The Serialist Read online

  I admit, I’d had a crush on Aram from the beginning, though I never in a thousand lifetimes thought he’d take notice of me. My feelings about Ivy were more complicated. I’d never even considered romance with a fellow girl, but she was so beautiful, so graceful, so brilliant, and in some mysterious way so tragic, while at the same time seeming so strong and dominating, almost more like a man. It was confusing.

  Then one night she came to my room with a bottle of wine, explaining that Aram was out. Neither of them ever seemed to leave the house, so I asked where.

  “Hunting,” she said and laughed in a deep-throated way that made me drop the subject. Hunting? In New York? Did she mean for other girls? Was this what made her so sad? If such was his pleasure, I could not imagine too many resisting. Could I? Would I want to? For a second, I remembered the wolf who had ravaged my attacker in the park. Didn’t that beast, too, have green eyes?

  “Won’t you invite me in?” Ivy asked, interrupting my reverie. I laughed and shook off the image.

  “Of course!” I held the door back, and she floated over the threshold.

  That night, we talked and laughed and listened to music and drank, or I did, and the next thing I knew I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up in the dark. Then, as my senses adjusted, I realized someone was there. I felt strong hands touching my face. I felt breath on my lips. Aram? I thought. Knowing it was wrong, but unable to resist, I let my mouth part to accept the devouring kiss. I put my arms out . . . and felt long hair and the warm body of a beautiful woman. It was Ivy!

  Even as we embraced, I told myself I was only dreaming, and the next morning I doubted that it had really happened. But it went on: days spent among books and dusty relics, nights of squab and Schubert, and then Ivy slipping silently into my bed, a finger pressed to my lips to keep me from asking questions.

  “Not tonight, sweetness, I beg of you,” she would whisper. “Not while we have tonight.” I guess I was too dazzled to think straight. It was like I was under a spell. I had never met anyone like them. But I didn’t realize exactly how unique they were until the night that I found them fencing in the parlor.

  That’s right, fencing, as in dueling with swords. I came downstairs, expecting an evening of Mozart, and there they were, hair flying, sweat pouring, swinging these blades at each other. They darted and lunged and jumped over couches. They thrust and parried and broke chairs. It crossed my mind that perhaps they were fighting over me, but they didn’t even seem to care that I was there. Finally, with a brutal grunt, Aram sprang forward like a panther and, to my utter horror, sank his foil deep into Ivy’s chest, right between her snow-pale breasts, the lovely breasts I’d been kissing just hours before. She staggered about, tearing her dress open and moaning, with the foil stuck in her body, while Aram watched, impassive, his mouth twisted into a cruel smile. I was too shocked to move. She crashed into a small Second Empire end table and collapsed.

  “Ivy,” I cried, and ran to her. But then, with her last breath, she pulled a huge handgun from the drawer of the table and fired, hitting Aram right in the heart. I saw a hole blow open in his chest and he went down, just as Ivy sighed and died on the priceless carpet before me. I fell on my knees. I wept. Then suddenly, Ivy reached up and gave me a kiss. A big wet one, smack on the lips. I gasped and the dead woman beneath me laughed.

  “Ivy, you’re alive?”

  “Of course,” she said, sitting up, the sword still stuck in her cleavage. “Although this does sting.” She pulled it out and rubbed the wound, which seemed to be shrinking, healing before my eyes.

  “But you shot Aram,” I said. “You killed him.”

  “He deserves it,” she said.

  “Sour grapes,” Aram said, sitting up, fingering his bullet hole. “You can never just lose gracefully.” He stood, smiling, and came forward. “But don’t worry, I’ll get my revenge.” I stared in shock, unable to believe my eyes. Was this some trick? An illusion? But how?

  “So sorry to scare you,” Ivy said. “But you see we are a bit jaded, and in marriages as long as ours, you need to relieve the tension. You’ll understand when you’re older. How long have we been together, darling?”

  He shrugged. “It feels like forever, but it’s only nine hundred years.” He coughed. “Excuse me,” he said, and cleared his throat, then spit into his hand. Smiling, he held it out to me. There was a bullet resting in his palm. My eyes widened in amazement. I couldn’t breathe. For a second I thought I was losing my mind. Suddenly, they both began laughing madly, like wild children, embracing with maniacal glee.

  It was then that I first saw the fangs.

  14

  “You Tom Stanks, the Slut Whisperer?” His voice was mild, deep, and a little hoarse, and he spoke the Queens English like me. I walked across the visiting room, polite smile set on my face, the tie Claire had picked and pre-tied for me tight across my throat, and I jumped only a little when the guard shut the door behind me. There were no bars or squeaky gates, just a normal door with a small window. And we weren’t in a cell, just a cement room painted an ugly green and furnished with a table and chairs.

  I said, “My name is Bloch, actually. Harry.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I keep forgetting. I’m Darian.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I held out my hand and he chuckled.

  “It’s been a while since anyone’s said that.” He held up his arms to show that they were cuffed. “Have a seat.”

