by Rin Chupeco
“I can see them. They’re grouped all around you, and they don’t look very healthy. Why are they all afraid of you?”
“What an interesting child you are, Sandra,” the Smiling Man says. “What a funny little child.” From his pocket he withdraws a folded handkerchief, sending a faint whiff of chloroform into the air. He should not be doing this so close to the police cars, he knows, but sometimes the thrill of it fuels his motivations.
“You’re quite creative when it comes to making things up, aren’t you?”
“Sandra!” a woman’s voice calls from where the throng of people is thickest, laced with a mother’s worry and panic. “Sandra! Where are you?”
This produces a most unusual change in the Smiling Man. Where his body had been tense and coiled, as if he was biding his time to spring, he now relaxes and slides back against the bench. His hand slackens, and he slips the handkerchief he is toying with back into his pocket, out of sight.
“It appears your mother is looking for you, Sandra.”
The girl pops the bud back into her ear and skips across to where her mother stands, a tall woman with cropped hair and a dark blue police uniform, a tall woman struggling between a job that takes up too much of her life and a child who needs too much of her time. The anxiety in her face shifts into a cross between welcome relief and anger as she spots her daughter.
“What did I tell you about leaving the car? I told you to stay inside!” she scolds, as she brings the girl to where a police car is parked half a block away, the windows rolled down and the doors unlocked.
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” the girl says sincerely. “But it was really hot inside.”
“What am I supposed to do with you, Sandra?” The woman is exasperated. This is not the first time her daughter has wandered off on her own.
“The guy from Massachusetts and all those kids with him kept me company.”
“What guy from Massachusetts?” The woman’s maternal instincts have been triggered, knowing there is something odd about her daughter’s words without knowing why. She scans the crowd, hunting for a face that may strike her as strange or unusual.
But when her eyes come to rest on the bench, no one is sitting there. Making his escape while the cameras flash and the sirens turn on, while the door slams shut behind what is left of Blake Mosses and the ambulance speeds away, the Smiling Man has disappeared, and with him, all the dead children he has killed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bread Crumbs
Four days after the murder hits the front-page news, the manner and reasons for the stranger’s death remain a mystery to the people of Applegate. The police have no suspects, and the bizarreness of the crime ensures that reporters are still quick to trot it out on evenings when the news is slow, though few updates warrant reporting.
People have taken to locking their doors or moving about their houses to check for open windows or stray curtains at night. They take the time to warn their children to come home before it grows too dark, cautioning them about the perils of nightfall, and they frequently look over their shoulders, waiting to hear the tread of steps behind them, expecting to observe and question every shadow that moves across the street.
Teenagers find death easier to deal with than adults do, and the news passes easily enough from their minds. Classes give way to lunchtime, and the cafeteria seats are occupied. There are the sounds of boys and girls laughing and gossiping as they congregate in groups and friendship.
The tattooed boy shares in none of the revelries, instead retiring to a corner of the cafeteria alone. Chewing on a sandwich, he stares at the wall across from his seat. He wears another long sweater and has resumed his habit of tugging his sleeves down until they reach well below his knuckles. The sun is shining outside and the air-conditioning is marginal at best inside, but he is huddled, quivering, and with every breath, tendrils of cold air billow out of his mouth. His eyes are dull.
“Hey there, stranger,” a voice says. It comes from a pretty brunette his age who has a fresh face with a slight abundance of freckles and a penchant for friendliness. Her manner suggests that she is one of the more popular girls at Perry Hills High, and this means she is free to do as she pleases. Today what she pleases to do is to strike up the boy’s acquaintance. Rumors of the tattooed boy have spread, and ironically, the boy’s disinterest in his fellow students makes him more enigmatic and appealing in their eyes. “You must be this strange Tarquin fella some of the guys have been talking about. Wanna eat with us?”
“No,” says the boy, who has a penchant for surliness.
The boy’s yellow-haired cousin enters the cafeteria. She looks up, sensing by some obscure instinct that something is about to happen, and glances toward where the boy sits.
“Why not?” insists the brunette, who is not accustomed to being rejected. She reaches out and tugs playfully at the boy’s hand, a show of coyness. “My name’s Andrea. Come on, I don’t bite.”
“I said no.” The boy tries to shake her hand off, but it is too late. The dark-haired girl’s fingers snag against his shirtsleeve and the material rides up, revealing the strange tattoos that undulate and curl on their own like they are coming alive on his skin, staring up at them both like malignant eyes. The air grows dark and stifling, and the mist begins again, rising expectantly around the two teenagers.
The brunette stumbles back, eyes staring out of her lovely head, uncertain of what she has just seen.
“No!” the boy shouts, and his voice carries across the room. The rest of the cafeteria falls silent, heads turning. The boy yanks his sleeves back down, so hard the fabric nearly tears from the strength of his misery. And yet the fog doesn’t lift. It rolls over and around him so that, to his cousin’s eyes, the denseness of the shadow obscures him, the form behind him rising once more to mimic the shape of that brooding mask, that lady in black.
