“From the eerie opening tale to the grisly closer, and all of the wonderfully mean-spirited tales in-between, Wrathbone is a winner!” —Jeff Strand, author of Dead Clown Barbeque
“ This is horror of the mind at it’s very best … Very dark, very atmospheric, very powerful writing. Excellent stuff … Only the second time ever that I have given every story in a collection five stars. This one is going to be hard to beat.” —Nev Murray at Confessions of a Reviewer and Scream Magazine
“Wrathbone and Other Stories is a hard-hitting collection that you can completely immerse yourself in. The title story is a beautifully written period tale of love and tragedy.” —Mercedes M. Yardley, author of the Bram Stoker Award winner Little Dead Red .
“Jason Parent channels the darkness. Wrathbone and Other Stories offers a glimpse into the twisted mind of a gifted storyteller, whose characters are every bit as vivid as the demons that haunt them. Parent’s definitely an author to watch!” —Michael McBride, author of Subterrestrial and Burial Ground
“An elegantly written novella of madness, murder, and demons, Jason Parent’s Wrathbone reads like Edgar Allan Poe’s take on ‘Jacob’s Ladder.’” —Adam Howe, author of Tijuana Donkey Showdown, Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet , and Black Cat Mojo
What Hides Within
Seeing Evil
Unseemly
Where Wolves Run
Bad Apples
Bad Apples 2
Bad Apples 3
Dead Roses
First Comet Press Trade Electronic Edition, October 2016
Wrathbone and Other Stories
copyright © 2016
by Jason Parent
All Rights Reserved.
This edition copyright © 2016
by Comet Press
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-936964-64-2
Visit Comet Press on the web at:
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For those who wish to see their (fictional) worlds burn.
I have many people to thank for making this collection a reality, with Cheryl Mullenax, Randy Chandler, and the entire staff at Comet Press at the forefront for outing my words into this collection you have before you today. I would also like to thank Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi for her belief in my work; Kimberly Yerina for being the person I can always turn to for an honest critique, a beta read, and a friendly ear; and Evans Light for inspiring me to produce only my best work, even if that means less of it.
Specifically, I’d also like to thank:
Wrathbone: Kimberly Yerina and author Evans Light for their beta reads and Stefanie Spangler Buswell, Irene Steiger, Lynn McNamee, and the Red Adept Editing team for their editing contributions. I must also send a huge thanks out to author and historian, Caleb Jenner Stephens, whose non-fiction book, Worst Seat in the House, served as the inspiration for my tale.
The Only Good Lawyer : Author Gregor Xane and Sarah Carleton for their editorial contributions.
Dorian’s Mirror : Author Elizabeth Los and Patricia Kearney for their editorial contributions. And of course, one of the greatest authors and wits ever to exist, Mr. Oscar Wilde.
For the Birds : Nev Murray and Jo Harwood for inspiring the story, and for being two of the most fantastic, genuine people I have met since submitting my first work for publication. Nev and Jo, this story is clearly for you, and for Kimberly for her editorial contributions.
Revenge is a Dish : Patricia Kearney for her editorial contributions.
As you can see, a lot of people came together to create these stories, and I treasure all of them. Writing is always more enjoyable when there are people with whom to share it. With that said, thank you, the reader, for allowing me to share these tales with you.
I get asked to write introductions a lot, or to otherwise bestow kind words upon the work of young up-and-comers, many of whom I’m not familiar with until they reach out to me. It’s a tricky proposition, and a situation I never imagined being in when I first started out and was myself desperate to get the blessing of established writers. And I remember thinking, back when Norman Partridge, Poppy Z. Brite, Michael Marshall Smith, David B. Silva, Bentley Little, and other writers were kind enough to lavish praise on something I’d written, that I would be more than happy to return the favor later on should new writers ever come looking to me for such favors. Alas, what seems simple in theory seldom is, and as I got older and established a foothold in the business, I realized that it’s not always possible to be kind to the next generation of writers, no matter how much you might want to. And the reasons for this are simple. One, time is a commodity and if I’m plowing through a novel and/or battling multiple deadlines, I’m not inclined to break away from it to read someone else’s work or write something I’m not under the gun to get done. It’s just not always possible or economically viable for those of us who do this for a living. Two, and this is the worst part: the reality is that sometimes the work you’re being asked to endorse is, to put it mildly, not yet ready for primetime. And sometimes, it’s just terrible. Digital publishing has made this a common scenario. Now, writers don’t need editors and publishers to see their work in print. Self-publishing means you can just whip a book together and throw it up on Amazon. Sometimes this results in some terrific and unjustly overlooked work getting its due. Often, it means the virtual shelves end up cluttered with dreck.
So it is always with some trepidation that I tentatively agree to take a look at something. In the case of Wrathbone and Other Stories , I was familiar with Jason Parent as a name that kept cropping up on Goodreads or Amazon or on Facebook, and from the handful of anthologies in which our stories have appeared alongside each other. We’d exchanged a few emails in the past, but I did not have the kind of familiarity with his writing one needs in order to form an honest endorsement.
Now that I’ve read this collection, it is with no small measure of relief and delight that I can, wholeheartedly recommend to you this book and Jason’s work as a whole. But of course, such things are easy to say, and I could simply have started this introduction with that claim and saved you all some time. Allow me then to tell you a little bit about why I dug Wrathbone , as that is, after all, why we are here.
First off, the title novella is worth the price of admission alone. I’m a sucker for antique horror, those tales told in the dry, florid, sometimes manic tone that popularized the best work of Lovecraft and Poe and Blackwood. Here, Parent utilizes the unreliable narrator trope to wonderful effect to document the suffering of his protagonist in the wake of President Lincoln’s assassination. In the process, he gets to flex his creative muscles and bring to us some wonderfully descriptive and inventive set-pieces, some of which call to mind such unexpected influences as the Evil Dead movies, and all of which is enhanced by the ambiguity that underscores the narrative. Is our character witnessing all of this insanity, or is Henry Reed Rathbone simply enduring a particularly violent form of PTSD? Of all the stories contained in this collection, this is far and away my favorite and serves as a great example of the author firing on all cylinders.
The rest of the stories in Wrathbone are short, sharp shockers, all of them set in contemporary times, all of them laced with the kind of wry cynicism and over the top horror that will be familiar to fans of such E.C. Comics-fare as Eerie , Vault of Fear , and Tales from the Crypt . In some, you can pretty much see where you’re being led, but while in the hands of another author that might ruin the effect, Parent seems to know you know where he’s going and has a lot of fun taking you there. For example, all you need to know about “The Only Good Lawyer” is implied by the title, but it sure is a hell of a ride seeing just how poor old Bradley Walsh gets his just desserts.
Vanity is always fertile ground for horror, and Parent has a blast cataloguing the particularly cruel descent of his self-obsessed protagonist in “Dorian’s Mirror,” a gruesome tale that, of all the stories here, would have made a terrific fit for HBO’s late, lamented anthology series, Tales from the Crypt . So much so, one can almost imagine The Cryptkeeper’s introduction: “Hello kiddies, you’ve caught me in a bit of a reflective mood (giggle) … just like poor Dorian, who wants nothing more than to save face (giggle) …”
It’s hard to talk about “For the Birds,” another nasty little piece, without giving the game away, so I’ll just advise that you don’t eat anything while you’re reading it. And now that I’ve read it, I’m going to be crossing macaws off my want-list.
The collection closes with a lengthy story, “Revenge is a Dish,” which starts off seeming like one type of story, but then shifts gears completely right around the midpoint and becomes impossible to predict. Much like “For the Birds,” this was not at all predictable, but is just as gruesome as all the other tales in this book. More disturbing still, it made me hungry.
There is much to admire about the work Jason Parent has done here, but if there’s an overarching impression to be gleaned from the writing, it’s that rarest of things, the one quality that indicates longevity, and that’s confidence . I can’t tell you how much work I have read over the years (including my own early efforts) that wear too much of their influences on their sleeves, with no identifiable signature inherent in the prose, that are rote, typical, devoid of passion. Frail imitations of work already done, and done better. There is no voice, no brand, no hint of who the writer is or will grow to be. Confidence separates the lifers from the pretenders, and as evidenced by the stories in Wrathbone , Parent has that in spades. He knows how to tell a good story, knows the tropes, the rules, and how to work with them and around them. He has a distinctive voice and knows how to get you to listen. He knows how to develop a scene, how to draw you into it and keep you there. He is, not just a good horror writer, but a good writer, period. And he’s an entertainer.
So why don’t I get out of the way and let him entertain you.
You’re in for a wild ride.
—Kealan Patrick Burke
Columbus, OH
June 2016
I am not a good man.
I am not even close to the man I sought to be. Husband, father, soldier … all are parts of a former self, lost to time, misery, and something far more sinister. My mind is but the shambles of thought, plagued by grief, the last stubborn embers of a fire long ago smothered.
She had been the flint that sparked its flames. She had been the kindling that kept it raging. From the ashes of tragedy, the phoenix rose, our bond flourishing from a horror only we had shared. And when all seemed lost, she—my Clara, my sweet, unfaltering, beautiful Clara—set purpose to life and bestowed love where undeserved. She was my reason to persevere.
Yet the cycle of life and death shall always come full circle. These twenty-some odd years—it could have been thirty—I have wasted away behind these walls of human construct. Since I … since Clara left this world, I persevere still. Neither strength nor purpose compel my hollow existence, but anxiety keeps me vigilant. Terror coerces my fight.
A dark force, evil hiding in shadow, has hunted me for half a lifetime. The barrier shielding this holy ground is crumbling. Saint Michael’s Cathedral, with its massive bronze doors depicting the fall of man on the left and his salvation on the right—a door I have never seen opened—and its adjoining monastery have been my stronghold. From here, I exist, nothing more, but that is more than enough. In this church-turned-asylum, men, bad men, those who would serve the darkness, have taken residence. Evil has found its way in. I fear they will soon claim what they seek.
Now, as I pen this testament, the ghosts of the past howl at the barracks of my psyche, shaking their foundations. My keepers call it madness, but what do they know of it? They say I suffer from a sickness of the mind called “melancholia.” What a funny word this is, science’s attempt to explain what logic cannot. But reason and scientific process dictate that all hypotheses must be proved or disproved. These keepers of mine willfully ignore the apparitions over their shoulders and the demons under their feet. My delusions, they say, derive from internal failings, but it is they who fail to disprove the external. I had believed that on this once hallowed ground, where scriptures and sermons were prevalent, put forth by the faithful who bathed in God’s light, the evil that had afflicted me would no longer thrive. I had thought the priests could fight it or, at the least, understand it.
Alas, they are no different than the men of the world, smiling men who discuss one’s deepest failings in hushed voices when they think him out of earshot. My keepers always talk behind hands so that I cannot read their lips. Madness, melancholia … they will call it what they will. Perhaps they are correct, in part, for my fate has been aligned with tragedy.
I alone know the truth of it, for I have seen what they can—or will not. I alone have glimpsed the depths of hell, where my failures await me.
I grow weary. I fear my perseverance has reached an end. When two dogs fight over a bone, one eventually authenticates its claim whilst the other skulks away, defeated, its tail tucked between its legs. The bone is my soul, and I am the skulking dog, for the bone is lost as soon as I close my eyes for the last time.
Maybe I have always been that dog. Now, though, my once-full auburn hair is all but a memory. My teeth—the few that remain—are black with decay. My gums bleed after every meal. My skin sags as if it has predeceased me. And my once-strong bones and lean soldier’s body now ache from the slog of burdens piled ever higher.
Still, they persist. After Clara’s death, their clamoring ceased for a time, and I was certain they had all they wanted from me. With my own demise so near, I suspected they had come to revel in their victory. Or have they come to provide me escort into the darkness? They, the vile spirits, batter at my body and mind, always after my soul. I fear this unrelenting force shall have it.
In truth, I have always known it would.
I know not why I fight. Without Clara, I love nothing. I love no one. I am nothing. I am no one. Forgotten.
My shame lingers. It resides within and without, like the mark of an adulteress emblazoned upon my chest, a cross jutting from my heart, the curse of all things human. The curse of love.
As I sit in these gardens, far away from my birthplace and the children who once loved me, I hear the dead whispering through leaves, sighing with the wilted flowers, screeching behind the birdsong, ever calling me home. The light is dimming.
Soon, the devil shall come.
Am I ready? A sickly feeling clogs my throat—vomitous, wretched, and violent. I cannot choke down the taste. With its bitter flavor comes the harsh truth that I deserve what will be. My place in the next world has been decided.
I am not a good man.
I knew such a man once, a man of great import. His legend, though existing well before his death, never altered his humility. I knew no finer man. He was everything I had striven so hard to be. And in one catastrophic moment, I failed him, and with him, an entire country.
It is not peculiar that his death gave rise to the demons. At Antietam and Fredericksburg, thousands died before my very eyes as American slaughtered American on divided soil. Their deaths came in all forms of abomination. Bayonets gutted men like pigs. Horses ground bone beneath their feet. Minié balls ripped through flesh as if the corporeal form were an affront to their existence. Worst of all, those black globes of agony, pulverizing and maiming, rent limbs from bodies as they bounded across the landscape. Some men had died quickly. Others had wailed long after the battles had ended, crying for help that would never come.
But America, not I, had failed those men. On April 14, 1865, my failure cost a great man his life. That date, I could never forget, could never move past, and in hindsight, I see I was but a marionette in the vilest of machinations.
I know now that Lucifer was present that day. He recognized the weakness in me and tricked me into a wicked game I could not forfeit, for my soul was the prize. He set his denizens upon me, preying upon my guilt and self-contempt. Even now, they mock me, assail me with what-ifs and thoughts of what could have been. They want me to suffer, and that is punishment I deserve.
Yet their efforts are needless. I have toiled ceaselessly over the events that occurred that night at Ford’s Theatre. I must have relived that moment a million times.
I still hear it all—the blast from Booth’s pistol, the First Lady’s screams, and my own beloved shouting for the same help that would never come. I hear them in my dreams and while I ruminate. But the ghosts have evolved their torture. A new face haunts me now.
Clara.
* * *
“How do I look?”
“Clara Harris, I do believe that the stars themselves are no match for your beauty.”
Perhaps it seemed pedestrian, for I was a soldier, not a poet. Nevertheless, I meant every word. Nothing on earth or in the heavens could compare to the beauty of Miss Clara Harris, my betrothed. I had known her since we were children, and for a time, we’d lived beneath the same roof. In all those years, I never loved another so deeply. So infatuated was I that the very thought of being without her stifled my breath and unbalanced my heart. For the length of the war, I had been without her … too long. Before my country demanded service afar, I asked for her hand. To my prodigious good fortune, she had accepted my own. War, that vile antithesis to the sublime wonder I shared with Clara, had called me away from my beloved.
With Lee’s surrender and with the Confederacy a waning crescent, I returned to Washington and the only embrace that mattered, my raison d’être , my one love, Clara.
I would not be apart from her again.
My heart swelled with blood and sentiment that only the most passionate could hope to know, that only the most gifted artists could hope to portray. Love—surely I felt it, but the feeling was more than that, all-consuming, written into the fabric of my being. I do believe it was Clara who set my heart in rhythm, made my legs prone to dance to its beat when not subdued by a normally reserved composition. Outwardly, I must have glowed whenever she drew near. Inwardly, I was afflicted with nothing less than euphoria, which I wholeheartedly welcomed.
Her brown hair curled upon her forehead like waves rolling in to kiss the shore. Her eyes shone brightly, as did her smile. In them, I saw happiness, my own happiness, and the man I knew I could be, so long as she remained at my side.
In preparation for the night’s festivities, Clara had donned a long white satin dress, elegance clothed in elegance. The modest dress could not hide her form from the scrutinizing eye. Heat flashed across my cheeks, no doubt the shame of wantonness manifesting. Clara was much more than a mere carnal desire and was deserving of a proper gentleman.
My heart skipped. I knew my eyes would not be alone in their wayward advances, for Clara was the light that illuminated the room. Hers was the beauty that could move sound men to delirium and lesser men to roguish conduct.
I would have to be on guard.
“Let us stay home, my dear. I feel as though we’ve not spent any time alone since my return.”
Clara leaned in to kiss my cheek. The slightest caress of her soft lips stirred the animal inside me, though I kept it discreet and myself dignified. I would never let it show. And with that briefest touch, Clara chased my insecurities into the cellars of my mind. Her reassuring smile stabbed them profusely, lest they dare to emerge anew.
“Henry, all your fretting will shorten your years, I swear. A lifetime together awaits us. I am afraid you will be tired of me come winter.”
“Never.”
She giggled and covered her mouth with her hand, then she smiled sweetly and curtsied. That was Clara: positive, sensible, and carefree. She was the day to my night, an everlasting sunshine parting the gloom. She straightened her dress on her shoulders. “Besides, it is bad form to turn down a presidential request.”
I laughed. “The play has likely begun, and we only received our invitation two hours ago. Surely we were not the first guests the President had in mind.”
“General Grant and his wife, Julia, had to cancel upon short notice, as Mary tells it. The Lincolns were left scrambling for a suitable substitute. We should be honored that they thought of us.”
In fact, I did feel honored, and Clara’s excitement was infectious. How could I spoil it with groundless worry? In love and war, there are no victors, simply conquerors and the conquered. Many would see the President harmed or worse for the Southern secession and the bloodshed that had followed. A fanatical insurgent would not likely be deterred by the innocents who stood in his way.
The President was no fool, and I was aware that his advisors had secured the services of the Metropolitan Police to bolster security. My anxiety lessened, and I took a deep breath. We were protected, and even if we were not, who would dare commit a deed so foul as to attempt harm on our great nation’s leader, so near his home, while he was surrounded by friends? That would be treason of the most devious kind.
Still, any risk to my Clara’s safety was not a risk I would undertake frivolously. She was not a dog to be leashed. A woman of stronger convictions, I had never known. Idle threats would not temper her desires. If she was to attend the theater, then I would be her companion and her sentry.
She stroked my arm and offered another smile. “Come, Henry. It will be a night worth remembering, an evening with the President as he stands at the peak of triumph.”
She must have noticed the tactic had failed to move me, for she altered her strategy. “I had a wonderful time when I attended the showing of The Magic Flute at Grover’s Theatre with the Lincolns.”
“As I recall, you said he was grumpy the entire play, excepting when he snoozed.”
“Henry,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “A month ago, the Union was fractured. Now, it is only beginning to heal, and he is healing with it.”
I took her hands in mine and gazed silently into her eyes. Outside, hooves clomped upon the road. “Let us be off then.” I forced a smile. “Our evening with the hero of our Union awaits.” I laughed and escorted her outside, her arm tucked around mine.
“He is not the Union’s only hero, you know,” Clara said, snuggling against me. I flinched, taken aback by her perhaps-inappropriate forwardness, though the act made my knees quiver and my heart flutter, as if I had what poets were wont to ponder through scribbles but could never achieve, not with smell, taste, and touch. And sight! What a sight! I might have thought Clara’s beauty unimaginable had it not stood before me. At that moment, I cared little for the Union, so long as I was a hero to her as she was to me, my candle in the dark.
As we stepped inside the carriage, a black barouche of exquisite craftsmanship, the Lincolns met us with warm smiles and kindly greetings. Not a whiff of insincerity lingered about the President. He looked absolutely regal in his frock coat, waistcoat, trousers, boots, and bow tie—all black, unadorned yet magnificently refined. Mary looked elegant in her white-and-black striped dress, black lace veiling her hair. We were in the best of company.
If the state of the nation troubled the President, no one was the wiser. As wheels turned toward Ford’s Theatre, my unease fell away like a robe from my shoulders.
Mary and Clara shared the latest gossip while the President and I talked over the more pressing matters of the day. Clara was better suited to engage the President in politics and governance than I was, but we all had roles to play: he, the austere leader; Mary, his dutiful and devoted wife; Clara and myself, the young couple in love, both concerned with my advancement. And in love we were, though we showed only the amount of affection that was proper in high social circles. I was vexed to have my most cherished desire so near yet be forbidden fruit. What kind of culture had we that shunned the spectacle of love?
“… measuring up to Albany?” The President’s words startled me from my thoughts, though I had already forgotten where I had drifted.
“Forgive me, Mr. President, but I did not hear your question.”
The President smiled knowingly. “A young man oft finds himself distracted when sitting alongside such a lovely woman.” He bowed his head toward Clara. Holding his wife’s arm in his, he said, “We were young once, believe it or not.” He patted his wife’s hand. “Although you, my dear, remain as lovely as the day I met you.”
Life lightened the browns of the President’s eyes, then was gone. His irises dulled to a brown so dark it was almost black as he leaned back into shadow. “I was merely asking how our great capitol was measuring up to Albany, your home before the war, if I am not mistaken.”
“It was, though I can hardly say I miss it. Here, I have the pleasure of Miss Harris’s company all to myself.”
Clara blushed. “And our chaperones, of course.”
The President and his wife shared a look but remained silent.
“Of course,” I said, then cleared my throat. “Still, where better to cultivate a career of servitude to the Union than in the burgeoning capitol itself?”
The President sighed and rested his head against the carriage wall. “You come from means, but there is much to be said for simpler life, one of work and the fruit born of it, away from the schemes of men with snake-oil wares and the devils that drive them.”
He leaned forward, his long arms folding over his knees, and looked me straight in the eye. “I have seen good men do evil and evil men do the unthinkable, often for little more than a step up. I have tried to guide this nation fairly yet firmly, staving off darkness from without and from within. Evil is everywhere. It has followed me on my long road to the presidency and into that altogether-too-large house.” He sighed. His sad, tired, deep-set eyes were nearly hidden by the eaves of his brows. “That house of pride and greed,” he muttered. He rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes as if the wan light were sending invisible pitchforks into his brain. “Yes, I do think when this is all over, I would like to return to a simpler life.”
A rather morose perspective from one so accomplished , I thought. Someone so much more than Major Henry Rathbone. We rode the remainder of the journey in uncomfortable silence.
Arriving at the theater, we were surrounded by the President’s men. His valet and messenger, Charles Forbes, introduced us to John Parker of the Metropolitan Police, who would be standing guard outside the theater box all evening. Once inside, we traversed the staircase and stepped into the dress circle. The talented Laura Keene halted the performance to announce the President’s arrival, whereby the Lincolns were met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation while the orchestra blasted “Hail to the Chief.”
Clara beamed with pride, as if her mere proximity to the President earned her praise for his accolades. She looked on the President with such awe and approval that my own status shriveled.
At that moment, I understood what greatness looked like: tall and awkward, far from comely, yet worthy of mass admiration premised upon deeds alone. Wanting to be a great man, I clapped along with the crowd as my head hung low.
For Clara.
At last, the applause faded, and we carried on to the President’s Box. Forbes took a seat nearby at the end of the dress circle. Parker took up his post in the vestibule. We entered the President’s Box through Door Eight. The President approached the rail for another round of applause. Humble and gracious, he bowed to his adoring fans.
I stood in the back of the box, unseen, like an ant in the shadow of a mountain.
The President sat. His wife took a seat beside him, and their hands entwined.
“I will never grow accustomed to their cheers … or their false faces,” the President whispered as I helped Clara to her seat beside Mary. “I wonder how many of them would sooner see me dead.”
I must have leaned closer to him, for at that moment, the President turned to me and asked, “Would you, Major?” He smiled broadly at me, baring a toothy grin that fringed the edges of human capability.
The President, I had thought, was good-natured but reserved, tending toward anecdotes and dry wit, not nefarious humor, if it could be considered humor at all. I stumbled upon my words. “Of-f … no, no, of course not, sir.”
