Cold sweat dampened his sheets. With a strict gasp he awoke, and he lay still, silent, watching the darkness move across the room unsure if phantasms from his dreams befell him still, or if his eyes only reached for an object like a falling climber reaches for rope. He remained in his molding position, sinking further into his own moisture. His arms and neck flesh stood like static. Warm sweat pooled under his eyelids and under his chin
When his alarm sounded he rose with his .45 pointing to the series of high pitch ostrich screams in the dark. Absinthe hooks fastened to the notches in his spine, and stimulated his muscles to roll over the mattress and crawl backward, fighting back the layers of sheet with his teeth bared and fists thrusting into the dark. He hit the wall. Books fell from the shelf. A sound like sand slipping through an hourglass within the wall. The rug burned the flesh of his lower back. Then he realized the dreamworld left him.
Bancroft never dreamed. Not even under a crash of wave against the haul of a swaying ship, not while drugged or sedated, not when quiet faeries raise the pillow to his head and whisper the promise of sweet dreams. No nightmare struck him. No mischievous gremlin poured fears into his sleeping ears. Bancroft feared something real. But he didn’t know what. He remembered each dream but they seemed jammed together in his cortex like a ball of rubber bands. He reached deep into his mind to unravel it. Each one he remembered vividly, as if he lived it. Bancroft tried to sort the dreams out, but it caused him a headache.
He looked at the ground beneath him. Watching the dark floor like a narrow path above a steep penalty he walked to the source of the alarm. A red light blinked from the ceiling. He pulled it down and deactivated it. He sniffed and smelled smoke rising from his ashtray. A burned photograph lay curled and bleached with brown and white ripples.
He laid back down, but his heart raced resisting the call to understand his dreams with the same urgency to read emergency code transmitted from the bottom of the ocean. He changed out of his sweaty nightclothes and into comfortable garments and strode down the hall to the back of his home where he stood outside and blew smoke rings for the night creatures to sing about. He began to remember the first dream. He swooned with shame, covered his eyes and groaning. That isn’t me… nothing resembling me in the slightest. He said to himself over and over again. That Other isn’t a professional. He was a novice…worse than a journeyman.
“I’m no fucking novice.” Bancroft uttered to the night creatures.
Even they knew he dreamed mortal dreams for the night creatures usually stay shy of humans, but they never dared get into his trash. Now he looked out into the dark and saw them all over, running across the lawn, licking their coats, watching him with the patience of unanswered riddles.
“I’m Bancroft Maluum”. He reiterated to the unconcerned beasts.
The first dream came to him as it occurred.
Bancroft entered a bourgeois cafe draped in cabana wear like an idiot on vacation. The 5:30 am sunrise lit up the business. One other person sat inside and Bancroft plopped in the seat next to him.
“Are you him?” the contractor asked, grave contours highlighting his cheeks and eye sockets.
“Yes. You got the money?” His contact already gave him the information he needed.
The contractor pulled out a stack of cash and slid it over to Bancroft, who grabbed the cash started counting it on the table. In hundreds he counted up to three thousand eight hundred before the owner came to them and pointed at sign reading “Tables for customers only”.
“We’re busy.” Bancroft hissed, squeezing her hand and impaling her with his eyes. She pulled her hand loose and left the two. He finished counting the money and put it all in his pocket. The contractor rose an eyebrow.
“Are you capable?”
“I’m the best killer there is. I’m the Ringo of assassination...”
The wakened Bancroft cringed. The dream rubbed one of his fantasies in his face; the ambition to kill the last Beatle, his sole regret being that he couldn’t kill the other three because the fad died away by his boyhood only to be resurrected with free music on the internet. Ever since he wondered about being the one to finish the quartet off. Someday.
“...the master of murder. You’ll know when he’s dead.”
Bancroft stood up and left. He felt eyes on him from some corner of the cafe. His footsteps clapped like symbols as loud as possible.
With the payment in his possession Bancroft climbed into an explosive ogre of a truck- the wakeful Bancroft hated excess and bit his lip. The truck roared down the street. With the cash in his pocket he felt thrilled and decided to kill the target that night. In the meantime, he had daylight to kill.
He spent five hundred dollars on heroin and liquor and went to the abandoned ice cream store where everyone went to do their drugs. He sat in a sunny corner, rolled up his sleeve and shot up five hundred milligrams of substance into his veins. The passing eyes of creeping crackheads giggled and cackled. Their leafy hands crawling towards Bancroft’s cash. Drugged, but still vigilant, Bancroft waited for them to lean over him, then he drew his gun and dug the barrel deep between the crackhead’s ribs and begged for cause to pull the trigger. The crackhead drew his hand away and vanished behind the curtain of dust floating in the sunlight with the other disparaged creatures. He smiled at the scornful tones, and enjoyed the warmth cast onto him from the sun rays until his medicated condition passed. That’s when he got into his vehicle and opened the booze. He took drinks from the bottle as he drove to his favorite strip club, Dirty Curtains, to watch the afternoon talent. He entered like a cowboy, dragging and slapping his feet so everyone knew just how expensive his shoes sounded.
Not many sat inside. A couple of old men drooled over the railing at the performer. A young boy sat in the front row with his hands in his lap. A pop with a straw sitting besides a pyramid of empty cans. Bancroft shook his head and approached.
“Boy, you aren’t eighteen, are you?”
“My mom works here.”
“This is how I grew up too.” Bancroft stuck his hands in his pockets. He went up to the bartender. A joyless middle aged woman worked.
“I thought Hazelnut danced today.”
“Hazelnut’s got a doctor appointment. Getting herself checked out.”
“That’s why I love her. Guess I’ll have to check up on her at home.”
Before he left, Bancroft paid for multiple private dances and tipped generously with his loads of cash. When he felt the fun die away, he decided to visit Hazelnut. Her name so beautifully etched into a bathroom stall above a one inch hole with a phone number that he never forgot, burned into his memory like his own birthday.
