The Mentor

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

  “For who?” Kyle coughed, the words drooling from his mouth.

  “The police.”

  “Whatever you have planned won’t work out in the end. I’ll make sure of that.”

  William slapped Kyle across the face. It stung at first, but seconds later it woke Kyle up. William held the syringe to his neck.

  “The only reason this isn’t flowing through your veins right now is that I want you to watch Sierra die. I’ve taped her fingers to slow down her death, but it’s inevitable.”

  “Why … does she have to be involved?”

  “The why isn’t important because it isn’t in my manuscript. I can tell you my reasons, but no one else will know them, so it doesn’t matter. The two of you will be found dead at the hands of a deeply disturbed soul. Let them speculate for ages why.”

  “And what will happen to you?”

  “The police will write the narrative for how this goes. Will they kill me here in the shack, or do they risk sparing my life and giving me a chance to rage?”

  “I’ve told the town’s sheriff about you,” Kyle said. “He has the final draft of Devil’s Hopyard. He’ll find this place.”

  “I know he will. I know him well. How he moves. His motivations, what Mia had meant to him all these years. You and I are not the only ones who had been spellbound. And Brett Swenson has the book too. I guarantee once he finishes and reads tomorrow’s headlines, Devil’s Hopyard will be sent right off to the presses.”

  “So that’s what this was all about, just to write a bestseller?”

  William chuckled his signature laugh. “A bestseller means nothing these days. Morons have written bestsellers. I’ve created something that’s never been done in literature before.”

  Kyle figured his best chance was to keep talking. Whatever he could do to keep William preoccupied.

  “You haven’t created anything, only destroyed. Mia was nineteen years old—”

  “She made promises she couldn’t keep.”

  “You loved her, I know.” Kyle pushed through the cobwebs in his mind as hard as he could. He had to take control of this ending. In his pants pocket was a Wisconsin Badger’s key chain with a Swiss Army knife attached. Even with his hands chained, he could try to maneuver it out of his pocket.

  “We had made plans,” William said. He bent down and picked up what was left of her jaw. “Did she ever make big plans with you?”

  “No,” Kyle said.

  William nodded smugly. “That’s the difference between your relationship with her and mine.”

  Kyle managed to get his pinkie looped inside his pocket. He shifted in place to try to dig deeper.

  “You were a child,” William said. “She wasn’t interested in a child.”

  “So you killed her so I couldn’t have her?”

  “No, Kyle, despite your belief that the world revolves around you, you did not factor into that decision. You were a toy to her just like all the rest. And lamentably, so was I. She rejected me because I was her chance at happiness, but she didn’t feel like she deserved it. That’s what made us so close, made us into the same person. We came from poison, we knew rot, me in a faraway shack like this one, and her disintegrating just a mile from here, with a cranked-out stepdad slipping into her bed each night.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Kyle said, but he did. Mia had told him all about her past. He’d been complaining about his mom because she was always a little whackadoo depending on whatever meds she was on. Mia had the same situation with hers, but things were far worse at her home.

  “Imagine having a doped-up mother along with a rapey stepdad,” Mia told him. She had said it so nonchalantly.

  Kyle never complained about his family to her again. It made him try to reach out to his dad to mend things, even though his attempt was too late. He and his dad had never been close. Wally Broder didn’t like books or see the point in them. He wanted a son to hunt with and watch NASCAR. He was a mechanic and spent the day working on cars, coming home smelling of grease and oil and a different scent of perfume each night. One day he just stopped coming home, not a word for a year until a letter floated into their mailbox telling of another family he had out in Eau Claire. Kyle’s mother was a challenge, high-strung and a pill addict; it was one of the first things he and Mia bonded over—but Wally never laid a hand on him, just lost interest.

  Kyle had gotten his ring finger inside the pocket now, his middle finger so close. The chains sliced into his wrists. They were slick with his blood. He prayed they wouldn’t saw into an artery.

