“Next time. I promise,” he said.
“Okay,” she nodded, continually glancing back towards the kitchen as her mother banged one pot against the other. “I have to do some chores later.”
“I can help,” Stony said, his voice deepening as he caught up with his breathing. “Tell your mom I’ll wash her car.”
“I heard that!” her mother called out from the kitchen. “Tell him I want it waxed, too!”
Lourdes grabbed his hand, giving it a conspiratorial squeeze. “Let’s get out now while we can.”
“I want you two back here by three. Understand?” Her mother’s voice became shrill as it blended to Spanish, “Lourdes Maria, entiendes?”
“Si, Mommy,” Lourdes said.
Then, she went out the apartment door, and when it was shut behind them, he grabbed her and they kissed and she felt something wonderful blossom inside her.
* * *
4
* * *
It was always: to the lighthouse, to the lighthouse. Stony might drag her this way and that in the cool October night, she might linger down by the harbor where the trawlers creaked along, abandoned till the following morning, but it was always to the lighthouse, finally. The woods, too, or the cemetery, or out on the docks late at night when the sea was a flat gray glass and the few twinkling lights of the Isles of Avalon beckoned. But the lighthouse was better, for you could go inside and huddle in the low-ceilinged room, or climb up the tower and look out over the Sound. Or you could go out to the sloping hill that led to the rock wall before the sea, and lie camouflaged by shadows and land. The lighthouse no longer functioned, so it was the best possible place to make out and speak softly, for it was dark at Land’s End, across the cracked pavement of Lighthouse Alley, to the dead end marker. Leaping over this, to find one of the grassy bunkers that rose on the hillock over the wispy sea.
After Stony had told her of his love, and she told him of her love, and they did all the things young people are warned not to do,
And in his mind, he felt Moonfire bursting yellow red almost a sunset
Almost the pale light of a moon—
She told him.
That night, he wept for joy.
Then, by dawn, he wept for fear. Alone in his bed, knowing that the sun would be up in minutes and he had not slept a wink. He could hear one of the wild dogs of the docks barking as the trawlers pushed away, out to check their lines and cages.
Words could kill, sometimes, he thought then. Words could change everything.
Lourdes had whispered it sweetly, knowing that a boy might not like hearing the words. Knowing that this might destroy the wonderful thing they had together.
Knowing that this might destroy everything and take from both of them all they had ever dreamed possible.
He felt his heartbeat accelerate, and something that might have been adrenaline—or liquid fire—burst under the surface of his skin when she said the two most horrifying words any fifteen-year-old boy could ever have heard.
CHAPTER SIX
CONSEQUENCES
* * *
1
* * *
“I’m pregnant.”
“You can’t be,” Stony said, more startled than shocked, knowing that of course she could be pregnant. It was nature. It was their bodies reaching fertility; it was hormones and the terrible price that came with them.
She didn’t say anything for the longest time, but he heard her breaths, slow and careful.
“I love you,” he said.
In the morning, the full understanding of this hit him, of what it would mean to him and to his future.
* * *
2
* * *
Mid-afternoon, a couple of high school punks skip school, and one of them has the bright idea. “Let’s pillage my folks’ room. I know they always got a couple of twenties lying around,” one says, and his name is Van Crawford and he’s lanky and has ears that nearly stick out, but he has that aura of coolness with his knit cap on and pockmarked face and terminally hip sullen sneer. H
Chapter Six
CONSEQUENCES
* * *
1
* * *
“I’m pregnant.”
“You can’t be,” Stony said, more startled than shocked, knowing that of course she could be pregnant. It was nature. It was their bodies reaching fertility; it was hormones and the terrible price that came with them.
She didn’t say anything for the longest time, but he heard her breaths, slow and careful.
“I love you,” he said.
In the morning, the full understanding of this hit him, of what it would mean to him and to his future.
* * *
2
* * *
Mid-afternoon, a couple of high school punks skip school, and one of them has the bright idea. “Let’s pillage my folks’ room. I know they always got a couple of twenties lying around,” one says, and his name is Van Crawford and he’s lanky and has ears that nearly stick out, but he has that aura of coolness with his knit cap on and pockmarked face and terminally hip sullen sneer. He knows these things about himself:
He hates life.
Hates his little brother Stony. Tolerates him but hates him.
Hates his mother.
Hates his father.
Hates the fact that he has to live at all among these fish-people in this fish-village.
Hate is tattooed on his ass, only he’s never shown it to anyone in his family, but half the guys in gym have seen it in the showers after soccer practice. Not that Van is good at soccer, but hate can even fuel him through a rough game. He got drunk one night down in New London, and his buddies dared him to get a tattoo, but he decided that HATE was the word he wanted emblazed on his left buttock for all eternity, although if he’d had his druthers he would’ve had a flaming skull tattooed there too only he was too drunk and he couldn’t afford it.
He sits on hate, he breathes hate, and he lives hate.
If he could get drunk on hate, he would.
