Not Like He Seemed (An Ilse Beck FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 2)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

The spruce trees and low hanging boughs welcomed Ilse Beck back into familiar territory. Sunlight glimmered through the windshield, illuminating the one-buck McDonald’s coffee in its cup holder. Ahead, as the road dipped, a familiar low-hanging mist hovered against a backdrop of unrelenting green and brown foliage. The air through the cracked window of the rental car brought to mind images of badgers in burrow, squirrels scampering from branches, and sparrows fluttering their wings as they flitted from tree to tree.

Ilse wanted to smile... But a tremoring hand left the steering wheel, reaching up to brush her dark hair in front of her maimed ear.

Everything about the Black Forest in Germany seemed familiar. Not just because she'd grown up here, but because her new home, outside Seattle in Washington State seemed a near carbon copy of the rolling hills, deep forests, and misty roads.

One could never quite leave their past behind them. And yet, now returned to her own stomping grounds, Ilse was reminded of just how much of her past she'd managed to transpose to her new life in America.

“Brown hair. Brown eyes. Forty-two. Bundy. Thirty victims. November twenty-fourth. Forty-six.” she murmured beneath her breath, using the memory trick to try and calm her nerves.

The rental she'd taken direct from the airport dipped over the hill, sending bits of weathered asphalt skittering off to the shoulder. A ping suggested one of the rocks had struck the metal rail overlooking a short drop towards a winding creak.

Ahead, as she dipped down the road, her eyes settled on the true reason for crossing the North Atlantic.

Freiburg.

Small, quaint homes and shops looked exactly as they had decades ago. The same sort of Bavarian architecture with n***d oak balconies and anachronistic Waelderhaus designs that were not dissimilar to the Washington town of Leavenworth she'd settled near. So many threads, all of them connected.

Her eyes strained through the windshield, and she clicked the wipers, swiping a layer of fog free so she could see more clearly.

“Schizotypal personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder. Psychotic disorder. Dahmer. Blonde hair. Ninety-four. Seventeen victims. May twenty-first,” she murmured, faster now. Her eyes darted towards the small digital clock on her dash. Only 1:02.

Two minutes late. She'd intended to arrive right at 1:00 PM, exactly. A slow flicker of anxiety filled her chest. If she'd been two minutes early, she simply would have pulled to the side of the road and waited before proceeding into Freiburg.

But now... Two minutes late.

She'd been late before. Being late bothered her more than almost anything.

Ilse bit her lip, allowing the pain to jar her senses. Her eyes trailed from one building to the next as she pulled through the small town. The same town where the park ranged who'd found her all those years ago had brought her.

Her mind flashed... She pictured a shuttered window. Remembered the sound of hurried voices and panicked words. Felt hands at her back, pushing, pushing... And then, the sound of rapid footfalls as she escaped up the dusty road, fleeing...

Run, run, run... Her siblings had demanded that she run, and so she had.

Ilse shuddered, reaching up and pressing a finger to her maimed ear. Just then, a car pulled out of the parking spot next to her. Ilse yelped, slamming on her brakes and jolting forward, her head nearly ricocheting off the steering wheel.

She froze, breathing heavily and watching as an older woman with severe features peered into her rearview mirror, scowling at Ilse.

Dr. Beck raised an apologetic hand, still breathing heavily and watching as the old, silver Volkswagen pulled from the curb and began to meander up the road. The old lady had been patronizing Schultz Appliance.

Ilse frowned towards the double, square-framed windows. A small, brass bell hung on the outside of the door, beneath a green and blue awning. She stared at the hardware store for a moment, feeling a flicker of memory.

Her father had often visited this place... Except back then, it had been called something else.

Hämmer und Nägel. The store had changed. Even the window frames were painted green now instead of the old, faded pink they'd once been.

In fact, as she continued slowly through town, behind the old woman's sedan, Ilse realized just how much of the town had changed. Many of the buildings were still quaint, Bavarian. But the shops, the stores, the businesses, didn't have their old, small-town charm. Many were now two stories, even three, with bright signs and newly painted facades. A few of the signs even boasted English names, suggesting the nine-hundred-year-old forest city had become something of a tourist destination.

Her father would have loathed this. He'd always preferred his privacy. Of course, given what he'd kept in his basement, she supposed she couldn't blame him. Or, well, perhaps she could. Perhaps there was nothing but blame to ascribe to the old man.

That was why she was here, wasn't it? To revisit? The boogeyman was no longer snoring in her closet. Now, step by step, he seemed to be emerging. Not just in her memories, and not just in the brief and lucid recollection of her trauma in both dream and experience.

But, also, in very b****y reality.

She shivered, remembering her sister, and how Heidi had come at her, trying to kill her. The victims Heidi left in her wake. The way she'd stalked Ilse, trying to make her pay...

For being late.

Ilse had escaped. Three weeks had passed before she'd sent help. She still couldn't remember why. What had caused the delay, exactly?

