Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned Read online

  Naomi watched the news coverage in stunned silence as Greg Oliver showered down the hall.

  She learned the rest of it quickly. Greg had fled in a white Camaro with the police in close pursuit. Greg had abandoned the car five miles away from the hospital, in the development she lived in, and there was no trace of him. He was also the father of a two-year old son, Bobby, now deceased. His wife had been arrested but was never charged with Bobby’s death, which had been labeled an accident.

  The sound of a helicopter flying overhead eclipsed her thoughts and broke her attention from the newscast. The police were here, at her subdivision, conducting a search.

  Down the hall, the shower stopped.

  She felt tense as the news droned on in the background. There was no doubt that if the police showed up while Greg Oliver was in the house, he would kill her. But if it took another few hours for the search team to reach this end of the subdivision and Laura –

  Laura! What would happen with Laura? Would her elementary school let the kids out of school knowing what was going on?

  She worried about this while the news coverage continued, and before she knew it Greg Oliver was standing in the living room dressed in a pair of Larry's old jeans and nothing else, towel-drying his hair as he watched the TV.

  After watching the coverage on himself for a few minutes he muttered, "Goddamn. They didn't waste time putting this on TV, did they?"

  She didn't say anything; her heart beat heavily in her ribcage. She felt sweaty, hyped up with adrenaline.

  Greg turned to her. "They're searching the development?"

  Trembling, she nodded.

  The shower seemed to have reinvigorated him. When he’d first taken Naomi hostage he'd been primed up, on the edge, a man driven to desperation. She’d seen the tiredness in his eyes. Now the shower seemed to have driven away whatever fatigue he'd had; he looked more dangerous now than ever.

  They watched silently as the news anchor brought the viewing audience up to speed, repeating the story she'd seen earlier.

  Naomi stayed silent, watching him.

  Finally he turned off the TV with the remote. "Okay, this changes everything. Damn!"

  Her thoughts were running a mile a minute. She shook her head, hoping he’d see the look of desperation on her face. He looked at her for a minute, and then reached over and ripped the duct tape off her mouth. Naomi winced at the pain, debating on what to tell him. "It's only ten-thirty," she said. "It's not going to take all day to canvass the area. They'll probably finish by two and reopen the development. When they do that, you can go. I’ll even drive you out myself." Then you can go and be out of my life, she thought. Before Laura gets home.

  He was shaking his head. "They're not going to reopen it so soon," he said. "They'll keep it closed off. They'll escort people into the development as they come home from their jobs. They're not going to write me off as being gone so quickly. They know I'm nearby somewhere."

  "Well, they can't just force their way into every house in the neighborhood," she said.

  "I dumped my vehicle only four blocks from here," he said. He regarded her calmly with those dark eyes, that strangely passionate and dangerous face. She noticed for the first time that he was lean, his stomach flat and hairless. "They're going to concentrate their attention four blocks in either direction. That means they're going to mostly be smack dab in the middle of this development."

  "If they do, we just won't answer the door," Naomi said. "We'll just—"

  Greg tore off another strip of duct tape from the roll. "I'm taping your mouth shut again so you don't scream when that happens." He leaned forward, ready to tape her mouth shut again when she shook her head.

  He paused, irritated. “What?”

  “Why...” Naomi began. Go ahead, ask him! she thought. With that little bit of internal courage, she finished her thought process. “Why did you try to kill your son?”

  He looked at her for a moment, his dark eyes deep and penetrating. “So you want to know why a man would go out of his way to kill his own child?”

  She nodded. She had to gain his trust, and the only way she could do that was to keep him talking, learn what made him tick, empathize with him. In that position, he might let down his guard enough to allow her to—

  "You want to know what you're up against, huh?"

  She nodded again.

  "Bet you see a lot of cases of kids with behavioral problems, don’t you? Kids who are out of control; not in the normal sense, but more than you’d expect."

  “I suppose I do,” she said, playing along with him.

  "Bet these kids’ parents don’t know what to do with them, do they? They come to you because they think you have some insight into their child’s behavior. They think because of all your big degrees and your years of practice that you have some insight into what makes a child’s mind work. And you know what?"

  “What?”

  “For the most part, they’re right.” He leaned forward and placed a rough, callused hand over her mouth. His voice was a whispered hiss, his face inches from hers. "Here’s where your colleagues have got it wrong, though. My son's a little monster. Everybody always says that children are special, children are our future, they’re innocent, but it's all bullshit! There are birth defects and there are mental abnormalities. We see them every day and we live with them. Sometimes we can treat them. But out of all those physical and mental abnormalities there's an even smaller percent, maybe less than one percent of all those kids born with certain deficiencies, that have something else, something that makes them different. I don't know what it is, and I haven't been able to find anybody that can help me, not any scientist, or doctor, or psychologist. Nobody! All I know is what I've seen, what I've experienced, what I've seen happen around me and my son. He's a monster, and he'll grow up to be a bigger monster if I don't do something about it! He'll—"

  "What has he done?" She didn't realize she was going to ask this question until it was out of her mouth. She shuddered, hoping she'd said the right thing.

