Tomorrow I Will Kill Again

by Matthew Allred

  All around him hung intricately embroidered curtains, obscuring everything more than a few feet beyond him in every direction. He realized that even around the altar there was no floor. Beneath the cushion area for his knees, there were only more layered curtains, thin as sheets. They seemed lit by some kind of sacred, cool, white flame.

  He clasped his hands together and continued the prayer he’d begun before sleeping.

  More so than at any other time in his life, Clancy Miller had the sensation that God heard every word as he prayed. Not only that He was listening, but that He was listening from some place very close, as a man would with human ears.

  Miller prayed that Kenner would be stopped, that Deeny would be stopped. He prayed that Detective Matthews would believe and understand him, though he had the feeling that was already the case. He prayed for Mary’s soul, though he knew there were many others that needed his faith at this time far more than she. And then, though it shamed him to do so, he prayed for his own life.

  “I want to live,” he said.

  Some voice, completely indeterminate in gender, attitude, age, or location said, “Thou art certain?”

  And then Miller was not. Was it truly that he wanted to continue life, or was it that he did not want to die at the hands of a madman? Surely, this was not unreasonable.

  “I do not want to be killed by him,” Miller said. “I am certain of that.”

  The light from everywhere increased, and though the draped curtains stirred only slightly, a powerful, invigorating wind began to blow. It filled a place in Miller that had been empty forever.

  In the dream, the voice spoke again, this time as a mighty thunder:

  “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful in your duty. I shall now give unto you many duties, and I shall make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

  †

  In the morning, Emma found him dead, looking more peaceful than she had ever seen a man. She was not too shocked or saddened by his passing to keep from thinking what a terrible houseguest he had been.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “BUT IT WAS IN SELF-DEFENSE, does that really count?”

  “You can feel that it does. Writer, as much as I admire you, I grow frustrated by how slowly you allow your eyes to open. It does not matter if it is fast or slow, it does not matter if they feel pain or fear, although these things are good. It does not matter if it is in rage, passion, or if it is to protect yourself or someone that you care for. The only thing that matters is that a life is extinguished, and another, and another.”

  Near the frozen lake, they sat by the shore, Paul in a camping chair and Deeny on the snow. The night was overcast, but the moon was bright. A bare, limp wind periodically blew. Upon returning, Paul had noticed the smell of the pine trees and wondered why he had not noticed them at camp before. He supposed he had simply gotten used to them.

  Paul said, “Why?”

  Deeny shrugged. “It is just what the necklace needs.”

  “You know, I used to think that it was you that wanted all this.”

  “It is, Writer, it is. The necklace and I are connected.”

  “So you, and the necklace, you just want us to murder as many as we can?”

  “Yes. That is all.”

  “Then what do you and Sean mean when you say I will become a new god? This… Mayhem?”

  Deeny’s face darkened. His grin was gone.

  Paul repeated, “What does it mean?”

  “I… I am not sure. I would be happy with what you have written.” Deeny let his black eyes rest on Paul’s face, but did not really seem to be looking at him in particular. “Death after death. That is what the necklace wants of me, and it is what I want. Sean is a part of me, in a sense he is me, but the first mention I heard of this Mayhem was from him.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I do not know.”

  “When I… when I killed Kyle Weaver, I saw something I didn’t understand.”

  “What?” Deeny said, an edge to his voice.

  “I can’t seem to remember. When the power flowed away from me to you I couldn’t see or understand it anymore.”

  “When Sean comes back from work we will ask him.” Without another word Deeny closed his eyes and returned to his meditating.

  †

  Paul felt too strange to talk with Jen, so he went for a solitary walk in the woods. After about five minutes, snow began to fall, but in the thicker parts of the evergreens he could barely tell. It crunched underfoot, but Paul could hear virtually no other sounds. The cold was welcome to him. He realized he hadn’t eaten in almost two days, but he had no desire for food. The image of the man’s face turning from human to mess kept coming back to him—at first it was repulsive, but each time it returned it seemed more surreal and beautiful, like a painting. Eventually the image became a thing disconnected from human pain or gore. It was just color and movement and nothing.

  Perhaps he was meant to do this. Maybe it wasn’t wrong.

  Or maybe, right and wrong had no part of it. Maybe it was just the next step the world must inevitably take. In an opening of the evergreen canopy above, a pretty swirl of flakes came down, almost in a continual stream. It was too dark for him to see them well, but he could, somehow.

  He thought about how easy it had been to get to this point. First, he killed the Deeny that met him in the bathroom. Then Deeny pulled the trigger on Donald Harmon. Then this man Kyle Weaver gave Paul no choice but to kill him when the time came. The whole endeavor seemed charmed, some might even use the word destined.

  But what was the next step?

  Death.

  Simple as that. The next step, and the next, and the next… were all death. But it wasn’t like Deeny thought, it wasn’t just death forever, on and on into eternity. Perhaps that was a lie the green necklace used to pacify Deeny, and even if Deeny could see that, he would pretend not to because anything else was too painful.

