The Bad Box Read online

  “Darnell, what the fuck are you talking about? The devil or some kind of shit like that? Look, people are getting killed and all you’re doing about it is talking shit. If you don’t turn yourself in right now more people will die, but instead you’re wasting time talking about the devil!”

  There was a long pause, and Sarah was thinking, great, now I’ve done it, I’ve got him pondering some kind of theological crap, how many devils can dance on the head of a pin, and any minute she’s going to take over and the killing is going to continue.

  “No,” Darnell said at last. “Angel’s friend is not the devil, not Satan. It’s more like a living darkness. It’s a man and yet not a man. The man is alive and yet not alive. Her friend has some connection with that horrible farm where we used to live, our grandparents’ farm. I can’t tell you exactly what he is, or it is, because I don’t know, but it’s something malevolent, something that wants to appall the world.

  “You have to let people know this, Sarah. Madness isn’t just some materialistic dysfunction, like some kind of flu in your brain. It’s much worse than that. Listen, I have proof that he’s making her stronger. It’s right here on my chest.” He paused, and when he spoke again he sounded embarrassed. “She’s growing breasts.”

  “What? Darnell—”

  “Yes. They’re still small, but they’re breasts. They’re the first female breasts I’ve ever touched in my life. Isn’t that comical? Think how that feels, Sarah. The first breasts I’ve ever touched, and they’re my own.”

  “Darnell, listen to me—”

  “I have to go. She’ll wake up soon. There was so much I wanted to tell you, I didn’t get to say most of it. Talking to you was all I’ve had to look forward to, the last good thing for me to enjoy in this life. Now it has gone by so fast. Sarah, I . . . I know you don’t want to hear me say this, it must sound almost obscene . . . but I want you to know that I liked you . . . I do like you. You were very kind. I suppose it’s no surprise to you, but I never had a girlfriend . . . I was always shy.”

  She thought she probably should say, “I liked you too,” but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She just wanted him to hang up, cut his wrists, and get it done.

  “I’m frightened of dying,” he said. “I’ve read accounts of near-death experiences, people floating through a tunnel toward the light, people going to the city of light, the city of God. It won’t be that way for me, you know. No city of God, no light. Just the box forevermore.”

  She heard a muffled sound. It took her a few seconds to realize that Darnell was weeping.

  “Goodbye, Sarah.” He hung up.

  ***

  Darnell hung up his disposable cellphone and sat for a while weeping in the small upstairs efficiency that Angel had rented, thinking that this ugly apartment was the last place he would ever see. No more skies, no more green parks, no more birds or squirrels or dogs or cats.

  It was the kind of dump a hooker would rent. Probably she had picked it because it was cheap and because no one would pay attention if she brought men up, but he also suspected that the squalor appealed to her.

  He could feel her awakening, trying to wrest control. He was light-headed now and had to struggle to keep from blacking out. He was made weaker by fear and grief.

  He wanted to see Sarah once more, wanted one more pleasant evening chatting with her in his old apartment, Sarah looking so pretty and listening as no one had ever listened to him. He wanted her to understand what it was like to be Darnell Brook. He wanted to tell her the story of his strange, sad life. He wanted her to know that he had never intended to harm her or anyone else. In a few minutes he would be dead, and no one, no one would have ever truly known him, no one would ever mourn him.

  He felt Angel squirming like a fetus in his brain and he knew time was running out. He dumped out her purse on the narrow bed and found her scalpel wrapped in a napkin. He was about to do the job when he thought of the casket that would imprison him from now on, that horrible box, and he realized that he had to leave a note.

  He tore a page from Angel’s little notepad, where he had found Sarah’s new address, but he couldn’t find a pen or pencil. He looked desperately around the room. No time to lose; Angel was fully awake now and grappling for control.

  Finally he grabbed a tube of lipstick and began to write on the mirror of the vanity. His hand was jerking, wanting to go its own direction, but he managed to scrawl in bright hooker red: “CREMATION PLEASE. NO BURIAL!”

  He was almost glad that she was taking over, allowing him no time to think or delay. He grasped the scalpel and tried to bring it to the vein, but his hand wouldn’t cooperate. His arm no longer belonged to him. He struggled against the growing blot of darkness until it consumed him.

  “Twerp!” Angel said. “I’ll fix your shit for good.”

  She took off her clothes and felt her small breasts with pleasure. They weren’t growing as quickly as she wished, but they were definitely growing. A 15-year-old girl would probably be very proud of them. The nipples were plumping up nicely, sticking out like little pink pencil erasers, and she pinched them till they hurt. No one would call them boy-nipples now.

  She sat in front of the vanity and carefully threaded a needle with black cotton thread. She got a soup bowl from the kitchenette and placed the needle and thread in it along with the scalpel. She carried the bowl to the bathroom and poured in half a bottle of 91-percent isopropyl alcohol.

  At the redhead’s apartment she had found a bottle of Betadine and a full prescription of amoxicillin, no doubt intended to treat the girl’s infected piercing. She swallowed two of the amoxicillin, slipped on a pair of sterile rubber gloves, and sat on the edge of the bathtub with her feet inside.

