by Ian Ballard
I go on. “Obviously you’ve got some idea what’s going on here.” I realize too late this sounds formal and patronizing. Something a principal would say to a smirking juvenile delinquent. “I’ll just shoot straight with you and tell you what’s what. The truth is that I’m a murderer.” Long sigh. “I kill people,” I add, redundantly.
If there is a smooth hip way to do this preamble thing, I haven’t figured it out yet. But you have to muddle through since it's essential to the process. They have to know what’s going to happen.
If they don’t know, then they can’t fear. Or fear to the full extent. If the threat is equivocal, the fear is not the same. If they hold out hope, even to the slightest degree, they will not face the coming end.
Fear, as I may have mentioned before, is important. Not just for them, but for me.
It’s the heart of the endlessly repeating cycle that's at the heart of me. It’s the spark that ignites and spreads to all the rest. All the aborted, stunted parts of me. I know by rote the route the spreading flames will take through my dark interior. Like a map of Pepto Bismol spreading pink relief to an upset stomach.
But it’s strange. Today, the fear is spreading faster than I'm accustomed to. I can feel the tightening in my stomach. The first symptom. And yet it’s a bit early for this.
“So here’s the deal,” I go on. “You and I are going to spend the night together. I’m not talking about sex. You don’t have to worry about rape or torture or anything like that. At the risk of sounding weird, all I want you to do is talk to me. I’ll ask you things. You just need to be open and honest. To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” I make a swearing in, courtroom gesture.
My heart is also beating faster than it normally does at this point. It’s not a big deal, but I’ll have to look into this later. Maybe ask a doctor.
“Now here’s the tough part. The sad part that you’re not going to like. Then sun is going to come up in about four-and-a-half hours. When it does, I’m going to stand up, walk over to you and fill the bathtub up with water. Yes, your clothes are going to get wet.” Girls have actually asked me about that. “When the tub's full, I’ll tell you good-bye, and I’ll push your head underwater and hold it there. Probably around the two-minute mark, you’ll take in a breath of water, and thirty seconds after that, everything will go black. By the end of minute three, you’ll be gone.” I drum my fingers on the tub. “Those are the cold, hard facts. Like I said, there’s no point in sugarcoating it.”
I take a sugar-free Red Bull out of my backpack and gulp down about half of it. I’ve read the aspartame isn’t good for you, but it's better than the hollow calories in the regular variety.
I turn back to Courtney. “Typically the first question people have is this: why would I stay up all night chatting with someone who just promised to kill me? That’s a fair question. But I’m prepared to offer you a deal that might make it worth your while, as crazy as that sounds. Most people take the offer. But that’s totally up to you. Here goes. If we chat all night and you’re candid and engaged, I’ll let you use the last hour before sunrise to write a letter to someone. One letter. To whomever you want. You’ll have a chance to say goodbye to whoever's most important to you. To thank them for everything they’ve done to make your own and only life all it was. I’ll even spring for the stamp and drop it in the mail.”
Tears well up in Courtney’s eyes and impale themselves on the lower line of lashes. They are already bent and waterlogged from three prior bouts of sobbing. The tears mix with eyeliner. Several dark snakes wind down her cheeks, leaving riverbeds of L’Oreal sediment in their wake.
I finish the Red Bull and put the can back in the backpack.
“That’s all I have to say, Courtney. I’m going to take the tape off your mouth in a few minutes. Oh, but first, one other thing. It probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it just in case. I’m going to keep this butcher knife right here next to my chair.” I pick it up and show it to her. I notice that the blade is shaking slightly in my hand. Odd. “If you scream or make any attempt to get away or draw attention to yourself, our deal is off. I’ll very calmly, very carefully, pick up the knife and push the blade into the center of your throat. It will go through two very large arteries and you’ll be dead in about thirty seconds. Moreover, if any of your sorority sisters happen to hear you and come to your rescue, they will meet with a similar fate. I don’t want to belabor the point. Just speak in a quiet tone. I know this is a lot to think about all at once, so I’ll give you a few minutes to mull it over. Then I’ll take the tape off and we can go from there.”
Pausing for a few minutes at this point builds tension and lets everything sink in. It reduces the chance that Courtney will unleash a hysterical scream right off the bat, something which I think goes against both our interests. I glance at my watch. Its 3:22 a.m. Let’s give it till 3:27. Five minutes.
I’ll pass the time by peering into her eyes. Not in a domineering, psycho way, but in an unobtrusive, watchful way—like a closed-circuit camera in a gas station.
Her green eyes, as I may have mentioned, are quite alluring, even in this muddy, tear-bedraggled state. They project a goodness and an innocence. It’s curious how an organ can radiate abstract emotions or principles. Certainly a kidney or a tonsil would not be up to the challenge.
I suppose other men before me have been moved by these same eyes. Perhaps they’ve even fashioned similes comparing them to large verdurous objects (over-sized emeralds or a lily pad-coated lake). The comparisons may have been quite bad considering the youthfulness of Courtney’s likely suitors.
And yet, it's such a beautiful gesture.
