PRL Serials

What makes a man capable of empathy? Is it something that we acquire at birth? Or are there experiences in life that teach us that there is a benefit to acknowledging the feelings of other? Bradley was not a sociopath, or he had never been diagnosed as such, but all of his life he had struggled to care if his actions had adverse consequences on someone else. He had always thought of his life as a track leading him to acclaim, influence, and wealth beyond the imaginations of the family that he had left before arriving at the Farnsworth mansion. It’s hard to know why this was the case for Bradley and it is very likely that he was a sociopath and he never felt guilty using others to achieve his own aims.

By all appearances, Priscilla Farnsworth was a very charming middle aged woman and most people enjoyed her company. She spent her free time riding horses at the local horse farm, and enjoyed sitting on a towel at the beach by herself listening to the ocean slowly pull up and back along the VA coast. She would describe looking out over the Atlantic as “looking past the edge of the world” because she felt so small compared to the expanse and she thought about the ancient men and women who were brave enough to set out over the waters in search of uncharted lands. She didn’t know if she would have been brave enough to make that journey herself, but she loved to stare out and imagine. The idea of sea travel was magical to her. She’d flown to many different countries in her life, but staring at a body of water gave a person perspective.

When she was a young girl, Priscilla shared her love of the water with her brother. His name was Percy and the two were inseparable. Only, Percy had a physical deformity that made it impossible for him to walk and Priscilla would happily push him around the grounds of the family estate in his wheelchair until their father interrupted their levity and forced Percy back to his lonely home. No one outside of the family and their employees ever knew about Percy. He lived in a guest house on the estate and he was only ever visited by the family’s staff of housekeepers and cooks who made sure he had everything he needed, and Priscilla who loved to spend time with him. She asked her father why Percy didn’t live in the house with the family, and he never gave her an answer, never one that made sense to her. But in reality, her father was ashamed to admit that he had fathered a son who looked like Percy and he never acknowledge that he had a son to anyone. Priscilla’s mother didn’t care at all. She had bored of caring for children many years ago and she mostly skulked around the mansion drinking and spilling wine that others would clean up. The woman did enjoy the occasional visit with her son, though after too much time with the boy, she would feel guilty and blame herself for his deformities; she had been unable to resist alcohol and cigarettes during her pregnancy. Percy always made her feel like a mother, but then he reminded her of her weaknesses and she would leave him to find another bottle to drown her sorrows. Priscilla’s mother died in the house when Priscilla was a young girl; she’d fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. Her father was never the same and he blamed his secret son for her anguish that led to the tragedy. And then the tragic day that came that would change Priscilla forever.

When she was about Bradley’s age, Priscilla’s father begrudgingly hosted a party that was attended by many affluent members of the community. It was a fundraiser for a local charity that served disadvantaged veterans, and Priscilla’s father only agreed to host it after a an old friend badgered him for months. He didn’t spend much time with anyone after his wife died, he mostly sat seething on the back porch, looking out at the guest house and hating his son. He’d thought about killing the boy in his sleep but would resist because he knew that Priscilla would be devastated to lose her brother. On the night of the fundraiser though, when Priscilla’s father was drinking and trying his best to laugh and mingle with the guests who filled his house, Priscilla wheeled Percy into the main living room and her father watched with a look of horror on his face. The boy’s limbs were thin and his necked was so weak that he could not hold his head upright. Before anyone knew what was happening, Priscilla’s father forced the children out of the back door and to the guest house, yelling the entire way. And when they were inside, Priscilla’s father cursed his son as and demon who had ruined his life.

“You will die today.” Priscilla’s father said and done he grabbed her roughly and drug her back to the main house.

When the party was over, Priscilla and her father stood on the back porch facing the guest house.

“Life is precious, you know that don’t you?” Priscilla’s father asked.

“Yes, daddy.” 

“You may not realize it, but God is always testing us. He sends people into our lives and he judges us as we interact with one another. We are the hands of God, Priscilla, do you know that?”

Priscilla was becoming nervous in the dark with her father who spoke with a sense of urgency that she had never heard before.

“You know that. And your brother, that demon out there, was sent to test us Priscilla. He has haunted our family long enough.” He drug Priscilla to the guest house where Percy slept, curled up on his bed. Priscilla thought he looked like an angel. 

“Put the pillow over his head and hold it until he dies.” Her father said.

“Daddy…” Priscilla stammered and looked at her father horrified.

“You are the righteous hand of God. You are a Farnsworth. You have the power to decent good and evil. And your brother is the spawn of the devil. He killed your mother and everyday that he sleeps here, he is killing me. Go on, now. Rid your house of evil.”

Her father grabbed a pillow and held it firmly over Percy’s head and his weak arms started to thrash. He pulled Priscilla over and made her push.

