by Jason Parent
“Where is he?”
“In the bedroom.” Morgan’s outstretched finger pointed deeper into the apartment. “Please don’t kill him.”
Reilly glanced over her shoulder but only for a second. “Stay here. I’ll—” Her words were cut short by the swinging of a baseball bat.
The black shadow, immersed by smoke, turned the tan color of polished wood as the bat swung swiftly toward her. Reilly recognized her peril before her thoughts could fully process it. Gun held high, she pulled its trigger, aiming and firing all within a split second.
A woman screamed, and Reilly couldn’t tell if it was her or someone else. She felt excruciating pain around her shoulder, then nothing. Her world darkened as she fell to the floor.
As her consciousness waned, Reilly saw Morgan standing over her, a wild-eyed glare and savage smile contorting her face. Morgan raised the bat over her head in preparation for what Reilly knew would be a deadly strike. She was powerless to save herself.
But the bat fell from Morgan’s hands. Morgan fell next. She coughed, and blood ran from the corner of her mouth. The bat dropped from her trembling hands. In the black-and-white haze of the apartment, the red-ruby sparkle of Morgan’s blood painted a vibrant reminder of life’s imperfections.
Even after everything outside went quiet and no one had come for him, Clive lay still, pervaded by incapacitating chemicals, imprisoned without walls. He could do nothing but subject himself to unwanted but recurring thoughts, victimized by an onslaught of his own memories, which had been let free by a malevolent bitch of a spider. It was all true. He saw everything he’d done. He saw each and every explosion, all meticulously planned and executed except one. They played and replayed like mini action movies in his mind. He didn’t understand them and couldn’t accept them.
A new voice for which Chester couldn’t be held responsible emerged. It swelled in with the volatility and motives of another Clive, a sicker, more demented version of the real thing. Or was it the real thing? Clive wondered if he was the imposter. This invisible and unlocked part of him couldn’t be reconciled with the passive, semi-moral Clive Menard whom he thought he was. His darker self reveled in death, destruction, chaos. It craved more. It ordered Clive to carry on its deadly ways.
Worst of all, it laughed at Clive, mocking his weakness. Who was this stranger inside him, this dark passenger, fighting for control, screaming to be heard? Soon, Clive would succumb to it. Soon, Clive’s sanity would cease to exist, and his darkness would reign free.
He pined for an escape, not only from his bed, but from Chester and himself. Yet the venom kept him immobilized. Or was it fear? Clive couldn’t be certain. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Its sting was like a slap to the face. He struggled to move. Not even a toe would wiggle.
Through his suffering, Chester’s berating continued. She criticized his botched villainy—the imperfect bombing of Mayor Robert Sousa—blamed it for their falling out. Chester was convinced Clive’s solo explosion had led to Reilly’s suspicions and their downfall.
I was smart, she shouted. I was precise, and I was infallible. My crimes left no evidence. Without me, you would have landed yourself in prison for a sentence longer than your short lifespan—or worse, an early grave.
Clive tried to drown out Chester’s criticisms. She only pushed harder.
I had a small matter to address, a lowly man to kill. I was only gone for a night. How could you have been so impulsive? She demanded to know why Clive had gone it alone. She demanded to know why he would risk their success on some bullshit plight for notoriety.
Clive had no answers. He couldn’t concentrate. Chester’s voice penetrated his every thought. It fueled his anger. Surely, he wasn’t as bad as the things he’d done. He wasn’t a monster. Chester had fucked up his wiring. This had to be her fault.
“You turned me into this! You made me kill all those people!”
So typical of you, passing the buck. You would try to convince yourself of that, wouldn’t you? No, Clive. I didn’t do anything to you. I simply gave you the sophistication to carry out your own desires more competently.
The paralysis weakening, Clive shook his head, but denial wouldn’t stick. He was aware of everything he’d done. The reasons behind his actions remained a mystery to him. The watersheds in his tear ducts broke loose. His heart hurt so badly that he thought it might rip itself from his ribcage and the ligaments and arteries holding it in place. He needed Morgan. Morgan would make it all right again. That is, if Morgan was all right herself.
