The moon opens its eyes to the desolate valley that carves roads in winding turns of black pavement, slicing through hills surrounded by dry brush ready to light aflame come summer, gutting the incline up the Old Ranch Highway, a two-lane instant car crash death waiting to happen—especially at night and especially when one of the involved drivers is sleep-deprived.
And if only sleep deprivation were the lone issue.
Memory annihilation. Manifesting dissociative personalities.
Managing the stress brought on by heading straight for a maniac who has most certainly set a trap and waits for me to fall into that trap, and yet I defy my wise flight response and rush into that trap nonetheless. Because wisdom holds no merit for the desperate.
I turn onto Mori Canyon Road, fully inoculated from fear. From the latent anxiety produced by looming mortality. Because just as my mind softens yet again—her name is Fuji, the dog is Glitch, and you are who he thinks you are—and as apparent as the darkness is that I’m about to confront, so too is the sense of finality. That maybe this whole journey was nothing more than a stint in purgatory—a period starting from that last night on the farm that continues to bleed out still this very moment as I wait for judgment on my life lived—a final purification of the elect or the punishment of the damned.
One way or another, this ends tonight.
And aren’t endings—even the most hopeless ones—peaceful in their own weird ways?
The van redlines as the incline grows steeper, the drop off the cliff becoming more vacuous and unknown, even with headlights gliding over the top of the canyon’s edge. Now and again the road bends like sloppy cursive and I can see off over the cliff and across the canyon, through thick pine and redwood forests and to what look like houses. But they are few and far between. You don’t move out into the valley for neighborly comradery. You move out here because you want privacy—a world built in the pursuit of total desolation.
Where am I going again?
I snatch the hot-pink sticky note off the center console. Read it.
Glitch—the dog.
Fuji—the old lady.
I am my father’s son.
At last, the ascension up the hill finds a side turn—a private dirt road barricaded with an iron gate. No Trespassing. But this is the destination. This is Fati Way. Only one residence on the road. The one I need. I pull the van over. Get what I need out of the vehicle. The one item wrapped in a garbage bag.
A camera mounted to the gate—eyes and ears atop a surveillance neck—oscillates and follows me. I approach the gate and wonder if the Coast Killer is the only one watching on the other side of that surveillance feed. If someone at another data facility in another city can also tune in. Before I can figure out how to scale the barrier, the fortress opens its womb to me—the gate slowly swings forward at its hydraulic command. I walk through and onto Fati Way, looking up at a well-lit path guiding me to a looming mansion atop the hill, the gate closes behind me, and as it does, my mind bends to the pressure of those pills even more.
Glitch—the dog. That beautiful creature that refused to do anything but love you—YOU—the miserable piece of shit human who robbed people of their identities, people like that one old lady—
Fuji—that unbelievable woman who took you in and protected you and helped you see the truth no matter how ugly it seemed because it is undoubtedly ugly and still filled with unknowns about the farm and whether this foolish identity thief may or may not have killed his own—
Father—I am my father’s son—that is who I am, and I can’t forget that, not yet, not until this is over and I have lived up to the person he believed in, the person he fought to preserve.
The garbage bag hooks over my shoulder as I carry it up the hill along the killer’s version of a yellow brick road. Shoes crunch pebbles, but not the kind nature randomly scatters across the earth. These are the high-priced sort that sparkle and are bought, sold, and delivered by price-gouging landscaping contractors. On both sides of the path are tiki torches, not illuminating the night with flame but with electricity, and as I continue up the trail, each successive torch lights up, somehow detecting me along the way. Hovering over me in predatorial wait is the mansion—stone-clad, wide, and tall—ivy running up the sides and held below second-story balconies like a bride’s bouquet. The third story rises above the rest of the compound—a sniper’s tower, long and narrow. The oval driveway gives way to the courtyard, and the walkway leads to a front door guarded by statues of imperial horses.
Why am I here again?
