“OK,” I sighed. “I’ll catch you tomorrow then.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
Our roles had switched it seemed, even if only for a night. “Too early to tell.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you ever think about him? About what he might do if he was still here?”
“Bernard?”
“Tommy.” He said it like it should have been evident, like I should have realized he couldn’t have been referring to anyone else. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.”
“I miss him too.”
“Sometimes it seems like we lost him only yesterday, but other times it seems like it’s been a hundred years, doesn’t it? Sometimes it seems like it couldn’t be possible he’s been gone for so long.” Ice cubes clinking glass echoed through the phone. “But he would’ve known what to do, don’t you think? Tommy would’ve known what to do.”
Donald was right, of course. Somehow Tommy—or at least our memory of him, the teenage version, the version that remained forever young, forever frozen in perfection even when I remembered him dying along the side of the road—that Tommy would’ve known what to do, would’ve gathered us all together like the natural leader he was and made everything all right with a cool, collected sentence or two.
I started drinking. If Donald wasn’t coming over there seemed no reason to delay the inevitable. “Yeah, Tommy would’ve known what to do.”
“Maybe he’s guiding us.”
A comment so lacking cynicism sounded peculiar coming from him. “Let’s hope so.”
“Do you ever…do you ever feel him around you?”
“Right after he died,” I admitted. “But not for a long time now.”
“Sometimes I do. Or—well, at least I think I do. Probably just wishful thinking.”
I heard him swallow, crunch some ice. “Everything’s changed,” I said. “Anything’s possible now.”
“You’re right. If we’re expected to believe demons exist then why not angels too?” His voice cracked. “I loved him, you know.”
“Me too, man.”
“No…I loved him, Alan.”
I poured another drink. “I know.”
“And I don’t know if I’ve ever quite recovered from his death.” Although when he spoke again he had done his best to collect himself, I could tell by the cadence of his breath he’d been battling sobs only seconds before. “Christ, maybe Bernard was right when he said we’re all a bunch of clichés and don’t even realize it.”
“Bernard was wrong.”
“Yes, well Bernard may very well have been the Devil.”
“No, just a devil.”
“Maybe he was right about me. I’m a lonely, pining, overemotional, self-loathing, alcoholic gay man—gee, there’s a new twist—never seen that characterization before. Could I be a little more ’70s formula, please? Lip-synching to Diana Ross records in a bad wig until the wee hours of the morning can’t be far behind.”
Even under the circumstances, his sense of humor was contagious. “Far behind?”
“OK, I’ve done that too. Apparently my political incorrectness is terminal.”
“And I’m a huge loser with no job. And my wife just left me. What’s your point?”
“You’ve lost enough people you loved to know there aren’t any second chances,” he said softly, his tone serious again. “You and Toni were made for each other, Alan. Don’t let her go. Do whatever you have to do, but get her back, because it’s a terrible thing when someone’s gone—really gone—and you’re left wishing you could say all the things you feel, all those things you need so desperately to say. And you do say them, trust me, you do. Only by then, no one’s there to hear it.” The sound of a hissing match was followed by a slow, deliberate intake of breath. “Get her back, Alan.” Then release. “Just get her back. You need her. Hell, we all do. Toni’s our den mother.”
I laughed lightly. Toni would have loved that description. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Don’t get too drunk.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, though I could no longer be sure of anything.
I hung up the phone and turned back to the bottle.
Let the demons come, I thought. And I knew damn well they would.
But this time, they’d come on my terms.
CHAPTER 19
A while later I found myself sitting in the den, a Robert Johnson CD playing on the stereo as I worked at finishing off the whiskey. The glass no longer necessary, I had taken to occasional swigs directly from the bottle while rummaging once again through Bernard’s planner. I studied the photograph of the mystery woman for a while then slipped it behind the lip of a pocket on the inside cover. I wondered if she could be another victim, but that seemed unlikely. Still, he’d known her—he didn’t have her photograph for no reason or by coincidence—I was certain of it. There had to be some connection.