His smile shrank into something less devious then returned to plain and somber. “You are a good man, Major. I think perhaps your story will not end here, but will yet fill many pages. As men, we will rise and tumble and rise again, but our greatest triumphs will always be the bonds we share in marriage and in love.” He winked at Clara. “Cherish her, Major.”
“Always, sir.” And I meant it.
Clara’s was the last of three chairs, so I offered her my coat before taking my own seat on a sofa along the back wall. I have to admit, I felt the excitement, as well. Embarking upon an evening with the most prominent figure of our time, with my beloved by my side and Our American Cousin playing out onstage, I could not conceive of a more stimulating affair. That I could barely see the performance did not matter. At that moment, there was nowhere else I would rather have been.
My gaze fell upon on Clara, and I watched her as intently as she watched the play. With powerful friends and family to help us on our way, our future was destined for greatness. I wasn’t so naïve as to think myself the next American President, but a senator perhaps, or a diplomat. Clara was the crutch that could steady my stride. She and I would face the future as the President and his wife were facing it: hand in hand.
Our union was stronger than our country’s had proven to be. Our life would be a joyous adventure, I knew, filled with laughing children and open doors. Open, like Door Eight was. The lock was broken. We had seen no need to close it. With Forbes and Parker just outside, we were secure, safe … and happy.
Harry Hawk pranced across the stage, gearing up for one of the play’s biggest laughs. “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” he asked, his voice booming. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap.”
The crowd rumbled with laughter. I, too, could not hold back a good guffaw, until another sound earned my attention. To my left, only seven feet away, a blast rang through the box and shook the pillars of a nation. A man stood behind a cloud of smoke. In his hand, a Derringer fumed like the mouth of a dragon.
Clara! I thought only of her as I leapt from my seat. But as I lunged at the intruder, I saw the President slump in his chair. The back of his head looked like matted fur, thickest behind his left ear.
My mind was quick to register what had occurred. Only one pistol had fired, and the bullet’s intended victim was clear. The ladies were shouting, calling for help, but they were unharmed. I meant to keep them that way. But the President …
My God! My body acted before my mind could comprehend the nature of our peril. I knew not whether I faced a single shooter or a legion of Confederates. I wish I could say my soldier’s training propelled me into action, but selfishness—nothing more than the fear of losing her—spurred me toward the man who had infiltrated the President’s Box and stolen our peace.
I seized him, held him firmly in my grasp. Then my stare met his. A current coursed through my veins like a drug that must have overwhelmed me. I swear I saw his face melt!
One moment, I stared at a mustachioed man close to my age, with wavy hair and eyes filled with striking determination. The next moment, his face was ablur, twisting and contorting as if reflected upon warped glass. My muscles tensed, and despite my fear, I pulled him closer. Chills ran down my spine as hot waves sizzled from the faceless man’s skin onto my own.
A new face drew itself upon a blank canvas as time slowed around me. A smile, as wide as a shark’s and filled with nigh as many pointed teeth, settled across his cheeks. An upturned nose with nostrils stretching like fingers into his forehead steamed like a kettle over flame. Eyes as black as night penetrated mine and tested my courage. They were abysmal pits, and at their bottoms, hate and despair dwelled. This, I could not see, but felt, and I knew it as sure as I knew that my lungs needed air and my heart needed Clara.
Darkness eternal. Oblivion.
I could no longer swallow. This feeling of desolation, Death’s fingers clutching my throat, was no stranger. I had always felt Death’s cold hands draped over my shoulders as I stood on the battlefield. Then, he had been a passive observer.
This thing I saw, that demon , was not Death but a bringer of it, a harbinger of suffering, evil’s executioner. Terror ate at my sanity like mealworms through bread. It urged me to abandon my post and stilted my resolve.
Still, I held fast.
I blinked. Before me stood a man. Only a man. A man with a large Bowie knife.
Pain set my arm afire. The man slipped from my grasp. As I reached for him again, he turned toward the railing. He bounded over it, his coat catching in my fingers and tearing as he plummeted onto the stage below.
“Sic semper tyrannis! ” the man yelled as he fled.
“Stop that man,” I shouted. I could not believe what my eyes were seeing.
Nearly two thousand people were on hand for the play. Not one of them answered my plea.
“Stop that man!” Clara yelled, adding her voice to mine. “Won’t somebody stop that man? The President is shot!”
My God, the President!
Mary’s screams drowned out the drumbeat of my blood pulsing through my temples. I turned to see her cradling her husband’s head in her arms. Clara, sweet Clara, was at her side, trying to comfort the hysterical woman. The President’s grave condition was immediately apparent. Hoping he was still alive, praying he could be saved, I raced to the vestibule door, only to find it barred.
Parker. Where in God’s name is Parker?
I had no time to consider the man’s whereabouts. My sleeve had absorbed all the blood it could. Dark fluid seeped through the fabric and trailed down my arm, dripping off my fingertips and reminding me of my injury. That, too, would have to wait. My strength was beginning to fail me. Funny, I hadn’t noticed the blood—so much blood—before then.
Fists pounded against the opposite side of the door. Their owners cried for entry. I shook off my wooziness and heaved the wooden plank that barred us from them. The door to the vestibule burst open. A crowd stared at me with quizzical faces, some wrought with horror, others with accusations. Mouths assigned blame, and fingers pointed—at me.
I had no explanations for them. The President needed immediate assistance. I called for a doctor to step forward. A young man introduced himself as an army surgeon, and I let him pass. Racing around the theater, I found two more doctors and a soldier to stand guard before rushing back to my fallen countryman’s side.
Everything was happening so quickly, I could not catch my breath. I followed the army surgeon and a small squadron as they carried the President down the stairs and across the street to the Pederson house. The President was unconscious but still breathing, albeit strenuously.
They placed him on a bed in a small room, where my presence was only a hindrance to those better qualified to administer aid. I was useless. I said a prayer for the President and stepped out of the room, not allowing hope to fill me with unreasonable expectations. I had seen many a man die from far less dire injuries.
Out in the foyer, alone in my thoughts, I revisited the attack. Though it had happened quickly, I began to wonder why I hadn’t seen the intruder. Had I been less intent on the play—no, on Clara—I might have been able to stop the assassin.
The candlelight flickered, then all light vanished. Though the sound was faint, I thought I heard children laughing. I swayed on my feet. The room spun, slowly at first, but soon, the particulars of the room melted into each other. I tried to blink it away and steady my mind, thinking it another delusion.
When I opened my eyes, the room had ceased spinning. But what remained caused my heart to stop. The walls, the furniture … everything was situated as they had been only minutes before, but they had fallen into rot. Termite holes marred the wood. Paint flaked off the walls. Metal hinges creaked with rust.
But most alarming were the black tendrils oozing out of the floor, rising from the dirt beneath. They spread across the floorboards, inching toward me.
Again, I closed my eyes, not believing what they showed me to be anything other than a trick of the eyes or mind derived from stress. When I opened my eyes, the tendrils were upon me, coiling around my feet. I gasped, tried to run, to cry out for help, but my body betrayed me. There I stood, suffocating inside the coffin of my mind, trapped inside a body no longer my own, as something sinister violated me.
A hand emerged from a black hole, which, though small at first, was quickly stretching across the floor. The hand belonged to no human or animal. Five fingers, it had, but the appendage had too many knuckles. The nails, monstrous and soiled, were tools for tearing flesh and carving bone. The hand reached for me, and I screamed inside, but I could no more move than sprout wings and fly.
The fingers ran down my shirt, poking at my chest as if exploring for tender spots. I was at their mercy. Dead gray flesh fell from gnarled joints. The hand would infect me with its decay and drag me into the floor, down into the fiery pits below.
Fingernails slid along my arm, tasting the skin before delving into it. A poisoned, smothering death nearly at hand, I fell into the darkness as my mind shattered. The room began to spin again, faster and faster, until all was nothing and I was no more.
A hand seized my arm. I screamed.
Clara.
The room was reborn. The darkness retreated. With one touch, Clara had forced it to relent.
My terror slowly subsided as Clara tied a handkerchief around my wound. I looked at her and smiled weakly. She was the sun that parted the clouds. She was the calm that leveled the waves.
My sun. My calm. My love.
“Henry, you’re as pale as a ghost.”
“It is only a trifle,” I lied, trying to forget the hallucination. Surely, the visions could be attributed to stress and blood loss or perhaps a tainted blade. Clara was real. I needed rest with my love beside me. But the nation’s needs came before the man’s.
“I’ll be fine. We must see to the President.”
“There’s little we can do for him now. Please, Henry, the Provost Marshal is here. Let him take a look at your arm.”
Soon he will belong to the ages, Henry .
“What? Who’s there?”
A voice, low and guttural like the start of a dog’s growl, pierced my head. Gloom blanketed the air like heavy fog. Clara? I looked everywhere, but found myself alone again. The room was cloaked in silence—except for that voice disturbing the peace. You failed him, Henry .
Laughter rose from the floor, and I saw that the hole had reopened. I staggered forward, pulled toward it by some unseen force. My head splitting, I was blinded by pain. My knees wobbled beneath my weight, and my mind went blank. I fell headlong into the abyss.
The next thing I knew, the Provost Marshal was helping me to my feet. My arm draped over his shoulder, he walked me outside and helped me into a carriage. Clara hopped in next to me, and I rested my head on her lap. Her fingers ran lines through my hair, her touch again claiming sovereignty over the darkness, trading nightmare for serenity.
As I flittered in and out of consciousness, my mind fought to remember what had emerged from the depths of that pit. I muttered something about creatures, demons maybe … Yes, demons! Had they come for my soul?
Figments, no doubt, of a momentarily unstable mind. They were of no concern. Clara was with me. So long as she stayed there, no demon in hell or on earth could tear me from her side. I let my thoughts settle upon the motion of her hand, the soothing simplicity of her stroke. I closed my eyes and dreamed of her.
I had never considered myself a religious or philosophical man, at least not at the time of President Lincoln’s assassination. Trivial words on paper, anecdotal nonsense—that was all the Good Book was to me. It had no influence over a learned man.
Or so I had thought. A near-death experience and the events that came after cast away all my doubt, for I know now that the devil is real. He was there that day, wearing the face of Mr. John Wilkes Booth. He was there the day I failed my president.
And he had hooked his depraved fingers deep into my soul.
Perhaps I had been in shock. Perhaps the surge of energy I had felt coursing through me deteriorated my appreciation for life’s fragility—although I had not known it at the time, I was so near death that had I remained still, I might have been mistaken for a corpse. My blood loss had been severe. The seven-inch blade had sliced a gash below my shoulder that ran the length of my arm nearly to my elbow. It was so deep that it scratched bone and delved so near an artery that my blood poured like rainwater down a gutter.
I’ve heard tell that excitement and blood loss such as I experienced might cause one to remember events differently than they occurred, to imagine the fantastical where only the natural had been. My own doctors had claimed as much, and for a long time, I believed them. But what I saw that day was real! The Father of Lies came for my soul as my body wavered on existence’s delicate balance.
I do believe it was Clara who saved me, who liberated me from damnation, offering a reprieve from an eternity in hell. Surely, I will soon call the fiery pits home. Even now, I see oblivion’s tendrils rising from the floor, scaling the garden walls. My surroundings begin to circle, slowly now, like a weathervane caught in a slight breeze. I only pray for enough time to finish my confessions, to let the truth be known regardless of whether or not those who read this choose to believe it. The wise would heed my warning, for the darkness awaits us all.
Yet, the simple truth is this: I have damned myself. The devil is merely trying to collect what is owed him, what I am not yet ready to give up. I can blame him only for the action, not the reaction. He killed a great man, while I, the lesser, failed to stop him.
I asked it then, and I ask it again: why had I not seen the demon as he entered the President’s Box? I alone was in a position to thwart the monster. I alone had opportunity to save an infallible man, to alter fate and defeat evil. A trained soldier, bested by a thespian? If ever the hour of need had been greater … how could I have been so absent when destiny called?
That question has been the bane of my existence for more than forty-five years. God, has it really been that long? To think that I would persist when so many others, so many betters, have fallen to time’s unrelenting progression.
My sweet Clara …
My failures, my guilt, my sin—in them, the devil took root. He never let me forget that day. Though at first, I managed to carry on with my life, the memory of that horror plagued my sleep and crept into my thoughts whenever the fortress of my lucidity revealed its faults. The memory, chiseling like a prospector after precious ore, tore that fortress into ruins.
Perhaps, too, I was punishing myself. I should not have dragged Clara down with me.
In the years that followed the assassination, Clara and I had peace and were wed. Happy years were spent in what should have been recovery.
But the devil was merely biding his time, cultivating his strength. In the sullen hours, I brooded, while he laughed into my ears and barraged me with fork-tongued curses. I was not his puppet or plaything. I ignored his taunting and mockery, but his hold on me was only beginning.
* * *
“It is this house, Henry,” Clara said. “We should never have moved here. It isn’t good for you.”
I had heard the argument a hundred times. We had purchased a home in Lafayette Square, directly across the street from the White House, no less. Number 8 Jackson Place was a fine home, built for an admiral and worthy of one of his esteem. I hadn’t chosen the home to improve our political and social lives as I had claimed. That much was certain. After resigning from the army, I cared nothing for the public world. Everything I wanted—my beautiful wife and my tranquility—was always found at home, wherever that home might have been.
Maybe I wanted to honor his memory. Maybe it was to make sure my guilt never let me forget.
As I gazed out the front window at the solemn and graying structure, I wondered if forgetting was even possible. A tall, skeletal-thin man with a stovepipe hat and black coat stared back at me as he stood upon rigid White House steps. Blood ran down his forehead and masked his face, except for his wide shark-like grin.
Clara could not see him, I knew. She was beginning to think something was wrong with me, and I was beginning to wish she were right. But I saw him, and he saw me. At first, I believed him the creation of a tortured mind, but upon seeing his unnatural smile, I knew he was something sinister, something frightfully real and altogether evil. Three presidents had taken up residence at that monolithic site since Lincoln’s assassination, yet his likeness was the one I’d seen the most. Over and over again.
And he was dead.
The demon haunting me was not.
Clara wrapped her arms around me, startling me from my thoughts. I looked away, and when I looked back, my demon was gone. I wasn’t sure how she did it, but my Clara always scared the scoundrel away. I supposed no demon was a match for an angel, even one who refused to understand.
“It is not the house,” I said. “This house is perfect, and it is exactly where we should be to advance our station.”
“Our station? My dear Henry, you’ve written so many letters. How many others have been written on your behalf, by great men, prominent men? I am afraid we have pulled all the strings available to you. Yet President Hayes makes no appointment.”
Clara sighed. She nuzzled her cheek against my back and held me close.
My hands found hers, locked around my waist. I knew what she wanted to say. I had heard it for years. Still, I knew I would have to hear it again.
“They know about you, Henry, how you’ve changed, retreated into yourself. They worry about you. I worry about you. Where do you go when you lock yourself in that mind of yours? What do you see?”
“I see faces.”
“Whose faces?”
“The faces of the dead and one who would see more join their ranks.”
Clara sniffled behind me, and I wished I were stronger. She squeezed me tighter. I lowered my chin against my chest and was content to stand there in silence, safe in her arms.
When I looked up, President Lincoln took off his hat and bowed. The gesture would have been benevolent if he hadn’t been thirteen years dead. Thick sludge covered the front doors of the White House, flowing like a waterfall. When it hit the porch, it flowed like a blanket billowing in the wind, creeping up behind the dead president. When it was nary a foot behind him, it rose into the air and took shape. A shadowy figure appeared. A pistol fired.
I fell backward. Clara’s arms caught my weight. No, they were not Clara’s. “How?”
That didn’t matter. What I knew was horrifying enough. That shadow had been outside, but now its arms were wrapped around me, coiling tighter. I squirmed, batted at the hose-like arms, but it was no use. I could not escape.
I turned in the demon’s grasp. Rage consumed me when I saw its face. Half-Booth, half-demon, the corrupted being bellowed, “You failed him. You killed him.”
“I’ll kill you!” My hands found the monster’s throat and squeezed. I heard a scream. It seemed to come from everywhere. I glanced about for its source. When I looked down, I saw that the demon had vanished.
Instead, it was Clara whom I was strangling.
* * *
The devil had been inside her! It had violated my Clara. It could taunt me, mock me, brutalize me, pine away for my soul … I didn’t care. I deserved it. But the demon had gone too far. I swore I would never let it possess my precious jewel, my beautiful Clara, again. I would kill it first, any way I could. Clara was mine, no one else’s. Our family would not claim her. All her would-be suitors prancing around as if I didn’t even exist could not have her! Hell should take the lot of them and leave my Clara with me. Hell couldn’t have her, either. No one could have her but me!
After I had throttled the demon out of my wife, I was constantly on my guard. I kept a pistol at my hip except when I slept. During the night, I tucked it beneath my pillow, a companion for the Bowie knife I kept in a nightstand by my bed. But sleep came only when exhaustion commanded it. Each time my eyes closed, they would spring open to the sound of a gunshot and the smell of a fired pistol. In that hazy realm between alertness and dream, laughter echoed in my ears. The merriment always sounded like a muffled version of the Ford’s Theatre crowd at first, roaring at Harry Hawk’s punchline as their President died.
One laugh, soft at first, grew to a rumble. It was heavy, and soon, it overpowered all the rest. It belonged to Booth—no, it belonged to the face behind Booth’s.
And each time I woke, the laughter followed me. Its ungodly maker hid somewhere inside my bedroom. Again, it blamed me, much like the hushed voices of neighbors, former friends, the self-righteous, and the know-it-alls did. Evil hid in the hearts of men. In those who let it take root, evil will surely manifest. The only question was: when would it take hold?
“You failed him,” the voice still whispers. “You killed him.”
My physician, bless his confused soul, repeated what our friends had said, except he used medical jargon. The gist of it was that I was harboring too much guilt from the assassination, assigning blame to myself where it was not due. My mind was at war with itself, laying waste to a once-fertile landscape. The constant shooting and stabbing was leaving it porous. In the resulting holes, delusions bred.
My doctor, my family, and even my dear Clara, who had regarded me with suspicion too long after I had banished that demon from her—not one of them knew the truth: a malevolent being had taken up residence inside my mind. A real evil, not a product of my guilt, was locked behind walls of flesh and bone. They would not, could not, see it until it decided to reveal its dreadful conspiracies.
Night after night, its voice came unbidden, unwelcomed, never revealing its corporeal form. It kept me from sleeping and wore me down, always seeking to break me. Then, one night, the walls of my mind’s construct crumbled. In spite of my will, I fell asleep.
* * *
I awoke to the acrid scent of smoke.
“Clara?” My wife was not beside me. The smell of gunpowder filled my nostrils, and my mind flashed images of the dead at Fredericksburg. So many dead. Sweat beaded on my forehead. It soaked my sheets. The house was stifling, or I was feverish. No, a fire burned nearby.
I leapt to my feet. “Clara!” I did not think she would let me sleep through danger even as she spirited our infant son to safety. She had been more distant as of late, more … wary? I laughed uneasily, dismissing such ill-conceived thoughts of my Clara before they could poison my mind. More likely, she had fallen. Was she hurt? Due to her delicate condition—she was carrying our second child—I feared the worst. I glanced around the room, but saw no one and heard nothing.
The closet door creaked open. Something thudded against it. The soft tap repeated like a shutter rapping against the side of a house. With each dull thump, my heart thumped twice. I imagined something hanging—someone hanging. My little boy’s slippered foot banged against the opposite side of the door as he dangled lifelessly from a coat hook. My mind’s morbidity could not be cast aside, nor could I bring myself to draw open the closet door and defeat irrationality with knowledge.
The thudding kept pace, then became harder and louder. I stepped closer. With one final bang, a crash loud as thunder or a bullet blasting from a Derringer, the door swung open.
At my bedside, I peered into the darkness of the closet. Where clothes normally hung, I saw only black space so thick, it seemed tangible, so vibrant, it seemed alive. It peered into me.
Then it moved.
Tendrils like those I had seen at the Pederson house unraveled along the floor and across the walls. But they could not be real! My friends, my doctor, and my Clara had assured me of this.
I reached out and touched one. It was icy, bloodless, as though it had never felt the warmth of the sun or the love of one’s heart. My finger passed into it but never came out the other side.
Something touched me back.
I yelped and jumped onto my bed. A hand as white as milk and as smooth as a melon rind floated out of the pitch-black closet. On its ring finger, I saw the band I had given my Clara. My mind fell into sorrow. The wrist followed the hand, then an elbow accompanied by the frills of a long, white satin dress.
“Clara?”
As if summoned by her name, Clara appeared from the bowels of the closet. She did not step forward, for her legs did not move and her feet hovered a few inches over the ground. Her complexion was as pallid as the clean patches of her dress, most of which was stained, saturated by blood—the same dress she had worn on April 14, 1865.
My hand went to my mouth. I bit down on my knuckle. “Clara? Is everything all right?” I asked, though I could plainly see that it wasn’t. Her eyes were empty black circles. Tiny tendrils squirmed out of them like starfish legs searching for food.
Something else squirmed in the blood on her chest. Maggots.
“What’s happened to you, my dear?” Fear caused my words to come out broken. I needed Clara to be okay. For the first time in my life, I prayed that I was insane.
Why had she kept that infernal dress? Perhaps she had done so for the same reasons I had chosen to move us next to the White House. I did not know, but when Clara’s mouth spread wide across her face, a shark-tooth grin opened like a bear trap. I knew the dress was cursed, and I had cursed it. The creature in the dress was not my Clara.
“Stay back,” I warned, though I had no means by which to battle the beast. Even defenseless, I felt defiance rise inside me.
“She is ours now, Henry,” the demon spoke, many voices echoing from the depths of its eyes.
“She does not belong to you. You shall not have her!” I wanted to attack and had begun to lower my foot to the floor, but the darkness blanketed it like rolling fog. My muscles froze. I shriveled in my cowardice.
Black ooze shot from the demon’s eyes. Muck flooded the air, swallowing me in its embrace. I screamed, and the secretion worked its way into my mouth and seeped in through my nostrils. It filled my lungs with the freezing nothingness between the stars. I couldn’t breathe. A formless shadow embalmed me while I yet lived.
Sightless in my cocoon, my vessel into the underworld, the demon hugged my arms against my sides. I thrashed. I screamed. I called her name across the void.
“Clara!”
“What is it, Henry? Who are you talking to?”
“Clara?” My bedroom was as it should have been. I kicked off my tangling bedsheets. Clara, clothed in her nightgown, unadulterated and safe, a vision more beautiful than Aphrodite herself, held me in her arms. Once again, she had pulled me from the darkness. Once again, she had ripped me from Oblivion’s grasp.
I jerked upright and reached around her neck, wanting only to gaze into the face of my soul’s guardian. Clara shrank away, cowering as though I might strike her. Though pained to see her that way, I realized that of course she would be afraid, having witnessed my own terror and nothing more.
She hadn’t seen any of it, God bless her. She knew only that I needed her, and she offered a helping hand. I shuddered to think what might have happened had she not been there to offer it.
I walled up that damned dress with brick and mortar. It did not stop my so-called delusions. The years passed, with the demons surfacing mostly in voices and nightmares so often that I would lie awake night after night, listening to Clara breathe beside me. Like a metronome, the pace of her breathing coaxed me into a sort of trance, where my mind could find respite from the evil that plagued it, if only for a little while.
Still, the demon would not relent. It saw easy prey in me, exploited my fear of losing Clara, and exalted my guilt over failing the President. And it grew craftier.
