Darkborn

by Matthew J. Costello

  Something happened to Narrio.

  Things were different.

  And as Will looked at them, he thought: Now there are four of us . . .

  * * *

  They gathered by the shed, even though they knew that Narrio’s head was somewhere yards away. Sitting in its own blood, in the darkness.

  We don’t want to see that, Will thought.

  The body had smashed into the shed and then bounced backward so that now the stalk stretched out, pointing to the sea. A steady steam of red spread from it.

  “Oh, God,” Kiff said. “Oh, God, poor Narrio, poor fucking Mikey.”

  The stream just grew and grew.

  So much blood in a body.

  And Will looked up. There was a new smell now.

  This sweet metallic smell mixing with the wood and oil.

  To the left, one of those freaky faces looked down at them. The Steeplechase man. Happy at their plight. Happy at everything.

  Sorry, Michael, Will thought, apologizing. I guess we shouldn’t have come here. I guess we should have gone to the dance. And you could still play your trumpet. And laugh at Kiff’s dumb jokes, and bust your ass studying calculus because it’s such a bitch for you.

  “Should we get him . . . his — shit! His head?” Whalen said. His voice came from miles away.

  “What?”

  “The head. Should we get it, bring it here?”

  The stream was closer to Will. He stepped back a few more feet. It looked black and shiny.

  Will laughed. What a stupid idea, what a silly idea. Yeah. We’ll go pick up the head and try to put it back on.

  Make Mikey as good as new.

  His eyes stung. And Will wiped them. Why do my eyes sting? But he felt that they were wet. Wet, and when the trail ran down to his upper lip, he tasted the salt.

  He turned away.

  There were sirens. A few blocks away.

  And when he turned away, he saw Tim. In the shadows with Kiff, pulling him aside, talking to him, whispering.

  What’s going on? Will wondered. What the hell are they doing?

  “Man, I don’t know,” Whalen said, still considering what he should do. “Maybe we should —”

  Kiff shook his head. Will heard Tim raise his voice. His arm held Kiff, tall, lanky Kiff, close to Tim’s head.

  Will took a step.

  Tim looked up to him. Tim’s glasses caught some dull reflected light.

  Maybe he thinks I’m responsible, Will thought. That I could have saved Narrio.

  But I couldn’t, he thought.

  I couldn’t.

  More sirens. Louder, closer.

  Tim walked over to him and Whalen.

  While Kiff stayed in the shadows.

  “It’s all worked out,” Tim said. His voice calm, in control.

  Will sniffed. His nose was running. He wiped at it.

  “What do you mean, ‘worked out’? What are you saying?”

  Tim nodded. “It’s okay.”

  “Okay?” Will laughed. “You gonna put Mikey back together again? You going to make him come back to life? What the hell do you — ?”

  Will was screaming.

  And Tim came up to him and grabbed Will’s jacket, his prep school blue blazer. Tim grabbed it hard and shook him.

  “We’re all fucked if we stay here. You understand? We’re all fucked.”

  Will was crying. Thinking: I want this over. I want this not to have happened. I want this to be yesterday, so I can decide not to do it. Please, God, please.

  And he felt sick with himself because he didn’t care about Mike Narrio now, he just cared about himself, about his terrible feelings.

  Tim plastered his face right in front of him. “We’ve got to get out of here. You understand — ?”

  Will shook his head.

  He understood nothing now. Nothing.

  Tim backed away.

  And said: “Kiff said he’ll stay. He’ll stay and say it was just him and Narrio. Just the fucking two of them. He’s suspended already. He’ll fucking do it, Dunnigan.”

  Will looked over to Kiff, standing in the shadows.

  “What?” he said.

  And thought: What is this? Kiff’s life is halfway in the toilet. So he’ll take the complete plunge?

  “We’ve got to move!” Tim said.

  “Kiff?” Will said. “Kiff, what — ?”

  Kiff came out of the shadows. His face was milky white marked by the thousand specks of his freckles.

  “Go,” he said. “Get the hell out of here.”

  Whalen grabbed Will’s arm.

  “C’mon. We’re leaving.”

  Tim and Whalen backed away, cutting through the park, back into the building.

  Will stood there.

  “Kiff,” he said. “You don’t —”

  The sirens were there.

  “You better go,” Kiff said.

  And, asking God to forgive him, Will ran away.

  * * *

  17

  There was a ten-block walk from Will’s subway stop on Flatbush Avenue to his family’s house.

  The streets were empty, deserted for his walk. He was alone, carrying his books, the strap all rubbery, the metal clasp cool.

  Schoolbooks. Big test next week. Gotta study.

  Big test. And maybe a funeral.

  He walked slowly.

  A car gunned its way up Avenue H. He heard somebody making out with a girl in a doorway. Heard their voices, low and sweet. He looked at them, and kept walking.

  I’m back from the dance, he thought.

  He imagined unlocking the front door and making his way quietly upstairs.

  Hoping that his parents would be asleep.

  Because if they woke up, they’d ask him.

  How was it? Have a good time? Enjoy the dance?