  “Mia was badly abused,” William continued. His voice had dropped in vibrato, the tone slower, more practiced. He’d let the conversation become untethered, but now he was bringing it back, seizing control. He knew exactly what he wanted to reveal. Kyle could see a flicker of excitement in the fucker’s eyes.

  “Mia’s mother had her boyfriend move back in,” William said. “The crank dealer. Mia couldn’t afford dorm dues so she was living at home. He started forcing himself on her again.”

  Mia had never told this to Kyle, which made him question whether or not it was true. He knew only what her stepdad did when she was in high school. He didn’t know it had continued.

  “This shack became her hideout. A place she could go to when things got bad. That’s why I found it for her. She came to me one afternoon drenched in tears. She asked me to take her away. We had plans.”

  “You were going to leave your wife?”

  Kyle finally tucked his middle finger into his pocket.

  “I was, I really thought I was. Whether I would have actually gone through with it, who knows? But Mia had inspired me then. I started writing again. Having children … well, it had sucked up all my time for many years. I wrote nothing, and it made me angry. I am capable of terrible things, and that foulness festered inside me. I’m aware of the many faces I have. I have to find ways to release these demons. So sometimes I’d drive to an animal farm at night. I’d get out a blade and leave behind a slaughter. I’d sit in their blood, paint my eyes, howl at the moon. You don’t know where I’ve come from, Kyle. The evil that I’ve seen.”

  “I know, I’ve read your book.”

  “And do you believe it?”

  “I do.”

  “Yet you still think it’s not good enough to be published?”

  Kyle wrenched his index finger into the pocket, only his thumb dangling off the side. He tried to grasp for his knife. He tapped against cold metal, but it was still too far away.

  “Who am I to say if your novel’s good or not if I still haven’t seen how it ends?”

  “It ends in death, just like all great endings. Yours and mine.”

  “Actually,” Kyle said, managing a grin, “my favorite kinds of books don’t have a definitive ending. They leave the reader hanging a bit. So the story continues on in their minds.”

  Now Kyle got his thumb jammed into the pocket. He planned to grab the knife and fall on top of William so the knife would plunge into his stomach. It was a crazy idea, but it was all he could think of trying.

  “You don’t see that as a cop-out?” William asked.

  “No, it’s more realistic. Nothing in life ever ends completely anyway. People die, but their loved ones live on after them, keep their memories alive.”

  William nodded frantically, tears in his eyes.

  “Yes, that’s what I wanted. To keep Mia’s memory alive. In life, what would she have become? She would’ve dropped out of Bentley, strung out around the country, looking for any way to pay for a needle.”

  “What do you mean pay for a needle?”

  “She was doing heroin, Kyle. He injected her one night while she was sleeping—the fucking crankhead her mom was dating. He got her hooked. And then she was like a puppy at his feet. He went from scum to hero, and I took his place as scum. I got in the way of her high. So you bet I fucking chained her up in the shack, I was weaning her off smack. I was going to get her clean, and then we were going to d
isappear—just for a while—and I was going to write our tale, our story.”

  Kyle reached down even farther, feeling the shape of the Bucky Badger key chain in his fist. He started to pull it out.

  “And I was going to tell Laura all about us,” William continued. “I would have come back for my kids too. I wasn’t going to lose my position at Bentley; this would just be my sabbatical. I had it all planned, even got that bitch Dr. Yancey to approve a proposal.”

  “But Mia didn’t want to go?”

  “I only kept her chained up for one night … the first time. When I came to get her, she wouldn’t even look at me. I unchained her, drove her home, but … she never truly looked at me again. Then she used you to make me jealous, Kyle. All of a sudden you two were inseparable, but junkies are erratic and you wouldn’t last. I begged her to give me another chance, told her I did it to save her life so we could start ours, but she became a wall I couldn’t penetrate. I began to think of her in a different way.”

  “You mean you thought about her heart?”

  William gave a solitary nod, unashamed.

