A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  Jimmy laughed, and I hated that the sound made my heart feel something. “Same ole Bobby. God, it’s good to see you.”

  He took a step forward, but I held my hands up to stop him. “That’s close enough…please.”

  Jimmy froze, and I watched his shoulders sag. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I would never hurt you like that, Bobby.”

  “I told the police that. They didn’t believe me, either did Katy, but I told them.”

  “I guess you can’t really blame them for that. I’ve done some terrible things.”

  And there it was—an admission.

  Wasn’t that what I’d come for?

  “Why, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy lowered his head, and I saw his chest rise and fall. “It’s like I already told you, I couldn’t help it.” He looked up at me again, and his face was sick with the truth of it. “It’s a compulsion…a sickness…a kind of fever…I fight it and I win for awhile…but then I’m weak again…”

  He inched closer to me while he was talking, and I suddenly heard Detective Anderson’s words inside my head: He likes to play games, Mr. Howard.

  “I have something I need to give to you, Bobby.” Another step closer, and his hand disappeared into his sweatshirt pocket. “Something very special.”

  I took a careful step backward, hoping he wouldn’t notice—and prayed that the snipers could see well enough in the dark and snow to have a clear shot.

  I didn’t know where the snipers were positioned, only that there were three of them, and they had set up hours ago, well before Jimmy was supposed to have arrived. I was wired under my sweatshirt and had a safe word, and they were supposed to be watching and listening to my every move.

  Of course, my overactive and terrified imagination informed me that there was always the possibility that Jimmy had ambushed the snipers, and the three of them were hanging from trees right now, gutted like deer, their steaming blood staining the snow red.

  I forced myself to ignore that image and took another half-step backward.

  “Your family is the only family I ever had, Bobby. Being with you and Katy and Grant is the only time I ever felt safe or happy in my entire, miserable life.”

  Jimmy walked closer.

  “That’s what makes this so damn difficult…”

  He pulled something long and white from his pocket.

  I had spent the second half of Friday and all of Saturday wrestling with my decision: tell Detective Anderson about the note or keep it to myself.

  By dinnertime Saturday—an early goodbye dinner at the house for Anne and her family—I had decided to keep the note to myself and not go to meet Jimmy. I didn’t know if it was the right decision, only that it felt like the safest and least complicated decision for my family.

  And I was at peace with that choice—

  —until the phone call.

  Detective Anderson had rung the house phone just as dinner was winding down, and I’d hurried upstairs to take the call in the bedroom.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, Mr. Howard. This won’t take very long.”

  I paced back and forth in front of the bed, suddenly nervous that she had somehow discovered the note—and my failure to disclose it. “It’s okay.”

  “Just two questions and you can get back to eating. Does a woman named Janie Loughlin work for you?”

  “Janie? Umm, yeah, but technically she works with me, not for me.”

  “Is Ms. Loughlin an acquaintance of Mr. Wilkinson’s?”

  I stopped pacing. “Not really. I mean, they’ve met a couple times. At cook-outs here at the house. And Jimmy came to our office Christmas party once or twice over the years.”

  “Do you know if they had stayed in any kind of contact with each other?”

  “I don’t think so. I think Jimmy would have said something if they had, and I know Janie would have. Why are you asking me this?”

  There was a short moment of silence on the phone, then: “I told you about the videotapes Mr. Wilkinson had made of some of his victims. The most recent tapes we discovered included nearly three hours of footage of Janie Loughlin doing everything from grocery shopping to gardening in her yard to walking across the parking lot into your office building.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I think it’s safe to say that Ms. Loughlin is a very fortunate woman this Christmas.”

  I leaned over and rested my face in my hands.

  “Mr. Howard? Are you still there, Mr. Howard?”

  I sat up. “There’s something I need to tell you, detective, but you have to promise not to tell Katy…”

  Dead branches crunching beneath his feet, Jimmy walked closer in the dark woods, and I knew I had maybe two seconds to make a choice. I felt my legs tense, but remained frozen in place.

  “I’m so sorry, Bobby.” He reached out with a shaking hand—and I saw that he was holding a crumpled, white envelope.

  He pushed it toward me—He likes to play games, Mr. Howard.—and I took it, backing up again once I held it in my hand.

  The envelope was sealed. I shook it, and something heavy rattled inside. “What is it?”

  “It’s…something that belongs to you.”

  I didn’t want to open the envelope.

  I knew that whatever secrets it held inside would change my life forever, and I didn’t want to open it.

  But, of course, I did.

  I turned the envelope over in my hand and tore it open along the top. I tilted the envelope and something metal slid out into my open palm. I held it up in front of my face—and suddenly I couldn’t remember how to breathe.

  It was a miniature lightning bolt pendant hanging on a faded, silver chain. The one my brother had been wearing on the day he disappeared.

  As I’d grown older, I had learned to tell people that my brother, Jimmy, had drowned for two simple reasons: first, because that was the most likely explanation for his disappearance. The lake was dark and deep, and people—kids and adults—drowned in its waters at the rate of one every three or four years. It wasn’t a terribly rare occurrence, merely a tragic one.

