Wicked Cruel

by Rich Wallace

  So he’ll be out tonight again, probably even later. I guess I can watch another football game. Or two.

  And go for another long walk if I have to.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It’s all quiet in the house, but I can’t bring myself to go up to the attic after dark. I keep glancing at the stairs and listening for that music, and it’s got me scared stiff. The sky has cleared and the moon is just about full, so I put on a dark hooded sweatshirt and some black cotton gloves and go out. A strong wind is blowing in my face.

  I pass the coffee shop and the Colonial Theater and turn at the bus station, walking through a parking lot and reaching the skateboard park. I scan the ramps but don’t see anybody I know. Then I hear my name and see Scapes sitting on the curb twenty feet away in a filthy football jersey.

  He juts his head in the direction I went earlier. “You go to the house?”

  I give him a puzzled look. “Why?”

  “I saw you heading that way this afternoon.” He stands and puts one foot on his skateboard.

  “How come you’re not in there?” I ask, pointing at the chain-link fence, into the skating area, where a few older guys are on the ramps.

  He frowns. “Still bummed out.” He walks toward me, pushing his skateboard along with one foot. “Gary said you saw him. After he died. What’s that all about?” He’s stooping a bit, minimizing his size, seeming less intimidating. I can tell by his voice that he’s spooked.

  “I think I saw him.” I give a huffy little laugh. “On this video. It sounds really stupid. It had to be less than twenty-four hours after he died, though. Just staring at me.”

  “What video?”

  I roll my eyes. “My father was watching this concert from Japan or somewhere, and suddenly there’s Bainer in the audience. But every time I went looking for it again, he wasn’t there. And then it came on by itself and he was back.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No. He just glared at me.”

  Scapes stands with his mouth hanging open, then looks around. He steps hard on the edge of his skateboard and it pops into the air and he catches it. “Ernie!” he yells to somebody inside the fence. “I’m leaving my board. Take it home.”

  He reaches over the fence and sets his board on the ground. Then he turns back to me. “Can you show me the video?”

  I shrug. “He’s usually not there.”

  “That’s okay. Let’s try, all right?”

  So we walk back to my house. We don’t say much. Halfway there he goes, “Gary says I killed him.”

  “He thinks we all did.”

  “Yeah, but he says I did the most.”

  Spike is on the steps, waiting to be let in. She rubs against my shin and meows.

  “You want anything to drink?” I ask Scapes. “Seltzer? Sprite?”

  “Nah. Clear liquids freak me out.”

  “They do?”

  He blushes. “Yeah.”

  He follows me up the two flights of stairs. “You live in the attic?” he asks.

  “I sleep in the attic. My computer’s up here, too.”

  I know which of the many “Way Back into Love” videos it is now, so I find it quickly on the Freewheeler site.

  “What is that?” Scapes asks as the woman starts speaking in Japanese.

  “It’s Asian,” I say. “Don’t ask how my father ever found this; who knows?”

  “But Bainer’s on it?”

  I lower the volume. “Sometimes. I mean, he’s not really on it, he just appears once in a while. Or he did.”

  The audience scan passes, but there’s no sign of Bainer. “No,” I say. “If he was gonna be there, it would’ve been by now.”

  Scapes leans closer to the screen and I can see the wispy, colorless beginnings of his mustache. “Run it again,” he says. “Okay?”

  I do, but it’s the same. “He shows his face when he wants to, not because we’re running the video. Last night it turned on by itself and there he was. Scared the piss out of me.”

  “I bet.” He drums his fingers on his thigh, then rubs the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. He’s looking around the attic, into the dark corners and up at the beams. “This is a cool space,” he says.

  “I like it. Or I did until Bainer started haunting me.”

  He shakes his head slowly. “Very weird. You think …”

  “What?”

  “You think a kid could die like that? From an accumulation of hits, even way after they happened?”

  “Man, I don’t know.”

  “I get banged around every day from boarding or playing football. It doesn’t keep adding up. It heals.”

