Dave Zeltserman - Bad Thoughts

“Why don’t you wake him and get it over with?”

“I said I don’t need you making me nervous!”

Charlie swallowed down what he was going to say and forced his mouth shut. The exasperation was too much. He picked up the padded handcuffs from the floor and shoved them into his pocket. He felt too jittery to stick around. He also knew the more jittery he acted, the more Herbie would stretch things out. “Fine, give me the keys. I’ll meet you by the car in an hour.”

“What do you need the keys for?”

“What do I need the keys for? You got to be kidding. The car’s been sitting in that lot for over three hours. I need to move it before it draws any attention.”

“It can sit another hour.”

“But-”

“I said it can sit another hour.” A petulant smile had twisted Herbie’s lips. “It’s your choice whether I’m here another hour or another twenty-four. It’s all your choice.”

Charlie took a step forward with the intention of snuffing the kid himself, but the look Herbie gave him stopped him. Anyway, he knew it wouldn’t help. It would only make Herbie more determined that they sit there twiddling their thumbs for the next twenty-four hours. That much was obvious. Reluctantly, he headed back upstairs.

“Fine,” he said, “let me know when you’re done.”

Charlie spent the next half hour pacing around the upstairs of the house working himself into a tizzy. The last two years they had been so careful they way they varied the details of each murder, and in fact, making a study of it. They had spent hours reading everything from forensic material to books on police procedural and criminal behavior to make sure there were no patterns to their murders, that there would be nothing the police could tie together, and more importantly, nothing that could bring the FBI in.

And now this. Usually Herbie didn’t throw these type of tantrums-at least not to this extent. All because that piece of shit kid had to cut him. In a way he could understand it, but still Herbie was putting them at risk. It just wasn’t worth it. The more Charlie thought about it, the more infuriated he got. When he heard the screams it was too much for him. Goddamn him, he thought, he couldn’t even gag him first?

He reacted to the screams without really thinking about it-flying down the stairs, his eyes bloodied with rage, his hands squeezing into fists. When he reached the kitchen he froze, not quite comprehending what he was seeing. It wasn’t what he expected. Everything was flipped around from the way it was supposed to be. The kid was on top of Herbie, slashing away at him with a carving knife as if his cousin were a side of beef. And Herbie’s head wasn’t laying quite right, sort of at a ninety-degree angle to his body. Charlie realized his cousin’s head had, for the most part, been cut off from his body.

He heard a noise from behind. Someone was trying to kick down the door. Without thinking, he turned and scampered back upstairs and ended up squeezing into the back of the master bedroom closet, pulling some blankets over him.

Somehow, the police didn’t search the house. If they had, they would have found Charlie Winters cowering in the closet. But they didn’t. They took it for granted that Herbie had acted alone and they didn’t bother searching upstairs, at least not carefully. Later, when the police were gone, Charlie slipped into the night.

He felt like a dead man. Numb and dazed, his world crashing around him. The unfairness of it all was staggering. He and Herbie were meant to be together. Now they weren’t and they never would be again. Charlie Winters couldn’t accept it.

For months afterwards he drifted, not quite sure what to do. There was no pleasure in anything he did. Nothing but a numbness he couldn’t shake. He and Herbie needed each other. They fed off each other. Without his cousin nothing made any sense. The world seemed pointless.

Nine months after his cousin’s death he was stopped by the police for a burned out taillight. He had been traveling through Seattle, driving straight through from Portland. In the back of his trunk was a thirteen-year-old boy he had picked up along the way. Normally, before he had stopped thinking clearly, the boy would’ve been either dead or properly anesthetized. But he had stopped thinking after Herbie’s death. As the officer wrote him up for the taillight, a thumping noise came from inside the trunk. The officer was quicker with the gun and Charlie Winters was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to eighteen years for kidnapping.

His fellow inmates labeled Winters a child molester, reasoning he had kidnapped the boy for purposes other than money. His first week in prison a group of “gorillas” held him down and took turns turning him out. Later, each one of them were found with their throats cut and their testicles hanging from their mouths. The message got out that Charlie Winters was someone to be left alone. It became gospel.

Even still, the next couple of years were a time of utter bleakness for him. Despondent, he lay on his cot and waited as the days blended into nights. Off and on he would think about his cousin and the unfairness of it all. It would stick deep enough in his craw that he’d start to choke on it. That little shit of a kid. He would’ve given anything for an hour alone with that little shit. But there was nothing he could give. Nothing to change that he was trapped within a six-by-nine-foot cage. Nothing to do but wallow in his misery.

His salvation came one day when a guard gave him a book on metaphysics.

He saw the light then.

It wasn’t the light the guard intended him to see, but for Charlie Winters it was as bright as the burning sun.

The ideas from the book-as they were twisted within his mind-summed up everything he and Herbert had known were true but had never quite put into words. Especially about man being god-like. Of course, the concept of every man being god-like was laughable to Winters, but that he and Herbert were was inescapable. As was their reason for being. To punish and inflict pain. For all time. To keep coming back to earth over and over again to spread their suffering. One day he and Herbert would be reunited. The book (again, as it was twisted within in his mind) all but said so. In the meantime, he would have to carry on for both of them and the book showed him how he could do it while in prison. Because you can only lock the body behind bars. If you can learn to leave the body…

And all he had was time to learn…

It took a year of practice before he succeeded, but Charlie Winters never had any doubts or wavered in his faith. The book had made it all crystal clear to him. When it finally did happen it only lasted for a few seconds before he was sucked back in. It was so fast, he almost didn’t realize it. Most people would’ve talked themselves out of it, blaming it on a hallucination, but Charlie knew it was real, he knew it wasn’t any dream. And he laughed good and hard over it because he had found his way out.

With practice he got to where he could leave his body just about any night. It was like learning to play the piano, things at first that were impossible and clumsy, over time became second nature. Movement became easy. Thought became reality. Think about a place and you were there. Think about a person and you were inches away. Eventually, he got to where he could stay out for hours before being sucked back in.

He spent his time out watching Shannon. There was some satisfaction in observing the relationship between Shannon and his father, knowing that he and Herbert were at the root of it. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

He needed to hurt him.

He needed to keep on hurting him. Again and again. For as long as there was breath in that piece of shit.