I flipped through the remaining pages of the planner, and just like the times before, found nothing unusual. In one of the plastic storage pockets I noticed a few business cards. All were people I didn’t know, and I assumed they were most likely customers he had met while at work. The only other card belonged to one of the salesmen Bernard had worked with. Chris Bentley, Sales Representative, it read. The dealership name was emblazoned above his name, and a telephone number was listed beneath it, followed by the italicized phrase: Nobody Beats Our Deals! I pulled the card free and stared at it. I remembered Bernard mentioning Chris Bentley now and then. He was one of the few people he worked with he ever talked about, and from everything I could recall, if Bernard’s side of it was to be believed, they had a decent working relationship. It was a long shot, but I didn’t have much else to lose, so I figured I’d pay Mr. Bentley a visit in the morning and see if he could shed any light on anything.
I closed the planner and put it aside, pictured Toni sleeping in Martha’s cottage—maybe somewhere else—then thought of the woman in the newspaper. Her face faded, replaced by Tommy’s. “Here’s to you, man.” I raised the bottle, took a long pull.
The room tilted and distorted as Robert Johnson’s mighty Blues riffs echoed and slurred; his haunting voice singing of hellhounds on his trail and the Devil’s relentless pursuit sounding like it was coming to me from the far end of a tunnel.
As my drunken stupor gave way to something resembling sleep the ghosts ended their silence, slipping memories to me piecemeal like a demonic slideshow from the past.
Behind the curtain separating then from now, I saw Tommy sitting on a big boulder out in Potter’s Cove woods. The same boulder we’d all congregated around now and then in years past. Tommy, with that knowing smirk and…I had to think for a moment what color his eyes were. Why couldn’t I remember something so basic about him? Gray. I remembered them as a kind of light gray. He sat atop that old boulder, smiling down at me, sunlight breaking through the trees and shining against his blond hair and fair complexion, casting him with an angelic aura. Like some wise forest prince, he looked down at me from that boulder and smiled. But now, unlike when he was alive, there was nothing to it, nothing behind it. Blood dripped slowly from his hairline, trickled along his cheek. He seemed disinterested.
And while he sat bleeding, Toni and I leaned against the base of the boulder, our arms around each other the way young lovers constantly cling together so desperately, sharing a beer while Donald stood a few feet away with a can of his own, laughing and talking with Bernard. Bernard—much younger than I remembered him—dressed in fatigues as counterfeit as he was, spinning tales about the Marines and his ill-fated early return, drinking his beer and laughing with the rest of us. We’d all gone to that spot in the woods to celebrate Bernard’s homecoming, taking along a couple six-packs as we’d done for years, knowing this could be the last time now that adulthood had caught up to us, now that spending Saturday nights out in the woods drinking like a bunch of high school kids would n
o longer do.
Rick, still serving his prison sentence, was absent. Bernard raised his beer to toast him, his hand clutching the can, the same hand that just months before had slaughtered two young women in New York City, hands that had stabbed and mutilated, that had held heads steady while cutting, slicing away pieces of flesh, hands that had mingled, played with the dead.
And now he was playing with us, pretending to be the same old harmless and unexceptional Bernard he’d always been, chugging a beer and contemplating his future just like the rest of us. No longer merely a torturer or a rapist, he had by then become a killer—savage, unremorseful, performing rituals and making sacrifices to whatever dark gods he served. Surely there was some sign, some clue we’d missed.
Even in the realm of dreams and whispers, it all seemed so absurd.
Tommy, long dead himself by then, watched us from the top of the boulder, his hair tinted red; the blood from his cracked skull leaking faster, dribbling down the front of him in a steady, sticky stream. His eyes shifted, gazed off toward another section of woods not so far from there, where an even younger Bernard had brutalized Julie Henderson.
