Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

by Blake Crouch

  "Is this when you started killing?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Because I could. And there were people who deserved it. But I'm not saying anything else about it. I won't sit here and let you put me in one of your categories. I killed. End of story."

  "When did Andy come back?"

  "When I started killing. I'd bought this cabin in Wyoming. I could feel Andy starting to move again, especially when I’d wake up in the morning. Sometimes he’d have control of his body. He didn’t know where the fuck he was. I told him he was in the Bahamas. I talked to him constantly without him knowing it was me. Still do. It's really just subtle suggestion. Sort of like hypnosis. That’s when I found out how much control I really had. He thinks he only killed once, but he killed whenever I told him to. He was pretty good at it. He thought it was a game."

  "I don’t remember any of that," I said.

  "Of course not. I told you what to remember. About this time, I bought the lake house. It was a safe place to let Andy write. He was good, too. Wrote about the things I did. You know, it's funny. He thought he was making it up. A lot of what’s in his stories really happened.

  "When his books started getting published and making money, I realized it’d be smart to let him keep writing. So I did. And the money he made allowed me to travel."

  "Travel as in hunt?" Goldston asked.

  "Yeah. I just had to be careful and let Andy have a small piece of his life, too. He'd made a few friends in the publishing business, so part of the time, I’d sit back and let him go. Let him keep up his connections. It took a lot of patience, but it paid off. The only time Andy was actually conscious was when he was writing and doing his book tours. I did a few readings, but they were boring. I'd have faked more of his life, but I’m a different person. People would’ve known something was wrong. Besides, I hated trying to act like someone else.

  "When he wasn’t writing or touring, I’d travel and send Andy away. If you asked his friends, they’d say he traveled quite frequently. Always going to the islands. Always alone."

  "Orson," Goldston said, "I want to show you something." Goldston pulled several pieces of paper out of the folder and laid them across the table. They were the letters Orson had sent to me. "I could never understand why Andy wrote these to himself," Goldston said. "Especially since he never used them to prove his innocence." He looked up at Orson. "You wrote these."

  "Yes."

  "Why go to the trouble of kidnapping your brother and bringing him cross-country to the desert when you had mind control over him? From what you’re saying, you could've just suggested he go to the cabin, and he would."

  "But not of his own free will. I did, I do have control over Andy, but that gets old. I wanted Andy to act on his own."

  "To kill on his own?" Goldston asked.

  "To kill on his own. I wanted him to kill for the pleasure of it. Not because I suggested it. I guess I wanted us to be more like brothers. Real brothers."

  "Did he?"

  "I didn’t!" I yelled. "Not one fucking time did I kill for the pleasure of it. Even when I thought I was killing Orson."

  "You tried to kill Orson?" Goldston asked.

  "When Andy was at the cabin with me," Orson said, "he learned about David Parker from this cowboy who I’d purchased the land from. I'd used Dave's name from time to time as my own. Andy thought David Parker was the name I assumed when I was away from him. So I let Andy chase him down. What did I care? This guy had gotten me fired from teaching. I also wanted to see if Andy could do it. If he'd kill me, given the chance. If he'd do it in cold blood."

  "And did he?"

  "Oh yeah," Orson said. "Just to give you an idea of how much control I have over Andy’s mind, I’ll tell you this. David Parker looks nothing like me. I told Andy he was me. I convinced him I was a professor named David Parker at Middlebury College, and he tracked David Parker down and murdered him and his wife. Andy did it of his own free will, too, and he did a damn good job of it. I still don’t think they’ve found their bodies, and I know they never suspected Andy. I was really proud of him for that. I knew he had it in him."

  Goldston scribbled furiously on his notes.

  "Orson, let me…"

  "No, Andy. I’ve heard enough from you. I’ve heard forty years of shit from you. You’ve had the past seven to yourself. It’s my turn now."