When he pulled to her trailer he checked the hour. The sun hung over the west yet. Plenty of time for quick business meeting. He exited the vehicle. Hazelnut’s pink bicycle leaned against her front door. She was home. He stepped out of his dreamed truck with a bounce in his step as he moved to the porch. The bike clanked, chips of pink paint fell away revealing white beneath. The chain came loose and the bike fell to the side. He found the door unlocked, and so he came in. He knew the way to her room. Her door hung open by a crack. He saw her changing, so he reached through the gap to expose her.
She jumped and covered herself, but she saw Bancroft and relaxed, letting her nudity fall open. Nothing he hadn’t seen before.
“You got time for the usual business?” She asked.
“Plenty of time...” he pulled out the money to show her.
Once the sun set he felt ready to leave. He kissed Hazelnut, but she didn’t kiss him back. She still loved him, he wagered. Then he headed off to conduct his mission.
He drove fifteen miles from the city. The urban radiance gleamed upward and colored the night with a sewer coated butter haze. He turned off the highway onto a country road and drove another five miles to a country home on top of a hill. Two stories with a columned porch bordering the entire house. The curtains drawn, but the lights on. Shadows passed by the curtains. Bancroft dropped the whiskey back three times. Then he took his .45, turned off the safety, and left the car running as he stepped out. He felt momentum behind him. His skin steel, his spirit indomitable, and his will unquenchable. He rushed up the hill. A Great Dane barked, and darted from the porch after him. Bancroft shot the hound in the head, and the acidic reek of gunsmoke confirmed his monumental prowess. Bancroft took the door down with one kick and stormed in with the gun drawn.
He froze in place. The momentum electrifying his muscles blew out the door by the confused stares of ten maybe twenty faces, all directed at him wine glasses in hand. A dense silence stuffed the room. He scanned the faces, but they all blurred together. His gun shook, his nerves splintered, and knees started to buckle- he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger once. Screams and chaos destroyed the silence. Bancroft bolted down to his car and sped away into the night. He drove down the country roads, and avoided the highways. The radio reported checkpoints and blockades set up to catch an unidentified white male driving an obnoxious truck.
He almost made it to state lines before the police found him and convened their cruisers in a circle around him. The chase ended. The sheriff called on him to give up. Bancroft pulled out his. .45 and fired out the windshield. Two thousand bullets hit his car. Fifteen struck him. The police held their fire. Bancroft opened the door. His leg flopped out like white flag, his ankle exposed. He slid out like jelly, and he crawled with his wounds for ten feet before succumbing to the deathly cold of the pavement.
The wakened Bancroft felt ice in his body for every bullet that ripped through his dreaming body. He finished his cigarette, lit up another. Why would I act like such a fool… he lamented to the night.
“I don’t die like that.” Bancroft muttered to himself so that only his chin hairs heard the words. “Never…”
The second dream
Bancroft assembled a kit with everything he might need and left.
Bancroft wore a fifty dollar suit into Dirty Curtains. He choose a curtained booth in the far back, in a dark corner. He watched the door until another came and sat down across from him.
“You’re him?” the stranger asked.
“Bancroft Maluum.” he offered a hand to shake. As he extended his arm his wrist become exposed and the contractor took notice of a tattoo peeking from his sleeve. The contractor took Bancroft’s hand. Jolts went up his arm. They didn’t hurt like like an electric fence, but rather drained him as pieces of himself attempted to escape the body.
“Do I make you nervous?” Bancroft asked retaining his grip. He let go. “Please sit down.”
The contractor sat, and wiped his hand off on his coat tails. He put a stack of cash on the table.
“How much is there?” Bancroft asked.
“Five thousand dollars. You’ll get the rest once he’s dead.”
Bancroft noticed little shoes behind the curtain. “Excuse me,” he said to his contractor. He stood up and tore open the curtain. The boy almost fell back, his ear red and raw from listening. The boy reposed himself and crossed his arms like a bouncer, tipping his head and putting out his lower lip.
“These booths are for paying customers.”
“Listen, you little shit, no one is here. There is no line for this booth. If you don’t leave us alone I’ll cut your throat and bury you where you mom won’t find you.”
The boy teared up and ran away.
“A bit harsh.” The contractor remarked.
“I kill people for a living.” Bancroft took the money from the table and walked out.
He drove a sunset colored Mercedes. His desire to visit Hazelnut gripped his heart and wrestled his mind from work. He almost turned the car around to find her, but the road crews dragging roadkill to the side of the road left streaks of blood on the pavement. He lost interest in her, and stopped at a gas station to grab dried junk to eat. A long night awaited him.
Bancroft drove the speed limit and minded the traffic signs even on the empty road. A few farm trucks toiled past. The old men waved their index fingers in casual greeting. Bancroft never waved back.
The Mercedes stopped in the road. A plowed field lay between Bancroft and the property. The clip of his kit snapped loose, and he took out the rifle scope and watched.
Morning mist still crept from the creeks and blew across the road and over the field divided by rows of dirt mounds. Resting cranes sat between the rows and watched morning sun eradicate pockets of shadow.
The house sat on top of the hill. The garage stood in the back between the house and a cement lot. Eight windows on the bottom floor, and five on the second floor. The head of a tower peeked from the top of the porch. Two windows, both sealed with wooden shutters.
A robed woman stepped outside with a bag of dog food. A dog crawled from under the porch and she poured some of the bag out into a bowl of the dog to eat.
A young man climbed from a second story window and ran into Buick. Later a teenage girl left the house and entered the Buick. She went towards the highway. Shortly after a little girl in a green jacket walked out and stood by the barn shaped mailbox. A yellow bus emerged from a cloud of gravel dust. It stopped, and when it left the mailbox stood alone.
Then he saw an adult male exit in a white dress shirt and khakis. Unlike the other two cars, his waited inside of the garage. When the garage door opened, Bancroft focused his scope on the interior content. He saw the van that the man drove, and a gas pump inside. The man pumped gas into his car, and left in the same direction.
A farmer passed by. Dust blew in through gaps in the window. Bancroft brushed it off himself and continued watching. A silver SUV remained on the driveway. He saw the woman come out again this time in business attire. She climbed into the SUV and went the opposite direction.
