Dexter's Final Cut (48 page)

And taking everything into consideration, there was only one person left who could come after him: Me. This was not good news for the good guys, considering my recent track record, but there was
no one else. And if there had been someone else, I wouldn’t want them anyway.

Robert had Astor, and she was mine. She belonged to me the way a gazelle belongs to a lion, and he had snatched her away, taken something of
mine
, and I could not let him get away with that.

And Robert had killed Jackie, and left me stranded on the shore of a dark and sandy place filled with nothing but epic emptiness. He had taken away the only thing I’d ever had that felt like
feeling
, my only ever stab at happiness, and for that he could not possibly suffer enough, not if I could tape him under my knife every night for a year, each session longer and more pleasantly inventive. There was no possible payment that could make up for what he had taken from me, but what he could pay, I would take. And I would not stop taking until it was all gone, and all of him, too: every too-white tooth and too-bright smile, every studied gesture and practiced expression, all of it. I would take everything he had, everything he ever was or would be, and I would send him far away forever to the place where only pain is real, never-ending soul-destroying shattering pain. And if I left a mess big enough to lead the cops straight to me, that was fine, too. There was nothing left in this world but dumb suffering, and whether I endured it in prison or on the sofa with Rita, it was all the same to me.

This might be the very last thing I did, but I would do it. I would take Robert out of his smug, pampered, lily-gilded world, and I would drag him straight into mine: the world of Dexter’s Dark Delight. He had no idea what he had unleashed when he pulled my chain. I was coming, and even if he knew it, he would be waiting for meek and mild-mannered Daytime Dexter, Doughnut Dexter, the soft-bellied blood-spatter boy from the office who was no more threat than a swivel chair. But that Dexter was gone, maybe forever, and it was something very different that was coming for Robert, and he would not like that difference, not at all.

I started my car and nosed it out of the lot, past the cop on the perimeter, and into the nighttime traffic, and the dim starless evening bled into me and filled me with the glow of very special purpose and I was ready for Robert.

It was the height of rush hour, and the traffic was snarled beyond repair. I inched along, grinding my teeth and thinking of new and special things to do to Robert. He was good-looking, and far too aware of that; that would be a help; I could use that. I could spend hours just playing with his face, slowly and carefully removing each separate bit of it and holding it up in front of his eyes so he would see Me holding permanently removed pieces of him, and see every step of the way that I was doing it, and it could not be stopped or slowed or repaired. This was happening to him, and this was all there was and all there would ever be, and there was no going back from it. This was the forever show in Dexterland, and tickets were nonrefundable and one-way only.

And I was so very wrapped up in my pleasant daydreams that before I knew it, I was down onto U.S. 1 and headed south to the New House. The traffic sputtered and wheezed and crawled along, but I idled along with it, thinking only of what was about to happen so very thoroughly to someone who deserved it more than anybody else ever had.

I turned left off U.S. 1, and in a few minutes I was there. I drove by once to see any sign that they were inside. A small convertible was pulled up in front of the garage door. Rita’s minivan was parked slapdash behind it. A full house, but the wild card was coming.

I went on by, scanning the area for anyone watching, and saw no one, nothing out of place, no more than the quiet middle-class neighborhood it was supposed to be. All along the street there were modest homes radiating the contented evening stillness of a day well done. Bicycles leaned against trees, Rollerblades lay in the driveways, and the muted aromas of a half-dozen dinnertimes threaded between the houses and dueled for dominance. But nothing was outside, no one was watching, and all was exactly as peaceful and unsuspecting as I wanted it to be.

I parked a block away from the house, under the canopy of a large banyan tree, took the fillet knife from under the seat, and climbed out of my car. It was full night now, and I breathed it in deeply, taking the darkness into my lungs and letting it flow out through my body and up my spine, and as it spread over my face and out to the very tips
of my ears I felt the cool slithery calmness take the wheel and slowly, carefully push us forward into sharp and eager action.

