Robert was running around through the patches now, pretending to be a plane or some kind of bird. He ducked behind one tree, then seemed to burst out a second later from another one nearby. He made the strangest sounds—sounds Clancy couldn’t quite place. While this was odd behavior, Mary didn’t seem to mind, so Clancy decided he wouldn’t either.
“You actor!” Mary said to Robert, starting to follow his example. Her ankle-length skirt twisted with her as she ran. Mimicking Robert’s movements, she pushed off of this tree and that, leapt over short undergrowth, fallen branches, and protruding roots. “Clancy!” she said, nearly singing. “I feel like a kid!”
“Sure looks that way,” he called back to her, glad to see her glad.
Then Robert was behind him. Clancy turned, only to see a plume of white smoke puff out of his friend’s mouth. He’d apparently lit a new cigarette. “So, what are we doing here, Rob?”
“Cookout,” Rob said, sucking in. The end of the white stick became a bright live coal, then it cooled somewhat.
“Yeah? I can’t remember ever doing something like this with you before.”
“Anything wrong with it?”
“I just keep wondering what the joke is.”
Robert looked contemplative upon hearing this. His eyes scanned the treetops, and he sucked in… then out. Another plume of smoke. “The joke,” he said, “is that this place has been here my whole life, and I never knew it.” He started to pace towards the car, and Clancy followed. Clancy guessed they were heading over there so Robert could lean on it, trying on a little more James Dean.
“Don’t worry about me!” Mary yelled, unsolicited. Clancy turned back and saw her dance behind a deadfall of trees and out of his sight. “I’m having the time of my life!”
“Wonder what that’s all about,” Clancy said.
Clancy’s intuition had proven true. Robert leaned on the Belvedere and looked at the treetops again, like he was trying to read them. “Do you know how long I’ve been coming out to Peoa? Christmases, Thanksgiving, summer visits, too, all to my grandma’s place.”
“You’re whole life, I’d guess.”
“That’s right,” Robert said, as if Clancy was finally catching on after a long lesson. “My whole life. And yet, I’d never really explored it. What I’m saying is, I never knew about this place. I’d ridden past Twin Nest Lane, sure, you have to to get to Gram’s.” He sucked again on his cigarette and coughed harmlessly. “But I never came down here. Why would I have?”
“Well why did you?”
Robert didn’t seem to have an answer to this, other than to take another puff. Then, perhaps in response to the question posed, perhaps as a way to change the subject, said, “I had a really good dream, Clancy.”
“What about?”
“I came here, first off. Stood outside these trees looking in. It was bright. I mean, the sunshine was wild. Like it was moving. I saw someone. A man, I guess you’d say. And he told me something incredible. At first, you know, I wasn’t so sure if I could believe him. But I wanted to. I wanted him to be telling the truth.”
Though the wind hadn’t changed at all, Clancy felt cold all at once. He asked Robert, “What did he say?” as he opened the passenger door to grab his black jacket.
He was leaning into the car, right hand on the thick seat, left hand reaching out for the leather corner of the jacket.
“I’m sorry, Clancy,” Robert said, and pushed Clancy’s rear end so hard his head slammed into the inside of the driver’s side door. “We can’t all be writers.”
“Rob! What—”
Clancy’s throat closed tight the second he twisted his frame to see Robert. He was holding up a tire iron. Amid the fury of other thoughts, Clancy realized the iron must have been hidden under a branch or something right next to where Clancy had parked the car. This weird foresight suggested a number of unpleasant things, none of which Clancy had adequate time to consider. Robert brought the iron down with more force than his thin arms looked able to produce, smashing Clancy’s shin. The pain was unthinkable.
“MARY!!” Clancy shouted, using the excruciating blasts climbing from his leg to the center of his brain to get some serious volume. “MARY, RUN!!” Tears were already streaming down his face. He got a glimpse of Robert, slowly moving around the car, and saw that he was crying, too.
“RUUUUN MARY!! RUUUUUUN AWAAAY!!”
