[Darkthorn 01.0] Pond Scum

by Michael Lilly

  My walk to work acted as another filter against this phenomenon, halting the self-condemning and conspiring thoughts and further tethering me to reality. I still counted my steps intently, but by the time I arrived at the office, I was able to hold Beth’s and my coffee steadily and without perspiration. I was relieved to find that I was capable of normal interaction with my colleagues as well, and before long, the routine swing of the day had entirely swept me out of the hell that was my morning.

  What I didn’t know was that it was preparing to swing me right into the hell that would be my afternoon.

  Beth accepted her coffee wordlessly, trading for it a manila envelope stuffed with information that had no doubt been tirelessly assembled overnight.

  “They didn’t want to do this one without you,” Beth said. She’d been in a mood of late, and her normal conversational shortness was augmented thus. I took the file to my desk and flipped through it.

  It was rough. Really rough.

  The body of a nine-year-old female, identified as Ellen Marie Dodge, was found in the park by passersby early the prior morning. The body was waterlogged, and was thus effectively stripped of all useful fingerprints and fibers due to being tossed into the pond. She had most likely been dead for a week or two, as her corpse had been dumped in the water and decomposed enough to rise to the surface.

  When you dump a fresh corpse, the oxygen in the lungs and throughout the body will keep it afloat for a time, but it will sink shortly, unless the airway is obstructed, preventing the corpse from expelling whatever air it has left in it. At that point, it sinks. But then, barring remarkably cold or sunless conditions, the body will begin to decay, and the bacteria and enzymes that feed upon the dead flesh expel buoyant gases, and eventually the corpse is less dense than the water, allowing it to ascend back to visibility and haunt some poor jogger’s sleep for years to come.

  The postmortem was still in the works, but the preliminary examination revealed blunt force trauma to the head, as well as bruising and inflammation in her arms, wrists, neck, and (I shuddered hard) vagina.

  She was just my dad’s type, when he was in the mood for females: blond, innocent. The photographs included in the file, of her in life, were full of just that. Her light hair and eyes had a sheen to them that was visible in every shot, from every angle, finally diminishing with the light of her life when it was snuffed out of her.

  By my dad. My fucking dad. My fucking dad. My fucking dad.

  I tried to suppress tears, but an empathetic wellspring produced images of her suffering what I had, picturing my dad’s appetite for filth and pain, and seeing whatever remained of his humanity disappear from his eyes, instead indulging his primal, wicked desires.

  The poor girl.

  Ellen Marie Dodge. I wasn’t about to let her be forgotten.

  In an effort to retain some sort of composure throughout the day, I busied myself with routine work, paperwork, flicking through evidence for the third, fourth, fifth time. I wasn’t prepared to investigate the way a proper detective should. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to those who knew her, not yet. I needed to guarantee that I could bring her redemption. For myself, at least, I needed to grant her peaceful rest, one untouched by the affliction and pain of vengefulness.

  Her future had been bright, rife with the promise of angst and drama, the magic of high school and friendships and dating, and the inevitable rebellious phase, all set to the beat of whatever her generation’s equivalent of Panic! At the Disco would be. But those possibilities were found facedown in the pond at Riverdell Central Park, having resurfaced with the desperate, ugly face of death.

  This was an affront to humanity, but humanity would not retaliate, not in a natural way. The natural way is swift, decisive, effective.

  Permanent.

  Without consciously deciding to kill him, I found myself orchestrating how best to do it. My first priority would be to make sure that it was actually he who did it. Surely he was capable of it, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t anyone else in Riverdell who was also capable of it. He was without doubt the most likely, but I couldn’t take any chances.

  My dad was, on the surface, a plumber, and worked independently. It worked well for him, since he could choose the people with whom he associated, and never was it anyone’s business how much he made, allowing him to disguise his masses of wealth as a product of his hard work. He did live in apparent modesty, but couldn’t help himself when tempted with new, better technology or instruments of greater comfort.

