He was sitting on the floor with his back propped against the sofa, facing the glass doors that led onto the back veranda. The raging of the storm was fierce and when the lightning flashed, he could see Tobias’s crow sitting out there, safe from the rain except when the wind shifted. Hylas thought she was awake and watching him, which was weird and so, he got up and closed the curtains. He never had understood Tobias and the damn birds, but wherever his brother went, there they inevitably were. Hylas remembered Jack-the-Sparrow when they were kids and then the owl that had made the eave of the house right outside the window of their shared bedroom into a roost. Hylas didn’t know a lot about owls, but he thought that was probably abnormal behavior.
Once he started thinking about the behavior of owls, he couldn’t stop. He was procrastinating; Hylas knew the signs well, but the desire to research owl roosting habits was nearly overwhelming. He determined right then that he would consult Wikipedia about that and see what it had to say. He dragged his messenger bag over to him, opened it up then unzipped the inner pocket inside the main compartment where he kept his laptop. All he found was a candy bar wrapper and a couple of sunflower seeds.
“Dude, that is wrong,” Hylas said as he stared into the open mouth of the compartment. The empty open mouth. He’d forgotten his damn laptop at the newspaper office. Or maybe it was on his kitchen counter. Its exact whereabouts were not what was important; what was important was that the laptop was woefully absent and that shit would not stand.
Hylas tapped his fingers on his knees and listened to the wind howling around the gables of Gallagher House. He needed his laptop, but he could not ride his bicycle in the downpour, especially not with so much lightning. It was late, but Nick might still be awake; he no longer worked a night shift, but Hylas suspected he had a mild case of insomnia. He wondered what that was like and decided he wouldn’t like it. He loved sleeping, he had the best dreams, so vivid and realistic he could taste the food he ate and smell the flowers he sniffed. Hylas could call Nick though and ask for a ride. Even if he did wake him up, Nick wouldn’t mind doing it because Nick was awesome that way. Hell, Wes was probably still up and he’d be happy to give Hylas a lift. Wes was a cool little dude, too.
Maybe he could go wake Tobias up and get him to do it. Tobias wouldn’t grump about it and it was Tobias, he probably hadn’t been asleep for very long anyway.
But no. Hylas got tired of bumming rides from his family and friends. Just because some of them might be awake or wouldn’t mind doing it even if they weren’t, he didn’t want to bother them with it. Sometimes, even as used to it as he was, his narcolepsy made him feel like a damn invalid. He was Hylas Dunwalton, the only person anyone actually knew to have fallen asleep and face-planted in a bowl of soup and nearly drowned (and he probably would have if Tobias hadn’t pulled his head out of it). Hylas Dunwalton, the guy who had dozed off with his hand down Nick Lange’s pants when they were in high school and while Nick had forgiven him, Hylas had not forgiven himself. Hylas Dunwalton who ended up head-butting his first real girlfriend because he’d been leaning in to kiss her when the urge to snooze had overtaken him.
He was the one, the only Hylas Dunwalton, the guy who always fell asleep no matter what.
It tended to hit him out of the blue, the fact that his narcolepsy kept him from doing cool shit like driving a race car or skateboarding or swimming without supervision. Or fuck, he couldn’t even safely jump too high on a goddamn trampoline. Heaven forbid he should come down with the dropsies and ricochet right off to crack his head on a root or some such.
“Nay, my good fellows,” Hylas said as he stood up. “For tonight, I am medicated and motivated. I shall persevere and be my own chauffeur.” He smiled to himself and bounced lightly on his feet. “In Tobias’s car.”
He laughed to himself and went to get the keys off the little hook where Tobias always left them because Tobias was a creature of habit. If Tobias knew what Hylas was about he would scold him and hide his keys far away from the grasp of Hylas’s sticky fingers, but Tobias would not find out. Tobias didn’t even know he could drive; it was one of those things his father had explicitly stated no one should ever teach Hylas to do. When pressed about the why of that decision, Mitch Dunwalton had told his youngest son: Because I know you and you can’t be trusted not to try it out. Frequently.
