“That’s where Uncle did it.” I listened to the words echo through the forest, unsure if they had come from me or if the old house had whispered its secrets so only we might hear. “That’s where he killed Michael Ring.”
* * *
“What do you think I am,” Uncle asked, slowly rising to his feet, “a dog on a leash? You think I only bite when you want me to, when it suits your needs? Is that what you think? When the hell are you gonna grow up and stop being such a candy ass, Andy?” He closed the already limited gap between us and stood so close I could feel his breath against my face. “Get a clue as to how life works.”
“I learned how life works from you,” I said quietly.
“Don’t blame me for your rose-colored view of the world,” he said. “Who the hell did you think I was?”
It was a good question, and one I still didn’t have the answer to.
“You think Michael Ring attacked other girls?” I asked.
He moved away, grabbed his cigarettes from the nightstand and lit one. He had a tuft of hair that fanned out across his chest and trickled down in a thin line to his navel, where it encircled it then continued on behind the front of his boxer shorts. His stomach, though flat, jiggled a bit when he walked, but the muscles in his calves and thighs and across his chest and arms were evident even when he was standing still. He didn’t possess the tumor-like physique of a bodybuilder but had instead a thick, powerful look to his body. He seemed someone else entirely out of clothes, and ironically less vulnerable, closer to some base segment of nature, perhaps, a stripped-down primordial version of that which he had allegedly evolved from. I noticed a bulging vein that ran along his bicep as he bent his arm to bring the lighter to the tip of his cigarette, but looked away once he tossed the lighter aside so he wouldn’t interpret my stare as a challenge.
“Criminals have a pattern,” he said. “They start young. He probably raped more little girls than we’ll ever know, and you can bank on this, he would’ve kept doing it until somebody stopped him. They don’t stop on their own. Those kind never do.”
“Does that just go for rapists?” I asked. “Or does that include killers too?”
He smoked his cigarette for a moment then looked me in the eye. “Andy, you and Angela are the closest thing I’ll probably ever have to kids of my own. You’re my nephew, and I love you. I’d do anything in the world for you, and anything in the world for your mother and for Angela. You’re my family, and you’re the whole world to me, all of you. I hope you know that.” He squared his shoulders, and his face darkened. “But I am what I am, Andy. I do what I do.”
I turned to the door, tears of anger already blurring my vision. “Me too.”
“You gonna turn me in?” I heard him ask from behind me. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Turn you in for what?” I asked without looking back. “You haven’t admitted a thing.”
“Would it make you feel better if I did? Is that what you want? You want me to explain myself, is that it? I gotta explain myself to you now, that how it works?”
Memories of Angela and me sitting together playing checkers blinked across my mind’s eye, our mother standing near the back door telling us lies, her lips slightly out of sync with the sound of her voice echoing in my head. My heart sunk. “It was Mom, wasn’t it? You did it because she wanted you to.”
Uncle blanched, left the cigarette dangling between his lips and stepped closer to me, his movements oddly sinister. “Don’t ever say shit like that about your mother. Ever. You hear me? You got any idea what that woman’s been through for you kids, any idea at all? That’s your mother, you talk about her you do it with respect.”
“I heard you. I heard you talking, I heard what she said. You didn’t want to do it, you told her but she—”
“She was upset, Andy. She’d just found out what happened, cut her some slack.”
“She made you—”
“She didn’t make me do anything.” He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and held it down by his side as smoke slowly escaped his nostrils. “Leave her out of this.”
I wanted to sit down but remained frozen near the door. “She’s part of it too, she’s—”
“We’re all part of it,” he snapped. “Now I’m not gonna tell you again, Andy. Leave your mother out of this. You came here to talk to me, right? So talk. Say your piece.”
“I’ve got nothing else to say.” I turned to leave.
“You’d side with a kid who forced himself on your sister over me? Me? What the hell happened to you? I never thought there was any room between you and me. I thought we were pals. I thought it was you and me like always. Buds forever.” When I said nothing in response he followed me to the door. “Maybe you need to think about Angela and your mother, and what all this is going to put them through. Don’t you think they’ve been through enough already? Or don’t you care about them anymore either?”
