“I’m glad, too,” Jeremy said and it was almost true.
“We can do it again sometime, huh?”
“Yes, sometime,” Jeremy said. “I don’t like going out much.”
“I know, it’s cool and all, but I just… ya know… I like it when you do,” Mooncricket said.
What an odd thing to say, Jeremy thought. He let go of the wheel with one hand to lay it against Mooncricket’s cheek, mindful not to press too hard on the still painful bruises. He hadn’t hit him again since the night he’d blacked out in the back yard and broken his arm, but Jeremy reminded himself it hadn’t been that long ago either. He shouldn’t start counting his restraint a success just yet and that troubled him. It troubled a lot of them, too. God, it was exhausting.
He gave his head a quick shake to jostle the clamor back into a low murmur, something tolerable and turned toward the park. Toward the sunshine-drenched paths cut with the shadows of the old live oaks. Toward the sonorous buzz of yellow jackets and wasps hovering around the cans stuffed full of garbage that baked and stank in the wet southern heat. Toward the sound of high, childish laughter rising in delight as they were pushed on swings by happy, smiling parents.
It made Jeremy’s stomach hurt just to think about, but it was Mooncricket’s day and he was determined to do his best. There were parts of him, pockets, where a guy who was actually nice (even if he was also somewhat misanthropic) did reside. Jeremy didn’t give that to many people, didn’t let them see the decent man lurking in the cracks and crevices that cut through all the shit inside of him. He didn’t share it because he thought there was a limited supply of that decency and he guarded it like a dragon with its hoard. It mattered to him to know that somewhere amid the wreckage was a shred of kindness, a speck of generosity; a flickering glimmer of the humanity he so despised. Over the weeks he had found he wanted Mooncricket to see it, to at least catch a glimpse. To know that Jeremy was not all bad.
The park was about as bad as Jeremy had expected it to be, but there was a small respite: there were not that many children running amok in the bright midday sun. Their mommies, daddies and other caretakers were probably making the little shits take their naps or were too conscientious to risk their crotch fruit getting sunburned. To which Jeremy thought: Good. His reprieve was tempered, however, by the presence of a rowdy group of teenage boys and their idiot girlfriends trying to grill at the barbecue pits. The smell of burnt hot dogs was rich in the swampy air and he sighed, propping his elbows on the words Slutt Monkie wuz hear scrawled on the tabletop. He looked down at them and smiled, relaxing a bit when he thought about Corey and how peaceful he had looked lying on the table the night he left him there.
Jeremy got lost in his thoughts and subsequently lost track of Mooncricket. When he looked up again, Mooncricket was sitting across from him and eating one of the burnt hot dogs.
Jeremy raised his eyebrow. “You’re bumming food off teenagers now?”
“No way.” Mooncricket took another bite, chewed and swallowed. “They gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. Maybe ‘cause I gave ‘em some smokes,” Mooncricket said. He took a sip of something from a red Dixie cup. “They hooked me up with a beer, too.”
“I didn’t think kids smoked anymore,” Jeremy said. He didn’t question how they had gotten beer, that one was easy: either they stole it from their parents or got someone older to buy it for them.
Mooncricket snorted. “They’re supposed to say no to drugs, too,” he said. “But uh, ya know, they don’t always listen. I know this for a fact.” He picked up his beer again and laughed around the rim of the cup as he gestured at himself with his other hand, the wiener slipping partway out of its bun.
Jeremy stared at him for a second and then he laughed, too. Mooncricket surprised him sometimes, glimpses of the smart kid he’d once been flickering up from the charred remains of the crispy critter he had become.
“Good point,” Jeremy said.
“I know, right?” Mooncricket said. “It’s an awesome point.” He shifted on the bench and frowned a bit. “Can we go now? Like, my back hurts, ya know? I got sweat in it.”
Jeremy didn’t need to be asked twice. He got up from the bench like he had springs in his ass. “Come on,” he said.
“Cool,” Mooncricket said. “I think my bandages need changing.”
“Even if they don’t, I’ll do it anyway because of all the sweat,” Jeremy said.
