Bad Thoughts

Chapter 11

February 7. Twilight.

Shannon squinted at the alarm clock. It was three in the morning. Susie was fast asleep, her small body clinging as tightly to her edge of the bed as it could. This had become routine. He knew she didn’t intentionally do it; it was more her subconscious wanting as little contact with him as possible.

He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, making sure to keep his eyes wide open. Because when he’d close them his mind would start racing and images would start snaking in and out. He didn’t want to see those images anymore.

It was too quiet in the room. So quiet he could hear Susie’s soft, shallow breathing. If he strained he was pretty sure he could also hear the quiet thumping of her heart. Too damn quiet. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t keep from hearing his own blood pulsing through his head.

When he would let his eyes close it would start to play out again in his mind.

What Elaine had been told about his mother’s death was only partly true. He did come home and find her body and for the most part it was the way he had explained it. But she wasn’t alone, and the killer wasn’t caught weeks later, and he didn’t die in prison. And the rest of it…

When he did get home that day he knew something was wrong as soon as he got to the front door and found it unlocked and all the lights out. He’d spent the afternoon playing street hockey with his buddies, and instead of leaving his hockey stick by the front door like he usually did, he kept it with him. And he moved as quietly as he could through the house.

He found them in the kitchen. His mother lying on the table, her legs hanging loosely over the edge, and him bent over her, looking as if he were caressing her cheek, his own head casually moving from side to side as a long, dirty ponytail swayed back and forth with it. At first all Shannon felt was embarrassed and confused, then he noticed the knife, the way it was coming out of his mother’s mouth, the angle it was tilting at, and after an agonizing moment he realized why. His blood chilled ice cold with the realization. The room started to sway. All he could see through a blur of tears was that ponytail swinging back and forth. And then he moved.

His hockey stick caught the killer on the side of the face. The blow cut a jagged gash running the full length of his cheek and the shock of it knocked him over. The killer rolled with the blow, spun to his feet in a fluid cat-like motion, and twisted his body so he faced Shannon. As he stood up, he towered over him.

More than anything it was his face that stuck in Shannon’s mind, permanently scarring his consciousness. Twenty years later and he could still vividly see that face leering at him. It was almost like a hatchet had been taken to it, leaving it with only a tiny slit of a mouth and even less of a jaw. The gash had left him bleeding like a stuck pig. The killer put a hand to it, noticed the blood and showed a slight twisted smile.

“That was pretty stupid,” the killer said.

Shannon swung the stick again but he was only thirteen and a good foot shorter than the killer and eighty pounds lighter. The killer let it bounce off his forearm and pushed forward, grabbing Shannon by the throat. Without much effort he lifted the boy and turned him on his stomach with Shannon’s right arm twisted behind his back. He pushed back two fingers and broke them the way you’d break a pencil. When Shannon screamed, he gave the fingers a hard jerk. The pain was unlike anything Shannon had ever felt.

“What’s the matter, boy, you jealous? Wanted your mommy all to yourself?” the killer whispered lightly, his breath hot against Shannon’s ear. When he didn’t answer, the killer applied more pressure to the broken fingers until Shannon repeated what the killer ordered him to.

“That’s better,” the killer whispered, his tiny, slit mouth close against Shannon’s ear. “Let me ask you something, boy. You think you have the right to make a god bleed?” After working more on his broken fingers, Shannon screamed out that he didn’t.

The killer jerked Shannon to his feet, one hand pushing the boy’s head, the other twisting the broken fingers. Then he forced him forward, until Shannon’s face was inches from his mother’s.

“Go ahead,” he whispered. “Take a good look. See what happens when you anger the gods.” Shannon had his eyes squeezed shut, but the killer kept whispering to the boy, modulating the pressure on his bent fingers, using them the way a puppeteer controls a marionette by its strings. When Shannon couldn’t stand the pain anymore he opened his eyes and looked into his mother’s dead face.

