by Jeff Lindsay
Other campers who had not had such wonderful luck encountering Our Lethal Forest Friends milled around and called to each other happily, while I cradled my hands and waited for everyone to arrive in the parking lot and find their assigned vehicle. For some reason, possibly just one more mean trick on me by a positively cranky Fate, Doug Crowley’s group all arrived together, got into the beat-up old Cadillac, and drove away for home while Cody and I were still waiting for Mario. I watched the old car cruise past and head out of the parking lot and then turn right onto the highway. The car gave a funny lurch and backfired once, causing a strange rattling sound as the piston knocked at the same time the loose front bumper shook. Then the old Caddy accelerated and was gone down the road, and I turned away and leaned on my car, watching the trailhead for any sign of Mario.
Mario did not appear. A fly began to circle my head obsessively, searching for whatever it is that flies always want. I didn’t know what it was, but I was evidently full of it, because the fly found me overwhelmingly attractive. It circled, darted in toward my face, and circled some more, and it would not give up and go away. I swatted at the fly, but I couldn’t touch it, and my flailing didn’t seem to discourage it. I wondered whether the fly was poisonous, too. If not, I would certainly be allergic to it. I swatted again with no luck, maybe because my hands were swollen from the poison ivy and mosquito bites. Or maybe I was just getting old and slow. I probably was, just when I needed all my reflexes at peak ability to deal with the threats coming at me, known and unknown.
I thought about Hood and Doakes, and wondered what they had been doing to frame me while I was busy infecting myself with plant and insect venom. I hoped that the lawyer Rita was arranging would help, but I had a very bad feeling that he wouldn’t. I have been in and around the law my whole life, and it’s always seemed to me that when you need a lawyer it’s already too late.
Then I thought about my Shadow, and I wondered how and when he would come at me. It sounded so melodramatic, right out of an ancient comic book. The Shadow is coming. Mooo-hahaha. Goofy rather than dangerous, as far as the sound was concerned, but then sounds can be misleading. Like the sound of Crowley’s car backfiring—it sounded like the car was about to fall apart, but obviously the old thing made it here safely. And I had heard that sound before.
I blinked. Where had that thought come from?
I swatted at the fly again and missed. I was certain I had heard that distinctive clattering backfire not too long ago, but I couldn’t remember when. But so what? Not important. Just more clutter in my overloaded mental works. Funny sound, though, very singular, and I was sure I’d heard it before. Bang, rattle-rattle. But my brain stayed blank; perhaps the poor ravaged thing was collapsing into premature senility. Quite likely an inevitable side effect of the recent combination of peril and frustration and loss of blood from the mosquitoes. Even the one time I had slipped out for a little amusement had gone wrong; I played that evening back mentally, once again remembering the horrible surprise in the grubby little house. And it had started out with such a promising feel to it, from the dark and deserted street outside when I felt so eager, ready, unstoppable even, when I had been unexpectedly lit up by a passing car—
Without realizing what I was doing I found myself standing up straight and staring out at the highway. It was a stupid thing to do; Crowley’s car was long gone. I stared after it anyway, for a very long time, until I finally became aware that Cody was jerking on my arm and saying my name.
“Dexter. Dexter. Mario’s here. Dexter, let’s go,” he said, and I became aware that he had said it more than once, but it didn’t matter, because I was also aware of something much more important.
I knew when I had heard that backfire before.
Bang. Double rattle.
Dexter stands there bathed in the light of an old car’s high beams, holding his gym bag filled with party favors and blinking at the light. Just standing on the sidewalk, wrapped in the cool cocoon of my Need-filled disguise, and as the car turns the corner I am suddenly lit up like I am on center stage and singing the title song of a Broadway show—and whoever is in that car can see me as clearly as if it is a bright summer afternoon.
Just that one frozen moment of perfect illumination; then the car speeds up:
Bang. Double rattle.
And it hurries away, around the next corner and into the night and away from the grubby little house on the dark street, away from the neighborhood where Dexter has found his Witness’s Honda.
And Dexter thinks no more about it and goes on into the house, and is still staring at the Almost-familiar Thing on the table when the sirens begin to wind closer …
… because someone had known exactly when I went in, and timed their call to 911 perfectly …
… because he had seen me outside, lit up in his high beams, and when he was sure it was me he had put his foot down hard on the accelerator to get away and make his call—
Bang. Double rattle.
Away into the night while Dexter slipped inside for his gaping and drooling lesson.
And now he has told me he is coming Closer, to mock me, to punish me, to become me—
And he has come closer, all the way up to my face.
Doug Crowley is Bernie Elan; my Shadow.
I had thought it was self-indulgent nonsense, blather from a deranged doofus, and I would be more than a match for whatever he could come up with. But then Camilla turned up dead and I was blamed for it.…
And just like he had promised, I looked very bad all of a sudden.
