The Boy in the Woods

by Carter Wilson

  ‘Oh, sweetie. You’re adorable. You think I actually called nine-one-one? Truth is, Tommy, I think you enjoy all this. I think you want me in your life. Pretty good team we would make, don’t you think? I get to do what I do and you get to write about it.’

  ‘You’re delusional,’ he said.

  But isn’t your new draft the best thing you’ve ever written? Haven’t you written more words in the shortest amount of time since she’s been back in your life? Can you really say she’s not your muse?

  He pushed the thoughts away as he pulled the covers off him and stood. He turned and walked to where he’d left his t-shirt and jeans on the floor, feeling her gaze on him.

  ‘Damn, Tommy,’ she said. ‘I could eat you alive.’

  Tommy put on his clothes and ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it out. This was done from habit, he told himself. He didn’t want to think he was actually concerned about how he looked in front of her.

  He turned to her. ‘Yes, I do have questions. And I think that’s why you keep following me. You want me to understand you, as much as I can. Right?’

  ‘That’s right, Tommy.’

  ‘So let’s do it. Right now.’ He pointed at the small wooden table where she had just been sitting. ‘Right here. Then maybe you can leave me alone for a while so I can write this fucking book.’

  She paused, then walked to the table and sat down. Her jacket pushed open just enough for him to see the soft curve along the top of her right nipple.

  ‘OK, Tommy. Whatever you want. Ask and it shall be answered, and then I’ll leave you alone. Until …’ Her voice trailed off, inviting him in, which he accepted.

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘Until you need to write the ending.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Tommy reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a small digital recorder.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No recording. No pictures. No video. Just notes.’

  He placed the recorder back in the bag, sat opposite her, then opened up a blank document on his laptop. His fingers poised over the keyboard.

  ‘Tell me again how many,’ he said. ‘How many murders.’

  ‘You mean you can’t remember?’

  ‘Just tell me again.’

  She sighed. ‘Our friend in Charleston. He was number thirty-nine.’

  Tommy began typing. ‘The beginning. Start from the beginning.’

  ‘Well, you know my first.’

  ‘Before that,’ he said. ‘Your parents.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Are they alive?’

  ‘They were at one point. Then, not so much.’

  ‘Did you—’

  ‘Of course not. Though sometimes I wished it.’ Tommy saw her drop her gaze to the table. ‘They died in a car crash when I was nineteen. On vacation in Puerto Rico. My father had rented a car. No one really knows what happened, but they went off the road and into a ditch. Car caught fire.’

  ‘Where were you at the time?’

  ‘College.’

  ‘What college?’

  ‘Well, Tommy, I can’t tell you that. I’m supposed to be a fictional character, remember? Just like I won’t give you the names of my victims.’

  ‘Well, I know Rade’s name.’

  ‘Which will be changed before you send this to your editor. In your teaser, you used the name Brian. That works.’

  ‘So. College. East Coast?’

  ‘Yes, East Coastish. Two years. I dropped out after my parents died.’

  ‘What was your major?’

  Elizabeth considered before answering.

  ‘Psychology.’

  Figures. ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then I used the life insurance money from my parents to find a nice little place to live and act out my fantasies.’

  ‘We’ll get to that in a minute. Siblings?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Tommy knew. ‘None.’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘So you never had to work?’

  ‘I’ve never needed a job, if that’s what you mean. I’m able to live off what my parents had and … the means of others.’

  ‘Others? You mean your victims?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Watchers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to know about them,’ Tommy said, not looking up from the glow of the screen.

  ‘I’ll bet you do.’ Elizabeth stretched one hand along the table and slowly rapped her blood-red fingernails against the wood.

  ‘The murders,’ Tommy said. ‘They fulfill you sexually, don’t they?’ He was surprised at his ability to ask the question so dispassionately. But he had interviewed killers before Elizabeth, so a part of this felt like basic research. He just needed to keep thinking of it that way. She’s just another murderer.

  ‘The answer to your question is yes,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think you and I define “sexual” the same way.’

