Faster.
Faster.
“Easy, kid. Easy. Ain’t nobody here going to harm you. My name’s Emery Dowd. I’m a police officer. You know what police means, right? Means you’re safe and sound. Ain’t nothing or no one going to hurt—”
He screams and lunges.
“Get him off! Get him off!”
The heat of eternity floods his mouth.
* * *
“Will someone please clean the blood off of this poor child?”
“It’s still evidence, ma’am. We got a team from forensics on its way now and—”
“Out. Just get out of my exam room.”
“I don’t mean no disrespect, ma’am, but I can’t do that. Kid damn near tore an officer’s cheek completely off with his teeth and just about clawed his eyes right out of his head. He may be a little boy, but he’s in the chain of evidence now. We need to figure out who all’s blood—Stop that right now. Don’t you dare—”
“You can’t tell me what I can and cannot do in my own ER. It’s my responsibility to treat the patient to the best of my abilities. And at this point what’s in the child’s best interests is getting the blood off of his face so that I can determine if any of it is actually his. So you can either step back or step out. And if you try to lay a hand on me again, so help me I’ll scream so loud—”
“I’m only doing my job, ma’am.”
“And I mine. So unless you’re prepared to cuff me, I suggest you give me a little space to work.”
He smiles and watches the policeman’s head turn red. He looks like he’s about to say something to the woman, but she turns her back on him and the officer’s only recourse is to bare his teeth in frustration. The woman in the white coat scoots closer on the stool and tips her face up to meet his. Her smile is warm, her eyes dark and engaging. Her black hair is drawn back into a bun, exposing a long, slender neck, around which a stethoscope hangs. He watches the shadows on her throat shift in time with the thumping of her pulse until she switches on the blinding exam light and he can see it no more.
“My name is Dr. Cyrus.” She smiles at him and pulls a silver tray between them. “What’s your name?”
He returns her smile and feels the dried blood on his face crack. It makes his skin itch.
“Ahh…I see. The strong, silent type.” She puts on a pair of tight blue gloves and dunks a stack of gauze into a silver basin brimming with soap suds. She wrings it out and reaches for his face. “All right. Let’s see who’s hiding under—”
“Careful.”
She rolls her eyes even though they both know the policeman can’t see the gesture. He stifles a giggle. He likes this lady, likes the way she puts the policeman in his place, likes the way the exam light sparkles in her eyes, the way her skin is so white he can see the green veins in her wrists between her gloves and the cuffs of her jacket.
“There. I knew there was a handsome boy under there.” She scrubs the warm water along his hairline, around his eyes, down his cheeks, under his chin. He closes his eyes and feels the cooling water trickle under the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “I don’t see a single cut on that face of yours.”
She unclips a tool from the wall and shines a light into first his left eye, then his right. She looks in his ears and then she listens to him breathe with what feels like an ice cube against his chest and back.
“I’ve got to tell you. I’ve never come across a healthier boy.”
He beams proudly, but his smile falters when she snaps off her gloves and scoots away from his chair with the fancy butcher paper drape.
“Don’t you worry, kiddo. I’ll check on you in a few. I just need to make some notes in your chart and talk to this nice policeman. In the meantime—” The door opens with a click and the officer steps aside to allow a man in a dark three-piece suit to enter. “—I’m going to give you some time to get to know my good friend Dr. Eichmann. He’s a special kind of doctor who helps people, especially kids like you, through their tough times.”
The man’s attempt at a smile makes him look like a corpse.
And he should know. He’s seen dead bodies before.
But none of them ever scared him like this man did.
The Present – Millington, Tennessee
Jeffers was treading water in the deep end of the Olympic-size pool at the Naval Air Station in Millington. His wife and young son were some distance away, in shallower water, where Claire was teaching Joey how to swim. It was a warm, sunny, summer day and, somehow, they were the only people in the huge pool. He smiled at his family and they smiled back. Then his son shouted at him to watch, and began plowing into the water in a frenzied blur of motion and gigantic splashes, but went virtually nowhere. Life couldn’t get any better, he thought.
But it could definitely get worse.
Neither Claire nor Joey saw the tall, thin man jump into the pool beside them, and move in close with a wicked-looking knife in his hand. Jeffers shouted---screeched---at them to watch out, swim away, but they ignored him, or they simply couldn’t hear him. And his body seemed to be frozen in place; no matter how hard he tried to swim over to help them, all he could manage to do was stay afloat. Panic-stricken, he watched in horror as the knife-wielding maniac---Craven---waded up to them and carved into his wife and son like butter, filleting their bodies and staining the water a deep, dark red…
…before he bolted upright in bed, heart thudding in his chest like a trip-hammer, warm sweat coating his bare chest and underwear-clad body like a second skin, a scream clogged in his throat.
Jeezus, he thought, gasping for air, it must be getting about that time again. Glancing at his alarm clock, he saw that it was still quite early---only 6:30 AM---but he also noticed that it was July 1st, just a week away from what would have been his 30th wedding anniversary.
