"That you, Tell?"
A male voice over the intercom. Deep. He sounded drunk.
I nodded, not wanting to show my face but desperate to make the man believe I was Telly. Inspiration struck, and I dug into the jeans, thankful I'd thought to transfer it from my pants when I'd changed out of them.
I held up the rabbit's foot. Jingled it on the chain.
The door buzzed.
"C'mon downstairs," the man said. "The party's started."
I stepped inside.
The darkened house smelled of burning incense. Beer. Lit dimly by the moon over the bay, the living room looked as though someone had been having a party. From deeper inside the house, music thumped. Just the bass, but I recognized the song. I'd heard it in nightmares so often the beat was seared into my brain. I swallowed bile, and continued toward a brightened doorway.
Stairs led down. Basements were rare in Miami—hell, in most of South Florida. Near the beach, you'd have to drill through several feet of coral rock before you hit water. It was difficult to dig, and even more to keep them dry.
I drew the revolver from the back of Telly's jeans. I'd already checked to see that it was loaded. I wasn't sure what I would find down there, but with the boy's swim trunks at the pool, and whoever lived in this house being a friend of Telly's, I felt it best to err on the side of caution.
Creeping down, I held the gun pointed at the doorway, expecting someone to step out at the foot of the stairs with every step down, the song so loud it felt like the music penetrated every pore in my body. I realized halfway down the stairs that I'd been crying.
As I descended further, a room came into view below, oddly incongruous to the modern style of the house above, as if someone had torn it straight from a magazine from the '80s. Faux wood paneling. A brown tartan sofa with colorful afghan throw pillows. An ancient game system resting on the floor, hooked up to a large tube television with knobs instead of buttons above the brown speaker panel. The smell of beer was even stronger. Several empty bottles stood on the coffee table, some with the labels peeled off.
I reached the clean concrete floor, and turned.
The boy was stretched out naked on the red fabric of a pool table, his frail limbs spread wide, hands and feet pointing toward the corner holes. He looked about nine or ten, the conspicuous lack of pubic hair at his groin and under his armpits evidence of his young age. He appeared asleep, but was more likely passed out or drugged. If so, he was lucky not to be subjected to the sight of the two men watching him.
On either side of the boy, two deeply tanned men stood stripped down to the waist. One wore boxer shorts, the other tight blue briefs, his erect penis sprung from the y-front. The man in boxers, his hair slicked back like Gordon Gecko, stroked himself with one hand while leering down at the boy, taking a swig of beer with the other.
"Father Figure," blasting from a large wood cabinet stereo, ended.
The man in the briefs kneaded the foreskin-hooded end of his penis as if he were chalking a pool cue. In the silence, he groaned. Neither man had seen me—yet.
I snapped back the hammer.
The man in boxers turned to me, the bottle dropping from his hand as he realized I wasn't Telly.
"What the—?"
The pistol silenced him before the bottle hit even the floor, the bullet tearing into his shoulder and spinning him around on his bare feet with a spray of blood, DayGlo under the fluorescent track lights. He fell back against the pool table, his arm squeaking as he slid down to the floor on his butt in a puddle of beer and broken glass.
The song started up again, on repeat: Tss-tss-tss…
Briefs had reached into one of the pockets and grabbed a pool ball while I'd watched the Boxer Shorts fall. As he threw it at me, his hard-on bounced in an almost comical way, making me think of those Follow the Bouncing Ball singalongs from old cartoons.
I ducked, but not before it struck me in the chest, just above the nipple Telly had slashed open. I fired again. The shot went wild, striking the wall a foot from his face, taking a chunk out of the wood wallpaper.
He tore a pool cue off the rack and gripped it in both hands, holding the felt-tipped end pointed at the boy's scrawny chest.
"Don't fucking shoot, man, I swear to God—"
This time, my aim was true.
I approached Boxer Shorts as he tried to pull himself to his feet, his blood-streaked hand constantly slipping on the wood of the pool table so he kept falling back on his ass in the spilled beer.
"Please, don't kill me, man," he wept. "I'm sick." He blubbered, lips quivering, tears streaming down his face. "I'm just sick!"
"I know," I said, and shot him in the head.
THE WALK BACK to Telly's Impala was excruciating. I kept thinking somebody must have heard the shots. Someone must have called the police. But the cops never showed. The streets remained empty and silent, just the sound of the breaks hitting the sand accompanying me to where Telly's body awaited disposal.
I filled the small gas can from the tank with a syphon I found in the trunk, and splashed the gas around the front and back seats, drenching Telly. I tossed the gun in through the passenger window, followed by the gas tank.
