by Blake Crouch
"Stay right there," Hartness said, his voice low, filled with malice, his hands shaking. He edged to the door and opened it.
"Want the car keys?" Orson asked. "So you can get that smelly body out of my trunk. I waive my rights."
"Take them out slowly," Hartness said, and I reached carefully into my pocket and withdrew the keys. I tossed them to the detective and he caught them in his left hand as he pointed his 9mm at Orson. Then he slammed the door and locked it.
# # #
The detective had been gone two minutes when Orson straightened himself in his chair and turned towards me. He put his face into his hands and ran his fingers through his greasy hair.
"Andy," he said, lifting his head, his eyes alive again, a smile edging across his lips. "Now I've gotta let you in on something."
My head ripped apart. Involuntarily, my eyes closed and when I opened them again, I was walking towards a woman, chained to the pole in the desert shed. I held a hunting knife in my hand, blinked, and was on her. Her screams were strangely pleasing, like I'd acquired the taste of a long-despised food. I stared down at her face as she exhaled her last bloody breath. It contorted into another, and this face breathed its last, gurgling breath, too, replaced by another, and over and over again I watched the men and women die.
I stood on the desert in the dead of night. All around me, there were open holes in the sand. I walked beside each one, and peering down inside, saw the heartless bodies, their eyes open, staring at me with a hollow rage, though they were not alive. The horrible scream rang out, inhuman, eternal. It was always there, in the back of my mind, as loud as I'd let it be.
Like movie frames passing in slow motion, a surge of images engulfed me. Standing at a podium and lecturing to fifty students. Running through a city street at night towards a railroad car. Fire in a rusted oil drum. Pounding rock into skull. Driving a black prostitute out of south Charlotte towards my lake house. Burying her in my backyard. Waiting on the shoulder of a dark highway for someone to pull over and help me with my car. Leaving boxes in Washington before dawn. Strangling my crying mother in her bed, her wide, confused eyes as the pantyhose tightens. Walter begging for his life and screaming why in the cold woods. Dragging a police officer from his car across the road. Shoving him bleeding into the trunk. Writing letters to a man named Andrew Thomas, who had no idea what he'd done or what he was.
I opened my eyes. My heart pounded, but the screaming had stopped. In the interrogation room, the tape recorder still running, the light bulb burning quietly above my head, I sat alone.
# # #
I leaned against the cool, metal fence and stared across the prairie. It was late in the day, nearly six o'clock, and though it was early August, the sky remained flawlessly blue. I liked standing here looking through the fence, because I could've been in my own backyard, in my own clothes, deciding which restaurant I'd dine in tonight. I could almost forget the four guard-towers, the high-powered rifles, and the icy men who held them.
Sick of the prairie now, I’d memorized the contours of the land, how it gracefully descended for six, gentle miles into a valley of pines, and how those pines adorned the lower slopes of the sharp, brown mountains. From the prison yard, I could see the skylines of the three ranges that surrounded Montana State Prison--the Big Belt Mountains to the east, the snowier Swan Range in the north, and the jagged, wild-looking Bitter Roots, west and south.
Normally, on a summer evening, I’d take my hour of exercise around eight o’clock. I liked to come out late to see the sunset, though the guards would never let me stay for its entirety. Prisoners aren’t allowed out after dark, but it was worth it just to see the sky turn red and purple for a short time. It made me feel normal again to know that at that moment, when the sun had almost slipped away, everyone watching it fade felt the same sense of loss as me.
But it was not a normal evening. I turned away from the fence and walked back across the parched, yellow grass towards the prison. Two guards waited for me on the steps, smoking cigarettes and talking. When they saw me approach, they instinctively put their hands on their holstered pistols, watching me warily. Seven years of perfect behavior had taught them nothing. They treated me fairly, but beneath their professional exteriors, I had no doubt that every guard who'd ever watched me despised me. I sensed that loathing in everyone, even the doctors and psychologists who wanted so desperately to study me.
