The Screaming Room by Thomas O'Callaghan

under the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Of course, he’d lay out the extra bucks for an overnight delivery. What good was the game if it didn’t sing?
    â€œAngus!”
    His sister was a screamer. It usually meant she saw a spider.
    â€œWhat is it this time?” he hollered back.
    â€œIt’s got a zillion legs! Come quick.”
    He put down the chip and headed inside to deal with the skittering demon. En route, he remembered the last time he heard those lungs in high-pitch mode. It wasn’t that long ago.
    Â 
    â€œAngus!” It sounded more like the shriek of a wounded hawk than a human scream, and it awakened him. It was nearing four in the morning, and the small house was otherwise quiet. Where was his sister? And, more important, where was Father?
    â€œAngus!”
    He followed the anguish-filled scream to the cellar, finding his sister, stripped naked and bound to the porcelain enamel-topped table in the room behind the furnace. Father lay sprawled in the corner, his arms and face covered in sweat; his pants at his knees; a honing blade at his side. He was breathing heavily and reeking of alcohol. Had he succumbed to its anesthetizing effects? Angus hoped so. He shook him. Father made no sound or movement.
    He approached Cassie. Tears trickled down her face, where eruptions of exposed tissue oozed blood.
    â€œHe raped me after butchering my face,” she whimpered.
    â€œWhy didn’t you call out before…?”
    â€œHe said he’d kill me if I made any noise. I waited until I figured he’d passed out.”
    â€œShsss. It’s okay. I’m here.”
    â€œPlease. Help me.”
    Angus unfastened leather straps, took Cassie into his arms, and carried her up to their cramped sleeping quarters, his eyes coming to rest on the corner of the glass face of a Pachinko machine that they had ceased to play with. It served now as a catchall for soiled clothing. Shoving the laundry aside, he used his fist to shatter the glass and collected the ball bearings contained inside. Running to his dresser, he retrieved a sock and poured in the half-inch spheres. Thus armed, he returned to the room and beat his father to death.

Chapter 26
    Thomlinson, Aligante, and Driscoll were seated around the Lieutenant’s desk in what had become a war room. A detailed map of the city was displayed on an upright particle-board behind them, red thumb tacks denoting where the bodies had been found. Driscoll was discouraged. To date, there had been no calls to the Tip Line from anyone seeing anything suspicious in the two restrooms, on the bridge, or onboard the USS Intrepid. These sons of bitches were good, he thought.
    He glanced over to the corner of his desk where the two-inch letters of the New York Post ’s headline stared back at him: DOUBLE TROUBLE !! He had alerted the media that the string of killings may have been committed by a set of male and female identical twins. The populace at large was urged to report any sightings of such look-alikes.
    Thomlinson was already in the loop, so the Lieutenant took the time to explain the significance of Turner syndrome in twin births to Margaret.
    When he had completed his X and Y summation, it was Thomlinson’s turn to speak.
    â€œOur search produced four sets of twins that fit the profile. The oldest pair is in their early fifties, the youngest is sixteen.”
    â€œFour sets from all that newsprint? Some rare condition,” said Margaret.
    â€œTurner syndrome itself isn’t so rare,” Driscoll said. “It hits one in two thousand females. It’s when you factor in the possibility of it affecting identical twins that the numbers get infinitesimal. In any case, it’s their DNA that’ll be their downfall, rare or not.”
    Thomlinson continued with his report.
    â€œI kept the initial search inside the United States. Leticia is checking on similar articles abroad. She’ll let me know what she