It felt like a game of chicken, and Max wouldn’t swerve first. He couldn’t. He knew that as soon as he said no to Pan, as soon as he challenged him on this, he would lose him.
The middle of the night at Pan’s house and noises crept through the walls. Max heard every rattle the wind made. Music crooned from a truck that idled somewhere in the dark. Max rolled and turned and tossed in bed. The sheets bunched up under him, and Pan boiled. It was just like Nils. Fever dreams and pillow talk and desire that ran from nose tip to toe.
Max got up from bed to pour himself a glass of grape juice. He walked in circles through the living room and kitchen. He pushed at his nose. It still throbbed.
During the day, the living area looked neat and vacant as a waiting area, but now, the shadows turned every corner foreboding. The furniture leaned toward the center of the room. Anyone could come through the door at any minute. It was just a thing that could open. Max walked to the stove.
Tacked to the fridge was a class picture of Pan from third grade. That same pout, angled-in eyebrows, pointed teeth sitting on his lower lip. So completely normal-looking. A bit angry, but a regular boy. Max wanted to understand Pan’s transformation. He grew up with the boys here. They went to elementary school together. When they hung out together, it felt comfortable. Pan knew their language. They did not prank or haze him the way they did the others at school whose ears they penetrated with candy bars and whose homes they ruined with raw eggs and whose cars they keyed. Max figured Pan wanted to pretend he tumbled from the ether a fully formed weirdo, but that wasn’t the case. Everyone got to be who they were in some way or another.
He thinks he’s a princess.
Pan stuck his head out of the bedroom door.
Ready? he whispered.
Sure, said Max even though he wasn’t.
Shh, Pan said. The mother doth sleep.
Pan drove the car through the damp night, down that rutted-up road with not a soul on it. Piles of red dirt were stacked on either side. Pan fidgeted in the driver’s seat. Max could feel the excitement coming off him in waves. Max couldn’t tell the difference between fear and intuition. But one of those feelings pawed at him. It ran knuckles down his spine. Around them, forests unspooled and solidified. So much land with no one watching it.
Davis had asked Max once: What’s the worst thing you could find walking alone through the woods, way far out with no a gun or nothing?
I do not know, said Max. A bear? A rabid wolf?
Another person, said Davis.
Max leaned into the passenger door and thought: anotherpersonanotherpersonanotherperson. Pan explained where they would turn, pointed his painted nail, glossy and black for the night’s occasion.
As Pan sped the sedan toward town with the velocity of two boys on a mission, Max knew he wouldn’t do it. He heard the shovels clink in the trunk. He winced each time they clamored against one another. He knew he wouldn’t slip the ski mask over his eyes. He wouldn’t undead the bodies the Judge had let die in the name of Jesus. But he couldn’t tell Pan this. Not yet, not until after Pan flipped off the car, stepped onto the wet cement of the cemetery parking lot.
Then there they were. Headlights cut. Night unlit. Trunk open and empty. Leaves shook in the trees above them. A shivering came from somewhere deep inside Max.
He turned to Pan, who held a shovel in his hands. Dirt still on the spades. The boys stood on either side of the car’s hood, and Max was glad there was something between them. Pan looked older, looked like the person he might grow into. Pan was not a witch. He was only a boy, and both of them knew it. The magic Pan possessed was a different magic. He believed in Max just as much as he believed in Quaid’s story. His belief was going to dig those holes, raise those bodies, throw the Judge in jail. And if Max let him, if Max would take the next step with him, then maybe, Pan’s belief would have been magic enough to make it true.
I can’t do it, Max heard himself say.
Pan stared out at the graveyard. His jaw quivered, but Pan must have known already, because he only nodded underneath his wings.
You believe in the wrong things, said Pan.
His voice caught. It was a note that wanted to break but couldn’t.
Let’s just be us, said Max. Let’s go back to the lake.
We’re never going back to the lake, said Pan.
On the drive home, Max knew not to reach over and place his hand on Pan’s thigh, which felt far away and no longer his at all.
