The Sopaths (3 page)

Abner could appreciate that. “I’ll try to warn the family the sopath is in. But they won’t believe until it’s too late.”

The man nodded, experienced in this. “But you can notify us. That may help. We try to track them.”

The police departed after their crew removed the body. Abner sat for a long time, trying to come to grips with it. He had indeed killed a child again, this time deliberately. This time his own little daughter. The police had evidently forgiven him, but how could he forgive himself?

Yet the policeman had been correct: if he had nerved himself to do it sooner, he would not now be numb with grief for his wife and son. Could he forgive himself for that, either?

CHAPTER 2

The rest of the day passed in a daze of grief, remorse, confusion, and bleak nothingness. Abner must have eaten, then slept. What else was there to do? His world had been destroyed in a single day. He knew he was in shock, but functioning. Though he wasn’t sure how long that would continue.

He tried to call members of his wider family, to let them know what had happened and perhaps garner some moral support. But he was unable to get through to any of them. He knew why: somehow they had already gotten the word, and put a block on his number. They did not want to talk to him. They regarded him as a murderer who had gotten away with it. Or they knew about the sopath, and wanted no part of it.

Actually, he understood. He suspected that he would have reacted similarly had one of them brutally killed their own child. He would not have been open to an explanation about a total lack of conscience. How could a little child be judged that way? He might not have openly condemned them, because family was family, but he would have avoided them, yes, like the plague.

He was on his own.

The night was interminable, alone on the double bed. He dreamed of Zelda, knowing she was dead. He relived his awful murder of Olive. Only three years old, yet a merciless killer. Had he but known...

Yet he had known, or should have known. Olive had been a little bitch from the time she had opportunity. At first they had dismissed it as the natural selfishness of a baby. In retrospect he saw that they had been in denial about her real nature. They hadn’t wanted to see her as she was, a creature without a conscience or the capacity to develop one. A child whose initial utter selfishness would never be ameliorated by time or nurturing.

They had paid for that denial with the wipeout of the family.

In the morning Abner had come to a decision: he would never again be in denial about anything. He would exert rational control and see all things as clearly as he possibly could. Had he done that before, he could have saved his family. Now, belatedly, he would do it, in honor of that lost family. Otherwise their dreadful passing would be for nothing.

He got up, shaved, dressed, had some breakfast, and moved through the normal morning routine, unable to focus on any larger objective. He was on automatic pilot, and that was fine. It allowed him to function, for the time being.

The phone rang.

He picked it up. “Hello.” He sounded normal to his own ear, to his surprise.

“Mr. Slate? I am Sylvia, of Pariah.”

A damned solicitation for a charity! He was in no mood. “Sorry, no.” He started to hang up.

“Please, Mr. Slate. I really need to talk to you. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“But—” But now she had hung up.

He sighed. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do. He would listen to her spiel, gently tell her no, and be rid of her. He had problems of his own.

The doorbell rang in exactly fifteen minutes. He answered, dully. There was one small silver lining: here was a person who didn’t know, so it was a regular interaction, providing the illusion of normalcy.

She was a woman of about his own age, thirty, smartly garbed, undistinguished. She didn’t wait on him. “Mr. Slate, I must talk to you about sopaths.”

So much for normalcy. She knew. “Come in,” he said numbly.

She took a seat in the living room and started talking without social preamble. “You have lost your family. The only reason you survive is because you killed the sopath. Others, even your own relatives, don’t understand. You have become a social outcast. You are in shock. You don’t know what you’ll do tomorrow, let alone the future. You need help.”

Obviously someone had told her. “You have help?” he asked somewhat dryly.

“I do, Mr. Slate. I represent Pariah. This is an organization of survivors of sopath infestation. We are all pariahs. We help each other in any and all ways necessary, to enable us to survive and eventually prosper.”

Suddenly he was interested. “You suffered—similarly?”

