Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

Milo eyed her suspiciously. “Yes, I was adopted, so what? And how did you know that?”

“I knew it,” Cait answered, her voice growing stronger and more confident, “because I was adopted, too. And I just learned the story of my history yesterday. I learned it from my real mother. The same woman who is your real mother. The woman sitting right over there.” She risked lifting her arm and pointing across the room at Victoria, hoping he wouldn’t interpret the movement as a threat and slash at her with the knife.

He didn’t. He followed her motion dumbly, making a slow half-turn toward the frail older woman duct-taped to her own kitchen chair, her mangled hand still dripping blood slowly onto the floor. Victoria closed her eyes and hung her head before nodding slowly, a mute affirmation of Cait’s story.

“You see things, don’t you?” she continued. “In your mind, I mean. You see things in your mind from other people’s perspective. You know things you couldn’t possibly know and it’s always been that way, ever since you were a very young boy. Am I right?”

The man’s jaw had gone slack and his eyes glazed over. He still clung to the knife but it seemed to have been forgotten, at least for the time being. “I’ve always seen things,” he whispered. “I never understood it but I’ve always been able to see pictures, like mental movies, of things happening in other people’s lives. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, sometimes the visions just keep coming, one after another, they won’t stop for hours sometimes, and it’s just so fucking…exhausting…”

Cait nodded, hoping to keep him talking, hoping against all reasonable hope that by beginning to forge a connection with him, however fragile and tenuous, he might see her as a human being rather than simply as a potential victim, and that in so doing she—and, hopefully, Victoria and Kevin as well—might somehow have a chance to escape this nightmare with their lives. “I’ve always had the ability as well,” she said gently. “I call those visions ‘Flickers,’ because they are like those old-time black-and-white movies that flicker up on the screen when you watch them.

“Our mother didn’t want to give us up,” she continued. “I just found that out yesterday. It was the hardest decision she ever had to make; it literally tore her family apart. But she had no choice in the matter—” Cait stopped talking, suddenly realizing she had gone too far, remembering what Victoria had said about the history of fratricide among twins going back centuries in her family’s history, remembering what Victoria had said about her becoming a target should she ever be reunited with her brother. Suddenly she understood that he didn’t comprehend his burning hatred for her any better than she did.

But the problem with making things up as you went was that you didn’t have time to plan ahead, and Cait immediately regretted her words, knowing they could logically lead only to one question in her brother’s psychotic mind: Why? Why had his mother cast him away? And the answer to that question would likely lead to a knife in the heart, not just for her but for Victoria as well and probably Kevin, just to round things out.

She hurriedly tried to steer the conversation in another direction, desperate to get onto safer ground. “But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Adoptive parents can be wonderful; they can treat you with love and respect just like biological parents. In fact, you could argue that if they were unable to have children of their own, they may appreciate the opportunity to raise kids even more than biological parents would.”

Milo’s face hardened, and as he tightened his grip on the knife, Cait realized immediately she had said something wrong, had blundered into a taboo area. “Or,” he answered, “they might treat you like an object, a slave, an animal to be beaten and abused and tortured.”

Milo took a menacing step forward and Cait shrank back, wishing she could disappear into the couch cushions. “How nice that you were given parents who treated you with ‘love and respect’” —he spoke in a falsetto voice filled with sugary sweetness, the anger behind the words spilling out despite his tone, or maybe because of it.

“ My parents never gave me a chance. They were well-respected in the community, but at home my father was a monster, using his belt as a motivational tool, flaying my back until it bled for the smallest transgression, using a fork to gouge ridges into my skin if I took too long bringing the trash out to the curb.”

Cait’s eyes widened in horror now as well as in fear. Milo’s anger seemed to be building on itself as he spoke, gaining momentum, taking on a life of its own. He was working himself into a rage, exactly what she was trying to avoid, and there was nothing she could do about it. “You want to see the ‘ love and respect’ you seem to value so highly?”

She stayed silent, afraid of saying the wrong thing again, and he continued. “Here’s an example of ‘love and respect .’” He pivoted suddenly, showing his back to Cait, and raised his shirttail. He was not wearing an undershirt, and Cait clamped a hand to her mouth in horror at the sight of his skin. Puckered scars criss-crossed his back, raised and angry, hundreds of them, tiny ridged welts, remnants of the torture he claimed to have received as a child. “My entire body is like this,” he said, “practically every square inch of skin that could be covered up to hide the evidence. My father was an animal, but he was also very careful.

“So don’t sit there and try to tell me how wonderful it is that I was given up for adoption. I have no idea whether what you’re saying is true, whether that dried-up old bitch back there is my mother, but if she is, I consider her just as responsible for what happened to me as a child as my adoptive parents.

“Now,” he said, dropping his shirt into place and turning slowly back toward the couch. “Any more bright ideas about how you’re going to soften me up so I won’t carve you like a Thanksgiving turkey?”

Cait closed her eyes, breathing in short gasps, trying to control her burgeoning terror and mostly failing. There was nothing she could say to save them. Family meant nothing to this man. He had been broken beyond saving, maybe by his adoptive parents, maybe by genetics, but any connection she had hoped to forge with this lost but terrifyingly dangerous soul was turning out to be a pipe dream.

It was over.

She was going to die and so was Kevin, and if there had been any chance, no matter how unlikely, that Victoria would survive what was about to happen here, that was likely gone as well.

Milo could not believe how the fucking little bitch had tried to manipulate him. Her efforts had been transparent and pointless, and, if anything, served only to increase the black rage coursing through his system. He had never heard a more bullshit story in his entire life. She was his sister? It was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard.

Then again, she had known about the visions he had been cursed with his entire life, and she had known he was adopted. It seemed highly unlikely that could be a mere coincidence.

But still, suppose she was telling the truth and she really was his sister, and the old hag taped to the kitchen chair really was his mother. Say for just a second that it was all true. What did that change?

Nothing.

It changed nothing, except, as he had informed his “sister,” it now became all the more critical that he complete what he had set out to do here today.

Now, though, instead of skinning one victim, he would do two. His intention from the very beginning had been to kill everyone when he was done with the young bitch, despite what he had told his “mother” earlier about not hurting her. It only made sense. It would serve no good purpose to leave any eyewitnesses.