Chapter 26

1

He wasn’t sure if he felt guilty. It came down to that. When he woke up in the morning, the box he’d left on his night stand, the box Grimwood had handed to him with stern orders to give it to a police officer named Allen Webster, was clutched inside his arms like one of his old teddy bears. He only sat up and set it down on his bed without wondering when he must have grabbed it. He couldn’t remember any dreams. Nothing clearly. No, the guilt he thought he felt was in the secret he carried that he was a spy. Because soon he’d be off to school and he knew his secret would be drawn all over his face, prompting his best friends in the world to ask him what he was on about. And he couldn’t tell them.

            Pug looked outside his window at the street. The storm had left its mark. There were branches in the street, and some still hanging askew. Up the road at Croak’s, the willow in the front yard looked worse for wear, some of its low-lying boughs having split and splintered onto the lawn, with one especially knotted branch nestled against Croak’s mom’s jeep. Water still puddled and the storm drains were still gulping the floods submerging the curbs where the street sagged.

            This is how fast the world can turn. It was a strange thought. But poignant, he figured. When he looked at the shed he saw the subfusc grass at its base where the lightning struck. That had happened. It was real. Sometimes he figured you had to parse through what did and what didn’t happen. Or what could and couldn’t. Especially when you heard your voice on the radio. Did that happen? He wasn’t sure. It felt real. Everything he’d done last night, from trudging through the storm, feeling the rain whip at him, to listening to his footsteps down the cavernous hallway beneath Reedy Creek as he knowingly walked toward Watchtower, understanding somewhere in his mind that this was the right thing to do, seemed real enough to imprint itself, to become an authentic memory. He was sure of it. His clothes were rumpled on the floor by his hamper, still wet. But the shed door was closed. Padlocked. He could tell even from his window; the door that had been swinging open during the storm had closed behind him when he went home. He couldn’t even remember if he was the one who’d closed it. He remembered the rain had stopped. He remembered being thankful the mystery box cradled in his arms wouldn’t get wet. But he couldn’t remember specifically turning to lock the shed door, because a part of him, a part still attuned to the magic of childhood, figured the door would lock itself. Just as it had opened itself.

            What you felt as you left Watchtower was a sense of purpose. Grimwood handed that to you. Because you let the world pull you down. When you’re too light, that’s all the world can do. Pull you down so you don’t float away. But now you’re heavier. You feel it, don’t you? You’re heavy enough now the world doesn’t need to pull you. You can pull your own weight. That’s what it came down to. And maybe that’s why he didn’t feel the guilt he figured he would. Because that box sitting next to him, that box wrapped in brown paper and crinkled so precisely on the ends where the folds were scotch-taped, made him matter. Made him important.

            Chels was on the floor. She slept at the foot of his bed, and she only lolled her head to look up at him. And her eyes were black.

            “Girl?” Pug leaned forward and pulled Chels up on his lap, feeling her weight, feeling her muscles tense beneath his fingers. She only exhaled. No. Her eyes weren’t black. There was something crawling toward her eyes. Something bristling around her nostrils and marching up the slope of her nose. Like ants. Is that what they are? He could hear the insects scuttling; there were so many of them, so many ants, their bodies obsidian, nearly gleaming specks, moving up and down Chels’s head, through and over her fur, into her mouth and into her eye sockets; he could hear the individual pocked falls of their pattering legs, each an echo of the others. When Chels opened her mouth, the ants, black as ink, coated her tongue with a revulsive patterned route, up and down, hanging like swinging pendulums from her teeth and burrowing into her gums, clogging her throat until he was certain she couldn’t breathe, until he was certain she would retch, that she would finally choke. But her belly still moved, up and down, as she lay over his lap, staring at him.

            Pug ran his hand over her head, trying to swat them away. But they were like smoke. He could feel her matted fur, could feel her moist snout, the soft tissue around her eyes as they distended beneath his touch. But not the bugs. Not the bugs he could see, the bugs he could hear. He tried again. And again. Forcing his fingers into a tense scratch through her fur. Back and forth. Not feeling the ants, those goddamn black drips of legs and carapaces evading his touch—

            “Geez, Horace, what are you doing?”

            Ange ran into his room and pulled Chels off his lap, kneeling with her on the floor by his bed. He didn’t even hear his door open. But now he could hear Chels whimpering. Could hear the pitched squeal in her breaths. Could hear her pain.

            Ange was slowly stroking Chels’s ear. “Horace?”

            “You don’t see them?” Pug was sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands on his lap, wisps of straw fur under his nails.

            “What?”

            He wiped his eyes. Cinching them shut beneath his fingers. When he opened them again, the ants were gone. “Nothing, I…I thought I saw bugs in her fur. That’s all.”

            Ange cocked her brow. She did give a second look. But there was nothing there. Not anymore. If there ever had been. “You either need more sleep or you had too much. You were hurting her.”

            “I…” He thought he might start crying, but then he looked down at the box by his hand and realized spies didn’t do that. Spies didn’t cry. “I’m sorry.”

            “Tell that to her.” Ange finally smiled. “Phone’s for you, by the way.”

            Pug didn’t even hear the phone ring.

            “Adam’s cute, but he calls too damn early in the morning.” She stood up and led Chels out of Pug’s room; Chels only pensively looked back at him, her chestnut eyes confused, curious. There were no ants crawling into them, embedding in her solemn irises, rooting into her brain like a disease. It was just her. His dog.