Near the steps which ascended back into the prison, I stopped several feet from the guards. I wasn't allowed to be within six feet of prison staff without handcuffs. I'd forgotten that rule once five years ago and surprised a guard coming in from the yard. He beat me unconscious with his nightstick, and I stayed in the hospital for two weeks. The warden determined the guard’s actions were justified. I had fucked up.
"Turn around," Haywood said, slowly descending the steps. He dropped his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it, twisting the toe of his shiny black shoe on the dying ember. A short, stout white man, he moved quickly. He stepped forward, holding a pair of handcuffs, and in an instant he'd cuffed me. Then he took my right arm and escorted me up the nine steps, through heavy, black double doors. Jerry, the other black guard, walked close on my left side.
As we headed through the dull, gray corridors towards the showers, I stared straight ahead, listening to our footsteps echo down the long, empty hallways, and the distant ruckus of other inmates. Muffled excitement pulsed inside of me, a rare emotion within these walls. I'd waited a long time for this night.
# # #
I sat in a hard chair, in a small room with white, windowless concrete walls, my feet chained together in leg irons, my hands cuffed behind my chair. Two guards stood behind the cameras, watching me. I could still smell the fragrant prison soap in my hair, and I wore a new, bright orange uniform. Across the large rectangular table sat Dr. Richard Goldston, a handsome, sharp-witted man. He may've been over fifty, but his face was smooth, without wrinkles, and his hair space black. He wore silver-framed glasses pushed down on the bridge of his nose, and when he looked at me, his smoky-brown eyes were penetrating but kind.
The woman who had wanted to do the interview stood beside the cameraman in a conservative yellow suit. She reeked of poignant questions, a zombie for her network. Though one of the top journalists in the nation, intelligent and savvy, she was utterly incapable. When I agreed to do an interview with the network, I had one condition. Dr. Goldston, a former FBI agent in the Behavioral Sciences Division, would conduct the interview. Regarded by his peers and colleagues as the sharpest, most qualified criminologist in the country, he'd dedicated his life to understanding and tracking serial killers, not to becoming a media whore. I respected that, and I respected his books. I wanted to meet him and feel his probing intellect.
Goldston laid a bulging, cream folder on the table and opened it. It was full of crime scene photographs, forensic reports, and several documents I'd never seen before.
He looked back at the woman and her cameraman. "You ready, Laura?" Goldston asked.
"Yes, we can start now," she said.
Goldston lifted a tape recorder off the floor and set it on the table. "I’m recording this for my file, too. Is that all right with you, Andy?"
"It’s fine," I said.
He pushed the record button and holding up one finger, spoke into the air: "August 17th, 2003. Eight p.m. Montana State Prison. Deer Lodge, Montana. Subject: Andrew Thomas." He cleared his throat and withdrew a sheet of paper from the folder covered in indecipherable cursive. Goldston looked up from his notes and smiled. He didn’t fear me.
"I want to first thank you for doing this. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you."
"Certainly," I said. I was nervous about the cameras and kept looking directly into them.
"When we spoke on the phone, I asked if anything was off limits, and you said there wasn’t. Is that still the way you feel?" he asked, and I nodded.
"This is the first interview you’ve agreed to d
o since your incarceration in 96'. You’ve remained silent, refusing to speak even at your own trial. Why have you waited until now?"
"I’ve been dealing with things. Privately."
"Are you responsible for the killings at the Blue Sky Motel?" he asked. There was no emotion in his voice. He was interested solely in obtaining information, not judging or condemning me. He put me at ease, and I could see why he was so well-respected.
"No."
"The Washington boxes?"
"No."
"Are you responsible for the bodies found at your cabin in the Wyoming desert or at your lake house north of Charlotte?"
"No."
In the thick silence, Goldston swallowed. "You consider yourself innocent?" he asked.
"I do."
