Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology (13 page)

She follows her shadow across the sky where his voice comes clear. Surging through the unbreakable cloud, she feels sunshine once more, for the first time in weeks, and his hands are on her, pulling her through atmosphere and space and time to a great tree, miles high and piercing the endless cloud weighing down the earth. The branches stretch for miles and they stand in each other’s arms bathed in sunlight watching the earth die.

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The Killer

by
Brian Evenson

With a razor,
Santon reads,
the killer slit the intravenous sack. The fluid gushed out, spattering onto the floor. Ruiz, drugged and immobilized in the hospital bed, could do nothing to stop him, could do nothing but wait for death.

It is the end of the page.
What is the killer thinking?
wonders Santon as he turns the page.
Who is the killer? Is the killer a man or a woman? What has led the killer to commit such an atrocious crime?

On the subsequent page, Santon finds that the unconscious Ruiz is not, after all, unconscious. He is disturbed, barely coherent, but he is conscious
. Ruiz stared at the figure above him, knowing the form to be familiar but unable to grasp the name.
What
, Ruiz wondered,
could the killer be thinking?
With that, the plot flees to make way for the slow death of Ruiz. His thoughts spin idly through
sunlit and sentimental years of childhood
much to Santon’s annoyance, until the memories slowly darken, take a sharp downward course into
systematized depravity
until page 420 when the memories collapse into a free association chain which, by leaping from the word “genuflect” out into empty space, leads to the novel’s resolution and climax.
The killer is
—, thinks Ruiz, and dies. Four pages later the book concludes, with an imaginary newspaper headline—
Mysterious Killer Still at Large
—and a subtitle—
Promises to be heard from again
.

Santon puts the book down. He walks from the chair to the table, running his hand along the table’s surface. The table is ordinary. It is dusty. There is nothing on it.

What does the word “genuflect” mean?
he wonders
. Is there perhaps a meaning for it which cannot be seen with the untrained eye? For Ruiz, who is dead, there was. Why not for me?

“Ruiz,” Santon tells Alma, “dies.”

The bar is dark and nearly empty. The table is lit by three paste-white candles as thick as Santon’s forearm, none of which give off more than a tiny flame. Not quite paste-white, Santon thinks. They are the color of two fish that Santon found once in an underwater cave. The fish were nibbling at his legs, not hurting him, just nibbling. He could not see them. He caught them and killed them and then swam out of the cave to look at them.
Not quite pasty-white
, he thought, upon seeing them in the light.

The patrón, wiping off the bar, asks Santon and Alma to lift their cups.

“Genuflect?” asks Alma.

“Yes,” says Santon. “Yes, for Ruiz that’s the key.”

“What does it mean?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says. “To squat?” he says.

Santon has some idea of what genuflect means but is certain that it meant something more to Ruiz. Words, when they brush up against people, swell and split and branch. They become unmanageable. He explains this to Alma, who listens politely, her index finger touching her chin. It is a gesture he has never seen her make before.

“Swell and spit and branch?”

He shrugs and buys another round of drinks. He drinks something clear. Her drink is opaque.

He explains to her how he wondered what the killer was thinking just an instant before Ruiz wondered the same thing!

“Is that a coincidence?” asks Santon. “I ask you.”

Alma says nothing. Santon goes on to explain that he was curious about other things as well.

“Sex.”

“Sex?” asks Alma, coloring.

“Sex,” says Santon. “The killer: which sex?”

“Oh,” she says. “I see.”

They are outside now and walking. The area they walk through is a park of sorts, poorly lit. It is dark. There are trees. There are spots of grass that have been pressed down and, off the path, dark shapes.

Santon puts his arm around her as they walk. Alma does not try to move away.

“Who in the book do you think the killer really is?” she asks.

Santon stops. “I can’t even make a guess.”

“He could be anybody?” asks Alma.

“He could be anybody.”

“You’d better be careful,” says Alma.

“What?” asks Santon.