  Goldston removed a thick stack of black and white photographs from the folder. I saw pictures of the desert, Washington D.C., the excavated backyard at the lake house, and a woman lying heartless on her back in the sand.

  "I’d like to discuss some photographs with you. Why you chose certain victims, when and why you started removing the hearts. Was Washington your ultimate goal?"

  "This is what you've waited for isn’t it?" I said. "The glory and the fame."

  "This is what I’ve waited for," Orson said. "This and you to finish your book. It’s good, Andy. I’ll make sure you get some credit for…"

  "It's not finished," I interrupted.

  "I know," he said. "I have to finish it."

  "What are you talking…"

  "You know what I’m talking about," Orson said. He looked me dead in the eyes and squatted down beside me. "I'll take it from here, Andy."

  "Excuse me," Goldston said, "but what…"

  "I’m talking to my brother," Orson said. "You can wait two fucking minutes."

  "Orson, please listen," I begged.

  "No. You’re just gonna fuck all this up. You know I earned this."

  "Orson, no."

  "What? You wanna do this hard time with me? You wanna get the needle with me? That’s five long years away. You know I could send you somewhere bad, Andy. I could send you to hell before you actually get there, so don’t piss me off."

  "Don’t do this here, Orson. Please. Wait till we get back to the cell."

  "Why not kill you on national television?"

  I screamed as loud as my voice would carry and shook in the chair. The guards’ eyes widened as they rushed around the table towards me, knocking over the cameraman. Goldston yelled something over and over, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t form words. Hands grabbed me. I saw Orson smiling, his voice whispering harshly into my ears to be still…

  # # #

  The waves are crashing gently onto the white beach. The sun beats down on my chest, slowly turning my skin into a deep golden bronze. I look out over the turquoise sea. The blue-green water stretches out to the horizon, blending indistinguishably into the cloudless sky.

  Sitting up in my chair, I lift my Jack and Coke from the sand, take a long, cold sip, and set it back down. There’s faint music in the distance behind me. I turn and see my hut a hundred feet above me on the lush, green hillside, its white roof showing through the trees.

  I have a strong buzz now. A warm, fuzzy peacefulness.

  I lean back in the wooden recliner and close my eyes. The salty breeze caresses my face, urging me into sleep. It’s such a mild day for the tropics, one that invites you to sleep right through it, beneath the sun, in the presence of the whispering waves.

  LOCKED DOORS ALTERNATE ENDING

  There's a saying about writing without an outline that's attributed to E.L. Doctorow: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

  Yeah. That sounds real nice and writerly, and I used to subscribe to this theory. In fact, all the way up to my book, Abandon, I made it a practice not to outline the last half of my books.

  The result was disastrous. It haunted my writing process, leading to massive rewrites.

  The upshot (for you, gentle reader) is that sometimes the original endings to my novels were pretty cool, or at least had their moments.

  In the summer of 2003, I reached the end of the Portsmouth section of Locked Doors, with an unfortunately vague idea of how I wanted to conclude the book.

  What follows is that 29,000-word original endin
g (roughly 140 printed pages). Be warned—this is quite possibly the darkest stretch of fiction I've ever written, and that's saying something. What I was attempting to do with the last half of Locked Doors, was to show how a man and a woman (in this case, Andy Thomas and Violet King) could be systematically turned into psychopaths.

  While the original ending of Locked Doors has its flaws, the Epilogue is one of my favorite things I've ever written. It's wild, it's out there, but in some ways, really fits the theme of the story.

  Again, with the advent of ebooks, I can bring this 140-page alternate ending of Locked Doors to my readers. Enjoy!

  # # #

  This alternate ending takes its turn into left field after the conclusion of chapter 49 and the end of the Portsmouth section, right after Violet has been clubbed in the head by Maxine Kite:

  Rufus pulled it from his back pocket, pressed the talk button, said, "Yeah, son, we got her. See you back at the house."

  Vi’s brain told her arm to unzip the poncho and take out the gun but she remembered that she didn’t have it and besides the arm wouldn’t move.

