Cain's Blood: A Novel

by Girard, Geoffrey

  He writes again in his journal:

  Is this why I have been summoned again? Fata viam invenient. Funny little games. I wonder each day how the others are doing. Jeffrey, most especially. To what have they been summoned? I wonder. Now that I’ve set them free in every possible way?

  RABBITS

  JUNE 11, SATURDAY—ORCHARD CITY, CO

  When Ted was nine years old, he’d hit a nest of rabbits with the lawn mower.

  It had been an accident. Or, at least, he’d thought so at the time.

  Later, he would learn the incident had been staged, prescribed for him as part of some test group to see if his MAOA levels would exceed those of another “Ted” somewhere else who hadn’t killed rabbits. Fucked up. He still remembered the weird fhump-fhump-fhump sound, and then little black shadows running in every direction, scattering. He remembered screaming, and the blood misted over the grass. And his dad, who’d been watching, moving toward him. Not his real dad, he knew now. Some guy they’d hired with monthly cash payments. “A damn shame,” the pretend dad had said. “But no use sniveling like some pussy girl. They shouldn’t have been there.” Ted had worked to stop crying. “Nothing to be done about it now,” the pretend dad had continued. He’d handed the boy a shovel. “Here.” Several of the baby rabbits had stopped no more than ten feet away. Even when Ted stepped right over them, they’d crouched perfectly still. As if he hadn’t been able to see them, or, maybe, just that they’d been too afraid, too stupid, to keep running. “They’re gonna die anyway,” the pretend dad said. “You doing ’em a favor. Make it quick. Go on. I said, go on now, you little fag.” Each time Ted lifted the shovel, they still hadn’t moved.

  He thought of those rabbits now while watching the other kids.

  Seemed like the whole goddamn state had shown up. About every redneck in Orchard City between fourteen and seventeen, anyway. All he’d had to do was talk to some girls online and flash some of the money they’d stolen. Party at Adria’s! Free beer and drugs! The rest had taken care of itself.

  The lights were down low, and sixty-plus “bunnies” had already crowded into this rich ho’s basement. She’d told Ted her parents were in Italy for two weeks, and he hoped they were having a good time. They were in for quite a surprise when they returned.

  There was beer, as promised, and pot. A little coke. Even some molly they’d bought.

  And also bleach and ammonia. Several big tubs of it for later.

  What they really wanted, of course, was to open the canister Jacobson’d given them. See what that shit would really do. Guy claimed it’d be all sorts of badass awfulness. Why wait for July? They could have some real fireworks right here and now.

  But Williford argued that Jacobson deserved their waiting—at least that much. They owed him still. And since Jeff Williford almost never talked, and fucking scared the shit out of all of them, they’d just agreed. And so then their thoughts all danced on to other poisons: Zyklon B, like the Nazis used when they were wasting all those Jews, but you couldn’t buy that shit anymore. Not even on eBay or craigslist. So next choice was sarin. One drop could basically kill a dude, and on the Internet they even found how to make it, but it was way too hard to figure out. Isopropylamine and sodium fluoride and heating it and all . . . shit could kill you. Forget it. Googling some more, they found much easier ways to kill lots of people. Too easy.

  “What about that one?” Albert nodded toward the crowd below. The music in the room was so deafening that Ted had to lean closer to hear him. “That one!” The three boys sat on the basement steps overlooking the rest of the party. “Tig ol’ bitties, red tank top!”

  “That one’s Laura, I think,” Ted replied. The room was hazy with smoke cut by a cheap strobe light. “Proof of God.”

  “So you like to say.”

  “Well, they are. What you want me to say?”

  “Bet she’s a virgin.”

  Ted laughed. He absolutely hated these guys. Albert and John mostly. Jeff Williford was terrifying but kinda cool. Ted said, “Yeah, OK. I guess.”

  “Wanna find out?”

  “Not enough time,” Ted shook his head. “Doors close in ten.”

  Ten minutes.

  John had already returned into the crowd to take care of the back door. He was still in his clown makeup and costume. Ted had almost forgotten what the kid looked like without, and he supposed it didn’t really matter anymore. John kept bumping into the locals and patting asses as he went, and everyone was laughing. Thought the outfit was a riot. Bunnies. If they knew the things he’d done this week. To his own family, to total strangers. Or knew he was a clone of some guy who’d butchered and raped thirty-plus dumb slobs. How funny would that be? If they understood who they’d been dancing with, throwing their arms around for Snapchat pics. Ted shrugged. They never would.

  “What was that?” Jeffrey asked.

  “What?” Ted leaned closer to hear.

  “I don’t know. Thought I . . . I don’t know. Crunk, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” But Ted had felt something also. Like the house’s AC had kicked into balls-freeze cold for two seconds. He ignored the strange feeling. It was almost time to lock the doors.

  There were all kinds of industrial materials to create toxic gas, they’d discovered. But ammonia and bleach had been the easiest to buy. Twenty gallons each, which they’d stored in three plastic trash cans they’d bought and hidden. One in the hallway closet, two just outside the basement door. All that was left was to mix it up a bit and let it go.

  Chlorine gas.

