Victoria (What Hides Within Book 2), page 1
VICTORIA
by
Jason Parent
Copyright © 2018
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s written consent, except for the purposes of review
Cover Design © 2018 by Silent Q Design
http://www.silentqdesign.com/
ISBN-13: 978-1-947522-16-9
ISBN-10: 1-947522-16-7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
READ UNTIL YOU BLEED!
ALSO BY JASON PARENT
NOVELS
A Life Removed
People of the Sun
Seeing Evil
They Feed
What Hides Within
NOVELLAS
Unseemly
Where Wolves Run
COLLECTIONS
Wrathbone and Other Stories
Please visit Jason on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJasonParent,
on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AuthorJasParent,
or at his website, http://authorjasonparent.com/
This book is dedicated to my amazing niece, Victoria, who, although she shares the name of this book's titular character, has nothing in common with her and has (as far as I know) never had a spider living in her ear. If she's good, maybe I'll get her one this year for Christmas.
The author would like to thank Kimberly, Evans, Carrie, and Ken for their efforts in helping to finalize this book and Pete and Bloodshot Books for their belief in it.
PART I:
OUT OF THE BLUE…
From Confessions of an American Killer: The Victoria Menard Murders, the recorded diary of Victoria Menard, dated August 26, 2022.
A long time ago, when I was just a little girl, I made a friend. Her name was Chester.
Doctors, some of the best professionals in the world—people with so many letters after their names that they needed an entire page for a signature block—denied Chester’s existence. They performed CT Scans and MRIs and all sorts of tests just to prove nothing was in my head and never had been. They diagnosed me with schizophrenia, claimed the voice I heard was a hallucination, and poked and prodded and pestered me about a so-called hallucination that I concede I no longer hear.
My friend is gone now… sort of, because I always feel her presence. She hasn’t spoken to me in many years, but in a way, she will always be with me. And I swear to you—the voice, my friend Chester, was as real as you and me.
Do hallucinations slide out your nose on sticky silken string? Do they tickle your ear with their eight pointed feet? Tell the doctors you have something living in your head, and they offer you antipsychotics, while they laugh and mock you when they think you can’t hear them.
Assholes. Know-it-all assholes, every one of them.
And why is it so strange to think I might have had a critter living in my head? We all have parasites. Roundworms, tapeworms, hookworms—all sorts of worms—flukes, and single-celled fuckers live inside all of us, feasting on our bodies, shitting out their eggs, and repopulating in an endless cycle. They give us fun times with eczema, breathing problems, colds, diarrhea, constipation, and just about every other medical symptom possible.
In short, they’re assholes, just like the doctors. And those are the normal kinds. Some parasites are much, much worse.
Many parasites affect the way you think and act. They make you crave junk food, sap your energy so that you forego exercise, essentially turn you into a nice, hospitable environment for them to multiply while encouraging human contact to help them spread. You take on hundreds if not thousands more just because some scumbag was too lazy to wash his hands. And you wonder why I hate people? They deserve to be hated.
Anyway, who am I to change the world? That’s not what this is about. It’s about taking control of your life. Foreign bodies inside your own body are, in effect, transmitting signals to your brain that are controlling your choices without you even knowing it. Doesn’t that scare you? Maybe you don’t believe me. Look it up. That’s what the internet is for, ain’t it?
Well, the doctors at least know that much to be true. Why, then, is it such a leap for them to think a parasite might exist that could literally send signals, words even, directly into your brain? Why is it so hard to believe that a parasite—say, some kind of spiderlike invader—might find some way to actually talk with its host, to influence that unlucky SOB in a more direct manner?
Okay, biology. I get it. Spiders don’t have vocal cords, tongues, mouths, et cetera that are physically capable of forming human words. Fair enough. But Chester was no ordinary spider. Trying to explain to you what she really was would only add milligrams to my daily dosage.
Chester. The name always amused me until it didn’t. Blame my Uncle Clive for that one—the name, not the diminished amusement. Don’t get me wrong: I loved my uncle, but he was kind of an idiot. He was the spider’s first host or, at least, the host that came before me. The name he gave her just kind of stuck, I guess. I thought they had been friends, my uncle and Chester. I was a bright girl even then, yet I’m still amazed by how long I took to put together the circumstances of his death—he jammed a pair of scissors deep into his ear—with Chester’s soon-after appearance on my Pop-Tart.
I still like Pop-Tarts. They don’t have them here. Or Cocoa Puffs, which sucks because my meds make me crave them.
Anyway, around the same time my uncle died, I lost both my parents: my mom to cancer and my dad to a bullet… self-inflicted. So what’s a seven-year-old girl, all alone in the world, to do when a spider shows up on her doorstep with promises of friendship and adventure? Chester was all I had, my uncle’s affliction passed down to me. She educated me in the ways of the world while showing it to me, taught me half a dozen languages and a host of skills, things no little girl should know how to do. I mean, how many little kids do you know that can pronounce Krav Maga?
