But she didn’t want to run. She wanted to stay here, with her friends, with her flowers, with Syrina who told her to start hitting the trails and suggested how to cut her hair, and Rikki-Tikki who was teaching her how to throw an effective right hook . . . and with Eddie. So much with Eddie.
There was no time. There was no time. There was no—
—time.
“I love you, Eddie Warshouski. I am going to die, very soon. I can feel it. It’s coming closer and closer, and it’s time for me to leave here, but I can’t. Because I love you, and I think that you love me, too. I want you to come home with me and meet my father.”
Well.
Well.
Eddie stuck his hands in his pockets. It looked like a defensive gesture, and something small, a bright and giggling thing inside of Bryony’s heart clicked and broke, and she felt the pain of it as it rusted inside her chest. She had been so sure, and Rikki-Tikki had said it himself, and could it be true? Were they wrong? Could it be that perhaps Eddie didn’t love her? The thought made Bryony slightly ill. Her head reeled.
“You’re not looking so well, love,” Eddie said, and helped her sit down.
“Yes, suddenly I’m not feeling so . . . what?” she said, staring at him with her large eyes. “What did you just call me?”
And Eddie did it. He couldn’t help it, but the sight of her inquisitive gaze, with hurt dampening the edges, made the sharp metal cage around his heart give way.
Eddie laughed. He tipped his head back and he laughed long and hard. When he finally wiped his eyes and looked back at Bryony, she was disheveled and obviously more than a little bewildered.
“Are you . . . laughing at me?” she asked him in a tiny voice. Eddie pulled her from the chair and swung her around.
“No, not at all,” he said. Then, “Well, yes. A little, but only in a good way.”
“I . . . uh, okay,” she said, and Eddie laughed again. He pulled something out of his pocket, which was the reason for putting his hand there in the first place.
“I’ve been trying to give this to you for ages, Bryony. And it just hasn’t worked out. I didn’t know how. But I saw this, and I thought of you, and I didn’t know if giving it to you would mean anything, or if I would make a fool out of myself, or if you wouldn’t like it or—”
“What is it?”
Eddie opened his hand, and inside laid a delicate bracelet made out of dozens of tiny silver stars. Bryony oohed.
“It’s beautiful, Eddie. This made you think of me?”
“How could it not?” he asked, and carefully clasped the bracelet onto her wrist. Bryony held her arm to the light, and the stars twinkled and chimed.
“It really is one of the most perfect things that I have ever seen,” she said, and the smile she gave Eddie made him know he had done the right thing, and for a second he was able to put the worries out of his mind. He knew as soon as he saw the bracelet was fashioned exclusively for Bryony, knew it would flow like water around the Star Girl’s slender wrist while sitting stiffly and disappointedly on anybody else’s. But he had hesitated. He had gone back to look at it in the case, again and again, pacing back and forth and trying to decide whether he should purchase it or not. Because he had visions, you see, pictures in his head of the way this would turn out. He would come home one day, either to visit her in her apartment, or perhaps (and this sent a little thrill through him) they would be married and he would return to the home they would share. “Bryony,” he would call, taking his jacket off and draping it over a chair. “I’m home, darling.” But there would be no answering call, no off-key singing in the back room while she dusted, and he would search the house for her, finding nothing, no trace. Until he came to the spare bedroom, where he would see something white and broken lying on the floor, barely peeping out from behind the bed. It would be her hand, he knew it, lying vulnerably with the palm up, the nails covered in blood and flesh that the police would later say wasn’t hers. And for a second he would say to himself, no, that wasn’t his Bryony, it was a discombobulated stranger that somehow ended up in the wrong house and had gotten herself killed. Yes, that is what happened except—
—except for the whimsical ring of stars circling her tender wrist and effectively destroying his desperate illusion, forcing him to see the bitter reality. Yes, this was his Bryony, and she had fallen, she had fallen, she hadn’t been able to run fast enough or far enough this time.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Dear Girl Who is Already Dead
This is what the murderer thought:
He thought, “The girl tends to come out in the early evening, except for Wednesdays. On Wednesdays she comes out in the morning when the mist still covers Matthews Beach. Useful.”
He thought, “She always runs alone and then stretches out by the water. Useful.”
He thought, “She tends to favor her right ankle, which seems to be a little unstable. Endearing, that. She is friendly to the other joggers on the trail, and doesn’t mind falling into step with them temporarily, and will even chat with them. Useful.”
He thought, “Something about her eyes. Something about the soft paleness of her throat. She seems to run above the ground, not necessarily across it. I think she was not created for this earth, but from the stars. And to the stars I will release her.”
Briefly he thought that this could be a kindness, but then he pushed the thought away. He is not a man who dwells on being kind.
Her time is coming.
It is coming, but it is not quite here. He wants to watch her a little longer, the way that she often comes and swings on the swings after a particularly hard run, like she was a child. The way she climbs into the lifeguard’s chair and gazes at the sky, or sits on the pilings and stares at the water.