“Perhaps I am the killer,” says Alma.

“Ruiz could tell me,” says Santon. “But he’s dead. Murdered.”

He takes his arm off from around her shoulders.

“Genuflect,” he says tentatively, watching her reaction from the edge of his eye.

She does not react. They walk next to each other in silence.

Reading another book, a “true crime” story, Santon remembers the novel’s last words: the killer will be “heard from again.”

He can’t concentrate. He puts the book down, gets out the novel with the killer. He takes out his telephone guide, calls
Biblioteca Fidel
, asks if they have another book by the author of
The Killer
. There is only the one book, he is told.

“Isn’t there a sequel planned?” he asks. “The killer promised to be heard from again,” he says.

“I don’t know anything about a sequel,” says the bookseller.

He thanks her, hangs up the telephone. He sits down again, looks at the novel in his hands. On the cover it says “Based on a True Story.” It doesn’t mean anything. Most books, he thinks, claim this.

When he opens it, he discovers the final pages have been cut out with a razor, cleanly. Six pages gone.

Perhaps a joke of Alma’s, he thinks. Nonetheless, he is deeply disturbed. If a joke, it is in poor taste. Is Alma capable of it? How could she get in? Practically speaking, she hardly knows him.

Perhaps it is not a joke. After all, anyone could be the killer.

For several weeks he avoids her, does not answer the telephone. The telephone keeps ringing. He encounters her accidentally on the bus. She is already sitting when he boards. She looks up and sees him and he has no choice, he feels, but to smile and join her.

One thing, another thing, and soon she and Santon sit in the dark on a wrought-iron bench. He has explained how when his grandparents came to the island their name was not Santon at all, but rather Sànton.

“Is that significant?” asks Alma.

Santon looks at her. Her body is cut in twain by darkness, her far side vague.

“Is it, Santon?”

“Is what?”

“The name.”

“Rather significant.”

They sit silent for some time.
Why significant?
Santon wonders.
What makes it significant? What if she asks why?

“So, you’re going to college,” he says quickly.

“Yes,” says Alma.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” says Santon.

Silence. Santon is thinking,
I’d give anything to know where the killer is right now.

He wakes. He washes his face and puts on his robe. When he goes to have breakfast, he looks out the window.

There are people passing on the way to work. He watches them pass. So many faces, but none of which he recognizes. He wants to close the blinds but cannot. He stays watching, anxious, until it falls dark.

He wants to ask Alma if she removed the pages from the novel.
If she admits to it
, he thinks,
maybe we can have a good laugh about it and forget about the whole thing.

But what if she will not admit to it? What if she did not do it? If it is not her, he can only conclude that it must be the killer. He would prefer the uncertainty over knowing that it is the killer.

Even if she does admit, it does not mean that she is not the killer. She may admit and laugh with him, to throw him off guard. And then kill him.

If she admits it, she might be the killer. If she does not admit it, she might be the killer.

He cannot bring himself to ask.

He is walking by a dilapidated theatre when he sees a poster. On the poster a hand slices an intravenous sack with a glinting razor:

THE KILLER!

A True Story!

Based on the Book!

The names of the actors are French, Spanish, Italian. None are names he recognizes. Beside the killer’s name, there is no actor listed.

He wanders around the district until it is dark, returns to the theatre in time for the first showing. The theatre is mostly empty, a scattering of people through it. He sits in the back, near the door.

The film flickers onto the screen. Light plays oddly over the few faces near him. He smokes a cigarette to make his hands stop shaking.

The movie begins much as the book, with the philosophical conversation between the curate and the well-dressed gentleman and then the subsequent murder of both, shortly thereafter. Then the bodies begin to pile up, while Ruiz begins to gather evidence, goes undercover, is nearly killed, uncovers the child pornography ring, catches malaria, is run over by a car, is brought to the hospital.