  And he’d have to smile and say yeah.

  A real nice time.

  His steps echoed on the deserted streets. The trees, still full of leaves, rustled as he walked by. He kept taking deep breaths, trying to purge his lungs of the air, the smells of the water, the wood, the sweet smell of blood.

  We didn’t look at Narrio’s head, he thought.

  We should have looked at Narrio’s head.

  Because, because . . . now.

  Yes, now I’ll see it for the rest of my life. Imagining what it looked like. For the rest of my life.

  No one woke up when he got home.

  No one asked any questions.

  That all came later.

  * * *

  18

  With a macabre sense of timing, the police interviewed them just before the funeral, right at the school.

  One by one they were taken in, Tim first, then Whalen. Will sat outside the headmaster’s office waiting for his turn.

  They had their story. There will be no problem, Tim had said, as Will left that night and got onto the subway.

  Now when Tim came out he walked straight ahead, and Will wondered whether he had cracked.

  Whalen came out crying.

  Then they called for Will.

  The headmaster’s office was filled with books, a dark red mahogany desk, matching red leather chairs. The headmaster, a small man, stood at the back. He introduced two men, detectives, who sat in the front.

  They smiled at Will. Will immediately forgot their names.

  They asked him about that night.

  Will started talking. Slowly, carefully.

  One detective, a rumpled-looking man in a too-small brown suit, flipped through a spiral notepad.

  “You — you saw Jim Kiff buy the alcohol, son?”

  Will nodded. Then he shook his head. “No, I mean we were outside. Kiff — Jim Kiff went inside and bought it.”

  The other detective, a young guy, cleared his throat. “And you drank it down at Manhattan Beach?”

  Will nodded.

  “You finished the bottle?” the rumpled man asked.

  Will nodded again.

 
“Could you please answer aloud,” the young detective said, frowning. “For the record,” he said, smiling a bit.

  “Yes. We drank it there.”

  Now the rumpled one nodded. “And can you tell me what the drawings on the rocks were about?” He dug a sheet of paper out of a folder. He passed it to Will.

  Will looked at the circle, the star.

  But they had their story about that too.

  Sure.

  It was a game. A drinking game. Something involving walking straight lines after drinking a lot.

  Will handed the paper back.

  The rumpled detective looked at his partner and then at the headmaster.

  “Will, please be very careful to tell all the truth, just as you remember it.”

  Will turned around to Father Bryant. His face was locked in a grimace.

  I may be in deep shit over this anyway, Will thought.

  It wouldn’t be the first time that a St. Jerry’s Prep senior got his degree from Midwood Public High School.

  “Yes, Father,” he said.

  “Will, what happened after you were finished drinking? After you finished playing your game?”

  Will cleared his throat.

  “We left the beach. And — and I wanted to go home. So did Tim . . . and Ted Whalen.”

  “But Jim Kiff and Mike Narrio didn’t?”

  Will shook his head, then he remembered the detective’s instructions. “No, sir. They had drunk more than the rest of us. They were pretty high. Kiff wanted to go to Coney Island, to do stuff . . .”

  And Will thought about the men, the corncob men that saw them at Coney Island. Maybe they’d be found. Maybe they could be witnesses. And the police would learn that there were five of them at Coney Island. Five of them, walking up to Steeplechase.

  The rumpled detective nodded. “So what did you do?” he asked.

  Will looked him right in the eye.

  “I went home, sir. I went home and went to bed.”

  The rumpled detective pursed his lips. He looked at the sketch of the pentagram inside the circle. He slid it back inside his manila folder.

  Then he smiled at Will.

  “We may have more questions for you later, son. But that’s all for now.”

  Will sat there for a second, unsure of what to do. He turned to Father Bryant. “Should I go?”

  The steely-eyed headmaster came forward.

  “Yes, Will.”

  Will got up.

  “I will see you and the other boys tomorrow,” the priest said.

  Will nodded. Tomorrow he’d find out what was going to happen.

  He walked out of the office, straight to the school chapel, where his class was already seated, waiting for the funeral service to begin.

  Will didn’t see Whalen or Tim during the service, though he was sure that they were there. And he didn’t see Kiff.

  Because Kiff never came back to school.

  It would be a long time before he ever saw Jim Kiff again. And he and Tim and Whalen weren’t kicked out. They were given what was called an in-school DA — disciplinary action. They were forbidden any involvement in extracurriculars. They were forbidden to speak with each other. They ate lunch at a special, supervised table.

  And even when that ended, they didn’t talk to each other. As if the last thing in the world that they wanted to do was talk to each other . . .

  Will started getting to school just in time for classes, and then leaving as soon as the day ended.

  No one bothered him anymore. Not D’Angelo, not anybody.

  Everyone knew that there was something wrong with his story. All their stories.

  He didn’t cry at the funeral. He couldn’t imagine that Mike Narrio was really in the white box with gold handrails. Mike Narrio was still at Steeplechase.

  And hearing Narrio’s mother wail, her terrible keening filling the small chapel, was too horrible to allow Will the solace of crying.

