They stared at the body for awhile. Reggie memorized its contours, the details of it. It would be with him forever, every bit of it: how one bootlace was coming loose; how the left pants leg wasn’t as sharply creased as the other; how the top two buttons of the shirt were undone; how one sleeve was hiked up the forearm a bit. The glaze of the eyes; the pained crook of the mouth; the hair ruffled and unkempt.
This was their body.
It was for them to remember.
Then the killer moved forward, bent, and pushed it, rolled the body towards the edge. There it hung for a moment, going over, suspended for an instant, and over the edge it went. The tumbling of it was audible, thumps and thuds and falling debris, and a crash far below, distant and carried up like a faint transmission in the ether. They looked over the edge, down the steep face.
Only a hand was visible, pale and sticking out of the brush, as if waving to them goodbye or hello or both: waving, forever waving.
CHAPTER SIX
1.
‘What do you think he was thinking when he died?’ Reggie asked.
They sat at the edge of the precipice with their legs dangling off, like children dabbling their feet in a stream. Down far below them the hand was sticking out, waving at them, pale against the green surrounding it. Across the stretch of forestland laid out below them, a tall length of stone poking out of the canopy, crooked like a finger, seemed to be returning the dead man’s gesture, beckoning him thither.
‘I don’t know,’ said the killer, ‘what would you be thinking?’
‘I don’t know,’ Reggie said. ‘The things I’d done wrong, maybe. The things I’d done right. I’d be thinking about everything I guess.’
‘That’s if you knew death was coming,’ said the killer. ‘Like if you have cancer and you have the time to think of the end as you slowly waste away. When you’re fighting just to breathe, you probably don’t have time to think much at all.’
Reggie thought about that. That was a good point. But he wasn’t entirely convinced.
‘Still,’ he pushed, ‘once you know fighting isn’t working, that you’re going to die any moment now, you’ve got to be thinking of something.’
‘Maybe,’ said the killer.
‘What were you thinking?’ Reggie asked. ‘When you were strangling him?’
Ivan looked at him askance. He had a curious wrinkling of his face as if he wondered about Reggie. Wondered about the questions he was asking and why he was asking them. But still the big man answered.
‘I was thinking that many officers are out of shape,’ the killer said. ‘But he wasn’t. He wasn’t huge, but he was strong, and me being in the condition I was I had to strike fast. Once I had the wire around his throat, I couldn’t let go no matter what. Because if I let go for any reason, I might be the one to die.
‘So I pulled tighter,’ said the killer. ‘I could feel the wire biting into his flesh, sinking deeper. I could feel the strain of my body, working against the pain of my injuries. I pushed away the pain until I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t afford to feel it, not then. And so there was only the man and the wire in my hands, around his throat.
‘I could feel his heartbeat,’ the killer continued, ‘we were so close together. It thumped and I could feel it. His body rattled as it died, and each rattle passed through me. When he died, his last breath left his body in a puff. I could hear it and I felt that too.’
‘How’d you feel then?’ Reggie asked. ‘When he was dead?’
‘I don’t know quite how to say it,’ the killer said. ‘I was aware of the absence of something inside him. Whatever it was, I had taken it from him. Yet the significance of it was lost on me.
‘Society says killing is wrong,’ the killer said, ‘but I don’t understand why. Killing doesn’t change anything. He’s dead down there,’ the killer motioned with a nod toward the pale hand below, ‘and we’re alive up here. But things could be different. He could be the one alive, and we could be dead. It wouldn’t really matter.’
Reggie didn’t agree with this. He couldn’t verbalize his disagreement, couldn’t put his thoughts rightly to words. There seemed a very real difference between Reggie being alive, and the deputy not, though he didn’t know exactly what it was. What the dead man deserved for the things he’d said and done (You know what rape is, kid? We’ve got pictures.) seemed a part of this equation. But if that were the case, didn’t the things that Reggie and Ivan had done apply as well? Did that change the balance of what was deserved, and who should be alive?