  The twerp’s little scrotum dangled loosely between her legs. She used a cotton ball to coat it with Betadine, lifted the scalpel from its alcohol bath, and made an incision. Not too big, just big enough that she could gently squeeze one testicle out and then the other.

  They had been shrinking for months and weren’t much bigger than marbles. They were hanging out of her body now on their thin stalks, two ugly purple globs like hemispheres of a little brain, Darnell’s stupid little brain, but it wouldn’t be thinking its dirty little thoughts any longer.

  She pulled the scrotum up tight against her groin to expose the cords as much as possible, then held her breath and cut. The pain was incredible, a head-clearing rush, a bright cascade of agony.

  The ugly little globs were lying in the bottom of the tub like purple eyeballs staring up at her.

  “So there!” she said.

  She was bleeding, but not as badly as she had feared. My first period, she thought. She got the needle and thread from the bowl and began to sew with nice tight overlapping stitches.

  The twerp’s little penis still hung there, getting in the way of her sewing, but removing it would have to wait. Angel had had enough fun for one day.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Detective Okpara was about to leave when Howard came home with several bags of groceries. He stood in the foyer still holding them while Sarah told him about the phone call. At last he set the groceries on the stairs and sat down beside them, his face sagging with dismay.

  “How on earth did Darnell get my number?” he said. “It’s unlisted.”

  “Peter has it,” Sarah said. “Do you think it’s possible—”

  She didn’t finish her sentence. Surely Peter wasn’t working with the killer?

  “With your permission, Mr. Goldwin, I’d like put a trace on your phone,” Okpara said.

  “Yes, by all means. Please do.”

  “At least one benefit will come of this,” Okpara said. “Now I’m sure your house will get the round-the-clock surveillance that I’ve been asking for. It will be an unmarked car with plainclothes officers, and it may be parked down the street where you won’t notice it, but it will be there.”

  “Good luck finding a parking place on this street,” Howard said.
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  Okpara smiled and left, but Howard remained seated on the stairs. The cheerful raconteur’s mask had slipped from his face, and he looked older than Sarah had ever seen him, a fifties-something man with a sagging face and dyed hair, his colorful green eyes dulled over with worry. As she bent down to pick up the groceries, she noticed a cigarette burn on the sleeve of his blazer—not like Howard at all.

  She carried the groceries to the kitchen and began putting them away: wine, potato salad, cold cuts, bean salad, chips, plastic cups and paper plates. He must have intended a picnic in the park to cheer them both up, and his plan made her feel all the guiltier.

  But soon he appeared in the kitchen and said, “Whatever are you doing, my dear? If you put all these things away, how on earth will we eat them? I rather thought we’d go to the park. Unless, of course, you have other plans.”

  He rummaged in the pantry and returned with a picnic basket. Sarah was amazed; she hadn’t seen one like that since she was a child. Schiller Park was only a few blocks away, and they took turns carrying the basket as they walked. The late afternoon sun was still bright and warm, but a soft breeze was promising a cooler evening.

  They chose a picnic table, and Howard covered it with a clean red-checkered cloth. Sarah didn’t help him because he seemed to be taking such pleasure arranging everything just so. He was beginning to look his old—or rather younger—self again. He had even brought linen napkins, which he placed neatly on the paper plates. He pulled the cork from a bottle of white zinfandel, poured, and handed her a plastic cup.

  “To truth and beauty and the occasional naughty little pinch,” he said. They drank and he began making sandwiches.

  “So we need to figure things out,” she said. “I’m moving out tomorrow, but even then you still won’t be safe. I’m so sorry about this, but I’m afraid you’ll need to find some place to stay until the danger is over.”

  “Danger? How very silly. Why, I’ve lived here for years and I’ve never had the slightest trouble. Ham or turkey?”

  “Both please, and try to listen to some sense, Howard. A serial killer knows your address. Doesn’t that worry you even a little tiny bit?”

  “Not in the least. You said Darnell was getting ready to slash his wrists, and by now he’s busy feeding the flies. Mustard or mayo?”

  “Both please. What makes you think he’s dead? Lots of people claim they’re going to kill themselves, but how many really do?”

  “Not nearly enough. Pickle?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She spooned some potato salad onto her paper plate and began to eat. She was hungry but her mouth felt dry, and she had to wash the food down with wine.

  “Sare, my darling, you worry far too much,” Howard said at last. “We’re going to stick together through this, and we’re going to be happy and safe, and that’s final.”

  She smiled. “Howard, if you were straight I’d ask you to marry me.”

  “And if I were straight you wouldn’t need to ask me because I would have married you long ago. May I fix you another sandwich?”

  “Yes please.”

  When they were done eating, Howard opened the second bottle of wine. He apparently felt like getting a bit drunk, and so did she. The sun was nearly down, and the cool breeze from the west felt better than anything she had felt for weeks. Odd that anything could feel so good when everything else felt so bad.

  “What we need is a dog,” Howard said. He was watching a woman walking past with a beautiful black German Shepherd. “A great big Rottweiler I think, one with fangs all the way down to its knees.”

