Silence stretched between them. Behind them, the knife-sharpener man's truck moved slowly away, the tinkle of its bells dimming.
"Why are you here?" John asked.
"This is where I belong," Billy replied.
"Why?"
Billy's face was blank.
"You'll live with the Becks for a while," John said, "but it won't last. They won't want you. No one will. They'll all be afraid of you."
"Are you?"
There was a sudden tight movement of John's Adam's apple, a nervous movement of his hands at his sides, that said more than his mouth could.
"I saw what you did to Jim Crane in the school yard that day," John said. There was a quiver in his voice. "I saw your eyes." Desperate anger rose in John's voice. "I knew Melinda liked you better than the rest of us. I saw that the day she brought you home. She told me once you needed her more. But I never believed that. I think you used her. I think you fooled her like you fooled everybody else. You fooled Marsh and Rebecca, too." He balled one of his fists and banged it against his side. A tear snaked down one cheek. His face was flushed. "You know where I came from? My father came home from work one day and kicked me out. He'd done the same thing to my mother. But now he had another woman, and he didn't want me around to remind him of my mother. He didn't even give me a chance to take anything with me. I had a baseball-card collection, and . . ." Hot tears rolled down his face, and he wiped at them with his sleeve. He glanced quickly to see that no one else in the school yard was near them, before the unstoppable flow of his words, of what was in him, forced him to go on. "He didn't even let me get that! I had a glove, and my new sneakers, and . . ." He paused, calming himself before going on. "Most of it my mother had given me. When Melinda found me, I'd been eating out of garbage cans for a month. She took me in and people loved me there. Only my mother had ever loved me." His eyes filled with red anger. "And then you came. Everything they gave to me—Melinda, Marsh, and Rebecca—they gave to you. I thought I'd found a new home, and then you came.
"And now you're here, and you want to steal it all again. You couldn't stand to see that I got everything I ever wanted, so you followed me here. I wouldn't be surprised if you killed Melinda before you came here. I don't care what you are. You're not going to take everything away from me again."
Christine appeared, stopping about ten feet away. "John, you okay?" she asked.
"I'll be right there," John answered. The flush had begun to recede from his face.
Christine walked a few steps away, stopping to wait for him.
John looked down at Billy, whose facial expression had not changed. The same steady gaze met him.
"Just stay away from me," John hissed, pointing a finger down at Billy. "I don't care what you are. Don't bother me, or this time I'll make sure you get taken care of."
He walked away quickly to meet Christine, who took his hand. They talked as they retreated, glancing back once at Billy before joining a group of boys and girls, one of them a tall boy with long blond hair and tight jeans who laughed and shouted "Hey!" as the crowd drifted to the other side of the playground.
Billy picked up his sandwich. It lay on wax paper on top of his lunch bag. He turned toward the chain-link fence again. The knife-sharpener's truck was long gone. Across the street someone came out of the deli, a man in a gray sweatshirt with a tool belt around his waist and a thin cigar in his mouth. He cradled a large paper bag in one hand. He shaded his eyes with his other hand and looked up one side of the street. Then he walked down the block away from the school. Near the end of the block he met two other men sitting on the lowered tail end of a pickup truck. He rested the bag there, and the three of them laughed over something one of them said and began to eat.
Overhead, a bird landed in the tree, announcing its arrival with three sharp notes. Billy glanced up; the bird met his gaze, one eye cocked to the side. It flapped its deep blue wings and went to a neighboring tree, where it perched, regarding him curiously.
Billy looked through the chain-link fence. Then a long, sharp set of clangs, the bell signaling the end of lunch, sounded behind him. Down at the end of the block, the three men and their pickup were gone. A torn paper bag in the gutter was the only evidence that they had ever been there. In the tree next to the one he sat under, the bird had taken flight.
Billy gathered up the remains of his lunch. He put everything into the paper bag, closing the top and folding it neatly over.
He rose, taking the bag with him, and went back to school.
