The Boy With Penny Eyes

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Who is Billy Potter?" John asked, as, with a bolt of pure fear, he saw Martha's eyes widen and turn to copper fire and felt his own thumb, over which he had no control, tighten on the trigger of the rifle. "Who is he?"

  Martha began to laugh, her little girl body thrown into grotesque paroxysms of mirth. She looked like a horrible little puppet being jerked by some invisible fiend.

  "Billy Potter?" she said. Her voice rose to a screech.

  Despite his fear, John's eyes were wide with wonder. "Who is he?"

  Martha grinned, opening her mouth. "Billy . . . Potter . . . is . . ." she said.

  She closed her mouth. The copper in her eyes deepened and burned bright, and John's thumb pulled the trigger. The rifle put a bullet into his brain, and his ears were already unhearing when Martha answered his question.

  "Who is Billy Potter?" she asked in the suddenly quiet room as she opened the door wide to leave the shadows and head into daylight.

  "Billy Potter is my good half."

  26

  He wanted a cigarette. He wanted one more than he had ever wanted anything, but the pack in his jacket pocket was empty. There was no time to get another one. He felt the crinkly wrapper with his fingers, the faint smell of tobacco reaching his nostrils. He imagined himself taking a cigarette from the pack, putting it to his lips, and lighting it with a match, slowly drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, tasting it there, letting it out slowly.

  He heard something. It was not the sound of the birds, or the cat that had moved through the trees trying to get at them for the past hour. A jogger had come by a half hour ago, a radio strapped to his side, head-phones turned up so loud that Billy could hear the music from where he was: Wagner, one of the Ring cycle operas, horns blaring teutonically. This sound was different. It was the sound he had been waiting for his whole life. It was the sound of himself, a sound deep within his heart and mind. He had heard it before feebly, when he wasn't ready, but now it was clear and strong. It was as if he heard his own heartbeat out loud.

  There was no one visible yet. He looked at the sky: late afternoon November, gray, maybe even snow before nightfall. It would be what Melinda had called Thanksgiving snow—the first snow of the late fall, not winter snow but fall snow, magic snow, which made you happy that the year was ending, not sad the way winter snow did. He thought about Melinda for a moment.

  He heard the sound again, very near.

  He looked around the clearing, into the copse of trees nearby, but saw nothing. He let his power open slightly. He felt a tiny bit of the empty space in him fill. It was a strange feeling. Then there was a sharp pull and he was empty again.

  She stepped out into the clearing.

  "I'm here," she said.

  All the Martha mannerisms were gone—the petulance, the teacher's pet whining. There was just cold clear language from her cold dark eyes.

  "You know who I am?" Billy asked quietly. "Who we are?"

  She said, "You're the good half, I'm the bad half. One soul split before birth, entering two different bodies." A snake's smile. "I never much cared how or why."

  "You know what I have to do," Billy said, letting his power reopen to her.

  Her eyes widened slightly in surprise, but she put her smile back on. "Tell me."

  "We end it." He opened a little more, pulling her darkness into his own.

  She fought it, and he let go.

  She said, "That's not what I want." Emotionlessly, he waited for her to tell him more.

  "I want this," she said, gesturing with one hand to encompass all around her. "All of it. And you."

  "You want to destroy everything?"

  "There's no reason not to." She took a step closer, her black eyes flaring for a moment to bright copper in excitement. "You have no idea how this feels," she said. There was obvious enjoyment in her voice. "The mere crushing of a bug, feeling the tiny light go out, is a sensation you've never experienced."

  She took another step toward him, and her face was like Lucifer's own—bright, mad, consumed with evil genius. "I was never sure until that day I saw you at that woman Melinda's house, the day we came for John. I was never sure until then that another part of me existed. But when I felt your power, felt you reaching out to me, I knew that if I didn't prepare myself, I could never beat you. Up until then I'd been very discreet, and very careful." She sounded almost proud. "That silly art teacher was a good example. No one cared about him; he'd be forgotten in a week or two. But when you showed up, it was obvious the time for caution was gone. I had to make sure I was strong enough for you. And besides, I enjoy it so much." Her face was suffused with confidence.

  Billy held out his arms. "Let me hold you."

  Her black eyes glared into his flat copper ones. "You think I don't know what would happen?"

  "Matter and antimatter," he said, the slightest of smiles on his face, his arms still held out to her. Slowly Billy's eyes began to deepen to black. For a moment they matched Martha's, but abruptly her serpent's smile disappeared. Her eyes became bright copper as comprehension dawned, and she began to fight back. "I wondered why you stayed away from me until now," she said, "why you stood by while I killed those people. I thought you were afraid. It was because you weren't ready."

  "I'm ready now."

  He opened wider.

  All of Martha's confidence evaporated. She stepped back, putting her hands up before her as if warding off a physical blow. "Let me walk away," she said desperately. "I'll leave you alone."

  "You'll keep killing."

  Even through the sudden fright and rage, a small, defiant smile appeared.

  "If I let you go," Billy said, "you'll grow stronger until I couldn't stop you. You'll kill everyone and everything."

  There was a dark glow of anticipation in Martha's dark eyes.

