Project Cain (Project Cain)

by Geoffrey Girard

  The two had vanished into the room. As the door closed, I heard the guy say something pretty crude about air-conditioning and her privates. She laughed, but even that had that same defeated sound I’d heard before.

  I tapped the railing above their room and looked back toward the spot where I’d been sitting. I don’t know what I expected to see. Maybe myself staring back, I guess. Some kind of Alice in Wonderland mirror thing. I only know I felt like I wasn’t alone all of a sudden. I looked down to our room but the door was still shut. No Castillo. I shrugged off the feeling and started moving to the steps again. It was time to get back.

  That’s when I noticed.

  One of the doors behind me was now open.

  • • •

  Just the narrowest crack. Two rooms away.

  I hadn’t noticed the opening when I’d passed, but I’d been focused on spying then. Don’t know if I’d even have detected it from that angle anyway. The only other cars in the lot were on the other side of the motel, our side. I suppose someone could have walked or taken a bus or . . .

  I tried remembering whether or not I’d opened the door myself. My hands absently trying each door latch as I’d passed. I didn’t think so.

  It didn’t matter. I would just walk past the door and be on my way.

  But I didn’t.

  As I got closer to the room, the door opening seemed wider and wider.

  And I’d gotten slower and slower.

  The gap showed only total darkness on the other side. The smallest hint of a dark green curtain that, I assumed, covered the inside window. There were no sounds from inside. I knew it was just an empty room, the door left open by some part-time maid days before.

  I eyed the darkness within.

  Anyone could have been on the other side looking back at me. Anyone at all.

  I did not, I’ll admit, want to walk past the door and leave it open behind me. No way. So I moved my hand to the latch to pull the door closed, and instead found my hand ON the door, applying pressure. Pushing it more OPEN.

  Hello? My high voice vanished into the room like smoke up a chimney.

  NOTHING. My hand pressing more and more.

  I saw blue carpet, the foot of an empty bed. Then the desk between. It was just like the room Castillo and I were in, but everything was on the opposite walls. The room was empty. No one was here.

  I put a foot into the room, my whole body now pressed against the door. My free hand searching for a light switch that I just couldn’t seem to find. Everything awash in shadows and the dusk’s red. Slowly peeked my head around the corner to see the rest of the empty room.

  And then I saw her.

  • • •

  A woman.

  Lying on the second bed facing the ceiling.

  She was wearing a long black dress. Her arms extended on either side like Christ, fingers hanging lifeless off the sides of the bed.

  There was something wrong with her face.

  It was too, too white.

  She was wearing a mask of some kind, I decided. Its cheeks and lips painted dark, dark red. Redder than the sun. I could not see the eyes.

  Until she turned.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  He stopped me on the motel steps.

  The guy with the tattoos and short hair.

  I don’t even remember how I really got there or when he appeared.

  I knew I’d run. Slammed a door. I remembered half stumbling down those steps. Crouched on the bottom step, my heart racing. Telling myself I’d seen only shadows in that room. There’d been NO woman in there. I had NOT seen her eyes. Those enormous wide-open painted-on eyes. Oversize cartoonish anime eyes.

  I needed to pull myself together before I went back in to Castillo. He thought I was enough of a freak without my giving him total proof. If I was losing my mind, I was going to do it alone. He would never know. No one would EVER know. I sure as hell wasn’t going to write about it in any damn journal like my father had.

  This tattoo guy was all like: “Hey, kid!” and “You’re F-in’ wasted, man, ain’t you?” and “Get this dude!” A real idiot, this one.

  I mumbled back some response. Something like HUH? Probably wasn’t even English. Didn’t exactly come across as a Rhodes scholar myself, I guess. I could barely figure out where I was. Still trying to understand what it was I’d seen in the room. A hallucination, I figured. Some kind of nightmare that’d followed me into the real world.

  God knows it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d seen something that wasn’t really there.

  But the days of blaming it on a car accident that I now knew never happened wasn’t gonna fly anymore.

  I needed to pull myself together. Didn’t know if I could. Ever.

  And the current situation was in no way helped by this guy, this absolute moron, laughing at me. I didn’t even have the strength in my legs to stand up and walk away.

  He was practically howling. Asking me if I wanted a beer.

  Huh? It was apparently the only word I had anymore. I wanted to shout: HEY, ASSHOLE. HOW ’BOUT YOU LEAVE ME ALONE A MINUTE AND GO UPSTAIRS YOURSELF AND DEAL WITH THAT DEAD LADY ON THE BED.

  But we all know I did no such thing, because (1) What would he possibly do about the imaginary woman upstairs? and (2) I was too chickenshit.

  I did, however, manage to grab the banister to help pull myself up. It was a start. (Small victories, you know. They were like gold these days.)

  He asked again if I wanted a beer. Suggested I was wasted again. Asked now if I wanted to smoke some pot with them. His girlfriend had come to their door. I just kept saying no.

  His voice now totally reminded me of another. (Henry’s.) ’Cause now he started getting all in-your-face about it. Called me a faggot and stuff. (Now he sounded like Ted.)

