Page 124 of Semblance

Brother?

Shadow stood on the helipad, his eyes staring into the distance at the chopper which had become a speck in the sky.

“It’s not her,” Lincoln said, his voice pulling Shadow’s attention from the city skyline back down to us. “Thank God, it’s not her.”

“What?” Shadow asked.

“It’s not Calisto,” Lincoln repeated, cradling the dead woman in his arms, knife still buried in her heart.

I had a look for myself. He was right. From afar it was easy to be fooled.

With a new hairdo and a gag over her mouth, it was easy to transform Bria into a Calisto look-alike.

The poor girl didn’t deserve to die like this, despite her antagonizing me. Bria wasn’t a bad person, just confused and misunderstood; and now she was gone.

Lincoln laid her body back on the ground and then stood up. In his hands was an electronic tablet.

“I found this next to the body,” Lincoln said.

Shadow’s eyes narrowed when he saw the tablet. He took it from Lincoln’s hands, tapped on the screen and saw that it was loaded with a video.

The screen image was of Sinister, sitting on what looked to be a throne.

Before even watching the video, I already knew that Sinister’s message was not going to be good.

Shadow held the tablet out for everyone to see and hit the play button. I held my breath and listened to the bastard’s words, which I knew would change us all forever.

#

Chapter Thirty-Five

Despite the shitty quality of the tablet’s speakers, the true voice of Sinister was unmistakable. With the voice scrambler removed, we ended up listening to Calisto’s delicate falsetto instead of the deep baritone drone of Sinister.

“I wish I could say I know what you’re thinking at this very moment Shadow,” she said in the pre-recorded video, “But the truth is, I don’t. But God, I wish I was there to see the look on your stupid face.”

Calisto removed the mask and revealed herself to us. She had a smug look on her face.

The three of us congregated on the helipad, huddled over the screen, absolutely dumbfounded. I turned to Shadow and saw the hurt on his face.

I reflected on my own emotions and discovered only hate for Calisto. She had murdered Justin and for that, I wanted her to die.

“The first question that must come to mind is regarding the death of mommy and daddy,” she continued. “Yes, I take full credit for that one, though I know it’s probably hard to believe. How could a ten year-old girl have the mental capability to commit murder that has baffled police—and my stupid brother—for over thirteen years? The answer is simple.

“I’m smarter than all of you. I always have been. But seeing as how mom and dad invested all their time on you, Shadow, I was always on the outside looking in—like a forgotten puppy left out in the cold on Christmas Eve, staring through the windows while everyone else feasted on their fat Christmas turkey.

“Iwas the one deserving of their attention.Iwas the one that was always smarter, andIwas the one that listened to everything that our parents told us.Ishould have been groomed to be the next leader of the Midnight Society but because I was born with no balls between my legs, I was regulated to the sidelines like a second-rate hack.

“No matter what I did, it always failed to impress mom and dad. While you were drawing stupid stick figures on snot-stained pieces of paper, I was composing ballads on my violin. But did mom or dad care?

“No, of course not; they ogled over your imbecile drawings and told me to hush my playing so you could concentrate on studying the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and Pablo Picasso. Do you know how I felt being second to you Shadow? Do you know how it felt being second to someone who was mentally inferior?

“It’s pretty amazing how much hate a ten year old can develop. Let that be a lesson for all parents—don’t neglect your kids because you’ll never know when they’ll murder you for being an asshole parent.”

“This brings us to the night that has altered the shape of your life forever, Shadow. You were asleep, if I recall. Dad was in the study; deep into his after dinner drink. I remember him passing out in his favorite arm chair; his head tilted back, neck exposed while Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody played. It was easy to sit in his lap and stab him in the jugular with the box cutter.

“Oh the blood, you should have seen the blood. It was brilliant. It was magnificent. What really made my day however was watching his eyes loll over to me in complete and utter disbelief. I stabbed him again, and the gurgling sound deep in his throat was the true music in the room, overshadowing Franz Liszt.

When dad was dead, I decided to saw his neck open with the box cutter. I didn’t know why at the time, but it felt like the right thing to do.

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