Tomorrow I Will Kill Again

by Matthew Allred

  Jen tried to work for the next hour-and-a-quarter. Not only did Sean’s behavior distract her, but so did her thoughts from the night before. Barnabus. Down a Dark Hall. Her dream of Paul becoming the world. What did it mean?

  Before she even realized why she was pulling out the drawer she was staring down at her face again. “Okay,” she said to her reflected image, “what does it mean?”

  “Nothing, obviously. Just random thoughts before sleep.”

  “Then why do I get the feeling that something big is coming? Something serious is about to change.”

  “Maybe because you’re trying to get pregnant. Maybe because Paul has been coming back to you, slowly and surely.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe the feeling doesn’t mean anything, either. So you feel like something’s about to change for you. So what? Are you a psychic now? A fortune teller?”

  “I guess not, but I’m still worried.”

  “About what, exactly?”

  And to this, she realized she had no answer. She slid the drawer shut and waited for 12:30 to come around so she could go eat. She hoped Sean would be acting more normal by then. She hoped she felt more normal by then.

  3

  Miller threw a few stiff shirts and old khaki pants into a never-used travel bag, still factory-squared despite living in the bedroom closet for the last ten years. Was Deeny still unaware of him after all that? Miller didn’t know, but he thought not. A couple days had passed since the fateful dream of the exploding face, and Miller had been trying to convince himself that he was still somehow safe here. But the nagging feeling that he wasn’t had grown and grown until Miller began to pack in a panic. The last thing he put in the duffle bag before zipping it up was an almost-full bottle of postum.

  His sister, not as aged as he but equally alone, would just have to take him into her house in Snyderville. Her house was much nicer then his, and he knew he’d feel out-of-place there. It was not actually that far from the woods where the creature lived, but he hoped that the small mountains and thousands of people between them would be enough to throw Deeny off his scent. He really didn’t know if it worked that way, but he didn’t know where else he could go. And anyway, it felt right.

  He marveled at how old he felt. Even the act of packing clothes made him tired. He felt as if any moment he would hear his bones audibly creaking. He suspected this had as much to do with the recent strain of facing Deeny in the land of dreams as it did his advancing years. He headed into the kitchen one final time, checking to make sure nothing had been left on.

  I’m not running away, he thought. He had to keep reminding himself of that. He just needed time to plan, prepare and—most importantly—to study.

  Before moving to Montana three years ago, his niece, Cara, had given him a new set of scriptures. The kind he had always thought of as Blind Man Scriptures because of their tremendous size and huge print. Blind Man Scriptures didn’t come in the beautiful leather binding with gold-leafed pages he had grown accustomed to over the past few decades; instead they looked like big prop versions of the free, blue plastic-covered copies of the Book of Mormon the missionaries gave to the investigators that would probably never read them. They looked as cheap and disposable as phonebooks (about as big, too), but the messages inside were the same, and cheap-looking or not, he would need their power for what lie ahead. After putting the duffle bag in his truck he went back in for them, carrying the books in both arms.

  He reverently laid them in the passenger seat of his ‘85 F100 one-by-one: THE HOLY BIBLE, THE DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS/PEARL OF GREAT PRICE combo, and of course THE BOOK OF MORMON. He took a moment to reflect on the formidable stack of scripture in front of him—which had to be eight or nine inches tall—and wondered if he would live long enough to read them all one final time.

  He stepped into the truck, a two-foot journey that got harder to make every year, the engine turned right over. He kept it in good condition. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—he would remember his Belvedere and long for it. For some reason he did so now, wishing not only for the car but the sweet girl who had ridden in it. Idling in his own driveway, Miller closed his eyes and tried to feel her. A grizzled old farmer on the outside, a romantic within, he believed she had waited for him in the spirit world, the time between mortal life and resurrection, and that she’d been helping him from the other side his whole life. Today he felt nothing, and this troubled him.