When the dreams proved inadequate in advancing its goals, the beast took human form. Every time we took leave of our Washington home, we were accosted by would-be gentlemen suitors seeking Clara’s attention as if I were merely her stepbrother or perhaps her valet. They offered her lascivious smiles and complimented her appearance as pointed incisors dug into lower lips, perversion twinkling in their eyes, scorn flashing across their delirious grins.
And Clara would thank them, encourage them even! She claimed they were gentlemen she knew in her social circles, those from which I steered away, and that their greetings were polite and perfunctory. The other men’s advances compounded upon the unspoken tension that had infiltrated our holy bond. Her wariness of me, the feeling of love unrequited, the rumors that she might leave me … they were all that abhorrent monster’s doing! It had formed a barricade between my wife and me that I could not penetrate. I felt emasculated and impotent, just as I had the day Lincoln was shot. Its beguiling, wanton advances filled me with rage. Those whom Clara saw as people, friends even, I knew to be the devil’s henchmen. To see the demon before my eyes yet be unable to confront it made me feel weak. I was nothing.
The devil’s illusions occurred so often that I shut myself behind my doors. That demon had confined me to my home! I kept Clara confined there with me as often as I could. Three children, we had: my boys, Henry Riggs and Gerald, and my daughter, Clara Pauline, who looked so much like her mother that my heart swelled whenever I gazed upon her. Like Clara, the children were my joy and my distraction from a soul’s burning. And like Clara, they fell under my protection.
In the name of my children’s education, we packed up our things and headed to Europe, eventually wintering in Hanover, Germany. Without work to occupy my time and divert my mind from the mad chanting of the demon inside it, I thought I could escape it by running. So I corralled my family onto a ship, and we sailed halfway across the world.
I soon learned that the world was not big enough to hide me. I should have known it would follow.
* * *
“Pauline, my little darling, your dimples have stolen my heart.” I pinched my daughter’s cheek. “Maybe … I should take it back from them.”
Pauline giggled. “You’re silly, Daddy.”
My wife smiled. “You’re always doting on her, Henry.”
I stared my daughter in her beautiful, round eyes as she sat on my lap. Her shining face and chubby cheeks, filled with dimples and innocence, beamed back at me. If time could have frozen in that moment, I do believe I would have found paradise. I wondered why maturing had to ruin who we were.
“I think your mother is feeling a bit jealous, my sweet poppet,” I whispered. I kissed Pauline on her forehead, lifted her into the air, spun her around, and stood her on the floor. She wobbled then steadied and ran over to her mother. She jumped on Clara’s lap.
Clara brushed Pauline’s hair.
I frowned. “You dote on them far more than I ever could. Sometimes, I think you forget there are four of us who need your attention.”
Clara’s arms dropped to her side. “Henry …”
I looked away, ashamed. “I’m sorry. I just … I love you, Clara, and I am not too proud to admit that I need you. Whenever I am close to crumbling, you are the glue that keeps me stable, the stamp that keeps me sealed. I have been having these thoughts as of late, bad dreams, as well, always of you leaving me.”
Clara set her jaw. “For the last time, Henry, I am not going to leave you. Whatever you overheard in Albany, whatever problems we had back home, we agreed to leave them there. Our winters in Europe have always been our best times together as a family. Let’s enjoy it. You’ll feel better once we disembark.”
“I know, but—”
“Enough of this, Henry. You promised—not in front of the children.”
I released a long breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s this ship’s infernal rocking, agitating my dyspepsia to no end. I do hope the hot springs in Carlsbad will do me well. Dr. Pope seems to think they may do wonders for my ailments.”
“They will, dear. And if they don’t, we will find another solution. You mustn’t give up hope.”
I looked at Clara and saw the sincerity and strength of a faithful wife, the stalwart pillar that held me up. I could not imagine facing life without her. Still, I suffered the influx of those who would have stripped her from my side: the suitors who called themselves friends; the family members who actually thought that I, Henry Reed Rathbone, might harm the mother of my children and the only love I had ever known; and that worst fiend of all, that demonic spirit latched to my back, always chanting in tongues, reciting curses into my ears. The demon’s influence was everywhere.
Clara’s soothing voice was like none other. Her courage and devotion muted the curses and tamed my roiling stomach. God, how I loved her! How dare they think I would hurt her? I could no more hurt her than I could be without her.
My children were the collateral that would ensure Clara’s faithfulness. Of course, it was petty of me to consider them instruments of security in transactions of the heart. But what joyous security! To be blessed with three children in as many years. They were growing up so quickly.
My oldest, Henry Riggs, bore a striking resemblance to myself at seven years. He stood tall and proud. I had no doubt he would be a leader of men one day, be it on a military or political front. And Gerald, almost six years old, was a bright young boy who excelled with both numbers and letters.
Curiously, I had not seen the boys all morning. The S.S. Seythia , a beauty of a vessel, had its fair share of places to hide, but it wasn’t like my children to run off without my say-so.
“Where are the boys?” I asked.
Clara, who had returned to brushing Pauline’s hair, raised her head. She smiled the smile of a proud mother. “They are in their room, studying their histories as their father instructed.”
I slapped my legs and rose, sharing my wife’s pride. “Perhaps I will join them then.” I sauntered over to their cabin door and knocked before entering. As I stepped inside, I saw Gerald seated at a desk, his back to me. The edge of an open book on the desk extended beyond his shoulder, but the boy’s body blocked the rest of the tome from my view.
Not even six years old, and reading grand volumes of European history . But Gerald studied alone.
“Where is Henry?”
My son remained seated, motionless. I cleared my throat. “Gerald, where is Henry?”
Still, my son did not answer. My eldest son was nowhere to be seen. We were on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Where could young Henry have run off to?
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw movement, faint and fleeting, near the wall to my right. Gerald sat at the desk to the left. To the right was only a bunk. I wondered if Henry was hiding beneath it, playing a prank on his father. “Aha!” I said, turning quickly. Henry was neither on nor beneath the bunk.
Instead, I stared at a rather unimpressive assortment of paintings adorning the wall. A flower, a ship, and a fish leaping out of the water—none were worthy of the space they occupied or even a passing glance. I started to turn back to Gerald to renew my attempts to ascertain my eldest son’s whereabouts when movement came once more at the edge of my peripheral vision. My head snapped back toward the wall as I wondered how I could have missed Henry.
Henry was not there. I stared at the wall, utterly perplexed. Aside from the three poorly crafted portraits, the bunk along the wall, and a chair in the corner, the right side of the room was empty.
Wait. The fish … I could have sworn that fish had been leaping out of the water. Now, it clearly was descending into it. The flower, a freesia, also seemed different. Its obnoxious purple hue seemed faded.
My eyes were playing tricks on me. Surely, lack of sleep and the acid in my stomach were confusing what was real and what was not. I needed only to have blinked, and the room would be as it should be. Nothing sinister had ever followed me abroad. My untrustworthy eyesight was merely the product of a long, tiresome journey from Baltimore to Hamburg. Perhaps the time for much-needed rest had come.
I walked toward Gerald, who sat as still as a statue, likely lost on the battlefield of some famous conflict. I looked back. I had to for some reason. Something peculiar about that wall raised the hairs on my neck. This time, I was certain something drifted into view, not once but twice. I scrutinized the wall once more, growing weary of my tired eyes’ tricks. The pictures were still hanging right where they were supposed to be and looking exactly the same as they had a moment prior. Any deviancy I had previously imagined was just that: imagined.
Normalcy had returned, but it was fleeting. “What?” A splash of purple corrupted the bunk’s white linens. It appeared to be a feather or perhaps a flower petal.
“It cannot be.” I approached the bunk cautiously. My stomach felt hollow. My palms began to sweat. Anxiety seized my mind, yet I knew not why.
I crouched and picked up the lavender petal. Its color changed in my hand, as did its texture, turning brown and brittle as if time had advanced for it. The petal aged at a rate one hundred times faster than I did. It crumbled to flakes and dust between my fingers then was no more.
As I stared at empty air where the petal had once been, water sprayed onto the back of my neck. I straightened and faced the wall. My hand covered my mouth, stifling the scream that had formed in my lungs. The small fish had transformed into a massive shark. Its enormous lipless grin bulged beyond the painting’s frame. Water dripped from its teeth. I couldn’t tell if the paint was wet and running or if the shark was drooling.
The flower had also evolved. Its bulb curved, limp and dying, but its stem grew offshoots filled with thorns. From their sharp points, dark-red streaks ran down the portrait and onto the wall as if it were crying tears of blood.
“Gerald,” I said, stepping back slowly. “We need to leave this room.”
The ship in the third portrait rocked on waves. The floor rocked below me. I threw my arms out to balance, but the rocking increased. Acid burned in my stomach. I thought I would vomit but held it back.
“Gerald, let’s go. Now!”
I wanted to take my son away from that place, but I could not remove my gaze from that storm-tossed ship. Its hypnotic sway held me. The ship grew larger, as if it were crashing across the waves toward me. I recognized the vessel, for I was standing in it.
A light flickered in a small window along the painted Seythia’s starboard side. Mesmerized, I stepped forward and leaned in, edging closer and closer to that small window as it moved closer to me. I could almost make out what was inside. No, not what, but who.
I grabbed the painting by its frame and tore it from the wall. “Henry!” My eldest son was held captive inside that paint-and-canvas ship. His young face was cast in a fit of terror, mouth frozen in a scream as a fire raged behind him. He was trapped in a cabin. The paint around him began to melt and run. My son waved frantically out the window, calling for help, his eyes fixed on mine. In my head, I could hear him begging me to save him.
Then he, too, began to melt.
I had to find him. I concluded that the painting was an omen—my boy was trapped somewhere on the ship, no doubt in grave danger. I had to save young Henry.
I called for Clara and turned to grab Gerald, but I found him already standing. His eyes were hollow black pits. His lips curled back, exposing rotted teeth. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, abnormally long and full of boils. Worms weaved in and out of his gums.
On his shoulders, a naked imp perched, digging into Gerald’s skin with gnarled toenails. Stubby legs extended from a fat, round body. The creature’s genitalia rested obscenely in the tufts of my son’s hair. A wide oval head with beady eyes set close together sat between two flapping wings that resembled duck feet. Coiling horns, like those of a ram, sprouted from the wicked creature where ears should have been.
This was not the shark-mouthed demon that haunted me, but likely one of its pets. I did not fear it. Instead, I feared only for my boys. I would do all I could to destroy it. But first, I needed to free Gerald from its infernal grasp.
Lightning crackled outside, followed by roaring thunder. The heavens released a torrent. The lantern dimmed then flickered out. The boat rocked more fiercely, and I staggered from side to side.
My son stood straight, his posture unaffected by the motion of the ship. The imp seemed to enjoy it. It fondled itself over my boy’s head.
Filling with rage, I charged the imp like a bull at a matador. I couldn’t fail my sons as I had … well, I couldn’t fail them, too. They deserved a better father than the man I had been. If only I could save them, perhaps I could find my redemption. Saving my children was a hard task, I knew, as my failures had brought these horrors upon them.
The ship swayed violently just as I dove at the imp. It easily evaded me. My head crashed down upon the desk, and I fell into the dark.
I knew then that I could not run from the evil chasing me. I knew, too, that it would use my family against me. My own children! The demon was a master of clandestine warfare. I convinced myself that I must confront it head on and do battle in the light until one of us fell. Only then would I be free.
I should have left my family then and carried the burden of my curse alone, but I was weak. I was ready to face the deepest darkness, but I couldn’t bear a moment away from them. My weakness spread like a cancer, infecting all those I loved.
Those last months we shared together were troubled times. Finally, years of silent battle spent in torment, suffering, and emptiness all culminated in one tragic morning: the day I committed a far worse crime than that which started my curse. For if I considered my earlier inaction or failure a sin, then my later actions were certainly damnable. On December 23, 1883, I failed Clara and the children. But in failure, I succeeded, for that day, I secured for them the salvation that I could never have.
* * *
I sat expectantly by the door like a dog awaiting its master’s return. My family had gone shopping for Christmas presents. The holiday was only three days away. And no one but the Rathbones celebrated Christmas as well as the Germans.
My wife and three children had all gone, and their long departure left me antsy. I picked at a handkerchief as I sat in the drawing room, where I had full view of the hallway leading to the front door. Sitting. Waiting.
Waiting!
That voice, that horrid demonic voice, like a cat’s hiss intertwined with a vulture’s cry, muttering, whispering—always whispering—spoke into my ear. She’s going to leave you , it said. She’ll take the children away from you .
Oh, how that foul demon preyed upon my darkest fears. It knew my heart. It sought to control my mind. “Get out!” I shouted. “Get out of my head!” I pulled my hair. I gnashed my teeth. I would let it hide in me no longer.
A hollow feeling, as if cold hands had passed through my skin and ripped my soul from its decaying shell, swallowed me whole. I couldn’t bear it. I jumped up, flipped over the table, and sat back down. Has she left me at last? I was neither blind nor deaf. I had heard the hushed talks she had shared with her sister, Louise, behind closed doors. Always discussing, always chattering …
Chattering!
They thought me unwell. The audacity! I would have never hurt my wife. I would have never hurt my children. What more could I have done to prove my love?
I wept then.
“Demon!” I shouted, kicking at the overturned table. I banged my fist against the wall. “This misery and doubt is your doing.” The stink of ash and rot filled my nose. I glanced about the room, but the demon hid from me well. Nonetheless, I knew it was there, somewhere behind the walls. Watching. Waiting.
Waiting!
The demon wanted me to give them up. For eighteen long years, I had battled it for my family, but I would never surrender them. The beast sought to torment me by hurting those I loved. Most foul were these creatures born from hell. Sic semper tyrannis!
I had spied the demon everywhere as of late, pining—always pining—for Clara, callers seeking to lure her away, German filth disguising their lascivious intents behind well wishes and season’s greetings. They would take everything!
I dabbed the sweat from my brow and righted the table. Then I returned to my seat and my handkerchief. Footsteps sounded on the walkway. I rose, my spirits rising with me. My Clara, my children, home at last.
As the door opened, I saw that it was only my Clara’s hateful sister. She had no business with our family and had stayed long past her welcome. Still, I nodded graciously as any gentleman would, and without further interaction, I returned to my handkerchief. She glared at me with those scheming eyes of hers, those patronizing, calculating, always-plotting mirrors of her black heart. She, her family—all of them—were always calculating. Always plotting.
Plotting!
The door slammed against the wall. The children charged in like cavalry, then Clara followed. Finally, they were home where they belonged.
“Wipe your feet, boys, before … ugh,” Clara said too late to stop Henry Riggs and Gerald from running straight into the apartment, one giggling after the other. They disappeared around a corner.
Pauline ran to me and gave me a hug, and I lifted her in my arms while she raised me to the man I could be in hers. My little Pauline. My angel.
“Henry, are you all right?” Clara asked.
“You look sad, Daddy.” Pauline kissed my cheek. Already eleven years old, she was still as cute as cute could be.
“Everything is just fine, dear.” I planted a kiss of my own on Pauline’s forehead. “I have just missed all of you. I get lonely when you’re away.” I rubbed noses with my daughter. “You will never leave me, will you, Pauline?”
I glared at Clara as I hugged my daughter tightly. She should not have left me alone for so long.
Pauline pushed off my chest. “You’re squeezing too tight, Daddy. I don’t like it when you squeeze too tight.” She pouted.
I placed her gently back on her feet. “I’m sorry, angel. Sometimes when I hug you, I never want to let go.”
Laughing, the boys ran back into the hallway. They kicked off their boots by the door as quickly as they could, then Henry Riggs took off running again with Gerald trying to keep up.
I sighed. “Too big to give your father a hug?” I called after them. When they circled back around, I grabbed Henry Riggs by the arm if only to share a moment with him, but he twisted away from me and scowled like a wolf baring its teeth. My son, who would never want in life, couldn’t even hug the man who had always provided for him. The miserable little—
“Are you sure everything is okay?” Clara stepped closer, drawing me from my thoughts.
“Now that you’re back, dear, everything is right as rain.”
“You haven’t seen—”
“No, dear.”
“Or heard—”
“Not a peep.” Deceiving my own wife … I sighed again. It had to be. No matter how many times I had tried to explain to her what haunted me, she never believed it. I only wished she could believe in me.
My upper lip twitched. She never listened. My own wife.
Never listened!
“Well,” she said, smoothing out her blouse, “I’ll arrange for dinner.” With that, she was off. No hug, no kiss, no term of endearment.
I took my seat back at the drawing room table. Hours passed as I sat there, tearing my handkerchief to bits.
A blast came from the pantry.
“Clara!” I ran as fast as I could. I felt the weight of my gun in my hand. When I reached my wife, she appeared unharmed, but she stared at me wide-eyed and trembling.
“Put down the gun, Henry,” she said. “It was just a cabinet door snapping shut. I’m all right, and so are you.”
Slowly, I lowered my revolver into its holster. Clara hated that I wore that gun. She said I would fire it someday, causing more harm than good. But its old metal felt like safety in my hand. It was our protection, not our undoing. My shoulders remained tense as the laughter of children echoed through the pantry.
Henry Riggs burst through one door, Gerald on his heels. I stood directly in their path. Henry stopped before colliding with me. Gerald bounced off his back and fell onto his buttocks.
“Boys,” Clara said, “go to your room and prepare for supper.” She covered my hand with hers, softly pushing the revolver back into its holster. I hadn’t realized I had raised it again.
“It’s your soldier’s heart, Henry,” she whispered. “You know how it makes you … anxious.”
For once, I agreed with Clara. I let out my breath. The demon was not at play.
“Is everything all right, Clara?” Louise asked. I jumped, having not heard her enter the pantry. She stood behind me, holding a frying pan. Scowling, she glared at me as though I were a villain for trying to protect my family.
“We’re fine,” Clara said. “Henry just had a little scare, but everything is fine now. Right, Henry?”
I didn’t care for my wife’s condescending tone, but perhaps I had been a bit jumpy. “Yes … just a little scare. I think I’ll go lie down for a while.” I walked to my room, collapsed onto my bed, and closed my eyes.
* * *
Children laughing.
I woke on the bed, and the laughter faded. My room was blanketed by night so dark, I could not see my hand before my eyes. I wondered if I had slept through dinner. My heart raced, though I knew not why. I rubbed my eyes. Still, they would not adjust. Blood pulsed through my veins, creating a muted beat pounding inside my skull. I rubbed my temples, trying to soothe away the ache. White light flashed before my eyes. Sharp pain stabbed at my brain.
The laughter returned.
“Henry, is that you? Gerald?”
Why can’t I see? How long have I slept? Where is Clara? I slid my leg over the side of my bed and planted my foot on the wooden floor. It was cold. I could not recall taking off my shoes and socks.
I tried to kick my other leg off the bed, but it caught in my sheet, and I fell to the floor. I didn’t recall getting under the covers. And damn it, why is it still so dark?
You killed him , a voice whispered. It’s all your fault .
“Scoundrel! How dare you come to me here?” I should have known the demon would choose Christmas, a time of joy and family, to deliver its worst upon us. It had always been there, lurking in shadow, living in the space within the walls, infecting everything from outside reality’s veil, waiting to become corporeal once more.
The pitter-patter of tiny feet came from the corridor. Pauline’s giggle echoed into my room.
The demon mimicked her giggle. Your wife will take her away from you , its slithering snake voice promised. She’s going to take all of them away. Do not worry, Henry. After she leaves you, I will be there to comfort her.
“Children!” I shouted, ignoring the beast. “Go to your rooms and stay there until I come for you. It’s not … proper to be roaming the halls at this late hour.”
The beast roared at that. You cannot protect them. They are not safe here .
Hot breath sizzled on my face. Though I could not see it, I knew the devil was close enough to touch—and maybe to strangle.
I lunged forward, meaning to kill the beast with my own hands or at least hold it in that room. As long as I kept it with me, my family would not be harmed. I caught nothing but air. I had been close, I knew, for I had heard its shark teeth gnashing. Its forked tongue stabbed at my cheek.
The demon would not be contained. Oh no, my dear Henry. They are not safe anywhere . Its words trailed off toward the door. I heard its rancid flesh scraping along the bottom of the door as it squeezed through the crack.
“No …” I scrambled to my feet and raced after the sound. Stumbling in the dark, I found the wall and ran my fingers along it until they found the door then the knob. I tore open the door.
“Gerald? Pauline?” My children stood at the far end of the hallway, opposite their room. They were the only light in the darkness, glowing like the moon, white against black. Arm in arm, they shuffled like wind-up toys just before their gears stopped turning.
One look at them was normally enough to put my mind at ease even at the most troubled times. But the demon’s presence was as thick as rolling fog. It caused the hairs on my arms and neck to stand up straight and my teeth to grind. I could smell it, too, like the gangrenous wounds of dying soldiers. The smell of death.
My sight came into focus.
Their smiles were big and grew bigger as they stepped quietly toward me. Their skin was as white as snow. Their eyes, dear God, were swirling black pits.
I swallowed hard. Their clothes! “Children, what are you wearing?” I laughed uneasily. I bit down on my knuckle, despising myself for letting the terror take me while my children were in danger. I threw back my shoulders and faced the approaching malevolence.
Gerald was dressed all in black, save for his white undershirt. His black coat, polished shoes, and bow tie matched perfectly the beard he hadn’t had before that moment. Something like mud slid down the side of his neck.
And Pauline in her long black-and-white gown looked like a skeleton princess, both lovely and terrible. Dark stains spattered the white of her dress. A black veil partially hid her eyes.
Though their sardonic smiles were frozen in place, I heard them laughing. Pauline was Mary Todd holding Honest Abe’s arm—the demon was reenacting that horrible night through my children. It had corrupted their innocent bodies with its foul puppetry. The beast wasn’t only in them. It was everywhere.
“Show yourself, demon! Leave them alone. They have no part in our quarrel. They’re innocent.”
None are innocent . Shadows took shape behind my children, creeping at their heels. The shadows rose and became one in a form that passed for a facsimile of Henry Riggs. My terror grew and shook the fabric of my being. Coming to light through my boy, the demon stared through hollow eyes directly at me and smiled. Then it vanished.
I next spotted the demon as it stood horizontal upon the wall. I blinked then found it crawling along the ceiling. This was not Henry Riggs, but the demon in its true form, playing at being a child. Tangible. Killable.
Like reanimated corpses, Gerald and Pauline continued to amble closer. The demon dropped from the ceiling and landed soundlessly behind Gerald. I saw its face in Gerald’s glow.
My God … it is Henry . The beast had defiled my eldest, possessed his young body, and gestated inside him. Wings like those of a bat’s reached from his back to the walls, scraping along them, wilting the paint and rotting the wood. The hallway fell into ruin before spiraling down a whirlpool into the abyss.
Demon Henry also wore familiar attire. He raised an arm. A pistol rose with it.
“Booth!” I shouted. I raised my pistol to meet the shadow form, uncertain that I could kill the demon without killing my boy. During my hesitation, Demon Henry fired. Time slowed. I saw the bullet spark from the barrel and take flight toward me as I hurried toward it. It collided with Gerald just behind the boy’s left ear. He and Pauline dissipated like smoke in a gust of wind.
The bullet hit me in the stomach with the force of a crashing wave. My momentum carried me forward in spite of it. Black tentacles slithered across my skin from the point of impact, stretching and spreading. Futilely, I tried to hold the oozing tendrils inside me. My end was near.
Only the demon and I remained.
