by Dan Wells
“Doctor Trujillo checks on him every day,” I said. “I can ask him to stop by and chat for a bit too, if it would make you feel better.”
“When he’s visiting your ‘friend of a friend’?” asked Elijah. We still hadn’t told him about Brooke, but his recent memory was whip sharp at the moment, thanks to the effect of the two Withered minds he’d drained, and he could remember our first conversation with startling clarity. I nodded.
“He spends most of his time there,” I said. “Visiting Merrill might actually be a relief.”
“It should be me,” said Elijah, and I could see the determination in his face: nostrils slightly flared, his mouth a grim line. “I’m the one who did it, I should be the one who pays for it.”
I thought about Brooke, completely alone in her medical cell, and nodded. “I know how you feel.”
“No you don’t,” he insisted. “Your mind isn’t a sieve—when you do something wrong you try to forget it, because if you don’t it will stay in your dreams forever. I don’t have that luxury.”
A broken mirror, covered with blood. “Haunted dreams are a luxury?”
“Nature’s way of making sure you don’t make the same mistake twice,” said Elijah. “I visit Merrill because what I did to him was horrible and I have to remember that—I can’t ever stop remembering that—because if I do I might hurt somebody else the same way.”
“He won’t live forever,” I said. “You have to stop sooner or later.”
His gaze grew even more intense. “Then you understand why I have to hang on to him as long as I can. How many times in my ten thousand years do you think I’ve drained a living mind, forgotten about it, and tried it again? How many times have I left someone a hollow shell? How many times have I rediscovered the horror that I’m capable of?”
A burning car and an ear-splitting scream.
“The one day I didn’t wake up to horror,” I said. “The one day I woke up without thinking about Marci—without remembering her face, without dreams of her dead body still fogging up my eyes—that was the worst day of my entire life, even worse than the day she died, because I walked to the refrigerator and saw that little fish magnet she used to have, the one I asked her mother for before I left town, and then everything Marci had ever done or said or been came rushing back and I knew that I had failed her. All I had to do was think about her, the easiest thing in the world, and I hadn’t. For twenty whole minutes.”
I stopped talking abruptly, as if I’d only just noticed the fact that I was talking at all, and wanted to hide it. I didn’t know why I’d told him that. My therapy sessions with Dr. Trujillo—which we hadn’t had in a while, to my great delight—had taught me that sharing my feelings was important, not because it accomplished anything or achieved any great purpose, but because the sharing itself was important. Maybe that’s why I told him. Maybe I just needed to say it out loud.
Or maybe I wanted to know if he was like me. Maybe I just wanted to see some recognition, for once in my life, that I wasn’t completely alone. If I had to get that from a demon, then … that sounds about normal for me.
“It gets easier,” he said. “Losing people.”
“I guess you do that a lot.”
“Millions of times,” he said. “But it’s never the millions that get to you. It’s the ones. That one person you can’t ever be without, and then you are.”
“People like Rose Chapman?” I asked.
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and nodded. “People like Rose. I built my whole life around two things, you know: taking new memories and avoiding everyone in them. It’s not the easiest life to maintain. Mistakes like Rose—like meeting her in the supermarket, talking to her again, going out of my big stupid way to see her again—they happen. This one ended poorly, but they can be so much worse. Rose can go on her way now and imagine that I’m some creepy weirdo she got mixed up with for a week or two, that got a little obsessed and put her life in danger, but I can live with that. Because she can move on from that. Her memories of me—of the Billy Chapman part of me that cares about her—those are undamaged. She can remember Billy Chapman, without any of this baggage, for the rest of her life.”
“I can’t say that,” I said. “You lost living people—mine are all dead.”
“You think I haven’t lost dead ones, too?” His eyes practically flashed with anger. “You think I’ve never been in a car accident that killed my wife and children along with me? You think I’ve never been in a murder suicide? Because I have, from both sides.” He leaned forward. “You think I’ve never been a sweet little old lady dying of old age, so excited to wake up and see her husband again on the other side—married for fifty years, separated for ten, and now at last on the verge of a joyful reunion in heaven? And then I wake up and I’m me. And he’s nowhere. And all I can think about is that it’s not over and I’m tired and I’m ready to go, but I’m still here and I have to do it again and again and again.” He leaned back in his chair. “You think about that before you tell me I’ve got it easy.”
I stayed silent a while before speaking. “So why don’t you end it?”
“Suicide?”
“If your life is such a hell,” I asked, “why bother? Why go through it again and again and all those times?”
“Because of…” He stopped and looked at the ceiling. After a moment he shrugged. “Because of children,” he said. “Because of smiles and sunshine and ice cream.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You don’t like ice cream?” Elijah shook his head. “It’s the best. Imagine how excited I was when someone finally invented it.”
“Sunshine and smiles don’t make all that other stuff go away,” I said. “This isn’t a fairyland.”
“No,” he said, “it’s the real world. And the real world is the most amazing thing any of us will ever experience. Have you ever climbed a mountain? Walked through a garden? Played with a child? This isn’t exactly a revelation, John; people have been praising the simple pleasures since even before I was born, and that’s a very long time.”