His dear old dad worried too much, though even their dad didn’t worry about him as much as Tobias did. Hylas thought it was sweet of them both, but sometimes their concern felt like a leash attached to a collar that chained him to going everywhere on foot or by bike. Hylas adored his bicycle, he’d had it for years, but it was not the same as driving a car or even a moped. And while he would not go so far as to actually purchase a vehicle, he had gotten Aaron to teach him how to drive on the sly. He had taught Hylas all the intricate ins and outs of driving a standard; clutch, brake, shift, flip off any motherfucker that dares cut you off. Most people weren’t a big fan of Aaron, but Hylas thought he was the tits.
Hylas twirled the keys around his finger and whistled as he opened the door to the garage. The garage had once been the carriage house and was later attached to the main house by means of clever carpentry work. Tobias’s Lincoln gleamed in the silent bangs of lightning, sitting on its four tires like a big, luxurious black cat. It was a sporty model of Lincoln, but regal and classy. Hylas had been itching to drive it since Tobias bought it and now, puppies and kittens, he would do just that.
Warming to the idea of some truly harmless theft, Hylas unlocked the doors and slid inside the warm interior of the car.
“Oh, yeah,” he said as he wiggled around to situate himself in the seat and feel the smooth black leather slide beneath the legs of his cut off shorts. He fit behind the wheel perfectly since he and Tobias were the exact same height, both of them a towering 6’6”.
He caressed the steering wheel once, almost tenderly, smiling like a happy lunatic. Then he cranked the car and listened to the well-tuned rumble of the V-8. One thing Tobias had in spades was taste; elegant, understated taste.
“Away we go,” Hylas said once he’d gotten the radio figured out and rifled through Tobias’s iPod to find suitable tunes. They didn’t have the same tastes in music, generally speaking, but there was some overlap.
The garage door rolled up and Hylas backed into the stormy night. He got the car turned in the right direction and rolled forward on silent tires, headlights illuminating the driving rain as he crept on. It was his one concession to driving at all: when he did, he made sure he went slow enough that if a nap did happen, he wouldn’t plow into a pine tree at 75 miles per hour. Such things quite often led to death and Hylas didn’t want to die.
He tapped the button clipped to the visor that would open the gate and sat in the car, breathing in the leather and the faint scent of Tobias’s cologne. Hylas was about to drive forward when the damn crow thumped down on the hood of the car. He jumped like he’d been goosed and looked back at Lenore. She glared at him through the water streaming across the windshield then cawed. She flapped her wings, pecked the hood agitatedly then hopped forward to peck the windshield. You get out of that car and you get out right this instant!
“No way, bird,” Hylas said as he eased on forward. “Me human, you avian. Besides, you’re getting all wet. Tobias will be muy sad-faced if you catch cold.”
He eased on and the crow stayed on the hood, pecking at it once in a while. As Hylas picked up speed, a little bugged out by the big damn bird on the car, she flapped her wings to try and keep her perch. He got the car up to thirty-five and it was too much for Lenore, she spread her wings and soared up into the night and out of his view.
“Whoa,” Hylas said with a smile.
He thought, I should tell Tobias about that. Then he realized he couldn’t because he wasn’t supposed to be driving the damn car. Up ahead was a caution light that marked the crossroads; the road Hylas was on led to Sparrow Falls or toward the Louisiana/Mississippi state line, depending o
n the direction. At the caution light if you took a left, you would end up in Plainview. If you took a right, you would end up in Lolly(pop Land Hylas, Nick, Aaron and Hunter used to call it). On the far side of the light to the left was a nice little corner store painted white with blue trim; they made sandwiches and served breakfast. There was a field directly opposite the corner store and on Hylas’s side of the caution light line, there were woods, woods and more woods, all lovely, dark and deep. And wet. Very, very wet.
Hylas eased on through the caution light, thinking about Robert Frost and wondering why no one ever plagiarized him. Maybe because most of his stuff was too damn boring. Hylas could dig that very well, actually.
