by Aaron Dries
Marshall slipped into a booth and heard the cushions gasp. In front of him was the silver napkin holder, the overhead lights burning bright against it, hurting his eyes. His pulse quickened. He felt like he was in that nowhere land between awake and asleep, where at any moment he might bolt awake in fear, or slip into the dark.
He glanced up and saw that all of the customers were looking at him, just like the Tweety Birds. There was the clatter of plates and the jingle of music, but no talking. Marshall’s palms started to sweat. He needed water; his throat was dry.
The song from the antique jukebox in the corner changed, the sliver of silence shocking the other customers back to their meals and conversations. A fly landed on the lip of the ketchup bottle in the center of the table. It rubbed its front legs together, as though it were cold, or praying. Marshall watched it suckle at the hardened sauce around the lip. He hated the fly; it made him feel sick.
On the opposite wall there were framed Twin Peaks photographs. Outside it started to rain. Water beat at the front door, rattling the glass.
Random voices ran through Marshall’s head, each at different pitches and speeds, but all were his own.
Who killed Laura Palmer?
The photograph on the wall. The frame was chipped.
Who Killed Roger Rabbit?
The entourage of Tweety Birds around the room. One had split open in the past and had been stitched together, a winding scar running the length of its face.
Who killed Laura Palmer? Who killed Roger Rabbit?
Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?
The rhyme came out of nowhere. Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?
Who stole the cookies. From the cookie. Jar.
Marshall put his hands together, rubbed them as though he himself were cold, or praying.
A seven-year-old Noah coming home from school. “Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?” He was dressed in his uniform, blue shirt and grey shorts. His shoes were coated in dust. He wore a necklace made of old twine and pasta tubes. “Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar? Who me? Yes you! Couldn’t be. Then who? You stole the cookies from the cookie jar!” And so on and so on the rhyme went, over and over. Noah running down the hallway, trying to touch both sides of the walls, but unable to reach.
Marshall crawled out of the booth, knocking over the ketchup bottle. A squirt of red sauce shot across the table and ran down the dangling tablecloth. The fly flew around the room and settled on a Tweety Bird. He was afraid he was going to vomit. A tall, dark haired waiter approached him. The young man had a shark tattoo on his upper forearm and he balanced the plates in his hands with an elegant ease. He looked kind, a wry smile on his face. According to the grease smeared nametag pinned to his shirt, he answered to Jason. “Are you okay, sir? I was just getting to you. Busy day. You know how it is and all—”
“No, I’m fine,” Marshall said, his face ashen. The waiter’s expression grew concerned and he asked if Marshall wanted some water.
“I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Marshall sat on the edge of the hotel mattress, laptop resting on his knees. The fingers of fatigue had crept out of bed with him, curled around his neck and strangled him. He found it hard to breathe.
Today’s the day, he said to himself.
He looked up at the clock on the wall. It was seven twenty, almost time to leave. Daylight was slipping away. The sun had fought through the clouds to paint the sky a vibrant pink, changing the color of all it touched. Everything seemed warm and inviting. It had not rained for six hours.
Marshall looked at the computer screen and reread the open email.
Hi Noah,
Meet me the bottom of the Rattlesnake Mountain Scenic Area just off Hermon Heights Rd. Theres a park there. lotsa trees. Past the trees there is a set of swings and next to that is a bench. I’ll b there @ 7:30, k? Please come. I never thought id ever meet you. Im nervous. Come by urself. There wont be anyone around. Just us 2. Im sorry for the things I said way back. I guess I didnt mean it. I want 2 b able to say sorry 2 ur face. K? Im scared. Please dont hate me. We can have a laugh.k?
The email was signed Sam.
Sam…
Marshall had looked at the location on Google Maps. As Sam had explained, it was in a remote part of town and there didn’t appear to be many—if any—houses or buildings nearby. There was a public toilet that could be seen from the road, but that was it. The road itself was unpaved. From the limited streetview on the Internet, Marshall hadn’t seen any swings or benches, just trees. The day the Google Map van had gone through North Bend taking periodic photographs, the weather had been fine. The image had been crisp and there weren’t any clouds in the sky. It was as though the photographs were from another, better time, a time before the fog and rain. Marshall wondered if he’d brought the weather with him.
He closed the laptop and left it on the bed. Venus twinkled to life in the sky as he stepped into his car.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Marshall knew he was beyond stopping; he’d come too far to turn back now. As he drove down the North Bend streets, purple twilight in the air, he assured himself that there wasn’t any violence in him.
I’m a good man.
But that didn’t mean that he hadn’t fantasized about hurting the teenager. Sleep had been out of reach the prior night and his head had been full of dangerous images. In these waking dreams he saw the teenager on the bench seat. Marshall approached and saw the boy smiling, his face sharp and narrow—an evil expression. Marshall then leapt at him and wrapped his hands around his thin, fragile neck. The tighter he squeezed the bluer the boy got. But the boy didn’t seem affected—he was laughing, it was a high-pitched, mocking sound.
