Everville (21 page)

"Owen?"

The boy's hair was spread on the pillow as though he were floating.

"Good morning," Owen had replied.

"Are you going to come back to bed?"

"What time is it?"

"Just before seven," Seth had said. "We don't have to et up yet." He stretched, sliding down the bed as he did so.

Owen looked at the spiral of hair beneath the boy's arms and wondered at the workings of desire. "I have to go exploring today," he'd replied.

"Do you want to come with me?"

"It depends what you're going to explore," Seth said, shamelessly fingering himself beneath the sheet.

Owen smiled, and crossed to the bottom of the bed. The youth had turned from waif to coquette in the space of one night. He was Lifting the sheet up between his knees now, just high enough to give Owen a glimpse of his butthole.

"I suppose we could stay here an hour or so," Owen conceded, slipping the belt of his robe so that the boy could see what trouble he was inviting. Seth had flushed-his face, neck, and chest reddening in two heartbeats.

"I had a dream about that," he said.

"Liar."

"I did," Seth protested.

The sheet was still tented over his raised knees. Owen made no attempt to pull it off, but simply knelt between Seth's feet, and stared down at him, his prick peeping out from his robe.

"Tell me-" he said.

"Tell you what?"

"What you dreamed." Seth looked a little uncomfortable now. "Go on," Owen said, "or I'm going to cover it up again."

"Well," said Seth, "I dreamed@h Jeez, this sounds so dumb-"

"Spit it out."

"I dreamed that," he pointed to Owen's dick "was a hammer."

"A hammer?" "Yeah. I dreamed it was separate from you, you know, and I had it in my hand, and it was a hammer."

Odd as the image was, it didn't strike Owen as utterly outlandish, given the conversation they'd had on the street the night before. But there was more.

"I was using it to build a house."

"Are you making this up?"

"No. I swear. I was up on the roof of this house, it was just a wooden fratne but it was a big house, somewhere up on the mountain, and there were nails that were like little spikes of fire, and your dick-" He half sat up and reached to touch the head of Owen's hard-on "your dick was driving the nails in. Helping me build my house." He looked up at Owen's face, and shrugged. "I said it was dumb."

"Where was the rest of me?" Owen wanted to know.

"I don't remember," Seth said.

"Huh.

"Don't be pissed off."

"I'm not pissed off."

"It was just a dumb dream. I was thinking about hammering and@an we stop talking about it now?" He slid his hand around Owen's sex, which had lost size and solidity while its dream-self was discussed, and attempted to stroke it back to its previous state. But it wouldn't be coaxed, much to Seth's disappointment.

"We'll have some time this afternoon," Owen said to him.

,,Okay," said Seth, dropping back onto the bed and snatching the sheet off his lower torso. "But this is going to make walking around a little uncomfortable."

Owen gazed at the nearly hairless groin before him with a vague sense of unease. Not at the sight itself-the boy's equipment was pretty in its lopsided way-but at the thought of his manhood being used to hammer in spikes of fire, while the rest of him went unremembered.

Most of the time, of course, dreams were worthless. Bubbles in the stew of a sleeping mind, bursting once they surfaced. But sometimes they were revelations about the past; sometimes prophecies, sometimes ways to shape the present. And sometimes@h, this was rare, but he'd known it happen-they were signs that the promise of the Art was not a hollow promise; that the human mind could know the past, present, and future as one eternal moment. He didn't believe that Seth's dream of house and hammer fell into this category, but something about it made his palms clammy and his nape itch. There was meaning here, if he could only decode it. "What are you thinking?"

Seth was looking up at him with a troubled expression on his long, pale face.

"Crossroads," Owen replied.

"What about them?"

"That's what we're going to look for this morning." He got off the bed, and went through to the bathroom to piss. "I want to find the first crossroads in the city."

"Why?" Seth wanted to know.

He contemplated lying to the boy, but why? The answer was a paradox anyway.

'Because my journey ends where the roads cross," he said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means-I'm not going to be here for very much longer," Owen said, addressing Seth from the bathroom door, so we may as well enjoy ourselves."

