You became irrational.
Think, Tommy. Think of the unspeakable things this person did to little boys, boys just like Chance. Think of the cruelty, the unbelievable fucking cruelty and horror. The terror. And the complete confusion going through the mind of those little boys. The moment of Why are you doing this to me? That final jagged thought before the darkness.
Just like Rade.
Tommy squeezed his eyes shut in the darkness as his fingers burrowed into the meaty arm of the man on the van floor. His fingers plunged deeper into the flesh. Harder. Clawing. He wanted his fingertips to burst down past the surface so he might grab hold of all his skin at once and tear it right off.
He hadn’t intended to do this, but once he made contact with Stykes, he wanted to kill him. Wanted him to suffer, wanted him to feel the pain and the fear and the sense of ending that all his victims had surely felt. How easy it would be to kill him now, here, in the van. His mouth was already covered in duct tape; all Tommy had to do was squeeze Stykes’s nostrils shut and in minutes the world would be free of at least a few ounces of evil.
Tommy felt his hands lift from Stykes’s skin and move toward his nostrils. But before he completed the act, Tommy pulled back, telling himself it wasn’t the time. He needed to adhere to the decision he had made a day ago, the decision he had explained in detail in those five letters he had written. Stick with the plan.
Tommy sucked in a breath, wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, and leaned back against the wall of the van.
Then Alan Stykes woke.
FORTY-FIVE
Stykes wasn’t just a little awake. He was fully awake, as if someone had just passed a massive current of electricity through him. Tommy could hear and feel the concussive thumps of the restrained body flopping on the floor of the van.
‘Mmmmppphhhh …’
Over and over the gagged screams throttled against the duct tape covering Stykes’s mouth, the horror of it accentuated by the dark. Tommy desperately wanted out of the van.
Stykes suddenly stopped flopping, and Tommy hoped that he’d slipped back into the drug-induced coma he’d been in.
But he hadn’t passed out again, Tommy realized. Stykes was strategizing.
Stykes suddenly began swinging his bound legs out, back and forth. Tommy realized this when the legs slammed into his own left shin. Tommy lost his balance and fell on top of Stykes’s chest. Stykes tried to attack, but his efforts were fruitless. Legs tied together. Hands bound behind his back. Mouth covered in duct tape. Stykes heaved against Tommy but could not seriously harm him. Tommy pushed himself off and stood, keeping his balance as the van continued on.
Tommy wanted to give him a warning. Stay still, you fuck. He lifted his right foot off the floor of the van, steadied himself, then slammed the heel of his shoe down. A good stomp in the chest would calm him down.
But it took only the moment of impact for Tommy to realize his foot hadn’t landed on Stykes’s chest, but rather on his face. He felt nose cartilage crumple under the force, like stomping on a hard-boiled egg.
Stykes howled into the tape. Tommy jumped back and steadied himself against the side of the van, but that lasted only until the van veered hard to the right and shuddered to a violent stop. Tommy went flying and landed again on Stykes, who kept screaming like a pig being repeatedly speared.
Tommy felt the slimy glaze of sweat on the man’s skin as the body thrashed beneath him.
Before he could push himself off, Tommy heard the driver’s door open. Seconds later, the back door opened.
Sunlight stabbed Tommy’s eyes. He could only see Elizabeth’s silhouette against the hazy sky. Her voice was sharp and deep.
‘What the fuck is going on back here?’
Tommy pushed himself off Stykes.
‘He’s awake,’ he said.
Elizabeth started into the back of the van. Then her eyes widened.
‘What did you do?’ She jumped into the back of the van as Tommy freed himself of the space and sucked in the fresh outside air.
‘I kicked him in the face,’ he said, turning. ‘I kicked him in the goddamn face. I was just trying to calm him down. He was trying to attack me.’
‘You kicked him in the face to calm him down? Nice thinking, Tommy.’ Elizabeth stared at Stykes, whose face was streaked with gushing blood. He shook his head as if trying to rid himself of the pain, and thick ropes of blood followed the motion of his head, splattering Elizabeth.
