The Fading (36 page)

He?

Noel stared into the empty air inside the bedroom.

‘Concentrate loosely,’ Dalton said. ‘It’s like an optical illusion. It’s difficult to see, but once you see it, you won’t
be able to unsee it.’

Noel didn’t want to see it, but he could not look away. His mind raced for an answer to Dalton’s riddle – what was this? what
could it be? – until he realized the answer was Dalton himself. What he was. What he could do.

They made me do it.

The hunt grows tiring. Exhausting.

Only once a month or so. More when I’m feeling strong, but it’s getting harder the older I get
.

Noel understood. Dalton was in command of his fade. He had the power to blind others. He had been living with this for a long
time. He had developed odd tastes.

He’s blinding me right now.

With that thought, the pressure in Noel’s mind relented. The pain in his temples, the sluggishness of
his thoughts, his heavy body, and something intangible – all unknotted itself and released him. It did so without a fight,
as if this too had been planned, and the full scale of what Dalton had done tonight sent waves of terror through him as the
professor withdrew his blinding shroud as swiftly as a magician yanking a tablecloth from beneath the setting.

I once was blind but now I can see
.

The young man was somewhere between his late teens and early twenties, pale skinned and well muscled, with shorn stubbly black
hair. He was sleepy-eyed, only now rousing from whatever Dalton had given him to render him pliable and willing enough to
follow the professor home. He was bound with black rope or rubber cord, arms at his sides, feet together, constricting him
nearly everywhere to a wooden post bolted to the ceiling and through the floor mat. His white Adidas track pants were stained
with piss, his bare feet wet. His eyes opened wide and lowered sleepily before widening again, and Noel knew the guy was waging
some kind of war to regain full consciousness.

‘Are you fucking sick?’ Noel said, turning to his host in the hall. ‘Let him go!’

Dalton frowned, shucked off his leather work gloves and walked to Noel, shoving the gloves into his hands. ‘Hold these.’

Before Noel could respond, Dalton turned to the roped man, removed something from a front pocket Noel could not see, and,
with all the fuss of a child dabbing paint onto a canvas, proceeded to poke the hostage
in the stomach, once, twice, three four five, pecking here and there without hurry. His movements were so deliberate and patient,
Noel didn’t understand that Dalton was stabbing the man with a knife until the sixth or seventh strike, when the blood began
to pour from his wounds and the man began to scream against the tape.

‘Stop!’ Noel shouted, lunging at Dalton.

‘See that?’ Dalton said, turning and jabbing the knife at Noel.

Noel stopped, the wet red blade inches from his own belly.

‘See how easy it is? You never even knew he was here. I could have kept you in the dark all night. That’s power.’

‘What did you do?’ Noel groaned, wanting to be sick. ‘What did you do? Why are you doing this?’

‘Because I can.’ Dalton grabbed Noel by the wrist and slapped the handle of the knife into his palm. ‘Now finish him.’

The man tied to the post was writhing, moaning against the gag, sweat bursting from his forehead as blood surged from nearly
a dozen wounds in his belly, his chest, his pelvic region.

Later he would have time to be ashamed of his inaction, but now, in this moment, Noel felt as though he were having an out
of body experience. His mouth fell slack. He stared at the knife in his hands. It was an arched flat wooden thing with a silver
blade that tapered to a nasty point. A Buck knife or something similar, greasy with warm blood.

‘You did it to me,’ he mumbled, unable to look up, wishing he never had to look up again. ‘You do this out there, to others,
the witnesses, so you can take people? So you can hurt them and kill them?’

‘I told you of my roots,’ Dalton said.

I was once a pastor in the town of Black Earth, Wisconsin, and before that I was a dairy farmer’s son. When I was nine I fell
from the back of my father’s tractor and cracked my skull open on a knob of fieldstone. I spent two days in a coma and did
not speak for almost a year, but I survived and in my heart I know that was when the gift was handed down to me.

Noel wanted to throw the knife away in disgust, but he didn’t. Couldn’t.

‘… what I didn’t tell you about was the creatures.’ Dalton was still talking. ‘… all kinds of the smaller living things, how
they responded to me after that. I took what I needed on the farm in order to feed it, and for my efforts it repaid me tenfold.
First there were baby chicks, then two of the meanest roosters you’d ever hope to meet, and that vicious German shepherd from
the Orlanski farm next door. Hogs in need of cleansing. You do what you can to resist, but eventually the fade demands a sacrifice.’

