Project Cain (Project Cain)

by Geoffrey Girard

  Because he was ONE OF THEM.

  These kids told Edward Bryce Albaum he was a clone. They told him he was the clone of a famous serial killer. Then they gave him a folder. Then they left. Only thing missing here was my dad and a thousand dollars in cash. (They handed him only a handful of twenties.)

  The kid’d been too terrified to call the police or leave the house for two days.

  Castillo sat with him for hours waiting for Help to arrive. Castillo asked him questions. The boy mostly stared at the television. He’d been in deep shock, Castillo told me later.

  The Help that showed up midday were some people DSTI and the United States government sent. The Help then took the boy away.

  • • •

  When Castillo first came back to the motel, I was practically bouncing off the walls. Because (a) he was back, which I admit always relaxed me a great deal because I didn’t want to spend another minute alone in that motel room not knowing if I would fall asleep again or where my mind might take me, and (b) I’d done good. I mean, shit! I’d officially solved the puzzle, you know. I’d officially figured out what that squiggle was and had led Castillo straight to an actual clone. I was a hero or something. I’d really proved my worth to Castillo and, honestly, to myself.

  That all lasted about thirty seconds.

  Castillo was in a foul mood as usual. Worse even. When he and I checked out of the motel and grabbed some food at a diner an hour down the road, he didn’t want to talk at all.

  He’d stayed up with the Albaum kid all night, and I think he was finally starting to ponder over the same thing I was: WHAT THE HELL WAS GONNA HAPPEN TO THIS KID NOW? What would the government and DSTI do to Edward Bryce Albaum when both thought of him only as the clone of Ed Gein? This kid, if the truth of what had happened were to ever get out, would be a media nightmare. He was proof of terrible experiments. Secret experiments. An embarrassment. A threat to national security. How would the government handle his existence, what he’d been told? How would they handle the three dead bodies in his house? People murdered by teenagers claiming to be clones.

  I hardly said one word while we packed, drove, and ate. Now the uneasy silence between us was amplified by the bustling diner. Castillo wasn’t even eating. I asked him if I could have some of his bacon, and he was cool with that. I was starved, so it was, like, the best meal I’d ever had. Castillo kept looking at me all strange, but I figured, why let good food go to waste?

  Castillo mostly studied the road map beside his plate. He dropped two fingers onto the map. Eventually he said: Unity, Ohio, and Lovett, Indiana. He said two girls had been found murdered in Unity. One found hacked to bits, apparently. A third girl, Emily Collins, was missing. A suspect. Her mother was also missing. Emily Collins’s sister was one of the dead girls. He said: In Lovett, Indiana, a couple of teens had been found hanging from a tree. Both bodies had been badly burned.

  They’re heading west, Castillo said while running his fingers in a subtle swiggle across the map.

  I didn’t want to look. I was tired of his Murder Map. I was tired of not talking about what we should be talking about: the Albaum kid.

  Actually I had one more question . . . really two more.

  Route 50, Castillo was mumbling to himself. From what the Albaum kid had told him, it looked like the original group had picked up some kid named John a couple of weeks before they came for him. And apparently this John kid had been dressed like a clown.

  WTF? One of the teens who’d killed the Albaum family had been dressed like a . . .

  I was so completely done with all of this. I might have even envied the Albaum kid some. I mean, it was completely done for him now, right? He’d vanish back into DSTI and—if my father was right—probably never be seen again.

  Then Castillo told me about John Wayne Gacy. Another famous serial killer. This guy tortured and murdered thirty-plus men and kept most of the bodies buried in his crawl space. Mostly he was known for dressing up like a clown sometimes at neighborhood parties and community events and stuff. A clown named Pogo.

  This distantly evoked a dream I’d recently had. The one I’d had about the park.

  I told Castillo I didn’t want to know any more.

  • • •

  Castillo asked me if I’d ever met a boy named John, a question I completely ignored, so he tried again. Ever in my life? I just kept staring at my plate. This was NOT the talk I wanted to have. Probably, I told him. This kid on my soccer team two years ago was named John Vincent. Did that count? But if he meant a John connected to DSTI, the clown kid? The clone kind of John, then no.

