I think we felt a sense of shame at first, but there was no rationalizing this because presumably what we had seen had been staged. It couldn’t have been real. Even the most arrogant of psychopaths wouldn’t have staged a murder in front of a live audience, and the way the skeletal figure had devoured her was nearly impossible to do without some kind of cutting device.
I wondered what Damon was thinking. He didn’t say anything, his face was frozen, and when we reached my house, all he could do was tell me goodbye. As he drove away, I stood there. A nagging depression left me stranded on that cold and icy thoroughfare. The freezing air began to creep up on me, callous and unforgiving. Kya wasn’t there that night. I figured she had gotten drunk and decided to stay the night with Stephanie. After entering the house, I went straight to the bathroom to check on my face. My top lip was swollen with a small cut. After medicating it, I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep because my thoughts started taking over. We had a small twenty-seven inch TV in the bedroom. I turned it on, hoping to find something that would take the place of my contemplations. I flipped through the plethora of nightly talk shows, innocuous sitcoms, and news pundits. None of it worked. Something, even the smallest thing, reminded me of what I had seen. Eventually, with the help of sleep aids, I achieved a state of rest, which was more like a comatose blackout, but it still couldn’t keep my thoughts at bay.
I had a dream, a vivid one. It was all remembered in fragments. I was with the young woman on stage, though my mind drew a composite of her that wasn’t quite clear. It was like viewing her through veined glass. She was giving herself to me. Flesh and sanctity, and I took it all as the crowd cheered me on. After chewing through the shaven sex between her legs, I achieved an orgasm. This was the most sexually exhilarating experience. She was giving her very life to me. I woke up having had the first wet dream since adolescence. I was sweaty and my eyes were groggy. It took me at least five minutes to stand up. Kya still wasn’t there. This sent shivers right through me. For some reason I pictured her dead somewhere in the snow, it was the type of contemplation an overbearing mother would have if her child stayed out past curfew.
After showering, I periodically looked out the window. The day was gray and the slush-filled earth was porous and muddy. An hour later, I finally heard her car just over the sound of the television. Just as she was getting out, I scrambled to the window and parted the blinds. She looked disheveled, tired, but okay. While lumbering up the walkway to the front porch, she smiled wantonly, as though she were a 16-year-old girl with a crush.
I hated her smile. It made me jealous because she never responded to me that way anymore. After hearing her door key, I quickly sat down in the living room chair. I remember wanting to hear her say something, anything, just to let me know we were still together, a solid couple who had hit a roadblock, but she shut the door loudly behind me and walked into the bathroom without saying a word. I told myself I was being silly at that moment. It was the haze of the night before polluting my view of the relationship. I thought about telling Kya about the party, but I didn’t know quite how to process it in my head, how to characterize it into speech. I wasn’t even sure what I had seen was real. It was all some sort of feeling. After she got out of the shower I tried to engage her, but all I could get from her was small talk.
The kind of talk two people throw at each other when they’re forced into an awkward social situation, even my swollen lip couldn’t court her attention or concern. Then I asked her if she would like to go out to dinner. I received a slight cringe, as though the mere offer had annoyed her. Afterward, I asked if she was okay and gave her a light massage, but she pulled away. She tried to cover it up by giving me a soft rub on my right hand with hers, and that night, we slept far away on opposite sides of the bed. We went along like this for the next couple of days.
Teaching was my only sanctuary, and I wondered about Damon. Then, a week later, there was a message on my answering machine. It was frantic and hard to understand, but all I could notice was his fragmented speech. I sssaw her ssshe in the Chillicothe Constitution- Tribune. A man at the restaurant was reading it. The rest of his ramble sounded muffled, as though he had his head turned away from the phone. I called him back, but the phone rang relentlessly. After thirty seconds, I put the phone down and tried again. The second time around I could hear the blood pumping in my ears. Once again, he didn’t answer. Quickly, I ran to my car, cranked on the ignition, and drove to his apartment. The complex he lived in was the wraparound kind where each tenant had what looked like a small one-story house with a miniature deck. As I turned into the large circular driveway, I saw someone driving out in a sleek, black Chevy convertible. I glanced at the driver to wave at him.
Then, disbelieving, I did a double take. It was Kerns. He was smiling as though he were a friend, as though he knew all about me. I hated it. I couldn’t even manage to wave back, smile, or show him anything but a grimace. Immediately, I slammed on the brakes and craned my head to see him driving away. Then I pulled my Wrangler right next to Damon’s Ford Taurus as quickly as I could. A series of scenarios about Damon flashed in my head, though none of them took much shape. When I reached his door I turned the handle, but it was locked.
“Damon!” I screamed. I waited a moment, but there was no answer from the other side, so I began banging the door as loudly as I possibly could. Finally, there was a voice.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s Shawn,” I said. There was a long pause on the other side. I heard the lock turn, the knob screeched, and then Damon opened the door. The look on his face was one of shock and defeat, an expression I had never seen in him before. He stood aside so I could walk in, and then he closed the door behind me with urgency and walked into the kitchen. I stood, puzzled, as though I were watching a man with a mental handicap.
