Sheriff
Tusk made up his flask of coffee as the
sun came up. No more ‘whiskey drips’ though; that was a thing of the past. Tusk
had made a promise to himself to keep a clear head. He made his way to the car,
dropping the bag in the back seat, the murder file on the seat behind him.
He
drove along the interstate, thankful the traffic was light. The radio was
playing, although he gave it little attention. Eventually he clicked the dial
off. On the back seat the file lay sprawled; after a while he felt the static
from it fill the car; the screams, the restless chatter. He pulled off the
interstate and headed into the woods.
They
said he worked as a landscape gardener. The press, always so keen to jump on
any quirk, seized upon that, over everything else. The killer’s actual history,
his upbringing, teenage years, all paled to that one line. The lurid nicknames
began, the macabre jokes were told. Even before his guilt was confirmed, his
history was established for the lurid paperbacks and cultural references set
for the future. Tusk had always been indifferent to the newspapermen, but now
it left a dark, metallic taste in his mouth. A nightmare, one of the few he
ever had, set in. It was not the killer that haunted him; he was more a
solitary, secondary figure. No, it was the hacks that circled the bodies that
caused him to jolt upright into life at three in the morning. ‘The ghouls’ with
their notepads open, their pencils ready. Bu it was their fingers that
flavoured the nightmare: Long, wiry and hungry.
Edward
Delbee was such a humdrum name for a murderer. Perhaps that’s why the newsies
were so desperate for a nick-name. An unremarkable man whose voice was low and
drifting, almost sounding on the verge of sleep, no matter what it was that he
said. His eyes were not lit; there was no manically charismatic smile. He was
simply a plain, greyed man who had chosen to kill twelve innocent people. Tusk
wondered if it was just that, the sheer mundane nature of the man’s life, which
had driven him to it, rather than some blazing, murderous impulse. Perhaps, it
was the only way he could be alive.
Tusk
parked the car and paid for the ticket. The park itself was a sprawling,
beautiful thing. Once, before he had been sheriff, he had made love to a girl
named Laurie Rocks amongst the conifer trees. Tusk had never told anyone; that
one afternoon with the girl he hardly knew had been the finest love-making of
his life. As ferocious as it was
temporary and like no other feeling in the world. Tusk lit a cigarette and
smoked it in the car park, then lifted the bag from the trunk, jamming the file
from the back seat in as best he could amongst the tools.
Delbee
simply waited until the evidence was overwhelming, then simply agreed with what
he was being accused of. Tusk had been in the room, though had not asked the
questions leading up to his final statement. The feeling of anti-climax was
overwhelming. Even the blow his partner landed on Delbee’s cheek was a
half-hearted, almost apologetic thing.
And
then came the sketches.
Delbee
was not a talker. He said ‘thank you’ for his meals and that was it. So when he
the paperwork was being filed and the recurring motif of a tree appeared on
whatever paperwork had been issued for him to sign, Tusk jumped on it
immediately. His partner raised his doubts, claiming Tusk simply wanted
something more, some gloss, to the whole sorry affair, in order to give it more
meaning. Foakes had said, good naturedly, that nothing upset Tusk more than a
boring murder. But it shook him all the same, the neat, careful, sketches, in a
way he could not quite fully articulate.
This
was when Edward Delbee changed. Whether he showed his true colours, or whether
it was simply another layer to an already broken mind, it was hard to say. All
Tusk really knew, was that something revealed itself in Delbee when he showed
him the sketches, all copied and cut and pasted into one montage. It was as if
something else, something primal, tore
out of the grey skin and into the light. The body of the killer remained the same
that much was certain. Scientifically, nothing had changed. And yet…and yet
when Tusk stood three feet from the man, clutching the sketches, it was like
standing in a room with another man; no being trapped in the same room. He mumbled at first, as if the words were
bubbling out of his throat, out of his control. Tusk had an idea if it had gone
on much longer, he would have foamed at the mouth. His eyes remained flat and
cold, but for once they were full of movement, scanning each picture as if it
retained codes in each tidy branch.
And
then there was his skin.
It
retained its grey, dull texture, all right, but Tusk saw something else
underneath the surface, that in his mind, burned bright. It was almost rippling
under the surface, trying to break free. Tusk had the idea the man’s whole body
was on the verge of something, on the point of tipping over into something else
entirely. Tusk drew the paper back and folded it back into neat squares. He
watched the killer the whole time; for a moment he had the feeling of being one
of his victims, such was the naked fury and hunger in the man’s eyes. If he had
taken his eyes off him, he would have seized on Tusk, he had no doubt of that.
He pushed the paper lower, out of sight into his pocket and like a spring
shower, everything slipped away in seconds and the pallid skeleton returned to the
seat. The host gone, Tusk thought.
Tusk
asked the man where the tree was. He asked casually, not wanting to reveal the
need he felt to track it down. Somewhere inside him had the idea that this
place was terribly important and that he needed to see it and maybe, deal with
it in some way. The man looked him over and just as casually told him the
location, where the tree was, down to the nearest inch. Tusk held his eye and
got a good sense he was not lying. Another cop would have asked more questions,
the whys and wherefore questions. Hell, the real questions. Instead, Tusk
simply nodded and turned out of the room, his mind playing over the image of
the man he had finished speaking to and the wholly different beast that reared
up inside him with the sketches.
It
was evidence.
What
they had discussed was evidence, or at least pertinent to the investigation.
