“Ducky, you feeling OK?” His father faced him now. Once a year, the man had the uncanny ability to sense when Doug really needed to talk.
“Yeah—OK, Dad.”
“Haven’t seen your girlfriend around much lately.”
“My friend,” Doug said.
“Your friend. How’s Emily holding up?”
“All right.”
“Well, good.”
“She’s OK,” Doug said.
“Well, tell her we miss seeing her. Unless you’re sick of seeing her. Then, you tell her to stay the hell away,” his father said affectionately. He sipped at his beer and smiled at his family. “We care about you and your brother more than anything, Duck.”
“I know, Dad.”
“OK, Duck-ster?”
“OK.”
After dinner, Doug emptied his backpack of all but the long-handled hammer and a flashlight. He sat on the edge of his bed and waited for his family to go still in theirs. He held an old paperback to provide an excuse for sitting up so strangely in case they looked in, which—Tiffany was right—they didn’t. Doug wasn’t chancing it. The book was Franny and Zooey, E.’s favorite when they’d met. She’d read it several times. Doug couldn’t understand how any book could be so good that anyone would read it even twice. It would be the same story you remembered, unless maybe the story was so confusing she’d reread what she’d missed to make sense of it or to get at the deeper meaning, neither of which sounded fun. Doug flipped through the pages. He tossed the book in his trashcan. He’d been so excited when she’d retired her copy to him, believing it was a sign E. liked him as more than a friend. All this time he’d kept the book on his nightstand to be a little closer to her, certain that all he’d needed to do to become her boyfriend was exert masterful patience.
He was still a fool.
Doug didn’t care if he was a nobody for the rest of his life. He didn’t care about what others believed him capable or deserving of. He cared about E. He cared about the wellbeing of the group, too. And he was proud of his patience, which seemed the most requisite trait as he considered two things: (1) If he had to, could he kill the Dead Man? and (2) Could a dead man be killed?
Doug relied on an ambulance’s wail to mask the sound of slipping out of his window just after 10:15. He didn’t bother to lock his bedroom door, yet he’d been deliberate about taking the book he would never read out of the trashcan and returning it to its dustless corner on his nightstand.
14
Smoke rose from the valley.
Doug coughed under the arched gateway of half-dead trees to Bachelor’s Grove and pictured his friends spit-roasted, crisp. Without a flashlight, he braved the steep path. He didn’t want to give away his approach. His fingertips strained for familiar landmarks in the dark—a remnant of fall leaves overhead, a V of trunks worn slick. The rough corridor of stone handholds guided him into the clearing. He’d been right about John, and it was time to act. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.
In the murk across the creek, a fire glowed under the Big Tree. Had the group gathered early and made a wild bonfire? The firelight was not trapped by the pit, Doug saw. Waist-high flames licked up the trunk of the Big Tree. He stopped and squinted against the light, unable to spot his friends anywhere. Smoke billowed heavenward and shadows quaked in the high branches. He searched the edges for the silhouette of a bent and emaciated figure, the Dead Man’s shape.
Doug flipped his backpack around and wore it front-wise like armor. He did so frantically, not thinking too much about it, needing to unzip the bag and slip his hand inside for the hammer’s rubber grip. There was something instinctual about the security brought by the drawn weapon. He couldn’t even dwell on how terrible he was at video game combat. His senses strained and amplified his leaping heartbeat, the margins of the darkness, and the sharpness of the wood smoke.
Doug stepped from the trail toward the burning tree. His elbow trembled though the evening was not chilly. He was going to kill someone, beat in their brains like in a zombie movie until the twitching stopped. Or an athletically superior killer was going to down him, separate him into two pieces, as Erika had been separated.
Life isn’t a videogame, he thought and was slowed to a pace that would take him an hour or more to reach the fire. His fear manifested as a swift current, and it took great effort to move upstream. Doug considered the finger of glacial ice that had pushed through the valley a bazillion years ago, clearing out all remains of plant and animal life or trapping the most insistent in a similar hell. His was the same battle, another life form against nothingness.
