I knew underneath that smirk of his was fury—he hated when people didn’t show up exactly when they said they would. He always had his days planned out to the millisecond. So I showed up three hours early. Just to fuck with him.
As I pulled the truck in front of the garage and Christopher did his best 1950s sitcom-waving impression of “welcome to the neighborhood,” I considered just doing it. Right here, right now. I thought about how easy it would be to roll down the window, whip out the Bersa, blow his head to kingdom come, and drive off.
Stop it. You have a plan. You have to wait for the right moment. Even if it takes longer than you want.
I looked back at Shepard, who was standing at attention, nose pressed up against the glass of the back window while his tail swished back and forth. For some inexplicable reason, Shepard liked Christopher. I thought dogs were supposed to be able to tell when someone was good or not. Or, at the very least, when they have a soul. But I guess when someone makes a habit of greeting a dog with bacon bits—even if they’ve only met a handful of times—that person will linger in that dog’s memory and make them lose their moral compass. Or all sense of…well, sense.
Sure enough, when I pulled open the backdoor, Shepard tumbled out and made a beeline for Christopher, who crouched down with his arms outstretched wide.
“There’s my buddy! There he is.” I hate when people talk to animals and babies in that high-pitched, whiny voice that sounds more like a radio frequency than a human.
I stepped out of the driver’s seat. Shepard and I were still damp from the storm back at Jeremy’s Run. I rounded my truck to where Christopher and my Judas of a dog were, my heartbeat thundering through my rib cage like a metronome hooked up to an amplifier.
We locked eyes.
Fuck me. Biding my time is going to be harder than I thought.
Finally, my brother stood up, breaking the silence.
“The two of you are soaked! What’d you do, walk through hell while Satan was taking a shower?”
“Nah. He knew I was on my way to meet you.”
And the dance begins.
“You’re early.”
“I thought we said five?” I lied.
“Eight.”
“Oh. I can come back.”
There was that billboard-worthy smile of his again. “Don’t be silly. I just wish I had known. Still had some preparations to make.” Christopher pointed at Shepard, who was expectantly sniffing around the pockets of his running attire. “I could have fried something up for our friend.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Daddy always said bacon makes a dog’s coat shiny.”
“How many beers in would he be when he said that?”
“That doesn’t make it false.”
“Shep’ll survive.”
“Surviving and living are two different things, Brother.”
“Don’t I know it, Brother.”
A roll of thunder rumbled in the distance. The storm that I had already weathered was rapidly approaching us. But that was nothing compared to the agitated, low moan that shook loose from Shepard as he continued to search for something edible in Christopher’s pockets. I did my best to prevent a grin from tugging at the corner of my lips. I knew that sound, and I knew what would come soon after that sound if he wasn’t placated.
Just needed to buy some time.
“Will Bonnie be joining us for these few days?” I knew full well that he and Bonnie had split about a year back, but it had been long enough since we had seen one another that I could reasonably claim that I didn’t.
A flicker of something—maybe sadness, maybe relief—tore into the phony mask that Christopher was currently wearing. “No. I’m afraid that she and I aren’t together anymore.”
“Oh. Shame. You normally have such a good eye for people.”
Wrath crinkled the corners of my brother’s eyes. It wouldn’t be perceptible to anyone else but me, but I knew what to look for. I knew what he was imagining doing to me at that moment. Problem is, he needed me. And I needed to keep him on the tit just long enough to be rid of him forever. So, we were at a stalemate. Until one of us decided to blink first.
And that sure as shit wasn’t going to be me.
The thunder got louder, along with Shepard’s irritation.
Christopher motioned at the cabin. “We should probably get inside. Rain’s about to hit.”
I looked at Shepard, recognizing the glint in his eye.
Any second now.
I nodded in agreement. “Yeah. It’s a real frog strangler.” I mirrored his beckoning to the front door. “After you.”
Just as Christopher tried to pick up and move, Shepard pinned his front leg on Christopher’s right foot, lifted his hind leg, and did what any reasonable animal would do in this situation. I could barely stifle my snickering as Christopher shouted out and recoiled in disgust as he shook himself loose from Shepard’s iron grip and propulsive stream of urine.
