Dad had a comically large keychain, which grew new keys every year. It was strange in an embarrassing dad sort-of-way, but it wasn’t a problem until last year, when a thumb drive appeared on the already-crowded chain.
“Just important files,” Dad explained when I asked about the thumb drive, but I never saw Dad use the thumb drive, not once, and neither did my sister. Tellingly, around the same time that the thumb drive appeared, Dad became hyper-vigilant about his keychain. For instance, once I wanted to quickly move the truck. Instead of just handing me the keychain, Dad carefully removed the truck key, which took a while given how many keys there were.
It made me wonder: what was on that damn thumb drive? It wasn’t a burning curiosity, but it nagged at me because it made no sense. If the drive held something valuable, and Dad didn’t need to access it often, why not hide it?
Then one Friday night, I came home around 2 AM. I was a little drunk, and I stumbled into the kitchen for a final snack before bed, and the keychain was just sitting on the kitchen counter. Unguarded.
Dad never left the keychain alone. He always put it in his bedside drawer (in, not on) while he slept, as if he was worried someone would sneak into his bedroom to steal his keys.
My sister was at the lake with her friends that weekend. It was just me and the keys. Me and the thumb drive. I gently lifted the keys up from the kitchen counter, careful to minimize their jingle. I placed a paper towel where the keys had been. It would be important to put the keys back in the right place so Dad wouldn’t know I’d touched them.
You don’t want to know what’s on it, I told myself. What if it was weird?
I had the sense I was about to choose between banishing ignorance or maintaining bliss. In all likelihood, I understood, it would be weird. What if it was foot porn? What if carrying around a thumb drive full of feet pictures aroused Dad? It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but who wanted that knowledge in their head?
I took the thumb drive to my room, closed the door, and with great misgivings slid it into the port of my laptop. There was a single video file on the drive. I won’t tell you the real file name in case you saw the name on the news. But let’s say the name of the file was “Quentin”.
Don’t click, I thought. I had been open to the possibility that the drive just contained a bunch of work files. But now that I knew it was a single video file? A dude’s name? It was going to be weird. Maybe Quentin was Dad’s secret love child. There’d been an affair, and it had resulted in a kid.
Or maybe Quentin was the affair. Maybe Dad was bi, and Quentin was his lover. I would delight in such a turn of events, given Dad’s Catholic stance that homosexual acts were sinful. (“I love homosexuals,” Dad would say. “That’s why I pray they stop endangering their souls.”)
Dad attended a small, dying Catholic parish. Father Conway (not his real name) was a “rad trad” and the only man in the world Dad seems to respect on theological issues. The hope that I could catch Dad in some classic Catholic hypocrisy emboldened me, and I opened the video file.
I saw a twenty-something man, apparently Quentin, tied up and terrified. I paused the video and looked around my room, just to be sure I was alone.
“Porn?” I whispered to myself, wishing I could tell my girlfriend (let’s call her Leah) about this. “BDSM porn?”
Dad was carrying around a single clip of porn? I would have been weirded out just knowing Dad watched porn at all. But the fact that he carried it around like it was some totem?
Eject the thumb drive, put the keychain back, and never think of this again.
But curiosity, damn it! There had to be something about this video. There were billions of hours of porn on the internet. Why did Dad keep this video on him at all times? I started watching again.
“Fuck!” I said after a few seconds. The word, involuntary and too loud, made me jump a little.
Because, suddenly, Dad was in the movie. He just kind of walked in front of the camera and stared at the bound man. Dad was in the porn. He was clothed—thank God—wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt. But how was he in the movie? I paused the video again. This isn’t a porno. It’s a sex tape. My Catholic father made a bondage sex tape.
I’m going to be in therapy for a decade, I thought. But the whole thing didn’t make sense, and that was the reason I needed to keep watching. It wasn’t a sex tape. Dad was clothed. It was some survivalist thing. If I stopped watching now, I would be scarred for life. If I kept watching, I would realize it wasn’t sexual at all. There was a rational, non-sexual explanation for this. I had watched too much porn over the years, and I was foolishly jumping to a perverted explanation.
