A GLARING LIGHT LIKE THE SECOND COMING JOLTED FIELDING awake. His first instinct was to run or move and he tried both but both were impossible. His ankles were bound, his wrists cuffed to something cold. He was seated in a metal folding chair and the cold something his wrists were cuffed to was the piping of an oil boiler. Everything was out of focus until it wasn’t and when it all came into view he realized he was back in that big empty room of the paper mill. There were studio lights on tall stands and the light was blinding. They were directed to a very specific focal point and beyond that ring of light the darkness could only be described as solid. The lights made a faint buzzing sound. And over the buzzing came the drugged sounds of Eunice Thompson tied to a table.
Fielding blinked heavily. He did it again. He didn’t believe what he was looking at. She was laid out on her back. Her clothes had been removed. Her long hair hung from the edge of the table like a thick vine. It had been braided and within the braid there were feathers and twigs of sage. Fielding could see parts of her body had been painted. The paint almost looked like blood and the designs it left looked to be made by a sloppy hand, with the palm and all five fingers bold and distinct before fading out as the hand smeared across the skin. A black oval was painted over her eyes. Just like the others. The table she lay upon was the same table he’d seen in the video. Cut in a V and her legs tied to that shape.
Fielding tried to say the girl’s name but only a mumble exited. A hot drip fell down his chin. In his lap there was a wide stain that glistened like spilled red molasses. He tried calling her name again but a voice not his own interrupted with,
Ah ah ah. I would not strain yourself, Mr Fielding. You have already lost a good amount of blood.
Fielding squinted into the darkness. The voice seemed to have no origin. It felt as if it were all around him. Fielding stayed quiet. Out of the gloom came a towering figure. Made taller by the gruesome mask he wore. The wild fringe of animal hair. The antlers wired in place. He came into view and stood just within the light.
Who the hell are yeh? Fielding said.
Through the mask Fielding heard the man laugh.
Who the hell are yeh! Fielding shouted.
Would that matter, Mr Fielding? Noon said.
What?
I asked whether or not that would matter.
Yeh get that girl off that table right now.
Why are you so angry, Mr Fielding?
Fielding spit a gout of blood onto the cement floor. A smell like iron and mold rose back up at him. Then the smell of urine. He wondered how long he’d been chained there.
Mr Fielding?
Stop sayin my name.
How shall I address you then?
Yeh don’t.
But I am here. You are there. We are looking at one another. We have to make an attempt.
All I can see is some chickenshit pervert hidin behind some stupid goddamn mask.
Would you prefer if I removed it?
I don’t care what yeh do so long as yeh untie the girl and then put a gun to yer head and pull the trigger.
Pull the trigger? That’s awfully violent.
Yeh’ve already done it once tonight.
Yes, Noon said, but you were running. Running looks bad. Running is panic.
If yeh don’t want panic then quit fuckin shootin at people.
Isn’t this funny?
No.
Yes it is.
Why is this funny?
Choices, he said. How we have arrived here simultaneously. The minor decisions, the insignificant details that led you here. To this place. To this moment. It’s remarkable, isn’t it? How so many events had to align just so to bring you here tonight. And now here you are. Seated in that chair. Looking at me. Me looking at you. Remarkable.
Choices, Fielding said. Had nothin to do with choices.
He spit.
Please stop spitting on the floor, Noon said. I can get you a towel or a jar if you like.
Fielding spit again. The man took off the mask. He removed it slowly as if afraid to damage it. Even in the shadows of the studio lights his blue eyes were luminous.
So that’s what a crazy person looks like, Fielding said.
I’m not crazy, Mr Fielding.
Yes yeh are, Fielding said. Batshit.
To be crazy is to not be in control. Do I look out of control, Mr Fielding?
Yes. Whatever the opposite of control is. That’s what yeh are.
Chaos.
What?
Chaos. Chaos is the opposite of control.
Sure, Fielding said. Let’s call it that.
Do you believe in movies, Mr Fielding?
Movies?
Film. Cinema.
I don’t know what that means.
It is a very simple question.
It’s a stupid question and I’m not goin a answer it.
I do, Mr Fielding.
Good for you.
Do you know why I do?
I could care less.
