The Face of Death (22 page)

22

LINDA’S MIND WAS EMPTY.

Sam slumped forward in the chair. She’d felt his pulse speed up underneath her fingers, then she’d felt it go faint, and then she’d felt it stop altogether.

She felt Sam’s blood on her hands. It wasn’t really there, but she felt it. One word ran through her mind, over and over and over, a huge black bat that blotted out the stars: Horror, horror, horror, horror…

“That was very well done, Linda.”

Why doesn’t his voice ever change? she wondered. It always sounds the same. Calm and happy, while terrible, terrible, terrible things…

She shuddered once and fought back a sob.

Maybe he’s not really there, inside. He’s like a golem, clay made to walk without a soul to guide it.

Linda looked over at her daughter. She felt her heart sag inside her. Sarah’s eyes were open, but they weren’t seeing. They were staring. A “not there” kind of stare. She was rocking back and forth. Her lips were clenched together so tightly that they’d gone white.

I know how you feel, babe, Linda thought in despair.

“I know that you are hurting,” The Stranger said. His tone became soothing. “We’re going to end that now, all that terrible, awful pain, forever.”

He looked at Sarah, watched her rock back and forth. A string of drool had collected at one corner of her mouth and was falling, falling, falling.

“I’ll keep my word, you know. So long as you do what I ask, and don’t deviate, I won’t hurt her.”

You’ve already hurt her forever, Linda thought. But maybe she’d have a chance if she didn’t die. You could recover from emotional trauma; there was no coming back from death.

The Stranger walked over behind Sam. He pulled keys from a jacket pocket, knelt down, and removed the cuffs from around Sam’s ankles, then he removed the cuffs from around Sam’s wrists. Sam toppled forward, thudding to the floor like a bag of sand.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” The Stranger said to Linda. “I’m going to give you these keys.” He did. “Please remove the cuffs from your ankles.” Linda did so. He reached behind him with his left hand, pulling a weapon from his waistband. “I’m going to place this handgun on the floor, here.” He did so. He moved behind Sarah and put his own gun to the back of her head.

“In a moment I will begin counting. When I reach five, if you haven’t used that gun to blow your own brains out, then I will shoot Sarah in the back of the head. Following that, I’ll rape you for hours and torture you for days. Do you understand?”

Linda nodded, listless.

“Good. Now, handguns are powerful things. You could touch that weapon, something could spark, and you might feel that it’s transferred its power to you. You might decide to do something brave and insane. Don’t. The moment its barrel starts moving toward me, I kill Sarah. The moment that it points away from your head, I kill Sarah. Do you follow?”

Linda stared at him, not speaking.

“Linda,” he said, patient. “Did you hear what I said?”

She managed a nod. It took all her strength. She was so tired.

Sam I Am is gone, she thought. I feel dead already.

She looked down at the weapon on the rug. The one she’d be holding soon. The one that would end this, that would let her join Sam, that would save Sarah
(she hoped).

Handgun, handgun, burning bright…

“I’m going to give you the same gift that I gave your husband. One sentence only. This is your last chance to say something to Sarah.”

Linda looked at her white-lipped, shivering, oh-so-beautiful daughter.

Will she even remember what I say?

Linda would have to hope so. She’d have to hope that her words would drill down somewhere into Sarah’s consciousness, that they’d surface later and be a comfort.

Maybe they’ll come to her in her dreams.

“I’m in the clouds watching you, Sarah, always.”

Sarah continued to rock back and forth and drool.

“That was very nice,” The Stranger said. “Thank you for complying.”

There it was again, that rage. Linda felt white-hot and blue-flame, rolling lava, exploding suns.

“Someday, you’ll die,” she whispered, her voice quavering. “And it’ll be a bad death. Because of this. Because of the things you do.”

The Stranger stared at Linda, then smiled.

