The Liar of Red Valley

by Walter Goodwater

  Do not cross the King

  Never, ever go in the River

  Don’t trust the Liar

  Before tonight, Sadie had never interacted with any of the King’s Men, let alone the King himself, so had never had reason to get on his bad side. And of course she’d never gone into the black waters of the River, because if you did that, you didn’t come back. But as tears began stinging the backs of her eyes, she realized she’d broken the third rule: she’d trusted her mother. Trusted her not to lie to her.

  Trusted her not to leave her.

  The stars winked at her, leering and sharp. The moon barely made an appearance. Sweat ran down her spine. She’d kill for a breeze, anything to blunt the heat, but she knew better than to hope for any relief. Not here. Not in Red Valley.

  Sadie’s best—and only—friend Graciela lived with her family on a tree-shaded street a mile or two from the hospital. As Sadie walked up the driveway to the front door, light and sound spilled out to greet her. Laughter, voices, the drone of the TV, the clink of dishes getting washed: it was all so vivid, so alive, and it hit Sadie like a punch in the chest. Her house had never sounded like this, not with just her and her mother. At times, their home barely felt lived in, and on any other night, Sadie would have welcomed the jarring contrast, but not tonight. Because tonight she had to go back to her home, and no lights would be on. No voices would ever come out to welcome her.

  She almost turned around and kept on walking, but that would be stupid. Sadie lived nearly ten miles outside of town and her legs were already barely holding her up.

  Javier opened the door when she knocked.

  “¿Graciela está aquí?” Sadie asked. Javier blinked at her, then pointed down the hall. Sadie came inside, instantly grateful for the chill of a functioning A/C. She could hear Graciela’s parents talking loudly in the kitchen. It sounded like they were scolding someone, probably one of her older brothers. Sadie thanked Javier and he shrugged and wandered off.

  She found Graciela in the living room at the end of the hall. Ashleigh, her girlfriend, was there too. Graciela was laying across her legs on the tattered couch, both their faces illuminated by the colorless glow of the television.

  “Hey,” Sadie said over the white noise of a commercial for allergy medicine.

  Graciela jumped up. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she still had on the faded polo shirt and khakis she wore as a cashier at Walmart. Large silver hoops dangled from both ears. “Finally, some life to this party!” She hugged Sadie before flopping back to the couch next to Ashleigh. “You want a beer or something?”

  Sadie said no and sat down in an overstuffed arm chair across from the couch. It felt good not to be standing.

  “Ash,” Graciela said, grabbing a Cheeto from a half-crumpled bag on the carpet, “tell our girl here what you were telling me earlier. You’re going to love this.”

  Ashleigh flashed a wicked smile. She was pretty, Sadie thought. Straight blonde hair framed her pale face, always painted with perfect makeup. Sadie had kind of hated her when they were younger—she’d seemed like every other stupid high school girl, interchangeably vapid and cruel—but after they’d graduated and she’d started dating Graciela, a more interesting version had emerged.

  “So last week my mom and I were running around town, picking up crap for my little brother’s birthday party,” Ashleigh began. Sadie just sat and listened, focusing intently, trying to hear the words over the roaring in her head. “And we were driving down Sycamore Avenue, you know, where the Planned Parenthood is?”

  “Oh, man,” Graciela said, kicking her feet in the air. “This is so good.”

  “Quiet, sweetie,” Ashleigh said. “I’m telling a story.”

  “Not fast enough.”

  “You want to tell it?”

  Their banter was like music, like a favorite song. But the key was wrong, the notes all twisting up in Sadie’s ears, and instead of wanting to dance, it made her want to cry.

  “Where was I?” Ashleigh said, giving Graciela a playful shove. “So as we’re driving by, who do we see walking out but Courtney Barber.” The name was said with appropriate gravity.

  “That’s right!” Graciela said, cackling. “The same self-righteous Courtney Barber who stood on the street and yelled ‘slut!’ at the other girls going inside Planned Parenthood. The same bitch who straight-up told me to my face I was going to hell because I was dating a girl. President of the Bible Club, sweet little youth group leader Courtney.”

