Grant was unconscious and they’d all panicked, thinking he was dead.
Shawn remembered, after looking at Grant slumped forward over the steering wheel, thinking, This is not good.
He turned to look at Lena and Edward in the back. His face had an odd, numb sensation and when he felt his teeth to make sure they were all there, his fingers came away bloody.
Edward and Lena seemed to be mostly okay, if only a little paler than usual.
“Are you okay?” Edward asked.
“I think so . . . yeah.”
He felt around his head to see if he could find blood anywhere else and didn’t think he did.
“I think it’s just my nose,” he said.
They all dazedly got out of the doors on the passenger side.
“Should we get Grant out?” Shawn asked.
“I think it’s best not to move him,” Lena said. “That’s what I’ve always heard, anyway.”
Shawn looked around and saw that the nearest house was about a half mile away.
He said, “You guys want to go see if you can use their phone to call somebody? I’ll wait by the road in case someone happens to pass.”
Edward and Lena limped toward the road and continued limping toward the house.
Shawn went back to the car and looked in at Grant. Blood flowed from a head wound but it didn’t look too deep and no part of the car seemed to have embedded itself in him. Shawn took off his shirt and pressed it against his face. He bent down to look in the passenger-side mirror. His nose was already swollen and purple and a smallish flap of skin hung down from the left side of his cheek. He poked it back into place, hoping it would minimize scarring.
He found an old t-shirt in the back of the car and pressed it against Grant’s bleeding head wound, wedging it between his head and the steering wheel.
He leaned against the car, now feeling oddly woozy, and watched for traffic along the long, straight road. Not a car in sight.
Everything was quiet except for the far off drone of cicadas and an occasional chirping bird. It all seemed kind of surreal, which was a word Shawn had only recently learned and was already in danger of using way too much.
An unbroken, rural landscape.
A crashed and smoking car with a bleeding teenager inside.
With his home life, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever really experienced anything that could be considered innocence. But he had built something with his friends and what he experienced in the stillness of that day was the undoing of that.
Had that been Grant’s intention? To undo what they had in one violent thrust? Now, as an older person, Shawn was aware all of that would have happened organically anyway.
And now he was trying to do it again. This time for good. That was what Grant had meant by a reunion. Get them all back together to finish what they had started. To finish what Grant had started.
There was no Debbie.
Debbie was theatrics, a smokescreen, an excuse for whatever homicidal tendency festered in Grant’s brain.
A shame Grant didn’t die that day. He could have retained some of his dignity. Maybe they’d all have met up somewhere on the day of his death to celebrate him. Maybe it would have been the thing that kept them together.
Maybe that was his intention.
Then why were they here now?
Maybe his intention had not changed.
Shawn was still back there at the scene of the accident, leaning against the wrecked car, not seeing a single other car pass on the road. He heard the ambulance sirens before Edward and Lena even returned.
Now he decided to misremember it. He froze the moment of leaning against the car. In his new memory, his reworking of the old one, he went back to the smashed out driver’s side window. He reached a hand in, pressing his fingertips under Grant’s jawline until he found a pulse. It was hard for him to know if he’d found it or not over the adrenal pulse in his own hands. He didn’t stop there. He reached his other hand in, encircling Grant’s neck. He told himself this wasn’t murder. He would be putting Grant out of at least twenty-five years’ worth of misery. He would be sparing Lucas from a life-altering home invasion. He would be saving Edward from possible death by Grant’s carelessness. Perhaps, most importantly, he would be saving Lena and himself from either the potential horror they would have to endure or whatever they would have to end up doing to Grant to make it out of this alive. He told himself he was doing a good deed as he continued to squeeze his hands until that pulse became fainter and fainter before finally ceasing altogether. He told himself Grant was unconscious, he didn’t feel a thing.
In the present, he told himself this would work. If nothing else made sense, then why should this?
He didn’t open his eyes until he could no longer hear Grant fighting himself.
When the sound stopped, he lifted his head and opened his eyes.
Grant was gone.
Replaced with something older, almost ancient. Leathery skin stretched across a bent skeleton.
Was this Debbie?
Shawn’s heartbeat picked up and raced along.
The illusion fell away and he was suddenly looking at exactly what he thought he would be looking at—Grant’s weak and battered body piled into a heap on the floor.
Unbelievably, he felt a sense of disappointment, as if he’d actually expected his weird mental trick to work. As if there really was something like magic. What about his experiences in the world had given him the freedom to have such a thought?
“Grant?” Shawn said.
No response.
“Grant?” he repeated. “Are you in there?”
No response.
“One of us needs to get the fuck out of here.” Lucas sat in the chair, his shoulders slumped, his arms flopping at his sides like fat wet noodles, his bent legs completely useless. Shawn had no idea how he hadn’t passed out from the pain yet.
“That’s . . . pretty obvious,” Shawn said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re a little tied up right now.”
“I have noticed, but it doesn’t even look like you’re trying to get out. It looks like you’re trying to take a nap.”