  ‘Define it for me.’

  She took what would be her longest pause of the whole interview. Finally, she said, ‘I can have sex without killing. And I can kill without sex. But neither of those things, in absence of the other, feeds me. Only when they are combined can I continue to thrive.’

  Tommy considered this. ‘So sexual homicide isn’t pleasure for you. It’s food.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘That’s a way of putting it.’

  ‘So you feel no guilt in killing, just like I feel no guilt over eating a hamburger.’

  ‘Not exactly. I do feel guilt, though it doesn’t manifest itself in a way where you would perceive it as such. Still, I’ve had periods where I stop myself, because I know what I’m doing is wrong. But when I stop, I grow weak. My body breaks down.’

  ‘But it’s not food. If you stop eating, you die. The same thing doesn’t happen if you go without sex. Sex isn’t essential to live. To create life, yes. But not to survive on your own.’

  ‘I don’t ask that you believe me, Tommy. I’m simply saying that’s how my body works. I know this for a fact. I need … to do what I do, just as I need to eat. To drink.’

  ‘What’s the longest you’ve gone without killing?’

  ‘Three years and thirteen days.’

  ‘When did that end?’

  ‘In Charleston.’

  Tommy stopped typing. ‘That was your first killing in over three years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you start again?’

  ‘He wasn’t for me. He was for you.’

  ‘To frame me?’

  ‘That’s how you chose to see it. And maybe there’s an element to that. But you needed to see blood. Real, flowing blood. You needed to see his face as he died. It had been too long for you, and you needed to be reminded.’

  This was the moment Tommy remembered he was sitting across from a killer, one who might still be planning to slice his throat open as well. He sat back in his chair.

  ‘Why did I need to be reminded?’ he asked.

  ‘Because you need to write it. Describe it. Know the sensation. The horror. The … the energy of it. You can’t get that from an interview.’

  ‘So you think I know you enough now? After seeing what you did.’

  She slowly shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. Not quite yet.’

  The way she said it was unsettling, like a doctor telling you the test results weren’t quite what he’d hoped for.

  ‘Alan Stykes. He was the man in the woods that day, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Bravo, Tommy. I understand you went over to his house for dinner.’

  ‘I didn’t stay very long.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have killed you, you know.’

  ‘Because you’re still working with him?’

  ‘No, because you’re not his type.’

  Tommy paused. ‘You killed four kids with him.’

  ‘Incorrect,’ she said. ‘Just one. The other three were all his.’

  ‘So—’

  ‘So the deputy
sheriff of Lind Falls has a thing for little boys. The other three boys were just the ones I know of. For all I know there are countless others.’ Her gaze wandered. ‘Little bitty graves, here and there, where no one can find them. Lonely-sounding, isn’t it?’

  Tommy stared at his fingers but did not type. He just sat there and tried to steady his mind. Alan Stykes is also a serial killer, he thought. And he just drives around Lind Falls all day, trolling, and everyone knows him and trusts him.

  He took a deep breath and continued. ‘Were you abused? As a child?’

  ‘Here we go. Let’s make sure we put the serial killer in the correct little box. Abused as a child, enjoyed torturing animals.’

  ‘Were you abused?’

  She flashed her eyes at him. ‘It doesn’t count as abuse if you like it,’ she said.

  Tommy recoiled at the casualness of the statement. ‘Your father?’ he asked.

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Until I went to college. I really missed him when he died. I didn’t really give a shit about my mom.’

  Tommy had never heard a victim of childhood sexual abuse say they enjoyed it. And many of the killers and rapists he’d interviewed over the years for his research were horribly abused. Most fantasized about killing their abusers. Some of them had.

  ‘How … how did you first equate sex and killing? Did you learn that from your father?’

  She released a soft laugh that sounded more at place at a cocktail party. ‘You can’t learn something like that, Tommy. You just know.’

  ‘Did you know that day with Rade? Were you planning to kill him?’

  She considered this. ‘I knew that was what I wanted. I just wasn’t sure I could actually go through with it.’