The headlights came out of nowhere or maybe it was just because Hylas wasn’t paying that much attention. He heard the rumble of the gravel truck’s engine and saw the blinding glare of the headlights a second before the truck t-boned the Lincoln. The world exploded in a spray of glass and the screech of metal and rubber sliding over wet pavement. Hylas screamed as his bones broke under the force and—
Tobias awoke, drenched in sweat, heart thundering in his ears, competing with the sounds of the driving rain and Lenore screaming outside his window. Her wings beat at the panes of thick glass and the lightning illuminated her dark body. His pounding heart rose in his throat and stuck there.
It all happened in a matter of seconds, but it felt too long even as his feet hit the floor and he rushed for his bedroom door. Please let it be a bad dream, he thought, but somewhere in the darkness, he knew it wasn’t.
Tobias ran down the hallway and thumped down the stairs two at time. He felt quivery all over, like the world had been turned into one big gelatin mold and every step he took set it all to wobbling around him.
“Hylas?!” he called as he hit the first floor, slipping slightly on the rug at the base of the stairs. “Hylas?!”
He wanted to hear Hylas’s voice answering him, but there was nothing. Then he hoped he would find him asleep in the living room, using one of the stacks of poems as a pillow. A quick glance around the living room did not reveal Hylas and he wasn’t easy to miss, especially wearing a shirt that loudly announced PENIS. Lenore was at the back doors, still screaming in her rasping voice, still pounding the windows to be let in.
Tobias’s heart seemed to stop then as he whirled and raced toward the front door. He didn’t bother to look for his keys because he knew they would be gone. He didn’t call for Dawn Marie because he didn’t think about it and because there wasn’t time. He slapped the button beside the front door to open the gate then pelted out into the night. The porch was dry and Hylas’s bicycle gleamed in the flashes of lightning. The sight of it made Tobias want to scream as he raced down the doorsteps and into the rain. The sharp stones of the driveway hurt his feet, but he didn’t feel the pain of them cutting him, didn’t even care if they did.
All he knew, all he felt, was that he had to get to Hylas, had to take care of his brother. Had to save him. He didn’t allow himself to think that it was too late. It wasn’t far to the caution light and Tobias had always been a good runner. In high school, Tobias had run track and Hylas had been there every time, cheering him on and coming out of the bleachers to slap Tobias’s back and congratulate him. Sometimes he’d talk his friends into coming, too and Nick, Aaron and Hunter would chime in with Hylas to make Tobias his very own (foul-mouthed in Aaron’s case) cheering section.
As he ran, that was what went through his mind; Hylas in the sun, Hylas laughing and saying, You must tell me all about running one of these days. It looks like a lot of work. Fun though.
The flash and blink of the caution light; red on one side, orange on the other, caught in the rain and turned the pavement to sparkling lava. Tobias’s pace faltered when he saw his car pushed so far to the side of the road it was tilting into the ditch on the passenger side. The driver’s side was buried in shadow then light again as the caution light switched back and forth. It was caved in, the metal twisted, the door pushed in so severely that it was nearly ripped off the hinges. The truck was idling, the growl of the diesel engine louder than the thunder.
Tobias ran through the sparkling paste gems of broken glass, some of it burying in the soles of his bare feet. A twisted, sharp piece of metal sliced through the sole of his left foot, but he didn’t stop until he reached the car.
“Hylas,” he said. He tried to yell it, but his voice came out a strangled croak as he stared in through the gaping hole that had once been a window. Hylas was slumped to the side, limp as a doll, tangled in his safety belt. “No. No. No.”
Tobias reached for the door handle only to find it was gone, but there was a gap in the frame where the door had buckled inward and he began to yank at it with all his strength.
“Aw, man, is he okay?”
Tobias whipped his head around to look over his shoulder at the man behind him. The rain sluiced away a thin trickle of blood from a minor scalp laceration and nothing more. It was the man who had hurt Hylas. Tobias could hear him still breathing inside the car, but the inhalations were jerky, labored and bubbling in his throat. That he was still breathing at all was not a consolation because the sound was awful; it was the sound of something too broken to survive having not yet gotten the message. The heart still stupidly pumping, the lungs still trying in vain to work because the brain didn’t know any better.