  “Yeah. Bainer didn’t heal quick. One time he got this bruise in the middle of his forehead.” The time I shoved him into the metal chairs. “It should have been gone in three days, but you could see it a month later.” Near his brain.

  Scapes is staring at the computer screen, which is frozen on the Freewheeler home page. He nods. “He bruised easy.” He reaches to the screen and gently runs his fingers over it, like he’s trying to see if it’s hot or something. “You definitely saw him after he died? On here?”

  I let out my breath in a short burst. “I don’t even know anymore. The obit says he died on Tuesday. My parents left on Thursday morning, and it was the night before that, for sure. So yeah, he was dead. And his annoying face was right there on the screen, scowling at me.”

  He sits back abruptly. “Whoa. I can picture it.”

  “Tell me about it. I picture it every night. It wakes me up in my dreams.”

  He blinks a couple of times. “I got an idea,” he says softly. “You have a flashlight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get it. Maybe we can do something about this tonight.”

  The Bainer house is a lot scarier at night, lit only by the full moon, and only on one side. We look at it from the shadows of the old warehouse for several minutes, then Scapes points toward one of the boarded windows. “That one’s loose,” he whispers.

  “You’re going in?” I ask.

  He gives me a half smile. “We are.” He steps toward the window and puts a hand on the board. It sways a bit. He gets his hand under it and pulls, and a nail makes an aaaank-y sound as it comes away from the frame. He pulls with both hands and the plywood falls with a dull thud as he jumps back.

  “You ever been in there?” I whisper.

  “Once. About five years ago.”

  That would have put us in second grade. Way before Bainer moved. “With him?”

  He tightens his mouth. Then he clambers up and straddles the opening before ducking in. I follow. “I went to his birthday party,” he says.

  That’s hard to believe. He does know the house, though, pointing out the living room and the kitchen as we wait for our eyes to adjust. I don’t dare turn on the flashlight, to avoid attracting attention. “What are we doing here?” I ask.

  “Like a séance. You know what that is?”

  “Yeah.” We keep our voices at a barely audible level.

  “Maybe we can communicate with him.”

  The house is empty, at least down here, and it smells moldy and damp. One beam of moonlight is hitting the living room floor; the thin wooden boards are warped and dotted with paint stains. The oven door has been ripped off and is lying in a dusty alcove where the refrigerator must have been, and all of the windowsills are covered with dead flies.

  “How are we going to do this?” I whisper.

  He juts his chin toward the stairs. “His room was up there.”

  I slide my hand along the wooden banister as we slowly go up. The air tastes stale and the wallpaper is peeling.

  He runs his fingers against the wall. “Bathroom,” he says as he reaches a door on the left. He points his thumb across the hall. “That was his parents’ room.”

  There are two other doors. He pulls the first one open to a stairway, obviously to the attic. The other door is already open. Bainer’s room is right above the
window we entered the house through.

  We’re facing away from the street, so I flick on the flashlight for a second and it lights up Bainer’s mug: A school photograph on the wall. It looks like it’s from third or fourth grade, secured with a thumbtack—no frame or anything. There’s also a paperback Matt Christopher baseball novel on the floor and a pile of small, cheap toys—like from McDonald’s Happy Meals—in the corner.

  Scapes sits against the wall, facing the back of the house, and I sit across from him. We don’t say anything for at least five minutes.

  “Eerie,” he finally whispers.

  “Yeah.”

  He picks a plastic Batman from the pile of toys, Doc from the Seven Dwarfs, and a samurai, and stands them in a semicircle, facing him. He motions with his hand for me to get closer, and I scuffle over next to Doc. My heart is beating way harder than it should be.

  From where Scapes is sitting he can reach Bainer’s photo, and he gives it a gentle tug until the thumbtack comes loose. He sets the picture on the floor inside our circle. “Let me have that light,” he says.

  He sets it facedown on the floor, so there’s only the slightest glow.

