The Boy in the Woods

by Carter Wilson

  ‘Fuck,’ Tommy muttered.

  ‘And then I heard Jason crying in the closet. Crying. I need my Watchers to be excited by the feast. Not crying. My orgasm immediately ended the moment I heard his sobs.’

  Poor Jason, Tommy thought. Poor, poor Jason.

  She flicked her hand as if dismissing an indolent servant. ‘He hanged himself three days later. Saved me the trouble.’

  ‘Trouble of what?’

  ‘Killing him myself, of course.’

  ‘That was your plan?’

  ‘It usually is. I can’t have Watchers just walking around willy nilly. Despite their own complicity.’

  Tommy considered this. ‘Except, of course, for three of us.’

  ‘That’s right. Alan Stykes, Mark, and you. You are my three little loose ends.’

  Three little loose ends, Tommy thought. It’s all about that, isn’t it? She’s covering her tracks, after all these years. She wants me to write her story, and then what? And what about Alan and Mark – are they on her endangered species list? And why now? What’s so special about this point in time?

  These were thoughts he had had before. In his dream of her, Tommy saw her as desperate. Taking chances she normally wouldn’t be taking. Signaling that, after thirty years, time was suddenly of the essence. That was just a dream, but he found himself wondering again, why now?

  He stopped typing and looked up at her. In doing so, he realized that in their brief time together he had never really looked at her. He had looked at what the image of her was in his mind, but for the most part he’d avoided looking directly at her, as if she would somehow steal his soul if he did. But now he looked, and what he saw was a beautiful woman … almost. There was something behind that beauty, some trace of frailty that was not just age. There was fatigue in her eyes that she tried to cover up by blinking a few too many times, and there was a lack of color in her face that she tried to cover with a little too much makeup.

  And then Tommy knew.

  THIRTY-THREE

  ‘You’re sick,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you?’

  She said nothing for a few moments, assessing Tommy’s face, searching his eyes.

  ‘Very good, Thomas.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ovarian cancer. That somehow feels ironic, but I’m not sure how.’

  ‘What stage?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘That’s early enough.’ Tommy blurted the words out automatically, as if he was encouraging her to get treatment and get well. Her dying could actually be the best news he could have received.

  ‘I’m not treating it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why go to the doctor at all?’

  ‘I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It’s a sensation I’m not used to.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘So this is how I will die. After all I’ve done, it’ll be something as dull as cancer that kills me.’

  ‘That’s what you meant when you said you get weak. You hadn’t killed in over three years. You stopped because you knew it was wrong. And you think that abstinence gave you cancer? Because your body feasts on the sexual high you get when you kill?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘But the body doesn’t work like that. It’s basic biology.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s what I believe. And it’s too late to do anything about it.’

  ‘Why did you stop?’

  ‘I was tired of being controlled by my needs.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re here. Now. Because you’re running out of time.’

  ‘I was always planning on writing my memoirs, and now I’m afraid there’s not enough time. And you are the perfect person to memorialize me, all through fiction. It needs to be a bestseller, Tommy.’

  ‘But you’ll be dead.’

  ‘I’m hoping they have libraries in hell.’

  ‘I could just wait for you to die,’ he said.

  ‘No, you can’t.’ She sat up and gave a small cat stretch. ‘Your book needs to be on the shelves within the next calendar year, and it needs to reach at least number ten on the New York Times list. I will need a draft in six months that I approve, and the final version cannot deviate substantially from the approved draft. I will need to be represented as a fictional character, and all references to any real crime will have to be changed enough to be untraceable. And, most importantly, you need to capture my essence, and only I will be the true judge of that.’

  She’s really thought this out, Tommy thought. ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or else my written history of that day in the woods and the location of little Rade – and all the wonderful evidence with him – will be released to the media and the police. I have a very good and expensive attorney who does what I ask and asks very few questions in return. He will continue to work on my behalf after my death.’

  ‘But then you won’t get what you want. You’ll be known as the killer you really are, not some romanticized fictional antagonist.’

  She nodded. ‘I’m betting your willingness to withhold the truth is greater than mine.’

  Tommy soaked in the information. None of it really surprised him. It all made sense, in a cosmically fucked-up way.

  ‘So you don’t want me dead?’ he asked. ‘Even after I write the book, there won’t be some hired associate of yours waiting to carry out your last will and testament?’

  ‘Tommy, no matter what happens, I’m not going to hurt you. You might go to prison if you don’t fulfill my wishes, but I’m not going to hurt you.’

  He wanted to believe her but he knew better. Elizabeth was a manipulator, and doing what she wanted would only fuel her desire to demand more. But if she was truly sick, Tommy could do what she wanted and her death would finally end their relationship.

  So that was it. This was the end. It might take a few months, but Tommy knew he could do what she wanted. He knew his book would break in the top ten – it would be a first if it didn’t. And he knew the manuscript was truly one of a kind – the best he had ever written. His book would come out, Elizabeth would be dead, and Tommy would go back to his life. He would be free. Free to be the husband he needed to be to Becky, one who held no secrets. Free to be a father without the looming threat of being taken away from his kids.

