The Vacation Killer

Image from Pixabay

The Vacation Killer

G.B. Carmichael

Copyright © 2022 G. B. Carmichael

Cover Design by G. B. Carmichael

Cover Art by Russ Banks; used by permission

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. This book is subject to copyright laws in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and elsewhere.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, relationships, dialogue, and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination and should not be construed as portrayals of real events.

ISBN (e-book): 9781958418017

Publisher: Lineage Independent Publishing,

Marriottsville, MD, USA

Maryland Sales and Use Tax Entity: Lineage Independent Publishing, Marriottsville, MD 21104

hurdmp@lineage-indypub.com

To women survivors and strong women, some of whom have shared some of life’s journey with me. Women, who like me, were lucky to have survived at all... Sadly, some do not.

Contents

Foreword

Out of The Darkness, a Heroine Rises

Chapter One: An Introduction

Chapter Two: The Making of a Killer

Chapter Three: The Highlander

Chapter Four: The Child

Chapter Five: Mercy, Elizabeth and Jacqui

Chapter Six: Time to Balance the Books

Chapter Seven: Two Down, Two to Go

Chapter Eight: The Breeders

Chapter Nine: Bye, Bye, Mummy Dear

Chapter Ten: The Italian Wedding

Chapter Eleven: The Sins of the Father

Chapter Twelve: So Close

Chapter Thirteen: A Half Truth

Chapter Fourteen: Sister Beatrice

Chapter Fifteen: Father John’s Lunacy

Chapter Sixteen: And So the End Begins

Chapter Seventeen: The Demise of the Beast

Chapter Eighteen: Lorna’s Fatal Mistake.

Chapter Nineteen: The End of the Road

Chapter Twenty: The Swiss Bank

Chapter Twenty-One: Revelations.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Auntie Ashleen

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Gathering

Chapter Twenty-Four: Catherine and Fraser

Epilogue: Who was Lorna Meehan?

Acknowledgments

Foreword

When I first proposed the idea of a full-length novel based on G. B. Carmichael’s novella, The Vacation Killer Stories, published in her first book, Canongate to Cannon Shell, she was agog with trepidation. The subsequent exchanges we had via e-mail and live chat were at first filled with self-doubt. Is there really enough to make a full-length novel interesting? was one of the recurring questions.

Here we are, several months later, and a full-length novel, The Vacation Killer is in print. G. B. Carmichael let the characters tell their stories, and she swore at times that they were sitting on her shoulder, whispering in her ears. Because of the way the story unfolded, I believe that the characters did speak to her and guide her words to paper.

I am honored to be the editor and publisher for this book, and I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Michael Paul Hurd

Author/Publisher

Lineage Independent Publishing

Out of The Darkness, a Heroine Rises

Who will nourish me, protect me

and Love me, as I need to be loved,

whispered the broken warrior crone.

From the great ethereal space of darkness,

Roared a silent, No-One.

She lowered her head, and communed

With her inner spirit.

And did, as ever, raised her chin.

in defiance of the silence.

She picked up her sword, smiled,

Straitened her spine, stood tall,

And ROARED back into the ether,

I WILL. 

Chapter One: An Introduction

She was single from choice: it suited her lifestyle. She kept her dark side well hidden. The staff at the infant school where she worked would have described her as a dedicated and compassionate teacher who loved the children and lived for her work.

Hah! That’s all they knew. They would stand united in their defence of her, rolling their eyes at the very thought of any impropriety far less criminal activity.

But they were so very wrong, Lorna Feeney was a sadistic inventive serial killer.

Nowadays she holidayed in a different country every year. She lived for those weeks off, being her true self.

She would seduce some young man or woman, and occasionally rich older men; they were always so terribly grateful and eager to spoil her. Ultimately though, it was the fierce passion of youth that always excited her to a higher place and left her wanting. When she had had her fill of enchanting and teasing her victim, she would whisper a rendezvous time and place, then strike.

