by David Beers
A long pause followed while both looked at each other.
“You’re just a part of my mind,” John said. “I can make you go away.”
“No, you can’t. Or else you would have. You’re sitting on a park bench right now, and from the looks of anyone walking by, you’re just staring into space—not even speaking. What are you really doing, though, John? You’re having a conversation with your dead best friend.”
Harry walked to the bench and John nearly jumped to the other end trying to get away.
“Calm down, man. Just calm down. I want to talk to you, not argue. We’re not adversaries here and I’m not going to hurt you. Truth be told, I didn’t ask to be here, and more, I’m not one hundred percent sure what I am. Am I me, Harry, or am I something your mind’s created? Who knows, and if you want some more truth, I don’t care that much. I’m here and there are things we have to do.” Harry looked over to John, that single large pupil seeming to hold all the universe’s secrets. “And you know what those things are, don’t you?”
John did. At his core, he knew since the moment Harry arrived in his room. The thoughts, the desire that he felt hadn’t died—but merely been masked by the newness of this world.
But he couldn’t mask it forever.
He couldn’t run, not to another country or another life.
That’s what Harry meant. What John saw now with this fat, dead thing in front of him.
“Yes,” Harry said. “Think whatever you want about me, but you understand the truth. You see it fine.”
Days passed.
Harry came and went on a whim, and John couldn’t figure out any of it. He felt like he should be able to control Harry, to make him disappear whenever he wanted, but he was powerless—absolutely so. Sometimes Harry showed up just to shoot the shit and other times to turn the screws about what he wanted.
John didn’t understand it, but as the days moved on, he accepted it.
And, truthfully, Harry wasn’t that bad.
In certain ways, he was kind of nice to be around. He had a sense of humor, if darker than before he went out into the ocean. He wanted John to talk, to think about all those horrendous things. Ripping flesh. Screaming vocal chords. Blood. He encouraged it, and at least a part of John craved it.
“You’ve got a real opportunity here,” Harry said.
“You’re insane,” John responded. He might think some of those things, but he wasn’t nearly at the place Harry wanted him at.
“No, no, just think about it for a minute. You’re in another country, John. Why do you think your mom sent you here?” Harry raised his eyebrows comically. “It wasn’t because she wanted less money to retire on or that the education is so much better in England. You kind of have a free hall pass to do whatever you want. Who’s going to know?”
“Harry, just because I’m in England, it doesn’t make murder legal.”
“Well, not legal perhaps, but easier?”
John stood up from the bench and paced in front of it. He still didn’t like meeting Harry in private, or rather, in enclosed spaces. He actually asked Harry not to come to his room anymore, and so far, Harry acquiesced.
“How’s it easier?” he said, looking down at his feet as he walked.
“No one knows you here. If someone disappears, perhaps someone not noticed by you or the community—no one is going to suspect you.” Harry followed John with his eyes, his head moving slowly left and right. “You’re like a ghost here, just some kid from America finishing up high school. Think about how many murderers already live in this city—they’re going to pin whatever happens on one of them.”
John stopped walking and looked at Harry.
He would ask this question many times in the future, perhaps every time Harry showed up, but this was the first. “And what about me? What happens to me, Harry, if I do this? I don’t know if there’s a God. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. But how do I go on living after I’ve killed someone.”
Harry didn’t answer at first. He looked down at his feet, black Nikes with the white check mark along the sides. “Well, John, you already know how, right? I mean, look at me.”
“Hey, honey,” Lori said.
“Hey!” John said and the excitement in his voice nearly made her melt.
“What are you up to?” she said, a smile coming through in her voice.
“I was just about to head to lunch. Finished up third period.”
Lori looked at the clock on the kitchen counter. Six in the morning. She still hadn’t gotten used to the time difference between the two countries.
“I’m having my first cup of coffee,” she said.
“Americans are so lazy.”
Lori laughed into the phone. “You’re a turncoat now, huh? Taking on the nationality of your current living arrangements?”
“Get in where you fit in, Mom.”
Lori took a sip of her coffee. “How are things over there?” She wasn’t sure what she meant, whether she was talking about class or about … the other—but she felt good simply hearing her son’s voice.
“They’re good,” he said, but she heard a slight change in his voice. Still happy, but the enthusiasm died a little. “As we say in London, the marks I’m getting are good so far, A’s.”
“Well that’s to be expected. If you don’t want your father to hurt you, of course.” As she said the words, she recognized the morbidity in them and hoped John wouldn’t. “Anything else going on?”
A pause, one that felt entirely too long.
“Do you ever think about Harry, Mom?”
Lori looked at the clock again. Had only a minute gone by? Somehow she felt like she'd been speaking for at least ten.
“Mom?”
How was she supposed to answer the question?
“No, honey. I haven’t in a long time.”
“Why not?” he said.
