Are You Afraid of the Dark?

4.

‘What happened?’ Ivan asked when Reggie climbed back up into the tree house. It was early afternoon and hot and Reggie handed over the sandwich and lemonade to the man across from him.

‘What?’ Reggie asked, settling down again in what was becoming his spot against the wall immediately to the right of the ladder.

‘Your face,’ Ivan said, gesturing with one hand at Reggie’s cheek where his mom had hit him, taking a large bite of the sandwich with the other.

Reggie touched his face absently.

‘My mom hit me,’ he said.

‘Why’d she do that?’ Ivan asked.

‘I called her a bitch,’ he said.

‘You sure have a way with people,’ Ivan said, finishing the sandwich and washing it down with the glass of lemonade. ‘Hit twice by two people in one day. Do you see the common denominator?’

‘What do you mean?’ Reggie asked.

‘You know why you were hit, don’t you?’ Ivan said, brushing crumbs from his hands and off his lap.

‘Because I called one guy dickless and called my mom a bitch,’ he said.

‘It’s more than that,’ Ivan said.

‘How so?’ Reggie asked.

‘You let people hit you,’ Ivan said. ‘You let them get away with it.’

‘The kid from school was bigger than me,’ he said.

‘So?’ the killer said.

‘My mom’s an adult,’ he said.

‘And?’ the killer said.

Reggie said nothing. He wanted to argue, wanted to defend himself, but didn’t know how. Also, some part of him thought maybe he deserved it – the hard shove to the ground, the stinging slaps. Why and what for, he couldn’t say.

‘The common denominator is you,’ the killer said. ‘People know you’re weak, so they know they can hit you if they want, and you won’t fight back. You have to change the common denominator, and the equation changes.’

Reggie didn’t reply, but he considered what the man said.

‘Tell me about the man who killed your dad,’ the killer said.

At first he didn’t want to. Caught off guard, Reggie struggled to find the words. The words to refuse this man before him, but more than that, to refuse the memory. He thought again of the rear-view mirror casting back his father’s gravesite, and the shame that simple reflection had stirred in him.

Reggie’s thoughts and feelings whirled, collided, then solidified into something clearer. He focused and it came to him, and surprising himself, he told the killer in his tree house about another killer, the one who’d taken his dad from him with a single bullet.

***

‘Where’d it happen?’ the killer asked.

‘In a parking lot,’ Reggie said.

‘What was his name?’ Ivan asked. ‘The man who killed your father.’

‘I never asked,’ he said. ‘I never found out.’

‘Why’d he do it?’

‘Because he was a drug addict,’ Reggie said. ‘And my dad tried to help him.’

‘Explain,’ Ivan said.

‘He was a parishioner at my dad’s church. My dad caught him stealing from the tithing box one day,’ he said. ‘Dad asked him why he was doing it. The man broke down and cried and told my dad. He said he needed the money for a fix. He couldn’t take it not having a fix. It made his body burn. It made him see crazy things. Only the drugs made it go away.’

‘What did your dad do?’ the killer asked.

‘Dad talked to him, and listened,’ Reggie said. Suddenly he had to do something with his hands. He rubbed them on his jeans; plucked at his shoelaces; scratched his arms. He needed to move and he stood, took a couple steps, settled down again and brought his legs up to his chest as he’d done before. For a strange and uncomfortable moment, Reggie wondered if this was how the drug addict had felt that day. ‘He told the man about programmes that helped people like him. He told him the church sponsored these programmes and could get him in at discounted rates or even free.’

‘Did he go?’ Ivan asked.

Reggie stared at the man across from him. Lowered his gaze to the large bandage about his middle, and the great red stain there. Again, he thought it looked like an eye, even through the bandage. A third eye looking at him, seeing him. Seeing through him.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘He went.’

‘But it didn’t work, did it?’ the killer asked.

Reggie superimposed himself on that large red eye. Looked with it back in time to the past year. He saw the parking lot clearly. His dad lying there in a pool of blood.

‘For a time it did,’ Reggie said. ‘The guy went to a rehab centre for two weeks. My dad went to see him every day. Came back and told me and Mom how the guy was doing over dinner.

‘“He’s really going to make it,” Dad said. “He’s going to turn his life around,” Dad told us. “That’s great,” Mom said. “That’s good,” I said.’

Reggie rubbed his eyes but found no tears. He felt inside like he should be crying, but he wasn’t. There was a numbness and a dull sorrow, yet his eyes remained dry. He wondered if it’d be like that until he died, and somehow that was sad too.

