by Brian Hodge
“And the only reason you know it’s not Hell, or that maybe Heaven and Hell are the same thing, is because you can hear the singing, for lack of a better word, because it’s not songs, or structured. But it’s beautiful. Sure—it’s Heaven, right? It seems to come from all around you, but it’s far away at the same time. Maybe it won’t be so bad, you’re thinking, if I get to listen to this. But pretty soon you realize it’s not for you. And a little while after that, you start to notice the strain in it. Like that tone in a hostage’s voice when he’s reading a statement about how well his captors are treating him, except he’s reading it with a gun at his head. And then you realize the worst thing of all: What you’re hearing are the ones that have learned to beg…
“And it must’ve been around then that the paramedics revived me.”
Manon was leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, fingers steepled together as she listened. “All that, and you’re not knocking down the doors to get back?”
He laughed—had to, needed to, and, speaking of hostages, thought he might have sounded a little like one himself. He did another check of the back door monitor and the windows and found nothing but more autumn outside. The brilliant reds and yellows and oranges of a couple of weeks ago had faded, the trees mostly stripped now and presiding over the deaths of millions. He watched the wind kick through the curled dry husks and thought that, compared to what he’d found on the Other Side, he’d have more freedom and individuality as a dead leaf.
Andrei ran his hand along the cold length of the crowbar. “Seems like an exercise in futility, doesn’t it? Just putting off the inevitable. Whoever it was that killed Kimmy, he could walk through that door and I could cave in his skull. I could kill a dozen more like him, if they’re really out there…or a hundred, or all that there are…and it wouldn’t change the fact that I have to die someday. I’ll go back to where I was.”
“I was wondering when you would get around to admitting this.”
“You think I should give up, then?”
“Not at all. Let me ask you something: Why do you think you’re bound to it? What makes you bound to it? Who says you have to go back there if you don’t want to?”
He stuttered out another laugh; had no idea how to answer this. “You think I’d go back there if I had any choice in the matter?”
“No. But I think you could go back if you don’t give yourself an alternative,” she said, just the strangest woman he’d ever met, because she seemed to trust that he’d found exactly what he said he had, and yet she wasn’t the least bit freaked out about it for her own sake. “You believed in it, Andrei. The Heaven you grew up learning about was different than you thought it would be, but you believed in it, and what supports it, and the god behind it, enough to give it all power over you. When you died, it didn’t so much claim you as you turned yourself over to it willingly.”
“So I wouldn’t have if I’d believed in something else,” he said, incredulous now. “And I wouldn’t have to again, if I just replace it. Simple as that, huh?”
“Worth a try, don’t you think?” Sounding as if all he had to do was flip a switch. “My friend Datjirri, the one who taught me the didgeridoo…his belief is that when he dies, he will return to the Dreamtime. It’s what his people have believed forever. Do you really think he has anything to fear from the kind of place you found? Even if he’s heard of it, do you think it could have any hold on him?”
“Good for him, but he’s got a little bit of a head start on me, don’t you think?” Andrei said. “You try not believing in someplace anymore when you’ve already been there.”
“So maybe you are destined to go back. But nothing says you have to return with the same attitude as the first time.”
Good to know. Oh, he had a fiercely bad attitude toward it now.
“Other people I’ve known, with different beliefs,” Manon said, “they didn’t worry about worshipping their gods, because their gods weren’t insecure enough to demand that. What was important to them was growing and learning and making the most of who and what they were inside. That way, when they died, they knew they’d done everything they could to become worthy companions for their gods. Not their slaves.”
“So if I go back, what am I supposed to be when I get there?”
“You don’t see it, you idiot? You’ve decided to go out fighting. Good. You do that, and maybe you’ll go back and take the fight with you next time.” Then she waved it all away with a flip of her hand. “But what do I know? I’m just a girl from a little town in France.”
VIII
He had a smile like razors and broken glass.
It had nothing to do with his teeth, which looked white and strong and maybe even perfect. Rather, it was everything that his smile seemed to promise.
In those first moments that Janika spotted him in the shop, she felt swamped by a sudden feeling that it was true, all of it…everything her brother had feared that she thought could be explained away as exaggerations, obsessions, and half-remembered hallucinations that had gotten mangled into memories.
Five minutes until closing, and outside it had been dark for hours. From behind the counter, she watched him moving up one aisle and down the next, killing time as he waited for the last couple of customers to finish up and leave, hardly varying his slow, ambling pace, seeming to look at every single item on the shelves without one of them capturing his attention. He would come toward her on one pass, then head away from her the next, walking the aisles as if winding through the queue at an amusement park ride, and carrying with him the air of an executioner who alone knew where he’d hidden his axe.
