Darkly dreaming Dexter

careless.” His face twisted into a hideous, very happy smile. “In more ways than one,” he said.

I tried to swallow. It didn't work. He—Brian—my brother—went on.

“I'm just guessing with some of this,” he said. “But I had a little time on my hands, and when I was encouraged to learn a useful trade, I did. I got very good at finding things with the computer. I found the old police files. Mommy dearest hung out with a very naughty crowd. In the import business, just like me. Of course, their product was a little more sensitive.” He reached behind him into a carton and pulled out a handful of hats with a springing panther on them. “My things are made in Taiwan. Theirs came from Colombia. My best guess is that Mumsy and her friends tried a little independent project with some product that strictly speaking did not actually belong to her, and her business associates were unhappy with her spirit of independence and decided to discourage her.”

He put the hats carefully back in the carton and I felt him looking at me, but I could not even turn my head. After a moment he looked away.

“They found us here,” he said. “Right here.” His hand went to the floor and touched the exact spot where the small other not-me had been sitting in that long-ago other box. “Two and a half days later.

Stuck to the floor in dried blood, an inch deep.” His voice here was grating, horrible; he said that awful word, blood, just the way I would have said it, with contemptuous and utter loathing. “According to the police reports, there were several men here, too. Probably three or four. One or more of them may well have been our father. Of course, the chain saw made identification very difficult. But they are fairly sure there was only one woman. Our dear old mother. You were three years old. I was four.”

“But,” I said. Nothing else came out.

“Quite true,” Brian told me. “And you were very hard to find, too. They are so fussy with adoption records in this state. But I did find you, little brother. I did, didn't I?” Once again he patted my hand, a strange gesture I had never seen from anyone in my life. Of course, I had never before seen a flesh-and-blood sibling, either. Perhaps hand-patting was something I should practice with my brother, or with Deborah—and I realized with a small flutter of concern that I had forgotten all about Deborah.

I looked over at her, some six feet away, all neatly taped into place.

“She's fine,” my brother said. “I didn't want to begin without you.”

It may seem a very strange thing for my first coherent question, but I asked him, “How did you know I would want to?” Which perhaps made it sound as though I truly did want to—and of course I didn't really want to explore Deborah. Certainly not. And yet—here was my big brother, wanting to play, surely a rare enough opportunity. More than our ties of mutual parent, far more, was the fact that he was like me. “You couldn't really know,” I said, sounding far more uncertain than I would have thought possible.

“I didn't know,” he said. “But I thought there was a very good chance. The same thing happened to both of us.” His smile broadened and he lifted a forefinger into the air. “The Traumatic Event—you know that term? Have you done any reading on monsters like us?”

“Yes,” I said. “And Harry—my foster father—but he would never say exactly what had happened.”

Brian waved a hand around at the interior of the little box. “This happened, little brother. The chain saw, the flying body parts, the . . . blood—” With that same fearful emphasis again. “Two and a half days of sitting in the stuff. A wonder we survived at all, isn't it? Almost enough to make you believe in God.” His eyes glittered and, for some reason or other, Deborah squirmed and made a muffled noise.

He ignored her. “They thought you were young enough to recover. I was just a bit over the age limit.

But we both suffered a classic Traumatic Event. All the literature agrees. It made me what I am—and I had a thought that it might do the same for you.”

“It did,” I said, “exactly the same.”

“Isn't that nice,” he said. “Family ties.”

I looked at him. My brother. That alien word. If I had said it aloud I am sure I would have stuttered. It was utterly impossible to believe—and even more absurd to deny it. He looked like me. We liked the same things. He even had my wretched taste in jokes.

“I just—” I shook my head.

“Yes,” he said. “It takes a minute to get used to the idea that there are two of us, doesn't it?”

“Perhaps slightly longer,” I said. “I don't know if I—”

“Oh, dear, are we being squeamish? After what happened? Two and a half days of sitting here, bubba.

Two little boys, sitting for two and a half days in blood,” he said, and I felt sick, dizzy, heart floundering, head hammering.

“No,” I gagged, and I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “What matters is what happens now.”

“What—happens,” I said.

“Yes. What happens. Now.” He made a small, strange, snuffling, gurgling noise that was surely intended to sound like laughter, but perhaps he had not learned to fake it as well as I had. “I think I should say something like: My whole life has been leading up to this!” He repeated the snuffling sound.

“Of course, neither one of us could manage that with real feeling. After all, we can't actually feel anything, can we? We've both spent our lives playing a part. Moving through this world reciting lines and pretending we belong in a world made for human beings, and never really human ourselves. And always, forever, reaching for a way to feel something! Reaching, little brother, for a moment just like this! Real, genuine, unfaked feeling! It takes your breath away, doesn't it?”

And it did. My head was whirling and I did not dare to close my eyes again for fear of what might be waiting there for me. And, far worse, my brother was right beside me, watching me, demanding that I be myself, be just like him. And to be myself, to be his brother, to be who I was, I had to, had to—what? My eyes turned, all by themselves, toward Deborah.

“Yes,” he said, and all the cold happy fury of the Dark Passenger was in his voice now. “I knew you'd figure it out. This time we do it together,” he said.

I shook my head, but not very convincingly. “I can't,” I said.

“You have to,” he said, and we were both right. The feather touch on my shoulder again, almost matching the push from Harry that he could never understand and yet seemed every bit as powerful as my brother's hand, as it lifted me to my feet and pushed me forward; one step, two—Deborah's unblinking eyes were locked onto mine, but with that other presence behind me I couldn't tell her that I was certainly not going to-“Together,” he said. “One more time. Out with the old. In with the new. Onward, upward, inward—!”

Another half step—Deborah's eyes were yelling at me, but-He was beside me now, standing with me, and something gleamed in his hand, two somethings. “One for all, both for one— Did you ever read The Three Musketeers?” He flipped one knife into the air; it arced up and into his left hand and he held it out toward me. The weak dim light grew on the flat of the blades he held up and burned into me, matched only by the gleam in Brian's eyes. “Come on, Dexter.

Little brother. Take the knife.” His teeth shone like the knives. “Showtime.”

Deborah in her tightly wrapped tape made a thrashing sound. I looked up at her. There was frantic impatience in her eyes, and a growing madness, too. Come on, Dexter! Was I really thinking of doing this to her? Cut her loose and let's go home. Okay, Dexter? Dexter? Hello, Dexter? It is you, isn't it?

And I didn't know.

“Dexter,” Brian said. “Of course I don't mean to influence your decision. But ever since I learned I had a brother just like me, this is all I could think about. And you feel the same, I can see it in your face.”

“Yes,” I said, still not taking my eyes off Deb's very anxious face, “but does it have to be her?”

“Why not her? What is she to you?”

What indeed. My eyes were locked onto Deborah's. She was not actually my sister, not really, not a real relation of any kind, not at all. Of course I was very fond of her, but-But what? Why did I hesitate? Of course the thing was impossible. I knew it was unthinkable, even as I thought it. Not just because it was Deb, although it was, of course. But such a strange thought came into my poor dismal battered head and I could not bat it away: What would Harry say?

And so I stood uncertain, because no matter how much I wanted to begin I knew what Harry would say. He had already said it. It was unchangeable Harry truth: Chop up the bad guys, Dexter. Don't chop up your sister. But Harry had never foreseen anything like this—how could he? He had never imagined when