Nocturnal: A Novel

rage for that, too much anguish: like with the priest, the world had to know.

Hail to the king.

The curly-haired boy turned the corner. Bryan stayed calm, stayed motionless inside his hunting blind, moving nothing except his eyes. Bryan wasn’t the smartest, he knew that, but he could hunt like no one else. As big as he was, the prey never saw him coming.

The boy walked down the sidewalk like he owned the whole street. His turf, his neighborhood, his territory. Big enough that most would avoid him. Young enough to think he controlled his life, to think that no one wanted to mess with him.

One womb.

The heat of the hunt boiled inside Bryan’s skin, a feeling so primitive it bordered on lust. Bryan wanted to kill, needed to kill.

The black, curly hair stuck out beneath the boy’s white baseball hat. He wore a dark-crimson jacket with the big, angled letters BC on the left chest. An eagle — forever paused with wings back and talons outstretched — sat in the middle of those letters.

The boy drew closer. Bryan breathed slowly. The boy glanced at Bryan’s blind, then wrinkled his nose and looked away. The boy drew even with Bryan, took two steps past, then came the voice.

“Help … me …”

That voice came from behind the black gate. The boy stopped, looked through the gate’s bars into Meacham Place’s still shadows. Bryan knew what the boy would see. On the right, scraggly, ten-foot-tall trees growing up out of the narrow sidewalk, trunks only a foot from a brick wall, their leaves casting down lightless pools of deep black. On the left, the laundromat’s crumbling masonry, broken windows and layers of grafitti. And in the middle, lying on the cracked pavement, a bearded man in a white tank top.

Bryan waited. There were enough cars passing by that if the boy ran, Bryan would have to let him go. If the boy went into the alley, Bryan and the others would move.

Take the bait.

The boy looked down and to his left, again examining Bryan’s blind, again deciding the unmoving, blanket- covered homeless person wasn’t worth worrying about.

The man in the alley called out a second time, so softly that no one but the boy would hear. “Help me … please. I’m hurt.”

Take the bait …

The boy gripped the gate’s black bars. He quietly climbed over, careful to avoid the pointy spear-tops, and dropped down on the other side.

Bryan moved without a sound, turning his head slightly to look down Post Street — empty enough to act. He quietly stood, but remained hunched over. Bryan was careful to keep the big blanket looped around his face, like a hood, so that no one could see what was underneath. The rancid fabric cut off his peripheral vision, but that didn’t matter: it was almost over.

A crawl of fear washed over him. The monster was always out there, somewhere. Bryan looked up, scanned the buildings above, looking for movement, for an outline.

Nothing.

He had to draw the symbol, and soon, or the monster would come for him.

“Mister,” he heard the boy say. “You okay?”

Was the boy going to try and help? Or was he just looking for an easy victim?

It didn’t matter.

Bryan bent slightly, then jumped. He sailed over the gate and came down silently on the other side.

One womb. One family.

The man in the white tank top lay on the ground, his beer-gut spilling out from under the shirt and over his dirty jeans. He wore a green John Deere ball cap. He reached up a chubby hand toward the boy who stood a few feet away.

“Help … me. Please.” Marco was a good actor. Really good.

The boy moved closer. “You got any money, asshole?”

The heat of the hunt bubbled Bryan’s soul. He took a step toward the prey. When he did, his foot ground a small rock against the asphalt, making a slight skritt sound that caused the curly-haired boy to turn.

Bryan smelled fear. The boy realized he’d made a mistake — he was cut off, trapped between two men. His hands clenched into fists, his eyes narrowed and his head dipped down a little, as if he might lash out at any second. Like most trapped animals, the boy growled a warning.

“Fuck off,” he said to Bryan. “Don’t fuck with me, you piece-of-shit bum.”

Behind the boy, Marco silently rose to his feet.

Bryan finally stood tall and let the filthy blankets drop to the ground.

The boy’s face changed. The haughty look slowly slipped away, his angry, icy stare melting into puzzlement.

He took a step back, right into Marco’s belly.

The boy turned, found himself face-to-face with Marco. It was hard to see anything under that beard, but Bryan knew Marco was smiling.

Marco reached behind his back. When his hand came out again, it held a rust-spotted hatchet. The alley’s feeble light flickered off the sharpened edge.

“Don’t,” the boy said. He didn’t sound that tough anymore.

Bryan heard the flap of fabric, of things falling from above. The others landed on either side of the boy. One remained tucked under a dark blanket, his face hidden save for the glint of a yellow eye.

The other let the blanket slide free.

Bryan saw a nightmare. A man with purple skin, with big black eyes. It stared at the boy for a moment, then smiled wide a mouth full of big, white, triangular teeth.

The one still hidden inside a blanket spoke. “Pierre,” he said in a voice that sounded like sandpaper on rough wood. “This one is yours. Take him.”

Sly had kept his promise.

Hail to the king, motherfucker.

Bryan rushed in. He took the bully from behind, teeth sinking into the prey’s shoulder. Bryan’s mouth filled with the vibrations of crunching bone, the nylon taste of the crimson jacket and the sweet heat of squirting blood.

Bryan opened his eyes. His heart mule-kicked in his chest.

Adrenaline pumped cactus-prickle through his veins and muscles and skin. His pulse blasted away, undeniable in one place more than any other. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring off into the dark room, his rock-hard erection pitching a tent in his underwear.

The dream had gone farther than the last. Bryan hadn’t just stalked, he’d attacked. He had tasted blood. He could still taste it. So why was he vibrating with excitement when he should be vomiting in disgust? Why did he have a boner so hard a cat couldn’t scratch it?

And why did he feel like he was being watched by someone who wanted to kill him?

“What the fuck is wrong with me?”

No one answered, because there was no one else in the room. There was never anyone else. He was alone in his silent apartment, as he had been every day since he’d moved out of Robin’s place.

He reached over to his nightstand to grab the pen and the notebook he’d left there. He drew. A few scraggly lines. He didn’t even know what it was, only that it wasn’t quite right. Still, that feeling, that being watched feeling, it faded away.

Bryan let out a long, deep breath, then set the pad and pen back on the nightstand.

He stared at it for a moment, then picked it up again and wrote down two words.

Meacham Place.