“It’s not going to hurt us. You heard it.”
“I . . . didn’t.”
Edward approached the cage and crouched down in front of it. The head dangling from the creature’s gut turned and smiled at Shawn. At least, he was pretty sure it was a smile. The face was so jumbled and twisted he didn’t think conventional facial expressions applied.
“My legs . . .” Shawn practically fell into a tree behind him, sliding down its rough surface, pulling his thighs up to his chest and burying his heavy head between his knees.
Now, nearly at the creature’s level, he felt even more terrified. He couldn’t look at it anymore. Just putting his eyes on it felt like it twisted a knife in his gut. And it felt like the same thing happened to his brain, his thoughts becoming muddied and confused. This was his fault. If he had just listened to Edward when he wanted to turn back, they wouldn’t be in this situation. Or maybe it was Edward’s fault since it was his idea in the first place. They could be sitting around a comforting fire, sipping warm beer, and getting stoned on Lucas’s shitty weed. He could have deluded himself into thinking there was some hope in the future, something other than blind confusion and despair. Now he couldn’t see anything beyond the terror of the moment.
“Be careful,” Shawn said as Edward reached toward the cage.
He heard the creak of the cage door and looked up just in time to see the creature bound from it before darting off into the misty darkness, the weird head thing dragging the ground.
Edward had been right. Whatever the thing was, it definitely wasn’t a goat.
Edward came and sat beside him.
They each lit a cigarette with a shaky hand and sat in silence while they smoked.
By the time they stood up, it was almost like the event had never happened. Even though it had only been such a short while ago, Shawn would be hard pressed to describe what he’d seen, if he’d seen anything at all.
As they walked back to camp, still oblivious of the time, Shawn couldn’t help shake the feeling that their world had been changed.
Changed because that thing was now out there in it.
And they had helped it out.
Although, as they joined the others back at the camp, he wouldn’t have been able to tell any of them what that thing was. Neither he nor Edward brought it up. They smiled and laughed and joked their way through the rest of the night but Shawn didn’t feel any of the joy he expressed with his body.
TWENTY-FIVE
Having screamed himself out, Edward went slack in the chair, the realization finally washing over him and pulling him back under that wave. He didn’t know if he had the energy to claw his way back to the top or not. Didn’t know if he could ever think of a reason to do that.
He’d wondered why he’d bothered coming here and now he guessed he knew.
Turned out that Grant wasn’t crazy, he was just . . . wrong.
Whatever he and Shawn had unleashed that night hadn’t entered Grant, it had entered him.
It made a weird kind of sense. There had certainly been enough nights over the past two decades that Edward had no recollection of. He wrote all those instances off to being drunk or stoned but . . . but maybe it had been something else. Sure, he’d drank. Sure, he’d done the drugs. But maybe that was all it took. Just that momentary dropping of his fully conscious guard to allow whatever that other thing was to move in and use him as its puppet. Could explain why he never felt as bad as he should have the next day. Part of him wondered what all he was guilty of and part of him was glad he had no recollection.
Whatever it was, it was a blessing and a curse. Edward wouldn’t be who he was today without it.
No, he thought. He wouldn’t be the current version of himself but maybe he’d be someone he liked.
That thing, he felt sure, had given him this drive and the—let’s face it—opportunistic cunning to be where he was today. Or, okay, maybe where he was yesterday.
Everything led to him being here at this exact moment.
But to what end?
For what purpose?
To consume the truth.
The thought flashed through his mind and felt nearly alien. Not totally alien. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t him, but they’d lived alongside one another for so long they were like a couple who finishes each other’s sentences.
Why wait so long?
That thought was very much his and he didn’t know if he had an answer to it.
Grant.
It still had something to do with Grant.
Of course it did.
Because he was the one who knew.
He might not have known everything, but he knew enough to begin putting the pieces together. Without him, Lena and Shawn would have continued down their own paths, maybe occasionally having the feeling something was askew or just not right, before sweeping it under the rug to get back to their busy lives. And poor Grant, the ranting and raving lunatic. Nobody was going to believe him while he was locked away in an institution. For that matter, it even sounded like he didn’t put too much thought into it when he was doped to the gills. Grant was the bringer of truth. He was the one to gather them together, place the truth in the center of the table, and say, “Let’s eat.”
And Edward would have kept doing what he did or whatever that thing wanted him to do until . . .
A shudder ran through him.
Aside from the music he made getting a lot shittier, the only real difference between the early Edward—the one still connected to some more fundamental self—and latter day Edward was the size of the crowd.
Edward’s shudder turned into a steady tremble.
The thing hadn’t gone anywhere because it didn’t want to. It was happy with him. Plus it wasn’t as easy as just jumping bodies. If it were, the thing would have made its way to someone far more powerful than Edward. The President or the head of a large news organization or, fuck, at least one of the Rolling Stones.
Maybe it was because Edward had been the one to let it out.
It was entirely possible this thing was responsible for whatever fame he had.
