Nocturnal: A Novel

  The Belt

  But I feel sick.”

  Roberta Deprovdechuk crossed her arms and stared. “Get up, boy. You go to school.”

  The very word school did, in fact, make Rex feel sick. Sick inside, a cold sensation that made him want to crawl into a hole and hide forever.

  “Honest, I really don’t feel good.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You think I was born yesterday? You’re not sick. Those kids pick on you because you’re obnoxious. You leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. Get up and get to school. And no skipping! You skip school like some good-for-nothing burnout, sit here and draw all day. I let you put your stupid pictures up on your walls, don’t I? Now get up.”

  She grabbed the blankets and yanked them off. He had a horrid, frozen moment of exposure, of his boner pushing his underwear out in a little tent. Rex slammed his body into a fetal position, hands over his underwear-clad privates.

  “You filthy boy! Did you touch it?”

  Still curled up, he shook his head.

  “Rex, did you touch yourself?”

  “No!”

  He heard the familiar hiss of leather sliding through denim belt loops. He closed his eyes tight in anticipation of the pain to come.

  “Roberta, I didn’t touch it! Honest, I—”

  The crack of leather on his back cut his words short.

  “You little liar.”

  A second crack, this time on his legs. Despite the stinging pain, he stayed curled up. Rex knew better than to cry out, or to try and get away.

  “I told you never to be like the other dirty boys, didn’t I?”

  Crack, his shoulder lit up.

  “I’m sorry! I won’t do it ever again!”

  Crack, on the thin underwear fabric covering his ass. That one made him lurch, twitch, his body screaming at him to run, but he fought himself back into a tight ball.

  If he ran or resisted, it would only get worse.

  “There,” Roberta said. “I’m helping you, Rex. You need to learn these things. If you’re not ready for school in five minutes, you get more. You hear me talking to you?”

  She walked out, slamming the door behind her.

  The pain faded a little, but the cold feeling in his chest would not leave.

  He still had to go to school.

  Rex sat up on the bed. His boner had gone away. Roberta had always told him boners were bad, and the lingering stings on his back, his legs, his ass told him she was right.

  He’d dreamed again, and this time he’d remembered more. He’d been watching Alex Panos, waiting for a chance to kill Alex. And that was what made Rex feel funny. Not girls, not even boys — the stalking gave him the boner. Hunting Alex felt exciting, arousing, but the dream also carried a dark fear that someone was watching Rex, waiting in the darkness to hurt him.

  Dream-Rex had turned away from Alex. Instead, Rex and his friends had grabbed some random homeless guy. Grabbed him, taken him, but taken him where? Rex couldn’t remember.

  He stood. That fear, it sat in his stomach like a block of ice. It wouldn’t go away. He picked his jeans up off the floor. As he slid them on, he looked over at his desk, at his latest drawing of Alex Panos and the bullies.

  The drawing wasn’t finished.

  Maybe he could finish it in history class. Rex had read the whole textbook the first week of school and got 100 percent on every test — Mr. Garthus didn’t care if Rex did any work, as long as he kept quiet. No time to finish the full drawing, but Rex felt an urge to sketch that symbol again. He had to sketch it, right now.

  When his pencil completed the symbol’s final half-circle, the lingering dream-fear finally eased away. Rex’s more familiar, ever-present anxiety remained, however. Roberta was wrong; it didn’t matter if he minded his own business or not, the bullies would come for him no matter what he did.

  Rex shivered. He wanted to skip school, but he didn’t dare. Whatever beating the bullies had for him, it couldn’t match what Roberta would do if she switched from the belt to the paddle.

  Rex rubbed his new welts. He finished dressing. He gathered his books, then slid them, his pencils and his art pad into his bag.

  Maybe today would be better.

  The Drawing

  Bryan opened the Buick’s door, moved Pookie’s pile of folders, then sat.

  “Pooks, you ever clean up this crap-ass car?”

  Pookie leaned back, affected an expression of hurt. “My goodness, did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

  Bryan shut the door. Pookie pulled into traffic.

