Plow the Bones

by Douglas F. Warrick

  Grace Sorbo:

  I brought Marissa out to the show. I made her come. They were playing at Macy Amphitheatre, which was the biggest venue in Parachute City that any of us Parasite Rock scenesters had ever played. It was a gorgeous venue, and it was a beautiful night.

  Casper Lynch:

  Poor Boyd Taupin. Y’know, the dude from Misanthropics. Boyd found Jan’s body. I never saw it, but it did a number on Boyd. I don’t know what Zero did to Jan, but it wasn’t like your common household homicide. I know that Boyd is back home now, but for a while, maybe six years, he was up in Waverly Hills Hospital. He lives with his mom now. I think they were planning another Misanthropics record, but I’ll be real surprised if that ever happens.

  Boyd Taupin (guitar — Misanthropics):

  Lots of, uh, lots of, uh, reporters, journalists I mean, lots of journalists come around, or came around, they came around, they don’t come around often anymore, but they came around and asked me about it, they asked me what happened to me, because, so they say, you don’t get so, y’know, so, y’know, so, y’know, fucked up about a stupid body and I haven’t ever, um, told anybody what I saw, and I don’t, I don’t, y’know, I don’t, um… intend… to start telling it… now, not now. So, y’know, so… maybe you ought to get the fuck out of my mom’s house before I call the cops, Mr. Reporter, Mr. Journalist. Maybe you ought to get the fuck out, out of my mom’s house, or I’ll just call the cops, I’ll call the cops, I’ll call…

  Aaron Dhames:

  I made the decision not to call the cops. Yes, I saw the body. Yes, I know. I’m sorry, man, he deserved everything he got. I was…because of my closeness to Jan, because I was his butt–boy or whatever, I was in a position to call the shots. I didn’t realize how much I hated him until he was dead. So I thought… fuck it, he wasn’t murdered, exactly. What do you call it when a man of mud kills somebody? Is it a natural disaster? I mean, you tell me. As for what Golem Zero did to him… I told you, right, that he taught me some, uh, secrets? Yeah, well. He taught me how to keep secrets, too. If you think you’re getting any nasty, gory details out of this… sorry, man.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  The rain started coming down halfway through JLGB’s set. Zero was always terrified of rain. Because… (laughs)… clay. He didn’t blink. I’m sorry, I can’t.

  Aaron Dhames:

  I ran out on stage and tried to gather everybody up, tried to get everybody away from the rain. We could maybe put a canopy up or something. The equipment could have fried everybody, we could have had a fire. And rain was bad news to the golems for obvious reasons. But Zero had his plan at that point. He wanted to show us all what he was made of.

  Grace Sorbo:

  I’m in the front row and I see Aaron run out waving his arms and shouting, trying to herd the golems off stage. Zero leans into the microphone and says, “Excuse me for a second, we’ve got an issue.” And he walks away from the microphone and grabs Aaron by the throat. The other golems are just standing there with their instruments. Their eyes are on the clouds. Zero lifts Aaron off his feet one–handed and starts punching him in the face with his free hand. Aaron is kicking his feet and waving his arms, trying to get free, and the crowd… ugh… they’re cheering. They love it. They’re bloodthirsty. They think this is what Parasite Rock is all about. It’s what people still think Parasite Rock is about. Violence. Magic. That wasn’t us. That wasn’t our scene.

  Aaron Dhames:

  I just stopped struggling. My nose was broken and my eyes were all swollen and purple and my cheeks were puffy. Zero carried me by the throat to the front of the stage and said, “This song is called ‘No Coda.’ ” I’ll never forget that. No Coda. That was their last song. They played like that, with me dangling from the end of Zero’s arm.

  Jan Landau’s Golem Band — “No Coda”:

  Forget this song. Nobody sings in the wasteland.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  The rain came down. My nightmare about locking eyes with Zero was completely untrue. He never glanced at me.

  Aaron Dhames:

  His grip wasn’t tight. He didn’t want to kill me. Or maybe he did and he couldn’t. Then again, he wasn’t supposed to be able to kill Jan, but we know how that turned out. I wish I knew how. I wish I knew how he broke Jan’s hold over him.

