Chapter 9 Theo
THEO
Oliver comes and goes, but I still can’t get Chloe out of my thoughts. She really is like the killing moon: constant, urgent, obsessive.
I hang the new picture of her beside the old one, on the wall beside my bed.
Then I go into my closet and pry back the floorboard in the left-hand corner to get at my metal lockbox.
The lock is broken, but that doesn’t matter, not with the hiding place.
That’s where I set the rest of the drawings, adding them to the collection that Oliver has brought me.
I’m not sure why I started doing this. For the last sixty years, the only things I’ve kept in that lockbox are newspaper clippings about my four killing moons and their aftermath.
They’re still there, buried underneath the drawings, but I’ve read them so many times over the years they’ve become stale.
The drawings are new and therefore interesting.
I like to look at them sometimes, studying how the world outside my peninsula has changed.
When the killing moon hits again, I want to be prepared.
I hope it doesn’t call me anytime soon, though. Not with Chloe’s sweetness calling me instead.
That night, I lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling. Like my father, I don’t sleep much, although I can sometimes will myself to drift off when my cold, obsessive thoughts become too much.
It doesn’t work tonight, though. This new obsession with Chloe is so different from what I’m used to.
Where the killing moon is the ice of death, Chloe is the fire of freshly spilled blood.
She makes me feel agitated and out of sorts, but in a way that I don’t ever want to end.
The thought of her face makes my cock hard, and I have to touch myself to relieve the pressure.
Before her, I only ever came when I was killing someone, and these orgasms feel strange and half-completed.
They don’t slake the fire or the ice. They just leave me restless.
By midnight, I give up trying to sleep. I know from previous experience there’s no point in watching her house through the telescope, not this late. She usually goes to bed by eleven, so I’ll have nothing to look at but a dark, empty window. Unlike me, she’s asleep.
The thought stirs something in me. A wisp of an idea.
She’s asleep.
I’ve killed people who were asleep before. I’ve broken their locks and crept through the dark hallways of their houses, and I’ve watched them, lying in bed, their breaths slow and steady. Most of the time, they don’t even wake up until my blade is lodged in their throat.
I could watch her.
I could be near her.
I shove myself out of my bed. Yes, this is what I need to do.
Chloe draws my attention across the water like the killing moon, and what is it I do when there’s a killing moon?
I go across the lake and slake my urges.
It’s true that my urge for Chloe is expansive and ill-defined.
It’s just a need to smell her, to be close to her.
But if that’s what it will take to clear my thoughts—
I spring into action. Obviously, I leave my weapons behind, save for a slim little switchblade, which I can use to pick the lock on her door. My rowboat I drag out of its place under my cabin and down to the lakeshore. Heavy work that makes my muscles ache, yes, but it feels good. It feels right.
The lake is dark and still. The moon itself is only half-full, not a killing moon at all, but it casts just enough thin, hazy light to make the water glimmer as it laps against the sides of my boat.
I row quickly across the water, keeping my gaze fixed on the houses along the shore.
They’re all dark and shut up tight for the night, but this is my first time in years that I’m crossing the lake with the possibility of a real audience.
Even Veritas, when it still existed, was a little further back, and the lake shore was overgrown.
I don’t sense any humans, though. Not really. They’re all tucked in their houses, safe and sound. And they’ll stay safe and sound tonight. I only have one target in mind.
I maneuver underneath Chloe’s pier, into the murk with the cobwebs and spiders and other crawling things.
Then I let the water wash me up into the tangle of reeds growing along the shoreline, where my boat lodges in a wedge of mud.
It’s not a perfect hiding spot, but it’s good enough.
I’ll be gone before the sun rises anyway.
I slither up onto the pier and then stop, breathing hard. Chloe’s house rises in front of me, the huge window reflecting the moonlight but revealing nothing else, because she has the curtains pulled.
It feels strange, standing here on this side of the lake without the pull of the killing moon compelling me forward.
For a moment, I’m not even sure what to do, and I just stand there, staring at her house, the warm, damp wind whispering along the back of my neck.
My hand slips into my pocket of its own accord, almost, and pulls out my switch blade.
I flip it open, let it catch the moonlight for a moment.
I look back up at Chloe’s house, considering the back door on the porch or the French doors on her balcony. The back door will be much easier.
My heart is racing. It never races. Not when I’m killing, anyway.
I move forward, stepping onto her porch.
