Rogue

by Greg F. Gifune

  “I just came from there, I—”

  “No,” she says, “your childhood home. Go home and talk to your parents.”

  A once vibrant and strong woman looks up at me, transformed into someone on the verge of slipping into a coma, someone destroyed, shattered, and beyond repair. I know then that she’s right. I can’t save her. I never could. And I’m sorry, so very sorry.

  Because I know I will never see her again.

  “My parents are dead.”

  Outside, the rain picks up, spraying the windows. Marianne’s apartment suddenly feels more like a tomb, a place of death and emptiness, of misery.

  She smiles sadly as the shadows behind her move, creeping about like the dark lords they are. “What difference does that make?”

  * * *

  From the darkness, Anthony…his beady black rat eyes glaring at me from his now skeletal, pale, pockmarked face…

  Still dressed in his tuxedo, it was now soiled and wet and covered in filth the same as I was. And just like me, he stunk. I could smell his foul stench even though he was several feet away. Smiling that condescendingly evil smile, he strode toward me.

  “We’ve made it, sir,” he said. “We’ve made it.”

  And then I remembered him dragging me through the sewers beneath the nightclub to these strange and forgotten old ruins of what appeared to have once been a luxurious hotel. “I want to leave this place, Anthony.”

  He pointed at something behind me. “Then go ahead, sir.”

  Although terrified, I forced myself to look back over my shoulder. The rickety old elevator from my nightmares and visions awaited me.

  “No…”

  “They’re waiting for you, Mr. Horne.”

  I knew the moment I stepped inside and the doors closed, the cable would snap like always and the elevator would plummet, rocketing down the shaft and vanishing into the bottomless pit below. “I won’t go.”

  “But they’re waiting for you,” Anthony repeated. “They’ve been waiting so very long, sir.”

  Somewhere outside that strange dark building, the rain continued to fall as thunder rumbled in the heavens.

  A bell sounded and the elevator doors rattled open.

  Inside, the faceless operator stood at the ready.

  With a formal and dramatic bow, Anthony backed away and into the darkness from which he’d come.

  Then up from the shaft and out through that old elevator came thousands of snarling voices nowhere near human, a battle cry of ancient brutal warriors there to fetch me for their depraved master. Dead or alive.

  * * *

  Dorchester, in the rain, on a dilapidated porch littered with bags of rotting trash. The same plastic bowl as before lies inches from my feet, but the orange cat is nowhere to be found. The dark and dirty duplex sits silent in the downpour, lifeless and hiding its secrets, but not for long.

  This time the locks disengage even before I knock, the door creaks open and Alfred Copeland stands before me, his plump form draped in a loose T-shirt several sizes too large for him. His legs and feet are bare, his toes crooked and caked with dirt, his toenails long and discolored. He is unshaven, and the hair jutting out on either side of his otherwise bald head is unwashed and unruly as ever. The eyes too are the same as before. Empty…broken...lost…drowning in things unclean…evil.

  Without a word, he steps to the side and lazily motions for me to enter.

  Once I’m inside, he closes the door, then leads me to the kitchen. It is the same mess it was the first time I came here, but this time the doors to the adjacent bedroom and bathroom are both closed. But for a rickety kitchen table and chairs, there is still no furniture here, and dingy sheets remain tacked up over the windows instead of curtains.

  Copeland takes up position on the other side of the table and stands there as if already bored with my presence. His depravity hangs in the air between us like fog.

  “Why don’t you do us both a favor and go put some pants on?” I tell him.

  “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

  “Trust me, Copeland, you don’t want to make me any angrier than I already am.”

  “You think I’m afraid of you?” He smiles with his yellow, decayed, crooked teeth. “Is that what you think?”

  “You should be.”

  “You’re the one who should be afraid.”

  “What did you do to Marianne?”

  His eyes dart to the closed bedroom door, then back to me. “I told her the truth.”

  “Are we alone here?”

  He slowly shakes his head no.

  My heart begins to race. “Is there someone in the bedroom?”

  “You know,” he says, “many have done this before me. Many have done it before you. Only it’s usually to their advantage, to further evil, and even then we don’t get away with it. We always end up right back where we started. Difference is we don’t much care, because that’s where we belong. Just some wolves out playing in the night and home to the den before sunrise, that’s all. But not you though. Oh no, not you. You’re something special. Who the hell do you think you are, Horne?”

  “Is there someone in that bedroom, you sonofabitch?”

  His soulless eyes watch me. “They’re just playthings, toys. But you seem to think they matter. Delusions of fucking grandeur, that’s your problem.”

  Thunder booms as rain pounds the house, coming down in sheets now and blurring the already filthy windows. Like before, things begin to shift, to feel more like a dream. Slower…imprecise…distorted…

  “I know you,” Copeland tells me. “I know you, Horne. And you know me.”