  “I had some messed-up dreams,” Bryan said. “Couldn’t sleep for shit.”

  “That could explain why you look like the wet side of a half-dry dog turd.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. But seriously, folks, you do look awful. And trim that beard, man. You’re starting to look like a gay hipster. I’ve no room for such nonsense in my life.”

  Bryan’s chest pain had faded from sharpness to a dull, nagging ache, like a jammed finger, or a knot in his spine that refused to crack. He dug his right fist into his sternum and rubbed it around.

  Pookie looked over. “Heartburn?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Not sleeping, pale as a ghost, and chest pains to boot,” Pookie said. “If we weren’t meeting Chief Zou, I’d drive you back to your apartment and tell you to take a sick day.”

  Chief Zou would already have the preliminary overview from the shooting review board. A full investigation was under way — standard procedure — but the early overview would determine if Bryan stayed on normal duty or was relegated to a desk until the final report came in.

  There was also the option that Zou could just suspend him altogether. For most cops, that wouldn’t be a worry. Most cops, however, hadn’t just killed their fifth human being.

  “I’ll be okay,” Bryan said, which was a lie. His fever had grown during the night. He felt hot all over. He was still a little dizzy, congested, and on top of that the body aches were even worse. His knees and elbows, his wrists and ankles, all his joints felt like they were filled with gravel. His muscles throbbed with an entirely different feeling, as if someone had spent hours pummeling him with a meat tenderizer.

  “Don’t breathe on me,” Pookie said. “You get me sick, I’m kicking you in the nuts. Tell me about these messed-up dreams. Anything involving either a naughty cheerleader, detention with the MILF-a-licious assistant principal, or a shy-yet-stacked nun questioning her life choices?”

  Bryan laughed, a short, choppy thing that drew a raspy cough. “I wish. Weren’t those kind of dreams.”

  “Nightmares?”

  Bryan nodded. “Dreamed I was with a couple other guys. I don’t know who they were. We were hunting this kid as he walked down Van Ness, and at the same time something was hunting us. Something real bad, but I never saw it. Then we were going to do something to this old bum. I was still scared out of my gourd when I woke up. I had to draw something from the dream.”

  Bryan pulled the sheet of paper out of his pocket, opened it and passed it to Pookie. Pookie looked at the image: an unfinished triangle with a circle slicing through the lines and under the points, a smaller circle in the center.

  “Wow,” Pookie said. “Your father and I are so proud, honey, we’ll put it right on the fridge next to your report card. What is it?”

  “No idea.”

  “And … what happened after you drew it?”

  Bryan shrugged. “The fear went away. So did most of the dream. But I think I remember where the dream took place.”

  “You recognized the spot?”

  “Uh-huh. Pretty sure it was Van Ness and Fern.”

  “Crazy. You want to check it out?”

  Bryan shook his head. “We have to get to the chief’s office.”

  “We’ve got fifteen minutes to spare,” Pookie said. “Come on, this could be good material for our cop show. I can see the log-line now —
an overstressed rebel cop can’t escape nightmares of the hit man that got away.”

  “I didn’t dream about a hit man.”

  “Dramatic license,” Pookie said. “Come on, Bri-Bri, this could be like a whole episode for me. Or even a three-episode mini-arc. You in?”

  Bryan remembered the crawling sense of creeping death, the fear that had gripped his stomach even as he descended on the bum. But he didn’t feel that fear anymore. And besides, it was just a dream.

  “Sure,” he said. “Let’s check it out.”

  Pookie changed lanes again. He left angry honks in his wake, and — as usual — he really didn’t seem to care.

  Van Ness and Fern

  Bryan looked around the alley. So damn familiar. Maybe he’d been here before. Had to have been here before. He couldn’t know this place from a dream.

  Pookie lifted the lid of a beat-up blue dumpster and peeked inside. Seeing nothing of interest, he shut the lid, brushed off his hands and adjusted his sunglasses. He kept looking around the alley. “So you saw a bum. And some kid wearing crimson and gold?”

  “Not sure,” Bryan said. “The kid could have been crimson and gold. It was a dream, Pooks.”

