Unearthing

[WP] The serial killer confessed to burying the bodies under the house and excavation began. 10, 25, 50 bodies were exhumed and the deeper investigators dug, the more they uncovered. You were called in when they uncovered the rotting remains of a neanderthal.

*****

“It doesn’t matter what I try,” she says, “it always ends up the same.”

She doesn’t look like a killer. Just tired, like someone who got in late after a night of drinking. She’s maybe late twenties, younger than me for sure. Skin smooth, hair plaited back.

“Do you know what it’s like to be unable to change anything, no matter what you try? Can you imagine how helpless you’d feel?”

“I know,” I say.

She looks up from the table. Her eyes are deep wells filled with muddy water. Her lips flicker into a smile. “Can’t catch every killer, I suppose. And then they just go on killing. That can’t feel good, lying in bed knowing people are dying because of you.” She rattles up her handcuffed hands. “But look, the most dangerous killer has been caught! You can sleep easy again.”

The lone light above the table flickers. For a moment we’re shadows. We jump in and out of existence. When it comes back, the light seems paler, like it’s caught a bug and gotten sick.

”Got a cigarette?” she asks. “I can smell them on you. Come on, don’t hold out on me.”

I take a pack of Richmond’s from my jacket, light one, jam it in my mouth. I lean back in my chair and release a sigh and a puff of smoke.

”Jerk.”

“They’ve found more bodies,” I say. It’s the first real information I’ve given her since entering the room.

“Oh yeah?”

”They’re dressed strange, these bodies. Different to the rest. They’re in rotting clothes from the fifties, forties, thirties, and so it goes back and back the deeper they dig. You enjoy dressing those poor souls up like dolls? Get a kick out of it?”

”Dressing them?“ She laughs but it makes me think of a dog being kicked in its side. “Is that why they‘ve sent you here to grill me, instead of my usual detective? Because you’re an expert in historical sartorial style? Well, you look like you might have been born back then, so maybe you are.”

My hand reflexively rubs my greying stubble. She smiles at the reaction. I sigh, take another long drag.

”Who the fuck are you?” I ask.

”Why does that matter? I’m the person who murdered all those people. Give me whatever name you like. The press will anyway. The doll maker, maybe. Seriously, what do names matter?”

Beneath the table my left hand trembles. I grab it with my right and draw it into my lap.

”They kept digging,” I say. “More bodies kept on coming up. Looked like a graveyard that’s been used since the beginning of time. More recent bodies thrown on top.”

”Maybe that’s what it is? Maybe I didn’t kill any of them. It’s just a historic graveyard.”

”Except they were all murdered. Mostly the same way, necks slit, killer crept up from behind. Like a coward.”

She sighs and slouches back on the chair. “What does it matter how they died? What does it matter they died, even”

I’ve heard serial killers say this before. What does death matter when we all die eventually. What does anything matter. Murderers tend to have a bleak and shallow view of existence. But in a way…

”It matters to the families,” I say.

”They’re all dead too, if that helps.”

“That a confession?”

”It’s a fact. Listen, you married? Got someone you love?”

”You going to tell me their lives don’t matter either?”

She shakes her head. “No. Like you said, they matter to someone. To you.”

”Had a wife. Still got a kid. All grown up now.”

It stings to talk about them. It’s been two years since I last saw my kid. She moved countries to get away from me. Not that I blame her. I think if I could do the same, I would. But I’m trapped here, in this body. Always and forever.

”I’m sorry,” she says.

“For what.”

”Your wife.”

”Forget about it.” I roll my neck. The click echoes through the room. The light flickers again.

”We found something else,” I say.

She’s silent to that.

”You know what a Neanderthal is?”

”Sure. I guess. They don’t look so different from you, you know.” She smiles at her joke. “I heard lots of us have Neanderthal genes in us.”

Both my hands are shaking now. I tuck them between my knees and squeeze my legs to clamp them.

”You’re sweating,” she says.

I can feel it on my forehead but I can’t wipe it away.

”We found one beneath your house,” I say.

”What a fantastic archeological discovery for you.”

I shake my head. Sweat beads onto my nose. Hangs there until I wipe my shoulder across it. “It wasn’t long dead. I mean, not like it should have been. Body hadn’t fully decomposed.”

It’s all spilling out now. Like my guts have been split open by a knife. I meant to be slow, drip the information to her. Make her uncomfortable. That’s what I’d have done back in the day, back when I was in control. But I feel like we’re sitting the wrong sides of the table now.