Her fingers clutched more tightly at her steering wheel as she rolled slowly past an old, double-lot building that had once been a general store. Now, the structure was in ill-repair, boarded up and—by the looks of the notice out front calling for a zoning meeting at town hall—soon to be slated for destruction.

Distracted now, as she turned up a familiar street, Ilse realized she'd rolled through a red stop sign with white trim. She cursed, slamming her brakes halfway through the intersection. Someone leaned on their horn. And she winced as an old green sedan veered around her, someone shouting out the window as they passed.

“Sorry,” she muttered quickly. “Sorry!” she tried to call louder through the window.

But her voice felt stuck in her throat. Thankfully, no police had been in view of the traffic infraction. Ilse gritted her teeth, glancing around the unfamiliar town. A marriage of quaint and modern had slowly swallowed the dusty, unpopulated village she'd once remembered from the trips her father had often taken here, especially to the hardware store. Once in a while, if they'd been on very good behavior, the children had been allowed—one at a time—to occasionally accompany him. They'd remain in the backseat of the truck, often enough, the doors child-proofed to prevent escape.

But as she looked around, it all seemed so unfamiliar...

Why had she come, exactly?

“Father wasn't alone... Not alone upstairs...”

She shivered at Heidi's dying words. Ilse had never realized that her father had worked with an accomplice before.

An accomplice. Someone had lived upstairs with her old man. Someone who'd been part of it all. If there really was an accomplice, then she had to find them. A mystery within a mystery. Her father, according to Heidi, was now in prison, locked away.

The accomplice though?

Perhaps not so much. And what about her other siblings? The others who'd managed to survive that horrible basement?

Her memory flashed again. She heard the snip of scissors, felt a sudden agony along the side of her face. Instinctively, Ilse's hand darted to her cheek, covering the scar leading from her missing earlobe down to her chin. She swallowed, brushing her dark hair forward again.

What exactly had happened in that basement? She could only remember glimpses. Who was the accomplice? And why, all those years ago, had she managed to escape, but failed to bring help for three whole weeks? Three weeks in which her father had exacted his vengeance on those who'd remained in the basement.

Heidi had blamed Ilse for that. Her sister had been furious enough to hunt Ilse down and try to kill her. Two of their siblings had already been killed, apparently—at least according to Heidi's testimony-- though the words of a serial killer couldn't be trusted. Given Ilse's line of work as a trauma psychologist, specializing in those who'd survived encounters with psychopaths, she knew this well enough.

But still... something had drawn her out of her small lake home office. Something had brought her over the Atlantic back to Germany. Back, in fact, to the Black Forest itself.

Not the trees, the mist, the rivers and lakes and small, quaint towns. None of that appealed to her in that moment—rather, she was interested in the things buried beneath it all. The forgotten things.

The old general store was boarded up. The hardware store had been renamed and remodeled.

Familiar, yet different. Old stomping grounds... but modernized. Still, she hadn't come all this way for nothing.

There was one place she knew wouldn't have changed. She'd already looked it up online. The place where all of this had started.

Her old childhood home.

A cool shiver crept up Ilse's back, causing her spine to tingle. She fixed her eyes through the windshield now, leaving town and picking up pace, flooring the gas pedal.

What would be waiting for her back home?

Did she want to know?

She needed a lead. Some sort of tether to it all. Maybe they'd left something behind. Maybe she'd jar her memory...

She gritted her teeth, murmuring her memory trick beneath her breath. She hadn't come all this way to lose her nerve now.

One way or another, she would find what had happened to the others, find why she'd delayed three weeks to bring help all those years ago, and... perhaps most importantly, find her father's accomplice.

***

Her feet crunched pine needles as Ilse slowly exited her car at the mouth of the long driveway. Now, she stood in the deep forest. Dark, looming trees embraced the horizon, crowding out the cottony white clouds and the lingering blue of a sun-streaked horizon. Leaves were thicker, pinecones larger, the odor of the bark and misty wood more pronounced. The scent of petrichor and detritus lingered on the air while the sound of critters and creatures emanated through the woods.

Ilse's feet settled softly against the bed of old leaves and moss. Even the driveway had been neglected, with large branches, some of them moldered and hollowed, blocking entrance to the driveway.

She stared at the blocked path. Ahead, through the trees, she spotted the glimmer of blue.

A lake.

For a moment, her eyes fixated on the water, through the low branches, and over the tangled shrubbery. An intense sense of... familiarity and longing and... and something worse that she couldn't quite place roused in her chest.

Ilse found herself breathing heavily now. She brushed her hair past her ear, and then took in a deep breath, counting slowly in her mind. Even now, as she stood facing the old driveway, she managed to track her emotional response. Intrusive memories, emotional distress, physical manifestation of suppressed trauma, cue-prompted reactionary thinking... But just because she understood what was happening didn't mean she could prevent it.

