Dumb

1

He had not been to church since he was a kid. He had not crossed the threshold and entered sacred ground, where Jesus watched from golden crosses and the Virgin Mary lingered in the air, providing hope to the weary and the lost.

When he sat down and closed his eyes, he was unaware of Reverend Mulls’ presence. He simply shut his eyes and prayed.He prayed for forgiveness.

Reverend Mulls tapped him on the shoulder midway through his fifth repeated prayer. He opened his eyes and looked at the vicar. Mulls was a kind-looking man, his eyes like drops of the ocean, his hair raven black. He had been the local Church of England vicar in Wellington Hollow for ten years, leading a peaceful life without much controversy—unlike his predecessor, who had left under something of a cloud.

“What ails you, my son?” Mulls asked.

“I scarcely know where to begin,” he admitted.

“You were praying for forgiveness. I could not help but overhear, and I apologise for the intrusion, but I would be remiss if I did not ask why you seek forgiveness.”

The man studied him carefully, trying to see whether the kindness was genuine or if beneath the clerical mask lurked something cruel and callous. After a pause, he decided Mulls was the former.

“Reverend, do you believe in evil? True evil, the great serpent whose name is Lucifer?”

“But of course,” Mulls replied. “Evil lurks in many places, in many corners of the world.”

“And do you also believe that a person of evil spirit could…” He stopped short.

“Could what, my son?”

“Could do something so cruel, so sickening, yet in a strange way… kind?”

“It is possible,” Mulls said, though the suggestion unsettled him. “Why do you ask?”

“I have met evil, Reverend,” the man answered quietly. “I have met evil, and it was kind.”

“Kind?” Mulls echoed. “Would you please elaborate, so I have the full picture, Mr…?”

“Jennings,” he supplied.

“Mr Jennings,” Mulls repeated with a nod. “If you would elaborate, I may be able to offer guidance.”

Jennings inclined his head, then began his story.

2

Jennings arrived at the Compton house at seven p.m., tired from his day at the office and truly done with life. He was still dressed in his suit when he rang the doorbell. Julia Compton answered, dressed in her fabulous black dress, and ushered him inside.

Julia was married to Barry Compton, a friend of Jennings since school who had managed to work himself up to regional manager at his firm. When the invitation came—a fancy do—Jennings knew he would have to attend, but there was a problem. Lucy, his daughter.

Lucy was not odd. She was born deaf and then, as she grew older, it was discovered she had “limited intelligence.” That was how Barry phrased it. The more politically correct way of saying retard.

Jennings had been warned in advance that Barry was looking for someone to babysit his seventeen-year-old daughter, to make sure she didn’t accidentally set fire to the house. On the same day, Jennings’ wife Mary had walked out the door and moved in with her new lover—and so, like a schmuck, he said yes.

“Thank you for doing this,” Barry said in the living room, where Lucy sat in the corner, her mind fixed on the television, watching re-runs of Tom and Jerry without understanding what was going on.

“Don’t mention it,” Jennings replied with a fake smile.

“We’ll be back by ten,” Barry promised, heading out the door with Julia’s hand in his. Jennings was left alone with Lucy.

He sighed.

As was his habit when entering someone’s home, Jennings glanced at the shelves of books and records to see what made them tick. The books were the usual: Dickens, Lawrence, Hemingway, Kerouac. Though he did find a copy of Fanny Hill hidden behind a Beano annual.

The records were a hippie’s paradise—The Beatles, The Stones, The Doors, The Who, Dylan. Missing only the Grateful Dead to complete the vibe. When he came across Jeff Buckley, he thought about his daughter.

Jennings had bought Grace for Emily’s nineteenth birthday. He had hoped his wife would go with him to her university dorm, so they could take her for a family meal. Instead, he had to explain to Emily what her mother had been getting up to behind their backs.

He chose to put on Jeff Buckley, sitting back as Lucy stared at the television. Barry had told him he could play music if he wanted—Lucy wouldn’t mind—but he couldn’t smoke in the house. Jennings broke that rule as he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

As the angelic voice of Buckley filled the room, despair crept across his heart. Rage began to swell. Darkness descended.

3

“I sat there, smoking, listening to the music, rage overcoming me,” Jennings recounted.

“And as the rage reached its peak, I found myself rambling. More like venting. Explaining everything to a deaf and dumb girl who could not hear. Who just couldn’t. I told her what my bitch of a wife had been doing. Every sordid fucking detail.”

