What the Dead Can Do, page 20
He’d Googled gliomas, meningiomas, astrocytomas, and all the other -omas. Enough of what he was experiencing matched up pretty well with the details online. But it was patently abhorrent how often idiots performed self-diagnoses like that. You’ve got a problem you don’t understand? You go to an expert. So, there he was: waiting to see an expert. If the doctor ruled out the various tumors he’d read about, he’d move on to a priest.
It’d been three days since Aidan took back control of his body in front of that school. He only gained that control after falling into the concrete wall of the building’s staircase. Other adults, holding hands with their children, filed past him while he struggled to steady himself. He hadn’t stuck around to learn more and considered it lucky to have been able to walk away from the property on his own. His memory of what he’d seen occur while under its spell was fuzzier than it had been with the other episode inside the bodega, but he was pretty certain that he—or rather something using his body—had caused an incident that wouldn’t soon be forgotten.
Whatever it was inside of him, tumor or demon, its power was getting stronger.
Around his thirty-fifth birthday, he’d sworn off doctors because the last one tried to get him hooked on antidepressants. Big Pharma was good for a laugh, good for a rest, good for a thrill, but there was no prescription cure for his way of being. Of course, he had never owned up to his unquenchable bloodthirst with them. An inextinguishable flame of black hatred for the deserving wasn’t going to be pilled away, anyway. His thinking differed from the rest of the human species, a defect—what one might call it, if they didn’t have it—that had been apparent since early childhood.
Mom and Dad knew what he was, and he’d worked hard at honing in on an emotion that could pass as gratitude for their constant worry. Who was anyone to say if that feeling he had for their efforts was authentic or not? They had tried to solve him and had failed. But they tried, and as they say, all one can do is try. Divorce yourself from the consequences of your actions. Trying is plenty. The journey is the reward. Even a shitty one, he guessed. What a load.
Of course, addressing his shortcomings as a member of civilized society was easier these days. There were more theories, more specialists, and more research on the causes, external and peripheral. Plus, it was loads quicker to find the documentation of that research online. If they’d lived only a decade longer, his parents might have stumbled upon a cure. There were legitimate scientific reasons now, some more well-known than others, explaining why some men bent toward a life of killing for gratification. At a minimum, Mom and Dad might’ve liked to pick a hypothesis just to have some closure. As it was, they were dead, and if it wasn’t their constant searching for a fix to him that had exhausted them into their early graves, it was the related heartache of knowing they’d birthed an abomination and could not bring themselves to imprison him. Their love was unconditional. Even from her sickbed, Mom had gone on and on about how there was good in him somewhere; she told him she loved him with every fiber of her being.
“There’s time yet to put you on the right path, Aidan … to save you from yourself.” She closed her eyes the final time, still believing.
His own theory was cut-and-dried: He enjoyed killing, and God, in his infinite wisdom, had seen to it that some of his flock were meant for killing. To be honest, it was more of a belief than a theory, as it was certainly not provable. But he was what he was, and besides, wanting sluts dead didn’t make him unique. History was pocked with others. At best, what made him special was that he’d spent his adult life employing far more self-control than the repeat murderers whose stories made streaming services rich. At least he liked to think he was special for that reason. His current situation ran counter to the killer he hoped to die as: proficient, not famous, a reaper of only the deserving, not randoms. And no kids. Ever. No. Kids.