  But what about Alan Stykes? Tommy couldn’t possibly go back to his normal life knowing a child murderer was watching over the town of Lind Falls. But he could do something about that. An anonymous tip to the FBI, perhaps. He could call one of his friends who—

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ she said, pulling Tommy from his thoughts. ‘One last thing I need you to do.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You need to understand me fully.’

  ‘You’ve already said that.’

  ‘But I need you to know what it feels like. There is someone I need … to go away.’

  Tommy knew immediately.

  ‘Alan Stykes.’

  ‘Correct.’

  It instantly unfolded before Tommy. She was going to ask him to be a Watcher while she killed Stykes. The homeless man in Charleston wasn’t enough – it was too spontaneous. She doubted Tommy’s abilities to understand her process, her system, in that one, random killing. She needed him to be there, in anticipation, while she feasted. He would be Jason in the closet. An unwilling accomplice. He would watch as she executed Stykes, and then at last she would believe in his ability to capture her essence in his words. Bestselling words.

  He felt revulsion at the thought. He still carried the sound of the tearing flesh of the homeless man to bed with him every night, and the vacant, dead eyes of Rade Baristow greeted him each morning. But Stykes? Stykes was a certified, genuine, made in the US-fucking-A child killer. Could he not take some comfort in that? For the sake of all that he had to lose, could he do this one, last horrific thing?

  He didn’t know the answer.

  And then Elizabeth spoke and rendered worthless his brief dilemma.


  ‘Alan Stykes,’ she said. ‘I want you to kill him.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Tommy stared out the dirty car window, watching the leaves on the trees around him plunge to their deaths. Technically, they were already dead, but suicidal thoughts seemed to fit his mood.

  He was parked outside his old house, on the opposite side of the street, the part nestled against open space. In the two days since he’d gone into the woods with a shovel, the owners of his old place had put up some cheap Halloween decorations. Grocery-store variety.

  Wind swirled and growled outside the car. Dead leaves danced.

  Tommy had no idea why he was here. He needed to go home, back to Colorado, but somehow it was important to come back to the neighborhood, even if it was just to look at what had changed. Maybe looking at his old house was supposed to show him how all things change, and despite that (or because of it), life goes on. But instead it was just fucking depressing. His dad would never have put up cheap, grocery-store Halloween decorations.

  Tommy had a decision to make. He came here for an answer, and instead he found emptiness.

  Elizabeth hadn’t said much more. She didn’t need to. She wanted Tommy doing the killing, for only then could he have the best chance of understanding her. When he had countered that the two of them were chemically different, and what motivated her did not motivate him, she accepted his argument as essentially true and told him it didn’t matter.

  She wanted what she wanted, and that was all that mattered. She thought the killing would make Tommy a better writer. Tommy disagreed. She didn’t give a shit.

  So he had a decision to make. And he had three days to give her his answer.

  He put the car in drive and slowly pulled away from the curb, taking one last look at the house and still feeling nothing close to any kind of inspiration. He wasn’t sure he was supposed to feel inspiration, but he damn well needed to feel something.

  Three houses down he drove by Rade’s old house. No Halloween decorations.

  Then he saw someone. On the porch. An old man.

  Tommy stopped the car, wondering if it could be who he thought it might be.

  He pulled once again to the curb and made eye contact with the man sitting in a cheap metal chair on the front porch. The air was frosty but the man didn’t seem to notice the cold. He looked to be on the ugly side of seventy and carried a stare that said don’t bother me. But the age was about right, and Tommy decided to take a chance.

  He got out of the car and crossed the street. The old man’s eyes seemed buried by wrinkles around them, so Tommy couldn’t tell if he was staring at Tommy or beyond him. When Tommy reached the sidewalk in front of his house, he got his answer.

  ‘I don’t entertain solicitors. That’s how I’ve always been. Nothing against you. Just the way it is.’

  Tommy stopped walking.

  ‘Mr … Mr Baristow?’

  The man shifted in his chair.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘It’s … I’m Tommy Devereaux. I … I used to live here a long time ago.’

  Tommy thought he could see the trace of movement on the man’s mouth, but couldn’t be sure.

  The wind kicked up again and raked frosty fingers though Tommy’s hair.

  ‘Tommy Devereaux. Now there’s a name I hear every so often around here.’

  ‘Can I come up?’

  ‘Suppose it’s in your mind to anyway.’

  Tommy took that as a yes and walked up the path to the house. Three concrete steps led to a wooden porch that begged for repair and staining. Charles Baristow watched him every inch. An empty chair sat next to Charles, but Tommy remained standing.

  ‘You’re some kind of writer now I hear,’ Charles said.

  ‘Some kind, yes.’ Tommy had a sudden moment of horror thinking that Charles had read the teaser of The Blood of the Young and realized the story of the killing was about his own boy.