“And you feel ashamed for that?” Mulls asked. “For explaining this evil to a disabled child?”

“No, not for that, Reverend,” Jennings said flatly. “Not for that.”

4

As Buckley began to sing the opening lines of Hallelujah, Jennings lit another cigarette. Rain poured outside—typical British weather. Typical for Wellington Hollow, a crummy town in Cumbria. He could hear the droplets tapping against the glass, each rhythmic beat pounding in his skull like a Keith Moon drum solo.

“I’m married, you know,” he muttered. “I’m forty-nine and married, with a daughter called Emily. She’s studying History at Cambridge.”

He laughed to himself at the absurdity of talking to a deaf girl.

“My wife—Mary—she’s forty-seven. Forty-seven. She has a daughter for Christ’s sake, you’d think she was grown up. That she’d know better. And what’s she doing? Right now, she’s shacked up in the Silver Bells Hotel with her boyfriend, Peter.”

He had not discussed this openly, though people in the office had heard rumours of Mary’s infidelities and mocked him with remarks.

“I wouldn’t mind if it was someone her own age. But no—Peter’s eighteen. A student in one of her classes. A student, for fuck’s sake.”

Jennings glanced at Lucy. She hadn’t moved, eyes locked on the screen. He wondered if he should stop. But then thought, to hell with it. She can’t hear. I’ll rant as much as I fucking want.

“She didn’t even pretend when I caught her out. She seemed almost proud when she told me. Smiled like a whore. And then had the audacity to blame me.”

He lit another cigarette as Tom fell into another of Jerry’s traps. He laughed, even as Buckley poured out his soul. The rain eased.

“I get that I work late. I’m far from perfect. Yes, I kissed Isabella Perkins at the office Christmas party four years ago. But a kiss is a less adulterous crime than the shit they get up to.”

A tear welled in the corner of his eye. He wiped it away. He did not wish to cry. Not anymore.

5

“I don’t know why I started ranting, Reverend, but once I did, I couldn’t stop. I needed to get it out of me,” Jennings said.

“I understand,” Mulls replied. “You were in pain. Your wife had caused you pain.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Jennings answered with a surprised laugh.

6

“She started buying shit. Shit I didn’t even know was coming into the house,” he told Lucy, whose gaze never left the television. “When I found them, I found her out too.”

He stood, changed the record, and put on Morrison Hotel by The Doors. He smirked bitterly when “Roadhouse Blues” chugged out of the speakers. Roadhouse. Fuck. She called it the Roadhouse.

“The shit she bought I didn’t even know you could get on Amazon. Half of it I could hardly believe she smuggled into the house. Too many nosey neighbours. But she did. She crammed it into the spare bedroom and had a lock fitted. That should’ve told me something.”

Tom was now chasing Jerry’s grey mouse friend. Jennings couldn’t remember its name, but it reminded him of Scrappy-Doo—an annoying little runt he often wished he could shoot with an AK-47.

“One day I came home, she wasn’t there. I got curious. Decided to break into the spare room. Separate bank accounts meant I couldn’t track what she was wasting money on. So I kicked the door in. Third kick, it collapsed. I almost wanted to do a Michael Caine impression, but I was too shocked once I stepped inside.”

The walls were painted dark red. In one corner, a Berkley horse. In another, an X-cross. In the centre, a spanking bench. Along the walls: restraints, gags, whips, clamps. The air thick with the smell of shame.

Jennings sighed. He poured himself a large whiskey, hiding the butts of four cigarettes in the bin.

“And then of course,” he muttered. “Then of course was how she paid for all this shit. For her weekends away on ‘teaching courses.’ She told me how she got the extra money. I thought she was joking. But when I looked into her eyes, I knew it was true. She’d been acting like Cumbria’s equivalent to Pablo Escobar.”

7

“Pablo Escobar?” Mulls repeated, frowning.

“He was a drug baron, Reverend,” Jennings explained.

“I see,” Mulls nodded slowly. “So, your wife was selling drugs?”

“Yes. Cocaine. For a real bastard. Her boyfriend’s father.”

8

“Everybody knows who Abe Tull is,” Jennings continued as Tom picked up a mallet. “Tull—whom everyone respected and feared—nicknamed ‘the Gent’ for his polite manners, clean appearance, love of gin. He made thousands from his little drug empire. Even had cops on the payroll.”

