XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation

by Brad Magnarella

  She had always been in bed when Tyler’s father came home, Creed and Tyler, too, their bedroom doors locked. Alcohol went down one of two ways with his dad: either to the good place, where he’d laugh and effuse like a new groom, and she’d let him into their bedroom, or to the bad, where he’d accuse her of “running the streets” and use the foulest words Tyler had ever heard a woman called. On the worst nights, his father would threaten to kill her unless she opened her door. Those were the nights Creed and Tyler took turns stepping out into the hallway.

  The truck door slammed shut, and Tyler’s mother cringed. A shadow passed the curtains. Throwing the afghan off himself, Tyler hurried to the door. The staggering scuff of engineer boots mere feet away, he twisted the dead bolt. His mother remained on the sofa, staring blank-faced at the black-and-white television, where Dick Clark grinned back at her.

  “C’mon, Mom,” Tyler said, waving for her to follow him upstairs.

  She didn’t move. Outside, keys jingled on a ring.

  “Mom,” Tyler whispered. When he took her by the arm, her skin felt cool and claylike, as though she’d already surrendered to whatever horror might come through the door.

  The keys fumbled and landed on concrete. “Shit!” a voice barked.

  At twelve, Tyler was no bigger than his mother, but he scooped her up like a roll of sagging carpet and held her to his chest. He tottered back from the couch. Outside, the keys skittered, as if they’d been kicked. His father swore again. Tyler stumbled past the wooden coffee table, nearly falling.

  “He’s going to kill me,” his mother mumbled, her lips pale and waxy.

  A fist pounded on the front door, rattling the walls throughout the house.

  Tyler hiked his mother higher and took three lurching steps toward the staircase. He tripped over something and landed on his elbows. His mother shook with the impact but didn’t so much as murmur.

  More pounding on the front door. “Hey, I’m locked out!”

  “Can you walk?” Tyler whispered.

  His mother’s eyes stared, but she didn’t answer.

  Tyler managed to work her up and over his shoulder. He hugged her sweatpants-clad legs. Beneath the baked-in smoke, Tyler could smell the corrosive sweetness that had come off her drink earlier. He pictured the alcohol oozing from her skin. When he reached the stairs, Tyler hiked her and used his free hand to grasp the wooden stair rail.

  The knocking at the front door ceased, but the sound of jangling keys returned.

  Tyler grunted through clenched teeth as he tried to climb faster. The loose rail rattled in his grasp. His mother’s fingers bounced against the backs of his straining knees. When he reached the top of the stairs two things happened: the front door opened, and the banister broke from the wall.

  There was a moment of unreality as Tyler teetered in space with nothing to hold on to. Then he heaved his mother forward, managing to set her bottom on the top step. Her trunk flopped backward into the carpeted hallway as his own body began to fall away. His shoulder blade hit first, and then his legs passed over his head. Time slowed. Carpet, wood paneling, and cheap plaster cycled through his vision. Amid the images, Tyler caught glimpses of his father’s engineer boots stepping into the house. The front door slammed behind him.

  Tyler landed spread eagle and quickly pulled his legs in.

  “What in the hell are you doing?”

  Tyler pushed himself to his feet. The severe face of his father spun in front of him. Underneath his jean jacket, he was wearing a thick, red-checked flannel shirt. “I… I fell,” Tyler said.

  “You broke the damn banister is what you did.”

  Tyler peeked around. The stair rail had slid some of the way down with him and now jutted out into the front hallway. At the top of the dark stairwell, his mother’s legs were a pair of shadows.

  “You drunk, son?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  Tyler’s bladder spasmed, leaking urine. “In bed.”

  “What are you still doing up?”

  Tyler nodded toward the television. “I was watching the ball drop.”

  His father strode over and slapped the knob on the television. The screen shrank to a point of light, then went dark.

  “Anyone else been here tonight?”

  “No.”

  His father stared at him, then stripped his jacket and tossed it over the couch. Sighing, he pushed his hands through his thick hair. “All right. Get to bed. I’m headed there myself.”