Her eyes flicked to the old lake again, and then back to the branch-strewn driveway. She shot a look towards her parked sedan, wishing she could proceed on wheels. But then, with a sigh, she began to move, picking up pace.

She stepped over the branches, hurrying across the trail, her eyes ahead, risking only the occasional glance to avoid tripping on the ill-maintained pathway. The scent of lake water mixed with the old forest.

In memory, she glimpsed her small, frail form stumbling through these very trees. Gasping, panting, wild-eyed and desperate. The sound of crunching pinecones, the screams from her own mouth. Ilse swallowed, closing her eyes for a moment, trying to steady her breathing.

Then, another step, her eyes fluttering, she spotted the house.

Ilse went still all of a sudden, motionless in the middle of the dirt road, peering up at the familiar two-story home.

She'd expected a flood of memories, perhaps a sudden burst of emotion, maybe even tears.

But now, she found as she stood there, all she sensed was familiarity... and sadness.

The old, dilapidated two-story house in the deep woods wasn't a happy place. Now, outlined against the lake, the house was in disrepair, falling apart. Old windows were boarded up with beams stained in black mold. Cobwebs gathered in thick sheets beneath the balcony floor. The wooden stairs leading to the patio were all but eaten away, and Ilse spotted some sort of nest wedged against the bottom step.

Slowly, she began to move again, approaching the old, abandoned home.

No sound, no movement, just silence. Even the critters in the trees and woods seemed quieter now, giving the old house a wide berth. Some places just exuded an aura... An old, noxious odor of... Evil? Danger? Rot?

Everything around her, from the forest floor to the dipping boughs whispered decay. But nothing more so than the run-down, rotten home against the backdrop of the blue lake.

Her tongue darted out, wetting her lips as she approached the bottom step. Her hand grazed the rough, splintered rail. The moment she touched it, her mind swam. In memory, she heard the loud thud of a truck door being slammed. Then, the sound of booted feet moving around the truck towards the passenger door, unlocking it from the outside so Ilse—Hilda Mueller at the time—could climb from the back.

She remembered a hand, tight gripping her wrist, dragging her away from the same door she now approached willingly.

Ilse shivered, taking another step, daintily, careful lest her foot fall through the old, worn wood. The steps felt soggy beneath her feet, the rail itself creaked and tipped under her movement.

She breathed slowly, glancing towards that same wrist. The wrist her father had gripped. Now, a thin, looping tattoo circled this wrist like a manacle, visible just past the hem of her sweater. She preferred sweaters and had a penchant for turtlenecks with sweatpants and sandals. Ilse also rarely wore makeup and didn't have any piercings, nor did she enjoy headbands or scrunchies in her dark, nearly black hair.

Take captive every thought... The tattoo on her wrist read.

She exhaled softly, staring at the tattoo, and closing her eyes once more. She took the next three steps in one giant stride, breathing heavily as if after a sprint as she stood on the patio now.

The front door was open. Or, more accurately, there was no front door. Perhaps someone had taken it, or, judging by the splintered remains, squatters had come through, using it for firewood. She shivered, staring at the gaping entrance to her old childhood home. Her heart hammered, and she murmured softly to herself, “Sensory cue prompting physical response. Clammy hands—impulse imminent.”

Heightened emotions, swirling chemicals. Nothing more. A house couldn't hurt her. Couldn't hurt anyone. The man who'd once owned this home had been in prison now, for nearly two decades.

She took another step towards the open doorway.

This wasn't normally the entrance she'd been allowed to use. Normally, months at a time, she'd been kept in the basement with her brothers and sisters. On the rare occasions she'd been allowed outside, her father would return her to the basement through the back door, which was closer to the basement stairs.

As she approached the front door, now, it almost felt... f*******n.

She paused in the yawning mouth of the dilapidated entryway. More cobwebs draped the frame above her. Small, dead spiders curled in on themselves rested against their own webs. Leaves and twigs and animal scat littered the visible portion of the entryway. She swallowed again, moving to enter the front door, but then feeling a flash of horror.

The front entrance wasn't for her...

It never had been.

What if he found out she'd used it?

She closed her eyes, briefly, fingers massaging her wrist tattoo. She knew it was irrational. Just chemicals. Just memories...

And yet... one woman could only summon so much courage in a day. Gritting her teeth, legs stiff, arms swishing like a marching soldier, she turned away from the door, moved back down the stairs and circled the house towards the back entrance.

She ducked beneath thorny vines, her sweater catching some burs. Cautiously, picking the burs from her sleeve, she rounded the house towards the back door. Casting a glance towards the lake and inhaling the scent of lake water, she reached for the door handle.

It seemed fitting, somehow, the back door was still shut, while the front didn't even have a door.

The door creaked on its hinges as she slowly pushed it in. For a moment, behind her, she heard a soft splash and turned sharply, but spotted ripples in the middle of the lake.

A falling branch? A fish?

She shivered. No sounds from the house. No visible movement around her.

Ilse Beck pushed through the back door and stepped into her old family home.