Chelsea, wiping her eyes, regarded her overnight bag stuffed with more, much more than she’d need for a sleepover. Enough to get by for a few days, until she got stuff figured out.
Good-bye, Mama. For all I care, you can suck a poot straight out of my butt.
But: a cold rock in her stomach. Her mother’s dewy-eyed doting face, weeping for her lost daughter.
The minutes, slipping by, and the sky turning darker. A bobwhite, sounding off in the distance. Well out of sight, she yanked down her tight jeans and urinated in what seemed like an endless torrent. Feeling silly and exposed. Wiping off her privates with a magnolia leaf.
Every car driving past made her jump with anticipation. Now fifteen minutes late.
Where was he?
What time was this damn concert supposed to start, anyway?
Twenty-Seven
Billy
Cacophonous voices in the humid, crowded arena lobby, smells coming in waves: patchouli, cannabis, B-O like you wouldn’t believe. Skin crawling, hesitant to touch anyone. Billy, tripping hard.
And fretting.
Feeling bothersome.
Fuck.
Inside the cavernous basketball hall, an empty seat between Devin and Libby. Billy plopped down between them, clunking Devin on the skull with a rude elbow.
His friend, eyes like saucers, almost exited his body. “For fuck’s sake, man.”
Billy, sweating and bopping to the house music, nudged Libby. “Hope the lights go down soon.”
“Settle down, stretch.”
“I’m scared,” Libby said.
Billy, concerned. “What’s wrong, angel?”
But she didn’t look scared—she was writing a screenplay. “What if they’re coming to kill us all.”
Ruck, intrigued. “Who?”
“The Dead,” Billy said, nodding. “They have at last risen from their cold, uncomfortable graves.”
“Exactly.” Libby scribbled a few lines in a small notebook she’d started carrying on the advice of her writing teacher. “Somewhere George Romero is smiling.”
That was his movie girl. He didn’t know about this Romero cat, but if Libby was into it, it was cool.
Libby, collapsing in laughter, slapping skin with fellow movie buff Billy. He nudged Devin, gave him a shit-eating grin.
Time and space slipstreaming all around him, light bending, Billy felt himself transcending into LSD warp drive. The band hadn’t yet played a note. And poor Ruck, green around the gills.
Excellent.
Without warning, the arena lights winked off to a stupendous, chicken-skin inducing exultant roar that swelled up from the multitudes and crashed like a wave against the colorful bandstand now holding a unit of exceedingly ordinary-looking rock stars including Jerry himself, fat as the Goodyear blimp. Everyone in Billy’s line of sight had already leapt to their feet and started grooving even though the music had yet to start—everyone with the noticeable exception of Ruck.
Twenty-Eight
Creedence
Creedence, almost soaked through from the mist hanging in the air, still crouched concealed behind the Pine Haven sign. Sobbing and heaving until nothing left.
No one.
Not her brother.
Nor that bastard Roy Earl.
No one was coming.
Well, ‘no one’ not entirely accurate: at one point Dusty had gone past the entrance to the subdivision in his grandmother’s dark blue Ninety-Eight. He wasn’t supposed to be driving after dark, not on a learner’s permit. Dusty ought to have had his license by now, but he kept failing the test. Like Mama always said, with a dead drunk for a daddy, poor Dusty didn’t have no one to show him how to do nothing.
Chelsea, needing to pull herself together. She could go on to the Fordham’s after all, she supposed. She’d had to bribe Shelby with five dollars out of the precious stash-money for cover in case her mother called. Which with ever-protective Eileen Bevins Rucker on the case, a distinct possibility.
Shivering and soaked, at last she trudged a half-mile to the Amoco Gas Chief to call Dusty and tell him to come get her. No intention of explaining what’d happened, no—she’d say that Mama and her had had a fight, et cetera et cetera, all quite believable; Chelsea, later telling her mother than she and Shelby had had the fight, and that she’d gone to Dusty’s to get him to go and beat her up, or some such dramatic prattle.
The Gas Chief. The bathroom inside. The rubbers.