These questions made him uncomfortable. He shifted on the hard ground, as if finding a comfortable position would translate to peace of mind. It didn’t, so he remained silent and just listened.
Ivan turned to Reggie. Reached out and held him under the chin. He turned Reggie’s face until they were looking at each other.
‘There’s no purpose to anything,’ the killer said. ‘It’s just life and death. Those are your choices. Remember that. Make decisions that are good for you, fend for yourself, and you’ll be okay.’
Then he stood and started back, leaving Reggie with the sled and the dead man waving below. Reggie stood, looped the ropes about his shoulders, lifted the sled on his back, and followed.
As they made their way along the path through the woods, there seemed a greater weight upon Reggie’s shoulders than merely that of the sled, and it bore down on him the entire way back.
2.
They had to get rid of the deputy’s cruiser next.
Fortunately, Reggie’s mom still wasn’t home.
Ivan got behind the wheel and started the patrol car with the keys he’d taken from the deputy. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said before pulling away and driving the car around the bend in the road and out of sight.
Reggie went back inside and stared about the living room. Everything seemed in place, as if nothing had happened. As if a man hadn’t died in that very room. And with the body gone, and now the patrol car, as far as anyone else was concerned that was the case.
Nothing had happened.
At least not here.
They might say he met with foul play. Or that he ran off with a woman. Or any of a thousand other stories.
Reggie could see that was exactly what would happen. No one would ever know what happened, unless he or Ivan told them. And that wasn’t an option – they had a deal. There were consequences for breaking a deal. The killer had made that perfectly clear.
Ivan was right: it was almost as if it didn’t matter.
Some things lived. Some things died.
As he had after he and Ivan had run off to set their false trails in the woods for the police, Reggie sat down on the sofa, switched on the television, and waited. He clicked fast through the news stations.
In a big budget movie with a big name star, the hero would be watching the news or monitoring the radio, staying one step ahead of those in pursuit. Yet Reggie had also seen Missing Persons alerts on TV, and the last thing he wanted was to see Deputy Collins’s face peering back at him from the screen.
No doubt his colleagues in the sheriff’s department would all testify to the deputy’s character. Hats in hand, held sombrely over their hearts, other officers would regale the viewing audience with stories about their missing comrade. Clips would be shown of the man bringing an old lady’s cat down from a tree, or carrying a toddler through floodwaters. Maybe he’d foiled a bank robbery a couple years ago and been given the Key to the City.
Of course, Reggie would know the lies for what they were. But he wasn’t sure that mattered.
Didn’t everyone have different sides to them? Couldn’t the deputy be both the asshole that had taunted Reggie at the side of the highway and barged into his house, and a cherished friend and colleague at the same time?
Trying to push these uncomfortable thoughts aside, Reggie found a reality show about married couples swapping spouses. When this ended, another featuring an ex-boxer who now raised pigeons took its place. Realizing wh
y some grown-ups called it the idiot box, Reggie turned the television off.
In the sudden silence, the knock at the door was loud and unexpected. Reggie leapt up from the sofa, smacked his shin on the edge of the coffee table.
Limping, rubbing his leg, he made his way quietly to the door, peered through the peephole. What he saw surprised him almost as much as seeing a SWAT team charging the door with a battering ram would have.
He opened the door.
‘Hey Reggie,’ Rodrigo Ramos said.
The lanky boy always looked like he was in the middle of shrinking, his jeans and shirts a size or two too big for him. The Hispanic kid was always adjusting the loose, hanging sleeves and pulling at the hems, as if worried he’d trip up on the fabric or lose himself in the folds.
Despite having not seen him in months, despite having only hours ago watched a dead man thrown off a cliff, Reggie smiled at his friend.
‘How’s it going, Rigo?’ He held out his hand palm up, received a slap, gave one back.
‘Fine,’ the other boy said. ‘I just wanted to … you know … see how you’re doing. Can I come in?’
