In the House of Mirrors (20 page)

Geoffrey shook his head. His eyes had dried.

“You're wrong. You're so... wrong,” Geoffrey said, as he walked out of the motel room.

6

Enraged, Geoffrey slammed the door behind him. A headache squeezed his brain. It was a familiar sensation, one that usually proceeded a conversation no one else could hear. The current headache was the most intense he had ever experienced. There was so much pressure that a little black dot—reminiscent of those cigarette burns in old movies—appeared in front of him.

You know what you're going to have to do, don't you?
Master asked.

“
Wh-what?” Geoffrey asked. “What is it you want me to do?”

You're father has become a greater nuisance than we suspected. You're going to have to kill him.

Geoffrey swallowed air. His stomach turned. The notion nauseated him. However, he didn't disagree. Nor did he ever think the words,
well, I really shouldn't.

CHAPTER TWENTY

It didn't take long to concoct a plan. He had read enough newspaper articles in his time, seen enough movies, read enough books, and heard enough tales, giving him numerous ideas on how to go about it. He also knew his chances of getting away with it were pretty slim.
That's okay
, he thought.
Just need to buy myself a little time, that's all. Won't need much!

He planned to go through the doorway after that, to be acquainted with his Master. The Master had work for him there. So much work. He required Geoffrey's immortal devotion. But there was one problem.

He needed the key first.

2

Geoffrey's plan was simple—attack the bastard while he was sleeping. The voice in his head agreed that this was the best way. He would dispatch the old man in the early hours of the morning, when shadows danced upon the walls, concealing ghastly secrets. His murder weapon would be a three-dollar pillow provided by the Moon Motel. He would plant the fluffy sack over his father's face, and press down on it until Carter stopped flailing around, until his body went limp. The voice in his head told him to do this and Geoffrey agreed wholeheartedly.

When it came to murder, there was no margin for error. After the air had been depleted from Carter Boone's lungs, and he was no longer a member of the living, Geoffrey yanked his father across the carpet and into the bathroom where he had prepared stage two of his sinister plan.

Geoffrey needed a plan to dispose of the body. Or at least the voice in his head told him so. Geoffrey had read a short story once about a gentleman who killed an old man in his sleep, and chopped him up into little pieces, hiding them beneath the floorboards. It was written by Edgar Allan Poe, and it was called “The Tell-Tale Heart.” When police detectives came asking questions, the murderer had trouble answering because he kept hearing the old man's beating heart blaring in his ears, which was ludicrous because the old man had been dead for quite some time. Eventually, the drumming heart drove the murderer insane. Being unable to stand the noise of the beating heart any longer, the murderer confessed to his heinous act.

Geoffrey did not want to become the murderer in Poe's tale.

He had mulled over the idea of leaving the body on the bed. The Master told him that was idiocy, that he would be surprised how quickly a dead body began to stink. Geoffrey argued that he would be through the doorway long before the body began to rot. He could leave a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, which would probably work for a few days. It would be plenty of time to grab the key and get through the doorway. The Master didn't argue; he
told
Geoffrey what to do. He commanded Geoffrey to find a way to dispose of the body, because he could not guarantee that the key would be in his possession within any designated time. There was much uncertainty in their grand scheme.

So Geoffrey put together a way to hide the body, borrowing a line from Poe's short story. He would get a saw—one that could cut through bone with relative ease—and hack his father's body into little pieces.

He did this without throwing up once.

3

He hacked and sawed, until his father's body was completely eviscerated, spread across the blue tarp he bought from a hardware store down the block.

Geoffrey never imagined that there could be so much blood in the human body. Carter's body was scattered in eight different pieces. Upon Master's wishes, Geoffrey wrapped each piece in shrink wrap. The organs that happened to fall out of the midsection went into one of two coolers. When he was finished, both coolers were full of vital organs (the stomach, the liver, intestines, etc.) and blood. Everything fit in there, except for the heart. Geoffrey had kept the heart out of the coolers for two reasons. One, being it didn't quite fit, and the other being this: as much as Poe's short story had helped him create such a macabre scenario, it had also made him paranoid. Geoffrey did not want to hear the beating heart as Poe's murderer did. Geoffrey heard a great deal of things he could not see already; he didn't want his father's beating heart to be one of them. So Geoffrey—after all the body parts were squished in their respective packaging—put the heart on a plate, took a fork and knife, and proceeded to consume the heart. It tasted awful. Its rubbery texture made it hard to chew and swallow, left a silvery aftertaste no drink could equalize. It stuck with him hours after he finished devouring it. 

