The Boy in the Park: The gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by A J Grayson

  ‘I just need … just need another second,’ I answer. And an explanation, my mind demands. And some answers. I close my eyes, trying to quiet the thoughts, but that only brings images. Faces of pure terror. Weapons in motion. Bodies falling to pieces.

  I can’t handle it. I fling open my eyes. The leaves at my feet are unmoved, but my breath is tensing again.

  ‘I need to know something,’ I force out between gasps, trying in vain to calm myself. Joseph grunts a ‘huh’ from a position that sounds like it’s in front of me and I push my hands off my knees and start to rise to face him.

  ‘I need you to tell me wha—’

  But I can’t finish the sentence. I halt, half-crouched and half-standing. It’s not my lack of breath that stops me, but the sight that befalls my eyes. For the first time since we’d fled the farmhouse I catch direct sight of Joseph, I look into his face, and the sight stops everything. My words, even my racing breath. For a second I am completely frozen.

  Joseph’s eyes are wild. I feel I’m looking into the face of a beast – and I don’t mean that as a poetic aphorism for a particularly mean or wily person. I mean I feel like I’m looking into the face of a wild animal, a creature: something untamed and feral. His hair has been scattered in every direction from the run, the blood that covers his face splotching and smeared from the sweat of the exertion. There is red in the hair, too, stained rust and brown now as it dries. His chest is heaving in violent jerks. His cheeks flex in and out with his breath and the tensing of the muscles in his jaw. It’s a scene out of a bad vision, a grotesquerie from a disturbed mind.

  But it’s in his eyes where the beast is the most evident. The moonlight is reflecting off them in a dull glow, and in all my life I’ve never seen anything like it.

  I know, somewhere inside, that eyes don’t really change. The poet in all of us talks about eyes ‘looking tender’, ‘growing mournful’ or ‘taking on a happy expression’, but eyes are actually fairly featureless. They never change shape or texture, they never flex or grow slack. The face around them, sure; but eyes themselves are constant and fixed. Perhaps that’s what makes them so perpetually captivating. They’re the one part of our being that really can’t change with our moods and emotions, and so we notice them all the more when those emotions are in flux. Even when tears flow over them or lids conceal them, eyes never really alter.

  But in this moment, Joseph’s eyes are different. I can’t explain it, I can’t identify it, but they’re not like they were before. They’re the same jade-green I noticed when I first saw him, before our attack, of course; but staring into them now is like staring into a different soul. Or the absence of a soul, if such a thing were even possible. There’s a hollowness to them. The place where I’d seen humanity and determination is now taken up by something else. Something ferocious, uncontrolled.

  And it’s in more than his eyes. His gaze is darting about our surroundings with flash-like speed, his body is following his glance with each turn. Joseph is hopping, spinning. It’s a strange, incomprehensible dance.

  He dances in the forest light and I’m suddenly more afraid than I was before. I’m afraid because I’d stormed off that hill and into that farmhouse with a righteous man keen to help me do a righteous deed, who’d grounded me in the need to act. And I’d escaped that horror with a righteous man who could be my support in coming to grips with what the deed had cost.

  But righteous men don’t look like wild beasts. Their eyes aren’t hollow, and they don’t let fear make them dance in forests.

  45

  Thursday – Night-Time

  My fear finally gives me strength. Given Joseph’s strange visage I realize I can either let it stunt me or I can try to act, and I find the resolve to do the latter. It comes, in part, from looking beyond Joseph’s face – by far the most frightening part of him. When I glance over his whole body I’m reminded that as bold and fearless as he is, he’s a teenager. He can’t yet be twenty. Being fearless when you’re a teenager rarely means you aren’t actually afraid.

  I right myself, recognizing that something has to happen to change this situation. I need Joseph to be sensible. Stable. Despite his youth, thus far he’s been the one with the concrete plans and I need to ask him what the hell it is we’re supposed to do now. That means bringing him out of whatever trance he’s worked himself into. So I reach out a hand to calm him, bringing my open palm towards his shoulder in what I hope will be taken as a sign of friendship and empathy.

