by S. D. Perry
“That’s gross,” Tommy said, with a measure of real disgust.
Jeff nodded happily and abruptly changed the subject, catching him off guard. “Yeah. Hey, you weren’t at the raid this morning. I didn’t see you last night, either. Where you been?”
Tommy felt himself flush. “Here. I’ve been busy, is all.”
“Doing what?”
Tommy opened his mouth, not sure what would come out. “What the fuck do you care? You taking a survey?”
“Jeez, lighten up,” Jeff said. “You know the carnival’s coming in next week? They’ve got a Zipper and an Octopus and this giant slide, you go down on a little mat. They’ve got a bunch of baby shit, too, but it’s mostly pretty cool. Everybody goes.”
Tommy wanted to ask if Jenny Todd was going, but he already knew it didn’t matter. He wasn’t even an actual teenager yet, and she was perfect. “What’s a Zipper?”
“You know, one of those cage-spinner Ferris wheel things, only it’s like more tall instead of round?”
Tommy nodded. There was something like that at the fairgrounds outside Tacoma, only they called it the Terminator. He’d stood in line for it twice, but chickened out before he got to the front. Not like he’d tell Jeff, who’d call him a pussy.
I’d go on with Jenny, though, he thought, and that was exciting, but then he thought about the man on the pier again, and then his mom’s voice not five minutes ago, calling up the stairs, her voice all sweet and motherly while he was jerking off, masturbating. The swoops between sexual excitement and total disgust with himself were dizzying, which made him feel angrier for some reason. Why should he care if Jeff thought he was a pussy? Fuck him.
“Two years ago, this guy Clark, he was a senior? He was shit-faced on beer, right? Him and his girlfriend started spinning, up at the top? And he threw up and puke went everywhere; it was like this watery beer-puke, and they couldn’t stop spinning for some reason, so they got soaked, and so did like six other people in the cages all around theirs. Some of them threw up, too.”
“Nice,” Tommy said, smiling in spite of himself. “Think I’ll skip that one.”
Jeff nodded. “No shit, those cages are gross. Hey, there’s these guys up there every year, though, the carnies? There’s a couple of them that’ll sell you drinks. There’s this one guy, he carries a big flask around full of tequila, for a buck you can take a drink.”
Tommy grimaced. “You know how many diseases carnies must have?”
Jeff laughed, but that creeping smile was behind it. “Yeah, but they could buy us beer, though. And my mom’s got some stuff she wouldn’t miss.”
Tommy didn’t say anything. He’d had a sip of beer a couple of times; it tasted like soda made out of moldy bread. Nasty. Ditto with the tiny glass of rotten-grape juice his mom let him drink last Christmas. Having the option, though…that was interesting.
“And there’s this other guy, he’s like the manager or something? He’s always trying to get guys to go in his trailer. He says he’s got a bunch of porno, and all kinds of liquor. And pot.”
Tommy made a face. “That’s—nobody ever does it, do they? That’s freaky.”
“No, it’s not like that. It’s mostly older guys, like sixteen, seventeen. I know some guys who did it, and they said he just wanted to brag about all these women he fucked and how he ran a nightclub about a million years ago, and all these people he beat up. He says fuck like every other word, they said, and he says he killed people for money, twice. He’s old, though.”
“Oh.” Tommy wasn’t sure what to say to that. That didn’t sound so safe, but they were too young, anyway.
“We should go up there, when they’re setting up,” Jeff said, as though he was just thinking of it, but Tommy could tell they’d gotten to the reason for Jeff’s visit. “It takes them like two days; there’s always kids going up there after dark, running around in the woods, drinking. It’s like an unofficial party.” He leered. “Jenny Todd will definitely be there, with her equally hot cousin, Allison. They hang out with a bunch of girls.”
Alcohol, parties, girls, after dark. Jenny. Even thinking about going, he felt scared and excited…and the fear was losing ground fast. He was practically a teenager already. And everyone was always saying how much older he seemed, because he was smart. He could handle himself, and it wasn’t like he was going anywhere alone. Still, there was no way in hell his mother would let him go, even if she hadn’t heard anything about kids disappearing. Which she probably had, by now.