            Pug went to the phone and picked up. “Hey Adam—”

2

Croak woke up early. He didn’t bother re-setting his clock after the power went out. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was still dark. He was fiddling with the rabbit ears on his TV in the basement. He’d turned on every light, making sure nothing remained hidden in the shadows. Because all it took for a crazy mind was the realization of one’s insanity before the doorway to the abnormal opened; and Croak could not have imagined what he watched last night. Randy was right. The power had gone out. But the TV still flickered back on. He remembered hearing the snowy static, remembered seeing the effusive white light setting a ghostly pallor over the basement. And he remembered the anchor from Davenport; he remembered watching the man before the guttural thunder and everything snapped off, and then he remembered seeing him again, but a reflection. As if he was watching the man in a mirror. It was the part in his hair. First left, then right. And that image stuck with him as he thought about it more. It didn’t make sense he’d be able to watch the news when the power went out; it didn’t make sense the guy’s appearance would somehow reverse; and it certainly didn’t make sense that news coverage in Davenport would be investigating his mother via those goddamn surveillance feeds.

            He turned the TV on and off. Testing it. Not sure for what, but experimenting with its transmission. Care Bears was on channel 2. He watched Lionheart for a moment, then turned the dial to channel 3 where he found a commercial for Pepsi. He flipped back again, wondering if Care Bears would be projected in a mirror image, if Lionheart would be standing on the opposite side of the screen. He wasn’t even sure if what he was doing made any sense. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Thinking about the anchor, and thinking about his mom and the mystery man with his back turned to the camera, the mystery man courting his mom with those romantic asides that always convinced Croak he could be meeting his new dad, the guy who might just stick around and play ball with him, watch the game and let him try his beer just to watch his face pucker at the bitterness and tell him to remember that feeling should the inclination ever come up again when he’s with his friends, the guy who would sit at the head of the dinner table, just like Cliff Huxtable. And the Hopsons would finally be wholesome. Whole.

            Croak walked back to the couch and plopped down. He felt like the entire endeavor had failed. That if it was his imagination, if Randy was right, he shouldn’t obsess over what didn’t happen. What couldn’t happen. Because he knew what obsession did to people. Hell, he and his friends watched what addiction had done to Robert Wilson, to Colin Perkins, and if the summer had done anything it was to teach the four what not to devolve into when adulthood took them into its insipid claws. But it was so real. And that was the kicker. That was why he couldn’t fall asleep, why he just lay in bed listening to the storm taper, listening to the tree in the front yard teeter-totter and snap, and the thunder move on to farther lands to frighten other children. Because the news feed was so undeniably real. But the power was out. Lights wouldn’t turn on. Storm shit kicked the grid to kingdom come.

            That was it.

            Croak bounded off the couch, his gangly legs wheeling as he skidded around the television and nearly toppled into a cardboard box. The power cord looped from its back in a long slack line into the outlet in the back wall. His mom had an electrician come out to the house to power the basement and wire in some plugs from the main line, just for the sake of building this secondary fortress for the boys to keep them out of her hair. Croak thought she might have gone out on a date with the guy, who kept dropping his tools to chat her up. But it didn’t last long. He wasn’t father material. Croak pulled out the power cord and listened to the Care Bears behind him, singing their grating kiddy garbage, blot out without any sort of fade. They were singing and then they were not. He dropped the plug on the floor and went back to the couch. Certain this was right. Certain if he was meant to see anything, to see the man from Davenport News with the part on the wrong side of his head, perhaps talking about Democratic nominee George Bush and Republican Michael Dukakis, then he would now as long as the feed wasn’t connected in any real sense to the grid that powered everything, because in that world things worked differently. That world operated in a mirrored reality, where everything was opposite.

            Croak sat on the couch and stared at the black television screen, antennae and tin foil jutting from its rear, as if mocking him, flashing the peace sign. You gone crazy, boy. I ain’t showin’ nothing and you’re watching me like I got tits. He sat this way until the slant of morning sunlight splintered the stairway and grew fatter when he heard the footsteps of the house finally waking up. Croak gave up. He stood up, still staring at the TV, waiting. He looked at the plug as it lay in a mote of sun, not in the outlet, disconnected. He sighed and went upstairs.

            “Damn, damn, damn…”

            It was his mom’s voice. Croak hurried toward her. She stood at the front door, at the base of the stairs. She was wearing a cream house robe, draping behind her slippers. He could smell the coffee and wondered if he would ever stoop to drinking the stuff. Wondered if it was just expected of you once you were old.

            “Mom? What is it?”

            She only exhaled. “Serves me right. Going back to work when everybody and their dogs knew the storm was coming. Stayed late last night to finish up some reports. By the time I hit the road the power was already out and I couldn’t open the garage door.” She ran her hand through her hair and offered a slight smile. “Most of the wind had died down. I thought it would be okay. But that damn tree.”

            Croak looked outside the front window by the door. Her Jeep was parked nicely on the pad. There were branches on the front lawn, leaves scattered about in piles that reminded him of Halloween. One knotted branch in particular had fallen with lopsided precision, its fractured end still somewhat connected to the tree by mere ribbons of viscous sap where it swung this way and that, clubbing the car with the heft of its bushy end until the driver side window finally shattered, leaving glass in and out of the Jeep. It reminded Croak of Randy. Of his face. And he stopped himself from saying it out loud.

            “Like it waited until something expensive was beneath it before it gave out.” She chuckled. “Joke’s on it. I might just call a guy with a wood chipper. Finally get this house out of the shade.” She shook her head. “Now I’ve gotta spend the morning on the phone with insurance. Getting batted this way and that by their service department, waiting on hold while they play that horrible elevator music, hoping I might go crazy before I speak to an actual human. After a storm like that, I’m betting more people than me are dealing with damage, and knowing my luck, they’re all calling this morning.” She looked down at Croak. “Sorry hun. Just venting. What do ya want for breakfast?”

            “You were at work last night?”

            “Yeah. I snuck out when I heard Randy’s music on upstairs and I knew you were in the basement on the boob tube.” She smiled. “You accusing me of something?”

