by Dan Wells
I peered deeper into the mirror, searching. Who was staring back? He looked like me, he talked like me, his body moved when I did. I swayed to the right, then left, then back to center; the person in the mirror did the same. This was the thing that terrified me the most—more than the victim, more than the demon, more even than the dark thoughts. It was the fact that the dark thoughts were mine. That I couldn’t separate myself from evil, because most of the evil in my life came from inside my own head.
How long could I live like this? I was trying to be two people—a killer on the inside, and a normal person on the outside. I made such a show of being a good, quiet kid, who never caused problems and never got into trouble, but now the monster was out, and I was actually using him—I was actively seeking out another killer. I’d given in. I was trying to be John and Mr. Monster at the same time.
Was I fooling myself, thinking that I could split my life like this? Was it possible to be two people, one good and one bad, or was I forced to be a mix of both—a good person forever tainted by evil?
My throat grew cold, and I threw up in the sink. I shouldn’t be going out with Brooke—it was dangerous. She was the one thing that Mr. Monster and I both wanted, and that made her the gap in my armor. She was the link between us, and anything that strengthened that link would make Mr. Monster stronger. I could only hope that it would make me stronger as well. I was starting a battle that only one of us could win.
But was Brooke the prize? Or was she the battlefield?
“Hey John!”
Brooke opened her front door quickly; she must have been waiting for my knock. She was dressed in shorts, as usual, even though we were going to be out late. It was supposed to be pretty warm tonight, so she’d probably be fine, but if she got too cold we could hang out by the bonfire. Win-win. Despite the shorts she did have a jacket, though I stopped myself from looking at her shirt, to avoid looking at her chest.
What kind of crazy date would this be, if I didn’t even know what kind of shirt my date was wearing? Was this really as insane as I thought it was? How long would it be before she realized I was crazy? The only thing to do was the thing I always did—fake it.
“Hey Brooke,” I said. “Nice shirt.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling and glancing down at it. “I figured it was appropriate, since this is kind of a school thing.” I kept my eyes on her hair, which she wore long and loose like a blond waterfall. She looked like a shampoo commercial. I imagined myself washing it, brushing it gently, gently, while she lay still on the table.
I forced the thought out and smiled. “This should be fun. You ready to go?”
“Sure,” she said, and started to pull the door closed, but someone called her from down the hall.
“Brooke?” It was her dad.
“Yeah Dad,” she called back. “John’s here.”
Mr. Watson stepped into the doorway and smiled. “Headed for the bonfire tonight?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, you be careful out there,” he said. “A bunch of kids get together in the middle of the night, you never know when one of them’s going to do something stupid and hurt somebody. But then I suppose my baby’s in good hands with you, right?”
It was frightening how much most people didn’t know about me.
“We’ll be fine,” said Brooke, smiling at me. “Besides,” she said, looking back at her dad, “there’s teachers there too—it’s like a real school activity.”
“I’m sure everything will go fine,” said Mr. Watson. He stepped onto the porch and put a hand on my shoulder, guiding me a few steps to the side. I glanced at Brooke, and she rolled her eyes. “I always imagined what I’d do the first time my daughter went on a date,” he said.
Brooke groaned behind us. “Dad . . .”
“I always kind of imagined myself threatening the boy that took her out, you know? ‘I have a gun and a shovel,’ kind of thing. But I don’t imagine that would really be all that scary to you, after what you’ve been through.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
“The thing is,” he said, facing me directly, “the things you’ve been through recommend you pretty highly for the job. Every time I imagined this in my head, she was hopping on the back of some gangbanger’s Harley and ignoring me as I waved goodbye.”
“Oh my gosh,” said Brooke, turning red and covering her face.
Mr. Watson kept going. “I guess what I’m saying is, given the options, I’m glad she chose the local hero instead.”
What?
“Hero?” I asked.
“And humble to boot,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “Well, I won’t take up any more of your time—you asked her out, not me. Brooke, you remember the rules?”
“Yes,” she said, turning to go.
“And?”
She rolled her eyes again. “No drinking, no driving fast, home by midnight.”
“And you have your phone?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“And you will call home if . . . ?”
“If we get lost or stuck somewhere.”
“And you will call the police if . . . ?”
“If we see drugs, or if someone starts a fight.”
“Or if he tries to kiss you,” he said. Brooke turned bright red, and Mr. Watson laughed and winked at me. “Hero or not, you’re still out with my baby.”
“Holy crap,” Brooke muttered, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the car, “let’s get out of here. Bye Dad!”
“Bye Bubba!” he shouted.
“He calls you Bubba?” I asked. Brooke was thin as a rail.
“Baby nickname,” she said, shaking her head, though I could see that she was smiling. We crossed around the car to the passenger side and stood by her door.
And stood by it a while longer.
