was the “Salve Regina,” referring to Eve from Genesis.

  Alex’s face began to tremble.

  “Deliver this poor soul from the darkness, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

  “It’s not you, Alex. It’s not you killing all those women,” Jessica said. “It’s Eve.”

  “Do you want to be my friend, Jessica?”

  “Eve’s the whore,” Jessica said, stronger now. “She’s the one who whipped us when we were children.”

  “Within your wounds hide me.”

  “Take her to the table and tie her down, Alex.”

  Jessica stepped back, eyes furious. “Is that what you want? You’ll take me and let them go? Is that it, you sick pig? Then do it.”

  She spun around and stretched out her arms. “Whip me!”

  Daniel’s body dropped from the ceiling, slammed into the wall, and froze two feet above the ground in the same upright, crucified position.

  “Whip her!” The words crashed through the room in an earsplitting snarl.

  Alex began trembling head to foot.

  “Whip me!” Jessica screamed.

  Her blouse tore from neck to waist, ripped down the center back by unseen hands. A whip hanging on the wall behind the table flew across the room and smacked into Alex’s hand.

  “Whip her!” Eve snarled.

  “My God, my Jesus, hear me. Within your wounds hide me.”

  Long, ugly scars covered the skin on Jessica’s back. The final piece of the picture dropped into Heather’s mind. As Father Seymour had speculated, they’d both been systematically beaten when they were children. Severely. Often. By Eve. Who’d now graduated from mere beatings to ritualistic murder.

  Alex held the whip without looking at it. His eyes were fixed on his sister’s scars.

  Alex began to shake violently. The whip slipped from his hand and fell to the ground.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  “Whip her,” Eve snarled at Alex. “Whip her, you little worm!”

  “No.” His face twisted in anguish. “No, I can’t!”

  Jessica shook with sobs, but she did not lower her arms or turn to face them.

  “Whip me, Alex!” she screamed. “Kill me! Kill me and never kill again . . .”

  “My God, my Jesus, hear me. Within your wounds hide me.”

  Alex began to wail. He tore at his shirt and ripped it down the middle, exposing the same long, ugly scars that covered Jessica’s back. He grabbed the whip and turned back to Daniel, who was still on the wall, face contorted, once again bleeding from his wounds.

  “It’s me,” Alex screamed. “I’m the one you want. Take me!”

  Jessica whirled, face white.

  Alex yelled at Daniel again, a terrible throaty moan as loud as the scream. “Take me! Kill me!” He sucked in air. “Kill me! Kill me!”

  “No!” Jessica cried. “Oh, God, no!”

  Alex jumped up onto the table and began to lash himself over the shoulder. “Take me, take me, take me!” Tears streamed from his eyes.

  Daniel jerked his head to the ceiling and began to scream.

  FORTY-TWO

  DANIEL STILL WAS. Just was. Barely was.

  And all that was, was darkness. A void so deep and so empty that what was left of his life was sucked into this abyss of anguish.

  Daniel could do nothing except scream, long bloodcurdling cries of anguish, begging for relief, for help.

  He now knew one thing that he’d never understood before: he existed to be and belong, and the dark hole that had swallowed his mind was enemy to both, separating him into terrible loneliness that was so horrifying it brought him a great deal of physical pain.

  Which was why he couldn’t stop screaming. In complete silence.

  He wondered if molten fire had been poured into his bones, so great was the pain. The top of his skull might have been sawed off, and a bucket of lava poured in, searing his nerves.

  But there wasn’t red lava or molten fire. There was only pitch darkness. Separation from the light.

  And this last, singular truth was what now swarmed his mind, spinning around the darkness.

  He wasn’t meant to be separated from the light.

  The light. Everything he’d rejected for so long was now his only hope. And yet it was so distant, so estranged.

  He wasn’t meant to be pulled from the light any more than a fingernail was meant to be pulled from a finger.

  And that was why. He was. Screaming.

  But now even the screaming was running out. The jaws of silence gaped from the very throat of this darkness. He wanted to scream, only to make some sound, because sound itself was something to belong to.

  Then the last of the sound faded, and he hung limp on the wall. Slowly a tremble swelled, not through his flesh, but in his bones.

  The others couldn’t see his shaking—that alone would have offered him some comfort and eased his trembling. To be known and seen and therefore reacted to, at least. Anything but this . . . this perfect solitude in darkness. This void.

  In fact, it was the acute loneliness that made him quake.

  He was not meant to be alone. He knew that now, like an eyeball staring at a razor blade closing in knows it is not meant to be sliced.

  If only he could scream, his voice would keep him company.

  If only he could cry, his tears would be a welcome companion.

  If only he could be seen, really seen in this darkness, he would be understood, and maybe one of them would care. Maybe Heather would care, even after all . . .

  A voice broke through the darkness of his mind. Set him free! Set him free, set him free you hear me, you filthy spirit from hell!

  The darkness suddenly receded. Daniel gasped.

