On the forum, a man claiming to be a police officer on the case posted terse details about the crime scene, and the sleuthy housewives were tantalized beyond their wildest dreams.
National park, remote campsite, hand-written “Reserved: do not disturb” sign attached to a clothesline strung across the trail precisely two hundred and twelve feet from the campsite. Ropes on a tree, tied low, at little-boy height. Circle of stones containing campfire detritus and ashes distinguishable from common wood ash due to their greasy consistency; analyses pending. Hatchet. Lithium-ion battery pack. Skull fragment, approximately three inches square, with attached scalp and reddish hair: DNA analysis pending. Drought conditions resulted in the preservation of deep indentations in the dirt, clustered in formations of three, in a manner suggesting the sustained use of a tripod holding equipment heavier than a still camera. Small human bones, charred, located approximately five feet inside a drainage pipe at another campsite about sixty yards away. Fragments presumed to be bone, analyses pending, strewn in a patch of wild daisies.
There followed a maelstrom of posts: Were the bits of bones in the daisies arranged in a pattern? Did they spell out a message? No discernible pattern, no indication that they had been arranged. More likely, deposited via shotgun blast. But the ones in the drainage pipe, surely they had been stacked in a special formation? It was a functional large-bore drainage pipe, people. In other words, water had disturbed any formation there might have been. These are irrelevant questions.
No more posts from that officer appeared.
There was a rumor on the website and, soon after, in local newspapers: a video camera and multiple tapes had been recovered from the suspect’s car.
This man had kept Kyle alive for six weeks. He had known before he pulled Kyle into his van that a single tape would not have been enough. He had planned to record hours and hours of footage, and he had done so.
Danielle read all of the rumors. Her compulsion to bear witness to Kyle’s trauma, to somehow share the burden of his agonies, as if he might feel a measure of relief, had been too strong to resist.
Finally, there came a point when she had to stop: a journalist claimed to have watched one of the tapes, and had described what he’d seen in detail. It could not have been true, Danielle knew. No monster, no beast, no human being, could do the things the source described—not to her son, not to anyone’s child. Not to an enemy, or to a toy. But the simple fact that this reporter had himself imagined such atrocities was the sticking point: if one man could conjure them in his mind—for he certainly had, hadn’t he—another could have actually performed them.
This was not a burden she could bear, after all. From then on, Danielle bore her days, spending them mantled in cold shock. One night, her trance had been broken by the slam of the bathroom door overhead. That was the night she wept.
Child Protective Services had indeed come by twice in the year before Kyle had gone. They’d been gathering notes on a case against Danielle’s ex for some reason or other, but she hadn’t seen him in seven years. Until the caseworker had knocked on her door, Danielle had been pretty sure her ex was long dead. She wasn’t any help to them.
The same caseworker had been back five times after Kyle’s disappearance: first, because Danielle herself had been a suspect. She had trouble remembering that fact. Those had been very dark days in some other world. Later, they’d just visited to be sure that Danielle hadn’t gone insane or mistreated Chase and Annie. They’d been satisfied with their findings and had wished her family well.
Danielle was glad that the check-up phase was long finished by the time the murderer arrived to haunt her house.
The trial had been too much for her to handle. Just too much. On the first day, she could not tear her eyes away from the face of the man who had murdered Kyle.
He was a calm, quiet person, sharp-shouldered in his orange jumpsuit. He looked normal, utterly normal. He sat for the first couple of endless hours with his normal hands clasped before him, his normal forehead tilted against his knuckles, in a normal attitude of peace, perhaps of prayer. His eyes were closed.
Danielle had tunneled her vision at him, desperate to see inside. And he was, after all, the last person to have heard her son’s voice.
So she had stared. For hours.
Then, he had jolted in his chair. His head had rocked back hard, as if he had been blasted at close range with a shotgun, and Danielle imagined bone fragments and a hunk of skull with the skin attached flying from him. As she blinked the image away, he twisted his head around and met her gaze.
His face was utterly impassive.
And she felt him see inside her, instead. He saw that he himself was within her, forever. The wounds he had inflicted would never go away.
She saw that this pleased him. Deeply.
Danielle had scrambled from her seat and run for the door, where the guards caught her, and she had vomited bile and hot water on one’s khaki slacks, and they had let her leave.
She had not returned.
But she followed the trial in the news, struggling to remain conscious of the case. Everything in the world, including the case, was a distant remove from her. Kyle, the puppy, daily realities of bills and food and work: none felt present.
The only thing that felt absolutely immediate was the reality of the killer—his placid face, and the infinitesimal uptick of his left eyebrow broadcasting his awareness of what he had done to her.
Everyone had expected an insanity plea. He had represented himself. He had been very low-key and matter-of-fact throughout the trial, expecting the guilty verdicts he indeed received.
But during sentencing, he asked the judge if he could show the jury the videotapes. The prosecution team couldn’t believe their luck when the judge agreed and ordered that the tapes be shown in open court.
Anyone who wanted to leave the courtroom before the tapes were shown could do so; they had time to decide while the windows were covered with blackout curtains. Those who opted to leave did so, and the doors had then been locked.