            “What?”

            “Your tone. It reeks of suspicion.” She ruffled his hair and went into the kitchen, pulling out a box of Lucky Charms and a bowl. “This work for you? I’m honestly not in the mood for eggs and pancakes.” She pulled out the Reedy Creek directory and dropped it on the table.

            “You didn’t catch the news, did you? From Davenport?”

            “Don’t usually catch me with my feet up watching television from the office.”

            “Oh.”

            “Everything okay?”

            “I guess. Didn’t get much sleep. Thunder kept me up.” He feigned a smile.

            “You never did like thunder. Your brother okay? You talk to him at all last night?”

            Croak only shook his head.

            “Still not out of his funk.” She poured the Lucky Charms into the bowl and opened the fridge to grab out the 2% milk. She shook it indifferently and then popped it open. “How is he, at school I mean?”

            Croak could tell she was worried about him. They both were. “Quiet.”

            “And the others…other kids? Do they…I don’t know…forget it. He’d hate knowing I was talking about him. Asking about him.” She handed Croak his cereal and silently watched him eat. She grabbed herself a coffee and stood for a moment, drinking it black. She never drank it black. Hated how acrid it was when it first touched her tongue.

            The phone rang. She was startled out of her thoughts, thoughts of her boy, the son she watched the world shun; Croak was pulled back from his own as well, thoughts of Opposite World, where the news was of Reedy Creek, about the people behind their closed doors, about his own mom and the man who wanted to be with her. The man who would be his father.

            “If the world is just this is the insurance adjuster now.” Avery picked up the phone. “Hello.” She turned to Croak. Somewhat crestfallen.

            “It’s for you.”

3

It was the same alley as before. He remembered it, the way the mind always figured out how to capture the smallest details, those minute distinctions the eyes would otherwise blot out; the air was thick and soupy with humidity. A real New York summer. He could feel the wind pressing its tongue against his face. Could hear the kids running through the water before the police came to cap off the busted hydrant and scold the ne’er-do-wells. He could hear each of their individual voices and a part of him wondered if they were kids in Reedy Creek, kids who’d made the long trek northeast to the Big Apple, kids he saw at school, or who he’d passed during the summer with but the slightest nod. He could smell the dust from the flapping linens, from the women clapping old textiles against the fire escape rails and watching the silt rain through the hazy sun. But in a city of millions, a city of endless eyes and windows, he was truly alone. Alone in this alleyway, where between those dumpsters ahead, wavering beneath the steam of fetid wastes and swarming flies, he knew the man in the fedora would step out, just as he had the first time.

            But it wasn’t the same. Even in sleep, in dreams, the distinctions that could create worlds whole cloth from but the briefest memories, could change on a dime. Could take what you knew and transform it into something you didn’t. Or didn’t want to know. Yes, he figured that was more correct. Because what he heard was far too familiar. It was the screech of wheels, the clickety-clack of one stubborn plastic wheel getting jammed on the cheap axis of an even cheaper bucket. He’d see that bucket first. See it as it was pushed out from between the dumpsters. And Danny was suddenly certain that smell wasn’t the garbage but bodies. Countless rotting bodies, all glaring up into the New York skyline with unblinking eyes. All having choked on that scummy mop water. Drowned in it.

            “Why are you here?” Danny found the courage to speak. His voice was low and tinny in this place, in this alley outside of reality in a New York of his making. The sounds of the world, of the kids screaming, the playfulness of summer itself, became mottled and lost, fading more and more into a hum that would disappear entirely and leave the vacuum of this place. This nightmare.

            “Jew York needs janitors too.” The man smiled, his fists clenched around that mop handle, its chipped wooden surface marred by serrated splotches of blood, still gleaming and wet. Pattered, even, over his knuckles. He licked his teeth as his sallow eyes studied him. His sharp teeth. Filed into points.

            “This place isn’t for you,” Danny retorted. “It’s my place. I made it. I control it.”

            “You keep tellin’ yourself that, ya fuckin’ kike, cause if you got control of dis place I got a bridge to sell ya. It’s in Brooklyn. Comes with a whole heap o’ niggers, but I’m takin’ any and all offers.” He pulled the mop out of the bucket and slapped it on the asphalt; it squished against the gravel, against the crud piled up against the base of the dumpster, and Danny noticed it wasn’t sudsy water but frothy blood. It splashed the cuff of his navy pants and spattered his black boots. “You don’ control jack shit, Oven Escaper. You try to. And you can convince yourself udderwise, but you’re just a fly in a trap. And I be hungry cause I’m a spider.” He stepped forward. Away from the garbage. “I can take your cock in my mouth. Give you back your foreskin. Would you like that? Would you?” He smiled and licked his teeth again, his eyes turning to slits in his fat face. “Ya don’t have to be a pesky kike. Nope, you can find faith in Christ, boy. Find it in His blood. Meat of my meat, blood of my blood.”

            “Leave. Me. Alone.”

            “I’m your drug, Jew. Ya don’ know it yet, but I am. Maybe I will show you the boiler room at school. Fuck you against the wall while you scratch at the tiles, leave little squiggly finger prints, screamin’ fuckin’ nonsense from your Torah. Would you like that? All drug addicts like a little fun for their fix. Would that be fun?”

            “Fuck you. You’re a Nazi!”

            “More bite than his daddy.” Closer now. The sound of his black boots clocking the pavement almost fleshy. Soft. “But his daddy still took my dick. Took my dick while he cried and cried. But he learned to like it. To crave it. Like the boy will. The Jew York boy. They all learn to love my dick.” His smile was so wide now, so leering, Danny thought his cheeks would split. That his jaw would splinter and fracture his nearly perfect white skin, leaving him with bones poking out of his face. And he might have preferred that. He might have preferred such monstrosity was apparent, was on the surface.