“You are my only child and you will make sure our name rings out loudly and proudly into the future. And you will be the hand of God, you will rid this world of the demons that run free.”

By the time Percy stopped moving, Priscilla had both her hands on the pillow over his face and no she was crying silently. 

Priscilla was never the same after that. Her father had given her an evil power, the courage to kill anyone who she believed to be a servant of the devil. Which is why she killed her father just as she entered womanhood. She poisoned his whiskey and watched him slowly pass into the next life as the two enjoyed dinner outside on the porch. She had never forgiven her father for taking her brother from her and she figured that the test God had given her was to see her father for the demon that he was and she was happy that he was gone.

Bradley barely listened to stories of Priscilla childhood when the two enjoyed meals on the porch. He knew that Priscilla was mostly just talking out loud to herself and Bradley would look out over the grounds of his mansion imagining all of the splendid things he would put there. She’d told him about the ordeal of killing her brother and her father, but he had hardly heard the details. He’d figured that she felt guilty about their deaths and blamed herself and when she started to cry, he stood behind her, slowly rubbing her back and absently offering words of condolence. She also confessed to him that she had killed at least five of the children that she fostered over the years and buried them in the garden, but Bradley could only admire the impressive growth in the garden and wondered if corpses made for good fertilizer.

“They were truly wretched souls, Bradley. You should have heard the way they talked to me and the way they treated the other children. I was just doing God’s work.” 

Bradley looked at her with compassion. “We do what we have to.”

Bradley kept Priscilla’s secrets and slowly, the other children began to disappear from the mansion. 

Not all of them died. Cara was eventually placed in a permanent home and she was so excited to leave the home behind. Before she left, she said to Bradley, “You can’t stay here. The boy in the wheelchair won’t let you.” her words may have meant something to Bradley if he had actually listened to Priscilla talk about her past, but he just dismissed her words and smiled that one less child was sleeping in his mansion.

After Cara left, Elizabeth had a hard time sleeping alone I  the room they shared. She would complain the in morning about hearing things and seeing things moving in the darkness. Elizabeth became unruly as she slept less and less and she would yell to be returned to her mother. Priscilla spoke with the agency and insisted that Elizabeth be removed from the mansion and she was gone that same day.

Bradley was becoming more comfortable in his new home and he actually slept more soundly when he thought he heard spooky whispers and unexplained rustling in the shadows. It was the ghost of his adopted family welcoming him. 

Teddy, who normally never said a word, finally spoke to Bradley shortly after Elizabeth left. “She kills people.”

The two and Donald were finishing breakfast and Bradley was rambling about how he was happy to be in a permanent home and how he hoped the other two boys would find theirs soon. “Not just because I want you guys out of my house. Of course, it’ll be good to be the only child here, but I think everyone deserves to find their place, you know?” 

Donald was angry, but it was Teddy who spoke up. “She’s a killer. Why would you want to stay here?”

“How do you know that?” Bradley asked, pretending that he did not know the truth. “And even if she is, she wouldn’t kill me. I’m her favorite.”

“The boy in the wheelchair said she killed a lot of people in this house.” Teddy said as he cleared his plate.

“What is with the boy in the wheelchair?” Bradley asked.  “Did you and Cara get together and make up an imaginary friend? Donald, tell this idiot that there is no boy in a wheelchair.”

Donald didn’t say anything, but stood from his chair, then proceeded to hit Bradley until he fell from his chair. Bradley called for Priscilla and she rushed in with one of the housekeepers to drag Donald away. Bradley’s face was badly bruised and he cursed Donald through his swollen and bloody mouth. Teddy left the table quietly to attend to his chores.

When the boys met with Priscilla later that evening for dinner, she expressed her pain at the damage Donald had caused to Bradley’s face. 

“Where is he?” Teddy asked.

“I was just about to ask the same question.” Priscilla said absently, never taking her attention from Bradley who played up his injuries and did his best to be sympathetic. 

After a couple days without Donald, a social worker from the agency showed up at the mansion to talk with Priscilla who offered the explanation that Donald must have ran away like so many others. The social worker was inclined to accept this as truth until Teddy offered an explanation. 

“She killed him. His body is buried in the garden.”

Priscilla laughed nervously but the social worker had to call the police to make sure there was no foul play. And Priscilla never betrayed herself, even after the police unearthed limbs and bones in the garden.

Teddy and Bradley rode with the social worker back to the agency and Bradley cried silently to himself. He would never know if the other children had actually seen the ghost of Priscilla’s brother, or if ghosts actually existed, but he would harbor a hatred for anyone who believed in them because Teddy had snatched his ideal away from him before he was able to even settle into it. And he would never trust any adult who promised to care for him. He resolved that he would grow as fast as possible so that he could make the life that he knew he deserved for himself, and no one, not even ghosts, would be able to take it away from him.