He looked like he hadn’t bathed. Perhaps he had, but his clothes were ruffled and compressed, as if he had slept in them. It just wasn’t like him. Even if he only had the company of his close friends, he was always as GQ as he could possibly be. When I stepped into his kitchen, I saw a half-drunken bottle of high quality Pinot Grigio.
He was drinking it straight from the bottle. It was as if he were some antihero Detective in a Raymond Chandler novel. A copy of the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune was sitting right in front of him.
“Where’d you get the wine, bud?” He took another firm swig before answering.
“He brought it.”
“Who?” I knew exactly of whom he was referring.
“Martin Kerns. He was here.”
“How did he know where you lived?”
“We had a conversation at the restaurant some time ago. I told him where I lived.”
“Why did he come here?” Damon took another drink. This time it was long and drawn out, as though he were swigging down a tall glass of water, and even then, he didn’t answer me. Slowly, he pushed over a copy of the paper containing the woman’s picture. According to the article, her name was Rebecca Schroeder. The picture itself seemed to be from a casual function with friends, and the article under it only took up a few paragraphs, mostly talking about how the police had no evidence to go on. The author of the article also hinted at the fact that she had run away on several occasions. Her mother lived in Rhode Island, and according to friends, the two of them barely spoke.
Rebecca lived with her father, who was, according to residents and family, a violent drunk. When she had run away the first time, she stayed with a friend. The second time, it was with a boyfriend. The final time, however, everyone claimed, even her closest friends, that they didn’t know about it.
“He said he made her come,” Damon said, seeming to know that I had just finished the last sentence of the article. She was seeking purpose, direction, and he gave it to her.
“I don’t understand, what are you saying?” I replied.
“That thing we saw, that corpse on stage. It was Kerns. He killed her he…” Damon slowly cocked his head t
oward me, and with every slight movement, his head seemed to shake awkwardly, as though it were only being balanced upon his neck with a spring. “He said he was old. Thousands of years, I think he said. The Aztecs used to call him a God of the Dead, and acts of cannibalism were performed around a great temple.
He had other names among Dark Age tribes throughout time, though most of them were false, he claims, and even though he has power, he is not a deity, just simply a part of a complicated and ever evolving understanding of the world.
He told me he doesn’t know where he began, when the void of nonexistence suddenly turned to a conscious state. He feels it is his role to show people what they’d rather deny. Remind them of what they suppress, show them what they are in spite of their hubris. He wants to show us that we haven’t mastered our base compulsions.
He told me that’s what sacrifices are all about. I liked what we saw that night, Shawn. I mean… I hated it but I like it, you know, I was filled with exhilaration when he killed her. I felt like I was sharing in his aggression. It was freeing. I can’t get it out of my head.
“Stop! He’s lying, can’t you see that? And you didn’t know it was real.” My outburst was met with a docile, almost sickly expression. The behavior was bizarre to me. He seemed weak.
“I don’t think he is, and he said that if either of us went to the police we would regret it.”
“Those are the actions of an entitled thug, Damon. We have to tell the local police department what we know. It’ll be there responsibility from then on out, but we at least have to say something. ”
He protested slightly a few more times. That’s when I told him I would be the one to do it, but I made it aware to him, and I think he knew this deep down, that he would have to talk to them as well. He conceded to this with a slow head nod. Then I asked him if he wanted me to stay for a while. He told me he was fine, though I couldn’t agree.
“Don’t tell Kya about this, at least not until we go to the police. I don’t want her involved in this.”
“I won’t. I promise.” When I got back home Kya was out for the second night in a row, but she did return earlier than she had before, saying that she had a client who had to work late and couldn’t get a haircut until seven thirty.
“It’s ten o’clock now. It took that long. He must’ve had a real tough cut.”
“Actually, it was a woman.” There was a pause between us for a long while.
“Oh yeah, what’s her name?”
“Karen Hernandez,” she replied. I felt like she had told me that name before, but I couldn’t quite place it. “What are you implying?” There was a very sharp and direct tone in her voice. It meant I had an argument to look forward to, and I always tried my best to avoid them. As much as I hated to admit it, I was more like my father than I formally thought.
All the anger that had driven my assertiveness in adolescence and early adulthood seemed to die away when I met her. At first, it seemed a blessing, but in moments like this, and they were growing more frequent, I felt like a straw doll made to be stepped on.
“I just miss you, that’s all. You’re not home much anymore. You know I didn’t mean anything by it.” She took in a slow and nasally inhalation of air.
“I have things to do.” I wanted to ask her what those things were because I felt her slipping away, but I bit my tongue.
