Waking Lazarus Read Free Page B

closely, was a faint clinking made by the jars bouncing together inside the canner. So many times as a child he had resisted sneaking into the kitchen and unsealing the canner’s lid. In his childhood mind, releasing the lid would surely cause an explosion of shattering glass and boiling water. Even reflecting on it now, years later, he still wished he had opened the canner once, just once, to see the jars inside detonate in a poetic ballet of splintered glass.
    His father had converted the basement of their home into a root cellar, where they stored jar after jar of canned treasures from the garden. And next to all those jars sat burlap sacks filled with potatoes. Late at night, after his dad passed out, he often liked to sneak down into the basement root cellar, breathe in the smell of fresh dirt and burlap.
    Mice liked the root cellar, too. They couldn’t do much to the canned vegetables, but often the mice chewed through the burlap to get to the potatoes. Sometimes the Hunter himself chewed on the burlap. He wasn’t sure why, but chewing burlap was comforting. Right .
    Other times he just liked to catch the mice and choke them. Their whitish-gray forms wriggled, squealed in his hands as the life drained from their bodies and into his own. Sometimes the mice would even bite, though he didn’t mind this. He savored the sensation, embracing the pain and watching the blood trickle from his fingers. And really, the pain of the biting mice was nothing in comparison to the pain his father inflicted with belts. Or cigarettes. A shovel, once. He had learned to stay away from his father when the late afternoon rolled around, when the beer or liquor took hold. Father couldn’t control his behavior, which was part of why Mother—
    Never mind that. Burlap and dirt. Comforting scents.
    The Hunter opened the door to his current home, similar in so many ways to the childhood home that still haunted his thoughts. The house had a deep root cellar, stocked with a fresh supply of burlap bags. He liked to store things in root cellars, too.
    His Quarry had been very loud, squirming and screaming after the chloroform wore off. But now, a few hours later, the Quarry didn’t move much. The fun part was ending.
    Soon the toy would be broken.
    When he was young, yes, the Hunter enjoyed killing the mice. But when he matured—when he became —the thrill of killing wore off. Now he really didn’t like killing.
    Killing was his least favorite part.

3
    HIDING
    The man who called himself Ron Gress awoke, as he did every morning, in a sweat-stained panic. He always spent the first few minutes of each day sitting in the recliner where he slept, gulping deep breaths and trying to slow the jackhammering of his heart.
    Keep it secret, keep it safe . He said it in his mind, over and over, a kind of mantra that calmed his body, stilled his nerves. Keep it secret, keep it safe .
    Ron looked at the table next to his recliner. The arms of the old-fashioned alarm clock were nearly touching as they pointed down: 6:27. 6:28, maybe. He liked having the old clock with hands; it was gentler, more trustworthy than its digital cousins. Not that he really needed an alarm clock—he managed to wake within five minutes of 6:30 A.M. every morning without one—but it was still comforting to have the clock there, just the same.
    A control center for an elaborate alarm system sat below the clock. He pressed a button on the system, changing the crimson LED from ‘‘Status: Armed’’ to ‘‘Status: Disarmed’’ with a short beep. He sat in his chair a few more minutes, remaining absolutely still, holding his breath as he listened for noises in the house. A squeak. A scrape. Anything indicating an intruder. Of course, he knew there couldn’t be any intruders inside his home, especially with the alarm system. But it was comforting to listen, just the same.
    He stood and began his usual morning ritual. First, he walked through every room in the house, opening