She was devious enough to always ensure it would seem impossible for her to have made it to the meeting point. She always had an alibi; she could never have been there. The destruction of her latest lover would be deemed accidental. They never put two and two together.

Her first kill had been a friend from school, her first sexual encounter. She was still flush from their erotic, if inexperienced, tumble in the back of a car. He had foolishly and incessantly teased her. She remembered nothing of what followed. When she came to herself again, he was dead, and she felt amazing.

His decomposed body wasn’t found for over ten years. She had been reborn that day, she was a dispenser of death!

She loved her life, and their deaths – at least that’s what she told herself.

Chapter Two: The Making of a Killer

Lorna Feeney

Saint Catherine’s children’s home was situated on the outskirts of Brighton. Lorna Feeney had been one of its resident children since she was found on the doorstep when she was about six years old. Her body had been covered in bruises, cigarette burns, cuts, and scabs. Her hair, matted and lice ridden, had to be shaved off. Her bones protruded beneath her undernourished skin.

All the ministrations, whether pleasant or painful, like the cleaning of the infected cuts, she endured without reaction. Lorna was so docile it was painful to watch. The physical damage was obvious.

Sadly, the damage to her psyche was unseen and yet to manifest itself. Psychiatric and psychological help for a child who was not acting out or totally withdrawn was bound to have been overlooked. Had the wisdom of today been available back then, many lives may have been saved, including poor Lorna’s.

She thrived under the care of the nuns and care workers there, at least for the first six months, Lorna thought herself in heaven. Sisters Beryl and Barbara were kind, caring, and encouraged her to mix. They took quite a shine to her and often pulled the prettiest of clothes from donations for her. They were aware, from medical reports and interviews by police when she was first found, that Lorna had been poorly cared for and cruelly used by her father and other adult men.

They had tried to locate her parents, but the home they once had in an area in the seediest part of the seaside town had been abandoned. They learned from neighbours that her parents were serious drug addicts who had to leave in a hurry after scoring on tick from the wrong people. They had disappeared. It was a miracle the child had survived at all in the squalor and filth she had endured.

Six months after her arrival and following diagnosis of early onset dementia, the benign and benevolent Mother Superior Kathleen was replaced by Sister Beatrice, a cold, unkind, and unhappy woman who was only ever observed to be close to showing pleasure when in the company of two of the priests. Then she would simper after them, hanging on their every word.

The two priests who evoked this response were Father Bernard and Father John. Sister Beatrice would be beside herself if she found she had failed to please them. On the other hand, if Father Liam and more so Father George’s voice were to be heard approaching, she would jump, as if an electric shock had been administered. Should they approach and speak to her, she was subservient and submissive, reminiscent of a whipped dog. She never dared to look into their faces when they spoke to her. Whenever one of these meetings occurred the good Sister was vicious to any and all upon whom she might happen. God help anyone who witnessed her obsequious grovelling. Many a back, leg or arm would sport the mark of her stick, delivered with a heavy hand as she passed in her debased rage.

Father George had requested Sister Beatrice to escort the now seven-year-old Lorna to his office. She was brutal whenever she encountered Lorna or any pretty or attractive but damaged girls or boys. Sister Beatrice had never at any time in her life been attractive. Her eyes were sunken and too small for her large, jawed face. Her nose, crooked, ending in a bulbous lump, which shadowed her thin straight lips. And the hump on her left shoulder was the final touch.

Her parents were aghast and from shame hid her as much as possible, sending her away to school so they were not offended daily by her presence. Her fellow students were cruel as children often can be. All this, a recipe for a cold, hard and vengeful woman. One who would go to her grave knowing she was unloved at birth and so it would be at her death.

She hated the world and all who inhabited it, the exceptions being Fathers Bernard and John, whose sexual interactions she had convinced herself was affection, love even? Fathers Liam and George also availed themselves of her body, but were often sadistic, brutal, and misogynistic, taking pleasure in her humiliation and debasement. As her superiors, their positions ensured she dare not rock the boat. Where else could she go? The habit, the Church, they were her hiding place from a world that had refused and reviled her.