I screamed angrily as I lunged at the beast. I locked arms with it, thinking in my rage that I could tear it limb from limb. Even as I felt the icy, worming tendrils weaving in and out of my skin like stitches, I did not let go of the demon.
Pain blazed through my arm. The beast escaped my hold. Blood soaked my sleeve and dripped from the blade that had appeared in the monster’s hand. My fear and pain were second to my desire to destroy that vile creature. I reached for its neck.
I caught a better look at its face. Not Booth? Not young Henry? I didn’t understand. The face I looked into was my own.
The demon was a smaller version of me, dressed just as I had been on that fateful night. Contorting my features with its own shark grin, the demon laughed hard and loud. A slender tail with a spearhead tip whipped erratically from its backside, until another creature latched onto it.
The demon’s pet. That filthy imp .
The gremlin was dressed like Clara, wearing the nightgown she most often wore to bed. It flowed behind the urchin like a wedding gown, dragging along the hallway floor. The creature’s erect phallus tented the gown. The imp stroked itself as it stared up at me with devious eyes.
Before I could seize the demon, it and its pet disappeared. Gone, too, was the festering hole in my stomach and the creeping-vine tentacles. The scent of blood and gun smoke lingered.
I looked up, down, and everywhere for them. My heart pumped feverishly. Sweat rained from my armpits and forehead despite the frigid night. I had to get them out of there. The demon was gone, but it would be back. It had been playing with me before. I knew worse devilry was yet to come.
The apartment was calm. I could no longer hear the whispers. We had no time to dawdle. The demon’s power had receded. It would be back to claim my family, once and for all. It would be back that very night. We had to escape.
My pistol trembled in my hand, a lantern in the other. I knew not when or how I had acquired either. Another trick of the beast, I assumed. I had no time for it. I cried, desiring only to remove my family from the devil’s path.
I ran to my children’s room. The door was closed, and every nerve of my body screamed to kick it down, but I restrained myself, having enough wits about me to counterfeit a balanced mind for my children’s sake. Our circumstances were dire, but I would spare them any and all horror I could.
I knocked softly. “Is Pauline in bed?”
Louise, who shared their room, answered, “Yes.” She did not open the door.
I reached for the knob.
“Dear husband, do calm yourself,” Clara said as she entered the hallway from our bedroom. She was wearing the same nightgown the loathsome creature had worn. I thought we should burn it once we were safely out of the building. Maybe we should have burned the whole house down.
My sweet Clara had arrived to steer me safely out of the darkness. Or is she here for the children. Always the children. When did she forget about me? I shook off the thought. The demon was already returning.
“Lock the door,” she said to her sister. “Save the children.”
Save the children? What harm did she think could befall them from my hands? Rage ignited within me, kindling a fire so fierce, I thought it would consume me. White light again flashed before my eyes, searing the retinas. Clara, how I loved her and hated her then. I holstered my pistol, grabbed her by the elbow, and escorted her back to our chamber. We hadn’t the time for her disbelief. I knew what I saw, and I knew what was coming. I needed her cooperation. I needed her to stand beside me, her husband. To stand where she fucking belongs!
I needed her.
After slamming the door behind us, I shuffled her farther into the room. I placed the lantern on the dresser and ran my fingers down my face. Before I could gather my thoughts, Louise had invited herself in. I lost it. I pushed Louise from the room as she batted at my arms. I swung the door, hoping it would hit her.
Clara was crying. She tried twice to push past me, but I would not let her leave. Not until she heard what I had to say. Not until she understood our danger. I was trying to save us! Why couldn’t she understand that?
When I heard the laughter, I knew we were too late. It came from all four walls. At first, just the demon I knew offered its voice. A chorus of other wicked things then added their amusement.
She’s ours now, Henry , they chanted.
“No! You cannot have her!”
Clara stared at me, her lips trembling, her skin losing color. Did she finally hear them, too, now that they had come to claim her?
Now that it was too late.
I had to think of something. The demons were closing in, everywhere in the walls and the ceiling. The black blood of hell seeped up through the floor, coating our home in despair. Sharp talons and fanged mouths pushed through the walls and peeked out from behind the paintings. Where the wood would not give, demon appendages molded it like clay into frightful sculptures.
A hoofed foot clomped the floor beside me. Claws grabbed my pant leg. I kicked them away before they could drag me down to meet their owners. I screamed. I cried. I raved. I pulled out my hair. My mind was out of solutions. We had no way out.
The demons laughed louder, drowning out all sound. Our fate had come. Damnation awaited the both of us. So I did the only thing I could do.
I saved Clara.
I raised my pistol.
“Henry, let me live!” she howled behind a shark-toothed grin. Then, in a voice that was decidedly not Clara’s but low and resonant as if bellowed from the bottom of a well, she said, “For the sake of the children.”
The laughter, so loud then, so persistent that it was maddening, nearly brought me to my knees. But I could not falter. I summoned what was left of my strength. The beast needed to be silenced.
I shot Clara twice in her chest. She fell onto the bed. I walked to the dresser and opened the drawer where I kept my knife. I needed to be sure she was dead—to save her.
Clara lay on the bed, still alive. Her eyes stared at me, asking that infernal question: Why?
I do this for you, dear. I love you.
The demon’s hot breath blew against the back of my neck. I smiled. “You are too late, fiend. You will not have her.” I raised my knife and plunged it into my sweet Clara’s heart.
We did not come for her , the demon whispered into my ear. It laughed low and heavy as it retreated into the walls with its army.
I was alone with my dying wife. The knowledge that I had made the ultimate sacrifice for her, that she would go to a better place because of my actions, was bittersweet. Grief wormed its way into my soul. We would spend eternity apart. Never would I see my Clara again.
I pulled the knife from her chest. Then I stabbed it into my stomach. Again. And again. And again.
It won’t be long now. My God! What a long life I’ve lived. So little to show for it.
Liquid nothingness swallows the walls. Darkness encroaches. I start to nod off but shake myself awake. Every moment in this world, every last second I can abate life’s march, is a second I cheat that demon from what is owed.
I’ve spent a long life of battling against a tide, wading against its pull as long as I could before I am spent, knocked down, and swept under. The demon left me alone after Clara’s death, its purpose fulfilled. I’ve had twenty-seven years here in this asylum to consider it all. All that time … I had thought the beast was after my family to punish me. I should have known it was me it had wanted.
I leave these scribbles behind for anyone who will read them. I have little faith that they will be viewed as anything more than the ramblings of a mind fallen into disrepair. Still, I lay bare my sins, confess those to which I am at fault and deny those for which I have been charged. I am well past the judgment of man.
I go now to the other side, void of love, void of Clara, with only my demons to embrace.
Innocent until proven guilty: that was his mantra. No matter how guilty Bradley Walsh knew his client to be, he’d make sure justice remained blind. He’d bury the truth in a murky sea of “facts” and misdirection, obscured by a school of red herrings. Reasonable doubt was his ally, a vixen who seduced jurors with an alluring cloud of deceit.
The trial was his to control. The participants—the witnesses, the victims, the prosecutor, and even the judge—were his unsuspecting pawns. The courtroom his playing board, Bradley ruled the game. And that day, just like all the days before it, he had performed masterfully.
Bradley dismantled the prosecution’s case with carefully crafted cross-examination. His questions could only be answered one way, limited so much in their scope that witnesses answering them had no room to wiggle. He’d never ask them the material questions, those that would damn his client—not unless the state wanted to pay him the exorbitant amounts his clients were willing to shell out. No, private practice had swelled his bank accounts and his ego well beyond those of the inferior masses.
Victory was so close he could smell her perfume. Only one witness remained. After that, Bradley would move to dismiss the case, and he would succeed, the state having failed to put forth any credible case against his client. The jury would not have the chance to convict on gut feeling alone. His client would never have to set foot in the witness box.
Bradley glanced at his client, his eyes smiling upon a guiltless canvas. Clint Billings, a convicted drug dealer with a rap sheet that read like a Manson confession, stared back at him, a smug grin marking an otherwise hardened face.
The face of a killer . Bradley was sure everyone present thought it. But who could prove it?
Billings was evil, pure and simple. A six-foot-six, three-hundred-pound weapon of mass destruction without compassion or conscience, Billings ran a crew of thieves, rapists, drug dealers, and murderers, the sort who took what they wanted no matter the consequences. He was a monster inside and out. Monsters like him didn’t think twice about suffering and torment unless someone intended to inflict either upon them.
That was what the state had in mind for him. But Billings had learned long ago the cardinal truth behind the criminal justice system: threats, bribes, and unscrupulous representation were far better than innocence, particularly since innocence was supposed to be presumed.
Bradley was happy to accommodate so long as his pockets were stuffed. He cared little for innocence. For the right price, he could serve innocence up on the proverbial platter. He’d even steal it from the scales of justice.
“No more questions, Your Honor.” Bradley backed away from a rattled college student, the prosecution’s star witness to the brutal murder of Jeanette LeFevre. Once a beautiful teenager filled with dreams of a bright future, Jeanette now lay dead and mutilated in a cold wooden box six feet below the surface. She had been abducted from outside her dormitory, bludgeoned repeatedly and defiled—postmortem—in the woods nearby.
The young man on the stand, a fellow university goer with no apparent reason to lie, testified on direct examination that he’d seen Billings force Jeanette into his black BMW at gunpoint. By the time Bradley had finished with him, the student could no longer say with certainty the color of the car Jeanette had entered, the time or day of the alleged abduction, the circumstances under which she’d entered the vehicle, or the identity of the man with whom she’d left.
The student’s testimony had unraveled against questioning designed to discredit, confuse, and confound. The case was all but over. The victim’s father, a witness of no factual consequence, was the sole barrier between Bradley and yet another win.
“The state calls Pepe LeFevre to the stand,” the prosecutor announced, projecting confidence Bradley found as phony as unicorns in space.
A dark-skinned man rose from his seat in the back of the courtroom where he had sat alone, unnoticed. Small in stature but large in presence, he stepped out from behind the crowd and walked toward the gate separating the officers of the law from the rest of the rabble. All eyes were on him, including Bradley’s. He walked through the swinging half door and paused until a court officer directed him to the witness box. His part in what masqueraded as the administration of justice was about to begin.
As LeFevre passed, Bradley watched him with the shrewd confidence of a falcon stalking a field mouse. Easy prey . But on closer inspection, the little mouse didn’t seem so meek. LeFevre was clad in a royal-blue blazer thrown over a black T- shirt and black dress pants. The afterthoughts of a fire scarred one side of his face. His mouth was hideously deformed, the corner of his lips missing where the scar tissue began, his teeth partially exposed. It made him look as though he might be smiling sinisterly, mouth curled like something between a dog’s snarl and the smirk of a psycho clown in a horror film. His teeth were stained yellow and unnaturally spaced. A few were black and rotted.
But it was his eyes that bitch-slapped Bradley’s composure—completely colorless, cataract plagued, and milky. LeFevre must have been as blind as a mole. But he wore no sunglasses, and he was sure-footed. There was conviction in those eyes, a strength unbefitting the man’s four-foot-nothing frame.
And Bradley saw it well. LeFevre’s gaze never left him. Bradley wanted to retreat from that stare. That ghost of a man, that nobody among giants, made him feel small. He swallowed hard. Something in LeFevre’s eyes caused the attorney’s hands to shake. His tie tightened around his neck. He tugged at his collar. Sweat pooled in his armpits.
What’s wrong with me? Bradley couldn’t make sense of his fear. He had shaken hands with the Devil, represented beings far worse than LeFevre. Yet this mongrel, straight off some ill-begotten raft, likely without a dollar in his pocket or a friend with any clout, had unnerved him with nothing more than a stare?
He’s nothing , Bradley tried to rationalize. But his uneasiness wasn’t so easily staved. The upper hand was his to lose. He needed to pull himself together. He needed to stall. So he stood.
“Your Honor, before swearing in this witness, perhaps now would be a good time for a break?”
Judge Mia Nevarro peered over the thick bifocals propped on the end of her nose. Bradley knew she despised him. He had played fast and loose with the rules of procedure in her courtroom many times too many.
She looked at the clock hanging high on the back wall. “Mr. Walsh, it’s only twelve fifteen. As you are well aware, lunch break isn’t until one. This case seems to be nearing conclusion, so I thought we’d press on through lunch. I see no reason—”
“Fifteen-minute bathroom break, Your Honor?”
Judge Nevarro let out a long, heavy sigh. “Very well.”
She stood and turned toward fourteen blank faces aligned in two rows: the esteemed members of the jury and the alternate jurors. Bradley saw them as fourteen people too dumb to know how to get out of jury duty, fourteen people who would eat up his bullshit all day long.
“Jurors,” Judge Nevarro said. “Same instructions as I gave you before the last break. No discussing the case with anyone, including each other. We’ll take a short break and be ready to resume in fifteen minutes. I trust that everyone who needs to use the facilities will have done so by then.” She cast a sideways glance at Bradley.
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
“All rise,” a court officer hollered. Like sheep, all in the courtroom complied.
While waiting for the judge and jury to exit, Bradley shuffled absentmindedly through papers on the table before him, keeping his eyes downcast, away from LeFevre’s stare. But his brain eventually betrayed him; he looked up just as LeFevre stepped from the witness stand. Again, their eyes locked.
Bradley watched as thin lips pulled back, revealing diseased gums. Now he was sure of it: LeFevre was smiling.
A court officer, who Bradley thought was named Len, escorted LeFevre between the lawyers’ tables to the gate. As they passed him, LeFevre opened his jacket. A patchwork doll with green button eyes and a stitched-on smile was affixed to the inner lining. Its hair looked real; it was light brown and parted to the side. The doll wore a stylish blue pinstriped suit, white button-down, and canary-yellow tie. It matched Bradley perfectly.
“He … he …” Bradley pointed at the doll, but he couldn’t get the words out. Words were his weapons, yet the doll’s appearance made him forget how to wield them. He’d heard of dolls like that. He understood their significance. Though he didn’t believe they held any supernatural power, he sure as hell didn’t like the threat. Bradley didn’t just feel threatened; he was downright terrified.
LeFevre jabbed the doll with a sharpened fingernail. Pain burst through Bradley’s side as though a spear had pierced it in exactly the same spot. He keeled over, bracing himself with a palm against the table. LeFevre winked and exited the courtroom. The court officer returned to his post.
“What’s the matter with you?” Billings asked from his seat beside him. Bradley’s lawyering had secured his client that seat, as well as the absence of an orange jumpsuit and shackled, cuffed wrists so that he’d look less guilty. But the ankle shackles remained. His client had to stay put. That was the deal.
“I gotta take a shit,” Bradley answered, not wanting to alarm his very big and very violent client. He waved the court officer over and headed out of the courtroom.
Outside, the court officer, who matched Billings pound for pound, glared at Bradley with questioning eyes. This had better be good , the eyes said.
“Thanks for coming out here with me, Len. You’re not going to be—”
“The name’s Lou.”
“Right. Lou. Sorry.” Bradley pointed to LeFevre, who was standing twenty feet down the hall. “I know this is going to sound strange, but that man has a voodoo doll of me attached to the inside of his jacket.
Lou frowned. “You serious?”
“Could you just ask him to open his jacket, please?”
Lou huffed, but he did as asked. Bradley watched as he walked over to LeFevre. The two talked. Then they laughed. LeFevre opened his jacket. He took it off and handed it to Lou, who shook it and sifted through its pockets.
Bradley heard Lou say, “Sorry for the inconvenience.” The court officer walked toward him with palms held upward, a satisfied look on his face. He shrugged and returned to the courtroom.
“But …” Bradley tried to protest, his lower lip quivering. His best bet for a comrade-in-arms had wiped his hands clean of the situation, leaving Bradley alone and defenseless in that hallway. Now he really did need to use the restroom. He hustled toward it and away from LeFevre.
The courthouse was decades old, and its restrooms were no better than outhouses with running water. Bradley pushed open the wooden door to the men’s room, staring blankly through a bubbly opaque-glass window that framed everything on the opposite side in shadow. The door creaked. Bradley scanned the bathroom for life, but it was empty. He walked over to the sink and splashed cold water on his face, happy to be alone.
He’s fucking with me . Bradley stared through his reflection in the mirror, his mind replaying the events in the courtroom. Stupid mind trick—that’s all it was .
He hit his palms against the sink, angrier at himself for being duped than at LeFevre for duping him. He thinks he can shake me off my game? Bradley scoffed at the notion. The knots in his shoulders, wound tightly by LeFevre and his little toy, began to unravel. He would not be bested by some manipulative freak.
He unzipped his fly and strutted toward the middle of three adjacent urinals, all unoccupied. As his stream released, his stress released with it. He stared at the wall in front of him. Justice is blind was scribbled on the tile.
Bradley laughed. Yeah, but it sure is lucrative .
The restroom door creaked. The sound of footsteps did not follow. Bradley thought nothing of it until he felt a presence to his left, then another to his right. He cleared his throat, shook himself, and tucked his manhood back into his pants. As he zipped up, a chill ran down his spine. Without rhyme or reason, nausea hit him like a punch to the gut. His mind screamed for him to look left, simultaneously warning him against such action. He stole a glance to his left.
Bradley screeched as his eyes met the cold, dead stare of Pepe LeFevre. He stumbled back, bumping into the man to his right.
He released his breath. Thank God I’m not alone with LeFevre , he thought, feeling the warmth of the stranger’s shoulder against his back. It gave him confidence, emotional support. He would not be terrorized—not by LeFevre, not by anybody.
“Mr. LeFevre,” he said, trying to sound coolheaded. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you are going through. Your daughter deserves justice. But respectfully, sir, I think you’d be better served if you pushed the police to find her real killer. I’m sure they will help you in every way they can.”
LeFevre didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t so much as blink. He just kept on staring that thousand-yard stare. Bradley imagined gruesome cinematic depictions of his own death playing upon the back of the man’s eyes. All the while, LeFevre’s eerie-ugly smile never vanished.
“In the meantime,” Bradley continued, again needing to clear his throat. “Your threats against me have got to stop, or I’ll have no choice but to report you to the authorities. Am I clear?”
Though LeFevre made no hint of aggression, Bradley saw something malevolent beneath his smile, darker than anything in the faces of the hundreds of criminals he’d plucked from judgment—a glimpse at the essences of hatred, rage, and murder. Real evil. It chilled him to the bone.
But what could LeFevre do with a witness standing right next to him? Bradley turned to apologize to the man he’d bumped, his rope out of this pit of fear.
Pepe LeFevre stared back at him.
“What the fuck?” Bradley’s jaw dropped open. His heart tried to leap out of it. His thoughts raced out of control. And into the abyss he plummeted, the darkness dragging him down.
Instinct preserved Bradley. He spun to his left. No one was there. He spun right. LeFevre number two had also vanished. Bradley could hear his pulse pounding in his temples. He scanned the bathroom. LeFevre was gone.
But something remained. When Bradley saw it, he raced to the sink where it had been perched. He reached with both hands, wanting to throttle LeFevre but willing to settle for this little doll. But silly superstition halted him in his tracks. What if … ?
Blood rushed into Bradley’s head. His face turned apple red. “That’s it!” he shouted, the words coming out with a growl. He kicked the wall, putting a hole through the plaster. He picked up the doll.
Someone had drawn Xs over the eyes with a Sharpie. The mouth was no longer smiling—the stitches ran flat, expressionless. The hair was styled the same way he had styled his hair for the last twenty years, parted left to right. Most strands were light brown, and some were gray—the same as his hair looked in the mirror before him. He felt it. The hair felt like his, too. Just like his.
He flipped. “Motherfucker!” Bradley kicked the wall until the small hole he had made grew to the size of a manhole cover. Clutching the doll, he stormed out of the men’s room.
He hurried into the courtroom, where he placed the doll in his briefcase and slammed it shut. Billings jumped. Bradley found it nice to know he wasn’t the only one on edge.
He waved Lou over.
“What is it now?” Lou asked, obviously irritated. “More doll issues?”
“You’ll see,” Bradley replied flatly. “Please inform the judge that counsel would like to speak with her before the jury returns.”
Lou shrugged. “All right, but it’s your funeral. You know she’s not going to like another delay.”
“I think she’ll understand. This warrants her attention.”
Lou huffed and disappeared through a doorway behind the bench. Moments later, he returned with Judge Nevarro in tow. She did not look happy.
She sat down in her chair. Leaning over the bench, all the while glaring at Bradley, she crooked her index finger. “Counsel, you may approach.”
Bradley grabbed his briefcase and hustled to the bench. The prosecutor was slow to follow, his face reflecting his confusion.
“This had better be good,” the judge warned.
“Your Honor,” Bradley began, his voice like silk. “The victim’s father has been threatening me. Since his testimony has no relevance to this case, I ask that he be stricken as a witness and removed from the courtroom.”
The prosecutor leaned forward. “Mr. LeFevre’s testimony will place his daughter’s whereabouts at the time of her abduction—”
“Which is undisputed—”
“And will detail the numerous occasions upon which he’d seen the defendant’s automobile outside his home. As to any threats made against Attorney Walsh, this is the first I’m hearing of them.”
“Mr. LeFevre’s testimony is relevant. He will be allowed to testify.” Judge Nevarro stroked her chin. “But Mr. Walsh’s claims are troublesome, to say the least. I am extremely hesitant to remove Mr. LeFevre, given his obvious interest in the outcome of this trial and the public nature of this courtroom. Still, I take threats very seriously. Do you have proof to support your allegations?”
“I most certainly do, Your Honor.” Bradley felt smug. The judge grimaced but said nothing.
“He created a voodoo doll with my likeness. It’s here in my briefcase.” He lifted his leather case and placed it upon the bench. Lou stepped forward, but Judge Nevarro waved him off.
“Let me just …” Bradley unclipped the latches. He never finished the sentence, for when he opened the briefcase, the voodoo doll was gone.
He shuffled around his folders. He reached beneath his documents and deep into the inner sleeve. Bradley could feel Nevarro’s eyes upon him, judging him as judges did.
Come on . It has to be in here somewhere . Bradley panicked. He dumped the contents of his briefcase onto the floor.
“Mr. Walsh …”
If the judge said more, Bradley didn’t hear her. He crouched and sifted through pens and papers scattered about the courtroom floor, looking for something that clearly wasn’t there, unwilling to concede the obvious truth.
“I don’t understand,” he murmured. “I never took my eyes off it. He must have …” Bradley gathered his things into his arms and stood. “I don’t know how he did it, but it was here; I swear it.”
“Swear all you like, Mr. Walsh,” the judge replied. “You’ve never had much credibility with me. If I find out you’re playing some kind of charade to keep Mr. LeFevre from testifying, I’ll have you jailed for contempt.”
Peering over the rim of her glasses, her unblinking eyes narrowed on Bradley. Judge Nevarro meant it. Bradley was stunned. He had many tricks and employed them freely, but this was not one of them.
“Now pick up the rest of your things. Lou, have Mr. LeFevre approach.”
Bradley dumped the contents of his armload in a heap upon his table. He collected the few sticky notes and pens that remained on the floor and added them to the pile. Billings watched him with a raised eyebrow.
“Everything’s under control,” Bradley whispered. He hurried back to the bench just as Lou was returning with the demon who called himself Pepe LeFevre. Bradley scowled at him, but LeFevre nodded respectfully to the judge.
“Mr. LeFevre,” Judge Nevarro began. “I’ll get right to it. Have you been threatening this man?” She jabbed at finger at Bradley.