“Is that who you’re thinking about right now—Mom and Angie?” I finally found the courage to face him again. “Is that who you were thinking about when you murdered Michael Ring?”
“They won’t look for him forever,” he said suddenly, as if that were the point. “He ran away, or maybe something did happen to him—something bad—but remember when I told you I’d check him out? I did, and the Ring’s are poor, nobody in that family’s got any pull anywhere. It’s not like some senator’s kid’s gone missing, right? In a couple weeks nobody’s gonna give a shit. He’ll just be one more runaway punk, that’s all.”
“Only he didn’t run away,” I said.
“You know, most guys would’ve just attacked that prick without even thinking about themselves or the consequences or any of that. They would’ve just attacked the bastard. But not you, nah, you’re too good for that. You’re above all that, right?” He laughed lightly, again in a dismissive way. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you even care about him?”
I felt something snap inside me, something emotional rather than physical, as though some portion of my soul had burst like an internal organ. “I don’t care about him! I don’t give a shit about him! Why can’t you see that?” My body was trembling so violently I could barely stand still.
Neither of us spoke for a while, and after a moment I felt myself calming and coming back under some semblance of control. “I don’t care about him,” I said softly. “I care about you. I don’t want you to be this, I don’t want you—”
“Always remember, Andy,” he said, his laughter gone, “there’s the way you want the world to be…and the way it just fucking is.”
“I love you, Uncle, but—”
“I know you do.” He pointed to an old chair with a defeated motion. “Sit down.”
“I’m not—”
“Sit down.”
I turned from the door and slowly lowered myself into the chair.
Nodding slowly, as if trying to convince himself along with me, he sighed and said, “Here’s what you think you want to know.”
12
We stood watching the old caretaker’s house, the growing winter wind sweeping through us as if we’d become translucent somehow, as exposed and vulnerable as the open field behind us. The wind filtered through the forest, collected among the clusters of trees and drew clumps of snow from their branches. Discarded new skin, it fell silently to the ground like powdery specters fleeing the carcass of one world in favor of another. And I envied them.
“How do you know?” Boone finally asked, his voice trembling.
I saw Uncle then, standing just beyond one of the few remaining windowpanes, the cracked glass splintering and distorting his face and those of the two children standing on either side of him, their hands gently held in his own. They refused to look at me, but I recognized them too. Uncle smiled the way he so often had, with his eyes first, and cocked his head slightly to the side, his shoulders gliding up then down in a subtle though apologetic shrug. The wisdom had returned to those eyes, nesting there with long
ing and an odd look of peace I had never before seen in them. Closer to Heaven than Hell now, he nodded slowly, knowing I would understand. Releasing me.
“Uncle brought him here,” I heard myself answer. “No one was looking for him yet.”
I couldn’t be sure if the profound feeling of dread in the air existed because of all that had happened here or if it was just a product of my mind. Maybe ghosts and the actions of the dead left behind a residue as real as anything else, though it no longer seemed to matter. The vision of Uncle, Angela and myself standing behind fractured panes of glass slowly dissolved, leaving behind only snow and cold and memory; a distant winter dream.
Boone stumbled back a bit, no longer wanting to get too close. He looked at me helplessly. “But they—they searched these woods and they must’ve searched this place too, they—”
“By the time they started looking here it was long over. They had no reason to suspect anything happened here, and all they found was an old rotting building. Uncle was gone. No more evidence,” I said flatly. “And no more Michael Ring.”
“I don’t want to be here,” Boone said, his nose running and his lips shivering uncontrollably. “What the hell you bring me here for?”
I wanted to answer, but the screams from within that old house had already begun.