“Morgan!” Clive howled. Again, he tried to go to her, but he struggled to move. He strained for several moments but eventually gave up. At last, he was defeated. Chester had won. Madness crept over his mind—the little left that hadn’t yet been corrupted. He sulked in a pool of his own drool and snot.
“How dare you do this to me!” a voice threatened. Clive spoke the words, but they came from the stranger inside him. “I don’t need you to kill!”
Ah, welcome back, friend. It’s been a while.
“Oh God—”
Still fighting it, Clive? You can’t win. He’s here. Let him in.
Clive’s rational mind tried to wall out the stranger. It kept hammering away at the wall with a sledgehammer. Clive focused on something real to him, something he assumed his other self wouldn’t appreciate. He focused on Morgan.
“What’s going to happen to her?”
Morgan? How should I know? By the sound of things, everyone out there is probably dead, and Morgan would have fulfilled her role nicely. So, let’s focus on the living, those in the here and now, shall we, Clive?
“Then what’s going to happen to me?”
I suggest we go on like we were.
“What? Blowing up shit? Killing people?”
Why not? Sounds good to me. As long as you follow my instructions, we’ll never get caught. What’s the expression? We’ll “get away with murder”? Except in our case, it won’t be just an expression.
“I don’t care about getting caught! You never… we never should have killed anyone in the first place! Why me, Chester? Why did you make me do such horrible things?”
For the last time, I didn’t make you do a damn thing. The explosions were all your idea. You even picked the locations. I just helped you make them a little bigger, a little better, and a bit more discreet. Kept your ass out of prison is what I did. I helped you. I believed in you. I kept you safe so that we could continue our mission, dismantling society through fear and, well, explosives.
“That’s not my mission! I don’t want that!”
Of course you do, Clive. I didn’t make you into who you are. I only allowed you to see it. This argument is getting redundant. I know the truth. You know truth. You know that I know that you know the truth. I guess Mayor Sousa’s death was a blessing in disguise. Because I wasn’t there, you can’t blame me for it. You know you did it. And you know you liked it.
“No… I did like it! That’s so fucked-up! How could I? Why?”
Accept the man you are, Clive. Embrace him. You can disregard this pathetic, empty version of yourself and carry on without fear, sadness, and all the other emotions that have helped you get nowhere in life. Cast off your mental constraints. Let him in, and you’ll be so much happier.
Real acceptance came hard. He closed his eyes and cried. “I killed those people. Everything that has happened, everything… it’s all my fault.”
Everything Chester had told him, everything he’d insisted was a lie, it all was true. Clive was a cold-blooded killer. At least, a part of him was. A part of him he neither knew nor understood. A part of him he wanted gone.
What could he do about it? Nothing—Wait… my toes! He felt them curl up. Sensation returned to his outer extremities. One leg worked. He threw it off the bed. The other leg didn’t. He fell to the floor. He crawled on his stomach toward the door. With his neck immobilized, his cheek, nose, and chin scraped along the carpet, creating a rug-burned mess.
 
; Still, his inner struggle raged on. It manifested in violent mood swings. A wild conviction sent him sprawling forward. By the time he made it halfway to the door, Clive was on his hands and knees. By the time he reached the door, he was standing, his body once again under his control.
Where are you going, Clive?
He ignored Chester, opened the door, and stumbled into the ruins he once called his living room. He coughed as the ashen air wafted by, caught in a spiraling wind. Squinting, he waved away the dust dancing in front of him. When he’d adjusted to the caustic atmosphere, he stood in awe at the gaping hole and partially missing stairwell. Then he saw the bodies.
Detective Reilly laid only a few yards from his bedroom door. He nearly tripped as his foot caught underneath her outstretched arm. Her eyes were closed. Her hair was matted by blood. More blood and pus oozed from her shoulder. She wasn’t moving.
Is that bone? Clive covered his mouth when he realized the nature of the object protruding from the detective’s shoulder. He couldn’t hold it back. He turned away and retched.
