“To practice more what?” Essie asked with a wink of the eye.
Clay and Savy left them in suspense. They moved through the back yard and paused at the Generator’s door. Since watching Karney’s reality TV, the place had taken on a tragic new layer, one they could never unsee. Never bring to light. With a breath, Clay stepped inside and activated the recess lighting. “Rocco? Do you see him, Sav?”
She stood with her back against the door for more than a minute before she answered. “Yes. There.”—her voice growing tighter—“Coming down from the loft.”
Clay heard the telltale groans on the risers. At the sight of Savy, Boyle hesitated. “It’s cool,” Clay told him. “She knows everything now.”
You two either had the best day of your lives—or the worst.
“Both,” Clay admitted.
Well, don’t keep a dead man in suspense.
“We found out where Rooster lived. And we paid him a visit.”
You what?
“Savy knows Barry and he told us where Karney—Rooster—was living. We went there to feel him out, maybe mention I was living in your house. We thought it might’ve tempted him to return to the scene of his crime.”
“It backfired though,” Savy added, her voice carrying the self-consciousness of learning to speak to someone there and not there. “Karney knew why we were looking for him. Or thought he did.”
“He played a tape,” Clay said. “With footage showing what happened the night you died.”
Our sex tape, Boyle realized. He was standing between Clay and Savy now; Clay could feel his presence like a physical thing—Savy staring wide-eyed in his direction confirmed it. I always figured he grabbed it, since the cops never found it.
“Rooster thought we were there to do to him what he did to you,” Clay went on. “So he doused his house with kerosene—and he lit himself on fire.”
He’s dead?
“It was fucking awful. We almost didn’t get out. Seriously, we almost fucking died in that house. His girlfriend did die.”
But did Rooster die? Boyle pressed. Did they find a body?
“He was covered head to toe in flame—but the news is saying, somehow, he’s still alive.”
The nearest chair flipped sideways and crashed across the floor. Clay and Savy flinched back.
I specifically told you to steer clear. Steer! Clear! You think I was sayin’ that for my health?
“We went there for you,” Clay stammered.
“And we did it for us,” Savy told him. “Your fans lived and died with you, Rocco. It’s not just your story, it’s ours too. We deserved to know what really happened.”
Boyle paced the floor between them. You have the tape then? You have evidence?
Clay lowered his head. “Everything went up in a blaze of glory.”
Boyle stalked closer.Clay could feel his emotion, his brimming anger. Too reminiscent of Deidre, too unpredictable. Clay stepped toward the exit. You’ve no idea the can of worms you opened.
“Maybe if you’d told me what happened in the first place,” Clay fired back. “What we were up against. We would’ve left it alone.”
An invisible palm struck Clay in the chest. He staggered and fell against the door.
Savy cursed and jumped forward, reaching up, as if there was something—a collar—to seize hold of. And Clay saw her body jerk back as Boyle shoved her too. “Don’t do it, man! Not her. I’ll board this fucking place up and never come back.”
The floor creaked—Boyle turning to face him.
“Careful,” Savy warned. “His hand’s balled into a fist.”
And for the second time in this endless day, Clay marveled at how quickly things could go bad. He summoned whatever conviction he had left. “We saw what you and Deidre went through. I’m sorry, Roc. Our hearts broke watching it. But if you turn into another poltergeist on me, it’s you we’ll steer clear of. I mean it.”
A moment passed. No one moved. As if everyone—Boyle included—was waiting to see which way fate would spin them.
I’m the one that’s sorry, the spirit told them. I was a fool to think it’d be different with you.
Savy relaxed, her eyes following Boyle. “Rocco? He’s leaving.”
“Hey!” Clay shouted after him. “I know who the Hailmaker is.” He glanced into the dark corner, where the grotesque figure had been standing in the video, and a shiver rattled his spine. “How can we avoid him? Like, for the rest of our lives.”
Boyle halted his retreat across the room, briefly. If Rooster’s still alive, it’s already too late. The anger was rinsed from his voice now, and in its place stood blunt fear.
Sooner or later, the Hailmaker will find you.
PART III:
ALL GOES DARK
18
COLD FEELINGS
No faceless boogiemen came for them. No devils in ill-fitting suits or oversized faces. And Boyle’s apprehension about the Pandora’s box they’d opened, messing with Davis Karney, was greatly exaggerated.
At first.
Farewell Ghost spent the following weeks polishing the five original songs in their repertoire, along with a new track they were tentatively calling “In Rolls the Storm,” an improvised jam that started as a slow-strumming shoe-gazer ballad and built over a ten-minute span to a climactic maelstrom of charging power chords and raucous distortion. Spider had secondary aspirations in audio recording (he was desperate to end up just about anywhere than as his father’s permanent Knickerbocker replacement), and he was ready to convert the Generator into their working studio—as soon as Clay gave the word.
Clay, meanwhile, was called upon to manage the band’s Facebook and Twitter presence. More than a few high-school girls had offered to run Farewell Ghost sites across social media, but for now the band consensus was to keep their entourage small. Just Mo, as Ghost’s roadie, gopher, and poster boy for the newly sober, and Delilah Jane, Fiasco Joe’s new girlfriend, a tall, so-blond-her-hair-was-white sourpuss, who did little at practice other than to keep Fiasco in a perpetual foul mood.
Clay googled “Davis Karney” every morning, expecting that this time, this time, he would learn of the rock star’s passing. It never happened. There couldn’t have