And just like that, the events of the day came crashing back. Reggie stepped forward into the threshold, pulling the door behind him so that the view into the house was narrower.
He knew he’d straightened the foyer space. He was pretty sure there hadn’t been any blood. But he couldn’t take any chances.
The deputy’s waving hand came to mind. Waving even at this distance. Greeting Reggie or motioning him forward, down, down into the tangled grave.
‘I’m not supposed to have anyone in the house when my parents aren’t around,’ he said, stepping now onto the porch and pulling the door completely shut. ‘Sorry.’
This was true enough. No friends inside when his mom and dad weren’t home was indeed the rule. With his mom still out and about giving away his dad’s things, and his dad … well, dead, Reggie found the excuse easy to deliver.
More than that, however, Reggie found it easy to block his friend’s entrance because, he realized, he didn’t exactly want him there.
They sat together on the top step. Reggie fiddled idly with his thumbs in his lap. Rigo pulled and folded his drooping sleeves.
‘Haven’t seen you in awhile,’ the Mexican kid said. ‘We all still do the ballgames on the weekends.’
‘We all’ meant the loose group of guys from school. Weekly summer baseball scrimmages at the local park were as close to a tradition as they had. As many as a dozen of them would meander on over and meet in the field around noon every Saturday and Sunday until school started up again. Teams and team captains were chosen not by any established process, but by whoever showed up first.
When Reggie didn’t immediately respond, Rigo pressed a little more.
‘You’re one of our best pitchers. Everyone asks about you. When you’re coming back, how you’re doing. You know, stuff like that.’
‘Yeah,’ Reggie said, not sure what that single word was directed at or what it even meant.
‘You know,’ Rigo said, ‘if you’re not up for that, maybe you and me could do something. Ride out to the comic book store. Maybe go catch a movie. Whatever.’
Reggie only shook his head; even less of an answer than before.
A part of him felt shitty, being this way to his friend. But another part of him had come to rely on being alone, he realized. Alone, there were no pressures, no expectations. He could say whatever he wanted, or say nothing at all. And not have to worry about what other people thought, or felt.
‘When my grandpa died …’ Rigo began, and Reggie felt his twirling thumbs tuck in, curl around his other fingers, as the hands became fists.
This wasn’t what he’d opened the door for. This wasn’t what he wanted.
Luckily, that was when his mom’s car came rolling up the drive, and Reggie rose to meet her. He walked away from his friend when he saw his mom pop the trunk, and reach in to bring out the grocery bags.
Reggie’s mom smiled at Rigo, and it seemed a genuine smile. Reggie didn’t, however, and with heavy bags in hand told his friend he had chores to do, said goodbye, and closed the front door behind him.
But a closed door couldn’t keep out the dead.
3.
A lesson Reggie soon learned was that the dead were as different as the living.
Whereas the lone waving hand at the bottom of the cliff made him uneasy, the urge to visit his dad was a nudging, old sorrow. The scars of time, like scars of the flesh, had memories of their origins affixed to them. Considering them brought back the events in a wash of recall that pushed aside all other considerations. This was a haunting of the mind, and it demanded an exorcism.
‘I’d like to see him now,’ he said when his mom returned from the last trip to the car, holding a bag under either arm.
She wasn’t even completely through the door, but she saw him there leaning against the kitchen island counter, looking at her, and she nodded.
‘Let me run to the restroom,’ she said. ‘Put the groceries away. Then we’ll go.’
***
They didn’t speak on the drive there. The morning was bright – almost unbearably so – the sun striking from the west, the world alight in its fire. The hum of the car rolling along the highway had an hypnotic effect. Reggie hung in a middle space between wakefulness and sleep. In this space he remembered his dad, and it was almost real.
When they pulled into the parking lot of the cemetery and his mom turned the car off, this middle space of almost-reality shut off with it. True reality remained, consisting of bright grass and grey tombstones and statuary.
