Murder House

87

Tonight it will be the beach. Sometimes it’s a park, sometimes one of the taverns as it’s closing and drunk patrons are stumbling out. The beach is always the best. Because there’s always someone there, and they’re asleep, unaware — easy prey.

His trombone case feels heavy. The boy alternates hands as he carries it along Ocean Drive toward the Atlantic, the beach, just past two in the morning.

The wind coming sharply off the ocean. Darkness, and roiling, chaotic waves.

And light.

Three small beacons of light. Lanterns, or some form of them, for the beach bums, the ones not comfortable sleeping in pitch darkness. He knows how they feel — he slept with the closet light on for years, his mother yanking on the shoestring to turn it on, then sliding closed the closet door, leaving it open just a crack. He’d beg for another inch, for additional light, and they’d negotiate it every night. She usually let him win.

Kind of funny, though, that they’d sleep out here on the beach, in a natural setting, and still require the comfort of artificial light.

What are they afraid of, scary monsters?

What scares you? Dr. Conway always asks him. Scary monsters, things like that? Or does something else scare you?

The boy climbs to the small perch where the parking lot meets the sand. He opens the trombone case and removes the BB rifle, fully loaded.

Safely enveloped in darkness, further shielded by the wild grass on his perch, he closes his left eye and nestles his right eye against the rifle’s scope, slowly moving the barrel of the air gun through the deep blackness, through the dark, until he finds the small glow of light.

You wanna know how I feel, Doctor?

When the rifle’s sight is perfectly aligned with the lantern, when the circular scope is filled with nothing but the yellow-orange glow, he pulls the trigger.

A quick, hollow clink as the glass breaks, and the light disappears.

Over the wind, over the rush of the crashing waves, he hears it, ever so faintly. Movement. Rustling. Someone jarred awake.

He imagines that person’s reaction: disoriented. Confused. Alarmed. And worse — not knowing. Not knowing whether he should be scared. Not knowing whether he’s safe. Not knowing whether something really bad is about to happen.

That’s how I feel, Doc. That’s how I feel, all the time.

The boy places the rifle back in the trombone case and slides down from the sandy perch. He steps back onto the pavement of the parking lot and heads north.

The house, the Murder House, on his right, just two houses from the beach.

He knows the house. His mother comes here once a week for her job.

He stops at the iron gate. Looks up at the sad monster of a mansion, at the gargoyles and the spears on the roof, aimed at the sky, as if angrily threatening the gods—

A loud, sudden noise, the slap of doors flying open, wood hitting wood.

The boy crouches down, fear swirling inside.

A man’s mumbling, angry voice carrying in the wind.

The house, still dark. But the boy finds it. The second floor, south end.

His eyes adjust. He makes out a bedroom. A balcony that wraps around the west and south sides. Double doors, flung wide open.

A man — the man, it must be him. Six, they call him, or Number Six, or just The Sixth. But it’s him. Holden Dahlquist VI.

Shirtless, hair blowing in the wind, leaning over the balcony, looking down.

Trying to get his leg up on the top of the railing that borders the balcony. Trying to stand on top of it?

The boy gently places his trombone case on the ground.

Unlocks the latches.

Removes the air gun.

Looks through his scope, moving through darkness until he finds the man, illuminated by the bedroom light behind him.

With a final thrust, the man pushes himself onto the top of the railing. He rises, wobbly, standing on a narrow perch, a tightrope walker getting his balance.

He’s only on the second story, but this is no ordinary house. The man must be thirty, forty feet up. No way he’d survive a fall, especially when his landing would most likely be on the spiked fence below him.

The man arches his back, raises his arms as if beseeching the heavens. As if preparing to jump, as if preparing to fly off the balcony to another world.

The boy watches all of this through the rifle’s scope.

He pulls the trigger.

The man takes the blow, staggers, flutters on his perch, his arms doing tiny circles, his legs buckling, before he falls backward onto the balcony.

Aim-fire-click. The boy can do it well. He fires two, three pellets at the man. The man, injured from his fall, confused, reacts to each shot, jumping with surprise before scurrying back into the bedroom, out of sight.

The boy smiles. Then he packs up his rifle and runs back to his house.

88

The boy returns the next day. An itch he has to scratch. He hasn’t stopped thinking about the man. Can’t get the images from last night out of his head.

No trombone case this time. And this time, during the day. No school today, and Mom says dinner isn’t until two.

