Affinity

by Affinity- The Friendship Issue (retail) (epub)

  The tape clicks off at the end of side B, and the boy startles awake. The monster is gone.

  Heatlight leaves an afterimage in the monster’s eyes, blue and white and gold. Standing takes time, the weight of detritus falling, shifting into place like stones grinding together. Bonemeal, hunger, one step, two.

  The monster feels a flash of satisfaction with its new feet, slats of sturdy iron. Minded of mankind, it pursues their sharp scent through the twilight. But there’s something else, a hollowness. Once there was a cavern, alive with home and sorrowrage. Once there was laughter in its heart, and something between its teeth. Moss, edge of iron, taste of silt. The monster does not know what it needs.

  Then the forest falls away, and it sees the giants. They march into the distance, skeletal, bound by drooping tethers. They are even more hollow than the monster.

  The boy sees his sister on the bridge over the creek. “I hardly see you anymore,” he says.

  “I see you all the time,” she says.

  “You’re barely a flicker,” he says.

  “I’m only burning away the weak parts,” she says.

  They hear a splash and look down to see ripples in the water where a fish must have hit the top of the world and gone back down again.

  The monster comes and goes from its lair. Sometimes the boy finds it and walks with it. The monster doesn’t talk, but the boy can hear the buzzing of its thoughts like a thousand wasps in its wheelbarrow head.

  It lumbers through the woods under the train trestle. Two teenagers are making out in an abandoned car. The monster tears the roof off and eats the teenagers one at a time, jaws moving thoughtfully. The teenagers are too cool to scream.

  The boy thinks it might have been Luis and Jennifer. When did they become teenagers?

  Cutting through the woods on her way home from school, the girl finds footprints on the muddy bank of the creek. A giant bear? No, the paws of the beast left corrugated markings. She cracks her knuckles, follows the tracks as far as the landfill. She notices a set of smaller prints beside the larger ones. She cracks her knuckles again.

  The boy digs through the third wife’s tools until he finds a compass and some good pencils. Then he digs under a stack of comic books for his pad of map paper, rows and columns of interlocking hexes, cool blue ink on heavy paper.

  He sketches real topographies for once, the wilds between the landfill and the river. Dotted lines for the paths he knows, a wavy one for the creek, an X for the burnt orchard. Certain big trees he draws in miniature, the rest are masses of wavy lines with vertical bars for trunks.

  He cranks the volume on his stereo. Men may say not where the haunts of these Hell-Runes be.

  He has to guess at the width of the swamps, but he knows exactly where to put his greatest secret. SECRET CLOVE, NO TRESPASSING. Below the words, he draws the monster’s face, its fanged grin a malediction. Finally he adds the key, 1 hex = 1/4 mile, a serpent’s snout pointing north.

  The girl follows stones that her brother left, a trail into the ravine, along the edge of the swamp and around the landfill. She finds the monster. A distant shout prickles the back of her neck, tells her to hide. Instead she runs her hand over the monster’s body. Rebar, wheelbarrow, milk crates, tires. Bittersweet and ivy.

  She whispers to the monster the way she whispers to the ghosts of cats. The monster moves, minutely. It looks at its left arm, then sags again.

  There’s a big hole in its chest, some loose paint cans in there. She plugs the hole with a tire, puts her hands on her hips. “You’re still missing something,” she says.

  She leaves the monster at dusk. She sees movement at the edge of her vision, a trick of the light. The narrow places that comprise her fiefdom feel narrower than usual. It’s getting dark, but she’d know her brother in any light. His headphones give him the silhouette of a bear, and she can hear his music even from a distance.

  When he sees her, he jumps, then takes his headphones off and says, “You should be home.”

  “You should be home,” she says.

  “It’s getting late,” he says.

  “Let’s race shopping carts,” she says.

  “Seriously?”

  Up the ravine they go, sister first, grubby sneakers slipping on rocks. They know the path better than they know the halls of their house. The lone light behind the grocery store is like a lantern, its beams harsh in the crisp night air. They haven’t done this for a long time. They test the wheels of shopping carts and pick the best. The best aren’t very good.