  ‘How did Alan Stykes get involved?’

  ‘I was fucking him, too. Met Alan when he busted me for smoking weed near the trailhead by the creek.’

  Tommy knew the exact location she was referring to.

  ‘I blew him and he let me go. We hooked up all summer long after that. Classic love story.’

  ‘And he knew what you wanted to do.’

  ‘I told him I fantasized about sex and death. I remember saying it very coyly, like I was just saying something to shock him. I wasn’t sure how he would react, but I had a sense about Alan. I knew there was darkness underneath that uniform, just as I knew it existed in myself. I just had no idea how deep that darkness went.’

  ‘Was … was killing Rade his idea?’

  ‘No, but watching was. He suggested a young boy – someone I could overpower. But I think he just had his own fantasies he wanted fulfilled.’

  Tommy tried to separate the memories of that day from his questions, but the blood and the leaves and the dirt and the skin all flashed at him as he kept typing. He felt his stomach jump at him, either wanting food or wanting to empty itself through his mouth.

  ‘Did you know we were there that day?’

  ‘No clue. Alan suggested Rade because he was always playing alone away from his home. Easy target. I found Rade and convinced him to come with me, but I really didn’t have that much of a plan.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘It’s true. I didn’t have a weapon, because that would have made it too certain. Too real, perhaps. I told Alan I’d figure something out, but I think the reality was that Alan would have come along and choked the kid out himself if I hadn’t finished him.’

  ‘So I led him into the woods,’ she continued. ‘And then I found you, Mark, and Jason. I almost just ran away, but then I convinced myself I could do this. I could control you. And then suddenly I realized it was supposed to be that way. I was supposed to find you there. You were going to watch it all.’ She grew more animated as she spoke, her gaze toward the ceiling, her hands moving back and forth. ‘And the idea of all of you watching me excited me more than I thought would be possible. You would be right there. Seeing everything. Smelling everything.’ She touched her neck, wiping away invisible sweat.

  ‘And then …’

  ‘And then I was on top of him. So young. So perfectly young.’

  Tommy felt the nausea well within him.

  ‘I saw the rock,’ she continued. ‘It was right there, as if placed there just for me. The moment was just … right. It was what I was supposed to do.’ She looked at Tommy. ‘This, I know, you will never truly understand, because you and I are fundamentally different. I can only try to describe it to you.’ She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled it gently over toward him. ‘I came harder in that moment than I ever have before or since. I’ve been chasing that feeling for thirty years, and I’ve never matched it. I hear the first one is always the best.’

  Tommy slammed his hand against the table and then pushed himself away from it. ‘Goddamnit, he was just a kid! He didn’t do anything to deserve what happened to him.’

  Elizabeth shrugged. ‘Does a lion hesitate before killing a young antelope?’

  ‘A lion has to eat,’ Tommy said, trying to steady his breathing.

  She smiled. ‘So do I, Tommy.’

  Tommy closed his eyes and tried to remind himself why he was doing this. What his objective was. You have to understand her to write about her, and when you do, you’ll be closer to getting her out of your life.

  She remained quiet, as if listening to the argument Tommy was having with himself. After a minute, Tommy let out a long, slow exhale, opened his eyes, and pulled himself back to the table and to his laptop.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me about your victims.’

  ‘I can’t be specific,’ she said.

  ‘Do what you can.’

  She closed her eyes and remained quiet for nearly a minute.

  ‘All male,’ she said at last. ‘Rade was the youngest. After that, they were between, oh, say twenty and fifty years old.

  ‘Afterwards,’ he said. ‘After … Rade. You tried to seduce all of us.’

  ‘I wanted to make you the same as me. I wanted you to feel what I felt. But I knew I couldn’t. You were all different. You weren’t like me. Except …’

  ‘Except?’

  ‘Mark. Except Mark. Mark is more like me than he is like you. I just knew.’

  What the hell?

  ‘Are you saying Mark … has …’

  She cut him off. ‘Mark has dark, violent thoughts that he hides under a thick blanket of Jesus and America.’