  They’d tried a batch earlier. The shit had burned green like a witch’s cauldron, then burned their eyes and throats. And that had been standing outside. Down here, three batches of it would blind every eye and burn out fifty-six larynxes. Then, collapse and death. Beautiful. Not quite as personal as Ted usually liked, but it was something.

  Something different.

  He had to admit the rest was, well, getting kinda boring. Same shit over and over. Jacobson had finally called them back. Some of the other guys, John and Al, had been having bad dreams. Baby stuff. Shit, Ted had them too, but he wasn’t crying like a pussy about it. But these dreams . . . Ted didn’t know. Even he had to admit that the dreams were getting a little more fucked up than usual. Someone, something, looking for him . . .

  The guys wanted to talk to their old pal Jacobson about this and some other stuff. Like when they used to all sit around in a big circle-jerk back at Massey and talk about their feelings and shit. So fucking gay. Jacobson was such an asshole. But he’d finally called back and was trying to put together some kind of meeting. Fine. There was history there. Something Ted might enjoy, maybe.

  Albert had mumbled something beside him.

  “Three minutes,” Ted shouted back, ignoring Albert and whatever he’d felt a minute before. “Why don’t you head down now to help John. We’ll get the one up top.”

  “Cool.” Albert stood.

  “Who’s this guy?” Jeffrey asked, pointing over the crowd to the back door.

  “What the fuck?” Ted leaned forward on the steps to get a better look. “Dude’s in a costume or something.”

  “John’s got competition,” Albert laughed. “Guess this town’s got its freaks, too.”

  “Yeah,” Ted said as he peered through the smoke. “I guess.” His whole back tingled with ice again. He stood.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Ted tried to shake off the feeling, but could not.

  The new guy had shut and locked the back door.

  “Who is that?”

  “Looks like a black guy, an old black guy. Or—”

  Someone screamed. The sound was half lost in the music, but Ted heard it perfectly. He knew all about screams now.

  A girl fell in the back of the crowd. People pointed, laughing. Then another collapsed. A boy this time. He was tossed aside by the dark man, and Ted had seen something spray, and he didn’t think it was beer.

  Jeffrey s
tood up beside him. “Did he—”

  “Yeah,” Ted said. “I think he . . .”

  “Dude!?”

  “Yeah.”

  More screams. The dark man rushed into the room, making his way deeper into the crowd. Toward John.

  “We should—”

  Before Ted could articulate the thought, the man clasped John’s costume from behind and spun him around.

  “What’s he . . . ?”

  The hand slashed across John’s painted face. Blood splashed out from the wide clown collar, sprayed the startled crowd still standing around the attack.

  “We should—”

  “What?” Ted asked, frozen, not taking his eyes off the thing. “We should what?” Another plunge drove a foot-long blade into John’s juddering body, another. Another. The man tossed John to the ground and looked up at the steps.

  The eyes found Ted’s.

  “What the fuck is that?” Albert shouted. “Ted? What the—”

  “I don’t know,” Ted replied calmly. Too calmly. Warm piss had spread down the front of his legs. “Come on.”

  He, Jeffrey, and Albert turned and raced up the stairs. Behind them, the crowd squawked and gibbered as they scattered. (Just like they’d been hit with a lawn mower, Ted thought.) Their lame shrieks of terror and confusion totally drowned out the music as their shadowed forms barreled up the steps after them.

  “What about the chlorine?” Jeffrey Williford asked.

  “Fuck it,” Ted shouted. They’d fallen in with several of the other kids. Each one running for their life. Exactly like he was.

  Finally, he thought, covered in piss, bursting with the others out the front door and into the night. Something different.

  He started laughing.

  JUST AFTER DARK

  JUNE 11, SATURDAY—ORCHARD CITY, CO

  They’d been less than thirty minutes away from the house with all the dead kids.

  Facebook and Twitter told them that.

  Jeff hadn’t been on either site in more than six months. He had only four new friend requests. Twelve new messages about nothing. He had only forty-two “friends.” But David and Al were two of them.

  Using Castillo’s phone, they’d clicked onto Al’s page and read the various threads and messages there. Clicked onto the pages of some of the girls Al was friends with. Took two hours. Jumping from site to site to site, scanning their posts. Everyone’s privacy settings were for shit.

  One girl, Laura Studer in Colorado, had posted random pics on Al’s Facebook wall all damn day. Mostly links to videos of obscure bands and a pic of a Magic 8 Ball. Beneath it, she’d typed “i wanna . . .” Then, posts to other girls with various versions of “cu2nite, rofl,” which quickly led to another site and a chain of tweets that included Cedaredge High baseball players talking about “crashing the party” and kicking some “Philly bitch’s ass.”

  It didn’t take long to piece together the kids’ weekend plans.

  “Where is Orchard City?” Jeff asked.

  It’d been fifteen hours driving straight through. It wasn’t yet 9:00 p.m.

  Close. But still too late . . .

  The girl’s parents had not known what to make of Castillo. He told them he was with the DEA and that a lethal LSD drug was being sold at some teen party. Where was Laura? They didn’t know exactly. Laura wouldn’t answer her cell. What about her friends? Castillo asked and even gave the names. Who might know where they went? Nothing.