  I reached to pull back a chair but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Everything’s nailed down here,” he said. “Including me.”

  “Right.” I sat.

  “So,” he asked, “do I look like you expected?”

  I shrugged nonchalantly. “I didn’t really think about it.” The truth of course was that I had been thinking about it nonstop. It’s a question many writers must sooner or later face: what exactly should a homicidal maniac look like? Do we make him a monster, hugely obese for example, like poor old Sade himself, wallowing in his prison of flesh? How about a shriveled creature in a wheelchair? An evil dwarf, so beloved of David Lynch? A mad scientist with wild hair and crazy glasses, flipping a giant switch? How about all the suavely devilish geniuses and demonic pretty boys, from Lecter back through Dracula to Lucifer himself? Or perhaps you prefer the quiet creep, the insignificant worm who wouldn’t hurt a fly?

  But the challenge of coming up with a fresh look for one’s psycho is really just a cover for a deeper dilemma: evil has no face, except perhaps in the mirror. Let’s say, for example, that you’re reading this book on the train to work. Now look around. Who among you is the liar, the adulterer, the thief? What about the arsonist, the psychopath, the cannibal? Really, it could be anyone. History is full of ordinary folks doing horrible things for no good reason. In stories, however, this homely truth strikes us as unconvincing. We don’t buy it. At least not in trade paperback. So fiction is left with a paradoxical task, one that religion, psychology, and the daily news all fail to achieve: to make reality believable.

  So I’ll just report the facts as I found them and you take them as you will: he looked fine. He was not an ogre and he didn’t look like Brad Pitt (though I’d be happy to sell him the movie rights). He looked like someone’s good-looking uncle, the one who keeps fit, playing tennis and ordering the fish. Prison had been good to him. He’d been working out, and even in the bulky jumpsuit I could see that every muscle of his arms, neck and shoulders jumped like a plucked wire. Before prison, he had been good-looking but weaselly, in skinny black suits and shirts at his trial, with his long, greasy hair in a ponytail for court and a couple of rotten teeth. But the state had fixed his teeth and cut his hair. Time had grayed his temples and refined his face. His wrinkles crinkled. His brown eyes twinkled. He looked ready to pose for the thermal underwear ads in a Christmas catalog, gazing into the eyes of a blond wife, beside a roaring fire.

  Sitting with him, two feet from evil, I knew the awful truth, but I still couldn’t quite grasp it. I
was meeting with an ordinary man, nice enough, if not overly bright. You wouldn’t fear him. You might even like him. Until you found out that he had chopped off girls’ heads and then thrown their bodies in the trash.

  “Well, you sure don’t look like I pictured,” he announced, looking me up and down, frowning like a diner who regretted ordering the special.

  “Oh?”

  “Younger. Much younger. Smaller too. Shorter and skinnier. You are the Slut Whisperer, right?”

  “Well yeah, I wrote that column among—”

  “You just don’t seem like the instinctually dominant type is all. But you are experienced?”

  “Sure.”

  He searched my eyes, as if he could peek inside, and asked, “So then you have worked extensively, training bitches?”

  “Well, I’m a writer,” I began, trying to scoot back in the bolted chair. I crossed my legs and arms instead. “Which you know, of course. And as a writer, needless to say, a certain amount of the research that I do is in the form of research per se, as well as actual reporting and speculative writing, as such. I wrote a lot of things, over the years, which as I work with you, projecting forward, this ability I’m sure you’ll appreciate, is the ability to project. As such.”

  Smiling dismally, I imagined myself trying to slip a collar around Jane. Would she bite my hand? Or punch my nose, like that time she accidentally elbowed me in bed and gave me a nosebleed? No. She would laugh. And she wouldn’t try to hide it either, like she did when she was helping stuff the toilet paper into my nostrils.

  “Yeah well, the reason I ask.” Clay sounded dubious. “This project is a two-way street.”

  “Oh yes.” I was glad to change the subject. “I think your letter mentioned conditions?”

  “Yeah. Take a look at this.” He pushed across a manila folder and I flipped it open.

  “These look like letters.”

  “Fan mail. Love letters from my groupies.”

  “Groupies?”

  “All these girls are in love with me,” he explained with a vague wave. “Some nice ones there too. Different ages. A few are even married. I get them from all over, though of course I’m more famous locally, I mean down in New York, not up here in the woods. Go on, read one out loud.” He sat back and prepared to listen.

  There were a lot of them, written in different hands, or typed on colored stationery. A few thick bundles seemed to stretch back for years, while others were just holiday cards with murky Polaroids and lewd scrawls inside. I selected a mauve letter with a scalloped edge and read from the round, loping script.

  “ ‘I’m not usually like this. So passionate about a man. Just the normal girl . . . next store?’ ” I cleared my throat. Why was I reading this? “ ‘But I can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be with you, serving your every pleasure as you wish, at your command, sir. I am five foot two, 127 with a 36 C and big sensible nipples . . . ’ ” I paused there, reluctant to turn the page.

  “So what do you think?” Clay asked.

