The Smaller Evil Read online

  Am I losing my mind?

  Am I?

  That’s what it felt like.

  Mari, the short man, and the dark-haired woman followed him wherever he went and watched him closely. Expressions of concern were etched across their faces.

  Doubt, too.

  “I thought you said Beau was down here,” the dark-haired woman said finally.

  “He was.”

  “And he was dead.”

  “Yes. I think so. I mean, I’m pretty sure.” Arman put a fluttering hand to his head. His memories of the recent past felt foggy. Distant.

  He wasn’t, he realized, all that sure of anything.

  “So where is he now?” the woman asked.

  “I don’t know. Someone—someone must’ve found him. The keys were still in the van. Maybe they took him somewhere. To a hospital.”

  She gave him a withering look. “And who would’ve done that? Everyone was in the meeting hall just now. Every single person. Except you.”

  “Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

  “I’m saying there’s nothing to believe.”

  This was stupid. Arman pulled at his shirt. Pointed to it emphatically. “And where do you think all this blood came from?”

  The woman shrugged. “Your bleeding head? Just a guess.”

  “He was here! The van was here!” Arman shouted. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Well, he’s not here now.”

  “Then someone must have come in from the outside and found him!”

  “Impossible,” the short man said. “No one drives up here. Road’s a dead end. No one even knows we’re here.”

  Sure they do, Arman started to say, thinking of the boy at the market. But he couldn’t get the words out. His whole body started to shake. Great seismic shudders that emanated from deep within him.

  Oh, Beau. Beau. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  Mari came over and rubbed the back of his neck. Arman let her. Her concern soothed him in a way he didn’t know how to describe, spooling some desperate need from his heart to her hands. I don’t understand what’s happening, he longed to tell her. Please help me understand.

  “He was here,” Arman said again, but his voice had lost its gusto. Could he really have been mistaken about Beau being dead in the first place? Maybe he’d driven himself somewhere. Maybe he was fine. Maybe Arman had gotten this whole thing all wrong.

  But there was all that blood. So much of it. And the knife. Oh God, the knife—

  His shaking grew worse, until his teeth chattered and his mouth grew watery. Until he had to sit on the ground and put his head between his legs. Mari crouched beside him, hand still on his neck, and while Arman focused on breathing deeply and not passing out, drifts of conversation between her and the dark-haired woman floated above him.

  “—confused, in shock, maybe drugs of some sort—”

  “—need to get back. This is taking too much damn time—”

  “—head wound. Possible brain injury, memory loss—”

  “Hey, is this yours?” a male voice called out.

  Arman lifted his head. Maybe twenty yards away, the short man stood beneath a thick-barked eucalyptus tree, and he had something in his hands. Arman stared. For a moment he was unable to make out what it was, but then realization hit him.

  “Yes! That’s my bag! That’s mine.” He pointed, looking up at the other two. “See. I told you. That was in the van. Someone took the van and they left my bag. I’m not making this up!”

  The short man walked over and handed the bag to Arman. He dug through it frantically, clothes spilling on the ground. A moan of relief escaped him. The money was still there. All of it.

  The dark-haired woman watched him. “Were you planning on going somewhere?”

  “I did go somewhere. I already told you that!”

  “Why don’t you just tell us everything that happened, Arman,” Mari said with a sigh. “Start at the beginning.”

  So that’s what he did. He took a deep breath and told them how he’d left the compound before dawn that morning and started his walk back toward civilization. He told them how he’d run into Beau at the market and that Beau was going to give him a ride to the highway. And—leaving out the part where Beau told the kid at the store Arman was a junkie and that strange moment of lost time—he told them how before they could drive anywhere together, the most horrible thing had happened: Arman had found Beau’s lifeless body in the back of the van. And it wasn’t due to any kind of accident or foul play. No, while Arman had been in the bathroom dicking around with his blisters and his Band-Aids, lamenting over the dullness of his looks, apparently Beau had been in the van cutting open his wrists and bleeding out all over the damn place.

  The wrists I wouldn’t cut.

  With the knife I wouldn’t use.

  Everything after was a nightmare, moments too hazy and fractured for Arman to recall in detail. All he had were bright bursts of memory: the blood-soaked van; Beau’s gray face and slack neck.

  But that was it.

  “Why on earth would Beau kill himself?” the dark-haired woman asked. “What possible reason would he have to do that?”

  “I don’t know why. But he, uh, seemed kind of weird when I talked to him.”

  “‘Kind of weird?’ Is that a technical term?”

  Arman glared.

  “What did he cut himself with?” the short man asked. “I don’t remember you saying.”

  “That’s because I didn’t say.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “It was this knife. Beau had it last night. He said it was his grandfather’s. A Damascus, he called it. It’s got this thick blade, and there’s a pattern to the metal. Like a fingerprint.”

  At this, a look passed between the three adults. Arman didn’t know what it meant. But he saw it. Clear as day.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  “But that knife—” started the short man.