Bancroft moved around. Catching many different angles, but maintaining a constant distance. He found no signs of damage to the house. No vines, no trellis. No shrubs, no bushes, no garden of flowers. Bancroft thought, maybe this is on purpose. Maybe he doesn’t want someone sneaking across his property.
Dog roamed free. It chased some waylaid foxes, but mostly rested on the porch with bored yawns. Bancroft hated killing animals. No one paid him to do it, and without incentive the role of violence is moot to him. Bancroft only wanted to wash off as much blood from his hands as necessary. A drop more costs him time he reserved for better gratifications.
Another car arrived and parked in the driveway. A brown fleshed woman used a key to get into the home. The dog did not mind her.
The woman returned first. The school bus dropped off the little girl. Then the man returned- in the opposite direction from where he came. The teenager didn’t come home when the rest did. The sun started to set. Then other cars started pulling up to the property and parking behind the house. Bancroft intended on waiting out the party, and going in once the guests left and the hosts drunkenly slept.
He waited past midnight, past 1 am, past two… then his work phone rang. Bancroft felt his guts concentrate. His work phone never rang while on the job. He answered it.
“Well?”
“The contractor is compromised. Get lost. Now.”
Bancroft hung up and sped away. He neared state lines, but lights flashed. He drew his gun and kept it the compartment in the driver side door. He pulled over. The police waited. He saw two outlines behind the windshield. They sat in discussion. They ran his plates. Yet they didn’t try to converse, get him to admit to speeding or driving over the line. A sickening sensation poured down his guts. That they found a car matching a description. If only they got out from their cars, he knew, he’d shoot them and be across state lines. But they remained seated. The dashboard shotgun unattached and in the lap of the officer. Bancroft stepped on the pedal and peeled away. State lines looked so close, but Bancroft turned around and drove for a town- any town with a big suburb to escape in. More cruisers joined the other- then more until a train of cherry flashes lined up behind him as he sped down the highway. A sign for a small town pointed him down a road he took. He turned towards the residential neighborhood, and just like how burning oil keeps the mosquitoes away, the space between Bancroft’s car and the police grew until he found himself driving alone once more.
He abandoned his car, and lit it on fire to destroy his equipment. He opened a manhole and slipped inside. He walked through the sewer, following the current of fresh air to a drain opening into a murky creek. Bancroft stepped out, and blinding spot lights burst from the dark and many different officers held him down in filth while the police handled him and confined him.
At the trial, Bancroft listened to multiple strippers, the boy, the gas station attendant all say they saw him talking to the contractor, who also testified against Bancroft in exchange for a shorter sentence. The old farmers testified that they saw his Mercedes.
The jury didn’t need to convene to find him guilty. The judge convicted him of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced him to life in prison
The wakeful Bancroft pressed his palms into his eyes and he grunted like relieving from a great pain. Gritting his teeth, and balling his fist, he spoke to the night.
“Me, sent to prison… can you believe that? I’d rather shoot myself. I’m better than those people. Because I do not get caught.” Bancroft put out his smoke. The tobacco didn’t ease his restless thoughts or keep him from flinging his fists around, clutching his furniture and walls and snarling into the dark. He wanted to reach into his head and pull out the bedreamt Bancroft to give him a hard strangle and a sharp slap to set him right. Bancroft turned on the coffee maker. The kitchen clock said 2am. He made a full pot, and filled the basket to the top with grounds. Black and harsh, the way he liked it. He watched the helix of dark fluid spiral to the bottom and collect. Steam fogged the glass.
He pondered the third dream as he waited.
Bancroft met his contractor behind the Dirty Curtains alley.
“Five thousand more when he’s dead.”
Bancroft placed the cash in his coat pocket and wasted no time. He swept from the alley. The sun’s aura crested over the summits in the distance. The stars remained in the sky. Mist and pesticide covered the country fields like cotton dust. Bright blue lights lit up the front of barns. One barn door hung open. The cattle mooed and hovered in the fog. One stepped onto the farmer’s porch and looked into the windows.
Bancroft hollered at the cow. “Hey. You get back to the pasture.”
“I don't have to do what you tell me, Mr. Bancroft. You’ll end up in a Potter’s field anyhow.”
“You’re a dumb cow. No one cares what you think.” and he drove on his way.
He stopped his car in the shade of a crumbling barn and a mile away from the target’s property. He walked in the ditches, sinking to the grass as vehicles passed by, and moving on once the engine roar muted and only a tail of gravel dust remained.
Moving by foot he arrived as the sun started to peek out and warm the world. He hid in the brush along the tree line. The morning fog crawled back into the tree line. The sunlight felt warm on Bancroft’s back, but the rays also awoke the aroma of cattle pastures and pig farms. He heard them bleat in the distance.
Bancroft drew a scope from the kit. He spotted the hound sleeping beneath the porch, and darkened windows. The two shutters in the tower head blew open in the wind and clapped shut again. He looked from their windows to the top of the porch. The formation of loosened shingles declined gradually. A lights behind the windows started to pop on. Bancroft lost no time. He held a chain in his hands as he traced the shadows along the property. The sun in the east cast tall shadows that lanced the walls of the home. The grass rustled under his feet. The dog slept but licked its lips. Bancroft stopped moving, and laid down. Mites burrowed under his clothes and bite his neck as he crawled towards the dog. Until he crawled near enough to see the discolored spots in its ear and scar across its nose. Bancroft guided his hand towards the sleeping hound like a candle over a pool. The clip on the end of the chain in his fingers. He hooked it around the iron loop in the collar. The Great Dane exhaled hot air that struck Bancroft like the end of a broom. He held the clip steady, and delicately attached the chain to the dog. The other end he attached to the lower balustrade.
