Black Jack: A nail biting, hair-raising thriller (Jack Ryder Book 4) (19 page)

M
ay
2016

The Doctor watched Shannon King while standing at the bus stop across the street from the doll-store. She watched as Shannon walked out of the store, grabbed her phone in her purse and walked around the corner to make a call.

Just as expected the Doctor’s phone soon rang in her purse and she picked it up. “Yes?”

“Hello, I have a doll that needs repairing. I was told you could do that?” she heard Shannon say in the other end. The Doctor watched her across the street as she leaned against the brick wall of the store.

So you found me after all, dear Shannon. Well it was bound to happen at some point wasn’t it?

The Doctor had seen Shannon walk into the doll-store from inside the house and knew she was getting closer. It was okay, really. The only thing that bothered her was the fact that Shannon thought she was so stupid as to fall for her little show.

“I do, yes.”

“Great. Carol’s doll-store referred me to you. When can you take a look at it? If you give me the address I can come to your place right away. I’m downtown anyway. I could just stop by?”

Nice try, Shannon. Nice try.

“That is very nice of them,” the doctor said. “I make house calls, if you like.”

“I heard that, but since I am downtown anyway and have the doll with me, I was thinking I might as well just stop by.”

“All righty, then. You just come on by, dear.”

“Right away?”

“Yes. That would make things a lot easier. I actually live right across the street form Carol’s little shop. It’s number 237.”

“All right. See you in a few.”

Sure will, Shannon dear. Can’t wait!

The Doctor hung up, then started to walk back towards the house. She hurried up the stairs and let herself in. She arranged the dolls in position in the hallway.

“We’re expecting nice company, girls,” she said and corrected Millie’s hair. “Now you all be in your best behavior, you hear me? It’s your favorite singer.”

The Doctor turned up the music, playing Shannon’s newest album, before she checked on Rikki Rick who was still sleeping in his crib. She closed the door shut, then listened to make sure you couldn’t hear the two girls upstairs. She kept them drugged during the day. Their screams were only for the night. To keep people away.

She walked to the entrance, where she spotted Shannon stop outside the fence and look up at the house. She seemed puzzled, like she felt like she was in the wrong place, then shrugged and walked up the stairs while looking behind her a few times.

She rang the doorbell and the doctor pulled the door open, smiling from ear to ear. Shannon King stared baffled at her, her jaw dropped.

“You? I know you! What on earth are you doing here?”

“Well I live here, dear Shannon.”

“But…but the tour-guide told us that the house was abandoned,” she said. “When we took the tour. What are…what the heck is going on here, Kimberly?”

“Don’t believe everything those guides tell you. It’s all just old stories and fairytales. I’ll tell you all about it dear,
niece
. As soon as you come on inside. Come, come.”

Shannon didn’t move. “I don’t know. Maybe I should wait for Jack. Wait…was that what the lady meant, that Carol lady when she said I looked like… she was talking about you, wasn’t she?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, dearie, but do come on inside and we’ll talk about it.”

Kimberly reached out and grabbed Shannon’s arm, but she pulled it away. “I think I need to…”

“COME IN!” Kimberly yelled, annoyed. This small charade was taking way too long. The neighbors would see them and blow her cover. Staying in an assumed haunted house was excellent for keeping curious people away. For years they had thought the house was empty. There was no need to tell them it wasn’t.

Shannon shook her head. “I think I’ll have to…” she said and walked a few steps down the stairs. But something made her stop. A sound so sweet Kimberly couldn’t have staged it better herself.

The sound of Rikki Rick crying.

M
ay
2016

“What was that?”

Shannon stared at her aunt and took another step towards her. She had recognized her face from pictures that her mother had showed her when she was a child. Only this face was a lot older, probably in her fifties or maybe even more.

She heard the sound again, through her own music playing in the background. Shannon gasped. She would recognize that cry anywhere.

“Tyler!”

Without thinking further about it, Shannon pushed aunt Kimberly to the side and stormed in. Inside she was met by an inferno of ugly dolls staring back at her with their creepy dead eyes.

“Where is he!” she yelled while aunt Kimberly closed the door behind her, and locked it.

“Well go on,” she said. “He’s right in there. Second door on the left.”

Shannon ran to the door and pushed it open. There he was. Lying in an old wooden crib, crying his little heart out. Never had him crying sounded more heavenly to her. Tears sprung to her eyes as she ran to him and picked him up in her arms. Holding him close was the best feeling she ever had.

“I’m never letting go of you again my dear baby boy,” she whispered and kissed him over and over again, tears rolling across her cheeks. “Oh Tyler, oh dear Tyler, how I have missed you.”

Kimberly came up behind her. “I bet you missed him a lot, huh?”

