Chapter Text
The Shurley boys could’ve been ‘round long,
But Brother Luke had his head screwed wrong.
He yearned to gain dark Satan’s power,
And killed his family one nasty hour.
Little Barty he strangled in the night,
Then chopped up Gabe; a bloody sight.
His mother Anna he saved for last,
Blew off her head with a shotgun blast.
Baby Cas somehow survived,
But to live through that ain’t much a life.
- Schoolyard Rhyme, circa 2006
I have a meanness inside of me, real as an organ. Sometimes I think that if you were to slice me open at the stomach it would all pour out, wet and meaty. The meanness breathes in my genes and runs through my veins.
It’s the Shurley blood. I’ve always been rotten, and I only got worse after the murders. Little Orphan Cassie grew up empty and limp, shuffled between my distant and ragged relatives. Years of pull-out couches, and mildew scented apartments, and flaking rotted neighborhoods dotted all around Colorado.
I sat in school wearing my dead brothers’ threadbare hand-me-downs, their old stains hanging off of my knobby body. Saggy collared t-shirts, stiff yellow armpits, and baggy jeans with patches on the knees that never quite matched. In class photos my hair was always sticking out in every direction, my guardian of the moment often unwilling to wrestle me with a comb, and I had perpetual purple rings under my feral-cat eyes. Maybe a whisper of a smile across my lips if I was feeling merciful that year. Maybe.
I was not a lovable child, and I have grown into a deeply unlovable adult. If you were to draw a picture of my immortal soul, it would have horns and teeth.
It’s a wretched February day, and I’m lying in bed thinking about killing myself. It’s a favorite hobby of mine. I love spending an indulgent morning daydreaming: A razor blade in one hand. Slice. Slice. “Where does he want to be buried?” people would ask. “Who should be invited to the funeral?” and no one would know the answer. They would put on a pot of coffee.
I roll over in bed, pulling my blanket closer around my shoulders. I want to get up. I don’t.
I am, I guess, depressed. I guess I’ve been depressed for about twenty-six years. I think there might be a better version of me hidden deep inside, sickly green; like a gallbladder. A Cas that is screaming at me to get up, do something, grow up, move on. But the meanness usually wins out.
My brother slaughtered my family when I was six. My mom and two brothers gone: chop, chop, choke, choke, bang, bang. I didn’t really have to do anything after that. After that, nothing was expected.
I inherited $321,919 when I turned eighteen as a result of the stream of do-gooders and well-wishers who had read about my sad little story and sent me thoughts and prayers. Whenever I hear that phrase (and I promise I hear it a lot), I picture lovely little envelopes sealed with hearts, floating their way to any one of the shithole homes of my childhood, my baby-faced self grabbing at it desperately, each one showering me in gold coins, “Thanks a ton!” I'd say.
When I was still a kid, the donations were placed in a conservatively managed bank account that faithfully saw a jump every four-five years or so when some magazine or newsstation would run an update on me or Luke. ‘Little Cassie Shurley: The Lone Survivor of the Front Range Massacre Turns a Bittersweet 10’ next to a picture of me in a Rockies ballcap sitting on the cat piss-soaked lawn in front of Aunt Naomi’s trailer. ‘Brave Baby Shurley’s Sweet 16!’ with me, face glowing in the light of birthday candles that were stuck in a cake the journalist bought.
I’ve lived off of that cash for fourteen years, but it’s rapidly dwindling. I have a meeting at noon to determine exactly how rapidly. Once a year, since I turned eighteen, I meet with the man who manages my money, a shiny angular man named Zachariah Zurich. Each year he insists on taking me to lunch for a “checkup”, as he calls it. He’ll buy me a food or beverage item of my choosing and we’ll talk about my life - “he’s known me since I was this big!” after all. On the other hand, I know next to nothing about Zachariah Zurich. I would rather get this over with than listen to whatever banality consumed his day to day.
The one thing that I suspected about Zachariah Zurich was that he must be Christian, a churchy type. He has the patience of someone who believed Jesus was watching. Technically, I shouldn’t have been due for a checkup for another couple months, but Zachariah Zurich had nagged and nagged, leaving messages in a hushed and serious tone, highlighting how he had done “all he could” to extend the “life of the fund,” but it was time to think about “next steps.”
