The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  “We didn’t kill anyone, you know. Not back then. Just knocked guys around a bit, stomped on some fingers, kicked in some teeth.”

  It went that way for a few years. Every couple of months the pain inside Johnny would get too bad and the two of them would make a trek to some bar in some other town and wait for some drunk to totter out to his car alone. Cobb would come up from behind, drop a hood over the guy’s head, and start in. Johnny would watch, smiling and offering encouragement, until the guy lay broken on the ground. On the way home again, Johnny would seem buoyant, all the weight lifted from his shoulders.

  And everything was fine until one night they picked the wrong guy. He hadn’t been alone like they’d thought, merely a few seconds ahead of his buddies. But Cobb realized that too late; he had already started. Seeing his older brother in trouble, Johnny stepped in despite his physical limitations. By the time it was over and the four other guys were bloody heaps on the ground, Cobb had a broken wrist and a separated shoulder, and Johnny had a broken jaw, a broken arm, and six broken ribs—all bones that, among others, had been broken for him a decade earlier, some more than once. Cobb decided that he would never put his younger brother in that situation again. He said that if Johnny wanted to watch from then on, it would have to be from inside a locked car. But Johnny wouldn’t have it. He wanted to hear it all, every blow; he needed to feel a part of it, even if he was several feet away. So Cobb decided that it had to stop altogether, for Johnny’s own good. He refused to do it anymore, despite his brother’s pleading. He told Johnny he’d have to find another way to make his pain go away. And he did. Three months later he drove his car into a concrete abutment. Not long after, Cobb began to feel the pain himself, way down deep. His brother’s pain—his darkness—was in Cobb now.

  “When he died,” Cobb said, “it wasn’t long before I knew something was terribly wrong with me. I thought I was just sad that my brother was gone, maybe feeling guilty, but soon I realized it was more than that. Far more. The emotional pain became physical. Deep inside. It was terrible. Eventually, I realized what it was, why I was hurting. It was Johnny’s Inside Dark. Somehow, it ended up in me. And sometimes, my God, you wouldn’t believe how bad it is. I don’t blame him for . . . the way he died. It’s agony.”

  “You can’t catch pain like a cold, Cobb. It’s not a virus.”

  “Except when he died, his hurt became mine. I don’t know how to explain it. So I did the only thing I knew to do . . . the only thing that helped Johnny. I hurt people.”

  “And that made you feel better?” Jason asked. “That’s just so wrong, Cobb.”

  “That’s the thing, though. It didn’t help. Not at first.”

  Even though he’d hurt people—sometimes badly—the pain wouldn’t go away. Without Johnny there with him, at his side . . . stomping on fingers and kicking in teeth didn’t do for him what it used to do for his brother. It didn’t silence the voice inside him. It didn’t take away his pain. “It wasn’t until Wallace took Johnny’s place, watching and cheering me on, that I could take the edge off. You understand?”

  Jason said nothing.

  “I needed someone to watch me, to urge me on, or the pain wouldn’t go away. I don’t know why it works like that, but it does. And Wallace was happy to do that.”

  Jason scoffed. “How on earth did two nut bags like you and Barton even find each other?”

  “Luck, I guess.”

  It didn’t matter how they had met, only that when they did, Cobb knew instantly that Barton was a like-minded person, that he had interests and desires that most people would consider twisted. And his was a special deviancy. Cobb saw that immediately.

  “Right away I could tell he’d be interested in what I was doing.” Exactly how he had been so certain about Wallace wasn’t Jason’s business, not yet—hell, he’d never even told Wallace—but Jason would learn soon enough. “And I was right. He liked to watch me hurt other people, but eventually . . .”

  “It wasn’t enough just to hurt them,” Jason finished for him.

  Cobb said, “No . . . not enough.”

  They’d discovered that early, on just their fourth victim together. At first, they’d just beat guys up in dark parking lots, the way he and Johnny used to, leaving them broken but alive. But that fourth guy . . . They hadn’t planned to kill him. Cobb was working away at him and Wallace, cheering like a rabid fan at a heavyweight fight, was enjoying himself, but when they were nearly finished, Cobb felt . . . unfulfilled. Worse, he still felt a terrific pain inside, like a knife twisting in his stomach. Purely on impulse, he’d picked up a rock and crushed the guy’s skull. And suddenly, the agony that had been his constant companion for months, ever since Johnny had died, that knife in his gut, was little more than a toothache. He looked over at Wallace, worried about how he might react, but the man was grinning from ear to ear. After that, they brought their victims back to Wallace’s stable. After that, there was no going back for either of them.

  “It wasn’t enough to merely cause people pain,” Jason said. “You had to kill them, too? To make your pain go away?”

  “What can I say? It works. For a while anyway.”

  Jason shook his head, disgusted and dumbfounded. “If you hurt most of the time, why not end it all? Why not just kill yourself? Like your brother obviously did.”

  For an instant, Cobb considered cutting Jason’s throat. Maybe he’d gotten a little too bold. Thankfully, the urge passed. “I’m not going to kill myself,” he said, “because I don’t want to die. I don’t know what’s waiting for me when I do. If there’s a heaven, I’m not getting in. And if there’s a hell, I’m in no hurry to get there.”

