The river carried peals of thunder from the distant heavens to the squalorous city on its rushing, rising, grey-brown tide. The warehouse loomed, skirted by runoff, and the roof reached its open metal hands to the angry sky, welcoming wrath.
Ethan's car lumbered up to its destination with the sticky sound of water peeling away from slick pavement. He hadn't looked out the window at any point during the drive, only at the GPS as the little blue line between the white triangle and the red target got shorter and shorter until they hovered over each other. He stuffed his emotions into a shoebox and locked them away, staring down that little target before he turned to face it in real life. He shut his eyes and tried to access that black and white space he could only see during his blackouts, concentrating to no avail, and then trying relax to no avail. The hairline cracks in his heart extended spindly webs further under the duct tape and thumb tacks that held him together. "I'm here, Shaun," he whispered to himself and beyond, expecting to feel his spirit in the place where he had died. "I'm here, son," he prayed, and, after a while, heard only silence.
He squeezed his eyes closed tighter and tighter with each gruelling, guilt-ridden moment that scraped by until he had no choice, opened his eyes, and embraced the solitude he had brought upon himself. Before him he saw the dismal derelict warehouse weeping in the oncoming storm, with its heavy doors open in a stiff frozen scream, a gasp, a mouth wide and crying out like the faces of all those dead victims. The wipers beat evenly on the windshield, until a turn of the key arrested their motion with one final lurch before settling into stillness.
Ethan put his collar up and ducked out into the rain, skidding over the slick pavement and into the mouth of the large grey corpse. Inside was desolate and hollow, safe for the scraps of wood and rebar that littered floor. A thick, silty layer of dampened dust displayed the same pair of shoes crossing back and forth to the same spot. Ethan followed the footsteps carefully across the smooth cement floors and rough makeshift bridges to the well in the center of the room, whose rebar lid stretched backwards and the rain from the open roof bulleted violently down into it. The brim of the water rippled gently over the edge as each new drop disturbed what otherwise would be a placid surface.
He walked to the ledge and glanced reluctantly down into the foggy grey water that lapped innocently at his feet. Distractedly, he scouted the room from its center point out the far reaches of each corner, refusing to gaze any longer into the depths of the dark, cloudy water, lest the face of his son or any of the other boys needlessly murdered arise from its depths. He shivered from the cold of the rain and the haunting feeling that the warehouse emanated, and that despite the silence that surrounded him, he didn't feel alone. He looked into the well again and considered the nine lives taken, but the reverent hollow feeling of the well didn't match the itching paranoia that clawed at the back of his neck.
"I think it's peaceful," a distant voice chimed. The light, casual tone rang to each corner of the warehouse like the voice of a god speaking from beyond.
Ethan turned to source the voice, but the echoey expanse of the room reverberated it with an unlocatable omnipresence. He scoured each corner, turning in place and thoroughly sweeping the room for any sign of movement, any indication that his fears were confirmed.
"It's like a graveyard except the bodies aren't here." The voice continued. "Apparently drowning is one of the nicer ways to go. I don't know who could say, though. They weren't very talkative when I came to pull them out."
The longer sentences allowed Ethan to triangulate the source of the voice. He stopped turning, narrowing down every shadowed cranny and cleft in the building, when he saw a crimson smear against a wooden crate. Through the obscuring unlit stage of the warehouse, Ethan distinguished a figure wore a loosened tie, a red velvet jacket, and sweet lipstick prints that covered his hands and smattered his face from the eyebrows down. He walked towards the figure with his defenses high, expecting encounter another one of the killer's traps. He approached cautiously, expecting him to speak again as he drew nearer and nearer. The red smear took a familiar form, like bait on a hook, teasing him with comfort before the inevitable danger struck.
"Ethan," Norman said lightly. "Thank God you're here."
"Holy shit, Norman." Ethan hurried towards him, neglecting his own defensiveness with a paternal protectiveness he thought he'd forgotten. "What happened to you- did the killer do this to you?"
Norman looked up slowly with lost eyes and a stained smile, and slowly drew the word "yes."
