Chapter 16

1

There were stars on his ceiling. The little ones that glowed in the dark. He sometimes lay awake and stare at his ceiling, disappearing into that infinite void, but he wouldn’t understand the thought in those words. He was just a boy. His dad said there was an opportunity up there, beyond the clouds. His dad didn’t really talk to him much. But when he did, when he sat down on his bed when his mom was already asleep (her tummy was big and round with his new sister or brother—he hoped brother, somebody he could throw the baseball to, somebody to take to Fenway and watch the Sox with, somebody to pin the blame on when he did bad boy things) he looked up at those stars as well. He didn’t read from any of the storybooks he had in his room. Maybe his dad didn’t like stories. He told him they were living on Spaceship Earth, and one day, one day when everything here, all of the food, was suddenly gone, they might have to evacuate to one of the planets on his ceiling. One of those glow-in-the-dark stickers, where scientists will have succeeded in creating a habitable environment where they could farm and grow new food.

            “There’s too many people, Adam. Too many of us. And we take more than we need. We take advantage. We are an entitled generation. But one day there won’t be anything left to take. One day we will have to look to the stars and take from them. Because that’s all we know how to do.”     

            But tonight he just stared at those stickers because he wasn’t tired. Or if he was, there was just too much on his mind to carry him into sleep.

            He heard the front door knock. So dull and lifeless, carrying with it a metronomic pulse that would sound like his mother’s heartbeat to his baby brother or sister. He heard the door open. He heard voices. He didn’t recognize them. Maybe they are people from the stars. People here to tell his dad to stop taking or one day nothing would be left.

            And then he heard something break. Something like glass. And he heard his mom. He heard her scream, heard scrambling footsteps up the stairs, heard the low timbre of men (star people) muffled through the walls, men he’d never heard speak before, and now the sound that was the door knocking became his own heart, so steady, that pulse carrying the rhythm until his bedroom door opened.

            “Adam…Adam…”

            It was his mom. She staggered into the room. Her face looked haggard in that dim, green cast of the glow-in-the-dark stars, her eyes recessed into white pinpoints.

            “Wake up, Adam…wake up. Come on…come with me…”

            He felt her fingers, usually so sheepish, so timid, grabbing the tufts of his collar, his pajamas a plain white. His friends had fun PJs; Graham had Red Sox ones, with the sheets to match, but his were just the boring stark white linens one expected to see in a hotel. She pulled him out of the bed; he didn’t have time to ask what was wrong, to ask what the star people were doing downstairs. Are they here to take us to space? He heard more voices from the main floor, heard his father, heard the man who so rarely spoke to him, who so rarely expressed anything to him that he’d become a stranger.

            “Mom?”

            She didn’t answer. She cradled him against her; he felt the protuberant brow of her belly, felt how rigid it was through her shirt; he could feel her heart, racing so fast, like rain patter against his eardrums. They went into his mom and dad’s room. Into the closet by the bathroom. His mom shut the door and she carefully receded back into the hanging clothes with him still in her arms, her grip strong and certain, sinking so swiftly into his dad’s pants. He could smell the man’s cologne, could smell an earthen dank that was the moist towels near the hamper.

            “Mom?” Now his voice was louder. He wasn’t crying. Maybe if he had been asleep he would be; maybe if his mom had pulled him from his dreams the utter confusion would have been enough to break him. But now he was alert enough to understand something was terribly wrong, that the sound of his mother’s heartbeat was an alarm more than anything.

            “Please, Adam, please…don’t talk. Not now.” She pressed his head against her chest. Her fingers were a comfortable pressure against his skull, like a maternal helmet. He heard the voices through the floor. Voices that weren’t quite screams but in their hum sounded angry. Sounded scary.

            And then he heard his father scream; the sound was shrill, hollow. He thought his daddy was invincible. But that was the sound of a broken man; that was the sound of a fragile man.

            “Daddy…”

            “No…” His mom pressed into his head harder, rocking now, pacing with the pulse of her heart.

            He heard something snap. Like a wet linen cracking in the wind or a tree branch breaking in a canyon. His father screamed again. This time louder. But weaker. Like somebody giving up. He didn’t understand where this thought had come from. In time maybe he would learn it was the version of himself that would have to be tough. The survivor. Another snap. Another scream. A pattern that would drive anybody to insanity.

            And then there were footsteps. Up the stairs. Down the corridor. The star people are mad at your daddy. The star people are looking for you. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe he never would.

            “Oh God…”

            His mom’s voice was just a mutter. A whisper.

            And the closet door opened. But it was wrong. This time it was wrong. Unlike the other times. The countless times when that door opened to the man with peppermint breath. The man who would take his mother by the hair, the man who would throw her on the bed. The man who would talk to grampa on the phone.

            “Grimwood?” His voice sounded so strange saying it. He was nine years old. But he knew the man standing in the doorway, the man with the low drawn fedora whose eyes were cast in the shadows but whose lips leered in a madman’s grin.

            “I’ve been looking for you, Adam Kramer. Ever since I watched you play ball.”

            “Leave my son alone!”

            “Sorry ma’am. I’ve got a job for your son. You should have never brought your boy to Reedy Creek. What happens here is your fault. Your husband’s fault. Its sins are on your head, you bitch!”

