Seth Adams - Are You Afraid of the Dark?

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‘Where’d it happen?’ the killer asked.

‘In a parking lot,’ Reggie said.

‘What was his name?’ Ivan asked. ‘The man who killed your father.’

‘I never asked,’ he said. ‘I never found out.’

‘Why’d he do it?’

‘Because he was a drug addict,’ Reggie said. ‘And my dad tried to help him.’

‘Explain,’ Ivan said.

‘He was a parishioner at my dad’s church. My dad caught him stealing from the tithing box one day,’ he said. ‘Dad asked him why he was doing it. The man broke down and cried and told my dad. He said he needed the money for a fix. He couldn’t take it not having a fix. It made his body burn. It made him see crazy things. Only the drugs made it go away.’

‘What did your dad do?’ the killer asked.

‘Dad talked to him, and listened,’ Reggie said. Suddenly he had to do something with his hands. He rubbed them on his jeans; plucked at his shoelaces; scratched his arms. He needed to move and he stood, took a couple steps, settled down again and brought his legs up to his chest as he’d done before. For a strange and uncomfortable moment, Reggie wondered if this was how the drug addict had felt that day. ‘He told the man about programmes that helped people like him. He told him the church sponsored these programmes and could get him in at discounted rates or even free.’

‘Did he go?’ Ivan asked.

Reggie stared at the man across from him. Lowered his gaze to the large bandage about his middle, and the great red stain there. Again, he thought it looked like an eye, even through the bandage. A third eye looking at him, seeing him. Seeing through him.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘He went.’

‘But it didn’t work, did it?’ the killer asked.

Reggie superimposed himself on that large red eye. Looked with it back in time to the past year. He saw the parking lot clearly. His dad lying there in a pool of blood.

‘For a time it did,’ Reggie said. ‘The guy went to a rehab centre for two weeks. My dad went to see him every day. Came back and told me and Mom how the guy was doing over dinner.

‘“He’s really going to make it,” Dad said. “He’s going to turn his life around,” Dad told us. “That’s great,” Mom said. “That’s good,” I said.’

Reggie rubbed his eyes but found no tears. He felt inside like he should be crying, but he wasn’t. There was a numbness and a dull sorrow, yet his eyes remained dry. He wondered if it’d be like that until he died, and somehow that was sad too.

‘My dad was so happy when he was helping people,’ Reggie said. ‘And it made me and Mom happy to see him that way. He liked giving people hope. He’d take calls from the congregation at any hour.

‘He woke in the middle of the night once to talk to a man whose mom had died from cancer. Another time, he drove twenty miles across town at 2 a.m. to console a couple whose son had died in Iraq. He even helped bury a little girl’s dog that’d been hit by a car.’

‘And helping this particular man got your father killed,’ the killer said.

Reggie nodded.

‘How’d it happen?’ Ivan asked.

‘My dad got a call from the security company that had set up the church’s alarm system,’ Reggie said. ‘It was late when they called and told him one of the window sensors had been triggered. I heard his half of the conversation from my room, where I lay in bed watching TV. He drove off to check it out.

‘Mom asked him not to. She told him to call the police. He said it was probably just an animal or kids throwing rocks. And he left us.’

Something started to come through the numbness inside him, and Reggie pushed it down again. The pain was old and tiresome and he was tired of hurting.

‘He was gone for hours for what should have been a twenty-minute drive there and back,’ Reggie said. ‘Mom finally had enough, grabbed her keys, and dragged me along. I’d never seen her drive so fast, and yet the drive there seemed so long.

‘I remember how dark it was on the highway,’ Reggie said. ‘It was like we were driving through a long tunnel. And those little homemade crosses on the side of the road where people mark accidents that have happened? They were so bright in the dark. Like signposts.’

He looked at the man across from him.

‘And then we were there.’

Like his mom earlier on the way back from the movie and cemetery, Reggie felt a wetness at his eye and swiped it quickly away.

‘We saw him in the parking lot, lying on the ground. The tithing box was broken in pieces around him. The money was scattered all over the place. A couple dollar bills blew around like trash.’

Reggie smiled at the killer across from him.

‘The police counted it later and told us,’ he said. ‘There was sixteen dollars and seventy-two cents on the pavement. After all that trouble, he killed my dad and left the money.’

Whether he’d expected sympathy, some simple display of concern, from the man or not, Reggie wasn’t sure. In the two days he’d known Ivan, he’d seen little to suggest the killer knew such simple things as human emotions. But what he definitely didn’t expect was what the big man said next.

‘Some things live. Some things die. Remember that, Reggie. There’s no sense to it, and you waste your time trying to find any.’

At first, a hint of anger rose up in him. Reggie thought of seeing his dad dead there in the parking lot, and the killer’s casual dismissal pissed him off. He clenched his fists, on the verge of saying something, like he’d said to the older kid at the drugstore. But as quickly as it had come, the rage slipped away.

Instead, Reggie found himself repeating those words in his head, the killer’s voice echoing in his mind. Some things live. Some things die.

Reggie found his gaze drifting again to the shoulder holster and the pistol slid snugly into it. Ivan watched him, saw the direction of Reggie’s glance. Quickly, Reggie looked away.

With nothing left to say, they sat in silence.

That afternoon the killer let him hold the pistol.

He wanted to walk around a bit, which Reggie didn’t think was a good idea. But Ivan insisted and they went down the ladder; Reggie first, the killer slowly following. He said he needed to know if he could move if he had to. Reggie knew that meant escape if he had to, but he kept that to himself.

The killer limped along, occasionally stopping to lean against a tree, holding his abdomen, catching his breath, but otherwise making steady progress. They had walked for about twenty minutes when Ivan told Reggie to stop.

The killer walked over to a fallen tree and set their empty water bottles on it. Making his way back to Reggie, he sat on a stump and pulled out his gun. He checked the safety and held it out to Reggie.

The gun was heavy and solid and cool.

‘Feel the weight of it,’ the killer said. ‘Become familiar with its contours, how your fingers feel around it.’

Reggie did so, feeling the heft of the thing. It was heavier than he would have thought. It felt large in his small hands.

‘Always keep it pointed away from you,’ the killer said. ‘Never point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot.’

Reggie lifted the gun and aimed at the bottles on the fallen tree several yards away. Ivan rose and stood behind him.

‘Keep your right arm locked,’ he said. ‘Now bend your left at the elbow a bit. Keep your legs apart and the left one forward.’

Reggie did as he was told, and looked down the sight at the bottles. Ivan reached over him and towards the safety. Reggie looked up at him.

‘Won’t someone hear?’ he asked.

Ivan smiled and reached in his jacket. From a pocket he pulled out a black metal tube and reached again over Reggie. Screwing the silencer on, he then flicked off the safety.