The lure was too great. He’d find a way. “Yeah, whatever. Sounds good.”
Jeff raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously.”
“You gonna get permission?”
“Are you?”
Jeff’s grin was wicked, and Tommy thought his probably looked the same. That was how it felt, anyway.
Amanda sat on John’s back porch alone and smoked and drank iced coffee. John was at work and Bob was in the study, still on the phone to one of his so-far-useless reporter friends, trying to drum up interest in the plight of Port Isley. There were news vans scurrying back into town, but Bob only knew newspaper people, it seemed, mostly in Seattle, and almost everyone he’d talked to had blown him off as cracked or drunk or both.
It was day three of living at John’s, and she felt restless—but strangely, not so bad. Her life had just gotten too fucked up, she figured; she maybe wasn’t capable of freaking out anymore. At least not with any real enthusiasm. She felt daydreamy all the time, distant from herself, wandering around John’s house, randomly jotting down images and ideas, reading his books, napping. Maybe she was in shock, but since John had first led her up the stairs to the guest room, she’d felt…it wasn’t like anything had really clarified, but she felt better, like she was taking a step in the right direction. She couldn’t describe it exactly. It was like…like waking up afraid because you can’t remember if the test is today, and then realizing that you studied for it already, that there is nothing to worry about; she felt like that, that warm, sleepy relief like she’d done the right thing and could feel good about it. That was stupid, probably, but there it was. She was still afraid when she thought about Eric, but compared to her freak-fest on poetry night, she was, like, relaxed, practically.
Sid had been great about everything, even Eric showing up and shouting for her on their doorstep the night after the poetry reading, the same day she’d sneaked out. John had talked to him, explained how it was—leaving out the psychic stuff, obviously—and Devon’s uncle had promptly volunteered to file a police report and take turns “sitting” with Amanda, although so far it hadn’t come to that. Sid had put deadbolts in, too, which made her feel better. She didn’t know if Devon knew what had happened, but she supposed he’d find out. She didn’t spend much time thinking about it, actually, which she recognized as unlike her. Normally, her reality kind of revolved around Devon, but he, too, seemed distant, too far away to worry about, to wonder if he would call, to wonder what she would say. As for the police report, the cops were all busy organizing and running a search for that little kid; Bob had been giving her updates. Following up on a teenage summer kid yelling his girlfriend’s name wasn’t going to be topping any lists anytime soon. She felt bad the trouble everyone had to go through, apologetic as hell, but she also recognized that guilt wasn’t going to help anything. She kept her self-torture to a minimum where she could.
On Eric, there was no word. He hadn’t popped up anywhere since making a scene at Sid’s. John had been to his house twice in two days, and his father had been as clueless as he’d seemed when she’d met him, insisting that Eric was being a typical teenage boy. When John had continued to push the idea that Eric might need help, Mr. Hess had finally taken offense and ordered John to leave his family alone. Both times that John had been there, Eric had conveniently been “out.” Lurking in the basement, probably. Working himself into stalker mode. It was bizarre that all her feelings for Eric had turned bad so fa
st, the change so seemingly complete. She didn’t miss him or moon over happier times; they’d fucked a bunch and he’d turned out to be a creep; the rest of it was just…just her believing what she’d wanted to believe, and that was all.