  “She must mean sensitive,” I suggested.

  “About the girl.”

  “Great. I’m sure you must be psyched.”

  He snorted dismissively and jangled his chain above his head. “Hell of a lot of good it does me. I’ll never touch hair nor hide of them.”

  “Oh right. That sucks.”

  Clay shrugged. “Simple twist of fate. Here I am locked up and suddenly every girl wants me. Not that I had any problems with that in the past but it’s different when you’re famous.”

  “Right. Right.”

  “You get that a lot? Being a writer?”

  “Not that much,” I admitted.

  “But I bet you got some stories.”

  “Sure. Some.”

  “There’s pictures in the back.”

  “Sorry?”

  “A lot of the girls send me pictures. Nothing like what I’d do myself of course. Just amateur stuff.” He winked. I shut the folder and pushed it back.

  “Listen, Mr. Clay. Darian. I’m not sure what you want me to do here.”

  He smiled and I noticed that his state-sponsored teeth were weirdly white. “I want you to write. You’re a writer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Look,” he said. “I’m never getting out of here. I know that. I’ll never be allowed to touch another girl or take another picture. All I have now is my mind.” He tapped his temple, three times, like knocking on a door. “Up here I’m free.”

  “I see,” I said, though I still didn’t. I was just noticing how close and hot the air was in there and how much I hated that tie around my neck. How the weird thing was the way I kept forgetting I was talking to a killer and not just the inappropriate, sleazy guy from work who cornered you, suggesting you cruise chicks together, maybe suggesting more. Some everyday creep you shrugged off and then brooded about when he scooped up the hottest girl in the office. He leaned toward me and laid his cuffs on the folder. His nails were chewed to the purplish underflesh, the cuticles bitten and raw, red as the gums around his too-white teeth.

  “I want you to go see these girls for me, that I can’t,” he said. “I got a list of ones close by that I asked and they’re willing. You talk to them, interview them, and write about me and them, doing what I tell you but in your own style.”

  “My style?”

  He fixed me with his eyes, described in the dumber papers as cobralike, but to me they were puppy eyes, wet and warm, brimming with earnest soulfulness. “That’s what I picked you for,” he said. “I dig your voice.”

  For a moment I said nothing, but I managed to keep a straight face, like I was swallowing something rotten at a dinner party. He waited patiently.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want me to go see these women and then write stories about you having sex with them, acting out your fantasies?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like a porn magazine but just for you?”

  “Right. For me to read in my cell.”

  “Huh.”

  “And masturbate,” he added.

  “Got it,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “But”—he pointed a finger at me—“it’s got to be quid pro quo. You know what that means?”

  “More or less.”

  “Each story you write for me you get a chapter for the book about my life. And not all the good stuff right away. We’ll start at the beginning, when I was a kid and whatnot, but don’t worry, you’ll get your book. A best seller. Guaranteed.”

  “Wow,” I said, sneaking a look at my watch, wondering what time the train left. “I don’t know. To be honest, I’m going to have to think about this.”

  “Sure, think all you want. Take your time. I have eighty-eight days.”

  15

  I felt sick. The whole time leaving the prison—passing through the checkpoints, signing for my cell phone and keys, desperately untying my tie—I was afraid I was going to throw up, but when I got back to the hotel it had passed. I immediately packed and checked out. I didn’t wait for Theresa Trio, although her meeting with Clay was after mine and we had planned to return together. I was also supposed to call Claire and let her know how it went, but I didn’t do that either. I just asked the desk clerk to call me a cab and waited for it outside, in my too-light jacket. It helped to fill my lungs with clear air and feel the wind in my face. It was cold but it smelled like spring: damp soil and melting ice. I got to the station early, with an hour to kill before the next train to the city. I bought my ticket and tossed the schedule in the trash. I wasn’t planning on coming back.

  I went to the men’s room, splashed water in my face, dried my hands under the blower. I went back out to the empty waiting room and paced. Then I saw a car pull up and park in the loading zone. Four people got out and entered the station, cold air rushing in the automatic doors with them, as if it had been waiting for the chance. Their hats and bundled coats made them look formless and indistinct, but there was an
older man with glasses helping a woman with a cane, another older guy with a trimmed gray beard, and a guy in his forties, clean-shaven. They walked right toward me, and when I stepped aside to let them pass, the younger man called my name.

  “You Mr. Bloch?”

  “Yes.”

  He was good-looking and fit, if unremarkable: short gelled hair and a winter tan, carefully manicured hands. I would have guessed dentist or commodities trader. “I’m John Toner.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Sandy Toner’s husband.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.”

  “This is Mr. and Mrs. Jarrel. And that’s Mr. Hicks. Do you know who we are?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  They were the survivors, the families of the girls Clay killed. I invited them to the station coffee shop, but they declined and we sat on the plastic waiting area chairs. This was awkward, as they were bolted in a row, so I ended up standing in front of them as if facing a panel. Mr. Hicks spoke first. His gray hair stuck up crazily when he removed his hat.