  "I can stop you now," he said. Then, gently, he added, "Hold me."

  He opened himself wide, willing her to fill his emptiness. It would be quick; there would be light, and maybe a sound like the dissipation of ball lightning. But there would be a tiny, flaring moment before nothingness came, when the two of them would be one—not two in one body, but one, single mind and single soul.

  Martha gasped. She knew that she could not defeat him. Not now. She had to get away. She would hide, and if she had enough time, she would develop her power and then she would eat him alive, suck the marrow from his bones, feel his blood run through her teeth.

  But not now.

  "Martha, hold me." His voice was soft, but she felt herself flowing into him.

  "No . . ." she cried.

  "Billy!" a voice screamed.

  The spell was broken.

  One moment, Mary Beck was running toward Billy and Martha. Then they disappeared, and her mother was standing there, looking sternly at her.

  But it couldn't be her mother. Could it?

  Had her mother come back to forgive her?

  "Kneel," her mother said, standing over Mary. Her tone was hard but not the harsh one she had always used.

  Mary knelt. She felt as though she were twelve years old again. Her mother's hard, bony, dish-worn hand was on her head. She could feel the bones in her mother's hand through her hair, not resting on her head but gripping it.

  "Lord," her mother prayed, speaking through Mary, as if she were a conduit to Jesus, not speaking to the clouds or to heaven but directly to Mary, as if Jesus was in her. "Lord, take thy servant Mary in your arms, and suckle her like the lamb is suckled. Amen."

  "Mother—" Mary said.

  "Quiet," her mother said. Hard words again. Her mother's hand came away from her head. Mary looked up. It was her mother, wrinkles around her eyes, the thin hawk's nose, the pinched mouth, the hard long chin. The same deep, knowing look in her eyes, back in those wrinkled spaces. She knew what the world was made of, and she knew she was right.

  Mary opened her mouth to speak, but the look in her mother's eyes (was that a dark space back there in her mother's eyes?) told her to be still.<
br />
  "You remember Abraham," her mother said shortly, not a question but a statement.

  "Yes," she said.

  "What did the Lord say to Abraham? Did he not say, 'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains'?"

  "Yes, Mother." Her mother towered above her like a prophet. This is what she had always thought of her mother as: a seer, all-knowing, in touch with God Himself. What her mother said was always right.

  "What did Abraham do?" Her mother loomed over her. There was something in her hand. What was it? Mary felt so small and young. She was a girl again, under the bed. Her mother would tell her what to do. What was it, bright and long, in her mother's hand? Her mother's eyes—was that copper in the middle of her mother's eyes? Didn't she know someone with copper in their eyes? Yes. No. She couldn't remember. That long thing in her mother's upraising hand . . .

  Her mother said sternly, "If I were Abraham, and you were Isaac, would I not be prepared to deliver—"

  Her mother was gone. Mary was still a little girl, with God and her mother telling her what to do, her mother's words that made her tremble coursing through her, but her mother had vanished. There was another girl standing there—a girl she somehow knew, with eyes the color of pennies. Eyes Mary had seen on someone else. On whom? On that boy over there—the boy she knew—but she was just a little girl hiding under the bed from her mother and God, and she couldn't remember.

  Billy could not hold Martha and save the woman. When Martha pulled all of her resistance from him, and turned it on Mary Beck, Billy thought he could draw her back to him. But he could not.

  She broke away from him, and he pulled back.

  "Shall I kill her quickly?" Martha asked mildly. "Or should I do it slowly, to show you how our power can be used in the right way?"

  Billy threw himself open. She reeled back, but her smile returned. "You know I'll do it. I would love to watch you stand by helplessly. The great martyr, unable to help one woman.”

  "That would be the end."

  "It would be worth it. You would still lose. Those others I killed you couldn't help, because you weren't ready, but now you would have a choice. I wonder if you could stand that? Did I tell you I killed your mother? That was before I killed the Mifflins, including your old friend John."

  For only the second time in Billy's calm life, he was shaken. She had reached beyond that place he had once visited, when he had first seen the ocean. She had found that place where he had to face the fact that what she did he did, too, because she was him and he had to see what she was truly capable of.

  "You can be gotten to, after all?" Martha cooed. "You want a choice? Let me go and I'll leave this place. I'll let this woman and everyone else here live."

  "You'll go somewhere else and kill."

  “You can catch me?"

  "Yes."

  Fear burned across her face, but she doused it.

  "That's a chance I'm willing to take. What choice do I have?" Her voice turned hard. "Let me go."

  "No."

  She shrugged, and turned back to Mary Beck. "If that's what you want."

  "Put your head down," Mary's mother said.

  "Yes."

  She was about to die. This was what God wanted. This was what her mother wanted. Finally, she knew. God would take her now, because He had told her mother, just like He had told Abraham, to take her. But there would be no angelic intervention this time. This was what God wanted of her. She finally knew.

  And, finally, her mother would forgive her. Mary began to cry. That was not right, but she couldn't help it.

  "Die," her mother said. Only, it didn't sound like her mother. The voice was so sharp, filled with triumph.

