Sequel to
Psychological Mitosis
*New
York Herald*
Is
a serial killer on the loose?
New
York's finest this morning discovered the decayed remains of the missing John
Ashley. He was reported missing two weeks ago after NYPD's chief detective Theo
Farrell of the 23rd precinct, wanted him to answer some more questions in
relation to the series of ghastly murders which began with his psychic wife.
John Ashley was found in the basement of a house in the outskirt of the city.
Police reports claim that his Achilles tendons were severed and therefore,
rendered him crippled as he tried to escape. The police have labeled the crime
heinous and sadistic and have sworn to bring the killer to justice.
***************
Four weeks earlier
Cindy Ashley
was home alone and on the phone when she heard a knock on the door. She looked
up at the clock and told whoever was on the line that she would have to call
back later. She then dropped the receiver on the cradle and got up to answer
the door. But as she was about to open it, she was hit by a bad psychic feeling
and backed away from the door terrified. As thought on cue, the door
immediately bust open and someone rushed in and repeatedly attacked her with a
knife. After the assailant was through, he turned around and began to search
her drawers. But unbeknown to him, she was still alive. So she began to crawl
towards the window in a last desperate bid to save herself.
******************
Jack Ashley was in front of his apartment when the sound
of breaking glasses, preceded his wife's body crashing through the window. So
he immediately dropped his best friend Bill, who he'd been carrying back home
because he'd had one too many drinks at the bar, and ran into the house. Once
inside, he immediately lifted her body from where it had been impaled on the
window and tried to stop the bleeding. While he was desperately trying to save
his wife's life, he heard her killer making his escape. Numb and in shock, John
called the police who arrived minutes later to secure the crime scene for
processing, while his statement was taken by a detective Theo Farrell of the
23rd precinct. After writing his statement, the detective asked him if anybody
had any reason to murder his wife. He'd almost said no but hesitated when he
remembered an incident that happened on her last show.
His wife was sort of a celebrity because she hosted a
live show on NBC1. She performed psychic readings for people and also gave
counseling on the best course of action one should take in a relationship. On
this particular show, she'd been interviewing a man when she'd been hit with a
premonition. Her vision had been about a psychotic killer who was going to kill
again. While in the grip of the premonition she'd said, "You will both strike again and again together", "Like
you did in the past". The whole studio then became as quiet as a
graveyard until it was broken by the scuffling of feet as someone in the
audience got up to leave and a couple of others followed suit.
After the show she told John that in her vision, she'd
seen a book that had a picture of a house on the front cover. She claimed that
it was a clue and she may know who the killer is, but wanted to be very sure
before she went to the police with the information. After he'd recanted the
story to the police, they left with a promise that they would do everything in
their power to bring the culprit to justice. Then he was warned not to leave
town in case they needed him for further questioning.
Two weeks later, during Cindy's burial, his neighbor Ms
Loveheart came over to pay her condolence. After paying her condolence, she
told John that she remembered something from the night of his wife's murder.
She claimed she'd seen a man peeping into their house that night but before she
could investigate, she'd heard the sound of breaking glasses, then the sound of
footstep running into the house. John thanked her for the information and
relayed it to detective Theo Farrell after the burial. The detective then told
him to inform Ms Loveheart that she should stop over at the precinct the
following day, for her statement.
John got home and went to relay the message to his
neighbor. But for the second time in two weeks, he dialed 911 to report another
gruesome murder. He'd found Ms Loveheart butchered, with her head, arms and
legs cut off from her body. There was blood all over the house, so much blood
that John had puked all over her floor in disgust. For the first time, he was
so scared for his life that he'd soiled his pants. Later that night, after the
police and the coroner had left, his phone rang. It was a man who identified
himself as a book dealer. He claimed that his wife had called him about two
weeks ago, on the night of her murder to be precise. He claimed that she'd
inquired about a book, so he was calling to inform her that he now had it. John
remembered his wife's reference to a book on the night of her premonition, so
he asked for the book to be mailed to his apartment the following day.
