The Face of Death

  “Sarah will live. You are both going to die, but she will live. If you’ve had concerns, that should allay them. I’m not going to kill her.” He paused. “But I could decide to hurt her.”

  He transferred the gun to his left hand, reached into his back pocket with the other and came out holding a lighter. It was flashy; a mix of gold plating and mother-of-pearl, with an inlaid picture of a domino tile on one side, the two-three piece.

  He flipped the lighter open, and flicked the wheel with his thumb. A small flame lit, blue at the bottom.

  “I could burn her,” The Stranger murmured, looking into the flame. “I could torch her face. Turn her nose into a lump of melted wax, fry off her eyebrows, blacken her lips.” He smiled, still looking at the flame. “I could sculpt her literally rather than figuratively, using flame as my knife. Fire is strong and ruthless. Absent of love. A living representation of the power of God.”

  He snapped the lighter shut in a sudden motion and returned it to his pocket. He moved the gun back to his right hand.

  “I could burn her for days. Please believe me. I know how to do it. How to make it last. She wouldn’t die, but she’d beg for death in the first hour, and she would lose her mind long before bedtime.”

  His words, and the certainty with which he delivered them, terrified Linda. A raw and ragged terror. She didn’t doubt him. Not even a little bit. He’d burn her baby, and he’d smile and whistle as he did it. She realized that she feared this more than dying, and for a moment (just a moment) she felt relief. Parents like to think that they’d die for their children—but would they? When a gun came out, would they step between it and their child? Or would something more primal and shameful take over?

  I would die for her, Linda realized. In spite of what was happening, this made her proud. It was freeing. It gave her focus. She concentrated on what The Stranger was saying. What did she have to do to keep him from burning her baby?

  “You can prevent this,” The Stranger continued. “All you have to do is strangle your husband.”

  Sam was startled from his reverie of rage.

  What did he just say?

  The Stranger reached into a bag near the couch, pulling out a small video camera and a collapsible tripod. He placed the camera on the tripod and positioned it so that it was pointing at her and Sam. He pushed a button, there was a musical tone, and Linda realized they were now being filmed.

  What did he just say?

  “I want you to put your hands around his neck, Linda, and I want you to look into his eyes, and I want you to strangle your husband. I want you to watch him die. Do it, and Sarah will not burn. Refuse, and I’ll put the flame to her until she smokes.”

  The rage had gone away, far, far away. Had it ever really been there? It didn’t feel like it to Sam. He was dazed. He felt like someone had just hit him in the face with a hammer.

  It was as if his ability to comprehend had been ratcheted up to a superhuman level. He was thinking in fractals, seeing the interconnectedness of everything in strobe flashes. Truths arrived in rifle cracks of illumination.

  This leads to this leads to that…and the sum is always the same.

  He and Linda were going to die. He understood that with a sudden certainty.

  Too sudden?

  No. This man was implacable. He wasn’t testing them. He wasn’t pranking them, this wasn’t a trick. He was here to kill them. Sam wasn’t going to break free and save his family. There wouldn’t be any Hollywood-movie moment of sudden redemption. The bad guys were going to win and get away clean.

  This leads to this leads to that…

  Only one outcome wasn’t yet decided, the most important one: What was going to happen to Sarah.

  He looked at his daughter. Sadness overwhelmed him.

  What would happen to Sarah? He realized he’d never really know. His little girl, if she survived this, would go on. Sam would end here. He’d never know if any sacrifice made had saved her or not.

  She looked so small. The couch was just a yard away, but it might as well have been a light-year. A new wave of sadness, choking and desperate. He was never going to touch his little girl again! The kiss he’d given her last night, the hug, had been the last of it.

  He looked over at Linda. She was listening to The Stranger, her eyes intent. Sam drank in the image of her chestnut hair and her brown eyes, and then he closed his own and remembered her so hard that he could almost smell her, a scent of hand soap and woman, as uniquely Linda as her DNA.