I didn’t have school the next day, so I spent most of my time thinking, finding it hard to shake all the things running through my head. It was then that I decided to go for a drive. I had no particular place in mind. I just drove to the eastern side of town and decided to walk around an old secondhand shop I liked. It was early morning, and the air was cool. There were only a few people inside the shop. I mostly looked at the ground and thought to myself, which my mother would’ve criticized me for doing. She claimed that it would negatively affect my posture and that pickpockets would single me out because I looked like a victim who was not paying attention. Looking back, I think I just develop the habit to spite her. After leaving the store, I saw a police officer at the end of the street.
The sheriff was parked securely on the curb and he was smoking a cigarette. My heart started to pound. I wanted to tell him everything that had happened, but as I drew nearer, my heart sank and I lost my footing on the snow ridden sidewalk.
“Hey, are you all right, son?”
“I’m all right,” I said, slightly shaken from the fall. The ground was cold, piercingly so. At first, I didn’t know the man who was speaking. Once I shook the momentary shock and pain, I looked up.
When I saw the police officer bent over, face next to mine, I crawled away as quickly as I could. I had seen him at the party. He was one of the ten men guarding the door. I remembered him so vividly because he was the closest to the middle, directly where my line of site lined up. He smirked at me, looking like a malevolent jester, and the thick folds of his fat face formed even rivulets from the curves of his lips to his upper cheeks. Quickly, I turned around and stood up on my feet.
“You’re okay, right?” he said. I didn’t turn around. I just continue to walk faster and faster, until I reached an assured run. It was only out of sheer luck that I didn’t slip. People stared, but I didn’t care. After getting in my car, I drove home, speeding the entire way. I tried to gauge for myself the encounter I had just had. It was confusing and I continue to ask myself if I had overreacted. I played the scenario over in my head, not really knowing what I was expecting to find.
I asked myself if I was adding things that had not happened, things my subconscious had added to fit my own perceptions. As I walked through the front door, I heard the phone ringing. Something about it made me angry. It interrupted, or rather it added to my already taxed emotions. When I looked at the caller ID, I saw the call was from Kya. I was so angry with her that I didn’t want to answer it. It rang for another thirty seconds, and then stopped.
I began to turn around only to find that it started again. This time I answered it. Kya was crying on the other side. The fact that she was crying filled me with relief, which was not nice or thoughtful, but it meant she still relied on me.
“Calm down, honey, what’s wrong?” It was hard for me to sound concerned because I was so happy. She had come to me and nobody else, but when she began to explain the reason for her call, my face became slate white. There was a fire at The Lee House. She said on the phone that it was blazing out of control. I told myself that she was exaggerating out of fear, but fifteen minutes later, while driving to her as quickly as possible, I could see the smoke.
The street had been completely cleared. Police cars were blocking all sides of the street. A handful of people flocked as closely as the police would allow, and down the street, though I couldn’t see it clearly because of the smoke, there were flashing lights.
They overlapped each other strangely, causing a fluid incandescence that streaked the sky. When I stepped out, I could feel the water mixing with the cold air. It was all so loud. Frantically, I searched for Kya, but the blinding brume soaked up my oxygen and eyesight.
The fire was a luminous beam trying to escape the prison of smoke and the virtual flood of water fleeing the fire hose. It looked like a shapeless totem being brought to its knees. I shouted Kya’s name, but this was hollow and ultimately pointless. My voice couldn’t rise over the cacophony. While still glancing around I saw someone walking toward me in the cloud of smoke. Stridently, I squinted at the person coming toward me. It was a long time before I could even tell the person was human. The image came to me in fragments of thick smog.
For some time, at least at first, I thought it was Damon coming to tell me he was okay, but as it all cleared away. As the miasma conveniently parted, I saw the police officer I had the encounter with just a few hours before.
“You did this,” I screamed. “You killed him.” I was filled with fury at that point, and I rushed to attack him. He braced himself and tried to reach for his Glock. This compelled me to hesitate, which a
llowed him to give me a sharp shove head first onto the ground. He was a big man, and the pain in my face soon traveled through my entire body.
“I’d advise you to go no further with this. The only one who’s going to be affected is you. Your girlfriends sittin’ in the back of my car, a couple of my fellow deputies are watching her. She’s really broken up.” Even though he was shouting over the noise, his voice sounded muffled and strained. ”
“Because of you, does she know you’re a part of all this?” I shouted, pushing myself up onto my knees.
“Does she know about you? You watched the show, just like everybody else, and you even liked it, didn’t you? There was some primordial part of you that enjoyed it.”
I wanted to shout at him, cut him to pieces with a chorus of searing words that would tear at the fabric of his accusations, but as I set about forming them, my mind suddenly went blank. There was an aspect of me that liked it, and in dreams, I had seen fit to replay it to my own liking. I stood up, not knowing what to do. He stared at me for a moment, seeming to size up my intent.
“Did you do this?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“I think you know,” he said. He then turned away from me and started walking toward the police car, knowing that I would indeed follow peacefully. When I finally made my way over to the cruiser I saw Kya sitting in the backseat, wrapped in a police blanket. She was crying so hard that she couldn’t breathe, to the point where she was gasping for any invaluable intake of air she could get.
9 Tales Told in the Dark 15 Page 7