Van says, “Always beer in the fridge and maybe once we get some cash we can go on to Mystic and meet some girls or somethin’.” He has this way of speaking that’s half snarl and half cough, his voice is too deep, his eyes are set too close together. “I fucked Brenda last night.”
“No way,” his buddy says, his buddy named Del who lives in a rundown old farmhouse with his lobsterman father, but way out on the highway, way out in the middle of nowhere. Del lives far out enough from the borough and the docks that he doesn’t have the fish stink on him. “You didn’t fuck Brenda.” His voice, drunken, giggling.
“Yeah I did. I rammed it in and got her to moan real bad. She smells though. She smells like barnacles down there. Fuckin’ townie. I didn’t care. Just needed to get a nut off,” Van says.
“Holy shit. Think I can do her?”
“Fuck yeah. She ain’t the kind of girl who’s gonna mind a few more,” he laughs, and then they’re rummaging the fridge for beer, calling friends, lighting up the last tiny bit of a joint and wondering when the hell their other friends are gonna come over.
* * *
3
* * *
Van grinned stupidly, a can of beer in one hand, his other clutched around his hunting knife. “Your knife is your dick,” he said, laughing. He lay back on his parents’ lumpy messy bed, and looked up at the ceiling. “See? And life is a great big pussy that you just jab at and slam it home—” He sliced the air above him. The knife flashed silver in the overhead light. It reminded him of fish beneath water.
His friend Del Winter opened and slammed a dresser drawer shut. “I can’t find ten bucks in your mom’s dresser,” he said, ignoring what Van said.
“You hear me?” Van said. “I said your knife is your dick!”
“Yeah yeah,” Del said, pulling out a strand of pearls. “Shit, your mom has nice pearls. We could maybe take these to a pawnshop. You people in this village, you got nice things.”
&
nbsp; Van downed some beer. “Naw, they’re fake. She don’t have nothin’ of value, trust me.”
“Last week you found a twenty,” Del said, dropping the pearls back in the drawer.
“Yeah and last week she got pissed off ‘cause she figured out I’d been taking it.” He took another gulp from the beer. He hated Bud, but it was the only thing his father ever bought. So it was all he could steal from the fridge. He sat up, looking at himself in the mirror above his mother’s dressing table.
“Your knife is your dick and your dick is your knife,” he said to his reflection. “Who the hell asked you?”
Giggling, sipping, swinging the knife around.
Del came over and picked up a new can of Bud from the floor. He popped it open. “You’re gettin’ shit-faced, my man.”
“Yeah I guess I am fuckin’ very gettin’ shit-faced.”
He set the beer down at his side, heaving a bit. It overturned, spilling the last of its golden contents on the white comforter. The room spun slightly. His reflection in the mirror wavered. “Your balls are God and your dick is your knife, that is wisdom,” he said.
“Yeah yeah,” Del said, chugging his beer down.
“I would like to kill that Spic bitch who my brother’s fucking,” Van said almost solemnly.
“Yeah sure. Hell, I’d do more than just kill her,” Del laughed, raising his beer in a toast. “I’d make her cream.”
Van held his knife up. “Your knife is your dick,” he said.
* * *
4
* * *
Van Crawford lived by a single code:
Survival of the fittest.
It was fuckin’ Darwinian.
* * *
5
* * *
“Throw out your line,” Van said, nudging Stony’s arm. They were in the dinghy, which rocked gently back and forth on a fairly placid current in the cove. The sunlight was almost blue across the pockmarked sky, and swans rested like feathered bowls not far from their boat. “You’ll get something.”
“No thanks,” Stony said. He leaned back against the prow, and stared up at the sky. He watched the sun, wondering if he would go blind from staring.
“Something’s up,” Van said. He reeled in his line, and set his pole down in the bottom of the boat. “Tell me.”
“No way,” Stony said. Even when Van seemed warm and kind, Stony had not grown up for fifteen years in that house for nothing. He knew Van too well. Trusting his older brother seemed impossible at times.
“It’s your girl,” Van grinned. “You get some pussy?”
“Shut up,” Stony said. “Shut the hell up.”
“Use rubbers, that’s my advice.” Van slapped a mosquito on the back of his neck. “Damn skeeters ain’t dead yet. It’s fuckin’ October and they ain’t dead.” Then, an after-thought, “Don’t trust a girl to take the pill. They lie. They all lie about that. Dad told me even Mom lied to him. All women do.”
Stony couldn’t help himself. “Too late for that.” Had he said it aloud, or muttered it? He glanced at his brother. To see what his face betrayed.
But Van was always on the lookout for the nasty sides of things and the deep dark secrets. “Shit,” he said. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“Shut up,” Stony said. He reached down into the cooler and brought out a Coke. Popped the top, sipped it. Two swans circled around the dinghy. Stony tossed the birds bits of his sandwich, which they gobbled greedily.
Van shut his eyes, shaking his head. “All that you’ve known about sex, and you got her knocked up?”
“Shut up,” Stony said. “We came out here to fish.”