Ocean Drive is empty. The beach is empty. Even the beach bums, the drifters, have found someplace else to be today. It seems like everybody has someplace else to be on Thanksgiving.

The boy slips through the iron gates. It takes some effort, but he’s small enough.

He walks into the front yard, which slopes upward to the house. Colorful leaves dancing all around him, the air brittle with cold, the wind coming off the ocean downright treacherous.

He’s staring at the monument by the fountain — Cecilia, O Cecilia / Life was death disguised — when he hears the noise in the back.

He rushes to the back of the house, his feet crunching the blanket of leaves.

The first thing he sees: a rope, dangling from a tree branch, knotted in such a way that an oval circle hangs down, bobbing in the wind.

A noose. He knows the word for it. That’s a noose.

A ladder. A man — the man, it’s him — standing on the top rung, reaching for the noose, struggling to fit it over his head. Crying, sobbing, cursing.

And then suddenly noticing him, a trespasser, a boy, having just come around the corner.

“Get... get outta... get outta here... kid.” His words thick and slurred. The noose in his hands, not yet around his neck.

He is so terrified, he can’t respond to Mr. Dahlquist.

“I said... get out... get—” The man swaying, the ladder rocking, the man losing his grip on the noose as the ladder topples over, the man falling with the ladder to the blanket of leaves below with a muted thump.

The man cursing, then sobbing, his shoulders heaving. Punching the ground, swatting leaves, gripping his hair, grunting and screaming, like something inside him is trying to get out.

Then he stops. He’s worn himself out. He looks around and he finds the bottle, half-filled with some brown liquid, obscured by the leaves. He unscrews the top and takes a long guzzle, empties most of the bottle, wipes his mouth with his sleeve.

Then he turns and looks at the boy.

“It was... you... last... last night,” says Holden Dahlquist VI. The words struggling to escape his mouth, heavy and blurry.

The boy doesn’t answer. Doesn’t confirm, doesn’t deny.

But he walks toward the man.

“You my... guardian angel... or some... something?”

The boy stops short in front of him.

Mr. Dahlquist, dressed in a flannel shirt and pajama bottoms, yanks open the right side of his shirt, ripping off a button, revealing a small, deep-red wound.

“You... shot... shot me... last night.” His eyes red and heavy and unfocused, his face unshaven but handsome. Thick auburn hair. Tall and lean.

And then the boy sees the handgun, nestled in the leaves, three feet from him, and three feet from Mr. Dahlquist.

The boy reaches down and picks it up.

It is tiny, and light. Gold and silver. A short barrel. A big looping circle in the middle of the brass grip. Nothing like the guns that cops have, or that you see on TV.

“My great... grandfather’s revolver,” says Mr. Dahlquist. “Over a... a hundred... years old. A knuckle... knuckle duster.”

The boy wraps his fingers in the circle. Can’t even find the trigger.

“I’m a good shot,” the boy says.

The man’s eyes grow wide for a moment, his lips parting. His eyes shift from the gun to the boy. “That gun’s... loaded,” he says. “It has... bullets—”

“I know what loaded means.”

Mr. Dahlquist stares at the gun, as if lost in a deep dream, his body swaying slightly, his chest heaving. “Give it... to me, kid.”

The boy doesn’t move. He cocks the gun, which produces the trigger, protruding against his index finger.

“What... are you... doing?” Mr. Dahlquist reaches out with his hand, palm open. “Gimme it.” He lets out a noise, air whooshing out of him, and pushes himself to his feet, unsteady.

The boy doesn’t move. Holding the gun, aiming it at the man. The sensation it brings, the feeling of power, control, over another person.

The boy isn’t scared anymore. For the first time he can remember, he isn’t scared or confused. He feels... in control. For the first time in his life, he’s composed, in command.

He relishes that feeling. He doesn’t ever want to lose that feeling. He wants to remember that feeling forever.

He doesn’t ever want to go back to those other feelings he has.

He puts the barrel of the gun against his temple.

Mr. Dahlquist raises his hands, palms out. “No...”

The boy pulls the trigger.

Nothing but a loud click against his temple.

He cocks the gun again, pulls the trigger again.

Nothing again. The boy hurls the gun like a tomahawk across the yard. Adrenaline swirling inside him, his heartbeat rattling against his chest.

Mr. Dahlquist, chest heaving, eyes bugged out, looks at the boy, then at the gun in the grass, then back at the boy.

