by David Beers
He prayed like he spoke, oftentimes interchanging silent thoughts with vocal words. He had prayed for so long—years and years—that it was simply an extension of himself, as natural as breathing. Father Charles hadn’t lost his faith despite the anger he felt right now. He would do what he needed to because of his faith, not in spite of it. His love for God led him to his love for mankind, and thus to the necessity of what came next.
“Would you like a drink?” he said, looking up.
“You have something here?”
Father Charles nodded to the bar behind him, a small thing. “Jesus drank wine, right?”
John smiled. “I always thought that was for decoration. Sure, I’ll have one.”
Father Charles stood from the edge of the desk and walked behind him, opening up the bottle of whiskey.
“Do you think you’ll get caught, John? Does that scare you?” he said as he poured the brown liquid into a glass.
“I’m terrified of it. I feel like the world is closing in around me and there’s nothing I can do to put it off. Like it’s a rope around my neck and it’s tightening. It’s been tightening my whole life, but it’s moving quicker now, and it’s going to choke me soon.”
Father Charles nodded, looking at the glass of liquor. “I feel it too, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t sleep, John. I wake up at night almost screaming because I’m watching you do these things. I don’t know why God brought you to me. It’s like He cursed me.”
John didn’t speak for a few seconds before saying, “I’m sorry, Father.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
The priest poured another drink so that now two sat in front of him. “I don’t have any ice.”
“Straight is fine.”
“Your wife still thinks you’re an alcoholic?” Father Charles said.
“Yes.”
“So this is your first drink in a long time?”
“Yeah.”
The priest turned both glasses in his hand and walked to the side of John’s chair. “Here,” he said, and handed him the glass. John took it and offered it up for a brief toast. They clicked and both put the glass to their mouths. Father Charles took his down without a grimace, though he felt the warmth draining along his throat.
He took both glasses and walked them back to the bar, standing there for another few seconds.
“What are you going to do?” the priest said.
“I don’t know.”
“You won’t turn yourself in?”
“No.”
The priest sighed. I would say Your will, not mine, Lord, but I don’t know what Your will is anymore. He reached into his pocket and pulled out what he hadn’t wanted to, what he hoped could be kept hidden forever. No more, though.
He turned around and walked toward John’s back.
* * *
“This isn’t good,” Harry said.
John didn’t turn around to look at Father Charles, but kept his eyes on the floor as he leaned on his knees.
“I don’t like what he’s saying. He hasn’t ever spoken like this before, John,” Harry said.
John ignored him. Harry might be right, but this was also the first time Father Charles had somewhat leveled with him, talking about these monstrous acts on a semi-human level.
“I want to stop,” he said, for what felt like the millionth time. “I just can’t.”
“Would you fucking listen to me?” Harry said. “I don’t like this. Turn around, see what the hell he’s doing. Why would he call you here like this and have a goddamn drink with you? None of it is making sense.”
John didn’t feel happy, per se, but he felt better than when he’d been sitting in the car waiting to walk into Kaitlin Rickiment’s apartment. He felt like at least someone was listening to him. And as long as he was here talking, he wasn’t out there killing.
Still, he couldn’t ignore Harry. Something in what he said rang true, because the whole situation was past the point of oddness, despite the contentment it gave John.
He turned around.
“FUCK!” Harry screamed, seeing the priest for the first time.
John reacted, some primitive part of his mind taking over and pushing everything else out in one hard rush.
Father Charles held a knife horizontally, the blade facing John and moving straight toward his neck. John pushed on the chair, simultaneously standing up and shoving the chair into the priest.
It hit him hard, stopping his walk forward and causing him to bend over as it collided with his stomach. John looked into his eyes for a brief second, saw the surprise echoing across the priest’s brain, and recognition that what he hoped to happen, wouldn’t.
“Kill him,” Harry said, his voice a whisper of ice floating by John’s ear.
The hunger came, falling over John as a fever might a child. He couldn’t fight it, couldn’t understand it, could only embrace it in all its horrible glory.
John reached into his pocket and pulled out his own knife.
The priest backed away a few steps, his eyes widening with each step he took.
“John …,” Father Charles said.
John couldn’t hear him, though. Had Harry spoken, he wouldn’t have heard him either.
He moved forward, his feet sure and his hand tight on the knife. The priest didn’t even try to feign an attack; he kept backing up until he hit the bar he’d just served drinks from. The bottle tipped over, clanging against a metal tray. John kept pushing forward, and with his left hand grabbed the priest’s right, pinning the knife to the bar.
The Father’s flesh shone with sweat and John looked at it dripping down his neck, knowing absolutely nothing and yet everything that mattered. He brought his own knife up to the priest’s throat, pushing forward, and though the man fought, the knife sunk further and further toward his neck.
At last, it reached his skin, piercing it with the point.
Blood started in a trickle, but John kept pushing, and the flow increased as the flesh separated.
