CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
“You have that look. This is it, isn’t it? You’re going to kill me.”
The Man was curled up into a ball and shrunken into a tight corner. His voice didn’t sound nearly as deep or as mean as it had before. He sounded like a young child, trying to reason their way out of a spanking.
Alex sat on the edge of the bed. He pushed himself up and down and the bed sprang back so he nearly bounced right off. It must have been comfortable sleeping here night after night and not having to curl up on the cold floor. There was carpet too. It felt soft and warm under his toes. He squished them around the curling fibers and he smiled as they tickled the tender parts of his sole.
He leaned down and ran his hands through the fibers. He lightly brushed the palm of his hand over the carpet as if it were the skin of a hot bath and a shiver ran up his arm and tickled the hairs on his neck.
“Is it difficult to clean?” he asked.
He looked over at The Man. He had an ‘answer me now’ kind of stare.
“You shouldn’t bring food into the room. It’s hard to get the crumbs out.”
“Why did you do those things?”
“I had to. I had no choice. You don’t understand. But you will.”
“How many?”
Alex was standing now. He was standing over The Man and he seemed so tall. His shadow cast onto the wall and it crept so large that it blackened half of the room. He had a large serrated knife in his right hand. It had been wiped clean and it glimmered under the half-light mirroring The Man’s panicked stare.
The Man turned to the picture in his hands. It was still well kept, no folds and no tears and no dog eared edges. He looked at the boy he had once been. He wondered why he had to change, why anything had to change. Couldn’t it just be as it was until it couldn’t be anymore?
The Man remembered a dog he had when he was just a boy. It had slept on the edge of his bed before he was even conceived and when he was brought home, when he was put into that tiny cot, when he was left alone to his own cries, it was that small dog that sat beneath him and whimpered at his every waking struggle. It was that dog whose cries called his mother and father to his defense. It was that dog who never tired of his game, even when that game had gone too far, never once biting back at the infant and child that was learning to sharpen its claws.
One day he was happy and wagging his tail, wanting to go for a walk. And then one day he wasn’t. And then the next day he died. Dogs never changed their way. They were dogs up until the day they could be dogs no more.
He didn’t feel old. He felt tired and his body hurt more. When he fell, it took longer to heal and to get better. But he still did the same things he always did. He still liked the same things he always did. He still thought that way he always did. Maybe he didn’t show it as much. Maybe that was the problem. But he didn’t feel like he’d changed.
“Look at me” shouted Alex.
He growled when he spoke. He wasn’t the same boy, not anymore. The Man could hear how he had changed. He wondered if Alex could feel it himself, if he knew what he was becoming. And if he did know if he could feel it if he knew what it meant, would he still do what he had to do?
The Man looked at Alex for a second and then he turned away. He saw himself in the boy’s reflection. Not as he was now; cowering on the floor and silently protesting the end of his life. He saw himself as he had been. He saw himself a he had never himself seen.
That fire was so familiar, that which ran under Alex’s skin. He had felt it before, blood like gasoline, running through his veins that once ignited, made him feel like he could accomplish anything, that he could reduce an empire unto ashes with just a single breath. He’d felt that very same fire once before, but he’d never seen what it looked like outside of his own skin, not until now.
The Man tried to think of somewhere special, somewhere better than this. He had spent his whole life in this dungeon, from a young boy taken from his family and haunted and preyed upon by an older man who set upon him with cruel whippings and jesting laughter, who made him do things, dirty things, memories that he couldn’t erase from his mind, things that made him convulse and gag even now, long after he found his voice.
It was horrible when he first arrived. He had found himself inside a small box, desperate for air and unable to move his legs or his arms, both of them tied behind him to the floor of his prison. There were holes on all sides of the box and when he was sleeping, the man who haunted him would pour hot water into the holes and it would scald him and he would hear the sound of his own skin sizzling over the manic laughter of his captor dancing wildly around the room.
That man, he had done things, he had done things that should never have been done. And in the end, he paid for everything that he did. The torture done unto him was no less kind than what he had ever done unto another human being.
The Man looked at his picture. The worst he had ever felt was just a little discomfort, an annoyance or a little shame. Maybe he had been scared, maybe. He didn’t like to be ushered here or there, no child ever did. But this, this experiment, this was no medicine.
This was no better.
The Man wished he could be that boy again. He stared into the child’s eyes and he closed his own and he thought, “When I open them, I’ll be clean again.”
“I wish I were you,” he said.
But when he opened his eyes, he saw only the carpet beneath his feet, with the picture taken from his hands like he had been, from those of his mother and his father. And he felt as they must have, having his reason snatched from his hands.
Alex wore a cruel murky grin.
“How many?” he asked.
The Man looked at him. He wore sorrow as the color of skin.
“A lot,” he said.
