Butchered Dreams by Hadena James

Author:Hadena James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: serial killer, missouri, us marshals, the butcher, aislinn cain, sctu
Publisher: Hadena James

Sixteen

Rollins was tucked into his bed, tired from the day. His snoring penetrated the flimsy walls of my motel room. Malachi was watching TV. It had taken twenty minutes for me to find the show on my own TV, Monsters and Mysteries in America. I’d turned it off when I discovered the episode was covering the Dogmen of Michigan, the Beast of Bray Road and the wendigo. Normally, I would be curious by exactly this sort of thing, but after hearing Gabriel’s story, it bothered me.

Besides, I had other things on my mind. Something about my Great Uncle Virgil had just been off. I had yet to figure out exactly what it was. I’d tried distraction, thinking if I took my mind off of it, it would come to me, but it hadn’t. So, now I stared at the ceiling, tucked under my own covers, snug in a pair of pajamas, with my house shoes still on and my hair still pulled up from the day. Despite being in bed, I wasn’t ready to sleep. My mind was still struggling over Virgil’s sudden reappearance.

My phone told me the time. It was after midnight. I dialed my mother anyway. She answered.

“Are you in trouble?”

“I need to know why this cannot be Virgil Clachan.”

“Aislinn,” my mother sighed. “Because Nina told me that Virgil had been killed by his father.”

“That’s what Virgil told me too.” I sighed. “After Gertrude accused him of molesting her.”

“Gertrude supposedly made those claims against all the boys. Nina said it was because Virgil was still trying to practice cannibalism after The Depression ended.”

“Thanks mom, go back to bed.”

I hung up. Virgil had still been practicing cannibalism. What the hell was wrong with my family? Serial killing cannibals seemed to be a common event, with the exception of Patterson. Patterson was so scarred from the experience that he couldn’t butcher an animal, let alone eat one. How that fit in with him being a serial killer was still in limbo, the two seemed contradictory. Malachi was right, my family was the poster child for monsters in the making.

Was that it? Was it that simple? Was Virgil a psychopath and that was why he set off alarm bells? It definitely was part of it. However, I’d spent most of my life in the company of a psychopath. That shouldn’t have been enough.

I kept trying to convince my overactive imagination that it was because he’d just reappeared after all this bad stuff had happened in the family. That was the most logical part of the entire thing though. I had rushed to Nyleena’s side. With Gertrude in custody, Nina dead, and Patterson a wanted man, he was the only one of his generation left. Also, he’d been donating money to the trust fund for years.

It was one more thing that ruled out Patterson. Patterson hadn’t been in California in the 1940’s. He hadn’t gone on the run until a decade later.

My memory replayed the meeting. Carl and Virgil’s faces were both gone, my memory unable or unwilling to remember them.

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