The Confession
Detective DiVida hated this time of year. Halloween was not
a time of laughter, tricks, and treats. It was a hell-inspiring time of year
when seemingly every wacko and loner struck out in demon-like or ridiculous ways.
And here before midnight, this Halloween had already proved to be far more foul
than anyone involved in this case could ever accept.
The gruesome scene left behind at 130 Richmond was one that
would spell out nightmares for anyone who responded to this case. There were so many questions to be answered, questions that would likely never be seen through.
As he stood outside of the police station alone, taking in
the last duffs of a bummed cigarette, the detective took a look up to the
heavens above. The sky was black. Only a sliver of a moon glared back. On any
other night, this would have been expected, but tonight, the sight of the
darkness gave the detective an unexpected chill. Evil truly had touched all of
them in this night.
This case would be unlike any other homicide before,
although it had the makeup to be as regular as any other youth gone bad
profile; a recent drastic move, a step-parent, isolation, and to top it off,
the kid had a record. Possession and being involved in a knife fight on the
street in his last city of residence. The kid had convinced a jury that the fight was in self-defense, but
the ink on his sheet did not bode him favors tonight.
Both his parents were dead and his house lie half in rubble
from a fire that most were already saying he started. How else could a sixteen
year old escape from a level 3 blaze relatively untouched?
This was one of the countless questions that Detective DiVida intended to find out.
The door opened and the Detective entered the plain walled
interrogation room, a scene he felt more comfortable in than at home. There
were a number of things a veteran detective such as himself looked for the
second he stepped into the room – first and foremost, was the detainee awake.
It seemed backwards to new recruits and to those who had no experience in crime
investigation, but for most, planning a murder is a sleep depriving ordeal, one
that has a host of demons screaming in your head, so once the deed is done and
if you’re in a quiet, safe place, the adrenaline drops you into dreams. Detective
DiVida half expected this, but the kid was awake, wide awake. Though deep circles that suggested the boy had not
slept in weeks, underlined his brown eyes, the kid could not have looked
farther away from being dropped by adrenaline. Perhaps he was terrified that he
had been caught so easily. Time would tell.
“Alright,” Detective DiVida sat down slowly at the desk,
deciding to take a more firm, yet soft spoken approach with this kid who
already seemed so tightly strung out on the edge. “They said you wanted to talk
to me. Just take your time, there’s no rush.”
The boy's eyes never ceased their constant scanning of the
room. But he did not appear to be looking for anything in particular. It was
more like he was afraid of the shadows on the walls. The unsipped cup of
Styrofoam between his hands that would not keep still rattled from his knee
bouncing up and down unyielding beneath the table. The observers on the other
side of the black window were taking bets as to what drugs the kid was on.
But after years of working VICE the detective had thought
he’d seen it all until tonight. There was something so otherworldly about this
case and it was all about to spill out before him.
“Okay,” the boy's shaky voice started. He pushed his ear length
hair back and for a split second the detective could see some of the deep
scratches that had been noted in the report the first responders made. From the
file that the detective had reviewed before coming into the room, the
detective knew that the boy’s skin was riddled with similar scratches that
looked to have been done by fingernails. “I-I-I’ll tell you,” the boy's voice was
frantic. “But there’s no way you’ll believe me. I just, I gotta tell someone.”
The detective calmly
nodded his head. “I’m listening, Brandon.”
Sighing hard, the boy took several deep breaths before being
able to muster up the words to tell his tale of horror.
“We moved into this stupid town from the city a few months ago.
My step-dad got a new job out here, so my mom and I picked up our entire lives
and moved. Aside from the fact that the town sucked, everything was fine at
first. Until the day I got into a fight after school. That’s when everything
all started.
“My mom and step-dad were pissed, to say the least. He
started yelling at me and then my mom started yelling at him and in the midst
of everything a family picture we had on the wall of the living room fell.” The
boy hesitated, his shoulders drew up. The detective did not know, but this was
exactly as everyone had reacted the moment the frame shattered upon the floor. “It
stopped our fight and we just sorta blamed it on an earthquake that we didn’t
notice– this is California, a faulty
nail, or something like that. But, we could not have been more wrong.
“We’re not,” the boy stopped. His heart wondered if he
should use past tense, but thinking of his parents as dead was too much for him
yet. “We’re not a quote ‘religious’ family or nothing like that. We’d go to
church on Christmas and Easter and that was pretty much it, but once things
really started going in the house…that’s when we became believers. Clearly too
late.” The boy snuffled hard, wiped his running nose with the sleeve of his
loose fitting black sweatshirt.
“My parents started fighting all the time, like really bad. Screaming and yelling. They’d
never been like that before. I know
you probably think that I hated my step dad, but I didn’t, ok. He was alright.
