‘My initial plan was to do them together. Let the mom watch me kill her son, then kill her. The husband said he wanted her to suffer, but he didn’t specify how. I thought that was as good a way as any. Sometimes emotional pain is greater than physical.
‘Remember that, Reggie,’ the killer said.
Reggie did just that, adding it to the litany of other things the killer had already told him:
Always mind the details.
Some things live. Some things die.
‘But I didn’t see any sense in making the kid wait that long,’ the killer continued. ‘He’d woken up at the ringing of the phone, took stock of the situation, and was crying. He’d also peed himself, and I thought that was enough so I shot him in the face.’
The offhand manner in which the killer relayed the story at first bothered Reggie. At the mention of the kid in the story getting shot in the face, Reggie thought of the gun in the holster under Ivan’s jacket. He thought of holding that gun only a short while ago, squeezing the trigger, watching the bottles get whisked away. The power he’d felt with its weight in his hands.
But picturing one of those bullets punching into the face of a boy like himself was another thing altogether. And then the faceless boy in this mental movie was replaced by his dad, sprawled in the parking lot of the church.
Shifting uneasily against the tree house wall, Reggie looked out the window, then looked to the ladder again. But he didn’t move, and listened as the killer continued.
Ivan likewise shifted against the wall he sat against, a hand to his bandage. A barely audible moan escaped as he shuffled for a more comfortable position. But otherwise there was no hint of pain – either physical, or the greater sort he’d just mentioned as he’d confessed to killing a child.
‘It was just after midnight when I shot him.
‘She came home at around five in the morning. She saw her son tied to the chair, but she didn’t see me. She ran over to him and cupped his head to her, crying, shaking him, telling him to wake up.
‘I walked out of the hall and hit her over the head.
‘I tied her to another chair. Took a seat on the living room recliner, turned on the television, waited for her to wake up. I watched three episodes of a Twilight Zone marathon before she woke.
‘She was gagged so her scream at seeing her dead son again was muffled and not that loud at all. I held a finger to my mouth for her to quiet down. That didn’t work. So I pulled out my switchblade and that got her attention.
‘I turned the recliner so I was facing her.
‘I told her who sent me, though I’m sure she knew.
‘I told her what was going to happen to her, and she grew quiet and resigned. She got control of her breathing and hung her head like she was tired. I watched her for a time, letting her gather herself.
‘When finally she looked up at me, she used her eyes to indicate the gag. I understood she wanted to say something, didn’t think she’d be any trouble, and so I took the gag off.
‘“When did you kill him?” she asked.
‘“Just after midnight,” I told her.
‘“Did he suffer?” she asked.
‘“No,” I told her.
‘“Would you wait and kill me after midnight?” she said. “Kill me the same time you killed him?”
‘I thought about it, thought her request was interesting, had never heard anything quite like it before. People had begged, people had prayed, told me the things they could do for me. The money they could get me. The women they could get me. Cars, houses, drugs. I’d been offered everything. Heard every conceivable plea.
‘But no one had ever requested what time I would kill them.
‘I was intrigued, so I agreed.
‘We watched the marathon together, episode after episode. All the classics were played, and I remembered why I liked the show so much as a kid.
‘I got her a glass of water when she asked.
‘I followed her to the restroom when she said she had to urinate.
‘And when she asked if she could sit on the sofa with her son, I said yes, and watched her untie him, pick him up, and carry him over to the couch. She held him in her lap as the clock slowly ticked away the time. Morning to afternoon to evening, slowly, so slowly, the longest day I’ve ever lived.
‘Until, at five minutes to midnight, she spoke again.
‘“You didn’t have to do this,” she said.
‘I was briefly disappointed. I’d heard this many times before. The appeal to my humanity. That I could choose to be better. That I didn’t have to kill the person I was sent to kill. So often, this tactic quickly led back to begging.
‘“No,” I said. “I didn’t. But I did.”
‘She nodded, and that was it. No pleading. No anger. No cursing.
‘I was pleased and gave her a little smile.
‘When the clock ticked midnight I walked over and put the gun to her head.
‘“Thank you for waiting,” she said. And I told her she was welcome.
‘Then I pulled the trigger and it was done.’
***
‘Why do you regret that one?’ Reggie asked. ‘Of all the people you’ve killed, why do you wish you’d never killed her and her son?’
Ivan didn’t answer immediately. He cocked his head a bit like a scholar considering a great question.
‘I think it was because she was polite,’ the killer said.
‘Because she was polite?’ Reggie asked, surprised. He didn’t know what answer he’d expected, but ‘she was polite’ wasn’t it.
‘She didn’t fight me,’ the killer said, nodding. ‘She didn’t curse me. She didn’t demean herself by begging. It was as if she knew it was merely my job, something I had to do.
‘Killing for some people is fun,’ the killer said. ‘They take pleasure out of hurting others. It’s amusing when they kill someone and the target shits or pisses their pants. They get off on it. I knew this one guy who used to collect things from his targets. Little objects they’d owned – a knick-knack, a photo, a piece of jewellery. Sometimes a body part: a swatch of skin or a finger.’
