KINGS CROSS

“My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding.”–THOMAS EDISON, “Do We Live Again?” The Illustrated London News, May 3, 1924

“A soul. A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.”–STEPHEN VINCENT BENET, “The Devil and Daniel Webster”

CHAPTER ONE

1993 – Northridge, California

To eight year-old David King, this new van seemed like the space shuttle. They had only had it for a few months but David thought it was fantastic. He liked to sit in the front with his mom and pretend he was a pilot on the space shuttle Columbia handling all the controls and navigation. They even called those seats captain’s chairs. It made sense. The inside of the van was so cool with its dramatically curved dash console and futuristic gauges and info panel. The outside: not as cool. From the outside the van looked like an egg. Some of his friends made fun of it, and called it the Easter Bunny car.

David was an identical twin. Apparently he was really identical to his brother Damon. People sometimes couldn’t get over how much he and his brother looked alike. It could be annoying when adults went on and on about it. Today was a rare day when the two of them weren’t together. David realized he liked it. A lot. Today he was just David and there was no “carbon copy” as people loved to call them. And he got the captain’s chair all to himself. When Damon was in the van most times they fought over who would sit in the front. Damon often won. Not today.

Having an identical twin brother was both great and horrible. David always had someone to play with and who mostly knew what he was thinking, or understood him, and Damon liked a lot of the same things he liked. That was the upside. There hadn’t really been a downside. But recently David learned there was one; he never felt like he was his own person, separate and individual. Individual was the exact opposite to twin. David sorted through these thoughts now and he struggled with what it all meant.

David believed everyone saw him only as half of something. It didn’t matter what was being talked about, it was always “the twins” or “David and Damon.” They weren’t conjoined twins, but sometimes David thought we might as well be. Then he would backtrack. Those kids who were physically connected, that would be truly awful. It brought up something his dad said all the time, “It could always be worse.” Lately David felt a strong desire to do his own thing. Something, anything, different than what Damon was doing, not a twin thing, just a David thing.

Since they were little they’d played on the same T-ball teams, soccer teams, same baseball teams, and in the same Boy Scout troop. Damon made it clear he hated Boy Scouts so that might not last long. Maybe he would stay in the troop without his brother. David also thought about playing football instead of baseball next year. He hadn’t mentioned it. He decided to wait until the last minute when they were signing them both up for baseball and then tell them he didn’t want to play baseball anymore.

David’s feelings were conflicted about his brother. It bothered him. It didn’t help that Damon kept getting them in trouble. David had a hard time following his brother’s new way of thinking.

The last time was three weeks ago; Damon was taking candy from the shop at the health club. He came home with his pockets loaded with candy bars. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have any money, they both got a generous allowance for mowing the lawn and other chores and if they did need money they just had to ask for it. Their family owned a very successful chain of dry cleaners, and their father was still expanding it more. They weren’t rich rich but David never noticed any concerns around money between their parents.

Damon said he stole the candy because the woman that ran the shop was fat and stupid and he didn’t like her and it was fun to prove what an idiot she was. He convinced David to try it too. It didn’t go as well for David, and he got them both caught. David remembered crying in the woman’s office when said she was calling the police. He remembered it clearly because when he looked over at Damon his brother just stared at him not looking even one bit sorry. Instead, there was a look in his eyes that frightened David a little. That was the first time he had gotten the bad feeling looking at Damon.

The woman only called their parents, not the police. The Kings were considered prominent members of the club. The incident angered their father very much. He prided himself on honesty, and this was a blow to him. He never hit the twins but David sensed this had brought him close. Their punishment period went on for three weeks. This week grounding was over and no more extra chores.

Their parents were concerned this would become a trend. A recent chain of similar events prompted their worry; spray painting, letting the air out of old man Wasden’s tires and the “firecracker incident” that sent Chris, a kid from their neighborhood, to the emergency room. Damon thought it would be funny to put a black cat firecracker into Chris’ coin pocket of his jeans. David distracted the boy while Damon lit the fuse. The explosion had blown a four-inch wide hole in the kid’s Toughskins. The burn bruise and welt on Chris’ hip would take over a month to heal.

Not that funny.

Every time Damon came up with the ideas, and David just went along with it. Stupid.

David thought about it more. He sat in his captain’s chair and watched their neighborhood going by through the huge front window of the van. He thought about the feeling he got in the woman’s office when he looked at Damon. It was a cold strange feeling. He didn’t like it.

He decided right there in the van, he wasn’t going to go along with Damon’s ideas anymore, no matter how much he tried to talk him into it.

The van pulled into their driveway and into the garage.

“David will you get Thomas out of his car seat?” his mom asked.