            And Grimwood’s eyes, hidden for so long in that crescent moon shadow, slid finally into the light to reveal scarlet clots that dripped from his face in bleared lines, and his thin lips stretched into a jeer that pulled back from filed teeth, from fangs that left his lower lip cut to ribbons, and his pallid soapstone fingers, gnarled in knotted bone, reached out to him as he clutched to his mom—

2

Adam came into the kitchen. It was morning and last night was what he would forever call the Long Night. It started with Lazarus out in the woods and ended on Deermont Court just off Pug and Croak’s street. They took a long corridor lit by fluorescents from under the farmhouse that led to a doorway into a shed. Or something like a shed. He would think, even as he turned around to look at the clapboard siding and tar shingles, that what one would expect to find in that place when he opened the door would be a few shelves, some hedge clippers and a lawn mower, and a plywood back wall upon which hundreds of spiders would nestle in the darkness and stir whenever light entered. But there was only a staircase leading to Reedy Creek’s basement. And so this non-descript doorway would sit like some utility house by Pug’s Tudor and where, just last night, a table was set up at the curb to house about thirty coolers of beer. And when he’d finally gone to bed, after the Fenway Four had parted ways and agreed to sleep on Grimwood’s proposal before any of them came to a concrete answer (and of course agreed to talk about it with each other first), he had that same vicious nightmare, that goddamn dream about what grampa called the Low Breed, the nightmare that so often left his sheets wet with piss when he woke up screaming. This morning the linens were thankfully bone dry, but he suspected he might have been crying. At some point. He wasn’t sure.

            “You okay? Didn’t see much of you at the barbecue last night.”

            His mom was in the kitchen with Patty. His brother was staring at his hands, a mound of oatmeal on his tray with signs that his paws had found their way into the sticky goop, but not much had apparently made his mouth yet. Adam wondered if what he’d said yesterday, that somewhat querulous quip about his grampa and about his dad, still felt like a leaden weight on his mom. He’d watched the air leave her, he had, and that was mostly expected. But to think he’d like the reaction was something that surprised him; it was the gotcha moment of one in a debate who’d found a logical fallacy in his opponent’s argument, that sudden and exciting understanding that for once he may have found the higher ground.

            “Just pallin’ around with the guys.”

            “Seriously, Adam. You okay?”

            So she did see something. Or at least sense it. For as much as he sometimes questioned her as a mother, especially when he saw his friends’ moms, when they spoke and when they asked if he’d like to stay for dinner with the interested dedication and decorum to which he was so familiar from TV shows like Cosby or Family Ties, he always understood what he had at home was a product of what his dad had become in his field. And his dad was once important. Self-important, the Jew would say, and maybe that was partly true, but Adam saw the way people talked to his dad back then. The way they respected him. And he felt guilty for so long because he didn’t feel the same way. But now, the tone in her voice, the way her eyes looked, he was reminded that she could be something special when she wanted to be. That she could be motherly. And maybe that was enough for him.

            He couldn’t have stopped it if he wanted to. Adam cried. And when Barb Kramer saw those first tears, she went to her boy. And for that one moment it was perfect. He would always think that. He would.

            “I had the dream again. The buh…bad dream.” It was a slight stutter. But he got it out. She’d already whisked him to the table and Patty only watched his big bro with silent curiosity.

            “Oh God,” Barb said.

            “I’d forgotten how, well, how real it would be.”

            “I hate to ask, but the therapist always said it was smart to talk. That bottling it wouldn’t make it go away but grow and grow until you couldn’t contain it anymore.” Adam always thought about the Hulk when Dr Sawyer spoke to him about the horrible dreams, and he always suspected his mom gave the man a different version of the true events, just to save his dad’s reputation. He always thought about just holding onto those dreams, holding onto those memories until they grew so large he would just burst into a ferocious monster with enough power to find those men in the suits and kill them. He would kill each and every one of them. The thought frightened him because he’d have it with such conviction; he didn’t care about mercy, about law, he just wanted those men to pay. “Did you finish the dream? Did you let it finish?”

            He hadn’t. Because it wasn’t the real dream. The normal dream. This one was different and somehow worse because it was unexpected. But he wouldn’t let his mom know that; he wouldn’t let her know why he might have had such a nightmare, that he’d found a place under their feet, a place in the tunnels where men watch everything on monitors, and the man in the fedora patrolling the entire operation was the leader of the Low Breed and he wanted to hire Adam for his services. To what? He didn’t know.

            “The man, the man with the peppermint breath.”

            “I remember.”

            “He came to the, to the closet…and he pulled you out. He…he hit you.”

            His mother closed her eyes. He didn’t know what those men did to her when they first came to the door. He could imagine, yes, but reality would always just be the memory of her scrambling into the room to grab him. But what he did see was a man who took her by the arm and pulled her from the closet like a ragdoll. And his mom cried that she was pregnant, that she was with baby, and the man with the black hair and the black suit and the black soul didn’t care. Because he threw her into the bed and climbed on top of her, even as Adam screamed, and his dad screamed below them, still loud even over the groaning bed springs, the creaking floor.

            “Dam dam okay?” Patty looked concerned and had forgotten about the oatmeal. He just watched his bigger brother. He didn’t know any of this story, didn’t see it unless he could somehow watch from his perch in heaven, if that was how it even worked. Adam wondered if he’d heard any of it. His mom sometimes talked to her belly, said it was comforting for the child to familiarize with the voices around. So maybe Patty had heard the bastard with the peppermint breath.

            “I am, baby bro, I am.” He smiled. His mom took his hand, just like she had yesterday when he walked in on her crying. Now it was his turn, he figured.

            “Those men are out of our life. For good, Adam. Grampa saved us, and as much as I sometimes hate to admit it, so did this place. Your dad’s council got him out of a jam. We make mistakes and we learn from them.”

            She’d said that before, but did she know her husband, his dad, was in control of a workshop in the Creek’s dungeons that gave names to a security detail only to find their obits in the Post or their faces on the cover the next day? Did she?

            “I know,” he finally said. “I know, I know, I know. I just have to remind myself. For the best.” He offered her a smile. It was fake but passable. “Just thought I’d grown out of that nightmare.”

            “You never grow out of them. They change as you get older, take different shapes, but they’re never gone.”

            “That’s comforting.”

