Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

And here she was, trapped in her bedroom, preparing to fail him again.

“Nice of you to return my boat, Corpsey,” the Butler said as he crushed Will around his arms from behind. “For a while I thought you and your little crewmate were going to perform your best submarine imitation out there.”

Will kicked his legs wildly in the air and yelped. Titus grew stern and spit on the ground and had put up his big fists to advance on Butler when from behind Claymore appeared like a phantom and drove him flat across the back with his shovel. Titus collapsed as though his body had momentarily teleported from his clothes. He lay in the pigeon droppings, heaped, breathing shattered.

Will struggled to retrieve his garrote, but his arms remained pinned. Then the Butler seized his wrists and offered up his hands to Claymore, who bungee-corded them behind his back. When the job was done, the Butler let go, and Will took a jumping kick at Claymore, who dodged it easily.

“Careful there,” Butler said, tapping at Will’s Helmet with his own sharpened shovel. “When my friend here loses his temper, he doesn’t find it for two weeks.”

Titus was bound and hauled to his feet. They dragged Will and Titus through the elevator’s lower catacombs to the iron staircase. “Up,” Claymore growled, kicking Will in the flank.

As they climbed, Titus was soon drowning in the clogged pond of himself, coughing and retching and sucking voluminous gasps that never were sufficient to sate him. Will’s thoughts turned to Angela grinding out coughs in her hospital bed, to his mother hyperventilating on the kitchen floor. At last they crested the stairs and passed through the Distribution Floor, where Will and Jonah’s skateboard ramps sat unused like monuments of a fallen civilization, a world Will now doubted he’d ever inhabit again.

“It’s a clever security system, Corpsey,” the Butler said out on the walkway, swinging open the boiler door with a rusty peal. “But we found your hidey hole all the same. Thanks to a mutual friend of ours,” he said to Will with a grin.

With his hands bound behind him, Will was pushed onto his face in the ash and was spitting it out when he came through the other side into the workhouse. There Will saw another of Butler’s men, the one pushing the wheelbarrow that day, watching over Jonah, who was bungee-corded to a chair, his head dipped, bangs hanging in his face like a fox tail.

When they were all inside, the Butler took out a small bottle of amber fluid and had a long slug. Claymore walloped Titus again across the back and he buckled to the floor near his pallet bed.

“Don’t,” Will said, nearly sobbing. “He can’t breathe.”

“Oh, he’s used to it,” said Claymore, unwinding Will’s wrists in front of Jonah, who looked up to Will and offered a weak smile. “Doesn’t take care of himself is his problem.”

After Will was tied to the chair beside Jonah’s, the Butler left, and Claymore and the other one started tearing the workhouse apart, unearthing plants and throwing Titus’s hefty books around, plunging their heads into the cupboards and shelves.

“They asked about the map,” Jonah whispered. “But I stuffed it in my underwear. Luckily they’re not perverts. But I do wish I wore my helmet.”

“Shut up,” Will said, smiling despite his clunking heart.

Then the other man left, leaving only Claymore, who was turning over Titus’s mattress and peering into the birdfeeders Outside. Titus remained unconscious, crashed on his face, hands bound behind him. By then his breathing had quieted and sounded trifling as a fire flickering out. Soon Claymore gave up his search and sat across the room thumbing through Titus’s books, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that smelled of creosote.

“How did you get here?” Will whispered. “I thought you were done?”

“Because I couldn’t sleep. I knew you were crazy enough to come back down here. I figured you’d be needing some medical attention.”

“Jonah,” Will said, leaning as close as he could manage. “You were right about Titus. He did do something to Marcus,” Will whispered. “I think he might have sunk him in the lake during one of his moods. But I don’t think he remembers. For some reason I’m not convinced he meant to. I can’t explain it, but whatever he’s done is what’s making him insane.”

“Well, our best bet is to give the Butler his map and leave Titus to them. He deserves whatever’s coming for what he did to Marcus,” Jonah said, managing to dig in his pants, extracting the map and balling it in his fist.

“But it’s not just Marcus,” whispered Will. “Today he was wearing the exact hexagon boots. And last night I found his fingerprints inside my house.”

“That’s not possible,” said Jonah, shaking his head.

“Where. Were they?” Titus said, suddenly awake, neck straining upward in agonized rapture.

“Where were what?” said Will. “The tracks? Right behind my house. Made by the same boots you’re wearing.”

“The fingerprintssss …,” Titus said, his lungs letting go.

“Doesn’t matter where they—”

“In. My room?”

“No,” Will said, “they were in my room.”

“I watched. Her paint. Everything. When she returned. Where. Was it? Up high?”

After matching the prints, Will had dusted other surfaces like the doorknob and the light switches and moldings, and he’d found plenty of his own, even a few of his mother’s, but the prints on the light fixture were the only trace of Titus he found. “Yeah, so what, what does it matter?”

“Wouldn’t get. Wiped. There. Not unless. A neat freak. Which she never. Was. Exactly,” he said heaving.

“Will,” Jonah said, before leaning in to whisper that he remembered studying a passage near the end of their fingerprinting manual that said latent prints left on ideal surfaces like glass or metal when kept in a climate-controlled environment could last for years, sometimes indefinitely.

“But why were you in our house?” Will said.

Titus managed to roll onto his back, and his breathing came easier. “After. I saw you both in the. Window,” he said. “I waited. For her to come. Out. But she never did. I knew. Something wrong. So I watched. I would. See you. In the window. Icarus. Number One. You always looked. So busy. I liked to observe. You. Paint.”

“So you were watching us,” Will said angrily.

“I told Marcus. To leave your. House alone. That it. Was vacant. But he. Didn’t. And then out. You. Came. I knew you. Were hers. The night. At Marcus’s. Shack. Recognized your name. From. Paintings. You threw away.”

“Then why did you write that note trying to scare me into staying home?”

“Too dangerous. Down. Here. For you and Icarus. Number Two. Didn’t want to draw you. Into this. Thought she. Would keep. You home. But you came. Back. Your decision. I knew she’d never. Forgive me. But you brought. Her bread. And I liked. You Icaruses. Here. Selfish. Now look. I’m. Sorry.”

“Okay, okay,” Claymore said, nudging Titus’s ribs with his foot. “Normally I knock people around to make them blabber, but today I may have to do so in the interest of quiet.”

Then the Butler returned through the boiler, a tall glass of water balanced between two long fingers. “Sorry for all the hubbub, Corpsey,” Butler said in mock sympathy, standing over Titus. “It pains me to say that this has all grown more convoluted than I’d have preferred. But that’s why I left my girls at home in their kennels today, because I want to resolve this peaceably.”

Then he turned to Jonah and Will. “You see, this old ghost here was supposed to do something for me.”