Are You Afraid of the Dark?

CHAPTER THREE

1.

The sheriff’s department came around about an hour later. The white and green Ford could be seen over and through the trees from their perch in the tree house, crawling up the road at a leisurely pace.

Reggie moved for the ladder and Ivan grabbed him by the arm.

‘Remember our arrangement,’ he said, not a question but a statement.

Reggie nodded.

‘In my line of work,’ he said, ‘there’s consequences for breaking your word.’

Reggie didn’t remember actually giving his word about anything, but nodded again anyway. Then he was moving down the ladder and emerging from the woods and jogging back to the house across the dry field of the front yard. A slight summer breeze stirred things and made a whisper in the air over the expanse. He walked in the back door just as his mom was leaving the kitchen to check on the sound of the car pulling up out front.

He watched from the hall as she opened the screen door and stepped out on the porch to greet the man walking up. The cadence of heavy boots pounding up the steps to meet her sounded like heartbeats.

‘Good morning ma’am,’ the man said. Through the mesh of the screen door he was a vague form with a wide-brimmed hat and a gun belt. ‘I’m Deputy Collins,’ said the man and they shook hands.

The voice was familiar and Reggie wanted to reach out and pull his mom back inside and lock the door behind her.

‘Good morning, officer,’ his mom replied. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘We’re driving around notifying nearby residents about a situation,’ the deputy said. How the same voice that had tauntingly asked You know what rape is, kid? could now disguise itself with civility, was beyond Reggie.

Such a trick seemed dangerous to him. Something a predator did to lull its prey into a false sense of security. Just before it flashed its claws and dragged the hunted into a dark den.

‘What situation would that be?’ his mom asked. Interest rather than concern tinged his mom’s voice. Serene calm or outbursts of emotion when he was late home for something or wasn’t where he was supposed to be were her only two moods since his dad had died. One or the other. Nothing in between.

That was almost as troubling to Reggie as the deputy’s dual personalities.

‘Not to cause any alarm, ma’am,’ the deputy began, ‘but it seems there’s a dangerous man on the loose.’

‘You don’t say?’ said his mom.

‘Unfortunately so,’ said the deputy. ‘Yesterday morning a man escaped from a police escort taking him to the county jail in Tucson.’

‘What’d he do?’ she asked. She leaned nonchalantly against the door, her back pushing against the mesh and bending it inward.

‘He’s a killer,’ said Deputy Collins, friendly neighbourhood peace officer and tormentor of bike riding boys.

‘Who’d he kill?’ his mom asked, her tone still mildly interested, like someone spying a squashed bug on the sidewalk momentarily before passing.

‘Many people,’ the deputy replied. ‘He’s a contract killer.’

‘My word,’ his mom said.

‘Yes, I know,’ said the officer. ‘Who’d think such a man loose in our town?’

They each shook their head at the wonder of it all.

‘If you see this man,’ the officer said and held up a photo Reggie couldn’t see through the screen door, ‘stay away from him and get to a phone. Give us a call and we’ll be there lickety-split.’

They shook hands again, and the deputy walked away, climbing in his car and driving off. Plumes of dirt billowed into the air and then settled like battlefield detritus. His mom stood on the porch for a time, looking at the photo without really looking at it, and then came back inside.

Reggie left silently by the back door.

2.

‘Tell me about the first person you killed,’ Reggie said after climbing back up the ladder and settling down again across from the killer. Together they’d watched the patrol car weaving away in the distance, until, crawling first up and then down a hill, it blinked away in the white horizon.

Despite the deputy’s unsettling offer to let him see crime scene photographs, Reggie thought about what the officer had said to him by the side of the highway: He raped and killed a woman and killed her kid. And about how Ivan himself had admitted to killing women and children only a short time ago.

Reggie idly wondered if he could get to the ladder before the killer drew his gun. If, peddling fast, he could catch up to the patrol car on his bike before it reached the highway. But these were just fleeting thoughts without substance, like the remnants of vague dreams upon awakening, drifting away.

The two of them had an arrangement, a deal. And in Ivan’s line of work, a man’s word was everything. Ivan had rightly judged Reggie when he’d asked what if he called the police and the killer had said he knew Reggie wouldn’t. Reggie was likewise sure the man would keep to the terms of the deal. He was safe as long as he didn’t betray the killer’s trust.

At least, he was pretty sure.

‘My first hit?’ Ivan asked. ‘Or the first person I killed?’

‘There’s a difference?’ Reggie asked.

‘There is,’ the killer said. ‘A hit is never personal, just business. Killing someone because you want to is an entirely other thing.’

‘The first person you killed then,’ Reggie said, nodding with the decision. ‘The very first.’