            Now Barb laughed. “It really isn’t. I’m sorry. But I’m a bad liar. If I told you it would just be baseball and, well, girls, you’d just get mad at me when you found out the truth.” She turned back toward Patty and scolded him for throwing a wad of oatmeal onto the floor; his lips were still mostly clean, meaning none of the chow had yet reached his mouth.

            “You want breakfast? Day before school. I always remembered it being tough knowing summer’s over.”

            “No, no I’m fine. Ate enough last night to choke a horse.”

            Barb chuckled. “Not sure what that even quantifies. Might explain the dream though. Any plans?”

            “Last day with the boys. Meeting them for ball. Who knows what happens tomorrow, right?” He wasn’t sure how much baseball they’d play. They had a lot to discuss. He thought of Grimwood’s eyes in his dream, like clotted paint-splatter, his wraith-like hand reaching for him as he clawed into his father’s clothes in the closet.

            “Right. Well, might as well not take for granted these waning days, Adam. Take it from me. Getting older sucks. Your dad’s got a meeting with the council and your grampa’s scrapbooking. That’s what happens.”

            “Scrapbooking?”

            “Believe it or not. Looking through old pictures of us. Been at it since I was up with Patty. Why don’t you go see him?”

            “I don’t want to.”

            “Are you upset with him?”

            He was quiet for a moment. Because he didn’t know how to truly answer that. “I don’t know. Disappointed maybe. About the accident.” But mostly his secrets. Cause he had a bunch as well, didn’t he?

            “Getting older sucks,” Barb repeated.

            “Sucks!” Patty exclaimed and laughed. This made Adam chuckle. Your grampa’s losing it, bud. Losing it with a capital CRAZY. First he smokes Lazarus’s van, then he ignores you at the BBQ, and now he’s, what, scrapbooking? He’s losing it, and you know what they do with old folks when their heads aren’t in the right place? They ship ‘em off to that geriatric bin that stinks of shit and medicine.

            “Well, I should meet the guys.”

            “This time tomorrow you’ll be learning math while the cute girls oggle you.”

            “Yeah right, mom.” He left. They were okay. That was good. But his grampa was off his meds. And that meant he clearly didn’t give a shit if he left Patty and him alone with his dad. Like their lives before. When he was invisible.

3

“We can all agree, last night was unexpected.”

            That went without saying. If the boys would hold council, Danny figured they should at least present the forum with some sort of structure. Pug thought it was a good idea. And they decided it was best if they convened beneath the bleachers, because there were no cameras under there and they were out of any sight line (that they could see). Croak thought most of the high schoolers would have scored enough free beer at the barbecue when the adults weren’t looking that they were most likely nursing one hell of a hangover this morning. So they shouldn’t, ideally, be by hoping to get high one last time before vacation was up.

            The space was dim and dreary. That was obvious. It still stunk of weed and cigarette smoke; there were enough butts in the dead grass, and what Croak called roaches, to prove any time spent under here would have been in a hazy cloud of smoke. Above them somebody had scratched: REEDY CREEK MINITRUE into the underside of the bleacher, revealing the whitish wood under the paint.

            “I mean, did you think fucking NASA was under our feet?”

            “I didn’t know what I thought,” Adam said, “but it wasn’t that.”

            “It’s a mystery solved, though,” Pug said. He was watching Chels. She was lying in the shade, her nose peeking between tufts of grass and dandelions, watching the boys under the stands. “I mean, as much as we didn’t expect what we saw, at least we did see something.”

            “Pug’s right there,” Danny said. “We went into this with a goal. I’m going to be honest. I didn’t think we’d ever get far with it. Because I didn’t think we were supposed to.”

            “Yeah. There’s some fucked up stuff going on here. I mean, really fucked up. And I’m not just talking about the cameras. When I woke up this morning, my mom was crying. Sitting at the kitchen table. She wasn’t drunk, didn’t have a dude in the house with her. She was just alone. Had been crying for what looked like hours. Randy used to tell me about the way she was when my dad left. She was…I don’t know, I guess broken. That’s the way he put it. I’d imagine when I saw her this morning, it was the same way back then. When she saw me, she got sort of angry. Like, angry at me. Asking me where the hell I was last night. And if I’d seen what happened to Randy.”

            “What do you mean?” Adam asked.

            “She wasn’t really that specific. But he came home pretty bruised up. Said he got the shit kicked out of him.”

            “What? You think it was Lazarus?”

            “You mean Henry?” Danny corrected, looking at Adam briefly, their faces slatted by sunlight.

            “I don’t know. I mean, Henry left us at the farmhouse. Shit, Henry, saying that name doesn’t feel right. He started as Lazarus and I think he should stay that way. Cause that’s the way he’s always made sense. But I doubt he could have high-tailed it back round to the woods by Havenmount to catch up with Randy.”

            “Maybe he used one of the magic hallways under the farmhouse,” Pug said. They knew he was being sarcastic, but at the same time they understood maybe he wasn’t. They all had their suspicions, and they would all shed light on them here, but none would correct Pug. None would call him an idiot for even implying the basement in this town couldn’t be magic, couldn’t be lined with David Copperfield’s blood. Or Merlin’s.

            “Well, even if he did. Even if he could somehow head Randy off, I just don’t think it’s right. I didn’t get that vibe from him last night, you know. Even with the gun. I didn’t think that was his, I guess, intention. Does that make sense?”

            “Does to me,” Danny agreed. “Seemed like he had bigger fish to fry. Grimwood had an errand for him. He had somewhere to be.”

            “Right,” Croak said. “Grimwood…” His voice trailed. As if he was pondering something. “I dreamed about him. Geez, after what happened last night, I figured it was a possibility. I did. But, it was so strange.”

            “Me too,” Pug said. Adam nodded his head as well.

            “I did too.” Adam’s eyes were closed. He thought about the man in the fedora as he reached into the closet. Reached and reached and reached until all of the warmth in the world was gone.

