Darkborn

by Matthew J. Costello

  And it was all there, in Tim’s words, his tone of voice. An acceptance, a sense of moving on , past whatever had happened that day. Will smiled, trying to pick up the mood tossed off by Tim as if it were a gently lobbed tennis ball . . . to be picked up and returned.

  He walked over to the booth, which was engulfed by a cloud of smoke.

  “What the hell happened?” Tim said. “Old Gately make you stand on one leg?”

  Will grinned and he sat down beside his friend. “No, but he sure the hell let D’Angelo off the hook.” Will shook his head. “Football practice. But at least Gately gave D’Angelo’s head a good rattle before letting him go.”

  “The Deadly Gately Blender! Great.’”

  Now Will looked up at the others. Narrio was smiling, listening. Mike never had much to say. But Whalen still wore his usual disgusted look that seemed less a pose and more the outward sign of one nasty kid. Will looked around, over to the counter and Mr. Koko, then back to the others.

  “Where’s Kiff?”

  Whalen took a drag on his cigarette and sneered., “Gone to check something. Told us to wait here. For you .” Whalen rolled his eyes. “Who knows what the hell he’s up to . . .”

  Narrio nodded. “I have to go soon.”

  It seemed as though Kiff’s great surprise was petering out. But then Tim tapped his arm.

  “Whoa. There he is,” Tim said. Will turned around and there was Kiff, dodging the traffic on Ocean Parkway. He looked demented, waving at them in midstream, grinning a giant smile surrounded by his mess of freckles.

  A strange-looking guy, that was for sure.

  A car nearly hit him and Kiff banged on the hood — they all laughed — and Will saw him yelling something, his mouth open.

  “What an animal,” Whalen muttered.

  Then Kiff ran the rest of the way, up to the door, and on into the luncheonette.

  He came over to them, barely able to contain himself, so excited because of his secret.

  “Will, Tim, Whalen, Mikey . . . great! You’re all here.”

  “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here and all that good shit, Kiff,” Whalen said. “Can you please get on with it?”

  Kiff raised a finger — a lecturer pausing in mid-thought. “Let me get a Coke.”

  He flew over to Mr. Kokovinis, who looked spooked by Kiff. He recognized a crazy person when he saw one. The man went to the fountain, pulled up a Coke glass that was still wet from a recent washing. (If plunging the glass into semi-soapy water and then dunking it under something almost equally soapy for a rinse could be called washing.)

  Mr. Koko pulled back on the spigot and Coke gushed out.

  “I can’t believe we’re sitting here, waiting for him,” Whalen said. “Watch, it will be nothing.”

  Kiff grinned at them, then his face looked surprised. He dug into his pants pockets, pants held up by a belt but still the cuffs dangled to the floor, scraping at it. Kiff went over to the jukebox.

  Tim slapped Will’s arm. “What? He’s going to play music?”

  And sure enough the machine — normally quiet — kicked into life and the Beatles’ “Help” thumped out of it.

  “Oh, groan,” Whalen said.

  Kiff picked. up his drink from Koko and swooped toward them, sending some of the Coke sloshing over the side.

  And Kiff sat and licked at his hand.

  “What’s with the fucking music, Kiff?”

  Kiff took another lick at his wrist.

  “God!” Tim said in mock disgust.

  Kiff reached out and squeezed Will’s wrist, and then Tim’s. And that made Will think about some of the things he thought about Kiff. Some of the things the others said about him, half joking, when he wasn’t there.

  Will wondered just how strange Jim Kiff was.

  Kiff grinned, feigning shrewdness. “I don’t want anybody else to hear this, guys.” His face looked serious all of a sudden. “ Anybody . . .”

  Kiff’s face looked just too weird, like the guy in Dracula who gets to feed on bugs, overjoyed at discovering an errant moth.

  Will turned and looked out the windows of the luncheonette. The sky had turned cloudy, thick with gunmetal-gray clouds. It might rain, he thought. Maybe I should get going, hit the subway, beat the storm.

  But then Kiff began his story.

  “I was at Scott’s home for my advisor’s meeting-”

  Will nodded. Every senior met with one of the three advisors for college counseling, career guidance, and all that other bullshit. The lucky ones got Mr. Edward Scott. The others got somebody else.

