The Face of Death

  Sam would weigh the facts. Linda took a deep breath, closed her eyes.

  Fact: We can’t escape. He’s handcuffed us, the cuffs aren’t budging. We’re trapped.

  Fact: He can’t be bargained with.

  Fact: He’s going to kill us.

  These last two facts were facts. The Stranger’s calm resoluteness, the workmanlike way in which he did everything, including burning Sarah’s hand, left no doubt about what he was and what he would do. He’d do what he said.

  But will he spare Sarah if we do what he asks?

  Fact: We can’t know for sure that he will.

  Fact: We can’t know for sure that he won’t.

  It all led to what had caused Sam to close his eyes: this leads to this leads to that, and the sum is always the same.

  Fact: The possibility that he will spare her is all that’s left. The only thing we might still be able to control.

  She opened her eyes. The Stranger was watching her.

  “Have you made your decision?” he asked.

  She blinked once for yes. He removed the tape over her mouth.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  That hint of excitement again, a ghost that appeared and disappeared in his eyes.

  “Excellent,” he said. “I’m going to re-cuff Sam’s hands behind his back first.”

  He did this in quick, practiced motions. Sam kept his eyes closed and didn’t resist.

  “Now, Linda, I’m going to remove the handcuffs from your wrists. You could decide to have another one of your ‘moments.’” He shook his head. “Don’t. It won’t get you anywhere, and I’ll burn Sarah’s left hand until it’s a melted lump. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she replied, her voice full of hate.

  “Good.”

  He removed the cuffs. She did consider attacking him, just for a moment. She fantasized about shooting her hands out, grabbing his neck, and squeezing with all the rage and sorrow in her heart, squeezing until his eyes exploded.

  But this, she knew, was pure fantasy. He was an experienced predator, alert to the tricks of his prey.

  Her wrists throbbed. It was a dull, deep pain. She welcomed the sensation. It reminded her of Sarah’s birth. Beautiful, terrible agony.

  “Do it,” The Stranger commanded, his voice flat and taut.

  Linda looked at Sam, Sam with his eyes still closed, her beautiful man, her beautiful boy. He was strong in ways that she was weak, he had tenderness, he could be callous and arrogant, he had been responsible for her longest laughs and her strongest grief. He’d looked past her outer beauty to gaze upon the uglier parts of her, and had loved her still. He had never touched her in anger. They’d shared moments of sex as love and tenderness, and they’d fucked outdoors in a rainstorm, shivering as the cold water pelted their naked skin and she screamed above the wind.

  Linda realized that she could continue this list forever.

  She reached out with her hands. They trembled. When they touched his neck, she choked.

  Sense-memory.

  The feel of Sam, igniting remembrance of another ten thousand moments. A million tiny paper cuts on her soul, she bled from them all.

  He opened his eyes and a million cuts became a single, searing pain.

  Of all his physical features, Linda loved Sam’s eyes the most. They were gray, intense, surrounded by long eyelashes that any woman would envy. They were capable of such deep expression, of such emotion.

  She remembered him looking at her with those eyes over a table on a wedding anniversary. He’d smiled at her.

  “Do you know one of the things I love most about you?” he’d asked.

  “What?”

  “Your beautiful lunacy. The way you can arrange the chaos of a sculpture or a painting, but couldn’t arrange an underwear drawer to save your life. The way you fumble through loving me and Sarah with your whole self. The way you never forget a shade of blue, but can never remember to pay the phone bill. You bring a wildness to my life that I’d be lost without.”

  Sam was loving her now, she could tell. Those eyes, those intense gray eyes, radiated emotion. Love, sadness, anger, pain, and joy. She fell into them, and she hoped he understood everything that she was feeling right now, every bit of it.

  He winked once, and it made her laugh—a strangled laugh, but a laugh nonetheless—and then he closed his eyes again, and she knew he was ready, that she’d never be ready, but that the time was now.

  She started to squeeze.

