Page 39 of Freaks
Whoever had drawn this…was the same person who had drawn those incredibly graphic images of me. The ones Fix had found in the bunker back in Centralia.
My hand began to shake.
Surely Sadie…
Fuck. There was no way Sadie had drawn them. She would never have drawn a picture of herself like this. There was just no way. Sadie was so straight-laced, it was hard to imagine her even making out with a guy, let alone going further with him. She was not a hyper sexual person. She wouldn’t have even commissioned someone to do a portrait of her like this.
It wasn’t as though I’d asked anyone to do those drawings of me back in Centralia, though. And I hadn’t posed for them, either. Maybe the sick fuck who drew them drew this picture, too, and sent it to Sadie as a way of fucking with me. Of infiltrating my life.
God, if that were true, I was going to have to tell her the truth. I was going to have to tell hersomething. If she’d been dragged into this nightmare and she’d been sent such graphic, vile, personal artwork, then I owed her the apology of a lifetime.
I kept hold of the drawing as I padded barefoot down the hallway and opened my bedroom door. I’d get dressed, and then I’d have to speak to her. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but—
The scream left my lips before I even really registered the sight before me.
Blood.
On the bed sheets.
On the window panes.
On the walls.
On the rug.
There was bloodeverywhere.
I couldn’t fucking breathe. My bed was soaked with the stuff. I took a step into the room, and that’s when I found the source of the blood. Dead eyes stared up at me, black and lifeless. Matted fur—brown, white, and now red—lay in clumps all over the sheets, torn from the…
I tried not to gag.
…torn from the body, as if someone had grabbed handfuls of skin andripped…
It was no good.
I dropped to my knees, crumpling forward, and I retched, vomiting so hard it felt like I was never going to stop.
It was Archie, my dog.
Archie?
It made no sense. Archie was with the dog sitter. Colby would never have brought him back here and left him if I wasn’t here. He loved Arch more than life itself. They were best fucking friends. Most of the time, I felt like Archie loved Colby more than he even loved me. So this…this was not sinking in properly. Who would have done this? Who would have hurt him so badly? Cut him open and pulled out his intes—
“I wasn’t joking when I said I’d made a mess, Ser. I really am sorry about all of this.”
I blinked, staring at the crimson stained rug beneath my palms, trying to focus my eyes, but they weren’t cooperating. Slowly, I turned, and Sadie was leaning against my bedroom door, holding a mug in her hands. Hot steam rose from the mug—she must have made herself a coffee. “I see you found Daddy’s drawing, too. Quite the little sneak, aren’t you?”
“Daddy’s…?” My whisper barely made a sound as it slipped past my lips. What the fuck was going on? What was she saying? I couldn’t fit any of the pieces back together now. I couldn’t comprehend even the simplest, most obvious of things.
Archie was…dead?
Sadie walked into the bedroom, the Cuban heels of her boots making dull thudding sounds against the rug; she pulled a face as she gingerly stepped over a red, twisted mound of what looked like internal organs that had been piled to the right of the bed. With her back to me, she faced the window, clasping the mug in both hands as she looked out over the city. “He didn’t like people to know he could draw. He was always so dead-set on people being afraid of him. Drawing seemed like too romantic a pastime for a man supposed to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who had dealings with him. Funny, really. If he’d shown anyone his drawings, they’d have seen right away that there was nothing romantic about them at all.”
“Sadie. What the…fuck is going on?” I was breathless. Couldn’t fucking speak.
She came to me, squatting down so she could pick up the drawing I’d dropped. Our eyes met, and for the first time in years, I felt like I was looking into the face of a complete stranger. The warmth in her eyes was gone. Her usual, sunny disposition was gone, vanished, as if it had never been there at all. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners into a grimace of displeasure.
“What d’you think’s going on, Sera? Come on,” she said, tutting quietly. “I thought you were the clever one. The girl who had it all figured out. You certainly pulled the wool over my eyes, that’s for sure. Do you have any idea what it was like to stand in that hallway before and see you hurtling around the corner toward me? Hmm? I thought I was about to have a fucking heart attack. See, I thought you were dead.” She stroked her hand down the side of my face, her eyes sharp as daggers. “I brought that lovely bottle of wine here to celebrate your untimely demise,finally, and then boom. There you were, alive and well. I shouldn’t have been surprised. You have this way of manipulating people. Bending them to your will and getting them to do whatever the fuck you want. I’ve watched you do it for years. If you could convince one hitman to spare you, why would I have assumed you wouldn’t do the same with the second. Tell me. Did you fuck him, too?”