He sighed, his hammering heart finally calming down, slowing. Every year around the anniversary of his wife and son’s death, and also around his wedding anniversary, he suffered horrible nightmares in which his family was brutally slain in front of him. It had been bad enough when he’d been tasked to identify their bodies twenty years ago, but to nightly revisit these myriad death scenarios involving the “Infinity Killer” was rubbing salt in a still-open wound.
Jeffers turned off the alarm clock and eased himself out of bed.
A lot had changed in the twenty years since he had located and killed the “Infinity Killer.” He had changed, both physically and mentally. His once-lean and muscular 6’-2”
frame was now at least 30 pounds over his SEAL weight of 200; his formerly-crew cut but full head of black hair was a lot thinner now and completely gray; and his previously unwrinkled, clean-shaven face now sported crow’s feet around his dark brown eyes and more frown creases than laugh lines amidst his usual two-day’s growth of beard.
And despite the score of years that had passed since his family’s deaths, he had never gotten over their inhuman, untimely passing.
In the wake of the “Infinity Killer’s” slaying, and shortly after the media frenzy had finally cooled off, Jeffers had invested the balance of his wife’s insurance policy money in a new business: personal security. And that was what he called his fledgling undertaking. PERSONAL SECURITY. After what he had been through, he felt it was only logical that he provide to the public an outlet which an ordinary citizen could enter and purchase any manner of legal self-defense item for personal use or for home installation. In his hole-in-the-wall operation on Navy Road, in the heart of Millington, he offered such gadgets as stun guns, tazers, mace, pepper sprays, various types of handcuffs, batons, motion detectors, parabolic mikes, and a slew of other devices to ease anyone’s mind and ensure their safety and security, whether on the street or in the comfort of their own home.
It helped too that the landlord of his proprietorship was a former colleague of his from his Navy SEAL team days. Jeffers had been close to Dave McIntosh for several years in the late 80’s and early 90’s; they had actuall
y bonded like brothers. When McIntosh had learned the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Jeffers’ wife and son, he had cried almost as hard as his younger buddy. Once McIntosh retired from the Navy in 2000, the pair began to spend a lot more time together, both in Jeffers’ shop and on the nearby golf links.
Jeffers padded into the bathroom, took a leak, showered and brushed his teeth. He threw on some comfortable, casual clothes, then stepped over to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. His one-bedroom apartment was conveniently located right above his business on the second floor. It wasn’t fancy, but it was all he needed. He had never remarried; in fact, he had rarely ever dated over the years. He just couldn’t get his wife and son out of his mind. He wondered if he ever would…or if he even wanted to.
Once the coffee was ready, the delicious blend pulling him from his make-work efforts, he poured himself a cup, black, then dropped into a chair in front of his computer to browse the national news before checking on his store inventory.
Around 8:00AM, his eyes tired from squinting at the computer screen for over an hour, he found his cell phone and punched in a well-used number.
“Hello, Mal,” McIntosh said after the second ring.
“Hey, Dave,” Jeffers said.
“Calling a little early, aren’t you?”
“Yeah…”
“Well…yeah, I guess it is getting close to your anniversary, isn’t it?”
“Yep, July 8th.”
“’This too shall pass,’ isn’t that how the saying goes?” Dave said.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“I know, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean it that way. I know it gets rough around this time of year. You know I’m here for you, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, for sure.” Jeffers said. “It’s just…well, you know…uh, think you could swing by later today?”
“No problem, man. Around lunch time?”
“Yeah, that’d be fine.”
“By the way, you check out this morning’s Commercial Appeal?”
“No, you know I don’t get that Memphis rag. What little news I get is straight off the Internet.”
“Well, I don’t mean to make your day any worse, but you might want to Google copycat, Infinity Killer.”
“What?”
“You heard me right. Just check it out. We’ll talk later.”
After the two of them had rung off, Jeffers just stood there, cell in hand and said, “What the hell?”
1993
The walls in his bedroom are decorated with masks. He hangs them there, side-by-side, floor-to-ceiling, with barely enough space between them to reach his small fingers through. They are him. Different hims. Situational hims. He sits on his bed and stares from one to the next, studying their intricately painted mouths, the differing amounts of teeth they show, the various wrinkles in the skin of the cheeks and the foreheads, the shape of their eyebrows, the emotion that each represents. He commits them to memory. More than memory. He commits them to his being, to the part of him that is him and yet not him and simultaneously all of him. He practices them, practices changing them at will, faster and faster. But there is one thing he can never change, one aspect that the mask can neither hide nor alter, no matter how many he wears or how rapidly he switches them.
His eyes.
The windows to the soul that can’t be hidden behind insubstantial lids of skin.
The gateways to infinity that can never be closed.
He understands this. He understands everything. He is not a fool, and he is definitely not an idiot. He recognizes the fact that the walls of this prison that somehow qualifies as his bedroom are bare, that no masks hang upon the nicotine-yellowed plaster. He knows that the bed is not his, that the urine stains in the mattress are not his, that the bugs that live between the sheets have tasted blood other than his. He tells himself that the clothes in his bag are more than enough, that the children shrieking outside will want to play with him, that the man and the woman in the room behind him will be better than the last. He reminds himself that he is merely serving a sentence, that one day he will leave all of this behind him, and that in the meantime nothing bad can happen to him with all of his masks watching over him through their empty sockets.
