Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Seth C. Adams
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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