Some things live. Some things die.
Now, sitting atop the hill with Ivan, having heard the man’s story of his emptiness in the Texas motel, those words made even more sense. Death was just another type of emptiness. And even for those things that lived, it was only a transitory reprieve.
A sentence temporarily commuted.
Option number two would find them all in the end.
All things die, was what the killer should have said, Reggie thought.
With this understanding came a heaviness. A weariness and resignation that settled upon him like a heavy blanket. Covered by this mantle, Reggie shut his eyes for a time and rested.
CHAPTER NINE
1.
‘I killed something,’ Reggie said as noon approached and the sun climbed higher along the blue desert sky.
‘What was it?’ Ivan asked, interested.
‘A mountain lion,’ Reggie said. ‘Or at least I think so.’
‘You think so?’ Ivan asked.
‘It was mangy,’ he said. ‘Scarred and dirty. It was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.’ He held his fingers in front of his mouth. ‘Teeth out to here,’ he mimed. ‘Claws as big as knives.’
Ivan gave an impressed harrumph.
‘What did it feel like?’ he asked.
‘What?’ Reggie said.
‘Killing it,’ the killer said.
Reggie didn’t answer immediately, carefully considering his response. The attack on the singing man’s camp had been so fast and unexpected that it almost didn’t seem real. It could have been a dream, where time passed in flashes and rapid-fire sequences. Coming upon the men from the camp themselves had seemed unreal and dreamlike also – glimpsing them first far off and the floating orbs of their flashlights, then close up, entering the camp and the circle of light cast by the fire, the darkness all around. None of it seemed like something that had actually happened.
But it had. Seeing each man in turn pulled into the darkness; torn apart by demon claws; the death screams like banshee shrieks.
‘I was scared,’ Reggie said.
‘Of what?’ Ivan asked.
‘Of being killed myself,’ he said.
‘But not of the thought of killing?’ Ivan asked.
‘No,’ Reggie said. ‘Not at the time.’
‘You wanted to live,’ Ivan pressed, ‘and were willing to do whatever you had to, to make sure that you did.’
‘Yes,’ Reggie answered. ‘I had a shotgun in my hands. I’d never fired a gun before – except that time with you. But I knew what they did. I knew what they were used for.’
‘And this didn’t bother you?’ Ivan asked.
‘No,’ Reggie replied, shaking his head. ‘Like you said, this was survival. I had to kill it or it would kill me.’
‘Go on.’
‘The mountain lion leapt at me,’ Reggie said. ‘It seemed to be flying. I watched it coming down on me. I saw its teeth. I could see down its throat. I knew what it would do to me if I let it. So I aimed and pulled the trigger. The blast of the shotgun was louder than anything I’d ever heard.
‘It sent shivers through me,’ Reggie continued. ‘There was a spray of blood in the air. In the beam of the flashlight it floated like red dust. The mountain lion fell and didn’t move.’
‘Did you leave immediately?’ Ivan asked. ‘Or did you look at it?’
‘I looked at it,’ Reggie admitted with a slight nod.
‘What did you see?’ Ivan asked.
‘I watched its chest move up and down with its last breath,’ Reggie whispered. The memory seemed something sacred, and his tone as of someone in church or at a funeral. ‘One of its legs twitched, and then it was dead.’
‘What else?’ the killer said.
‘I wanted to touch it,’ Reggie said.
‘Did you?’ the killer asked.
‘I kicked it,’ Reggie said. ‘You know, to see if it was still alive. But it wasn’t. I wanted to do more. I wanted to kneel down and touch it. I wanted to put my head against it, see if I could hear anything. I wanted to study the gunshot. I wanted to trace the edges of the wound. I wanted to smell it. I wanted to know what the difference was between it being alive, and then dead.’
‘Did you do any of those things?’ the killer asked. ‘Did you touch it with your hands? Did you inspect the wound?’
‘No,’ Reggie said.
‘Why not?’ Ivan asked.
‘Because … I think another part of me knew none of that mattered,’ Reggie said. ‘Because it was dead, and I was alive. It felt like the body was off limits. It shouldn’t be disturbed.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Ivan asked.