  But Tyler remained in front of the stairwell. If his father discovered his mother laid out, there was no telling what he’d do to her. Tyler tried to swallow, but the air was too dry. Electricity crackled around him.

  “You deaf?” His father stood straight. “I said get to bed.”

  Tyler cleared his throat to give his words more force. “You should sleep on the couch tonight.”

  His father stared at him, brows, mustache and thick sideburns collapsing toward each other. “You telling me where to sleep in my own house?” He pushed his sleeves up. Long underwear hugged his hairy forearms. “Huh? You telling me where to sleep in my own goddamned house?”

  Tyler stiffened. If his father got much nearer, he’d see his mother, and Tyler had already gotten a whiff of his mood: Anyone else been here tonight? That’s how it would start, him shouting that question in her face, fist raised. And when she didn’t answer…

  Tyler took two steps forward.

  His father drew up in front of him. “You the man of the house now, that it? What do you think you’re gonna do?”

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “I’m gonna say this one more time.” His father bent forward until their foreheads almost touched. “Get your ass to bed.”

  Tyler stared back at him, trying to imagine his own legs as roots, reaching beneath the linoleum, immovable. Instead, he became even more aware of the electricity crackling through the dry air. He had just peeked down at his arm to find his hairs standing like pins when his father’s fist crashed into his head.

  Tyler collapsed onto his side, his brain ringing. The blunt toe of his father’s boot caught him in the navel. A sick feeling exploded deep in Tyler’s gut, curling him into a ball.

  “I come home ready to make goddamned amends, and I get this smart-mouthed bullshit?”

  Tyler whined for air as another kick landed against his arm and two more found his exposed sides. Each one appeared as a bruise-colored starburst behind his clenched eyelids. His father grabbed a handful of hair and hauled him to his feet. Tyler grasped at his father’s arm with both hands, his scalp on fire.

  His father’s breath smelled like diesel fumes. “You’re going to bed. Now.”

  Tyler tried to answer, to tell him no — he’d already begun shaking his head, or trying to — but the electricity in the air was inside him now, contracting his muscles, locking his jaw.

  His father’s gaze jerked to his own wrist, where Tyler’s fingers were clamped into his thick tendons, like hooks.

  “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  His father shook him. A thin whine grew in Tyler’s throat. His teeth clenched together until they felt as if they’d fracture and grind to dust. When his father’s face drew away, something in his eyes had changed. The bullet-like hardness was being replaced by a quivering uncertainty.

  “Stop it, son.”

  Tyler tried to tell him he wasn’t doing it, but the electricity had him in its violent grip. His muscles felt like they were going to burst their sheaths. His fingers dug between the bones of his father’s wrist.

  His father’s face winced. “Stop it, I said.”

  I can’t stop! He’d never heard this kind of fear in his father before, and it was scaring the shit out of him. I can’t, I promise! Then Tyler caught a cruel smell. Horrified, he watched the hairs around his father’s forearm begin to curl and ignite in small pops. Thicker hairs flared in bunches. Tyler could feel the heat again
st his eyeballs.

  His father opened his mouth, but whatever he planned to say rose into a babble of shouting as his red-checked flannel shirt burst into flames.

  Above them, the fire alarm began to bleat like a stuck sheep.

  * * *

  “You taking a dump out there, or what?”

  Tyler craned his neck, his gaze passing over the dim, moonlit pasture to where a red point shone under the oak tree. He heard Creed’s high giggle at the same moment a low, mean smell, like burning hair, wafted past. Tyler yanked his shirt collar to his nose and for a second thought he was going to lose his two tacos from El Indio. His brother’s silhouette handed the joint to Jesse, who stooped down for it.

  “Be there in a sec,” Tyler called back.

  He turned and strode farther away from them, his heart beating hard and high in his chest. He couldn’t keep doing this. Couldn’t keep reliving the events of that night. He’d go crazy.

