Drawing Blood

  From somewhere in the room came a faint popping sound, then the noise of something heavy hitting the floor. Trevor jerked reflexively but did not look around. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what new surprise the house had dealt him. Not yet. Can’t you even give me a minute with Didi? he thought. Can’t I even have that before I have to start thinking about you again?

  But by now he knew he wasn’t calling the shots, not many of them anyway. He had come here to learn, and whatever was here would teach him … something. He pushed himself up on his elbows and turned to look into the corner of the room from which the sound had come, over by the closet. A small dark object lay near the edge of the kudzu, as if it had tumbled out of the vines. The object was perhaps a foot long, half-shrouded in shadow. Trevor tried to tell himself it could be anything. A stick. A stray piece of wood.

  A hammer.

  He got up and crossed the room, stared at it for a long moment, then leaned down and picked it up. The stout wooden handle was scuffed and streaked with dark stains. It felt slightly warm in his hand. The head and claw were rusted, caked with a delicate, crumbling dry brown matter like powdery fungus, like desiccated petals. He touched his finger to it, rubbed it against his thumb. The scrim of matter between them felt dusty, gritty. Pale brown, like the edges of the bloodstain. He remembered reading somewhere that any human tissue would turn to some shade of brown eventually, given time. It was the color of all skin, the color of waste, the color of rot.

  Cause of death: blunt trauma …

  Trevor had no idea what had happened to the hammer that had killed his family, but he knew it could not have stayed in the house. It would have been taken as evidence, photographed, probably even fitted into the holes in their skulls to prove it was indeed the murder weapon. That was how they did things. Yet he knew too, just as surely, that this was the same hammer.

  He stood for a long time turning it over and over in his hands. He felt a few slow tears leaking from his eyes, running into his mouth or dripping off his chin. But he had done most of his crying last night, with Kinsey. Now he was beginning to feel as if he were being taunted. Here’s a hammer; what can you do with it?

  He didn’t know yet.

  But when a noise came from the living room—no scrape or creak of the house, he was already starting to get used to those, but a distinct footfall—he whirled and raised the hammer before he knew what he was doing.

  And when he heard a stranger’s voice, Trevor moved swiftly and silently toward the door.

  * * *

  “Shit! I better get back to the store before it pours. Tell Zach I’ll see him later if he decides to hang out.”

  Terry tipped a quick salute at Kinsey, who was on his knees ripping several weeks’ worth of silver duct tape off the stage, and took his leave of the Sacred Yew. A few minutes later Zach came out of the rest room, his face and hands freshly scrubbed, his dark eyelashes still beaded with water, settling his glasses on the narrow bridge of his nose. “It’s raining,” he told Kinsey.

  “I heard. How could you tell?”

  “The ceiling’s leaking. I put the trash can under it.”

  Kinsey sighed, pushed his feathered hat back over his stringy hair, and kept tugging at the duct tape.

  “Did Terry leave? I was going to ask him if he knew a place I could crash.”

  “He’ll let you have his spare bedroom if R.J. isn’t camped there. You can sleep on my couch, too, if you’ll do me a favor. I was going to do it myself, but I need to stay here and make sure the place doesn’t flood. The landlord won’t fix our pipes and sometimes a heavy rain just comes right in.”

  Zach had an open Natty Boho in his hand—he’d grabbed it out of the cooler and slapped two dollars on the counter before Kinsey could card him—and looked in no great hurry to go anywhere, but he agreed readily enough. “Sure, I’ll do you a favor.”

  “There’s a young man living in an abandoned house out on the other side of town.” Kinsey explained briefly about Trevor, giving none of the details of why he was in the house. “He has no electricity or running water. I brought in a few things for him—blankets, bottled water, some food. Think you could take it out to him?”

  Zach looked dubious. “Okay.”

  “He doesn’t bite.”

  “Oh, well then forget it.” Zach saw Kinsey’s blank look. “Sorry. What’s he doing in this abandoned house?”

