Sequel to Psychological Mitosis
*New York Herald*
Is a serial killer on the loose?
New York’s finest this morning discovered the decayed remains of the missing John Ashley. He was reported missing two weeks ago after NYPD’s chief detective Theo Farrell of the 23rd precinct, wanted him to answer some more questions in relation to the series of ghastly murders which began with his psychic wife. John Ashley was found in the basement of a house in the outskirt of the city. Police reports claim that his Achilles tendons were severed and therefore, rendered him crippled as he tried to escape. The police have labeled the crime heinous and sadistic and have sworn to bring the killer to justice.
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Four weeks earlier
Cindy Ashley was home alone and on the phone when she heard a knock on the door. She looked up at the clock and told whoever was on the line that she would have to call back later. She then dropped the receiver on the cradle and got up to answer the door. But as she was about to open it, she was hit by a bad psychic feeling and backed away from the door terrified. As thought on cue, the door immediately bust open and someone rushed in and repeatedly attacked her with a knife. After the assailant was through, he turned around and began to search her drawers. But unbeknown to him, she was still alive. So she began to crawl towards the window in a last desperate bid to save herself.
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Jack Ashley was in front of his apartment when the sound of breaking glasses, preceded his wife’s body crashing through the window. So he immediately dropped his best friend Bill, who he’d been carrying back home because he’d had one too many drinks at the bar, and ran into the house. Once inside, he immediately lifted her body from where it had been impaled on the window and tried to stop the bleeding. While he was desperately trying to save his wife’s life, he heard her killer making his escape. Numb and in shock, John called the police who arrived minutes later to secure the crime scene for processing, while his statement was taken by a detective Theo Farrell of the 23rd precinct. After writing his statement, the detective asked him if anybody had any reason to murder his wife. He’d almost said no but hesitated when he remembered an incident that happened on her last show.
His wife was sort of a celebrity because she hosted a live show on NBC1. She performed psychic readings for people and also gave counseling on the best course of action one should take in a relationship. On this particular show, she’d been interviewing a man when she’d been hit with a premonition. Her vision had been about a psychotic killer who was going to kill again. While in the grip of the premonition she’d said, “You will both strike again and again together”, “Like you did in the past”. The whole studio then became as quiet as a graveyard until it was broken by the scuffling of feet as someone in the audience got up to leave and a couple of others followed suit.
After the show she told John that in her vision, she’d seen a book that had a picture of a house on the front cover. She claimed that it was a clue and she may know who the killer is, but wanted to be very sure before she went to the police with the information. After he’d recanted the story to the police, they left with a promise that they would do everything in their power to bring the culprit to justice. Then he was warned not to leave town in case they needed him for further questioning.
Two weeks later, during Cindy’s burial, his neighbor Ms Loveheart came over to pay her condolence. After paying her condolence, she told John that she remembered something from the night of his wife’s murder. She claimed she’d seen a man peeping into their house that night but before she could investigate, she’d heard the sound of breaking glasses, then the sound of footstep running into the house. John thanked her for the information and relayed it to detective Theo Farrell after the burial. The detective then told him to inform Ms Loveheart that she should stop over at the precinct the following day, for her statement.
John got home and went to relay the message to his neighbor. But for the second time in two weeks, he dialed 911 to report another gruesome murder. He’d found Ms Loveheart butchered, with her head, arms and legs cut off from her body. There was blood all over the house, so much blood that John had puked all over her floor in disgust. For the first time, he was so scared for his life that he’d soiled his pants. Later that night, after the police and the coroner had left, his phone rang. It was a man who identified himself as a book dealer. He claimed that his wife had called him about two weeks ago, on the night of her murder to be precise. He claimed that she’d inquired about a book, so he was calling to inform her that he now had it. John remembered his wife’s reference to a book on the night of her premonition, so he asked for the book to be mailed to his apartment the following day.
The book arrived in the afternoon. It was a novel with a front cover that had a picture of an old house with trees around it. It was written by a man using the pseudonym “Terry Brimstone” and the novel was titled “The Slaughter house”. The novel was based on a real life account of a double murder several years ago. John decided to find the writer so that they could have a chat, so he called some friends, inquired from book stores and finally got the writers phone number. So he called and made an appointment with the writer for six thirty the following evening.
The following evening, John arrived at the writer’s apartment ten minutes late. So he hurried over to the front porch to knock but met the front door ajar. A familiar feeling of misgiving overcame him and when he entered, he discovered blood stains that traced a path from the kitchen to the writer’s basement. In the basement, he found the writer butchered while some of his body part had been fed into his washing machine. The machine had then been switched on, and he could see lather mixed with blood and pieces of flesh whirling inside it. By now John was already used to the sight of death, so he immediately turned around on surprisingly steady legs and headed back for his car.
As he made his way to the car, he noticed two framed picture’s lined up on the writer’s hallway. On one of the picture was a face he recognized. The face belonged to the man on his wife’s show, the night she’d gotten her premonition. His looked at the other picture and realized that it was the picture of the same old house on the book cover. So John took the picture of the house and left the premises quickly without calling the police, as far as he was concerned, he was never there. When he got back home, he had to take three shots of vodka in quick succession to steady his nerves. Twenty five minutes later, he started examining the picture and discovered a name, year, address and a note written at the back which read “From father to son with love“.
