“Yeah, she did. She treated you like the close friend she thought you were. And you repaid her by stealing her identity and turning her into a whore online with deviants and perverts.”
“But it wasn’t really her, I—it was just a game.”
“You used her real name. You used real pictures.”
“No, I only did that with Gorton, only with him.”
“You sent that sonofabitch private, intimate pictures of Lindsay you didn’t even have a right to see yourself. Then the two of you got off to them together online while you pretended to be her. Admit what you did, you sick fuck.” Daniel fought the urge to move closer, afraid of what he might do if he got within reach of him. “You must’ve stolen the photos while you were staying with us. You made copies then put them back, didn’t you? What did you do, rummage through our things when we weren’t there? God almighty, this is unbelievable. I trusted you, you sonofabitch. I trusted you with my things and my home, with my wife. And you fucked me. For no reason at all, you fucked us both.”
Slouched in half-light, mere remnants of the man he’d once been, Bryce looked like a child. His pale flesh—arms, chest and legs coated in thin fine hair so blond it was nearly white—glowed angelically beneath the moon’s muted touch, his head bald as an infant’s.
“How could you do this? After all these years and everything we’ve been through together, how could you do it? Didn’t our friendship mean anything to you?”
The pain riddling his face answered for him. “I’m sorry,” Bryce said desperately. “Goddamn it, man, I’m so fucking sorry.”
“You should be, you piece of shit.”
“I loved Lindsay too, you know.”
“That’s what you do to people you love?”
“Lindsay wasn’t the perfect being of light you thought she was, Danny.”
“And she wasn’t the slut you wanted her to be, either.”
“Truth of the matter is, just like the rest of us, she was a little bit of both.”
Daniel took another step closer to him. “How the fuck would you know?”
“I’m connected to her too.”
“Your connection isn’t real. Are you that far gone?”
“Are you? It’s as real as my connection to you is, as real as anything else.”
“It’s a lie.”
“It’s all a lie, man.”
“Is that supposed to be deep?”
“I tried so hard to keep it safe,” he said as if that were somehow relevant. “Whenever I was her I never talked to people from around here. I always made sure they were far away so the odds were they wouldn’t know her or know who she was. I never thought it would hurt anyone. I didn’t think anyone would ever know.”
“You have cyber sex online with strange men while pretending to be my wife, and you never thought it would hurt anyone? Do you even hear the shit coming out of your mouth?”
“It’s not that I liked sex with guys, I—shit I wish it was that simple—I just liked them wanting me. Or who they thought I was. The idea that they were so turned on and so into Lindsay—not the real Lindsay but the one I’d made, my version of her—it turned me on too. It was so fucking powerful, man. It’s like being God. I made her, I created her. I could do anything with her I wanted, make her do anything or be anything I wanted. It let me experience things I never could before.” He motioned to the laptop. “I could come on here and do or be any goddamn thing I wanted whenever I wanted and however I wanted. It was total control over a whole universe and everything and everybody in it. Once I started, gave in to it and went with it, I couldn’t stop. I wanted to, I swear on everything that’s holy I did. But it gets inside you. It changes you. Like a high, you know? You want to feel it again and again, better and better, stronger than the last time. But the more you do it the more tolerance you build against it, so you have to increase it, make it more and more intense, more and more out there…until you realize you need it, because without it you can’t feel anything at all.” He dropped his face into his hands. “When Lindsay was killed, I—Christ—I felt so guilty about what I’d done I wanted to kill myself.”
“That’s when you tried to stop with Gorton, wasn’t it?” Daniel asked. “When she was killed?”
He nodded; face still buried in his hands.
“But he wouldn’t let it go, and then you were trapped.”
“I couldn’t stop everything. I tried to stay off the computer completely, but I couldn’t. I only knew I couldn’t be Lindsay anymore. I just couldn’t do it. So I broke it off with Gorton. I thought that would be the end of it, he’d go his way, I’d go mine. He’d never know who he was really talking to. You’d never know I’d pretended to be Lindsay. Everything would just go away and nobody would have to get hurt. I thought he was gone, I thought it was over. And then the phone calls started and the strange things on the computer started happening. I thought I was losing my mind, I—I thought I was crazy, that it was all coming back on me like some haunting out of the Tell-Tale Heart or something. I just wanted it to go away. I thought maybe if we went to the cops they’d arrest him for murdering his wife and no one would ever know it was really me he’d been talking to. He’d go to prison and we’d get on with our lives like…like before. But it was too late. Something had happened. Gorton wasn’t the same. He wasn’t Steven anymore, he was Russell. He was somebody else.” When Bryce sat upright again, his face was streaked with tears. “Tonight, I finally had to come to terms with what I’ve known for a while now but just couldn’t get my mind around. Gorton isn’t just someone else, he’s something else.”
