Lucky Number 23 Read online

  I plopped the girl over my shoulder down onto water stained mattress then left to run over the other side of the manor to get warm blankets. I returned minutes later with my electric heated blanket and a sheet. I peeled off her hoodie, the shirt she wore underneath, and her soaking wet pants while taking care to be gentle around her near frozen extremities. Her body laid before me in just her black bra and black thong panties. I watched her ample chest and tight waist rise up and down with her shallow breaths and allowed my hands to run down the length of her, from her shoulders, over her perky breasts, across her navel, and then to her hips in one swift motion. I licked my lips and felt my cock stiffen as my eyes roamed as my hands did. The fact that she had to die was a shame, but she would never be more beautiful than she will be when she becomes my art, and I needed to keep reminding myself of that.

  I covered her entire body head to toe with a blue sheet I had pulled off my bed and then draped the soft, heated blanket over the top of her and switched it on. I sat on the edge of the bed and dug my hands under the blanket and laid them on her thigh then started massage on her legs to try to restore circulation. I also desperately wanted to touch her again.

  I massaged her legs in small circular motions holding her thigh in both my hands and slowly working my way down to her knees, then her calf. I worked on each leg for at least twenty minutes until the blue began to fade to white and I could tell frostbite hadn't set in. There was no discoloration on her smooth, porcelain legs, but there were several papercut-like lacerations from trekking through the creek and climbing up the snowbanks. I traced them with my fingers and remembered the deep cuts my father would leave on the girls during his experiments with pain triggers.

  Dr. John was more like a mad scientist than a psychologist. One of the best psychologists in the central United States but his degrees and credentials did nothing for him when it came down to the state health department's word versus his. Dr. John was conducting research funded by the state, but he had taken it to extremes the officials never sanctioned according to witnesses during the trial. My father took the fall, but I knew the truth, and so did my mother, the wretched bitch could have saved him but instead; she testified against him to save herself. I still believed that Mama Ester was the one who let number 22 out of her cage the night they came for my father.

  I stopped my work on the girl's legs and slid my hands up the thigh closest to me until I reached her fingertips. I gently pulled her arm away from her body under the warm blanket and began the massage routine on her arms, starting at her shoulders and slowly working down to her elbow and then her fingers. I concentrated on each muscle and inch of skin under my hands. I didn't want to look at her face. Not until I was ready to let her soul speak to me and tell me what she wanted to become.

  I looked around the room as I continued to work on the girl's body. I missed being in this room. I missed Lucky. I couldn't remember her face anymore, and the only pictures we had of her were taken with the case files and patient records into evidence. I wondered if I would even know her now, more than ten years later, if I ran into her on the street. I wondered, as I often did, what she would be like now, what she'd be into, if she still loved me and if that love could be something more. I would find her. I just needed to finish my mission here at the manor.

  Chapter Ten

  I left the girl still unconscious in Lucky's old bed after I was sure she would be okay, and that the ill effects of the hypothermia were being kept at bay. She could wake up at any time; however, so I locked her inside the room before I headed back downstairs to the kitchen. I was starving and had missed the dinner date I was supposed to have gone to hours earlier. Twelve text messages on my phone let me know that I wouldn't be seeing that girl again, but I didn't have a use for her anymore, now that number twenty-three was locked upstairs in her predecessor’s old room.

  I headed back down the patient stairway into the kitchen, but rather than go back down to the basement I headed through the central part of the manor. That part of the house was so different from the upstairs where the patients were housed. The ceilings were high, and the grand staircase in the foyer was still the most beautiful showpiece of the home. The walls were light grey with white trim—my mother’s idea. The Victorian era manor was modern and bright inside the house, unlike the yellowed exterior that was covered in brown moss under the piles of snow. My mother hated the dark Minnesota winters and wanted to make sure the inside of her home felt bright and comfortable. The sterile look of everything reminded me of a doctor’s office. My father was an actual doctor, well, a psychologist, but his study looked anything but clean.

  I stopped in front of the French doors that opened into Dr. John’s study. I stared through the frosted glass like I did as a child and tried to decipher what was hidden behind the doors. I knew now, of course, but I still got nervous each time I had the wrought iron doorknobs in my hands. This room had been forbidden to my mother and me; only one other person in the house had ever seen it beside my father.

  I pushed open the doors and stepped inside. The musty smell of old books and mildew made my stomach turn. I had only been in the study a few times since they arrested my father and took me away. I spent two years gone while the house sat empty. I came back to yellow crime scene tape, a leaking roof, and a brand-new outlook on life. I fixed up the roof, got rid of all the tape, added my kiln and turned the outbuilding into a furnace for my glass, but I never did clean up father’s study.

  I learned more in those two years than Dr. John had taught me in my entire life, and I had been using my gifts well. People from all over the world were buying my glass pieces. I was more well-known than the infamous Dr. John, and the women I cured didn’t end up lost in the woods, they were made immortal. I provided them with the only thing that could cure them—death. But unlike most, the bodies of the wicked girls I found would be able to live forever as art, rectifying the evil they put out into the world.

