“Look, it’s not like I dated these women for years, taking them to the opera and shit like that. I met these chicks on the streets, junkies, whores, what not. They were more than happy to come back to my place. I took care of them. I made sure they had whatever they needed. They just had to do the one little thing for me in the process, and they could live out their lives like they wanted to.”
“And that one little thing was to bear your children.”
He smiled and settled back in the chair, scratching his neck. He stared through the lens.
“You’ve asked enough questions for now,” LeRoy said. “Now, it’s my turn to ask a few.”
“If you will please, Mr. Trottier—”
“If you want me to answer the questions that you’re really looking for the answers to, then you’re going to have to answer mine, or this interview is over. You and I both know that you have no business here. I’ve already been tried and convicted, and since I killed a cop, it’s only a matter of time before I get myself killed in here as well. So if it’s answers that you want, then you just shut your damn mouth and listen!”
His eyes blazed in their darkened sockets. He leapt to his feet and pointed with both fingers directly into the camera. There was a moment of silence as the camera shook. Slowly, LeRoy collected himself and slunk into his seat, staring off to the left before returning his stare to the screen.
“I have two simple questions. You answer them both honestly, and I’ll tell you what you came here to find out.”
He pulled a cigarette from the breast pocket of his orange jumper suit. Forcing the pack back into the pocket, he produced a pack of matches and lit it, tossing the empty book onto the floor. Dragging deeply, he exhaled a large plume of gray smoke and then rubbed his eyes. He began speaking, his voice low and cracking.
“I know you’re not a lawyer or a filmmaker. I can see in your eyes that you know a whole lot more than you’re letting on. Judging from your pretty little hands, I would guess that you’ve never had to work an honest day in your life, but you have soft eyes, which means you were never meant to. My money says that you’re here because you’ve seen the children, helped them in some way, but you saw something that isn’t quite sitting right with you. And from the look in your eyes, I can tell… you saw him.”
Harry sighed from behind the camera.
“Mr. Trottier,” he said slowly. “Who—”
“My questions first!” he shouted, leaping to his feet.
A guard walked in from the left side of the camera, gripped LeRoy tightly by the shoulders and forced him back down into his chair. Seizing him tightly by the neck, he squeezed, the tendons popping out in his arms as he leaned down and whispered something into LeRoy’s ear.
LeRoy looked into the camera, and nodded, the guard slinking back into the corner of the room out of view of the camera.
“As I was saying,” LeRoy said calmly, glancing back into the corner of the room where the guard leaned against the door, holding his baton across his folded arms. “Tell me, where are the children?”
“I don’t know.”
LeRoy looked him up and down, his bottom lip protruding as his dark eyes narrowed.
“You’re lying to me,” he whispered, leaning forward. “Thing is, I already know what happened to those kids, but for some reason, it’s important that I hear it from your lips. I need you to tell me your part in all of this.”
“I found three of them dead,” Harry said, his voice trembling. “I ran off with the fourth and turned it in to the county. For close to a week, they were unable to track down the original parents of the child, but by the time they did, well, you obviously know the rest from that end.”
“So where is my son now?”
“He was placed with an adoptive family.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“That’s how it needs to be done.”
“What do you mean?”
“My second question. What did he look like?”
“Who?”
“You know… him.”
“I guess I’m not sure who—”
“Listen,” LeRoy said, focused intently on the camera. “I’ve felt his presence. I’ve tasted his breath in the darkness. I’ve heard him in my house in the middle of the night. I’ve fallen asleep to the screams of my wives as he raped them. But I’ve never seen him. Do you know how I know that you have?”
“How?”
“It’s in your eyes. The same emptiness that I recognized in those of my wives after they first saw him. It’s unmistakable. Almost like the light in your eyes burns out.”
“Those were his children?”
“My question first.”
“Are you saying that those children are the spawn of—”
“My question first!” LeRoy shouted, leaping from the table and slamming both fists down.
Immediately he looked to the corner to the guard, raising both palms in front of him as he slowly eased back into the chair. His hands shook as he coaxed the guard into remaining in the corner with a look. Turning back to Harry, he lowered his head, looking straight up from beneath his brow.
“Please?”
“All right,” Harry started, resetting the camera on his shoulder. “It was very dark and I was about fifty yards away. I saw him first, kneeling beside the house, barely more than a dark shape against the moonlit snow. Then he rose to his feet. He was tall, very tall. He stood straight, you know, his posture. He wore a long cloak or something along those lines, frayed at the end, the tattered edges flowing in the wind. He walked up the front stairs of the house, onto the porch, where he stopped and looked over at me. His face was dark, but I could feel his eyes on me. I could feel him smiling at me even though I couldn’t see a damned thing other than his shape. He turned and walked into the house, and that was when I ran off.”
LeRoy sat there with his eyes closed, soaking every detail into his mind like a sponge. His lips curled at the corners with a grin and he looked peaceful, if only for the moment.
“Thank you,” he whispered, inhaling deeply. Rubbing his thumbs together, he slowly opened his lids and stared right into the camera. “Now, I’d answer your question, but I believe you already know the answer.”
Silence filled the room.
“Know this,” LeRoy whispered, leaning in close. “That child, wherever he is, will be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. That is his sole purpose.”
“Time’s up,” the guard said from the corner of the room, once again appearing in the center of the frame. He raised LeRoy to his feet by the back of his shirt, turning him with a shove and leading him out of the room.
The camera ran on for a moment, filming the empty seat across the table before the screen finally went white.
“I don’t understand,” Scott said, turning to Harry, who was already rewinding the film through the camera.
“There’s something else I need to show you,” he said, stopping the film and flipping the switch so that it showed each frame one by one like a slide projector. “Every tenth frame, not so often that you can truly see it while it’s playing, but if you slow it down…”
Scott turned back to the screen and watched the image of LeRoy as he moved just the smallest fraction from one frame to the next. It was the portion of the interview where he leapt to his feet, his face slowly reddening from one frame to the next until…
“Holy shit,” Scott whispered.
This frame was different. It followed the others in their progression, but this one was dramatically different. The skin had disappeared from LeRoy’s face, leaving only the image of his skull; the eyes vanished into the hollow black holes.
The next frame was back to normal, as was the next series in the progression, until he finally sat back down in the chair and stared at the camera, the flesh falling from his face to reveal the skull once again. Harry left
