Twisted.2014.12.16.2014 FOR REVIEW Read online

  What did happen?

  Blake was looking at Mal. Eyes wide.

  Alyssa followed her husband's gaze. And realized what she should have seen, what Blake had long known….

  "One-third of abused children grow up to be just as bad as their parents," he said. And, as always when he said it, he sounded half ashamed and half… what?

  Hopeful.

  And in a vision, given to her by a boy who was so afraid, so deep in darkness himself she now suspected he had also known this kind of fear….

  Matthew Jr., pulled out of a crawlspace. Skin peeled free, crying, bleeding.

  "Please, Pa, don't hit me again. I'll never tell. I promise!"

  Don't hit me again.

  Blake began to crumple. Alyssa tried to hold him. He was too heavy. Mal – what had been Mal – smiled.

  "'Daddy will kill you,'" she whispered. Mal's smile grew. "It's not what your father did," she said to him. "It's what you wanted done. You never wanted us to get away. Not from him, not from you."

  The letter in her mailbox. From Matthew Jr., not his father.

  "You wanted us to kill your father," she said. Mal – Matthew Jr. – still hadn't spoken. But now he began to laugh. The laugh was low, a rumble that was completely out of place in the body of her boy. Old, twisted, evil. "That's why you saved us," she said. "We got it wrong. The Scrabble pieces didn't say 'daddy will kill you,' they said, "will kill you, daddy."

  Her boy reached out. His hand reached out. The hand that now belonged to another.

  She shrank back, but he touched her. Just like Ralph had touched her, and just as when the courier had lifted her into vision, so now she saw. But this was not a lifting, it was a descent. A fall into Hell, into damnation.

  Matthew Jr. crawls through the darkness. Bleeding. Terrified.

  But also angry.

  The blood is new. Some of the bruises.

  But not all. Not by a long shot.

  Pa wants to kill him. The day has finally come. And the anger that sparked so many times now explodes into a final, consuming flame.

  He crawls, he bleeds. And he whispers.

  "I'll kill you someday. I'll kill you, Daddy. Kill you. Kill you."

  Still half in vision, barely aware of her husband's body finally completing its slow tumble to earth, Alyssa said, "You wanted us to kill your father."

  Mal – already changed, even though she didn't see it in her panic – left with Ruthie in his arms. Pretending to wide-eyed fear. Hiding cold calculation as he said, "You have to stop him, don't you? The thing in Daddy? Or he won't go away?"

  Another small push in a series of shoves, all of them toward a final outcome.

  "You wanted me to kill him."

  Matthew Jr. stopped laughing, though the levity was still in his voice when he said, "Not just that. Not just him."

  "They aren't just born monsters," said Alyssa, sitting on her good husband's lap. "They learn to be that way." She reassured him, and hoped he heard her….

  And later, Ralph told her, "Whatever is behind this isn't just here to bother you. It wants to kill you all."

  Alyssa looked at Matthew Jr.

  Beside and below them, Blake sighed and then was silent.

  "You don't have to be a monster," she said.

  Matthew Jr. grinned and giggled. "But I want to be," he said.

  He began to whistle.

  Goin' to run all night, Goin' to run all day….

  Alyssa never got a chance to run. Though she did get to scream. And scream and scream.

  TWISTED

  Ralph sat on the bike. Sat and sat and sat.

  Watched.

  He could see the Douglas house in the distance. It was a bit taller than most of the others on the block, the kind of house you might purchase if you were finding a bit of success and wanted the world to know about it.

  That's what Ralph figured, anyway. Not that he would really know. He'd never had that kind of success. Never wanted it. Just wanted to ride, and to be left alone by the dead.

  The closer he got to the place, the more ghosts there were. On the sidewalks, on the street, in yards and on rooftops. All of them moving slowly toward that house in the distance. That house where something evil was happening. Something so very bad that it drew all maleficent things to it.

  Ralph had no chance of finding his mother. He had no chance of finding her body and turning it to ash and ridding himself of the forever fear he took with him everywhere he went: the terror that she would return and one day be his mother again. And that this time she would never leave and he would never be able to escape.

  But this woman, Alyssa… she had a chance to stop her family from falling prey to something like that. Maybe something even worse.

  That was why Ralph got off his butt and left the cemetery. That was why he peddled through silent streets full of silent figures that ignored him but that he knew were as aware of him as he was of them.

  Maybe he could help. Really help, just this once.

  The closer he got, though, the slower he moved. He felt his uncertainty chip away at what might be the one fully good decision he'd ever made.

