"Where'd you get that?" I managed to say.
"Saving up cigarette coupons—where do you think I got it? I stole it from one of the rest stops we made before we picked you up. Arnold and me painted it and changed the plates—that's where he got the bright idea about painting the trailer. You gonna be all right there for a minute?"
"But your family—"
"—is going to be real glad to see us. I hope you're hungry, because you can bet that Mom's going to make you eat something. No guest ever leaves our home unfed. You stand warned." He rolled the motorcycle up to the entrance and leaned it against the wall. I noticed for the first time that he had some other things up there, as well; a duffel bag and several shoulder bags which held, I assumed, the computers.
As he came back to help me to my feet, I said: "Don't you want to know?"
"I already saw the address, I don't need to know anything more. It's about forty-five from the truck stop. Be there in a jiffy, you'll see."
He led me toward the opened door of the trailer.
The smell hit me hard; it was much more than human stink—although the odor of old piss and shit was more than enough on its own; the smell of the bodies inside was overpowering. It was this thick, moist, heavy, spoiled, meaty, swollen reek that assumed invisible physical shape within and without; the kind of smell that immediately sinks down through every layer of skin and takes about a month to wash off and whose coating in my nostrils would probably never completely go away.
The strange thing is, I gagged but did not throw up.
Christopher helped me up into the doorway. "I thought you might like to meet my former host. You know—witness what may or may not be his final words and all that."
"Do I have to?"
"It would mean a lot to me, Mark, if I didn't have to face him alone this last time."
I looked into his eyes and saw a frightened little boy still hiding back there. "Sure thing, buddy. Sure thing."
We moved into the trailer. I was amazed at how quickly the stink went away. I realize now that the smell didn't go anywhere, it was just that my olfactory senses had had enough, tuned out, and stopped sending signals to my brain. The stink was still there, my nose was simply pretending it wasn't.
The lights in here still worked—which is why Christopher had left the bus running, I now realized—so everything was easily visible.
The interior of the Airstream had been stripped bare of everything—seats, built-in appliances, tables, even the toilet and carpeting was gone. The floor was bare metal, covered in dust and torn shreds of paper and stray sections of electrical wire, as well as tire tracks and blood.
The two bodies—one of them naked—were laid out next to each other at the far end of the trailer where the bomb had once been. They were both face-down, for which I was grateful; despite what these two had been a part of, I knew that their eyes would be frozen in final accusation: How could you be a part of this?
Okay, Dad; if you were in my position, what would you do?
Whatever it took, that's what I'd do. Whatever it took to end this as soon as possible, that's what I'd do. I love you, Mark.
Love you too, Dad.
A duffel bag sat near the door, beside which was large tool box; Christopher knelt down to open the lid. I lost my balance a little, caught myself on the door frame, and did not collapse. The maps fell out of my pocket and hit the floor at an angle, skittering a few feet to stop at the foot of a large cardboard box that, according to its markings, once held a new water heater.
Christopher pulled something from the tool box and set it to the side, then closed the lid, locked it with a padlock, and tossed the key outside into the darkness.
Something moved inside the box, made a muffled sound, then kicked out at the edge, causing the box to move a few more inches in our direction.
"I'm surprised he's got that much energy left," said Christopher, walking over to the box and moving it aside. The back had been cut out so as to set flush against the wall.
Christopher threw the box down, then kicked it over by the bodies.
The man chained up against the far wall looked like a skeleton covered in fish-belly skin. He was pale, emaciated, and covered from the waist down in the semi-dried remains of his own filth. He too was naked, except for the heavy layers of bandage covering the stump of his right leg, which had been removed just above the knee. Both his right and left arms were manacled, and none-too-gently, judging from the open sores encircling his wrists. The chains on his arms were short—less than three feet—and were soldered into opposite walls. The chain attached to the manacle around his left ankle was much longer—easily eight feet—and was soldered into place just below the other left-side chain. His mouth was stuffed with a small rubber ball held in place with a thick rubber band that encircled his head, which had been scalped; sections of skull were visible here and there through the ragged, bloody, chewed-looking tissue that remained. Darkened trails of dried blood ran straight down over his face, pooling around the top edge of the blinking electronic collar around his neck, then dribbling down onto his chest. His body was covered in gashes, cuts, and burns, all of them in various stages of healing. Directly behind him hung an IV packet from which snaked a clear, thin plastic tube whose other end disappeared up his nose and was held in place there by medical tape. I assumed the IV was some kind of liquid nutrient used to keep him alive. He glowed with sweat, making his pale flesh seem all the more ghostly in the harsh light. His face was drawn and hollow, covered in ten-day-old beard speckled with gray.
But his eyes were the worst.
Have you ever noticed, whenever you see pictures of serial killers, rapists, mass-murderers, that all of them seem to have the same dead eyes, forever frozen in a cool, detached, hundred-yard stare, as if they've given up trying to make you understand the logic behind their actions and so are content in themselves by staring at their goal you'll never be worthy enough to gaze upon? Once, in college, a friend of mine was doing a photograph collage for an art project. She took photos of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, and about a dozen others whose names I don't remember and don't want to, and she cut out their eyes, interchanging them with each other—Dahmer got Gacy's, Gacy got Manson's, Manson got Bundy's, and so on. When she was done we both stood back and looked at the results.
You couldn't tell she'd done a thing to any of them.
They all had the exact same eyes—
—You are not worthy enough to understand—
—just like Grendel's, that stared out dispassionately and patiently from within dark circles and above puffy, discolored bags. He did not blink as Christopher approached him, checked the IV, then removed the ball and rubber band and gently pulled the tube from his nose and stomach.
"Don't swallow, don't swallow," he said to Grendel in a soothing voice. The tube came out and flopped on the floor, snaking around and spitting out clear liquid. Christopher grabbed the free end of the tube and clamped it closed, then stood up and walked over to the chain and manacle holding Grendel's right arm in place.
Not once during all of this did Grendel look at Christopher.
Instead, he stared unblinking at my face.
Unlike the "distributor" at the rest stop, Grendel's gaze nailed my feet to the floor. Until this moment, I had never really embraced the idea of evil being something pure, something compelling, seductive, charismatic, and attractive.