Palindrome

by E. Z. Rinsky

  Courtney polishes off his tea. “And what is that explanation?” he asks.

  “He was possessed.”

  I grind my teeth. “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Lincoln couldn’t have killed a child. He wasn’t crazy or sick or evil. He must have been possessed by the devil.”

  Courtney is frowning and stroking his cheeks on maximum throttle. He’s obviously come to the same conclusion I have: This would be too much of a coincidence. Girl corresponds with Silas and then a cult starts up in her house, ending with a boy dead and her a vegetable, talking about the tape with her last cognizant breaths. So Silas mails her the tape . . . why? Because he loved her? And how does a tape turn someone into a killer?

  I fiddle with my empty cup. “I don’t believe in the devil,” I say.

  “Neither did I,” Ms. Anderson responds. “But when you see what’s in the attic, I think you’ll reconsider.”

  WE FOLLOW MS. Anderson through the living room. I was right, the room is completely circular, with a ceiling just as high as the kitchen’s. A tall cylinder. Dull afternoon light creeps in through a pair of filthy windows that curve along the concave walls. It’s like someone tried to design a hypermodern house on a tiny budget and also had terrible taste.

  Through the windows I see snow falling quietly on a fenced-­in backyard that looks like it used to be a vegetable garden.

  The TV flickers silently as we walk past, the only sound the dull thud of Ms. Anderson’s rubber-­bottomed cane hitting the carpet. I get the feeling the TV never goes off; keeps her company. Wallpaper the sickly color of curdling cream. Conspicuously missing are any photos on the walls or resting on the TV. The only decorative pieces are a pair of pink porcelain angels resting on a wooden cabinet and a three-­foot crucifix mounted on the wall. Like the kitchen, most of the room is devoted to storing taped-­up cardboard boxes. Maybe Lincoln’s old stuff?

  Ms. Anderson shuffles into a dark dining room of unremarkable proportions. The table is covered in dusty plastic, hasn’t been used for years. As if reading my mind, she says, “I usually feed Candace when she’s in bed. It’s easier. And no reason to sit at the big table by myself.”

  She stops and leans on a windowsill. Looks out at the snow for a moment, and when she looks back, her face is cast in shadow. She points to a dark brown door at the far end of the dining room.

  “Go on up,” she says. “I’ll be waiting in the kitchen. The stairs are too hard for me, but I wouldn’t go up there anyways. Nobody’s been up for years. I hope the lights still work.”

  As Courtney and I approach the door, she turns and walks back through the living room, like she doesn’t even want to be around when we open it. Courtney breathes into his hands to warm them up. Looks at me, like he expects me to go first. I grimace and pull open the attic door.

  A whiff of cold, moldy air. I reach up for a beaded metal chain and a bulb tentatively flickers on, illuminating a narrow, unfinished staircase.

  “Think the tape is up there?” I ask Courtney.

  He shakes his head. “Doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a hunch. One thing we’re certain of: This tape is valuable to ­people. It was valuable to Candy and the guys up there.” He juts his chin up the dark stairway. ­“People don’t leave things like that behind. And neither do cops. Any real evidence will be gone.”

  “But you think it was here at one point?”

  Courtney nods.

  “Yeah.” He rubs his hands together. “I think we’re getting close. Might wanna start thinking about how Greta’s gonna pay us.”

  I smirk. “Patience.”

  I go first up the stairs. Have my phone out for supplementary light. Courtney has to crouch, and I can hear him struggling behind me, bitching to himself about how the Beulah Twelve must have been little ­people. I grip the shaky railing, haul myself up, not wanting to put too much weight on my bad ankle. Feels like we’re in a mine shaft. Floor covered in grime and old sawdust. I wonder if Lincoln built this house himself. There’s no heat in here, and it feels like there are open windows upstairs.

  “Kind of a bummer Silas couldn’t have mailed that tape to someone in Malibu, eh?” I say as I pivot around a bend in the stairway.