His reasons were his own, making the recent unauthorized trip of his body to the school that much more unnerving. The incident was the second time in a week that he’d quasi-watched himself harass a child. And the same child, which was odd. Bits and pieces of the interactions stabbed at his brain. In both instances, the memories came in like a hangover—a state of being he knew well from his days at Princeton. He’d tried to drink himself to death. His first murder, a hooker of no note, had done a real number on his confidence that semester. It hadn’t left him happy or sad. Emotionally, the end result had been so confusing that he talked himself into accepting that he’d been foolish and plain wrong about following his true calling. He had no business doing what he loved. As a student, that thinking probably hadn’t made him all that unique either. Thankfully, drinking yourself dead was harder than advertised. Practice, on the other hand, didn’t ever actually make perfect, not with murder, but it sure as hell made each kill that followed the last a lot easier. And in time, the gratification came. He considered himself a pro now, but even Michael Jordan had had stuff he needed to work on toward the end of his career. The key difference, Aidan thought, was that should a newsman ever ask him, he was perfectly OK with admitting that he didn’t have it all figured out.
Twenty-five years had passed since that suicide attempt. Personal improvement and the acceptance of his personality, beliefs, and his troubled spirit had come easily thanks to the hundreds of self-help books that still made up a good chunk of his personal library at home. The core principles behind authentic self, no matter how they were presented or who was presenting them, made good sense. He’d even mailed a few handwritten and carefully considered letters to his three favorite authors, all of them women, by the way, thanking them for the tools they provided and for helping guide him through some dark uncertainties about who he was meant to be in the world. Only one of those authors—or more likely a member of their PR team—had sent him back a typed form response along with a signed copy of their most recent book. Just their name, though, no personalization. Coincidentally, that expert’s twenty-something daughter went missing while attending Vassar just an hour and a half north of Stamford, Connecticut, where Aidan lived. To his knowledge, the girl was yet to be found, and while he hadn’t anything to do with her disappearance, he felt there was a certain poetic karma at play. The author hadn’t published a new book since, and that was fine. Much of what her book and the others held had long been coopted by corporations and influencers by then to help sell burgers, shoes, nicotine, and shiny lifestyles. The whole world was unwittingly self-helping their way into debt, but not Aidan, because he bettered himself the old-fashioned way: giving up time to actually earn it.
He’d been born a killer. This wasn’t a choice he’d made. Every child who leaves the womb faces the same dilemma. Genetics, geography, and the family you had or did not have was not a choice you got to make. To be a child was to be told what to be, where to be, how to be, and what to do. Even when children decided to rebel against that paradigm, the rebellion itself was not a choice, it’d been built in and was expected. His decision to spare children, no matter how petulant, repugnant, or ignorant they seemed, hadn’t been made because he couldn’t stomach killing them—he simply believed no child could ever qualify as deserving. They’d had no chance to choose—not really. When a child looks up to the heavens above and asks, “Why me,” they have every right to do so. They are anchored to a system that was created without their input. If, after turning eighteen, that same child had decided the best they could do was exchange hand-jobs for drugs behind the dive bars behind Anytown, USA, that was their choice. “Why me?” was no longer an unanswerable riddle. It had one, and only one, correct answer now: Because you decided this was who you were, and were therefore deserving of the end Aidan had in store for you. “Why me?” was exactly how all those experts made their millions with those books—not that he’d ever uttered it or thought it. Aidan had never felt that otherworldly forces were conspiring against him—well, that was until now—and possibly against the child, too.
If the child was in danger, more drastic measures might be necessary. His empathy for the boy, regardless of whether it was real or faked or somewhere in between, was considerably less important than regaining control of his body full-time in order to ensure that how he’d modeled his life as a killer remained intact. Eluding capture until he chose to stop killing or died of natural causes was the script he wanted to stick to. His body had interacted with two different women now. One at the store and one at the school. He had spoken long enough to both the boy’s mother and a teacher for either of them to provide details about his appearance to the police. Brooklyn detectives had easier crimes to solve and wouldn’t take any report made about a man who might be baiting kids with candy that seriously. At least not reports filed by upper-middle-class mothers. It was the most laughable of legends around abduction. Kids were easy enough to grab. You didn’t need to coax them with candy or puppies or pretend to be looking for one of their friends. Just snatch and go. That said, neighborhoods like the ones he’d been walked to were as nice as they were due to the collective paranoia of their residents. They reported anything and everything twenty-four-seven. The police rarely gave a damn, but on occasion, some newbie rookie might. They’d ask for security footage. He hadn’t done anything illegal at the store—probably he just looked like a junkie coming down hard—but being seen or discovered or analyzed in any way, no matter the interpretation, would be a consequence of a decision his possessor had made for him.
