A Good and Useful Hurt

by Aric Davis

  Doc shook his head. “Yesterday we started with the easy one and today with what I expected to be the most difficult. I suppose the manner of it is of no concern.”

  “Jesus, Doc, you’ve got to be shitting me! This is a box of powdered person! What in the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Put it in a good place, I suppose.”

  “Like in my apartment?”

  “Yes, and you better wrap your head around it and fast. You’ll be meeting the contents of that box tonight. I don’t suppose I need to remind you why?”

  Mike grumbled. The last thing he needed was a reminder. The memory of the night before might fade over time, but for now it was just as vivid as finding Deb in the first place. Mike set the box on his lap and tried not to think about the box or the woman or anything else.

  The next house was just a few miles away, and this time, when the car stopped, there was no question of Mike taking the lead. This one was Doc’s. Mike watched his friend walk to the door, but most of his attention was on the box.

  Such a wonder that a person would hand over the remains of their child to a stranger, just to be rid of them. To Mike, everything felt like a stage of death right now. Things could get ugly with these families, and that was reasonable. But to be given the remains of someone’s little girl? It was almost too depressing to think about. Sure, Deb’s family had been in a hurry to dispose of her remains, but this seemed so much worse. Mike wasn’t sure it was even healthy to imagine the mental state that would allow such a transgression to occur, especially involving a total stranger. Wrapped up in thought, and in the box, Mike barely even noticed Doc’s return until his friend was seated and accelerating.

  “Whoa, Doc. Rush to get out of there. Any luck?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Our young lady, Hladini? Not cremated. I improvised.”

  “What do you mean improvised? What did you do?”

  “I saw no other option, time was limited, I needed to get something…”

  Mike stared at his friend, the box forgotten. “Will you just spit it out?”

  Doc held up a small plastic bag, the kind they’d been collecting ashes with when they didn’t use a vial or jar. Inside of it were a few strands of what looked like thin black string.

  “Where did you get her hair?”

  “I asked to use the restroom.”

  “Jesus Christ, how could you possibly know if that’s even her hair?”

  “I spoke to the mother for a few moments and tried to explain myself, but the language barrier proved to be too thick. I was able to get from her that Hladini had not been cremated, however. I could tell from the pictures that the father was estranged and that Hladini had no sisters. I asked to use the restroom and slipped into what had to be Hladini’s room. I found the brush on the dresser, took a few hairs from it, and left. We can just incinerate them and mix them with the ink, I assume. Or at least it’s worth a try.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  Doc grimaced. “We’ll have to hope for the best with just seven of the eight.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Mike lay in bed that night, wondering if he was going to need a sleeping pill. He was consumed with terror at the idea of the girls being like they were when they’d first come in from the hall, but of course those thoughts just compounded the terror. Surely bad thoughts before sleep would be as apt to bring a bad dream now as ever. He hoped to meet the new three already healed—three, that is, if the hair even worked.

  Just when Mike decided that, yes, he was going to need the pill, sleep took him. He was smiling at the last thought he’d had, a happy memory that never happened of he and Deb working together on an art project. She laughed as he fell asleep, a happy laugh that he’d never heard enough of, and one that wakeful ears would never hear again.

  He woke in the interrogation room. Mike scanned his surroundings. The mirror and walls were as they should be, and even the chip marks the door had put in the stones by the steel frame had been repaired. Mike heard footfalls in the hallway, a lot of footsteps, but no yelling or arguing. Finally the door swung open and Deb entered, followed by Annie and the rest of them. The last three were new faces, but they looked undamaged; they stood separate from the others, looking at him and the room they’d found themselves in. They did not look angry as the others had, but they seemed uncertain, confused.

  Mike said hello to them all, and they all returned his greeting, one after the other. Then he asked them how they felt.

  The first girl who spoke was Jessica; Mike could sense it before she told him. She was a petite girl with thin, straight, black hair. Her clothing was plain, just a sweatshirt and jeans, and she spoke to Mike in a quiet voice.

  “He wanted to hurt me, and he did. There’s not much else to say about it.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “He was tall and thick-chested. I don’t know what happened to the other girls, but he took his time with me, almost an hour I think. I was living alone, so there was no one to hear me, to know that I needed help. He knew it, too. He used a knife on me, and he used rope—the rope he’d almost kill me with, and then he’d let me breathe for a while. By the end I wanted to die so bad I was begging him for it. That’s what he wanted, I could tell. I’ll bet it’s what he wanted for all of us, for us to suffer long enough to beg him to kill us. He wanted me to be compliant with him, wanted me to enjoy what he was doing. And then he made me beg him for death. He petted me like a kitten, and then he pulled that rope tight the last time and I was happy.

  “That was the worst part, to be happy that I was dying, but I was—I died smiling. There was so much viciousness and awfulness in him that I could tell I was the first success.

  “He’ll do this forever if he can, and it will be worse every time. I don’t know how I know that but I do—I know it as sure as I know anything.”

  “Do you remember any facial features?”

  “No. He wasn’t ugly and his eyes were green, but otherwise, nothing. He was just a man.”