“How many?” shouted Alex.
The Man wiped a tear from his eye. He hadn’t cried, not in so long. Not since before it was he speaking with a gravel tongue. He thought about them all, all of the children, the ones that had come before him and the ones that he had seen bloodied and dismembered.
“I didn’t kill any of them. I didn’t touch any of them. He wanted me to. He wanted me to, though. He is so cruel” said The Man, fumbling over his words as he cried.
“You killed them all, hundreds of them, small defenseless children. You killed them all” shouted Alex.
His fingers were strangling the handle of the blade. He could hardly hold his hands still. They looked as if some invisible anchor were keeping them from slashing and stabbing.
“I didn’t hurt anyone, I promise. It was The Gruff. He did everything. He made me bring you here. He made me put you in that box. He wanted me to scare you. He wanted me to hurt you. He wanted me to…”
The Man choked on his words. He buried his head in his hands.
“What? What did he want you to do?”
“He wanted me to touch you” shouted The Man.
He buried his head in his hands again. He wept loud and he sobbed as the tears streamed down his face. He could taste, in every salted tear that touched his lips, every lashing he had ever received from his captor. He could feel his captor’s every sweaty finger creeping up his back as he pretended to sleep, seeing The Gruff, watching it all from the other side of the room.
“I couldn’t do it,” said The Man.
The Man was shaking.
He was defeated.
“I can’t take this anymore. I can’t be his eyes when all he wants to see is suffering. I can’t be his hands, not when all he wants is to take what is not his. I can’t be his hate, not when it leaves me hating myself and I can’t be his love, not when it has me so scared of growing old. He asked me, when I was like you, a long time ago, he asked me if I’d ever leave. I told him I never would, that we’d never be apart.”
The Man closed his eyes. He could see, so plainly in his mind, himself, standing where Alex was now. He had his hands clenched around the very same knife. Like Alexander, he had a trickle of blood ru
nning down the inside of his leg only the blood was not his. On the ground before him lay, in a crumpled mess, the man who had tormented him for weeks. His clothes were torn. His face was torn. His thing had been removed and the carpet around his tattered body was painted red.
“Every day we grew further apart. You couldn’t see it. You could feel it. The closer we were, the further we kept ourselves. I tried to be his friend, like the friend that he wanted, but he stopped caring. He didn’t want to play cards anymore. He didn’t want to play chasey. He didn’t want to do anything. He just kept telling me how I changed and every day, how I was changing more. Until he said that I was old and at first I didn’t believe him but then he made me go up, up to the house and look in the mirror.”
The Man looked at the picture in Alex’s left hand. He couldn’t see the boy, but he knew every shade and every angle of his face off by heart. It was all he had to look at for forty years. Just as a body and soul might find re-juvenescence in its reflection on the face of a placid lake, he found his, staring at this picture each and every day. It didn’t matter that it was in Alex’s hands. When he closed his eyes, he could see the young boy clear in his mind. He imagined the boy stepping inside his body and filling his empty soul. He tried to imagine what it would feel like having innocence instead of gasoline in his blood.
“You’re not a good person. You took me. You brought me here. You took me from my mum and dad. You tried to hurt me.”
“But I didn’t hurt you. You see?”
“You did this to me. You were out” he said in disbelief. “Why didn’t you go to the police? Why didn’t you run away? You didn’t have to take me. You didn’t have to take those other kids too.”
“It was The Gruff. He’s sick. He wants to relive his fear over and over. I don’t know how long this will go on but if you kill me now, if you do this, it’ll continue, with you.”
“He won’t hurt me.”
“He won’t let you go. If you kill me, he wins. This is all he wants. Both of us are the victims here. I gave you every chance to get away, but you came back.”
“There was no way out. The stairs were blocked.”
“What do you mean? No, they’re not.”
“There was a wall. I couldn’t get out. The Gruff said that you have a key. That you have the way out.”
“He lied. There’s a door here, but it doesn’t go outside. Do you want to see? Do you want to see what I keep?”
There was still a fire burning in Alex’s eyes, but it was more of a blaze than an inferno. He looked at the door and curiosity dampened the brunt of his ignorant rage.
“Open the door” he ordered.
“Don’t hurt me, please.”
“I won’t, just open the door god damnit.”
“The key,” he said, extending his hand.
Alex looked lost.
“What key?”
“The one around your neck. It’s the only key. It opens every door. I need it” The Man said.
Alex touched his chest and tightened his hand around the key with his other choking the handle of the knife. He could feel a sickness swelling in his stomach. He could feel adrenaline shaking at his toes. It started to course up his legs and like rising magma, it rumbled and shook his stomach as it rose up towards his gaping mouth.
“The key,” said The Man.