  “You threw it over a cliff last night, didn’t you?” finished the dark-haired woman. “We heard about that. Beau told us. It was an heirloom. Irreplaceable.”

  “It was. I did.”

  “Then how could he have had it?”

  “I don’t know.” Arman faltered. After all, it didn’t make sense to him either.

  “Arman, how did you hurt your head?” Mari asked.

  His fingers went to the wound on his temple. “I—I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I think I was running. Maybe I blacked out or something.” He looked at her. “All I know is that I thought—I thought I could still help him. I wanted to try. I had to try.”

  “So did you call the police? Or try to find a hospital?”

  “I couldn’t! My phone didn’t work! And the kid working at the market in Los Padres wouldn’t let me use his. He didn’t like me.”

  “Did you go anywhere else?” Mari asked. “Or talk to anyone?”

  “No.”

  “But how can you be sure if you don’t even remember hurting yourself?”

  “I just am,” Arman said. “I came here. I came right here. I know that.”

  Mari didn’t respond. But she looked worried.

  “You know,” the dark-haired woman began, and she spoke in the sort of taunting tone that made Arman want to poke her eyes out. “This whole thing reminds me of a movie I once saw where this woman goes to pick her child up from nursery school, only it turns out nobody’s ever seen her child. Nobody even knew she had one and the kid’s not enrolled at the school. She never was. Then the mother goes home and finds that all of her child’s things are missing. There’s no trace of the kid anywhere. Gary, do you know the one I’m talking about?”

  The short man—Gary—nodded. “Bunny Lake Is Missing.”<
br />
  The dark-haired woman smiled. “That’s right. Bunny Lake. You’re like Bunny Lake’s mother.”

  “What happened to her?” Arman asked cautiously.

  “People thought she was crazy, of course. She was looking for something that didn’t exist.”

  “What are you talking about? Beau exists. You know he exists.”

  The dark-haired woman waved a hand. “You’re telling us to believe in the existence of something you have no proof of. It’s the same thing, really.”

  Arman squeezed his hands into fists to keep from digging into his own skin. “It’s not the same thing! The proof is that the van is missing!”

  “‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,’” Gary recited in a singsong voice.

  Now Arman wanted to poke his own eyes out. He knew that old maxim. He knew it well. Last year, his physics teacher had had a poster with those same words hanging in the back of his classroom.

  “Well, shouldn’t we call the cops now?” he asked. “Let them figure things out?”

  The dark-haired woman was still smiling. “And tell them what exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” Arman said, and even he felt his resolve dissipating. Considering the money in his bag and the blood all over him and the fact that a lot of people had seen him argue with Beau last night, talking to the cops was not high on his list of desirable activities. Even if it was the right thing to do.

  Which it probably was.

  But Mari, it seemed, could read his mind. And as always, she was gracious. “Arman, no matter what happened, you did the right thing. Okay? Going to the police or anyone else would’ve been confusing. They wouldn’t have understood you. So please don’t feel bad.”

  Arman nodded.

  “I think you should lie down and rest now,” she said gently. “You hit your head pretty hard. That could explain why you’re confused.”

  “Lie down where?” Arman asked.

  “You don’t remember where you’re staying?”

  “No, I do. It’s just . . .”

  “It’s just what?”

  Arman looked at her with pleading eyes. “It’s just nothing about this . . . well, nothing makes sense.”

  “Of course it makes sense,” Mari told him in the kindest way possible. Then she echoed the exact words the cook had spoken to Arman earlier that morning, “You just don’t know how.”

  17

  ARMAN WAS IN A DAZE. A wretched one. What else could he do but accept that he was either completely delusional and had imagined the last six hours of his life or . . .

  Or what?

  Or nothing, he realized. There wasn’t any other option. He was batshit crazy. He had to be. Because dead bodies didn’t disappear and vans didn’t vanish into thin air and heirloom knives didn’t return from the depths of darkness.

  Except when they did.

  Hence the daze.

  The adults standing around Arman kept talking. And they did it in that way adults always did. Like they knew best. Somehow it was decided that Gary would walk with Arman back up to the cabin where he’d been staying. Gary was a doctor, it turned out, a real medical doctor, and he wanted to tend to Arman’s head wound. Apparently there was a first aid station somewhere up there, too.

  Doctor or no doctor, Arman did not want to walk with him—he didn’t like the guy’s arrogance or his drippy voice or even the way his weird gauzy clothes dragged on the ground because his legs were too short for his body—but Arman was in no position to argue. Both Mari and the dark-haired woman insisted. Only there was something about their insistence that felt off to Arman. Like he was being pandered to. Or appeased. He resented that. There was a stark difference, he thought, in being cared for and being taken care of.

  But in the end, Arman agreed—because it wasn’t a choice and really never had been—and started the walk back up to the cabin with Dr. Gary at his side, carrying his bag for him.

  “You’re going to need stitches,” the doctor told him.

