by Poppy Brite
Trevor kicked the door shut. The tiny room was dark but for the fragments of mirror in the tub, which seemed to suck in light, infect it with noisome colors and send it swirling back over the leprous walls and ceiling. The sink was stained black with blood. Zach wondered if the come was there too, dried to a translucent scale.
The pain in his shoulder ebbed a little. Zach stopped struggling. He felt dizzy, remote. Trevor’s hold on him was shoving his ribs up and crushing them inward, making it difficult to breathe. He was going to die right now. These sensations of pain and disconnection were the last he would ever feel, these fleeting, panicky thoughts the last he would ever have.
Stupid fucking program …
Then Trevor slammed him into the wall face first, and Zach grayed out completely.
Yielding flesh in his hands, hot with fear, sticky with sweat and blood and already smelling of heaven. Helpless bones his to crack, helpless skin his to rip open, sweet red river his to drink from. He had to do it. He had to know. With his eyes and his hands, with all his body, he had to see.
Trevor shoved Zach into the space between the toilet and the sink, his space. He clawed at Zach’s chest with his fingernails, ripped furrows in that smooth white skin. Blood sparkled on his hands, sprayed across his face. He pushed his mouth into the spray, lapped at it, then tore at the skin with his teeth. It was easy. It was right. It was beautiful.
Zach’s hands came up and tried to push Trevor’s head away, but there was no strength left in them. Trevor slid him farther back into the corner, into the cobwebs, felt tiny multilegged things skittering away. He ran his tongue over the long shallow wounds his fingernails had made on Zach’s chest. They tasted of salt and copper, of life and knowledge.
He stroked the concavity of Zach’s stomach. All the body’s bountiful secrets, cradled between the pelvis and the spine. He would sink his hands in to the wrists, to the elbows. He would reach up under the rib cage and make the heart beat with his fingers. He would find the source of life and swallow it whole.
“Trev?” said Zach. His voice was weak, paper-thin, barely there. “Trevor? I can’t fight you. But if you’re gonna kill me, please tell me why.”
Trevor closed his teeth on Zach’s earlobe and pulled at it, wondered how the soft little mass of flesh would feel going down his throat. “Why what?”
“Why pain is better than love. Why you’d rather kill me for the thrill of it than try to have a life with me, I thought you were brave, but this is some pretty cowardly shit.”
Tears were trickling down the side of Zach’s face, into the fine hair at his temples. Trevor traced their salty path to the corner of Zach’s eye, flicked his tongue over the lid, then sucked softly at the eyeball. It would burst in his mouth like a bonbon. He wondered if that amazing green would taste of mint.
“To see everything,” Zach whispered, “you have to be alive. If you do this to me, you’re gonna die too. Tell me you’re not.”
Maybe he was. Of course he was. But hadn’t he always known this would be the last panel, the crucifixion and conflagration, the way his life was supposed to end? And wouldn’t it be worth it?
But suddenly Trevor remembered something Bobby had said to him in the other room, in the other house. Birdland is a machine oiled with the blood of artists.
He looked down at Zach. Blood had run down over Zach’s face in thick black rivulets from a wound in his scalp. Blood leaked from his nostrils and his torn mouth. He had a lurid purple knot on one shoulder, an encrusted bite mark on the other. His chest was crisscrossed with furious red scratches. Where it wasn’t cut or bruised, his skin was absolutely white. His eyes held Trevor’s. His expression hovered somewhere between terrified and serene.
“Whatever you want,” said Zach. “It’s up to you.”
The words jarred Trevor completely from his dream of rending flesh, of crawling inside the body to find its secrets. Because it wasn’t just a body, he realized. It wasn’t a puzzle or an anatomy lesson or a source of mystical knowledge, it was Zach. The beautiful boy he had watched strutting and moaning onstage tonight, smartass and criminal anarchist and generous soul, his best friend, his first lover. Not a box of toys to tear apart, not a rare delicacy to rip open and devour still steaming.
And Zach was right. Whatever Trevor did next would be his own choice, and he would have to live with it until he died, even if that was only a matter of minutes. And if he died, would he go to Birdland? He thought of Bobby, alone with those two broken bodies forever. What if Trevor ended up in his own house, trapped with his own dead?