“What the fuck?!” bellowed my brother. Shepard did his best John Wayne impression as he sidled back over to me, swinging his hips domineeringly.
“Sorry, Brother. I don’t know what got into him,” I feigned innocently.
Shepard sat down next to me at attention and licked his chops, knowing full well what he did and not caring one bit.
Looks like Judas was on my side after all.
While Christopher showered off Shepard’s piss, I ambled around the cabin, taking stock of my brother’s palace. I barely recognized anything I saw—things had changed quite a bit since I was here last. Designer furniture, wallpaper, and rugs that probably cost more than my entire house back in Kentucky. I barely knew my brother anymore, but even I knew this décor wasn’t suitable for him. Not representative of where he came from. Where we came from. This chichi shit—stuff that he had clearly spent a small fortune on to try and give the property a clean slate after what had gone down—was to impress a crowd of people that was never going to pick up what he was putting down. No matter how high in government he rose, he was always going to be seen as poor white trash made good—a cancer in this neck of the woods if there ever was one. I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
I drained the last of my coffee that Christopher had insisted on pouring for me and set the empty mug on his expensive-looking coffee table. No coaster. Because fuck him. He had spent about two minutes explaining to me that it was some specially imported blend of Colombian beans. Or maybe he said Arabica. I couldn’t remember. About five seconds in, I had turned off my ears. Putting down the mug with no coaster seemed a fair punishment. The coffee was delicious, though. I’ll say that much.
Shepard’s buzz saw snoring made me snap back to my surroundings. Stepping over my beached whale of a dog, I looked outside through the living room’s new, larger-than-necessary bay window. The storm was shifting between two gears: raining so hard that it made the whole house sound like a rock drummer hopped up on cocaine and a slow drizzle that looked like a movie star trying to cry their way to an Academy Award. It seemed God couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to wipe us clean off the earth, washing away the mistakes he made when creating us.
I heard the shower shut off and the curtain rings grind against the rod as Christopher finally stepped out. I checked my watch—it had been thirty minutes since he had gone into the bathroom. I have never met a man who takes as long in the shower as he does.
The bathroom door burst open as a freshly changed Christopher stepped out, steam billowing out behind him.
“Woo boy. Nothing better than a long, hot shower. You want in?” He hooked his thumb behind him.
Yeah, there’s definitely hot water left after that Greek tragedy of a shower. Dickhead.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Don’t want to spritz the horse smell off you?”
“I didn’t think I smelled.”
“It lingers.”
I clenched my jaw. “That smell is in my blood, Brother. No chance of getting it out now.”
“Anything is fixable if you try hard enough, Brother.”
“Didn’t realize I needed to be fixed.”
Choosing not to respond, Christopher pointed at my coffee mug.
“More coffee?”
I snatched it up before he could get to it. It delighted me to see that a faint ring line had been left on his precious table. “I’ll get it myself.”
I strode over to the galley kitchen that had been renovated just enough that he could claim it was a “chef’s kitchen” and poured myself another cup out of the stainless-steel pot. Trying to look anywhere but at my brother, I intently studied the murky liquid that was steaming out of my porcelain mug.
“I was thinking I’d fix us some dinner here in a bit. How do you feel about steak tartare? I got the recipe from this restaurant on the Hill that I go to…” Once again, I tuned out Christopher’s voice as he rambled on, changing the channel in my brain to something else.
Anything else.
I looked up from the coffee through the small kitchen window. God had downshifted the weather into second gear for a beat, so I could see into the backyard.
And that’s when I noticed it.
The Red Maple where my beloved’s body had swung in the wind.
The bastard told me he was going to cut it down. He promised me that he was going to chop it into mulch-sized pieces. And, like an idiot, I had believed him.
My hands shook as my fist curled around the mug like the Ouroboros.
He changed everything else about this fucking house, but he couldn’t be bothered to change the one thing that actually needed to go?
Tighter.
And tighter.
And tighter.
When I kill him, I’m going to make it slow. And painful.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Christopher yelled at me.
I looked down at my right hand. My grip had cracked the mug down to bits and gashed open my palm. Not deep enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, but deep enough that it wasn’t nothing.