Julie, all these years later, existing in that dark apartment, silver crucifixes hanging in the windows, Bibles and used syringes scattered about, the putrid stench of cooked heroin lingering in the air while she struggled so desperately to hang on to whatever slivers of sanity and well-being remained. Working a job slinging diner food, one eye always on the door, hurrying through the neighborhood with head bowed, making drug buys in filthy alleys and on desolate street corners, waiting for the demons to come looking for her again, hoping to make it to the safety of her apartment, her sanctuary, her fortress and tomb, where Adrian waited, scratching at bruised arms.
She emerged from shadow gradually, rocking gently, her nightgown pulled up around her waist as she rode Adrian’s emaciated form. Lying beneath her on the bed, his eyes rolled back in a heroin daze and little eruptions of intoxicated laughter escaped him between slurred words of encouragement.
As she bucked harder, increased speed and ground deeper, tears fell from her eyes like the initial slow and steady raindrops that precede a heavier storm. She wrapped her arms around herself and twisted at the waist as if suddenly forced into an invisible straight jacket. The tears grew worse, flooding eyes crazy and wild and stained with madness wrought by unclean spirits, eyes that had seen Hell, and not from a distance.
Teardrops became the ticks of a clock, and I knew then that the recurring dream had begun again. I had joined Julie in the gulch between that which was real and that which was better left imagined.
The ticking clock began to irritate me right on cue, and from my position on the bed, I heard the floor creak, felt it shift. The headache tingled behind my eyes, same as always, but I ignored it and sat up. I knew Bernard would be standing in the room staring at me, so I wasn’t surprised to see him there, pale and dead, smiling his sad smile. This time, I knew why I was afraid. I looked to the doorway. The others would be coming for him soon. He stepped closer, gleeful in the madness, and reached for me with dirt-caked fingers, his nails cracked and brittle and looking as if he’d been burrowing through earth and stone and scraping at casket lids for hours. He leaned closer, touching me now, leering at me the way a butcher leers at a prize hog, rubbing my legs and squeezing my thighs, running his hands over me as I sat paralyzed.
His hand slid between my legs, stroked me roughly before cupping my scrotum. Vomit burned the back of my throat. He laughed soundlessly, his fingers pulling at me, prodding; his breath rancid and warm against my face.
In his free hand something flashed, reflecting what little light existed in the room. Small razor blades moved quickly, individually between his fingers, from one to the next in rhythmic motion, turning and rolling and flipping the way a gambler manipulates a deck of cards with a single hand.
“Stop—Bernard, for God’s sake—stop.”
He smiled at me, his lips cracking and crumbling like all the times before, dripping blood and spittle. The ticking of the clock became instead a steady buzzing sound. Something moved down by his feet. Flies. They gathered on the walls, along the ceiling, crawled across the window casings, their number steadily growing as they converged on the room, swarming forth from unseen portals.
As they covered the room in a living blanket, Bernard opened the ragged bloody hole that had been his mouth and held it in a silent screech. Over his shoulder shadows appeared, crossing the doorway and signaling the approach—their approach. The others.
His cold dead eyes looked directly into mine, and his hand knifed across my lap. I felt quick, dragging, savage pressure, then the gradual and increasingly agonizing burn razors leave in the wake of slashed flesh.
When the others came for him I was still screaming, kicking and flailing and trying to press both hands over my groin in a frenzied attempt to stop the spray of blood that even then was painting the wall.
Splashed with crimson, the glut of flies rippled and heaved like a single disturbed mass, surging higher along the wall.
Then it was all gone, and I realized I was alone. Rick, Donald and I were on our own, alone with Bernard, alone with all he had done.
And with all that remained.
SUMMER
CHAPTER 20
The sun was going down but still bright, still hanging on and struggling against the horizon as if it had waited for us, the shafts a beautiful collage, varied hues of orange and red cutting the sky and reflecting off the gentle waves of the Atlantic.
