SHUDDERVILLE THREE (2 page)

“Yes, of course. No secrets.”

“Are you sure? Are you strong enough?”

“For what—the truth? Yeah. Absolutely.”

“All right. I was born in 1939,” he said, his gaze never wavering. “I graduated from Harvard in 1960. I moved to Boston and worked for a law firm. I met Tobias in 1966. He was my next-door neighbor. He invited me over for drinks one day, and the conversation took a strange turn. He told me he could grant me one wish. Anything I wanted. Anything in the world. I laughed. I thought he was joking. I responded that I thought it would be pretty cool to be immortal. I told him I never wanted to die. That was my wish. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”

She stood in stunned silence.

“And now I can’t end it. The daily grind. Life goes on. History repeats itself, over and over. I’ve outlived my entire family. I can’t take it anymore.” He gave her a pained smile. “You have no idea what a curse it is.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she said, on the verge of hysteria.

“Because I want you to see what I go through. I want you to understand why.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He glanced around. It was an overcast weekday in mid-November. There were no other hikers on the trail with them, and there’d been no other cars in the parking lot. He gave her a sobering look, and before she could stop him, he ducked under the guardrail and jumped off the edge of the precipice, dirt and gravel tumbling under his feet as the ground gave way.

“Ryan!” she screamed, leaning over the railing, the posts wobbling beneath her grip. She watched his body strike all the rocky ledges on the way down, until it bounced off a jagged boulder and landed 150 feet below.

Cassie shrieked and bolted down the mountainside, her fashionable boots landing clumsily on the narrow footpath. It seemed to take forever, but when she finally got to the bottom, she found him crumbled on a sodden bed of leaves. She’d heard the thuds and plunks of his body hitting the rocks all the way down. She’d heard his bones popping and breaking. Now she stared helplessly at the corpse and couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t find her voice. His clothes were bloody and torn. His hiking boots were missing. His head was twisted around. His fingers were dislocated. His skull was crushed and some of his brains were exposed. All her nightmares coalesced into a single sticky lump inside her throat, and the roar of blood filled her ears, drowning out all other sounds.

She screamed for help.

No one came running.

She gasped for breath and stared at his broken body. There was a piece of gravel lodged in one eye, and blood ran down his battered face and dripped off his chin onto the ground. She thought she saw him twitch—and that scared her to death. After all, he’d just told her he couldn’t die. “Ryan,” she gasped. “Ryan?”

No response.

Cassie hurried over, knelt down beside him and felt for a pulse. She gently pushed her fingers into the soft bruised flesh of his neck and couldn’t feel a thing. She rested her hand against his chest. No heartbeat. She placed her fingertips under his nostrils. No breaths.

She stood up, lightheaded.

He was dead.
Ryan was dead
.

He had killed himself right in front of her. Why? To prove what?

Bright crimson blood pooled around the body, soaking into the ground. With a horrifying shakiness deep in her bones, Cassie wiped the sticky blood off her hands and turned her back on him, unable to look anymore. She fumbled in her pocket for her phone and drew ragged breaths as she dialed 911.

“
9-1-1. What’s your emergency?
”

“We were hiking, and he… he fell off the mountain, and he...” She lost her voice. Tears blurred her vision. “I think he’s dead.”

“
Is he breathing?
”

“No.”

“
Did you check his airway?
”

“Yes.”

“
Did you check for a pulse?
”

“Yes. He’s dead,” she wailed.

Two loud snaps resounded in the misty air.

Cassie spun around.

Ryan was sitting up with his head dangling from his broken neck.

“
Ma’am?
” the operator said. “
Are you still there?
”

There was another loud snap as he twisted his left leg around in front of him. He snapped the bones into place, then reached up to straighten out his head on his neck. He did everything with calm precision, like a person made out of Lego’s. He fastened and popped the vertebral bones of his neck back into place, one at a time. Then he stared at her with his one good eye.

“
Are you there? Hello?
”

Cassie couldn’t speak. She was on the verge of throwing up. When he plucked the piece of gravel out of his eye and casually tossed it aside, she backed away shrieking and nearly toppled into the rock pool.