I let my blood drip down onto Christopher’s hardwood floor, making no attempt to stop my DNA from sullying it.
“Jesus, Cillian!” He practically shoved me into the sink and under the cold, running tap water before dropping to his knees in a vain attempt to prevent my blood from forever soiling his domain.
As the frigid water slowly brought me back down to earth, I set my jaw, reigning myself in. It took a minute before I could bring myself to speak. “I need to lie down.”
And with that, I spiked the shards of mug into the trash, wrapped my hand in a towel, and strode into the guest bedroom, slamming the door behind me.
Christopher’s raw meat would just have to wait.
The sound of tightening rope woke me up from my nightmare with a jolt.
I lurched up out of the guest bedroom’s bed, my forehead dripping in the sweat of fear.
There’s nothing on this green earth that I wouldn’t do to cut that memory out of my head.
I checked my watch. There was still some dried blood on the strap from before, and the old towel I had used to wrap my wound was now permanently red. It was a little after 1 AM, and the cabin was wrapped in a misty film of darkness. I rubbed my temples, trying desperately to stop them from pounding.
After the earlier incident in the kitchen, I hadn’t gotten out of this bed, save for one time when I heard Shepard scratching at the door. Shepard got rather insistent when a door wasn’t opened for him immediately. Now, he was curled up against the radiator, claiming all the heat for himself. I think in a previous life, he was a tyrant prince. Or maybe a Hollywood producer. From what I hear, they’re two sides of the same coin.
I swung my legs horizontally over the bed frame, touching my bare feet down on the floor. Unlike the rest of the house, the guest bedroom flooring was the cheap, laminate stuff that only appeared like it was wood. I guess Christopher chose to cut corners in a place he knew most people wouldn’t see. I’d say there was a metaphor of some kind in that.
I ran my tongue over my cracked, dry lips. They, along with my parched throat, needed to be satiated. Oxycontin tends to make me thirstier than an alcoholic at a brewery.
I would need to step foot outside my stronghold.
I slowly opened my door and tip-toed out into the living room, taking great care not to make any noise that could potentially rouse my brother. I didn’t want to have to see his smug face again until morning.
I peeked at the crack beneath his door frame. No light emanating from within, far as I could tell. I pressed my ear lightly against his door. I could hear the faint sounds of his snoring interlaced with his noise machine that concocted sounds of a babbling brook streaming through a forest.
Sleep tight, asshole.
I padded to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, taking care not to look out the window at the thing that had taken a buzz saw to my nerves in the first place. I drained the glass and repeated the process. As I felt the ice-cold liquid sliding down inside my chest, I recognized something else creeping in the back door of my brain: doubt.
Once I did what I came here to do, there was no going back from it. My brother’s death wouldn’t go unnoticed. And I would be the prime suspect unless I executed everything perfectly. But if I missed one thing, slipped up on one point? I would be trading my own life for his. It’s not like I had experience doing this, after all.
And for murdering a high-profile Virginia politician? Life in prison. Was that a risk I was willing to take?
As I feebly tried to extinguish the bonfire in my brain, I noticed, for the first time, my brother’s fridge. Unlike everything else in this godforsaken place, it looked like someone with a soul had decorated it. It was covered with photos, as well as a few quirky magnets. One in particular caught my eye. It was the head of a bear—mouth wide open, baring its teeth—that had been fashioned into a bottle opener. Underneath the head was the catchphrase in all caps: BEAR WITH ME WHILE I OPEN THIS BEER.
I couldn’t help it. That made me chuckle.
My eyes cycled through the photos. Most of them were of Christopher shaking hands with various state and federal government figures. I recognized a few. There were a couple with Dad, and then a couple more with some of Christopher’s college buddies that I vaguely remembered. The type of guys who were no doubt still caught up talking about the good ol’ days—save for the geeky-looking one on the far right. That was the tech wiz that hit it big with Christopher’s initial backing. The guy that paid for everything in this house.
But it wasn’t them that caught my attention.
In the top left corner, so small and faded that if you blinked, you’d miss it, was a picture of us. We were about eight years old, arms wrapped around each other as we cheesed in front of Funland, the small outdoor amusement park on the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach. My front two teeth were missing. His too.
