Chapter Twenty-Two
Jamie began to scream as she suddenly sat up in bed. A cold sweat dampened her body. She pressed her hand against her chest to get her breathing under control. The nightmares had been nonstop since that night at Asa’s cabin. It was ironic because while she was with him, during the past eighteen months, she rarely had a bad dream.
He used to make her feel safe and now, she would never look at him the same way again. It was why she’d left the next day while he was at the hospital. She packed her bags and headed over to Thea’s house because she figured if he looked anywhere for her, he’d start with Kat.
Thea had been surprised because she’d thought the relationship between Jamie and Asa had been perfect. Though Jamie didn’t reveal that Asa was some kind of psychopathic killer, she did say that she couldn’t go back.
Thea seemed to understand. Her friend had even gone one step further and suggested a friend who lived upstate on a farm and often took in boarders if she was looking for a temporary place to stay.
It had been two weeks since she’d left. She wondered if Asa would come looking for her since she now knew his secret. Would he kill her as well? He claimed that he’d never hurt her but that dead look in his eyes when he… She could barely think about it.
Jamie needed to figure out what her next move would be. Obviously, she couldn’t go back, even though school would be starting in a few weeks and she had no other place to go.
If she didn’t have her modest savings to dip into, she didn’t know what she would have done. But, it wouldn’t last for long. That money would only cover room and board for another couple months. It didn’t include food and other necessities she needed for day-to-day living. Jamie had been forced to leave a lot of stuff behind because she wanted to leave as fast as she could.
She couldn’t go back to sleep and she didn’t feel like reading. The rest of the boarders in the house were probably asleep at this time of night and she didn’t want to disturb them by tip toeing through the house.
So, she lay in bed thinking about how she could have missed all of those signs. She even remembered the time when he’d flat out said he’d murdered someone but she thought he was joking with her. He’d never lied to her technically but he’d never told her the truth either. And in Jamie’s opinion, a lie by omission was still a lie.
It was hard to reconcile the killer to the man she loved. Jamie shuddered as she recalled the maniacal glee in his eyes as he tortured and beat her father until the life drained out of him. She’d never seen someone die before and it was something she’d never forget.
Her heart raced and her breathing became ragged as the panic attack she’d felt coming on earlier hit her full force. Jamie bent over and gasped for air.
“Breathe, Jamie. In and out. In and out.” Asa said in a soothing tone while rubbing her back.
She wanted to pull him away from his touch and run away as fast as she could but she was trying desperately to breathe. It felt as if she was suffocating and invisible walls were closing in on her. She felt dizzy and believed she’d pass out any second but somehow Asa’s voice managed to calm her after several terrifying moments.
“That’s it. Deep breaths, slow and steady.” In that moment, she could almost forget that he was a psychotic killer. The sound of his voice soothed her and the nauseous feeling she’d had in the pit of her stomach slowly subsided.
But once her panic had eased, a crippling fear she hadn’t experienced since she was a little girl took over. She took a step away from the man she thought she knew. He was a stranger.
“What have you done?” she whispered in horror.
Asa grabbed her by the forearm and guided her inside the shed. The foul stench hit her right away. Having working in custodial services in a hospital, Jamie had come across some horrid smells.
But this, this was on another level. It was a mixture of decay, old blood, vomit and feces. Flies swarmed her father’s head and a chunk of meat hung from his cheek. Were it not for his groans of obvious suffering, she would have thought he was dead.
“Keeping my promise. I want you to see that I’ll always protect you and slay your monsters. After what he did to you, he doesn’t deserve to live.”
“But who are you to be judge, jury and executioner?”
“Didn’t you know? I’m a monster, too. And who better to track and down monsters than one of their own.”
Jamie tried to pull out of Asa’s grip but he was too strong for her. She slapped his face as hard as she could. His head turned but other than that, he showed no emotion and his grip remained firm. She hit him again and again. She beat against his chest with her fist but it had no seeming effect on him. “Have you gotten that out of your system?” he asked. There was an angry red handprint on the side of his face but other than that Asa remained unfazed.