“Cassie, don’t panic,” he said, holding up his hands.

Don’t panic?

As soon as he opened his mouth, she could see that all of his teeth were broken. His beautiful teeth. He leaned over and spit out a jellied blob of coagulated blood.

“
Ma’am? What’s going on?
” the operator said.

“
He’s not dead,
” she screamed into the phone and hung up. It started to ring almost instantly. She opened the back compartment, ripped out the battery and threw it away.

Cassie watched with astonishment as the blood began to seep out of the ground, hundreds of viscous bloody blobs defying gravity. They rose up in the air like magic, spinning and whirling, and then spooled their way back into his open wounds, sucking back into his veins.

She couldn’t believe her eyes. His wounds were healing over. The skin was stitching itself back together. His eyeball had already regenerated inside his empty eye socket, and the exposed cranial bones of his skull began to repair themselves, eggshell fractures inching together with jigsaw precision. The sliced-open flesh of his scalp knitted itself together, and soon all his hair had grown back. And then he stood up. And there was nothing wrong with him. Absolutely nothing.

Cassie spun on her heels and ran through the dazzling yellow woods.

“Cassie, wait!” he shouted.

She jumped over a muddy stream and pushed her way through the tangled underbrush, scraping her arms and legs on gnarled vines and thorny branches. She spotted the Range Rover in the clearing, burst out of the woods, and flung herself inside the vehicle, where she locked all the doors and sat shivering in the front seat with her jagged breaths fogging all the windows.

After a moment, Ryan knocked on the glass. “Cassie?”

“Go away!”

She could hear his knuckles rapping softly on her window. “What?” she barked.

“I had to show you what it was like for me.”

She felt a sticky dampness all over her body as the horror of what just happened began to congeal inside her heart. She would never forget it. She could barely wrap her mind around it. He was dead. She had seen his ruined body. She had spent a lifetime of grieving in a matter of seconds.

And now here he was, expecting her to go on as if nothing life altering had happened. Knocking innocently on her window and asking to be let in. She rubbed a circle in the foggy window and peered out at him. He didn’t look dead anymore. His bones weren’t broken. His teeth were intact. His deep-set eyes were as beautiful as ever. She couldn’t detect any scrapes or bruises on his body. He seemed perfectly okay as he waited for her outside the Range Rover with his hands thrust in his jacket pockets, his youthful face rosy from the fresh air. He gave her a sheepish grin and said, “Let me in. Please?”

Her anxiety slowly died. She felt the emotion draining out of her like a leaky tire, until her body grew heavy and waterlogged with exhaustion.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “But I had to show you what it was like for me. I can’t die, no matter what. It’s kind of hellish.”

There was a snap of lightning, followed by a deep rumble of thunder, and the clouds released a hard driving rain that pelted the ground. Ryan raised his jacket collar and hunched his shoulders in the downpour.

She felt sorry for him. She unlocked the doors and let him in.

“I found this,” he said, cupping a broken eggshell in the palm of his hand.

She knocked it away.

“Cassie,” he chastised, slamming the door. “It’s a fucking nightmare being me. You have to understand...”

“You’re a monster!” she shrieked, startling even herself. She hadn’t expected those words to come flying out of her mouth.

“Who’s the monster?” he argued back. “You betrayed your fiancé and your best friend. Maybe
you’re
the monster? Did you ever think of that?”

This tore her up inside. She broke down and cried, but it was the kind of rigid-faced silent sobbing that was even more disturbing than out-and-out bawling.

He waited until her tears had subsided before he said, “Cassie, look. If you care about me, then I need your help. I need you to help me
not
be a monster.”

“How can I do that?”

He didn’t answer her question right away. Outside, the trees shivered and danced in the rain, and she felt an unbearable uncertainty about everything.

“It brings me nothing but pain,” he said softly. “This immortality business.”

Another lightning strike shattered the sky, and the Range Rover’s interior ignited momentarily into a demonic, unrecognizable place. He put his hand on her leg, and she flinched. He drew it away and smiled sadly.

The rain hammering against the roof of the Range Rover was oddly comforting. Gradually, she began to soften toward him. She felt sorry for him. Finally, she cupped her hand over his. His skin was warm and soft. They wove their fingers together. Forgiveness. Yes. What a relief. It happened so fast.