"Yeah," Ethan concurred absently. He swept the room again for the killer and found nothing. The danger was not all around him, but right in front of him as Norman slouched against the wall, blood running thickly from his eyes, his nose, his lips. The priority was clear. "We have to get you fixed up," he decided. "Can you walk?"
Norman held his frozen smile and shook his head. "You can't face him without me."
"Norman, please," he implored. "I don't want you to get caught in the collateral if you can't walk. Come on, take my hand. We're gonna get out of here," he said so kindly, that Norman's fragile mind snapped under the weight of Ethan's unconditional altruism.
Norman placed his fingers in Ethan's palm and gripped it with a vivacity that betrayed his outward appearance. He tugged forcefully on the hand that had been extended to him and Ethan fell forward onto the floor, looking into his running red eyes.
"You can't face him without me," Norman smiled vacantly, "because he's right here." He squeezed Ethan's palm and rubbed the back of his hand with his thumb, his voice dropping to a whisper, oozing with pride. "He's right here."
Ethan's eyes hardened and he instinctively pulled his hand away, the pilot light within him popped and flared. There was no hope to smother it and he felt himself distanced from his body, floating in that apathetic space above his head where the world washed to grey. "You," he said in a low, threatening voice. "You killed Shaun?"
Norman nodded shallowly, wearily, as his smile persisted frozen on his face. "You should have seen how he looked when I told him you weren't coming-"
Ethan grabbed Norman's lapels and threw him back against the wall, blood both fresh and half-dried squelched between his fingers, running over his knuckles. "If this is a joke it's a fucking sick one," he growled. "Tell me you're lying."
"Oh, Ethan," he smiled, too numb to feel his head snap back again with a crack that filled the entirety of the vacant room. No revocation followed, only a sinister, proud unwavering smile.
Ethan's eyes were foggy mirrors as his face contorted with grief. He gritted his teeth and choked on a scream. "Tell me you're lying!"
Norman only laughed a low, insidious chuckle as his head hung down, chin tucked against his chest. He looked up slowly and met Ethan's eyes, basking in the product of his work, in the gritty scream, in the pearls that formed along his waterline. "I wouldn't lie to you, not after everything I put you through. I said drive into oncoming traffic, I meant it..." his chuckle crescendoed into unhinged laughter. "And you did it! You did all of it except escape the police, but I don't blame you. Hopping along that railing must be difficult with those broken ribs." He sighed vocally and coughed a palmful of blood into his fist. He opened it to reveal the tube of trypto and looked at it lovingly.
"I'll kill you for this," Ethan quavered, repeating it to himself faster and faster and the little flame spread into a burning fire. "I'll kill you for this. I'll kill you for this. I'll kill you for this. I'll kill you for this."
Norman took a long, savoring whiff of the trypto. Glistening blue leaked out in an explosive new river of red. "Go ahead," he coaxed. "Show me what I've taught you."
Ethan stood up and paced across the open floor of the warehouse, turning away from Norman's vacant stare. A distant growl swelled overhead, the sound pouring in from the gaping ceiling along with the rain and the bursts of sporadic light. It was the sound of the world tearing apart as the fissures of lightning revealed its aching seams. He looked to the buckling sky and weighed his options. Sooner or later the repressed would come and collect its dues. He heard Norman rise to his feet and struggle to regain his balance. Ethan felt, now, more than ever, like a dead man walking. "Shaun, if you're here," he mouthed to himself. "Look away, son."
Norman stumbled through numbness and the thick fog that occupied his mind and approached Ethan slowly. "I don't remember it, you know," he tried innocently, as if the testimony would acquit him. He pulled the trypto out of his pocket and dusted the excess off his hands. "Really, they say this stuff is supposed to help." The blue coating on his palms blotted to red as he brushed them against his jacket. "But when I'm left to my own devices, I go fucking insane. It's not my fault those kids died-"
Ethan swung around and pushed Norman away with a force that he himself didn't know the full strength of. He looked at his hands and found them stained and shaking, gripping them tightly into fists as if he could hold on to the remaining scorched bits of himself and prevent himself from granting a fate to man who deserved it the most.