She started to cry. “Let me go!” she screamed.
“Never.”
“Please let me go,” she begged.
Asa responded by wrapping his arm around her waist and holding her against him. “Look at him.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head vehemently. “I can’t.”
“Open your eyes and look.”
“No!”
“Look at him!” he roared.
Jamie reluctantly opened her eyes. Her father was a mess, barely recognizable but she would know him anywhere.
As if seeming to realize that he was being stared at, her father opened the one eye that wasn’t completely swollen shut. “Please,” he said sounding hoarse, his breathing ragged. “Help me.”
“And why, exactly, do you think she should help you after what you’ve done to her? After all that you put her through.”
“I’ve done my time.” He coughed and spat blood before training that one eye on Jamie. “Help me, girl. You can’t let him do this to me. Honor thy father.” He coughed again.
“You see, Jamie. After all he put you through, he’s trying to guilt you into helping him. Did he help you when you were being tormented by your stepmother and sisters? Did he offer you food when you hadn’t eaten for days? What about when he locked you away from the world when guests came over? They starved you, kept you uneducated, abused you and would have let you die. He was the mastermind. He orchestrated it all. And now that he’s facing you, he doesn’t have the decency to tell you that he’s sorry.”
“I am, James. I really am,” her father whined.
“Then say it,” Asa demanded. “Tell her what a big piece of shit you are. Tell her that you don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.”
He raised his head again. “Your mother was a lying whore who tricked me. She told me she was on the pill but she just wanted to trap me. Even made me believe you were a boy for the first few months of your life. Guess she thought if she named her child after me, then that would make things right. But despite all that, I took you in out of the charity of my heart. I may have made some mistakes, girl, but like I said, I did my time. I paid for those mistakes.”
Even after all the torture and pain he’d suffered at the hands of Asa, her father still looked at her with so much contempt. Jamie didn’t have any expectations of the moment she was supposed to have with her father. She’d never expected to see him again. But it was clear, he still hated for her simply existing and worse yet, he seemed to have no remorse for what he’d done.
“So, no apology?” Asa asked softly.
“I said, ‘I did the best that I could.’ What did she expect? Her mother set out to destroy my family and that one,” he inclined his head in Jamie’s direction, “she finished the job. I lost my wife and girls. I was stuck in jail when my wife and baby girl died in that accident. I couldn’t even attend their funerals. And my other daughter, doesn’t want to be associated with me anymore. If you think I’m going to apologize, then forget it. Go ahead and kill me.”
Asa released Jamie and headed over to a bench covered in bloody tools. He picked up a knife and jabbed it into her father’s thigh.
Her father howled in pain. “Okay, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, okay! Are you happy? Is this what you wanted from me?” A trail of tears flowed from his open eye and mucus ran from his nose.
“Not good enough.” Asa pulled the knife out and stabbed his other thigh before going to the wall and pulling off a rope. He wrapped it around her father’s neck and pulled.
Jamie shook her head. “No,” she whispered, paralyzed with fear, revulsion and an emotion that scared her even more than the first two.
Asa continued to strangle his victim all while maintaining eye contact with Jamie. He didn’t stop until it was obvious her father was dead.
Jamie had gone completely numb. Everything had seemed surreal after that. She’d been unable to move and Asa proceeded to clean his tools with care, all the while ignoring the body growing cold beside him. She felt as if she was a spectator watching a movie. This wasn’t real life. It couldn’t be.
After his tools were cleaned to his liking, Asa untied the body and dragged it past her. And still she remained rooted to the spot, unable to even talk. Asa guided her back to the cabin, where he instructed her to lie on the coach while he finished the cleanup.
Jamie stared into space, barely blinking. Her mind had literally stopped working. It was nearly dawn by the time Asa returned to take her home. During the car ride home, if he said anything to her she wasn’t sure because her mind had literally shut down. She must had blanked out because her next coherent thought was of Asa putting her in the bathtub and bathing her as he whispered words that should have soothed her but further served to terrify her.
“It’s okay, baby girl. Daddy has taken care of the monster. And, he’ll never hurt you again.”