“Then can we, you know,” Mooncricket said. “It’s just… I don’t wanna be a pest, but it’s been a while.”
It had been a handful of hours, small in Jeremy’s chickenshit habit world, but probably huge in the world of Mooncricket’s King-Kong habit. Mooncricket tossed away the rest of his burnt hot dog and kept the beer, passing it to Jeremy when he held his hand out for the cup. It was warm and half flat with a taste like weakly fizzy piss, but it was wet and Jeremy was hot and thirsty.
They went home and Jeremy tended to Mooncricket’s back. It was healing nicely, but it would be a while yet before he could see the poppy garden in its full glory—as freshly laid scar tissue, shiny and smooth to the touch. He re-bandaged Mooncricket’s back after coaxing him into the shower with him though by then Mooncricket was starting to fidget and scratch lightly at his arms.
“Go sit down,” Jeremy said when they were done with their shower. “I’ll fix us up something.”
Mooncricket’s eyes turned glassy at the mention, his want turning his brilliant blues into flat, hungry shark eyes.
“Good,” Mooncricket said. “I’m starting to get really bad off.”
“I know,” Jeremy said as he turned to go down the hall. Mooncricket went the opposite direction toward the living room where the fun stuff was; television, stereo, shiny things to stare at while he nodded.
Barghest was lying in the middle of Jeremy’s bed when he went into his room and he paused in his mission to scratch the dog’s head.
“Tonight’s a big night,” he told Barghest. “Really big. I’m going to do it. Do you think it will work?”
Barghest woofed at him and licked his hand. His intelligent eyes sparkled with curiosity as he watched Jeremy. Barghest tipped his head to the side and thumped his tail on the mattress once: We’ll find out tonight, won’t we?
“It has to work,” Jeremy said. But he’d been saying that for years and it hadn’t worked out yet. Thanatos did not hear him when he called, but he knew what he’d been doing wrong for so long. Maybe he could fix it and do it right for a change instead of deluding himself and believing he was doing it all correctly even though he had been leaving out the most important part.
If only.
There was the frightful, niggling thought that crept into Jeremy’s mind on a wave of frantic, whispering voices, his own among them: What if he doesn’t love us anymore? What if Thanatos does not heed our call because he has tuned us out?
“He wouldn’t,” Jeremy assured himself. Assured them. “Not to me, not to any of us. He loves us.”
He had to believe, that was all there was to it, he just had to hold on.
Jeremy took his heroin from its hiding place, scooped some of the fine China white out of the bigger baggie and into a smaller one then laid a clean syringe beside it while he prepped Mooncricket’s afternoon dose. When he was done, Jeremy fixed himself a smaller dose, really only a taste because he couldn’t get totally wasted. It was too early even for his everyday activities and he had to go out later that night, too.
Everything prepared, Jeremy went down to Mooncricket who was chewing at his bottom lip and scratching his left elbow with the concentration of a philosopher in deep thought.
“Thank you, thank you,” Mooncricket sighed, already holding out his arm for Jeremy to shoot him up.
Mooncricket was perfectly capable of doing it himself, but he had caught on early in their relationship that Jeremy liked shooting him up and he didn’t mind allowing him to. He watched as Jeremy tied off his righ
t arm to give his left a rest. Jeremy tapped his arm to pump up a fat blue earthworm vein and when one appeared, he kissed the crook of Mooncricket’s elbow.
“You’re welcome,” Jeremy said as he slipped the needle into Mooncricket’s thin, pale arm. He drew a little blood into the barrel of the syringe then pushed the plunger down, giving it and so much more back to Mooncricket.
“Oh, God,” Mooncricket said. He moaned softly and closed his eyes when the heroin hit his brain. He rubbed his arm, breathing deep and slow; blissed out. “You’re beautiful, man.”
Jeremy laughed and went to sit beside Mooncricket to dose himself, a slide of the needle into the vein in his wrist where the track would be hidden by a thick leather cuff.
“I love you,” Mooncricket said.