            “So it’s gotten even more fucked up,” Danny laughed.

            “It wasn’t the first time. Not for me at least,” Pug said. “I know that’s effed, but I dreamed about a man in a hat, kind of like the hat Grimwood was wearing, after we found the cameras, after we found the VHS tapes. And he was blackmailing people. My parents…he had bad tapes of them, tapes people in my church wouldn’t like seeing them in. That’s a pretty big coincidence. Cause when Grimwood did open the steel door last night, I thought I was still dreaming. It was déjà vu.”

            “Or an incredible coincidence,” Danny said.

            Adam thought about what he wanted to say. Because hearing Pug, hearing him admit for the first time of his dream rendered his own about the man with the crow’s eyes with an alacrity that went beyond coincidence. They were kids, and they still got scared listening to ghost stories, so the power of suggestion was still highly relevant that whom they did finally meet beyond the door was some sort of monster. “So you all dreamed about him last night?”

            Croak didn’t say anything. He just plucked some grass and twisted it between his thumb and forefinger. Pug nodded and the Jew stared at an etching under the top bleacher seat that read TONY MONTANA HAS THE GOODS. And there was a phone number or something beneath it. He didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know when it was scratched into the wood, but he knew it was a nice little escape from what they were all talking about.

            “What did you dream?”

            “Something was under my bed. Scratching at my box spring, just scratching and scratching. When I finally did check, when I could find the courage to look, something under there turned and the whites of its eyes were showing in the shadow. It smiled at me and I knew who it was. I just knew. It was such an awful smile, but knowing…like he was leering, like a bully laughing when he’s pulled your ginch up your butt. And he grabbed me. Grabbed me by my PJs and pulled me under the bed. But it wasn’t my bed, or my room or my house. Or anything. It was that Watchtower, the place with the TVs. And he, Grimwood, told me he had a job for me. That he wanted me to kill my sister cause she smoked weed. That my mom and dad wouldn’t care because she did something wrong and because she was the oldest, she somehow deserved it. And he handed me a knife. It was an old knife. Its handle was made of bone. White but kind of yellowing. And cracked. He told me to slit Ange’s throat as she slept so she wouldn’t make a noise of protest. He told me she was asleep right now, told me it would be so quick I wouldn’t have time to feel bad about it. Because I was doing something important. And the scary thing is, I actually thought about it.” Pug stopped. His face was flushed; he was visibly upset. He only stared between his knees.

            “Jesus,” Croak said.

            “It was so real, man. So real. Even thinking about it now, I can feel the knife in my hand. When he handed it to me, still smiling. My fingers tingle.” Pug looked at Chels and watched the spaniel follow a butterfly on its lopsided course over the field. Usually she would have chased the thing around until she tired. But now she only watched. She was there when he woke up from that nightmare, sitting at the foot of his bed, panting and watching. She somehow knew he was having a bad dream, and he could only appreciate that she’d stand guard.

            “How about you?” Adam said, looking at Croak.

            Cory was still offering Pug some form of consolation, as if a tender glance would suffice. “I don’t really remember my dad,” he said absently. “He left when I was younger. It’s always just been us three. Me and my mom. And Randy. I mean, I do remember him, but I don’t want to and I think that’s made the difference. I think that’s been more powerful. It’s why I’m not screwed up. Cause Randy took it to heart. Like it was his fault. And my mom, she tries her best, she does. And she’s amazing. But I know she was hit hard and I know she still holds onto it. But last night I did remember him. The asshole. But it wasn’t him. Wasn’t really my dad. It was Grimwood. Same stupid old guy hat, same grin, same eyes, same bony hands. But everything that happened, everything that led up to his leaving us high and dry just, I saw it again. I saw it and I remembered. And I—” Croak stopped for a moment. His voice had broken; there was no stutter. Pug thought he might lose it, that he might break down, and he considered going over to show some support might benefit them all, but he cleared his throat instead, clenching his fists. “I fucking hate my dad. Like you Adam. I do…so when I woke up this morning and my mom was crying and my brother wasn’t up, he was locked away in his room, I just…” He cleared his throat again. “I thought it was all real, that it happened again, that I had to live through it again and try to forget it again.”

            “But it was just a dream. Like we all had. Because we just saw the guy last night. We saw his operation. Of course we’d, what, take everything we learned to bed.”

            “So you had a dream as well?” Adam asked.

            “It doesn’t matter.”

            “It does. It does because we decided we had to talk about this. That we couldn’t make any decisions without really thinking about it.”

            “Adam, they’re just dreams.”

            “If you really believe that, Danny, you can jet.”

            Danny sat there and thought about that. Maybe he even considered it. But he didn’t move.

            “It’s okay. You can tell us,” Pug whispered.