“I don’t see you slithering over to the door.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“To me, it makes about as much sense as one of us turning into Houdini.”
“You know this guy, right? Can’t you try rationalizing with him?”
“Have you seen what he’s been doing the past ten minutes? Does he look like a rational person?”
“Hm,” Lucas said. “I guess you’re right. It’s funny . . . when I had my crazy period, my mom always called it irrationalia, like it was an illness or something. She and my father were both psychologists. She threatened to use me as a case study, said she was going to get it listed in the DSM. I think she was half-joking, though. I’d disappear for weeks—sometimes months—at a time. Then I’d come back home, usually because I’d run out of money or been run out of someplace, and she’d say, ‘This bout of irrationalia finally ran its course, huh?’
“I’m surprised I didn’t recognize him when he showed up. Sometimes I’ll still get the occasional crazy person who tracks my folks down. They’ve been dead for years so I don’t know what these people are expecting, but they somehow manage to find the address and overlook the fact that they can’t possibly be here. It wasn’t until the woman . . . Lena? jostled that memory. It came back to me a little. My mom would have said it cured me of my irrationalia. But I think it scared me. I’d lived rough before, but I’d never lived like that. And I was usually someplace a lot more exotic, not my parents’ backyard. I think I was high or drunk the entire time. I do remember sleeping with Lena. It . . . wasn’t like that with most girls I was with. I remember thinking there was something dark about her, but innocent too. It was confusing. She kept asking me to do stuff to her and I did, like I had no control over it. Maybe she didn’t either. She couldn’t have liked most of it. I’ve never had another experience l
ike that, but it left me feeling weird. Not good. I remember thinking there was something evil in the woods, maybe the town itself. Something unexplainable. Like it was mostly light and happy people but then there was just a . . . feeling or something. I don’t know. Something off. Something off in a really bad way. I moved back into the house the next day, wanted nothing to do but get out of this town. Fast forward ten years to my parents dying and leaving me a decent inheritance and I build a house in the same fucking spot I’d had that tent. Where I’d had those . . . thoughts.”
Lucas fell silent, looking down at his twisted legs before looking at Shawn. “Why am I telling you any of this?”
“Why are you talking about me like I’m not even here,” Lena said from the floor.
Shawn couldn’t help but chuff out a laugh.
“There’s nothing funny about it.” Shawn couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not. He supposed, given the circumstances, there was absolutely no reason for her to be anything but serious. “I was totally violated by a much older man, a creep who lived in the woods.”
“I’m sorry,” Shawn said. “I know it’s not funny. I was just . . . I don’t know. I’ve never known how to take you.”
“What’s worse,” she said, “is that I haven’t had an orgasm since.”
“Is that what this is about?” Lucas said. “Was this guy like your boyfriend or something?”
“Fuck no,” Lena said. “But he saw everything that happened between us. Maybe it fried his brain or something.”
Shawn started feeling a little uncomfortable. “Can we . . . not?”
“What? Are you blushing?”
“Fuck off.”
Shawn kept thinking of that word Lucas said his mom had used: irrationalia.
He turned his attention back to Lucas. “Think about it this way: If irrationalia was like an STD or something, you managed to pass it on to Grant. Or, at least, that’s what he seems to think. Only he calls it Debbie and sees it as an ancient demon.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lucas said.
“I believe that would be the nature of irrationalia, no?”
“It was more like affluenza,” Lucas said. “I think that’s what they call it now. I was just a stupid kid from a good family that had way too much money and zero responsibilities.”
“You’re probably right,” Shawn said, “but that’s not how he sees it.”
It seemed like just talking about it brought the demon back to life. Shawn knew the demon was never really Debbie. It was Grant, through and through.
Grant slowly made it to his feet and stood up, if not exactly straight.
“I’ve figured out how to get rid of her,” he said, his voice far away, most of the life gone from his eyes.
NINETEEN
Lena felt as though she had missed her opportunity to slip the ropes. She knew she didn’t want to get free when Grant was raging around the room and she didn’t think it would be as simple as running for an open door. Then she got distracted by Lucas talking, felt like she should have known at least some of that stuff about him, but guessed the only time they’d really had alone wasn’t spent talking.
Lena’s current position made it difficult to see everything going on.
“Debbie needs to go back in Lucas,” Grant said. His voice sounded dislocated and emotionless. “I think . . . I think I’ve said that.”
He moved closer to Lucas and placed a hand on the back of his head.
She couldn’t imagine how much pain Lucas must be in. He was pale and the dress he wore was wet with sweat.
Lucas’s eyes were clenched shut. “Please don’t do this.”
“There’s no other way,” Grant said. He was astoundingly erect. Lena didn’t even see how that was possible.
Grant shoved Lucas’s head forward and he went spilling to the ground, hard, unable to brace himself. He let out a shriek of fresh pain. His head was now in front of Lena, her legs and the seat of the chair blocking his face from view.
Grant lifted the dress and yanked down Lucas’s underwear.
“Grant!” Shawn said.