  Soon he stopped biking. Just sat in the middle of the street. Watching the top of the house, wondering what was happening there.

  Come on, Ralphie.

  He didn't move.

  Be a man.

  Still nothing. Just fear that emptied his legs of strength.

  Do something. For once.

  The things around him opened their mouths. All at the same time, they opened wide and began to moan. Not waves, not up and down sounds like a person might make while suffering pain. This was a single note coming from each mouth, combining to make an almost deafening chant.

  She's winning.

  Ralph got on his bike and began to ride. Maybe he was too late to help. But he would be there to congratulate her.

  Maybe that would mean something. Maybe not. But it was him, doing something.

  He started to smile.

  Then the moan stopped. Ten thousand breathless screams cut off, replaced by a single living shriek.

  It was a woman's scream. Fear, loss.

  Pain.

  Ralph kept peddling. But he turned the handles a bit, turning the bike in a wide arc so he was facing the opposite way. And he peddled harder now. Faster.

  Something had gone wrong.

  He had told her. Told her, but she hadn't listened. She hadn't understood.

  Some ghosts are stupid – all they want is the evil crap they wanted in life. But some get craftier, more powerful, more twisted. They make plans.

  Some of the ghosts turned to look at him now. A few smiled. One winked.

  He thought he saw a familiar face in the darkness between two houses. A dress he'd seen often, worn every time the needle came out, every time a new picture pushed under his skin.

  Maybe not.

  But he peddled faster.

  Some ghosts are stupid.

  But some get craftier, more powerful.

  More twisted.

  They make plans.

  The scream followed him into the night. She hadn't watched her back. If it was even possible to do that. Some kinds of evil, he thought, just might not be the kind you could protect against. Maybe they were too insidious, too subtle. Maybe they misdirected you until you were in their trap and then it was too late.

  He saw the form again. A smile, outstretched arms.

  And he pedaled as fast as he could, but he knew that he couldn't outrun her. Because in the end, she was part of him.

  Just like evil was part of everybody.

  And when he thought that, he slowed. Just a bit. Maybe that mattered, maybe not.

  He felt his bike grow heavy. Felt his legs grow weak.

  Felt a cool hand around his stomach.

  And heard a voice in his ear.

  "Mommy's missed you, Ralphie."

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  I remember sitting on a porch a little bit like the one th
e Douglas family owns, though belonging to a house not nearly so fine. I was a young missionary in South America, and another missionary and I were chatting with a woman who was in her late forties. Her four kids came and went, occasionally stopping to talk with us, to drink some soda pop, to just hang out.

  The visit went pretty late into the night, then she said goodnight and we left.

  It was ostensibly a social visit, but everyone there knew the real purpose: her husband had threatened to beat her to death. Then the kids.

  We were there to protect her.

  The woman wasn't of our faith, but we had chatted on numerous occasions. We were friends.

  And she trusted us. Enough that she turned to us for help when her husband made this threat. He had beaten her before – badly – but this was new. Another level.

  Going to the police was out of the question: in this part of the world, at this particular time, women were still just a small step above chattel. To complain about an actual beating would be a ridiculous waste of time in the eyes of the cops, let alone complaining about a prospective one.

  My missionary companion and I didn't feel good about the idea of hunting the husband down and going all Charles Bronson on him (well, we felt kind of good about the idea, but it didn't seem very missionary-ish, let alone Christlike), so we decided to just sit with her in the hopes that her husband would stay in the street after getting drunk, rather than coming after the family.

  It seemed to work. By three or four a.m. he hadn't shown up.

  But when we went to see her the next day she was wearing large sunglasses and limping. It was horrifying, somehow all the more so because it was so cliché. And there was really nothing we could do about it. Short of murdering the guy, he would keep beating his family, and they would take it.

  That's what an awful lot of people do. The kids have no option, and a disturbing number of the beaten spouses feel like they have no options.

  Maybe worst of all, though, is the self-perpetuating nature of this practice: so many children who are beaten also turn into child abusers, and their children continue the chain, on and on ad infinitum. It's horrifying, and with that same woman's family I started to see this very principle at work as the son – who got as many stripes as anyone – first turned inward, then lashed out and became harder and harder as a person.

  I don't know how they turned out. I hope they are okay. I hope the man got help and turned his life around and has spent all the years since then giving love to his family to make up for pain they suffered.

  Failing that, I hope Mom packed up in the middle of the night and ran out with the kids while he was drunk as a skunk, hid in a different part of the country and is now happy and safe under an assumed identity, with the guy unable to leave his home because of radically explosive diarrhea that strikes every six minutes, twenty-four/seven.

