Vicious Circles

In response to an unforgivable transgression, two brothers plan the inconceivable. But no plan survives contact with reality.

***Content Warning: This episode obliquely alludes to child sexual abuse, and references torture and murder. Listener discretion advised.***

Transcript

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

Episode Forty-Seven: Vicious Circles.

(Sounds of whistling wind)

NARRATOR

The gate agent’s voice drones mechanically over the speakers, and Ty stands from the black plastic terminal seats and gets in line. The thoughts crowding his mind are dark, darker than the Georgia night outside, as he boards the Southwest plane and takes his seat, 23B. Normally, the presence of the pretty young woman in the window seat beside him would make him needlingly self-conscious, but tonight, he is hardly aware of her.

Hang on, bro, he thinks, I’m on my way.

The pilot and flight attendants mechanically slur their way through the usual safety routines, and then the Boeing 737 begins to roll across the tarmac, taxiing slowly toward the runway.

Days of poring through newspaper articles, PDF files, and images of book pages captured by phone camera have strained his eyes and his mind, on top of everything else. A half-remembered line of text blinks through his thought, as though printed on some internal paper ribbon: There is always a cost associated with such subtle methods, but the time and the nature of this exacted price is beyond guessing.

Ty blinks blearily, finding the erratic but gentle motion of the plane slightly soporific. Just as his morbid ruminations begin to mingle with the coalescing fragments of a dream, there is the jolt of the Boeing’s runway acceleration, then the belly-tumbling lurch of takeoff.

He opens his eyes to the dimmed cabin, and once again imagines the gap-toothed smile of his niece Enid, and feels the heat of tears gathering behind his lids.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Ty emerges from the terminal, vision fuzzy with fatigue and the drizzling dark. He casts his gaze around the pickup lane, passing over his brother’s battered tan Buick LaCrosse a couple of times before recognizing it.

Jax doesn’t turn toward him as he stows his bag in the back, then slides into the front passenger seat – his older brother’s gaze remains fixed forward, staring at some indeterminate point through the windshield. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, like he is on the verge of absolute collapse.

As Jax shifts the car into drive and pulls away from the terminal, Ty struggles to find something to say by way of greeting, to show that he shares in his brother’s rage and pain, but all words seem inadequate, and silence rears serpentlike in the space between them.

It is Jax who breaks the silence, saying simply, Tomorrow night.

Ty nods, needing no further explanation.

The city lights begin to thin and then to dwindle behind them, and then they are swallowed by the dark, broad plains.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

They pass the night in Jax’s humble place, housed in a large old Victorian house that was converted to apartment units in the late eighties. Both his partner Seren and their seven-year-old daughter Enid, who have shared the apartment for four years, are now with Seren’s 63-year-old mother in Houston now, leaving the two brothers alone to their work, though of course Jax has told them nothing of what they are planning, instead urging them simply to get away from town and leave what has happened behind them for a few days.

Rather than giving in to the sleep his body so desperately craves, Ty lies on the couch, scrolling on his phone. For the thirteenth time, he scrutinizes the brief newspaper blurb about Durgan’s arrest and subsequent release due to a supposed lack of evidence. The article conspicuously fails to note the familial relation between Ross Durgan and the county attorney. It also glosses over the three prior incidents of record involving Durgan, whose father owns thousands of acres of the county’s most productive farmland and sits on the county board.

The last image that drifts through his mind before he finally sinks into slumber, well after 3:00 A.M., is again an image of Enid’s face, only this time, it is contorted by confusion and fear in the moments before a devouring shadow passes over it.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

They both rise late the next morning, and in the unforgiving daylight that filters through the windows, Ty notes that Jax looks even worse than he realized on the drive home, like he has aged a decade since they last saw one another.

He tells himself that it makes sense, after what has happened, but nothing can shake the disbelief at the raw visual evidence of this alteration. And as they go out to brunch at the only diner in town, sitting and talking sporadically and awkwardly over bitter black coffee, he sees that Jax’s eyes are dark and expressionless, as if the light that once graced them has been snuffed out.

On the drive home, as Jax’s LaCrosse grumbles along the road, they begin to discuss their plans for the coming night. The lack of inflection in Jax’s voice further disturbs Ty, and he wonders now if he can really do what they have decided to do. But he also knows that Jax will act with or without him, and that Ty cannot forsake his older brother to the darkness that is spreading like a mold over his heart.

And so, he begins to mentally catalogue what he knows of Durgan’s past, and what it says about the future.

Ross’s first victim was a four-year-old boy in 1997. His family had lived in the county less than a year prior, none of them speaking much English, and so nothing much had come of it. Durgan, only 19 at the time, had not even been arrested. Within only a few months, the boy and his family had relocated without leaving any forwarding address, and no one had shown any interest in pursuing the matter further.