  “If you don’t grip harder, he’ll spend a long time dying,” The Stranger said.

  Linda squeezed harder. She could feel Sam’s heartbeat beneath her fingers, could feel the life of him, and she began to cry. Deep, ropy sobs, wrenched from that undefinable part of her that was capable of hurting the most.

  Sam could hear his wife crying. He could feel her hands tightening around his neck. She’d gripped in the right places; the blood flow to his brain was being cut off. It created a huge pressure in his head, along with a lightheadedness and a faint pain in his chest. His lungs were starting to burn.

  He kept his eyes closed, looking into the black. He prayed that he’d be able to keep them closed while he died. He didn’t want Linda to have to see him, to watch life leave him.

  More burning now, panic was starting to come, he could sense it in the distance.

  Fight it, Sam, he commanded himself. Hold on, it won’t be long now, you’ll pass out soon.

  He would, he knew. He could feel it, black edges around his consciousness. Sparking. Once he fell into that blackness, that’d be it. That sparking was the last bit of himself. First he’d be enveloped by the black, and then he’d become the black.

  Ooops…

  He’d lost a moment there. Instead of sparks, there had been a flash, not of light, but of darkness. He realized that it wasn’t something he was going to be aware of, it was going to sneak up on him. A flash of dark would come and then it would stay, forever.

  Another flash, but this one was brilliant, blinding, excruciating in its loveliness. He and Linda, naked in a rainstorm, the raindrops powerful and so cold. They shivered and they fucked and she was on top and lightning lit up the sky around her head as he came, so hard—

  —Sarah wailing in the delivery room and he couldn’t breathe and his knees were weak and he was filled with such triumph—

  —Sarah rushing toward him, hair in the wind, arms wide, laughing at the world, Linda rushing toward him, hair in the wind, arms wide, laughing at the world—

  OliveJuiceOliveJuiceOliveJuice—

  The last flash, and Sam Langstrom died.

  He was smiling.

  22

  LINDA’S MIND WAS EMPTY.

  Sam slumped forward in the chair. She’d felt his pulse speed up underneath her fingers, then she’d felt it go faint, and then she’d felt it stop altogether.

  She felt Sam’s blood on her hands. It wasn’t really there, but she felt it. One word ran through her mind, over and over and over, a huge black bat that blotted out the stars: Horror, horror, horror, horror…

  “That was very well done, Linda.”

  Why doesn’t his voice ever change? she wondered. It always sounds the same. Calm and happy, while terrible, terrible, terrible things…

  She shuddered once and fought back a sob.

  Maybe he’s not really there, inside. He’s like a golem, clay made to walk without a soul to guide it.

  Linda looked over at her daughter. She felt her heart sag inside her. Sarah’s eyes were open, but they weren’t seeing. They were staring. A “not there” kind of stare. She was rocking back and forth. Her lips were clenched together so tightly that they’d gone white.

  I know how you feel, babe, Linda thought in despair.

  “I know that you are hurting,” The Stranger said. His tone became soothing. “We’re going to end that now, all that terrible, awful pain, forever.”

  He looked at Sarah, watched her rock back and forth. A string of droo
l had collected at one corner of her mouth and was falling, falling, falling.

  “I’ll keep my word, you know. So long as you do what I ask, and don’t deviate, I won’t hurt her.”

  You’ve already hurt her forever, Linda thought. But maybe she’d have a chance if she didn’t die. You could recover from emotional trauma; there was no coming back from death.

  The Stranger walked over behind Sam. He pulled keys from a jacket pocket, knelt down, and removed the cuffs from around Sam’s ankles, then he removed the cuffs from around Sam’s wrists. Sam toppled forward, thudding to the floor like a bag of sand.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” The Stranger said to Linda. “I’m going to give you these keys.” He did. “Please remove the cuffs from your ankles.” Linda did so. He reached behind him with his left hand, pulling a weapon from his waistband. “I’m going to place this handgun on the floor, here.” He did so. He moved behind Sarah and put his own gun to the back of her head.