  (I was a missionary, but I still have problems with forgiving some things, some people.)

  At any rate… a lot of this fueled Twisted. Not a happy story, because parents hurting children who grow up to hurt their children can't be a happy story. But hopefully this one has a point.

  Everyone in Twisted is doomed, and none of them really did anything wrong. Or, better said, the things they did wrong began with teachings at the knee of people who were supposed to teach them love and care and hugs, but who instead taught them hate and bile and beatings. It was all these people knew, and that brought them to the slippery slope that was their downfall, and the downfall of all those around them.

  In real life, I do think people make a choice, take that first step that sends them sliding. You can't point back and say, "But he did it first!" and get instant and automatic absolution. But there's no doubt that a real cycle exists and getting caught in it makes life much scarier, more difficult, and fraught with real danger.

  I can't speak to what it's like to abuse a child: I've never done it. I can speak to what it's like to have mental health issues that require professional help. It's scary, it's overwhelming, and it makes some people (like me) feel like less of a person sometimes.

  But getting that help is better than the alternative.

  Much as I hate the idea that I need help to run something as basic and intimate as my own brain, and much as I hate the fact that I have to take medication every day to keep my sanity train from derailing, I vastly prefer it (when I'm thinking rationally) to the idea of hurting myself (and through that action, hurting the ones I love), or completely losing control of my life.

  All this to say: if you're reading this and you've lost control and hurt a child, then you've done something appalling and there's no two ways about it. BUT there are ways to get help, and ways to get better.

  And better is always, well… better.

  In this case that's especially so because, unlike just being regular ol' crazy (like me), people who abuse are – again – likely to end up teaching other people that abuse is the only way to live and the only way to allow others to live around them.

  That is not true.

  There are better ways.

  And better ways are just… better.

  Michaelbrent Collings

  November, 2014

  Resources:

  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Welfare Information Gateway section on Child Abuse and Neglect: https://www.childwelfare.gov/can/

  The Information Gateway Reporting Child Abuse and Neglect (mandatory reporting and how to report suspected abuse: https://www.childwelfare.gov/responding/reporting.cfm

  The National Child Abuse Prevention Month (tip sheets for parents and caregivers for taking care of children and strengthening families:

  https://www.childwelfare.gov/preventing/preventionmonth/tipsheets.cfm

  Child Maltreatment: Past, Present, and Future:

  https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/issue_briefs/cm_prevention.pdf

  Long-Term Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect:

  https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/long_term_consequences.pdf

  Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect:

  https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/preventingcan.pdf

  Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development: https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/issue_briefs/brain_development/brain_development.pdf

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),

  Understanding Child Maltreatment: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/cm_factsheet2012-a.pdf

  Prevent Child Abuse America: http://www.preventchildabuse.org/index.shtml

  Helpguide.org, Child Abuse and Neglect: http://www.helpguide.org/articles/abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect.htm

  If you would like to be notified of new releases, sales, and other special deals on books by Michaelbrent Collings, please sign up for his mailing list at http://eepurl.com/VHuvX.

  (ALSO, YOU CAN GET A FREE BOOK FOR SIGNING UP!)

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michaelbrent Collings is a full-time screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga.

  Follow him through Twitter @mbcollings or on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings.

  NOVELS BY MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS

  THE COLONY SAGA:

  THE COLONY: GENESIS (The Colony, Vol. 1)

  THE COLONY: RENEGADES (The Colony, Vol. 2)

  THE COLONY: DESCENT (The Colony, Vol. 3)

  THE COLONY: VELOCITY (The Colony, Vol. 4)

  THE COLONY: SHIFT (The Colony, Vol. 5)

  THE COLONY OMNIBUS

  THIS DARKNESS LIGHT

  CRIME SEEN

  STRANGERS

  DARKBOUND

  BLOOD RELATIONS:

  A GOOD MORMON GIRL MYSTERY

 
THE HAUNTED

  APPARITION

  THE LOON

  MR. GRAY (aka THE MERIDIANS)

  RUN

  RISING FEARS

  YOUNG ADULT AND

  MIDDLE GRADE FICTION:

  THE BILLY SAGA:

  BILLY: MESSENGER OF POWERS (BOOK 1)

  BILLY: SEEKER OF POWERS (BOOK 2)

  BILLY: DESTROYER OF POWERS (BOOK 3)

  THE COMPLETE BILLY SAGA (BOOKS 1-3)

  HOOKED: A TRUE FAERIE TALE

  KILLING TIME