Murderland

by Garrett Cook

  When I get into bed, Cass is dead silent. She’s waiting for some kind of explanation. If there was a word for the combination of shame and mortal terror that I feel, then I would give one in a heartbeat. This is beyond shame, though. This is another secret, another secret that cost another life and I don’t think that shame would mean anything. The blonde and the baby might not have been Dark Ones. There is something in me that wants me to go further, to stop questioning its orders and only do. There is something in me that puts the crusade above the consequence and above the reality of it. Something in me that needs to reconcile that there are real enemies and imaginary ones, whether the Dark Ones exist or not. This part of me, by making me slaughter these innocents might very well be causing me to aid the Dark Ones. This part of me ignores what I tell it to do, not as much as it used to, but it still does. The only way I can do anything to stop it is to talk, so at the risk of sounding like I’m crazy, I talk.

  “Cass, I don’t know what I was doing today.”

  There is patience, disgust and love in her gaze, in the way that only her eyes could show them. She doesn’t say anything, though, because she needs me to finish, for me to hear myself being scared of something I might have done wrong.

  “I killed a woman and her baby because I thought they were Dark Ones. I need to go to Connecticut tomorrow. I can’t tell you why I need to go back to Connecticut, but it’s really important. If I don’t, I won’t be able to sleep anymore. If I can’t sleep, I won’t be any good to anyone. I need to go to Connecticut with you, okay?”

  She’s still silent. There is no approval, no disapproval, and that’s what you need from a pure confession. Every man’s bed should be his church, and every man’s confessor should be someone who loves him enough to forgive him, like they say about God. She knows that insanity might also be part of the war and that sanity doesn’t come easily and that’s why so few people actually have it.

  My dream returns. I’m so exhausted, I just let it play over and over again without getting up to resist its pull or its message. The plain extends for longer and the mountain is harder to reach the top of. And when I do reach the top, Lud says nothing; he just reaches into my pocket and pulls out a handful of squirming vipers.

  “I just have to stay here. I gotta stay here waitin’ until God calls down the lightning and he splits the serpents in twain.”

  When I awaken, I am even more certain that this man is the only one who can help me retrieve my sanity. No more meditation or spacing out or sleeplessness. I will be here for each moment until the final battle comes. Though I feel a lot less certain than usual that I will win that battle.

  Connecticut

  It always looked so small on the map, but to drive through it is like driving through the Sahara or sailing along the Amazon. There’s something big about Connecticut, something too huge for its own good in spite of its smallness. It isn’t because it’s all the same, nor is it because it just looks boring. It’s because it doesn’t add up. It doesn’t know how rich or poor it is, it doesn’t know if it should be proud of its sex shops and casinos, or of its Ivy League school. It defines itself based only on the junk it can attain, like a pathetic single middle-aged man looking for toys at a yard sale. Connecticut tells us what’s wrong with America, a nation of Ivy League sex shops and clapboard ghettoes. It turns into poetry because there are no other words in this car, nothing that Jeremy would tell me until it happens.

  This trip is some sort of detox for him, some kind of weird serial killer rehab. Maybe it’s odd that I want to rehabilitate a serial killer into a terrorist, but terrorism makes sense. In a country that looks and thinks like Connecticut, it’s so tempting to blow up the tasteless, yard sale crap. So maybe it was Connecticut that drove him nuts. Maybe tourist traps and ghettoes and vestiges of sophistication made it hard for him to get a handle on all of the stupidity. If he’s going back to where his insanity started, to introduce me to his foster father, I’m going to scream. I’m going to do worse than scream. I don’t know what it is that I’ll do, but it will make screaming seem downright polite, not to mention any number of other alternatives to screaming. Maybe I’ll do something to make him scream. I’m angry. I’ve been left in the dark about something that he thinks is of critical importance and I’m pissed about it. It’s only natural after all. I’ve had enough of secrets lately.

  “You’ll tell me when I’m getting close to the place, right?” I ask him. It’s been maybe a half hour of Connecticut, but it feels like so much of it. It feels like it felt driving south from Massachusetts. I’ve also gotten a bit tired of his staring ahead. The silent treatment is all well and good for self-expression, but it never seems to get any info.

  “There are a lot of billboards out here,” he says, not acknowledging my question.

  “Too many. Why did you have to be from my least favorite state? By the way, I asked you if you’ll tell me when we’re getting there.”

  “Of course,” he answers.

  Where could he be going? The home for boys? That foster home? His old school? An old friend’s house? I’m trying to figure out which of these Jeremy wants to revisit, but it’s hard to read him. He doesn’t talk much about the past. He only said he didn’t like his foster home, he didn’t like his school and he didn’t like Connecticut. Nothing I can use right now.

  “What are you coming here for?” I just say it. I’ve been driving awhile and I’m tired of the games.

  “Dreams,” he answers, “I’m looking for someone here.”

  This does not bode well. Not at all. Dreams? Looking for someone. I have come to Connecticut so he could find a figure from a dream? Is he looking for Elvis, Satan, the Sasquatch? He’s been watching billboards, too. It might be Captain Crunch or Crazy Dave and the Morning Smile Brigade. What an excellent reason for me to take a day off work.

