Methods of Madness

by Ray Garton

  The sounds continued… the thumping… the shouting and groaning…

  My office faded away around me and, after a moment of darkness, became the living room. I was in the middle of the living room, staring down the hall toward the bedroom.

  The living room disappeared and, in a blink, I was standing before the bedroom door. I opened it and went in.

  She was rolling over beneath him, onto her back, grabbing his cock and guiding it into her. Her eyes were dark and puffy. She made a sound like a small animal being beaten as he began to move inside her again and the sound became words:

  “So… big… so… fucking… big… it hurts… so good… “

  I stood beside the bed staring down at her, at the face that didn’t even look vaguely familiar. Her eyes were open wide, but she didn’t notice me, was completely unaware of my presence as she clutched her sticky breasts and thrust her pelvis upward to meet his. I moved down to the foot of the bed.

  Just put the gun away and do what you have to do, I thought as I lifted it to the back of Derek’s head. You just need some sleep, I thought as I squeezed the trigger.

  Derek’s blood and brains splattered onto Peggy’s face, much the same way his jizm had. Unfortunately, she had very little time to be aware of what had happened because the bullet went through him and entered her throat.

  I looked at them a while, then went back to my office.

  As I write this, I am holding a gun in my left hand. I am lifting it to my mouth and biting the barrel so hard that my teeth hurt. Now I am squeezing the tri…

  Sinema

  Brett Deever had been looking for his dog, Gabby, for half an hour when he found, instead, a hand.

  It lay a couple of yards below him, at the edge of Vintner Creek, which rushed with muddy waters left over from unexpectedly heavy summer rains. A tangle of tree branches were jammed between two large rocks, resisting the flow, and stuck along the other netted detritus was the hand. From Brett’s vantage atop the creek’s three- foot-high embankment, it could have been a dark, tattered glove, clinging to the branches as if for life.

  Brett’s typical nine-year-old curiosity took him down the embankment and carefully through the mud until he was within reach of the glove, or doll hand, or—

  He stopped when he saw the jut of bone sticking from the purple mush of wrist.

  It did not look like a doll’s hand now.

  “Gabby?” he called softly, nervously, backing up the bank. A clump of bushes began to rustle, and when Brett finally turned his head he saw Gabby’s German Shepherd rump half-out of the brush, tail sweeping back and forth enthusiastically. The dog was grumbling contentedly, making moist chewing sounds. As Brett drew closer, his stomach began to roil like a cluster of worms.

  Gabby was flat on his belly, eyes bright. He lifted his head to smile at Brett around dark, meat-flecked teeth, pink tongue dangling. He had been worrying what looked like the stripped branch of a sapling.

  Except it still had a foot.

  There was more, and after a sharp, happy bark, Gabby flopped on his back and rolled in it. Flies took to the air in clouds, like specks of soot on a breeze.

  Brett stared.

  He knew he should be reacting strongly, somehow—screaming or running or vomiting, something like that. The awful smell made him a bit queasy, of course, but what he could see—some stubby fingers and toes, the swollen, blackened half of the face that was visible—elicited no emotions in him.

  The walls were up.

  He felt numb, detached.

  He felt nothing.

  Just like in church.

  In a town as small as Manning, any death, even one by natural causes, remains the topic of conversation for weeks. A murder is talked about for months on end. When it is one in a series of murders, however, as this was, it is not talked about so much as felt. It is conspicuous by the silence it leaves behind.

  But Manning is not just any small town. It is located in California’s Napa Valley on the St. Helena Highway between St. Helena and Calistoga. It is actually a village more than a town, with a population of only 1,750. Most people in the Valley, however, think of it not as a town or a village, but as a sort of commune.

  It is inhabited almost exclusively by Seventh-day Adventists.

  Manning was founded in 1897 when the Seventh-day Adventists, led by their “prophet,” Ellen G. White, settled in Napa Valley. Another village, Angwin, rose up around the college built by the Adventists atop a hill just above Manning.