Goldston reached into his briefcase and took out a small tape player. "I want to play something for you," he said, setting the tape player on the table. He pushed play and for several seconds the speakers crackled. Then, through the softer static, I heard his voice:
"Barry Johnson’s in the trunk of my car you prick… I don’t think you wanna take the credit for kidnapping that police officer… I killed him, too… … … You stay right there… Want the car keys? So you can get that smelly body out of my trunk. I waive my rights… Take them out slowly [Door Slams]… … … … Andy… What?… Now I’ve gotta let you in on something… Oh God… … … … [Door Slams] Where’s Officer Johnson’s car, Orson? Where is his car? Oh, you don’t want to talk to me now. Piece of shit… Where’d he go?… Where did who go?… My brother… What the fuck are you talking about?… Shit. Oh, shit… Where’s the car, Orson?… Oh God… Tough man doesn’t wanna talk now. Well, that’s okay, cause you’re fucked. Why are you crying, Orson? Huh?… That’s not my name. Where is he?… Who are you talking about?… The man I came in with. Where’d he go?… You’re out of your fuckin’ mind… Where’d he go?… Calm down… Where is my fucking brother?!!!"
Goldston stopped the tape. My hands shook, and I felt very cold. He could sense my discomfort, so he remained quiet for a moment, allowing me to regain my composure. I took deep breaths and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I looked around the room, at the guards, the cameras in front and behind me, at Laura Webber, and then back to Goldston.
"Andy, I’ve literally spent hours going over what I just played for you. I’ve probably listened to that tape a hundred times, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what happened in that room. I even had several psychologists listen, and they were baffled. I interviewed the detective who questioned you. He said you were a different person when he came back into the interrogation room." Goldston removed his glasses. "What’d you feel hearing that tape?"
I stared at the table, my heart racing. "I don’t know. That was a really fucked-up day."
"How many people were in that room after the detective left?" Goldston asked.
I looked up from the table. "You won’t believe me," I said. "It’ll seem like I’m crazy, like I’m grasping to save my life, and I’m not. I know they won’t ever let me out of this place."
"How many?"
"Two."
"One physical person walked into that police station, Andy. There’s a videotape of it."
"I know."
"Who’s Orson?" he said, but I shook my head. "You don’t know?"
"I don’t know what he is anymore."
"Is he in your head?"
"No."
"Then you actually see him?"
"Not since Choteau."
"What does he look like?"
"Like me. He’s my twin."
I felt a cool breath on the back of my neck. "Hey, big boy," he whispered, and I shivered.
"What?" Goldston said. "What'd you say?"
Orson walked around the table behind the guards. He stepped over the mass of cords that linked the microphones and cameras to the outlets and leaned against the wall. He smiled, wearing jeans and a dirty tee-shirt. His hair was buzzed like mine, and he had a two-day beard.
"What’s wrong?" Goldston asked. "Andy, you’re trembling."
"I’m staring at Orson right now," I said, watching my brother walk to the table.
"Andy, you’re looking at me," Goldston said. "You’re looking directly into my eyes."
"No, I’m looking at you," Orson said, standing beside me, his dirty hands on the table.
"Orson," I said, "listen to me…"
"Dr. Goldston, I’m Orson Thomas."
"It’s nice to meet you, Orson," Goldston said hesitantly. "Where’s Andy?"
"Right here," I said. "Watching you talk to Orson. He's beside me. I'm looking at him."
"No," Goldston said, "you’re looking at me."
"Who the fuck cares?" Orson said. "You wanna talk? Talk."
Goldston gathered himself and cleared his throat. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, and he wiped them away on the sleeve of his black jacket.
"What makes you come out, Orson?" Goldston asked.
"What do you mean?"
"What makes your personality come out?"
"I’m not a fucking split personality, Doctor. I’m always here. I run the show, not Andy."
"You’re always aware of him?"
"Yes."
"Is he always aware of you?"
"When I want him to be. He’s in la-la land most of the time."
"La-la land?"
"I send him away when I have things to do. Europe, Aruba. That’s his La-la land."
"But sometimes he physically sees you…"
"Because I make him see me."
"Does he know we’re talking now?"
