Killer, Come Back to Me

by Ray Bradbury

  The Dark One. Johnny’s mind spun, ached, and thrust to get free. Uncle Flinny!

  Uncle Flinny, he thought. Why do you call Ellie the Dark One? Why? Your bedtime stories, Uncle Flinny. For so many years you’ve told the same story, the same strange story about the Dark One and the beautiful woman, and now the Dark One came to be my teacher, and why did you kill her! What did she do to you? Why do you call her the Dark One? What does the bedtime story mean? I don’t know.

  “Don’t kill me, Uncle Flinny. The water’s cold and shining tonight. I don’t want to be under the cold shine of it.”

  Johnny grabbed onto the body behind him and fell forward. The two of them plunged screaming into the pool. There was a great plunging nausea. The fingers released him. There was a fighting in wet darkness, water stabbing his nostrils, bubbles breaking from his lips.

  When Johnny broke surface there was a great sound of air rising from below, a dim surging of an old man jerking against the lazy tide. The man never came to the surface again. Just the bubbles came.…

  Johnny was crying, screaming to himself as he dragged himself from the pool and saw her lying there so lonely and tired— the mannequin in the cocktail dress. His foot knocked something dark and small rolling on the tiles. He picked it up. One of the dark chess pieces Uncle Flinny was always stealing from the chess set in Grandma’s room.

  Johnny held it tight, not seeing it really, and looked at the pool with the slowing ripples on it where Uncle Flinny slept below. It was crazy, so crazy he couldn’t stand it.

  He looked at the house through blurred eyes, and he was shaking like a sick dog. Lights were clicking on all over it. Windows in squares of yellow and orange. Father was running downstairs, shouting, and the back door was opening, just as Johnny collapsed, sobbing, upon the cold hard tiles.…

  * * *

  Mother sat on one side of the bed, Dad on the other side. Johnny got his crying all out of him and lay back and looked at Dad, then Mom. “Mom?”

  She said nothing, but smiled weakly and held onto his hands so tightly.

  ‘‘Mom, oh, Mom,” Johnny said. “I’m so tired, but I can’t sleep. Why? Why, Dad?” He looked at Dad again. “Dad, what happened? I don’t know.”

  Dad found it hard to say. He said it anyway. ‘‘Uncle Flinny was married twenty years ago. His wife died when their baby was born. Uncle Flinny loved his wife very much. She was very beautiful and good. Uncle Flinny hated the baby. He’d have nothing to do with it. He thought the baby was a murderer. You can understand how he felt, can’t you? You can understand how I’d feel if Mother died?”

  Johnny nodded weakly, not too sure at all that he understood. ‘‘Uncle Flinny put the baby in a girl’s home somewhere. He wouldn’t tell us where. She grew up, bitter, hating Uncle Flinny because he treated her unfairly. After all, she didn’t ask to be born. You see, son?” he said.

  ‘‘Yeah, Dad.”

  ‘‘Well, just a month ago, Ellie, the baby, grown up now, found out where we lived somehow. She wrote a letter. We offered her a job as your teacher, which was only right and deserving. We thought to keep it secret from your uncle. When Ellie came, and went upstairs during the party, Uncle Flinny guessed who she was.”

  Dad couldn’t speak for a moment. He closed his eyes. “Then—you found her in the attic. We tried to keep it quiet. We tried to make you forget. It was no use. We could never forget, ourselves. It was bound to come out. There was so much at stake, though, all our lives, we tried to work it out quietly. Things like money and reputations and business and what people would say made us do it, son.…And—really—they’re not worth a damn!”

  Johnny turned his head. “I kept poking my nose in—” “You were our conscience, I guess. A rather active symbol. You kept the house stirred up. Uncle Flinny thought you were hurting your mother. Your mother—his sister—was all he had after his wife’s death.”

  “So he tried to make it look like I was drowned in the pool—”

  Mother suddenly bent and held on to Johnny closely. “I’m sorry, Johnny. Sometimes we’re blind. I didn’t think he’d do that.”

  “What about the police?”

  “The truth. Flinny killed her and committed suicide.”