  Feeling alone, forsaken by both God and Mary, he made his way out of Peoa. The phrase I am not running away repeated in his head like a slow, peaceless siren.

  4

  At Red Lobster, Sean seemed to have calmed down a little, but still he had a bristling energy about him; his face looked the way air tastes in a lightning storm. They’d been seated at a table near the corner, and Jen had a good look of the room over Sean’s shoulder.

  “So you never told me what’s got you so happy,” she said, forking another bite of fried catfish into her mouth.

  He said, “It’s just a friend of mine… a friend who has wanted one for a long time.”

  Around them people chatted and ate and waited for food. Forks scraped and dishes clinked on glasses.

  “One what?” she asked.

  Sean smiled even wider, if that were possible. Jen couldn’t shake the feeling that she and Sean somehow did not belong among the crowd in the restaurant, as if at any moment everyone would stop talking, get up, and leave the restaurant, responding to some cue Sean and she would not hear.

  Finally, Sean said, “A kid,” as if revealing he had just won the Powerball. Not that Utah had the Powerball.

  “Who is she?” Jen asked, feeling as if she were pulling every word from him as she might infected teeth.

  “Actually, it’s a man I know.”

  “Oh. Well, did he just find out his wife was pregnant?”

  Sean replied dreamily, “No, no. He just got his son last night, early in the morning. It’s a really happy day for all of us.”

  At the table beside them, a biggish young man with a pink-red face laughed. It was a hearty, healthy sound that highlighted to Jen just how far from honest laughter she was feeling at that moment. What was it about Sean today that had her so disturbed? Again—randomly—she recalled Barnabus’ speech to his camp guard: I just don’t want to die like this, sick and useless, more impotent than a chess pawn. If I’m going to die… I want to do it fighting. I want to do it while being able to walk ten paces without passing out.

  She mentally shoved the thought away from her, and said, “I’ve never heard you talk about this person before.”

  Sean looked dreamy, and though his eyes met hers, she had the sensation that he wasn’t really seeing her. He said, “I never had anything to say about him before. But I couldn’t be happier.”

  “I can see that. Well, I hope Paul and I can be as lucky as your friend and his wife.”

  Sean looked up at her from the food he had hardly touched. Beneath his grinning surface something squirmed—she could not understand the emotion his face was trying to convey, only that, whatever it was, he was failing. His eyes bulged slightly, as if they would not open as wide as he’d like. His lips parted. He blinked… blinked again. He raised his head slightly toward the ceiling.

  Jen’s annoyance turned to panic without warning—what was happening to him? Jen glanced around, but no one paid them any attention.

  She said, “What are you doing? Is something wrong?”

  Sean couldn’t get his face under control. Happiness and fulfillment and something worse pressed up from underneath with great force. He gurgled, “I’m fine. Everything is really good with me right now.”

  Cars and trucks of every size lined up to get on I-80 outside the window, people enjoyed their lunches around them, across the street runners ran and families played at the edge of Sugarhouse Park’s artificial pond. No one else seemed aware of what was happening at their table, as if the entire world had frozen and she—and what was
almost Sean—were alone. Then, so suddenly that she didn’t understand what was happening, Sean collapsed into his meal, sending a glass shattering across the floor and several too-salty garlic cheese rolls skittering under a nearby table.

  Finally someone screamed and people started talking about an ambulance and heart attacks. Jen simply sat still, not knowing she was holding a forkful of broccoli in one hand, stunned.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  POLICE.

  The word had an irresistible power, like the atrocious smell of dumpsters brimming with rot. Its inescapable force gripped Deeny with the panicky strength of a human’s night-horror. He had expended so much energy suppressing any and all of the objections that sprung from the Writer’s mind, he had never considered that any of these objections might be important, might be more than simple morality and fear. But now he wished—oh, how desperately he wished!—that he had listened more closely to the whispers.

  Police.