“I’m sorry, jenn fanm ,” LeFevre answered, a heavy Haitian accent lacing his words. “By chance, we had a rather uncomfortable meeting in the restroom, but I made sure not to say anything at all because I didn’t think he and I were supposed to talk to one another. Mr. Walsh appeared angry with me though I am not sure why. I’m afraid my appearance does seem to alarm people at times. Perhaps this was one of them. I left the restroom as quickly as I could.”
“He’s lying!” Bradley blurted.
“Settle down, Mr. Walsh.” Judge Nevarro sounded like a mother scolding her child. Bradley kept his mouth shut, not wanting to press his luck.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this, but have you created a voodoo doll or any other type of doll or figurine that looks like Mr. Walsh?”
“No,” LeFevre responded, smirking. “Of course not.”
“Did you bring any dolls or figurines with you to this courthouse today?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Will you agree to stay away from Mr. Walsh, to not approach him or speak with him except to answer the questions he asks you while you are giving sworn testimony in the course of this trial?”
“Certainly,” he said, his smile disappearing. He nodded at Bradley. “I have nothing to say to Mr. Walsh.”
“Good enough for me. Counselors, take your seats. Lou, have Mr. LeFevre return to the stand then bring in the jury. Let’s get this trial done, gentlemen.”
“But—” Bradley tried to protest.
“I’ve made my decision.”
Defeated, Bradley sulked back at his table. A moment later, the jurors filed in, and the prosecutor began his direct examination of Pepe LeFevre.
Bradley glanced at his Rolex. Fifteen minutes had passed. In that time, LeFevre had failed to advance the state’s case against his client in any meaningful way.
He’s just whining about the loss of his daughter . Boo- dee-fucking-hoo. Cry me a river . He cracked his knuckles then went back to doodling on his legal pad. LeFevre was no threat to his defense. He began to wonder why he had ever been worried about him in the first place.
He panned the jury box. Sure, they feel sorry for him. They’re eating up his sob story like a bunch of old ladies watching soap operas. But he hasn’t even pointed a finger at Billings, and it doesn’t sound like he’s going to, either. I won’t even have to cross-examine the bastard .
Bradley folded his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his seat, smiling inwardly. The case was coming to an end. He winked at Billings. A most favorable end, indeed .
When the prosecutor rested, Bradley flashed him an arrogant grin. He had never been above gloating, and with another victory just moments away, he swaggered out from behind his table.
Two words would end it all. He opened his mouth. Words formed upon his lips. “No questions,” was all he had to say. If he didn’t want to show off so badly, he wouldn’t even have to show the court proper deference by standing to utter those words.
He did stand. He did strut. And he did speak. But the words that came out of his mouth were not the words he intended.
“Mr. LeFevre,” he heard himself say. “Who is Clint Billings?”
The question had flowed from his mouth though his mind had never formed it. The judge eyed him queerly. The prosecutor looked downright flabbergasted. Everyone in that courtroom knew he had won. Yet for some reason, Bradley pressed forward.
Was it black magic? Did LeFevre have an accomplice, someone manipulating the voodoo doll while he testified? What kind of sinister incantation had programmed it—and, through it, him —to speak? Bradley tried to scan the courtroom, but his head wouldn’t turn. At that moment, he knew he was in real trouble.
His eyes were forcibly locked on LeFevre’s. He peered deep into those milky-white globes. They seemed viscous. The more Bradley stared, the more the lines of LeFevre’s sockets blurred until his eyes were like egg whites spreading in a frying pan.
He wanted to scream, to run from that courtroom. But his body was no longer his to control. If only his outside reflected what he felt on the inside. Couldn’t Judge Nevarro see his panic?
Help me! he shouted, the words imprisoned within his mind. For God’s sake, won’t somebody help me?
LeFevre gritted his teeth. Their yellows blended with the whites of his eyes, his face a featureless monstrosity. The courtroom around him glazed over. The flesh of the judge and the jurors melted like cheese. Their hair ran down their faces like mascara in the rain. Their mouths were cast in horrific poses, silent screams, and unnatural shapes impossible for the human form. Is this what Hell looks like?
Still, he couldn’t close his eyes. He couldn’t even blink. Terror seized him. The fear made him howling mad, particularly because he could do nothing about it.
Though he could no longer recognize LeFevre, Bradley knew he still faced the man. Somehow, he knew the son of a bitch was enjoying this. He hadn’t answered the question, instead savoring the moment, letting Bradley squirm inside while an unseen puppeteer acted out a script the lawyer hadn’t written.
“Clint Billings is the man who …” LeFevre choked up. His gaze fell away.
Bradley’s breath returned. So did his movements. He blinked away the blurred world. He was free!
Now’s my chance! Thinking fast, he spoke. “No more—”
LeFevre’s head shot back. “Clint Billings is the man who brutalized and murdered my beautiful daughter,” he said at last, his tone righteous. A fire burned behind LeFevre’s eyes, and Bradley knew he saw Hell. Somehow, Hell had regained its hold upon him.
“And how do you know that?” his voice asked.
“Because he gave you the metal pipe he used to beat her with. You put it in a safe at your office. My daughter’s blood was still on it.”
More than one juror gasped. Another ran his hands down his face. Most stared on with their mouths hanging open. For a moment, silence pervaded the courtroom. Then the murmuring started, the peanut gallery’s hushed voices collecting into a low rumble. The prosecutor stared at Bradley, accusations dancing in his eyes.
Judge Nevarro pounded her gavel repeatedly. “Order! I will have silence in my courtroom.”
And Bradley’s pride fell. His shoulders slumped. His heart sank. He had been tried and convicted in the minds of those who’d heard LeFevre’s claim, reduced to the lowest form of criminal, revealed as the lowest form of man. He was guilty until proven innocent.
It wasn’t the first time Bradley had helped conceal a crime, but it was the first time someone had found out about it. All his other discretions—the hookers, the gambling, the drugs—could be covered up by greasing the right palms. But this allegation had been presented to a courtroom full of palms, some of which would not take kindly to greasing.
Judge Nevarro shook her head. “The jury will disregard that last remark. No evidence or testimony has been presented that would substantiate or corroborate Mr. LeFevre’s statement, nor is the witness speaking from personal knowledge. Further, I’m ruling that the answer given was nonresponsive. It shall be stricken from the record.”
Bradley sighed. The judge had actually cut him some slack. But though the testimony had not come into evidence correctly and was properly stricken, Judge Nevarro had no love for him, and the prosecutor wasn’t going to object to a gem like that.
Suddenly, he lurched forward, nearly stumbling into the witness box and the vile man who sat within it. The strings controlling him had been severed. His body was once again his though he didn’t know how or why. He’d waste no time minimizing the damage done.
“No more questions,” he blurted, expecting some force to cut him off again.
The prosecutor stood. “The state rests.”
“Your Honor, at this time, the defense would like to …” Bradley started. Move to dismiss is how his mind envisioned ending the sentence. A cold tingling surged throughout his body like thousands of thin tendrils penetrating through his pores. There was nothing he could do. His body submitted once again to another’s control.
And his words that followed were, “Call myself as a witness.”
Clint Billings shot up from his chair. He looked as though he wanted to rip Bradley’s head off. Lou must have gotten the same impression; his hand rested upon the grip of his gun.
Bradley hoped he would come for him, maybe break the invisible bonds with his pummeling fists. Unwillingly, his arm rose, a flat hand held out to pacify his client.
“This is rather unorthodox,” Judge Nevarro said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Your Honor, Mr. LeFevre has brought my name into this case. I feel it will do the jury a great service to hear the truth.”
“What is the state’s position?”
The prosecutor stood, his face revealing his amusement. “No objection, Your Honor.”
“Very well. I’ll allow it, but only to the extent of addressing the comment that was made. I’ll remind you, Mr. Walsh, that the statement is not in the record, and the jury cannot use it for any purpose whatsoever. But if you insist on clearing the air, by all means do it quickly. I’m giving you a little rope here, counsel. See that you don’t hang yourself with it.”
Bradley already felt as though he were dangling from the rope. The noose around his neck squeezed tighter and tighter. Hope left him. He was at the mercy of a vengeful father. He was a prisoner unable to act, forced to watch from the confines of his mind.
His legs were set in motion. They carried him to the stand. Lou followed closely. Was he laughing?
At the stand, Lou administered the oath. Bradley raised his hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. His mouth kept that vow.
“What Mr. LeFevre claimed I did is true. I accepted the weapon my client, Clint Billings, used to slaughter Jeanette LeFevre. I kept it in a safe at my office for a time until I found an opportunity to dispose of it. I dropped it off the East Bridge.”
The words sounded so calm and collected. Bradley could not believe they were his, their tone a stark contrast to the turmoil within him. With more dignity and poise than he could have mustered on his own, under the circumstances, he stood.
“I now rest my case. I hope the jury will see that justice is served.”
From that point on, the remaining semblance of law and order was shattered. The spectators burst from their seats. Cries of anger and outrage filled the air. The judge banged her gavel as if she were driving in a railroad spike. The prosecutor slunk low in his chair, perhaps fearing that bullets would fly. The jurors froze with anxiety as if they were on a roller coaster heading toward the big drop. Court officers tried to order chaos. Clint Billings charged at his attorney.
“I am going to beat you far worse than that bitch ever got!” he shouted, his massive frame barreling forward like a charging rhino. Even with his ankles chained together, he made it to Bradley before anyone could stop him, if anyone had tried.
“You’re dead, Walsh,” Billings said between clenched teeth. Spit flew from his mouth. His hands wrapped around Bradley’s throat. “So fucking dead.”
Chaos became a cluster fuck. Court officers and attendees swarmed Billings, taking shots at him freely. Some went for Bradley. He was kicked, punched, and beaten, all while an angry behemoth throttled his neck.
A jolt of electricity shot through him. Then another. And another. With each jolt came mind-blanking pain. The courtroom flashed white. For a moment, he was blind.
When his sight returned, Bradley saw Billings pinned to the ground with Lou clenching his legs between his arms. Another officer drove his knee into the back of Billings’s neck. A third cuffed him. Still others were holstering their Tasers. Bradley had no idea where they all had come from, but he now had a good idea what had caused his teeth to chatter.
It took many officers to hoist Billings from the floor. His face bled from multiple locations. One of his eyes was swollen shut. A deep gash ran across his lips. His mouth poured blood, and several teeth were cracked or missing altogether.
Yet even as he was being dragged away, Billings laughed the laugh of the defiant. He swore revenge against everyone in the courtroom. He had some particularly choice words for Bradley.
Most of the crowd had hit and run. The judge and jury had disappeared, likely hiding out in the judge’s mysterious inner sanctum.
Bradley rubbed his temple. It ached something awful and was trickling blood. Soreness ran throughout his body, but with the pain came the realization that his body was his again—a not-so-small consolation.
He walked sheepishly back to his seat, where he nearly fainted into his chair. He stared blankly at his table, unaware of the passage of time and the goings-on around him. He still sat speechless when the judge returned and notified the attorneys of her decision to give their predetermined jury instructions behind closed doors and send them off to deliberate. Slowly, some of the crowd crept back in. Billings did not return.
The jury came back with a verdict in less than ten minutes. Billings was found guilty on all counts, including murder in the first degree. A sentencing hearing would determine whether that finding included a death penalty, if the beating Billings had just taken didn’t kill him first.
With the verdict read and the jury dismissed, the courtroom emptied. Judge Nevarro ordered the attorneys and Lou to remain. She stared at Bradley with a disgust he’d normally let slide over him. But in his pitiful state, her revulsion sharpened the sting.
“In all my years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything quite like that. What you did took guts, Mr. Walsh—a heck of a lot more guts than brains, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t even come close to excusing your revolting conduct. I’m recommending immediate disbarment. I’ll leave it to the state to decide whether it wants to press criminal charges.”
The prosecutor leaned toward Bradley. “Don’t plan on taking a vacation anytime soon,” he whispered.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Bradley stammered, his voice no longer boastful. He shoveled his papers into his briefcase and hurried from the courtroom.
Confused, terrified, with his career on its last legs, Bradley yet found himself grateful. He was alive and free of alien control. He ran into the parking garage, threw his belongings into the back seat, and jumped behind the wheel of his brand-new Mercedes CL-Class, paid for with monies illicitly begotten.
Inside his car, he felt safer. He let out a breath, ready to forget the day by any means possible, glad it was over. He’d return to his home, drink as much bourbon as it took to obliterate his fear, and pass out with his collie, Jenkins, resting over his feet. Tomorrow, he’d begin his slow crawl back to the top.
It’ll be okay , he told himself. Always the stellar lawyer, he was even able to convince himself it was the truth.
He turned the key in the ignition. His Mercedes sprang to life. After fastening his seatbelt, Bradley turned to back out of his parking space. As he did, his eyes caught a glimpse of something black and white sitting on the passenger seat. His heart lunged into his throat. Slowly, he turned his head for a better look.
It can’t be! How the fuck did that son of a bitch get it in here?
A familiar smiling replica of a man, decked out in a fancy suit and polished leather shoes, lay across the seat. The corner of a small piece of paper jutted from the miniature briefcase the doll held in its hand.
Bradley checked his anger. He swallowed his fear. You’ve won , he thought, the dams behind his eyes threatening to burst. What more do you want of me?
His hand trembled as he reached for the briefcase. Its detail was amazingly accurate. Bradley might have been impressed had it not been so terrifying. He clicked open two tiny gold clasps with the edge of his fingernail. The paper fell out of the briefcase and onto his lap. It was folded several times until it formed a neat square. He opened it and read.
My friend belongs to you now.
Keep him safe .
Bradley picked up the doll. Its stitched-on mouth had changed, now curled into a big smile. Its green-button eyes shined as if they had been buffed, round and open, no trace of the black Xs that had marked them earlier.
“It doesn’t even look like me,” Bradley scoffed. He wanted to rip it apart, to make sure he’d never see the damnable thing again, but the thought caused his pulse to quicken. He placed the doll delicately back on the seat. Then he backed out and drove toward the parking garage’s exit. He swiped his pass, and the gate opened. He pulled forward into the bright afternoon sun.
Blamm! Shots thundered through the air. His back passenger-side window disintegrated into crystallized fragments. They speckled his back seat and his sleeve. Several loud thuds followed in rapid succession.
“Billings!” Bradley said. It wasn’t the man himself, of course, but his enforcers had wasted no time avenging their boss. They weren’t just trying to scare him; they meant to kill him. He pressed his foot to the floor.
A moment later, he heard a loud crash behind him. In his rearview mirror, Bradley saw that a police car had T-boned a Chevelle Supersport with windows tinted so dark they were black. More blasts filled the air. The officers scurried out of their cruiser, one behind the other out of the driver’s-side door, and returned fire at three or four gunmen blazing from the Chevelle. Bradley’s foot eased off the gas only slightly. He kept on driving.
He didn’t get far. His Mercedes began to sputter. “Come on!” he yelled, striking his palms against the steering wheel. “Not now!”
He glanced at his fuel gauge. “What do you mean, empty? How can you be empty? I filled you this morning!”
When he raised his eyes, Bradley saw a man standing in the middle of the road not more than twenty feet in front of him. His car would surely run the man down unless he acted fast. He swerved and veered into the breakdown lane. With a grinding sound, his hubcap skidded along the curb before his wheel rode up on the sidewalk. He hit the brakes. Finally, he stopped.
That was Pepe LeFevre . Had the realization came sooner, Bradley would have floored it.
“What the fuck?” he screamed. His head felt as though someone had jabbed a bicycle pump into it and kept on pumping. Soon, it would burst. Now was the time to confront LeFevre, the moment when rage expelled all caution. Bradley had had enough. LeFevre was going down.
Bradley had no doubts that he would have coldcocked LeFevre if only he could have found him. He looked left. He looked right. He even checked under the car. LeFevre was nowhere to be seen. Yet his presence lingered, fouling the air. The odor was familiar, one Bradley detested. What was it?
Gas!
Bradley ran to the back of his Mercedes. A trail of cola-colored fluid led from up the street to beneath his car, where it trickled from a couple of deep holes.
Bradley slapped his palm against his forehead. “Can this day get any fucking worse?”
The sensation that shot through him at that moment told him it could. The hair on his neck stood erect. His stomach went sour. Someone was behind him. Someone now stood where no one had been standing just a second before.
In the reflection of what remained of his window, Pepe LeFevre’s dead white eyes seemed to stare right through him. The man puckered his lips as if he were whistling.
An icy breeze ran up the back of Bradley’s neck. He coughed. Smoke engulfed his head. Heat swelled beneath his reddening cheeks. His temples throbbed. His jaw clenched. He swung around without thought, acting in tune with his most animalistic instinct. His arm swung with him, a powerful backhand meant to rend LeFevre’s head from his shoulders.
But Bradley hit only air. The cloud of smoke dispersed. In it, he saw a single lit cigarette, suspended at chest level, held up by nothing but sorcery or imagination. The power, whatever it was, released its grip. The cigarette fell, spiraling downward, onto the—
Oh, fuck me! Bradley thought, as he turned to run. Sure enough, the gasoline that had been at his feet ignited.
Dodging traffic, Bradley sprinted across the street. A car horn honked, but he made it to the other side intact. He panted like a fat dog after a run as he checked himself for flames. He was fire free. He was safe.
From the opposite sidewalk, Bradley watched the blaze grow. Soon, it swallowed his Mercedes whole. The fire burned bright and clean, a beautiful sight on an otherwise dreadful day.
Then Bradley remembered the doll, still sitting where he had left it on the seat. He ran to his car. The gas tank imploded. Flames lashed their hot tongues into the car’s interior. Bradley began to sweat. The skin on his arm sizzled, then ignited. The pain drove Bradley to his knees.
The car combusted. So did Bradley.
Dorian Clarke wiped his palm across his bathroom mirror. Between streaks of condensation, his reflection stared morosely back at him. He stroked his salt-and-pepper stubble. When did I get all these gray hairs? Perhaps the water droplets on the mirror misled him. He assumed his facial hair was as dark as it had always been and paid it no more attention, returning to his post-shower routine. With a towel wrapped around his waist, Dorian brushed his teeth.
At twenty-eight, Dorian stood tall and confident. A full-time model and sometime actor, he had a Greek god’s body and the swagger to match it. His eyes were emerald green and fearfully enticing. With fashionably unkempt dark hair, olive skin and an easy smile, Dorian charmed most of the women he met in New York City. His ego wouldn’t rest until he’d seduced every beauty among them.
Above all, Dorian valued his youthful splendor and exploited it as much as he could. “Your looks will fade,” his pal Henry had told him. “Use them while you can. It’s better to be stuck with memories of what once was than those of what could have been.” Henry had lived life to the fullest. Dying from an overdose a year ago, Henry was gone, but his influence remained.
As he finished brushing his teeth, Dorian was haunted by Henry’s words. The mirror had mostly defogged. In it, he saw a tired face, looking much older than it had even the day before. Had time, always racing against him, finally caught up? His beard was thicker, sprouting faster than usual overnight.
He frowned. More gray hairs.
Maybe I’m still half-asleep. I’m sure I look fine. Last night’s tequila binge lingered in his system. His shower failed to rouse him. Dorian turned on the faucet and splashed his face with cold water. After drying himself, he patted the mirror with his towel.
What? Dorian gaped at his hair. He’d never seen it so long … and gray. Even worse, the hairline had receded. He tried to recall his last haircut, but couldn’t remember. He ran his fingers through his hair. It felt short and full.
How long was I out? Dorian checked his cellphone, which he’d placed atop the hamper. The display read, “9:42 a.m., Saturday, May 25.” Yep. It’s the day after yesterday . He chuckled. Just as it should be.
Dorian chided his own foolishness. His eyes were playing tricks on him, as simple as that. Someone must have slipped me the good stuff. Of course I’ve only aged a day . He owed his sub-par appearance to hallucinations spawned by a long night of drinking, drugging, and sex with a girl whose name he’d never care to remember. A few more hours of sleep would clear his head and restore his comeliness to its former grandeur. He exited the bathroom and sank into his couch.
* * *
Screw that face in the mirror. Let him age instead of me. Dorian smirked. I’d give everything to always look this good . He closed his eyes, repeating the wish he’d made every time he looked into a mirror.
Three hours later, Dorian snapped awake, escaping a nightmare he’d already forgotten. He sat up. Goosebumps ran the length of his naked torso. His towel lay discarded upon the floor.
Still hazy, he threw on some work clothes. In between modeling gigs, he supplemented his income bartending at Michelangelo’s, an upscale restaurant a few blocks over from Times Square. Dorian worked solely for tips, not officially an employee. He welcomed the tax-free dollars. Modeling paid him big bucks, but his posh flat and party lifestyle required constant funding.
Charlene, the manager at Michelangelo’s, let Dorian come and go as he pleased, his presence a boon to business. Whenever Dorian was behind the bar, wealthy cougars prowling for young studs lined it with fat purses. Rarely did he leave without one or more of them, the phone numbers of several others jammed into his pockets or down the front of his pants.
He entered Michelangelo’s at 1:55 p.m. Dressed in a stylish black button-down, dark designer jeans and freshly polished dress shoes, Dorian turned heads as soon as he walked through the door. A wry smile crossed his face; he flashed it at everyone he passed. He nodded politely to a waitress, greeted the regulars, and made his way behind the bar, a U-shaped mahogany monstrosity with short sides, a flat front, four tap stations, and a foot rail.
The wall behind the bar consisted of a giant mirror lined with shelves. Top-shelf liquor filled every open spot. Dorian scanned the rows of alcohol, looking for his favorite. Grinning, he grabbed the Glenlivet, poured himself more fingers than he had on one hand, knocked it back, and tossed the empty glass into a bus bin. Then, he went to work.
Greg, the scheduled bartender, gave Dorian a smile. An average-looking thirty-something with a burgeoning beer belly, Greg seemed happy for the company. He’d make more tips sharing the bar with Dorian than he’d make alone.
Within an hour, the bar was hopping. Drinks were draining almost as fast as Dorian could serve them. He was on his third glass of Glenlivet, and he’d also done a shot of Stoli with a voluptuous blonde in the sixth seat.
He was pulling in tips and numbers in an endless stream. His confidence was high, his ego swollen. His customers’ attention made him feel invincible.
Dorian glanced at his adoring fans. They love me . And I’ve earned it. Looks like mine don’t come easy. Sure, genetics played a part, but I maintain this body, this hair, these clothes, this smile. I turned something good into something perfect.
Feeding off their shameless stares, Dorian put on a show. He began to juggle a bottle of rum and a couple of glasses. Behind the back, under the leg, the bottle and glasses twirled until his big finale, catching one glass inside the other and then the bottle inside both. Dorian heard the crowd cheering and reveled in it. They whistled and applauded as he took a bow. Then, they opened their wallets and purses.
A slight buzz hit Dorian, followed by resentment. The customers showed their appreciation with their hard-earned cash, but management offered him nothing. Charlene should pay me under the table. Can’t she see I’m the reason everyone’s here?
He glared at his coworker as he plodded around fetching drinks without style or glamour. No one cares about Greg. No one cares about Charlene or anyone else here. It’s me they come to see .
He glanced at the Glenlivet. It seemed to call to him from the shelf. At the least, what I do for this place entitles me to another drink.
As Dorian removed the bottle from the shelf, he glimpsed himself in the mirror behind it. He gasped. The bottle slipped from his hands, bounced on the rubber floor mat, and rolled beneath the bar.
Instinctively, his hand went to his face, examining its contours. The reflection mimicked Dorian’s movements, but the ghastly image staring back couldn’t be his. Its face was wrinkled, the skin loose and dry. Crow’s feet extended from the corners of its eyes. A mop of gray hair shot like cotton candy from the back half of the head. The image’s mouth hung open, revealing yellow-stained teeth behind cracked lips. As Dorian touched his mouth, he realized it was open, too.