  It was hardly more than a black wave sliding back into the ocean of fear on a starless midnight, but the subtle shift from pitch

  There was no light, but this slightest relief made Daniel scream again. This time in raw desperation. Please, please, please find me! Find me, I’m here in the darkness! Please don’t leave me.

  But the darkness settled back in, as heavy as before, snuffing out his cries.

  Daniel hung there and trembled at his core, lifeless in their eyes, like a blackened, bruised cross. He begged for death. He begged to be swallowed by . . .

  The darkness pulled back from his mind like a draining sea, revealing a gray, sandy bottom. The boy, Eve, was racing back and forth on the horizon, frantic. Whirling back and staring for a moment or two at a time, but always returning his attention to the horizon.

  Screaming obscenities.

  Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. But he dared not hope, he could not hope, it was too painful.

  He clenched his eyes and began to scream to whomever, whatever, was pulling back the utter darkness.

  “Help! Help!” The words he
wanted to use, the words that would explain his dire straits, didn’t come. Only that single word, bellowed, hoarse and raw.

  “Set me freeeeeeee! Oh God, set me freeeee . . .”

  He snapped his eyes wide, saw that the darkness was being pulled back, way back, and lost himself completely.

  “See me, see me, please, see me. Set me free . . .” Tears streamed and his shoulders shook in violent sobs. “Please, please, please . . .”

  He heard another distant voice over his own, and he stopped screaming.

  “My God, my Jesus, hear me. Within your wounds hide me.”

  This was the priest. He was crying out for Daniel, a voice in this dark wilderness, trying to find him.

  The voice came again.

  “Here!” Daniel screamed. “I’m here, I’m over here, save me, save me!”

  No one seemed to hear him.

  The darkness started to come back in, like a massive black wave. “God, no! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave . . .”

  A throaty roar split the air, rose to a shriek, and shook Daniel to his bones. This was it, this was death.

  But it wasn’t death. The roar crackled and then was gone, leaving only an echo behind.

  And with it, the darkness was gone, leaving a pale horizon.

  But in Daniel’s mind, this pale emptiness vacated of Eve’s darkness might have been a hundred bright suns.

  And then it was a hundred bright suns, exploding on the horizon with a heat that engulfed him. Pressing against his skin and blowing his hair back with its raw fury.

  The light.

  He threw his head to the sky and whimpered.

  “TAKE ME!”

  “No!” Jessica cried again. “No, Alex!”

  A new voice sounded from the wall. Daniel. Head stretched to the ceiling, groaning out in a cracked, breathy voice. “Set me free . . .”

  They froze as one. There was something monumental about those words screamed by Daniel in this pit of despair. The air seemed to have been sucked from the room.

  Daniel moaned. “God, oh God, set me freeeee . . .”

  “My God, my Jesus, hear me. Within your wounds hide me.”

  A roar split the air, coming from the timbers it seemed. From the air, the room, the wall behind Daniel. Daniel. But from his chest, not his throat.

  His body, stretched to form a crucifix, went limp and dropped to the ground in a pile.

  Unseen hands threw Alex Price onto the table. Flipped him over on his belly, facedown. His left arm was jerked toward one corner, and the old leather strap fixed to the table slapped itself around his wrist and tugged tight.

  Then the same with his right arm. And each leg, an invisible power working feverishly with the swishing and slapping of leather restraints.

  Alex’s shirt peeled away, exposing a strong, muscled back.

  They all watched, stunned at the suddenness of it all.

  The flesh over his spine parted, leaving a gash roughly two feet in length. Alex screamed in pain. But he did not fight it.

  Then another cut, and another. He was being beaten by an unseen cat-o’-nine-tails. But now more. Bruises rose on his arms and lumps moved over his torso, leaving long blue streaks behind.

  A short giggle rippled through the air.

  “No!” Jessica threw herself at her brother’s body, sobbing. “No!” She covered his back with her torso, stretching out with her arms to protect him from the unseen assault.

  “No, oh, God no . . .” She screamed at the empty air above them, “I love him!” A heavy breath. The tendons in her neck stretched tight. “I love him, you hear me? I love him!”

  A long, hollow shriek split the cold air and ran around the room, followed by a long cut that sliced the skin on Jessica’s back.

  She jerked. “I love him!”

  And then nothing. Silence.

  Alex Price lay still.

  He’s dead, Heather thought. Eve killed him. She/he/it had vacated Daniel in a rage, killed Alex, and fled.

  But then his head moved, and Jessica was kissing his head. “I’m so sorry, Alex. Forgive me, forgive me, I’m so sorry . . .”

  Heather spun back to Daniel, who was still sobbing. Shaking.

  “Daniel?”

  She ran to him. His wounds had stopped bleeding, but the one in his side in particular looked like it could threaten his life.

  “Daniel, please, honey, lay still.”

  He turned his head to the sound of her voice, peered up with misted eyes, and seeing her, he grabbed her sleeve. Tugged her frantically toward himself.