  Her question startled him. Greg looked at her, his eyes wide. His breathing seemed to stop. He still had his hand over her mouth but it loosened somewhat, which was how she'd been able to ask him her question. Now the hand relaxed slightly. He was looking at her with a false sense of hope. "What are you saying?" he asked. "How do you know?"

  She felt elated, and sagged with relief at the sound of his last question. She had the necessary background to deal with this, and it was more than enough to deal with him!

  "If this is some bullshit you’re trying on me," Greg continued, his hand still over her mouth, "I'm not buying it. I know what I've seen and—"

  "I know what I've seen too," she said, the words coming out in a rush. "I see it all the time in my practice and believe me, what you’re saying is something I’ve been turning over in my mind now for the last few years. I know society puts children on a pedestal, that children have become poster things for politicians and clergymen, that so many of our laws and the way society is structured is to protect children. You want to know something? It's all designed and manipulated by these...these things that aren't children. They're the ones manipulating parents into becoming shrill, overbearing advocates for child protection at every level of society. And they do this because it drops our guard against the real threat—the creatures who are masquerading as children!"

  "I don’t know if I should believe you," he continued. "You probably think I'm psycho or something, saying shit like this about kids. You're a psychologist, you're probably just stringing me along and—"

  She shook her head. "No, I know what you're talking about. Believe me, I’ve seen it enough in my practice that—"

  His eyes narrowed. "There's pictures of a little girl all over this house. Who is she?"

  "My sister's daughter," Naomi lied. She could tell he believed her, and she continued. "I don't have kids and I'm not married. My husband, he wanted children, but I didn't. I...didn’t have time...I
wanted to concentrate on my career. That's why we broke up." Another lie, but what he didn't know wouldn't hurt. "My sister has a daughter and I guess she's a good kid. She sends pictures every few months. I have pictures of other people in the house, too. Didn't you notice them?"

  He nodded now, the suspicious expression slowly giving way. "You asked me something a minute ago," he said. "You asked me what my kid did, as if you knew he’d done something...that he’s not like other kids. How did you know? Why'd you ask that?"

  Naomi’s answer came quickly. "Because I know children are born with no conscience, no sense of morals, of right and wrong. Most parents do a good job of raising them and instilling some sense of values in them, but a lot of them don't even bother. It becomes easy for such children to become emotionless vacuums. I've read stories about pre-schoolers who snap suddenly and lash out violently at playmates, of elementary school kids shooting each other at school and not feeling sorry for what they've done. It's something I've taken interest in, something I've read up on since I was in my early twenties when my parents, my whole family actually, started asking me those pesky questions about when I'm going to reproduce. They wouldn't accept my reasons for wanting to be childless. They felt there was something wrong with me for not wanting to be a mother, especially since I work with kids. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with self-preservation, for not wanting to reproduce. A child in the womb is a parasite, a leech draining a woman's natural resources. When it's born it physically depends on the mother for nourishment. Likewise for the father if he decides to stick around. The father becomes a host mostly on the financial end, but also the psychological. His life suffers to a degree. Most people can handle that and even like it. I knew early on that wasn't for me. I didn't want that kind of drain on me, so I opted to not have kids." She paused for a moment, watching his reaction. "Society doesn't encourage this, though. The way everything is so...so..."

  "Child friendly?" He asked. He removed his hand from her mouth.

  "Yeah." She nodded.

  "That's part of what they do," he said. Naomi could tell she was getting to him now, that she was getting him to let down his guard and trust her. "It's their trick. They've been fostering this notion that breeding is good, that the more kids people have, the more emotionally fulfilled you'll become. They do this because they want more of themselves. They're rare, you know. Only a fraction of all births in the world. That's tiny, a drop of water in a vast ocean. There were more of them up until the last fifty years or so. Now people wait until their thirties and later to have kids. And the things don't like it. That's why we're seeing such an increase in the way they're manipulating those in power to ease restrictions on birth control. They want to encourage more births, because the more kids people have, the more chance they have of increasing their numbers. That’s why you have people like that woman in Texas who killed all six of her kids—people like her realize what they are, and they try to put a stop to them but nobody sees it!"

  "You didn't answer my question earlier," Naomi said. Now she knew she had him. His mention of Andrea Yates was the clincher. If she could now only gain his trust further, get him off guard so she could save herself and escape... "I asked you what your son did. Tell me."

  Greg Oliver paused for a moment, than relaxed. He sat on the sofa next to her, no longer intent on keeping her mouth shut. "Lady, believe me, I'd love to tell you but—"

  "You don't trust me," Naomi said, frowning slightly. "Look, you've got to trust me with some of this, Greg. Believe me, if I wanted you caught I would have screamed, and the way the police are canvassing this neighborhood, you and I know somebody would hear me."

  His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know so much?”

  She felt an ache in her heart as her answer yearned to burst out of her. “Because it’s...well, like I said...I see...a lot of things in my practice...”

  His eyes widened. All the color seemed to drain from his face. “What kind of things?”

