I Can Barely Breathe (10 page)

As Tom limped through the dining room and
into the kitchen, the back bedrooms came into view. He saw Julia’s
half-naked, blood-covered body lying on the floor with
approximately twenty stab wounds in her chest. His heart doubled
its pace. It was a quick little moment that told him his worst fear
had come true.

His best friend was the serial killer that
Cosmos and Sorrow’s Sky had been hunting for so long.

If his adrenaline hadn’t been pumping so
hard, he probably would have felt the embarrassment then that would
inevitably catch up to him and his reputation at the station and
within the town. Carver was his rock. They’d been working together
for seven months side by side. Tom was the police chief’s son and a
detective. How could he not have seen that his own partner was the
killer?

“Carver! Where are you?” he yelled in a
panic.

The house was too quiet. He knew Carver
wasn’t one to hide from a fight. Glancing out the kitchen window,
he saw his friend disappearing into the barn. It took Tom a few
minutes to exit the back door; he moved across the lawn as fast as
his injured leg would allow. The wind had picked up; it felt cold
on his face. He could hear it whistling through the rafters of the
barn’s roof. The building creaked with the gusts. As he got to the
door, he steadied his weapon and tried to catch his breath.

“Carver?” he yelled again. “I’m coming
in!”

Tom hobbled through the barn door and
focused his sights on his target, who stood still with a knife in
his hand.

“Drop the goddamned knife, Carver! It’s
over.”

“It’s fitting, isn’t it? That you would be
the one to bring me in?” The young killer turned, and his eyes
scanned the open grave. “It was the blonde, wasn’t it? She woke
up.”

“She came to see me at the station. She
pointed you out in a picture.” Tom took a moment to ponder the
implications of the five other graves that lay just beyond Carver’s
untied boots. “You killed all of them? I thought I knew you.”

“You did know me, just not all of me.”

“You’re going to prison,” Tom said. “You may
even be sentenced to death. Was it worth it?”

“Yes. You have no idea the feeling you get
when you kill someone. The look in their eyes will change you
forever.” Carver paused and shook the thought from his mind. He
smiled a sincere smile. “You’re going to save me, Tom. I need you
to pull that trigger and save me from my sins. That’s what best
friends do.”

“Make a move with that knife and I
will.”

“You know I’d never hurt you. We’re
brothers. I need you to do this.”

The words echoed in Tom’s head. He couldn’t
blame Carver for wanting to die, for not wanting to face the
families of the ones he’d murdered so brutally, for not wanting to
face his coworkers at the station. All their lives the two young
men had looked out for one another.

Tom was always the honest one. He was honest
with his friends and the courts, the other cops and the people of
Sorrow’s Sky. He had to be honest with himself too. The path that
lay before him was grim. He was partly to blame for all those
innocent lives, and no one would overlook that. But where death
begins, death ends. He could change things.

In a heartbeat, his hope for his best friend
took over his thoughts. He felt an undeniable pity for Carver that
overpowered him, and, in that collage of memories and camaraderie,
Tom saw a weakness that could only be named love. Because of that
weakness he did the only thing that made sense to him; he squeezed
the trigger and set his brother free.

The explosion from the barrel pushed Tom’s
shoulder back, shaking his body in an instant. The pellets entered
Carver’s chest, throwing him onto the girls’ graves and splattering
his blood on the back wall. Tom could smell the buckshot and smoke,
as the dust settled and his ears rang. He dropped the shotgun in
the dirt and pulled the pistol from its holster under his suit
jacket.

Tom was alone. As he put the gun in his
mouth, he thought of his life in Sorrow’s Sky. He closed his eyes
and cocked back the hammer, then pulled the trigger, and it was
over.

Kattic sat in a comfortable chair in the
base of the clock tower. The cold air down below the tower’s inner
workings and gears had him chilled, so he covered his shoulders
with a small blanket.

He had retrieved his black book from its
hiding place in the wall upstairs and spent some time pacing around
the old tower. His thoughts were racing with the day’s events and
by the time he had mentally organized them he found himself down
below, in the cold. The harsh cold did him well. His hands were
shaky, his foot tapped the old wood floor repeatedly and inside he
felt a heavy pressure in his chest. A part of him hoped that the
cold would numb him.

It was storming outside. Rain covered the
windows; the wind blew fiercely, and the thunder pounded overhead.
He noted how strange it was to have yet another rainstorm in late
October. Candles burned all around, helping to warm him. He opened
his book to an empty page and wrote:

Friends
,

I must admit, I write to you on an eve when I can
barely breathe. You’ve all heard the stories and lore of the Carver
Thorton killings
.
In your time period the man is an icon of
horror cinema, and the stories of his murders are told on a daily
basis around the world
.
Well
,
over the past seven
months, I’ve gotten to know him very well
.
He has been a
good friend
,
a shoulder to cry on for anyone in need and an
impressive special investigator
.

If you could have known him and were somehow
unaware of the monster that consumed him
,
his eye for detail
would astound you
,
his courage would be revered and his
sense of humor would only make you like him more
.
Today the
legend has died
.
I suppose today is the day his story truly
begins
.

Our partner Thomas Mallik died today as well
.
Let me tell you
,
our history books were correct about
him
.
Even though Carver was his best friend
,
he
stopped him from ever killing again
.
The police say Carver
must have rushed Tom with a knife in the old historic barn that you
all know too well, and Tom did what he had to do. However, killing
his childhood friend must have been too much for him. Tom put a gun
in his mouth shortly thereafter. He was a brave man, and I am
forever changed by knowing him
.
May he rest in
peace
.

I had a moment today, after the dust settled and the
investigation ensued. I couldn’t get over how odd it was being in
the famed barn, not seeing the memorabilia, framed pictures and
documents that our future time has preserved.. It had a quiet feel,
eerie and more still than I could handle.

It was difficult to sit back and watch this
dreary portion of our town’s history take shape
.
I’m afraid
my being here had pushed events off track, so I did my best to
steer them back into place
.
I never got to say good-bye to
my two good friends, and it will most definitely be odd not sharing
any more cases with them
.
I’m sure, at some point, my mind
will slip, and I will have a moment where I forget that they are
gone
.
I fear that realization
;
it will be as if I’ve
lost them all over again
.
I can’t help but feel alone in a
world that is ever changing
.
After all
,
this town is
my home
,
but this time is not
.

As for the merger between the past and 1962
,
all I can tell you is that the military was involved
.
However
,
if these events had not taken place
,
I
fear what may have become of our town
.
I will continue to
send you updates on the events to come, for that now is my only
priority. Our history is a unique one, and we may have our
scars
,
but we are who we are because of the long
,
harrowing journey that made Sorrow’s Sky our own
.

Good luck and Godspeed
,

Kattic

October 26, 1962

He set down his pen and left his book open,
so the ink would dry, then pulled a cigarette from a nearly empty
pack. Striking the head of a match and burning the tip of the
smoke, he sat back and inhaled. He exhaled. As he took a sip of red
wine from a brandy glass, his pen lifted in the air and floated in
front of him. Kattic knew it was only the beginning.

I am
August Verona
. I am a Colorado native and
I reside in the small village of Red Feather Lakes within Roosevelt
National Forest.

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