  “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

  His voice was so raw, so wrung with desperation that she wondered if he was still being tormented. His eyes searched beyond her, to the ceiling. He was crying out to whatever, whoever had rescued him, she realized. Not wanting to return to whatever hell had held him in its grasp.

  She wrapped her arms around his head and wept with him. “No, no, it’s okay, I’ll never leave you.” She bent over and kissed his forehead. “Sh, sh, just rest. It’s going to be okay.”

  The sound of Jessica’s sobs filled the room.

  “It is finished,” the priest said.

  MAN OF SORROW:

  JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS

  by Anne Rudolph

  Crime Today magazine is pleased to present the ninth and final installment of Anne Rudolph’s narrative account of the killer now known as Alex Price.

  2008

  THE EIGHT previous installments of “Man of Sorrow: Journey into Darkness,” written for Crime Today magazine, provide a limited but satisfactory look at the forces that shaped Alex Price into the killer known as Eve.

  Most of what we know about Alex’s first twenty-eight years came from interviews with Jessica Price, also known as Lori Ames. After pleading no contest to the murder of sixteen women attributed to the Eve killer, Alex Price was sentenced to life in a federal penitentiary. He still refuses to discuss more than what has been recorded in this account.

  It’s not difficult to imagine what his life might have been like between the time he went missing from Pasadena and the time he reemerged in 2007 as the serial killer known only as Eve.

  Did he live in an apartment somewhere, poring over theology and philosophy volumes? Did he spend much time on the Internet, vicariously wandering through the lives of those who unwittingly expose themselves for all to see?

  Did he kill more than the sixteen women chronicled in this book?

  Although we know much about the path Alex Price ultimately chose, we may never know much about the stops he made along the way. One thing is clear: Alice Brown’s treatment of him as a child ultimately influenced his murder of so many women. But even more than Alice, it was Eve who relentlessly drove him to the brink of madness, demanding that to stay sane, he must feed her lust.

  Fleeing Southern California in 1991, Jessica Price made her way to North Dakota, where she changed her name to Lori Ames. Eager to put the past behind her, she studied ambitiously. After spending two years at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks with the intention of becoming a teacher, she decided to study medicine instead. She earned her medical degree at the UCSD School of Medicine in 2000 and subsequently served with the FBI in Phoenix.

  Following her brother’s admission of guilt, Jessica left the FBI and now teaches medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles, where much of what happened during her formative years has since come to light.

  The full details of her own journey are available in a number of essays published through Children of Hope, her Los Angeles–based foundation, which helps abducted children and their parents recover.

  When asked why she didn’t reveal her relationship to Alex much earlier, Jessica responds with averted eyes, perhaps wondering whether she made the right decision. But she wasn’t absolutely positive that the Eve killer was Alex until Heather Clark was released from the root cellar and described her place of captivity. Naturally, she always had her suspicions, but never any certainty. I
t was possible Eve had finished with Alex and moved on to some other soul. Indeed, she was driven to help Daniel recover his memory of the killer he’d seen in Manitou Springs so that she would know for certain, based on the description, whether the Eve killer was Alex. Short of definite knowledge, she could not act, and even then only very carefully.

  Jessica’s fear was primarily motivated by the direct threats Eve had made toward her, threats she believed it would carry out. If the killer was Alex, Eve would be watching should she get too close. Jessica had no doubt that if she confessed her suspicions to the FBI, Eve would know and would do much worse than what Alex was doing already.

  On the other hand, Jessica knew she might be the only one who could stop Alex. Faced with the conundrum, she reasoned that she had to get close enough to Alex to stop him without presenting a direct threat to Eve. Which, in the end, is exactly what she managed to do.

  It’s unclear exactly how Eve’s power functioned. Did it possess Alex and his victims at the same time? Father Seymour believes it’s more likely that there was more than one entity involved. Although certain aspects of evil spirits’ behavior are predictable, much is a mystery.

  Jessica says that she nearly confessed everything to Heather several times. But she agreed with Heather that Alex would kill Daniel if the FBI tried to help out. Instead, Jessica helped Heather connect the last few dots and let her go alone, hoping that she could save Daniel.

  When Jessica finally did make the decision to ignore Eve’s threat and go down to Oklahoma after Heather and Daniel, she was terrified of Eve’s retaliation. Such was the lingering power the spirit held over her.

  In the end, however unorthodox, Jessica’s decision to withhold her suspicions from the FBI proved to be an invaluable link to ending Alex Price’s cycle of terror.

  Although I’ve done my best to characterize the events surrounding Alex and Jessica’s life, I draw no definitive conclusions about precisely how the forces beyond our natural senses operate. Nevertheless, I do believe that the story told in the preceding pages should make one think about more than whether locking your door each night is a good idea. After all, the forces that drove Alex didn’t care much about locks.

  Ask any clergy with experience —or ask a priest named Father Seymour—and you will learn that the victims of demon possession are always willing participants, though they rarely recognize their willingness until much later.