THREE TIMES A LADY (9 page)

Turning away from the child, Nathan Stiedowe then exited the room, passing through Dana’s body again as he went.  In a flash of jumbled images, Dana’s mind sped through the police reports of the devastating night in 1976 that she knew by heart.  Her father, James Whitestone, would be the first to die, gunned down by his wife’s illegitimate child – the product of a brutal rape over a church altar when Sara Whitestone had been just sixteen years old.  As he relieved himself in the bathroom following a tender lovemaking session with his beloved wife, a .22-calibre slug would shatter James Whitestone’s skull from behind and send chunks of his destroyed brain matter sliding down the tiled wall above the toilet in a disgusting rainbow of gray and white and red.

Dana strained her eyes through the darkness and watched Nathan Stiedowe enter the bathroom, the scene of her father’s hopelessly grisly murder in 1976.  The soft scratch of plastic shower rings sliding across a steel rod filled her ears as her half-brother concealed himself inside the tub.  Right on cue, her father emerged from the master bedroom and closed the bathroom door behind him.  The gunshot that rang out ten seconds later was loud enough to rattle all the pictures hanging on the wall, followed almost at once by the muted thump of a heavy weight collapsing to the floor.

Horrified tears streaked down Dana’s cheeks and blurred her vision.  Through the veil of tears, she watched numbly as her mother emerged quickly from the master bedroom, alerted by the commotion out in the hallway. 

Dana’s heart shattered into a million tiny pieces at her first glimpse of the beautiful face she hadn’t seen for more than thirty-five years.  Same short blonde hair as her own.  Same pale blue eyes.  Same diminutive figure.

Sara Whitestone knocked lightly on the bathroom door, a pattern of worry-lines etching a series of deep wrinkles into her smooth forehead.  ‘James, honey?  Are you okay?  What was that noise?’

The monster cleared his throat inside the bathroom.  ‘I’m fine,’ he coughed.  ‘I’ll be out in just a minute.’

Sadly, Sara Whitestone was completely fooled by the mimicry, just as she’d been on the devastating night of 4 July 1976.  Without knowing it, Dana’s mother had just made the same horrible mistake that would lead to her same horrible death.  The same horrible death that Dana couldn’t do a goddamn thing to stop.  Once again – just as had been the case when she’d been four years old – Dana found herself completely powerless to wake up from this awful nightmare.  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Sara Whitestone breathed, laughing nervously.  ‘You scared the shit out of me, babe.  I thought you broke your neck in there or something.  Hurry up and come back to bed already.’

Turning on her heel, Sara Whitestone then walked back to the master bedroom with her satin night robe flowing behind her in the narrow hallway like the train on an elaborate wedding dress.  Fifteen seconds later, the monster followed her out into the darkness and loomed in the doorway of Sara’s bedroom, just another seemingly harmless shadow in the night. 

Without warning, Dana’s body suddenly vaulted down the hallway at great speed; moved by an unseen force that positioned her just as easily as a chess player positions a pawn.  In the blink of an eye, Dana was standing directly
behind
the monster, close enough to reach out and touch him had she been able to control her arms.  From this distance, she could actually
smell
the murdering bastard.  Smell the pure
evil
wafting off his body.  A sickening combination of vinegar and battery acid and rotting meat that turned her stomach inside out. 

Inside the bedroom, Sara Whitestone lay on her side in the king-sized bed, dressed in only a flimsy off-white negligee now, the night robe she’d been wearing a moment earlier dripping from the doorknob of the closet like strands of shimmering silver garland dripping from the branches of a beautifully decorated Christmas tree.  She’d propped up her pretty head coquettishly on one small hand.

Sara smiled at the monster through the darkness.  ‘You just gonna stay out there all night or are you gonna come keep me company in this big old bed, lover boy?’

When the monster crossed the threshold of the master bedroom, Sara Whitestone bolted upright in horror as she suddenly realised he was not her husband.  A tiny squeak escaped her lips, but she was much too stunned to scream immediately. 

