by Blake Crouch
I took a step closer. His face now inches from my boots, he made fists and grunted, preparing to die. With both hands, I steadied the gun, and my finger found the trigger.
I squeezed, but the hammer only clicked.
Jeff gasped.
"I’m sorry," I said, and as his back heaved up and down from hyperventilation, I stepped back. The cylinder of a Smith & Wesson rotates counterclockwise. Orson had loaded the eleven o’clock chamber instead of the two. You did that on purpose, you bastard. I dropped the round into the hot chamber, put the barrel behind Jeff’s ear, and thumbed back the hammer.
He went limp and rolled onto his left side. I hadn’t heard the gunshot or felt my finger move, but a stream of dark blood flowed fast onto the plastic. In five seconds, it had surrounded Jeff above the shoulders, a crimson halo that reflected the lightbulb redly. I could see into his right eye, open but blank, without soul or will. As the pool expanded across the plastic, Wilbur jerked back, dragging Jeff’s body with him, and shrieking his name. Do not analyze this moment. You couldn’t bear it.
The back door opened, and Orson entered, an expression of awe upon his face as he stared at the plastic. He pulled the Polaroid camera from his pocket, and captured me looking down at Jeff.
"This moment…" he began, but did not finish the thought. His eyes glistened, joyful. "My God, Andy." He came and took the gun from my hands. Embracing me with tears in his eyes, he rubbed my back. "This is love, Wilbur," he said. "Real as it gets." Orson let go and wiped his eyes. "You can go now if you want, Andy," he said. "You’re welcome to stay, but I know you probably don’t wanna see this. I won’t force you."
As Orson looked at Wilbur, I could see his mind drift from what I’d done. His preoccupation with his next victim took precedence, and his eyes glazed over with predatory concentration. He walked across the room and returned with the sharpening stone. Then he sat down on the concrete and began sliding the knife blade against the stone, returning it to the razor edge it had held before Shirley Tanner. You killed a human being. No, stop that. Stop thinking.
"Staying or going?" he asked, looking up at me.
"I’m going," I said, watching Wilbur watch the knife as it scraped across the stone for him. I wondered if Orson would make the knife speech after I left. Orson set the knife on the floor and walked me to the door. When he opened it, I gladly stepped outside. Wilbur strained his neck to see the desert, and Orson noticed.
"You interested in something out here, Wilbur?" he asked, turning around as I stood in the threshold. "Well, take a look," he said. "Take a long, long look at that night sky, and the stars, and the moon, ’cause you’ll never see them again. Not ever."
Orson’s icy stare returned to me. "I’ll see you in the morning, brother."
He slammed the door in my face and locked it. I trudged toward the cabin, the sound of the knife blade on the sharpening stone reaching faintly through the walls.
Ahead the black mass of the cabin pressed against the navy sky. The desert had turned blue again in the moonlight. I thought of my quiet room inside. I would sleep tonight. This staggering numbness was my lifeboat.
As I stepped onto the front porch and reached for the door, the first scream rushed out of the shed and splintered the gentle night. I could not fathom the pain that had inspired it, and as I walked inside and closed the door behind me, I prayed the cabin walls would impede the sound of Orson’s handiwork from reaching my ears.
13
ON the eleventh day, I didn’t leave my room. Orson slipped in during the afternoon. I wasn’t sleeping, though. Since first light, I’d been awake. He brought me a ham sandwich and a glass of port and set them on the bedside table. I lay on my side, facing him, staring into nothing. The despondence that always struck him afterward was evident in his cumbrous eyes and hushed voice.
"Andy," he said, but I didn’t acknowledge him. "This is part of it. The depression. But you’re prepared for it." He squatted down and looked into my eyes. "I can help you through it."
Raindrops ticked on the tin roof. I had yet to get out of bed to look outside, but the light that struggled shyly between the window bars was far from the brilliance of a desert afternoon. Soft and gray, it sulked in the corners. The turpentine fragrance of wet sagebrush perfumed the desert and my room.
"I’m through with you now," he said. "You can go home."
A current of hope flowed through me, and I found his eyes.
"When?"
"Pack today, leave tomorrow." I sat up in bed and set the plate on my lap. "Feel better?" I took a bite of the cold smoked-ham sandwich and nodded. "I thought you would," he said, moving to the door. As he opened it, a cool draft swirled into my room. "I’m locking the door. I’ll bring you dinner later this evening. The only thing I ask is that you’re packed before you fall asleep tonight."
When he was gone, I closed my eyes and saw Lake Norman — mosquitoes humming on the surface, a baby blue sky reflected in the mild water. I could smell the pines again, the rich, living soil. The plagiary of mockingbirds and children’s laughter echoing across the lake filled the dead air of the cabin. I could turn this all into a dream. I’m not home yet. My eyes opened again to somber reality — the sound of Orson moving about the cabin, and rain flooding a desert.
