Chapter 11 Theo
THEO
My body feels the way it does right before a kill, like all my atoms are rioting, threatening to obliterate me.
I race down the stairs and into Chloe’s living room and then erupt out into the warm, humid night, the frog song overwhelming.
I don’t stop running until I get to the end of the pier, where I jump into the lake with a splash, sinking down in the murk.
For a moment, I consider staying down there, letting the water flood my lungs like it did sixty years ago, until everything goes black.
At this point in my life, a drowning won’t take long for me to revive.
Certainly not the five years it did the first time.
A month or two, maybe. The longer you’re alive, the easier reviving becomes.
Especially a relatively simple death like drowning.
But when my lungs start burning, I don’t have the willpower to stay in the dark. I shoot myself up to the surface, gasping as I drink in the humid air. Then I whip around to look at Chloe’s house.
The light is on in her bedroom. At first, that’s all I can see, the soft pinkish glow through the curtains covering her windows. My chest heaves in the water, and my skin buzzes.
I know what you are. I know you aren’t human.
Is this why I felt so drawn to her the moment I saw her in the fading sunlight?
She’s not one of my kind. Not a Hunter. But she didn’t seem surprised when I told her my name, that I was the boy who died sixty years ago.
Maybe that’s why I showed her the sign for what I am, the killer-whose-purpose-is-to-kill.
I breathe out, eyes fixed on the window. A shadow moves past it, and she has something lifted to the side of her head. She’s holding a phone.
My stomach bottoms out with something like betrayal. Did she call the police?
It was one of my father’s first lessons to me, after I finally found him in that little clapboard house outside Schenectady.
Don’t tell humans what you are, he said, the two of us sitting on his screened-in back porch, a corn field rolling toward the horizon.
He was smoking a cigarette, I remember, and not really looking at me.
Not even to scare ‘em. Our strength is hiding in plain sight.
You told Mom, I wrote out on a notepad, the hurt of her death still fresh.
He stiffened. I remember it even now, sitting in the cold, black water. He stiffened and looked at me through the veil of cigarette smoke trailing from behind his fingers.
That was different, he said darkly, although he didn’t, at the time, tell me why. Later, though, I realized it was because he loved her. Well, as much as we can love anyone.
The living room light comes on in Chloe’s house, and a few seconds later, she appears in the window. I was right; she is on the phone, and she stands in the window and peers out at the lake. Not that she’ll be able to see anything with all the lights on in her house like that.
Still, I instinctively sink a little lower into the lake, submerging myself in the cold, inky water. My boots keep wanting to drag me under, but I’m strong enough to keep myself afloat. Perk of being what I am, I guess.
Inside the house, Chloe paces back and forth, the phone still pressed to her ear. My stomach twists around, and I don’t know if I do feel betrayed or not that she called the police. I don’t blame her, particularly, even if it’s about to make my life a hell of a lot more complicated.
In fact, I shouldn’t be here at all. I should be dragging my boat out from under her pier and making my way back to my cabin to prepare for the cops’ inevitable arrival. But she’s still watching, and that much movement, so close to her house, she’ll absolutely notice.
She stops pacing and stands with the phone to her ear, nodding every few seconds. I wonder what they’re telling her. In the bright light of her living room, she looks pale. Afraid.
Of me. I know that. I usually love soaking up humans’ fear. But with Chloe, it feels stale and sour.
Chloe draws herself up. I keep waiting for her to switch off the light and pull the curtains shut so I can fetch my boat.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she walks over to the back door and pushes it open.
I reflexively jerk back, my heavy legs kicking out beneath the water. What the hell is she doing? Why would the cops tell her to come outside? Idiots. They know how many people go missing around here, even if it’s been a good twenty years since the last killing moon.
Chloe switches on the porch light, and it makes her seem to glow as she steps onto the pier. I slide lower into the water, my heart hammering, and push backward, as slow and careful as I can. I don’t want to make too loud a splash.
“Um, hello?”
The quiver of fear in her voice chimes in my head. Part of me desperately wants to answer her, to go swimming back to the pier and heave myself out like some swamp monster. The other part of me knows damn well this has to be a trap.
“Theo?” She says my name a little louder, although the wind catches it and blows it away. “I, um, I was hoping maybe we could talk?”
My entire body goes into high alert: all my muscles tense up, and my blood surges the way it does before a kill. At the same time, some unfamiliar warmth in my chest tries to pull me toward her.
Chloe says something into the phone, too soft for me to hear at this distance, especially over the lapping of the waves. Then she looks out at the lake again.
“Are you there?” she calls out.
God, I want to go to her. She looks lovely there in the yellow porch light, her hair glistening around her pale, terrified face. I’m sure her fear would be delicious when she sees me for the first time, gliding through the water like a shark.
But I don’t know why she’s doing it. I worry it’s a trap, even though what scares me about that isn’t the threat of getting caught, but of what I would do to avoid it. Who I would kill.
An image of the police flashes through my head, as clear as the image of Chloe on her porch, never once straying from the sphere of light, as if it’s a shield that will protect her from danger.
I imagine them swarming her house, the red and blue lights flashing, shouting dumb commands at me.
I’ve had standoffs with the police before.
Back in ’87, I even let them shoot me. But it’s not a killing moon tonight, and I don’t want to die.
So if this is some scheme to put me off my guard, to keep me on this side of the lake until the cops arrive, I know what’ll happen: I’ll fight. I’ll kill.
And I might even kill Chloe.
The idea makes me sick to my stomach. I push back in the water again, a slow and steady butterfly kick. Chloe’s talking to whoever it is on the phone, her voice low and slightly panicked. Probably begging the cops to let her go back inside. I hope they fucking do.
I take a deep breath and drop under the water, spiraling around so I’m facing my peninsula.
The cops’ll find my boat and oars, but they won’t find any traces of me.
They might find hairs or flakes of skin or fingerprints, sure, but it won’t lead them to me.
I’m not human. I’m untraceable, like all of my kind.
So the boat can be a sacrifice. I don’t believe in God or the devil, not anymore, but something gave me the strength to kiss Chloe there in her room, her big frightened eyes gazing up at me. And something, just for a few brief seconds, told her to kiss back.
So the boat will be a sacrifice to that, whatever it is. It’ll lead them to my territory, but that’s okay. I can act fast. Clear everything out of my cabin that gives even the faintest suggestion that I exist. I’ve done it before.
I glide through the water, sliding up only to catch a few gulps of air before ducking back under. And as I slip deep into the darkness, I leave Chloe behind me, shrouded in the light.