Oh, so you’re committing to possession, now?
Either way, any positive identification would be difficult. If the cops knocked on his door, he had perfectly logical answers to any questions they wanted to ask him. It wouldn’t be soon. There was plenty of time to come up with a whole set of grand excuses for being there.
Maybe you can tell them it was a tumor.
Reality hit him again. The smell. The magazines. The uncaring buzz of canned light.
A tumor would make more sense.
“Mr. Schaeffer, the doctor will see you now.”
In circumstances less dire, Aidan might have taken in the female physician’s assistant’s appearance, noted whether she had a wedding ring or no ring, and decided to mark her for observation. He might have followed up on that decision by stalking her to see if she was just pretending to be a decent human being or if she, like so many he’d observed before her, had addictions that she could only manage by debasing herself. What choices was she making in the world? But as he followed her through the hallway and to the examination room, his mind was preoccupied with a new idea: He was being punished. In fact, punishment was what he’d expected for most of his adult life. An eye for an eye, as it were. He’d robbed women of their dignity, their personhood, and their lives enough times to believe God’s wrath would find him eventually. Even if it was God who’d allowed him to be successful, if not legendary, as a killer thus far. He or she or it was a fickle bitch. But the thing inside him didn’t feel holy or pious.
Aidan wasn’t like one of these idiots who’d been recently polled and thought they could get the upper hand on a grizzly bear. And whenever he was under, so to speak—when that force inside of him had full control, it seemed far more fitful, unpredictable, and utterly determined than he believed any animal ever could be. It pained him to think it, but maybe he’d met his match, and for the first time since arriving at the doctor’s, he found himself rooting for a tumor.
19
NICOLE
Nicole took a seat and evaluated the strangers in the circle. The faces at the AA meeting in downtown Manhattan were as unrecognizable as she’d hoped they’d be when she left the house. In the heat of a moment they were having, Matthew had suggested she take a long walk to cool down. He hadn’t had to tell her twice. She let her anger carry her like a tsunami outside of her neighborhood, across the Brooklyn Bridge, onto John Street somewhere north of Manhattan’s Financial District, and down the steps of a church into its basement. They say if you don’t like a meeting, find another one. Without trying, she had, and the mix of grizzled old-timers in wifebeaters and perfectly coifed banker bros suggested it would be a real doozy at that.
It had been three days since the failed abduction attempt on Ethan. The kids were still going to school, with Matthew insisting that his taking them there and back himself was protection enough for now. During that time, he hadn’t explicitly said that he didn’t want her to leave the house, but when she tried to leave for a meeting with her home group the night before, he guilt-tripped her into staying home to watch a movie with the family. So far, his idea of the best path forward seemed centered on more hunkering down in that tiny shit condo—hoping that, like the reporters had eventually, this new problem with a fucking kidnapper would just go away.
The hour-and-a-half walk there hadn’t quieted her discontent. She desperately needed the meeting to start so that her mind might have a legitimate sixty-minute distraction from the spiraling thoughts about the kids, her husband, and the heated argument he and she had over ensuring Ethan and Emily remained safe and, to put it plainly, were never kidnapped. But so far, the volunteer hadn’t shown up to conduct the meeting, and their fight remained front and center.
After an early dinner, Em had taken Ethan to read in the family room. With the kids just out of earshot, Nicole boosted the volume of the Bluetooth speaker streaming NPR’s recap of that day’s news. She’d started with a reasonable suggestion and did so before Matthew opened his laptop. Because when he made that nightly transition to work mode, talking to him about anything important would have been less productive than spilling her guts to the dog.