Shannon sniffled, then looked at her aunt. “Why? Why did you take him? Why would you do such a terrible thing?”

Kimberly smiled. “For his own good. And for yours, dearie.” She moved her neck from side to side with a crack of her joints.

Shannon scoffed. “What do you mean? How can stealing a child from his mother ever be the best for anyone?”

Kimberly exhaled. “There is so much you don’t understand, Shannon. You’re still so very young.”

Shannon felt her heart racing in her chest as anger rose in her and replaced the joy of finally being with her son again. “You’re sick. Mom always said you went mad when you lost that child. That was why we never saw you. She said you were dangerous.”

Kimberly smiled again. “Well your mom always did run with half the truth now didn’t she? I kept your son perfectly safe.”

“What about the children, the girls? What about Betsy Sue? You stole her from her mother when she was just five years old. Who does that?”

Kimberly shook her head. She pursed her lips. “Again with only half of the truth. Betsy Sue was just an infant when I brought her here. So were Miss Muffit, Bibby Libby and Rikki Rick. All grew up in this house perfectly protected.”

“Until you killed them. Betsy Sue told us you tied a girl to the chair and let her sit there till she died? They found the bones in the tunnels.”

“Yes, Bibby had to go, I am afraid. She was getting too dangerous,” Kimberly said shifting in her seat.

“What the heck do you mean?” Shannon snapped feeling suddenly very tired. Her aunt was creeping her out. She just wanted to leave with Tyler now.

“When we first moved here, I thought it was the house,” she continued. “We inherited this house from my aunt who had lived here with her husband and four girls. Only the three of them were killed one night. Stories were also told about the general who built the house who…”

“Let his daughter die of thirst in the chair,” Shannon said. “The tour guide told us the story. Why didn’t I make the connection before, when Betsy Sue told Jack about the chair!”

“Yes. At first I believed the house turned people evil, like Joseph, my late husband. The changes were visible. He started to dress and act like the general, like in the pictures I had seen in that book, that my daughter … well that doesn’t matter. But soon I realized it wasn’t the house. What had all these people in common? We were all related, the house being handed down through generations and the killings happened every time someone moved into the house, except when some students lived here in the eighties. It took me a while to get to the conclusion, but at some point I realized that it wasn’t the house. It had nothing to do with the house and everything to do with us, with our family, our genes.”

Shannon exhaled. What was all this? Kimberly was blocking the door, so she couldn’t just walk out. Did she really have to stand there and listen to all this craziness?

“Listen, she said. “I need to get back to…”

“NO! You are a part of this, just as much as I am,” Kimberly yelled. “It’s in your DNA as well. And in the boy’s. Don’t you think I didn’t read about how you killed that man? They let you get away with it, but you did kill him.”

What the heck?

“It was self-defense, besides it was my ex husband who killed him. Not me.” Shannon took a step backwards. The look in Kimberly’s eyes was that of a madman.

Kimberly walked close to Shannon, pointing her long crooked finger at her. “You have it too, and you know it. The murder-gene. It’s in your blood.”

D
ecember
1990

Was she really the one going insane here? Kimberly wondered while lying on the couch in the living room. Rosa had gone back into the attic while Joseph was hiding in the basement as always.

Didn’t it happen? Were there really no cavern and no guests? Or was Joseph messing with her? Was he pretending it didn’t happen just to make her believe she was losing it? Was it all just a part of a sick game he was playing?

The general killed his daughter. Aunt Agnes’ husband killed those three girls. Even if they say it’s just rumors. He did it, didn’t he? There is always some truth to every rumor. That’s what they say, isn’t it?

“He’s tricking me into believing I am going mad,” she mumbled to herself while staring at a raven in the branch outside the window. “He did all those things, didn’t he? He let the raven into the kitchen; he put the rat in the sink, didn’t he? He could have. Could he somehow have planted the fleas between the planks?”

Kimberly got up, the blanket tucked around her shoulders while thinking back at the past months. A theory was slowly shaping in her mind, and she was getting more and more determined that she was right. It was like all the pieces finally came together. He was trying to drive her insane. The only thing she didn’t have an answer for is why? Why would he do this to her?

Kimberly felt sadness overwhelm her. She had loved him so dearly through all these years. But lately the love had started to fade away. She didn’t like what he had become, she didn’t care for the way he dressed or how he acted. He simply wasn’t himself anymore.

“It’s time we have a talk,” she said and walked towards the basement.

They had always been able to talk and sort things out. Before they had children they would sometimes talk all night. Even after the kids came along, they would be good at it. Always just sit down, a cup of coffee and talk. Why wasn’t it like that anymore? Why was she suddenly afraid of her own husband?