‘You broke his nose, goddamnit,’ she said. ‘We can’t leave the tape on his mouth. He’ll choke to death. This is not how it’s supposed to happen.’
She reached up to Stykes’s face and grabbed a corner of the tape, then ripped it off in one fast burst.
Stykes screamed as he vomited blood.
FORTY-SIX
They entered the woods.
Elizabeth drove them down a path farthest away from the sleepy subdivision bordering the eastern edge, the one where Tommy grew up, and the one where Rade’s father sat out on his porch at night, staring out to the trees, waiting for his little boy to come home.
She maneuvered the van down a small access road, guiding them deep into the woods, away from the streets and the houses and into an area where they could be alone. Tommy knew that someone could come out for a jog or to walk their dog, but he guessed Elizabeth had spent time finding a spot of reliable solitude for the day’s events. It was a quiet place.
Stykes’s screams, however, would travel far once the van’s doors were open.
Elizabeth turned the engine off and looked at Tommy, who had relocated to the passenger seat. Blood spray from Stykes’s screams and curses had transformed her blouse into a macabre Rorschach test.
She had Tased Stykes to get him to calm down, though it had simply enraged him more. He had thrashed about in the back of the van like a crocodile drowning its prey. Elizabeth seemed resigned to this, as the only other alternative was to tape his mouth again and risk Stykes choking to death on his own blood.
Tommy looked over and locked eyes with her. The trauma of everything he had seen and done, and what he needed to do, left him almost detached. There was a problem to be solved, and there were specific steps that needed to be taken to solve it. If he followed the steps precisely, the desired outcome would be achieved.
‘It’s time,’ she said.
Tommy studied her. ‘How long do you have?’ he asked.
‘We can’t take too long,’ she said. ‘We need to move fast.’
‘No. How long do you have? Your cancer.’
She blinked. ‘Why?’
‘Because one of my greatest friends died from cancer seven years ago, and she had all the treatment in the world. She didn’t last more than six months from diagnosis. You say you aren’t doing any treatment at all, and here you are looking like you could pass for a twenty-five-year-old.’
Her answer was immediate. ‘Uncertain, but less than eight months from what I’ve been able to discern. I stopped going to doctors, so I don’t know for sure.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘I feel like we need to move forward now and stop with the questions.’
‘Maybe you don’t have cancer,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s all part of your game.’
Elizabeth then opened her door and simply told Tommy: ‘Come.’
After it was clear she would not answer his accusation, they moved to the back of the van and Elizabeth opened the doors to the cargo area.
Stykes immediately spat out blood in her direction.
‘You fucking whore!’ he shouted, though it came out fuggin hor through his shattered nose. His eyes were the only things not painted red on his face, and they shone through like pieces of smoldering coal.
Elizabeth calmly leaned forward, pushed the Taser into his neck, and pumped him with electricity. Stykes screamed and temporarily flopped silent, at which point she produced a leather glove and shoved it forcefully in his mouth. Stykes began gagging a
lmost immediately.
Her voice was still as lake water. ‘Slow down, Alan. Breathe. Focus. There should be enough space to breathe around the glove. You just need to calm down and focus.’
Tommy watched the scene and was quickly losing his sense of detachment. The man was choking to death.
‘It’s not working,’ he said. ‘He can’t breathe.’
‘He can breathe,’ she corrected. ‘He’s just not listening to me.’
Stykes began thrashing about more, screaming into the black leather glove filling his mouth. When he spun and looked at Tommy, his eyes bulged from the sockets.
Tommy took a step back, as if he could physically remove himself from the suffering.
Elizabeth watched Stykes for a few more moments, tilting her head twice, analyzing the problem in front of her. Finally, she stepped forward.
‘Fuck.’ She said it with the annoyance of having just broken the heel of her shoe. She reached forward and grabbed on to the small bit of glove protruding from his mouth. ‘Open,’ she said. As Stykes did, she yanked the glove free.
Stykes sucked in the air around him, wheezing and struggling to fill his lungs.