Take another step and you’ll be a plucked little ducky, fear said.
Doug lowered the hammer. He stopped and shielded his eyes to spare the world from the humiliating tears that rushed forth—
But not before he saw a figure step out from behind the Big Tree. Amorphous fabric billowed against the flames. A long blade glinted in one hand. The cloaked figure stalked through the trees toward the original crime scene. It could be John, though the confidence and power in its stride was unfamiliar.
Doug coughed. He’d drawn a breath of smoke and spittle, and couldn’t help it. He clamped his mouth with one hand and stepped back. A branch cracked under his heel. The black-sheeted ghost scanned the valley. The figure had a wavy outline from the flames that made it difficult to tell if it creeped away or closer. No—the figure was stopped and faced in his direction. It’d spotted him.
Doug collapsed. Someone tackled the boy from behind. Ran into him, really. But the impact felt like a tackle, and he shrieked and kicked at his attacker—for the distance and time to—groping for—on his feet—the hammer rising—on Tiffany and Alex.
“Whoa, what’d you do, genius?” Tiffany laughed. She and Alex jogged ahead to assess the damage.
“Stop! He—it—Tiff!” Doug called after them.
They crossed the creek bridge. The girls were seconds from their death at the campsite.
Doug lurched forward. To face off against the Dead Man, who’d stolen his best friend and was leading the others to an early grave, was one thing. But it wasn’t John. Was it? Terror broke Doug to sniveling just to think of the knife-wielder’s nearness. His imagination ran: it was an enormous man; John seated on another kid’s shoulders; a lean devil with neatly folded wings. His nose leaked hot strings that stuck to his shirtsleeve like melted cheese. He wiped his face over and over to regain composure, knowing he had to help his friends. Tiffany and Alex were at the fire now. He didn’t see the cloaked figure. With painful clarity, Doug did see that he didn’t love Tiffany Dennys. If he did, he couldn’t have let her go ahead without him. Only alone, knowing the killer could be anywhere (even right beside him), did he go to them, not in support, but cowardice.
The fire wasn’t as bad as his imagination had painted it. The flames licked high, but the Big Tree’s trunk hadn’t caught. Logs crossed at its base had been left to burn. Tiffany and Alex separated them with fallen branches and pushed each carefully into the fire pit. Doug turned a circle as they worked, watching the bushes for movement, his hammer out limply.
The trunk of the Big Tree was scorched black about eight feet high. The image of Erika was charred, as well as vandalized—where her abdomen used to be, two deep, deliberate cuts marked the tree in the form of a steeply sloping peak, like: /
“By the state of these logs,” Alex’s quizzical eyes lifted to the shadows around them, “the fire was started no more than ten minutes ago. The killer could still be here.”
Tiffany cupped her hands into a bullhorn and cried, “You better run!”
“I saw him,” Doug said.
Alex asked where exactly, unfazed by the news. Doug pointed at the ground beneath his feet.
Noticing his blotchy face, Tiffany took his hand.
“Who were these kids, genius?”
He said it was just one person “in a cloak.”
“A cloak?”
“Are you positive it wasn’t
a baggy hoodie?” Alex asked.
“I think so. He had a long knife—”
“Shit. You sound like John right now,” Tiffany said.
“Which hand was the man holding the knife in?” Alex asked.
“The left. No … I don’t know, now.”
The rest of the group arrived soon after: John and E. together, and Josué and Greg together. Doug described the cloaked figure. There was talk of hunting for him in the trees. If still nearby, he was likely well hidden, perhaps watching from a perch along the valley’s ridge. The book was missing, stolen from their secret spot behind the tree.
“They’re trying pretty hard to scare us,” Tiffany said.
“They feed on fear.” John’s back was turned to the group.
“Correct,” Alex said, “that’s what our tormentor would have us believe.”
“It’s fucking working,” Greg said.
“Why attack Erika, again and again?” E.’s voice faltered, though her eyes were dry. “Why not come for us?”
“We outmatch him,” Alex said. “Or them. Probably we’re not the only ones who are afraid.”