Yet Bobby had put the hammer in his hand and told him to go find out what it felt like.
Trevor imagined a crisp new autopsy report: Zachary Bosch, transient, 19 yrs … Cause of death: blunt trauma, ex-sanguination, evisceration … Manner of death: Murder …
Was that what his father considered art these days? Or was Birdland thirsty for blood to grease its cogs?
He shoved himself off Zach, out of the cramped space between sink and toilet. He stared at his hands, and for a moment he thought they were slicked with Zach’s blood, that he had sunk them deep into Zach’s insides, that he had really done it, and woken up too late. If I have any talent, any gift left at all, he heard his father saying, it’s in you now.
Fuck that, he thought. I’m not doing your dirty work.
He turned away from Zach and stepped into the bathtub. Broken glass gritted and scraped beneath his bare feet. Trevor stared down into the fragments of mirror, into the swarming light. “I won’t do it,” he said. “I don’t need to know what it feels like. I don’t need to draw it. I can live it.”
He made his right hand into a fist and drove it straight through the wall.
The damp old plaster splintered, sifted away, disintegrated beneath his knuckles. It hadn’t hurt at all. He wanted it to hurt; he wanted the pain he had been so ready to inflict on Zach.
He fell to his knees and began slamming his fist again and again into the hard porcelain, into the broken glass.
Zach thought he heard a bone crack in Trevor’s hand. He tried to push himself up. His head felt numb and leaden, his vision blurry. He could not get off the floor to go to Trevor.
So, with the last of his strength, he crawled.
The tub seemed very far away, though Zach knew it was only a couple of feet. He had to grab its edge and drag himself the last of the distance. The porcelain felt loathsome, slick as teeth and cold as death, shaking with Trevor’s blows. Trevor’s fist hitting the tub sounded like raw meat slamming into a stone floor now. Zach clung to the edge with one hand, reached out and touched Trevor’s back with the other.
Trevor whirled on him. His face was contorted, his eyes crazed with grief and pain. This is it, Zach thought. He’s gonna kill me now, and then beat himself to death like a moth against a windowpane right here where Bobby can watch. How stupid. How utterly useless. He felt no more fear, only a great hollow disappointment.
But Trevor didn’t grab him again. Instead he just stared at Zach, his face almost expectant. Something I said made him stop hurting me, Zach realized. What can I say to make him stop hurting himself?
“Listen,” he said. “Bobby killed the others because he couldn’t take care of them anymore and he couldn’t let them go. Then he killed himself because he couldn’t live without them. Right?”
Trevor made no response, but he didn’t look away. Suddenly Zach had a flash of intuition, the way he sometimes did when hacking a troublesome system. He thought he knew what was on that loop in Trevor’s brain. “Is it about love?” he asked. “Trev, do you think you have to make all this keep happening to prove you love me?”
At first he thought Trevor wasn’t going to answer. But then, ever so slowly, Trevor nodded.
We’re so fucked up, Zach thought. We could be the Dysfunctional Families poster kids if either of us lives long enough. Thanks, Joe and Evangeline. Thanks, Bobby.
“But I know you love me, Trevor. I believe you. I want
to stay alive and show you. I don’t need you to take care of me; I can take care of myself. And if you come away with me I won’t leave you ever.”
“How …” Trevor’s voice sounded husked out, used up. “How can I know that?”
“You have to trust me,” said Zach. “All I can tell you is the truth. You have to decide the rest for yourself.”
Trevor looked up from the hypnotic swirling pattern in the mirror shards, looked into Zach’s battered face. The pain in his right hand was enormous, hot as a skillet on the burner, then cold all the way to the bone. His knuckles were torn to bleeding ribbons. He thought he had broken at least one finger. The feeling of it made him heartsick. But the terrible anger was gone.
He had been ready to go plunging down, down, down. And he had nearly taken Zach with him.
Zach was kneeling before him, naked and bloody as if he had just been born. Pain needled through Trevor’s legs as he stood. His feet were sliced up pretty badly too, he realized; he had been grinding them into the broken glass, trying to obliterate some image he could not piece together. The mirror fragments were opaque with his blood now, reflecting nothing.