“Karma. An interesting concept.” He shrugs. “Perhaps you’re right. But if you are are, that will be then. We are in the
now.
In the now, I start counting.” He paused. “It’s going to be a measured count. Slow heartbeats. You have until I get to five.”

“The last thing I’ll be thinking of is going to be you. You dying a bad death.”

The words were worthless, they’d change nothing, but they were the last resistance she could offer. The Stranger didn’t even appear to have heard her.

“One,” he counted.

Linda forced herself to turn away from her rage. To look at the gun he’d placed on the floor.

So this is it.

Extraneous things began to fade. It was if someone had turned down the volume on life. She could hear the beating of her heart and The Stranger’s slow count.

One was over. Then would come Two. Then Three. Then Four. And then…? Should she let herself hear Five? Or should she pull the trigger just before Five?

Why wait, don’t hesitate…

One was still echoing in her brain as she moved toward the gun. She could hear it vibrating in the air. She found herself in an elongation of time, as if each second was filled with a lifetime of sharp edges and she was rubbing up against all of them at once.

There’s more pain in life than pleasure. It was something she knew as an artist, a secret ingredient she added to the potpourri of her paintings or sculptures.

The sharp edges, that’s how we know we’re still in the game.

She knelt down on the carpet and picked up the weapon. She made sure not to point the barrel at The Stranger.

“Two.”

It shocked her as he said it, like a slap in the face.

The sting passed.

Linda marveled at the coldness of the steel. Its smooth polish. The heavy, brutal promise of the thing.

This end toward enemy, she thought, looking at the barrel.

Someone invented this. They dreamed it, sketched it, tossed and turned about it.
Let’s take a hunk of steel and fill it with steel-jacketed birds, and let’s send them exploding outward into other human beings.

“Three.”

Her awareness of the number was more clinical this time.

This weapon had a silencer on it. It was a gun that spoke of assassins and hit men and secret death.

It was just a piece of metal, though. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t human. You didn’t anthropomorphize a gun; you pointed it and fired.

What was it the marines said?
This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine…

“Four.”

Time stopped. It didn’t just slow—it froze. She was covered in ice. Trapped in amber.

And then, a strobe-flash.

Sam on the floor.

Strobe-flash.

Sam in her arms.

Strobe-flash.

Sam hanging up the phone. His face white. Looking at her. “My grandfather died.” Tears, and Sam in her arms again.

Strobe-flash.

Sam above her, eyes clouded with a mix of love and lust, face contorted with pleasure. She urged him to hold on, just another second, just another second, just another second…

This was that moment, she realized in wonder. That feeling you got as you hung on to the knife-edge precipice of near-orgasm, straining, trying to fend off the beckoning detonation and blinding light. The place where you stopped breathing, where your heart stopped beating, a moment of life and death.

Strobe-flash.

Sarah.

Sarah laughing.

Sarah crying.

Sarah living.

Oh.

God.

Sarah.

Linda realized in a final strobe-flash that she would miss this most of all: loving her daughter. She was pierced by a longing that was the sum of all the longings she’d ever felt or sculpted or painted.

If pain could be rain, this was an ocean of it.

It came out of her in a howl. It wasn’t something she could control. It sprang from her. A scream of agony to stop birds in flight.

Even The Stranger grimaced at the sound of this howl, just a little. It was a physical force.

SarahSamSarahSamSarahSam

Strobe-flash.

The gunshot came and went in the room, a silenced thunderclap.

Sarah stopped rocking for a moment.

The left side of Linda’s head exploded.

Linda had been wrong.

Her last thought hadn’t been about death.

It had been about love.

Hey, it’s me. Modern-day Sarah. I’m going to write about the past and then take a break and come back to the present in places. It’s the only way I’ll ever get through this.

About my mom—maybe her last thought was about fear, maybe it was about nothing, I don’t know. I can’t really know. She was there and Daddy was there and I was there and he was there, these things are true. He made her kill them both while I watched, this is true. Is it true that my mom was that noble at the end, alone and suffering inside her head? I don’t know.