  He knelt and stood, and sat and knelt again, staring straight ahead, listening to the Latin mass, staring at the coffin.

  Thinking: He’s got his head back now.

  Only one time did Will feel as if he might snap.

  At Communion, when the entire school received.

  And while Will sat in his pew, awaiting his turn, Mrs. Narrio came back from the railing, the host still in her mouth. Her husband supported her. She walked funny, with a small limp, as if there were something wrong with one foot.

  Will kept staring forward.

  But the woman slowed. She slowed, and she stared at him. Right at him. Will felt beads of sweat on his brow.

  Will turned just a bit.

  To see her looking at him, her face a mask of horror and hate.

  Her eyes were dry now.

  No more tears, Will guessed.

  Then she moved on.

  And Will tried to breathe, to make the air flow in and out of his lungs evenly.

  But he gasped at the air, filled with the smell of incense, the smell of hundreds of small votive candles, the stifling smell of boys’ wool suits and scented vestments.

  Later, he’d think of this as the moment that he lost his faith.

  While Father Bryant rambled on about Michael’s life, his’ love for his parents, his church. What a good boy he was. How he liked playing the trumpet.

  Will waited for the celebrant to criticize just one thing …

  Michael’s choice of friends.

  But that hoped-for penance didn’t come.

  And, after a while, Will imagined that he was alone inside the chapel. Just him and the coffin and the priest rambling on, forever, into eternity.

  They gave Mike Narrio his own page in the yearbook.

  He smiled out from page 3, under the heading “Dedication.”

  Will didn’t need the picture to see Mike as he was, or what happened to him.

  It was the sixties.

  And a lot of things were about to happen to Will.

  But Mike Narrio, the beach, that night, were always there, in Will’s thoughts, in twisted nightmares, well into college … and beyond.

  Until it all started again.

  * * *

  12:08

  * * *

  19

  I’ve been tricked, Will thought. I got nervous and hid inside that coffee shop and now it’s way past midnight.

  I lost track of the time.

  That’s ironic, now, isn’t it? Lost track of the time.

  He stopped at the corner of Park and 30th, just up from the black building, all dark glass and steel. The black glass and steel building gobbled all the light.

  Will shifted the bag in his hands. There was no doorman outside. It was an office building.

  Except people came and went all the time, working around the clock. Industrious people, people trying to get ahead, to crawl above the rat race.

  Will knew that. James told him that.

  And he’s in there, James said. I saw him.

  Will looked at his watch.

  He pressed a small button, and a tiny light illuminated the LCD face: 12:09. And then . . . 12:10.

  He’s in there, Will thought. If I haven’t screwed up, if I’m not too late, he’s in there.

  Twenty-seven years later …

  Three times 3 times 3.

  And that equals 27.

  A cube. A perfect number.

  Mathematically pure.

  That was more of the irony, Will thought. Three to the third power.

  Twenty-seven years . . .

  He heard steps behind him.

  Will spun around, trying to snap out of his reverie.

  It was just another hooker. He knew that just to look at her. Didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that. She walked up to him, dressed in ultra-tight shorts, shimmering yellow. And a tank top that exposed her midriff. Full, red lips.

  Will looked at her.

  And guessed that she couldn’t be more than thirteen, maybe fourteen years old.

 
; “Hi, babe,” she said. “Want to go out?”

  Not much older than my daughter, Will thought. For one terrible second he imagined her out here, part of the chain of money and coke that ran from this corner to the giant blow plantations of Colombia.

  Will moved his bag from one hand to the other. It felt heavy, a constant drag on his arm. Heavy, heavier. He looked back to the building. No one came out.

  And no one went in.

  She took another step forward, her legs coltish and lean. “Whaddya say?”

  Then he saw her look down at his bag. Good, he thought. She’s not a total idiot. She’s dimly aware that there might be something bad going on out here, that there’s —

  “What’s in there?” She grinned. Nervous. “Homework?”

  He nodded, thinking that he must look like any other forty-year-old guy with an attaché, looking for a cheap thrill, trying to chase away those midlife blues.

  There’s only one cure for them.

  Only one . . .

  She licked her lips. “We can have a nice party,” she purred. More steps. And Will found himself backing up, against the wall. Another quick turn to check the building. A van blocked his view, then it passed, slowing, another potential customer checking out the action as the girl worked hard to sell herself to Will.

  I should just tell her to get lost, Will thought. Take a hike.

  Tell her I’m a cop.

  I’m shopping for something else tonight.

  But he saw her eyes, still clear, still not completely fogged up by whatever hellish life she was leading.

  Will walked closer to her. His bag swung on his arm.

  “Look, don’t you know what’s been happening out here?”

  The girl squinted her eyes as if struggling to make sense of what he was saying. “Don’t you read the papers? Don’t you know what could happen to you?”

  She grinned.

  “All I know, honey, is that my man” — she turned, and pointed toward Madison —”is right down there, right there, watching over me.” She smiled. “I’m protected.”

  Will nodded.

  “Protected,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’m —”

  He turned back to the building.