Andrew Kaufman: The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted: A Psychological Thriller

I guess you could say Tracy was my first love; the only problem was she never knew it. She lived three houses down from me, and I would have moved heaven, earth, and everything in between to be with her. A classic case of unrequited love. We were good friends while we were young—that is, until adolescence set in. Then the social pecking order kicked into gear, and away she went, straight to the top with me falling somewhere near the bottom. I don’t think she ever meant it to be that way—just one of those things, I guess. We drifted apart, but I never forgot her.

“It’s been a long time,” she said, walking to me. Her smile was warm. “How’ve you been?”

“I’m well, Tracy. You?”

She moved past me, and for a split second, I caught her scent. Something linen mixed with something floral, and in that instant, it was high school all over again.

Gazing up at a shelf, she shrugged. “I’m okay, I guess. You know… husband, two kids, living out in the burbs. Never got out of this place. Smart move on your part that you did.”

Not like I had a choice , I thought as I put Oliver back on his shelf. “Doesn’t look like much’s changed around here.”

“Nope,” she said through a restless sigh, “it never does.”

“Hot and muggy with a chance of showers by afternoon?”

She grinned, still studying the rows of books. “You got it.” Then she turned to me. “So. A famous writer now. Pretty impressive.”

I shrugged. “Just a news magazine.”

“Modest…you always were.”

“Was I?”

“About as unassuming as they came.”

I returned my gaze to the shelf, nodded.

“I have to say, though, I was kind of surprised to see you came back.”

“You and everyone else,” I said through a forced laugh. “I’m not exactly the town’s Favorite Son.”

She dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand. “Screw ‘em,”

“Right,” I said, and grinned. “Screw ‘em.”

“But you look good, Pat. You really do. I’m glad things got better for you after the…”

“The overdose,” I said quickly, as if by doing so it might take away her discomfort.

“Yeah.” She fell silent for a moment and pushed her hair behind one ear. It was a nervous habit she’d had since childhood. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“No. It’s okay. I’m fine with it. Really.”

She offered a thin smile.

“Can I ask you something, though? Was I the only one who thought she was evil?”

An unsettled expression crossed Tracy’s face, and then she turned her head away, shaking it. “Everyone thought she was kind of crazy, I guess. The ones who wanted to see it.”

“Did you?”

“Want to see it?”

“Did you know?”

She turned back toward me, but this time her expression was easy to read. “I should have done something that day, Patrick. I should have stayed and listened.”

That day. My stomach twisted into a knot. I struggled against my thoughts, pushed the words out slowly, “But you had no way of knowing...”

“I knew,” she said, nodding, and then softer, “I knew. I was just…afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Of the other kids. Of her. Of…everything, I guess.” She looked down, hair behind the ear again. “I just left you there. Alone. It was all my fault.”

I lost Tracy’s voice and quite possibly my mind. The knot pulled tighter in my gut, and suddenly everything came rushing back to me. I was there again, living the nightmare. White light. White noise.

“Patrick?”

I snapped back to the present, stared at her with what I knew was a dazed expression. The lump in my throat made it damned near impossible to speak, my voice coming out gritty and tight. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah…look, I’d better go back upstairs.”

“Patrick…”

“Fine, really.” I attempted a smile, then pushed past her. Headed up the staircase, quickly, and straight for the bathroom.

I locked the door behind me. My back against the wall, eyes closed, I took in a long steadying breath. A thousand thoughts rushed through my head. A thousand memories.

Then I pulled the pad from my pocket, and with shaky hands, wrote the word vicious fifty times.

Chapter Two

In The Count of Monte Cristo , Alexandre Dumas wrote that houses have souls and faces like men, and their exteriors carry the imprint of their characters. To me, our house always looked dark and ominous, a shadowy projection of the horrors inside its silent, secretive walls. As a kid, I remember staring out through those dreary windows and wondering whether the world outside was as awful as the one within. Bad memories lived there. Horrible ones.

I decided to take Warren’s advice and go back anyway—not for sentiment, as he’d suggested, but to rid myself of those memories. I needed to go through the place, chase away my ghosts, and then walk out that front door one last time.

But going in was another story.

I stood in the doorway and felt my nerves jangle with slow-burning apprehension. Bad vibes seemed to rock this place from its foundation. I stepped in, stopped, then looked around.

She’d done most of her dying here before moving on to Hospice, but as I walked in, I could still feel a sense of approaching death hanging heavy in the air. Stillness, but not the kind that lent itself to peace or tranquility—no, this was something different, a life waiting to end and a peculiar numbness that seemed to resonate throughout.

The kind that gnaws at your insides.

Warren had obviously hired a cleaning crew to wipe away the postmortem effects, everything in its place, not a speck of dirt anywhere. An oxygen tank covered in plastic stood in one corner; in another, an empty trash container sat on the counter. I gazed at the bed: neatly made. A sanitized version of hell , I thought, then moved on.

I peered into my former bedroom and shook my head. She’d wasted little time converting it into her sewing room once I’d left for college.

“I put your things in the garage,” she’d said matter-of-factly at Thanksgiving break. “Take what you want. The rest goes to Goodwill.”

Great to see you, son.

Moving on to the living room, I gave it a quick scan and then a drawn-out sigh; nothing ever seemed to change here. Those tattered drapes. The outdated television. I thought about that damned music box, and a sharp pang of anger flickered, then fizzled. The thing meant more to her than I did.

As filthy-rich as my uncle was, I never understood why my mother insisted we live in such lower-middle class squalor. Was it to elicit sympathy? Because she never thought she deserved better? Warren offered repeatedly to get us out of here.

“Camilla,” he’d plead, “let me help you. You don’t have to live this way.”

“Don’t need any charity,” she’d say in her typically dismissive tone. “I can manage on my own.”

So we existed on a meager income, inside a two-bedroom box, and in a part of town that people kindly referred to as “undesirable.” Our threadbare, second-hand furniture had the smell of other people’s lives—ones I was sure had been much better than mine—and I wore clothes to school that had outlived their usefulness on someone else’s back before landing on mine.

“You don’t need fancy new clothes,” she’d tell me in her singsong voice. “What you have is just fine.”

God, I hated that woman.

Warren did his best to help, gifting me with what she wouldn’t provide, but I always sensed it was more because he felt sorry for me than anything else. He never really succeeded in being the stand-in male figure in my life, seemed he always radiated more pity than love. I knew the difference—most kids do—so I grew up resenting his misplaced, half-hearted attempts.