Maggie Shayne - Sleep with the Lights On

Besides, the boys weren’t like him. They fit in. They weren’t freaks.

He’d wondered, back then, if everyone would always be able to see the rat inside him as clearly as the kids in middle school seemed to. Because they saw it. He had no doubt that they saw it. Even when he could keep it mostly silent and sleeping for months at a time, and only had to feed it a neighbor’s cat here and there, they saw it. Kids homed in on shit like that and tried to kill it. You know, like a litter of healthy animals, mom and all, will push the one sick one right out of the nest and leave it to die? He’d seen it on the Discovery Channel. Lions did it. Wolves did it. Birds did it. Kids were just like that. A weak one, a different one, a broken one, or even an especially gifted one—anything different—was to be shunned, banished, destroyed. It was probably a matter of self-preservation left over from the caveman days. You didn’t want anyone evolving faster than the norm or they’d be unfair competition. And you didn’t want anyone evolving slower than the norm, or they’d drag you down with them. And you sure as shit didn’t want predators—the kind who would prey on their own—because they’d eat you.

Kids always knew. Adults, not so much. Adults were mostly blind. Not his mother, though. His real one. She must have taken one look at him and seen that he was broken.

Eric smoothed Josh’s hair and turned toward Jeremy’s bed, then stopped where he was, shocked by how much more of the bed Jeremy took up. He couldn’t possibly have grown that much taller since May. Could he?

He moved closer, surprised when Jeremy rolled over and opened his eyes. They were brown and accusing. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

But it wasn’t his words that made Eric’s blood chill in his veins. It was his look. He didn’t look like a kid anymore. He looked like a young man. Tall, lean, lanky, with brown hair he’d let grow all summer long, and deep brown eyes with heavy brows and thick eyelashes.

He looks just like they all look.

And that hot scratching began deep inside Eric’s brain.

“No,” he whispered. “No.”

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

“No? Well then, where were you?”

Eric backed away from his son.

Jeremy rolled his eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Come on, Dad, can’t you even talk to me?”

But he couldn’t. The rat was coming out. He felt it scratching, clawing, gnawing. The plaster hadn’t even had time to dry, and already the rat was breaking through. Its twitching nose was sniffing through the first tiny hole.

Eric backed out and closed the bedroom door. The digging intensified. That scratching rat inside his brain had caught the scent, and it was demanding to be fed. And the meal it wanted this time was Eric’s own son.

He couldn’t stay at the house. Not once that feeling had begun. It never went away once it started. Nothing would stop it, nothing but killing.

He heard Marie banging pans in the kitchen, warming up leftovers for him. She was always worrying about what he ate, his cholesterol, his weight, shit like that, shit that didn’t even matter. His body wasn’t diseased, his brain was.

He walked quietly back through the house. It wasn’t a bad house. Small, only three bedrooms. The boys each had their own, but Josh had given his up to be a nursery, so they were sharing now. The living room was a mess. The boys’ sneakers scattered randomly all across the rug, jackets flung over chairs, backpacks spilling out onto the floor. He looked at the clutter, at the out-of-place sofa pillows and the TV, turned on, volume muted, running an infomercial about an electronic gadget you plugged into the wall to drive away pests. Mice and ants and spiders...

Not rats, though. Once you’ve got a rat, you’ve got a rat, that’s all there is to that that that.

He went out the front door, barely making a sound. He knew how to move in silence. He was a predator, after all. A hunter.

He got into his ’03 F-150, and drove back the way he’d come, over the bridge onto 81, and twenty minutes south to Binghamton. To his brother’s apartment. Mason let him in, groggy, only a little curious, but too tired to stay up long enough to grill him. Just pointed at the couch and scuffed back to his bedroom. A minute later he brought out a pillow and a blanket. “You need to talk, bro?”

“No. Maybe tomorrow.”

“All right. Get some sleep, okay?” Mason handed him the bedding, and went back to his room.

Eric hadn’t slept, though. He’d thought. All night long, he’d paced and he’d thought.

He guessed he’d probably been hoping to stumble onto another solution. A different answer. But he knew down deep that there wasn’t one.

And now it was morning. He’d pretended to be asleep while Mason was getting ready to go to work, knowing his brother wouldn’t wake him. Better that way. If he spoke to Mason first, his detective instincts would tell him something was wrong. So he faked sleep and waited until Mason left.

And now he was alone, and he was ready. Everything was done. He’d showered, and he’d gone down to his pickup to get his stuff out of the locked toolbox where he kept it. A man’s toolbox was sacred. Like a woman’s purse, according to Marie. People didn’t snoop in a man’s toolbox. Not without a damn good reason, anyway, and he’d always been careful never to provide one.

So he was ready. His duffel bag was on the floor, up against the wall on the far side of the room. He’d returned the blanket and pillow to Mason’s bedroom, and unrolled a sheet of plastic on the sofa and out across the floor for several feet all around it, because this was his brother’s place, after all. He didn’t want to ruin it entirely. And he always had plastic in his truck. For moving them. His letter was written, and though it was short, that had taken the longest, ’cause what could you say, really? Sorry? Sorry didn’t even begin...

Didn’t matter.

The long line of driver’s licenses was on the coffee table, one neat straight row. He’d texted Mason. Mason would know what to do. He would take care of everything. He always did.

So...it was time.

He picked up the gun in his right hand. It was heavy. He’d rarely used the thing, kept it just in case. He’d avoided the question, in case of what? It wasn’t really his gun. It belonged to the rat. But he was going to use it now.

He was shaking hard as he pressed the barrel to his temple. It worried him how hard he was shaking. He didn’t want to mess this up. He didn’t want to suffer. He didn’t want to feel it. Barrel in the mouth didn’t always work. He’d read that somewhere, hadn’t he? So, to the temple. And it wasn’t like he had to be too precise, anyway. The gun was a .44. He wrapped his left hand around the barrel to keep it from bucking with the recoil and just blowing off the top of his head. And yeah, it would burn his hand—that barrel would be hot. But he didn’t think he’d feel it for more than a second or two, and it was better than letting the gun buck and not getting the job done. That wouldn’t be pleasant. He might survive that.

Gotta do what must be done, burn my hand on the red-hot gun.

God, I’m scared.

He had to do it. Mason would be here soon. It had to be done before Mason got here to stop him.

Is there really a hell? God, what if there is?

He took a deep breath. Then another.

It’s gonna hurt. I know it’s gonna hurt.

He heard footsteps outside. Hell, Mason was already here.

Just do it. It’ll only hurt for a second. Just do it already. For Jeremy.

“Yes, for Jeremy.”

The rat was scratching frantically now. Its claws had broken through. It was ripping away the plaster. If it got out, it wouldn’t let him go through with it. He knew that.