Nausea set in. This time, he did throw up. The remains of his father's heart his stomach could not digest were flushed down the commode.

4

An hour before dawn, Geoffrey Boone drove around Red River looking for Dumpsters behind shopping centers and other places of business. He needed to find eight of them, one for each shrink-wrapped appendage. He decided to spread them out, that way the stench of decaying flesh would be minimal. There were several good hiding places he came across. Carter's severed head would rest in a Dumpster behind an Italian restaurant until the waste company claimed it later in the week. A donut shop in the south end of Red River had a cop parked out front when Geoffrey drove by it, so he opted to go to another one closer to the shore. Carter's right arm went there. Carter's left arm went into a Dumpster behind a crab shack, a perfect place because the smell of decaying human flesh blended nicely with leftover seafood. Geoffrey debated whether or not to dispose his father's remaining limbs along with the left arm, but Master told him to stick with the plan. Geoffrey obeyed. The right foot rested inside a Dumpster shared by a movie theater and a huge department store. The left went into a sewer near the Red River Mall. The right leg went into a Dumpster behind Cameraland. (Little Chris was sleeping inside, after spending many hours trying to reconstruct the Denlax). The left leg went into a Dumpster behind Red River North High School. The contents of the two coolers were dumped in two separate bodies of water; one being a lagoon near a bunch of shady-looking apartments (it was not the first time body parts had been dumped there), left for the nighttime critters to snack on; two being the Red River, adding another black mark to its already gruesome legacy.

Nobody found the body parts that once made up Carter Boone's body.

At least, not right away.

5

Three days later, a lone raccoon would be stealthily creeping around Red River at night, as raccoons often did. This particular raccoon was hungry.
Really
hungry. So hungry that it would dig to the bottom of every Dumpster it laid its beady little eyes upon. It would salvage what it could from these Dumpsters, devouring whatever small scraps it happen to scrounge up. Anything that the raccoon would deem worthy of sharing with its family would be dragged from the Dumpster, across the highway, and deep into the forest where three hungry kits awaited their mother's discoveries.

The mother raccoon's snout picked up on a scent coming from a Dumpster behind Jolly Joe's Crabs and Seafood. It was really bad luck for Geoffrey Boone, because the scent the raccoon sniffed out was a bunch of leftover codfish that went bad days ago, and not Carter Boone's left arm. The raccoon dive-bombed the Dumpster, ripping open black plastic bag after black plastic bag. It ate what it could (a few scallops, some shrimp juice, and a half-eaten lobster tail), but stopped taste testing when it accidentally tore into the clear plastic bag containing the old man's arm. The raccoon lapped up some bodily fluids that oozed from the slit. It was a savory, sweet flavor it never tasted before. The raccoon immediately determined the treat delicious enough to share with its kin.

The motherly raccoon fished the limb out of the Dumpster, and dropped it onto the blacktop below. It climbed down, grunting, excited about its find. Who wouldn't be? It was quite a discovery. Her little cubs would be very happy, for they have not eaten in days. Their mother had come up empty-handed the past few nights, leaving their little cub bellies empty as well. But mother did well that night. Very well indeed.

The raccoon dragged Carter's arm across the parking lot, which remained empty during non-business hours. The raccoon went as fast as it could, joyously lugging the arm along. It tried several approaches, testing which method would be the fastest and most efficient. First, she tried nudging the limb along with her nose. If she continued with that approach, she would've reached her kits by dawn, which would've been much too late. She abandoned this method immediately. The good mother also tried pushing the arm with her paws, but it proved just as futile. Next, it sank its sharp teeth into the flesh, and trotted toward her destination. That seemed to be the best solution, although this method tired the raccoon quickly, forcing it to make frequent breaks, every twenty yards or so.

One of these breaks happened to occur on a major highway, the only stretch of road that separated the raccoon from a clear path to her babies.