  Mother’s voice seemed distant and removed and tired. Johnny heard himself talking. “Uncle Flinny used to tell me bedtime stories, Mom. I still don’t understand. All about the Dark One and the beautiful wife, and—”

  “Someday, when you’re older, you’ll understand. Poor Ellie. She was always the Dark One.”

  Things were fading away, away. It was all over, done. “No more bedtime stories, Mom, please. No more, huh?”

  Out of the tired darkness, Mom said, “No more, Johnny.”

  Johnny rolled wearily over into dreams. His left hand opened and the small black object in it fell clattering to the bedroom floor. He was asleep even before the Black Knight ceased rolling.

  “I’m Not So Dumb!”

  Oh, I’m not so dumb. No, sir. When those men at Spaulding’s Corner said there was a dead man hereabouts, you think I ran quick to the Sheriff’s office to give in the news?

  You got another think coming. I turned around and walked off from them men, looking over my shoulder every second or so to see if they was smiling after me, their eyes shining with a prank, and I went to stare at the body first. It was Mr. Simmons’s body in that empty-echoed farmhouse of his where the green weeds grew thick for years and there was a larkspur, bluebird sprouts, and morning-fires fringing the path. I tromped up to the door, knocked, and when nobody said they was home, I squeaked the door open and looked in.

  Only then did I get going for the Sheriff.

  On the way some kids threw rocks at me and laughed.

  I met the Sheriff coming. When I told him he said yes, yes, he knew all about it, get outa the way! and I shied off, letting him and Mr. Crockwell smelling of farm dirt and Mr. Willis smelling of hardware hinges and Jamie MacHugh smelling of soap and scent and Mr. Duffy smelling of bar beer past.

  When I got back to the lonely gray house they were inside bending around like a labor crew working a ditch. Can I come in, I wondered, and they grumbled no, no, go away, you would only be underfoot, Peter.

  That’s the way it is. People always shake me to one side, chortling at me. Those folks who told me about the body, you know what they expected? Expected me to call the Sheriff without stopping to see if they was lying or not. Not me, not anymore. I realized what went on last spring when they sent me jogging for a skyhook and shore line for the twenty-seventh time in as many years; and when I sweated all the way down the shore curve to Wembley’s Pier to fetch a pentagonal monkey wrench which I never found in all my tries from the age of seventeen on up to now.

  So I fooled them this time by checking first and then running for help.

  The Sheriff slouched out of the house half an hour later, shaking his dusty head. “Poor Mr. Simmons, his head is all rucked in like the skin of a rusted potbelly stove.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  The Sheriff flickered a mean yellow glance at me, switching his mustache around on his thin upper lip, balancing it. “You damn right it is.”

  “A murder mystery, hunh?” I asked.

  “I won’t say it’s a mystery,” said the Sheriff.

  “You know who done it?” I asked.

  “Not exactly, and shut up,” snapped the Sheriff, thumb-rolling a cigarette; and sucked it into half ash with his first flame. “I’m thinking.”

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  “You,” snorted the Sheriff, looking up at me on top of my mountain of bones and body, “help? Ha!”

  Everybody laughed, holding rib bones like bundles of breathing sticks and blowing out cheeks and glittering their sharp shiny eyes. Me help, that was sure something to tickle.

  Mr. Crockwell, he was the farmer man, he laughed, and Mr. Willis, he was the hardware-store man and tough as a rail spike, he laughed like tapping a sledge on a beam iron, and Mr. Duffy’
s Irish bartender laugh made his tongue jig around pink in his mouth; and Jamie MacHugh, who would run away if you yelled boo, he laughed too.

  “I been reading Sherlock Holmes,” I said.

  The Sheriff raked me over. “Since when you reading?”

  “I can read, never mind,” I said.

  “Think you can solve mysteries, eh?” cried the Sheriff. “Get the hell away afore I boot the big rump off you!”

  “Leave him be, Sheriff,” laughed Jamie MacHugh, waving one hand. He clicked his tongue at me. “You’re a first-rate sleuth, ain’t you, Peter?”

  I blinked at him six times.

  “Sleuth, detective, Sherlock Holmes, I mean,” said Jamie MacHugh.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Why, why-high,” laughed Jamie MacHugh, “I’d bet my money on big Peter here any day, ann-eee day! Strong, strapping lad, Sheriff. He could solve this case with one shuffle of his big left shoe, couldn’t he, men?”