  The instant I make contact with his shoulder, Joseph swings. I don’t think he means to: it’s an automatic, instinctual reaction. The touch is like a trigger, and his whole body rotates left in one violent surge: a coiled spring released on contact. His right arm is in a hook that’s spinning round his torso, ending in a fist flying towards my face. It happens so quickly that there’s no time for me to respond. I’m defenceless as his fist comes for me.

  He freezes with only inches to spare. His eyes – still wild and ferocious – meet mine, and a confused recognition grabs his features just in time for him to stop his swing. His breath is racing in pace with mine, and for a few seconds we linger like that: wild eyes connected, his clenched fist hovering inches from the left side of my face, a few silver moonbeams casting their dim light into the blackness of the forest depths around us.

  I want to yell at him for this unprovoked behaviour. I want to fling a torrent of angry words back the way he flung his fist at me. I want to spit at him, to cry out in judgement of the fact that I joined him in the house and he is now acting like such a stranger. Like an ass. But the words that work their way up out of my chest and into my lips aren’t those. They come in a whisper, in an entirely different tone.

  ‘Joseph,’ I finally ask him without breaking our stare, my tone trembling, ‘what have we done?’

  The question pours out of me with a mournful sob. I don’t mean it to, but my words take this force all of their own. It’s a genuine question – I don’t comprehend, not fully, what just happened – but it’s also a cry of agony. An agony I’ve never before felt.

  My sobs don’t seem to affect Joseph’s solid dispassion. ‘We did what we needed to do, Dylan,’ he answers, finally lowering his arm and unclenching his fist. His eyes are back to dotting around the darkness. ‘What needed to be done. Nothing more.’

  ‘Nothing more!? Joseph, that was, that was …’ I can’t find the right word, not for a few seconds. But then it comes. ‘Slaughter.’

  He turns back to face me, his features hard. ‘You can call it what you want. I call it standing up for what’s right. Doing the hard work that sometimes needs to happen.’ He draws closer, looks straight into my eyes. ‘Where there’s great evil, that kind of evil, steps need to be taken.’

  I’m looking past Joseph as he talks. Past our surroundings, back to the sights of the farmhouse that are so vivid they might as well be my current surroundings. I’m repulsed, revolted by what I’ve seen. By what he’s – no, we’ve – done. It’s abhorrent. The earth, out of pure revulsion, should open up and swallow us alive.

  Yet what’s even more incomprehensible to me is that even in this moment I can’t completely disagree with Joseph. I, too, feel that in the mix of it all we’ve accomplished something acceptable, or at the very least something necessary. I remember hearing once that there is a distinction between ‘just war’ and ‘good war’. I’m not suggesting what we had just been involved in was a battle or a war, but the distinction suddenly makes sense to me. What we did certainly wasn’t good; no one could possibly call it that. But it might have been just. It must have been. Because if there wasn’t justice behind it …

  But can justice really involve so much blood? So much pain?

  And then there is the one question. The one that causes my stomach to turn over and knot up. The question mark hovering over one action that cannot possibly be righteous or just.

  ‘Joseph, what about … her?’

  His body cringes. To hear that final word p
hysically repels him, and in an instant his eyes are wild again in that way I can’t explain. The rational man of a moment ago – the man of virtue-minded deliberation on the necessary response to evil – is gone. What stands in his place is a hollow, empty beast.

  ‘What about her?’ he spits out. Even his words feel vacant. Then he shakes his head. Denial. Rejection. ‘What “her” are you talking about?’

  I can’t believe he’s asking me the question. My anger starts to flare.

  ‘Her!’ I shout. ‘The woman! For Chrissakes, the woman in the house, Joseph!’

  He cringes again each time I mention her. His head is shaking. It’s an irrational motion: like a child refusing to accept that there are vegetables on his plate that he doesn’t want to eat. If he says they’re not there, then they’re not there. That’s the way it works in a child’s mind, and it makes a kind of sense at that age. Denial is a powerful force. It’s a power strong in Joseph’s mind now, visible in his motions.

  But she was there. Joseph’s denials can’t change that fact. I’d seen her with my own eyes.

  ‘The man had to die!’ Joseph shouts, and I notice that he completely avoids answering my question. ‘I don’t mind that it had to be bloody. I can live with that.’