            “It’s so stupid,” Danny muttered. “My dad’s a geek. A fucking dork. Doofus. Whatever you want to call it. I know I ain’t great, whatever, but my dad told me he was the kid with a damn pocket calculator. Loves numbers. Typical Jew, right.” He smiled. But it was false. “My dad told me to be the person I want to be. Not what others tell me to be. I always appreciated that. I love baseball. Just as much as him. Maybe not the same way, for the numbers, the stats, but I love the history, the trivia, the game, the strategy. My dad lost his uncle. His aunt. Polish Jews. They never made it here, to Ellis Island. Not like my grandparents. It’s like a flip of a coin, those who make it and those who don’t. Chance. My dad said the Nazis were like a mouth, a hungry mouth, and it really liked the taste of one thing in particular: Jews. Like me. Like him. He told me for some reason some people just don’t like us. That no matter what we’ve done or what we’ve been through, some people think everything’s our fault. I always thought it sounded silly. But my dad, he told me about a guy in New York, a guy named Eddie Hilton. An older kid who lived on the same block as my dad in the late 50s I think. Not sure exactly. But he was bigger. And when he found out my dad was a Jew, when he fucking found out he—” Danny stopped and ran his hand through his thick hair. He’d worn his Yankees cap, but it sat between his legs in the grass now. “Eddie was a bully. But my grandpa, he’s a bigger man. And mean. Worked at a watch repair shop a friend of his started. He could take apart and put back together a Phillipe Patek. He had a temper. Eddie knew this. So he bullied the only way he knew wouldn’t leave a visible mark. He went after my dad’s mind. He did. And my dad warned me about people like Eddie. My whole life. I’ve never really seen it, nah, but maybe the people I know are more open minded. Last night I dreamed I was in New York. Just on some back street. Fire escapes above me, people flapping out sheets; it was summer, just hot and thick with humidity. I think kids might have been running through water coming from a busted hydrant. But I was alone in this alley, I was, and Eddie Hilton was there. Or somebody like him, cause I know it didn’t look like my dad’s old tormentor. How would I know, right? Plus, the guy behind me, the guy who’d come from between a couple dumpsters, he was wearing a fedora. And he came up to me and smiled. Shit-eating grin. I asked him what he wanted and he said: ‘you the Christ-killer boy, ain’t ya? Cause you couldn’t stop at Jesus, could ya? Couldn’t stop at Jesus, ya had to fuckin’ eat up his followers like little vampires and put their blood in your matzos. Hitler shoulda gassed your pa and your ma and your entire goddamn bloodline!’”

            Danny had to stop; there was a vicious clarity to the way he spoke, as if he was recounting everything with an insane attention to detail, to the point where he tried to mimic Eddie Hilton’s gruff accent. Or what he imagined it must have sounded like.

            “This is so stupid. We’ve got shit on our minds and we put Grimwood there cause of what we saw. Nothing more, nothing less.”

            “You sure about that?” Adam asked.

            “You think it’s otherwise? Some dopey fucking supernatural thing?” Danny laughed; it was inauthentic and scared. As it should be. “Tell us, then, smart ass, what did you dream?”

            “My old childhood nightmare. And Grimwood was my bogeyman.” He wouldn’t say more. He didn’t want to say more. Because it was too real. He could still feel the pull of that wraith’s grip, those bony fingers wrapped around his little wrist with the savage strength of a killer.

            “So we all had bad dreams. How could we not? We saw a goddamn pervert in a big, expensive room watching people. On your fucking dad’s orders, too, Adam. Did you ever think of that? Did you?”

            “Guys, stop it,” Pug intoned. “Adam’s not his dad. We all know the guy’s weird. Maybe not this weird, but we went into this knowing he had his hand up Lady Weird’s skirt. Adam, your dad’s an asshole. You’d be the first to say it, and I can see you agreeing now. We came here for a reason. And we didn’t want Grimwood to watch our little meeting. Hence the bleachers. He saw us come, but he can’t watch us chat. Can’t see our reactions. Hasn’t sent his little henchmen to come nab us. So we can assume for now that his attention’s elsewhere. Good riddance. He showed us the videos because he wanted us to find him. But we had to make the choice to. And now he’s leaving the choice up to us about his offer as well. Says more about him than it does about most adults. Cause we’re kids, and most adults just tell us what needs done. That’s it, that’s all.”

            “So you’re saying he respects us?” Croak was skeptical.

            “I’m saying he’s not our dad, so we can say whatever we want to him, and I think that’ll be enough. He said Reedy Creek is broken. I think we can all agree there’s some truth to that. People are dying. We’ve seen it. He showed us enough in that room of his to make him some sort of mascot in our nightmares. And maybe that’s what our brains had to do to make sense of everything.”

            “We had to turn him into a nightmare, into our bogeyman?” Adam asked.

            Pug only shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. How could I? I just know he brought us to his place for a reason. We’ve been hunting that reason since you hit that homerun, Adam. So we should probably decide if it’s something that interests us. Helping him. Being his eyes.”

            “For what, though? He didn’t really say anything. And it’s that sort of, well, that sort of haziness that has me concerned.”

            Pug watched the Jew turn over that thought in his head. Always the rational one. And he could appreciate that. But even beyond the dream he’d had about the bone-handled knife, about the twisted request that he slide its edge over his sister’s throat as she slept, he couldn’t help but think about the possibilities of one with so much access. And this thought scared him considering how he felt when they first watched Robert Wilson in the sanctity of his own home. The story you’re writing. It could be real, Pug ol’ boy. You could be the eyes in the shadows. You could see so much. That sort of knowledge is powerful. He knew it was his thought, his voice, but it sounded like Grimwood’s words and he shuddered.

            “Who knows his end game, or if he even has one? He could be a damned crazy war vet. I’ve read about them; their minds are all screwed up cause of what they’ve seen. Maybe he finds comfort in other people’s shit. That’s why he’s paying Lazarus to dole out drugs here. And those other two guys—”

            “The smokers,” Croak finished, understanding what Danny was on about. “They sit there and smoke and drink coffee. Like they’re rhymes of each other. Did you guys see that at all? Have the same thought?”

            Pug nodded.

            “Everything about what he’s got down there seems off. I pictured those two guys, Steve and Bernard, I pictured them without faces. Just big eyes and little holes in their throats the size of cigarettes. They have just one purpose and Grimwood’s taken from them what they don’t need.”

            “Shit that’s grim, Croak.”

            “Yeah. And what if he did the same to Lazarus, right. Just fucking shot him in the face so he’d have nothing else to do but his bidding.” This thought was new for Croak, but the more they talked about it, the more these things made sense. Something was off in the Creek. The dead animals. The cameras. Everywhere. And a council calling the shots to a crazed old man living underground with errand-boys who was just on the look out for more little helpers. Like a hobo Santa Claus.