“I don’t think we should keep sending the kids to school like everything’s normal.”
He rested his hand on the lid of his computer for a moment as if debating whether or not he wanted to engage. Then, he bent his head to one side until his neck went crack, the way he always did when he was about to act put off for having to be the calm one, the sensible one. As a drunk, that sound hadn’t bothered her much, but in sobriety, she found the snap to be as repulsive as what it foreshadowed. He hadn’t said anything yet, and she already felt sick to her stomach.
“We’re not acting like everything is normal. The police are involved; that’s not normal.”
He didn’t bother turning the kitchen chair around to engage with her further, and his hand started back toward his laptop. The frenzied husband from three nights ago was no more. Old Matthew had returned the very next morning. Mister Easy Peasy. Mister It’ll All Work Out. Mister You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About. Mister I’m Too Busy for Your Crazy. There was a time that would have been fair, but this was not the old her and not the old crazy.
“Don’t you fucking open that computer,” she said.
She was as surprised as he was by the command, but if that’s what it took to get his attention, so be it. He was damn well spun around in that chair to talk to her now, eyes on fire between the squint of appalled disbelief, and ready to lose his shit.
“Everything alright in there?” Em asked.
Neither of them answered right away.
“Yeah, everything alright?” Ethan repeated, brightly but thick with concern.
“We’re fine,” Matthew said. “But thank you for checking.”
Before her husband could use the interruption as another out, Nicole added, “Em, take Ethan upstairs and give him a bath, will you? I’ll be up in a minute to relieve you from duty.” The chuckle she made to help sell the ask was so phony.
“Fine,” Em replied. “So long as you two behave.”
So much of Nicole’s behavior and the things she said and did lately had felt insincere. Like an act. Her love for the kids was genuine, but this new version of her was having a hard time landing on a personality that comfortably matched her renewed enthusiasm for parenting.
“Get after it, thank you.”
She and Matthew stayed quiet until they heard the tub turn on upstairs.
“I don’t have time for this—”
“Fine,” she stopped him. “Don’t make the time for me, make it for them, goddammit.”
“I am, Nicole. Who’s walking them to and from school now? Me.”
“That was your decision—not mine. And it’s not enough, anyway. Frankly, it’s dumb that you are. I know what the guy at the store looked like, not you. How in the hell are you going to stop anything from happening? You don’t even know who to watch out for.”
Matthew stood, then closed the pocket door between the kitchen and the family room. “Keep your voice down,” he said as he walked to the front door to check all the locks. When he was done, he seated himself again, but this time on the side of the kitchen table that was furthest from her. “If we’re going to talk about this rationally, can you at least take a seat?”
She didn’t want to. But she also wasn’t about to give him a reason to cut this short. She took the seat across from him, took a deep breath, and tried to mimic his calm. “I’m just saying that we could be doing more. This isn’t a rogue reporter or an inconsiderate looky-loo. Checking the locks twice before bed isn’t going to cut it for me. We need to be proactive. Maybe relocate.”
“Move?” he asked, shaking his head before even waiting for confirmation.
It wasn’t like she’d said to Mars. “Yes. Move.”
“Look. What happened at the bodega freaked you out. I get that, and it’s not that I’m not freaked out—I am—but we told the cops about that, too. You gave them your description of the man. You were there. They literally asked us to go about business as usual, so what the hell else are we supposed to be doing, Nicole? Besides running away? Tell me. I want to know.”
It didn’t sound like he wanted to know. It sounded like he wanted her to agree with him so he could put his head back in the digital sand and go on pretending all those extra hours he spent analyzing data were going to do fuck-all for his latest start-up. Her compliance probably seemed like a given to him at this point because, in fairness, she’d spent one-third of her life giving him exactly what he wanted in this type of situation. There was no specific rule or step or expectation in AA that one was supposed to stay calm at all times—maybe a suggestion at best.