Marshall had let go of the pillow, the stuffing all bent out of shape, and rolled onto his side. The fact that he didn’t even have control over his fantasies any more left Marshall wondering how he would deal with the real thing.
It’ll be different, he assured himself. I don’t want to hurt the kid. I just want to see him. I want to look him in the face and tell him—
What?
Marshall had no idea.
Panic rushed in and the car felt tiny. Things were happening much too fast. The prior four years had crawled by—the days dragging, the nights long—and yet the last two weeks had flown by. So much had changed—he had changed. Marshall felt as though he’d been hurtled through the air, ripped from his home in Vancouver, towards this exact time and place. Everything led to this confrontation and now that it was about to happen he wanted to turn the car around and go back.
He pictured himself back in his hotel room, gathering up all of his things and paying in full. Returning the car, stepping onto the Greyhound. Going back to Vancouver. Getting on a plane and going home to his family in Australia and whatever friends he had left—
Marshall stopped the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition. The engine ticked. He had arrived.
Lichen-covered branches steamed in the final sunlight of the day. The sky rolled dark blue, the orange fading away. Clouds gathered thick on the horizon. It was the first time Marshall had found the Washington State weather bearable, even pleasant. Despite this, he felt the beginnings of a chill. The wind racked the trees; leaves rained over the park.
The two swings hung over the sandbox, their chains creaking. A blackbird perched on one of the seats and drank from a small puddle. It flew away when Marshall stepped into the clearing.
A termite-ridden lamppost stood near the toilet block, which like the park itself, felt hidden and contrived in its location—as though the park was never constructed with the considerations of children in mind. Marshall couldn’t help feeling that there had been very little laughter, or play on that swing set. This park had been made for meetings such as this…or drug transactions, who knew?
Marshall was chewing gum. Somehow it helped. A distraction.
The lamp flickered to life an
d he heard the hum of electricity. A single bulb burned above the barred toilet doors. Moths flew out of the forest and within moments the lamps were swarming with delicate wings, tiny eyes.
“Hello?” Marshall said. His voice carried no authority. It was meek, afraid.
He saw the shape growing out of virgin shadows—a small man. A teenager. Marshall’s head throbbed, his pounding headache growing worse. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead and pooled under his eyes. He chewed the gum harder, faster.
A thin mist rolled out from between the trees. It hovered close to the ground, moving with the wind. The light from the two lamps made it glow a milky white; the shadows of the moths were gigantic upon its almost flat surface.
The shape stepped forward as the last of the sunlight dipped away. The cold settled and they were alone.
“Hello,” Marshall said. It wasn’t a question this time.
The boy stared back at him. His face was lit from below, from the mist.
Marshall’s heart skipped a beat. He thought he was going to faint.
It was Noah.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Marshall fought for composure, not wanting to appear weak before the boy. He squinted in the twilight and looked at the face again.
It wasn’t his son, but the resemblance was uncanny.
The teenager stood a little over five feet, and thin. His face was porcelain white. Marshall could hear the boy’s breathing from the other side of the creaking chains. Each intake of air: a wet rasp. Marshall drunk up the sight of him: burnt auburn hair, loose-fitting jacket, blue jeans. Converse shoes.
White iPod earplugs dangling around his neck.
Oh fuck me, Marshall thought—and for a second he wondered if he’d said it aloud. He really is just a kid. What am I doing here?
What. The. Fuck. Am. I. Doing. Here?
White iPod earplugs.
The chill that had been stalking him for so long ran through him again—only it was more than a chill this time; Marshall had no words for what the feeling because he had nothing to compare it to. Things had changed. In light of all the things he had done in his life—the positive and the negative—he’d never considered himself a truly bad man.
But everything was different now. It was the iPod earplugs that sent him over the edge.
Who am I?
Marshall shuffled backwards a step. His imagination flared to life with startling clarity: He saw the trees burst part and police come running out at him, guns poised, flashing torch beams. They screamed out his name, telling him to get down on the ground.
“Oh Jesus.” His words were tiny, as fragile as the wings of the blackbird, which had returned to drink from the pool of water. Leaves swirled around his ankles.
His face in the grass as police handcuffed his hands behind his back, reading him his rights.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Marshall remembered his fantasy of strangling the boy. He knew that the dream had been a lie. He had been lying to himself all along, reconstructing his own suspicions to fit his anger.
In truth, he’d never expected to meet a boy.
When Marshall had replied to all of HelveticaBoy’s emails—when he accepted the invitation to the secluded park on the outskirts of town—deep down, he’d expected to find an adult. A man. Fat. Lonely. Obese. Sweating. Panting. Smiling.
Not this.
Marshall wanted HelveticaBoy to be that overweight stereotype who preyed on children over the Internet—just like one of those predators he saw on the late-night exposés. He wanted this to be the truth so bad, because deep down, Marshall wanted to strangle the fucker until he turned blue.
Deny it all he wanted, Marshall wanted revenge. The potential for violence in him had become a very real, tangible thing.
“I’m sorry,” Marshall repeated, stumbling back a step. Birds took flight, scattering feathers. “I’m going to leave—”
He knew the truth now, and that truth made him want to kneel over and vomit. It made him want to slit his wrists.