Reggie thought it might take him a moment or two to call forth the memories. So many killed over so many years, he figured the killer might have to close his eyes against the tide. Take himself back and carefully reel in the memory out from the rest. But Ivan answered immediately.

‘That would be my father,’ he said, looking now not at Reggie but at some spot above and past him. He was indeed reeling in the memory, Reggie realized, only it wasn’t difficult at all. This was something that was at the core of the man sitting across from him. It was there all the time, merely waiting for him to draw it forth from beneath the surface.

‘Why’d you kill your own dad?’ Reggie asked. He thought of his mom and his own dad. Such a thing – killing one of them – didn’t make sense. He couldn’t even fully develop the thought.

‘I caught him touching my sister,’ Ivan said. ‘You know, in the way grown-ups aren’t supposed to.’

Images came unbidden to Reggie’s mind. Dark basements; old corners; unlighted children’s rooms at night. A large, hulking figure standing over a frail one with sheet covers pulled to her chin. Again he thought of the deputy on the side of the highway, and later on Reggie’s own front porch: Do you know what rape is, kid?

‘How many times did he do it?’ Reggie heard himself asking. He realized what he was saying, and he thought of the gun lying beside the man across from him. But Ivan didn’t show any reaction to this question, and Reggie relaxed a bit.

‘I only saw him the one time,’ Ivan said. ‘But there’s no telling how long it went on before I saw him.’

‘Didn’t your sister ever call for help?’ Reggie asked.

‘She had Down’s syndrome,’ Ivan said, making a vague gesture at his own head to punctuate the statement. ‘She wasn’t all there, you know?’

Reggie nodded though he didn’t know, not really. He’d seen people with handicaps before, of course. Coupled with their caregivers, guiding them or pushing them in wheelchairs, such people were obvious. But they were just people all the same, and Reggie had never given the mentally or physically challenged much thought.

As a minister, his dad had always told him God created all people as they were for a reason. People with disabilities weren’t to be looked down on, or even pitied. But the way Ivan pointed to his own temple in indication of his sister’s condition told Reggie that the killer didn’t see things quite the same way.

‘We lived up north in a mountain town,’ Ivan said. ‘I went to school in the city. Took a bus home. It was a short day, they let us out early, and I came in through the back door. The hinges didn’t make a sound, and the television was on, so I guess they didn’t hear me come in.’

Reggie pulled his legs up to his chest, hugged them about the knees. He rested his chin on his right knee and stared down at the floor at a spot near Ivan’s booted feet. He couldn’t look at the man just now, and he didn’t know why.

‘My sister’s room was across the hall from mine,’ Ivan said. ‘I had to pass it to get to my room. The door was ajar and I looked in as I walked by.’

Reggie stared hard at the wooden floor. He felt like he had when the deputy asked if he wanted to see the pictures. The rape pictures. Not wanting to be in a certain place, and yet held there by another.

‘She was on the bed,’ Ivan said. ‘He’d pulled a chair up close beside it. His pants were around his ankles. One hand was on her, one was on himself.’

Reggie wondered what was on television. He tried hard to think if there was a book that maybe he could read. He wondered if his mom still wanted to see a movie, go have lunch.

And at the same time he was rooted to the spot. It was as if the very floor of the tree house had sprouted invisible vines, shackling him. He couldn’t leave and he wasn’t sure he would if he could. With an effort he pulled his gaze from the floor and looked at Ivan again. He was staring right at Reggie.

‘What’d you do?’ he asked.

‘Right then?’ the killer asked. ‘Nothing.’

Reggie waited. He knew the story wasn’t over.

‘He finally saw me and turned to look at me,’ the killer said. ‘He took his hands off my sister and himself, but didn’t bother trying to pull up his pants or explain anything. He just sat there half-naked in his chair and looked at me.’

Patiently, Reggie remained silent.

‘I walked to my room and closed the door behind me,’ Ivan said. ‘I did my homework at my desk by the window. Watched the day pass into evening. He knocked on my door once and said that dinner was ready. I told him I wasn’t hungry and had a project to finish. I heard him go upstairs to his room not too long after.

‘I chopped wood for us,’ Ivan said. The change of subject jolted Reggie, but he remained quiet. The set of the killer’s face – all hard lines and solid planes – told Reggie they were getting somewhere. Somewhere important. This was something told in a way only the teller could determine, in his own time. Like when Reggie had to tell his mom or dad about a lie he’d told, or something bad he’d done at school.

‘I loved doing it. It was hard work and repetitive, and the rhythm of the work set me at ease. And then watching the logs crackling in the fire and the smoke going up the chimney seemed a fitting conclusion to the work. A cycle of a kind.

‘The hatchet I’d bought from a hardware store with the money from one of my first summer jobs. I kept it in my room rather than outside in a shed or with the cords of firewood. I kept it under my bed wrapped in an old blanket.’