  I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry. I suck some saliva off my tongue. “Now what?”

  He taps a finger on the wooden floor a few times. “Bainer?” he whispers, looking up and around.

  “Bainer … we’re waiting,” he says. “Come on. When you’re ready.”

  I catch his eyes and he gives me a look that says something like, Be patient.

  So we sit and wait. It’s cold in here, but we’re out of the wind. We sit very still, staring at the flashlight. Nothing moves.

  After ten minutes the Batman tips over and makes a soft plunk on the floor. I keep staring for a minute, then glance over at Scapes. He lifts his eyebrows and opens one palm. “It’s cheap plastic,” he says, barely loud enough for me to hear. He gives me a nervous half smile. We leave Batman down.

  Then there’s a scrabbling sound above us, in the attic.

  “Squirrels?” I say.

  “Or rats.”

  The sound stops.

  The glow is mesmerizing. Eventually I start feeling calmer and not cold at all.

  The samurai is smaller than the other two figures, made of hard plastic with no moveable parts and a red painted-on mouth. It seems to take a tiny, almost imperceptible step forward, then steps back.

  I wait two minutes. “You see that?” I whisper.

  “What?”

  “Did that sword guy move?”

  I look over at Scapes. He wipes his mouth with his thumb. “I don’t think so.… The light’s funny; the moon and the wind and all. Makes things shimmer.”

  I nod slowly. I’m sure it was the light.

  Ten more minutes pass. Twenty.

  “Bainer?” he whispers again. “We’re here.”

  There’s no response, no more movement. Scapes picks up the flashlight and shines it into the corners, where there are spiderwebs and cracked plaster. He tacks the picture onto the wall, just a few inches above the floor, and slides the toys beneath it.

  He stands and whispers, with slightly more volume, “I’m sorry, Bainer. Rest in peace, man,” and we make our way down the stairs.

  We climb carefully out the window. He props the plywood against the side of the house, but we have no way of reattaching it. So we turn to go, and I hear a thwack as something with force hits the clapboards above our heads. Scapes shines the flashlight on the house and finds a fresh dent. He bends and picks up a rock that bounced near our feet, about the size of an egg.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says, and we hurry across the lawn back toward town.

  We stand near Papa’s Tacos for a few minutes. Scapes looks up at the sky. His voice is shaky and low. “In second grade—this is the only nice thing I ever remember Bainer doing—my father’d been yelling at me all morning and I was shook up. He was still drunk from the night before, like every morning, and he smacked me in the head and shoved me out the door in a T-shirt. It was twelve degrees outside. So I start running to school and Bainer comes up behind me. He says something stupid like he always does, but he takes off his coat and hands it to me. He’s wearing a heavy sweater so he’s okay, and I’m freezing my butt off so I take the coat.”

  Scapes glances toward the skate park. I know that the cops start coming by every half hour after ten to clear the place out, but the boarders go back within five minutes.

  He lets out a sigh. “A few days later he asks me to come to his birthday party. He did me that favor with the coat, so I go. It was me, his parents, and two kindergartners from down the street. Callas and some others hear about it and give me hell until I bust them all in the face, but after that I really started”—his voice seems to catch in his throat—“well, I picked on Bainer a lot more.”

  “To redeem yourself?”

  He hacks up some stuff and spits. “Something like that,” he says. “What a jerk.”

  I nod. “Yeah. He was.”

  “I’m not talking about him,” he says. “I’ve been a jerk ever since that happened.”

  He shrugs and starts walking toward the skateboard park. I walk home. Lots to think about.

  What happens when you die? Do you lie there in limbo while your bones decay, not getting free until every molecule in your body has turned to dust and you become part of the atmosphere again? Like a million years from now? Or do you float away from all of that the moment you die, entering some afterlife where everything’s peaceful and light and all of your dead relatives are there to greet you?

  And what if you’ve got scores to settle back on Earth? Some revenge to enact on anyone who might have helped hurry you along toward your death?

