The strangest thing about the racing of her mind was either the disparity of images and thoughts that it continued to upturn, or the penetrating intensity with which they registered.
She’d read a scary story when she was twelve or thirteen: Lois Duncan’s Down A Dark Hall. She hadn’t spared a thought for it in years, but now—and for the past twenty minutes at least—the book was one of the penetrating thoughts keeping her awake. In it, a small number of young artists were taken to a school for gifted children, where they began to excel in their work. Only Jen couldn’t seem to remember the rest, or even the basics of how it ended. Only that something had been wrong—some force or forces compelled the children in their work.
Another of these thoughts, mixing with the memory of the old paperback she’d read eighteen years ago, was from one of Paul’s books, Manpower, the book that first brought Paul to Utah as he’d prepared to write it. Manpower was a concept novel that documented the lives of three Civil War soldiers who came from groups commonly overlooked in Civil War history. One of these soldiers was Barnabus Young, son of the second president of the LDS church, Brigham Young. Barnabus was fictional, but most critics concluded that his story was the most real and moving of the three. Specifically, one phrase Barnabus had said kept knocking around in Jen’s mind. He’d been taken war prisoner and was living in the overcrowded Salisbury Prison. After a minor wound became infected, Barnabus confided with one of the Confederate guards. He’d said, “I don’t mind dying in this war, sir. I really don’t. I don’t think God’s going to spare me just because of who my father is. He means nothing to you, but where I come from he’s God’s mouth. But I do not want to die like this, sick and useless, more impotent than a chess pawn. If I’m going to die for the cause of America, I want to do it fighting. I want to do it while being able to walk ten paces without passing out.”
The last thought, completing the trifecta of insomnia, was of a dream. One she’d had the night before. In the dream she was standing over Paul, or maybe she was standing on him as he lay beneath her. When she looked closer at her feet, she saw that Paul was naked, almost. Instead of clothing, his skin was partially covered in grass and dirt. Then she saw that the grass was actually growing on him, as if his body were the needed soil. As soon as she noticed this, trees began to grow, up from his chest and legs, but also around them. There was no longer any difference between Paul’s body and the ground; he blended seamlessly into it. Then he was only a face buried in the tree patch. He was smiling, and Jen understood—just moments before waking—that Paul had become the entire world. The cold, desolate feeling the dream had left her with was profound.
Jen didn’t know what these thoughts meant, and right now she wasn’t very curious. She only wanted to sleep.
Paul surprised her then by asking, “Can I get you anything? To help you sleep, I mean?” His voice was soft and small, but she felt he was somehow annoyed with her.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said. “I didn’t realize my being awake was keeping you up.” She wished she had said something kinder, and with less vocal attitude, but she was tired, and it wasn’t her fault if her not sleeping bothered him.
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s just important to me that you get enough sleep.”
“Sorry.”
He gripped her hand under the covers. She was not expecting it to feel as cool and clammy as it did, but she said nothing. Instantly she began to feel closer to sleep, as if he’d transferred some sleeping virus to her by touch.
“Repeat after me,” he said. “I’m sleepy now.”
“I’m sleepy now,” she said.
“I’m going to sleep, and nothing will wake me.”
“I’m going to sleep,” she said, already drifting. Had she been more awake at this point the transformation from troubled to relaxed might have alarmed her. “And nothing will wake me.”
“Nothing will wake me, at least not tonight.”
“Nothing will…”
“Finish saying it, then I’ll let you go.”
She struggled, but finally said, “…wake me.”
Paul said, “At least not tonight.”
“At least not tonight.”
He released her hand and she was gone.
†
Paul said, “Sorry, honey. I’m really sorry.”
She could not hear him, nor could she see the streaks of tears now painting his face.
CHAPTER SIX
A FLOORBOARD CREAKED.
The creak woke Donald Harmon, who stirred with a familiar ache behind his eyes and a stranger in his bed. He was hung over. Again. The girl beside him was still sleeping, so he took the opportunity to try to remember her name and how she had come to be here with him. The dim overhead single-bulb was still on. He saw they were naked except for one black sock that Donald, in his drunkenness, had failed to remove from his foot. Darn it, he thought, no condom. Reluctantly he looked to the garbage can beside his bed, and was dismayed to find it empty, totally prophylactic-free. The young girl beside him was pretty—or had once been pretty—and washed-out. Easily twenty years his junior. Ouch, he thought, as he wondered how much he had spent on this girl before she agreed to come home with him. She was thin. In fact, too thin; her skin, paper-white, stretched over her ribs tightly, all-too-visible ribs poking out like rolling hills, though her upper chest was covered by the blanket.
Seeing her, emaciated like this, he realized he had probably spent little so far, only the cost of drinks. And what he still had to give her was not much. She was a junkie. This girl, like a few he’d brought up over the years, would be content with a $20. Maybe even a $10. He’d give her $30 just to be sure she wouldn’t be trouble. And anyway, he felt bad for her.
If he could remember the night before he might even say it had been worth it, but sadly he didn’t even remember what her titties looked like. He’d take a peak now except he wasn’t in the mood. If he was going to go to Hell and waste all his money to fornicate with girls young enough to be his daughters, he should at least be able to remember it, right?