  Some distant part of Sadie’s mind remembered her. She went to Pastor Steve’s church and had been nice to Sadie when they visited, but then never spoke to her again after they didn’t come back.

  “I wonder who knocked her up,” Ashleigh said. “She was dating that skater punk Danny for a while. Trying to win him over for Jesus with her feminine wiles.”

  “Hey,” Graciela said, snapping her fingers in front of Sadie’s face. “Why aren’t you laughing? We boring you?”

  They both looked so happy. Young and beautiful and happy. Why had she come here, to ruin their night with her pain? There were only a few feet separating them, but she suddenly felt like they were on different planets, different planes of existence, like their lives were on separate and separating tracks.

  “Mom died tonight,” Sadie said, her tears racing the words and winning.

  Graciela’s face went blank. “Wait, what? No.”

  Sadie just nodded and wiped away the tears before they dripped from her chin.

  “Oh, honey,” Graciela said.

  Sadie sat with them a long time, crying and telling them in halting bursts about what had happened, with her mom and with the King’s Man in the hospital parking lot. Even as she was telling it, it all felt so unreal, like if she hurried home she might still get there before her mom went to bed. She couldn’t really be gone, could she?

  Graciela’s mom brought in some leftover pork tortas and they picked at the food in heavy silence. Sometimes life didn’t really leave much to say.

  Eventually, Ashleigh said, “I can’t believe one of the King’s Men talked to you.”

  Sadie was grateful for the distraction. As freaky as the encounter had been, talking about that was preferable to remembering the smell of the hospital room or the weight of her dead mother’s hand.

  “Beto said he saw one of them kill a dude once,” Graciela said. Her eldest brother had always scared Sadie more than a little bit. “Just some guy, walking down the street, and then one of those old cars drives up and this mirroreyes gets out and says something to him. The dude tries to run, and then he’s just dead. Splat. A smear on the sidewalk.”

  Ashleigh gave Graciela a sharp look that said, Talk about something else, you insensitive dipshit. “What are you going to do?” Ashleigh asked. “About these books the King wants kept safe.”

  “I don’t know,” Sadie said. “I didn’t know my mom had them. She never told me anything about her job.”

  “I wonder what the King wants to stay hidden,” Graciela said.

  “What do you mean?” Sadie said.

  “The books,” she said. “He doesn’t want anyone to read them. Must have something juicy in there, something real good.”

  “Don’t,” Ashleigh said firmly.

  “What?” Graciela said. “We’re all thinking it. The Liar keeps everybody’s secrets, maybe even the King’s. He’s got to have some too.”

  “That’s the King of Red Valley you’re talking about. The King.”

  “So? He can’t hear me.”

  “What about the whispers?”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” Graciela said. “The whispers aren’t real. That’s just something parents tell their kids to scare them.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  “If you’d seen him,” Sadie said, her voice sounding far away in her head, “if you’d seen what he did to that cop, just like that. If you’d seen that, you wouldn’t talk like that. Not anywhere in Red Valley you
wouldn’t.”

  That shut them up. Sadie hadn’t meant to, not really; the conversation was the only thing keeping her from losing her mind. But she kept replaying that moment over in her head: the gun, the blur of movement, the screaming, the blood on the pavement, in his teeth. Maybe she’d already lost her mind.

  Ashleigh put a soft hand on Sadie’s. “I think it’s best if you do what the King asked. I think you want to stay on his good side. I know he’s supposed to be our protector and all that, but he doesn’t seem very… forgiving.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Graciela said. “No one’s going to come after those books. Everybody may not love the King, but they’re all scared of him. And probably scared of you too, now that you’re the Liar and all that.”

  But she wasn’t, not really. She didn’t know the first thing about using the Liar’s magic, even if it was in her veins. And the thought of becoming the Liar gave her little enough comfort. While the town had hated her mother, people sometimes had at least shown Sadie some measure of pity. Not anymore.