  He remembered her clothed and classy, and he remembered her naked underneath him, in her studio, covered in paint and sweat.

  He remembered his daughter too. He remembered that the surge of love he’d felt when he first heard her cry was so strong it threatened to consume him. It was fierce, and it was huge, and it was larger than he could ever hope to be alone.

  He remembered her laughter, and her tears, and her trust.

  Last, he remembered them together, the wife and the daughter. Sarah asleep in Linda’s arms as a baby, after a long and colicky night.

  He remembered and he felt sad and he felt angry and he wanted to fight, but—

  The sum is always the same.

  He opened his eyes, and he turned to Linda, and this time she was looking back at him. He tried to make his eyes smile, tried to show her the all of everything inside him, and then—he closed his eyes, once, and nodded.

  It’s okay, babe, he was telling her. Do it, it’s okay.

  Linda knew what her husband was saying. Of course she did—they’d talked without words, plenty of times. We may be different in some ways, he was saying, but in those places where the rubber meets the road, we’re one person.

  One tear slid from her right eye.

  “I’ll remove his gag, and I will uncuff your wrists. You will put your hands around his neck and then you’ll squeeze until he’s dead. You’ll kill him, and Sarah will watch, and it will be terrible for you, I know, but I won’t touch Sarah when I’m done with the two of you.”

  He cocked his head, seeming to notice for the first time that something had passed between Sam and Linda.

  “You’ve already decided, haven’t you? Both of you.” He was quiet for a moment. “Did you hear that, little one? Mommy is going to kill Daddy to keep me from burning you with fire. Do you know what you should learn from that?”

  No reply.

  “The same lesson as before. Mommy is going to be ruthless, and it’s going to save you. Did you hear me, Sarah? Mommy’s ruthlessness is going to save you. Her willingness to feel pain for you is going to save you. Strength, finally, to support that mother-love.”

  Sarah was hearing what The Stranger was saying, but they weren’t real words to her. She believed in monsters. In the end though, the monsters always lost.

  Didn’t they?

  God made sure that nothing truly bad happened to good people. This wouldn’t be any different. It was scary, it was terrifying, it was terrible that Buster had died. But if she could hold it together, The Stranger wouldn’t win. Daddy would stop him, or God would stop him, or maybe even Mommy.

  She kept herself from believing what he was saying, and concentrated on waiting for the moment that it would all be over, and Mommy and Daddy and Doreen would be okay.

  Linda Langstrom listened to The Stranger talking to her daughter. Rage and despair roared up inside her. Who was this man? He’d walked into their home in the middle of the night, without fear or hesitation. He’d entered their bedroom with a gun, had woken them with a whisper. “Scream and you will die. Do anything other than what I tell you and you will die.”

  His control had been absolute from the start. He was both the irresistible force and the immovable object, and now he’d backed them into a corner, with only one way out. She had to kill Sam, or the man would torture Sarah. What choice was left with such inexorable options? The Stranger was manipulating them, she knew this. He might still hurt Sarah. Kill her, even.

  But…he might not.
And that possibility, well…what choice was left?

  Her rage was impotent, she was aware of that. Her despair was suffocating. Sam would die. She’d die. Sarah might live. But who’d raise her? Who’d love her?

  Who would watch her baby from the clouds?

  “I’m going to take off both of your gags. Sam, you will be allowed two final sentences—one to your wife, one to your daughter. Linda, you are allowed a single sentence to Sam. Exceed these parameters, and Sarah burns. Do you understand?”

  They both nodded.

  “Very good.”

  He removed Linda’s gag first, then Sam’s.

  “I’ll give you a minute. A sentence isn’t much, when it’s your last chance to speak. Please don’t be frivolous.”

  Sam looked at his daughter and his wife. He glanced down at Doreen, who wagged her tail at him, stupid, lovable dog.

  He wondered at his lack of fear. On one hand, everything was bright and sharp-edged, on the other it was all a floating surreality. Shock? Maybe.