But then again, neither do you.

I do know that my mom had a lot of love in her. She used to say that her family was a part of her art. She said that without me and Daddy, she’d still paint, but all the colors would be dark ones.

I like to think that she had some certainty, in that last moment, that what she was doing really would save my life, because it did, no matter what else happened later.

I don’t know for sure whether her last thought was about love.

But her last action was.

23

I CLOSE SARAH’S DIARY WITH A TREMBLING HAND AND GLANCE
over at my clock. It’s three
A.M.

I need a break. I’m only just into Sarah’s ordeal, and I already feel shaky and restless about it. She wasn’t wrong; she has a gift. Her writing is too vivid. The happiness of the way her life used to be contrasts with the bitter humor of her prologue. It makes me feel sad and dirty. Wrung out.

What did she call it?
A trip to the watering hole.

I can see it in my mind. An obscene full moon in the sky, dark things drinking
bad water
…

I shiver because I also feel the
fear
rising inside me. Bad things happening to Sarah, a short step away from bad things happening to Bonnie…

I glance over at Bonnie. She is deep in sleep, her face untroubled, one arm thrown across my stomach. I disengage myself from her, lifting her arm away with the same gentle care I’d give to a ladybug I was setting free in the backyard. Her mouth opens, once, and then she curls into herself and continues to sleep.

In the beginning, she’d wake up at the slightest change or motion. The fact that she can now keep sleeping eases some of my concerns about her. She’s getting better. She doesn’t talk yet, it’s true. But she’s getting better. Now if I can just keep her alive…

I slide out of the bed and tiptoe out of my bedroom, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. I reach into the cabinet above the refrigerator and find my secret vice and small shame. A bottle of tequila. Jose Cuervo, a friend of mine, just like the song.

I look at it and think: I am not an alcoholic.

I have spent time reviewing that statement, along the lines of “all crazy people say they’re not crazy.” I looked without giving myself the benefit of a doubt and arrived at that certainty: I am not an alcoholic. I drink two or three times a month. I never drink two days in a row. I get pleasantly buzzed but I never get truly shit-faced.

There’s a truth, though, a big, bellowing elephant in the room: I never drank for comfort until after Matt and Alexa died. Never, not once, no way.

It troubles me.

I had a great-uncle on my father’s side who was a drunk. He wasn’t the funny, friendly, charming drunk-uncle. He wasn’t the artistically inclined, self-tortured, pitiable drunk-uncle either. He was embarrassing and violent and mean. He reeked of booze and sometimes worse. He grabbed me by the arm at a family gathering one time with enough force to leave a bruise, put his boozy mouth about an inch from my terrified face (I was only eight) and proceeded to say something garbled and sly and disgusting that I’ve never fully deciphered.

The things we see as children make lasting impressions. That’s the picture of a drunk that always stuck with me. Anytime I was drinking and found myself heading toward
a little too much,
Great-Uncle Joe’s rheumy-eyed, unshaven face would pop into my head. I’d remember the smell of whisky and tooth decay and the cunning look in his eyes. I’d set down whatever I happened to be drinking at the time, and that would be it.

Not long after my family died, I found myself in the liquor section of the supermarket. I realized that I had never bought anything other than a bottle of wine, certainly not at a supermarket, definitely not in the middle of the afternoon. The tequila caught my eye, the song came to mind.

Screw it, I’d thought to myself.

I’d grabbed the bottle, paid for it without meeting the checker’s eyes, and hustled home.

I spent about ten minutes at home with my chin in my hand, gazing at the bottle, wondering if I was about to become a true cliché. If I was about to become Great-Uncle Joe, a chip off the old block.

Nah, I’d thought. No one pitied Great-Uncle Joe. They’ll pity you.

It went down good, it felt good, I liked it.

I didn’t get drunk. I got…floaty. That’s as far as I’ve ever taken it.