It is in its ending that the heretofore faithful film changes, for there is no sign of consciousness on Ruiz’s part, no flashbacks into childhood, no free association chain. Instead, there is a transition and the hands and torso of the killer are shown in an apartment. He walks about, straight razor in his hand, as if stalking someone. The scene fades, comes up again in a hospital. The killer slits the bag as Ruiz’s breathing slows. The killer leaves, the breathing stops. There are no closing gestures or credits, the film simply spools out.

He stays for the second and third showing, falls asleep. When he wakes up, he seems to remember, while groggy and before falling asleep, catching a glimpse of the killer. The killer had walked past him and sat three rows before him. Santon had noticed it, but had not realized the person was wearing the same coat and gloves as the killer in the movie until now, waking up. Unless he imagined it. The seat is now empty.

After the second reel, the film stops. The light shines white on the screen. Santon sees he is the only person in the theatre.

He waits, but nothing happens. He goes out into the lobby but the lobby is empty. He opens the door to the projection booth and moves up the stairs. There is nobody in the room. The film reel, still spinning, clicks against the tail of the film.

He waits for a moment, then threads the third reel himself, returns to his seat. When the movie finishes, he makes his way out into the lobby. The theatre is still empty, the lights extinguished. He pushes quickly into the streets, is relieved when he finds people around him again.

He is nervous about returning to his apartment alone. He is as much afraid that nothing will happen as that something will. If nothing happens, there is something wrong with him inside. If something happens, there is something wrong with the world. It is easier simply to avoid returning home, at least for one night.

He finds a card house called “The Five Aces” with a bar, a few rooms with beds above it.

He arranges to take a room for the night. The room is squalid, the wallpaper puckered and yellowed. He can hear mice in the walls. The bed has a cheap metal frame, a miswoven blanket atop the uneven mattress. On the wall beside the bed is a black house phone, an internal line, no dial.

In chipped enamel at the bottom of the mirror are four aces, spread, one from every suit.
Where is the fifth ace?
he wonders.

Santon picks up the receiver, waits. He hears it click at the other end. “¿Mande?” a voice says.

“Where’s the fifth ace?” Santon asks.

“Pardon?”

“From here I can see only four aces. Where is the fifth ace?”

“The fifth ace?” says the voice. “Sir, you are the fifth ace.”

“Where are you?” Santon yells. “What is your name? Where are you?” The line seems to have gone dead.

When he is sufficiently drunk, he pays the bartender to let him call Alma. He tells her to come meet him.

“You can be the sixth ace,” he says, forcing a laugh.

She says she might come but she is not certain she can make it. She’d like to come, she says, then asks him if he’s been drinking.

“I’ll wait for you,” he says. “I’ll wait in the bar. We can go upstairs and talk. All we have to do is talk.”

She gives some answer or other. He sits down to wait at a table that gives him a good view of the door, orders another beer.

He awakens to find the bartender jostling his shoulder, the rest of the bar empty. He lets himself be led upstairs to the bed, is quickly asleep again.

When he runs into Alma again, she asks if she can borrow the novel. She would like to read it, she says. She has seen the movie and liked it and wants to compare it to the book.

He shrugs. He invites her to his house that evening, says he will give it to her then. Smiling, she accepts.

Later, he will claim it did not turn out as he expected it to. His only intention is to give her the novel, which she herself had asked for, but when he has given it to her, she seems reluctant to leave.

Out of reflex, he asks her if she wants a drink. Then, through a series of events which Santon fails to understand, they are in the bedroom together, without clothing, on the bed. She has straddled him, her hands resting lightly on his bare chest.

“The book,” he says. “The last pages have been razored out.”

She hushes him, presses her finger to his lips.

“But—”

“What’s the matter?” she asks. “Not afraid of me, are you?” He doesn’t respond. “Relax,” she says. “It’s not going to kill you.”

She covers his eyes with her hands, brings herself tight against him. He can hear her body move, as if at a distance. It terrifies him. “Don’t open your eyes,” she says. “Don’t look now.”

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