  Seventh-day Adventists worship on Saturday, the seventh day, rather than Sunday; as with the Jewish faith, their sabbath begins at sunset on Friday and ends at sunset on Saturday. During that time, the only place in town that is open is the church. Weekend mail is delivered on Sunday instead of Saturday (Manning has its own little post office which, of course, employs only Seventh-day Adventist residents). Sometimes Delbert Mundy, manager of the Manning Food Market—which sells no alcoholic beverages, no cigarettes, no meat, and nothing containing caffeine, all of which are condemned in the writings of Ellen White—can be seen on Saturday evenings standing just inside the market’s front doors, keys in hand, staring at his wristwatch, waiting for the sun to go down so he can open up.

  The thing about Manning that Brett Deever hated most- despised, in fact—was that, unlike its neighboring towns St. Helena and Calistoga, both of which are larger but still quite small, Manning had no movie theater.

  It would have done Brett no good if it had.

  Along with drinking alcohol and coffee, eating pork and seafood, reading fiction, wearing make-up or jewelry, dancing and playing cards, the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s list of condemned activities also includes going to movies.

  The summer rains that had hit the Valley with such a vengeance earlier in the month had caused Vintner Creek to disgorge all kinds of garbage onto its muddy banks, none of which was as horrible as the chewy treat Gabby had discovered.

  While Brett had found a hand, and Gabby, a foot, the police and their dogs had uncovered a lot more, all of it identifiable with the help of lab techs from San Francisco. Despite massive decay, the body parts were identified as belonging to Jimmy Greenlaw. He was the third such victim in two years.

  All three boys had been approximately the same age. The first had been a resident of St. Helena, the second from Angwin, and Jimmy had spent his eight years of life in Manning. All three had been Seventh-day Adventists.

  The boys had been sodomized, then dismembered, and their remains cast into the waters of Vintner Creek to find their way into the digestive tracts of various fish and forest animals.

  The bone scoring suggested the killer used dull kitchen implements, and that he’d done a sloppy, amateurish job of it. The cut patterns on the bones were a near match; the semen tracks were an exact match.

  The police claimed there was other linking evidence proving the killings to be the work of a single person or group. They refused, however, to discuss such niceties as chemical proof and tissue damage with the press.

  That was just fine with Brett’s grandma.

  “They’ll be back, those reporters,” she said a few days after Brett’s discovery, seating him at the kitchen table. Grandma was a large gray woman who dressed colorlessly and seldom smiled. She was especially unsmiling now; she’d just chased two more reporters from the front door. As she poured Brett a glass of soy milk, she said sternly, “And you’ll not talk to them. Always sticking their microphones into people’s faces after something awful’s happened. The more awful the better, far as they’re concerned. That’s why I’ll not have any newspapers in this house. Rags, all of them.” She lowered herself into a chair across from Brett. “No television, either. All those reporters smiling while they tell about murders and rapes and homo-seck-shuls spreading AIDS. Course, the television shows are just as bad. Nothing but sex and killing… “

  Brett sipped the thick sweet milk, wiped off his creamy white mustache and said, “Larry Jackson says they have a tele
vision, but his parents only let him watch good shows. He says—”

  “I don’t care. A television is Satan’s doorway into the home. I know some say they can handle it, but if Sister White were still alive, she’d tell them differently. Maybe they’re watching good shows now—” She spat good shows with bitter skepticism, “—but you just wait. You watch enough of that stuff and it… it affects you.” She searched Brett’s face for a moment and her eyes clouded with worry. She reached across the table and closed her puffy liver-spotted hand over Brett’s small one. “You haven’t been thinking about that boy, have you? About those… what you found?”

  Brett shook his head, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “No, Grandma.”