  Mr. Crockwell winked at Mr. Willis and Mr. Willis tonked a laugh out like cleaning your pipe on a flat stone, and everybody shot little sly glances at the Sheriff, nudging one another’s ribs and chuckling.

  “Sure, I’d bet good money any autumn on Peter there. Here’s fifty cents says Peter can solve the case afore the Sheriff!” said Jamie.

  “Now, look here!” bellowed the Sheriff, standing stiff.

  “Here’s seventy cents says the same,” drawled Mr. Willis.

  And here came round money silver shining, and green money like little wings flapping on their hairy hands.

  The Sheriff kicked a boot angrily. “Odd dammit. No feeble-minded giant can solve any murder case with me around!”

  Jamie MacHugh tilted back and forth on his heels. “Scared?”

  “Hell’s gate, no! But you’re all riding my goat!”

  “We mean it. Here’s our money, Sheriff; you meeting it?”

  The Sheriff crackled he sure as hell would, and did. Everybody boomed out laughter like on bass drums and with brass trumpets. Somebody slapped me on the back but I didn’t feel it. Someone yelled for me to go in there and show him, Peter, show him, but it was all underwater, far away. Blood pounded around on big red boots in my ears, kicking my brain back and forth like a wrinkled football.

  The Sheriff looked at me. I looked at him with my heavy hands hanging. He laughed right out.

  “God, I’ll solve this case before Peter has time to open his mouth for spit!”

  * * *

  The Sheriff wouldn’t let me be in the room with the corpse unless I stood on one leg and put both hands out in the air. I had to do it. The others said it was fair. I did it. I must have stood there during most the time we talked, on one leg, hands out to balance, and them snickering when I toppled.

  “Well,” I said, over the corpse, “he’s dead.”

  “Brilliant!” Jamie MacHugh had a bone of laughter caught in his throat, choking him.

  “And he’s been head-bashed,” I said, “with a heavy thing.”

  “Colossal! Wonderful!” spluttered Jamie.

  “And no woman done it,” I said. “Because a woman couldn’t have done it so heavy and hard.”

  Jamie laughed less. “True enough.” He glanced at the others, eyebrows up a tremor. “That’s true; we didn’t think of that.”

  “That counts out all females,” I said.

  Mr. Crockwell teased the Sheriff. “You didn’t say that, Sheriff.”

  The Sheriff’s cigarette hissed sparks in a Fourth of July pinwheel. “I was going to say it! Damn, anyone can see a woman didn’t do it! Peter, you go stand in the corner and do your talking!”

  I stood in the corner on one foot.

  “And—” I said.

  “Shut up,” said the Sheriff. “You’ve had your say, let me have mine.” He hitched up his trousers on his rump. Silence. The Sheriff scowled. “Well, like he says, the man’s dead, head stove in, and a woman didn’t do it and—”

  “Ha-ha,” said Mr. Crockwell.

  The Sheriff shot him a blazing look. Mr. Crockwell covered his mouth with his hand.

  “And the body’s been dead twenty-four hours,” I said, sniffing.

  “Any dimwit knows that!” yelled the Sheriff.

  “You didn’t say that before,” said James MacHugh.

  “Do I have to say, can’t I think a few?”

  I looked around the empty room. Mr. Simmons was a strange man, living alone with no furniture in the house and only carpets here and there, and one cot upstairs. Didn’t want to spend money on stuff. Saved it.

  I said, “There wasn’t much fuss or fight; nothing’s upset. Must’ve been killed by someone he trusted.”

  The Sheriff started to swear but Jamie MacHugh said for him to let me talk, this was damn interesting. The others said so too. I smiled. I closed my eyes, grinning soft, and opened them again and everyone looked at me for the first time in my life as if I was good enough to stand beside them. I stepped from the corner, slowly.

  I crouched beside Mr. Simmons, looking. He was blood ripe. The Sheriff quick followed, imitating me, on his knees. I peered close. The Sheriff peered close. I fussed with the rug. Sheriff fussed with the rug. I smoothed Mr. Simmons’s right sleeve. Guess who smoothed Mr. Simmons’s left sleeve? I made a humming sound like a comb and tissue in my throat. The Sheriff ground his teeth together. Everybody stood high and sweating sour in the summer-heated quiet.

