Now is the Time of Monsters, page 1
Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
ALSO BY A.G. MOCK
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DEDICATION
CONTENT WARNING
QUOTES
Voice Recording of the Gemini Killer
) THE GEMINI (
1
) CASSIE (
2
) JANICE (
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
) HOLDEN (
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
The Gemini Wordsearch
22
23
24
25
26
27
The Gemini Halloween card
27 (cont.)
28
29
30
31
32
Crime Scene Photo of Hannah Wilson's Convertible
33
34
35
36
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Now is the Time of Monsters
Copyright © 2024 A.G. Mock
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.
The following is a work of fiction and all characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. All brand names, product names, songs, musicians, television shows or films referenced are trademarks, registered trademarks, trade names and/or copyright of their respective holders. Neither the author nor Epoch Thrillers is associated with any product, manufacturer, vendor, or artist in this book.
First edition, Epoch Thrillers, October 2024.
Library of Congress PCN: on file with Publisher
ISBN: 978-1-7362919-7-9 | eBook
ISBN: 978-1-7362919-8-6 | paperback
ISBN: 978-1-7362919-9-3 | hardcover
Published by Epoch Thrillers in the United States
Epoch Thrillers and its raven imprint are trademarks of Epoch Thrillers
AGMock.com | EpochThrillers.com
ALSO BY A.G. MOCK
also by A.G. Mock
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DEDICATION
~ for those who sometimes struggle within the maze of their own convoluted mind ~
CONTENT WARNING
This book is for fans of the psychological thriller and/or horror genre. It may contain intense content and themes. Please note that in order to avoid spoilers, I choose not to preface my novels with specific trigger warnings. From this point on, please read at your own risk.
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“The old world is dying,
and the new world struggles to be born:
Now is the Time of Monsters."
—paraphrased from the prison diaries of Antonio Gramsci
***
)(
“He who fights with monsters
should be careful to not become one.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
***
RECORDING OF THE GEMINI KILLER
Archived phone call evidence courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigations archive on kidnappings and serial killings:
TO LISTEN, CLICK HERE OR scan the QR CODE below with your phone.
)(
) THE GEMINI (
1
OCTOBER 13, 1969 • San Francisco
THE POLAROID CLICKED, a flash of brilliance igniting the night. A negative afterimage swam across his blinking eyes as the camera’s distinctive whir and grind spat out a thick, glossy square of paper.
Slipping through his fingers, what would soon become a photograph wafted to the floor. As it dropped through the darkness, its descent was captured when another click whitened the room; another mechanical whir filled the silence; another square dropped from the instant camera’s rollers.
Already developing between their chemical sheets, the photos slowly appearing would preserve this feeling forever.
She lay unconscious upon the floor, her strawberry-blonde hair in a subtle bouffant spilling from a bright green headband. Having been carefully combed and positioned by the man just so, it framed her sculpted face and flowed gently over her shoulders.
He’d also wiped and tidied the smudged crimson of her lips before perfectly repainting their pouty contours.
Though incapable of processing what was happening to her, the woman’s eyes—those clear, bright green eyes—had remained open as her breaths came fast and shallow. He knew the Polaroids would capture that emptiness and fail to do justice to this occasion when he relived it later
again and again
and that just wouldn’t do.
So he closed her eyes with a gentleness associated with great intimacy, careful not to disturb her smoky eyeshadow.
Or those long, enhanced lashes.
He did this despite the mascara streaks that ran down the woman’s face. Traces of black lightning. These he never wiped away because, truth be known, they excited him more than just about anything else: those salty runs told a story.
There. That was better.
With her eyes closed, the woman was again perfect. Wanton. Waiting. Willing to be whatever he wanted her to be.
She was his now.
Only his.
Always and forever.
Another click. A blinding flash. The tell-tale whir.
From the rain-soaked street, the living room window of number 8213 pulsed a final time. Brilliance blanched the room.
Now darkness.
With all but one of the ten photographic squares discharged the window was again an inconspicuous void, like so many others that lined the street like vacuous eyes. The fact that this particular one had been strobing bright white made little difference.
The residents of West Summerdale Street hadn’t noticed.
One way or another.
) (
Sheila McCabe was new to the neighborhood, having moved in only months before. Knocking on every door on the street with a smile and a batch of her famous lemon drop cookies, Sheila had made a deliberate point of introducing herself within her first month of living there. After all, as a single mom Sheila felt it was important to make new friends with whom she and her daughter could share this next chapter of their adventure.