  “In a moment I will begin counting. When I reach five, if you haven’t used that gun to blow your own brains out, then I will shoot Sarah in the back of the head. Following that, I’ll rape you for hours and torture you for days. Do you understand?”

  Linda nodded, listless.

  “Good. Now, handguns are powerful things. You could touch that weapon, something could spark, and you might feel that it’s transferred its power to you. You might decide to do something brave and insane. Don’t. The moment its barrel starts moving toward me, I kill Sarah. The moment that it points away from your head, I kill Sarah. Do you follow?”

  Linda stared at him, not speaking.

  “Linda,” he said, patient. “Did you hear what I said?”

  She managed a nod. It took all her strength. She was so tired.

  Sam I Am is gone, she thought. I feel dead already.

  She looked down at the weapon on the rug. The one she’d be holding soon. The one that would end this, that would let her join Sam, that would save Sarah (she hoped).

  Handgun, handgun, burning bright…

  “I’m going to give you the same gift that I gave your husband. One sentence only. This is your last chance to say something to Sarah.”

  Linda looked at her white-lipped, shivering, oh-so-beautiful daughter.

  Will she even remember what I say?

  Linda would have to hope so. She’d have to hope that her words would drill down somewhere into Sarah’s consciousness, that they’d surface later and be a comfort.

  Maybe they’ll come to her in her dreams.

  “I’m in the clouds watching you, Sarah, always.”

  Sarah continued to rock back and forth and drool.

  “That was very nice,” The Stranger said. “Thank you for complying.”

  There it was again, that rage. Linda felt white-hot and blue-flame, rolling lava, exploding suns.

  “Someday, you’ll die,” she whispered, her voice quavering. “And it’ll be a bad death. Because of this. Because of the things you do.”

  The Stranger stared at Linda, then smiled.

  “Karma. An interesting concept.” He shrugs. “Perhaps you’re right. But if you are are, that will be then. We are in the now. In the now, I start counting.” He paused. “It’s going to be a measured count. Slow heartbeats. You have until I get to five.”

  “The last thing I’ll be thinking of is going to be you. You dying a bad death.”

  The words were worthless, they’d change nothing, but they were the last resistance she could offer. The Stranger didn’t even appear to have heard her.

  “One,” he counted.

  Linda forced herself to turn away from her rage. To look at the gun he’d placed on the floor.

  So this is it.

  Extraneous things began to fade. It was if someone had turned down the volume on life. She could hear the beating of her heart and The Stranger’s slow count.

  One was over. Then would come Two. Then Three. Then Four. And then…? Should she let herself hear Five? Or should she pull the trigger just before Five?

  Why wait, don’t hesitate…

  One was still echoing in her brain as she moved toward the gun. She could hear it vibrating in the air. She found herself in an elongation of time, as if each second was filled with a lifetime of sharp edges and she was rubbing up against all of them at once.

  There’s more pain in life than pleasure. It was something she knew as an artist, a secret ingredient she added to the potpourri of her paintings or sculptures.

  The sharp edges, that’s how we know we’re still in the game.

  She knelt down on the carpet and picked up the weapon. She made sure not to point the barrel at The Stranger.

  “Two.”

  It shocked her as he said it, like a slap in the face.

  The sting passed.

  Linda marveled at the coldness of the steel. Its smooth polish. The heavy, brutal promise of the thing.

  This end toward enemy, she thought, looking at the barrel.

  Someone invented this. They dreamed it, sketched it, tossed and turned about it. Let’s take a hunk of steel and fill it with steel-jacketed birds, and let’s send them exploding outward into other human beings.

  “Three.”

  Her awareness of the number was more clinical this time.

  This weapon had a silencer on it. It was a gun that spoke of assassins and hit men and secret death.

  It was just a piece of metal, though. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t human. You didn’t anthropomorphize a gun; you pointed it and fired.