  “Until I came here to do my job, we’d never met before.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  He laughs lightly and scratches at his crotch. “There are always boundaries, you know that. In all of nature, there are always boundaries. And when they’re crossed, things have to be set right, or the entire thing can come crashing down. Couldn’t have that, could we? None of the powers that be are gonna sit still for that bullshit. Because it’s all about order, even the chaos, right? You’re no savior. You’re not even a dime novel hero, Horne. You’re just a rogue male, that’s all, a freak. You’re an aberration even among deviants. And you know what happens to rogue males, no matter what the species? Sooner or later they get put down. Either an outside species or their own takes care of them, because they’re out of order. Saw a show one time in the joint, one of those nature shows about lions. You know the kind I mean. Followed this pride around, mostly focusing on this one mother and her cubs. Outside the pride, there was this rogue male hanging around causing trouble, breaking the rules. It stalked the cubs for days but always stayed on the perimeter of the pride’s territory. Until one day, it attacked. It charged the cubs. The mother defended her babies, her way of life. She defended the rules. She threw herself between her offspring and that rogue male and she fought back with everything she had. Even though she drove him off before he could kill any of the cubs, the pride realized this lion was too much of a wild card, too much of a threat. It might’ve been one of their own at some point but it wasn’t like them anymore. It was rogue. So it had to go. Next time it ventured too close, they took it the fuck out.” Copeland slaps his hands down on the table with a resounding thud. “You better get on your knees, boy, and pray to your lord before that happens to you.”

  I stare at him, unmoved by his theatrics. “What about you, Copeland?”

  He straightens up. “What about me?”

  “Aren’t you the real rogue male here? You’re the one snatching little girls off—”

  “You fucking fool,” he says. “When a lion takes down and eats a beautiful gazelle, it’s just a lion being a lion. I still know who I am. I still know my place.”

  “You’re nothing but a pedophile, a sexual sadist, a rapist of little girls.”

  “Every now and then I make an exception, give an older one a good fuck,” he says, waiting for my react
ion before adding, “you know, like Remy.”

  Visions of the nightclub stage blink through my mind.

  “That wasn’t real, how did you—how do you—that wasn’t real!”

  I’m going to kill him. You know that, don’t you?

  “You’re a fucking imbecile.”

  You’re so silly tonight, Mr. Horne. You already have.

  I move around the side of the table, closer to him. “You don’t even speak her name, you understand me? You don’t even think about her, you piece of fucking shit!”

  “Yeah, I’m a piece of shit. And what are you, Horne, any idea?”

  “I’m the one who’s going to put you down, that’s what I am.”

  He nods, drifts away from the table and moves over to a counter. Leaning back against a sink full of dirty dishes, he folds his arms across his chest. “Toll’s due,” he says evenly. “But you won’t be the one to make me pay it.”

  We stand in silence for what seems a very long time.

  “You need to go home, Horne,” he finally says. “You hear me? Go home.”

  Go home and talk to your parents.

  Instead, I start slowly toward the bedroom.

  My parents are dead.

  “Sure you want to go in there?” Copeland asks but makes no move to stop me.

  What difference does that make?

  “Think you can handle it, Mary?” he goads.

  The doorknob is cold in my hand. “What have you done?” I ask quietly.

  “Just being a lion, baby, just being a lion.”

  I turn the knob, then give the door a subtle push. With a creaking sound, it slowly swings open. A strong rancid odor wafts free. Tacked up over the only window is another towel, and the rest of the small room is draped in shadow and half-light. As before, there is only a bare and filthy mattress lying on the floor, some pornographic magazines and spent rolls of toilet paper scattered about.

  But this time there is a pile of clothes on the mattress, clothes that clearly belong to a young girl. Copeland releases an orgasmic sigh before he begins whispering his profane, inverted prayers.

  “Heaven in art who Father our…”

  In my mind I see the girl’s tiny arms tied behind her with rope, her ankles bound as well, her nude body covered in lacerations, bruises and welts, her hair caked with blood.

  “Name thy be hallowed…”

  There’s no need to look any closer. The clothes are soiled with blood and other bodily fluids, some hers, some his.

  “Done be will thy, come kingdom thy…”

  Whoever the little girl was, I’m certain she’s dead, as the mattress too is soaked with blood.

  “Heaven in is it as Earth on…”

  “You want to vomit,” Copeland says from somewhere behind me. “But you won’t. You want to cry, but you can’t. We’re the same, you and me.”

  “Where is she?” I ask, still staring at the clothes.

  “They’ll find her eventually…what’s left of her anyway.” He snickers. “I knew I didn’t have much time, figured I’d better kick it up a notch.”

  My hands shake with rage and sorrow.

  “You ever see the vampire movies where a bunch of bloodsuckers close in on someone who just got bit? And just before they kill him, they slowly back off, because they understand now that he’s turned, he’s one of them. You may want to put me down, Horne, but you won’t, because you’re one of us.”

  I step back out of the bedroom and close the door behind me. “Even if that was true,” I say, feeling the evil moving deep within me, “I’m a rogue male, remember?”

  Unsure of me, his gleeful blasphemy fades.

  “I don’t follow the rules.” I remove my jacket, hang it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, then methodically roll my shirtsleeves up to the elbow. On the counter is a half-eaten sandwich, a can of ginger ale, a jar of mayonnaise and a silver butter knife. I select the knife, hold it up before me and study the dull blade. When my eyes find Copeland, he understands I’ve decided this will do just fine.