If Dad took off so much as a sock, I would stop watching and wash my eyes out with acid. But until then, I would watch. I had no choice. I pressed play again, viewing the video with one eye shut, and that’s when my world ended…
After viewing the video, I intended to call 911, but I was distracted by the keychain, spending more than twenty minutes trying to put it back exactly how I had found it. No matter what—when I stepped away—the keychain just didn’t look right.
A terrible thought struck me. When I had first seen the bound man (Quentin), I had felt a tingle of recognition. I had assumed Quentin was some semi-famous porn star. Now another option slowly grew in my mind.
You saw Quentin on the news.
At first this was just a hypothesis, but as I was fiddling with the position of the keychain, a name popped into my mind. The moniker of a serial killer. I won’t tell you the name. Maybe you’ve already guessed it.
Leaving the keys and tiptoeing back to my room, I did some Google searches. Countless articles arrived.
What was I supposed to do?
Call 911.
Call 911 right now.
But I was drunk. Tired. Confused. I hadn’t meant to take any drugs that night, but what if someone had slipped something into my drink at the party? Had I actually seen my father’s face in the video? The light hadn’t been great. I would need to see the video one more time, when I was fully sober, to confirm the video really showed my father stabbing Quentin with a spear.
With a spear? Could that be right?
It didn’t make sense. Dad was not a violent man. He had never hit his children, and he rarely raised his voice. If I called the police and there was some explanation for all this, I would die of embarrassment. Plus, I would destroy my relationship with Dad.
But what if Dad was this uncaught serial killer? Turning Dad in would ruin my life. No matter what I did, no matter what I achieved, the murders would be the most important thing about me. Forever.
Will Leah still want to be with you? asked a voice in the darkness.
Of course she would.
She won’t want a murderer to be her children’s grandpa, the voice said.
I realized I was sweating, and the sweat smelled vile. I turned off my laptop. I couldn’t do anything until the alcohol was out of my system. The only way to make that happen faster was to go to sleep. I would wake up tomorrow and some obvious solution would be sitting there on my bed, shining in the morning sun. I would slap my forehead, chuckle to myself about my idiocy, thank God I hadn’t told anyone my crazy suspicion, and decide to stop drinking for a couple months.
If things weren’t clear by morning, I would call the police. That was a certainty.
Approaching my bed, I doubted sleep would come easy, my mind racing, my stomach full of knots. I reclined on my comforter and squeezed my eyes shut. Although I was still awake, the nightmares rushed forward immediately…
I did not know if I was asleep or awake when the knock came at the door.
“You up?” Dad asked in the hallway.
I was angry. Why was Dad banging on my door at the crack of dawn? I looked at my phone and saw I had a text from Leah, and actually, it was almost noon.
“Sleepy head?” Dad said again.
I did not have a lock on my door. I had suggested it once when I was fifteen, but Dad had refused. Nothing stopped Dad (serial killer) from strolling into my room while I was vulnerable and hungover in bed.
“I’m still asleep,” I said, pulling the covers over my head as Dad opened the door.
Make him think you’re hungover, I thought. Just a normal young man hiding the mistakes of Friday night. My head was pounding. At least that was true.
“We need to have a conversation,” Dad said, and I felt the murderer sit down on the corner of my bed.
“I drank too much.” I stayed under the covers, praying I wouldn’t have to see Dad’s face. “I’m sorry. You can lecture me later.”
Dad gently but firmly pulled the covers away. “I told myself I’d give you the night and the morning, but it’s noon now, and I need to know what you intend to do.”
I was fully clothed—I hadn’t even taken off my jeans—but I felt sweaty and naked.
“Do about what?” I asked. It was ridiculous to pretend. We both knew it. I could see the understanding in Dad’s cold, calm, determined stare.
“You looked on my special thumb drive,” Dad said, and I realized I could die that day, could die that very hour.
“No, I didn’t. I…”
The objection broke on my tongue. I actually felt guilty for lying to my father. How twisted was that?
