The Devil and the Details

I wake up.

I shower and dress.

I set about learning the parameters of the dilapidated old house that I currently call home.

I look at the floorboards. I mark where the boards meet the rugs, where the legs of the furniture rest. I take measurements between objects. I memorize the space.

Now that I've gotten used to the more-or-less silent conditions of the house, I've begun to attune my ear to all of the little noises that happen every few moments. The house is constantly settling in on itself; the floorboards creak, the windows rattle, and the pipes moan. Mice burrow through the walls, digging secret tunnels.

Old houses like this have creeped me out ever since I was a little boy. My great-uncle Sergei had one like this, a little smaller, back in the old country. There was a room that once belonged to his daughter, my aunt. She had rows upon rows of dolls with cracked porcelain faces and hand-made dresses, fringed with yellowed and tattered lace. I dreamed about those dolls for years.

I mark the precise locations of every box, trunk, and piece of furniture in my bedroom. I set about doing the same in every other room of the house.

The others all look at me strangely while I do this. EV strikes up conversation, asking me what I think is going on. She has no idea that our doom could be circling closer and closer, picking up the tiny clues and bits of evidence to determine my location. I have no doubt that anyone with whom I was known to have repeated contact has been interrogated, and if necessary, neutralized.

I think I covered my tracks. I think. Of course, in my business, I know that all you have to do is leave one thing out of place, one tiny fiber, one speck of blood, one phone bill or credit card receipt, one fingerprint, and it will all eventually unravel and they will find you.

EV smiles at me and asks about the work I've done with the police. I give her a pat, charming answer, and she grins, finding the whole process intriguing and mysterious.

I'd hate to see her face reduced to hamburger and splinters with stray teeth.

My mind is reeling, because I can't quite explain what happened in the attic. I've never before been faced with a situation that couldn't be explained through forensic evidence and an understanding of the basest impulses in human nature. Lust, greed, envy. It usually boiled down to one or all of those three things. People died, and I was hired to either find out how, or to cover it up, depending on who was offering what.

I use an ultraviolet marker to document where everything rests. Eventually, EV loses interest in what I'm doing and wanders off on her own.

Marcus glances up when I come near him, but doesn't say anything. He has the look of someone who's never seen anything violent, never had to wonder whether or not a person smiled or cringed when they pulled someone's fingernails off.

Joseph warns me not to touch any of his recording equipment, and I give him a curt, polite nod. I know he would beg and cry and offer all sorts of sexual gratification to a man who had him tied to a chair, hands taped together, toes mashed into unrecognizable mounds of purple flesh. I've seen his type before, and they break the hardest when the hammer comes crashing down.

I wonder if I would beg, or plead, or get angry and spit, or offer to suck a guy's dick to make the pain stop. In my family, we were taught that pride was a sin, but to lose it was an even bigger one.

I don't want them to find me.

I'm hiding in a haunted house in the middle of nowhere, trying to piece together the details, hoping to God that they don't do what I'm doing, that they don't have a bloodhound as good as me on my tracks.

Of course, at least I can explain what they would do. In this house, I'm beginning to wonder if my sanctuary might be more dangerous than what I'm hiding from.