  Though it was the last place she wanted to be, Sadie sighed and asked, “Can one of you give me a ride home?”

  Graciela’s old Toyota pulled off the paved road onto the dirt driveway. Rocks crumbled under her bald tires as her headlights cut weakly through the midnight darkness. Sadie could see their house at the end of the driveway. Her mom always left the porch light on when Sadie was out late, but no lights greeted them tonight.

  “Never understood why you guys live so far out here,” Graciela said as the road bumped under them.

  Sadie hadn’t ever given it much thought, but now the answer seemed obvious. “I don’t think Mom liked being in Red Valley much. I think she wanted room to breathe.” Her heart caught on the words, like skin on splintered wood. She was already switching to the past tense.

  “And you never got a car?”

  “Never seemed important, I guess.”

  Far from the lights of town, the sky overhead was overwhelmed with stars.

  “You can stay with us,” Graciela said when she put the car in park. “We’ll have a slumber party, braid each other’s hair, whatever. Like that time in the fifth grade when Julia fell asleep early so we drew all that shit on her face.”

  “You going to draw on my face?”

  “I think you’d look good with a handlebar mustache, maybe a soul patch.”

  They laughed and Sadie didn’t have the heart to say she didn’t remember that slumber party, or who Julia was. She’d known Graciela forever, but as memories of a shared childhood faded, she often wondered what really held them together anymore.

  “But seriously, chica,” Graciela said. “You don’t have to go in there. Not tonight.”

  Sadie stared at the black windows. There was nothing for her inside, except—hopefully—the Liar’s ledgers. But she had come back for other things as well: a pile of dirty laundry, a coffee cup ringed with lipstick left on the table, a passive-aggressive note on the fridge about using the last of the milk. Echoes of her mother, fading.

  “I’ll be fine,” Sadie said, her hand on the car door handle. “Thanks.”

  “Hey,” Graciela said, grabbing her in an awkward hug over the center console. “You know I love you, right? Maybe you’re the Liar, maybe not, who cares? The world’s gone to shit overnight, but I’m here for you.”

  Sadie touched away new tears and said her goodbyes. She stood on their sagging porch and watched Graciela’s red taillights as they retreated up the long driveway and then turned and disappeared into the night. Sadie may not have much, but she had a friend who actually cared about her, and maybe that would be enough. At least for tonight.

  The air inside the house was stale and stuffy. They didn’t have A/C, just a rusty swamp cooler hanging precariously out one window. Sadie didn’t bother to turn it on. The heat, at least, made it feel like the house wasn’t so empty. She just stood in the living room for a while, soaking in old memories while sweat slid down her back.

  Reading books on the floor.

  Dancing barefoot on the ugly threadbare carpet.

  Purposely annoying her mom while she tried to read the newspaper.

  Yet even as she pictured these moments from her life, she felt strangely detached. Her memories felt far away, like a lost balloon floating into the summer sky. Whatever her life had been, it was something else entirely now.

  Even though it was nearly 1am, her appetite was finally back so she wandered into the tiny kitchen to find something to eat. The lunch meat in the fridge still smelled okay and she didn’t see any mold on the loaf of white bread, so she slapped together a sandwich while the day’s events cycled over and over in her mind. It felt like it had happened to someone else, not her. Some other unlucky girl whose hair still smelled like the deep fryer, who just had the worst day of her life and who was staring down more days like it. Some other girl who—

  Sadie stopped. What the fuck was that sound? The knife she’d been about to use to cut her sandwich hovered in midair, shaking a little. She listened but the house was quiet now, so absolutely quiet that she could nearly convince herself she hadn’t really heard anything.

  But then she heard it again.

  Laughter.

  Despite the heat, Sadie’s blood turned to ice. She gripped the knife’s worn wooden handle until her knuckles turned white. A high-pitched tittering laughter floated down the hall from the bedrooms. It sounded like it was coming from her mom’s room, but it was definitely not her mom’s laugh.

