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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2016 David Mark 

Then . . .

The first girl was still alive when he poured the cement into the cavity between the floorboards and the earth. He decanted it tenderly, like wine from a chalice. She managed to raise her hand above the level of the setting liquid and over the course of the next two days, the cement-coated limb turned to stone. He watched the transformation without interval. Viewed it dispassionately. Viewed it the same way he had watched her die.

At length, the sight of the stone hand began to unsettle him. Even when he closed his eyes he could still see that arm and wrist, that palm and halted pulse; fingers curled inward, rising up from the floor as if reaching out for him. Eventually he had to hack it off with a spade. The hand sits on his bedside table now. He uses it to hold his ring, watch, and crucifix as he sleeps. The flesh inside the stone shell has started to corrupt but he does not mind the odor of the rotting claw. It is a comforting smell, like baking bread or mown grass.

With the second and third girls, he made sure their hearts had stopped beating before he began to pour.

By the time he entombed the eighth girl, he had begun to know, almost to the exact hour, when their pulses would give out through lack of food and water. He had begun to know on what day their cries would stop.

This girl is different. She is still alive two days after he expected her to expire. She still has some luster in her eyes.

It is almost as if she believes there is still hope . . .

Though she can no longer feel her legs, the girl senses they are drawn up, babylike, pressed against the swell of her gut.

In these moments she fancies that this place, with its wooden roof and bare earth and its dead-animal smell, is a womb. She is an un-born child, protected and embraced by the walls of the cavity in which she squirms.

At other times, she feels that the chamber has the properties of a cocoon. She will be reborn as something magnificent, all effortless grace and dazzling wings.

In such moments, she does not despise her confinement but sees it as the man wishes, as a place where she is safe. She can almost forget the reek of piss and blood and the sensation of scuttling beasts that scamper, multilegged, like disembodied hands, across her unwashed skin.

The man is right, after a fashion. She is safe down here. Her prison is impregnable. She knows the ceiling to be sturdy and immobile, having banged upon it with fists and knees until both were bloodied and numb. She knows that she can only burrow down a few inches into the cold soil before she strikes rock. At first, she had believed herself capable of turning onto her belly, perhaps finding a softer patch of ground where she could begin to tunnel out. But the wooden timbers are only a few inches above her face and the size of her stomach makes it impossible to rotate. So she lies in the dark and the cold, sticking out her tongue and trying to catch the water that dribbles through the cracks between the wooden panels. She savors the tastes of mud and brick, of spilled gas and old leaves.

It has been several hours since she last lapped at the chemical-tasting water that her captor has gently drizzled through the tiny fissures above her face. She has begun to yearn for the pleasant numbness that she has come to associate with its presence upon her tongue. Her thoughts are becoming less fuzzy and the pain in her stomach is turning from a vague ache into something that seems to be tying her intestines to her spine. She realizes that she is choking. Her tongue has rolled to the back of the dark, wet cave of her mouth. For an instant she imagines rolls of fifty-dollar bills, wrapped with a band and pushed down her gullet. And then the image is gone, replaced by f lashes of gold that stab into the blackness of her vision with each dry, punishing cough.

She can hear movement up there, the rhythmic thrump-thrump- thrump of the rocking chair as it moves forward and back, forward and back, disturbing the dirt and the dust and the chalky gray powder that carpets the floor and billows down onto her filth-streaked face.

Please, talk to me. Please, don’t give up.  I’ ll  listen.  I  promise  I’ ll listen . . .

The sound of the rocking chair stops abruptly. Icy panic fills the girl’s chest and throat.

Footsteps reverberate softly on the floor above her face. A sprinkling of dirt tumbles through the cracks and into her open mouth. She begins to cough again and closes her eyes instinctively as she begins to retch and heave.