“Now breath deeply,” the killer ordered, “smell that beautiful smell of death.” And Shannon did what he was forced to do.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it, boy?” the killer asked softly. Then he jerked Shannon away from the table and applied pressure on his bent fingers until Shannon was kneeling on the floor.

“I was fifteen before I had my first chance to smell that beautiful smell,” he whispered. “How old are you, boy?” A little twist made Shannon answer. “Aren’t you lucky,” he whispered, his breath obscenely hot. “Starting off so young. But this will be your only chance, boy. ’Cause you know what I’m going to do to you after this?” He described it in great detail, his breath flicking in and out of Shannon’s ear, tickling it like a snake’s tongue.

At times Shannon would black out from the pain. When he’d fade back in the killer would be whispering to him about how little time Shannon had left.

“Time to get up and kiss mommy good-bye,” the killer breathed lightly as he escalated the pain. He forced Shannon to his feet and back to the table. The killer pushed harder on his fingers, trying to force him forward. The pain screamed through Shannon’s head like a siren, exploding into a fiery burst. Then it went black. With the next twist, the pain reached a new level, a level beyond any conscious awareness.

The pain was no longer a part of him. It had gone beyond that. It was as if Shannon was outside of himself, observing the scene from a distance.

Something distracted the killer. Without being aware of it, Shannon swung his free elbow and caught the killer in the groin. There was a dull moan as he released his grip of the boy’s broken fingers. Shannon scrambled forward and pulled the knife from his mother’s mouth. Then he turned on the man.

The rest was only a dizzying whirl of images, with him slashing and stabbing at the killer, knocking the killer to the ground, then pulling at his dirty ponytail and yanking his head back and… and trying to sever that malformed ugly head from his body. Hacking away, again and again.

Someone pulled him off and twisted the knife from his hand. Shannon stared blankly at the man until he recognized him as his next-door neighbor.

“I heard you screaming,” the man said, his face white as a sheet. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered as his face grew even whiter, his eyes scanning the room, “let’s get you the hell out of here.”

The police came. They put Shannon in a cruiser and took him to the hospital where he underwent surgery to save his badly mangled fingers. The doctor performing the surgery was more shocked than anyone that he was able to. Afterwards, Shannon was put on pain killers and sedatives, and put in a private room. Both the police and the reporters wanted to get to him, but only the police did and that was after a week of fighting with the hospital staff. Shannon stared into space as they questioned him, telling them only his mother was already dead when he got home. He wouldn’t tell them anything else, not what the killer later did to him or any of it.

His mother…

The autopsy report showed bruises along her neck, but only the one wound inside her mouth. The knife had shredded her tongue and severed both her larynx and windpipe, and had cut through to the back of her neck. She actually had died of asphyxiation, unable to breath in air after the damage to her larynx. The police reasoned that she had been strangled until reflex forced her to open her mouth and then was stabbed. Most likely, the killer took a great deal of pleasure in letting her know what was going to happen as soon as she gasped for air. They were somewhat concerned about the lack of marks along the killer’s wrists and arms. They were also bothered by the fact the only fingerprints on the knife were the boy’s, but they were willing to accept that the killer must’ve wiped his off after the murder.

The killer…

He was identified as one Herbert Winters. His family was from Mornsville, North Carolina. Upper middle-class, his father a doctor, his mother a high school English teacher. They had no idea what he was doing in Sacramento. They further claimed they’d had no contact with him since he’d left home three years earlier. The police sent his picture and prints to the FBI hoping to tie other murders to him. Herbert Winters’s death was ruled justifiable.

Bill Shannon ended up hospitalized for five months, most of it in the psychiatric ward for severe depression. His father visited him only a few times during those five months, and when he did, neither of them talked much or made eye contact. When he drove his son home from the hospital it was in silence.

Shannon’s father was only thirty-four when his wife was killed. Before the murder he looked enough like Robert Conrad to have people stop him in the street. He and his wife used to joke about whether he should try and get a stand-in job for the Wild Wild West. Five months after the murder no one bothered to stop him. He no longer looked like Robert Conrad. He had aged, become an old man almost overnight. His hair more gray than black, the flesh around his face loose and sagging, his jowls hanging from his jawbone. It was his eyes, though, that had changed the most. They had become hollow and bitter.