‘There’s something that separates us from them,’ Reggie continued, struggling to voice what he had felt, and was still feeling. ‘We’re not the same. What’s in us isn’t in them anymore. It’s as simple as that. And it seems wrong somehow, the living bothering the dead.’
‘What if I were to tell you you’re wrong?’ the killer said.
‘What do you mean?’ Reggie asked.
‘That there’s nothing special or different about the living and the dead at all,’ the killer said. ‘It’s all just meat. We’re walking, talking meat. They’re … well, dead meat. But all of us – living, dead – are on our way back to the dirt.’
Reggie didn’t know what to say to that.
He’d taken biology classes in school. Dissected frogs and pig foetuses. He knew his father was dead. And yet there was something to be said about visiting the grave, as his mom had pressed him to do all these past months. He couldn’t put it into words, but there was something right about honouring the dead. He’d resisted it for months, but paying respects by giving the dead their proper space lent a finality to the event itself.
‘Lean closer,’ the killer said. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’
One hand disappeared beneath the jacket, and Reggie waited for the knife or garrotte or pistol. He moved not an inch, wary that his slightest motion may spur the killer to action. Perhaps now that Reggie had taken a life, Ivan wanted to teach him the next lesson. The final lesson that awaited everyone.
Some things lived. Some things died.
And now the killer would teach him this last thing in exquisite detail.
When none of the three instruments of death emerged from the folds of the big man’s jacket, Reggie let a breath out through thinly pursed lips. Rather than blade, strangulation wire, or gun, the killer held a sheaf of glossy prints, like a poker hand fanned out.
The photographs were bent and creased. Some were even yellowed, either by age or moisture, tucked for ages in the leather wallet Ivan dropped onto his lap. He fingered one after the other, flipping them top to bottom like a Vegas dealer. When Reggie saw what they showed, he didn’t want to look at them, but had no choice.
‘These are the dead,’ the killer said, shuffling the photographs with a flip and snap, magician-like. ‘I keep them with me, to remind me and to strengthen my resolve. There’s power in remembrance. They do not haunt me. They do not bother me. I control them. I have power over them.’
Flip. Snap.
‘This was a woman in England,’ said the killer. ‘She was the wife of a member of Parliament. Her husband owed a great deal of money and wouldn’t pay it.’
The photo showed a pale woman, nude, tied to a tree in a wooded area. It was dusk, the sky purple-dark, but a spotlight shone on her brightly. Her skin shone with the light and reflected it in a sweaty sheen. Her throat was slashed, a gaping second mouth, and below it her body was showered with blood.
Flip. Snap.
‘This was a third-generation rancher in Texas,’ said the killer. ‘His family had owned the land for over a hundred years. He stumbled on a business deal being conducted on a remote corner of his acreage. He refused to be silent about what he saw.’
There was a middle-aged man in a flannel shirt and jeans sprawled in a weed strewn ditch. He’d been shot through
each eye, and now stared heavenward with raw, red holes. Ants crawled along his face, in and out of the crimson tunnels.
Flip. Snap.
‘This was the daughter of a banker in Paris,’ said the killer. ‘Her father was approached with an offer to allow certain transactions and exchanges to pass through his establishment. Moral qualms inhibited him from accepting the generous offer that was made, and he threatened to go to the police.’
A stretch of freeway and a car ploughed into the concrete divider. The young woman hung half in and half out of the car’s windshield, sprawled on the hood, looking sideways at the camera. Her features were mashed together like a drawing scrubbed out. One arm hung uselessly askew, bent at an unnatural angle.
Flip. Snap.
‘Here is the child of a Mexican police chief,’ the killer said. ‘The officer was informed of certain shipments that would be passing through his jurisdiction near the border. He was informed of the importance of the shipments, and the greater importance of their timely arrival. Despite a handsome offer, he refused to cooperate and allow the shipment through.’