  And his mother’s questions. Do you think he’ll be back? Your father. Think he’ll be back? The deeper she waded into her pills and drink, the more she seemed to ask. She had been half catatonic when it happened, laid out at the top of the stairs, but was she beginning to suspect something? And what about what Scott had said about the cameras? Tyler had searched all around the house in the first days of the new year, looking high and low, and had come up empty. But that didn’t mean anything. After all, surveillance equipment was meant to be hard to find.

  And then came the thought that roiled his stomach. Could someone else have seen What Happened that night?

  When he was almost to the paved road, he let his shirt collar fall from his nose. The moon cast the asphalt in blue. On the other side of the road, up a short distance, he noticed a parked car — or at least one of its headlights. The rest of the car was concealed by high grass and the low branches of an oak tree. Tyler eased onto his haunches. He listened, but all he heard was the breeze and the occasional cow lowing down the hill. Was the car there when we turned onto the dirt road? He gauged its distance. The beams on the Chevelle would have caught the rectangular headlight, for sure, maybe even flashed over the windshield. But then he remembered that he’d been looking back, watching for the car behind them.

  It’s the same car.

  After all, there hadn’t been any other cars during the drive out. No cars had passed in the last ten minutes. And now a car was parked across the road from where they’d turned off, in the middle of nowhere.

  Too much of a damn coincidence.

  Remaining on his haunches, Tyler took several large backward steps. When he could no longer see the car, he spun and raced toward the oak tree.

  “There you are,” Creed said. “I was starting to think—”

  “Shh!” Tyler pushed his hands toward the ground.

  “What the hell’s with you, bro?”

  “That car, the one that was behind us…” Tyler paused to control his breathing. “I think it’s out on the road.”

  Creed rose from his seat in the grass. Jesse twisted his hulking shoulders.

  “How do you know it’s the same one?” Jesse asked.

  “I just do.”

  Creed took a final drag and giggled out a mouthful of the stale-smelling smoke. “Let’s check it out,” he said, pitching the joint away. “Been a while since I’ve gotten to exercise these bad boys.” When he held up his gloved hand, the blades were already extended.

  Jesse lumbered alongside Creed. Tyler took up the rear, his eyes sweeping the field. He had little to fear in Jesse and Creed’s company, but a dry bitterness filled his mouth anyway. Saying nothing to the others, he focused until bits of electrical energy rushed toward him like metal shavings to a magnet. He concentrated the stinging power in the palms of his hands.

  At the fence, Creed climbed up the wooden slats and craned his neck. His hair glowed in the moonlight. “Where?” he asked.

  “Up the road a little ways,” Tyler whispered.

  But when he arrived beside the other two, the tall grass and low branches across the road no longer harbored a car. He looked again, not believing it could have slipped off in, what, the one minute he’d been away.

  “It… it was parked up there, under that tree, I swear. Just a minute ago.”

  Creed brought his hand to the side of his mouth. “Yoo-hoo,” he sang down the road. “Scary ca-ar?”

  “C’mon, man,” Tyler said, his heart still beating too hard. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Aw, quit acting like a pansy. The party’s just getting started. In fact, let’s put some music on in the car.”

  “We’re leaving,” Jesse said.

  “What?” Creed’s hair whipped toward Jesse. Tyler was just as surprised by Jesse’s announcement.

  “We’ve got rap sheets,” Jesse said. “If it’s the police and they catch us out here with this stuff, we’re looking at time. And jail would be the easy part.”

  Tyler nodded, knowing Jesse was talking about his own dad.

  “The freaking police?” Creed said. “There’s not even a car here, for Christ’s sake.”

  Jesse turned from the road. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  Creed shot Tyler a look that said, See what you’ve done, you goddamned twerp? In his relief, Tyler let his electric charge fall out and disperse into the ground. He followed Jesse toward the barbed-wire fence. Muttering, Creed veered off toward the oak tree to retrieve his baggie and package of cigarette paper. When he arrived at the Chevelle, Jesse held out his hand.