  Jason looked horrified but he also seemed fascinated, which Cobb took as a good sign. “Why do you only do it to men? Why not women or children?”

  “Wallace suggested we do it to a woman one time and I told him I had no interest in that, and he didn’t really seem to care. All that mattered to him was that whoever we chose suffered. But me? I just never wanted to hurt women or children. I like kids. They’re innocent, at least until they get older. And I like women, too. I respect them. And no, I’m not gay, and I wasn’t sexually abused by a priest or anything. Those stereotypes are insulting to gay people, victims of clergy abuse, and serial killers. I just think that grown men are no better than animals. Take Wallace and me, for example.”

  “I’m guessing it was a man who hurt your brother. Broke a few of his bones.”

  “Broke a lot of his bones. It was our uncle.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I wish. He died too soon. Not before he ruined Johnny’s life, but before we could punish him for doing it.”

  “Let me guess: he was a face painter? Maybe a carny or something?”

  “Ah, that.” Cobb chuckled. “Nah, he was a cop. That’s how he got away for so long with what he used to do—that and the fact that my father was a coward. But the face painting? That was mostly for kicks.”

  Cobb recalled the night they had thought of it, halfway through a second six-pack. They had talked about how a lot of famous serial killers had their little quirks, their calling cards, so they decided to come up with their own. Besides making it a little more interesting, they figured it would also provide a little cover, give the authorities something irrelevant to run down, a red herring to add to their psychological profiles. And while the cops were questioning carnival workers and amusement-park face painters, he and Wallace would be laughing at them.

  “I did all the painting,” Cobb said. “Wallace didn’t have an artistic bone in his body, but I think I got pretty good at it.” He smiled. “You know, Jason, it feels really good to talk about this with you.”

  “But won’t you have to kill me now that I’ve heard all this? I’ll know your secrets.”

  “I already told you. I don’t want to kill you.”

  “How about my family?”

  “I don’t want to kill them, either.”

  Jason desper
ately looked like he wanted to believe him. “I just don’t understand what we’re doing here, Cobb. I don’t understand anything. If things were so great with Barton, why stop? Why did you kill him?”

  “You mean, why did we kill him?”

  “Whatever.”

  “We killed him to save you, Jason. He wanted to kill you, like we killed all the others. It was the reason we took you, after all. Except, when it came time to do it, I didn’t want to. Usually when we brought someone to the stable, we’d kill him the same day, maybe the next at the latest. But we kept you around for days while we argued about whether to break you and kill you or dump you somewhere unharmed. Wallace didn’t understand why I didn’t want to kill you. I wasn’t so sure myself for a while, either.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He finally got tired of waiting and said, ‘Screw it, I’ll kill him myself.’ But I stopped him. He had no chance against me. I choked him unconscious. Then I had to choose. Him or you. I chose you . . . and just like that it was all over with him. Everything we’d been doing together was over. While he was unconscious, I painted my own face—the butterflies were nice, weren’t they?—and broke my ulna with a hammer and then my ribs with a mini-sledge.”

  “Oh, my God . . .”

  “Yeah, that hurt, I’m not gonna lie. But I had to make it impossible for anyone to think I could’ve been anything other than one of Crackerjack’s victims. Think about it. Who the hell would do what I did to myself? Seriously. How crazy would I have to be?”

  Jason seemed to have no answer to that, so Cobb continued.

  “I stuck a mask on Wallace’s head, and when he started to come around, I carried him to your stall—not easy to do with my broken arm—and dumped him on top of you. And you killed him.”

  Jason looked shaken. Cobb bent down and looked straight into his eyes.

  “It’s all over now, Jason. It’s all gone. Crackerjack; the bone breaking; the nice, remote place to work in; my partner in crime. I gave it all up for you. So, in a way, you actually did kill Crackerjack.”

  “Not well enough, it seems.”

  “That’s more true than you realize. Because here’s the thing: I’m not gonna stop killing. I’ve already started up again, as you know. But those were just random kills. I’ll want to go about it more organized, like before. I’ll want to come up with a new signature, a new way to express myself. Like the face painting, only different.”

  Seeing the horror on Jason’s face, Cobb couldn’t suppress a small smile.

  “Looks like when you killed Crackerjack, Jason, you gave birth to a new monster.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Jason didn’t want to be doing this. He didn’t want to be tied up any longer, talking to a murderer. He didn’t want to keep wondering whether Cobb would honor his promise not to hurt Jason’s family.

  “You still haven’t told me why I’m so special,” Jason said. “Why you didn’t kill me like Barton wanted, like you’d originally planned.”

  “I saw something in you.”

  Jason sucked in a sharp breath. Cobb’s words slashed more deeply than his knife ever could. Those words . . . so similar to the ones he’d heard Sophie say.

  “Saw something in me?” Fearing the answer, he asked, “Like what?”

  Cobb looked at him for a long moment before nodding, almost imperceptibly, as though he had settled some internal debate and was about to divulge something important, then he shook his head slightly, apparently having changed his mind. “Like I told you the other day, we have a lot in common.”