PART 3
AUTUMN IN ALABAMA WAS BEAUTIFUL. The pavement was no longer too scalding to walk across in bare feet. The lakes were no longer the temperature of drawn bathwater. In the evenings, it was pleasant. The boys took sweatshirts with them that they would pull over their shoulders when the sun went down. Piles of leaves smoldered under naked trees. Their burning lit whole neighborhoods with the smell of sweet smoke.
The boy across the street from Max’s house roamed the yard with his friend, their mouths smeared with BBQ sauce and their hands dusted Cheeto orange. They pointed BB guns at squirrels that ran under the shrubs, at Miss Jean’s cat, and at the three-legged dog that everyone on the street fed scraps to.
Pan had stayed away from Max for weeks, and Max understood. Space. He needed space. He’d driven Max back to his house without talking. Max had seen Pan’s tearstained face reflected in the glass and that’s when he knew how much he’d let him down.
Distractions helped, like football. Max did not want to be alone. He went home with Knox after practice and ate hot dogs stuffed with Velveeta cheese. He raked Miss Jean’s yard. She made him chicken and dumplings. He joined his mother at the arboretum and hiked through the piles of auburn crunch. Max saw Pan only during Physics, where they used foam tubing to construct a roller coaster in the hallway that carried ball bearings down loops and around hard turns. They timed the ball bearings at certain distances to measure their speed.
MAX PRESENTED A BASKET OF Kinder Chocolate to a convoy of ghouls. Sheets cascaded over their bodies. Holes had been cut into the fabric, so they could see. Blue eyes blinked into the dark. Young girls in tutus waved wands. Girls with whiskers drawn across their cheeks meowed at him, then hissed. They bared human teeth.
A fleet of ghosts ran down the street. Witches descended in tall black hats. They skidded from block to block on brooms. Robots walked the hills and dropped candy corn into the flowers. Silver wrappers glinted against the moonlight.
The Judge warned against Halloween. He said it taught children to beg for handouts. He disapproved of dressing up as the dead, as ghosts, as devils. Max gave candy to a devil. Red horns perched in a boy’s blond curls, tied down with barrettes.
Trick or treat.
What are you?
Oh, a skeleton.
Oh, a scarecrow.
His mother loved the girl dressed as a black sheep. Her shoes looked like hooves. She had a fluff of a tail, a red nose, and a small, thrusting mouth.
IT WAS CUSTOM BEFORE THE last game of the season for the boys to spend the night in the abandoned insane asylum. Wes told Max how they had crushed cans of beer against the rusted red walls and blood poured out, how they had dared one another to spend an entire night in a ward where human brains had been lobotomized. The boys had woken up with their underwear gone. He told him they had seen an absolutely real ghost stare back at them from the bathroom mirror on the ground floor. He said a homeless man without a face had jumped at them and tried to piss on their feet. The boys knew for sure that a family of spirits lived on level five, and there was a patch of air cold as a refrigerator in the attic that was the soul of a murdered girl.
Doctors used to have to trim the bottom of magnolia trees because patients would sneak under the branches that reached to the grass and have sex with each other, said Cole.
He laughed like this was hilarious. Wes was sitting next to him in the backseat of Lorne’s truck, and he laughed, too.
It was bad here in the day, said Davis. People from the governmen
t had to come to the state in person to shut it down. The docs treated these people like garbage. We’re fixing to show you some gnarly stuff.
Alabama, Wes said, is full of places with ghosts trapped, and they can’t leave.
Why? Max asked.
Cause their stories never got finished, said Cole.
The building’s chipped paint and broken windows and grand porch came into view. It had the look of something that was once magnificent. Lorne pulled the truck around the circular driveway, but Davis said, Park away from the road, stupid.
The driveway’s long enough, Lorne said. I parked here before and you can’t see balls from the highway.
Max looked in the direction of the highway. In between the truck and the road rolled a lawn where patients once roamed in hospital robes. He tried not to think about the psychiatric practices from the past. Davis won the argument and Lorne drove a little way down a dirt road and into a thicket, where they hid the vehicle, parking it near a wilting gardener’s shed. They’d have to walk back to the asylum through a wooded path that crisscrossed the old hospital grounds.