  Our house is dark. Spike is lying on the couch, so I push her aside and turn on Comedy Central. Some woman is doing stand-up and I watch for a few minutes. I’m hungry, so I go out to the kitchen and fish around in the refrigerator, finding that chicken David cooked earlier. I yank off a leg and bite into it. Then I stop cold, hearing a familiar voice from the TV.

  “So, I heard your father is working as a plumber’s assistant.”

  I set the chicken leg on the counter and rush to the living room. It’s still that woman, joking about sex. I stare at the TV. Was that a commercial I heard? I shut off the set and go back to the kitchen.

  I take another bite of chicken. And then I hear Bainer again from the living room. “I need your help right away; I gotta leak in the sink.”

  The TV is on when I get there, but the screen is blank and the sound is nothing but fuzz. “Bainer,” I say, really loud. “What are you doing?” I’m scared, but I’m mad. I hustle up to the attic and turn on my computer.

  I run through that “Way Back into Love” video three times but don’t see a trace of him. The moonlight is coming directly through my narrow window, making a long, thin patch of brightly glowing light on the floor. And in the light are three tiny silhouettes that look like a samurai and a dwarf and an action figure.

  I’m losing it. I’m going crazy. I need to get out of here fast.

  The Shamrock is much busier tonight, with crowds of college students standing in the alley smoking and talking on cell phones, and hundreds of others packed into the bar room. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is making the walls vibrate. It feels like my whole brain is vibrating, too, but not from the music—from nerves and confusion.

  I lean against a brick building across from the bar and listen. I figure the band will give it a rest at some point and David will come out for a smoke.

  They go through “Dream On,” “Midnight Rider,” and “Born to Run,” then some taped crap from Lady Gaga comes on, so I know the band’s on a break. Ten minutes later David squeezes through the crowd with a woman with curly bleached hair.

  I walk over.

  “Jordan,” David says. “What’s going on?”

  “Thought I’d check out the band.”

  “We sound good?”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, from out here. You gonna be playing all night?”

  “Another hour maybe. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, though I’m not. “I guess.”

  The woman steps past me and lights a cigarette. “Hi, honey,” she says in a raspy voice.

  “Hi.”

  David gestures at her with an open palm. “This is Lydia. I knew her back in high school.”

  Lydia gives a short, high-pitched laugh. “He ignored me back in high school,” she says. “What’s your name again? Jordan? Listen, Jordan, this uncle of yours was something special back in the day. Now look at him”—she gives that awful cackling laugh again—“won’t even buy me a drink.”

  “You didn’t let me,” he says with a grin. “Said that’d raise too many expectations.”

  She takes a long drag on her cigarette and studies him. “Okay,” she says, blowing out the smoke. “You can buy me one. Or two.”

  David gives me a sheepish shrug. They start to go back inside. David says, “You’re definitely okay, right?”

  Lydia answers for me. “He’s fine.”

  Yeah, thanks.

  She rubs her cigarette out against the bricks, then tosses it into a puddle. “Right, honey?”

  “Right,” I say. No use saying anything else.

  My hands are shaking as I reach Main Street. I’m seeing him everywhere now—the Internet, the television. But not outside my house. We sat in Bainer’s own house for way over an hour and never saw a trace of him. Except maybe that rock that hit the house. And the samurai.

  I walk back that way. I don’t know why. Past the industrial area, through the college neighborhood.

  There’s Bainer’s house, dark and empty.

  My stomach is so tight I feel like I might throw up. The idea of going back to my house is terrifying. Things turn on, and I hear Bainer or see him. But he’s never spoken to me; he just lets me know he’s there. He’s getting back at me in the best way he knows how. By scaring the living crap out of me.

  I step across the lawn, halfway between the street and the window we climbed through earlier.

  I was his only chance for a friend in this town, and I wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t risk the shunning from everybody else. I was the only one who might have stepped up and thrown him a break, back when I could have used a friend, too. Instead, I turned against him. I hurt him and I pushed him away.