Ledger swung the crowbar in a wild, shoulder-jarring arc as Dale moved around him. He got lucky, and it clipped the blade of the knife. The knife flew out of Dale’s hand and skidded over the ground until it disappeared under the dumpster.
“And all the people who died because of that?” Ledger asked. “Your cousins, your uncles, yourfamily.What did they deserve?”
Something horrible happened to Dale’s face. Already grotesque, it crumped in on itself in slow motion as he gaped his mouth open and screwed his eyes up. It was grief, Ledger realized, when the ability to cry was gone.
“Better than me,” Dale choked out through the dry sobs that racked him.
He lunged forward and grabbed for Ledger’s throat. They both staggered backward, and Ledger wedged the crowbar between them. Dale’s hands closed on that, and he pushed on it. Ledger’s arms trembled and then slowly gave under the inexorable pressure. Dale wasn’t inhumanly strong, just as strong as a human when pain wasn’t an issue anymore.
The cold metal grazed Ledger’s throat as he staggered back into the wall. He flexed his fingers against the rough edges of it.
“Then help me,” he rasped out. “You want compensation? Or do you want to watch Earl die?”
Dale stared at him. This close, he didn’t smell bad, exactly. There was the lingering aroma of Axe bodyspray, applied over the base scent of something old and dry and dead in a cave. His mouth opened and closed, his vocal cords creaking audibly.
“Why should I trust you, Conroy?” Dale scraped out of his throat as he remembered he needed air to talk. “This is all your fault.”
“No. It’s yours,” Ledger choked out. The crowbar dug into his throat, the pressure making something crackle and strain in there.”You didn’t need to take the deed. It didn’t even have your name on it. You signed it John Doe. What could Earl do with that? He’d not have been able to use it to find you or even work out who you’d been. So this? This is on you. The only reason I’m still in Sutton is because Earl tried to pin Bell’s sins on me… and Bell never even had the deed, did he? You swapped it out in one of the books he used to communicate with Syder. No one else had the chance.”
Dale screamed in his face. His breath smelled like old bones. He shoved the crowbar against Ledger’s throat until Ledger gasped and squirmed as his air was cut. Then Dale let go of the metal and stepped back. Ledger hung onto it, fingers cramped around it. Then it dragged his arms down, and he dropped it like it was an anchor. He sagged back against the wall, wheezing for breath as he rubbed his throat with one hand.
“Because I hate him,” Dale said.
“Yeah, that doesn’t make you special,” Ledger said. He doubled over and braced his hands on his knees. The pressure was gone from his throat, but it didn’t seem to want to cooperate with breathing anymore. He glanced up. “Bell or Earl?”
Dale spat on the ground. Or mimed the action since there was no spit to leave his mouth.
“Both of them,” he said bitterly. “They’re both as bad as each other.”
“You knew Ben, didn’t you?” Ledger said. It had dawned on him when he heard the contempt in Dale’s voice. “He used to buy books from you.”
Dale nodded. “He did. I liked him. He wanted… he wanted to have a life, and Bell took that. He…” Dale trailed off. He rubbed his hand over his face. “But that’s not why I did it. That was… spite. I wanted Mr. King tothinkthat the deed had the answer. I wanted him to think he’d been so close. Soclose,” Dale held his thumb and finger up, squeezed together so they almost touched, “to finding me, but he hadn’t. I wanted to torment him, the way he’s tormented me.”
It wasn’t funny. Ledger laughed anyhow as he braced his back on the wall and pushed himself back to his feet.
“He doesn’t even remember you,” he said.
Dale shook his head and jabbed a finger at Ledger. “He killed them. My family. I’m barely related to them now, after so long, but sometimes they still look like my brother or my son. It’s like they’re alive again, just so Mr. King can take them away again.”
“The monster’s senile,” Ledger said. “Dying. Maybe when he started this, he had a reason for who he killed. Now he just does it because he did it before.”
Dale pointed a finger at Ledger and took a step forward. “He crawled inside me and wore me like a suit. He walked around in my body and used it to commit… foulness, and I was there for every step. I have been centuries in this cold, fucking purgatory of a body, and sometimes I can still feel where he was, like the gap where a tooth has been. He murdered everyone I ever loved, either by his own hand or by forcing me to remain while they aged and died. How can you do that to someone and forget them?”
Ledger took a step forward. “Because he does that to someone twice a year or more. He can’t remember all their names, and he definitely doesn’t remember yours,” he said. “He’s not here to punish you. He just wants something you took from that house.”
“Then that, at least,” Dale said as he turned his back to enter the building, “I can deny him.”
“If I don’t find it,” Ledger said, “he’ll kill me.”
“The living are here to die,” Dale said. “If you don’t die tonight, you will tomorrow. Or in a decade. Or three. What difference does it make?”
“A lot to me.”
“No one saved my cousins or my great-grandchildren,” Dale said. “So why should I save you?”
“It’ll kill him,” Ledger said. “That’s what he wants. To die. To be done. No more dead relatives, Dale. Not before their time, anyhow.”
That was enough to get Dale to stop. He clenched his hands and dropped his head. “So I’m supposed to feel sorry for him? This poor, suffering monster.”
