Fairlane Road

by Cody Lakin

  “I’m gonna count to ten, Knox, and if you aren’t on the ground when I reach ten, I’m putting you down.”

  Incredibly, in response to Jackson’s final warning, Charlie Knox’s eyebrows rose, and then he grinned and laughter escaped him. Laughter.

  “One.” Jackson braced the gun, trying to hide the wild discomfort in his voice at Knox’s genuine, hoarse laughter. “Two.”

  “My god…” Knox shook his head. “It’s incredible. Has anyone in this world evolved at all?”

  “Three.”

  “You think, because you hold the switch, or the stick, that you have power over others—”

  “Four.”

  “—when really all you’re doing is responding, in obedience mind you, to what you don’t like or don’t understand with the one thing you do understand: force.”

  “Five…”

  “You and your base instincts, your unquestioning, unthinking obedience to whatever laws you think bind the world, as if invented rules are synonymous with morality.”

  “Six.”

  Knox laughed that high, rough, borderline hysterical laugh, the kind that came from his stomach. “Don’t like someone? Offended by something? Scared? Confused? Use force! Pull a gun! Beat ‘em into submission!”

  “You’ve killed people Knox, and you’re under arrest! Seven.”

  “It must be bliss, living on such a low level of intellect and consciousness. How I envy your simplicity, officer. You’re an ant. An automaton.”

  “Eight!”

  “Wandering around, unconfused and unbothered by anything of true value or depth, simply because you can’t comprehend or even conceive of it as you stumble through your life, existing on only the most superficial of levels.”

  “Nine. You better drop now! I’ll shoot!”

  Knox’s grin widened. “Of course you will.” He raised his hands to his head, breathing slowly, deeply. Without warning, he removed the goggles from his head, and Jackson saw his eyes.

  Not knowing what to expect, Jackson was caught off guard by the expression in Charlie Knox’s eyes. Even in the darkness, with the street lamps casting shadows along the sidewalks, Charlie Knox’s eyes seemed luminescent, and his irises were a piercing shade of emerald green. Jackson saw this, took note of it, and for a moment was confused by the wide-eyed, watchful, intensely focused expression that had settled into Knox’s face as soon as he removed his black goggles. But then, for Jackson, the world spun away. One moment his awareness was magnified and heightened by instinct and adrenaline, and he was taking in every detail of the scene before him, ready to either move in or pull the trigger and put Knox down. The next moment his mind was wiped clean, and his awareness, normally run on the paranoid analytical instincts of a police officer, was replaced by a cold blankness. He saw only the focusing eyes of Charlie Knox, seemingly illuminated in the night, and there wasn’t a single thought in his head.

  Charlie Knox dropped his hands to his sides and he grinned, unblinking eyes never leaving Officer Jackson’s. Then he made a gesture, and Jackson mimed it perfectly: he flicked an arm to the side in tandem with Knox, and tossed his gun into the middle of the street. The crowd of onlookers down the sidewalk all gasped and began to mumble amongst themselves (why’s he copying him? Is it hypnosis? We need to get out of here. Something weird’s going on). And Charlie Knox, his focus never wavering, walked right up to Jackson, who stood now like a mannequin with a glazed expression.

  “Tell them I did this,” Knox said in a whisper, still not blinking, his face inches from Jackson’s. When Knox reached up to scratch his ear, Jackson mirrored him. “Tell them their reckoning is upon them. Soon comes the night when we shall all raise our glasses, like we did when our race was young, in honor and in fear of the high invisible ones. Soon comes the night when we shall tremble before them once more, and all the trivialities of this superficial world will vanish.” The people gathered on the sidewalk were all shuffling away or retreating back into the bar, many of them dialing 9-1-1 on their cellphones. “Now… sleep,” said Knox, and Joel Jackson toppled onto the asphalt, unconscious.

  No one saw Charlie Knox walk into the night, and by the time sirens wailed and police cruisers came speeding to the scene down Lamplight Boulevard, he was gone like the stars would be at the break of dawn.

  Chapter 4:

  Fairytales

  Detective James Goode and his partner Aaron Simms got the call early that morning while they were just starting on their routine morning coffee. It was a woman who had been at Tony’s Club the night before, claiming she had seen the whole thing. She gave her address, and the two detectives didn’t hesitate driving over to talk with her.

  “You really think this is Knox, like Joel said?” asked James Goode once they were on their way to question the woman who had called them. He stared out of the passenger window, his eyes unfocused and far away, skimming over passing houses and trees.

  “I can’t say for sure, but I sure as hell think so. I think it’s gotta be.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Think about it,” said Simms. “First, there’s his disappearance from the holding cell. I doubt we’ll ever get an explanation for that, and not one of the cameras showed us a goddamn thing that we can make sense of. It’s fucking unexplainable. And so is what happened last night. I know Joel. Not too well, but I know him, and what happened doesn’t make any sense.” Simms kept his eyes on the road, not needing directions to get to the woman’s house; he knew where everything in Lamplight was, just as most locals did. “It’s not like Joel was knocked out or anything, either. He was asleep when we got there. Asleep.”

