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Of course I checked in with Emilie, on a secret encrypted phone. I told her as much as I could, speaking in the special code we made up as kids. I let her know I’m all right, and that I’m in America investigating our family’s past, and she’s to say nothing to our parents. She’s dying to know more, but she agrees to be patient.
Emilie is like our mother and father in some ways—married, respectable on the outside, and a parent to three little boys. She has that hidden mean side, though. Her vicious streak is what I love about her, but unlike my darkness, hers is purely practical. If someone ever crosses her or anyone she cares about, she will cheerfully savage them and make them wish they’d never been born, but other than that, she’s sweet, generous, and kind.
I know her lust for vengeance isn’t normal, any more than my actions are. Now I wonder if it’s genetic.
She worries about her middle son because she’s seen him do disturbing things to his action figures. I used to dismiss it as just child’s play, but I’m not so sure anymore.
Is there a black thread of evil weaving its way through the men of our family? How far back does it stretch?
Robert holds all the answers, and I’m getting impatient.
I’m supposed to meet him at 7:00 a.m. by a boathouse next to a large lake in the middle of the park, so I arrived at 6:00 a.m. to scope the area out. I would have come earlier, but the park doesn’t open until 6:00 a.m. and I didn’t want to sneak in and risk getting busted by the cops who patrol the area.
Robert has been communicating with me through a burner phone, so I haven’t been able to get in touch with him yet. What I have done is thoroughly researched the history of my parents. The news stories are bizarre. My life feels unreal now. I grew up having been assigned a part in our family drama, and I acted according to the script. I was the dirty, perverted failure in a family of shining angels. I dutifully hated myself for it. I scourged myself with shame and self-loathing and denied myself the release I craved.
For the most part.
Now I know I was raised by liars. My parents are nothing like what they pretend to be.
But what are they like behind closed doors? An entire wing of the house is completely locked off to us. Do they kill people in there? Does my mother kill people, or was that just a one-time thing when she shot the pedophile?
What strange forces created me?
I need to know more. The newspaper stories barely scratch the surface. My mother worked as a summer temp for my father’s former business. He was a billionaire in his early thirties at the time. Nobody seemed to know his exact age. He’d appeared out of nowhere in his midtwenties and made a name for himself as a corporate raider who consumed other companies for profit. He was seen at all the hotspots with various socialites and actresses, who he never seemed to date for very long.
And then things got weird.
First, my wealthy playboy father was suspected of being responsible for my mother’s disappearance, and that of my mother’s neighbor, a woman named Heather. Then my father’s twin brother, whose name was Charlemagne, kidnapped my mother and tortured her to get revenge against my father for committing him to an asylum. It turned out that Charlemagne, who also went by the name Micah, was the one who kidnapped Heather. He murdered her.
After my mother was freed, she developed an obsession with some pedophile, stalked him and shot him to death. She was being held in a psychiatric hospital when she escaped.
My mother and father vanished from the public eye.
It all reads like an overwrought soap opera, but it’s my fucking family history. It’s what made me into the man I am.
Follow-up news stories revealed that Joshua Smith was a pseudonym, and so was Charlemagne. There were no birth records of them anywhere. So my mysterious, distant cousin Robert is my best and possibly only chance of finding out the truth.
As I walk, I hear a rustling in the underbrush and am instantly on alert. I swing toward the sound and push my way through thick branches. And then, a wonderful thing happens. A man dressed in camouflage gear leaps out at me with a knife in his right hand.
As I swing toward him, a delirious thrill rushes through my body. I’ve never been afraid of physical harm. I crave the adrenaline rush of a good fight, and the only thing I hate about fighting is that I can’t tear my opponents into little pieces when I’m done.
He makes his first mistake by rushing me. I let him get close, then drop to the ground and bring him down with a leg sweep. He’s flailing, the knife still clutched in his hand, but I’m pinning that arm with my knee, and the other knee is in his stomach.
Within a second, I’ve jammed my elbow into his throat.
I’ve always had lightning-fast reflexes. I’m several moves ahead of everyone else in every aspect of my life. It makes chess boring, and it means my fights are always over quickly. Fighting feels to me like watching someone swing their fist in my direction, in slow motion, while I impatiently wait for it to get close enough to be a threat.
“Who sent you?” I’m grinning like a maniac. God, this is fun. If only he were a little more of a challenge.
“Fuck yourself,” he wheezes and thrusts upward with his hips in an attempt to dislodge me. In the distance, I hear voices, people strolling, unaware of the life-and-death drama playing out so close to them. The man tries to cry out for help, so I slam my elbow down, crushing his larynx. His eyes widen in horror.
Does he realize he’ll never speak again, that his last words on this earth were the obscenities he just spat at me? I find that hilarious. I’d like to share the joke with him, but it seems like a waste of breath. I don’t think he’d appreciate my sense of humor.
He won’t be able to tell me anything now that I’ve shattered his voice box, so he’s of no use to me anymore. I stare down at him as I increase the pressure. His face purples, and his eyes go bloodshot. He’s moments away from death, and I wonder what’s going through his mind.
I leap to my feet, brushing myself off. The tension that’s always twisting up my insides releases its grip on me, and I feel light and free and deliriously happy. He’s passed out on the dirt, but he’ll live to see another day. Not that he deserves it. He attacked me.
I would’ve loved killing him.
