My Best Friend's Exorcism

by Grady Hendrix

  She looked around her room and wanted to scream. How did she ever think she could do this? This was a little girl’s room, this wasn’t the room of a grown-up. This was the room of a child.

  She ripped down her E.T. poster, yanking the brittle paper off the wall and pulling it to pieces; then she took Tommy Cox’s Coke and pegged it into the corner. She clawed the photos out from around her mirror, shredding Gretchen’s face and her face, screaming profanities as she reduced their years together to glossy confetti on the floor. She yanked No Jacket Required out of her tape deck, the black magnetic ribbon spilling like streamers, then she unspooled one mix tape after another: Awesome Summer Mix 88, Halley Comet Beach Party, From Gretchen to Abby IV.

  It wasn’t enough. The sight of her stuffed animals made her want to puke. They belonged to a stupid little girl. She turned her nails into claws and dug them into Geoffrey the Giraffe’s face and tore out his shiny black eyes, then split the stitching down his back and turned him inside out. She twisted off Cabbage Head’s skull and took a pair of scissors and slashed open Wrinkles the Pound Puppy’s belly. She felt sick because she knew what she was doing was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was tired of being stupid, she was tired of Gretchen laughing at her, she was tired of losing. She was so tired.

  When Abby woke up, full sunlight was flooding through her window, and someone had just stopped screaming. Abby sat bolt upright in the wreckage of her room, heart pounding, scalp prickling. She’d overslept. The house was silent. Abby listened, hoping it had all been a bad dream.

  The woman screamed again. It was her mother.

  Abby threw her desk chair aside and opened the bedroom door. Three enormous police officers were waiting in the hallway. Abby’s mom was down at the other end of the hall, crying, held back by a female officer.

  “Mom?” Abby shouted. “What’s wrong?”

  “You need to come with us,” the larger officer said.

  “Why?” Abby asked.

  “We need to know what you can tell us about this,” he said, holding up a brown paper bag.

  It was Gretchen’s bag. The one she’d had the night before.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You tell us,” a shorter cop said.

  Before they could stop her, Abby snatched the bag and it tore open. Something boneless slithered to the floor with a meaty thump. It was gray, like a skinned cat. Its eyes were closed, its mouth was open, and its hands were balled into little fists. It landed on the tips of the shorter cop’s feet. He covered his mouth and nose and turned away.

  They’d found the missing baby.

  Harden My Heart

  After Abby was taken into custody, identified, advised of her rights, questioned, given an intake screening, interviewed again by a member of the Department of Juvenile Justice, and assigned a date for a detention hearing forty-eight hours away, it was made clear that she could be released to her parents or spend the next two days in the juvenile detention center. Mr. Rivers wanted to leave her there to teach her a lesson, but Mrs. Rivers wasn’t about to let her daughter spend the night in juvie, so they brought her home.

  Abby would have had an easier time in the detention center. Her dad drove, staring straight ahead through the windshield, not saying a word. Her mom wept the entire time. Whenever it seemed like she was about to stop, she started up again. When they got home, she went to her bedroom and slammed the door. Abby could hear her crying through the walls.

  Her dad poured himself a Diet Pepsi over ice, then sat down carefully at the kitchen table, sipping it and staring at the wall.

  “Dad?” Abby said, getting up off the sofa and creeping toward him. “You know I didn’t do that, right? You know I would never do anything like that. Someone put that here to make me look bad. You believe me, don’t you?”

  He turned and looked at her, blinking calmly.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” he said.

  Abby backed away from him, stumbled down the hall, and locked herself in her bedroom. She had forgotten she’d destroyed it and wasn’t prepared for the wreckage. Her stomach hollowed out when she stepped on one of Geoffrey’s black eyes, which she’d ripped from his face. She wanted to cry. She didn’t even have a past anymore.

  They had already taken the keys to the Dust Bunny, but that was all right. It would mean that her parents couldn’t be blamed for what was about to happen. It wasn’t much, but it gave Abby some small comfort. Because she was about to break their hearts.

