“I’m sorry to hear that,” Laura said carefully. “You know, you never told me your name.”
“Robert,” he said, and then bent and set his hands under the unconscious girl’s armpits and began to drag her towards the center of the room.
Laura sat forward in her seat, as much as she was able to, alarmed. Where was he taking her? Was he about to kill her? Laura couldn’t let that happen – it was the very thing she’d come here to stop. But on the other hand, if he took her into the other room, maybe this would be her chance to get free…
But Robert stopped when he reached the middle of the room they were in, letting the girl drop gently back into a position where she was lying on her back, almost peacefully. Except that her sleep was artificial and unwanted, and if she woke up here, Laura knew she would feel anything but peace.
“Robert,” Laura repeated, using the power of his name, trying to get him to listen to her and talk to her instead of doing whatever it was he wanted to do now. “Is that what this is all about? Feeling close to people?”
“That’s precisely it,” he said, with a sad tone in his voice. He looked at the unconscious girl for a moment longer, as though satisfying himself that she was in the right place. “You may think very little of me. I accept that. But you know, for people like me, there are very few options. You get to a place where just a little human interaction is all you need. All you crave. Where you would do anything for a little affection. And all of these women – Evelina, Ashley, Cici, and Cherry – each of them were people I saw in my daily life. Women I admired so much. And do you know how often they noticed me?”
“I’m sure they noticed you more than you realized,” Laura said. “We all interact with people in different ways. If you were a customer at the diner, I’m sure that Ashley would have recognized you more than you thought. I’m sure she knew who you were.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Robert said with a sigh that seemed to come from deep in his soul, moving back over to the table where he had placed the tools. There was a hunched stiffness to his movements, like he was cradling a great pain inside of him. “And no one ever remembers my order. Not even when I order the same thing day after day after day. You know, there are people who can arrive in a town fresh off the bus and within a week, people are offering to serve them ‘the usual.’ I don’t know how they do it. It’s like some kind of magic to me, and it comes so naturally to everyone else.”
“I think people will notice you a lot more now,” Laura said, which came out darker than she intended. It was true, though. He would gain himself notoriety with this. Probably not in a positive way. She could imagine him being paraded and celebrated as a champion of the incels. She didn’t voice any of this, though – the last thing she needed was for him to realize that she wasn’t really on his side.
“I don’t need them to,” Robert told her, in a voice that was soft, almost dreamy. “I already have everyone I need. We’re so much closer now. Like this, I can carry on.”
“You mean, you’re done?” Laura asked. Hope sprang fitfully in her chest. It wasn’t good news to be down here with him, obviously, and she wanted to save the girl he had in front of him – Cherry, he’d called her. He was moving back towards her now, holding something in his hands, his back to her. But even if she and Cherry died here – if he was done – if he wasn’t going to kill again after this…
“I don’t know about that,” he said, making her heart drop again. “Maybe there will be others, in the future. Maybe I’ll meet someone new. And, of course, I haven’t finished with Cherry yet. Or you.”
“Me?” Laura breathed, her voice catching in her throat. It wasn’t as though she’d thought he would let her go. But still…
He turned, the dancing golden light of the candles reflecting off the thing he had in his hands. It was a knife. Long and wickedly sharp, with a polished shine to it that suggested it had been cleaned and whetted recently. “Well, of course,” he said, mild as ever. “I have very much enjoyed talking with you. It’s been so long since I could be open with someone like this. I thought I was unlucky when you walked in just as I was getting ready to set up things with Cherry, but it gave me some more time to admire her as she is, to remember her. And then I realized you could join me, too. And once it’s all over, we’ll be connected in a way that is so deep and strong. You’ll see. We’ll have all the time in the world to talk some more after that. And I’ll find somewhere nice to leave you both, after. You can lay in rest together. Maybe on the beach, where you can hear the waves and look up at the stars.”
“Robert,” Laura said, gasping for breath. She felt like she was being held underwater. She couldn’t see straight anymore. There was only one thought in her mind. Lacey. Her daughter. She thought of her daughter growing up without a mother. “You don’t have to do this. We can talk as much as you like now. Why rush? We might as well talk some more while we can do it face to face.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, with almost a chuckle in his voice. He squatted down beside Cherry, holding the knife by her neck, like he was measuring where he was about to cut. “It’s quite alright, you know. It’s only a moment, and then you’ll be with me. You’ll feel what I feel. Everything will be okay, and we won’t need to communicate in the traditional ways anymore. It goes far beyond that.”
“But what about talking to everyone else?” Laura blurted out, trying to find some way to distract him, but it was no use. He was bending over Cherry completely now, stroking her hair back from her face, moving it away from her neck. He had some kind of dish that he’d carried with him, a basin, and Laura realized with a sick terror that he was planning to use it to catch her blood as it drained from her neck.
She struggled against the ropes, but it was useless. There was just enough give for her to kind of shuffle up and down in place, making the chair move just slightly, but nothing else. She couldn’t pull her hands back or out or break through the knots. They were almost cruel: loose enough to give her hope, but tight enough to make the hope a vain one. She couldn’t get out. She couldn’t fight it.
She was going to die here.
“Agent Frost?”
The calling of her name made them both freeze, Laura and Robert at the same time. In shock, they both stared in the direction the sound had come from. The same direction Laura had come from. The side of the basement where the stairs gave out.