  “What was that about him being murdered by a friend?” Mr. Crockwell wanted to know.

  “Sure,” I said. “Someone he trusted, no commotion.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Willis, who didn’t speak much.

  Everybody said it was right, all right.

  “Now,” I said, “what people didn’t like the cold man here?”

  The Sheriff’s voice was high and stringy with irritation. “Simmons wasn’t liked by many. Always fightin’ with folks, tetchy-like.”

  * * *

  I looked at the men, wondering which one I could detect to be the murderer. My eyes kept snapping in rubber-band moves to Jamie MacHugh. Jamie always was flighty. You lost your match-box and stared at Jamie, he’d whine, guilty, “I didn’t take it.” If you dropped a nickel and it went away Jamie’d say, “I didn’t do it!”

  Funny. Something scared him as a kid, all the time he felt guilty, whether or not he was. So I couldn’t help but see him now, and go up and down him with my eyes, him so nervous and losing his head over things. Just opposite of Hardware Willis, who would stand rock stiff while lightning bounced around him.

  “I heard Jamie say Mr. Simmons should be killed,” I said.

  Jamie opened his eyes. “I never said that. And if I did, you know how you say things you never mean.”

  “I heard you say it, anyways.”

  “Now, now, now,” said Jamie three times. “You, you, you are not Sheriff for this city, city. You just shut your trap.”

  The Sheriff fox-grinned. “What’s the matter with you, Jamie? Second ago you was egging Peter on, all het up for his side.”

  “I don’t want anybody accusing me, that’s all, you big slob,” said Jamie to me. “Go stand on one foot in the corner!”

  I didn’t blink my eyes. “I heard you say Mr. Simmons should be dead.”

  “You look sort of nervous, Jamie?” remarked the Sheriff.

  “I remember,” said Mr. Willis. “You did say that, Jamie. Say, Peter, you got a good memory.” He nodded at me smartly. “I bet fingerprints of Jamie are around here,” I said.

  “Sure,” cried Jamie, pale. “Sure, they’re here. I was here early yesterday afternoon to try and get back my thirty dollars from that damn scoundrel lying limp on the floor, you elephant!”

  “You see,” I said. “He was here. His fingerprints all around like ants at a picnic.” And I added, “I bet if we looked in his pocket we’d find Mr. Simmons’s wallet full of money, I bet we would.”

  “Nobody looks through my pockets!”

  “I’ll do it,” I sai
d.

  “No,” said Jamie.

  “Sheriff,” I said.

  The Sheriff looked at me, looked at Jamie. “Jamie,” he said.

  “Sheriff,” said Jamie.

  “Who was it picked me to solve this case?” I said. “Jamie did, Sheriff.”

  The Sheriff’s cigarette hung cold on his lip, twitching. “That’s right.”

  “Why’d he want me solving it, Sheriff?” I asked, and answered, “Because he thought I’d only kick up mud in the creek, rile you so you wouldn’t get nothing done.”

  “Well odd damn, imagine that,” murmured the others, moving back.

  The Sheriff squinted tight.

  “Peter, I got to admit, you got something. Jamie was sure hot to bring you up to mess around. He started them goddamn bets. Irritated me with you until I can’t see beans from breakfast!”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well now, I didn’t kill nobody, I didn’t sic Peter on you for that purpose, Sheriff, oh, no, I didn’t,” said Jamie MacHugh, sweat gobbering out his head like water from them fancy park sprinkling systems in the concrete skulls of them pretty naked women statues.

  The Sheriff said, “Let Peter search you.”

  Jamie said no, as I grabbed his wrists with one big hand and held them while I put my other hand in his rear pants pocket and pulled out the dead man’s wallet.

  “No,” whispered Jamie like a ghost.

  I let him go. He swung around next thing, gibbering, and slammed out the door, crying, before anybody could stop him.

  “Go get him, Peter!” everybody yelled.

  “You really want me to?” I asked. “You’re not kidding like with the skyhook and shore line?”

  “No, no,” they cried. “Get him!”

  I thundered out the door and ran after Jamie in the hot sun over a green hill, through a little woods. What if Jamie gets away, I thought. No, he can’t do that. I’ll run fast.