One, Two ... He Is Coming for You

Willow Rose

Copyright © 2011 by Willow Rose

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced,
scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission
from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance
of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. The
Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is
prohibited.

Cover design by Jan Sigetty Boje

Special thanks to Linda Harris of Perfect
Word Editing Services http://www.perfectwordediting.com

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ISBN: 978-0-9835600-0-5

One, two, He is coming for you.

Three, four, better lock your door.

Five, six, grab your crucifix.

Seven, eight, gonna stay up late.

Nine, ten, you will never sleep again.

Prologue

One, two … the song in his head wouldn’t escape. Sure, he knew where it
came from. It was that rhyme from the horror movies. The ones with the serial
killer, that Freddy Krueger guy with a burned, disfigured face, red and dark
green striped sweater, brown fedora hat, and a glove armed with razors to kill
his victims in their dreams and take their souls, which would kill them in the
real world. “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” that was the movie’s name. Yes, he
knew its origin. And he had his reasons for singing that particular song in
this exact moment. He knew why, and so would his future victims.

He lit a cigarette and stared out the window at a waiting bird in the
bare treetop. Waiting for the sunlight to come back, just like the rest of the
kingdom of Denmark at this time of the year. Waiting for spring with its
explosion of colors, like a sea of promises of sunlight and a warmer wind. But
still the winter had to go away. And it hadn’t. The trees were still naked, the
sky gray as steel, the ground wet and cold. February always seemed the longest
month in the little country though it was the shortest in the calendar. People
talked about it every day as they showed up for work or school.

Every freaking day since Christmas.

Now, it wouldn’t be long before the light came back. But in reality it
always took months of waiting and anticipating before spring finally appeared.

The man staring out the window didn’t pay much attention to the weather
though. He stood with his cigarette between two fingers. To him, the time he
had been waiting ages for  was finally here.

He kept humming the same song, the same line.
One, two, he is coming
for you
.... The cigarette burned a hole in the parquet floor. He picked up
the remains with his hands wearing white plastic gloves and carefully placed them
in a small plastic bag that he put in his brown briefcase. He would leave no
trace of being in the house where the body of another man was soon to be found.

He closed the briefcase and went into the hall, where he sat in a
leather chair by the door to the main entrance.

Waiting for his victim to come home.

He glanced at himself in the mirror by the entrance door. He could see
from where he was sitting how nicely he had dressed for the occasion.

He was outfitted in a blue blazer with the famous Trolle coat of arms on
the chest, little yellow emblem with a red headless lion—the traditional
blazer for a student of Herlufsholm boarding school. The school was located by
the Susaa River in Naestved, about 80 kilometers south of Copenhagen, the
capital of Denmark. As the oldest boarding school in Denmark, the school took
pride in an array of unique traditions. Some of them the world outside never
would want to know about.

The blazer was now too small, so he couldn’t close it, but otherwise he
was looking almost like he had been back in 1986. He was, after all, still a
fairly handsome man. And unlike the majority of the guys from back then, he had
kept most of his hair.

His victim had done well for himself, he noticed. No surprise in that
though, with parents who were multibillionaires. The old villa by the sea of Smaalandsfarvandet
in the southern part of Zeeland was big and admirable. It could easily fit a
couple of families. It was typical of his victim to have a place like this just
as his holiday residence.

When he heard the Jaguar on the gravel outside, he took the glove out of
the briefcase and put it on his right hand. He stretched his fingers and the
metal claws followed.

He listened for voices but didn’t hear any to his satisfaction.

His victim was alone.

1

“We’re going to be too late. Do you want me to be fired on my first day”?
I yelled for the third time while gazing up the stairs for my six-year-old
daughter, Julie.

“Go easy on her, Rebekka. It’s her first day too,” argued my father.

He stood in the doorway to the living room of my childhood home, leaning
on his cane. I smiled to myself. How I had missed him all these years living in
the other part of the country. Now he had gotten old, and I felt like I had
missed out on so much and that he had missed out on so much of our lives too.
It was fifteen years since I left the town to study journalism. I had only been
back a few times since and then, of course, when Mom died five years ago. Why
didn’t I visit him more often, especially after he was alone? Instead I had
left it to my sister to take care of him. She lived in Naestved about fifteen minutes
away.

Well there was no point in wondering now.

“You can’t change the past,” my dad would say. And did say when I called
him crying my heart out and asking him if Julie and I could come and stay with
him for a while.

I sighed and wished I could change the past and change everything about
my past. Except for one thing. One delightful little blond thing.

“I’m ready, Mom.”

Her.

Julie is the love of my life. Everything I‘ve done has been for her and
her future. I sacrificed everything to give her a better life. But that meant I
had to leave it all behind—her dad, our friends and neighbors, and my
career with a huge salary. All for her.

“I’m ready.” She ran down the stairs looking like an angel with her
beautiful blond hair braided in the back.

