Lena began tugging at the knots of the rope.
Grant contemplated touching her asshole with his finger but stopped himself. It might give her the wrong idea. Plus he would probably find it revolting. Why could he not even bring himself to touch her sweaty skin but found himself transfixed with her asshole?
“Do they all look like that?” he was pretty sure he said aloud but, again, it didn’t seem like anyone was paying attention to him.
“Now’s your chance to finally fuck me, big boy,” Lena snarled.
Grant was pretty sure she was now actually drooling.
Shawn’s face was gouged and bloody and Grant still found himself interested in what he was going to say.
“I bet once these ropes are undone, you’re going to try and run just like the big, fat pussy you are.” Lena untied the last knot and Shawn just lay there.
“I’m not,” Shawn said. Grant couldn’t tell if he was calm or exhausted. “I’m going to tell you about . . . Debbie.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Shawn wondered why he wasn’t running.
Only a few moments before, listening to Lena squeeze the life out of Lucas while Grant sat casually watching from a chair, he would have given anything to get away from this. It was easily the most horrific thing he’d ever experienced.
Now he wondered what the point of escape would be.
Wasn’t the world outside just as sick and twisted as what was happening in here?
Definitely. He didn’t have to think too hard about that. Micro-doses of horror. A little farther away, maybe, but it seemed like the goal of the modern world was to bring that horror as close to you as possible, as often as possible.
He struggled against his beer belly and overall wooziness to stand up.
His face burned where Lena had gouged at it. Amazing, growing up with his two psychopathic older sisters and neither one of them had ever physically assaulted him. Mentally assaulted, sure, but the laying on of hands had always been left to his father. Maybe that was one of the reasons no one else in the family had ever physically hurt one another. They wanted to hurt each other but not one of them, his mother included, wanted to be like his father. Hitting had been his dad’s thing. The others had to try a little harder to destroy their family members.
Lena came at him again, her hands grasping for the button of his jeans. He was beyond arousal. All the adrenaline and fear had shrunk him to the point of no return for the time being. Part of him actually wished he could give her what she wanted. Part of him wished he could shove her to the floor, spread her legs, bend her in two, drive himself into her, brutalize her. He thought back to earlier, jerking off to the image of her at seventeen. Only it hadn’t just been her. It had been Edward fucking her. Maybe he couldn’t even bring himself to fuck her in his imagination. He certainly hadn’t had any problems with it as a teenager, even though he’d always felt a little guilty about it afterward. There was always something fragile about her. Even more so now. He thought people were supposed to harden as they got older, but the image he had of her was that of a fragile vase perched on the edge of a table, ready to fall and shatter at any moment.
“At least let me see it, shitwad,” she hissed at him. “You just watched me fuck another man. I know you did. I know you got off on it. Probably why you can’t get it up now. You probably all watched me that night, sitting around spanking your little cocks.”
“Stop it.”
He placed a hand on her forehead and shoved her away from him, held her at arm’s length.
She continued to reach for his crotch, grunting and crying with frustration. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, but this wasn’t the Lena he remembered.
“Nobody else was watching you. We’re not all like Grant. No offense.” He looked at Grant.
“Oh, none taken.” Grant, who had seemingly been closely observing Lena’s asshole only moments before, now wandered dazedly back to his chair and plopped down heavily.
Lena continued to struggle against Shawn’s hand until she grew tired and limp. Then, slump-shouldered, she returned to her mess of clothes and began pulling them on.
It was one of the saddest things he’d ever seen.
“So,” Grant said, “tell us what you know about Debbie.”
“You’re right,” Shawn said. “There was something in the woods that night. Me and Edward saw it. Edward let it out. I don’t think he had a choice.”
“Why would it have chosen me to enter?” Grant said.
Shawn hesitated before speaking. “I . . . I don’t know that it did.”
Grant crossed his legs, lifted his head to look at Shawn, reached for his beard before pulling his hand away as though repulsed.
“Of course you’re wrong,” he said.
“Maybe so,” Shawn said. “I don’t really have any idea of my own. And I’m sure you did see something. And it’s entirely possible it has something to do with the four of us.”
“That’s probably why Lucas is dead.”
“Maybe,” Shawn said. “But Lucas was part of it. Because he was there. So he had to be.”
“Then it’s not just the four of us,” Grant said.
Shawn sighed. He felt completely exhausted. All he wanted to do was plop down in the chair. No. What he really wanted to do was curl up in a comfortable bed and sleep for days. To lie down and pull the covers up over his head and not emerge until he felt like he could bring the world into some kind of focus.
“I think,” Shawn said, “it has to do with a lot more people than us. But I think it started there. I think we let something terrible out.”
Lena rolled her eyes. “Fucking delusions of grandeur. Are you going to listen to his lies, Grant?”
“Maybe,” Shawn said, “we should go check on Edward.”
“You’re right,” Grant said. “Let’s go check on Edward.”