Lori gritted her teeth, not wanting to answer the question. Not wanting to be asked it, for that matter. “Are you thinking about him?” she said, trying to keep her voice light, but knowing she failed desperately. Because John wasn’t light. A heaviness resided in his voice like a cancer weighing down a body’s energy.
“Yeah, Mom. A lot.”
“Did you before?”
“No. Not in a long time.”
She didn’t want to ask the next question, but knew she had to. “Did talking to Dr. Vondi help with it?”
Now John paused for a few seconds. “I … don’t think so.”
“Why are you thinking about him then?”
Another pause. “Why have you always been scared for me?” he said.
And just like that, everything Lori tried to hide under everyone’s radar—even John’s to a degree—was out in the open.
“Because, John, there’s something not right with our blood,” she said quietly. No one else was awake in the house, but that didn’t matter. Lori could have stood in the middle of an arctic storm, and she still would whisper those words. “There’s something inside me, and was in my mom, and I think in you, that might make you do something … that you don’t really want to do.”
“Have you ever done something like that?” he said.
“No.”
“Did your mom?”
“Yes. Many, many times.”
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, and then Lori said, “Are you feeling like that, that you might do something you don’t want to?”
“No.”
And she saw the lie the same as if John had been wearing a neon sign screaming LIE, LIE, LIE! across it.
“You’re sure?” she said.
“Yeah. I’ve just been thinking about Harry is all.”
“What about him?”
“Nothing,” John said, and she could almost see him shaking his head. “I don’t want to get into it.”
Lori didn’t know what to say. She wanted to keep pushing, to understand what her son was going through, but a part of her was too scared to know the truth. Bec
ause the truth inside these lies was far worse than she thought she could handle. She didn’t want to even imagine John doing something like Clara had. And yet, the part of her too scared to question further knew it was possible.
“What was wrong with your mom?” he said.
“She was … troubled,” Lori said, feeling that old disgust and hate rise up in her like some wicked bird, ready to pluck out the eyes of any creature looking up into the sky.
“What did she do?”
Lori saw a chance, a real one, to make a connection. To do something that might help John. She could have reached out, right then, and extended a hand to him—said ‘I’m here, and I know at least some of what you’re going through.’
That wicked bird was scared, though, because to go back to that place … She couldn’t. Telling Vondi had been enough—too much.
“I’ll talk to you about it sometime, John, but it’s too early in the morning right now.”
John thought about his mother’s conversation all day.
“What do you think happened with your grandma?” Harry asked.
“I don’t know,” John said, barely paying attention to Harry’s question. “I never met her, never called her grandma.”
His mom said something was wrong with their blood, but what did that mean?
“Something with your brain, man. It means you’ve got some things not wired correctly up there.”
Harry was right, that’s exactly what it meant. That genetically John was fucked and that meant …
“It’s not your fault,” Harry said. “You can’t help this anymore than you can help being white. You don’t let black people make you feel bad, do you, because you happened to have the same skin color of those that enslaved them? Then why feel bad about something else you can’t help.”
John ignored him, wasn’t even going to get into the differences in his comparison. But truth still lived in his words, even if not the whole truth. If John’s brain was different than the rest of the world, then what the fuck was he supposed to do? Was Alicia’s?
“Don’t call her,” Harry said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t trust her.”
“My sister? Harry, are you serious?”
“She’s never been there for you, has she? She won’t understand. I think your mom understands because I think she saw some things with her mother that might not have been wholesome. Your sister, though? No way.”
“Shut up,” John said. He grabbed the phone on his dorm room wall. He’d finally decided that not seeing Harry in his room would become awful as winter came. John called home. Alicia should be there and John had to hope that his parents didn’t pick up the phone and yell at him for being up so late.
“Hello?”
Good, it was Alicia.
“Hey, it’s me,” he said.
“Hey! How are you?”
John hadn’t talked to her since he came over. She didn’t call him and he didn’t call her and both seemed fine with it, yet he liked hearing how happy she sounded at his call.
“I’m okay, how are things there? Mom and Dad acting alright?”
She laughed. “They’re pissed right now, actually. I got a C in geography and they think that my life is over. That’s why I’m home, actually. Trying to pacify them a bit by staying at the house this week. The commute is a bitch, though.”
John hadn’t even thought about her not living at home—she was at college. What else was he not seeing since he fell into his and Harry’s shared mind?
Shake it off, he thought.
“Were you looking for them?” she said.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you; I just got lucky that you’re at the house, I think.”
“What’s up? How is everything over there? Meet any cute girls?”
“Best of luck,” Harry said. He sat on John’s bed with a paperback open. One of Stephen King’s, something about a dark tower—John didn’t know, didn’t have any time to read. “She’s not going to let you get a word in edgewise. Women, am I right?” Harry didn’t look up and John only shook his head.