“The keychain wasn’t even put back properly. I thought you would at least get it close. I’m disappointed.” Dad smiled, to show he was joking.
I denied it for about a minute more, and we went in sickly circles before I broke.
“You wanted me to look,” I said, angry but also afraid.
“I wouldn’t say I wanted it, but I allowed you to make the choice.”
I pulled myself up against the headboard. “Why?”
Dad gave that cold, calm, determined stare again. Had I seen such an expression on Dad’s face before that day? Did Dad reserve that stare only for his prey?
“Is this a mistake?” I asked, with incoherent hope.
Dad shook his head. “But I want to tell you three things.” Dad stood up from the bed. “First, nothing that happened was my decision. Second, it will never happen again. I didn’t like doing it. I was forced to do it.”
“Who forced you?” I asked in desperation, hopeful there was an explanation.
“Third, I did not act alone.” Dad paused. “Your sister helped.”
I shook my head. “You’re lying.”
“When she was very young…I’m not even sure she remembers, but if I’m arrested, I fear she will remember.”
Bitter with knowledge, I asked, “Why did you let me look at the thumb drive in the first place?”
If Dad had wanted to get caught, he could have done it without involving me. Did Dad have a plan? A purpose for his one begotten son?
“Wasn’t my call,” Dad said, sympathetically.
That was bullshit. No, it was more than bullshit, because Dad believed it. It was insane. Dad was insane. I had lived with a psycho for almost two decades, and I was just figuring it out.
“What will it be?” Dad asked. “Can we keep this between us?”
Did I really have a choice? I didn’t think so.
“I pray to God your sister won’t need to know about this.” Dad reached out his hand to touch my cheek.
I flinched.
“Why didn’t you call the police the moment you saw the video?” Dad asked with a wry smile. “Why didn’t you run out of the house and hightail it to the police station?”
“I was confused.” I reminded myself I could still do the right thing, could run out of the house then and there.
“I wouldn’t have stopped you,” Dad said. “That would’ve been God’s will. But you didn’t run because deep down you know there’s a reason for all this. Turning me in will create uncomfortable questions for you, the kind of questions that will never go away.”
What would happen when the world learned the truth? They would ask what I knew and what I’d done to stop it.
“So is all this squared away?” Dad asked with a smile. “We can have pancakes and bacon for lunch. Just the boys.”
I had two decisions to make. First, what to say to Dad? Second, what to actually do?
“It will never happen again?” I asked. It sounded like a naïve question, but what else could I ask?
Dad shrugged. “Think what my arrest will do to you and your sister.”
“Our lives will be over,” I said, almost to myself.
I thought about my sister, who idolized Dad. There’s just something special about fathers and daughters, Dad would sometimes say. Even as a teenager, my sister loved Dad’s attention and craved his praise.
A few days later, my sister returned from the lake. Somehow, I had thought the world would go back to normal once she returned. Dad and I would never speak of the murders again. How could we, if she was around? But at fourteen my sister was both clueless and all-knowing, and she sensed immediately something was wrong. A couple days after her return, she barged into my room without knocking.
I burped. “I’m sick.”
She looked at me, disgusted. “Because of the drugs and booooze.”
“That’s not why,” I said, close to telling her about the murders. I suspected she wouldn’t run to the police. If I told her, I would have a confidant—someone who could help me think through my options.
“No, you never do anything wrong,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
I cleared my throat. “Do you need something?”
If my sister had been older, I would have told her, but a fourteen-year-old could not make good use of such information, and I wanted to spare her.
“What happened between you and Dad?” She put her hands on her hips in a matriarchal stance. “I leave for a few days and it’s like someone died.”
I was bursting to say something, so I said, “Dad isn’t who you think he is.”
Her eyes seemed to glaze over when I said that, as if she wasn’t curious about my comment at all, as if she was the exact opposite of curious.
She sighed. “So you won’t answer me.”
Not responding, I pulled the covers over my head. Eventually, huffing, she left the room.
