The lights had turned off in one place in the house while thuds were heard elsewhere….
… there were sounds upstairs only seconds before Sheri was grabbed….
… and several of the videos he had seen had zoomed in or out or changed angles, even though the Killer was in the scene.
Jerry felt realization blooming. “There are two of you,” he said, speaking more to himself than to anyone else. “Twins.”
The Killer frowned. “Father never wanted more than one son. There’s only one of me.” And then he kicked out suddenly and Jerry went flying forward. His right foot came down on hard ground, but his left touched… nothing. He fell, and realized the Killer –
(The Killer’s brother? Which one did what?)
– had kicked him into the pool. Jerry came up sputtering, screaming. “Relax!” shouted the Killer, sounding almost jovial. “You were on fire.”
Then he picked up Sheri’s still form… and moved toward the still-burning pyre of the house, a smile on his face.
102
Jerry screamed and paddled for the edge of the pool, trying to move as fast as he could while at the same time keeping his head high enough that he could see what was happening.
The Killer strode with Sheri to the edge of the fire, gripping her under an arm with no apparent effort. He looked back at Jerry, holding his gaze.
“She can’t live, Jerry. Those are the rules. We live and die by the rules.”
And he reared back to throw her into the fire and there was nothing Jerry could do.
“My life for hers!” he screamed. The words just came out, half garbled by water getting in his mouth as he paddled. He didn’t exactly know where they originated, if from anywhere. One moment there was silence, the next moment the words were on his tongue as though by the strangest convolutions of creation ex nihilo.
Still, they gave the Killer pause. He stared at the fire but did not move.
There was a loud crackle, a flurry of sparks that rode skyward on a twirling tendril of flame. The house fell in on itself. Still a huge fire, but diminishing in size. Disintegrating as he watched.
Though it was more than enough to burn an unconscious teen alive.
Jerry kept swimming, aware he was saying the words over and over as he paddled. “My life for hers my life for hers my life for hers.”
The Killer watched the fire. It seemed to brighten in front of him, a forge of Hell reaching for its master. Then he walked back to Jerry, dragging Sheri with him.
Jerry had reached the edge of the pool. Had his hands on the edge of the deck. He thought for sure the madman would try to shove him back, away from the edge.
But he didn’t. The Killer lay a gentle, almost loving hand on Jerry’s head. Like a father giving last goodbyes, a patriarch of old endowing his posterity with their blessings from on high.
He looked at Jerry, and the look was calm, bereft of hatred or evil or madness. It was chillingly normal.
Jerry had let the man in his house, over and over. Had let him in, had said, “TV’s in there,” and then let him alone.
How many times do people do that? he wondered. And how many times are the strangers worthy of that trust? How often are they good people, and how often are they madmen come to prey on our illusions, to eat them up and spit out broken lives in passing?
“Jerry,” said the Killer, hand still on his head, “you’re going to be all right.”
Jerry said the only thing that he could think to say. “Why?” So much packed into the word.
Why us? Why this way? Why now?
Why Sheri?
So much meaning, but the word came out less than a whisper. It was a breath, the barest idea of a question, the awestruck, confused utterance of a man before a god.
The Killer looked genuinely confused.
“Don’t you understand, Jerry? You were the only one.” The Killer waited a moment, as though to see if Jerry would comprehend. “You were the only one who told your secret, who confessed.”
“The others. Sheri –”
The Killer shook his head sadly. “The others didn’t confess. They were made to confess. The truth can only set you free if you embrace it, Jerry. And you were the only one who did that not after you were threatened with death and had your secrets shown to the world, but of your own volition.”
Jerry remembered, almost against his will, that the Killer had shown video of Ann, of Drew, of Sheri. Remembered the Killer threatening to kill each of them if they didn’t tell their secrets. But he hadn’t had a chance with Jerry. Because Jerry was better? No, he didn’t think so. Only because he had changed the path before the Killer had a chance to show Jerry’s video, to threaten Jerry’s life.
“I’m no better,” Jerry said. “I’m no better than they were.”
