He wanted to lay down and sleep. Just sleep.
The Killer slashed Sheri across her arm, a long vertical cut. Blood flowed.
“Stop!” he shouted.
At that moment, as if waiting for his voice to trigger it, the TV screen changed. A new scene appeared. And Jerry’s stomach clenched even as his bowels suddenly felt loose. Because there was only one more image, one more memory. The one he didn’t know if he could handle. The one that would break him.
“No,” he whispered.
73
The pool.
It was a silent green gem, its surface rippling in a gentle breeze that made moonlight dance across it, one of those moments where nothing could possibly be wrong with the world, nothing at all.
Nothing but the body. Face-down on the deck beside the pool, the body of a young man, a teenage boy.
“Brian,” whispered Jerry. He wanted to hide his eyes, to look away, but he couldn’t. He was paralyzed. Nothing existed in that moment but him and the vision of his long-gone son, like a ghost come to mock him from beyond.
He realized that his son was not the only one in the scene. There was someone else, standing in the foreground of the shot: the Killer. Still in shadows, Jerry couldn’t make out his face, but it was him. Of course it was, who else would it be?
How long has he been watching us?
The Killer was staring at the body. And as he stared, blood started to seep from below it, a widening pool of darkness that ran along wood and concrete in lines and puddles until it dripped off Brian’s feet which hung over the edge of the pool. The red blossomed in the green pool, reaching bright crimson tendrils out that trailed off into obscenely beautiful patterns in the water.
The Killer watched, then turned and walked away, gone from the scene, gone from the shot.
But not gone from the family’s lives.
Jerry felt himself return to the office with an almost audible snap. Sheri was still screaming, moaning, crying, and he hardly noticed. He looked right past her, past the light being shined in his eyes, to the darkness where lived the Killer.
“It wasn’t an accident?” he said.
The darkness said nothing. Jerry looked back at the screen. Back at the silence, at the rippling pool.
At the body.
He acted. Moved so fast it shocked him. “No!” he shrieked. Dropped his flashlight.
And threw himself at the Killer.
74
Jerry wasn’t the only one shocked by his sudden movement: no one in the room was ready for it. Sherry’s non-stop scream spiked in volume, and she shuffled backward on the stool at the same time.
He only noticed these items as superficial information, though, because he hit the Killer at that instant. The Killer wasn’t expecting his sudden motion any more than was Sheri, and Jerry heard an “Oof” as he hit the man’s mid-section.
He fully expected to go right through him, to find that the Killer was in fact a supernatural demon that would dematerialize when threatened, but the man was solid, and so was the knife arm that Jerry grabbed.
They both went down in a muddled pile. Jerry still couldn’t really make out the man’s features; it was as though darkness clung to him like a second skin. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the knife.
The Killer’s flashlight went flying, spinning into a corner of the room, sending wild shadows everywhere, like a visual counterpoint to Sheri’s screams. Jerry felt suddenly like he was in some insane version of a dance club, a place where the damned might dance to siren songs of the suffering, might writhe to the sweet strains of death come a-calling.
Then the Killer was suddenly on top of him, and all thoughts were of survival. The knife bore down on him, a glittering scythe emerging from the darkness.
The Killer was silent.
Jerry’s knee went up, almost a spastic movement, certainly not a result of training or practice. Regardless, though, the Killer seemed to crumple in on himself, and then Jerry was on top, and had the knife. He pushed down with it. Bore down on the Killer, on the man who had taken his family, his home, even his illusions.
Everything.
He was going to kill him. He was going to kill the man without even seeing his face. Pushing the knife into the darkness, aiming by feel, slaying the demon.
Then the Killer moved. Jerry angled his hips away reflexively, thinking the other man might be mimicking his groin shot, but there was no danger of that. No, the Killer wasn’t even trying to touch him.
There was a solid thud. Then a scream that made the others pale in comparison.
Jerry looked over. Saw, in the pale light of the TV, in the spinning glare of the flashlight, the shaking form of Sheri. His once-Princess, his daughter.
The Killer had kicked the stool out from under her.
75
Sheri’s screams ended, and Jerry took this as a bad sign: she must be in too much pain even to breath.
He looked at Sheri for the barest fraction of a second. Just long enough to process what was happening. The next fraction was dedicated to wondering if he had long enough to kill the bastard below him before his daughter’s arms ripped out of their sockets… and in the next fraction of a second he found himself reeling, a white-hot pain in his head.
He rolled across the floor, wondering what had happened, realizing at the same moment what it was: the Killer had used his distraction to good effect. The man had grabbed Jerry’s flashlight from where he dropped it and used it to brain him.
