Introduction

Based on the authors real-life relationship with a convicted murderer, this gripping first novel delves with subtlety and nuance--rather than violence and sensationalism--into the mind of a serial killer.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

Missouri 1994

Some time ago, two reporters visited me and I was as open with them as I could humanly be. They came every day for about two weeks and asked maybe a thousand questions. They seemed like nice guys, but just a little edgy. One sloshed coffee around as if I might be somewhere in the dregs. I'm no fool, so I knew they were searching for something no one else had—a slip on my part, an odd phrasing, a gesture, name. I could have toyed with them, made up corpses buried here and there. But I just answered straight. I try always to tell the truth.

Now, their account of our interviews is in the bookstore, laden with black and white photos of me at my typewriter. O-h-h-h, look at the demon creature at work. Don't be misled by the triviality of its habits or the blandness of its gaze. They write that they “occasionally saw glimpses of the monster within.” The monster they expected me to be. I remember them pretty well, feature by feature, movement by movement, and they never behaved as if they were dealing with something fearful or distasteful. I liked them overall. They seemed compassionate and kind, and won me over. If they saw something they didn't like, they were looking for it.

The reporters were unfair to me, but I understand that they wanted their book to do well, and I was their material. They shifted me to fit their needs—a kind of early death, dying by hyperbole. They wanted me not to be boring. Be a real monster, they implored silently. Please. Less than a monster will not sell our book.

We may be spectacular in our dreams, but our doings often diminish us.

* * *

They’ve butchered my mother in their depiction of her. I need to rectify that.

* * *

So, I’m going to tell my own story; my truth. I lived it. I know it best. If anyone’s words are going to unravel me, let them be mine. That's justice. Unadorned truth from me to you.

Bluntly—people believe I'm guilty of killing at least eleven women, and perhaps seventeen of them. They think I'm a case of “arrested development,” a “child of horrific abuse,” a “tortured, twisted psyche.”

They're wrong. I am a boring man, an observer. Deviancy in any species fascinates me, particularly if the deviancy is an act of true choice. I would be enthralled with my own nature if it held anything so grounded in will as defiance.

From Chapter 4

Parents often confine their children when necessary, so I don't think my mother was unusual in that way. I imagine she didn't have much choice or didn't know about any choices. We act according to the resources we have. When she felt her world changing, she protected me as best she could. By at least age two or three, I knew not to call for her. She would come eventually. The closet was my caretaker and my babysitter. I didn't become fond of it; just comfortable. I've read that even pain becomes familiar and bearable, sometimes even welcome. It's an odd assurance of one's place. The closet was deep and wide, storing only old coats, and their pungent smell became pleasant. In the corner, three folded blankets awaited my arrival. I guess she washed them from time to time, during her good periods. And I had a small wooden chair. I remember that it had no paint. The arms were spindled, and I often traced the grooves while I waited for her to appear. After I learned to count, I discovered there were thirteen grooves on each arm and on each leg; the back carving had twenty-four semi-circles in all and could, if one half-closed his eyes, resemble a face, fat and smiling. The disparity in odd and even numbers later troubled me. It was a deliberate imbalance in the very making of the chair.

Sometimes I heard her return from a walk, or visit, or trip to town (or wherever she went or thought she went), and I would listen intensely for her movements toward the stairway. Sounds, you see, become directions when they're all you have. If she would move at all, I knew exactly where she was. If she stayed in the kitchen, I knew she was eating and reading, and might be a long time in coming for me. She held the book with her left hand, turning the pages with a thumb, while she ate with her right. I can read like that, too, but I've made a point of not consuming words with food. Appetites should be kept separate so you know what they are. Many times she would come upstairs and sit outside the closet door. I worried then. I couldn't get the clues.

“Are you in there, Arthur? Do you want to come out? Will you be good? Shall I read you a story?”

Once, perhaps to punish her in my weak, childish way, I said “No,” that I didn't want to come out. She was silent. Then I heard her weeping. That's a wrenching sound, from any human being; or should be. “Yes, I do,” I said. “I do want out.” She opened the door and I saw my mother's other face, that stranger, gaunt, with eyes shadowed like bruises and yet burning, the mouth a thin red slit. “Then come out,” she said, and I scooted back under the coats to the far corner. She left me alone. She forgot to lock the door but I didn't leave the closet.

True tales: I knew a woman once who took her son for a stroll. They lived on land that was only planted when neighboring farmers leased land from the mother. It was an attractive farm, cut through with a creek and spotted with walnut, oak, hickory, and other huge trees. A narrow wooden bridge spanned the creek. There were no side railings. Sometimes, when the mother paused at the highest end, the little boy held his breath.

This particular day, she didn't stride onto the bridge at all, but walked under the trees shading the creek. The boy was careful to stay a little behind her. When she moved into a clearing, he followed.

“Look there,” she said, and pointed at vines growing up the base of a trunk. He saw the leaves trembling in the breeze. He didn't know what he was to respond, so he said nothing.

“You see how that vine grows around the tree? It's choking the tree, that's what it's doing.” She stared at him as if to verify that he understood. She shook her head. “Just choking the tree.”

He nodded.

“Someone should pull it off, shouldn't they?”

He nodded again.

“You think you could do that?” she said. She was resting her weight on her back-stretched arms. Her black hair hung straight and heavy almost to the ground. She smiled at him. “You want to do that for me? Pull off those vines?”

He got up immediately and walked to the tree. He tried to grip the vine but it had rooted in the bark. Still, he managed to break the vine in places and to strip it of leaves. He moved on to other trees as she directed him to do.