Jeremy froze, plunger on the syringe half depressed and looked at Mooncricket. His eyes were still closed, moving beneath the thin bruised skin of their lids. There was a sweet, stoned smile on his face. He was not even on the same planet as Jeremy at the moment and he wasn’t sure if Mooncricket was even talking to him or if he was talking to the heroin.
Then Mooncricket ruined it by adding, “Jeremy.”
He finished dosing himself and leaned back, waiting for the drugs to hit him. When they did, it was a slow rush; less like a wave and more like the soft lapping of surf against the shore. He sighed and tried to push Mooncricket’s words out of his mind.
It didn’t work and after a while, when he knew Mooncricket was well and truly drifting on the outer wave, Jeremy leaned forward and kissed the gently throbbing pulse in his throat.
“No, you don’t,” he whispered against Mooncricket’s skin. He made a soft murmuring sound, but nothing more. “You don’t even know me.” Us. Jeremy kissed his throat again and imagined ripping it out. The mental image was so pure it was crystalline, but there was no real joy in the idea other than an appreciation for the aesthetic of death. “But thank you.”
Mooncricket struggled to talk, mouth working as he made soft muttering sounds. Jeremy had given him a heavy dose in the hopes he would nod and it seemed to be working. He finally managed one word, “Music?”
Jeremy complied by turning on the stereo and leaving his iPod playing on random, “War Pigs” thumping out of the speakers. Mooncricket rode the rhythm of the song like it was a lullaby, slumping down on the sofa, face lax and expressionless as that of a corpse.
Jeremy left him to go get dressed, he needed to get a move on. It was a long drive to Houma for the show he was attending in the hopes of finding someone pretty enough to kill.
13
The day of Hylas’s funeral came too soon. It could’ve been twenty years or longer and Tobias still would have thought so. As it was, it took them five days because so many people had to be notified; family and friends around the world had to be waited on to come in and pay their respects. Hylas had been well-loved by so many people that it was overwhelming just making the phone calls to each person in his address book. Even with Dawn Marie and Wes helping out, Tobias had thought they’d never reach the end of the call list.
Each minute that dragged by was agony as he planned Hylas’s funeral. Tobias thought that was unfair. He wanted to know how anyone thought he would ever be all right enough to do such a thing because their father and Callie were too sad to do so themselves. But he was being cruel, they did try to help, but Mitch couldn’t concentrate very well and Callie cried a lot, so it was left to Tobias to make the big decisions.
Tobias at least knew the ins and outs of funerals, how to streamline the process and make it as quick as possible. He chose the casket and the flowers, he picked the music and nixed the idea of having a preacher do Hylas’s eulogy. Hylas had not been religious, he cared little for God and Jesus or “going home to his reward”. Hylas had worshiped at the altar of words and music and art. He had loved stories and the sound of people talking. To have some preacher that hadn’t even known Hylas talk about him like they did was abhorrent.
Every night since his body had been released into the care of Greene’s Funeral Home, Tobias slept in a chair near the refrigerated drawer Hylas laid in. The day before his funeral was no different though he did go home while Mr. Greene took care of Hylas one last time, cleaned him and dressed him and laid him out in his casket with the help of his daughter Helen. Tobias trusted them both to tend to his brother, but he still felt like a traitor going home to wait. When Mr. Greene called to let him know it was done, Tobias made the long trek back to Greene’s, sometimes walking, sometimes running, each and every footstep an exercise in pain to his cut and bandaged feet. Tobias didn’t care though, he almost welcomed the pain. It was something else to focus on besides the dull ache in his chest.
Tobias was heartbroken. It was a feeling Tobias had thought was only reserved for grieving parents or spurned lovers, but he knew better now. Heartbreak was an instant impact then a chain of slow explosions that followed in every waking moment after. It was an ache that would not let up, an emptiness that only got bigger as time passed, not smaller. It was a hopeless, lonely sense of abandonment. It was helplessness. He could not bring Hylas back from the dead no matter how much he wanted to and it was eating away at him.
Hylas had always bought into the extra-close nature of twins while Tobias hadn’t; they were twins and they were close, but that was it. Tobias never believed they were, as Hylas said, two halves of a whole. In the long nights he spent sitting in front of Hylas’s drawer, Tobias began to reconsider that a little bit because he could not escape it: He felt like he had been ripped in two.