  “It’s not to say I never thought about her heart before. It teased the back of my mind. I’d dream about it. I’d wake up in the middle of night and write these long passages about its beat, its … perfect muscle. I had these long scrolls penned in calligraphy, rather Jack Kerouac–like. Anyway, the final draft I did of Hopyard will lead its editor to where I’ve kept those scrolls. I imagine it could be a follow-up of some sort.”

  “How did she die?” Kyle asked, struggling to get the key chain out of his pocket. It had caught on a loose thread.

  William stared at an imaginary point just beyond Kyle’s head. Kyle wondered if he was looking at Mia’s ghost. If she had visited Kyle earlier, why not William as well? Was she telling him it was time to fully confess?

  William bit into his tongue, drawing blood. He chewed it for a while, contemplating.

  “Weeks went by after Mia spent the night in the shack,” he continued. “She had completely cut me off, treated me as if I were invisible. She stopped coming to class. You were probably too high to notice anything was wrong, but I knew. I’d stalk her every move, watch her descend into a daylong heroin high in her bedroom. Then I was in the Commons one night when I heard the two of you fighting, a drugged-out, nonsensical screaming match. The whole school watched. You went your separate ways and I followed her. She headed off campus down a trail that would eventually lead to her mom’s house. I pulled up beside her in my car.”

  Kyle yanked the key chain from where it had caught, but it slid from his fingers. He felt this loss in the pit of his stomach and had no choice but to try for it again.

  “When she saw me, she became possessed, spouting a stream of hate so dark … I … it took me back to being a child chained up in our farm’s shack as my father reasoned why he needed to hurt me, and I’d … I’d shut him off, just pretend I couldn’t hear, but with Mia … I loved her and so her hate was like bullets. She took off, running down the road, and I put my foot on the gas, plowed right into her. It was just an impulsive reaction, but the impact threw her a few feet, knocked her out. So I carried her to my car and we returned to her … final home.”

  Kyle was almost able to grab the key chain again, his fingers so close.

  “I handcuffed her to the bed in the shack. I stayed with her all night. I woke her with a kiss, but more hate spewed from her mouth. I’d return with all her favorite things, but it didn’t matter. I told her I loved her and that this was what I needed to do to help her. But she couldn’t see. She was so blind. So I began to use force, and then…”

  Kyle’s thumb and pinkie grasped the key chain, straining to get it out.

  “I left her for a few days. I went on a walkabout in the woods, and the whole book came to me in an instant. A confession of what I was about to do. I knew it would take me a long time to write, since I’d never finished a novel before, but I was patient. It would be our love story—as demented as our relationship was—and it would begin with her in the ground and her heart inside me. And once it was finished and on its way to the masses, I would expose the secret I buried—her bones—and engineer an ending in real life more haunting than I could ever write.”

  Kyle finally wrenched the key chain from his pocket. He spun it around in his hands, searching for the attached Swiss Army knife.

  “Looking for this?” William was holding up the knife. He slashed Kyle across the face, cutting deep enough for the wounds to possibly never heal. “I am the master, not you. And now to pay for your insolence, your little pet will die.”

  William went over to Sierra and unraveled her bandages, the blood flowing out an alarming rate.

  “Please … don’t,” Kyle said as Sierra turned pale.

  “Both of our novels could’ve been such a success for you. You didn’t have to just choose hers. You would’ve been the biggest editor in the biz with your literary darling and the madman. I was writing you a goddamn ticket, Kyle. And I was ready to sacrifice myself at the end for my art, to give Devil’s Hopyard a stellar ending. I would have made you the hero. You always were my favorite student.”

  “Even though you were trying to frame me for Mia’s murder?”