  His face actually registers something. He returns from the vast nothing he’s been wandering around to provide me with a little bit of reassurance. “Someone at the mall.”

  “At the mall?” I’m going to the mall to find somebody from Jeremy’s dream. I must be getting close to whatever stupidity brought me here, so turning around isn’t an option. I can only bask in the glow of my disapproval.

  “Yes. You didn’t find the legal pad? The old journal entries from when I was younger.” Uh oh. This stings a little worse on account of the fact that I could have had the requisite information and decided not to take the drive at all in the first place.

  “No. I didn’t see those entries.”

  “Good. You wouldn’t have come.”

  This is the man I love again. Capable of being perfectly clever and canny in pursuit of what he wants. It’s something of a relief, because the cryptic weirdo who sat beside me in the car made me worry. I wondered how it was that this person was going to help make a world that he approved of out of the blasted cultural wasteland around him. I would be much more relieved were it not for the fact that we have come this far to go to a mall. This had better be one special mall.

  It isn’t. A large Best Buy, a Marshall’s. Nope, nothing special here. He gets out and he surveys the parking lot. Is he looking for a car? He walks from car to car, each time looking at their windshields and nodding. He stops, looks around, and waits for somebody. Then, he moves to another section of the parking lot and does the same thing, then another afterwards. I don’t bother to run after him, or ask what he’s doing, because I feel like I would end up regretting it completely. Soon, he has scanned the entire parking lot, reading the things on everyone’s windshield. I half expect him to say “okay, we can go now”, but he ends up looking disappointed.

  “Bad news on someone’s windshield?” I ask.

  “No. Please stop patronizing me.”

  “So, what ARE you doing roaming around the parking lot reading people’s windshields?” I can’t wait for the answer to this one. No matter what it is, it’s gonna be good.

  “I’m trying to see if somebody was here. Somebody
who marks people’s cars with newspapers,” he says, “an old friend of mine.”

  “Well,” I answer, “if he’s been putting newspapers on people’s windshields for this long, he can’t expect mall security to never pick him up.”

  Jeremy kisses me and leads me into the mall. “These newspapers are fresh. He was caught recently. Maybe he’s still being questioned by mall security.”

  “So he’s being questioned by mall security. What do we do? I mean, besides get some chow at the food court and head home…”

  Jeremy gets this scary “Eureka” look on his face. “I’ve got it. I need you to distract mall security, while I free General Lud.”

  I need you to distract mall security while I free General Lud. I will pretend I didn’t hear that sentence, and yet somehow I know that I’m going to end up distracting mall security while Jeremy frees General Lud. Jeremy runs off ahead of me, while I have to figure out how I can get the attention of mall security. Far as I know, there’s basically one good way to get the attention of mall security and that’s shoplifting. But, I need to really get mall security’s attention, so I need to find a provocative way to get mall security’s attention via shoplifting.

  I walk into the Victoria’s secret and I pick out a pink bra and thong set. I discreetly walk into the dressing room. Why am I willing to do this? Because I love my boyfriend, because I want him to feel sane and because there might be something in this stupid excursion, there might be something worthwhile in Connecticut. I stuff my clothes into my purse and I emerge with a big, naïve grin on my face and the sales tag still on the bra and panties I’m wearing. I walk past the clerk and out of the Victoria’s Secret almost nude. The girl shouts at me “miss, miss, miss! You haven’t paid for that!”

  “That’s what I wore in!” I shout back. As humiliated as I am, I’m having fun now. When the clerk at the Victoria’s Secret calls for mall security, a sixty something man with a medicine ball belly rushes in as fast as his basset hound body allows.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jeremy leading a smelly, bearded homeless man out of the mall running like hell. The security guard looks me over. Really looks me over. “Umm, miss, I’m sorry but you’re…”

  I look down at my unclothed state and I look surprise.

  “Oh my god, you’re right! I am so embarrassed!”

  The Victoria’s Secret clerk is really confused when I reach into my purse and pay for the lingerie I walked out in. The woman looks at me and has no clue what to say as I go into the dressing room and change back into my clothes. The security guard takes extra long returning to his post after that. It’s very easy to confuse and frighten people in Connecticut. Especially with a little cleavage. I feel embarrassed, powerful and gorgeous at the same time.

  I get to the car and the homeless man is freaking out.

  “Shun the machines! Shun the machines! They’ll destroy you; they’ll turn you into one of them! They’ll turn you into a robot! Shun the machines!” he screams.

  “General Lud?” I ask Jeremy.

  “Uh huh,” he answers, seemingly not that disappointed by the fact that his friend is completely insane and apparently has never ridden in a car before.

  “I’m Cass,” I tell General Lud just to accentuate the fact that it won’t matter to him.

  “How…how do you do?” General Lud asks me. At least he’s capable of saying something coherent.

  “I am fine, General Lud,” I reply as if I’m talking to a six-year old. I’m trying to remember what I have done to cause Jeremy to play such a malicious prank on me. On April Fools day I put peanut butter in his socks once, but that doesn’t seem to be remotely of the same caliber malicious prank as this is. This seems to be a great innovation in the field of malicious pranks, the sort of thing that nets people awards.