Lena and Shawn were both essentially gold diggers, presenting as responsible adults, but only because their spouses were the successful—or at least fortunate—ones.
Edward wasn’t sure about Lucas, but he had then as much as he had now, a sort of trust fund vibe.
And Grant . . . he was a phone call away from being back in an institution or homeless shelter.
Something told him that was just survivor’s guilt. Until a few moments ago, he would have called that the rational part of his brain. Now he saw that as the lying part of his brain, the rug under which all the painful truths were swept.
How long had he made decisions based on that voice?
These decisions had once made a certain kind of sense. They were the kind of decisions military and world leaders, powerful business people, and other sociopaths made every day. They probably even sounded like logical decisions to most average people, but what had he given of himself in that process?
The first time he made a song he had no real recollection of making was when he should have doubted it.
He’d found the file on his computer and had no idea where it had come from.
He put the earphones on and listened to it, thought, “This is complete shit,” followed by, “This could make me a lot of money.” If it landed in the right hands, it could even be the backing track for a superstar vocalist.
He hesitated deleting it.
Later that day he got a call from his manager. It was the first time he’d called him since signing him, almost haphazardly, at a drunken SXSW party at about three a.m. That had been three years prior. Apparently Edward had sent him the song shortly after putting it together. The manager said he was going to shop it around, said he thought Edward had a real winner in this one.
A week later the manager called back with even better news. Swoleboy’s people were interested in it. The agent named a fig
ure Edward usually associated with the lottery and athletes’ contracts.
He spent the day thinking of all the things he could do with the money. None of it involved making the same kind of songs for the same kind of people.
He ended up doing none of those things.
He went into the business of trying to be a hitmaker.
Sometimes it worked out, mostly it didn’t.
He played bigger and bigger venues.
He would have been a headliner by this time next year.
That would be a lot of power.
He wondered what these songs were saying to people, their consciousness slightly altered, as they danced and drank at some expensive club on the Strip. What happened when his music popped up on some teenager’s playlist? Maybe its power lay in its generic innocuousness.
The part of him he would have once considered the rational part said he needed to get out of here. Said he needed to go back to Vegas and patch things up.
But that was not the truth.
TWENTY-SIX
Once Lucas had stopped bucking up and down and frothing at the mouth, Lena released her grip and rolled off beside him, her naked and sweaty back slapping the floor.
Grant couldn’t begin to describe the emptiness he felt. He didn’t know exactly when it had begun. Sometime while Lena was fucking Lucas, for sure. Actually not long after she had started. Something was missing. He didn’t know what. He didn’t know what he expected. Debbie to come raging and snarling out of his body, probably. Of course, maybe he wouldn’t really feel that since she would have once again taken over completely at that point. He thought he would see her, the same as he had so many years ago, hovering around Lucas and Lena’s bodies. Then he could have known she had left him. That she was once again out in the world, seeking someone else to enter. He thought he would feel sanity for the first time since he could remember. Sanity, real and bracing.
Instead, he just felt the great emptiness he’d felt so many times before the arrival of Debbie. Only this time it was magnified a thousand times.
Maybe something had happened and he’d missed it.
“Did either one of you see Debbie?” he said to the room.
Shawn sat in his chair, blubbering, shaking his head back and forth, but Grant didn’t really think that was in response to his question.
Lena lay on the floor, continuing to breathe heavily, staring up at the ceiling.
Grant felt confused and not like himself. He put a hand to his beard and began stroking it, something that usually gave him great comfort. Upon making contact with it, however, he felt repulsed by it. Perhaps he would cut it whenever this was over.
“I feel like something just happened,” he said to no one in particular.
“I think I just killed Lucas,” Lena said.
Grant looked at Lucas’s body.
“He looks dead,” Grant said. “That’s something, I guess.”
He clasped his hands and placed them in his lap. He leaned his head back and looked up at a support beam running along the ceiling, which it occurred to him was really just the bottom of the floor above them.
“We need to figure out what we’re going to do,” he said.
Lena stood. Her eyes were frantic. She was sweaty and tensed up and reminded Grant of a shaved cat.
“You’re going to fuck me now,” she said.
“Hm,” he said.
“Don’t you get it?” she said. “If Debbie was in Lucas that night and now she’s in you, then you should have been the one fucking me. That’s how we’ll release her.”
Grant uncrossed his legs and sat up straighter in the chair. He thought about it. He supposed it was possible he’d been overly fixated on Lucas all these years, assuming Debbie had come from him and not Lena. It was entirely possible Debbie had come from Lena. If not that exactly, it was possible Lena was the trigger. That, without her, Debbie could not be released.