  He made himself focus. What were his last words going to be? What should he say to Linda, who was about to be forced to kill him? What did he want his daughter to remember about this moment?

  All kinds of things flew into his head, sentences with fifty words, apologies, good-byes. In the end, he let the words come from him without inspection, and hoped they were right.

  He looked at his wife. “You are a work of art,” he told her.

  He looked at his daughter. “Olive juice,” he said, smiling.

  Sarah stared at him for a moment, surprised, and then she smiled the smile that had stolen his heart from the beginning. “Olive juice, Daddy,” she said.

  Linda looked at her husband and fought to keep herself from choking with grief. What was she going to say to this man? To her Sam, who’d saved her in so many ways? He’d saved her from her own self-doubt, had saved her from living a life without loving him. A sentence? She could speak for a year without stopping and it still wouldn’t be enough.

  “I love you, Sam.” She blurted out the words, and at first she wanted to scream, to take them back, they weren’t enough, that couldn’t be the last thing she ever said to her husband.

  But then she saw his eyes and that smile, and she understood that while it wasn’t the perfect sentence, it was the only one. She’d married her first love, the love of her youth. She’d loved him through laughter and anger, with kisses and yells. Love is where it started, love is where it was going to end.

  She expected The Stranger to say something, to make fun of these last words, but he didn’t. He stood and waited, silent. He seemed almost respectful.

  “Thank you for complying,” he said. “I really don’t want to have to burn Sarah.” A pause. “Now we’re going to begin the strangling. It’s not as easy as you might think, so please listen to what I tell you.”

  Linda and Sam listened to the man, but kept their eyes on each other. They talked without words. The Stranger droned on, giving Linda matter-of-fact advice on how to kill her husband.

  “I don’t need it to be painful, or to last for a specified time. If he goes quickly, that’s fine. It just needs to happen. The areas you’ll want to concentrate on are here and here.” He touched areas high on each side of Sam’s neck, near the jawline. “The carotid arteries. Cutting off the blood flow in those places will knock him unconscious before the lack of air kills him. Concurrent with that, you’ll need to exert pressure forward with both hands in order to cut off the airflow through his windpipe.” The Stranger demonstrated without actually touching Sam’s neck. “Then you hold on till he stops breathing. Simple. I will re-cuff him from behind so he can’t reach up to try and tear your hands away.” The Stranger shrugged. “It happens, even with suicides. One man had pulled a plastic bag over his head, had taped it closed around his neck, and then had handcuffed his own hands behind him. I suppose he changed his mind once it started getting difficult to breathe. He almost tore his thumbs off trying to rip his hands from the cuffs. We don’t want any of that here.”

  Sam was sure The Stranger was right. He could feel his own fear, far off but persistent. Knocking at his door.

  Little pig, little pig, let me in…

  No. He didn’t want to die, that was true. But he was going to. This leads to this leads to that, and the sum is always the same. Save Sarah. You can’t always get what you want. Life’s a bitch—

  —and then you die.

  Sam sighed. He took one more look around. First at the room, the kitchen, the shadowy front area beyond that. His home, where he’d loved his wife and raised his child, where’d he’d fought the good fight. Then at Sarah, the living, breathing result of the love between him and Linda. Finally, he looked into his wife’s eyes. A deep, lingering look, and he tried to tell her many things and everything, and he hoped she understood all of it, or some of it, and then he closed his eyes.

  Oh, Sam, no…Linda understood what he was doing, what he’d just done. He’d said good-bye. He’d closed his eyes, and she knew he didn’t plan to open them again. Logic was a big part of who Sam was. It was one of the things she loved about him, it was one of the things about him that drove her crazy. He had this ability, to see things three moves ahead, to arrive at an understanding while she was still puzzling over it.

  Sam had probably known they were going to die long before The Stranger ever told them so. He’d examined the situation, had weighed the possibilities of the man’s motivations, and had realized the inevitable. Everything since had been him waiting. And feeling.