Tusk knew that and kept walking. The paper in his pocket itched, almost burned
against him. He signed out for the day, tossing idle chit-chat back and forth
as his brain played with his career. Tusk drove home, talking himself out of
going to the park, letting sleeping dogs lie and all the rest of it. He parked
the car and immediately started loading his tool bag.
The
walk into the woods was bracing, almost pleasant. Tusk tried to keep himself
calm; even as he twisted off the recognised paths, he told himself his heart
stayed on an even keel. As he stepped into the mulch, his feet slipping
slightly, he noted how the angles of the branches cut-off a good deal of the
sunlight. He walked on, tumbling out of the day and into the darkness of the
woods. Tusk acknowledged that his heart surged a little. He gripped tighter to
the bag, trying not to shiver as the shade rode over him.
‘What
they felt, we could not say.’
The
words Tusk had issued to the press half-way through the investigation. Some
quarters took him to task with the statement, others praised the
non-sensational tone. In truth, it summed up everything he felt about the case.
The slim, perfect divide between being a victim and being a witness to such
cruelty. It had always been that way, Tusk felt.
Until
now.
Standing
before the tree, Tusk froze. It was not quite fear, not quite panic, either. It
was dread, pure and simple. He looked up to the monster and saw everything that
was wrong and dark taken shape. The bark was a thick, pus-like tone, oozing
without dripping. The nooks and crevices were empty, terrible places; not
natural indentations as much as scars, scooped out and left to weep, rather
than heal. The branches were distended paws, hungry and reaching, the twigs
more like blades, needy and sharp.
But
worst was the hollow.
Somewhere
towards the center of the thing was a space. It had not been carved, nor had it
been emptied, not in any natural way. Instead, it seemed simply…vacant, as if
waiting to be stuffed and sated. It was a gaping place; slack jawed but twitching
and ready. The monster pulsed; Tusk understood then, as eager to be fed, as
certain as it was that it would always be supplied.
The
other, unnatural sensation that shrouded tusk then, was pain. The pain of the
twelve the monster, through Delbee, had taken. The fury of their pain, the rush
of how their lives had been seized so unfairly, so coarsely, blazed over him.
It rocked Tusk onto the balls of his feet, almost toppling him back onto the
thick, wet ground. He kept his balance, pressing against the force, knowing
that to fall, to succumb, to the sodden place around him, would be the end of
him. No wind shuddered, no rain fell; it was as if the world had been cut off
from this one, secluded, dirtied place. It was, Tusk understood, a sliver of
Hell, sustained and gone unchecked, unnoticed for too long a time.
A
small part of his mind felt the insanity of the situation and almost made him
laugh. It was the stuff of poorly developed fairy tales, spook stories drafted
to warn off the young and vital lovers. Yet the darkness was overwhelming, a
current he had only ever experienced before in the hum before a storm. Though
he had stood his ground, Tusk became aware that the hollow seemed to be closer;
the void loosening all around him. It would not be long before it was over him
and then he would simply cease to be, he understood that. Tusk forced himself
rigid, buckling against the black, thinking of the victims, the families and
the anger that crackled through him at being lured here into Delbee’s trap.
One
hand gripped onto the tool bag, then another. Amongst the stilled rage that
gathered around him, Tusk pulled the tools from the bag; he roared in pain and
felt something, a bone snap someplace inside him. Still, he pushed on. Even
though he was inside Hell, Tusk did not lapse into any mode religion; he did
not go cap in hand for prayers. Instead, he repeated the names of the twelve
over and over; the motion of their names gave him strength, the grind of each
letter propelled his body forward. He screamed as he uncapped the fluid,
recoiled as the lighter latched onto the liquid.
It
burned.
No,
not quite burned; it died. Tusk stepped away, not to a safe distance, not by
any means; he had to be close by. The flames tore into the ripe bark, setting
onto it like hungry dogs. The fire crawled over every aspect of it, wearing it
like a cloak. Tusk did not want to see what came next, but knew he had to, all
the same. He was something else then; a witness to the victim’s revenge.
The
tree was pared down in the heat. From it, each of the twelve burst into life,
racing across the timber of the monster, each of them party to hauling it down
and dismantling its frame. There was no emotion in their faces, no savage joy
in what they did. It was a task, he thought, brining down Hell in order to
restore any trace of heaven. On and on it went, the vapours of the twelve
bodies racing through the smoke, tearing strips and clutching broken limbs. On
and on it went; as a final statement the pages from the murder file drifted
casually into the hollow of its heart, clogging it up with substance before
searing it to nothing with the flame. Then it was done.
Tusk
allowed himself to fall onto the ground; with the monster nothing but ashes
now, the ground surrounding it returned to its natural state. The fire had not
spread; there was no risk of it latching onto the real, thriving flora. The
flames had contained themselves to dispatching one terrible item and one alone.
Tusk listened for sirens that did not come, policemen or passers-by that did
not materialise. Soon, he would pick himself up and walk back to the daylight.
Something inside him understood that far from the forest, Edward Delbee had
slipped away; his heart stopped short, the last link removed. There would be no
more chains to lead to this place. But still, he pulled the last remaining
sketch from his pocket, the copied montage, and held his lighter under it. As
it burned to ash, he thought he heard a faint trace of a scream, little more
than whisper, then nothing. It was over. But still he sat and waited, circling
the patch with his eyes; he looked for any ash that looked as if it could
flicker into something else, something more than dead matter.
Tusk
sat.
Tusk
waited.
The
End