  “Good. Good. It’s not healthy to dwell on that sort of thing. It can… affect you.” She watched him a moment longer, as if waiting for a reaction of some sort, then said, “Go study your Sabbath school lesson, Brett, honey. And say a prayer for that poor boy’s family. After dinner, you can give me a back rub.”

  He polished off his milk and Grandma stroked his hair gently, sympathy glistening in her eyes.

  The policemen had been the same way. All of a sudden, everyone was treating him as if he were breakable just because he’d found a dead boy. Brett didn’t understand what the big deal was. It wasn’t as if Jimmy had been a friend of his; Brett had no friends to speak of. They’d had a passing acquaintance in Sabbath school, but that was all. Sure, it was a bad thing that happened and Jimmy’s parents were probably crushed, but Brett wouldn’t let his feelings get involved.

  On his way through the living room, Brett glimpsed his Grandpa. Brett seldom got more than a glimpse of him, usually rounding a corner or going through a doorway in his wheelchair, the two stumps of his legs—souvenirs from the Big War—hidden beneath a brown wool blanket. He had his own bedroom downstairs where he ate all of his meals and spent most of his time listening to gospel music on his record player. Brett never heard Grandma talking to him, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Grandpa speak; the only sound he made was the muffled rumble of his chair wheeling over the old wooden floor.

  In his room upstairs, Brett locked his door—something Grandma strongly disapproved of—and pulled a fat three-ring binder from under his bed. He flopped onto the mattress and opened the book, searching through the heavy construction paper pages. Pasted to each page were, movie advertisements cut out of newspapers. He looked for one in particular and when he found it, he folded his arms beneath his chest, tucked the tip of his tongue into the corner of his mouth, and stared at it, relished it.

  The ad took up a quarter of the page and written at the top in letters that appeared to be carved in flesh was the title:

  BEDSIDE MANNERS

  Below that:

  If you sleep in the dark,

  he’ll find you…

  If you sleep with a light on,

  he’ll find you faster…

  Below the words was a picture of a man’s bluejeaned legs from behind; a bloodied axe hung at his side. Between his spread legs, facing him, a woman lay in bed clutching the blankets to her breasts, mouth open in a horrified scream.

  The woman was Brett’s mother.

  The book held nearly sixty ads for all kinds of movies ranging from Academy Award winners complete with quotes of praise from the critics to grade-Z horror films promising lots of bosoms and blood; Brett collected them all. Because Grandma would not allow newspapers into the house, Brett had to fish discarded editions from garbage cans and trash bins, always careful that no one was watching. Once he’d found the entertainment section, he folded the paper up and stuffed it into his book bag, then sneaked it to his room, where it was subjected to scissors and paste. Risky business for a Seventh-day Adventist boy, but even more risky with Grandma around.

  Grandma had a nervous tic that wriggled her lower lip now and then, especially when she was upset. At the very mention of movies or theaters, Grandma’s lip began to twitch so fast it seemed about to wriggle off her face.

  “If you ever go into such a place,” she’d say firmly, “your guardian angel does not go with you. It puts a distance between you and the Lord and can be dangerous. Bad things can happen. Your soul is unprotected and if you should die within those walls, you’re lost forever.”

  Brett never understood exactly why it was wrong to go to movies. There were certainly no rules against having a television or watching movies at home on a VCR. There were approved and unapproved movies, of course. The Adventists Brett knew who owned televisions all claimed to use discretion in choosing programs and movies, but they still watched them. Sometimes the church held a “Family Film Night” when they would show The Wilderness Family or some Disney movie that was on the Approved List and charge admission to raise money for new carpet in the sanctuary, or something. But going to see a movie in a theater was absolutely forbidden.

  Brett had been given several explanations for this law such as, “In a theater you’re with a bad crowd, the wrong element,” and, “Movies contain unchristian and immoral themes and are a powerful negative influence.” None of them satisfied him. Lost forever was a pretty strong consequence to pay, but it did not dampen his desire to go to a theater. Brett dreamed of going to movies the way most boys his age dreamed of being a fireman, a secret agent, or an astronaut.

