by Blake Crouch
I tilted my seat back and listened to the wind ravish the car. Lightning blinked against the snowy dusk; thunder promptly followed.
"Orson," I said, "I want you to tell me why you killed our mother."
"You know."
He was right.
"I want you to say it. I’d have come after you for Walter’s family. Maybe just for me."
"I’m sure you would have."
"You’re an abomination. I’ve got another theory. Want to hear it?"
"Sure," he said, staring into the storm.
"Because she brought you into this world."
He looked at me like I’d caught him sniffing panties.
The temperature inside the car had already begun to plummet when I selected a box of Ritz crackers, a cylinder of provolone cheese, and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon from the stash of groceries.
"We aren’t gonna be able to drink this," I said. "No corkscrew."
"There’s a pocketknife with one on it in the glove compartment," Orson said.
Finding the Swiss army knife under a stack of road maps, I uncorked the bottle and swilled the spicy wine. Then I tore open the box of crackers and lined them up on my legs.
"You hungry?" I asked, slicing into the smoked cheese with the dull blade. "Here." Sandwiching a disk of provolone between two crackers, I placed it in his mouth. Then I lay back in my seat and watched the night come.
Once the windshield froze, the snow stuck to the glass. The wind blew so savagely that the flakes clung to every window, and within fifteen minutes, we could see nothing of the blizzard all around us. Only the constant shrieking and the cold, voracious energy confirmed its presence.
Orson noticed the bloody clothes beneath his feet.
"Andy," he said, "is that Luther’s blood?" I nodded. "Wow. Where’d you do it? Ricki’s?"
"We were supposed to meet at nine. I went at six to leave a note with the barkeep that you couldn’t make it. Luther walked in as I was getting ready to leave. If he hadn’t come early —"
"He came early because he knew something wasn’t right."
"How do you know?"
"He’s smart. But you were, too. You had your gun. Otherwise, you’d be dying right now."
"Are you sad he’s gone?"
"No. And that’s nothing against him. We did a lot together."
"Well, I’m delighted he’s dead."
Orson smiled. "He’s wasn’t all that different from you, Andy."
"Sure."
"I happened to him like I happened to you. He just took to it a little faster."
I stared at Orson, astounded.
"You know, you’ve done worse than kill me," I said. "You’ve wrecked me. You’ve taken my mother, my best friend. I can’t go home. I can’t return from this."
"No, I saved you, Andy. Your home was a sham. You no longer flit around like everyone else, blind to that black hole you call a heart. Be grateful. You now know what you’re capable of. Most people never do. But we live honestly, you and I. Truth, Andy. What did Keats say? It’s beauty. Not just pretty truth. We have black hearts, but they’re beautiful."
We devoured the entire box of crackers and most of the cheese. The wine was diluting my chary vigilance, so I slowed my consumption.
When we’d finished eating, I unzipped my fanny pack. There were two vials of Ativan remaining and two vials of Versed, but because it was the safer drug, I took the last of the Ativan.
"Andy," he said as I poked the needle into the first vial and began drawing the solution up through its hollow shaft.
"What?"
"You remember the summer they found that man under the interstate behind our house?"
"Yeah, I remember that."
Orson sat up straight and stared at me, his head cocked to one side, as though he were buried in thought. I drained the second vial and thumped the syringe. It was steadily darkening in the car — beyond twilight now.
"What do you remember?" he asked.
"Come on, man, I’m tired."
"Just tell me what you remember."
"We were twelve. It was June."
"July."
"Okay. July. Oh, yeah. Around the Fourth. In fact, it was on the Fourth when they found him. I remember that night, sitting in the backyard, holding a sparkler and seeing three police cars pull up on the curb. The officers came running through our backyard with two German shepherds. Dad was grilling hamburgers, and we watched the men disappear into the woods. A few minutes later, the dogs started going crazy and Dad said, ‘Sounds like they found whatever it is they’re looking for.’ "
Orson smiled. "Willard Bass."
"Huh?"
"That’s who they found in the tunnel."
"I can’t believe you remember his name."
"I can’t believe you don’t."
"Why would I?"
Orson swallowed, eyes asquint. "He raped me, Andy."
Thunder vibrated the glass. I stared into the half-empty bottle of wine between my legs. My fingers wrapped around the cool neck. I lifted the cabernet to my lips and let it run down my throat.
"That didn’t happen," I said. "I can look at you and —"
"And I can look at your face right now and see that you know it did."
"You’re lying."
"Then why do you have a funny feeling in your guts? Like something you haven’t touched in years is waking up in the lining of your stomach."
