James Patterson - Murder House

Shirtless, hair blowing in the wind, leaning over the balcony, looking down.

Trying to get his leg up on the top of the railing that borders the balcony. Trying to stand on top of it?

The boy gently places his trombone case on the ground.

Unlocks the latches.

Removes the air gun.

Looks through his scope, moving through darkness until he finds the man, illuminated by the bedroom light behind him.

With a final thrust, the man pushes himself onto the top of the railing. He rises, wobbly, standing on a narrow perch, a tightrope walker getting his balance.

He’s only on the second story, but this is no ordinary house. The man must be thirty, forty feet up. No way he’d survive a fall, especially when his landing would most likely be on the spiked fence below him.

The man arches his back, raises his arms as if beseeching the heavens. As if preparing to jump, as if preparing to fly off the balcony to another world.

The boy watches all of this through the rifle’s scope.

He pulls the trigger.

The man takes the blow, staggers, flutters on his perch, his arms doing tiny circles, his legs buckling, before he falls backward onto the balcony.

Aim-fire-click . The boy can do it well. He fires two, three pellets at the man. The man, injured from his fall, confused, reacts to each shot, jumping with surprise before scurrying back into the bedroom, out of sight.

The boy smiles. Then he packs up his rifle and runs back to his house.

The boy returns the next day. An itch he has to scratch. He hasn’t stopped thinking about the man. Can’t get the images from last night out of his head.

No trombone case this time. And this time, during the day. No school today, and Mom says dinner isn’t until two.

Ocean Drive is empty. The beach is empty. Even the beach bums, the drifters, have found someplace else to be today. It seems like everybody has someplace else to be on Thanksgiving.

The boy slips through the iron gates. It takes some effort, but he’s small enough.

He walks into the front yard, which slopes upward to the house. Colorful leaves dancing all around him, the air brittle with cold, the wind coming off the ocean downright treacherous.

He’s staring at the monument by the fountain — Cecilia, O Cecilia / Life was death disguised — when he hears the noise in the back.

He rushes to the back of the house, his feet crunching the blanket of leaves.

The first thing he sees: a rope, dangling from a tree branch, knotted in such a way that an oval circle hangs down, bobbing in the wind.

A noose. He knows the word for it. That’s a noose.

A ladder. A man — the man, it’s him — standing on the top rung, reaching for the noose, struggling to fit it over his head. Crying, sobbing, cursing.

And then suddenly noticing him, a trespasser, a boy, having just come around the corner.

“Get... get outta... get outta here... kid.” His words thick and slurred. The noose in his hands, not yet around his neck.

He is so terrified, he can’t respond to Mr. Dahlquist.

“I said... get out... get—” The man swaying, the ladder rocking, the man losing his grip on the noose as the ladder topples over, the man falling with the ladder to the blanket of leaves below with a muted thump .

The man cursing, then sobbing, his shoulders heaving. Punching the ground, swatting leaves, gripping his hair, grunting and screaming, like something inside him is trying to get out.

Then he stops. He’s worn himself out. He looks around and he finds the bottle, half-filled with some brown liquid, obscured by the leaves. He unscrews the top and takes a long guzzle, empties most of the bottle, wipes his mouth with his sleeve.

Then he turns and looks at the boy.

“It was... you... last... last night,” says Holden Dahlquist VI. The words struggling to escape his mouth, heavy and blurry.

The boy doesn’t answer. Doesn’t confirm, doesn’t deny.

But he walks toward the man.

“You my... guardian angel... or some... something?”

The boy stops short in front of him.

Mr. Dahlquist, dressed in a flannel shirt and pajama bottoms, yanks open the right side of his shirt, ripping off a button, revealing a small, deep-red wound.

“You... shot... shot me... last night.” His eyes red and heavy and unfocused, his face unshaven but handsome. Thick auburn hair. Tall and lean.

And then the boy sees the handgun, nestled in the leaves, three feet from him, and three feet from Mr. Dahlquist.

The boy reaches down and picks it up.

It is tiny, and light. Gold and silver. A short barrel. A big looping circle in the middle of the brass grip. Nothing like the guns that cops have, or that you see on TV.

“My great... grandfather’s revolver,” says Mr. Dahlquist. “Over a... a hundred... years old. A knuckle... knuckle duster.”

The boy wraps his fingers in the circle. Can’t even find the trigger.

“I’m a good shot,” the boy says.

The man’s eyes grow wide for a moment, his lips parting. His eyes shift from the gun to the boy. “That gun’s... loaded,” he says. “It has... bullets—”

“I know what loaded means.”

Mr. Dahlquist stares at the gun, as if lost in a deep dream, his body swaying slightly, his chest heaving. “Give it... to me, kid.”

The boy doesn’t move. He cocks the gun, which produces the trigger, protruding against his index finger.

“What... are you... doing?” Mr. Dahlquist reaches out with his hand, palm open. “Gimme it.” He lets out a noise, air whooshing out of him, and pushes himself to his feet, unsteady.

The boy doesn’t move. Holding the gun, aiming it at the man. The sensation it brings, the feeling of power, control, over another person.

The boy isn’t scared anymore. For the first time he can remember, he isn’t scared or confused. He feels... in control. For the first time in his life, he’s composed, in command.

He relishes that feeling. He doesn’t ever want to lose that feeling. He wants to remember that feeling forever.

He doesn’t ever want to go back to those other feelings he has.

He puts the barrel of the gun against his temple.

Mr. Dahlquist raises his hands, palms out. “No...”

The boy pulls the trigger.

Nothing but a loud click against his temple.

He cocks the gun again, pulls the trigger again.

Nothing again. The boy hurls the gun like a tomahawk across the yard. Adrenaline swirling inside him, his heartbeat rattling against his chest.

Mr. Dahlquist, chest heaving, eyes bugged out, looks at the boy, then at the gun in the grass, then back at the boy.

“You... think about... about doing that... a lot? Kill... killing yourself?”

The boy doesn’t answer.

Every day, he thinks. I think about it every day, every hour, every minute.

“Me too,” says Mr. Dahlquist.

Like the man can read his thoughts. Like he’s the first person who understands him.

“Good thing... that gun’s a... hundred years old.” And then Mr. Dahlquist starts laughing. He laughs for a long time, wiping at his eyes.

The boy doesn’t know what’s so funny.

“We’re quite a... pair. Can’t even... kill ourselves... right.”

Holden Dahlquist VI brushes himself off. “I’m cold. Are you... cold, kid?”

He picks up his bottle, drinks the remaining liquid, and staggers toward the house.

The boy follows him inside.

A secret. That’s part of what has made these last six months so fun. It’s a secret, the two of them. Nobody knows he comes over every day after school. Not his mother, not his friends — nobody knows about his new and special friend, Holden.