He woke, frightened, because he knew what the words meant, and they both terrified and comforted him. Now, as he moved through his days, he heard that voice in his head, and he was reminded that he could, in fact, stop. He didn’t, in fact, have to keep going.
He had considered killing himself before, of course; when he was in the home, and in Philadelphia, and after Ana had died. But something had always stopped him, although now, he couldn’t remember what that thing had been. Now as he ran from the hyenas, he argued with himself: Why was he doing this? He was so tired; he so wanted to stop. Knowing that he didn’t have to keep going was a solace to him, somehow; it reminded him that he had options, it reminded him that even though his subconscious wouldn’t obey his conscious, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still in control.
Almost as an experiment, he began thinking of what it would mean for him to leave: in January, after his most lucrative year at the firm yet, he had updated his will, so that was in order. He would need to write a letter to Willem, a letter to Harold, a letter to Julia; he would also want to write something to Lucien, to Richard, to Malcolm. To Andy. To JB, forgiving him. Then he could go. Every day, he thought about it, and thinking about it made things easier. Thinking about it gave him fortitude.
And then, at some point, it was no longer an experiment. He couldn’t remember how he had decided, but after he had, he felt lighter, freer, less tormented. The hyenas were still chasing him, but now he could see, very far in the distance, a house with an open door, and he knew that once he had reached that house, he would be safe, and everything that pursued him would fall away. They didn’t like it, of course—they could see the door as well, they knew he was about to elude them—and every day the hunt got worse, the army of things chasing him stronger and louder and more insistent. His brain was vomiting memories, they were flooding everything else—he thought of people and sensations and incidents he hadn’t thought of in years. Tastes appeared on his tongue as if by alchemy; he smelled fragrances he hadn’t smelled in decades. His system was compromised; he would drown in his memories; he had to do something. He had tried—all his life, he had tried. He had tried to be someone different, he had tried to be someone better, he had tried to make himself clean. But it hadn’t worked. Once he had decided, he was fascinated by his own hopefulness, by how he could have saved himself years of sorrow by just ending it—he could have been his own savior. No law said he had to keep on living; his life was still his own to do with what he pleased. How had he not realized this in all these years? The choice now seemed obvious; the only question was why it had taken him so long.
He talked to Harold; he could tell by the relief in Harold’s voice that he must be sounding more normal. He talked to Willem. “You sound better,” Willem said, and he could hear the relief in Willem’s voice as well.
“I am,” he said. He felt a pull of regret after talking to both of them, but he was determined. He was no good for them, anyway; he was only an extravagant collection of problems, nothing more. Unless he stopped himself, he would consume them with his needs. He would take and take and take from them until he had chewed away their every bit of flesh; they could answer every difficulty he posed to them and he would still find new ways to destroy them. For a while, they would mourn him, because they were good people, the best, and he was sorry for that—but eventually they would see that their lives were better without him in it. They would see how much time he had stolen from them; they would understand what a thief he had been, how he had suckled away all their energy and attention, how he had exsanguinated them. He hoped they would forgive him; he hoped they would see that this was his apology to them. He was releasing them—he loved them most of all, and this was what you did for people you loved: you gave them their freedom.
The day came: a Monday at the end of September. The night before he had realized that it was almost exactly a year after the beating, although he hadn’t planned it that way. He left work early that evening. He had spent the weekend organizing his projects; he had written Lucien a memo detailing the status of everything he had been working on. At home, he lined up his letters on the dining-room table, and a copy of his will. He had left a message with Richard’s studio manager that the toilet in the master bathroom kept running and asked if Richard could let in the plumber the following day at nine—both Richard and Willem had a set of keys to his apartment—because he would be away on business.
He took off his suit jacket and tie and shoes and watch and went to the bathroom. He sat in the shower area with his sleeves pushed up. He had a glass of scotch, which he sipped at to steady himself, and a box cutter, which he knew would be easier to hold than a razor. He knew what he needed to do: three straight vertical lines, as deep and long as he could make them, following the veins up both arms. And then he would lie down and wait.
He waited for a while, crying a bit, because he was tired and frightened and because he was ready to go, he was ready to leave. Finally he rubbed his eyes and began. He started with his left arm. He made the first cut, which was more painful than he had thought it would be, and he cried out. Then he made the second. He took another drink of the scotch. The blood was viscous, more gelatinous than liquid, and a brilliant, shimmering oil-black. Already his pants were soaked with it, already his grip was loosening. He made the third.
When he was done with both arms, he slumped against the back of the shower wall. He wished, absurdly, for a pillow. He was warm from the scotch, and from his own blood, which lapped at him as it pooled around his legs—his insides meeting his outsides, the inner bathing the outer. He closed his eyes. Behind him, the hyenas howled, furious at him. Before him stood the house with its open door. He wasn’t close yet, but he was closer than he’d been: close enough to see that inside, there was a bed where he could rest, where he could lie down and sleep after his long run, where he would, for the first time in his life, be safe.
After they crossed into Nebraska, Brother Luke stopped at the edge of a wheat field and beckoned him out of the car. It was still dark, but he could hear the birds stirring, hear them talk back to a sun they couldn’t yet see. He took the brother’s hand and they skulked from the car and to a large tree, where Luke explained that the other brothers would be looking for them, and they would have to change their appearance. He took off the hated tunic, and put on the clothes Brother Luke held out for him: a sweatshirt with a hood and a pair of jeans. Before he did, though, he stood still as Luke cut off his hair with an electric razor. The brothers rarely cut his hair, and it was long, past his ears, and Brother Luke made sad noises as he removed it. “Your beautiful hair,” he said, and carefully wrapped the length of it in his tunic and then stuffed it into a garbage bag. “You look like every other boy now, Jude. But later, when we’re safe, you can grow it back, all right?” and he nodded, although really, he liked the idea of looking like every other boy. And then Brother Luke changed clothes himself, and he turned away to give the brother privacy. “You can look, Jude,” said Luke, laughing, but he shook his head. When he turned back, the brother was unrecognizable, in a plaid shirt and jeans of his own, and he smiled at him before shaving off his beard, the silvery bristles falling from him like splinters of metal. There were baseball caps for both of them, although the inside of Brother Luke’s was fitted with a yellowish wig, which covered his balding head completely. There were pairs of glasses for both of them as well: his were black and round and fitted with just glass, not real lenses, but Brother Luke’s were square and large and brown and had the same thick lenses as his real glasses, which he put into the bag. He could take them off when they were safe, Brother Luke told him.