They Kill, page 25
She’d decided to tell the police the truth. They’d undoubtedly think she was crazy and throw her ass into a mental hospital, but that was okay. She felt that lying would be dishonoring the memories of the innocent people who had died this day. Besides, she could use the rest she’d get in a hospital.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t—
And then it hit her. It was quiet. The sirens had stopped.
She went to the front door, opened it, and looked outside. She saw Randall’s car in front of the oak tree in the yard, its front end crumpled. Stuart’s Camaro was parked on the street, the driver’s side door hanging open. Stuart’s decapitated body lay in the yard, his head some distance away. When the hell had all this happened? Probably when she’d been in bed with Mandy. A nuclear bomb could’ve detonated outside then and she wouldn’t have noticed. One thing she didn’t see: police vehicles. Maybe the sirens she’d heard hadn’t been coming here. Maybe Marc hadn’t managed to call 911 before he died after all. She’d have to do it herself. She’d left her phone at ArtWorks, and it was so much molten slag now. Her parents still had a landline, though. The phone was in the kitchen, and she could call from there.
She closed the door and headed for the kitchen, but when she entered it, she stopped and stared. A man with long blond hair dressed in a black suit sat in the breakfast nook, two mugs of fresh coffee sitting on the table before him.
“Nice to finally meet you, Sierra. My name is Corliss, and we have a lot to talk about.”
* * *
Corliss gestured for her to take the other seat at the small table. Her mom’s seat. He was sitting in her father’s.
She didn’t move.
“You have no need to fear me,” Corliss said. “I have no intention of harming you. In fact, I’ve come to help you. And you needn’t worry about the police arriving and interrupting us. I’ve frozen time, so we can talk as long as we wish undisturbed.”
Still she didn’t move.
“I can explain everything that’s happened today. More, I can tell you how to fix it. But first, you need to sit down, sip some coffee – I made yours with cream and sugar, just the way you like it – and listen to what I have to say.”
He gestured once more to her mom’s empty seat.
Sierra considered for a moment, but then she started forward. What was one more weird experience on top of everything else that had happened today?
She sat, but she didn’t touch the coffee. It smelled wonderful, though, and she felt guilty for reacting like that. How could she enjoy anything after all the death she’d witnessed?
“Because life goes on,” Corliss said, as if reading her thoughts. “Well, your life anyway. You’re the last soldier standing, Sierra. If this were a slasher film, you’d be considered the final girl. But you’re so much more than a mere survivor. Or at least, you could be.”
Sierra looked at her coffee. Not only would it taste great, but as weary as she was, she could use the energy boost.
Fuck it.
She picked up the mug and took a long, satisfying drink. After she was done, she held onto the mug with both hands. Its warmth was comforting.
“I dreamed about you last night,” she said. “I watched you bring Jeffrey back. And I saw you earlier, on the street across from ArtWorks. Before the fire.”
“Yes.”
Despite his urging that she should drink her coffee, he hadn’t touched his.
She had a difficult time not staring at the man’s jacket. It was almost as if instead of being made from cloth, it was fashioned out of space, of distance. Looking at it was like looking into a night sky where stars had never shone. Its darkness seemed to go on forever, and part of her wanted to join with that nothingness, to hurl herself into its oblivion and travel through the silent dark for all eternity. The effect was beyond hypnotic, and she had to keep tearing her gaze away from the jacket and focusing on Corliss’s eyes.
“Who are you and what the hell do you want?” she demanded. “Are you responsible for all this fucking insanity? Did you resurrect Jeffrey, and if so, why?”
Corliss smiled, and she didn’t like the look of his sharp lizard teeth.
“Those are a lot of questions. I did indeed restore your brother to life – of a sort – and I initiated the transformations your other friends experienced. They made their own choices after that, although I admit I manipulated events now and again to help things along. As for who I am, I’ve already told you. I’m Corliss. My people are known by many names in many places. The Unhallowed, the Children of the Gyre, Nightfears, the Darkblooded, and more. But we refer to ourselves simply as the Multitude. It is our sacred purpose to help break down reality so that it can more swiftly and efficiently be processed into nonexistence. In short, we predigest Entropy’s food for it.”