  Castillo glanced around the diner. Told me to keep it down and got all pissed and serious about it. Asshole.

  My bad, I replied, looked up. Then I whispered: No, I don’t think I ever met a John at the place-that-won’t-be-mentioned, which I often visited with the man-who-won’t-be-mentioned. I already gave you all the names I could remember.

  Castillo said the Albaum boy thought the clown was definitely named John but that a guy named Ted had done most of the talking. But the Albaum boy couldn’t really remember any of the other names. He thought he remembered “Al” and “Henry” but wasn’t sure. He was pretty positive he never once heard a “D name.”

  Castillo said: Maybe David and Dennis aren’t with these other guys anymore.

  I told him again that David wouldn’t be. Castillo didn’t seem impressed.

  Finally I’d had enough.

  Time for QUESTION #1. Was my dad there?

  Castillo said NO. While I thought about this, I absently used the fork to play with the food on my plate. Couldn’t decide which answer would have been worse: (a) that my father had been there, had been part of the group that had murdered the Albaum family, OR (b) that my father was still missing, vanished into the world somewhere.

  I then asked QUESTION #2: What about Jeff? Did this Albaum kid meet a Jeff?

  Castillo looked straight at me. His face looked pained. He greatly preferred the first question, I think. I asked if we were just supposed to pretend Castillo wasn’t also looking for a Jeffrey Dahmer clone. Castillo admitted he was. He also said the Albaum kid wasn’t sure if he’d heard that name or not. He’d questioned the kid specifically about each of the six, and the kid hadn’t remembered a tall blond guy.

  QUESTION #3. What happens to him now?

  Albaum? he said. He’s halfway to Pennsylvania by now. Back to DSTI.

  Yeah, I pushed, so what happens to him now?

  Castillo said he didn’t know.

  They’re just gonna kill him, I said.

  Castillo cursed at me. Man, he was angry. He asked: Why the hell would you even say that?

  I reminded him that my dad had said they’d kill me if they ever caught me.

  Well, Daddy ain’t thinking too clearly these days, is he? he replied. Castillo so wanted to punch me in the face. Instead he added: I’m sure the kid’ll be fine.

  Are you? I asked. Didn’t care if he wanted to punch me in the face.

  Castillo drank his stupid coffee.

  I asked: How long before you turn ME over? I was getting kinda angry too. Castillo had just turned this Albaum kid over to the government. Like he would turn in the others. And eventually me.

  Worse, I’d helped him do it. (I was, I think, mostly angry at myself.)

  Castillo said: They don’t even know you’re with me.

  But they knew I existed. Castillo would need to turn me in eventually.

  You’re helping me do my job, he said.

  And when I couldn’t, anymore? Or wouldn’t?

  Don’t know, he said. Guess I’ll decide then.

  I nodded. And just like that, it was over. The questions had been answered—or not answered—but they didn’t matter anymore. Castillo’s matter-of-factness had taken the steam out of my tantrum. There was nothing left to say, really.

  Castillo changed the topic. He said: Here’s what I know now. Based on what the Albaum kid says, I think a coup
le of guys split off, together or alone. Guys like your David, maybe. I think Jacobson . . . I think your father might have been with these guys at the very start but has also gone on alone.

  I told him I thought that too.

  It was the group heading west that Castillo was most worried about. He ran his finger along Route 50. He said: There are murders and disappearances all over the country, but if I wanted to draw a straight line down Route 50 today, I finally could. This, he tapped the map. This is the fresh game trail. The blood trail. You ever gone hunting?

  Isn’t that what we’re doing now? I asked.

  Castillo made a noise that sounded like a laugh but wasn’t.

  He asked of I’d figured out any more of my dad’s notes.

  I had.

  • • •

  But I stalled. Had to. Yes, I HAD figured some stuff out. After my nightmare, my hallucination, my trance, whatever the heck you want to call it, I’d locked myself back into that motel room and had gone through my dad’s notes again. Terrified to ever sleep again. Fearful of where I might wake up or what I might see when I did. And so I’d looked at the list I’d made at Subway, cross-referencing with the atlas Castillo had left me. And I’d found some stuff, but . . .

  But giving this info to Castillo meant possibly finding more clones.