  I reached into the pocket of my hoodie and pulled out my most recent piece. Number 21 had just graduated high school and had been on her way to audition for the New York Ballet. She told me all about her plans to be a prima ballerina when I met her at Drifter’s Pub a month or so ago. When she dangled the necklace of cocaine in front of me and invited me to the back alley, I knew exactly what would happen next.

  I placed the beautiful black, glass swan on the dusty desk next to the 20 others I had left for him over the last eight years. I gazed around the dark room and imagined my father stalking around the bookshelves reading his medical texts and stacking them in piles on the oversized desk, searching for answers he would never find. I pictured him sitting at his desk, furiously writing on his yellow legal pads while typing up his case studies on the computer that was taken by the FBI all those years before. I knew my time at the manor was ending. I needed to move on and leave the legacy of Dr. John behind me once and for all.

  I sighed and turned away from the desk that held my creations. My father was the only one that ever appreciated my artistic ability; it was a shame he wasn’t still here to see the lessons I had learned from his research and what I had accomplished without him. I placed my hands on the French doors and paused, a fleeting memory capturing me. A flashback of years before, when I would sit on the floor on the other side, my ear pressed up against the door, desperate to know what was happening during Lucky’s therapy sessions with my father. Her rippling laughter stuck out in my memory the way I wished her face would. The only one of my father’s patients that was found alive but had since disappeared as though she never existed, like what she went through here never happened. Even the media coverage after my father was arrested conveniently left out the fact that one patient was still alive. My foster father, Robert, insisted it was because the girl was a minor and her identity couldn’t be revealed anyway.

  The girl upstairs crept back into my mind. I stepped through the doors and listened for any sign of movement above. I closed my eyes to listen carefully for a full minute
and heard nothing. Not so much as a creak of the bed. She was still unconscious, and I needed some time to myself to figure out what I would do next. The only cage in the basement was already occupied, meaning I would have to do something different with the strange girl upstairs, sleeping soundly in Lucky’s old room.

  I could keep her in her Lucky’s room but something about the woman was unnerving, and I felt like I was tarnishing my former sister’s memory by having the woman in her room.

  I’d kill number 22 tonight then put the woman upstairs in the cage. That would solve my problem, but I had another issue to contend with—inspiration. Number 22 hadn’t revealed herself to me yet. I didn’t know what she was meant to become, and I was having a tough time getting it out of her. Even on our date, she had a hard time telling me anything about herself.

  The motion lights flooded the yard as I left the house and headed to the outbuilding—a large metal shed that once housed my father’s car collection. The classic sports cars were long gone, but the building had a different purpose now. My prized possessions were created here.

  I slid the large metal door to the side and walked into my shop where I made glass.

  I started the cast iron, wood-burning furnace and watched the molten glass begin to glow bright red and orange as the heat radiated from below. Before long, the flame of the fire started to fan through the openings of the furnace. The glass was almost ready.

  Just behind the glass furnace was another, larger furnace, made of brick. I always thought it resembled a pizza oven. I traded a retiring mortician two of my father’s beloved cars for the cremation oven. I flipped on the propane and started the oven. The heating process would take a while, so I headed back into the basement of the manor through the cellar to retrieve number 22.

  As soon as I opened the wooden doors, I heard the girl crying. Her tears never seemed to stop. Most of the other women had stopped crying after the first day—if I kept them that long. Number 22 was on day three of being in the cage and still she was able to cry.

  “Stop,” I ordered as I climbed down the stairs.

  I flipped the light switch on and ripped off the blanket that covered the large-dog crate sized cage. The woman skittered to the back of the cage, against the wall. She was dirty, and her clothes were ripped and covered in blood stains. She had put up quite the fight when she woke up unexpectedly in the truck cab on the way back to the manor. Having to hurt her had wrecked my inspiration and set me on edge. I couldn’t create without a clear mind, and I didn’t like violence. Most of the women were unconscious when they woke in the cage and unconscious again when they went into the oven. I didn’t want to hurt them, even the ones who had hurt other people. Number 15 had even killed someone before.

  Punishment wasn’t my goal. Setting them free of their wickedness was my endeavor.

  “Please, just let me go, I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” the woman begged.

  Her long dark hair hung in greasy strands around her tear stained face. Her brown eyes were puffy, and the whites were bloodshot. I frowned as I looked at her, remembering the pain my father inflicted on the girls. My cage stood where my father had once strung up the young patients, using torture as a trigger. I shuddered as the memory of finding Lucky in the basement flashed across my mind. Her hair—dirty blonde, hung in front of her face, obscuring my view of her face. I had never had a memory as detailed before, so I bent over the cage and closed my eyes tight to try to bring the memory back, but it was already gone.

  Number 22 sniffled, bringing me out of my head and back to the situation at hand. The basement was warm now that the kiln had reached the proper temperature. Sweat beaded along my forehead but I didn’t want to take off my coat. I wanted the girl to inspire me so I could take her to the hot shop and create my final ingredient for my next masterpiece. I knew the cremation oven was at temperature by now and I didn’t want to waste the propane.

  “What are some of your favorite hobbies?” I asked the cowering woman.