  He had a fortunate inattentiveness to the security of the house, however; strange for someone so absorbed in things of the world, but, for me, convenient. I picked the lock at his place with ease, having watched him depart from it only minutes ago in his work garb. I waited a short time to assure that he wouldn’t return immediately, having forgotten his phone or anything, and entered.

  It didn’t take me long to find what I was after; through some sick perversion of human heart and mind, he took pride in his work and, unless he was expecting company, he didn’t often bother to hide it.

  In Polaroids, scattered about on the table, was tiny, fragile, scared Ellen Marie Dodge. I recognized the background in the photographs as the garage, an attached one with room for two cars, although my dad owned only one. You can guess what the other half was used for.

  I briefly considered taking one of the photographs and submitting it anonymously as evidence, but decided against that; the justice system would not deliver the retribution that I had in mind. I take one anyway, for a different purpose. One that my dad didn’t like, apparently; it was buried at the bottom. It displayed none of Ellen’s pre-developed genitals, nor her breasts. It was only her collar and upward, and she looked mad.

  Thirteen

  And that was all I needed. My closure, my resolution had been sealed. I was going to kill my dad. If ever I’m pressed for the one moment that marked the beginning of my path, I suppose that this was it, although even then, I don’t know that, even then, it was the decision of a single moment.

  Thinking the words so boldly, nakedly, empowered me; for so long I had been the victim, haunted by the memories of my encounters with the man, but now, I had some direction. And not only some direction, but the direction, the one which would bring me peace of mind. The nightmares would cease, and my life would be allowed to continue, finally bursting through the pavement that had been poured over me and thriving in the plentiful carbon dioxide and sunlight waiting above.

  I could smell the emotional freedom already.

  I spent months watching my dad, acquiring a familiarity of his habits that probably even he didn’t have. I knew what foods he liked, where he bought his ingredients, and where he bought his meals when he didn’t feel up to cooking. I learned his orders at every café, bakery, what he liked on his sandwich, and that whenever it rained, he played The Beatles’ Black Bird.

  Asshole had to ruin a perfectly good song.

  In my time watching him, I saw Keroth come and go, as well, always leaving with a smug smile on his face. Back then he drove a red Saturn. The business had been good to him. I had all of the ammunition that I needed to do the deed, but needed to wait for the right timing. In matters of love and death, timing is everything, and the event that I plan to execute is the unholy offspring of both.

  I needed to wait a while, and that frustrated me. But patience is an art at which I’m nearly as masterful as that of invisibility. And with such a precious, gleaming prize, I could handle the wait. I could never reclaim my innocence; that was beaten and molested out of me, without option of return. No receipts given with the belt. But I could claim vengeance for it, and in so doing, secure the futures of unsuspecting children and their families.

  I could save the innocence of others. I had that power. I’m no expert in morals, but certainly it could be argued that, holding that power, I also had the responsibility to act on it. At least, that’s what Spider-Man taught me.

  As the wait be
came more and more grueling, my dreams remaining violent but now with me on the side of the dealer, rather than the recipient, I tried to focus in on my job, to remove myself from the shadowy depths of these thoughts. These were entities that I’d need to entertain later. Their feature was on its way, but first, previews. Popcorn, drinks. Even dinner.

  A well-executed murder is not the ally of the impulsive. It must be romanced, sweet-talked. Only in the last whispers of foreplay can one truly indulge the primal rage—the one that, in me, at least, is reserved for effective and dynamic retribution.

  With whatever time and resources I had available to me (the abundance of both of which surprised me), I started my work against Keroth. His address was unlisted in the white pages and unfindable on the Internet. He used a P.O. Box so as to optimize anonymity, which, as a detective, makes sense; you don’t want some douchebag getting out of prison early on good behavior and hunting you down the second they set foot on public streets to exact revenge.