  More little Edward Albaums out there.

  Or Richardsons or Sizemores or Whatevers.

  More kids to find and lead straight back to the slaughterhouse.

  • • •

  Castillo asked me again if I’d figured out anything more.

  I admitted, Maybe. (And just maybe, I thought, some good could come out of this.)

  The guys who’d escaped from DSTI hadn’t stopped at this kid’s house randomly. They’d been SENT there. I knew this as clearly as Castillo did. It was the big elephant in the diner.

  The very first night, Castillo had read it in my father’s journals: My dad wanted the clones free. All of them (all of us). And he’d probably SENT those kids to find Edward Albaum. Just as he’d first sent them to find Albert McCarty and his dead family.

  Had my dad told these guys to kill the families? Had he told them to kill the clone kids who wouldn’t play their game properly? Or had he simply left that decision up to the six boys?

  How many other families were going to be visited this week?

  Had the things I’d seen in my nightmares been only in a nightmare, or some kind of premonition of what was to come? Or a memory? And if so . . . could I still stop these guys? Were these killers just working from the same list of names I had?

  I told Castillo I thought maybe the black bird might be Hitchcock, Indiana.

  The Birds is this famous Alfred Hitchcock movie. It’s way too slow, like most old movies, but there are still one or two cool scenes. My father and I watched it together one night. He said it was a classic I should probably know. He even made popcorn.

  Castillo found Hitchcock, Indiana, on the map. It was right on Route 50. It was right on his growing “trail of blood.” He told me to go on, so I told him about the monkey.

  The monkey and Salem, Illinois.

  What monkey? He’d pulled out his phone to thumb through the images.

  Gilronan, I explained. The monkey with the graduation cap.

  Castillo thought it would make more sense if a Salem reference featured a witch’s hat instead of what-I-thought-was a graduation cap. Because, you know, the Salem witch trials. But that would not in ANY WAY have explained the monkey. I decided it best not to tell Castillo he was being stupid.

  Instead I just explained that Salem, New Hampshire, was a small town where John Scopes went to high school. Now, Scopes was NOT a serial killer. Not at all. He was a high school science teacher who got famous when he was arrested for teaching evolution to his class. This was against the law in Tennessee in 1925. (A law which remained in Tennessee until 1967, currently one of only two states where it’s legal, thanks to a new law in 2012, for teachers to present the Garden of Eden as a truth, and evolution as a disputed guess, if they want to.)

  The trial was called “The Scopes Monkey Trial.” And the guy who eventually prosecuted Scopes in court for teaching about evolution just happened to be a guest speaker at Scopes’s own high school graduation when Scopes was a teen. This was, like, ten years before the trial. Total coincidence. This man’s name was William Jennings Bryan. He’d been the presidential candidate for the Democrats three different times and had lost each time. He thought Charles Darwin’s evolution theory was nonsense and that people really came from the Garden of Eden.

  He believed in Cain.

  At the famous Scopes Monkey Trial—famous because the whole country was watching to see if Science or Religion would win—William Jennings Bryan claimed he actually remembered Scopes in the Salem audience that graduation night ten years before and that the younger Scopes had been laughing and basically being an ass.

  Castillo seemed impressed that I knew this. Or disturbed, maybe. I tried explaining that my dad was a scientist and that this was the kind of stuff we’d talk about. I’d remembered Scopes and the Bryan guy, but I’d needed Castillo’s phone to look up where Scopes went to high school and confirm: Salem, New Hampshire.

  Salem, Illinois—however—right near Route 50, and right on Castillo’s growing “blood trail.”

  Castillo asked if I thought the pics might be clues just for me. I shrugged and Castillo mirrored the move perfectly as I did it. Kinda funny. (Castillo wasn’t so bad.)

  He asked about the other cartoons, and I admitted I hadn’t a clue on the rest yet and that I needed more time.

  Castillo decided we’d maybe head first to Hitchcock. Said he’d need to get on his laptops to check if any Sizemores lived nearby. Worst case, he said, we’re totally wrong and we can cross off one more town.

  On the way he wanted to stop at that park outside McArthur, Ohio. It just happened to be where that mom and her two kids had vanished. Castillo said: Maybe we’ll find something. Killers sometimes return to the sites of their crimes.