  “Ready?” she asks.

  “Ready as rain.” That’s just something he says.

  The girl gives her brother the bone. It looks tiny in his thick fingers.

  “I thought I’d lost it,” he says.

  She’s lightening her load, preparing to fly. And it does feel like flying, the two of them together, between the trees and down to the bottom of the earth. She hears someone whooping and laughing, and it’s her.

  The boy calls Dan and says, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to the party.”

  Silence from the other end of the line.

  The boy says, “I’ve got this project.”

  Silence again.

  “You there, Dan?”

  “I’m here,” Dan says. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” the boy says.

  “I’m here, you’re here,” Dan says. “It’s almost like the party has already started.”

  The boy thinks Dan isn’t alone. There’s another presence, like low static but not from their connection, breathing with their breaths.

  Dan says, “I heard your sister is going to be a teenager soon. Maybe we should invite her instead.”

  The boy isn’t sure which is supposed to be the greater threat: him left out or his sister left alone with those wolves.

  “So we’ll see you there?” Dan says.

  The boy nods, then remembers that he needs to say something. But before he can speak, Dan says, “Good,” and hangs up.

  The boy takes four cans of beer from the fridge and stuffs them into his backpack. His father’s working the late shift. He imagines him scaling one of the power-line towers out by the cement plant, gazing with a giant’s view of town. He wonders if what his father sees squares with the map he made. He wonders if their house is visible from up there.

  Outside, the third wife is raking leaves. The boy hears her pause, maybe to say something. He walks more quickly down the sidewalk.

  The girl’s invisibility must be wearing off, because the third wife catches her in the kitchen and says, “I thought maybe we could do something together tonight, just us girls?”

  The girl looks desperately around the room. Amidst the clutter on the counter are two horror movies that she rented in the summer, never watched, never returned. She snatches them up and says, “Let’s watch these.”

  The third wife’s face wilts as she reads the titles, Trail of the Fiend and Covered with Blood 2: Haunts of Darkness. The girl knows that the third wife has never seen a horror movie, and she thinks she’s won. But the third wife smiles and says, “I’ll make popcorn.”

  A fire burns in the burnt orchard. With his headphones around his neck, the boy can hear the scrape of slow metal on stone. Teenagers stand facing the flames, quieter than usual. Rick is the first to spot him. He tugs the brim of his baseball cap, and his brother Eddie looks up. A half dozen others look or don’t look.

  “Hey,” says Eddie, and the boy says, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” says Rick.

  “Hey,” says one of the teenagers the boy doesn’t know. Hey, hey, hey.

  Quiet Larry stays quiet. Dan’s radio adds its static to the hiss and pop of the fire. The boy hits stop on his tape deck.

  A horror movie flashes on the television. The girl sneaks glances at the third wife. She waits for her to cringe from the gore on the screen, but the third wife just leans forward in the blue light, like someone who is about to be told a secret. Her han
d travels back and forth between the popcorn bowl and her mouth. Sometimes the third wife smiles and laughs, like she’s in on something.

  A fire burns in the burnt orchard. The teenagers are mostly boy teenagers, but there are also a few girl teenagers. Rick and Eddie lift a wood pallet and set it on the fire. Sparks fly up toward the moon, a bright sickle behind thin clouds. The teenagers pass around a bottle of whiskey.

  The boy remembers the beer and takes it out of his backpack. No one looks interested. Pasted to one of the cans is the word beer and its definition, clipped from the dictionary. He sets the cans on the ground.

  Larry stares at Dan like he expects him to do something, and Dan looks nervous. Thinking of the squirrel that Larry shot, the boy wonders who’s really in charge.

  A horror movie flashes on the television. The telephone rings, and the girl jumps. The third wife doesn’t notice, doesn’t turn away from Trail of the Fiend.

  “I’ll get it,” the girl says, and she goes into the kitchen.

