Nocturnal: A Novel

Bee-boop: “Get an ambulance.”

Bryan slid the phone back in his pocket. Streetlights reflected off of the blood slowly pooling around the wounded kid, wet-red smearing the van’s white paint.

“Just take it easy,” Bryan said. “I’m a cop. Help is on the way.” He didn’t want to move the boy, but broken bones or an injured spinal column didn’t matter if Bryan couldn’t find the wound and stop the bleeding. “I’m going to roll you over. I’ll do it slow, but it’ll hurt. Did someone throw you off the roof?”

“Jumped,” the boy said, his words muffled because his face rested against the van roof. “Had to … get away.”

“Get away from who?”

“Devil,” the boy said. “Dragon.”

Bryan rolled the boy over. Wide, frightened eyes stared out from a face covered with third-degree burns. Swollen blisters — some shiny-white, some raw-red — clustered on his cheeks, his nose, his mouth, his forehead, on almost every bit of exposed skin. His eyebrows and eyelids were gone, as was most of the hair at his temples and on top of his head. Blackened clothes — the jacket and what looked like a football jersey — had melted onto him. A small but steady pulsing of blood bubbled up from the boy’s abdomen.

Bryan moved to apply pressure, but something on the boy’s face froze him in place. A bit of red hair on the boy’s lip, a bit more on his chin … the remnants of a scraggly goatee. Most of it had burned away, but enough remained for Bryan to see the blistered face anew. A small part of him knew this was Jay Parlar. A bigger part of him, the part that took over, it recognized something else entirely.

That part recognized the prey from his dream.

One womb, motherfucker.

A wave of hatred instantly bubbled up and boiled over into blinding, murderous rage. Bryan stood and straddled the kid, his feet balancing on the dented, blood-streaked white metal.

He reached to his shoulder holster, pulled his pistol, then pointed the barrel right between the boy’s eyes.

A charred hand rose up, palm out, as if flesh and bone would stop a bullet.

“You’re a bully,” Bryan said. “I’m going to kill you.”

The boy’s oozing lips struggled to form words. “Please, no.” He didn’t even have the energy to fight for his life.

Bryan thumbed back the P226’s hammer until it clicked. “Long live the king, asshole.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “That’s what the devil said.”

Bryan leaned in. He rested the muzzle against the boy’s forehead. The boy squeezed his eyes tight.

“Bryan! Put it down, now!”

Pookie’s voice. Pookie’s screaming voice. Bryan blinked, looked down to the sidewalk. Pookie … his chest, heaving … his gun, drawn … his feet, spread in a shooter’s stance.

Why the hell is my partner aiming at ME?

“Drop it, Bryan! Drop it right fucking now or I will put you down!”

Bryan’s rage evaporated into the cool night air. There was something in his hands. He looked. He was holding his gun, pressing the barrel against the forehead of a badly wounded sixteen-year-old boy.

Bryan decocked the Sig Sauer, then slowly slid the weapon into his shoulder holster. The gun’s muzzle left an indented ring on the scorched, blistered forehead. The last of the boy’s energy seemed to fade away like a long, final breath — he closed his eyes.

He didn’t move.

Pookie scrambled onto the van’s hood, then up onto the now-crowded roof. The boy’s abdomen no longer pulsed blood.

Pookie grabbed the boy’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. “Nothing, shit.” He looked up at Bryan. “What the fuck were you doing, man?”

Bryan didn’t answer.

Pookie turned back to the boy. Left palm on the back of his right hand, Pookie started chest compressions. Bryan’s gaze drifted toward the buildings on the other side of Geary Street, at heads and bodies silhouetted in lit-up apartment windows. People were watching.

As Pookie pumped, he again looked at Bryan. “Were you going to kill this kid?”

Bryan blinked a few times, trying to collect his thoughts, then the impact of Pookie’s words hit home.

“No,” Bryan said. “He fell, he was on fire … I put out the flames. I didn’t touch him!”

Pookie’s hands kept pumping. “Didn’t touch him except for putting your fucking gun against his forehead, right? And I saw you. I saw you jump up on this van. Eight feet up and you landed standing? How the hell did you do that?”

What the fuck was Pookie talking about? Bryan couldn’t do that. No one could.

The fever swept over him again, hotter than before, as if it was furious at being ignored and wanted payback. The aches pinched his joints, his muscles. His face felt wet and sticky. He touched his fingertips to his forehead — they came back covered in blood.

Pookie kept pumping, his arms straight, his hands on the boy’s sternum. He stopped to press his fingers against the boy’s neck.

Bryan waited, hoping Pookie would feel something there, but Pookie’s shaking head told him otherwise.

“Still no pulse.” Pookie returned to chest compressions.

The oncoming sirens screamed louder. Couldn’t be long now. Bryan watched Pookie try to save the boy. Maybe this was still the dream. Maybe if Bryan had given first aid right away instead of putting a gun in the boy’s face, the boy would still be alive.

“Bryan, get off the van,” Pookie said.

Red and blue lights cut the night as patrol cars turned onto Geary. Bryan looked down at the boy again — horribly burned, young body smashed from a four-story fall. If Bryan hadn’t dreamed about the kid, would this have happened? All that rage, all that hate … how could he feel that for someone he’d never even met?

“Bryan!”

Pookie’s yell yanked Bryan back into the moment.

“Get down,” his partner said. “Let me handle this. You keep your mouth shut, let me do the talking, got it?”

Bryan nodded. He slid off the van. Next thing he knew, he was sitting with his ass on the concrete sidewalk, his back against the building from which a flaming Jay Parlar had fallen to his death.

Up on the van roof, Pookie kept pumping away on the boy’s chest. Pulse or no pulse, he would continue to do that until the paramedics arrived.

Bryan closed his eyes.

This was what it felt like to go insane.

Alex Panos Gets Gone

A half-block east of the ruined van, two teenage boys stood at the corner of Geary and Larkin, their heads peeking around just enough to watch the scene — four police cars, an ambulance and cops all over the place. One of the boys was much bigger than the other. The smaller one wore a black sweatshirt, hood pulled up over his head. His name was Issac Moses.

The other boy wore a crimson jacket with gold sleeves and a gold BC on the chest. His name was Alex Panos, and he wanted to know just what the hell was going on.

“Holy shit,” Issac said. “Alex, that cop, I thought he was gonna shoot Jay.”

Alex nodded. “I recognize those pigs. The one in black is Bryan Clauser. The fat one is Pookie something or other. They were at my house.”

“At your house? Holy shit, man, holy shit. What are we gonna do?”

Alex didn’t know. He glanced at his friend’s plain black sweatshirt. Issac thought someone wanted to kill