The bar had only about thirty people in it, and all heads snapped in our direction. As Coyote’s scream faded in the small room, the only noise remaining was a Zeppelin song trickling out of Benny’s tinny wall speakers.
“Call nine-one-one,” I said, or at least I thought I said it. I was so scared and confused I might have only thought it.
Before anyone could react, Coyote shot backwards in his chair. I never saw or even sensed his legs moving, and it looked like the chair simply yanked Coyote away from the table. He struggled to maintain his balance, and then he leapt from the chair and jumped on top of a vacant table by the bar’s front windows.
Everyone stared at him.
No one spoke.
I heard Jacob say, “What the fuck is going on?”
Coyote—crouched on the table—slowly straightened like a werewolf blooming toward the full moon. His fingertips reached toward the dirty ceiling. Every muscle in his body seemed ready to explode. Then, staring up, Coyote spoke.
“It is here.” The voice wasn’t his, or at least wasn’t the voice I knew to be his. It was deeper. Primitive. He repeated his command, his words peppered out in short, staccato bursts.
“It . . . is . . . here!”
Derek grabbed my arm. “What the hell is he doing?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
Jacob then turned to me. “Help him.”
“Jacob, what the fuck do you want me to do?”
A few other students shouted something, but I barely noticed. Everyone else was silent, fixed on the crazy man, wondering what he would do next.
The bartender shouted for Coyote to get the hell off the table.
Then something happened that I can’t explain. Perhaps I never will, but I know that it did happen. Everyone saw it.
Coyote ripped his shirt open, exposing his naked flesh beneath. He took it off and discarded it to the floor, the sweat shimmering off his body. His muscles were flexed, and every detail of each of them seemed sculpted from a Renaissance artist. He appeared to me as someone I did not know. This was not my roommate. This was a man transformed. He looked both strong and vulnerable, weak and commanding.
He lifted his arms so they stuck straight out and slowly began opening and closing his hands in unison.
Opened and closed. Opened and closed.
His head fell forward and a thick strand of now-damp hair fell across his closed eyes. A long, viscous line of drool dangled from his lower lip. He was in some kind of trance.
Then Coyote levitated.
This I am not making up.
I don’t know how he did it, but I will go to my grave swearing that both of his feet lifted a few inches off the top of that dirty bar table. It lasted only a few seconds, but everyone saw it. I know because I heard everyone gasp at the same time.
He levitated, and this parlor trick, more than anything else, solidified Coyote’s future. And mine.
His feet crashed back to the table and Coyote collapsed with it, both man and wood crumbling to the floor in a heap. Coyote was a rag doll, his tightened muscles now appearing soft and weak as he laid in an inert mass on the floor. A woman screamed from the corner of the room. I tore my eyes off Coyote for only a second and saw half of the other patrons standing. The bartender seemed frozen in time, his mouth hanging slack-jawed.
No one knew what to do, least of all me. I felt panic rising within my chest. What had to be an elaborate beginning to Coyote’s plan was both real and horrifying. Was he having a vision? Or was he truly just acting?
Coyote wiggled about on the floor before finally standing. No one made an effort to help him.
The lights in the bar flickered. I wasn’t sure if they had been doing that all along.
I could see what looked like a trickle of blood running down Coyote’s chest. Where his wound originated and what caused it I didn’t know, but the effect was dramatic. Coyote was beaten, weak, and transformed.
Standing fully erect and his eyes set in a blazing stare, Coyote addressed the onlookers in a booming voice.
“I am ready to understand a new Revelation. None of you are ready, but I can make you so. I must choose.”
Derek mumbled under his breath. “Oh my God, he’s lost his fucking mind.”
Like a dog sensing danger, Coyote flicked his gaze to our table and shot Derek a look that seemed more genuine than acted. He then turned his body and walked slowly to us as everyone else in the bar remained silent. I thought he was going to confront Derek. Derek must have, too, because he pushed his chair back and stood. Coyote walked up to him but quickly stepped around him, stopping instead in front of Jacob. Jacob hadn’t moved since his original cry for help moments earlier, and he remained fixed in place as Coyote walked up to him and stood within inches of his face.
I looked at the two of them and couldn’t help but feel I was watching a movie. In life, real life, we are so unaccustomed to witnessing the unexpected that when it comes, it transports us to another plane of thinking. It makes us feel special. It makes us want to sustain our feelings of fluttering importance by telling others what we saw, how we reacted, and, as is often the case, what we would have done had we more time to react.
It occurred to me in that split second this was exactly what Coyote was doing. He was giving everyone in this bar a story to tell. This was how he was planting the seed. He was doing something unexpected, and that was probably going to be enough to get something to grow.
Coyote lifted his hands and dipped each of his thumbs into the blood on his chest. Jacob didn’t move as Coyote held each side of Jacob’s face and smeared a line of blood on each corner of Jacob’s mouth.
“You will be the first to hear my message,” Coyote proclaimed. “Come with me, and you will learn. Then you will choose others to hear, and they will tell others still.” Coyote held out his right hand and offered it to Jacob, who grasped it. “But you will be the first.”