  He tried two more of the girls’ names, their houses. Nothing still. Only more parental confusion and more proof that they had no clue where their children really were for the evening.

  And then, finally, the sirens. The flashing lights.

  A lone police cruiser racing past in the distance.

  Jeff and Castillo shared a look.

  “Jesus Christ,” Castillo said.

  Then followed after the ghostly refrain of the retreating siren.

  • • •

  Castillo parked outside the flashing emergency vehicles. The gawkers of Orchard City were already gathering in full force. It looked like a thousand emergency vehicles were parked up and down the street, and the neighborhood twinkled and flashed like a pinball machine.

  In reality, it was only four local police cars and an ambulance. For now . . .

  Flashing a bogus badge twice had been enough to get Castillo into the house. The FBI was another hour away, the guys in Grand Junction another ten minutes, and the two hundred rubes of Orchard City, Colorado, still hadn’t locked the scene down yet. None of them knew what the hell to do, what the hell was going on. None of them had seen something like this before. He had, and he moved and looked like he knew what he was doing. So they left him alone.

  Colonel Stanforth, no doubt, was also already on the way.

  Castillo had to move quickly.

  He entered the basement, covering his nose and mouth with the top of his shirt. The whole house stank of ammonia. And blood. As he stepped carefully into the butchery below, he could see where both had splashed and soaked the carpet stairs.

  There were five bodies here. He’d passed four more upstairs leading out to the front porch. None had been covered yet. They’d been cut. He recognized none of the death-contorted faces. And there wouldn’t be time to look any closer. The place was crawling in confusion, but soon someone would show up who knew he didn’t belong there.

  But here, downstairs, he found the boy in the clown outfit.

  Not one of the original six, but a clone nonetheless. John lay sprawled over a dead girl and had been stabbed half a dozen times. His throat was slit, and the blood had pooled out below several of the other nearby bodies. The cuts were deep and had clearly been done with great strength.

  Castillo immediately knew who’d killed them, and he literally shuddered at the memory. Could still picture the dark man’s retreating form. Castillo quickly inspected the dead boy.

  He found two deep pockets in the side of the pants, from which he retrieved a handful of twenties and a cellphone. He left the money but tucked the phone into his own pocket. He patted the rest of the teen’s body. There was nothing else but a half-eaten bag of Combos. Castillo looked around again. The head of one of the girls was twisted wrong, angled crookedly to one side. But most of the others looked as if they’d been stabbed, too.

  “Who are you?” someone said behind.

  “DEA,” he lied again, standing.

  More police had arrived. And paramedics. He retreated insouciantly from the house, weaving through them and back toward the car. A news helicopter from Grand Junction now swept overhead, no doubt already streaming promising images of carnage to Fox News and MSNBC. His eyes glanced over the crowd, again looking for a familiar face. Wondering what he’d do, what he could do, if he actually saw one.

  He opened the cellphone he’d taken from John.

  A cheap toss-away. No text messages. Any calls in or out already deleted.

  Checked the boy’s contacts.

  There was only one.

  Castillo eyed the number again. 215 area code, Philly.

  The contact tag: DR J. The kid sure as fuck wasn’t talking to Julius Erving.

  “So, you’ve been calling Daddy,” he mused.

  Daddy . . .

  Castillo withdrew his own phone.

  “Would you . . .”

  Scrolling through his own call history. Nothing.

  He started for the car, but then stopped. Groaned.

  Opened up Safari to sign directly onto the phone service’s account. Records not so easily deletable. There Castillo skimmed the most recent calls made.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  • • •

  Castillo unlocked his car door and slipped inside, where Jeff clung to the shadows in the backseat. “Was it them?” Jeff asked. He sounded out of breath.

  “Yeah. Here . . .” Castillo handed the boy his cellphone.

  “What’s this?”

  Castillo started the car and pulled
slowly away down the street. “Need you to make a call.”

  “OK, Castillo,” Jeff said, inspecting the phone. “Who am I calling?”

  Castillo checked his rearview mirror. They were not being followed, and the flashing lights had already become a wine-colored blur in the distance. It looked like someone had misted Orchard City in blood. He eyed the boy, suddenly uncomfortable with having Jeff that close behind him. His teeth . . .

  In the mirror, he looked Jeff in the eyes.

  “Same guy you’ve been calling all week,” Castillo said. “Your goddamn father.”

  JEFF CALLS

  JUNE 11, SATURDAY—ORCHARD CITY, CO

  Hey. Hey, Dad.

  It’s me.

  Jeff. Jeff!

  No. Jeff Jacobson.

  Yeah. I’m . . . I’m OK. I know you told me not—

  Where are you? I need . . . I need to see you.

  No. It’s just . . . yes. I guess. Is that OK?

  Winter Quarters. No. Utah? Yeah, I can look it up. Thanks. I . . .

  Midnight. Yes.

  Are you OK? You . . .

  Dad?

  When will you—

  Yeah. OK . . . I—

  Yes.

  Yeah.

  I love you too.