Project Cain (Project Cain)

by Geoffrey Girard

  It was the middle of the day, I think. I still don’t know these things entirely.

  Every step I took, I left a fresh crimson print.

  The kid named Albert, Albert Young, was told to watch me for a while. He tried tying me up to this old wood chair in the room but failed completely. Kept muttering to himself the whole time. Guy was weird. I mean really F-in’ weird. He moved weird. Spoke in a weird high voice. His sentences broken into small bites. Robotic almost. Like he was less used to talking than I was. For all I knew, this was true. Maybe the guy was only really four years old. I think the other two guys hated him also.

  Albert had been made entirely from the DNA of Albert Fish, who’d been killed in an electric chair way back in 1936. His genetic source had raped, murdered, and then eaten as many as a hundred children. He even sent letters to his victims’ parents, describing every detail. How she did kick, bite, and scratch, one letter reported to the grieving family. It took me nine days to eat her entire body. With a hundred confirmed kills, he’d acquired several nicknames, including, “The Werewolf of Wysteria,” “The Brooklyn Vampire,” and “The Boogeyman.”

  His whole life Albert Fish had this habit/fascination with jamming sewing needles up into his gooch, that weird little area between your ass and balls. He got off on the pain somehow. Prison doctors found two dozen needles wedged up there when they did an X-ray looking for contraband.

  How weird was this Albert Young kid? He’d picked up the same habit. Read about it in some serial killer book and thought it was worth a shot. A proper nod, perhaps, to his former self. Maybe something else. Some memory of pain/pleasure that still resided deep in his genes somewhere. . . . I don’t think he was up to dozens of needles yet, but I know it was more than one. And that was enough as far as I was concerned.

  Mostly he kept to himself. Kinda wandered around the house. Breaking shit. Talking quietly to himself. Looking around nervously like a little rat.

  It was Ted and Jeff who were most interested in me.

  Mostly Jeff.

  • • •

  Ted asked me a lot of questions about Castillo, and I told him exactly who Castillo was. Figured there was no point in being all coy about it.

  I even told them that Henry was dead. (Ted laughed at that.)

  In return for all this info, he told me about killing families in Maryland, Ohio, and Indiana. Described the house in Maryland, then the Albaum kid. He described a park. All so familiar. From dreams I’d had, from strange thoughts, from snippets of conversation with Castillo. All blending together. I didn’t feel well. He described a house in Indiana. A wooden swing set there. How they’d taken a rope and hung the mother and her kids from it when they’d left.

  I threw up.

  Ted stood over me.

  He said: If you’d been at Massey that night, we’d totally have killed you.

  He told me: And your daddy would have applauded us.

  • • •

  Ted showed me a canister. It looked kinda like a soda can.

  And then he asked if I knew what it was.

  I didn’t. My guess was it had something to do with July 4.

  I was right.

  • • •

  Ted explained that on July 4 he and the others were supposed to go to an Independence Day celebration at some park, any park, in San Francisco and open the canister. Simple enough.

  He said the stuff inside had been developed by DSTI using special chromosomes taken from the clones. He said something about an XP11 gene. In short the clones at DSTI had been utilized to cultivate very specific gene structures and calculated mutations. And then the clones had been harvested. For their DNA. Which clones specifically had been used, no one could say. They’d taken so much blood from each of us, it could have been any or all.

  In any case, when the DSTI scientists were done, they had their weapon: a new neurological biotoxin.

  Ted said it would infect all the people there. Drive them mad with RAGE. He said they’d tear themselves to pieces. He said five thousand people would die.

  I whispered the word: Shardhara.

  He didn’t know at all what I was talking about. When he asked what I’d said, I told him not to worry about it. He punched me in the face. My lip split open. There was blood on the floor. My blood.

  Ted asked what I knew about the “dark man.”

  I told him honestly I didn’t know anything. I said only that he’d tried to kill me too.

  Ted considered that for a while.