Reilly’s collarbone had snapped in two. The broken bone punctured like splintered wood through her skin and stabbed at her neck, no more than a centimeter from piercing her jugular vein and ending her life. She bled profusely from an open wound across the side of her head, having obviously been struck by a blunt object. The polished but now blood-tarnished bat beside her seemed the most likely culprit.
When Clive finished barfing, he wiped his mouth. Keeled over, he noticed a hand with a few twitching fingers extending from behind a nearby chair. Lavender polish, the same color Morgan always used, covered the nails. He rushed to her side.
Morgan lay face-first on the carpet. Tears filled Clive’s eyes. He rolled her over and cradled her in his arms. Gently, he rocked her limp body, comforting her as she’d once tried to comfort him.
“Clive,” she muttered. Blood gurgled from the bullet hole in her chest. Dark blood.
Clive smiled, the tears dripping with newfound ferocity. “I thought you were—”
“Am I dead? This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Mucus dribbled from Clive’s nose. Chester slid out with it, but Clive was too distraught to recognize his opportunity.
“Chester… what’s happening?” Morgan struggled to speak. “You promised me. You promised we’d be together forever if I helped you protect him. You promised me, Chester!” she screamed, the pained wail of the dying in her voice. “You promised me!”
“What did you say?” Clive couldn’t believe he’d heard what he thought he heard. Morgan couldn’t possibly know anything about Chester. Still, he heard what he heard.
Morgan continued talking but not to Clive. “You said you’d make him love me,” she whimpered. Clive felt her warm tears dampen his sleeve. “You said we’d be together forever. Until the day we died. You said… for…”
The words trailed off. Morgan collapsed, her dead weight heavy in his arms. Her breaths came fewer and fewer.
“How do you know Chester?” Clive shouted. He shook Morgan, but she did not respond. Could she possibly have betrayed him? Was she in league with the spider? Whatever spark of life had shimmered inside him burned out with Morgan’s. That day knew only death.
Chester scurried back into her home. Clive felt her scuttling and tried to snot-rocket her out his nostril, but he was too late. Had she come out just to watch Morgan die?
Forget the bitch, Clive. She wasn’t good enough for you. Besides, you have me now.
“You!” Clive’s face flushed hot in anger. The vein in his temple pulsated with blood. His migraines returned tenfold. This time, they weren’t Chester’s doing. “I’ll take care of you!”
Clive tossed Morgan’s lifeless body from his lap. He scrambled to his feet and charged toward his bedroom. The scissors rested on his bed where he’d left them.
Now hold on a second, Clive. Calm down, buddy. You’re not thinking clearly.
Chester seemed frightened by Clive’s thoughts. They were all over the place. Two halves of the same person were screaming out commands, ordering Clive’s body this way and that. One voice was clearly winning, but Clive couldn’t determine which. Still, he bet his chance to rid himself of Chester hadn’t passed him by. She’d detached herself from Clive’s controls to get a front-row seat to Morgan’s demise. If he was going to act, there was no time like the present.
“I’m thinking clear enough to know that you’re never going to leave me alone. You’re just going to keep on tormenting me until I end up like Derek, Morgan, and all the others. Oh God! Who knows how many there have been? So, Chester, for the first time, I am thinking clearly, clear enough to know that together, we’ll keep killing innocent people until we’re caught or get killed ourselves. But that’s not going to happen. I’m going to stop it. So if you want someone dead so much, I say, you first!”
I wouldn’t do that, Clive.
Clive lunged for the scissors. He feared Chester would subdue him before he reached them. But by the time Chester seemed to realize what exactly Clive had in mind, it was too late.
He clenched the scissors and drove their point deep into his ear. Then he collapsed onto the bed, numb and twitching.
Life abandoned his body quickly. His vision clouded, and the room became a ghastly contorted image, a Renaissance portrait of hell fading to black.
“Did I get you?” Clive asked, his eyes going dark as the blood flowed behind them.