Letting Dusty finally put his peterpiper inside her.
The grandmother would be asleep on her couch.
They would be good as alone.
Sure. That would show them all.
On the walk, she considered instead snagging a ride with somebody—anybody—else. Hitching into Columbia, only thirty-odd miles; a truck driver, kind, would buy her coffee and chat about life on the road.
In Columbia, finding them all. Beating Devin and Roy Earl until bloody. Ripping them to shreds with her woman-teeth.
A stranger passed in a Chevy van. Watching as he rolled on by her, fog lights cutting through the mist.
But how to know a stranger’s intentions? So many serial killer stories, including Coy Wando right there in Edgewater Country. People saying, oh, it’s not like it used to be—it’s not safe.
No. No hitchhiking.
Something safe.
The Gas Chief payphone.
She made the call.
Chelsea, sitting against the wall under the pay-phone, her makeup wrecked, watched as Dusty squealed tires into the parking lot. She told her fibs, including plenty of detail to sound realistic; he believed her.
“Don’t you need to use the bathroom while we’re here?”
Dusty, frowning and wrinkling his nose at her bedraggled, wet-rat appearance. “You got mascara running all over.”
“The bathroom,” she repeated. “Shouldn’t you go in there?”
“But I peed before I—” Her wriggling eyebrows sparked awareness. “Oh—you really want me to?”
She shrugged, coy, but kept one eyebrow arched. “One way to find out.”
Hands shaking, Dusty fumbled change out of the cup holder of his grandmother’s sedan and hurried inside. He stumbled over the mat in front of the automatic door. On the brief drive her back to his grandmother’s house, he rubbed her leg above the knee, over and over.
Chelsea, hating the Wallis house so much. It stunk like his grandmother, of camphor, Lysol, and fake-sweet flowers all mixed together. When they got inside she went to clean herself up, ate leftovers while Mama Wallis blathered on badmouthing one of her rivals at the church. They sat together watching television until the old woman went to bed.
Alone.
Dusty’s face, shiny in the TV light.
He rubbed and squeezed and smooched.
Okay, Creedence thought. Okay okay. Why not. One way or another, the night would be memorable. Big time. Once Dusty’s grandmother had begun snoring from the other side of the thin walls, Chelsea Colette Rucker wiggled out of her jeans and set to losing her virginity.
Twenty-Nine
Devin
Devin, on the roof of his apartment building. The concert, still going, for all he knew. Enough already. That’s what he’d said.
The experience had gone bad for him early on, but for Libby’s sake he’d hung in as long as he could. The band’s first set of mostly straight-ahead rock tunes, a country-flavored pair of songs sung by the younger, skinny guitarist, a long, droning Bob Dylan cover, ‘Desolation Row,’ seemed fun and exciting—to all twenty-thousand in the arena but him.
After the set break the band came out and played music much more strange, flowing and mysterious. Devin, not understanding where one song ended and the next began; the stage lights went dim and the band eased into an insane, dark improv jam he’d sworn capable of conjuring up demons.
Devin, gripped by terror, the urge to bolt overcoming him, yelled in Libby’s ear, “I’m sorry.”
Libby, rapt, cringed a
way from his shriek and continued to sway, uncomprehending of the danger he sensed. Pounding drums, driving him from his seat, up the steps, through the horrendous lobby full of twirling hippies and bemused authority figures.
Seeing Dobbs. At the show after all. With a guy. A big dude that Libby knew, from another of her media classes, wearing overalls, a tie-dye, almost as tall as Billy but heavier. Dobbs and big bear dude, standing tucked away behind a throng of spinners in an alcove with a door leading to offices, conferring; Dobbs nestled right up next to him.
“Devin!” His eyes like saucers, Dobbs jerked away from his new friend. “Where are you going?”
Why his old friend tried to hide being gay, he’d never understand. Nothing had ever happened between them, other than the time when they and Roy Earl all jerked off to porno mags on a camping trip. They had known each other too long for pretense. He might not be ready to tell his mother, or the rest of the world, but Devin, a best friend. C’mon. “I’m too fucked up. Enough, already.”