She tilted her head back, heard the sound of the wind crashing high up in the trees, but there was only the barest of breezes across the deck. It was nice here, and for some reason she thought she wouldn’t be staying very long, so she wanted to enjoy it. She’d been having the oddest daydreams, some of which bled into her sleep, becoming images as she dozed out. Flying over a vast forest of dark trees in a tiny plane; walking through a desert at night. They were interesting…although if her daydreams were mild, she still saw most of the same repeating images as before in her deeper dreams, which made sleep not so restful. Some of them getting brighter, the details changing, some fading. They were all still frightening to her—she thought that they all meant death, but she didn’t know for certain. The big fire she kept seeing, maybe there were people inside the building, maybe not. The vignette with the sobbing mother and the small baby in the tub, she hated that one, there was no way around whose life was in peril, and she felt helpless and terrible when she heard the high-pitched wails of the baby and became the slumped, pale mother with tears of total abject misery coursing down her cheeks, her heart a dead black hole of exhaustion. She tried not to think of that one if she didn’t have to. The kid in the darkened hall of mirrors, he was scared, he thought someone was after him…and she was now certain that he was right. She sensed a sick longing somewhere in the dark, a rapid heartbeat, sweating hands. With that kid—those kids—disappearing, the distressing nature of the image had taken a definitely ominous tone.
There’d been other changes. At one time there had been a clear image of a woman with blood in her hair, smiling, but that one had stopped broadcasting or whatever; she hadn’t seen it in nearly two weeks. John had suggested that perhaps circumstances had changed, that the incident may have been bypassed somehow, but Amanda didn’t think so. She’d have bet on the woman having already had her bloody, smiling night, and it sucked, not knowing what had happened, how things had turned out. It was disappointing, like watching a season finale cliffhanger for a show that didn’t exist anymore, and she was thinking that she was going to have to get used to that if her newfound abilities stayed with her. She thought that they would, she hoped they would, because in spite of all the trouble, the fear, all the promise of future disappointment, she was already deeply attached to having superpowers. Not just because it was cool, but because she felt like big things would have to happen for her now: no waitress job, no average life. Maybe that was selfish, but she couldn’t help it.
Her psychic ability hadn’t grown, exactly, but it seemed to be sharpening, picking up subtleties of feeling since she’d moved into John’s guest room. There was this new thing when she was awake sometimes, these brushes of…of something that didn’t come from her, and she didn’t think they felt like anything from Bob or John, either, pretty much the only people she’d seen in three days. It was like this fluttering of chaos that edged around her wandering thoughts, something about numbers or mirrors…prisoners. Shadows. Lines of numbers. She couldn’t explain, nor could she quite catch hold of the threads to follow them anywhere. She didn’t think it was Eric…it didn’t feel like anything she’d ever felt before.
John seemed to be stuck in a kind of purgatory of inaction, frozen by too many considerations, by his romance with Sarah. He rarely said her name, but he thought it all the time, Sarah, Sarah. He’d told Amanda three or four times now that things would work out, but she could see that he didn’t have any real faith in that himself, let alone a plan on how to get from here to there. He spent his nights away. Even without being able to pick up his feelings and thoughts (which she could now, sometimes; it took only the smallest effort), Amanda could tell that his mind was elsewhere. It was in the way he couldn’t seem to concentrate, didn’t seem to be listening.
Bob was drinking less, she could tell, but he actually looked older since the paper had been canceled. His obsessive interest in reading old newspaper articles online took up most of his time. They had come up with the idea of calling his old cronies and telling them about the sharp rise in violence and general wackiness around town, hinting at a chemical spill, but the only people who had even been willing to listen had been other retirees, no one still on the job. She was starting to think that they were all just spinning their wheels, killing time until everything changed…which she felt would happen soon, but she didn’t know why she felt that way, if it was psychic or just some worst-case-scenario feeling. Everything was going to change, though, suddenly and completely. Like, maybe she was going to die. She didn’t know, but thought that panic was at least as useless as guilt.
Amanda took a sip of the coffee and adjusted her shades. Most of John’s back deck was shadowed by the park’s trees, but it was near noon; the sun laid a bright strip over the bleached and weathered wood. She leaned back against the heat of the chair. Every exposed part of her was positively greasy with SPF thirty—in shorts and a tank, that was a lot of sunblock, but she still wouldn’t stay out long. Too much direct sunlight made her feel dizzy, like her brain had turned to bleached mush, and it usually gave her a headache. Still, sunlight was supposed to be good for brain hormones or something, and she could chain smoke, and compared to Grace’s apartment, being up against the trees was nice, it was so quiet…
“Amanda.”