Then he rolled from the hound, and leap up. The shadows and fog nearly gone and replaced with golden hour shine. Tractors mowed in the distance. He heard running water rush through the walls. He took out a hooked corkscrew from his kit and wrapped his legs around the column on the corner to avoid windows. He screwed the hook in and used it to pulled himself up. Did this three times until his head brushed against the ceiling. He reached over the porch roof. The shingles caught his glove. He stabbed the hook in the roof and let go. He swung over the ground below, but he didn’t let his feet dangle. He folded them under his body as he pulled himself up onto the porch. He now sat face to face with the window to the master bedroom. A male, his target, stripped his clothes and closed himself in the bathroom. The bed looked made, and everything in the room looked sorted out. Even the paper can bore a sticker reading “Officer paper” the once next to it “mixed paper”. The closet door hung open. Bancroft placed his hands against the glass to see. Clothes labeled by day. A ledger on the nightstand.
Bancroft moved from the window. He jumped up and took hold of the attic window sill, and propelled himself up, sticking his toes on a narrow strip of wood beneath the tower head. His thumbs and forefingers keeping him from dropping. His veins tightened through his flesh. The window lock he saw hanging undone. Yet his efforts did not move the door. He took a hammer and a utility knife from his kit with one hand, holding on with the other and holding his equipment in his mouth. He used the utility to slice the paint between the window frame the sill. He then tapped the frame with a hammer. He stuck a flat screwdriver beneath, using the hammer to bury it into the wood, and pried the window up enough for his fingers to fit under. He let go to the sill and inserted his fingers. The leverage kept him upright, though all his weight centered on his toes trembling on the strip of lumber. With the window open far enough for his head to fit he reached in once more, took hold, then stuck his palm under the sill and pushed it up for his body to fit and slid his legs in one after the other. He crouched to the floor and let the morning light develop and brighten the attic. He joined the boxes of crap and forlorn furniture covered in dusty sheets in their stillness and silence. Nails stabbed from the boards. Pink instillation from the ceiling crumbled to the floor. A spider dropped down to ask Bancroft for sugar. Bancroft glared at the arachnid. The creature retreated back up its strand of web back to its kingdom in between the support beams.
Bancroft crawled on his finger tips and toes, moving like the spider he just dismissed, his senses following a trail of voice and the pattern of steps. He heard only few words distinct from his ear above the nails. But we needed to know, so he lowered d his ears to the wood, his head between the ranks of nails.
A man and woman discussed something. The master bedroom. A little girl whined. She didn’t want to get up, but a brawny teenage girl voice told her to “stop being so lazy”. The voices traveled under him. He felt their reverberations in the wood flow beneath him. He wondered if they felt his presence, and only shrugged the uneasiness off as unsolicited caution. Steps carried up and down. “where’s my shoes?” the teenage girl asked. Plates clanged against cutlery. A garbage disposal grinded. A plate broke.
“Tell the maid to clean up the God Damn Sink!” Bancroft heard his target shout so loud that the floorboards almost bounced him into the air. A door slammed. Bancroft almost lost his balance and tilted onto the nails. He placed his palms on the floor, and sucked in his stomach as he hurled his legs in the air and caught them in balance, then shifted his body around and walked on his hands to the window. He lowered his feet down where the sun cuts against the shadow of the window and pushed his body back upright. He watched the van drive away. Then bent back over and shifted across the attic, placing his feet at the cover over the exit. He lifted it just a crack. He saw the hallway. The woman bade the teenager “good luck today. Love you.” The little girl asked “when will I get to drive to school?”
Bancroft removed the cover and lowered himself down, dropping down, and landing like a cat with his legs spread out, his joints from his toes, ankle, and knees flexing and bending as his momentum came to a halt. A thud like clothes dropping on the laundry room floor echoed down the hall. Those downstairs did not notice and continued their rituals.
The teenager said good bye and the door closed again. Bancroft kept his legs bent. His joints rolled, his toe tips lifting him like a ballerina of death to the door in the middle, then another door down- where he pushed it open and slithered inside. He closed the door and locked it. The bedroom smelled like lemon carpet. Not even a sock lay astray. Bancroft opened the closets. He fingered through the clothes, and bent down to scan the boxes. “family photos”- “Mom’s thing’s”- “work stuff”. Bancroft opened each box and worked through the contents. Family photos wasn’t of his target’s family… but the woman as a girl, judging by the dates on the photo, and her clan. The next box he blushed after opening, but looked through to the bottom to be safe. He took out the third box. He lifted the lid of the third box, and tilted his head like a confounded hound. He sorted through three decade old pornagraphia. The models looked younger than in the porn he remembered enjoying. In fact, none of them had genitals and none had pubic hair. At the bottom of the stack he discovered fetish magazines with titles such as “Gagged” and the cover art hinting at the dark thrills within. He opened the binding, and Polaroids tumbled out. He picked them up to put them back, but took astonished reassessments. The photos portrayed naked boys bound and gagged and tested against various appliances. “You’ve been naughty.” he remarked about his target. He put the porn back in the order that he found it. Then he reached for the second thing in the box. A huge pickle jar filled with razors. Bancroft held it over his head and looked at the bottom. A key inside. He dumped the razors into the lid, picked out the key, and poured the razors back into the jar. He key looked too small for any standard lock. A toolbox, or a tackle box.
Bancroft rolled silently across the floor to the hall. Lay down on the floor and watched from the foot of the stairs the woman in her business clothes leaving. The door locked behind her. Her car left down the driveway. Bancroft slid down the rail to the ground floor. He put his hands in his pockets. His kit slung around his back. He entered the kitchen. Nothing interested him but for the note on the fridge written in purple ink.
“Lupe,
Please clean the dishes in the sink. I will be home at 5:00, Merriam will be dropped off at around then too. She needs her clothes washed because of an “accident”. Sorry. Linda is to BE HOME BY 6:00. If she comes home later, please let me know when. Also, our party will start at eight. Would you place the wine bottles and move the furniture? Thank you.
PS- Ervin wants you to re-arrange the dishes again.
