Death of the Author
by Sandrine Shaw
She was in love with a monster once.
Does it make it better or worse that she didn't know he was a monster then? Better, Ryan would say. How could she have known that the man she married, in whose arms she slept, whose child she bore, had a whole life she didn't know about, a life where he wrote a story in blood and death? Claire hates it. Hates that she never noticed, hates her ignorance, her blindness.
Joe writes his terrible tale, and she's not the heroine. She's not even the victim. The best she can hope for is the love interest, caught between the hero and the villain, not quite worth her own narrative. She can resent Joe for everything else, but Claire has no one but herself to blame for this one.
It's why she can't sit back and wait for Ryan and the FBI to bring Joey safely back to her. She's done being sidelined. Joe may be the one writing this story, but she's not going to make it easy for him to confine her to the role he sought out for her. She used to tell her students that with every work of fiction, there's a point when the author has to let go of the characters, when they stop being his.
This is that point, Claire vows, and she makes a plan.
Charlie finds her, like she knew he would. (You have to trust me. Because I'm your follower.)
"Come with me," he says, "I'll take you to Joey."
He detains her FBI detail long enough to get her in a car and put a safe distance between them.
"That's what you said the last time," she tells him, a token protest, pointless now that she's already followed him, willingly, into the unknown. She says it anyway, sending reproachful looks his way as he steers the car onto the highway.
"And I would have taken you to him, if the FBI hadn't intervened. You can trust me, Claire." He turns and fixes his gaze on her, taking his eyes off the road for long enough to make her uncomfortable.
There's something about his sincerity that's bothering her. She's been living with lies and half-truths for years now. Even after Joe (especially after Joe), no one was ever really honest with her. Not the FBI and the D.A. and Ryan who kept things from her to protect her, not the neighbors whispering behind her back, not her old friends with their excuses why they couldn't make time to see her. And here's Charlie, sociopathic member of her crazy ex-husband's little cult, and as far as she can tell, he has never lied to her so far, not even when it would have served him better to tell a half-truth rather than show her video footage of her bedroom. It's an odd sort of behavior, and if she were a psychologist, she'd try to figure out if his devotion to the truth was pathological. As it is, the only thing she can do is try to play on it.
"Tell me about the people you've killed," she says, and watches his jaw set.
He doesn't reply for a long moment, long enough for Claire to think that maybe he's not going to. When he starts talking, she almost asks him to stop. She doesn't, because even though she really does not want to hear it, she knows that she needs to.
Somewhere along the way, Charlie takes her cell phone and throws it out of the car. Later, when they stop at a motel, he cuts the landline with a pocket knife and locks the door, pocketing the key as she watches warily.
"Wow. I guess the whole trust business doesn't really run both ways."
For a moment, he looks almost guilty. "You tried to run before. You need me to get to Joey, but I don't think can trust you not to call your friends in the FBI and have them follow us so they can find Joe. I'm sorry."
She shrugs. "It's okay, I get it. I promise I'm not going to make things difficult. I just want to have my son back." Sitting down on the bed, her fingers start nervously playing with the ratty old comforter. "So where is it that we're going?"
"You know I can't tell you that."
She almost wishes he wouldn't sound so damn apologetic, like he's honestly sorry that he cannot give her the information. It edges her frustration on rather than calming her down. "Who would I tell? You made sure I won't be able to contact the FBI." When he doesn't respond, she tries another strategy. "At least tell me how long until we get there. Tomorrow? A week? Next month? I'm not trying to work out the coordinates, Charlie, I just want some sort of timeframe."
"Five days," he finally says. "You'll be with Joey on Tuesday. I promise."
Five days. She can work with that.
"Thank you," she says, calmer now, and offers him a smile.
He sleeps in the chair while Claire takes the bed. She isn't sure if he sleeps at all. When she comes out of the bathroom and shuts off the lights, he's working on his laptop, but she can feel his eyes on her when she's slipping under the covers.
"Good night," she says, and her voice sounds loud and foreign in the silent darkness of the room.
She can hear his fingers still on the keyboard. "Good night. Try to get some sleep. We're leaving early tomorrow."
"Okay," she tells him, but she doesn't fall asleep for a long time, unable to stop her brain from running on excitement and nerves and fear. I'll have Joey back soon, she thinks, and Joe will be there. And: Five days. I have five days.
