Bowen believed that, in Kittim, he had found just the man for the job, but he was wrong.
In truth, the man had found him.
Bowen’s truck pulled into the small clearing before the hut, just across the South Carolina state line in eastern Tennessee. The building was dark wood, four rough-hewn steps leading to a porch, two narrow windows on either side. It looked like a blockhouse, designed with defense in mind.
A man sat on a rocking chair to the right of the door, smoking a cigarette. This was Carlyle. He had short curly hair that had begun to recede when he was in his early twenties but had mysteriously arrested its retreat in his thirties, leaving him with a clown wig of fair hair around his domed skull. He was in good condition, like most of those whom Bowen kept close. He drank little, and Bowen couldn’t remember ever having seen him smoke before. He looked tired and ill. Bowen noticed the smell as he approached: vomit.
“You okay?” asked Bowen.
Carlyle wiped his lips with his fingers and examined the tips for any detritus. “Why? I got shit on me?”
“No, but you smell bad.”
Carlyle took a last drag on the cigarette, then carefully extinguished the butt on the sole of his boot. When he was satisfied that it was cold, he tore it to shreds and let the breeze carry the remains away.
“Where did we get this guy, Roger?” he asked when he was done.
“Who? Kittim?”
“Yeah, Kittim.”
“He’s a legend,” said Bowen. It had the sound of a mantra about it.
Carlyle ran a hand over his bare pate. “I know that. I mean, I think I know.” His features collapsed into uncertainty, then rebuilt themselves into an expression of disgust. “Anyway, wherever he came from, he’s a freak.”
“We need him.”
“We got by okay without him until now.”
“This is different. Did you get anything out of the guy?”
Carlyle shook his head.
“He doesn’t know anything. He’s just muscle.”
“You sure?”
“Believe me, if he knew anything he’d have told us by now. But that sick fuck keeps at him.”
Bowen wasn’t a great believer in Jewish conspiracies. Sure, there were wealthy Jews with power and influence, but they were pretty scattered when you looked at the big picture. Still, if Faulkner was to be believed, some old Jews in New York had tried to have him killed, and had dispatched a man to do it. That man was now dead, but Faulkner wanted to know who had sent him so that, when the time came, he could revenge himself upon them, and Bowen was of the opinion that it couldn’t hurt to know what they were up against. That was why they had taken the kid, pulled him from the streets of Greenville after he drew attention to himself by asking the wrong questions in the wrong places. After that, he had driven him up here, gagged and bound in the trunk of a car, and handed over to Kittim.
“Where is he?”
“Out back.”
As Bowen moved to pass him, Carlyle extended an arm to block his way.
“You eaten yet?”
“Not much.”
“Lucky you.”
The arm dropped. Bowen continued on around the side of the house until he came to an enclosed pen that had once been used to hold pigs. The stench of them still hung around it, thought Bowen, until he saw what lay on the bare ground at the center of the pen and realized that what he was smelling was not animal, but human.
The young man was naked and staked out in the sun. He had a short, neatly-trimmed beard, and his black hair was pasted to his skull with sweat and mud. A leather belt had been tied around his head. His teeth were visible, gritted against it, as the wounds he had suffered were widened and probed. The man stooped over him wore coveralls and gloves as he worked on the body, his fingers exploring the new cavities and apertures he had created with his blade, pausing occasionally as the staked man tensed and made soft mewling sounds from behind the gag before continuing his work. Bowen didn’t know how he had kept the kid on the ground alive, let alone conscious, but then Kittim was a man of many talents. He rose at the sound of Bowen’s approach, his body unfolding like that of a disturbed insect, and turned to face him.
Kittim was tall, six-two or six-three. The cap and glasses that he habitually wore almost obscured his features entirely, intentionally so because there was something wrong with Kittim’s skin. Bowen didn’t know precisely what it was, and he had never worked up the courage to ask, but Kittim’s face was a pinkish-purple color, with wispy clumps of hair attached to the flaking skull. He reminded Bowen of a marabou stork, built to feed on the dead and the dying. His eyes, when he chose to reveal them, were a very dark green, like a cat’s eyes. Beneath the coveralls his body was hard and slim, almost emaciated. His nails were neatly trimmed, and he was clean shaven. He smelled vaguely of meat and Polo aftershave.
And sometimes of burning oil.
Bowen looked beyond him to where the young man lay, then returned his attention to Kittim. Carlyle was right, of course: Kittim was a freak, and of Bowen’s small retinue only Landron Mobley, who was himself little better than a mad dog, appeared to feel any kind of affinity for him. It was not merely the torments being visited on the Jew that disgusted Bowen, but the sense of carnality that accompanied them. Kittim was aroused. Bowen could see it straining against the coveralls. For a moment, it caused anger to overcome Bowen’s underlying fear of the man.
“You enjoying yourself?” asked Bowen.
Kittim shrugged. “You asked me to find out what he knew.” His voice was like a broom sweeping across a dusty stone floor.
“Carlyle says he knows nothing.”
“Carlyle isn’t in charge here.”
“That’s right. I am, and I’m asking you if you’ve found out anything useful from him.”
Kittim stared at him from behind his shades, then turned his back on Bowen.
“Leave me,” he said, as he knelt to recommence his exploration of the young man. “I have not finished.”
Instead of departing, Bowen drew his gun from its holster. His thoughts were once again concentrated on this strange deformed man and the wraithlike nature of him and his past. It was as if they had conjured him up, he thought, as if he were a personification of all their hatreds and fears, an abstraction made flesh. He had come to Bowen, offering his services, and the knowledge of him had begun to seep into Bowen like gas into a room, half-remembered tales assuming a new substance around him, and Bowen had been unable to turn him away. What was it Carlyle had said? He was a legend, but why? What had he done?
And he didn’t seem interested in the cause, in the niggers and the faggots and the kikes whose very existence gave most of his kind the fuel they needed for their hatred. Instead, Kittim seemed distant from such matters, even while he was inflicting torments on a naked victim. Now Kittim was trying to tell him what to do, ordering him to leave his presence like Bowen was just some house nigger with a tray. It was about time that Bowen regained control of this situation and showed everybody who was boss. He stepped lightly around Kittim, then raised the gun and pointed it at the young man on the ground.
“No,” said Kittim softly.
Bowen looked over and-
And Kittim shimmered.
A sudden wave of intense heat seemed to pass over him, causing him to ripple behind its passage, and for an instant he was both Kittim and something else, something dark and winged, with eyes like those of a dead bird, reflecting the world without revealing any life within. His skin was loose and withered, the bones visible beneath it, the legs slightly bent, the feet elongated. The smell of oil grew stronger and, for an instant, Bowen understood. By doubting him, by allowing his own feelings of anger to break through, he had somehow permitted his mind to register an aspect of Kittim, the truth of him, that had remained hidden until now.