I took another jammy sip and set the bottle between my feet.
"Let me tell you a story," he said. "See if —"
"No. I’m giving you this so I can sleep. I’m not gonna sit here and listen to —"
"Do you have a cigarette burn on the end of your dick?"
It felt as though ants were traversing the back of my neck.
"Me, too," he said.
"That didn’t happen. I remember now. It was a story you made up after those kids found him."
"Andy."
I didn’t want to know, but I did. I sensed it had always been there, tucked away in an alley of my memory, where I could walk by and know that something awful lurked there, without ever wandering down the corridor to behold it with clarity.
"It happened late one afternoon during a thunderstorm," he said. "In a drainage tunnel that ran beneath the interstate. The water was only a couple inches deep and the tunnel was high enough for a man to walk upright in. We played there all the time.
"We’d been exploring the woods since lunch, when a line of storms blew in. To escape the squall, we ran down to the creek and followed it up to the tunnel. Thought we’d be safe from lightning under the concrete, but we were standing in running water."
I see you in the dank tunnel darkness.
"I was telling you," he continued, "that Mom was gonna whip our asses for staying out in the storm."
I turned away from Orson and set the syringe on the floorboard. Night was full-blown, and darkness pervaded the car, so Orson was imperceptible beside me. I only saw his words, scarcely audible over the moan of the storm, as they dragged me into that alley.
Our laughter reverberates through the tunnel. Orson splashes me with water, and I splash it back onto his skinny prepubescent legs. We stand at the mouth of the tunnel, where the runoff drops two feet into a waist-deep muddy pool that we think is filled with snakes.
Two hundred feet away, at the opposite end of the tunnel, we hear the noise of careless footsteps in shallow water. Orson and I turn and see that the dot of light at the other end is blocked now by a moving figure.
"Who is it?" Orson whispers.
"I don’t know."
Through the darkness, I detect the microscopic glow of a cigarette.
"Come on," he whines. "Let’s go. We’re gonna get in trouble."
Thunder shakes the concrete, and I step across the dirty current and stand by my brother.
He tells me he’s afraid. I am, too. It begins to hail, chunks of ice the size of Ping-Pong balls pelting the forest floor and flopping fatly into
the orange pool. More scared of the storm than the approaching footsteps, we wait, apprehensive. The tobacco cherry waxes, and we soon catch the first waft of smoke.
The man who emerges from the shadow is stocky and bald, older than our father, with an undomesticated gray beard and forearms thick as four-by-fours. He wears filthy army fatigues, and though hardly taller, he outweighs us by a hundred pounds. Staggering right up between us, he looks us up and down in a utilitarian fashion, which does not unnerve me like it should. I still don’t know about some things.
"I been watching you all afternoon," he says. "Never had twins." I’m not sure what he means. He has a northern accent, and a deep voice that rumbles when he speaks, like a growling animal. His breath is rancid, smoky, and sated with alcohol. "Eenie, meanie, minie, moe. Catch a tiger by her toe. If she hollers, let her go. Eenie, meanie, minie, moe." He points a thick grease-stained index finger into Orson’s chest. I’m getting ready to ask what he’s doing, when a fist I never see coming catches me clean across the jaw.
I come to consciousness with the side of my face in the water, my vision blurred, and Orson moaning.
"Keep crying like that, boy," the man says, winded. "That’s nice. Real nice."
My sight clears, but I don’t understand why Orson is on his knees in the water, with the man draped over him, his enormous villous legs pressed up against the back of Orson’s hairless thighs. His olive pants and underwear pulled down around his black boots, the man hugs him tightly as they rock back and forth.
"Hot damn," the man whispers. "Oh, good God." Orson screeches. He sounds like our cocker spaniel puppy, and still I don’t understand.
The man and Orson look at me at the same instant and see that I’m conscious and curious. Orson shakes his head and sobs harder. I cry, too.
"Boy," the man says to me, his face slick with sweat. "Don’t you move. I’ll twist your brother’s little neck off and roll it like a bowling ball."
So I lie there with my face in the water, watching the man moan. He closes his eyes and starts hugging Orson faster and faster. As he comes, he bites Orson’s shoulder through a blue T-shirt, and my brother howls.
The man looks so happy. "Ah! Ahh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhhhhh!"
Willard pulls out and Orson collapses into the water. There’s blood all over my brother’s ass. It runs down the backs of his legs. He lies in the water, half-naked, too stunned to cry or even pull up his pants. Willard takes a cigarette from his breast pocket and lights it.
"You’re a sweet piece," he says, reaching down toward my brother, who’s still curled up in the water. Orson screams.
