Tim finishes his cigarette, grinds the butt under his heel and has another in his mouth in less time than it takes me to speak.
“What did it say?”
“That’s the reason I’m telling you. I was hoping you might have some literary insight.”
“You’re talking about a serial killer’s note, not
Tim takes a step closer. Smoke rising from his hair.
“It’s a
The Smoking Room door opens and a lifer from Sports comes in, gives us a distasteful glance and lights up. Tim makes a zipper motion across his lips. I’m about to step outside when he grabs my wrist. Presses something into my palm.
“Call me later about those Leafs tickets,” he says. Winks a secret wink.
A business card. Tim Earheart’s writing squeezed on to the back. I read it over a few times in my cubicle, then tear it into confetti and let it fall into my recycling box.
Not much, as poems go. Just a pair of rhyming couplets, a Mother Goose simplicity that gives it the sing-song of nursery doggerel. Perhaps this is the point. Given the grisly context in which the poem was found, the childish tone makes it all the more threatening. The kind of thing you need only read once and it, or some part of it, remains hooked in your mind. A poem meant not to be admired but remembered.
So what does it say about its author? First, whoever did this to Carol Ulrich also wrote these lines. One an act of assembly, the other of dismemberment. Creator and Destroyer in one.
Second, he wanted the poem to be read. It could have been kept to himself, but instead it was left by the victim’s corpse. A killer who—like all writers—wants an
Third, while it is only a four-line ditty, there are indications of some intelligence. That a poem would occur to him at all puts him at a creative level above the everyday backstreet butcher. And the composition itself offers some indication of talent. It rhymes, for one thing. A rhythm that’s not accidental. Good enough that it would likely achieve its macabre effect even if it wasn’t deposited next to a corpse.
And then there are the words themselves.
The first line sets out the poem’s purpose: the poet seeks to introduce himself. He is the ground beneath our feet. That is, he’s everywhere. The next line establishes the character of this presence as menacing, hostile, the “man in dark alleys”. Naturally, the mention of alleys rings especially loud for me, as it was only a few days ago that I ran home through one, fearing something that likely wasn’t there. But “dark alleys” are universally regarded as places to fear. He wants us to know that he is the one who waits for us there.
The third line introduces a note of dark whimsy. The “Kingdom of Not What It Seems” is where he
All of which is reinforced in the poem’s concluding line. If we wish to see him, we must turn not to whatever clues have been left behind, but to our dreams. And these dreams aren’t only imagined, but “here”, in the real world. We are all part of the same dream whether we like it or not. And it’s
It’s not until my walk home that another interpretation occurs to me. “Occurs to me” might not be strong enough. In fact, it almost knocks me over. I have to sit on the curb with my head between my legs to prevent myself from blacking out.
When I’m partly recovered I speak into the dictaphone, still slouched on the curb as cars pass within inches of my feet.
TRANSCRIPT FROM TAPE
March 12, 2003
[Sounds of passing traffic]
Literally. Whoever first read the poem would have been on Ward’s Island. Standing on a beach. On
[Aside]
Oh, shit.
[Kid in background]
Look at this pisstank! He’s gonna lose…
[Car horn]
…if he doesn’t watch it!
[Background laughter]
Okay. To know who he is, we have to dream.
But who delivers our thoughts while we sleep?
[Singing]
10
Angela’s Story
The next week, after the school was re-opened despite the second missing girl remaining missing and no leads being discovered as to the perpetrator of what the town’s Chief of Police called “these heinous crimes” (a word the girl had never heard before and spelled in her mind as “hayness”, which only reminded her of what she discovered in the barn), Edra had to go into the hospital a hundred and sixty miles down the road for surgery. Her gallbladder. Nothing to worry about, Jacob assured the girl. Edra would be just fine without it. Which, if this was true, made the girl wonder why God gave us gallbladders in the first place.
Edra is taken to the hospital on a Friday, which leaves Jacob and the girl alone in the farmhouse until Edra is brought home, all being well, on Sunday. The old man and the girl have the weekend to themselves.
As much as the girl is delighted by the idea of exclusive attention from Jacob, part of her dreads their number being reduced from three to two. She wonders if the invisible cord that connected them as a family also acted as a spell, a force field that kept out the terrible man who does terrible things. With Edra gone, a door might be opened. For the sake of her foster parents, the girl would keep a vile secret. She would bury someone in the night and suffer the nightmares that followed. But she isn’t sure she could ever close a door to the Sandman once it was opened.
Soon her worry over all of this could be read in every look and gesture the girl makes. No matter how she tries to keep her burden hidden, she wears her trouble like a cloak. Jacob knows her too well not to notice. And when he asks the girl what’s wrong, this simple provocation triggers an explosion of tears.
