He moves toward the boy and strokes his head fondly. “You’re a little too old for me,” he tells the teaching assistant. “Too old. I like them young. The younger, the prettier, the better. This one’s older than I’m used to, but he’s got such a pretty face.” His fingers find a trail down the side of the boy’s jawline.
“But what to do with you?” He throws the covers off one table, revealing an assortment of knives, of strange and twisted surgical instruments. The girl’s struggles increase in earnest, and she screams again. “Never had anyone as old as you before. Not my type. Doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun, though, right?” He selects one of the larger knives and advances toward the nowterrified young woman, still smiling as kindly as a choir boy.
“I think I’ll start with you first. I like to take my time when it
comes to my toys, and I won’t have that as long as I’m in the house, thanks to you. By the time they arrive and find your body, I’ll be far away with my little boy, and no one will ever find us.”
Something rustles at the corner of his eye, and a faint gurgling reaches his ears. The Smiling Man crushhimscreamcrushhim turns his head, frowning at the distraction. But the boy continues to slumber atop the bed, and there is no one else present. Satisfied, he turns back.
He seizes the young woman’s wrist, ignoring how she cries out, how she tries to push him away. “Maybe I should take a little bit of you as a souvenir,” he says, thoughtfully. “A keepsake for the short time we had together, if you’d like. So a part of you will always be with my—Tarquin, didn’t you say his name was?—my Tarquin here. It’s the least I can do for you.”
The tattooed boy is still sleeping on the cot, unmoving. His feet are shackled, and his face is worn. Neither the girl nor the Smiling Man crushkillcrushkillKILLKILL sees the small blanket of black that rises around his form, though in the small trickle of light it seems larger somehow, like it gains its strength from places such as these.
The knife blade sinks into the young woman’s finger. Her screams grow louder.
Just as suddenly, the light above their heads breaks off, shattering. Over the sound of the young woman’s wailing, the Smiling Man is cursing. He fumbles for a lighter that he has set down on
the table, a small spark of flame igniting as the burning flint meets a candle. He holds this aloft, raising it up over his head to survey the bulb on the ceiling. He finds nothing wrong with it, except that it will no longer work.
He lowers the candle. He sees the faint outline of the boy on the bed and is satisfied. He starts to turn back toward the young woman, who is still struggling to free herself from her restraints.
Something else blocks his vision. The Smiling Man finds himself looking at a woman on the ceiling. The glow of candlelight catches only her face, her long hair hanging down, and her bright black eyes. She is only inches away, and she gurgles. It is the Smiling Man’s turn to scream, and the brief light is suddenly extinguished.
The young woman freezes as noises begin to erupt all around her, the sounds of frantic combat. She can hear the Smiling Man yelling at something to get away, threatening the unseen with death and worse. A table is overturned, and she hears the sound of several metallic objects hitting the floor, scattering. Blows rain down against one wall.
And then there is silence again. The young woman strains to hear more, fearful of the outcome.
Something moves along the floor; more muttered cursing. Another light flickers on, revealing the Smiling Man holding a
flashlight he has found inside one of the shelves. His clothes look ripped in several places, and thin, bloody trails mark his chest and upper arms, which he has scraped against his own knives and surgical equipment. He is no longer smiling. He is still sprawled on the floor beside the cot, panting and, for the first time since the young woman entered the tiny basement, afraid and no longer in control.
“What the hell was that?” he snarls. His face is twisting, the mask coming away so that the murderer underneath that gentle, genial facade is finally looking out. “Where are you, you bitch? I’m gonna kill you!” He swings the flashlight around the room, but other than the young woman, still trapped and whimpering, and the motionless tattooed boy, everything is silent. He swings the light up toward the ceiling, but there is no longer anyone there.
There is a cracking sound behind him, and something touches his foot. He looks back.
I am underneath the boy’s cot, watching him with wide, unblinking eyes. Shouting, the Smiling Man lunges forward, kicking desperately with his legs, but he continues to be pulled inexorably back despite his best efforts. He lands hard on his stomach and tries to crawl away, but his fingernails only carve deep grooves into the floor, leaving long scratches as he fights, shrill and squealing, and as he is yanked in quick, sporadic jerks underneath the bed, where I kill him
am waiting for him. The light goes out a second time. The young woman does not know how long she lies in the darkness, waiting. The Smiling Man has stopped screaming, and silence now takes his place. All she can hear is the house settling around her and the absence of anything else alive in the room.
Her finger stings. She can feel the blood trickling down her hand from the wound. Yet she grits her teeth, muffling her cries as best she can, as she tugs again at the ropes binding her.
The overhead bulb flickers back to life, light filling the room for the third time, and the young woman starts, blinking her eyes at the unexpected glare.
The tattooed boy has risen from the cot. His eyes are open, and he is crouching with his back toward his cousin, looking under the bed where the remains of the Smiling Man have been wedged into the small space, so small that it is not likely the body would have fit by natural methods. The dead man’s mouth is still open, like he has not yet finished screaming, but his face is bloodless and bloated and grotesque. The tattooed boy does not react at the sight, but the young woman squeezes her eyes shut, not wanting to look at the corpse any further.
When she opens her eyes again, the boy is standing over her. “Tarquin,” she whispers, relieved that he is unharmed. “Tark,
you have to help me. Cut me loose from these ropes. We need to call the police as soon as we can…”
The boy does not say anything. He continues to look down at her, and only then does the girl realize that there is a strangeness in his manner that has not been there in the past. He has a peculiar smile on his face, but an expression of aberrant emptiness. There is no expression in his eyes, and he gives no indication he recognizes her.
“Tark?…”The boy’s attention is riveted on her wound, the red dripping down her mangled finger. He moves further up the gurney. His sleeves are rolled up almost to his shoulders.
Now the young woman sees the boy’s tattoos up close. Several more lines of obscure writing ride up the length of his arm, beginning at the strange seals that mark each of his wrists.
There is blood on one of the seals, at the back of his right hand. As she watches, this blood disappears quickly into his skin as the seal pulses like it is alive. The ink fades in and out of view, matching the cadence and the rhythm of the shadow that continues to surround him, wrapping around in the air like it is a living, breathing creature all on its own.
The boy takes his cousin’s wounded hand. His touch is dry and clammy, as cold as death. He turns her palm down, and they both watch as the blood oozes out of her fingers and splatters against the seal on his left wrist.