The Death Agreement (9 page)

Standing in the empty parlor,
surrounded by the invisible fog of the incinerator, I tried to
reach Yang's cell. It rang three times and then went to voicemail.
I left him a brief message, "I think Taylor may have confessed to
me. Call me back." Then I dialed the number for the cab company. It
was late and the only thing left for me to do was to go back to my
room and wait for Yang to call.

So much had happened, I felt as
though I hadn't slept in days.

I yawned and my eyelids grew heavy
as I waited on the steps of Hardesty's Funeral Home. I must have
nodded off because the next thing I knew, the sound of a horn
jarred me awake. I looked up at a yellow cab idling in the road,
then stumbled to my feet, wondering why my leg felt so
numb.

I climbed into the back of the
cab, and the old cabbie turned around and smiled. "Where to,
pal?"

"Walter Reed Medical Center." I
slumped down, leaned my head back against the ripped faux-leather
seat, and closed my eyes.

***

For a moment, the world was dark,
calm, and silent. I felt myself drifting off…. Suddenly, every inch
of my body exploded with pain. I tried to move but my chest had
been strapped down to a military issue cot.

"What the…." My eyes adjusted to
the dim light, and a shadow slid across the room. It paused as if
looking at me, then it slithered in a spiral, drawing closer to the
cot. Once near enough to kiss, it rose vertically until it towered
at least eight feet high.

"What happened?" I
asked.

"You crashed," the shadow
replied.

"Am I dying?"

"Part of you is already dead. You
know that, don't you?"

A tear slid down the side of my
face. "Yes," I said.

The shadow trembled, then ripped
like an amniotic sac. Teeth gripped the fold of one of the rips and
tore the shadow more. Taylor's face, covered in blood spatter,
struggled through the rip in the shadow as if he were pulling
himself from the gravity of a black hole. The shadow trembled
again, then fell to the floor like a pile of dirty clothes. Taylor
smiled. In one hand, he held up my severed leg, toes wiggling. In
his other hand, he held the white maple handle of a menacing,
rusted, antique saw.

***

I awoke in a cold sweat, reaching
for my leg but finding only the prosthetic. I wiped the sweat from
my brow with my forearm, then looked out the window at the passing
cars. I could still feel my severed leg so I clenched my missing
toes and parroted what Taylor had said in the dream, "Part of you
is already dead."

"What was that?" The driver met my
eyes in the rearview mirror.

"Nothing. Thinking out
loud."

"Pardon my saying so, pal, but you
look like you've been through the wringer. Wanna talk about
it?"

I shook my head.

He looked over his shoulder at me.
"Ol' Frank's been drivin' cabs for twenty years; I can tell when
people need to get somethin' off their mind."

"Thanks, I appreciate it, but I'm
fine. Just tired."

"I'm just sayin' if you want, I
can take ya to a meeting. AA? NA? Nine years clean myself. You
gotta work the program. Know what I mean?"

I nodded.

The cabbie sighed. "Suit
yourself," he said, and left me alone for the rest of the drive.
When he pulled up to the front gates, I took out the last bit of
money I had after paying off Hardesty and handed it to
him.

"Sorry," I apologized while
getting out of the cab. "I wish I could give you more of a
tip."

"No worries. Oh, and
pal?"

I raised my eyebrows.

"Thanks for your service," he
said, then waved as he drove off.

I smiled and waved back before
flashing my ID to the gate guard. Once through security, I headed
toward my room, but halfway there I stopped and considered going
the other direction.

Something about the dream had me
shaken.

"The saw," I whispered. It had
been the same one that Taylor and I had discovered in the
sub-basement of the closed-off building. Yang had said the police
found a saw in the trunk of Taylor's car. "Could it be?"

It seemed unlikely. Probably just
my subconscious trying to make sense of the madness. That's what I
thought, but I knew I wouldn't be able to rest until I checked that
room.

I turned toward the old abandoned
wing of the hospital, sighed, then marched like a man heading to
the gallows.

***

"Still be there," I whispered.
"Please, please, still be there."

Making my way through the building
in the darkness wasn't easy. Every shadow moved as if it were
alive, and I felt as if someone had been watching me. Taylor and I
had joked about ghosts on our excursions, and even though I never
bought into the supernatural, each nerve tingled as if some kind of
power radiated from the walls of the old hospital ward.

"It's not real," I said. Then a
small voice in the back of my mind, the voice I had often ignored
said:
Yes it is, Jon.

I made my way to the passage that
led to the sub-basement and stood outside the entrance for what
felt like an eternity, remaining silent, listening for any sound at
all. At that moment, if a pin were to have dropped, I would have
gone insane and screamed for the rest of my life. I clung to my
cellphone, imagining horrors outside of what the dim light of the
phone provided.

Not knowing is the cruelest
torture. Maybe that's why God gave us knowledge of our own
mortality. Horrifying as it is, there's comfort in the certainty of
death. It presents us with a clearly defined border—no matter what
happens, death is the limit. If we weren't aware of that limit,
terror would be infinite. Terror would be all we could
know.

I found the courage to climb
through the hole in the wall and continue on. I walked through the
winding passageway, treading lightly. Thirty-three paces later, the
walls opened up into the room that shouldn't exist.

Corner by corner, I scanned the
room, expecting to see Taylor standing somewhere in the darkness,
holding the saw, waiting to strike. But the room was just as empty
as before, and my fear subsided.

I aimed the light at the ceiling.
The hook was still there, and so was the string. I moved the light
down the string to where the saw hung. Only, the saw was gone. In
its place, hung an envelope. Scrawled on the front: FOR JON
RANDON.