-Misty”
Bancroft left the kitchen and looked into the next door. The stairway dropped into the basement. Bancroft turned on the light and peered down. The laundry machines and piles of clothing sat against the walls. Mildew perfumed the basement. Bancroft coughed into his glove. He looked at the fuse box across from the stairs, and looked under the stairs. He saw no locked box but he did notice that they stored nothing beneath the stairs. He shut the door. The next door took him to a room with a television and two love seats. The room’s walls looked like coastline expanse. The glass door revealed the backyard, the lot, and the garage.
Bancroft came to the door and he kicked it. It hurt his foot and rang like layers of steel dominos tipping. Reinforcement. Bancroft shook his head disappointed that he needed a device to open the door. He circled it and found no windows. Bancroft crossed his arms. What is my target hiding? Even the conventional door felt heavy, and three rusted locks sealed it shut. The hound barked viciously. Bancroft worried he may have to kill the animal.
A motor ran by and alerted Bancroft. He looked from the corner of the house. A Lexus with fresh paint drove up the driveway. A man in a suit and sunglasses knocked at the door. Bancroft pressed against the outer wall, and lowered himself into the shadows. The eastern sun left him with a heavy darkness in the shadow of the house. The visitor did not leave, but started pacing around the house. Bancroft lowered his head and tucked his body into a wallet shape, the smallest possible. He kept his body so close to the ground that he saw the roots of the grass. He felt the lawn consume him and the darkness embrace him. The visitor came nearer. His shoes squished the water from the ground. His back hunched over, and neck craned forward as if searching for something in the distance. Bancroft held his breath, and kept his eyes to the dirt. People notice when you look at them, he understood. But he peeked anyway because of the almost clumsy steps the visitor took with both hands out.
“You there. I don’t care who you are, but I can smell the blood on the bottom of your shoes. You’re...” he rose his nose in the air and it extended by a foot as he took long, slow sniffs, when he stopped sniffing his nose sunk back to its place. “...Accomplished. You’re wasting your time here. Why aren’t you working for the Russians?”
Bancroft called his bluff and remained still. The visitor spoke to the wall.
“I’m looking for the owner of this house. I have a message. If you see him, tell him that the Offer Is Retracted. He’ll know what it means.”
The visitor wandered away past the garage into the trees. Bancroft regained his posture once again, and looked at the car he drove. The color and shape changed- it looked like wood paneling on an outdated station wagon. A brown skinned woman stepped out and unchained the dog. She followed it ripping around the corner. She hurried after it, finding the hound jumping at the door. She opened it, and the hound almost took her feet from under her when it bolted into the house. She called after it, “No, bad dog! Stay outside!” mud tracks ran down the carpet. The dog barked at the basement door. She tried to take hold of its collar but the dog snarled and scratched at the door.
Bancroft stood against the basement door with one hand on the handle and the other on his weapon. He heard the woman shout “shoo, perro, shoo.” she whacked it with a mop, until the dog stood on the porch and she slammed the door on the hound, who sat and whined at the door.
Bancroft left the door. He lowered his body and slid beneath the steps through a gap between the first two. He lowered his legs first and dropped. The maid opened the door. Her shadow cut against the wall. She flipped the light on and looked at the corners of the room and saw nothing.
She uttered some Spanish. Bancroft understood it to be “Dumb animal”.
Bancroft checked his time. Plenty. The party started at 800.
He listened to the maid run the vacuum and rummage around the kitchen. Her steps sounded soft and light. Bancroft wondered if she took the same dance classes as he did. She played music as she worked. Spanish Polka that sunk into the basement. A few of the songs he didn’t mind all too much, but he listened to one after the other with a sour face. After an hour he felt so bored in the dark that he started looking forward to a few of the sounds being replayed.
He waited there for nine hours.
Then the family started returning home. First the mother and her daughter. Then at 600, the target arrived. He spoke to the woman. Bancroft made out the woman say “You’re hiding something from me.” - to which he responded “No- I’m just stressed out about work.” He stomped up the stairs.
“Is she home yet? Where is she?” the target asked but Bancroft didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. He felt the anticipation of danger in his tone. He started to feel like a mannequin kept locked away in storage, but now his heart rekindled. He stole away to the fuse box, and pulled lose the fuses. The fuse box sparked in a flash, than darkness so thick that it swirled and danced as Bancroft stood still, aligned against the wall beneath the fuse box. He drew a club made from the stock of a flintlock from his kit and waited in beneath the stairs. The door opened and a flashlight cut through the dark. Heavy steps bouldered down. Exhausted grumbles under his breath. While the target fumbled with the fuses, Bancroft slid in behind him. He stood close enough to feel the target’s body heat, and his target paused, the light in his mouth, his attention on the fuse box- then he ended his pause and went back to task. Without a doubt he felt Bancroft’s heat too, but the target assured himself that no one else, surely, stood in the basement with him. The target tried the main switch again after making adjustments and sighed as the house remained in darkness. Then Bancroft took hold of the target’s shoulder- And the target drew in the same gasp as a skydiver when their emergency parachute fails to open. But his voice wasted away when Bancroft hammered the club downward. Bancroft held the fighting shoulder muscles in place. With the first blow, the target’s skull cracked. With the second, the club hit a soft thump like with mashing potatoes. The tension in the shoulders eased. Bancroft took him by the mouth. Teeth bit into his gloves. He lowered the body down, then hit his target two more times in both temples. Bancroft leaned back and watched his target’s heart slow. The blood didn’t pour but squirt, with each heartbeat the blood jumped lower and lower until at last it stopped. The bleeding stopped in ten minutes. The last blow made a cracking noise and splashing noise- like a giant egg cracking. The jaw grip weakened. The body lay limp and cold, blood on the concrete spilling down the drain in the middle of the floor. The drain gurgled. The floored flashlight shined its light up the target’s nostrils. Bancroft took the batteries out and left the flashlight on the floor.
Bancroft checked for pulse, scooped the body up, and lay it across his shoulder. He stood up. The weight constrained his graceful motions to short, but quiet steps. The bleeding stopped, but he heard it drip against the floor. Take it outside, leave it in a ditch, we pick it up in the car and dump the body in coal train headed to the power plant furnace.