“Yeah, things are good. I’m actually talking to one girl. Her name’s Cindy.”
“Oh yeah? What color hair does she have? She better be a brunette like me.”
John smiled. “Nah, she’s blonde.”
“The Devil, all of them.”
John heard his sister still smiling and didn’t want to go forward, but had to. If what his mom said was true, then maybe Alicia felt some of the same things he did.
“Don’t do it, John. She’s a well adjusted chick. She’s not like you,” Harry said as he turned the page in his book.
“I wanted to ask you something serious,” John said. “You got a second?”
“Sure.”
“Has Mom ever talked to you about her mother? Our grandmother?”
“No. She doesn’t like talking about her, I don’t think,” Alicia said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I think something happened when she was younger. Dad never met her either.”
John nodded, seeing that his mother wasn’t just hiding whatever lay in her past from him, but from the whole family.
“Look, this is going to sound weird, but do you ever have strange thoughts?”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Told you,” Harry said. “Told you, told you, told you. Listen to the way she said that—she’s not asking with any reservations. She’s genuinely curious.”
John knew he was right, heard it in her voice the same as Harry.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m just tired.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure. I’ve just been having some weird dreams lately and I didn’t know if you had them at my age.”
“What kind of dreams?” she said.
“Just end of the world type stuff.”
Alicia laughed. “No, never dreamed about that. Go dream about that cute blonde.”
“Maybe I will tonight. Thanks for talking, Alicia.”
“Anytime. Call me up at college; I want to hear more about what’s going on.”
“Sure thing,” he said. “Bye.”
He hung up and looked to Harry, who didn’t glance up from his book.
“King is good, man. Have you ever read him? This gunslinger, I need you to be more like him. It would be a lot easier for all of us.”
“So, it’s just me. Not my mom and not Alicia.”
“You got me, John. Don’t ever forget that,” Harry said.
23
A Portrait of a Young Man
Years Earlier
“I’m going to hold your hand now,” John said.
“Oh, are you?”
“Yes, I am. And if you don’t let me, I’ll probably have to tackle you.” John smiled, winking as he said it.
“Well, I suppose I don’t have a choice, but I want to be on record as saying that I’m doing this because I was forced to.” Cindy reached for his hand and took it in hers, interlocking their fingers.
Neither said anything for a minute or so, both just walking hand in hand. The air was cool, winter letting the world know its time was near. The sun went down three or four hours before, but neither noticed. They had just finished a movie, John’s first true English film.
Now the night was coming to an end and John didn’t want to pull away. Harry never showed up when he was with Cindy. John could forget that part of his life and just … be.
“I like you,” he said.
“Yeah? Do you feel like a traitor?” Cindy said.
“A little,” he smiled and looked at his feet.
A second passed. “I like you, too. A lot.”
They walked a few more feet, the silence not feeling the least bit awkward.
“I’ve never said that to a girl before,” John said, still looking at his feet and smiling.
“Have you ever kissed a girl before?”
&n
bsp; “Bold, aren’t you? If you were a bit bolder two hundred years ago, you might have won the war.”
Cindy pulled her hand away and punched him in the shoulder. John kept walking, but she didn’t move.
“I’m only kidding,” he said as he turned around, finally looking up.
“I wasn’t. Have you kissed a girl?” She stood about four feet from him.
“No.”
“Can I be your first?”
He looked at her eyes, shining in the moonlight, and thought he’d never seen anyone more beautiful.
“You’d be my first, too,” she said.
John stepped forward, not sure what he was doing, but knowing that he was going to do it regardless. He placed his hands on her hips and leaned forward, closing his eyes. Their lips touched, softly, and then with more surety, he leaned in, pressing harder against her. A small sigh escaped her lips and she pulled him closer.
Their tongues touched and John felt sure that there would never be another moment better.
They pulled away, both of them breathing a bit heavier.
“Not bad for an American,” she said, smiling, and then looked down at her feet—perhaps the first awkward gesture John had ever seen her make.
And then, John saw a horror from the deepest part of the worst hell to ever exist. John saw Harry.
He stood behind Cindy, about ten feet off, a hand waving and a giant smile across his face.
“Hey,” Harry said, his voice rising enough to cross the distance.
John’s eyes flashed back to Cindy, who still looked at the ground. He tilted her head up, touching her chin with his finger. “Thank you.”
“I’m still heeerreee,” Harry said, his voice slashing through the shield John tried to create by looking at her. “Kissing the girlfriend isn’t going to change anything.”
“Can I walk you home?” John said. He felt himself about to unravel, trying to focus on Cindy and at the same time his mind feeling like a hive of angry bees, unable to understand what Harry was doing or planning to do.
“Well you’re sure as hell not leaving me here,” she said, her brilliant smile returning.
She took his hand and they began walking again, moving down the sidewalk.