“Ah. Your loss.” Dobbs seemed to dismiss him. “See you back home.”
Devin had fought his way out through the dancers and twirlers, a maelstrom of color and movement. Time, turning elastic. Mirrors of mirrors reflecting inside his mind. Noise. Pungent odors. Blissful faces, glassy eyes.
Libby. He’d meet her outside, he’d said. She nodded like she had heard, turned back to the music, which to Devin had been incomprehensible.
Fresh air, and a couple of beers. That’s what he needed. Billy had laughed like a maniac when Devin had shouted in his ear that he had to split.
It all seemed like many hours ago, now.
His stomach clenching, Devin gazed in the direction of the distant football stadium, now dark following the conclusion of the Thursday night pep rally. Having to remind himself that what he’d felt and seen at the concert wasn’t a threat. Meant nothing.
And yet: The Dead were all hippie and love, but some immense power had vibrated in that room alongside them all. The white-maned man at the center of it all, hunched and burdened by the weight of his guitar, as well the immensity of the nightly experience. Devin, sensing this, wondered if these people fully understood the energies they too the risk of calling forth. Either way, the conclusion came to him as a monstrous, idolatrous, biblical-scale immanentizing of the eschaton-style epiphanic reveal. That kind of type-deal situation. He wanted no part of the ritual, that much for sure.
Salvation remained possible. Escape was at hand for the traveling man. The phrase had lodged in his mind, until at last he acted.
Inside, the close ceiling in the apartment had been too confining. Up on the roof, a fine mist somewhere between light rain and fog floated in the air, reminding him of the thick haze of smoke rising into the rafters of the coliseum.
Libby.
He left her behind.
With Steeple.
Also Roy Earl, Mike, Carmen, the sexy neighbor who ran hard with the party-boys. All of them together, tripping balls and raging the concert. All fine. They’d be back here to collect him before all headed out to the Old Market, which after a concert like this would pop with revelry all night.
In the time since—an hour? more? less?—Devin leaned back against an air-conditioning unit, pounded six beers and became fully in the now-now, placid and whole in the peace of the nighttime roof. Also pissing like a racehorse, belching, drinking, damp, tripping, listening to the swoosh and swishing of the passing traffic on the wet pavement. Catching hallucinations on the periphery of his vision. The acid, tidal, waned but returned resurgent, a cycle.
“Well, this is another fine mist you’ve gotten yourself into, beau.” And laughing. Devin could usually have a pretty good time by himself.
Devin, breathing, staring with wonder, open and alive. Thoughts traveling at lightning speeds inside his cerebral cortex, synapses opening and closing in patterns unfamiliar. Orange streetlights, already glowing due to the mist, streaking across his field of vision. The beer cans in his hand, huge; but then small, way too small.
A parade of marching anthropomorphic emergency vehicles, klaxons wailing and looking to Devin like animated cartoon versions out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, approached with ghostly anticipation until blazing along Blossom Street, a swelling of orgiastic light and sound, the cacophony eclipsed in dramatic impact by the shocking and vibrant color-splash of first-responder reds and yellows playing across the buildings, the trees, the hillside park, the cars parked down South Bull Street. Across his own body fell the colored light, as it had from the concert follow-spots in the arena; thinking, then as now, he could feel warmth from the light.
In the wake of the firetrucks Blossom Street again fell into silence, the atmosphere on the roof still as glass; getting late. A dog barking in the distance sounded like the sound effect from Pink Floyd’s Animals; Devin wondered if next he’d hear the bleating of sheep. Instead he heard laughter, and the approach of feet on wet sidewalks. Libby—with Billy.
As their spectral voices bounced between the buildings, Devin, creeping over across the roof and crouching down, watched from the shadows holding his breath like a sniper:
Billy and Libby, skipping down the concrete path from the student union on top of the steep hill at the geographic center of campus, were holding hands.
Gut-punched.
Billy, stopping to gaze down at Libby. He now held both her hands in his. Devin could barely hear Billy’s voice, out of breath, husky. But he heard enough.
