“Get yo’self back to that house right his minute, Jimmy-boy!” she screeched, wavin’ her hands around like her tail was on fire. That skinny little stick wobbled around in the air, but we knowed better than to think it would break. Them green wood switches she picked would bend into all sortsa knots before they’d up and break. “Yo’ daddy is gonna wring yo’ neck for what you done gone and did!” The boy took off runnin’ like his tail was gonna be on fire...and it prob’ly was, too, cause his momma really liked her whippin’ sticks. She caught me ’cross the knees one time for smartin’ off to her. I never did it again, I tell you what.
After Jimmy run off and left me standin’ knee-deep in the cool water with my shoes up on a sunny rock, I bent down and picked up somethin’ outta the water. It was a stone; the flattest, shiniest one I ever seen. It was bright white, but it had a streak of sparkly black runnin’ right down its middle.
I’m gonna have your soul, Mickey.
I felt the voice, like a cold chill of goose bumps up my back and my arms. It sounded like the wind, like nature had found her voice and wasn’t too happy with me.
You can’t run, and you can’t hide, Mickey. I’m gonna take your soul straight to Hell.
“Who’s there?” I called out. Now, don’t get me wrong...I was scared. So scared I didn’t notice the warm trickle down the inside of my right leg ’til long after I’d gone screamin’ home and crawled up cryin’ in my momma’s arms.
You know who I am, Mickey. Don’t play dumb.
“Now you listen to me, you dirty ol’ Devil!” I screamed. I know I sound a lot braver than I was, but when you’re eight years old, you ain’t got the good sense God gave a wet paper bag. “You gonna turn right back around and you is gonna go straight back to Heck!” I couldn’t say ‘Hell’ yet. Momma woulda washed my mouth out for sure. It didn’t matter. The Devil knew what I was talking about.
Tell me, Mickey...What’s it like to be afraid of something you can’t see?
“I don’t wanna see you! I want you to leave me alone!” I turned right around and I ran all the way home, leavin’ my shoes sittin’ on that rock. I got a whoopin’ like you wouldn’t believe for it, too. She wanted my Daddy to send me back down to the crick to get ’em cause they costed a whole fifteen dollars and eighty-three cents, but it was already gettin’ dark and my Daddy said no he weren’t gonna make me do it ’cause I might get hurt.
The next day I went back down by the crick. I told Momma I was goin’ to get my shoes, but I was really goin’ with Jimmy an’ our friend Timmy Barnes to skip some more stones. My shoes was still sittin’ there waitin’ on me, an’ that was when I realized I’d done gone and made a mess of myself for nothin’. There wasn’t nobody waitin’ to take my soul.
After awhile Timmy went home, and not long after that Jimmy’s momma came and got him, still squealin’ her head off over something Jimmy gone and did now. I shoulda gone home when them boys left me, but I was feelin’ brave. I wanted to prove that I could be a big boy, so I stuck my hands down in the water and pulled up a handful of stones.
In the middle of those stones was another solid white one with a sparkly, black vein. It mighta been the same one I picked up yest’day, cause I don’t remember if I dropped it or not.
I have your shoes, Mickey.
I stopped to listen to that voice in the wind again and then I decided to do the big-boy thing and ignore it. I still had the stone in my hand, and I focused on its smooth, cold surface. My stubby little fingers slipped over it, finding the perfect hold. Pulling my arm back, I slung that rock as hard as I could, twistin’ it out to the side and letting go with my thumb on top, just like my Daddy taught me to do. It bounced all the way across the crick, then turned in midair and bounced right back to me.
I turned around and started to run, but then I saw him standin’ on the bank, right next to my shoes. He was a tall, thin man, and he looked like every other tall, thin man that ever walked this planet. But it was the middle of the summer and that darned ol’ Devil wore a suit and tie, and leaned on a fancy walkin’ stick. My top half was sweatin’ like a pig, so I knew it was H-A-W-T—HOT. But that Devil, he didn’t sweat. He didn’t breathe heavy. He just stood there and smiled at me. If I hadn’t knowed that was the Devil lookin’ at me, I woulda thought he was somebody’s brother. His hair was the color of sunshine and he had big, blue eyes. Only...in the middle of those eyes, I could see the fire just a-burnin’. And it weren’t no fire I never wanted to see again.
