Letters in the dark, p.1
Letters in the Dark, page 1
Letters in the Dark
Kit Rose
Copyright © 2020 Kit Rose
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Kit Rose
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Thank You!
Prologue
The watcher smiled as he wiped the knife clean. Shimmering steel in a once sterile kitchen. Crimson and thick, the blood had pooled on the table under the man and was now running down his arm into a puddle on the tile dining room floor.
This was his gift to her. A gift of vengeance. A gift of blood and pain. The only gifts that mattered.
The man on her dining room table had wronged her. He’d lied to her, and he’d broken her trust. The watcher had known from the beginning, and he’d helped the woman find out. What else could he have done?
It hadn’t worked. She’d been too kind once again. Somehow, after all these years, after all her torment, she was still so kind, so willing to forgive. Maybe that was how she had survived the monsters of her past.
She’d watched all the good things in her life burn, and in the ashes, she’d found only heartache. She should have been broken like him. Shattered and cold. Soulless.
Instead, she was a light to those who lived in the darkness. A savior to the forgotten. She’d spent her life protecting the ones who couldn’t save themselves.
In return, the creatures that she consorted with, the men and women of her life, used her and ignored her. They didn’t care about her, didn’t give her the respect and adoration that she deserved. If they had, they would have stopped hurting her so often.
He respected her. He adored her. He would never hurt her.
This was his gift to her. The body of a monster who had gotten to close to her, who had woven himself into her life. A gift from a man whom she’d never seen, never spoken to. A gift from the only one who truly understood her.
She was the only one who had experienced the monsters that lived in the darkness and come away unbroken, somehow stronger and brighter. This extraordinary humanity was what drew him to her and could be the key to his salvation.
Cassandra Matheson may not know him. But she would help him. She would fix the broken pieces inside of him because there was no one else who could. She would have to.
Or Cassandra Matheson would never escape her Cage.
Chapter 1
3 hours since the Cage, Age 31
Cassandra Matheson moaned as she rolled over. White sheets on a twin mattress? She had slate gray sheets on a king-sized bed. Where had these come from? And why did her head hurt so badly?
She rolled over and saw a room she had no memory of, furniture she’d never seen before. Panic began to fill her, heart racing as she assessed her situation. No sound left her lips, a habit long ago perfected. Cassandra never screamed from fear and never spoke without purpose. Silence was safety.
She’d been abducted.
Her body tensed as she stood up and realized that she had been stripped of her clothing. The simple flowery sun dress had been taken from her body when she’d been kidnapped. The air in the room was slightly cool on her tanned skin, but she shivered from fear rather than from the temperature.
Waves of terror rolled through her at the realization, but she closed her eyes and took deep breaths. Fear would not help her now. Only action and awareness. She surveyed her surroundings. The room was simple, not much different than a hotel room except that there was no window.
White painted drywall with a spackled texture flowed into a matching ceiling. A matching set of light oak furniture was all that was in the simple room. She moved to the set of drawers and began opening them, one by one. Emptiness was all that Cassandra found.
The oak nightstand did not hold a lamp as it would in a hotel, and there was no Bible in the drawers. A small writing desk and wooden chair sat in a corner. No decorations hung from the plain white walls. Inset lighting in the ceiling kept the room lit just as much as would be expected at any workplace.
It was a sterile environment. Nothing drew the eye. No one had used any of this. The floors were covered in a beige carpet that seemed to muffle the sound of her footsteps as she walked through the room.
In each of the four corners in the ceiling were cameras that followed her movements. She eyed them, knowing that they watched her move through the room completely naked. Fear may have been the surface emotion, but below everything else, anger bubbled, and it drove her to do more than shiver in fear.
No one would keep her in a cage. Never again.
Who had taken her? Why had they taken her? A man had held her, she remembered the hand. She gritted her teeth as the tiny memory came back. There were more than a handful of people who hated her, and most of them were terrible people.