“I didn’t mean to,” the man said as he shook his head. He wasn’t really looking at Tobias, not yet. “Fuck! Shit!” He clasped the sides of his head in his hands. “I’m in so much fuckin’ trouble.”
Just like that, Tobias hated him with such fury that he forgot everything else for a moment. Tobias did not, as a rule, hate people; he liked them even if they didn’t feel the same way about him. He hated the man standing in the rain though, clutching his head and worrying about himself when he had just done such a horrible thing to someone else. To Hylas.
Tobias stared at him and he knew: the man had fallen asleep. The gravel company wanted its drivers up and at ‘em well before sunrise and the man—Kenneth Vaughan Wilson—had stayed up too late the night before. He’d been having a super sexy video chat with a Russian cam-whore and he hadn’t been able to put his dick away long enough to snatch forty winks.
“I agree,” Tobias said calmly as he turned on him. “You are in so much fuckin’ trouble.”
Kenneth (Ken to his friends and Kenny to his mom and the Russian cam-whore) saw Tobias then and he stumbled back from him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t… I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. It was an accident. Oh, man, I don’t wanna go to prison.”
The irony was brutal: it wasn’t Hylas who had fallen asleep that time. It was someone else. And wasn’t that just hilarious?
Tobias’s laughter was ragged and ugly as he stalked toward Kenneth. He could hear his brother dying in the car behind him and the goddamn radio was still playing, much too loudly because that was how Hylas liked his music best. In the pouring rain, Sonic Youth sang “The Diamond Sea” as Tobias grabbed Kenneth-Ken-Kenny.
“You killed my brother and all you’re worried about is how much trouble you’re going to be in,” Tobias said through his teeth as he squeezed the sides of Kenneth’s head. Kenneth tried to fight him, tried to hit him, but he couldn’t break Tobias’s grip. He stared down into Kenneth’s face and he stared back, eyes glassy with fear as Tobias glared at him. “Who do you think you are?”
“What—”
“Die,” Tobias hissed at him as he squeezed harder. Tobias’s back gave a sharp twist of pain, muscles fluttering under his skin as they threatened to spasm.
“Die,” Tobias whispered as he pushed closer to Kenneth, pressing their bodies almost flush together. He clenched his fingers, digging them into Kenneth’s scalp as he began to shake violently, eyes rolling back in his head, blood squirting from his nostrils and pouring out of his ears. Petechiae bloomed in black pinpricks on his skin.
Tobias leaned c
lose and spat through his teeth, “Just die.” He wanted no salvation for Kenneth-Ken-Kenny. He deserved no such thing, no eternal afterlife or damnation. All he deserved was to be blotted out and forgotten, soul not lost or found; simply gone.
Kenneth’s mouth opened on what should have been a scream, but came out as a long, whistling wheeze. He was foaming at the mouth and his clacking teeth snapped down on his tongue as the last shudder ran through him. There was a fine tinkle of sound like something made of expensive crystal snapping and being ground to dust. Tobias heard it clear as a bell even as thunder rattled the heavens with a sound like heavy artillery being dropped.
Tobias dropped Kenneth-Ken-Kenny’s body like it was no more than a candy wrapper to be discarded. He was so angry he was shaking, his arms and hands throbbing with tingles like little shocks of electricity as he went back to Hylas. He had to take care of Hylas. He should never have left Hylas. He would never forgive himself for it.
“I’m coming, just hang on,” Tobias said to the rasping, choking rag heap that was Hylas. He looked twisted sitting there; twisted and dark with moisture that smelled like copper and salt, raw meat from horrible wounds caused by the shattering car, the way the metal had enfolded and crushed him.
Tobias began yanking on the door again, biting back the horrible moaning sound that tried to rise up his throat. “Hylas, hang on, please, please. Please don’t do this.”
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 15