Deadly Secrets *Completed*

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Look-a-like

Chapter 28 - Look-a-like

Pure white snow coated the ground; an inch or two had fallen over night. The wind whipped furiously through the trees of his forest, violently lashing against the side of his house. More snow was blowing in. It was going to be a bad snow storm.

It was early, not yet six o'clock in the morning, but he felt restless.

Rein had departed from Ryder's soon after they had disposed of Heather, telling him they would speak soon. They needed to discuss their options for their Mother's demise, and Rein's determination to begin plotting as soon as possible was increasing with each passing day.

As Ryder walked back down to his cellar and over to the black metal shelf where his Creeper Doll's eyes sat so beautifully in a crystal jar, he placed his music box down in front of him and allowed himself be lost in her brown depths. So dark. So brown. He stared into her eyes, remembering their time together. The questions she'd asked - the answers she'd provoked.

Turning away from her provoking orbs, he made his way over to his tool table, a foggy haze clouding his mind. He was in a daze as he walked over to his tool table, his boots tapping lightly against the cellar floor. He stood there, considering — an unfamiliar sense of uncertainty cocooned him as he placed his hand gently on the silver handle of the drawer. He opened it slowly — gingerly, already knowing he was playing a risky game.

His eyes landed on her sketchpad. The black leather-bound book drew him in. His fingers itched to rake over the front. Before he knew what he was doing, he reached for it, pulling the book out and then sat down on his black leather stool and laid the book on his legs. He stared at it a few moments, the cool of the leather seeping through his denim jeans had a calming effect. Should he? Why not? What harm could come from looking at her beautiful sketches? Carefully, his fingers roved over the cover before they cautiously opened the cover, almost reverently. The first drawing was that of her tattoo. Her doll tattoo. The one that interested him and aroused his curiosity. His gaze grew intense as his fingers drifted over the dark hair of the doll and then trailed down, his fingertips tracing the blue outline of its porcelain-like skin. They grazed over the heels and then back up to the red-inked 'Fight' on her cheek.

He smiled, but it felt tight and something strange crept through him, something forlorn. Melancholy. His Defiant Doll was something he'd never expected. He'd never had a Doll quite like her. He suspected he never would again. There was only one Creeper Doll. He really had wanted to keep her, to spend more time with her.

If there was an afterlife, he hoped he'd see her there. In Hel, or wherever he was going when he died. He suspected Hel. He'd get to kill her all over again there, over and over, reliving his sins. Is it sadistic that he liked that thought?

Tilting his head, a smirk twisting his lips as his fingers trailed the doll once more. He turned the page to a sketch of a crow sat perched on a round headstone. Such magnificent detail. She'd had a knack for drawing. The feathers were detailed in inky black, each quill was exquisitely penned, while the crow's beady black eyes seemed to peer right at him, into his black depths. They were hauntingly intense.

The tombstone itself was engraved with 'Angelo Buono, Jr. and his cousin, Kenneth Bianchi'. They were known as the Hillside Stranglers. They'd raped and murdered ten girls and women, killing them by strangulation, among other methods (carbon monoxide poisoning, electric shock, lethal injection) in a four-month period between 1977-78. Buono had been apprehended in 1979, and he'd died in prison in 2002 while serving a life sentence. That gravestone had been an interesting choice to draw.

Even in death, his Creeper Doll still intrigued him.

He flipped to the next page, his eyes landing on a Raven that sat on a cross tombstone. The sketch of the Raven and the doll were his favorites. Again, his fingertips traced the image, brushing the outside of the cross and then gingerly traveling around the Ravens feathers, careful not to smear the ink. He couldn't help it. It was as if he were drawn to her sketches. Fascinated by them. Enthralled.