  "Now that’s what you call a good ol’ fashioned wallop," Rufus said and chuckled.

  Then the old man kissed his wife on the cheek and leaned down toward Vi, all gums tonight.

  "Her lips are still moving," he said. "Go ahead and clonk her again, Beautiful."

  ALTERNATE ENDING

  Elizabeth Lancing has lived in pure darkness for forty-one days.

  Around Thanksgiving, she stops taking her meals. For forty-eight hours she refuses to eat or drink.

  Then, on the verge of death, god saves her.

  "Elizabeth."

  The voice booms from the darkness above, masculine, calm, almost robotic.

  "Elizabeth, I know that you can hear me."

  She tries to sit up on the cold hard floor but has no strength.

  "Elizabeth? Respond to me…are you wondering if you’re really hearing this voice?"

  "Yes."

  "You aren’t hallucinating."

  "Where am I?" she croaks.

  "Where is not important. You want to die don’t you?"

  "Who are you?"

  "You know, my child."

  "I have children. Their names are—"

  "I know their names. I created them. I’m going to free you. But first, can you do something for me, Elizabeth?"

  "What?"

  "Eat. You’ll die otherwise, and I won’t be able to help you. Next time I come, I’ll tell you many things. Prepare yourself. Oh, Elizabeth?"

  "Yes?"

  "Jenna and John David are safe. I can see them now."

  # # #

  god returns the next day. He’s spoken to many people in this small stone cell. Some believed. Some laughed. One told god to go fuck himself in the ear. Most had already gone mad and half-brained themselves on the rock by the time he came.

  god finds Elizabeth Lancing asleep on the floor. The voice wakes her and speaks to her, though not of the fuzzy, comforting things she expects. It speaks of illusions she has accepted her whole life. god says he speaks truth—truth with teeth and big sweaty balls.

  He doesn’t ask her to believe. Only to muse. Particularly on evil. He says that evil is a misnomer for the diamond core of man’s soul.

  In parting, god says, "Consider how you might rid yourself of that definition, Elizabeth. Next time I come, I’ll tell you how you might do it, and if you’re interested, I’ll free you. If not, you may continue with your plans to die in the darkness you now inhabit and never see Jenna or John David again."

  # # #

  Pain divided by cushions of beautiful numbness…

  # # #

  I can see the sound from my bed. Blue sky. Navy water. A thread of green running between. Sometimes the leg throbs. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes I don’t feel a thing, not even my eyes.

  Those are the blissful times, and I stare out the window and watch clouds gather over the sound and do not wonder or care where I am.

  # # #

  Orson keeps vigil at my bedside. He says I’m going to die. I tell him I don’t care one way or the other.

  # # #

  I lie in a windowless stone-walled room, a bare light bulb shining above my head.

  An old man I’ve never seen before is stitching up my leg below the knee.

  He glances at me and stops, his arms red up to the elbows.

  The old man wipes his brow, says, "Give him some more gas, Beautiful."

  # # #

  Sometimes I see a strange sky. Cloudless. Sunless. Bright blue but without depth, almost as though I were staring into a blue television screen. While I stare at this sky, a voice speaks into my ear. Then I see things. I see the things it tells me to see.

  # # #

  Violet King has begun to splinter. Solitude can do that to you. Silence and unending darkness will most certainly do that to you. Her eyes have not seen light in fifteen days, her world now six by six by eight, enclosed by cold stone walls.

  Her last memory is of a lavish yacht. She doesn’t recall how she earned the fracture along the top of her skull. Though it is healing, stitches would’ve helped, and the headaches have not let up.

  She is still being fed and watered. One square meal a day. And though she thinks she wants to die, she continues to eat the slop that is put before her, ravenously. She believes if she doesn’t eat, she will die. The possibility grows more enticing each day, and though the idea of starving herself to death is occurring with increasing frequency, she has not yet taken the first step, which would be shoving the plate of food back under the door.