This is where the meanness comes in. I can’t help but think about the other little boy from the tabloids, Jimmy Something, who’d lost his family the same year. His dad set a fire that killed his whole family and burned half of his face off. Anytime that I hit the ATM I think of that Jimmy boy, and how I’d have twice as much money if he hadn’t stolen my spotlight. How Jimmy Something was probably out somewhere spending my cash on fancy ointments to smear on his disgusting scarred face. Which is a terrible thing to think of course. At least I know that.
When I’m finally able to pry myself out of bed, I pull on a sweater from off the floor and shuffle to the window at the front of the house. I rent an apartment in a middling building in a middling part of town, overlooking a yard of semi-truck trailers which are organized in match-neat rows.
My apartment building doesn’t have a name. People just call it “the big one” since it's the only building in this part of town over four stories tall. Located in a subprime, industrial area, full of chain link fences and dog crap. The other units are packed with a mix of twenty-somethings, living off of energy drinks and coke; and lonely elderly people whose health hadn’t worsened enough yet to force their family to intervene.
Sometimes they walk to their cars with careful tiptoes that make me feel guilty, like I should go to help. They are not friendly old people - they are stone faced, shit-lipped old people who do not appreciate me being their neighbor, and would appreciate my helping them even less. The whole building hums with their disapproval.
It makes me feel blue. Bluer. That’s that word my mom would use, not something as dramatic as depressed. I’ve had the blues for twenty-six years.
I put on jeans and a button up shirt for my meeting with Zachariah Zurich, still feeling like a toddler dressing up in my dad’s clothes to feel like a man. The front door rattles as I shut it behind me, and head down a yellowed and weedy slope towards the parking lot. On the ground next to my parking space, the smashed skeletons of two baby birds lie, flatly laminated to the pavement. They’ve been there for over a year. I can’t resist looking at them each time I get in my car. We need a good flood to wash them away.
One of my neighbors is passing my car as I climb inside. I can feel her refusing to see me. I don’t know anyone’s name. If she died I wouldn’t even be able to say “Poor old Miss Kline died.” I’d have to say, “That mean old bitch on floor seven bit it.”
Feeling like a ghost, I drive downtown to meet Zachariah Zurich, rolling into the steakhouse parking lot thirty-minutes late, knowing he will smile all-too kindly and mention nothing of my tardiness.
I’m supposed to call him before I get out of my car, a holdover ritual from years when I was too small and skeletal to be expected to defend myself in any meaningful way. The restaurant was a chinsey, franchise location. Certainly no lurking murderers waiting for their moment to pounce; but Zachariah Zurich is not going to be the The Guy Who Let Something Bad Happen to Cas Shurley. God forbid anything happen to ‘Brave Baby Shurley, Little Boy Left Behind’ only survivor of the ‘Flatiron Massacre’, the ‘Colorado Crazy’, the ‘Front Range Satan Killer’. My mom and two older brothers, all butchered by Luke. Being the only one left, I’d pointed to him as the murderer. I was the cutie-pie who brought my devil-worshipping brother to justice. I was a big deal. He couldn’t let anything happen to me.
I stare back at myself in the rear-view mirror. I light a cigarette. I’d go for months without smoking, and then remember: I need a cigarette.
“Let’s go, Baby Shurley” I say aloud. It’s what I call myself when I’m feeling hateful.
I get out of the car and smoke my way towards the restaurant, holding my cigarette in my right hand so that I don’t have to look at my left one - the mangled one. I walk across the parking lot by myself. I am not attacked. It is afterall, just past five. Zachariah Zurich was a proud early bird eater.
He’s sitting at the bar when I walk in, sipping what looks like a ginger ale, and the first thing he does is pull his phone out of his pocket and stare at it as if it’s betrayed him.
“Did you call?” he frowns.
“No, I forgot.” I lie.
“Well, anyway. Anyway I'm glad you were able to come kiddo. Ready to talk turkey?”
He maneuveres us over to a red leather booth, with tufts of yellowed stuffing peeking out through the cracks in the vinyl. I begin to pick at the jagged pieces as I slide into the seat, releasing a cloud of decade-old cigarette stink as I settle.
Zachariah Zurich never drank alcohol in front of me and never asked if I would like a drink, but when the waiter comes I order glass of white wine and ignore the maybe surprised, maybe disappointed, maybe nothing look on Zachariah Zurich's face. When the waiter leaves Zachariah Zurich lets out a long, dentist-y sigh and says, “Well, Cassie, we are entering a very new and different stage here together.”