Sierra looked at him for a moment, then said, “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Corliss shrugged. “It’s a difficult concept to grasp at the best of times, and you’ve been through a great deal today. Unfortunately, you’re not finished yet. My people are powerful, but we’re not immortal. How could we be? We serve Entropy, do we not? In the end, the Gyre takes all, even us. So from time to time, when our ranks grow thin, we go on a recruitment drive, for lack of a better term. We identify potential candidates who might make effective additions to our ranks, and then we conduct field tests to determine their suitability. You are one of those we’ve chosen, Sierra, and today is your test.”
Sierra’s head was spinning.
“You’re saying everything that’s happened today – people becoming monsters, people dying – was all part of some fucking job interview?”
“Essentially.”
Anger blazed hot and sudden in Sierra. As she’d feared, she was the center of all the blood, pain, and horror of this day, but she never could’ve imagined it would be for so ridiculous a reason.
“What makes you think I’d make a good…whatever the hell you are?”
From the way he’d described it, it sounded like his people were nothing more than a race of cosmic maggots feasting on the corpse of the universe.
In response, Corliss reached across the table and gently touched his index finger to her forehead. A memory rose from the depths of her mind then, one she’d buried long ago and never wanted to unearth.
“No,” she whispered, but she couldn’t stop it from coming.
Chapter Fourteen
Sierra is six years old.
Her parents have brought her to her grandmother’s house in the country. She’s not sure where it is compared to her house in Bishop Hill. All she knows is that it takes forever to drive here. She supposes it could be all the way on the other side of the world.
Jeffrey didn’t come this time. He’s in Boy Scouts, and his troop went camping this weekend. She wanted to go too, go so bad, and she cried before he left and cried even more after he was gone. It isn’t fair that she couldn’t go. Just because ‘Scouts’ has the word ‘Boy’ in front of it is a dumb reason to leave little sisters behind.
Her parents are inside the house, which doesn’t look much different to her house in town despite being in The Country. She wishes Grandma and Grandpa lived on a farm with animals and a lot of land. Then it would’ve been fun to visit. But they don’t. Their backyard isn’t much bigger than hers, and while they have bigger trees on their property, there’s no barn and no animals, except Rusty, a stray cat her grandmother feeds whenever he comes around and who always runs away when she tries to pet him. There are houses on either side of theirs too. It seems to her that The Country isn’t much different to Bishop Hill, except it’s even more boring.
It’s summertime, but instead of being sunny, the sky is overcast. It rained this morning, and Mom said it’ll probably rain again and Sierra is supposed to come back inside if it does. But the grown-ups are playing cards at the kitchen table – and drinking what her dad calls ‘adult beverages’ – and that’s no fun. Grandma and Grandpa don’t have any video games for her to play, and Mom won’t let her watch TV or use a computer without grown-up supervision. So she’ll stay outside even if starts raining – as long as the adults let her get away with it, that is.
The air is humid from the rain, and the grass is damp. Sierra is wearing flip-flops and she likes swishing her feet through the wet grass, likes the way the moisture feels on her bare skin. She does this for five minutes, tracing a figure eight in the yard, before she tires of it. She wanders around the yard, trying to find something – anything – interesting. She’s at the side of the house, looking at a large sticker bush that’s grown up against the foundation and wondering what it would feel like to wrap her hand around it and squeeze as hard as she can, when she sees the toad.
It’s crouched near the drain spout, hunkered down as if trying to make itself invisible. It’s big, about the size of her hand, and she wonders if she can catch it before it can hop away. She’s never tried to catch a toad, never even seen one in real life, but she instinctively knows that if she moves too fast, she’ll scare it. She inches forward. Closer. Closer. She reaches out her hand…. She expects the toad to leap away at the last instant, but it doesn’t. It remains still as a stone, and when she wraps her fingers around it she makes an excited squeeee sound.