  Then he said: Nice job, man.

  I figured I’d cash in my “nice job” coupon right away and maybe ask just one more question.

  More like REQUEST #1, I suppose.

  Screw Hitchcock. That’s what I wanted to say. I don’t give a rat’s ass about this Sizemore kid or the other clones either. Let’s just keep looking for my dad instead. But I didn’t have the balls to say it. Instead, needing to say something, I just asked if I could order some more food.

  Castillo said: Yeah.

  I’d done good. I thought he was maybe even starting to like me.

  Didn’t yet realize he was absolutely terrified of me.

  • • •

  For the record, the jury found Scopes guilty. It took them all of eight minutes. Scopes quit teaching and went to work for some big oil company. Back then, Religion won over Science. Now, it seems, Science just does whatever the hell it wants. Maybe Tennessee wasn’t/isn’t so backward after all. Maybe they just saw where the world was headed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Then we’re at the park. Goebel Park in Ohio. Just a little community woodlands and playground. It was night. Early morning. Two days before, a mother and her two children had maybe vanished here. Their minivan had been found a few miles up the road, nose-down in some creek.

  I wandered around while Castillo walked the playground and picnic area. He was tense. Worried the cops and news vans would swarm back anytime. Apparently the whole place had recently been crawling with reporters and volunteers and ROTC guys from Ohio University, all looking for this family.

  Ashley Nelson. And her young kids, Michael and Cassie.

  I could almost picture them at the park. Maybe a blanket on the picnic table and some cheese sandwiches or something. A couple of toys spread out. A Frisbee or something maybe tossed around together while killing some time on a warm afternoon.

  And then maybe THEY show up. A carload of kids. One
of them maybe dressed as a clown. Then things get bad, and “killing time” takes on a whole new meaning.

  It was easy to imagine. Too easy.

  It was, I realized, basically the same park from my dream. The park where the “Woman in the Black Dress” (sic “THE THING ON THE BED”) was swallowing up all the children with her evil. The same long plastic slides and planked bridges and turrets and swings. The same chunky mulch and narrow trees, and benches and shelters. The same dark shadows of night spreading in every direction. I expected to look up and see her at any moment. To feel the cold tender touch of her blackness first coiling around my feet, legs.

  But I saw nothing.

  It was just another park, of course. Any park. Every park.

  How could I possibly recognize it? It would be like recognizing the faces of dead people you’d never really met, right? Ha! Maybe I had been here before. Thirty years before, even. Parts of me. Maybe. I shook off the terrible thought, the thought that my whole body was just some organism carrying the memory of another. I moved deeper into the park.

  Castillo warned me not to get too far, told me we were leaving soon. I waved him off, kept walking. Needed to get away from the growing night shadows ever winding around the equipment and trees.

  Found myself moving toward a small skateboard pit just beyond the playground. There were no lights. But something was there. Something warm and bright cutting through the vast gloom. I found painted asphalt, a concrete half-pipe, and a couple of bars. Graffiti, chipped and old, where someone had written band names and “POSERS” and someone had written “WAX MAN” and drawn a weird picture.

  But the biggest graffiti, the source of the unnatural luminance, ran along one whole side of the half-pipe. It was a big carroty fluorescent paint that glowed in the dark like a living thing.

  It blazed: EXTREME FOR LIFE.

  • • •

  EXTREME FOR LIFE. I stood staring at those words awhile, thinking about what it meant. EXTREME LIFE would have been simple enough for any skate park. Extreme sports and lifestyle and all that stuff. It meant “to stay radical and colorful and dangerous and loud and outrageous.” And I’m sure that’s how most of the skaters here took it. But the “FOR,” I think, added something else entirely. Something that whoever’d spray painted this message however many weeks, months, or years before had meant for the whole world to see. Or maybe just for himself or herself. It meant, I think, to fight FOR life. To be radical and colorful and dangerous and loud and outrageous FOR life. Not taking it for granted. Call it carpe diem or YOLO or whatever. This person embraced life, was mad for it. It meant don’t take one minute of life for granted. It meant DON’T EVER BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. A challenge. And a promise, too.