Murderland

by Garrett Cook

  “Have the costumes and your briefcase ready. This looks like a job for Mr.400 and Gacy girl.”

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

  I meet him at the apartment and sure enough, he has the costume stuff ready. We find a secluded place and we change in the car, hoping that Hausmann’s place doesn’t have a doorman. It doesn’t, but we still have a buzzer to get around. I check my watch and Jeremy checks his. He pushes the button.

  “Hello?”

  “Pizza.”

  “You’re ten minutes late, I get it free.”

  We walk in and find the way up to Hausmann’s apartment. He answers the door thoroughly sloshed, but not too sloshed for his jaw to drop to the ground instantly. Not too sloshed to realize something real bad is coming up.

  “I’m Mr.400,” Jeremy tells him, “I think you should let me in.”

  “I agree,” says Hausmann, letting us in. For a guy who orchestrated a plot like this, he’s kind of a coward. I wonder if he’s the one who threw up in the warehouse toilet. I wonder it for all of five seconds until I see the thin, blonde teenager with the perfect wingtips who looks like he’s definitely out of place in Hausmann’ s train wreck of a living room. Wrappers everywhere indicate that this is where cows and Snicker’s bars alike go to die. This kid doesn’t belong here, but I know he’s not one of the hustlers. This kid is something different.

  “We need some answers,” I tell him and although Hausmann recognizes my voice, he knows there’s nothing he’ll ever be able to do about it.

  “Don’t worry,” Jeremy says, cocking his shotgun, “we’re not gonna tell the cops.”

  “Answers?” asks the blonde kid on the sofa, “about what?”

  “Let me see your wallet,” I ask him and he hands it over, of course. I triumphantly hold up the I.D that shows this boy is an intern for WBLD Reap News. Jeremy is genuinely impressed. He points the shotgun at Hausmann, who hands me his wallet as well. Not surprisingly, WBLD was where Hausmann was interning.

  “Thought you were gonna be the next big psychopomp, Walter? Capitalize on uncatchability, then surface as the murderer of all these male prostitutes?”

  Walter is completely still until Jeremy knees him in the groin. Then Walter nods.

  “But the hustlers weren’t the victims. The johns were, weren’t they, Walter?”

  Walter doesn’t wait for another beating to nod in agreement this time. He gets right to it.

  “And you didn’t kill any of those johns. Not at all.”

  “No,” Walter mewls, both a request for us not to kill him and an answer to my question.

  “It was those seven kids, and by now they’re undergoing plastic surgery at some discreet little clinic run by the network, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody will ever know who they are, Walter. Nobody will ever know who the killers that would someday make you famous are, will they, Walter?”

  “No.”

  Jeremy’s starting to get it. He looks at the intern. “You helped him with the skinning, didn’t you, kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ve got kind of a weak stomach.”

  “Uh huh,” he replies.

  “Get Walter’s camera,” I tell him, “get it and start it up.”

  I indicate Walter and he turns the camera on him. Walter is sweating bullets, as he should be.

  “Now, I want you to tell the truth, Walter.”

  “I can’t do that,” he says, “They’ll kill me.”

  “Walter,” Jeremy says, “I’m Mr.400. I’m going to kill you. Not them. Your life is about to end anyhow. Get this off your chest and maybe you will get some mercy from God. Maybe, Walter, I won’t even kill you, in spite of how much you deserve it.”

  “My name is Walter Hausmann…” he begins. After Walter’s fifteen minutes of fame on his confession tape, Jeremy stabs him and knocks out the intern. The sad part is that I know the tape will never reach the television audience it deserves, because the network was behind this to begin with. I go home and turn on the TV, looking for any network that has nothing to do with Reap. There’s a cable movie channel and I laugh and cry bitterly as the film finishes up. I mimic its last lines to myself,

  “Forget about it, Cass, it’s Chinatown.”