The priest screamed, but no one heard it. Not John or anyone else inside the empty cathedral.
Finally, the windpipe was severed, and the screaming stopped, but not the blood flow.
13
A Portrait of a Young Man
John sat at the back of the class. The teacher hadn’t assigned seats, and he was running late this morning, so when he arrived, he slid into the first seat he saw.
He arrived late because he had lain in bed all morning, not getting up when his alarm went off, or the next five times he hit snooze.
A year had passed since Harry’s death, but things hadn’t gotten easier. Maybe from a societal standpoint, given that no one checked in on him anymore—not outside of his monthly meetings with Vondi. What grew tougher were his thoughts, though he hadn’t noticed them at first. Slight things, like wisps of smoke filtering through someone’s vision from a cigarette burning a few feet away. He saw them for a brief second but they passed just like air, and that had been that.
As the months passed, the wisps grew thicker. He didn’t understand their origin, though he understood their content fine.
Thoughts of murder, plain and simple.
Was it Harry that triggered this, watching his friend drown and wanting so bad to relive his drowning over and over so that he could witness it forever?
Maybe it didn’t matter why, only what.
So he lay in bed that morning imagining what it would be like to actually kill a person. He had done those things to animals before but … the human body was so much bigger, with so much more blood inside. Larger organs. The ability to speak. To beg. All animals could do was squeal from tiny vocal cords and struggle against his much stronger muscles.
It didn’t suffice anymore. He found little enjoyment in it.
But to kill a person? Was that something he could even do? What did it make him, that he thought he might be able to?
John looked around the room at
his classmates, not hearing anything the teacher said. All of them were alive and he could make any one of them dead.
What the fuck is wrong with you? he thought. You gotta stop this. It’s going to consume your life. It already is. There’s a goddamn test next week and you’re not going to have a clue what’s on it.
The entire scolding was true, but it didn’t stop a single vision.
The blonde in class sitting to his right. He didn’t imagine having sex with her like most fifteen year olds his age; no, he saw what she would look like, tied up, with a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. He could think of nothing else. Would it be a simple entry wound, with a stream of blood rolling down her face? Would there be an exit wound behind, her head opening up like a mushroom cloud, sending both brain and bone onto the bare mattress beneath? Would she die immediately, or would her body keep trying to live? Would her bladder and bowels empty themselves?
Sick, disgusting thoughts.
But things he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to—and a part of him didn’t want to.
A very large part wanted to see it happen.
* * *
Nothing of note.
That’s what Lori told Dr. Vondi at her last visit.
And it was true. Harry’s death had been the last issue with John. No other dead animals.
“What about you?” she had said to him.
“Just the usual conversations.”
Lori didn’t like to have nothing of note, but she felt this might be the calm before the storm. Clara had periods like this, times when she wasn’t wild and villainous. That didn’t mean the woman wasn’t insane any longer, only that she might be storing up some of that insanity to let it all loose at once.
Lori didn’t know what that would look like with John, but it frightened her, because if he exploded—doing something rash (Murder, Lori—can’t you say it, even to yourself?), it would be hard for her to help him.
And so, she thought it might be time to bring Scott into this. If something were to happen, he would need to know about it, and if he believed her—then maybe they could take action now to prevent it. Lori didn’t know what to do on her own, not without getting John in trouble.
“We need to talk about John,” she said as Scott climbed into bed.
“Now?” he said.
“I don’t know when else we’ll have the chance. I think now is probably best.”
Scott sighed as he padded his pillow behind his head. “Okay, what about? Something to do with the psychologist he’s seeing?”
“Yeah,” she said, completely unsure how to start the conversation. Scott knew very little about her family and she wasn’t going to try and open that history right now. She needed some other way to broach the subject, and she couldn’t simply say, Our son has something wrong with him inside his brain, and he’s probably going to murder someone soon. I’m not turning him in because I love him too much, so we should plan something out before it happens.
“Well … what is it?”
“I’m scared he might be going down the wrong path.”
Scott laughed. “The wrong path? Did he join a cult or something that I’m not aware of?”
“Scott, seriously, I’m not joking.”
“Me either. What is it that makes you think that? He’s not wearing all black is he?”
Lori looked over at him and saw the grin across his face.
“I’m worried that Harry’s death might have done something to him. Like, messed him up somehow.”
Scott’s smile faded and he looked ahead at the television. “I worried about that for a while, too, but nothing has happened to make me think he’s not okay. His grades are fine. He acts the same around the house. He hasn’t had any trouble at school. Right?”
“Yeah, that’s all true, but … well, I talk to Vondi also, and ….”
“And what?”
“He just seems darker to both of us.”
Another sigh from Scott’s side of the bed. “So what do you want to do? He’s in therapy; it’s that guy’s job to help him not be so dark. That’s why we pay him.”
Just say it, Lori. Just tell him the truth, all of it, right now. Lay it out for him and then let him decide which pieces he wants to pick up and which ones he wants to discard. You can’t keep beating around the bush.
