He shoveled and shoveled.
“Now you wait here, Deanie,” Father said. “Wait here until the forest provides.” He was still shoveling dirt in the hole Dean had been laid in. “Do you remember what we used to say about Heavenly Father? About how He would take care of us always if we did His will and even sometimes when we did not?”
Dean nodded, displacing some of the dirt on his head. The green light was filling his belly.
“Remember all that, but now, instead of Heavenly Father… it is this forest. Do you understand?”
Dean nodded. It was hard not to understand with this light in him.
“The forest will give you everything you need.”
Robert came much later, failing utterly to wake Deeny. It wasn’t until a young girl, Laney Scott, had come to the forest by way of the Rockport River and a serious crack in her skull that Deeny had truly stirred. It may have been a simple accident; accidents happen. The body was never found. The forest enveloped it, giving Deeny the power he needed to begin drawing the other children. Deeny knew none of the deaths had been murder, just lucky mishaps with the scales tipped in his favor. He had pushed these things—his father, mother, humanity, life—far from him, and had embraced the only thing left: murder.
To kill is sublime.
And then, not that Deeny really understood why, Paul had come. His best friend.
Deeny shook himself frantically from the reverie. He was not interested in the past. The feelings of affection he felt for his mother and father—and even the forest—made him uncomfortable. As did his father’s talk of God. It sickened him.
He felt the wind winding through his scant, huge mass.
What did it mean? Why now, in the middle of the night, did this long-forgotten memory of some child he did not want to associate himself with come with such unstoppable force?
Then he felt, quite dimly, the man who had caused this. He could not see the man’s face, he did not know his name, but he became aware of an interloper. Now Deeny howled again, not in pain, but in rage.
†
The sound of that tortured howl travelled to the master bedroom. Jen, sleeping lightly, almost woke for it, but the sound only mixed with her sweet dreams and turned them into nightmares. In the morning she would remember nothing. Paul, wide awake, stared at the ceiling and fought the urge to run out and comfort his friend. He wanted to know what was wrong, needed to, but he also needed Jen unaware. He told himself that morning would come soon enough and Jen would be gone, back to work where she could not intercede.
The seconds ticked by like falling monoliths; apprehension held Paul as tight as any chain.
†
Miller woke from the nightmare communication with Deeny as Paul had that first night: in tears. He’d been swallowed up by Deeny’s great blackness, and though he hadn’t seen everything Deeny had remembered, he’d seen and felt enough to know that the monster had once been a child. A normal, loved little boy. He didn’t understand what had happened, exactly—and he was sure he didn’t want to—only that someone had gone mad, the boy’s father perhaps, and the madness had grown and grown, taking on a life all its own. The necklace and the trees seemed important as well, didn’t they? What was he dealing with here?
6
“Okay now, some people get this confused with a .38 special, which is understandable as it’s a .380. But this isn’t math class, okay? That little zero matters even though it comes after the decimal. It’s a very different gun.” The older, leather-skinned man grinned to show this was a funny joke; Paul grinned back, feeling out of place. It wasn’t that Paul didn’t know a lot about guns; he knew more than just about anybody, provided the gun in question was about a century and a half old.
The gun shop was too cold for Paul’s liking. People milled around in the background, and he couldn’t help but think they were all taking note of his face to describe to a police sketch artist later on. He tried not to let his nervousness show. He said, “Which do you recommend?”
The clerk laughed again. “Well, you’re telling me you haven’t shot a whole lot, and you want home protection. To me, that says .380. The bullets ain’t too cheap, but you ain’t going to be firing for fun. This thing doesn’t have much of a kickback, and it ain’t so loud it would disorient you if you needed to shoot it in the middle of the night without ear protection. Course a .22 would be a bit quieter and easy to fire, but I’ve read too many reports of somebody shooting at a burglar and only getting a couple shots on mark, and it barely slows the guy down.”
“Uh-huh.”