‘Want me to go with you?’ his mom asked.
There was no anger left in her voice. Neither was she subdued as she’d been previously. There was only concern, love unfiltered, directionless and needing a focus.
‘Sure,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘If you want.’
Together they got out of the car and started across the asphalt towards the grass. From unyielding cement to cushioned earth, the change of terrain was a startling shift in Reggie’s hyper aware state. It was a passage between worlds. Behind him was what he’d known; the pain, old and dull and part of him. Now he was in a different place, of rules he didn’t know, and an outcome he couldn’t foresee.
‘Do you remember where it is?’ his mom asked.
Taking a moment to gather his bearings, Reggie nodded and started to walk again. The place was bordered by upright cypresses, giving a wall of privacy to the mournful living, and perhaps the dead as well. Drooping willows hunched scattered about the grounds itself, like old battle-weary sentinels. He found the low hill easy enough, though last he’d seen it the area had been populated by men and women and children in black, so much like phantoms themselves in this land of the dead. Quiet, respectful, uneasy, they’d watched the coffin lowered into the ground, perhaps envisioning the day when the earth would have them and others would likewise watch their descent into a similar hole.
The headstone was simple. Only his name and the years of his life. It was the way Reggie’s father would have wanted it; unadorned, sobering. He’d want his wife and son to remember him in their hearts and minds, not by some fanciful, elaborate stone.
Reggie understood these things as he never had before.
Thinking on them, it was almost his dad’s voice in the silence of Reggie’s head, patiently explaining, pointing things out.
Morbidly, he found himself picturing the corpse beneath, rotting, falling apart. Then he was thinking of what had been. The days almost indistinguishable in a span of time that should have continued for decades more. The smiles and the laughter; the meals and trips; the mere presence of the man with them. Corpse mind-pictures and good memories wrestled for dominance, striving for the limelight.
Somewhere, someone was crying.
Reggie heard their sobs and understood. He felt for them and knew the satisfaction of a good cry. How it tired the body an
d the mind, releasing the things pent-up inside.
But it wasn’t for him, not this day. Just being here was enough. There might be time for tears later. This was just an acknowledgement. This opened the door and allowed for possibilities. This allowed the dead into his life, and what they brought he’d find out in the due course of time.
He kneeled on the plot.
He touched the stone.
He closed his eyes for a time, feeling the summer wind on him, the sun bearing down. The sounds about him made a background white noise; cars, people, birds. He was part of it, one thing among many. He allowed himself to be lost in the shuffle, to merge with it all; a stranger in the crowd.
He said hello to his dad.
He told him he loved him.
He said see you later.
And then he was ready to go.
4.
‘Whatever happened to your sister?’ Reggie asked.
The two of them – boy and killer – were back in the tree house again. They were in their places once more; Reggie near the ladder, Ivan against the far wall. He looked exhausted, Reggie thought. The activity of the morning had cost him. He stunk of old sweat and dank heat. They had changed his bandage because the work of killing and corpse disposal had opened the wound. Shirtless, middle bloodied again but not as bad as before, Ivan caught his breath before speaking.
‘She went to a special care home after our father died,’ he said.
‘After you killed him,’ Reggie corrected.
‘Yes,’ the killer said. ‘It was a special hospital for children with … conditions such as hers.’
‘Did you ever visit her?’ he asked.
‘Not for a long time,’ Ivan said. ‘Laws on murder and child abuse are strange things. Especially back then. Though I was protecting my sister from a sick man, I still served a long stint in a detention facility for youths.
‘I wasn’t kept up to date with my sister’s whereabouts,’ he continued. ‘She moved from place to place as care homes closed or moved. The economy didn’t bode well for such amenities. Social programmes are always the first hit when times are tough. Records were unorganized and incomplete at best, non-existent at worst. It took me over a month to find her when I finally got out.’
Are You Afraid of the Dark? Page 9