  Then he said my dad could go to hell and they weren’t gonna open a canister on the 4th and make HIM famous. They weren’t just gonna be little puppets in his big plan.

  I said OK.

  Ted asked me if I wanted to open the canister right now. Forget five thousand nobodies. Just open it up in this house and see what comes out. What happens.

  I said OK.

  • • •

  We didn’t open the canister.

  He just patted me on the shoulder.

  He said: Maybe you’re OK after all, Jacobson.

  Then he told me my father was dead.

  I said OK.

  • • •

  Jeff Williford was three years older than me.

  There’d been pictures of him in Castillo’s files, which I now knew well. He was different from his pictures now. In those, he’d looked more like an older, sadder version of me. He’d looked like the real Jeffrey Dahmer had while in prison. Sedated, unhappy, ashamed.

  THIS Jeffrey was something/someone else. This one was vibrant, alive. Filled with abundant energy and excitement. This was the Dahmer who joyfully struck. Strangled. Killed.

  The evil within sparkled like a black star. A perfect shadow of “Extreme for Life.”

  He looked, I think, “Extreme for Death.”

  Where I’d imagined life’s colors as bold and radiant, now the color was crimson, dark. His look said “YODO.” You only DIE once. EMBRACE THE DARK.

  A challenge. And a promise, too.

  He smiled. Jeffrey Jacobson, he said.

  Jeff Williford told me a story then. He started it like this:

  Once, there were ten baby boys.

  Ten little piggies.

  Each one exactly same. 100%.

  This little piggy died during gestation.

  This one did also. And another.

  This little piggy was born without working lungs and died.

  This little piggy was born with cancer and died.

  This little piggy lived but was set aside for lab work.

  This little piggy, I have no idea.

  This little piggy was given to a pedophile, a DSTI employee, and eventually committed suicide at the age of twelve. This caused much disappointment and several harshly worded memos.

  This little piggy was raised as an alcoholic by a DSTI employee. They broke his foot the day he was born to induce early trauma. His fake mother had fake seizures and yelled at him for stupid things. His fake father mostly ignored him for fifteen years and started fights with the fake mother. By the age of twelve he’d been encouraged to drink alcohol by older students at the Massey Institute, where he went to school. He’d been shown violent gay porn websites. He’d been exposed to dead animals. One kid, paid fifty dollars by a man named Jacobson, showed him how “cool the insides were.”

  Now, the last little piggy . . .

  The last little piggy got taken home by a man who proved to be a kind and supportive father. Got sent to science camps and was given piano lessons and private tutors. And one night, out of the blue, the father finally tells the piggy what he really is.

  • • •

  Jeff Williford thought this was all pretty interesting.

  The chance of it all. The randomness.

  I couldn’t agree more. But didn’t say so.

  It could have been you, he said.

  YOU could have been the one throwing up before class, he said.

  YOU could have been the one crying yourself to sleep, he
said.

  I couldn’t agree more. But didn’t say so.

  He said: And I could have been you.

  Yes, I said.

  He laughed. Touched my hair.

  It’s OK, he said. I’d rather be this.

  Then it got bad.

  • • •

  After, the dead came to see me.

  From the fringes of my vision and thoughts. Dahmer’s victims. Not as enormous vague faces this time. But as shadows. Shades. Human shapes crouched in the darkness just beyond my reality.

  I’d been stuffed into some kind of crawl space.

  The room was dark and smelled like dirt and mold and spiders.

  My feet felt on fire. My wrists and ankles taped again. I did not have all my clothes anymore.

  I did not want to see them yet. These ghosts. I was too ashamed.

  I was a victim now. Like them.

  • • •

  Still, my chance to escape came that night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  There was a hole in the floor filled with water. An old rusted sump pump. The rainwater inside rank and oily. Old cobwebs running all up the top of the well liner.

  I dunked my hands into the dark water. Kept moving the palms back and forth against each other.

  The duct tape loosened.

  I did this for what seemed liked weeks. (It was maybe an hour.)

