Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Seth C. Adams
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back on his bike, turned it, and started pedalling. Across the parking lot, onto the street, the long way home before him.
3.
He handed Ivan the medicine and a bottle of water. The man didn’t look good. He was still pale and clammy, but he was conscious and alert, which Reggie took to be a good sign despite the pasty flesh of the man’s face, and the shakes that occasionally passed over him.
The man downed a couple of the Amoxicillin tablets Reggie had found in his mom’s medicine cabinet, coughed and spit up some of the water, wiped his mouth, and looked at Reggie. He pointed at Reggie, touched his own temple and eye in indication of Reggie’s.
‘What happened?’ he asked, reaching for the antiseptic cream and Ibuprofen Reggie had purchased at the drugstore.
‘Some asshole from school,’ Reggie said.
‘Why’d he do it?’ the man asked.
‘I told him he had no dick.’
Ivan smiled, and this made Reggie smile. Though a smile on Ivan’s face didn’t look so much like a smile, as it did a crocodile or shark showing its teeth.
‘That’s likely to piss someone off,’ the big man said. ‘Why’d you say it?’
‘He made fun of me crying once in school,’ he said.
‘Why were you crying?’ Ivan asked.
‘My dad died,’ Reggie said.
Ivan looked at him a long moment before he said anything. Reggie wasn’t sure he liked those blue eyes staring at him so. They weren’t like eyes at all, just as his smile wasn’t exactly a smile. His eyes were like gems, bright but lifeless.
‘Tell me about it,’ the killer said, and to his surprise, Reggie did.
***
‘My father died doing that job it was he liked doing so much,’ Reggie said.
‘The one that took him awhile to find?’ the killer asked.
‘Yeah,’ Reggie answered.
‘And what was it?’ Ivan asked, trembling briefly with a pained breath. ‘What was it that made him happy?’
‘He was a minister,’ Reggie said, watching the man’s face closely for some slight indication of how this made him feel. What killers thought of ministers was something that suddenly piqued his interest.
The killer said nothing; gave only a small nod.
Reggie continued.
‘Dad used to say that he was confused much of his life,’ Reggie said. ‘That he never knew quite where his life was going. As a kid in school he got Cs and Bs, completely average, never excelled at anything. He didn’t play any sports. Didn’t do any after-school stuff either.’
Ivan nodded.
‘I’ve been there before,’ he said. ‘Confused.’
‘He said his parents were worried,’ Reggie said, ‘but didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like their son was misbehaving or falling in with the wrong crowd or anything like that. So they couldn’t yell at him or punish him or nothing.’
‘So they left him be?’ the killer asked.
‘Yeah,’ Reggie continued. ‘He got through high school, did some college, but eventually dropped out. He went from job to job, worked at just about everything a man could work at. Construction, retail, clerical; he even went back home at one point and did nothing but volunteering, living off Grandma and Grandpa again, saying there wasn’t any point in making money.’
‘But none of it made him happy?’ Ivan asked.
‘No,’ Reggie said, shaking his head.
‘And how’d he come about finding God?’ the killer asked.
Reggie searched the man’s tone for any sense of mocking or contempt, but found none. The gut shot man seemed genuinely interested, but Reggie kept watching, intent, wary of the man and interested also.
‘Dad used to tell me Grandma and Grandpa were what he called social Christians,’ Reggie said. ‘They went to church because that was what people were supposed to do. But they never really talked about church stuff, never went to any functions. There was a Bible around the house that found itself moving from table to table, shelf to shelf, but no one ever read it.’
The killer was like a child at a campfire ghost story, rapt and attentive.
The words came easier than Reggie would have thought, talking to a stranger about his dad. Almost as if they had always been there, waiting to be said.
‘Until one day Dad did,’ Reggie said. ‘He read it cover to cover on his time off from jobs or volunteering. Then when he was done, he read it again. The third time through he started taking notes, cross-referencing things he read.’
Ivan was nodding again.
‘I’ve known people like that before,’ the killer said. ‘Get caught up in religion. Only to give it up again.’
Reggie nodded.
‘That’s what Dad said too,’ he said. ‘He’d talked to co-workers, heard people at church or in public praising God for everything from cancer remission to baseball games. And that’s why he never really took it seriously as a kid.’
The killer nodded his agreement.
‘Then he read the book for himself,’ Reggie said. ‘And things changed. He said much of the scripture made no sense at first. But some of it did. And as he kept reading and rereading, more of it did.’
Reggie paused, looking at the killer. The expression on the man’s wan face seemed pensive, attentive, and Reggie waited for the big man to ask a question or say something. When he didn’t, Reggie continued.
‘Eventually, Dad said, it got to where the more he learned, the more it seemed there was to learn. Frustrated but committed, he figured he’d try to strip it down to the basics. He figured the most important stuff had to be what the faith was named after. So he started to focus on the Gospels, the things Jesus said.’
‘I’ve listened to that sort before,’ the killer said, almost speaking over Reggie. ‘Jesus this and Jesus that. How we’re all sinners and it’s the grace of God that saves us. How there’s an end to things coming and a new thing starting.’
‘What do you think of it?’ Reggie asked, cautiously, hearing a note of annoyance in the big man’s voice.
‘I told you before,’ the killer said, and Reggie remembered. ‘I’ve had people pray to God before I killed them, and a few pray for me. Ain’t nothing changed the outcome of what happened. Just me and my gun and the silence after.’
Reggie propped his chin in his hands, thinking about this. He was thinking of his dad and there was some of the old hurt. He was thinking of things his dad used to say, and weighing them without really doing so. Just kind of letting the memories float about smoke-like.
‘Let me guess,’ the killer said, breaking the brief silence. ‘Your dad studied, prayed, and eventually started his own ministry?’
‘Yeah,’ Reggie said.
‘How’d he die?’ Ivan asked, startling Reggie with the sudden change in the conversation. Though this was where it had been heading the whole time, Reggie realized, and he’d just been taking a detour. Sightseeing before he got to the destination.
Taking a breath, Reggie told him.
‘One of his parishioners shot him,’ he said, meeting the man’s eyes.
The killer’s response came quickly but calmly, not missing a beat.