Neither the teaching assistant nor the rest of the students see this woman. Not even the tattooed boy seems to realize her closeness. His face is washed of all color, and he is clinging to the table before him, hunched over in pain.
Several things happen.
Flocks of birds crash through the window.
They are missing their heads.
They hit the walls hard: thud, thud, thud. They crash into plates and trays, into water fountains and people. Several smash into the lighting fixtures overhead before dropping down, suddenly motionless, and nearly missing a group of girls huddled in a corner.
The students begin to scream. The boy’s cousin claps a hand over her mouth, stunned by what she has just witnessed.
Without another word, the tattooed boy takes off—past the cafeteria doors and down the corridors, bursting out of the school’s main doors and barreling down the street, with the woman’s shadow fluttering after him.
“Tarquin!” His cousin follows him. She is quick enough to catch sight of him, with the strange darkness surrounding his head like a crown, before he disappears around the corner. “I’m going after him!” she calls out to other teachers who poke their heads out of their rooms, curious. She gestures back inside, where the screaming continues to drift out, where the dead birds still litter the floor.
“Take care of them, Jen!” she tells her friend who has come running up, eyes wide.
“What are you going to do?”
The young woman does not answer her. Already, she is running.
But boys are light of feet and quick of temper, and he is soon lost in the busy afternoon of cars and people. The teacher’s assistant pauses, looking this way and that, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But the crowd flows past her, unyielding and unrepentant.
It is then that she sees the woman in white.
I am standing at the corner of a busy intersection, my face hidden under a ruined cobweb of hair. The girl sees me like a man might see an oasis in a dried desert—disbelieving, certain that
her senses play with her mind, convinced this is nothing more than a mistake, a puzzle of flesh.
I lift my hand and point at something in the far distance. The young woman takes a step forward, her own arm extending, reaching for this strange creature. She is convinced that she will be reassured if she touches this apparition and feels the sensation of skin and bones underneath her own. But in the space between moments I move, and she finds herself standing alone, with only people swarming past.
She turns in the direction I pointed and, because she can think of no other alternative, follows this road.
She stops again along a boulevard, her path lost. A pedestrian light turns green across the street. Once again she catches sight of the woman in white gliding through the rush of people, and I do little to blend in. I lift my head momentarily and the teaching assistant glimpses black hair streaming down past sightless eyes, before I am once more gone in the maze of briefcases and shopping bags.
The young woman makes her decision. She takes off after me, following the bread crumbs I am strewing in her path. Her pace quickens as her certainty grows, and she pauses only to call out apologies and excuses as she jostles against other men and women scurrying past.
She finally catches sight of the tattooed boy. He sits inside a white car. His eyes are half closed, and his head lolls against the seat. But the man closing the door beside him is not his father. It is a blond man with bright eyes and youthful features, and he is smiling.
“Wait!” The girl is frantic. Heads turn in her direction as she fights against the flow of people walking past: an old man in a wheelchair, a dog walker with three German shepherds, two baby carriages. “Wait! Stop him! Tarquin!”
But the man starts the car and drives away, leaving her helpless by the curb. Inside the car, the teenager turns his head, puzzled.
“Did someone call me?” he asks, his voice slurred.
“I didn’t hear anyone,” the Smiling Man says gently. “Go back to sleep.”
The car speeds on. The young woman watches it leave before she looks around and does the next best thing.
“Taxi!”
• • •
“For the last time, Jen—this is not a joke.” She speaks into her phone with a mixture of annoyance and agitation, as the taxi speeds down the street in pursuit of the white car. “I think Tarquin Halloway has been kidnapped by a man in a white Ford, and I want you to call the police. No, I don’t have their number just lying around. Yes, 911’s been busy for the last five minutes, and I’m not entirely sure why. That’s why I want you to call instead while I…Yes, I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out where they’re heading. No, I don’t know what the hell happened with those birds. Yes, I’ll be back as soon as I find Tark.”
“Is this for real, lady?” The taxi driver looks alarmed. “We’re after some pervert on the run?”
“I don’t know yet.” The young woman’s eyes are glued to the white car just ahead, which is turning onto a smaller, quieter street at the outskirts of town. They lose it for a few minutes after it speeds up and turns a sharp corner, and it takes some more searching before she finally catches a glimpse of the car as it turns into a small driveway, almost hidden by a tall grove of trees. She gestures at the driver to stop at the opposite side of the street.
“I’ll be getting off here. Keep the change.”
“You sure you don’t want me to stick around, miss?”
She pauses. “Can you use your radio to call the police?”
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I can radio my boss and he can—”
“Do that.” She hands him a couple of bills and gets out of the car.
“I think you ought to wait for the cops to get here, miss. If there’s some wacko on the loose, I don’t think you ought to be looking for him alone…”
“I don’t think I can wait that long. Just call the police as quickly as you can.” She runs toward the row of houses, while the taxi driver picks up his radio and speaks hurriedly into it. But by the time he gets out of the car, intent on following the teaching assistant, he stops. She is nowhere to be seen.
