The Stranger - Max Frei [129]
“Kela promised me that they’d help me die here,” the tormented soul suddenly informed us. “Are you the ones who will help me?”
“Who is this Kela?” I asked.
“A streetcar driver. I don’t know who he is. He promised me that everything would be over soon. So I felt calmer. He was going to kill me, but then he changed his mind. He said that other people would do it. Kela’s my friend. I used to have another friend, when I was a kid. I killed his dog because she was in heat. It was disgusting. Kela’s also my friend. The best one of all. I don’t know—” He made an effort to raise himself up, and stared at me with something like horror, or maybe with love. “Oh, a familiar face. I’ve seen you somewhere before, friend. Only without that cape. In a dream . . . I saw . . . yes.”
He started to grow weaker. Then he closed his eyes and was silent.
“Where could he have seen me?” I asked in surprise.
“What do you mean ‘where’? In the Great Battle of Horse Dung, when you were the brave commander of a mighty horde of five men!” Melifaro prompted.
“Shut up,” Sir Kofa muttered. “Can’t you see? Something is happening here that neither you nor I can understand, or even hope to.”
“It’s not all that bad, Kofa. Hope is the last thing to die,” Juffin piped up gaily, and turned to me. “He said ‘in a dream’! Where else? Whether you like it or not, there is some very strong bond between you two, Max. And a very dangerous one. This is a special problem. In short, you’re going to have to kill him.”
“Me?!”
I was beyond dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe my ears. The world felt like it was collapsing around me.
“Why do I have to kill him, Juffin? The death penalty was abolished long ago—you said so yourself. And he won’t hold out for very long as it is.”
“That’s not the point. It’s about you. This stranger used your Door. I can’t explain it all right now; it isn’t the time or place. You must understand one thing: if the man dies his own death, he’ll open another Door for you. It’ll be there waiting for you. It could be anywhere. No one knows how things will transpire, and you have too little experience to figure it out on your own just yet. And behind this new Door will be Death, because now his path leads only there. And by killing him with your own hands, you will destroy this unnecessary and fatal connection you share, which you had no part in choosing. And mark my words, there’s no time to lose. He’s dying. So . . .”
“I understand, Juffin,” I nodded. “I don’t know why, but I understand everything. You’re absolutely right.”
The world around me shuddered and melted away, subsiding into a million tiny flames. Everything became shiny and dull at once. It was, as I saw—no, sensed, felt—a kind of short corridor that stretched between me and this dying madman. And I very much doubted that we were two distinct people. We were Siamese twins, freakish sideshow monsters, connected not by a tissue of skin, but by something else, concealed from the gaze of the crowd in some other dimension.
Perhaps I hadn’t been aware of this from the start, but when I rushed off to wash my hands, as if that would help, I already knew. I had managed to hide this terrible knowledge from myself, until Juffin uttered out loud what I had been too afraid to think.
I dropped down on my knees next to my abhorrent double, and took the splendid Profiline butcher’s knife from the inner pocket of his coat. And I planted the knife in his solar plexus, without shrinking back and without even flinching.
I’ve never been a strong man, rather the opposite. But this act completely changed my notions of what I was capable of. The knife went into his body like it was butter—though it doesn’t really happen that way.
“You got me, friend . . .”
In the last words of the dying man I heard more reason than I had heard during all the other events of that absurd, sickening day.
And then I went to wash my hands again. It was the only way I knew to reward myself for my courage.
When I returned to the place of execution, junior officials were already bustling