by Dan Wells
“Then it’s a question of identity as well,” he said. “If I’m somebody else, is that as good as being me? If I can’t be myself anymore, am I better off being nobody at all, or choosing a new self to become?”
“That’s right,” I said, nodding. “You can stay one person, in one place, doing one thing forever, and hate it, or you can be free of everything—no responsibilities, no problems, no baggage.”
He stared at me a moment. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“I want you to tell me what would make you stay in that situation,” I said. “I know you think this is about me, but it’s not—I can’t explain. Now seriously—you’ve got nothing on the one side, and everything on the other. Why would you stay?”
He thought about it for a couple of minutes, tapping his pen on his pad and frowning. This was why I came to Dr. Neblin—he took me seriously, no matter what I said or how crazy I sounded.
“One more question,” he said. “Am I a sociopath?”
“What?”
“This is your puzzle,” said Neblin, “and as we have often discussed, you have strong sociopathic tendencies. I want to know if I should be answering from a standard emotional state, or from the lack of one.”
“What’s the difference?”
Dr. Neblin smiled. “There’s your answer. You said that the second option, leaving and starting a string of brand new lives, had freedom—it had no ‘baggage.’ Where a sociopath sees baggage, a typical personality would see emotional connections. Friends, family, loved ones—not all of us can give those up so easily. They define us, and they make us who we are. Sometimes the personalities around us are what make us complete.”
Emotional connections. Loved ones.
“Kay.”
“What?”
“I . . . I said okay.”
It was Kay Crowley. Mr. Crowley was really in love with her—not pretending to be, not using her for cover, he was really, truly in love with her. I’d tried putting myself into Crowley’s place and it didn’t work, not because his mind was too different, but because mine was. The demon loved his wife.
“I have to go,” I said.
“You just got here.”
Crowley had done it maybe a hundred times before, maybe a thousand times, jumping from body to body, life to life. He moved to a new town and started fresh, and when his demon powers couldn’t sustain a body anymore, he just dropped it and moved on. He’d done it in Arizona with Emmett Openshaw, and fled here to Clayton County to hide and start over—but then he’d met Kay, and now it was different. Leaving this body meant leaving her, and he couldn’t do it, so he was patching himself up piecemeal instead—fixing each part as it broke down instead of starting over fresh.
“John?”
“Huh?”
“Is there something you want to talk about?” asked Dr. Neblin.
“No, no, I . . . have to go. I have to think.”
“Call me, John,” said Neblin, standing up and pulling out a business card. “Call me if you want to talk, about anything at all.” He wrote a second number, his home number, I assumed, on the back of the card, and handed it to me. I realized abruptly that he was worried—lines of concern etched his face like wounds, and he was watching me anxiously.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, and left the office, picking up my coat from the waiting room and going downstairs. I got on my bike and rode home, not aimlessly, not desperately, not nervously; I was calm for the first time in weeks. I’d found his weakness.
Love.
I spent the evening locked in my room, going over my notes and watching out the window for Mr. Crowley. Love was the chink in his armor, I knew, but I hadn’t come up with a plan to exploit it yet. I crafted and discarded a dozen different ideas, desperate to find one that could stop him before he killed again. But he was already growing very sick. He’d strike soon, and I wasn’t ready.
Sure enough, a little after midnight Mr. Crowley staggered out to his car. He looked worse than I’d ever seen him—he was waiting as long as possible to fix himself. I wondered if he might have to replace more than one thing, and then I wondered if that was even possible—if he took too much from one person, did he become that person whether he wanted to or not? That would explain why he replaced just one organ at a time.
I opened my door quietly; Mom was still awake, watching Letterman. I closed it again, locked it, and went to the window. It was a long drop to the ground, but Crowley was getting away. I bundled up in my coat and put on my newest acquisition—a black ski mask—and jumped.
