A Blood of Killers

by Gerard Houarner

  “Todd came up first to the old man sitting on the bench. Todd was his favorite. The old man looked at him the longest, especially when he was laughing. He liked Todd’s cheeks, and his sweet little dimples. And the way his blond hair bounced up and down when he ran real fast.

  “Aren’t you hot in that long coat?” asked Todd. He stood with his hands behind his back and his legs crossed. He swayed to and fro, because it was hard to keep his balance. And he was a little nervous.

  “Sometimes I am,” the old man answered. His chicken-lip mouth almost smiled. He put down the paper he’d been pretending to read, hiding his face behind the big open pages and peeking out at all of you when he thought you weren’t looking.

  “Leo was next. The old man gave him a look-over, letting his eyes rest on the mop of dark hair falling over his eyes, and his dirty hands half-stuck into jean pockets.

  “Then you should take it off,” Leo said, bold and loud.

  “I think maybe soon I will,” said the old man.

  “Ray came up carrying an old, folded up sports section from the Sunday Times. The old man’s eyes seemed to roll right down Ray’s upside-down light-bulb body, then bounce right back to Todd. Ray was supposed to ask if the old man was from around the park, but he couldn’t get the words out.

  “Where’s your little sister?” the old man asked him, still looking at Todd.

  When Ray didn’t answer, Todd said, “Home.”

  “Such a lovely girl,” the old man said.

  “Michael was the last. He came up from behind the bench. The old man hardly ever looked at him. And when he did, he looked away fast, as if Michael’s bones and sharp angles hurt to see. Michael didn’t say anything, either. He kept his fists close to his sides, a little behind his hips. “I have something for you boys,” said the old man. “Something special. Something your parents never gave you, never will.”

  “Is it magic?” Todd asked.

  “Is it shiny?” Leo asked.

  “Is it sweet?” asked Ray.

  “Is it sharp, like this?” said Michael.

  “The old man turned around. Michael raised the knife he’d been holding in his hand. Then Todd showed the knife he’d been holding behind his back, and Leo opened the knife he’d had in his pocket, and Ray pulled out the big butcher knife he’d kept in the paper.

  “And you all rushed the old man and stabbed him with your knives. Again and again, until his coat was cut to shreds and what was underneath was red with bits of white showing. And you sang and danced and shouted to the skies, because he would never look at you again like he had a lot of questions to ask and things to show you that you didn’t want to hear or see.

  “And when you were done you all ran home to me, where I fixed you a big bowl of popcorn and sat down on a chair just like this one and let you tell me all the wonderful things you’d done that day, running wild and free just like I want you to be.”

  She knew everything about us. The how and where and why we lived. But the stories Tracey told when she had two or more of us together just weren’t the same as when she had us alone. Alone with her is when we really felt special.

  Sometimes we’d get together on Saturday afternoons behind the public bathrooms in the park and tell each other her stories about us. I never said how she wrestled me to the ground first, and the others didn’t talk about whatever she did with them. How she smelled, or felt, or how her hair could tickle the skin of a neck was never brought up. We filled those little details in for ourselves, I think.

  It was the stories we shared and talked about. It was the stories we believed. We wanted to believe them, desperately. Passionately. Because they were our link to her. Our bond with her.

  If Tracey said we’d killed our father, that’s what we’d done. If she said we’d killed our mother, well, we’d done that, too. After all, who were they?

  In the heat of our little group, in the inferno of her time with us, they were strangers. People who told us what to do, when, how. People we could never please, who changed their minds for no reason, who took things away and kept things from us for the sheer pleasure of our misery. Demons. Monsters. Keeping us locked in our rooms. Spanking us. Slapping us across the face. Whipping wet rags across our backs and arms. Knocking us flat with the back of their hands, or their palms, or fists. Broom handles. Pans.