  Rain batters the building, sealing us in tight and drowning out the screams of agony and horror that will soon shatter the silence of Alfred Copeland’s apartment.

  “I’m out of order,” I tell him. “Remember?”

  Copeland steels himself, contemptible until the end. “I remember nothing.”

  “You’re gonna remember this, motherfucker.”

  Now, the gleeful blasphemy belongs to me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The wind is strong, forcefully rolling along the avenues as I drive through my hometown, the city of Fall River. Although the rain has all but subsided by the time I arrive there, just a little over an hour since leaving Dorchester, the same dingy industrial pale hangs over this section of city as always, echoes of a once thriving textiles trade that is long gone but still lingers like a ghost in the shadow of the nearby Braga Bridge.

  After what I’ve done, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go home again. Can I ever again look Remy in the face, hold her in my arms and tell her I love her? How do I go back? How do I forget this and make it go away? Is that even possible? Whoever this is walking around in my skin and claiming to be me is not Cameron Horne. It’s some other man, one who enjoys and is skilled at inflicting pain, someone intimately familiar and comfortable with violence, bloodshed, carnage and agony. Death. This thing inside me is its messenger, and I am its vessel.

  I bind him with belts I find in the bedroom. He is so badly beaten by then that he offers little resistance. A naked blob jiggling and bleeding all over a scarred floor, his blood mixing with his victim’s, Copeland refuses to make a sound. He thinks he will rob me of the satisfaction of hearing him scream and beg for mercy. He’s wrong.

  I find my old neighborhood quickly. A few of the buildings and businesses have changed here and there, but for the most part, it’s the same as it was when I was a kid, and a flood of memories surge through me as I turn onto my old street and slowly roll toward the triple-decker that housed the apartment I grew up in with my parents. My blood is still running cold, but memories of playing on this street, of learning how to ride a bike on these very sidewalks, of growing up here and all the history and experiences I enjoyed in this neighborhood keep coming.

  I find a small radio on the windowsill and switch it on. An old ’50s tune crackles through the cheap speaker. Del Shannon singing “My Little Runaway”: “My little runaway, run-run-run-runaway! I’m walkin’ in the rain. Tears are fallin’ and I feel the pain!”—and I hesitate a moment, allowing the music to move me. Soon, I’m dancing along, smiling down at Copeland as I fondle the butter knife I plan to mutilate him with. His swollen and bloodied eyes widen in horror, but he still refuses to make a sound, even when I kneel down next to him, and with the rhythm of the music, slam the dull blade up under his arm, piercing the flesh there before plunging deep enough to hit bone.

  After finding a space, I exit the car and walk briskly to the building, hands stuffed in my jacket pockets. There are a few people milling about the neighborhood, along with some light traffic, but I pay little attention as I tentatively climb the steps of the building. It has undergone some modest remodeling and updates over the years, but our first-floor apartment basically looks the same. I’ve no idea who lives here now, but I draw a deep breath and knock anyway.

  Warm and sticky, Copeland’s blood sprays my hands, arms and neck. And now he cries and begs like there’s no tomorrow—because there isn’t one—his life is slipping away slowly, painfully, and there isn’t a fucking thing he can do to stop it. He tries to tell me something, but I’ve already taken off most of his bottom lip so it’s impossible to know for sure what he’s saying. Using the small, mildly serrated section of blade, I saw away strips of flesh from his stomach, chest, arms and legs, then roll him over and get to work on his back. I wonder if the little girl he murdered cried and squirmed the way he does.

  I hear movement from within, a shuffling of feet, then the so
unds of locks disengaging. My heart races with anticipation. The door opens, answered by an elderly man in a cardigan sweater and a pair of slacks. His features are soft and rounded, his thin gray hair parted on the side and neatly combed into place. He raises his bushy white eyebrows at the sight of me. “Yes?”

  As I wash up in the bathroom, I glance in the dirty mirror over the sink, see Copeland’s body behind me on the kitchen floor. He’s dead, has been for several minutes. But I am grateful that he was alive long enough to feel me hack and rip his cock from his body and force it deep into his mangled mouth.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I tell the old man. “My name’s Cameron Horne, I used to live in this apartment. I grew up here.”

  “Who is it?” a female voice asks from behind the man.

  Rather than answer her, the man says, “I’m sorry, you—you’re who?”

  “Cameron Horne. I used to live here years ago.”

  “Sam, who is it?” the woman asks again.

  “A young man,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder a moment before returning his attention to me. “You say you lived here?”

  I realize I have no idea what the hell I’m doing here, why I’m bothering these people or why they’d care what I have to say.

  “Yes, sir,” I answer, suddenly worried I might not have washed all of Copeland’s blood from my hands, “when I was a child.”

  The man squints at me. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Cameron Horne.”

  “Which apartment did you live in?”

  “This one,” I tell him.

  “When you were a child, you say?”

  “Yes, sir, I grew up on this street.”

  He smiles at me warmly. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong building.”

  “No this—this is the place.”

  “Can’t be,” he says. “My wife and I have lived here for the last forty-seven years. You can’t even be that old, are you?”