The Killer was up in an instant, running out the door even as Jerry struggled to his feet, the room spinning around him. Part of him wondered how much more of this kind of punishment he could take – the general stress of the situation, plummeting over the second floor balustrade, being hit by the flashlight.
The answer came immediately: You’ll take as much as you can. And then you’ll die. So if you’re not dying now, get the hell up, Jer-Jer.
There was a ringing in his ears. A moment later he realized that it wasn’t ringing, but screaming. He turned slowly. Saw something blurry that he didn’t recognize. Blinked.
Sheri.
He hurried to her. She was screaming again, her arms pulled up unnaturally behind her. He reached for her.
And stopped.
Saw again, the image of her bumping and grinding in front of the computer.
It wasn’t that he thought she should suffer. Wasn’t that he wanted her to be in pain. He was just seized by the sudden certainty that this wasn’t her. It couldn’t be Sheri. Not his Princess. This must be an impostor.
She screamed again.
He shook his head again. Reached for her. As with the Killer, he almost expected her to puff away to nothing, a succubus come not to assault him sexually but mentally, to batter away the last of his internal walls and leave him a shadow of himself, good for nothing but an asylum.
If you’re not in one already, Jer-Jer.
But no, she was whole. Solid. He lifted her up high enough that the strain was off her shoulders. She collapsed against him, weeping. He realized he was still holding the Killer’s knife, and used it to slash the rope that tied her to the fan, then put her down and cut the bindings at her wrists.
Sheri’s arms fell loose at her sides and he thought he might have acted too slowly. She might have had her shoulders pulled out of their sockets, or at least separated. His fingers went to her shoulders automatically, the doctor in him surfacing of its own accord.
Sheri gasped as he checked her. “Stop it,” she moaned between sobs.
“You’ll be okay,” he said. His voice was gruff, gruffer than it should have been. Shouldn’t he be holding her? Stroking her, saying shhh, it’ll be all right? “Maybe minor separation, but you got lucky.”
He turned away from her. Away from the TV with its still image of his son. His only son, he reflected. The only one he really knew.
“Where’s Mom?” Sheri said.
“Dead,” he said shortly. “He killed her.”
Sheri made a noise Jerry couldn’t interpret. But he couldn’t look at her. He was still reeling with the many different revelations that had been pushed onto him. Still struggling to come up with a framework for dealing with it all.
“How?” she said.
“He….” Jerry’s voice caught. He didn’t even know what he was feeling. Grief? Anger? Fear? Certainly all those, and more. “He hung her. In the foyer.”
Silence. Jerry almost ached for Sheri to ask him for help, for her to ask him to make it all better, the way she had when she was a little girl and came to him with a boo-boo. But he knew he couldn’t. He didn’t even know the extent of the wounds among the family, so how could he possibly hope to fix them?
What was left of them.
Sometime later – it could have been a second, or it could have been minutes, he somehow lost track of time in there, in the office with the ghost-image of his first and last boy behind him – he felt a hand on his shoulder.
He turned. Looked at the stranger behind him. He wanted to help. Wanted to be caring and helpful, but instead he just felt the horror on his face as he saw the strip-show in his mind. He wondered why that would bother him so much, why it would be worse than drugs, worse than what Ann had done.
She was my Princess. Every man with a daughter has a Princess. And when you put someone on a pedestal, it’s just that much farther to fall, and that much greater a crash.
“Dad, I –” said Sheri.
Jerry found himself shaking his head emphatically, averting his eyes.
Don’t want to hear it don’t want to hear it don’t want to hear it.
“Please, Daddy.”
Sheri sank to the floor and started to cry. Jerry didn’t go to her. He turned and aimed the flashlight out the office door.
Wouldn’t do to let the bastard get you now, would it? Not now that you’re all alone?
His thoughts were falling apart. Fragmented. Out of control. He was going crazy. Madness teetered. People always talked about madness like an abyss that you fell into, but he realized that was wrong: madness was something that fell onto you. Like a mountain, or a train, or….
Or a house.
He heard motion behind him. Sheri getting to her feet. He flicked a quick glance over his shoulder, checking on her. She was glaring at him, which he thought was odd. Leaning on his desk for support and glaring at him, angry.
She caught his gaze. “Don’t pretend you’re better than me,” she said. “Don’t pretend you’re perfect.”
She was standing now. Standing in her fury, looking like his Princess, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t, she couldn’t be and never would be again –
“Who was the girl?”