Danielle was at home that day, in her bedroom, ignoring the reporters on the porch. Early on, the police and the prosecution had discussed the tapes with her. She had sat among all these people at a conference table and stayed silent while they argued over her bowed head. She had gotten a cramp in her hand from clutching her knee, and the pain felt stupid and insulting, coming as it did during this pitched discussion about brutal violence done to her son.
The police had screamed at the prosecution team that no one should see the tapes, especially not Danielle. The prosecution had wanted her to be furious and horrified and become the face of the case, making TV appearances with her eyes hollow and her soul in ashes.
She had murmured something in the negative and shaken her head, and one of the cops had driven her home in a squad car.
Danielle didn’t think that was the same officer who had committed suicide before the trial, but she wasn’t certain. The one who had driven her had seen the tapes and done a lot of the yelling at the conference table. There had been another two cops at the meeting who already looked dead. It had probably been one of them. Danielle understood exactly how they felt. The man was allowed to speak, since he was representing himself.
What he said to the judge after the lights came up was, “This is no longer a jury of my peers. This is a jury of my victims.”
What the court said in reply was:
Death.
◙
Danielle sat in front of her television, her legs folded under her. She adjusted the black hood of her sweatshirt, pulling its edges past her cheekbones until the fabric pressed hard against the back of her head. This made a little tunnel through which she could only see the TV. If the ghost was sitting on the sofa, she couldn’t see him, and if she couldn’t see him, she was all right.
Unless he was standing beside her. That really wouldn’t be all right.
She willed herself to focus on the travel show about Hong Kong,
but the host’s gleeful yammer about prawns and harbor tours grew distant as Danielle became certain that the ghost was looming over her. Reaching for her. If he touched her—
She dropped the remote and gripped the edges of her hood. The tendons in her neck creaked as she, slowly and with intense effort, turned her head to the left.
No ghost. Empty couch, door locked, all lights on, lots of noise about Kowloon’s nightlife.
But if she looked back at the TV, what if he was right in front of it?
And what if she continued to hide, and he was there, looking at her, about to touch her? And what if she looked back, and there was nothing? Where would he be, instead?
Because he was there. He was always there.
She heard footsteps overhead. Upstairs, feet running the length of the hallway. A barking laugh. The bathroom door slammed, and then she heard another thud immediately after, as if someone had run into the door, or kicked it.
Danielle groped for her hood-strings and yanked them, cinching the hood tight, collapsing the tunnel. She crossed her arms atop her head and bore down, folding herself into a knot. She kept very still until she slept.
◙
“Mom?”
Annie’s small hand pressed on Danielle’s shoulder and shook it a little. Danielle blinked, then squeezed her eyes closed and drew back the hood. She opened her eyes and glanced around the room, too bright in the new dawn. Dust motes hung static in a blaze of sunshine from the living room window, and Danielle peered at their arrangement. They seemed random. She saw no figure in the dust.
Annie sighed, shook her head, and went to the kitchen as Danielle went to work unfurling her limbs. Everything ached. She scanned the room for the ghost: all clear.
Massaging her sore shoulder, she thought then of Annie’s hand there. When was the last time Annie had touched her? When had she last embraced either of the children? Ages. They had clung to her for a time, but children adapt well, twins especially, she’d read. Their fear had gradually faded, though they did seem much closer to one another than she recalled them being before Kyle’s death.
From the kitchen came the sound of whispering. There was a sudden, cacophonous jangle of pots and pans and a loud bang as a cupboard door bashed against its neighbor. A little shriek, and more whispers. A giggle.
Danielle pushed herself from the chair and hurried across the room, plunging through the shaft of sunlight, setting the dust awhirl. She rounded the corner and crossed into the kitchen.
The ghost of the man on death row leaned against the refrigerator. He met her eyes and smiled. His teeth were tan against the sickly gray of his skin. Her body, breath, mind all stopped.
Chase crouched beside the stove, piling cookware back into the cabinet. He was still giggling a little.
Annie had set the cereal on the table and was going for the milk.
Danielle stared, aghast, as her daughter neared the fridge.
Annie reached for the handle. Danielle sucked in air and took a falling step forward, wanted to yell, “No!” wanted to stop her, to get her back, to get her away. Danielle’s lungs were turgid and sore with the force of her gasp, and she could not scream at Annie, could not scream at the ghost.
But the ghost kept his eyes fixed on Danielle. She stumbled into him and was glad then that her lungs were full, because she didn’t want to breathe him in, to let him inhabit her any more than he already did. She coughed with disgust and spun away, catching hold of the countertop. Her fingers whitened from the force of her grip.
Annie had already opened the fridge and retrieved the milk. Gallon jug in hand, she stood there, looking with mild interest at her mother. Danielle’s eyes were wild and wide, her breathing shallow, as she scanned the room. The ghost was nowhere to be seen. She forced herself to settle, closed her eyes, opened them.