‘I could drug him,’ she said to Tommy, ‘but I don’t want to. That would knock him out for too long.’
She reached back in and grabbed a fistful of Stykes’s hair. ‘I’m not going to bullshit you, fuckface. You know you’re here to die. So just take it like a man and don’t scream. Understand?’
‘Fuck you,’ he mumbled through his pain. Fug you.
Elizabeth pulled her arm back and smashed the side of his face with her fist. The motion was so quick Tommy almost couldn’t process what had happened.
Stykes hung his head down and was indeed silent for a moment.
‘You know what I can do,’ she told him. ‘You’ve seen what I’m capable of. If you don’t scream, then our friend Tommy here will kill you. I’m sure it will be sloppy, but he’s going to want to do it fast. He’s not like us, Alan. He won’t take pleasure in it. But if you do scream, then I’ll make sure I get to spend some time with you first.’
This seemed to soak in to Stykes. He nodded.
‘Good,’ Elizabeth said.
Tommy looked at Stykes, who was secured by multiple loops of duct tape and had blood still seeping from his face. He looked like some kind of mummy–zombie hybrid.
‘Where are we taking him?’ Tommy asked.
Elizabeth nodded past the trees. ‘In there.’
‘How?’
‘That’s your first job,’ she said. ‘Transport your victim.’
‘I can’t carry that much weight. At least not that far.’
‘Then it’s a good thing I think of these things for you. In the van, mounted to the side panel. There’s a dolly.’
Tommy remembered. He’d almost smashed his head into it when the van had lurched.
‘Bring it out here and stand our friend here on it. You can wheel him forward, Hannibal Lecter-style.’
It’s just another task, Tommy told himself. Break everything down into a series of small, manageable tasks. Grab the dolly, stand it on the ground, swing Stykes’s legs off the van, stand him in the dolly …
Three minutes later the small tasks were complete and Tommy stood behind Stykes, who was secured to the dolly with a belt around his hips and his chest.
Elizabeth went to the passenger side of the van, reached in, and pulled out a small leather bag, the design of which reminded Tommy of a doctor’s bag from the nineteenth century. He pictured it filled with various elixirs and intricate scalpels. She also grabbed a shovel, which Tommy knew was for burying Stykes’s body.
‘I’m going to walk ahead of you,’ she said. ‘Let me get out fifty paces ahead and then follow me.’
Elizabeth walked into the woods, the medicine bag in one hand and the shovel in the other, her feet making small crunching noises in the dirt and rock of the narrow pathway that threaded the towering trees. Tommy watched her, and he had a fleeting desire to wait until she was far enough away and then just jump in the van and drive away. But he knew he couldn’t. First, he didn’t have the keys. But more importantly, running away wouldn’t put an end to everything. However this was going to end, it wouldn’t be with him running away.
Stykes was still going to be difficult to move, even in the dolly. Tommy tilted the man back and took the weight on his front shoulders. He couldn’t lean him too far back or the weight would overwhelm him. Tommy could lean him back about fifteen degrees and then manage to push him forward on the wheels of the dolly.
It was slow going and Tommy didn’t like having Stykes’s bloodied face so close to his own. Stykes closed his eyes and wheezed, and small bubbles of blood popped as they grew from his nose. Tommy could smell the man, a rank, sweet smell, the smell of an unclean animal. Rot.
As Tommy slowly made his way down the path with his burden, Stykes began to speak.
FORTY-SEVEN
‘Think you can kill a man?’ He spoke slowly, calmly, trying to make his words clear despite the broken nose. Think still came out as thig.
Tommy said nothing.
‘Stuff happens when you kill someone,’ Stykes continued. ‘Chemical reactions in the brain. Changes you.’
Tommy grunted with effort as he wheeled Stykes over a small bed of rocks.