Jerry blinked. Realized that he had lost himself in a spiral-spin of half-finished thoughts again.
“What?” he said.
“Who was the girl?” Sheri repeated. “The girl in the picture?
76
Jerry suddenly wished to go back in time. Not long, he didn’t want much – nothing so grand as a trip back to a time when he was actually happy and life made sense. Just a few seconds. Just back to the comforting moments where a shadowed madman was trying to stab him to death. Anything to avoid this moment.
“Come on, Dad,” said Sheri. She was advancing on him now. “All those late nights, all those ‘long work days’ where you came home so late…. We all just thought you didn’t want to be here. To be around the memories.”
Jerry wanted to run. To flee. But where? Into the dark house? No, not there. The house offered no safety. He had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Nothing was his, not even this room, not even this moment. No freedom, not even in his words.
“But that’s not it. You weren’t hiding from the memories. You had your own secret.” Sheri looked at him with the loathing that had made its home on his own features a moment ago. Destestation, then revelation. “You slept with her, didn’t you? Just like Mom did! You’re no better than she was!”
No choice. Have to hide, it’s the only thing.
Then he realized he did have a choice. He always had. There was always choice, even when the choice was between awful options, between two things that seemed worse than death. Because sometimes the true choice wasn’t in the decisions presented, it was in the way they were faced.
Jerry screamed. Not in anger, not in fear… it wasn’t even madness finally crashing down on him and crushing him under its dark weight.
It was simply time.
It was the years of hiding, of pretending. Years of covering what had happened, of becoming what he wasn’t by trying to excise a part of his reality. He screamed and buried the knife down on the desk, embedding it deep in the wood as he shrieked:
“I didn’t sleep with her!”
The silence after his words was total. Jerry felt like he should have heard himself perspiring, but he was cool. Composed. His thoughts coming back to themselves, reversing the outward spiral that they had been embarked on during the entirety of this travesty.
He looked at his daughter.
She stared at him blankly, just as he stared at her.
He didn’t hate her. Nor did he love her. Maybe later he would come to do so again. But there was not time to repair things now. No time to reclaim trust, no time to locate lost love.
From somewhere upstairs: a thud.
And Jerry knew that they didn’t have much time.
There was still a Killer among them.
He shook his head. “Why is he doing this?” he asked. He said it to himself, still pulling his thoughts together like they were strands that had come unraveled and he was reweaving, desperately shaping them into something that could save them.
Sheri answered. “Secrets,” she said.
“What?”
“All our secrets,” she said. “He found them out, somehow. Like we’re being punished for them. Whatever they are.”
She looked at Jerry intently, clearly waiting for him to reveal his secret; obviously believing his was merely an issue of adultery.
More creaking upstairs. Another thud that could not portend anything good.
“What now?” asked Sheri.
And a thought-thread came to Jerry, woven into a pattern that had long been lost to him. It was still fuzzy, still faraway. But he was finding it again.
“What do we do now?” she asked again.
Jerry grasped the thread. Held it. “He came in,” he said. “That means he knows the way out.” His face grew grim. He stood a bit straighter, and it seemed suddenly that some of the pain he had been feeling left his body. There was nothing left. Nothing but truth.
Perhaps that would be enough.
“And he’s going to tell us.”
77
The man takes refuge. He knows he has at least a minute or two before Jerry gets his daughter down and they figure out what to do.
“What happened?” he asks himself. Not much more than a whisper, but he can hear the shock and anger in his voice. They weren’t supposed to do that. Weren’t supposed to fight. “They didn’t take their turn,” he answers himself.
Hearing his own voice, even whispered, calms him. It always does. He is the only reality that he could count on, the only person who will never lie to him is… him. And so talking to himself always soothes. Reminds him that there is goodness in the world. He is proof of that.
Perhaps the One proof. But proof nonetheless.
“Besides,” he continues, “maybe they’re not cheating, maybe they’re just doing something you haven’t seen before.”
That gives him pause. Even a bit of hope. “Maybe,” he says. “But they didn’t take their turn.”
He shakes his head.
“No, they didn’t.”
Taking turns is important.
If you don’t do it, you get punished. On that, he always agrees.
78
They looked through the house.
They had done this before, the entire family. But that family had
been a family of liars, and so by extension was a lie itself. What was left now was a pair of strangers. But at least there was no lie holding them apart, burdening them, weakening them. And it seemed to Jerry that they were more in sync as strangers than they had been as family; more aware of one another as unknowns than they had been as “Daddy” and “Princess.”
Strangers Page 22