Robert clunked the tire iron over the hood of the Belvedere absentmindedly as he moved around the car, scratching and denting it.
“I’m just as surprised as you,” Robert said over Clancy’s continued weepy screams. “I never would have thought my life would take me to this point. Never. But I’m happy for it now. I mean, let’s face it Clancy, I never fit in.”
“You’re popular, though,” Clancy choked out through a bubble of teary snot that had formed in his throat. He felt as though he might pass out. As of yet he didn’t think he had lost any blood, though, and that was good. He had to stop Robert. Had to save himself and Mary.
“Being well-liked is not the same thing as belonging,” he said, as if it were the truest truism ever spoken by man.
Clancy’s head was still just barely resting on the driver’s side door. It dropped down an inch when Robert opened the door. Some kind of power—probably his body’s survivalist reaction to the assault—was rushing through Clancy, and for a moment he ignored the pain as much as he could. He tried to focus on the upside-down Robert towering above him. But focusing on anything was not easy, as his right leg was currently a log on fire.
“You need help,” Clancy said, his voice gurgling out.
“And I got it. Right here,” he said, holding his arms out like a statue of Christ. He looked up and sucked in air through the O of his open mouth. He was drinking a portion of the sky, the wind.
Robert said, “You know what’s buried here? A necklace. It’s so…” he trailed off, apparently looking for the perfect word. “Green.”
“What are you talking about?” The edges of Clancy’s vision fluttered with dim light. He felt his brain trying to shut down. It was tempting, but he fought it.
“Nothing. Everything.” Robert laughed, then broke out into hysterical sobs. “I don’t know. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to do this! I didn’t! But I do want what’s at the end.”
“What, what do you mean? Is somebody making you do this?”
“Thy mother,” Robert said. He stopped crying, but his cheeks still glinted with his tears and sweat. Like the sun breaking out from behind a thick passing cloud, a grin turned on. “I unprintable in the milk of thy mother.”
He tapped the top of Clancy’s head. Hard. As if testing it. He smacked again, and Clancy saw an explosion of dark stars. He yelled out in pain, but Robert didn’t seem to notice.
He said, “You ever read Hemingway? That ‘unprintable’ stuff’s a real gasser.”
†
That was enough for now, surely. Miller’s sandwich was gone, as was the Pepsi. Even though he was just sitting there, thinking, he felt all worn out. Worse: he felt like a man ready to pass on.
“Not yet,” he said aloud. “Not quite yet.”
12
Deeny sat in the forest, kind of.
He did not fully need to materialize, for he was alone, but he did need to have enough substance to cross his legs and clasp his hands in front of himself. He was praying; mumbling. The starlight did not penetrate the trees; the light of the mansion did not reach through Deeny’s darkness.
His prayer reached the object of his worship, for Deeny’s ears were not far from his mouth. He hoped to answer his own prayer that very night; he prayed to find a suitable first kill for his new, young friend. The only true friend Deeny could remember ever having.
Images flashed before him, but he did not understand them. Something red. Something wet and heavy.
Something red. Something wet and heavy.
Curious.
Soon, however, he realized what it wa
s he was seeing: the Writer’s nightmare from the first night they had spent together. That was the night Deeny—not understanding back then, like a child—had used the blender to get the Writer’s attention. He laughed good-naturedly to himself in the blankets of black he’d cocooned his half-tangible frame in, remembering how he had thought the blender was a device for torturing extremities.
Deeny almost cast off the dream as a strange fluke, but something stopped him. He trusted himself, so he returned his thoughts to the dream.
It was the Writer. That made sense; it was his dream after all. The Writer… walking down a short hallway in a rambling home (whatever that meant—Deeny would never understand everything he heard from the Writer’s mind)… The Writer could hear heavy breathing. He must have been following the sound of that breathing, for it got louder as the Writer continued to walk through the hallway. Eventually he was at a plain, wooden door. Darkness was everywhere, it made everything hard to see. Deeny himself could see in the dark without difficulty, but he supposed because he was channeling the dream of the Writer he was being subjected to the Writer’s limitations. The Writer’s hand was on the door, and he was—was what? Was that actually the sound of laughter? How wonderful, Deeny thought. How vivid.