  So, instead, I borrowed Beth’s car on the pretense of running errands in town (not entirely untrue) and followed him home after one of his rendezvous with my father. I knew his car well, which made it easier to follow at a distance, rather than having to follow immediately behind him the whole way there. The crucial moments were those of neither following too closely nor falling too far behind as he entered and exited I-84. But alas, my surveillance went undetected, and I committed his address to memory as I sped away.

  With this information handy, I was able to give him the same level of attention as I had previously given my dad. I found out where he liked to eat, the likes. Through some very tricky timing (for which I patted myself on the back later), I managed to steal a pen that he had accidentally left behind at his favorite sushi restaurant after signing the check.

  While in Portland, I purchased an Oregon street map and found the single page that was dedicated to Riverdell, and, with gloves on, traced the route that my dad reliably took to get home from the bar every weekend at closing time. On a more daring endeavor, I picked the lock of his car to see if I could purloin anything of use while he was at the DMV, and came out one hair comb richer. Plenty of beautiful, horrible DNA to help me realize my goal.

  My arsenal was growing, and the time would soon be nigh to mount an attack.

  I certainly didn’t regard it as a personal convenience, but just at that point in time, Beth’s relationship with Patrick the douchebag went south, which offered a relatively safe outlet for my concentration, which would most likely not get anyone killed. Domestic was handling the case, charging him with abuse, and I spent most of my waking hours doing my best to console her. Fortunately, she wasn’t the type to need a heart-to-heart every night, instead opting for pizza rolls, ice cream, and dozens of gun-slinging action flicks.

  Like always, Beth handled it like a champ. Comparatively speaking, of course. There was the obvious emotional fallout that inevitably results from the termination of an invested relationship, but she was always the type to rip the Band-Aid right off and lick the wound, and this time was no exception.

  While we had always been friends, I think it was this time of healing and closeness that made up the string that stitched us together. Before long, the stitching dissolved away, but by that point, it was no longer necessary; Beth and I had become irreparably inseparable.

  Of course, at work, we maintained the appropriate boundaries; she called me Thorn, and I called her Connors, and our chats were brief and business-related, save for the odd confirmation of plans outside of work. When she wasn’t on the clock, however, I had the pleasure of playing witness to the most witty, foul mouth I’d ever met. I love Beth.

  At one point, she dragged me to one of Patrick’s parties, knowing full well that I wouldn’t enjoy myself, but insisting that I witness the ‘culture’ of our generation. As it turns out, the culture of our generation is strikingly similar to a vegan with a thrift store fetish. I found myself treading water mentally, ignoring conversation (which was mostly a smattering of media buzz words with bridges like ‘privilege’ or ‘entitlement’) and electing instead to count ceiling squares.

  To my ego’s dismay, I found myself agreeing with most of what they were saying when I did tune in for a minute, but satisfied myself with the knowledge that I was far less pretentious. I hoped. I found solace in that Beth wasn’t an active participant in this culture either, but an amused onlooker, a ticketholder at a display of foreign foods and customs. On occasion, when the conversation would turn toward more normal territory, Beth would throw out a false headline that she claimed to have read in the Washington Post and watch them scramble to agree with the article and know the author on a pen-pal basis. We exchanged glances several times throughout the night, each of them followed by a suppressed giggle. Then I knew why she wanted me to come.

  “I was really hoping some redneck extremist would break through the window and assassinate that one in the ascot,” I said.

  “Umm, excuse you,” she said, doing offended, “I think you mean assassinathan.” We laughed ourselves to tears.

  Patrick submitted pretty quickly to the lawsuit; the prosecutor was putting on the pressure and, even though the evidence was largely circumstantial, he caved without much effort, to the relief of both Beth and me. We celebrated with an actual pizza and a Keanu Reeves marathon.

  The process took some time, time that I used as a vehicle to shuttle me closer to when my dad would go down. The clock’s ticking was music to my ears.

