What is a baby window? The answer is not something that can be forgotten. Fair warning.
‘Roué’ was the word that was scrawled hundreds of times, like a Stephen King trope, over the inner walls of a suspected abductor’s lightless home. According to Google, a roué is a debauched man – a sleaze-ball who obsesses over women and seduces them. The writing didn’t frighten me. There’s nothing intimidating about criminals who employ theatrics to spook people. I’ve spent ten years on the force, and that’s usually my psychoanalysis of the suspects I meet.
In this case, I was wrong. That word didn’t even begin to explain the atrocities the abductor committed. Still, I’ll refer to him as Roué for the sake of anonymity, and I’ll call myself Detective Louise Smith. Seems redundant to conceal names, I know. The horrifically-specific details of this post will undoubtedly be enough to identify me, but being fired might be for the best.
This might save someone from a demented man who talks about baby windows.
On the evening of May 1st, acting on probable cause, I broke into Roué’s residence without a warrant. Within his home, I witnessed horror beyond what I believed to be humanity’s limits. A scene so vile that I doubt the finer details would ever make it to news circuits.
Man abducts several women and assaults detective.
You might end up seeing such a headline in the press, but that’s not even half of the story.
From late July to early April, nearly a dozen women in this town went missing. The ages of the victims ranged from twenty to thirty. There were no leads. Two of the victims had a mutual friend, but nothing ever came of that connection. Given that it’s a small town, most people know each other. And the most unsettling aspect of each abduction was that the perpetrator took women from crowded areas without detection.
So, what led me to Roué on May 1st? An anonymous trail of clues. Hand-written notes about eleven brides, baby windows, and a home in the country. A series of numeric puzzles. Together, the pieces of evidence led my team to his front door. Like any maniac, he wanted his work to be found.
“Is anyone here?” I asked, climbing the stairs with a torch in my outstretched hands. “This is Detective Smith. Please announce yourself.”
A rattling noise from the attic filled me with a deep, animalistic fear. Anywhere but the attic. That was all I could think as I took hesitant strides across the landing. My light caught the ladder, which had already been pulled to the carpet. I knew it was a trap. Come alone, Detective Smith. A clichéd demand on one of the notes. I shouldn’t have agreed, but I knew my fellow officers were hiding on the other side of the road. Besides, I feared the abductor would do something horrible if I were to enter the building with anyone else.
Too late, it turned out.
“I’m heading into the attic!” I hoarsely shouted, climbing the rungs of the ladder.
As I ascended towards the unknown blackness, I heard more rattling noises and muffled voices. My chest tightened in terror as I braced myself to find the eleven victims. Based on the commotion, I hoped they were alive and well. When I swung the end of my torch across the room, I discovered they were indeed alive, but not well.
Eleven unclothed women hung from the ceiling of the unlit attic, arms and legs hoisted by meat hooks which had elasticated their bloodied skin. Their entire world was darkness because Roué had stitched a large, circular sheet of flesh over each woman’s eyes, nose, and mouth. He had, even more heinously, carved bloody smiles into their new faces.
I emptied the contents of my stomach onto the floor, which briefly drowned out the haunting chorus of muffled wails and groans from the suspended women. But as I approached the hanging victims, I realised that I’d only glimpsed a fraction of the ghastliness Roué had inflicted upon them. I saw what he’d used for the circular sheets of flesh – something more terrible than anything I could have conjured in my wildest nightmares.
The skin had been removed from each woman’s pelvis, and each gaping hole was covered by layers of a translucent, plastic material – polyethylene – which held their innards in place. More specifically, the material served to secure their bulging uteruses, which also bore gaping holes, sealed with plastic. And when I bent down to check that all eleven women were still breathing, I found myself eyeballing their unborn foetuses through plastic windows.
I dry-heaved, thankful that I’d already emptied my gut during the initial shock. I prayed the material would be sturdy enough to hold the women together until help arrived. They’ve lasted this long, I thought, horrified at that idea.
“Do you like the windows to my children?” A voice giggled from the darkness.
I spun around in time to see a short, shrivelled man barrelling towards me with a syringe in his hand. I managed to catch the deranged lunatic’s wrist before he could inject anything into me.
“Backup!” I screamed into my radio. “They’re coming. It’s over, Roué.”
The wicked man grinned, and a wave of dread enveloped me. “No, sweetheart. I’ve prepared a special place for us. I can’t wait to cut a baby window into you.”
I screamed, propelling the lunatic off me with all of my upper strength. We both rose steadily to our feet, and my heart resumed beating when I realised the syringe was no longer in his hand. But the look on his face was terrifying enough. How could such a frail man instil such horror in me? It might’ve been that he seemed lesser than a man. There was something direful about the joy on his face, as we stood in a room of such unfathomable awfulness. The most evil things on Earth truly are human.
“You look sad, Louise,” He said, smiling. “So did the others. But I can fix that.”
He launched his body towards me for the second time, and I slammed the sole of my boot squarely into the maniac’s scrawny, malnourished torso. He catapulted through the attic door, and there was a resounding thud as his body connected with the upstairs landing.
Scurrying sounds followed.
When I ran to the attic opening and looked down, the hallway was empty. And less than ten seconds later, the other officers burst into the house. Two of them entered the attic, and they immediately discouraged the others from coming up – both of them vomited. Over the following twenty-four hours, three Crime Scene Investigators asked to be taken off the case. I doubt the ones who stayed will ever be the same.
Of course, compared to what those women endured, it’s nothing.
And it’s not over, is it? I think it might be time to move far way. There’s a misconception that detectives love closure on a case. Not true. I don’t want to catch Roué.
I have nightmares of ending up with a baby window if I were to try.