  Deeny rested his massive frame on Harmon’s wide couch (he did not cause the cushion to sink down by even an inch), watching the Writer pace frantically back and forth in Harmon’s well-decorated living room. They had come back the next morning after Jen left for work to try to decide what to do. The Writer looked as if he wanted to tear the hair from his head as Deeny had done during his own period of utter panic. The giant TV screen, on which “shows” were watched, reflected a midnight-black version of the Writer pacing alongside his counterpart. All the blinds and drapes where drawn, and so the natural light was thin.

  The book the Writer birthed in the forest was only a projection of Deeny’s fondest wishes, but this was real life. There was opposition, there were laws and institutions created by the fearful, quivering masses and now—only now that the deed had been done, the murder committed—did understanding fully reenter the Writer’s mind, and in turn, Deeny’s.

  They now had a dead, disfigured body in a tub and a girl regaining consciousness, bound and gagged in the next room. The Writer had only purchased the gun the day before; it would easily be traced to him. And as much as Deeny wanted to deny it, even to himself, his power was not as great yet as he had hoped. He had used up what felt like gallons of will and energy to get the Writer to come willingly to him, and while it was true that the death of the fat man had strengthened Deeny, he had been all but empty when it happened. It would be months before he had the power to cloak the house and the incident from the eyes of on-lookers with his strange forces.

  They did not have months.

  The Writer had stopped at one wall where he seemed to be looking at a watercolor painting of a wooded hillside Harmon had hung there. Deeny quickly realized however, that he was not looking at the landscape, but his face reflected in it. He had been weeping when they’d left the night before, directly after the attack, but that phase seemed over. Deeny had thought he had wanted the Writer to stop crying, but what had replaced the tears seemed worse somehow: a hollow-eyed, useless energy.

  Deeny fought down his disgust for the guilt the Writer harbored and was about to speak, start asking about options, when the Writer suddenly said, “You pulled the trigger. I didn’t.” He couldn’t tell if he was angry with him, Deeny, or disappointed in himself.

  “I helped.”

  “BUT WOULD I HAVE?” the Writer screamed, filling the room with a sound which seemed, to Deeny, even louder than the gun’s report. “Would I have?” He repeated, looking feral. Despite his own nature, Deeny felt a tiny pang of human fear, a useless artifact of his former life. Had circumstances been lighter, Deeny would have found humor in the fact that he was, in some insignificant way, afraid of the Writer, something he had never before considered within the realm of possibility.

  The Writer finally turned to Deeny, visibly shaking. His eyes stared beyond the world. “I just… I don’t know. If I would… if I could have…” He smacked his back against the wall, knocking the watercolor down onto the carpet, where the glass cracked. As if it had been something within himself cracking, and not just the glass, he grabbed the top of a halogen floor lamp and smashed it into the wall, inviting further darkness into the room with the bulb’s expiration. Then he threw himself back on the wall and slid down onto his butt.

  Deeny didn’t mean to, but he let one. It was loud and smelly.

  Wretched affection for the Writer lurched again in Deeny’s heart. He didn’t like seeing the man in such pain. But there was work to be done and these feelings would have to wait.

  “I only helped,” Deeny said. “Next time it will be you alone.” Deeny lifted himself from the couch and made his way over to the Writer on the floor. He placed a large hand on his friend’s shaking shoulder. His anti-light lingered on the couch, and slowly it began to grow near them. “But I need your help now. We have to deal with this… this word that is sounding in your brain… these…”

  “Police,” the Writer finished for him. “you mean the police!”

  “Yes.” Deeny crouched down further, resting his tremendous rear on the heels of his feet. “The police. The protectors, like the one I used on you in the canyon.” Renewed anger at his own stupid blindness flared up again in Deeny. How could he have allowed this to slip away from him so soon?