He had gotten into Camilla’s apartment and seen all the pictures of me, and even left one of his own—Camilla and me face-to-face, the final clinching shot in his collage, the ideal way to set me up and take me down. And he had killed Camilla to push all the suspicion on to me. It was very neat; whether I was ever actually arrested or not didn’t matter. I was pinned in the spotlight, under constant scrutiny, and therefore completely helpless to do anything. One small part of me actually paused and admired the way he had worked it. But it was a very small part, and I crushed it quickly and felt myself begin to smolder. Closer than you think, he had said, and he had done exactly that. His stupid, awkward attempt at conversation that I had found so irritating; I had wondered why he wouldn’t go away and leave me alone. And now I knew why. He had been riding up into my face and touching me to say, This could have been your death, and you are too slow and stupid to stop me.
Boo.
And he was right. He had proved it. I hadn’t suspected anything, felt nothing but irritation as he had goggled down at me and blathered nonsense and then walked away, no doubt lit up inside like the Fourth of July sky. And I didn’t even know it until right now.
Bang. Double rattle.
Gotcha.
“Dexter?” Cody said one more time, and he sounded a little worried. I looked at him frowning at me and tugging at my arm. Mario and Steve Binder stood behind him, watching me and looking uncomfortable.
“Sorry, guys,” I said. “I was just thinking about something.” And it is a tribute to my long years of diligent training that even though my brain was screaming at me to run to action stations and open fire with all guns, I still managed to maintain my cheerful disguise and get all three boys into the car and start driving, and I even remembered the right direction to take us all home.
Happily for us all, Mario was much quieter on the long ride back. He had stumbled onto a wasp mound and gotten three or four stings before he escaped, which just proves that insects are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. The other boy, Steve Binder, just sat silently beside him in the backseat, frowning. Every now and then he would turn and stare at Mario’s wasp stings, poke one with a finger, and smirk when Mario jumped. Even in my profound mental funk, I began to warm up to Steve Binder just a little.
Other than those few interruptions, the drive home was quiet, and I used the relative silence to think, which was something I desperately needed to do right now. With a
few minutes of reflection I pulled myself off high alert and began to sort through things calmly and rationally. All right: The Caddy’s sound was distinctive, but that was not conclusive proof of anything. Sounds like that might come from any old car. And to think of Crowley as being dangerous in any way took some hard work. He was so completely soft, inept, his presence almost intangible …
… which the writer of Shadowblog had made a point of saying about himself. It was where the name Shadowblog came from. I walk into a room and it’s like they can’t even see me, like I’m no more than a fucking shadow. A perfect description of Crowley, if shadows could be annoying.
But to think of it as a disguise, the same kind as mine? Ridiculous—it was too good, maybe even better than mine, which I did not want to admit at all. And it was impossible that it could be good enough to fool me—and fool the Passenger, too. Nobody was that good—especially nobody who had so much trouble faking a real-looking smile. To think that anything with an appearance that soft and insubstantial could hammer Camilla Figg to death—it was absurd. It made no sense at all.…
I remembered my admiration of the heron back in the swamp: so cute and fuzzy, and so very deadly. Was it possible that Crowley was not a bland doofus at all, but was actually another of Nature’s great achievements, something like the heron, which looked so tame and pleasant that it got right on top of you and got its beak into you while you were still admiring the plumage?
It was possible. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was likely, too.
Crowley was my Shadow.
He had stalked me, framed me, and then come right up to me to gloat about it. And now he was going to push me out of my life and into the Dark Forever, where I had sent so many deserving friends. And then what would he do, take my place? Become the new Dark Avenger? Turn himself into Dexter Mark II, a double with a new look, softer and more harmless-looking? Lure his victims in with the appearance of bland and annoying Normality and then bang! Speared and swallowed, just like the heron’s prey.
Maybe it should have been comforting to think that someone wanted to continue my Good Works after I was gone, but I was not comforted, not at all. I liked being me and doing what I did, and I was not done yet, not by a long shot. I planned to go on being Dexter for a very long time, finding the wicked and sending them on their way, and I had one very immediate candidate in mind. It had become personal. I knew that was a bad thing, against the Harry Code and everything I knew to be right and true, but I wanted Doug Crowley, or Bernie Elan, or whoever he wanted to be. More than I had ever wanted anything, I wanted to get my hands on him and tape him to a table and watch him squirm and see his eyes bulge out with terror and smell the fear sweat as it broke out all over him and then slowly, very slowly, raise up a small and very sharp blade and as his eyes go red with knowing that the agony is coming I will smile and I will begin his very own end.…
He thought he was so clever, coming right up to my face and mumbling stupidly, while all the while he was playing his game, touching me lightly instead of killing me. He had been counting coup on me, that ancient game of the Plains Indians. It was the ultimate insult if you were a Lakota, a failure of manhood so shameful it could actually end a warrior’s life when it happened, to be touched by an enemy while you stood helpless—but I was not a Native American. I was Dexter, the One, the Only, and Crowley had overlooked one important thing:
The Lakota lost.
They rode off into the history books with their honor intact, but they lost the war and everything else because they came up against people who preferred to kill and didn’t even know that they had been insulted—and that was also a very good description of me. I did not play those kindergarten games. I came, I duct-taped, I conquered. That was who I am.
