(2)
 The woods at night were a curious mix of quiet and noisy. Night birds filled the hollow autumn air with chick-chick sounds, with warbling nesting cries like troooooo!, with howls and mating calls. Somewhere, a pack of coyotes giggled madly as they pursued a kill in their hunger. A squirrel darted up a tree, almost silent, except when it brushed through leaves, in quick, darting motions. The man had disturbed a long, fat snake. Its pattern consisted of alternating bands, the lighter colored like the yellow leaves all around, the darker like those leaves that were brown like dried blood. Hypnotically, the bands moved from side to side as the snake moved deeper into the leaves to hide. An owl hooted, and the hoots echoed among the timber. The man listened, but he heard no laughter. He did hear the wind sigh around him. Leaves chittered with ghostly energy, as if unseen beings were shaking them in alarm, in dread, in foreboding. If there were ghosts about, they must be jittery. Ghosts don't remember the past much. They live in the moment of their death, without comprehending, an eternal and muddled present. But they can dimly foresee the future, especially dreadful events, and they manage to cluster about, sometimes years ahead, hordes of them, more evanescent than pollen in the air, waiting. Maybe that was them, shaking the leaves in the tree crowns all around, together with the wind spirits.
As he walked down the boat slip road, the man could see the pond glittering like black oil ahead. It was a big pond, just on the verge of being a lake. On the far side were the ruins of an old concrete cement plant, abandoned generations ago, and now home to rats and skeletons. The ruins glistened in moonlight. Their windows looked like black eyes full of gloomy thoughts.
The moon hung overhead like a silver-yellow lantern—with a shocked expression in its dark-green stoney seas that slumbered in borrowed sunlight.
The man pulled his knife out in one quick, blurry motion. He did not break stride even for a second. Seeing his prey, he walked more quickly. The two cars sat parked on either side of the road, overlooking the water. They pointed slightly away from each other, modestly, as if seeking privacy. No matter, because the windows were steamed up from inside.
The man knew which car to take first. Or, rather, he knew which one to leave for last. He walked the last few yards on stalking feet, like a Native American tracker, without making a sound. Holding the knife ready in his right hand, he put his other hand on the driver's side rear door handle. The lock was off, and the door opened. Two startled faces looked up at him. His face caught a blast of warm, humid air full of muzzy smells—warm hair, flushed skin, sweat, and faintly pungent sex smells. The girl started to scream, but he stabbed her in the throat and she bent away into the darkness, silent and shocked, holding her throat with both hands. The youth lunged at the attacker, who could smell the girl's lipstick on the boy's breath. With both arms on the attacker's shoulders, the boy left his torso wide open. The man finished him quickly with some ripping motions. The boy lay bleeding silently to death as the man finished the girl off with a dozen hard overhead stabs. He closed the car door and turned.
As he crossed the road, the other car's rear window rolled down. The youth called out to his friends: "You guys okay? I thought I heard something, like a scream." Then he saw the man all dressed in black, crossing the road with a dripping knife, and yelled: "Oh my God, no! What are you doing? Who are you?"
The attacker was upon him before he could roll the window up or lock the door. As he leaned into the car to stab the youth, the young man grabbed the attacker by the front of his sweatshirt. It was not a tactical move, or one with much thought, because already the attacker's knife had entered his torso at least twice. The girl, whose name was Emily Thurston, crawled over her boyfriend's back to help. She was an athletic, pretty girl who ran track and played tennis. She reached out to grab their attacker, but managed only to pull off his ski mask.
As her boyfriend lay slumped and dying, with his wrists on the windowsill and his head propped limply face down so all you saw was a blond buzz-cut, the girl screamed: "Billy Packward! What are you doing? You've killed him!"
Billy Packward, the quiet kid who had sat near Emily Thurston in many of her classes for four years, and had been sort of a hovering annoyance to her as far back as grammar school, spoke with her for the first time in his life: "I've been in love with you since we were kids." He spoke rapidly as she sobbed with her hands over her face and tears streaming between her fingers. "You never had the time of day for me, but I love you more than you can imagine. I'm not going to hurt you, Emily. I love you. I'm going to save you and take you away from here, so we can be together."
"No, no, no, go away!" she sobbed.
The boy moved once more, and Billy Packward stabbed him again. The boy reared up and grabbed Billy's wrists in a death grip. His eyes were full of blood, and blind, and blood ran down his cheeks, as he cried out to her through gritted teeth: "Run, Emily. I'll hold him as long as I can."
Obediently, Emily kicked the door open on the other side and darted away.
It was Billy's turn to cry "No!" but the knife fell from his hands as the other young man gripped his wrists, tried to bend them, break them. "Emily!" Billy cried after her, but she disappeared into night and darkness. When the young man's hands grew limp, Billy ran around the car and yelled into the darkness: "Emily! Emily!" All he heard was the echo of his own voice. "I love you!"
For a while, he stumbled about, but it was dark in the forest, and he kept bumping into bushes and trees. Finally he ran down to the boat slip and looked for signs of her anywhere out on the shores of Agony Pond. The moon stood high in the sky. Its light almost seared Billy's skin, so hot and bright was it. The man in the moon looked distraught.
"Emileeeee!" Billy cried out as loudly as he could. "I will find you. No matter where you go. I will find you, if I have to run to the ends of the earth!"
The ruins across the pond stared at him mutely with those big window-eyes. They, and the moon, and the forest all around, and the glittering lake, were in a conspiracy of silence to hide Emily from him. But he would find her. He still had the coil of rope on the back of his motorcycle. He would find her, and tie her up, and take here away someplace where they could be alone together in their love.
This happened ten years ago.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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