The Killing Kind

Confessing seemed to have restored some of his confidence, because his habitual ugly sneer returned. “And, I was you, I'd find me another line of work. The kind of fella you're asking about don't like being asked about, you get my meaning. The kind of fella you're asking about, he kills people get involved in his business.”

That evening I felt no desire to be in the house or to cook for myself. I secured all of the windows, placed a chain on the back door, and put a broken matchstick above the front door. If anyone tried to gain entry, I would know.

I drove into Portland and parked at the junction of Cotton and Forest in the Old Port, then walked down to Sapporo on Commercial Street, the sound of the sea in my ears. I ate some good teriyaki, sipped green tea, and tried to get my thoughts straight. My reasons for going to Boston were rapidly multiplying: Rachel, Ali Wy

I paid the check and left the restaurant. Across Commercial, crowds of kids lined up to get into Three Dollar Dewey's, the doorman checking IDs with the skepticism of a seasoned pro. The Old Port was buzzing, and noisy crowds congregated at the corner of Forest and Union, the edge of the main drag. I walked among them for a while, not wanting to be alone, not wanting to return to the house in Scarborough. I passed the Calabash Cigar Café and Gritty McDuff's, glancing down the pedestrian strip of Moulton Street as I passed.

The woman in the shadows was wearing only a pale summer dress patterned with pink flowers. Her back was to me, and her blond hair hung in a ponytail against the whiteness of her back, held in place by an aquamarine bow. Around me, traffic stopped and footsteps hung suspended, passersby frozen briefly in their lives. The only sound I heard was my own breath; the only movement I saw came from Moulton.

Beside the woman stood a small boy, and the woman's left hand was clasped gently over his right. He wore the same check shirt and short pants as he had on the day when I had first seen him on Exchange Street. As I watched, the woman leaned over and whispered something to him. He nodded and his head turned as he looked back at me, the single clear lens gleaming in the darkness. Then the woman straightened, released his hand, and began to walk away from us, turning right at the corner onto Wharf Street. When she left my sight it was as if the world around me released its breath, and movement resumed. I sprinted down Moulton, past the shape of the little boy. When I reached the corner the woman was just passing Dana Street, the street lamps creating pools of illumination through which she moved soundlessly.

“Susan.”

I heard myself call her name, and for a moment it seemed to me that she paused as if to listen. Then she passed from light into shade and was gone.

The boy was now sitting at the corner of Moulton, staring at the cobblestones. As I approached him he looked up, and his left eye peered curiously at me from behind his black-rimmed glasses. Dark tape had been wrapped inexpertly around the lens, obscuring the right eye. He was probably no more than eight years old, with light brown hair parted at one side and flicked loosely across his forehead. His pants were almost stiff with mud in places and his shirt was filthy. Most of it was obscured by the block of wood-maybe eighteen inches by five inches, and an inch thick-that hung from the rope around his neck. Something had been hacked into the wood in jagged, childish letters, probably with a nail, but the grooves were filled with dirt in places, conspiring with the darkness to make it almost impossible to read.

I squatted down in front of him. “Hi,” I said.

He didn't seem scared. He didn't look hungry or ill. He was just… there.

“Hi,” he replied.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“James,” he said.

“Are you lost, James?”

He shook his head.

“Then what are you doing out here?”

“Waiting,” he said simply.

“Waiting for what?”

He didn't reply. I got the feeling that I was supposed to know, and that he was a little surprised I didn't.

“Who was the lady you were with, James?” I asked.

“The Summer Lady,” he answered.

“Does she have a name?”

He waited for a moment or two before replying. When he did, all the breath seemed to leave my body and I felt light-headed, and afraid.

“She said you'd know her name.” Again he seemed puzzled, almost disappointed.

My eyes closed for an instant and I rocked back on my heels. I felt his hand on my wrist, steadying me, and the hand was cold. When I opened my eyes, he was leaning close to me. There was dirt caught between his teeth.

“What happened to your eye, James?” I asked.

“I don't remember,” he said.

I reached toward him and he released his grip on my wrist as I rubbed at the dirt and filth encrusted on the board. It fell to the ground in little clumps, revealing the words:

JAMES JESSOP

SINNER

“Who made you wear this, James?”

A small tear trickled from his left eye, then a second. “I was bad,” he whispered. “We were all bad.”

But the tears fell only from one eye, and only the dirt on his left cheek was streaked with moisture. My hands were trembling as I reached for his glasses. I took the frames gently in each hand and slowly removed them. He didn't try to stop me, his single visible eye regarding me with absolute trust.

And when I took the glasses away, a hole was revealed where his right eye had been, the flesh torn and burned and the wound dry as if it were an old, old injury that had long since stopped bleeding, or even hurting.

“I've been waiting for you,” said James Jessop. “We've all been waiting for you.”

I rose and backed away from him, the glasses dropping to the ground as I turned.

And I saw them all.

They stood watching me, men and women, young boys and girls, all with wooden boards around their necks. There were a dozen at least, maybe more. They stood in the shadows of Wharf Street and at the entrance to Commercial, wearing simple clothes, clothes designed to be worn on the land: pants that wouldn't tear at the first misstep in the dirt, and boots that would not let in the rain or be pierced by a stone.

KATHERINE CORNISH

SINNER

VYRNA KELLOG

SINNER

FRANK JESSOP

SINNER

BILLY PERRSON

SINNER

The others were farther back, their names on the boards harder to read. Some of them had wounds to their heads. Vyrna Kellog's skull had been split open, and the open wound extended almost to the bridge of her nose; Billy Perrson had been shot through the forehead; a flap of Katherine Cornish's skin hung forward from the back of her head, obscuring her left ear. They stood and regarded me, and the air around them seemed to crackle with a hidden energy.

I swallowed, but my throat was dry and the effort made it ache.

“Who are you?” I asked, but even as they faded away, I knew.

I stumbled backward, the bricks behind me cold against my body, and I saw tall trees and men wading through mud and bone. Water lapped against a sandbag levee, and animals howled. And as I stood there trembling, I closed my eyes tight and heard my own voice start to pray.

Please Lord, it said.

Please don't let this begin again.