Before any of us could react to anything that was going on, a shirtless Coyote and a stunned Jacob left the bar and went into the cold, dark night.
No one saw either of them for ten days.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
AUGUST 1990
Harden woke and smelled urine. The bucket hadn’t been collected for the past three meals.
He stretched and rubbed his eyes, hoping to see something different than he always did. He didn’t. He sat up and wiped dirt off his face.
It was cold today.
He thought about Emma. He didn’t know why they’d taken her back, or what they had done with her. Or why they had allowed them to be together in the first place.
Another game, Harden thought.
He looked around his coffin and practiced not feeling. If he thought too much, he could feel the hopelessness in the hard dirt and concrete walls. If he thought too much, he only felt death.
He missed his father fiercely, in a way he never thought possible. His father’s cold and unfeeling exterior was a tropical haven compared to this place. He hated thinking that his father was out there desperate to find his son. Worse, he hated to think his father had no idea Harden was even missing.
He pushed these ideas away and focused on his writing. That was it. Of the little he had, he still had the ability to tell a story, so he clung to it as fiercely as he could.
Harden moved to the typewriter. His joints ached and his stomach growled.
The page was only half filled. He had so much more to say.
He knew where he wanted to resume. It was a good part. He was actually looking forward to writing it, as much as he was able to look forward to anything anymore.
The door opened. Harden turned.
Baby Face stood in the doorway. Harden instinctively began to move to the corner, but something happened. Or, more accurately, something didn’t happen.
Baby Face didn’t ask him to move. Instead, he said something he had never said to Harden before.
“I want to talk.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Harden said nothing, and instead, sat back in the chair and lightly gripped its arms. He imagined Baby Face suddenly charging him, and Harden would have to use the chair to fend him off, like a lion tamer. But after a few seconds he realized there was no sudden anything about Baby Face. The man wavered ever so slightly back and forth, as if standing on a large beanbag, trying to keep his balance.
His voice was deep, slow, and lazy. “Don’t you want to talk to someone, Harden? Gotta be bored by now.”
Harden wished he could see the man’s face. He’d only seen two Baby Faces since he’d been in the cell. He thought this was the one he’d hit with the typewriter—the slightly larger one—but he couldn’t be sure. He wanted to see his eyes, to see if he was what Harden suspected he might be, which was drunk.
A drunk Baby Face could present an opportunity. Also, a drunk Baby Face might turn into something terrifying.
Be careful.
“Your job,” Harden said. “Do you enjoy it?”
Baby Face took a step inside the cell and closed the door. Harden didn’t hear it lock from the outside.
“I’m not ready to answer your questions yet.” A step closer.
“But you’re the one who wanted to talk.”
“Oh, you’ll ask me questions.” Ask came out as ashhsk, and Harden knew he was either drunk or high. “But there are rules involved.”
Harden squeezed a little tighter on the top of the chair. “What are the rules?”
Baby Face reached into his back pocket and pulled something from it. It took Harden a moment to see it in the dim light, but once he did, he knew with no uncertainty exactly what it was. It was a surgical blade.
Harden stood and placed the chair in front of him.
“Take it easy,” Harden said.
Baby Face held the blade loosely at his side, making no effort to threaten with it. But he didn’t need to. He was holding a fucking razor, after all. Bolt cutters for Emma, razors for Harden. And Derek. Derek had been sliced all over, hadn’t he been? Maybe with the very same piece of steel on which Harden was now transfixed. This place wasn’t a prison anymore. It was a slaughterhouse.
“What do you want more than anything, Harden?”
“To get out of here.”
Baby Face shook his head. “Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen. Least I can’t make that call. So, aside from that . . . what do you want?”
“Answers.”
“Exactly.”
If he’s drunk, he’ll be slow, Harden thought. But don’t underestimate him.
“Kind of hard to carry on a conversation when you’re wearing that mask.”
Baby Face tilted his head, and just that slight twist behind the smooth, expressionless mask chilled Harden.
“I can take it off.”
“Yes,” Harden said. “Please.”
Baby Face reached up with his free hand and pushed the mask to the top of his head, and for the first time Harden saw his captor’s face. He was young, maybe even as young as Harden, but wrinkled layers of fat around the man’s small, dark eyes gave him somewhat of an ageless look. Buzzed hair, clean shaven, pasty skin, and a rubbery purple welt from where the typewriter had hit him.
Harden had always figured him at north of two hundred and fifty pounds.
“That’s what you did.” Baby Face pointed to the welt. “Have to say, I was impressed. Didn’t think you’d have the strength. You got me in some trouble, you did.”
“Good.”
“Not too easy to find typewriters like that and get ’em quick. Big pain in my ass.”
So that’s it, Harden thought. He’s come here for some payback.
“What do you want?”
“We’re going to have a little chat, Harden. Little dialogue.”
“About what?”
Baby Face scrunched up his nose, and the words slurred out of him. “Well, I guess that isn’t exactly the right way of putting it. I’m going to let you ask me some questions. I’ll give you straight-up answers and everything. Scout’s honor.”