And he dared to think he could be me? And start off with such a lousy job of it? He had no idea what being Me really meant—he had missed the point completely. But he was about to find out that Dexter’s Point is on the end of a knife, and Dexter has no equal and no competition, and no one was ever going to take his place, least of all a chinless geek who had to steal my methods because he didn’t even have his own personality. Crowley was going to learn firsthand why there could never be a Dexter Double, and that lesson would be his very last and his most painful, and he would take it with him into the red darkness and as he spun away into All Over Forever he would know he had been taught the Ultimate Lesson by the Old Master.
Doug Crowley was going to go the way of all flesh, and as quickly as possible I would find him and flense him and send him off to the ocean’s floor in four neat and separate garbage bags, and I would do it before he could write another taunting drivel-filled blog bragging about his insult to me. I would tape him and teach him what it truly meant to be Me, and I would make him wish he had chosen someone else to fill out his shadow, and the only question at all was a very simple one-word query:
How?
TWENTY-SIX
IT WAS A LONG DRIVE HOME, BUT NOT LONG ENOUGH FOR ME to come up with any answers. I had to find my Shadow, and quickly, but how? The only hint I had was the name he was using now, Doug Crowley. From the skill with computers he had shown already—faking his own death had been impressive—I was certain he would not use a name that did not have documentation and a convincing background. It wasn’t much, but I had access to several search engines that left Google far behind in the dust, and I could certainly find a few hints about him and where he might be. It was a starting point, and I felt a little bit better about things by the time I dropped off Mario and Steve Binder and headed for home.
The female section of my little family was sitting on the couch when we arrived. Rita had a cup of coffee in one hand and was sipping it as she watched TV. She looked up at us, frowned, and then did a double take and leapt to her feet and slapped the coffee cup down onto the table. “Oh, my God, look at you!” she said, hurrying over to us and looking from Cody’s large red nose to my large speckled hands and face. “What on earth happened to— Cody, your nose is completely— Dexter, for God’s sake, didn’t you take any bug spray?”
“I took some,” I admitted. “I just didn’t use it.”
She gave me an appalled shake of her head. “I don’t know what you were thinking, but that’s— Oh, just look at the two of you! Cody, stop scratching.”
“It’s itchy,” he said.
“Well, if you scratch it, it’s just going to get worse— Oh, for the love of … Dexter, your hands, too?”
“No,” I said. “That’s mostly poison ivy.”
“Honestly,” she said, with obvious disgust at my bungling. “It’s a wonder you weren’t eaten by a bear.”
There was very little I could say to that, especially since I agreed, and in any case Rita gave me no chance to say anything. She immediately jumped into action and began bustling around us, applying calamine lotion to my face and hands and pushing Cody into a hot bath. Lily Anne started crying, and Astor sat on the couch smirking at me. “What’s so funny?” I asked her.
“Your face,” she said. “You look like you got leprosy.”
I took a step toward her. “Poison ivy is contagious,” I said, raising my hands at her.
Astor flinched away and grabbed at Lily Anne, lifting her up and holding her between us like a protective shield. “Stay away; I’m holding the baby. There, there, Lily Anne,” she said, slinging her sister onto one shoulder and patting her back with a series of rapid thumps. Lily Anne stopped crying almost at once, possibly stunned by the force of Astor’s patting, and I left them there and went to take a shower.
The hot water running over my swollen hands was an amazing sensation, unlike anything I had ever felt before, and truthfully, not something I was eager to experience ever again. It was somewhere between an immensely powerful itch and searing agony, and I almost yelled out loud. I got out of the shower and put more calamine on my hands, and the throbbing died down to a kind of background torment. My hands felt numb and clumsy, and I h
ad some trouble using them to get dressed. But rather than ask for help with the zipper and my shirt’s buttons, I fumbled my clean clothes on all by myself, and soon I was seated at the kitchen table with a very welcome cup of coffee of my very own.
I held the coffee cup between the palms of my swollen and throbbing hands. The backs of my hands pulsed with the warmth of the cup, and I wondered what I could possibly hope to do with two such useless appendages. I felt like I needed all the help I could get, and not just because my hands were out of commission. For some reason, I had been two steps behind the whole way, almost as if Crowley was reading my mind. Knowing what I now knew about him, I couldn’t believe it was because he was so amazingly clever—he wasn’t. It had to be me. I was off my game, sliding into the muck of mediocrity, all the way down the long slope from my usual lofty perch of supreme excellence, and I wondered why that was.
Maybe I was just not as sharp and gleefully wicked as I used to be. It might well be, I realized, that Crowley really was a match for the Me I was nowadays. I had gotten too soft, allowed my new role as Daddy Dexter to make me a bit too human. One little problem had turned me all mushy and helpless. Although to be accurate, it was two problems, and neither of them was all that little, but the point was the same.
I thought of the other Me, the one that matched the picture of myself I had hanging on the back wall of my self-esteem: Dexter the Dominant. Clever, sharp, fit, and ready for anything, eager to be off on the hunt and always alert and able to sniff out the potential perils that might lie along any small fork in the game trail. And comparing that hallowed portrait to what actually stared back at me from the mirror of this present moment, I felt a sense of loss—and of shame. How had I lost this other me, the ideal Dexter of my dreams? Had I let easy living bring me so far down?
