Simon watched from where he had parked the van on the least busiest of the three streets adjacent to the school. He pretended to casually read one of the comic books, glancing furtively over the pages, taking note of the children and their positions and pedestrians passing by.
He wanted to make friends with a boy and so dismissed the girls out of hand.
Eventually the group by the swings broke up and went their separate ways but none of them alone and the two playing marbles had somehow vanished without him noticing.
He was sat there for awhile debating if he should just go hide the van somewhere and try again tomorrow when he saw a boy walking towards the van from far down the street. He had a back pack and he was walking very, very slowly. The way one walks when they don't really want to go to where ever they are going. Simon knew what that felt like. They hadn't even met yet and they already had something in common. Very calmly Simon climbed in the back, opened the sliding side door and sat at the edge of the doorway, pretending to read one of the comics.
“Oh hey,” Simon yawned from over top of the book when the boy came into view.
“Hello...” the boy greeted back and kept walking.
“Is this St. Joseph's?” Simon asked nodding towards the school behind them.
“No, it's St. Augustine's.”
“Oh darn! I was supposed to pick up my nephew Johnny here after school. I guess, I'm going to be late. Do you know here St. Joseph's is?”
“No sir. Sorry, I don't.” He said and sped up his pace a bit to get away from the van.
“Do you read comic books?” Simon asked holding up the comic in his hand so the boy could see the cover.
“Sure. Yeah.” the kid said with a shrug.
“You can have this one if you want? I already read it?”
“You read comic books?”
“Sure,” Simon said shrugging his shoulders back. “Why not?”
“I don't know... Because you're old?”
“Yeah... I guess I am. But I guess I'm not like other adults because I still like kid stuff... I'm Simon by the way,” he said and held out his hand for the boy to shake it.
The boy looked down the street in the direction he was travelling then back the way he came. But Simon was patient and left his hand there; hanging in the air between them until the boy finally swallowed his growing discomfort and reached out for it. He shook it quickly and tried to withdraw but Simon held it for second.
“What's your name?” He asked.
“Alex.”
“Nice to meet you Alex,” Simon said, finally releasing his hand and handed him the comic book. “Here, take it.”
Simon arched one brow and watched as little Alex leafed through the pages, curious if his eyes would widen when he came across the green skinned siren around page seven. They did, and Simon couldn't help but smile. That was a normal boy thing just as he thought and he felt a little better about being so aroused by her earlier.
“Are you coming from school? Why are you walking alone?”
“No, I'm, coming from home. My mom has one of her friends over and she doesn't like me being in the house they he's there.”
“Oh I see. A boy friend?”
“Yeah, maybe, I don't know,” Alex said and rolled up the comic book and leaned back on his heels as if about to leave.
“You know, I got more. You can have them. He could see that the boy was unsure so he added, “I have a whole bunch of them. And I've read them all so I'm just gonna throw them out anyways.”
Alex shook his head slowly no but didn't leave. Though he looked kind of scared and Simon knew it must be his kid sense. Kids had a way of knowing something was wrong even if they didn't quite know why. Again, that was a feeling he could definitely relate to.
“It's okay,” Simon said waving the issue away with forced nonchalance. “I'll just give them to some other kid. No big deal.”
The boy hesitated and lingered a few moments longer and Simon's excitement began to climb in direct correlation to the boys wavering indecision. He knew he had him, a friend, finally a little friend. But he had to be very patient. It was like fishing he imagined, but a boy is much smarter than a fish and so he had to be even smarter still.
“Hey, if you don't want them that's okay. You can keep that one. See you later kid,” he said then turned his attention away from him but in his peripheral vision he could still see the boy standing there.
“Okay,” the kid finally said. “Okay I'll take them.”
“You sure? I mean, you don't have to take them just to be nice.”
“I'm not just being nice. I want them.”
“Alright,” Simon said shrugging and climbed into the back of the van. He stopped at the stack and moved them a little closer to the door so he could see them but not so close the boy didn't have to get in to take them.
“They're right there if you want them.”
The boy hesitated but eventually climbed into the van and scooped up the stack of comics.
“Oh hey,” Simon said as if just remembering, “You can have these too ,” and then he lifted the bag of chocolate bars and handed them to the boy.
“Thanks Mister.”
Then the boy turned to leave but Simon, almost desperately, said:
“Wait... uh. Let me show you my favourite one before you go.”
He took the stack of books and flipped through them until he found the issue he was looking for.
“Here it is.” he declared holding it up proudly. “Do you want to know why it's my favourite?”
“Okay. Why?”
“Because of the art work in the fight at the end,” He said flipping to the appropriate page and holding it up for him to see. “Pretty cool huh?”
“Yeah. Cool. I have to go Mister. You can keep that one since it's your favourite.”
And then the boy turned to leave but Simon reached out and grabbed him by the arm. The boy spun away from him, the fear igniting some semblance of common sense inside of him but Simon wouldn't let go off his little arm. He couldn't. He just couldn't let go, though he knew he should. This was the one moment, the one true test of his life to determine if all the bully's and predators had won or not. But God help him, he couldn't let go of the boy. In that moment Simon knew that the bullies and the bad people had won. The bad people always win. And he was one of them now.
