7.2
I cut myself cleaning up the glass the next day. It feels deserved, just like my pounding headache. Stopping is when it hurts most, when everything you said and did comes under a new, shaming light. I should go back to work. I know that’s my only choice before I manage to drain my whole life away. But that would be much easier if I hadn't screamed nonsense at Dirk yesterday.
Even harsher in the light of clarity is recognising that he's the one to have helped me the most. He convinced Tawill to send me home, then to bring me back. He wanted to save me from finding out the way I did. Now I've thanked him by accusing him of being a serial killer.
Gritting my teeth, I call him, trying not to be relieved when he doesn’t answer. I don’t even know what I’d say, how I’d explain myself. Then, half an hour later, when the phone rings and I lunge to answer it, I try not to be disappointed that it’s not him.
“H-hey, how are y-you?”
“Hey Seb,” I say, leaning against the wall, eyes closed. I’d forgotten all about Seb with everything. What must he be thinking? The woman he’s been going on lunch dates with, is now the confirmed widow of a psychopath. “I’m… well, shit, really.”
“Want to g-get l-l-lunch?” His stutter is either more pronounced or worse over the phone.
I look down at myself, smell myself, or smell the apartment. I’m not sure which. “I uh, I need to clean up a bit. Dinner instead?”
He answers quickly and affirmatively, clearly not one for being on the phone.
I hang up and press my face to my hands, realising I need to get cleaned up now.
***
I don't feel like being in a restaurant, surrounded by the clinking of glasses, and the chatter of people, to risk someone recognising me, so Seb and I buy sandwiches and eat on the edge of the park, looking into the fairy-lights that web the trees. He's naturally quiet, and I'm not feeling talkative, so we sit in comfortable silence for a time. It just feels good to be out, distracted from everything, for a while. I showered and put on clean clothes. There's a mountain of laundry waiting for me at home.
"It’s p-pretty, from here," Seb comments, and I follow his gaze to the city lights.
"Less so up close." I smile.
He hums a laugh. The weather is warmer, clear and crisp tonight. He still wears a beanie and a woollen jumper with a wide collar up to his chin.
My eyes linger on him, his cheek. I shiver a little in the breeze, pulling my coat tighter. "You're not scared to be seen with me? You must have seen the news."
Seb nods slowly. "I heard. That’s h-harsh. But this city… p-people will move on. Yest-terdays n-news and all." He tilts his head. "Will you move on?"
I smile. "I'm trying."
He walks me home. We go the long way, lingering on the streets that are as quiet as they ever get so close to Downtown. I slip my hand into the crook of his elbow and try to enjoy the sleeping city. But there's an uneasiness there, a wrongness I put down to my recent self-incarceration, but nonetheless, it leaves me on edge.
At the door of my building, I turn to face Seb. He glances towards the gate, lingering with me. Maybe I should take him upstairs, distract myself in a different way. It could be cleansing. On impulse, I step forward and kiss him, hands resting gently on the soft wool of his jumper.
His hands brush my waist, but before he holds me properly, I've pulled back all the way back. I touch my chin, my mind tripping over itself. I’ve never done that before, and yet I know those lips, that taste.
But no, that’s not possible. It can’t be.
"Something wrong?"
Words stick in my throat, and a beat later, he asks, "Aren’t you going to invite me in?"
"Nothing, I just…" I shake my head, stopping myself abruptly. He didn’t stutter, not even a tremble. I'm staring at him again, and he's transforming in front of my eyes. Like I’m really seeing him for the first time. His eyes are green through the lenses of his glasses. In the half-light I know them too well. By the time I take in the rest of his face, his mouth has lost that crooked lilt, and his shoulders sit straighter.
Suddenly he's familiar, known.
This, right here, is my killer.
***
"Let’s go inside."
My hand, the key in it, is a fist against my chest. "Seb?"
His head tilts incrementally, not agreeing, not disagreeing. "You wanted to know. We've got some things to talk about."