Lord knows, life can be tough enough at the best of times. Having a caring support network can make all the difference.
It takes a village.
Now, as her brutal and methodical murder was being immortalized in instant photos by the very man who was perpetrating it, those same families were concerned with nothing but clearing away their dinner plates so they could settle down in front of their TVs. Entranced by Goldie Hawn in shiny white go-go boots and psychedelic dress, giggling to the punchline of her own jokes on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, most of the residents saw nothing.
Most.
But not all.
One woman, Gladys Noble of 8220, had caught one of the unusual flashes from the corner of her eye while calling out for Mr. Whiskers from her front stoop. But then came a rumbling of faraway thunder and Gladys gave no further thought to what surely must have been a flash of distant lightning. Swooping her wayward feline into her arms, Gladys promptly returned to the safety of her modest two-bedroom midcentury home.
Across the street and three doors down, the man in Sheila McCabe’s home cared little whether the flashes of his camera were noticed or not.
Ignoring the developing squares of glossy paper now cast about his feet, he stepped softly toward Sheila and knelt before her naked body. She was bound by decorative rope tiebacks from the curtains he’d torn from the window. Her ankles were tied to one another; her wrists tethered so that her hands rested upon her abdomen as if clasped together in prayer.
Extending his finger to touch her, the man reached slowly—oh so slowly—savoring the exquisite anticipation with intention.
When his fingertip was all but an inch away, he paused.
Wait…
…wait…
okay—
—now.
He gasped as he made contact, the air escaping his lips in a sigh of ecstasy as his fingertip barely brushed Sheila’s smooth ivory skin. Now he allowed a second finger to touch her. Then a third. He played these over her left arm, cherishing the sensation of her soft, transparent hairs beneath his fingers.
His stroke halted at the woman’s wrist.
Thin and perfect, it was adorned by a petite silver wristwatch. The man delighted in the cool sensation of the watch’s metal firmness; its polished crystal face.
&n
Now playing his fingertips over the slight bump of her wrist, he began to tremble as he stroked the outside of her hand. Her pinky finger was short and thin and so wonderfully delicate, and he pressed the tip of his own to it. Running his finger around it in small, sensual loops, he softly moaned in anticipation.
Now the man closed his eyes.
Moving with great forethought from the woman’s pinky to her ring finger, he etched in his mind a permanent memory of the way it felt when he touched her silver wedding band. Cool and smooth, the ring was so deliciously wide that she must be very, very married indeed, and a grin lit upon his face as wide as that ring seemed upon Sheila’s finger.
The expression twisted into something beyond joy when he again caught sight of the mascara runs down her cheeks. Oh, how those tears had poured as the woman begged. She offered him anything—anything—he wanted…if he would only promise not to harm her child.
Caressing the wedding ring and the woman’s long, slender finger, he thought about this desperate pleading as he unzipped his trousers and touched himself until he came.
This time, he granted himself permission to ejaculate over the ring; between the woman’s fingers; across the back of her hand. Despite being of a similar age, he called out to her as though she were his mommy.
He was still erect when he pulled the serrated pruning blade across the soft, supple skin of her wrist. It rasped its distinctive duotone as he pulled then pushed; pulled then pushed; the saw blade satisfying its hunger as it chewed through her bones. As it did, the woman began to stir. Her eyes fluttering. Spasming. Then the unmistakable stench rose to the man’s nostrils: a smell like teeth at the mercy of a dentist’s grinder as the sawblade grew hot from the friction.
After detaching the woman’s left hand with the greatest of care, the man removed Sheila’s gold peace sign pendant from her neck. She clearly cherished it, and it felt disrespectful to get it covered with blood when he slit the mother’s throat from one ear to the other. He then went about the task of removing her head.
While ejaculating again.
) (
8:43 PM
“There’s–been–a–murrr–der…” The man’s voice was bright and crisp. The words were not spoken, but lilted in a singsong manner the way tattletale children sing the phrase: I’m–gonna–tel–ell…
Being her first week with the San Francisco Police Department, this particular switchboard operator found herself succumbing to the natural reaction anyone would have.
“Excuse me?”
