CHAPTER FOUR
The silence was a thick.
Kill, or she's mine.
The words weren't in my ears; they were hammered into the hollow space behind my sternum. I watched Elara put away the groceries, her movements meticulous and controlled. She was soaked, her exhaustion visible around the tired kindness of her eyes, but her gaze was not on the cabinet doors. It was on me.
"You're shaking, David," she stated, not asked. She didn't press for details, which was her way—the calculated patience of a lawyer waiting for the weak point in a witness's testimony.
"I just… the cold got to me," I lied. It was a flimsy shield, and I saw her lips press together in a thin, knowing line. She let the lie stand, for now.
"We were supposed to talk about Lily's school applications tonight," she said, her voice low and even. "You were meant to be home earlier."
"I got held up," I snapped, the rage from the failed Marcus Henderson kill and the lingering terror of the Quiet Man boiling over. "It happens. I'm here now. You are also home late... But I get. It's the groceries."
She looked at me for a long time, her expression unreadable. "Fine. Let's go to bed."
The bedroom was dark, cooled by the persistent rain outside. Elara's breathing evened out quickly, settling into the familiar, soft rhythm of sleep. I did not sleep. My eyes were wide open, fixed on the ceiling, the last image of the Quiet Man's grinning, featureless face seared onto my retina. The memory of his whisper was a low-grade current of electricity—a demand.
The darkness was smothering. I needed air.
I slid silently from the bed. The floorboards were cold beneath my feet. I walked to the glass doors leading to the small balcony. The handle turned with a soft snick, and I stepped out.
The rain had stopped, leaving the night air frigid. I leaned on the railing, watching the streetlamps haloed by residual mist. The city was a vast, indifferent wonder, but tonight, I was aware of an eye watching me from its core. The weight of his threat—Kill, or she's mine—was unbearable. I had to choose a target, and it had to be tonight. It had to be fast. It had to be a statement.
Behind me, the door remained ajar.
In the dark room, Elara's eyes flickered open. She watched my rigid silhouette on the balcony. He was so far away tonight, so unreachable. Her David was warm, comforting, and untroubled. This man had changed from the David she knew and loved. What are you doing, David? The question burned in her silent mind. Who are you protecting, and who are you hiding from? She closed her eyes again, pretending to sleep, but the knot of suspicion in her stomach tightened another degree. She would watch. She would wait.
She took a few deep breaths and slid out of bed. She walked towards me. "Darling. It's cold. What are you doing outside?"
I turned to her, "I couldn't sleep. I needed air"
She sighed. I could feel that she wanted me to speak up but I just couldn't tell her.
The next morning was silent and gray. Lily was at a playdate. Elara had left early for a long court session. The house was empty, affording me a quiet I usually coveted, but today it felt like a ringing vacuum waiting to be filled with violence.
I chose my target: Silas Thorne, a mid-level banker known for systematically preying on the elderly to steal their pensions. Small fish, but a viper nonetheless. His apartment was in a rundown block downtown. A place where no one would hear a thing.
"Just going for a long drive," I wrote on a note for Elara, the lie was automatic. I pulled on my jacket. I left the knife, instinctively knowing this kill needed to be different.
I found Thorne in his apartment, drunk and asleep on a dilapidated sofa. The air was reeked of stale whiskey and loneliness. He was a pathetic, slumped figure, yet his small-scale greed had ruined dozens of lives.
I didn't wake him. I didn't need him to beg.
Instead of my blade, I used the environment. The horror, I decided, would be in the spectacle, the violation of a familiar space.
I went to the kitchen and returned with a heavy, rusted meat hook hanging unused over the stove. With cold, surgical calm, I drove the hook deep into the ceiling beam above the sofa. I found the thickest rope I could, tied it tight to the hook, and wrapped the other end securely around the sleeping man's throat.
I then returned to the kitchen. I wanted a slow and absolutely extinguishing death.