Charlie has switched the laptop off, but she knows he's still awake, doesn't need to look at him to feel him watching her in the dark. She knows it's not the first time; she's seen the evidence recorded on video. It's different though, knowing that she's been watched and actually being aware that she is being watched right this moment. She wonders if it's different for Charlie too, now that she knows. Now that there's no camera and computer screen between them.
She shivers and burrows deeper into the covers, and it has nothing to do with the temperature in the room.
At some point in the night, despite the adrenaline pumping through her veins and the weight of Charlie's stare on her, she must have fallen asleep, because when she opens her eyes, the sun is streaming in through the window and Charlie is not in his chair anymore.
There's a disposable cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich on the table, and she can hear the shower through the closed bathroom door. At some point, he must have gone out to fetch breakfast, and Claire isn't sure if she should take it as a sign of trust or if he's just familiar enough with her habits to know that once she's out, she's a heavy sleeper.
When she takes a tentative sip from the coffee, it doesn't surprise her in the least to find that it's exactly how she likes it.
They're headed north-west, which is pretty much what Claire expected. They don't talk much on the road, not after yesterday's exploration of Charlie's killings. He switches the radio on and chooses a station that plays the kind of laidback music Claire likes. It could be a coincidence, but she doubts it. It freaks her out a little that he knows her so well. That he's found it all out without her consent or her assistance. He probably knows more about her than most of her boyfriends did. She wouldn't be surprised if he knows things about her that even Joe doesn't. Unless, of course, he reported it all right back to Joe – and wow, isn't that a disturbing thought?
"What is it?" he asks, tearing her from her thoughts abruptly back into the here and now, and she realizes that she's been staring at him.
Her mouth twitches, half-smile, half-grimace. "What? You've watched me for years, but when I look at you for five minutes, you freak out?" She manages to make it sound teasing even though she doesn't really think it's funny. There's nothing about this entire mess that's even remotely funny.
Somehow, she must manage to convey a light-heartedness she doesn't feel, because he's smiling in return. "Sorry. I didn't mean— You can watch me if you want to."
His tone is awkward and uncertain and honest, and she catches herself thinking that it's sweet until she reminds herself that this is a man who kills people because he wants them dead. Those were the words he used yesterday, casually, like someone else would say they ate a steak because they were hungry. I wanted them dead, he said, as if that was a reason. If she killed everyone who she wanted dead—
The thought stops her short, because she realizes that this is actually the point: normal people, herself included, don't habitually want people dead. They might dislike them, hate them even, but in general they don't want them to die, not truly.
She never really wanted anyone dead, before.
Maybe the step from wanting someone dead to killing them isn't actually that big after all.
It's late when they stop for the night, and the hotel is old and shabby, dark corners and stuffy furniture. The bathroom would make an idea setting for a remake of Psycho, making Claire's shower a less than pleasant experience. She cuts it short, wraps a towel around herself and escapes back into the bedroom, where Charlie is once again seated on the room's lone chair, his laptop balanced on his knees.
He looks up when she comes in, and he doesn't look away while she's rummaging in her bag, pulling out an oversized t-shirt she'd bought in a supermarket earlier today. (Charlie had been steadfastly at her side, not leaving her alone with anyone else, afraid she'd slip them a note that said, Help me, I'm being kidnapped, call the FBI. The saleswoman probably thought he was an attentive boyfriend.)
"Can you turn away?" she asks. "I need to change, and there's no way I'm going back into the creepy bathroom."
"Of course," he says, and she hears him stand and walk over to the window.
She pulls the towel off and dries herself, turning around to pick up the shirt and a pair of panties and putting them on, her back towards Charlie. She doesn't feel the exact moment his eyes are on her again, but nevertheless it doesn't surprise her when she turns towards him when she's dressed and finds him looking at her. She'd expected it, counted on it, and yet it sends a hot flush of self-consciousness to her cheeks.
He immediately looks away when she catches his gaze. "I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry." He grows more agitated by the second, enough anger directed at himself that Claire is afraid that he'll start hitting his head against walls again.
She stops him before he can, a hand on his arm meant to calm him down, but he jerks away as if she'd struck him.
