See, then, the throb and ebb of light from the entryway to the chambers of the knights’ council; and a moment of mutual understanding between Lord and Lady, that they are not among their own, but have breached some castle grounds whose customs, to them, seem strange; and behold, upon the floor, the outlines of bodies, mockeries of life, blind oracles; which both do regard overlong, Marc Buckler remarking upon them, What happened here, and his Lady in response, I have no idea, I’m really sorry; and he seeing the words ANGEL and PLAYPEN and perhaps feeling, in his coward’s heart, the turn of the play; and she seeing BEYOND and ETERNAL, and bethinking herself to return to the surer safety of the outside; Come, says she, obviously something happened here, again betraying the careful stewardship of her father, never apologize for anything, they smell blood; it is too late; I’m really sorry, I had no idea, and him a-following, his visions of wealth all a-glitter with the youthful vigor of unknowing; and, from the darkness, unseen, emerging, lo, a brave knight, his sword mighty, his strike sure, a swordsman forged in the fury of self-preservation; and as has been seen on battlefields for as long as men have done battle, he who follows last is first to fall; and behold, this ocean of blood, the sword-point hath pierced the neck; he falls retching; see now Lady Gates gaze in horror upon this young knight all mad, his mail but rude, the outfitting of the peasant; Get away from me, you son of a bitch, she cries, but finding the door closed, fumbles; Where is the Goddamned doorknob; and does the blade fall once, or twice, or three times sidewise upon her skull; yet living, Marc Buckler beholds; the blows that fall like rain; the careful silence of he who wields the sword; nor can Lady Gates cry out, her head struck by iron; she has found the doorknob; yet but one blow from the flat of the blade and her hand retreats; the doorknob knocked from its housing; she must join her companion upon the floor; and in the dusk remain where she lies until some deeper grave be found, if the cunning of the knight who guards the castle gates can abide but a short span longer.
NORTHUMBRIAN WHISPERS
The initial reports went out over the airwaves; cases like these are godsends to local radio. Something lurid to make drive time pass more quickly between work and home, something so juicy it makes Dad turn on the TV news as soon as he gets in through the front door. Bill, what? Shh, listen. Some kind of satanic thing. That stuff in New Jersey? No, down near the freeway. The freeway here? What other freeway is there? Shh. Well, you said it last year, whole lot of new people lately. Too many, last time I checked, this is just, wait, shh, here it is.
Rumors began to spread as soon as the news hit the wires: on the campuses of the middle and high schools first, filtering down a day or two later to the elementaries. These would grow distorted and bizarre as they traveled, the inevitable process of myth-building in an age of print and video: seven kids in a pact with Satan to kill, unrepeatable atrocities visited upon the bodies, old corpses dug up from the lawn. Signs and symbols to describe with fear and wonder. Nocturnal rites inside the dirty bookstore. Younger kids, hearing, genuinely frightened but too proud to show it, would, when they passed the stories along, embellish new details from the reservoirs of their dreams: I heard they lit the bodies on fire. I heard one guy was covered in oil but he didn’t burn. My friend lives near there, he saw the burning bodies. For real? For real. My brother said there was a lady inside whose right leg was twice as long as her left one, she had to drag herself around by her hands. How did she kill anybody if she couldn’t run after them? Somebody held them down for her right there on the floor.
The detail of the lady with one leg twice as long as the other is one I found in an openly skeptical news report, one of the few pieces about the killings to be broadcast beyond the confines of California during the week that followed. A teenager, whose name the paper, citing general policy, had declined to publish, said he’d heard it from at least three people, including somebody who claimed to have known Siraj personally. Siraj? Siraj, yes, with a j, new kid, everybody at the whole school knows he was involved, he’s crazy, he can’t shut up about all the shit he gets up to, excuse me, all the things he does—this as fellow students nearby, also unnamed, erupt with laughter and then try to compose themselves. Find him, though, for real, he knows all about it, swear to God.
Dana Reid, the reporter of this story, seems to have requested and been given access to the enrollment records; I was unable to locate a court order granting her access, but these were looser times. Finding nobody named Siraj, she remarked, parenthetically: “Action News found no student by this name on the rolls for the 1986–87 school year.” She touched then on competing theories of the case—former tenants with an ax to grind; criminals occupying an abandoned property; crack is mentioned several times: in the eighties you could get away with blaming almost anything on crack—before returning the broadcast to its anchors.