“Everything’s gonna be different now. I can feel it.”
Libby, laughing low and strange. “How?”
“I’m on Dead tour after this. You heard what I heard. And you’re going with me, doll-face.”
“Be my guest. But I have class in a few hours.” Libby, giggling, pushed Billy’s hands away. “Come on. Let’s find ‘Ruck’ as you keep calling him.”
“Let’s not, but say that we did our best.”
Libby, uproarious. Slapping Billy on the arm. “You’re awful.”
“Everything’s gonna be different,” he repeated. “You’ll see.”
They ran over to the building, laughing and skipping like little kids. Disappearing under the balcony, Devin could hear the jangling of keys—Libby, having her own to the apartment, one Devin swiped off Roy Earl’s ring back at the beginning of the semester. Poor Roy, gaslit to the point of near madness over how a key could, of its own volition, migrate off a ring like his had apparently done.
The voices, muffled and echoing from inside. He heard her faint call—“Dev?”—followed by the hollow thumping of footsteps up the stairs.
Devin crunched on the roof grit over to the corner of the building, his room below. One of the windows, cracked open to let out his cig smoke, gave him a reflected view of the room, albeit upside down and distorted. He wanted to observe, see if Steeple was making moves on her for real. An intuition. The acid had opened up meridians and neural pathways. Maybe he’d switch to this stuff from the booze.
His light came on. Billy’s black T-shirt and bald head appeared in the reflection, Libby beside him in her tie-dye babydoll-style shirt.
Billy, sounding impatient. “See, Ruck’s not here.”
“Well—dang.”
“His ass is already warming a stool down in the Market.”
“Or, he’s back there in the hippie village hunting for us.”
“Let’s go back, then.”
“I’d rather wait. They say you should wait for someone who’s lost in a crowd, not start searching. That’s what the lost person is doing. You just have to wait for them to find you.”
Devin, not believing his eyes. Billy, putting his hands on Libby’s shoulders. Spinning her around. Crushing her to his body.
Kissing her.
Libby shoved him away. “Stop.”
“I hear what you’re saying. The time is perfect. So—so is the place.”
Devin’s blood, pounding in his ears. Waiting to hear Libby’s answer. Incredulous, laughing, hig
h, too high. “No, Billy. I—I’m not making out with you.”
Confident and insistent and shoving his face into hers, he said, “You told me you thought it might be over with him.”
“I didn’t say it that way. I said, I hoped he still loved me.”
“A woman should trust her intuition.” Billy, pushing Libby back down onto the bed. Looming over her.
Devin’s bed.
And now Libby kissing him right back, albeit with moderate reluctance. Head drawn back, one hand pushing away rather than embracing him.
Finally pulling her mouth away from his with a wet smack.
Devin, frozen. Watching her kiss someone else.
But putting a stop to it. “Okay, mister. Cool your jets.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“This is not happening. This is Devin’s room.” Libby, sounding as angry as he’d ever heard her. “Are you out of your mind?”
“He’s not even here. Who cares?”
“I can’t do this—I don’t want to.”
“Yes yes yes you do. ”
Libby, a quiet, tender, conclusive effort: “Billy—no.”
“It’ll make it better, being in here. Exciting.”
Billy Steeple—dead man walking. Devin, seething, got up to go put this asshole in his place.
Libby, screaming.
Devin, finding his voice, his vision distorted by anger and LSD, shouted and lunged down toward the window.
Off the roof.
And fall-fall-falling, one tripping frame at a time, to the wet ground below.
Thirty
Billy
Billy’s concupiscence now beyond the point of no return, a throbbing, explosive need pulsing throughout his circulatory system straight to ground zero, zooming, rushing, the peak of his trip going on and on, the concert all but forgotten, now here Libby, ready to receive his infamous gifts, the top of his skull feeling about to come off, edges of his vision rippling in a grand, revolving vortex, at its center his cock about to enter Libby’s pussy. This, his destiny, and hers too, whether yet realizing such. About to climb on board Billy Express, promised-land bound.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 22