I believe in it because it’s a way to see ourselves in our most extreme form. To see ourselves in a way we could never imagine in reality. On film anything is possible.
That’s why yeh make that bullshit smut?
Again, Mr Fielding, choices. It’s all about choices. I value honesty. Vulnerability. Intercourse, sex, the physical act of it all doesn’t mean anything. Not really. Merely an amusing by-product. What I am searching for is that brief moment of vulnerability. That moment immediately preceding death. The exact instant one realizes and admits to the final outcome. That it is unescapable. A person will do anything in that moment.
Why are yeh tellin me this?
Because I want you to know. Because I want you to hear me say it. Because I don’t want you to think badly of me.
I do think badly of yeh, Fielding said. In fact, I haven’t thought worse of anyone before.
Noon frowned.
I’m going to let you ask me one question, he said.
I don’t want to ask yeh any questions.
That’s not true, he said. All you have are questions.
Okay, Fielding said. He spit. Yeh always been this sick?
That’s not a question.
I don’t care.
Would you like to know my name?
No.
It’s Michael. Michael Noon.
That’s a borin name for someone as fucked-up as yeh are.
I was named after the archangel Michael. It was my mother’s idea to name me that. She believed I would trample the devil. Just like the archangel.
Yeh must’ve been a big disappointment.
Noon smiled with his eyes.
My mother was a good mother until she wasn’t. It broke my heart to do it. She was a good woman for the most part.
Stop talkin, Fielding said.
She would take me to the beach and bake me cookies, Noon said. She would read to me at night. On Christmas Eve she would brine a big turkey. We had a Christmas tree with twinkling lights. A very good mother. And then one day she was different. She never smiled anymore. She began talking to herself. I now know she’d had a psychotic break. One day when I was eleven I knocked over a glass of milk and to punish me she held my hand atop the stove-top burner. Another time after returning home late from school she held me down and poured motor oil into my mouth. Not exactly loving behavior. It only worsened, of course. She chided me every chance she got. Belittling me in public. Laughing at my follies. Naturally I began to hate her. On my sixteenth birthday she made me brush my teeth with a wire brush. Happy sweet sixteen. My mouth filled with blood. I told her I would kill her that night, after she fell asleep. Can you guess what happened?
She fell asleep? Fielding said.
Noon laughed.
I kept her head in an old trunk that she loved. I had to get rid of it after a while because of the odor. That really broke my heart. Anyway, that was my first experience with vulnerability. Do you want to know how I killed her?
No.
I strangled her, Noon said. Watching the life drift out of her eyes, I felt this supreme sensation of connection. A moment I cherished. I have been searching for that sensation ever since.
If yer goin a shoot me just do it and get it over with. Yer voice is annoyin me.
I’m not going to shoot you, Mr Fielding. I’m going to give you a choice.
I’ve already made my choice.
Your choice is this: your friend can watch it all happen or I can shoot him first so he doesn’t have to. Two choices. Quite fair.
My friend?
Fielding suddenly looked up. The blood spilled off his chin.
Oh, Noon said. Yes. I forgot to mention that. My apologies. Mr Batey decided to join us as well. Let me get him.
Noon stepped again into the darkness. Then the whine of caster wheels over cement. What appeared in the light seemed a crude imitation of Batey. Drugged and naked and his body painted. He was vigorously duct taped to the chair, his head secured so it could not fall forward. Wrapped within that tape was a set of antlers. Five points a side. The sight overwhelmed Fielding and he cried out and lunged forward. The handcuffs cut into the skin of his wrists.
Yeh sumbitch, Fielding said. He said, Yeh ain’t walkin out of here alive.
Is that my choice, Mr Fielding? Is that the choice you are imposing? Stay or go?
Yeh don’t get any choices anymore, Fielding said. The last choice yeh made was a long time ago.
Is that the truth?
That’s the truth.
If so then I have chosen wisely. He outflung his arms like a faith healer. He said, If what you say is true and I am not leaving here alive then what a beautiful culmination. I suppose I ought to thank you.
Thank me?
Yes. You have made all of this possible. You and Mr Batey. Miss Eunice Thompson. We have all made our decisions and now we are all here together.
Let me ask yeh a question, Fielding said.
Of course.
Why those girls? Why them specifically?