The night before Hylas’s funeral, Tobias sat in the front parlor, the biggest of them all and stared at Hylas’s midnight blue casket. Lenore took up a spot on the back of the pew beside him and cocked her head, looking at the spangled light falling through the window onto the coffin. Another piece of Tobias’s heart cracked as he looked at it, too. Hylas had loved the tricks of moonlight and the new garden of colors it could grow in the right circumstances.
With a thick sigh, Tobias lay down on the re-purposed church pew that Mr. Greene had dragged in a few years earlier. The front parlor was almost like a chapel in appearance; there was even a stained glass window at the front of the room. There was no image in the glass; Greene’s Funeral Home was strictly non-denominational, but the pieces of colored glass created a mosaic swirl that glittered and winked around the room with the moonlight streaming through it.
Tobias didn’t mean to fall asleep, hadn’t thought it was even possible, but he did anyway, head cradled in the crook of his arm, long legs hanging partway off the pew. He dreamed of nothing, unaware and at peace for the first time in days until early the next morning when Dawn Marie woke him up with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, Toby,” she said with a wan smile when Tobias blinked his eyes open.
“No,” Tobias said as reality came stomping back into his mind.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Dawn Marie said. She reached out and ran her hand over Tobias’s hair, smoothing down the sleep-mussed strands. “You need to come home for a little while and get ready.”
“I don’t want to.” He sounded petulant and small to his own ears and that was enough to make him finally sit up.
“I know,” Dawn Marie said as she rose from her crouch. She was still wearing her pajamas, the light coming through the window was weak and watery; the sun was probably barely up. She bit her lip and blinked too rapidly, her large, expressive eyes growing shiny as polished glass. She plopped down on the bench beside Tobias and lit a cigarette then passed him the pack without a word.
They weren’t supposed to smoke in there, but Mr. Greene wouldn’t mind too much and by the time everyone else arrived, the smell would be long gone. In silence, they observed Hylas’s coffin and didn’t talk about the loss that lay inside of it on the silver-blue satin lining.
“I miss him,” Tobias said. “I really, really miss him.”
Dawn Marie made a choking sound and leaned into Tobias’s side
.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I miss him, too.”
“I know,” Tobias said. “I’m sorry, too, for being so crappy lately. I should’ve helped y’all out more with the cooking and cleaning and—”
“Shut up, Toby,” Dawn Marie said. “You think I care about that? Because I don’t. I get it, okay? I know you need your space and cleaning up the guest rooms with Nick and cooking with Wes and Nancy—that’s not going to help you. But it kept me busy and them, too. You did us a favor.”
“I don’t know how you figure that,” Tobias said.
“Don’t question my logic, grasshopper, just accept it,” Dawn Marie said. She sighed and tapped ash in her palm. “You and Lenore ready to head back?”
“No,” Tobias said, but he stood anyway. “I have no choice in the matter though.”
“This fucking sucks,” Dawn Marie said with another of those thick, choking sounds. “It sincerely does.”
“And how,” Tobias said as they made their way up the aisle, leaving Hylas alone for a little while. Today was his last day aboveground and Tobias loathed the thought—the reality—of it.
In the car, Tobias fastened his seatbelt and stared at the rising sun, letting it dazzle and blind him with its furious glow. Dawn Marie cranked her little Bug up and backed out of the parking space, turning the car toward home.
When they drove through the caution light where Hylas had died, Tobias squeezed his eyes closed and leaned his head against the window.
“Do you have anything that will knock me out for a little while?” he asked.
Dawn Marie glanced over at him with her eyebrows raised then nodded. “Yeah, but are you sure you want it?” she asked. “You need to be up by eleven at the latest and well, Toby, you’re not used to that sort of thing.”
“I just want to sleep for a little longer,” Tobias said. As it stood, he was wide awake because he was the kind of person who, once he was up then he was up to stay; he could seldom ever go back to bed straightaway. “Dawn Marie, please.”
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 17