Close Friend

A single figure, cloaked by the shadows of the night, stands before the crashing and foaming surf and beneath the full moon’s silver luminosity.

Years as a news reporter, chronicling the most notorious murderers on Hudson Bay, and it has all amounted to this one desolate moment. He has always felt a sense of loneliness that has loomed like a malignant cancer to this soul. Only tonight marks the loneliest he has felt since before he met…

“I knew I’d find you here,” a familiar voice acknowledges from behind.

He turns to see a kid no older than fifteen, clean-cut brown hair, a patch of freckles on the nose, and donning a crisp Cubs jacket. The kid has this mischievous glow in his eyes that contains a nothing-comes-without-a-price honesty. The teen strikes a lucifer to light a cigarette hanging off the edge of his mouth.

“Johnny.” The reporter motions back.

“Expecting a dame to waltz with under the pale moonlight?” The kid snorts. “For well over thirty years you’ve came to this spot as some poor soul whenever something gnaws at you. The first time was July”

“4th, 1987.” Canton returns a soft smile capturing a moment light-years away returned to in a mere instant.

The kid takes a drag of the smoke. “Your parents separated. You came running out here, an eleven-year-old with a quarter of whiskey you snatched from your pop’s liquor cabinet.”

“That’s where you came up and stood,” Canton pointed at Johnny, “at that very spot.”

“On a night much like tonight, as the cliche normally went.” Johnny nods to the moon, “Under the glow of a single full moon; envision the symbolism.”

“No words rang truer. It inspired me to write that poem that won 1st place in the 6th-grade Small Bee writing competition, and make 3rd in regional.” Canton sighs, “And also a writing career that led me here. All because of you Johnny; some troublemaker who made it his good-deed-of-the-day to talk a kid out of drowning his sorrows under the swig of a bottle.”

“Not the only contribution I made for your success. Skimming too much fat off the meat? Or gaining full-credibility?”

Canton hesitates, “Woah, wait… I am not gaining full-credibility behind anything.”

Johnny folds his arms, “What brings you out here on this marvelous midsummer night when the Cubs are neck-in-neck with the Mets?” Canton clams up, prompting Johnnie to calculate, “I’ve not seen you since the library massacre. Tell me, Hexley,” the hairs on the back of Canton’s neck bristle by the acknowledgment of his last name, “is it shame from letting the biggest scoop in your career fall through your very fingers that brings you out here tonight? Remember, I do know you more than anyone else in your pathetic one-nickel life. Think hard. Why were you not there at Williams’ Coats and Jackets trying on the finest sport coats in town at 10:45 a.m.? A four-minute trip from there to the library: long enough for you to hop in the car and come to the crime scene in the lead.”

Canton bolts under the pressure, “You win, I chickened out!”

“Weak answer, Canton. You know better than to hang me dry. There was something else.” Johnnie flicks the cigarette aside, “I’m waiting.”

“If you are dying to know.”

Johnny’s eyes narrow in disgust. “Nice pun, jerk-face.”

“I had to make a last-minute trip; a big case, but nothing that would make the papers. That’s part joy of being a reporter: these nice little surprises that crop outta nowhere to bite people in their rumps.” Johnny’s jaws clench in voiceless response. “Speechless? I’ll sever the tension. Oxenburg.” The boy’s eyes round, yet utters not a word. “Name ring a bell? How could it, when a fifteen-year-old chump such as yourself should have no business being 600-miles west of Dodge? I found evidence behind something that has been plaguing me since... Well since my girlfriend, Heather Ramsey, died of a most-awkward death. Found, ripe age of twenty-three, at her parents’ pad. Rumors floated suicide, but more than most remained as dumbfounded as I by the mystery.. As torn as I was, I had to make a report, and conducted a complete investigation of the Ramsey case Want to know what incremental evidence I found? Sure you do, because--much like Heather’s parents--I went for total confidentiality. Turns out autopsy found saltwater in her lungs.” Tides crash to emphasize the unspeakable. “Instead of writing an article that may have put my name on the spotlight, I sacrificed three-years worth of exposure by writing a mediocre article with loose-ends but enough spunk to gain reader attention.”

“All-American Boy Scout, you are. Deserve a medal.”

“Saltwater.” Canton’s eyes tear. “Don’t tell me this was the spot.” Johnny beams a half-smile Canton could not see, but feel. “Going the confidentiality route. Fair enough.” Canton reaches into his pocket, both glad to and hating to do what must be done, and reveals a silver disc four times the size of a quarter the the symbol of a cross dead center. Insignias revolves the outer lining of the artifact.

Absolute terror grips Johnny. “How did you?”

“You come to me in a day of desperation as some miracle sent by God; the muse every writer longs for and every serial-killer rides passenger with. From day one, my own little house of cards have been stacked. What began as small mysterious murders and disappearances of kids and adults who have rivaled me, had perpetuated into the offing of peers at high school and on through college, which had metamorphosed into accounts of complete strangers. It was hard finding a link when I was younger because you came to me more as a soothsayer than as an activator, like the visions prophets speak of in the Bible. Every time, you were dead-on in delivery, not missing a beat. But Heather was the first step in a long and excruciating journey uncovering who you are. I cannot count how far underground I had to crawl, through the lowest dregs of human society, to find out what exactly what in Hell’s eternal damnation you are. When I did, it was enough to get me sick for a straight week.”