  It’s Marco. She can’t think of why Marco would be calling. He isn’t friends with her brother, is he?

  “Hey,” Marco says.

  “Hey,” she says.

  He wants to know if she has plans. He wants her to come to a party, down at the orchard. “There should be beer,” he says.

  “You think I care about beer?” she asks, genuinely curious.

  There’s a pause. “I guess I don’t know what you care about. But you’re invited.”

  The girl twists the cord around her fingers until she’s wearing a plastic mitt of spirals.

  A fire burns in the burnt orchard. Marco shows up, his curly hair shining in the firelight. He gives Dan an unsecret wink. Then he sees the beer and pulls a can from its plastic loop.

  The boy watches a barge move slowly upriver, riding low in the water, fully freighted. The others have quiet conversations in groups of two or three. He wonders what they’re waiting for. He opens a can of the beer and sips. He sips again and nods.

  In the horror movie flashing on the television, a woman walks alone through a barn. Something moves behind the walls, but the woman doesn’t see.

  The girl reaches into her pocket for the bone, but of course it isn’t there. She fakes a yawn and says, “I think I’m gonna hit the hay.”

  The third wife looks up. “Aren’t you curious about how it ends?”

  “These movies all have the same ending,” the girl says.

  The third wife looks startled. “Well don’t tell me what it is,” she says.

  The girl goes upstairs and pulls her hood up. She eases the window open and climbs out onto the porch roof. By the time her feet hit the grass, she’s invisible again.

  The fire in the burnt orchard burns lower. The beer is getting warm in its can, but the boy keeps sipping. When he sees his sister arrive, he feels like he might throw up. She gives him a funny look, but the boy can only stare.

  Marco prances over and puts one arm around the girl’s shoulders. She shoves him away and he prances back, hooting. The others laugh.

  Dan says, “All right,” and the laughter stops.

  Larry is watching Dan carefully. Dan’s radio squelches. He switches it off and takes out his knife. “So which of you wants to go first?” he says.

  The boy takes the knife. He sets the tip of the blade near the heel of his left shoe, against the edge of his shadow.

  “Don’t,” his sister says, and the teenagers look at her.

  The boy tries to make the cut, but his shadow squirms. He feels it like an ache in a muscle he didn’t know he had. He presses harder. The beer rolls warmly in his stomach, and his arm feels weak.

  “I can’t do it,” he says.

  “Should we do it for you?” asks Larry. It’s the first thing the boy has heard him say tonight. He sounds eager.

  “I’ll do it,” the boy’s sister says. She walks over to him and holds out her hand. The boy gives her the knife. She kneels, bringing the blade close.

  “Ready?” she says.

  “Ready as rain,” he says.

  The girl throws the knife toward the river. It flies in a high flashing arc and disappears into the cattails.

  “Run,” the girl says, and they run.

  They have a head start, but the teenagers are faster, because teenagers have longer strides and no shadows to slow them down. Dan tackles the boy and the boy feels the air go out of him. Eddie grabs the girl’s arm and swings her around; the girl gets free, but then Eddie’s brother Rick tackles her.

  The boy’s backpack has spilled open. On the ground is his map of the forest. Larry picks it up and says, “Interesting.”

  A teenager goes looking for the shadowless knife. A teenager shines a flashlight at the map of the forest. A teenager lights a cigarette and smokes it, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. A teenager finds the shadowless knife. A teenager goes back for the whiskey. A teenager keeps the boy pinned to the ground. A teenager holds the girl’s arm too tight. A teenager points a flashlight at the sky to see how far the beam will reach. A teenager points to a spot on the map of the forest and says, “There.”

  They follow the paths the boy marked, the winding ways along the creek and over the bridge. The forest looks ragged and hungry. The boy says, “This isn’t a good idea.”

  Dan says, “Keeping secrets from us is, like, the opposite of how this is supposed to work.”

  Eddie looks a little sad about the whole thing. His brother Rick punches him in the shoulder.

