The Truth (Mommy's House 2)

Part Four

The crackling film portrayed the poor boy, Cole, tied up and sitting in a chair. There was a bandana tied around his mouth, and his eyes looked tired yet stressed. His gaze darted around the dark room, which was only brightened by a lamp barely seen in the footage.

The audio of the video was a bit muffled, and cut out several times, but I was able to make out several words that were said to him.

The deep voice of a man cried out in frustration from behind the camera. "I can't understand when you talk! Please talk normal!"

Cole tried to jolt his body out of the restraints. His worried stare was locked behind the camera, and his chest was heaving rapidly.

Liv jotted some notes down on the notepad in front of her. I began to wish that I didn't agree to analyze the videos, but I wanted to make sure we knew everything about what was happening and who was connected to the case.

The second I saw the man approach the poor boy with a pocketknife, I stared down at the table to ease my anxiety. My stomach twisted and flipped around for what felt like the millionth time that week.

I heard a loud and muffled groan, most likely from Cole, but I couldn't even force myself to look at the screen. My eyes wandered to Liv as she flinched while looking at the television, her features illuminated by it. She shook her head and looked back at her paper, pulling her lips into a straight line as she visibly fought back emotion.

Glancing back at the screen was a mistake. The knife cut into Cole's skin, and his eyes closed in pain while his head rolled back. The man continued to work his way through Cole's t-shirt, slicing it open and allowing blood to soak into the torn fabric.

The woman was nowhere in sight. I felt angry towards the fact that Jared's claims could have been correct. Through all the videos we had watched - the videos stalking the three children, the videos recording the children sleeping - they all involved the man and the woman was nowhere in sight.

But something still felt off. The man's behavior, it seemed almost like he was doing everything to please somebody else. Whenever he spoke, his sentences were broken and didn't make sense. The large, grown man sounded much like a child.

"I don't know if I can watch this anymore," I mumbled to Liv.

Her eyes wandered to mine. "I understand," she whispered, biting down on her lip and staring at the notes she was taking. "We still have an entire box full of videos that we have to analyze though. You can opt out if you need to, but I don't know if that's the best idea."

I looked at the table, my gaze tracing over every individual marking embedded in the cherrywood.

"We need you to investigate," she whispered. "You're one of the smartest we've got. We need someone like you to make conclusions, not somebody like..." she looked over towards Jared. "...him."

Another muffled noise came from the television, and I could hardly take any more. The poor boy on the screen looked more and more like my son with every second I watched.

My lungs were tight and my heart was racing in my chest. The tape ended and turned to white static, making Liv stand up and continue sifting through the box of tapes.

"That man is absolutely disturbed," Jared said from behind me, leaning back in his chair and exhaling. "This is some of the most fucked up shit I've ever seen."

I pulled Liv's notes in front of me and looked through them.

"I told you, James. That man is the mastermind behind all of this. The woman is nowhere to be seen," Jared told me.

I looked over to him. "You're right. But how do you explain what Cole himself said? He said 'the woman who took us'. There's got to be more to this."

"Sometimes victims become attached to people who kidnap them. I forget what it's called, but that's probably what the kid has. He's trying to protect that man's image, even though he's dead as a doornail. I wonder who killed him," Jared said with a long sigh.

I nodded, purely to shut him up. "That's probably it. But we still have a lot more to investigate."

Liv plopped the box down and looked between the two of us. "This was buried in the box. Maybe this can give us the actual answers we need."

I looked at the tape in her hands, and even in the dark room, I saw that it was labelled "my life without you". I tilted my head to the side and opened my notebook as Liv ejected the previous tape and slid the new one in.

The screen was white static, until a grainy image of two children sleeping in a room came on the screen. Liv pressed play, and in the bottom right corner was the date. JAN 30, 1983.

The camera was shaky as it showed Bella and Elliot, slumped against the wall and sleeping soundly in the basement room that we had just searched. Bella was clad in a dirty, blood-stained and very revealing dress, with matted hair. Elliot was in a dirty t-shirt and jeans, his hair also messy and long around his small face.

"Hi, Steven. I wanted to make this film to show you how great I am doing without you," said a horrifyingly raspy voice from behind the camera. It had to be the woman. "Those are our two children - the slut and... my angel, but he's annoying sometimes."

I recoiled and jotted down what the woman had just said on the paper in front of me.

The video then showed the woman walking out of that room, and walking into the room on the right side - the one we had also searched. There was quick breathing from behind the camera, before she set it down on the floor, showing an image of the dirty mattress lit up by the lamp.

Then, something hit the filthy mattress hard. The woman must have pushed Cole onto it, because she then picked the camera up and propped it up on something to show both her and Cole.

The woman was who had been found dead with the wound in her neck. The one Bella had cried out was "Mommy", and who she had told me she murdered. The woman was very thin, with wrinkles all around her face and small, dark eyes. She had very wiry, ginger hair and drawn-on eyebrows.

Cole looked even weaker than the previous video. His eyes had dark circles under them, and his shirt was off, exhibiting the many wounds on his chest. He had the same gag around his mouth, a bandana, and his arms were tied behind his back.

"This is our son. He looks a lot like you, doesn't he? Say hi to the camera," she said, reaching out to grab onto his shoulders. He flinched away from her, and it reminded me of when he flinched away from me.

Cole's light eyes squinted towards the camera, before he then looked back at the woman. He didn't even have fear in his eyes - they seemed void of emotion. That was one of the most horrifying aspects of the video.

"He's just shy. He sometimes gets time away from the slut and the annoying one in the other room. Because he's so special and handsome, isn't that right?" the woman asked him with a large smile that showed her bright, yellow teeth, as she leaned closer to him.

Cole rolled his eyes and looked away, which made the woman visibly angry.

She grabbed onto his arm and forced him to stand up, before she then grabbed the camera again. The film was shaky, but it finally steadied and showed her shoving Cole into the same room with Bella and Elliot.

"He's ungrateful," she said while slamming the door shut.

The camera moved towards the staircase leading up to the house, and the footage shook rapidly as the stairs creaked, showing that the woman was going upstairs.

Once she entered the house, she immediately filmed a man at the counter with his head buried in his arms. I assumed it was the man in the previous video - the man who was also found dead.

"There's my idiot excuse for a boyfriend," the woman said, briefly filming him.

Then, she walked more with the camera, before panning it towards the window. Outside of the window was the familiar house across the street.

"That's my boss' house. He will be purchasing our daughter, and I feel great knowing she will be in good hands."