  What was it the marines said? This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine…

  “Four.”

  Time stopped. It didn’t just slow—it froze. She was covered in ice. Trapped in amber.

  And then, a strobe-flash.

  Sam on the floor.

  Strobe-flash.

  Sam in her arms.

  Strobe-flash.

  Sam hanging up the phone. His face white. Looking at her. “My grandfather died.” Tears, and Sam in her arms again.

  Strobe-flash.

  Sam above her, eyes clouded with a mix of love and lust, face contorted with pleasure. She urged him to hold on, just another second, just another second, just another second…

  This was that moment, she realized in wonder. That feeling you got as you hung on to the knife-edge precipice of near-orgasm, straining, trying to fend off the beckoning detonation and blinding light. The place where you stopped breathing, where your heart stopped beating, a moment of life and death.

  Strobe-flash.

  Sarah.

  Sarah laughing.

  Sarah crying.

  Sarah living.

  Oh.

  God.

  Sarah.

  Linda realized in a final strobe-flash that she would miss this most of all: loving her daughter. She was pierced by a longing that was the sum of all the longings she’d ever felt or sculpted or painted.

  If pain could be rain, this was an ocean of it.

  It came out of her in a howl. It wasn’t something she could control. It sprang from her. A scream of agony to stop birds in flight.

  Even The Stranger grimaced at the sound of this howl, just a little. It was a physical force.

  SarahSamSarahSamSarahSam

  Strobe-flash.

  The gunshot came and went in the room, a silenced thunderclap.

  Sarah stopped rocking for a moment.

  The left side of Linda’s head exploded.

  Linda had been wrong.

  Her last thought hadn’t been about death.

  It had been about love.

  Hey, it’s me. Modern-day Sarah. I’m going to write about the past and then take a break and come back to the present in places. It’s the only way I’ll ever get through this.

  About my mom—maybe her last thought was about fear, maybe it was about nothing, I don’t know. I can’t really know. She was there and Daddy was there and I was there and he was the
re, these things are true. He made her kill them both while I watched, this is true. Is it true that my mom was that noble at the end, alone and suffering inside her head? I don’t know.

  But then again, neither do you.

  I do know that my mom had a lot of love in her. She used to say that her family was a part of her art. She said that without me and Daddy, she’d still paint, but all the colors would be dark ones.

  I like to think that she had some certainty, in that last moment, that what she was doing really would save my life, because it did, no matter what else happened later.

  I don’t know for sure whether her last thought was about love.

  But her last action was.

  23

  I CLOSE SARAH’S DIARY WITH A TREMBLING HAND AND GLANCE over at my clock. It’s three A.M.

  I need a break. I’m only just into Sarah’s ordeal, and I already feel shaky and restless about it. She wasn’t wrong; she has a gift. Her writing is too vivid. The happiness of the way her life used to be contrasts with the bitter humor of her prologue. It makes me feel sad and dirty. Wrung out.

  What did she call it? A trip to the watering hole.

  I can see it in my mind. An obscene full moon in the sky, dark things drinking bad water…

  I shiver because I also feel the fear rising inside me. Bad things happening to Sarah, a short step away from bad things happening to Bonnie…

  I glance over at Bonnie. She is deep in sleep, her face untroubled, one arm thrown across my stomach. I disengage myself from her, lifting her arm away with the same gentle care I’d give to a ladybug I was setting free in the backyard. Her mouth opens, once, and then she curls into herself and continues to sleep.

  In the beginning, she’d wake up at the slightest change or motion. The fact that she can now keep sleeping eases some of my concerns about her. She’s getting better. She doesn’t talk yet, it’s true. But she’s getting better. Now if I can just keep her alive…

  I slide out of the bed and tiptoe out of my bedroom, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. I reach into the cabinet above the refrigerator and find my secret vice and small shame. A bottle of tequila. Jose Cuervo, a friend of mine, just like the song.