I was speechless, walls of false reality tumbling down. Everything I'd lived for became a transparent curtain behind which Orson had lived and murdered. He'd given me a glimpse of it in Choteau, but I'd tucked that hideous knowledge away. I'd denied and forgotten it, letting my brother remain an enigma as I'd done before.
"Yes," I said, tears trickling down my cheeks.
"Shut your fucking mouth," Orson said, wiping the tears away.
"So you sent him away when you went to kill?" Goldston said. "How?"
"I don’t know how I did it. It’s like he lived in a fantasy world when I used him. But it was strange, because sometimes he wrote books about what I did. It was like some part of him knew what was happening even though I sent him away."
"Can you read Andy’s mind?"
"He’s as much a person to me as you are."
"Oh, man," Goldston muttered. He glanced back at Laura, her face white. Everyone’s face had blanched, even the cameraman and the two guards. Goldston turned back to Orson. "Who was born into this body, Orson? You or Andy?"
"We both were," Orson said.
"Andy, I want to talk to Orson for..."
"You don’t have to ask his permission."
"Okay," Goldston said. "When did Andy became aware of you and you of him?"
I wanted to speak, but I didn’t. I let Orson talk, though I feared what he might say.
"I don’t know how old we were," Orson began. "I lived behind his eyes. I could hear him talk, I saw what he saw, but I had my own, separate consciousness. When we were seven, I started talking to him. I don’t know how, but when I spoke to him, he saw me. I told him I was his twin, that no one else could see me. I told him not to tell anyone or I’d go away.
"Well, he told his mother, and she went right along with it. Just like I was his fucking imaginary friend or something. She’d set a place for me at dinner. She’d buy presents for me at Christmas. Jeanette was always a little weird."
"But you still didn’t have control over Andy’s body?" Goldston asked.
"No. Not until he was twelve. I can’t explain to you how I did it, but he was sleeping one night, and I moved his arm. I just thought about doing it, and it happened. I realized that when he was unconscious or asleep I could use his body. So I started going out when he fell asleep, and he never knew it. I did this for several years.
"
As Andy got older, through high school and college, I think he started to realize I shouldn’t be there. Started feeling weird about me. We were close, and then in college he tried to ignore me. Tried to pretend I didn’t exist."
"Did that make you mad?"
"Don’t fuck with me." Orson glared at Goldston. "Anyhow, you gotta remember I’m telling this from my point of view. I knew what the fuck was going on. I knew I was inside of him. He didn’t know that. I'm not sure how, but he saw me. He physically saw me. Only thing I can guess is his mind created these hallucinations to compensate for what it heard. I don’t know. I’ve looked at psychology texts and there isn’t a damn thing on this sort of condition."
"I’ve never heard of anything like it," Goldston said. "What happened in college?"
"I was twenty-one. I didn’t like the prospect of spending my life sharing someone else’s body, watching them live. So I turned Andy off."
"What do you mean?"
"How can I explain it to you? I had an edge on him. I just turned him off. I could suggest things to him, by thinking into him. It’s impossible to explain. I told him to sleep, to dream. Told him he was in paradise, and he slept for seven years. He vividly dreamed that part of his life so when he woke up, he had a past that wasn’t mine."
"What do you remember, Andy?" Goldston asked.
"Why do you wanna talk to him?" Orson said.
"I’d like to hear what he dreamed, what he remembers."
"I remember the Caribbean," I said. "A long time ago. It’s very vague, like childhood."
"You didn’t think that was strange?" Goldston asked. "That your memory was fuzzy?"
"What did I have to compare it to?" I said. I wanted to cry but I didn’t.
"What’d you do during that time, Orson?" Goldston asked. "While he was asleep."
"I left Appalachian. Went to New York and was homeless there for awhile. Practically lived in the library. I read constantly, gave myself the best education you could imagine. Then I went to a school in Vermont called Middlebury. I made up this flawless resume. It said I got my Ph.D. in history at this college in Arizona which didn’t even exist. I made up all the credentials. It was ingenious. I taught in Vermont for a year until this prick named David Parker, a professor in the history department, too, found out that Baxter College didn’t exist. I was fired."