She lifts the toad up to her face to examine it. She’s surprised by how light it is, and how squishy too, especially its sides. It feels like the toad is a little warty bag filled with water. She wonders what would happen if she squeezed it, really hard. Would it pop like a water balloon? What would come out of it? Blood? Guts?
She squeezes it, just a little, just to see what happens. Nothing does. The toad looks at her with its black-marble eyes. She wonders what it thinks when it sees her. Does it think she’s a giant? Does it think she’s a monster?
Something happens inside her then. She doesn’t know what it is, can’t put words to it, but somewhere in her mind something switches off. Or maybe on. She looks at the toad, and she doesn’t see an animal now. She sees an object, a thing, a play toy with which she can do whatever she wants.
And she wants to see the toad fly.
She carries the toad into the backyard, and when she reaches a suitable place – one where the grass isn’t tall or thick – she stops. She looks at the toad one more time, then she hurls it straight up into the air. She expects it to spin around as it soars upward, but it remains level with the ground, as if it’s levitating under its own power. When it reaches the apex of its flight, it hangs there for a split second, just long enough for Sierra to think it might stay there. But of course it doesn’t. It plummets, tumbling on its way down, and it hits the ground with a sound like a beanbag. It bounces, but not as much as she expects, and then comes to a rest on its back and doesn’t move.
She feels nothing.
She walks over to the toad and kneels to inspect it. She’s only six, so she didn’t throw it all that high, and the toad has survived its landing. She can see it breathing, but it doesn’t right itself, doesn’t try to escape. It’s almost as if it wants to be thrown again.
Sierra obliges.
She throws it three more times, and each is the same. Up, pause, down, thwack. And after the last time the toad’s left side is swollen and bulgy, and gray goop is leaking from its mouth. She’s impressed that the toad can take so much punishment and still be alive. She wonders how much more it can take. Not much, judging by its current condition. One more throw, maybe two, and it will be over.
For the merest fraction of an iota of an instant, she sees someone standing close by – a man dressed in a strange black suit with long blond hair. He smiles at her approvingly and then disappears, having come and gone so quickly her conscious mind doesn’t register his presence. But her subconscious mind? That’s a different story.
She reaches for the toad, intending to send it skyward for what might well be the final time, when whatever switch was flipped inside her flips back. She freezes, stunned by the realization of what she’s done. A maelstrom of emotions rips through her. Shame, revulsion, self-hatred, sorrow…. Tears stream down her face, and she sobs so hard she can barely breathe. Her hand trembles as she picks up the toad and carries it back to the spot near the drainpipe where she found it. She puts it down gently, hoping that it will recover from what she’s done to it, knowing that it won’t.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
Then she turns and runs away. She doesn’t go into the house, doesn’t seek the comfort of Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa. If Jeffrey was here she’d go to him. He might be her big brother and he can be a real pain sometimes, but when she’s upset, when she really hurts, he’s always there, and he always listens, and he never judges.
But he’s not here, so she runs down the driveway, onto the road, and keeps running. It will be a half hour before the adults realize she’s missing and call 911. A state trooper will find her an hour later, walking because she’s too exhausted to run anymore. But she’ll still be crying, and she’ll be whispering “I’m sorry” over and over.
* * *
When Sierra came out of the memory, she was shaking as if in the grip of arctic cold.
“I was just a kid,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t mean it!”
“Of course you did. Despite what people like to believe, none of us are born with empathy. We innately understand the true nature of existence, that in the end everything is nothing but food for the Gyre. We have to be taught to believe otherwise, to pretend that other lives matter as much as our own, that others’ pain is our pain. It’s only a comforting illusion, of course, but one that helps most people get through their lives and fulfill their ultimate purpose with the least amount of fuss. It’s sad, really, but if it keeps the cattle content….” He trailed off then finally took a sip of his coffee. “Like the majority of people, you’ve created a shell identity around your true self. But unlike most, your core remains intact. It’s a spark that can, under the right circumstances, be fanned into a glorious dark flame.”