She opens her eyes as the hinges creak. Light floods the six-by-six pit in which she has lain these past weeks. It is not a harsh light. It makes her think of old-fashioned photos and oil paintings. It speaks to a part of her that she only half remembers but the voice is strong. She finds her eyes brimming over, emotion pushing on her chest. She finds herself reaching up. She wants to be picked up, like a child, wishes for warm, strong fingers to close upon her wrists and to lift her, effortlessly, from this pit of filth and despair. Through the blurring swirls of her vision, she fancies that she can see her father, with hisstraight back and his curly hair, his gold cross and colorful shirts. Tries to smell him, to lose herself in the sweat and soap powder and tobacco and rum. She cannot find it. There’s only the stench of herself.

And then him.

Him, with his pale eyes and pale skin and his empty mouth.

She opens her eyes into the thin, sunken face of her captor. He looks like a dead thing. Looks as if he has begun to decompose, only to open his dead eyes and worm his way back into the light.

“Please,” she begs, and it sounds as though there is a foot on her throat. “Talk to me. Please. You can. I’ll never tell. I’ll never say . . .”

She sees herself in the blackness of his pupils. And then she sees, for a moment, the person she was. She has a name. A family. A home. She used to be called Alejandra, but these past years she has answered to Ali. More American, her father said, in an accent thick with the sounds of home.

Her head feels like it is exploding. Memories collide and smash and splinter. She was running through the place her family called Alphabet City. Counting the streets, the way she always did. The early evening sky was silvery-blue, like the blue around St. John’s severed head in the jigsaw puzzle picture that glared down behind the priest as he smiled and twinkled through Mass. Blue like the man’s watch, scratching her wrists as he pushed her down and covered her body with his own. His associate. That was the word he used, that warm night when she looked upon the handsome devil who did things to her that she did not understand and which at first she did not want to stop. Regret came later. Regret and pain, followed by those long months of not knowing what to do or what to say and watching her body change while praying over and over again that nobody else would see the truth of her.

A sudden rasp, almost masked by the casters of the chair. A sudden mechanical noise, and then it feels as though her ears are filling with water as the tomb reverberates around her.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been eight months since my last confession. I have allowed the devil to seduce me on four occasions when I was unable to stop myself from touching my skin in a way that would displease the Lord. I have harbored many impure thoughts. I have thought disrespectfully about the man who calls him- self my father. I am grateful for his kindness and yet when he speaks to me I feel a great rage inside me—a hunger for something I can’t describe. I have imagined myself stealing into his room at night and smashing his brains in with a hammer—perhaps driving a nail into his skull as if it were the wrists or feet of our Lord. I do sincerely repent . . . Shush, please, no more . . . I repent of these sins and ask for the strength to not repeat such offenses. Forgive me, Father, for my actions in making this confession. The girl I took had kind eyes and spoke kindly to me. Please allow her torture to cease. She suffers and screams and cries and her skin has begun to repel me. Father, please intercede with our Lord and pray for her agonies to cease so she may rest with Jesus and her sinful flesh can be consumed by this sacred earth. Bless me, Father. Amen.”

Ali pictures the other girl and knows, with an intuition she cannot comprehend, that she once shared this tomb. She sees the girl as a mirror image of herself, beneath the ground, growing weak, fading with each flimsy tick of her heart. She wonders whether the girl still lies next to her. Whether her head is near her own feet so that they sleep top to tail, as her mother used to call it. She wonders whether there was pain in her final moments, or if she flew to heaven as softly as falling asleep.

Ali suddenly remembers a sensation of . . . hollowness. Of being an empty thing, a vessel to be filled. More than that. Exhaustion. Her knees and back ached. She was scrubbing floorboards. Floorboards that were almost golden. Floorboards in which she could see her face. Mama had been skinning poblano peppers that morning. The apartment would smell of sofrito verde. There was homework to be done but nothing she did not enjoy. History. English. But then it rolls over her again, that memory of wrongness. That sensation of unease, like a patch of dampness on her clothes or a stone in her shoe. She remembers pain. Remembers sitting alone in the bathroom and weeping into her hands. Her mind fills with traffic and neon. That night. That night . . . running down the alley off Avenue C, four streets from home, safe in Alphabet City, in these streets of guns and dealers which her father still called Loisaida, and where she never felt afraid.