  “Hope you kept your fly zipped while you were there,” Tim said, his voice louder than even John Lennon’s wailing.

  “Oh, fuck you, Hanna,” Kiff came back.

  In the great world of post-pubescence, Will knew, everyone was suspected of being homosexual . . . especially a male teacher who lived alone.

  “Anyway,” Kiff said, struggling to regain the momentum of his story, “old Scott got drunk.”

  “What else is new?” Whalen said.

  Kiff turned to Whalen. “He was plastered. You saw him. You were there just before me,” Kiff said.

  Whalen nodded.

  “Get on with it, Kiff,” Tim said. Will saw Mike Narrio look at his. watch. Narrio’s parents were Old World. Real garlic eaters, Tim joked. And they liked their Michael home , doing homework, practicing his trumpet.

  Will and his friends were doing their best to be the bad influence in his life.

  “I mean, he was blotto, gang. I was pretty well wrecked too . . . Jeez, we were mixing sherry and brandy.”

  “He let you drink with him?”

  “Sure, he was too far gone to care.”

  Whalen spoke again. “All right, so you had a few drinks with old Scott. Tell us something that we haven’t all done.”

  Will looked at Whalen. Thinking: I’ve never had a drink with Scott. There was something about Scott that scared him. He might not be homosexual, but he was pretty damned eccentric.

  Whenever Will spoke to Scott he thought: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

  “But that’s just it, Whalen, my man. He passed out. Flat out in his living room, muttering garbage about William Blake and poetic realism and throwing the cup at the altar.”

  “Oh, no. Not that shit!” Tim said, laughing. He dug out another cigarette. Tim was loving this. This kind of event — people completely out of it — was Tim’s element.

  Except — except . . . Will didn’t remember Tim ever being out of control.

  “What shit?” Kiff said.

  “Scott has this thing,” Tim said. “The Church’s teaching on yanking the crank —”

  “Beating the meat,” Whalen added, grinning.

  Kiff looked lost.

  “You see, Scott says that the Church is out to lunch, because it compares the onanistic act of spilling one’s seed with dumping a chalice of consecrated blood onto the ground. Drives him nuts.”

  “I never heard him say that,” Narrio said.

  Tim shook his head. “Last year, Mikey. You were out of class that day. It must have been National Pizza Day.”

  Everyone, including Narrio, laughed.

  “Yeah, well,” Kiff said, trying to regain the floor. “He was out, gone. So I decided to nose around a bit.”

  “You what?” Will said.

  Kiff turned to him and Will smelled Kiff’s foul breath. The guy needed a refresher course on human hygiene. Coke, fries, the occasional Devil Dog. But was there any toothbrush action in the guy’s routine? Will doubted it.

  “I looked around his house. Why not? It’s filled with books, papers, all sorts of neat stuff. A really great wine cellar.”

  “Jeez, you spied on him!” Whalen said.

  “Right!” Kiff grinned. “And guess what I found’”

  For a second, no one said anything. Because, Will figured, nobody had an idea.

  “I got it,” Tim said. “You found his mother, in a wheelchair. All dri
ed up . . . Norman,” he added, laughing. “Norman, put me down’”

  Will laughed, but he saw that Kiff wasn’t enjoying this. His story wasn’t getting him the respect he felt it deserved.

  Kiff made a fist. “No, Tim. That’s not what I found. I found a closet. And then, behind the closet, a fucking secret door’!”

  Tim raised his eyebrows.

  And Will saw Whalen look up.

  Narrio looked at his watch — quickly — then back to Kiff. He had their interest now.

  “Go on,” Tim said.

  “Yeah, a secret door right behind his little wine cellar. It looked ajar — as if he had just been there and had the door open, and was too fucking drunk to close it. I opened it. But I couldn’t see too well. There was no light. But I reached in, and then I felt what was there.”

  Kiff waited, letting everyone hang there, blowing in the breeze.

  Will thought he heard a rumble outside. Damn storm is coming, he thought. And I’ve got no raincoat, no umbrella . . . nothing.

