2004-11-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

Cold

It was cold that first night. Damn cold. The kind of cold that chills you right to the very core. Deep down into the very core of your being. The nights where it gets cold around dusk, and anyone with half a brain scurries homeward to sit in front of a heater with a bowl full of soup and some good TV. I used to have nights like that all the time back home. Right in the very middle of winter, right when the days were at their shortest, and the nights are long. That night the wind had sprung up in the evening and dragged with it a blanket of cloud down from the hills. That's probably why they took so long to find her. She was tied by her wrists to the crossbar of the soccer goals on the main oval with barbed wire. Her throat had been slit. I will never forget that day, July 7, 2003, half way through senior year. I arrived at school, stressed as usual on the Monday morning just in time to see them taking her away. We all knew her of course. She was a senior, one of our own. Tessa Andrews, shining star in the school's crown, the right balance of sporty, academic and breathtaking good looks. She was widely liked and very well known. You could practically feel the ripples of shock that spread throughout the school as the news hit everyone. Younger grades were sent home. Year elevens and twelves were kept behind. Police had questions. I sat on the bleachers with the rest of them, hearing about what happened. As far as they could tell, the last person to see her alive was her boyfriend, He claimed to have dropped her at home at about 5pm Sunday night, but she never reached her door. Everyone noted his absence at the morning assembly. They tried to put it eloquently of course. I believe that his exact words were "Due to the nature of the crime, we believe that we are looking for one or more male suspects". Boys were held back to be interrogated one at a time, whilst the girls were let free. Some sobbed, some wandered round dumbfounded with shock, others gathered in small groups staring at each other. As for us, we were dragged one by one into the deputy principals office and "asked questions" concerning our whereabouts the night before, anyone without an iron clad alibi for the night before was grilled for as long as they could stand.

It was about midday before we heard that her boyfriend had been arrested. That was equally as shocking. Joel White was equally as respected and popular as his girl. The perfect couple suddenly didn't seem so perfect anymore. Apparently his alibi didn't check out. The rest of us were sent home, everyone driving away in a numb state of absolute shock. Even though it was supposedly over, I still got out of the car to walk my girlfriend to her door. Just in case.
That night it made the evening news. "Local schoolgirl battered and brutally raped' they said. And it was only the beginning.

Life was never quite the same after that. Tuesday was considered a day off to let people cope with everything. I heard murmurings through the grapevine about what was happening to Joel. I felt bad about it, I was on the basketball team with him and he sure as hell didn't seem like the kind of guy who would brutally batter and rape his own girlfriend and leave her hanging at school. He didn't seem like the type to do a thing like that.

I was right.
Wednesday morning it happened again.
The school had recently begun upgrading its facilities to make it more technologically oriented. Four new computer labs were being built up behind the science building. Yet to be completed, they were a haven of plastic sheeting, bits of wood and construction supplies. That's where they found her. The basketball team was there, walking back from morning training towards our lockers. We were the first to hear the screams. Me and three other guys ran full pelt towards the new building. On our way in, we encountered one of the builders coming out. He only just made it in time to evacuate his stomach into the gutter. What we saw next is burned into my memory. At first it didn't look human, just a mess of hair and blood. It soon took shape. She was naked, and she had been nailed to the wall. Three in each palm, one through each of her wrists and a couple holding each of her feet out, so she formed an X shape. The bloody nailgun lay nearby. There was blood everywhere, the body was bruised, sections of sharp broken rib showed through the skin of her torso. I looked at her face. It took me a while to recognise who it was; her mouth had been sewn closed with jagged ugly black stitches, as had her eyes. When I did the colour drained from my face. It was Amy. Amy Houseman, who I had known since we were both kids. Her mum made good cookies. I had many fond memories of times spent around her kitchen table just talking. We used to get our bikes and ride till we were free of our parents, far out of earshot, ride like we could escape. And now she was dead. She wasn't a stunner like Tessa, she wasn't super sporty or super academic, she was just Amy, and she had been a friend and ally for as long as I can remember. She had been raped. I felt ill, My knees gave out and I sank to the floor in disbelief, before vomiting into a shallow puddle on the concrete floor. I heard the official coroners report later. Her panties had been stuffed into her mouth and her lips sewn closed. Whoever he was had had his way with her, before nailing her to the wall. Then he supposedly took pot shots with the nailgun at her from a distance, the coroner having found 27 additional nails in various parts of her body and the plasterboard behind. Death had come from massive internal injury. The eyes had been sewn shut before she died. Big looping stiches with thick black thread. Apparently this murder was enough like the first to suggest that Joel was innocent. Not like it mattered. He took a bath with his toaster two days later and got fried. Given the circumstances, the school moved up the holidays by a week to give us all a chance to get over what had happened.