In the mirrors of his eyes, she sees herself clearly. She lies on her back, face twisted upward, bare legs drawn up to her belly. She is dressed in rags and she senses that her black curly hair looks like the hide of a long-dead bear.

Strong hands close around the bare skin of her wrists. She makes little noise but for a strangled gasp as she is pulled upward, jerked into a sitting position and lolling in this unfinished grave like a puppet.

For an instant, she sees the room. Brick fireplace. Wooden walls. A solitary wooden chair and a table with a tape recorder. A three-seater sofa, covered in magazines. Empty food cartons and discarded clothes. A wall, crammed with books. And mirrors. So many mirrors . . .

He pulls her upward and suddenly the pain is not in her arms. The whole lower half of her body seems to contort with agony and the sensation gives her strength. She resists the tugging on her limbs. In- stead she gives in to the crippling pain encircling her whole lower half. And then she is free, slumping back into the hole in the ground as her captor steps back, anxious to avoid the gush of liquid that sprays down her legs to splatter her round, rippling belly.

“My baby,” she says, as memories flood her like daylight. “Please!”

The light is snatched away as the lid of her prison slams shut. Her scream bounces back and forth between the wood and the earth until

 she is a lost in an echoing tomb of her own cries.

PPAARRTTONETHIRTEEN NIGHTS AGO

The branches reach out for him like the grasping limbs of dead souls. Withered, rotting things that cling to his cuffs and his hands and his hair like the forsaken. He thanks God that he cannot see their faces and that they cannot see his. He has sent a lot of people to hell and he does not doubt they take it personally.

He brushes the thoughts away, crashes past the branches and the spindly leaves, pushing onward, his boots thumping down through the thick snow and striking the hard earth beneath. He can hear his own blood banging in his ears. The sound of the gunshots is still echoing in his skull and the flashlight in his hand jerks up and down with each urgent step.

“Here, you old fuck,” comes a voice filled with laughter. “I see you. Follow the light.”

Claudio curses and raises a hand to his face as the glare of the flashlight skewers him. He is still wincing when the younger man emerges from the tangled pocket of evergreens and walks slowly to- ward him. He still has his gun in his right hand. Claudio holds a knife, its hilt thick with blood, in his left.

“You catch him?” asks Claudio breathlessly.

“Fuck no. Prick was fast.”

“Faster than a bullet?” he asks irritably and wipes the sweat from his forehead, leaving a smear of crimson upon his skin.

“What you wanna do now?” comes the reply. “His accent was Russian. Somebody’s fucking us around. This is a setup. There might be more of them.”

Temper overwhelms Claudio. None of this was supposed to happen.

Crisp.

Efficient.

Clinical.

That is how he made his name and kept himself alive these past thirty years. The younger man is all bravado and front, with his soft calfskin coat and  his  sweatpants,  his  white  sneakers  and  his  gold chains. His name is Luca and he may have just gotten them both killed. Claudio chews on his lower lip with his one remaining incisor.

“Stop that, man,” laughs Luca. “You’re like a fucking vampire. And these woods are creepy.”

Claudio makes a fist, then takes a deep breath, trying to rein in his temper. He was supposed to be pretending to be a traffic cop, for fuck’s sake. And he’d arrived in sneakers and sweatpants! All he had to do was keep them quiet until Claudio arrived. But he couldn’t help himself. Had to show off. Had to show he was a man that mattered.

“I’m sure I clipped him,” says Luca. “You hear all that bullshit? Did he look important to you?”

“You know the Russians—everybody says they’re somebody important,” says Claudio quietly. “I know that accent, though.”

“Doesn’t mean he mattered.”

“Something’s gone wrong here,” whispers Claudio, suddenly aware of the absolute silence of the woods. “This wasn’t the job. I smell lies. And now there’s nobody to ask because they’re fucking dead.”