"Hey, it's okay. You really shouldn't have looked, but it's alright." It feels as if she's talking down a scared, cornered animal, and she makes her voice sound as soothing as she can. Waits until he's visibly calmed down before she goes for the jugular. "I'm not going to tell Joe."
He freezes, emotions flashing across his features, panic first and then, briefly, a cold kind of anger that makes her back away because it seems to be focused at her this time and she's afraid that he's figured her out. If he did, what would he do? Joe wants her back with him unharmed, but Charlie kills people he wants dead and from everything she's seen, impulse control doesn't seem to be his forte, especially when it comes to her. For one short moment, she's honestly, genuinely scared of him. But the moment passes and his anger gives way to impassivity.
Everything about his attitude is cool and businesslike when he tells her, "It won't be happening again."
Claire fears that she may have pushed things too far, too fast. Trouble is, she's going to have to push them a lot further and a lot faster now. (Four days, she thinks, panicking, because it doesn't seem even nearly enough.)
It rains the next morning when they leave, and it continues raining all day, drumming steadily against the car windows, and the road out front blurs as water runs down the glass.
All of Claire's attempts to make conversation are thwarted by Charlie's silences, like a hard, impenetrable wall she keeps running against over and over again until she gives up. She curls up tightly against the passenger door, leans her head against the window and closes her eyes. The glass is cold and wet from condensation, making her shiver, but in time it warms up to her touch and she dozes off.
It's Charlie's hand on her shoulder that shakes her awake with a gentleness she thought she'd lost last night. It's dark outside, and through the rain-coated window she can make out the neon sign of a hotel.
"Come on. I got us a room."
"Please tell me it's better than the one yesterday. I know you're trying to lay low, but I don't think I can take another night at a dump like that, worrying if the owner might come in at night and cut our throats."
For the first time since she's met him, Charlie is smiling. It's sharp and not entirely pleasant, but she likes it better than the stoic mask he's worn all day. "You don't have to worry about that. I can protect you against anyone who comes after you."
Can you? she thinks, aware that the biggest threat she'll be facing won't come from knife-wielding strangers in a hotel but a man she once swore to have and to hold until death did them part. Will you?
"I'll hold you to that," she quips, trying her best to make it sound glib and playful and not at all like she means it.
She kisses him that night.
It's nothing she's planned, not like this, not right then, but they've grabbed some food in the diner across the road and they ran back to their motel room through the rain. Both of them are drenched to the skin, wet clothes and hair sticky and uncomfortably cold, and Claire disappears into the surprisingly clean and light bathroom and strips down to her underwear before she notices that there are no towels anywhere to be seen.
"Charlie," she calls through the closed door. "Can you reach me a towel?"
There's shuffling outside and then a knock on the door, and when she pulls it open a little and peeks through, Charlie is right there, still as wet as he was when they came inside, holding out a fluffy blue towel for her. She reaches out to take it and their hands brush, wet and cool skin that should feel clammy and uncomfortable and yet is oddly electrifying to the touch. He isn't letting go, and he looks at her with an expression that's at the same time hungry and lost, like he wants and knows he shouldn't, like it's breaking him apart inside.
This is it, she thinks, and she darts forward to press her lips against his – a rain-wet, cool touch that lasts just long enough until she feels his mouth warming up under hers and breaks away. The panic in her eyes is real and she breathes hard, her pulse beating in her ears.
"I— We can't," she gasps breathlessly.
Before she pulls the door shut, she catches a glimpse of his wide-eyed, shell-shocked face. She turns the key in the lock, wincing at how jarring it sounds, echoing through the silence. Unmoving, she stays where she is, her ear pressed against the door, hearing nothing from outside for an endless moment. She imagines him standing there, motionless and overwhelmed, until at long last, there's the sound of footfalls creaking on old floorboards as he walks away.
Her legs start to tremble and she sinks bonelessly to the floor, only the door at her back holding her upright. It's like the walls start closing in on her and she can't breathe anymore. She doesn't know how long she sits there, cold and drenched and shivering. Time slows down and the world around her blurs, and when she finally begins to take in her surroundings again, she realizes that she's been crying.
I can do this, she reminds herself, wiping angrily at her face. Three days.
Whatever breakdown she's going to have, she has to hold it off.
When she goes back into the bedroom later, showered and dry and only a little red-eyed, the room is dark and Charlie is curled up in the chair, asleep – or at least pretending to be.
