Chloe Sullivan had developed an interest in suicide. Not her own, though a few people at The Daily Planet had of late begun to notice her withdrawing more and more. Perhaps they believed she suffered from depression. They certainly couldn't understand why a pretty young girl with perfect mental health would spend much of her free time researching those who killed themselves. Chloe didn't blame them for thinking such a thing; couldn't guarantee this 'hobby' wouldn't damage her in the long term.
She'd never told them the interest was not in the suicide itself. The method was irrelevant, she had long since decided. Whether by hanging or bullet or slit wrists (or in one gruesome case she'd found, a slit throat) it didn't really matter. She was coming more and more to the idea that the why wasn't so important either. Often this could not be determined anyway. Not everyone left a note, not every note told the whole story. 'I just can't go on like this anymore' was not terribly specific. And when the reasons were clear, they were often very different from each other.
Not every suicide interested Chloe. The specific ones she was looking had little in common on the surface… apart from having a certain individual involved in them. The man who got them to do it.
He never actually came out and told them to kill themselves as far as she was aware. She'd certainly never found anyone claiming such a thing. Yet she pursued this man (or rather, the story) on the basis that he was responsible for a massive amount of suicides. She'd seen something similar before when Bob Rickman had come to Smallville, but that was nothing like on this scale. Dozens of separate cases where the people involved mentioned a man who had reminded them of some horrible incident in their lives. None of them talked after the fact, of course. A few offered descriptions of him, too vague to be proof, but enough to fuel her own suspicions. The words 'grinning' and 'cheerful' appeared more than once.
"Not drinking your tea?"
"Just letting it cool," said Chloe, who had in fact forgotten it was there. She reckoned her host would have preferred something stronger right about now. Reckoned she might just as well, though she'd be driving back later. It was a two hour drive back to Metropolis from here, but she didn't fancy a hotel. And it wasn't like she was going to be offered a place to sleep here.
Bill was around fifty years old, thin on top, chin having seen only a casual meeting with a razor.
"So there has been a history of suicide in your family?" Chloe asked. A casual tone of voice adopted, as if discussing last nights football game or plans for the weekend. In the rare times she'd come face-to-face with someone who knew about old 'grinning' and 'cheerful' she'd found keeping an emotional distance was useful. She looked at her still full teacup. Bill, or Mr Evert's was by comparison almost empty. The man was fairly gulping the stuff down.
"Not in the immediate. Couple of cousins did. Uncle too, quite a few years back," said Bill. Chloe finally lifted her cup and took a sip. It was still too warm. She didn't understand how Bill hadn't been scalded.
"And people connected to them had committed suicide too?"
This innocent little comment finally stopped Bill pouring tea down his throat. A few seconds later and she'd probably have been responsible for a spit-take.
"Why the hell would you assume that?" he asked. Chloe just shrugged her shoulders.
"Are you saying I'm wrong?"
Bill remained silent for a moment. The expression on his face seemed to suggest he had been hit by a real head-scratcher.
"No," Bill sighed at last. "No, I can't say as you are."
Bill shook his head and laughed quietly. "What's your earliest memory?" he asked suddenly. Chloe's eyebrows came together; puzzled by the question, annoyed by the evasion. Her mother's leaving was the first thing that came to her mind. It was certainly one of her strongest early memories, but she supposed there were little bits and pieces before that.
"I don't know. There's no real order to the early ones. When I was ill and my parents looked after me, I guess."
Bill just nodded as if that were exactly the shitty sort of memory he'd expect from someone like Chloe Sullivan.
"Mine's of a grin. A twisted, horrible grin with yellow teeth and dry lips."
Chloe almost leapt out of her chair. As it was she spilled a little tea on her leg. Neither of them seemed to notice.
"You've seen him?"
"Oh yes. Never would have let you in if all I had to go on was someone else's say so. That'd be crazy."
Yup, thought Chloe, who was here entirely on other people's say so, crazy's just what that would be.
"My uncle, he looked after me quite a lot when I was young. My father had to work and my mother died soon after I was born. Not suicide, you understand. She was murdered, stabbed seventeen times on her way home one night, while we lived in Metropolis. Kind of thing most people only ever hear about on the news, and here it was happening before I was even two years old. You want to be careful out there, miss. Still, I suppose you have a boyfriend to protect you?"
Well, there was always Clark, thought Chloe. He might not qualify as a boyfriend, however much she might wish otherwise, but when it came to protection you could always rely on him. When it came to other things, like going out for dinner, not always so much. She smiled, and Bill nodded, realising this was the only response he was going to get. He remained silent for a moment, perhaps considering making himself another cup of tea. Chloe would have offered hers, but she didn't think the offer would be appreciated. It wasn't the sort of thing her father had raised her to do.
"Anyway, my uncle took me along to the supermarket one day. Had me sitting in the shopping cart. He took his attention off me for a bit, busy looking for somethin' he couldn't find I guess. That's when this guy came over."
