Heartland Junk (Part II): Sanctuary (5 page)

              Abby gave me one last, imploring look, then opened her mouth. I backed away. A raw, fleshy, blood-blackened stump sat on her lower pallet, half hiding behind her pearl-white teeth.

              Her tongue had been cut out.

Chapter 7

              I DIDN'T mean to hurt Abby's feelings by pulling away. It just happened, pure reflex. But I couldn't take it back, either. Her eyes grew sad and she turned away to face the back of the couch.

              "I'm sorry," I said. "I...I didn't know. I'm sorry." She ignored me. Jesus, no wonder she was in such a bad state. Last night, I might have become the only friend she had left. Besides Theo, of course, but motherly instinct didn't fill the same holes as friendship. And for some reason, I found myself wanting to be her friend, which made it all the more maddening that I'd fucked it up. So maybe I'd dreamed all the stuff about her kids. So what? I'd spilled my own guts to her, and dammit, she'd listened. That part wasn't a dream, I was sure. I couldn't remember the last person I'd talked to about my parents, and this woman whom I barely knew had listened. Had understood. She could empathize on a deeper level, as if we'd communicated through pure emotion rather than words. I don't know how I knew that, but I believed it in my bones.

              I turned to the quiet sounds of Theo walking into the living room. He yawned and stretched little arms over his head, then froze when he saw the two of us, me crouching on my haunches beside the couch, Abby turned away from me.

              "Told you she could talk," he said, voice slightly accusing, and wandered past me into the kitchen.

              I didn't tell anyone about what had happened with me and Abby. Why would I? A drunken dream, that's all it had been. While Jennie and Rivet laughed and fucked and argued all day long, I absconded to my third-floor sanctuary once again, only this time with a plan in mind. After hauling all the supplies from the grocery store up both flights of stairs, I arranged them on the floor in front of me. Thirty pounds of sugar, three hundred grams of baker's yeast, and enough unmalted grains to sate the thirst of an army.

              I was going to become a brewer.

              There are four ingredients in beer: Malt, hops, yeast, and water. I didn't have malt—not yet—and I sure as hell didn't have any hop vines growing anywhere nearby, but I could at least improvise with what I had.

              This required dipping into our precious stores of water, but I faced surprising little resistance when I began lugging gallon jugs of water, four each trip, up the stairs. Only Rivet had a comment for me, which was, "Save some for the fishes, maestro."

              I emptied a little bit of water from each jug, then poured two pounds of sugar into each one, shook the hell out of them to dissolve the sugar, and topped them off with a pinch of yeast from those packets you can buy for baking your own bread. Instead of capping the jugs of brownish sugar water, I tore into the pack of condoms and performed an act that is surely in the top ten nightmares of every male on Earth: I poked a tiny hole in the tip of the condom, right in the sperm reservoir.

              Beer generates carbon dioxide as it ferments. In a tightly capped vessel, these gases build pressure until the container explodes. When I'd spent a summer brewing beer with Rivet a few years ago, we ordered these plastic cylinders online that allowed carbon dioxide to escape without permitting the ingress of outside air into the bottle, which could carry bacteria and mold. Even the shakiest alky would snub moldy beer.

              Since I didn't have any of those airlocks handy, I had to resort to condoms. I slid the base of the first condom over the mouth of the water jug, stretching it tight across the ribbed threads molded into the plastic. It hung limply down the side of the jug, a glistening, deflated slug. Within a few hours, however, it would inflate as the yeast in the jug chowed through the sugar and shit out alcohol and carbon dioxide. The pinprick hole in the tip of the condom would allow enough gas to escape without blowing the whole jug and spattering me with half-fermented sugar water, but since there would always be more pressure inside the bottle than outside—always pushing out through that little slit—contaminated air wouldn't be able to get inside and spoil the beer.

              One by one, I condomed off the remaining jugs and stepped back to look at my handiwork. There were twelve jugs in all, lined up on the floor like pretty little ducks and filled with your basic Brew Science 101 toilet hooch. They made a man proud.

              Next, I turned to the grape juice. "Grape" was a misnomer—I'd grabbed jugs of crangrape, blueberry-grape, raspberry-grape, blueberry-raspberry, blueberry-pomegranate, and a dozen other combinations of fruits and berries and artificial flavoring. Bloody thick, saccharine sweet, and chock full of corn syrup that would ferment like a dream. I ran out of condoms halfway through, so I taped squares of paper towel and coffee filters over the rest of the jugs' mouths. It would serve the same purpose, more or less.