  She stepped back, and Mike watched Deb walk to her. The two spoke in hushed tones that Mike could neither hear nor wanted to hear.

  “I’m Lily.”

  “Hello, Lily.”

  Lily had been the last one Mike and Doc had found, the one they’d come the closest to not meeting. Mike’s arm was still sore from where her father had grabbed him. His eyes had lit up at the mention of the daughter’s name, and Mike knew they’d made a bad mistake, possibly even a fatal one. The man had roared at them while the thin little wife, who it turned out looked just like her daughter, spoke to him softly. He’d screamed at them, had thrown them onto the lawn, first Doc and then Mike. Mike had lain there on his elbows, and though there was pain, he was almost laughing. Why hadn’t they all reacted this way?

  The man had looked like he was going to come and kill him, and Mike had a fleeting thought that if he laughed, it might really be the end of him. He wondered if Doc would have had to cremate him for a Mike tattoo, and then the laughter really almost did come, and there would have been peals of it. He was to the brink, the man huffing and heaving by the door, when Mike felt Doc’s arms on his shoulders, lifting him up.

  The mother had run outside then, screaming at the husband to go back in the house, to let it end. He eyed them like a feral beast, and then he finally walked in and gently closed the door. The mother had apologized, then pushed a small bag with a scant few ashes in it into Mike’s hand.

  That was how he was able to meet Lily.

  “Your dad near to killed me,” he told her. “I think he would’ve if your mom hadn’t have been there.”

  “He’s got a temper.”

  “I think he was in the right. I’d have probably done the same thing before all of this. What do you remember?”

  “I was scared, that’s most of it. It happened right in my house; my folks were out that night. He probably watched the ho
use, so he knew that. One minute I was watching TV, and the next he was on me. He beat me up pretty badly. I lost consciousness I’m pretty sure, but I woke up when he was—when he was raping me. I was a virgin, and it hurt so bad I couldn’t believe it. The whole time he was covering my mouth with his hand and I could barely breathe. When he was done, I just lay there. I was stunned, and I’m not sure I could’ve moved for anything. He put the rope around my neck and squeezed and it was over. Everything was over.

  “I remember little flashes of his face but nothing of any use. Just that it was awful and it was almost nice to die and not have to remember it.”

  “I’m sorry that you had to recall it for me.”

  “It’s different now. There’s no hurt or violence here. When I talk about it, it’s like someone else is making my mouth move, like it didn’t happen to me because that stuff can’t happen to good people, and I think I was a pretty good person.

  “It can, though. Really bad things can happen to anybody, they do every day, and that day they happened to me. I feel like I took everything for granted for so long, and then all of a sudden it was just over. Everything was over.”

  She moved back, and Mike could see Deb talking to her. What was she saying? She appeared to be comforting her, leaning in tight with her arm around her.

  Hladini moved that imperceptible step forward to speak. She said, “I’m Hladini. I don’t remember any of it or anything out of the ordinary from that day. The last thing I remember was getting home from work—after that, everything was different.”

  Mike realized as the woman spoke that she was the girl that they’d been unable to get ashes from, the girl from the hairbrush. Could it have been that easy for Deb? Was the trip to North Carolina a waste? Mike shook the thought away as best he was able. The trip had been worth it, even with its horrors. He would have done all of that and more to be with her, even if it could only be like this.

  “Different how?”

  She glanced to Deb and then back at Mike. “Different. I can’t explain it, and I’m not sure you’d understand. Just different.”

  “You don’t remember anything about being killed?”

  “There’s nothing to remember. I’d assume I was basically dead before I knew it.”

  Mike stood, and the women watched him do it. He felt unnerved, and he didn’t know why. They were here to help him, but he still didn’t feel safe.

  “Deb, can we talk in private?”

  “We could pretend to, but anything you say to me when they’ve been called, they will hear. You may as well just come out with it.”

  They watched him, not with the hungry, angry eyes he’d imagined—he’d been wrong about that—but with eyes that longed for something. What they longed for wouldn’t be pleasant, but that unpleasantness wouldn’t be for him. They’d been brought by hate—for the first time, he saw that. They weren’t removed from their pain, but rather made of it, of pain and hate and anger that still pulsed as furiously as the blood that had run through them.

  He said, “I don’t think we’re going to get the man who did this to you. I can’t find him, and neither can Doc, without more information. Isn’t there anything else anyone remembers? Anything I can use to help that poor girl who hasn’t been killed?”

  They were silent.

  “Deb, I can’t do this. We’ve got nothing. I want to help more than anything, but I can’t do this. My brain is completely fried, and it’s all going to be for nothing. In a week I’m going to be reading about this poor dead girl, and nothing I’ve done will have done her or anyone else any good. This was a good try, and I have no regrets, but we failed. We did everything we could, but we failed. I’m not a cop, I have no way to know how to analyze this stuff, and I have no database to use to find out anything with the information I do have. We tried. We tried and failed and people are going to die.”