  I’d somehow made it totally to my feet. I felt like I’d just topped Mount Everest.

  Told him “thanks,” told him I was “cool.” Just meaningless prattle to get away.

  Yeah, you’re cool, he said. You’re cool, kid. Hey . . . hey . . . He was really giggling absolute fits now, could barely finish a thought, and I started really looking at him for the first time. HE was the one who was drunk or high or something. Whatever. Anything to take my mind away from the room upstairs, from whatever trick of light I’d seen. This guy was actually a total godsend.

  Then this godsend started in on the sex stuff. Crude stuff again. Like asking if I wanted head from his girlfriend. But he kept calling it “dome,” and it took me a while to even get his stupid joke. I’d gathered that her name was Anna, and when he first used her name, I instinctively looked her way. Could have totally died of embarrassment the second I did. She turned away and was probably thinking the exact same thing. Then he said more crude stuff to embarrass me (her, too, I think now), and he’d put his hand on my shoulder.

  Exact same kind of bullying Ted would do. I’m telling you. And this guy wasn’t some monster created in a lab. He was just a guy. One of those regular everyday types always making things kinda awful.

  I shrugged him off me. Embarrassment had become pissed-off in a single blink.

  He grinned. Knew he’d gotten to me. Made some kind of teasing Woo-hoo! sound. Then he said more crude stuff and started tapping my chest. Laughing in my face.

  My new pissed-off state worked just fine. I used it to move, to move down the steps, to move past him easily and along the corridor back toward our room. And I moved quickly. Hell, I think I ran again.

  Dude cackled behind me. Kept yelling out after me like: “That’s cool!” And “Stop by any time!” and “You know where to find her!”

  And I know he was totally talking about his girlfriend, Anna. But all I could think about was the imagined woman upstairs. I absolutely knew where to find her.

  I had to knock to get into the room because Castillo’d locked me out. I was leaving one asshole for the safety of another.

  What’s all that about, Castillo asked, looking over my shoulder
toward the guy at the steps and letting me pass through.

  You’re all assholes, I declared.

  Castillo just nodded.

  Guess he agreed.

  • • •

  This is what a killer looks like.

  My glasses lay beside the sink. The mirror half-fogged with steam from the shower I was pretending to take. Castillo was in the next room doing something CIA-ish. Two days now in this sketch-assed horrible motel filled with drunks and dead women. These were my choices now.

  Deal with asshole strangers and imaginary dead women or stay in the room another hundred days. It was boring times a thousand. I would just watch more TV and pretend to sleep while Castillo researched and waited. Waited for murders.

  Each one now a little red dot for the map on the wall. Every reported murder in the last forty-eight hours. Every rape. Every missing person. Precisely when and where the last American life had violently ended. Each red dot an unsolved murder. One of this week’s three hundred. Some dots bigger than others. Like Polaris or Sirius shining brighter than the rest in a night sky dripping red with dozens of little crimson dots. Castillo believed that the more brutal murders, like those committed at the Massey Institute, would eventually lead to the six missing boys. He said it was now only a matter of time and making red dots, starting to mark some lines along the various highways, and looking for possible paths. The lines already ran in a hundred different directions.

  I noted it was just like connect the dots.

  Castillo replied, staring: Just like. But with dead people.

  He still totally hated me. The few times he left to get food or make a phone call or something, he’d always come back into the room pissed. Disappointed I was still there. Best just to stay out of the guy’s way. Pretending to be asleep, hiding in the bathroom. Invisible. It was easy enough to do now. I’d become the invisible boy. The Old Navy clothes and haircut had been just the start. Not a single person on Earth would notice, let alone recognize, me one bit if they saw me. I’d ceased to exist. Not that anyone cared if I did anyway.

  I realized my father had spent a great portion of his life making sure no one gave a good goddamn about me. I’d never attended the same summer camp or science camp twice. Never been in the same soccer or basketball league twice. Homeschooled since birth (whatever “birth” meant now). Different piano teachers and instructors every year. We’d even moved three times. I’d been frankly amazed when Mr. Eble had come back for the second year. Hadn’t realized my dad was already planning to send him away.

  Massey and DSTI were the only places I’d really been to for more than a couple of months. The only people I really knew. And now, according to anyone who would talk to me, they wanted me dead.

  This is what a killer looks like.

  Looking in the mirror now, I tried to picture myself as I’d been just a day before. Then imagined myself at eighteen. The same age as Jeffrey #54. The other one my dad had built in a lab. The one Castillo was chasing after. The one who’d probably helped kill all those people at Massey. Eighteen years old. That was just a couple of years from now. Maybe I’d grow some sideburns or a little soul patch. I’d probably be a couple of inches taller.

  I wondered how old all the others were. The other JEFFs. How many were there in the world? According to the notes my father had given me that first night, I was really Jeff #82.

  Another seventy copies had died, by both flaw and design, prior to my . . . birth.

  Seventy.

  And I was one of, then, maybe four, five, other Jeffrey Dahmer clones that’d survived.

  I thought of a joke I’d heard: What’s worse than a barrel full of dead babies?