“Let me clarify that at Pariah we have a policy of Don’t Ask. That is, don’t ask the details of a particular person’s experience with the sopath. They are universally ugly. But we can tell our own cases, if we choose, and receive a sympathetic and empathetic hearing. So I will tell you mine. It was last year. I had three children, and the youngest was a boy I thought was just being difficult, as they can be at that age. The terrible twos, you know. Then he started killing his older siblings. When he put rat poison in my husband’s drink—” She shook herself. “My eyes were finally opened. I did what I had to do, though it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. I filled the bathtub and held the devil child under until he drowned. Then I vomited, cleaned up, and turned myself in.”

“And the police brushed you off,” Abner said.

“Exactly. My family cut me off. The police have known about the sopath menace for some time, but kept a lid on it so that the public won’t panic. I think this policy is a disaster, as it guarantees that families will continue to suffer as mine did.” She looked at him. “As yours did.”

“You do understand,” he agreed.

He wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, but then he was in her arms, sobbing while she comforted him. There was nothing romantic or sexual about it, and they weren’t even friends. It was simply a necessary release.

“We all have to let go sometime,” she said as they separated. “The multiple horrors overwhelm us.”

“Thank you,” he said as he wiped his face. It was a small blessing in the inferno of hell to have an understanding person. “You were saying?”

She picked up as if there had been no interruption. “So I formed a local chapter of Pariah, which is a quiet global organization without official status or many paid personnel, doing what needs to be done on a voluntary basis. Social organizations and the police inform us of new cases, and we step in. We seek no publicity. We have no pride; we merely do what is necessary. It does seem to give our ruined lives meaning. We will help you if you want it, and expect you to contribute what you can. The need is constant and growing, unfortunately.”

“You are a kind of family,” Abner said.

“We are,” she agreed. “We are widely diverse, with a few things in common apart from the dreadful one. We are of reproductive age, we are suffering, and we understand. That last is what binds us together.” She gave him a straight look. “Mr. Slate, no one at Pariah will condemn you or avoid you. We all have similar sorrow, shame, or criminality, whatever one chooses to call it. All you have to do is join. There is no formal membership, but we do have meetings on a daily basis, just pariahs getting together, helping with new cases. I will give you my address so that you can come in when you are ready. There is no obligation.”

“I’m ready now,” Abner said with sudden decision. This was exactly what he needed.

She hesitated. “I would take you in now to show you our literature and facilities, and have you meet other members, but I have another call to make. It is the nature of these things that they should not wait long. The—the suicide rate is high. I would have come for you yesterday, but there were children to pick up. We are especially sensitive about newly orphaned children.”

“I understand. I’ll come with you.”

She nodded. “As you wish. My car is outside. You can follow in yours.”

He did. She led him to another section of town. There was the smoking ruin of a house that had just burned down. The sooty hulk of the car showed where the garage had been. The fire truck was just departing.

Sylvia parked, and Abner parked behind her. They went to the house. There was a woman on her knees beside the ashes, her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. No one was comforting her. No neighbors had gathered. That gave Abner the hint already: there had been a sopath in the house.

“Mrs. Falcon,” Sylvia said.

The wretched woman didn’t seem to hear her, unsurprisingly.

“Bunty Falcon,” Sylvia repeated more loudly. “I am Sylvia. I represent Pariah.”

The woman noticed her. She tried to get to her feet, but fell on the ground, too distraught to make it alone. Her hair and bathrobe were coated with ashes, her face streaked with grime and tears. Abner felt guilty for noticing the flash of her well-formed legs as the robe parted.

“I’ll help.” Abner stepped in and put his hands on the woman’s shoulders, carefully heaving her to her feet. It was in part his way of masking his embarrassment for his peek, though he hoped it had gone unnoticed. How could he be tuning in on legs, in the throes of his own grief?

She had caught her balance; he could tell by the shifting of her stance. He tried to let her go, but she turned into him, flung her arms around his body, and sobbed into his shoulder. Pretty much as he had done with Sylvia.

He stood there, holding her, his awareness of her slender torso compounding his guilt. She needed honest comfort, not masculine appreciation. He looked over her shoulder at Sylvia.

Sylvia nodded. “Let it be,” she murmured. “Whatever is needed.”

He had become a member of Pariah. He discovered that this eased his own pain to a degree. He was helping another person, a woman who had evidently lost not only her family, but her home, her car, clothing, everything. She was worse off than he was.