“So how much is left?” I ask, running the thought saytenthousand, saytenthousand, saytenthousand over in my brain.
“Do you even read those reports I send you?”
“I sometimes do,” I lie again. I like getting mail but not reading it.
“Have you listened to my messages?” The waiter is back.
“I think your cell phone is fucked up,” I say around a swallow of wine, “It cuts out a lot.” In truth, I had listened to his messages just long enough to know I was in trouble.
Zachariah Zurich folds his hand in front of him and sticks out his bottom lip. “There is 1,982 dollars and 15 cents left in the fund. As I have mentioned before, if you had been able to replenish it through and kind of regular work, we'd have been able to keep things afloat, but…” he splays his hands flat on the table and grimaces, “things didn't work out that way.”
“What about the book, didn't the book…?”
“I'm sorry, Cas, the book did not. I tell you this every year. It's not your fault, but the book…no. Nothing.”
Several years ago, to exploit my twenty-fifth birthday, a publisher of self-help books paid me to write about how I had “conquered the demons of my past.” I haven't conquered much of anything, but of course I agreed to the book anyway.
I didn't actually do anything, I had just talked over the phone with some woman in Washington who did all the writing. The book was called It Shurley Gets Better! Don't Just Survive Childhood Trauma - Surpass It! and included a few glossy snapshots of my dead family, pressed between hundreds of pages of watered down, positive-thinking porridge.
I was paid a grand total of $10,000 dollars, and a handful of survivor's and true crime groups invited me to speak. When I would sign copies of It Shurley Gets Better! I'd write “You Can Shurley Do It!” How lucky am I to have a pun for a last name.
When I realized that I wasn't being paid for any of these appearances, I stopped agreeing to go. The book had already bombed anyway.
“It seems like it should have made more money,” I mumble. I really wish the book had made more money.
“I know,” Zachariah Zurich says, having nothing more to say about it after seven years. He watches me drink my wine in silence. “But in a way Cassie, this presents you with an interesting new era in your life. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I can tell that he's trying to be charming, but it unleashes a burst of rage inside of me. I don't want to be anything. That's the fucking point.
“There's no money left?”
Zachariah Zurich shakes his head.
“What about new donations? The anniversary is coming up.” I feel another splash of anger at him for making me say this aloud. Luke started his killing spree around 2 a.m. on March 12, 1999. The time stamp on my family's massacre, and here I am looking forward to it. Who says things like that? Why couldn't there have been even $5,000 left?
He shakes his head again. “There's no more, Cas. You're what, thirty? A man. People have moved on. They want to help other little boys, not…”
“Not me.”
“I'm afraid not, kid.”
“People have moved on? Really?” I feel a sharp pang of abandonment, the way I always felt as a kid when some uncle or cousin was dropping me off at some other uncle or cousin's house: I'm done, you take him for a while. And the new uncle or cousin would be so very nice and try so very hard with bitter little me for about a week until…well, in truth it was usually my fault.
It really was. That's not victim-talk or something. I covered one cousin's living room in hairspray and set fire to it. My aunt Naomi - my guardian, my mom's sister - took me in and sent me away again half-a-dozen times before finally shutting her door for good. I did very bad things to that woman.
“There's always a new murder, I'm afraid, Cassie,” Zachariah Zurich is droning on. “People have incredibly short attention spans. I mean, look at how crazy people are going over Lisette Stephens.”
Lisette Stephens was a pretty twenty-five year old who had disappeared on her way home from a family dinner. All of Denver is invested in finding her. You can't turn on the news without seeing her photo smiling back at you. National news picked the story up about a month ago, and nothing had happened since. Lisette Stephens is dead, and everyone knows that by now, but no one wants to be the first to leave the party.
“But,” continues Zachariah Zurich, “I think everyone would like to see you doing well.”
“Perfect.”
“What about going back to school?”
“No.”
“Okay,” he takes a pointed sip of his ginger ale, “How about we try to set you up in an office job of sorts?”
“No.” I fold in on myself, ignoring my wine, projecting glumness. That's another one of my mom's words: glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.
“Well, why don't you take a week and think on it?” He's slurping down the rest of his ginger ale. Zachariah Zurich wants to leave. Zachariah Zurich is done here.