The next weekend, I stepped out the door and saw Dad at the top of his fiberglass ladder, fixing something near the roof with a hammer. As Dad worked, the ladder wobbled, and perhaps it trembled.
Dad could fall, I thought. The monster could fall. If I rammed the ladder now, it would tip over. Dad would fly off and crack his skull. I looked around. No witnesses. No one would know.
But are you sure it will kill Dad?
What if Dad only broke a leg? What would he do then? To me? To my sister? Did it matter? How much damage could Dad do if he was paralyzed, his legs in wires in a hospital bed?
Plenty, I thought.
I just couldn’t do it. If Dad started killing again, I decided, something would need to be done, and done right away.
I pray for a new disappearance, I thought, in the growing sickness of my mind. It will force me to act.
Unfortunately, a few weeks later, God or Satan answered my prayers. Dad entered my room in the middle of the night, claiming that he needed to go on a trip.
“I have to go away when God starts speaking to me,” Dad explained. “Otherwise, God might pick you as a sacrifice. I try to keep you away from my mind, so God doesn’t notice you.” Dad leaned toward me as if he were ready to lunge. “If he picks you, I’d have no choice, don’t you see?”
“Sacrifices don’t have to be people,” I said, clutching at my covers. “In the Bible, they sacrifice animals.”
“In the Bible, God told Abraham to sacrifice his son.”
Abraham and Isaac.
I pulled away from my father in numb terror.
“Be not fearful,” Dad said, reaching out his hand. “I would hate it if you were afraid.”
But I was not sure of that. It was possible Dad enjoyed making me afraid. How much of Dad was madness and how much of Dad was sober, calculated, knowing evil? How much was belief and how much was bluster?
“So you only need to listen to God during certain times?” I asked, stalling.
“I always listen to God,” Dad said primly. “He only speaks to me at certain times.”
Like vengeful demons, questions circled my mind. “When does he speak?”
“I can’t say.” Dad’s posture strengthened. “But I have some warning.” And then unbidden, Dad explained further. “The shadows become deeper.” Dad gazed at me.
I nodded, like his words made sense.
Dad babbled: “It is wonderful when God speaks, like an empty cup being filled up, filled up to the brink, with wine.” Dad explained: “There is a place, a secret place, I go when God speaks. I will go there next time God speaks, and I will tell Him I cannot sacrifice anymore.”
“How?”
“It isn’t easy,” Dad said. “It’s the hardest thing a man can do, but a man can do it because God gives us free will, and I have done it before. You think I’m a monster, but look how few times I’ve served God, all these years. You think those were the only times God called on His servant? No! He called many times.”
I gave Dad an understanding look. “Where is the secret place?”
Dad was a general contractor by trade. If Dad had constructed a lair for his murders, it would be isolated and secluded with clean, metal walls. I would be able to hold Dad there. In fact, I could kill Dad there and get away with it.
“You will know soon,” Dad promised, but he said no more.
The next day, Dad was gone. I thought about calling the police. I did not. Instead, I dropped to my knees and prayed Dad wouldn’t murder again. Maybe Dad had even decided to kill himself.
“That would be the best solution,” I told God during my prayer.
Unfortunately, Dad returned a few days later, and not long after Dad returned, there was news about the serial killer. It came on the television while we were eating dinner. I wanted to change the channel, but I resisted the temptation.
A promising young man in his late twenties had disappeared a few hours away from our house. Dad stared at the television like he was mesmerized by the colors of the screen.
After the segment, my sister stared at me. “Are you worried?”
“About what?” I asked her, as my stomach lurched. I should have stopped Dad.
Dad smiled, eating heartily, looking back and forth between his children.
“This serial killer,” she said. “You’re his type.”
“Males under thirty,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“You think it’s a sex thing?” she asked scandalously.
“I wouldn’t think so.” Dad scratched his cheek. “He seems to be on some sort of religious mission.”
“People use religion as a cover for sex all the time,” she said, almost angrily. “Like Catholic priests.”
“That’s enough, dear,” Dad said calmly, staring up at the picture of Pope Pius XII on the wall.
