“I make plenty of sacrifices,” Terry said, his voice softer now. He was pleading. “The Party keeps half the money I earn and more. I’m left with nothing but table scraps. Come on, Sal, I’m begging you here.”
“How ‘bout this, then—we keep it in the family. No one has to know, eh? Not your sons, not your neighbors. I’ll tell the guys at work, but that’ll be it. Hell, they’re all doing it, too. They wouldn’t understand if I opted out. You want me to look bad in front of them?”
“Then lie about it, Sal.”
“Are you kidding me? They got ments—little ment kids—that make sure we don’t do that kinda thing. Look at me, Terry. You’re getting off lucky here. Under my protection, your tax fumbles won’t even matter. There’s zero chance you’ll get shipped to the camps. You know what would happen to Lydia here if you got shipped to a labor camp, right? And your two boys?”
There was a moment of silence in which Michael’s blood pulsed through his body so loud he could hear it.
“Okay, then.” A chair creaked, and Michael could picture Uncle Sal sitting back in relief. “It’s settled. Two nights a week, starting Thursday. It’s the best thing for your family, baby brother. Trust me.”
Michael waited for his father to say something, but the man kept silent. Michael turned very slowly and tiptoed to his room, where he tossed and turned in his bed for hours, trying to decipher what he’d just heard.
His dreams over the next few days were erratic and terrifying. In one recurring dream, he was in a dark van with strangers dressed all in black. They had no faces, only pale masks of flesh covering their skulls, and they were murmuring deep in their throats and reaching for him, all fingers and nails, as the van drove them through a place that smelled like trees.
Chapter 7
Thursday came to find Michael lying in bed, sleepless. His uncle was set to arrive that night, but to what purpose? He wondered about it as he stared at the ceiling until a strange tugging sensation made him sit up. It was as if a string had been tied to a hook inside his skull, and someone was pulling it from another room.
“What the hell?”
A dry ache flared in his head. Something wasn’t right.
Then he heard it—a rumble from down the hall. It sounded like furniture being roughly pushed aside. He held his breath and listened, but there was only silence.
Tiptoeing out of his bedroom, he stood in the darkened hallway. The rumbling noise came again, and this time, he could tell exactly where it was coming from—his parent’s bedroom at the other end of the corridor.
Exactly where the tugging sensation was trying to lead him.
He crept past the stairwell, keeping his eyes on the door. A squeak sounded, then someone’s voice—a woman’s—followed by the clack of flesh against flesh. A vision rose in his mind, a nasty one of his parents wrestling naked on top of the covers.
But he knew the man in the room was not his dad. Michael closed his eyes, trying to hear.
“Shh… easy,” a gruff, muffled voice said.
Michael found himself standing at the door, his legs having carried him without his consent. The tugging in his mind had vanished. His breath became shallow, panicked.
“Enough of that,” came a woman’s sharp whisper. “I don’t like that. Don’t do it.”
Trying the knob, finding it locked, Michael took several steps back, then sprinted forward, right foot raised. He kicked the door open to reveal the moon-tinted darkness within.
His eyes adjusted, and he saw two people in unusual positions on the mattress. The bed itself was a mess of tousled blankets and sheets pulled toward the center, exposing the frayed corners of the mattress. On top of it all, his mother lay on her back, naked and spread-eagled as if about to give birth. Her breasts flopped on either side of her rib cage like they were melting off her chest. She quickly covered them with her hands, her legs clamping shut.
Michael’s breath caught in his throat. His heart hammered. This couldn’t be happening.
His mother’s pose was not the worst part of the scene. On the lower half of the bed, his uncle knelt, slightly hunched forward like a plumber about to squeeze himself into the nook beneath a sink to fix a leaky pipe. He was also completely naked, the dim moonlight washing over his lumpy, doughy body, illuminating the disgustingly thick carpet of hair that grew on his back and shoulders. He held an empty bottle—the thick end pointing forward. Where did he plan to stick it?
