The cat slunk around the corner, its green eyes glowing in the dark. The wind blew, scattering the leaves lying dead on the ground into the late night. Hardly anyone was awake and about. Halloween was nearly over; most kids were lying exhausted in their beds, hands curled possessively around their bag of goodies.
Mr and Mrs Davis were dressed for bed, just waiting to get into the covers and cuddle up to each other. Ah, the joys and bliss of a suburban life... no worries of kids growing up the wrong way, hardly any crime, wonderful neighbours to share the latest juicy Hollywood scandals with, a serene lake nearby to fish in, a beautiful cosy home and a golden haired ten year old son to be proud of. What else could anyone ask for?
Upstairs, the golden haired boy, Scott, was lying in his bed; eyes wide open, listening to the creaking of the floor boards as his parents got ready for bed. Twenty long minutes had passed since his parents had tucked him into bed... each second of those twenty minutes like an hour in itself… sleep wasn’t coming to him today. He was tired, exhausted with the day, to be true. But instead of his eyes drooping with sleep, he was wide awake, rest being the last thing on his mind.
Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw the old woman, creaking in her rocking chair, on her face, a dazed expression. He saw her neck tilted to an obscene angle, half of it not connected to the body anymore, her blood running down her arm- tiny rivulets, staining her crinkled skin and finally dripping down to the floor… collecting in a still pool, only disturbed by more blood falling into it… enlarging it.
Scott jerked back to the present, when he heard the bathroom door shut. That was an indicator that his father was now shuffling across and getting into bed. Sure enough, his parents’ bed soon emitted a loud groan. Scott suppressed a feeble smile, his mind momentarily distracted from the horrible scene he had witnessed, late that afternoon when dusk was settling its cloak around the sleepy little suburb of Hazel Lake
He had kept his mouth shut and not told his parents because they had warned him beforehand not to go into that part of town, when he had waved and left to go trick or treating with his friends. He had nodded absentmindedly at that time… now, he was regretting not listening to them. He had wandered off when his friends had insisted on going and ringing the bell of the Simons. He had never liked the Simons and especially not their daughter who thought she was the smartest thing around. Girls disgusted him anyway, something his mother found exceedingly cute and amusing. When he went looking for his friends after a while, they weren’t anywhere to be seen. Unfamiliar with the routes in town, he had landed up in the same part that he had been warned away from. When he saw an old derelict cottage nearby, he decided to go and ask for a glass of water. As he peeped in, he was met with a sight that he was probably never going to forget all his life, a sight that was going to come up at various moments in his life, a sight that would make him wake up drenched with sweat while his wife slept peacefully next to him, a sight that would haunt him till his grave.
Tired of thinking, Scott finally closed his eyes and was consumed by a sleep that wasn’t refreshing but intensely disturbing instead… vague and multi hued images came and went, all leaving him tossing and turning and muttering incomprehensible words.
******************
He stroked the slouching kitten, as he watched the dark house, the only light now emanating from the purring cat. Strange how animals always responded to him; humans on the hand, shied away from him, preferring to stand a safe distance away, he thought to himself, with a wry grin, his eyes darkening with a maniacal gleam. He continued to pet the cat that was now pawing at him, as if urging him to stop staring at the pretty little single storied house with the neat garden outside. His thoughts went on, leisurely as if he had all the time in the world. He had thought the same thing when he had walked into the old lady’s meagre hut.
In a flash his musings about the day gone by flew away and he was left furious at the way he had to crouch behind the old woman’s torn couch, dusty and dark in its solitary corner. He hadn’t been able to even behead her properly and he hated leaving a job undone. It was like being well on you way to constructing a masterpiece and then being swept away when you were two steps from completing it. Intense fury and hatred washed over him, leaving an acrid bitterness in his mouth as he thought of the way he had hurriedly left, scared that the boy would call help and melodramatically try to take the lady to a hospital.
But the boy was wise. He hadn’t told anybody. Should he go to the boy and ask why he hadn’t told anyone? Curiosity overwhelmed him, as he sat in that dark corner, the cat long gone, in pursuit of helpless mice.
******************
Scott woke up with a feeling that the day was not going to be a bright and cheerful. For one, he had decided to tell his parents about the old lady, even if it got him into trouble. His eyes had dark circles under them and he was as tired then as he had been when Sleep had overtaken Consciousness in the race to drain him of the last vestiges of energy.