He reached the stairs and turned for the back door. He walked along the staircase as steps descended. The woman’s voice echoed in the basement as she called for her husband. Bancroft moved with steady resilience. To the back room and the glass door. In the dark he thought he heard something scrape against the glass but he saw nothing but distant lights and the moon masked by ashy clouds. But lights flashed- Bancroft pressed into a dark corner adjacent to the glass. A cellphone light. Lovers whispered against the glass. Quint giggles, and the urgent shushing. “We’re late.” The brawny girl voice explained. The glass door slid open. The romeo, juliet giggling increased as the two silhouetted against the moon light lingered to the love seats and honored the name with quaint kisses that dove deeper into intimate pressure. Bancroft only had two feet to move and was free. He eased over, bending his knees and moving on the balls of his feet. The teenagers didn’t notice the blood dripping on the carpet. The girl stopped her suitor’s voracious consumptions to take a photograph. Bancroft took his first step out from the dark when the flash beamed across the room. Only after a second, both stared at the photo in silence, both turning their heads at the same time to see that the camera made no error. A man in black held the dead father. Both of them screamed. Bancroft dropped the body and pulled out his gun.
“Drop your phones on the floor. Get in the basement. Now.”
The woman called after them The teenagers dropped their phone. Bancroft stomped on them both. The kids held each other. Bancroft prodded them along, whispering his own midsummer night’s dream to them: “Tell her I’m here, and I can’t promise you’ll live through the night.”
The teenager girl screamed for her mom anyhow. Bancroft took them both by the neck and drove them from the room, holding the gun over their heads as feet ran for the cries. In the dark the woman ran into the two teenagers and the three of them dropped to the floor. Bancroft stood over them, dragging them one by one and tossing them into the basement.
Bancroft shoved furniture against the door to block it, and he sorrowfully enacted his nuclear option. He turned on the oven and tossed in the target’s bloody clothes, leaving the door open. He opened his kit and took out the lighter fluid. He lit the burners and sprayed the fluid over the stove. The fire lit the room in a red haze and lit the curtains ablaze. He poured some in a bowl, and placed pennies inside. He placed it in the microwave and hit the popcorn key. In thirty seconds the bowl ignited. He opened the microwave, and batted the bowl out. It crashed on the floor and the flames spread up the wood counters.
Bancroft needed to make certain to destroy any evidence. He saw the house burn for miles as he drove through the country to the highway. Then his phone rang. He answered it, and stopped his car. The contractor called him.
“I’m not paying you the rest.”
“Your man is dead. There were unforeseen complications, but he’s no longer a part of this earth.”
“The deal was to kill him. Not his whole family.”
The contractor hung up. Bancroft stewed. His whole body felt dissected, soaked in broth of sweat and blood. He felt exhausted. His muscles ached. But he felt he did a job well done, and stayed on the highway but didn’t try to pass state lines. He still had the five thousand dollars and he intended on sharing it with Hazelnut.
He stopped the car, changed from his black guise and changed back into his suit. Another man exited from the front door and waved to Bancroft who ignored the stranger. The other man looked away and pretended like he made a wrong turn and ended up in the trailer park.
Bancroft entered her room, and leaned in the doorway until she noticed him like always.
“You reek of Death.” Hazelnut said to him.
“Shall I shower first?”
“No. I like it.”
Bancroft awoke in the morning. The police knocked at the door. Bancroft told her that if it meant she’d stay out of trouble than to answer any question of him they ask “Sure” she shrugged, and Bancroft bolted out the window.
Bancroft was apprehended, and sent to trial. The prosecution found most of the house burned but standing- which Bancroft did not anticipate. They recovered three hairs. All of which belonged to Bancroft. He left the windows of the house down, and the fire didn’t get enough oxygen to burn hot enough to destroy the house. The jury found him guilty on four counts of murder and arson. The maid rescued the the youngest daughter and the “animal mudo”. The judge sentenced him to death.
They showed him a gallery of options to choose from. So many different ways to be executed, so many clever mind’s ingenious devices. The Iron Maiden, the Spanish Horse, the Iron Bull. Bancroft requested decapitation by axe. The headsmen told him that he’d leave his axe unsharpened unless he paid him a hefty sum.
The wakeful Bancroft poured his coffee and sucked the steaming fluid down. It burned his throat and guts but his body felt cold after remembering the ending that the dreamworld conjured for him. He stepped back outside. He didn’t want to be inside for the fourth dream.
The fourth Dream
Bancroft entered a smoking room, dark, and occupied by hooded individuals with their faces hidden, needles and bottles at their feet, hookahs and pipes on the tables. He sat at a far corner and asked for water so the proprietor would leave him alone. There he waited for his contractor. He came in looking like a mouse trapped in an unfamiliar lair, stressed by the grave decorates and shrouded stares. He looked like prey, and the lurkers of the smoking chamber knew it. They leered with long teeth and primal eyes, inhuman gargles uttering from under their chins. And like spiders they cornered their prey with sheets and nets they hoped to trap him with but Bancroft stepped behind them. “Leave him be.”
The lurking menaces scurried back to their tables.
“Sorry about them. They won’t touch you now. Many are de-recognized faces from billboards and tv anyhow. Come. Let’s discuss our business.”
Bancroft wore a funeral suit. The contractor covered his body in warm clothes. Bancroft led him behind a curtain and down narrow halls to an office with the pipes and wires of the ceiling exposed.
“First thing. The deposit.”
The contractor pulled out an envelope and handed it to Bancroft, who stored it in his interior pocket.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Vance Logust, but he’s going by Ervin Rowewood.”
“I know his name. Who is he?”
“Logust is a killer. He’s murdered four children between 1979 and 1985 in four different states.”
“You’re a police officer.” Bancroft sipped with water with a singing grin. “Who did he kill?”
“George Littleton. Frances Blair. Louise Wyn. Flash McCatskill. Probably more.”
Bancroft leaned into the light.
“Photos.”
the contractor showed him the graying, balding features of a middle aged man.
“He’s too old to kill again. Which one did you know? Littleton?”