The Killer laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, the kind of laugh you might hear in a crowded room and be tempted to join in with, just because. “Jerry, I’m not God. I’m not here to judge your thoughts. Just to get rid of the secrets.” He winked. “You’ll be much happier now. Trust me. I know.”
“My life for hers,” Jerry said again.
The Killer looked like he was considering the matter deeply. Sheri groaned as though to add her thoughts to the conversation. “It would be fair,” he said, his eyes faraway on some plane where his mad rules held sway, now and forever. “Fair. But would it be just?”
“Please,” Jerry said. “She’s too young. It’s not her turn to die.”
The Killer went still. And Jerry knew he had said something either terribly right, or dreadfully wrong.
103
Jerry held himself as motionless as possible, the water gently lapping around him, as the Killer’s face underwent a panoply of minute changes. Jerry didn’t understand fully what he was seeing, but sensed that he was watching something akin to a tornado held in a porcelain vase. They had only seconds. Seconds before the fragile container burst. Seconds before the tempest took them all.
Jerry knew he had to do something. The only problem was that he had no idea what. He was burned, bleeding, bruised, beaten. Hanging in water while his enemy stood on firm ground and held all that was precious to him in his hands.
Before he even finished considering his position, the Killer blinked. “No,” he said. His voice was firm. His eyes, calm before, took on a strange cast. “It is her turn.”
He leaned toward Jerry, hand still on his head, and Jerry thought he was going to shove him under.
But no. He simply screamed, “It is her turn!” Then he visibly brought himself under control. “We take turns, Father. We’ll always take –”
Jerry didn’t hear the rest. Because at that moment he clamped his hands down over the Killer’s hand in a double vise grip. He put his feet against the inside of the pool at the same time, bending his knees and then shoving back with every last ounce of strength he had.
There was an enormous splash and the Killer was inside the pool with him.
Jerry didn’t know what to do, he hadn’t thought beyond this moment.
Hell, Jerry, be honest – you didn’t even think of this moment.
And that was true. All he was thinking was to get the Killer away from Sheri. But now he was in the water with a monster, and he had no idea what to do. The Killer was pummeling, scratching, pulling Jerry under. Jerry tried to take a breath but he swallowed water instead. He was too tired to fight, too tired to struggle.
Too tired to care.
He felt himself slowing. Felt the muscles in his body slackening. It was almost like he was an observer, someone watching a television show or a movie – and it wasn’t even a show he much cared about.
Just like family movie night.
An image appeared in his mind. The family, gathered around the huge television, each of them glancing at the show in between mouthfuls of food and texting and work and all the bits of their worlds that they carried with them, all the walls they kept between one another.
All the lies.
>
Then he saw something else. Not in his mind, but in reality. He looked up in his diminishing struggles and saw something. It was wavy and irregular, little more than the promise of form. But he recognized it.
Sheri.
She must have awoken. Crawled to the edge of the pool.
A hand was reaching out. Reaching for him. Barely-glimpsed, hardly-seen.
But real.
True.
He reached for her hand. Found it. Held it. Held it tight, held it like it was the only thing left, the only thing that mattered.
Sheri pulled him to her, even as he pulled her to him. Jerry’s head broke the surface of the water, and he inhaled a sputtering, coughing, gasping draught of air.
Behind and below him, the Killer pawed and pummeled, but suddenly seemed like less. Suddenly seemed like an unreality. A lie that belonged to the fiction of their before. And, holding to his daughter, it was abruptly easy for Jerry to pull himself away from the Killer and then to spin as Sheri’s good arm encircled him. It was suddenly simple to turn and face down the murdering bastard who had tried to steal what was his, tried to steal what was real.
Jerry’s legs went around the Killer’s shoulders.
He shoved down.
The Killer struggled. Struggled. But Jerry was anchored now. Tethered to the real.
The Killer thrashed and flailed. But he didn’t last long.
Lies couldn’t.
He slowed. He stilled.
Jerry kept holding on. Just in case. Wisest to keep tabs on the harms of the past, though securely rooted to the realities of the present.