I sit up against the concrete wall. It’s no longer hailing, and Willard stumbles through the water toward me, his pants still down around his ankles. I’ve never seen a man’s erection before, and though beginning to fade, it’s ungodly huge. He stops in front of me.
"I can’t love you like I did him," he says, dragging on the cigarette. "Ever sucked on a dick?" I shake my head, and he steps into me. My jaw is swollen, but I forget the pain when I smell him. He holds himself in his hand and brushes it against my cheek.
"You put that in your mouth, boy, or I’ll twist your head off."
Tears slide down my cheeks. "I can’t. I can’t do it."
"Boy, you take that now. And you do me good. Like you mean it. And mind those braces."
The moist bulbous head of his cock touches my lips, and I take it for a full minute.
A grapefruit-size rock drops beside me into the water, and Willard staggers back into the opposite wall and sinks down into a sitting position in the water. He’s dazed, and I don’t understand what’s happened until I see Orson’s hand lift the rock back out of the water.
Because Willard is holding his left temple, he never sees Orson wind up again. The rock strikes him dead in the face this time, and I hear the fracture of bone. The man’s face is purple now, rearranged. On his hands and knees, he struggles toward the mouth of the tunnel. Taking the rock again, Orson mounts him, like we used to ride on our father’s back, and brings the granite down into the man’s skull. Willard sustains four blows before his arms give out.
With both hands, Orson lifts the rock up high and dashes the man’s head out like a piece of soft fruit. When he’s finished, he turns to me, still astride Willard, his face speckled with blood and pulp.
"Wanna hit him some?" he asks, though there isn’t much left to hit.
"No."
He lobs the rock into the pool and comes over and sits down beside me. I lean over and vomit. When I sit back up, I ask him, "What’d he do to you?"
"Put his thing in my butt."
"Why?"
"I don’t know. Look at what else." Orson shows me his tiny penis. There’s a blister on the end, and it makes me cry to see it.
I walk over to Willard and roll him over. He doesn’t have a face. His skull reminds me of a cracked watermelon shell. I find the soggy pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. The lighter’s inside the pack, so I take it, along with one cigarette, and sit back down beside my brother. Lighting the cigarette, I pull down my pants and brand myself.
"We’re still the same," I say, whimpering as the pain comes on.
Willard Bass was a fly buffet when the dogs found him. Though our parents forbade us from playing in the woods for the remainder of the summer, they never seemed to notice that their sons had been hollowed.
It’s funny. I don’t remember forgetting.
Silence reigned for a long time after Orson finished. The darkness inside the car became complete, and the storm raged on.
"Guess you think that explains a lot," I said.
"No. You want to know what I think? I think if you and I had never gone into that tunnel, we’d still be in this desert. I am not who I am because I was raped when I was twelve. Willard Bass was just gas on my fire. When will you see it?"
"What?"
"What’s really in you."
"I do see it, Orson."
"And?"
"And I hate it. I fear it. I respect it. And if I thought for a moment it could ever control me, I’d put a gun in my mouth. Time for your injection."
33
WHEN I woke up, I didn’t hear the wind. The clock read 10:00 A.M. Orson was breathing heavily, and though I shook him, he wouldn’t stir.
It had grown uncomfortably hot inside the car, so I shut the vents. I turned the windshield wipers on, and they knocked off a wedge of snow. The sun shone into the front seat with eye-splitting brilliance.
The snow depth had risen above the hood, and as I stared out across the white desert, I saw only an occasional tangle of mature sagebrush poking up through the snow. The sky was orchid blue.
I saw a white ridge several miles ahead, and I wondered if it was the same one that rose behind the cabin and the shed.
Watching my brother sleep in the passenger seat, I felt a knot swell in my stomach. Bastard. I’d dreamed about Willard Bass making me take it. The rage lingered, festering in my gut, and the more I shunned it, the more it swelled. He should not have done that to me.
"Orson, wake up!" I slapped his face, and his eyes opened.
"Oh my," he mumbled, sitting up. "There’s three feet on the ground." Orson cracked his neck. "Roll down my window." A clump of snow fell onto Orson’s lap as the glass lowered into the door. "I see the cabin," he said.
"Where?"
"Two black specks on the horizon."
I squinted through the passenger window. "Are you sure that’s it?"
"There isn’t another structure within fifteen miles."
"How far is it?"
"A mile or two."
I reached into the backseat, grabbed an armful of clothes from the suitcases, and dropped them on the console between Orson and me. "I’m gonna let you out of the cuffs till we reach the cabin."
"We’re going now?" he asked, incredulous. "There’s no way we’ll make it."