“I think they’ll catch him soon,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. “He’s getting sloppy. He shouldn’t be sending these letters.”
I wondered if she was saying this for Dad’s benefit. How much did she know? How much did she remember?
“Maybe he wants to get caught,” I managed to say, but I couldn’t look either of them in the face.
“He probably doesn’t think in those terms.” Dad grunted softly. “As I stated, he feels he’s on a mission.”
I had a flash in my mind: Dad galloping on a horse toward an electric chair. Did they still use electric chairs? I pictured Dad’s face shaking, rippling, rupturing with electric current.
As if my sister were reading my mind, she asked, “Do you think he will get the death penalty?”
“Our state abolished the death penalty,” Dad said, shooting me a private glance. “And as Catholics, we’re against the death penalty.”
“Actually, I support it.” She held up a forkful of steak, stuck it into her mouth, and chewed loudly.
I looked away from her, wondering if she was truly her father’s daughter.
Abraham and Isaac.
Later that night, I stared at Dad, who was working on his desktop computer with a satisfied grin on his face. I went behind Dad and took a peek at the screen. He was reading a news article. I stepped closer. The article was about the latest victim, the latest sacrifice.
I staggered away, heading into the kitchen, where I found a half-empty bottle of red wine in the fridge. The neck of the bottle felt cold and correct in my hand. I walked back into the office, where Dad was still enraptured. Realizing I was in a sort of rapture myself, I brought the bottle down onto Dad’s cheek. At some point before impact, I let the bottle slip from my hand, so it wasn’t exactly a swing, and it wasn’t exactly a throw, but it did hit Dad’s face. The bottle fell to the floor, red wine everywhere. Dad tumbled from his chair, screeching, eyes wide, his hands clutching at the blood on his face.
Dad looked like a demon. Abaddon. Balaam. Nergal.
“I’m going to stop you,” I said, and for the first time—as I towered over Dad in blood and wine—I believed the words.
Muffled music, EDM, was emanating from my sister’s room, and I hoped she couldn’t hear the conversation.
“Will it come to pass that I must sacrifice my own son?” Dad looked up at me, eyes full of anticipation.
“Is that what God plans for us?”
Dad’s eyes went toward the bottle, and I realized I was defenseless. I had attacked Dad under some sort of trance, without a plan. As Dad began to rise, I wondered what it would feel like to have my eyes and nose and teeth beaten in, beaten to goo, by a wine bottle in Dad’s hands. How long would it take before death?
But then, out of nowhere, my sister was there, standing in the office doorway, dance music still beating from upstairs.
“What did you do?” My sister yelled at me, rushing to Dad’s side.
Dad stopped trying to rise and seemed to fully sink into the floor, playing up his injury for her.
“Get out of here,” I told her, poison raging, burning up my throat. I wondered if she’d heard Dad threaten to kill me.
No, of course she didn’t, I thought. She thinks I attacked him, unprovoked.
She glared at me, hatred in her eyes. “You get out of here.” She began to tend to Dad, whose hands were trembling.
In righteous anger, I wanted to tell her everything, but the trance was broken now, and I left the office, went out the front door, got in my car, and drove away.
I moved out after that. I refused to talk to Dad, which confused and concerned Leah, who already saw Dad as her future father-in-law.
“I talked to your dad,” Leah told me one day in the new apartment, her hair gathered into a fierce bun.
I had been unpacking. I stood up from a cardboard box and glared at her.
“Don’t be mad.” Leah linked her arm through mine, leaning her head against my shoulder. “He’s worried about you.”
I dropped my head. “It’s not how it looks.”
“Then explain it to me,” she said, eyes full of concern. “My parents don’t understand why we can’t invite him over anymore.”
“I can’t,” I said, as the truth trembled on my lips. “You just have to trust me.”
The scandals in Leah’s family were laughably tame. Late-marrying aunts who insisted on destination weddings. Hippie cousins who converted to Jainism. Did Leah even have the vocabulary to discuss something like this?
“No,” she said forcefully.