  “Who’s there?” Sadie called. She held the knife out in front of her as she took a step toward the closed bedroom doors.

  A pause, and then the laughter returned, even higher than before. The door to her mom’s bedroom slowly started to open. A moment later, someone stepped out into the hall. It was too dark to see his face well, but he was only a little taller than Sadie, with skinny arms, lanky hair, and a loose-fitting shirt with a faded Nirvana logo across the chest. He took a step toward Sadie, but stopped when he saw the knife.

  “I’m just here for the Liar’s books,” he said in a low voice that sounded nothing like the laughter she’d heard. “Tell me where they are and I’ll go.”

  Closer to the light from the kitchen now, Sadie recognized him. His name was David, or Danny, or something like that. He’d been two years ahead of her at Red Valley High, a skater who rarely showed up for classes and barely made it to graduation. He had silver rings in his lip and eyebrow and a cold glaze in his eyes.

  “Get the fuck,” Sadie said, grief and fury and fatigue shredding her voice, “out of my house.”

  That maniac laughter returned, bouncing around the hallway and echoing in Sadie’s head. Only, the overgrown skater boy’s mouth hadn’t moved.

  Oh, God, Sadie thought. He’s a Laughing Boy.

  There were plenty of stupid kids in town who lost themselves to pot or heroin. Meth had become a problem too, especially in the rural parts of the county east of town. But for some, drugs would never give a good enough high, and in Red Valley, there were other options. Like inviting a demon into your head.

  The first time someone explained it to Sadie, she was sure they were lying. Why would anyone want some monstrous thing crawling around inside of them? The answer: Because it feels so good. Nothing else could compare. It was like flying. No, it was like you’d spent your whole life blind and could now finally see. You understood the true measure of the world, the ancient mysteries, the forgotten tomorrows. That is, until the demon decided it wanted to stick around. Then you were fucked.

  She could see the signs, now that she was looking for them. His fingers were a little too long, the nails a little too sharp. His irises were a little too blue, like some unholy icy light was pushing through cracks in the surface. When his pierced lips curled back, she could see his yellowed teeth tapered to sharp points.

  And, of course, the laughter. Once the demon was riding you, its laughter would be ever-present, no matter how tightly you clamped your m
outh shut. Its words whispered in your head and its will tugged at your hands and feet, begging, threatening, promising violence. But it was usually the laughter that drove people insane.

  The only thing worse than a Laughing Boy was a Crying Boy, when the demon decided it wasn’t having fun anymore.

  “Give us what we came for, bitch.”

  “How stupid do you have to be to break into the Liar’s house?”

  Danny said nothing, but the demon inside him couldn’t remain silent for long. “The Liar is dead, you stupid bitch. Now give us what we came for or we’ll make you bleed.”

  How could they possibly know her mom had died already? She’d only left the hospital a few hours ago.

  “So that means I’m the Liar now, idiot,” Sadie said, putting as much spite as she could into her words to mask the tremor of fear. “I can make your life hell.”

  The demon cackled. “Except, you’re not the Liar yet, are you, girl?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Danny said. “But it might make me. So please just give me the books.”

  Sadie pointed the tip of her knife at the front door. “If you don’t want to hurt me, then leave,” she said. “Walk out that door and don’t look back. Or are you not in charge anymore?”

  That sent the demon into a new laughing fit, while Danny just stared at her with his eyes leaking deathly blue light. Sadie’s courage shriveled with every passing breath. She didn’t want to mess with a Laughing Boy, but even if she wanted to give him the Liar’s ledgers, she had no idea where they were. And as scary as he was, this punk was nothing compared to the King.

  “I just need the books,” Danny said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “They aren’t here.”

  “I think they are.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you think.” She held up the knife. “Liar or not, I think I can do something with this. You want to try me?”

  Danny took another step and Sadie retreated, though there wasn’t much room behind her.

  “I’m only gonna ask one more time,” Danny said.

  “Then we break your jaw and feed you your own hands,” said the demon.