The problem, I think now, as I pour an inch (never more) into a glass, is that I continued this habit even after the agony of losing my family subsided. Now, it helps me with my fear, or in times of great pressure. The danger is in that arena: not drinking because I
want
to, but because I
need
to. I know that means it’s not a healthy habit I have here.

“To rationalization,” I murmur, toasting the air.

I down the glass in a single gulp and it feels like I just swallowed paint stripper or fire, but it’s a good feeling, putting pressure behind my eyes and delivering an almost instantaneous feeling of contentment. Which is the point. Contentment is so much harder to come by than joy, I’ve always thought. A single shot of tequila does it, for me.

“Jose Cuervo, da do do do dah dah,” I sing in a whisper-voice.

I consider a second shot, but decide against it. I cap the bottle and replace it in the cabinet. I rinse the glass, taking care to get rid of any lingering smell. More tiny red flags, I know: drinking alone, hiding it. In the end, I have to accept that, rationalized or not, my drinking isn’t out of control, and hope that I’ll recognize it if it ever becomes so.

I consider the moment. Why is Sarah’s tale getting so under my skin? Why the need to run to Mr. Cuervo right now? It’s a terrible story, but I’ve heard terrible stories before. Hell, I’ve
lived
terrible stories. Why is this one hitting me so hard?

Bonnie’s already nailed it: because Sarah is Bonnie, and Bonnie is Sarah. Bonnie is a painter, Sarah is a writer, both have lost parents, both are dark and damaged. If Sarah is doomed, does that mean that Bonnie is too? These similarities stoke my fears. Fear is what I struggle with most, these days.

I had played down the actual level of my terrors about Bonnie when I had talked to Elaina. The fear, when it comes, surpasses mere discomfort. I have hyperventilated. I’ve locked the bathroom door and crouched on the floor, arms around my knees, shaking with panic.

Posttraumatic stress is what a shrink would probably diagnose. I imagine that’s accurate. But I’m not interested in talking my way through this. I’m going to suffer my way through it, and hope that I don’t screw up Bonnie along the way.

I find what works best is to divert my thoughts in these moments, to think of something, anything else. What flies into my mind this time isn’t particularly helpful.

1 for U two 4 me, babe.

Why, Matt? I made my peace with Alexa. Why can’t I make my peace with you? Why can’t I forget about it?

He shakes his head.

Because you’re you. You have to know. It’s how you’re built, how God or whoever made you.

He’s right, of course. It’s a truth that applies to everything: Sarah’s diary, 1 for U two 4 me, the future. It’s one of the things that drives me forward, that helps me navigate through my fears: the desire to see how the story ends. Bonnie’s story, the next victim’s story. Whatever.

What about my story?

Quantico. The second elephant in the middle of my personal room. It appears as I think of it, all sad-eyed and wise. I stroke its gray skin and realize what about it bothers me.

That it doesn’t bother me enough.

Here I am, I realize, offered a plum because my face won’t look right on a poster. Here I am, considering a move that would separate me from the only family I have left, that would end a new and possibility-filled relationship with Tommy, that would pack away this house and all its memories for good—and all I can feel is a sense of opportunity.

Considering leaving my friends and the life I’ve known should be tearing me apart. Instead, I am ambivalent. Why?

It’s not like things haven’t been getting better. Packing away Matt and Alexa’s things is progress. No more nightmares is progress. Sharing even a small part of myself with a man other than Matt is progress. Why don’t I seem to care more?

Enlightenment evades me for now, but I realize here, at last, is the discomfort I’d been looking for. Maybe I’ve been fooling myself. Maybe what I’d thought was emotional growth was simply me learning to walk in spite of my disabilities.

Maybe the parts of me designed to feel most deeply have been injured beyond repair.

That doesn’t explain the booze now, does it?

With that it’s time to shove the elephant away. He goes quietly, but stares at me with those wise, sad eyes that say,
It’s true, we elephants have
long
memories to go with our
long
trunks, but no tusks here, even though memories can have
long
teeth.

I lick my own teeth and search for contentment, but I can already tell that both it and sleep will be absent.

Contentment…

Wait, elephant,
I cry.
Come back.

He does, because he’s my elephant after all. He stares at me with those patient eyes.

I just realized why. It’s because for all the progress I’ve made…I’m still not happy. You know?

He touches me with his trunk. Looks at me with those wise, sad eyes. He does know.

I’m not sad or suicidal, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy.

Memories, yes,
the elephant’s wise, sad eyes say,
memories can have long teeth.

Yes,
I think,
and the happy memories have the longest teeth of all.

That’s the problem: I’ve known true happiness. Real, fulfilling, down-to-the-bone, close-to-the-soul happiness. Feeling “okay” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s as if I was on a drug that made the world glow and now that I’m off it, now that I’m going cold turkey, it’s not that the world is
bad,
per se—but it doesn’t
glow,
dammit.

I’m not confident that Tommy or Elaina or Callie or the J-O-B or even Bonnie will make me happy in that way again. I cherish them all, but I mistrust their ability to fill the void, to bring back the glow. Ugly and selfish but true.

That’s why Quantico appeals to me. A nuclear changeup, a mushroom cloud of “different,” perhaps that’s what I really need. A raw and brutal break to shake the foundation and rattle the rafters of
me.

The elephant plods off without being asked. I can talk to my metaphors without shame when I swallow tequila, it seems.

Elephant,
I think,
thy name is “Not-Happy.” Or maybe, “No-Glow.”

Will Quantico solve that?

Who the fuck knows? I want a cigarette.

I sigh and resign myself to wakefulness. Time to shove aside the personal and drown myself in the professional. It’s an old solution, but a faithful one. It doesn’t
glow,
exactly, but it’s guaranteed to banish the elephants that ail you.

I plod back upstairs and grab my notes and return to the living room. I sit on the couch and try to organize my thoughts.

I take the page titled
PERPETRATOR
and add to it:
PERPETRATOR AKA “THE STRANGER.”

I think about what I’ve read so far in the diary. I begin to write, my notes now less structured and more extemporaneous.

He was caused pain = he’s causing others pain. Revenge.

The question remains, though: Why sarah?

The logical suspicion would be that he’s making Sarah pay for something her parents did. But he told Sam and Linda that they were
not
at fault.
It’s not your fault, but your death will be my justice.
Was Sarah simply chosen at random?

I shake my head. No. There is a connection, and it’s not imaginary. I feel as though some aspect of it is staring me right in the face. Something about who he was speaking to…

I sit up straight, suddenly energized.

If Sarah’s account was accurate, The Stranger was speaking to
Linda
when he said,
Your death will be my justice
.

Linda specifically.

A phrase I had heard earlier today comes back to me:

The Father and the daughter…

Revenge isn’t random and he loves his messages. That wasn’t a slip of the tongue.

I write.

What if the object of revenge goes back another generation? He said to Sarah yesterday, while he was flicking blood onto her, “The Father and the daughter and the Holy Spirit.” He told Linda Langstrom, “It’s not your fault, but your death will be my justice.” Could we be talking about Linda’s father? Sarah’s grandfather?

I read it back to myself and experience that flush of energy again.

I’m in my home office, faxing the pages containing my notes to James. I didn’t call him; James will hear the fax and wake up. He’ll be pissed and grumble about it, but he’ll read them regardless. I need him to know what I know.

The grandfather.

It feels, if not certain, at least very possible.

The machine beeps to let me know it’s done and I go back downstairs. I check the clock. Five
A.M.
Time marches on.

I want the morning to come, and I want it here now, dammit!

A thought comes to me.

Sarah said no one’s believed her about The Stranger. Why? From what I’ve read so far, that makes no sense.

I glance over to the diary pages waiting on the coffee table. I glance at the clock and the hours I have left to burn.