Trevor climbed out of the tub and helped Zach up with his good hand, grabbed him with the other arm and buried his face in Zach’s stiff hair.
“What can I do?” he asked. The question seemed terribly inadequate, but he could think of no other.
“Leave with me. Now.”
Trevor expected to feel the house clenching like a muscle around him, trying to hold him in. But he felt nothing coming up through the floorboards to mingle with the blood from his feet, nothing in the walls around him. He looked over Zach’s shoulder at the buckled shower curtain rod and felt only an echo of the old sorrow tinged with dread. That was where Bobby had ended up, where he had chosen to end up. Trevor could choose to go anywhere he wanted to.
The realization was like seeing infinity suddenly unfold before his eyes. A million mirrors, and none of them broken. A million possibilities, and more branching out from each of those. He could leave this house and never see it again, and he would still be alive. And it was by his own hand: he had chosen to be with Zach, had chosen to eat mushrooms and go to Birdland, had sought out the house and turned the knob and walked in on Bobby’s eternity. They were all choices he had made. It was up to him.
Zach opened the bathroom door and pulled him into the hall. The house was full of a clear, still blue light. The night was over.
Trevor looked down into Zach’s ill-used, blood-smeared, weary face. I choose you, he thought, but I can’t believe you still want me.
They stumbled into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. Zach found his glasses unharmed on the floor and put them back on. Trevor saw the gouge in the opposite wall where he had tried to hit Zach, saw the bloodied hammer in the corner. He stroked Zach’s hair with his good hand, kissed his eyelids, his forehead. He hoped an electrical current would have run up his arm and shocked him to death if he had violated this wondrous brain.
Zach leaned against him. His head lay heavy on Trevor’s shoulder. “I need to get out of here,” he whispered.
“Okay. Where will we go?”
“I don’t know.” Gingerly, Zach touched Trevor’s right hand, which he was cradling in his lap trying to keep still. “This looks bad. You need to get it set. And I think I might have a concussion.”
“Oh … Zach …”
“You didn’t do it. My dad did.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah. Look, we have to talk, but I can’t right now. I feel like I’m gonna pass out. We need a hospital.”
“The closest one’s twenty miles away. Can you call Kinsey on your cellular phone?”
“His home phone’s cut off. I heard him say so last night …” Zach trailed off. His eyes were half-closed now, his breathing quick and shallow. His skin felt cool, slightly damp.
“Can you drive?”
Zach shook his head.
“But your car has a stick shift.”
“I know. I’ll shift for you if I can stay awake. If I can’t, it’s gonna hurt you like hell, and I’m sorry. But I can’t even see straight. I’d run us right off the road.”
“All right, then.” Trevor tried to flex his hand. Great bolts of pain shot up his arm. The two middle fingers were stiff, swollen shiny, suffused with blood. The skin felt as tight and uncomfortable as an ill-fitting glove. His knuckles were so badly abraded that he thought he could see a pale glimmer of bone beneath all the red, though he didn’t look too closely.
I can’t hold a pencil with that, he thought. But he was too worried about Zach to care much.
Zach helped Trevor dress, tugged his sneakers on and tied them for him. Trevor felt the linings tugging at the cuts on his feet, blood soaking into the soles. Then Zach dressed himself and helped gather their belongings. Trevor took nothing but his Walkman, his tapes, and his clothes. If his hand healed, he would get new pens and sketchbooks later. He couldn’t imagine using the old ones again.
After some consideration, he held a match to the envelope containing his family’s autopsy reports and burned them in the kitchen sink. It felt a little like smashing his hand had felt. But he thought they belonged here.
He helped Zach out through the living room, half holding him up as Zach carried both bags. The air was thick as syrup, sucking at Trevor’s legs, pulling at his feet. You could stay, it whispered. There is a place for you forever, here in Birdland.
But Trevor would not listen. It was only one of a million possible places, and it wasn’t the one he wanted anymore.
Zach clung to him until they were out of the house and off the porch. The sky was a deep watery blue streaked with rose. A few stars were still visible; they seemed too huge and bright, their glitter too intense. The whole world was silent.
