A Long Way Down

by Randall Silvis

  “I’m with you. Where do you want to go?”

  “Someplace where people aren’t always hurting each other.”

  “Like maybe a grocery store?” she said. “The fruit section?”

  His laughter hurt, felt like something broken inside his chest. “No good,” he said. “I’ve seen people come to blows over a mango.”

  “Who ended up with it—you or her?”

  “She was wiry for an old woman.”

  They smiled at each other, a matching pair of smiles, equally fraudulent. He pulled his body forward a bit more, took her into his arms. Pulled his legs and feet back onto the bed. She curled into him, cried quietly against his chest.

  He said nothing, only held her. Was willing to do so forever if that was what she needed.

  But a few minutes later, she drew a hand over her face, wiped off the tears. Turned to sit with her head on his shoulder. She said, “Can we talk about that reward money for a minute?”

  “I don’t want it,” he said.

  “I don’t either. Let’s give it away. We can start with the victims’ families.”

  He nodded. “We’ll make a list.” He had a hand just above her stomach, fingers spread. Her stomach rose and fell as she breathed. Beneath his thumb, her heart continued to beat. Or maybe it was his own pulse beating in his thumb. Maybe both hearts were beating to the same rhythm.

  She asked, “Can we do something today?”

  “Anything you want.”

  She moved her hand to the side, felt around for the little wooden box, and finally found it beneath the sheet. She pulled it forth and set it atop the back of his hand, where she held it in place. She said, “I want to put our baby to rest somewhere.”

  He tried to keep his voice calming and steady. “It’s already at rest.”

  She shook her head no. “I want it to be with somebody who will watch over it and always take care of it. But I don’t know who. Who’s going to watch over our baby’s soul?”

  He sniffed, felt his head and chest fill with congestion, felt his eyes sting and his throat tighten, felt her heart and his hammering with grief. He lifted her hand momentarily, turned his own hand underneath the box until it was resting in the palm of his hand, then brought her hand down again to hold the box from the top. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I know just the right place.”

  Ninety-Eight

  DeMarco came down the stairs that morning and saw the white envelope on the foyer floor and stopped on the fourth step from the bottom of the stairs. There was no mail delivery on Sundays. Somebody had slipped the envelope through the mail slot while he and Jayme were still in bed.

  He looked back over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t close behind. No, he could hear water running in the bathroom; she had stepped into the shower. He came down the last three steps, stood over the envelope, looking down.

  A white card envelope, faceup on the cool tile. There was no return address, no stamp. No bulges. Nothing to indicate it was anything other than a card from a well-wisher. Yet it oozed darkness. It made the dim air feel even heavier.

  He picked it up by one corner, just in case, careful to touch no other part of its surface. Carried it, dangling from his finger and thumb, into the kitchen. Using his free hand, he tore a paper towel from the roll on the dispenser, laid the towel on the kitchen table, and dropped the card atop it. He gathered another paper towel and, from the knife block, a paring knife. Used the second paper towel to hold the envelope flat while he sliced it open. Used the tip of the knife to slide the sheet of yellow stationery, folded twice, out of the envelope and onto the first paper towel. Used both the knife and the paper towel to unfold the letter. And read the neatly typed message that filled both sides of the page. The font was small and made him squint:

  TO: Sergeant Detective Ryan DeMarco

  So now you know. From the TV news I learned that our Mr. McBride, my Erebus, still lives and is cooperating with your police. I had hoped and planned otherwise. Had you and Miss Jayme come up the same stairs, Erebus would have attacked one of you and been killed by the other. His journal would have been discovered, the killer identified, and all settled but for the identity of the mysterious Magus. Why did Miss Jayme leave your side? Who mounts a barricade in the middle of the stairs? Obviously, I misjudged both her and your tenacity. You always appeared so tame to me. I hope that characterisation does not offend you. I did imagine you less capable. That was my error, and one I will not make again. Also, I promise to become more proficient with a firearm—now that I have one of my own. A knife is more intimate, of course, but intimacy has never been my objective.