She reached for the phone, then stopped. Assuming she could even make a 911 call without attracting his attention, what would she tell them—I don’t like the way he’s walking? Andrei had already phoned the police the first day his siege mentality had kicked in. Because of the verifiable connection with his friend’s murder in Wyoming, they had sent patrol cars on frequent drive-bys past the house, but he’d said that even those seemed to be fewer and farther between by now. One more unsubstantiated and panicked report couldn’t help Andrei’s cause. All this man would have to do was play nice with the police for two minutes, because what could she tell them, and then they would be on their way again.
The family who kept crying wolf.
He was coming forward again, his circuit finished, making his measured way between the aisle and the wall, ignoring the row of African drums that everybody else in the world seemed to drool over. He detoured, swinging back to the front doors to lock them and flip the CLOSED sign around.
“You’ve kind of been shorthanded around here lately, haven’t you?” he called out to her.
Nearly eight o’clock at night in November and he was still wearing sunglasses, heavy, futuro-hipster things that looked like they came straight out of an extreme sports video. When he came closer, she could see that their frames were fitted with little audio earpieces—dear god, he was listening to something that made him smile that way, he knows, then he reached up and turned them off and pulled them from his head, he knows I know and it’s all been true all along —
“I bet if I asked you to show me the back room, there wouldn’t be anybody there, would there? That’s what happens when you let a couple of your best employees go on vacation at the same time.”
Janika tensed, wondering if she could spring over the counter, take him to the floor, grab the nearest chunk of hardwood and not stop beating him until she saw his brains. Probably she could. It was all in the legs. No one might know it to look at her, because she didn’t have the shape of a track runner and apparently never would, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t out there most mornings in a sports bra, pounding out a couple of miles in the cool predawn air.
“Think very carefully before you do anything.” He seemed to sense that she was measuring angles, distances. “Every decision commits you to the next one. You lose options that way in a big honking hurry. The worst thing you can do
is act before you’ve really had a chance to read your situation.”
“You’ve been watching my house?” she said.
“I’ve been watching everything. Your house has been the easiest. You’ve got an entire blockful of houses on the other side of the street, and they’ve all got windows facing yours.” His voice sounded strange to her—its modulations, his phrasings, the force behind it. He spoke like somebody accustomed to talking at people instead of with them, as if everything was a declaration that they should be glad to hear. “There’s no need for me to tell you which one of them has been vacant for the past few days. It may not mean much to you anyway. Most people don’t even know their neighbors anymore. It’s not like it was when I was growing up. They all watched out for each other then, kept each other in line. You can’t tell me that wasn’t better for everyone.”
Feeling sick, Janika tried to put faces with houses, neighbors glimpsed on the opposite sidewalk, or in cars as they rolled past one another on the street, and for the most part, he was right. Somebody’s already dead and I may not even know their name.
He was at the counter now, in reach, yet appeared completely confident that he was in charge…and she was afraid that he was. He knew things she didn’t. He stood broad-shouldered and big-boned, the bulge of a hard, muscled gut swelling in front. His head appeared a little too large, with hair buzzed short on the sides, leaving a bristle on top, and with his lantern jaw and small eyes, agate eyes set in deep sockets, he looked as though he were made to inflict damage while absorbing as little in return as possible. And he knew it. He had about him the most unnerving sense of purpose that she’d ever encountered in anyone, anywhere.
From the pocket of his nylon coat he pulled out a camera, a little silver digital thing that fit in his thick palm. He stabbed a button with his finger and the camera made a twinkling chime as it powered on.
“Before you start making any decisions, you need to see something. I’m taking a risk here, you know. I’m doing something I hardly ever have the opportunity to do. I’m giving you the chance to make a very important choice.”
He poked at the camera’s arrow keys until he seemed satisfied, then held the camera up and turned it around so she could see the photo displayed on its LCD.
“That’s the best one,” he told her. “The fear in his eyes really comes across there. Most of the others, he just looks pissed off.”
How was it possible that her heart could beat again after seeming to have stopped for so long? Corey occupied the middle of the bright little screen. Corey against a huge stainless steel kitchen rack—sitting? standing? lying across it?—and wrapped in swath after shiny brown swath of what appeared to be shipping tape. It covered his mouth, too, and his eyes looked shockingly bright against his skin, and the blood from his scalp was as red as red could be.
“He could come out of this fine,” her guest told her. “Or he could come out of it a real mess. Restaurants always have the best knives. It’s up to you.”
“If it were really up to me…? Your head would be across the room right now.”
His eyebrows knitted together for a pensive moment. “Now, you look like a big strong girl, and we both know you might even give me some trouble. But that only helps if I’m working alone, so you’re going to have to factor that in, too.” He tapped the LCD, then lowered the camera. “I have some business with your brother. I think you know that already.”
“Andrei for Corey—that’s what you’re asking?”
“Nailed it.”
“You already know where he is!” she shouted. “Why didn’t you just…?”
But it was obvious before the words were out of her mouth. Where Andrei was concerned, this man had lost the element of surprise. Andrei was waiting for him. Andrei was ready. He would need other tricks to take her brother.