“You... think about... about doing that... a lot? Kill... killing yourself?”

The boy doesn’t answer.

Every day, he thinks. I think about it every day, every hour, every minute.

“Me too,” says Mr. Dahlquist.

Like the man can read his thoughts. Like he’s the first person who understands him.

“Good thing... that gun’s a... hundred years old.” And then Mr. Dahlquist starts laughing. He laughs for a long time, wiping at his eyes.

The boy doesn’t know what’s so funny.

“We’re quite a... pair. Can’t even... kill ourselves... right.”

Holden Dahlquist VI brushes himself off. “I’m cold. Are you... cold, kid?”

He picks up his bottle, drinks the remaining liquid, and staggers toward the house.

The boy follows him inside.

89

A secret. That’s part of what has made these last six months so fun. It’s a secret, the two of them. Nobody knows he comes over every day after school. Not his mother, not his friends — nobody knows about his new and special friend, Holden.

Well, six days a week, not seven. His mom comes here once a week. The boy doesn’t come on that day.

But all the other days, the boy slips through the gate and comes around the back.

“Did you kill yourself today?” he asks Mr. Dahlquist.

“Nope. Did you?”

“Nope.”

Their running joke.

“I won’t... if you won’t,” Holden always says at the end. “Prom... promise?”

Sometimes Holden looks happy to see him. Most days, he doesn’t look happy about anything else. Always unsteady on his feet, always reeking of alcohol — “my medicine,” he calls it — always slurring his words, forcing them out in small spurts.

Every day there is a chore, and the reward of ten dollars. Usually the task is really small, like raking a meager pile of leaves or shoveling snow off the front walk or washing a few dishes. The boy can tell that most of this work has already been done by someone else, and only a small portion of the project has been reserved for him.

Most days they talk. The boy, mostly. He tells Holden stories about his life, or his day at school, or the things that bother him. Holden doesn’t like to talk about himself, or even his family, for some reason. He likes to listen more than talk.

The boy watches Holden sometimes, even when he doesn’t come in for a visit, standing outside the gate and just watching. Holden doesn’t leave the house very much. He lives alone, save for the servant who comes in every other day to clean and cook and run errands.

He doesn’t have any other visitors, except the pretty women who come by once in a while and stay for a few hours, looking disheveled and sometimes bruised, sometimes limping, when they leave. Holden doesn’t like to talk about them, either.

Sometimes Holden paints. Sometimes he reads. Always, he drinks.

Canvases fill his upstairs, nearly all of the artwork dark, macabre. Storms ravaging houses, angry oceans, portraits of people dying, sometimes in bloody, grisly fashion, spears protruding through their midsections, gaping wounds in their chests. Anguished, tortured faces, death and destruction.

“You don’t... have to come here... every day,” Holden tells him one day.

“I want to.”

“You have... friends... friends your... age? Kids in... school?”

“Not really,” he says, when the true answer is a hard no. “I’m not really—” The boy isn’t sure how to finish the sentence. “They’re not... like me.”

Holden turns away from his artwork and looks at him, appraises him.

“I’m not like them,” the boy says.

Holden nods.

I’m like you, the boy does not say.

His other secret — the one he hasn’t even told Holden: the journal.

Or diary, whatever you call it. The thick book, bound in red leather, more than two hundred years old, which the boy found around Christmastime in Holden’s parlor. Wrapped in plastic for preservation.

He doesn’t understand every word of what’s written in that journal. Some of the words he has to look up in a dictionary. But he gets the gist of it. Some passages he reads and rereads. He doesn’t dare dog-ear the pages, but he slips makeshift bookmarks into those pages.

From Winston, the patriarch:

From Holden III, Winston’s great-grandson:

Holden VI:

They can’t help it. That’s what they’re saying. It’s not their fault. They can’t stop it. It’s a part of them. It’s outside their control.

They don’t want to do it. They have to do it.

He reads it every day. It makes him feel different. It makes him feel better. As if something inside him is blossoming, something changing, like a drug releasing its contents into his bloodstream.

He’s not the only one.

He’s not the only one who feels like there’s a monster inside him.

And he knows that Holden’s just like him, too. No matter how hard he tries to resist it, Holden’s no different from him, no different from his ancestors.

So he will wait. It may take months. It may take years.

He will wait for the moment when Holden is ready to show everyone what lies inside him.