by Keith Thomas
Standing across from Janice, Rade inhaled the stale, cedar-scented air of the bedroom and let the memories fade away. He was not frequently given to nostalgia. Though his body still enjoyed the queasy frisson of those memories, he largely found them quaint now—the dreams of a beast. As much as his flesh still wanted to quiver and cheat, he liked to believe he no longer fell for its tricks and illusions.
No. I won’t touch Janice’s body with desire.
I’ll touch it with hate.
Rade pulled off his rubber gloves, tossed them to the floor, then tugged a new pair from his back pocket and put them on slowly. His eyes were glued to Janice’s as he took off his hoodie, folded it carefully, and placed it on a gray athletic duffel bag on the floor under a cheap card table.
“Before you escaped,” Rade said, “you told me you’d do everything you could to cure me. Like you were a doctor or something. How funny. I believed you. I was going to run too. But then I saw it.”
He paused.
Then, shaking his head, he said, “I saw that same ruthlessness. You are truly your mother’s daughter. More than you could ever imagine.”
Janice said nothing, her expression stone-faced.
Rade walked around her, the lighting touching her shoulders.
“Back then, I felt abandoned. Lost in this world. It took time, but I came to realize that was for the best. Staying with the team . . . distilled me. And now, we’ve come full circle. You’re the one who’s been abandoned.”
Back at the card table, Rade pulled a laptop from the duffel bag. He set it up on the table, logged into Skype, and then turned the laptop around to face Janice. On the screen were four open windows, stacked neatly in a row, faces appearing in each. Two men and two women, three of them in their midsixties; one woman was younger, possibly forty. They all wore business attire. The woman on the far right of the screen had thin blond hair pulled into a ponytail. She had green eyes and skin the golden color of lightly toasted bread. The woman was framed by a window, through which a hazy sky was visible. She toyed with an exceedingly expensive Aurora 88 Sigaro Limited Edition fountain pen.
Rade took his place standing behind the table, as if at attention.
“Dr. Sykes,” he said, “if you could begin.”
The blond woman looked directly at Janice.
“It’s good to see you. You look well.”
Janice ignored her.
Dr. Sykes twirled her pen and said, “Let’s begin, Rade.”
Rade removed a leather kit from the duffel bag; inside were hypodermic needles and syringes. He carefully filled a syringe with a clear liquid from a small glass bottle with a rubber stopper.
Then he walked over to Janice, carefully inspected the inside crease of her right arm, and injected the clear liquid into her accessory cephalic vein.
Janice didn’t thrash; she didn’t fight.
• • •
Janice had spent the last twenty years running from this moment.
She’d trained every nerve fiber in her body to resist what would come next and mentally walked herself through the worst pain imaginable—envisioning steel cutting, pliers pulling, hammers breaking, chemicals burning, and rope strangling. Janice knew that Rade would be the perfect torturer.
She insisted on being his most imperfect victim.
Seventeen seconds passed before Rade turned to the laptop.
He nodded to those assembled.
The show was about to begin.
29
AS RADE BEGAN to remove items from his black leather kit, Janice angled her head as best she could to see what he would be using.
Scalpels, knives, awls, augers, specialized surgical instruments.
But the last thing Rade removed from the briefcase was a cheese grater. The kind sold in stores catering to high-end chefs and most discerning foodies. The cheese grater was encased in a plastic sleeve to protect blades that Janice could only assume were exquisitely, beautifully sharp.
Rade walked over to Janice, the grater tight in the grip of his right hand.
“I need the solution,” he said.
Janice spoke for the first time.
“No.”
“I have all the skills you have. I know all the same escape techniques. The same survival strategies. I want you to make this easy. For me. If you give it to me, I will cut your throat. It will hurt but not for long. Not compared to the alternative. If you don’t give me the solution, I’ll have to open you up to get it.”
Tears rolled down Janice’s cheeks before she knew it.
God damn it, she thought. Already . . . You need to be strong, girl. You need to show him he can’t scare you. Don’t want him getting off on this.
“The solution,” Rade said again.
“No.”
Rade slowly slid the cover off the cheese grater. Then, stepping next to Janice, he placed the cold metal against the warm skin on her forearm. He wasn’t sweating. She imagined his heart rate hadn’t increased by a single beat.
“We didn’t abandon you,” Janice said.
Rade met Janice’s gaze.
“We didn’t,” she continued. “We would never have forgotten you.”
On the laptop, one of the women cleared her throat. The signal was clear. Keep going. Don’t stop. This must be done and done now. Rade momentarily closed his eyes. Janice wanted to imagine he paused because there was still an emotional, feeling person at his core. He hadn’t been totally erased. Of course, she figured she was wrong. Do not hold out hope, girl. Can’t have no faith in hope.
“Tell me the solution.”
Janice, her skin flushed, her nose running, eyes bloodshot, shook her head in defiance. She stared down the blurry faces on the laptop, sending them every ounce of hatred and rage she could hold in her gaze. She willed it to wither their souls.
“Fine,” Rade said. “Fine.”
• • •
Rade had used the grater before.
