Paint It Black

by Val Crowe

  “Is it your religion or sexual orientation?” I said. “Besides, what’s it going to matter if you’re dead, huh?”

  “Listen,” said Rylan, “I know that practically every lesbian couple on TV shows and in celebrity couples has this one chick who was once straight and then turned gay. I mean, there’s Willow and Waverly and Anne Heche. And I’m not saying I don’t have my own little fantasies about turning various straight women gay with one kiss, you know? Who doesn’t? But that’s not real life, and I think there’s something to be said for not caving to societal pressure. For knowing that you don’t want a dick even if you’ve never tried one. I am a gay woman, and I am never having sex with a man.”

  I blinked. “Then I guess you’re going to die.” I turned and started walking again.

  “Oh, geez, Deacon, that was harsh,” said Wade. He caught up to me. “So, did you go down on Charlotte?” he said in a low voice.

  I gave him a look. “Seriously?”

  Rylan was there too. “Okay, look, let’s just try the vision thing with the three of us. Let’s go back to the dorm and try what you did before with me instead of Charlotte?”

  “No,” I said, and I was still walking, going even faster. “Because I almost fell out of that window, and I’m not going to die.”

  They were both keeping pace with me.

  “We’ll both be there,” said Rylan. “We won’t let you fall.”

  “I caught him last time,” said Wade. “But barely.”

  “Maybe we try something else, then,” said Rylan.

  “Like what?” I said. “Got any ideas? Because I sure as hell don’t. Except passing this on and getting on with our lives.”

  “It’ll just come back to us,” she said. “Like karma.”

  “It might not,” I said. “If people stay ahead of it, it could be passed on indefinitely. It’s not like a real STD, you know? You can get rid of it. So, we don’t even have to feel guilty about doing it. It’s survival. That’s all.”

  “What if we tried something like with the oil?” said Rylan. “Find someplace that has really strong energy. Positive energy, not like whatever you summoned before. Rainbows and balloons and shit. We go there, and maybe that positive energy will absorb the barnacles.”

  I shrugged. “You want to waste time trying that? Fine. Do it without me.” I walked even faster.

  “Deacon,” said Rylan. “Come on.”

  I didn’t answer. I just picked up the pace even more.

  Eventually, neither of them were keeping up with me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I went back to the Airstream and took a shower. I had hooked up the campground’s water, but I’d been taking quick showers, just running a bar of soap over everything, including my hair. This time, I took my time. I used product in my hair. I shaved. I got dressed in clean clothes.

  When I came out of the steamed-up bathroom, Mads was there.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I am.” I had a plaid shirt unbuttoned over the tank top I was wearing underneath. I fingered the buttons. “I don’t want you to get upset.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just… maybe don’t follow me,” I said. “And if I bring someone back here, please don’t…” I couldn’t even say it out loud. Everything was so freaking weird in my life. I ran a hand through my hair, destroying all the work I’d done with the product.

  Then I wiped my hand on my jeans.

  Damn it. Was that going to leave a stain?

  “Deacon…”

  I looked up at her. “What you said before? What am I supposed to do with that? You don’t… belong to me, because I never asked for that. I’m not ready for that. And you’re not…” Real. “Human. Anymore. Or maybe you never were. I don’t know. But… screw it, Madeleine, it wasn’t fair for you to say something like that.”

  She laughed a little, looking embarrassed. “I was hurt, Deacon. I was being stupid. Forget it. I didn’t mean it, anyway.”

  Which hurt, for some reason. I clenched my jaw. “Good.”

  She nodded. “Good.”

  I started to move past her.

  “Deacon, if you want to talk about your mother—”

  “I don’t,” I said, giving her a hard look.

  “It’s only that I was there,” she said. “I remember it all. I saw it all. I know what happened.”

  “I was there too,” I said. “I know what happened too.”

  “You’re running from the barnacle because of what it said to you when you were about to fall,” she said. “But even if you get rid of the barnacle, it won’t matter. That other ghost picked up on it too. It comes off you in waves, Deacon. You project it. Until you deal with it—”

  “Mads.” My voice was quiet.

  “I’m only saying—”

  “You don’t want me to do this,” I said. “I get it. But it doesn’t mean anything, okay? Nothing has to change between us.”

  She let out a funny, strangled-sounding laugh. “Sure. Fine. You go and stick your dick in whatever you want, and I’ll be here waiting.”

  I felt guilty, and it wasn’t fair. So I glared at her. “That’s your choice.” And then I did push past her—through her—and out of the camper.

  * * *

  So.

  Full disclosure.

  The last time I got laid before the disaster with Charlotte was… oh, hell, maybe ten months ago. Before that, it was even longer. Over a year. And I had never been in what you might call a, um, relationship.

  Because, you know, there was the whole unrequited Olivia thing. And there was the fact that I see ghosts, and they have a tendency to screw with me. And I wasn’t one for staying in one place, which makes it hard to go back for more with one person.

  Now, I could lie and say that I was perfectly happy with my lack of a sex life, but the truth was that I was just shit with women.

  Judging from the way things had gone with Charlotte, it was likely that I was shit in bed too. I mean, I liked to think that if I went to bed with a woman who was not screwing me only because she didn’t want to die that I could please her.