He lit another cigarette. The clock read nearly half-eight. He didn’t care. Lucy just sat there, her eyes glued to the screen.

“That’s the part no one knows about—the drug dealing. But of course, I should keep my mouth shut, shouldn’t I? I’m forgetting your brother David. He died of an overdose. O.D.’d in a fucking McDonald’s toilet because the stuff was cut with fentanyl. Mary swore she didn’t know what Tull was up to. Swore she had no idea. I believed her. Typical stupid cunt.”

For a moment, he thought he heard her crying. He dismissed it as imagination. He poured another whiskey, sipping it slowly.

“I feel awful just telling you this. I’ll confess something else. I was going to kill myself tonight. End it all. Blow my brains out. The old Kurt Cobain special. But I’m a coward. Always have been. I could’ve shot Tull, his son, my wife—but I can’t do that either. I used to lean Christian, and if I’m damned, let it be for my own life, not someone else’s.”

The Tom and Jerry marathon ended. Looney Tunes began. Bugs Bunny tormented Elmer Fudd. Jennings smiled. Even laughed.

“Truth is, I feel like shit. Ever since she left. Ever since I found out. Part of me wants her back. Part of me wants her to die horribly. Like the death she inflicted on your brother.”

He sighed again. And for the briefest moment, thought he heard a faint cry.

9

“So, you knew your wife was involved in her brother’s death,” Mulls said. “And you reported it to the police? You think you betrayed her? Is that the evil you’re referring to?”

“No, Reverend.”

“Then what evil could you possibly mean? I see no evil at present.”

“I didn’t see it either, Reverend. Not until it was too late.”

10

Emily had fallen asleep in front of the television by nine. Jennings still rambled.

“So after all this crap came out, you know what she did? She blamed me. For everything. Said it was my fault because I’m a boring old fart who cares about my job, football, my daughter, and having a kept wife instead of ‘fun.’ Said she didn’t know she needed fun until she met Peter.

“I could’ve hit her. Strangled her with whatever was at hand. Instead, I broke down, called her a few harsh names while she packed a case. She called me pathetic as she left. And I am. Pathetic. Totally pathetic.”

When he finished, he sighed. He wanted another cigarette but didn’t dare risk it with the Comptons due back in an hour. He sat, watching Road Runner outsmart Wile E. Coyote. For a while, he forgot his troubles.

When the Comptons returned, they thanked him. Julia helped take Emily upstairs, giving Jennings a strange look on the way. He dismissed it. Barry offered to pay him, but Jennings declined. He didn’t want their money.

At home, pacing the spare bedroom with his grandfather’s old service revolver in hand, Jennings placed the barrel to his temple. He tried to pull the trigger. Couldn’t. He wept. He wept like a little girl.

A week later, while in Oldham, he got a call from the police. His wife was dead. So was Peter Tull. Murdered. Found by a cleaner at the Silver Bell. Mary tied, bound and gagged, savagely whipped after Peter was shot. Whipped so badly muscle and bone showed through. On the wall, written in her blood, two words:

For David.

11

“God almighty!” Mulls exclaimed.

“Precisely, Reverend.”

“Did you… did you kill them?”

“No,” Jennings said calmly. “When they were killed, I’d just checked into my hotel in Oldham.”

“Then who did?”

“I know exactly who. But no one would believe me.”

“What about the police?”

“They’d laugh. Call it ludicrous.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“The only person who knew about David Compton’s death aside from me… is his sister.”

“That’s impossible,” Mulls whispered.

“But true,” Jennings replied. “I received a letter. The handwriting was scrawly, but legible. It said: thank you for watching me and telling me the truth.”

“Good God…” Mulls muttered. “And is that why you were begging for forgiveness? For telling her? For sending her off to do this evil deed?”

Jennings looked at him, confused.

“No, Reverend, you still don’t get it,” he said. “I’m praying for forgiveness because, if I could do it all again, knowing what I know now—I still would have told her.”

R.J. Butler's fiction has appeared in Dark Harbour and with Stygian Press, and another story is currently being adapted into a podcast. I am completing a PhD in Creative Writing and write mainly in horror, fantasy, mystery, and noir, often experimenting with literary surrealism. I am also autistic, bisexual, and live with depression—experiences that shape the perspectives and emotional undercurrents of my work.

Image credit: Kelly Wright via D-ALLE, Ideogram, and Midjourney