He moved toward her and began kissing her, and she relished the surface tension between them, luxuriating in the give and take. She surrendered to her overwhelming feelings for him. She gave into the swirl and churn of her desire.

After a while it stopped raining. They sat up. Buttoned up. Zipped up.

Cassie listened to the steady drip-drip of the wet waxy leaves. “Ryan?”

He turned to her questioningly.

“How can I help you?”

“You need to accept what I’m about to do.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. “What are you about to do?”

He looked at her with solemn eyes. “Do you know what true love is, Cassie? Honest-to-God, deep down love and respect? When you’ve endured the worst with somebody, and yet you still love them? No matter what? Despite everything? When you’ve seen them at their worst and their most vulnerable and least appealing? When you know all their moral weaknesses? And yet you still accept them for who they are and what they’ve done? Simply because you love them? Unconditionally? And because you can see who they are in their soul, and your love makes them a better person? That’s real love. That’s true love. Love is total acceptance of the other person’s foibles and failings. Love is acceptance of their decisions and choices, even if it costs you. Even if it tears you apart. So? Are you ready for that kind of commitment?”

She shivered all over as she recalled the pop and smack of his body landing on the rocks, his internal organs exploding. She remembered his broken teeth. His smashed skull. His cold ironic cruelty.

“If you love me, Cassie,” he said, “if you really loved me, then you’d accept what I’m about to do. Completely. Without question. Can you do that? Can you accept what I’m about to do utterly and completely? Warts and all? Or do you want me to drive you to the airport? We can part ways. No hurt feelings.”

“No,” she said, almost a whisper. “I accept.”

“Are you sure?”

She gave a reluctant nod. “I accept.”

“Everything? Without question?”

“Yes.”

He smiled warmly at her. He got out of the vehicle and fetched a pair of Chucks and some dry clothes out of the back and quickly changed into the same basic outfit—jeans, a T-shirt and a jacket. Then the clouds parted and the sun came out, brilliant rays of light shooting down from the sky. Ryan smiled at her, keyed the ignition and stepped on the gas.

They splashed through puddle-filled potholes, while the windshield wipers made a steady whisk-whisk sound. They took the two-lane road through the forested hills, where the yellow and orange leaves glistened in the sun.

*

They headed south to a town where a man named Hector Mendoza lived. Ryan wouldn’t tell Cassie anything about it. She had made a pact with herself to accept whatever he did from now on, to follow him blindly, even though she was dying to ask. She wanted to prove that she was capable of the ultimate act of love, and so she kept her mouth shut. She would accept him 100%.

Hector Mendoza’s blocky brick apartment building was located on the east side of a sprawling suburb of Philadelphia, beyond a parking lot cratered with potholes. Inside the harshly lit foyer, Ryan leaned against the intercom button until a gruff male voice said, “
The fuck do you want?
”

“Hector? My name’s Ryan. Tobias Mandelbaum sent me.”

There was a slight delay before the door buzzer released the lock, and Cassie followed Ryan up a narrow flight of stairs toward the second-story landing, where they had a magnificent view of the weedy courtyard with its sand-filled planters and battered plastic chairs. Ryan knocked on 2–B and the door swung open.

“Yeah?” Two gleaming, drug-addled eyes glowered at them from the gloom of the apartment.

“Tobias said you might be able to help me out with my… ‘wish’ problem.”

Hector stepped out into the hallway. He was tall and ripped and thick in the neck, and he could’ve snapped Ryan in half like a breadstick. His face was dense and meaty beneath his pockmarked, caramel-colored skin. “Mandelbaum, huh?”

Ryan nodded.

Hector gave him a disgusted look before motioning them inside. “Get in.” He glanced around to make sure no one had followed them there, and then he shut the door behind them.

The place smelled like a gym locker. There was a foam mattress on the floor, incongruous floral curtains on the windows, careworn butterfly chairs and cheap Indian-print throw pillows. An overturned hubcap doubled as an ashtray, and the apartment reeked of cigarettes, stale coffee and pot.