Stares at the water.
Suddenly he thought of a gift that he could give her. It would be something very special, very personal for the Star Girl.
For the murderer had a hidden streak of romantic fancy inside of him, although he would slit your throat immediately if you so much as dared mention such a thing to him. But we are who we are, and deep inside the nearly impenetrable chambers of his heart, he wanted to do something small to make Bryony happy. He wanted to see her face alight with joy, to see her smile widen and know that he had caused it, to see the happy light burn bright in her eyes before snuffed it out permanently. This was what he thought about as he lay in bed at night.
“Dear girl who is already dead,” he said out loud to her in the darkness of his room, “how will the world be without you? How will this city alter if you are no longer here? Will you leave stains of yourself around, or will I be the only one who remembers you? Perhaps I alone shall bear witness of your existence, and I’ll remember the joy that I gave you” (for she very much seemed to be the type of girl who would be delighted at unexpected presents), “ and I will know you smiled for me alone.”
What a pleasing thought. What a fantastic, warming idea that is. He hugged her smile close to him, happy that he was going to please her before he owned her. She would be his favorite butterfly in a jar.
He knew she would simply adore his gift. He would make sure it would be the best, most superb gift that she ever received.
How to do that, he wondered? What is it about a gift that makes it so incredibly memorable?
Ah, that’s right. It is all in the packaging.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
A Brief Essay on Gifts
There are few people who are not genuinely delighted when it comes to gifts.
Whether you are giving them or receiving them, there is something undeniably magic that skitters up one’s spine and makes one shiver in anticipation. A gift! A surprise! Something unexpected and shiny and sparkly where before there was . . . nothing! Suddenly there is something new to squirrel away and whisper to in the dark, quiet parts of the evening.
And when one gives a gift, one is transformed from Billy Next Door to A Generous Benefactor, and when the re
ceiver opens their box, they are full of gratitude and awe for the kindness and insight of the giver, who knew exactly what they wanted.
Unless, of course, it is a particularly terrible gift that is delivered in an undeniably ill-chosen fashion. And it is a sorrowful thing to say, but that is exactly what happened with the murderer and his carefully chosen gift for Bryony.
The gift itself was a charming thing, a delicate star on a chain that inspires whimsy and sparkly rainbows of happiness, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was where the murderer found it. It was a trophy he had taken home from an earlier kill—a rather mannish brunette with a penchant for fine things. And after she had been stashed away in several places across the valley, he placed this necklace along with the others in his stash.
Oh, he had beads and rings and a tongue bar, and even the gruesome second joint of a woman’s pinky finger he had a special fondness for, though even he couldn’t explain it.
But the young girl on the trail, the one who radiated her own soft light, needed stars, and a star he had, and he was quite certain the earlier owner wouldn’t put up a fuss if her necklace was passed along to somebody else, somebody a little more deserving, and—dare he say it?— a little livelier than her. Really, wouldn’t it be quite selfish of the muscular brunette to begrudge a thing of such beauty to the glowing girl on the trail? After all, she wasn’t using it, and would never use it again, this much was certain.
Now the murderer was left to ponder the exact way he should get the wondrous gift to the girl. After all, if he were to simply hand her a creatively wrapped package and say: “Hello, dear girl, I am the man who shall be the death of you, but first I would like to present you with this trinket in order to commemorate the event. I do hope that you like it. See? It’s shiny!” Well, then. She would look at him askance and bound off to the nearest police station, and his life would certainly change, and most likely not for the better.
So that was right out.
But he wanted something that would really make an impression; something that she could reflect on for years to come, or at least, for the rest of her life, which he was fairly certain wouldn’t stretch as long.
He considered himself a patient man for the most part, but didn’t think he could wait that long. He wanted his hands around her throat, his teeth on the back of her neck, the knife zipping along in its usual friendly, productively busy manner.
Bzzzzzzz, it would hum as he slid it between bones and joints and across the fluid surface of her skin. Did she have tattoos, he wondered? He so hoped she had a discreet tattoo hidden away from the eye of Every-Day Every-Man, a tattoo that he would be able to study and feel and eventually cut away, and frame as art. Yes.
But he digresses. He will save that luscious thought for later, and instead focus on the subject at hand. The gift and its packaging, and the ever-so-sticky problem of delivery.
He clicked his tongue and thought of the things he knew about her; her tendency to be gregarious and the way her soul washed out on the waves as she stared at the water after a tough run.
Ah, yes. How perfect, truly.
He would be able to combine pleasing the Star Girl with his first love, which of course is the stalking, the waiting, and the almost unbearable pleasure of hearing his victim gasp and fight, and eventually the consuming silence that occurs afterward. That silence, untouched by breath, unstained by the constant beat, beat, beating of a heart hidden under clothes and skin and ribs and tissue.
