Into the Dark

22

Greater Los Angeles, California

The freeway rushed under Robert Bowen’s SUV as he headed east on the 210 toward the mountains.

Before leaving L.A., he’d taken care of a few matters. It was now late afternoon but traffic was still good. The Los Angeles Times article was folded in his bag.

He needed to think.

Problems were rising around him. Everything was at stake. The police were hunting for him. Claire was determined to bring a baby into their lives; and the darkness within him-the force he thought he’d conquered-was back full bore and fighting him for control.

As his wheels ate up the highway, his mind swirled with a million concerns. He loved Claire. He’d worked hard to build what he had with her. He could not lose it. He wanted to be a father-wanted a normal life.

But the monster inside him was relentless. For as long as he could remember he’d struggled against it. At times he was convinced he’d put it to rest. Then he would see a woman, the right type of woman, one that would give him a metaphysical vibration. He’d become enthralled by her smile, her look, her everything.

It would arouse him and the monster would take control.

He would stalk her, study her, and obsess about her until a spark would ignite a glorious, all-consuming inferno, leaving him to question his fate as a force from hell.

Will I ever escape this curse?

How much longer can I exist as two beings?

He searched the distant mountains for the answers, letting the hypnotic rhythm of the road carry him back through his life to his earliest memories.

Pain.

He’s staring at a naked lightbulb burning bright against dark flashes as the leather belt slices through the air, whip-snapping over and over.

Each lash bites into his tender skin.

He is four, maybe five, years old. Wedged into a corner, he tries to shield the blows but his foster mother grips both of his tiny hands in hers and with alcohol-laced grunting, she continues beating him.

“Don’t ever piss in your goddamn bed again! Do you hear me? You’re lucky to be alive! You’re a filthy little worm!”

He’d been told that he was orphaned as a baby after his parents had been killed in a car crash. He’d been placed with social services and moved from home to home.

At age six or seven, he was placed in yet another foster home. His foster mother, who’d lied to social services in order to get her check, was an unstable, manipulative drug addict. Whenever she was working her shift at some dive bar, she left him alone with her boyfriend: an ex-con who watched pornographic movies in front of him.

At that time, he felt the stirrings of another force within him, one that compelled him to spy on his foster mother as she undressed, showered or had sex with her criminal lover. One summer afternoon when she was on the apartment balcony tanning in a bikini, she caught him staring at her cleavage and slapped his face so hard he bled.

He glances out the window at the vapor trail of a jet cutting across the sky. At that moment he wishes he were flying above the earth, above the pain and humiliation this bad woman is inflicting on him.

He also wishes he were smashing her head with a hammer.

Eventually, he was passed to another home where his foster mother was an ex-prison guard who looked more like a man than a woman. She had a teenage foster daughter. One day, he was alone in the house with her. She was in her room putting on makeup, drinking beer and smoking pot. She saw him in her mirror, watching.

“Stop staring at me, you little asshole!” She pauses for a second before her eyes glint with an idea. “Come here, it’s time you learned the truth.”

She takes him to their foster mother’s bedroom, goes into a dresser drawer and produces a photocopy of an old news clipping.

“You can read, right, moron?”

The short news article reports that:

A newborn baby boy was found in a Dumpster at an abandoned northeast apartment complex, according to police. A homeless man searching for cans in one of the large trash bins near the old Stone Mill building found the infant in a bloody blanket…

“This story is in your file. It’s about you, garbage boy. And you know what I heard? Back then, they called you the throwaway baby. They never found your whore mother and all the families that tried to adopt you brought you back because you’re a freak.”

At that moment he struggled to comprehend that his fate was more than being unwanted and unloved.

I am nobody. I came from nowhere. I was never meant to be.

He’d come to realize that he was utterly alone in this world. His isolation deepened, giving shape to the second being growing inside him, the one that was taking control.

He was not alone. The other being was with him and together they were better than all of them. They would make them, and everyone like them, pay. One day, everyone in the world would know and fear his name.

He retreated to his dream of becoming a pilot. He lost himself in books, spending hours alone in the library reading about aviation, aviation history and aviation engineering. He read entire sets of encyclopedias, classic literature and textbooks on science, everything he could find, gaining knowledge while strengthening his determination to escape his misery.

During this time, as he grew into his teens, he’d continued passing through a succession of homes. Nearly all of the cities and towns he’d lived in blurred by like the suburbs along the freeway.

His time with one family changed him forever.

In one small town, his foster father was a barely educated, self-pitying man whose job was to destroy life. He took him to his workplace.

“You ain’t ever seen nothing like this.”

The old man worked in the slaughterhouse at the edge of town, where he was “the killer.” He spit on the ground, as if to dare you to challenge him. “Because that’s what I do for a living.”

The stench from the barns was choking. The mooing, the clang of chains and rattle of metal gates was deafening. The cattle were prodded along the chutes one by one toward the death pen where his foster father waited. When the animal was positioned, he fired a penetrating steel shaft from a bolt gun point-blank into its head.

Crack.

The animal collapsed dead.

The side of the pen opened, a chain was affixed to its leg. It was hoisted and hung from an overhead conveyor and cut so all the blood drained from its carcass. It was then moved farther through the process.

“Right now, I am God,” his foster father said, standing there in his rubber apron and gloves as blood swirled around his boots. “I control life and death.”