‘My dad was so happy when he was helping people,’ Reggie said. ‘And it made me and Mom happy to see him that way. He liked giving people hope. He’d take calls from the congregation at any hour.

‘He woke in the middle of the night once to talk to a man whose mom had died from cancer. Another time, he drove twenty miles across town at 2 a.m. to console a couple whose son had died in Iraq. He even helped bury a little girl’s dog that’d been hit by a car.’

‘And helping this particular man got your father killed,’ the killer said.

Reggie nodded.

‘How’d it happen?’ Ivan asked.

‘My dad got a call from the security company that had set up the church’s alarm system,’ Reggie said. ‘It was late when they called and told him one of the window sensors had been triggered. I heard his half of the conversation from my room, where I lay in bed watching TV. He drove off to check it out.

‘Mom asked him not to. She told him to call the police. He said it was probably just an animal or kids throwing rocks. And he left us.’

Something started to come through the numbness inside him, and Reggie pushed it down again. The pain was old and tiresome and he was tired of hurting.

‘He was gone for hours for what should have been a twenty-minute drive there and back,’ Reggie said. ‘Mom finally had enough, grabbed her keys, and dragged me along. I’d never seen her drive so fast, and yet the drive there seemed so long.

‘I remember how dark it was on the highway,’ Reggie said. ‘It was like we were driving through a long tunnel. And those little homemade crosses on the side of the road where people mark accidents that have happened? They were so bright in the dark. Like signposts.’

He looked at the man across from him.

‘And then we were there.’

Like his mom earlier on the way back from the movie and cemetery, Reggie felt a wetness at his eye and swiped it quickly away.

‘We saw him in the parking lot, lying on the ground. The tithing box was broken in pieces around him. The money was scattered all over the place. A couple dollar bills blew around like trash.’

Reggie smiled at the killer across from him.

‘The police counted it later and told us,’ he said. ‘There was sixteen dollars and seventy-two cents on the pavement. After all that trouble, he killed my dad and left the money.’

Whether he’d expected sympathy, some simple display of concern, from the man or not, Reggie wasn’t sure. In the two days he’d known Ivan, he’d seen little to suggest the killer knew such simple things as human emotions. But what he definitely didn’t expect was what the big man said next.

‘Some things live. Some things die. Remember that, Reggie. There’s no sense to it, and you waste your time trying to find any.’

At first, a hint of anger rose up in him. Reggie thought of seeing his dad dead there in the parking lot, and the killer’s casual dismissal pissed him off. He clenched his fists, on the verge of saying something, like he’d said to the older kid at the drugstore. But as quickly as it had come, the rage slipped away.

Instead, Reggie found himself repeating those words in his head, the killer’s voice echoing in his mind. Some things live. Some things die.

Reggie found his gaze drifting again to the shoulder holster and the pistol slid snugly into it. Ivan watched him, saw the direction of Reggie’s glance. Quickly, Reggie looked away.

With nothing left to say, they sat in silence.

CHAPTER FOUR
1.

That afternoon the killer let him hold the pistol.

He wanted to walk around a bit, which Reggie didn’t think was a good idea. But Ivan insisted and they went down the ladder; Reggie first, the killer slowly following. He said he needed to know if he could move if he had to. Reggie knew that meant escape if he had to, but he kept that to himself.

The killer limped along, occasionally stopping to lean against a tree, holding his abdomen, catching his breath, but otherwise making steady progress. They had walked for about twenty minutes when Ivan told Reggie to stop.

The killer walked over to a fallen tree and set their empty water bottles on it. Making his way back to Reggie, he sat on a stump and pulled out his gun. He checked the safety and held it out to Reggie.

The gun was heavy and solid and cool.

‘Feel the weight of it,’ the killer said. ‘Become familiar with its contours, how your fingers feel around it.’

Reggie did so, feeling the heft of the thing. It was heavier than he would have thought. It felt large in his small hands.

‘Always keep it pointed away from you,’ the killer said. ‘Never point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot.’

Reggie lifted the gun and aimed at the bottles on the fallen tree several yards away. Ivan rose and stood behind him.

‘Keep your right arm locked,’ he said. ‘Now bend your left at the elbow a bit. Keep your legs apart and the left one forward.’

Reggie did as he was told, and looked down the sight at the bottles. Ivan reached over him and towards the safety. Reggie looked up at him.

‘Won’t someone hear?’ he asked.

Ivan smiled and reached in his jacket. From a pocket he pulled out a black metal tube and reached again over Reggie. Screwing the silencer on, he then flicked off the safety.

‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Give it a try.’

Reggie sighted down the pistol at one of the bottles. His finger curled around the trigger, but he didn’t pull it. He thought of his dad in the church parking lot and the blood on the asphalt.

‘Pull, don’t squeeze,’ said the killer.

Then he was thinking about the older boy at the drugstore. And his mom slapping him at the cemetery.

He pulled the trigger smoothly and deliberately.

There was a low whoosh and dirt kicked up about a foot in front of the tree. The recoil shook in his arms and made his muscles twitch.

‘Again,’ said the killer, soft but firm, and Reggie pulled the trigger again.

A silver-dollar sized crater appeared in the bark just below the bottle on the left. The thunk of the bullet sounded like something heavy dropped on carpeted floor. The bottle did a little wiggle and twirl like a tired dancer, but came to rest still upright.

‘Again,’ the killer said, and Reggie pulled the trigger.

The low whoosh again and the bottle disappeared, pulled out of sight like something yanked out of reality. It was there, and then it was gone.

‘Good,’ said the killer. ‘Now the other one.’

He adjusted his stance and aimed. Pulled the trigger and the other bottle likewise was yanked away.

‘Very good,’ said the killer. ‘You’re a natural.’

Ivan reached out and over him to take the gun. For a moment both their hands were over the weapon, and Reggie didn’t want to let go. When he did and it was out of his hands, Ivan considered him with a curious look.

It felt good holding the gun, and when it was in his hands he wasn’t afraid of being hit by anyone.

‘Let’s head back,’ Ivan said, holding his side and starting to walk, each step placed gingerly and with care. He holstered the gun and Reggie watched it until it was out of sight beneath the flap of the jacket hem.

He could still feel it in his hands, like a phantom sensation.

Like it belonged there.

***

‘Was there ever someone you wished you hadn’t killed?’ Reggie asked when they were back in the tree house.

The walk and climb back up had exhausted Ivan, and the man settled back down in his spot near the far window with a groan. Outside, a summer wind stirred the branches and made the structure moan likewise, as if returning Ivan’s grunt like a separated beast calling for its pack. The swinging branches brought the sun in fits and starts of bright light, casting alternating bars of sunlight and shadow across the floor and the walls of the tree house. This pattern fell over Ivan, making the man seem caged, behind bars.

He thought of what the deputy had told his mom earlier.

Yesterday morning a man escaped from a police escort taking him to the county jail in Tucson.

‘No,’ said the killer, the answer snapping Reggie back to the moment. ‘There were two people I wish I hadn’t killed.’

‘Who were they?’ Reggie asked.

‘Just a woman and her son,’ the killer said. ‘No one special.’

‘Is it the woman you raped and killed yesterday?’ Reggie asked.

Ivan looked at him sternly.

‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

‘When I rode into town for the medicine,’ Reggie said, ‘there were police all over the highway. One of them stopped me and told me about the woman and kid you killed when you escaped.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone yesterday,’ he said.

‘But the cop said …’ Reggie began.

‘I don’t care what the cop said,’ the killer interrupted him. ‘A state trooper recognized the car I was driving as reported stolen. Pulled me over. A second highway patrol vehicle happened to be passing and pulled in behind me. They cuffed me, searched the vehicle.’

‘What were you doing here in Payne, then?’ Reggie asked. ‘Were you sent to kill someone?’

‘Only if necessary,’ the killer said. ‘I was sent to find something. Not my usual business, but the money was good.’

‘How’d you get away?’ Reggie asked, interested in what the killer was supposed to find, but deciding to save that question for another time.

‘There are a few ways to work yourself out of handcuffs if you know what you’re doing,’ Ivan said. ‘I waited until the two police cars were separated in traffic before I made my move. The trooper was young, inexperienced, and panicked when he saw me free of the cuffs. He crashed into the concrete divider, the window shattered, and I crawled out.’

Reggie’s uncertainty must have shown on his face, because the killer elaborated a little more. That the man wanted Reggie to believe him seemed somehow important, and so he filed that away in his mind.

Always mind the details, he thought, and was slightly disturbed by the killer’s voice replaying in his head.

‘I escaped yesterday from the police, beat them up pretty bad, got my stuff back, but I didn’t kill anyone. And I don’t do rape.’

‘So the woman and kid you’re talking about …’

‘Happened a long time ago,’ said the killer.

‘The officer said he’d show me the pictures,’ Reggie said, thinking of the deputy standing in front of his bike, blocking him, and later on the porch with his mom. ‘You know … of the crime scene.’

