Jeff Lindsay - Double Dexter

Halfway down the block, a large old car lurches around the corner and for just a second its headlights light us up. It seems to hesitate for half a second, leaving us uncomfortably illuminated, and we pause, blinking in the unwanted light. Then there is the sudden bang of a backfire from the car, accompanied by a strange rattling sound as a piston knocks in unison with a loose bumper, and the car speeds up and rolls past us harmlessly and disappears around the corner up ahead. It is quiet once more and there is no other sign of life in this fine dark night.

We stroll on and no one sees our perfect imitation of normal strolling, no one anywhere close is watching anything but the TV, and each step brings us closer to joy. We can feel the rising tide of wanting it, needing it, knowing it will be soon, and we very carefully keep our steps from showing our eagerness as we approach the house and stroll past it and into the darkness of the giant hedge that hides the Honda and now hides us.

And here we pause, looking out from our near-invisible spot beside the rusting car, and we think. We have wanted this so very much and now we are here and we will do it and nothing can stop that but this is different. It is not just the lack of a moon that makes us hesitate and stand in the shadows and stare thoughtfully at the awful little cottage. And it is no sudden change of heart or twinge of conscience or any kind of doubt in the heartless, conscience-less darkness of our purpose. No. It is this: There are two people inside and we want only one. We need to, we must, we will, take and tape our Witness and do to him all the many wonderful things that we have waited too long to do to him but

That second person. A. The ex-wife.

What do we do with her?

We cannot leave her to watch and then tell. But to tumble her away, too, into the long forever night is against the Code of Harry, against all the very reasonable well-deserved Wickedness we have always done and hope to always do. This is unearned, unsanctioned, messy, collateral damage. It is wrong, we cannot but we must. But we can t We take a deep relaxing breath. Of course we must. There is no other way. We will tell her we are very sorry, and we will make it quick for her, but we must, just this one very naughty and regrettable time, we absolutely must.

And so we will. We look carefully at the house, making sure that all is right. One minute, then two, we do nothing at all except stand and wait and watch, trickling all our senses out into the street around us, the small yard of this dingy little house, watching and waiting for any slight sign that we are being watched, and there is nothing. We are alone in a world of dark longing that will very soon burst out into bliss and carry us along to the happy and necessary ending of this oh-so-lovely night.

Three minutes, five there is no sign of danger, and we can wait no more. And we take one more cool and steadying breath and then we slide deeper into the shadows of the hedge, stalking back toward the fence that blocks the backyard. A quick and silent vault over the fence, a momentary pause to be absolutely sure that we are unobserved, and then we are cat-footing along the side of the house. Nothing can possibly see us except from the two small windows, one of them up high on the wall and made of pebbled glass, a bathroom. The other window is small and cranked open six inches and we stop a few feet away from it and look inside.

There is a faint glow of light showing in this window, coming from some interior room, but there is no sound and no sign of any living thing. We open our bag, take out our gloves, and pull them on. We are ready, and we move on past the window and into the backyard.

The back edge of the yard is completely blocked by a fence that is overgrown with young bamboo. The shoots are slim, but already ten feet tall, and we cannot be seen from this side either and we breathe easier. On the back side of the house a little brick patio nudges up against a sliding glass door. Grass grows up shin-high between the bricks, and a rusted round grill is pushed to one edge, missing one wheel and tilting drunkenly over. Again we pause, staring into the house through the glass of the sliding door. Nothing moves inside, and a first gray finger of doubt pokes into our ribs; is anyone home? Have we come so far and been so very ready, all for nothing?

Slowly, carefully, we move closer onto the bricks and then up to the sliding glass door, where we wait, looking and listening and sniffing the air for anything at all and there is nothing.

We put a hand on the metal rim of the door and push with carefully increasing pressure; the door moves. We slide it open an inch, six inches, two feet, taking half a minute to make sure there is no sound and no reaction from inside. Three feet open and we stop and wait one more cautious moment and again there is nothing and so we slip in through the door and tug it closed behind us.

We stand in a kitchen: a rusted refrigerator in the corner next to an old stove, a cracked Formica counter with a cupboard above it, a stained and dirty sink with a dripping faucet. The room is unlit, but through a doorway in the far wall we can see a faint gleam of light in the next room. A whispered tickle of warning begins to prickle up our spine and we know there is something there, something in that room in the light. And now all of our focus is forward, into that next room, and the nylon noose is in our hand as we glide slowly across the floor toward the light with a near-drool of anticipation and the glee surges up inside at the thought of what now must come as we stalk silently to the doorway and look carefully around the doorframe and into the next room at what is waiting in that one small halo of light and we pause and peek into the room and

Everything stops.

No breath, no thought, no movement. Nothing but stunned and automatic denial.

This can t be. It just can t. No way, not here, not now, not this we are not seeing this, not at all, we can t be seeing any such thing; it s impossible, wrong, not in the script

But there it is. It does not move and it does not change and it is what it certainly is:

It is a table under a single dim hanging bulb. An old and unremarkable metal table from some thrift shop, with a chipped white finish. And spread across the tabletop in neat bundles is something that used to be a human being. The body has been carefully sliced and sectioned and stacked into orderly piles and it is all so very perfect and exactly as it should be and it spins me into an unreal moment of totally familiar and totally impossible comfort because I know just what it is but it cannot possibly be that and I look and I look and it still is that, exactly that.

It is a body prepared for disposal after a long and lovely session with a knife and a need and it is familiar and comforting for the simplest of all possible reasons because this is precisely the way I do it myself. And that is not possible because I did not do it and there is no one else in the world who does it exactly the same way, not even my brother, Brian, but it is there and I blink at it and look again and it is still there and it has not changed.

And it is so impossible and so nightmare perfectly just what I was going to do that I cannot stop myself from stepping toward it through the doorway, pulled closer as if it was a giant magnet too strong to resist, and I move in without breath and without seeing anything else, step toward the thing that cannot be there even though it so clearly is: one step, two steps

And on the far side of the table something steps toward me out of shadow and without a thought I whip out my knife and I jump forward at this new menace

And it jumps forward at me with a knife in its hand.

And I crouch and freeze with my blade raised high