Something else about the memory of the toad came back to her then.
“You were there,” she said. “I saw you, just for an instant.”
Corliss smiled and nodded.
“We research our recruits most thoroughly. So, let’s discuss what comes next. If you want events to continue from this point on, I’ll allow time to restart and go on my way. The police will arrive and you’ll have quite a bit of explaining to do. Your shell personality will remain intact, and whatever the rest of your life holds – I’m betting on a long prison stay, given the way you bashed in Mandy’s head – you will still be you, and you will never hear from me again.”
“I sense an or coming,” Sierra said.
“Or you can move on to the last phase of the test. If you do, you’ll have a chance to prevent the events of this day from occurring, saving numerous lives in the process.”
“Are you serious? You can do that?”
“I am indeed serious, but only you can do it, Sierra. If you so choose, I will send you back in time exactly one year, and you’ll have a chance to stop the accident that claimed Jeffrey’s life from ever happening.”
Sierra couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Save Jeffrey’s life, and by doing so save everyone else who’d died today? Her parents, Marc, Karolyn, and all the rest? How could she say no to that?
“Well, you won’t be saving everyone,” Corliss said. “In order to save your brother, you will need to kill Grace, Stuart, Randall, and Mandy, but as they were a year ago. Perfectly ordinary humans with no idea of what they’ll become one day. But the seeds of their monstrous selves will be inside them, and by killing them, you’ll prevent them from ever becoming those creatures – which means everyone they killed today will still be alive. But let me make this very clear: killing the four of them is the only way you’ll get a chance to save your brother. If you try to do it without killing the others first, all your attempts will fail. You still might fail even if you do kill them, but that’s the only way saving Jeffrey will be possible.”
Sierra had allowed herself to feel hope when she’d first heard Corliss’s offer, but now she realized she’d been a fool to listen to him.
“This is bullshit. It’s all part of the sick game you’ve been playing since this all started.”
“Sick depends entirely on one’s point of view, but I assure you my offer is a legitimate one. I’m not guaranteeing you success, but I am giving you the opportunity for it.”
“If you’re so fucking powerful, why not go back in time and change things so all this madness never happens?”
Corliss smiled wide, revealing his disturbingly sharp teeth once more.
“Because that, my dear, is not the deal. You have two choices and two choices only. Do nothing and things remain as they are, or go back and kill the others and have a chance at saving Jeffrey and preventing all the deaths that have taken place this day. That’s it, and you need to choose now. As they say in commercials, this is a limited time offer.”
Sierra wanted to tell Corliss to go fuck himself, but she didn’t. Instead, she found herself considering what he’d told her. She believed everything he’d said, about who and what he was, and what he could do. She’d experienced too many bizarre things today to disbelieve him. And deep down, maybe in that cold emotionless core he’d spoken of, she recognized the truth of his words. So the question wasn’t could he make good on his offer. The question was could she do it? Could she kill four people to save dozens of others, among them her brother and parents? From what Corliss said, if she succeeded, the events of this day would never occur. And it wasn’t as if she’d never killed anyone. Mandy’s blood was still literally on her hands, as well as other parts of her body. But she’d killed Mandy in self-defense. If she went back in time one year, Mandy – along with Stuart, Grace, and Randall – wouldn’t be monsters. They’d be innocent people, and she’d be the monster stalking and killing them. But she wouldn’t be killing them for her own pleasure. She’d be doing it to protect those who they would kill one day. It would be a preemptive strike. She recognized this line of reasoning as bullshit, though. Killing was killing, regardless of the reason. But if she had the chance to prevent people dying, didn’t she have the moral responsibility to take it, regardless of the cost?