The snowy expanse of the killer’s northern home came alive for Reggie. Hills and forests and mountains. A small town of quaint, warm houses. And in one a young man in a room, kneeling to reach under his bed for a cherished bundle.

‘My father was a heavy sleeper and snored loudly,’ the killer said. ‘The walls in our home were thin and I could hear him clearly when he was asleep. I climbed upstairs without a single squeak of the floorboards beneath me, which was unusual. It was an old house, and the creaks and pops of its structure was a background noise you got used to. That day, however, it was silent, as if the place itself approved of my intentions.’

Reggie wondered about that. Could a place think? Could a house or building have a memory? He thought of the church and its parking lot. He thought of his dad’s plot at the cemetery. How he’d avoided both places for the better part of a year. The very air of each of them seemed heavy and difficult to breathe. At the wake in the church and the funeral at the cemetery, Reggie had felt as if he’d been watched the entire time, and not merely by the people who’d gathered to say their goodbyes.

Shifting uncomfortably, he didn’t think that was such a strange idea at all.

‘He was face down on the mattress,’ the killer continued. ‘He never awoke, never saw me coming. I did it with one swing. Cleaved his skull in two.’

The killer took a breath, let it out slowly. Then another. Reggie was reminded of a bull chuffing, its nostrils flaring, as it stared at an intended target to gore. Measuring the distance to the tree house ladder, Reggie hoped he wasn’t the focus of the man’s quiet, bestial fury. When the killer spoke again it was in a noticeably quieter tone, so Reggie had to strain to hear.

‘I wonder if maybe he knew I was coming and slept soundly because of it. Maybe in his own way, he wanted to be punished.’

He looked at Reggie with those stony eyes.

‘What do you think, Reggie?’

Reggie didn’t think much of anything at that moment, and said as much:

‘I don’t know.’

‘How does a man sleep after doing what he did?’ Ivan asked. ‘I like to think he knew I was coming and slept in comfort knowing that it was over. Maybe he knew the things he did were wrong and wanted them to end.’

‘How do you?’ Reggie said.

‘How do I what?’ Ivan said.

‘How do you sleep, knowing the things you’ve done?’

The cold blue eyes twitched but nothing more. One hand slipped beneath his jacket and roamed, idly searching, and finding what it sought, stroked the item gently. Whether gun or knife or some other secreted instrument, Reggie didn’t know, and didn’t want to.

‘I’d like to be alone now, Reggie,’ the killer said after a time.

Reggie nodded and stood up. Moving down the ladder he stopped and looked back at the man leaning against the far wall.

‘I’ll bring you a sandwich or something for lunch,’ he said. ‘Lemonade or something to drink too.’

‘That sounds fine,’ the killer said, his gun now beside him. That Reggie hadn’t seen the motion that brought it forth was unsettling.

The man’s fingers ticked slightly, as if they yearned to touch the weapon. So close, only inches away.

Reggie moved down and out of sight.

3.

In his room, Reggie moved to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and reached under his socks. His fingers found the bundle of money he’d filched from Ivan’s jacket, pulled it out.

He flipped through the bills, made a quick tally. Three hundred dollars. More than he’d ever had at one time. Once, he’d gotten over a hundred dollars combined for Christmas, from both sets of grandparents. He’d felt rich then, and his mom and dad had to remind him not to blow it all at once.

Now with three times that amount, Reggie felt momentarily overwhelmed with the possibilities. He could get a new bike. Or the new Xbox everyone at school had been talking about.

Then his excitement was quickly squashed as he considered the source of his newfound wealth. Where it had come from. How it was obtained.

We have an arrangement. We have a deal.

There’s consequences for breaking your word.

Suddenly, Reggie wasn’t sure if he really liked the terms of the deal. If he spent the money, it would be as if he agreed to it. But if he didn’t spend it …

Shoving the bundle back under his clothes, Reggie shut the drawer and walked out of his room, then downstairs, putting as much distance between himself and the cash as possible.

***

His mom did indeed want to go to lunch and a movie; Reggie didn’t know how to get out of it, and it was all because of the bruise on his face. She overreacted when she saw it, as he’d known she would.

‘It’s just a bruise,’ he said, trying to push her hand away as she cupped his face and turned it in the light of the kitchen for a better look.

‘How’d it happen?’ she asked.

‘I fell off my bike,’ he said, not quite lying.

‘You need to be more careful,’ she said, just short of a shout. ‘I can’t watch you twenty-four seven, Reggie!’

‘I know,’ he said, hanging his head low, hoping submission would end the interrogation.

‘You’ve got to be responsible, Reggie!’ she said, wetness gleaming at the corner of her eyes. ‘No one else is going to look out for you!’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Your father would be disappointed,’ she said, peering so close and intently at his discoloured temple Reggie could feel her breath. ‘He’d never approve of such recklessness.’

