It was the dawn that woke him, pushing insistently against his eyes. The first sensation he felt was warmth, an odd feeling during the winter months and especially around here. But the lingering heat was not nearly so alarming as the leaves brushing his face and hands, the feeling of the rough ground contours beneath his back, or the trilling of stubborn song birds. He sat up with a start, eyes grasping for the familiarity of his small apartment and the comfort of the familiar shadows, the humble decorum.
The forest stared back, trees clustered close together and holding up armfulls of snow. It was a beautiful morning, crisp as the hard-edged wind pushing gently against his hair.
Scrambling up from the ground, a more alarming sensation pushed forward in Byron's perception, explaining in a moment what he was doing in such an unfamiliar place.
Blood, sticky gobs of it clung to his mouth and fingers, painted Rorschach blots splayed across his t-shirt, browning tattoos crawling up his jeans. He had no memory of how they got there, of last night or even the day previous. Panic bubbled in his stomach for a moment before simmering, realization and even remorse passing through him like a brief wind, cold and sharp.
His victim lay sprawled beneath an aspen, a few green needles starkly bright against her naked body. Her clothes, strewn across the ground, were not ripped or removed with savagery, but with the careless passion of sex. Settling back onto the snowy ground, Byron's head sunk to rest in his hands but paused when he remembered the blood still on them. Grabbing small handfuls of snow, he clenched them in his fists till water ran between the wrinkles of his hands. Scrubbing the blood from his palms and face, he ventured to the body, hesitantly turning her over.
Her body was stiff, an entire evening in the wintery forest taking a toll on her skin and bones. Her eyes, thankfully, were closed and a pale blue pallor had darkened her cheeks in some sick parody of a blush. Byron felt his heart leap into his throat. It was Brenda.
Brenda Franklin was the pretty daughter of Joseph Franklin, sheriff of Rosalin. Even in death she was beautiful, pale skin as soft as he remembered it and her golden hair now brighter, a halo around her senseless head. Her skin would have been unmarred save for her chest, a vicious hole torn through the skin above her chest, an abyss of shadow and blood.
The shock was a cold numb feeling in his stomach, a sickening realization that he did not feel guilty about her death, but only that it was her who had to die. Usually in the tourist seasons he could be more careful. Attacks in the wilderness, short but passionate affairs on vacation, even trips down the mountain to the larger cities...where runaway teenagers and homeless were missing before he took them...
But he had never been so clumsy before.
Looking at her now, sitting beside her lifeless body, Byron fancied he understood what his hunger had seen in her. She was a perfect creature, crafted of moondust and sunlight. By all accounts she should not have been alone, vulnerable. But her outer features masked a yawning emptiness so similar to his own they might have been soul mates...all his victims and he might have been.
A little calmer now, Byron tried to get his bearings, to understand why his hunger had brought him out here. Usually it disposed of the body once done, an instinctual desire to remain in anonymity perhaps, or even his own guilt removing the body before he could think see them. Was this a sign he was becoming more callous?
The quiet murmur of running water ghosted beneath the icy pine needles, drawing Byron to a stream pushing down the mountain and into the forest. A hole was smashed in the ice of a small pool, a receptacle for the water about three feet deep before the stream continued on. The dark water invited him, an eye staring into him and through him. Symbolism was everywhere if one looked for it and Byron was becoming irritated with how coincidence seemed to remind him of what he was, what he wasn't.
What he didn't have.
Groaning under the weight of her body, he slipped her beneath the ice. She slid into the water easily, her bright golden hair like veins of metal beneath the ice itself. Given a day or two, it would freeze over again. Byron looked at her through the water, the way her face looked like she was sleeping, caught in a dream or floating in eternity. Not many people were buried like this, but he felt it was prettier this way. They looked so peaceful, as if they might get up in a moment and return to life.
He could have changed her, turned her into what he was...but he wasn't that lonely, not as lonely as she was.
Gathering some snow from the branches, he dumped it on her face, blocking it from view. He was clumsy this time, and it might uproot him from the life he'd decided to lead. He shivered, couldn't think about it and turned away from the stream. His bike would be ahead somewhere, and with it a change of clothes. Every month or two, the same routine. Hopeless met hopeless and hopeless ate hopeless. Like clockwork it would begin again. The birds were still singing, but it was a hollow sound, mocking rather than sweet. He imagined his maker in those chirps, laughing at his desires to live normally, to strive for something he could not stand.
Loves makes us weak, love is our enemy.
Love was her enemy, and she had never understood it.
He only hoped Brenda had felt something like love in their relationship, however brief, however secret. She was so full of kindness and life, and she would be missed...searched for. By now she should have been volunteering in the library, then her usual rounds around the town. Remembering her as she was comforted Byron, picturing her riding a bike down the streets of Rosalin, sitting in the park, or bringing warm apple crisps to the shop clerks on a long and trying day.
He left his own clothes in the dirt of a hastily dug and shallow hole. The ground was too cold to dig farther and sated, his strength was no longer impressive.
Something about the forest felt...awake, alive, watching. Glancing at the trees, how they whispered to each other by wind, Byron counted himself lucky plants spoke with no language anyone could understand. But if they moved so gently to this murder...what else had they seen in the long years beneath them?
What horrors could be worse?
********
By the late morning he was back in town. On his bike, he ducked inside the quiet shops delivering the care packages from Bill at the Post office. In their eyes he imagined accusation, suspicion, the people he had come to know over the two years he'd been here suddenly turning against him. So perhaps he was a little pale, his smiles wan or somehow weaker than they usually were. The one time a police car passed, a stranger in the normally peaceful town...especially on off-season, Byron nearly swerved his bike into a girl walking along the side of the road. He recognized her, the novelist girl, quiet and usually in a world of her own. Yanking the handlebars of his bike, he narrowly missed her, skidding across a store window and spinning off his bike face and across the sidewalk.
"Sorry! Sorry!" He chanted to her, leaping to his feet and retrieving his bike. The packages were fine...thankfully, but he was late for his first delivery, He gave a short wave to her, smiling apologetically, "In a completely different places, sorry for not paying attention!" Then jumped on his bike and peddled, hoping the groan in the frame was just a sigh of exasperation rather than any indication it was breaking.
Stopping by the library, he grabbed one of the packages assigned to him and passed through the door. The lack of the blonde he had left under the ice lent an eerie serenity to the place, more akin to a well kept tomb than a place of learning. He noticed Ms. Fulcanelli toward the back, obscure researcher of the town. He felt drawn to her sometimes, when the month wore on toward the end and familiar hunger rose within him. She was like him perhaps, empty, but at least he had the good sense to stay away from town when the hunger took him.
Every time but this.
"Mr. Holkonsen, package for you," Holding up a wrapped parcel he placed it on the front table, "I'd say it was a surprise, but the folks you buy from certainly leave nothing to imagination." Byron had gone through a 'scholar' phase fifty years ago but had grown tired of books as of late. They always seemed to play the part of the insistent tale weaver or aged professor, droning on about how their work was important. His favorite writer was life, a 'by the seats of your pants' kind of author who had no idea where the story was heading.
I was always a surprise, whether for good or bad.
"Just need you to give your John Hancock, let boss man know it got to you alright." Ivan had a way about him, a musty mysteriousness that only enhanced his friendly demeanor. Sometimes Byron felt something from him to, but it was fleeting...like the echo of something. No expert on the nature of hearts, he'd never questioned it. Placing the clipboard on the table with a pen, he leaned against the hard edged table and glanced around the library. It was small, cozy even, but there really weren't any books that caught his interest.
"Nice day out, quieter without so many tourists huh?"