            And the janitor’s hand snapped like a claw, a lobster’s pincer, and Danny felt his cold grip around his throat, could feel the man with the sharp teeth pulling the boy, his shoes skidding on the asphalt, toward him, and he saw the bulge on the janitor’s front, through his slacks, so defined and protuberant. So willing.

            And Danny screamed.

            That’s when he woke up. Sweating. As if the New York heat and humidity was real. Maybe it was. He was panting. His room was lit by the morning, so inviting but at the same time cold and distant. He hated how afraid he was. How afraid that janitor made him. How exposed he’d been to the world’s underbelly. It’s like he knew more than you. It’s like whatever experience the two of you just shared, it was the groundwater and this dream version grew, extended, beyond your shared knowledge. Like this extended version knew more. Was leading you on. He wasn’t sure what the thought meant. That maybe it didn’t matter.

            Danny got dressed and casually walked downstairs. His parents were already in the kitchen, his mom with a cup of coffee and his dad pacing by the television watching the recap of the ball games on the news, fiddling with his tie. His coffee was on the table next to two slabs of toast and butter.

            “It’s a mess, David.”

            “It happens everywhere, Maddy. It isn’t just a New York thing.”

            His mom was looking at the newspaper, spread out on the table. Danny briefly saw the photographs on the front, and the byline: DOUBLE HOMICIDE. He’d heard the rumors all day yesterday, saw the blazing police cars as they raced down Main. In a town like this, he understood gossip merited just as much respect as its journalists, and it worked a hell of a lot faster.

            “But it’s so peaceful here. Or should be.”

            “Well, you start mixing big city folk into the drink, it’s bound to get toxic. Hey Daniel.” His father nodded his head, finally approving the knot in his tie and returning for another sip of his morning brew. “Yanks blew it yesterday. But Winfield got a couple ribbies.”

            “Baseball, David? Baseball?”

            “Maddy,” his father said, not sternly but with a fatherly stoicism Danny had grown to accept. “You can accept bad things are going to happen, regardless where you break bread, and you can accept there are fine lines that mean what might happen, however horrible, cannot have the power to break your spirits or enter your home. Because the world is good. And the world is evil.”

            “She was a fine girl, David. A fine girl. And cute too. Spare me your sermonizing.”

            His dad winked at Danny and took another sip of coffee before biting into his toast.

            “Well, I expect you’ll have your tie on quicker, and a black one, for her services. We are going to pay our respects.”

            “Of course, dear.” He threw on his jacket and finished his toast quickly, setting his plate on the counter.

            “Oh, so I’m to, what, put this in the dishwasher for you?”

            “Storm killed my alarm clock. No time, dear. See ya, Daniel.”

            “Don’t say that…killed. You should be ashamed, David.” She stood up and took his father’s dirty plate, setting it into the dishwasher. “You don’t take any of his bad habits.” She quickly set the paper down in the kitchen, front page down. She had always tried, by some elemental maternal instinct, to keep his eyes away from bad news. In a place like New York it was difficult. She wasn’t against moving here because she understood it was the sort of environment where a young kid could find and retain a certain level of normalcy. “Are you hungry, dear?”

            Danny ignored her for a moment, flipping open the paper to look at the pictures. He did remember Sarah Darling. He always thought she was attractive. Even if she was a lot older than he was. And he knew the pharmacist as well. He was dowdy and plump. He thought he would play a great Santa Claus at a mall, but beyond that he was just what most would call a fixture. Somebody you saw every couple of days, but nobody you were really interested in knowing. He thought it seemed mean, but it was true. The two were murdered in the General. And so forever that place’s lasting legacy will be the question about whether or not it is haunted. The world is good. And the world is evil.

            “Terrible news, isn’t it? I hate that you have to be burdened by it.”

            “I heard about it yesterday.”

            “Yes, but now it’s confirmed. It’s printed. Real news. Hard to take that back.” She folded the newspaper and dropped it in the bin. “You remember her, don’t you? She was so pretty.”

            “Yeah, mom. I do.”

            “So, breakfast?”

            “I’m not sure I’m that hungry.” He wasn’t. He was thinking about the blood in the janitor’s bucket. And the smell. The smell of the fetid garbage rotting in the New York sun. His father was right. You start mixing an assortment of people into the cocktail of a town and shit could do nothing but turn sour. Because the world was good, and the world was evil. No matter the intentions in the end, there was always a clear winner.

            “You don’t look well, Daniel.”

            “Just a rotten sleep.”
            “It was some storm.”

            “Mom, do you think there’s something strange about this place? About Reedy Creek?”

            She cocked her eye. She returned to her seat at the table and nursed her mug, gauging him. Her eyes were dark. Nearly black. Like her hair. His mom was pretty. He’d seen photos of her when she first met his dad, and maybe back then he could say with confidence that she was a real stunner, but now she just appeared content. Content with life and that was that. She wasn’t Avery Hopson, and he knew his friends wouldn’t be by to scope her out in a robe, but he could appreciate that contentment, and he hoped one day he could find it as well. “It’s a nice town.”

            “But does it feel…off?”

            “Well, that certainly doesn’t help.” She gestured toward the paper in the garbage. “What are you on about?”

            “Nothing.” But it was something. A feeling. He wouldn’t know the other guys had shared the same sentiment: that whatever was off about Reedy Creek wasn’t just on its surface, what they knew, the common knowledge about the surveillance project that had everybody in town tapped as some sort of suspect, it was the town’s emotion, its breath, the undercurrent that could create the illusion of idealism or shatter it with the reality of its inherent madness. It was the murders. It was Grimwood. It was the town council and their VHS tapes. It was Robert Wilson. It was the janitor. They all shared the same sickness hanging around Reedy Creek’s throat like a noose, and soon he’d be able to talk freely about it. To unload. But now he just watched his mom and understood her contentment shouldn’t be broken. That she should be allowed to coast.