  Jeremy’s Journal, April 14 th, 1994

  I bring the newspaper clipping everywhere. Nothing else really entertains me and intrigues me this much. I can’t believe everybody else who saw this just threw it away and ignored its warning. It’s ridiculous. I brought it to church today, for the Easter Mass. The two of them have a weird effect together, like my friend Bryan says about the Wizard of Oz and this Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon. He keeps saying that I should come over and check it out, but I can’t stand watching the Wizard of Oz for any reason at all. Even with some elaborate coincidence behind it, I don’t think the movie could entertain. But the sermon and the clipping do it.

  “Christ said I am the resurrection and the light,” says Father Flanagan. The resurrection and the light. When he says these words I can see how close the spheres of light have come. I can see who they hover around and I can see why they are hovering around them. Christ, the child of God was the resurrection and the light, so these things; wherever they’re from, whatever they are, need a child. And if they need a child, like God, they will need a womb to bring that child into the world. The lights are surrounding the women around me at the church, especially the younger ones, especially the blondes. Resurrection, the light, the return of the child to earth and the spheres of light jumpstart my mind and I can see something. I can see something that makes a startling and terrifying amount of sense.

  I can see a sad-looking blonde woman with big, blue eyes leaving me on the steps of the home for boys. She looks like she’s running from something, like she knows something or like she just doesn’t want anything to do with me. The balls of light circle around the blondes, the blondes are chosen to deliver the servants of the creatures and maybe their Antichrist. This woman, my mother was a blonde, and I have always somehow felt like I might not have come from the same place as the other children, like I was made different and had different potential than they did. Maybe my mother, stupid bitch that she was for abandoning me, still resisted them and created something they couldn’t control. Maybe I can see them because I have some connection with them and I am somehow like them. Am I their resurrection and their light? Am I the light that will conquer them?

  Soon I can’t hear Father Flanagan. I can only hear whispers and a kind of hissing sound that comes out of the balls of light. I find myself fixating on the image of Christ on the cross, blissful, but full of agony, the hopeful but sad way he looks down. He gave everything to save us and then we abandoned him, let him die. We let him die slowly on the cross, did nothing as the Romans took him? What about me? If I am the resurrection and the light, am I doomed to the same fate? I am not like Jesus. I am something else entirely. I am a human made to achieve some task for these creatures, he was a man made to give his life for God. I have duties to perform and a crusade to undergo, but I do not have to be like him. If I die, there will be no resurrection and there will be no followers. There will most likely be no followers as I do what I must do. I must do what I must alone.

  The stained glass Christ smiles and stares at the things that are in this church, in his sanctuary. His eyes seem to move with one of the balls. I follow his eyes and the light and I find it buzzing around my stepmother. The sermon doesn’t move her. The church doesn’t move her, she looks sort of sleepy and submissive and ready to give into whatever the light plans on doing to her. I come to the conclusion that the light is going to impregnate her, but the light doesn’t. It flies off, and Jesus’ eyes return to where they were.

  “Don’t panic, Jeremy,” a voice tells me, “don’t panic. You know enough, you’re starting to figure it out. Once you have it all figured out, it will be so much easier, Jeremy.”

  I think back to Dark Side
of the Moon, which Bryan wants me to hear as he plays the Wizard of Oz. The part of the song that says “there’s someone in my head but it’s not me”. He says the scarecrow dances around to that song. Somebody was speaking to me and I don’t know who it was, but I remember everything they said.

  My stepmother is sort of confused when I whisper “Lud?”

  Even more confused that I say nothing after that.

  “It’s not the old man,” the voice says, “I’m you. I’m a part of you and I’m here to help. Don’t talk out loud. I can hear your thoughts.”

  I’m starting to look crazy now, aren’t I? Starting to look like my connection with reality is getting severed and I’m becoming part of something else that isn’t reality at all. I’m scared by what General Lud said and what the newspaper page said and I’m scared by what happened in church. But, I’d swear it all happened. I swear I talked to the voice more and heard more from it.

  “What do I do?” I ask the voice.