  A live one at the bottom, trying to eat its way out.

  That was me.

  I tried to imagine him (me) at twenty-five. Jeffrey Dahmer #1. The Original. The one in the files. The one who’d murdered seventeen people in cold blood. That was the face I was looking for now. The face smashed open with a broom handle because that’s what God wanted. It wasn’t too hard to imagine at all. I’d seen his pictures in my file. Brown hair dye wasn’t enough. It was still the same face underneath. Add a couple of pounds maybe. Not too many.

  My fingers pressed into my skin against the skull and jawline beneath. Pressed harder and harder until my nails were digging into the skin. I imagined just tearing. Ripping the flaps of skin away. My hair. Pulling off my cheeks and lips. I realized it wouldn’t help, would only make everything worse. The gleaming skull just beneath. The very last thing seventeen people saw just before they were killed.

  Maybe not literally my face, of course. But they saw it all the same. One that looked identical to mine. Yeah, and no doubt about it. It was the same face in the mirror. HIS face.

  I suddenly imagined the face with painted-on eyes. . . .

  This is what a killer looks like.

  I turned the hot water faucet all the way. It took another minute to steam the mirror completely. Faces, or maybe only the shapes of them, had already appeared in the emerging coating of vapor. But my own had now vanished completely.

  Thank God.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Castillo was pissed.

  I’d finally gotten out of the shower, and he was standing at the front door, eye at the peephole, arms angrily crossed at chest.

  Turns out the drunk tattooed jerk from before had a couple of buddies now. And they were all in the parking lot making noise, breaking bottles and stuff. Castillo was totally worried that cops were gonna show up, start asking a bunch of questions. Maybe ask for some ID from the motel’s one or two witnesses.

  I got the feeling Castillo had 0.0 intention of being a “witness,” to have ANY record of him ever being here. To have to explain why a sixteen-year-old kid who clearly wasn’t his son was in his room. He stepped outside and calmly tried to get the guys to chill out some. That didn’t go so hot. Castillo told me to pack up. He said: It’s time to get the hell out of here anyway.

  I moved as fast as I could. There were half a dozen reasons to finally get as far away from that place as possible. From open doors to torturous boredom. But the biggest reason of all was I didn’t want to piss off Castillo. He looked like he was spoiling for a fight for sure. To that end, he seemed pleased with how fast I got ready. He’d packed even faster. I couldn’t even imagine the kinds of places he’d been to in his life. Places in other countries where he’d had to move light and fast. There was no doubt he’d done this a thousand times before.

  They were banging on our door now. Shouting stuff. Bored and drunk and stupid. At least two of those three, if not all three.

  Castillo’s pissed look was more, I think, amused now.

  He told me just to stay close and we headed out.

  If Castillo was looking for a fight, he got it.

  • • •

  First they gave us crap right in the doorway, even tried blocking us.

  Castillo just kept talking calmly, moving both of us forward to his car.

  There were now a couple of cars across the way. The door to their room was open, loud music coming out. There was another girl now too. The guys were saying more crude stuff about me and Castillo. Castillo just kept moving forward. The tattooed guy had gotten into his pickup.

  Just get in the car, Castillo told me.

  The pickup was now behind us. Blocking us. Castillo tossed our bags into the car, told me to stay put. This was not a problem for me. I twisted around in my seat, watched as he asked them to move the pickup. This went about as well as MY earlier conversation with this same guy.

  I was trying to think of something to do, anything. Felt like I should lend Castillo a hand. But there was nothing to do. There were four guys out there. All of them in their twenties at least. Maybe if I . . .

  Before I could even imagine some fantastical heroism I might have pulled off, it was over. I’m not even sure if I saw most of it happen.

  One second, there’s four guys surrounding Castillo, giving him shit. />
  The second later, or maybe ten, there’s four guys lying on the ground.

  Holding bloody faces and crooked knees. One guy, my tattoo guy, was just out. I mean OUT. Lying in the parking lot like he was sound asleep. Peaceful almost. I swear to God, I thought the guy was dead. (He wasn’t.)

  Castillo retrieved something from the unconscious guy, the keys, and tossed them to one of the girls. Anna, it was. I could swear she was almost smiling. He told her to find other guys to hang around, and then he got into the car.

  There was all this heat and energy coming off his body like the engine of a car that had just driven ten thousand miles. I’d done horseback riding at camp a couple of times (still not a big fan), and that’s what it was like. I was sitting next to something extremely powerful.

  Too powerful.

  Anna moved the pickup. Castillo knew I was staring at him and told me to shut up, even though I hadn’t been talking. So I looked away and just stared at the four guys lying on the ground as we slowly backed up.

  And then drove away.

  As the car exited the parking lot, my eyes moved up from the four broken men.

  Up to the second floor just above.

  I knew the room there.

  She was standing in the window now. The curtain pulled back just enough.

  Staring out into the night. Watching our escape.

  Her monster cartoon eyes had seen everything.

  I spun away from her stare.

  Castillo made a sound of disgust and annoyance.

  I didn’t know if it was directed at those guys he’d beaten up or at me.