Women Who Stay, 22

Chapter 1 ... Chapter 21

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Maybe it was Mark's confidence that I would pick up on the house's energy. Maybe it was his admission to feeling uncomfortable in the pool area. Or maybe it was just that the pool was a very bad place, where many men had died. Whichever way, my teeth were on edge as we walked through a dark basement hallway, chasing the drifting scent of chlorine.

Objectively, it was a beautiful place. The water was a pristine aqua, the surrounding marble tiling spotless. There was a floor-to-ceiling window wall letting in an abundance of light. And still, I felt a darkness pressing in from the corners of the room.

"Feel it now, huh?" Mark whispered.

"I'm sure it's just... what we know," I stuttered. "From Brian Hart. Biasing us."

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Brian Hart was the only man to meet Antonio's darker half and live. In 1993, Antonio picked him up at Twister, a gay bar in Trenton, under the alias Cornelius Hemming. They'd shared a night, and three months later Brian spoke to Detective Stern.

BH: Cornelius told me he was from out of town, housesitting a huge mansion for his boss. He was really nice. So when he asked me if I wanted to get out of there, see the place, I thought, why not? He said it had a pool. Said we could... swim there. He drove us. But when we got there, things got weird.

He took us in the back way, straight to the pool. Immediately, I regretted going with him. There were mannequins, all over. Really creepy. I asked him about them. He told me he got lonely there.

DS: Didn't you think that was odd? That if he was housesitting, he'd brought in a bunch of mannequins?

BH: Well, yeah, now that you mention it. But I was a little drunk, a little high. Not thinking straight. He brought out a video camera, and grabbed a pool hose, and told me he wanted to choke me with it. 'No,' I said. 'Absolutely not.' But he got angry. Told me I could do it to him first. That it felt really, really good. Made you... made orgasms so much better. And he'd done it loads of times, was safe to do. So I did it to him, in the pool, and then he did it to me.

DS: Why'd you let him do it?

BH: *pause* I felt like he'd kill me if I didn't let him do it.

DS: Did he threaten you?

BH: No. But he got really intense. So I let him do it, but I faked passing out. Let myself slip under the water until he released the hose. Never seen a man so frightened, when I popped back up. And so we kept doing it, back and forth.

DS: You kept going?

BH: By that point, I had an idea of the danger I was in. I thought if I could outlast him -- it must've been 3AM by that time, or something -- then I could figure a way out. And that's what I did. He fell asleep on a lounger. I stayed awake the whole night. In the morning, he said something like 'Oh, you're still here!' And I was like, yeah, you drove me here. My car's still at the bar. And so he drove me back.

DS: Well, it sounds like you made some bad choices that night. But you're fine, yeah?

BH: No, you're not listening. I saw him at Twister again last week, talking to Horace. And now Horace is gone. You need to find Cornelius Hemming.

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Read on to Chapter 23