  “I’ll let him tell you himself, if he wants to. You’ll like Trevor. He’s lived in New York—the two of you can compare notes on that pestilent hellhole.”

  Zach followed Kinsey behind the bar to get the box of supplies. Kinsey noticed that Zach’s hands were restless, nervous, their slender spatulate fingers always manipulating something: skating over the keypad of the adding machine, toying with the phone. Once he reached for the keys of the cash register, but drew back as if realizing that would be impolite. The boy seemed to have a fascination for switches and buttons. He refrained from actually pushing them, but stroked and tapped them gently as if wishing he could.

  Kinsey gave him directions to the house and let him out the back door. Zach could hardly miss the place; there were several run-down houses on Violin Road, but only one that was barely even there. Kinsey went back into the club. Now a thin trickle of water was seeping from under the door of the men’s room. If the rain kept up, he could spend the whole afternoon mopping and wringing, mopping and wringing. Damn the landlord.

  He wasn’t sure he had done right by sending Zach out to Violin Road, but it felt right somehow. He hated the thought of Trevor staying out there another night without food or water. Someone should at least make sure he hadn’t fallen through a rotten floor and broken his neck.

  Zach was an all right sort, if a little shifty. Kinsey didn’t think he was really from New York, or anywhere near it. There was a type of New York accent that sounded something like his voice, true. But Kinsey had heard a distinctive one from New Orleans—a weird blend of Italian, Cajun, and deep-South—that sounded a lot closer. And Zach had perked up visibly when Terry mentioned that the name of his band was Gumbo.

  But if he wanted to be from New York, then he was from New York as far as anyone around here was concerned. Kinsey only asked questions when he could tell a kid wanted him to. Right now Zach, no last name offered, looked like he wanted to stay as far away from questions as possible.

  Zach swerved to avoid the swollen carcass of a possum in the road, slowed, and turned into a likely-looking driveway. It was barely more than a rutted track losing a battle to tall grasses and wildflowers; the house itself was so overgrown that it was invisible from the road unless you were looking for it. Zach thought it looked like a wonderful place to live.

  He finished his beer, got out of the car, and pulled the box of supplies out after him. Kinsey had put a six-pack of Coke in with the bottled water, blankets, and various packaged food. There was even a pillow in a flowered case at the bottom of the box. Whoever this Trevor Black was, Kinsey had done him up right.

  The rain had slacked off some, but it was still drizzling drearily, beading on his glasses, making his hair straggle into his face. The day had taken on a cool, slightly eerie cast. Zach hoisted the box and lugged it up the steps to the vine-draped porch.

  The front door hung askew on its hinges, half open. Zach knocked, waited, knocked again. No response. He squinted into the damp gloom of the house, then shrugged and let himself in.

  For a moment he stood in the center of the living room letting his eyes adjust to the absence of light. Gradually details resolved themselves and he saw the holes in the ceiling, the vines twisting in the windows, the rotting hulks of furniture. A tendril of unease touched him. He cleared his throat. “Hello?”

  Nothing. The doorway to the hall was a black rectangle, the wall around it smeared with indistinct dark stains. Zach stared at it, feeling worse. What had that old hippie sent him into?

  He would just put the box down here on the floor and turn around and go. Nothing to i
t. He lowered it halfway, his eyes never leaving the hall door.

  When a tall pale form appeared in the doorway, Zach stifled a scream and dropped the box. It hit the floor and tipped over on its side. A can of Chef Boyardee ravioli rolled across the floor, disappeared under the couch. Absurdly, Zach wondered if Kinsey had remembered a can opener.

  The pale form came out of the darkness toward him. A shirtless, skinny, ridiculously beautiful boy, long blond hair spilling over his shoulders and dirt-smudged chest, eyes wide and blazing and utterly mad, a rusty claw hammer clutched in his upraised hand. He looked like some malevolent avenging angel, like a pissed-off Christ come down off the cross ready to pound in some nails of his own.