  In the boy’s secret clove, teenagers shine their flashlights into the trees and over the ground. They shine their flashlights on the rock covered with melted candle wax. On the ground the teenagers find a few cracked bones, the bones of teenagers.

  “Like a goddamn summoning ritual,” one of the teenagers says.

  They find some scrap metal, some twine, a lot of broken sticks. There is a hole in the forest where the monster should be.

  “Where is it?” Larry says.

  “I don’t know,” the boy says, and he doesn’t.

  Larry holds the knife to the girl’s shadow. “Where is it?” he says.

  “I don’t know,” the boy says.

  Larry starts cutting, and the girl’s shadow squirms.

  “Larry,” Dan says.

  Larry gives Dan a look, and Dan looks at the ground.

  “Where is it?” Larry says.

  “I don’t know,” the boy says, but this time he does.

  The monster’s shadow is like a cold breath on the back of Larry’s neck. He turns and screams. The monster picks him up in one hand, and Larry screams again. Quiet Larry’s screams aren’t quiet. He drops the knife. The monster chews Larry carefully, starting at the top.

  The other teenagers run, and the monster runs after them. The boy and the girl run after the monster.

  “Great party,” the girl says to the boy. The boy can’t tell whether or not his sister is joking.

  The forest is hungry, but not as hungry as the monster. It swipes trees aside to get at teenagers. Most of the teenagers go quietly when they go into the monster’s mouth, and other teenagers respect them for this.

  The windows of houses up on the ridge flash blue with light from televisions. In a clearing at the bottom of the slope, Dan, Eddie, and Marco stop running. They’re the only teenagers left. They turn to face the monster, ready to make their final stand.

  The monster crashes into the clearing and takes a deep breath of electrical moonlight. It blinks with eyelids the boy gave it, fake leather torn from a school-bus seat.

  A tall someone appears on the slope. It’s the third wife. She walks down into the clearing and stands between the teenagers and the monster. She sees the girl and says, “There you are! I followed your trail—”

  Of popcorn, the girl realizes, feeling the warm slick of butter inside her pocket. She must have stockpiled it there and dropped pieces on her way.

  But the third wife has stopped talking. She sees the monster and tilts her he
ad. She seems to think carefully about what she’s seeing.

  The monster picks the third wife up in one hand. She doesn’t scream, but the girl does.

  “Oh,” says the boy.

  “It’s all right,” the third wife calls down to them. “They all have the same ending.”

  The girl runs to the monster and presses her palm against its leg. She feels its hunger, undiminished. She feels how narrow it is despite its girth, captive to an inner thinness. The monster is, she thinks, a monster of her own dominion. She climbs up its leg and pulls the tire out of its chest. The space is just right for her to curl up inside.

  “Here we are,” she says.

  The monster feels pain for the first time since it woke here. The pain is in its chest, along with a new warmth. It would fall to its knees if its knees were better at bending. Instead it wavers, exposed in the clearing while the tiny men watch. So fleshy. So easy to pull apart. But this clearing is nothing like the wilds of its youth. The monster is far from home.

  It lifts the small creature to its mouth. With its other hand, it grabs that arm and holds it steady. Then it wrenches the arm free from its body, cracking sinews of rope and wire, iron frame bursting. It sets the arm on the ground and the hand opens.

  In its chest, jammed between rusting metal and twisting vines, the girl sighs.

  The third wife, whose name is Laurie, gets up and brushes herself off. She seems grateful but also a little disappointed. She curtsies.

  The teenagers run, and the monster goes after them. Not for eating, just for something to chase.

  They burst from the woods shouting, stumble through a playground and over a backyard, dash across a county route and into a parking lot. Drivers don’t understand what they’re seeing.

  The girlmonster sticks Marco in a tree and leaves him there. Quietstalking, it sets Eddie on top of his own house, because it ate his brother Rick and feels a little bad about that. Dan it locks inside a cage at the abandoned zoo.

  On his radio, Dan hears the firemen talking as they search for him. He cries when one of them says that he’ll make a good fireman someday.