The boys stepped out into the night. They slammed the doors to the truck and announced their arrival to the great wide fields. The wind smelled like bad vegetables. Someone had spray-painted the shed’s exterior. Cock Suck Piss dripped in red paint. A water tower watched them from the distance.
It’s healthy to give yourself a good scare, Cole said. Freak the daylights out of yourself. Keep your heart healthy.
Lorne flung his arm around Max’s shoulder. His hair frizzed with humidity. A zit tipped his nose. He dialed his eyes onto Max’s lips. Max held his breath. He felt connected to Pan in this moment. He didn’t know if what he felt was jealousy or desire. Maybe one could spawn the other. Maybe they could be the same. Lorne had a boy’s beauty. He had a mouth that always hung open. Pan knew how those lips tasted, that mouth. Heat spread across Max’s chest. His heart would never beat like this for Billie and her macramé bracelets.
He was my first husband. And I was his first wife.
You’ve heard the story of Henry, said Lorne.
He kept his arms around Max’s shoulder. Max decided to fling his arm around Lorne’s shoulder, too. He shook his head no. Shake, shake.
Henry was a ghost that haunted a girl. He walked through her house and knocked things off the counters and scared the daylights out of her. Like she seriously couldn’t sleep a minute. She’d go into the room after something fell and say Hello. Nothing. No one was there. One night she took a picture of herself after she’d tried to say Hello, Henry, come out. That’s what she called him. And guess what? Guess who’s just sitting there smiling smug as hell in the picture once it was developed?
Lorne’s lips were close to Max’s ear, tickling it.
Henry was there. But you can’t see him unless you take a picture of him first.
Really? Max said.
Really, said Lorne. How about that, huh?
Davis walked up beside them carrying the sleeping sacks.
Check out how scared shitless Germany looks, said Davis. He laughed and began to run.
Max let his eyes widen as Wes told him about the asbestos that was spread across the floorboards like snow. Cole told him they’d say a prayer to Jesus. Jesus would put a protective force around them that kept them safe from the devil, if the devil lived in the asylum, which the boys said he probably did.
After they passed torn-up and falling lean-tos, the giant building stood before them, six stories of dark windows. Only half of its front columns remained intact. The boys claimed they would show Max the ward where the criminally insane used to live. They swore to God that old medical records were scattered all over the ground.
There’s one dude who lived in here, said Cole. He chopped whole families into bits with scissors because he thought they were aliens and he hid their body parts in a golf course. That’s true. Swear on my mom’s grave.
Some of it is going to make you feel a little sick, Germany, said Lorne.
Yeah, don’t pee yourself okay, you dumb Nazi? Davis said.
They walked up a wrought-iron stairway. Humans had been there and signed their names as proof. Beer cans littered the front porch. A giant swastika had been carved into the front door. Slurs ruined the walls inside. They passed under archways flanked by windows that would stream in sun if it was daytime. The boys talked loudly, as if to prove they weren’t afraid. Covering the floor underneath them: dust, bent wires, cracked glass, dry newspapers, a bent hypodermic needle. Laughter ran from the children’s ward and into Max’s ears. He was alert to every creak that careened down the vacant, crumbling hallways. On the third story, murals of stone-eyed elephants stared down.
They walked in a huddle. Max squished into the middle, the protected, sacred center. They swung the arc of their flashlights down dark halls and turned slowly to check behind their backs when the wind blew. They decided against sleeping in the criminally insane ward and walked up to the roof. It was less scary up there, and Max was relieved to be outside again.
Pan would love it here. Maybe he’d even been. Maybe Lorne had taken him.
From the roof, Max gazed over the pointed heads of pine trees. A car traveled down the highway. The perspective soothed Max. Lights from Delilah smoldered in the distance.
Father God, Davis’s voice boomed out into the cool night. Banish all evil spirits from our presence. Make this place holy for you. Keep us safe from the devil if he lurks here, which we know he does!