Rick had been released a few hours earlier, set free after serving his time. He’d emerged from the gates, and upon seeing us, trotted down the steps the way the gangsters in old movies used to do it, sideways and graceful—like a dancer—as if to show that all was well, and the hop in his step proved it. While he was still in good shape physically, his football-player-build had suffered somewhat. Because he had lost a lot of weight his body looked thin and tight as opposed to thick and powerful, and it showed the most in his face, which at first glance appeared drawn. Having been deprived of sound sleep for a long period, large dark circles had taken residence beneath both eyes, and since his time spent outside had been severely limited, his complexion was paler than it had been in the past.
He’d made it very clear in the days leading up to his release that he wanted us there to pick him up and not his family. He’d need a few hours out before he could face them, he’d told me. But even we were nervous, lifelong friends or not, all of us uncertain of what to say or how to say it, of what to do or how to do it. He came to me first, and we hugged. Despite his attempt at a composed demeanor, his body felt rigid and tense.
“How you guys been?” he said, leaving me to hug Donald, and finally Bernard, who had hung back closer to the car like a shy younger sibling. Yet it was Bernard who had embraced him the longest that day, clinging to him until Rick finally wrestled himself free in a rather awkward and embarrassing maneuver, whispering, “It’s OK, man, it’s OK, take it easy.”
Rick looked at the sky like he’d never seen it before. He smiled but it came off as meaningless. Our leader had returned. Locked away the head Sultan—our Warlord—only time would tell what had emerged in his place. “Let’s go to the beach,” he said.
It was the first time I’d heard his voice without having a sheet of thick plastic between us in months, and it sounded rich and full, but not exactly as I’d remembered it. Like his smile, it lacked the conviction it once had. He’d been broken in there, and despite his best effort it showed.
“The beach,” I said. “You got it. Whatever you want.”
The ride there was quiet. Initially Bernard had tried to make small talk, but no one responded, so he let it drop. Rick sat in the front passenger seat, looking out the window but not focused on anything specific until we hit the beach parking lot. It was early fall, the tourists had all gone home and the beach was deserted. Before I had a chance to park he rolled the window down and drew a
deep breath of ocean air. He smiled, and this time it seemed closer to genuine, like he was working his way toward it. “You miss the weirdest shit. All kinds of stuff you never really think about.”
We held back, allowed Rick to take the lead and get out of the car first. As he crossed the sand, trudging along toward the waterline, we slowly emerged from the car and trailed him, giving him a wide berth. Once he’d reached the water he crouched down and touched it, then looked out at the waves and the sky and the slowly setting kaleidoscope sun.
After a moment we slowly converged on him and formed a half circle behind him. The temperature was dropping, and the wind off the water was growing stronger. No one said a word—even Bernard knew enough to keep quiet—while Rick bonded with the sand and sky and air and water and whatever else he needed to see and feel and think and know. He ran his hands through the sand, let it fall between his fingers, then grabbed a handful and tossed it out at the water.
He turned back to us, cheeks flushed. “So what do you guys want to do?”
“It’s your night, dude,” Bernard said. He stepped forward and lit a cigarette. In an attempt at cool that was even less genuine than Rick’s earlier efforts, he cupped the flame from his lighter with both hands, cocked his head and did his best James Dean. “How about we go to Brannigan’s and get some steaks? We can throw back a few then hit a titty-bar or something like that.”
Bernard had begun to prematurely bald his senior year of high school, and since Rick had gone, Bernard had taken to wearing a rather silly looking wig that would eventually become one of his defining characteristics. Between that and his thick glasses, Donald often joked that he looked like he was wearing a bad disguise, but it apparently made Bernard feel better about himself.
“Check this guy out,” Rick said, doing his best to appear amused. He had clearly been shocked by Bernard’s appearance, but never said a word about it. “You a big titty-bar guy now, Bernard?”
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