The boy looked downcast. "What will I do when you've gone?" he said. Owen ruminated for a moment. Then he said, "Build a. house, maybe?"

Tesia got lost just north of Salem, and had traveled thirty-five miles along the Willamina road before she realized her error and turned round. By the time she reached the Everville city limits it was past one, and she was hungry. She drove around for ten minutes, orienting herself while she looked for a suitable eatery, and eventually settled on a place called Kitty's Diner. It was busy, and she was politely told there'd be a ten-minute wait.

"No problem," she said, and went to sit out in the sun. There was plenty to divert her while she waited. The diner was situated at the intersection of the city's Main Street and a second, equally bustling thoroughfare. People and vehicles flowed by ceaselessly in both directions.

"This place is busy," she thought.

There's some kind offestival going on, Raul replied.

"How do you know?"

It's right in front of you, he said.

"Where, damn it?" she said, scanning the intersection in all four directions.

Up a couple offeet, Raul said.

Tesla looked up. There was a banner strung across the street, announcing WELCOME to THE EVERVILLE FESTIVAL WEEKEND in blue letters three feet high.

"How come I didn't see that?" she thought, confounded (as ever) by the fact that she and Raul could look through the same eyes and see the world so differently.

You were concentrating on your stomach, Raul replied.

She ignored the remark. "rhis isn't an accident," she said.

What isn't? "Us being here the weekend they're having a festival. It's some kind of synchronicity." if you say so. She watched the traffic in silence for a time. Then she asked Raul, "Do you feel anything?" Like what? "I don't know. Anything out of the ordinary?" What am I, a bloodhound? "All right," she said,

"forget I spoke." There was another silence. Then, very softly, Raul said, Above the banner.

She lifted her gaze, past the blue letters, past the roofs. "The mountain?" she said.

Yes...

"What about it?" she said.

Something, he replied. I don't know, but something...

She studied the peak for a little time. There wasn't that much to see; the summit was wreathed in mist. "I give up," she said, "I'm too hungry to think."

She glanced back at the diner. Two of its customers were up from their table, chatting to the waitress.

"About time," she muttered, and getting to her feet, headed inside.

"Just for one is it?" the waitress said, leading her to the vacated table and handing her a menu. "Everything's good, but the chicken livers are really good. So's the peach cobbler. Enjoy."

Tesla watched her pass between the tables, bestowing a word here and a smile there.

Happy little soul, Raul remarked dryly.

"Looks like Jesus is cookin' today," Tesla replied, eyeing the simple wooden cross hung above the serving hatch.

Better go for the fish then, Raul said, at which Tesla laughed out loud.

A few querulous glances came her way, but nobody seemed to much mind that this woman was so entertained by her own company she was weeping with laughter.

"Something funny?" the waitress wanted to know.

"Just a private moment," Tesia said, and ordered the sh.

Erwin could not remember what terrible thing had happened in his house; he only knew that he wanted to be out of it and away.

He stood at the unopened front door with his thoughts in confusion, knowing there was something he had to take with him before he left, but unable to remember what. He turned and looked back down the hallway, hoping something would jog his memory.

Of course! The confession. He couldn't leave the house without the confession. He started back down the hallway, wondering where he'd set it down. As he came to the living room, however, his desire to have the papers suddenly evaporated, and without quite knowing how he got there he found himself standing outside his house again with the sun beating down on him. It was altogether too bright, and he dug in his pockets, looking for his sunglasses, only to discover that he was wearing an old tweed jacket that he thought he'd given away to charity years before. The gift had been spontaneous (which was rare for him) and he'd almost instantly regretted it. All the more wonderful then to have chanced upon it again, however mystifying the circumstances.

He found no sunglasses, but he did find a host of mementoes in the various pockets: ticket stubs for concerts he'd attended in Boston two decades before; the muchchewed remains of a cigar he'd smoked to celebrate passing the bar exam; a little piece of wedding cake, wrapped up in a napkin; the stiletto heel of a scarlet shoe; the little bottle of holy water his mother had been clutching when she died. Every pocket contained not one but four or five such keepsakes and tokens, each one unleashing a deluge of memories-scents, sounds, faces, feelings-all of which might have moved him more had the mystery of the jacket not continued to trouble him. He was certain he'd given it away. And even if he hadn't, even if it had languished unseen at the back of his wardrobe for a decade, and by chance he'd plucked it out of exile this morning without realizing he'd done so, that still didn't solve the problem of where the memorabilia in its pockets had appeared from.

