“Fuck those guys, and fuck Dyer, too.”
He held on to the anger because it pushed the darkness back. The dirt was real, the burned-out house and the fire. Anger kept all that bright, so he thought of the warden, the guards, how the whole thing could still end bloody. It worked for a while, but he blinked once and the fire burned away as if the eye blink were an hour. He’d drifted as he used to do, blinked and gone away. He tried to shake himself alert, but was heavy; everything was heavy. When he blinked again he saw Liz, distant at first and then close, a face across the smoke, the eyes liquid and troubled and impossibly deep.
“What are you doing here, Liz?”
She moved like a ghost and sat, soundless, on the dirt. The edges of her face were blurry, her hair as weightless and dark as the smoke around her. “Did you know I was going to jump?”
He tried to focus, but couldn’t; thought maybe he was dreaming. “You wouldn’t have done it.”
“So, you knew?”
“Only that you were frightened and young.”
She watched him with those impossible eyes. “Was it terrible? What they did to you?”
Adrian said nothing; felt heat in his skin. The eyes weren’t right. The way she watched and waited and seemed to float.
“I see the hollow place.”
She pointed at his chest and drew the shape of a heart.
“I can’t talk about that,” he said.
“Maybe, there’s some of you left. Maybe, they missed a piece.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Doing what? It’s your dream.”
Her head tilted, a mannequin face on a mannequin body. He stood and looked down.
“You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Because of what they did to Eli?”
“Don’t ask me to let them live.”
“Why would I do that?”
She stood, too, then took his face and kissed him hard.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“What do the papers call me?”
“I don’t care if you killed those men.”
“Yet you dream of me,” she said. “You dream of a killer and hope we are the same.”
15
He liked morning light because it was so unused. Anything could happen with such soft, pink lips pressed upon the world, and he took a moment—just for himself—before dragging the girl from the silo. She fought harder than most, her skin filthy and her fingers torn bloody at the tips. She kicked and screamed, cuffs clanking on her wrists, both hands locked on a ridge of metal. He pulled until her hips rose off the ground, then sighed deeply and touched a strip of skin with the stun gun. When she went loose, he dropped her legs, then stepped away to blot sweat from his face. Normally, the silo made them easier to work with. Fear. Thirst. This one was a fighter, and he thought that might be a good sign.
When his breathing slowed, he rolled her onto a tarp, then removed her clothes and took his time cleaning her. This was a big part of it, and though she was beautiful in the light, he focused on her face instead of her breasts, on her legs rather than the place they joined. He cleaned dried blood from her fingertips and wiped her face with care. She moved once as the sponge slipped behind her knee, and then again when it touched the plane of her stomach. When her eyes fluttered, he used the stun gun a second time and after that moved more quickly, knowing how the light would harden and age her, how different she would appear if he waited too long. When her skin was scrubbed and dried, he used a silk cord to bind her ankles and wrists, then placed her in the car and drove to the church. Yellow tape sealed the door, but what did seals matter? Or police? Or worry itself?
At the altar, he laid her down and used the same cords to strap her flat, cinching the legs tight, pulling the arms down until the shoulder bones jutted. He moved faster now because she was stirring. He covered her with white linen, folding it just so, making it perfect. By then his vision was blurred, both eyes so full and brimming it was as if no time had passed, and all the years between then and now were glass. Her lips were parted; breath moved. And while some deep part of him recognized the illusion, the weeping part embraced it with profound and terrible joy. He touched her cheek as the eyes fluttered and the pupils dilated. “I see you,” he said, then choked her for the first time of what he knew would be many.
*
It took a long time for her to die. She was crying; he was crying. When it was done, he went under the church, dragging himself to the worn spot beneath the altar, and curling in the earth as he’d so often done. This was his special place, the church beneath the church. Yet, even there he could not hide from the truth.
He’d failed.
Had he chosen poorly? Was he somehow mistaken?
He closed his eyes until the grief passed, then touched one shallow grave after another.
Nine women.