Dark Screams, Volume 1 (3 page)

It was an old story. One told so often, by so many, that Kara wondered if it had lost its power to horrify and disgust. When forced into mandatory counseling, she'd hesitated to even tell her tale. They'd told it for her, those other girls, so many of them, variations on a theme that ultimately landed them in that room, bitter or broken. When the therapist finally coaxed Kara to spill her secret, she swore the woman's eyes had glazed over, as if to say, “Not this again.”

His name was Bill. Her mother brought him home when Kara was nine, two years after her dad left. Well, two years after he left, and eighteen months after her mother finally realized he hadn't just taken off temporarily, as he'd done all of Kara's life. They'd never gotten married, so he'd seemed to feel free to disappear at will, chasing some more exciting life. Come back when the money ran out. Stay until he got some again. This time, he must have found what he was looking for. Kara never saw him again.

Bill had seemed like a trade-up. That's what her mom called him, giggling to her friends, “I sure did trade up, didn't I?” They'd agree, with varying degrees of approval and envy. Bill was a proper family man, one with a proper job who cared for his new wife in a proper fashion. As for his stepdaughter…Kara was certain that, in Bill's mind, he was caring for her in a proper fashion, too. That's what he always said, anyway. That he was showing her how much he cared.

Old story. No further explanation required. Hers fit the other girls' like it was a script they'd all memorized. The main role varied—boyfriend, stepfather, even Daddy himself—but the plot stayed the same. Creaking door. Creaking bedsprings. Our little secret. Can't tell Mommy, because Mommy loves him. Mommy is happy. We want Mommy to be happy.

Kara was thirteen the night everything changed. She was in her room doing homework. Ingrid was staying the night, as she usually did on the weekends when Kara's mom worked late. Bill hated that. He knew exactly why Ingrid stayed over, and he'd yell at Kara's mom about how this was his house and he didn't like strangers in his house. Kara's mom would say Ingrid wasn't a stranger and this was the one thing she defied him on, and later, in those therapy sessions, Kara wondered if her mother knew what Bill did when she worked late, and that's why she insisted on letting Ingrid stay over. The reason didn't matter. If Ingrid stayed, Bill stayed out, and that was all that counted.

Usually Ingrid got pissy when Kara did homework during their overnights. But it was the only time Kara could concentrate, safe in the knowledge that her bedroom door handle wouldn't turn.

That night, though, Ingrid had encouraged Kara to do her homework.

“I'll make Rice Krispies squares,” she said. “That'll keep Bill happy.”

So Kara worked while Ingrid baked, and Kara had almost finished her worksheet when she heard the sound. Like a car backfiring.

She went into the hall and looked toward the kitchen. A moment later, Ingrid appeared. There was blood on her T-shirt. Kara gasped and ran down the hall. Ingrid put up her hands to stop her.

“It's okay. It's not mine. There's been an accident.”

“What—?”

Ingrid motioned for her to follow. Kara jogged after her, through the living room, into the back hall, wheeling around the corner into Bill's workshop, hearing a song playing on his tinny radio. Leonard Cohen. “Everybody Knows.”

There was Bill. Sitting at his bench. Lying facedown on his bench. His head…

There was blood. Blood and bits of…Bill's head. The insides. His brains. Everywhere. On the bench. On the wall. On Ingrid.

Ingrid pointed at Bill's shotgun on the floor. “He was cleaning it. I don't know what went wrong. I came in to give him a snack and
boom.
”

Kara stared at Ingrid. Then at Bill. Then at the marshmallow-cereal square on the bench, speckled with blood.

“I should get rid of that,” Ingrid said, taking the Rice Krispies square. “I'll need to get changed, too, after we call the police. It'll be easier if we don't mention I was in here.”

Kara nodded, unable to speak.

Ingrid walked over and clutched Kara's arm. “It'll be okay. Everyone knows he cleaned his gun on Fridays during hunting season. Accidents happen.”

When Kara still didn't move, Ingrid leaned down to her ear and whispered, “He won't touch you ever again, Kare-Bear.” Then she walked past and headed for the bathroom.

“Kara?

“Kare-Bear?

“Are you there, Kara?”

Kara lay there, listening to Ingrid calling for her. Then, quietly, Kara said, “I heard what you told him.”

Silence.

Kara raised her voice a notch. “You told him I shot Bill.”

“N-no. I-I never—”

“I heard you, Ingrid. You told him and he beat me, and you let him.”

“He was going to kill me. I panicked. I didn't mean to say it. It just came out.”

“Like with Eddie?”