‘He was fucking with you,’ Ivan said.

Reggie thought of the deputy, and the bigger kid knocking him off his bike. He thought of holding the cool, heavy gun and pulling the trigger. He thought of what Ivan had said to him earlier.

The common denominator.

People know you’re weak.

He hadn’t felt weak with the pistol in his hands.

‘What about this woman and her son?’ Reggie said, changing the subject back again. ‘The ones you killed a long time ago.’

After a brief pause the killer spoke, and Reggie listened.

***

‘There was a woman who left her husband because he hit her. And we’re not just talking about how some guys do when they’re drunk. He hit her a lot.

‘Like many women in the same situation, at first she tried to placate him. She thought it was her fault. Maybe she didn’t pay enough attention to him. Maybe she wasn’t pretty enough. Lots of maybes with no answers.

‘He never gave her answers. He just hit her. And she took it, because a wife was supposed to be obedient to her husband. That’s how she was raised, and so she just took it. Until he hit their son.

‘That’s when things changed. That’s when she couldn’t take it anymore.

‘So one day she left him. She packed a couple suitcases when he was at work, took their son, and left. Didn’t leave a note or anything.

‘There was only one problem,’ the killer said. ‘Her husband was someone important. Or, more accurately, his father was. Her husband was a coyote for human traffickers. His father was the man financing that operation, and many others.

‘Her husband’s family had their hands not only in human trafficking, but drugs, prostitution, weapons procurement, and pornography. This family was used to getting what they wanted, and once they had something it was theirs until they no longer wanted it. And her husband wanted her back, just not alive.

‘He didn’t even need all of her. Just the head would do, he said.

‘Furthermore, since his son was a quiet kid, a reader, and not at all likely suitable for the family business, he saw no reason to let the kid live either.

‘So the husband called me. He explained to me what he wanted, and offered me a lot of money. I accepted the job.

‘I found the woman less than a week later. She was working as a card dealer in some Indian casino. The kid was going to school nearby.

‘I waited for them at their home. The kid came first and I knocked him out and tied him to a chair. The woman called some time later and left a message on the machine. She told her son she was going to cover a shift for one of the other dealers and wouldn’t be home until the following morning. She told him not to wait up.

‘My initial plan was to do them together. Let the mom watch me kill her son, then kill her. The husband said he wanted her to suffer, but he didn’t specify how. I thought that was as good a way as any. Sometimes emotional pain is greater than physical.

‘Remember that, Reggie,’ the killer said.

Reggie did just that, adding it to the litany of other things the killer had already told him:

Always mind the details.

Some things live. Some things die.

‘But I didn’t see any sense in making the kid wait that long,’ the killer continued. ‘He’d woken up at the ringing of the phone, took stock of the situation, and was crying. He’d also peed himself, and I thought that was enough so I shot him in the face.’

The offhand manner in which the killer relayed the story at first bothered Reggie. At the mention of the kid in the story getting shot in the face, Reggie thought of the gun in the holster under Ivan’s jacket. He thought of holding that gun only a short while ago, squeezing the trigger, watching the bottles get whisked away. The power he’d felt with its weight in his hands.

But picturing one of those bullets punching into the face of a boy like himself was another thing altogether. And then the faceless boy in this mental movie was replaced by his dad, sprawled in the parking lot of the church.

Shifting uneasily against the tree house wall, Reggie looked out the window, then looked to the ladder again. But he didn’t move, and listened as the killer continued.

Ivan likewise shifted against the wall he sat against, a hand to his bandage. A barely audible moan escaped as he shuffled for a more comfortable position. But otherwise there was no hint of pain – either physical, or the greater sort he’d just mentioned as he’d confessed to killing a child.

‘It was just after midnight when I shot him.

‘She came home at around five in the morning. She saw her son tied to the chair, but she didn’t see me. She ran over to him and cupped his head to her, crying, shaking him, telling him to wake up.

‘I walked out of the hall and hit her over the head.

‘I tied her to another chair. Took a seat on the living room recliner, turned on the television, waited for her to wake up. I watched three episodes of a Twilight Zone marathon before she woke.

‘She was gagged so her scream at seeing her dead son again was muffled and not that loud at all. I held a finger to my mouth for her to quiet down. That didn’t work. So I pulled out my switchblade and that got her attention.

‘I turned the recliner so I was facing her.

‘I told her who sent me, though I’m sure she knew.

‘I told her what was going to happen to her, and she grew quiet and resigned. She got control of her breathing and hung her head like she was tired. I watched her for a time, letting her gather herself.