There was a bedroom on the other side of the door. It was a bit brighter here than in the hallway. The bedroom seemed like a nice place to Deeny, not that he cared, but it was really nothing compared to the lavish, cavernous bedroom the Writer shared with his wife.
A man who many would consider fat (though not if they had Deeny to compare him to) snored loudly next to a tall, wispy girl, neither of them were clothed. Deeny knew little of sex. In fact, almost everything he had gathered about it had been from the Writer’s mind. He could tell thanks to that information that the couple had been “sleeping together” before sleep (this was a phrase Deeny found amusing; he liked to imagine it could also be applied to murder). Their ages were quite different. She was at least twenty years younger than the man. Deeny also understood using the lens of the Writer’s mind, that this age gap was unusual.
Loud reports, four in all, startled Deeny as a gun exploded in the Writer’s hand. It was so disorienting, he almost lost the dream in his confusion, coming back fully to the forest. But Deeny held on and watched in fascination as the bullets (he could still not fully wrap his mind around the gun concept, but he knew that it killed somehow) tore into the fat man’s flesh. One of them hit the man in the forehead, scalping him as effectively as any native warrior. Deeny didn’t really understand this phrase, “native warrior,” but it made him smile anyway. In the dim light of the room, Deeny could see a part of the fat man’s brain, and he wanted to leap like a child in his excitement. Before the girl could let out a scream, the Writer smacked the pistol-butt across her head; a dull arc of gray-red slashed up from her head and fell across her naked torso as she crashed to the floor. Deeny’s heart dropped a bit upon realizing Paul was not trying to kill her as well; he only wanted her unconscious and silent.
The dream shifted, and now the Writer was in a large bathroom with a high ceiling. He lifted the large body over his head. Deeny did not yet fully understand the human anatomy and muscle, but he had the idea that this was quite a show of strength. The blood from a number of large wounds poured down his hands and face where they mingled with the Writer’s tears.
Tears? Deeny thought in total, you should be laughing. You should smile.
But despite his tears, the Writer was doing something else. Something that went beyond the killing. Though the man was already dead, it seemed the Writer wanted to disfigure his body. He was pouring corrosive cleaning chemicals on the man’s face; some of them bubbled onto the exposed gray matter of the brain. Why was he doing that? What possible purpose could such a thing serve? No matter the reason for this bizarre post-killing ritual. No matter the tears. The Writer had killed a fat man. The excitement was too much for Deeny, and for a moment he almost forgot it was only a dream.
Everything disappeared and Deeny found himself faced with his own anti-light.
It was not just a dream. It was more than that.
It was a vision.
13
The blonde young woman in Salt Lake was in a corner, alone in a house full of party-goers she did not recognize. Boris’ “Farewell” played loudly from a dusty sound system perched on the loft railing, and soon it would transition to “Pink,” but it was all only so much noise to the girl, mixing with the voices of the chatting strangers. The almost bleachy, almost tinfoil smell of someone smoking meth pushed her further into seclusion where she sat on the carpet near an old dollhouse. The blonde girl did not wonder what the dollhouse was doing there or who it belonged to. The shadows cast by the multi-colored strobing lights made the dollhouse dance like a jack-in-the-box.
She coughed. Three feet from her a couple lay on an old mattress somebody had put out on the floor. As far as she could tell the man was already naked; he was skinny and tall and dark-skinned. The girl he was with was as white-skinned as paper. The cakey ring of thick lipstick on and around her mouth gave her the appearance of a voracious meat-eater in a jungle, face messy with blood. The lipstick girl shed her blouse, then her bra, then they seemed to start copulation before her pants were off. This didn’t compute to the blonde girl watching, so she turned away.