He shook his head. Closing his eyes, Dorian prayed that when he re-opened them, his true face would be there to greet him. His prayers went unanswered. If anything, his reflection seemed older still, as though it were aging upon the glass.
It’s not me , he tried to convince himself. But the eyes told a different tale—emerald green and unmistakably his. His head began to swirl and he braced himself against the shelving. He keeled over, the liquor in his stomach threatening to come out. The memory of his strange reflection after his shower came back. His fans’ admiration, along with the alcohol, had erased it from his mind. But not from the mirror.
This can’t be happening. I’m only twenty-eight. I’m not old. I’m young. I’m young!
“Are you all right?” Greg asked.
Dorian glared at his coworker. “Of course I’m not all right!”
Greg stared back at him with the dopey-sad eyes of a scolded puppy.
Oblivious, as usual. Dorian scowled. He let out a breath, then straightened, careful to avert his eyes from the mirror. Greg watched him. The confusion written across his face remained.
“It’s a joke, right?” Dorian asked, laughing in a kind of panic. “Some kind of magic mirror?” The idea made no sense, but he was desperate. He wanted to believe it. “It’s a damn good prank. Was it your idea?”
“What are you talking about?” Greg asked. “Are you feeling okay? Maybe you should take a break.”
Dorian turned back to the mirror. An old man’s face stared back at him, a face so foul he had to look away. He’d wished his reflection would age instead of him, but even if such a wish could come true, it would take fifty years or more to look this bad. It had to be a trick. “Okay, Greg. Good one. Can we move on, now? Seriously, how are you doing it?”
“Dorian—”
Dorian cut the lesser bartender off with an exasperated grunt. He wanted immediate answers, and Greg wasn’t cooperating. He dismissed his coworker and approached the closest customer, a young woman with straight brown hair tied back into a ponytail. She wore a dull black suit that screamed “lawyer.” A matching black purse sat next to her on the bar.
“Miss,” Dorian began. “May I ask you a question?” The woman seemed surprised by the attention. When she didn’t respond quickly enough, Dorian continued. “How old do you think I am?”
The woman smiled. Dorian could tell she was interested. His confidence slowly returned. No woman her age would be interested in that geezer in the mirror.
“Do I get a free drink if I get it right?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Twenty-six.”
“Close enough.”
“I’ll trade the free drink for more time with you. I’m Becky, by the way. How close was I?”
“Nice to meet you, Becky. I’m Dorian. You were two years off.”
“Oh yeah? Which way?”
Reassured, Dorian smiled. Still, he hesitated to look into the mirror, convinced the old man would still be standing where his young, vital reflection belonged. Slowly, he willed his head to turn.
Dorian stopped smiling, and so did the man in the mirror. The image now resembled his father, just before he … Dorian shuddered. A long, white beard hung from his reflection’s chin. Dorian stroked his chin, but all he felt was stubble. Am I going crazy?
“Enough!” he shrieked, slamming his fist against the bar. Becky jumped. Dorian’s face reddened. Fear had gotten the better of him. He masked it with a shaky grin.
“Do you have a mirror?”
Becky stared at him as though his words were foreign. Dorian fidgeted and his heart raced, but he waited patiently for her response. At last, Becky nodded.
“May I see it?”
Becky opened her purse and sifted through its contents. After a moment, she withdrew a compact mirror and handed it to Dorian.
Hands trembling, he fumbled it open. A lump caught in his throat. He wanted to scream, barely holding it back. In the mirror, he saw the self he might have expected to see if he were eighty years old.
Quivering, he threw the mirror onto the floor and stomped on it, grunting like an animal, breaking glass and plastic beneath his heel.
“Hey,” Becky protested weakly. Greg stepped away and attended to a customer at the far end of the bar. Charlene hustled over.
“Dorian?” she asked. “What the hell are you doing?” Without waiting for his reply, she turned to her frightened customer. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. We’ll take care of your tab and pay to replace the mirror.”
“It’s okay,” Becky said, blushing. She stood, threw on her coat and exited quickly, leaving Dorian to face Charlene’s wrath alone.
Before she could berate him, Dorian spoke first. “I’m sorry, Charlene. I don’t know what came over me. I’m not feeling well. May I go home?”
“I think you’d better.”
“Thanks,” Dorian muttered. Sweat dampened his armpits and forehead, and his stomach turned. He headed to the men’s room. Once inside, he locked the door and ran to the sink.
Staring into the mirror above it, he clenched the sides of the sink until his knuckles turned white. His face paled and, his stomach twisted up in knots. Tears glistened on his cheeks.
“No.” He wouldn’t accept what the mirror foretold. It had his future all wrong. He would never look like that. Dorian was in control of his destiny, and his destiny was to be desirable.
He gnashed his teeth as he locked stares with what purported to be his reflection. Was it smiling at him? Black teeth and rotten gums peeked out from behind curled-back lips, their corners slightly upturned. Green eyes watched him as he watched them, but they were now more jade than emerald, blanketed by cataracts. Age spots blemished a mostly bald head. The only remnants of Dorian’s lush hair appeared in sporadic gray strands. Blotched flesh was scored with lines a century in the making.
The man in the mirror had fallen into oblivion. Age had sucked the life from him like a parasite. But Dorian was strong, full of life. He could feel his jaw clenching, his fingers constricting. His heart pounded. Blood pulsed through his veins. He was alive and robust, not that dying old façade, and he would do whatever it took to keep himself that way.
If not for its eyes, dull yet recognizable, Dorian could have convinced himself that the reflection didn’t belong to him. He swept his hand through his hair. It felt as full as always. The rest of me must be unchanged. The mirror lies. But Dorian could think of no rational explanation for the faces he’d met that day.
“I’m losing it,” he said. The notion provoked him. Pull yourself together. All you need is a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow, everything will be back to normal. You’ll be the lady killer you’ve always been. He formed a gun with his index finger and thumb and pretended to shoot at the mirror.
His ancient doppelganger shot back. It seemed to be smiling.
“Why are you doing this?” Dorian yelled. “What do you want?”
The old man mimicked him like a bratty child. When Dorian went silent, the image followed suit. Is it patronizing me?
Dorian exploded. “You are not me! You can’t be me!” He pulled at his hair, slammed his fist against the wall. Then, he froze.
Faint laughter, its source unknown, reached his ears. He couldn’t tell if it came from within his head or without. A voice said, You’re aging .
“Aging? The hell I am. That woman thought I was twenty-six.”
With vacant eyes as still as the glass in which they were reflected, the image offered no response. It remained cold and motionless, a stark contrast to the emotions raging in Dorian. Behind those faded eyes, Dorian thought he saw something as infinite and empty as deep space, drawing him in as though it were calling him home. Its power terrified him.
“Die,” he told it, “whatever you are.” His voice shook. The sink rattled beneath his grasp. “You can’t have me. You can’t have my life. I won’t let you take it.” His muscles ached from constant straining. He released a deep breath and paused, attempting to settle himself, but the turmoil inside him continued to mount.
“I’ll break you. I’ll break every damn one of you if I have to.” Dorian lashed out and struck the mirror, shattering it. Fragments of glass fell about the sink. Particles embedded in his hand and clung to his sleeve. His knuckles ran with blood.
A knock came at the door. “Dorian?” Greg called from outside the restroom. “Are you okay in there? Charlene’s here, too. She says you need to leave.”
“Just a minute,” Dorian said, picking up a large shard of glass. In it, that same decrepit face stared back, still smiling. The laughter returned, louder this time. Dorian covered his ears with his hands, but it was no use. The laughter amplified, making his head spin. Dizzy, Dorian caught himself on the sink. He stared down at a multitude of glass shards, each with the same reflection—the same old, ugly, laughing man.
“No, no, no, no!” Dorian paced the length of the restroom, hiding his eyes in the crook of his elbow. A second knock came. He ignored it.
It’s the alcohol. I passed out. It’s a dream. When I open my eyes, he’ll be gone, and I’ll see me again.
Dorian drew out his breaths. Just a dream , he repeated to himself. His breathing slowed. So did his heart. But when he unveiled his eyes, he again saw a withered version of himself, mocking him behind its shimmering shield.
The laughter grew louder still, debilitating even. Dorian fell to his knees. Glass cut into his legs. His mind raced from one thought to the next, trying to make sense of his unnatural reflection. What would happen when his reflection could age no further? Would it die? Would he die?
The doorknob jiggled then turned. Charlene unlocked it with her key. She opened the door, and Greg rushed in.
“Dorian?” he called. “What are you doing in here? We thought we heard fighting. Were you talking to yourself?” Greg glanced at Dorian’s mess but said nothing more.
“What happened to the mirror?” Charlene asked, poking her head around Greg.
Dorian heard them talking, but a migraine punished his head. He couldn’t concentrate. His eyes blurred and his nose felt as though it were bleeding, but when he put his hand beneath it to check, it came back dry.
“Let me help you up,” Greg said.
“Get him out of here, Greg,” Charlene commanded.
A hand fell upon Dorian’s shoulder. It was comforting. He looked up to receive the assistance, but what he saw confounded him. His fear swallowed him whole. His doppelganger had crossed over. It had come for him and now stood above him.
Instincts of fight and flight battled inside Dorian. Fight prevailed. “I told you,” he said, the words spitting through the slits between his teeth. He leaped to his feet. “You can’t have me!”
Dorian lunged at his enemy, driving him backward into the wall. A warm wetness coated his hand. He looked down to see it covered in blood. He had never released the glass shard, and its jagged edges dug into his hand. The shard’s sharp point was buried deep in the demon that haunted him.
Dorian smiled. I beat you .
But when he raised his head to watch the life slip from his adversary’s dying eyes, he met Greg’s eyes instead. Color left the bartender’s cheeks as blood drained from the puncture wound in his stomach. Clammy and blank-faced, Greg slid down the wall, slumping onto the floor like a heap of dirty laundry.
Charlene screamed and fled. “Call 9-1-1,” Dorian heard her shout, somewhere distant. Dorian’s breath escaped him. He covered his eyes. Traces of Greg’s blood smeared his cheeks. So much blood. He turned on the faucet. He tried to wash the blood off his hands, but the water only seemed to spread it around.
His head pounding, mouth bone dry, Dorian stumbled out of the restroom. Customers and employees ran from him. Some watched from a safe distance. He wanted to tell them he didn’t do it, or didn’t mean to do it, but with Greg’s body lifeless and mutilated on the floor, Dorian doubted they’d see it that way. His legs shaking, he staggered through the bar and out into the street.
“Look out!” someone shouted.
Dorian raised his eyes as a New York City transit bus barreled toward him. Its tires screeched as the bus braked and skidded, its gears grinding. The air filled with the scent of burning rubber.
Dorian could have jumped out of the way, but something fixed him in place. As the bus neared, he saw his reflection in its massive front windshield. He gaped as the image aged before him like a movie in fast forward, everything else around him in slow motion. Flesh turned sour, rotted, and fell from its face. Hair grew long and whitened. Everything human about it melted away.
By the time the bus was upon him, all Dorian saw were endless dark caverns of hollowed-out eyes against a bone-white backdrop. Something lingered in their darkness, that cold inviting presence Dorian had seen earlier, somehow more poignant now—more sinister.
The windshield collided with his face. Dorian’s jaw dislocated. His teeth shattered. The fiberglass windshield didn’t quite break as his face embedded into its web-like cracks. They sliced through his flesh, carving him up like a jigsaw puzzle while the impact crushed his nose, eye sockets and cheek bones.
The bus stopped short, and its momentum transferred to Dorian. His face jerked free of the webbing with a flash of pain as hot as if he’d been worked over with a blowtorch. For a moment, he floated airborne and spun, his hands out before him in a half-hearted attempt to break his fall.
His hands buckled and wrists snapped against the pavement. His face and chest crashed down with such force that he slid for several feet. Shirt and skin shredded.
The pain, agonizing at first, faded as his body succumbed to shock. Broken ribs pierced his lungs, and he fought to breathe. He tried to rise, but he couldn’t feel his legs. He saw nothing but blood. Then, he saw nothing at all.
* * *
“Coma … disfigurement …” Dorian couldn’t see who had spoken. His eyelids parted. White light flooded into his left eye. His right eye saw only black. It itched terribly. Scratching it, he felt cloth where he should have felt flesh. Bandages?
Familiar laughter surrounded him, echoing off the walls. Who’s there? Who’s laughing? Dorian’s unfettered eye adjusted to the light. He scanned the room but saw only four white padded walls and a door. In a corner above, a curved security mirror cast a sordid reflection.
My face! Dorian clawed at the gauze that mummified him. The upper layers fell away, clean and pink. Blood and pus soiled the bandages beneath. The unhealed wounds smelled like meat gone bad. Dorian tossed them aside and swallowed hard. He inched toward the mirrored surface.
A scream rose in his throat but never escaped. Instead, laughter passed his lips. Tears flowed from the eye and tear ducts still intact. A cavern, like those hollowed eyes he’d seen in the bus’s windshield, sat where his right eye had been. Something hid in that abyss, something dark and cold and void of anything human. Dorian shivered.
“You did this to me!” He charged at the mirror, aiming to tear it from the wall, to destroy it any way he could. No matter how high he jumped, the mirror remained just out of reach. Running up the wall with bare feet, Dorian almost touched it, but he slipped and fell, crashing hard onto his back.
He curled into a ball on the floor. The laughter intensified, filling the empty spaces. His body shook in time with it. Staring up at his reflection, he cackled wildly, out of control. His reflection laughed with him … or was it at him? Dorian couldn’t tell. He could hardly bear the sight of himself in that mirror.
But he had to look. The mirror was all he had.
“Meat!” the fourteen-year-old scarlet macaw squawked. Her red crest fluttered every time she screeched out the word, which was far too often by Nev’s count.
Just like my ex-girlfriend. Nev shook his head. Never shuts up . Still, he loved his parrot, his best and only friend in a life of reclusion. Given the breed’s average lifespan in captivity, Nev, who was three months shy of fifty-five, would have a companion for the rest of his days.
And that was enough.
Still, Joji was sometimes temperamental. She had a one-track mind when it came to her favorite delicacy: red meat, and the rarer the better. Nev did his best to ignore her outburst. He refused to make eye contact or otherwise cave to his better half’s demands. Joji was fond of words, but not so keen on manners.
He took a sip of his coffee and returned to his newspaper. Clearing his throat, he said, “Do you believe this?” He set down his coffee and pulled the paper up in front of his eyes. “There’s been another one, only a few miles from here.”
He threw down the paper in disgust. “The victim was violently assaulted before her attacker killed her, and for what? A couple of bucks and a three-year-old TV? I tell you, Joji, my ol’ gal, the Apocalypse is coming, not with one big, booming blast, but with tiny, marching footsteps.”
Nev’s gaze rose from the newspaper. Joji regarded him with peculiar fascination.
He chuckled, then tsked. “You won’t need to remind me to lock our doors tonight.” He smiled and winked. “I’d never let them get to you, girl.” He smiled.
“Meat!” the parrot squawked, louder and shriller than the first time. As if to accentuate the point, she stretched her blue-tipped angel wings and shuddered violently. A stream of Oreo-colored shit shot from her rear end and landed smack dab on a cartoon in the newspaper below.
A political satirist and pundit for the Warren City Gazette, Nev was pretty sure the cartoon was one of his. Everyone’s a critic.
“Now, Joji,” he said, standing and placing his hands on his hips in a show of exaggerated frustration. “Where are your manners?”
Joji bowed as if to demonstrate shame or humility. She tilted her head completely sideways so that her black-rimmed, yellow-marble eye was staring into Nev’s. The bird whistled, then squawked, “Please?”
Nev held his frown as long as he could, a whole second before smiling. He clapped, proud as any father would be. “That’s better.” He walked over to the refrigerator. Joji flew off her perch and landed on the kitchen counter. Her head bobbed like a buoy caught in a wake.
“Now, you know the rules,” Nev said as he opened the refrigerator. “If I give you some now, you can’t have any more for the rest of the day.”
“Meat!” Joji barked, but that time, she didn’t let her bowels loose. She offered another whistle, followed by an eerily human, “Please?”
Nev pulled out a sandwich bag of extra rare roast beef, sliced thin. He wondered if the deli meat would still weigh the pound he’d paid for if he poured out all the blood that had pooled and congealed in the bag.
Extending his index finger like a hook, he went to scratch Joji’s head, but the parrot bobbed and weaved away. Her eye locked on to the meat with singular purpose.
Nev sighed. “All right.” He opened the bag. “I spoil you. This stuff will kill you, you know?” He smiled. “And then your Papa will go to prison for murder, and you’ll be left all alone with no meat and no one to love you.”
Joji remained silent. Her predatory glare remained fixated on the fresh beef.
Maybe I shouldn’t. Nev always second-guessed feeding the bird her favorite dish, ever since that first time six years ago when he’d learned of Joji’s carnivorous nature. Nev had been tenderizing a fat sirloin to grill up with some onions and peppers when Joji landed near him, pupils dilating like a coke hound. The bird had been curious at first, pacing near the raw slab, her head pecking like a strutting rooster’s.
Until she pecked at the meat.
Nev had barely gotten his hand out of the way in time. As Joji’s beak plunged deep into the purplish muscle, Nev yanked the steak away. Joji freaked, chased after the steak in a burst of ruffled feathers and slashing claws. She drew blood from both meat and master. His heart bruised worse than his hands, Nev picked up his phone, dialed his local emergency veterinarian, and mourned for the pet he was told might die.
But Joji never even got sick. Nev had never fed the macaw any rodents, but he knew falcons and hawks and other birds of prey ate them regularly. Nothing of the sort had been included in the pamphlet he received when purchasing the animal, but Nev was hardly an ornithologist. After a day of observation, he figured his emergency vet didn’t know shit about exotic fowl.
Since then, Nev had laid down some ground rules. “One slice,” he said as he pulled a sliver of wet roast beef from its packaging. He slapped it on the counter and backed away.
Joji ran toward the beef but stopped short of trampling it. “Thank you!” she shrieked before planting one taloned foot on top of the deli meat. Her weight held it down so that her bill could tear off stringy, mouth-sized morsels. Once she had a good grip, she jerked her head in opposing directions until a more manageable bite tore free, then swallowed down the serving as if kicking back a shot.
Smiling, Nev sealed up the remainder of the roast beef and shoved it back into the refrigerator bin. “Happy?”
The parrot didn’t respond. Nev hadn’t expected her to. But damn did Joji seem content.
A snap came from the yard, the sound of a twig breaking underfoot. Nev turned to face the window over his sink. Nothing out of the ordinary caught his attention. Probably just an animal . He froze and listened all the same. The string of home invasions in his quiet, rural neighborhood had him more on edge than he’d realized. But it was morning and the sun was shining brightly. Even at his remote home, surrounded on three sides by forest, no criminal would be so brazen.
Would he?
In his peripheral, he caught a shadow pass by his living room’s picture window. Scuffling came from the front porch. He tiptoed to a nearby closet where he kept the baseball bat he used to scare raccoons out of his garbage cans.
That’s probably all this is: a raccoon. He huffed. Except the raccoons usually come at night.
Joji squawked. She marched along the counter, her black tongue lolling. Every other second, she’d stop to lick a spot of errant blood off the wooden surface. As Nev stalked closer to the front door, the parrot flew back to her perch in the living room and relieved herself.
The front doorknob jiggled. Nev’s muscles tensed. Raccoons don’t open doors . He gripped the bat a little tighter, his hands having become clammy. Sweat pooled on his brow. His heart pounded in his chest. The doorknob stopped jiggling.
I’ll call the police. I’ll—
“Drop it,” a deep voice ordered from behind him. He heard a click and slowly lowered the bat. His knees began to tremble.
The front door splintered and swung open. Nev shrieked and jumped. The bat fell from his hand. A sharp pain ran up his back, something as hard as metal driven into it. Wincing, he fell to his knees. Tears welled in his eyes.
A man wearing sunglasses over a ski mask entered his home through the busted front door. Nev couldn’t see the second man behind him, but he assumed his new acquaintance was similarly attired. The intruder must have pried open his back door or jimmied loose a window. The burglars had the jump on Nev. He’d already lost.
“Please … I don’t have much.” Nev’s voice quivered over trembling lips. He threw out his hands. “It’s yours. Take it, whatever you want, and just go.”
“Oh, we’re gonna take it, all right,” Ski Mask said. He was tall and thin and wore black leather gloves. In one gloved hand, he held a pistol. “Whatever we want.”
The man behind Nev batted his skull. Nev fell onto his stomach and rolled onto his back. He could see both men now, and they were smiling.
The shotgun stock of the shorter, plump man who had blindsided Nev was stained with blood. Unlike his partner, he wasn’t wearing a mask and didn’t seem to care who saw his face.
That’s not promising. Nev studied the short, bald man’s beady, sunken eyes as he rubbed the back of his head. His fingers came off red and wet.
“Meat!” Joji called.
The taller criminal spun around with pistol raised. “Woah,” he said. “That fucker scared the shit out of me. And look at the size of it! It’s like an ostrich or something.”
“It’s a parrot,” his partner corrected.
“Yeah, I know it’s a fucking parrot, ya dumb fuck. I meant, the fucker’s as big as an ostrich.”
“Ostriches are way bigger than that, Gumbo. They can’t fly neither.”
“You’re gonna fly, right out that fucking window, if you don’t stop using my fucking name on jobs.”
“Does it matter?” the shorter man asked. “We’re just going to kill him, anyway.”
“Just …” Gumbo growled. “Don’t do it, okay? Or I’m gonna start calling you ‘Pokey’.”
“That’s Gumby’s horse, not Gumbo’s. You’d think with a name like yours, you’d know that.”
“Maybe I don’t watch baby cartoons, asshole,” Gumbo said. “Christ, give me strength.” He stared down at Nev. “Hey? You still with us down there? You ain’t gonna shit yourself, are you? Because if you do, that fat fuck’s gonna make you eat it, comprendo ?”
“Why do I have to make him eat it?” the shorter man asked. “And I have a glandular condition that—”
“My point is,” Gumbo interrupted. “We ain’t going through all this work smelling your stinking britches the whole time.”
Nev looked away. He was rewarded for his irresponsiveness with a swift kick to his ribs. Stabbing, hot pain flared through his side.
“You listening to me, asshole?” Gumbo kicked again.
Nev saw the attack coming and managed to roll with it just a little and lessen the blow. Gumbo’s foot connected with the fleshy side of his lower back, causing considerable hurt but no permanent damage.
“I’m listening, I’m listening,” Nev shouted. His rage boiled over, and he sat up quickly.
“Uh-uh.” Gumbo jammed the snub nose of his pistol into Nev’s forehead. Nev froze, his jaw clenched and his anger bubbling.
“That’s better,” Gumbo said. “Now that I’ve got your attention, tell us where you stashed the good stuff. Drugs, money, jewelry, bearer bonds, rare comics, limited edition Atari games … whatever. We want your valuables, and we don’t want to have to tear through your whole goddamn house to find them. So why don’t you talk, huh? Make it easier on us …” He pistol whipped Nev across the ear. “And yourself.”
Nev growled. His head was ringing. “I don’t have a stash. I—”
Agony seized his jaw and shot arrows into his brain as Gumbo brought the butt of the pistol across Nev’s mouth. He fell in the direction of the blow, collapsing onto his side. A steady stream of blood and shattered teeth ran from his gaping maw.