  Theodore Ricks:

  Casper comes over to our little tour van and throws the door open and goes, “Zero’s gone crazy.” So we run over to the stage and watch.

  Casper Lynch:

  The rain came down, and they peeled layer by layer, and we saw every moment of it. We saw the first strata washed away and we saw what was underneath. Everyone in Macy saw it. The colors that made up their insides. You know, your eyes are biologically designed to only see certain colors. The cones in your retina, they can see over ten–million variations on those certain colors, but if there are colors other than those basic rainbow ones, you can’t see them. But we did. Do you have any aspirin on you?

  Aaron Dhames:

  They looked like voodoo dolls cobbled together from bat wings.

  Theodore Ricks:

  Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you dare ask me what it was like. That’s not fair.

  Grace Sorbo:

  Zero’s last words were, “I love you, Parasite City.”

  Aaron Dhames:

  The last thing he said was, “Fuck you, Parachute City.”

  Marissa Taliofano:

  “Fuck you, Marissa.” The last thing he said before he was gone.

  Golem Zero (suicide note):

  For months, I have wanted to see the world destroyed. And I can’t. Jan can. Jan is powerful enough. But Jan needs the world. He needs it so he can have something to take advantage of, something to rape and forget about, because that’s where his power comes from. His power is in revulsion. And so, no, I can’t blow up the planet. I can’t wipe out the infection. And so I’m done. I give up. But before I go, I’m going to break as many of you as I can. After tonight, the history books will say that Jan Landau changed the world, but you all know that Jan had nothing to do with it. It was me. I’m about to change everything.

  Aaron Dhames:

  When it was all over, I still had Zero’s hand around my throat. Looking around, there were hands everywhere. Human hands, identical to each other right down to the length of the nails, just scattered across the stage. Ten of them. They looked like (laughs)… uh, like rutabagas, like, their wrists tapered off to these earthy roots. And then the balls of notebook paper. One from the mouth of every golem.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  It’s no secret. There are probably a thousand videos online. The crowd rocking and swaying, curled up in fetal positions on the ground. Me, crawling onto stage and picking up the paper. That’s the thing, isn’t it? There are a thousand videos of the aftermath and not one of the cataclysm. No record of the golems opening up their mouths and vomiting up those sheets of crumpled notebook paper. I still have all of them. They’re in my purse. You want to see?

  Theodore Ricks:

  The world should have changed. Things should be different. Look around. The entire planet is aware of the reality of mysticism. Scientists have been studying Jan’s notes and books around the clock for, what, nearly a decade now? And what’s the most significant change? Charlatan rock and rollers selling you on the idea that they know Landau’s secrets. Websites where you can buy “necromantic guitars” and digital editing suites that allow you to filter your tracks through “Baphometic reverb.” We’ve managed to capitalize on the rape of rationalism. Astounding.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  See, look. Five sheets of notebook paper, one from each golem. The writing looks Hebrew, but it’s not. According to the guys at Parachute City Community College, it’s written in charcoal, but it never smudges. I’ve spent eight years trying to find out what it says. Nobody can tell me. I know — I fucking know — that one of these five pieces of paper is Zero. I know it. Now, will anybody let me se
e Jan’s books? No, of course not. Which leaves me with Aaron fucking Dhames.

  Aaron Dhames:

  No, I’ll never do that. She doesn’t want to know what she thinks she wants to know. It’s not nice stuff, man, it does bad shit to you. Look, they said goodbye! They made their mark and they took off, what does she want to bring him back for? So he can do it all over again? So he can make a deeper cut on the world, and be even more miserable than he was before? So he can make her miserable? Again?

  Marissa Taliofano:

  Aaron… he owes this to me. One of these papers is Zero. And I know that Aaron has his hands. I know it. I need him. I never got to tell him I was sorry. If I could just tell him I was sorry, everything would be okay. I could teach him how to be happy. He was so close. He could have reached out and grabbed it.