  You might imagine that you have won the war by routing your enemy, but you are mistaken. I know that Erebus will entertain you with all he knows, but do not think that I have been careless with what I have allowed him to know. Also he will lie to you to save himself. That you can count on. I know him well and used him well. He was a spear for me, nothing more. And when a spear breaks, the warrior throws it away and rearms himself with a new one. I have many spears. I need only reach out to seize another one, for they surround me wherever I go, eager to be of service. In this way the war continues, and is now more imperative than ever.

  I invite you to look around—at this town where you live, the city where you grew up, the country you fought dumbly for not once but twice, all the damage you and those like you have wrought. Yes, I watched as your sheriff praised you before the insatiable cameras. I wonder why you and your wounded mistress were not there puffing up your chests and basking in the praise. I am glad I did not kill her. To die is to be free of this prison, and it is not yet time for either of you to be free. You must first learn who you truly are and who is pulling your strings. Your country is spreading its pollution around the entire planet now, and only absolute chaos can cleanse it. There are dark, chilling currents running through your history and your culture, but how many of you are willing to acknowledge them? Have you paused to notice how many of your countrymen and women are addicted to alcohol and tobacco and prescription drugs? Cannabis, once meant to be employed only as part of the rituals of healing and divine connection, is now sold like bags of cotton candy in many of your states. How many ways must you find to narcotise your souls? Your people are obese and cancerous with sloth. You sedate yourselves with noise and artificial light, rendering the stars invisible and the celestial hum impossible to hear. There is no city in your country where the stink of smog and the insane clamour of man cannot be heard. Your leaders are thieves and deceivers, hysterical in their idiocy, vile and foul in their avarice, putrefying in their desire to subvert individual will for their own gain. Your children are raised addicted to the opium of the little screens, one worthless generation after another, multiplying like fevered beasts, filling subdivision after subdivision, ghetto after ghetto. You have made technology your god, but technology is a product and function of ego. Ego must be subverted, not apotheosised, if you hope to ever evolve. It would be better to see a thousand of you fall than to see another tree felled. You have divorced yourself from Aranyani to such an extent that she no longer speaks a word to you, no longer cares for your continuance, but pleads to the Source for your extinction. All this is the faeces you have spread across the planet, not like a fertile manure but like bile and vomit, so perversely have you interrupted the natural cycle by which life sanitises and perpetuates itself. You protect and nurture that which is too weak to survive on its own, and in so doing you weaken all life. Conflict and suffering are essential to growth. A dog with only eight teats does not attempt to nurture nine puppies; she devours the runt of the litter, and thereby assures her own survival as well as that of the other eight puppies. Every animal down to the simplest bacterium behaves this way, because they have not lost their native intelligence. They understand that the weak will weaken all of them. But your society has forgotten this. You attempt to sanitise it from conflict and suffer
ing. You waste your energy and resources by sustaining that which should be allowed to die. You coddle the weak, and in so doing weaken all of your society. This you call morality. This you call compassion. There can be no growth for mankind, no evolution, without suffering. The weak will die cradling the weaker in their arms!

  These are dangerous times indeed. You must remain aware of this now and never lose sight of what you have done. That reason alone is why I am happy I did not kill you and you did not kill me. Because now everything I do will remind you of this truth. Every time a citizen is run down by a truck or shot dead in the street, you will think of me. Every time a fire erupts in an apartment building for no reason, you will think of me. Every time a child disappears from one of your odorous amusement parks, you will think of me.

  Only chaos can cleanse you, my friend. The spectre of death will drive many of you even deeper into your bottles and drugs and the insentience of fear, but those not yet wholly weak of mind and will can be saved by it. Like me they will awaken to the truth, will detoxify their bodies and purify their minds of your culture’s putrescence. Perhaps you and I will meet again in this incarnation, but whether or not the universe chooses for this to happen, I will always be with you now. I am multitudinous. I will be everywhere you look, and especially in those places where you fail to look. Like Khaos, I surround you, and like Shiva, I am here to destroy you, arouse you from your stupor, and give you new form.

