Seth Adams - Are You Afraid of the Dark?

‘You don’t say?’ said his mom.

‘Unfortunately so,’ said the deputy. ‘Yesterday morning a man escaped from a police escort taking him to the county jail in Tucson.’

‘What’d he do?’ she asked. She leaned nonchalantly against the door, her back pushing against the mesh and bending it inward.

‘He’s a killer,’ said Deputy Collins, friendly neighbourhood peace officer and tormentor of bike riding boys.

‘Who’d he kill?’ his mom asked, her tone still mildly interested, like someone spying a squashed bug on the sidewalk momentarily before passing.

‘Many people,’ the deputy replied. ‘He’s a contract killer.’

‘My word,’ his mom said.

‘Yes, I know,’ said the officer. ‘Who’d think such a man loose in our town?’

They each shook their head at the wonder of it all.

‘If you see this man,’ the officer said and held up a photo Reggie couldn’t see through the screen door, ‘stay away from him and get to a phone. Give us a call and we’ll be there lickety-split.’

They shook hands again, and the deputy walked away, climbing in his car and driving off. Plumes of dirt billowed into the air and then settled like battlefield detritus. His mom stood on the porch for a time, looking at the photo without really looking at it, and then came back inside.

Reggie left silently by the back door.

‘Tell me about the first person you killed,’ Reggie said after climbing back up the ladder and settling down again across from the killer. Together they’d watched the patrol car weaving away in the distance, until, crawling first up and then down a hill, it blinked away in the white horizon.

Despite the deputy’s unsettling offer to let him see crime scene photographs, Reggie thought about what the officer had said to him by the side of the highway: He raped and killed a woman and killed her kid . And about how Ivan himself had admitted to killing women and children only a short time ago.

Reggie idly wondered if he could get to the ladder before the killer drew his gun. If, peddling fast, he could catch up to the patrol car on his bike before it reached the highway. But these were just fleeting thoughts without substance, like the remnants of vague dreams upon awakening, drifting away.

The two of them had an arrangement, a deal. And in Ivan’s line of work, a man’s word was everything. Ivan had rightly judged Reggie when he’d asked what if he called the police and the killer had said he knew Reggie wouldn’t. Reggie was likewise sure the man would keep to the terms of the deal. He was safe as long as he didn’t betray the killer’s trust.

At least, he was pretty sure.

‘My first hit?’ Ivan asked. ‘Or the first person I killed?’

‘There’s a difference?’ Reggie asked.

‘There is,’ the killer said. ‘A hit is never personal, just business. Killing someone because you want to is an entirely other thing.’

‘The first person you killed then,’ Reggie said, nodding with the decision. ‘The very first.’

Reggie thought it might take him a moment or two to call forth the memories. So many killed over so many years, he figured the killer might have to close his eyes against the tide. Take himself back and carefully reel in the memory out from the rest. But Ivan answered immediately.

‘That would be my father,’ he said, looking now not at Reggie but at some spot above and past him. He was indeed reeling in the memory, Reggie realized, only it wasn’t difficult at all. This was something that was at the core of the man sitting across from him. It was there all the time, merely waiting for him to draw it forth from beneath the surface.

‘Why’d you kill your own dad?’ Reggie asked. He thought of his mom and his own dad. Such a thing – killing one of them – didn’t make sense. He couldn’t even fully develop the thought.

‘I caught him touching my sister,’ Ivan said. ‘You know, in the way grown-ups aren’t supposed to.’

Images came unbidden to Reggie’s mind. Dark basements; old corners; unlighted children’s rooms at night. A large, hulking figure standing over a frail one with sheet covers pulled to her chin. Again he thought of the deputy on the side of the highway, and later on Reggie’s own front porch: Do you know what rape is, kid?

‘How many times did he do it?’ Reggie heard himself asking. He realized what he was saying, and he thought of the gun lying beside the man across from him. But Ivan didn’t show any reaction to this question, and Reggie relaxed a bit.

‘I only saw him the one time,’ Ivan said. ‘But there’s no telling how long it went on before I saw him.’

‘Didn’t your sister ever call for help?’ Reggie asked.

‘She had Down’s syndrome,’ Ivan said, making a vague gesture at his own head to punctuate the statement. ‘She wasn’t all there, you know?’

Reggie nodded though he didn’t know, not really. He’d seen people with handicaps before, of course. Coupled with their caregivers, guiding them or pushing them in wheelchairs, such people were obvious. But they were just people all the same, and Reggie had never given the mentally or physically challenged much thought.

As a minister, his dad had always told him God created all people as they were for a reason. People with disabilities weren’t to be looked down on, or even pitied. But the way Ivan pointed to his own temple in indication of his sister’s condition told Reggie that the killer didn’t see things quite the same way.

‘We lived up north in a mountain town,’ Ivan said. ‘I went to school in the city. Took a bus home. It was a short day, they let us out early, and I came in through the back door. The hinges didn’t make a sound, and the television was on, so I guess they didn’t hear me come in.’

Reggie pulled his legs up to his chest, hugged them about the knees. He rested his chin on his right knee and stared down at the floor at a spot near Ivan’s booted feet. He couldn’t look at the man just now, and he didn’t know why.

‘My sister’s room was across the hall from mine,’ Ivan said. ‘I had to pass it to get to my room. The door was ajar and I looked in as I walked by.’

Reggie stared hard at the wooden floor. He felt like he had when the deputy asked if he wanted to see the pictures. The rape pictures. Not wanting to be in a certain place, and yet held there by another.

‘She was on the bed,’ Ivan said. ‘He’d pulled a chair up close beside it. His pants were around his ankles. One hand was on her, one was on himself.’

Reggie wondered what was on television. He tried hard to think if there was a book that maybe he could read. He wondered if his mom still wanted to see a movie, go have lunch.

And at the same time he was rooted to the spot. It was as if the very floor of the tree house had sprouted invisible vines, shackling him. He couldn’t leave and he wasn’t sure he would if he could. With an effort he pulled his gaze from the floor and looked at Ivan again. He was staring right at Reggie.

‘What’d you do?’ he asked.

‘Right then?’ the killer asked. ‘Nothing.’

Reggie waited. He knew the story wasn’t over.

‘He finally saw me and turned to look at me,’ the killer said. ‘He took his hands off my sister and himself, but didn’t bother trying to pull up his pants or explain anything. He just sat there half-naked in his chair and looked at me.’

Patiently, Reggie remained silent.

‘I walked to my room and closed the door behind me,’ Ivan said. ‘I did my homework at my desk by the window. Watched the day pass into evening. He knocked on my door once and said that dinner was ready. I told him I wasn’t hungry and had a project to finish. I heard him go upstairs to his room not too long after.