  “You go fuck yourself!”

  The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them, driven by emotion, not logic. The Stranger paused, looked at her, cocked his head.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I told you to go fuck yourself,” she snarled. “I’m not doing it.”

  She looked over at Sam. Why hadn’t he opened his eyes?

  The Stranger leaned toward her. He gazed at her for a long moment, and she was reminded of a statue. Stone, unfeeling, resolute.

  “You’re mistaken,” he said.

  He put the tape back over her mouth, and then Sam’s. He didn’t seem angry as he did it. Without speaking, he walked over to Sarah, gagged her, grabbed her handcuffed wrists, and yanked her hands forward. He stuffed his gun in his pants, and reached into his back pocket, pulling out the flashy gold-plated lighter. Linda’s heart froze when she heard the “snick” of it opening. His thumb pumped once on the wheel, and there was fire.

  He made sure that Linda was watching as he held Sarah’s palm over the flame for three full seconds.

  Sarah screamed the whole time; The Stranger did what he had said was the only duty of the strong: He kept on breathing, calm and sure.

  21

  SARAH COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH IT HURT. SHE’D BEEN forced to stop crying so that she could breathe through her nose.

  All the far-away things were now close. Her emotions were a blinding sheet of white lightning inside her, terror, grief, horror. The monster was inescapable. She knew that now. This knowledge was destroying her.

  Her mother had raged as Sarah had been burnt. Linda had yanked so hard against her handcuffs that she would have torn the flesh on her wrists to the bone, if the insides of the cuffs had not been padded. Mommy was still Mommy, but she crackled with a threatening energy Sarah had never seen.

  Even The Stranger was impressed.

  “Magnificent,” he’d said. “You are one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen.”

  Sarah had agreed.

  “The problem, Linda, is that I’m scarier.” He’d shaken his head. “Don’t you understand? You can’t win. You won’t beat me. I am strength. I am certainty. Your choices are unaltered: Do what I say, or watch as I burn Sarah into a semblance of a circus freak.”

  Her mother had quieted down then. Sarah had tried to look at her daddy, but his eyes were closed.

  “I’m going to give you a few moments to c
ollect yourself. A full minute. After that, you’ll either tell me that you’re ready, and we will move forward, or I will put the torch to Sarah in earnest.”

  Sarah quivered in fear at the thought of more fire, more pain. And what did he mean by “moving forward”? She’d been in her far-away place, waiting for the monsters to go away. He’d talked during that time, said something important. She strained to remember.

  Something about Mommy and Daddy…

  Mommy killing Daddy…

  She remembered, and her eyes opened wide, and the far-away place beckoned once more.

  Linda struggled to get herself under control. She was full of white noise and static, one big short-circuit of the soul. Rage had taken over. She hadn’t been able to hold it back. She’d seen red and the anger and futility had marched in, banishing what little equilibrium she’d had left. Her wrists ached, and she felt over-oxygenated and sick to her stomach from the adrenaline rush.

  Sam, damn Sam, still had his eyes closed. She knew why, and she hated him for it. Hated him for being right. For knowing it was over, knowing there weren’t any other choices, and for accepting that.

  No, no, she loved Sam, she didn’t hate him. This was him, who he was. His mind was one of the things she loved most about him. His clarity, his brilliance. He was being so courageous right now. He’d said good-bye, closed his eyes, and left his neck exposed, ready for her strangling hands.

  WWSD?

  The saying had jumped into her mind: What Would Sam Do?

  It was a mantra that she used when her emotions battled with her common sense. Sam was calm, Sam was logical, Sam was steady-as-she-goes. Capable of rage when it mattered, but able to let the small things go with a shrug.

  When someone cut her off on the freeway and she started swearing out loud at them in front of Sarah, she’d take a breath and ask: WWSD? What Would Sam Do?

  It didn’t always work, but it had woven itself into the fabric of her, and it appeared now at the time when she most needed it.