It’s something I’ll never be able to do, except in palest imitation. This subtle fig of humanness will always linger just beyond my reach. Forever separated from me by the great veil.
Sigh.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes?
That’s a line from a poem.
Sometimes lines just pop into my head. I’ll have no idea why, but then later I’ll grasp the significance. The line comes from a poem that talks a lot about eyes. Maybe that’s why I thought of it.
But we were talking about Courtney’s eyes. Namely, the fact that they are beautiful and that I am staring into them.
I’m staring into her eyes, but in an unconventional way. Like I’m staring at the eye itself. Like it’s an object, rather than an organ looking back at me.
I try to block out everything else. Like I’m meditating. Like I’m a poet hidden in the light of thought.
Courtney might be into meditating too because she has a glow-in-the-dark Buddha on the water tank of her toilet on top of a stack of Glamour magazines. It doesn’t really matter to me since I don’t meditate myself. It’s just that what I’m doing at the moment reminds me of what meditation might be like (note: this notion is derived mainly from senseis in martial arts movies and may be inaccurate).
On the other hand, I doubt there’s a wrong way to meditate. It's not like you can throw your back out like you could in a yoga class. Who knows? Maybe there’s even a beginner’s luck aspect to it.
Let’s give it a shot.
Besides, what else am I going to do for the next three-and-a-half minutes?
So here goes. Luke’s first attempt at meditation.
Slow, deep breath, inhale.
I focus completely on Courtney’s green irises and try to make the rest of the world fade away.
Slow, deep breath, exhale.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
That line just popped into my head, as I’ve explained lines are sometimes wont to do. Just go with it. Let it flow.
When you look deeply into Courtney’s eyes, the colors in those green rings get wavy and restless. Quantumy. Bits of brown, blue, yellow and red swirl and wriggle there.
Picture it as a green sea and just beneath the surface eels and other sea serpents maneuver languidly about, vivid and el
ectric. Think Rime of the Ancient Mariner or the scene in Star Wars where the room turns out to be a huge trash compactor.
Blue stars shiver in the distance.
Yet again. Just going to ignore it. Keep going.
Courtney’s irises are filled with a wonderful lava lamp plasma. Halfway between liquid and gas.
I draw even closer. Focus even more intensely. This is fun and scary at the same time.
I picture myself floating above a stormy green planet. Everything is silent and Kubrick slow. It’s an envious Jupiter where violet lightning bolts thread rowdy, emerald clouds.
You could really lose yourself in these eyes.
To think I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
Get sucked into them.
Like the jittery crew of some wayward Star Fleet vessel. At this very moment, I’m like just such a ship, drifting near a giant green quasar.
Watch how the craft shrinks as it nears the hazy vastness. Becomes a white pebble. Then a speck.
Then is diminished to a thing so infinitesimally tiny it’s indistinguishable from oblivion.
In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
I have disappeared in the black pupil hole at the center of her.
If I never returned, what would happen? What would it mean?
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
I hear a loud, metallic sound.
The butcher knife has slipped from my fingers and clattered to the ground.
My hand is trembling.
It has not happened like this before.
Courtney bats her eyes. But I am not thinking about Courtney.
I am not ready to tell you what I’m thinking about.
20
El Paso, 1989
“Hi, Rose,” said Garrett in a soft, taunting tone.
Rose turned and saw her son's rangy shape framed in the doorway. His figure seemed to sway slightly from side to side like a poised cobra. He was little more than a silhouette in the final rays of evening, but her mind filled in the details—the lazy eye and the soulless smirk—that the dimness obscured.
Without realizing she was doing so, Rose took a half-step back. Shards of the crushed aquarium crunched underfoot. Her rage, still simmering, was tempered by the shock of Garrett's sudden appearance. She realized the situation with Roscoe would have to be dealt with right here and right now. There was no putting it off.
It wasn't that she feared her son. He was twelve years old, for God’s sake. She was a grown woman who outweighed him by thirty pounds. And one who was armed with a shovel, for that matter. No, she wasn’t afraid. Yet, her heart must have its own reasons for pounding the way it was.
When Rose finally discerned the details of her son's face, she saw that he was smiling. It made her sick. That wicked smile seemed to say that he was taking off the mask. Setting it aside, so she could peer into his bleak recesses. At the malignancy, swarming like a mound of millipedes where his soul should be.
She’d exposed him for what he was. And for what he’d done to Roscoe, and for whatever else the graves behind the shed were proof of. The jig was up. She'd outed him and he'd never forgive her for that.
And she knew from that smile he'd kill her the first chance he got. He would focus every ounce of his patient cruelty on dreaming up the surest and most horrible way. He might poison her with Drano. Or mess with the brakes on her car. Or stage a fake suicide and press a gun into her mouth. And he was a persevering little shit—you had to give him that. If he failed the first time, he'd keep trying till he got it right.
Unless of course, he wasn't given the opportunity. . . .
A picture of Roscoe flashed through her mind, and anger flared again. All her reason and self-control seemed to dissolve in its venomous red waters. She raised the shovel and held it in both hands, the way one might brandish a shotgun. This was going to end here. There would be no remorse for the remorseless.