  Zach stood paralyzed as the hammer-wielding angel, presumably Trevor, descended on him. He could not seem to make himself speak. He did not want to die like a character in a splatter movie, did not want to die quick and stupid or slow and mean, with a chunk of metal buried in his frontal lobes and syrupy blood gradually obscuring the dumb, startled expression frozen on his face for all eternity. But even less did he love the idea of turning to run and feeling the claw end of the hammer take a divot out of his skull.

  His heart caromed crazily off the walls of his chest. A wire-thin pain shot down his left arm. Maybe he would just have a heart attack and avoid the whole thing.

  Trevor’s other hand snaked out, wrapped long fingers round Zach’s wrist. His touch was galvanizing, akin to an electric shock or a whole pot of coffee. Zach thought his nerves might just rip out of his skin and go twining up Trevor’s arm like the stinging tentacles of jellyfish.

  But his synapses refused to save him. Think, his mind yammered, flex your brain and THINK because if you don’t it’s going to end up splattered all over this dirty floor, and is that any fate for this rare and superior organ that has served you so well for nineteen years? Wanna go for twenty? Then HACK THIS SYSTEM, DØØD! What’s the first thing you need? THE PASSWORD!

  “TREVOR!” he hollered. “NO!!!”

  He had made his voice as loud and sharp as he could. He saw Trevor hesitate, but his grip on Zach’s wrist didn’t loosen, and the hammer stayed upraised, ready to fall.

  But passwords always required more than one try. “Trevor!” he shouted again, letting an extra edge of fear and deference creep into his voice. “Kinsey sent me! Please don’t kill me! Please!”

  Zach felt a tiny bright pain deep in his head, wondered if that was the spot where the hammer would go in or if he had just managed to have an aneurism instead of a heart attack. It seemed the body always had some time bomb lurking in its depths.

  But some of the madness appeared to melt off Trevor. His eyes met Zach’s, really saw Zach, and a glassy film cleared from them. The black-rimmed irises were the palest, most delicate ice-blue; moments ago they had been muddy with killing rage. Now Trevor looked horrified, and years younger. He let go of Zach’s wrist. His shoulders sagged. He tried to swallow but could not seem to work up the spit; the curve of his throat worked convulsively. The skin there was creased with sweat and grime, as if he had not shaved or bathed in days.

  Okay. You found a crack in the system; that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in. Verify yourself. Reassure the system that you belong here.

  “Trevor? I … didn’t mean to scare you. My name’s Zach and I’m new in town too and … uh, Kinsey from the club sent me out to bring you this stuff.”

  The quicksilver eyes flickered; then Trevor’s lips moved. His voice was deeper than Zach had expected, and very quiet. “You must think I’m crazy.”

  “Well—” said Zach, and stopped. Trevor tilted his head. “Well, it would help if you put the hammer down.”

  Trevor stared at the grisly tool in his hand as if he had no idea how it had gotten there. Then, very slowly, he bent and placed the hammer on the floor. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  Bingo! In with full user privileges! Bells and whistles should have been going off in Zach’s head. But he didn’t feel as triumphant as he usually did when he cracked a system. He was starting to remember that Trevor was more than a system; he was a person, and people were volatile things, and that hammer was still within easy reach.

  And on top of all that, the stricken look on Trevor’s face and the jagged catch in his voice were so genuine that Zach actually felt a little sorry for him. He was a beautiful boy with fierce intelligence behind the craziness flickering in his eyes. Zach wondered what had brought him to this place, to this extremity.

  “You’re the only person who ever tried to kill me that apologized for it afterward,” he said. “So I guess I accept.”

  A trace of a smile might have crossed Trevor’s face. It was gone before Zach could be sure. “How many other people have tried to kill you?”

  “Two.”

  “Who were they?”

  “My parents.”

  Trevor’s eyes went very wide, paler still. Then suddenly they shimmered with tears. A couple spilled over the rims of his eyelids before he could stop them, great fat crystal drops of pain.

  Once in a while you happen purely at random upon the right password in a million, the unguessable code sequence, the needle in a program’s haystack. Once in a while, you just get lucky.

  “I can explain everything,” said Trevor.