I take a step back, forgetting the edge behind me. His hand snakes out, catching my hip. I jolt away from that too, up against the gate now. "Don't."
He drops his hand; he waits.
"You… the lab." He's been among us this entire time. Handling our evidence on him . I even took him his own saliva.
Inconclusive results.
"Yes. But not here. We need to be alone."
I shake my head, hand trembling around my key. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
Not-Seb fixes me with a look. "W-wouldn't I have done it already if I was going to hurt you?"
There's something uncanny there, that brief glimpse of Seb's stutter, moreso than Seb's face on Needler's words. I look at his mouth. "Your stutter… it’s real."
"Psychological. Only as Seb. Mask on, no stutter. When I'm him."
Mask on, cold-blooded killer. "Your limp?” I ask, as though that’s the most important thing right now. “Psychological too?
"You want answers? W-we need to be off the street."
How badly do I need to know? Badly enough. "You bastard," I mutter, but unlock my gate.
All the way up, in my dingy elevator, to my door, until I lock the door behind me, I don't speak. Then the Needler is in my living room, unmasked. And he didn't limp the whole way. "You're Tristan," I say, wasting no time, keeping close to the door. "Caleb's partner."
His lips twitch. Lips I've kissed so many times. He nods. "We met once, briefly. And to answer your question, I had a limp. From him. It took me two years to learn to walk again. A J-John Doe by the time I washed up down the river." Two years, the gap between Needler’s first and second kill.
"Why a John Doe?"
He pulls off that beanie, and I stare, seeing suddenly why he never took it off. An inch of bright blond regrowth stands out, a line against the false, faded copper. "I liked it that way. Everyone thought I was dead, charred beyond recognition." His stutter is a half-thing now, sliding away with Seb.
"You could have told the truth!"
"I could have? Even with both of us 'dead', people still conjectured that I was the first Cocooner. A-always me. Never Caleb. Never the rich boy from the estate side, with the doting wife and clean record. You c-can’t deny it, you bought it too. Besides, what good would I have been? Better to be Needler, to punish them."
I shake my head. None of this makes sense. “But… you came back to the station. How? How didn’t anyone recognise you?” How didn’t I recognise you? I want to scream. How didn’t I see Caleb for what he really was, and now Seb?
He spreads his hands. “They remember a tall skinny blond guy with crooked teeth and a beard. Is that what Seb was? No one’s looking for the dead guy in the awkward lab tech.”
So he’s bulked up now, clean-shaven, straight teeth, and donned glasses, but still, I can’t drop it. “Rosie would have seen through that,” I say it like a demand.
“She was starting to. Eyes stay the same. But most don’t look someone stuttering at them in the eye for very long.”
Taking a step back, I bump the table and catch myself. "And me? Why stalk me, fuck me…"
I see his chest rise and fall in a long breath. "Watching you was the b-best bet for stopping the new Cocooner. I knew they’d come for you eventually. Then… my reasons got mud-dled. I’m still human.” Tristan sighs. “He was such a martyr to you. He didn't deserve that regard. I knew eventually the world was going to know, and you too."
"Trust me, you haven't made that any less painful."
"Haven't I?" he asks quickly. "You're telling me you fucked your husband’s murderer with not even the slightest doubt in your mind?"
My mouth opens and closes. He's putting ideas in my head, giving me a noble excuse. I can't say if it’s the truth or not. Hindsight is too lenient.
His jaw works, gaze dropping. "I liked you, really. You were kind to the lab-boy.”
I shake my head. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me!”
He shakes his head. “Not everything. I didn’t lie to you about stuttering as a kid, the accident. It came back after that night, after him, the Cocooner. And it only went away with the mask. With revenge.”
“What, I’m just supposed to believe you now?”
“Eleanor…” he reaches towards me, then thinks better of it. “I could see the self-destructive side of you from the start. I followed your story after his death. You’re brave.” He smiles softly, then looks sad. “It was going to get you in trouble. It still will, if you're not careful.”
"It’s a little late to be careful!"