  “Yeah, but this is cool. Episode is practically writing itself. It’s rare for a dreamer to think of a specific spot and not have there be some kind of a connection.”

  “And you know this because of your doctorate in dream-ology?”

  “Discovery Channel, asshole,” Pookie said. “There’s more to life than reality TV.”

  Pookie pulled out his cell phone and checked the time. “All right, we better get rolling. Can’t be late for your chitchat with Zou. Maybe the Brothers Steve already tracked down Joe-Joe. The Steves find Ablamowicz’s killer, and we go back on nights and can grab the Maloney case away from Polyester Rich.”

  Lanza had made good on Bryan’s demand for a name. That name? Joseph “Joe-Joe” Lombardi, another of the guys who had come out from New Jersey. Bryan and Pookie had immediately turned that info over to the Brothers Steve. Was that Ablamowicz’s actual killer? Bryan couldn’t say, but it was a lot more information than they’d had twenty-four hours ago.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Bryan said. “My stomach is a mess. If I have to smell that dumpster anymore, I’m going to blow chunks.”

  They walked out of the alley back to the Buick.

  “Pooks, you need to get with reality — Zou won’t give us the Maloney case.”

  “The hell she won’t.”

  “Polyester Rich and Zou go way back. I heard they both made inspector about the same time.”

  Pookie got in and started the car. “Mark my words, young Bryan Clauser. You and I will get this case. And when we do, we will nail Paul Maloney’s murderer. I simply won’t stand for pee-freak vigilantes in my town.”

  Bryan slid into the passenger seat. He looked back to the dumpster and saw something he’d missed.

  Underneath the dumpster, was that a blanket?

  A red blanket.

  With pictures of brown bunnies and yellow duckies.

  … a little bird …

  As Pookie drove away, the nightmare’s cold echo blossomed anew in Bryan’s memory. Bryan took a breath, tried to forget about the blanket. He hadn’t really dreamed about a red blanket with duckies and bunnies, he was just reverse-imprinting or something. For now, he had more important things to worry about — things like Chief Zou’s take on the shooting review board.

  But maybe, when that was done, Bryan could find a quiet place to draw that weird picture again and make the cold feeling go away.

  BoyCo

  Rex ran.

  They were faster than him, but he ran anyway, hoping against hope that he could find a way out or a place to hide.

  Sometimes they got him, sometimes they didn’t. Every now and then he got lucky, made it to a street with lots of pedestrian traffic, saw a cop car or something else that would make his constant pursuers break off and wait for another chance.

  Today was not a lucky day.

  They’d been waiting for him after school. They knew which path he took to walk home. Sometimes he’d go fifteen or twenty blocks out of his way, taking different, random streets, but this time he just wanted to get back to his room.

  That fat, ugly meth-head April Sanchez had seen his drawing. April bought her drugs from Alex. She was rich. Rex hated her. She’d recognized the people in the drawing and said she was going to tell Alex. Rex had known, instantly, that he was in major trouble. April wanted to be Alex’s girlfriend. Something like the drawing was a chance to get Alex’s attention.

  Rex had spent the last hour of school terrified, waiting for the bell to ring so he could get home fast. He should have gone away from his house, to one of his many hiding places, even to his favorite park, but in his fear he’d taken the direct route home.

  Big mistake.

  He’d made it two blocks when he saw them, all four of them, on the corner of Francisco and Van Ness. Their crimson, gold and white clothing stood out bright and clean in the afternoon sun. Rex instantly turned and ran back down Van Ness, past the football field, toward Aquatic Park. He should have run somewhere with more people, but he’d just run away.

  They chased him. They laughed.

  The four boys. Always the same four.

  Jay Parlar … Issac Moses … Oscar Woody.

  And the worst of them all, Alex Panos.

  They caught him just past the parking lot that funneled the two divided three-car lanes of Van Ness Avenue into a normal two-lane road. An arm wrapped hard around his shoulders, a hand clamped over his mouth. The boys packed in close around him, carrying him.