  ‘You think this or know this?’

  ‘With me, there’s no difference. That’s the beauty of megalomania.’

  Tommy wanted to add this accusation to the list of things that made her crazy, but something about it seemed … correct. Mark was definitely not the man he portrayed to the public – even Tommy could see that. But violent?

  She interrupted his typing.

  ‘Jason was a Watcher, you know.’

  ‘Jason?’

  ‘He was my fifth Watcher.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t want to do it. Trust me. He was a lot of work, that one.’

  Tommy leaned slightly over the table. ‘You’re talking about Jason Covington.’

  ‘That’s the one. The one who fucked me and cried.’

  ‘He moved to Texas.’

  ‘I know. I tracked him down. I forced him to come to New York.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  She rolled her eyes, as if the logic of her thought process should flow as easily through those who didn’t enjoy combining sex and murder.

  ‘Finding a Watcher is a tedious, long process, with great risk associated with it. You have to identify the right person, which is only an extremely small percent of the population, mind you. Then you have to develop a relationship with them and slowly introduce the idea, which they almost always reject outright. It takes great skill and a lot of patience. Years, sometimes. And sometimes even then it doesn’t work, and then you have to start all over again. Trust me, I wish my … desires
… weren’t so attached to the concept of having another person watching me. But that was all cemented on that day thirty years ago, and thus has it been ever since. The process owns me. I don’t own the process.’

  ‘But Jason wasn’t the type,’ Tommy said.

  ‘No, but he was vulnerable. He could be blackmailed, after all. He didn’t want to relive that day any more than you do now, and he was willing to do anything to make me go away. Don’t you see? I didn’t have to go through all the work of the recruitment process. I could just go straight to him.’ She lost herself in thought. And Tommy wondered what it must feel like to think the way she did. ‘It was a mistake,’ she said.

  ‘Jason?’

  ‘Yes. It didn’t give me the satisfaction I needed. He hated every minute of it, so my pleasure was minimized.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  She grinned at him. ‘You mean who did I do?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘It was 1991. New York City. I set myself up as an independent escort. Back then there were no websites. No Craigslist. I placed ads in the Village Voice and priced myself to attract the Wall Street type. Worked like a charm.’

  Tommy forced himself to keep typing. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I got a banker to come to my apartment, where Jason hid in the bedroom closet. He watched through the wooden slats of the closet door as I fucked the banker. I remember it so vividly. The smell of him. Cheap cologne on a guy who was probably a millionaire. Cheap cologne and sweat. Whiskey breath. He fucked me from behind and pulled my hair, saying things like, “Yeah, you like that, don’t you, you dirty fucking whore?” I mean you could just tell he had done this a thousand times before, and it had always gone his way. Just as he planned. Fucked the whore and then tossed some crumpled hundred-dollar bills at her as he zipped up and left.’ Her eyes grew wide with the innocence of a five-year-old finding money from the Tooth Fairy for the first time. ‘But not this time. I almost came just with the excitement of what was about to happen, but I held back. Not yet, I told myself. Wait for the moment. It’s so much more powerful to come when I’m actually feasting, you know?’

  You know? Tommy thought. How the hell would I know about any of this?

  ‘So I told him I wanted to be on top,’ she continued. ‘And when we switched positions I pulled the knife out from under the mattress and hid it just under the sheet. I rode him and told him to close his eyes. I felt myself close to climax, so I reached back and grabbed the knife. Kitchen knife. A Henckels. They’re the best, by the way. And as I pulled it out from under the sheet, I heard Jason gasp in the closet. Loudly. Like a huhhhhh sound. Then the john opens his eyes and says, “What the hell was that?” Only he doesn’t get quite that far because he sees the knife in my hand, and gets maybe only half the sentence out. Good thing he had a couple of drinks in him and I have quick reaction time. Before he could do anything I stabbed down at him. I only had one real shot at that point and made it happen. Right into the chest. His eyes screamed but only air came out of him, through both his mouth and the hole I had just made in him.’