  “Yeah. I was thinking somewhere along the same line. None of it makes much sense.”

  Simms sighed, tapped the steering wheel idly with his fingers, and nodded. “Exactly.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  The house they pulled up to was small, even by the living standards of Lamplight, and it was the kind of home Goode recognized immediately. Small, yes, but inside it was likely homey, even if a bit messy, and upon exiting the car he could hear the movements and voices of children from inside. He guessed that the woman who had called and invited them here was a single mother, and even though the house was small, it was enough for this family.

  Simms and Goode went to the door together.

  “I got it!” a little girl’s voice announced, and there was the sound of bouncy bare feet pattering over hardwood floors before the door opened, revealing the smiling six- or seven-year-old girl, red hair done up in a ponytail. She had one front bottom tooth missing. “Hello!” she said, and was gone back into the house before either of the detectives could say hello in return. The girl’s mother, a tall blonde who looked like she was in her late thirties but could have easily been around fifty, came to the doorway a few seconds later.

  “You the detectives?” she asked, and they nodded. “I spoke to one of you. James Goode, I think?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s me.”

  “All right. Well, I’ll tell you what I saw, but that’s about all I know about what happened last night.”

  She joined them on her front porch and they listened to what she had to say while Simms took notes. She took her time relaying it all, sometimes getting hung up on trying to make sense of smaller details, sometimes expressing nothing more than her own discomfort and confusion at what she’d seen.

  “And—and he was just about to get to ten with his count, all tense and commanding… about to shoot him, I think. ’S what I thought, anyway. But this guy, all he did was take off those goggles—who wears fuckin’ goggles, anyway? and at night?—and all he did after taking them off was stare at the cop, and then
… I don’t know. It’s like he was hypnotized or something. I don’t know if that’s right, ‘cause I’ve only seen folks hypnotized at, like, carnivals and stuff, but I don’t even know if that’s real, but it’s like the cop was hypnotized.”

  “And that’s when he threw away his gun?” asked Goode.

  “Mhm. The guy with the goggles made a throwing motion, and the cop did the exact same thing, only he threw his gun. Like he was being controlled, didn’t have his own thoughts maybe.” The woman—Ashley Mapes—crossed her arms in unconscious discomfort and looked down at her feet. “You ever hear of something like that?”

  “No,” Goode said, and looked at his partner.

  “I haven’t either. But I agree. Sounds like hypnosis, or something like it.” Simms looked off in the distance as if in search of something. “Still, I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

  “Mhm, well, I’m afraid that’s about all I got for ya. When everyone started shufflin’ away, you can bet your ass I went with ‘em. Say, what happened to the cop? He all right?”

  “He’s fine,” said Goode. “Confused, and scared, but fine.” For a moment the detective considered telling the woman about what Officer Joel Jackson had said after he’d woken up, but decided against it. The look in Ashley Mapes’s eyes said that she was shaken and ready to end this conversation, ready to go back inside with her kids, and Goode didn’t blame her. More than anything he wished he could be with his fiancé right now, and have nothing more to do with Charlie Knox.

  “Good. I’d say he’s pretty lucky, wouldn’t you?” said Ashley Mapes.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, thank you for your time, ma’am,” said Simms. They both shook Ashley Mapes’s hand.

  “Hope you catch that bastard, for what he’s done. Then we can all sleep better,” she told them as they returned to their car.

  The drive back to the station was mostly silent. It seemed, to both men, there was nothing that could be said about what they had just learned. All they could offer was their shared bewilderment. And all Goode could think about was what Officer Joel Jackson had said when he had woken up.

  Something about a reckoning.

  Something about the way the world was now, and how it would all change.

  He’s like the boogeyman, thought Goode, watching houses file by through the passenger window. Maybe we’ll never catch him. Maybe it doesn’t matter how many people we question, how many leads we follow, or how close we think we’re coming. Maybe he can’t be caught. And then he thought that maybe this was his version of Hell: fear mixed with false hope; a case that could never be closed; events that could never be explained without the risk of losing one’s sanity; a killer who couldn’t be caught.

  * * *

  “You see em?”

  It was his partner’s voice. Samuel Gibson. From the passenger side.

  “You see em, Andy?”

  Andrew nodded as the car rounded the last corner of Forest Street, and the beginning of Fairlane Road came into view. Three figures, standing in the road.

  “I see them,” he said, accelerating.

  In the passenger seat, Samuel—Sam, as Andrew called him—undid the strap on his holster and tensed.

  The car’s engine roared, and Andrew spun the wheel and jammed the break pedal down, bringing the car to a slanted, screeching stop, lurching he and his partner in their seats.

  He undid the strap of his own holster, and they both jumped out of the car, drawing their guns and instinctively taking cover behind their open doors. Andrew was preparing to yell out commands, to tell them to lift their hands in the air and drop to the ground. This was going to end one way or another. No more bodies. No more fear. This was going to end; they would bring the Knox family down at last.