  Jason remembered. He’d heard it last week as he’d strolled through the park, unknowingly in the company of an infamous serial killer—the things they had in common . . . family members with Down syndrome, automobile accidents, permanently disabled loved ones. And Cobb seemed fixated on the color of Jason’s hair . . .

  “I remember now,” Jason said. “Your brother Johnny, you said he had red hair, right?”

  “Like yours, but his was a little redder.”

  “I’m not your brother, you know.”

  “Seriously, Jason? Is that what you think? That I’m imagining that you’re my brother, somehow back from the dead? Or perhaps he’s inhabiting your body? Wow, you really do think I’m crazy.”

  “No, Cobb, it’s obvious that you’re perfectly sane.”

  Cobb regarded him for a moment, then laughed. “Well, I’m not that crazy. I don’t think you’re my dead brother. You just . . . remind me a lot of him, that’s all. And you and I . . . hell, there’s just a lot we have in common. And really, you’re so much like him. I swear to God.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t kill me? I have reddish hair? We have a few things in common?”

  Cobb shrugged. “I didn’t notice your hair when I took you. And I didn’t know about the other things at first. I stashed you at Wallace’s place and was going to let you stew for a day or two—sometimes it’s better for me that way, let the anticipation build a little—but then I started seeing stuff about you on the news. All the things we have in common. And with your hair, you just reminded me so much of Johnny—you really wouldn’t believe it—and you’ve suffered so much already . . . the car crash, a crippled wife, a sick child . . . Johnny suffered a lot, too. So I sat in the stall next to yours and acted like another victim so we could talk a little. And soon, like I said . . . I saw something in you. Something like inside Johnny. And me.”

  Again with Cobb having seen something in him. When Sophie said that, he could deny it with confidence . . . maybe sometimes with a little more confidence than he felt. But when Cobb—a serial killer—said it . . . well, perhaps there was more to it than—

  But no. Cobb was insane. Sophie? She was wrong; Jason had to believe that. But Cobb? He was just nuts. The guy had a name for his pain, for God’s sake. And Jason was supposed to believe Cobb saw an Inside Dark in Jason, too? No way.

  “I needed to get to know you better,” Cobb said. “So I could decide once and for all if I wanted to break you into pieces, then kill you. And the more I learned about you, the more you made me think about my brother, about the way things were when he was alive . . . and the less I wanted to kill you.”

  “So help me out here, Cobb. You don’t want to kill me, but you have to know that if you don’t, I’ll tell the police everything.”

  “That’s refreshingly honest, Jason. It really is. Most people would lie about that to save their lives . . . say they won’t tell a soul while planning to call the cops as soon as they get the chance. But I bet you’ve already thought that through a little and can see the problems with it. And in case you haven’t, let me help you. All the evidence so far points to Barton—whom you killed, by the way—and none of it points to me.”

  “They’d find something if they looked hard enough.”

  “Nah. I was really, really careful. So it would be your word against mine . . . and you already gave your word to millions of television viewers that you fought Crackerjack to the death. That you and I, working together, escaped a notorious serial killer. If you change your story without any evidence to back you up, you’ll just look foolish. Worse, you’ll look like a liar.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “You might want to hear me out first. I hate to break it to you, but there’s more.”

  More?

  Cobb nodded. “Remember when I said that all of the evidence points to Barton?”

  Uh-oh.

  “Well, that’s only the evidence they have so far,” Cobb said. “But there’s more of it out there, waiting to be found.”

  “Like what?”

  “A more important question for you is where? See, the night we ‘escaped’ from the stable, while you were in the hospital, I visited your apartment. I had to go in the middle of the night because of all the media in front of your building, and I had to find a back way in, but it was easy enough getting inside. And I planted incriminating things. A lot of them. In places you’d never thin
k to look, but where the cops sure as hell would. In your closet? Maybe. Behind utility access panels? Possibly. How about all the dark, secret places in the basement of the building? Maybe even buried in the little patch of ground out back? All good possibilities.”

  “No one would believe it.”

  “Really? In and around your building, and in your apartment itself, are paints and brushes, the same kind they found in the stable. And books on face painting. Pieces of clothing with blood from some of the victims on them. Personal things of theirs, too, like watches and jewelry, each with your fingerprints on them. All it’d take is an anonymous call from a nosy neighbor claiming to have seen you hiding things in one of the public places I mentioned, and once they found one little thing, they’d tear your world apart.”

  “My fingerprints? How—”

  “While you were unconscious in the stable.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Want a sample?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you find the key yet?”

  “What key?”

  Cobb smiled. “You have your keys on you?”

  He hesitated. “In my left front pocket.”

  “I don’t mean to get too chummy here,” Cobb said as he stuck his fingers into the pocket of Jason’s jeans, then pulled out a ring with several keys on it, keys Jason knew well: to his car, to the front door of the building where he lived, to the door of his apartment, to Sophie’s house, to the small padlock he kept at the gym he hadn’t visited in months.

  “Recognize this one?” Cobb asked, singling out a small silver key. “Did you even notice it?”

  After a pause, he shook his head.