He tip toed down the stairs, looking for his mom. He finally found her in the kitchen, flipping pancakes and looking her usual efficient self. He went up to her and said “Mom...”
“O hi kid! So you finally decided to wake up, huh?! Good job. Your father sleepwalked again last …” she began cheerfully, but stopped midway through her sentence when she saw the desperate look on his face. “What’s wrong? Do you feel sick or something?”
Scott shook his head miserably, held her hand and pulled her to the island in the kitchen that the family also used as an informal eating place. He poured out the previous day’s entire course of incidents and continued to hold her hand -something he had stopped doing since he was seven.
Mrs Davis listened, her eyes growing larger as her horror mounted. She did for a brief second remember that her husband had forbidden Scott from venturing that way, but then she was more aghast at what her little boy had seen and what he must have felt. The Lord knew that she herself would have run a mile in the opposite direction if she had witnessed something like that, and Scott was just ten. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the scars that would be left his delicate mind.
When he was done, she got him a glass of milk and a pancake and after he was sufficiently fed, she picked up the phone with a slight tremble and placed a call to her husband, the assistant detective at the Hazel Lake Police Station.
“Hello… Sarah, is that you? Is Detective Davis there? Yes, this is Mrs Davis. Could you transfer the call to his desk please? … Yes, I’ll hold… Thank you Sarah”, she held the phone, waiting to hear her husband’s voice, a voice that could comfort her in any situation. She trusted him to make it all right and he had never broken that trust…. Never ever.
“Hello, Jessica? You okay Jess?” her husband sounded a little confused- his wife hardly called him at work.
“Honey, there’s a problem. I think you should come home…. Yes it’s urgent and no, I can’t explain it over the phone…”
“Your father is coming home, Scott. He’ll make it all okay sweetie”, she soothed her son.
Scott heaved a sigh of relief. Like his mother, he too had an intrinsic faith in his father’s abilities to make all wrong things right.
Half an hour later, Detective Davis walked into his living room and said, “Okay, where’s the fire? You guys need to give me a real good reason why you called me home!”
His wife poured out the story that she herself had heard only a few minutes ago. Her sentences were short and her tone betrayed the kind of emotions she was feeling. Scott merely held his hands in his lap and sat quietly on the sofa. He was relieved that he had told the grown ups- they would definitely catch the bad guy who did it and his thoughts were considerably brightened when he saw that his parents were not going to scream at him for disobeying orders.
His father heard everything without saying a word and then when his mother was done telling him everything, Detective Davis pulled out his mobile phone and barked out a few orders to someone to go to Mrs Jenson’s home and check if there was a dead body there. He left shortly after that and Mrs Davis knew that he had gone over to the old lady’s house to investigate himself- her husband was never one to sit back when there were things to be done and actions to be taken; he always led his men from the front. She was scared to her wits right then but very proud that her husband was the old fashioned hands on types of man instead of the delicate darlings most men were today.
Over the next few days, Detective Davis was hardly ever home for dinner on time. Mother and son knew that he was trying his hardest to solve the murder that had rocked the entire sleepy suburb. Hazel Lake
Agreed that no one actually went to meet Mrs Jenson and keep her company; but no one also had anything against her. The town was just waiting with bated breath to see who had committed the heinous murder.
******************
And he was waiting with bated breath to see whether the police would actually eventually catch up with him. “The idiots haven’t had a murder case in, probably, a decade”, he thought to himself with a short laugh that almost sounded like a bark. This cat and mouse chase thrilled him, almost like a sexual arousal. It gave him immense pleasure to see them floundering about, in their desperate need to catch him. So, the boy did open his mouth. “Should he be killed or should I show him mercy?” -he slowly thought it over.
******************
The police had given up. They couldn’t find any clues to the murderer’s identity. Although they weren’t ready to admit defeat, every single person in town knew that it was becoming useless and hopeless to chase a criminal who had apparently, left no clues behind and had got almost a day to cover his tracks and get the hell out of Hazel Lake
Scott had stopped thinking of the old lady and though he did occasionally get short nightmares, he seemed to have regained his sunny disposure to life. Jessica had watched him closely and had also asked if he wanted to sleep in their bedroom but he had refused. Her son was a brave boy and would grow up to be just like his father, she thought as she saw him happily playing with a cat at the gate to their home, a cheerful smile on his fair face.