  Sometimes we were bad. We didn’t listen to grownups. We cut school. Our grades were low. We got into fights, and pulled pranks. Michael broke a girl’s arm once. Scared her so much she didn’t tell on him. Todd got something into the Halloween candy that old witch Mrs. Hillinger bought to give out. Made a lot of kids sick, and Mrs. Hillinger moved away. Ray disappeared for a week, and when he came back he spent a month in the hospital and wouldn’t talk about it after he got out. Me, I set my cat on fire after she scratched me. Poisoned a neighbor’s dog that used to chase me when I rode my bike. Put left over inside parts from biology lab into Mrs. Stein’s coat pocket after she called me a brat in front of the class.

  But our parents were bad, too. Not so anyone would notice. But we did. We heard them talking about what they did at work, the deals and backstabbing. We heard about bills and taxes they didn’t pay. We heard them on the phone, when they thought the house was empty. We smelled their breaths when they came home late at night and checked in on us. We saw and heard the things they tried to hide from us and each other, and themselves.

  Only Tracey was good. To all of us, she was good. We would have done anything for her. Anything she wanted us to do. But all she wanted was for us to believe in her stories. Make them ours. Become them. “Tell me what I just told you,” she’d ask, at the end of a story. “Really?” she’d ask. “You did that?” She’d poke and tickle and squirm, laughing at me as I laughed and struggled under her. “I don’t believe you. Tell me how you did that. Tell me, why?”

  We told each other her stories as if we believed them. As if we’d really done all the things she said we did. The blood, the knife. The creeping up, the screams. Because we wanted to believe them. The stories made us a part of her, and her a part of us. And with her inside of us, we could be strong where we were always weak. We could change the world, strike back. We believed her stories because, no matter how strange or improbable or frightening, our lives were better in them than in the real world. In them we had the power to make things happen.

  All she wanted was for us to believe in her stories. And then, after a while, she wanted each of us to do something for her. A secret thing.

  First it was Todd. “She wanted me to do something for her,” he told me over the phone. It was a weeknight, and I’d been grounded in my room. He got my parents to bring me out only when he said I had a homework assignment he needed.

  I didn’t need to ask who “she” was. “Save it for Saturday,” I whispered. I wasn’t in the mood to listen.

  “No, for real. She asked me to do something. For her. Only me. And I did it.”

  It was the laughter that made me believe. Right before he hung up, he laughed. Bubbling, joyous. Like an angel filled with the special light of power and knowledge laughing from someplace above me. I shivered from the cold on the way back to my room.

  The next day in school, he wouldn’t tell me or the others what he’d done. Not on Saturday, either. We tried to bribe him, we threatened him, we even hit him a few times. He only laughed, with his eyes glowing like a cat’s in the right light. Then it was Ray. The next week, I thought something was up when I saw him in school. Smug smile, a little nod of the head instead of a big hello. Like he was holding something big inside of him, something bigger than him. He told us Saturday that she’d asked him to do something, and he had. But he didn’t tell us what it had been.

  I asked Tracey what was going on the next time she came over. She put her hands on her hips and said, “Make me” I tried. I really tried. But she was strong, and bigger than me, and a fighter. And soon enough she made me forget about Todd and Ray. At least for that night.

 
; Michael tried to pretend she’d asked him a couple of weeks later. We were sick to death of Ray and Todd holding their special status with Tracey over our heads. We were pretty sure they hadn’t told each other what they’d done—they said Tracey had made them swear secrecy to her. But we were desperate to be included in their special orbit around Tracey.

  It was after school when Michael said he was in with them, and with Tracey. Todd and Ray stared at him for a while. They smiled. And Michael broke down and cried. Ran away. They watched him run, then gave each other a look that was warm and happy and cruel at the same time.

  I didn’t cry as I walked home. But my eyes burned like acid had been poured on them.

  When Michael again said she had asked him to do a secret thing for her the next Saturday afternoon we got together, Todd and Ray believed him. So did I. Blood was in his face and hands, close to the skin, pulsing with life. He had the glow.