  My anger deepens and I take a step towards him in the darkness.

  ‘I’m not talking about him! I’m talking about—’

  My sentence is cut off. Before I can say ‘her’ another time, Joseph is swinging at me again, but it’s not his fist that rounds towards me. He’s swung the rifle over his shoulder and is aiming it straight at my face. There is still blood crusted on the barrel and stock. It’s purple, almost black, in the shady moonlight.

  46

  Taped Recording Cassette #057A

  Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

  The cassette whirs to life in the usual way. The small speakers crackle before the conversation picks up from the last point in the dialogue.

  It is Pauline whose voice first emerges from the speakers.

  ‘Tell me, Joseph, about the actual night of the murders.’ Despite the content of her question, her voice is calm and non-judgemental.

  ‘Murders?’ the male voice answers. Joseph sounds taken aback. ‘Why do you say murders? It’s not like I’m a serial killer. I told you I only killed the woman.’

  Pauline Lavrentis’s voice is ever so slightly hesitant in response. ‘Okay. Maybe that was the wrong way for me to begin.’ A lull indicates her reflection on what words ought to come next. She remembers that hesitation. He’d thrown up a wall; she’d had to get around it. ‘Let’s set that aside for now. Tell me what you remember, in as much detail as you can, about that night.’

  A long pause seems longer on the cassette, which rotates slowly in the absence of sound before Joseph finally answers.

  ‘That’s hard to talk about.’

  ‘I know, but it’s important. It’s important that we look back at what happened out there at the farmhouse.’

  ‘I was angry, I guess,’ he answers. ‘Angry that nothing was being done, and that so much evil was being allowed to take place.’

  ‘Is that what drove you? Your anger?’

  ‘The anger was just part of it. An aftereffect. What got me going was what happened inside those walls.’

  ‘And you wanted to do something about that, since what was happening there made you mad?’

  ‘I wanted to kill him!’ Joseph snaps. His voice is suddenly harsh. ‘That’s all there was to it. Not rocket science. I wanted to kill him. To make him pay.’

  ‘Now that’s very interesting,’ Pauline says. She permits a note of encouragement into her voice.

  ‘You always say the stupidest things when I tell you something that really matters,’ Joseph bites back. ‘Like you’re “troubled” when I confess I’m a murderer, or it’s “interesting” when I say I wanted to kill.’

  ‘Joseph, listen to me,’ she presses, ‘what’s interesting isn’t that you said you wanted to kill. We both already knew that.’ She pauses, waiting – hoping – for him to recognize where she’s leading, but when he doesn’t she carries forward.

  ‘Do you realize that you’ve just said “him”?’

  Joseph hesitates. Then his anger snaps again.

  ‘Of course I did! Why the fuck are you hanging on that? I wanted to kill him. Kill him because of the things going on in that house.’

  ‘I know what was motivating you, Joseph. It’s just that in the past, even until just a few moments ago, you’ve always insisted that you killed a woman. A her. But you’ve just said you wanted to kill “him.” To make “him” pay.’

  Seconds pass in silence.

  ‘Maybe I … maybe I meant her.’ Joseph’s voice bears the hallmarks of confusion. His words slur slightly together. ‘It could have been a her, actually. Now that you mention it. I’ve always said it was a woman.’

  Pauline interjects. ‘No, Joseph, don’t let these thoughts get away from you, and don’t fall back on old patterns. I’m trying to tell you that you’re making progress.’

  Joseph snorts, but doesn’t say anything. The lull between them feels uncomfortable.

  ‘Tell me the sequence of what happened,’ Pauline finally prompts.

  Joseph shuffles in his chair. ‘I’d found the bastard, that’s what happened. Found him in his little hidey hole, even though he thought he’d never be rooted out. He was a damned fool, that one. I knew what sort of things he was responsible for.’ Joseph halts at his own words, as if they suddenly resonate with him in a new way. Then, ‘Yes, I guess it was a him. Yeah. You’re right. It was a man.’

  She sighs, and it is definitely a sound of pleasure. Of relief. The goose bumps that had risen along her back at the thought of him closing up entirely, she recalls, had tingled as they receded.