            “So, everything we’ve discussed here, it seems like we’re coming to the same, I don’t know, decision…conclusion. Yeah, I like that word better,” Danny said.

            “Thanks, but no thanks,” Adam agreed.

            “Yeah. Is that it? If this is our council, like Grimwood said, do we put it to a vote? Like what Adam’s dad does with his nutjob friends?”

            Adam looked at Danny and only shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt. So we have two motions. Do we help Grimwood, or do we forget the fucker and go to school? New day, new problems.”

            “I like it,” Croak nodded.

            “Okay. So motion one. We help the old pervert. Any takers?”

            Nobody shifted. Nobody raised their hand.

            “Okay,” Adam said. “Motion two: we forget Grimwood and go on with our lives. That’s that. We discovered something’s going on in Reedy Creek, but we go on as kids. Not our problem. Maybe I’m making it sound, I don’t know, careless, but it is what it is. No sense lying about it.”

            Croak raised his hand first; it nearly brushed the underside of the bleacher seat above him, where somebody had stuck an old wad of pink bubblegum. Danny followed. Adam nodded his head. “How about you, Pug?”

            “Majority rules, right. Doesn’t matter what I think. Three votes yay.”

            “So you’re considering it?”

            Pug got on his knees. “No. Just sad. Cause it’s over. What made us, well, us. It’s gone. Tomorrow’s a new start. New grade. Maybe new friends.”

            “That’s not what this is about,” Adam said defensively. “Grimwood said so himself. We’re special, or he wouldn’t have watched us play ball.”

            “We’re the Fenway Four,” Croak chirped.

            “Hate the name, but I agree,” Danny said. “We wouldn’t have been invited if we were randos, man. We intrigued him because we were better than the secrets in this town. Bigger than them, maybe.” He smiled. It was a powerful thought. Precocious. And at the moment none of them would understand how right Danny was. How incredibly on-the-mark he was. Because as a foursome they were powerful, and that could be dangerous. Couldn’t it?

            “So what do we do? How do we tell him?”

            Danny looked at Adam and then over at his bag lying in the sun near Chels. They’d brought their baseball stuff; it was mostly for show, but Danny hoped they would break out the bats and have one last go at it before the school bell rang. Because baseball was summer. And this was the best summer of his life. “We don’t tell him. We show him.”

            Danny reached into his knapsack and moved aside his glove; he’d taken some of his mom’s eyeliner a few months ago, the really thick stuff, and told the guys it was Eye Black. The charcoal ball players rubbed under their eyes to staunch any glare from the sun so they could catch fly balls better. “Pug, hate to say this, but you’re the biggest billboard. Take off your shirt.”

4

You were afraid of this, weren’t you?  It was an agreeable thought. Avery Hopson wasn’t old enough to have forgotten how kids were. How teenagers were. Because they were led oh so easily by public opinion, and she knew small towns like this, especially in what she’d call America’s shitstain, looked down upon those styles and people deemed odd by country standards. Randy got into his funk when Ted left. But she hated to call him by his name. No, his given name had become The Asshole, and whenever she discussed the man with her lawyer, that epithet replaced any mentioning of those three letters she’d often moan when they were having sex or talking about life and their future together. Because those three letters had to remain unspoken now; those three letters, that name, it rhymed with how she felt for so long when The Asshole did finally leave. She felt dead. But none of that mattered now. The Asshole didn’t matter. Only what he left in his wake. He was a fucking tornado, spinning in with the vicious and mindless destruction of something blind to its own cause and effect, coming into her life and sweeping her off her feet, giving her two kids then vanishing in those fine wisps of wind leaving only the psychological anguish of a world they built together now left in tatters. That was Ted. The Asshole. Men. In general, they only thought with their dicks, didn’t they? Always looking forward, never behind. Because he never did see what he left; he never did see how Randy reacted, what he turned into. And maybe she was partly to blame. For coming here. For uprooting him. But that had to happen, they had to start again, they had to leave that life. Because in that life it wasn’t just the memories of what they lost but the reality of what Randy was becoming. And she didn’t like it. She didn’t like the music he listened to, the friends he’d made, the disrespectful decisions that were truly just the manifested eventuality of a kid spiting the world that spited him. She got that. He grew his hair out, and though it came in only sparse bursts, he tried his hand at facial hair, at light tufts of stache and burns, and he decked himself out (those were his words) in black to symbolize the anarchic decay of the world, because the world itself was just one big cluster fuck, one big reaction to the Man, and if he was going to prove anything, if Randy was going to represent anything, it was the reaction to the establishment. She didn’t expect people in Reedy Creek would understand that; they wouldn’t understand his long hair, his black hoodies and black ripped jeans and combat boots and don’t-give-a-fuck attitude were all reactions to an established life that had turned its back on him. And that was all on Ted. Ted the Asshole. So maybe what happened last night to him, maybe that was the Creek’s own reaction to what Randy represented. Because everything was cause and effect. Everything was a reaction to some establishment.

            And then he changed. Then he became a Creeker. He cut his hair. Wore a T-shirt. Met a girl. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

            She knocked on his bedroom door.

            “Randy. Angela’s here.” She pressed her face against his door; the lights were off. He was stewing in darkness. In silence. She’d answered the door when the bell rang. She quickly glanced at herself in the foyer mirror. She so often did that; she had to appear presentable if she was going to disappear into the world of dating. Besides her kids, it was all she really had. And maybe that was her own cross to bear. Randy lost himself in some sort of counter-culture. Avery made herself an object. To feel wanted. And she didn’t care what that did, or how she hurt other women as a result. Like that bitch the Asshole went to. The bitch with the red lipstick and tight little ass, that bitch she watched from her car as she gallivanted the way so many untethered little bitches did without kids and without responsibilities. And she partly felt jealous. She wanted that again. She wanted that feeling. Of being looked at, of being wanted. Today she looked the same way she had when the Asshole left her alone with two kids to fend for herself. Her eyes were swollen. She tried to gather herself, to find some semblance of composure, and she opened the door to find Angela, that sweet little thing from down the street. And then the guilt started to eat at her again; it did every time she saw Angela, every time she saw Horace (Cory calls him Pug, poor thing). The guilt that came part and parcel in one who’s become an object.