"It’s not." Tristan steps towards me, and I hold my ground until his fingers brush my jaw. Gently, he tells me, "You w-were..." He sighs, and tries again. "You were going to be his Magnus Opus," he says it slowly, carefully. "The best work he'd ever done."
Somehow that possibility, that Caleb would have done to me what he did to others, had yet to occur. No, I was on the safe side of him, untouchable. His hand falls from my face as I back up, out of reach. "He wouldn't have killed me."
There's a look in his eyes- pity. "He was saving you. Until it could be perfect."
He's blurry in front of me. My knees wobble, like they're going to let me down. "But he didn't. So why tell me?"
"Because of the copycat. I've been trying to t-tell you. It’s too close to what Caleb did- what they do. They had to of learned from him, firsthand."
"What, some kind of…" My lip curls—I might vomit. "Apprentice?"
"I've been trying to find them. But now, they're almost there, the last piece to make. I'm trying to save your life, Eleanor."
I shake my head, forcing down the lump in my throat. "I have to tell them who you are. Who Seb is."
“Who? The cops? Tawill?” Tristan shrugs. "Go ahead, I’m not going back."
“But they… they can find you.” But they can’t, even as I say the words, I know that. Because they never knew him to begin with. “The background checks? Your fingerprints,” I try grasping at anything.
The corner of his mouth quirks. He holds his hand towards me, palm up, and I see now, the burned pads of his fingers. The burned body comes to mind. “Happy accident, I suppose. I wore false ones when they did the interview. It’s not hard to get a completely new identity in Tregam.” I blink, letting go of his hand. His smile is somewhat consolatory. “We’ve all got histories, Eleanor, even Tawill can’t be so thorough. Look at Caleb… there had been suspicions, in the sweet rich town he grew up in. You know them now, those unopened cases of his schoolmates going missing… But those concerns could all be- and were all- paid to go away.”
I was married to him in that sweet rich town, among canapes and garden teas. No one ever mentioned anything of that sort of controversy, of course, as though any black mark on the town’s history couldn’t be stood to exist or be spoken aloud.
Tristan pulls my mind back to the present, “And your friend Dirk was a street fighter for the better part of his teenage years, did you know that? He hides it well, but the whispers still linger in Tregam’s underground. He’s one of their own, now wearing a badge.”
I nod once, still stunned. “I knew,” I say softly. He told me. In his way, casually and offhand, as if he was telling me something no more interesting than where he went to school.
“Even me, a foster home kid, royally fucked by the system and they knew it, yet I was allowed to be a detective. You only need to clean up so well here. Tregam is desperate for anyone on their side of the law.”
Yet the odds stay stacked against us. Not feeling any better for that insight, I stare back at him. I don’t know who he is anymore. I never knew.
After a pause, he takes a breath. “I’m sorry, Eleanor.” He turns to go.
"My husband killed your sister," I say before I've had time to think it over. He turns back. "I'm sorry that happened."
A suggestion of a laugh. "He liked to go after people he knew. Or ones important to the people he k-knew."
I wince.
"Cass had some problems but… she was getting better." He meets my eye. "I hope on some level you can understand why I went this way."
"I don't know if I understand anything anymore."
"Well, that’s a start."
I don’t say anything, but when he turns away from me to leave, I find myself stopping him again. “Is Seb gone now? Just a part of your past? Are you more Tristan? Or the other one.”
He tilts his head as though in thought. “They’re all me. Just d-different parts.”
“Can I ask for one?”
His lips twitch. “Which would you want?”
I bite my lip. I thought I knew which, but now, faced with the offer, I don’t. “Tristan.”
He seems surprised by this, as much as I’m surprised to say it.
“Why didn’t I know you?” I ask. “You were Caleb’s partner.”
He spreads his hands. “He was always closed off about his home life, the t-things he did in private. I didn’t ask. I started after you left. I think…” Tristan pauses, then goes on. “He didn’t want you knowing anyone, really. To be kept, isolated, pure in a way.”
“Right.” The word chokes in my throat a little. I blink away tears, then lift my chin. “Well, fuck what he wanted.”