  The second reason was because it was simply easier. I could have explained that the body had never been found, and that the police had also conducted a missing person’s investigation, and that the investigation had turned up no evidence of foul play; but that would have just led to even more questions and extended a conversation I loathed to take part in in the first place. If there was one thing I’d learned growing up, it was this: people couldn’t shut up and mind their own business when it came to a real life mystery. They all turned into amateur detectives.

  So, as the years passed, it had become the official explanation: James Alvin Howard had drowned in the lake at the age of thirteen.

  Only now I knew better.

  “You…” My legs felt like they might give out. I staggered back a step, regained my balance. “You killed him?”

  Jimmy nodded and lowered his head.

  “Answer the fucking question. You killed him?”

  “Yes.” Barely audible above the wind.

  I felt like I was going to faint. “How? That was…almost forty years ago.”

  Jimmy looked up at me, and this time I could see his eyes. I wish I could say that they looked dead or empty, like a shark’s eyes; I wish I could say that they didn’t even look human; that they looked like a monster’s eyes.

  But that wouldn’t have been the truth.

  He looked very much like my old friend right then, standing there in front of me in the snowy woods, his eyes sadder and more tired than I had ever seen a person’s eyes look before or since.

  He cleared his throat and started talking:

  “I had just turned twenty the month before and was on a two-week leave from the Army. Most of my buddies had gone home or to the beach for some R&R and women, but I had taken off on a solo road trip instead. Mom was dead by then, so I had nobody, and nowhere to go.

  “I’d driven sout
h, and that’s how I ended up at your lake on my second day out. At first, I’d just laid there and read a book on the beach and gotten some sun, drank some beers from a cooler I’d brought along; but then I saw your brother splashing around in the lake…and he looked so young and alive…and I felt something.”

  “Something?”

  He flexed his hands in front of him. “An urge…an itch…down in the deepest part of my brain. I knew what I was feeling, and I fought it. I even packed up my stuff in the car and left. But a few miles down the road, I turned around.”

  “He was…the first one?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “The second.”

  “Who was the—”

  “My sister didn’t die from cancer, Bobby. She was real sick and she probably would have died anyway…but she didn’t die from cancer.”

  It was too much; I felt something breaking open inside of me. “So all these years…”

  “I followed the story in the news and the papers. I learned all about the sweet single mom who had lost her older son to the lake, and I learned all about the younger son still with her. The guilt and regret ate away at me. I tried to think of ways to make it up to the two of you…”

  “Make it up to us?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I was sick, Bobby. My brain wasn’t working right. Even, years later, when I couldn’t fight it anymore and I started killing again, I still thought about you and felt guilty about what I’d done. I did my best to keep track of you as you grew up. I kept a scrapbook. Newspaper clippings from back in high school about your baseball games and your business scholarship. Some of the guest editorials you wrote for your college newspaper. An interview you did for the alumni newsletter when you were working your first job. Even your wedding announcement to Katy.

  “A lot of time passed, but I never forgot you, Bobby. I couldn’t. And then one night, maybe ten years ago, not long after my wife passed away, I was living in New Jersey, and I had an idea. I knew it was a crazy idea, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it: what if I found out where you were living and became a part of your neighborhood; a part of your life?”

  “All this time…”

  Jimmy nodded. “All this time…I didn’t know what I’d thought would happen, even after I moved in right next door to you. But I never dreamed it would turn out like this. I never dreamed I would learn to love you and trust you. Like a brother.”

  “Don’t you fucking say that!”

  He put his hands up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Why tell me all this now?”

  “I always wanted to tell you, Bobby. Not a single day passed that I didn’t think about it. I wrote about it in my journal all the time. But when all this happened and I had to take off…I knew that if I didn’t tell you now, if I didn’t find a way to return the necklace to you, you would probably never find out.” He almost seemed to shrink in size in front of me. “I just thought you should know…no matter how much it made you hate me.”

  I took a step closer to him.

  “What happened to my brother, Jimmy?”

  He glanced at the ground. “When I got back to the lake, I watched and waited until he went to the restroom alone, and then I tricked him into helping me with my car in the parking lot. The whole thing took maybe three minutes, and we were gone.”

  My brain felt like it was on fire. “What…did you do to him?”

  He looked at me. “I’m not going to tell you that, Bobby. I can’t.”

  “Where’s my brother, Jimmy? What’d you do with his body?”

  “I buried what was left of…” He caught himself, quickly looked away from me again. “I buried him deep in the forest, up past Lake Codorus.”

  What was left of him…what was left of him…what was…

  Whatever control I had left abandoned me then—and I pulled the wrench I had snuck out of Grant’s Subaru from my coat pocket and smashed Jimmy across his face with it.

  I felt his cheek and nose explode, and he collapsed hard to the ground, blood spurting.

