“We need to get him some help,” Jo says.
“This guy just tried to kill me. I’m not taking him anywhere.”
“We’re taking him to a hospital, Charlie, and then we’re going to the police.”
I look at her face and then at the gun and I like this combination a hell of a lot better than the last one. “I’ll be charged with murder.”
“If you’re innocent you won’t be. Anyway what sort of murderer would bring a policeman to a hospital under these circumstances?”
“So you believe me.”
“Let’s just say I’m more open to strange things happening.”
“Glad you’re on my side,” I say.
“I’m not, but if we leave him here he’ll die.”
Then we should leave him here. I start to help him to his feet, but his legs are like jelly. He can’t take any of his own weight and I can’t take all of it. I’m weak from the cold and it’s going to be hell carrying him back to the cabin. If he dies on the way I’ll dump him where he lands and hope Jo doesn’t shoot me for it.
“You’re sure you don’t want to carry him?” I ask.
Jo doesn’t answer.
“Jo?” I hoist Landry onto my shoulders. I stagger at first, trying not to slip across the wet ground. My thighs start to burn. Landry has to be at least ninety kilograms. If lifting him is this hard, carrying him will be impossible. It’s time to revisit this whole idea. Landry made his bed, he can sleep in it. It’s not my fault the sleeping will be in the middle of the woods.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” I say, speaking louder as I turn around.
“You’ve got that right, partner,” the tall figure says. He’s wearing black clothing, has dirty skin, long black hair, a scraggly beard, bushy sideburns, and he’s standing next to Jo.
This is the man who I thought I had killed.
This is the monster in a world that, according to Jo, doesn’t have monsters.
Jo doesn’t have the gun anymore. Instead now it’s pointing at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Watching, watching, Cyris is waiting and watching, yeah, yeah, things are working out well, really well, and the rain keeps on falling in the forest, but he doesn’t mind the rain, he loves the rain, the rain is very cool, except for when it’s not. He thinks of a time when he went swimming and saw a dog drown, his dog, the damn thing was old and couldn’t swim worth a damn, but she sure could sink like a motherfucker. Thinking of the wet fur makes him start to itch. He can’t stop wondering what color the inside of his soul would be-then wonders if he has one at all. Would it be blue or gray?
He thinks about how that wet dog felt beneath his fingers as he held it down. If the dog could talk it would tell him to look out for other dogs because sometimes they can be rabid, sometimes they can really tear you apart. Thinking of the wet dog reminds him that it’s raining. He hates the rain. He’s wet and he’s hungry, but this doesn’t worry him because he’s entertained, yeah, yeah, entertained by this hilarity, because all of this is nothing but funny. It wasn’t supposed to be, it was supposed to be simple, nice and easy, and it has become nothing but. People say if you don’t laugh you’d cry. In his case he likes to laugh and make other people cry. Then he likes to do worse to them. The shotgun is in his hands and it has a nice weight too, what he used to think of back in the army as a life-ending weight. Whether he uses it or not is up to the weatherman. Everything is up to the weatherman and that makes Cyris jealous. It makes him angry because the ability to choose who lives and dies should be up to him.
Killing out here where nobody can see him is the perfect way to end all of this, but it’s also a cheap way. His mind races for another solution, a solution that equals gain, a solution that isn’t so cheap or slippery, and if it weren’t for the Goddamn pain and medication that’s twisting his thoughts every which way, he’d be able to figure it out. He’s lucky that he at least recognizes the fact he’s not himself. Hell, he hasn’t even thought of that stupid dog in ten years. He hasn’t been right since that son of a bitch stabbed him the other night.
He’s aware he’s just stood on a hedgehog, but it wasn’t really his fault.
Not really, not when it’s so dark out here.
He starts to laugh. Stupid hedgehog. Stupid thing deserved to die.
He’s angry. He can’t help it. The hedgehog was innocent, but maybe it died happy, so he starts to laugh again. He laughs and starts to think of the two dead women. He thinks back to Monday morning and things were going fine, so fine, and the night was nicer than this, there was no rain and plenty of night, plenty that couldn’t go wrong, but seemed to anyway, and Monday came before the drugs could take away the pain of it all. Two pills a day became two an hour, then he started to lose track, then he broke into his wife’s morphine supply, which is something he swore he’d never do. He also found some stuff a buddy of his gave him years ago, stuff they used to refer to as “the good shit” back in the day. So there’s that, the morphine, and whatever the hell else he’s been able to get his hands on. They’re damaging his mind, no doubt there. He pictures his mind working like a washing machine, the thoughts tumbling, no, spinning-it’s the dryer that tumbles-and then Charlie Feldman came along and ruined everything. Things will work out in the end. That’s not true of everything, but it will be true of this. He’s proving that. Right now things couldn’t really be any better. It would be better if he could remember what star sign he is and this bothers him more than anything else. His stomach hurts too. Cancer?
No. Gemini.
You are in control, he tells himself, you are in control, buddy, so now what? He counts one policeman here who needs to die so maybe he ought to start there because there’s no use for the policeman. In fact the exact opposite is true because there are several uses for a dead policeman. He looks at Charlie and he looks at the woman and he smiles his smile of relief. Everything’s under control, everything’s going to work out fine, but he should never have doubted that, and he never will doubt it again, and his stomach is throbbing, and he can feel the duct tape across his skin and the duct tape is gray, but it’s red too because of the blood. Thinking about things he shouldn’t doubt lead to him thinking of things he should do-which immediately makes him think of all the drugs he’s taking. Some would say it’s a miracle he’s even functioning. He doesn’t believe in miracles.
He tightens his grip on the shotgun. He uses it to push the woman toward Feldman. He doesn’t know the brand of the shotgun and doesn’t care. It could be Russian or American, but they all do the same thing at this range. He doesn’t pull the trigger because he wants to gain something, though he doesn’t know what it is, even though a few minutes ago he did. It came back to him when he read the piece of paper in his pocket. On that paper is the reason he’s doing all of this. He wrote it down when he figured out his thoughts aren’t what they ought to be. He wrote it on Monday afternoon. He wants to get it out and read it, but the rain will soak it. He needs to think. He needs to remember. Having ink running down his fingers won’t help at all.
He covers the three people with the shotgun and the policeman doesn’t look that healthy. Perhaps the painkillers Cyris has been taking would help the policeman, but Cyris only wants to help himself, and there’s not enough to go around. He keeps trying to tell himself to think things through, to think things through, to think about a gain, a goal, and a small voice in his mind tells him to look at the note, but then it comes to him anyway-he’s doing this for the money. Isn’t that why people do anything? Love and money. Well, he sure loves getting paid.