Jamie thought she might have nodded absently but she couldn’t remember. Asa then fixed her a cup of tea which she drank because her body was still on autopilot. She still couldn’t process what was happening—what had happened.
The next thing she recalled was waking up screaming. She couldn’t stop. Her screams then turned to wild sobs as it all hit her. Asa was a cold-blooded murderer. He’d basically admitted there had been others before her father. He was a serial killer. How could she have not seen what was happening. She should have known that someone so seemingly perfect could turn out to be something made of nightmares.
Now that she knew his secret, was she next? Jamie didn’t want to find out. She had to get out of there. The fact that Asa hadn’t come when she screamed meant that he was gone. Was he at work or was he out looking for another victim?
It didn’t matter.
As she hastily threw some of her necessities in an overnight bag, a fleeting thought occurred to her that he’d drugged her tea. Maybe he intended for her to still be asleep by the time he returned home. Or it was possibly all in her head because seeing him murder her father had made her paranoid. Not that it mattered because she had to go.
It was how she ended up at this farmhouse. Even though she’d put some distance between them, he wasn’t far from her thoughts. She couldn’t get the image of him killing her father out of her head. Asa had this look of glee in his eyes as he performed his homicidal act. He got a kick out of it. There was something very wrong about the fact that he’d taken the Hippocratic Oath to save lives, yet he’d taken so much pleasure in breaking it.
How many people had he done that to and what made him think he had the right to do so? She understood that he’d gone through his own trials and tribulations as a youth but it didn’t give him license to murder. A thought suddenly popped in her head, a detail she’d forgotten. After he finished cleaning his instruments and before he untied the body, he’d carved a J in the wall. There was a neat line of letters already there and she wondered what they meant and if he did that after every kill. She noticed there were several letters and that alone was terrifying. She wished she’d never stepped into that murder shed.
There was a knock on her door.
Her heart sped up. Who was knocking at this time of night when everyone was asleep? She grabbed the pepper spray she now slept with under her pillow and cautiously approached the door. She opened it slightly to see Mrs. Sheridan, one of the owners of the farmhouse, standing on the other side of the door.
“Mrs. S. Is everything all right?” she asked hiding the pepper spray behind her back.
“I came here to ask you that. I heard screaming.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I just--I had a bad dream.”
“You’ve been having them every night since you’ve been here. But this one, by far, was the worst. Sweetie, maybe you should come down to the kitchen with me and we can have a chat.”
Jamie sighed. “Okay, let me get my robe and I’ll be downstairs in a minute.”
“Okay, I’ll make you a cup of my special hot chocolate.”
“Sounds good.”
“See you downstairs.”
Jamie closed her door, put away her pepper spray and grabbed her robe. It was likely that the older woman was going to tell her to find somewhere else to stay. That would put her in a dilemma. Her savings was small as it was and there was no way she’d find somewhere else to stay for more than a month or two without some immediate income.
She went to the kitchen, careful to tread lightly so as not to disturb the rest of the tenants who weren’t already awakened by her screams.
Mrs. Sheridan was standing at the kitchen stove stirring something in a pot as she hummed softly to herself. “Go ahead and take a seat. This should be finished shortly. I had some left over from the last time I made it so I just need to heat it up. I detest microwaves because the food never tastes the same.”
Jamie twiddled her thumbs nervously as Mrs. Sheridan made her concoction. Finally, Mrs. Sheridan pulled two mugs from the cabinet and poured the steaming liquid into them. “Here you go, dear.” She placed the mug in front of Jamie.
Jamie looked at her mug and it smelled delicious. “She took a sip. Mmm, it’s really good.”
Mrs. Sheridan smiled. “Thank you. I know it’s not really compatible with the weather but when my children were still little every time they’d get in a little scrap or had a bad day, I’d whip up a batch of my special hot chocolate. It made everything better. This is the adult version. I put a little Irish Whiskey in it to help you sleep better. Just a dash though so you won’t wake up hung over.”