“It’s a moral dilemma, a choice like this,” he said. “There’s no right answer. But from what I’ve heard, you want him out of the house already.”
“Not on your terms.” Her hands were shaking. “I…I can’t serve my brother up to you like…like…”
“Okay. Fine. Then how would you like to see the fat man served up—fillets, cutlets, flank steaks?”
As she leaned against the counter to keep herself steady, he smirked at her, or seemed to, as though he might have been forcing it because he felt she would expect it. Genuine or not, Janika now knew what he reminded her of: the jocks back in high school, or the vicious ones at least, with their hulking bodies and untaxed brains and stunted souls, drawing amusement from others’ misery. They always won.
“Would it help any if I told you that I won’t hurt so much as a hair on Andrei’s head unless he asks me to? Because I won’t,” the man said. “I’ve told a lot of lies in my life, but this isn’t one of them.”
She had absolutely no reason to, and what he’d just said didn’t even make sense…but she believed him, oddly enough.
“Don’t worry, it’s not one of those situations where it comes down to him or you or Chubby or the funky little chick he’s spending every moment with, it looks like. There’s not going to be a knife at your throats unless you make me put it there. All three of you don’t have to have any more part in this, unless you choose to make it your business, in which case, sorry, all bets are off. I just want to talk to Andrei.”
“Just talk—is that what you told his friend Kimmy?”
“Look, if it was only a matter of wanting Andrei dead, he already would be. All I’d’ve had to do was fire a rifle across the street, from one window to the other. I could’ve taken that shot twenty or thirty times already. He checks the windows a lot.” The guy held up his camera to give her one last glimpse of Corey, then twisted the mode dial and the photo disappeared. “Like I said. If I harm your brother in any way, it’ll be because he asked me to.”
“He’d never do that.”
“You’d be amazed what people are capable of when all you do is ask them to live up to their own words.” He nodded toward the phone. “Go on. Make the call. Get him down here, whatever it takes to do it. We’ll keep this all in public for tonight. Just one requirement: Don’t mention anything about me.”
Sickened, she was reminded of war, and the casual cruelties of the invaders. Sophie’s choice—which child will you send to its death? Or fleeing a village with one toddler while the marauders were occupied with another. On some level, killers who forced decisions like this probably thought themselves merciful.
I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, Andrei…and I’m sorry I’ve let him make me believe there’s enough of a chance here to keep hope alive.
When the call was done, she looked across the counter at this king of tormentors, resisting every impulse to beg because she knew it would either entertain him, or worse, do nothing to him at all. He nodded a couple of times, some kind of approval. Then he lifted the camera, and she thought, Oh god, here it comes, the one where Corey’s dead —
Instead, it was her picture he took this time, the flash a brilliant white pop in her eyes. Her vision was gone, and her good sense too, must be, because she should have known that there was another reason for this; should have dived blindly for the floor, instead of letting him put her there with a perfect punch straight into her chin.
Right on the button, they called it.
Screwed, that worked too.
IX
Neon and streetlights and whirling dead leaves churned past the car’s windows like ghosts of another life. How long had it been since he’d ridden in a car, moved at these speeds—three years? Four? Those first minutes in Manon’s car, it seemed impossible that the human body could take such mechanical stresses. He would pulp against the seat like a test pilot pulling too many Gs.
“She’ll be okay,” Manon told him, and Andrei tensed a little more when she took one hand off the wheel to rub his arm. “Everything will be okay.”
Of course it was a trap, and a surprisingly lame one, too. Was Kimmy’s murderer really this stupid? Did
he honestly think that this was going to work—flush Andrei out of the house, take him by surprise? Maybe the guy had no sisters, or no family at all, so maybe he just didn’t know any better.
If you grew up with a sister, lived with her for years, if you helped her get through a divorce that you knew, down deep, was caused in part by your deranged presence, then you knew her maybe even better than her own husband had. You knew her rhythms and her ways and her nuances, and the times where her voice tightened up when she was stressing, and you especially knew how it sounded when she lied, because you’d heard her do it for so long.
It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, it was just time, we just grew apart.
You’ve got a home here as long as you need it.
Did this wandering butcher think he wouldn’t know his sister was being coerced? On the surface, Janika’s call seemed innocent enough: Charlotte, her evening clerk, had gone home sick with the flu. Could he and Manon come in for an hour or two to help with some stock work so she wouldn’t be there by herself until midnight? All the right words, all the right apologies and disclaimers, yet he’d known it was as phony as the promises of preachers and politicians.
Whoever had forced Janika to make that call, did he not stop to think that they might have friends a few doors away who were good for a favor? Thirty seconds after she had hung up, he was on the phone with one of the baristas at Slaves To The Bean. A simple request, don’t ask questions, and don’t do anything to get involved any deeper: Take a walk around the block, have a casual look inside the windows at Global Village, and tell me what you see.