”I didn’t kill it long ago,” she says. “So it makes sense.”

“See, this is where your lies run into a solid wall of truth. Ne-“

”They don’t exist anymore. I know. Because we wiped them out, didn’t we?”

My turn to be silent. Best to let her talk. I’m not sure what I’d say anyway.

”We were born of war and death. Survival of the fittest and all that bullshit. Something more powerful than what was here before.”

I raise a hand and wipe my sweat away. She sees me trembling.

“You’re sick?”

”I wasn’t expecting the call to get here,” I say. “Been on leave for a while.”

”That so?”

“When I said I knew what it was like — to be helpless. To not be able to change things.“ I shrug. “I know it pretty good.”

She pauses. I think she’s going to tear into me, into the pathetic detective who lost his family to his own weaknesses. But instead she says, “I’m sorry.”

It’s a new one. I’ve never gotten sympathy from a serial killer before. Not genuine sympathy, which I think this is. Those deep well-like eyes look hard at me, and I fall down them as easily as I fall into a bottle.

”How many times have you tried to give it up? It’s a funny term, isn’t it — giving it up, when you’re doing everything to fight.”

I don’t reply. Instead I’m thinking of something that happened to me long ago. ”When I was a kid,” I say, “a bird flew into my bedroom window. A little blackbird. Can’t have seen its reflection and it crashed into the glass like a rock.”

“Did it die?”

I shake my head, carry on the story — although I’m not even certain why it came to mind or why I’m telling it. “I found it bleeding on the grass below. Broken wing, left leg not moving, altogether in a sorrowful state. I found Dad watching sports, necking back a beer. Told him about the bird. He said I had to be a man and put it out of its misery. Get a rock and crush its skull, that‘d be quickest. It didn’t even phase him. Eyes never left the game.”

”But you didn’t?”

”I didn’t. I kept it in the shed. Nursed it back to health. Imagined what my mom might have done when I was sick. I fed it before school and after. Maybe I spent two months looking after that little bird. It’d sing in the mornings as I headed to the shed with feed, as if it knew.” I pause. “Anyway, one day it’s all better, fluttering around the shed. So I let it go. Watch it fly away. ‘Goodbye’, I yell.”

”Sweet story.”

”A week later something crashes into my window. Same bird. Only this time its neck is broken and I can’t fix that.”

We’re quiet then but it feels like something has changed between us. Her face has eased. Maybe mine has too.

“Listen, I’m going to be honest with you,” she says. “And I don’t mean to scare you.”

“I don’t think you could,” I lie — I’m already scared and I’m not sure why.

“We’re all going to die,” she says. “Soon.”

”Okay, maybe you can.”

“That’s why I’ve been going back. I’ve been trying to change it. To stop the future that’s hurtling towards us.”

”Going back?”

”Where else do you think those bodies came from? You’ll get lab reports soon enough to confirm it. You’ll work it out. But it doesn’t matter where I start or what I change in the past, the darkness is coming. It’s like there’s only one future no matter what we do in the present.“

”I don’t understand,” I say. “You saying you’re a… a time traveller? I don’t understand.”

”You do. And you believe me. Because it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Now I don’t know if I’m trembling from the lack of drink or from what she said. Probably both.

”What darkness?” I manage. My chest is tight.

The light flickers again. Only this time, it hangs dark. Doesn’t come back.

”It’s already begun,” she says. “And I’d given up trying to change it. That’s why I‘m here, why I let them catch me. I wanted to rest so badly.”

“What’s going on?”

”But you, you’ve lost everything, haven’t you? How many times have you lost it all? And you haven’t given up. You know there’s only one future for you — you run into it over and over again. And yet you still try to refuse it.”

“I don’t understand.”

She leans forward. I see her eyes only in the red haze of my cigarette. ”What I’m saying is you chose a bad time to stop drinking.”

I swallow. My throat rocks. My neck’s goose-pimpled.

She says, voice barely a whisper, “The question is this: do you truly believe we can change things? Or are we just following a path carved by a river long ago?”

The building rocks. Dust falls from the ceiling like snowflakes into the red light. Something very bad is going to happen soon. And maybe we can stop it, maybe we can’t.

I take the cigarette from my mouth. The building trembles again. I say, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I know we have to keep trying either way.”

*****

THE END.