  "Mother?" she asked. She reached up. Her hand hovered in midair. Her mother laughed.

  Her hand fell upon her mother, and she read, and there was the dimmest of lights, nearly black emptiness.

  "Satan!" she screamed as she felt the point of the knife in her neck.

  Billy let Martha go. She saw the knife in Martha's hand drop, saw Mary Beck fall to the ground.

  Martha turned to him. "I knew you would give in!" she cried in exultation. They regarded each other for a frozen moment. Then Martha's eyes suddenly widened. "Fool!" she shouted, coming at him with her full power, knocking him to the ground.

  His mind was burning. Through flames he saw Martha laughing, moving away from him. He could not follow. "You won't catch me!" she taunted him. She held something up, a letter. "Your friends, Marsh and Rebecca—I'll kill them slowly. You won't catch me!"

  Martha ran off, a figure lost in the flames in his head.

  His mind burned, and then he heard shouts and saw a man and a girl running toward him. The flames mounted, roaring high in his head, and then they reached his eyes and he cried out and he heard the roar of the ocean.

  27

  He was on a beach.

  He often dreamed of the ocean. Once, when he was four years old, before his father left, his mother and father and he had gone to the seashore. The sun was hot that day, and the air in the car, even with the windows open, was hotter than the air outside. The vinyl seat of the car stuck to his legs below his shorts, and even the rushing air from the open window didn't cool, only felt like someone was holding the nozzle of a hair dryer before his face.

  But then the ocean drew near, and the air felt different. There was a salty taste, and the air coming in the window suddenly felt cool and damp. He could almost taste the ocean.

  His mother and father in the front seat were already fighting, arguing over which lot to park in, but finally his father, as always, won the shouting match and they pulled into the farthest parking area. They had passed two others that were filled, the signs out front saying they were closed, and then two others that were half full. But his father wanted this lot, because it was closest to where they were going to go to the beach. It looked full.

  They drove around for twenty minutes, row after row of parking spaces filled, and his father began to curse louder. His face grew red, as it always did when he got angry, and he began to blame his luck on his wife. "I told you we should have gotten started earlier!" he shouted, turning his face sharply toward her and then back to the windshield, searching for a parking spot. "Didn't I?"

  Billy's mother said nothing.

  "Give me another beer," his father snapped. At first, his mother sat motionless, but when his father repeated the command, shouting this time, she reached behind her to the red enameled metal cooler at Billy's feet and opened it to take out a can of beer. For a moment her eyes met Billy's, and she looked as though she wanted to say something, but when she saw the calm stare that was always on Billy's face, she just dropped the lid of the cooler and turned around to the front seat.

  "Open it up," his father snapped when she handed the beer to him, thrusting it back into her hands.

  She opened it and gave it to him.

  His mother was beautiful that day. He had seen her modeling her new bathing suit in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom before they left. Some small part of him had wanted to tell her that she was beautiful then, had wanted to run to her the way he knew she longed for him to, but the thing that always kept him from doing these things, would always keep him from doing them, intervened, and he merely went downstairs to gather his pail and shovel like his father had yelled at him to.

  They drove around for another ten minutes, his father alternately cursing and draining his beer, and when he had finished the beer, they went out of the lot and back to the one they had passed before with empty spaces in it.

  A young lifeguard in pale green bathing trunks and safari hat was just putting the FULL sign out.

  "Goddamn," his father spat, giving his mother a dirty look.

  They went back to the lot before that one, and after another ten minutes, they found a spot at the farthest end.

  His father had
another beer as they emptied the car. His mother told Billy to take his shoes off, and the pavement in the parking lot, sprinkled with windblown sand, felt warm and hard and slightly gritty beneath his toes. The air was even sharper now, almost cold, and a breeze came off the ocean and slapped the smell of water gently at him even here, up the slope, out of sight of the water.

  He carried his shovel and pail, and a folded paper bag for seashells that his mother had insisted they take along. "I'll put all the nice ones in a jar, after I wash them off, and put it on the mantle in the summertime," she said, which only made his father laugh derisively. His father carried the cooler and a pale striped umbrella that had lain against the wall in the garage for a long time.

  They left the parking lot, walking over the wooden railroad ties that bordered the sand, and up over the ridge. The ocean was there. It was vast, a world-filling thing that ate the earth in front of him from horizon to horizon. At the beach, it threw waves indifferently, but farther out it swelled and rolled and moved its giant flanks like a sleeping beast secure in its own power. It was cold and deep and uncaring, a heartless surging expanse of life, and it did something deep inside Billy. It touched that small place within him; the cold vastness of the ocean opened a place he thought could never be reached, and before he knew it, his hands began to tremble and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

  He dropped the pail and shovel, and the paper bag, which the wind caught and lost in the parking lot behind them, and stood where he was, and an uncontrollable river, a tributary of the cold sea before him, streamed from his eyes to add its salt to the sand at his feet.

  His father was ahead, unmindful of the two behind him, his nearly empty beer in his hand, his thoughts on the next one in the cooler. But his mother turned around and saw him. Suddenly she dropped everything she carried—the picnic basket, the beach ball—and hugged him as if he had just been born.