Come on, Mickey...come and get your shoes.
Uh-uh...no way was I gonna leave the water and let that monster get near me. And I sure as heck wasn’t gonna go home without my shoes two days in a row. My Momma would have my hide for sure.
I was just a kid and all, but I was pretty darn sure that if he got his hands on me, my goose was cooked. So I stood there, that shiny stone clutched in my hand—how did it get there, I wondered—staring into the eyes of the Almighty’s nemesis.
“What do you want with me?” I asked. I’d already pissed myself again. I was scared out of my gourd, but I was stuck. If I set foot on land, he was gonna get me.
I want your soul, Mickey.
“Yeah, you already said that,” I said. I’d heard his voice, clear as day...but his mouth didn’t move. What he said came from somewhere else, and I didn’t like that. “Why do you keep sayin’ my name?”
Does it bother you, Mickey?
Yeah, it bothered me, but I weren’t about to let him know it. Sure, I knowed somethin’ was wrong, but I shoulda knowed it didn’t have jack-all to do with that stone, but I was naught but eight years old that day. I know now that I didn’t know no better then’ cause that stone disappeared into my pocket by my own hand. It mighta been that minute that I really got lost, ’cause after my hands was free, I hitched up my pants to wade outta that crick. I weren’t really scared no more, ’cause I weren’t really thinkin’ so much about what I was doin’.
“I ain’t gon’ let choo kill me, you mean ol’ Devil!” I shouted while my feet carried me right on up to stand in front a’ him. That man that wasn’t a man looked down at me with a slick, nasty smile, an’ then he laid his cold, slimy hand on the toppa my head.
“Oh, Mickey,” he said outta his mouth and I realized I liked that sound even less than the wind-voice, “I have no intention of killing you.” My head started to tickle and tingle, like he was suckin’ my brain out with his fingers. His smile got real wide, and I got dizzy. “You are an innocent, Mickey,” he told me. “But your family is not. Your mother sold you to me, Mickey. You and your brother.”
“I ain’t got no brother!” I squealed, and tried to jerk my head away. An’ me pullin’ away? Didn’t work, ’cause he had a strong hold on my hair.
“Oh, yes you do, Mickey. She gave me your souls—both of them—because she wanted to be pretty.” Maybe so, an’ maybe she just went ahead and sold him outright. Didn’t give him a chance to go bad like me.
“I don’t believe you,” I said, but those words didn’t have much backbone. All my energy was drainin’ outta the top of my head and into his hand. I stood there and stared up at that evil man, my pants wet with piss and crick-water and my feet still bare. My shoes was in his hand and tears and snot was runnin’ down my face and I didn’t know anything at all but that my Momma didn’t love me enough to protect me from the Devil hisself.
A warm feeling spread out all over me, and all that fright disappeared when he took his hand offa my head. I felt so empty. I didn’t like it, but weren’t naught I could do about it. The Devil, he stuck my shoes in my hand and he smiled down at me again.
“Go home now, Mickey. Go on home and don’t you tell your mother about any of this. Understand?”
I nodded, struck dumb, and with my shoes in my hands and piss drippin’ from the leg of my rolled-up pants, I went home, just like he told me to. Only I stopped on the porch and looked up at the ratty ol’ do
or. I stood there still feelin’ all empty inside, knowin’ for sure my Momma didn’t love me enough to let me go to heaven, an’ for an eight-year-old that kinda news could end the world.
For me it did.
That night I thought on it some more, and I stopped carin’ about ev’rything. My grades wasn’t the best in class anyways, but they got worse after that summer. They got so bad the school wouldn’t take me back the followin’ fall. Jimmy teed me off so I pushed him down into the crick. He skint his knees all up an’ I didn’t care. We stopped bein’ friends ‘cause I wouldn’t ’pologize for it neither.
Weren’t no need for me to be good no more. I weren’t goin’ to heaven.
When I turned twelve, I stole Bobby Dickey’s bicycle an’ I sold it for ten bucks. My Momma whooped me good for it, but it didn’t hurt. I didn’t feel muchanothin’ after that, ’specially when it came from her. She kilt my heart that day she let that Devil take my soul.
That’s why I kilt her.