But she couldn’t say it out loud.
Because if he didn’t believe her … if he responded like Vondi, or worse, thought something wrong with her … it all led to something she couldn’t have happen: an inability to protect John. The worst case scenario for anything she saw far outweighed the best.
“Maybe,” Lori said. “I just think we should pay closer attention to him is all. I think it would be good for you to spend more time with him.”
Scott nodded and leaned back onto his pillow. “I can do that.”
* * *
Vondi was reaching a fork in the road, and he saw it just ahead.
He had been seeing Lori Hilt for two years and John for a year. He didn’t see progress in either—or rather, he saw progress from Lori in certain areas, but the one that now occupied much of his thinking, her son’s penchant for violence, he saw no change in those thoughts. And John? What was Vondi trying to get out of that?
Knowledge, he thought.
But the progress was slow, if at all.
The fork was coming up, and he would have to decide whether he went right or left. Ignore what he thought or did something about it.
“I’m not sure,” he said, “of what else to do.”
He sat on the couch this time, his psychologist on a chair across the room.
“You haven’t talked much about them before,” Trevor said.
“I guess I’ve been scared about what to say. I could be imagining all this; I mean, I’m still working with his mother to stop having such illogical beliefs. Yet here I am wondering the same thing.”
“What is it about the kid that bothers you?” Trevor asked.
“There’s something off about him,” Vondi said, his mind slowly turning through the words that could describe what he meant. “I spoke with one of his teachers, and she told me there was a ruthlessness about John that most kids didn’t have.”
“You spoke to his teacher?”
Vondi nodded, his lips pressed tightly together.
“How did you manage to do that?”
“I went to his school and asked to speak to someone that taught him.”
Trevor smiled, cocking his head slightly to the left. “Why?”
“You don’t get it with this kid. I can’t get anything out of him. His mother is convinced he’s a serial killer, and while that seems pretty far fetched to me, there’s something not right. One of the only times he ever opened up to me, he told me that he dreamed about his friend that died, and in the dream, he didn’t save his friend because—and I quote—he ‘didn’t want to.’”
“And that means what?”
“You don’t find that disturbing?”
“How old is he?” Trevor said.
“Fifteen.”
“It’s a bit odd, but the kid is young, and you know this as well as anyone—he could simply be lying to you.”
Vondi leaned back against the couch, sighing. “You’re probably right … but I just can’t shake it that there is something going on here.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“Honestly?”
Trevor nodded.
“I want to follow him and see what he does all day. I want to know what he’s hiding.”
“Outside of the ethical problems with what you’re saying, what are you going to do if you find out he is hiding something? It’s not your business what the kid is up to.”
“I,” Vondi said, “… I don’t know. I guess it depends on what he’s hiding.”
“Maybe you should stop seeing him,” Trevor said.
Vondi looked down at his shoes. He knew Trevor was right but …
“I don’t want to,”
he said.
14
Present Day
John backed away from the body lying on the floor. He did it hurriedly, knocking the chair over and slamming into the priest’s desk.
“What the FUCK!” John shouted, blood covering his hands and shirt. He looked down at it, frantically trying to wipe it off, but only smearing it across his arms.
“Jesus Christ,” Harry said. He stood over the body, the priest’s blood slowly outlining his sandals.
“Oh my God,” John said, his breath picking up speed. “What did I do?”
“You killed the son-of-a-bitch,” Harry said. “Christ’s cunt hairs, man. This isn’t good.”
John walked forward, the knife falling from his hand and landing silently on the floor. He knelt down in front of Father Charles. The priest’s eyes were open, staring at some spot on the wall. His neck was open too, blood slowly oozing out, though it appeared gravity caused it, as the priest’s heart no longer pumped.
John reached forward, placing his hand on the priest’s chest, his fingertips dipping into the cooling blood.
Harry grabbed him and threw him back; John landed on his ass but didn’t even look up at Harry. He couldn’t take his eyes off Father Charles.
“Don’t fucking touch him. This is a mess, John. A goddamn mess. I told you not to get involved with this guy. He just tried to kill you!” Harry stared at John as if expecting an answer, something along the lines of, You were right, I was wrong.
John couldn’t speak, though.
He couldn’t do anything but stare at the man who had given him spiritual guidance for the past decade. That man lay dead, his throat slit by John’s insane lust.
Harry looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s nearing three, man. I don’t know what time first Mass is supposed to be, or if janitors get here early, but we have to move. We gotta get this body out of here and this whole office cleaned up … FUCK, MAN!”
John looked down at the floor in between his knees. “What did I do?”
Harry walked across the room, kneeling at John’s feet so that they were eye to eye. “You killed someone, John, without any planning involved. His blood is everywhere, and your DNA is too. Do you love Diane? Do you love your kids? Because if you do, you need to stand up and start doing something about this shit. You have three hours probably, and at the end of those three, if you don’t get it together, you’re going to jail.”