“Can I do it please mom?” Catherine asked.

Catherine was his five-year-old sister, and wanted to help do everything Thomas. She was actually good at a lot of baby “chores.”

“Alright sweetie, David please unbuckle it for her and you can help me with the groceries,” she said.

After he helped his mom bring in all the bags David went to the room he shared with Damon. His bed was made but Damon’s looked the same as when he got out of it. No Damon. He looked out their window across the pool and the large back yard. Empty. He could see the door of the garden shed slightly ajar.

He moved over to the desks in the room. With a glance down the hall, he opened a drawer in Damon’s desk and took out a small sketchbook. He thumbed through the sketches. He’d seen most of them before. Damon was pretty good at drawing, and a lot of times he’d just sit there and draw. That is all he did when they were grounded from TV and video games. David liked looking at them but Damon wasn’t always interested in showing him.

David looked for new ones. There were three. The first was clearly the fat woman in the health club shop with her nametag pinned on her polo shirt. He’d drawn her with some kind of evil pig’s head and she had a noose around her neck. There was a new picture of a dog, or maybe more like a wolf. It snarled and looked menacing. The wolf was a good one. It was detailed and shaded. David thought Damon must have spent some time doing it.

The last new drawing was of a doctor. He wore glasses and had a stethoscope. In his hand he held a huge magnifying glass with an enlarged part of his image inside it. David thought that was pretty cool. He wouldn’t have thought to draw that. The magnifying glass focused a light beam onto a person bent over into a ball, like he was in pain or being melted. The image gave David an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t sure why but it really bothered him.

There was no question Damon was better than he was at drawing. He put the sketchbook back in the drawer and closed it.

He walked through the house and back into the kitchen.

“Where’s Damon mom?” he asked.

“Isn’t he in your room?”

“No. And he’s not in the backyard either,” David replied.

Brenda King stopped putting away groceries and looked at David. There was a flicker of concern behind her eyes. David couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She returned to putting things away.

“He said Tim was coming over and promised me they would stay in the house and play video games,” she said. “They’re probably in the family room.”

“Why would Tim come over?”

Damon hates Tim.

“I don’t know. That is what he told me. Please go and find him, I want to talk to him,” she said, “Maybe they went to the big pool.”

“Tim’s not even friends with Damon. Why would he say he was coming over? If Tim could come over, I would have stayed home. Tim said he couldn’t come over.”

“I don’t know David. Go and find your brother.”

David walked out of the kitchen and made a circle through the house looking for Damon. He knew he wasn’t going to find him hanging around with Tim that was for sure. Tim Sheffield was David’s friend and Damon seemed to have a real dislike for him, and he never played with them when Tim was there. Damon was also convinced Tim had taken one of David’s Super Mario games. It was one Damon liked to play. He claimed it had gone missing after one of Tim’s visits. Damon told David he should make Tim give it back. David didn’t believe his friend would steal a video game, and didn’t care that much about the stupid game anyway.

Tim didn’t care much for Damon either, and told David more than once he thought something was wrong with his brother. He said he wasn’t normal.

Damon was nowhere to be found in the house, or out in the front yard. The Kings lived in a spacious four-bedroom home on a cul-de-sac in the foothills at the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley for the past five years. It was a nice neighborhood. Their house the only one with mature trees David’s father had made the developers work around or bring back to replant.

When Catherine was born the family moved from a much smaller house down on the valley floor to this more affluent area. The houses on the street sat atop one of the foothills. From the upstairs rooms in the houses, there was a great view of the whole valley over gently sloping backyards with no back neighbors. David and Damon had learned to ride bikes right there in the cul-de-sac. Most of the houses had pools on his street and there was also a larger community pool and a park a block away. Damon looked in the garage; Damon’s bike was there. He walked all the way down to the end of the street where he could see the community pool area. A woman sat reading on a lounge chair with her pants rolled up getting some sun on her legs. One hand rolled a baby stroller back and forth next to her.

No Damon.

David walked back to their house and continued to the backyard. He saw Catherine on the back deck with her miniature kitchen set, cooking up a storm for her stuffed animals and singing one of her little songs. She loved that kitchen set. She looked up and saw David.

“Do you want to play?” she asked.

“Maybe in a minute Caty. Have you seen Damon?”

She shook her head and went back to what she was doing. Damon walked past the pool and down the slope toward the shed. It had been a detached garage for the original house that had stood here. His father decided to leave it standing to use as a garden shed for the large yard when the new house was built.

As David got closer to the shed, he heard a strange sound coming from inside the shed. Someone was crying.

Then pleading.

David got to the door and pulled it open wider and stepped inside.