After that day I had horrible nightmares. I couldn't sleep. The doctor prescribed a sedative. Soon the pain faded a little. I spoke at Amy's funeral, and gradually tried to get over it. My holidays were spent for most part with my girlfriend; both of us curled up in each other's arms wondering what would happen, wondering who was next. It was in that time that I wanted to hold her forever. There was a slow return to normality. We went back to school. Police hung around, advising us not to let anyone go anywhere by themselves, especially after dark. At night cars patrolled the general area. For a time there was a 10 pm curfew imposed on people under the age of 25 from walking around the streets. Cops crawled everywhere, searching for the guy they perceived to still be out there. They made bold public statements about the fate of their killer, about how he would be caught, and caught soon. Yet they struggled to find any evidence or get a lead. The greatest false alarm of this time was when our student, Craig Delacroix had been busted climbing out of his girlfriend's bedroom window at 3am after a quickie, before being taken down to the police station and mercilessly grilled for three hours. The cold persisted but still, life went on, the work kept piling up and piling up, and the stress mounted.

It was about that time that Marie Combes was found in her car. She wasn't a student, but a youngish policewoman working undercover to try and nab the guy. Mouth sewn shut, glazed eyes staring into oblivion. The skin from her torso skilfully removed and draped over the passenger seat, like some sort of macabre seat cover. The ground staff found the car. Sitting in the student parking lot. The doors were all locked, and across the inside of the windscreen were two words scrawled in blood. NICE TRY.

Papers christened him "The Ridgefield ripper", and he was every bit as ghostlike as Jack the ripper himself. Noone had ever seen him, yet Marie Combes' car had been parked in the student lot since she had arrived in the morning. It had never moved, which had meant he had got her before she left school. He seemed to be able to slip in and out of places without making a sound or arousing suspicion. Fear soon became more and more widespread. Police were stunned at the loss of one of their own. They stepped up the investigation. People were fingerprinted and DNA tested, but to no avail. The ripper didn't seem to leave prints or DNA for suitable comparison. The papers began to speak of him like he was a demon, a foul spectre that could not be caught. It certainly seemed that way. While we were studying during the final term, he managed to kill another. They found this one in the thick wet mud of the bottom oval. The most alarming part being, there were no footprints anywhere near her body. It began to seem like they would never catch him, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Still time marched on.

The year was getting closer and closer to its end. And with it, people no longer had the time to worry about the ripper, Exams were on everybody's mind. The stress was immense. People were freaking out. Some having to go to hospital and chill for a few days because the combination of the onset of exams, late night study and a vicious serial killer loose in the neighbourhood was more than enough to fry a few brains. I know that I spent many hours studying by the weak light of my desk lamp. Often long into the morning. I drank too much caffeine to be healthy, and spent the weeks before exams cramming. Hoping that the knowledge would stick long enough for me to pass. I rarely slept, and if I did, it wasn't for more than a couple of hours. I don't think I was the only one. As soon as exam season started however, everyone started sleeping. I came home after my first exam and collapsed into bed, not moving for damn near 12 hours. The rigorous schedule took its toll on everyone involved, but we all looked forward at the light at the end of the tunnel. Exams flew past, Two sessions for English, Three for Chemistry and Physics, Three for maths, and Two for Economics and then they were done.

