John Dies at the End

Danny said, replying to the camera a full three hours before Krissy made that comment.“Baby, I’ve done somethin’ really stupid. I’ve gotten wrapped up in something. Something you can’t imagine.”

“What?” Krissy said, sobbing. “What did you get into?”“If I told you the details, you would wish I hadn’t. But you know by now that I’m not myself. I come and go, and right now I’m fine, but I have to fight for every second of control. It’s draining. Baby, it takes so much energy to keep myself on top, on the surface, at the wheel. As soon as I relax, he’ll take over. It will take over. And I’ll just be a spectator. Helpless.”

He broke down into sobs. So did Krissy, sounding utterly drained.“Are you okay?”

he asked, through hitching breaths.“Were you hurt in all of this?”

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. This is so strange.”“I don’t even know how I’m doing it, any of this. Right now. I see things, I hear things across time and space and . . . it’s better if you can put it out of your head, Kris. It’s better to live the rest of your life believing things like this aren’t possible. But there’s other things I need to tell you. Things I’ve been wanting to say for a long time. And if I’m still alive, I probably won’t have the courage to say them in person. But first . . .”

Wexler’s eyes shifted slightly. A chill ran down my spine.

He was looking at me.

I shifted to my left a couple of feet, and his eyes followed me.

He said,“You’re David Wong?”

No! Say no!

“Yeah . . . I guess.”

Video conferencing across time. Man I need pie, and fast.“I don’t know all the details, things are . . . confused in my mind right now. But you’re under the eye. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

I found I couldn’t answer. My mouth had gone so dry it had glued shut.“David, you alone fully understand what is at stake here.”

A thousand questions popped into my mind but all I could do was peel my lips apart and say, “But . . . I don’t . . .” before trailing off.“Kris and I need to have a private conversation now, okay? Glad you made it out alive.”

I BEGGED OFF from John’s offer to stay the night at his place and drink many beers with him. I was hungry, and had something else to take care of first.

I took a cab to McDonald’s and had it dump me in the parking lot.

I took a deep breath, steeled myself and approached the sign. I prayed I’d find it back to normal.

Nope. There was Ronald, cutting himself, gutting himself, eating himself. I felt something rigid in my jacket pocket and pulled out a rusty utility razor I didn’t remember putting in there. I dropped it like it was a rattlesnake, then picked it up with two fingers and threw it in a trash can.

I stared down the poster again.

I was hungry.

The inside of the restaurant was closed but they did have a twenty-four-hour drive-through. I walked up to it and, shivering in the chill of the autumn air, ordered two bratwurst.

I sat on the curb across the parking lot and, looking right at the sign the whole time, ate them both.

ARNIE ROLLED TO a stop in the weed-and-dirt field that would have been the mall parking lot had they ever gotten around to paving it.

“So,” Arnie said. “Christian mints, crosses, Bibles. This whole long story is just an elaborate setup to get me to subscribe to Guideposts, isn’t it? You’re gonna leave me with pamphlets with pictures of Jesus, then go start telling this whole story to the next sinner? Got to be less roundabout ways, Wong.”

“No. That stuff, the crosses and all that, either it works because we think it works, or because the bad guys think it works. Or maybe there’s some power everybody can tap into if they just know how.”

“It’s Scientology, isn’t it?”

I said, “We never saw Krissy or Wexler again. Not even on TV. They moved out of town as soon as he got out of the hospital. Together. So, yeah, he was porking her.”

He squinted at the sprawling skeleton of the mall and said, “This is the place?”

“You think a town could have two places like this?”

I ran my hands through my hair and stared at the darkened sockets on the decomposing mall where windows should have been. I heard the faint sound of a plastic tarp snapping in the breeze somewhere. “You scared, Arnie?”

“Should I be? Is this place haunted?”

“Nothin’ so simple as that. I wish it were. You say it’s haunted and you picture the ghost of some old lady wandering around aimlessly. The things that come and go around here, I don’t know that they were ever human. Or maybe they just don’t remember it. Try to imagine a Hitler or a Vlad the Impaler or even the nasty old man at the dump who steals people’s cats and buries them alive. Now imagine those guys but strip them of all their limitations. No bodies, so they never die or run down or get tired. Give them all the time in the world. Imagine that malice, that stupid black mass of hate drifting through eternity, just burning on and on and on like an oil well fire.”

Arnie waited for me to go on. I didn’t.

I was realizing all of a sudden how hard it was going to be to tell this next part. I thought it would feel good to unload the whole tale on somebody. But this next bit, this felt more like a confession.

I got out of the car and walked toward a concrete ramp, a would-be loading dock for a stillborn mall department store. I heard Arnie’s door click and thunk behind me and knew he was following.

I said, “There was a girl here in town. She disappeared last year. It wasn’t a big story, but you can look it up.”

“Let me guess. You were the last person to talk to her.”

I didn’t answer. I climbed up the loading ramp and reached a doorway, greeted by the familiar smell of mildew and urine.

I tore aside a strip of yellow warning tape and stepped into the cool darkness within.

“Now, this is going to sound crazy . . .”

CHAPTER 10

The Missing Girl

IN THE SUMMER of the year after the Wexler thing, I realized someone was watching me through my television.

I could sense it, the way you sense someone staring at your back. A presence behind the screen, a pair of watching eyes.

I ignored it as long as I could, telling myself no one would want to secretly watch a single twenty-three- year-old on his couch eating Taco Bell bean burritos day after day (eighty cents apiece, two and a Coke for three bucks). But I knew better, of course. There were, apparently, parties who had a very good reason to keep eyes on me at this point, aside from my perfectly-sculpted Statue-of-David buttocks.

One night, with the television on some History Channel special about history’s Top Ten Deadliest Warships or some shit, I turned away from the TV and toward the mirror on the far wall. I went to pull a brush through my knotted hair and froze.

I had glimpsed the TV, playing in the reflection over my shoulder.

A face.

It was an oddly shaped face, with features that were human but off. A Michael Jackson face, a face like a mask. Wide, too-large eyes, a nose not quite centered. Looking right at my back from the TV, plain as day.

I spun on the television, the hairbrush flying from my hand, a terrorized breath sucking through my teeth.

Back to normal now, the Bismarck getting sunk in a plume of smoke.

Again, I suppose most people would have feared a mental illness at that point. By now, though, mental illness would just mean some tests and a prescription. Big deal. No, my fear was of somebody actually watching me