The Waking Dark

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” West said.

  “Before, I wanted to see you. Meet you. See what the big deal was. But it didn’t seem like a good idea.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “The other night, with your buddies —”

  “They’re not my buddies and they’re not going to bother you again.”

  “Actually, I think they will, and I’m done asking you to stop them, because you obviously don’t have that in you.”

  “Don’t pretend to know anything about me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and don’t tell anyone what I totally don’t know, and don’t say anything to your parents, et cetera. I had all year, Jeremiah. I had more than that. You think if I wanted to ruin your life, I wouldn’t have done it already?”

  “Then why are you here?” West asked, suppressing an insane impulse to drop the act and just cop to the truth. Jason already knew the whole story, probably all the dirty details Nick had passed along before the two of them had split; probably they’d sat together watching bad movies on Nick’s ratty couch, talking about West or, worse, not talking about him, talking about whatever esoterica lay between them. Maybe they’d done more than talk. West knew he hadn’t been the first, but he’d never let himself think about the others, about someone else’s hands finding their way to places soft and secret, about Nick pressing his lips to someone else’s skin, fixing them with his goofy, besotted gaze.

  What would happen if he asked the question? Just said it: I loved him. Did you?

  Wasn’t it worth the risk, if it meant he could set down what he was carrying, if only for the duration of the conversation? Maybe, that night, he would sleep.

  “I want to get out of here, do you understand that?” Jason said. “I need to get out of this town.”

  “Well, yeah, we all do. But I’m sure it’ll only be a couple more days, and then —”

  “No, not in a couple of days—now.” There was a wild edge to his voice. “But I can’t get out, can I? I’m trapped here. We’re all trapped. We’re all going freaking nuts. So why shouldn’t I? Why should I bother to stay away from you, if I don’t want to? Why shouldn’t I just do whatever the hell I want? Like your buddy Baz. Maybe he’s got the right idea.”

  “Last night… I wouldn’t have let anything happen. You know that, right?”

  Jason laughed harshly. “You let everything happen.”

  “I would have stopped it.”

  He waved away the excuse. “Doesn’t matter. He’s going to do what he wants. And you know what he wants? He wants me hurt. Bad.”

  So Jason didn’t know everything after all. Baz, West was pretty sure, wanted him dead.

  “And you know what I want?” Jason said.

  “I told you, I’m not going to let him —”

  “I don’t want to hurt him. That’s not good enough. What I want? Is to stop him. For good. Maybe that’s why I came here, Jeremiah.” His fierce expression mirrored the one he’d worn on the ground, pinned by Baz’s boot, the not-so-helpless prey daring the predator to go further, to cross the line, to give him an excuse. “For Nick’s sake – to warn you. Stay out of my way.”

  That night, trying to fall asleep, he listened for Nick’s voice in the wind. It wasn’t there. But something was.

  Not a voice.

  A touch.

  The weight of a hand on his chest.

  The brush of lips against his neck.

  A mist of breath warming his cheek.

  It was like an echo.

  Or a reward.

  Jule dreamed of the knife.

  These days, Jule always dreamed of the knife.

  In the dream, it still wore James’s blood. And she knew, with irrefutable dream logic, that it had gotten a taste, and that had awakened its hunger. It wanted more.

  In the dream, she knew it wanted her.

  It hunted her.

  In the dream, Uncle Scott held the knife, caressed the blade against his meaty palm, drew it, in the way of a starving man delaying gratification, against his lips. It was Uncle Scott who prowled the halls, feet shuffling along unfamiliar floorboards, shadow advancing along fading walls, creeping down a long corridor that wasn’t long enough, because at the end lay her bedroom door. Behind it, lying in bed but not asleep, she waited for him, listening for his steps, waiting for his hand on the knob, knowing, in the dream, that it was not him who wanted her. It was the knife. She could hear it, keening its hunger, whispering her name.

  In the dream, when she cried out, there was only a silent scream.

  Sometimes she bolted awake as the door opened, the echo of the knife fading from her ears as she blinked in the dark. But sometimes, as it did that night, the dream pressed on, and Scott, with madness in his eyes and the knife in his hand, slipped across the threshold, and the knife found its home in her chest, and sliced through flesh and vein, and fed.

  When she woke up, gasping and feeling for a wound that wasn’t there, it wasn’t Scott in her doorway, but the parasite. He lounged against the frame, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets, lizard eyes on her. She was certain she’d locked the door.

  “Have a nightmare?” He gave no indication of moving now that he’d been caught. It was unlike him. He was usually more subtle, or at least more abashed.

  “Still am,” she said. He looked to be considering it, the possibility that this was her dream, that he was her monster. While he weighed the possibilities, she scrambled out of bed and closed the door in his face.