  But he heard something, then. The low voices of Thomas and Susan Knox, speaking to their twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy.

  “We love you, Charlie. We love you so much.”

  That’s enough, Andrew thought, clicking the safety of his gun off from where he crouched behind the door. He was about to stand and aim, about to shout the commands—

  —when the gunshots rang out, cutting through the air and silencing all else—

  Andrew Jean awoke with a small start, the immediacy of the dream—a dream he’d had many times over the last few years—echoing and fading from his mind, and by the time it was gone, he had all but forgotten the dream entirely aside from how it had ended, and that it had startled him enough to wake him up. He became aware, although dimly, that it was early, earlier than he was accustomed to waking up without an alarm, and his first thought once his mind slid from the dream to full awareness was of how glad he was that, even after all the things he had seen and been through, sleep had never been much of a problem. Nightmares, yes, but he had always been strong willed enough not to let such things affect his need for sleep. This morning, however, he awoke while it was still relatively dark out—the sky was no longer black but had yet to make the full transition to blue—and even after staying in bed for some time, he realized he wouldn’t be falling back asleep. His mind, once conscious, was full, always spinning, always thinking and pondering.

  Could’ve been a philosopher with all these thoughts, he thought to himself as he stared up at the ceiling. This was something he had told himself numerous times over the years, more and more so in the past few months as his inclination to reflect on his life had grown. Now he surrounded himself with it, attaching his beliefs and philosophies to every aspect of his life, giving words to everything he saw, and the result was a calmer, clearer mind. He even thought so now, in the morning’s silence, that the way he lived life now would have saved him a great deal of mental pain had he discovered it long ago. He now let his thoughts go freely. He purposely found meaning in every detail of life that he could, which in turn made it so that he had something important to say about even the smallest of things. Because of this, he felt he had more headspace, more room to breathe and relax. It was most likely why, he thought, that the young detective James Goode spent so much time with him, and maybe even why Jezebel had no qualms whatsoever about staying with him and maintaining such a close relationship with him while many people her age—people who had once been her friends—had entirely different, often unhealthy relationships with their parents: he was an intellectual, a kind of philosopher, and detested pointless interactions and smalltalk. And he could be trusted to put a great deal of thought into any idea, any concept, any event.

  Andrew shut his eyes, and after a few moments he heard Jezebel in the kitchen, cooking something on the stove.

  He thought of a similar morning two years ago, remembered coming out of his bedroom and finding Jezebel sitting on the back porch, a cup of tea in her hands, tears in her eyes. She’d been nineteen at the time, and had been going through a bout of depression, and added onto her inner turmoil was that her relationship with two of her closest friends had become toxic. This he had found out after going outside to sit beside her and ask what was wrong.

  “People,” she’d said, sniffling, her eyes on the back lawn which was mostly foxtails and tall, golden grass. “Stupid people and their drama.”

  “This have anything to do with Pat and Sierra?”

  She had nodded. “I tried to explain to them what I’m going through, and that it’s just… it doesn’t have anything to do with them. Just because I feel like this sometimes, and don’t feel like seeing them—or seeing anyone—doesn’t mean I’m angry at them, or don’t want to be friends with them. But all they can think about is themselves, like they couldn’t… like they couldn’t care less about whatever I might be going through, and nothing’s ever their fault. It’s always like that with them. They just… react. Make it about themsel
ves.” She had leaned against him, losing the battle of trying to hold her tears at bay.

  “I had a feeling this was coming,” he’d said.

  “Yeah. I guess I did, too.”

  “You ever read any Carl Jung, Jess?”

  She had sniffled and laughed, slightly. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “One of Jung’s main philosophies had to do with the archetypes we all embody. How each of us has one or more archetypes in us. The rebel. The hero. The helper.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And when it comes to the people who most often create drama, you see the victim archetype in full form. The kinds of people who, from their own point of view, are never, ever wrong in any situation, no matter the circumstances. They don’t have a shred of objectivity or empathy in them, and if they are wrong for a fact, and you tell them this, they’ll attack you, guilt-trip you, claim the whole world’s against them—all of this because it is literally impossible for them to admit or realize that they are wrong. They’ll do anything but that, even if it means attacking you, playing on other’s sympathy to turn others against you, play the innocent, wronged victim. And all of this stems from some deep-seated insecurity, otherwise they’d have no need to be so defensive and so victimized.” Andrew had shaken his head and sighed, holding his daughter close. “Masters of manipulation, really. Mind vampires. Or, as I like to call them: manipulative jackasses.”

  Jezebel had giggled. “Sounds like you’ve had some experience with these kinds of people.”

  “You could say so.”

  “That all describes Pat and Sierra scarily well. Like, specifically.”

  “Jung knew his archetypes, and I know them, vaguely at least, when I see them.” He rubbed her shoulder. “Jess… whatever they say to you, whatever they do, whatever they think… it has nothing to do with you. You aren’t doing anything wrong. However they’re acting, or whatever they do, it has nothing to do with you Jess, and it has everything to do with them and their insecure, skewed realities.”