He knows what my mother looks like. Like him, if I start something, it has to end in death.
So I watch the cop as he recedes back to his patrol car. Once in his seat his gaze lingers over me for an extra second, and then he pulls out, turns around, and disappears. A gust of wind rises off the water and blows the black bouquet of a rotting New England south into my face. I can smell the Salem witch hunts, bodies hanging in the sun. Giles Corey refusing to enter a plea of guilt or innocence, doomed to torture and crushed to death beneath a board covered in rocks. His words carry on the breeze. I can hear him demanding of his judges, more weight. More weight. What a total badass. More weight, as the rocks piled up and his lungs exploded.
I run my index finger along the grooves.
SAY YOU LOVE SATAN.
I climb back into the Mustang and follow the slow-trolling cop out of the park. I kill a couple of hours grabbing a long breakfast at a local diner. I drive home and find my father's vomit all over the place. He's had a bad night himself but he made it in to work. I'm impressed. There's no note for me. We'll never exchange words again.
I pack my shit in two rucksacks, steal what cash is around, and take a cold shower. The icy water isn't enough to drive down my fever. I climb out sweating, my face red, my eyes spider-webbed with bloody veins. I dry myself. A couple of the bites and scratches are infected. I clean and bandage them as best as I can. You could make a set of dentures from the teeth indents on my thighs.
I dress, take one last look around, and I'm off for good.
I head to the cemetery to make sure that Ricky and his cronies haven't disturbed my mother's grave. It's entirely conceivable. I didn't tell him my name but I'm certain he knows it by now.
I stand before my mother's tombstone and my ankles throb as if she's reached up and taken hold of them. She's taught me prayers that aren't quite prayers, and I recite them aloud, louder than I intend. The fever burns through me.
Other mourners and visitors turn in my direction. Rose petals and strands of silk flowers float by on the breeze. I nearly ask my mother what I'm supposed to do now, but I'm afraid that she'll answer, with a tone of disappointment thick in her voice.
It's impossible to shake the image of her skull on Ricky's homemade altar, radiating force and dominion. I can see him and his followers kneeling before a reliquary of ashen bones and stolen trinkets. They're out in a field that has a lightning-split coven tree at its center. They chant petitions and benedictions they've learned from stolen library books. They dance around in the nude, in the tidal spray, calling on the infernal order, crying out for more soldiers from the pit.
I can see Ricky going down his list, name by name, inviting his victims out to the woods, the thickets, the sawgrass, the dunes. He maims and kills and leaves his prey unburied. He takes their eyes and throws them into the fire. He takes their eyes and uses them in his dreams. He makes me bear witness.
9
On Linda's porch I stand fast while her father works my midsection. Like her, he's got a lot of muscle to him. He hooks me twice more to the ribs while screaming what a filthy animal I am. I swallow my laughter. He should only know what his daughter is capable of. He should only see her in action.
Linda's eyes meet mine. She's having a hard time hiding her smile too. And her fear. The amusement plays there in her face. The terror rises and fades from one moment to the next. She loves me genuinely now. She loves me now because she knows Ricky is no longer the only boy who knows how to talk to demons.
Her old man says he's calling the cops. He says he's going to kill me. Her mother lets out a wail from the other side of the screen door, like a trapped animal seconds away from gnawing off its own trapped paw.
Despite his brawn he's not doing much damage. I resist striking him back. My father's done a lot worse to me. I know how to deflect and dodge and buckle just right. It keeps everyone happy. He's not hurting me and I have no need to kill him. Unlike the cop, whose rage can never be spent, Linda's father is already wearing himself out. I can take this in my sleep. I do take this in my sleep.
I understand his fury. Linda's covered in bruises, welts, bandages, butterfly Band-Aids and gauze. Some of it's my fault. Most of it is Gwen's. All of it was at Linda's own request and passionate need. No matter how bad she looks, Gwen is bound to look much worse.
He backhands me and I taste blood. The heady stink of it ruins what's left of my patience. What would daddy say if he knew his little girl got off fifteen times thanks to our minor agonies? I spit and my laughter comes out with the blood. He rushes in to try to pummel my belly again but I've had it. In one fluid motion I'm on him and he's down next to the barbeque grill, and I'm making sounds that I haven't made in a very long time.
So's he. It takes thirty seconds of using my hands in strange ways to make him sob and whine and mewl. My laughter gets louder inside of my head. Outside of my head, I am whispering in a harsh voice, describing just one small act that Linda and I performed last night. He squawks like a chicken about to meet the axe.
I kneel on his chest and enjoy his panic. My mouth waters. My mother's secret name is in my throat. My own secret name is bound in a box made of lead and leather and hidden under my heart.
I thrust him from me. He hits the side of the house and wood shingles splinter. I stand and the clouds move together and move apart, thunder murmuring distantly, and the night birds are signing in the morning.
Linda places her hands on either side of my face and draws me closer. She kisses me deeply and I follow her to the Mustang. We get in. We drive on to the next act of our Grand Guignol Theater that plays out beneath a very bad star, moving us along as it must.
'I wanted you to snap his neck,' she tells me. 'I know you could've done it. Why didn't you do it?'
All of our fathers want us dead, and we want all of them dead. Her mother's wail is the only bit of grace I've experienced in longer than I can remember.
'Next time, kill him,' she says. 'And her. Especially her. She deserves it even more than him. She deserves it the most, my fucking God, living the way she does, if you can call it life. So vague, so transparent. They disgust me. I'll help you plan how to do it. He's got a shotgun collection. He keeps them locked in cases in the den but I know where he keeps the key.'
There's no need to point out that she sounds like a moron.
We drive around town, in rough concentric circles, with Aztakea Woods as a kind of central point. I weave around the streets keeping an eye out for Ricky. There's going to be more blood on his hands soon, if there isn't already. Someone else is going to have to say he loves Satan. Someone else might love his mother.
Linda feels it too. I glance at her and she's overjoyed. The Acid King's will is in the wind. She peels back her bandages and checks her wounds. They're infected too, of course. She has the start of a fever. Gwen's bites and burns and razor slashes have ushered her down the road of transcendence. She always knew there was another level to love and hate, one beyond normality, but now she's experienced it firsthand. It's left her gorged and wanting more.
We ride up and down Jericho Turnpike and stop and have brunch at the Majestic Diner on Old Country Road. We eat in silence. The buzzing, banal conversations of the other patrons are painful to hear. Linda tilts her head like she's got an earache. My chin is cocked at the same angle.
We skip out on the check. Back in the car she talks about murder like it's a new team cheer. Something to practice after classes until you get it just right. Something to do in front of a crowd to get them all applauding. She acts like it's an important part of school spirit. She wants to butcher old lovers, gut cheerleaders who don't pull their weight, cut the school custodian's throat. She says he lurks around in the girls' locker room hoping to catch a flash of naked teenage ass. She's got kill fantasies about the team mascot, the QB who got sacked three times at last year's homecoming, the assistant principal who put his sweaty hand on her knee. She wants to throw acid in the face of the science teacher who gave her detention in the ninth grade.
Her rage calls to my rage. I try hard not to writhe in my seat, clutching the wheel tighter. I light a cigarette and lean my elbow out the window.
'I want to fuck you in the middle of Times Square,' she purrs. It's a pretty dramatic jump from all her kill fantasies. She tells me to get on the LIE and rip towards the mid-town tunnel.
One of her old boyfriends used to bring over cheap porn films, the kind shot in somebody's basement. They'd hang a sheet on the wall in her bedroom and use it as a screen. Then he'd run the projector and they'd watch nasty