He was still holding on when the first firefighters came. When the police came. Still holding on to the Killer and still held by Sheri, and it wasn’t until medics pried her stiff arm away from him that he let the body fall to the bottom of the pool and disappear below the water and the reflections of a funeral pyre that had once been his dreams.
Now he was awake.
Epilogue
The man watches. Watches as he works.
He watches from afar, of course. There are police and firefighters and media and even a few neighbors who are curious enough to come out and actually inquire into what has happened. The man doesn’t get too close, because has no wish to go to jail.
But he does watch.
He feels strangely diminished. Which is natural, he supposes, since two-thirds of him is gone.
Forever? He does not know. He has never died before. Perhaps he will rise up out of the pool, out of the ruins of the house.
But he doubts it. If for no other reason than for the fact that he will no longer match: he cannot be One if he is bloated and waterlogged, burnt and charred to bones and tough tendon… and startlingly normal. No, what is three cannot be One. That was one of the things Father always taught him when he came out of Mother and she died because of the strain and Father never let him forget it. Never let him forget that if he had only been One she would have lived. Would have survived.
The man pulls his mind away from that. Away from the dark times when he was becoming One.
Back to the house. To what has happened. He knows all, of course. Because he was One until recently. And because of the cameras everywhere and the monitors in the van. So he knows of Jerry’s survival, which is well and good.
He knows of Sheri’s, as well.
He purses his lips. He is not sure how to think of that. Should he finish the job? She didn’t confess, as he himself pointed out to Jerry. So by the rules, she must perish.
But then, those were the rules when he was One. And now he is simply… one, he supposes.
He will have to think on this.
He finishes what he is doing. Ripping off the bumper stickers on the front of the van, the one that says “Honk if you Love Jesus” and the other that says “Honk if you Love Satan.”
He saw them in a truck stop once, and thought they rather represented his Oneness. Much like a Godhead of religious tracts, though he was not particularly religious. And he had put them on the front of the car as a private joke, as though anyone could ever see him coming.
But now… now he was no longer One, and perhaps people would see him coming. Best to be careful. The bumper stickers would go.
He looked at the house, down the street. He could make out a figure – Sheri? – being led limping to an ambulance. He would have to figure out what to do with her.
But not today. Today he died, after all. Forever? He does not know. He has never died before.
But whether forever or not, he is glad that when he did die… it was not his turn.
He gets in his black van.
Pulls slowly away.
And is gone.
For now.
Author’s Note
“What’s the difference between a writer and a pizza?”
“You can feed a family of four with a pizza!”
[Hilarious laughter]
It’s actually a pretty funny joke. Unless you are a writer, looking at a month where you know you are going to have trouble paying the bills. I mean, I love my kids, but they insist on eating every single day. Sometimes multiple times. Sheesh.
In such a situation, if you’re like me and you have next to no marketable skills, you hurry up and write a book. So a few years ago I wrote a short book (40,000 words – more a long fiction piece) called The Stranger Inside in the hope that I could make some money for my family.
You know, for that darn eating habit.
But that meant I had to do a rushed job, cranking it out in a few weeks. The basic idea – of a family that wakes up to find out that they have been locked inside their house by a madman intent on teaching them a “valuable life lesson” a la the Disney channel (only with more dead people) – was a good one, but I didn’t think I did it justice. It’s bothered me since then.
Fast forward a few years. Maybe I have grown in my ability to feed my family. Maybe I’m just more accomplished at self-delusion. Either way, I decided to revisit The Stranger Inside, redo it and (hopefully) make a decent idea into a flat-out good book.
It’s been fun. The trip was much darker the second time around. Partly because the story called for it, partly because due to some medical issues I was in a lot of pain during the writing.
But… and this is the thing I want to really drive home, the real reason for this Author’s note… no matter how well (or poorly) it turned out, you don’t have to worry. I am not George Lucas. I have no intention of revisiting everything I have ever done with the idea of “improving” it. This was just a one-off. Just this one time. I swear.
Probably.
- Michaelbrent Collings
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michaelbrent Collings is an award-winning screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter @mbcollings.
Thank you for reading Strangers. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Amazon.
Strangers Page 27
