Black House

curds of foamy spit leaking from the corners of his mouth and flowing over the slack, liver-colored roll of his lower lip. The drool runs down his chin like a stream of soapsuds. He wipes at it absently with the back of one gnarled hand and shakes it to the floor in a splatter, never taking his eyes from the mirror. The boy in the mirror is not one of this creature’s poor lost babies—Ty Marshall has lived in French Landing his whole life and knows exactly where he is—but he could be. He could very easily become lost, and wind up in a certain room. A certain cell. Or trudging toward a strange horizon on burning, bleeding footsies.

Especially if Burny has his way. He will have to move fast, but as we have already noted, Charles Burnside can, with the proper motivation, move very fast indeed.

“Gorg,” he says to the mirror. He speaks this nonsense word in a perfectly clear, perfectly flat midwestern accent. “Come, Gorg.”

And without waiting to see what comes next—he knows what comes next—Burny turns and walks toward the line of four toilet stalls. He steps into the second from the left and closes the door.

Tyler has just remounted his bike when the hedge rustles ten feet from the Strawberry Fest! sign. A large black crow shrugs its way out of the greenery and onto the Queen Street sidewalk. It regards the boy with a lively, intelligent eye. It stands with its black legs spread, opens its beak, and speaks. “Gorg!”

Tyler looks at it, beginning to smile, not sure he heard this but ready to be delighted (at ten, he’s always ready to be delighted, always primed to believe the unbelievable). “What? Did you say something?”

The crow flutters its glossy wings and cocks its head in a way that renders the ugly almost charming.

“Gorg! Ty!”

The boy laughs. It said his name! The crow said his name!

He dismounts his bike, puts it on the kickstand, and takes a couple of steps toward the crow. Thoughts of Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham are—unfortunately—the furthest things from his mind.

He thinks the crow will surely fly away when he steps toward it, but it only flutters its wings a little and takes a slide-step toward the bushy darkness of the hedge.

“Did you say my name?”

“Gorg! Ty! Abbalah!”

For a moment Ty’s smile falters. That last word is almost familiar to him, and the associations, although faint, are not exactly pleasant. It makes him think of his mother, for some reason. Then the crow says his name again; surely it is saying Ty.

Tyler takes another step away from Queen Street and toward the black bird. The crow takes a corresponding step, sidling closer still to the bulk of the hedge. There is no one on the street; this part of French Landing is dreaming in the morning sunshine. Ty takes another step toward his doom, and all the worlds tremble.

Ebbie, Ronnie, and T.J. come swaggering out of the 7-Eleven, where the raghead behind the counter has just served them blueberry Slurpees (raghead is just one of many pejorative terms Ebbie has picked up from his dad). They also have fresh packs of Magic cards, two packs each.

Ebbie, his lips already smeared blue, turns to T.J. “Go on downstreet and get the slowpoke.”

T.J. looks injured. “Why me?”

“Because Ronnie bought the cards, dumbwit. Go on, hurry up.”

“Why do we need him, Ebbie?” Ronnie asks. He leans against the bike rack, noshing on the cold, sweet chips of ice.

“Because I say so,” Ebbie replies loftily. The fact is, Tyler Marshall usually has money on Fridays. In fact, Tyler has money almost every day. His parents are loaded. Ebbie, who is being raised (if you can call it that) by a single father who has a crappy janitor’s job, has already conceived a vague hate for Tyler on this account; the first humiliations aren’t far away, and the first beatings will follow soon after. But now all he wants is more Magic cards, a third pack for each of them. The fact that Tyler doesn’t even like Magic that much will only make getting him to pony up that much sweeter.

But first they have to get the little slowpoke up here. Or the little po-sloke, as mush-mouthed Ronnie calls him. Ebbie likes that, and thinks he will start using it. Po-sloke. A good word. Makes fun of Ty and Ronnie at the same time. Two for the price of one.

“Go on, T.J. Unless you want an Indian burn.”

T.J. doesn’t. Ebbie Wexler’s Indian burns hurt like a mad bastard. He gives a theatrical sigh, backs his bike out of the rack, mounts it, and rides back down the mild slope of the hill, holding a handlebar in one hand and his Slurpee in the other. He expects to see Ty right away, probably walking his bike because he’s just . . . so . . . tiyyy-urd, but Ty doesn’t seem to be on Chase Street at all—what’s up with that?

T.J. pedals a little faster.

In the men’s room, we are now looking at the line of toilet stalls. The door of the one second from the left is closed. The other three stand ajar on their chrome hinges. Beneath the closed door, we see a pair of gnarled, veiny ankles rising from a pair of filthy slippers.

A voice cries out with surprising strength. It is a young man’s voice, hoarse, hungry, and angry. It echoes flatly back from the tile walls: “Abbalah! Abbalah-doon! Munshun gorg!”

Suddenly the toilets flush. Not just the one in the closed cubicle but all of them. Across the room the urinals also flush, their chromed handles dipping in perfect synchronicity. Water runs down their curved porcelain surfaces.

When we look back from the urinals to the toilets, we see that the dirty slippers—and the feet that were in them—are gone. And for the first time we have actually heard the sound of slippage, a