My Daddy done gon’ an’ died a year a’fore I done it, and I ’spect she mighta had sumthin’ to do with that too, ‘cause after he was gone she had lots money an’ a diff’rent man comin’ over to the house every night. She tol’ me it was a heart attack or sumthin’ like that, but her eyes was cold and dark and I just knew she was lyin’ to me. I didn’t know just how she was lyin’, but I knew she was, an’ I hated her for killin’ my Daddy ‘cause he was the only person in the world that still loved me. I don’t think he ever knew about that deal she made with the Devil neither, ’cause I don’t think he woulda let the Devil take my soul.
The night I kilt the evil old biddy was the night that drunk fool named Bradley throwed me down the stairs. I bounced off the bottom step and it broke. Pieces of the rotten old wood crunched against the bones in my arm and sliced me wide open from my elbow near abouts to my shoulder. I started cryin’ and she came runnin’ out the door in her housecoat and slippers with a cigarette in her mouth. I tried to tell her what he done gone and did to me, but she didn’t care. She tol’ me I deserved it, too, for bein’ such a stupid little S-H-I-T.
So I was standin’ knee-deep in the snow, bleedin’ all over the place, cryin’ with snot runnin’ down my face and piss pourin’ down my legs, beggin’ my momma to carry me to the doctor and get stitched up and she said no ’cause she had to get dressed to go somewhere and she was tired.
That was the final straw. I got tired of takin’ a back seat to her trash and her men. She didn’t love me...I knowed that for years. So I picked up the snow shovel an’ when she turned around in her slippers and shuffled back up the steps, I bashed her skull flat. She fell face-first to the porch with Bradley screamin’ at me goin’, “What did you do Mickey, what did you do,” and I reached up and smashed her head in again. Then hit him—not so hard to kill him but hard enough to hurt him good. Then I blamed that a-hole she called a boyfriend and told the police he done tried to kill me too and showed ’em the scrapes on my legs and that big, nasty cut up my arm. He went to jail for murder an’ I went to the hospital for the first time since I was born. Then I got carried over to a home for boys and stayed ’til I turned eighteen. Nobody wanted to ‘dopt a screwed-up kid like me from a murdered-up family. My Momma and Daddy was both dead an’ I saw one of ‘em die...nope, nobody wanted poor little Mickey Landis. Maybe they all knowed sumthin’ was wrong with me. Maybe they all took one good look at me and saw I didn’t have no soul.
After I got throwed outta that home for bein’ too old I took up with two other boys that got throwed out for bein’ too old too an’ we made a livin’ rippin’ off old folks in the parks. Made a right good racket too. We stole wallets and jewelry and pretty much everything else we could get our hands on, and we pawned it all for cash. It worked out great ’til that little snot named Jason went an’ got hisself caught with drugs and turned us all in. When the cops showed up at our house Chris went all quiet and said okay, but not me. I ran, and they chased me. I weren’t about to wind up in the can. Kilt a cop to get away, too.
It took two weeks for ’em to catch up with me. They chased me, but I ran faster. Kilt eight more people, too. Weren’t like I had a chance at gettin’ into heaven noways.
That part started just outside Birmingham. I tucked my thumb out an’ hitched a ride with an old man wearing thick glasses and a bad wig. He took me into Shreveport and bought me dinner, and then when we got back in the car the radio said I was a runaway cop killer. The old fart thought it might be a good idea to be a boy scout and turn me in, so I reached over and elbowed his nose just about clean off his face. The car ran off the road and he stomped the brakes. When he throwed it in park, I pummeled him until he didn’t have no face left, then took his wallet and tossed him out the passenger door into the gully. I drove off with his car and didn’t never look back.
That old man was the first. After him I ditched the car in a parking garage in Dallas. After him I tucked out my thumb again for round two. My thumb carried me across the country and every time I took wallets an’ cars an’ left the owners dead in ditches. I did all those things people talk ’bout doin’ on the television. I always knowed I’d get caught, but I didn’t never consider what would happen to me ’til I got to the last one.