Tristan chokes out a laugh, then sobers, “It was never you that I meant to hurt. He was the only one I wanted to hurt.”
At the time.
I brace my hand on the top of the TV cabinet. “That night, I want to know what happened. To him, between you two.”
Tristan frowns, almost a pained expression. “I don’t think…”
“I don’t care,” I say, not harshly. “I need to know that at least.”
He sighs, taking a seat on the couch. Now that he’s lower, I feel more eased, like somehow this makes him less threatening, less the walking lie and madman I’ve been sleeping with. Drifting closer, I perch on the arm of the couch, watching his profile.
“I followed him,” he starts, not looking at me. “I thought… there was something off about him. I’d thought it for months. I got the same feeling from him that I got as a kid, in some of the worst foster homes me and Cass were sent to. So that night, I decided I had to know. No matter what it took.” He shifts, sliding down to between the couch and the ottoman, more comfortable on the floor, even further below me. He twists towards me, but his eyes stay fixed on a point somewhere near my feet where they perch on the seat cushion.
“I stayed outside your house for hours, watching. I saw you… and I thought for a minute, am I crazy? You were just watering plants there in the dark. It looked like you’d been crying.”
I frown. I don’t remember that, but few memories of the end have stuck with me. I cried sometimes, sure, but didn’t everybody? Life, and Tregam especially, was cruel.
“I was about to give up, then I saw him leaving, and I followed his car again. Into Crennick. Well, I’m sure you can imagine what I found. The victim was already dead, had been there too long. I confronted him.” Here, Tristan shakes his head. “I should have called it in but… something just snapped. All I could see was my sister in that dead man’s face. Knowing what he’d done to her. Never being able to bury her properly, just a few bits of hair...”
I remember the hopeless missing posters, and they take on a new sting now to think of what they went through together. All the homes, the violence, only for her to be scrubbed out by the Cocooner when things were turning around. No wonder he had trouble letting go.
“Caleb fought back, hurt me, but I got him down.”
My hands press together between my knees, shoulder hitches up between my ears as though the room is cold. This story, these events, I’ve wanted to know for so long. It’s all different now. “And?” I press.
“I told him to tell me where her body was. Since there was a chance she didn’t… dissolve.” Tristan’s cheek twitches. He turns his face away. “He laughed in my face. I lost control. I grabbed the nearest thing, ripping it out of a machine, some kind of tuning fork, I don’t know, and I stabbed him.”
I’m nodding slowly. He doesn’t say how many times. But I know how many. 32.
“The minute I came back around, I knew what would happen to me. They wouldn’t believe me. Why would they? Caleb was a model citizen. And I’d just shown myself to be crazed. I knew they’d assume the other body was me if they knew that was him.”
“But his face,” I start, then close my mouth, still unable to speak of that.
Tristan tilts his head, eyes vacant. “He let my sister be an unknown corpse somewhere. No closure for her. I wanted him to be just as anonymous. No face, no name. But then… it wasn’t you that I wanted to punish. I left his body there, cleaned up the signs of the Cocooner. And then left my life. You know the rest.”
I bite my lip, staring into nothing as the silence stretches out. So there it is.
Tristan straightens. “Do you want me to leave?”
“I should,” I say. “But I don’t. I don’t want to be alone.”
He’s standing now, and I look up at him. “Too many ghosts around,” he offers.
“Something like that.”
He holds out his hand, and for the second time I look at his fingers, his palm, with no glove to cover them. “Come on, I’ll stay.”
I take his hand, and though it still doesn’t feel right, his touch grounds me. Tugging me backward, he guides me onto the couch, turning as we lie down to bring my back against his chest, arms tight around me. His breath tickles the back of my ear, and at once I feel myself becoming heavy with exhaustion.
Next that I blink awake, the TV is on, though silent. Some old movie playing and his arms are still around me, though I can tell he’s not asleep, and perhaps has stayed awake however many hours I lay here.
I close my eyes and drift away again.
***