Chloe interrupted at this point. She'd hoped to avoid asking questions during the story in case Bill clammed up, but she had to ask this one.
"You saw him in public?"
Bill smiled at the disbelief in her voice. On reflection it was not the best way to sound, but Bill didn't seem to mind.
"Yeah. A few times I've almost managed to convince myself it was a dream. It was so long ago, so surreal, and you can't really get a firm grip on reality at that age, you know? Like you said about your early memories not being in order. Out of sequence, like."
Chloe nodded, gestured for him to continue.
"He was grinning right at me. I don't remember what he was wearing, what colour his eyes were, couldn't even swear how tall he was. But I know that grin in every last detail. He didn't even say anything at first. Just started loading up the cart. Our cart, as if it were his own."
"With what?"
Bill stared at her, probably judging whether or not Chloe was going to believe her or jump out of the chair and call him a loon.
"Beef. He just kept on adding huge rumps of beef. Whistling as he did it. No-one else really noticed, or if they did they pretended they didn't. What would they have done if they had? My uncle was totally baffled when he saw the cart afterwards. Started lookin' at me funny, like I'd climbed out of the cart and done it myself."
Bill chuckled at that, though to Chloe it sounded forced.
"He put them all back, of course. No way we could have afforded all that crap. Good thing he noticed before we got to the counter, but he couldn't help but notice, you know?"
"Did your uncle see the other man?"
He gave her an incredulous look, one that was far too honest to come from any stranger raised to be polite. This one conversation had brought them closer together than Chloe had been to most people her entire life. It wouldn't last, of course, but for now there was a definite bond between the two. I must be better at this than I thought, she figured. Should have had Clark spilling his secret years ago.
"Miss, that was no man. Walked and talked like one, but I'll swear on my mother's name that was something else entirely."
"What do you think he was?" she asked, dismissing Clark from her mind. Chasing a story was the only easy way for her to accomplish such a thing.
"Don't know. Some kind of monster, but not like one I've ever read about. To answer your original question, no, my uncle didn't see him. Not then, at any rate. I'll wager he saw him at least once later on. He said something like that himself."
"What did your uncle tell you?" Chloe's mouth was open. She was breathing through it without realising.
"Not my uncle. The monster told me. He told me my uncle was going to kill himself. I forget how he said it would be done; reckon I wouldn't have understood it at the time anyway. But he killed himself, sure enough, on the anniversary of his wife's death."
Chloe reflected on the conversation as she drove back to her apartment in the early evening. They'd talked for a little while after that, but the most significant stuff was over. Most of the rest consisted of snippets, speculation, and pure guesswork. Bill had done most of the talking of course, and with all the care of a drunk man. He'd been sober the whole time as far as Chloe knew, smelling nothing on Bill's breath when they'd shaken hands and said goodbyes. Bill was pleasant enough when she told him she would call if she had anymore questions. She didn't think she would though. Best not to push things any further. Besides, she'd surely gotten everything worth hearing. Like a drunk man who'd said too much, he might not be too happy having sobered up.
The drive back took a lot out of her. The last thing she'd eaten was a quick bite in the morning. Bill had offered to fix something up but she'd declined, wanting to head back as soon as possible. By the time she got back she was feeling tired and a little deflated. Her initial excitement of obtaining more information was replaced by doubts over what this was actually achieving. She'd had to skip a college class in order to make the trip, and all she was doing was researching a story that was unprintable. On her mobile was a message from Clark asking her out to dinner, asking after her, concerned that he hadn't heard from her lately, wanting her to call him back. Too late now, she thought. It was less satisfying than she might have suspected being the one who couldn't make it for a change.
The story was isolating her, she realised. And although she'd tried to keep her distance from the dozens of cases she'd looked into, some of them got to her. Hell, all of them did at one point or another. Even the ones she came to believe had nothing to do with this strange figure at all. She was in too deep now, and this story could likely never come to light. It might be a good idea to bring Clark up to speed. This thing clearly held some terrible power, even if it was just the power of persuasion. Gives me a good excuse to see Clark anyway, she thought, realising she'd missed seeing him lately. Maybe they could schedule that dinner for tomorrow.
For tonight she made do with tossing something into the microwave. She did that a lot these days, in keeping with being a student and all. She shared the apartment with a couple of other students, but she saw little of them at the moment. A note on the fridge told her not to expect them back tonight. Probably because they're out doing something, you know, fun, said a mocking voice in her head.
Just before going to bed she scribbled down some notes in her journal. Not that she expected she was going to forget any of what she'd been told. This was the biggest news she'd gotten in a long time, after weeks of feeling like she was making no progress whatsoever. She lay awake for a long time.
"I could never kill myself," she told the walls of her room.
Just four hours after her enthused reaction to Bill's story, she was weeping.