There was a dank, clammy smell in the room. Michael’s stomach turned. His uncle had a plan for that bottle. He was going to stick it somewhere. His mother wouldn’t like it. No, she wouldn’t enjoy it one bit. Michael could sense it in the room—her fear, as heavy and nauseating as the smell of their naked bodies.
“Get out,” his uncle snapped. “Close the door.”
Instead, Michael flipped the switch. The room filled with light so fast it was like a powdery burst. The two figures on the bed winced.
Uncle Sal pulled back his right arm, the one holding the bottle. Michael didn’t have time to duck. He was still so shocked by the scene he almost failed to register the loud thump and the spreading pain. The bottle banged against the wall. It had literally bounced off his skull, his uncle had thrown it so hard.
He covered the welt with one hand, dazed.
“Mom?” he said.
“Mikey, it’s not what you think,” his mother said, sitting up. “Get out of here. Go!”
Uncle Sal climbed off the mattress. He faced his nephew, slightly hunched. Michael readied himself. Without really knowing what to do, he dropped his shoulders and bent his knees in case he had to jump away.
“You little shit,” his uncle said.
Michael glanced to his left, searching the area of carpet against the wall. There it was. The bottle.
He went for it as Uncle Sal charged.
His left hand closed around the bottle while his right hand shot up to keep his uncle away. The man brushed it aside easily, as if Michael’s arm were no more than a thin branch crossing his path. Then, he grabbed Michael’s hair and yanked upward, forcing him to stand. Michael went to swing the bottle, a desperate move. He was taller than his uncle. He could do this.
Or not. His uncle caught Michael’s hand in a firm grip, pinning him against the wall. He was surprisingly strong and quick. Michael had underestimated Uncle Sal, the years the man had spent practicing hand-to-hand combat, weapons handling, the suppression of fear. He was old and fat now, but he was still deadly.
“She’s my mom,” Michael said, his voice shaking. “You—you have no right.”
Sal chuckled, and Michael caught a whiff of the man’s dinner on his breath. Pasta sauce and gin, partially digested. Too much gin. He reeked of it.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mikey,” his uncle said. Michael could sense the man smiling, though his face was shrouded in darkness. “I can do whatever the spiteful hell I want.”
His fingers wrestled the bottle out of Michael’s grip. His other hand clamped around Michael’s neck, holding him in place, suffocating him. Sal raised the bottle to strike, surprising Michael. Would the man really break a glass bottle against his nephew’s face.
Gasping for air, Michael grabbed his uncle’s arm, the one pinning him to the wall. But there was nothing he could do. Uncle Sal was stronger than him. Stronger by leaps and bounds.
Then it came back.
The thread that had pulled him toward this room. It was quivering wildly now. Michael saw it reach out for the smaller, tighter thread in his uncle’s head, now visible to him as if by some sort of magical revelation.
The threads touched. A current went through Michael’s body, a violent sort of energy that begged to be released.
“Stop!”
He shut his eyes. His uncle gasped. There was no crash, no shatter of glass. All he heard now were pounding footsteps as men ran down the hall toward the bedroom. Sal’s men were coming.
Michael opened his eyes to the revolting sight of his u
ncle’s limp genitals and hanging belly, his chest hair matted with sweat. His gaze crept further up until it reached Sal’s face, which was frozen in a mask of howling rage. He was still holding the bottle high above his head without wavering at all, not even blinking, as if he’d suddenly become a lifelike statue.
Deep, steadying breaths kept Michael from vomiting. His father and Benny ran to the door, peeked in for a moment, then cautiously stepped inside. They kept their eyes on Sal.
“What’s going on?” Benny said. He stared at his mother, who was on her knees on the mattress, still naked and clutching a bedsheet up to her neck. “Ma, what—what are you…”
“Oh God!” She scrambled off the bed, wrapping herself in the sheet. “Terry, my God, what did he do to him?”