15
Hate.
The world was bright with it. There was nothing else. The world was a copper thing, seen through cool eyes. It thought of its self-control, and deep inside, behind the cold mask, it laughed even as it wanted to scream, to flail out, bring its arms up and strike and strike until there was red everywhere, let its tongue lash out and bite, its fingers grab and rip until the nails were raw with blood, its legs kick and break bones. It wanted to butt with its head, take hammer and knife and scream as it hit and hit again, hearing the sound of breaking bones that was music. It wanted to hear screaming voices, voices begging for release; it wanted to grind broken teeth beneath its foot, push teeth back into gagging mouths until those mouths were filled with them, choked on them, and the eyes bugged out, cheeks flushed purple-black, tongue pushed out futilely, begging, flailing, begging, dying . . .
There came a sound from outside, and it looked out the window. Below, on the street, two teenagers were walking by, arm in arm. The boy was taunting the girl, tickling her at the waist, and she was moving away from him and then back, their hands interlocking. Under a streetlamp, they stopped and abruptly kissed, then the boy's fingers went to her side and tickled her. She broke away laughing, but then they kissed again, longer and harder. They walked on, arm in arm, talking, out of the lamplight and back into the night.
A want filled it greater than any it had ever known. It longed to open the window and climb out, as it had on other nights, and follow the girl and boy. They would probably go into the park; it had seen other teenagers go there, into one of the secluded spots by the pond or under the stone bridge that spanned the stream that fed it. There were other places, at the far end of ball fields, by the unused bandstand, and it would be easy for it to track them to one of these spots. What then? Perhaps it would become one of their teachers or parents, appearing out of nowhere to scold them. Or perhaps--yes, better yet—an angel, an apparition from the heaven they would so shortly inhabit, come to tell them their love would last forever. It could almost see their rapt faces, their young, lightly-pimpled complexions spread into happy smiles, contemplating the life of bliss their puppy love would flower into. And then? Then it would metamorphose before their eyes into—something else. Most of these stupid teenagers went to see all the horror movies, and so it would turn from angel to devil, a reptilian horror in green, crusted skin with a sewage-like odor. Its face would be the face of a huge, enraged lizard, eyes wide and yellow, nostrils flaring, the teeth sharp and white and long. It would scream at them in its deep voice that it knew what they had been doing, that they would go to hell for it, and that it had come to take them. And then it would let the girl watch as it pounced on the boy, who would put up a fierce doomed struggle, and it would bite him with its teeth, letting the girl see as it ripped at her boyfriend's flesh, tearing it in great strips from his body, biting deep into his arm or leg, through the bone, letting the boy and girl hear the sound of the boy's bones being snapped, and then the girl would scream and try to tear it away and it would turn on her, brandishing the head of her boyfriend, and laugh and howl into her face, "You will go to hell! You will go to hell!"
And then in the morning, someone strolling through the park would find their two bodies, suicides, the illusions it had twisted out of the light in their bodies long dissipated by the time they'd be found, strung up side by side from a tree, apparently just another lovesick couple filled with hopelessness, unaware that in reality they had been
hanging themselves with their own hands while their eyes and brains were seeing themselves consumed by the devil.
That was what it wanted to do; what it wanted to do right now was climb through the window; as it had so many other nights, and follow those two stupid young lovers and kill them, kill them—
But it would not. And it would do none of those other things, those things it longed to do, ripping flesh, the world in red and the cracking sound of breaking bones and torn limbs filling its ears . . .
At least not yet. There would be time for all these things, if it only continued to be, as that silly fag art teacher had kept saying to himself—
Careful.
For even as the fires raged deep inside, the fires that wanted to lash out, to burn and rape and tear limb from socket, even as the fires burned as hot as the core of the sun, it continued to look at the world through eyes as cool as the dead emptiness of space between stars. Because, a long time ago, it had learned patience, and cunning—had learned to be . . .
Careful.