              Abby and I barely looked at each other for two days after my birthday, but on the third day, she helped me carry some jugs of water up the stairs, and after that she just sort of hung out on the third floor with me. We didn't say anything, but the silence wasn't empty. Her presence alone was a strange form of comfort. I liked having her around.

              Theo joined us that afternoon and asked questions about what I was doing. I took him around the room and explained how each of the different brews worked, how the yeast and sugars and enzymes worked together to make alcohol, why there were "balloons" on all the jugs. Abby watched us closely, a small smile on her lips. I think she'd smiled once on the night of my birthday, but I'd never seen one stick around this long. It curled her whole face up into a Valentine's heart and made me want to smile, too.

              On the afternoon of the third day, I proudly unveiled the first of my brews to the residents of River House. It was plain fermented sugar water in a gallon jug. I poured some in a glass and plopped both the jug and the glass down in the center of the kitchen table. Theo, Abby, Jennie, and Rivet gathered around, and for a moment, we just stared at it. The liquid in the glass was clearish and thin, with dark, snot-looking tendrils floating serenely from one side to the other.

              "That's fucking gross, Ray." Jennie spoke up first.

              "Young ears," I reminded her absently, looking around. "So how about it? Who's game?"

              "I'll drink it," said Theo, balling his hands into thin, determined fists.

              "No, you won't. Rivet will," Jennie said.

              "Why me?" Rivet retorted. "Ray should drink it. He made it."

              "He made it for
us
," Jennie reminded him. "Don't be rude."

              "I don't mind," said Theo. "Really."

              "No," I told him. "I think Rivet should."

              "I thought we were friends," Rivet glowered at me, but he picked up the glass and swirled it in the light. The snot pieces danced around, caught in the eddies. "Onward and upward..." he murmured, then tipped the glass to his lips and took a long swallow. He made a show of trying to keep it down, screwing his face up like he'd just sucked a lemon.

              "That's some real bad shit, Rayman," he said when he was done.

              "But it's booze!" I said, laughing.

              "It is indeed booze," Rivet conceded. "Tangy, too. Well done, Raymondo."

              "Okay, I'll ask what everyone's thinking," Jennie said. "Do we even know if plain booze will work? I mean, it's not like we know how the drugs work. Maybe alcohol won't do the same thing. We still dose, even when we drink."

              Rivet belched and squinched his face again. "I think I'd rather be a zombie."

              "Can I try it?" Theo asked.

              "No," Jennie and I said together. "I have a plan to find out," I added. "If the booze will work, I mean. But I'm going to need all of your help."

              Rivet swallowed another gulp of the hooch. Jennie caught him doing it.

              "I thought you said you didn't like it," she said.

              "I said it was fucking horrible is what I said. But...it's growing on me. Now quit interrupting Ray. I want to hear this."

              "It's simple enough," I said. "You're going to tie me up, and I'm going to get drunk."

              As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Abby shoved past Jennie and grabbed my shoulders, locking her eyes onto mine. Her eyes bulged, terrified, and she shook her head at me. Her fingers dug into my shoulder like claws, and Rivet was saying something, joking, but all I could process was Abby's eyes. The sheer terror in them, the sadness and pain.

              "Ms. Abby says you can't do that," came Theo's reedy voice. I barely heard the words, and it was only when I felt him tugging on my shirt that I broke Abby's gaze. I looked down at the boy.

              "Ms. Abby says you can't," he repeated.

              "I heard you, kid. Why not?"

              "Because it will break you."

              "
This
again?" Rivet said. He started humming the "Twilight Zone" theme. Jennie punched him in the shoulder, and he hummed louder.

              "Do you know it won't work?" I don't know why, but I directed the question at Abby. One of her eyes had burst a blood vessel. Her pupils were dilated to points, and her irises were hazel. I'd never noticed that.

              Abby didn't reply to my question at first, but eventually she shook her head. Her eyes grew pleading.

              "Then we have to find out," I said softly. "Knowing this could be the difference between life and death. Its reassuring that you care, Abby. I don't know
why
you care, but...it's nice. Thank you." Gently, I extricated myself from her grip. "You ready for this, Rivet?"

              "To tie you up? All my life, Ray. All my life." He rubbed his palms together, eyes gleaming.

Chapter 8

              THE LIVING room was cozy, if a little sparse. I don't know why we didn't just do it in the kitchen, but somehow we all ended up in that room at the front of the house. While Rivet wound duct tape around my wrists and the padded arms of a hard-backed sitting chair, I looked around the room, wondering why I never spent any time in here.

              Most of the dark hardwood floor was covered by a long, woven Persian rug, and what that didn't touch was claimed by the massive black grand piano. It gleamed in the lamplight, the only thing in the house it seemed that had been given any love. Theo sat on the piano's bench, toes dangling an inch above the floor, and plunked out "Jingle Bells" one finger at a time.