“You don’t do any of those things.”
“But I have my memories,” said Elijah. “Sometimes. And I have even simpler things: music. Food. Everybody likes bacon.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“Asparagus, then,” said Elijah. “Roast it in a pan, a little olive oil and a little salt; you get the most incredible flavor, almost like a nut, but deep and rich and the texture is just perfect.”
“I’ve tried it.”
“The world is more than sadness,” said Elijah. “I have a hundred thousand memories in my head—I can’t remember all of them, or maybe not even most of them, but they are so much happier than sad. For every dead mother or brother or child there are a hundred breezes, a hundred sunsets, a hundred memories of falling in love. Have you ever kissed anyone, John?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“A first kiss is incredible,” said Elijah. “Most people only get one, but I can remember a hundred thousand of them. How could I give that up?” He shook his head, smiling for the first time. “The world never gets old, John.”
I thought about Cody French and Clark Forman, so weary of the world they could barely stand it. “The other Withered would disagree.”
“They only see it through Withered eyes,” said Elijah. “You’re human, so you can see it any way you want to.”
I said nothing for long time, just sat staring at him and thinking. There was no way it was that simple, no possible way that the darkness and the horror and the half-eaten bodies of the world could all just be brushed away with nothing—with the laughter of a child. That’s not how the world worked. All light does is cast more shadows.
But I wanted to believe him. Even if it’s all I ever did, I wanted to take what he knew and give it to Brooke and make all that darkness go away.
But it doesn’t go away. I said it again, out loud so he coul
d hear it. “The darkness doesn’t ever go away.”
He nodded. “No it doesn’t. For every time I’ve fallen in love, I’ve eventually lost a loved one. That’s how it works.”
“So how do you do it?”
“Find the good in the bad—in the places that they overlap. Bittersweet might not be very sweet, but it’s not pure bitter, either.” He paused. “What music do you listen to?”
“I’m not really a music guy,” I told him.
He shook his head. “You can’t tell me the world isn’t worth it if you haven’t even bothered to experience what’s here.”
“So what’s your favorite music?”
“Irish,” he said.
“Why?”
His smile faltered, just a fraction. “Because all their love songs are about death.”
* * *
I was starting to like Elijah and that worried me. I didn’t like anybody, not even my mom when she was alive, not even Max, the kid I used to hang around with. See? Even in my head I didn’t call him a friend. They were all just people, and sometimes they got in the way, and sometimes I could get things from them, and sometimes they wanted things from me. But that’s as far as it ever went, until Marci. Marci I talked to because I liked talking to her—because I liked hearing what she said, and how she said it, and why. In the beginning all I wanted was a sounding board, and Marci’s father was a cop so she had inside information. She was a means to an end, just like everybody else, but over time that changed. Maybe not even while she was still alive. I don’t know. She became more to me than just an informant, or an acquaintance, or a piece of the scenery. She became a person I cared about.
I couldn’t care about Elijah because he wasn’t Marci. It was an insult to her memory that I should even pretend to feel a kinship with anyone after I’d felt one with her. I left the interrogation room in a confused, angry haze, not talking to anyone.
I was downright relieved when the new body was discovered a few minutes later.
The police brought it in through the basement, trying to keep the new death quiet as long as possible; the general public still had no idea it was a supernatural killer, but tensions were high just the same. I thought they were just delaying the inevitable, but nobody asked me. The victim this time was Kristen Mercer, a short, blond woman who looked nothing like anyone on our team. There went that theory. Obviously The Hunter was choosing his victims by some other formula; now we had to figure out what it was.
There was no note this time. We called for Elijah, and the police walked him through the hall with a pole-and-collar restraint, the kind they use for the most dangerous inmates. Nobody wanted to get close enough to touch him.
He stood before the body, which was fresh from a highway underpass, where a homeless man had found it; it hadn’t been cleaned or examined and blood still seeped from the gaping bite wounds. One upper arm was chewed down to the bone, and on her other side, the shoulder and back were missing giant chunks of meat. Her chest was nothing but a bloody hole, and bite marks dotted the rest of the corpse like a pox. You could feel the violence of the attack just by looking at it, and Elijah hesitated.
“Are you sure this is the only way?”
“To talk to the victim directly?” I asked. “We could ask her questions all day if you want, but I’m pretty sure this is the only way she’s going to answer.”
“I thought you were against this,” said Diana.
I looked at Elijah, feeling again that unbreakable knot of confusion and hatred and guilt. It was wrong not to hate him. I needed to hate him. “This is the only way,” I said, and immediately hated myself for echoing Elijah’s words. “I don’t have to like it for it to be right.”
The coroner was a pale woman named Hess; she looked up from her inspection of the body to address Ostler. “It’s a few hours old at the most. Probably died this morning, but I’ll have to do a full exam to be sure.”
“Then we can wait,” said Elijah. “I have until tonight at least—”
“Do it now, please,” said Ostler.