  She took a shower and put on her face. It took forever because her skin was a suppurating mess. When she finally finished, she put her makeup in her gym bag along with a change of underwear and socks, a clean bra, a sweatshirt, and another pair of pants; then she turned on her TV and sat on her bed, watching through the back window as the sun went down.

  She wished there was another way, but she was out of options. Maybe if she were smarter, she could have come up with a better solution, but this was all she could think of right now, and she had to do something. She looked out the back window and watched the light turn the long grass and abandoned lawn mowers first golden, then orange, then lavender, and finally black.

  Abby listened for sounds of movement in the house. Hearing none, she slid her window open and popped the screen. Something caught her eye in the ocean of garbage strewn across her bedroom floor, one piece of her past that had escaped destruction: Tommy Cox’s can of Coke from the fifth grade. She picked it up and slid it into her gym bag, then zipped it up and snuck out of the house.

  When she reached the Kangaroo gas station, she made a call on the payphone. Then she waited inside as if she was browsing magazines until the white van pulled up to the pumps. She ran outside and knocked on the passenger side window. Brother Lemon opened the door.

  “Do you have it?” she asked, getting in.

  He opened the glove compartment and showed her a plastic sandwich bag wrapped around a few tablespoons of gray powder. Right next to it was an identical baggie.

  “Why two bags?” she asked.

  “Always bring a backup, just in case,” he said. “Like astronauts in NASA.”

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Straight through the light across Coleman Boulevard.”

  As he pulled out and they drove into the Old Village, Abby slumped low in her seat.

  “Do you have the number of the pay phone?” she asked.

  “It’s taped to the baggie,” he said.

  She opened the glove compartment and took both bags.

  “I don’t know why I can’t park there and wait,” he said.

  “Because in this part of town, they call the police when they see a strange car,” she said. “Pull over here.”

  A wedding reception was being held at Alhambra Hall, and cars were parked all the way down the street. Abby stuffed both baggies in her pockets and got out of the minivan. Brother Lemon cruised away, brake lights flaring at the corner, and then he was gone.

  Abby walked up the line of cars toward Pierates Cruze. Inside Alhambra a band was playing a beach version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and the guy doing the whistling wasn’t bad. Abby let the noise fade behind her in the dark as she walked past the park, beneath the live oaks, and onto the Cruze.

  When she got to Gretchen’s house, she noticed Mrs. Lang’s Volvo in the driveway, but not Mr. Lang’s Mercedes. She hoped that meant they’d gone to a friend’s house to watch the Clemson/Carolina game, along with everyone else in the Old Village. Mr. Lang was a Clemson grad, and for a game this big, Abby knew that parents liked to hole up together somewhere; the men would get drunk while the women fluttered around the kitchen.

  Abby slipped around the side of the house and snuck into the backyard. The upstairs was lit up, but downstairs was dark. She could see light all through the second story, shining in every window, throwing big bright rectangles across the yard.
It made the harbor look blacker in comparison.

  Abby watched the windows of the house, trying to see if anyone besides Gretchen was home. A cold wind cut through her jacket, and she started to shiver. Somewhere in the dark, she heard an owl. After a while she crept to the front door, expecting yard lights to pop on at any minute and pin her to the grass.

  Nothing happened, and she made it to the door. Slowly, she pressed down the handle and felt the latch turn, then click open. She pushed the door, breaking the seal as quietly as she could, and then slipped inside, closing the door behind her.

  It was cold inside, colder than it had been before. Abby didn’t know how anyone could live like this. Almost immediately, she started shivering.

  She slipped into the dark living room and advanced toward the kitchen, where she hoped to find a bottle of Diet Coke in the refrigerator. Gretchen was constantly drinking Diet Coke, and Abby planned to empty the contents of one baggie into a two-liter bottle. Then maybe Gretchen would drink enough and pass out. And then maybe Abby could get her out of the house before Gretchen’s parents came home and drank the drugged Diet Coke themselves.