  “Really?” Arman had never had stitches. The idea wasn’t a pleasant one, thinking of his body as unwillingly open. Exposed to the world for everyone to see.

  “We’ll need to go to the research building for that. I don’t keep all that equipment in my cabin.”

  “What research building?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They walked more. Arman got the feeling the dislike between them was a mutual thing, but the silence made him grow restless.

  “What’s going on in there?” He pointed back toward the domed meeting hall, which was still visible over the tall grass and the wildflowers blanketing the meadow.

  Dr. Gary gave a terse nod. “That’s Inoculation. It’s a long process.”

  “How long?”

  “They’ll be there until at least dinner.”

  “But what are they doing exactly?”

  “Well, to be fully Inoculated, you first have to identify what it is that’s making you sick. We don’t target symptoms here; we work on a model of vector control. So that’s what they’re doing. Identifying where disease transmission is occurring in their Outside Lives, so that they can put a stop to it.”

  “Hmm.” Arman thought of the disarray his own mind and body were in. What vectors were responsible for his disease? His parents, he supposed, but it had to be more than that. When Arman closed his eyes and pictured himself as a dot in the center of a bull’s-eye, surrounded by all the systems he operated within on a daily basis—home, school, his social life, youth group, basketball, the entire US government—the number of possible vectors affecting him seemed infinite. But didn’t that mean Occam’s razor should apply? If everything made him miserable, wasn’t the likely origin of the problem him?

  No. Stop it. There’s nothing wrong with you. That type of thinking is why you came here in the first place. It’s why you need to change.

  It’s why you need Beau.

  Except Beau was gone and possibly dead, and Arman, in his effort to run away, was the one who’d lost him. And wasn’t that the strongest evidence that there was something wrong with him?

  Didn’t that prove, deep down, in the most empirical of ways, that he was a bad person?

  “What are you thinking about, Arman?” Dr. Gary’s cool voice sliced its way into his daydream.

  Arman twitched. “Nothing.”

  “You seem upset.”

  “I am upset.”

  “We teach that, too, you know. How to regulate your emotions. How to remain rational in times of crisis so that you can choose the correct path toward healing.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to heal people?” Arman asked with a glare. “I mean, seeing as you’re a doctor and all.”

  Dr. Gary’s lips widened into the most placid of smiles. “You’re right. I am a doctor. But where much of the medical work I do is reparative, the work we do here is empowering. You see, not only are we trying to help individuals evolve to a place where they can manage their own immune systems, but we also know it’s possible for people in very heightened states of consciousness to control all planes of existence: physical, emotional, spiritual. That’s true independence. That’s freedom. There’ll be no need for doctors at that point.”

  Arman was doubtful. “There won’t?”

  “Oh no. I mean, we’re not there yet. But that’s where we’re going. That’s going to be the next phase.”

  “Next phase in what?”

  “The evolution. The one happening right here.” The doctor gestured out at the compound property. “Our first phase has been focused on recruiting and training. On building our base. But now we need to go further.”

  “How?”

  “The way all research is done. Or at least the way it should be. With control. By closing our borders and becoming completely self-sufficient, we’ll be able to maintain a sterile
environment. There’ll be no contamination from the outside world. Our Enforcement strategy will make sure of that. And that’s when our work will really begin.”

  “Beau didn’t say anything about closing the compound.”

  “Beau’s been focusing on growth. That’s really his area of strength. But he’ll come around. It’s going to be beautiful, Arman. When the mind and body achieve true harmony, there will be no limits. None. You can be or do anything.”

  Arman didn’t know what to say. The whole thing sounded strange. And not all that appealing, if he was being honest. He’d come here to learn how to deal with the outside world, not live with a bunch of old people forever. What would happen when they all died? “You know, I’m only supposed to be here a week.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you will be,” the doctor said soothingly. “We’re being very selective about who stays for this phase. It’s not for everyone. It’s going to take a lot of resources.”

  • • •

  They kept hiking and Dr. Gary kept talking, though Arman had long stopped listening. As they passed the cluster of cabins where Arman had been staying, Dr. Gary led them into the woods, veering off the main trail to brush beneath the low-hung branches of pine trees. Arman followed reluctantly, staring up the hillside. The cook’s house wasn’t much farther, just a few hundred feet, and despite his confusion, he refused to believe those breathless, urgent moments between them that morning had been anything but real. There’d been no dream, no fantasy, he’d ever had that had felt like that.

  Finally they reached the two-story, flat-roofed building Arman had noticed yesterday on his way to the bathroom. The one with the dark windows.

  “What is this place?” he asked. Unlike the rest of the compound, there was nothing warm or rustic about the building. It was institutional. Bland. It exuded gloom. “People don’t sleep here, do they?”

  The doctor pulled a set of keys from his pocket to unlock the front door. “Here? No. It’s used for storage mostly, these days. But I do keep an office here.”

  “An office?”

  “That’s sort of a joke. It’s not like I have a lot of patients.”

  “But you called it a research building.”