Mr. Crowley was too far gone for me to follow his lights, so I rode as fast as I could to the Flying J, hoping he would look there for another drifter. The Flying J was hard to reach by bike, so I rode to the base of the hill behind it and hiked up, avoiding the freeway and the lights. Crowley was just pulling out—alone. He hadn’t found anyone yet. I tumbled back down the snowy hill and rode the few blocks to the freeway off-ramp, where I saw him come back into town and head over toward the wood plant. Maybe he’d try to get a night watchman or something; some innocent nobody in the wrong place at the wrong time. His car was swerving dangerously, and I realized he probably couldn’t wait for a victim nobody would miss—he had to kill the first person he found. At one in the morning, that would still be almost impossible. I followed a few blocks behind, as black as the night.
He turned a few streets early, and when I reached the corner I saw him pull up behind an idling diesel cab. The truck engine turned off, the door opened, and a man jumped down; his breath floated like a ghost in the freezing air. The man jogged toward the front of the truck but Crowley got out of his car and called out to him. The man paused and called back. I couldn’t hear what either was saying. The man pointed at a house behind him—a duplex.
My heart froze. I looked up at the street sign above me: Redwood Street.
That was Max’s dad.
“No!” I screamed, but it was too late—Max’s dad looked up, looked right at me, and Crowley staggered toward him, claws out, knocking him to the ground with a gleaming claw and then falling on him with animal fury. Max’s dad went down in a whirlwind of blood and claws, and Crowley stood over him unsteadily for a moment before collapsing next to the body. Both men lay inert in the frozen slush. The street was silent as a grave.
I took a tentative step forward. Crowley had pushed himself too hard—maybe he’d pushed himself past his own ability to regenerate. He hadn’t even taken an organ yet. Maybe Max’s dad was still alive, and I could help him. The houses were dark and still—no one had heard my scream, or the attack. I trotted slowly across to the bodies, nearly slipping on a patch of ice. Nothing moved.
As I got closer, I could see that Max’s dad was beyond hope—his body was in pieces, ragged and bloody. A pile of entrails lay steaming on the frozen asphalt. I felt the monster inside of me stirring more strongly than ever, urging me to kneel down, to feel the glistening organs. I closed my eyes and fought for control. When I opened my eyes again I looked at Crowley, face down and still half demon, his elongated arms corded with inhuman muscle. His long, black fingers ended in terrifying claws as white as milk. Like the exposed entrails, Crowley’s body was steaming in the cold.
I wanted to kick him. I wanted to punch him and beat him and pound him into the street until there was nothing left—no demon claws, no human body, no clothes, no memory at all. My mind raged to think of all the evil he’d done, but it was more than that. I was jealous. He’d killed himself, and taken away my chance.
The steam boiled around him, and suddenly his body spasmed. I jumped back, slipping on the ice and falling onto my back. The demon’s head came up abruptly, gasping for breath through a mouth too full of fangs to be real. I scrambled to my feet and backed away again. The demon feebly pushed itself up on its arms, and turned to face me. Its dark eyelids slid grotesquely over its wide, crystalline eyes, as it if couldn’t see me clearly. I felt my face to make sure the ski mask was still there. In this darkn
ess, it probably couldn’t tell who I was. Its fangs glowed faintly in the darkness, pale and phosphorescent. It crawled toward me one faltering claw-length before collapsing again on the ice. It coughed and turned its head, searching for something, and when its gaze fell on the tattered remnants of Max’s dad, it forgot me and painfully crawled toward them.
I took a few quick steps around it, trying to see if I could move the body—drag it out of the demon’s reach—but it was too close. I’d missed my chance. The demon was going to regenerate, and then it was going to come after me. I could only hope that it hadn’t recognized me in the dark. If I could get away quickly, and stay ahead, it might never know I was there.
My house was twenty minutes away by bike during the day, but I made it there in ten—speeding down the middle of empty streets, barreling heedlessly through intersections, taking time only to stay out of the snow in order to leave no tracks.