Day 11
I’d estimate the hour to be approaching midnight. It’s raining, as it has been all day, and storm clouds have shrouded the moon, so the desert is invisible except when lightning jolts the sky. But it comes without thunder. The heart of the storm is miles away.
My duffel bag is packed. I think Orson’s waiting for me to fall asleep. I’ve heard his footsteps approach my door and stop several times in the last hour, as if he’s listening for the sound of my movement. This makes me a tad nervous, particularly since he’s been so kind today. But strangely enough, I trust him. I can’t explain it, but I don’t think he’ll hurt me, especially after last night. That really touched him.
Hopefully, this is the last entry I’ll ever make in this cabin. Through writing these pages, I saved some degree of sanity and autonomy, but I haven’t written down everything that occurred here. The reason for this is that I intend to forget. Some people find the cravenness to lose entire years of their childhood. They tuck things into their subconscious so that it only eats them away a little at a time, in small, painless bites.
This idea of repression is my model. My goal is to forget the unspeakable events of these past eleven days. I’ll gladly pay the price in episodes of depression, rage, and denial that are destined to plague my coming years. Nothing can be as devastating as the actual memories of what I’ve seen and done.
I signed my name at the bottom of the entry and folded the sheet of notebook paper into thirds. Then I walked to the duffel bag and stuffed it down between the dirty clothes with the other entries I’d saved. Turning out the lantern on the bedside table, I slid under the blanket. Rain on the tin roof was more effective than a bottle of sleeping pills at lulling me to sleep.
Lightning broke the darkness, and I saw the whites of Orson’s eyes. He stood in my room, dripping onto the floor. When the sky went black again, my pulse raced, and I sat up in bed.
"Orson, you’re scaring me." My voice rose above the tinkling roof.
"Don’t be afraid," he said. "I came to give you an injection."
"Of what?"
"Something to help you sleep. Like what you had at the motel."
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Awhile. I’ve been watching you sleep, Andy."
"Will you turn the light on, please?"
"I shut the generator off."
My heart wouldn’t decelerate, so I grabbed a book of matches from the bedside table and lighted the kerosene lantern. As I turned up the flame, the walls warmed, and the terror faded from my heart. He wore jeans and a green poncho, soaking wet.
"I need to give this to you," he said, showing me the syringe. "It’s time to leave."
"Is it really
necessary?" I asked.
"Extremely." He took a step closer. "Lift your sleeve."
Pushing the T-shirt sleeve above my shoulder, I turned my head away as Orson jabbed the needle into my arm. The pain was sharp but brief, and I didn’t feel the needle pull out. When I looked back at Orson, the room had already grown fuzzy, and my head fell involuntarily back onto the pillow.
"You don’t have much time now," Orson said as my eyelids lowered, his voice as distant as the storm’s thunder. "When you wake, you’ll be in a motel room in Denver, a plane ticket on the dresser, the three-fifty-seven locked up in your duffel bag. At that point, you can know that Mom is safe, and the evidence I have against you is in a secure place, in my possession. You’ve upheld your end of the agreement. I’ll uphold mine.
"I think we’ve passed this stage in our relationship, but I’ll say it once more. Tell no one what you’ve done, where you think you’ve been. Say nothing about me, or Shirley Tanner, or Wilbur and the boys. You were in Aruba the whole time, relaxing. And don’t waste your energy coming back out here to look for me. You may have deduced the location of this cabin, but I assure you I’ll be leaving this desert with you.
"In the coming months, things may happen that you won’t understand, that you may never have dreamed of. But Andy, never forget this: Everything that happens, happens for a reason, and I’ll be in control of that reason. Never doubt that.
"You’ll see me again, though it won’t be for some time. Carry on with your life as before. Guilt will come for you, but you have to beat it back. Write your books, embrace your success, just keep me in the back of your mind."
His face was blurry, but I thought I saw him smile. The sound of the rain had hushed, and even Orson’s voice, an eloquent, soft-spoken whisper, I could scarcely understand.
"You’re almost gone," he said. "I see it in your slit eyes. I wanna leave you with something as we say good-bye and you fall into that blissful unconsciousness.
"I know you like poetry. You studied Frost our freshman year of college. I hated him then; I love him now. Especially one poem in particular. The thing about this poem is, everyone thinks it applies to them. It’s recited at graduations and printed in annuals, so as everyone takes the same path, they can claim uniqueness because they love this poem. I’ll shut up now and let Bob put you to sleep."
My eyes closed, and I couldn’t have opened them had I wanted to. Orson’s voice found my ears, and though I never heard the last line, I couldn’t help thinking as I surrendered to the power of the drug that "The Road Not Taken" was undisputedly his.
" ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth;
‘Then took…as just as fair and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted…the passing there had worn them really about the same,
‘And both…in leaves no step had trodden black….’ "
II
14
WITH the floor space of a coffeehouse, it surprised me that such a crowd had squeezed into 9th Street Books. One of a dying breed of individually owned bookstores, it felt like the library of a mansion. Though two stories high, the second floor existed only as shelf space, and a walkway, ten feet above the floor, circumnavigated the store, lending access to shelf after shelf of elevated books.