A young boy, no older than ten, hung from a traffic light. His head rested at an odd angle on his broken neck, and he dangled several feet off the pavement. One shoe had fallen off and lay on the street below him, lonely and solitary in the empty lane.
‘The dead have no power,’ said the killer. ‘They hold no mysteries. They have no hold over us save what we allow them to. Human traditions and the myths of cultures, passed down over the centuries, tell us otherwise. But these are merely stories, handed down through the ages by ignorant and stupid men.’
The killer reached out and patted Reggie.
Something within Reggie shrank and withdrew at the touch.
‘The perpetuation of fear by those in power,’ said the killer, ‘is the surest means of securing conformity and cooperation. You tell people how frightening death is, how wrong it is, and back that conviction up with might, and you have a society. Laws and the enforcement of laws by strength of arms makes everyone line up obediently and believe the lies.’
The hand on his shoulder squeezed affectionately, and Reggie’s balls shrank and drew upwards. He was knotted inside with a raw fear he’d never known. Yet he listened attentively to every word spoken by the madman beside him.
‘This is my gift to you,’ the killer said. ‘The imparting of knowledge, so that you can discern for yourself what is and isn’t so. With this knowledge you can do anything. Nothing will be off limits. You will answer to no authority save your own.’
Flip. Snap.
Flip. Snap.
The images of the dead passed before Reggie’s eyes, like a projector slideshow at a macabre family get-together, a series of snapshots of vacations and parties chained together for nostalgia and laughs. He watched the slideshow for a while longer, and with each flip of the photos something inside him was burned away.
***
Surprisingly – or maybe not so – Reggie fell asleep. The exhaustion of the previous night draped across him like a great weight. He’d intended only to close his eyes and enjoy the warmth of the sun on his face for a moment or two, and then he was dreaming.
In the dream he was in the funeral home again. His dad’s casket was before him. The lid was open and he could just see a hint of the body within. A tip of the nose. A lock of hair. The knuckles of the folded hands.
Then the lights of the place went out, and Reggie was thrown into darkness. In the deep blackness he heard a shuffling, as of fabric against fabric. It came from the direction of the coffin, somewhere ahead of him. A thump and a thud followed, as of something dropping to the floor.
A dragging, slithering noise came next, as something pulled itself across the linoleum.
Bolting upright, Reggie awoke. Breathing hard, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes, he was aware of Ivan sitting across from him, watching. The killer asked a question, but it took Reggie a moment to register it.
‘What were you dreaming about?’
Reggie’s curt answer: ‘My dad.’
‘It bothers you that he’s dead,’ Ivan said, not really a question.
‘Of course it bothers me,’ Reggie said, looking about himself, still hearing the sound of the thing from the coffin dragging itself across the floor. ‘He’s my dad.’
‘After everything I’ve shown you?’ the killer said. ‘After everything you’ve seen? You still miss the dead?’
Reggie didn’t know exactly what Ivan had shown him the past few days. It all seemed sort of vague and surreal itself, like a distant memory hard to grasp and hold. He remembered hauling the bloodied killer on a snow sled. He remembered beating a kid bloody. He remembered a deputy being strangled and rolled off a cliff.
Reggie recalled his initial fascination with his talks with Ivan. How nothing seemed inappropriate; how they could talk about anything. Now he was just tired and confused. And the longer he spent with the man, it seemed the confusion got worse.
‘When your dad died,’ the killer said, ‘he didn’t go to heaven or hell. No god or devil greeted him. He wasn’t reunited with friends or family. His neural impulses merely stopped firing, his brain died, and he was gone.
‘This life is all there is,’ the killer continued. ‘We all find things to fill our time with until the end. For some it’s religions. For others careers. But it really makes no difference because none of it matters. There’s no one watching out for us, no one condemning our actions or keeping track of rewards we’ve earned.’
Reggie wanted to tell him to shut up. He wanted to scream and strike out at the man. Instead, he listened, and was scared as he realized the more he listened, the more the confusion fell away.
‘When you step on a bug,’ the killer said, ‘what do you feel?’
