Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Seth Adams C.

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      ‘I kill people,’ he began.

      ‘Why?’ Reggie asked, mildly shocked by the man’s admission, and at the same time immediately interested. A part of him knew he should be scared if the man was telling the truth. Knowing the man was telling the truth, however, didn’t bother him as it should.

      Reggie had seen death, close up, on a parking lot’s asphalt. And countless times afterward, replayed in night terrors. Its constant assault over the past year had numbed him.

      ‘For money,’ the man said.

      ‘Good people or bad people?’

      ‘Any people,’ he said. ‘Whomever I’m paid to kill.’

      ‘How many people have you killed?’

      ‘Many,’ he said slowly with a small nod of his head, as if confirming the answer. ‘Many people.’

      ‘How long have you been doing it?’

      ‘A long time,’ he said with another nod. ‘A very long time.’

      ‘Does it pay well?’

      ‘What?’ the man said, a slight note of surprise in his tone.

      ‘Killing people,’ Reggie asked. ‘Does it pay well?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So you don’t need the money anymore.’

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess I don’t.’

      ‘So why do you keep doing it?’

      He didn’t answer immediately. It was as if speaking gave the man strength, but in pausing his body rattled with laboured breathing. When he spoke again the tremors passed.

      ‘I guess it’s all I know how to do,’ he said.

      ‘Do you like it?’ Reggie asked.

      ‘Do I like it?’ the man repeated, taken aback once more.

      ‘My dad did many jobs until he found what he liked doing,’ Reggie said. ‘Then when he found the job he liked, he never left it. We don’t have to do things we don’t like. So you must like doing it.’

      The man said nothing.

      ‘You must like killing people,’ Reggie said.

      ‘There’s a power in it,’ the man finally said. His hand roamed and found his gun, stroking it, almost as if he wasn’t aware of it. ‘Knowing you hold someone’s life in your hands. That you can end them and the world will continue as if they’d never existed at all.’

      Reggie nodded as if he knew what the man was talking about.

      But he didn’t speak. Waited instead for the man to continue.

      ‘There’s a thrill,’ the killer said, ‘a rush when I pull the trigger or tighten the wire around the throat or sink the knife in the belly. There’s no one to tell me what I can and can’t do. I answer to no one.’

      ‘Have you killed women?’ Reggie asked.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Have you killed children?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘What about God?’ Reggie said.

      ‘What about Him?’ the man asked.

      ‘What about hell?’

      The man shook his head slowly. He smiled but it wasn’t a happy smile or even a smile of amusement, like he thought what Reggie said was funny or stupid or both. It was a sad smile, like he missed something he’d once been fond of.

      ‘I’ve never seen anything that would make me believe in a heaven or a hell,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen cruelty, and greed, and men and women pushing and manoeuvring to make it to the top. Only to find that when they’re at the top there’s somewhere else they want to be. Somewhere higher.’

      ‘Will you kill me?’ Reggie asked.

      The man stared at him long and hard.

      ‘I haven’t yet, have I?’ he said.

      ‘That’s because you still need me,’ Reggie said. ‘You’re not healthy enough yet to get along on your own.’

      The man smiled again and nodded sagely.

      ‘That’s very perceptive,’ the man said. ‘Always mind the details.’

      ‘Will you kill me when you’re better?’ Reggie asked.

      ‘No,’ the man said. ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because we have a deal,’ the man said. ‘And in my line of work, a deal’s a deal. A man’s word means everything.’

      ‘What if I break it?’ Reggie asked. ‘What if I call the police?’

      ‘You won’t,’ the man said, looking at him intently, as if he were reading fine print on a contract.

      Under such scrutiny, Reggie had to look away.

      Not because he was scared, though. And not because of any suggestion of threat beneath the man’s words should the deal be broken. But because, Reggie realized, he knew he wouldn’t call the police.

      He’d made that decision the moment he’d run up to help the man and hadn’t turned away even after seeing the gun beneath the jacket.

      Reggie looked away because the killer, having known him only a few hours, already read Reggie like a book. This was the kind of insight that only a close family member had.

      Someone like a mother … or a father.

      They were quiet for a time, looking across the space at each other. The lantern was lit but carried hardly a few feet. Outside the open windows of the tree house the night was heavy and dark. As if the two of them were in the last habitable space in an abyss.

      The man looked at his abdomen, then out the window nearest him, then at Reggie again. He looked tired, aware, and restless all at the same time, like how Reggie felt when he had a big test the next day at school. Something important that much else depended on.

      ‘You should probably go to bed,’ the man said.

      Reggie nodded and moved to the ladder.

      ‘I think I’ll need something for infection,’ the man said.

      Reggie looked back and nodded again.

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