  The Writer seemed to calm a little in response to Deeny’s reassuring touch. Perhaps it helped him to have a problem to work on with his wonderful mind. Eventually the Writer said, “I see only one possible way out. Donald is well known around here. People know he has young women in his house like this often. She is certainly—almost certainly—from Salt Lake or somewhere near there.” Deeny had to probe around in the Writer’s head to give context to the words. “If she’s not, if she’s from around here, we’re sunk. But if she is from Salt Lake, or anywhere far away, then we’ve got a shot.”

  “Why, what can we do?”

  “Donald Harmon doesn’t work. He makes money off the land his grandfather left him. He has a lot in savings—or so he says—so he doesn’t deal with anyone in particular from day to day. No boss, no landlord. Nothing. So maybe no one will know he’s not around. Maybe no one will miss him. There will be a search for the girl, sure, but if she just hopped into his car from a bar or a club there’s no way they will track her way out here. At least, not right off the bat. At the very least, we might have some time.”

  Panic receded from Deeny slowly, like a tide going out. “Time is all we really need.” He chanced a small grin and said, “so we just kill the girl and leave her, it is—”

  “No.”

  “Writer…” Deeny spoke as if to reassure, to comfort, “you must see—”

  “We’re not talking about this, Deeny. This is non-negotiable. She lives.” And then he added, “for now.” Deeny didn’t know if he was sincere, or spoke only to appease him. “I’m not ready to kill her in cold blood.”

  Deeny knew that now was not the time to demand or press, dealing with a human soul required much more delicacy than he could have ever imagined, but it was hard; the girl was theirs. It would be such an easy thing… “Well,” he said, “we will need to kill someone. If we want to hide we need my power. That comes from murder. You need to do it this time. You alone.”

  “I know,” the Writer said, and again a wretched swelling of something like love threatened Deeny. He had not expected to care for the Writer or anyone else, and that affection seemed more dangerous to him at the moment of its swelling than any number of police, for it was more than mortal.

  2

  Paul passed the bathroom, trying not to think about the burned, shot, cut, dead body in the tub. Neither of them knew why he’d disfigured the body; it had felt natural, inevitable. He went to the breathing girl in the bedroom. He had wrapped her in a sheet to cover her nakedness before asking Deeny to tie her up. Deeny had objected, claiming that interacting with the physical plane in such a manner would require even more energy, energy they had precious little of to spare, but Paul had insisted, knowing the cost it would exact from him would be even more irreparable. Deeny
hadn’t done a great job, as he had been rushed to complete as much as possible in the short time he could make himself fully physical, but one look at the girl’s wasted frame (and indeed one look is all Paul had made before covering her) was enough to know that she was not fighting fit.

  Now that they had a plan, or at least a hope of delivery, Paul felt that he could face her. He had to know where she was from, and if anyone would come looking this way. Paul knelt next to her to inspect her condition. Her head was bruised, but he could tell nothing else of the wound. It had not bled much, which Paul decided was a good sign, though he knew a concussion would not be visible from the outside.

  He saw how dirty her long blonde hair was, and wondered if she might have even been homeless, but he wasn’t ready to start wishing for that kind of luck. She wasn’t quite unconscious or conscious, but somewhere in between. He lifted her body up into sitting position facing away from him so she could only see one wall with a closed closet door. He said—but could not believe he was saying—“If you swear to not scream, I will remove the gag from your mouth. I won’t hurt you.” He swallowed. “I promise.”

  Her head dipped and nodded, but Paul didn’t think this was in response to his words.

  Suddenly, the inhumanity of seeing her bound hit him all at once. He knelt behind her, and held her by one shoulder so she wouldn’t fall. An urge, the opposite of anything primal, swelled within, and he wanted to release her, release her and suffer whatever consequence might follow. It wasn’t right for a person to be tied like this; how would he feel if it were he, kept against his will? What if it were Jen? Wasn’t this girl someone’s daughter? Being kidnapped was a kind of hell, wasn’t it?

  Kidnap… How could he…?

  Deeny noticed Paul’s hesitation and came over. He put his hand on Paul’s shoulder, creating a chain three beings long, as Paul was still steadying the girl with his own hand.