  It was a terrible plan, but Abby was all out of clever.

  Something barked behind her. Abby jumped and her nerves caught on fire. Silhouetted in the light from the hall was Max, staring into the living room, his eyes fixed on Abby. While she watched, he barked again.

  “Max,” she whispered, “it’s me.”

  She squatted down and held out one hand, trembling from the cold. Max cocked his head.

  “Max,” she whispered. “Good dog. Good dog, Max.”

  He barked again, but it was a qualified bark this time. More of a “whuf?”

  Upstairs, she heard footsteps. Abby froze.

  “Max?” Gretchen called down. “Who’s there?”

  “Max,” Abby whispered, “come here, Max. Shhh . . .”

  More footsteps as Gretchen walked to the head of the stairs. Abby crept backward, retreating into the darkness of the living room, squeezing between the end of the sofa and the wall, ducking down.

  “Who’s here, Max?” Gretchen called. Abby could hear her coming down the stairs. She pressed herself tighter into the corner. Gretchen wouldn’t see her if she stayed out of the living room. Max’s collar jingled as he trotted toward Abby, pressing his muzzle into her face, licking her lips.

  “Go away, Max,” she whispered. “Go, go, go.”

  The dog stuck his snuffling nose into her chest.

  “Please, Max,” Abby whispered. “Go.”

  “Who’s down here, Max?” Gretchen said from the bottom of the stairs.

  Abby made meaningful eye contact with Max, holding his head, and she stared deep into his eyes and channeled everything she had into conveying to him how very important it was that he go away.

  “Go,” she whispered into his ear.

  “Come here, Max,” Gretchen called. Max whipped his head around, as if hearing her for the first time, and raced out of the living room. “Good dog, Max. Come with me.”

  There was the sound of something clicking, a rattle and a jangle of Max’s dog tags, and then Gretchen and Max were running up the stairs together. Abby sagged, then she heaved herself up out of the crack and raced to the kitchen. The light over the sink was on. She opened the fridge.

  Everything was rotten. The food had decayed into mush or dried into brown scraps. The only intact items were six two-liter bottles of Diet Coke, the first one cloudy with greasy handprints. She was reaching for it when she heard Gretchen’s bare feet come

  galloping downstairs again. Abby closed the fridge and spun, taking three long steps and slipping into the dark doorway of the TV room, just as Gretchen entered the kitchen through the living room.

  Backing up into darkness, Abby bumped into the ottoman where the Langs kept all their magazines and fell backward. Tightening her legs, she managed to fall in slow motion, catching herself and a copy of European Travel & Life before it hit the floor. Frozen, bent over backward, she listened.

  In the kitchen, Gretchen opened the fridge door, then a cabinet. The ice maker growled and Abby used its noise for cover, sinking slowly onto the leather ottoman as Gretchen finished plinking ice into her glass. Abby crept to the door.

  Gretchen was standing at the counter, her back to Abby, wearing shorts and a tank top. She had a glass out, full of ice, and the bottle of Diet Coke stood next to it. She pulled out a wrinkled dried lemon from a line of rotting fruit on the window ledge, then rattled open a drawer and slid out a broad, gleaming butcher’s knife. Holding the dried lemon steady on the counter, Gretchen started to saw through it, but then her head snapped up and she sniffed the air. Turning, she looked directly at Abby, then she turned the other way and looked into the dark living room.

  “Who’s here?” she asked. “I can smell you.”

  She padded toward the dark living room, butcher knife gripped in one hand, and disappeared. Quickly, Abby tiptoed to the sink, pulling the baggie of powder out of her waistband. She dumped the entire packet into the glass. It was supposed to have been enough for two liters of Coke, but Abby didn’t care, she just wanted to get it in. She stirred the clumped powder with one finger, and ice tinkled gently against the glass.

  “Abby?”

  The footsteps were coming back, padding quickly, and Abby started for the TV room.

  “Are you here, Abby?” Gretchen called from the TV room.

