Relentless

deliberately from one seated relative to the next.
    He greets each of them by name, sometimes calls them an ugly word or makes an obscene suggestion, sometimes offers a compliment. Regardless of what he says, he shoots each of them to death.
    Two curious things happen in that farmhouse, and this is the first: Even after the initial deaths, there are enough people in the living room to rush Tray and overpower him before he can shoot them all, yet no one makes a move against him. They see him kill each of them in the order they are seated, and those still alive weep or beg, or sit in a silent daze, but they offer no resistance.
    We see this occur on other occasions in the twenty-eight years since the Durant killings, but on that night it is a new phenomenon.
    Are the victims so committed to a reasoned disbelief in the existence of Evil that, when face-to-face with its agent, they are incapable of acknowledging their error?
    Or are they capable of recognizing Evil but unable to believe there is a power opposed to it that stands ready to give them the strength— and a reason—to survive?
    Perhaps it is the nurtured narcissism of our age that leaves some unable to imagine their deaths even as the bullet is in the barrel.
    This is the second curious thing that happens in that farmhouse: I survive. How I survive is easy to describe.
Why
I survive is beyond my ability to explain.
    After watching Tray kill three more people where they sit, all fear lifts from me, and I know what I must do.
    I do not run. I do not hide. Neither option crosses my mind.
    First I go to my cousin Davena and restore her modesty by straightening her skirt. And that feels right.
    As carefully as I can, I roll her off the footstool over which she has collapsed, and I get her onto her back. I smooth her hair away from her lovely face.
    I say, “Good-bye.”
    My father’s face is broken and fallen inward. Over the arm of a chair is Aunt Helen’s shawl. I arrange it to drape my father’s ruined countenance.
    “Good-bye.”
    Tray proceeds through the room, killing people one by one, and I follow several deaths behind him, restoring where I can some small measure of dignity to the deceased.
    A psychologist might say these are the actions of a boy in a dissociative state, but that is not correct. As I minister to the dead, I remain at all times aware of what I am doing, of where I am, and I know that the killings are proceeding beyond my control, in this room and subsequently in the next.
    Not only has fear been lifted from me but also horror, and for the purpose of completing my task, I seem to have lost the capacity forrepugnance. These are members of my family, and nothing about them in death can disgust me, just as nothing about them in life disgusted me.
    To each, I say good-bye.
    I am conveyed across the bar of grief, that I might do this service, and though the day will come when I will find myself on the harder side of that bar, for now I do not weep.
    Cousin Carina, one week short of her twentieth birthday, sits on a chair with a cane back, head lolling against the wall. Before being shot, she lost control of her bladder. Her skirt is soaked, and her stockings.
    As I move toward the sofa to get a camel-colored cashmere throw, with which to cover Carina’s lap and legs, I step aside to let one of Tray’s friends pass.
    He is a pale man with a mustache. An ugly cold sore mars his lower lip. He is looking for women’s purses.
    While I arrange the cashmere throw to cover Carina properly— “Good-bye”—and while I examine the remaining victims to see if there is anything I can do to make them more presentable, the man with the cold sore rummages through the purses for money and takes the wallets from the dead men.
    He does not speak to me, and I do not speak to him.
    Tray enters and says to his friend, “I’m gonna see what shit they might have upstairs.”
    “Be quick about it, this is so goddamn off the rails,” his friend replies. “Where’s Clapper?”
    “In the dining room, doin’ what you’re doin’.”
    Having done what I can for the twenty dead in the living room, I proceed to the dining room to continue with my mission.
    Tray’s other friend, Clapper, is a large bearded man. On the dining table are gathered the purses and the wallets of the eighteen victims inthis room. He is stripping out the folding money as he half mutters and half sings “Another One Bites the Dust,” which had been a hit for Queen a couple of