            The phone rang.

            “Well? You have two legs, doncha?” She smirked over the rim of her cup.

            Danny picked up the phone. The world is good. And the world is evil.

            And sometimes the two came to a head.

4

They laid flowers down on what used to be home plate. It felt right. And none of them wanted to truly believe what Adam had told them when he called. Because you could prank your buds, but sometimes the context was what mattered, and they understood Adam wouldn’t joke about that. Wouldn’t joke about grampa. Senility was okay, but death was over the line. Because Lew was always one of them.

            Fenway was still quiet. Still an oasis beyond the fold of the Creek, but now with the overgrown grass and weeds, it seemed somehow appropriate considering the mood. Danny had come across the peeling 2x4 that had acted the rubber for the summer. He’d gotten down on his knees and touched it, remembering what was so innocent just a month ago. Now it felt rotten.

            They’d all ridden their bikes to the field. Their backpacks and BMXs sat in a tangled gridlock just in front of the arcade of pines where cameras were pointed toward Woodvine and toward them. The one pointed toward them was what gave Grimwood his vantage point. What prompted him to watch all summer and leave out VHS tapes to be found. To mire them in a trap that removed them from childhood.

            The four of them stood in the spot where Croak had set down that used tee’s base; it wasn’t there anymore. They’d each grabbed wildflowers that were growing on the skirts of the clearing near the deadfall, and they carried them in bunches, not really talking but all sharing the same sentiment. Pug took his handful to that spot where Adam crushed the ball into the woods. The last ball ever hit at Fenway. This Fenway. And so that magic had gone with the raw hide and left the place feral. So why not make it grampa’s memorial? He dropped the flowers at his feet and wiped his eyes. Croak did the same. Then Danny. Adam last. Adam got down on his knee and set each flower individually atop the pile, his friends standing over him, watching but leaving him alone at the same time. Allowing him a moment’s peace.

            “I love you, grampa. We all do. This is your place now. You came to watch us play ball here. And maybe we were really playing just so you’d watch. Because you were always one of us. And now, you’ll stay that way.” Adam wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and stood up, still staring down at the pile. The flowers were cluttered and not truly organized. But he thought grampa would have preferred it that way. That if they were jammed nicely in a vase he would have joked that he wasn’t a chick.

            “To grampa.”

            Danny followed. “To grampa.” Then Croak. Pug was last. And then there was silence for a moment as the wind stirred the memorial laid at home plate.

            Pug took Adam’s shoulder in his hand. “Are you okay?”

            “No. No, I’m really not.” He was still staring at the flowers. “This wasn’t an accident, guys. They’ll say it was a heart attack. They’ll say it was his time. It was natural. My parents will sit down with me and tell me there’s nothing I could have done, that…that life is funny because you don’t choose your time. But they’re wrong. Reedy Creek fucking killed him.”

            “What did you see, Adam?” Croak asked. Because they all experienced something unique last night, didn’t they? And maybe it was Reedy Creek. Maybe what Danny was beginning to think, that this place was sick, had some actual merit.

            Adam exhaled and told them. Because he knew they would believe him. That they had to.

5

“I think Patty knew.”

            “What do you mean knew?” Danny asked.

            Adam flicked the grass he’d picked from his fingers and watched them dance back toward the field. “He was calling out for grampa.”

            “Bampa. That’s what he still says, right?” Pug asked.

            Adam only nodded. “I heard him. But my parents didn’t. And grampa didn’t. When I went to Patty, guys, I swear to God he would have fallen down the stairs cause his eyes were closed. As if he was dreaming. If I was like…shit, a few seconds late, we’d be burying my…” He stopped for a moment and gathered himself. “Burying my baby bro too.”

            “You think he was sleepwalking?”

            “And climbed out of his crib?” Adam only looked at Croak. “It wasn’t the storm, wasn’t the rain or thunder that had him crying. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and my parents were in their room. Their door was shut, but I heard them in there. And they didn’t come running. Why? My dad may be an asshole, but when Patty’s crying, he comes if he’s around, you know. But nothing. And there was a knock on the front door. Not the doorbell, just that knock. And it was so…thin. Distant. But we heard it. Patty heard. And I held him. I could feel him trembling. He…he pissed himself. Because he knew something I didn’t. Like he knew who was on the other side of the door.”

            “Jesus,” Croak whispered.

            “Maybe that’s who it was, right? I mean, who would come knocking on your fucking door during a storm only to leave a dead body behind? Maybe it was Jesus coming to take grampa home.” He said it sarcastically but it still sounded sad. Incredibly sad.

            “Did you…did you see anything? Did you see who it might be when he opened the door?”

            Adam didn’t know what to tell Danny. Because he did see something. And he felt like he should not have. It was weird but true. And he wasn’t sure how that might sound spoken. “Last night I felt like I stepped into something outside of what we know. Of what is.”

           “What the hell does that mean?”

           “Maybe there’s pockets. Like in space. Me and Patty, we were in one of them. Outside of what my parents could hear. And grampa was in another. Separate from us, from our pocket, because he couldn’t hear Patty. But we…we were connected to his…or something. Fuck, I know how this sounds.”

            “Crazy?” Danny jibed.

            “Maybe,” Adam agreed. “But how do you explain it? Some people can, like, see ghosts where others don’t. Explain that shit.”

            “Touche,” Danny conceded.

            “That’s what it felt like…like we were ghosts, unheard, unseen, watching grampa, and when he opened the door there was no rain. The rain and wind was hitting the window above the stairs, but not the front steps. It was just quiet. Like today. This morning. I mean, look at what the storm did to this place. To Fenway.”