He saw the art in what it could do. It was such a simple tool, yet it was capable of unimaginable horrors. Watching someone’s skin curl up through the grater’s notches never ceased to amaze him.
When the grater slid across Janice’s flesh she howled.
Her screams bounced off the walls like a car crash in an echo chamber.
Rade ignored it, kept working. When he’d removed enough of the first three layers of flesh, enough to see the fat globules and muscle underneath, Rade emptied a vial of silver nitrate onto her arm.
Then he stepped back from his work and looked upon it.
His hands, his forearms, and shirt were soaked with blood.
Janice coughed and spat, the thin drool dripping down her chin. Without looking up, she said, “When I had my little girl, I pushed for four hours straight with no meds. Not even a single Tylenol. I can push through this. I can push through anything you do to me long enough to make you understand: I won’t break.”
So Rade got back to work.
Over the next five minutes he carved through muscle, down to bone. He went slowly, enjoying the way the fat bubbled up through the grooves and the muscle curled tight. When he hit bone, he began shaving it down. Janice passed out. He woke her with smelling salts from his kit.
When she woke, Janice said, “You’re being lied to.”
Her voice was now a pale flicker.
Rade lowered the grater. He could see his reflection in the pool of blood on the floor beneath the chair. He got close, placing his ear a few inches from Janice’s mouth. She wanted to bite his ear off, but she knew she didn’t have the strength to move her neck. Besides, her words would be more powerful.
“They’re lying . . . ,” Janice repeated.
“Of course they are,” Rade said. “That’s never changed.”
“Turn . . . turn off the computer . . . I’ll tell you. . . .”
“Tell me what?” He leaned in even closer.
Over the weirdly antiseptic scent of fresh blood and raw flesh, she could smell Rade’s anti
perspirant. Floral hints, something citrus, something earthy.
“What she’s hiding from you. . . .”
“She?”
“Dr. Sykes. . . .”
Rade stepped backward to the table and, still facing Janice, reached around and closed the laptop. He then removed a syringe from his kit. Then, crouching down in front of her, Rade prepped the needle and found a vein on Janice’s right hand; one he hadn’t gotten to yet with the grater. He injected her.
“Painkillers and norepinephrine,” he said.
Then he said, “Talk.”
Janice gave the drugs a few seconds to infuse her system. The heaviness in her head lifted, the fog in her eyes cleared. She met Rade’s cold gaze with a glacial stare that suggested nothing of her former self remained.
“They built a new accelerator,” Janice said. “They won’t tell you it works . . . but it does. And I can get you in. You can be fixed. . . . No more medication. . . . No more torture and death. No more being their tool.”
Rade cocked his head like a dog, curious.
Seeing his interest, Janice continued, making her mouth form words though her throat felt as though it were collapsing in on itself. “The machine is only a few miles away. It went . . . it went online a few months ago. You ensure my daughter is treated and released, and I will tell you where it is.”
“Give me the solution and we’ll go there now,” Rade said.
“No . . . Not unless we have a deal. . . .”
Exploding into motion, Rade grabbed Janice’s hair and wrenched her head back. It happened too quickly for her to scream, though the pain that shuddered through her body had shredded nearly all her resolve.
“I don’t make deals,” Rade said. “Tell me and I’ll make sure this ends quickly. That’s all I can offer. Nothing more.”
Janice grimaced, her vision swimming, her skull in a vise.
“Fine,” she whispered.
Rade let her go. Janice’s head flopped down, her chin banging into her chest hard enough that she bit her tongue. The dull penny taste of blood was instantaneous. Rade walked over to the card table and opened up the laptop again. He leaned the screen back as far as it would go to see the windows, and their digitized faces, click back into focus.
“Everything okay?” Dr. Sykes asked.
“Listen,” Rade said.
The laptop was turned to face Janice.
“Fifty-One,” he said. “Give them the solution.”
Janice closed her eyes and recentered. Then, with a broken sigh, she recited a long series of numbers and letters—a formula. The solution. Rade listened to it dispassionately as the heads on the laptop scribbled it all down. Smiles spread across their faces simultaneously. Finished, Janice looked up at Rade.
“I forgive you,” she said.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Rade asked.
“You can’t help what you are.”
Rade pulled a filleting knife from his kit under the card table.
Janice knew what it meant. The pain gnawing at the back of her brain, the stiffness in her limbs, all of it would come to an end soon. As Rade approached, Janice looked beyond him, beyond the faces on the laptop, at the wall. It dissolved away and Ashanique’s smiling face materialized there. Janice laughed to herself, remembering how her daughter would dance in front of the mirror, wearing a scarf and sunglasses. Each little movement sent a jagged cascade of pain through her body, but each was worth it—while Rade’s cocktail might have worn off, the endorphins that flooded Janice’s body more than masked the pain.
Seeing Ashanique, feeling her daughter’s warmth, she was at peace.
Janice said, “I see back . . . a million years . . . my line . . . continues. . . .”
Knowing he’d already lost her, Rade stepped toward Janice, and without hesitation, he slashed her throat in a clean line.
