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It was almost too difficult for me to pull my eyes off her and study the body she straddled. She’d cut a line down the center of the chest, all the way down to the stomach. Another line ran just under his collarbone. She’d… used the knife to skin him, pulling and folding the skin on his chest away so she could get at what lay beneath. The muscle mass, the tendons, and past that, the ribcage. It looked like she wanted to take him apart piece by piece until his corpse was nothing but a skeleton.
I drew my eyes up, taking in the wounds on the guy’s neck. His eyes were still open. The body was… almost unrecognizable, most of it either mutilated or stained with red, but I saw wisps of blond hair on the head, and that told me it wasn’t Gareth.
If it wasn’t Gareth, then who the hell was it? I wondered, and then it hit me. The kid I’d seen her with at that basketball game. Was this kid responsible for Erin and her family’s disappearance? Had he tried to hurt Brianna too? That didn’t work out for him, obviously.
I knelt down and stretched a hand toward Brianna, giving her a soft, gentle smile even though she wasn’t looking at me. She still hummed as she peeled back more gory insides. Through it all, she’d finally reached the ribcage, and she ran her free hand along it, gliding her palm against the slick, gooey mess.
“Brianna,” I spoke her name as I tried to grab her shoulder, “it’s me, Rick. Let’s get you somewhere—” I was going to say somewhere safe, but Brianna jerked away from my hand, turning her blood-stained face toward me.
It was then I saw it, the look in her eyes. Her pretty gray eyes were dilated, way more than they should’ve been, even though the room was dark. The only bits of light in it came in through the windows—and even then, it wasn’t enough. Was she high on the kill, or had she been drugged?
Maybe both.
Brianna stopped humming, and her eyes had difficulty focusing on me. “He’s still warm. I need to see.” She turned her head away from me, sticking the knife in the middle of the ribcage, at its top, and then starting to saw her way down. The sound of gooey meat giving way to the switchblade in her hand was something I’d never forget.
“Need to see what?” I asked.
Her answer came immediately, and the way she said it, so simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, made me uneasy, “The bones.”
“Right, the bones.” Yes… the bones. That made a lot of sense.
Since she was clearly out of her mind and she had a knife, I didn’t want to force her off the corpse. I also didn’t know if she’d even remember what happened before this, so I said nothing as I pulled away and stood up.
I watched her for a few moments, watched her dig deeper into the corpse, and then I took a few steps back. “You… get those bones. I’m going outside for a minute, but I’ll be right back, okay?”
All she did was start humming again, like I’d ceased to exist. Her only reality was the body under her and the mess between and around her hands, the only solid thing the knife in her grip.
Once I was outside, I breathed in the clean, woodsy air, filling my lungs a few times before I pulled out my phone. I didn’t check the rest of the house yet, but if I had to guess, I’d say Erin and her folks were here somewhere. I’d… as much as I hated to admit it, I’d need some help dealing with this.
So, I dialed the only person I could think of, the only person who was used to handling messy situations like this.
He picked up on the second ring, “Rick. To what do I owe the displeasure of this call?” His voice sounded bored, emotionless, monotone, as always, but I knew all that would change the moment I told him what was going on.
“Alistair,” I whispered, “tell me you’re free, because I’m gonna need your help.”
Alistair must’ve sensed something was wrong, because he didn’t tell me off, didn’t say he wasn’t obligated to help me one bit, that things worked the other way around. No, instead he asked, “What is it?”
“It’s Brianna. She—”
“Is she all right?” He interrupted me. “She left with her mother. I didn’t catch where she was going.” He didn’t ask about my welfare after warning me about Gareth coming after me, not that I was expecting him to. He was totally, absolutely, one hundred and ten percent focused on Brianna.
I swallowed. “I’m with her right now.” Well, sort of. She was inside and I was outside, but I didn’t think she’d be going anywhere anytime soon, needing to see the bones and all that. “She’s… I’m really hesitant to say she’s fine.”
“Rick—” My name was growled out, a threat, which was the most emotion I’d heard from Alistair in years. Brianna must really get him going, in more ways than one.
“She’s alive, but she’s… I’m going to send you an address. Come as soon as you can, and bring the kid. We’re going to need all hands on deck for this one.” I didn’t want Alistair here, and I sure as shit didn’t want Gareth here, but I couldn’t think of any other way. Maybe, if all three of us were here, we could calm Brianna down together, pull her off that body while making sure no one, including her, got stuck with that knife.
“Send it.” It was all Alistair said; he hung up after that.
I sent him a ping of my location, and then I started to pace the length of the house. I couldn’t get the sight of Brianna on top of that corpse out of my mind. She’d looked so… for lack of a better word, crazy. Like she’d lost her goddamn mind.
I didn’t go back inside. I kept pacing the front of the house, hands on my sides, fingers tapping my hips. I didn’t know what to do. I’d known Brianna wasn’t like anyone else, but seeing that… it really hammered it home. That was why Alistair had chosen her, that was why he thought he’d gift wrap her and hand her to Gareth.
Brianna wasn’t normal. She wasn’t fully sane. Even if she was high on something in there, unless it was hardcore drugs, you didn’t snap and start playing Picasso with someone else’s body after you killed them. You just… you just didn’t do that.
I didn’t know how long it took for another car to pull up, and I’d completely forgotten that I’d parked my car on the driveway, before it opened up into a wider dirt area in front of the house, but by the time I heard Alistair’s car pull up behind mine, it was too late to offer to move it so he could pull up all the way.
He turned his car off and got out, and Gareth was slow to get out of the passenger’s side, glancing all around with an expression of disgust on his face. I stopped pacing, waiting for them to come to me.
