Cody McFadyen - The Darker Side

Michael grabbed her wrists to keep her from hurting herself more. He'd always loved her hair. Other than her eyes, it was the thing that made her the most beautiful.

"Frances! Get hold of yourself!"

She yanked her wrists out of his grasp and sat down against the wall. She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her forehead against them. She began to rock, back and forth.

"Go and see. You'll understand."

He could barely hear her.

But something was starting to swim up from a very deep, very dark place. Something that caused a greasy sweat to break out on his forehead.

He took a last look at his twin and opened the door. He padded down the hall toward the voices, which were coming from the chapel. The sweat was really coming now and he started to run, because that dark thing was swimming with a vengeance, and he wanted to get there before it broke the surface, so he could prove it wrong, wrong, wrong. .

He burst into the chapel barefoot, in his underwear, covered with sweat and shivering like a naked man in a snowstorm. The thing burst through the surface. Laughing.

Do you see? it asks. Do you seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee hee hee hee hee?

He did see. He saw his father, the great and honorable Frank Murphy, standing next to the woman who'd said she was their mother.

The woman was a nun, and he knew her well.

Aunt Michelle.

"MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER HAD BEEN BROTHER AND SISter, twins like my sister and I. They'd lain together and the result had been us." His face is sad, somber, grave. "They conspired to hide my mother's pregnancy. It wasn't so hard. They were both eighteen. They'd gotten drunk and had let the devil lead them.

"How do I describe what that was like for us? The two people we respected most in the world had spent our lifetime lying to us. Our birthright was incest. We were the result of the forbidden coupling.

"I asked my father, that night, if he'd ever confessed this sin to another. He said that he had not." Murphy's expression is incredulous.

"Can you imagine? He'd kept his sin to himself, had consigned himself to hellfire. Why? To protect us? No. Any priest he'd confessed to would have kept his secret. He did it because he was ashamed.

"Of all the things I learned and heard, that was the one that was unforgivable to me. Not the incest, though that was bad enough. Not the lying to my sister and me, I could even understand that. The one thing I could not forgive him for was his deception of God.

"They told us they'd devoted their lives to God and had raised us to fear God as penance for their sin. I couldn't hear this, couldn't see past that most basic deception.

"My sister and I fled the church that morning. Father tried to stop us, but I struck him down." He smiles, once. "No, I didn't kill him. He died of cancer ten years ago. I have no idea if he ever confessed to his sin. I like to think he did."

"She never talks," Alan says.

"He's in charge," I reply. "It's his show."

This is common in serial killer teams. One acts as the dominant, calls the plays, provides the rationalization for their actions. Kirby hadn't been so far off the mark after all.

"We were troubled for a number of years, I will admit. We lost our way. The only thing we never lost was our love for each other." His sister places a hand on his shoulder. He reaches up to hold it while continuing to speak. "It took us some time to come back to God. I won't bore you with the ins and outs of that right now. There's time for our full story later. All that's important now is that truth: we did come back to God. I came to realize that the ruination of our lives was the result of a lie, a refusal to bare all to God, a refusal to confess in order to receive salvation.

"We have since applied this to ourselves, without mercy or restraint. I admitted to sexual longings for my sister. She did the same. We did our penance for our actions, for so nearly following in our parents' sinful footsteps. And we came, once again, to understand what God's purpose was for us."

He glances up at her, she down at him, and they smile. It's an image made terrible because it is beatific. Monsters with halos and blood on their teeth. They return their gaze to the camera.

"God had tested us, from the moment of our conception. He gave us every reason to give up on Him. He provided us with betrayal, doubt, and suffering. He wanted to be sure we were strong enough. God tests all His prophets thus.

"I came to understand that the face of my father was the face of far too many. The holy man, devoting his life to God and others. The admirable soul who is yet willing to consign himself to eternal damnation because he is willing to reveal some of his secrets, but not all of them. My father admitted to having children out of wedlock, but not to the ultimate truth-that it had been his sister he slept with.

"I came to understand that it was our duty to bring others to the full light of God by ensuring they understood that God accepts only absolutes in His truth. Be truthful about all, be factually contrite, ask Him to forgive, and He will cleanse the sin from you. Admit to nine sins of ten, hold back the one, and you will burn forever.

"We have devoted our lives to this work. It has been difficult. Thou shalt not kill, one of God's most basic dictates. But all those we killed had confessed to their sins, and all save one were truly contrite. How else could we know about them? We only took souls who had admitted their sins to a priest in holy confession. They were martyrs, all but one, pierced in the side as Christ on the cross, and the contrite now sit at the right hand of the Lord." He pauses. "The child is the exception, of course. I have no doubt that she is burning as I speak. She died to illuminate the other half of the sacred agreement: contrition. Because of these deaths, millions more will understand that they are not alone, that we all have shameful things inside us. We all have a darker side we must admit to if we're to experience the fullness of the love of God. And oh, how wonderful that love is. God is many things, but most of all, God is love."

The first visible hint of insanity reveals itself. It's subtle. A certain shine to the eyes, a higher pitch to the voice. But it's there. Behind it will be the truth of what he's doing and done and why. Shame at the circumstances that caused their birth, betrayal by those they trusted, all of it wrapped in the religion in which they were raised. I don't care how flowery the phrases are, how carefully thought out the rationalizations; serial murder is sublimated rage. There are no exceptions. I consider, again, the fact that the victims were all women and realize that Callie had been correct when she spoke about the Madonna and the whore. Michael Murphy blamed his aunt/mother more than he blamed his father, and the women he murdered had paid the price.

"That stage of our work is done. We're ready now, to move forward, to take the next step on the path God has laid for us. Come find us. We are ready. We will go willingly, and will not fight back."

Fade to black.

"Isn't that nice of them?" Callie says, scorn in her voice. "Poor babies, boo-hoo for them. Daddy was an asshole, join the club."

I tend to agree with her sentiments; we all do. Life is rough, even cruel and unjust. That's no excuse for turning on your fellow man. The nature versus nurture argument has raged for years, and will rage for more. I think there is truth in the need for a good environment. Our future is informed by what we experience as children. Statistics bear this out too often to be discounted.

Approximately one-third of the abused go on to become abusers. But what about the other two-thirds? All those abused, mistreated, beaten, and betrayed, who went on to lead normal lives? Haunted forever by their experiences, maybe even permanently damaged, but-