  Paul had not given enough thought to that necklace. What was it? Was it perhaps more to blame than Deeny for bringing Paul to this point? Paul found it difficult to turn his thoughts toward it for too long. He believed the true picture would be revealed as they continued down this path. Each life taken would show another piece of what actually waited for him.

  Mayhem.

  But where does Jen fit in?

  She doesn’t.

  Paul knew that. She was, at best, another step in the path. But she wasn’t really a danger to him or the necklace. She was a mortal, like all of them. It was only the human love he had cultivated for her that held him back from ending her and tapping into another wealth of power like the one they’d acquired from Kyle Weaver. And what was his excuse for the girl, Clare? Why could he not simply kill her and see more of the unavoidable revelation?

  Feeling surer than he had in months, he turned back to camp to do just that, to take Clare out, but he became confused before reaching her tent. Instead, he passed by the women’s tent and went into his own, where he slept alone. He missed Jen. He was glad Cards slept with her; at least she was not utterly alone. It was so strange to think she was less than twenty yards from him, and yet he could not go to her. It was possible that he would never find comfort in her arms or smile or warmth again.

  He had to banish this from his mind, for it threatened their whole endeavor. Their purpose. He knew nothing would be better for him in that moment than to go to the women’s tent and kill them both, right now, no hesitation—but he also knew he couldn’t do it. He needed to sleep, to rest and realign his priorities. Tired as he was now, he was useless.

  Deeny would have to talk to Sean alone when Sean came home. Paul was exhausted. As his brain turned to sleepy mush, one final thought offered him the first real smile he’d enjoyed in what felt like a very long time:

  Tomorrow I will kill again.

  2

  Clare had enough presence of mind to laugh at this being her ultimate trip. Sh
e was going to die from stopping junk cold, and she knew it. Her crotch, a source of constant discomfort for the last few days, was now on fire. If she could have dug the offending organs out, she would have. Sometimes her head throbbed and banged as if her brain were a wild beast, crazy to get out. Other times she felt her brain deflating like an old balloon, steeped in all the agony such a thing would entail.

  Her bones were rods of misery, itch-baking her from the inside out.

  She floated in an ocean; every wave was pure cleansing pain.

  Her body was buried in the earth. The dirt was tiny sewing needles, and tribal men danced above it, pushing the needles in again at new angles with each footfall.

  She was in the basement again. Kidney Lake was a million miles away. Uncle Garry was hitting her. Her under-wire sliced into her armpit and left breast as he pulled her bra over her head for the third time that day, and the tender wound oozed blood and grew to fill her whole body until she was nothing but a mass of bleeding sores. She cried out for her death, no longer wanting drugs, thinking nothing of salvation for her soul.

  †

  Jen watched Clare from her half of the tent, weeping, clutching Cards, powerless, knowing there was no reason to call out for Paul or anybody.

  3

  Matthews had been surprised to hear about Miller’s death. He would be taking a helicopter to investigate alone without any arguments from the old man. Well, not alone alone. Chase Duckworth, a private pilot their department had hired on a couple of occasions, would be flying, and Officer Shirley Cada would be going with him. She was green but had already proven she had what it took, a little bit of steel in the belly, as his old police chief used to say.

  The night before he planned to leave, Matthews sat in his office, again with the lights off. The murder book was on the desk, but he’d already thumbed through it a hundred times. There was nothing more it could do for him. He had the distinct feeling of preparing for war. That said, he also had the feeling that there was nothing he could do at this point to prepare except maybe offer a prayer and call his older brother, Scott. Matthews’ parents were both long gone; he was the youngest of their seven kids. Scott was really the only family Matthews was close to.

  Like Miller, Matthews had already come to terms with the fact that he might not be returning from this little investigation, though he felt no immediate inclination to tell anyone about his hunch. Whatever happened happened—he just knew he had to go up there. It was something akin, perhaps, to his destiny.

  He picked up the phone that, as always, felt like a toy in his hand, and punched in Scott’s number with his big fingers.

  After a few rings, the high, mild voice of his brother said, “Hey, Shad, what’s up?” In the background he could hear little kids, Scott’s grandchildren, shouting and laughing. Matthews was overcome with a rush of harsh, warm emotion. If he did die, he’d never see those little ones again, and he’d certainly never get the kids of his own that he still sometimes hoped for, despite being in his forties.

  “You there?” his brother said.

  Matthews forced his own voice not to crack and said, “Yeah. Sorry. Nothing serious. Just wanted to check in. Sounds like you’ve got a lot going on over there.” He made himself laugh.

  “Yeah, kind of,” his brother said. “But I still got time if you need something.”

  “Oh. Oh, no, nothing really. Just a social call. I’ll try you another time.”

  His brother said, “You sure? Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright, then. Thanks for the call.”

  “Just—Scott?” Matthews said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Just know I love you and pass on my love to the fam, okay?”

  A pause. “Okay, Shad. You call anytime. I mean it.”