  The bedroom window opened onto a narrow ledge. It formed the top of latticework that climbed down the side of the house. Jule exchanged her sweatpants for jeans, and in a few moments, she was out and down and free.

  She couldn’t walk all night. Jule circled the town twice, but when she came upon the darkened church, and spotted the slender girl stooped on its front steps, she was just tired enough to drop down beside her.

  “God’s got long hours,” Jule said. “Hope you’re getting overtime.”

  Ellie turned to face her but, miraculously, didn’t light up and start outlining the ways in which Jule, if she would only make the effort, could save her soul. Jule found herself strangely disappointed. Maybe she wasn’t just tired. Maybe she wanted someone to talk at her. Or just wanted someone.

  Hell, maybe she wanted to save her soul. But business hours were evidently done for the day.

  Ellie’s eyes were red.

  “You okay?” Jule asked.

  Ellie nodded. “You?”

  “No worse than usual.”

  Ellie didn’t ask what she was doing there, so Jule repaid the favor.

  “So okay, since it’s just us – you don’t really talk to God, right? Or, I mean, you don’t hear him talking back.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Right, sure, I know that’s what the deacon’s telling people, and they’re stupid enough to believe that because you went out in the middle of a tornado, on purpose, and didn’t get blown away, that means you’ve got a halo, but you can tell me the truth. Who am I going to tell? It’s a scam, right? Look godly, get some donations for the church or an award from the pope or whatever?”

  “I don’t have a halo,” Ellie said. “And if people knew…”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter. But I do. Hear it.”

  Don’t laugh, Jule reminded herself. “The voice of God.”

  She hesitated. “Sometimes.”

  It was too late at night for niceties, and that had never exactly been a hallmark of their relationship. “You do know how that sounds, right?”

  “Crazy. I know.”

  “So how can you be sure it’s God and not…”

  “Schizophrenia?” Ellie straightened up a little. “You know, a lot of the great mystics and saints of the past would have been diagnosed as mentally ill today. Saint Teresa. Saint Bernadette. Margery Kemp. Joan of Arc. They’d all be doped up. Probably locked up. People are always asking why God doesn’t talk directly
to us anymore, the way He does in the Bible. Maybe they should ask why we stopped listening.”

  “But some people are just crazy. You can’t be saying that everyone who thinks God talks to them is right.”

  “God talks to all of us,” Ellie said. “In our own way. And His.”

  “Okay… but some guy who thinks God told him to murder his neighbor and bury him in the backyard? You’re saying we don’t lock that guy up, we elect him to sainthood?”

  “I think most of the time, voices in your head are just voices in your head,” Ellie admitted. “But there’s a difference. True faith reveals it.”

  “And yours reveals to you that you’re not crazy.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Instead, her gaze snagging on something over Jule’s shoulder, she went rigid, her fingers knotting together so tightly that all blood leached out of them.

  “Ladies,” Baz said, giving Jule a jaunty salute as she turned to face him. “What a happy surprise.”

  Not again.

  Ellie was shivering.

  Jule put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Not tonight,” she told Baz. “In fact, how about not ever.”

  “But it’s been such a good night,” he whined, approaching the steps. Ellie jumped to her feet. Jule joined her. “And I’ve been a pretty damn good boy. Surely I deserve my godly reward.”

  “Stand with the Lord or stand with the sinners,” Ellie murmured. “That’s the choice. That’s the only choice. The Lord or the sin. The sin or the Lord.”

  “You got it, Mother Teresa,” Baz said. “And we all know which side you’re on. At least, I do.”

  Ellie shook her head. “I reject the sin,” she said, this time loud and clear. “I reject the sinners.”

  “Uh-huh.” He turned to Jule. “And how about you? You’ve always got something to say.”

  “Don’t talk to me,” Jule said. “And don’t even look at her.”

  He smiled, and it was the same forty-watt grin that had charmed more than one cheerleader into his bed, the mouthful of white brights and the crinkle of skin around the edges that said This is all for you, not just the face and the muscles, but the real Baz, the guy who’s better than his reputation, the guy who will buy you flowers and compliment your hair and worship at your pedestal and prove to you he’s worth the trouble. Jule was unimpressed.

  “You can’t still be mad about the tampon-girl thing,” he said. “We were just having some fun.”

  “Oh, were we? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Please stop,” Ellie whispered. “Go away. Go away.”

  “You don’t strike me as the Team God type.”

  “And yet you know nothing about me,” Jule said.

  “I know you’d have more fun with Team Sinner. We win all the championships.”

  Ellie was losing it. Jule could spot the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. Baz didn’t deserve to see that.

  “You’re not scoring tonight,” she said. “Not here, at least. Trust me.”

  He shrugged. “Your loss.”

  “Hopefully, someday I’ll be able to forgive myself.”

