Infinite(26)

I squeezed the handle of the knife even tighter in my hand. I retraced my steps and went back to the bedroom doorway. This room, so normal and familiar, now terrified me. I had to fight away memories again. Karly and I had made love in that bed hundreds of times, but it had been weeks since our bodies had joined together. First I’d been busy at work, distant, hassled, the way I usually was. And then, after her confession about Scotty, we’d avoided each other for days. I didn’t know the last time she’d been naked in my arms. I hated that I couldn’t remember. I hated that Scotty had been the last one to hold her, not me.

Inside the bedroom, a closed door led to our small closet, and a closed door led to our small bathroom. He had to be behind one of those doors. I thought about calling out to him, but I simply listened, trying to hear someone else breathing above the wild pounding of my own heart.

I approached the bathroom door slowly, expecting it to burst open as he charged me. I waited outside, listening again, hearing nothing. Finally, with the knife poised, I threw the door open and leaped inside, jabbing the blade forward as I did. He wasn’t there, but the shower curtain was stretched across the length of the tub. The floor was wet. Steam clouded the mirror and made the air in the tiny space close and damp. I pictured him, naked in the shower, dripping as he got out and ran to the front of the house. He could feel me coming.

I went to the tub and tensed as I threw the curtain back.

He wasn’t there. The bathroom was empty.

Which left one more hiding place.

I went back to the bedroom and stood outside the closet door. It was an old, heavy wooden door with a metal knob. The closet itself was small, not much bigger than a couple of phone booths. Karly was always complaining that she had no room for her clothes.

There was no point in pretending anymore.

“I know you’re in there,” I whispered.

This time, unlike in the park, he didn’t answer me. It made me think for a moment that I was wrong. That I was crazy. Then I slowly closed my hand around the doorknob, and with the knife ready in my other hand, I pulled hard.

The door didn’t open.

I yanked again, but as I put pressure on it, someone on the other side responded with an equal pressure in reverse. I couldn’t move the door. It stayed closed. He was every bit as strong as I was. In fact, if I thought about it, he was exactly as strong as I was. We were in equilibrium, with the door fixed like a wall between us. But he was inside, and I was outside. He had nowhere to go, no way to escape. I didn’t understand the point of this game.

And then I did.

Standing outside the closet door, trying frantically to get it open, I heard a voice from inside. It wasn’t my voice. This was a stranger’s calm voice, slightly muffled and staticky. A woman’s voice on a speakerphone.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

A long moment of silence passed, and the dispatcher spoke again.

“911. Hello? What’s your emergency?”

This time, the man in the closet replied, drawing out his words as if it were an echo in the canyon. I knew that voice. It was my voice. “Well, hello . . .”

He was speaking to me as much as to her.

“Sir? Hello? What’s your emergency?”

“My name is Dylan Moran. You need to send the police here right away.”

He rattled off the address—my address—and said, “You need to hurry.”

“Sir? Can you tell me what the problem is?”

“I’ve been a bad boy,” he told the operator, drawing out the adjective with a smirk in his voice that was meant for me. “I need to be stopped.”

“Sir? Are you in danger? Is it someone with you who’s in danger?”

“Everyone near me is in danger. I kill people. I murder them. I stab them. I drown them.”

He put an emphasis on that last one, and I felt myself ready to be sick. I pulled at the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. I wanted to shout, to say something, but my throat felt paralyzed with shock. I couldn’t get out the words.

“Send the police,” he said again.

“The police are on their way. Sir, are you alone? Is anyone with you?”

“No one’s with me,” he said, with an irony for me to savor. “I’m alone. Just me. Dylan Moran.”

“Stay right there, sir. The police are two minutes out.”

“I need to be punished,” he said intensely.

“Sir? Stay on the line, sir.”

“My evil is limitless. My evil is . . . infinite.”

He used the word.

Eve’s word.

Infinite.

I was still pulling on the closet door, but all of a sudden, the counterpressure disappeared. The door flew open in my hand, and I lost my balance, stumbling backward. I could still hear the dispatcher speaking on the phone.

“Sir? Sir, are you there? Sir?”

I charged the closet, but no one was inside now. I yanked the chain on the bulb overhead and squinted at the bright light. The closet was empty, nothing but Karly’s and my clothes hanging on hooks and a cell phone on the floor, still broadcasting the voice of the 911 dispatcher.

“Sir? Sir? Stay right there. The police are on their way.”

I was alone, and my doppelg?nger was gone. I was the only one here.

Dylan Moran, who’d just confessed to murder.