  Abby backtracked so fast her shoes almost slipped out from underneath her. Six quick steps and she was in the dark living room as she heard Gretchen coming through the kitchen, right on her heels. Abby kept going, moving as fast and quiet as she could, slipping into the front hall just as Gretchen snapped on the lights in the living room behind her.

  It was close. She might not make it out the front door before Gretchen, but she had to get outside, get out of this freezing house, get away from Gretchen. She turned the handle. The door was locked. The deadbolt needed a key. Abby spun around to search the hall table.

  Gretchen was standing in the doorway to the living room, butcher knife in one hand, glass of Diet Coke in the other.

  “You really are gay for me, aren’t you?” Gretchen said, taking a sip.

  Abby thought about smashing through the glass door and running, but she couldn’t move her legs.

  “I can’t believe you were dumb enough to come here. Especially after you were arrested,” Gretchen said, sighing. “Come on. If you’re here, you might as well see something cool.”

  Gretchen trudged up the stairs to the second floor. Abby hesitated, then followed. She found Gretchen in her bedroom standing in front of her closet, pulling on a baby blue raincoat.

  “What are you doing?” Abby asked.

  Gretchen took a deep pull of her Diet Coke and set it down on her desk.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  Gretchen lifted the enormous butcher’s knife from her desk. Its blade caught the light in the room and sent silver shards dancing across the walls.

  “Come on,” she said, then she beckoned to Abby with the knife. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Gretchen walked into her bathroom. Abby knew it was stupid to go into a small room with a crazy girl holding a knife, but Gretchen didn’t feel dangerous right now. She felt like Abby had interrupted her in the middle of an extra-credit project and Gretchen wanted to finish it up before starting anything new.

  Abby entered the bathroom. Gretchen was waiting for her, leaning against the sinks, the knife lying on the counter. In her hand was the black pistol from her parents’ bedside table. In the shower was Good Dog Max. His leash was looped over the faucet and he was dancing from one foot to the other, his claws clicking on the fiberglass tub. When he saw Abby, his tail began to wag.

  “See,” Gretchen said, “he likes you.”

  Max let his tongue
fall out, then the wastebasket next to the tub caught his interest and he stuck his head inside and started rooting around.

  “It’s because he likes you so much that I got this idea,” Gretchen said. “So in a way, what’s happening to him is all your fault.”

  Gretchen pulled up the hood of her raincoat and stood at the edge of the tub.

  “Good dog, Max,” she said. “Who’s a good dog?”

  Gretchen took Max’s collar and pulled his head out of the garbage. Good Dog Max tried to lick Gretchen’s hand that was holding the gun; then she had his chin in her hand, lifting his head, and she pressed the gun to the base of his neck.

  “You don’t have to hurt him,” Abby said. “You don’t have to do any of this.”

  “You don’t know who you’re talking to anymore,” Gretchen said.

  Max whined, his claws tapping at the fiberglass, trying to twist his head to get back in the garbage.

  “I know who you are,” Abby said.

  Without hesitation, Gretchen released Max, stepped away from the tub, and backhanded Abby. Caught off guard, Abby spun to her side, hit the wall, and fell to the floor. Gretchen was straddling her, yanking her head back by the hair, the cold metal gun pressed to the underside of Abby’s chin. Abby had never been on the wrong end of a gun before, and ice blossomed inside her guts.

  “Lesson learned,” Gretchen said. “Don’t talk shit.”

  Then Gretchen was standing, and she kicked Abby in the stomach. Watery spit flooded Abby’s mouth. Through blurry eyes she saw Gretchen standing at the side of the tub, and Good Dog Max’s feet were thundering on the hollow fiberglass.

  Unable to catch her breath, Abby crawled into the bedroom and dragged herself to the far wall by the door. A moment later the air cracked in half and slapped her in both ears as a flash lit the room. In the silence that followed, gunsmoke and the stink of cordite wafted from the bathroom door. Through the ringing in her ears, Abby heard something moving, thumping against the tub, and then Gretchen came out.