The second was a ten-year-old girl in March 2004. She was Durgan’s second cousin, and many of the family members had refused to either corroborate or refute her claims, and so again, Ross had escaped all meaningful consequences. Even with both incidents making small appearances in the local newspaper, his last name had shielded him from true ostracization.

The third was in 2012. Ross had told his girlfriend at the time, a much younger woman named Zoey who had only arrived in the county some two years prior with a daughter from a previous relationship, that he would pick up the girl after school. Zoey had been called into her job as a waitress at the diner to cover the afternoon shift for a sick coworker, and knowing nothing of Durgan’s past, had thought it nothing other than a sweet gesture of care.

When she learned the truth of his intent, she had driven out of her trailer house at the point of a kitchen knife, and then called the police. But somehow, the county attorney of that time, of no relation at all to Durgan, had determined that there was simply not enough evidence to prosecute the case. Devastated and isolated by the shadows cast over their lives, Zoey had taken her daughter and moved out of state, an expense which she could hardly afford on a waitress’s earnings.

And now, Ty thinks, it has happened again. And all he knows about are the incidents that have been reported and made a matter of public record – how many more lives has Ross Durgan polluted, and how many will he continue to darken if he is not stopped?

He finds his jaw is clenched hard now, and that his resolve has ceased to waver.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

They load all that they will need into two dark duffel bags when they arrive home, and then they sit and talk at length now, covering their plan in detail and trying to account for every likely eventuality.

Afterward, Ty begins making them an early spaghetti dinner, Jax’s favorite since childhood. The recipe for the sauce is the one their grandmother used, and Ty puts every bit of his nervous energy into preparing the meal, wanting this one thing to be perfect before they take the road that can only be traversed once.

Even so, when it is finished, Jax eats mechanically and without real appetite. Ty realizes, a little guiltily, that this hurts him almost as much as anything else that has happened. And he realizes too that he has missed his brother, missed how close they once were, before Seren and Enid – and how he has resented the latter for this.

You wished ill on a little girl, he tells himself cruelly, and you got your wish.

He ends up packing away most of the meal into the refrigerator, wondering if anyone will ever get the chance to finish it.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

They wake to Ty’s phone alarm at 1:35 A.M. As quickly and quietly as they are able, they dress themselves and slip out of the apartment, down the stairs, and out onto the silent street. Ty feels unexpectedly exposed under the hollow, pallid light of the sparse streetlamps, and the sharp cold of after-midnight January bites easily through his layers of clothing.

Stowing the duffel bags in the backseat, out of sight but readily accessible, they get in, careful not to slam the car doors too loudly. Jax turns the engine over, and they roll through the town streets, suddenly spilling out into the open and unlit countryside. Without a word, Jax navigates them ever westward, taking turns that Ty does not recognize. For a moment, Ty wonders if indeed they are going the right way, but he left this part of the country years ago, whereas Jax moved back shortly after dropping out of college.

When they turn onto something marked Redgrave’s Draw, a narrow sandy road sloping downward between two sheer ridges of crumbling sandstone, he recognizes the name from his Google Maps research, and suddenly the old skittishness returns. What little dinner he partook of begins to stir uncomfortably in his stomach, and shadowy doubts swirl amongst his thoughts, but he feels it is too late now to turn back from what awaits them at the end of this drive.

(Dark, unsettling music)

[Long pause]

NARRATOR

Jax pulls over into an abandoned farmstead about a quarter mile from their destination. The barn has wholly collapsed, and the old house is windowless and rotting, but the trees planted there generations ago have grown tall and broad, providing a sheltering canopy of darkness where they feel confident that the LaCrosse is unlikely to be noticed on this seldom-travelled road, in the middle of the night. As they trudge along the ditch toward Durgan’s house at the end of the road, they are careful to walk only in the places where the thick carpet of dead grass and weeds will absorb the impact of their duffel-laden steps, leaving fainter impressions than the snow and mud of the road proper.

Ty only prays that no late-night driver will pass them by, for surely two walkers at this hour would draw notice. But the night remains silent, unbroken by any other set of headlights. As Durgan’s ugly little house rears before them, its windows all dark, Ty wonders at how easy all of this really seems to be. It seems so difficult to believe, that someone who has done the sorts of things Ross Durgan has done can sleep, untroubled and unguarded, in a lonely house in the countryside.

They cross the overgrown, unkept little yard carefully, watching the house for any sign of life within. Once, they are startled by a wet snuffling sound off to their left, and in surprise Ty drops his duffel bag with a muted clanking that makes his older brother hiss. The sound is followed by the familiar grunting of pigs, and Ty reshoulders the bag, feeling foolish. They knew of the pigs already, had in fact already incorporated them into their plans. The stress of their approach had simply driven all consideration of them from his mind.