Terry Lanza stood frozen in place much like his brother.
“Dad,” Michael said, circling around his flash-frozen uncle. “I don’t know what happened. All I said was—”
“Stop.” His father held up a hand. “Don’t say another word.”
“But, Dad…”
“You can explain later.” He pointed at Sal. “Right now, we need to clean him up.”
Chapter 8
It was like moving an awkward piece of furniture.
Terry tied a bedsheet around his brother’s waist so it resembled a giant diaper. Then the three of them—Michael, his father, and Benny—lowered the man’s flabby arms and tipped him onto the bed. They tried closing Sal’s eyes, but his lids kept springing open. It was Michael’s idea to place coins over them to keep them shut.
When Uncle Sal was safely nestled in bed—the coins giving him a phantom-like, staring expression—the four members of the Lanza family went downstairs and opened a bottle of wine, one his father had been saving for a special occasion. A resigned expression on his father’s face told Michael the man was not surprised by any of this. They sat in silence for a while until Terry began to speak.
“She was my sister,” he began in a weary voice. “Claudia was, I guess you could say, different. No—special is the right word. We had to change our family name after what happened to her, from Cairne to Lanza, my mother’s maiden name. By then, Sal was already in the academy, and my father had disowned him. Sal changed his last name to Mastrano to further distance himself from our family. That’s how scared he was of Claudia.”
Michael absently took a sip of wine, not really tasting it, his attention wholly on his father’s words. His mother, dressed in pajamas and wrapped in a thick blanket, poured herself another glassful. Benny only sat back and listened.
“There was an incident at school when she was about nine years old,” his father said. “She shouted something at her teacher, and the woman had some kind of breakdown. Later that night, men in suits came to our house. They drugged her and took her away. I was ten years old. I never saw my sister again.
“One night around thirteen years ago—I remember it was during a thunderstorm that knocked out the power—a woman showed up at our doorstep carrying a four-year-old kid. She was soaked to the bone—they both were—and the kid’s lips were blue.
“‘This is Claudia’s son,’ she told me. ‘His name is Michael, and he needs to be kept safe.’ I invited her in, but she said it was too dangerous. She said her sister and her sister’s husband had been killed, that she’d been running for days. The boy had to be protected at all costs, she said. Meaning you, Michael. She said it was your mother’s dying wish that you be loved and protected. I remember the woman had this strange tic. She kept blinking, like her eyes stung.
“Then she said something I couldn’t figure out for the longest time. ‘When he reaches puberty, he’ll need special help. You have to find Louis Bell…’ or something like that—some name she didn’t quite finish because she died, right there on the doorstep. I saw the bloody bandages when I took you from her arms. She’d been shot in her side. I guess she ran all the way here like that.
“I checked her clothes, but she didn’t have any money or identification. After I hid you upstairs, I called the police to come for the body. After I’d moved it down the street, of course. The rain washed her blood off our doorstep, and I remember thinking…” His eyes took on an absent look, and his voice was grave. “I—I remember thinking, well, at least I don’t have to wash it.”
Seeming to snap out of it, he became himself again. Clearing his throat, he lifted the wineglass and took a large gulp. “I told them she was just some crazy woman seeking shelter. I guess they believed me, because they didn’t send anyone to follow up. I got lucky. If the police had come by with one of their ment lie detectors…”
He let the thought go unfinished. Michael stared at the table, stunned at the possibility he had a whole other family apart from this one—his real family, with a mother named Claudia. Did he also have brothers and sisters? And who was the man—Louis Bell?—that was supposed to have helped him?
“You were so sick,” his mother—no, his aunt—said into the silence. “I thought you would die.”
Benny added, “I remember that. I was six years old.” He frowned at his father. “You told me he’d been staying with Aunt Lina up in Bannerville because he was too sick for us to take care of him.”