It's not awkward in the morning. Claire isn't sure if that's a good thing or not.
They say "good morning" and Charlie gets them coffee and a couple of warm bagels. There's a strange kind of domesticity to the situation, but at the same time it's as if nothing had happened last night at all. If it weren't for the way his eyes linger on her when she's not looking at him, she'd believe that she might have imagined it altogether.
They've stopped for gas and food when a police patrol recognizes them. Recognizes her, really. There must be an APB out on her, and she bets that by now every cop in the country will have her picture.
She can spot the exact moment when the man, a flappy guy in his fifties, realizes who she is. She panics, thinks of something she could tell him, some sort of sign she could give him, and she's still contemplating it when she spots Charlie walk up behind him, reach out and snap his neck. It happens fast enough that the cop doesn't even have time to turn, fast enough that she doesn't have time to scream before Charlie grabs her arm and pulls her back to the car.
"Come on, let's go," he says, and there is a split second when she thinks that she needs to get away as fast and far as she can, that it was crazy to think that she could ever manipulate this man into helping her. She wants to run, but his grip on her is firm and unrelenting, and after witnessing the ease with which he snapped a man's neck right before her eyes, she knows she has no hopes of fighting him off.
They're back on the road not five minutes later and across the border within the hour.
Claire can't stop shaking. She wants to scream at him, but she has no words left.
Her anger breaks through the numbness at last when they've stopped for the night. She stalks out of the car and to the room before he comes to fetch her, throwing the door shut with a bang behind her and throwing her bag on the bed.
Charlie follows a minute or two later, his eyes flickering between where she's standing and the nightstand, and it takes her a moment too long for her to realize that she's been alone with a functional phone for the first time in four days and she's made no use of it. Charlie walks over and takes the receiver, hitting redial she assumes. Then, satisfied, he rips the cord from the wall.
The blatant display of suspicion is the final straw that makes her explode. "Fuck you!" She crosses the distance between them and slaps him hard, watching his head snap aside from the force of the blow. It feels good, and she does it again when he doesn't move to stop her or defend himself. "I came with you willingly. I didn't call the FBI, and I wouldn't have told the cop today a thing. You could have trusted me, but instead you had to kill him."
He stumbles backwards when she shoves him. "Did you enjoy it? Ending someone's life, maybe ruining a family, does it make you feel powerful? Does it turn you on? Is that it? You want to kill me too, but you can't, because you have to do what Joe says?"
She's about to give him another shove when his fingers close around her wrists, holding her in place with a grip that's punishingly firm. She struggles, and he pushes her back until she hits the wall, and the bones of her wrists ache and strain against his hold.
"Stop it. I don't want to hurt you."
"Liar," she hisses, trying to kick him. He pulls her hands up and captures both her arms in one hand, the other closing around her throat, tightening just enough that the implied threat makes her still. Unlike that first day, he doesn't choke her, just holds her in place.
His face is too close to hers, his breath warm on her skin. Frustration is making the vein at the side of his neck pulse, and there's an angry red handprint on his cheek left by her slaps.
"I don't enjoy it. Killing. I don't feel powerful or satisfied when I kill someone. I don't feel anything at all. I don't kill because it gives me pleasure, I kill because I need the person to disappear. That cop today recognized you. He would have called it in, and the place would have been swarming with Feds in less than an hour. I had to stop that from happening, so I had to kill him, that's all."
He makes it sound so reasonable, so utterly matter-of-fact, like he wasn't talking about taking a life.
"There would have been another way," she says, despairing.
"None that would have bought us enough time to make it across the border. He had to die. I'm sorry that it upset you, but in the same situation, I would do the same thing again."
"How can you just say that?" She frowns at him, trying to find something on his face that helps her figure him out, but all she sees is an emotionless mask betraying nothing but the barest hint of strain. Almost without meaning to, she's stopped struggling against him, and his grip on her neck has loosened. "When you said that you went to Joe to feel your life, you really meant it, didn't you? You don't feel anything."
"I feel something," he grates out, with an insistence bordering on anger, and before she has time to figure out what he's saying, he surges forward and clashes his mouth against hers.