“Help! Help!” Alex screamed as loud as he could. Simon lifted his free hand, pleadingly at first. He tried to shush, tried to calm him down but they were beyond that. The boy continued to scream for help and now Simon was panicking too. He just wouldn't shut up and so Simon did what he had to do to make him.
CHAPTER 29
He couldn’t tell if he had actually slept or not. Maybe an hour worth of minutes here and there, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. Jeremy lay in the springy motel bed all night trying to turn off his mind, trying to un-see the things he had done. He knew as soon as he checked his phone he would have to leave. Not that he minded getting out of the room and its cigarette stench, but the less he was out in the open streets the better. He told himself he would wait until seven to check, and the two hours leading up to then where the longest of his life. He paced, he sat, he stood, he tried to cry and failed. At seven and not a second later he inserted the battery back into his phone.
He scrolled through streams of messages from Costa and Moramarco and Katie until he found what he was looking for. A message from a sender he didn’t recognize.
The message box was blank, only a subject line: Was it you?
He replied: Yes. I did it for you.
This was not smart and he knew it. He had to turn the phone off again as soon as possible but had to wait for a reply and hope like hell it would come soon.
He went to the kill-bag and removed the hand gun. He checked the chamber, cocked and un-cocked it and checked it again. Five whole minutes passed this way as he checked the gun and checked the window, checked the gun, checked the window. It made no sense but it gave
him a bit of comfort. Finally his phone beeped
Another email, one word: Why?
Because we must be free. He typed back.
This time the response was immediate: 749 Macedonia Way. Kill them all.
He pulled the battery from his phone grabbed his things and rushed out the door.
He pulled out of the parking lot and headed west. It took him passing a LAPD cruiser for him to realize how colossally foolish it was for him to be driving around in his own car. He removed the gun from the glove compartment and placed it beside him in the door while he watched the cruiser in his rear view, unable to breath until the it was out of sight again.
He had to get off the road. He parked his car in the parking lot of a mall where it would be inconspicuous among the lanes and lanes of the other vehicles, grabbed the kill bag and went to find a coffee shop where he could wait out the day.
Walking down the sidewalk observing the city and its inhabitants going about their lives made him feel like an alien that had just landed on a strange world. Who were these people and what did they want? Where were they going? What made them tick? Though it seemed like only yesterday that life had taken this sudden turn into darkness, he could no longer remember what innocuous living felt like. Couldn’t relate any longer to the day to day trivialness of these people and their lives. Who was he before all this misery? Was he ever truly awake to what was important?
He found a small coffee shop where his presence for an extended period of time wouldn’t seem suspicious. A poor man’s coffee shop, the kind where bums hang out reading papers they had found in the garbage and the losers spend hours watching baseball on old tube projection tvs to mitigate their sense of aloneness in the world. He ordered a coffee and sat a table in the back, staring into blackness of it until the world grew just as dark and cold. When it was time, he retrieved his car from the mall parking lot.
The house on Macadonia Way was a small detached home in a middle class neighbourhood. A basketball net in the driveway meant there were children inside. He knew there would be no alarm and no dog. Mister was clearly doing some research and not picking addresses at random. He couldn't keep doing this... but if he stopped now it was for nothing. Eight people dead by his own hands. If he hadn't killed them would Mister have forced someone else to? He wanted to think so. But the truth? The truth was that he killed them. What Mister would or wouldn’t do didn’t change that fact and if he stopped now it was all for nothing. If it was for nothing than he was as bad as him.
White make up, white suit. It had become a distressingly familiar ceremony. He was now accustomed to how they costume made him feel; Dangerous, powerful and other-worldly in some way.
Once in the backyard, which was really just fenced in ten by ten patch of grass, he bent down behind the cover of a bush and removed the hatchet and crowbar from the bag. Though when he check the door it was already ajar. He stood very still in the shadow of tree and listened and waited. No sound inside, not light in any of the windows.
Very slowly, very carefully he pushed the door open with his gloved hand and stepped inside.
The living room was cool and dark, save for the soft blue light coming from the stove's clock on the adjoined kitchen. For a long, almost peaceful moment, he stood and listened to the sound of the house. No pipes running, no footsteps or television. Just the calming, whirling breeze of a ceiling fan in the living room.
He pulled out the gun and proceeding slowly through the dining room and into the main hall. The house was relatively new, he thought, and didn't creak anywhere on his weight.
Coming around to the stairs he jumped back, shocked, gasping, uber alert. A dead body lay at the bottom step. A tiny pond of blood growing around the corpse, swallowing it in its sticky blackness.
Like a firecracker in his mind he realized that Mister must be in the house.
“Drop the gun,” a voice said from behind him.