I realized abruptly that she was waiting for me to open it for her. I glanced at her quickly, then stared at the door. This was her door. One of things I never touched. I glanced at her again, just long enough to see that her eyebrows were scrunching down a bit—she was confused. If I delayed any longer, or if I made her do it, what would she think? She’d seen me look at the door, then back at her—I couldn’t feign ignorance or bad manners at this point, unless I wanted to look like a complete jerk. I reached out my hand and opened the door, imagining as I did all the times her hand had touched the same door, her fingertips pressed against the same handle. When it was unlatched I let go and grabbed the top of the door instead, pulling it open that way.
“Is there something wrong with the handle?” she asked.
“There was a wasp in there earlier,” I said, thinking quickly. “I think it was trying to build a nest.”
“That seems like a weird place,” she said.
“That’s because you’re not a wasp,” I said, holding it open as she sat. “It’s all the rage for wasps these days.”
“And you’re up to date on wasp trends?” she asked, smiling mischievously.
“I read one of their magazines,” I said. “Not mine, of course, I saw it at the barbershop. It was that or Moose Illustrated, and I had to read something.”
Brooke laughed, and I closed her door. How long could I keep this up? It was six o’clock now, and her dad wanted her back by midnight. Six hours?
Trying to look normal when I was one in a crowd was easy. Trying to look normal one-on-one was going to be very hard work.
I went to my door and climbed into the car.
“It’s going to be weird seeing a big fire that you didn’t start,” said Brooke.
I froze. What did she know? What had she seen? Her voice had sounded so casual, but . . . maybe there was some hidden cue underneath that I hadn’t picked up on. Was she accusing me? Was she threatening me?
“What do you mean?” I asked, staring ahead.
“Oh, you know, like the big fires the Crowleys used to have in their backyard, like for neighborhood parties and stuff. You’re always the one who t
ends those.”
I sighed in relief—literally a sigh, as if I’d been holding my breath without knowing it. She doesn’t know anything. She’s just making small talk.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I started the car and smiled. “I’m great.” I need an excuse quick. What would a normal person say in this situation? Normal people have empathy; they would react to the people in the story, not the fire. “I was just thinking about the Crowleys,” I said. “I wonder if Mrs. Crowley’s still going to have those parties.” I pulled away from the curb and drove toward town.
“Oh!” said Brooke, “I am so sorry; I didn’t mean to bring that up like that. I know you were really close to Mr. Crowley.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I had to force myself to continue—talking to her had been against my rules for so long, it was hard to just speak freely. “Now that he’s gone, I look back and I think I didn’t really know him at all.” Nobody did. Not even his wife.
“I feel the same way,” said Brooke. “I’ve lived here for most of my life, and he lived right there, two doors down, and I didn’t really know him at all. We’d see him at those parties, of course, and trick-or-treating and stuff, but I feel like I should have . . . I don’t know, talked to him more. You know? Like, where was he from, and what was he like as a kid, and stuff like that.”
“I would love to know where he came from,” I said. And if there are more like him.
“I love talking to people and hearing their stories,” said Brooke. “Everyone’s got their own story to tell, and when you sit down with someone and really talk to them, you can learn so much.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but that’s really kind of strange too.” I was starting to fall into a rhythm, where words came more easily.
“Strange?”
“Well—it’s strange to look at people and think that they have a past,” I said. How could I explain what I was trying to say? “I mean, obviously everybody comes from somewhere, but . . .” I pointed to a guy on the side of the street as we passed. “Look at that guy. He’s just some guy, and we see him once, and then he’s gone.”
“Oh, that’s Jake Symons,” said Brooke. “He works with my dad at the wood mill.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” I said. “To us he’s like . . . like scenery, in the background of our lives, but for him, he’s the main character. He has a life and a job and a whole story. He’s a real person. And to him, we’re the background scenery. And that guy,” I pointed at another person on the street, “he’s not even looking. He might not notice us at all. We’re the center of our own universes, but we don’t even exist in his.”
“That’s Bryce Parker,” said Brooke, “from the library.”
“Do you know everybody in Clayton,” I asked, “or am I just picking bad examples?”
Brooke laughed. “I go to the library like every week, of course I’m going to know him!”
“So how about that guy?” I pointed at a man mowing his lawn about a hundred feet ahead.
“No, I don’t know him,” said Brooke, staring closely. We drove past him and he turned at the last minute, giving us a clear view of his face, and Brooke laughed out loud. “Okay, okay, I do know him—he’s the guy from Graumman’s Hardware, uh . . . Lance!”
“Lance what?”
“Lance Graumman, I assume,” said Brooke. “It’s a family business.”
“You know a lot more about the hardware store than I would have guessed,” I said.
Brooke laughed again. “We remodeled our upstairs bathroom last summer, and I don’t think we ever bought the right size stuff on the first try. I was in there a lot.”
“That would explain it.” It felt odd talking to her, chatting so freely about nothing. I’d fantasized about her for so long, and forbidden myself to communicate with her in any depth, that even this simple small talk felt powerfully intimate. Intimate and empty at the same time. How could such meaningless drivel feel as if it meant so much?
I turned out of town, on the road toward the lake, and fell into line behind a couple of other cars full of high school kids. I studied the backs of their heads, hoping I could recognize them and show Brooke that I knew other people too, but even though I knew I’d seen them before, I couldn’t think of their names. They were a few years older than us, so I’d never really interacted with them.