“This is a reliable gun, with a bigger bullet, but it’s small enough to stick in a bedside drawer or something. This model holds eight rounds, which should be good against any intruder.”
“That sounds good,” Paul said, wishing he could buy this little toy without help.
“You don’t need a .38 for what you want,” the clerk laughed again, a laugh of disbelief, as if Paul had been asking for one. “You’d be more likely to shoot a hole through your arm or knock yourself out with the buck than take a guy down.”
“That’s fine. The .380 should be fine.”
The clerk nodded. “Sure will. Now, you fire this thing at least twice a year. Make sure it’s working okay, and make sure you know what it feels like to fire it and aim and all that. Does that sound doable?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright,” the clerk said, as if unconvinced. “Let’s get you registered.”
†
Twenty minutes later, Paul was driving back toward Peoa. The .380 lay next to two boxes of ammo in the backseat. Paul had been struck by how much the rounds looked like stereotypical cartoon bullets. They reminded Paul of an old Hannah-Barbara segment he used to like as a kid, Ricochet Rabbit. Ricochet Rabbit must have used a .380, Paul thought, chuckling sadly. But Paul wouldn’t be stopping bank robbers and any other bad guys with non-lethal gadget-bullets like old Ricochet, he understood this was just the first of only a few steps that would lead to Deeny’s vision of their future. But Paul couldn’t help it; Deeny’s howling had been too awful to bear. He had to help his friend, and this was the best way he knew to do that.
But then on the way home through Brown’s Canyon, his resolve again faltered. Dim, gray clouds hung low in the sky, but still no snow. He pulled over at the Peoa Cemetery before getting to town. He always found comfort in such places of rest and reverence. Back in Armour Square, Jen had been alarmed to hear how he’d taken the hour-long bus ride from their apartment to Oakwoods Cemetery after a bad fight. She said he had a death fixation. Back then, he’d disagreed with that.
Oakwoods was a large stretch of manicured green grass and white, gleaming headstones in all shapes and sizes, spreading out for tens-of-thousands of square feet. The Peoa cemetery was no Oakwoods. There were weeds and patches of long grass blades. A haphazard whitish fence had been strung along the hills behind the small graveyard. Paul left the door unlocked with the gun in the back seat. Maybe he’d get lucky and somebody would steal it. He walked down one of the few, short rows of graves. In the shadow of the large flag, he listened to the constant ping ping of the braided hoist striking the flagpole in the wind. He could almost imagine it was a voice: ping ping. kill kill. ping ping. kill kill.
He could no longer deny the desire. He knew he wanted to kill, but not why. He wondered half-heartedly if other killers had felt this same tug-of-war within themselves. But the answer didn’t seem to matter. In fact, very little seemed to matter as he ran his hand across the grainy top of one of the headstones. GRETCHEN LUCILE DECKER MAR. 17, 1892 ~ JAN. 1, 1993 it read. She’d died on New Year’s Day. Paul had been fifteen then. He had, in the wee hours of that same morning, enjoyed his first kiss ever, with a tall, lanky girl named Andi Diamond at a New Year’s Eve party. Back then Andi been the most important thing in his world, and he hadn’t know this person whose grave he stood above was dying, just as he didn’t know about all the other humans dying at the same time, always, in a constant
stream of death all over the world. They died of age, disease, accident, starvation… violence. He’d read somewhere that every second about two people die. Two people. Every second. Did death really matter, one way or the other? Gretchen had been buried beside the body of her husband, GRANT LEE DECKER JULY. 10, 1878 ~ JULY, 5 1982. Someone had recently left flowers for both of them. A Mormon temple, Paul thought it might be the one in Salt Lake, was etched neatly on the top of each of their graves.