My head snapped toward Leah. “I’m your boyfriend,” I said, shaking. “I’m telling you to trust me.”
“I need an explanation.” Leah stood her ground. “You just completely cut your dad out of your life? Are you going to do the same thing to me one day?”
I wanted—desperately—to tell her the truth, but I could not. She’d think I was crazy. Even if she believed me, she’d go to the police. She’d have no choice. It was the right thing to do.
Think of your sister, Dad had implored me. She’ll kill herself.
I knew there was only one way to save my sister. Only one way to live happily ever after with Leah.
Kill the killer.
My hand itched to hold a gun. I did not just fantasize about shooting Dad. I fantasized about shooting Father Conway as well.
You’ll never do it, a voice mocked me.
Not brave enough to push over a ladder, I certainly wasn’t going to murder a priest. For now, it was just a titillating dream, and unless I grew insane, which wasn’t impossible, it would remain a fantasy until the end of my days.
Just kill Dad.
My true plan to kill Dad first formed in a dream in which Dad and I were out hiking, as we had hiked many times, and Dad warned me not to stray too far from the path because there was a cliff. Dad said, “Someone should put up a fence there before some poor soul falls off.”
I woke from the dream, knowing exactly the location of that cliff. Dad hiked regularly in the park, but how often did he pass that particular cliff?
Offer to go on a hike with him, I thought. Pretend you want to make amends.
Dad guarded the solitude of his hikes. As far as I knew, Dad had only ever invited his children on hikes with him.
Hiking in solitude is when you best hear God, Dad used to tell people. If I asked to go on a hike with Dad, it wouldn’t just be a gesture of reconciliation. Dad would see it as a sign of submission.
“And then what?” I muttered under my breath.
Just hope Dad wanders near the edge of the cliff? Just ram him and push him off? I was unsure I could overpower Dad, who would not be completely at ease on the hike. Somewhere—perhaps deep in his mind—Dad would fear I planned to murder him. If I tried to push Dad off the cliff, I could be the one who ended up dead.
What if you do manage to pull it off? an evil voice asked. How will you explain what happened? Dad has hiked the park countless times, passed the cliff countless times.
“He just tripped,” I murmured. “I don’t know what happened. He just fell.”
But now that I had moved out, everyone in our tiny town knew I didn’t get along with Dad. I would automatically become a suspect.
“So what?” I said to myself. If I became a suspect, I could tell the police Dad had tried to kill me. The police would learn Dad was an infamous killer soon enough. They would retrieve the thumb drive from the body if I did not retrieve it first.
But it would be better if Dad was never connected to the serial killer. Better for me. Better for my sister. I decided I would take the thumb drive off Dad’s body before the police arrived. If I was going to do something so horrible, I thought I should receive maximum benefit. The goal was to avoid all stigma, avoid all guilt.
“So let Dad be alone when he falls,” I told myself in the mirror. I generally knew the days and times Dad went hiking. Saturday mornings. Sunday afternoons, after church. I could spend a few weekends enjoying solitary picnics near the cliff. I would bring a few paperbacks. It wasn’t suspicious to spend a weekend reading a book in nature. It was downright wholesome. I wouldn’t do anything suspicious until Dad was on the edge of the cliff.
Rush forward. Push. Retrieve the thumb drive. Leave.
I wasn’t sure that would keep Dad’s murderous identity a secret, but there was a chance. I wasn’t sure I was going to kill Dad, but I decided to set the plan in motion. In the end, it would be up to God, I decided.
The morning of the push, as I thought of it, came with drizzle, and I worried Dad would not go for his hike. The Lord was protecting His faithful servant, perhaps. But soon the sprinkle stopped, and the sun burned righteous through the clouds.
That morning, the park was full of pungent smells. Allergies and rot and mold and carcasses. The smell of hikers pissing on trees. The stench of dog poop in the middle of the trail. I felt the park was falling deep into unreality, the sunlight still and calm.
Is this what killers feel before the act?
Is this what allows them to do it?