  “Two years ago one of my clients, a little girl...” she chose her words carefully. “...killed another little girl. She was at this little girl’s house playing, and...my client pushed her friend down a flight of steps. The little girl died instantly of a broken neck. The police were involved, but my client...was only five when it happened. She didn’t understand! She was distraught...she said it was an accident and the performance she put on...it convinced the police and the social workers that what happened was an accident.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “But it wasn’t.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t?” Greg asked.

  Naomi was silent for a moment. “It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. She tried to choke another playmate a few months before. And the little girl that was pushed down the steps? One time...my client swung a belt at her, hitting her in the face. My client wanted to kill that little girl. And...and...”

  Before she totally lost it, Greg interrupted her. “My son Tony drowned his little brother.” His voice was tortured, dripping with raw pain. “He drowned Marky in the bathtub. Connie had nothing to do with it! I caught him doing it. I...I didn’t get there in time to..to save him!”

  Greg almost lost it. She waited with bated breath, willing her own tears back and listened as Greg told her what he’d been through with his oldest son, Tony. “He was always a handful but there was something just...different about him...it was as if he knew what we—his mother and I—were thinking. Every time we tried to discipline him or correct him in any way, he would do something worse...it was as if he were testing us. And then we started hearing from his daycare providers that they were having trouble with him. His pediatrician diagnosed him with ADD, but I knew it wasn’t that. It wasn’t until his daycare providers told us they could no longer care for him that I started looking for more serious help. Tony was in three different daycare providers and saw four different child psychologists in a five month period. When he—”

  “Is that why you tried to kill him?” Naomi asked.

  Greg took a deep breath. She waited for him to answer, noting out of the corner of her eye that it was now almost eleven. She had a little over four hours until her daughter, Laura, came home.

  “I saw him slipping rat poison into my wife’s coffee a few days ago,” Greg said slowly. “I...I didn’t let him know I’d seen him and I waited till he left. Then I poured the poisoned coffee down the sink and went upstairs and filled the bathtub. I was thinking about Marky and what Tony had done to him. The police originally chalked that up to an accident, you see. Marky was only a year old and Tony was only two at the time. The prosecutor wanted to press charges against Connie, but there just wasn’t any evidence. Connie had been beside herself with grief—she’d never hurt the kids for any reason. She never even spanked them. So I was thinking of Marky when I filled the bathtub, and then I went downstairs and picked Tony up and he put up a fight. He kicked and screamed, bit my thumb. His screaming woke Connie up. By the time she pulled me away, I’d had Tony’s head dunked under water for over a minute. By then I could hear the sirens and I left, I—”

  She nodded, tears spilling down her face, remembering the rest of the story from the news.

  “I went back to the hospital to finish the job,” he said, his voice haunted. “I can’t live knowing that I...I helped create...I helped spawn this...this creature...”

  She was just about to say, I know what you mean, when there was a knock on the front door.

  They froze, their bodies rigid. She held her breath, her heart lodged in her throat. Part of her thought, this is your chance! You can scream now and they’ll bust the door down...you might get hurt but at least—

  And on the heels of that: No! Don’t say anything!

  Greg Oliver gripped her upper arm with his hand. The doorbell rang and the knock sounded again, more firmly this time. Then, a voice: “Anybody home? This is the Orange County Sheriff’s Department!”

  They remained silent, hardly breathing. Naomi whispered to Greg, “Don’t say
anything. Don’t even move, even if they go in the backyard. All the curtains are drawn and every door in the house is locked. They can’t get in.”

  It seemed like an eternity, but they finally left. “They’re gone,” she said.

  “Yeah.” She felt him relax beside her.

  For the first time Naomi realized her lower back was getting numb. She shifted position on the couch, her bound wrists chafing together. “My butt’s getting numb.”

  Greg rose to his feet. “Let me untie you.” He went to the kitchen and came back with a pair of scissors.

  As he cut the duct tape that bound her wrists and ankles, she said, “They’ll have to eventually start letting the people who live here back into the area again. Once that happens, you can stay here for a few days, and then when the coast is clear I’ll take you to wherever you need to go.”

  Her bonds were untied now and she rubbed her wrists. He sat on the sofa, hands over his face. She could tell he was exhausted. “You hungry?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. He looked at her. “I am.”

  Naomi stood up. “I’ll make you a sandwich.” She headed to the kitchen.

  He followed her and she didn’t even go for the handgun he’d left sitting on the counter. She opened the refrigerator and took out cold cuts, mayonnaise, mustard, and then she got a loaf of bread out. He watched as she prepared a sandwich, and then he went to the refrigerator and opened it. “Got anything to drink?”

  “Help yourself.” She opened the silverware drawer and pulled out a large butcher knife. He had just pulled out an ice-cold bottle of beer from the refrigerator when she sank the nine-inch blade deep into his abdomen.

  His eyes flew open. His hands closed on hers as she twisted the knife in his gut. Aside from the initial spatter of blood on the linoleum floor, the wound didn’t bleed much. She twisted the knife again, pushed it in even deeper, as deep as her straining muscles would allow, and the look in his eyes before he died seemed to search her face and ask, why?