Jamie took another sip and savored it on her tongue. “To be honest, this is the first time I’ve ever had hot chocolate.”
Two gray brows rose in surprise. “You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not. When I was a kid, I didn’t get many treats. I don’t think I tasted actual chocolate until I was in my late teens. But, I’ve never had hot chocolate before.”
“Oh, you poor dear. How horrible for you.”
Jamie saw no point in bumming Mrs. Sheridan out by telling her how rough things really had been for her. “Yes, it is.”
“I suppose you’re probably wondering why I’ve asked you to join me down here?”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No sweetie. You’re a friend of Thea’s so you’re welcome here. Besides, you’re one of our quieter tenants, nightmares and all. Something is obviously bothering you, honey, and sometimes talking about it makes you feel better. Who are you running from, honey?”
Jamie had been in the middle of taking a sip of her hot chocolate and spit it out when she heard that last line. “Excuse me?”
“Did I hit the nail on the head?” The older woman looked at her knowingly.
“Uh, what makes you say that?”
“Well, Thea did mention you were having relationship problems.”
That was the understatement of the year but how could she say that her lover was a murderer? Mrs. Sheridan would probably look at her as if she had a few screws loose.
Jamie pushed her mug away and wiped up the spittle with a napkin. “Um, you can say that we’re having problems. It’s just, I found out he wasn’t the man I thought he was.”
“What do you mean?”
“With all due respect, Mrs. Sheridan, I’m still trying to process all of this so I’d rather not go into detail.”
“Well, I have to ask, did he hurt you?”
“In what way?”
“Did he harm you physically?”
Jamie shook her head. “He’s never laid a hand on me.” Not counting the times when he’d meted out sexual discipline.
“Was he mentally abusive?”
Asa loved to be in control but he never pushed her to do anything she didn’t want to. “Never.”
“Did he cheat on you?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t understand sweetheart.”
“Like I said, I’m still trying to work things out for myself.”
“Well, do you want to know what I think?” Mrs. Sheridan gave her a kindly smile.
Jamie had a feeling this woman would tell her regardless of whether she said yes or no. The first few days she’d been here, Jamie had pretty much kept to herself but Mrs. Sheridan was a bit of a busybody. With a sigh, Jamie nodded. “Sure.”
Mrs. Sheridan beamed as she reached across the table and patted her on the hand. “Well, I’ve been with the Mr. Sheridan for 45 years. We’ve been together since junior high school. We’ve had our ups and downs but we fought to stay together. That’s what’s wrong with young people nowadays: when the going gets tough, you just want to bail. Clearly, you still care about him. I see that far off look in your eyes. You’re mooning over him and that’s okay. Love is worth fighting for.”
This woman was talking as if Jamie and Asa had had a petty disagreement instead of Asa murdering a bunch of people. “It’s not that simple.”
“It really is, my dear. Now, finish up your hot chocolate. It will help you sleep. Maybe tomorrow morning, we can move your room to the back of the house so you won’t disturb the rest of the tenants with your screaming,” she said nonchalantly.
Jamie finished the rest of her hot chocolate as fast as she could to get away from this conversation. “Well, thank you for the talk.”
“Anytime, dear.”
Jamie couldn’t get to her room fast enough. She slipped back into bed and tossed and turned for at least an hour before she drifted off to sleep.
When she woke, Jamie felt more tired than she had when she went to sleep. She showered, hoping that it would wake her but she couldn’t shake the sadness within her. Jamie didn’t want to confront the possibility that it was because she actually missed Asa.
What the hell was wrong with her? It wasn’t natural that she’d feel this way.
As she went downstairs to get breakfast, Mrs. Sheridan was standing at the bottom of the stairs with a huge smile on her face.
“Jamie, my dear, I was just coming up to get you. I have a wonderful surprise for you.”
“A surprise?”
“Yes!” Mrs. Sheridan clapped her hands in glee. “Look who’s come to visit you!”
For the first time, Jamie noticed that Mrs. Sheridan wasn’t alone. Standing in the middle of the living room was Asa.
He smiled at her. “Hello, Jamie.”