Just then, Rose detected movement behind Garrett in the open doorway. Two shorter, slighter figures lingered just beyond the threshold. It dawned on Rose that not one, but all three of those mouths who called her mother were in attendance. Squinting, she discerned ten-year-old Tad holding a pair of pliers and seven-year-old Luke toting a large silver flashlight. So these were Garrett’s little assistants. And from the looks of it, they were apt pupils.
Their six eyes rested on her, like the gaze of a single entity. For a moment she hated them all as one. “You brought them along to help?” Rose said. She could feel her lips trembling.
Someone snickered.
She’d misjudged things in assuming their innocence. In blaming it all on Garrett. Maybe he’d nurtured in them his same sickness.
But, no. Surely the other two were not just like Garrett. Tad, maybe, but not Luke. She'd seen goodness in her youngest son. A soul. Unless Garrett had managed to snuff it out.
“So, what brings you 'round to these parts?” Garrett asked, imitating the stilted drawl of a Southern gentleman.
He took a step forward.
“Don’t move,” Rose said, waving the shovel in front of her as if warding off a demon. She took another step back and found herself at the rear of the shed, with no room left to retreat.
“Am I under arrest or something?” Garrett said with a laugh.
Heckling laughter from one or both of the confederates.
“I found Roscoe,” she said.
The toe of Garrett’s sneaker was inching forward. And was it just her imagination, or were the other two creeping up on her as well?
“Was he missing?” Garrett's voice was full of mock innocence.
“He was.” She clinched the muscles in her jaw and tightened her grip on the shovel. She was already picturing what she would do to him. God, it was going to feel good.
“And what all was he missing?”
And that was all it took. “You son of a bitch,” she wailed, spewing spittle from her lips. Her vision all went red, like the lens of a periscope. With a powerful swing, she brought the shovel down hard on Garrett’s head. The impact made a crisp thwack that was followed by a dull metallic ring.
Garrett collapsed down on all fours, stunned but conscious. Not far from his left hand lay a hacksaw—probably what the son of a bitch had used on Roscoe. He was looking up with a dizzy, stupefied gaze, as if not grasping or believing what had just been done to him. He made a series of weird, convulsive blinks. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
“Do you like that? Do you like how that feels, Garrett? That's one one-hundredth of what you put that dog through.”
Garrett reached his hand up and touched the top of his head. Then he brought his arm down and stared at his red palm. There was a horrible kind of wonder on his face.
“There's more where that came from, you little shit,” she whispered.
She raised the shovel and held it aloft so Garrett had a chance to see it coming. His body wavered. He stretched his right arm blindly out above him, as if to fend off the next blow.
“No, Mom. No!” Garrett cried, the words reduced to a gurgling sound by the blood in his mouth.
“You cut him up and left him in a fucking box,” she screamed.
“I didn’t do it. Mom, it wasn’t m—”
The shovel fell again.
It was Garrett's forehead that took the brunt of the second blow and Rose watched his skull sink in, like a circle of frozen lake giving way beneath an ice skater.
Garrett toppled forward onto his stomach, lanky limbs sprawling in every direction, his feet spasming and thumping against the floor.
A final flash of Roscoe in her mind’s eye. As he’d looked up at her in his last moments.
This swing would settle the account for good.
The shovel rose again and fell, and Garrett's body was still.
Rose leaned over and whispered in her son's dead ear, “Where is your smirk now?”
She rose to her feet and stared down at what sh
e'd done. Her mind was sealed off from the world in some horrified and exultant haze, where everything was silent and still.
But soon she became aware of sounds. At first it all sounded garbled and far away. Curses and pleas. Scurrying and screaming.
Breathing hard, she let the shovel fall over and hit the ground.
There was a ring of spittle around her lips and on her chin. She wiped it away. Then she noticed that her lips were moving, as if of their own accord, muttering who-knows-what. She stared at her hands, opening and closing them, as if they were someone else's. As if a stranger had borrowed them like a pair of gloves to do what had just been done.
Now the room was quieter. Tad and Luke weren't shouting anymore. She glanced at the open doorway, but they were no longer there. Where were they? She had an impression of movement. Little footsteps. Scuttling. Were they behind her?
Just as she was about to turn around, Rose perceived, not through sight but touch, a pressure on her back. A forceful but indistinct sensation that invaded her trance-like state. It seemed to move outward from some central point on her body, expanding like a reverberation. Like a gong had been struck within her. It had a heaviness, a density that she could not ignore. And yet, she didn't have the slightest idea what it was.
All this was happening in a split second. Before she had time to turn around. But then the feeling started to change. It took on more acute edges, as a sharpness mingled with the bland sensation.
And then, in the next instant, there was pain.
Lightning bolts of crackly and electric agony radiated out from her neck. And then it was everywhere at once.
Then, at the very center of the pain, a tinge of cold. A sleek, moving coolness, from a point on her left shoulder. As if an icicle had been pressed against her.
Out of the corner of her eye, a blurry shape was withdrawing something long and shiny from her shoulder. The world suddenly regained its sound, and Rose realized she was screaming.
She tried to turn around. To defend herself, before she even knew what she was defending herself against.