Telly's Zippo lit on the first strike. I stepped back, and threw it in.
The fire caught fast. I was already on my way back to the beach when the gas can exploded, and I turned back to see the Impala shoot into the air, flames spewing from shattered glass as it crashed back down on burst tires.
The boy was sitting where I'd left him. I'd carried him upstairs and dressed him in the living room, where they'd left his clothes. He didn't weigh much, maybe sixty pounds soaking wet. His eyes fluttered as I carried him down through the darkened residential streets. Police sirens blared by on the block opposite, heading toward the fire, but somehow we remained unseen.
I carried the boy as far as Mercy Hospital. With the cap peak still obscuring my face, I brought him into Emerg, which seemed eerily empty. As I laid him out on a gurney, a night nurse came down the hall with a clipboard. She called after me as I rushed off, ignoring her, glad the boy would be safe in her care.
As I walked home, I thought about what Marnie had said to me the day I left. Nola may not have needed a vigilante. She would certainly have preferred I'd never left, that I'd stayed home to be a father to her and watch over her. But I'm certain the boy, had he known how close he'd come to being violated and most likely murdered that night, might not feel the same.
It broke my heart to know things between Marnie and I would never be the same, no matter how hard I tried. Even if she'd have me back, our time apart would always be between us. The Rabbit Man's death, and those nameless men whose lives I'd taken in a basement in Coconut Grove, would seep into every seemingly pleasant conversation, every social engagement, every one of Nola's milestones. In the back of my mind and hers, the Rabbit Man would still be running.
Back at the house in Coral Gables, I used my key in the door, pleased for a second time to find it still worked. I crept up to our bedroom, saw Marnie sleeping with legs stretched over my side of the bed. It had been four months since we'd slept in that bed together, and she still slept mostly on her side.
I slipped by into Nola's room. The moon illuminated her head against the pillow. Nola had a thumb in her mouth, a habit she'd grown out of at age four but had taken up again in the wake of her experience with the Rabbit Man.
My sweet little girl's eyes opened wide as she drew the covers up to her chin, and for a terrible moment I flashed back to the eerily similar look Telly had given me when I woke him with the knife. Nola relaxed, seeing it was me.
"I thought you were a monster," she said.
I wondered, Am I?
Could I tell her there was nothing to be afraid of, that there were three less monsters in the world because of what I'd done that night? I flashed on the tape in Telly's hand, completely unreadable in the dark. It could have been a polka album for all I'd cared. That splotch on the rabbit's foot could have
been dirt or paint or just about anything.
Could I tell her I'd taken pleasure in killing those two men?
There was no doubt in my mind what they'd intended to do with that boy. But what was Telly's role in it? Had he in fact been the Rabbit Man I'd so wanted him to be? I'd needed him to be, so I could come home to my wife? To our daughter?
Marnie had been right after all: Nola didn't need a vigilante. I'd needed to be one.
I'd fooled myself into believing that killing the Rabbit Man was about seeking justice for my little girl, but it had never been for her. I'd needed to take him out of the world to feel strong again. I needed to erase him from our family history to cover for my own shame. So I wouldn't feel like a coward anymore. So I would feel safe.
It had never been about justice. And the fear, the shame—that would never end.
There were more of them, you see. I'd forgotten about Telly's cell phone tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. And as I crossed the South Dixie Highway on my way back home, it buzzed against my pelvis.
TOMORROW NIGHT, the text said.U IN?
Was I in? No question.
But first I'd need to buy a gun.
I smiled down at Nola, her face half in darkness, my shadow drawn long over her bed. "No, honey," I told her, faking a reassuring smile. "It's me. Daddy's home."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Duncan Ralston was born in Toronto and spent his teens in small-town Ontario. As a "grown-up," Duncan lives with his girlfriend and their dog in Toronto, where he writes dark fiction about the things that frighten, sicken, and delight him. In addition to his twisted short stories found in Gristle & Bone, the anthologies Easter Eggs & Bunny Boilers, What Goes Around, Death By Chocolate, Flash Fear, and the charity anthologies The Black Room Manuscripts, VS: US vs UK Horror, Bah Humbug!, and Burger Van, he is the author of the novels Salvage, Wildfire and Woom, an extreme horror Black Cover book from Matt Shaw Publications.
For more from Duncan Ralston, including exclusive updates, contests, and a FREE book, please join him at his official website, The Fold (duncanralston.com), or follow him on his Amazon Author Page, BookBub, Facebook, and Twitter.
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