Perhaps predictably, it was a cheap hotel. Ilse kicked her shoes off where she sat on the bed, staring across towards the large mirror over a long, wooden dresser. She sighed slowly, leaning back as she did and resting her head against the bed.
She glanced towards the door. Locked. She'd triple-checked. But... what if?
A slow, anxious knot formed in her stomach. A familiar knot. It wouldn't untangle unless she gave in. No rhyme, no reason... Only action solved it.
Sighing, but knowing enough not to fight the instinct she got up, moved to the door and checked the locks again. And again. And again.
Then, certain they were secure she reached for the strap of the laptop bag Sawyer had checked out for her from the precinct.
Bleary eyed, crossing in view of the mirror again, she approached a small, square table near the kitchenette.
Ilse didn't like the internet. She didn't like computers. She didn't like being connected so closely to the outside world.
But sometimes...
Sometimes she remembered why she made it so hard for herself to access the unending, unrelenting wealth of information offered across the web.
She pulled the laptop out, slowly, with steady fingers. She didn't bother plugging it in. If the battery died it'd only be fitting.
Thoughts of this case, of Agent Sawyer fluttered in her mind. The idea of abused children, of a teacher getting away with it for decades. How many victims? How many sealed lips? She clenched her jaw, flipping open the laptop and clicking the browser.
How many askance glances? How much shame and damage spread from one ink blot in a pond, the toxicity poisoning all it touched? Like Heidi. Like Katarina. Like Francis.
But not like you? A small, accusing voice whispered in her mind. Big bad Hilda Mueller the invincible. If you were so invincible, how come you wouldn't visit him? Not even behind bars?
She snarled, staring at the screen for a moment, her fingers hovering over the keys.
Was it really worth it? Did she really want to know? Her father had an accomplice. Someone who'd scared Kat even worse than the old man... It all felt so horrible.
But sometimes, perhaps feeling wasn't the point. Surgery hurt, but it left the body better than before. The process didn't have to feel good if the result did...
At least, this was how she justified it.
“Mueller, Freiburg, arrest.” She typed in and scrolled through the first list of results.
Few pictures back then, twenty years ago. One article had pictures of the house itself. She'd even forgotten some of these details over the years. Buried them along with the other memories. She stared at the articles, reading them quickly... Fragments, in German, said things like... “Horror house finally free...” Or, “...two bodies found on premises of Mueller murder home.”
She knew some of the articles by heart... Not the ones where he was involved. Strangely, none of the articles mentioned little Hilda Mueller. None of the children were mentioned specifically, their identities protected by the press.
All of them, however, mentioned Gerald Mueller. The monster himself.
She stared as the name flickered across her screen. “Gerard Mueller sentenced to fifty years for role in house of horrors. Serving sentence at Justizvollzugsanstalten Freiburg.”
She stared at the line and read it again, blinking and shaking her head.
Even as she read it, her mind almost grew foggy, as if her consciousness rebelled against the words. As if the phrase simply didn't compute.
Could he really be behind bars? Could monsters really be stopped?
She shivered at the thought, feeling a cold tremble along her fingers. Her eyes flicked to the picture of his face. One of the few pictures in the article. She stared in those dark eyes. Stared and he stared back. She felt her skin begin to crawl, felt the way—
She cursed and slammed her laptop lid, breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling now—her fingers no longer steady, her hand trembling against the shut casing.
Breathe in for four seconds, out for four. “Ridgway, Utah, forty-eight victims,” She rattled of beneath her breath.
Had she locked the doors?
A prickle crept up her spine and she whirled around. In her haste, though, she knocked over the laptop bag, and something tumbled out of the side pocket.
Something she'd placed there for safekeeping.
She swallowed, staring at the little tchotchke doll. The half-broken thing her sister had given her stared back. The same way the picture had.
She reached down, grabbing the thing, her fingers wrapped around its face, hiding its eyes. Don't look. Stop looking.
She flopped back onto the bed, clutching the tchotchke tightly, her fingers blocking its eyes.
Her own eyes closed, and she lay there, lights on, yet feeling trapped in darkness. Her hand rested against her stomach, holding the little doll.
And then...
She was back in the basement just like the day before. Crash! The railing snapped. She slipped. Ilse tried to scream, to scramble back up the stone steps. But they were slick now, glazed in ice... She tried to flee, slipping, sliding. She couldn't move, as if caught on a treadmill.
She wanted to scream, to lash out to cry.
But no sound came...
No sound except for the sobbing behind her. The sound of her siblings. Not just children, but their aged faces. The faces of those she'd just met.
The chorus of shouting children and her full-grown brothers and sisters echoed behind her. “Why'd you leave us, Hilda? Come back! Come back!”
She slipped even more, desperate, heart pounding.
Fingers grabbed her. Hands wrapped around her ankles. They began dragging her, yanking her back down the steps, yanking her back into darkness.