  I am Magus, the Redeemer.

  DeMarco’s hands were shaking as he pulled a plastic bag from the box in a kitchen drawer, and as he slipped both the letter and the envelope into that bag. He then stood very still and cocked an ear; water was still trickling though the pipes upstairs. He went out the back door, sat on the edge of the porch, and took out his phone.

  Ninety-Nine

  “For the love of God,” Ben said after being informed of the contents of the letter. “Well, I guess we need to get it to the FBI. You want to meet me in Erie?”

  “Jayme and I have some plans for the morning. I’d rather not have to cancel them.”

  “Want me to come get the letter?”

  “Could you? I hate to ask you to make the drive.”

  “Where’s a safe place you could leave it for me?”

  “I’ll put it in the top drawer in the china closet in the dining room. The house key will be, uh…back porch. Under a bag of sand against the wall.”

  “Got it,” Ben said. “Has Jayme seen the letter?”

  “No, and I don’t want her to. Not just yet anyway. I don’t want her to know how close that son of a bitch was to us last night. Can you ask the FBI to not release any information about how they came by the letter, or who it was addressed to?”

  “I’ll insist. Not that I carry much weight with the feds, but I’ll insist anyway. To release it to the press would just incite panic and play right into that lunatic’s hands.”

  “Thanks, Ben,” DeMarco said. “I owe you one.”

  “You don’t owe me diddly, brother. Just do what you have planned for the day, and this conversation never happened.”

  “What have you learned about Khatri?”

  “That’s not his real name, for one thing.”

  “What is?”

  “Still a mystery. The feds are doing fingerprint and facial recognition searches, but they’re coming up empty.”

  “Then they need to expand the search. He came from somewhere on this planet.”

  “I hear you, Ryan. I hear you. By the way, his bosses at the Dairy Queen and Humane Society had nothing but praise for him. Said he was an exemplary employee. Smart, reliable, a natural-born leader.”

  “Who apparently knows how to fake or get hold of fake documents. Didn’t anybody do a background check? Call for references?”

  “To serve ice cream and shovel up dog doo-doo? There’s a high turnover rate for both of those job skills, I’m afraid.”

  “What about the colleges? Was he a registered student at either one?”

  “No record of that. McBride says he audited Gillespie’s class. Has no knowledge of him attending any other classes. Said Khatri claimed to have ‘released’ a dozen or more souls so far, but he wouldn’t say when or where.”

  “There’s probably no way to disprove or corroborate that.”

  “Not with over forty thousand sets of unidentified human remains gathering dust in this country alone.”

  DeMarco shook his head, could think of nothing to say.

  Brinker asked, “Did you have a chance to read those pages from McBride’s journal?”

  “I did. I haven’t showed them to Jayme yet.”

  “Whatever you decide is fine with me. Just so you know, though, McBride’s been filling in some important details for us.”

  “What details?”

  “Khatri was in the car with him for Brenner and Hufford.”

  “Jesus,” DeMarco said. “He helped kill them?”

  “Kept them secured and subdued anyway. The little coward hid in the back, then used his stun gun on them. It was Khatri’s car they used, which is why no DNA turned up in McBride’s. McBride says he wasn’t allowed to write any of that in his journal. Wasn’t allowed to mention Khatri’s name. Khatri kept tabs on it. Read everything he wrote. ”

  “It was his insurance policy. Plan A was to pin everything on Gillespie. If that failed, plan B was to pin it all on McBride.”

  “I bet he did a happy dance when Gillespie accidentally killed the girl.”