Norman staggered back, laughing to himself. "All you had to do was find him in time. I gave you everything you needed. Tell me it wasn't just a little fun to play detective."
Ethan lurched forward and snatched the tube of trypto, throwing it across the room. "You took everything from me!" He yelled, inkling remnants of himself charred and crumbled away as a hollow inhumanity took its place. He took steps towards him, dangerous impulsivity taking over as the flames flared fiercely and burnt him beyond recognition.
The torrents fell through the hole in the ceiling with an incomparable ferocity. The pounding of the rain silenced the shatter of the trypto. Ethan stood so close to the skylight, the murder weapon, he could feel the spray of it on his face as it ricocheted off corrugated metal.
Norman took Ethan's shirt in tight fists and held onto it imploringly. "It was the drugs," he explained lightly. Desperation for acquittal mounted rapidly. "I wasn't myself. I'm sure you can understand with your little blackouts, can't you?"
Ethan pushed him back again with vehement disgust. "Your fucking junkie habits should have taken your life nine times over," he growled. "Not my son's or anyone else's." He pushed him forward again, fighting himself and how good it felt to indulge in violence. He felt his fists tighten, readying himself to start throwing punches. Norman staggered violently and struggled to regain his balance. He put his arms out, grasping for anything to steady himself with and finding nothing. He stumbled to the side, ankles crossed, and fell elbow-first into the well. The grey cloudy water filled his eyes and nose as he followed exhaled bubbles back up to the surface. He had hardly gasped in fresh air when Ethan kicked him back under.
He sputtered the dirty water from his mouth and puffed his cheeks with air to be sure he wouldn't breathe it in. The blunt force accelerated his dizzy, disoriented, drug-induced haze as he turned and pushed his way through the well water, trying to find the surface. He reached his hands out, feeling slick slimy walls that festered with constant damp growths and followed it up to the light. His fingers graced the rebar lid before his face had surfaced. Inches remained between the cage that covered the well and the water that rose by the minute.
"Ethan," He begged, pushing his face up between the bars of the grate. The water lapped and filled his bleeding eyes, washing them clean if only briefly. "Ethan, you can't let me die here! I know, I know I made you kill before, but-" he gasped the fleeting air and spat the words out with the water. "You're not a killer!"
"I'm not a killer," Ethan sneered. "I'm not myself right now. The police have all the information they need to find you. They just have to do it in time."
His knit brow pressed upwards and tense little dots dimpled his chin. He wore lamentful, pained look as he gazed into the well, whose surface thrashed violently. He placed his red hands in his coat pockets and turned around, forcing all expression from his face as he walked slowly across the grey silty floor, out of the corpses mouth, and under the crying sky. The city lights reflected orange on the cloud ceiling. Thunder rolled gutturally from beyond.
"Ethan!" Norman screamed, resisting the rising water with less and less avail. His voice reverberated through the warehouse on the old abandoned block. The only person around to hear stood on the gravel lot with his eyes on the polluted heavens. "Ethan!" The protests grew garbled. Thunder rolled again, drowning out the beggings for mercy not to be received.
Ethan pulled his sober hands from his pockets and crouched beside his car. He folded his hands and rubbed them together absently with this face by his knees. Reaching down, he scooped a palmful of water from behind his tires and rubbed the muddy water between his hands until the red-brown mixture dripped dry, and he palmed the water over and over until nothing was left. He took the phone from his pocket and dropped it in the puddle, pressing it into the dirt with his heel, before he got in the car and pulled away.
Lightning waved for his attention and he paid it nothing more than a glance. Thunder called a bassy, cosmic wail that was heard and not listened to. His eyes watered but he felt nothing, and he coughed once in the freezing November air that filled his car. A cloud formed off his lips, quietly smoky before his face, before it dispersed into the air as quickly as it had come, leaving no trace that it was ever there to begin with.