The book arrived in the afternoon. It was a novel with a
front cover that had a picture of an old house with trees around it. It was
written by a man using the pseudonym "Terry Brimstone" and the novel
was titled "The Slaughter house". The novel was based on a real life
account of a double murder several years ago. John decided to find the writer
so that they could have a chat, so he called some friends, inquired from book
stores and finally got the writers phone number. So he called and made an
appointment with the writer for six thirty the following evening.
The following evening, John arrived at the writer's
apartment ten minutes late. So he hurried over to the front porch to knock but
met the front door ajar. A familiar feeling of misgiving overcame him and when
he entered, he discovered blood stains that traced a path from the kitchen to
the writer's basement. In the basement, he found the writer butchered while
some of his body part had been fed into his washing machine. The machine had
then been switched on, and he could see lather mixed with blood and pieces of
flesh whirling inside it. By now John was already used to the sight of death,
so he immediately turned around on surprisingly steady legs and headed back for
his car.
As he made his way to the car, he noticed two framed
picture's lined up on the writer's hallway. On one of the picture was a face he
recognized. The face belonged to the man on his wife's show, the night she'd
gotten her premonition. His looked at the other picture and realized that it
was the picture of the same old house on the book cover. So John took the
picture of the house and left the premises quickly without calling the police,
as far as he was concerned, he was never there. When he got back home, he had
to take three shots of vodka in quick succession to steady his nerves. Twenty
five minutes later, he started examining the picture and discovered a name,
year, address and a note written at the back which read "From father to son with love".
The picture had been taken by the Tom who was the
writer's father, then later framed and given to his son as a gift after he
graduated from college. Armed with the picture, John drove the following day to
locate Tom, who then told him everything he knew about the murder and the fact
that the house still stood but no one has lived in it since. So John visited
the house to see if there were any clue's that would reveal the killers
identity. But when he got into the house he was knocked out by a severe blow to
the head and when he regained consciousness, the house was on fire. He managed
to escape and rushed back to Tom's house, only to find his headless corpse in
the sitting room.
Further investigation led him to the toilet where Tom's
severed head sat on his water closet. The gruesome sight was too overwhelming
that he crumbled to the floor and immediately began to back away. As he drove
away from Tom's apartment like a lunatic, he wondering what kind of demented
soul he was dealing with. He wondered what kind of monster would leave so much
destruction and horror in its wake. John began to fear he would become the next
victim, so he decided that he was leaving the town for good. But before he
went, he'd have to stop by at Bill's and wrap up one little business.
As he drove to Bill's house, he prayed fervently that
the killer hadn't gotten to him yet. Twenty minutes later, he was knocking on Bill's
door. Bill opened after a couple of seconds and ushered him in. Inside, Bill
opened a bottle of vodka which they drank as they chatted. It was more of one
sided as John did all the talking and drinking, while Bill just sat there
listening. It continued that way till John pulled out a knife and placed it on
Bill's neck. Bill's calm and handsome face transformed from deep concentration,
to puzzlement, to fear and finally to terror. It was seconds later before he
could muster enough courage to ask John why he was holding a knife to his
throat. In reply, John angrily smacked him on the face and told him he was the
reason for all his recent troubles.
Bill had been having an affair with Cindy and John had
known for months. The betrayal had hurt him, so he'd been plotting on how he
was going to make them pay. But she then handed him a way when she had that
psychic vision. He reasoned that all he had to do was find a way to kill her
and blame it on a nonexistent psycho, because he never believed his wife was psychic.
The night he was supposed to kill her, Bill had bumped into him at the bar.
Then when Bill had gotten himself drunk, John was presented with another
brilliant idea. He was going to use Bill as his alibi. So he carried Bill back
home when he'd passed out, dropped him outside his house, then proceeded in and
killed his wife. When the police arrived and questioned him, he was pleased to
note that they'd swallowed his cocky and bull story hook, line and sinker.
Everyone believed him, even his whore of a best friend.
