The coffee in the cup had stopped steaming some time ago, but Eric hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t touched the beverage since he started writing. The first two letters had been the easiest. He’d explained to his children that he loved them and that he only wanted the best for them. He’d given them rules to live by and guidance. There were pieces of advice about dealing with the opposite sex and their family’s history of being different. The hardest part had been trying to explain why he did what he did. Did fifteen-year-olds really understand the concept of justice? He wasn’t sure. He imagined that his children would. They would inherit genes from both their parents and turn out to be intelligent and with a little luck, they would never understand what it was like to live as a psychopath.
The letter to his mother was much harder. In her world, two wrongs never made a right. Justice was not served at the end of a gun. Making her understand his actions would be impossible. He knew this, yet, he felt he had to try to explain it. Eventually, he gave up and wrote just a few lines. “You did not fail me as a mother, quite the opposite. I learned to love Elle and the children only because you loved me in spite of what I was. I can never repay you for being my mom, but I can bring suffering to those that made you suffer. That is the only way I can express my gratitude.”
In the final letter, he laid bare his soul. Explaining the building of his blood lust, which could only be slated by making up for the loss his family had suffered. His desire to draw blood had become nearly unbearable, a burden upon his soul. Every day, he wrestled with the darkness and feared that it would take control. If it did, he would not be able to stop if he unleashed upon someone he cared about. The time had come to slake his thirst and put himself where he really belonged. He signed it with the words “Love You.” No name, his sister wouldn’t need one.
Aislinn was stronger than him emotionally, and he knew that. She was also mentally stronger. Her own blood lust would not eat at her soul like it did his. She would never unleash it upon those she cared about. It was possible she would end up in prison because he knew she would kill anyone who dared to even threaten those that she loved.
In many ways, he admired the fourteen-year-old girl who had faced down a serial killer. Not because she had killed and escaped, but because she had done it with no hesitation, no regrets, no mercy, and no lost sleep at night. He had known then that she was different, she was special. She was not like him and Patterson. He also knew that only she would understand exactly why he had done it. It was why her letter was slated to wait the longest. If she lived to thirty, and Eric suspected that the serial killers of the world were in for a surprise as she got older, she would get her answers on why he did it, if she didn’t guess before then.
His wife, Elle, had married him just five years before. Cassie was the oldest at two and Kyle was still in the womb. He would never meet his father. It was probably better that way.
He hated to tear his family apart, but he knew if he stayed, he would do it in some other way that would be far more devastating. Elle seemed to know it too. She was not unfamiliar with the world of psychopaths. She’d come to the US on a student visa to get away from the press in Germany after it was discovered that her uncle was a cannibal. He’d been fond of grinding immigrants into sausage. Their lives were not perfect, but they were perfect for each other. They knew it by the end of their first date.
By the time he was fifteen, Eric knew that he would succumb to the same urges his grandfather had. He wasn’t sure how his father had managed to avoid it. Some internal strength or control seemed to have existed in Donnelly Clachan that didn’t exist in him. He hoped if either or both of his children turned out to carry the genes that were in him they would have the controls that his father had. Donnelly Clachan hadn’t always done the right thing, but he had been a decent man.
That was the real problem for Eric. Donnelly had been a good man, a good psychopath. One of the few men who understood how the world worked and tried damn hard to make it better. He had seen the changes that were coming and he had been determined to make them less of a problem for his children and grandchildren. If Donnelly had lived, Eric believed his life might have been somewhat different. He’d still be a killer, he still was a killer, but he wouldn’t be on the verge of collapse.
Because that’s exactly where Eric stood, on the verge of collapse. His family had suffered so much. If his sister grew up to be a serial killer, he would be able to look back at the points in her life that fueled her rage. The same pain fueled his own rage. Whoever said psychopaths didn’t feel emotional pain, didn’t understand what it meant to be a psychopath. They had been listening to too many psychopaths lie about the nature of a psychopath.
It was true that he didn’t care about most people. The men he planned to execute today were nothing more than thugs that deserved what they were getting, like ants that got lost from their colony. When he did care though, that feeling was more extreme than any other and it could go from good to bad in a millisecond.
Years ago, he’d climbed out the window of his house in the middle of the night, intent on finding his sister. He didn’t have a plan that night, just a desire to find her and kill whoever had her. He’d wandered for hours, fantasizing about all the things he do to the asshole that had her. Eric was going to pay him back for every bit of physical and emotional pain she had endured. He’d tried to retrace her steps that day. As he did, he had walked past Callow’s house at least a dozen times, never realizing that his baby sister was on the other side of the door.
When he’d come home, empty handed, Isabella had known. She had whispered to him until the dawn that Aislinn would and could take care of herself. She had calmed his demon until all he could do was feel the pain that losing Aislinn caused. He had curled up in his older sister’s lap and a part of him died, convinced that Aislinn would meet a fate worse than death before she was found, and the worst part was that he could do nothing about it.
Poor Isabella. Eric had been pushing memories of her away for the past two years, unable to face them. She had always known what to say to him, how to soothe his demons, how to bring him back to the land of the emotional. The only one of the three siblings that was not a psychopath, she knew exactly how to handle them. She had been the best at it. Eric had once believed that losing Aislinn had been the worst pain he had ever experienced. Then Isabella and Donnelly had both died in a single day.
Another part of him died with them. He saw it on his little sister’s face, when they were alone. She dropped the mask and just was. He could see it in her eyes. Knowing how little she felt and how much she felt when she thought of the two of them, now dead, had been too much for him. It had been hard enough to deal with his own demons and lose them. To see her go through it made Eric think he would break.
Only Elle had kept him sane during the last few years. He could confide in her. He could talk to her. He could just look at her and never say a word and she understood. She was as good as Isabella when it came to calming his rage.
She couldn’t calm it now. Eric knew he was a lost cause. It was only a matter of time now. He felt it burning within his gut.
Patterson had come by a few weeks ago, to talk to him. To try to help him control it. However, Patterson didn’t understand how to deal with Eric’s rage any more than he understood how to deal with his own.
This was Eric’s last chance at redemption. He knew that. Elle knew that. One day he hoped his children understood. He hoped the letters helped them deal with their abandonment.
His plans were not just about revenge. They weren’t even limited to quelling his anger. In the grand scheme of things, he was sacrificing himself. That was the part that no one would ever understand, at least, no one outside of those involved.
Because if it wasn’t Eric, it would be someone else. Someone who was important to his family that did this. Patterson, maybe. He had talked about it. However, Patterson was a necessary part of the world right now. He was needed to help keep Aislinn safe from the world and herself.
It could be Malachi though. The young man had the darkness. Eric saw it growing inside him; a giant void where his soul should have been. Malachi who considered Aislinn the end all, be all of his world. Without her, Malachi would fall into the abyss and never look back. His body count would be awe-inspiring and horrifying. He was smart enough to get away with it for a long time. He had enough rage that he would need to quench it often.
However, Aislinn was his biggest fear. He loved her and didn’t want to see that happen, that was true. Yet, there was more to it. Her demons were much darker than his, they were even darker than their grandfather’s. If she ever tumbled down the rabbit hole, Malachi would follow, but the damage he did would be minor compared to the wholesale slaughter she would bring with her. It would be as if a new plague had swept across the face of the Earth and she was the sower of it. He would never forget the giggling he’d heard come from her the night she’d killed Callow. She had enjoyed killing him far too much for an eight-year-old. She hadn’t been in shock, she’d been basking in the glory of his death.