I pulled off the photo to get a closer look. Mama loved Rehoboth. We went there all the time before she passed. I remembered Funland. It was one of the few memories I had left of my early childhood—the times before Christopher and I grew apart. I remembered us smashing into each other with bumper cars, laughing up a storm, and then getting frozen custard where the cones had enough sugar in them to last us a week.
One time, we waited in line for nearly a half-hour for one of those delicious treats, and when we finally got them, a neighborhood bully I had some tussles with came up and knocked the cone out of my hand. Christopher, in solidarity, didn’t eat his either. But that was mainly because he jammed it on top of the bully’s head before giving him a shiner. After the bully staggered away, he helped me up and told me that ‘brothers looked after brothers.’
For a split second, I wondered if my face would ever again carry the unadulterated delight that photo captured. Or if either of us would tell the other something like that again. But then I realized all that was a distant memory—something that could never be reclaimed.
No matter how hard I tried.
There was no chance of my going back to sleep now. So, I quietly unlocked the front door and let myself out.
It was time for a walk in the night.
Walking at night relaxes me more than it probably should. There’s something oddly freeing about not being able to see more than a few feet in front of you. You’re completely surrendering everything over to the universe and its twisted sense of humor. The ultimate roll of the dice in this bullshit game of craps that we call life.
It was completely clear overhead now—the storm had passed, leaving the kind of cloudless night where the moon is shining so bright it’s practically burning a hole in the sky. It was the kind of moon where, as a boy, I’d climb the tallest tree all the way to the top just to get a look at it and pretend I was Jimmy Stewart about to lasso it down.
I wasn’t a boy anymore.
He had probably planted that photo there in preparation for me coming. There’s no way a guy like him would hang onto that photo for any other reason…right?
I tried to remember if I had ever seen it before. I honestly couldn’t recall—I had done everything in my power to erase my memories of this place, like an addict flushing all his drugs down the toilet.
Stop it. Don’t let him win. Manipulating people to get what he wants is his profession. He doesn’t deserve to come out of this unscathed. He doesn’t deserve to come out of anything unscathed.
I needed to shut the fuck up and listen to what my brain was trying to tell me. Drown out what my heart, the foolhardiest part of me, was attempting to get me to believe. The part of me that had prevented me from carrying out my plan of retribution all these years. The part of me that secretly wished my brother would accept some sort of responsibility for what had happened with Audrey—so that we—my brother and I—could perhaps, maybe, find some sort of common ground again. A truce.
I stopped and looked around, getting my bearings, not exactly sure how long I had been walking. I did know it was just a straight shot back to the cabin, though, and I knew I was high up on a mountain. Off the proverbial beaten path—hell, I’d gotten to the point where trails were but a distant memory.
Which made it weird that I saw a fresh set of hoof prints in the mud in front of me.
Frowning, I crouched down to get a better look. The indentation marks were light, which meant two things: the horse didn’t have a rider, and it wasn’t shod. No one would be riding up here in the night, anyway. It had probably jumped its fence. A runaway. An animal that was looking for a way out of its circumstances by any means necessary.
I followed the tracks to see where they led, only to find they dead-ended in an open grassy plateau. I let out a series of low whistles, trying on the off chance that I could lure the horse out of hiding. No luck. As I wet my lips to try again, I stopped myself short.
Why would I want to stop this horse from achieving what it really wanted? Horses are herd animals—they don’t run off unless the life they’ve been living is so awful that braving it alone in the wilderness seems like the only possible alternative.
I chuckled ruefully as it suddenly occurred to me—this horse had the stones to do the thing that I had been too chicken to do all these years. The burn-all-of-your-bridges battle charge was the only thing that would actually give me what I wanted: some sort of finality, maybe resolution.
I needed to take a page out of this horse’s book—hop the wall that had been boxing me in and gallop off into the night. Untethered by doubt.
I turned heel and practically double-timed back to the cabin.
I had failed to protect my beloved from him. I had been the ultimate coward.
But now? I was going to make him pay. For all of it.
I got back to the cabin in what felt like no time at all.
Then I saw that the front door was wide open.
And that my brother’s corpse was splayed on the steps, his brains splattered all over the front porch.
Someone had beaten me to it.