In due time, after receiving more unnerving calls, desperate pleas for help, inarticulate screams, or just plain hoaxes, than she could count, the operator would learn to stifle such an instinctive response. Conditioning would erode any empathy until she was all but numb to the most brutal, bizarre and heartbreaking aspects of human depravity.
That day had not yet come.
“What did you just say—?”
The approaching stormfront punctuated the otherwise silent phone line with a telegraph-like series of crackles before the caller again sang the confession. His lyrical cadence then glided to a halt, emotionless as he declared:
“There have been others. Allow me to give you a couple, so you know I am telling the truth. Are you ready to write this down?”
With her fingers shaking as much as her voice, the operator put pen to paper. “I-I’m r-ready.”
“I took that young girl from Mount Diablo, the one they haven't found yet. And the wife from Sausalito. That one I stuffed into the trunk of her own convertible. I called it in myself. Her sexy wedding ring finger even dialed the phone for me. Make sure you pass that on to Sheriff Morris Miller over there in Contra Costa County. He’ll know what it means. And if you say you coaxed it out of me, you just might get a promotion.”
Bristling with adrenaline but with her training now kicking in, the operator steadied her voice and asked for the address from where he was calling.
“8213 West Summerdale.”
The switchboard operator knew that area. It was west of downtown, near Clarendon Heights. She knew this because she lived not far from there.
“Her daughter is alone in the house. Sleeping. You might want to get there before the little darling wakes up and finds what used to be Mommy lying on the floor.”
“May I have your name, sir?”
Silence.
Interference crackled like popcorn.
“Is she still alive? Does she need an ambulance?”
“She needs a hearse…”
A gentle rumble of thunder. First over the phone line, then in the ear of the operator that wasn’t covered by the mono headset.
Now she knew he’d lied about his location. The headquarters of the San Francisco police, and where the operator was currently seated, was in Mission Bay…the east side of the city, a good four miles from West Summerdale Street. But that thunderclap was audible over her headset and in-person simultaneously.
He was calling from somewhere close.
“And pardon me for being rude. You asked me a question which I haven’t yet answered. About my name…”
“Yes, sir. What is your name?”
“…This is the Gemini speaking.”
Now came the sounds of the city street: A car horn; a car splashing through standing water; the muted tones of a partial conversation as a man and woman walked past the phone booth.
More crackling.
Then a gentle hiss of static as the caller did not hang up, but instead dangled the black handset from its coiled metal cable until his dime would eventually run out. The SFPD operator continued to speak to a caller she was certain was already gone as the handset rapped against the inside glass of the phone booth. She did this because her training taught her to keep a caller on the line as long as possible, until officers arrived if she could.
Silence. Static. A light tap of the receiver against the phone booth’s glass.
It was several long minutes later when the caller’s voice again whispered unexpectedly in her ear, and the operator’s breath caught in her throat.
“One more thing…” the voice offered in a gentle tone one would normally associate with a certain level of intimacy, “…I’ve left another little something for your detectives.”
“What did you leave, sir? Is it something that might harm the officers?”
“Let’s just say it will make our little game a lot more fun...” The caller hesitated before adding: “…For all of us.”
In the same singsong manner by which he had begun the call, the Gemini whisper-sang goodbye.
) CASSIE (
2
THREE MONTHS EARLIER / JULY 1969 • Haight-Ashbury
IT WASN’T GHOSTS and goblins she was afraid of, it was people. They were the real monsters. And if there was one thought that tightened Cassie Kennedy’s chest, it was the growing fear that she wasn’t alone in the house at night.
Like the very prowler she presaged, the idea crept uninvited into her soul each time the lights went out and the stillness and silence took over.
The mere thought of it gave her the heebie-jeebies.
On her own these days far more than she wasn’t, it was everything Cassie could do to keep this thought from consuming her. If only she could share with her husband how she was feeling, she might find a way to overcome it. But she knew he’d think her unstable. Maybe even crazy. At the very least, phobic.
But weren’t phobias a fear of the irrational?
This fear was anything but.
And she wasn’t crazy.
Just to make sure, Cassie buried herself in research at the West Portal library where she found herself surrounded by shelves of books most afternoons. An avid reader with plenty of time to kill, the library invited her to explore a world where she could be anything she wanted to be, go anywhere she wanted to go. Certainly more than the suburban housewife and mother who, at the age of twenty-five, had already dedicated her future to everyone but herself.