Bryce slowly slid the laptop around so Daniel could see the screen. The web browser had loaded a homepage for the local newspaper in Youngstown, Ohio, ironically called The Vindicator.
A black-and-white photograph of a man and woman side-by-side, presumably Steven and Natalie Gorton, was positioned next to another photograph of the home the two had lived in together. The front-page headline read: CORONER CONFIRMS BODY IS STEVEN GORTON.
“Bartkowski isn’t the only one that’s kept up with news on Gorton,” Bryce told him. “I’ve been checking the paper every night online. This just broke.”
“Gorton’s dead?”
“All this time the investigators thought he was the one who murdered his wife, since when they found her dead and mutilated, he was gone. They even found semen in her that matched his DNA and proved he’d raped her prior to her death. Everything pointed to him. No one else had motive, the cops were totally sold on Gorton being the murderer. But since they had no luck in locating him or anyone else involved, investigators decided to go back to the scene and expand their search deeper into the woods behind Gorton’s house for possible clues. Police dogs found the remains of another body that had been buried out there. Earlier today, the coroner working the case positively identified the body as Steven Gorton. The coroner also determined that his time of death was before his wife’s murder, hours before, possibly even as long as the previous night. They know it was the same killer because the bodies were both mutilated the same way and partially dismembered. And their eyes…their eyes were destroyed.”
“I don’t understand,” Daniel said numbly.
“Neither do the authorities. They’re baffled. The only thing they’ve been able to come up with is that because of the semen match, they think Gorton raped and butchered his wife, possibly with someone else looking on—someone he met online—and then that someone turned around and murdered Gorton and buried him in the woods. That’s the latest theory. About the only one that makes sense from where they’re sitting, I guess. It’s just not the truth.”
“And what is the truth?”
“Russell killed Steven then raped and murdered his wife. The semen matched because Steven and Russell are two parts of the same soul.”
“Russell isn’t real, he doesn’t exist.”
“We made him real. Just like that computer freak you hired said we did. We opened a door and let him through. All
of us, together.”
“What is he?”
“You tell me.” Bryce closed the laptop, extinguishing most of the light in the room in the process. “It’s only a matter of time before he finds us.”
“What does he want?”
“Lindsay.”
“Lindsay’s dead.”
“Not the part of her he’s looking for.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel looked to the windows. Snow fell delicately in big fluffy flakes that drifted through the night sky. “It’s really happening.”
“Yeah, it is. And I know what I have to do.” Bryce rose slowly from the couch. “There’s no other way out.”
Daniel saw the gun in his hand.
“That’s why I went by Maggie’s,” he said, tears again filling his eyes. “I wanted to see the kids, I…I wanted to say goodbye. It’s better this way though, they’ve been through enough. I’ve put us all through enough.”
“Unbelievable. You cause all this, you make this mess and now you’re just going to check out and leave it behind? How easy for you. Put the gun down, you fucking idiot.”
“It’s all right. I want it to end, I—I need to end it.”
“I don’t give a shit what you need.” Daniel held a hand out. “Give me the gun.”
He walked out around the coffee table, the 9mm down at his thigh. “I’m going upstairs to my room. I’m going to lie down on the bed and watch the snow through the skylight for a while. I’m going to think about my life and all the things I’ve done, right and wrong, and I’m going ask God if He can forgive somebody like me and to have mercy on whatever’s left of my soul…if I even have one. Then I’m going put this gun to my head, pull the trigger and find out what His answer is.”
“You either give me the gun,” Daniel told him, “or I take it from you.”
“Don’t.” Tears spilling across his cheeks, he brought his gun hand up toward his face and used the back of his hand to wipe some of the perspiration from his forehead. “Just don’t, OK?”
As Bryce walked dazedly toward the staircase Daniel felt as if he were seeing the apartment for the first time. He’d been there countless times in the past, but he hadn’t truly seen it for what it was, an empty and heartless place. For a moment he saw Bryce sitting here, huddled over his laptop for hours at a clip, alone in a city full of people, trying desperately to connect with something, anything that might make him feel alive and valuable, if only for a moment. He saw his friend dying here, slowly wasting away to nothing like the monstrosity held captive he’d witnessed earlier. And finally he saw Bryce’s betrayals, his iniquities, his madness, festering within him and spreading to everything he touched like the plague it was.
But when he’d walked through all those fires, what Daniel ultimately saw was a man who had been the brother he’d never had, a friend he’d known his entire adult life. He saw them laughing together, saw Bryce standing up for him at his wedding, saw how happy he’d been when he and Maggie had been married, saw him crying when it all went bad and the marriage was over, and the look on his face when he’d learned Lindsay had died. Somewhere beyond all the horror and nightmares there was only Bryce, only night and snow, memories, and regret.
“I’m not letting you do this,” Daniel said.
“You don’t get to make the calls anymore. I don’t either.” Bryce slowly climbed the stairs, the gun dangling by his side. “We never really did.”