  Vi was raised to think that if you commit suicide, you go to hell. It is the belief of a Catholic, not a southern Baptist, but for some reason her father believed it, so she believes it, too. However, as her notion of hell is eclipsed by her reality, she may reconsider her conviction.

  # # #

  The meal is always the same: an apple, steamed broccoli, browned hamburger meat, and two slices of white bread. Sometimes she keeps it down. Usually she doesn’t. Her morning sickness rages on. Incredibly, she has not miscarried.

  # # #

  The baby growing inside her is the only reason she’s still alive, the only reason she continues to eat. Vi has taken to talking to her stomach. She also sings. But the sound of her voice makes her cry. She hears the brokenness of it. A person she doesn’t know.

  # # #

  Today is Thanksgiving, but Vi has lost all concept of time. Lately, she can’t distinguish between sleeping and consciousness. It’s all that same quiet darkness. Hope has ceased to exist even in her dreams.

  # # #

  One day she decides that she’s in hell, and that the world of light and love and a man named Max was something she had imagined to pass this black eternity. She had become so good at dreaming, at conjuring that pretend, perfect life, it had alleviated her torture here. But something has snapped her back into hell. She will try to dream it all up again.

  # # #

  She fails. Her mind is leaving her. She hasn’t eaten in two days, because she doesn’t think she’s pregnant. Becoming a mother was a part of that lovely dream. Her deepest fear now is that she won’t die. Souls don’t require sustenance. She is unbreakable and will go on forever, a bottomless container, capable of holding oceans of pain.

  # # #

  I drift so far back. Is this a memory? A dream?

  It’s a Saturday in late June. I’m nine or ten. Daddy wakes us up at 6:00 a.m. and tells us to get dressed. Mom’s at the beach with her sisters. Just the boys this weekend.

  We climb into the station wagon and ask Daddy for the fifth time where we’re going, but he only grins and says, "Have to wait and see." He’s a great lover of surprises.

  We ride in the front seat, me in the middle. At a nearby bakery, Daddy buys a dozen doughnuts, and I hold the box in my lap. By the time we reach the visitor parking lot of Stone Mountain State Park, the box is empty and our fingers sticky, our
faces stained with chocolate icing and jelly and custard fillings. I’m a little mad at Orson, because he ate all of the crème-filled chocolate ones.

  We reach the summit of Stone Mountain a little before 11:00 a.m., and Daddy throws a blanket out on the rock. With one strong warning not to go beyond the ledge of stunted pines, where the dome of granite begins to slope precipitously, he sets us loose—something Mom would never have done.

  Orson and I spend the next hour chasing each other across the acres of sunlit rock. The June sunlight is strong, and the water collected in the small craters of the mountain is warm as bathwater. We take off our shoes and socks and dip our feet in and pretend we’re on the moon.

  After lunch, we lie down on the blanket beside Daddy. Orson drifts off, but I stare out across the folds of Appalachian forest rippling off into the horizon. June bugs zip by, clicking noisily, and a yellow jacket seems interested in the uneaten triangle of Orson’s peanut butter and honey sandwich.

  I glance over at Daddy and see that he’s asleep, too. I lay flat on my back and stare up at the sky which has begun to fade from the crisp blue of morning into the bleached baby blue canvas that may birth thunderstorms in several hours. I feel a prick. The yellow jacket must have stung my arm.

  And I stare at the sky and stare at the sky and it turns bluer and flatter and the mountains disappear and Orson and Daddy disappear and then a voice speaks out of the heavenly pixels.

  "That was a lovely memory, Andy. So nice to hear you speak of Orson. Your brother was very special."

  I feel like I’m floating. I try to speak, but now my words come out mangled.

  "Don’t talk, Andy. You couldn’t possibly form a coherent sentence. The pain was coming back, so I gave you another injection. Shall we go deeper this time? How about I talk and you listen?"