  ‘So the face you’re seeing now, the one you wanted to kill, back then … it’s a man’s face?’

  ‘God, I hated that bastard,’ Joseph answers. ‘With everything in me. More than I’ve ever hated anything or anyone else in my life.’

  ‘So you knew him in advance of the attack?’ Pauline is keeping her voice at a neutral register, but she can’t fully conceal her enthusiasm. They are, at last, making what she considers progress. ‘There must have been some past between you, for you to harbour such strong feelings.’

  ‘Do you have to actually know a man to hate him?’ Joseph asks back. ‘Can’t it be enough that he is who he is? When he’s that … vile.’ The word is slippery as he utters it. Venomous.

  ‘Some men are simply deserving of hate, whether you know them or not. And in the end, who really does?’

  47

  Thursday

  I’ve never before had a gun pointed at me. I’ve sometimes wondered what it would feel like, if it ever happened. In films people usually cower in a kind of whimpering, emasculated terror, begging for mercy and making promises of whatever they can think of to deter the individual holding it. Money, servitude, favours. Or they’re belligerent bastards who don’t care whether they live or die, who manage to say something threateningly witty despite the circumstance.

  In the moment, my reaction is neither of these. I don’t whimper or beg or plea, but nor do I respond aggressively. In fact I can’t get out any words at all. All I see is the barrel. I’m puzzled by the fact that it seems to be so still: perfectly aimed at a spot between my eyes, even though Joseph, holding it, is a heaving wreck of movement. And I’m amazed at the thought that this very gun, the one he’s holding, had been able to do so much damage. Such a tiny hole at the end of that barrel, barely a pinprick. And yet I’d seen it wreak such terrible things.

  I find it extremely odd, but I really don’t feel afraid. And I can’t say that I have any profound thoughts, either – no flashing-of-the-life-before-one’s-eyes sort of event. It’s the strangest thing, but in this moment what shoots into my mind is a memory, calm and wonderful and peaceful. A memory evoked by the trees around us more than the gun barrel in my eyes.
My body is a mix of panic, adrenalin, fear and fury, my skin caked in sweat and dust and blood, and in the forest I experience a moment of perfect calm.

  It’s a little over two years ago. I’m not in the forest, but in the heady melee of my arrival in San Francisco, with all the bustle and change involved in a move. Yes, in the present reality of circumstance I’m on my knees in the woods, but in this instant I am also content and joyful in the city. That’s the way memory works. Here in this scenario of impossible violence and a gun in my eyes, I’m back at that instant where I at last found a spot to call my own. I’m kneeling in hell, but the thoughts that fill my mind are of that joyful day when I finally found heaven.

  I wasn’t sure, when I first entered the city, whether I ever would. Everything in that foreign place is concrete and noise: roads, corridors, traffic, people. And I don’t mind all that, I really don’t. But everyone needs a place of their own. A place apart that’s a refuge from the noise of the world.

  And I’d at last discovered mine. I’d found it within a great wilderness that sits right in the middle of the bustle. Golden Gate Park: the Central Park of the City by the Bay. It’s a vast expanse of the most exquisitely cared-for greenery, fifty-three city blocks from east to west and between five and six from north to south. It’s stunning that the city cares so much for green space that it’s allowed its heart to be vastly gutted for this purpose – but what bliss has come about as a result.

  I blink, and for a moment I see the black night and dark, towering trees of the forest. I see the gun barrel and I can hear the fluttering gasps of Joseph’s breath. But a light flashes in my mind and the greens around me are once again tended, bright and glorious.

  My first visit to the park was actually a drive-through. I experience the moment again now – the taste of the outside air sneaking into my car, the sound of the birds unseen in their trees. Though it’s mostly a haven for pedestrians, there are a few roads that criss-cross the park, and 19th Avenue, the main drive from the peninsula up towards the Golden Gate, bisects it almost perfectly through the middle. I hadn’t realized what was there the first time I drove my car from the bridge towards the southern neighbourhoods of the city – the Sunset, Merced Manor, Ingleside, Daly City. From the street you can only see a border of greenery, a sign that there is something next to the road other than houses, but there’s no indication of just how magnificent the space is that lies on either side of the road.