  My wrists moved more freely every time in the water.

  Eventually I got my thumb, its nail, beneath the tape.

  Back and forth times forever.

  The duct tape loosened.

  Two fingers and the other thumb now. The duct tape was now ripping. Enough.

  I turned my one wrist and pulled. It totally came out.

  Five minutes later I was completely free.

  The only light came from the wide cracks in the doorframe to the next room. I thought it might have been morning.

  I moved quietly around the crawl space, up on my fingers and toes. Moving as slowly and silently as possible. Every step was agony because the sides of my feet had been cut up so bad.

  I had no idea where the guys were. When they’d be back.

  I found a small pile of bricks. Remnants of construction done forty years before.

  I choose one.

  It felt good having a weapon in my hand.

  • • •

  The door opened easily enough. They hadn’t blocked it or locked it or anything. They probably hadn’t given me a second thought. I crawled out into the next room. Water-stained carpet. Seventies wallpaper. A rusted metal table in the center of the room and steps leading up. Up and out. My breathing was all messed up. A freaky combo of rattling gasps or long inhales followed by nothing for far too long. I was terrified. I moved up the steps, where each little creak sounded like the whole house caving in.

  Halfway up I saw him.

  Al.

  He was sound asleep at the top of the steps. His legs on the second step, knees bent, leaning back through the doorway to the next floor. Guess he’d been given “watch duty” and had fallen asleep some time ago. I got closer.

  Past the doorway I spotted hints of a kitchen, windows. But no clear sign of a door to run to. Didn’t know where the other two were. Ted or Jeff Williford. Or where the closest door was to escape through.

  I looked up at Al. I was about his age, but a lot bigger than he was. Probably stronger too, I figured. But I wasn’t Castillo. Not by a long shot. I’d never been in a fight in my life. I figured I could at least get by him. Maybe even get in a couple of good punches. The kid was out cold. But ultimately he’d wake. Scream for help. The others would know what was going on immediately. Escape ruined.

  The other option was simple and obvious enough.

  Kill him.

  • • •

  I squeezed the brick tightly.

  Fingers trembling with rage. Fear. Knuckles white.

  I moved up to the second step, carefully straddling his legs.

  I had a clear shot at his head. All I had to do was slam down once right in the center of his forehead. It’d make a noise, sure. But just for a second. Not him yelling for help.

  It was simple enough.

  As simple as pulling apart a caterpillar.

  Or stepping on a bird.

  • • •

  I’m not gonna make a big production about what happened. My decision. The short version is, I didn’t use the brick. I made a run for it instead. Jumped over/on Al and ran for where I thought the door would be. The door was there, but it was too late. Al woke up and started yelling, just like I thought he would. I think Ted grabbed hold of me first.

  To this day I still don’t know why I didn’t just kill Al. Why I couldn’t.

  I guess the same way that Jeff Dahmer didn’t know why he could.

  • • •

  Ted wanted to kill me, but Jeff Williford wouldn’t let him.

  He said we still had a lot to talk about.

  More bad stuff happened.

  • • •

  One day, I don’t remember which, Jeff Williford put this small pile of bones on the table. Animal bones. Small animals. Mice and birds, mostly. A squirrel he’d found. And a cat from the house in Maryland where they’d collected John. Tiny vertebrae, ribs, tibiae, and skulls that he’d pulled together over the last few weeks. He carried them in an emptied box of Frosted Flakes reinforced with the same silver duct tape they’d used on me.

  Williford told me that when he was five, someone had made sure he’d found similar bones behind the Massey facility one morning, with the hope that he’d find them amusing and play with them. And they hoped this because that’s exactly what Jeffrey Dahmer, the real one, had done when he was a kid. The scientists at DSTI must have been quite pleased with the results.

  It’s the sound, Williford told me. When they rub together. Or when the pile collapses and they roll off each other. That click, click, click. He leaned in close as he spoke and he picked up some of the pile to let the tiny bones trickle back off his fingers onto the table. Click, click, click. Do you hear it? Williford asked me. He picked up and dropped another handful. Click, click, click.