If so, I was happy for the discovery, empowered by such knowledge. It was like Novocain before dental work. It was like Adderall before the big exam. I daydreamed about Dad flying off the cliff, arms flapping desperately, plunging toward death, a scream and perhaps a look of grudging admiration on his face as he peered up at me on the edge above.
Then I heard someone coming. A rustling. Leaves crackling. Suddenly, I had a terrifying vision. What if he pushed Dad off the cliff, but Dad somehow survived the plunge? It was so far down. Could Dad really survive?
Of course he can!
Dad was a monster. What if Dad only broke his bones? What if he could still scream? I would have to go down there and finish him before someone heard the screams. I imagined trying to strangle a screeching pile of blood and bones and skin, hands slipping as the blood writhed and screamed.
You can’t do this!
Suddenly, there Dad was, by the cliff’s edge, walking slowly but steadily, glistening sweat. I wanted to move, but I feared Dad would hear me.
Dad being there—actually being there—was too much to process. I realized I’d decided to plan for Dad’s murder, but I’d never actually made the decision to murder Dad. Now there wasn’t enough time. Dad was already at the cliff, but I had to make the decision to kill, and then I had to rush out and push Dad over the cliff. I would have done that with enough time, but Dad wasn’t stopping to enjoy the view, and everything was behind schedule.
“A beautiful sight,” Dad said, ostensibly to himself, as he looked out beyond the cliff.
He knows I’m here, I thought. God warned him. He’s waiting for me.
As Dad passed away from the cliff, I began to shake, my body full of adrenaline. Once Dad was out of sight, I dropped to the ground, sitting there for more than thirty minutes.
I’ll never try something as foolish as this again.
But it was good I’d made the attempt, because now I knew it simply wasn’t possible. I was not a murderer. As I left the park, I decided I needed to find another way. The next morning, I was glad I hadn’t gone through with it. Something wicked inside me was conniving to be born, and it would have been born, I thought, if I’d murdered my father…
But it was not over. A few days later, Dad arrived unannounced at my new apartment.
“You must take my place,” Dad said, dark perspiration under each armpit, after I opened the door.
“What place?” I asked, examining my father’s sweat-beaded forehead.
“Make the sacrifice,” Dad told me, leaning into the doorway on that hot summer day. “It’s not your choice, but God’s.”
“Get away from me,” I screamed as I slammed the door in Dad’s face.
Dad left without another word. I resisted Dad’s prophecy for days, but then the words seem to change. They were no longer in Dad’s voice but in my voice. Soon they sounded like they were in God’s voice.
One day, in the heat of the sun, I saw the man who needed to be sacrificed, and it wasn’t through my own eyes that I saw this man. No, it was through God’s eyes. I would need to decide quickly. I could not stalk the man. The scene of the sacrifice began to appear in my dreams. Surely, that was from God. Surely. But if I sacrificed the man and the words weren’t from God, what did that make me? A murderer. A lunatic.
What if I kidnapped the man, but couldn’t finish things? What if the man spoke beguiling words, degrading my resolve? Would I end up arrested, charged with kidnapping and attempted murder?
The next morning, before dawn, I decided to do it.
Make the sacrifice.
I packed a bag and loaded one of Dad’s guns, the sun rising from a blood horizon. I arrived at the house, entered Dad’s bedroom, and pointed the gun at Dad’s nose while Dad’s eyes came wide awake.
“What do you want now?” Dad asked, staring at me intently, showing no fear.
“Get up.” I motioned with the gun. “We’re going on a trip.”
“Where?” Dad asked, as if he were a child posing an unanswerable question.
I felt my arm break into goosebumps. “I want to see your secret place.”
A bloody scene unreeled like a film in my mind. No one would find Dad’s body in the secret place. Dad was a skilled builder, and I was sure Dad had constructed his own tomb.
Dad emerged from the covers. “Do you intend to inherit my role?”
“We just need to talk,” I said, but anxiety snuck into my voice. Had Dad told similar lies before making his own sacrifices?
“And what if I scream for your sister?” Dad asked, gesturing toward the door.