No, Clive. You didn’t get me. Hell of a mess you made in here, though.
“Is it over?”
Yeah, it’s over.
“Did I win?”
We’ll call it a tie. Good-bye, Clive.
Not waiting for the body to get cold, Chester skirted over the shiny metal obstruction that had crashed through her living room. With a heavy sigh, not of sadness, but of disappointment—so much wasted potential—she crawled out of Clive’s ear. She paused briefly on his lobe, a moment of respect for the recently departed. Then she lowered herself on her web, dropped down to the carpet, and left Clive’s apartment forever.
CHAPTER 53
R eilly went to the wake, looking for closure. Her wheel-chair rolled up the ramp to the Steinbeck Funeral Home, pushed by a low-ranking officer. She looked like hell had chewed her up, swallowed her, then regurgitated her back into this world. Her neck and upper torso were locked in place by a giant cast. Her collarbone had been shoved back into place and the tissue around it sewn together. Much of her shoulder had been pulverized into particles of calcium and dust. Its reconstruction was painstaking, requiring lots of nuts, bolts, and metal plates.
Her head was wrapped in gauze, covering the fissure Kevin’s keepsake bat had opened in her skull. Repairing the wound beneath was no joy either. It would never entirely heal. The scars would be reminders of a case completed. She even had to wear one of those ridiculous-looking sticks to prop her arm up and hold it in place.
All about the remainder of her body were bruises and cuts. Bandages and clothes covered most of them, except the lacerations on her face. She wouldn’t be going on any dates in the near future.
Still, Reilly was fortunate. Her brain suffered no damage, and her body was on the mend. She was even offered a nice, long leave of absence, though she wouldn’t take it. Her friend and partner’s leave was more permanent.
After signing the guestbook, the officer, whose name Reilly cared not to ask, wheeled her into the line for a casket viewing. Pretty big crowd for a murderer.
Scanning the room, she recognized some of the faces from the Harcourt Insurance Company. A heavyset woman in a gaudy dress bawled in one of the seats. Consoling her was none other than Felix Winters. His hand was on the woman’s upper thigh.
Then again, she thought, they still don’t know he was a murderer.
Beside the coffin, two females stood, one little and one larger. The little one stood solemn, her composure a stark contrast to the despondent older woman beside her.
Reilly rec
ognized the little girl from her investigation—Victoria Menard. She was finely decked in a casual deep-purple dress. Plastic butterflies of the same deep purple held her hair back.
Reilly presumed the older woman to be Clive’s mother. She wore a plain black business suit adorned only by the pearl necklace hanging low on her bosom. Her suit was wrinkled, undoubtedly from all the hugging and consolation. Her tears hadn’t stopped since Reilly had first laid eyes on her. Victoria, on the other hand, looked as out of place as a priest at a swinger’s convention.
An old couple stopped and knelt in front of the casket. Some distant aunt and uncle perhaps? Reilly watched as they prayed and prayed then prayed some more. She grew impatient as she listened for an “Amen.”
What’s taking them so long? Reilly’s discontent mounted. She ordered the patrolman to wheel her beyond the casket to the receiving line.
As she crossed the room, she could feel the many eyes upon her. Were their stares accusatory? She was thankful for the bandages that partly mummified her. She didn’t know if the crowd recognized her as the Fall River detective dragged unconscious by paramedics from their recently departed loved one’s apartment. Were they simply staring at her because she looked like a victim of medical restoration? She hoped it was her appearance and not her actions that captivated their attention.
Reilly rolled over to Clive’s mother just in time to cut off the now-disgruntled old couple who’d finally finished paying their respects. The old man let out a noticeable “humph” as Reilly’s wheel rolled over his toes.
“Henry, she’s in a wheelchair,” Reilly heard the old woman whisper. Reilly paid them no attention. She stared up at Clive’s mother, who seemed to be avoiding eye contact.
“Ms. Menard?” she said.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Clive’s mother didn’t respond. She didn’t seem to know who the disabled person in front of her was. She bowed her head and continued to cry. Reilly continued down the line.