We looked over the roof of the car, down the street to the house. A light gleamed beside the front door. We didn’t care. Its nasty gleam would never touch Us: We would slide around to the back, hugging the hedge and following the shadows. We would stalk through pools of gloom and slip in through the tattered screen of the pool cage and up to the back door. We would use the key we had been carrying these many weeks and we would slide through the door, into the house, and onto Robert, and then we would begin, and we would not end until there was nothing else left to do.

A deep breath, a slow and steady flush of clarity and control, and all the cold dark blues of the night around us glowed warm and bright in our eyes and the night smells came alive in our nose and all the clicks and whispers of nocturnal life began to blend into the thrumming music of the hunt, and we go forward with them.

Slowly, with casual carelessness in our steps, we walk toward the house. TV glows and blathers in the neighbors’ living rooms, and all is just as normal as it can be, everything peachy fine and hunky-dory—everything except for the nonchalant Monster strolling by on his way to a pleasant evening of lighthearted play that does not quite suit these sleepy suburbs.

We reach the hedge and all is still just what it should be, what it
must
be, and we pause to be sure, and when we are sure we slide without sound into the deeper darkness of the side yard and move carefully, quietly, perfectly down the shadowed hedge to the backyard.

And moving softly soundless across one brief bright patch we pause once more behind a key lime tree only ten feet from the pool cage at a place where a large flap of ripped screen hangs loose, and we stand there and we do nothing at all except breathe, wait, listen, and watch.

Several minutes go by and we remain motionless and soundless in our predator’s patience. Nothing happens. There is no sound or sight or smell and still we do not move, just waiting and watching. This side of the house is very clearly visible; one window shows a
faint glimmer, as though a light is on in the hall just outside the room. Along the back of the house, facing the pool, there is my door, and then a large sliding glass door, and then another window. In this last window a bright light is on, and in the center, seen through the sliding glass door, there is a muted glow, spill from a light set back from the door.

But on our side, at our door, there is only lightless shadow, and nothing moves there, and we feel the gleaming happiness that all is right, all is ready, that once again things will go our way, as they always do when we are on the hunt, and at last, when there has been no sign of anything moving for a very long time, we move, one long smooth glide of purpose, out of the shadows and across the brownish grass and through the tattered flap of screen to the door.

We pause, one hand on the knob and one ear pressed against the door: nothing. No more than the muted rush of the central air conditioner blowing through the house. All is quiet, all is ready, and out of our pocket we take the key to Our New House, a newer and bigger and brighter and freshly painted house, ready for a wonderful new family life that will never move in now, because that dream was built on fumes from a happy hookah, a wispy picture of something that was never any more than hallucinations of hope, and that delusion has evaporated like the mirage it was and left cold dark ashes. And that does not matter. Nothing matters at all except this moment, this night, and this knife, this Right Now.

This is what is: Dexter with a blade and a target. This is the only Real there ever was: the sly stalk through shadows, the sudden pounce, the snicker of steel in a darkened room, and the muffled squeals and groans as the Truth slowly, gleefully pushes through the curtains and takes its bow. This is what is and what was and what shall be, and there was never really anything else in the world but this Dark Purpose, and never any time but
now
, and we push the key into the lock and with a silent twist of the wrist the door is open.

An inch, two … six slow and careful inches the door swings open and we pause once more. No movement, no sound, no sign of anything but the dim walls, still giving off the faint smell of fresh paint.

Still slow and careful we push the door open wider, wide enough now to slide through sideways, and we do, and as we turn to push
it quietly closed we hear a melon-breaking
thump
and the dim room lights up around us like a bursting star and a bright pain blooms on the back of our head and as we pitch forward from dull surprise into painful darkness we are filled once more with the awful truth of our complete and brainless incompetence and the mean and mocking voice of our self-reproach as it calls out,
Told you so!

And just before the blackness floods in and pushes out everything but regret, I can hear a small voice from a very great distance, a familiar voice, the snide and snarky voice of an eleven-year-old girl, as it says with great and bitter self-righteousness, “You didn’t have to hit him so
hard
.…”

And then happily for me, or for all the stupid inept shards of self-delusion that are left of me, black nothingness takes the wheel and drives us straight into a long and lifeless tunnel.