I had to jump to grab the
envelope, and in the process of landing, my prosthetic hit the
ground at the wrong angle and I fell backward, cracking my head on
the hard ground. I reached back and felt the sticky wetness of
blood. When I tried to stand up, I felt dizzy. It would be a few
minutes before I could walk. I knew it was a bad idea, but I opened
the envelope, knowing what would be inside.

Taylor's Death Agreement had been
folded neatly into thirds. I slid it out of the envelope as
cautiously as an EOD tech would dismantle a bomb.

Slowly, I flattened it out on my
lap and began to read. Most appeared unchanged. Taylor's final
entry in the history section talked about the prospect of a future
promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and how he and Lorie were
discussing having a baby. They had hoped for a girl and wanted to
name her Leena.

I flipped through the pages and
found an area that had a whole section scratched out. I recognized
it as the passage that Taylor had meant to be his final
words.

He had wrecked it thoroughly, as
if angry, ripping the paper in places. The main points could still
be seen through the deep pen scratches. To sum it up: He loved his
family; he loved his friends; he wanted his children to know him
after he was gone.

Below the carnage of the destroyed
words, he had written something new, something
chilling….

***

Final words:

They will say a lot of bad things
about me, so let me address that first: It is all true. That was
easy, was it not? But if you are reading, you are probably
wondering how I got here. That
is
what you want to know, is it not?

It started with this feeling of
dread. Something was very, very, very wrong. I could not figure out
what and that made it worse. The dread dug under my skin. Then the
voice came. It began as a whispering in the back of my mind. It
kept me awake at night.

The voice said it could help me. I
tried to ignore it. I really did. But it grew louder . . . and
louder . . . AND LOUDER.

Eventually the voice overpowered
my own. I had no choice but to listen. It spoke about the shadows
and the secrets, about the good time. It named all of the evils
which hide beyond our vision, all thirty million. It shared
revelations of twisted worlds. It laughed as my feeble mind tried
to hold it all in.

The voice never stopped, and as it
spoke, the cadence sped faster . . . and faster . . . AND
FASTER.

The voice sounded like someone had
spun a record with their hand until the centrifugal force ripped it
to shreds. I could no longer hear the words but I still understood
and nodded along in agreement.

The voice said I knew a place tied
to dark history. It said a presence in the black hole of time had
been roused for another chance to exist again. It named the evil,
though I cannot pronounce it in writing. It commanded me to serve.
It told me what I must do.

I plugged an old radio into an
extension cord. '
When Johnny Comes
Marching Home,
' an old Civil War song,
blared from the speakers.

I sang along.

Get ready for the
Jubilee,

Hurrah! Hurrah!

We'll give the hero three times
three,

Hurrah! Hurrah!

The laurel wreath is ready
now.

To place upon his loyal
brow.

And we'll all feel gay
when,

Johnny comes marching
home.

As I sang, I filled the bathtub
with water. I stepped in and then I dropped the radio. The song
continued to play as an eternity of Hell flashed before my eyes.
The voice said I would not die. The voice was right: I did not die.
Living was a reward and punishment. Now I could see what the evil
had done. Somehow it had gotten into my blood. It was a black and
viscous, pulsing, crawling, as if it were alive. The voice named it
the bad blood and it said the bad blood needed to be removed. It
reminded me there is truth in every lie like there is a key to
every horror. The key to mine is the hidden saw.

I am a believer, so as a believer,
I retrieved the saw.

Then I did a man's work. A work
which was not pleasant.

Little Jon was first. The bad
blood had gotten into his little head. I used the saw. I wrapped
him up in his blanket and then went downstairs and handed him to
Lorie. I hoped he would get better once the bad blood was gone. He
did not. Lorie let out a shrill scream when she saw. She ran, but
she did not get very far. I held her down and planted my seed
inside of her while she pretended to wither in agony. I thought it
was love we shared but all I did was leave bad blood in her
abdomen. So I used the saw. Lorie did not get better.

The bad blood must have infected
ALL of my family. That is why Jon and Lorie were not getting
better. I needed to remove the bad blood from each of them. The
arms of my mother and sister were infected with the bad blood. I
used the saw.

The neck of my father pulsed with
the bad blood. I used the saw.

I beckoned for my brother. As I
suspected, the bad blood was in his leg. I used the saw.

The screams lasted a long time. I
missed them when they stopped.

I hoped my family would get
better. None of them did. Why did they not get better? I asked the
voice. The voice did not reply. Suddenly I remembered my bastard
grandfather. It was a message from the voice. Surely my family will
get better after I saw him.

But what of Jon? I asked the
voice. I wanted to speak to him, to see him, to saw him if he had
the bad blood.

The voice did not answer, so I
went back to the basement. I reached out to Jon, yet Jon did not
answer either. I knew time was running out. I knew I could not
wait. Jon has no idea how close he came to feeling the
saw.

Today is my day and I will leave
The Death Agreement for Jon to find.

Time is short. I need to collect
my grandfather. I need to discard the useless parts. I need to saw.
There is bad blood in my leg. The voice wants me to use the saw
because that is what the saw is for. Then we can all get
better.

The voice promises.

Jon, you are family, but you are
not blood. I saw the bad blood in everyone. I hope it is not in
you.

Saw everyone . . . but
you.

- J.T.

***

The next page added to Taylor's
copy of The Death Agreement was worse than the confession itself.
The top of the paper read, "Family portrait." It showed what Yang
had been unwilling to tell me.