What had this Gretchen been like? Had she been stern? Mean? Had she been light-hearted enough to be amused that she and her husband shared initials? Had she been reborn somehow after her death, somewhere? Did she still exist in any form, as ghost, spirit, or god? If not, what was the meaning of her life? Her death? Who was she, really, and why did she and her kind deserve to die by his and Deeny’s hands? He didn’t know. He only knew that the need, the drive to do what Deeny was suggesting, sprung out of him like a deep well. It was as powerful as his desire to be a father used to be. He wondered what had changed as he sauntered deeper into the tiny cemetery. Well, what had changed him was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? Deeny had made him like this. But could it have been helped? Did he still have a choice? He certainly felt powerless against the pull of his new friend, but wouldn’t a true friend let Paul chose for himself? But how could he ignore the pain Deeny had been through last night when he had been howling? He still did not know what had happened to upset him so much, but if Paul was going to be a good friend—like he wanted Deeny to be to him—didn’t he need to do his part to make Deeny feel better? Had this all really started with Deeny?
Suddenly bored with the bones and plaques of the dead, he went back to his car.
Maybe just one would be okay. That was what, half a second?
7
An hour later, as the morning of December 17th became afternoon, Paul stood in front of Deeny in the tree patch. He held up a steel-gray case, snapped the clasps open, and revealed the .380 to Deeny. Its extra clip and trigger guards were at home in foam holes.
Deeny took a step back. He should have been ecstatic, but he felt threatened again by intense affection. He said, “What about the book?”
“I finished it last night.”
Deeny was not sure why the book mattered, but he did feel it was vital for their work. This display of dedication on Paul’s part was as unexpected as the gun. He said, “You did? You really did? I need to read it.”
“There will be time for that another day. I’d be happy to read it to you myself, but we should… begin with our true work.” Paul winced, as if being pricked. “I just bought this this morning. I like the shape of its bullets.” He pointed to the top of the extra clip, where one was poking out. “They look like cartoon bullets, sort of, you know?” He sighed with a sadness Deeny didn’t want to understand. He said, “It’s a good thing there’s no waiting period in Utah.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Deeny said, his eyes flicking about the case, still trying to come to grips with the immensity of what this next step meant for them.
“It doesn’t matter.” Paul sighed again.
Paul seemed to notice the look on his friend’s face, and his eyes brightened. He said, “What is it? Do you want to back down? Because it’s okay if you do. We don’t have to kill anyone if you don’t want to.”
And Deeny was torn, but not by the question of whether or not he wanted to kill—he wanted it more than anything; to kill is sublime—but by the question of love. He knew if he and Paul did this thing together they would strengthen their bonds. He was still shaken by the events of the night before. He did not know about Miller, specifically, but he knew that something had precipitated the flood of memories. Memories he had no interest in or use for.
A bird trilled.
Deeny said, “Do you think you love me, Paul?” afraid of the answer either way.
And for a long time Paul said nothing. He only looked at the .380 in its case. Wind mussed his soft, sandy hair. He finally said, “Tonight. We will kill. If you can take us to the right place.” He snapped the case closed and handed it to Deeny. “Until then, you hold on to this.”
Then Paul left Deeny to consider his terrifying feelings of loss and love.
8
The blonde girl in Salt Lake sat at the bar in a dirty hole that had the audacity to call itself a “lounge.” The bodies at the bar and various tables around her made up about thirty-five people, most were drinking. She came here sometimes in between fixes because she had a superstitious belief that this bar was more likely than others to offer up a suitor for the evening. She didn’t consider herself a prostitute, but some people understood the business-like give-and-take lifestyle of some junkies. Usually these were junkies who might once have been considered pretty. Some people understood exactly what she was looking for in exchange for her company. The blonde girl did not have a drink yet, for none had been provided to her. She had no money, and she wouldn’t waste it on booze if she had.
The bartender was talking to a dark-haired, thick-bodied woman nearby. His head was shaved, but his deep brown bushy eyebrows made the baldness look more like a choice than a style of necessity. Green and blue mounted lights gleaned off his scalp.
The blonde girl felt her brain dipping down into the numb sludge, peeking up and out periodically, like a bobbing fish looking for a bite.