  “Give me that.” He indicated the Ziploc, which Creed had started to shove inside his pocket. Creed sighed and placed it in Jesse’s palm. Jesse drew his fist back and fired the baggie off into the woods.

  “Hey! What’d you do that for?”

  “Let’s go,” Jesse said.

  The car sank beneath him as he got inside. Worried Jesse might change his mind, Tyler hurried to the passenger side and ducked into the back seat. Not that Jesse ever changed his mind. Tyler twisted to look back through the rear window, half expecting to find a pair of high beams bearing down on them. But the view through the brown tinting was dark.

  Creed sagged inside and slammed the door closed. “That was twenty-five dollars you just chucked!”

  Jesse ignored him. He backed the Chevelle down the dirt tracks and onto Archer Road.

  Creed turned the radio on, but Jesse snapped it off again. The windows remained up, sealing in the silence. Tyler sat sideways, one knee on the seat, looking out the back window. As the miles ticked off, his view remained as black as the night…

  Until two spots of light appeared.

  “Shit!” The word shot out of his gut and landed on his heart with a shudder. Creed turned and squinted over his shades. Jesse’s eyes went to the rearview mirror.

  “Could be anyone,” Creed said.

  But Tyler shook his head. “Naw, man. The road’s been running straight as an arrow, but those lights just appeared. They’ve been following us in the dark until just now.”

  Jesse depressed the accelerator, and the engine rose an octave.

  “You trying to lose them?” Creed’s voice wavered for the first time. Whether it was from fear or blood lust, or maybe some dangerous concoction of the two, Tyler couldn’t tell.

  “Just checking something,” Jesse said. The headlights, which looked to be about a half mile away, fell back for a moment before growing to their former size. Jesse grunted and eased his foot from the accelerator. The engine wound back down. “They’re matching our speed.”

  “You think it’s the police?” Creed asked.

  “Don’t know,” Jesse said.

  Ahead of them, the first streetlights appeared, tall cement columns spaced every fifty yards or so. The pastures and sweeps of woodland on either side had been cleared for development. No homes yet — no materials, even — just massive debris piles and wide plowed roads. Before long, the first sodium lighting fell through the windows of the Chevelle. Glowing squares passed ove
r Jesse’s hands, which gripped the steering wheel like a pair of ham hocks, his thumb knuckles nearly touching. Their car passed beneath the second streetlight and then the third.

  When Jesse braked, Tyler was thrown against the front seat. Jesse’s hands cranked hard to the right.

  “What the hell!” Creed’s arms flailed for something to grab hold to.

  Tyler covered his head as the car bounced over a rutted dirt road. The Chevelle’s beams cut off, and the car turned about sharply. It braked again, then rocked to a rest in the dark.

  Creed held the sides of his head. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Shut up,” Jesse said.

  The Chevelle was aimed toward Archer Road, and through the windshield, Tyler could see the car that had been behind them. As it approached the first streetlight, its sleek blue color glistened. A passenger car. Some sort of Toyota. Tyler studied the rectangular headlights.

  “Was that the one you saw?” Jesse asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Yes or no?”

  What are the odds? “Yes,” Tyler heard himself say.

  “Put on your seat belts.”

  Jesse stomped the accelerator. The engine roared like the first blast at a heavy metal concert. A wave of dirt and rocks pelted the undercarriage. The Chevelle leaped forward, fishtailed one way and the other, and then latched onto the rutted road like determination itself.

  “Dude,” Creed cried, “you’re headed right for it!”

  His brother was right. As Tyler clung to the rubber handles above both windows, he could see the small turns of Jesse’s head, gauging his path to that of the approaching Toyota.

  They were on a collision course.

  The driver of the Toyota saw it too. Brake lights spilled red over the road. Jesse aimed the car toward it, like a shark toward blood. Through the Toyota’s passenger-side window, Tyler caught a glimpse of a startled face. Hands went up in the window — hands suddenly close enough to touch. Tyler squeezed his eyes closed as the Chevelle’s windshield imploded.

  16

  Thirteenth Street High

  Monday, March 11, 1985