I take the sticky note out of my back pocket.
Glitch!
I scan over the notes about Fuji and my father and get to my chicken-scratch plan.
Step One: Find a spot by the house that makes sense.
There are cameras mounted at every corner. Their necks swivel like hawks. The vast property continues its intimidation when I reach the backside. Rounded river stone stairs give way to what feels like two full acres of lawn surrounded by hedges cut with bonsai perfection. The gravel perimeter around the yard leads to a fenced tennis court and infinity pool, the audible whoosh from its hot tub. The pool spills over the edge and looks out to the valley, creamy moonlight dressing the tops of trees. Based on what Laura described, the guy had to be wealthy. This checks all the boxes. This is him.
The trek continues and unveils new cameras surveilling and moving to the opera of their oscillations’ electric buzz. But as I approach the pool, round off the garden path and away from the meticulous landscaping, the buzzing ceases. Just as the lights from the tennis court and patio die off in the distance, a new light emerges from behind a wooded area sloping to the other side of the cliff. It’s there that I find the real compound. Another stone structure—always stone with this guy. No windows. No cameras. A single-story guesthouse wedged between two castle-like turrets, moss decorating the sides. I place the garbage bag down at the base of one of the turrets.
Step Two: Initiate the clock.
I reach inside the black plastic bag, the open valley sky abloom with stars galactically powerful. I twist knobs and flick switches. Press arrow-up buttons until the parameters on the control panel are just right and the device is triggered. I leave it in the bag so any nearby cameras do not detect what waits inside. The digital display repeats back to me the time I have until this is over and I thank it for that.
Step Three: Synchronize your watch.
Over my shoulder, a door creaks on its hinges, greeting me with an invitation laced with threat. With the mouth to the guesthouse wide open, I look into its jaws and throat and head toward it anyway. The insides flash one neon light after the next. Pink for a count of one, two, three, then neon violet for another one, two, three. A voice familiar but too inaudible emanates from inside as twigs and leaves crush underneath my boots, the last steps from the outside world—perhaps my last breaths of the organic outdoors—before I finally walk through the doorframe. Fire-engine red—one, two, three—inside the first room, and it looks like nothing more than a hunter’s dream cabin resting someplace in the great Montana wilderness. Bearskin rug, head and claws still attached—posed with fangs aflare, roaring at me. Deep blue for three seconds. On the far side of the room is another door and I know the invitation extends there and the voice crackles louder but is still too indistinct to focus on amidst the blitzkrieg of stimuli. Green-green-green. I open the door and the one I previously walked through slams shut but that’s okay because I knew this was one-way traffic before I entered.
The room in front of me is more like a walk-in closet without the clothes rack or storage bins for shoes. Narrow and dark but for the still-penetrating hot colors flashing. Citrus orange—one, two, three. It leads to marble stairs descending into this compound, the voice playing over the speakers now louder and clearer, a sound wave rising from the bottom of the staircase. My boots clap marble as I’m taken—by fate, by will, by utter acceptance for what is and what is to be—lower and lower. The staircase twists like a spine reaching behind itself, and I travel around a thick column, concrete and as cool as the earth we are undoubtedly beneath. With each step, the electricity in my head sparks—quick zaps at first, then consistent lightning bolts through my neural pathways—a deadening of thought and comprehension. I fall on my ass. Back pushing against the column as I wait for the magnetic pulse. The crunching static.
But it doesn’t come.
Because this is not a glitch.
The last Lobotomy Pill finishes its work. Carries its toxins through my heart and veins and entire body, ripping through my cellular structure and settling in at the seahorse-shaped part of my brain—the hippocampus—where the last fighting bits of memories, the surviving part of me, exist and only for now. Because Fuji’s slaps across the face can save me no longer.
Step Four: Do not forget Step Three.
My legs are jelly. My eyes fog over.
And the voice is now crisp.
“I waited for my mom to leave—maybe fifteen minutes or so,” the voice says. “That’s when I made my way to the other side of the house.”