It's different than before, miles away from the awkward, clumsy kiss he planted on her in the bunker, and nothing like her own tame attempt to snare him the other night. There's an intensity to the kiss she didn't expect and which leaves her breathless and overwhelmed. Paradoxically, it makes her at the same time want to jerk away from him at once and loose herself in the moment, forget what she's doing and why.
But she can't. She has a script to follow and only two days to see it through. She lets herself kiss him back with equal fervor, and if some of the desperation she puts into the kiss is real, well, then all the better because it makes her seem more genuine. The hand that had an iron grip on her throat minutes ago is now traveling down the side of her body, and she allows him to linger for a moment before slipping her arms from his hold and pushing him away, making him stumble.
"We can't do this," she tells him, sounding every bit as wrecked as she feels inside. "If you know Joe at all, you know how possessive he gets. He'll kill us both for even thinking about it."
"Joe wouldn't kill you," Charlie argues, but he doesn't sound entirely convinced, and Claire knows she has to push it, because this may be her last chance.
"Maybe not yet. But I doubt that I'm meant to live through the final chapter of this bizarre novel he's writing. He'll never allow me to be free of him."
Her words have the conviction of truth behind them. She may have been playing Charlie, but at least in this, there's no falsehood, no need for pretense. She's absolutely sure that at the end, Joe intends for her to die. If it's at his hand or someone else's, possibly even Ryan's in some twisted sort of kill-her-or-something-worse-will-happen scenario, remains to be seen; she doesn't pretend that she understands what kind of showdown Joe has envisioned for his final chapter, but it would surprise her if there'd be even a single survivor when the book is closed.
Perhaps Charlie understands that as well, because he doesn't object to her words and watches her with a stricken look as she pulls away and locks herself in the bathroom.
In the dark, they lie in silence.
They're both awake, her on the bed, him on the floor near the foot end because there is no chair and she couldn't quite bring herself to offer to share the too narrow mattress. She almost regrets it. If he was beside her, she could at least see him, rather than just hearing his unsteady breathing that tells her that he's finding as little sleep as she does.
This is their last night on the road. Tomorrow, she'll be with Joe. (She tries to focus on the fact that she'll be reunited with Joey, but not even the comfort of that thought can drown out the panic when she thinks about facing Joe in freedom for the first time since she knew what he was. Just thinking about it makes her want to scream and scream and never ever stop.)
"Charlie?" she whispers.
There's no reaction, and at first she thinks that maybe she was wrong and he's asleep after all, but then he sits up and looks at her. "What is it?"
It's dark in the room, but the curtains are open and the illuminations from the neon sign outside are bright enough that she can see his features and the shadows the curtains paint on his face. He looks tired, and not for the first time, she wonders if he's been sleeping at all those past couple of days.
She gnaws on her lip until she tastes blood.
"If it weren't for Joe—"
She leaves the thought unfinished. She doesn't say, we could be together. She doesn't tell Charlie, I need Joe gone. And she certainly doesn't voice the request: Kill him (for me). But she knows she might as well have said the words, that they're loud enough and easy enough to understand despite remaining unspoken.
The expression on Charlie's face, conflicted and despairing, tells her that he hears them too, and it gives her the oddest feeling to know that she's doing this, she's really doing this. She wasn't sure if she could see it through, and the fact that she has, that this sort of manipulation isn't beyond her, that she can ask someone to kill for her... it makes her feel powerful and depraved at the same time.
Joe, she thinks, would appreciate the irony that while he's been out there, re-imagining Poe, it seems that she has taken it upon herself to rewrite Macbeth. (Can she, though, even if she succeeds? Lady Macbeth went crazy over her guilt and killed herself, she recalls. But Claire has a son she needs to care for, so she'll just have to deal with it and live.)
Charlie is quiet the next morning. Quieter than usual, and he's never been a talkative person to begin with. It leaves Claire alone with the thoughts in her head for the final part of the right, the fear and the anxiety and the anticipation and the guilt.
When they approach a mansion that looks like it could be the country residence of some rich business mogul or Hollywood star, enormous and classy and remote enough to grant privacy, Claire shivers and turns towards Charlie, who's steering the car slowly down the winding road.
"I'm scared," she admits, and even as she says the words she cringes because it sounds like something she's rehearsed, part of her ploy to get him to do what she wants. But it's not, and it's suddenly important to her that he understands that. "I really am scared. I didn't think it would be this bad, but now—"
He turns to face her, and his expression is calm and impassive. "You don't have to be. I already told you, I will protect you."