  Aaron Dhames:

  Don’t you think that if I could help her I would? Don’t you think I would love to do that? I can’t. I’m not a monster, okay? I’m not a bad person. Marissa wants this story to end with her and Zero cuddling up on the couch, happy again, and yes, fine, that would be lovely. But it can’t happen. This story ends with me, an aging fucking douchebag scenester in charge of keeping secrets. I know what I did to her. I know what I did to them. I don’t know how, but I know that if you follow all the roads backward, they all lead to me. And I can’t do anything to fix it. I don’t have that kind of power.

  Jan Landau’s Golem Band — “Whisper It To Me”:

  You’ve got me under your fingernails and I’m never coming out. It’s warm in here, and I don’t ever have to be afraid.

  Drag

  THEY SAY THINGS ABOUT THE closet in the common room of Holton House. Weirdest thing. All four walls are mirrors. Even the back of the door. Floor to ceiling on all sides, endless mirror hallways leading on and on until the reflection blurs, like if you could step through the barrier and run through those hallways, you would fade and be spit out into total blank obscurity at the other end. There’s no light switch. If you want to stand in that closet and use those mirrors (and nobody does, that’s for goddamn sure), you have to leave the door open and see by the trickling light of the common room. So what the boys of St. Cecelia’s Private Academy talk about on those long secret nights — their dorms abandoned, their voices low, all of them huddled around a single candle — is that closet.

  Marco tells the story that most of them already know. Marco is a senior. He never made prefect, never played politics. And he looks eighteen, so he buys cigarettes for the younger kids sometimes. People look up to Marco. People are afraid of Marco. He has earned the right to this story, to claim partial ownership of it. So he crawls up on the back of the couch, reaches up, twists off the smoke detector. He takes out the big square battery. Then he climbs down, picks up the candle and uses it to light his Camel. It’s an important part of this story.

  He says, “Okay. Shut up. Listen.” He takes a drag, wanders around the room. Blue smoke follows him, curls and coils from his mouth. It’s part of the show. He leans on the ping pong table and he says, “A long time ago, something happened in Holton House.” He tells them that whatever happened, it was so bad that nobody wants to talk about it. And he’s right. Go ahead. Try to ask somebody about the closet. Try to find out what happened in there, when it happened, who it happened to. Nobody’s talking. Marco says, “Here’s what you do,” and he holds up the Camel so everyone can see. He tells them how to summon up Ember Eyes. He passes on the same secret ritual that he learned his freshman year. It’s all bullshit, of course. He tried it once. Nothing happens. You just about shit yourself imagining that it might, but then some dickhead bangs on the closet door with both fists and you shriek like a baby and you walk out of the closet and everyone’s losing their shit laughing at you. But that’s not the point. That moment just before the banging, just before the rage and humiliation, the moment just after you inhale and just before you scream, when you’re sure it’s all real, that is the point.

  It’s that Brett kid who speaks up when it’s all over. It’s always somebody. That Brett kid’s a transfer student. Sophomore? Junior? Whatever, older than most of the new kids. Kind of has that pretty–boy thing going for him. Baseball build. Sort of swoopy haircut. Right now though, that Brett kid is just another newcomer who thinks he knows what’s coming. He says, “Well that’s pretty fucking stupid.”

  Everyone laughs. It is well timed. This kid is good at shit like that, natural comedian.

  Marco says, “Try it,” and throws his pack and his Zippo at Brett.

  Brett says, “I don’t smoke,” but it’s too late now. Should have thought about that before. Because now everyone in the common room is giving him that upward lilting catcall, that “oooo–OOOH!” noise, subtitled, You have just been issued a challenge. Failure to answer this challenge will reveal you to be a spineless fag. We know you will not step down now.

  He shrugs. Says, “Fine.” Gets up. Has to step over everybody to get to the closet door, careful footfalls between and around and over the tangle of crossed legs, searching out the patches of carpet like a swamp–walker. Christ, it seems like the entire house is in here. Then he opens the door and goes in.