F
OR A VERY LONG TIME THERE WAS ONLY DARKNESS
. N
OTHING
moved, or if it did, there was nothing to light its way, and nothing there to see it. There was only timeless, bottomless, thoughtless gloom, without shape or purpose, and this was very good.

And then somewhere far off on a bleak horizon, a persistent bleat of pain began to nag at the edge of the darkness. It throbbed insistently, and with each rhythmic beat of its pulse it grew bigger, brighter, sending out thorny little vines of misery that grew larger and stronger and pushed back the darkness piece by ever-shrinking piece. And at last the pain grew into a great and luminous tree with its roots driven deep into the bedrock, and it spread its branches and lit up the darkness and lo! It spake its name:

It’s me, Dexter
.

And behold, the darkness answered back:

Hello, stupid
.

I was awake. I could not be sure that this was a good thing; it hurt an awful lot, and so far I had done much better when I was unconscious. But no matter how much I might want to roll over and go back to sleep, the throbbing pain in my head was strong enough to make
sure that I had to wake up and live with my apparently boundless stupidity.

So I woke up. I was groggy and dopey and not really tracking things very well, but I was awake. I was pretty sure I hadn’t gone to sleep normally, and I thought there might be some really important explanation for why I hadn’t, but in my numb and painful state I couldn’t quite think of it, or of anything else, and so I dove right back into the same stupidity that had landed me here and I tried to stand up.

It didn’t work very well. In fact, none of my limbs seemed to be doing what they were supposed to do. I pulled on an arm; it seemed to be behind my back for some reason, and it jerked about two inches, dragging the other arm along with it, and then it stopped and flopped back to where it had been, stuck behind my back. I tried my legs; they moved a little, but not separately—they seemed to be held together by something, too.

I took a deep breath. It hurt. I tried to think, and that hurt even more. Everything hurt and I couldn’t move; that didn’t seem right. Had something happened to me? Maybe—but how could I know if I couldn’t move and couldn’t see? My head throbbed its way through one or two thoughts, and came up with an answer:
You can’t know if you can’t move and can’t see
.

That was right; I was sure of it. I had thought up the right answer. I felt very good about that. And in a fit of overwhelming and completely unjustified self-confidence, I grabbed at another thought that floated past: I would
do
something about that.

That was good, too. I glowed with pride. Two whole ideas, all by myself. Could I possibly have another? I took a breath that turned the back of my head into a lake of molten pain, but a third idea came.
I can’t move, so I will open my eyes
.

Wonderful; I was firing on all cylinders now. I would open my eyes. If I could only remember how …

I tried; I managed a feeble flutter. My head throbbed. Maybe both eyes was too hard; I would open
one
of them.

Slowly, very carefully, with a great deal of painful effort, I pushed one eye open.

For a moment, I could not make sense of what I was seeing. My vision was blurry, but I seemed to be looking at something cream colored, maybe a little fuzzy? I could not tell what it was, nor how far away. I squinted and that really hurt. But after a long and painful time, things began to swim into focus.

Fuzzy, underneath me, where a floor should be: Aha, I thought. Carpet. And it was cream colored. I knew there was something I could think of that had to do with cream-colored carpet. I thought really hard for a while, and I finally remembered: the master bedroom at the New House had cream-colored carpet. I must be in my New House. The carpet was blurry and hard to see because my eye was so very close to it.

But that meant I was lying on my face. That didn’t seem to be right, not something I would usually do. Why was I doing it now? And why couldn’t I move?

Something was just not right. But now I had several really good clues, and a small dim memory told me that there were things I liked to do with clues. I liked to add them up. So I closed the eye and did the math. My face was close to a carpet. My hands and legs seemed to be held together by something so I could not move. My head hurt in a way that made me want to scream—except that even the thought of any loud noise made it hurt even more.