Twisted by Hannah Jayne(45)

It was Christmas Eve, and Beth Anne had just turned thirteen. Everything around Raleigh was decorated with swaths of pine, red bows, and giant, round ornaments, and bell-ringing Santas were outside stores. Every commercial on TV showed a family rushing into one another’s arms, having been separated by long flights or college or snow. Not one of them showed a father in a holding cell, gathering up his motherless daughter in his arms. Not one showed a little girl fingering an old, knitted stocking, wondering if she should bother to put it next to hers.

Every day the world reminded Beth Anne that her family wasn’t normal, but it was always worse in December. There were no holiday cards in the mailbox, no Christmas letters to read, no snow-laden family pictures to tack up. There was a flimsy Christmas tree wrestled from the attic and adorned with a string of half-working lights. A couple of brand-new ornaments bought from the Walgreens because Beth Anne’s family had nothing to hand down. And there was one photograph that Gran trotted out every year and put on the mantel.

From a distance, it looked like a normal—if slightly stiff—family portrait. Gran stood on one side of Beth Anne, her father on the other. Her mother, like a shadow, hovered behind. It almost looked like they were smiling but there was no joy in the slightly upturned lips. Every year Beth Anne studiously avoided the portrait, but that year, she rolled up on her tiptoes and pulled it from the mantel, scrutinizing it. There was something sad in her grandmother’s eyes. Something empty in her mother’s. And her father’s…well, they were sharp and black, searing and defined, daring you to look away.

Beth Anne, six, at best, was clutching a square gift box wrapped in red and green, the only indicator of the season. Her grandmother’s hand rested gently on her shoulder. Her mother’s hands were clamped around Beth Anne’s arms as if holding on for dear life. And her father had his hands by his sides, slightly fisted, two inches of space between him and his family. Beth Anne wondered why she had never noticed the distance before.

In her room, she tried to block out the images of the victims, but they flashed in front of her eyes, seeming to lurk in every corner: Amy Eickler with a necklace of ligature bruises in the closet; Isabel Doctoro, bloodshot eyes wide and accusing, hunkering by the bed; Melanie Harris, hands bloodied as she clawed for her life in that Food Lion parking lot. Even as the sunlight streamed in through the windows, Bex turned on every light and pushed open every drape until her bedroom nearly glowed. She could still hear their voices. She could still hear his. She pressed her hands against her ears.

“Stop, stop, please stop,” she whispered.

Dr. Gold had talked to her about “the phantoms” once. Had told her that they were figments of her imagination, manifestations of her guilt for not turning her father in sooner. Then why was he talking too? Why was he begging me to remember, to set them straight?

Suddenly Bex was shaking.

“Maybe he’ll want to tell you his side of the story.” She remembered Detective Schuster’s trailing words.

Maybe…

Bex sat down at her laptop, her fingers hovering over the keys.

“W-W-W,” she started. She paused, tapping her finger against her bottom lip, everything inside her a churning mass of confusion. She wanted to talk to her father. She wanted to tell him to run. She wanted to tell him to disappear, to never bother her again, to never have been in her life. She wanted to see him locked up. She wanted to never exist.

“W-W-W,” she said again, her voice soft, “W-C-F-A-N…on fire.”

It was the same page from the night before, but this time there weren’t a dozen others blocking out the home page. It popped up immediately, joy and terror populating her whole screen. There were pictures, screen grabs of old headlines and newspaper clippings. Repeated shots of her father glancing over his shoulder, his eyes fierce and black, his lips pressed together hard, the slightest hint of a contemptuous grin.

Bex wasn’t sure she was breathing. She wasn’t sure her heart was still beating.

Her mouse hovered over the main menu, page titles like “Kills,” “Court,” and “Crimes” magnifying. She knew she should go straight for Forums because she was doing what Detective Schuster had said: she would find her father and trap him. The overzealous “Dangerous Serial Killer Surfaces in Beaufort” headlines would vanish, and maybe, if she was fast enough and smart enough, she could disappear back into her life as Bex Andrews, back into Michael and Denise’s family, back into her plain high school social life at Kill Devil Hills High.

A girl was murdered there after you came, that horrible voice hissed. You’ll never be normal. You’ll never disappear…

Bex didn’t even try to blink back the tears.

“You and me, Bethy girl. We’re special. There ain’t any like us. We stick together. We take care of each other. We’re special, Bethy. You and me.”

Her father’s voice was a smoke-filled whisper in her ear. The memory of her sitting on his knee, his big palm wrapped around her rib cage, was just a slice, a tiny vision.

“I’m helping Detective Schuster,” Bex said, jaws clenched.

But was he really the one who needed help?

Bex knew she should drop another bit of bait, but the page Beginnings caught her eye. She wasn’t sure she had seen it the night before. She clicked and the photo-heavy page loaded slowly. As the connection lagged, the picture came up incrementally, half-inch-thick bars creeping horizontally across the screen. She saw the top of her father’s head first, some caught-forever-on-film breeze casually lifting a few strands of hair that used to be the same color as Bex’s.