“No!” Kara heard a scrabbling noise and imagined Ingrid getting to her feet. “I swear, I never told them you had anything to do with Eddie.”

Liar.

Kara squeezed her eyes shut, rage whipping through her as she remembered Eddie's death. Ingrid swearing he'd raped her, then making Kara help her cover it up, as she'd done with Bill.

“If you tell anyone about Eddie, I'll tell them you killed Bill.”

“I didn't—!”

“But that's what I'll tell them, and they'll believe me, because you had reason to kill him. I didn't.” Ingrid's voice softened and she stroked Kara's hair. “But that's not going to happen because you know I did the right thing. With Bill and with Eddie. I saved you, Kare-Bear. Two times I saved you. Now you owe me. You have to pay the price.”

And she had. They both had. No one ever realized Bill's death wasn't an accident. Eddie was different. The police eventually figured it out and arrested both girls, and Kara did as Ingrid told her. She said Eddie raped Ingrid, but that's all she knew, and she had no idea who shot him.

What had Ingrid said? Kara never found out. The whole experience was a blur of shock and confusion and terror. The case never went to trial. Their public defender struck a deal, and both girls were sentenced to separate juvenile-detention facilities until their eighteenth birthdays.

That
was the price Kara had paid for being Ingrid's friend.

Kara lay on the floor after that, too exhausted for anger. It hurt even to breathe. He didn't need to beat her so badly. There was little purpose to it except his own enjoyment, and she'd seen that glittering in his eyes. The beatings wouldn't stop until she escaped, and right now she couldn't even think about doing that. Just staying awake was too much effort, and soon she lost that battle. She tumbled into restless sleep and a nightmare, this one straight from life.

Kara sat on the park bench, holding Melody on her lap so the baby could watch the big kids.

“Do you want to go play?” Kara laughed when Melody's feet drummed against her leg. “I bet you do. I bet—”

“Hello, Kara.”

Kara jumped. No one called her that anymore. She was Kerry these days. Kara Snow—murderess—died in Ohio. Kerry Martin—mother and wife—lived in Seattle.

Her arms clenched around her daughter so tightly that Melody let out a squawk of surprise.

“Shhh.” Kara pressed her lips against the baby's ear, arms wrapped around her. “It's okay. It's okay,” she whispered, the words as much for her own comfort as for her daughter's.

“Hello, Ingrid.” Kara didn't look up. Just kept clutching Melody as her childhood friend sat beside her.

“That's some welcome,” Ingrid said. “Five years, and I don't even get a hug?”

Kara looked over at her, and all the rage of those years welled up. Six years of telling herself Eddie must have attacked Ingrid. Five years of refusing to consider the possibility her friend had cut a deal implicating Kara in his murder. Four years in that horrible place, with those horrible girls. Three years since she'd gotten out to discover her mother wanted nothing to do with her. Two years since she'd fled to Seattle with Gavin to become someone else. All because of Ingrid.

“How did you find me?” Kara asked.

“Gavin Martin.”

Kara cringed. She'd met Gavin in an outreach program after her release. He'd recently been released himself, from a minimum-security prison, where he'd served time after his own so-called friend talked him into a convenience-store holdup. That kind of record wouldn't stop him from getting a construction job, so he'd made no attempt to hide his identity as they'd moved west. Anyone who knew she'd been dating Gavin could just ask his family where they'd gone.

“I have a new life now,” Kara said.

“So I see. What a cutie. Can I hold her?”

Kara's arms tightened again around Melody. She paused, and as hard as she tried to hold on to her anger, when she heard Ingrid's voice and looked over and saw her old friend there, she felt…guilty. Some-damned-how
she
felt guilty.

“She isn't used to strangers,” Kara said.

“Shy, like her momma.” Ingrid looked at Kara and her pretty face softened. “I'm sorry, Kare-Bear. I know I have a lot to be sorry for, and I really am. I've changed, and I wanted to tell you that.”

“You came all the way to Seattle to tell me that?”

Ingrid's smile sparked, as bright as ever. “Sure. You're my best friend. I'd go anywhere for you. Now, how about we get this little girl's momma a nice hot coffee? It's freezing out here.”

And so it began. Kara didn't just roll over and play best friend again. But…yes, ultimately she let Ingrid back into her life. She didn't have a choice.

“I know who you really are,” Ingrid had told her, a week later, when Ingrid announced she had a new job in Seattle and wasn't leaving. “That's just our little secret, though, right?”

“If you mean Gavin, he already knows—”

“Of course he does. But I'm sure you don't go around telling people here that you spent three years in jail for murder.”

