Google Images... Artist Ian Joyner
[As I said before I'm hoping for some feedback about how to integrate the two Night Gods stories for the book. I'm also working on the backstory- the origins. It may surprise some to learn that some of this is true- not the serial killer part, of course, but most of the characters (with the exception of Eddie) are real- still alive and well I hope]
THE NIGHT GODS OF WAR
War is the state of perpetual night. It is a triumph for the demons... feeding upon the darkness that abides deep within men's souls. It has been the realm of the Night Gods since the beginning of time. It was they that directed Cain's hand as he slew his brother Abel. It was they, not Helen, that launched a thousand ships against Troy. They danced with glee at the Crucifixion of our Lord and revelled in the persecution of the Martyrs. So it has been and so it shall ever be.
When it became my time to go to war, I learned a very important truth... good people come home in flag-draped boxes. People who learn to embrace the darkness come home alive. I don't mean that the darkness becomes everything...only that while in combat it becomes a useful tool, something temporary. This, of course, is not the purview of the demons- they seek only to possess. In the darkness of my soul they would come to me, without making me aware of their presence. War, you see, is not about winning or losing- that realm belongs to politicians- it's about staying alive at any cost. I became the night and the night became me. There was nothing traumatic to me about killing... it was a job. Killing is the natural state of man... Born of sin... Bred of evil.
Young men become old, you can see it in their eyes... It's called the tousand yard stare... We become willing witnesses to the triumphs of the Night Gods. After seeing the things that no man should see, day after day, erodes the soul. Numbness sets in replacing empathy. Tragedy becomes commonplace. We all had, and many still have, the eyes of the dead. And the Night Gods rejoiced at our horror. You could almost see them in the night, dancing among the trees awaiting the next day's catch, like perverted fishermen adrift on a sea of gore and despair. Yes, you could almost see their black eyes glistening with delight in the fires of every burning corpse...the stench of burning flesh was the perfume in their nostrils. How they fed on the despair revelling in it.
There were queues of people from burned out villages along the roads, soot covered faces, streaked with tears over loved ones lost to the carnage. Their meager belongings on their backs, or carried on their heads. Babies and children, witnesses to bloated corpses lying in the roadside ditches. Babies seeing things no man should ever see. We drove by with faces of stone....like the demons themselves in this carnival of horror. There was something eerily surreal about it...as though it wasn't really there. It couldn't be, it was too terrifying, yet real it was. It was almost like a landscape from Hell.
The horror to which we returned was almost worse than the one from which we had just escaped. Nobody wanted us here at home...The land of the free and the home of the brave had been replaced by a cesspool of depravity... Hippies spitting and throwing baggies full of excrement... it only fueled my desire to kill- my desire to retreat back into the comfort of the darkness. "Make Love Not War"... yet they had declared war against us- a war that we were never allowed to fight. Oh, how I came to hate them... To hate them and love the darkness. It was not of my choosing- they chose for me with their constant hypocricy... I would make them pay... If they would not allow me into the light, then so be it- I vowed to drag them into the darkness with me. It seemed like light would never penetrate the blackness that had come to pervade my soul. The Night Gods were pleased... they wanted me. I still had no idea, I'm not certain that I do now. All I wanted was to forget. To forget the horrors, the nightmare that had been my life for over two years. I was already dead, yet somehow still alive. Adrift in a reality that wasn't real, or my own. I got drunk.
BOBBY & JENN
I first heard the news while reading about it in The Globe at the luncheonette while eating breakfast. It was being reported as another drug-induced murder/suicide... LSD and marijuana was found in the bloodstreams of both. According to The Globe, one Robert Levy had brutally molested and murdered his girlfriend Jennifer Godwyn while both were under the influence of the powerful drug and after realizing the horrific nature of what he had done- presumably after he "came down"- he became so remorseful that he hung himself.
I knew Bobby and Jenn, they were friends of mine who lived in a third-floor apartment above a head shop on Charles St.. I used to stop by three or four times a week to get high with them and even dated Jenn's college friend Polly for a brief time. They were an unusual match. Bobby was a Jewish kid from the poorer neighborhood of Brookline and Jenn was one of the Boston "Blue Bloods." She was a very pretty blonde in contrast to Bobby's Semitic countenance. Her family went presumably back to the Mayflower, they were rich. She went to an exclusive girls college out on Commonwealth Ave. Bobby worked at the head shop. The way the newspaper portrayed the events was so far beyond absurd as to be laughable.
As I read the report, I knew viscerally that it was all wrong. Not just because I knew that it couldn't have happened that way- but because I knew somehow, how it had happened. Not exactly, mind you, but I could see glimpses of things as they occurred, as if I was a shadow on the wall or something like that. I could close my eyes and watch the shadows dance across the backdrop of my mind- a reality akin to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. It was confusing. I finished my breakfast and went on to work. All day long it nagged at me... how could I know so much about what happened without really knowing anything at all.
After work I met a few friends at the bar for beers before returning home. They had all seen the news and were as shocked as I was... there was a general air of disbelief. None of us believed that Bobby was capable of such a crime- high or not. It pretty much replaced the Red Sox as the primary topic of conversation. It was with a heavy heart and a very confused mind that I went home to shower and to bed.
It came to me almost as a dream, in that twilight world that exists between wakeness and sleep. That nether world where shadows are real and those images at the periphery of our vision almost slow down enough to see... almost like a movie playing against the back of my eyes. It was almost like I was there, yet not there... a witness to my own actions without doing them myself. Bobby and Jennifer were there too- characters in this theater of horror.
Had a diligent enough cop or medical examiner been curious enough to look, they may have found a small puncture wound near Bobby's neck. But to them it was a clear-cut case of murder/suicide. They didn't bother to look past the tox screen and obvious clues. They might also have seen where someone had pushed the window near the fire escape open to enter.
Bobby noticed me first and I clasped him on the back, plunging the syringe into his neck. It contained Chloral Hydrate, a powerful hypnotic that rendered him helpless almost immediately. He sagged and slumped to the floor. Then Jenn saw me, eyes wide with surprise. "Help me with him," I told her. "Help me get him into a chair."
She didn't question how I got there, she was just grateful for the assistance... and high as a kite on the acid. With some difficulty we got him into a straight-back chair, but he slumped out. "We've got to keep him upright, help me tie him to the chair," I said. She wandered in a daze collecting scarves and things with which I secured him to the chair. I bound his hands and feet, but Jenn seemed not to notice. All he could do from here on out was watch.
By the time Jenn realized what was happening it was way too late. Her eyes opened wide in terror as I threw her to the bed and ripped her shirt off. I covered her mouth with my hand and showed her the knife I had concealed in my boot. It was long and razor sharp. I was watching myself as if from somewhere else... like a movie. But, I was there at the same time.
Using the knife, I cut the belt on her skirt and tore it away. Then I cut off her sheer panties, her body was lovely and white... breasts young and firm. I had my way with her, enjoying every delicious moment... but more delicious moments for me were yet to come. A tear ran down her cheek as she looked up at me... she thought it was over. Her eyes opened wide with amazement when she saw the knife for the last time. It went across her throat severing her carotid... I jumped back to avoid the arterial spray and then her eyes went blank.
There was a large hook in a stud above the bedroom door upon which hung a plant in a macrame holder. I tested it for strength and finding it suitable, I got a heavy duty extension cord from the living room and tied a noose. Placing it around Bobby's neck, I pulled him upright. I had tied his hands with a scarf as not to leave marks. I removed it and untied his feet. Disposing of the paraphernalia in the closet, I placed a upturned milk crate near his feet. He shuddered a few times and was still. The Night Gods were well pleased.