“I doubt you were ever a Boy Scout.”
A drunken laugh. “But the catch is, Harden, for every answer I give you.” Now he brought the blade up to eye level. “I get a little taste.”
The word taste brought bile into Harden’s throat, and he had to fight off the image of Mr. Kildare and the storage closet.
This will just be our secret, okay, Harden?
Five feet separated the back of Baby Face and the unlocked door, but it felt a mile away.
“What do you mean?”
Baby Face turned the razor over in his hand. “Is that your first question?”
“No, no. I just . . .” He didn’t know how to stall, how to tell this sadistic psychopath to stay away from him. Moreover, he didn’t want to provoke him. At least not yet. “I suppose I don’t have much of a choice.”
“We always have choices, Harden.”
“What happens if I don’t want to play your game?”
“That’s question one, and the answer is I hurt you badly. Now get over here.”
“That wasn’t my question,” Harden said.
“You’re not the one holding a razor.”
Harden took a step back toward the wall. Think, Harden. You might be weaker than him, but goddamnit you have to be smarter.
“It’s not fair,” Harden said.
“What’s not fair?”
“I want three questions at a time, not just one.”
“That so?”
“It’s the least you can do.”
Baby Face mulled this proposition.
“Fine,” he said. “Is that it?”
“No,” Harden continued. Make him human, he thought. Make a connection. “I want to know your name. Your real name.”
“Why?”
“You know mine. Seems fair enough I should know yours.”
“You sure do care about things being fair.”
“I’m not asking for much.”
A small grunt. Almost a laugh, but not quite. “No, I don’t guess you are. But maybe I’ll just cut you up anyway.”
Harden had thought about death a lot since being down here and had even gotten to the point where the idea of being dead sometimes lured him, promising him a warm blanket and an end to his suffering. But the idea of dying still terrified him. The process of death. The blade cutting to the bone. The unbearable pain.
“I don’t think that would be as satisfying for you,” Harden said. “You like games. Okay, let’s play games.”
Baby Face grunted then cleared his throat, bringing up something horrible into his mouth. He spat it into the dirt.
“Bill,” the man said.
“Bill?”
This fucking demon’s name was Bill?
“Yeah. Bill. And that was your second question.”
“It wasn’t a question.”
“Your voice sing-songed when you said my name, as if you didn’t believe me. That’s a question in my book.”
“Fuck you.”
“You got one more question in this round, Harden. Make it a good one.”
Harden took a moment, feeling the walls close in on him. He had about a hundred questions he could think of. Where was he? Were people looking for him? Was Emma still alive? Are they ever going to release them? Harden didn’t know which one to ask, or if Bill would even answer truthfully. Or if it even mattered. Harden had the sense he could ask Bill his favorite color and Harden would still end up sliced into pieces, his blood turning the floor into mud puddles.
“Starting to lose my patience, Harden.”
“How do I get out of here?”
Bill smiled, then pointed the blade at the door behind him. “Through that door, down the hallway through another door, and up a flight of stairs. There’s another door at the top. Go into the room inside, and then it will be very clear to you where the exit is. It’s a beautiful day today, too. The fresh air would probably taste like birthday cake to you.”
Ha
rden considered the answer, and for a fraction of a second it actually sounded to him like an invitation to leave. Then he realized that his confinement had slowed him mentally. Bill was being literal. Harden wasn’t going anywhere, and he just wasted a question.
“Now that’s three questions,” Bill said. He held up his hand and gestured for Harden to come closer. “Give me your hand.”
“What are you going to do?” Harden cringed as he realized he’d asked another question, but Bill didn’t seem inclined to debit him this time.
“Cut you. Just a little. Now get over here, or it’ll be worse than it needs to be.”
Harden looked at Bill, and a sense of peace suddenly washed over him. He would be cut, but Bill didn’t seem to want to do anything else to him. At least not anything like he’d been through as a little boy. And if he trusted that Bill’s cut wouldn’t be bad, Harden would at least get three more questions. Three more questions meant three more answers.
Harden took a step forward, not thinking there was any other choice.
Bill gestured like a shopping mall Santa coaxing a wary toddler. “Little closer now. It’s okay.”
Harden sucked in a deep breath and took another step. They were close now. Harden could hear a faint wheeze coming through Bill’s nose, the distant sound of a rocking chair squeaking in an empty room.
“Give me your right hand.”
Harden’s arm felt like lead, but he managed to raise it enough to let Bill grasp his hand.
Bill turned it over and studied his knuckles carefully.
“Make it fast.”
Bill didn’t look up. “Sure thing, boss.”
Before Harden could brace himself, the knife flashed, and Harden saw the blade slice across the back of his hand. His flesh zippered open over the ridges of a thousand tiny bones.
Harden screamed and yanked his hand back, then squeezed it with his other hand, trying to apply pressure. He could feel the blood spilling over his fingers, but when he allowed himself to finally look at the wound, it wasn’t quite as bad as he’d feared. The cut was maybe two inches long, but it would need stitches. He backed up out of arm’s reach.
“See now, Harden? That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
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