  The song on the jukebox changed. The Rolling Stones jumped in with “Get off My Cloud.”

  Seemed appropriate.

  “My eyes got used to the dark. It smelled like hell in there. And I could just about make out that there were books, shelves of them . . .”

  “And?” Tim said, licking his lips, smoke whispering out of his nostrils like a sleeping dragon.

  “Tim, it was fucking unreal.” Kiff looked to the others.

  “I pulled a few of the books out. And damn, he had something called The Book of Enoch . The fuckin’ Book of Enoch . Do you know what the hell that is?”

  Will expected everyone to shake their head no.

  But Whalen nodded.

  “Yeah? So? Big deal,” Whalen said.

  Kiff reared back. “What, Whalen? The Book of Enoch . How many copies are there in the whole world? Three, four?”

  “So? He’s a book collector,” Whalen said.

  Will couldn’t wait anymore. “Would someone mind telling me what The Book of Enoch is?”

  Kiff turned to Will, grabbed his arm. “Just one of the most ancient books of alchemy and occultism ever, Will, my boy. It’s called the fucking Black Bible. Shit, it’s still on the Vatican’s top ten proscribed list.”

  “But can you dance to it?” Tim said.

  No one laughed.

  “And what else?” Will said.

  “There was a lot of books. Some of the spines felt as if they’d crumble away in my hands. But I saw two more titles that I knew. Two more major books in the world of the occult — A-number-one tracts for the old dark forces.”

  “Shit,” Tim said, “you sound like Father Williamson having one of his visionary attacks in the middle of mass.”

  “Don’t laugh, Tim. These are incredible books.” Kiff licked his lips. And Will — for the first time-was scared of Kiff.

  He looked gone . . .

  And where Kiff was, Will didn’t want to follow.

  “So what’s the big deal?” Will asked, knowing just how unconvincing he sounded.

  Mr. Kokovinis started over to their table.

  Kiff — with eyes in the back of his head, apparently — shook his head to Will and started slurping at what was now an empty glass of soda.

  “You-a boys want some more?” Koko said none too pleasantly. They always overstayed their welcome for the one soda they bought.

  Kiff popped up. “Another round, barkeep,” he said. Koko shook his head and walked away.

  “Hey, I gotta go,” Narrio said.

  Kiff shot out a hand and imprisoned Narrio.

  And Kiff — crazy, wild — told him to wait. It sounded like an order. An order to them all to wait.

  At least until he heard Kiff’s plan.

  And Will listened, thinking, What the hell does this have to do with me?

  Not knowing that the answer to that question was everything .

  * * *

  5

  Nobody had any Coca-Cola left by the time Kiff wrapped up his pitch. And Will watched Kiff sit back, just like a carnival huckster, to wait for the suckers to take the bait.

  Kiff made his plan simple, so simple that it was hard to find a reason to say no. Mr. Scott has these books, he explained. And these books have ceremonies, rites, for doing things.

  Cool stuff.

  “So let’s get one and try it,” Kiff said.

  The jukebox went quiet.

  “How?” Tim said, dropping his cigarette butt into the dregs of the Coke.

  Narrio leaned over to Will. “I gotta go. I should have left —”

  Kiff’s voice cut in, loud, pushing away Narrio’s nervous squeaks.

  “That’s the great part,” Kiff said, looking around as if Mr. Kokovinis might actually be interested in this nonsense.

  And that’s what it was, Will knew. Nonsense. The occult, the spirit world, black magic.

  Cue Twilight Zone music, or maybe the even eerier wail that opened One Step Beyond .

  Just bullshit, stuff to talk about on hot summer nights, hanging out on the corner. Looking at a yellow moon, UFOs. King Tut’s curse. And is John Dillinger’s prick really in the Smithsonian? Bullshit. That’s all it was . . .

  “Scott’s rehearsing Hamlet. And” — Kiff fairly sputtered in excitement —”it will be a long rehearsal, until six, at least.”

  “Oh, Christ. I know where this is leading,” Whalen groaned.