She sat up, her heart freezing in her chest—and there he was, Eric Hess, leaning against the porch rail on the wooded side. His face—his expression was angry, but his voice was tight with pain.
“What the fuck, huh? You tell me to make coffee, then fucking disappear?”
Amanda could yell for Bob; he’d come running. Or she could probably make it inside and shut the door; he’d have to jump the rail that’ll take him a few seconds, go go—
“Why are you looking at me like that? What did I do?” Eric’s voice was plaintive. “What did I do, can you at least tell me that?”
“You scared me,” Amanda said, carefully getting out of the chair, edging behind it. “I got scared. I have to go now, OK?”
His fingers tightened on the railing. “No! I’m losing my fuckin’ mind here, don’t leave!”
“You’re scaring me now,” she said, as evenly as she could. She continued to back toward the sliding glass doors. “I’m sorry I ran away. I’m crazy. Totally nuts. Decide that I’m a crazy bitch and drop it, please, OK?”
“Drop what? What are you doing?” Eric leaned forward and heaved himself up on one lean arm, swinging his legs easily over the rail, the movement taking about a second, and he was on the deck, he was close enough that she could see his cracked lips and bloodshot eyes and feel his need, pouring out of him like the heat of the day.
“I’m—we’re broken up now,” Amanda said. “I’m sorry, but it’s over.”
“What did you see? What scared you?”
“What don’t you get about it’s over?” She took another sliding step back, and he held up both of his hands.
“Don’t leave,” he said. “I won’t come near you, OK? Just—don’t do this. It’s not over. I love you.”
“Oh, shit,” she said.
“I love you, and I know you love me,” he said.
He hadn’t come any closer, and she was drawn in despite her fear. She wanted him to understand, to leave her alone without being angry about it. “No, listen, you think you do, but it’s whatever’s happening here; it’s the same thing that makes me see things about people—it’s making people feel things too much. We talked about this, I know we did. Think about it. Have you ever been like this before?”
“I love you,” he said again. “I don’t just think it, I feel it. We feel it, when we’re together, when I’m fucking you, and the way you look into my eyes…we belong together.”
He stared at her, his gaze strangely flat—and then he had
closed the distance between them, faster than she could think, and his arms were around her, and he was holding her, trying to kiss her.
Amanda turned her head, drew a breath, and screamed, loud and long. Eric’s arms loosened, and she tripped over her own feet trying to get away and shouted again as she fell, thumping heavily to the deck, whacking the shit out of her right elbow. Behind her, the glass door was shoved open.
“Hey! Get away from her!” She couldn’t see Bob, but he sounded mean and strong. She felt the vibrations of his shoes on the hot wood beneath her legs and her butt. Her sunglasses had gotten knocked off when she fell, so Eric seemed overexposed, like in a picture, as he turned to confront Bob, a snarl of rage contorting his white features. Whatever he saw changed his mind. He backed away, looking at Amanda, his expression going tortured, sick, lost…furious. He turned and ran, off the deck and into the park.
A few running steps against dirt and then nothing, a wind in the trees. Amanda fell onto her back, cradling her funny bone, looking up at her savior—who was holding a handgun, still pointed the way Eric had run. It was a revolver, had the cylinder thing in the middle, and Bob’s finger was on the trigger.
“Jesus, Bob, where’d you get that?”
Bob pointed the weapon straight up and looked down at Amanda. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine,” she said, and sat up. “Didn’t know I had Cowboy Gunpants as my babysitter.”
He held out his hand and helped her pull herself to her feet. “Yup. I get a senior discount on the ammo. You might want to sit down for a minute.”
“I’m fine,” she said again, and then felt her legs go wobbly all at once, like her muscles decided to lie back down. Bob caught her, supporting her against his body. He was strong and smelled like whiskey and soap, and it occurred to her for the first time that he was a man, not just an old person. The realization was surprisingly unsettling.
“Did I not just tell you to sit down?”