  No, I could please a woman. I definitely could.

  Why was I thinking shit like this now?

  I needed to be psyching myself up, staring in the mirror and calling myself a sexy beast, not doubting myself. I needed to be confident. Women responded to confidence. Sure, I was only picking up some chick so that I could pass along to her a deadly barnacle that could kill her, but I needed to act as though I was doing this for fun.

  Because I could do this. If I wanted to pick up a chick, I’d pick someone up. And if I wanted to give her this barnacle thing, I could do that too.

  It was only that it was so different than what I’d done with Charlotte. I’d tried to save her, and now I was foisting the thing off on some unsuspecting girl? It made me feel a little sick.

  I decided to drown that feeling in lots of beer. I could have hit the liquor again, but a night of whiskey dick was not going to help me out. No, I’d drink beer. Just beer.

  I didn’t go to the bar where Wade and I had gone earlier, but instead to a different place, something that might more accurately be termed a club. There was a dance floor and a DJ and strobe lights and it was loud.

  I bought drinks for every girl that looked at me. After three different girls, one tried to talk to me. It was too loud to talk.

  She pulled me onto the dance floor.

  I’m not good at dancing, but luckily, this kind of dancing didn’t take a lot of movement on the guy side of things. She did a lot of undulating and grinding, and I swayed and pressed into her. It was easy.

  We danced. I bought more drinks.

  At one point, we went outside, back where people were smoking cigarettes. She pulled out a cigarette and lit up. She offered me one. I declined. That cigarette Wade had given me as a kid had been my first and last smoke
. Even Wade had only messed with them as a kid to piss off his dad. I wasn’t a big fan of kissing smokers, but what the hell? This chick was a sunk cost at this point. And it didn’t matter. She was a means to an end.

  I was using her.

  That made my gut twist.

  I drank more beer. I made small talk with this girl, and I lied through my teeth. I told her I went to grad school in another state. I told her that I was studying to be a lawyer.

  She laughed a lot. She was drunk.

  She pressed in against me, and the intimacy seemed easy after all the dancing we’d been doing. This girl who had maybe told me her name, but I didn’t remember, whose body had been against the length of mine, who was a stranger for all intents and purposes. She kissed me.

  I pulled away. “I need to find a bathroom.”

  “Cool,” she said. “After that, you want to get out of here?” She winked at me. “My apartment is only a block away.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, great.”

  * * *

  But when we got back to her place, I excused myself to the bathroom again.

  She made some joke about breaking the seal.

  I laughed and shut the door against her. Then, alone, I stared at myself in the mirror. The way that I’d styled my hair looked stupid now, contrived. I smelled like sweat and beer and cigarette smoke. Everything seemed sordid and strange. I took a deep breath.

  You can do this, I told my reflection.

  The barnacle swung into my vision. It hadn’t have a reflection, so I couldn’t see it in the mirror, but it was there. I had to get rid of this thing.

  She’ll be fine. She can give it to someone else, I told myself. She obviously has no qualms about taking guys home from the bar.

  I stayed in there and stared at myself and tried hard not to feel guilty. When it became clear that the guilt was just a thing I was going to have to deal with, I squared my shoulders and pushed out into her apartment.

  She had a studio—one big room with a kitchen in the corner and her bedroom and living area bleeding into each other. She was smoking a cigarette on her couch. Her shirt was off, and she was only in her bra.

  She grinned at me, crooking her finger and beckoning.

  I swallowed.

  Was it always this easy to get laid, and I just didn’t try?

  Or was there something wrong with this girl, something broken in there, some hurt spot from where no one loved her enough, something she wanted me to try to fill? Or had she broken herself, opened herself once too many times to someone who wanted to use her, and now she wasn’t capable of anything other than this kind of casual hookup?

  Or was I being an ass thinking this shit?

  Maybe she was just a chick who liked to get laid.

  I crossed the room to her.

  She seized me by the shirt and pulled me down on top of her.

  Her tongue was in my mouth.

  We kissed for a while, and then she let go of me, giggling. “You don’t live here, right?” she said.

  Man, had she sounded that drunk before? When we were walking back here? “I don’t live here.”

  “I’m not going to have to run into you,” she said, but she was slurring her words heavily. “That’s always so awkward.”

  “No,” I said. “After this, I’m leaving.”

  “Good.” She giggled again, writhing against the couch. She reached out and unbuttoned my pants.

  I stopped her. “You seem a little drunk.”

  She let out a disbelieving laugh. “So are you.”

  “Yeah, but… I mean, you sure about this?”

  “Definitely,” she said. “Last night, my boyfriend of three years told me that he slept with some girl when we were freshmen and never told me. Now, I am going to get back at him. With you.”

  I pulled back. “Wait, you think this is going to be revenge?”

  “Do you care?”

  “So, after we do this, what? You dump your boyfriend, and then you find other random guys to sleep with?”

  “No,” she said. “One night. I get to even the score. And then rub his face in it. And then we’ll be even.”

  “So, you’re going to go back to being in a monogamous relationship?” Where they would give the barnacle back and forth to each other until one of them died. And then the other would die. No way. That wasn’t cool at all.