I opened the cabinets and began to empty them. Flour, sugar, spices, dried beans. I poured everything onto the floor. I opened the tap on the sink just a trickle, enough to create a slow, seeping mess. I scattered the contents of the apartment until the entire room became an unsettling parody of a pantry.
Finally, I pulled his small, cheap television from the stand. I wedged it on the floor, facing the sofa, and turned the volume to a whisper. It was playing a children's cartoon—bright, loud, and utterly incongruous with the scene.
I took the slack of the rope in my gloved hands. With a steady, almost tender pull, I applied the pressure.
Thorne woke then, eyes wide, struggling for a sound that could not escape. His hands clawed at the rope, then scrabbled for purchase on the sticky, flour-dusted floor.
The slow tightening was excruciating—not just for him, but for me. The lack of a blade's satisfying penetration was replaced by a drawn-out, cold obliteration. The sight of his last seconds, his face contorted beneath a ceiling light that cast long, his head turned red and blood was blocked from passing.
When the frantic struggle ceased, I tied the rope off on the rusted radiator. Silas Thorne hung motionless. The snick of the rope against the hook in the subsequent silence was the only sound.
I cleaned the hook and the rope, bagging my stained clothing—a silent, visceral confirmation of the act. I didn't leave a note.
I came home to a flurry of movement.
"David! Where have you been?" Elara was in the hallway, her face was tight with a tension that eclipsed her earlier weariness. "You were supposed to pick up Lily! I had to leave court early and I got stuck in traffic for an hour!"
"I lost track of time," I said, my voice flat. I saw her eyes immediately lock onto the gym bag in my hand. It was where the bloodied clothes were bagged and sealed.
"What's in the bag?" she asked, too casually.
"Dirty workout gear. Sweaty." I moved past her, trying to keep the bag behind my hip.
"It's a weekday, David. You haven't worked out in six months." Her voice hardened. "Show me what's in the bag."
"Stop, Elara."
"No. Not this time." She reached for the strap. "You're hiding something. You've been gone, cold, staring into the dark... Let me see!"
The struggle was brief. She was strong and determined, but I was faster, fueled by a night of murder and a day of dread. I wrenched the bag free, shoving it behind the linen closet.
"Don't push me," I warned, the coldness of the killing floor still in my voice.
"Or what? You'll lie to me more?" Tears sprung to her eyes, less from fear than from betrayal. "I don't know who you are anymore!"
I didn't answer. I turned and walked quickly toward Lily's room, needing the simple reality of her presence to anchor myself.
She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by colored blocks.
"Daddy!" she shouted, running to me.
But then she turned back to the floor. A terrible chill went down my spine.
She had built a structure: a tiny, elaborate block tower. And from the top of the tower, she had tied a small piece of string and hung a miniature plastic figure—a man in a suit—from it. The tiny plastic man swung gently.
Around the base of the tower, she hadn't drawn on a piece of paper. She had scattered things: a dusting of white flour from her play-dough kit, small dried kidney beans from her craft box, and a few drops of spilled juice, bright red.
"Look, Daddy!" she beamed, pointing at the swinging figure. "The bad man is sleeping! He's sleeping forever, and now the kitchen is all messy." She looked up at me with her bright, innocent eyes. "Why is he sleeping in the kitchen mess, Daddy?"
My blood ran to ice. The flour. The beans. The slow, quiet death. It was the same grotesque tableau I had created less than an hour ago.
This was the second time. The blood rain note. The mess of the kitchen.
My daughter was mirroring my kills. A link—dark and absolute—had been forged between us.
I stared at the small, swinging toy man and the flour-dusted floor. A terrible, terrifying thought hit me: was she not mirroring me, but anticipating me? Was the darkness not in me, but in our shared air?
I knelt beside her, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. "Lily," I whispered, my voice raw. "Where did you learn to play this?"
She just giggled, and pointed a small, delicate finger, not at the ceiling, but toward the corner of the room, into the deepest, thickest shadow.
I didn't need to look. I knew he was there.
The Quiet Man.
He was waiting. And he was smiling.