I faked sleep for as long as I could. Candy was a super light sleeper. I had to remain exceedingly still so as not to wake her. By four in the morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. It felt like hissing cockroaches were scuttling under my skin. I had to get up.
Candy didn’t stir as I crept out of the room. I checked in on Katie. She’d kicked her covers off and was clutching her Build-A-Bear purple pony.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I went online to see if there’d been any developments in the story. I also wanted to see if anyone had discovered Marcellus’s body yet. If not, odds were high that it had been dragged off by some of the local wildlife, left to molder in the woods. He’d be declared a missing person before a corpse.
I checked the Portland Press Herald, saw the front page crammed with stories on the weather and the strange virus that had hit several major cities. Were the people who had the virus getting strange messages and killing bad people too?
No, they were just sick, plain and simple. Sick and dying, not sick and murderous. News like this would have raised my blood pressure considerably, but I had something else on my mind.
It wasn’t until page five when I saw an article about the man I’d killed yesterday. It said there was a sketch of the murderer on page two.
Oh God, this is where my life ends.
My finger swiped to the next page. What I saw nearly made me fall off my chair.
The man in the sketch wasn’t me at all!
A burly Hispanic man wearing a baseball cap glowered at me. He had a small scar under his right eye.
How the hell had the kid come up with that? I was a skinny white guy with a well-kept beard. That man couldn’t be more opposite me.
And the more I looked at him, the more familiar he became to me.
My hand flew to my mouth.
I’d seen that man before. He worked in the produce section at the supermarket. He’d once opened a new box of Bartlett pears for me to make sure I got the freshest ones.
What the fuck was going on here?
On the one hand, I was relieved that my door wasn’t in danger of being broken down by the police. On the other, heavier hand, I was a two-time murderer and now an innocent man was getting framed for one of my crimes.
Pushing back from the table so hard I almost knocked my chair down, I stormed into the living room and found my phone. I went back to the kitchen.
“Where the hell are you now, AO?” I hissed, checking for new texts.
I not only didn’t find new texts—all of AO’s previous texts were gone. Wiped clean, as if they’d never happened. The same with my email account.
I ran to the sink to throw up.
“What if I’ve been imagining everything?” I said between hot gouts of bile.
I cleaned up fast, grabbed my coat, and left the house. The streetlights were still on and there were no signs of the sun coming up any time soon. Good. I didn’t exactly want my neighbors to see me traipsing around the streets in my pajamas with flecks of vomit on my mouth.
The Mustang was gone too. A new, white Honda was parked in the space where I’d left it. Collapsing on the sidewalk, I pressed my face into my palms.
Losing my job had caused a psychotic break. I’d been normal up to that point. Maybe the messages I’d received before I went into Marcellus’s office was just a convenient lie I’d told myself so I wouldn’t think what I was thinking now.
And despite my insanity, I’d committed two crimes and gotten away with them.
“I have to turn myself in.”
My ass was soaked from sitting in the morning dew.
First, I had to tell Candy. She had to know why I was going to the police station, why I had to distance myself from her and Katie.
If I had convinced myself that someone called AO made me kill those two men, it wasn’t safe for me to be around my own family.
* * * * *
Katie slept past six a.m. for the first time I could ever remember. That meant Candy was also asleep. I paced around downstairs, watching the local news, feeling parts of my soul dissipate with every report of the murder.
Finally, just after eight, I heard my daughter’s light footsteps tip-tap into my bedroom, followed by the sound of Candy laughing.
They’d come down in a couple of minutes. I’d have to fake being normal for Katie and find a way to get Candy alone. My heart’s rhythm went so out of whack, I found it hard to breathe, my lungs hitching like a world-class stutterer.
“Daddy!” Katie yelped when she saw me, her pony in tow. I knelt down so I could catch her as she threw herself at me.
“Good morning, lazy bones,” I said. “You slept late today.”
“I did?”
I kissed her cheeks and the tip of her nose. “You sure did. You must have been having some real nice dreams.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I can’t remember.”
“You want some cereal?”
She nodded.
“Okay, take a seat in the kitchen and I’ll get it for you.”
I thought my knees were going to give out on me a couple of times as we walked hand in hand. I found her favorite cereal, nearly dropping the bowl as I took it from the cabinet.
“Morning, honey,” Candy said, dressed in her mommy robe and fuzzy slippers.
Plopping Katie’s cereal in front of her, I said to Candy, “I need to talk to you in the living room.”
She looked concerned. I didn’t have a good poker face.
“Sure. Katie, baby, we’ll be right back.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Candy slipped her hands in mine. “What’s up, Peter? You look like you’re having a panic attack.”
“I have something to tell you and I need you to stay calm,” I said. I swallowed hard, fighting back another bout of nausea.
She said, “I know this is hard for you and even when I tell you we’re going to be all right, it doesn’t feel like it at the moment. I’m glad you’re talking to me. Tell me whatever you’re feeling so we can work through it together.”
I looked into her hazel eyes and saw so much love there. Would that love remain when I confessed? I didn’t want to lose her. It would be easier if I just shut up.
No! When I’d taken those lives, I’d already lost her by destroying myself.
“Candy, look, I…I…”
The tempest of pain came roaring back, shattering my skull like it has been carpet bombed. I strangled out some kind of cry and felt my bowels let loose, shitting myself with such force, I thought I’d ruptured something. I felt Candy’s hand on me but couldn’t hear her.
Before I blacked out, I saw the fire again, a hundred-foot high wall of flame, consuming everything in its path. Candy and Katie reached out for me within the flames, pleading for help, their flesh turning black, cracking and popping until they collapsed out of sight.