Taking in a deep breath that expanded her birdlike chest nearly to the point of bursting, Sara finally let out a loud, earsplitting wail that caused the monster to race across the room and clamp a large gloved hand over her mouth.  ‘Shut the fuck up, bitch,’ he hissed, spraying hot saliva all over Sara’s smooth cheek.  ‘One more sound and I’ll chop up your precious goddamn son into so many pieces that they won’t be able to put him back together again for the funeral.’

Sara Whitestone squirmed in the monster’s strong grasp, an impotent little field mouse struggling to escape an eagle’s powerful talons.  Smiling, Nathan Stiedowe leaned down into her face.  His perfectly even teeth sparkled brightly in the darkness, emitting an eerie, almost
phosphorescent
light.  ‘Tell me something,’ he snarled.  ‘Do you even know who I
am
?’

A brief look of confusion coloured in Sara Whitestone’s beautiful face, followed almost at once by a horrified jolt of recognition that Dana could feel inside her own chest.  ‘Jeremiah,’ Sara whispered.

Rearing back, the monster slapped Dana’s mother so hard across the face that Dana could hear Sara Whitestone’s teeth rattle in her mouth.  ‘That’s not my name anymore, slut,’ the monster spat.  ‘You made damn sure of that a long time ago and now I’m going to kill you for it.  For your information, my name’s Nathan Stiedowe now – not that you give a flying fuck.  Stupid little cunts like you
never
give a flying fuck about who you hurt, do you?  Only worried about yourselves and your precious goddamn families.  But before I kill you, tell me something first,
Mom
.  How could you do it, anyway?

‘How could you give away your own fucking
baby
?’

Annabeth Preston had performed her rudimentary version of a castration on Nicholas the day he’d turned thirteen – the same day she’d started giving him the testosterone shots to ensure his continued physical development.  After all, she certainly wouldn’t want to arouse anybody’s suspicions, now would she?  Of course she wouldn’t.  Wouldn’t want anyone to suspect that the devil’s soul lurked just beneath the
façade
of that gorgeous angel’s face of hers.  And apparently she’d grown weary of arousing
other
things on Nicholas, too. 
Unholy
things.

Even though they weren’t Jewish – they were Catholic – Nicholas had received a horrifying
bris
when other boys his age who actually were Jewish were busy celebrating their
bar mitzvahs
.  Not that the Catholics had anything to puff out their chests and crow about when it came to the ghastly practice, though.  In medieval times in Europe – back in the days when women weren’t permitted to perform in choirs during religious services due to their lowly social standing – the Roman Catholic Church had often castrated boys in order to prevent their voices from breaking at puberty, allowing the lads to develop especially high vocal ranges.  Italian church records dating all the way back to the 1550s mentioned
castrati
, and it wasn’t until the late-1880s that the church had finally condemned the practice officially.  A hundred years later – when Catholic priests would fill in their time by molesting untold numbers of altar boys behind the locked doors of vestibules, the church would turn the same blind eye to the sickening abuse, led by none other than cover-up master Pope Benedict the Sixteenth himself.

Early-onset puberty had allowed Annabeth Preston to dismiss the concerns of
Nicholas
’s voice not developing properly. 
His
adult voice was already there.  Even at thirteen years old, he possessed a deep baritone that people often mistook for an adult’s whenever he spoke with them on the phone, often leading them to think that his cadence and pitch belonged to his deceased father.  ‘You sound exactly like him,’ they’d say with amazement in their own voices.  ‘It’s
uncanny
.’

So, Jewish or not, Annabeth Preston had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about going forward with the extremely dangerous procedure.  And why in the hell
would
she have any qualms about it?  What did she have to lose at this point?  Another child?  Probably not one of her biggest concerns, considering
her
history.  Only Nicholas’s special
bris
– which translated to ‘covenant of circumcision’ from the Hebrew – had gone quite a bit further than simple removal of his foreskin.  Quite a bit further, indeed.