In Reggie’s mind flashed backyard wrestling matches with his dad. Hikes along forest trails. Woodcrafts in the garage, the table saw buzzing, sawdust sprinkling the floor.

He was sure she knew the untruth of what she said. Her husband, his dad, had done many things with certain risks, and invited his son to all of them.

But that wasn’t the point, and Reggie knew this as surely as she knew the reason for her harsh words. Without his dad around, certain things just weren’t safe anymore. As his death had shown, anything was possible at anytime.

Only vigilance could assuage disaster, and that only with luck.

She went to the freezer and got out a bag of frozen peas, came back and pushed it at his face. He tried pushing it away but she prevailed, pressing the cold bag against his temple.

‘Hold it there for a bit,’ she said.

‘Mom,’ he began.

‘Don’t argue with me,’ she said in near hysterics, pushing him onto the sofa.

So he sat there in the living room, reached for the remote and turned on the television. Onscreen, the starship Enterprise blasted at vicious Klingon cruisers. Uninterested in the explorations of the crew that had in years past previously enthralled him, Reggie changed the channel, found a talking head on a cable news station. Sat back and tuned out the world to the droning white noise of the smartly suited anchor. His mom moved about the house in an imitation of work – dusting this, rearranging that – but always found her way back to the living room. After a dozen or so circuits, she stopped in the hall and looked in at him.

‘Want to go see that movie?’ she asked.

Her arms were crossed and that meant that though she’d calmed down outwardly, internally her gears were still turning, her mind working.

Reggie knew there was no arguing when she was in such a mood.

‘And lunch?’ he asked.

‘And lunch,’ she said, smiling.

‘Pizza?’ he said, figuring he’d go whole hog if this was his sentence for the day.

‘Pizza it is,’ she said. Her arms fell away from her chest in a motion approaching relaxation, and she strode away to get her purse and keys.

***

The movie was a comedy, not the comic book movie he’d initially wanted to see. For some reason he wasn’t in the mood for violence and action, even stylized and cartoonish like in a Marvel Studios film.

The comedy was of the slapstick Leslie Nielsen variety, and made them both laugh in their high seats at the back of the theatre. In the dark of the theatre with the lighted screen in front of them and their laughter echoing it was almost as if that was all there was. The world relegated to four walls and their easy laughter, and for a time things didn’t seem so bad.

After the movie they ate their pizza on the patio of the restaurant and the soaring summer sun cast everything in bright hues. In the warmth and a light breeze with the food and cool drinks before them, they recalled some of the best gags in the movie and laughed again.

They walked back to the car side by side and to Reggie it seemed there was a lightness in their step and stride. As they drove he hung an arm out the window and the wind of their passing buffeted his hand like a sail and it felt good. Along the dirt shoulder of the highway, padding heavily in the opposite direction, a pregnant stray mutt made her way down the road, head down and sway-backed with the weight of her burden.

Reggie averted his gaze.

For a time, with the Dodge rolling along in the quiet of the day, the bleached hills sliding past, nothing mattered. Not the man in the tree house. Not the deputy offering up his rape pictures. Not the condom bandit with his hard fists and taunts. Certainly not a pitiful dog treading down the highway.

Then they were approaching a certain familiar turn-off and a large, bold bronze and stonework sign and something in him froze. At first thinking it accidental – that his mom was just taking a different route home – Reggie tried to calm himself. But then they were pulling into the parking lot of the place, and his anxiety kicked up a notch.

He thought of the conversation he’d only just had with Ivan. His ideas about places and memories.

His mom steered the car into a space and put it in park.

He felt sick in his stomach, like he might throw up.

He looked around at the rolling green hills and the stones about them stretching in all directions from the perimeter of the parking lot.

‘I know it’s hard, Reggie,’ his mom said, touching him lightly on the shoulder.

‘Mom,’ he mumbled.

‘But I think this is for the best,’ she said.

‘Let’s go, please,’ he said, shaking a little. He had a tight grip on the passenger door handle. His other hand gripped a fistful of his pants legs.

‘I think you should visit him,’ she said. ‘It’s been awhile.’

He surprised himself by laughing. It was a short, wicked noise.

‘There’s no “him” to visit,’ he said. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Reggie,’ his mom said in a soft voice like a caress. ‘You can talk to him. Tell him how you feel. It might help.’

‘He can’t hear me,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘He’s worm food.’

‘Reggie,’ his mom said, her own voice changing from softness to warning. ‘Don’t be like that. That’s your dad you’re talking about.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not. It’s a fucking corpse.’

‘Don’t use that kind of language, young man,’ she said, the softness gone now, leaving only a menacing tone he hadn’t quite heard before. There was an unspoken threat in it, but he didn’t care.