“Yes, you are,” I nodded and looked into her bright blue eyes. “Do you
have everything ready for school”?

She sighed with annoyance and walked past me.

“Are you coming or not?” She asked when she reached the door.

I picked up my bag from the floor, kissed my dad on the cheek, and
followed my daughter who waited impatiently.

“After you my dear,” I said as we left the house.

I found a job at a local newspaper in Karrebaeksminde. It wasn’t much of a
promotion since I used to work for one of the biggest newspapers in the
country.
Jyllandsposten
was located in Aarhus, the second biggest town
in Denmark. That was where we used to live.

When I had a family.

I used to be their star reporter, one of those who always gets the cover
stories. Moving back to my childhood town was not an easy choice, since I knew
I had to give up my position as a well-known reporter. But it had to be done. I
had to get away.

Now, after dropping off my daughter at her new school and smoking two
cigarettes in anxiety for my daughter’s first day, I found myself at my new
workplace.

 “You must be Rebekka Franck. Welcome to our editorial room,” said a
sweet elderly lady sitting at one of the two desks piled high with stacks of
paper. I looked around the room and saw no one else. The room was a mess, and
so was she. Her long red hair went in all directions. She had tried to tame it with
a butterfly hair clip, but it didn’t seem to do the job. She got up and waddled
her chubby body in a flowered yellow dress over to greet me.

“I’m Sara,” she said. “I’m in charge of all the personal pages. You know,
the obituaries and such. People come to me if they need to put in an announcement
for a reception or a 50-year anniversary celebration. Stuff like that. That’s
what I do.”

I nodded and looked confused at all the old newspapers in stacks on the
floor.

“You probably would like to see your desk.”

I nodded again and smiled kindly. “Yes, please.”

“It’s right over there.” Sara pointed at the other desk in the room.
Then she looked back at me, smiling widely. “It’s just going to be the two of
us.”

I smiled back, a little scared of the huge possibility of going insane
in the near future. I knew it was a small newspaper that covered all of Zeeland,
and that this would only be the department taking care of the local news from
Karrebaeksminde. But still … two people. Could that be all?

“Do you want to see the rest of your new workplace?” Sara asked and I
nodded.

She took a couple of steps to the right and opened a door. “In here we
have a small kitchen with a coffeemaker and the bathroom.”

“Let me guess. That’s it?” I tried not to sound too sarcastic. This was
really a step down for me, to put it mildly.

Sara sat down and put on a set of headphones. I moved a stack of
newspapers and found my chair underneath. I opened my laptop and up came a
picture of Julie, me, and her dad on our trip to Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. We
all wore goggles and big smiles. Quickly I closed the lid of the laptop and
closed my eyes.

Damn him
, I thought.
Damn that stupid moron.

I got up from the desk and went into the break room to grab a cup of
coffee. I opened the window and lit a cigarette. For several minutes I stared
down at the street. A few people rushed by. Otherwise it was a sleepy town
compared to where I used to live. I thought about my husband and returning to
Aarhus, but that was simply not an option for me. I had to make it here.

I drank the rest of the coffee and killed my cigarette on the bottom of
the mug. Then I closed the window and stepped back into the editorial room.

I need to clean this place up
, I thought but then regretted the
idea. It was simply too much work for one person for now. Maybe another day.
Maybe I could persuade Sara to help me. I looked at her with the gigantic
headphones on her ears. It made her face look even fatter. It was too bad that
she was so overweight. She actually had a pretty face and attractive brown
eyes. She looked at me and took off the headphones.

“What are you listening to?” I asked and expected that it was a radio
station or a CD of her favorite music. But it wasn’t.

“It’s a police scanner,” she said.

I looked at her surprised. “You have a police scanner?”

She nodded.

“I thought police everywhere in the country had shifted from traditional
radio-scanners to using a digital system.”

“Maybe in your big city, but down here we still use the old-fashioned
ones.”

“What do you use it for?”

“It is the best way to keep track of what is happening in this town. I
get my best stories to tell my neighbors from this little fellow,” she said
while she leaned over gave the radio a friendly tap. “We originally got this
baby for journalistic purposes, in order to be there when a story breaks, like
a bank has been robbed or something like that. But the past five or six years
nothing much has happened in our town, so it hasn’t brought any stories to the
newspaper. But I sure have a lot of fun listening to it.”

She leaned over her desk with excitement in her brown eyes.

“Like the time when the mayor’s wife got caught drunk in her car. That
was great. Or when the police were called out to a domestic dispute between the
pastor and his wife. As it turned out she had been cheating on him. Now that
was awesome.”

I stared at the woman in front of me and didn’t know exactly what to
say. Instead I just smiled and started walking back to my desk, when she
stopped me.

“Ah, yes I forgot. We are not all alone. We do have a photographer
working here too. He only comes in when there’s a job for him to do. His name
is Sune Johansen. He looks a little weird, but you’ll learn to love him. He’s
from a big city too.”