I placed my bike carefully against the side of the house, trying to match its previous position as closely as I could, just in case; the house had to look exactly as it was when he left, so it wouldn’t suspect me. I crept up the stairs and listened at our door—the TV was off, and it sounded like Mom had gone to sleep. I opened the door quietly and slipped into the darkness, locking it tightly behind me. I tore off my gloves and ski mask, grateful for the warmth, and flopped wearily onto the couch. I was safe.
But something was wrong, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Everything seemed quiet enough, but not too quiet—the clock in the kitchen was ticking like normal, the furnace was blowing as usual. I listened at my mom’s door, rubbing my hands together in the cold, and heard her low, even breathing. Everything was fine—
Why was it cold? I hadn’t noticed at first, because it was so much warmer than outside, but I could tell now, especially here in the hall, that it was definitely cooler than it should have been. I opened my door to check my room, but the handle wouldn’t turn. It was locked.
I’d left by the window, not the door, and the window was still open.
Mr. Crowley would be home any minute, wondering who had been watching him, and he’d see my open window and the footprints in the snow below it. He’d get suspicious; he’d wonder if it had been closed when he left. He’d come to check, and there I’d be, alone in the dark, locked out of my room, wide awake at one in the morning. Mom would wake up and ask—in front of him—how I got out of my room. He’d know, and he’d kill us both.
I started to go back to the stairs, to go outside and close it, but that would be even worse—he’d come home and see me outside, trying to climb back into the second story window, and know that I had followed him.
My bedroom door opened in, so I couldn’t reach the hinges to pop them off. I thought about kicking it down, but I didn’t know if I could—and I knew that Mom would hear me and wake up, and she’d never forgive me for destroying a door. I was amazed she could sleep in this cold at all. I peeked out the living room window. The street was clear. He was still gone, there was still time. What could I do?
Crowley would get suspicious if he saw me trying to hide, but what if I didn’t hide at all? The street was still empty; I pulled off my coat and put on my old one—it was a different color than the one he’d seen me in—and went back outside without my gloves or ski mask. I reached the snowbank below my window and crawled up onto it just in time. Mr. Crowley’s headlights appeared at the end of the street, far away. I watched them draw closer and closer, watched the car itself come into view, and just as it started to slow I ran out in front of it, waving my arms wildly in the headlights. The car screeched to a stop, and he unrolled his window.
“John, what in blazes are you doing out here?”
“Can I sleep at your house tonight?” I asked.
“What?”
“Mom and I had a fight,” I said. “I jumped out of my window. I was going to run away, but . . . it’s cold. Can I please sleep in your house?”
He glanced across the street at my house, my window open, and my curtains flapping faintly in the breeze.
“Please?” I asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “My house isn’t . . . it’s not safe to be out like this at night, John, there are . . . prowlers. It’s not safe for you or your mother.”
“Don’t take me back,” I said, trying to summon up tears. I couldn’t. “I don’t want her to know I left.”
He thought a minute. I could tell he was healthier than before—more alert, more composed, and far more steady. You could barely tell he’d been sick. “If I promise not to tell your mother, will you go home?”
“My bedroom door is locked from the inside—I can’t get back in, and if she sees me in the living room she’ll find out eventually.”
He thought a moment longer, and glanced nervously around the neighborhood; he obviously thought his stalker was watching. “My ladder will reach,” he said at last. “We can put you back in that way—but you’ve got to promise not to run out like this again.”
“And you won’t say anything to Mom?”
“I promise,” he said. “Deal?”
“Deal.” He drove past me into his driveway, and together we pulled his extendable ladder from his shed, and set it up under my window. “Can you get it put away by yourself?” I asked.
“I’m an old man,” he said, smiling, “but I’m not helpless.”
“Thanks,” I said, and climbed up to my window. I got inside, waved at him, and he folded the ladder up and took it away. I closed the window tightly, closed my curtains, and watched him from the darkness. I’d fooled him again.
