“Did you really think I left the front door open for you?” Jorgen asked, his eyes focused on the blade rather than on Apollo. “Did you believe I told you all this history simply to unburden myself?
“If the front door is open and the front light left on, my son knows to run,” Jorgen said. “What you took as a confession was my way of giving him time to flee.” He looked up at Apollo. “It’s what any good father would do. I’ve done all I can. Now give that blade to me.”
Apollo went down on a knee. “You can have it.”
Apollo brought the blade to Jorgen’s neck and thrust. Instinctively, Apollo’s eyes fluttered shut. He heard the old man’s choking, astonished cough. When he opened his eyes again, the man’s throat threw out gouts of blood. Apollo blinked furiously but was blinded. His face felt scalded. Jorgen’s blood clogged Apollo’s nose and clotted his left ear; it cloaked his eyes. Apollo felt absolute disgust spread across his skin like a coating of mud. It threatened to suffocate him.
On the counter the kitchen timer beeped. It sounded as loud as a tornado siren. The old man’s legs kicked underneath Apollo and nearly sent him over. The only way to stay upright was to lean into the knife so it pressed deeper into Jorgen Knudsen’s throat. Apollo felt it lodge into something sturdy that was either the wooden drawer face or the old man’s spine. The pot with the sheep’s head jumped and shook, and it seemed as if the whole house was giving off the old man’s death rattle.
Apollo fell back from the body. He rubbed the sleeves of his shirt over his face just to clear the blood from his eyes. There was Jorgen Knudsen, back against the kitchen cupboards, and his eyes were gone back in his head. A house without its lights on, that’s what Jorgen’s body looked like now.
The alarm continued to sound, and its cry brought Apollo back to himself. He looked at the alarm, then at the large pot with the fire still going high beneath it. He turned off the flames.
“The sheep is ready,” Apollo said.
APOLLO KAGWA LEFT 124 86th Road under cover of night. He carried, in two hands, a large serving plate covered by a domed lid. The potatoes and the cabbage had been boiled for as long as the sheep’s head, three hours, and were ruined. In both pots the water had long boiled away, and the rest left behind was scorched. Only the sheep’s head came out whole. Its flesh had gone from yellowish red to an overall darkish gray, and its eyes hardened until they looked like marbles. Apollo took the sheep’s head out of the boiling water with his bare hands and set it on the tray. His hands turned a bright red, nearly purple, but if there was any pain, his mind couldn’t register it. His body still throbbed in the aftermath of the murder he’d just done. The water in the big pot turned a murky maroon from the blood on his fingers.
He set the head on the serving tray and covered it. Jorgen said he brought meals to Emma, whether Starbucks or homemade, as a kind of offering. Would Apollo have to do the same? Would this sheep’s head be enough? There was just so much Apollo still didn’t know. He shouldn’t have killed the old man until he’d learned all the steps, but he hadn’t been able to help himself once Jorgen explained how he’d played Apollo and why. It’s what any good father would do. Kinder Garten had been living in this home; maybe he’d even come to the front door, seen his dad’s signal, and escaped. And while that happened, Apollo had been in the windowless den, talking about the past at the expense of the present.
Apollo washed his face and his neck in the sink. It hardly cleaned him off. On the second floor he found a bathroom that had a large, claw-foot tub. He showered himself clean. He went upstairs and found Jorgen’s bedroom. Or was this Kinder Garten’s room? In a dresser he found slacks and a shirt, socks and a tee. He dressed himself and came back down to the kitchen. He hadn’t been wearing his coat and cap when he killed Jorgen Knudsen, so those were still clean.
He covered the sheep’s head with the lid. He took the bottle of Brennivín and swigged it. Three gulps, and he felt steadier. Took it with him, jutting out of his coat pocket, the serving tray carried with two hands. Out back he found his suitcase. He’d forgotten it was even there. He set the tray on the top of the suitcase and pulled the suitcase along by its handle.
Apollo returned to the staircase by the park, where Jorgen had set out the bags of food the night before. He climbed to the top and set down the serving plate, lid on. He thought better of crossing the street and trying to hide in the shadows there. Whoever had called the police on him might just do it again. This time he figured it was better to walk into the park.
He lifted the suitcase and led with it, using it to push at the wall of brush. Just three feet into the wooded area, the streets of Queens were scrubbed away. The sudden quiet overwhelmed him like a rogue wave. Not silence, but quiet. The limber creak of trees bending in strong wind, the dried leaves underfoot making a sound like crackers being chewed, the smell of winter air, which is expansive, it hollows out the nostrils. He touched at the red string as a Catholic might caress a rosary. He turned it around and around on his ring finger.
Then the last sound, playing at a register below the others, so regular Apollo mistook it for running water, a babbling brook. But they were words. The woods themselves seemed to be whispering. Not to him, not for him, but all around him. He had entered the woods of a witch and made an offering.
And now the witch appeared.
APOLLO SEEMED TO be standing inside a thunderstorm. He shielded his eyes. He had stumbled into view of a blue cosmos between the rows of winter trees. He saw his wife—she appeared at the center of the rippling lights, the clouds of cobalt smoke, but the distance between him and her appeared insurmountable. Freezing wind pulled at his coat. His ears rang louder than when Cal had fired shots from her gun. The air itself smelled burned, and the scorch of lightning strikes dazzled his eyes. Emma Valentine wore this terrible weather like a cloak.
Then she moved toward the staircase landing and the trees parted before her. She didn’t raise her arms and move the branches; they parted for her. Apollo witnessed this. She stepped onto the landing and hardly seemed to bend. The serving plate, lid still on, rose into the air and landed on her outstretched hand.
He heard the words from the children’s book. They played on her lips but hardly seemed to come from her. He heard it in echo, sound bouncing across the dirt and up the tree limbs and even pebbling against the concrete staircase, swirling in the night sky.
She stepped back between the trees and turned in the direction she’d come from, her back to him. The metal lid scraped faintly as it trembled with movement. She moved away from him. She was leaving. She hadn’t even noticed him.
“Em,” he said.
His throat hurt, dried out. The air burned the inside of his mouth.