            She could hear Randy moving. That was a good sign. She would go to his door with Advil, offering him some relief, but she was really just checking on him, to make sure he was still with her. Because a mother’s greatest fear was the quiet and what it implied. She’d read stories in the news about teenagers, about depression, and she understood what could happen in the silence. What angst could express without any reasoning.

            “Please, Randy. You have to come out. For me.” She ran her fingers down the door. You hated him. For a long time. You hated the way he was. But maybe that wasn’t only it. Maybe you hated him because he looked like the Asshole, he was a piece of him. She heard his footsteps shuffling toward the door. She heard the click of the backset. She felt relief.

            Christ, his face. It was worse now, even as he peered out from the darkness. He’d pulled his hair forward over his brow; it dangled in messy tangles, but his eyes were bruised, puffing into purple sockets out of which glazed marbles peered idly. And his nose was so swollen she thought his skin would split like an overstuffed turkey. If she showed him her fear, her disgust, it would only make things worse. It would only send him receding back into the darkness. She knew that. She only inhaled and held her breath, feeling her diaphragm expand, tasting the coffee in her throat.

            “She’s here?” he whispered. It sounded like it hurt to talk.

            “Yes…yes, Angela’s here. She’s waiting in the kitchen. Says you were supposed to come over this morning. For another walk. Does she—oh Randy, does she know?” She went to touch his face but held back her hand. He didn’t need or want to be mothered right now; she thought she’d recognize a glimmer of…hope, maybe, but his eyes were dark and unfeeling. Vacant.

            But that was wrong, wasn’t it? Because there was feeling. There was anger. Randy pushed past her and, clutching his stomach, ambled to the stairs.

5

“My God…your face. Randy, your face…”

            It was the look of surprise that angered him. Infuriated him. She set loose the dogs and she was seeing the mark of their work. Angela’s beautiful eyes, blue (she called them azure) and framed by dark strings of hair curled by either cheek, widened in the expressed revulsion of one who was seeing something horrific and unexpected. But that wasn’t true, was it? Was it?

            “Why did you come?”

            “Randy, what happened?”

            He didn’t answer. He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the foyer, past his mom who only watched, her own eyes puffed with the suggestion that she’d spent the night crying; he could only wonder if that was because of him, or because Cory hadn’t come home, that Scarface had taken the boys hostage. But he didn’t really believe that. He didn’t care at the moment. Right now he wanted to know why Angela came by to gloat. He took Ange out into the front yard by the willow where he used to flick Winstons and watch her and her sister sunbathe. That seemed so long ago now.

            “Randy, my God, you’re scaring me. Were you in an accident?”

            “Why are you here, Angela?” His voice was just a whisper.

            “Your face.” She went to touch him, his jaw, but he pushed away her arm. The look of shock that followed made him content.

            “I’m a big boy, Ange, a big boy. You could’ve just been honest with me. You didn’t have to pretend.” And now he felt like crying. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

            “Pretend? Randy, where is this coming from? What are you talking about?”

            “You said my brother…your brother, they had pics of you, pics of Brad…you wanted them destroyed so you went out with me…”

            “I thought we already covered that.” She smiled. It was demure and sensual, and Randy wanted to slap it off her face. Because it was his mom’s smile, his mom every time the doorbell rang and some new guy was on the stoop with cheap flowers, cheap cologne, and a wallet full of condoms. “Please, Randy, what happened?”

            “You know what happened.” His teeth gritted against his voice. Slithering through the lacuna between his teeth. “You could have told me yourself. You could have told me after the pizza. Or after our walk. You could have told me yourself…”

            “What? Told you what? Randy, you’re not making any sense…”

            “I would have listened, Ange. I really would have.”

            “Randy. What?”

            “You kissed me, Ange. You kissed me. Why did you take it so far? Why?” And now maybe he did want to cry. Maybe he’d earned it. Because she made him believe something was real; she made him believe he could change. That what he’d become over time, what he’d amounted to, could somehow be reversed, could make him better. To make him belong.

            “Take what so far? Come on, what?”

            “I would have left you alone if you told me. If you told me.” He quickly wiped his eye. Moving his arm hurt like a bitch. He was pretty certain at least one of his ribs was broken. Or badly bruised. So maybe she was convinced if she did see a tear it was just his eyes watering from the swelling. But she’d most likely gloat to them anyway. Gloat that she made the weenie cry and they would all have a chuckle. “You didn’t have to send your attack dogs. I would have listened to you.”

            “My attack dogs. Goddamnit, Randy.”

            “I would have fucking listened to you, Ange. I would have. But you played a mean fucking joke. I don’t know what I did to you, I don’t. I don’t know why I deserved it. But I hope you and your boyfriend are happy. I hope you and Brad are happy. Hardy har har, Randy, you fucking putz.” He spit. It was all he could do, and holy hell if it didn’t hurt. The wad had some dried blood in it and he turned around toward his front door. His mom was watching through the window.

            “Randy. Randy!” This time it was a demand.

            He didn’t listen. Randy Hopson closed the door on Angela.

            “Randy. Sweetheart…are you okay? What were you talking about out there?”

            Randy looked at his mom. He gave her the consideration he figured she deserved. Especially if she was worried about him all night. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be angry. Because she brought him here. She brought him to Reedy Creek. “I hate this place. Look what it’s done to me. Look what moving here has done.”

6

“Angela, please, wait for one sec.”

            Avery hurried after the girl. Angela stopped in the street and turned. She was crying.