That morning Martha comes to me like an apparition, like just another ghost slipping through the walls, skipping across time and reason to hover in that spot where she so often does. Just beyond the foot of our bed, she stands alone, this ghost, barely visible in the soft glow of light falling from the earliest traces of a new dawn. Her hair is undone and hangs to her shoulders, straight and full and offering glimpses of natural auburn amidst the gentle brown. She wears only an old sweatshirt, one too large for her—one of mine—her hands hidden in the cuffs, the curves of her body concealed until the bottom of the shirt ends at the midpoint of her thighs. I notice the smooth skin there; follow it to her shins and bare feet, and when I return my sleepy gaze to her face she smiles at me with a subtle turn of her lips and a sparkle in her eyes.
At the very foot of the bed, the two kittens are snuggled together as if holding onto each other for dear life, which perhaps they are, asleep on a tiny blanket of their own.
The phone rings but Martha doesn’t seem to hear it, and in the near dark, lying on my side among a tangle of sheets and blankets and comforter, I can only guess where the dream ends and certainty begins.
Flashes of an old chair and a blurred form tied to it, hands and feet bound, a bloodied face, eyes wide with terror, a mouth covered with duct tape and the grunts and pleas muffled beneath it bled from deep within the old caretaker’s house, stained the snow in sprays and spatters like crimson rain. The falling flakes quickly covered the past, a fresh blanket thrown over a rotting corpse.
Uncle stared at me through the windows, a gun in his hand. In the shadows behind him was someone else. I squinted at the forest as if to better see whom it was, but had solved these mysteries years before. Like so much of my life prior to Uncle’s death, maybe this too was just for show. Maybe what really existed behind the dark curtains in my mind were things I had not allowed myself to see until I knew for sure that he was dead and gone, because only then could I somehow even hope to make sense of them.
Boone staggered about somewhere nearby, furiously crushing snow with his heavy footfalls. “No reason for us to be here,” he said, the emotion coupling with the bitter cold causing his voice to crack. “No reason.”
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back; let the snowflakes tickle my face. But even in the dark—perhaps especially in the dark—the shadows behind Uncle parted and I could see Michael Ring, his long hair hanging like string, matted with dark red splotches that clung to it like thick perspiration, his face a mass of blood and tears, nose leaking equal parts blood and snot as he struggled to breathe through his nostrils, cheeks puffing, mouth hidden behind tape, eyes swollen and beaten and filled with terror. He made a kind of odd howling sound that emanated from deep within him, from some dark, lonely, primeval place. The front of his shirt was covered in blood and stuck to him like a second skin, and the lap of his pants was covered with a dark circular stain that made a path down one of his legs to a small puddle on the floor below.
When I opened my eyes the light temporarily blinded me, but even through the flash I could see my mother there now too, standing near the door to the old house, huddled there like a child awakened by nightmares but suddenly aware that escaping sleep had not been enough, because the monsters had followed her.
Martha stares at me, hands still hidden in the cuffs of the sweatshirt but folded one atop the other. I know now that she has heard the phone ringing, but she makes no move to answer it, and at first, neither do I.
“No one calls at this hour with good news,” she says sadly.
I nod and look to her for help, for an avenue of escape.
But there is none, and we both know it.
As Martha watches I place the phone to my ear and in a sleepy voice say, “Yes?”
“Mr. DeMarco?” a voice asks.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Andrew DeMarco?”
“Yes.”
He stood next to the chair, the gun held down against his thigh. My mother, still by the door, nodded to him, her face a failed attempt at stern indifference. “Don’t,” she said, her voice lifting and flying through the trees.
Uncle didn’t look quite human to me. He looked like he’d been replaced by some synthetic version of himself—a wax double, perhaps—cold and lifeless and without joy or thought or even malice—inanimate—neither dead nor alive.
“We can’t let him go,” he said flatly. “Not now.”
“Paulie—”
“I told you to be sure.” His eyes were open but without sight. “Wait for me outside.”
The boy in the chair began to struggle, his cries deadened by the duct tape covering his bloody mouth.
“Paulie, I—”
“I’ll drive you home. Then I’ll come back and take care of the rest,” Uncle said. “But right now, go outside.”
“Don’t—”
“Wait for me outside, Marie.” I saw him raise the gun, point it at Michael Ring’s head without even looking at him. “Now. Do it now.”