Luca shrugs. He doesn’t much care. He’s enjoyed himself tonight. He’s had a chance to hurt somebody. There’s a light in his eyes as bright as the blood upon the snow.

Claudio shakes his head again. “There’ll be repercussions. I don’t like repercussions.”

Luca rolls his eyes like a petulant teenager. He turns his back on Claudio and starts walking back to where he left his car.

Claudio stands still. It could have all gone perfectly. It was a good plan. A perfect pincer movement, followed by enough layers of rumor and speculation to ensure that nobody ever guessed at the truth.

He watches the younger man trudging away through the crow- black woods. He’s struggling through the thick snow and cursing the cold. His gun is hanging loosely from the hand he is using for balance as he totters precariously in front of an old oak with a long, splintered branch . . .

Claudio has stayed alive far longer than he has any right to expect. His longevity has given him a curious kind of sixth sense, a skill for reading situations and staying a step ahead. Perhaps it is his many years in the shadows that have taught him how to read darkness. He does not care to overthink it. But when he feels the air behind him change shape and texture, some primal force takes over and he drops to his knees. Instead of slamming into the back of his head, the branch merely clips him on the top of the skull. He does not make a sound as he topples forward, collapsing onto the tree roots and the hard snow with his arms outstretched and his legs out straight behind him. Christ-like, he lies immobile, only half seeing out of one eye as the man from the trunk, the man who fled into the woods, steps over him and runs lightly toward Luca. Claudio tries to speak but cannot seem to make his lips move. He feels wetness upon the back of his neck.

“Come on, old man, we’ve got to get busy.”

Luca is a few feet away, struggling through the snow. Claudio’s world is black-and-white, a photographic negative, a snowstorm of newspaper print. In its center a silhouette, an inky blob that crosses between himself and his companion in purposeful, efficient strides.

Helpless, feeble, he watches as the man who has attacked him moves toward Luca. Quickly, silently, he darts forward and without another word he grabs Luca by the collar of his stupid calfskin jacket and pushes him forward. The branch goes into his chest just below his rib cage and exits between his shoulder blades. There is a sound like somebody has snapped a dozen small branches and then the soft hiss as the air in his lungs gurgles upward through bloodied lips and into the cold night air.

On the ground, Claudio breathes out, slowly. He tries to become a part of the forest floor. He does not want the man to come back and finish him off. He knows that were the roles reversed, it is what he would do. He is a killer. He takes no pleasure in it but it is his life’s work to stop human hearts. He came here, to this lonely place on the road to Crow, to kill two men. He has done what he was paid to do. He wasn’t expecting the third, who took off into the darkness as soon as Luca pulled the trigger and the big dark Irishman fell forward onto the snow-covered earth.

Claudio watches as the man who killed Luca disappears into the trees. After a moment he begins to move. Slowly, soundlessly, he checks himself over. There is a gash to the top of his skull and there is blood in his mouth, but apart from a ringing sensation in his ears, he is unharmed. Damp and cold, he pulls himself upright and  leans against a tree. He reaches into his pocket and finds his cigarettes. Lights up, and breathes out a cloud.

“Fuck,” he whispers, to himself. It covers the majority of his feelings.

Pissed off and sore, Claudio consoles himself with the thought that it is not his fault. Luca fucked up, not him. And nobody had told them about the Chechen. He did his job right and then other forces got in the way. Even as he thinks it, he finds himself shaking his head. He has seen men killed for so much less. He has killed men who had perfectly good excuses  for  their screw ups.  He closes  his eyes  and searches for comfort. Finds it in Belle. The little girl is the only light in the blackness inside him, but she is a light that grows brighter every time she holds his hand and looks at him as if he is something other than a monster. For her, he would stop all this. For her, he would try and be a better man. But neither she nor her mother knows how he earns the money that sustains them and he never intends for them to find out. He lives on borrowed time. For forty years he has been waiting for it all to stop.

As he stares at the body of the young man impaled on the tree, Claudio feels a shiver of premonition. He suddenly fears that he is at the start of something that could lead to his end.