  William wagged his finger. “That was only a backup plan. Insurance. Stick it on the crazy kid who’d just been arrested in case Sheriff Pealey came sniffing too close. But he never did. He never wanted to find the truth because the truth would’ve forced him to deal with reality. Hunting for Mia’s killer kept him alive.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Kyle managed to say. The blood from William cutting his face had clouded his eyes, everything painted in red, making the scene appear even more macabre. “Devil’s Hopyard will never be published. Burke & Burke would never—”

  “I think you sorely underestimate your colleague Brett and even your boss. The publishing business isn’t what it used to be. Overhead is high and sales have declined. All the big houses are looking for that next breakout hit. With the national press I’ll receive for what I’ve done, the book will be rushed into production. Although you’ll never see that happen because you’ll be dead. You could’ve had your name in lights, but—”

  Outside, the sound of a car crept toward the shack. They both could hear tires crunching in the dirt. William tilted his head toward the sound, distracting himself long enough for Kyle to thrust his head into William’s stomach, knocking him to the ground. William snapped back, slamming Kyle’s face into Mia’s skeleton, which broke into pieces. Kyle leaped up and bashed his head into William’s. Both reeled from the pain, but Kyle kept going. Neither knew whose blood was being flung into the air.

  At the door to the shack, a voice echoed, too far away for either Kyle or William to make out who it was. Both had entered into a surreal tussle, a fight between animals for dominance. They had left their souls, rolled around in the blood and bones, ready to die.

  A shot rang out, flinging the door off its hinges. Sheriff Pealey stood with his gun raised, face flushed with horror at the swirling nightmare before him. He tried to aim at his target, but William and Kyle had merged into one terrifying organism.

  “You’re fucking dead, you’re fucking dead,” Kyle screamed. He managed to wrap his fingers around William’s throat. He could feel William laughing, softly at first until it was causing his palms to shake.

  “Son, let go of him,” the sheriff yelled, but Kyle wouldn’t relent. “Son, we’ll take him in, we’ll make him pay. You don’t want this to be on your hands. You don’t want that on you.”

  But Kyle couldn’t hear. He was squeezing William’s neck so hard. He imagined the bastard’s head just popping off and then planting it on a pike.

  “Timshel,” William gasped.

  “Son, don’t make me shoot you,” Sheriff Pealey yelled. He fired a warning shot that seemed to jar Kyle from his state. Kyle looked over to the scattered bones of a girl he once loved. It made him think about the girl he sti
ll did—Jamie. He hadn’t gone insane enough yet that he wouldn’t be able to return to her. Throughout this ordeal, he hadn’t done anything so awful that might plague his dreams forever. He began to ease his grip on William’s neck. William wheezed in relief as Kyle’s trembling fingers slid away. He rolled off William’s body as the sheriff descended, twisting William’s hands behind his back and throwing on handcuffs. Then he called his radio for backup and an ambulance.

  Kyle ran over to Sierra and fixed the bandages over her fingers until she stopped bleeding. Sheriff Pealey restrained William, who was silent now. William had his rights read to him and seemed creepily calm, relishing this moment, this utter chaos. He smacked his lips, and Kyle didn’t want to think what he might be tasting in his mind—one last tangy thrill: the heart of a girl he had obliterated.

  40

  WITH A DETACHED cool, William watched Kyle and Sierra being loaded into an ambulance. The sheriff’s deputy, a boy named Hawker, had arrived along with the FBI. William was escorted into the backseat of the sheriff’s car, with Deputy Hawker sitting shotgun. They took off, sandwiched between a chorus of FBI cars, their sirens wailing. He listened to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, the notes floating through the squad car, putting his soul at ease. The true ending of this tale would now begin.

  Sheriff Pealey and Deputy Hawker were trying to get him to speak. They were mystified by it all, as they should be. Pealey was more shell-shocked, having known William for years. Despite being the size of a mountain, it was apparent Hawker was green to the job—a young kid with ears that stuck out and a bad teenage mustache.

  “I just don’t see how this can be,” Pealey said, overcome by tears.

  William guessed that someone who made it to seventy years of age thought that he’d already seen the worst things imaginable, but he had caused Pealey to become demoralized.

  “Your kids, Bill!” Pealey wailed. “And Laura? What are they gonna think? What’s everyone gonna think?”