******************
So, I was right- they weren’t able to catch me. Not that I ever expected them to. You might have guessed my identity by now. Or you might not have. Let me make it easier by telling you why I killed her. You see, this old lady, Mrs Jenson was, you guessed it right, my step mother. I’ve been hearing people say that “o, she loved her step son so much”… absolute hogwash! She never loved me. After my father died, she did everything to make my life miserable in Hazel Lake
I worked in factories, carried sacks of sugar on distant dockyards and put myself through school. I worked all through the day and just managed to drag my weary bones to night school. Some days I went hungry; some days only managing on a dry piece of bread someone had wanted to give to the dog. People made fun of me, my ragged and torn clothes- but all that just made me stronger. Time passed and gave me courage to deal with my life. That I wanted to make something of myself was crystal clear to me. I saved up every penny and dime I could.
And then I realised, that I wanted to see her again. See my step mother who caused me to mature before time. She was the demon I could never exorcise myself of. No matter what I did or where I ran, I caught myself thinking of why she had hated me so. And one inevitable day, I decided to go back. I was a strong lad of twenty five and I could deal with anything that was thrown my way.
As I stood on the familiar porch, memories came rushing back at me with back breaking force. I stood still, trying to get my equilibrium back. I knocked and waited. And when she came to the door, I got the shock of my life. She had shrunk into an old woman I could not recognize. Her hair had whitened and her skin had become like parchment. Nowhere could I see the dominant woman who had so tortured me. She looked at me and said, “Yes, what do you want?” and then I realised that she did not recognize me. I fumbled through my words and said “Nothing ma’am. I must have come to the wrong house” and I fled from there.
I decided to stay back and build my life in the same town that had once felt like a curse to me. No one remembered me or asked any awkward or suspicious questions and slowly, my fears dissolved. I got married and my life was filled with both the important and the trivial delights that I had once thought to be eternally denied to me. And yet, those demons still refused to go away. I ignored them initially, but then found that these strange feelings receded when I saw my step mother living life in her crumpled ways. Seeing her in pain and poverty brought me a strange peace that I couldn’t even find holding my newborn.
Years passed. That year had been particularly sweet because I had been promoted at work and the entire town had been of the opinion that it was well deserved and a little late in coming, though better late than never, as they say. My child was growing up to be a delight and the love between my wife and I was everything dreams were made up of. And then it was Halloween; and as I passed through the town, watching kids go trick or treating, I remembered all the bitter times when she would never even bother to sew me a costume or even let me dress up to go out on my own.
I drove to the ramshackle cottage in a crazed frenzy. The door was open and she was sitting in the rocking chair and muttering to herself. I stormed inside and demanded if she recognised me. She shook her head in mute horror. When I told her who I was, she only remained silent. Her silence incensed me to levels of rage I did not know I was capable of. A black cloud of semi consciousness took over and the last thing I remember was sawing through her neck with a blunt knife. And then I passed out. When I came to, I saw that it was late evening and a pool of blood had collected on the floor. I hadn’t been able to behead her totally and was just going to take sadistic pleasure in doing so, when I noticed a shadow approaching. Swiftly, I went and hid behind the ragged couch and prayed that whoever it was, was alone and did not shout for help. I peered around the corner of the bedraggled thing and saw the boy and his dismayed expression. He turned and ran away in revulsion. I decided that this was no time to be artistic and try to finish the beheading of my personal monster. The boy might be back at any time with a host of other people. And I was not sure how I could explain my presence if I did get caught.
I escaped, washed myself and felt a calm aura about me. The giant had been slain and Jack was free again. Even though I knew that the boy was a potential danger, I felt that he was a minor problem that could be easily swept out of the way.
And now, as you can see, I’ve escaped. My past demons are gone, my life is free, although the small problem of the boy does remain. Maybe I should do something about him.
As I walk towards the boy’s house, again, the question I’ve been toying with comes to my mind…. Be practical and kill him or be generous and show him mercy?
As he sees me walking towards him, I look into his face and choose mercy. I yell, ““Hey Scott! How’s my kid doing?”, and I pick him up in my arms swinging him into the air.
******************
Scott, glad that his home was early that day, yelled for his mom. “Mom, Dad’s home!!!!!”
Jessica hurried to the door, happiness and pride showing on her face as she looked on at father and son playing in the yard.
******************
… And I smiled too.
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