“Does it matter? All I care about is him d-”
“Let’s not say something we may come to regret. It does matter. A lot. Tell me what he did.”
“He...” the contractor rose a flat hand as if to show him something he already knew existed. “would marry a single mother, then plant drugs on them. While in jail he kidnapped the children. They found George ten miles down the road naked skewered to a fence post. By the time the women are released from jail, he’s moved to the another state, changes his name- even got some plastic surgery done. He’s never been charged with the murders. Now, he’s got a “new family”...”
“Sir, you came to the best.”
“I want him to suffer.”
“Now, sir- I can make him suffer or I can kill him. The two are different. But why come to a man whose profession is murder, not torture? If that’s what you want I suggest you try some low life with a pickup truck. I can find someone-”
“How will you kill him?”
“Are you willing to find out for yourself?”
“But you don’t know how long...” the contractor grabbed the table so hard the wood creaked.
“No, sir. I do not. Because my subjects never get away.”Bancroft stood up. “You’ve told me all I need to know. The job will be done. I’ll call you.”
He left the chamber, walked up stairs before blinding outdoors and walked to his car where he stored the money in the glove department he kept locked tight.
Bancroft wasted no time. He drove straight to the property. Early morning rays cut through retreating fog. Birds flew south. He waited for the family to leave, and once Ervin turned down the road, Bancroft waited until he saw only the tail of gravel dust and started his pursuit.
He followed him to the highway, but to his surprise he didn’t go to the city. He drove ten miles north of the city to the racetrack. He parked the van in an empty parking lot. He carried a suitcase inside with him. Horses raced before empty bleachers. Ervin came back empty handed, far paler than when he entered. He cried on his steering wheel for a good five minutes before starting the car up and driving on back to the city. He took the highway to the industrial part of town. Nuclear smoke stacks chugged steam. Ervin parked his car in the back of the lot and walked up a long row of cars to the plant. Bancroft prepared to wait for him to get off work in eight or more hours, but within a few hours Ervin came out- with another briefcase that he stored in his car and took back to the racetrack, then back to the power plant. Bancroft left his car at a motel. A hook handed pimp and his prostitute solicited their services to Bancroft, but he ignored them. He marched to the nuclear plant and scaled the fence, using his coat to climb over the razor wire. From the top he leaped into the parking lot and slid under the cars to reach the van. He Looked inside. Never had he seen such a clean interior before- the suitcase still inside. He used a wedge from his kit to pry open the door by half an inch- this gave him enough room to stick a small rod in to unlock the door. Click. Bancroft climbed in and shut the door just as the security guard looked from his issue of “Gagged” over his shoulder. Bancroft took the suitcase from the backseat and laid it on his lap. A lock sealed the case shut. Bancroft broke it with a hammer and opened it. Reports of waste management and reports of safety. Bancroft laughed. “Naughty. Corporate espionage! Ha.” He put the documents back and stuck a pin in the case so that it felt locked at distant notice. Then he set it back. Bancroft tried to open the glove department but it too required the hammer. Registration, maps of various states with spots marked with red Xs, car rental pamphlets, and real estate advertisements from cities marked on the maps. He also kept a melted candy bar and a hunting knife. Bancroft crawl behind the back seat. A mattress lay in the bed of the van big enough for one person. The bottom faced upwards. Bancroft lifted it and saw bleach stains, but still smelled blood. The spare tire lay beneath, but it didn’t fit in the compartment. He removed the spare. A keep sake box sat. Shaped like a valentine. The size of a shoe box. A tiny key hole. No match for hammers.
The contents caused Bancroft to smile with wicked possibilities, but they confirmed what the contractor said. The box contained tiny shoes. No pairs, only single shoes- and none made in the last twenty years. Bancroft remembered shoes of this design. He wore them as a child, but never ones so nice. The dirt and mud scrubbed off, but still scrapes and scars personified soles and heels. All black or white laces except for one red lace. Bancroft pulled the lace from the shoe. He closed the box and set the tire back on top. He shifted back to the front, where he tied the lace to the rear view mirror.
Bancroft watched and waited. The pimp spoke to an old man in a wheelchair back at the motel. A few people came and went, but they didn’t notice Bancroft. At 3:30 Ervin came out of the plant once again. He looked more sober than before, but still troubled. When he saw his car door unlocked the trouble became a fear that turned his lips inside out. He recognized the lace. He jumped into the car tore it down, revved the engine and left the city. He drove to a quiet place, an empty place. He took the suitcase and started tearing the documents to pieces to burning them in the suitcase. Ervin said nothing, but watched the flames with deep concentration.
That’s when Bancroft unfolded his body and emerged from the back- opening the truck door with his weapon drawn. Ervin saw him at once but he grinned.
“You’re too late. I’ve destroyed the reports.”
Bancroft shot him twice in the heart, and stored the body inside the van, and drove it to a swamp. He took the body deep within, wading until the swamp rose to his waist. Algae and moss tangled up in his coat. Ervin’s arms and head floated to the surface, so Bancroft filled his pockets with rocks. The body sank into the mud at the bottom.
Bancroft drove the van back to the motel. He paid the prostitute to leave an ear ring inside, along with money to keep her tongue still about seeing him, then hopped into his own car and left. He listened carefully to the radio. No news about the incident. He felt that he did a job well done. He called his contractor.
“It’s done.”
“I haven’t heard anything on the news.”
“I know.”
“Wow. You really did it. Thank you. Thank you so much. You’re an angel. I left the money… where your contact said you’d find it.”
“Smart man. Until next time...” he hung up and drove his car deep into the country to the shambles of a home so buried in neglect that trees busted from the walls. Vines grew over the window grilles. The glass long since destroyed. He entered. The copper wire stripped from the walls. Rotten clothes lay covered in dust. Hornets build nests in the corners, despite the shivering weather.
