Chương 103: 96. Many faces

It took me a while to realize who that was, as I'd only seen him briefly. But now it all made sense.

"When do your parents come back?" I asked the girl.

"They work late. Why?"

"Good, so we have time. I think your brother should join us," I said. The boy looked at me suspiciously.

"And who are you?" he asked.

"I'm here about the Peter situation," I said, and I saw panic on his face. I didn't need to extend myself to know what he was feeling.

"W-what do I have to do with that?"

"They were in different classes," the girl said in a harsher tone than she intended, clearly also panicking.

"He doesn't know anything."

"He might not have been in the same class, but I'm sure he's well aware of the story." I could see the kid grow paler.

"I don't—""Sit," I barked, looking him in the eyes. He flinched, but then finally let his head hang and slowly sat down, looking like a prisoner going to an execution.

"He doesn't know anything. I can tell you all the—" the sister started, but I interrupted again.

"He's well aware of what you did. That's why he stopped talking to you, isn't it?" I said, looking at the kid as he hung his head even lower. The girl stood there with her mouth half-open, gazing at her brother with wide eyes.

"Is that true?" she asked weakly, and he nodded after some hesitation. She fell into one of the chairs by the table.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Andy," he said in barely a whisper.

"Okay, An—" I started, but a desperate voice from the girl interrupted me.

"He was stalking me, I swear. We needed to do something. I didn't want it to go like that, I… I—" She tried to explain, but all it did was make the kid's lower lip start to tremble as his facial muscles flexed.

"He wasn't stalking you," I said, looking at Emma and then turning to Andy.

"He came around to see you, didn't he?" He nodded.

"But why? Why did you need to sneak around just to see your friend? Why not just… come over instead of meeting in the middle of the night?" Emma tried to understand.

"I saw him in the bushes. I swear. I'm not lying." I looked her in the eyes with my eyebrows raised. She had her mouth wide open as she looked between me and her brother. She was about to speak, trying to explain her case, but as she met my gaze, realization finally dawned on her.

"Oh," she squeaked.

"I—I didn't know. I'm so sorry. I…" She stammered.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Her brother lifted his head and looked at her as if she were dumb.

"I wouldn't start hating you all of a sudden because you have a boyfriend. You're my brother!" she said in a hurt voice.

"Look, I wanted to tell you, but that was also Peter's decision to make. We wanted to wait until we could go off to college, just in case. I wasn't afraid of you or our parents. Hell, I wasn't afraid of the community. Father Matthew was the only one who knew initially."

"Our priest knew before me?" the girl asked, surprised.

"He found out when I went to confession. Pulled me aside after Mass. I thought I would get a private screaming session. But he told me that we don't know God's plan, but he surely loves all His children."

"A good man, then," I said, breaking their conversation. I didn't come here for family drama.

"But start from the beginning—how it started and how it ended with… this."

"But how did you know?" the kid asked, looking at me with a mixture of confusion and suspicion.

"I ran into you during the parents' conference. You were making a call outside the building." Some realization shone in his eyes as I said that.

"I was missing a piece. I knew Peter was most likely the murderer if the hook sat in his body, but he had to have help. I was looking for someone in contact with him. Someone who most likely gave him a signal about the parents' conference and his father's absence. Someone who would know about his father's habits. Someone with a Christian background," I said, looking at the cross hanging over the door.

"You fit perfectly." The kid hung his head as his sister looked at him in shock.

"What is he talking about?" she asked.

"Start from the beginning. So we both understand." He hesitated for some time before sighing and starting his story.

"Well, it started in my first year of high school. It was around then that I talked with the priest after my confession. Around the same time, I met Peter at school. Preacher's son, all quiet and shy. We became friends at first, but it was slowly becoming more than that, and that scared him, not the relationship. No, he was terrified of his father finding out. So, I tried telling him that his parents weren't the entire world. And his mother was the kind to love her child unconditionally—he said so himself.

This relaxed him a bit. But… maybe, maybe I shouldn't have… because… he finally slipped in front of his father." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. I nodded. I could remember his father's feelings. It wasn't the most pleasant combination.

"His old man checked his phone after Peter started coming back late from hanging out with me, and he found our conversation. He was always overbearing, but it became even worse after that. Peter would come back from school and be made to memorize Bible passages and recite them, not allowed to see anyone. Overall, a bad place to be. But he gained some confidence over our time together, so he didn't bend easily.

His relationship with his father worsened until it reached a crescendo before the previous semester began, when Peter's dad decided the education was to blame and pulled him from school. Started treating him like a prisoner."

"That made things worse, I imagine," I said, to which Andy nodded slowly.

"Yes, it became much worse. We met in secret when no one was around. He would sneak out late at night and come over."

"I… I'm so sorry, Andy. I didn't know. We tried asking him, really."

"What did you expect?!" Andy snapped.

"That he would tell you he was meeting your younger brother in the middle of the night, when he was afraid to tell his own parents? His father would fly into a rage even if he heard some gossip."

"I wouldn't tell anyone."

"Even your friends?"

"Well," Emma hesitated.

"They can keep a secret."

"Sure, Andrew would keep the secret. The same dude who stole the gun from his dad and bragged to the whole school."

