“I don’t know.”
“And you’re sure that’s your mom in there? It’s not some other woman that got in the house somehow?”
“No, that’s my mom.”
“And the woman who was on the bed when we got here, the woman who was all cut up, that was your mom too?”
“Uh-huh.”
The policewoman smiled and wiped tears from her eyes.
“It’s a miracle,” she said.
Tears began to flow freely down her face and she began to laugh.
“It’s a miracle!” she said louder.
Dale smiled back at her, confused but happy.
Moments later CSU arrived. They began collecting evidence, evidence that would confirm exactly what Dale had told the policewoman, evidence that they would all reject. A week later, when the lab came back with the DNA results, the blood on the bed and carpet and the skin recovered from the scene were all confirmed as coming from Dale’s mom. The results were dismissed as some sort of lab error and the case was promptly closed.
CHAPTER TWO
Dale picked up the kitten from the crate. His hand gripped its head tightly as he slowly turned it like he were unscrewing a jar, twisting its neck. He could hear the bones crunching and sinews and ligaments ripping and popping as the kitten kicked and gurgled and scratched. Its tongue flopped out of its mouth and its eyes rolled sideways and came to a stop. Dale smiled as he watched its chest cease its rise and fall. He stared at the kitten for a moment, then breathed into its mouth. Once. Twice. He pulled his mouth away and smiled as the kitten began to breathe again and its heartbeat returned, unnaturally fast at first, then gradually slowing. The fur around the kitten’s neck undulated and Dale could hear snapping and popping sounds as muscles, bones, and sinew rearranged themselves beneath the feline’s skin.
The kitten purred as Dale scratched its tummy and behind its ears. It closed its eyes and rubbed against Dale’s legs contentedly. Dale chuckled and shook his head in disbelief.
“Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.”
He grabbed the kitten by the throat again and began to squeeze.
Dale could hear his mother and grandmother talking in the kitchen. They were talking about him. They were always talking about him. They tried to whisper but it was so still and quiet that he could still hear every word drifting through the open window on the warm spring breeze.
“I talked to the priest today…about Dale.”
“Momma! I told you nobody is supposed to know about him. About what he can do.”
“Oh, hush. I didn’t give away your secret. It was in a confessional. He can’t tell anybody. Besides, something ain’t right with that boy and you know it. The dog won’t even play with him. I find knives and clothes in his room with blood on them. And I have nightmares. I have these terrible nightmares about being stabbed and suffocated. I know it has something to do with Dale.”
Dale’s grandmother was an old Southern woman who’d grown up on a farm. She wasn’t like those Southern belles you saw on TV sitting on the porch of some old colonial mansion sipping mint juleps. His grandmother had dropped out of school in sixth grade to work the farm. She was hard and coarse and always spoke her mind whether she was right or wrong and was more likely to be smoking a cigar than sipping tea.
“Shhhh! Keep your voice down, Momma. He might hear you.”
“Ya see? You’s afraid of him too.”
Dale heard his grandmother pause and take a deep breath. He paused too, holding his breath, waiting to hear what she’d said to the priest about him.
“I told him all about what happened to you and what Dale did. How he breathed life back into you. The things I’ve seen him do around the house. How I watched him kill a butterfly in the garden and then bring it back to life. Then I asked Father Stanley why God would put a power like that in the hands of somebody evil.”
“Momma! Dale’s not evil.”
“That boy has got the devil in him and you know it.”
“He’s just a little boy.”
“And God help us all when he becomes a man. God help us all.”
His mother let out a long sigh and Dale could almost see her rolling her eyes.
“What did Father Stanley say, Momma?”
“Oh, he’s an old fool. He tried to tell me that God wouldn’t give power like that to someone unless it was to fulfill his purpose somehow. He told me Dale must have some good in him, that God must be working through him in some way. Made Dale out to be some kind of saint. He wanted me to bring him to the church and set him up like they used to do with the revival tents and all. So he could heal people in Jesus’s name.”
“And what did you say?”
Dale continued to listen. He was fairly certain that whatever the old battle-ax had said about him, it hadn’t been good.
“I told him that God gives power to evil people all the time. Hell, some of the most powerful people in this world are mobsters, drug dealers, pimps and gun runners, dictators and warlords. I asked him if God had some sort of plan for Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini or Saddam Hussein or that idiot that got us into the war in Iraq. That shut him up right quick. He came back with that old bullshit about God working in mysterious ways. It seems like whenever you point out God doin’ something that just don’t make no damned sense they always hit you with that. Maybe God ain’t really all that mysterious. Maybe he just likes puttin’ us through hell.”
“Momma, you don’t mean to talk that way.”
“To hell if I don’t. You explain it then. You tell me why God would give that kind of power to a boy like that. That boy got the devil in him, I’m tellin’ you. He ain’t got no conscience, no sympathy. You know damn well he ain’t no good. He’s just like his father and look how he ended up.”
Dale squeezed the kitten tighter. Its tongue lolled from its mouth and it made a dry hissing sound as its legs beat at the air. His mother, his grandmother, none of them understood him. He didn’t even understand himself. All he knew was that he was different and for some reason it felt good to kill things.
The smile marring his face turned cruel and the look in his eyes became one that battered women often saw in the eyes of their abusers. It was the look his dad had worn the day he’d taken a knife to Dale’s mother. Dale grabbed the kitten’s head with two hands. It began scratching, hissing, and kicking its legs, its entire body twitching and convulsing as Dale shoved his thumbs into its eyes. Blood poured down the kitten’s furry face, soaking its whiskers, as Dale’s thumbs dug into the feline’s brain.
The kitten twitched and shuddered, then went limp. Dale withdrew his bloody thumbs from the cat’s skull and wiped them off on his Levis. He stared down at the cat and tried to feel for a pulse in its throat. He wet the back of his hand with his tongue and held it up to the cat’s nose to see if he could feel it breathing. It wasn’t. Dale looked over his shoulder to make certain that no one was watching and then gathered the kitten into his hands. Its body was so tiny it barely filled his cupped palms. He held its face up to his lips and once again Dale exhaled into the cat’s lungs, watching as its chest expanded and then began to rise and fall rapidly.
Its eyelids seethed with movement. A riot of activity was taking place in the empty sockets where its eyes had been. A wet crackling sound emitted from the cat’s bleeding face as it regenerated. When the kitten’s eyelids fluttered open, two flawless green orbs stared up at Dale. The newly resurrected kitten sat in Dale’s palms, licking its own blood off its whiskers and grooming itself. It showed no fear as Dale began to stroke its fur. Just as before, it rubbed itself against him, purring contentedly. It had no idea of the things Dale had done to it.
Still holding the kitten, Dale removed a small penknife from his pocket. He stabbed the knife into the kitten’s throat as the kitten howled and hissed, crying out in agony and spearing its tiny needlelike claws into Dale’s hands. Its claws were still embedded in Dale’s hands when it began to shake and convulse, spraying blood from its mouth. This time Dale whooped with excitement and laughed out loud as the little gray-haired Himalayan choked on its own life fluid.