Kimberly took the eight steps down to the basement, then walked towards the door to Joseph’s room. The door was ajar.

That’s odd. Joseph always closes the door.

Kimberly walked closer, then pushed it open and peeked inside. “Joseph?”

No answer. Kimberly walked inside, took a few steps towards the couches he had put up to make it more of a man-cave.

At first she couldn’t see his body because it was blocked by the back of the couch, but as she walked closer she spotted it, lying on the carpet between the two couches where a coffee table would have been had a woman decorated the room.

Kimberly gasped and froze. Then she walked to him and kneeled beside him. Blood was on the floor. It had run from the wound in his head where the axe had hit him. It was still sitting there, making him look like someone from a terrible horror movie. The blood in his face reminded Kimberly of the tomato soup she had made a couple of days before.

“Joseph?”

Kimberly grabbed his hand, but it was lifeless in hers. “Joseph, wake up,” she said. “Don’t toy with me. You know how much I hate blood.”

But Joseph wasn’t moving. There was no pulse in his wrist when she tried to feel it.

Slowly the realization sank in. Kimberly started to sob. Then she felt the salty tears hit her upper lip. The blood had left a pool around him and when she kneeled she had placed her hands and knees in it. Now she rubbed it in her face when wiping away the tears.

“Who did this?” she asked and tried to wipe away the blood on her hands in her skirt. She was crying hard as she backed up towards the stairs and fumbled up to the kitchen.

“Who would do such a horrible thing?” she kept repeating to herself when she heard the ravens in the attic. They were making an awful noise, sounding almost as if they were crying.

“Rose,” she said to herself, then grabbed a kitchen knife.

M
ay
2016

They kept me waiting in the interrogation room for hours on end. I felt so frustrated and angry with them for making such a big deal of this, even if I tried to convince myself that they were only doing their job.

It was just such a freaking waste of my time and I could have been out there looking for Tyler. Didn’t they know how much every minute counted?

Finally Bellini entered the room. “You can go, Ryder.”

“So it didn’t match?” I asked and grabbed my jacket.

“The footprint didn’t,” she said.

I smiled. “Don’t want to say Told you so, but I kind of did.”

“The dirt on your shoes did match though,” she continued with a skeptic look.

I sighed. They weren’t going to let this go, were they? “Which is only natural when I told you I was at his house yesterday,” I said.

Bellini handed me my phone back. There were several unanswered calls.

“We’ll be in touch,” Bellini said and held the door for me.

I walked outside and went through my calls. My parents had called me from Cocoa Beach, letting me know they were leaving town now. Then Sarah had left a message telling me my parents had called and told her they were leaving town now and asking me when I believed I would be back, since the kids were asking. Next message was from Shannon. I listened to it, standing in front of the police station, in the street, eyes open and jaws dropped. When I had heard it to end, I listened to it one more time, to make sure I had heard everything right.

The doctor is a woman? She is a doll-doctor? But how does that…Betsy Sue told me it was a man, I don’t get it…or did she? Maybe she just didn’t correct me? But why wouldn’t she tell me the truth? Doesn’t she want us to find her? Is she protecting this woman? Does she have like a Stockholm syndrome or something going on?

I called Shannon back, but she didn’t pick up. Then I called Sarah and asked if Shannon had come back.

“No. We haven’t heard from her all day,” she said.

I looked at the time. It was almost five in the afternoon. What had she been doing for all these hours? Something wasn’t right.

I tried to call her again and left a message telling her I was done at the police station and for her to call me back when she heard this, then I hung up and called Sarah back again, told her I wanted her to call me as soon as she heard from Shannon.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Did something happen to Shannon?”

“I hope not,” I said while waiving at a taxi. It drove right past me. I cursed but didn’t say it out loud. Anxiety was beginning to rise within me. “Just stay with the kids and make sure they don’t sense anything, all right? I don’t want them to be more worried than they already are.”

“Of course not. Don’t worry about them. They have been playing all afternoon in the yard. They say they miss Betsy Sue and of course they keep asking if you know anything about Tyler. I had a long talk with Austin earlier because he started to cry out of the blue. He said he was afraid he’d never seen his little brother again. He was sad that he never even got to play with him and he was looking so much forward to it, because all the girls wanted was to hold hands. I told him that Tyler would come back and that he would be playing with him soon.”

“Good,” I said feeling pinch in my heart. I wasn’t sure I could go on much longer without knowing where to find my child. I wondered where Shannon was. Had she decided to call this doll-doctor on her own? In the voicemail she only said she had gotten the number from the store, so that’s where I was going to start.

I hung up on Sarah, when finally a taxi responded to my waving. I decided not to take it.