  “What I’d like is a gun,” she said. “This morning I tried to buy one, but they wouldn’t let me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Once upon a time when Peter was slapping me around I gave him a good sharp knee to the nuts, and the bastard was so pissed off that he pressed charges. Before I could do anything about it I learned my parents were dead and had to leave town. Now I’m a criminal.”

  “Well, I hope you kicked him really, really hard.”

  “Not hard enough.”

  “I used to own a brace of dueling pistols myself,” he said. “The most gorgeous things, as big as blunderbusses—they would have terrified an elephant. Though not very practical, I suppose, by modern standards. I haven’t the faintest idea how you were supposed to load them, I guess you had to pour some powder in the barrel and stick a ball in there somehow. I wish I still had them, but some perfidious young rascal pilfered them.”

  “That’s what lovers do,” she said. “They steal our blunderbusses and make us feel like shit. To hell with all lovers.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  He refilled their cups and they drank without talking until the sun was gone and so was the wine. They were repacking the picnic basket when suddenly he said, “Sare, my dear, I believe I have just solved our little problem. Imagine a nice safe place in the country that Peter Bellman and Darnell Brook can’t possibly know anything about. Imagine a place just far enough out of town that no one can follow us without being spotted, but close enough that I can easily drive back to teach. And then imagine a nice big gun in your hand, just in case.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then let me do the thinking and don’t ask any questions. I’ll make arrangements as soon as we’re home, and by tomorrow night we’ll be we’ll be as safe and snug as two cooties in a rug.”

  ***

  Howard awoke with a small cry. He had been dreaming that he was giving a dinner party for a dozen other men at the big table in his dining room. Most of the guests were past lovers, men whom he had not seen for years, but the man seated at the head of the table he had never seen before. Already the dream was fading, and Howard could no longer remember the stranger’s face, just his long flowing hair and the fact that he was the most gorgeous man Howard had ever seen.

  For some reason he felt sad, though he couldn’t imagine why. What he could remember of the dream seemed festive; he wondered why it should disturb him so. He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but the strange sadness of the dream wouldn’t let him. He wanted a glass of wine; perhaps that would put him to sleep. He and Sarah had drunk some Burgundy before going to bed, and he was sure there was some left in the bottle.

  At last he got up, put on his silk robe, and stepped out to the dark hallway. He heard Sarah’s noisy fan as he crept past her shut door, and he hoped she was sleeping soundly. Since she had moved in, her comfort and safety were on his mind more than any other concern, and he thought with pleasure of the brilliant plan that had popped into his head during their picnic. Tomorrow night they would both be safe and secure, far from the reach of any psychotic hooligan.

  It was only tonight that he had to worry about—and of course the police were out there somewhere watching, so there was really no need to worry. Still, he found that he was tiptoeing.

  As he crept down the stairs, it occurred to him that the dream might have a religious meaning, the Last Supper and all that. Possibly that explained the sadness it had left him with. He had been raised a Roman Catholic, and he had never stopped believing in his childhood faith, though he had stopped attending church. He found it impossible to take comfort from a church that didn’t accept him and wouldn’t allow him to marry, not that he had ever wanted to. But perhaps some part of him missed attending Mass, and that was why the dream had left him with a sense of loss.

  He went to the kitchen and found the half-empty bottle of Burgundy. He poured a full glass and took it to the big living room so he could sit in his favorite chair. The only light was the dim glow that seeped through the front window, and in the near-darkness the wine looked as opaque as blood.

  As he gazed at the glass, it occurred to him that one didn’t age gradually, but rather in fits and starts. Suddenly one was aware of being much older than the last time one had noticed. It seemed to him
that he had recently become much older. Perhaps Sarah’s presence had stirred something in him that made him aware of the new accumulation of years.

  He was surprised by the pleasure he had been finding in thinking about someone other than himself for a change. Odd how loneliness could creep up on one like age. He wondered what it would be like to have a true mate, a lifelong partner whom he could care for as he currently was caring for Sarah.

  The house was filled with quiet unsettling sounds, a creak here, a rustle there. Probably his imagination, but Howard was glad they would be getting away for a while. He no longer felt safe here, though he tried not to let Sarah see his anxiety.

  A sound from the back of the house caused him to pause in mid-sip. That hadn’t been his imagination. There it was again—a scratching sound or maybe a rustling in the privet hedge out back. Probably a cat or raccoon had gotten itself caught in the hedgerow somehow. He sat motionless with the glass to his lips and listened.

  He heard it again, and finally he forced himself to get up and pad quietly in his slippers to the dark kitchen. There was a shadow on the glass behind the curtain of the back door. He stopped, and a second later the shadow moved—maybe the shadow of a man, but he wasn’t sure. Then he heard rapid wheezing breath, like a mad dog panting or a mad man. He crept closer to the door and the shadow moved again.

  Suddenly there was a loud, metallic tapping, like a huge steel beak pecking at the wood, and the door shook. Howard was unable to move. His thoughts were on Sarah—should he call out and warn her or run to the front door and yell for the police? Maybe they weren’t even there. It was a moot question anyway, because he was frozen with terror.