            The boys did solemnly look around. Some of the trees had lost their branches, and leaves had piled in chaotic torrents beyond the clearing; they could tell something nasty had rolled through. But they listened to Adam in silence. Because this guy was the cool one. He was always the pivot around which the foursome revolved. Remove him, and they might just scatter, unused, diffused by school until they were invisible. It was a sad thought, but it was one that had haunted Pug for some time.

            “But there was nothing, no rain, no wind when that door opened. And the thing…the person who stepped inside, I felt guilty for seeing it. Him. Her. I don’t even fucking know.”

            “Guilty?” Croak asked.

            “I don’t even know how to explain it. It was like I wasn’t supposed to see it. Like when we were watching those tapes of Wilson the first time. We were watching something we weren’t supposed to. It felt exactly like that. But I had to know. I just had to. I heard grampa’s footsteps. And I heard the stranger’s as well. That’s how I knew I wasn’t…crazy. And I thought I, I don’t know, smelt perfume. Something I might have smelled before.”

            “So you think it was a woman?” Danny asked, his eyes earnest.

            “What I know is the smell was familiar. That’s all. I could hear grampa talking, but nothing in return, nothing really. Unless I really strained to hear. Because the sound was low. Like maybe what it would sound like if you were talking underwater through thick glass. That thick glass they have for the giant aquarium at EPCOT at the Living Seas. You know, Pug, you’ve been, right?”

            Pug only nodded.

            “But there was nothing…grampa wasn’t with anyone…he was just alone. Sitting there. And I knew something was wrong. I just knew. Like when you can see bad news in somebody’s eyes before they tell it to you. He wasn’t right. When I saw him sitting there, just staring, I…” He stopped for a moment, trying to collect himself, to pall the rapidity of his heart. He was sweating. “He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me. At nothing. Like when we saw Wilson in the car. In the Audi. His eyes. I knew grampa was gone. Fucking gone. And it wasn’t a heart attack. Grampa wouldn’t have gone like some pussy. No. Somebody did this to him. Somebody…murdered him.” He hated the sound of that word as it came out of his mouth. He only bit his lip. The moment he said it, the idea seemed realer. Grounded.

            “I believe you.” Pug was the first to say it. He wasn’t sure if it was what Adam was expecting, but he said it regardless.

            “Me too,” Croak said.

            Danny stood silent for a moment. It all sounded crazy. Like hokum. But in the end how could he think an entire town, its very being, was somehow ill and getting sicker and not believe something crazy, something unnatural had taken grampa’s life? “I do too, Adam. It sounds like horse shit, but you already know that.”

            “I think this whole place is loose in the seams,” Pug said. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “And I think the storm was just a part of that. I mean, if we’re going to use this…this opportunity to confess, I think it’s only right to let you guys know I think Reedy Creek is like a deer after it’s been hit by a car. It’s just holding on, you know. It is clinging to what it can to remain but it knows its time is short. And it’s looking for help. Any help. But all you can do is watch it die and feel bad that you were helpless. Look at what’s happening. At the General. The murders. That is rot working its way deeper.” Pug thought about the video he watched in the Situation Room; the video of the pharmacist and his beautiful assistant in those moments before death, and he thought about Grimwood’s own damning incriminations against the council giving him the lists of names. Names ending up in the Post. Names ending up in bad news. Yes, Reedy Creek was loose in its seams. “I saw something too, Adam. Something crazy. And my sister didn’t.”

            Danny only nodded, agreeing with the sentiment, understanding this conversation would reveal more and more.

            “What did you see?”

            Pug wouldn’t tell them about the radio or about Grimwood. Because the man under Reedy Creek had done him a solid by returning Chels, so once he delivered the box to Allen Webster, the box sitting in his backpack, he felt like the weight of what he was keeping from his friends would be lifted. But the implications of what was happening to Reedy Creek had Pug convinced that maybe his services as a spy were required. That maybe Mr Grimwood was onto something.

            “I saw black…bugs or something, all over Chels’s face, digging into her eyes. Burrowing into them. And I could hear them. Their little legs. Moving so fast. Over her fur.” His breathing was stilted so he just closed his mouth and looked at his friends. “Ange didn’t see them. Didn’t hear them. Ange was brushing her hand right through them and she wasn’t…wasn’t repulsed.”

            “What were they?” Danny asked.

            Pug closed his eyes. He thought he knew. The more he thought about it, the more he thought about what he saw, the more he understood he was seeing what he feared most. He looked at the flowers piled on the ground and only swallowed. “Cancer.”

            “Shit, you think, Pug?” There was a sharp inflection in Croak’s voice, but no characteristic break.

            Pug only nodded. “It’s all guesswork. But it fits. I might be crazy. It might be my imagination working around the angles, taking what the vet said and turning it into something else. But I think you guys believe me. Just like we believe Adam.”

            “I do,” Croak said. “My TV turned on when the power went out…and the newscaster, I think he was talking to me. Directly to me. Did you…did you guys watch the news last night?”

            “Out of Davenport? Nope.” Danny only shook his head.

            Adam followed. And Pug only closed and opened his fists.

            “You know the guy, though, right?”

            “Old dickhead with grease in his hair,” Danny said.

            “That’d be the one. Well this dickhead’s part was the wrong way, like I was looking at him in a mirror because everything about him was off. Was reversed. The pic behind him was of a moon over some field. Not the sun. And he, well, I think he was talking to me.”

            “What did he say?” Pug asked.