Mr. Crowley put the ladder away and went inside—but didn’t close his door. I kept watching, intrigued, and a moment later he came back out and did something I didn’t expect—he wrote something on a piece of paper and taped it to his door. I rummaged in the dark for my binoculars, and tried to focus on the note without budging my curtains. It was too dark to read. I sat by the window all night, waiting, and when morning came I looked, reading through the binoculars in the feeble pre-dawn light.
YOU COULDN’T STOP ME, AND YOU NEVER WILL
It was a note to his stalker, flaunting his power and practically promising to keep killing more people, again and again. It was barely a week since the last one—how much longer ‘til the next? He was a killer, cold-blooded and evil, no matter how much he loved his wife or helped his neighbor. He was a demon. It was a demon.
And it had to die.
15
The new death was all over the news the next morning: Roger Bowen, local truck driver, husband, and father, was found torn in half in the street in front of his house. The killer hadn’t even bothered to move the body, let alone hide it.
Mom looked like she wanted to hug me—to reassure me, or herself, that everything was going to be okay. I suppose that’s what mothers are supposed to do, and I felt guilty that mine couldn’t do it. I could tell by the way she watched me that she wanted to comfort me, and that she knew I didn’t need to be comforted. I wasn’t sad, I was thoughtful. I didn’t feel bad that he was dead, I felt guilty that I hadn’t been able to stop his killer. I wondered, then, if I was doing all of this because I wanted to save the good guys, or if I just wanted to kill the bad guy. And I wondered if that made a difference.
Mom asked after a while if I wanted to call Max, and I knew, objectively, that I should have, but I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t. Just as no one could comfort me, I couldn’t comfort anyone else—that was the realm of empathy, and I would be completely useless. I suppose I could have said “Hey, Max, I know who killed your dad, and I’m going to kill him back,” but I’m not an idiot—sociopath or not, I’m smart enough to know that’s not how people talk to each other. Better to keep it all a secret.
As soon as the police cleared the crime scene on Saturday night there was a vigil for Max’s dad. It was not a funeral—the FBI forensic team was only just beginning their autopsy—but a simple gather
ing, where we all came together and lit candles and prayed, or whatever. I wanted to watch Crowley’s house instead, but Mom made me go. She pulled a couple of old dinner candles from a back drawer somewhere and we drove over. I was surprised at how big the vigil was.
Max was sitting on his porch, surrounded by his sister, his mom, and the whole Bowen family from out of town, who’d driven in to comfort them. It seemed to me that they’d want to drive away from a town under threat from a serial killer, not into it, but what did I know? Emotional connections made you do stupid things, I guess.
Margaret joined us, and we put flowers in the street where the body had been found; there was already a big pile. Someone had started a second pile for Greg Olson, also a family man, and still missing, but it wasn’t nearly as big; many people still clung to the idea that he was guilty of something. Mrs. Olson and her son were there, showing solidarity with the community, but there was a police escort hovering nearby, just in case anyone started a fight.
I was cold, and I was anxious to get back to watch Crowley’s house, but most of all I was bored—all we were doing was standing around holding candles, and I didn’t see the point. We weren’t accomplishing anything. We weren’t finding the killer, or protecting the innocent, or giving Max a new dad. We were just there, milling around, watching impotent little flames melt our candles, drop by drop.
At least our neighborhood-watch meeting had used a fire. I could start one now—we’d be warm, we’d have light, and, well . . . we’d have a big fire. That was its own reward. I looked around for something that would burn, but Mom pulled me suddenly toward the other edge of the vigil.
“Hello, Peg,” she said, reaching out and hugging Mrs. Watson. Brooke and her family had just arrived, all crying. Brooke’s face was wet with teardrops, round and raised like blisters, and I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch them.
“Hello April,” said Mrs. Watson. “It’s so terrible, isn’t it? It’s just so . . . Brooke, honey, can you take the flowers over? Thanks.”