• • •
She is not afraid, not at first. She is careful not to attract too much attention, though her nerves are frayed and adrenaline shoots through her network of veins. The house is nestled on a tiny cul-de-sac, one of only three houses there. It stands against a backdrop of afternoon sky, the sun bleeding through the clouds. A still calm descends as she nears the parked white car. The hood is warm when she touches it, but its occupants are missing.
The cab driver’s right, the teacher’s assistant thinks. There are a million reasons why I shouldn’t be here alone. I’ve watched enough slasher movies to know this.
But she knows that as the minutes tick by, her cousin draws ever closer to danger. Her last conversation with his father drifts into her mind, and she is ashamed that she is unable to keep her promise of watching over him. It is a part of her nature to be protective, and this flaw sometimes overrules her caution.
She tries the door and is not surprised to find it locked. She wrestles against the idea that she could be arrested for breaking and entering, tries to imagine herself serving time in jail stripes, and decides to chance it. She circles the house and finds a small window opened partway—enough for her to be able to squirm inside.
There is no one inside the first room she enters, which is a kitchen. Knives of varying sizes line the wall, gleaming in the dull light. Grocery bags take up one side of the kitchen island, filled with vegetables and canned goods. Everything appears to be in its place, tidy. There is nothing out of the ordinary here. She waits at first; frightened, certain she’s been found out—but the minutes go by, and no one comes. The house is quiet; not a creature stirs.
For a moment she feels foolish, embarrassed. Could she be mistaken, after all? She takes out her phone to call her friend and is annoyed by the lack of mobile signal in the area.
She turns just in time to catch a glimpse of me drifting into the next room, head bowed, feet barely touching the ceiling.
She is taken aback and wonders briefly if she is going crazy on top of everything else, but she realizes she has come too far now to turn back. She grabs a small knife as a precaution, then follows me into the next room and sees me standing before a large wooden door. She blinks, and I disappear.
By all outward appearances, it could have been a closet or a storage space, or even a small bedroom, the type allotted for guests. But when the teaching assistant pulls the door open, all she sees is a set of stairs, leading down into night.
It is all she can do to take that first step down. It creaks slightly under her weight, not loud enough to echo into the narrow space, but enough that she becomes more aware of the darkness. Her descent is slow and careful, and for the first time, she wishes she had looked around for a flashlight to bring. But before she changes her mind, she reaches the bottom.
There is a bulb hanging at the end of the stairs and another door before her. The young woman swallows hard, silently counts to ten, and pushes it open.
Inside, the tattooed boy is nestled against a small cot on one side of the room, fast asleep and unharmed in every way that she can see, much to her relief. A small candle has been lit beside him. Large pipes run parallel across one wall, gurgling water and sewage. The room itself carries a dank smell of rotten wood and moss.
The young woman looks around for other signs of life. Finding none, she hurries to him, feels his forehead, and sighs with relief upon noting his steady pulse, his measured breathing. “Tark? Tark, wake up.”
But the boy only murmurs something unintelligible and sinks back into slumber.
She takes one step, two steps toward him, then gets no farther. Something crashes painfully against the side of her head, and the last thing she sees before blacking out is me, standing over her crumpled form, head twisted enough to one side that
a disfigured eye stares back down at her, black against a pale, stark face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Smiling Man
“Wakey, wakey, sleeping beauty.”
This is the first thing the teacher’s assistant hears as she struggles back to consciousness. A light shines from somewhere above and distorts her vision. She shakes her head, attempting to dispel this hurt, and finds that she cannot move. Someone has lashed a series of ropes around her legs and arms, imprisoning her against a hard bed. She can do nothing more than move her head a few degrees in either direction.
A man moves into her line of vision. He is the same one she saw driving the white car with the drowsing teenager in his passenger seat.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” the Smiling Man says. “Though I am sorry to say you won’t be staying here very long.”
The girl tries to sit up, struggling in terror against her bonds, but the Smiling Man has done this many times before, and they hold fast. She opens her mouth to scream, but the man merely laughs as her cries bounce off the walls. “Nobody’s going to hear you this far down, sweetheart. I made sure of it.” He grins in a disarming way, but his eyes remain blank and hooded, unable to absorb so much as a glimmer of light.
“I called the police,” the girl gasps out, unwilling to surrender. “They’ll be here soon, and they’ll catch you.”
The Smiling Man
take him, take him now
shrugs this off, like it is of little importance to him.
“It’s quite a drive from the nearest police station, especially with the rush hour. There aren’t many police in this town anymore, not after the recession. And besides”—he leans in close so she could smell his light, delicate perfume, the strong decay of eggs in his breath—“by the time they get here I will be gone,” he whispers. “And you will still be dead.”
He moves toward the boy and strokes his head fondly. “You’re a little too old for me,” he tells the teaching assistant. “Too old. I like them young. The younger, the prettier, the better. This one’s older than I’m used to, but he’s got such a pretty face.” His fingers find a trail down the side of the boy’s jawline.