  “What we do, guys, is go over there and” — Kiff took a breath —”break into Scott’s apartment. I know how to do it and —”

  Tim laughed. “Right. Breaking and entering. Just what I need on my records before I apply to Princeton. Right, Kiff. You got a real chance.”

  “No. Tim, Will — guys . It’s no big deal. Scott’s basement apartment has a back door. I saw the lock. It’s a piece of cake.”

  “You notice those things, do you?” Whalen said.

  “One of us can watch while another gets in. We won’t even take the fucking book. We’ll just copy down the instructions —”

  “Yeah,” Tim howled. “How to summon a demon. God!”

  “I gotta go,” Narrio said. And this time he pushed hard against Will.

  Will stood up.

  Maybe it was time to go.

  “Wait a second,” Kiff said. “We can do this. Test the forces of darkness,” he said, grinning. Kiff slapped a fist into his hand. “Hell, we can do it this Friday, instead of going to the stupid dance.”

  That Friday was St. Jerry’s monthly dance, and they usually all went, even though only Tim ever had a date, his steady. If he was to be believed, he was getting it regularly.

  “Not go to the dance?” Will said. “And do what?”

  Kiff stood up, his shabby trench coat flying around his body like a cape.

  “We’ll do the fucking ceremony. We’ll try to summon a spirit.” Kiff paused. “Or are you guys too punk?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tim said. “I’m terrified . Absolutely frozen with fear, Kiff. Why the hell don’t you — ?”

  “Then do it, Tim. You always have the big mouth, the big ideas. So let’s do this.”

  Tim shook his head. Will thought he was going to say something. But he didn’t.

  There was a rumble outside. Then another. Will heard the tiny specks of rain hit the glass.

  Kiff waited. Whalen lit another cigarette. Narrio picked up his book bag — the only one of them to actually use an official St. Jerome’s book bag. Bags were strictly for douchy freshmen.

  “All I need is someone to come with me now — to help me get inside. Scott’s out of the way. Then we can make plans for Friday.” He paused again. “That’s it.”

  “I suppose,” Whalen said slowly, smiling, “that you can get us some Old Grand-Dad too . . . just in case your other spirits fail to materialize.”

  “Damn straight I can,” Kiff said.

  “I can’t go with you,” Tim said. “I have to go with my old lady to meet my old man in the city.” />
  Will knew Tim was lying.

  “I — I’ll come Friday,” Narrio said, “but I have to go now. My —” He walked to the door.

  “That’s okay,” Kiff said sympathetically. Everyone knew that Narrio wasn’t the right person for Kiff’s plan.

  Will and the others said goodbye to him as he hurried away.

  The door to the luncheonette slammed . . . and then there were four.

  “ I sure as hell can’t go with you,” Whalen said. “If I don’t catch the five o’clock train, I’m fucked.”

  Whalen was prisoner to the Long Island Railroad time tables. He lived somewhere out on the island. In a real big house. He had to catch the right train.

  It was his convenient excuse.

  Then — like a play, as if it were scripted — Kiff turned to Will. And Will thought: Why didn’t I see this coming? What the hell is wrong with me that I didn’t see this screaming toward me from miles away?

  “Will, can you come?” Then all eyes were on Will.

  Like before. When he was in the shower.

  Will shook his head. “I really should go. I mean, there’s the calc test tomorrow. And, shit, it’s raining.”

  He watched their eyes, but they weren’t buying any of his excuses. They saw right to the heart of the matter.

  “Hey, c’mon, Will. You’re the only one that can go.” Kiff waited.

  Will licked his lips. His throat felt dry and tight. “I —”

  “C’mon,” Kiff pleaded.

  “Forget it,” Whalen said.

  A script. A play.

  “Forget it, because he doesn’t have the balls for it. Isn’t that true, Dunnigan?”

  Whalen looked right at him, his grin wide, a mouthful of teeth.

  “Screw you, Whalen.”

  “Got — no — balls —” Whalen said again.

  The rain came down a bit harder.

  Will looked outside the window.

  “Shit. There’s time. You can still get home for dinner,” Tim said. “Your parents don’t give a shit . . .”

  Will nodded.

  “Maybe — if you’re too scared — it’s better you didn’t do it,” Whalen said.

  Will looked at them.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”