  “Goodbye, Scott.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Matthews put the receiver down. He didn’t know what he was expecting. The feeling of doom had lifted from him a bit, and he almost felt silly for calling. Maybe nothing would happen tomorrow. After all, the old man had seen it in a dream. Matthews had even had to lie to his superiors to get the copter. He told them Kenner had mentioned to the old man that he would be headed up to Kidney Lake.

  The more he thought about it, the more he could make himself believe that when they got there they’d find nothing but wildlife.

  4

  Paul was laughing and laughing. Melodramatically. Incessantly. He laughed until he was hoarse, and then, all but drained of energy, began to lick his blood-stained fingers with quick, passionate motions of the tongue. He kept chuckling quietly in the back alley in downtown Coalville, as if it could even be called a downtown. One of the ten or so streetlamps in town shown like the light of a searching beacon, but Paul had nothing to fear from the probing lights of the world.

  Something, maybe Deeny’s power, maybe the necklace, maybe his own growing godhood, had led him here to kill an old beggar just moments before he would have died from winter exposure. Paul was still not ready to kill hodge-podge, at random, but he could do this. He had stabbed the man with a knife he’d found in camp. Simple as that; it had been right outside his door. A long-bladed hunting knife; extremely sharp. The man had not put up much of a fight.

  As Deeny had reminded him, it did not matter that the life was extinguished only minutes or seconds before it would have anyway, the only important thing was the killing. He had no worries of police or any other passerby; their power was growing. Three more deaths in as many days.

  He again felt the glowing pulsing green light of energy from the kill. He again, now for the fourth time, glimpsed the clockwork machinations that constantly ran beneath and behind the universe men and women see with their mortal eyes. He’d now killed Harmon, Weaver, and three beggars like this. Again—if only for a passing, primal instant—he wanted nothing but to pull that structure of gears down. The vision faded, as did the memory of it, but not as fully this time. He did not know what he, as Mayhem, was meant for, but he did know that it was something grand and far-reaching.

  He looked at the slack face of the murdered beggar and felt nothing negative. Deeny’s puny murders would satisfy him for only so long. But for now they did indeed satisfy… satisfy and more. The power flowed away from him to the east, toward Kidney Lake, but—more so than before—some of that green power stayed in him, made him strong.

  In his elation he nearly killed again before leaving town, but he lost his nerve. On his walk back to his getaway car he became disgusted with the murder. He threw the knife in a gutter, wanting to never see it again or anything like it.

  Sean, this time driving an old, stolen Corsica, seemed too pleased or bloated to reprimand him for not killing anyone else, though it would have been so easy. They drove back toward camp to check in with Deeny. Soon, Deeny would want to come with him. He would not be able to orchestrate the acts himself, but Deeny seemed sure that watching the extinguishing lives would charge him further.

  On the drive home Paul silently vowed to himself that he would kill Clare when they got back to camp. There was no reason not to. His momentary disgust with killing had disappeared. Clare was a liability. And anyway, she was suffering. Paul had heard her screaming. He would probably be doing her a favor.

  But once they actually got there, after ditching the car in the woods and making the hike up in the cold, he again became profoundly confused before reaching her tent. Again, he returned to his own tent to sleep—or more likely simply lie down and rest—without as much as speaking to Jen or the girl.

  He had not actually seen or spoken to either of them in three days. He also did not talk to Deeny. A rift between them had taken hold the last few days. He wished it was not true, but Deeny was not as pleased as he had been before—as he should be now—with the recent murders. Sean had become more of a driving force than Deeny.

  As Paul rested, he went to the edge of something that was like sleep.

  †

  Paul was standing
on a ridge near the outskirts of camp. The water stretched out on one side and the trees on the other. He watched the snow fall in blizzard-like heaps. Then the scene below him changed, and the snow melted like a bad claymation video. Each tree grew in both height and width. Large, lush patches of grass sprouted up in many places. A hundred or more people came from somewhere to swim and fish in the lake; they ignored the two big tents that made up Paul’s campsite.

  The water turned a beautiful azure-blue; the cloudless sky smiled down at the fertility and magnificence of the scene below. Then that friendly sky deepened in color, turning from bright blue to purple then pink, finally resting at blood red. Green leaves and green needles fell off the branches of the trees as they continued to grow. The soft, thick grass became rough and reddish-purple, but still it grew and grew. The people, who had not noticed the shifting colors, began struggling to get out of the water. It had become soupy and white; bubbles crept up to the surface from some fathoms below. The faces of the swimmers distorted in agony, their mouths opened in large O’s of pain, but Paul could hear nothing except a faint, wispy breeze. The sunbathers ran to escape the growing body of pale, opaque lake water that reached out for them. Some didn’t get away in time and were sucked under the frothy water. The overgrown grassy patches cut the legs and arms of those who did manage to run, and soon they were covered in bleeding wounds, howling in terror. The sharpened blades of grass may have been poisonous, for some people were falling over into them, motionless.

  The sky then darkened further, the branches of the trees reached up into it and connected with the unnatural red tendrils descending from some unknowable place in the sky. The dead and dying bodies of the people of the lake mixed with the grass and trees as they grew and grew and grew. The wind grew louder.