Blood Men: A Thriller

“I’m nothing like you.” I begin to stand. He reaches across and grabs me, and before the guard can say anything he lets go. I sit back down.

“The darkness. That’s what I called it,” he says. “I know you’re listening to it, but you also have to control it. If you can’t, it will take you to places before you’re ready. It doesn’t care if you get caught—it just wants to see blood. You have to rein that voice in, need to come to an understanding with it and, if you’re hearing it now, and I’m sure you are, then you have to find a way to stop it from overtaking you.”

“I have no darkness.”

“It never goes away,” he says. “At night I can hear it whispering, but I have no outlet for it here. It’s faded some over the years, sure, but it’s still there, no denying that.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“To protect you,” he says, “from the same thing that happened to me. Please, son, let me help you.”

“I call it the monster,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I can stop them, and Dad slowly nods, and for an awful moment I think my dad is going to smile, and say something sickening, perhaps a that’s my boy, but he doesn’t. The warmth goes out of his eyes and he stops nodding.

“That’s a shame, son. It really is.”

“I never knew what else to call it. I figured you had a monster, and when you went to jail, it came to live with me. Came to live inside me.”

“Not my monster,” he says. “You proved that by killing the dog before I went to jail. You have your own darkness. I wish I could help you more, and I would, if I was out there with you. Son, word around here is that the cops have no idea who killed Jodie.”

I stare at him blankly.

“She didn’t like me much, but I could see she was a good person. She was a good wife, I bet, and certainly a great mother, and I owe her for what she did for you. What happened to her—that’s a shitty thing. A real shitty thing. Yet if you ask me, the fact the cops haven’t caught anybody, that’s a good thing.”

“What?”

“It’s a good thing, son. Think about it.”

“What are you on about? How the hell can you say that? What are you? What in the hell are you?”

My dad leans forward in his chair then slowly pushes himself up. Both guards come over. “It was good talking to you, son.” He starts to walk away.

“Fuck you!”

“No yelling,” the guard says, and puts a hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off. The Christchurch Carver looks over and watches.

Dad turns back. “Go home and think about what happened to your wife,” he says. “And take some advice from your old man . . .”

“Save it,” I say.

“It’s okay to listen to the voice,” he says, then he disappears through the doorway.





chapter fifteen