The gouges on Shawn’s face had reduced to a dull throb. He hadn’t been in this much pain in recent memory. Now he did think about running up the basement stairs and trying to get through the door. But only for a moment. It seemed ridiculous but he didn’t feel any sense of immediate danger, despite watching Lena strangle the life out of someone. He had thought he was surrounded by crazy people and now, oddly, having that confirmed put him at something like ease. It was the world outside, filled with demons and monsters and crushing regret, that scared him. Lucas was nearly symbolic of all that. An outsider. Just as he’d been all those years ago. An outsider in their inner sanctum. And Lena had taken care of him. Shawn didn’t understand her furious anger. Probably never could. Over time he could maybe come to terms with it. He could force it to make some kind of sense. He was good at that. It was one of the reasons he and Lexi had been married as long as they had been.
Grant walked to a closed door in the basement that led to some kind of utility room.
Part of Shawn felt like Edward had to be okay. To come all this way, to make such strides at figuring out the truth of that night, only to have one of them expire unexpectedly seemed like an impossibility. Another part of him thought it would serve as some sort of wake-up call. Like nothing special had happened that night. That there hadn’t been some sort of dark force reaching out to them all these years. That they were all just common people, aging and fucking up the same as anyone else had.
What would they do if something had happened to Edward?
Just shake their heads, agree to call it quits, and go back to their ordinary lives?
Christ, what would Shawn even be going back home to?
An empty house?
Would Lexi be there, wanting to talk her decision through, really pound those last few nails into the coffin?
Obviously it wasn’t in the note, but he was sure there had to be someone else. That was usually the case with these things. He wondered who it was this time. Wondered how long it would take her to get tired of him and come back.
Grant’s hand twisted the doorknob and Edward came bursting through the door. The fr
ont of his shirt looked like it was covered in puke and the foulness of his stench stood out even in the already foul smelling basement.
He twitched and writhed, wild-eyed.
“It’s in me!” he shouted. “Not Grant! You have to get it out!”
He clawed at his shirt as though it was on fire, tearing at it, ripping it off.
“It was me and Shawn,” he said. “We let it out. It’s our fault! It’s not in you, Grant! You have to help me get it out!”
Lena approached him almost casually, drew back a bony fist, and slammed it into Edward’s face. There was a loud pop, possibly his nose breaking, followed by a river of blood flowing over his mouth and dropping onto his pale chest.
“It’s not in you,” Lena said. “Just like it’s not in Grant. Why do men think they’re so fucking special?”
Edward spotted Lucas’s corpse on the floor.
“Who’s that?” he said.
“It’s Lucas,” she said. “But he’s dead.”
“Did you fuck him?”
Lena seemed to weigh this question, as if deciding whether or not it was even worthy of a response.
“Yeah,” she said. “I fucked him.”
“What happened?”
She smacked him on the side of the head, then the other side, then the original side. Shawn stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her, dragging her back from Edward. She seemed to have entered maniac mode again.
“This is all your fault!” she yelled. “Why weren’t you the one who fucked me that night?”
Shawn spoke into her ear, trying to sound calm. “We already decided that didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Lena yanked herself from Shawn’s grip and turned to him. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” She turned back to Edward. “I was crazy about you and you never even asked me to go out with you. If you had, maybe we wouldn’t have even been there that night. Or maybe we would have been the ones to go out in the woods. If so, I wouldn’t have let you go near that fucking thing. I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant at fucking seventeen. I wouldn’t have had to make those decisions. I wouldn’t have had to lose you guys. None of this would have happened.”
Her voice faded into a tinnitus buzz and then the only sound in the basement came from the overhead lights.
“I . . .” Shawn began, “didn’t know you were pregnant.” He felt like he should do something to comfort her but chose not to, as much afraid of her reaction as anything else. “Somebody would have let it out. That’s what it was there for.”
She whirled back to him. “Then this would be on them.”
“We don’t even know what this is,” Shawn said. Then he imagined Lucas’s corpse lifting its head and turning toward them before mumbling “Irrationalia” and dropping back to the floor.
At least, he was pretty sure he imagined it.
What if that was all this was? A case of irrationalia, as Lucas had called it? Something akin to temporary insanity. Twenty-five years ago it could have just been considered growing pains. What would it be now? Some sort of collective mid-life crisis? Some form of consensus reality?
No, Shawn thought. This wasn’t something they could just walk away from. It wasn’t something they could choose to deny or work through.
Edward had picked up his puke-sodden shirt and was using it to staunch the flow of blood from his nose.
He looked at Lucas’s corpse and said, “Maybe we should all fuck it.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Terrible idea,” Shawn said.
Lena heard what both Shawn and Edward said but tried her best not to react, not that there would have been much of a reaction anyway.
She felt numb.
Following the violent surge of emotions she had felt after fucking Lucas, she welcomed the numbness.
She still couldn’t understand why she was here. She didn’t know if she wanted to.
Since seeing Lucas again, the only time she’d really been aware that the fat man in a dress was the same Lucas she’d known so long ago was when she’d slid his cock inside of her. It was something that couldn’t be intellectualized. It was primal. It was a connection of the basest, most physical sort. Undeniable. When two people were fucking, they were inarguably connected.