‘When finally she looked up at me, she used her eyes to indicate the gag. I understood she wanted to say something, didn’t think she’d be any trouble, and so I took the gag off.

‘“When did you kill him?” she asked.

‘“Just after midnight,” I told her.

‘“Did he suffer?” she asked.

‘“No,” I told her.

‘“Would you wait and kill me after midnight?” she said. “Kill me the same time you killed him?”

‘I thought about it, thought her request was interesting, had never heard anything quite like it before. People had begged, people had prayed, told me the things they could do for me. The money they could get me. The women they could get me. Cars, houses, drugs. I’d been offered everything. Heard every conceivable plea.

‘But no one had ever requested what time I would kill them.

‘I was intrigued, so I agreed.

‘We watched the marathon together, episode after episode. All the classics were played, and I remembered why I liked the show so much as a kid.

‘I got her a glass of water when she asked.

‘I followed her to the restroom when she said she had to urinate.

‘And when she asked if she could sit on the sofa with her son, I said yes, and watched her untie him, pick him up, and carry him over to the couch. She held him in her lap as the clock slowly ticked away the time. Morning to afternoon to evening, slowly, so slowly, the longest day I’ve ever lived.

‘Until, at five minutes to midnight, she spoke again.

‘“You didn’t have to do this,” she said.

‘I was briefly disappointed. I’d heard this many times before. The appeal to my humanity. That I could choose to be better. That I didn’t have to kill the person I was sent to kill. So often, this tactic quickly led back to begging.

‘“No,” I said. “I didn’t. But I did.”

‘She nodded, and that was it. No pleading. No anger. No cursing.

‘I was pleased and gave her a little smile.

‘When the clock ticked midnight I walked over and put the gun to her head.

‘“Thank you for waiting,” she said. And I told her she was welcome.

‘Then I pulled the trigger and it was done.’

***

‘Why do you regret that one?’ Reggie asked. ‘Of all the people you’ve killed, why do you wish you’d never killed her and her son?’

Ivan didn’t answer immediately. He cocked his head a bit like a scholar considering a great question.

‘I think it was because she was polite,’ the killer said.

‘Because she was polite?’ Reggie asked, surprised. He didn’t know what answer he’d expected, but ‘she was polite’ wasn’t it.

‘She didn’t fight me,’ the killer said, nodding. ‘She didn’t curse me. She didn’t demean herself by begging. It was as if she knew it was merely my job, something I had to do.

‘Killing for some people is fun,’ the killer said. ‘They take pleasure out of hurting others. It’s amusing when they kill someone and the target shits or pisses their pants. They get off on it. I knew this one guy who used to collect things from his targets. Little objects they’d owned – a knick-knack, a photo, a piece of jewellery. Sometimes a body part: a swatch of skin or a finger.’

The killer fixed his blue eyes again on Reggie. Those ice-blue spheres were windows, showing Reggie things he’d never imagined. A whole other world was there behind those eyes.

‘It’s not like that for me,’ said the killer. ‘It’s just something I’m good at. Like some people are fast typists. Or others are good with numbers. I do it because I’m good at it, and I get paid well for it.’

It occurred to Reggie then just how small the tree house was. They were so near each other. The walls seemed too close, squeezing him in. Pushing him nearer the man than he was comfortable being.

‘And she knew this?’ Reggie asked, the question coming out in a croak.

‘Yes,’ the killer said. ‘She knew it was nothing personal. Knew it was just my job. And so she didn’t hold it against me. And I appreciated that.

‘I think about her sometimes,’ Ivan said. ‘Holding her dead son on the couch, watching television. How the light of the television flashed across them. She looked like a ghost there, dead already, on the couch with her son.’

Reggie thought of how he’d come downstairs last night, saw his mom in a similar fashion, glowing in the television light. Chills went across his flesh in a tremulous wave.

‘I’d never seen a person dead until they were dead,’ Ivan said. ‘Until I’d pulled the trigger or strangled the life out of them or stabbed them to death. But she was dead long before I did the deed. She was dead the moment she saw her son was.

‘I’ve never seen that kind of love,’ Ivan said, ‘and I sometimes wish I’d left it alone. I could have lied to the husband and his father. I could have told them there were complications and I’d had to dispose of the bodies. My reputation was spotless. I could have let the woman and her kid go, and no one would have ever known.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Reggie said.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said the killer.

‘Because that’s your job,’ Reggie said. ‘It’s who you are and what you do.’

The killer didn’t speak or nod, but the answer was in his eyes.