  The ritual begins like this. Brett shakes a smoke out of his pack and mutters, sing–song, “Fuck you guys. Seriously,” then he sticks the cigarette in his mouth and lights it. The lighter swallows up oxygen and spits out flame and now there is light in the closet, and Brett can see for miles and miles down the hallways behind his four reflections. He chokes (this is good; this is not part of the ritual strictly speaking, but it doesn’t hurt), and in the windless claustrophobic space (the one that goes on forever and ever down those phantom hallways), the smoke hangs, weaves, makes shapes for him, a shadow show. Now Brett holds the cigarette like a pencil between his thumb and forefinger, leans close to the wall opposite the door, presses the ember against the surface of the mirror. Twists. It rains orange embers. They flutter like dying lightning bugs toward the carpet, and now the cigarette is out and there is an ashy black smudge on the mirror. Brett says, “Okay, cigarette burn number one. Looks like a cat’s asshole.” Out in the common room, the other boys laugh. It’s that timing again. Guy’s a riot.

  He lights the cigarette again. The Zippo’s getting hot, but that’s part of the ritual too. Again, he presses the ember against the mirror. Another half–assed fireworks show. Another ash–stain, this one maybe two inches from the first.

  He lights the cigarette one more time. And he flicks the lighter closed.

  The only light is the orange cherry, replicated four–fold, cloned a thousand fold, onward down the endless hallways.

  And now…

  Everything that happens now is too slow to see. Think of time–lapse photography, think of capturing motion where no motion seems to be, because that’s what this is like. The ash–stains start to glow again, like the cherry of his cigarette, like the embers that cascaded to the carpet and burnt little black marks there (next to older identical burns; building on the history is part of the ritual). The stagnant smoke stops twisting in the space between Brett’s face and the mirror. It finds form, seems to eat away at space and make room for matter. And Brett hears the sound of paper lungs trying to breath.

  Ember Eyes. Ember Eyes in the mirror, smiling sadly. In a white shirt and a red St. Cecelia’s tie. Naked below the waist, his legs somehow both shriveled and dry and black, and also wet and lithe, snakeskin slick. And that face, like a child’s drawing of a face, a hole for the mouth and those fiery cigarette stains for eyes. Ember Eyes says, “It’s been… so long since I’ve had one of those. Could I bum?”

  What Brett is supposed to do now is say, “No.” He’s supposed to say, “Ember Eyes, you want something from me. I have what you want. What price will you pay?” That’s how Marco explained it: vague symbolic language, the decorative frills of ceremony. But this was never supposed to happen. The opportunity was never supposed to present itself. Right now, there is someone on the other sid
e of the closet pounding a double–kick–drum tattoo on the door. Boo. Gotcha. But there is no high–pitched girlie shriek from inside, Brett’s not bursting out of the closet and telling Marco to go fuck himself, and everybody’s laughter is stillborn in their throats. Outside, nobody says anything, and inside nobody screams.

  But, oh goddamn it, Brett does want to scream. He wants to run. He wants to burst out of the closet and let everyone know what a baby he is, fine, whatever, he doesn’t care, he just wants out of here, away from Ember Eyes, who is pawing at the other side of the mirror, begging in his shredded emphysemic old–man voice, “Come on, man… I haven’t had a cigarette in such a long time.”

  And Brett says, “Okay,” and offers the pack to Ember Eyes. It knocks against the glass. And Ember Eyes’s fingers, black and bulbous at the tips like tree–frog toes, squeak on the other side of the glass, slide down the surface (somebody will try to Windex the mirrors some time later, and they’ll wonder why they can’t seem to scrub off the smudges, and they’ll get the fuck out of that closet, not really understanding why it spooks them so bad). Ember Eyes says, “Is this a joke?”

  Brett shakes his head. The tears are coming.

  Outside, one kid says, “Okay, ha ha, Brett, you turned it around on us. Come on out.” He’s good, that Brett kid. He’s doing the voice, doing it better than Marco, and they can all hear it. They are disappointed. No spook show. No humiliation. This is not what they wanted.