  “You need to keep a keen eye and you need to be ready to do things for me and you and Jesus and the earth. You need to be ready to save the earth and to save the earth you’re going to have to listen to me. Are you ready to listen to me?”

  “Yes,” I tell the voice, “yes I am.”

  “Good, Jeremy,” the voice replies, “good. Now listen, I can do most of the tough things for you, but I’m going to need your body. You’re going to need to give up meat. No more killing things to live. You understand? No more meat. The animals don’t deserve to die, they’re innocent.”

  I like meat, but I like animals too, so I kind of have to agree with it. “Okay, no more meat.”

  “You keep in shape, work out and get ready. Your body needs to be fighting fit. If it is anything less than fighting fit, you’ll have problems.”

  I’m a little scared by how loud and bossy this voice has turned out to be, but what it says make sense. It wants me to be fighting fit, so I’m going to work out more. There’s no reason not to, anyway. Working out and giving up meat just seems natural. I can’t disobey orders that simple, or any orders for this voice. Anyway, it goes on to tell me more.

  “The lights are scouts for the Dark Ones. They allow them to determine who will breed more of them, their human children. Dirty. Mutants. Mutants like you were supposed to be, Jeremy. But you didn’t turn out all the way for them. You became something different. You can be the best weapon against them, if you can be a good weapon. I’m sure, Jeremy that you can be a good weapon.”

  It says a lot about being a good weapon. It’s scary that way. It’s fixated with my helping it get rid of these creatures and I don’t know why. I feel like I’m not in charge of this fight, but I sort of don’t want to be. I don’t like the thought of fighting. I wish people would just read those newspaper pages that Lud puts on their car and grab their guns to get rid of the things.

  “Your stepmother has been targeted by the scouts. Since she has been targeted by the scouts and they’ve gone off, they’ve determined that she’s still prime for breeding. She will breed one of them. There is only way to stop her from doing that.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I ask the voice.

  “My logic jumps ahead of yours, to the next level. I have to tell you what you need to do. I need your body to carry it out. I need you to be willing to help me do something that others could not do. Your faith and your strength will be tested. This time you’ll have to prove yourself to me. After that I can help you. I can make sure you do everything right.”

  As it speaks, I can’t help but look at how many of those scouts have come to the mass, how unafraid they are of this holy place. They could come to the school, too. I wonder if when I get back to school I’ll find them in the hallways, contaminating every girl who’s ready to have one. I can hear Father Flanagan make noises like the processor of a computer. It hurts me to think that they’re at church too and God can’t stop them. But from what the voice says, God needs us to stop them.

  “Okay,” I say to the voice, “I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

  The agreement was made and there’s nothing I can do about it now. Even if I stop liking it, I can’t stop it since I made that promise and the voice is willing to help. Good thing that voice is willing to help, because everything feels big and ominous to me now. The voice scared and relieved me in the church and it scares and relieves me still.

  When I get home, I return to my room and I try to sort everything out, to get all the facts in one place and discern what things must have been real and what other things must have been fantasy. It’s too hard to actually accomplish, though. It seems like a useful thing to do, but I think it might well be impossible. The Dark Ones have come from another dimension. They seek to get women pregnant to bring their face to earth. General Lud sees in the newspaper that there’s a page about what the Dark Ones are doing, a page to warn everybody that they’re there, but everybody ignores it and the Dark Ones go invisible. It’s possible that my mother was one of the women that the Dark Ones impregnated, and I was created. I turned out human, possessing the ability to see and fight them, an ability which was unlocked by General Lud. Because I see the Dark Ones now, the voice has offered to help me fight them. As I examine all of this information, it makes perfect sense and no sense at all.

  “Okay,” I ask the voice, “how do I get rid of her and what’s happening to her?”

  “I won’t always come when called,” says the voice, “I will come when I’m needed and I’ll come when I choose. You’re on your own right now, until you have proven to me that you are capable of carrying out your mission. You are capable of carrying out your mission, aren’t you?”