  “No. No, I don’t accept that. None of us accepts it, Mike. You have to do better.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Deb stared at him. She was different from the rest: her eyes were still her, she was Deb, and still she was telling and not asking. Their eyes locked, but she was looking through him. “I want you to draw.”

  “Draw what? I haven’t been able to draw anything since—you. Just looking at blank paper makes me sick. I don’t know if I’ll ever draw again.”

  Mike glanced down at the desk. An enormous pad of paper lay before him, along with two packs of sharpened pencils and a package of charcoals. When he looked back at her, Deb said, “We’ll talk, you draw.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  They spoke as a single entity, finishing one another’s thoughts. There were no interruptions or disagreements as they spoke, just a constant stream of consciousness. Mike kept up as best he was able, but they seemed to know when he couldn’t: they’d repeat little details, like the depth of a crease in the man’s brow, or the way the skin underneath his eyes was discolored, until he got it right. When the drawing was halfway finished, Mike had been ready to abandon it, but instead soldiered on, adding new details and filling the sketch out.

  The women kept refining the man as they spoke, bringing him to life in the way their little testimonies never could have. Those memories were pain and hate and death, the recollections were of the awfulness, not just the man. Now, focused just on the face, they were able to remember much more than any of them, even Mike, would have considered possible.

  Mike knew, as the face took shape, that he was out of his league. Lamar would have been perfect—he’d spent his whole life drawing portraits. Mike had been more of an illustrator, his imagination designing life as it never was. He wasn’t sure he had the chops to pull this off. Still, he worked. There was simply nothing else to do; the women spoke, and he replicated what they said as best he was able. The face was coming together, Mike would have agreed with that, but did it look anything like the man? Spurred on by them, he pushed the thought aside and worked.

  It was almost as if they knew exactly what to say and when to say it. Trimming down the final details now, Mike would wonder about a corner of the mouth, and three of the women would describe that part of the anatomy one after the other. The same happened for the width of the eyes—they looked too far apart to Mike, but they confirmed it to him, one after another.

  All of the women were contributing equally, save for Hladini. She managed a few short, descriptive comments, but she added little to what she’d said earlier. It seemed more likely than not to Mike that she was dead before she hit the floor. The bits of memories she was culling seemed to come from some other place.

  When Mike finally did turn over the sheet for them to see, their excitement rose even further, and the real refinement began. Mike laid a sheet of tracing paper that hadn’t been there before over the sketch, and he used this to build the man again, this time with the other paper as a base. He started with the hair, and with the paper lying flat and the other sheet as an example, they were able to help him refine it faster, to make it cleaner. The face, which had looked so wooden to Mike on the first page, now came alive. The eyes were lit, the mouth cruel and defiant. The nose was squared at the tip and just a little too small for the face. The cheekbones were high and protruding, the cheeks below them soft and sallow. The face lived, and when Mike held it up with a clean white sheet as the background, the stream of voices stopped.

  One of them said, “That’s him.”

  And the rest spoke in assent.

  Mike sat back in the chair, his brain asking to keep drawing even while his hands ached. His body was finished, but his mind felt clean after being able to draw, as if a plug had been pulled in his brain, and Mike could feel that part of him that was art saying, More. More.

  Deb interrupted his trance. “Now you have to leave us and draw it without our help.”

  Mike sputtered, “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t think you can take it back with you, do you? You’ll need to draw it when you’re awake so you
have something to study, something you can show Doc. You’ll need it to be sure, so that you don’t hesitate. One more thing. Unless it becomes impossible to do on your own, don’t involve the police.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we want him.”

  One second he was in the interrogation room with them in front of him, the women forming a loose semicircle before the table, the next second awake, panting and sweating in bed. Sheets and blankets curled about his legs like pythons as Mike struggled to wakefulness. He finally extracted himself from the bed, ignored the clock, and went to the kitchen.

  Lying there waiting were all of his drawing supplies, set out just as he would have himself: the pencils shaved down to razor tips, the vellum and large pads of paper unfurled and ready. Mike looked at the bathroom. The door was open, but Sid was nowhere to be found. But she’d done this—he knew it as well as he knew the face he had to draw.

  The first lines came easy, then sputtered into tentative scratches before stopping entirely. Mike took a deep breath, looked through the paper, and began to draw, really draw.

  In his head their voices murmured, and Mike wasn’t sure if they were breaking through to his wakeful world or if it was just his memory speaking for them.

  He drew and they paced him, a give and take during which he felt like he was running abreast with them towards some impossible target. They ebbed and flowed with his pencil, the voices or memories of voices jousting with one another more than they had in his sleep, not arguing but now not all polite correction, either. They refined the art as he worked, enough so that the man he’d drawn twice already was more vivid on the page than ever when Mike completed what he assumed would be the final draft.

  The eyes were awful. Mike had thought them alight before, but now they blazed from the paper, though he’d yet to use anything aside from a gray scale to construct the man. The mouth he felt compelled to draw in a snarl; he couldn’t figure why at first, and then he realized that was how the women had seen him. Maybe docile for moments, but otherwise violent and enraged.