‘I’m not like you,’ Noel said.

Dalton inched closer to him and clutched his wrist, rolling it so that the knife blade turned before them.

He said, ‘In high school there was a girl, a very dirty girl. Do you want to know her name?’

‘No, I …’

‘Shirley. Shirley Minturn. She smelled like dirty socks.’

‘Stop,’ Noel said, wresting his arm from Dalton’s grip. ‘Get the fuck away from me!’

The professor was undeterred. ‘You can find her in the news archives, though they never did find her. She drowned. In a river.
A dirty river, but one that flowed cleaner than she did.’

Noel was having trouble breathing. His vision was spotty. Was Dalton still doing it to him, or was he merely about to faint?

‘It’s all right, Noel. Don’t be frightened. This is something we both understand. You can trust me. We’re just talking. What
is it they say? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?’

Noel stared up at the bleeding man strapped to the post. The man was there, then not there, there again, then blurring like
melting film.

‘I’m not part of this.’

‘Oh, Noel. I can see it in you. I can smell it like perfume.’

‘I never hurt anyone,’ Noel said, his breath escaping in one long shudder.
The policeman in the snow …
‘Not like that. I never—’

‘You’re lying.’ Dalton’s tongue waved across his upper lip. ‘But you’re a good boy. You fought it, but what’s the use when
it’s so easy for us? Your first was clumsy. Perhaps you told yourself it was an accident. It is not an easy task to complete,
but I can show you how to make it the easiest thing in the world. Like flicking the heads from dandelion stems.’

Hop in
, Dalton had said from the back of the cab.
I’ll take you to my place and show you my collection.

‘Get out,’ Noel said.

Dalton smiled.

He’s not just some fuddy-duddy professor
, a very rational and strangely calm part of Noel’s mind asserted now
. He’s a serial killer. An honest to fucking God serial killer. This is what he’s chosen to do with his fading. Or maybe he
was always going to be one, and one year his Christmas stocking came packed with an extra special gift to make it easier.

‘Get out!’ Noel screamed, and threatened Dalton with the knife.

Dalton retreated, giggling, and began to circle the room. He ducked behind his bound and bleeding victim, then popped up on
the other side.

‘Calm down, Noel. You’re going to get hurt.’

‘Get the fuck out!’ Noel shrieked, and ran for Dalton.

The professor darted to toward the door and Noel brought the knife down in the back of his shoulder, stubbing the blade into
bone before withdrawing it. Dalton released a high-pitched squeal and ran into the hall. Noel followed for several steps,
but when Dalton slammed the bathroom door behind him, he stopped.

He returned to the bedroom and found the roped hostage no longer struggling. His head was hanging low, chin against chest.
Noel put a hand against the stained shirt to feel for a heartbeat. At first there wasn’t one, then something, but it was faint.

Noel began to saw at the ropes. When he’d cut through two strands, he was able to pull the rest away
and the guy crumpled before Noel had time to toss the knife and catch him. He kneeled, rolling the man to his back. What was
he supposed to do? He didn’t know how to perform CPR. There were too many wounds. The man was bleeding to death. He needed
to call for an ambulance.

He got to his feet and ran into the hall.

Dalton emerged from the bathroom and stopped, blocking the exit.

Noel raised the knife.

‘That’s your choice?’ Dalton said. ‘Are you sure? Think very carefully, now. Because there’s no coming back from this one.’

‘Get out of my way, you fucking psycho, or I will take you down.’

The professor hesitated. Considered. Something was twisting behind Dalton’s face, anguish and fear and whatever demons lurked
in his soul.

‘Don’t be like this,’ he said at last. ‘We can be friends. We have to be friends. We need each other, don’t you see that?’

Noel stepped forward and jabbed the knife at Dalton. ‘I’m calling nine-one-one. You’re fucked.’

Dalton backed away, his face changing as swiftly as a flipped coin, this side showing seething hatred. ‘Don’t be naive. It’s
too late for the police. Now that you know, we have no choice but to be friends.’