Removing my gold-rimmed glasses, I chewed on the rubbery end of an earpiece, leaned forward with my elbows against the wooden lectern, and read the closing sentence from The Scorcher: " ‘Sizzle died and went happily to hell.’ Thank you."
When I closed the book, the crowd applauded. Adrienne Phelps, the proprietor of 9th Street Books, rose from her seat in the front row. "It’s nine o’clock," she mouthed, tapping her watch. I stepped back from the lectern as the small, thin-lipped woman with short jet black hair and a sweetly menacing face pulled the microphone down to her mouth.
"Unfortunately, we’re out of time," she told the crowd. "There’s a display up front with Mr. Thomas’s books, and he’s been kind enough to autograph fifty copies of The Scorcher, so those are on sale, too. Let’s give him a big hand." Turning to me and smiling, she began to clap. The crowd joined in, and for ten seconds the staccato applause filled the old store, the last stop on my twelve-city book tour of the States.
As the crowd dispersed from the store and out onto the street, my literary agent, Cynthia Mathis, left her chair and came across the worn hardwood floor toward me. I dodged an autograph-hungry fan and reached her.
"You outdid yourself tonight, Andy," she said as we embraced. Wearing a perfume that suggested lilac, Cynthia embodied every quality an elegant, successful New York woman might be thought to possess. At fifty, she hardly looked forty. Her hair, frosting into a misty gray, was long, but she wore it wrapped tightly against the nape of her neck in a chignon. A hint of blush glowed beneath her smooth cheeks, in striking contrast to her black suit.
"It’s so good to see you," I said as we pulled away. I hadn’t seen Cynthia since before I’d started The Scorcher, and it felt strange to speak to her in person again.
"I got us reservations at Il Piazza," she said.
"Thank God, I’m starving." But at least fifty people surrounded us, waiting for a personalized autograph and a few seconds of chitchat. The doors of the bookstore, which led to my supper, seemed miles away, but I reminded myself that this was what I loved, what I’d worked so hard for. So I taped a courteous smile to my face, took a breath, and walked into the waiting crowd, hoping their interest would be short-lived.
The tall Italian sommelier handed me a ruby-stained cork, and I felt for dampness on the end as he poured a little wine into my glass. I swirled it around, took a sip, and when I nodded again, he filled both glasses with a dark amber Latour that had waited fourteen years for this moment.
When the wine steward left, our waiter came and described several dishes in intricate detail. Then he left us with two burgundy menus. Stumbling through the Italian, I sipped the velvety wine and thought of purple grapes ripening in the French countryside, and then subterranean cellars.
Lights from downtown created the calm, glittering ambience of Il Piazza. On the thirty-fifth floor of the Parker-Lewis Building, the restaurant occupied a corner of the skyscraper, so the best tables were positioned along the two walls of windows that peered out upon the city. We sat at one of these candlelit tables, and I stared down at the waters of the East River far below, gliding beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. My eyes followed the lights of a barge drifting upriver against the black current.
"You look tired," Cynthia said.
I looked up. "I used to love the readings, but they wear on me now. I wanna be home."
"Andy," she said, and I could predict by the gravity in her voice what was coming. I knew Cynthia well, and my disappearance in May had shaken her faith in me. "Look, I’ve tried to talk with you about what happened, but you always blow it off as —"
"Cynthia —"
"Andy, if you’ll let me get this off my chest, we can put it aside." When I didn’t speak, she continued. "You understand what bothered me about you just taking off for the South Pacific?"
"Yes," I said, stroking the glass stem with my thumb and forefinger.
"If you just up and leave without telling me in the midst of writing a book, I don’t care. I’m not your mother. But you were gone when your book came out. I don’t have to tell you how important it is for you to be around that first week. You’re a visible writer, Andy. It’s the interviews and readings you do then that help create buzz. Initial sales were down from what Blue Murder sold. For a while, it looked like it might flop."
"Cynthia, I —"
"All I’m saying is, don’t pull that shit again. Aside from the bookstore appearances your publisher canceled, I had to call a lot of media people and tell them why you weren’t coming. I didn’t have a clue. Don’t put me in that position again." The waiter was walking toward us, bu
t Cynthia waved him off. "God, Andy, you didn’t even call to tell me you were leaving," she whispered fiercely, her brow furrowed, arms thrown forward in agitation. "How hard is it to pick up a goddamn phone?"
I leaned forward and said calmly, "I was burned-out. I needed a break, and I didn’t feel like calling to ask permission. Now, that was my reasoning then, it was wrong, and I’m sorry. It won’t ever happen again." She took a long sip of wine. I finished my glass and felt the glow of warmth in my cheeks. Reaching out, I touched her hand. Her eyes gasped.
"Cynthia. I’m sorry, okay? Will you forgive me?"
"You better smooth things with your editor, too."
"Will you forgive me?"
A faint smile overspread her lips. "Yes, Andy."