He leaves me with three pieces of mail and an empty grin. Three pieces, all looking like junk.
Zachariah Zurich used to hand me bulging shoe boxes full of mail, most of them letters with cash and checks inside. Each donor received a form letter in my sloppy child handwriting in response. “Thank you for your donation. It is people like you who let me look forward to a brighter future. Yours truly, Cassie Shurley.”
But the shoeboxes of donations are gone, and I've only got three letters and the rest of the night to kill. On the way home several cars flash their lights at me before I realize I've been driving dark.
I try to picture things that I could do for money. I imagine myself in a crisp white lab coat, a starchy blue police uniform, a suit with a briefcase. My idea of adulthood still comes from picture books.
I try to come up with something realistic, maybe something with computers. Data entry, wasn't that a job? Customer service maybe? I saw a movie once where a guy did children's birthday parties for a living, with face paints, and balloon animals, the kids bright and cheerful. I don't like clowns though, they scare me.
I finally think, of course, about farming. Our family had been farmers for a century, right down to my mom, until Luke killed her off. Then the farm got sold.
It's not like I would know how to farm anyway. I have some memories of the place: Luke mucking around in the spring mud, swatting cows out of the way; my mom digging her hands into the pellets that would blossom into sorghum; the sounds of Gabe and Barty jumping on haybales in the barn. “It itches!” Gabe would always complain, and then jump in again.
I can never dwell in these thoughts. I've labeled the memories as if they were a particularly dangerous region: Dark Place. A dark farmhouse, maniacal smears of red blood. That inevitable, rhythmic axe, moving as mechanically as if it were chopping wood. Shotgun blasts in a small hallway. The panicked, jaybird cried of my mother, still trying to save her kids with half her head gone.
What does an office administrator do? I wonder.
I pull back into my buildings’ lot and stare up at the building. If the whole thing tumbled down like London Bridge, I wouldn't lose much. I own nothing of value.
I tread up the stairs and into my darkened apartment, sitting down at my flimsy metal table to open my three, precious envelopes.
I never make it past the first letter.
Castiel Shurley,
I hope you get this letter, because I can't find you online anywhere. I've read about your story and wanted to know how you're doing these days. Do you ever do official appearances? I belong to a group that would pay you $500 just to show up. Please contact me.
Thanks,
Dean Winchester
PS This is a legitimate business offer.
The letter is typed, except for a handwritten phone number inked at the bottom in blocky script. I dial the number, hoping for voicemail. Instead, a male voice comes on the line, “Hello?”
“Hi. Is this Dean Winchester?” I say, rubbing my palm back and forth across the corner of the table.
“Who's this?” There are voices in the background.
“This is Cas Shurley. You wrote me.”
“Ah, shit. Really? Cas Shurley? Uh, where are you? Are you in town?”
“Which town?”
The man yells something at someone behind him, then groans into my ear.
“You in Denver? You live in Denver right, Cas?”
“What do you want?” No way in hell am I giving this guy any information about me.
He gives a little chuckle, “Well, like I said I wanted to talk to you about an appearance. Maybe.”
“Appearance for what?”
“Well, I'm in a…club. There's a special club meeting next week, and…”
Every alarm bell in my body ringing, I ask “What kind of club?”
“Well, it's kind of different…underground.”
I say nothing, let him twist. I can feel him get uneasy with the silence.
“Ah crap, it's impossible to explain over the phone. Can I, uh, buy you a coffee?”
“It's too late for coffee,” I say before realizing he probably didn't even mean tonight, and that I would still need to find a way to kill the next several hours.
“A beer? Or wine, then?” he asks.
Pause. “Tonight?”
Pause. “Fine.”
Dean Winchester looks like a serial killer. Which means he probably isn't one. If you were chopping up druggies or eating hookers, you'd try to look normal.
He's seated at a sticky-looking table in the middle of The Grill, a humid dive bar attached to a flea market. The Grill had become famous for its Blossomin’ Onion and is currently in the middle of being gentrified; the clientele an uneasy mix of grizzled old-timers and perm-haired boys in patterned button-ups.
Dean is neither: he’s somewhere in his early thirties, with close-cropped mousy hair. He wears a green canvas jacket, over a flannel and an ACDC t-shirt. He has features that are too delicate for a man. Men aren't supposed to have rosebud lips.