In some early cultures, castration was performed on soldiers who’d lost in battle.  The winners did it to symbolise their complete victory over their defeated foes.  To take away their very manhood and ensure they could never retrieve it again. 

For her part, Annabeth Preston had symbolised
her
victory over Nicholas with a sharp scalpel, no anesthesia and with a delighted smile planted firmly on her pretty lips.

After strapping Nicholas down by his wrists and ankles with thick leather restraints to the huge wooden table in the middle of their kitchen, she’d stood over him with the sharp surgical instrument balanced unsteadily in her delicate hand.  ‘Try not to move, son,’ she’d said.  ‘If you move, I might mess it up.  And if you scream, I’ll make sure I mess it up on purpose.’

Nicholas had tried his very best to keep silent – had tried with every last ounce of energy he’d possessed – but when the sharp metal blade had sliced into the tender skin at the top of his genitalia he had no choice
but
to scream.  He screamed loud and long and hard, screamed until his throat felt like it had been crammed full of razor blades, screamed until he had no voice left with which to scream.

But Annabeth Preston had only watched him silently the entire time, not even the slightest
trace
of emotion crossing her beautiful face.  Not even the slightest
indication
that his animalistic howls had affected her eardrums in the least little bit. 

When Nicholas had finally stopped his screaming – much too exhausted to make another sound and feeling a pain in his penis like none he’d ever experienced before – his mother tutted.  ‘Now, now, son,’ she’d said soothingly.  ‘I warned you, didn’t I?  I was just going to take your foreskin and testicles, but now I suppose I’ll have to take off the whole sinful thing.  I wish you hadn’t made me do this.  But you did.’

With that, she discarded the scalpel in favour of a wickedly sharp meat cleaver that was hanging over their kitchen table along with a variety of other knives.  As the longtime wife of a butcher, she knew
exactly
what to do.

Undoing the leather restraints on Nicholas’s ankles, she turned his limp body over on one side before pulling the shaft of his penis taut against the wooden surface of the table.  In one swift movement, she lifted up her right arm before bringing down her gloved hand again in a blindingly fast chopping motion.  It took less than a second for the meat cleaver to slice effortlessly through flesh and veins and arteries and make resounding contact with wood.

Nicholas didn’t remember screaming again at that point.  Everything had gone pitch-black.  He supposed the trauma of the entire ordeal must have signaled his brain to flood with endorphins, nature’s very own painkillers: a way for his body to deny the horrific trauma to which it had just been subjected.

Total removal of the male genitalia didn’t come without its inherent risks, though.  Far from it.  The danger of death due to bleeding or infection was much greater than with simple removal of the testicles.  But like everything else in her extremely well planned-out life, Annabeth Preston had prepared for
that
possibility too.

Blood spurting forth like an exploding geyser from between Nicholas’s quivering thighs and every last cell in his body screaming out in agony, Annabeth Preston had moved to the stove and held the flat side of the meat cleaver against a burner glowing bright red.  The world around Nicholas blurred, swimming in and out of focus until everything appeared to him as though he were viewing it through a thick sheet of rain-spattered opaque glass. 

Returning to the table, Annabeth Preston had then pressed the hot metal against her son’s wound to cauterise it.  The sound of sizzling flesh had filled Nicholas’s ears.  The smell of cooking meat had wafted up into his nostrils, mixing in with the scent of his mother’s expensive perfume.  Chanel No. 5, of course.  Nothing but the very best for her.

‘What do you say, son?’ she’d asked.

Somehow – despite the unspeakable horror to which he’d just been subjected – Nicholas had managed to mumble his reply right before he’d passed out for good.

‘Thank you, Mother,’ he’d said.

And once again – strange as it might have sounded to any of the so-called
normal
people out there in the world – the really sick thing about the whole thing was that he’d actually
meant
it.