  “W-w-what?” she stuttered as she used the back of her hand to wipe the snot off her face.

  “What do you do for fun?” I repeated slowly.

  “I-I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “I think you do.”

  “What is this?” she asked. “Why are you asking me these questions again?”

  “I want to get to know you; it was pretty hard to talk to you a few days ago with my cock buried in your throat,” I reminded her.

  “You’re a fucking creep!” She screamed at me and started sobbing hysterically again.

  “Oh, come on, I’m not that bad. I’m an artist. Isn’t that why you like me?” I teased her.

  Number 22 was the new cashier at a gift shop in the Mall of America, two hours south in Bloomington where I sold my glass pieces. I had just dropped off an order of pipes when the manager introduced me to Amber, a twenty-two-year-old college art-school dropout. She was fucking her way through the art galleries in downtown Bloomington hoping to become someone's muse, find someone to take care of her since mommy and daddy wouldn't let her come back home. She was a slut who needed purification. She was number 22.

  I kneeled in front of the cage and inputted the combination to the padlock then unwrapped the chain keeping her from being able to escape. Number 22 was as far into the corner of the cage as she could get. Her arms were wrapped tight around her knees which were in her chest.

  "No, no, no," she whimpered.

  "Don't make this harder than it needs to be," I warned her and reached into the cage to grab her forearm.

  She screamed and slapped at my arm. She still had some fight left in her.

  "I don't want to hurt you again," I told her.

  I didn't want to injure her, but I would if I had too. Number 23 was upstairs, and the sooner I was finished with 22, the quicker I could move on to the girl upstairs and then be done with all this for good. Two more bodies before I could be set free as well, I could complete the cycle.

  I reached in again and grabbed the woman's arm. I yanked, and she jerked back which caused me to lose my footing and fall forward, smacking my face on the cage.

  "Fuck!" I exclaimed and grabbed my nose.

  I looked down and saw the blood filling my hands.

  "Goddamnit! Fucking bitch!" I shouted.

  I stood up and grabbed a towel from one of my work benches, tipped my head up and held the towel to my nose and squeezed. My head was throbbing and my anger, which I usually kept under control, was boiling in my gut.

  "Aaaahhhhhh!"

  I whirled around as I heard the deep, bellowing scream from the girl but I wasn't fast enough to brace myself. Number 22 barreled into me, slamming her shoulder into my chest and sending me back on top of the workbench. I scrambled off the bench as the woman made a break for it up the stairs that lead to the kitchen. I leaped towards her to the bottom step and reached out to grab her ankle. She screamed and kicked as I pulled her down the stairs. I grabbed hold of her thighs and pulled her down again. I turned her around to try to get a better grip on her and get control of her arms, but as soon as I flipped her, she lashed out with her long fingernails and dug them into my cheeks. She kicked me in the chest and tried again to scramble up the stairs. Her hand was on the doorknob when I caught her again but wasted no time in being gentle.

  The sickening thud her face made against the wood door stopped me in my tracks. I slammed it again, and again to be sure she wouldn’t try anything again. I watched her drop to the floor in a heap. I stood on the steps and caught my breath while I stared down at number 22. Her face was bashed in and bloody. Her forehead was flattened, and her nose was completely shattered.

  I hated that she made me hurt her. I stooped to check her pulse and was relieved when I found one. I didn't like it when I killed them. When they died because of me, they didn't count. Their souls were already gone; they couldn't be cleaned. I was thankful that the situation had only happened twice.

  I grabbed her up and slung her over my
shoulder and carried her back down the steps, through the basement and out the cellar doors instead. The motion lights came on once again bathing everything in yellow light. I trudged through the snow to my shop. Smoke was already billowing out of the chimney for the cremation oven.

  I tossed the girl onto the dressing table. I used to wash their bodies before the purification ritual and went back outside. The building was hot like it was supposed to be, but for some reason, the inferno was getting to me tonight. I drew in a long, slow breath and countered to three before releasing it. The autumn night sky was clear, and I identified the visible constellations overhead. The winter was sure to be long and harsh since the ground was already snow covered in November. I hoped to be out of Minnesota before the blizzards and ice came this time.

  I took another deep breath and looked over to the manor. I thought about the depth to which this home was engrained in me. So much had happened here, but I was ready to let it all go and move on, even if it meant never finding Lucky again. Part of me was beginning to believe she never really existed at all.

  My father had gone to jail on multiple charges, not just homicide. The study and experimental treatments the girls were subjected to were unethical and considered medical malpractice, but my father was a genius. My foster father had explained Dr. John's mental manipulation to me not long after I ended up with him. Any doctor that could hurt his patients could hurt his son too, right?

  I sighed. I missed Dr. John even if he was a mad scientist or evil as the media portrayed him. I had thought back to my sixteen years in McCourt Manor before my father was caught and I couldn’t recall a single time he so much as raised his voice at me, though he frequently yelled at my mother and his patients upstairs. I shook the thoughts from my head. I decided that neither Robert, while amazing and brilliant, or anyone else, would ever understand my father the way I did, regardless of the evidence against him.