by David Beers
They talked as addicts did, in a manner that only addicts could understand. People discuss a judgment free zone, much like they did a gun free zone—but those places rarely existed. The human mind was made to judge, indeed, it’s what helped humanity evolve so far beyond its humble origins. However, addicts were probably the closest group to ever come to judgment free. Even now, with an ulterior motive, John sympathized with much of what Paul said.
The obsession.
The depression.
The inability to stop.
All of it clicked home like a key to a lock.
So the conversation went, until finally Paul said, “I’m really glad you found me. This has been absolutely great.”
“Yeah,” John said. “It really has.”
“Got any plans for tonight?”
“Probably going to head home. My kids got back from a week with their grandparents last night, so going to take some time to see them.”
“Hey, much better than acting out, huh?” Paul said.
“No doubt about it.”
“You want to get together a little bit later this week? Maybe meet up on Friday and check out a meeting?”
“Sure,” John said. “I’ll give you a call on Friday and we can figure out the details?”
“Works for me,” Paul said as he stood up, taking his jacket off the back of his chair.
The two walked through the store, Harry in tow behind John. When they got outside, Paul zipped his jacket up, but John barely noticed the cold air’s assault. Only one thing mattered to him.
“Alright, Paul, I’ll see ya Friday,” John said, offering his hand. They shook but John didn’t hear what Paul said—his mind already too focused on the next base. He turned and started across the parking lot.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” he said to Harry.
“You know I am. Why are we even discussing it?”
“Okay, Harold. Let’s get it over with.” John stopped and turned around, looking at Paul as he pulled his keys out of his pocket, ready to get inside his car and out of the bitter cold. “Hey, Paul!” John shouted, raising a hand as he did. Paul looked up and John toward him. He looked across the parking lot as he did, making sure that no one had heard him shout Paul’s name. A few people were heading to and from the different shops, but not a single person looked up at John’s voice.
Good, he thought.
“What’s up?” Paul said.
“Hey, I don’t know who your higher power is, but I was wondering if you might want to get in a prayer before we head home? My church is right around the corner and our pastor usually keeps the doors unlocked.”
“Sure, man. I’d love to. Should I follow you?”
“I could drive us there and then bring you back when we’re done, if that works?”
“Not a problem for you?” Paul asked.
“Not at all.”
The sun had nearly completed its descent beyond the horizon, cascading beautiful rays of orange and yellow across the world. John looked out into it, but didn’t care in the slightest. Nothing about this world mattered to him anymore except getting Paul to where he wanted him to be. The road moved beneath him and every once in awhile his mind wandered to a place where he asked himself how the person sitting in this car was the same one praying so hard for deliverance just a day or so ago.
He didn’t have an answer and wasn’t going to dwell on it, either. Perhaps later, when this was done, he could contemplate about the thought process from there to here, but now … he had work to do.
John pulled his gun from the inside of his jacket, slowly, casually. No sweat appeared anywhere on his body. No ticks. No shifting eyes. John was as calm here as he had been at seven years old when he took that punk kid’s head and smashed it into the mirror. John was, as the saying went, in his element.
“Paul, I want you to put your hands on the dashboard.”
Paul looked over to him, a slight smile on his face. John returned the look, but without any smile.
“Put your hands on that dashboard, Paul.” With his right hand, he brought the gun up so that the barrel faced the ceiling. “I don’t want to use this, but if you don’t listen to me, I will.”
“What … what the hell are you talking about?”
“FUCKING DO IT!” he screamed, spit flying from his mouth onto the steering wheel. No blood rushed to his face, though, and no veins stood out on his neck. John’s pulse didn’t speed up in the slightest.
Paul moved fast, his hands slapping down on the dashboard in front of him. “What are you doing?” he said, words tumbling from his mouth like snow in an avalanche.
“Now, Paul, I don’t want you to talk too much while we drive. Here, take these.” John put his knee under the wheel and with ease pulled out a pair of handcuffs from beneath his seat. He bought them years ago, found them at a pawn shop and paid cash. Since then he had washed them with bleach numerous times, making sure to kill any possible DNA contamination. “Put them on.”
Paul looked at the metal restraints as a woman would look at her rapist, bright terror running through him. John kept his knee on the steering wheel, the gun now pointing at Paul, and the handcuffs hanging from his other hand.
“Quickly. I don’t like driving without my hands.”
Paul took the handcuffs, slowly though, as he would have perhaps handled a snake.
“Go on. Do it.”
“What are you doing?” Paul said, one last chance at trying to make some sense out of the senseless.
“No talking. Just put on the cuffs,” John said.
Paul did as he was told, the sound of the metal locking into place as loud as a pair of cymbals in the quiet car.
The car rolled on, John putting the gun on his right leg and his left hand on the steering wheel. He wished, at times like this, that Harry could hold a gun. Not that Harry wasn’t real—the dead man sitting in the back of John’s car right now was as real as the passenger sitting to John’s right.