“But they’ve killed somebody before,” Greg said.
“I saw the knife,” Doug said. “It had to be—”
Tiffany hugged the dork how a parent preemptively embraces a fallen child. Doug didn’t cry. The shock didn’t wash from his face, either.
•
Alex shrugged. Each shoulder lifted awkwardly, independent of the other, at different speeds and directions, until approximately similar in height, simulating disaffectedness. Only simulating because Alex had a theory—a fine working theory along a reasonable timeline of events both confirmed and speculated—of what the previous group, the ones who had come before them, had wanted, how they’d operated, and what had soured relations between them. The sole remaining mystery was the identity of the perpetrators, and to let on now wouldn’t be conducive to solving that mystery, as the entire group had not yet been ruled out as collaborators or informants: Josué, little chance. E., little chance. John, probable. Greg, probable. Doug, not very probable. Tiffany, not very probable, either, having phased into the negative an hour ago. What of the likelihood that this deduction was influenced by personal feelings? Not probable at all, but one hundred percent certain.
Tiffany had spent all afternoon with Alex. The girl appeared at the Karahalios residence not long after the group had adjourned from the campsite that morning. Alex’s mother answered the doorbell, not an uncommon enough occurrence to disrupt Alex’s social media research on one Rocco “Rocky” Lordes, who’d been expelled from Palos Hills Junior High and sent to Paragon Preparatory after multiple sexual harassment incidents, acts known as “sharking,” and finally, it was said, he’d set fire to an American flag and sprinted down the hall with it toward the principal’s office to deliver him the news that the world was “good and dead” (before reaching the office, the janitor had doused him with a mop bucket of dirty water). By then, the laughter coming from the Karahalioses’ living room had reached the volume of an authentic disturbance, and Alex was forced to investigate.
“Alexie, your good friend is here!” Mother said in singsong.
She and Tiffany occupied separate ends of the white leather couch, their legs tucked similarly. Both wore tight fitting sweaters with white bottoms, Mother in Capri pants, Tiffany in shorts, probably a trend. Alex looked back and forth between the women. They showed teeth as they smiled. Alex assessed their camaraderie as high and began to calculate the odds that Tiffany Dennys and her mother were azygotic clones.
Tiffany gave a short wave. “Hey, kiddo,” she said. Her eyes scrunched, thrilled by her own surprise visit.
“Mother, what’s going on?” Alex sensed another plot deepening.
“Gosh, you’re a Sensitive Sally today,” the woman said. “I swear, the most obvious things remain invisible to her—the unkempt hair, that dowdy sweater. Then the school friend she’s been hiding all year appears, and suspicion abounds.” A lawyer, Mother packed an argument into every observation.
“I’m here to see you, silly,” Tiffany said.
“See?” Mother said. “I need to finish up some work, girls. So why don’t you two talk in your room. Alexie, you really should have more good ideas of this sort. And open up a window in that dungeon. A draft of spring air would do you well. I’ll fix cappuccinos. You do drink cappuccinos?”
“All the time,” Tiffany said with her back to Mother, who didn’t see the girl wink and mouth the word “dungeon.”
Then Alex and Tiffany Dennys were alone together, with the bedroom door shut and cappuccinos, which Mother never made for Alex. Tiffany rifled through the short shelf of paperbacks beside the bed.
“I wish I could be like you,” Tiffany said. “Even the stack on your desk is in alphabetical order. Eh … no, I don’t. But I respect it—a lot.”
“Why were you trying to make a good impression on my mother?”
“To get us some time alone, Silly Sally.”
“Sensitive Sally.”
“Be whatever you want, Alexie.”
“I want to know what you’re after.”
“Sit with me.” Tiffany pulled Alex onto the bed without waiting for an answer. “I want to ask you something. Wow, it’s hot in here.” The girl fanned herself for two seconds, then pulled off her sweater.
