Savage Beauty - Peggy Webb Page 0,54
few rusty-colored smears that looked like dried blood.
He crooked his finger at her. “Come closer.”
She’d forgotten to ask Toni if Wyler was dangerous. What was the true nature of his breakdown? What were the lasting effects?
As she moved closer, she could see a pattern to the scribbles. This appeared to be some sort of timeline. She started reading at the top.
Clive chopped off his finger with a carving knife.
Poe’s Raven, black tea rose. An evil plan.
Elizabeth, a yellow floribunda rose. Consolation. “There are left behind living beloveds.” Oh, Mama, dead, dead, dead.
The entry was followed by a smear of blood. Chills ran through her. “What is this?”
“Read.”
Heaven and Earth, red Grandiflora rose, all the blood, all the bones.
Song of a Second April, white tea rose, a lesson:, death creates beauty.
Indifference, pink floribunda, 3 roses, one girl.
With growing fear, Lily continued to read. She lost count of the number of roses Wyler listed, followed by either a cryptic message or a quote from a line of poetry. He was methodical in his use of quotation marks to distinguish between the two.
About a third of the way down the list, she came to a message that stopped her cold.
The Vanishing Red, oh the cruelty of Clive’s lessons, the horror of creation, the unbearable guilt, the tragedy of losing the greatest love of my life. I killed the girl to make the rose. I will never forgive myself.
She stepped back from the writings and covered her mouth to hold back her terror.
“Don’t be afraid.” His voice was gentle. “I won’t hurt you. I didn’t save Toni. I want to save you. And I want you to save me.”
“It this true? You murdered a girl to create a rose?”
“Yes. Clive taught me. It’s the Allistair family secret to our roses.”
She raced to grab the wastebasket, and leaned over it, heaving.
“He learned with his own finger.” Wyler spoke matter-of-factly and with almost no inflection, as if he were discussing the weather. “Human bones and blood make perfect bone meal and blood meal for the roses. The hair adds amazing nutrients to the fertilizer. The discarded parts make liquid gold.”
“The compost pile?” Her legs wouldn’t hold her. She sank onto the sofa, still holding the waste basket against her chest. Her horror was now a living, writhing thing inside her, growing bigger by the minute.
“Yes.” He pointed to the wall. “There’s more.”
“I can’t read any more of this. I feel like I’m going to pass out.”
She leaned back against the sofa while Wyler hurried into an adjoining bathroom. He came with a wet washcloth, sat beside her then swabbed her throat and her face.
As he worked he continued the tale of horror in that toneless, emotionless voice. He told how Clive drugged the girls and took them in the dead of night, how one girl could create many roses, how he kept them alive in underground rooms connected to a secret passage in the library and accessed by removing the slim volume of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Poems.
She’d almost discovered the secret passageway. Except for Clive yelling at her, she would have. All their secrets and lies piled in on her. The weight of it almost knocked her to the floor.
“Are you feeling better now?”
How could she possibly feel better? She’d just learned that Clive was a serial killer, and he’d taught his son Wyler to do the same.
Suddenly the truth slammed her with the force of a three-hundred pound linebacker.
“Was Cee Cee here the whole time I searched for her? Underground?”
“Yes.”
She leaned over the wastebasket and lost her lunch. She felt almost detached, as if she were going into shock.
Pull yourself together. She had to call the police. She had to get out this room and get some air.
“How did Clive manage to handle Cee Cee? Did Graden help him?”
“No. Graden is not involved, and Clive didn’t take the girl.” The truth pierced her like a javelin hurled into her heart. “Stephen did.”
Terror shot her off the sofa where she could do nothing but turn in circles. She barely heard Wyler saying, “Stephen’s rose-girl creations are all on the wall. You need to finish reading.”
“It can’t be.” She repeated this over and over, a woman gone suddenly mad. “He’d never do such a thing.”
“Stephen is like Clive. He thrives on it. He tells me the details to torture me. He thinks I’m weak. He bragged what beautiful roses Debbie Waycaster and Cee Cee would make.”
Galvanized, Lily sprinted toward the door,