  A new moon on the eleventh allowed for Orion to shine in all his glory, gracing me with his presence and instilling in me comfort and focus. Being the small town that Riverdell was, its light pollution was relatively little, and the view of the stars at night was magnificent. On a still night, you could see the stars reflected in the pond at the park, and on nights during which I couldn’t sleep, or my sleep was plagued with nightmares, I would sometimes walk to the park to take advantage of that. I didn’t know how spoiled I was in regards to stargazing until I spent a weekend in Portland where, even in the darkest, most naked hours of the night, one could barely pick out the big dipper.

  That year was the first that I spent with Beth for Thanksgiving; most of her family lived in Seattle, and she wasn’t all that close to them anyway. She had one brother who moved to Texas (God’s country, he would call it; never Texas) and married a smart, strong lady. By Beth’s account, they were pretty decent, they just never saw each other; by the time Beth was old enough to have thoughts of her own, her brother, Tyler, was getting ready to move out.

  You would think that an event like Thanksgiving would provide an opportunity for closeness, but she seemed to prefer the distance.

  Her parents were any independent child’s worst nightmare. Beth always credited (or blamed) them with her career choice, as rules and the enforcement of them were the only things that she was raised to know. Her dad was a retired priest, and successfully put the fear of god in his kids by the time they could talk.

  It didn’t last, though; Beth hadn’t believed in god for years, and only put on a show of it to avoid family drama. She had a suspicion that Tyler was in the same boat, but didn’t want to call him out on it for fear of fallout. Makes sense.

  Other people’s family drama intrigued me. I had heard of such things when I was younger, but I could never bring myself to believe that, given the opportunity for peace, a group of people would instead choose hostility over something as petty as a duplicate side dish at a family gathering, or sibling envy at Christmas time. Simultaneously, it seemed both outrageously blown out of proportion and incredibly tame.

  When my dad was out of town, our home knew a tranquility that most people only dream of. We knew that the opportunity for mistakes to be made forgiven and unpunished would not last long, and we took advantage of it. Mom would laugh. My sister, Trina, would sing. She had quite a voice, too. She would mostly sing whatever was on the radio, but she gave it a surreal quality that one might expect from a Disney prin
cess.

  Trina moved to New York on a scholarship to Juilliard, then married her girlfriend. She went on to become a vocal performer, doing the less well-known shows, but with Broadway in mind. I’d always been certain of her success, and she’d make it there soon, I was sure.

  She would call now and then, and we’d chitchat and make small talk under the pretense that our dad wasn’t a molesting, abusive son of a bitch. Visiting was hard, as we lived on opposite sides of the country, and by association, whenever I saw her, I found myself getting upset with memories of our dad.

  “Shut your damn mouth!” he’d scream whenever he heard her singing. Partially it was because it was interrupting his show, but mostly, I suspected, he just didn’t want any of us becoming independent and getting ideas about turning him in. Singing liberated her and he knew that, so he tried to snuff it out.

  The thought of her doing it anyway, doing it well and succeeding, never failed to put a smile on my face.

  My mom fled when I was sixteen, hoping for a better life. I don’t blame her, either. In most situations, a mother would stick around to help her children, but I think the realization finally hit her that she had no power, no influence in the house. She couldn’t help us. She didn’t know what to do, so she up and left. At least she could make a better life for herself. Whether she ever planned to reunite with Trina and me is beyond my knowledge and perception, but in any case, I don’t blame her. She was all out of fight, and flight was her only other option.

  I’ve tried to incite anger within myself from time to time, cursing her for not taking Trina and me with her as she crept out of the house in the night, but for whatever reasons (perhaps born of sympathy, or simple mother-son love), I couldn’t bring myself to hold her accountable for that.

  Sometimes I’m tempted to contact her. To tell her that we’re okay, and that things were being taken care of. I entertained the idea of sending her an invitation to Dad’s funeral, but in the darkly humorous style of a birthday or wedding invitation.