Later, in the kitchen, when eruptions burned on his entire body and swelled shut his eyes, she said “Guess that was poison ivy you got into.”

She made a paste of baking soda and water and dotted it all over his naked body. “You're a sight,” she said. “A real mess.”

On another summer day, she pointed at a brown ribbon emerging from beneath a creek rock. “Water moccasin,” she said. “Poisonous snake. Really likes little kids.” The boy went rigid in her arms. The ribbon undulated in the water, finally disappeared from his sight. The boy was uncomfortable with her gripping him so tightly, but he didn't move at all. He hoped she would turn back home, but she didn't. She slipped her shoes off and stepped into the water. She waded to the flat rock where the snake had emerged, and set him down feet first. He kept his hands locked behind her neck, but she unfolded his fingers. Then she walked away, and squatted on the bank, resting her elbows on her knees. She wore a light yellow sundress, and the cut of the dress's front revealed her shoulder bones.

He stood there a long time, maybe hours. He could see rocks on the bottom, some dark green as if a miniature world were under there, with soft grasses and waving trees. He waited for ribbons to curl up over the edge of the rock and hurt him. He knew then she'd take him home. When she tossed a pebble near the rock, he wet his pants.

“We can go home when you're ready,” she finally said.

A few moments later he stepped into the water and walked out.

That, too, was my mother. I amused her. And she loved me.

* * *

I once saw a special on a crazed chimpanzee, female, a new mother. She couldn't care for her offspring. She would carry the baby around in her left arm, just under the teat, and occasionally shake the baby, urging it to nurse. But she didn't hold the baby quite close enough, and didn't urge it right. The researchers interfered with the third offspring. They took it away to feed it and that inept mother grieved. You could see it in her expression, her posture, the curving of her empty arms. She longed to feed that baby. She just couldn't get her desire and her nature to blend.

Another chimpanzee female was a marauder in a natural setting. Worse, actually—a cannibal. She ripped away the newborns of other chimps and ate them. She taught her own offspring to do the same. That mother chimp had flat brown eyes. No expression at all. It was a terrifying film.

These creatures weren’t alike. They were both aberrants, but one was more horrendous. Both had no choice, but one seemed to want choice.

From Chapter 15

* * *

A man might feel a quickening and have to slow it down. He might have to keep a lid on it. He has to look at a steady spot on the wall or out the window or get up and go outside and down the stairs and sit in the stairwell. If he opens and closes the door, there’s a whooshing sound that can soothe him for a while. He can walk down all the flights, and come back up and enter the room very quietly, and feel that quickening again, as though he hadn’t left at all. And there she lies on the bed, on her back, little bird face straight up, hands drawn close to her shoulders, palms to the ceiling. Palms to the ceiling. It could be a game.

So he sits in a chair. A light of some kind blinks through the window across the wall and out the other window, though that’s not possible. Is it? For light to come and go on its own like that?

One day and night gone but lasting too long still. And there she lies, resting for the morrow, for another long passage of nothing fun. Arthur this. Arthur that. Arthur. While on her back she lies. He comes to the bed and bends down to see who exactly is lying there? Is that his mother? No. Of course not his mother. He puts one hand scant inches above her parted lips. He can feel her life in his own palm, very faint, a weak little life. She might wake and say something wrong, something ugly or stupid or just something. He waits for her to do that. He remembers having to stand still for so long his body hurt. Her eyelids flicker so he knows she’s awake, somewhere she’s awake and she knows who’s standing here and what he’s about. But she doesn’t open her eyes. Won’t. She’ll let it be a dream. He knows they do that. They pretend to be sleeping beauties. She knows her car is in another city and no one in the world knows where she is, so she’s not going to open her eyes. She’ll dream on. She’ll dream he’s loving the very sight of her. He may lower his hand over that mouth, see the startle of silent fear, the O O O. Something happens. A moan or subtle turn. A door shut. A laugh. A light blinking through the window. A scream out in the street. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Do specific traits in Arthur’s victims seem to account for his violence or are his acts truly random?

2. Arthur believes patterns underlie everything we do. What patterns does he see? What patterns do we see that he doesn’t?

3. Although the book is in Arthur’s point of view, we can see discrepancies. What clues might have been picked up by those around him? Or is he truly an absolute gentleman on the surface?

4. Do names have any particular significance to you in interpreting the story? Might they have any meaning to Arthur? “Nada” means “nothing” in Spanish. Other main characters’ names are Grace, Mary, Arthur. The Sheriff’s deputy who arrests Arthur is named Shirley Dyer. Are any of these significant?

5. Arthur makes many observations about the animal kingdom. What prompts his interest? Do his occasional interpretations seem accurate and normal?

6. Is Arthur being as truthful as he promises to be? In what passages do you feel Arthur is playing games with the reader?

7. Does Arthur kill the “apple” girl at the beginning of the work? What supports your belief?

8. What traits are, to your understanding, common to many serial killers? Does Arthur seem an accurate portrayal? In what ways does he fit or not fit your concept?

9. Why does Arthur have difficulty speaking Grace’s name?

10. Arthur insists that he really cares for Grace and Nada. Is this true? What suggests yes or no?

11. The work suggests that Arthur’s madness could be from heredity, environment, or both. Do you feel the work slants the evidence toward one cause more than the other? Which? Why?

12. What does Arthur teach us about nature vs. nurture?

13. Why does Arthur take Nada’s fiction? One level of interpretation is that the novel explores the difference between realism and romance and the literary value of one type of writing over the other. What does the theft say about Arthur as a writer, particularly his assessment of his own work?

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