  I can only say “yes.”

  I go downstairs and my stepmother is alone in the kitchen. She’s sitting at the table, staring into space. There’s a bottle of Vodka, half empty on the table. She’s drunk again, drunk and surrounded by the buzzing things. When she sees me, a smile is on her face, a big stupid, cow smile.

  “Jeremy, dear, come sit with your mother.”

  There are so many things I want to ask her about my mother. I always get the feeling she knows something. It looks like she has something in common with my mother, but I will never see this woman as my mother. Nor will I actually see my mother as my mother. I have no mother and no father. I was made from the Dark Ones and the light made to destroy them, I have no need for something like a mother. Especially not one like this, some shopaholic yuppie imbecile who claims to be a good Catholic but pays no attention in church. She sickens me. I wouldn’t want to sit with her if there weren’t little creatures around her, but I feel even less like sitting with her since they’re there. I still sit down with her.

  “Jeremy,” she says, “I don’t feel like you like us and this town very much. I’m sorry we’ve never connected.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I tell her. I start to tear up a little. I can’t believe what I have to do, even to do it to someone I hate feels wrong. I hate the thought of killing, even of killing someone I don’t like who’s gonna do something wrong.

  “We love you, Jeremy,” she slurs, “we really do.” She says it a lot, but the vodka makes her mean it. She suddenly breaks down and cries, resting her head against the table. She doesn’t say anything at all for awhile.

  “We love you, Jeremy and I want to be a good mother, I do, Jeremy.”

  “I know you do.” I don’t know if I believe this, but it feels like a confession, it feels like she thinks it’s true enough. I feel like letting her say her peace. Even if I were to decide not to kill her, I would want for her to have said what she actually thought.

  “It’s not easy,” she tells me, “you’re not like other kids are. You’ve read every book in the house, when I ask what you want for Christmas, you can never tell me and then you get disappointed when it’s not under the tree. Why don’t you ever tell me what you really want for Christmas, huh, Jeremy?”

  “I don’t know, Elise.” I tell her, and I ho
nestly don’t. I never know what I want for Christmas. Nothing they’d give me would really show me that they love me anyway. And even if they did love me, I’m not sure that I could care.

  “Why don’t you ever call me mom?” she asks. She looks angry now, angry and sad and drunk and beat.

  “I’m sorry, mom,” I tell her. I don’t think I have called her mom before and even with the little affection I have for her, it feels like I owe her at least this. I am sorry that I don’t love my stepparents. My stepfather is a machine and my stepmother is about to become the vessel for something more disgusting than anything else on earth.

  I get really scared when something buzzing around her becomes clearer, less like an out of focus image. I wish that it hadn’t because maybe I wouldn’t have done something as scary as what I had to do. If I didn’t know what they looked like, I’d feel less like destroying them, but I can’t feel less like destroying them because I might be the only one that can. It’s a black, disgusting little monster with strange little wings and a big mosquito-snout dripping with some smelly black oil from hell. It’s clearly nothing from our world. Nothing from our world could look like that or smell like that fluid it’s dripping. I know what that fluid is and it’s even more disgusting for me.

  “I wish this family could get along better and that you could have been a regular, happy child. I don’t know if you can be now. I think it’s too late. I think I’ve ruined your chance of being a happy person, and I’m sorry again, I’m sorry you can’t be happy.”

  With this awful thing flitting around her, it’s hard to keep calm. I felt really obligated to, though. It became too painfully necessary for these to be her last moments, so it was painfully necessary to keep calm.

  “Shh, it’s okay, mom.”

  I don’t think I’d hugged her before that. I feel really brave getting so close to her with that monster so near, but I don’t feel brave about what I have to do next. I don’t want to stab her, we don’t have a gun, I don’t think I could bare to strangle her. It’s hard to figure out how I can do what the voice needs me to do. Hard to figure it out until she stopped crying and said, “Get me my pills, Jeremy, please. I need my pills.”