“No.” Kara looked her in the eye. “And if you're threatening to tell—”

Ingrid hugged her. “Of course not. I mean, they don't know, so they can't understand you the way I do. You need me, Kara. That's all.”

That was not all, and Kara knew it.

Kara had been lying on the basement floor for what felt like hours. Every now and then Ingrid would call her name. When Kara ignored her, she started to moan about the pain, that she thought their captor had broken her arm, that she felt feverish. When Kara still didn't answer, she started to cry, soft sobs at first, then rising, begging forgiveness from God and Eddie's brother and every person she'd ever wronged.

“I didn't mean to hurt anyone,” she sobbed.

“Even me?” Kara said.

Silence, then, “Kara?”

Kara rose to sit, chain scraping the floor, metal digging in where she'd yanked against it, trying to escape the beating, knowing it would do no good. The price she'd had to pay, apparently. There was always a price. And Kara was always paying it.

“You're asking everyone to forgive you, but those people aren't here. Even Eddie's brother can't hear you down here. The only one listening is the person you owe the biggest apology to. But I don't hear you giving it.”

“If you mean Eddie—”

“Yes, let's talk about Eddie.” Kara wrapped her arms around her knees, wincing as pain knifed through them. “He
is
the person you wronged most, isn't he? That's why he came to mind first. Which he shouldn't, if he did what you claimed. I don't know if rape deserves death, but I don't feel the least bit bad about Bill, so I guess I'd accept the punishment as just.”

“I-I don't understand.”

“But I do. I always have, I think. I just couldn't let myself. I felt disloyal thinking it, believing my boyfriend over my best friend. Worse, if I believed he didn't rape you, that meant you murdered him in cold blood. Murdered an innocent boy. Who would do that? Not a human being. That's the act of a monster. The sort of person who'd let her friend go to jail, even when it didn't clear her own name. Was accusing me supposed to clear your name, Inge? Or did you just want to ruin my life along with yours?”

“If someone said I accused you—”

“No, but even if you didn't, a confession from you would have set me free.”

“I thought we'd be together.” Ingrid hurried on. “Not that I accused you, but I didn't
take
the blame, and I should have. I see that now. But I thought we'd be together. We'd look after each other. You owed me that.”

“I owed you? For killing a sweet kid who never did anything but treat me like I was special?”

“I treated you special.” Ingrid's voice rose and her own chain clanked as if she was getting to her feet. “I treated you like
gold,
Kara, and what did you do? Threw me over for a second-string football player.”

“Who never laid a finger on you.”

A pause, too long. “What? No. Eddie attacked me. I was in shock and I thought he was going to hurt you, so I shot him. For you. It was all for you.”

“Bill, too?”

“Of course,” Ingrid snarled. “You know that. I killed him for you, and you were grateful for it, and now you dare accuse me of—”

“Of murdering Eddie for no reason. You say you treated me like gold, but he—”

“Don't you fucking compare me to that boy!” Ingrid's voice went shrill. “He barely knew you. We've been together since we were three.
Three
fucking years old! But there was always someone else. Some guy trying to get between us. To take you away. First Bill and then Eddie and now that Neanderthal you married. Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. Can I tell you what I'd like to do to fucking Gavin, Kara?”

Kara heard Ingrid's door creak open. “Sure, Ingrid. Tell us what you'd like to do to me.”

“What?” Ingrid said. “It's
you
? You sick son of a—”

A thump and a screech as Gavin hit Ingrid.

“Kara!” Ingrid screamed between blows. “It's Gavin. It's all—”

“All me,” Gavin said. “It's always been me. Looking out for my wife. You aren't going to hurt her anymore, Ingrid. I'm here to make sure of that.”

The beating continued, Ingrid screaming for help, screaming for Kara, and, finally, screaming for mercy, screaming for her life. That's when Kara realized what Gavin meant to do. Stop her. Permanently.

Kara fumbled in the near dark with her leg iron. It was supposed to be latched, but not locked, just as it had been earlier. But now when she tugged, it wouldn't open. She yanked harder, heart pounding, as Ingrid's screams took on the terrible edge of something no longer quite human.

“Gavin!” Kara shouted. “Stop! That's enough! Please, stop!”

He did stop. Not then, not as Kara screamed, her voice raw, every shout stabbing through her bruised stomach. No, her pleas didn't stop him. The thumps and the screams continued. Then thumps and whimpers. Then just thumps. And finally silence. Absolute silence.

Kara collapsed on the floor and started to cry.

Gavin. When Kara first met him, he'd reminded her of Eddie. He didn't look like him, but there was the way his forelock fell, getting into his eyes when he was distracted. The way he smiled sometimes, at just the right angle. Even some of his kisses, in the beginning, took her back to those days, when life was as perfect as it would ever be.

