by Melanie Tem
Jerry turned the van sharply to the right and Lucy fell against the wheel well, hitting her shoulder and the side of her head. When she sat up again, 175
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they were hurtling down an alley. She saw garbage cans, parked cars with snow on their roofs, a couple of garage doors with words spray-painted on them that she couldn’t read.
Mom’s car nosed into the alley after them. There must have been a hill, because Lucy slid toward the window as the van went up and then toward the seat as it went back down, and for a few seconds Mom’s headlights weren’t there. But before they came out of the other end of the alley onto the street, the dented and dirty old white and blue car was there again, and gaining. It always embarrassed Lucy to be seen in that car.
They sped along streets she was sure she’d never seen before, careened through neighborhoods she couldn’t quite picture anybody living in. Houses and trees hardly looked like houses and trees as they streamed out behind the van like ribbons, like tin cans tied to the bumper of a newlyweds’ car.
They jumped over curbs, into and out of parking lots. Lucy bumped her knee. They squeezed through alleys so skinny that she thought sure they’d smash into one wall or the other. Mom stayed with them. Lucy hadn’t known Mom could drive like that.
Then, all of a sudden, they were in a park somewhere, and Mom’s car wasn’t behind them anymore. Tears of abandonment flooded Lucy’s eyes, hot at first and then prickly cold on her cheeks. If Mom really loved her, she’d have caught up with the van.
It excited her, scared her, made her mad to see so plainly that there were things her parents couldn’t do for her no matter how much they wanted to.
That was what Rae and Ethan must have learned before she did. That was what it must mean to grow up.
There were lots of tall dark trees here, and open snowy spaces, and they’d lost Mom. Jerry still drove fast for a while on the road that spiraled deeper and deeper into the park. Then he slowed down. Then he came to a stop in a grove of blackish pine trees taller than the van and close together, with snow on their branches like the streak in Lucy’s mother’s hair. Jerry turned the engine off, and in the silence she could hear him panting. “Come here,” he said.
She hesitated, staring out the back window. There was no one else in the park.
“Lucy,” he said. His voice was weak, and he was slumped back in the seat.
“Please, sweetheart, come here.”
He needed her. When she crawled to him, the van shifted a little under her weight. She pushed between the seats, between the gearshift and Jerry’s thigh; Jerry’s thigh gave, as if it were making itself hollow to take her in.
He put his arms around her and she relaxed into him. Then he pushed her down across the seat and wedged one massive leg over her. She struggled to 176
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free herself but couldn’t; he wasn’t very heavy, but he was bigger, stronger, and he needed her to stay where she was.
“It’s okay, Lucy, it’s okay.”
He was murmuring against her ear, against her temple. She felt her own pulse there, and his tongue and teeth against it.
“You feel rage. It’s good to feel rage. Rage is nourishing. Feel it, my love.
Feel it as big and as full as you can, and then give it to me.”
Rage.
Rage at Ethan for dying.
Rage at Rae for going away.
Rage at Mom and Dad for not keeping anybody safe, at Mom for coming after her tonight and then losing her, at Stacey for not really being her friend, at the world because it wasn’t the way she wanted it to be.
Rage hot and cold, red and flashing silver and every color, bursting out of her ears and mouth and vagina. She was screaming. She was moaning. Jerry pressed his open mouth over hers and sucked.
“That’s good, that’s good, oh, you’re so good, you’re so beautiful. Give it to me, Lucy, give it to me.”
Then his huge, heavy, growing body stiffened and shook on top of her.
He groaned into her open mouth, and she knew she was dying or being born again or turning into something she’d never been before.
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He carried her over the threshold of his secret place. Without words or pictures in her mind, she was aware of his sheepskin coat under her cheek and ear: the different colors of brown in it, the way the plush spread apart, the odor of lanolin.
Vaguely she thought to put her arm up around his neck. She tried, but it wouldn’t stay. Even if she couldn’t hang on to him, she knew he wouldn’t let her go.
She was hollow. Her body was hollow; she didn’t think there were any organs left inside. Her mind was hollow. She wasn’t scared or mad or hurting anymore, or tired or hungry. She didn’t have to go to the bathroom.
She didn’t miss Rae or Ethan, didn’t hate Mom and Dad, didn’t worry about the little kids. Nothing itched or cramped. All she was was with Jerry, in his arms.
He was shaking and breathing hard. He pushed through the door without stopping and it slammed shut behind him as he carried her into the center of the house. He was humming; she felt the vibrations in the hollow of his neck just above the thick coat collar, and the strong beating of his heart almost but not quite loud enough to hear. The humming got thinner and 178
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louder, like a teapot getting ready to whistle. Faster and faster, he carried her through rooms and halls. Then they were outside.
Not exactly outside. There was nighttime sky overhead, with a few cold-looking stars and a few snowflakes. There were bushes and a tree. But there were walls on all four sides.
When Jerry set her down, she was on ground, not floor. She staggered and caught herself on a cold, wet metal bar—a fence or a railing. She was in a space in the middle of Jerry’s secret house, like a big box with the lid and bottom off, a room with no floor or ceiling.