“Well,” he said quietly in the dark, knowing he wouldn’t wake her, “maybe next time.”
He sat up, shifting his big belly into a more comfortable position and tried to think through the headache. He had been in Salt Lake, obviously, in the… Something Something Lounge (maybe?) by Pioneer Park. The previous night came back in snatchy pieces. He must have been one of the oldest people there—if not the oldest—but no one had bothered him. He remembered the music hadn’t been very loud, which was unusual in those kinds of places.
Yes, he remembered now. He’d been dressed pretty nice. He tried to when he went out so the girls who wanted a little extra green (or at least someone to pick up the tab on their drinks) would know that he was their man.
This girl, this… Clare, had it been? Unlike so many others, she hadn’t bothered him with her life story, her dreams and aspirations. He’d known right off she didn’t want to talk. Normally he would like this quality in a girl, but it saddened him to think the reason she hadn’t offered any drunken dreams was because she didn’t have any. He did wish he could be certain what her name was, though. He’d learned in the last decade of young-lady-chasing that remembering the name was vital to getting them back home with as little awkwardness as possible.
She rolled over and groaned, “Mitchel,” finally exposing her chest, which still seemed full, despite her wasted frame. He saw the tiny wounds on her arms, and wondered where else he might find them on her body. He didn’t share the girls’ indignation with forgotten names and thought she could call him Mitchel or Samantha or Pee Wee Herman for all he cared, as long as it meant getting her out of his house more easily. He knew he should use hotels, but his coop got great gas mileage, and he always felt ripped-off at any place clean enough for him to sleep in. He liked his bed and his bedroom, so this is where he brought them. He knew he was silly.
He loved, or was pretty sure he loved, the nighttime part�
�the dirty part—but he abhorred the mornings. Trying to get them to the car without his nosy neighbors seeing, driving them home despite the inevitable headache (they were often surprised and dismayed to hear they were over half-an-hour’s drive from Salt Lake), trying to ignore the embarrassment of the whole ordeal. How he got home safely while drunk driving through that canyon was a mystery to Donald, but as long as it kept up he wasn’t complaining, and anyway, he didn’t like to get truly smashed until he was home drinking his own booze, another thrifty habit.
Then he realized there was no light coming in through the window. He hadn’t noticed before because they had fallen asleep with the dim, one-bulb overhead bedroom light on. He glanced at the cheap digital clock—4:35 AM. Whoa, he thought, what am I doing up?
His heartbeat quickened as he remembered he hadn’t woken up because it was morning; he had heard something. And then, as if on cue, another creak sounded out. A footstep in the hall. He didn’t want to wake the girl, so he quietly asked, “Who’s there?” hoping he’d been mistaken, that no one would answer.
But no, there was definitely a response of some kind, a voice he couldn’t make out. All over his large body, sweat broke out. He was fully alert now, not even feeling a whisper of the headache he’d woken to. Whoever it was sounded very upset, grumbling behind the closed door. Perhaps it hadn’t been a response. Maybe the intruder was just… talking.
Then he made out a block of words. The voice said, “I can’t I can’t I can’t I’m sorry.” The desperation was unmistakable.
A pause.
The voice let out a giggle.
A pause.
The voice said, “You are so bad.” Clearly a man. “No, this is how you hold— Maybe we should have chosen a killer. I’m looking, okay? Why this guy?”
A pause.
“Right. I keep forgetting about your—sorry, sorry—my dream. But they’re going to tie me to this guy. We shouldn’t even be here, legally, I mean.”
Donald considered his options and didn’t come up with much. He’d meant to get a gun for home protection someday, but guns had always frightened and bored him. His house was on three acres of land, so there was no way a neighbor would hear him yell for help. They probably wouldn’t even hear a gunshot here. He didn’t keep a phone in the bedroom; he’d moved it out years ago after being woken once too often after a long night. The only thing nearby that looked even remotely useful was a heavy drinking glass with about a quarter-inch of water at the base. The most deluded optimist on Earth couldn’t call that half-full.
The voice said, “You don’t know what you’re—” A pause. Stifled laughter. “But I mean— It’s not a hammer Deeny. This is how you hold it— I know— No, I don’t have a blender. I don’t think that’s funny.”
A bit louder this time, Donald said, “Who’s out there?”
The voice abruptly silenced.
A long time passed. Donald couldn’t even hear the man breathing. Then the doorknob turned reluctantly, Donald had a brief, bizarre sensation that a nightmare-stricken child waited on the other side, hoping to find comfort in Mommy and Daddy’s bed. Only Donald was no father, and he certainly hoped the naked girl beside him was not a mother.
But it wasn’t a child; it was Paul Kenner, the writer who had bought that patch of his land by the river. There would perhaps have been no person whose presence would have confused Donald more. He tried to understand the significance of Paul’s breaking into his home as the bullets tore into him.