  I couldn’t stand it. I thought I was going to die of shame, hurt, loneliness. I felt like she’d abandoned me, though she still came over whenever my parents asked her to and she still told me stories just as she always did. I stopped meeting the guys at the park on Saturday afternoons, stopped hanging around with them at school. I begged her to let me do something for her. When is my turn coming, I’d ask. I want my turn.

  She told me to wait. She had something special for me, too.

  I waited alone. I didn’t know what was going on. My parents never talked about the accidents. I knew they felt sorry for her. Mentioned some terrible run of tragedy in her family. But I didn’t know.

  Then she told me her last story. Told me to believe. And I did. With all my heart, with all my imagination and will, I believed. She told me what she wanted me to do. I did it.

  And when they came for me, for Michael and Ray and Todd, and made us tell our stories, we told them like we’d always told them to each other. Believing every word. And we were believed.

  That’s how we knew we belonged to Tracey.

  THE DREAM

  Dark path snakes by a deep valley, where a red river runs fast at the bottom, flows from the mountain caves, fills still pools to soundless depths.

  Stillness.

  Cold lightning in hand, burning flesh.

  Waiting to strike, waiting to strike.

  Eager to strike.

  Frozen flashes of lightning hanging in the sky, still in the sky, illuminating a landscape of blood red pools.

  Word ribbons wind around the bolts, come too close, break into little pieces and drift down into the pools. Float. Leo. My lion. Blood. Wild and free. Run.

  Tell me how you did it.

  Again.

  Again.

  Strings of words paralyze, bind, lock. Pools stir, bodies surface. Fingers curl into unsheathed claws. Mouths open, eyes closed. Alone, and not alone, in the land of blood red pools filled with bodies and words.

  Leo, the words say. Leo. The words shadows of a figure wrapped in a cloak, wearing the face mask of a cartoon girl.

  THE REAL

  Leo rang the bell to the house he’d been watching since he’d woken up early in the morning in the back seat of his car, screaming. Pain from the blows he’d taken at the club pulsed along his back with the rhythm of his rapid heartbeat. He was shivering from the cold night he’d spent in the car, the engine off, wrapped in his trench coat and a few forgotten beach towels from the trunk.

  He waited for Tracey to come to the door.

  The neighborhood hadn’t changed that much. Houses surrounded by trees and polite little lawns lined up on either side of the road. Christmas lights clung to windows and drain pipes, blindly blinking. Plastic reindeer and Santa Clauses dotted the yards. Sidings and roofs had been changed, additions jutted out at odd angles, and the cars in the driveways were smaller than when he was growing up, but he knew the street. He’d lived on the next block. Ray and

  Michael had been neighbors on the corner. Todd’s old home was two blocks away.

  He remembered football games played with screaming frenzy in stadiums of falling leaves. The parade of monsters on Halloween. A cascade of snowless Christmases just like this one getting presents he didn’t really want. The shock of seeing a haze of green growing out of dead darkness. Long, lazy walks to and from the park five blocks away. Baseball games with innings rolling in and out like waves on a beach. Lemonade stands.

  The smell of barbecues, and freshly mowed grass, and Tracey’s perfume.

  The door opened. A woman peeked out. Disappeared. Left the door open.

  Leo was drawn across the threshold by the woman’s eyes. Inside, the carpet was worn, the furniture dull and scuffed. The air was stuffy, scented with the faint, sweet smell of decay. Dust motes glittered in the sunlight streaking through gaps in the venetian blinds. Another reality struggled to emerge out of the ruin. New furniture, fresh carpet. Lamp light. Darkness. Leo braced himself against the wall for a moment, shaken by vertigo. He took a deep breath, forced himself to walk.

  He flinched as he went past the stairs, thinking he heard water dripping in the bathroom above. Drifting into the kitchen, where the sink was filled with dishes and a black garbage bag lay half-filled next to the grumbling refrigerator, Leo stared at the woman sitting on an aluminum-frame dinette chair. Her back was to him. Smoke from a cigarette floated over her grey-streaked crown of wild hair. He walked to the chair opposite her, sat down.