It was a bit of a drive, where they were going, but it would work out as long as Paul didn’t do anything idiotic.
“Can you just tell me what’s happening, please?”
John said nothing.
“Man, Jesus, what did I do to you?”
“You didn’t do anything, Paul. No more than the women you chase after do to you.”
“God, please. I’m sober. Don’t hurt me because of things I did in the past. Don’t do this, John.” Tears ran down Paul’s face, the sobs making his words harder to understand.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think this had something to do with your addiction. Not at all. In fact, I understand your addiction, as well as a man who has his own demons can.”
“THEN PLEASE LET ME GO!”
John’s face didn’t change at all as Paul screamed from the other side of the car. He kept yelling but John blocked him out, ignoring him like a parent does a child throwing a tantrum. Miles and miles passed until the sun was only a memory and night ruled once again.
“This is going to be good,” Harry said from the back, breaking through John’s mental wall around Paul’s whimpers and protests.
“You think so?”
“God, yes. I mean, I don’t think this could be planned any better. I know you’re blocking out all his crying, but Christ, this is amazing stuff.”
John didn’t reply, only let the hum of the road communicate with him.
Two hours later, he slowed the car down and veered to the right, heading down an unpaved road with trees on either side of it. No lights shone on the road. The place was completely desolate, just as it had been when the sun was up and John drove the path a day ago. He’d been down this path before, but he needed to make sure everything was the same as he remembered it. People used this path to bring their boats down to the lake, which was why foliage hadn’t completely overgrown it.
The car rolled down the path at five miles per hour, but Paul’s screams didn’t match the car’s pace one bit.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” he shouted. The time neared eight, but that didn’t mean the place would be empty, only a higher probability—especially with the winter weather like this. People weren’t likely to go out on the water.
“Paul, I need you to shut the fuck up or I’m going to put a bullet in your thigh. Do you understand that?”
The man went quiet for a second. John continued driving until finally his headlights hit the lake. A still, black, imposing mass of water with the moonlight making it look impenetrable in its depth.
John stopped the car just before it rolled out from behind the cover of trees and into the boat opening. He looked into his rearview mirror and saw one busted and one normal pupil staring back at him.
“You ready?” he said.
“Oh yeah,” Harry answered.
“Paul,” John said, looking to his passenger. “I’m going to get out of the car and you’re not to move until I tell you to. You got that?”
“Please, John. Please. You don’t have to do this.” The man sobbed as he said it, fat tears rolling down his face like huge raindrops.
“Here we go,” John said looking back at Harry. He opened his door and stepped out of the car, listening to Harry do the same. He walked quickly around the front of the car to the passenger’s side. Paul tried to scramble to the driver’s side, wanting to get as far away from John as possible.
He raised his gun to the window and tapped the barrel against the glass. “No, no, Paul. Let’s not do that.” John wrenched the door open, letting it fly back and bounce off its hinges. He reached in and grabbed Paul by his hair, both of the man’s hands immediately coming up to ward off his attacker. John pulled as hard as he could, yanking the man back across the car and then out onto the dirt road.
“BE STILL!” he shouted. John looked up for a brief second, making sure he was far enough away from the lake for his voice to not echo across it.
Paul lay on the ground, breath heaving in and out of his mouth, spit and air mixing with the dirt cloud created from their commotion. He didn’t scream, only cried as silently as he could into the dark clay beneath him.
John pointed the gun at him, all energy and adrenaline. His pupils were hugely dilated, looking more like Harry than he would ever care to know.
“Go on,” his dead friend said. “Go on and kill him.”
John nodded, his mouth set in an almost grimace, yet sparks flew through his eyes like fireworks through a night sky.
He pulled the trigger.
Paul gasped, trying his best to suck in air through a hole that now existed in his right lung. John could hear the air whistling in and out of Paul’s chest as the shirt he wore began darkening. Blood ran from the wound, creating a wet mess all over the man’s chest.
Paul fell completely to the ground and rolled onto his back, staring up at the dark sky. He breathed fast and hard, like a horse after a harsh run.
John didn’t move an inch, just kept the gun pointed at Paul. His own breathing was rapid, though not in comparison to his victim’s. He didn’t hear Harry if Harry spoke. He heard and saw nothing but the spreading bloodstain and the pale, white face with veins sticking up across it as Paul struggled to stay alive. He heard the sound of the man’s breath combined with the hole in his lung wheezing out the air he so desperately wanted to keep in.
John stood for five minutes, watching the man die, until finally no more blood moved through Paul’s body.
John finally felt the cold air against the back of his neck, like a corpse massaging him. Tiny hairs shot up his neck and spine, trying to warm him from this sudden change in temperature. He blinked a few times and then glanced to the gun in his hand. It felt heavy, like an anvil, all black with a silencer at the end of the barrel. John could slightly smell gunpowder, though the blood’s coppery odor was overpowering that quickly.