“Great,” Pokey said. “How’s he supposed to talk if you dislocate his fucking jaw?”
“You got a better idea?” Gumbo asked.
Pokey pulled out a large survival knife. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Gumbo smirked. “By all means …” He stepped back and waved his partner forward.
Nev recognized the opening. He rolled away from the criminals, onto his stomach. He scrambled to his feet and dashed for the front door.
“Oh no you don’t,” Pokey said. His left hand grabbed under Nev’s chin while his other …
Nev’s eyes burst open. He stopped dead in his tracks and fell to his knees. His hands shook as they hovered around the gore-stained knife’s tip protruding out of his belly. He squealed as he watched the blade twist and retreat back into him.
His body numbed. Some connection had severed. He plopped limply onto his shoulder, gravity flattening him to his back. His left arm was pinned beneath him, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t even tell if his other arm was still attached.
Something’s wrong. Oh God, something’s terribly wrong.
“I can’t move.” The words fell from Nev’s lips like snowflakes in the night. Their weight began to build. He raised his head. That, he could move. But everything below his neck refused to obey his mind’s command, not so much as a raised finger or a twitching toe.
A low whine emitted from his throat. Snot bubbled from one nostril as tears rained from his eyes. He slammed his head against the carpet repeatedly. He wanted to scream, but choked on his sobs.
Finally, he found his voice and wailed. “I can’t move!”
Gumbo tucked his gun under his belt. “Well, I guess that resolves that, then.”
“Ah man, Gumbo.” Pokey’s nose wrinkled. “He shit his pants.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Gumbo kicked Nev’s leg. Nev winced in anticipation, but he never felt the blow.
“I think the poor sap’s paralyzed.” A smile wormed across Gumbo’s lips. “Breaks my heart.” He turned to his partner. “Anyway, let’s grab what’s worth grabbing and get moving. Who knows who heard the son of a bitch screaming?”
The burglars disappeared from Nev’s sight. He could hear them knocking furniture over and tossing things around in the other rooms, but none of that mattered. He couldn’t breathe, his heart was beating fast, his lungs pumping faster. His sobs compounded the problem. He didn’t care. Nev wanted to die.
“Meat!” Joji shrieked. She flew from her perch and landed on his groin.
Nev couldn’t feel her weight. He smiled through the anguish, the only thing he loved come to see him in his lowest hour. She lifted a taloned toe and scratched the small white feathers around her eye, regarding Nev with what he hoped was the same love and compassion he felt for her.
Joji’s head bobbed. She rocked from side to side and whistled. “Please?” Then she plunged her head into Nev’s wound and tore out a strip of flesh.
Nev’s mouth dropped open. “N-No, Joji,” he stuttered. What he’d seen his beloved pet do had sent his already fragile mind careening into the abyss. Not being able to feel the mutilation had been his saving grace.
After her first peck, Joji had retreated as if she’d expected repercussions. Nev couldn’t so much as shift his weight to jostle her off of him. He could do nothing but watch.
Joji whistled again. “Thank you,” she said in her mock human tone. She dove in for seconds. Nev gaped as she ripped and tore into the wound, opening it up to expose the raw, red muscle beneath. Blood soaked the bird’s beak, matted down her feathers.
She ate her fill.
Nev passed out.
* * *
“Fuckin’ hell, Gumbo!” Pokey’s voice startled Nev from rest. “You’ve got to see this!”
Nev craned his neck and whimpered. Joji’s head was completely buried in his stomach. The wound was a ravaged mess.
“Oh my God,” Gumbo croaked. He put his hand over his mouth and made a gurgling sound as if he might vomit.
“Please,” Nev whispered. The low tone was all he could manage. “Get her off me.”
“This asshole’s still kicking?” Gumbo asked. He leaned over Nev and slapped him across the face. “Hey, asshole? You telling me you can’t feel that shit?”
Nev rolled his head slowly from left to right. “Please …”
“Sure, buddy,” Gumbo said, offering a placating smile. “I’ll get the bird off of you. Just one question: why is she eating you in the first place? I thought these things ate like fruit and nuts and shit.”
“She loves meat,” Nev struggled to speak. “She’s obsessed with it. There’s some roast beef in the fridge. If you put it on the counter …”
“Sure, sure.” Gumbo grinned so wide that he bared all his teeth, wet with saliva. He stood and walked toward the refrigerator and out of sight.
“Thank … thank you.”
“Aw, man,” Pokey said. “You’re a sick fuck, brother.”
Gumbo returned, laughing. He was holding the bag of roast beef open in his hands. He pulled out a slice and ate it.
Joji stretched out her neck toward the roast beef. Her head tilted so that her eye could look directly at it. “Meat!” she squawked and took a shit on Nev’s stomach.
“That’s right, bird,” Gumbo said. “Meat. And it’s all for you.” He crouched over Nev and wiggled a slice over his face.
The bird stepped closer. “Please?”
“What … what are … no, please …” Nev was barely awake as Gumbo draped the thin-sliced deli meat over his mouth. The burglar clamped Nev’s head with his knees so he couldn’t shake it off.
The parrot paced up and down Nev’s chest, her feathers rustling. She wanted more.
“We got everything packed up?” Gumbo asked.
“Good to go,” Pokey answered.
“Good.” Gumbo removed the rest of the beef from its package. He smeared a couple of slices over Nev’s eyes and forehead, leaving clumps of meat and streaks of blood everywhere it touched. The criminal draped the remaining slices over Nev’s face. Standing, he dumped the blood from the bag over Nev’s roast beef mask. Nev could hear him walk away and exit through the remains of his front door, followed by his partner.
As they left, Joji hopped onto his chin. Her weight creased his lips. Her claw dug into his cheek. He felt all of it. And he felt it all the more when she started to eat.
“Why’d I ever take that fucking job? Why’d I ever take that fucking job? Why’d I ever take … that fucking … job ?”
Maurice shouted the words up at his captive audience, the blinding ball of fire scorching his already sun-burned skin. He howled as he slammed his fists into the water, and it spat back, salt stinging his eyes. Helios and his fucking chariot couldn’t race across the sky quick enough for his liking. His boiling, blistering skin and cracked, dry, and bleeding lips cried for sunscreen.
He took a long, slow breath, trying to calm down and conserve his strength. But as the calming dispelled his anger, he gave way to despair and began to sob. “I don’t even like boats. I hate the freaking water, I hate the constant rocking, and I fucking hate rich people.”
But he sure as hell didn’t mind screwing them, at least not that gold-digging slut, Olivia. Even she had turned on him, left him for fish food.
Just two months ago, Maurice had been a rising star in the culinary world. He had a reputation for making exquisite new creations from standard ingredients or using exotic and sometimes unheard-of fare in more common dishes. After a rather public dispute with the owner of Mes Amis , who made unfounded (or at least unproven) allegations that Maurice had embezzled from the restaurant where he’d served as head chef, he took a break from the Manhattan elite cuisine scene. A week later, he received a call from Dr. Nigel Flickenhoffer at the behest of his wife, Olivia, a regular at the restaurant during his head chefdom.
Dr. Flickenhoffer was a retired curmudgeon of inexhaustible means, despite his trophy wife’s exorbitant attempts to exhaust them. At one-third her newly wedded husband’s age, Olivia—the name she’d given the old fool, though Maurice suspected she’d gone by Trixie or Lexus in a former life while employed at some truck-stop strip club or its nearby parking lot—had an insatiable sexual appetite, the kind a limp dick like Flickenhoffer couldn’t satisfy, not with all his hoity-toityness and fancy things or all the Viagra in the world. Her vocabulary was as small as her waist, but her fake tits were the best and biggest money could buy, no doubt a gift from Doc Asshole, as Maurice preferred to call him. It didn’t take long for Maurice to realize he hadn’t been selected for his cooking skills but for his pretty-boy looks, piercing blue eyes, strong arms, and chiseled abs, the kind only years of exercising and eating right could provide. Olivia took him for a test drive during his tête à tête interview and seemed pleased with the results. Four times pleased, by his count.
The job seemed simple. The couple intended to sail their yacht, a ninety-foot Princess, around the world. To do so, they required a chef to provide the daily meals for them and their small crew. Freshly returned to the job market, Maurice needed a paycheck and Olivia needed a fuck buddy to fill the void, her void, while her dickhead husband fulfilled his egomaniacal, global-explorative fantasy.
“Come with us,” the doctor had said, “and see exotic locales and forgotten cultures, worlds you never knew existed.” Maurice was all-too-willing to say yes, enjoying the pay and the perks Olivia’s proposal offered. He signed on the dotted line two minutes after he’d spilled his seed on her back and was out to sea only a few days later.
In the six weeks he’d spent in that smoking-jacket-and-boating-shoe-wearing, George Hamilton wannabe’s employ, Maurice had kept everyone well fed and Olivia well satisfied. Everything was perfect.
Until he got caught with his dick in Doc Asshole’s most prized possession.
Even on a boat as big as the Wakemaster , it was easy to run out of places to hide. Their secrecy was not aided by the facts that Olivia was a screamer and a lust-crazed whore. Her aggressive and endless grinding had chafed Maurice raw. Her indiscretion had gotten him fired. He’d barely had enough time to pull up his shorts before the old bastard and his captain threw him overboard.
He floated on a lifesaver that one of the deckhands, a teenager named Samuel, had been kind enough to let slip from the back of the boat as it drifted away. Maurice clung to the hard, white doughnut as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered. Out there, surrounded by deep, dark ocean as far as his eyes could see, it was all that mattered.
That, and revenge.
If I somehow make it out of this cesspool alive, I might only take a finger or two from good ol’ Samuel. The rest of them will rot in hell, but not before they suffer. They’re in for a whole fucking galaxy full of hurt.
He gritted his teeth. Especially that twat, Doc Asshole. “I’m gonna kill you for this, you mother fucker!” he screamed at the sky.
Maurice slumped over the lifesaver. The thoughts of revenge, the anger, the wild schemes and planned torture his imagination concocted, those were the fuel that kept him floating. But with every passing hour—twenty-seven or so by his best estimate—the voice of doubt and hopelessness grew louder in his mind, a voice that told of a future far more likely, a future without his pipedream revenge.
A voice that told him he was going to die.
He sobbed quietly, unable to hold it back. Last he knew, the Wakemaster was drifting lazily somewhere north of the Solomon Islands. He had no idea which way the currents had taken him, could barely tell direction at all, his only indicator being the downward arch of the cruel afternoon sun.
As much as he despised that burning globe and the damage it was doing to his smooth, boyish face, he feared its setting. Maurice knew so little about the ocean. He knew nothing about sailing, or nautical miles, or currents, or buoyancy, or surviving alone at sea. He barely even knew how to swim. Yet somewhere in the far recesses of his mind dwelled a tidbit of information he believed to be true whether it was or not: sharks feed at night.
The opening scene of Jaws flashed behind his eyes. He gripped the life preserver a little tighter.
The irony of a chef becoming food for another creature was not lost on him. He laughed that nervous sort of laugh one has while walking through a haunted house, pretending to be brave. The fear of what hid beneath him in that infinite expanse of deadly water seeped through his body like the icy touch of a howling blizzard.
He would not survive the night.
He would not have his revenge.
Maurice had made it through the first night thanks to the sheer power of denial, defiance, and rage. Reality had since kicked him in the ass with a steel-toed boot. Dread sent a hollow pain through his chest, and he winced as another sob caught in his throat.
Something touched his leg.
The slightest brushing, probably just a swish of water, tickled the hair on his calf. He’d felt it a hundred times since he’d entered the water, and each time, his heartbeat fluttered. Each time, it had turned out to be nothing.
Because it was nothing. Just my imagination .
The water temperature rose, and he wondered if he’d been so petrified that he’d pissed himself. But the water didn’t cool. Heat seemed to pulsate through it as if it were tangible and alive.
“Fuck!” Something slid, slippery and eel-like, across his shin. It’s just my imagination just my imagination just my imagin—
“Ah!” He swiped his hand across his calf. “What the fuck?” Something had bitten him, really had bitten him this time. He lifted his leg, relieved to find it whole. His fingers prodded the skin around a small bump. It wasn’t a bite. It burned as though it had been pressed against a hot oven.
He had little time to consider it before electric pain jolted through his other leg. He hollered in agony. Instinctively, he jumped atop the lifesaver, his body commanding as much of itself as possible out of the water before his mind could piece together the cause of his duress. He balanced precariously on a tiny island, his buttocks sinking through the hole.
His legs remained submerged up to his knees. He growled, half in anger and half in pain, as needle-like stabs poked junkie tracks across his skin. Something curled around his ankle, where flesh was thin and nerve endings shallow. Maurice squealed. Tears ran from his eyes. He ripped his foot free of the water, tottering backward and nearly plunking himself into the drink.
Long, thin strands of what looked like vermicelli slid limply from his ankle and fell to rest atop the waves. More strands streaked across the surface, dozens of them, some dormant while others writhed like inchworms.
Nearest to Maurice, the strands were spaced as wide apart as a foot. He traced their length twenty yards away, the distance between them narrowing like that of guitar strings up the frets until they began to overlap. A patchwork quilt formed close to a bulbous, off-white membrane that bobbed in the water like an upside-down buoy.
The membrane was getting closer.
“Shit.” Maurice turned onto his stomach. His legs sank deep into the water. The stinging was immediate and tormenting. Still, he kicked, the pain making him kick faster. When one adventurous tentacle caressed his thigh, he bit into his lip so hard that he drew blood. Maurice welcomed its copper taste, a reminder he yet lived. It took everything he had to fight the panicked urge to reach down and swipe the tentacles away.
After a minute, new stings stopped coming, but the old stings ignited every nerve cell in his legs. The water simmered. His flesh was on fire. He kicked until his legs couldn’t kick anymore, then collapsed into the lifesaver. His teeth chattered, a deep cold icing his insides and causing him to shiver violently while his legs and forehead scalded. Where salt water didn’t soak him, sweat did.
Tears in his eyes, he cursed Doc Asshole and the occupants of the Wakemaster , wondering how he could replicate and inflict all his pain and anguish upon them. A thousand wasps, stirred into a frenzy and set loose on those sons of bitches, seemed like a decent appetizer, but hardly par for the main course.
If he’d only get the chance.
He looked up at the sun, low in the sky, and sank into the preserver. He rested his ear against its curved surface and closed his eyes.
* * *
When Maurice woke, he gazed up at a sky full of stars. In his initial daze, he found it beautiful. Then he vomited out the sour-tasting contents of a stomach he’d thought empty.
His head spun. A splitting headache pounded a heavy metal drumbeat through his skull. His skin radiated heat, while his insides were colder than a grave. Every muscle ached as if he had just completed back-to-back decathlons. His legs coasted weakly, the skin numb, the water strangely soothing.
Content to float, thirst scratching at his throat, hunger gnawing at his belly, Maurice let fate do with him as it would. He had been foolish to think he’d had any choice in the matter. He cupped his hand in the water to wash the retch from his chin. His fingers tangled in a mass of stems and leaves, their color indistinguishable under the moonlight.
Seaweed . He’d used it in a few dishes, but he had never cared enough to research what it looked like in its natural, non-dried state beyond the nasty shit that gathered on the shores of Staten Island. He lifted it out of the water, wondering if it was edible. As salted and saturated with seawater as it was, Maurice guessed that eating it would only make him thirstier, if not violently ill.
Maybe it will speed along my death . The thought wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
Another thought came to him, and he sprung up in excitement. An idea, a flash of information the truth of which he was certain—like sharks feeding … Oh, God, it’s night —blossomed like a flower at the forefront of his mind. He shook off his fear. A faint light of hope, a dying ember at best, needed fostering.
Land! Kelp like this grows closest to land!
Despite having no idea where he’d heard this fact, Maurice was so sure of its veracity that he paddled frantically forward into a mass of lush flora. It tangled his arms and legs, slowing his momentum. His efforts were at first like trying to sled down a snowless hill, then like trying to sled with no hill at all. Soon, he was swallowed by a living, underwater jungle.
Immobile.
He squinted to see through the thick black of night. If land was out there, which direction it lay was not a guess he was willing to make. The water and sky both shimmered with moonlight, but everything in between hid behind darkness. Shore, his salvation, could have been less than a half mile away for all the good it would do him. He couldn’t see a fraction of that distance.
He frowned. Does kelp even grow in tropical waters? Is this even kelp? I wouldn’t know kelp from seaweed or any other fucking kind of ocean plant or algae or whatever the fuck it is . The growth around him was alive. That much seemed certain—that, and that there was a lot of it. His chin dropped. I am going to die out here . His heart thumped in his chest. He thought he might cry again, but before he could, he took several cleansing breaths and pulled himself together. Relax. Save your strength. You’ll see what’s what in the morning .
Somehow, Maurice did begin to relax. He turned to his back and let his head dip into the water. The night was clear and beautiful. His mind began to drift, and he was back in his home, enjoying a cold beer and a fat, red burger, its juicy blood running down his chin. He licked his lips and closed his eyes. For one blessed moment, he allowed himself to forget his dire circumstances and simply exist in silence and in peace.
Water splashed nearby, a light disturbance in the surface beyond the gentle sway of the ocean’s ebb and flow. Maurice froze. His eyes shot open, and he held his breath. A splash came again, and he caught sight of its maker. A small fish wiggled as it bit into the thick growth. A similar splash came from behind him, then another off to his right.
Maurice let out his breath. The splashes came sporadically, but the fish that made them paid him no mind. He stared at the water as it rippled across the leafy tips of the underwater vegetation. It’s nothing. Just some little fish having a snack. These plants must be the feeding grounds for tons of them . He imagined all sorts of bright-colored fish, beautiful, harmless creatures like those he had hand-fed in Cancun.
His reasoning seemed logical, but an uneasiness lingered at the back of his mind. He remembered the graduation card his parents had given him when he earned his Culinary Arts degree. Be a Big Fish in a Big Pond , it read. A picture of the food chain was drawn on its cover, that oft-used image of a tiny fish about to be eaten by a slightly larger fish, which in turn is about to be eaten by an even larger fish, and so on and so on. Except this card added a new component to the image. The pool in which all the fish swam was actually the inside of an Earth-sized fish’s mouth that took up most of the card’s cover. The mouth curled into a sinister grin.
A shark’s grin, full of pointed teeth.
“Why in fuck’s sake would you want to think of that?” Maurice asked himself aloud. Surely, he was being paranoid. He had enough to worry about without adding his irrational fears to the pile. He hadn’t seen a shark the first night, though he might have been too out of his mind to notice one tap dancing on the water directly in front of him, and he hadn’t seen one yet that night.
Yet.
Stop it.
As soon as it was light enough to see, he would swim for shore. If there even is a shore. If there—
“Ow!” Something bit him. He yelped again as another bite came.
Whatever had bitten him wasn’t in the water. It was on his chest. He slapped his skin. Something squished.
He raised his hand in front of his eyes. A sort of jelly with hard, greenish chunks in it spread across his palm. Tiny sticks jutted from one of the larger chunks. He brought his hand closer for a more critical inspection just as an inch-long bug skittered around his knuckle. It resembled a centipede, having too many legs to be an insect or spider, its smooth shell segmented like that of an armadillo.
Its sharp pincers speared Maurice’s skin.
He gasped and emitted a terrified squeal that might have called his manhood into question had anyone been around to witness it. He thrust his hand into the water and swished it as if it were on fire, trying to free himself of the dead bug and its very much alive friend.
A chill ran down his spine as he glanced down at himself. His skin crawled. So did the swarm of isopods on it.
He trembled. They were in his hair, under his clothes. He had to get them off. He needed them off that instant.
In his panicked swatting, he tumbled into the water. Sinking beneath the surface, he tore off his shorts, clawed at his hair, and patted every inch of his body. When he calmed enough to take in his surroundings, as blind in those depths as he would have been lantern-less and several hundred feet below ground, he used his hands to see. They led him through a maze of shoots, which he grabbed to pull himself forward, his legs frog-kicking to assist.
The plants grew everywhere, and though they parted easily enough for him to pass, Maurice feared them all the same. He imagined them belonging to something conscious and evil, like the tentacles of the jellyfish he’d already endured, except these were trying to drag him down to a watery grave: cold, empty depths where the souls of millions of others lost at sea waited with open arms and hollowed out eyes.
Instead of swimming up, he tried to swim out. His breath grew short. Air bubbles escaped his lips. His lungs ran on empty. When they could operate without oxygen no longer, he swam for the surface.
Only then did he realize how far he had sunk.
He scissored his legs with all his might. His lungs burned, begged for air, but air seemed a mile away. Maurice couldn’t tell where water ended and night began. Something nudged him. Something solid and sleek. He screamed. Salt water seeped into his mouth, leaked down his throat. He tried to swallow it all, but liquid squeezed its way into his lungs. He coughed behind lips he couldn’t keep closed. His arms turned in maddening circles. He choked, gagged, panicked as life seemed forfeited.
His grasping fingers found air.
He wheezed as his mouth breached the surface, then fell into a coughing fit that depleted the oxygen he’d just inhaled and sprayed seawater spittle from his mouth. Even as he coughed for another minute, his eyes looked left, then right, then left again, scanning the surface for that horrid monster that had touched him, praying it would not touch him again. He saw nothing, heard nothing beyond the wind and the waves. Still, his heart pumped in rapid-fire staccato.
A splash came from directly in front of him. He couldn’t see what had made it, just the white froth where the creature had once been. The ripples in the water, the sound the animal had made as it cut across the surface, led Maurice to believe it had been no minnow or goldfish. No, the creature was big, big and monstrous, probably with lots of teeth.
He stared straight ahead. The danger revealed itself. A black fin, like the tail of an airplane, sliced through the water a mere thirty yards away.
Twenty-five.
Maybe it’s a dolphin . He wished to God that it was, but when it was only twenty yards away, he saw the second fin zigzagging gracefully about six feet behind. A dolphin’s tail fin is horizontal. Sharks’ are—
Maurice didn’t need to finish his thought. He didn’t have to see the rest of the animal to know it. A shark headed his way, and if the distance between dorsal fin and tail fin was a trusted indicator, this particular shark was enormous.
He pictured a giant mouth with pointed teeth curled into a sinister grin, the cover of the graduation card his parents had given him. His heart pounded so hard, he thought it might explode, hoped it might. His head spun. The world blurred.
The shark closed in.
* * *
The sun was cooking the sky from purple to pink when Maurice woke, sputtering and floating on his back in water shallow enough to stand. He saw a beach and beyond it, a thick forest and the promise of an end to his nightmare. At first, he thought he was dreaming, or perhaps he’d found the afterlife. He slapped his cheeks and felt the sting.
Is this real? I’m alive? How?
A clicking sound, like that of an egg timer cranked slowly, emitted from the beak of a charcoal-skinned dolphin with smiling eyes. Another beside it bobbed its nose in and out of the water, splashing Maurice.
Not two fins from the same animal. Two fins from different animals. Two dolphins! Had they saved him? He’d heard stories about shipwrecked sailors being rescued by dolphins, but he’d never believed them to be true. The playful creature splashed him again, and he splashed it back, laughing, slowly letting himself accept that the worst was over. Tears of joy ran rivers down his cheeks.
“I wish I had something to offer you, you beautiful bastards.” He smiled at his saviors, their bright faces innocent like children. He’d never loved any person or thing as much as he loved them then. “Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Naked and humiliated, his penis shrunken and wrinkled like a California raisin, Maurice waded to shore, part of him thankful it appeared deserted. When he reached it, he collapsed on the sand, embracing the beach and making promises to God to live a better life.