Johnny remains smiling, letting the preacher do his preaching. “A doppelganger, of all things. I just want to know, why me? Did you find the devil too boring?”

“The devil can’t waltz if it meant eternal bliss for him if that’s what you mean.” Johnny walks to the edge of the beach in mock innocence. “I’m no enemy; just doing a hard day’s work.”

“The sun has to rise, the moon has to set, the fire light,” Canton returns.

“--and the flame snuff.” The kid disappears to reappear to Canton’s right. Johnnie is perched on a boulder, chomping on an apple red as a rose.
Pieces of flesh fling in the air as he says, “Don’t act as if all this ‘evil’ you are beating around the bush about is not of your doing.”

“You’re the doppelganger; I’m the mortal.”

“Yeah and I’m Johnny and you’re Canton. Big biblical deal! Someone has not studied their Western folklore much. Amazing you actually graduated with a minor in English. Well, actually as they say, life imitates art and art is an inspiration of life’s little derivatives. Point in being, that doppelgangers do live as a natural entity but also exist as a manifestation of one’s imagination. You see, old--ahem--young man, I am only an extension of your primal urges, down to the very first fly you swatted at a picnic when age five. Most people are not fortunate enough to ever encounter their own doppelganger and for that many years of tears can be shed for their loss. In your most desperate moment, with all of your wrath festering in your tender heart, and right before the point of eruption, I came on-calling. It wasn’t but three months later when your father’s girlfriend died in that one-vehicle collision that ended in an explosion. That one great moment of promise when your parents had the opportunity to unite as one again was short-lived; they never came to terms, no matter how much you lived in a state of denial. So one, by one, your enemies fell.”

“But what of Heather, Johnny? What in the world did she do to me to deserve such wrath?”

Johnny’s face hardens and utters, “She got in the way.”

“In the way of what? Us? Do I detect jealousy?”

“No, Canton… Not us. Nothing will ever getly between us.” Johnny sees Canton raise the disc as a reminder. The nervous kid laughed, “She was getting between you and your career. She regarded your dreams as nonsense and the stories you broadcast as drivel. Might not have been in those words, but anyone with sense enough in their pinkie could read between the lines. Well, except for those people of the feebleminded who need constant assistance.” Johnny hushed before he spoke any further.

“Whether whatever happened between Heather and me, it would have not gotten between my job.” Canton added, “But me and you, let’s just pretend we never knew each other.”

“You just shut your trap.”

“Or what?” Canton pressed toward him, “You’re going to implode in a blaze of glory?” Johnnie licks his lips in hesitance. “Before your elaborate exit, just answer me this. What of the library?” Canton was in a daze. The weight of dozens of lives and the salaries made in blood money pressed upon his very soul. Yet still, he couldn’t piece together any connections with the library.

“The library was my gift to you. The massacre would hit the history books--forget all that ‘media nonsense’ as Heather would so lavishly express. This one job would be the one that would make or break you, and that’s what really brought you out here. You were contemplating what you couldn’t accomplish thirty years ago, to be one with the lake. I know you got that gun in your pocket, and I doubly know that your temple would have an eternal marriage with the bullet in the barrel.” Canton’s flesh tingles either from the Johnny’s stark realization or the lonesome breeze drifting. “You are finished, just as I. Go ahead. Throw the disc. I just want to know one thing in return for what I divulged to you concerning the library massacre.”

“Shoot.”

“Not yet, dear friend. The time is nigh.” Johnny chuckles in a voice unlike the boyish one he carried with him; this one, a deep-set voice with a low growl from the pit of some chasm a thousand leagues beneath the earth. “How much of my past were you able to uncover?”

“Enough to know what you are, and from where you come. I am bound to send you back in a ‘to-hell-with-you-and-no-thank-you’ basket.” He clicks the disc, heavenly light escapes.

“Hold it.” The boy yelps, fingers splay, “What of everything I have done for you? All that coverage? The exposure? The wealth? I can give it all to you just as I had from here to eternity!” The teens flesh melts, exposing the muscle beneath the searing flesh. “Think of all the murders to which you count no credibility! Never has a life’s blood fallen on your hands.”

“Until now. I’m done. Good riddance, close friend.” Canton presses in the cross dead center of the disc, a stronger wave of light emits, bursting Johnny in a sparkling glow of embers that dance away into the darkness of an uplifting breeze.

Canton stares into the horizon, his thoughts escape for just an instance before reaching into his jacket. The cold gun lay in his open palm. He opens the barrel, paradise lay within, and closes it. He lifts the gun, pulls the primer, and squeezes the trigger. The single bullet shoots up to the heavens and gets lost amidst the stars looking down toward him from the heavens.