He always treated me and my mom right, you know? But once he started screaming
at her, that was it. I knew it wasn’t right. You know? Like it wasn’t him.
“After the first few nights following the first few fights,
that’s when things really started getting nuts. I’d wake up in the middle of
the night. It was really weird. Like I felt like something was in there with me…staring
at me. But there was nothing there.
“My mom said that there was one morning when she was getting
ready for work that she was in the bathroom and when she was in the shower,
there was someone in there with her. Creeping on her. She was terrified. She came
out screaming. That was just a day or two before…” the boy could not finish his
sentence, but he meant a day or two before Halloween. “That night, we all had
another big fight, my parents and me. It was the worst. I honestly can’t remember what we fought about because of
what else happened. We were in the living room and we started to hear doors
slamming upstairs. Open and shut, open and shut.
“All the photos we had on the walls were shaking like there
was an earthquake, but the ground, it wasn’t shaking. It was horrible. I’ve
never been so scared in my life, but I was still so mad from the fight, you
know? So I started screaming at the house. How I hated that place how it needed
to burn.” The boy stopped because he could see the judgment in the eyes of the
detective. “Look man, I know this sounds nuts, but I’m not making this up. Look
what it did to me!” The boy popped up out of his chair and ripped up his shirt.
All across the boy’s stomach, chest, sides and back were the terrible scratches
that did not look as if caused by human fingers, but by claws. The detective
was taken aback by this. He had seen the file that the EMTS, had provided in
the file and they were not described half as terrible as these.
Before the detective could say or ask anything, the boy
continued, “It all stopped after the scratches. Until tonight.” The boy sobbed
heavily. “Everything went to hell
tonight. My mom had brought home a Bible, as far back as I can remember we’d
never had one before. As soon as she crossed into the front door…they knew.
“All the lights began to fade, then light up again, fade
then light up. We heard what sounded like, I don’t know, a tapping? Coming from
my room upstairs. So my mom, my step dad and I went up there to see what was
going on. The lights wouldn’t turn on. It was pitch dark in there, but that
same feeling that I’d had that something was in the room with me was back and I
knew my folks could feel it to.
“Something began to speak to us, but it wasn’t right. It was
somewhere between a growl and a whisper. I couldn’t hear it exactly, but I
could understand it, like it was in my head. It was saying, ‘Get it out. Get it
out.’ Over and over again. I knew exactly what it meant: the Bible. But that
was the last thing I was about to do. I ran down stairs to where my mom had
left it, leaving my folks upstairs. I grabbed it and the second I did, screams.
My parents were screaming!” The tears streaming down the boy’s face were
running into his mouth and down onto his heart as he spoke. “I bolted back, but
half way up the stairs…there was fire. It was so hot. I couldn’t…there was
nothing I could do. There was this horrible feeling like something was pulling
me, pulling me in two directions. One toward the fire, one back down the
stairs. It felt like I was being dragged downward, like my feet didn’t even
touch the ground.
“Next thing I knew, I was out front. Watching my home, my
life, my…my parents burn.” The boy looked up straight into the eyes of
Detective DiVida. “I know you think I’m nuts and that you’re probably going to lock
me away forever, but this is what happened. I swear to you. There was something
evil in that house. And it destroyed us.”
The detective had been watching, listening to everything
that the boy shared. He remained a moment more, trying to see if the boy was
going to prove his madness and burst into, ‘Happy
Halloween.’ But he didn’t.
“Thank you, Adam,” Detective DiVida said as he began to
stand. “I’m going to um, get you some stuff to help you freshen up. I’ll be right
back. Okay?”
Adam didn’t know what to think or to say. Freshening up
seemed so pointless. He nodded once. He
knew that the men in white coats would soon come to take him away.
Detective DiVida removed himself from the room. He did not
stop when questioned. He continued all the way back to the spot at which he had
been smoking his cigarette. He wished he had bummed a second. Leaning his back
against the door, the detective once more stared up in to the black sky. He
thought back to the scene that he had walked in upon two hours ago: a Bible on
the grass of the front lawn, the house, smouldering. Deep within the rubble and
the ashes were found two collections of bones, but not complete bodies. On two
separate locations in the exact positions, there lie a head and two femurs,
crossed as if designed like skull and crossbones. The most unnerving aspect was that neither of the bones displayed any typical trait of having been through extreme heat and fire. It was as if the flesh had been stripped and placed at the scene of the crime.
Another wretched chill ripped
through the Detective. He knew what fate awaited the boy. He knew what the
juries and the CPS investigators would say. Holding on tight to the pocket
Rosary his grandmother had given him when he was around about Adam’s age, he
felt it as true as anything in his heart. He knew, that probably he alone with the boy, believed
in the demons that haunted and tormented the former tenants of that house.
~*~*~
Happy Halloween!
Your humble author,
S. Faxon
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