The killer fixed his blue eyes again on Reggie. Those ice-blue spheres were windows, showing Reggie things he’d never imagined. A whole other world was there behind those eyes.
‘It’s not like that for me,’ said the killer. ‘It’s just something I’m good at. Like some people are fast typists. Or others are good with numbers. I do it because I’m good at it, and I get paid well for it.’
It occurred to Reggie then just how small the tree house was. They were so near each other. The walls seemed too close, squeezing him in. Pushing him nearer the man than he was comfortable being.
‘And she knew this?’ Reggie asked, the question coming out in a croak.
‘Yes,’ the killer said. ‘She knew it was nothing personal. Knew it was just my job. And so she didn’t hold it against me. And I appreciated that.
‘I think about her sometimes,’ Ivan said. ‘Holding her dead son on the couch, watching television. How the light of the television flashed across them. She looked like a ghost there, dead already, on the couch with her son.’
Reggie thought of how he’d come downstairs last night, saw his mom in a similar fashion, glowing in the television light. Chills went across his flesh in a tremulous wave.
‘I’d never seen a person dead until they were dead,’ Ivan said. ‘Until I’d pulled the trigger or strangled the life out of them or stabbed them to death. But she was dead long before I did the deed. She was dead the moment she saw her son was.
‘I’ve never seen that kind of love,’ Ivan said, ‘and I sometimes wish I’d left it alone. I could have lied to the husband and his father. I could have told them there were complications and I’d had to dispose of the bodies. My reputation was spotless. I could have let the woman and her kid go, and no one would have ever known.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Reggie said.
‘No, I didn’t,�
� said the killer.
‘Because that’s your job,’ Reggie said. ‘It’s who you are and what you do.’
The killer didn’t speak or nod, but the answer was in his eyes.
2.
Climbing on his bike again, pedalling away from the garage, Reggie thought of what he’d asked Ivan earlier, before leaving the tree house.
How do you find someone? Like you did the woman and her kid?
Everyone leaves a trail. Use what you know.
Ivan’s answer had made Reggie think of the school’s yearbook, and he’d gone back to the house to dig it out of his closet. It had taken him twenty minutes of flipping through the pages to find the photograph of the older boy from the drugstore, the rubber thief. His name was Johnny Witte. With the name, he was then able to go onto his computer and do the rest. The kid’s street address was familiar to Reggie, and he told his mom he was going back into town.
She was on the couch again with the television on. She didn’t look at him and waved him away, so he left. He rolled his bike out from the garage and rode off.
The police along the highway were gone and he made good time without being stopped. The route to the older kid’s home took him through the downtown business district. People walked along the sidewalks, under the awnings of the antique shops and bookstores and video stores and burger joints. They went about their business as if nothing else existed, as if each of them were the centre of it all. They walked through the world but weren’t a part of it.
That each of them went about their lives while a killer was in his tree house made Reggie feel strangely special. Unique. Like he carried an important secret that affected many things.
Turning into the residential streets, the tract houses lined up side by side and nearly identical like clones manufactured on an assembly line, Reggie found the right number and rode on by. He didn’t see the older kid but that didn’t mean anything. He could have been inside or at a friend’s.
So Reggie rode to the corner of the street and waited.
He watched people mowing lawns. He saw the drifting trails of barbecue smoke swirling skyward like incense offerings to the heavens. A little girl gave her dog a bath in a little plastic pool in the yard. A boy and his dad threw a football in the street.
He felt like a detective, watching people. Or a killer scoping out an intended target, minding the details.
Then he saw Johnny Witte turn the corner at the far end of the street. Even from this distance Reggie recognized him. The rubber bandit strolled with a nonchalant gait as if he hadn’t made fun of Reggie’s dad and knocked him down mere hours ago.
Reggie pedalled hard, an imaginary cross hairs on the older kid.
The condom thief didn’t see him until it was too late.
His eyes turned large in surprise and he tried jumping out of the way. Reggie’s bike clipped him on the hip and thigh and Johnny Witte fell, rolling, on the sidewalk. A long stretch of shredded skin along his forearm dotted blood and as he pushed up Reggie leaned forward and spat a nice big gob on the kid’s face.
‘Fuck you, dickless!’ he yelled and pedalled away furiously.
He looked once behind him.
The condom bandit was on his feet. Coming after him, arms pumping. The Morse Code thumping of his leather-soled feet spoke of his fury.
The red-flushed rage on the older boy’s face said he was going to pound Reggie good. And that was just what Reggie wanted.
He thought of what Ivan had said.
The common denominator. People know you’re weak.
He braked in a vacant field. Dust rose behind him.
He got off the bike, looked at the ground around him. He picked up two large dirt clods, one in either hand. He didn’t have long to wait. The older kid wasn’t that far behind him. The footfalls of his furious approach smacked a mad cadence in the still summer air, thudding like the clamour of a stampeding herd.
Reggie gripped the missiles tight in either hand, hefting them, testing their weight. Channelled his own rage into them.
The bigger kid came running into the dirt field.
Turning to face him, Reggie let fly the first missile. It flew inches to the left of his target’s head. The older kid watched it fly by in surprise.
