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The sight of blood always went to his head.
A drop of crimson blossoms at the corner of his chin, blooming, growing, until it bursts, starting the slow trickle down his neck.
He stares, fascinated, and even just at this tiny prick, his head feels light. Like how he feels after two or three beers, fuzzy and queasy and invincible.
The moment is broken by the sound of his wife in their bedroom, starting her morning routine. He presses a tissue to the shaving cut, letting the paper absorb the blood, his blood, and he continues to shave, unable to meet his eyes in the mirror for the rest of the morning.
He doesn’t encounter blood often. He trades stocks online, lives in a townhouse in New York with his wife and children, the perfect life of upper middle class affluence.
His phone rings while he’s making himself breakfast, and he cuts himself on the knife he was using to slice vegetables. He swears and fumbles his cell phone, trying to ignore the blood on his thumb. “Hello?”
“I’m looking for Wade Crocker?”
The voice is male, gruff, and unfamiliar. It takes Wade a moment to focus on the question as he wraps a napkin around his thumb and sits down before his head gets any lighter.
“Speaking.”
“My name is Dwight Hendrickson, I’m, uh…” There’s a pause, and Hendrickson clears his throat before continuing. “I’m the chief of Haven police.”
Haven.
Wade hadn’t thought about that town in years; it was his father’s town, his brother’s town. He’d never belonged there, never wanted to belong there, and there was no reason for anyone from that town to even have his number, aside from Duke. “What kind of trouble is my brother in this time?”
Another pause from Hendrickson, he clears his throat again, takes a sharp inhale Wade can hear across the line, and then continues speaking. “I regret to inform you that your brother Duke…”
Hendrickson doesn’t seem able to continue the sentence, but only one sentence begins like that. Wade stares at the Rorschach blot of blood on the stark white makeshift bandage. It looks like a clown, a little, if he tilts his head. “How?”
“Uh…” Hendrickson definitely doesn’t sound like he’s done this before. It always goes a lot smoother on television, doesn’t it? “There was an accident, he didn’t… there’s no body.”
Wade nods, then realizes Hendrickson can’t see it. “Why’d you call me?”
“He had no next of kin listed. The Teagues remembered you.”
Wade has a vague recollection of the Teagues—they ran the tiny town newspaper. The bigger one, Wade never remembered their names, used to sneak him lollipops when Simon wasn’t looking. “What do you need from me?”
“Is there any chance you’d be able to come to Haven to arrange, uh, things?” Hendrickson doesn’t sound like he actually wants Wade to come to Haven any more than Wade wants to go. But Duke is—was—his brother, even if they hadn’t spoken in nearly five years.
No body, which meant no rush for a funeral. Wade wonders how much Duke has to his name, these days, aside from the boat he’d won in a poker game years ago. “I can be there on Friday.”
Hendrickson thanks him and hangs up. Wade is glad there’s no body, that he doesn’t have to look at a corpse, even if it’s his kid brother. He stares at his hands, and the blood has soaked through the napkin, and he can’t tell if his head is spinning because of the news or the blood. Maybe it doesn’t matter. He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to focus himself, and his mind’s eye is filled with images of eight-year-old Duke, running around without a care, scraping his knees and elbows and knuckles, of that kid who broke his arm sledding and didn’t even seem to care. He can smell the blood, copper and sharp, and he feels… something.
Not regret, nor remorse. He’d barely known Duke, truth be told; they’d spent one winter together while Wade spent time in Haven with their father, and then Duke had stayed with them for a few months after Simon died, before heading back to Haven to live with some distant uncle of his mother’s.
He pushes those thoughts aside, forcing himself to his feet to walk into the bathroom and deal with the cut on his thumb, still pooling slowly, life and vitality and strength, sluggish and persistent, and he can’t tear his eyes away.
“You’re special, Wade.”
“You could be the solution. Would you like that?”
Blood.
It all comes down to blood.
He was only going to take a little--how much did he need, anyway? But Duke interferes, and Jordan tries to tell him it’s all been a big mistake. That’s the story of Wade’s life, one mistake after another, and Wade’s through with that.
The whiskey burns on its way down, but it gives him the liquid courage he needs. It’s easy, so easy, to slide the knife into Krebs’ stomach and back out again. He stares at the blade for what feels like a lifetime, seeing the blood clinging to the metal like so many rubies, every single drop precious.
He wipes the blood onto his hand, watches it sink into his skin, and feels--
Feels everything. There’s a breeze from the air conditioning; there are competing scents of cologne and aftershave and perfume; cars are driving past outside and he hears them as if they’re right behind him. Every sense is heightened, and his heart races like it hasn’t in years. He feels powerful, alive, and there’s no chance in hell that he’s letting Duke take this away from him.
Jordan was supposed to be different. She looks at Wade the way Marcie hasn’t in years, makes him promises and tells him he’s special. Until the moment they’re sitting by the cemetery and she tells him no, he’s not special, he can’t save the world or even just this town that he hates and can’t resist.
But she’s wrong. He is special, he can feel it pounding in his chest like a caged beast trying to break free.
He kills her, because she won’t help him end the Troubles. Her blood soaks into his skin, just like Krebs’ did, and he feels the power again, feels the beast roaring as it once again tastes freedom.
He meets his eyes in the side mirror. If Jordan won’t tell him her plan, he’ll just have to do this his own way. One Troubled person at a time.
“For the first time, I realized why I’m here. It was incredible.”
The sight of blood always went to his head.