Bancroft crossed over the sinking floorboards to a dark room at the back of the house. Half of a ceiling support hung down over the doorway. He he dipped under and entered. Then the clock started ticking again. He smiled, it's still here. A grandfather clock. The pendulum swung, and but the hands remained anchored in place. Bancroft opened the clock. The brass rods rose up and down like water filled syphons. Inside Bancroft checked to see, and he felt comfort in knowing, the same single leather glove remained inside since his boyhood. He stroked the leather as he recovered his money, and remained in the house with the leather glove until he fell asleep.
Bancroft awoke. Cold air chilled his bones. The smell of flavorless cigarettes and cheap makeup. He thought for a moment he saw his mother back from the dead, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark he saw the person standing above him pointed his own gun at him. He squinted. He knew who found him, but no matter how he tried to think of it, he couldn’t not determine how the teenage daughter found him. She pulled the hammer back, shaking, horror sweat dripping into her eyes. Bancroft glared, You better pull that trigger. He put his hands on the floor and rose his upper body, bringing himself closer to the weapon, he even guided it for her to hit his heart, and stretched his arms out, and waited for her fatal shot.
Dream 5
“Explain yourself.” she demanded.
“I’ve committed more crimes than years you've spent breathing. As far back as I can remember- but it's always been my own road. I don’t regret a single damn thing. It's this… or live like a victim. Just like your old man. I’m the fox in the hen house. If I deserve death for that, then I accept death.”
She failed to speak, so her muscles spoke when a javelin of emotion spiked her chest. She fired the weapon, and Bancroft fell back against the wall in a pool of his own consanguinity. The girl took money from his wallet, and kept the gun.
The waking Bancroft poured the coffee out. He marched into his medicine cabinet and swallowed everything. Within moments he found himself laying on the floor in yesterday’s shower dampened rug. I’m getting this right.
The dreamworld revealed itself to him once again.
Dream 6
Bancroft met his contractor in the smoking chamber. The contractor lay an envelope on the table, but Bancroft shoved it back to him.
“You are to call Petersen’s Funeral Home and make arrangements for Rowewood, use this to cover it. Send the rest to a woman named Hazelnut- and tell her to wait at home for me.”
Bancroft again broke into Ervin’s car while he worked at the plant and stole the memento box of shoes. He drove to the Rowewood estate. The hound greeted him with curious barks and studious encirclement, sniffing and licking the old blood stains on his clothes.
On the porch he knocked, loud and hard, until the maid came to the door. He instructed her in Spanish. “Hello, Ms, I have something to give the family. It’s imperative- IMPERATIVE- that the Mrs of the house be given this. Do not let anyone but her see it, and if she asks who gave it to you, say a friend of George Littleton’s.”
Ervin left work, and started to drive when he felt cold steel at the back of his neck. He looked in the rear view and his stomach started eating itself in anxiety.
“We’re taking a detour.”
“I’m just doing what my boss tells me to do.”
“I don’t care about the toxic compounds or what your doing with them.”
“I paid Big Z. I paid back all of it.”
“I don’t care.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
Bancroft dangled the red lace. “Vance Logust. Keep driving. There’s an old propane field up this way. Why don't we make pit stop when we get there?”
“I swear to you- it was my wife’s idea. I helped, but she forced me to do it.”
“No concern of mine.”
“No? But it was thirty fucking years ago.”
“And I got paid to-day.”
“Who… who…”
They left the city and turned up the road that Bancroft directed.
“I swear… if you let me go….”
“I’ve already got everything in world I want right here.” Bancroft dropped the lace into his lap.
“Please...” his words quivered. He reached for the lace, his fingers moving like lost memories, his throat cracking, and repressive eyes peeking from the back of his mouth. His teeth chattered and horripilation aroused his arms to feel like a cheese grater. The lace slipped between his fingers, softening and tumbling, curled around his fingers.
“Know to whom that belongs?” Bancroft inquired.
Ervin looked at his feet. He spoke like a schoolboy telling the master why he didn’t learn his lessons. His arms and shoulders hung limp, a blank stare projected to the country roads. His mouth hung open, the words knotted in his windpipe, choking his thoughts, challenging his constitution, dishonesty a burning effigy of a horseman with a noose riding nigh. “Who hired you?” He asked.
The rusted propane tanks sat among overgrown grass. Black birds rested on them. Wind howled as it passed through.
“Pull up then, and I’ll tell you.”
The car stopped in front of the tanks. Both got out. Bancroft told Ervin to strip, which he did, repeating “who… who…?”
Bancroft took Ervin out into the trees. A then deeper until the ground softened and sunk into a swampy riverside. Brass whimpered names:
“…Melinda Bradly?… Lindsey Arhens?… Will Grossley?...” as they tunneled forward the thorn guarded circulatory system of snapwood and shredded bark. Bancroft didn’t need a gun pointed at him. He had his heart in his hand.
Bancroft stopped walking and Ervin stopped, wincing back seeing Bancroft unarmed with his hands in his pockets. His eyelashes enchained extinguishing restrictions.
“We’re here.”
“What do you want? What are you going to do?”
“Take a swim.”
Ervin stepped into the swamp and waded forth.
As the algae and foam rose to Ervin’s waist, Bancroft stood atop a stone over the swamp, and relaxed his shoulders. Ervin kept moving.
. “...Jessa Hollyfield?… Chance Red-Rock?… Romona Fairfax?….”
Ervin turned around to Bancroft. No more names came to his mind and his tongue flopped out as if to show that nothing else remained hidden in his mouth like undesired vegetables. Bancroft informed him: “George Littleton”.
Ervin looked at him with enigma in his eyes, coking his head every way, corkscrewing his neck, pulling his thin strands of hair, the name nowhere to be found. He sunk into the swamp, the mud consuming his feet, then his knees. He slumped forwards and the mud took his hands as his own reflection beckoned him to join the turtles swimming at the bottom.
Bancroft watched Ervin’s thin hairline submerge. A tuft of hair sat on his raw potato of a cranium. A crown of bacteria and algae gathered around his ears, green water flowed inside and flooded his hearing. Down he sank, and never emerged.
With the job done, he drove to the house and recovered the rest of his money. He purchased high grade heroin, then drove to Hazelnut’s house.
