The Crack

The shape is one step back at the edge of the light. It has not come in. It has not gone. He stands in the cabin with the axe in his hand and waits for the cut it wants from him. It does not come at him. It moves — one step, sideways, along the far wall, where the room goes on past the lamp into the black.

There is a second door there.

He had not seen it. He comes around the table, the axe still in his hand, and the shape is not in the way. It has opened the door. A lower light comes from the room behind it, a smaller lamp, and he steps into the doorway.

The person is on the floor.

He reads it the way he read the other one, keeping his eyes off the face. Arms bound behind. Legs tied. Laid on the side, the shoulders up off the boards, the head turned toward the door. The killer has not finished this one. It has kept one of the staff alive and put it in the frame, where the cut will happen, where he can look at it.

The sound comes out of it. Low, thin, a noise that does not get to be a word. Then it uses his name — the first part of it, “Lu,” the rest not making it out of the throat.

He does not answer it.

It is alive. Alive is worse. The dead had been arranged to be read. This one is working still, and it sees him, and he stands in the doorway, in the lower light, the axe across his hand.

He sees it now. The week was pressure. It found the crack in him and it pressed there, one camp quiet after another, the sound going out of the trees in the middle of the night. The crack is the lever. The thing in the dark has been finding out how hard to push.

He tries to hate it.

He does. The hate does not hold, because under it, quiet and private, there is the other thing.

He is the one it chose. It went through the strong, the careful, the brave, and it kept him, the one who wants to be watched. Some part of him glows at that. The horror of it turns in his chest into a distinction: of everyone dead in this camp, it kept him to perform.

He catches it. He catches himself in the lower lamp — the jaw, the eyes flicking to the treeline. His hand re-grips the axe.

The light on this one, the floor, the bound thing that called his name — it is a stage, and he is on it, and the shape past the lamp is the only audience left in the camp.

The fear is still in him. He can feel it in his hands at the worn tape. But there is something climbing over it now, and he lets it climb, and he does not name it. His breath is still shallow. His hand is steady on the axe. His eyes come off the treeline, back to the bound one on the floor, and he looks at it the way he would look at a thing he has to hold still.

The killer wants the first act.

It has had the whole camp. This one is for him. To stay the centre of it, to stay on the stage, alive, to be the one it keeps watching, he will have to be the one who does the thing. That is the first act.

He stands in the doorway, in the lower light, the axe across his hand. The bound one on the floor sees him and makes the sound again, and the shape is one step back, waiting.

The need has been his as long as he can remember, and now something in the dark has found it and is feeding it, and he cannot tell if he is being broken or being seen.