Calamity

his father. How his brother had done something stupid and Brendan was afraid things were only going to get worse. And then, he yanked the final ton of weight off his brain and confessed to killing Delaney.

Ellis took it all in without a trace of surprise. His face spoke of empathy and pity, not shock and ridicule. How could he not think what Brendan did to Delaney was unspeakably horrible? While waiting for Ellis’s response, Brendan began to worry that the other people in this room were not deep in prayer, but were spies with hidden recording devices. They had caught everything he said and now they were going to run to the police and the cops would run to Dad and Brendan would be in prison by morning, maybe sooner.

“You have paid a terrible price,” Ellis said. “Yet, there is hope. With God, there is always hope.”

“What should I do?”

“First, we will pray and then I will take you home.”

“Pray for what?”

“For the path, of course.”

Ellis faced the Giant Jesus on both knees and Brendan followed likewise. Some tears still trickled from his eyes, but he felt so much better than he had only minutes earlier. He felt he could return to the wake and look Delaney in her dead face and tell her he was sorry and not feel like some psychotic kid in need of therapy. He had been misguided, he saw that now, but Ellis would show him the way. Ellis would open the true path and Brendan would finally be able to keep his family safe.

Brendan waited for Ellis to say something, but he simply kept his eyes shut, hands folded together before him, head tilted toward the flickering Giant Jesus, who twitched again. It’s like he’s trying to break free from the cross and come down. If he did, wouldn’t he be slightly upset about being nailed to a cross in the first place? How could God be so kind and forgiving after what Man did to Him?

These thoughts trailed after Brendan while he dove deeper and deeper into the darkness of his own mind where he assumed prayer occurred. He was quite good at finding this place; it was where he went when he took Pilly Billie, where he imagined the stories in his composition book and where he went when he invoked instruction from the gods.

Almost as an afterthought, Brendan wondered again about the potent flower aroma. He hadn’t seen any flowers. Were they being kept someplace, perhaps for some type of ritual? No, he knew where the smell was coming from. Mom used to buy Yankee Candles, which burned different smells for different holidays—Christmas Wreath, Candied Apples, Jellybeans. Some were foul. Some smelled of fresh flowers. Like this smell. It disturbed him that a temple of God would have scented candles. When you closed your eyes, you’d think the place was full of flowers. When you opened your eyes, there was only flicking flames. It was like they were playing make believe.

Then Brendan was deep in prayer, begging for a way to keep his family safe.

7

He had to stop thinking about Sasha (naked, legs spread) and her deranged mother (sac rice luff chide). It had been stupid going over there. What had he been thinking? Well, he hadn’t been thinking. Simple as that. But no, that wasn’t true. He had been thinking and now he had to accept that his thinking had been wrong, hell, totally off the mark. Before he could do that, however, he would have to admit what those reasons, no matter how stupid, were.

He had expected a simple face-to-face with Sasha and her mother and hoped that such an interaction would put all the messiness away, like shoving dirty clothes under the bed. He would say his peace, they would protest a bit but ultimately realize he was right, and then he’d walk away, leaving Sasha with her fucked-up mother. That hadn’t happened, of course. Instead, he had walked into another world, an insane one where mothers offered up their daughters on home-made witchcraft altars and chanted morbid tones while their naked offspring waited spread-eagle for someone to penetrate them.

He hated to admit that such a situation seemed enticing, even erotic, while sitting here in his bedroom, elbows on his thighs, hands juggling his cellphone back and forth like a game of hot potato, but being front and center for the actual event hadn’t been arousing in the least—it had been horrifying. Thinking on it now, Tyler wanted to vomit. Small tremors of cold raced through his body every few minutes and he shook off each one like an un-welcomed touch.

What had he been thinking?

It was time to be honest, now if ever, and especially with himself. He couldn’t sit here in his silent room and try to rationalize his way out of his own thoughts. The problem wasn’t that he hadn’t been thinking or that what he had been thinking was idiotic. No, the problem was that the motivation driving his thinking had proved unbelievably and horrifyingly correct. He couldn’t deny it. With a sister in a coffin waiting for burial, a mother in a pill-induced coma, and a father sitting in the car in which his daughter had died (Dad didn’t think anyone knew why he had had his car towed back to the house but Dad was fooling himself more than anybody; he was in the garage right now, probably sobbing in the front seat where Delaney’s blood still looked fresh), Tyler couldn’t turn away from the truth. To do so now, after all the damage that had been ravaged would be like trying to drink a glass of water while underwater. He either acknowledged what was going on or he drowned in his own madness of denial.

Ultimately, it was simple: he believed Sasha’s mother had cursed his family because Sasha believed Tyler had raped her. Now, now, he might as well be totally honest—no one was listening but himself, after all. He had raped Sasha, even if he hadn’t realized it until after it was over. No matter the intent, he was guilty and she had seen fit to punish him. She seduced him at her house into a trap and then he stupidly believed he could reason his way out of the mess. You can’t reason with a witch; you can’t make sense out of something insensible. How could witchcraft even exist? What sense was in that? Why would she kill Delaney instead of make his balls rot off or something? Why was she punishing his whole family when only he was to blame?

The answer was obvious enough: because she’s either totally crazy (crazy in love) or completely evil.

Yet, he had hoped he was wrong. That was the real reason he had made Paul drive him to Trailer Trash Town. He had believed that it was all some crazy string of coincidences. Sasha’s mother wasn’t a witch (that was preposterous), and while Sasha might be upset (maybe even a bit delusional herself about what happened), no one had cursed his family. He had gone there not to end a curse or reason with a witch; he had gone there to reassure himself that the world was still a rational place.

Instead, he dropped into a black ocean of madness and had now slipped beneath the surface where he could no longer tell which way was up. Sasha’s mother was a real witch, an honest-to-God, broomstick-riding, spell-casting, malevolent witch. She had wanted Tyler to fuck Sasha in front of her while she cast yet another spell. Perhaps she meant to convert him to witchcraft. She had cursed him and that curse had made somebody drop a bowling ball off a bridge and into Delaney’s face.

Brendan’s composition book lay on the bed next to him. Tyler picked it up, flipped to the page that had been folded over, conveniently enough. It read in a scribble across the top: Tyler’s Problem. Beneath that it read:

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Discovery. The Darkman is around here somewhere, thought Bo Blast. He had tracked the mad killer to an abandoned warehouse where tennis shoes used to be made.

And on and on it went about some detective named Bo Blast and a killer named The Darkman who apparently killed people only in the dark. The chapter was nine pages front and back and Tyler read over them twice and even skimmed the next chapter (Chapter Seven concluded with the Darkman pointing a gun directly at Bo Blast’s chest and though he wouldn’t admit it openly, Tyler wanted to find out what happened next) before assuring himself that Brendan hadn’t overhead anything about Tyler’s situation. But then why did he write Tyler’s Problem across the top of the page? A few suspicions lurked at the corners of his mind, but he wanted to talk to Brendan before making any accusations.

How the conversation with his brother went would determine what happened next and how much deeper into the black water Tyler sank.

* * *

Tyler knocked once on Brendan’s door and opened it without waiting for a reply. Brendan was kneeling next to his bed, elbows on the bed, hands folded in prayer, forehead resting against his hands. Their family was not inclined to say blessings before meals (not even on holidays) or offer prayers to God, so Tyler stopped mid-step and gaped at his brother as though he had discovered him naked humping one of his stuffed animals.

Should he say something? Had Brendan found God when no one was looking? No, that was unlikely. Brendan