But Gavin wasn't Eddie. As time passed, she'd come to see more of Ingrid in him and, sometimes, even Bill. Old story again. Too often told. The victim who kept stumbling into the same kind of relationships, not because she went looking for them, but maybe because she didn't feel she deserved any better. That after Eddie's murder, she didn't deserve another sweet boy like him. But at some point, when you realize what you're doing, trapped in old patterns, you have to make a choice to stop doing it. To say “enough.”

Gavin must have sensed she was thinking about leaving him, because that's when the condom “broke.” Twice. That's when she got pregnant.

If he'd thought that would make her stay, he'd underestimated her. Whatever Kara had still felt for him, she had felt more for the life growing inside her. She'd tried to leave Gavin for the baby's sake. He figured out how to make her stay. He might never have been even a B student, but he was a quick study, and he realized how to get to her. All he had to do was punch or kick a little too close to her belly, and she got the message.
Leave and you leave alone.
So she stayed. He promised to stop hitting her, and to take her to Seattle and start their new lives together, and she went because she didn't really see another option.

As for keeping his promise, the hitting stopped while she was pregnant. She'd give him that. And he never threatened or hurt Melody. On a relative scale, he wasn't as bad as he could have been, and she knew that was no justification at all, but sometimes, when you're trapped badly enough, you need to find a bright side. Life was not good; life was not bad. Kara would bide her time until Melody finished high school, then she'd run with her daughter.

That's when Ingrid came back into her life, and things went from “not bad” to hell, the nightmare of her old life seeping into her new. That's when Kara devised the plan, one Gavin happily agreed to. He would call pretending to be Eddie's brother out for revenge, and if that didn't scare Ingrid off, then this would. An abandoned cabin with a basement, where “Eddie's brother” would beat them both until Kara found a way to “escape” and they'd flee. After that, Ingrid would keep running until she was out of their lives.

Killing Ingrid? Not part of the plan. Not Kara's plan, at least.

Kara lay on the floor, crying quietly. The door opened. Gavin's footsteps crossed the room. She kept her eyes squeezed shut as he walked toward her. She could smell the blood on him. Ingrid's blood.

Ingrid dead. How many times had she fantasized about that while she slept on her hard, metal bed in the detention center and thought about Eddie, began to admit to herself that he'd done nothing wrong, that Ingrid murdered him in cold blood? But she never dreamed about this, about being there, smelling her friend's blood, being responsible for the spilling of it. No, in her fantasies, someone simply gave her the news: Ingrid is dead.

Did that make her a coward? Maybe.

Gavin crouched beside her. His hand touched her shoulder and she shrank back, eyes still shut.

“I did it for you, Kerry,” he whispered. “For us. You know that.”

No. She knew exactly why he'd done it and she'd been a fool for not seeing it coming.

She opened her eyes. Blood flecked his face, but his eyes glittered. As they'd glittered the whole time he'd been beating her. Afterward, he'd kneel beside her and touch her battered face and whisper that he'd hated doing it, remind her that it had been her idea, that she had to be beaten as badly as Ingrid so her friend wouldn't suspect anything when they escaped. But he
hadn't
regretted it. She'd seen that in his eyes, and now she realized he hadn't needed to beat her at all, because he'd never intended for Ingrid to see her again.

“And if I want to go?” Kara whispered, bracing for the answer, but knowing she had to ask, to be sure. “If I want to leave now?”

His lips curved in a smile, almost tender. “You can't, Kerry. You just helped me murder your best friend. If you leave, I'll blame you. They'll put you back in jail—real jail this time—and you'll never see your daughter again.” He looked her in the eyes. “Can you imagine what her life would be like without her mommy?”

Yes. Yes, she could.

“And if I say you did it?” Kara asked. “That you killed Ingrid?”

He shrugged. “Then that's the chance I take. But remember who's the convicted killer, Kerry. You won't leave and you won't tell. I saved you, again, and this is the price you pay.”

Kara nodded, her gaze down. Gavin unlocked the cuff on her leg. As he did, she reached into her pocket for something nestled deep in the folds. She pulled it out, hidden in her palm.

“It's going to be okay,” Gavin said, reaching to hug her.

She accepted his embrace. “Yes, it is,” she said, and stabbed the penknife into his throat.

Kara huddled outside the cabin with a blanket wrapped tight around her. Red and blue lights cut through the night, bouncing off the trees. More lights bobbed across the ground as the crime-scene techs made their way into the house. She glanced at the ambulance. The lights were off now, bodies being loaded into the back.