†
“NO NO NO!” Paul yelled as Deeny slipped the tip of his huge pinky finger into the trigger guard and helped Paul squeeze once, twice, three times a killer. Then all thought ceased in Paul’s head, and he became an unthinking body of action. The blonde girl stirred, though with much less animation than the situation warranted, so he clubbed her, holding the gun like a hammer in just the way he had told Deeny not to moments before. He followed a bright thread of dream déjà vu and dragged Harmon’s bulk off the bed.
“Yes!” Deeny said, cheering him on.
How could he obey the dream and disfigure this corpse? He frowned and the tears welled up again. As a younger man, and even as a child, he had rarely wept. He seemed to be growing soft in his old age. Oh, how could he do what Deeny wanted?
But… how could he not? Imagining it in detail, a grin exploded on Paul’s face, though the tears did not cease. He said, “What have you done to me?” but expected no response, and was not even certain he was addressing Deeny.
He stumbled through the long hallway with the body cradled in his arms. He guessed that there was more than adrenaline assisting him. He shouldered his way into the bathroom, and barely made it to the tub before running out of strength. His burden landed in the large ceramic basin with a sickening flump-crunch.
He had not been able, as he had in the dream, to lift the man over his head.
He went back to the bedroom to check on the girl. Her body slowly slid off the side of the bed. He hoped she was not too severely hurt but inwardly refused to inspect her because she was nude, and he didn’t want to be unfaithful to his wife.
Seeing that she was fully unconscious, he went to the kitchen for the tools and chemicals he would need to do what else they’d seen in the dream, the disfiguring of the body. Deeny followed, as pleased as a kid at Disneyland.
2
The following morning Jen went to work like she did every weekday.
Something was different with Sean, but she couldn’t quite pin down what it was.
He’d been standing in her office, staring at her, during the entirety of her phone call to the event director, Randy Thomas.
“Yes,” she told the man on the phone. “The deaf conference is the second week of January… Yes, we considered that. We are actually hoping that the lack of schoolwork so early in the semester will raise interest and attendance among the student body, but… I know that, but I wasn’t running it last year so you have to expect some aspects are going to be different…” As she spoke, Sean continued to watch her. She pretended she had to scribble something down just to have some reason to take her eyes away. It looked like Sean wasn’t blinking, just staring, staring. “Okay… sure,” she said, only half-listening even though the conversation was actually important to the conference. “That should be fine… Right, right, but as I said, I wasn’t in charge last year…” She felt as though she hadn’t slept ten minutes last night, even though she knew she’d slept okay once she’d gotten to sleep.
The man droned on, half-disguising his petty complaints as questions required by his position, and Jen found him hard to follow. In the edge of her vision she saw Sean waiting… watching… apparently in no hurry, yet excited about something. Jen looked down at the pen in her hand, and was surprised to see she had drawn a small set of piano keys. Only then did she remember the penetrating, disjointed thoughts that had plagued her the night before. The girl from Down a Dark Hall had played the piano, hadn’t she? Her name had been… what? Kathryn? Katie? Kit?
“So… is that okay?” the voice on the other end of the line was saying, waiting for some response.
She had no idea what she was agreeing to, but she said, “Okay. Sounds good. Thank you Mr. Thomas. Goodbye.” Jen set the receiver down in the cradle with unusual care.
Still, Sean stood there, smiling and waiting. Eventually, after an awkwardly long pause of three of four seconds, Jen looked up, signaling he could now speak. While she typically looked forward to seeing Sean—talking to Sean was probably the best part of most work days—today was different. He was different.
“Trouble?” he asked with a grin that could push a cow off the train tracks.
Though she felt more like putting her head on the desk and shutting out all stimuli, she put on her friendly face and said, “I’ve got it under control. It’s just Randy Thomas wants everything to be exactly the same as it was last year. But from what I’ve heard, last year kind of sucked.”
All smiles, he said, “That’
s what I heard, too.”
“I’m just hoping to get more people involved, especially with the lecture about teaching sign language to children without disabilities. That’s something just about anyone would want to hear. When Paul and I have our kid you can bet he or she will know sign language.”
“Great,” Sean said, beaming, almost glowing.
“Some people think it’s weird, but it’s not. I mean, think about it, a chimpanzee can learn sign language at three months. Babies have an incredible capacity for communication, even if they don’t have the functions necessary for physical speech.” She was babbling. She didn’t know what else to do. Whatever it was Sean was so excited about, Jen wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. Finally, fresh out of baby sign language factoids for the moment, she relented. She said, “What’s up with you today? Did you meet someone last night or something? You weren’t like this yesterday.”
“Oh no. Nothing so trivial.” He grinned and grinned.
Jen shifted in her seat and sat up straight. “Sean, seriously, what’s going on?”
He stared at her. His face had gone flat as a billboard, giving the impression of being painted on for the viewer’s benefit. Even his smile seemed fake, though it reached the eyes as true smiles do. He said, “Is it lunchtime?”
“Um,” Jen looked on her monitor for the time. 11:17. “No. We usually don’t leave until about twelve-thirty, right?”
“Oh yes. Excuse me.” His grin never faltering, Sean stole out the door and, presumably, returned to his cubicle. He’d closed the office door behind him, which she would usually want, but just now the seclusion of her office felt unnatural.
Tomorrow I Will Kill Again Page 16