I slide my body down the steps, pulling and yanking my torso and hips and legs along this final journey.
“There was a cabinet in the hallway. I reached into it and pulled out a gun.”
One more step, I tell myself. Another—come on! Legs bumping into the sharp edges of marble, hands grabbing and pulling at the banister or column or stairs, corkscrewing one more time, only a few steps to go.
“I stood over him with the gun, looking down at his face. Never seen such a tortured look.”
I flop onto the concrete base of the staircase. Lift my head, wipe my mouth, and there, swaying east before returning west, spitting emblazoned embers out of its pit, displayed with the pride of someone always in control, is the figure eight—an infinity aflame.
“I had the pillow in one hand, the gun in the other,” the voice says from out of the speakers.
My voice.
The wall curves with thirty or forty mounted screens across three rows. Perfectly symmetrical squares—electric boxes with black-and-white images—the same video playing on each television screen. I watch one. I watch them all.
As they play the warehouse surveillance footage.
As I watch my recorded testimony.
“And then what did you do, poor little bird?” A white guy with dreads—machete-sharp bone structure—coaxes me in the video. I watch myself lean into the microphone to answer.
My mind folds in on itself, and I try to fight it off. Because I want to see from the surveillance footage what I had to say next. What my answer was that night. That night—was it weeks ago or years ago? Is that Dash or Amir? My brain has hit FORCE + QUIT, and the power-down sequence has begun, and I roll over on my back, head arched on its crown so I can still see the black-and-white footage, asking myself the simple question. Why?
Why keep going?
The first screen on the top row clicks off.
Why keep fighting?
Each subsequent TV does the same.
Isn’t this what I wanted all along?
The speakers pop as the audio source changes. The killer speaks and the voice is layered—different octaves and pitches distorting his speech, like all the souls murdered here talk with him in unison.
“You are the toy that entered willingly,” the killer says from the speaker.
Why did I want it—to become something new?
“But I am your Death Professor,” the killer taunts.
To run away from something?
“And class shall commence.”
Emerald clouds of smoke pour out of the small vents on the floor. Soft shapes twirl, rising in the air, swelling on the ground.
“Breathe it in. Breathe it out.”
I cough. Gag. Small pieces of glass ripping the insides of my lungs.
“No. No. My toy is not allowed to die yet.”
All I can see are the two inches in front of my eyes, that space that never leaves us and constantly reminds us that we are real and we exist.
“Will my toy play for me?”
I reach back into that dying tissue of my brain, that fading layer that tells me what I’m doing and what I am.
I am my father’s son.
Sticky note in hand, eyes burning from dust and gas and tears and choking—choking—choking—I read the writing. My writing? Yes, my writing. The line about the dog. About an old woman. A father. Skip to the last thing written. Squint to make sure I understand what it says to do. Try to remember what it means. Remember everything I can. The people—all the people that have pushed me, pulled me across moments and days and weeks and years. Remember all the experiences and pain and joy and pain and excitement and pain and love and pain—always the cost—that shaped me. Fight myself and the toxins in my body and the room—the killer laughing through the speakers and calling me his plaything again and I fight more, wanting to know what I told myself on this pink sticky paper I hold in my hand, fight and fight and fight because the residual instincts of the real me are all I have left. I fight until it floods my mind—a tsunami brought forth by angry and destructive gods—the handwriting my prayer to make them relent. I reach into my front pocket and find what I need. Pull it out and hold the ruby tablet in front of my eyes before dropping it on the surface of my outstretched tongue. Swallow it down. Close my eyes and breathe. Breathe and breathe and breathe. Taking that deep breath in.
Let it out.
You are you.
The killer laughs as I cough. As my consciousness finally gives in.
But you are also your father’s son.
And he gave you a superpower.
Step Five: Take the other pill if necessary.
The Next Chapter Begins in 3, 2, 1 . . .