Jeremy's first instinct was to turn and begin to blindly fire his weapon but something told him that if he moved too suddenly he would be dead before even laying eyes on him. Somewhere in the room a gun cocked confirming his instincts were right and so he let his firearm fall to the ground.
“And the blade,” the voice added and Jeremy again complied.
This is it. He thought. This is were I die. Next to this stranger and a stranger to myself.
“Why did you do it?” Mister asked from somewhere in the darkness.
“I did it because it’s the only way.”
“Only way to what?”
“To wake up.”
Then something cold was on his neck and the surge of an electrical charge was filling his body, fighting the terror inside of him for room until they both filled him completely, broke him apart into a million little shards and laid him down softly into placating blackness.
CHAPTER 30
Simon paced back and forth in his claustrophobic living room, the floor boards squeaking like mice under his feet. He didn't want it to happen this way. He didn't. But what other way could it have happened? And in any case, it was spilt milk now. Spilt milk. Done deal. It happened.
The boy was tied and gagged in the bathtub. A chain fastened him to the pipe under the sink. His legs were tied with rope which was wrapped around the back of the toilet. It was the only other stable thing in the bathroom to which he could tie him to and he didn't want the boy thrashing and kicking him in the face. He cried and cried for hours, even with a gag stuffed in his mouth, the boy cried and cried and cried and cried. He tried talking to him but he wouldn't listen. He just wouldn't stop with the crying and Simon had to finally admit to himself that this had not gone the way he wanted it to. He and the boy would not be friends.
He wanted to let him go but he couldn't. And he couldn't deny the way seeing the boy tied up and helpless made him. Here he was about to do to a young boy what some other monster had done to him as a young boy and he couldn't shake the feeling that somehow he was infected with something he could not overcome. Something in his blood which had been growing and waiting.
Without really allowing himself to think about it too much he went to the kitchen drawer where he had placed a pair of scissors and than scurried into the bathroom. Alex was still, very still and if he didn't know better he would say he was dead, but he knew that wasn't possible, unless of course one could die from fear. But then again, if that was possibly he was sure he would have died himself when he was a boy.
He cleared his throat and the Alex stirred. It wasn't until he started cutting off his jeans with the scissors that little Alex started to cry again and fight back.
“Please sir. Please don't.”
“Call me Johnny.”
“Please sir.”
“Call me Johnny!”
“Please Johnny don't!”
The boy was struggling too much. He had cut him in several places with the scissors before deciding to give up. For now. He left him there like that in the tub with one of the legs of his jeans cut up the side all the way to the waistband. Blood from where the scissors snipped at his legs, trickling down onto the cold and grimy porcelain.
This wasn't going to do. He didn't want to hurt him. Not more than he had to. Maybe if got him drunk things would run smoother. But no, the kid would never willingly swallow enough alcohol. And then he remembered how the teenage boy who hangs out around the convenient store down the street tried to sell him LSD a few days ago. That would probably do the trick. He'd never done it himself but heard stories. From what he could gather it was pretty powerful stuff. Much more powerful than alcohol.
He took one last look at the boy to make sure he couldn't get loose and hurried down the corner store. The kid wasn't there so he got himself a can of coke and waited. Then a second can. He had no idea what all the fuss was about until he had one for the first time a couple weeks ago. Now he understood. It was unlike anything he had ever tasted. It was surgery and kind of syrupy and burned the back of your throat really bad but they faster you dra
nk it the better it felt and it made you burp so hard that it was relieving, and you wanted it to make you burp just so you could experience that feeling. He had a third. Just as he was crushing the can and debating grabbing a forth the boy he looking for arrived, coasting in on skateboards with two other teenage boys. Simon hurried over to them and stopped them before they could enter the store.
“Hey!”
“Uh... hey?”
“I met you the other day. Do – do you remember me?”
“No.”
The kids all exchange confused looks. Simon was oblivious to the hopped up and manic state he was in. His eyes were bloodshot and intense, he hair matted and greasy against the side of his face which glistened with a sickly sheen of sweat.
“You asked me if I wanted something...” Simon tried to hint. He knew better than to just say it outright.
“Are you a cop?” The kid asked blankly.
“What? No! No, I'm not a cop.” And then he laughed a little too intensely but it was funny. Him? a cop?!
“Okay. So you want weed or acid?” The boy finally asked and his two friends went into the store so they could conduct their business.
When he got back to the apartment it occurred to him that the police may already be looking for the boy so he tuned his little clock radio to the local news. Weather and sports and traffic but no talk of a missing boy. Maybe there was nobody to miss him. Maybe his family didn't care where he was. He knew how that felt. It made it a little harder. Maybe he and the kid were more alike than he realized. Maybe if things went differently they would have become friends even. Real friends. That's all he wanted. But that possibility was gone now. Long gone.
He took a small bottle of water from the fridge, poured out half then placed one of the two hits of acid that he bought into the bottle and shook it vigorously. He then went into the bathroom and wiped some of the tears away from Alex's flushed cheeks. The boy recoiled as far as the slack on the restraints would allow.
Horror Becomes Me Page 14
