by Jeff Lindsay
I parked a block away from the house, under the canopy of a large banyan tree, took the fillet knife from under the seat, and climbed out of my car. It was full night now, and I breathed it in deeply, taking the darkness into my lungs and letting it flow out through my body and up my spine, and as it spread over my face and out to the very tips of my ears I felt the cool slithery calmness take the wheel and slowly, carefully push us forward into sharp and eager action.
We looked over the roof of the car, down the street to the house. A light gleamed beside the front door. We didn’t care. Its nasty gleam would never touch Us: We would slide around to the back, hugging the hedge and following the shadows. We would stalk through pools of gloom and slip in through the tattered screen of the pool cage and up to the back door. We would use the key we had been carrying these many weeks and we would slide through the door, into the house, and onto Robert, and then we would begin, and we would not end until there was nothing else left to do.
A deep breath, a slow and steady flush of clarity and control, and all the cold dark blues of the night around us glowed warm and bright in our eyes and the night smells came alive in our nose and all the clicks and whispers of nocturnal life began to blend into the thrumming music of the hunt, and we go forward with them.
Slowly, with casual carelessness in our steps, we walk toward the house. TV glows and blathers in the neighbors’ living rooms, and all is just as normal as it can be, everything peachy fine and hunky-dory—everything except for the nonchalant Monster strolling by on his way to a pleasant evening of lighthearted play that does not quite suit these sleepy suburbs.
We reach the hedge and all is still just what it should be, what it must be, and we pause to be sure, and when we are sure we slide without sound into the deeper darkness of the side yard and move carefully, quietly, perfectly down the shadowed hedge to the backyard.
And moving softly soundless across one brief bright patch we pause once more behind a key lime tree only ten feet from the pool cage at a place where a large flap of ripped screen hangs loose, and we stand there and we do nothing at all except breathe, wait, listen, and watch.
Several minutes go by and we remain motionless and soundless in our predator’s patience. Nothing happens. There is no sound or sight or smell and still we do not move, just waiting and watching. This side of the house is very clearly visible; one window shows a faint glimmer, as though a light is on in the hall just outside the room. Along the back of the house, facing the pool, there is my door, and then a large sliding glass door, and then another window. In this last window a bright light is on, and in the center, seen through the sliding glass door, there is a muted glow, spill from a light set back from the door.
But on our side, at our door, there is only lightless shadow, and nothing moves there, and we feel the gleaming happiness that all is right, all is ready, that once again things will go our way, as they always do when we are on the hunt, and at last, when there has been no sign of anything moving for a very long time, we move, one long smooth glide of purpose, out of the shadows and across the brownish grass and through the tattered flap of screen to the door.
We pause, one hand on the knob and one ear pressed against the door: nothing. No more than the muted rush of the central air conditioner blowing through the house. All is quiet, all is ready, and out of our pocket we take the key to Our New House, a newer and bigger and brighter and freshly painted house, ready for a wonderful new family life that will never move in now, because that dream was built on fumes from a happy hookah, a wispy picture of something that was never any more than hallucinations of hope, and that delusion has evaporated like the mirage it was and left cold dark ashes. And that does not matter. Nothing matters at all except this moment, this night, and this knife, this Right Now.
This is what is: Dexter with a blade and a target. This is the only Real there ever was: the sly stalk through shadows, the sudden pounce, the snicker of steel in a darkened room, and the muffled squeals and groans as the Truth slowly, gleefully pushes through the curtains and takes its bow. This is what is and what was and what shall be, and there was never really anything else in the world but this Dark Purpose, and never any time but now, and we push the key into the lock and with a silent twist of the wrist the door is open.
An inch, two … six slow and careful inches the door swings open and we pause once more. No movement, no sound, no sign of anything but the dim walls, still giving off the faint smell of fresh paint.
Still slow and careful we push the door open wider, wide enough now to slide through sideways, and we do, and as we turn to push it quietly closed we hear a melon-breaking thump and the dim room lights up around us like a bursting star and a bright pain blooms on the back of our head and as we pitch forward from dull surprise into painful darkness we are filled once more with the awful truth of our complete and brainless incompetence and the mean and mocking voice of our self-reproach as it calls out, Told you so!
And just before the blackness floods in and pushes out everything but regret, I can hear a small voice from a very great distance, a familiar voice, the snide and snarky voice of an eleven-year-old girl, as it says with great and bitter self-righteousness, “You didn’t have to hit him so hard.…”
And then happily for me, or for all the stupid inept shards of self-delusion that are left of me, black nothingness takes the wheel and drives us straight into a long and lifeless tunnel.
THIRTY-FIVE
FOR A VERY LONG TIME THERE WAS ONLY DARKNESS. NOTHING moved, or if it did, there was nothing to light its way, and nothing there to see it. There was only timeless, bottomless, thoughtless gloom, without shape or purpose, and this was very good.
And then somewhere far off on a bleak horizon, a persistent bleat of pain began to nag at the edge of the darkness. It throbbed insistently, and with each rhythmic beat of its pulse it grew bigger, brighter, sending out thorny little vines of misery that grew larger and stronger and pushed back the darkness piece by ever-shrinking piece. And at last the pain grew into a great and luminous tree with its roots driven deep into the bedrock, and it spread its branches and lit up the darkness and lo! It spake its name:
It’s me, Dexter.