“I suppose we could try.” Grant tried his best to sound calm even though he didn’t see how it could possibly happen. Women made him nervous. He’d never been with one sexually and couldn’t imagine being able to have sex under these conditions, especially with Lena, who he was no longer attracted to. Had he ever been attracted to her? Maybe not in a physical way. Even though he’d now masturbated to her fucking another man on two occasions, it wasn’t really her he was attracted to. It was the act of sex. Watching something he wasn’t supposed to be watching. Probably why he was able to ejaculate all those years ago and couldn’t seem to just a few moments ago. Shawn’s presence and Lena’s open awareness of him made it seem like something that was socially acceptable, thus removing the secret perversity of it. Had he ever really been attracted to a woman?
He stopped to consider the vagina. Not a two-dimensional vagina. The vagina in real life.
That was probably it.
Vaginas, assholes, mouths, cocks . . . they were all pretty gross, if you stopped to think about it.
He didn’t know if he’d ever been attracted to another person period, man or woman.
Grant unclasped his hands, held them palms up in front of him, and said, “Do you think your vagina is as clean as my hands?”
Lena moved toward him, vaguely predatory, and a feeling of fear rose up in Grant.
“What?” Lena seemed moderately confused. “No. It’s dirty. It’s real fucking dirty. Sex is dirty. Your dick is dirty. It’s filthy. I’m going to fuck you and I’m going to come harder than I’ve ever come before.”
“I just . . .” Grant began, not knowing what else he was going to say.
“Stop,” Shawn said.
He was still crying. He looked miserable.
Grant knew he shouldn’t indulge him. He didn’t even know why Shawn was here. But Lena now stood right in front of him and Grant felt like he needed to explore other options.
“Why?” Grant said. “Why should we stop?”
Shawn took a deep, shaky breath and said, “Because it’s not going to work.”
Aside from the tears running down his red cheeks, he now had a long string of snot dangling from one of his nostrils. Grant pitied him. He wondered if untying him would help make him feel less sorry for him.
“Lena and I have already worked this out. We think it will work, provided I can get my penis hard enough to have intercourse.”
“It won’t work because that’s not how it happened last time. That thing—”
“Debbie,” Grant interrupted.
“I’m not calling it Debbie.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“Shut up.” Lena turned ferociously toward Shawn.
“It’s not how it happened last time. That thing—”
“Debbie.”
Shawn did his best to stamp his feet. Grant assumed it was out of frustration, partially because of the grunt that accompanied the stamping of the feet, causing the rope of snot to sway rapidly back and forth before breaking off and falling somewhere Grant couldn’t make out.
Then Shawn opened his eyes and glared at Grant and there was a part of the teenage Shawn in that glare. It somehow righted things within Grant, restored a sense of balance. Teenage Shawn had not been a violent guy but he had a very righteous sense of justice and was quick to anger, sometimes even using his fists, if he felt like he or someone he knew were being wronged.
“Are you going to listen to me if I call it Debbie?” Shawn said.
“It would certainly help.”
“Just shut the fuck up, Shawn. Now,” Lena said.
“Maybe we should let him talk,” Grant said.
Lena grabbed the sides of her head.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no. This is happening.”
“There’s no reason for it to happen if . . . there’s no reason for it to happen. Let him talk.”
Lena lowered her hands from her head and seemed to compose herself. She leaned over Grant, placing one hand on his shoulder and reaching the other hand down t
o grab his penis. She looked into his eyes with great intensity that made her seem nearly desperate and, even with her hand on his penis, he couldn’t imagine getting hard.
“Don’t you want me?” she said. “Don’t you want to fuck me? I can suck your cock. You can fuck me in the ass if you want. You used to like me. I know you did. You all did.”
Grant said, “You have to stop.”
“Jesus Christ,” Shawn said. “He doesn’t want to.”
Lena, no longer composed, whirled to face Shawn.
“You’re a fucking liar!” she screeched before launching herself across the basement and throwing herself on Shawn.
His chair flipped back with a loud clap and his head thunked the floor. Lena raked her fingernails down the sides of his face, all of her muscles tense.
“Lena,” Grant said softly.
“You’re not a man,” she hissed. “You couldn’t please anyone, not even your wife.”
She raked and clawed and continued. “I can’t even imagine what she must have been like, probably white trash like you. Did you ever think of me while you were fucking your sad, fat wife?”
“She wasn’t fat,” Grant said from his chair but no one seemed to hear him. “She was actually quite attractive. Is quite attractive, probably. Maybe a little sad, though, you’re probably right there.”
Now Grant was curious. He wondered if Shawn or Edward had ever imagined fucking Lena while they had sex with another woman. Probably, he thought.
“Get her the fuck off me!” Shawn shouted.
Lena now sat on Shawn’s knees and hammered her feet down on his chest. It looked like it hurt. He could try to stop her but he couldn’t imagine dragging her off Shawn. Couldn’t imagine even touching her.
“Why don’t you want Grant to fuck me?” she said. “Is it because you want to? I bet you’re not even man enough.”
Now she was on her knees beside Shawn and Grant found himself staring right at her asshole, nearly hypnotized by it. He stood up from his chair and moved closer to get a better look. He’d never seen an asshole in person before, not even his own, since it had been in a mirror and therefore only the reflection of an asshole.
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