After he had his revenge.
Once his joy had tempered, he stood to gauge his surroundings. He had escaped the perils of the sea, but he had no idea where he was or how he was going to get back home. It wasn’t long before he spotted his answer.
A large, white craft lazed in the water off in the distance. Maurice threw a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. “No fucking way!” He must have died. Either that or the jellyfish stings were making him hallucinate. He knew that vessel.
The Wakemaster.
It can’t be. I must be losing it . Maurice rubbed his eyes, blinked the blur away. The ship was no illusion. He squealed with glee like a toddler. He knew that she-bitch, Olivia, forced the captain to stop at every good sunbathing beach and that her husband forced the boat to stop whenever the notion to explore fancied him. But right there? Right then?
Maurice rubbed his hands together. His luck had done a complete one-eighty. Or perhaps it was that other she-bitch, Karma, come to bite those motherfuckers in the ass. The dolphins hadn’t just saved Maurice’s life. They had towed him to other people.
And a chance for revenge.
How he wanted to kiss those slippery sons of bitches. He didn’t know why the boat was docked there and didn’t care. Maurice had one mission: get to the ship before it left him stranded a second time.
A mosquito bit his forearm, and he smacked it. The small splatter of blood its flattened form left behind caused him to chuckle. Anything else want to take a bite out of me?
Maurice thought back to those nasty kelp critters and examined the welts on his skin. He recalled that moment of sheer horror when he thought a shark would make him into sushi. He wanted those on the Wakemaster to know that feeling, the fear of being eaten alive by something sinister and predatory. He wondered if that sort of terror was something he could cook up.
The pipedream spurred him into motion. At first his legs protested—they had forgotten the feel of solid earth—but soon they were sturdy beneath him as he sprinted the winding beach, keeping out of sight close to the tree line.
The scalding sun had risen high by the time he approached the yacht. Sweat glistened on his red-brown shoulders, dripped from his hair. All that separated him from the boat was half a football field of wide-open beach, followed by a five-minute swim. Despite nearly two full days in the ocean, Maurice coveted that swim, his body already like dry brush ready to ignite.
He steadied his mind, forced himself to examine the boat, watch for signs of life. But the ship sat silent. Is everyone sleeping? He smiled, then tip-toed across the beach. To his right, he spotted what he first mistook for felled trees until he saw that they had been hollowed out.
Some sort of canoe? He crouched and rolled forward, which probably would have drawn more attention to himself if someone had been watching. Feeling exposed, he wondered if the beach was as deserted as he’d thought. Keeping low, he held his breath and waded quietly into the water.
He swam much of the distance underwater, only coming up for air when he absolutely needed it. The ladder started a foot above the water. He pulled himself up and made his way to the top, where he peeked over the lip. No one stirred. Maurice climbed aboard.
Where the hell is everybody? He scanned the deck, half-expecting a trap. But no one jumped out at him. Master and crew had simply … vanished?
He made his way from bow to stern, his wet feet slapping the deck, announcing his presence with every step. He loitered at the stairwell down to the living quarters, listening for chatter, snoring, anything, but heard nothing.
As he slunk below deck, every creaky stair made him cringe and stop to listen. He searched room after room. Still, he found no one. When he reached the galley, he ran to the refrigerator and yanked it open. He cracked open a bottle of water and let it spill down his throat and seep from the corners of his mouth. The cold water felt like heaven. When the bottle was empty, he placed it on the counter and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then, he grabbed another bottle and a plump, red apple.
The loud crunch as he bit into the apple made him freeze. He chewed slowly and put the apple down, then grabbed a large butcher knife from the chopping block and a bottle of vinegar from the cabinet. After finishing his sweep of the cabin, satisfied he was alone, he rummaged through his bedroom, happy to find his stuff had not been thrown overboard. He grabbed a clean shirt and shorts and headed for the shower.
Cool water cascaded over his damaged skin and rehydrated his pruned lips. He scrubbed clumps of seaweed from crevices and wiped dead things from his skin. Red and purple welts tracked across his legs like bubble wrap filled with blood. Some of the bubbles had burst, leaving open sores that looked like rare roast beef. He laughed. He’d heard once that certain jellyfish could kill a man in less than five minutes. Apparently, he’d been exposed to the pussy kind, even though his legs throbbed worse than anything he’d ever experienced.
All mirth left him as he poured vinegar over the wounds. His eyes squeezed shut. His teeth clenched tighter than a virgin’s legs. His free hand gripped the shower railing so hard that his knuckles bleached white.
But he was alive. He was clean. The copious amounts of aloe he applied to his face and body were already resurrecting his skin.
He had only his mind left to attend to.
It demanded revenge.
Maybe I’ll just take the boat, leave them here to rot. That’s much better than how they left me. Better than they deserve.
Maurice didn’t even know where here was. He certainly didn’t know how to pilot a yacht or navigate the high seas. The others could have been partying at some rich island estate owned by Doc Asshole or one of his asshole friends. Maybe they were only minutes away from a city or civilization. His idea might leave him worse off than they were.
He finished washing, dressing, and tending to his wounds, then searched the boat for weapons. In addition to his butcher knife, with which he had carved the best damn sashimi that side of Tokyo—the way southern side , he assumed—he grabbed a flare gun from the emergency kit and a gaff hook that looked like it could haul in Moby Dick.
He stared over the rail at the bow, scanning the shore and the lush palms beyond as he gobbled the rest of his apple. The fruit was a light snack to test the agreeability of his stomach. He wondered if he should pack some food but decided against it. If his plan was a success, he’d half plenty of time to come back and eat his fill. And if it was not successful, he figured he would have no need of food then.
He spotted one of the yacht’s lifeboats, its back end lolling in the shallows just waiting for the undertow to drag it away. He wondered how long it had been there, why it had been left forgotten. The more pressing questions concerned what its owners were up to and how Maurice could exact his revenge.
Planning had never been his forte. He knew he wanted to see Doc Asshole, Olivia, and the entire crew—except maybe Samuel —dead at his hands, but hadn’t the faintest idea on how to bring that about. The knife in his grip seemed a good start, but how was he going to stab one without the rest noticing? He could ambush them on the boat, but that would give him little room to maneuver unseen. He’d get one, maybe two, before the rest overcame him.
On land, he could sneak up behind them, take them out one by one, ninja-style. A ninja he was not, but the idea had a certain appeal to it. Regardless, his best odds of success seemed to be on solid ground.
He counted his fingers: one, two, three, four, five. Five! There was the captain, the two deckhands, Logan and Samuel, Doc Asshole, and his blushing bride. The doctor was the least threatening. Maurice grinned. He’d save him for last. Olivia was a hellcat, though. She scared him the most, even more so than the brawny captain.
You can do this , he told himself, trying to summon confidence. Why should they get to live when they left you to die?
His legs throbbed their agreement. His back and shoulders ached their hurrahs. His fever still hadn’t broken, but he knew the heat in his face had more to do with his festering anger than what ailed him.
He lowered the remaining lifeboat and tossed the gaff hook and knife inside it. He tucked the flare gun into his belt, climbed into the boat, and rowed to shore. The physical exertion punished already exhausted muscles. His body yearned for his cozy bed.
I’ll sleep when this is over.
Maurice had never been a violent man. He’d never been overly moral either. Still, nothing about his intentions seemed wrong. He bit into his lower lip, thinking black, delicious thoughts. His plan may not have been right, but it sure as hell felt righteous.
On the shore, he found tracks leading from the other lifeboat into the jungle. They were set in groups of three, side by side, too many to belong to just the crew. Unless they came and went more than once . It could have been the same group. The outer footprints in each threesome were made by bare feet, and those in the center were made by shoes scuffing the sand.
After pulling both lifeboats farther up the beach, he followed the tracks toward the trees. Just before sand yielded to thick underbrush, two sets of footprints veered off to the right in long strides. Maurice followed them twenty feet where they stopped abruptly. Spots of what looked like raspberry jam dotted the white sand. Tracks then veered into the jungle. Two narrow grooves were dug in the sand as if something, or someone , had been dragged.
He followed the tracks as far into the jungle as he could before he lost them. He was no tracker and trod carefully, guessing that the dangers of the jungle likely matched those of the sea. At least on land, feet firmly planted, he stood a fighting chance against anything thrown his way.
He scratched his head. What would possess Doc Asshole and his crew to leave the safety and comfort of the yacht for the wilds of an untamed land? Maurice would have to watch his step, but he was determined to pursue his revenge before the island could take it for him.
The smell suddenly made him forget all that. Like the blissful aroma of a Brazilian rotisserie, the scent of sizzling meat wafted toward him on a warm breeze. It revitalized his stomach’s longings. The apple had been nowhere near enough to abate his hunger. He swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth. God, what I wouldn’t do for a taste of that .
Led by his nose, Maurice pressed farther into the jungle. The gaff hook hung loosely over his shoulder, its point jammed into a wine cork. His butcher knife, firmly in his grasp, pierced the air as he held it in front of him. Every now and then, he used it to bat away a fern or branch that blocked his path.
He knew he should be cautious, but his stomach would have none of it. If he died of snake venom or malaria or some other bullshit, at least he’d die after a satisfying meal.
A low moan, carried on thin wisps of smoke, made its way toward Maurice. It quickly crescendoed, becoming the mad howls of human suffering. Maurice stopped dead. The hairs rose on his neck. He held his breath. The screaming turned his blood to ice. He was sure a man was being tortured. Or skinned alive.
Or roasted .
His stomach gurgled and turned at the thought. The pool in his mouth went stagnant. Yet the smell of the meat remained savory and inviting.
At the sound of a dull thud, the screaming stopped. Run, moron! He knew he should, but his feet crept forward. The knife quivered in his hand. Smoke writhed in thick tendrils like a giant squid searching for Captain Nemo. It billowed over leaves, covered Maurice in haze, and burned his eyes. He nearly stepped into the clearing before he saw it, throwing his back against a tree at the edge of the open space before, he hoped, anyone could have seen him. He clutched the butcher knife to his chest.
Chancing a peek at the clearing, he saw nothing in the split second he allowed himself. He crouched low and looked again, spotting a crackling fire and two long, dark, cylindrical animals skewered over it. They were thick like boa constrictors, but not quite so evenly shaped.
Deer legs? No, not deer. Maurice covered his mouth. He looked away.
Human .
The rest of Samuel lay beside the pit. His legs had been removed a few inches above his knees, the stumps blackened, cauterized to stop the bleeding. Flies flew circles around the wounds and the spitted meat. Samuel’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving except for the faint rise and fall of his chest.
Christ, he’s still alive! Maurice bit his knuckle to hold back a scream. His first instinct was to help Samuel, and he acted on it before logic could hold him in check. The young deckhand had at least tossed Maurice a lifesaver, while the others just turned their backs like the cowards they were.
“The others,” he whispered, as he crawled hastily to Samuel’s side. The boy was unconscious, his arms tied behind his back. His hair was matted against his skull. He appeared to have been clubbed. His legs crackled and charred above them. Rivulets of blood boiled and bubbled and ran fiery trenches through ashen fields of flesh.
But where were the others? Did they do this to him for helping me? Have they all gone mad? Maurice sawed through Samuel’s bonds, unable to take his eyes off his task for fear of stabbing the boy and taking off more parts than the poor kid had already lost. He hadn’t seen the others, hadn’t spotted who had done this to Samuel, not until he grabbed the deckhand under his arms and straightened to drag him away from his savory-smelling other half.
And saw the pointed tips of spears aimed at his face.
He dropped Samuel and slashed at the air, but the knife did nothing to slow his attackers’ approach. He ripped the flare gun from his belt, and the five dark-skinned islanders jumped back. One dropped his spear and ran. The others stood their ground, but their weapons trembled in their hands.
“So you recognize guns?” Maurice had acted without thinking, had no time to be afraid, but the flare gun had bought him some time to think. The island’s natives seemed terrified of it. Yet there were four spears to one flare gun and one knife. Maurice did not like his odds. Still, the fact that he didn’t yet feel sharp points stabbing into his back made him think there might not be many natives other than those who stood before him. White men with guns might have had something do with that.
The two men and two women stood mostly naked except for the women’s grass skirts and the men’s banana hammocks, which were held up with twigs. Necklaces circled their throats like chokers, with bones and teeth—human, dog, and others Maurice couldn’t identify—dangling from them. Each held a six-foot spear with a wooden shaft and a stone blade. They were hunters; Maurice could tell by the deft way in which they handled their weapons, but they were not successful ones if their emaciated frames told a story.
Or perhaps they had just run low on their preferred game.
Others stood behind them, well out of harm’s way. Two small children hung by their mother’s side as a babe nursed from her tit. An old man with a malformed arm glowered like a wild dog whose meal had been stolen from its snapping jaws. Seeing their teeth filed into points and Samuel’s legs roasting over the fire, Maurice didn’t have to guess whose company he kept: cannibals, and by the looks of them, the worst kind—hungry.
If he didn’t see them with his own eyes, Maurice might not have believed cannibals still existed in the civilized world. But he was far away from what he considered civilization and had recently drawn the conclusion that what he mistook for civilized society wasn’t truly civilized at all.
“Is that Maury?” a woman’s voice called from an animal pen at the other side of the clearing. “Help us, Maury! They’re cannibals!”
“No shit.”
Olivia stood behind a row of tall, wooden spikes thatched together to form a crude picket fence. Her clothes were tattered and revealing, and Maurice couldn’t help the movement in his pants when he thought of her glorious fake tits. Hardly the time for it , he chided himself, but he was just a man.
Behind Olivia, the remaining crew of the Wakemaster rose along with the good doctor. They appeared to have been roughed up a bit.
Tenderized .
Maurice considered his options. The right thing to do, he supposed, would be to try and save them. The smart thing to do would be to walk away, take the yacht and retreat far from the island, leaving the rest of them to their well-deserved fates. The idea curled up the corners of his mouth, even if revenge would not come at his hands. With four sharp spears between him and their freedom, Maurice figured walking away was the only chance any of them had of surviving.
One surviving was better than none.
As he stood deadlocked with four starving cannibals, his arm began to tire. But one of the hunters lowered his weapon first. He pointed a finger at Samuel, who lay at Maurice’s feet. Then he slowly brought his hand to his mouth and opened wide to stuff it full of air. He repeated the gesture, only this time he pointed at Maurice after he raised his hand to his lips.
Is he offering to share? Maurice’s gaze fell upon the fenced-in prisoners. Doc Asshole glared back at him, not pleading for forgiveness, not begging for help, but instead wearing that same smug asshole face that only pretentious, know-it-all smug assholes wear, beady eyes peering down a narrow asshole’s nose, mouth pressed asshole flat, and arms asshole-crossed as if his patience was dwindling and his entitlement to rescue had never been in question. Seeing that face, Maurice’s rage rose so quickly that it spawned a third option.
That mother fucker . Maurice seethed. He hadn’t survived two days at sea, having every hell visited upon him the ocean could muster, only to be ridiculed by a man certain to die unless he did something. Oh, I’ll do something all right, you piece of shit. I’ll fucking do something. Who says revenge is a dish that has to be served cold?
He lowered the flare gun, hands steady and deliberate as a surgeon’s, though his eyes twitched with just a hint of madness. He tucked the gun into his belt. The islanders raised their brows and cast quizzical looks at one another. Maurice made no sudden movements. He crouched beside Samuel.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though the words rang hollow. “It’s too late for you.” With a grimace of effort and concentration, he slid his knife into the boy’s muscular thigh and began to shear meat from bone. Samuel’s eyes burst open. His mouth contorted as if he were yawning. His fingers clawed deep grooves into the earth at his sides. A silent scream froze on his face as his eyelids fluttered, and he passed back out.
Maurice severed an eight-inch slab of human. He slid the gaff hook off his shoulder and speared the meat with it as if he were going fishing for leviathans. The curled point looked like a giant teriyaki beef skewer. He held it over the fire but not too close, patiently letting the meat cook evenly while the islanders watched with savage curiosity. Any fear seemed to have dissipated along with their murderous intent, as if the cooking muscle had a hypnotic power over them, lulling them into quiet hunger.
Minutes passed, with Maurice passing the hook between hands as one tired. “A fine cut,” he muttered. “Hardly any fat.” He let the blood rise to the surface before rotating it, browning the meat and searing the outermost edges to add a smoky flavor, leaving the center red and juicy. He licked his lips, unable to deny his own hunger and the fact that properly cooked human at least smelled delicious.
When Samuel’s thigh muscle had cooked to a fine medium rare, Maurice waved the gaff hook in the air to cool it. He handed the spear to the native closest to him, a woman with thick, coarse hair and devilishly black eyes set deep above pockmarked cheeks. “Careful. It’s hot.”
The woman didn’t take the gaff hook right away. She stepped back and shouted what sounded like laleo , then looked to her companions for guidance. The others grunted. She stepped forward like a wild animal, wanting the proffered treat but fearing the hand that held it out to her. She touched the hook, then recoiled, only to snatch the tool from Maurice’s grasp a moment later. As if immune to the heat, she grabbed the meat and tore it off. After sniffing it and turning it around in her hands, she bit off an enormous chunk.
The others watched in silence as she chewed. She grinned widely, then laughed with her mouth full. Chunks of meat hung like bats from a ceiling in the gaps between her teeth.
The other three islanders lowered their spears. Each took an impressive mouthful of Samuel’s thigh muscle in turn. When the last of the four had bit off more than he could chew, he passed the fist-sized leftovers to Maurice.
“I’m good.” Maurice didn’t take it. The islanders frowned. They gripped their spears a little tighter.
“Okay, okay.” Maurice took the meat, shocked by how quickly he’d folded. Did part of him actually want to try it? He let out a breath. I can do this. Before he could overthink it, he shoved the morsel into his mouth.
And smiled.
Warm blood ran down his throat, so naturally flavorful, no seasoning or marinating required. “It’s … it’s amazing!” he said with so much fervor that the islanders flinched. They all laughed after he did.
He kept chewing. By God, he wanted more!
The two children ran over to him, apparently given the okay from their breast-feeding mother. He handed the rest of the meat to them. They tugged at it as if it were a wishbone, the little girl getting the larger chunk. She beamed with pride as she gnawed it ravenously. The little boy seemed content to nibble on the lesser half.
In the pen, Logan was hurling, and Maurice remembered that the deckhands were somehow related. Maurice shrugged. He knew he should be sick, too, but that part of him that saw and understood the wrong in his actions didn’t feel it. He had less ill will toward Samuel than he had for the rest, but the boy was as good as gone by the time he’d found him, the nearest hospital only God knew where.
The others were as good as gone, too. They just didn’t know it yet.
Or maybe they did. Olivia cried, loud sobs Maurice might have thought melodramatic had she less reason for drama. The captain huddled in a corner, hiding his face behind his hands. Doc Asshole remained defiant, smug asshole face firmly fixed.
Maurice chuckled. You’re next, asshole .
The huntress with the onyx orb eyes handed back the gaff hook. She had a wildness to her that no longer frightened him. In fact, he kind of liked it. She snapped her fingers and pointed at Samuel, who looked as pale as death. His eyes were open, but they were glazed over.
Lifeless.
Maurice felt nothing. He certainly didn’t feel responsible. He raised his hand to his mouth copying the gesture one of the males had made earlier. The huntress grunted and smiled. Maurice readied his knife, a chef once again.
They ate most of Samuel that afternoon. Maurice made steak tips out of the charred legs, flaying most of the charred skin for a few mangy dogs that lingered around the campsite. He paired Samuel’s ribs with roasted sago, pan-fried banana, and some kind of grub the islanders fussed over. He hesitated to eat the larvae, then laughed at the irony. There were other parts of Samuel—parts that even Maurice’s surprising indifference to human consumption wouldn’t permit him to eat—and they did not go wasted, the tribe picking them clean. All that was left of the boy was a pile of bones.
Waste not, want not. Maurice had more than his fill, and the rich meat and gristle bloated his stomach, but not once had his stomach turned. Not once had he felt even an ounce of regret. The meat tasted too damn good. After what those bastards did to him, they were getting their just desserts.
“Desserts!” Maurice was already contemplating tomorrow’s meal. He sat in the dirt, absently drawing figures in it with the little boy. Devil Eyes tapped him on the shoulder. She pointed up to what looked like a giant bird’s nest approximately forty yards above the ground. It was big enough to accommodate twice as many as those comprising the tribe, a treehouse with a thick, knotted Banyan tree serving as its main support, bolstered by stilts and crossbeams, and roofed with umbrella-sized palm leaves.
Devil Eyes smiled and closed her eyes, pressing praying hands to the side of her face. She grabbed Maurice’s hand and tugged him to follow. But he stayed put, watching the tribe, including the children and the deformed old man, climb up a tree trunk ladder and into their home. Maurice figured he’d head back to the ship for a good night’s sleep in the master bedroom.
Having broken bread with the tribe, consumed the flesh of man, Maurice had apparently earned a place among them. The clearing was his as the tribe prepared for the night, the sun sinking into a thin black line. He marveled at the innocent, almost naïve trust they placed in him, an outsider.
He rested, let his meal digest, then walked over to the pen. He felt good, carefree. His fever had broken. The throbbing in his legs was gone. And the best part: not so much as a twinge of remorse.
“You’ll burn in hell for that,” Doc Asshole called out as Maurice walked by. Maurice stopped.
Olivia ran to the gate. Tears turned her made-up face into a clown mask. “Don’t listen to him, Maury. He’s just a limp-dick asshole, like you always said he was.”
Maurice started walking away. Slowly. Smiling. The rest of the prisoners stared silently, eyes pleading for help just as his had pled for theirs. He’d give them the same answer they’d given him.
“Let me out of here, babe,” Olivia begged, tears beginning anew. “We can fuck all you want. Maury? Let us out, Maury. Maury!”
Maurice had passed the enclosure. But before heading back to the yacht, he turned for one last look. Olivia had fallen to her knees. Somehow, someway, Doc Asshole still stood way up high on his pedestal, looking down.
Maurice just laughed. He pointed at the doctor. “You look a little tough. I think tomorrow I’ll teach these islanders how to tenderize meat and fix a proper steak. A good marinated steak always tastes better when you cook it slowly. We’ll start small, hands and feet probably. There’s always a learning curve. Who knows how many lessons these locals will need to get it right?”
The doctor looked away, but not before Maurice caught a glimpse of a face stricken with horror. Whistling, he returned to the ship, wondering what seasonings would best spice up old meat.
In his head, Jason Parent lives in many places, but in the real world, he calls New England his home. The region offers an abundance of settings for his writing and many wonderful places in which to write them. He currently resides in Southeastern Massachusetts with his cuddly corgi named Calypso.
In a prior life, Jason spent most of his time in front of a judge … as a civil litigator. When he finally tired of Latin phrases no one knew how to pronounce and explaining to people that real lawsuits are not started, tried and finalized within the 60-minute timeframe they see on TV (it’s harassing the witness; no one throws vicious woodland creatures at them), he traded in his cheap suits for flip flops and designer stubble. The flops got repossessed the next day, and he’s back in the legal field … sorta. But that’s another story.
When he’s not working, Jason likes to kayak, catch a movie, travel any place that will let him enter, and play just about any sport (except that ball tied to the pole thing where you basically just whack the ball until it twists in a knot or takes somebody’s head off - he misses the appeal). And read and write, of course. He does that too sometimes.
Please visit the author on Facebook at facebook.com/AuthorJasonParent , on Twitter at twitter.com/AuthorJasParent , or at his website, authorjasonparent.com , for information regarding upcoming events or releases, or if you have any questions or comments for him.