If she couldn’t believe that was Lucas until the connection was made, then how could she believe that Grant was Grant or Shawn was Shawn or Edward was Edward? Not that they were the guys she remembered anyway. They were more than twice as old as they had been when she’d stopped hanging around them so, while some core identity might remain, that was about it. Their lives and experiences had transformed them into something else.
A strong sense of hopelessness settled into her.
Reality felt very thin, tenuous.
She wanted to be able to look at Grant and say, “I know you.”
Same for Shawn.
Ditto for Edward.
She didn’t feel as though she could do that.
If Lucas had somehow been the start of this then it didn’t seem right that she was the only one to have been truly connected to him. They needed to come together. She had already propositioned every one of them and they’d all turned her down. To her, that had seemed like the most logical way. She had three holes, there were three of them. It wouldn’t be the first time for her. It was, in fact, like her life would have served as a primer for that very act to take place but it was . . . what? Too logical? Too sad a conclusion to their friendship, from knowing them as innocent kids only to culminate in a reluctant gangbang of people whose lives had been shattered?
“I think it’s a good idea,” she said.
“What?” Shawn said.
“What Edward said. I think you should all fuck Lucas.”
“That’s . . . insane,” Shawn said. “And sick.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. If you’re talking about re-creating that night, this is how it has to be.”
“I’m not doing it,” Shawn said.
“Stop lying to yourself. You think this is all to help Grant. You think he’s crazy, but he’s not.” She didn’t know if that was true. She felt like maybe she was just committed to the idea of arranging these people into some configuration that would make them extremely uncomfortable. Something she’d done countless times before, to herself included, but this would be . . . well, this would probably be her most extreme thing yet. In a way, more extreme than killing Lucas. She already felt removed from that. It was like wiping out a bad memory. She wondered if this was what Grant felt like when Debbie took over. And, like a fucking godsend, Grant took over.
“She’s right,” Grant said. “We need to do it. Debbie is not just in me. She’s been in all of us. I thought I was the one who experienced the totality of her because I’d never left Twin Springs, but I think I was wrong. I think it was Lucas. Think about it. He built a house on the exact same spot. The basement is in the very earth where that thing was unleashed upon the world. We knew him a little. All he wanted to do was be a free spirit and travel around. And what did he end up doing? Settling down here. Starting a family. Rooting himself. Tethering himself. And now he’s the first to die. We wouldn’t have been out in the woods that night if it hadn’t been for Lucas. That thing—Debbie—drinks pain. It’s what she wants. Even though I feel semi-lucid at the moment, I can sense her. She’s feeding off all of us. She always has been. I’m surprised Lucas didn’t know us when we showed up because I’ve been aware of all of your pain over the years. Debbie brings it back to me, like there are psychic tunnels connecting us. I knew about Lena’s baby. I know about all her . . . transgressions. Shawn, I know you think you love Lexi, but she’s your greatest source of pain. She’s using you for your stability. She’ll keep hurting you as long as you let her. And Edward, you’re never going to be happy until you start doing what you want to do, but you’re hooked on more right now. More will never be enough. As long as Debbie’s around, you’ll keep making things you’re ashamed of and eventually
you’ll self-destruct. This is how we give our pain to Lucas. This is how we kill Debbie. She’s waited all these years, getting stronger and stronger with little appetizers of pain. She wants to come back. She wants to be born. Only then can we destroy her. But, in order to do that, she needs a feast.”
“I, um . . .” Edward said. “It was my idea so I guess I’m in.”
Lena felt a crack in her numbness, a shiver of excitement tingling her scalp.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Shawn said.
“What are you afraid of?” Lena said.
Shawn ran a hand through his thin, sweaty hair. “Fuck. I don’t know. Jail? Having my picture in the paper as a guy who fucks corpses. I mean, Jesus, my life might not have been perfect but now it’s ruined. All of our lives are ruined.”
“So . . . why not?” Grant said.
Shawn clenched and unclenched his fists. If one of them were to leave, it would be Shawn.
“I could walk out right now,” Shawn said. “I could say I was never here. I could try to live the rest of my life like this had never happened.”
“You could,” Lena said. “But then you wouldn’t know how it turned out. Don’t you think the rest of your life would be better if you knew we’d beat this thing?”
“If it wasn’t meant to happen, you wouldn’t be erect right now,” Grant said.
There was now no doubt in Lena’s mind that this was going to happen.
“Take off your clothes, Shawn,” she said. “No one else has to know. It’s just us. When we’re done, we’ll drag him upstairs and burn him. I can rent a helicopter and scatter his bones across three states. They’ll never be found. You know this has to happen.”
The fight visibly left Shawn.
“I call the asshole,” Edward said.
He jerked off his shoes, unbuttoned his pants, and shucked them down before stepping out of them. Lena could tell he was the kind of guy who liked being naked. The type of guy who wouldn’t get dressed after showering until he was completely dry. The type of guy who doesn’t put his clothes on right away after sex.
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