For a minute she couldn’t find Jerry, and she thought maybe for some reason he’d left her here. Then she saw him, squatting over in the corner of the courtyard, big and round and gray as a boulder. He grunted, straightened a little, and moved his arm up and over in front of him. She couldn’t tell what he was doing. She didn’t care.
Then she saw that he was pulling open a door in the ground and laying it open beside the hole that it had been hiding. Opened like that, it looked kind of like book covers.
Jerry came over and gathered her up again. He was still humming, still panting. This time he laid her over his shoulder and held her there with his forearm across the backs of her legs. Her head and arms hung down his back like the snout and paws of the red fox fur that Rae’d found that time at Good-will. Its long body had been all skinned and hollowed out.
He had a thick rope in his other hand, and he used it to pull the trapdoor shut after them. When that happened, Lucy’s ears felt funny, like when she’d flown in an airplane to Grandma and Grandpa’s in Texas. But they didn’t exactly hurt this time. She didn’t think anything would ever hurt her again.
They were underground, underneath Jerry’s house. Lucy had never been under the ground before. They were inside the earth.
Lucy thought of mites and spiders, of worms eating secret tunnels for themselves to travel through. She thought of earthquakes, and those stone plate things that moved around down here; of volcanoes, because this was where lava came from.
After they’d gone down a whole lot of winding steps, Jerry stopped. Over his humming she heard the jingling of keys again, the scraping and clicking of keys in locks. The door he opened this time was in a wall, not in the ground, and it had padding on both sides.
He took her through the door, into a secret chamber deep inside his secret house, and shut the door behind them. He crouched and slid her off his shoulder. Her legs wouldn’t
hold her, and she collapsed onto something bouncy, like thick foam rubber. Jerry stood up again and ran his hands all around the edges of the door, the way Mom did when she sealed a container for the freezer.
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Lucy tried to look away from Jerry, into the chamber. It was so dark that she thought maybe she’d closed her eyes again without knowing it, and she stretched them wide until they hurt at all the corners.
Then she started to see things. Shapes. Movement. On a couch or bed was a boy curled up on his side.
Ethan.
She started to crawl toward him. Her arms and legs were heavy. Her hands and feet didn’t seem to belong to her.
But it wasn’t Ethan. Ethan was dead. It was Billy Duncan, from group.
Somehow, for some reason, she’d kept crawling across the foam-covered floor, and now she was right next to him. He was asleep. She raised one hand.
That made her tip sideways, but she didn’t quite fall over. She touched Billy’s shoulder. He opened his eyes. They were flat and white and didn’t have any light in them. She didn’t think he was seeing her or anything else. She heard herself say, “Hi, Billy,” but he didn’t say anything back, and he smelled funny.
“Lucy.”
Rae.
Rae was coming toward her. Lucy wasn’t even surprised. Rae was as dark as everything else in the chamber, but her eyes were little white circles with black dots.
“Lucy.”
Then she realized that shadowy figures were coming toward her from everywhere, like fog. They were closing in. One or more of them touched her. Now she couldn’t find which one was Rae. Their faces all looked blurred.
They were all saying her name.
Hands were under her, inside her clothes, raising her up into the dark air.
She was swirling. She opened her mouth to breathe or to cry out. The fog got inside her throat, burning, pulling. The faces and hands and tongues and teeth got inside her body everywhere.
Then she saw Jerry in the center of the foggy circle and heard him calling her name, too. “Lucy,” he said. “Lucy.”
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She was naked, but not cold, not embarrassed. Hands were on her everywhere, rubbing, holding her down. Stephanie’s nails were digging into her left shoulder, but it hardly hurt at all. Rae was on her knees with one hand on each side of Lucy’s pelvis and her head bent so low that Lucy felt breath on her belly, on her pubic hair. That was okay.
Rae was her sister. Other teenagers she didn’t recognize had hold of her feet, her knees, her hands, her hair. She couldn’t move. Part of her mind kept saying, Get out of here! Fight! and she knew that if she was ever going to get out of here, if Rae was going to get out of here, they’d have to do it themselves.
She felt like a traitor for even thinking about leaving. She really didn’t want to go anywhere. Even if they hadn’t been holding her down, she couldn’t have moved.
Everybody was humming. She thought she might be humming too. This underground chamber was full of humming, rubbing, sucking.
Her head was in Jerry Johnston’s lap, held there by the insides of his giant soft thighs and by his big hands massaging her head and face. She knew it was Jerry by the smell of him, the feel of him; she couldn’t turn her head to see.
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Jerry was humming. His whole body vibrated, making her vibrate, too.
Then his voice broke out into words. “Rage,” he said, and the word was big and hollow, hungry. “Rage. Sorrow. Terror. You are scared. You are sad. You are furious.”
And she was, then, everything he’d said and more. She was more than sad; she was distraught. She vibrated with terror. She was enraged.
She writhed under all their hands. Among all the hands that were on her, she searched in her mind for Jerry’s and was able to pick them out right away. They moved all over her body like a massage. Cupping, slapping, pressing, pulling.
“Feel it, Lucy,” he murmured to her, just to her and not to anybody else.
“Let yourself really feel it all.”