Reggie let loose the second one.
The rubber thief, who’d asked why Reggie was crying that day, did he crap his pants, did his gay lover dump him, watched this second missile also, and it was like slow motion, the rock sailing through the air between them. It found its target. Hit him high on the chest, below the shoulder. Sent him stumbling back. He tripped and tumbled in the dirt.
Reggie ran at him, yelling, fists clenched.
But the bigger kid was getting up, saw Reggie coming, and was ready. His fist met Reggie’s jaw and sent him down into the hard dirt. The impact jarred the bones of Reggie’s face, sending shockwaves throughout his body.
He tried getting up and a boot to his ribs sent him back down.
It was difficult to breathe but he tried crawling.
Fistfuls of shirt pulled him up and he was looking up into the bigger kid’s face.
‘You couldn’t let it go, could you, little faggot?’ the rubber bandit said, cheeks red, spittle flying with each word. ‘Fucking faggot! Goddamn motherfucker!’
He punched Reggie square in the stomach. All the air was sucked out of him. He crumpled to his knees.
He was waist high now with the bigger kid.
He thought of Johnny Witte stealing rubbers as he fought for breath. What did he do with them? Try them on?
It suddenly seemed funny and a laugh escaped through the pain.
‘What’s so funny, faggot?’ roared the other kid, cocking his arm back, fist raised.
Reggie remembered something else Ivan had said.
Always mind the details.
Eyes squinted against the pain, Reggie looked dead ahead.
He balled his fist, steadied himself with a trembling breath, threw a punch. Time seemed to slow again. Almost to stop. His piston-fist nailed Witte in the crotch. He felt the mashing of the other guy’s balls through the jeans.
The bigger kid let out a long, slow groan before falling to his knees. They were eye to eye now. Johnny Witte’s cheeks were teary and red with agony, then, rather than rage. Reggie reached out and grabbed the other guy’s shirt, pulled him close as had been done to him moments before.
‘You ever bother me again,’ he said with effort, ‘I’ll kill you.’
He rose on shaky legs. The older kid’s eyes followed him up.
‘Good night, dickless,’ he said, cocked his arm and let fly, his knuckles slamming Witte hard on the temple. The condom bandit fell with a thud to the dirt.
Reggie walked back to his bike, got on, rode away.
He took his time riding home. The sun on him felt good, and the busy world quiet and calm.
3.
He stopped in the living room on the way upstairs. His mom was still on the couch. She still wouldn’t look at him.
He walked over and sat beside her.
‘I’m sorry I called you a bitch,’ he said.
She turned to him, saw the dirt on his clothes.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
She reached to inspect him, and he gently pushed her hands away.
‘I fell off my bike,’ he said.
‘Again?’ she said, worried and knowing he was lying at the same time.
‘It’s fine, Mom,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’
She studied him, trying to figure it out. Something was wrong. She couldn’t read him, needed to know where he was coming from. Had to anticipate him, and she couldn’t.
‘I just wanted you to see your dad,’ she said, tears rising in her eyes.
‘I know,’ he said kindly, smiling. ‘But that’s my decision, not yours.’
People know you’re weak.
He couldn’t allow that anymore. Not with anyone.
‘I lov
e you,’ he said. ‘But I’ll figure things out on my own.’
Then he stood up and walked away. The sounds of his mom’s soft crying followed him up the stairs, and it was the loneliest sound he’d ever heard.
4.
‘Have you ever killed anything?’ the killer asked him.
‘Just bugs and stuff,’ Reggie said.
He’d come straight to the tree house after the fight with Johnny Witte and his brief exchange with his mom. He’d felt like a streak of light flying through town back home. Charged; powerful. The world seemed to have admitted him to a special place. He felt light inside almost as if he could float away. He needed to talk to someone about it, the feeling inside of him, and there was only one person he could think of.
Yet, having regaled Ivan with the epic tale of the older boy’s serious ass kicking, the man merely nodded. Then he’d changed subjects to this.
‘You’ve never killed an animal?’ the killer asked. ‘Never shot a pigeon with a BB gun? Or stomped a cat to death?’
‘No,’ Reggie said, a little horrified. But not so much that he wanted to leave. ‘Of course not.’
‘Of course not,’ said Ivan.
He paused, rubbing his stubbly cheek with one large hand.
‘How did it feel holding the gun?’ the killer asked.
Reggie thought a moment before answering. It had been a mix of emotions when he’d held the gun. There was power and fear all mixed together, and excitement also.
‘It felt good,’ he said, unable to put his thoughts to words.
‘When you pulled the trigger?’ the killer prodded.
‘Exciting,’ he said. ‘And scary too.’
‘You weren’t really seeing the bottles, were you?’ the killer asked.
Reggie’s heart skipped a beat. How could the man know that? Could he read thoughts, this killer in front of him? Was he something more than a man?
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘You saw the people who’ve caused you pain,’ said the killer.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You saw the deputy,’ said the killer, and Reggie nodded. ‘You saw this kid Johnny Witte,’ he said, and Reggie nodded again.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? Page 6