Sometimes when I closed my eyes I couldn’t see my father’s face. I felt cheated by my brain’s refusal to cooperate. I could see his broad shoulders. I could envision the soft, blue cotton shirt he wore that night he took me to get ice cream. I could even recall the shape of his hands. Large and calloused but gentle at the same time.
But it seemed when I tried to conjure his face, it remained obscured. It was a blur. A non-descript blob above his neck.
And then I’d see the pictures and I’d remember. It would be a relief. And then it would become a burden.
Because I wished I could forget everything the way I could forget his face. Conveniently.
My childhood had been a happy one. I had had a comfortable existence that was now, with the haze of hindsight, marred and ruined.
I remembered birthday presents and Christmas dinners. Hide and seek with Matthew and movie nights on the couch. My father used to make origami cranes and leave them on my windowsill before he would go on his fishing trips. Special secrets between the two of us that I never shared with anyone.
There were flashes of pure happiness that almost eradicated the foundation of pain.
Joy. Contentment.
Normalcy.
Until it wasn’t anymore.
Then it became tears and whispers and ugly suspicions.
The truth killed my childhood.
It became an invention created by a troubled mind.
I remembered walking home from school one day after my daddy went away. I was only eleven, barely old enough to understand the gravity of who my father was and what he had done.
Schoolmates had pelted me with vicious words and horrible taunts. They hurled the knives of accusation that had cut my skin. They had told me in their cruel, juvenile way, what my daddy was now known as.
The Nautical Killer.
The name, I would come to learn, was taken from the nautical star tattoo on the inside of his left wrist.
As a curious child, I had been fascinated by the blue points and decorative scrolls on his arm. I remembered tracing it with my finger and my father, only ever patient and tender in those brief stolen moments, telling me how it was designed to look like the old compass rose.
“So I can always find my way back home,” he had said.
Isn’t it strange how I could hear his voice but seemed to struggle to see his face? Until it flashed in front of my eyes at the most devastating times.
Like when I pulled out one of the dozens of newspaper articles I had collected over the years. Articles detailing his crimes. Spelling out for me the kind of monster he had been even as I tried to reconcile that with the memory of a loving, taciturn man who had been my hero.
The Nautical Killer.
The articles, the news channels, they all said the same thing.
Cain Langley, the man I called Daddy, had been responsible for the brutal murders of over twenty young women. Some victims they believed would never be found. And my father would never disclose.
Some secrets he would keep to himself.
These crimes spanned the better part of ten years.
Twenty girls not much older than I had been when he was finally arrested.
Twenty girls.
Why did I hate them almost as much as I hated him?
He was a systematic predator. His targets were chosen carefully. He was never impulsive but instead took the time to learn their habits, familiarizing himself with all elements of their lives. He chose young women with a clear purpose. They each fit a certain profile. The disconnected. The runaway. The lonely. The girl rebelling against a controlling family. He was a killer with a particular ritual that never deviated.
He’d choose his girl.
They were lonely. They latched onto his freely given smiles and warm affection.
They never stood a chance against his irresistible charm.