“What a lot of people don’t understand about men,” the bartender was telling the thick woman, “is that we all have our different tastes in women.”
“Uh-huh,” the thick woman said. She looked half-Latino and wore a shimmering pink halter-top with a pair of white jeans. Halfway through her fifth drink and rocking back and forth.
The bartender said, “Me personally, well… I happen to like big women.” He was polishing an already clean glass.
“Uh-huh,” the thick woman said.
“I realize on TV and in magazines, someone… uh, someone with a body type like yours wouldn’t normally be hired to play the ‘hot’ one. They like to believe everybody likes the same kind of girl: skinny, blonde, symmetrical.”
“I like to think I’m symmetrical,” the thick woman said.
“You know what I mean,” he said, stammering. “I’m not into that Barbie-doll look.”
The thick woman said, “So, what does this big girl have to do to get one on the house?”
“Sorry,” the bartender laughed, “my boss is crazy. She keeps track of everything.”
The thick woman said, “Is that so?”
“But, you could come to my place after my shift. I’m sure I’ll come up with something, haha.”
She downed the last of her glass. “I’ll just bet,” she said, and pushed herself up out of her stool. “You take care now.” She walked out the front door and the blonde girl and the bartender watched her go, her considerable rear swaying sensually through the large windows.
The bartender turned to the blonde girl and said, “She must have seen somebody she knew,” as if she needed an explanation. Soon he was helping another large woman at the other end of the bar. He didn’t seem to realize he’d just insulted the skinny blonde girl practically to her face, and she actually felt absurdly wounded, though just weeks ago she wouldn’t have.
In the days that had passed since her experience with the plastic baby, the blonde girl had become increasingly sad. The impervious numbness she had developed in the last three years had begun to give way to something awful, some great longing within. She did not remember the doll exactly, but nevertheless, the image of a wayward hand squishing the head—an image now adorned with blood and otherworldly gore—had been repeating in her dreams each night. She did not know where the sight had come from, but during her waking hours she reflected on it again and again, a hand squishing her baby’s head.
For the first time in a long while she felt vulnerable, and it made her even more desperate than before to get the substances in her body she thought she needed. Her now stringy, dirty hair fell to veil her fac
e when a rush of air from the main door came in as someone entered.
Soon a man was on the stool next to her. His bottom, much larger than the thick woman’s, almost swallowed the stool. He was older than most of the bar’s patrons, but there were one or two other men his age milling about, and he did not seem too out-of-place. His ink-black hair had been neatly trimmed, and though quite large he had a clean, orderly quality to him.
In other words, the blond girl had done worse.
He ordered two bourbon-and-water’s and set one in front of her. She barely glanced over—just long enough to see he was a older than she’d thought at first—before downing a third of it. It didn’t really taste like anything, though two years ago it would have burned her throat. She sighed, considering the immensity of effort that she knew she would be required to expend between this moment and the acquisition of heroin that it precipitated. She thought she’d rather sleep, or maybe just die, but she forced herself to say, “What do you do?” She tried to focus on the thought of heroin, the prize at the end of the game.
He said, “We don’t need to go through all that if you don’t want.”
A cooling wave of resigned relief stole over her, and she was almost capable of gratitude.
Twenty minutes later, after some more drinking, they’d left in his car. Between them, they’d had more drinks than words.
9
Jen had a lot to do in the morning, so, lying in bed next to her sleeping husband that night, she knew her first priority should be joining him in slumberland. Unfortunately, her mind did not seem interested in sleep. She hadn’t fought this hard to quiet it in years, probably not since college.
An owl hooted outside. Jen didn’t think she’d ever heard one at the house before. She pushed the blankets from her chest, but the night was too cold without them, so she quickly replaced them. She felt as if they were crushing her slowly, trapping her in the bed. Even the weight of Cards sleeping at their feet, usually pleasant, seemed designed to make her feel confined.
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