AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“A Christmas present from my grandfather.”
I might have had a lump in my throat for little Wolfgang had I not been trussed up and about to be marinated in liquid fuel by the bastard. “Did she hit you?”
“She knew better. Wilda wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Is your mom hurting you now?” Did he have her dried, rat-chewed corpse sitting in a rocking chair in the basement? Did he like to wear a wig and pretend to be her?
“Violet.” He looked at me like I was a silly ninny. “Mother has been dead for years. How could she hurt me now?”
Well, excuse me for confusing thenearlydeparted with thedearlydeparted in his psychotic hallucination.
He lifted the cake and set it on the table. Then he pulled a square piece of paper from his shirt pocket and placed it in the center of the cake. I crooked my head to the side, squinting in the candlelight at the black-and-white photo. A curly-haired, blonde girl glowered back at me.
He stuck a clown candle next to the picture. “Wilda has always loved clowns,” he explained.
Wilda? Sitting back, I continued to stare at the picture, everything falling into place. From Wolfgang’s fascination with my hair to the clowns plastering the rooms downstairs, it all made sense now—twisted as it was. Neither Wolfgang nor his mother could let go of Wilda. She’d possessed them both long after her death.
I glared at the waxen fool jammed into the icing. There wasn’t anything the slightest bit funny about his rainbow suspenders, big shoes, or the wick sticking out of his top hat. I wanted to mash it with a sledgehammer.
“Mother hated me, but the penalty she doled out eased with time.” Wolfgang squirted the cake with some lighter fluid. “Wilda’s vengeance keeps growing stronger, more painful.”
I wanted to raise my hand and remind him that she was dead, too. At least I thought she was. I glanced over my shoulder, checking for a young girl, coiled up in a corner, waiting to strike, but found only shadows. “I thought Wilda was gone, too.”
“Oh, no, Wilda is still here.” The surety in his tone made my limbs quiver harder.
I jerked on my bindings, my right hand close to freedom. If I could just get some leverage.
“She refuses to leave me alone.” He held the can of lighter fluid toward me. “Unless I kill the one I love.”
Expecting to get squirted, I shrank away. “Why kill?” I couldn’t keep the panic from my voice. “Can’t you talk her into a minor maiming instead?”
He frowned and dropped to his knees beside me, placing the lighter fluid on the floor. “No. She’s the eye-for-an-eye type.”
“But I didn’t do anything to her.”
“I did, and she won’t leave me alone.”
“What did you do?”
“She was a bad seed, Violet, sprouting thorns early. I had to stop her before she could murder anyone else.”
“Who did she murder?”
“My father.”
I turned to him, my eyes wide. He had my full attention now. “I thought your mother poisoned him.”
Wolfgang shook his head. “You’ve been listening to rumors. It was Wilda. I was five, she was seven. He wouldn’t let her join the swim team, wanted to punish her for feeding the neighbor’s dog a bunch of Alka Seltzer tabs for no reason other than the pleasure of seeing the animal suffer.” He captured a strand of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “So she poisoned him. Mixed Diazinon with the coffee in the canister he took down in the mine every day.”
Damn. Wolfgang’s whole family had been cuckoo for Coco Puffs. “So you killed Wilda?”
“I didn’t intend to kill her, just hurt her.” His eyes were dry, his voice steady. “Wilda had said she was going to poison the only girl on her swim team who was faster than her in the backstroke. I tried to stop her, threatened to tell Mother. She’d swore she’d cut off my ear if I tattled. So I pushed her down the stairs and told everyone she’d tripped.”
My mouth fell open. “How old were you then?”
“Eight.”
“Oh, God, Wolfgang. You were just a kid.”