And behold, the darkness answered back:
Hello, stupid.
I was awake. I could not be sure that this was a good thing; it hurt an awful lot, and so far I had done much better when I was unconscious. But no matter how much I might want to roll over and go back to sleep, the throbbing pain in my head was strong enough to make sure that I had to wake up and live with my apparently boundless stupidity.
So I woke up. I was groggy and dopey and not really tracking things very well, but I was awake. I was pretty sure I hadn’t gone to sleep normally, and I thought there might be some really important explanation for why I hadn’t, but in my numb and painful state I couldn’t quite think of it, or of anything else, and so I dove right back into the same stupidity that had landed me here and I tried to stand up.
It didn’t work very well. In fact, none of my limbs seemed to be doing what they were supposed to do. I pulled on an arm; it seemed to be behind my back for some reason, and it jerked about two inches, dragging the other arm along with it, and then it stopped and flopped back to where it had been, stuck behind my back. I tried my legs; they moved a little, but not separately—they seemed to be held together by something, too.
I took a deep breath. It hurt. I tried to think, and that hurt even more. Everything hurt and I couldn’t move; that didn’t seem right. Had something happened to me? Maybe—but how could I know if I couldn’t move and couldn’t see? My head throbbed its way through one or two thoughts, and came up with an answer: You can’t know if you can’t move and can’t see.
That was right; I was sure of it. I had thought up the right answer. I felt very good about that. And in a fit of overwhelming and completely unjustified self-confidence, I grabbed at another thought that floated past: I would do something about that.
That was good, too. I glowed with pride. Two whole ideas, all by myself. Could I possibly have another? I took a breath that turned the back of my head into a lake of molten pain, but a third idea came. I can’t move, so I will open my eyes.
Wonderful; I was firing on all cylinders now. I would open my eyes. If I could only remember how …
I tried; I managed a feeble flutter. My head throbbed. Maybe both eyes was too hard; I would open one of them.
Slowly, very carefully, with a great deal of painful effort, I pushed one eye open.
For a moment, I could not make sense of what I was seeing. My vision was blurry, but I seemed to be looking at something cream colored, maybe a little fuzzy? I could not tell what it was, nor how far away. I squinted and that really hurt. But after a long and painful time, things began to swim into focus.
Fuzzy, underneath me, where a floor should be: Aha, I thought. Carpet. And it was cream colored. I knew there was something I could think of that had to do with cream-colored carpet. I thought really hard for a while, and I finally remembered: the master bedroom at the New House had cream-colored carpet. I must be in my New House. The carpet was blurry and hard to see because my eye was so very close to it.
But that meant I was lying on my face. That didn’t seem to be right, not something I would usually do. Why was I doing it now? And why couldn’t I move?
Something was just not right. But now I had several really good clues, and a small dim memory told me that there were things I liked to do with clues. I liked to add them up. So I closed the eye and did the math. My face was close to a carpet. My hands and legs seemed to be held together by something so I could not move. My head hurt in a way that made me want to scream—except that even the thought of any loud noise made it hurt even more.
I was pretty sure I wouldn’t do all this to myself. Something unusual had happened to me. That must mean somebody else had made all this happen. Head, hands, legs, New House—all these things were connected. They added up and meant something, and if I could just push the pain aside for a moment, I would remember what they meant.
I heard a voice in another room—Astor’s voice, rising up in a tone of blame and scorn. And I remembered:
I had heard that voice, that same tone, at the exact moment all these unusual things began to happen.
For a long while I just drifted with the pain, remembering small pieces. I remembered the thump on my skull that put me here, and I remembered Astor’s voice as I pitched forward, and very slowly, I began to remember why I was here.
I had come here to tie up Robert. It hadn’t worked. He had tied me up instead.
And slowly at first, and then with a flood of bitter memory and lizard-brain rage, it all came back to me.
Robert had killed Jackie, and by doing that he had killed my new and wonderful life. And he had taken Astor, taken her from me, and he had done all these things right under my very own night-sniffing nose, making me into a bungler, a booby, a complete clown: Dorky Dexter, Royal Fool at the Court of Shadows. Dress him in motley and turn him loose with his funny little knife. Watch while he stabs himself and falls down, tripping over his giant floppy shoes. Dexter the Dupe, looking right at Robert and smiling because he sees only harmless, brainless, self-centered stupidity. And still looking and smiling while the dim-witted clot outthinks him, outflanks him, and caves in his head.
For several long and bright seconds the anger took me over and I shook with it, grinding my teeth and pulling against the ropes that held me. I rolled over once, twice, and yanked my limbs furiously, and of course, nothing at all happened, except that I was now three feet away from where I had been, and my head was throbbing even worse.
All right then, brute force was not the answer. And clearly thinking was not our strong suit. That left prayer, which is really just Talking to Yourself, and Myself had not been very helpful lately. Was there anything else left?
And strangely, happily, just in time, it turned out that there was one last thing: pure, stupid, unearned Luck.