He looked down at Paul.
That had been his name.
Paul. Paul S. John never even knew the man’s last name.
Blood soaked his shirt and his mouth hung open as if he was about to say something but couldn’t find the right words. His eyes stared up at the sky, not blinking, the moon’s light creating a false sense of life in them.
No life, not with Paul S. anymore.
John looked around him, wondering where Harry was—had he watched it all?
And then he remembered, Harry wouldn’t be here. Not now. No, John stood alone on the dirt road with a dead man lying at his feet.
He went to his knees, tears flooding his eyes like a river overflowing its banks. He sucked in air, much deeper and stronger than Paul had been able to at the end of his life. He held it in, gritting his teeth, the world blurry around him; he couldn’t let the air out yet, because if he did, he would scream and he thought that he might never stop. He might just keep screaming until people with badges showed up to see him kneeling over a dead body.
John closed his eyes tight, forcing the tears to fall down his face and into the dirt below.
Harry. Where the fuck was Harry? He had been here the whole time and now, where the hell was he? John wasn’t going to open his eyes and look around for him. He could search these woods from one end to the other and find nothing more than squirrels.
No, when everything ended, John was always alone. Alone with a dead body and nothing to show for it, nothing but a bunch of fucking risks he took on and another soul passed from the Earth.
The man at his feet, he didn’t know, didn’t care about him in the slightest outside of him being one of God’s children, but John’s own family? His children? His wife? Where were they right now? Not here watching him murder.
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK,” he said, halfway forgetting his need to remain quiet. “Why, why, why …”
He mumbled the words to himself, not opening his eyes. He didn’t want to see the mess on the ground. He wanted to act like none of this had happened. It hadn’t. This was some horrible dream that he would wake from if he could just keep his eyes closed and not see anything around him. Because this wasn’t real, wasn’t his life.
John would open his eyes and find himself lying in bed. No Harry. No memories of this outside of the way that you remembered parts of dreams, unclear and out of focus. Diane would lie next to him and Tim and Drew in their beds down the hall. All of this would be right because he hadn’t just murdered someone. Even thinking he had sounded absolutely insane. Impossible.
But, when John opened his eyes, he saw insanity lying in a spreading pool of blood on the ground before him.
14
A Portrait of a Young Man
Years Earlier
Lori felt relief after telling Dr. Vondi, a relief that she couldn’t fully believe. All those years she carried so much pain inside, unable to share with anyone. Then, all at once, she dumped it onto a single person she barely knew.
She stood outside of his office now, not even wanting to go into the waiting room. Such relief, followed by fear. They could go on and on about Clara, but she didn’t come for that. In her own way, Lori had made peace with that past—all the gruesome details. She meant what she said to Dr. Vondi, that Clara wouldn’t win. The woman had wanted Lori’s dad dead and for Lori to lose her mind.
Lori hadn’t.
She wasn’t always what she was now, but she never went down the path Clara wanted her on.
Lori wanted to stop dwelling on her past. She wanted to talk about her kids now, and that scared her—because only part of her wanted the truth.
Lori opened the office door and walked into the waiting room. Dr. Vondi didn’t have a receptionist, so she sat down and waited, her mind turning over and over the coming conversation.
“How are you, Lori?” Dr. Vondi said, breaking through her near trance.
“Hey,” she said. She picked up her purse and walked through the open door and into his room.
“How are you?” he said as she sat down.
“Not bad.”
“Everything okay?” he said.
&
nbsp; “I’m just scared about where we go next, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could keep going on about Clara, but I think you get the point. Whether or not she killed my father isn’t relevant anymore, outside of what it could mean for my kids.”
Dr. Vondi nodded.
“That kind of insanity, it can be hereditary, can’t it?” Lori asked.
“I’m not sure there are conclusive studies on it, but generally speaking, a lot of diseases—both physical and mental—travel down through generations, so I think I’m safe in saying yes, it’s certainly possible.”
“That’s what I can’t let happen. I can’t have my kids carrying that on.”
“What makes you think they would?” Dr. Vondi said. “I mean, what gives you the idea that either of them might be anything like Clara? There can be strong genetic components, but a lot of this is nurture as well. Look at you, direct offspring of your mother and raised in a pretty terrifying environment, but you’re relatively well adjusted.”
“John’s fight at school,” she said, not breaking eye contact. “That viciousness sounds just like her.”
“Or it sounds like a kid trying to protect himself.”
A silence passed over the two of them and Lori thought for the first time that people might not believe her. She had worried about this for a long time, since Alicia’s birth, though she kept it quiet. Yet, she always assumed that when people understood her mother, they would understand the worry—would see it as Lori did.
Only, Dr. Vondi wasn’t seeing it that way, which scared her.
“Does Scott know you’re worried about this?” he said.