Well, Ike didn't have good luck anymore. Now he had me instead.
"Here's my problem, Ike," I said, after he woke up, and realized he couldn't free himself. He tried to yell at me, but he was gagged pretty good, and still woozy from the chemicals I'd knocked him out with, and it was just muffled noise. I leaned back in the chair I'd dragged over by the couch where he was bound. "I could just call the cops, and let them know about the bodies in the backyard. I can be really convincing, especially if the cops are from around here. You'd get arrested and put away for a long time. But that would be bad for the neighbourhood. People here don't realize there's a monster like you in their midst. Everybody knows you. You've been in most of the houses on this street at once time or another. To find out you've been killing women and burying them in your back garden…" I shook my head. "Most of these people wouldn't trust anyone ever again. There'd be news reporters all over. Property values would plummet. People would move away. I'd hate to see that happen."
He made furious noises. I removed the gag. He tried to bite off my fingers. I couldn't blame him. "Make a fuss and I'll knock you out again," I said. "You've got lots of nice chemicals under your sink I can mix up."
His voice was low and intense. "You don't understand. This used to be a nice place, when I was a kid. Now all that trash lives on this street. Spies, chinks, whores and junkies. Jabbering away in Spanish and Chinese, trying to cadge change off people so they can by drugs, all that bullshit. This whole place is a toilet now. I wish I could flush them all."
I raised my eyebrow. "What about black folks? Want to flush us too?"
"I got nothing against black people," he said, wounded, as if I'd slandered him. "And there's decent Chinese people, like your aunt, and some Mexicans I don't mind, but the kind of garbage that rents rooms down at the castle apartments, they're just worthless, they —»
"So killing them has got nothing to do with your sexual gratification, then?"
"That's sick," Ike spat. "You're disgusting. I do what I do to keep this neighbourhood nice, to keep it safe. A piece of shit like you couldn't possibly understand that."
"You're no prize yourself, Ike. You know it's all over now, right? You're finished."
"You can't mess with me," he said, his eyes shining, as they had when I'd spoken to his deep down parts before. "This is my place."
"It's my place now. And you don't have a home here anymore." I put the rag of chemicals over his face again until he passed out.
I held a hammer in my hand with every intention of caving in Ike Train's skull, then disposing of his body out in the desert somewhere, but I couldn't do it. He was a person. I'd expected a monster, and yes, Ike was a monster too, but I couldn't see past his humanity. In my more natural state, without a body, I would have found executing Ike Train as simple as flicking an ant off a tablecloth. But for now I was wearing a human form, and Ike was one of my tribe, albeit a crazy, dangerous one. I couldn't smash his head in, not if I wanted to keep functioning in this body. Such an act would tear me apart. I put the hammer down.
Still, Ike had to die, and disappear, if I wanted to save this neighbourhood from imploding. They could never know this monster had been in their midst — such a revelation would poison the wellspring of camaraderie and human kindness I'd found here. I had to do something fast, though. He was a big man, and he would wake up soon, and I couldn't bear talking to him again.
Sometimes, back in the old days, I'd watched people drown, disappearing beneath churning waves. Losing those people hurt me — diminished me — but it felt more natural, somehow, with the elements taking their lives, instead of a human hand.
I'm not stupid. I know killing is killing, even if some natural phenomenon is the murder weapon. If you cast someone into a churning sea, and they die, you've murdered them, even if it's the water that ends their lives. But maybe you can sleep a little easier, since the blood isn't on your hands. Maybe.
Ike Train was a man who prepared for things. There were several gas cans in the garage, by his emergency generator. They sloshed full when I picked them up.
Fortunately, Ike didn't wake, even when I piled pillows around the perimeter of the living room and doused them with fuel. The smoke would kill him before the fire touched him. A mercy, and more than he'd offered his victims. But I'm not about vengeance. I'm about finding bad homes and making them good again.
When I felt tears on my face, I tried to believe they were just stinging from the gas fumes.
House fires aren't exactly good for neighbourhood morale, but they tend to make a community pull together. Everybody came out and watched Ike Train's house burn. The fire trucks got there pretty quickly, but not quickly enough. The roof collapsed while they were still hooking their hoses up, but Ike was surely gone by then.
Nobody paid any attention to me, not even Sadie, though she stood only a few yards away. Everyone was watching the flames. I needed to get cleaned up, and shower off the mud from Ike's backyard. Maybe I'd visit Sadie later, and see about making myself into boyfriend material. This could be a nice place now.
"Vocabulary word," said Oswald, walking over from his house down the block and joining the spectators. " 'Conflagration': a large fire. Also a conflict or war."
"Shut the fuck up, Oswald," someone said wearily. "We think Ike Train died in there."
"Another," Oswald said softly. " 'Cothurnus'. A tragedy. Also the costume worn by an actor in a tragic play."
Then he looked at me, for a little too long, like he had something to say, but some people just have eyes like that, intense and too direct. I slipped away from the neighbourhood crowd, though being among them was all I wanted. I knew the ugly burned-out lot in the middle of their street would be better than the ugliness that Ike Train had caused. I'd used fire to cauterize something much worse. But I still felt guilty. A shower would help, a little. You have to start getting clean somewhere.
I was on my way to visit Sadie the next Saturday, for our weekend of sex or tourism, when Oswald hailed me from his front yard, where he was brutalizing a patch of unkempt grass with a weed whacker. "Mr Reva!" he said, turning off his buzzing yard tool.
"It's just Reva," I called back.
"I wonder if I might have a word with you," he said.
"What, vocabulary words?" I called back, trying to sound cheerful, because even a miserable little guy like this probably had some good in him somewhere. But I really just wanted to see Sadie.
"Very droll," he replied. "Please? Just a moment? I have something inside that might interest you."
Was this a come on? Was Oswald so cranky because he was closeted and gay? I'd seen that sort of thing before. I wasn't interested in him, but maybe, if he was from around here, I could talk with his deep down self, and help him relax, and be a better neighbour. "Sure," I said, and went up the steps, following him to his front door. He opened the door and gestured for me to enter. I did, and it was dark inside — very dark — so I paused just inside the door. "Maybe we should turn the lights on — " I began, and then he shoved me, hard, and I stumbled forward into empty air, falling hard on what felt like a mound of rubble and broken glass. "Fuck!" I shouted, and turned over, my eyes starting to adjust. There was no bouse inside his house — it was scooped out and hollow, just a few beams to support the roof and walls, otherwise an open pit of dirt and rocks.