Seth Adams - Are You Afraid of the Dark?

‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Give it a try.’

Reggie sighted down the pistol at one of the bottles. His finger curled around the trigger, but he didn’t pull it. He thought of his dad in the church parking lot and the blood on the asphalt.

‘Pull, don’t squeeze,’ said the killer.

Then he was thinking about the older boy at the drugstore. And his mom slapping him at the cemetery.

He pulled the trigger smoothly and deliberately.

There was a low whoosh and dirt kicked up about a foot in front of the tree. The recoil shook in his arms and made his muscles twitch.

‘Again,’ said the killer, soft but firm, and Reggie pulled the trigger again.

A silver-dollar sized crater appeared in the bark just below the bottle on the left. The thunk of the bullet sounded like something heavy dropped on carpeted floor. The bottle did a little wiggle and twirl like a tired dancer, but came to rest still upright.

‘Again,’ the killer said, and Reggie pulled the trigger.

The low whoosh again and the bottle disappeared, pulled out of sight like something yanked out of reality. It was there, and then it was gone.

‘Good,’ said the killer. ‘Now the other one.’

He adjusted his stance and aimed. Pulled the trigger and the other bottle likewise was yanked away.

‘Very good,’ said the killer. ‘You’re a natural.’

Ivan reached out and over him to take the gun. For a moment both their hands were over the weapon, and Reggie didn’t want to let go. When he did and it was out of his hands, Ivan considered him with a curious look.

It felt good holding the gun, and when it was in his hands he wasn’t afraid of being hit by anyone.

‘Let’s head back,’ Ivan said, holding his side and starting to walk, each step placed gingerly and with care. He holstered the gun and Reggie watched it until it was out of sight beneath the flap of the jacket hem.

He could still feel it in his hands, like a phantom sensation.

Like it belonged there.

***

‘Was there ever someone you wished you hadn’t killed?’ Reggie asked when they were back in the tree house.

The walk and climb back up had exhausted Ivan, and the man settled back down in his spot near the far window with a groan. Outside, a summer wind stirred the branches and made the structure moan likewise, as if returning Ivan’s grunt like a separated beast calling for its pack. The swinging branches brought the sun in fits and starts of bright light, casting alternating bars of sunlight and shadow across the floor and the walls of the tree house. This pattern fell over Ivan, making the man seem caged, behind bars.

He thought of what the deputy had told his mom earlier.

Yesterday morning a man escaped from a police escort taking him to the county jail in Tucson.

‘No,’ said the killer, the answer snapping Reggie back to the moment. ‘There were two people I wish I hadn’t killed.’

‘Who were they?’ Reggie asked.

‘Just a woman and her son,’ the killer said. ‘No one special.’

‘Is it the woman you raped and killed yesterday?’ Reggie asked.

Ivan looked at him sternly.

‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

‘When I rode into town for the medicine,’ Reggie said, ‘there were police all over the highway. One of them stopped me and told me about the woman and kid you killed when you escaped.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone yesterday,’ he said.

‘But the cop said …’ Reggie began.

‘I don’t care what the cop said,’ the killer interrupted him. ‘A state trooper recognized the car I was driving as reported stolen. Pulled me over. A second highway patrol vehicle happened to be passing and pulled in behind me. They cuffed me, searched the vehicle.’

‘What were you doing here in Payne, then?’ Reggie asked. ‘Were you sent to kill someone?’

‘Only if necessary,’ the killer said. ‘I was sent to find something. Not my usual business, but the money was good.’

‘How’d you get away?’ Reggie asked, interested in what the killer was supposed to find, but deciding to save that question for another time.

‘There are a few ways to work yourself out of handcuffs if you know what you’re doing,’ Ivan said. ‘I waited until the two police cars were separated in traffic before I made my move. The trooper was young, inexperienced, and panicked when he saw me free of the cuffs. He crashed into the concrete divider, the window shattered, and I crawled out.’

Reggie’s uncertainty must have shown on his face, because the killer elaborated a little more. That the man wanted Reggie to believe him seemed somehow important, and so he filed that away in his mind.

Always mind the details , he thought, and was slightly disturbed by the killer’s voice replaying in his head.

‘I escaped yesterday from the police, beat them up pretty bad, got my stuff back, but I didn’t kill anyone. And I don’t do rape.’

‘So the woman and kid you’re talking about …’

‘Happened a long time ago,’ said the killer.

‘The officer said he’d show me the pictures,’ Reggie said, thinking of the deputy standing in front of his bike, blocking him, and later on the porch with his mom. ‘You know … of the crime scene.’

‘He was fucking with you,’ Ivan said.

Reggie thought of the deputy, and the bigger kid knocking him off his bike. He thought of holding the cool, heavy gun and pulling the trigger. He thought of what Ivan had said to him earlier.

The common denominator.

People know you’re weak.

He hadn’t felt weak with the pistol in his hands.

‘What about this woman and her son?’ Reggie said, changing the subject back again. ‘The ones you killed a long time ago.’

After a brief pause the killer spoke, and Reggie listened.

***

‘There was a woman who left her husband because he hit her. And we’re not just talking about how some guys do when they’re drunk. He hit her a lot.

‘Like many women in the same situation, at first she tried to placate him. She thought it was her fault. Maybe she didn’t pay enough attention to him. Maybe she wasn’t pretty enough. Lots of maybes with no answers.

‘He never gave her answers. He just hit her. And she took it, because a wife was supposed to be obedient to her husband. That’s how she was raised, and so she just took it. Until he hit their son.

‘That’s when things changed. That’s when she couldn’t take it anymore.

‘So one day she left him. She packed a couple suitcases when he was at work, took their son, and left. Didn’t leave a note or anything.

‘There was only one problem,’ the killer said. ‘Her husband was someone important. Or, more accurately, his father was. Her husband was a coyote for human traffickers. His father was the man financing that operation, and many others.

‘Her husband’s family had their hands not only in human trafficking, but drugs, prostitution, weapons procurement, and pornography. This family was used to getting what they wanted, and once they had something it was theirs until they no longer wanted it. And her husband wanted her back, just not alive.

‘He didn’t even need all of her. Just the head would do, he said.

‘Furthermore, since his son was a quiet kid, a reader, and not at all likely suitable for the family business, he saw no reason to let the kid live either.

‘So the husband called me. He explained to me what he wanted, and offered me a lot of money. I accepted the job.

‘I found the woman less than a week later. She was working as a card dealer in some Indian casino. The kid was going to school nearby.

‘I waited for them at their home. The kid came first and I knocked him out and tied him to a chair. The woman called some time later and left a message on the machine. She told her son she was going to cover a shift for one of the other dealers and wouldn’t be home until the following morning. She told him not to wait up.