“You’re talking almost twenty years ago,” Rick reminded me. “Come on, this is crazy. You’re telling me Bernard was killing people for that long and never got caught, never fucked up? Bernard? Yeah, fucking maybe. Even if he was capable of doing some of this stuff, he couldn’t get out of his own way half the time.”
“He’s got a point.” Donald put the folder aside. “Bernard was hardly criminal mastermind material.”
“He didn’t even have his shit together enough to be psycho material,” Rick said. “None of this adds up. None of it.”
“It does once you realize that Bernard was more than a criminal, more than a psychopath.” They looked at me in unison. “He was evil.”
“Here we go again with this shit,” Rick sighed.
“You’ve changed your tune since the talk we had at Brannigan’s,” I said. “You were convinced Bernard did this.”
“Yeah, the murder here in town. Bernard had problems, and maybe we didn’t have any idea how bad they really were. Maybe he couldn’t take it anymore and one day he snapped and killed this chick. I can believe that, Alan, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to believe he was some fucking serial killer.” Rick stomped around the room like a spoiled child then stopped suddenly and glared at me as if another thought had just then occurred to him. “And I’m sure as hell not ready to believe all this boogieman horseshit. Bernard was our friend, but he was a huge fucking loser, and we all know it. He couldn’t do anything right. He—”
“Remember Julie Henderson?”
His face turned pale as a corpse in winter. “Yeah, sure, I remember Julie—Brian’s sister. What about her?”
I killed my drink and let the glass rest in my lap. “I went to go see her today.”
By the time I was finished telling them all I had learned from Julie, Rick had stopped his incessant pacing and taken up position in the recliner. Donald remained on the couch next to me throughout, listening quietly, and now stared down into his empty glass with his usual look of isolated sorrow. I let the silence hold us a while as memories of crucifixes dangling in windows flickered through my mind.
After a while, Donald slowly rose from the couch. “Well,” he said softly, “who needs another drink?”
I handed him my glass and he headed for the kitchen, moving as if sleepwalking. Rick hadn’t moved since I finished talking, and was looking everywhere but at me.
Neither of us said a word until Donald returned with my drink. He remained standing. It was his turn to pace. “You believe her, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
The recliner squeaked as Rick pushed himself to his feet. “OK, look, maybe you didn’t hear, but Julie Henderson has some serious problems herself.”
I nodded. “And now we know why.”
“But you’re—you’re putting all your faith in some broad that’s out of her fucking mind, Alan.” Rick looked like he might burst into millions of tiny pieces at any moment. “The bitch is crazy. She’s been in and out of nuthouses for years. Ask anybody in town, they’ll tell you. Julie Henderson’s a loon. She had some kind of breakdown or something and—”
“Have you heard a word I just said?” I stood up. We were all standing now, three grown men trying to figure out what in the hell to do with ourselves. I looked to Donald, but he was staring into space as if in a trance.
“Yeah, I heard you,” Rick growled, “I just don’t believe any of this shit.”
“Why not?”
He moved closer to me in a manner that would have felt threatening had he not been so obviously nervous. “You’re awful quick to sell a lifelong friend down the river, aren’t you? You believe what some girl with mental problems says about ghosts and goblins and demons and whatever the hell else she was babbling about without even stopping to think that it’s probably all in her demented head. She’s nuts, Alan, you understand? She’s fucking insane.”
“You knew, didn’t you.” There was no doubt I had made a statement, not asked a question.
A spasm-smile wrestled with his face. “What?”
“You knew.”
“What are you, serious?”
“He told you he raped Julie Henderson, didn’t he? You two talked about it, fantasized about it like typical hormone-crazed teenage boys, maybe even plotted and planned out how you’d do it. But you never expected him to actually go through with it, and when he did and he told you, then it was too late to—”
“You know what, Alan? Fuck you.”
I took a sip from my drink then placed it on the coffee table. “No, Rick. Fuck you.”
He was on me so quickly I didn’t have time to react. Before I knew it he had grabbed hold of my shirt and pushed me clear across the room. As he slammed me against the wall I grabbed his forearms and tried to loosen his grip, but there was no chance. I could have hit him, but I didn’t want to escalate it into anything more violent than it already was. He slammed me a second time and I heard Donald screaming for him to stop as my head snapped back and slapped the wall. Pain fired from behind my eyes and blossomed across my face. “Who the fuck are you to accuse me? I don’t have to take this shit!”
As my vision cleared I saw Donald trying to push himself between us. Rick let go of me then, pushed his way by Donald and headed for the door.
I regained my balance and stepped away from the wall.
“Are you all right?” Donald looked into my eyes then spun back toward Rick. “Are you out of your mind? What the hell is the matter with you?”
Rick stood near the door looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to leave or stay. Finally he turned back toward us, his anger apparently softened. “How did… How did you know he told me?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I guessed.”
He dropped his head like a reprimanded schoolboy. “Bernard said a lot of things, you guys know that. He lied all the time—exaggerated about everything—made himself out to be more than he was. I never believed half the shit he said and neither did anybody else.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. “He told me he made it with Julie Henderson. He told me that he did it but I didn’t believe him. Why would I? Why would I believe him? I thought it was just more Bernard bullshit. I blew it off, never thought about it again, you see what I’m saying?”
“This is real, Rick,” I told him. “It’s all real.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, the last word catching in his throat. “I swear to Christ, I didn’t know.”
I had never seen such emotion from him, and wasn’t sure what to do.
“Of course you didn’t,” Donald said for me. “Alan only meant—”
“I shouldn’t have…” Rick reached out as if to touch me, but he was too far away. “Look, man, I… I’m sorry. Are you OK?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“This’ll destroy us if we let it.”
“Well then we won’t let it,” Donald said quickly. “We’ll get through this. We’ll stick together and we’ll get through this.”
“I’m as scared as you guys are, but we can’t deny what’s happening here.”
Rick shook his head. “But Jesus Christ, dude, demons?”
“It’s just like Julie said. You can’t see evil, but you know it’s there. Maybe I’m the only one who had visions, but we all had the nightmare. We all experienced it. We all felt it. You gonna stand there and tell me we’re all crazy, Rick?” I grabbed my drink and powered it down in one swig. “I’m telling you right now, there’ll be more bodies, more death, and more darkness. Bernard may be gone, but the evil he used isn’t.”