Torn

grabbing his arm and looking at the blood on his palm. “It’s not stopping. I feel dizzy. Not good.”

It looked like the big cut on his arm was the only damage, but there were so many dark stains on his shirt, Devin couldn’t be sure. Cody looked out at the floor. “I say we make a run for it, dive for the front door, and hope it opens. If it doesn’t, we can force it.”

Devin shook his head. “The police will be here any second. Let’s just wait!”

A bursting laugh of air flew from Cody’s mouth. “You, always with the goddamn waiting. What if they don’t? I’m going to pass out. It’s thirty yards, man. Let’s go!”

Devin stared at Cody’s blue eyes. They were wavering. His head seemed to list on his neck. “I’m probably not going to get that door open without you,” Cody said.

Devin counted his breaths. He kept hoping Cheryl and Ben had gotten someone’s attention, that at any second those doors would burst open from the other side, the police would rush in, and they’d be saved.

But the only thing that happened was that Cody’s eyes began to droop. As he held his arm, the blood seeped between his fingers and dripped onto the floor.

Devin tried to remember first aid, how to make a tourniquet. Could he do that?

He took another breath. Another thick drop of Cody’s blood fell.

“Okay,” Devin finally said. “Let’s go. On three.”

The light in Cody’s eyes seemed to flare. A slight smile went to his lips.

“See that?” he panted. “I keep telling Cheryl you’re not so stupid.”

“One…” Devin said, tensing. “Two…”

Before he could say three they were both running, stumbling across the children’s clothing section toward the front door. Nothing else seemed to move except them. The beautiful glass double doors loomed closer and closer. The lights from outside grew brighter.

One second, Cody was beside him, even getting a little ahead; then there was a slight rush of air, and he was gone.

Devin stopped and whirled. Cody was on the floor, on his back, his arms above his head. He was moving. His arms looked wrong, too long. At once, Devin realized the thing was dragging him back into the depths of the store, away from the blinding light.

As Devin watched, it pulled Cody beneath a rack of footsie pajamas, the little cloth legs and feet parting to make way for the creature and its prey.

Devin turned and jumped after them. His feet felt rubbery underneath him. The thing, along with Cody’s torso, vanished beneath the rack.

There was a horrible snapping sound. Then Cody’s powerful voice fell to screaming louder than Devin had ever heard it before. Just before Cody’s feet vanished beneath the rack, Devin leaped across the floor and managed to grab one. He held the ankle, then the whole leg, bracing his feet against the linoleum and pulling as hard as he could.

“I’ve got you! I’ve got you!” he said, but he had no idea if Cody could hear him, because the cutting sound just grew louder. It was louder than the pounding rush in Devin’s head, louder than Cody’s screams, which peaked, then faded into nothing.

For a second, for one brief instant, all of Devin’s pulling and yanking seemed to pay off. The leg came free in his arms. But Cody was no longer attached.

As the police burst through the front door, filling the darkness with the beams of their flash-lights, Devin, his mind collapsing, could think only one thing:

Cody had been Torn.

11

The police grilled them for hours.

“Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

“Was it like the monster in your song?”

“One kid died and your song got popular, right? Did you think your song would get even more popular if someone else died, too? Did you think it would be cool?”

Terms like “satan worship” and “cult sacrifice” were bandied about, making Devin fearful, frustrated, and ultimately angry. He worried that if they had dressed in trench coats or in Goth style they’d have been charged and convicted on the basis of fashion. He realized grimly that misunderstanding and suspicion were just as much part of the long-standing legend of rock as the fame and the money.

He wished Cody were here. Cody would love to see how much the police were freaking out, how desperate they were to find anything that would give the slaughter some kind of sense, some kind of order. He imagined Cody laughing at them, making up stories just for fun.

Yes, officer, we worship a fish god who lives in a giant lair beneath the sea. Your so-called goldfish-bowl castles are a mere echo of our god’s home. It does crave human blood at times….

Or the more familiar: The music made me do it. Voices in the song told me to kill our lead guitarist, so I figured, hey, what the hell. I mean, wouldn’t you?

It would be so simple to get them to believe anything. Anything except the truth. But that, Devin had to admit, sounded, even to him, even now, in the cold light of the small room they kept him in, the strangest of all.

One Word Ben was the first to be released, either because he was the only one who didn’t claim to see a monster, or because his one-word answers made things go faster. Cheryl was second. She was hysterical, and she’d only caught a glimpse of the thing in the men’s room, so her description was easily dismissed, both by the police and by her.

But Devin—Devin was the only witness to the actual murder. The only witness to both murders, and the only one who insisted on what he saw, who described it in unbelievable detail.

So they tested him for drugs, but since the results would take days, they grilled him for hours more, then tested him again in case they would be unhappy with the results from the first tests. Then they had a psychiatrist speak to him. Then they grilled him some more.

They wanted very badly to press charges, but when the crime scene photos and forensics came back, showing the hole in the bathroom ceiling, the shattered guitar, the thick scratch marks on the floor and walls, and the sheer strength needed to rip Cody’s leg off, they corroborated his story. And when Devin’s father, looking older and smaller than he’d ever seemed before, bellowed and threatened to sue, the detectives finally conceded that “something like” what Devin described might actually have occurred.

But on the way out, as if Devin couldn’t hear, they advised his father of their various theories: that the killer had threatened Devin in some way so that he was unwilling to give honest testimony, or that he was on drugs, or that he was crazy. When his father pushed, though, they admitted they couldn’t prove any of that. So, yes, they’d let him go, for now, but they wanted to know his whereabouts 24/7.

The car ride home was shorter but more grueling than his time at the station. His dad babbled about Columbine and asked him over and over about drugs, about gangs, about guns. The sharp, steady man had never seemed so clueless before, never felt so far away.

As they drove, the morning light seeping between the trees felt as brittle as Devin’s tired head. His sinuses were on fire. He had some sort of cold, maybe a fever.

It was only when his mother hugged him, warm and soft in a housecoat she’d worn since he was a child, that Devin realized how cold and stiff he felt. She looked at him, brushed his hair out of his face, and then quickly made an excuse to vanish into the kitchen to get him something hot to eat. They would talk later, after he’d rested. After she’d had a nervous breakdown or two.

Devin plodded up the stairs, entered the hallway bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and tossed them on the floor. Seeing the blotches of dried blood on the pants and shirt made him dizzy, but he managed to stumble into the shower. The burst of warm water soothed his skin and forced his shoulder muscles to relax; yet even though he stood there for a long time, something in him still stayed cold.