  “I hope you bought that bra,” says Jeremy, “it looks REALLY good on you. The pink goes great with your skin color.”

  I give him one of my favorite glares. The one that shuts him up really quickly. My patience is almost nonexistent.

  “Snakes are comin’” says General Lud, “you seen the snakes, ain’t ya? I know you. You’re Jeremy. It’s been a long time, but I know you. More of us now. More of us can see what’s on the page. More of us know the snakes are comin’. The jackal and the serpent king are on their way.” I don’t know what his words mean, but there’s a great weight to them, a big cumbersome kind of truth. It bothers me immensely. It reassures me that this person had something to do with Jeremy’s visions and the nightmares Jeremy wakes from.

  “I’ve dreamt about the snakes,” Jeremy tells him, “the snakes were stampeding across the plain full of garbage. Then I saw you on the mountaintop.”

  “The lightning must strike true. We got friends. A block or so, turn this corner, come see. We got friends. Some say we use the machines and we spread the message. Sometimes the message goes into the sky and it comes back down and it tells people what’s on the page, but nobody listens. We got friends. Turn here!”

  When in Rome…or in this case when in Bedlam. I turn the corner and there’s a network of alleyways filled with dingy homeless people, some who wave at General Lud in the car. Some are cooking things on a fire; others are rooting through heaps of garbage. All of them have a lost look on their face, a lost look tinged with some kind of knowing, like the look on Lud’ s face. At the end of the alleyway, Lud motions for me to stop, and I stop of course. We all get out and a few homeless people come to meet us.

  “Hi. I’m Leon,” says one of them, a leader of sorts, he looks like he’s actually bathed and speaks English, “I used to be an engineer, but then I heard what Lud had to say about the machines.” He says this knowing that I have trouble accepting that anybody in this alleyway would be sane. It kind of helps, actually, to be reminded that everybody here had something or believes something.

  “I’m Cass,” I hold out my hand and he shakes it. His hands are covered in oil.

  “This is Jeremy,” says General Lud, “he’s seen everything, too. He knows what’s happening. He might help the lightning strike. Might need help though. You help him help the lightning strike. I think he’s got ideas. You help him with the ideas.”

  “Sure thing.” Leon grabs a pile of car parts and loads them into a wheelbarrow.

  “They can help you with that, Leon,” says Lud, “they can haul more parts in that thing. It won’t hurt ya none. You can go and take these things to Jones. I’ll come and you come. We can take these things to Jones and he can help Jeremy. I have seen Jeremy in the dreams. He’s good. He’s gonna help the lightning strike true.”

  Leon nods and loads the parts into the trunk. It feels good at least to be meeting people and to be going places here. It feels like less of a waste, even if I’ve driven here to haul car parts for sale. Leon and Lud get in the back, which is kind of a tight fit with the suitcases we have back there, but they manage. This time Leon is the one providing directions. Providing directions that are in between Lud’s rants.

  “No more voice. No more running, Jeremy,” Lud rants, “No more mountaintop, it ain’t safe there. Don’t go to the mountaintop. Somethin’ else is happenin’, somethin’ else happens so you do right and you let the lightning strike true. If it don’t strike true, there’ll be nothing but pain. The serpent king will bring pain. The jackal will devour. Don’t forget.”

  That rings truer than a lot of the other ranting. Jeremy looks even more disturbed by it, like there was something he was missing. I don’t see much myself, but I see that he did have to come here and maybe something will be done about the dreams and the feelings he has of powerlessness. Maybe he’ll only kill when he wants to if he thinks this through to the end. I’m not shocked when Leon points out a warehouse.

  “Is this Jones actually a person? Is he here?”

  “Yup,” says Leon, “this is where you find Jones. Don’t you worry about that.” He laughs. Even Lud laughs a little. I thought it would be scary to hear Lud laugh, but it isn�
�t. It reminds me that no matter how far gone he is, the crazy man from the mall is actually a person.

  Leon walks up to the warehouse door and rings a doorbell. First of all, I’m a little taken aback to find that this warehouse has a doorbell. Second of all, I’m surprised that this doorbell when pressed plays “Brick House” by the Commodores. Jeremy, Leon and I all find ourselves humming along. I have a feeling that Lud doesn’t follow vintage funk. As the motto of this trip has fast become expect the unexpected, I expect the unexpected, and my expectations are still surpassed.

  A young woman in a black geisha wig and kimono answers the door. A massive katana about half her size is sheathed at her side. She bows to Leon and Lud, and then rises, extending a hand to Jeremy.

  “Reiko. And you are?”

  “Umm, Jeremy.” It’s good to see that this place confuses Jeremy too. It’s good to see somebody else overcome by the madness of Connecticut. Of the things Jeremy expected, one of them was probably not a girl who is about as authentically Asian as the Chinese food at Juan Sanchez’s Happy Panda Palace on 128. Having walked a bit deeper into Wonderland today, I bow.

  “Konichi-wa…”

  “Very funny. Stand up.” She offers a handshake and a look that reminds me that she’s carrying a katana with a four foot blade at her side.