If there was an Internet predator in that park, that predator was him.
Marshall felt something bite at his neck. He whipped his hand around and slapped at his flesh; a bubble of blood exploded under his palm. For a moment he thought it had been a wasp, or some damn big mosquito—but the pain had been too sharp and distinct to be either. He turned to his left, knees growing weak.
A tall man wrapped in shadows stood next to him. Marshall saw something glimmer, something shiny in his hand.
Jesus, he thought. This can’t be happening. It’s a police badge.
The tall shape stepped forward, radiating heat. Leaves crunched underfoot.
Marshall looked back in the direction of the boy, only to find that he had turned away, his iPod plugged into his ears. There was the thin warble of music in the air.
“I didn’t do anything!” Marshall didn’t realize he was screaming, or that his words were slurred. He sounded like a drunk man feigning sober. “I didn’t do nothing. I’m going to go. Oh Jesus, I swear I did nothing—”
The shape took another step and the face dissolved into the lamp light. Moth shadows danced over the mask. It was Joy: the eyes black and empty, the mouth upturned in a permanent grimace.
Marshall noticed that it wasn’t a police badge in the stranger’s hand but a syringe; a single bead of blood twinkled at its pointed end. The blackbird flew away again, leaving behind ripples in the water. The stars started to fade.
Wind blew through the park and the trees sang their song. Moths beat at the naked bulb until their wings were burnt and they spiraled to the ground.
Marshall spun around to run—but the world swung harder. He struggled to keep his eyes open, despite the adrenaline bursting through him. Two lunges into his escape, he fell forward, the ground rushing up to smash him in the face. Blades of grass slipped into his nose. The smell of dog piss and mud. He didn’t feel much pain.
His thoughts started to slip away, one by one. There had been large, bold words flashing in his head moments before, words like RUN, DON’T LOOK BACK, but now those words were growing dim. He felt an incredible weight sink over him as he tried to crawl away from his attacker. Marshall wondered if he was having a heart attack. Sleep became tempting, calling out to him. But he didn’t want to sleep, or give in. This was no heart attack.
“I’ve been drugged,” he said to the grass, only the words came out in an unrecognizable moan. He started to drool. There was a throbbing in his neck from where the needle had jabbed him.
Disease, he thought. AIDS. Junkies. I’m being jumped. They’re going to rob me blind. What the hell did they hit me with?
“I’ll take him back with me,” said one voice. It sounded so far away.
“You want me to take his car?” asked another. “Where’s the keys?”
There are two of them, Marshall noted with a weird detachment. The voice doesn’t match the kid; it’s without a doubt a second man. He felt as though he were overhearing a movie being played at full blast in another room, and even then, only listening with a vague interest. All that mattered any more was sleep.
“Check his pockets. Hide the car and come back to meet us. Don’t fuck this up and don’t be seen,” said the deeper of the two voices.
“I won’t.”
Marshall felt someone pulling at his pants; the jingle of keys. He groaned.
“Did you hit him with enough shit?” asked the second man. Something in his thick, syrupy voice made Marshall think the man was overweight.
“Don’t challenge me.” The first voice was deep and tense. Marshall was terrified by its power, even through the fog of his thoughts. “Now take his car and meet us at the house. And tomorrow I want you to come back and paint the van. And throw on some new tires, okay? Bring new tires.”
“Neugh hhires—” Marshall droned.
“Is he out yet? I thought he should be gone by—”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Vibrating womb s
ounds. A flash of light burned his eyes. His heart beat was in every limb.
Thwump-thwump. Thwump-thwump.
There were patterns in the dark behind his eyelids, twirling fountains of color. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. Another flash of light, yellow this time. A glimpse of the sky, of stars sliding past the window and trailing skittish lines across his sight. Somebody coughed. He could smell engine oil and bitter body odor, cologne.
Marshall couldn’t move.
The teenager in the park, surrounded by glowing mist and beating moth shadows. The teenager turning away, iPod plugged into his ears. Music in the air. Twirling leaves.
Marshall slipped under again.
Noah came home from school, throwing down his backpack. He looked up at his father, so tall above him. His blue eyes, streaked with violent black streaks, reflected the room around him. Marshall looked down at him and cupped his hands around his son’s face. It was as though he were holding Noah’s smile; it stretched from thumb to thumb.
“Tomorrow we’re doing some painting in class,” Noah said, brimming with enthusiasm. There were leaves in his hair.
“Oh you are, are you?”
“Yep. And guess what?”
“What?”
“I need a shirt!”
“You need a shirt? You got plenty of shirts, you silly sausage.”
“No, Da-aaad. I need one of your shirts. So I don’t get all messy.”
“Well, you’ve been pretty good, so I guess I can find something for you.”
“Yeah?”
Noah’s face was excited, hopeful. Marshall pulled him into a hug. “Of course I can.”
They went into Marshall’s room together and rifled through his wardrobe. Shirts tumbled through the air. The window was open, the curtains billowing around them. Insects buzzed at the fly screen, desperate to get inside.