  “Then found out we were looking for McBride. Probably knew the kid would turn on him sooner or later. So he lured us to the hospital expecting McBride wouldn’t survive it. Plant the journal, killer dead, case closed.”

  “Except that your aim was too good.”

  “Nobody aims to wound, Ben. You know that. I sure as hell didn’t.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing he’s still alive. Works out better for us.”

  “Except that I played right into Khatri’s hands,” DeMarco said. “Almost did his dirty work for him.” The thought that he had allowed himself to be duped by Khatri made a bubble of nausea rise in his stomach. And with it, his anger rose too.

  “We’ll get him sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time. Most people go through life trying to convince themselves they’re not as boring or homely or incompetent or stupid or cowardly as they fear they are. Only the fools succeed at that task. And Khatri is a fool if thinks he can hide from the FBI.”

  “And how many people will he kill in the meantime?”

  Brinker must have noticed the alteration in tone, the self-blame; he changed the subject. “How’s our girl doing today?”

  “Sleeps, mostly. Otherwise in a kind of daze. Makes it easier to keep her away from the news. She doesn’t even seem curious about any of the developments.”

  “That won’t last.”

  “I am going to tell her. Sooner or later. But when she’s stronger.”

  “Tell her what?” Ben said. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Huh,” DeMarco said, the best laugh he could muster.

  “And how are you doing, my friend? Holding up okay?”

  “Scraping by all right,” DeMarco said. “Like a glacier.”

  “There’s a lot of power behind a glacier.”

  “Gravity, Ben. That’s all it is.”

  “I hear that, I surely do. Well…enjoy your Sunday, man. Best that you can.”

  Afterward DeMarco sat awhile longer on the edge of the back porch. Sat looking at his yard and the alley and the garage and the spread of town and land and sky beyond. More than anything, he wanted out of there. Wanted to lift Jayme off the ground and carry her away somewhere. Wanted to stand with her on a hill so high that they could look down on the planets and stars and black holes and the whole angry sea of pain and wherever the hell
God was hiding.

  He needed to tell her that. He stood. Hid a house key behind the bag of sand on the porch. Then placed the plastic bag containing Khatri’s letter in the china closet in the dining room. Then went upstairs and into the bedroom.

  She was still in the bathroom, its door closed, though the shower was silent now. He reached for the doorknob but paused when he heard a sharp inhalation, followed by a shallow exhalation and soft “hunh.” She was sobbing.

  Of course she is, he told himself, and put his hand on the doorknob. But the door was locked. She never locked the bathroom door. What should he do?

  He turned and looked into the bedroom. Should he sit and wait? Allow her the privacy she obviously wanted?

  He crossed to her side of the bed, sat on the edge. Heard another convulsive sob, and stood. Then told himself, No, she locked the door. Let her be.

  Walked around to his side of the bed. Saw the box of Huston’s papers on the floor. What should I do? he asked. Should I talk to her through the door?

  This was all unfamiliar territory to him. He had viewed it from afar but had never lived it before. Never inhabited the very heart of it like this.

  He eased himself down onto his knees beside the box. Pushed the top layer of composition books aside and squeezed the edge of one near the bottom. Pulled it up through the others and laid it atop the bed, one hand flat atop it. “Help me, Tom,” he said.

  After a few moments, he opened the book at random. Verso and recto, he told himself. Left and right pages. Laraine had taught him that. That and a lot more, not all of it about literature.

  The choice was easy; the verso page was blank.

  On the recto page, he read:

  Everyone is angry today. Everyone is bilious with social or political or moral outrage. What a waste that is! What a waste of your precious time on this earth!

  The piece seemed to have been written for Huston’s students, and went on to talk about the need to ignore the ubiquitous media attempts to inflame and manipulate their passions. It talked about spending time alone in the woods, and meditating, in learning to find joy in even the most banal of activities, and in always nurturing a dream, a goal. DeMarco struggled to find any relevance in the material to his own life. Then he came to the final paragraphs: