Read I Don't Want To Kill You Online
Authors: Dan Wells
I Don't Want To Kill You (17 page)
‘Then I do my civic duty and tell the police about the young man who told me he wanted to kill a woman in town.’
I breathed deeply.
Just kill him. Just take him now, while he’s not expecting it – knock him back against the wall, crack his neck against the chair. Hide him in the basement. No one will ever know a thing.
Just kill him. Just take him now, while he’s not expecting it – knock him back against the wall, crack his neck against the chair. Hide him in the basement. No one will ever know a thing.
‘Give me a week,’ I told him. ‘Just one week.’
‘You said I can’t trust you.’
I met his gaze. ‘You can trust me for a week.’
He paused a moment, eyes flicking as he thought. Finally he nodded. ‘One week, and you come back here. But if you hurt anyone, I swear to God your torment will not end in this life.’
I took a breath. ‘One week.’ I opened the door and disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 12
I drove home via a long, convoluted route, looking over my shoulder for anyone following me. Everywhere I looked I saw movement in the corners of my eyes, shapes and shadows that I knew were watching me, hunting me, and then I turned to see them and they disappeared.
I told him too much.
I felt sick and nervous, and I couldn’t stop shaking.
I told him too much.
I felt sick and nervous, and I couldn’t stop shaking.
Parking several blocks from my house, I walked into a stranger’s backyard and climbed over the fence into the forest beyond. It was a haze of dark on dark, shadows and shapes barely distinguishable from the smothering blackness of night. I waited, watching and listening with every ounce of concentration, but no one followed. I was alone.
I felt my way through the trees, passing darkened houses on one side and the endless forest on the other, until I reached the parking lot of the mortuary. No one was waiting; there were no police cars, no slavering monsters. It was nearly two in the morning. I went inside, locked the door tightly, and collapsed on my bed.
The religious theory made sense: all three killings could be the work of a self-styled holy avenger. But why would Nobody, a demon, want to punish sinners? She wasn’t here on her own agenda. I had called her, and she had come to hunt me. Everything she did had to make sense through that lens.
Did she see me as a sinner, too? I’d killed her friends.
There were two main possibilities: either this was part of a complex plan to figure out who I was and take her vengeance, or she was merely passing time while she searched for me in other ways. Each demon I’d met thus far was missing something – they had no identity, or no body, or no emotions. They killed because it helped them to fill that hole, even if only for a little while. This demon wasn’t killing people because they were sinners, but because believing they were sinners gave the killing some kind of vital meaning in her mind. It was the only way she knew to try to fix the holes in her soul.
I needed to know what the victims’ guilt meant to her, which meant I needed to know exactly what she thought they were guilty of. Mr Coleman was guilty of looking at underage porn, so he was killed and his eyes – the offending organs – were removed. It was relatively clear and simple. But what had the other two victims done?
Neither Pastor Olsen nor Mayor Robinson had lost any extra body parts – just the hands and tongue. It seemed to serve as a baseline. It might be that the hands and tongue were taken from every sinner, regardless of their specific crime, and an extra part was taken from those who were especially evil.
The tongue was easy enough to guess at: it represented what people said. But what had the pastor said to invoke the Handyman’s wrath? What had the Mayor said? None of the three victims had very much in common when it came to speaking: one spoke about religion, another about politics, and the last taught math in school. The Mayor and the teacher maybe overlapped on the subject of economics, but the pastor certainly didn’t-not unless he’d preached a sermon on supply and demand or something.
Preaching. Preaching and teaching . . .
Maybe the common overlap had nothing to do with what they said, but to whom they said it. All three of them were in positions of authority. All three had made a living talking to others. They made plans for others; they guided others’ lives. The Mayor was not an actual teacher, like the pastor and Mr Coleman, but he held a huge influence over the entire town. When you boiled it down, all three men were leaders.
That made Father Erikson an obvious target – him and every other pastor and schoolteacher in town – but so far they’d been safe. The demon wasn’t killing indiscriminately; the mere fact that she posed the bodies so carefully meant that she was trying to teach us something. She had a message, and she wanted it to be heard and understood. We’d missed her point on the first few killings, so now she was taking more care; that’s why she’d ‘signed’ the Mayor’s corpse with bloody plastic wings, marking herself as an Angel of Death, and it was why she’d made the lesson even more obvious by taking Coleman’s eyes. That meant the next victim would be similar to Mr Coleman: a community leader with a sordid past, so no one would miss the point. All I had to do was find the most likely candidate and then lie in wait, ready to catch Nobody on her way to the kill. It was perfect.
But it wasn’t.
Father Erikson had cut me right to the core, obliterating all the careful lies I’d built up to protect myself from the truth: that I too was a killer, no different from any other. But I couldn’t just stop: there was simply no way, no physical way, that I could turn myself around and walk away from this. If I didn’t stop Nobody, she’d keep killing – and that would make me responsible; and I refused to be responsible for any innocent deaths.
If I could figure out who the next target was, and stop Nobody before she got there, I’d be saving lives –
if
everything went perfect. Of course, nothing ever went perfect. But if I could think of a way to involve the police, they could move in first and protect the target. I wouldn’t have to kill.
if
everything went perfect. Of course, nothing ever went perfect. But if I could think of a way to involve the police, they could move in first and protect the target. I wouldn’t have to kill.
But I want to kill.
No. One thing at a time. I identify the target, I tell the police, and then I can find out if I’m right or not without putting anyone at risk. Then the next time, I can do it myself. I can be ready. I can kill the demon.
If the demon kept to her pattern, the next death would be in two weeks: late at night on Wednesday the twenty-second, or early the next morning on Thursday the twenty-third. It seemed like a lot of time to find one sinner, but it wasn’t.
There were an awful lot of sinners in Clayton County.
The next afternoon I parked in front of the Jensens’ house and turned off the engine, too nervous to go inside. Marci’s dad was the only policeman I knew personally, so if I was going to present my plan to the police it had to be through him. We’d talked before – he knew that I knew what I was talking about, and he trusted my opinion. But if Marci hated me as much as I thought she did – or even if she simply didn’t like me any more – my chances of talking to him were slim to none.
Not to mention the possibility, still lurking in the back of my mind, that he was the demon. Just because I’d figured out why the demon was killing didn’t mean I knew who the demon was – and if Nobody could steal bodies and identities like Crowley had, she could be anybody. Still, even if Officer Jensen was a demon, he hadn’t killed me yet, and now that I knew to be suspicious I could keep my eyes open and try to stay one step ahead. The only way to figure out his plan, if he had one, was to observe him as much as I could. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.
It was a cooler day than usual, and I shivered as I walked up the steps and knocked on their door. It was open, as usual, warm air spilling out through the screen. I heard the common noises of Marci’s family – a loud TV, children shouting, footsteps pounding up and down the stairs and running through the halls. I waited only a moment before Marci appeared and stood behind the screen. Her face was blank.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey.’ Despite all the time I’d spent preparing for this visit - planning my pitch to Officer Jensen, and my escape strategy if he turned out to be a demon after all – I had no idea what to say to Marci. I stood still, feeling robotic again, watching her face for some sign that I could grab on to and know what to do. She was looking off to the side, avoiding my face.
I remembered her crying, remembered how sad she was, and tried to force myself to empathise through pure force of will. Nothing came. Instead I fell back on my old standby: faking it. What would a normal person say to a sad friend?
‘Are you okay?’ I asked. It sounded clumsy, too loud and direct. I watched her carefully for a response, and she nodded.
‘Yeah. You?’ She looked up, catching my eyes with hers. They were red from crying. She hadn’t been in school all day, and I wondered if she’d been crying straight through since last night.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
What would a normal person say next?
I was no good at this. Just like before, the first time I’d sat down and talked in her kitchen, I knew I couldn’t pretend with her. I couldn’t be somebody else. I took a deep breath.
What would a normal person say next?
I was no good at this. Just like before, the first time I’d sat down and talked in her kitchen, I knew I couldn’t pretend with her. I couldn’t be somebody else. I took a deep breath.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m not very good with people. I don’t know how to talk, and I don’t know how to react, and I definitely don’t know how to comfort anyone. I know you were really sad last night, and I wish I’d been able to do something about it, but I couldn’t. Sorry.’
She started crying again. ‘No, no,’ she said, and I braced myself for the worst. ‘I was such a mess last night, I was hysterical, it’s not your fault at all.’ She paused. ‘After the way I treated you, I didn’t think you’d ever come back.’
That was not what I had expected.
She put a hand on the screen. ‘You want to come in?’
I hesitated just a fraction of a second. ‘Sure.’
She pushed open the screen and I started to step in, but she caught me mid-step and drew me into a tight hug, wrapping her arms around me, burying her face in my neck. Her tears were wet against my skin, and I could feel her chest against mine, her heart pumping steadily.
‘I don’t hate you at all,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry you would ever think that.’
Slowly I put my arms up around her, touching her uncertainly. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d hugged someone in the last eight years – I had no idea what to do. I patted her a couple of times before letting my arms fall still and simply hold her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sniffing and pulling away. ‘I’m gonna get snot all over you. Come on in.’
The phone rang twice before Father Erikson picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘Don’t call the police.’ I was on the payphone by the truck stop; I hadn’t bothered to disguise my voice.
‘Is this John?’
‘Yes.’
‘We made a deal, John. You talk to my friend, or I call the police. I can’t just let this slide.’
I’d worked this out beforehand, planning my moves carefully to throw him off my trail. ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’
He paused. ‘It’s just a therapist, John, not a psychiatrist. She’ll just help you work some things out.’
She.
I’d looked up every therapist and psychological counsellor in town, and of the three I found, two were female: Mary Adams, a recovery counsellor at the hospital, and Pat Richardson, the high-school counsellor. Which one was his friend?
I’d looked up every therapist and psychological counsellor in town, and of the three I found, two were female: Mary Adams, a recovery counsellor at the hospital, and Pat Richardson, the high-school counsellor. Which one was his friend?
‘I’m not trying to back out of the deal,’ I said. ‘I’m just . . . I don’t want anyone to think I’m crazy. You know?’ I tried to sound embarrassed and sincere, but I was never good at faking emotion. Was he buying it? ‘I’ve never had therapy before. I’m scared.’ ‘It’s nothing to be afraid of,’ he said, and I tried to read his voice. Reassuring? Impatient? I really hated talking on the phone, but sometimes it was the only safe way. He couldn’t see me or touch me, and had no idea where I was. ‘She’s completely discreet; no one you know will even see you talking to her.’
I smiled.
That means it’s not the school counsellor.
Dr Adams at the hospital was an odd choice, given her specialty, but I could make this work.
That means it’s not the school counsellor.
Dr Adams at the hospital was an odd choice, given her specialty, but I could make this work.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I know it’s not our deal, but I already took your advice, and I got an appointment with a counsellor at the hospital. It’s the only place I could think of to go. Please, just let me talk to her – don’t call the police.’
He said nothing, and I knew he was thinking it over. He knew I was potentially volatile, and now he thought I was already seeing the counsellor he wanted to introduce me to, so why force the issue any further? It wouldn’t hold him off forever, but it would give me more time. A week, at least.
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