  “I really was just kidding around before,” he said, as his parting shot. “Sorry if I went too far. It won’t happen again.”

  It seemed so out of character she thought she must have misheard.

  “Some stains never wash out,” Ellie said, watching him fade into the shadows.

  “It’s okay, he’s gone. Are you okay?”

  “You can’t wash off a filthy soul,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know what he wants.”

  “Well, he made it pretty clear.”

  “Only a whore would let him look like that. Knowing what he wants. Knowing that he’s always watching. Asking for it.”

  “Did you just call me a whore?” Somehow, Jule didn’t think they were talking about Baz anymore.

  “The sinner senses sin. He smells it. He’s drawn to it. The taint. The filth. You can’t wash it off.”

  Jule wanted to kick herself – or Ellie – for stupidly thinking it would be possible to shelve the God stuff for a night and talk like normal people. Ellie obviously had problems of her own, but that didn’t mean she got to call Jule a filthy whore. Or suggest that Jule liked it. When he looked. She knew what most people in town thought about the Prevettes, and the parasite, and her.

  Animals slept in their own filth; animals couldn’t be expected to control their urges.

  “If this means you’re done trying to recruit me for Team God, don’t expect me to get all broken up about it,” she said. “I hear Team Sinner has an opening.”

  She was still tired – too tired to stop herself from leaving Ellie alone on the steps.

  And running after Baz.

  Ellie, who had long ago forgotten her presence, didn’t notice she was gone.

  “So, you wanna have some fun?” Baz asked her, flashing a startlingly genuine, or at least genuine-seeming, grin when she caught up with him. There was no leer, no insinuation, no roaming hands, nothing but open surprise. Running on the fumes of Ellie’s insults, Jule told him that she’d changed her mind, that she was in the mood for trouble, that he was the closest with a ready supply. “Good enough,” he said. “Trouble it is.”

  It was a mistake, she knew that.

  But the other thing, the shameful thing: it was fun.

  Jule, her mind ever on the prize, suggested they try sneaking across the border. But in the end, Baz had a better idea. No one would catch them, he assured her. No one would dare. This was a special mission from the mayor himself. This was righteous. Even at two a.m., even in the shadows, this was allowed.

  She didn’t care.

  She simply liked it, the splash of gasoline against the cheap aluminum siding, the sick-sweet smell that pressed down on them, driving away that other smell, of storm and poison and death. She liked dancing in the darkness. Carving up the night with ribbons of fuel, coating first the outer walls of the building and then, after a satisfying shower of broken glass, the space within. She didn’t let herself think about how her uncles would approve. She did, as Baz let her paint the trail of gasoline away from the newspaper office, think about the words the Post used to describe her family: Animals. Beasts. Menaces. Parasites. Maybe this was justice rightfully distributed; maybe it was, as Baz said, a service to the town. Neither seemed important. What mattered was that it was bad.

  It was destruction, pure and simple. The sound of a lighter sparking; the whoosh as her trail of gasoline burst into light.

  A menace, Jule thought, and it felt good, for a night, to be exactly the girl everyone believed her to be.

  It wasn’t like the movies. There was no explosion. Just a slow, steady build, hungry fire licking the walls and slithering under the doors, smoke chugging from the windows and collapsing the roof. It was mesmerizing. Baz stood behind her, his hands around her waist, and that felt right, too. His hands, large and sure, wrapping her up. His heart thumping in her ear and, when she twisted back to look at him, a little-boy grin on his face. He could have kissed her then, and maybe she would have let him. But he was fixed on the flames. “Team Sinner,” he whispered.

  You can’t fight Mother Nature, Scott liked to tell her.

  It was easier, sometimes, not to fight.

  The street was deserted; no fire engines appeared. The fire burned on. They watched, proud as parents gazing on the child they had made.

  And then a figure stumbled out of the flames, hunched over and shuddering with coughs, and all the euphoria drained away.

  “You said there’d be no one in there!”

  “Shit. Think he saw us?”

  But Jule was already running toward the person, who turned out to be a she, and looped an arm around her shoulder, holding her up. The woman was middle-aged, with dried blood smearing her face and clothing. She limped on a mangled foot, and her left arm hung against her chest in a makeshift sling. She smelled like she hadn’t showered in a wee
k.

  What I did to her, Jule thought, incoherently, shouting for Baz to help shoulder the weight, trying not to cry. What I almost did to her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked stupidly. The woman looked at her, dazed, eyebrows knitting as if she were trying to figure something out. “Where are you hurt?” No burns, Jule thought, trying to calm herself, trying to weasel out of it. Old injuries. Broken, not burned.

  The woman said something in a hoarse croak, too soft for Jule to hear. Jule bent toward her lips. “What?”