“Hey!” said Brooke, “That’s Jessie Beesley! That’s not her boyfriend, though, I wonder what happened there.”
The sun was still high, and I adjusted my shade flap thingy to block it. “You know every single person in town,” I said, “and I don’t even know what this thing is called.”
“It’s the . . .” Brooke grimaced. “The thing that blocks the sun?” She laughed. “What is that thing called? It’s a . . . shade. It’s a blocker. It’s a very small awning.”
“It’s a flat umbrella.”
“You could put lace on it and call it a parasol,” said Brooke. “It would be precious.”
I glanced over and saw she was smirking. I’m pretty good at reading people, for a sociopath, but sarcasm is so hard to identify.
Looking at her, my mind drifted back to her dad’s words, and the trust he had placed in me to take care of her. He’d called me a hero—me, the crazy, death-obsessed sociopath who worked in a mortuary and wrote all his class papers on serial killers. A hero. It stirred up thoughts I’d almost forgotten—I’d been so focused on how to kill the demon, and on the psychological aftermath of actually doing it, that I’d almost forgotten why. I focused so much on “killing the bad guy” that “saving the good guys” had been pushed aside and forgotten.
But nobody knew I’d killed a demon. Even Mom did her best to forget what little she understood about the real story behind that night in January. All Mr. Watson knew was that I had been outside that night, that I’d moved Dr. Neblin’s body, and that I’d called the police. Was that enough?
“I wonder what food they’ve got,” said Brooke, and I realized suddenly that my thoughts had left a void of silence in the car. “I assume it’ll be hot dogs; I don’t know what else you’d eat at a bonfire.”
Crap. It hadn’t occurred to me that the food would probably be meat. What was I going to eat?
Just say something, I told myself. “They might have s’mores.” It was all I could think of. “Those are good bonfire food. Also squirrels, with very poor senses of direction or self-preservation.”
Brooke laughed again. “That would have to be a really mixed-up squirrel to just wander into a bonfire.”
“Or a really cold one.”
“They could just build the fire on top of a gopher hole,” said Brooke, “and then they could pop out pre-cooked, like a vending machine.”
Wow. Did she really just make that joke?
“Sorry,” said Brooke, “that was kind of gross.”
I looked at her with new eyes, watching her as she talked. She glanced over at me and smiled. Did she think I was a hero?
Did she think I was good?
We pulled off the road at the end of a long line of cars—there was a field up ahead, of sorts, where big groups could park for parties by the lake, but the Bonfire always drew a massive crowd, and the sparse parking was overflowing by nearly half a mile. As we walked toward the party I looked at each person we passed—other students that I’d known for years—as if seeing them for the first time. Did this one think I was a hero? Did that one? It was the first time in my life that I’d assumed people were thinking good things about me, rather than bad ones, and I wasn’t sure what to think.
But I liked it.
“I love this smell,” said Brooke, walking with her hands in her jacket pockets. “That cool breeze off the lake, mixed with the smoke from the fire and the green from the trees.”
“The green?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “I love that green smell.”
“Green isn’t a smell,” I said, “it’s a color.”
“Well, yeah, bu
t . . . don’t you know that smell? Trees and reeds and grass sometimes just smell . . . green.”
“I can’t say that I’m familiar with the smell of green,” I said.
“There’s Marci,” she said, “let’s ask her.”
I looked where Brooke was pointing and immediately looked away; Marci was wearing a low cut tank top that practically screamed ‘look at these!’ I watched Brooke’s feet as she hurried to meet her, keeping my gaze down—just because I was breaking a few of my rules to be with Brooke didn’t mean I was going to throw caution to the wind and break them all. Looking at a girl’s chest was strictly prohibited.
“Brooke!” shouted Marci. “Lookin’ hot! I love the shirt.”
Man, I really wanted to know what her shirt looked like.
“Good to see you,” said Brooke.
“And John,” said Marci. “I didn’t expect to see you here, that’s awesome.”
“Thanks,” I said, staring at her feet. Then, because I didn’t want to seem like a freak, I glanced up—first at Brooke’s face, then at Marci’s. Her line of cleavage was prominent in my peripheral vision, and I looked out across the lake. “Nice night.”
“You gotta answer this question,” said Brooke. “Do trees smell green?”
“What?” asked Marci, laughing.
“Green!” said Brooke. “The trees here smell green.”
“You are insane,” said Marci.
“Who’s insane?” asked Rachel Morris, joining the group. I smiled at her politely, grateful that she was dressed more modestly than her friend.
“Brooke says the trees smell green,” said Marci, struggling not to laugh out loud.
“Totally,” said Rachel, nodding her head. “This whole place smells green—and a little brown, because of the smoke.”
“Exactly!” cried Brooke.
“Can you believe these two?” asked Marci, looking at me. I focused on her ear, trying not to look at anything else.
“Must be a shared delusion,” I said, then stopped myself before getting any deeper into a psychological hypothesis. That was probably not the kind of small talk that would go over well in this crowd.