  Her faded yellow velour robe was half-open, exposing a “V” of pale flesh.

  “My little lion,” she said with a smirk.

  For an instant, something in her husky voice cut through the years and he saw the old Tracey buried in the doughy apparition before him. Bright eyes. Firm breasts. Parted lips. But only for an instant. “You’ve changed.” His voice cracked.

  “So have you. I don’t think I can beat you up anymore, Leo. Unless, of course, you let me.” She sat back as she laughed and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. The laughter stopped when she took a drag from her cigarette.

  For a moment, he wanted to let her beat him up. If her skin had been smooth, her body packed into jeans and an old western shirt, and if she had looked him in the eye and smiled, if she’d been wearing the same old sweet perfume, and had stood up and walked over to him and pushed his shoulder, he would have slid to the ground. Fallen to his knees. Waited for her to slap him, catch him in a hold and throw him around, then sit on his chest and tickle him.

  “I don’t think so,” Leo whispered. She tapped ash from the cigarette. “So, disappointed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Need me to tell you if you should be?”

  Leo rubbed his forehead. Nausea passed through him, leaving him dizzy. Reality crumbled, no matter how hard he pushed his fingers into the bone of his forehead. He felt unreal. Lost. What was he doing here? What was supposed to happen, what was he supposed to do? He stared at the ashtray, found no answers. Helpless, he looked to Tracey. “Why the card?”

  “Take a look around you. Don’t you think I need the company?”

  “You always had company.”

  “You boys were my company. My life.”

  “What about the others? Didn’t they want to come?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Tracey glanced at the floor and cocked an eyebrow. The gesture glistened like an old dinosaur bone under museum lights, straining to bring to life what been long dead.

  “Are you going to keep me in suspense?” Leo shot back. “What happened, you always were full of stories. Did you run out?”

  Tracey put the cigarette out. Moved the ashes around with the butt. “Todd committed suicide after he came out. Stepped out on a highway and let a fourteen wheeler run him over. Visited me once, right before he did it. Ray was killed by a guard during a bank robbery in California last year. He came by a lot, in between jail time and his jobs. Me and him, we got along pretty good. Michael died on Thanksgiving in the hospital. AIDS. He came by once in a while. Said he us
ed to see you in New York, sometimes, on the street outside of some clubs. Waved to you, once. You must not’ve recognized him. He barely caught you in your get-up.”

  A few moments passed before he realized she had stopped. He felt as if he were floating, watching Tracey’s weathered face and the bodies of his boyhood friends sink into a blood red sea far below him. Out of that sea old hurts rose, snarling and snapping with rage. He was blinded for a moment by a single thought: they’d already been with her.

  A sound hummed in his mind: myturnmyturnmyturn. “You used to tell better stories,” he said. He strained to hear his own voice. It sounded distant, child-like.

  “Oh, I’m all out of stories. Haven’t had any in me since I lost you boys. I listen to other people’s stories, now. On the talk shows, soaps and cable movie channels. When Todd came around, he wanted to stay and have me tell him stories, like before. He told me about how the other kids treated him where he was sent, and how he grew up wanting to be with me, forever and ever, listening to my voice, to my stories. I had to tell him no. Had to. There were still neighbors around then who remembered what’d happened. How would it have looked, shacking up with one of the guys who killed my parents?” Tracey laughed. “Besides, I didn’t have anything to give him. No more stories. They’re all gone.”

  Leo shuddered.

  “Ray was held over longer than the rest of you. Kept getting into trouble with the kids at his facility. He came by a while after Todd. He understood what the deal was after the first visit. I won’t say it didn’t hurt him, my not telling stories. He cried for a bit. But he was realistic. Afterwards, he’d drop in and tell me all kinds of stories. Car chases, gun fights, show downs with mobsters and murderers and detectives.” She pointed to a ragged hole in the wall near the ceiling. “He got carried away one night and put a bullet up there. That hole always reminds me of him. Most of the time, though, he came and went quietly. Of course, he had to. Somebody always wanted a piece of him.”