Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter

I looked over at her, some six feet away, all neatly taped into place.

“She's fine,” my brother said. “I didn't want to begin without you.”

It may seem a very strange thing for my first coherent question, but I asked him, “How did you know I would want to?” Which perhaps made it sound as though I truly did want to—and of course I didn't really want to explore Deborah. Certainly not. And yet—here was my big brother, wanting to play, surely a rare enough opportunity. More than our ties of mutual parent, far more, was the fact that he was like me. “You couldn't really know,” I said, sounding far more uncertain than I would have thought possible.

“I didn't know,” he said. “But I thought there was a very good chance. The same thing happened to both of us.” His smile broadened and he lifted a forefinger into the air. “The Traumatic Event—you know that term? Have you done any reading on monsters like us?”

“Yes,” I said. “And Harry—my foster father—but he would never say exactly what had happened.”

Brian waved a hand around at the interior of the little box. “This happened, little brother. The chain saw, the flying body parts, the . . . blood —” With that same fearful emphasis again. “Two and a half days of sitting in the stuff. A wonder we survived at all, isn't it? Almost enough to make you believe in God.” His eyes glittered and, for some reason or other, Deborah squirmed and made a muffled noise.

He ignored her. “They thought you were young enough to recover. I was just a bit over the age limit.

But we both suffered a classic Traumatic Event. All the literature agrees. It made me what I am—and I had a thought that it might do the same for you.”

“It did,” I said, “exactly the same.”

“Isn't that nice,” he said. “Family ties.”

I looked at him. My brother. That alien word. If I had said it aloud I am sure I would have stuttered. It was utterly impossible to believe—and even more absurd to deny it. He looked like me. We liked the same things. He even had my wretched taste in jokes.

“I just—” I shook my head.

“Yes,” he said. “It takes a minute to get used to the idea that there are two of us, doesn't it?”

“Perhaps slightly longer,” I said. “I don't know if I—”

“Oh, dear, are we being squeamish? After what happened? Two and a half days of sitting here, bubba.

Two little boys, sitting for two and a half days in blood ,” he said, and I felt sick, dizzy, heart floundering, head hammering.

“No,” I gagged, and I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “What matters is what happens now.”

“What—happens,” I said.

“Yes. What happens. Now.” He made a small, strange, snuffling, gurgling noise that was surely intended to sound like laughter, but perhaps he had not learned to fake it as well as I had. “I think I should say something like: My whole life has been leading up to this!” He repeated the snuffling sound.

“Of course, neither one of us could manage that with real feeling. After all, we can't actually feel anything, can we? We've both spent our lives playing a part. Moving through this world reciting lines and pretending we belong in a world made for human beings, and never really human ourselves. And always, forever, reaching for a way to feel something! Reaching, little brother, for a moment just like this! Real, genuine, unfaked feeling! It takes your breath away, doesn't it?”

And it did. My head was whirling and I did not dare to close my eyes again for fear of what might be waiting there for me. And, far worse, my brother was right beside me, watching me, demanding that I be myself, be just like him. And to be myself, to be his brother, to be who I was, I had to, had to—what? My eyes turned, all by themselves, toward Deborah.

“Yes,” he said, and all the cold happy fury of the Dark Passenger was in his voice now. “I knew you'd figure it out. This time we do it together,” he said.

I shook my head, but not very convincingly. “I can't,” I said.

“You have to,” he said, and we were both right. The feather touch on my shoulder again, almost matching the push from Harry that he could never understand and yet seemed every bit as powerful as my brother's hand, as it lifted me to my feet and pushed me forward; one step, two—Deborah's unblinking eyes were locked onto mine, but with that other presence behind me I couldn't tell her that I was certainly not going to-“Together,” he said. “One more time. Out with the old. In with the new. Onward, upward, inward—!”

Another half step—Deborah's eyes were yelling at me, but-He was beside me now, standing with me, and something gleamed in his hand, two somethings. “One for all, both for one— Did you ever read The Three Musketeers ?” He flipped one knife into the air; it arced up and into his left hand and he held it out toward me. The weak dim light grew on the flat of the blades he held up and burned into me, matched only by the gleam in Brian's eyes. “Come on, Dexter.

Little brother. Take the knife.” His teeth shone like the knives. “Showtime.”

Deborah in her tightly wrapped tape made a thrashing sound. I looked up at her. There was frantic impatience in her eyes, and a growing madness, too. Come on, Dexter! Was I really thinking of doing this to her? Cut her loose and let's go home. Okay, Dexter? Dexter? Hello, Dexter? It is you, isn't it?

And I didn't know.

“Dexter,” Brian said. “Of course I don't mean to influence your decision. But ever since I learned I had a brother just like me, this is all I could think about. And you feel the same, I can see it in your face.”

“Yes,” I said, still not taking my eyes off Deb's very anxious face, “but does it have to be her?”

“Why not her? What is she to you?”

What indeed. My eyes were locked onto Deborah's. She was not actually my sister, not really, not a real relation of any kind, not at all. Of course I was very fond of her, but-But what? Why did I hesitate? Of course the thing was impossible. I knew it was unthinkable, even as I thought it. Not just because it was Deb, although it was, of course. But such a strange thought came into my poor dismal battered head and I could not bat it away: What would Harry say?

And so I stood uncertain, because no matter how much I wanted to begin I knew what Harry would say. He had already said it. It was unchangeable Harry truth: Chop up the bad guys, Dexter. Don't chop up your sister . But Harry had never foreseen anything like this—how could he? He had never imagined when he wrote the Code of Harry that I would be faced with a choice like this; to side with Deborah—not my real sister—or to join my authentic 100 percent real live brother in a game that I so very much wanted to play. And Harry could not have conceived that when he set me on my path.

Harry had never known that I had a brother who would-But wait a moment. Hold the phone, please. Harry did know—Harry had been there when it happened, hadn't he? And he had kept it to himself, never told me I had a brother. All those lonely empty years when I thought I was the only me there was—and he knew I was not, knew and had not told me. The most important single fact about me—I was not alone—and he had kept it from me. What did I really owe Harry now, after this fantastic betrayal?

And more to the immediate point, what did I owe this squirming lump of animal flesh quivering beneath me, this creature masquerading as my sibling? What could I possibly owe her in comparison to my bond with Brian, my own flesh, my brother, a living replication of my selfsame precious DNA?

A drop of sweat rolled across Deborah's forehead and into her eye. She blinked at it frantically, making ugly squinting faces in an effort to keep watching me and clear the sweat out of her eye at the same time. She really looked somewhat pathetic, helplessly taped and struggling like a dumb animal; a dumb, human animal. Not at all like me, like my brother; not at all clever clean no-mess bloodless razor-sharp Moondancer snicker-snee Dexter and his very own brother.