I learned quickly, always such an enthusiastic student and a ready, willing, and able participant. If the assholes putting together this documentary even knew a quarter of what I’ve done…
I digress. Yeah, I learned a lot of things from Chester and from the world, but I missed out on a lot of skills, too, like socializing, gaining and keeping friendship, love… you know, normal human interaction. When I interacted with others, Chester always had a purpose behind it, always had an eye for seeing what that interaction could do solely for us.
But the biggest thing I never learned from Chester: morality. Thankfully, I never really needed it… arguably. I’d stored away enough of what was right and wrong from my parents’ teachings that I understood the basics. For the most part, I’ve tried to do what was right… Okay, I tried to kill as few people as possible, unless doing so was a major inconvenience. I don’t think of myself as evil.
And compared to some, my halo’s so bright it can be seen from space. Do you think it was easy asserting my will with a devil as my mentor, a demon that had kept me alive, kept me safe… reasonably speaking, that is. She gave me a chance in life.
If you call this a life.
I’d like to think I gave back to Chester. Hadn’t I provided her years of shelter and given her safety? But a time comes when a girl has to find her own way, set out on her own, and sever the ties of parenthood, no matter how craftily woven they may be. I tried that once, and everything changed. I was just a girl who didn’t care much for the world but who didn’t need to see it burn either.
Chester wanted that and worse. So the time came when our interests collided, and I needed to rid myself of her before we went too far. I’d been alone for so long, alone with Chester, so I found it hard to imagine what I would be, what I could be, without her.
So, at sixteen years old, I embarked on a crusade. And it all began in Vatican City.
CHAPTER 1
Vatican City.
“We need more Pop-Tarts.”
What do you mean ‘we’? I don’t eat those things.
“You really should,” Victoria whispered. “They are so good, especially the cinnamon and brown—”
Chester shushed her. Will you pay attention? This is important to at least one of us.
“Pop-Tarts are important to me,” Victoria muttered.
What?
“Nothing.” She crossed her arms. “Fine, I’m paying attention, already.” She looked around for security. “All I see are clowns.”
In their blue-and-yellow-striped uniforms, the Swiss Guards stood out like Picassos in a power plant. Victoria stifled a laugh as she took in their weird, floppy hats and hot-air-balloon capris. A couple of them served as sentries at the gate into the square.
Eyeballing the nearer of the two, she whispered, “He probably rustles like a garbage bag every time the wind blows.”
Your uncle used to have pants like that. They were popular when he was a kid… something to do with some guy named Hammer, I think… though I can’t be sure. Your uncle’s head was, eh, somewhat cluttered. A bit difficult to find one’s way around in there.
“Well, I hope you’re keeping mine nice and tidy,” Victoria said aloud despite the fact that her conversation partner lived in her head. She always spoke to Chester aloud but quietly so as not to draw any
A small price. At least she didn’t have to wear the Swiss Guards’ stupid hats and pants.
“I’m telling you, they look like clowns wearing ladies’ suits.”
They’ve been dressing like that since long before your uncle died. The Pontifical Swiss Guard has been around since the early fifteen hundreds.
Victoria shifted her weight back and forth from one foot to the other. Standing in line outside the entrance to St. Peter’s Square was starting to take its toll. The late-spring day was warm enough to make her uncomfortable in her black hoodie, the weight of her backpack light on her shoulders but heavy enough to press the thick cloth against her skin. She’d been waiting there for at least forty-five minutes past her scheduled tour time. The old man posing as their tour guide was up front with all the necessary documentation, smiling and speaking with some official-looking dude who wasn’t smiling back.
“God, I hope we get in.”
Chester thrummed against the walls of her nest. We’d better.
She looked away, hoping Chester would relax. Chester had waited a long time for the chance to get inside the library. Centuries, by her count. What was so important to her inside, Victoria didn’t know and could never learn much about by asking, which only heightened her already curious nature. Still, getting into the Vatican Library seemed a huge and unnecessary risk, one that the others might have been a huge help in alleviating, had Victoria been allowed to let them in on the secret. But Chester would have it no other way.
Chester didn’t trust much. Victoria could understand that. She didn’t trust much either. At the least, though, they could trust each other.
But since they’d arrived in Italy a year before—no, even before that, when they arrived in Europe—Chester had become more and more fanatical about getting into that damn library. She was always research this and research that, ever driving them closer to the Vatican and pushing Victoria to broaden her unique skill set. The weeks leading up to the tour had been utter hell, Chester never stopping her droning and questioning, as if eight years together, never a moment apart, wasn’t enough to warrant a little faith. They’d accomplished more difficult tasks and committed far more complex crimes than breaking into some stupid library.