“Can’t we at least clean her up?” asked Elijah. “Or cover her, or something? This is a human being!”
“Like you care about that,” said Nathan.
“She’s a human being that I’m about to become,” said Elijah, his face growing fierce. “When I drain her I’ll have all of her memories—everything she’s thought, everything she’s felt—not just her death but her life, her family, her wedding, her dreams of the future. I will care about her more than anyone in this room.”
“The sooner you do it the sooner we can find her killer,” I said. “It’s just a few hours old—we’re right on his heels this time.” He looked at me, and I looked back coldly. “Stop stalling.”
Elijah took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Ms. Hess backed away, and we all braced ourselves for whatever was about to happen. How did he “drink” a mind? Would it be gruesome, or violent, or traumatic? How long would it haunt our nightmares?
He put his hand on her forehead, and as we watched, his arm began to tremble.
“No,” he moaned. Nathan stepped back.
“My son!” Elijah shouted, staggering away from the body on the table. “Is he okay? Has somebody checked on him?”
“Where did you leave him?” asked Ostler.
“He’s at the neighbor’s,” said Elijah, tears streaming down his face. “I left him there to go shopping, I … I don’t think I made it.”
“Tell us the last thing you remember,” said Ostler firmly. Elijah hid his face, wailing into his hands.
“My husband,” he cried. “He doesn’t know.”
“Help us catch the man who did this,” said Diana. “Please.”
“I was…” He clutched his head, turning to the wall and crouching down into a fetal position. If it had been anyone else, someone would have run to him by now with a blanket or a comforting arm, but the Withered suffered alone. “I was on my way to go shopping and I got a flat tire. Somebody stopped to help. I remember … a sharp pain, in the back of my neck.”
“A bite?” asked Ostler.
“No.” Elijah shook his head, as if trying to shake the thoughts right out of it. He put his hand on his shoulder. “It was like a stab, barely more than a pinprick. It’s the last thing I remember.”
“A needle,” said Potash. “He injected her with something.”
“The back of the neck doesn’t show any signs of damage,” said Hess, rolling the body on its side and peering closely with a light. “Some blood, but it’s all from other areas.”
“Not the neck,” I said. “He said neck, but look where he’s holding himself: on the shoulder.”
Hess looked up; Elijah was clutching the spot where his neck met his back, just over the right shoulder behind the collarbone. Hess looked back at the corpse. “That part isn’t even here anymore.”
“He ate the wound,” said Diana. “That’s why we couldn’t find any cause of death on the other bodies—The Hunter ate the evidence.”
“Something will show up in the toxicology report,” said Ostler. “Ms. Hess, I want your report immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Hess signaled to a member of her forensic team, and they wheeled the body into the exam room.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would he hide the method of death?”
“Because he doesn’t want us to know,” said Potash.
“Yes,” I said, “obviously. But why not? Start asking the right questions.”
“Somebody find my son!” yelled Elijah.
“Get him back into interrogation,” said Ostler, gesturing brusquely to a nearby cop. “Find out where Mercer’s car broke down and get someone on the scene ASAP.”
“And check to see if her car was tampered with,” I called after them as they left the room. Diana looked at me quizzically. “Maybe The Hunter sabotaged it,” I said. “He’s not the kind to leave things to chance.”
“Get Dr. Trujillo on the phone,” Ostle
r snapped to another officer. “He’ll need to update his psych profile with this new information.”
“This destroys the profile,” I said. “Nothing we thought we knew about The Hunter makes any sense anymore.”
“He’s meticulous,” said Ostler. “He’s precise. That all still holds. Trujillo’s profile even theorized he was a doctor or a scientist, and this injection story corroborates that.”
“The only thing we have to change is the method,” said Nathan. “We thought it was mind control, now we know it’s not; that’s only one detail—”
“That’s everything,” I said again. “We thought we were looking for a Withered who stunned people and ate them. Standard predator behavior, regardless of the method itself. Now we’re looking for a Withered who’s actively deceiving us about his own nature. Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he’s trying to spook us,” said Nathan. “A needle in the back isn’t nearly as frightening as a mind-controlling monster, so he’s making himself look more frightening. Everything about his letters was intimidation—this is just one more piece.”
“Only if he could predict that we’d guess that he could mind control people,” I said. “There’s no way he could control any of that; it’s too many leaps of logic.”
“Unknowns are always more frightening than knowns,” said Potash. “The specifics don’t matter.”
“What did he do that he didn’t have to do?” I asked, thinking out loud. “He ate the needle marks because he…” I was grasping at straws. “He was ashamed of them because a Withered shouldn’t need to sedate people. Or he hated them because he felt guilty for what he did, so he wanted them destroyed.”
“The man who wrote those letters doesn’t feel guilty about anything,” said Ostler.
“I know,” I said, “I’m just trying to think.”
“Maybe the injection isn’t a drug at all,” said Nathan. “Maybe it was butter and herbs, like you’d inject in meat before you cook it.”