Standing up, she knew that he watched her. He had already touched her, seen her naked body. Her captor would do what he wanted with her. She knew that. If he wanted to see her, she would not make it hard for him. Submission was safety.
This was not the first time that Cassandra had lived as a captive. It was not the first time that Cassandra had lived in fear of pain and suffering. She would survive. Regardless of anything else, Cassandra knew that she would survive. And she would find a way out.
What did he want? If he’d wanted to just cause her pain and torment, then why watch her? Why hadn’t he strung her up and begun the torture already? If he’d wanted to rape her, why hadn’t he had her tied to the bed? If he wanted her dead, why was she breathing still?
She had to understand her situation. She walked to the first door in the room. It was a simple door, wooden and white. Only a single thing made it different than a normal hotel room: there was no peephole.
She tried the door and found it locked. This was the way out. And the way in. This was where her captor would come from.
Cassandra tested the light switch next to the door, and the inset lighting in the ceiling went out no differently than a hotel room. The light from under the other door across the room was visible, but there was no light coming from under this one. That little bit of light from across the room was enough to see by. Almost like moonlight in a forest. It wasn’t enough to see details, but enough to know that someone was there.
She moved to the door on the other side of the room. It swung open easily, and she found a fully stocked bathroom. The red light of a camera on two different corners followed her as she walked through the tiled hotel bathroom. Greens and blues filled the room, and though the colors should have brought some life to it, there was no life in this bathroom either. Again, just sterility.
The room was a cage. Her Cage. Everything was different in a cage, even the way that colors felt. The colors would never have the same brightness that they’d have if there had been a window in the room or a peep hole in the door. Freedom allowed colors and life, but this cage was filled with only darkness, filled with the nothingness that would slowly eat away at her mind.
She tested the water in the faucets and the shower. They worked. At least she’d be able to have the simple creature comforts of cleanliness and water when she wanted.
She walked back to the bedroom and sat back on the bed to contemplate what she would do.
Without making a sound, and without any warning, the lights went out. Not just the inset lighting in the ceiling. Every bit of light seemed to be s
She moved her hand in front of her face and could see nothing. No glint of movement or even a hope of seeing something. The hair on her arms felt the air change ever so slightly, and she heard something, a sound that she couldn’t quite place. Then two soft thuds as something was set down.
The air changed again, almost as though there had been a brief wind in the room, and seconds of silence passed. The lights turned back on, blinding Cassandra for a few moments.
She looked around the room as her vision cleared and saw only two changes. A tray of food had been put on the desk. A simple sandwich and chips along with a glass of lemonade.
Beside the tray of food lay a notebook and a pencil. Cassandra went to inspect it. It was nothing special, just a simple spiralbound notebook like a child would use in school.
He had been in the room. Only a few feet away from her. Somehow, he had been able to move through the darkness without any problem. Cassandra’s heart pounded in her chest as she realized just how different this was to her previous cage. Once again, deep breaths helped to calm her panicked body.
The notebook waited on the desk as her body relaxed back into the alert but calm state she’d had before the lights had gone out. She picked it up and opened it to the first page.
Chapter 2
Cassandra,
I’m sure that you’re wondering why you’re here and where “here” is. The why is simple. I am… well, I’m a broken man, and I need you to help fix me. Psychologists would call me a psychopath, but most people would say that I’m soulless. I don’t know what the truth is but let us say that I’m broken.
I’ve watched you for a long time, Cassandra Matheson. I’ve watched other people as well, but those experiments did not pan out. After years of thought and research, it is my opinion that you are the most likely person on the planet to teach me how to fix myself. The day that I ‘feel’ like other people is the day that I’ll allow you to leave.
You have experienced the evils of the world, and you still try to help, still try to save the ones the world has forgotten. Unlike so many other people, when the world showed you the worst it had to offer, you did not break or lose your humanity.
All you have to do is show me how to be like you. Teach me, through these letters and through your actions, how to become more human, and I shall set you free. Teach me to feel something more than emptiness. That’s all I ask. Until then, I have some rules.