Just as the raccoon stopped to reaffirm her grip on the bloody package, Cindy Ellis, a nineteen-year old girl who was heading home from her boyfriend's house party, was driving twenty miles over the speed limit, talking to her friend Charlotte about how cute her boyfriend's friends are and how Charlotte should “totally hook up with one of them.” Cindy took the bend awfully fast, and lost control of her red Mustang. The raccoon glanced up just in time to see a large rubber disk slam down on her, flattening her against the pavement. The innards of the good mother splattered across the highway, as Cindy's car did several three-sixties before colliding into a nearby tree. The tree was a part of the forest where the racoon's cubs lived, and eventually starved to death because their mother would no longer be able to bring them Dumpster scraps.

This was the Denlax Effect, ladies and gentlemen, watch it in its finest form.

If the raccoon would have taken one more break, or slowed down just a bit, taking five extra minutes to reach the highway, a truck driver named Dan Rivera would have crushed it, similar to the way Cindy Ellis did. One
less
break, maybe keeping a faster pace, Ira Bankston would have taken the raccoon out with his Jaguar, ruining a perfectly new set of tires. If the raccoon would have taken no breaks at all, Donnie Tulls would have split the helpless animal in two, driving ninety-five in a fifty mile-per-hour zone.

No matter what, the left arm of Carter Boone would have caused the raccoon's demise. Why? Because Boone's arm was a product of the Denlax. If I learned anything from this ordeal, it was the camera just didn't have the power to take pictures—of our world and another one similar to ours—it had the power to
change
things. Alter the future. Skew Fate. Create its own rules, defying the ones made by the universe from the onset of time.

This was the Denlax Effect, ladies and gentlemen, watch as it extends its ever-so-powerful arms, embracing whoever dares to cross its path.

6

It would take the Red River Police Department almost a week to figure out what an old man's arm, a drunk girl heading home from a party, and roadkill had to do with each other. It would take Cindy Ellis two days alone to completely convince two detectives that the bloody limb found in the middle of the highway did not come from her car, nor had she any idea it was on the road until they presented it to her during their interrogation. The detectives would ponder how far a raccoon could physically transport a dead man's left arm. It would take them another six hours just to trace the limb to the nearby Dumpster behind Jolly Joe's.

It would take another week for a second limb to surface, and for a full investigation to begin.

But Geoffrey Boone would be through the portal by then.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The day after my uncle turned into a homicidal maniac, I called Sheldon Daniels to inform him I wouldn't be coming to work for at least a week, maybe longer. I needed some time to get my head right. He didn't give me any problems, but his tone suggested he wasn't too happy about it. “Sure, whatever you need,” he said, in a hurry to get back to work. No compassion in his voice. He didn't ask me how I was holding up, or if there was anything he could do to help. Just, “sure, whatever you need.” Honestly, I hadn't expected anything different.

After our brief conversation ended, I thought about the last thing he said to me in person, the day I questioned him about my predecessor, Lester Resnick (who I would come to find out was L, Geoffrey's friend in Benton). “Anything else you want to know, you can ask him,” Sheldon had said to me. I planned on using my week off, while Aurelia was in class and working her part-time job at the local grocery store, to follow up on this.

I called Benton Health Facility and asked to speak with someone about visiting a patient there. “Lester Resnick,” I said. The receptionist transferred me to Doctor Kimberly Parsons. She sounded young, around the same age as me, maybe a few years older.

“This is Dr. Parsons,” she said, in a hushed tone.

“
Yes, Dr. Parsons, I'm looking to see if I can come visit a patient. Perhaps today, or tomorrow?”

“
Lester Resnick?” she asked.

“
Yes.”

“
Are you family?”

“
I'm a close friend,” I lied.

“
What's your name?”

“
Denlax. Ritchie Denlax.”

“
Hold on one second,” Dr. Parsons told me. She returned several minutes later, when I was beginning to think she wouldn't. “Lester seems very excited you're coming to visit.”

“
Well, it's been a long time.”

“
Because Lester's in a
different
section of Benton, you won't mind if I interview you briefly before your visit, would you?” she asked. I knew what she meant by
different.
I could tell by the way she said it. He was in the part where the real whackos are, the ones that drool all over themselves and talk to voices in their head. “It's standard procedure,” Dr. Parsons added.