The house remains dark and silent, and they find the front door unlocked – the norm in this part of the world, but still seeming unbelievable to Ty in this moment. Carefully, they step into the house that smells like a sour dish rag, padding softly on the worn carpet. Jax carefully lowers his bag to the floor and unzips it, extracts a coil of three-strand light hempen rope, a roll of duct tape, a crowbar, and black-gripped Buck hunting knife with a six-inch blade in its leather sheath. He clips the knife sheath to his belt, tucks the roll of duct tape into his jacket pocket, and slings the coil of rope over his shoulder and neck like a bandolier. Seeing this, Ty kneels and fishes around in his bag for a second roll of duct tape, a smaller folding knife, and the Beretta M9 he picked up two years ago at a pawn shop, after a late-night scare with a drunkenly aggressive neighbor. He bought it on a whim, just to feel a little safer, and has only fired it once since then at a shooting range back home in Atlanta.

Before he has even finished pulling the handgun from his bag, there is a sound of shuffling approach from the hallway, which seems completely black compared to the partially moonlit entryway and living room where the brothers stand. After a few moments, a stocky, pot-bellied man emerges, with longish dark hair and an unkempt beard, dressed in an oversized white T-shirt and loose grey sweatpants, both of which look slept-in and a little stained.

As soon as he becomes visible, Ross Durgan pauses, staring at the brothers in bleary surprise.

Who the fuck are you? he growls.

Like a cat already poised for the pounce, Jax springs forward, quickly closing the distance. Durgan turns away and begins to run, but makes it only three steps before Jax is on him, swinging the crowbar hard at the back of Durgan’s left knee. There is an awful sound, wetter and somehow hollower than Ty would have expected, and Durgan screams as the leg looses all supportive integrity beneath him. Before he can begin to recover, Jax begins to swing the crowbar again, battering again and again at the arms and shoulders that the bewildered Durgan raises to protect his head. One of the blows connects with the side of Durgan’s jaw with a loud crack, and he goes still then, open eyes glinting faintly in the murk as he stares senselessly up at the ceiling.

Breathing heavily, Jax looks over at his brother, and says that it’s time to get to work. Trying to still his roiling stomach, Ty begins to draw out the rolls of thick, industrial-grade plastic sheeting from their bags.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Even bound and bleeding, Durgan remains unrepentant. His denials only last about the first ninety seconds under Jax’s knife, and then he begins to speak freely of the things he’s done over the years, almost gloating. If what he says can be believed, Ty’s intuitions were correct, and he has harmed so many more young souls than any records tell. Durgan’s mocking, proud tone only makes Jax’s emergent sadism subtler and more precise, and after the first twelve minutes, Ty has to step outside for a break, just as Jax is drawing the cordless drill from his duffel.

It is not so much pity for Durgan that troubles Ty – if anyone can deserve such torment, he thinks, it is people like him, who take such sordid pleasure in victimizing the most vulnerable. It is instead seeing his brother, who as a boy would cry whenever anything broke, as if even plates and towels and balloons had souls and minds, the elder brother who was both his closest friend and his stalwart protector when they were small, exacting such perfectly calculated cruelty, and even seeming to take satisfaction in it.

Whatever they are becoming, Ty thinks, there is no returning to the people they were. Gazing up at the stars, winking between wispy strands of high, icy cirrus cloud, he realizes that this is always and has always been true, to some extent, but that knowledge brings no comfort, and makes their current transformation no less appalling. He begins to cry, and the tears in the cold winter air sting his cheeks.

Inside, Durgan begins to scream, more wildly and horribly than he has yet.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

When the screaming finally stops, Jax emerges, his black jacket and gloves glistening wetly in the moonlight. For a moment, Ty is terrified that his older brother is going to ask him to help with what comes next, but instead, Jax tells him to go and bring the car, now that there is no chance of its approach warning their quarry.

So he trudges over the grass and weeds of the fields, crunchy with ice, avoiding the road altogether now. Checking his phone, he sees that it is a little past five in the morning, and he cannot tell if that seems too late or not late enough for the sprawling horrors of the night. True dawn is still over two hours away, but before long, the sky will lighten to blue-grey in the east, increasing their risk of discovery. Even now, he can clearly make out the plume of his breath in the frigid air.

As he has many times prior, he wonders at their odds of really ever being able to get away with this. And now that it is a reality, he doubts very much that those odds are anything but abysmal.

