I was sitting on a wrought-iron bench in the town square - the one that faces Main Street, with a view of the dozen two-story brick shops that form the entirety of our commercial district. I could see Mrs. Thompson re-stocking the shelves of her corner store through the front window. She was replacing the cereal boxes in the third aisle and chatting to her husband behind the counter. Their cat lay out on the front step, basking itself in the warm sunlight, and refusing to acknowledge any of the shoppers going on their Sunday routes.
I saw him when he turned the corner from Gilford Street. He was six-foot tall and athletic, with a face sharpened by exercise. At the same time he was noticeably elderly. His silver hair dropped to his shoulders and he wore a set of ancient glasses, the sort with oval glass lenses as thick as an inch and encased in a wire frame of twisting copper. You would not expect to be able to see his eyes clearly through those glasses, but you certainly could - sharp, dark grey, and searching. He wore a dark grey suit and overcoat, despite the heat. All of this was overshadowed by the characteristic, intangible but equally significant, that he was entirely right in everything he did.
His name was Dr. Everett Cross. He didn’t have to tell you.
He smiled at me, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight, and I was so surprised that such a man was even acknowledging me that I couldn’t return the expression. He walked past me and approached the corner store. The cat lying on the steps suddenly bolted to its feet and snarled at him, its back arched, before it turned and sprinted out of sight.
Dr. Everett Cross removed his bowler hat from his head, held it in his right hand, and pushed open the glass door to the shop. The other people in the street had started to notice him as well, and we formed into a small crowd outside of the large front window. I could see old Mrs. Newman standing on her tip-toes at my side to see over the back of the person in front of her. We stood, pressed together and silent, and watched as Dr. Cross eradicated the Thompsons.
As he came out of the store, we all rushed to praise him. He had freed us from an evil that we had been too ignorant to see. The Thompsons were, of course, terrible people. I couldn’t believe that I had been a loyal customer for so many years! How had I not seen through them? Mrs. Thompson, with her small-talk and her inquiries, was nothing more than a liar. She could care less about our lives, and she put on a show of interest solely to compel us to keep buying her products. She had never been genuine for a moment. Then there was, of course, the scheme she and Mr. Thompson had been running to poison the town. I couldn’t believe I had missed it before! How often had I felt sick to my stomach after drinking one of their sodas, and had to go back to their store to buy some Pepto-Bismol? How many times had my daughter developed a cough after eating their chicken, and I went back to buy their cough medicine? I had always thought it a coincidence - but I could see now that it wasn’t. The Thompsons had been making use of us for years, running us through their meat-grinder for every last dollar we had!
I shook hands with Dr. Cross vigorously, and I didn’t mind at all that a bit of the Thompsons was left stained on me.
He walked further down Main Street. The crowd followed him right at his heels. We must have been half the town population or more by now. I struggled to get to the front, to have the honor to see what he did next, but I couldn’t quite push past enough people before we reached the house of Mr. Patel, a third-grade teacher. I watched over shoulders and in the space between heads as Mr. Patel glanced up from his dining-room table. He lunged upward in fear, his face drawn into an elongated scream, and he bolted for the back exit, but his wife stopped him in the doorway.
As we approached, I realized why he had to be exterminated. The background-checks at the district office hadn’t been thorough enough. I thought of Mr. Patel looking at my daughter, currently a grade below, with his hungry, creeping gaze, and I tried again to get to the front to watch what Dr. Cross would do to him.
“No!” he shouted as his wife pushed him through the front door. He stared out over us in horror. “What are you all doing? Is - is that - blood?”
He saw Dr. Cross and whitened to the bone. “What,” he choked, “what - what is that? -”
Dr. Cross eradicated Mr. Patel, and we fell over ourselves to thank him.
We continued onward, down to city hall, and Dr. Cross spoke - well, he told us - that the mayor was the one behind it all. He had endorsed Mr. Patel, knowing fully what he was, and he had discovered the Thompsons, but kept silent in exchange for blackmail checks. The mayor, Dr. Cross explained, did not care about us. He did this for personal amusement, to enjoy the sense of being higher up than us all.
It was such a relief to trust Dr. Cross. I had sat on my bench, a mere hour ago, and believed that all of these terrible people were the cornerstones of the community, the best that our town had to offer. I would have said they were the best people that I knew! Now, of course, I knew the disturbing truth about them all, and I felt sick for having been so ignorant.
People could lie and Dr. Cross could not.
The mayor had taken refuge in the church, for some peculiar reason. We formed a circle around it and began pacing around in a loop, following the lead of Dr. Cross.
The mayor was shouting from inside and telling all sorts of incoherent lies. “Don’t follow that devil!”, I heard, and then I had shuffled in the circle around to the back side of the church and his words were muffled. I came back around to hear, “Please, would you snap out of it!”, and then he addressed me directly. “Adrian! Adrian, can you hear me? I know this isn’t who you are! You’re stronger than him. Adrian, look at me!”
I did, just for a moment, and I saw the good man that I had admired for so many years.
I felt the rough hand of Dr. Cross on my shoulder, and, fighting not to lose myself over the honor of his touch, I saw that the mayor was lying. There was a dark figure below the jovial surface, a man who would do anything for power just for the sake of having it. A man who would kill me gladly if it meant he might do better in the world. I saw this, and I knew that this was the true form.
People could lie and Dr. Cross could not.
After another half-hour of circling, during which time nearly every remaining resident of the town came to join us, Dr. Cross told us that we could only be free from the clutches of the mayor if we bound ourselves together against him. He raised his left hand and we all mirrored him, eager to please. He drew a pin from his jacket-pocket and asked us to speak our names aloud to it.
“Adrian,” the mayor called. “I was at your wedding! I took that photo of you and Susan - it’s still on your counter. I saw it when you hosted dinner on Tuesday! Adrian, please, don’t do this, don’t give in to that thing - please, you can’t do this to yourself -”
I called my name out to Dr. Cross, and the woman behind me did the same, all down through the ranks of our circle. He smiled gratefully and stuck the pin into his left palm. I felt a speck of pain and saw that my own hand had started to bleed as well. I had just experienced the exact same pain as Dr. Cross - it left me starstruck.
As the drops of our blood fell down to the path we had worn in the ground, the windows of the church shattered, and Dr. Cross reached in and eradicated the mayor.
“I’ve shown you,” he said, and he was really speaking now, in the usual sense, “how terrible the leaders of your community have been. You don’t know who to trust yourselves with.”
“Wouldn’t you much rather come with me?”