  He sometimes met other children his age who were not Seventh-day Adventists and asked them what it was like to go to movies. Puzzled by his urgent questioning, they told him of the warm smell of popcorn in the lobby, the posters on the walls, the way the voices hushed in the auditorium as the lights slowly died, of the coming attractions shown before the movie started, and the movies…

  He asked them again and again about the movies they saw, wanting to know every detail from beginning to end.

  “How come bad things don’t happen to the other kids who go to movies?” he asked Grandma once.

  “They haven’t been shown the truth yet. You have. They don’t know they’re doing wrong, so the Lord won’t hold it against them. But someday He’ll show them.”

  There was always a shadow of worry on her face when he asked about movies; Brett suspected she feared he would turn out like his mother.

  It had been so long since Brett had seen his mother that he’d forgotten what her voice sounded like. She called him every Christmas and birthday (although she’d forgotten his ninth), but the calls were brief and her voice was fuzzy with distance. He remembered her face only because he had a picture of her tucked in the back of the binder with her letter and postcards.

  And now he had a new one: BEDSIDE MANNERS.

  A little more than three years ago, Mom had left Brett with Grandma and Grandpa so she could go to Hollywood to become an actress. That’s what she’d been doing before he came along, she’d claimed; she hadn’t quite made it then, so she wanted to give it another try.

  Grandma spoke of Mom only when Brett got a phonecall from her. After the call, she would hug Brett to her enormous breasts—she always smelled of mothballs and Ben-Gay—and mutter, “Imagine your own mother running off like that. And to that town to work with those, those people. At least she had the good sense to leave you with me so I could raise you in Christ.”

  Sometimes it was easy to hate Mom for leaving him with Grandma and Grandpa; he hated Manning, the church, and everything that came with it. But he wouldn’t let himself hate her because he always knew she’d come back for him someday. Now he knew he was right.

  Brett took his mother’s most recent letter from the back of the book. He only got her letters during the summer when he could get to the mailbox first. When he was in school, Grandma burned the letters before he could find them.

  Brett honey,

  Got my first movie role! It’s a cheapie

  horror flick called Bedside Manners and

  the part is small—I play a “victim” in the first

  ten minutes—but they’re using me

  on the poster, so it’s good
exposure…

  Brett skipped down to the last paragraph.

  I’ve got a little money now and hope to

  come up north and get you soon. Would

  you like to live in LA with me? There are

  good schools here and lots of things to do…

  Brett’s chest swelled with the very thought of going away with Mom.

  … hope to come up north and get you soon…

  … get you soon…

  … soon…

  He heard Grandma in the hall and quickly put the book away, unlocking the door before she tried the knob, then he lay back on his bed again.

  Brett was so happy that even the thought of having to give Grandma another of those smelly Ben-Gay backrubs after dinner could not depress him…

  Mr. Moser was the only person in the small Manning church with whom Brett felt comfortable. The rest of the people there seemed to be stiff, emotionless machines, programmed to smile at certain times, frown or look sympathetic at others, set to shed a tear or say “A-men!” during the sermon, and to sing the designated hymn when the organ began to play. On Friday afternoons, they washed their cars, cleaned and pressed their finest clothes; they came to church looking their best but seemed to leave their souls at home…

  As Brett sat with his grandparents (Grandpa always parked his wheelchair at the end of a pew) and looked at the empty staring faces around him—some nodding off, others watching the droning pastor but apparently seeing something else—he felt a sadness that was hard to shake. So he didn’t watch them anymore. He shut them out along with the whiney organ music and the pastor’s level, reverent voice that went on and on. Brett learned how to shut himself off during the hour or so that the service lasted; he heard nothing, saw nothing, and felt nothing. Afterward, instead of feeling agitated and depressed as he normally would, he felt relaxed, as if he’d taken a nap.