‘Move now,’ Noel said, walking forward, backing the man into the living room.

Dalton laughed, but there was panic in it. ‘Soon as
you learn to hate them for their ability to lead normal lives, you won’t be able to help yourself. Let me save you the heartbreak.
We can start tonight. You don’t like boys? That’s all right. I know a ranch. In the desert, where they keep the girls. You
can choose your own and, trust me, it will be a love like no other. Once you feel that, you won’t ever have to love again.
Your precious Julie will have all the sentimental value of a baseball card.’

Noel stopped, his ears ringing with violence.
Julie?
Did this piece of shit just say her name? He came forward and took Dalton by the collar and shook him once, hard enough to
sprain his neck. He pressed the blade against the professor’s nose lengthwise, ready to swipe it off.

‘If you go near her, I will bury you alive.’

Dalton raised his hands in surrender. Noel threw him to the floor and Dalton landed hard on his tailbone, gasping. He made
no effort to stand.

Noel went to the kitchen and took the cordless phone from its cradle. There was a dial tone. He punched 9-1-1, never taking
his eyes off Dalton, knife held up like a crucifix.

‘Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?’ a woman said.

‘This is Theodore Dalton,’ Noel said. ‘I’ve just killed a man in my apartment. Please send help now.’

Dalton cackled on the floor. ‘I love it! Now we have a real shooting match!’

The woman was asking questions but Noel couldn’t
understand them. He was pacing in a circle as Dalton began to rise. The professor stood, rubbing his back, and slowly walked
around the living room, into the hall, to the front door.

‘Get back here!’ Noel said.

‘You will never see me coming,’ Dalton said.

Then, as he opened the front door, he looked back at Noel and wiggled his fingers goodbye, vanishing before his footsteps
began to echo down the hall.

He was gone. And Noel couldn’t stay. The dispatchers would have the address. Emergency responders were already on the way.

He ran to the bedroom and checked the bound man on the floor for a pulse. He attempted mouth-to-mouth. He clasped his hands
together and pumped the breastplate. He used paper towels from the kitchen and hand towels from the bathroom to try and stop
the bleeding.

But the young man who wore sandalwood cologne was gone.

The sirens grew louder, and everything was moving too fast.

Footsteps, real and imaginary, roaming the hall. The dying sound of a muffled cough from the next room over. Low voices that
fell silent as they passed his door, the intermittent burr of the ice machine drowning out an attempt on the doorknob. The
thin blade of light at the threshold, blinking with foot shadows. It could be happening even now: a tentacle-like probing
of his mind from the stairwells and elevator shafts, breaching the walls, swirling overhead like invisible smoke, clouding
his eyes and blinding him to the evil slug dragging itself within toward its nutrients.

I see you. I’m coming for you. I’m here now.

Let me in.

Solid, unable to flip the switch, Noel lay awake in a vacant room on the Palace Tower’s ninth floor at Caesars, knowing sleep
would not come tonight, tomorrow and possibly for days. The moon-gray screen of the alarm clock on the nightstand between
the two beds taunting him, daring him to sleep. 3.48 a.m. He sat up, popping his ears to catch the telltale click of a lock
being picked. Minutes passed and he felt a draft, air circulating in the
room, even though he’d turned the thermostat down to keep the air conditioning in slumber. The idea of invisible molecules
parting for an invisible body propelled him from bed to the window. He scooped the curtain to peer down to the pool area and
gardens with their stoic winged lion gargoyles that could not protect him.

Not so much as a lone security patrol walking about, but what did it matter? When Dalton came for him, he would not arrive
in his visible element. He would come the way he had come for the others lining the graves in his forty-year serial spree.
One minute the coast would be clear, the next Noel would feel a piano wire sinking into his throat, the ice pick gliding into
a kidney. Or maybe only a single inhalation through the ether-soaked rag, then darkness … until he awoke in a much smaller
room, six feet long, constructed of pine.

He padded to the bathroom. Checked behind the door, the shower curtain. Stared into the mirror. The reflection was that of
a man in the foment of breakdown. A sheen of sweat on his face, neck lined with road grit, puffy gray streaks under his bloodshot
eyes, five days of stubble turning into a rash. He was afraid to run the water, to shower, to flush the toilet. Any sound
could give him away.