‘Most people don’t have it in ’em,’ he said. ‘Think they do. Think they can unleash violence like a wild animal if they have to, but most can’t. And those who can, usually it’s because of those same chemicals in the body.’ His speech was painfully slow and at times Stykes struggled to speak at all, pausing when he needed to work through the pain and fatigue, but Tommy knew the man wouldn’t shut up until he was dead. He was pleading for his life, after all. ‘Someone’s attacking you, your instinct is to run. If you can’t run, you have to fight or die. Those instances, the chemicals let you fight. Take the pain away. Give you amazing focus. You can hear anything. But for most folks, that’s only when they have no choice.’ Stykes turned his head to try to look at Tommy, but Tommy leaned his head back. ‘You have a choice. You got me helpless, and she’s gonna ask you to end my life. With your own hand. I don’t think you can do it.’ He spit a glob of blood into the dirt. ‘Takes someone like me to do it, and we are different folk, you and me.’
Tommy looked up the path and saw Elizabeth at least fifty yards ahead.
‘Where did you bury the children?’ Tommy asked.
Stykes grunted a laugh. ‘What children?’ Chidden.
Tommy heaved Stykes over a half-buried tree root. ‘The photos in your bedroom. That’s where they are, aren’t they?’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘It’s one good thing you can do,’ Tommy said. ‘Give some closure to the families. Tell me where they’re buried, so I can tell the police.’
Stykes said nothing.
Tommy thought for a moment. ‘You’re the one who moved Rade, aren’t you? She asked you to.’
Stykes wheezed. ‘I did. About a month ago. Nothin’ left but bones.’
‘Is he still here?’
Again, Stykes did not answer, and Tommy knew he wouldn’t. He stood Stykes upright in the dolly, relieving the strain on Tommy’s arms and back. He looked up the path toward Elizabeth as he spoke in Stykes’s ear.
‘So you’ve been talking to her. All this time.’
Stykes nodded. ‘We keep in touch. Ours is a special relationship.’
‘And you never thought she’d try to kill you? Get rid of the loose ends?’
‘Not until now. Didn’t think she had it in her.’
‘Had it in her? That’s some fierce denial, Alan. She killed Jason, or at least drove him to kill himself. Then Mark …’
Stykes spit out another glob of blood, most of which landed on his own shirt. ‘Hell, son, she really is in your brain, isn’t she? She didn’t kill Mark. Not sure what happened to him – man was probably drunk. But she ain’t the bogeyman. Maybe
you think she’s invincible. But she’s just a scared little girl, just doing what nature is telling her to do. Simple as that. Doesn’t mean I feel sorry for her. ’Sides, if there’s any real loose end here, it sure as hell is you.’
Tommy saw Elizabeth waiting for them. She stood next to a tree, the most distinguishing feature of which was it was taller than the dozens of others in the same area. Like the others, it was gnarled and old, its skin around the base dark from the lack of sunlight.
‘There,’ Stykes said. ‘That’s where it’ll happen. Take it in, Tommy. Take it all in.’
Tommy moved his gaze from the tree back to Elizabeth, who suddenly seemed no different from the sixteen-year-old he’d first met in these same woods. She looked upon him like a ghost gazing in from an outside existence. She motioned to him to come.
Come to my world.
The afternoon was growing old, and Tommy could see the darkness ahead, the shadows from the trees, spread along the dirt and scrub like a cold, stiff sheet. Tommy sucked in a deep breath and leaned Stykes back on his shoulder, pressing him forward in the dolly, which moved slowly, the rubber wheels digging into the dirt, an inch at a time, as it rolled toward the clearing.
FORTY-EIGHT
‘What’s in the bag?’ Tommy nodded at the medical bag she had placed on the ground. His heart was still pounding from transporting Stykes the distance from the van, though he doubted his pulse would have been slow and steady otherwise.
Elizabeth reached down and opened the bag, pulling from it Tommy’s printed manuscript along with the extra pages in the back. She walked over to Tommy and dropped it at his feet.
‘You’re not used to handwriting these things, are you?’
‘No, I’m not.’
She went back into the bag and pulled out a pen, which she similarly tossed to the ground near him.
‘Hope your hand doesn’t cramp up. You’ll have some good things to write down soon.’
The Boy in the Woods Page 23