  “What is this? Do we really need to know everything about each other?”

  I buttoned my pants. “I can’t do this.”

  “Are you kidding me?” She sat up straight. “Is it because I told you I had a boyfriend?”

  “It’s because you’re drunk,” I said. “You don’t know what you want.”

  “Don’t be that guy,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t be that patronizing, patriarchal dickwad who thinks he knows what I want and is trying to protect me from myself. Who do you think you are? Mr. Knightley?”

  “Mr. Who?”

  “It’s from Emma,” she said. “Jane Austen?”

  I looked at her blankly.

  She rolled her eyes. “God, go to English class sometimes. And get out.”

  “Yeah,” I said, getting off the couch. “I was just leaving.”

  * * *

  After leaving the chick, whose name I still had not recalled, I wandered around the streets of Thornford, feeling stupid and yet somehow relieved. I just wasn’t the kind of guy that could take advantage of drunk women, apparently. Or maybe it was because of the boyfriend and the barnacle. Maybe I couldn’t just give this thing to someone.

  I had asked for it. I had taken it willingly.

  That made it my responsibility. I needed to grow a pair and be a man and handle having the thing on my neck.

  It skimmed around my face and neck, plunging against my face, and it was like being hit by a snowball made of black dry ice.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I’d come down the street to Ridinger Hall.

  Aw, hell. Of course I was here. Where else would I have gone?

  The building looked especially demented, almost as if it had been pasted against the sky, like it didn’t belong. It was whispering to me in a voice like rattling bones. It wanted me.

  We want in, Deacon.

  I wasn’t going inside. The last time I’d been in there, I’d almost died, and the time before that—

  Come to us.

  I took an unsteady step toward the house. And then another.

  I tried to turn around. I thought about it. I thought that what I would do is turn around and go back to find where I had parked my truck and then drive back to the Airstream. Of course, I was probably too drunk to drive, but if I did get pulled over and thrown in the drunk tank, at least I’d be safe. No windows to hurl myself out of in jail.

  You inside us. Us inside you.

  I was going up onto the front porch.

  The house seemed to shudder.

  Inside, I heard a sobbing sound, like a woman crying. No, not a woman. A child.

  I swallowed hard, but I kept moving. I went into the house.

  The crying was louder. A little boy. He didn’t cry like that very often anymore, but he was so stunned and betrayed. It wasn’t the pain so much as it was the surprise. “Stop it, Mommy. Please, stop it.”

  I ran through the lobby to the steps upstairs. Maybe if I climbed those steps, I could get away from that noise.

  I clambered up the steps, but there was only more noise.

  More sobs echoing against my skin. More whispers. “Come here, you little shit. Come here.” A high-pitched female laugh, hysterical.

  I clutched the railing. I wanted to leave now. I wanted out of this house. Why had I come back inside? I thought again of leaving, going down the stairs and going to find my truck.

  But this time, I knew it was just a vain fantasy. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was inside this place now. It had me. As I climbed higher and higher, the weight of the barnacle on my neck seemed to increase. Each step made it heavier and more s
olid.

  You inside us. Us inside you.

  “Take us away from all this, Deacon,” said the laughing female voice. “Take us back to your place.”

  And still, I trudged up the stairs. I had to get to that room. Of course I did. Was there anywhere else that I could go? It was the only place. I would need to be there and once I was there—

  Rylan?

  Rylan was in the room, the room where Heather Olsen fell.

  She wasn’t alone.

  She was pinned to the wall next to the window by some guy I’d never seen before. The guy was kissing her.

  So, she’d taken my advice, then. She was getting rid of the barnacle. Well, good for her. At least one of us would be okay, then. I should leave her to it. Let her have her privacy.

  Except I was still moving forward, through the room, heading straight towards her and the man.

  The barnacle was crazy heavy now. It was like lugging around an extra person. I shuffled forward under its weight.

  Rylan peered over the man’s shoulder. He was kissing her neck. She reached out to me. “Deacon,” she said in a breathy voice.

  “I’m here,” I whispered.

  Rylan shook the guy. “Look, Joey. Look, it’s Deacon.”

  The man—Joey, I supposed—turned. His eyes were rolled completely back in his head. Only the whites were visible. He let out a guttural laugh. “Welcome, Deacon. You inside us. Us inside you. Come here.”

  “He’s for both of us,” said Rylan, giggling.

  I was close enough now that she could touch me, and she did. She seized my hand and pulled me close.

  I put my hand on Joey’s face. I dragged my fingers over his jaw, his neck.

  He sighed.

  I pushed Joey back against the wall, the same place where I’d pushed Charlotte—Heather—that morning.

  Joey grabbed me by the neck and pulled my face to his.

  His mouth was hot and moist.

  I pulled back, gasping. What the hell?

  Rylan was kissing Joey again.

  My temples were pounding. Someone was laughing.

  No, Mommy!

  Joey again. Joey’s mouth on mine.

  Get back here, you little shit.

  “First,” said Rylan in a grating voice as she worked at Joey’s zipper, “we fuck him. And then we push him out the window and watch him splatter.”