While John recanted his story, Bill just sat still
listening and occasionally checking his watch. And when John was through, they
both were silent for a couple of seconds before Bill asked if he was going to
kill him now. John smiled and asked him, what he thought, but Bill replied by
looking at his watch again. Why would a man that was about to die bother about
the time, thought John. So he asked Bill why he was looking at his wristwatch
and Bill told him that he was waiting for the drug he'd placed in his drink to
take effect. When realization dawned on John, he quickly raised the knife to
strike but his vision blurred and he collapsed to the floor. John woke up later
to find himself in the basement, strapped to a
funny looking chair with Bill seated in front of him, holding an axe and
his knife. Strangely, Bill looked different, his demeanor had changed and even
his voice was different as he began to tell his story;
"He claimed that they'd both killed their sister,
mother, father, and grandfather when he was a kid. He also claimed that they
had taken great pleasure in doing it because their father and grandfather
molested them and their sister. Their sister and mother suffered it all in
silence because they probably enjoyed it while he took the bulls by the horn
and killed them. But their sister and mother rejected them because of the deed
so they killed them too. It would have remained that way if the stupid milkman
hadn't told his writer son the story and John's bitch of a wife hadn't had that
premonition".
John began to put the pieces together but some facts
were still confusing. Tom was the delivery milkman that discovered the murders
years ago. The boy was the only survivor and the story made the news. A lot of
fuss was made about the boy but after some time the boy was sent to an
orphanage, where he changed his name and that was the last anybody ever heard
about him. What John couldn't understand was Bill's reference to
"they", like he had an accomplice and the reference to the death of
his grandfather, father, mother and sister. Because Tom had told him that it
was only his father and his sister that was murdered that day.
Bill continued rambling about how he'd fucked John's
wife and the way she begged for more. He claimed that he hadn't seen it as
wrong because he was after all John's best friend and best friends help each
other out. He said that John should thank him for fucking his wife because he'd
done him a grand favor. He further claimed that he'd been so shocked when he
heard her psychic vision and that was why he'd panicked and left the show.
Since he wasn't sure how much John's wife knew, he'd decided to have a drink
that night and see if John would talk about it. But when he didn't say
anything, he decided to pretend that he was knocked out so that he could spend
the night in his house.
John took him back home where he witnessed the murder,
and Bill had been happy that John had done the job for him. But when he found
out that John's neighbor had seen him watching the killer, he killed her too.
Then when John had called to make inquiries about the writer and the novel,
he'd also had to kill the writer and his father too. He stressed that everybody
who knew about his past had to die, and now John had to die too. But this time,
he would give John the luxury his other victims were not afforded, the choice
between the axe and the knife.
John begged for his life and reminded Bill that they we
were best friends. John proclaimed that he only wanted to scare him and had no
intentions of killing him. But all Bill did was to sit down and watch John weep
for about five minutes before he said he believed John. Bill claimed that he
saw it in John's eyes that John hadn't really wanted to kill him, so he was
going to release him. So Bill went behind John's chair, bent down, cut both
Achilles tendons, stood up untied John and told him he was free to go.
Now my patience has payed off and I am reaping the fruit of my labour because revenge is a dish best served cold with a bottle of chilled beer to go with it. Oh God! That feeling! That feeling I so waited for is building up and its about to consume me, impatiently I waited as it rumbled to the surface, only for it and my progress to be interrupted abruptly, Arghhh! I felt the pain before I heard the gunshot. My screamed continued to reverberate in the silent house while I lay crumbled on the floor with my blood spraying around the room as I try unsuccessfully to plug the hole while her two sightless eyes stared at me accusing and blaming me, undeterred i stared back at them too my sight never wavering, daring it to do its worse and when I eventually won the staring contest I started laughing despite the excruciating agony I was experiencing and the amount of blood I was losing, I laughed and laughed till I howled in pain, screamed in frustration and finally burst out laughing again for I was devastated it had to end this way after all the barriers I broke, circumstances I dared to be here and the pains and risk I took to make this reunion perfect.