A narrow band of moonlight divided the staircase into light and dark, and as he took the final step before crossing into the darkness at the very top of the stairs, he turned for one last look at Daniel, and in a sense, the past that had been his life. He opened his mouth to say something more, then suddenly stiffened and gasped. He coughed, and a small amount of blood spilled from his mouth in a quick and sickening spray as his expression turned from one of confusion and shock to disbelief. His eyes rolled back to white and he tumbled headfirst down the entire length of stairs, one hand grasping for the railing but not quite finding it, until he landed in a heap at the bottom, the handle of a large knife protruding from the center of his back, the wound so deep and clean it had undoubtedly killed him but had not yet begun to bleed.
Daniel was certain he’d screamed something, perhaps Bryce’s name, but he couldn’t be sure. A strange buzzing filled his head, and he tried to will himself to move but his feet remained glued to the floor.
“Bryce.” This time he knew he’d said it, but rather than a scream it came out as a question in monotone. “Bryce?”
From the darkness at the top of the stairs, a man stepped into the moonlight. “That identity’s been deleted,” he said in the same horrible voice he’d used on the phone. “It’s just the three of us now, Daniel. You…Me…and Lindsay.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Time burned slow and steady as the reality of what had just happened took shape in his mind. Daniel, finally able to move, stepped back and away from the base of the stairs, away from the monstrosity that had just murdered his friend. Though he was of average height and weight, and didn’t appear particularly physically intimidating, there was an inherent violence to this man, something broken and vile in him, something demonic. Daniel’s natural instinct was to run, but instead he continued gradually backing away until he again felt the door against his back.
Russell descended the stairs, placed a foot on the back of Bryce’s shoulder for purchase then grabbed the knife and pulled it free of his body. The blade caught moonlight and winked through darkness, glistening crimson.
Bryce’s body lay still, dead in a tangled mass at the bottom of the stairs. And while Daniel knew this was true, until then his rational mind had instinctively rejected it. “You killed him,” he said, his voice gruff and clipped. “God almighty, you—Jesus, God.”
“Jesus?” Stepping over the body, Russell brought the knife to his mouth and licked the blade nearly clean, the blood smearing and staining his lips. “Never been a big fan.”
Daniel felt for the cell phone on his belt, yanked it free and flipped it open.
He never made it past 9.
Moving with sudden and graceful speed, Russell closed on him, and with a single violent backhand, knocked the phone from Daniel’s hand. It hit the floor and slid away into shadows.
Now just inches from him, Daniel felt Russell’s breath on his face, smelled its foul odor. His lips parted to reveal teeth stained pink and red with Bryce’s blood. “Come within reach of me and I’ll kill you where you stand,” he said mockingly. “Isn’t that what you told me?” The knife moved up to his face, the tip coming to rest just beneath Daniel’s right eye. “Well? Kill me where I stand.”
He pressed the tip a bit harder against the soft flesh beneath the socket, maintaining the pressure until it pierced the skin. Daniel flinched, and his movement turned a small prick into a bona fide slash. Pain fired down his cheek and back across his temple. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.” His eyes, horribly dark and wicked, were glassy, the whites discolored with a network of bloodshot veins. Otherwise he was the spitting image of Steven Gorton. “And you know what I am. What are you?”
“I have nothing to do with any of this, I never did.”
“The children’s hour is over, Daniel, time for the adults to play.”
“What do you want with me?”
Russell let up on the blade, and though it no longer touched Daniel’s face, it was only a hair’s width away. A thin stream of blood leaked from the wound beneath his eye and trickled to his chin. “The real question is: what do you want with me?”
“This is about Lindsay, she—”
He shivered with pleasure at the mention of her name. “Mmm.”
“My wife’s dead.”
Russell glanced around the apartment, sweeping his eyes about without moving his head. “Things are still hazy now and then.” He wandered a few steps away, gazing at the windows. Dressed entirely in black, from th
e plain knit hat atop his head to the boots on his feet, he seemed to absorb the darkness around him. “It takes so long to…adjust.”
“The woman you want doesn’t exist,” Daniel said. “She never did.”
“Ironic. I could say the same thing to you.” He shook his head as if disoriented, then reached into the pocket of the black leather jacket he was wearing and pulled something free. “Things are so vivid here.”
They’re out of their natural element. Almost like being on a planet with enough atmosphere and oxygen to breathe and survive in, but still being lethargic, disoriented or adversely affected due to the change in what they’re used to.
Daniel eased away from the door.
Spinning round, Russell grinned at him as if reading his mind and thoroughly amused by what he’d found there. The bloody knife still in one hand, he raised his other to reveal a pair of large black goggles. “Hell does horrible things to the eyes.” Slipping them on, his eyes vanished beneath dark spheres. He didn’t look quite human in them, more machine, or insect. “The blind are the most fortunate there. But then, the damned can never truly be called fortunate.”
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