“When I was twelve, my parents died. Somehow, my dad managed to run the car off the road and through some trees and eventually off a cliff – not a huge cliff, just a little one on the side of a hill – and they died when the car hit the ground. My uncle told me their bodies were so messed up they needed dental records to make sure it was them. I’m not sure why their licenses weren’t good enough, but whatever.
“So we had a closed casket thing for them because my uncle didn’t want me to see how awful they looked. At the funeral, I asked him where they wrecked – I hadn’t thought about it until then, I was only twelve. He said it was on some road north of the city. Like I would have known any road names or anything anyway, you know? So that was good enough for me.
“Anyway, my parents, before they died, obviously, used to have Uncle Walter babysit me when I was little. It was, I don’t know, once a week or so, like when they’d go out to dinner or something. But then they stopped going out. At least, they stopped going out without me. And one day my dad told me to tell them if I saw my uncle, if he stopped by the house or by my school. This was a few weeks before the accident, but I never saw him in those weeks, so I never even thought about it.
“So my parents died and my uncle was my closest living relative, and I always liked him and he always took good care of me whenever he’d watch me, so I went to live with him. And then one day he told me he was going to take me to dinner. A special dinner, he said, at a special place, to show me how happy he was to have me with him.
“He took me to this really fancy place downtown with candles and chandeliers and everything, but he took me really late. There were no waitresses or anything. Just the chef, who was my uncle’s friend.
“Uncle Walter told me that his friend made food that tasted better than anything I’d ever eaten, and that it was so good that it actually made you feel better after you ate it. He said it was so good that it would even help me get over what happened to my parents. It would make me feel so good it would be impossible for me to be sad. And he said I was special, because his friend wouldn’t cook for just anyone.
“And you know, he was right. After dinner I felt better. It’s not like I wasn’t sad at all, but I was better. I felt sort of strong, like I’d be able to handle anything a little more easily. It was a pretty intense feeling.
“My uncle told me not to tell anyone about his friend. He said there wasn’t enough of his friend’s food to spread around, so we had to keep it a secret. It seemed like a fair deal to me. I got to feel stronger and happier and less empty, and all I had to do was keep it to myself. So we would go down there once a month or so for dinner.
“And then, after a while, there were more people there, eating this magical food, so I asked him about it, and he said his friend had found a way to make more of it, so now he could help more people feel better. After a few years, there were so many people that we all couldn’t eat in the restaurant anymore, so my uncle bought the warehouse, and we started eating there.
“By this time, I was like seventeen. I asked him, for the first time, what the food was. What does Gregor put into it? What kind of meat is it? So he tells me this story about some Native American myth about this guy that eats this food, and he gets stronger and stronger, and he can do things most other people can’t, and all this other wonderful stuff, just because he’s eating this food. He tells me it’s not just a myth, that this food really does this. And he finally tells me that the food is other people. He said the reason it makes you so much better is because you absorb the dead person’s spirit, and two spirits are better than one. A person’s spirit has all strengths and no weaknesses. The weakness comes from the brain, he said.
“Of course I freaked out and told him I was going to go to the police and he’d go to jail and all that. Then he told me that my parents were going to go to the police too, and look what happened to them. And it wouldn’t do any good anyway, since some of the people who ate with us were policemen. He said he only wanted me to be involved because he loved me so much and wanted me to be happy. He said he’d rather not have to have me killed. That was unreal. I mean, when does anyone say that to you and actually mean it?
“So I never told anyone. I stopped eating it, though. God, that was so much harder than quitting smoking. It was awful. I’d get the shakes and everything. I’d vomit. It was bad. I would have left, but they’d have been able to find me – all that money and resources and everything.
“And I kept going down to the meetings with him because I figured I’d have to know what was going on, just in case. I told Uncle Walter that if it made him feel good, I was ok with it, but I wouldn’t eat it anymore. He was fine with that, actually, just as long as I never told anyone and he never had to kill me.
“So, for the last, what, nine years or so, I’ve just been having this fucked up life. And every year they kill and eat more and more people. And it has to stop.
“I was ok – well, not ok, but better with it when they only ate people who were already dead. But this murdering people thing has got to stop. I can’t let it happen anymore.
“That’s why I need you.”