Noon cocked his head.
That is your question? Of all the questions one can ask in their final moments, that is what you want an answer to?
Yes.
If you were standing before God in your hour of judgment, Noon said, this would be the question weighing most heavily?
Yeh sayin you’re God?
No, Mr Fielding. Because God does not exist. But I do.
Yes, Fielding said. That’s my question.
Okay, Noon said. He pulled a metal folding chair across the floor and stood it before Fielding. Then Noon sat down in it and placed his palms on his knees and inhaled deeply through his nose like he was about to give a monologue onstage.
Vulnerability, I suppose, Noon said. Their lives could fall no further it seemed. To fall any further would be death. Their entire existence was balanced on that fulcrum.
Not Eunice, Fielding said. She wasn’t fallin at all.
Let’s say she made a few bad decisions. Then what?
But she didn’t, Fielding said. She was perfectly innocent.
Innocent. Please, Mr Fielding. You can’t possibly be that naive.
What about the woman who worked at the shelter. Yeh kill her?
Yes.
How about those three people down in the cellar?
Yes.
What about the girl found on the beach? The ones found in the hills?
Noon raised his hands in a gesture of guilt.
Were there others?
Yes, there were others.
Why did yeh do what yeh did to them after they were dead?
You mean have sex with them? Noon said.
Yes.
Noon shrugged.
Nothing ever really dies, Mr Fielding. Just another state we enter. We become connected. They have a piece of me and I have a piece of them, to wit, an eternal connection, Mr Fielding.
Yeh know how fuckin nuts yeh sound?
Do you really want your last conversation to be this way? We have a chance to be civil here.
So yer goin a kill me too.
I’m sorry.
Go on then, Fielding said. Who is it goin a be first? Me or Dee over there?
Again, Noon said. That is your choice.
I guess the coward’s way would be to go first. Not have to see it all.
You do not strike me as a coward, Mr Fielding.
No, Fielding said.
Is that your decision then? Think carefully.
That’s my decision.
Noble, Noon said.
Noon stood. He raised the gun from his side. The barrel winked under the studio lights. He stepped toward Batey. He laid the cold barrel against Batey’s temple. Levered back the hammer. Batey in his horrifying articles looked up at Noon and blinked a slow drugged blink. A seemingly final regard of the world. Of everything he had known and lived through and loved. It could all be pinched out like flipping a wall switch. Life’s terminus in this dismal place. Then the shot popped and echoed off the bare concrete walls and rang through the expired pipes and fled finally down the hard corridors and then it was silent, and all the memories and malice and evil escaped from Noon along with fragments of bone and brain matter through a star-shaped hole just above his left eye as his legs gave out and he fell to the floor.
The pistol shot had frightened Fielding and when he opened his eyes again he saw Wilson standing there under the lights. Then Fielding saw an officer. Then another. Wilson said, Get some attention going on that girl. Then he went to Batey and said, And get some help going on him too.
Finally he came toward Fielding with a look on his face Fielding had never seen before. It was relief and it was horror and it was empathy and it was the most honest anyone had ever looked.
Wilson moved behind him and removed the handcuffs and then handed Fielding a handkerchief for his bloody wrists. Fielding took the handkerchief and dabbed at the lacerations. Then he went to stand but he fell forward onto his hands and knees. Wilson went to him but Fielding waved him away.
You don’t have to get up, Wilson said.
Yes I do, Fielding said.
He labored to his feet with Wilson holding out his hands like one would to a convalescent. He walked to where Noon lay dead. Simply looked down at him without saying a word. He looked at the girl who now had a blanket to salvage some dignity. She moaned oddly. Then he looked at Batey taped to the chair. Fielding limped to him and pulled the garish horns from the tape and lobbed them into the darkness. He kneeled before him. Batey’s eyes rolled. Clouded. Glassed as marbles. Fielding said,
Can yeh hear me?
Batey blinked.
Fielding said: It’s all over, partner.
Wilson said, The good news, if there can be any in any of this, is that he won’t remember it.
Fielding stood. Turned to Wilson.
I will, he said. All of this. No matter how hard I try. This is forever.
Exhaustion and pain and the weight of it all caught up to him and Fielding collapsed and again it all went dark.