Days would pass without Shannon or his father saying a word to each other. Sometimes Shannon would catch his father looking at him a certain way, the way you’d look at something you detested. Shannon would stare back and his father would end up averting his eyes.

One day Shannon felt his father staring at him. When he turned to face him, his father didn’t look away. Instead, he kept staring at the boy, his lips twisting into something hateful. Then into something insane.

“Was your mom alive when you got home?” he asked.

“What?”

“You heard me, was she alive?”

Shannon stood with his mouth hung open, too confused at first to answer, and then it hit him what was really being asked. A cold fury took him over. As he turned away, his father grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled.

“I asked you a question, was she alive?”

Shannon struck out, catching his father along the cheek. Then he watched as his father’s eyes went blind. The older Shannon threw his son against the wall and then stepped forward, punching him in the ear and knocking him to the floor.

“Answer me, goddamn you!” he screamed, his face twisted like a wounded animal’s. “You were there for over an hour. Was she dead when you got there? And what the hell were you doing to her?”

For awhile it was like it was with Herbert Winters, near the end anyway, with Shannon seeming to observe the scene from a safe distance, detached, only vaguely interested in what was happening. As if he were floating in a corner of the room, watching as his father slapped and punched at him. It seemed to last a long time. Then it was as if he were sucked back into his body. At that instant he could feel a mix of hot tears and humiliation and pain surge within him. As it took him over he told his father every hurtful thing he could think of.

The words hit his father hard, his body wincing with each one. He stood up, backing slowly away from Shannon, his body shaking like a drug addict’s. Shannon didn’t let up as the words poured out of him, as the words chased the older man out of the room and finally out of the house.

That was the last time they spoke to each other or even looked at each other. At seventeen, Shannon left both the house and California.

Shannon jerked his eyes open, a cold sweat breaking out along his upper lip. He sat up and reached over towards Susie, his hand finding her small hip. Still asleep, she pushed his hand off her. He stared slowly at her before squinting at the alarm clock. It was only three-thirty.

He got out of bed and went to the kitchen and found a pack of cigarettes. He sat and lit one after the other, inhaling the smoke deeply into his lungs. A half hour later the pack was nothing but ashes and burnt-out stubs. Shannon sat for a little longer and then went back to bed.

Come on, close those eyes. Let the Sandman come and put dust in those black holes of yours. I got a lot to tell you and I’m getting sick of waiting. More sick than you could ever imagine. And I don’t know how much longer I can stay out. It’s four-thirty already. The night’s fading away.

Of course, waiting’s not easy. It’s damn hard. Everything moving at such an accelerated pace. It’s a bitch to stay anchored in any one spot for too long. So close them, pal, there’s so much I need to tell you and I need to tell you tonight. All about Phyllis Roberson, about how much fun I had with her. I don’t know how much longer I got and the last thing I want to do is watch you lying there, too scared shitless to sleep. Well, that’s not quite true. It’s rewarding in a way, but it’s not what I’m here for.

Goddamn it… losing my anchor… don’t worry, pal, I’ll be back… you can’t keep a good man down for long. Bet on it.

It’s always kind of weird when you lose your anchor. It’s what happens, though, when you wait too long in any one spot. Oh, man, what a wasted night.

Early on I tried to find Phyllis, see if I could put the fear of God in her, so to speak. A lot of times if you catch them early enough, before they get a chance to get acclimated, you can really have a lot of fun. Get to them before they have their sense of bearing. Well, I didn’t quite make it. She had a crowd around her, guiding her, explaining the ropes and all the rest. Oh well, you get your kicks when you can.

And now this. You’re ruining my plans for the night, man. It’s not good, but I guess it really doesn’t matter. I’ll be back. We’ll talk. Only a matter of time…

See ya, Billy Boy.