“This is the only way to do it,” Grant said. “He unleashed this thing into the world and now it’s time for it to go back. This is how it has to happen.”
Lucas cried from the floor, “Dear God please!”
“Debbie,” Shawn said.
Grant dropped to his knees, straddling Lucas’s twisted legs.
“Debbie’s hiding right now,” he said. “She’s hiding because she’s afraid. She likes me better. She doesn’t want to go back.”
“Think about what you’re doing,” Shawn said.
“If you’re worried this will make me a homosexual, then don’t be,” Grant said. “I’ve never had sex with a male or female so I’m essentially asexual. My sexual fantasies always involve females, so I identify as a straight male.”
“I’m not . . .” Shawn seemed suddenly flustered. “I don’t fucking care about any of that. It’s just . . . not going to work.”
Grant spit into his hand and wetted his cock.
“I’m listening,” he said. “Tell me why it won’t work.”
Shawn didn’t answer right away and Lena knew he was stumped.
“Because,” she said, not even knowing where she was going to take this. She just needed to break the silence because it seemed like, lately, silence had been giving birth to terrible things.
“Because is not a reason, Lena.”
Lucas hammered his head against the floor. Lena assumed he was trying to knock himself out.
“Stop that.” Lucas used the hand that wasn’t stroking himself to grab Lucas’s hair and keep his head off the floor.
Lena thought this Debbie business was about the stupidest bullshit she’d ever heard but knew Grant wasn’t about to listen to any reasonable argument.
“Think about it,” she said. “Why did you invite us here? You wanted to re-create that night, right? That’s how you thought you were going to undo all of this?”
“What’s your point, Lena?”
“If Debbie entered you, it was because you were the one she chose. Lucas didn’t put Debbie in you by fucking you. He fucked me. That’s what set Debbie free. And she entered you.”
“This just seems like the most direct way.”
“But it’s not how it happened, Grant. If we’re all here again, it’s because Debbie wants us to be. Maybe she wants to be set free again. Maybe she’ll choose somebody else. Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . maybe we can get rid of her.”
“I’d have to untie you.”
Lena sighed. “You think I’m going to run away? Twenty-five years without an orgasm is a really long time to wait.”
“How do we know he’ll be able to achieve an erection? If not, everything will fail.”
“Maybe it’s just the sexual energy that’s the important part.” She was completely bullshitting at this point. “We won’t know until we try, right?”
She exhaled a sigh of relief when he stood up, still stroking himself. He approached her, bent down, and uprighted her chair.
“I feel as though I should warn you,” he said. “If you try to run you won’t get very far. We’re locked in and there’s no way you’d be able to make it through one of the windows.”
Oddly, she was no longer sure if that was part of her plan. After all, Lucas was the only reason she’d come to this thing. More specifically, the opportunity to fuck Lucas again was the only reason she’d come to this thing.
“I won’t try to get away,” she said.
She blinked and gulped. She was surprised to find that she was getting wet. Then again, why wouldn’t she? Nothing was really happening here she hadn’t somehow orchestrated in the past. She’d paid people to watch Trent fuck her. She’d never thought that particular kink might have gone back to 1993, but now it seemed kind of obvious. And now she found herself bound in a chair in a locked basement. The reality of it only made it that much more exciting.
<
br /> “If we’re going to re-create that night,” Grant said. “I should move Shawn away. He wasn’t there.”
Lena looked into Grant’s vacant eyes. “If we’re going to completely re-create that night then we need to be in a tent, we all need to be twenty-five years younger, and Lucas needs to drop a few pounds and not have broken limbs. I want Shawn to watch. Who knows? Maybe he’s the one Debbie wants. Maybe that’s why she invited him.”
She didn’t know if he would buy this or not. Grant may have found something sacred in that night. Something that only happened between the three of them.
“I would be okay if you wanted to move me,” Shawn said.
“No,” Grant said. “Maybe it would be best to have another observer. Maybe you’ll see what I saw that night.”
TWENTY
When one finds oneself tied to a chair in a basement of an unfamiliar house while two people debate the merits of having sex with a virtual quadriplegic in order to release a demon, one must question the life decisions leading up to that point. Unfortunately, that was not a luxury Shawn had. He couldn’t, at the moment, think about anything other than getting out of the chair. He didn’t know what he was going to do if he managed that but, again, that was a luxury he didn’t have.
He just knew he had to stop what was about to happen.
Why?
The answer was there. He thought it was, anyway, although it seemed like a very unformed thing.
Why should he care about what happened between Grant and Lena and Lucas? It didn’t really involve him. He was just a passive observer. Same as he had been that night so long ago.
Only . . . that wasn’t really true, was it?
Grant looked down at Lucas, lying nearly unconscious on the floor, and then at Lena, as though contemplating what his next move should be, stroking himself all the while.
Shawn felt this must be like pornography for Grant. This was like a dream come true, to have all his friends gathered in the same room, doing exactly what he wanted. That’s probably why he resented Lucas so much. Lucas had been the one who entered their circle of friends and shattered that dynamic. He’d upset the power structure.
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