Joshua didn’t move, didn’t accept the knife, which his father brought back to him now.
His father spoke softly. “Take the knife, Joshua. This is very important.”
“But sir, it’s…I’m scared.”
Kenneth shook and rattled his chains, trying to pull himself free from the wall. But he couldn’t do it. Joshua thought he wouldn’t ever be able to do it.
“I know, Son. Don’t be frightened. Just take the knife.”
At last his father gently positioned the knife in Joshua’s hand, as if it were a precious gift, and that’s what Joshua thought of in that moment-a gift, and of course, his upcoming birthday.
A gift.
And Joshua thought of what he wanted. Instead of something like a shiny knife, it was something childish and embarrassing: a stuffed animal like he used to have when his mom was alive.
And he thought of going to sleep with it, holding it close, deep beneath the covers where his father wouldn’t see and would not find it and be disappointed in him for turning to a stuffed animal for comfort.
The handle of the knife was well-worn and leather. Soft to the touch.
A gift from his father.
“Now, take the knife over to the man.”
Joshua hesitated. He smelled bathroom smells and saw that the man’s pants were stained wet in the front. Joshua wondered how long the man had been down here in the cellar, in the special place.
“Go on, Joshua. Go closer.”
He took two steps.
“I want you to take the blade of the knife and push it into his belly.”
The sounds coming from the man named Kenneth grew louder, more desperate.
“You need to learn how to do this, Joshua. You need to be able to do this yourself. Remember when I told you that everyone dies?”
Joshua didn’t answer. He was too busy looking at the man.
“Son?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everything dies.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The life is in the blood. You remember that.”
Joshua was silent.
“Say ‘Yes, sir,’” his father told him.
“Yes, sir.”
But Joshua didn’t move any closer to the man and at last his father knelt beside him. “It’ll feel kind of soft and springy. It might be a little difficult at first because the knife needs to push through his skin.” He pointed to the end of the knife. “But, once the tip is inside, it’ll get easier. See how it’s curved here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s so it’ll poke in better and slide out easier when you’re done.”
His father walked to Kenneth, and then pulled up his shirt, revealing his round, white belly. Kenneth shook violently, and the fat in his stomach wobbled in a strange way.
“I want you to push the knife in and then move it back and forth. Like this.” In the air in front of him, Joshua’s father demonstrated the way he wanted him to wiggle the knife back and forth in the big man’s belly. “See? You can slide it in and out too. It’ll get easier each time.”
Joshua said nothing. His heart squirmed in his chest.
“Go on, now.”
Joshua stared at the man who was struggling so hard to get free.
Everything dies.
Yes, everything dies.
Joshua approached him.
“You can do it.” His father reassured him, but when Joshua didn’t raise the knife, his father wrapped his hand around Joshua’s and bent over. “Here. This is your first time. I’ll help you.”
There was a lot of blood.
And nothing in the cellar smelled right when they were done.
It was hard, looking at the man hanging by his wrists and not moving. Not even a little bit. Not even breathing. Joshua kept expecting him to move. He couldn’t believe that anyone could ever be that still. The hood was off now and the fat man was staring at Joshua, but he wasn’t blinking at all, not once, and that was scary too.
Finally, his father noticed and reached down and closed the man’s eyes. Then he put a hand on Joshua’s shoulder. “You did well, Son, but I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you, shouldn’t have tried to make you do it all by yourself.”
All Joshua could think was,
“From now on you can help me, okay? I’ll show you how, and when you’re ready you can do it by yourself. But only when you’re ready. It’ll get easier each time. There’s no hurry. Don’t worry. I’ll teach you.”
Then his father took the knife again and showed Joshua what to do when the person who’d been brought to the special place beneath the barn wasn’t moving anymore.
Now, nearly three decades later, Joshua sat in his basement and watched the CNN coverage of the story about the ongoing homicide investigation in Champaign, Illinois, concerning the death of twenty-three-year-old Juanita Worthy.
On the newscast they were interviewing an expert on violent crimes against women, someone named Jake Vanderveld, and he was speculating that the lungs of the victim had not just been removed, but had also been consumed by the killer.
“Anthropophagy,” he said soberly. “Cannibalistic behavior.”
Joshua knew the term “anthropophagy” already. He’d learned it long ago from his father, and now he was understandably intrigued by what the man had to say about the crime. Joshua watched and listened and thought of Dahmer.
Back before the city of Milwaukee had raised nearly half a million dollars to buy Jeffrey’s old apartment building just so that they could level it, Joshua had snuck in with a video camera and walked through the place room by room, taking careful footage of the living room where Jeffrey cuffed and overpowered his victims, the bedroom where he killed them and slept with their corpses, the kitchen where he sat at the table and ate their skin and meat and viscera and brains.
Visiting Jeffrey’s apartment had made the connection between them more real, more concrete, more intimate.
Joshua heard his wife, Sylvia, calling from upstairs, “What are you doing down there, honey?”
“Nothing. Just watching the news.”
“Are you coming up? It’s almost ten o’clock. I made you some brunch.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
“I need to leave, remember? I have two houses to show before noon.”
“I’ll be right up.” He turned the volume down a little so he could watch the last few minutes of the interview without Sylvia hearing it.
Joshua’s job allowed him a somewhat flexible work schedule. He’d taken the rest of the day off because he had something to take care of in Plainfield, a couple hours northwest of his home on the outskirts of Milwaukee.
He figured that if he left in the next half hour there would be just enough time to make it there and back by dusk, or the gloaming, as it used to be called. That was the term he preferred, the one he’d first heard in the Celtic folk song “Loch Lomond,” a song of death and the pining but ultimately futile hope of a soldier to return home to his sweetheart.
