| |
––––––––
Gabriel fought to stay awake, drifting in a rolling lull where there was nothing but a blank space between dusk and dawn. Just the way he liked it.
A six point star lay on the floor and six candles flickering at each corner, and there a drift of bitter incense that reminded him of piñon resin. All he needed was the book to give him the words, the long, repetitive mantra he once knew by heart.
After luring Adel Martinez from her house with the offer of a shoulder to cry on, Gabriel was exhausted. Eight hours it took to prize the information out of her were eight hours he might have spent sleeping.
He sat on the only other chair in the room and tried to process what she had just said.
“Did you say I was a freak?” he asked, swiveling a knife on the surface of an upturned crate.
Hands tied behind her back, who could blame Adel for not responding. Her head had flopped forward like a rag doll, eyes fluttering as if she was trying to stay awake.
It was a setup. Adel never had the book. The detective did. The square-jawed, sullen-looking black man who had hunted him one night in a cornfield and along a narrow lane all the way to the main road.
Lawmen were never far behind.
Had the detective seen Gabriel on other occasions? Did DCPD’s swarming network of agencies have prior knowledge of his entire life? While he knew it to be true, he found the reality of it disturbing.
“The van, you fool,” Demon whispered. “All those tell-tale signs. You’re dead now.”
And yet, Demon had promised he would keep the van working.
Every day upon opening the front door or going about his business, Gabriel wondered if law enforcement crows would be standing outside with their all-too-familiar smiles.
Yes, disturbing.
He expelled a loud sigh and raked a hand through his hair. The basement was getting colder and both of them were shivering. It all seemed pointless until Adel lifted her head.
“Paddy... He was doing drugs.” Adel looked like she was going to start crying. “Don’t you remember? He kept laughing at things. He was weirded out most of the time.”
Adel had a point. Paddy would have found a gray wall hilariously funny. He just wasn’t right somehow. But he knew the difference between Alice and Adel because they looked nothing alike. Even if he was high.
“You chased him,” Gabriel reminded. “Was it to satisfy your curiosity? Self-esteem? What?”
Adel winced, tried to lift her feet out of a bucket of iced water. It must have been hard with torso and hands tied with heavy duty bungee cord and feet so cold she could hardly breathe. She left Gabriel with no answers, just silence.
He looked around the dreary space he remembered so well. Wood beams stretching the entire length of the house and a water heater that soughed on and off. There was a toilet in the far corner and as far as he recalled it never flushed.
“It’s where all the bad kids go,” Demon whispered.
Gabriel tapped the side of his head with his fingers and then with the heels of his hands. He remembered the beatings, the echo of his sobs. It was always him. Never her. Because she was perfect.
He remembered a time when she tiptoed down the basement stairs, head lowered, hoping to see him on the way down. She brought him food and she hugged him until he ran out of cry.
“What did you do?” Demon murmured.
What did I do? The cogs in Gabriel’s mind tried to search for that information and all he could come up with was one word. Steal. Hunger got the better of him when he was eight. That’s when it started. He stole food from the pantry and money from his father’s desk. There were quarters in the top drawer, a whole jar of them, and he’d bought himself a milkshake after school.
When the jar was half empty his father began to ask questions. Never scolded her and Gabriel couldn’t for the life of him understand why.
His train of thought was shattered by Adel’s hoarse voice. Her very presence startled him because she had been half dozing, half sobbing. He was irritated. Wanted to retreat into silence with his perpetual memories.
“Did you kill them?” she stammered.
Gabriel tapped out a cigarette on the arm of the chair and lit up. He studied her face, candlelight providing sharp angles and shadow, and creating a classic 1950s beauty she never really had.
“They say a killer’s motives are hidden in the psyche,” he said, watching her shudder in the cold. “A place common people can’t go. You’d be too afraid to see what I see.”
“What do you mean afraid?”
“This room...” He looked up at the beams, closed his eyes for a moment. “You can love it or you can hate it. It does have a certain charm. But I didn’t bring you here to discuss the Feng Shui. I brought you here to discuss the book.”
“I n-never had it. They did.” Adel’s face was pale, pupils large and black in the light of a sputtering candle.
“You’re lying.” Gabriel could feel it in his immortal bones. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s the only way to get rid of Demon. The only way to stop it all. The hate. The lies. You do understand?”
The candle spat a gob of wax across the floor, spreading out like a comet’s tail. Gabriel thought it was beautiful. That it was a sign.
“It can’t go on forever,” Demon whispered from somewhere in the shadows. “This... this constancy of human failure. I should tell you there is an end to my patience.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes and took a long hard drag of his cigarette. He rolled his shoulders too and sat up a little straighter knowing how Demon wanted it over with, wanted to move on to the next thing. But what Demon couldn’t grasp was Gabriel’s reluctance to meet those demands. He was sick of the games, the bloodshed and the rabbit trails.
Sick, sick, sick.
Because he would go to jail if he lived, and that would be hell enough. Like the tumor in his brain.
He stubbed out the cigarette and lunged for the knife, watched Adel’s eyes as they flicked upward to his raised hand. And then her mouth dropped open and she began to scream.