It was dim inside, just the light from the windows of the doors so it took a second for his eyes to adjust. The pleading and crying was coming from inside a large cardboard box. Their new standup freezer had come in that box a few days earlier. There were a lot of tiny holes all over both sides of the box David could see. Some had trickles of dark that ran down the box.

Damon stepped out from behind the corner of the box; he had one of their mother’s long knitting needles in each hand. The ends were shiny.

David frowned. He didn’t understand what he was seeing.

“What are you doing in here?” David asked.

From inside the box it was Tim’s voice scared and desperate.

“David, it’s me! Help me! Get me out!”

“I’m playing a game with Tim and teaching him a lesson. Do you want to help me?” Damon said.

He smiled and held out a knitting needle to his twin.

For just a moment, David felt a familiar tug. It was odd, like he was already part of this; like the other times. Then he remembered he was not going to go along. And this was crazy.

“No. I don’t.”

Damon brought his arm and the needle back to his side. He looked at David.

“Well then get out and close the door,” he said.

When their eyes met David was frightened. It was that look again and he felt a cold shiver. He looked at the knitting needles in Damon’s hands and realization came over him. The ends were shiny with blood.

Why is he doing this?

“Damon, are you crazy? Let him out!”

David moved toward the box and Damon stepped in front of him.

“He stole your game and he’s paying for it,” he said.

“I will give it back!” Tim howled inside the box through his crying. Then he whimpered, “Please David. Please get me out.”

David moved to get around Damon to the box but Damon put down his shoulder and charged into his brother knocking him down. He dropped the knitting needles and they wrestled and punched each other on the floor until Damon jammed David up against the tool chest and workbench. He twisted David’s arm behind his back and pressed his knee into his back. Damon reached up and grabbed something off the counter. David heard the rip of a duct tape roll.

“Stop it Damon. What’s the matter with you?”

In a quick moment his wrist was wrapped in tape. He fought more but Damon got his other arm and pulled it back wrapping that wrist too.

David screamed at the top of his lungs.

“MOM! MOM! HELP!”

On the deck near the house, Catherine stopped playing and looked up. She stared out into the back yard toward the shed.

That was all David got out before Damon slapped a piece of tape over his mouth muffling his yelling. Now David was crying too. Damon dragged him kicking and struggling over to the back corner of the shed. He tied a piece of rope through David’s arms to the workbench. When David’s voice went muffled, Tim started screaming.

Damon walked over and pulled the shed door closed. He picked up the knitting needles off the floor. He gauged the sound coming from the box and stabbed one of the needles through the box hard. Tim cried out in pain.

“Keep screaming Timmy, it’s easier to find you in there.” Damon said.

His voice was flat and emotionless.

The box went silent. David struggled to get free on the floor no longer able to see through his tears. He could not understand this.

How could he do this? It was a video game.

Damon moved around the carton a dark smirk on his face, now having fun, bumping the box to get the boy to move and then occasionally stabbing a needle through. Inside the box Tim tried to remain silent not to give his position away. He used the light from the tiny holes to tell him Damon’s whereabouts until a needle would come through and hit him and he’d cry out.

“DAMON DANIEL KING!” came from the doorway.

“WHAT IN GOD’S NAME ARE YOU DOING?” Brenda shouted.

Brenda stood in the doorway of the shed, Catherine at her side. Damon spun around and looked at his mother. The look reminded Brenda of a cornered animal, but then it went blank. She reached down next to her and turned Catherine around.

“Sweetheart, go back to the house. Now.” she said.

Catherine ran off toward the house.

Brenda stood and looked at Damon. He didn’t move. She looked at the box with dozens of tiny holes in it. She heard muffled yelling. What was on some of the holes?

Is that blood? Jesus!

She pointed at the stool next to the workbench.

“Sit there. Right now.”

Damon stood his ground. Now she had her own wild look in her eyes and pointed again at the stool. He moved over to the stool and sat down. He put the knitting needles on the workbench. Brenda stepped further into the shed and saw David on the floor tied to the bench, the source of the muffled yelling, his mouth covered with duct tape.

“Let him go!” she said.

Damon stood up and walked over to free his brother. Whimpering and quiet crying came from inside the box. Inside something hit the floor and bumped the side.

Brenda moved toward the cardboard box; the look on her face changed to horror. This had turned into some kind of nightmare. She reached up and grasped the top part of the box and leaned it toward her so she could see inside. Whatever was in it moved allowing her to tilt the box toward her. She looked over the flap to the inside.

She gasped. She couldn’t breathe properly. Her stomach lurched and she felt light headed and unsteady.

Oh my god. Damon what have you done?