Annie set the half-empty jug on the kitchen table and crossed to her mother. She slipped her cold hand into Danielle’s. The milk had chilled her skin. She looked up, and Danielle met her eyes. They were curious, patient eyes. Danielle read no concern in them; the twins were used to her being like this, she supposed. They both were beyond concern, now.
Danielle watched Chase slam the cabinet door closed, stand up, and make a grand show of dusting off his hands. He saw her looking, grinned broadly, and gave a what-are-ya-gunna-do? shrug that almost made her smile too.
The light was in his hair.
Danielle looked from one twin to the other, and saw that, no matter where the ghost may be—for he was always, always there, even if she couldn’t see him—he was only haunting her. They knew nothing of him. And if anyone was frightening the twins, it was Danielle herself.
She flung her arms around Annie and squeezed her tight. She buried her face in Annie’s unruly fluff of hair and kissed the top of her head. Then she went to Chase and hugged him as hard as she could. He hugged her back, and it felt lovely.
Danielle grabbed the back of the fourth chair at the breakfast table and dragged it across the kitchen. She opened the back door, thrust the chair through it, and gave it a kick. It tumbled down the back steps and landed on its side. She closed the door and locked it.
The twins looked at each other. Chase whispered something to Annie, and she laughed and nodded.
The ghost loomed beside the refrigerator again.
Chase slammed himself into his chair with such force that it slid a few inches to the right; without missing a beat, he grabbed the edge of the table and slung himself right back in front of his cereal bowl. He snatched up the box and dumped cereal into his bowl with one hand, catching the sugared bits that fell to the table and jamming them into his mouth with the other.
Annie settled into her chair, pushed her nylon book bag and windbreaker a few inches across the floor in a hissing scuff until they were clear of the chair, then reached for the milk jug. Danielle watched her pour milk into the bowl, taking care to cover the little pattern of ivy within it, then gently shake the cereal over the surface, little frosted wheat lily pads floating in a pond. Annie spooned up each individual flake, then, when there were none left, repeated the whole performance.
Danielle noticed the puff of Annie’s frizzy curls shadowing her clear brow, the shine of milk on Chase’s skinny wrist from where he’d wiped his mouth. She listened to the scrape of shoes on the chair rungs, to the spatting drip of milk as it fell from each lifted spoonful, to the sop-chaw of the twins, always chewing with their mouths open.
Danielle took a clean bowl from the dishwasher, sat down at the table with Chase and Annie, reached for the cereal, and said to the two of them, “Good morning.”
Rachel Karyo on Caitlín R. Kiernan's
“Rats Live on No Evil Star”
Several of my favorite horror stories are found in Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Tales of Pain and Wonder. But “Tears Seven Times Salt,” “Postcards from the King of Tides,” and “Estate” have already received much critical acclaim, so for my Deep Cuts recommendation I nominate “Rats Live on No Evil Star.” “Rats…” tells the story of Olan, a “lean and crazy man,” living in a rough neighborhood, terrified of the “long-legged thing” he sees down by the train tracks and the “searching noise” he hears in the night. There’s so much to admire about this story: arresting language (“…the camera flash of rage…”), poetic imagery (“Morning like clotted milk…”), interesting characters, and moments of shivery horror. There’s something sublime about the sentences, the atmosphere. Kiernan is so brilliant and original. Her work blows me away, and her courage inspires me to take more risks in my own writing.
◙◙◙
Beavers
Rachel Karyo
The first beaver arrived on a snowy Monday morning. The baby was on her play mat, batting at her psychedelic hanging toys. Sara was folding freshly dried towels. Sara’s husband had forgotten to lock the front door when he left for work, so the Beaver let himself in.
“She should be on her stomach,” the Beaver said.
Sara wondered wh
en the whole world would stop offering unsolicited advice on parenting.
“Tummy time is so important for babies,” the Beaver continued. “You can put a little pillow under her chest if she gets tired or frustrated.”
Sara picked up her daughter and said, “Carrot gets plenty of tummy time.” And then, she wondered how much was enough.
Carrot opened her mouth wide and started banging it against Sara’s collar bone.
The Beaver’s whiskers quivered, and he said, “The little one is hungry!”
“I’m going to feed her and put her down for a nap,” Sara said, looking pointedly towards the front door.
“Excellent. Then we can speak without interruption.” The Beaver followed Sara into the kitchen. When he saw the Enfamil, he scowled.
Sara said, “We tried everything. I saw three lactation consultants and the only breastfeeding doctor in Westchester.” Her voice pitched high, defensive.
The Beaver nodded. “Ah, that must have been very difficult.”
They all went upstairs to the nursery, and soon, Carrot was drinking, making happy gulping sounds like a fish tank.
“You seem sad,” said the Beaver.
“I’m just tired.” Lately, even the air had felt heavy. Sara wanted to lie down and sleep for days, for weeks, for months. Her husband, Ben, kept encouraging her to hire a babysitter so she could get some rest. But how could she sleep with a stranger in the house?
When the bottle was half empty, Sara wrestled the plastic nipple out of Carrot’s mouth, sat her up, and tapped her back.
Deep Cuts Page 19