“I came out here to fish. You came out here to confess,” Van laughed, and then, “Holy shit. Holy shit. Stony, your life is over.”
And then Van said, “That bitch. She let herself get knocked up on purpose.” Something tugged at his line. Bringing it up, it was a small bass. He unhooked it quickly, holding it in his hands. “That fucking bitch. Wequetucket Spanish Portuguese bitch trying to get a white boy from the borough to take her and her bastard in. Just like Mom got knocked up and made Dad marry her. Just like it’s always been in this shithole. Jesus, these fucking bitches. And you are such a dumb shit for knockin’ her up.”
“SHUT UP!” Stony shouted, his voice echoing across the water. Geese flew up from the surface of the cove, rippling the sky as they went.
* * *
6
* * *
In the shower, Stony Crawford steps beneath the hot water, and turns it up hotter. He isn’t sure if tears are falling or if it’s just the spray of clean hot water that almost feels hot enough to clean off the dirty way he feels. Don’t fuckin’ cry, he warns himself. You cry and you might as well be back in third grade. He grabs the bar of Dial soap and scrubs it hard beneath his armpits, and along his shoulders. The water and soap runs across the light hair on his chest, and the smell is fresh and new.
All he wants is to be clean.
If he could, he would scrub the soap across his mind to erase his memory. To erase the part of him that told him he needed to somehow take care of this. To eradicate the fear he had about the future.
The steam and heat are almost magical, taking him out of himself for a few minutes.
The Storm King is alone. If he touches someone they might burn to a crisp or drown...
And the MOONFIRE got him.
Then, the water begins to turn cold.
He stands beneath the cold water, shivering, wondering what the hell he’s going to do about the baby that he made with Lourdes Maria Castillo.
* * *
7
* * *
In the pocket of Stony’s jeans, a note:
Things I love about you:
I love your smile.
I love when you get angry and stomp around like a big baby.
I love all that hair on your chest and tummy. It’s like you’re a puppy.
I love when you kiss me.
I love when you tell me you love me and all the reasons you do.
I love the way you mow a lawn! Hubba hubba!
Your soul.
Your purity.
Your heart.
I love how sweet and kind and considerate and wonderful you are Stony Crawford. Don’t ever forget it. And we’re never going to be like your folks or my folks. I think you’re pretty special.
Love ya,
Lourdes
* * *
8
* * *
He walks into the living room where his mother, in darkness, watches The Holy Brigade. The man with the glasses is shouting that the false messiahs abound, that “we live in an age of miracles and nightmares, and God will send his Fury down upon sinner and saint alike, and there will be war and rumors of war, and rumors of unnatural beasts from the seas, and of fire from heaven!”
His mother glances up at him for less than a second. “You might want to pay heed to this,” she says in a monotone. “Your father won’t and your brother won’t. But you ought to.”
Then, she takes another drink from her small flask.
* * *
9
* * *
FROM THE DIARY OF ALAN FAIRCLOUGH
...All my life I had been searching for this, but did not think in my wildest dreams that I would find some evidence of it. We are raised with such beliefs in devils as children, but as we grow older, our imaginations die. Our beliefs transform like the consecrated wafer, but in reverse. From flesh to bread, we believe that symbols take over from imagination, rather than the opposite, that imagination creates symbols from the genuine creation. Ritual comes from our instinct, the way that salmon return to the rivers of their birth. Ritual is not empty. Ritual is full.
If this damn business with the banks had not taken over, I would have remained there at my retreat, but it’s always the prosaic that draws one back from the abyss, time and again. I would not wish the hell of finances upon anyone. Let the poor remain happy rather than dea
l with the headache responsibility of money when one wishes to be a hermit in the wilderness, a scholar in the library, or a pilgrim at a place of worship...damn necessity...damn properties...damn worldly goods.
But without them, I could not have my home on the island. I would not have met these terrible yet wonderful people. I would never have seen the creature, or watched it open itself, change its geometry, go from beast to demon to beauty as if it could no longer keep to one shape. There is no god but the god of the flesh, and all sanctity runs from profane images. All flesh is profane. All flesh is sacred. All men are gods. Ritual is the key between the worlds of the Old and the New.
The town is a crucible, a place to observe the effects of our grand experiment, our foray into playing God, our need to move humankind forward, to stop the endless spiral of death that is mortal necessity. When I first saw it, in its cage, its arms strong, its eyes golden and fierce, I knew terror as no man has ever felt. What must the ancients have known who laid eyes upon these beings! What must the holy sisters have felt when they heard its cries beneath their sanctuary?
And yet my terror turned to love and longing, for even in the darkest of daemons, the fire of heaven kindles and threatens to rage.
When I touched its face, it gave in; it put aside fury, softened.
Can I describe what I felt when I parted its warm flesh and watched the transformation beneath my hands?
When this business is done here, I will return to America, to that crucible. The note I received from George Crown this morning was full of urgency. There is more, he told me, there is the beginning of the future now.
Halloween Chillers: A Box Set of Three Books of Horror & Suspense Page 8