  “This may sound crazy,” Courtney says from behind me, “but I’m getting a strange feeling that it had to be this way, somehow. That the tape was always meant to come here. And so were we. Sort of a destiny feeling, you know.”

  I turn around and shine my phone in Courtney’s green eyes. “Don’t start with that shit. Keep your head screwed on.”

  Courtney puts up a hand to block the light. “Why, because it scares you?”

  “At least I’m not scared of the dark,” I say and huff my way up the last ­couple of stairs.

  “It’s not the dark; it’s just these tight spaces that make me uneasy.”

  At the top is a thin plywood door with a rusty gold knob. Have to put my shoulder into it to get it open. And then I step into the attic, Courtney a few seconds behind me. There’s a lot of natural light in here; windows on each of the four walls. Some of the windowpanes are busted, and it’s about the same temperature in here that it is outside. The ceiling is the inside of the slanted roof. Dark brown wooden beams run between the tops of the walls.

  Looks like the place was pretty well cleared out by the cops. But they left the centerpiece: an enormous stone table that looks like it must weigh a literal ton.

  “Don’t touch anything. We don’t have gloves,” Courtney says as I approach the monolith.

  It comes up to about waist height. I shine the flashlight on it, and my stomach curdles. The flat surface is coated in what I immediately recognize as very old blood. I’m suddenly grateful for the ventilation in here. There are four leather straps hewn into the surface, screwed down into chiseled holes. Doesn’t take much imagination: two for ankles, two for wrists. Spaced out just right for a kid.

  “It’s an altar,” Courtney whispers, taking my phone from me and kneeling to inspect the sides of the stone. Beckons me to look closely. Dark, sticky droplets of old blood. “Cops didn’t want to scrub too hard, were worried about damaging evidence.”

  “Did the articles say if they just left the kid here? Strapped down?”

  Courtney nods grimly.

  “Rape?” I ask, my voice a little squeaky.

  “No,” Courtney responds. “But they made a real ritual out of it.”

  Feeling a little queasy, I shift my attention away from the altar. Arranged so they face the altar are two rows of wooden pews that look ripped straight from a church. I’m thinking, enough to sit ten, while the other two put on a show. On the wall behind the pews is a rack for hanging tools, empty. Undoubtedly confiscated and wrapped in plastic, buried deep in some evidence room. Could take months to locate them, just to confirm the obvious: sharp, lightly used, sticky with blood. Would like to see the shovel someone hit Candy with for myself though, just to confirm what Ms. Anderson told us.

  “I don’t understand how they got this in here,” Courtney says, mostly to himself, still fixated on the altar. “You’d need a crane or something. And even if you could lift it, no way it would squeeze up that staircase.”

  I break away from the tool rack. Not much else in here. Gaze out the broken window that faces Candy, still sitting rigid in the garden. An old woman walks slowly down Main Street and stops to rest on the steps of the Ritz. Beyond the dirty blue and pink of the old Victorian are just pine trees for fucking ever.

  I turn around. Courtney’s still crouched at the altar. My gaze drifts up to the skylight and freezes.

  “Courtney. Let me see my phone,” I say and grab it from him before he can hand it to me. I shine it on the beams that wrap around the room where the walls meet the ceiling. The beams are of a different consistency than either; polished, more expensive looking, like
they were brought in special.

  Stretching around the room, carved into the beams, is a flowing dark line. I dash to one of the pews and climb up, lean in close enough to see the etching. It’s highly detailed, textured. I follow it around the perimeter of the room until I reach the spot right above the window from which you can see Candy and the Ritz. A chill shoots down my spine.

  “Look, Courtney.”

  “What is it?”

  “That line all around is a snake. And here,” I whisper, indicating the crux of the carving, “he’s devouring his own tail.” I gulp. “I’ve seen this before.”

  “Where?” asks Courtney.

  My pulse picks up. Prickles on my forearms.

  “Silas had the same thing tattooed around the circumference of his head,” I say.

  Courtney and I stare hard at each other, then turn back to the image. The line melts into an oversized, bulbous serpent’s head, jaw wide, baring sharp teeth, only inches away from the tip of his own tail.