Surprised, disconcerted at the sudden change of subject, Reggie initially said nothing. But Ivan repeated his question, and under that intense, steely blue gaze, he had to answer.
‘Nothing,’ Reggie said.
‘Why?’ the killer asked.
‘Because it’s a fucking bug,’ Reggie said, irritated.
‘But it’s alive, isn’t it?’ Ivan asked.
‘But it’s only a bug,’ Reggie said.
‘Who says it’s only a bug?’ Ivan asked. ‘Who says a bug’s life isn’t as important as a person’s? Who made this rule?’
‘God,’ Reggie said weakly. ‘The Bible says so.’
‘And who says it’s right?’ Ivan asked. ‘Who was there at the time of its writing, to see God come out of heaven and write it down?’
‘Moses,’ Reggie said.
‘And who was there to see him see God?’ Ivan asked. ‘Who saw these things? How do we know they’re right? How do we know they’re real?’
Reggie said nothing.
‘What we have are stories,’ Ivan said. ‘Stories told by the few to the many to keep them in line. Societies are formed by laws agreed upon to keep order. But the laws aren’t intrinsically right or wrong. They’re things made up by men to keep other men doing certain things and not do others.
‘So when we say killing a bug is okay,’ Ivan said, ‘but killing a man isn’t, how do we come to that determination?’
‘Bugs don’t think,’ Reggie said. ‘They don’t feel.’
‘How do you know?’ Ivan asked. ‘When you crunch them underfoot, who’s to say they aren’t pleading? Aren’t crying out in agony?’
Reggie pictured stepping on an anthill like Godzilla upon Tokyo, crushing a hundred or so ants, destroying their homes, their hopes for ant college, a career, ant marriage and ant children. He felt the urge to laugh and choked it down. Because then he superimposed images of his dad, the strangled deputy, and the dead camping posse, upon the imaginary ants and suddenly it wasn’t so funny.
‘And when you point a gun at a man,’ the killer said, ‘and pull the trigger, who’s to say what you did was right or wrong? Who among us can claim moral superiority over another? And by what auth
ority?’
Reggie again said nothing.
‘When you mourn your father,’ Ivan said, ‘you burn calories on sorrow and anger. You’re not paying tribute to his memory or soul. You aren’t beaming prayers of vengeance or justice to God, because there is no god.
‘You’re wasting time,’ the killer said, ‘on a dead thing buried in a hole somewhere. Its skin is bloated or shrivelling. Its eyes have fallen out or congealed. It’s a dead thing falling apart, and no one gives a shit.’
Reggie remembered his mom driving him to the cemetery. How she said she thought it was important that he visit the grave. He remembered what he’d thrown back in her face before she’d hit him.
Its fucking eyeballs have fucking popped out and it’s fucking being eaten by fucking worms.
He’d sounded then like Ivan sounded now, and that didn’t make him feel so good.
But he didn’t want to argue, either, not with this man. So Reggie remained silent. He let the silence take hold and in the utter stillness his mind was a flurry. Within that mental chaos was a lot of confusion – about what to think, how to feel – but one thing for certain climbed its way out of the storm:
He’d have to decide something very important, very soon.
2.
Before he could come to any determination, though, the cop with the kids showed up, and everything changed. First, Ivan stood, looked south over the desert stretched out there in the distance, and told Reggie it was time to move.
‘If I can get to Mexico,’ he said, ‘things will be all right.’
Having seen the wound after helping Ivan clean and redress it just minutes ago, Reggie doubted that. There were streaks of red around the partially scabbed bullet hole, like spokes or trails on a map. Ivan looked pale again, and though he tried to hide it grimaces of pain played across his face from time to time.
‘I got to piss, too,’ he added.
So did Reggie, and with that settling the matter, they started down together.
The descent was treacherous, Reggie urging the large man to move slowly and cautiously. Bits of rock and dirt tumbled down before them, and Reggie thought of Deputy Collins tumbling down, breaking, and then he thought of them, himself specifically, tumbling down and breaking. At the bottom the dog and shotgun awaited them. Ivan looked at both curiously.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? Page 15