CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Cassius stared into the bathroom mirror, and a stranger stared back. A pale wraith with hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes. The face of a man who had danced too long with demons and had the scars to prove it. Time had not been kind, but then again, neither had he.

Fitting, he supposed. One should look their best for their final bow. And this performance was to be his swan song. His pièce de résistance, if you will.

He ran a hand over his chin and felt the rasp of stubble. Shaving seemed so pointless now, because where he was going, the niceties of grooming held little sway.

The pills sat heavy in his palm in a kaleidoscope of colors. Cassius tossed them back, chasing the bitter slurry with a swallow of water gone tepid in the glass. One last chemical crutch to see him through to the final curtain.

Somewhere downstairs sat his completed manuscript, as short as it was. He'd sent copies to every publisher from New York to LA, packed up all his little snapshots and scribbled confessions like some deranged scrapbook. All that was left was the final chapter – already in print, but not yet manifested in reality. And to add that final chef's kiss, he'd tucked a special surprise between the pages. Photographs, a whole macabre collage. His victims, captured in the amber of his lens. Their final moments, preserved for posterity. The kind of pictures the newspapers didn't have.

It was his masterpiece, and soon, so very soon, the world would know the name Cassius Auctor.

But Cassius knew, in the marrow of his bones, that he would not live to see his legend spread. To watch it sink its hooks into the collective unconscious and pull.

No, he had a different kind of immortality in mind. The kind that came on a blade's edge, in the space between heartbeats. The kind that would see him reunited with the specters that had dogged his every step since he was old enough to fear the monsters in the mirror.

Fifty years. Half a goddamn century since he'd first felt the icy touch of something other slither across his soul.

It had started on the farm. That ramshackle collection of sagging outbuildings and blight that his foolish parents had thought to tame. Nights spent huddled beneath threadbare sheets, eyes screwed shut against the skitter and scratch of things that shouldn't be.

The teddy bear his grandmother had given him, the one with the button eyes that seemed to follow his every move. He'd whisper his secrets to it, his childish fears and fancies. And sometimes, in the hush of a moonless night, he'd swear he heard it whisper back.

Hateful things, hissed from a cottony mouth stiff with age.

And the pigs. Lord, the pigs. Porcine faces pressed against the slats, grunting and squealing like something straight out of hell's backlot. When his father had handed him the knife, shown him just how to slide it in, just how to twist for the quickest bleed... that's when Cassius had learned the terrible thrill of holding a life in his hands.

He'd watched the light go out of those piggy eyes, watched them film over and go dull. But later, in the chilly dark of his room, he'd swear he saw them watching. Staring. Accusing from atop his dresser, right next to his toy soldiers.

And the faces in the windows glimpsed from the tail of his eye. Eyes like mirrors that reflected his own horrified visage back at him.

It was enough to drive a boy mad. But Cassius, oh, he'd been a fighter. He'd battled those demons the only way he knew how – with pen and paper, spinning their likeness into stories to chill the blood.

If he couldn't exorcise them, he'd damn well canonize them. Commit them to the page in hopes that they'd release their hold on his psyche. But these ghosts were insatiable, so he'd tried to appease them in other ways. The haunted house, his humble effort to grant them corporeal form. What better way to breathe life into nightmares than to give the masses a taste, let them sup on the same horrors that had been his bread and butter for so long?

But Cassius was no Hitchcock. His terrors were too raw, too real. The rubes didn't pack his little spook show the way they did the other, flashier attractions.

So he'd adapted. Donned the greasepaint and the rubber masks. If he couldn't beat them, he'd join them. And for a time, it had almost worked.

Almost.

But the eyes never stopped watching, and the voices never stopped whispering. He'd tried to drown them out with drink and the needle's sweet kiss but neither had worked. People told him he was overreacting. Even his own parents had laughed him off. Ghosts aren't real, boy. Get out of your head.

No more. No more dancing to a tune he'd never asked to hear. No more capering for phantoms and leeches. He was the master of his fate now, and this ship was headed for strange shores indeed.

One last voyage into that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. He just had one final piece of business to attend to. One last ghost to lay to rest.

He allowed himself a wan smile at his reflection. I'll see you soon, he mouthed. Save me a seat by the fire.

Cassius donned his black coat like and slipped the kitchen knife into his pocket. It was time to go back to where it all began - time to feed himself to the hungry dark and let it choke on his bones.

But then a sound from below made him freeze.

A knock on the door. Someone trying the handle.

Someone was in the shop.

No, scratch that. Someone was trying to get into the shop.

A thief or a vagrant most like, scavenging for scraps among the forgotten places. Desperation made bold the hearts of men.

A voice, muffled but unmistakable. Not in his head this time, oh no. This was a distinctly earthly intrusion.

Cassius moved to the window and peered down at the street. A man stood before the bookshop door, fumbling with the lock. Even from this distance, Cassius could make out the telltale bulge of a shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

Well now. This was an interesting development.

For a moment, Cassius thought to let him pass, to grant this small mercy as some final act of grace before the end. But then a notion seized him – a final frisson of the old madness.

What if this wasn't chance, but providence? The universe serving him up one last canvas, readymade and ripe. A parting gift from the muses. He'd planned for the bookshop to be his final bow, but wasn't an ellipsis so much more intriguing?

Cassius edged to the closet beside his bathroom. Inside were the tools he'd always kept for emergencies like this. They'd been here for years, unused, merely insurance should a robbery take place. His car was in the lot just beyond the back door, and Cassius doubted anyone would see him dragging a body into it.

He could hear movement downstairs now. The scrape of a lock giving way, the creak of hinges in need of oil. His uninvited guest had made his way inside.

Yes, fate was watching down upon him tonight, and it seemed it had a change of plan in mind.