Somehow he was inside her, inside her mind. Dimly she understood what he was doing: he was finding what she already felt and making it stronger, making it bigger, making it hotter and thicker and more to his liking and much more dangerous to her. So vaguely that it was almost unconscious, she understood that Jerry was using her, that he needed her hurt and fear and anger in order to stay alive, that even those feelings wouldn’t keep him going for long and so he’d use her up in a hurry and she’d be dead and then he’d find somebody else to feed him.
Jealousy spurted brief and hot, deep inside her. She felt Jerry reach for it and grab hold.
She would gladly give him anything she had, everything he could find in her and use for himself. She would die for him. That was all right with her.
Rae cried a thin hollow wail, raised her head, and took her hands away from Lucy’s hips. Lucy couldn’t tell exactly where her sister was touching her until she wasn’t anymore. Now those spots were cold.
Jerry was so close to her that she couldn’t tell which were her feelings and which were his, and she didn’t care.
She saw a face, part of a face, a figure moving outside the circle. In the same chanting voice, Jerry said, “Rae,” and Rae, sobbing, put her hands back on Lucy’s pelvis and lowered her head over her again. Now Lucy felt her sister’s tears on her belly, between her legs. But that was okay, because the circle was complete again, there weren’t any gaps, and Jerry was going to kiss her, she saw his face coming down over hers.
His mouth seemed to cover her whole face. There were teeth in it that sank into the flesh under her jaw, and a tongue that lapped at her eyes and nose, but mostly he sucked. Hands massaged her everywhere, inside and outside. Humming and chanting rose. Rae’s sobbing was almost a scream. Jerry sucked. Lucy saw her mother’s face, her mother’s hands. But it couldn’t be her mother. It was too late for her mother to be here. She felt herself draining 182
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into him, and understood in a dizzying rush that she was going to die so that he could live.
“Stop it!”
Light. Cold air. Yelling. Jerry’s mouth, face, hands taken away from her.
The hands and voices of the others taken away from her. Mom in the open doorway. Mom running into the room. Stephanie and the others (but not Rae) surrounding Mom, putting their hands on her, pulling her down.
“You crazy son of a bitch, you can’t have my daughters!”
Mom was sprawled on the floor now, against the cot where Billy was still asleep. She was held down by half a dozen members of the group (but not Rae, not Rae). Lucy longed to be one of those with their hands on her mother, but even though nobody but Rae was touching her now, she couldn’t move.
“Well,” Jerry said from somewhere behind her. He was panting. “Carole.”
“You sick bastard!”
“I’m glad you’re here.” Jerry’s voice was husky with excitement as he moved farther and farther away from Lucy. A profound terror swept her: her mother was in danger; she was going to lose her mother.
Jerry was bigger and needier and more powerful than her mother could possibly understand. Lucy understood.
Jerry didn’t try to stand up or even to crawl. He just scooted across the foam floor toward her mother. The heels of his hands left little indentations for a second or two, and his legs and butt left a faint trail like a snake’s. Four people were holding Mom, although right now she wasn’t struggling. On the cot, Billy still hadn’t moved, and, suddenly, it occurred to Lucy that he must be dead.
She shivered and tried to hide herself, mostly from her mother but also from Jerry and the others. When she was this far away from Jerry, when he wasn’t pay
ing attention to her, she felt stuff again. Bad stuff, painful stuff, stuff she didn’t want to feel. So sad. Furious. Scared to death.
Rae was sitting on the padded floor next to the pile of Lucy’s clothes. Her legs were spread out in front of her and her hands fell limply onto the mat between them. She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that Lucy recognized from before she’d disappeared; they were filthy, and way too big for her now.
Her head was up and her eyes were open and at first she seemed to be watching what was going on, but when Lucy motioned to her to hand her her clothes, she didn’t move.
Lucy thought maybe Rae was dead. Like Billy. Like Ethan. Like Mike Garver, she realized, who probably really had died of a heart attack or the doctors wouldn’t have said so but who, before his heart attacked him, had been full of rage and sorrow and fear, and had been used up.
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Jerry had used him up, and now he needed more. More and more and more. Nobody could fill Jerry up anymore. Nobody could make him happy.
Maybe she could. Maybe she was the one person in the world who could make him happy. Now he really needed her.
Feel it. Feel it as big and as hot and as hard as you can, and then give it to me.
She’d have to get her clothes herself. She was so tired and weak and confused that it took her a long time to get to them, crawling across the padded floor and trying to hold on to the smooth padded wall. Then it took her a long time to put them on because she could barely remember how buttons worked, or sleeves. The cloth hurt her skin.
“I get so empty,” Jerry said thoughtfully, reasonably. “I get so hungry. It used to be just sort of a small, nagging discomfort, and it didn’t take much to soothe it. When I was a kid, all I had to do was befriend screwed-up kids, once in a while see to it that they got in serious trouble or got badly hurt.
That was easy.”
Lucy couldn’t imagine Jerry as a kid. She couldn’t imagine anything. Her mind and body were all shapes and colors and loud noises, sorrow and rage and fear.
“But the older I get,” Jerry was saying, “the more anxious and agitated I get. Lonely. Out of balance.”