Every Dead Thing

“You’re a little man, Bird. Do you have any idea how many little people I’ve killed? Trailer park trash in penny-ass towns from here to Detroit. Cracker bitches who spent their lives watching Oprah and fucking like dogs. Addicts. Drunks. Haven’t you ever hated those people, Bird, the ones you know are worthless, the ones who will never amount to anything, will never do anything, will never contribute anything? Have you ever thought that you might be one of them? I showed them how worthless they were, Bird. I showed them how little they mattered. I showed your wife and your daughter how little they mattered.”

“And Byron?” I asked. “Was he one of the little people, or did you turn him into one of them?” I wanted to keep him talking, maybe work my way toward my gun. As soon as he stopped, he would try to kill both Rachel and me. But more than that, I wanted to know why, as if there could ever be a why that would explain all of this.

“Byron,” said Woolrich. He smiled slightly. “I needed to buy myself some time. When I cut up the girl at Park Rise, everyone believed the worst of him and he ran, all the way back to Baton Rouge. I visited him, Bird. I tested the ketamine on him and then I just kept giving it to him. He tried to run once, but I found him. In the end, I find them all.”

“You warned him that the feds were coming, didn’t you? You sacrificed your own men to ensure that he would lash out at them, to ensure that he died before he could start raving to them. Did you warn Adelaide Modine too, after you sniffed her out? Did you tell her I was coming after her? Did you make her run?”

Woolrich didn’t answer. Instead, he ran the blunt edge of the scalpel down Rachel’s arm. “Have you ever wondered how skin so thin…can hold so much blood in?” He turned the scalpel and ran the blade across her scapula, from the right shoulder to the space between her breasts. Rachel did not move. Her eyes remained open, but something glittered and a tear trickled from the corner of her left eye and lost itself in the roots of her hair. Blood flowed from the wound, running along the nape of her neck and pooling at her chin before it fell on her face, drawing red lines along her features.

“Look, Bird,” he said. “I think the blood is going to her head.”

His head tilted. “And then I drew you in. There’s a circularity to this which you should appreciate, Bird. After you die, everybody is going to know about me. Then I’ll be gone-they won’t find me, Bird, I know every trick in the book-and I’ll start again.”

He smiled slightly.

“You don’t look very appreciative,” he said. “After all, Bird, I gave you a gift when I killed your family. If they had lived, they’d have left you and you would have become just another drunk. In a sense, I kept the family together. I chose them because of you, Bird. You befriended me in New York, you paraded them in front of me, and I took them.”

“Marsyas,” I said quietly.

Woolrich glanced at Rachel. “She’s a smart lady, Bird. Just your type. Just like Susan. And soon she’ll be just another of your dead lovers, except this time you won’t have long to grieve over her.”

His hand flicked the scalpel back and forth, tearing fine lines across Rachel’s arm. I don’t think he even realized what he was doing, or the manner in which he was anticipating the acts to come.

“I don’t believe in the next world, Bird. It’s just a void. This is Hell, Bird, and we are in it. All the pain, all the hurt, all the misery you could ever imagine, you can find it here. It’s a culture of death, the only religion worth following. The world is my altar, Bird.

“But I don’t think you’ll ever understand. In the end, the only time a man really understands the reality of death, of the final pain, is at the moment of his own. It’s the flaw in my work, but somehow, it makes it more human. Look upon it as my conceit.” He turned the scalpel in his hand, dying sunlight and blood mingling on the blade. “She was right all along, Bird. Now it’s time for you to learn. You’re about to receive, and become, a lesson in mortality.

“I’m going to recreate the Pietà again, Bird, but this time with you and your lady friend. Can’t you see it? The most famous representation of grief and death in the history of the world, a potent symbol of self-sacrifice for the greater good of humanity, of hope, of resurrection, and you’re going to be a part of it. Except this is the anti-resurrection we’re creating, darkness made flesh.”

He moved forward again, his eyes terrifyingly bright.

“You’re not going to come back from the dead, Bird, and the only sins you’re dying for are your own.”