  It was hard to move with the bulletproof vest Detective Anderson had insisted I wear, but I lunged forward and was on top of Jimmy before he could get up.

  Hitting him…again and again and again…until he wasn’t moving anymore, and the wrench was slick with blood and hair.

  He likes to play games, Mr. Howard.

  But, even then, I didn’t stop, I couldn’t stop smashing what was left of his face, over and over again—

  —until suddenly Detective Anderson and the other cops were there next to me, barking orders in my face and pulling me off of him.

  And then the woods all around me were alive with voices and footsteps, and there was nothing left for me to do but lay there sprawled on my back in the trampled snow, staring up at the uncaring December sky, as one cop read Jimmy his rights—“I don’t think he’s gonna need those, Dan.”—and another cop radioed in for an ambulance; and then a helicopter buzzed the treetops overhead, its spotlight cutting through the skeletal branches, bathing us in its circle of golden light, the snow falling harder now all around us, looking like angel tears sifting down through the heavenly glow; and then my shattered mind had just enough time to think—Isn’t it so beautiful? Like we’re inside one of Katy’s snow globes.—before Detective Anderson was kneeling at my side, taking me into her arms—“Hurry, he’s going into shock!”—and even then I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t stop sobbing his name, “JIMMYYYY!”

  Over and over again.

  Only to be drowned out by the roar of the helicopter overhead.

  For Steve King

  STORY NOTES

  Many readers enjoy learning about “the story behind the story.” They may be curious about where the idea for the story came from; or what the writing process was like; or, perhaps, when and where the story was written. I, myself, am one of those curious readers. For me, it feels a little like sitting alone in a dark corner with the author and listening to him tell me all his secrets. I like that.

  Still, plenty of other readers could care less; and some, in fact, would prefer the writer just keep his big mouth shut and tell his stories and be done with it. I certainly understand that point of view, too.

  Regardless of which camp you fall into, I ask that you please wait to read these Story Notes until after you have read the stories themselves. There are spoilers lurking ahead.

  BLOOD BROTHERS—This one was originally published as a nifty little chapbook from Subterranean Press. When it was first released, I heard from several longtime friends who had just read and enjoyed it—and were completely convinced that the story was about them and their respective brothers.

  And no matter what I said, or how many times I said it, they refused to believe otherwise. I grew up with some weird friends.

  So, here it is, after all these years, my final, in-print denial: “Blood Brothers” came from the dark basement of my imagination, and nowhere else.

  As proof of this, I offer the following argument: “Blood Brothers” focuses on two themes which often pop up in my fiction—the unsettling certainty that no matter who you are, no matter how happy or secure or safe you feel, your life can change in a heartbeat, and there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening; and the idea that sometimes life forces you to make hard choices and to do whatever is necessary to protect the ones you love, no matter the cost.

  These are themes you will encounter time and time again in my fiction—a direct result, I’m sure, of my longtime wariness of this world we live in—and “Blood Brothers” is just one more example.

  One other aside: “Hanson Creek” plays a pivotal role in “Blood Brothers” and many of my other short stories. I actually had no idea this was the case until I sat down and started assembling the nearly three-dozen stories that make up this collection.

  But it makes sense.

  I grew up and spent my entire childhood in a two-story, corner house on Hanson Road in Edgewood, Maryland. And, while there was no rea
l-life Hanson Creek in Edgewood, there was a twisting little stretch of muddy water called Winter’s Run located about a mile from my house. My friends and I spent countless summer days there, fishing and swimming in the creek, and exploring and shooting our BB guns in the surrounding woods.

  Winter’s Run was one of those magical childhood playgrounds that only us kids seemed to be aware of—picture The Barrens in Stephen King’s IT, and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about—and it pleases me very much to look back now and realize just how many times this cherished place of my youth has snuck into my make-believe stories.

  THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES—Most days, I sit down and write to entertain myself, and this story succeeds on that level. I had a great time writing it, and I think the end result is a whole lot of fun.

  On one hand, it’s clearly a throwback to the days of The X-Files or maybe even The Twilight Zone.

  On the other hand, it reads like a pretty decent character study of an ordinary, small town guy who may—or may not—possess superhuman powers.

  I like that the answer is never crystal clear.

  Or is it?

  And, yes, while I do primarily write for myself, I also admit that it tickled me to no end when author Rick McCammon took the time last summer to email me and enthusiastically praise “The Man with X-Ray Eyes.” His kind and generous words fueled my writing for weeks to come, and still make me smile today when I think about it.

  If you haven’t read McCammon’s coming-of-age masterpiece, Boy’s Life, run out and buy it right now; I promise you will thank me later.

  THE BOX—A lot of readers were shocked—and disturbed—by the ending/final reveal of this story.

  I’ll tell you a secret: I was, too.

  When I sat down and wrote the first sentence of “The Box,” Charlie was my killer. When I hit the halfway point of the story, Charlie was my killer.

  But, somewhere in that second half, the story flip-flopped on me. The characters flip-flopped on me.