He hears footsteps outside his bedroom door. It is the first sound he learns in every new home, a sound he needs to be able to identify even in a dead sleep, for his body must sleep at some point, and the footsteps in the hallway are patient. Always patient. They know when exhaustion has claimed him. They always know.
A hesitant knock on the door. It’s hollow, the kind of flimsy plywood thing that could snap in half if someone even looked at it hard enough.
He draws a deep breath, blows it slowly out.
He rises from the bed and walks along the wall until he finds what he’s looking for. He stands on his tiptoes so he can reach the mask he wants, then affixes it perfectly over his face.
When he opens the door, he’s wearing his mask that says: I’m perhaps a little nervous, but I’m cautiously optimistic about my future here.
As always, he averts his stare.
* * *
The cadaverous man steeples his bony fingers under his chin, leans forward in order to brace his elbows on his desk, and cocks an eyebrow nearly all the way up to his receding hairline. Dr. Eichmann’s office is dark, save for the weak brass glow from the lamp in the corner by the palm plant.
He can barely see the framed paintings on the walls or the spines of the books in the cases or the motes of dust swirling in the airless room.
Why was it always so dark in here?
The doctor stares at him, through him, and he is certain he feels those spindly fingers prying at the edges of his mask, the fingernails scraping his skin deep enough to draw blood. Of all of them—the nurses and the physicians and the social workers and the case managers—only Dr. Eichmann recognizes that he wears the masks, and it’s now the doctor’s mission, it seems, to see behind them.
He suspects that the doctor wears masks too, but he has absolutely no desire to see behind them. Whatever lurks underneath them is better left buried, for it is something black and rotten and cunning.
“Fifth foster home in barely over two years? Are you having trouble adapting?”
He tries to switch masks to offer his most perplexed expression, but he sees the flicker of recognition in Eichmann’s eyes and knows he’s been caught.
“No. I don’t suppose that’s the case at all. I suspect you’re well equipped to adapt to most any situation. A human chameleon. That’s what you are. A human chameleon.” The doctor cocks his head and appraises him as a predatory bird might. “I wonder, though…do you actually know who you really are in there? Deep down? You change colors to blend into your surroundings, but do you even remember which one is really yours?”
He leans back into his chair, hoping that somehow the cushions will absorb him, or, if nothing else, grant him even a few precious inches of distance from Eichmann, who appears tensed, as though at any moment he might spring over his desk and set upon him with his corpse-like fingernails and teeth.
Eichmann smiles and leans back in his own chair, a contented expression on his face. A few self-congratulatory nods to himself and the doctor rises from his seat, unfurling to his full height. His movements are stiff, disjointed, as he rounds the desk, slides aside a box of tissues, and sits on the edge, a scant foot away.
“Does all physical proximity make you this uncomfortable? I’d hate to think it was more…personal…than that.” Eichmann crosses his legs in an almost feminine manner. “Have you considered the fact that some of your problems could be easily rectified? You don’t have to let every little misunderstanding escalate to the point that you find yourself in need of a new foster home…and sitting in here with me. You aren’t stupid, are you?”
Eichmann smirks and raises an eyebrow. It’s a blatant attempt to bait him into lashing out. After a moment, the doctor nods in that smug way of his when he gets
the response he obviously expected.
“No. You aren’t stupid by any means. You’re an intelligent child, aren’t you? I have no doubt about that. You can try all you want to hide it, but I can see it in your eyes. Aha. That’s interesting. Struck a nerve, did I? What is it about the eyes? You can look away all you like, but you can’t hide from me. I can see you in there. You can change colors to match your mood and your environment or to project whatever emotion you want, but you can’t hide what’s inside.”
The doctor moves with alarming speed, taking him by surprise. Those skeletal fingers grip his chin and tilt his head up so that his stare can no longer avoid Eichmann’s.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” The words are sing-song, the breath that carries them like the gasses of decomposition. Eichmann’s fingers rise to the corners of his mouth and move his lips up and down, up and down. Smile. Frown. Smile. Frown. With a chuckle, the doctor releases his face and walks around behind him. “Still not talking, hmm? We’ve already established that you aren’t an imbecile, so tell me, son…is it because you don’t have a voice or because, like your colors, there are too many to choose from and you can’t seem to figure out which one is truly yours?”
He hates the fact that he can’t see the doctor, but he can’t bring himself to turn around to face him either. His cheeks itch as his mask crumbles. It reminds him of the sensation of the dried blood on his face before the pretty doctor—the nice doctor—washed it away.
A tickling sensation on the outer conch of his ear. The warmth of Eichmann’s breath on the lobe as he whispers.
“You can’t hide in there forever. A time will come when you will forget which color and voice are yours and you will simply cease to exist…Poof!”
He flinches.
The doctor claps him on the shoulder and walks toward the office door.
“Or maybe that’s already happened…”
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