There had been close calls, times when a flash of what it knew and could perform had leaked out, mostly before it was ready to use these things, but at those times it had been lucky, and the damage had been minimal and mended. There was a memory of the day it had discovered not only its powers and urges, but the need for temperance, and that had been the luckiest day of all. It could not have been more than a year old, but it remembered the day as if it had been its birthing day itself. In many ways it had been. The day was sunny and blue, early June by the weather, with summer still held at bay by high spring. The world smelled like flowers. There were clouds overhead, so high they seemed part of another world. It was lying in its stroller, in a park somewhere, and it was looking up at those clouds when suddenly it realized what they looked like. They looked like the light it saw when it touched its mother or anyone else. And it knew what it wanted to do. Those clouds were beautiful—high and as fluffy as cotton balls. But it wanted to make them turn black, shred them to bits, rip them with its teeth. And it knew it could do that to the light it saw when it touched its mother, could rend that light, twist and deform it. A burst of insight went through it; its entire being filled with a fierce dark knowledge and it knew who it was. And what it could do. It looked at the low walls that imprisoned it, the padded dark blue vinyl of the stroller where it lay, with the sun bonnet folded back, and it wanted to mash that carriage to shreds of plastic and stuffing. It wanted to make the flowers it smelled wither and die, make them reek instantly like mold and rotting earth, make the day turn sour, fill it with burning rain and thunderheads, the wind howling, make the tops of fresh green trees whip one against another, ripping each other to pulpy bits. It wanted to do all these things.
It felt a vast, exhilarating power tearing through its veins, and suddenly, with an uncontrollable urge, it wanted to do all these things now. It reached its hands up, and willed the day to turn black. Nothing happened. Rage consumed it; it began to beat its fists wildly on the sides of the stroller, tried to rip the plastic from its frame with its tiny hands, crying and crying.
"What is it?" a face said above it. The mother. The face was huge, the mouth downturned in a silly pout filled with concern, the eyes filled with both caring and something else. Fear? Not quite, but something like it.
Suddenly, looking up at that face, it longed to rip those huge, caring cow eyes out, tear the flesh from the mouth
A look of alarm crossed the mother's face. It had gone too far, it knew; and now it learned its first lesson. It pulled back until there was only concern on the mother's face, and that thing below fear, and it turned its cries into whimpers and then managed, with all of its raging will, to put a small smile on its face.
"There, there, that's better," the mother said. It felt the mother's hands upon it, huge hateful things, and it saw the soft strong light that was in the mother and wanted to rend that light with its hands, but it cooed and laughed, and the mother smiled. "There, such a fright you gave me!"
It heard another voice, and the mother turned her head away, talking to someone else: ". . . all right now, everything's all right," it heard the mother say to the new voice. Then there was a new face peering down at it, a face it hadn't seen before: old and small, like a chimpanzee's, wrinkles around the mouth and eyes, nose pitted with age, only the eyes bright. The old man smiled down at it, reached a bent finger in, and tickled it under the chin. "Is the baby good now?" the old man said in a high, silly voice. "Is the baby good?" The old face retreated, and once more it heard the two voices, the mother and the old man, conversing on the park bench.
The cloud overhead was passing out of its line of vision. It thought about what had happened. It knew the power was in it to do the things it wanted, but it knew now that it would take time to be strong enough. Like all of the other, noxious things it must learn to do—crawl, walk, talk, eat with a spoon, and drink from a cup—this, too, must be learned slowly. But it would learn. It would learn to walk and then run, and then, slowly, it would learn to . . .
The old face blocked out the cloud again and hung over it. "Good little baby?" the cracked lips asked. It saw where a spot of drool sat toad-like on one corner of the old man's mouth; the teeth were age-yellow and there was a breath of garlic and red wine and age. Seventy years of odors drifted from the old man's mouth—toothpaste, and apples, and garlic—seventy years of rotted food and decay.