"Continue, please," I said, cutting in. Andy hesitated for a second, then spoke again.

"After my sister saw him, we changed our strategy. We started meeting at slaughterhouse parties. It was a great excuse. If his father found out, he would say he was partying like the other kids. Would get him screamed at and even more grounded, sure, but without a beating. So last time we decided to meet at one of those, but I was running late." He then looked at his sister.

"You never went there, so I didn't think you'd take our parents' car." Tears were slowly streaming from his eyes as the girl stared ahead absentmindedly.

"I didn't know… We just meant to scare him…" I winced at that, but I needed the whole story. The next part was what I was most interested in. I gave them some time to calm down before speaking again.

"Okay. And what happened next? How did it end up with you giving him information about his future victims?"

"I didn't know they would be victims," he said weakly.

"After that party, Peter went back home with a torn shirt in the middle of the night, barely conscious. His father made him sit alone in his room until he had memorized the Scripture. He had a secret phone stashed for moments like that, so we started talking once again. But he was acting stranger and stranger. He said that there was something in his body, underneath the skin. That it was whispering horrible things into his mind. That there were more and more voices and that his body was changing.

He was writing to me about faces showing on his flesh, speaking to him. He tried praying, thinking it was because he was a sinner. He told me that the demons came to punish him, and that they sang to him about revenge. So he thought that revenge would make them go away…" So that would be other souls. I still wasn't sure how they had attached themselves and why he had instantly healed while Sandra had died. But what was interesting was the need for revenge.

So they did have a goal, although they didn't sound fully conscious, more like they blended into the boy's unbalanced mind.

"He finally ran away from home and told me to meet him. I did, in the forest…" The kid froze, sitting there with fear evident in his eyes.

"What did he look like?" I asked gently to bring him out of it.

"Not human," he said at barely a whisper.

"He looked like some beings had attached themselves to him. There were other parts on his body, faces, hands… flesh. It was like… like… I don't know. Those demons, I don't know why they did that to him." He started going off, still staring straight ahead.

"It's not demons. The thing underneath his skin. That's the cause."

"Can we take it out? Will it cure him?" Andy piped up. I considered lying, but that would be cruel even by my standards.

"I don't know," I said truthfully.

"I doubt it will change him back, but I'm not sure. Finish the story, and we can think about how to help him." The kid nodded.

"So I believed that maybe it was demons, and if he could get revenge, then maybe, just maybe, they would go away. They whispered to him about some 'butcher,' so he thought it was about the slaughterhouse, about the kids that hanged him on the butcher's hook." My eyebrows shot up at that.

"Butcher of Karhirs?"

"I'm not sure. It was a weird word," he said as he looked at me, slightly weirded out.

"I tried talking him into trying to have them apologize, learn their lesson, you know, that maybe that would be enough, not to kill them. And he agreed… I thought he agreed. I should have known it wasn't his voice that said that…" The kid started trembling.

"So you told him about the school meeting, that he could confront them then, and gave him the signal when the parents would all be away." He nodded.

"He then called me during the meeting, asking if his father was there. I said no. It wasn't until then that I realized what that could mean. I tried calling him again, but he wouldn't answer, so I went to his house as fast as I could. I was too late. I saw him standing there… in half-darkness, covered in blood… I knew there was no going back. His eyes were so hollow. I knew it wasn't him in there anymore. The creature told me that everyone should know why he did it, something about frig de… Some foreign word.

I—I don't remember, I'm sorry, I don't—""Frigus duellum?" I proposed. The kid looked at me with more suspicion, joined by fear now.

"How did you know?" It was an ancient custom after the war. With many grudges, revenge duels became a thing. Frigus duellum was the name of the custom. So the souls weren't fully aware. They wanted revenge but didn't exactly know what was going on, half-conscious, in some sort of trance, blending into one consciousness. But they could plan, so overall, I should assume an intelligent opponent.

"It's an old custom. Doesn't matter now. So what happened then?" The kid looked at me for a few seconds, but finally continued the story.

"He gazed at his father's body like he was trying to remember who that was. Then those faces on his body looked at me, told me to celebrate them. I was afraid they would kill me. I knew his father liked to quote the Bible, and Peter complained about having to read the Scripture as punishment, so I wrote the message, and he, or it, seemed satisfied. The next thing I remembered was running into the forest and him picking me up. He moved so strangely, as if he were running on air…

And then I managed to get away after he dropped me and just ran home. Later, I found out about Sandra…" The kid went quiet as I was deep in thought.

"Do you know where he went? Or where he is staying?"

"Yes, I think he's in the abandoned mines near the town. Or somewhere in that area."

"Do you know what his plans are next?" I asked after a pause. He shook his head.

"I haven't talked to him since then. But…"

"But?"

"The original plan, before I told him about the parents' meeting, was that he wanted to confront them during the festival. When they would all be in one place."

"Was that before you talked him out of just plain killing them, or after?"

"Before." I winced.

"Does he seem afraid to show himself?"

"He used to. But now… I don't know."

"If you had to guess, assuming he still wants to take them out all at once, do you think he would be capable of just crashing the festival to hunt them down?"

"... Yes," the kid whispered after hesitating. It looked like I just confirmed a battle tonight, whether I had all the information or not.

"Well, fuck."