The morning of my last exam, the ripper struck again. This time, a priest had stumbled across it, in his church. There was not one, but thirteen separate girls had been murdered in the most grisly mass murder that this town had ever seen. Twelve girls were on their knees in the pews next to the aisle, six on the left, six on the right. heads bowed in silent prayer toward the altar. Their wrists were bound with barbed wire, and a six-inch industrial nail had been hammered through their palms, keeping them in a constant position of prayer. Their eyes had been sewn shut, and again, their panties had been placed in their mouths and the mouth ad been sewn closed. Another nail lay behind each kneecap, through muscle and bone and secured their knees to the floor, and kept them rigid in their humble positions of worship. The finishing touch was the crowns of barbed wire, firmly jammed against their heads. Each kneeling girl had a number carved deeply into her chest, just above where the ribs met the sternum. They were numbered one to twelve. The thirteenth girl had lain on the altar. Her body was tattered and destroyed. She too had been hammered in place using the six-inch nails through each of her arms and legs. Where her head was meant to be, there was nothing but a ragged bloody stump. It was not until later that the head was discovered, tucked neatly in the tabernacle, dripping deep crimson blood onto the pure white communion wafers. The body had been beaten, burned, bruised, cut several times, with a ghastly straight razor that lay beside the corpse. Scars of old wounds were scattered about her creamy white skin. Right down her middle was a gaping tear. Her heart had been removed. She had been cut open before she died. In the vacant space where the heart should have been, the medical examiner discovered a live cane toad. Police were amazed. They had never seen a crime scene of such amazing brutality. The guy was one sick son of a bitch. It was a while later that they looked up at the large crucifix on the wall above the altar. The killer had stuck a bloody hammer in one of the effigy's outstretched hands, and the girls heart in the other, neatly tucked within the chalice used for drinking communion wine.
The coroner had said that the girls had died progressively over the last week, a couple every day. The type of planning required for a crime of such a large scale was phenomenal.
After the church killings, the community was wary. The killer was never found.
As for me, exams finished, I passed, mercifully. I went off to schoolies week with all of my friends, and had a ball. Slowly we all adjusted to a new lifestyle after school and life went on.
The ripper didn't strike again.

More time passed. Life returned to something resembling normal. I have been at Uni for three years now. I meet old friends from my Senior class every few weeks for a beer or so, But we never talk about what happened. Three years in on my psychology degree, The stress is starting to mount again, it hasn't been as bad as this since senior year. I live with my girlfriend now. A small shitty apartment not far from uni. It's a rough neighbourhood, and it's a small space, but it's ours and that's all we need. I have my own car, a sunburst orange Datsun 120Y. We are talking about getting hitched. Both of us have left the final year of high school far far behind and all the stress and heartache that came with it. We were happy.

That was until yesterday morning, when I read his name in the paper. "Ridgefield Ripper strikes again".
The weather last night had cooled off, and an evening breeze had dragged a thick blanket of cold night mist down onto the plains. Sounded like perfect conditions for the bastard. Apparently the killer had not wanted to hear pleas for mercy last night. A three-inch metal spike had been rammed through her tongue. Similar spikes had been jammed into each of her eyes, and she stayed that way, while she was brutally raped and beaten like all the others. Her body was marred with burns, cuts and bites. Deep bites, which had torn away hunks of flesh. Her arms had been tied behind her back with big tight loops of razor wire, and her ankles had been fastened in a similar manner. A jogger had found her dangling from a tree in a park not far from my old high school, dangling from a noose made of barbed wire. They say she was still alive when she was hung there. Accompanying the article is a photo.
It looks like a yearbook photo.
A school photo. A young girl of about 18, she is smiling brightly. Her face full of hope for the future. No such luck now. She had beautiful honey blonde hair.

It smelled like strawberries. But the papers didn't know that...

I came home late last night. I left work on time, but arrived home three hours late. Jess was worried.
She is crying in the next room now. She thinks I was with another woman last night.

I think she might be right.

Don't Eat The Yellow Snow - Cold