“
I wouldn't mind that at all,” I told her.

“
Excellent. Lester is looking forward to your arrival.”

2

I arrived at Benton the following day. The institution was secluded from the rest of society, built in the middle of an open field behind a wrought-iron fence intended to keep people from escaping. It was miles from the closest suburban development, in case one of the really bad inmates happened to break loose. I'd later find out that Benton only had a handful of attempted escapes. The only one Kimberly Parsons knew to be successful was Johnny Anderson.

Dr. Parsons met me at my car and took me through the garden, which consisted of a few colorful flowers and some bushes trimmed to look like animals. There was a bear, an elephant, and a lion. There were others, but I was too busy listening to the doctor's introductory speech to take notice. We trotted up the stairs and proceeded to walk between two fiberglass columns, across the white deck which led us to the front door. A security guard welcomed me and opened the door for us. Once inside, Dr. Parsons told me to sign in with the receptionist. The lobby was fairly empty, only the receptionist's desk sat in the middle of it. Behind her, was two doors. One was labeled “Left Wing” and the other was signed “Right Wing.” After I jotted my name and telephone number down on the blank sheet, Dr. Parsons led me to the Right Wing. “Stay close behind me. And try not to get caught up in any conversations, if you know what I mean,” she warned.

She opened the door and we stepped into a long, rectangular-shaped room. The doctor told me the visiting rooms were just beyond the doors across the way. The only thing that stood in our way were perhaps thirty mentally-unstable patients, all of them appearing too doped up to bother us. Nevertheless, I intended to abide by Dr. Parsons' generous tip. I counted four security guards walking the floor, while there were two others stationed behind a glass window in another room attached to the one we were in. They watched the floor from there, probably telling each other jokes judging from the smiles pasted across their faces. They were probably making fun of the lady who sat in the right-hand corner of the room, her forehead pressed against the wall, mumbling to herself in some language that no one had ever heard before. Or maybe it was the two elderly gentlemen who were discussing which of their favorite superheroes had the biggest genitalia that had them cackling to each other, hands over their mouths to mask their immaturity. There was also a young man trying to observe the inside of his lip by stretching it as far away from his face as he possibly could, which also could've attributed to the guards' behavior.

One lady approached me while we were only ten feet from the door. She was old and haggardly. Her eyes sagged in their sockets. Most of her other features sagged as well. She looked like she had weighed a ton at some point, but lost most of it during her stay at Benton. Her skin was drooping off her bones, her hair white and frizzy. “Have you seen my...” she asked, and then whispered a word I couldn't quite make out.

I looked at Dr. Parsons. She had reached the door, while I was still six steps away from it. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head ever-so-slightly. I thought I caught a faint smile forming on her face.

“
What?” I asked, confused.

“
Have you seen my...” she started to say, and then leaned in so she could whisper in my ear.
“Vagina?”
she asked, straight-faced.

I pulled back and looked at her. She looked worried, as someone who lost their reproductive organ should.

“I can't find it anywhere,” she said wistfully.

“
I haven't seen it,” I said, and turned away, trying my hardest not to laugh.

“
Well, if you find it, you'll let me know, won't you?” she asked, but I didn't respond. Dr. Parsons and I were already through the door.

3

She sat me down in a small room that looked like it had been stolen from the set of a popular detective show. There was a single table in the center, with two chairs on either side. A one-way mirror used to observe conversations was to my left. Dr. Parsons sat across from me, flipping through a seemingly endless pile of papers secured to her clipboard.

“
Okay...” she said, “what is the nature of your visit?” she asked.

“
Just to catch up. I haven't seen Lester in quite some time,” I said.

“
Childhood friends?”

“
Co-workers,” I corrected. 

“
Have you ever been committed to a mental health facility, Mr. Denlax?”

“
No.”

“
Have you ever taken any medication to help with any problems concerning mental health?”

“
No.”

“
Are you taking any prescription drugs—this includes any for recreational use—at this time?” she asked.

I had no idea what this had to do with my visit. She could see the confused expression on my face. “No,” I said, smiling, almost chuckling to myself.

“This is just procedure.” She flipped the page. “It's state law that we have to interview any visitors coming to see patients deemed extremely dangerous to themselves, and others.”

“
Extremely dangerous?”