  “There’s more,” Courtney says, pointing above the drawing. I was so enraptured with the snake that I missed the board hanging above it, coated in shadow, clearly made of the same wood as this polished snake board. Etched into the board are two lines:

  It is better to never have been born.

  Nrob neeb evah reven ot retteb si ti.

  “Jesus,” I whisper, suddenly feeling like I might throw up.

  “It’s a palind—­”

  “Yeah. I got that. Thanks.”

  I stagger to one of the pews and take a seat, vision starting to swim a little. I need a drink. Bad. Can feel the evil in this place. In this very bench beneath me, I can feel something unholy. The altar, caked in dried blood. A little boy strapped to it—­

  I keel over from the pew and vomit all over the old floorboards. Probably better off without that vegetarian Mexican food anyways.

  “Oh shit, Frank.” Courtney is at my side. “What a mess. Wait here, I’ll go ask Ms. Anderson for a towel.”

  “No,” I wheeze, climbing to my wobbly feet and groping to the staircase. “I’m outta here.”

  “Frank—­” Courtney starts.

  “Nothing else to see here, you know that.” I open the door and begin a tentative descent down the narrow staircase. “I’ll be across the street drinking. Come over when you’re done.”

  THE SUSTAINED EXISTENCE of the Ritz Tavern in Beulah, Colorado, is nothing short of a miracle. The six-­table dining room is half full for dinnertime, and I get the feeling this is a relative bustle for the family operation. Decorations are old-­timey and cutesy: stuffed deer heads mounted on the walls, black-­and-­white photos of this place a hundred years ago—­not much has changed. First floor is a restaurant/bar, second and third floors are rooms.

  Courtney cautiously probes a steaming plate of fajitas with his fork, then sits back, looks at me with a grimace. “I’m not hungry either.”

  My untouched burger is growing cold in front of me. Thought maybe once I saw the food I’d want it. I was wrong. Wish there was somewhere else to eat and sleep in this “city”—­somewhere that wasn’t right across the fucking street from Candy, Paula Anderson and that evil house. That attic.

  I flag the waiter over, a thin boy with long hair, swimming in his white button-­down. Looks like he can’t wait to get off his shift and get stoned. Don’t blame him. What else do you do in this town?

  Human sacrifice, I guess.

  “Get me another double bourbon, kid. No ice.”

  I catch the boy glancing at our untouched food, then he nods and shuffles to the next table. I rest my head in my hands. Feels heavy. Don’t even like closing my eyes because of what I see when I do.

  “This is all fucked, Courtney,” I say.

  I see him bobbing his long head in agreement. “Yeah.”

  “What now?” I ask. We might as well talk about it, because I can’t think about anything else.

  “You try calling Greta again?”

  “Twenty minutes ago.”

  “You leave a message?”

  I pick my head up and glare at him. “No I didn’t leave a goddamn message, because this isn’t nineteen-­ninety-­fucking-­five. I texted her that this was my new number. She can see me calling her. If she wants to talk, she’ll call back.”

  Boy arrives with my drink.

  “This is a double?” I stare at him.

  “Think so,” he says.

  “Better go get me another one,” I growl, raising the glass to my lips and letting the shitty house whiskey shoot down my throat, imagining it’s burning off some of the vile spiritual shit I can feel inside of me.

  “Frank . . .” Courtney’s giving me a sad, maternal look.

  “What?” I say. “You want one?”

  He crosses his arms. “You know I don’t drink.”

  “If you want my professional opinion, you should start tonight.”

  I’m feeling a little warmer now. A thin haze is starting to build between the tavern room and the house across the street. It’s dark now, so Candy has probably gone inside. Maybe Ms. Anderson helped her take a bath. I imagine what Candy must look like naked in the tub; eighty pounds of emaciated flesh. Can’t even talk. Those empty fucking eyes. While upstairs, still in the attic over their heads, is a goddamn sacrificial altar.