He catches my eye as I walk towards him. He hasn't recognized me yet, just assessing me, this stranger. When I have almost reached the table, it clicks for him: the eyes, the fledgling skeleton, the rot.
“Cas!” he starts before realizing that it’s too familiar, “Shurley!” he adds. He stands up and pulls out one of the chairs, looks like he regrets the chivalry, and sits back down. “Your hair is blue,” he says without elaborating.
“Yup,” I hate people who start conversations with facts. What am I supposed to do with that? Sure is a hot one today. Yes, it sure is. I peer around and signal the waitress for a drink.
“The ribs are really good here,” Dean says. But he isn’t having any either, just sipping on the dregs of whatever he had been drinking before I arrived. I don't eat meat, really; not since I saw my family sliced open.
I shrug and wait for my beer, looking around like a tourist. Dean's finger nails are dirty, first thing I noticed. The waitress is wearing a wig, sweaty strands of white hair sticking to the back of her neck. A fat man sits by himself at the next table, eating brisket and examining his flea market purchase: a chinsey-looking vase with a mermaid on it. His fingers leave grease marks on her breasts. The waitress sets my beer down in front of me.
“So what's with the club?” I prompt.
Dean turns slightly pink, his fingers drumming lightly on the side of the table.
“Well, you know how someone guys do fantasy football, or collect baseball cards?” I nod.
He lets out a strange chuckle. “Well this is like that, but it's… well, we call it a Kill Club. It's not as weird as it sounds.”
I take a swig of beer, “It sounds pretty fucking weird.”
“Well, you know some people like mysteries? Or true crime? Well, this club is a bunch of people like that. Everyone has one crime they're obsessed with, and I mean you...and your family…it's huge with the club. Bigger than Casey Anthony.” He catches me grimacing and pauses, “It's a damn tragedy, what happened. And your brother, in jail for, what, going on twenty-seven years?”
“Don't feel sorry for Luke. He killed my family.”
“Uh. Right.” He sucks on a piece of milky ice, “Did you ever talk with him about it?”
I feel my defenses flip up. There are people in this world who swear Luke is innocent. They mail me articles about Luke they've printed onto office paper. I never read them, toss them in the trash as soon as I see his photo. Pushing forty.
I've never gone to see my brother in jail, not once. His current prison is, conveniently, located on the outskirts of our hometown - Meekermont, Colorado - where he'd committed the murders in the first place. But I'm not the nostalgic type.
Most of Luke's devotees are women. Bug-eared and long toothed, permed and pantsuited, tight lipped and crucifixed, all types. They show up occasionally on my doorstep, eyes shining. Tell me that my testimony was wrong. That I'd been confused, I'd been coerced, I'd been sold a lie when I swore, at age seven, that my brother had been the killer. Oftentimes they scream at me. They are very spitty people. Several have actually slapped me.
Maybe if they were nicer I would listen to them.
“No, I don't talk to Luke. If that's what this is about, I'm not interested.”
“Ah, no, no it's not. You'd just come to…a convention almost, and let us pick your brain,” a pause, “You really don't think about that night?”
Dark Place.
“No, I don't.”
Something imperceptible flits across Dean Winchester's face, “You might learn something interesting. There are some fans…experts who know more than the detectives on that case. Not to say that's hard...”
“So these are a bunch of people that want to convince me that Luke is innocent.”
“Well…maybe. Maybe you'll convince them otherwise.” I catch a whiff of condescension. It starts my rage, again.
“I want $1,000.”
“I can give you $700.”
I glance around the room. I'll take what Dean Winchester will give me, because otherwise I'm looking at a real job, real soon, and I'm deeply uninterested in that. I am not someone who can be depended on five days a week. I don't even get out of bed five days in a row; reporting to a workplace would be unfeasible.
“Seven hundred, then.” I say.
“Great! Oh, yeah!” he glances around, “There'll be a lot of collectors there, so bring any, uh, souvenirs.” Licking his lips, he says “Items from your childhood you might want to sell. You could leave with two grand, easy. Letters especially. The more personal the better, obviously. Anything dated near the murders.” Perfect. “March 12, 1999.” He says it like he's recited it often. “And anything from your mom. People are really…fascinated by your mom.”
People always were. They always want to know: What kind of woman gets slaughtered by her own son?