The first thing she sees when she steps out of the car is Joey, running towards her. She grabs him and hugs him tightly and clings to him, sobbing as she presses her face into his hair. Her baby is all right, and for the moment, that's all that counts.
But then she sees Joe step towards them, a smile on his face and his arms stretched wide open in greeting, and Claire's blood freezes in her veins. Behind him, she spots Denise, Emma, whatever her name may be, and she wants nothing more than to run up towards that woman and strangle her for daring to take away her boy.
"Claire, my love," Joe says. "Welcome home."
She recoils when he folds her into an embrace and kisses her cheek in the cruel parody of a civilized greeting, but he acts like he didn't notice. From the corner of her eye, she catches Charlie watching them.
They put her and Joey into a room together. It's a place she'd consider comfortable, beautiful even, if the presence of Joe and his creepy cult hadn't tainted it. The door is locked from the outside, and it's too high up to try and climb out of the window even if the grounds weren't guarded tightly – if she were alone, she might be inclined to risk it, but she has Joey to consider, and she knows that Joe is counting on this.
"I'm fine, mom," Joey tells her for what's at least the tenth time since she came here, sounding like he's embarrassed by her constant fretting, but she can't help herself. He seems fine, physically unscathed and in good spirits, but after the video Joe had sent to her, Claire is unable to shake off a lingering wariness over what her son has witnessed and was told in the time he spent with those people. Already he seems confused about who the good guys and the bad guys are, and Claire can't exactly blame him. The past two weeks have been an ordeal during which she's seen the lines being blurred too many times to be able to tell the difference herself.
The sound of the lock opening startles her, making her freeze because she doesn't know who to expect – Joe or one of his sycophants, and she isn't sure which one is worse. Sensing her distress, Joey clings to her, and she holds on tightly.
When Charlie slips through the door, there's a flash of relief, sharp and treacherous because in her heart she knows that Charlie is nowhere near harmless. He's every bit as deadly as every other person in this house.
"We've got to get out of here," are the first words out of his mouth, his tone calm despite the urgency the statement relays.
Joey peeks out from where he's hiding behind Claire, and when she follows the line of his gaze, her breath catches and all the questions die on her lips.
"You have blood on your shirt," Joey says with all the innocence and candor only a child can possess.
Charlie looks up towards her, his eyes meeting hers for a second before he takes a step towards them and bends down to Joey, quietly reassuring him. "Don't worry. I just slipped with a knife. I'm fine, and you'll be fine too, and your mom. You just have to be really quiet when we leave."
Joey nods earnestly, and Claire brushes her hand through his hair.
"Will they come after us?" she asks softly.
Charlie stands and looks at her. "By the time they find the body, we'll be long gone. I'll take us off the grid for good. No one will find us."
Something in the way he's watching her, sharp and appraising, tells her that he's wondering if she'll make a break for it. Throw him to the wolves, grab Joey and run, back to Ryan, back to the FBI and protective custody. She thought about it. The way she played her cards, there were only two ways this part of the story could have ended, and she's spent the past week thinking about what she'd do afterwards.
Joe may be dead, but there are plenty of people keen on finishing his work for him, and Ryan and the FBI have failed at protecting her and her son so far. Trusting them to keep her safe now would be foolish, and she can't do this on her own.
Pulling Joey towards her, she looks Charlie in the eye. "Come on, then. Let's go."
His hand on her arm stops her.
"Are you sure?" he asks, because he's a smart guy who knows her a little too well. He probably knows what she's been doing, has maybe been aware of it the whole time. It makes her wonder why he played along, if he was testing her or if he honestly thought it was worth it even if she was using him. Not that it matters, in the end.
"Can you keep Joey and me safe? Will you?" She waits for him to nod and holds his gaze steadily. "Then yes, I'm sure."
Her voice is firm and confident.
She was in love with a monster once. She can do it again. Only this time, she'll walk into it with her eyes open. She knows what Charlie is, knows that he's killed, knows that he will probably kill again (has killed for her, too, and that's at the same time oddly comforting and profoundly chilling), and if she stays with him, she's not closing her eyes from it.
Joe isn't controlling the narrative anymore. This is her story now.
End.