  “So the tape was here,” I say, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Main Street.

  “Yeah.”

  “Silas mailed it to her from Sachar.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’d let him mail something like that, you think?”

  Courtney shrugs. “Don’t see why not. Just a tape, as far as they knew.”

  “Then her dad got his hands on it, and some nasty shit went down.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Courtney agrees.

  The boy returns with another bourbon, hands it to me carefully, like I’m a hyena and he’s feeding me raw red meat.

  “Anything else?” he asks.

  “Could you make me a black tea? With lemon?” Courtney asks.

  “Uh, yeah.” The boy wipes some shaggy hair out of his eyes, then goes.

  I pick up my next full shot and look Courtney squarely in the eyes as I pound it, then slam the empty glass down on the paper tablecloth.

  “Why?” I ask, feeling suddenly angry at something I can’t define. “Why would Silas mail her the tape? This was his prize, right?”

  “And why would he wait until he was in the loony bin for two years to do it?” Courtney adds, swirling fajitas around with his fork. I watch for a second, mesmerized. There’s something graceful about the way the greasy peppers and onions centrifuge around his tines.

  “Something happened,” I say slowly. “It all happened at about the same time. Two years into his sentence. He tried to kill himself, withdrew into his room, and mailed the tape to Candy.” I look up at Courtney. “Something happened. What happened? Anything in the file?”

  He stops spinning the fork.

  “I’m only halfway through. There’s a lot in there, Frank. Five years’ worth of appointments. But so far, nothing stands out. I’ve read about the suicide attempt and the withdrawal, but nothing particular that seems to have precipitated it.”

  Booze is working its magic. I’d like another one, but I’m already getting a little woozy, and I don’t wanna be hung over tomorrow. Besides, it’s only seven at night. Jesus. Time feels different in a shit hole like Beulah.

  “Where did the tape go?” I say.

  Courtney sighs. “It seems to me, unfortunately, that in all likelihood, wherever the Beulah Twelve disappeared to, the tape went with them.”

  I click my tongue. “And that’s something that a whole shitload of dudes smarter than us, with a significantly larger budget, couldn’t figure for shit. Just left it as unsolved after eigh
t months, right?”

  “A year. They gave up after a year.”

  I start chuckling, and then I’m flat out laughing. “Great. So now in order to find the tape, we gotta solve the crime of the decade. How the fuck we gonna do that?”

  I’m half aware that I’m talking loudly. A few parents at adjacent tables are staring daggers at me.

  “Well.” Courtney scratches his forehead. “We do know something they didn’t. About the connection to Silas and the tape.”

  I snort, which then turns into a round of hiccups. “Great.”

  “And we have our three weapons, Frank: thoughtfulness, subtlety and patience.”

  I roll my eyes and snap my fingers in the air. “Garçon!”

  “Frank . . .”

  The poor boy meanders back to our table, like a prisoner to the gallows.

  “Another double shot please. This night is over as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Uh, you sure—­” he starts, looking at Courtney for help.

  I pull two of the hundreds Greta gave me out of my pocket, waggle them in his face.

  “Don’t worry, kid, we’re gonna take care of you, okay?” My words are slurring. I don’t care.

  “Frank . . .” Courtney tries again.

  “Shuddup,” I say to him. “I’m a grown man.” To the kid: “Make that two double shots, okay? This fucker here is gonna take one with me.”

  The boy nods nearly imperceptibly and backs away cautiously. Courtney is looking at me with disgust.

  “I’m not taking a shot, Frank.”

  I grin. “I know.”

  I’M DEEP IN what is, by default, the best sleep I’ve had in a week—­no dreams, just straight black—­when Courtney shakes me urgently. Eyes flit open. I’m still drunk.

  “Frank! I found it.”

  “The tape?” I jerk up.

  “Oh.” Courtney frowns. “No, not that.”

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Three.”

  “Jesus,” I groan, let my head sink back into the pillow. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “No, Frank.” Courtney smacks me lightly on the cheek. “You gotta see this. This is serious shit.”