If that happened, I knew, things would fall apart. I could not hurt my sister, but I feared she would hurt me. Nevertheless, I said, “Then I’ll kill you right here.”
Dad nodded and slowly got out of bed. “Can I take a quick shower?”
“No, just get dressed.” I hated how afraid I was, even now, even though I had the gun. I hated feeling so weak.
Dad bobbed his head, almost smirking. I feared Dad had expected this. Perhaps Dad wanted this.
Dad pointed to his dresser. “I need socks, but I have a pistol in my sock drawer.”
After freezing in fear, I retrieved the socks for Dad, who dressed without incident. Button-up shirt. Trousers. We left the house.
Dad took the driver’s seat and started the car while I held the gun on him from the passenger side.
“You look like you haven’t been sleeping,” Dad said as he drove, striking uncomfortably close to the truth.
I spotted a car with a bumper sticker that asked: Are you following Jesus this closely?
“Stop talking,” I said, fearing Dad would dissuade me from the path of righteous anger, of righteous murder, if there could be such a thing. Besides, silence was the only way to suffocate Dad’s insanity.
When we arrived at the secret place, I had the sense that this was to be the location of my death.
No, I thought. It’s the place of Dad’s death. You’ll sacrifice Dad, so he won’t sacrifice you.
“As you can see, no one’s being held here,” Dad said, taking a seat in the outer room of the secret place. There was a picture of my sister and me as kids pinned to a bulletin board.
Angry tears stung my eyes. “I can’t let you keep doing this.”
“Yet you can’t turn me into the police without catastrophe,” Dad said with a calm grin. “Thus, you think you have only one option.”
“Do you see any other option?” I had intended the question to be rhetorical, but I realized I was waiting intently for an answer.
“You’ve committed a fallacy.” Dad reached for a deck of cards on the table of the secret place. “The fallacy of the false dilemma.”
“Tell me the other option,” I said, tense with anger, wishing Dad would lunge at me, wishing Dad would make the killing easier.
“Let me fulfill my mission.” Dad shuffled the deck of cards. “You wouldn’t be the only one who turns a blind eye.”
So others had faced this terrible choice.
“Who?” I asked, and I feared Dad would utter my sister’s name.
“Father Conway,” Dad said, as if it were obvious.
I almost choked. “How?”
“Don’t be dense.” Dad gave a look of disgust at my display of theological ignorance.
I thought for a moment. “You tell Father Conway about the murders during confession?”
“I’ve never murdered in my life,” Dad said, affronted.
“The sacrifices, I mean,” I said, at my wit’s end, unwilling to argue semantics.
“Not the actual sacrifice,” Dad explained. “That is commanded by God, and thus cannot be a sin. But I sin in preparation for the sacrifice, and I sin in the aftermath. I confess those things.”
I sucked in air. “Father Conway…”
I had never liked Father Conway, but I had been raised with a reverence for the clergy, and I still had a hard time believing any priest could be so morally blind.
“I haven’t spelled it out for him, but he must have put it together by now.” Dad gave a slow nod. “Yet Father Conway says nothing.”
“Why?”
Did Dad hold something horrible over Father Conway, just as Dad held something horrible over me?
Dad again looked dismayed. “I’ll assume you’re in shock, and that I haven’t completely failed in my religious education of you.”
I tasted something bitter in my mouth. “It’s a sin to reveal confessions, but…”
“It is the greatest of sins,” Dad stormed. “I’m sure he does not like what I’m doing, but there can be no doctrinal dispute here. Turning me in would make him an enemy of Christ.”
All my fire was extinguished by the revelation about Father Conway. The priest could have stopped this long ago. Instead, Father Conway had foisted this responsibility onto me.
“Why is it my responsibility?” I said out loud, though I’d meant to say it to myself.
“It’s pride to take on these things,” Dad said, as something shifted in the shadows of the secret place. “Leave it to Christ. He will strike me down at a time of His own choosing.”
Dad and I sat in the secret place for a long time and spoke about small things.
Maybe it is a false dilemma, I thought. Then we got back in the car and drove home.