Something strange was going on; something damned strange.

Next door, Ken Margosian emerged from his house whistling, and sauntered among his rose bushes with a pair of scissors, selecting blooms. "The roses are better than ever this year," Erwin remarked to him.

Margosian, who was usually a neighborly sort, didn't even look up.

Erwin crossed to the fence. "Are you okay, Ken?" he asked.

Margosian had found a choice rose, and was carefully selecting a place to snip it. There was not the slightest sign that he'd heard a syllable.

"Why the silent treatment?" Erwin demanded. "If you've got some bitch with me@'

At this juncture, Mrs. Semevikov came along, a woman whom under normal circumstances Erwin would have happily avoided. She was a voluble woman, who took it upon herself to organize a small auction every Festival Saturday, selling items donated by various stores to benefit children's charities. Last year she had attempted to persuade Erwin to donate a few hours of his services as a prize. He had promised to think about it, and then not returned her calls. Now here she was again, after the same thing, no doubt. She said hello to Ken Margosian, but didn't so much as cast a glance in Erwin's direction, though he was standing five yards from her.

"Is Erwin in?" she asked Ken.

"I don't think so," Ken replied.

"Joke over," Erwin piped up, but Ken hadn't finished.

"I heard some odd noises in the night," he told Mrs. Semevikov, "like he was having a brawl in there."

"That doesn't sound like him at all," she replied.

"I knocked on his door this morning, just to see that he was okay, but nobody answered."

"Stop this," Erwin protested.

"Maybe he's at his office," Mrs. Semevikov went on. "I said stop it!" Erwin yelled. It was distressing him hearing himself talked about as though he were invisible. And what was this nonsense about a brawl? He'd had a perfectly peaceable The thought faltered, and he looked back towards the house, as a name rose from the murk of his memory.

Fletcher. Oh my God, how could he have forgotten Fletcher?

"Maybe I'll try him at his office," Mrs. Semevikov was saying, "because he promised me last year-"

"Listen to me," Erwin begged.

"He'd donate a few hours-2'

"I don't know why you're doing this, but you've got to listen."

"to the auction."

"There's somebody in my house."

"Those are beautiful roses, by the way. Are you entering them in the flower competition?"

Erwin could take no more of this. He strode towards the fence, yelling at Ken, "He tried to kill me! " Then he reached over and caught hold of Ken's shirt. Or at least he tried to. His fingers passed through the fabric, his fist closing on itself. He tried again. The same thing happened.

"I'm going crazy," he thought. He reached up to Ken's face and prodded his cheek, hard, but he got not so much as a blink for his efforts.

"Fletcher's been playing with my head."

A wave of panic rose in him. He had to get the meddler to fix his handiwork, now, before there was some serious damage done. Leaving Ken and Mrs. Semevikov to their chatter about roses, Erwin headed back up the path to the front door. It looked to be closed, but his senses were utterly unreliable, it seemed, because two strides carried him over th( threshold and into the hallway.

He called out for Fletcher. There was no reply, but the meddler was somewhere in the house, Erwin was certain of it. Every angle in the hallway was a little askew, and the halls had a yellowish tinge. What was that, if not Fletcher's influence?

He knew where the man lay in wait: in the living room, where he'd held Erwin prisoner in order to toy with his san ity, His fury mounting-how dare this man invade his house and his head?-he marched down the hallway to the living room door. It stood ajar. Erwin didn't hesitate. He stepped inside.

The drapes were drawn to keep out the day, the only source of light the fire that was now dying in the grate. Even so, Erwin found his tormentor at a glance. He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, his clothes shed. His body was broad, hirsute, and covered with scars, some of. them fully six inches long. His pupils were rolled up beneath his eyelids. In front of him was a mound of excrement.