Next to the dollhouse there was a doll. A pretty little baby boy with shining plastic white hair. The blonde girl picked it up and cradled it in her arms. It looked happy.
Somewhere above her a rough, gravely voice said, “Kickapoo, Missouri!” as if ending a joke. Other voices laughed, sounding nervous and serene. Someone else, perhaps a woman in the far-away land of the kitchen, said something about piggy police. No laughter followed the comment.
The blonde girl looked around and found a spent syringe pushed up to the baseboard about a foot from her. She grabbed it. Her arm was fully extended as she did so, and her hand seemed to be simultaneously a billion miles away and directly in front of her eyes. Smiling for the first time that night, she lovingly pushed the needle into the doll’s plastic arm and depressed the dowel, injecting air into the empty space inside. She pulled the needle out and set it aside gently.
“There,” she said, hugging the doll up to her chest. “That’s all better, isn’t it? That’s all better.”
Lipstick girl began to moan. They’d moved to the edge of the mattress closest to the blond girl, and for a moment she forgot about her baby, distracted by the pornographic scene. A rash of lipstick streaks lined the dark man’s forehead.
Someone screamed from the other side of the room. It sounded like a man. The blonde girl guessed some trip nightmare had breached the real world for a second, but then it disappeared. Things like that seemed to happen all the time.
Someone said, “Her dad’s giving her brother a Ferrari.” More laughter.
The blonde girl looked down at the baby doll again, and she saw how its lips were pursed. “Okay,” she said. “Mama’s here.” She pulled her Jägermeister tank top up along with her bra. The abused, tattered fabric tore open at once with the movement, but the girl didn’t notice.
She moved the doll so that its mouth concealed her teat. “Oh,” she said, flinching, “your lips are so cold. Poor baby.” Once she thought it must have had its fill, she let the doll drop onto her knee. It bounced and it rolled three inches to the edge of the mattress. The panting dark man, trying to find a better point of leverage, endeavored to put both hands on the floor, but one of them squished the baby’s head.
The blonde girl screamed, “GET YOUR HAND OFF MY BABY!” and the dark man looked up in confused shock. His swimming eyes could not process the girl in front of him, one breast hanging out beneath a face of rage. She stood in a flash and kicked his ribs ineffectually with a bare foot. “GET AWAY! GET AWAY!”
Freed from the weight of the hand, the blonde girl was happy to see the doll’s head slowly re-inflate. One of its crooked, obscene eyes popped back toward her.
Thankfully, it still looked happy.
“Hey hey,” someone else was near her now, a big guy with an intricate and terrifying chain of tattoos up one arm. “Calm it.” She saw the tattoos writhing.
She lunged for the skinny dark man, the naked baby-squisher, thinking she might tear his eyes out or at least help him begin a trans operation. Two pairs of hands grabbed her, and she forgot about the child. She lost control of her reality completely then, thinking she was still in her uncle’s basement, where she had spent much of her time in her Jr. High years.
“Oh, man,” someone said.
“Is she with someone?” Tattoo man said, “Can someone come get her?”
Lipstick girl rolled over and swore. Then she fell asleep.
The blonde girl began to plead, knowing from experience it was the only thing that sometimes worked. “I won’t tell my mama,” she sobbed, as someone adjusted her shirt, covering her exposed chest. She was in a hallway now, watching her lifeless feet slide across the ground. The hands holding her dug into the tender flesh of her underarm. “I won’t tell my mama.” One of them was the tattoo man.
The other one, shorter and thinner than the inked man, said, “Neither will we.”
Tattoo man laughed, as cruel as a handmade whip.
The music receded along with the dim light of the living room.
Tattoo man said, “She can sleep this one off in here.”
She was still sobbing, but her limbs had lost the power to move. She found herself on a scratchy tweed couch. “I won’t tell anybody,” she said.
She could barely hear the confused wail of the singer in the stereo now. The relative quiet of the room seemed itself to be a malevolent creature. The darkness was breathing.
Tomorrow I Will Kill Again Page 12