Before the blood frothed out of the wound, Janice mouthed something. It was not meant for Rade but the people, the lives, Janice saw beyond him. The walls of the apartment building dissolved away like sugar in water. The sun rose overhead and Janice could hear the ocean-wave rise, crest, and fall of cicada calls.
Rade could not hear it.
He did not need to.
“This is where you end,” he whispered.
30
3:57 P.M.
1.5 MILLION YEARS AGO
LOWER PALEOLITHIC
EASTERN AFRICAN CONTINENT
THE SOUND OF the cicadas is deafening.
It rises and falls like ocean swells, sweeping across the savanna, intermingling with the chatter of birdcalls and the grunts of grazing wildebeest.
The sun hangs directly overhead.
In the far distance, just over the mountains, the patriarch notices a thunderstorm. It will rain tonight, and he will need to move his family into the forests that surround the savanna.
A lion roars as the cicadas start up again.
The patriarch’s family is sprawled in the shade at the base of a baobab tree, its massive branches sweeping out over the red dirt and small, thorny bushes. The matriarch to his left, her narrowed eyes are trained on the sunlit grasslands. Sitting in her lap is their youngest, a child of no more than eight, napping, her eyes rolling under her eyelids. To his right, his oldest son, a young man with long legs and a scarred left hand, sharpens a flake blade with a river stone. The young man’s wife, a lithe girl with a dark stripe painted across her eyes, sleeps. Their children, toddlers, toy distractedly with the long-ago-abandoned shell of a tortoise.
They have walked for fifteen days straight, following the herds.
At the base of the mountains, where the rivers were at their wildest, the family hunted deer and boar. In the early evenings, when the moon was at its largest, the family swam in a shallow pool teeming with small fish and frogs. Now, in the buzzing heat, the patriarch licks his lips, recalling the sweet taste of the water. He thinks over the route they’ll take south, through the river basin, before swinging back toward the northern forests. He plans to bring his family to the shallow pool again. Even if it means a day less on the savanna, a day less hunting, he knows it would be good for them. They have never felt as close, as much a family, as they did sleeping beside the pool.
The cicadas stop their relentless buzzing. The savanna is silent.
The wildebeest and elephant look up, instantly attuned to something the patriarch cannot hear. But he knows predators have moved in close. He grips his spear, fingers moving over the smooth surface. The matriarch stirs beside him, leaning forward to better watch the swaying grass.
Seconds later, the elephant and wildebeest lower their heads and feed again. The danger they sensed has passed. The cicadas start back up. The patriarch sighs and leans against the trunk of the baobab. As he does, he places his hand on the small of the matriarch’s back, runs his fingers along the dull scars that dot her skin. He likes the feel of them—small, soft mountain ranges and valleys.
Still watching the savanna, the matriarch shakes a handful of dried berries from a small leather pouch she wears around her ankle. She chews them thoughtfully, enjoying the touch of the patriarch. They have been together for twenty years now.
She recalls the birth of their first daughter. The matriarch was in labor for two days, crouched and moaning beside a fire, while the patriarch rubbed smoothing clay onto her back. The baby was stillborn and she recalls crying silently after they’d buried the tiny body. The patriarch peeled the dried clay from her back, tossed it into the guttering fire, and then they moved on. Chewing the leathery berries, the matriarch takes her eyes from the savanna for a brief moment, to look down at the face of her sleeping child. The youngster awoke before dawn, crying and afraid. She could not explain why, but the matriarch understands that the visions during sleep are often frightening. She is eager to soothe the little one again.
The patriarch looks beyond the horizon. He imagines he sees many things in that gamboling haze—animals, people, faces of loved ones, faces of tho
se who have died. A breeze rustles the leaves above his head. The branches sway. It brings a cool sensation that sweeps over the patriarch’s face and shoulders.
He closes his eyes, one with the moment.
31
2:30 A.M.
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
GITTINGER CONDOMINIUMS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
MATILDA SLEPT THROUGH the first three rings as her cell danced on her nightstand.
At the fourth, eyes still closed, she reached over, picked up her cell, and pressed it against her ear.
“Hello?”
The phone was cold. Matilda was under three layers of blankets and wore flannels; her fabric cocoon. Curled fetal, she wasn’t sweating. She’d had a boyfriend in college, Oscar, who used to call her a caddis fly. He specifically meant the larval form of the caddis fly. A small, grublike insect found in fast-running, cold-water creeks and rivers. The creature builds a little house for itself out of pebbles, a sort of rocky blanket that it hides in before it’s old enough to molt and take skyward. Despite the subtle gross-out factor (or maybe because of it), Matilda liked the nickname and she liked that he thought the insects were cute, snug in their stony burritos. After their relationship soured, and it really did, badly, she kept the nickname.
“Dr. Deacon. This is Detective Omaboe. Sorry to wake you.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after two thirty. I wanted to talk to you about the girl.”
“Ashanique? Thought you wanted to wait until tomorrow morning.”
Matilda sat up in her bed, suddenly very awake and concerned. Her bedroom ceiling was crisscrossed with lines of light, reflecting off the snow and ice on the street two floors below. On the wall opposite her bed, she saw a warped version of her pale face reflected in the television screen. She looked tiny, alone.