I replace the phone to its cradle while Martha and I gawk at it as if it’s some alien instrument, something we’re in awe of and from which we hope to glean great knowledge or assistance. But it grants us neither.
From the foot of the bed the sleeping kittens purr, the quiet rhythm the most peaceful and wonderful sound I have ever heard. I look at them for what seems a long time, and in their tiny bodies and infant faces sense the presence of God in a way I have not experienced since I was a young child myself. For me, Heaven seems a distance beyond comprehension, but to babies it is infinitely closer, a distance not so very far after all. I try to remember what life felt like when it was still new and anything was possible, but it too remains well beyond my reach. Somehow, I understand this is how it has to be, at least for now, and for a brief moment it all makes perfect sense.
As that flash of clarity passes, Martha steps closer and cocks her head like a baffled puppy. “Tell me,” she whispers.
My mother moved along the small path between the caretaker’s house and the edge of the forest, but I could not see her face. Her head was bowed and her movements were oddly smooth and dreamlike, more gliding than walking.
No longer cognizant of the cold, I trudged closer to the old building, closer to the shattered windows.
Through cobwebs separating the past from the present, I saw Uncle place the gun against Michael Ring’s temple. The boy’s eyes shifted, slid to the side, watched Uncle, and an odd quiet overtook him. He stopped struggling, no longer attempted speech.
In the face of the gunman I saw memories of a man laughing and playing, chasing Angela and me in our backyard, tickling us or holding us quietly on his lap, loving us and protecting
us and being everything we needed him to be. I saw him dancing with our mother, twirling her around the kitchen and all of us laughing. I saw him walking with me when I still only came up to his waist, his arm draped over my small shoulders and mine wrapped around his lower back, him listening more than talking, hearing me, and the feel of his body, warm and strong and how it made me feel invincible and safe alongside him. I remembered all the times I had silently wished he was my father, and how later, I came to realize that in many ways, that’s exactly what he was.
His voice, in a tone I had never before heard, still echoed through the decaying walls of that old house.
“Fuck you. Fuck you for what you did. And fuck you for making me do this.”
The blast in my mind was deafening.
A flock of sparrows nesting in the trees overhead were spooked into sudden flight. They flew in perfect unison, looking like a single dark cloud as they whirled in one direction, swooped a bit then whirled back the opposite way before disappearing into the winter sky.
I turned away from it all. Boone was glaring at me from just beyond the tree line. “No reason for us to be here,” he said again, shivering so badly now it was difficult to discern what he was saying. “Why here? Why don’t you take me out to the woods behind your old house? Why not go there? Why is this place such a fucking shrine? Why don’t we go out to that path where the bastard raped Angie? Why don’t we go there and get all misty-eyed, you hypocritical motherfucker!”
In many ways, Boone was right. But what he didn’t realize was that as he screamed at me the visions continued, visions that had always been there but I had never allowed myself to see. Uncle, holding the body down with one hand while using a saw with the other, his face spattered with blood and stray chunks of meat as the serrated teeth sliced deep through the flesh and eventually found bone. Me standing next to the corpse, kicking it, kicking what was left of Michael Ring’s head again and again until all that remained was a bloody pulp. And later, Uncle carrying pieces of human being stuffed into large plastic garbage bags—the kind I had used countless times to fill with leaves after raking—to the trunk of his car, thrown there like the garbage it had become. In the visions I am there, rather than only hearing what happened from Uncle’s own lips, the two of us standing there in his dingy little apartment like mannequins packed away with our secrets and lies in some dark closet. In the vision I’m able to do to Michael Ring what I had fantasized about doing for so long—to desecrate him even after death, to kick and pummel him while Uncle dismembered his body like the carcass of a recently slaughtered farm animal in order to dispose of it in the manner men like Uncle disposed of bodies. Unlike reality, where Uncle explained what had really happened in those woods the day Angela and I played checkers in our backyard, leaving me to decide what I could live with and what I could not.
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