  ‘I never read any of it. Just how I am. Never been much of a reader.’

  ‘Quite all right, Mr Baristow.’ He expected to be told to call him Charles, but the invitation didn’t come. ‘I … I was just in the old neighborhood. Just waxing nostalgic, I guess.’

  The man’s eyes flashed with emotion for the first time. ‘Nothin’ here but nightmares, Tommy Devereaux. I suppose you know that. If not, it don’t matter, because I certainly do.’

  Tommy lowered his gaze. ‘Yes, I suppose I do know that. I haven’t been here in ages.’

  ‘Left to go to college. Never came back?’

  ‘No, I never came back.’

  ‘Best decision of your life.’

  Tommy shrugged.

  ‘How are your parents?’ Charles asked.

  ‘Dead,’ Tommy said. ‘Within the last five years for both of them.’

  Charles nodded as if that was just about the right answer. ‘Never knew them all that well. Moved away not long after you left for college.’

  ‘My dad got a job in California.’

  Another nod. ‘Your mom. She made me some dinners after … after Rita moved out. Damn nice of her.’

  ‘I remember that.’

  Charles looked across the street, the hazy sunlight warming over his milky cataracts.

  ‘Why did you come back, Tommy Devereaux?’ He didn’t ask it as a question so much as some kind of accusation.

  Tommy once again fought to keep his focus on the man’s face and once again lost.

  ‘I’m doing some research,’ he said, hoping it didn’t sound as lame as it felt.

  ‘That so?’

  A quiet settled upon them, but not a comfortable one. Tommy wanted to ask what he wanted to ask, but felt hesitant. Charles Baristow seemed to slip in and out of this world.

  Finally, Tommy said, ‘I want to ask you about Rade if I can,’ he said. ‘You can tell me to go away and I would understand.’

  Charles seemed not to hear him, his gaze still across the street, lost in the depth of the trees in the woods. Then, like a hawk spying movement from above, his gaze shot to Tommy.

  ‘This part of your research?’

  Yes, Tommy thought.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you can ask. Then I’ll decide if I’m of the mind to answer or not.’

  Tommy took a deep breath. ‘Did … did you ever find out what happened?’

  Tommy saw the man’s jaw tense and then release.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The police. They … they dropped the case?’

  The response was grumbled in old-man drawl. ‘Well, the police will tell you one thing and then another, but they’ll never tell you they dropped the case. They just move on to other things, which I suppose is what they ought to do. But nothin’ ever came of my boy. One day he was here. One day not. So it goes.’

  So it goes. Tommy recognized the line from Slaughterhouse-Five, but didn’t know if Charles was quoting it or just making an observation about the ebb and flow of life. It was a book about death, and Charles wasn’t much of a reader. Tommy felt the queasiness rise in him, but he couldn’t stop himself. ‘Do you keep looking?’

  ‘No place left to look. A person can grow crazy turning over stones, once you turn over enough of ’em.’ Charles looked down and cleared his throat of a day’s worth of build-up. ‘Course, a person can grow crazy lots of different ways. Happened to Rita. She stopped looking and still went crazy. Killed herself. Don’t know if you knew that.’

  ‘I remember hearing that. I can’t imagine what you went through.’

  ‘No, Tommy Devereaux. No you certainly cannot. And I hope you never will.’

  ‘Any … any theories about what happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t have much use for theories. All theories do is let you imagine a million different horrible things and never let you know which one is the truth. Just another thing to drive you crazy.’

  For a second Charles’s face broke its stoic mold, and in that instant Tommy saw the pain. The pain of a man who had lost so m
uch he had nothing left to lose.

  Tommy felt the weight of it all on him again, just like in the days immediately after it had all happened. The guilt and the shame. The incredible, dense pressure of a knowledge he couldn’t – wouldn’t – share. Tommy didn’t have a theory about what happened to Rade. Tommy knew what happened. And he could tell Charles the truth. Right here. Right on the old man’s front porch. Charles probably wouldn’t believe a word of it, but that was just another excuse to Tommy. Tommy had lots of excuses, some of them downright logical. He didn’t want his family destroyed. He didn’t want his children hurt. He didn’t want to go to prison. These were all real and valid excuses for the kind of man Tommy had become, but they all fell under the one large umbrella of the real reason. The real reason Tommy wouldn’t say one word about the truth to Charles Baristow was because Tommy was a coward, and he hated himself for it.

  Charles’s rigid expression returned, but Tommy would never forget the sense of loss he saw in that one instant on the man’s face.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Charles continued, trying to force his words back into an emotionless tone. ‘Alan’s the only one who seems to give a rat’s ass anymore, and he’s not even a detective. State police don’t even return my calls anymore, but Alan still searches for leads here and there.’

  ‘Alan Stykes?’

  ‘That’s right. Solid man.’ Charles nodded in conviction. ‘A good man. And it’s not just Rade. There were some other kids missin’ from this area. You hear about them?’