Davis’s fly was unzipped, his flaccid penis pissed the perimeter of the roof as Davis walked it. When he was done baptizing the place, he turned to them and shook some drips off the head and pinched it.
The roof had been slept on before. Max knew because someone had scrawled I Was Slept Here in red paint above the outline of a body. Lorne laughed like it was a joke. He was genuinely not scared, but the others seemed uneasy, even Davis.
Cole said, Countdown to camp has begun, fellas.
Davis stretched his arms above him. Cannot even wait. Holy God, knight me already.
What’s camp? asked Max.
Camp can only be experienced, said Davis. Never explained.
That’s why I don’t get it, said Wes. My mom won’t ever let me go.
You got to just sneak out and come with us this time, said Boone. Lie and say you’re staying at my house. This year will be a big year. It’s right before the election.
My mom is a literal psychic, said Wes. And my sister would tell on me. I can’t go.
What Glory don’t know, don’t hurt her, said Boone.
Then you never met Glory, said Wes. Cause that girl knows everything and all.
I’d like to go to a camp, said Max.
Davis said, Yeah, duh, Germany. You are coming. No doubts in the mind.
Guess who I brought? Lorne said.
He extracted a flask from the pocket of his coat. He held it up and winked. Davis revealed a fifth of whiskey from his bag. They clicked the edges together. Cheers.
Max did not want to get drunk around the boys. He still never had. He would usually sip his beers slow and pour them into the sink or into the grass when no one watched. He didn’t care to be out of his mind. He didn’t know himself enough to trust what he would do or say around them. He remembered waking up in Pan’s bed with red nails and an empty head.
But that night on the roof, he consumed so much whiskey that he curled into the shape of a snail right on the scrawled outline of the body that a stranger had drawn. The boys wanted to make sure Max didn’t fall off the roof, so they lorded over him and drew boobs on his back and wrote the words broken angel on his chest and beer. They made sure he drank water, and thought it was hilarious when he vomited into a neat little puddle. Lorne had two paper bags of miniature hamburgers from Shakes & Stuff. He tried to stuff one in Max’s mouth to sober him up, but the burger just came right back up. Max dropped his head in Lorne’s lap and moaned into his jeans. Lorne pushed more bits of ha
mburger into Max’s mouth, then wiped away his dribble with the back of his red-haired hand.
Price shared some of Knox’s moonshine, and Davis drank so much that he began to howl and chant.
You sound like a madwoman, said Lorne.
Like a tater tot, said Boone.
Rat magic? Max tried to say, but it came out as a mumble into Lorne’s thigh, where his head still rested. Poison?
What’s that? asked Lorne. A hand in Max’s hair. Small pets. Shhh.
Look, fellas, said Davis. He stumbled toward them with his arm outstretched. A small black snake dangled from the pinch of his hand.
A serpent, said Davis.
Davis began to dance. He lifted the snake above his head. While they watched, Lorne stroked Max’s hair, almost sweetly. Davis began to sing and held the snake toward the stars. He brought it right in front of his nose and stared into its face. Then Davis bit the snake’s head off.
Fuck, said Boone. You are fucking crazy!
Davis spit the head off the roof and threw its body after it. The head and body blended into the black night and disappeared.
Max moaned into Lorne’s leg.
Shhh, said Lorne. It’s only a snake.
That night, Max dreamt that Lorne dragged his body to the other side of the roof. Max felt Lorne’s bulking arms around his torso and the labored breath on his neck. Ow, Max said in his dream when his knee collided with something metal. Max stepped outside of his body and climbed into an oak tree that reached above the roof. He sat on a branch and watched from his dream. He watched Lorne struggle to move him. He watched himself sleep. He batted at his face in the tree and his hand smacked Lorne’s chin on the roof. Nothing made sense. A headless black snake circled them and left a trail of blood. He found the snake head and put it in his mouth. He wanted to chew the snake head. He was so hungry. But even in his dream, he told himself no. Just swallow it whole. Just swallow the snake.
Lorne’s arms tightened around Max’s chest. It was a threat and not a hug.
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