            “Talking about the cameras. About Reedy Creek. And some shit about my mom. Mostly. But the…the power was out. TV even went black at first. I mean, what do you make of that? What can you make of that? This was after that loud lightning strike.” He didn’t tell the guys he watched a black TV screen for over an hour this morning after he pulled the plug, hoping with some obsessive impulse that what he’d seen last night would return, that he figured it was some magic that had given him the broadcast in the first place. Experiments were always about replicating the variables.

            “That lightning hit the shed,” Pug said. “I saw it from my window. Left the grass charred.”

            “Yeah, I saw that when I rode here,” Croak nodded. “What about you, Danny? Anything?”

            Danny thought not about the night of the storm, but of its eventual brewing as a madman janitor leered at him in the little boys’ room. “I dreamed again. Like the night after we met Grimwood.”

            “So it touched us all, then. The crazy. But why us?” Pug asked.

            “Because we know more than we should,” Adam simply said. “Because we went where we shouldn’t have. Because we ignored every warning sign. Because I brought grampa into the mix. Because my dad screwed up his life and brought us here to join a council that is…that is fucking killing people and we all said no to helping the only person who might be able to stop this madness.”

            “What are you suggesting, Adam?”

            Adam gauged Danny for a moment. “Somebody killed grampa. Just like somebody cut Robert Wilson’s brakes.”

            “You don’t know that.”

            “I can. If we weren’t such goddamn cowards we could know everything.”

            “It’s too dangerous, Adam. We all agreed.”

            “That was before I lost my grampa. Before I knew I would have to go to his funeral, to have to watch the one person holding my broken family together lower into the ground of a town he hated. Hated. I have to know, Danny. I deserve to know.”

            Danny only looked away. Toward the quiet woods where the stillness of the world masked what lay beyond a metal door in an old farmhouse.

            “So you’re really going to see Grimwood?” Croak asked, almost confused. And scared. Because he was their bogeyman. Didn’t they all come to that agreement?

            “I have to know.”

            “And you think Grimwood…will just hand over any tapes he has after we, well, shit what’s the word?”

            “Denied him,” Pug said. “It doesn’t matter either way, Adam. Because of your dad, there are no cameras in your house. You said so yourself.”

            “There’s one on the light post outside. Facing the front of my place. I checked. Made sure. You can see the front door.”

            Pug only exhaled.

            “You guys don’t have to agree. But you believe me. After last night, that’s really the only thing I could have hoped for when I called you. This is a choice I’m making. It’s on me. And if I’m right, if I saw what I…what I think I saw, I am going to rip Reedy Creek apart to find the motherfucker.”

6

The boys climbed onto their BMXs, slinging their backpacks over their shoulders, and rode toward the tree-lined path to Woodvine. All except Adam.

            “You’re not coming?”

            “My grampa just died, Pug. School knows I have to mourn.”

            “He won’t let anything happen to you,” Pug smiled. It was his first genuine smile of the morning, and even Croak joined in as he picked up his bike and swung his gangly denim leg over the seat. “I know that sounds like sappy Mormon hoo-ha, but grampa’s still here.” He touched his hand to his heart.

            “Thanks Pug.”

            “Be careful.”

            He would try. He stood at the arced pitch of the clearing that once acted the center field wall of Fenway. He heard the gang behind him disappear beyond the trees as they pedalled toward school. He looked again at the mound of flowers where he once tapped his shoes with the bat to swing away. For Grampa Lew. Adam smiled, suddenly feeling unburdened. That insanity he’d felt all night as he cried in his room, listening to the rain, listening to his mom share the same tears, reduced him to nothing more than a crazy idea. A hallucination. But his best friends in the world believed him. And he wanted to prove they were right to.

            Adam climbed down the deadfall.

7

But he wasn’t entirely honest.

            He wouldn’t know going to see Grimwood would be an open invitation for his friends to consider doing the same. No, because his head wasn’t there. His thoughts were on one thing.

            He didn’t sleep at all. Couldn’t.

            He understood beyond what he told the threesome at Fenway that there was an elemental magic that came part and parcel to childhood; and he understood each successive year peeled away some of that magic until one day adulthood was borne from its empty core. And the magic was gone. He thought that was why his parents didn’t hear Patty crying. And he thought it was why he couldn’t see what Patty was so obviously seeing, what drew from him the sort of fear that would have him wetting himself. He heard his parents talking in the kitchen in the earliest hours of the morning, as the rain tapered, as the storm that represented his grampa’s passing finally receded to prove what would dawn as a result was a sort of fierce resolve in Adam’s heart.

            “He was acting so strange,” his mom said. He imagined she was sitting at the table, needing to talk, still clutching to a wad of Kleenex and ever so frequently dabbing at her reddened nose. “Every time we spoke I expected he would confess to me…that he was ill.”

            “He had his secrets. But not that.”

            “How do you know?” She wasn’t whispering. She didn’t care if the boys upstairs heard her. He thought she might have suspected Adam wasn’t sleeping anyway. And maybe she would come upstairs at some point to check on him. But right now she needed to be comforted. Even if she didn’t believe him, believe what Adam said he saw, it was her father they’d wheeled out. Her daddy.

            “If he knew he was sick. If he knew this could have happened, had in some way planned for it, then he would have begged us to move back east. So that he could die at home. So he could be with your mom.” Something about what his dad said seemed callous. He wasn’t sure. He felt like he was interloping, that eavesdropping was somehow like watching them on one of Grimwood’s cameras.

            “He was talking about her so much. And the photo album. Trevor, I was so caught up about being sick myself, I didn’t really think to…” She muffled a few sobs. “I didn’t think to spend as much time with him that I could. My dad. He…he called me baby girl. I always loved that. It made me feel little again.”

            Adam smiled as he stood at the top of the stairs. Baby girl. But what did his mom mean about being sick herself?

              Their voices carried with alacrity. A clarity he thought was afforded by the dying rain.

