Tabula Rasa(16)

“That’s classified.”

I was sure he was some sort of ex-military. The way he moved. The way he talked. The calculating precision of every movement that showed signs of training well beyond that of a police officer but too regimented for a garden variety psychopath.

But that didn’t explain how he knew so much about getting rid of bodies. That couldn’t be standard military procedure.

“You think I’m a monster,” he said. He didn’t seem to be very bothered by the possibility.

I didn’t respond, but I was sure the truth was easily readable in my eyes.

“I’ve never killed an innocent. Are you innocent, Elodie?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about. Now go get the sheets.”

Unsure what else to do, I started toward the door. His voice stopped me.

“And Elodie? Don’t make me chase you.”

I should have run, I know I should have, but I was so scared I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know if I could trust he didn’t kill innocents, but if I ran from him would I stop being innocent in his eyes? Would it justify killing me too? He clearly knew his way around places like this. I knew he could find me. I knew he could outrun me. Then he would chop me up into little pieces just like he was about to do with Trevor.

I tried to blank my mind of everything but the immediate task in front of me and went into the other room to get the sheets. When I returned, the body had been drained and he was moving it onto the plastic.

Shannon arranged the body and then took the sheet from me. He squeezed the blood out down the drain in the floor. “Now go put that in one of the fireplaces to burn.”

I shook my head. “Please... I-I can’t...”

“Sure you can. You couldn’t survive what’s happened to you out here if you weren’t strong. I need you to keep moving.”

But still I stood staring at the bloody sheet he held out to me like it was nothing. All of this was nothing to him.

“Why do you need to drain and cut him up to bury him?”

“I’m not burying him.”

“Why? No one would find him out here.”

Shannon just stared at me, his eyes frigid blue ice. “No. I don’t do loose ends.”

I got the terrified feeling that he was beginning to see me as a loose end and I started to cry again. He ignored my tears and stood up, cleaning his hands in one of the pitchers of water. “Come with me,” he said.

“W-why?”

“Because I don’t trust you. You look like you’ve changed your mind about things. Have you changed your mind? Because now is a bad time for that. We are past the point of return. I’m destroying evidence. That looks bad. You’re in this with me for the long haul. I chose to help you on your terms because, against all my training and better judgment, I feel sorry for you and the f*cked-up shit you’ve been put through. But now that means I need to know I can trust you before you’re allowed to be a free range human again.”

That didn’t sound good. So I was effectively a hostage now? Why hadn’t I just let him call the police and get me help? But how could I have known what he was? How could anyone expect... this?

“Let’s go,” he said.

I couldn’t move. What if this guy was a million times worse than Trevor? Whatever he’d gone through to develop into a person who could do something like this had to have shut off the tap of at least part of his humanity. Even if he’d shown some in being willing to help me, it was such a small gesture compared to what I’d witnessed from him since.

“Just leave me. P-please. I swear I won’t say anything. How could it benefit me to talk about this?” I sure as shit didn’t want the attention it would bring.

Shannon’s expression closed off, and suddenly it was like any pity he’d felt for me had been sucked away into another dimension somewhere or maybe down that big drain with all the blood. He took a coil of rope out of his bag and advanced on me. I turned and ran, my self-preservation instincts finally coming to my aid. But he was far too fast for me.

He grabbed my arm and hauled me over to a chair in the banquet room.

“Sit,” he ordered.

I sat. “Please... I don’t know what I did wrong. A-are you going to kill me, too?”

“No. I’m not killing you but I can’t have you running.”

I sat there miserably while he tied me up. Why had I thought even for a second this guy could be any better than Trevor when all evidence had pointed to the opposite? I’d just been so desperate for anything safe to hold onto that I was making up imaginary saviors where they obviously didn’t exist.

Once he’d secured me, he disappeared back into the kitchen. He came out with the bloody sheet and tossed it on the fire, then he was gone again. He went to another part of the castle, then finally came back with a wheelbarrow and shovel. I have no idea where he’d found that, but he was right, the castle was big and contained all sorts of useful things. He propped the shovel next to the fireplace and took the wheelbarrow back with him into the other room.

It was a long time before he came back out. When he did, he had Trevor in small pieces in the plastic inside the wheelbarrow. He tossed the pieces on the flames of the fireplace he hadn’t used yet, then he took the plastic and returned to the kitchen once again.