  I didn’t. I said nothing.

  He got mad and made me drink more beer. There was already a half-empty case of Budweiser on the table, and Williford angrily reached for another can. Called me a faggot and shoved my head back so he could pour the beer down my throat. I spurted and choked as the beer ran down my chin and chest. Thrashed against the weight of Williford’s hand. He was too strong. He was me two years older, a hundred years meaner.

  Ted was in the room watching the whole thing like he was just watching reality television.

  Williford tossed the empty can across the room.

  He said: You’ll get used to it. Even start to like it, I bet.

  I coughed up more beer. Tried to stop choking. I thought: Extreme for—

  He stopped me. He told me that they’d had him drinking by the time he was ten. That they’d wanted a genuine alcoholic just like THE ORIGINAL. He moved behind me again, but kept his hand on my face. He said: Of course, you’re just really a baby, aren’t you? Still wet behind the ears with formaldehyde and whatnot. New and improved insta-clone.

  His fingers moved slowly over my chin, forced their way into my mouth. He gave me crap for being only, like, eight years old technically. (My father, I assume, had told them about that. What else had he confided to these killers?) Jeff Williford said this made me even less of a real person than he was, since he’d lived a legit eighteen years.

  I agreed with him completely but still couldn’t hear any more. He was preaching to the choir, and the choir just wanted to die. I begged him to stop talking.

  He told me to relax. It didn’t matter when I was technically born.

  He said: You’re still one of us. Right here and right now, you and I are exactly the same.

  He said: We are one.

  I’m . . . I tried talking.

  He said: Y
ou’re what, Jeff?

  I’m nothing like you, I said.

  He grabbed my face in both hands.

  He said: All evidence to the contrary.

  Then it got bad again.

  Real bad.

  • • •

  I know part of this is an exercise in putting into words what happened to me.

  By writing it down, making it more real, it becomes something else.

  Something I can eventually even understand and accept. Move on from.

  But I’m still not ready to do that yet. Someday, maybe.

  I don’t know.

  • • •

  I lay curled on the concrete floor again. Everything hurt. The cold damp floor against my face was the only feeling that wasn’t burning, piercing.

  They sat with me now, the other boys from someone else’s life.

  The ghosts born in my head for too many years.

  James and Matt and Ernest. (Now the souls gathered . . .)

  Curtis, Tony, and both Stevens. (From every side they came . . .)

  I’m sorry, I said.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  They’d never spoken to me before.

  Now they did.

  They’d told me apologies were unnecessary.

  They called me brother. Whispered to me for hours.

  Konerak even stroked my hair in the darkness.

  Be brave, he said.

  There was a hole drilled into the back of his head. I could see it. Long ago someone had injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobes of his brain while he was still alive. Someone had wanted to make Konerak a “zombie.”

  Be brave, he said. Castillo is going to find you.

  Be brave. Castillo is going to find you.

  I heard the door open.

  Konerak and the others were gone. Returned to the underworld . . .

  (My heart longed, after this, to see the dead again.)

  Who you talking to? a familiar voice asked.

  It wasn’t Castillo.

  • • •

  You hear their blood. From down—

  • • •

  —a long hallway. My father is working in his office, and I am left alone to explore. Find somewhere new, a doorway, a hallway never noticed before, like the hidden door of a secret room. Come with me down that long dark hall. Bright color glowing at the end like gold almost. Come with me to the door, hold our hands up to the security panel and watch the door open. Inside are the tanks ten feet high—five, ten, two dozen—in four neat rows across the whole room and each one glowing like gold, the liquid inside shining. There is something in each tank, something floating. Walk up slowly to inspect the closest tank. There’s a man inside and he is naked. His skin is dark gray almost. Place our tiny hands against the warm thick glass of the tank. Inside the tank, eyes open. Gray hands move against the glass to mirror my hands.