He looked kind, no different to any other boy. Alex took a breath. He felt disorientated. He didn't know what was up and down anymore. He didn’t know what was right and wrong and whose story to believe. He took the key from around his neck and he gave it to The Man.
“You’ll see what I mean, what The Gruff really does to little boys,” The Man said.
He turned the key on the small door. It looked like it could have been an en suite or an entry to a small closet. The Man turned the handle and opened the door. He turned on the light and then stood back, letting Alex walk in.
“I don’t understand,” said Alex.
He dropped the knife. He turned back to The Man and he no longer had gravel in the back his throat. When he spoke, it didn’t sound like he was shoveling through the silt of his repression. He didn’t sound fevered or angered. He didn’t sound like any kind of threat at all.
Alex remembered in that instant, the moment his mother and father had told him that Santa Claus wasn’t real. It was one of the worst things he had ever felt in his life. Until today, nothing had ever compared to that. No other child, no other mean and villainous child had ever said or done anything to ever make him feel as low and as embarrassed as his parents had done that day.
He remembered how everyone laughed at him; his brother and his sisters. They were hiding around the corner and they were listening as his mother kneeled down and said, “It’s not real. It was just a harmless lie.” And they laughed themselves and over time, even Alex, he learned to laugh. He learned to laugh at all of the nonsense that was made of him. How dare they make him feel so low. How dare they; they, who should love and protect him, be the first to make a fool of his hope, his joy and his trust. How dare they.
“Is it not what you expected?” asked The Man.
“What are they?”
The Man entered the room. It wasn’t very big. He could put his arms out and his elbow would still bend. If he closed the doors, he could reach an appendage to all four walls and he could keep himself up off of the ground. He could if the walls weren’t covered in human faces.
“They’re the other men,” he said.
He took one off the wall. The faces had been cut off the heads of grown men. They hadn’t been cut with any order. Some looked like they had been hacked while others had been pulled and torn away. And you could see the extent of how some children had taken to their captors. All of them, every mask, had been sewn back into a complete face. They all looked horrid, except for the one in The Man’s shaky hands.
“This is him,” he said.
“The man?” asked Alex.
The Man wept as he held the face of his captor in his hands.
“He didn’t just take me. He took from me. He took everything from me. He took me and he made this,” he said, weeping as he lifted his shirt and showed once more, the ravaging scars across his chest and across his back.
Alex too wept.
“That boy,” he said, pointing to the photograph.
Alex opened his left palm. He stared at the young boy.
“He took him. When he died, he took him. I stopped being that boy long before I grew up. He took him to the grave and I’ll never be that boy again” he said crying. “The Gruff, he made me this way. That man, he could have had his way and I could have died that boy. He could have tortured me until fear and hurt eventually turned off my mind. He could have tortured me for an eternity and I still would have always been that boy. Instead, I listened to The Gruff. He told me that story and I believed him, every word of it. I did just what you’re doing now. I even carried the same knife.”
The Man unfolded the leathered face in his hands. It was the only face of all the others on the wall that wasn’t torn. It hadn’t been ripped and it hadn’t been sliced or slashed or hacked. It had been cut with careful consideration.
“He made me cut it off. He said I had to unmask my fear, to truly find my voice.”
“Who are the others?”
“This has been happening forever. I don’t know when it first started, but it’s never gonna stop. When you kill me, you will unmask me and you will keep me on your wall. You’ll spend a lifetime looking at your picture and knowing you will never be that boy again and every night, when you are alone, you’ll come in here and you’ll take my face off of the wall and you’ll press it against your skin” he said, lifting his hands up to his face until the leathered skin was masking his own.
“Do you see me?” he asked.
Alex stepped back. He almost tripped over his own shadow.
“You don’t want this for yourself. This is no accolade. This is my hell.”
Alex l
ooked at the photograph in his hand. The boy looked like he had been sat there, but he didn’t look like it had hurt to do so. He looked like he was fighting under that grin to grimace or to pull a face. He looked like he was fighting to poke out his tongue or to twist his eyeballs. He looked like under that forced smile, he was fighting to be a little boy.
Alex looked at The Man. Under that mask, he saw The Man’s hollow eyes and they neither stole nor paid no attention and they cared not for any to is called upon them. Under that dead man’s skin, there was no boy, there was just another dead man, waiting to be unmasked.
Under that mask, there was nobody fighting to be a little boy, there was nobody fighting at all. Under that mask, The Man was as dead as the skin he guised upon his face.
“Yes. He lied to all of us Alex. He lied to all of us.”
“I wanna go home,” said Alex.
The Man took the skin mask off of his face. He dropped it down on the floor so that its tightness rolled it in a neat ball that sat near his naked feet.
“Then let’s get you home,” said The Man, putting his arm around Alex’s shoulder.
“What about The Gruff?”
“He won’t hurt you. Trust me.”