Chris Holm - Dead Harvest

I whispered for Kate to follow. Another clatter of footfalls as she darted to my side. Behind her, the elevator door slid shut, plunging us into darkness. Kate made for the light switch, but I stilled her with a touch. We stood that way for what seemed like forever — listening, waiting.

Eventually, our eyes adjusted, and shapes appeared in the darkness. The faint glow of the eggshell walls, broken here and there by squares of black: by daylight, art, no doubt, and originals at that. Ribbons of manmade starlight, extending from floor to ceiling: the city lights, peeking through half-drawn curtains. The bulk of furniture: a high-backed chair, a low-slung chaise, more felt than seen in the darkness.

Kate gestured toward one of the hallways that extended outward from the entryway. We crept its length in silence, Kate clinging to my side.

At the end of the hallway was the largest kitchen I've ever seen, all granite and stainless and cherry, the surfaces gleaming blue by the light of the microwave display. It wasn't until I saw the place that I realized how hungry I was, how long it had been since I'd last eaten. I could've spent all night in there, chopping, roasting, sauteing — the place was a cook's dream. Then Kate turned on the lights, and that dream became a nightmare.

It was my fault — she'd asked me with a glance, and I'd acquiesced, my reluctance evaporating at the thought of something hot to eat. But when the lights came on, I lost my appetite.

The place was a fucking mess — cupboards emptied, drawers upturned, their contents scattered across the floor. A set of stools were tossed haphazardly into the center of the room, their cushions slashed, their batting stained brown-red.

In fact, the whole place was covered with blood: the floors, the counters, the walls. Even the tray ceiling above, a tasteful buttercream trimmed in purest white, was spattered with flecks of blood.

I looked to Kate, expecting to see her recoiling in horror, but she wasn't. Instead, she stood stock-still, her eyes glazed and faraway, her face slack and emotionless.

"This is where I killed them," she said.

"No."

"But it is," she said. Kate gestured toward the piano across the room, a baby grand. A bowl of cereal was perched atop it, half-empty and moldering. "Connor was sitting over there in his cowboy pajamas, banging away on the piano. He was supposed to be eating his breakfast, but as always, he had other plans. Dad was in his study, calling Tokyo, and he kept shouting at Connor to keep it down. And Patricia — Mom — was in the kitchen, making lunches for the both of us. She knew she didn't have to — our school provides lunch daily for everybody — but she always insisted. 'There's no food in their food,' she'd say. 'It's all fat and sugar and preservatives.' And that's when it happened."

"Kate-" I said, but she just ignored me.

"Connor was the first. I picked him up like he was nothing, and I tossed him across the room. When the piano stopped, Mom looked up. When she'd seen what I'd done, she started screaming, and Dad came rushing in. That's when I found the knife."

"Kate," I pleaded, "don't do this."

"Dad tried to stop me, of course, but I just shrugged him off. Connor was crying, I remember, and screaming for his mother. Then all of a sudden he wasn't crying anymore."

She nodded toward the far wall, where a streak of brown led downward to a floor crusted thick with dried blood. "There was so much blood," Kate said, "in my hands, my hair, my mouth. And so much screaming. My mother, my father — me, too, maybe, although that may have only been in my head. When Dad tried to stop me, it was bad. What I did to him made Connor's death seem merciful.

"But it was Mom that got the worst. I tied her to a chair, and fetched some rubbing alcohol from the bathroom. A tiny cut, a splash of alcohol, over and over again. Do you have any idea how excruciating that is?" Kate glanced down at the stab wound on my leg, seeping red-black through my ruined jeans, and smiled: thin, humorless. "But of course you do. Although at least you had the benefit of blacking out. I allowed her no such luxury."

She clenched shut her eyes, fighting back tears. When Kate opened them again, that faraway look was gone, replaced with one of sadness and regret. "Mom screamed for hours, you know. Screamed until her throat bled, until she forgot her own name. Screamed in fury and in agony, and eventually, she even screamed for mercy. But in the end, it didn't matter. I just kept cutting and dousing, cutting and dousing, until finally the police arrived. Only then, when she was of no more use to me, did I end her pain."

"That wasn't you, Kate. None of what you're saying was you."

"What does that matter? What does it matter when the three of them are dead, and all I'm left with is the memory of their blood on my hands?"

I pulled her close, and held her tight. Kate resisted at first, but then the tears came, and she buried her head in my chest, sobbing for what seemed like hours. There was nothing I could say, so I just let her cry.

Finally, her sobs diminished; she dried her eyes on my shirt and let me go.

"It was a mistake, coming here," I said.

"No," Kate replied, "this was something that I had to do."

"Still, we shouldn't stay for long. It's not healthy. It's not safe. I think we should try to get some sleep, and then head out in the morning. We can grab some clothes, some food, maybe a little money, and then we'll see about getting out of the city."

Kate nodded, folding her arms across her chest and suppressing a shiver. "Yeah," she said. "Maybe getting out of here is not the worst idea."

The problem was, I couldn't sleep.

I mean, the bed was plenty comfortable, and probably cost more than the average car, and the pajamas I'd borrowed were cool and clean against my skin, but I just couldn't stop my thoughts from racing. Maybe it was this place keeping me awake, with its echoes of the recent dead reverberating through its halls. Maybe it was the fact that, despite what I'd said to Kate, I hadn't a single fucking clue what we were gonna do next. Maybe it was the lack of food, or the phase of the moon, or any of a thousand mundane things that hold sleep just out of reach, but I doubt it. No, I think that maybe, just maybe, I couldn't sleep because I had a sense that something wasn't right.

I wish I could claim I'd listened to that feeling, that I'd posted myself at Kate's door and kept watch throughout the night. I didn't, though. We'd set up camp in a couple of guest rooms on the second floor — Kate, of course, could've slept in her own bed, but she'd opted not to, and who could blame her? I'd given the apartment a once-over before we retired to our rooms, but rather than allaying my fears, it only served to amplify them. The place was too big, too labyrinthine, with too many closets, nooks, and hidey-holes in which a would-be assailant could hide. Even with Kate by my side, I probably couldn't have checked them all, and after the scene in the kitchen, I didn't want to put her through all that again; so like an idiot, I'd gone it alone. To keep my worries at bay, I'd resolved to stay alert, to keep my ear to the ground — and I would have, had exhaustion not gotten the better of me.

But it did. And not just your garden-variety weariness, either; this was an exhaustion born of running balls-out for going on a week without a moment's peace, not to mention a decent meal. So as I watched the hours go ticking by, lying sleepless in my bed, I made a dumb-ass move. As the clock struck 3am, I dragged my ass out of bed and walked right past Kate's guest room to the bathroom down the hall. Just off the master bedroom, this bathroom was clearly an oasis for Kate's mom — all soft and floral and littered with make-up, a ginormous jetted tub wedged into the corner beneath a bubbled skylight. Like any self-respecting Upper East Side socialite, her medicine cabinet was a veritable pharmacy. I shook a couple sleeping pills from their amber bottle and washed them down with water from the tap. Then I stumbled back to my bed, not even bothering to pull back the covers before collapsing onto it.