Dr. Parsons narrowed her eyes at me. “Of course.” I guess I couldn't hide the look that sprung onto my face well enough. “Certainly if you worked with Lester, than you know how dangerous he is.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, trying to keep my face expressionless. 

“
I should hope so,” she said. “He only tried to kill your boss.”

4

“Sheldon,” I said, although it came out more like a question.

“
That
was his name,” she said, as if she just remembered. “Sheldon Daniels?”

I nodded.

“Lester talks about him. He says that he is
in on it
, although Lester won't explain to us what
it
was,” she said.

“
What do you think
it
is?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I dunno. Probably just another delusional episode. Lester is always confused. He can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Like most dangerous patients, fantasy is his reality and he becomes lost in it. I'll be surprised if you can actually hold any sort of conversation with him.” She paused, observing my reaction. There was a small part of me which thought she caught onto my little escapade. “Anyway,
I'm
the one supposed to be asking the questions here, Mr. Denlax.” She grinned. “Shall we continue?”

“
Please.”

5

The questionnaire lasted another ten minutes. The state apparently wanted to know everything about me; where I was born; where I went to school; even my work history, which I had to lie about so that the dates when Lester worked there and mine matched. I didn't really think it was going to be a big deal. It's not like Dr. Parsons was going to fact check everything I said, at least not now. Maybe later. And by then it would be too late. I'd already have my conversation with Lester Resnick, who apparently tried to kill my boss at the
Treebound Tribune.
No wonder Sheldon spoke about Lester apprehensively. Lester had tried to murder him because, according to Dr. Parsons, he was part of
it
. This got my brain wondering if Sheldon was a part of
it
somehow, and to be perfectly honest—it would not have surprised me. Everything and everyone was becoming a part of
it
, whether they were aware of it or not. Even Aurelia—who at this juncture did not know just how a part of
it
she was—was caught in the very tricky web that the Denlax had spun.

This was the Denlax Effect, ladies and gentleman, watch as its seeds bloom chaos.

Dr. Parsons returned five minutes later, along with two security guards, who accompanied Lester Resnick. His wrists were handcuffed, and so were his ankles. He looked much like I expected. Long brown hair fell to his shoulders. His face had gone unshaven for quite some time. He wore a navy blue shirt with matching pants. He seemed unhappy, but his face instantaneously brightened when he realized that he was not headed to a psych evaluation or to take his medication; he realized he was meeting me. I was unsure whether or not he knew me. Well, not
knew me
personally, but knew who I was and what I had come to talk about. I figured he'd have a good idea judging from the phony last name I had given the hospital, which I was pretty sure they wouldn't go through the trouble of checking out anyway. If they had found out my true intentions, they would have put a stop to this already.

“
Lester, do you remember your friend Ritchie?” Dr. Parsons asked.

Lester grinned, much like how I envisioned a madman would. “Yes, Dr. Parsons. We go
way
back.”

Dr. Parsons smiled genuinely. “I'll leave you boys to it. Your conversation will be private,” she said, nodding toward the one-way mirror, suggesting that no one would be observing our conversation behind it. “If for whatever reason you need anything,” she said to me, “the guards will be right outside.” This was code for “if my patient decides to try to kill you, just scream, and we'll be right in.”

I nodded.

The three Benton employees exited the room, and Dr. Parsons shut the door behind them. Once they were gone, Lester and I locked eyes for a brief moment. I was clueless as to how to begin, and I was hoping Lester Resnick would take the reigns.

He obliged.

“
So,” he began, “you're my replacement.” The delusional man's wild grin stretched across his face.

6

His smile faded. He looked at me sternly, as if maybe my presence here had insulted him in some way. I felt hot. I could feel the perspiration bubble from my pores. “At first, when Kimberly told me that Mr. Denlax was coming to visit, I got real excited. But... somehow I knew better than that. I knew it was going to be you instead. I know why you're here. You seek answers.”

I nodded. “What do you mean by it 'was me instead?' Who else were you expecting?” I asked.

His grin returned and his eyes grew wide, like a home-run specialist getting served a soft underhand toss. Before he spoke, he studied my eyes closely, as if they were going to give away some sort of secret. “You don't know, do you? You really don't know... anything, do you?”