It’s strange, standing on it instead of watching it from afar.
There’s the blue Adirondack chair where she works in the mornings sometimes.
There’s the hummingbird feeder she hung a few days ago, the sugar water nearly empty.
And there’s the door that will lead me to her.
I’ve picked dozens of locks in my long life.
Hundreds, probably. But this is the first time my hands have shaken so badly.
It takes me three tries to wedge the knife into place, and I stop and let out a long breath and force myself to focus.
Not just on the lock but on her. I can sense her on the other side of this window.
Her steady, sleeping breath and slow heartbeat.
My cock jolts. I wriggle the knife around until the lock gives.
Then I turn the knob, and I ease the door open.
Her scent washes over me. The other day, when she was in my territory, it blended too much with the scent of the woods.
But here, it’s concentrated. It’s pure. I can pick out each individual element: lilacs, like the ones that carpet the forest floor in the spring.
Cedar. Fresh oranges. It all makes the back of my jaw ache.
I step into the living room and pull the door shut behind me. It’s quieter in here, all the outside world muffled by the house’s walls, and that makes it easier to focus on Chloe. She’s upstairs, and it feels for a moment like she’s floating above me. I can tell she’s still asleep.
I snap my knife shut and slip it in my pocket.
Then I go to her, keeping my steps as light as I can in my big work boots.
Her floor is covered in a thick, lush carpet, though, and I have a predator’s gait.
I don’t make a sound as I weave through the cavernous living room and up the staircase and into the dark, narrow hallway, where the sound of her body is thunderous.
Living humans are so noisy. She’s louder than most, but it’s not noise, the way it usually is. Her body sounds more like music.
Her bedroom door is cracked open, and I nudge it with my toe, releasing more of that music. But then I stop in the doorway, feeling paralyzed because, honestly, I don’t know what to do next.
So I just watch her. The bed is huge, and she sleeps in the center of it like a queen, curled up on her side with the blanket tucked under her chin. Her hair curls on the pillow beside her and glimmers copper in the moonbeam shining in through a crack in the curtains that cover the balcony doors.
Every other time I’ve been in this situation, I’ve had a weapon in my hand. An axe or a hunting knife. A chainsaw, on one memorable occasion. But right now, my hands are empty, and the switchblade in my pocket feels as dangerous as a cheap ballpoint pen.
I risk stepping into the bedroom, keeping myself tucked away in the inky shadows.
Chloe’s breath remains steady and even, which gives me enough confidence to move closer to the bed, although I stay out of that beam of silver moonlight.
I inhale deeply, drawing her scent into my lungs, and then I close my eyes so the soft music of her body washes over me.
My cock pulses, filling with blood. I let my eyes flutter open and adjust myself, biting down on my lip at the pressure of my hand on my erection. Still, a noise of pleasure manages to escape my throat. A single, soft grunt.
I freeze, dropping my hand to my side. Chloe moans and mutters something, then rolls over, burying her face into her pillow.
My heart thuds furiously against my ribcage.
I can’t move. I should move, I know that.
I should turn and go out the way I came, through her living room and down her pier and across the lake, back to where I belong.
But I don’t. I want to be in the same room as her for as long as I can manage.
She shifts again, rolling onto her back. I press my spine against the wall and admire the curves of her body underneath the thin comforter. Maybe I can pull it away. Not to touch. I just want to look.
I step forward again, my breath soft and shuddery, my eyes fixed on the pale hollow of Chloe’s throat.
Her pulse is a soft, whispery rhythm in the background.
I don’t know how many times I’ve stood in the shadows and listened to the sound of someone’s sleeping pulse.
But this is the first time I don’t want to silence it.
If anything, I wish I could record it and take it home with me and let it play anytime I try to sleep.
I’m so caught up in this fantasy, this idea that I could have even a small part of Chloe in my cabin, that I don’t realize the pulse’s steady beat is quickening. It’s not until there’s a sudden, rushing roar in the sound of her breath that I realize I’ve stayed too long.
She’s waking up.
Panic seizes me. I stumble backward, arms flailing out. My shoes feel too heavy for the carpet, and they make my movements clumsy. I should have taken them off. I shouldn’t have come here at all. I should have—
Chloe’s eyes slide open. Just for a moment, they seem to glow in the moonlight. Just for a moment, I think it’s too dark for her to see me.
And then she starts to scream.