When he gets into the LaCrosse, he finds it cold, the seat stiff beneath him. It starts just a little reluctantly, and he finds himself praying that it will not fail them before they are done with their task, though he has not prayed since he was fourteen years old. The mix of frozen mud, frost, and snowy gravel crunch under his tires as he turns the car around and drives slowly down the road to Durgan’s house.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

When he returns, Jax has already finished dividing the remains into manageable parts, separating the essential bones from the refuse. Of the process of treating and inscribing those bones for the desired effect, Ty has no knowledge. A part of him even wants to try again to convince his brother that it will not work, cannot work, but he is not as sure of this as he pretends. There is something too clinical, too distressingly mundane, in the old texts his brother has shared with him, the ones which describe, amongst other things, the arcane means to bind and trap a human soul within a prison of its own biological remains – and the methods for exacting agonies beyond living comprehension upon that undying, helpless soul.

Ty does, however, have to assist with what remains of the cleanup. While Jax begins to carefully roll up the plastic sheeting, careful not to let anything it has caught drip off onto the carpet, Ty must carry the scraps of Durgan in his own five-gallon plastic buckets, the ones he used to feed his small herd of American Yorkshire pigs. The pallid, squealing beasts show no qualms about disposing of these scraps, though Ty feels unpleasantly certain that their sense of smell and their intelligence are both sufficient for them to know what they are eating.

Meanwhile, Jax carries the sheeting and the fragments of the wooden kitchen chair to which they bound Durgan to the burn pit in the back of the property, and sets them alight. Whether this will really dispose of all the evidence, neither of them really knows, but they both agreed that it was the best they knew how to cover their tracks as much as they could. He has some trouble getting the flames to take at first, but after a little coaxing, he manages to get a merry, toxic-fumed little blaze going.

Lastly, the two brothers cast the buckets into the fire, and then begin to walk back toward their car, the sun’s first rays already coloring the easternmost reaches of the sky in pastel greens, pinks, and yellows. A drooping double plastic trash bag, presumably containing the still-wet skull, sternum, femurs, and phalanges required for the days of ritual processing to follow, dangles in Jax’s left hand. Looking at it, Ty wonders how long his brother intends to keep these deeply incriminating pieces of evidence, how long he plans to torment Durgan’s bound soul, if his thirst for vengeance will ever be sated even with that interminable outlet. And he begins to wonder how much of the flesh Jax was really able to remove in such a short time, or if the bones will need to be boiled – and there he cuts off the thought, feeling suddenly so nauseated that he fears he will throw up there in the yard.

With his right hand, Jax reaches into his pocket and turns his cellphone back on, before Ty can even protest that he shouldn’t have brought it along it all. That protest dies on Ty’s lips as Jax frowns at something on the screen. He presses a button and holds it to his ear, and Ty can hear at least eight rings on the other end of the line before a groggy, muffled answer comes.

Jax apologizes woodenly for missing the call, lying that he was asleep. Seren’s voice comes through, sad but inexorable, and she says that she is sorry too. They won’t be coming back, she says, then waits for her meaning to sink in. Jax’s face hardly changes as he asks what she means, and when she doesn’t answer, the first hint of panic tinges his voice. He tells her that he loves her, and she says she knows, but that he really should be with them right now. She doesn’t know what he’s doing, she admits, but she feels sure that it will not be without consequences, and she has to protect her daughter as best she can from further harm. The silence that follows is as laden as any words: you were away when we needed you most.

Ty notes that Seren does not say that she loves his brother in return, and wonders how much of the change she observed in Jax, long before Ty ever arrived. He wonders if, even through the phone, she can hear the sharp edge of growing malice in his voice, or the hollowness beneath.

Please, Jax begs, his voice breaking. Please, baby. I need you. I love you both, so much.

Goodbye, Jax, she too begins to cry. Take care of yourself.

She pauses as though she wishes to add something more, then disconnects.

Jax, who has shown so little real emotion over the past two days, begins to shriek, casting his phone at the frozen ground so hard that the screen shatters, fragments tinkling across the snow and earth. He continues to shriek as he sinks to his knees, as he cradles his face in clawed fingers, continues until his lungs are emptied. Then he crosses his arms over his chest and slumps forward, bawling and sobbing raggedly with his face pressed to the icy mud.

Ty stands there, helpless, lost. He looks at the ruined phone, thinking distantly that it is even more evidence they must clean up, even as he wonders if that truly matters anymore. And then his gaze shifts over to the swine, grunting in their pen as they nose through what gory morsels remain.

He remembers a line from one of the old books his brother shared with him: There is always a cost associated with such subtle methods, but the time and the nature of this exacted price is beyond guessing. And his blood turns gelid in his veins and arteries, as though he stood naked in the bleakest hour of winter’s heart.

As one, the pigs turn to look at the brothers with cruel, intelligent eyes. Dawn breaks, cold and pale.

(Dark, sorrowful music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

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Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]