He passed the gun to him and nodded to the pen.

“Go on, you give it a try.”

His heart beat faster.

He felt the weight and seductive power of the sticklike device in his hand. Amid the stinking chaos of the slamming steel pen, the mooing, clanging chains and snorting, the frightened animal lifted its head to him, its nostrils flaring.

As he raised the gun and pressed it against its skull, he met its eyes.

They were flashing with wild fear.

He felt nothing for the animal. Instead, he imagined its eyes to be those of every one of his abusers and he squeezed the trigger.

At the moment of death, his heart raced, his breathing quickened and he experienced a sensually cathartic release.

The other being inside him raged triumphantly.

He remained motionless for several moments, as if he’d fallen into a trance. As he watched the carcass being hoisted, he smelled the hot blood splashing onto the floor and his body rippled with waves of pleasure.

“I want to do it again.”

He became good at killing.

Several months after he’d polished his skill as a detached killer, he’d moved into another home. As he adjusted to a new foster father, he continued dreaming of becoming a pilot. Throughout his youth, to escape his upbringing, he’d worked. He got jobs, pumping gas, washing dishes, stocking shelves and landscaping, whatever he could find.

He saved every penny he earned, often hiding it from his foster families. But whenever he could, he sought jobs at the local airport where he would learn everything he could about flying from ground crews, mechanics and pilots. Soon he set out on his own, working while putting himself through college and, later, flight school.

It was not easy.

In addition to the grind of physical jobs, the monster grew stronger and more demanding. At times it took control, dominating every thought until he was certain he’d go insane. There were frightening instances when he’d blacked out and couldn’t recall the previous hours or remember where he went or what he did. The other being demanded he give in to its overpowering urges to replicate the ecstasy of the slaughterhouse with a woman. He battled to satisfy the hunger that was devouring him from the inside. He watched porno movies, visited strip clubs, paid for prostitutes.

In private moments, after joking around with some of the men he worked with, he’d come to realize what he already knew: his desires weren’t normal. Afraid that they could get out of hand, he sought counseling and was prescribed relaxation tapes and medication.

He tried it for several months before giving up.

Nothing worked.

It was as if his brain were on fire.

Nothing fulfilled him. The more the monster demanded a controlled kill, the more he fantasized about taking live action with a real woman, forcing him to hunt until he found a target.

She worked at a bookstore in a local mall where he bought books about planes. He studied her for weeks. She had a lovely figure, beautiful eyes. She gave off the vibe that fed his desire to take her.

He’d learned everything he could about her; where she lived, where she bought her groceries and where she took yoga classes. He learned that on nights after she closed the store and made a deposit at one of the mall’s banks, she walked alone in the parking lot to her car, a green Honda. He knew the route she drove home. Knew the ruse he would use.

He began preparing.

He’d dug a grave in a dense woods twenty miles from town where he would dispose of her body. He’d scouted a room in an abandoned factory where he would tie her up and possess her, possibly for days if he wanted, all while recording their sessions.

Everything was set.

But on the night he was to launch his mission, she didn’t walk to her car. Her boyfriend had arrived and walked her to his. He backed off and aborted the project.

It was too risky.

The monster thrashing inside him became enraged. He fought to subdue the beast. He summoned every iota of sanity to battle the dark urges, praying he could suppress them or outgrow them, hoping that they would ultimately fade away.

It took a great effort, but he concentrated on his job and his goal. He soon got his pilot’s license, then a job as a flight instructor, all the while working toward further qualifications. In time, he flew small charters, then cargo jets before ultimately flying across the U.S. and around the globe for a big commercial airline.

He was devoted to his career.

He stayed single, dated flight attendants and lived in cities around the world.

But in all that time, the monster would not rest.

With each passing month, each year, its craving intensified, creating fantasies as it presented him with plans for missions, insisting that together they possessed more intelligence than any other killer before him.

What they would achieve would surpass anything in history.

And no one would ever know.

Unless they wanted them to.

They could claim their glory, like Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer, and turn their work into art. Ultimately, the monster won. They launched a major undertaking of multiple projects. It was flawless.

Robert glanced at his bag in the passenger seat holding the article.

Five perfect kills.

But he could not bear the burden of his curse. He ached to be free of this evil, to live a normal life, an upstanding, virtuous life and when he found Cynthia, he’d been convinced she was his salvation.

He’d been so happy when they married.

He’d restrained the beast inside him. Maybe he’d even laid it to rest.

But his grueling job as a pilot, the days and nights away, his struggles with temptations and his past had caused irreparable damage. He was sorry about how it ended with Cynthia.

The disaster had forced him to take stock.

Again he searched for redemption, driven by the need to rebuild himself as a moral man and a compassionate human being.

Is that possible, given what I am?

After his marriage ended he had taken steps to leave the demanding world of a commercial airline pilot. He had been in the process of lining up a charter pilot job in L.A. when he met Claire.

Claire would always believe that he rescued her from her violent spouse that day at the Minneapolis airport, but Robert knew the truth: she’d saved him. She was a force of light in his life, a light that would grow even brighter with a child. With Claire, he was living in grace.

But the monster had returned.

He could feel its hot breath on him as he got closer to the mountains where he’d come to bury his demon. As he drove along the narrow road that cut through the dense forest, his jaw clenched with one thought.

Only one of us is coming back.