The picture had been taken by the Tom who was the writer’s father, then later framed and given to his son as a gift after he graduated from college. Armed with the picture, John drove the following day to locate Tom, who then told him everything he knew about the murder and the fact that the house still stood but no one has lived in it since. So John visited the house to see if there were any clue’s that would reveal the killers identity. But when he got into the house he was knocked out by a severe blow to the head and when he regained consciousness, the house was on fire. He managed to escape and rushed back to Tom’s house, only to find his headless corpse in the sitting room.
Further investigation led him to the toilet where Tom’s severed head sat on his water closet. The gruesome sight was too overwhelming that he crumbled to the floor and immediately began to back away. As he drove away from Tom’s apartment like a lunatic, he wondering what kind of demented soul he was dealing with. He wondered what kind of monster would leave so much destruction and horror in its wake. John began to fear he would become the next victim, so he decided that he was leaving the town for good. But before he went, he’d have to stop by at Bill’s and wrap up one little business.
As he drove to Bill’s house, he prayed fervently that the killer hadn’t gotten to him yet. Twenty minutes later, he was knocking on Bill’s door. Bill opened after a couple of seconds and ushered him in. Inside, Bill opened a bottle of vodka which they drank as they chatted. It was more of one sided as John did all the talking and drinking, while Bill just sat there listening. It continued that way till John pulled out a knife and placed it on Bill’s neck. Bill’s calm and handsome face transformed from deep concentration, to puzzlement, to fear and finally to terror. It was seconds later before he could muster enough courage to ask John why he was holding a knife to his throat. In reply, John angrily smacked him on the face and told him he was the reason for all his recent troubles.
Bill had been having an affair with Cindy and John had known for months. The betrayal had hurt him, so he’d been plotting on how he was going to make them pay. But she then handed him a way when she had that psychic vision. He reasoned that all he had to do was find a way to kill her and blame it on a nonexistent psycho, because he never believed his wife was psychic. The night he was supposed to kill her, Bill had bumped into him at the bar. Then when Bill had gotten himself drunk, John was presented with another brilliant idea. He was going to use Bill as his alibi. So he carried Bill back home when he’d passed out, dropped him outside his house, then proceeded in and killed his wife. When the police arrived and questioned him, he was pleased to note that they’d swallowed his cocky and bull story hook, line and sinker. Everyone believed him, even his whore of a best friend.
While John recanted his story, Bill just sat still listening and occasionally checking his watch. And when John was through, they both were silent for a couple of seconds before Bill asked if he was going to kill him now. John smiled and asked him, what he thought, but Bill replied by looking at his watch again. Why would a man that was about to die bother about the time, thought John. So he asked Bill why he was looking at his wristwatch and Bill told him that he was waiting for the drug he’d placed in his drink to take effect. When realization dawned on John, he quickly raised the knife to strike but his vision blurred and he collapsed to the floor. John woke up later to find himself in the basement, strapped to a funny looking chair with Bill seated in front of him, holding an axe and his knife. Strangely, Bill looked different, his demeanor had changed and even his voice was different as he began to tell his story;
“He claimed that they’d both killed their sister, mother, father, and grandfather when he was a kid. He also claimed that they had taken great pleasure in doing it because their father and grandfather molested them and their sister. Their sister and mother suffered it all in silence because they probably enjoyed it while he took the bulls by the horn and killed them. But their sister and mother rejected them because of the deed so they killed them too. It would have remained that way if the stupid milkman hadn’t told his writer son the story and John’s bitch of a wife hadn’t had that premonition”.
John began to put the pieces together but some facts were still confusing. Tom was the delivery milkman that discovered the murders years ago. The boy was the only survivor and the story made the news. A lot of fuss was made about the boy but after some time the boy was sent to an orphanage, where he changed his name and that was the last anybody ever heard about him. What John couldn’t understand was Bill’s reference to “they”, like he had an accomplice and the reference to the death of his grandfather, father, mother and sister. Because Tom had told him that it was only his father and his sister that was murdered that day.
Bill continued rambling about how he’d fucked John’s wife and the way she begged for more. He claimed that he hadn’t seen it as wrong because he was after all John’s best friend and best friends help each other out. He said that John should thank him for fucking his wife because he’d done him a grand favor. He further claimed that he’d been so shocked when he heard her psychic vision and that was why he’d panicked and left the show. Since he wasn’t sure how much John’s wife knew, he’d decided to have a drink that night and see if John would talk about it. But when he didn’t say anything, he decided to pretend that he was knocked out so that he could spend the night in his house.
John took him back home where he witnessed the murder, and Bill had been happy that John had done the job for him. But when he found out that John’s neighbor had seen him watching the killer, he killed her too. Then when John had called to make inquiries about the writer and the novel, he’d also had to kill the writer and his father too. He stressed that everybody who knew about his past had to die, and now John had to die too. But this time, he would give John the luxury his other victims were not afforded, the choice between the axe and the knife.
John begged for his life and reminded Bill that they we were best friends. John proclaimed that he only wanted to scare him and had no intentions of killing him. But all Bill did was to sit down and watch John weep for about five minutes before he said he believed John. Bill claimed that he saw it in John’s eyes that John hadn’t really wanted to kill him, so he was going to release him. So Bill went behind John’s chair, bent down, cut both Achilles tendons, stood up untied John and told him he was free to go.
My Dark School Of Thoughts 
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