Victoria bristled, suddenly aware of her thoughts and who might be listening. “Anyway,” she muttered, “if they’re that easy to spot, we’ll have no trouble avoiding them. They don’t even have guns or Tasers or even handcuffs, as far as I can see. I mean, that one guy’s carrying a freakin’ spear.”
It’s a halberd. And don’t let their uniforms fool you. They may look like—
“Like clowns!”
Yes, like clowns, but they have a full arsenal that is completely up-to-date.
“I know. I was there when we did the research, remember?” Victoria sighed.
A man with a curved beak of a nose glanced down it at her from the spot in front of her in line. She gave a smile as phony as ice in hell and, she hoped, a lot more chilling.
“Besides,” she said more softly when the man turned back around, “I’m sure the real security is much harder to see.”
Well, if we can trust—
“We can trust him.”
And the others?
“Them, too.”
Then why aren’t we inside yet?
Victoria frowned. She couldn’t really blame Chester for her impatience. She knew the team no better than Chester did, and they hadn’t ever worked a gathering like the crowd assembled in the square for the next pope’s selection. Add to that the fact that only she and the spider knew their real plan…
Victoria sighed even more loudly, but that time, the man in front of her did not look back. In a grumble that she meant to be a whisper, she said, “This was your idea. Having second thoughts?”
No. You’re right. The cameras will be down. They’ll get us in. Compared to Marrakesh, this will be like—
“A walk in the park?”
I was thinking more like a stroll through the square, but… yes.
Victoria rolled her eyes. “Just… don’t mention Marrakesh, okay? It’s bad luck to mention Marrakesh.”
All I’m saying is that if we get into any real trouble, I will get us out of it.
“And how many will have to die this time?”
Beak Nose turned around again, this time raising an eyebrow.
Victoria crossed her arms and scowled. “Can I help you?” she asked in Italian, then rose up on her tiptoes to see past the man. Their tour guide was waving them forward, apparently having resolved whatever dispute had held them up. She wondered what else the old man had planned for the day, already netting thousands with his pricey guarantees to people like Beak Nose, who’d paid a small fortune to get in to see a plume of smoke. Had they agreed to count them, the old man’s earnings would have been tough to beat. The others, wherever they were in line, were probably thinking the same thing. Those at the end of the line would be thinking something much worse about the old man when they realized he’d sold more counterfeit passes than he’d actually had in his possession.
Victoria snickered. “These people are such suckers.”
That’s the problem with these Christians: too much faith. Chester hummed, producing a tickling sensation that Victoria had long ago associated with her laughing. It became painful, crippling even, when her invited guest laughed too hard. Because of that, Victoria told very few jokes, not that she knew many that would appeal to Chester’s dark sense of humor anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Beak Nose said. “Did you say something to me?”
Victoria pointed at the entrance. “Line’s moving.”
“Oh!” the man blurted, smiling sheepishly. He smiled and hurried to catch up.
Victoria shook her head and grabbed the straps of the small backpack slung over her shoulders. In it, she carried six things: a compact, a sketch pad, a small cardboard box carrying two pens, a bottle of water, three tampons, and an empty purse with the price tag still on it. As she reached the gate, the Swiss Guards never even looked her way. But when she stepped through the metal detector just inside the entrance, it beeped.
“Step to the side,” said a very real-looking security guard—six-foot-five with bulging arms and bulging belly, wearing a white shirt and black pants. He waved a wand over her, which made a whirring noise and beeped over a front jeans pocket.
“Empty your pockets, please,” he said, handing her a small bowl.
In it, she dropped a wallet and coins from four different continents. The guard’s forehead crinkled, and he gave her a closer inspection but said nothing as he wanded her down again.
“Bag.”
“Oh.” Victoria shrugged her backpack off her shoulders and handed it over.
The guard opened it up and dumped its contents out on a metal table for all to see. She winced as the objects spilled out, clanging as they smacked against the hard surface. The guard dropped the backpack on the table and scanned the items. He unzipped every compartment on the purse and peered inside before tipping it over and shaking it out. After flipping through the sketch pad, he reached for the compact. He smiled as he checked his teeth in the mirror then frowned at the makeup he found inside, half black and half white.
“Mime?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
The compact apparently passed inspection because, after sniffing the makeup, the guard closed the compact and tossed it back onto the table. His fingers hovered over the tampons before reaching for the small box.
“I was hoping to draw St. Peter’s Basilica.” Victoria flashed the guard a smile.
The man just grunted. He opened the box, where two fancy pens of the type one gets for his ten-year anniversary at some dead-end cubicle job rested in a felt encasement. He pulled one out, stared at it, twisted off the cap, stared at it again, grunted, put the cap back on, and placed the pen back in the box. “Any defacing of Vatican property will result in your immediate arrest. Also, you can’t take pictures of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, but if you can draw it, then I’ll wish you the best of luck.” He smiled then, handed her the backpack, and threw a thumb over his shoulder.