Every day with your breakfast and your dinner, you’ll receive this notebook and a letter from me. You are required to respond truthfully. I will not accept any lies, and I will know if you are lying.
If you follow the rules, you’ll be rewarded. If you fail to follow the rules, you’ll be punished.
My question: Why do you care so much? Why do you care about everyone else even when it makes things harder on you?
Chapter 3
12 hours before the Cage, Age 31
Cassandra leaned back in the ratty leather chair at her office. It had been a long week. She’d just moved back into her house after living in a hotel for the last two weeks. The police hadn’t even tried to get the bloodstains out of her floor, so that had been the first thing she’d had to do when she’d gotten home. Rest just didn’t come easily when your dining room still looked like a murder scene.
That wasn’t even considering the difficulties at work. Regina had been working to get her children back, but she’d relapsed. Her kids had been excited, so excited to see their mom getting clean. But she’d lost her job, and instead of accepting a setback, she’d gone right back to the pipe to cope.
She hadn’t shown up to her drug test, and she hadn’t shown up to her court appointed therapy. It looked like she was going to have to start over again. Cassandra questioned why the courts allowed people like this to have second and third and fourth chances.
Cassandra was not a social worker for the parents. She was a child advocate first and foremost, and that would never change. Her upbringing wouldn’t allow it. Life was hard on everyone, and if you were going to have children, you needed to take care of them. Your circumstances didn’t decide whether you succeeded or not. It was the way you dealt with them that was important. Except when it came to children.
Children didn’t have that freedom. They were forced to succumb to whatever hell their parents put them through. They couldn’t fight their way out. They couldn’t work or think or struggle through it. All they could do was survive. They didn’t have the ability to leave their situation, and so it came down to social workers like Cassandra to be their escape.
Now, Cassandra closed her eyes to get a minute of peace. She’d just finished the paperwork to document all of Regina’s failures. Cassandra’s recommendation for the process to begin all over again would most likely make Regina give up on the hope of getting her kids back, but that was for the best. She’d seen the foster home they were in herself, and they were safe with foster parents who cared for their wards.
Her phone rang, breaking the silence of Cassandra’s small office.
She looked down at her cell phone and saw that it was her boss, Mary Lancaster. Mary was a decent enough boss, but sometimes, she was more than a little clueless. Cassandra sighed.
“Hello Mary,” she said, the frustration and exhaustion apparent in her voice.
“Cassandra, are you busy? I just got a call about a possible child abuse case, and the home is in your area.”
Cassandra’s case load came from a small suburb outside the city. It wasn’t the town she’d grown up in, but it was similar enough. She knew what the people were like, and she knew what to look for.
“Who reported it?” Schools made things easy. Parents made things hard. Everywhere else was a crap shoot. No one wanted social workers around. In their eyes, social workers were worse than the police. They didn’t take the bad guys away. They took the victims.
“A neighbor. He said that he heard multiple kids screaming.” Mary hadn’t been in the field in a long time. She’d forgotten to ask the right questions. What was normal? Were screaming kids normal? Was it silent typically? Were there pets? What about kids playing in the yard? What did the kids act like normally?
“Alright, Mary. I’ll head over there. After that, I’m going to go home. It’s been a long week.”
“Text me when you finish up and let me know if you’re picking up another case next week.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
Cassandra hung up and packed her bag. She was tired. Probably too tired to be adding yet another case onto her already overloaded schedule. It didn’t matter though. She was those kids’ only advocate.
She carried her bag to her car and drove to the address Mary had texted her. The house was not one she’d have expected to have screaming kids or neighbors who reported it.
It was a two-story house with white paint and gray trim. Cassandra thought she could smell fresh paint as she stood on the porch. For a moment as she waited in front of the door, she had the glimmer of hope that the kids had screamed because of a scary movie or their parents playing a joke on them.