After a time, the woman calmed and drew back a little, without stepping clear of his embrace. “I—I apologize. I am normally a very rational, self-possessed person. I was just so overwhelmed.” Her face, under the dirt and dark, frazzled hair, was becoming, like a work of art amidst ruins.

“No need,” he said. “I understand. I just lost my own family similarly. I am suffering too.”

She essayed a faint smile. “Bunty.”

“Abner. Maybe you had better come home with me. For now. Until the insurance—your home—”

She made no pretense of hesitation. She knew her situation was dire. “Thank you. I appreciate the kindness of a stranger.”

He looked questioningly at Sylvia. “That is exactly how it works,” she said. “Come to my house tomorrow, both of you. Here is my card.” She pressed it into his hand.

Thus simply he was driving Bunty to his house. It seemed to be the proper thing to do. She was a total stranger, but he understood what she was suffering.

“Before you take me in, there’s something I need to tell you,” she said as she rode beside him.

“The policy is not to inquire,” he said. “It’s a painfully private matter.”

“But I have to tell you. I murdered my son.”

“I murdered my daughter. She was a sopath.”

“We had heard of them, of sopaths, but were in denial. But when the house burned—he had locked the doors and windows—we never expected anything like that! It was sheer chance that I had gotten up early to use the toilet. I smelled the smoke and ran downstairs, not realizing how serious it was. I picked up a chair and bashed out a window and leaped through before the smoke got me. I ran around the house, somehow hoping my husband and daughter had escaped before me, but they hadn’t. Then I saw him there, still holding the gasoline can, watching the fire and chortling.”

“They have no conscience,” he reminded her. “They can kill from anger when disciplined.”

“I was so enraged that I came up behind him, picked him up, and heaved him headfirst through the window into the burning house. He must have been stunned by the impact, because he never even screamed. He died in the fire. Now you know. I am a murderer. If you prefer to take me to the police station--”

“They won’t listen,” he said. “My sopath daughter came after me with a kitchen knife. I held her by her feet and swung her head into a dresser. I must have broken her neck. She had already killed my wife and son.”

“You do understand,” she said, shuddering.

“Oh, yes, God help me.”

“God help us both,” she agreed.

They continued in silence.

At the house he showed her briefly around. “It’s not fancy, and not cleaned up for visitors. It—it happened just yesterday. I haven’t paid attention.”

“Could I—if you don’t mind—clean up a bit?”

“Of course! Use the upstairs bathroom. It’s got soap and towels. You’ll need clothing—you’re about my wife’s size. Just rummage for what you need. She won’t be needing it anymore.” Then, overcome by sudden grief, he turned away.

“I truly understand. Thank you.”

Abner gave himself over to the emotion, knowing it was best to experience it rather than try to suppress it. Before long, wrung out, he recovered equilibrium. He sat in the living room, feeling almost like a guest in his own home, listening to the sound of the shower followed by the hair dryer and the squeak of the bedroom closet door. A third time he felt guilt for imagining her nude. He had no business thinking of her that way. Not now in his grief. Not ever.

In due course Bunty reappeared. Abner took a breath.

She was in one of Zelda’s outfits, clean, with her damp hair spread out about her shoulders in a dusky cloud. She more than fit the clothing, which she must have cinched here and let out there to accommodate her figure. She was beautiful.

“All right?” she inquired gently.

Abner felt himself blushing. “Was I staring? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be concerned. I have been known to have that effect on men. I didn’t mean to overdo it.”

“Thank you for understanding,” he said weakly.

“Let me explain that I am the type of person who maintains control during an emergency, then collapses once whatever needs to be done is done. I will collapse again tonight. Fair warning.”

“Warning taken,” he said. “I’m the same way. I will give you whatever distance you need. Just treat my house as yours. It needs the attention of a woman.”

“Now let’s see what needs doing.” In a moment she was exploring the kitchen, especially the cupboards and refrigerator. “You are low on supplies.”

“Zelda was going to grocery shop today.” He was suddenly overwhelmed again, and had to sit down. “Sorry. Right now I seem to lack your ability to stiff it out. But I recover quickly.”

“Of course. We had better shop now.”

“I don’t really know what to get. Zelda always handled it.”