  * * *

  The thought of what he had nearly done made Trevor feel light-headed. The house spun around him; the floor threatened to tilt, to yawn wide open beneath his feet.

  He couldn’t remember what he had been thinking as he grabbed Zach’s wrist. He wasn’t sure he had been thinking; his mind had felt as empty as the rooms of the house, and that scared him worse than anything.

  “I can explain everything,” he said, though he doubted he really could, and doubted even more that Zach would want to hear it.

  But Zach just shrugged. “Sure, if you want to talk about it. I’m not hurt. It’s no big deal.”

  Trevor looked at him. Zach was trying to smile, but his face was terribly pale in the gloom, and his eyes still showed too much white. Even his hands were shaking. Trevor wondered what kind of threat Zach would consider a big deal.

  “I want to talk about it,” he said. “Let’s go outside.”

  They walked around to the side yard and sat beneath the glistening canopy of the willow. The leaves back here were so thick that the ground was almost dry, though a shimmer of droplets fell on them from time to time. Trevor was still shirtless, and the water beaded on his shoulders, made trickling paths through the dirt on his chest and back.

  Zach seemed to be watching him closely, waiting to hear what he had to say. In the daylight Trevor saw that his eyes were a startling shade of green, large and slightly tilted. His face was fine-boned, sharp-featured, interestingly shadowed by his wild spiky hair and the round black frames of his glasses. Trevor realized who Zach resembled: his drawing of Walter Brown, the singer who’d been arrested with Bird in Jackson, Mississippi. The singer whose face Trevor had had to imagine because he’d never seen the man’s picture. The likeness wasn’t exact, but it was strong enough to put him more at ease with Zach. This was a face he knew, a face that pleased his eye.

  Trevor began to talk. The words came slowly at first, but soon he could not stop. Never in his life had he talked for so long at one time. He told Zach everything: the deaths, the orphanage, the dreams, the things that had happened since he’d been back in the house. He even talked about the time he had cracked that kid’s skull open in the shower, though he didn’t mention how much he had liked it.

  He was surprised at how good talking felt. Not since he stopped letting blood from his arm with a razor blade had he felt such a welcome sense of release, of poison draining from his system.

  He wasn’t sure why those two words Zach had spoken—my parents—had opened him like this. Certainly there had been other kids at the Home who had taken plenty of abuse from their parents, and probably would have told Trevor about it if he had aske
d. But those kids had not appeared in the house of his childhood like embodiments of someone he had drawn. Those kids had not stood their ground and talked him out of … whatever he had been about to do. He had never gripped those kids’ thin wrists hard enough to leave red impressions of his fingers in the flesh.

  And if he had, he doubted they would have stayed around to hear his reasons why.

  Trevor’s face was hidden behind curtains of long hair, and his voice was so low that Zach had to lean in close to hear it. Trevor kept sneaking looks at Zach as if to gauge his reaction, but would not look him full in the face.

  Slowly the tale unfolded, beginning with the bloody history that had been branded upon the house before Zach was even born. He would have heard much of this in town soon enough, Trevor said rather bitterly; word was no doubt getting around Missing Mile that the last survivor of the murder family had come home. He said it just like that, the murder family, as if he knew that was what they would be called in the local legends that must have unfolded around them. But Trevor’s own story got weirder and weirder until hammers were appearing from thin air and drawings were undergoing sinister mutation betwixt hand and page.

  Zach kept nodding his encouragement. He was far too fascinated to let Trevor quit. Back in his familiar French Quarter, back in his comforting little corner of cyberspace, Zach thought he had seen strange things, maybe even done some. But he had never met anyone who had lived through experiences like this, anyone who had taken such damage and remained among the walking wounded.

  Eventually Trevor’s flood of words ran down and he sat staring out through the drifting, glistening fronds of the willow. Through the undergrowth one weathered corner of the house was just visible, paler gray than the threatening afternoon sky. Zach watched a single raindrop making its way down the knobby ridge of Trevor’s spine. At last Trevor said, “I don’t know why I told you all that. You still must think I’m crazy.”