Terry wiped one eye with a shivering hand, ignoring the others and focusing on Michael. “I knew as soon as I looked at you that you were Claudia’s son. You have her eyes, Mike.”
Michael held his emotions at bay—tried to, anyway. His voice came out shaky. “Who’s my real father?”
Terry Lanza, the man who had been his father for thirteen years but who was actually his uncle, sighed and shook his head. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.”
“I have to know. Is it this Louis Bell guy? Is it?”
Terry closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, son. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” He opened them, pity on his face. “I’ve been turning this over in my head for years. I think I know who she wanted me to find, who the man is who could give you this ‘special help’ you were going to need.”
“Who?” Michael said.
“The terrorist who blew up North Liberty Station and killed all those people.” His father’s voice dropped into an urgent whisper. “Not Louis Bell. Louis Blake.”
Chapter 9
The mountains shone in the distance like piles of gold covered in moss.
“Kill the ment! Kill him dead!” the boys chanted.
There were three of them. Gary, the one closest to their target, threw a rock, then melted into a crouch behind the grassy dune. The rock smacked the window of a ramshackle house half-hidden among the trees. The boys giggled.
“You hit it,” one said.
“You didn’t shatter it, though,” said the other.
“Shut up! I’d like to see you try it.”
The boy who’d thrown the rock glowered at his two friends, Eric and Sid, challenging them to say something else about how the glass hadn’t broken. He was dirty but proud in his dusty gray T-shirt and faded cargo pants. A true Eastlander. All he needed now was a pistol shoved into his belt.
“Do you think he’ll come out?” Eric said.
“Nah.” Gary peered over the dune at the rickety old house. His arm tensed with the urge to throw something bigger. “He never comes out. He’s just an old ment who smokes too much. That’s what my mom says, anyway. Here, gimme something else.”
Eric and Sid searched the ground. Sid found a glass bottle, dusty brown with the label worn off, and handed it over. “What about this?”
“It’ll do. Gotta fill it with dirt first to make it heavier. Watch and learn.”
He tilted the spout against the dune, then smoothed dirt over the opening. In the distance, crows cawed across the canyon in which their town lay. It was a bright, sunny afternoon—a delicious day for mischief.
“We could get in so much trouble for this,” Eric said.
“Wait a second.” This was Sid, always the scaredy-cat. “What if he’s our teacher in a few years?”
> “Will you shut up?” Gary said. The bottle was half full now. “All right. Ready?”
“No, really. He might be. Think about it.”
Ignoring his cowardly friend, Gary peered around the side of the dune, located the window he wanted to hit, and got ready to launch.
Then a strange thing happened. Before he could release the bottle, the muscles in his arm went soft, as if they’d turned to dough. It wasn’t just his arm, either. The feeling was spreading all over his body.
A wretched coughing sound—like the hacking of a sick dog—tore its way out of the house.
“What the hell is that?” Eric said.
Sid’s breathing came out panicked. “Just throw it and let’s get out of here.”
Gary was still trying to figure out what was wrong with his arm. It drifted to his side like melting candle wax, the fingers going soft around the bottle. The muscles around his bladder began to loosen as well, and he stared in horror at the dark stain spreading across his crotch.
His mother had always told him to stay away from Old Man Blake.
He should have listened.
Louis Blake peered through the blinds at the grassy dune in front of his house. He’d have to get rid of that thing, shovel it down flat or something. It was too good of a hiding spot for those little brats.
Out there, next to the dune, the boys were laughing at the one who’d wet himself.
“Ha, ha, ha, Gary pissed himself. Ha, ha, ha.”
“Shut up!”
Gary Tomlinson would spend the rest of his childhood living down the memory of the day he pissed his pants. Still laughing, the boys jogged back into the trees from where they had emerged. Gary glanced back only once, giving Blake the finger. Chuckling, Blake gave it right back.
“Serves you right, you little bastard.”
Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series Page 6