Without hesitation, it reached up a tiny hand and touched the old man's face. The old man drew back for a moment, the eyes widened in surprise, but then he let its hand rest on his face. Inside, it felt something happen. It felt a tiny window behind its eyes open, and as its hand lay on the old man's cheek, as it saw the old man's light, the light of life itself, it saw a tiny spot in his chest that was not as luminous as the rest. And then, as its tiny fingers stroked the old man's cheek, a gesture that made the old man laugh with misunderstood pleasure as it probed the old man's fractured light, it began to teach itself how to bend the light and make it do whatever it wanted. It could, it knew, make the old man see whatever it wanted him to, could make him see the things in his mind, his long-dead son, killed in the war, his daughter, who had run away, his wife, who, even now, lay childish and dying in the home across the park. Or it could shape the light, could go to that small weak luminescence in the chest and . . .
It stared into the old man's eyes and knew there was something it could do now. Something safe, that no one would know about. Just as it had learned to crawl, it was learning this now. It let the rage fill it, let the hate run through its body as the old man cooed above him, and then it opened its eyes wide and twisted that little weak spot of light.
The old man stopped cooing. Another spot of spittle, and then another, appeared on his lips. His cracked hand reached up toward his face, waving at something it couldn't quite see, and his eyes grew glazed. The old face moved up and away, and then the mother was shouting and the old man's face was completely gone and the mother was screaming for help. It heard a sound come from the old man, a dry crackle like a bunch of sticks being broken, and then nothing.
There were more sounds of alarm around him, more people running toward them, but it just cooed and waved its hands in the air as no one bothered with it, reached up at the next fat white cloud rolling overhead . . .
Hate.
So it had learned hate, but at the same time it had learned patience. And it had grown. And the hate, the deep golden hate that was in it, grew and matured along with its body. A calm descended over its exterior, a beautiful mask that it formed and shaped year by year until it was all but invisible, though the storm raged on inside. It was a storm that all but consumed it, a fiery reactor with its always burning core unquenchably hot—but it was something, this hot hate, that it learned to control and nurture. The core wanted to explode and fill the world around it with the destructive loathing it felt, but it taught itself to rein in the power, to let it grow slowly along with its body, until the time when
it needed to hide no longer, when it was old enough, and strong enough, to let the power explode from deep within. And even when it discovered that its strength had grown to the point that it didn't even need to use the touch of its hands to effect its power—that its mind alone could feel the lifelight, twist and deform it to its will—still it was patient.
It waited, and it grew.
When the time came, it would rend branch from tree, leaf from branch, limb from body . . .
When the time came. Until then, it was . . . careful. It took an outlet for its hatred here and there, feeding the reactor within itself without letting on that it existed. Now and then, it bent and shaped the light on an isolated victim, learning a new way to use its power.
Someday, it knew, it would need all of its power. But it knew that when the time came, it would be ready.
When the time came . . .
Hate.
16
Here it was, another Saturday night, God knew what time, and . . . he was finished.
He stared down at the neatly stacked sheets of note paper before him, and shook his head. Not bad, Jacob. He had been afraid to look at his watch, but now that it was all over, that the white heat had possessed him and let him go, leaving him with one of the best sermons he had ever written, he brought his wrist in front of his eyes. One-thirty.
Could it be? One-thirty in the morning, and he was actually done? He hadn't worked that fast since the first few weeks he had come here—and even then it had been because he had arrived armed with a clutch of partially finished sermons, hammered out in school and during the long summer while he and Mary waited for his appointment to go through, when he had worked as a clerk in a supermarket because he had refused to let his parents support them. One-thirty. Not bad at all. And here he was, still seated in his comfortable chair in his study, not pacing the floor of the church like a lunatic or beating his fists futilely against one of the pew railings. He had drunk two cups of coffee, smoked one pipe, and—he looked down again at the neat sure handwriting, the thoughts still freshly laid out in his mind as they were on the paper—well, he was done.
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