Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Hamish took me home and gave me this journal. He said to keep a record of my thoughts. I’m here at the crypt where my parents’ bodies actually are. I keep dreaming that they’re not dead, only sleeping. I brought a blanket to sleep here in case they do wake up. It’ll be scary for them to be in darkness, calling for help. I’ll be here to free them, just in case.”
I close the journal and set it down so I can lift out a bundle of pages. As I do, one flutters free. It’s a newspaper article, printed on paper so thin I can see through it.
I don’t need to read the headline. I recognize the article and the shape of the words.
“Death Comes to Small Town. Horror haunts Elirya.” The picture is as familiar to me as my name. It’s a fenced front yard, the tree with the red swing my dad hung for my brothers, three brick stairs, and a stoop. The front of my family home. And in the foreground, close enough you can see the tear tracks on her little face, is a little girl.
The little girl is me. I trace the outline of my tangled hair. The photographer had been lurking in my hometown for weeks, interviewing locals, trying to capture the sense of horror.
He knew the killer would strike again. He’d gotten wind of the crimes before the cops arrived and had come and snapped this picture. He must have been right up in my face.
I don’t remember him. I don’t remember anything about that morning. Only the night the terror came and took my family away.
The bundle falls from my hands, scattering pages. I fall to my knees among them.
I’m on the floor, surrounded by scraps of faded paper. Articles torn from a newspaper so long ago.
I’m not dreaming anymore.
I’m in Rex’s childhood bedroom. Who else’s could it be? And here is proof of how long he’s been hunting me. Article after article about my family’s death and the man who took their lives.
After the awful night when he came for my family, the Bondage Killer had been at the height of his horrible reign. The newspapers moved on from the victims quickly and focused more on the man who seemed to be one step ahead of the cops. He’d taunted them, sending them letters about how he chose his victims. He told them what he’d planned to do next and killed six more people before they pinned him down in an abandoned warehouse where he had been hiding out.
I sift through the papers. After that initial article, the newspaper editors suppressed all pictures of me and censored my name. It was too little, too late. The first one had done enough damage. The photographer won an award for the photo, if I remember correctly. A child’s pain and trauma served up for all to see.
Enara. They spelled my name wrong and never printed a correction, either. My mentor, Lacy Collins, had kept these articles in a murder book. She never wanted me to see it, but I dug it out and paged through it one day when she was at work. That’s why the headlines are burned into my brain.
I read everything I could about the Bondage Killer, trying to understand why he would snuff out so many lives. Why he spared me. Profiling him for my own purposes after all these years.
It seems Rex had been doing this, too. A journal flaps open. This one has the same boyish scrawl, grown neater. Rex, the boy, growing older. The pages have clippings glued to them. Pages on pages of the Bondage Killer’s letters to the police and press. In the margins, Rex wrote notes. Decompensating, Rex marks beside one rambling manifesto. Only six days after the last kill. He’s unraveling.
The final page has another copy of the article with my home and face. Rex has circled my face with a pen. “Who is she?” and underneath, in bold letters: SHE’S LIKE ME.
From the diary of Rex Roy, aged twelve. . .
Today, I found someone to live for. Hamish found me at my parents’ grave, but instead of telling me to return to the manse, he brought a newspaper to read while he waited with me.
It was her face that caught my attention first. She was scared and sad and mad all at the same time. It’s a mix that I’ve felt, but no one understands.
It was strange to see what I felt on someone else’s face. Strange and good.
She’s like me.
Hamish says they shouldn’t put kids’ pictures in the paper like that. I agree, but I’m glad they did. Otherwise, I never would’ve known about her.
They said her name was Enara. I stole Hamish’s phone and looked it up, and it means Swallow. I’m going to find her and tell her she’s like me.