Alex’s gaze lingered on Tiffany’s bra, radiating neon pink through her T-shirt where the curves pressed tightest. If working for the killer, a direct threat or attack would not serve her well here. Tiffany was clearly enacting a stratagem. Her weapon of choice? Her body. Connecting the Xs and Ys to figure the problem of what she could be after, however, proved difficult. Alex’s brain began to misfire, interrupted by curiosity of a sort inconsequential to the case.
The girl told another long story with the same earnestness she’d exhibited last night. She hadn’t returned home after the woods today. She was feeling awful, she said. Greg had invited her to lunch with Josué, but she didn’t want to go anywhere with those boys, any boys. Not even Doug, who, she insisted, was not her boyfriend, so not to worry. They’d had sex last night, which had only made it clear that she was done with boys for now, you know?
“I have no interest in boys,” Alex said. “What I want to know is—”
“So that’s what I wanted to ask you.” Her hand landed casually on Alex’s thigh. “How do you get by without anyone? Boys. I’m not trying to be a bitch here.”
“I—” Alex wanted to discuss the case. More interestingly, Tiffany was asking questions that’d been there before she’d posed them. “I don’t want boys.”
“Want to date them.”
“Correct.”
“Or to fuck them?”
“That follows.”
Tiffany moved her thumb in a circular motion on the inside of Alex’s leg.
“I think I understand,” she said.
Sensual touch was unlike the rush of dopamine released after winning a state math competition or working through a problem said to be beyond one’s age or ability. It was a fine, firming feeling, warm and almost funny.
Alex stopped her wrist when it rose further. “You don’t.”
Tiffany went stiff. Her neck blushed through her tan.
“I don’t mean that to hurt you,” Alex clarified.
Tiffany pulled back the hair that curtained her eyes and laughed short. “It’s all good,” she said. “I’ve just never been rejected like this before. Rejected period.”
“By females?”
“Easier to kiss than boys.”
Tiffany watched for Alex’s reaction. Tiffany’s eyes became hollow with desire, a second offensive. Suspended in waiting, she again asked to access Alex’s body in the form of a kiss.
“Fine. Pure experiment. Then you answer my questions,” Alex said and leaned in.
“Well, jeez.” Tiffany got up. “Now I’m all nervous and shit.”
She rubbed her hands and reseated
closer. She stroked Alex’s legs, and they kissed.
They mashed lips with a split of pain. Apologies were exchanged. Then Tiffany came in slowly and edged Alex’s mouth with patient kisses. After a while, her tongue coaxed her partner’s lips to part, prodded inside, and both widened their legs and mouths. Alex met the wetness of the girl and understood then that sex was about opening. There was some exquisite pleasure other people experienced in baring their insides, a ritual of great labor, it seemed, to feel right with the world. The act was empty of import for Alex. The result was no greater intimacy, no opening, nothing except for the terror of incompleteness, of maybe not having anything special locked away inside.
“This is doing nothing for you,” Tiffany said after a minute.
Cross-legged on the bed, Alex looked down at the gap between leg and lap. She took Tiffany’s hand. “I appreciate that you want to make out with me. I know it’s how you express yourself. But there’s something wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong. You just want … something else.”
“No. You were right. I don’t want anyone.”
“So? That’s freaking amazing.”
“It’s not normal,” Alex said.
“OK, it’s not,” Tiffany said. “But who wants normal?”
Alex’s thinking seized up, refused to entertain the hypothetical.
“Talk about not normal,” Tiffany said, “I want to quit wanting everyone. Wanting them to want me. Wanting in general. Seriously, it’s like a curse.” She rubbed Alex’s arm, for comfort this time. “We’re both cursed.”
“The ends of a spectrum,” Alex said.
“… hate the game.”
“… middle is bliss.”
“Hey, I tried to meet your middle.”
They laughed, and their eyes met. Each shared genuine affection for the other for the first time.
Alex’s mother knocked and the girls jumped and straightened their creased clothes. She poked her head in and asked could they handle another cappuccino. Coffee aged a young lady’s teeth and nerves, but the addiction was requisite to keep ahead of the wolves, and they might as well start running now. Both were still working on their first, they said and thanked her. When the door had closed, they talked in whispers.
Into that Good Night Page 16