Gregg Olsen - Victim Six

The wheels of memory seemed to whirl behind Melody’s eyes, but she remained quiet.

“The bitch has escaped!”

Melody Castile could barely contain her rage. She was mad at her son, at herself, at Sam, but mostly angry that Carol Godding had disappeared into the woods. None of the others that had been their playthings had ever dared to try to escape. No one left the Fun House alive. But this woman, the divorcee from Port Orchard, had done the impossible.

“You take the car,” Sam said. “Go up the road to the culvert. That’s the only way she can get out of here. I’ll follow on foot. I’ll get her and take care of her.”

Melody ran into the house, grabbed the car keys, and bolted back outside as Sam vanished with a Maglite behind the Fun House. In a second, Melody was behind the wheel of the silver Jeep. She cursed the damned gate as she spun the car around the driveway, then got back out of the vehicle to unlock and fling open the annoying barrier. There was no need to go back and lock it. She didn’t expect that she’d be gone that long.

Within five minutes, her headlights caught the image of the ghostly white figure of a woman on the side of the road. Melody tried to identify what she was seeing.

Was it a doll? A mannequin? Or was it someone’s little girl? A girl like she’d once been…

She swerved around the woman, as if to allow a hitchhiker extra room.

For safety, always give those walking on the shoulder at least a fifteen-foot cushion, came to her mind.

Melody thought of what her father had said when he taught her how to drive. She remembered how her face had stung when he slapped her for knocking over the road cones used to practice parallel parking.

She pressed the ball of her foot against the accelerator and circled back. The car skidded on the gravel and stopped; Melody swung the driver’s-side door open as fast as she could, as if slowing down for even a moment would break the momentum of what she was bent on doing.

She lunged for Carol, who’d slumped onto her bloody knees.

“Get up,” Melody said.

“You,” Carol said, crying. “Why you?”

“Because,” she said. “If not you, then it will be me.”

Carol’s face was smeared in dirt and blood, making the whites of her eyes look larger in the darkness. Wide, full of terror.

“Please! I won’t tell anyone!”

Melody stiffened and drew back. She turned in the direction of the woods, behind the cowering woman.

Branches cracked, and Sam emerged. His face was a mask of rage. Melody snapped back into the moment and grabbed Carol by the hair.

“For you, babe,” she said, summoning her nerve.

Sam said nothing as he bathed Carol’s body in the glow of his flashlight. She had dissolved into a shivering mass of blood-streaked flesh.

“Good girl,” he said to his wife. “Now finish her.”

Melody pulled on Carol’s hair, lifting her bowed head.

“Don’t hurt me. Please let me go! You don’t want to do this!”

Sam played the light over Carol’s terrified face.

“I can’t,” Melody said.

“You can, and you will.” He produced a hunting knife from his pants pocket and handed it to her. “Finish her!”

“No, I won’t. I can’t, Sam. You do it. I’ll help you, but I can’t do it myself.”

Sam arched his brow and shrugged. It was as if Melody’s reluctance, her passivity, warranted some kind of show of strength.

He grabbed Carol by the neck and strangled her. Still alive, she slumped into the gravel.

“She’s ready. Do it,” he said.

A moment later the blade was buried in Carol’s neck and blood pulsed from the gash, sending a fountain of red into the beam of the headlights.

Serenity looked into Melody’s empty eyes. She tried to summon some kind of conviction that what her sister was saying was true. Melody had told Serenity a sanitized version of what had transpired, leaving out the Fun House. Leaving out the fury in which she drove to find Carol.

Leaving out the fact that she’d seen her on the side of the road.

“Then what happened?” Serenity asked.

Melody broke their mutual gaze.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I never saw her. I only did what Sam wanted me to do. I looked for her, but there was nothing else. Nothing at all.”

Behind the glass shield, Melody was about to hang up the phone when a glimmer of alertness came to her eyes.

“I can’t say that I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that you want me to. But I did what I did for a good reason. At least, I thought so at the time.”

“How could you, Melody? How could you have gone along with him?”

The semblance of understanding had vanished.

“Who said it was Sam’s idea?” Her eyes now had no spark. “Besides, you played a role in this thing too.”

Serenity was struck mute, her mouth half open in incomprehension.

“You knew there were other victims,” Melody said. “And you knew ahead of time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. I told you.”

“You never told me anything. Your sick husband called and bragged about what he’d done.”

“Funny, that’s not how I remember it, Serenity. I was the one who called you when you did that story about Paige Wilson and the food bank.”

Of course Serenity remembered the call.

I’m going to pick up your little beauty queen and take her for a test ride, the caller had said.

“You never called me.”

Melody clipped the phone between her chin and shoulder and ran her hands over her hair.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You could have warned her. You could have stopped it, but you were too busy screwing that detective of yours and trying to find a way to use this story to launch yourself out of Port Zero.”

“That’s a lie,” Serenity said, eyes glistening.

Melody smiled at her sister, set down the phone, and turned away.

Serenity pounded her fist on the glass, and Melody spun around.

“Don’t say a word,” she mouthed. “Don’t ever say a word.”

Melody shrugged but wore a satisfied look on her face.

Serenity watched her sister follow an officer in a blue uniform down the corridor that led to the jail’s cellblock. Her orange flip-flops could be heard through the glass. In a moment Melody was gone.

Gone forever.

Josh Anderson and Kendall Stark were waiting outside the jail’s visitor reception door when Serenity emerged from her visit with her sister. She wore jeans, a cardigan, and no makeup. She was still very pretty. Bandages concealed the wounds on her wrists.

It was obvious that the encounter with her sister had shaken her.

“Well?” Josh asked.

Serenity dabbed at her eyes. “Nothing. She told me nothing.”

The time for tears had long since passed. She knew then that she’d unwittingly played a role in the selection of some victims. Most had been featured in the pages of the Lighthouse.

“You don’t look like you’re okay,” Kendall said, putting her hand gently on Serenity’s shoulder.

She looked at her and nodded. “I’m fine. I just wish she would have told me something,” she said.

The three walked across the parking lot toward the back entrance of the courthouse. It had stopped raining, and the air was filled with the scent of motor oil and wet asphalt. A seagull circled overhead. Jurors dismissed from a case filed past. One, a heavyset woman in a crocheted sweater and capri pants, glanced in their direction, wondering if they were somehow connected to the same trial. The woman carried a paperback novel about a serial killer to pass the time. She wondered if she’d see the three in court and hear their story. She nodded in their direction, and Kendall smiled back.