Wet grass brushed their knees as they made their way to the back of the house where the car was parked. Trevor helped Zach into the passenger seat, then slid in behind the wheel. Zach fumbled with his seat belt. Trevor wanted to wear his too, but he didn’t think he could fasten it himself, and he was afraid to ask Zach to lean across the seat and help him. Zach looked sick and sweaty, on the verge of blacking out.
Trevor fitted the key into the ignition with his left hand and turned it awkwardly. The engine roared into life. Pain flared in his foot as he stepped on the clutch. The Mustang began to roll through the yard and down the overgrown driveway.
“Zach?”
“… yeah …”
“Put it in second.”
Zach groped for the shift stick and pulled it down into second gear. The car picked up speed. They were at the end of the long driveway now, turning onto Violin Road. Trevor steered with his left hand, braced his right forearm against the wheel. He glanced into the rearview mirror. The house was barely visible through the shroud of weeds and vines. It looked like an empty place, Trevor wondered if it ever would be.
He let the car coast down the rutted gravel road. “Okay,” he said. “Put it in third.”
No response. Trevor looked over at Zach. He was slumped back against the seat, eyes shut, glasses sliding down his nose, bruises blooming like dark flowers on his pallid face.
“Zach!” he said. “ZACH!”
“… mmm …”
Trevor slowed the car to a crawl, made sure Zach was breathing, speeded back up to twenty or so. If he rolled through stop signs, he could drive all the way to Kinsey’s house in second gear. It would be hell on the clutch, but he didn’t care. If anything happened to Zach now, Trevor might as well go right back into that house and nail the door shut behind him.
“Stay awake,” he told Zach. “I don’t want you slipping.”
“… mmmmmm …”
“Zach! Sing with me!” Trevor tried to think of a song whose words he knew. The only thing that came to mind was one he had been made to learn at the Boys’ Home. It would have to do. “YIPPIE KI YI YO-O,” he sang loudly. “GIT ALONG, LITTLE DOGIES! Come on, Za
ch. Please … IT’S YOURRRR MISFORTUNE, AND NONE OF MY OWWWWN …”
“Yippie … ki yi yo,” sang Zach in a ghostly voice, barely a whisper.
“GIT ALONG, LITTLE DOGIES … c’mon, louder …”
“YOU KNOW THAT WY-OMING WILL BE YOUR NEW HOOOOOME,” they finished in unison.
Trevor glanced over at Zach. His eyes were open, and there was a tired smile on his face. “Trevor?” he said.
“What?”
“You’re a lousy singer.”
“Thanks.”
“And, Trev?”
“What?”
“That song really sucks.”
“So?”
“So … you want this thing in third gear?”
“Take it up to fourth,” said Trevor, and pushed the pedals to the floor.
Frank Norton chewed on a stale glazed doughnut and regarded the improbable figure that had just appeared in the doorway of his office. The kid looked seventeen or eighteen, his skinny body awkwardly put together and slightly hunched. Dirty brown ringlets of hair hung in his face. The lenses of his glasses were as thick as Coke bottles. His beady little eyes peered suspiciously through them.
“Is Agent Cover here?” he demanded.
Should’ve known he was looking for Ab, thought Norton. Who else has teenage nerds in his office at seven in the morning? “Nope. He had a rough time chasin’ down a Chevy pickup yesterday and he’s not in yet.” The kid stared blankly at him. “Can I help you?” he added.
“My name is Stefan Duplessis. I’m assisting him with the Bosch case.”
Ah. The stoolie. “Sure, Stefan. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve found a very important clue.” Duplessis held up a sweat-stained piece of newsprint. “I think Zach Bosch planted this article in the Times-Picayune. Furthermore, I think he’s in North Carolina. The first article said so, and this one does too. I’ve even figured out the name of the town!”
Furthermore. Jesus. “Is that so?” Norton asked politely. Ab was really grasping at straws on this case. That hacker was probably living it up in Australia by now. “Well, Stefan, I’m afraid that’s not my case. You’ll have to leave it on Agent Cover’s desk.”