            “We can always have a small service here. I’m not sure how many friends Lew might have made. But I’m certain a few will show up to hear about him. And we can transport him to Boston. He has a plot next to Betty, doesn’t he?”

            “I would hope so, Trev, I would hope they thought about that.”

            “His estate will stipulate that. We’ll talk to the lawyers. What’s left of his estate will go to you.”

            “He already sold everything to give us a second chance,” his mother said. Adam thought he heard spite there. “I’d like to have a service. That’s a fine idea. I think Adam…I think he would like it. To maybe say something. He and…they had such an amazing relationship. I’m worried about him, Trev. I’m worried about what this will do to him.”

            Adam closed his eyes as he hunkered at the top of the stairs. He was crying. His parents were so far removed from the magic that they could only cope with loss by focusing on the pragmatic reality of what happened next. Talk of wills and funerals and estates. He could think of nothing but the person he’d seen step into the house. And the smell of the perfume. It would border on obsession. Every lingering thought would be about what he did or didn’t see.

            He thought he masked that madness from his friends rather well.

            He didn’t tell his friends what he found Patty doing. Because there were layers to magic just as there were layers to childhood. He and the guys were on the last legs, he figured. So belief would be difficult. But Patty was just learning to speak, forming new words, actually talking; he thought communication was a step up the ladder beyond the fundamental separation between what one could see and what one couldn’t, but the transition from muteness to speech was gradual, and until one could entirely articulate what he was seeing, Adam thought the world beyond the veil would always reveal itself without the fear of its discovery by those from whom it wished to remain hidden.

            Patty had climbed out of his crib again. There was a thin light washing in through his window, bringing with it the shadows of the trees as they swayed, playing like puppets against the entrance wall. Patty was standing at his closet door. The bi-folds were closed. The boy stood there, in a new diaper now, holding the hem of his blankie as it dangled to the carpet; he was staring up at the closet.

            “Patty? You okay?”

            “Bampa. In here. In here.”

            Patty was smiling. Adam felt a cold fear wash over him. Because he knew Patty could see what he could not. He knew that. Because he would tell Danny soon, when morning finally came and he could sneak out of the house before his mom could bother him, before his mom could attempt to console him and see if he was still on about what she figured was nonsensical accusations, that some could see ghosts where others couldn’t. Adam only stared at the door, suddenly so afraid he could barely breathe.

            “Where?”

            “In here, Dam dam. In here.” 

            Adam slowly reached for the door. Wanting to appear brave in front of his baby brother. And he pulled it open—

            There was nothing. Nothing but the darkness of clothes and the smell of the hamper.

            “Be back, Dam dam. Bampa be back.” Patty was smiling up at him, his baby teeth like little cobblestones.

            Adam carried with him a dark secret about Reedy Creek as he approached the clearing at the foot of the farmhouse: a door had opened somewhere between the layers, and he and his friends had trespassed, they’d found something they shouldn’t have, and they lingered. And something didn’t like that at all.

8

Adam came to the clearing once again. The place Lazarus called Rotting-Row, whose gate was marked by the dead crow. This morning the field was clear at the foot of the farmhouse. There were no animals, though the smell remained. Adam figured it always would. Lazarus probably pulled out the front loader and pushed the carcasses into the pit just east of this place. The pit you found when you brought grampa. The pit you saw when you damned him.

           The sun was like fire behind the pitched roof. Adam walked through the clearing, feeling the grass crunch beneath his sneakers.

           Do you think Pug’s right? That Reedy Creek is dying? Can a town die?

           He didn’t know. He came to the front stoop and looked up at the cameras, their cords all cut. Because Lazarus had told him his father and the council didn’t have the right to know and see everything. That some secrets were best kept. He tried the knob on the door into the kitchen, somehow knowing it would turn. Understanding it was probably unlocked for him. Just like the way in was cleaned for you. You’ve seen enough death, haven’t you? That thought gave him chills. He walked through the kitchen, feeling the floor groan, heading toward the balustrade and stairway at the front. Maybe this place is like Reedy Creek. You ever think of that? It’s old and dying, rotting with the entropy of all things moving on. But its basement is alive with the circuitry of progress. With knowledge. He looked upstairs, wondering what he might find there. If any house could be haunted he thought it was this one. He thought many ghosts lingered in the hallways above, dancing in motes of sunlight, waiting with dire glee to brush past him with cold breaths. Adam only shivered. He could see dust swirling in whorls above where the early sun light cascaded into the hall, seeing the peeling wallpaper whose surface was of floral wealds, numerous fading colors in dizzying patterns; he wondered what Patty might see if he brought his brother here. He wondered whom Patty might talk to.

           Adam went to the door that started everything. The door with the hum. His own sort of damnation. And he knocked. Adam Kramer knocked on that door once again because he was certain he was right. And sometimes that certainty was like a drug.

           The door opened to the dank stone stairway and the sound of generators. Many of them. Humming with the power of sight.

          “Welcome back, Mr Kramer.” Grimwood smiled his toothsome grin, his face just a splintered shade beneath his fedora. So much like his dreams he was confident it couldn’t be coincidence. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

           Grimwood knew everything.

          “I need a new tape.”

          "Is it a demand you ask of me?”

          “A favor, sir.”

           His smile grew wider as he led the boy toward the stairs, clapping shut the steel door behind him. The smell of the underworld was like his parents’ closet, oh so long ago, once upon a time before he knew there was a Reedy Creek, before his grampa was taken from him, before before before, when the man with the peppermint breath broke his father.

          “A favor begets a favor, Mr Kramer.”

           Outside in that clearing a crow fell dead in the grass. It had circled the farmhouse, taking in the morning air to watch the light shimmer in the cornfields. And it fell as so many had before, wings spanned, like an ink teardrop.