The day she first took Lorna, she was happy. She assumed that this time it was not she who was on her way to his office to face the pain and shame that surely followed. The child: this pretty, auburn-haired child, was the one on her way to something life altering. Sister Beatrice was glad it was the child and not her.

How wrong she was! She had jumped the gun. Two hours later she and an unaltered Lorna left Father George’s rooms. He had forced Sister Beatrice to strip, then strip the child. He then made her show the child her future duties to this priest. She also had to make certain the child understood the consequences of attempting to tell anyone. Sister Beatrice would forever harbour a deep and dark hatred for Lorna. The girl had witnessed her total humiliation. She hated her only marginally less than she hated Father George.

Lorna however, though disappointed at having a man use her, had endured far worse before she came here. Here she was fed regularly and well, she was schooled and had a warm bed with clean linen, and clean clothes. This was nothing she had not survived before. So, it impacted only in as much as she was saddened, as it was not something she enjoyed but endured, and Sister Beatrice was now even more brutal towards her.

Lorna had learnt when she was small to pretend; to retreat mentally to a beautiful place, a place someone once had read to her from a storybook. A pretty garden that was all hers, where no-one else ever came, where she was safe! She would go to the secret place whenever she had to visit the fathers.

Within weeks, it was all four of them, Fathers George, Liam, John, and Bernard, each on different days usually, but not always, nor exclusively. However, none, not even Father George, were cruel to her; in fact, some occasionally gave her gifts. She was aware she was not the only child who had extra tuition with the priests. She also knew that some of them did endure the cruel, sadistic sides of Fathers Liam and George.

When Lorna was fifteen, it all changed with Fathers George and Liam, it was about a month after her first menstrual cycle. It began when Sister Beatrice had berated her publicly for the bloodied linen and nightie.

It was Sister Barbara who had sat Lorna down and explained what the blood was and what it meant. They had been expecting this, but doctors had warned them that Lorna’s development may be delayed due to the malnutrition and the abuse. Sisters Barbara and Beryl had argued a year ago that they should prepare her, for surely now fifteen, her menstruation was surely overdue.

Sadly, Sister Kathleen’s dementia had let that slip by. Now Sister Beryl was the one who obtained the necessary items for her to use every month. It was the first time after that, in her visits to Fathers George and Liam. that things got ugly and painful. They began the same abuse she had witnessed dispensed upon Sister Beatrice.

It was only three months after her sixteenth birthday that a boy from school asked her to come to a dance with him. This would be the catalyst that catapulted her into the start of another life

Photo by Patricia Donoghue

Chapter Three: The Highlander

Lorna Feeney, a.k.a Lena Thomm

Lena strolled lazily down the cobbled slope in Edinburgh that was the Royal Mile; her long flowery skirt floating round her legs felt wonderful. The city was enjoying a rare heatwave. She almost felt pity for the soldiers preparing for tonight’s Tattoo.

It was a night when both the television cameras were filming the show and a fireworks display ended the pageant. She had been to this wonderful event on a few occasions, but tonight’s performance was going to be unique.

She'd met Calum two days before on the famous Rose Street: pub after pub from one end of the road to the other. It was a rich hunting ground for someone with her proclivities. With the Tattoo and the fringe in full swing, the city was a hub of multicultural visitors to the daily events.

She'd been sitting in the shade from the late afternoon sunshine, scanning the revellers and pedestrian traffic for someone of interest, when a deep, highland accented voice asked,

Can I buy you a drink, bonnie lass? 

Lena looked up into a truly handsome face that was both masculine and beautiful all at once. She caught her breath, interesting! Delighted, she agreed to another white wine. Hours later, having drank far more than the one she intended, this glorious highlander lay sprawled across her rental flat’s large bed, divested of his kilt and shirt; he was a spectacular specimen. Unusually, he was intelligent, witty and a considerate if seemingly insatiable lover. She knew she needed to be careful. This man could have what it took to touch her heart and