Oh. There is nothing quite like it on this earth.
It is time. It is time.
The murderer scooped the star necklace into his pocket, ran a comb through his dark hair, and set out into the fine, fine evening.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Eddie on Edge
Eddie didn’t sleep that night.
This was for many reasons.
One, he was extremely nervous about playing at the station in the morning. Had he chosen the right songs? Would Bryony be moved by the one he had written especially for her, the one teased from Jasmine the Guitar on that fine, moon-magic evening? He had never played it for her before, and he could imagine her eyes growing starry and luminous with her joy, and hoped she would be bouncing eagerly from foot to foot, impatient to hug him, impatient to cover the bottom half of his face with kisses, ready to slip her anxious hand into his as she stood stalwart beside him. There would be interviews and maybe even autographs, and they would network and make small talk and schmooze, and do all of those necessary, yet sometimes delightful, things of making and selling music.
This was, quite honestly, enough to make him nervous on its own, but something else had Eddie on edge.
It was the feeling of dying, the feeling of: “Oh no, how can I possibly do this again?” that coursed through his veins like love or venom, from time to time. Bryony’s siren call for death meant monsters would come, and that’s how it would end for her, and he knew it. He felt that perhaps he could withstand a tragic Accident, whether it was a car or fire or a confused-yet-angry bear from the woods. He would stand resolutely by her casket, managing not to shed a tear, as though he had turned to stone inside.
“I’m so sorry that Bryony fell off of the hiking trail and landed in a den of rattlesnakes,” somebody would whisper, an old woman, maybe, and she would hug Eddie fiercely, leaving grandma perfume and outdated lipstick on his fine white lapel.
“It is all right,” he would answer tersely, although ever polite. “These things happen, you know, and it isn’t anybody’s fault. It was a terrible, terrible Accident.”
And that is how he would comfort himself. If she was eaten by sharks or hit by a meteor, of course he would go through the “If only I hadn’t said: ‘Yes, Bryony, I do believe you are correct, and today is the day you learn how to hang-glide!’ Then surely she would be alive.” phase. It would be almost inhuman not to. But at the end, as he curled up with his memories of her, he would be forced to admit he is not a god, and doesn’t have power over the universe. If something so unusual were to happen to her, then who is he to stop it? He can’t see the future. He can’t alter the cosmos. Will that lessen the pain? No, not really, but at least it would be a fluke of the universe, and not something more sinister.
Of course our Eddie is tormented by thoughts of Rita, and the pictures of her body the police shoved in front of him. The things that were done, the liberties that were taken, made him furious, they turned him into the kind of man he never planned to be. A man who hated, a man who hunted something and somebody to better hate.
It’s the intent of the thing that really got him.
That a monster sought out a person to hurt. He lay in wait for somebody full of vibrancy and life, and then perversely enjoyed bleeding it out . . . Well, that wasn’t right. It was downright wrong. And although Eddie was the kind of guy to let people choose their own idea of right and wrong, according to what suited them, he was unafraid to stand up and publicly declare that, hey, killing people was wrong, and torture was wrong, and pulling the living light out of somebody’s eyes for your own enjoyment is wrong wrong wrong. He does not try to be judgmental by this; he is simply declaring his own beliefs. And what he believes is this:
If you so much as lay a finger on my Bryony, I will come after you. I will come after you and I will make you pay and you will be sorry until the end of your days because you do not want to experience what will happen to you. You can’t do that to her. I won’t let you. I won’t let you.
So Eddie thought, strumming and fretting.
He practiced his song for Bryony until it was, oh, so perfect, and he feared what he had always feared since he had met her. He feared her death. He feared being lost without her. He feared waking up one morning and realizing that there might not be anything left.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
A Terrible Smile
“Daddy?”
“Sweetheart. How are you?”
“I miss you, Daddy.”
“I miss you, too, sweeti
e. Is everything all right?”
“I . . . yes, yes, it is. I just want you here more than usual, I suppose. But everything is fine.”
“You would tell me if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course, Daddy. I just . . . wanted to tell you I’m okay. I love you, and I . . . what’s that sound?”
“It’s nothing to worry about, honey.”
“It’s the desert, isn’t it? I can hear it even here, over the sound of the water. It sounds so angry.”
“It wants you, child, but it can’t have you. It’s frustrated, but isn’t that a beautiful thing? Sometimes I listen to it at night, growling its plans, and it makes me smile. I can feel it on my face, and it’s a terrible smile. A smile that I never thought would belong to me, but there it is. It is aching for you, and the frustration that it is exhibiting . . . Well, it’s beautiful. It might be one of the best things I have ever heard. The sound of its exasperated yearning? Ah. It makes my heart glad, dear one. It is the sound of you living your life. It is the sound of your survival. It means it hasn’t caught you yet, and sometimes I almost believe it never will. I think that it is the most exquisite sound I have ever heard.”
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