And Luck came slithering into the room where I lay.
“Dexter!” a soft voice whispered, and I turned my head to the door with great and painful effort.
Astor stood there in bright silhouette, the light from the next room behind her. She was wearing what looked like a white silk negligee, with a pale blue bow holding it closed below her throat. She tiptoed in and squatted down beside me.
“You moved,” Astor whispered. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said. “My head hurts and I’m tied up.”
Astor ignored that. “He hit you really hard,” she said, still speaking very softly. “With a baseball bat. He hit Mom hard, too. She hasn’t moved for a while.” She put a hand on my forehead, then took it away and nodded. “I didn’t know he would do that,” she said. “I thought you might be dead.”
“I will be,” I said, “and you will be, too, if you don’t untie me.”
“He won’t kill me,” she said, and there was a bizarre, alien smugness in her voice. “Robert loves me.”
“Astor, Robert doesn’t love anybody but himself. And he’s killed a couple of people.”
“He did it for me,” she said. “So we could be together.” She smiled, a little proud, a little pleased with herself, and a bizarre and unexpected thought popped into my throbbing head: She was actually considering leaving me tied up, for Robert’s sake. Unthinkable—but she was thinking about it.
“Astor,” I said, and unfortunately, a little bit of Disapproving Dad crept into my voice. It was the worst possible tone to use on Astor, and she shook her head and frowned again.
“It’s true,” she said. “He killed them because he really loves me.”
“He killed Jackie,” I said.
“I know. Sorry,” she said, and she patted my arm. “He kind of had to. She came busting into his trailer, yelling at him, and we were … together,” she said, looking smug and a little shy. “She was yelling about how the computer says he killed Kathy, whoever that is. But she sees us there, you know. I let him … kiss me, and … and she sort of, whoa, just stopped there. And Robert jumps up and he’s totally, ‘No, no, wait a minute; I can explain.’ And she looks at him, and says something like, ‘Okay, you can explain it to Sergeant Morgan.’ ” She grinned briefly. “Aunt Deborah,” she told me.
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“So anyway, Robert jumps up and says to me, ‘Stay here,’ and he’s gone out the door, chasing Jackie.” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to miss anything. I followed and I see them go into Jackie’s trailer, and by the time I get there he’s running out again, carrying this really nice MacBook Air.” She nodded. “He says I can have it,” she said. “When we get away someplace safe.”
“Astor, there isn’t anyplace safe,” I said. “He’s killed two people. They’re going to find him, and they’re going to put him in prison for a long time.”
Astor bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I do know,” I said. “There is nowhere he can go where they won’t find him.”
She didn’t look convinced. “People get away with murder all the time,” she said, and she looked at me with a kind of knowing, challenging smirk.
“But Robert killed somebody famous, Astor. The cops have to catch him or they look bad to the whole world. They’ll give this everything they’ve got, and they’ll catch him.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Definitely,” I told her. “They will try their very hardest—in fact, the only thing that could make the cops try any harder is if Robert also kidnapped somebody. Like an eleven-year-old girl with blond hair.”
“He didn’t kidnap me, Dexter,” she said. “I went with him. He loves me.”
“Do you love him?”
She snorted. “Course not,” she said. “But he’s going to get me into movies.”
“He can’t do that from prison. Or if he’s dead,” I said.
“But he says we can get away!” she sai
d. “We can hide from the cops!”
“And how will he get you into movies if he’s hiding from the cops?”
She put her lower lip between her teeth and frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. And I thought I might have convinced her at last.
“Astor,” I said. “Robert’s acting career is over. His life is over. And yours is, too, if you stay with him.” I wiggled closer to her and held my wrists up as far as I could. “Now untie me.”
Astor looked at me, and then turned and looked at the door. Then she looked back at me and shook her head. “I better not,” she said. “Robert might get mad.”
“Astor, for Christ’s sake!”
She put a hand across my mouth. “Shhh,” she said. “He’ll hear you.”
“I already did,” said a voice from the door, and Robert came into the room. He flipped the light switch beside the door and the ceiling light came on. It was a lot brighter than I remembered it, and I had to squint. So I didn’t see anything until Robert knelt down beside me, his head blocking the light. Then I could see, but I wished I couldn’t; Robert was carrying a very large butcher knife, and he looked like he knew what he wanted to do with it.
Robert studied me for a moment, head cocked to one side. Even in the glaring light of this room, his tan looked great, his skin seemed smooth and soft, and his teeth were still perfect as he peeled his lips back to give me a brief automatic smile. He hefted the knife and there was no doubt what he was thinking, but he was still the most unlikely executioner I could ever imagine. “You shouldn’t have come here, Dexter,” he said, rather sorrowfully, as if it was all my fault.
“You shouldn’t have killed Jackie,” I said.
He grimaced briefly. “Yeah, I hate that,” he said. “I just don’t have the stomach for it. But I had to,” he said, and he shrugged. “It gets a little easier each time.” He looked at me like he thought I would be easiest of all, and I could see I was running out of time. “Anyway,” he said, “I had a good reason. I did it for Astor.”