  Rex tried to yell for help, but the hand was too tight. The bay was off to his right, the greenery sloping up to Fort Mason on his left — and no one was around. They carried him to the left, into a shady spot, and threw him down on a dirt patch.

  Rex tried to scramble up, but they surrounded him. Someone kicked him in the side and he fell. They dragged him behind a utility van parked beneath an overhanging tree, out of sight from the mostly unused street. He wound up on his back. Someone hit him in the face, once, twice, three times. His nose buzzed with a numb, confusing pain. Tears filled his eyes, making everything look shimmery and fluid. He was dumb enough to call out for help, then something hit him in the stomach and all wind left his body.

  Someone sat on his chest, pinning him to the ground.

  “I heard you were drawing fag pictures of me, you fucking faggot.”

  Rex didn’t need to see; he knew that voice. Alex Panos. A deep voice, far deeper than it should be for a sophomore in high school, but still it cracked on the first syllable of drawing.

  Rex tried to talk, to apologize, but he couldn’t pull in enough air to speak.

  “Hey, here’s the drawing!” Jay Parlar’s voice. “Lookit, Alex. Hey, ha ha, I’m in it, watching you get your ass kicked. Wow, I look totally scared.”

  “Gimme,” Alex said.

  Rex blinked away tears. He could see again. Oscar Woody was the one on his chest. Oscar’s curly-poofy black hair stuck out from beneath a white baseball cap with a gold-lined, crimson BC on the front. Above Oscar, standing there looking down — Alex Panos.

  Alex, with his movie-star blond hair and his big strong body, a body that Rex would never have. Alex held an unfolded page from a sketch pad. He looked up. His eyes narrowed. He turned the drawing around, so Rex could see it.

  Rex’s drawings were getting pretty good — no mistaking that Alex was the boy in the drawing, the boy getting his arm cut off with a chain saw held by a muscled version of Rex Deprovdechuk.

  Alex smiled. “So you think you can kill me, faggot?”

  Rex shook his head, the back of his head grinding against dirt, twigs and dried leaves.

  Jay peeked over Alex’s shoulder. Sixteen years old and Jay already had a goatee, although it was as thin and red as the hair on his head. “Seriously, Alex, that’s a good drawing! Looks
just like you!”

  “Jay,” Alex said, “shut the fuck up.”

  Jay’s shoulders drooped. He seemed to suddenly shrink from a five-foot-ten stud to a five-foot-six weakling. “Sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean nothing.”

  Alex’s eyes never left Rex. Alex crumpled the paper, then tossed it aside.

  “Boys,” he said, “hold his arm.”

  Rex tried to scramble up, but Oscar was too heavy.

  “Stay still, pussy,” Oscar said.

  Someone grabbed Rex’s right wrist and yanked it hard, painfully stretching his arm. Rex looked at this attacker — blue-eyed Issac Moses, his strong hands locked on Rex’s little forearm.

  “Jay,” Alex said, “go grab those two chunks of wood, I want to try something.”

  Rex finally managed a few words. “I … won’t draw … anymore.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Alex said. He looked to his right. “Yeah, those are the ones. Put a chunk under his elbow, and the other one under his wrist.”

  Rex felt something hard shoved under his elbow, raising it a few inches off the leaf-scattered dirt. He watched Jay slide a piece of wood under his wrist, then looked up at the surprised face of Issac Moses, who had yet to release his hold on Rex’s arm. Issac’s mouth was always turned down, and his nose seemed too small for his face.

  “Oh man, don’t do this,” Issac said. “That’s going to hurt him bad.”

  Alex’s smile faded. He looked hard at Issac.

  “Shut up and keep holding him,” Alex said. “If you don’t, you’re next.”

  Issac’s mouth opened, perhaps to say something, then he closed it and looked down.

  Alex took a step forward. His feet straddled Rex’s elevated arm. Alex looked like a towering god, blond hair hanging down, a few locks gleaming from the beams of late-afternoon sun filtering through the tree’s shade.

  “I have to teach you a lesson, Rex. I have to teach you about pain.”

  The tears flowed. Rex couldn’t help it. “You guys hurt me all the time!”