That girl—she weren’t much older than me, truth be told—she tol’ me I had to do sumthin’ good for her so she’d carry me around. I stayed with her the longest, robbin’ houses and stealin’ stuff outta people’s unlocked cars. She kissed me all the time and hugged on me like I was her boyfriend or sumthin’. She even took my rock out of my pocket. Said it was purty. Then she crawled up in my lap in that dirty hotel room and asked me to stick her.
Laid her three times that night ’cause she asked me to. She liked it too, ’cause she wanted to do it again, but I knowed some bad things was about to go down. The news people on the radios were findin’ my bodies and gettin’ closer. I had to get out fast and I didn’t want this sweet little thing to go down too, but I didn’t have time to fool wit’ her anymore. I cried when I did it, with snot runnin’ down my face and all just like the night I kilt my momma, but I cut that girl’s throat in her sleep. Left her dead in the motel an’ took her car.
By the time I got to California I had just about ev’ry cop in the world on my tail.
Nineteen years old. That’s how old I was when I got busted. An’ that white stone wit’ the black streaks o’ sparkly stuff was still in my pocket when they booked me. I carried it ev’rywhere with me until the cops took it from me.
But you know what? It always showed up again. I was in my hand durin’ all nine o’ my killin’ trials, and in my hand for every single sentencin’. That rock’s been in my hand every day for the last eleven years while I been sittin’ in this little five-by-nine cell all by myself. An’ I’m gonna tell you somethin’ else, too. That rock, it’s gonna be in my hand tomorrow mornin’ when they strap me to that table an’ stop my heart beatin’.
I deserve to die. I know that, an’ that’s why I ain’t never let all those law people fight my penalty. Keepin’ me alive like a caged animal weren’t gonna solve nobody’s problems, ’cause all them people I done kilt weren’t gonna just not be dead anymore. I might as well join ’em. I ain’t skeert. I did what I did ’cause there weren’t gonna be no consequences for me. See, I got nothin’ left to lose, ’cause my Momma already gave it all away.
***
The audio turned to a high, rasping hiss, then clicked off. The young man sat motionless, staring at the cassette player in frightened disbelief. He ran a sweaty hand through his hair and swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. The tape had come in the mail that morning, addressed to Cooper L. Chisolm of Memphis, Tennessee from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. At first he didn’t know why. He couldn’t remember ever meeting this Mickey Landis. The tape came with no documentation save a hand-scrawled sticker on its face.
Michael Wayne Landis—final statement
to reporter Austin Greene.
How could a parent do something so cruel to her child, he wondered, but he didn’t have to wonder too hard. He’d been given away as an infant. At twenty-nine hours old his mother signed over her rights to him and let the State of Tennessee take him away forever.
Cooper paused, his forehead knitted in confusion, and rewound the tape to the start. He punched the “play” button and sat back, his breath held tight and his teeth clenched in anticipation.
“Skippin’ stones down by the crick... That was where any momma could find her little boy on a Saturday afternoon in Rock Mountain, Tennessee,” that emotionless voice repeated, and a chill ran up his spine. Rock Mountain, Tennessee wasn’t but twenty-five minutes from Memphis.
He wasn’t sure why, but the longer he stared at the machine, the faster the gears in his head turned. One by one the tumblers of his mind clicked into place and the fog that followed him day to day began to lift. While he and this stranger had had the same beginnings, Cooper realized he wasn’t as unfortunate as he would like to think.
He always wondered why things worked out the way they did. His infancy and childhood in the State’s care likely saved him from a much worse fate than the one he survived. He could have ended up as one of Mickey’s victims. Worse, if he’d stayed with his real parents, he could have been just like Mickey. Maybe being that adopted kid kept him from suffering on a much grander scale.
They’d never met, at least not that Cooper could remember, but something about this man still seemed so familiar...and it felt so wrong. The haunting sound of the dead man’s words rang eerily in his ears, tickling at some long-forgotten memory. Some part of him that begged to be set free. That unknown sense of need pulled him, tugged him toward the one and only thing that could answer all of his questions. Leaving the box and the old cassette player on the table, he stumbled to his bedroom on shaky legs to retrieve a box of papers he hadn’t bothered to open in years. When he returned to the table, Cooper pulled the lid loose and riffled through the papers, pulling out the oldest ones scattered along the bottom. He pushed the box to the side, inadvertently knocking it to the floor as something caught his attention.
The Big Bad II Page 8