            “I’m sorry Ms Hopson.” She sniffed.

            “Do you know what happened to him? Do you?”

            “He thinks I do…he does.” A new burst of tears and Avery could only take the girl and embrace her. Feeling guilt with every sob. “I never thought they’d…” She stopped. She looked up, and Avery could see something in her eyes now. She could see something she herself felt whenever she looked in the mirror after washing up, after getting out of bed understanding everything she’d just done was wrong. But she still did it. Every time the phone rang, she still picked up and she still went against every one of her discretions.

            “You never thought they’d what? Who’s they?”

            “I’m sorry Ms Hopson, I have to go.”

            “Angela, who did this to my son?” Now she was angry. Angela did turn and she reached for her arm and pulled her back.

            “Ms Hopson, please, you’re hurting my wrist.”

            “Angela, who did this to my son? If you know anything, you have to tell me.”

            “Nothing. I don’t know anything. It happened after he left me last night. I have to go.”

            And so she would let her. Avery watched Angela jog and then run to her house up the street; she watched until Angela disappeared behind the bushes lining their front walk. Avery stood in that spot. She didn’t know for how long, but she didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to be here anymore. She could slowly feel the poison that was Reedy Creek feeding her intuition. And like so much that would still happen, a chain of events had started in the woods behind Deermont the last Saturday night of 1988’s summer holidays.

7

“Over there. By the camera on the light post.”

            They were snickering. And why shouldn’t they? This was the last day of summer. Their last day. They’d come to a decision under the bleachers and it felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off all of them. Maybe it came down to challenging their own bogeymen. Adam would consider this first, especially as Pug sauntered out toward the baseball field. He’d taken off his T-shirt, understanding he’d be the butt of a few jokes. And maybe the kid relished that. He was the one so afraid of what tomorrow might bring, as if everything they’d done together this summer would somehow erase as a result of a few new people, friends even, joining their fold. But here was Pug now, his cheeks flushed. Danny had him lean against the guardrail at the base of the stands while he used his mom’s eyeliner (Adam knew it wasn’t real Eye Black; he’d never seen Jim Rice or Jose Canseco pulling out mascara in the dug out) to write, as legibly as he could, across Pug’s back. Danny said he didn’t want to have to look at tits while he was concentrating, and Croak nearly burst a blood vessel as he doubled over in laughter.

            “Ha ha,” Pug intoned.

            “They’re a nice pair, though. Makes me want to order a stack of flapjacks at IHOP.”

            “Look like an orangutan’s titties. But perkier,” Croak belted out.

            “Your nipples look like a coupla pink dimes on a pitcher’s mound,” Adam said, and Croak slapped his knees, tears coming to his eyes. Chels only watched with half-hearted interest, her tongue lolled from her mouth, her eyes somehow sad.

            “Guess you must like looking at guys’ tits, then,” Pug said, squinting against the glare of the sun.

            And here he was, walking toward the diamond; the chainlink glinted the sunlight and threw out beads of chinked beams.

            “Stand there and wave to the camera.”

            Pug looked at Danny for a second. He looked at the camera as well, and then slowly raised his hand in an indifferent wave. His skin was pearly white. This was a kid who didn’t take off his shirt at the pool, and it took some convincing to take it off now. But Adam promised Pug would hit first, and he’d have his pick of any player, past or present. “I’m gonna be Ruth. Babe Ruth.”

            “Cause you’re shaped like him. With his mom’s tits,” Croak jibed.

            Pug stood there for what felt like five minutes, just waving at the camera, no doubt saluting Steve and Bernard, those men with enormous eyes and smoke holes in their throats. The sun felt great on his skin. He thought he might burn, but it was nice to soak in a little of what his mom called the vitamin D rays.

            “Turn around and show the pervert our answer,” Danny called. The guys were standing by the dug out. Danny had hauled his bag over to the bench and Adam stood with his bat, his glove hanging off the handle.

            Pug did. He slowly pivoted, still looking up at that camera, what Adam called the crow’s eye, and he thought of Grimwood, the version of him from his dream, the version that would most likely continue to haunt him because a writer always had such a vivid imagination. Take this knife and slice it across Angela’s throat. I bet smoke will rise up from the cut. Her blood will steam. All of that marijuana is trying to get out of her. He shuddered, knowing the man in the fedora would see this. Maybe not now, but one of those watchers, Steve or Bernard, they’d catch this, they would, because they were undoubtedly told to look out for the boys, and so they would be sitting at the table behind those humming Commodores, huffing smokes and draining endless cups of coffee.

            Written on Pug’s back:

            THANKS BUT NO THANKS

            Danny thought it would be enough. It was honest. Pug stood this way, back toward the camera, for another few minutes and then Adam threw him his shirt. He felt the ruffled cotton hit him in the shoulder.

            “Okay Bo Derek. Don’t want to burn your melons. They go soggy.”

            Croak guffawed again, dropping the baseball he’d been tossing up and catching perfunctorily as he watched Pug pose. “Damn I wish we’d brought the Polaroid. I mean, shit, when are we ever goin’ to see that again?”

            “Don’t be jealous,” Pug said, pulling his shirt over his head and jogging toward the bench. “Give me the bat. Ruth’s calling number 715.”

            And they played ball. One last time that summer. But not in Fenway. Fenway had been compromised. Maybe that wasn’t the complete truth; Fenway was just too close to ground zero. That made more sense. They didn’t want to give Grimwood the satisfaction of watching them in that place they’d made, because he ruined it for them. The magic that brought them together, the magic they’d made, it wasn’t really there at all. It was them. Together. That was their power. Fenway would grow feral again with weeds and sweetgrass, and those footprints trod down the base paths and toward the makeshift mound, where a 2x4 would sit among the overgrowth, would begin to disappear. As all things eventually do.