              "Ow!" I jerked as Rivet pulled a corner of one of the layers of duct tape, tearing out a few of my arm hairs.

              "Don't be such a baby," Rivet said through grit teeth, kneeling to bind my legs. Abby stood in the doorway, hugging her ribs.

              "Aren't they sweethearts?" Jennie sidled up to Abby's shoulder. Abby stared at Jennie as if Jennie had just offered to murder her loved ones, then turned back to me and Rivet. Rivet worked his way between my knees, reaching to get the duct tape around my other ankle.

              "While you're down there..." I began.

              "You know I'd love to, but gosh darn, my lips are so dry. Maybe next time," Rivet didn't even look up, and I felt the next tape winding squeeze my calf uncomfortably hard into the wooden chair leg. The windows being boarded as they were, I couldn't tell what time it was, but I knew it was well past sundown. We'd had to wait a few hours until my system washed out the Vicodin, and even then I'd opted to hold off an extra half hour, just to avoid being taped to a chair so long. While Rivet moved to my chest, Theo maimed a staccato rendition of "Chopsticks" on the piano. I wondered why there weren't any pictures of the people who'd lived here.

              "Shit, wait!" I exclaimed. "I have to piss."

              Rivet looked annoyed. "You should have gone
before
you started turning into a zombie. Now we'll
never
make it to granny's in time for Thanksgiving."

              "Fuck you, I'm serious."

              "Me too. Sorry, Rayman, that train has sailed. But I promise you this: If you piss your pants, I'll laugh so it's funny and not pathetic."

              "I could kiss you," I said dryly.

              "Save it for my girlfriend."

              "I will."

              "Don't forget who's tied to a chair and who isn't."

              "Will you two just shut up and get on with it?" Jennie exclaimed, exasperated.

--

              Abby didn't take her eyes off me the whole time. Shit, I don't even think she
blinked
during those two hours. The first thing we had to do was let me get to the edge. I won't lie: I was fucking terrified. I'd been there before, stared into the dark where demons writhed and hell had the only eyes to stare back. On River Street our first day, I'd sunk into the pit and felt my mind drawn to the void of Vitala, whatever the fuck that was. Something had touched me that day that had never quite let go, as if it was marking me, tracking me, a monstrous creature saving me for the right moment. To consume. To devour.

              In the cozy den in River House, taped to a chair, I began to sink again.

              The whispers came first, familiar now like old friends. They beckoned me into their midst with a warm furor. Welcoming but insistent.

              Cold, frigid darkness crowded my mind with icicle fingers, an Arctic stream leaking into the folds of my brain. Even as I sank lower into the maelstrom, my psyche split into two streams of thought.

             
Yesss, this is right.

              Fuck! I'm going too far. Is this too far? Christ, get me out of here.

             
Just a little lower, a little closer...so close to the end...

              The whispers enveloped me like cemetery ghosts. The lights in the den dimmed, flickered. Rivet was leaning in close, watching me, waiting for the right moment to dose me when things went too far. The shadows under his cheekbones intensified in the dimming light; his eyes sank deeper into his sockets. In the doorway, Jennie's body withered to skeletal proportions. Her face took on the same hideous hardness as Rivet's, leering at me. An abomination.

              Only Abby's eyes remained normal. They burned with anxious intensity, drilling holes through my skull and out the other side. I had the feeling that she was watching my transition from an internal vantage point, following me into the hellish pit to observer the transformation first-hand. She knew something of my pain at this moment, my mixture of longing and revulsion.

             
Consume the flesh. Live in Vitala.

              Yes...it seemed so nice. Unconsciously, my teeth chattered slightly. Rivet's grotesque face leaned away at the movement. Had this creature been my friend? It was a monstrosity, fit only for death. If it would not become part of the same whole as I, it must die.

              My teeth snapped again, harder, jarring my whole head.

              "Come...come over...Rivet, come here," I stuttered.

              "That's enough," Jennie said. "Dose him, Rivet."

              "No!" I cried. "A little more. We have to be sure."

              They would let me go home. They would not stop me now.

              "Let's give him another minute," Rivet said. "He's right."

              "The fuck do you mean he's right?" Jennie shouted. "He's gone. Christ,
look
at him! Bring him back."

              Their words washed over me, senseless and inane. Why couldn't they see how petty their bullshit was? Their bickering and fighting and fucking, on and on, an endless cycle.

              They could come with me, if only they weren't so distracted by themselves. If only...

             
That's far enough, Ray.

              The whispers had become an insectile frenzy that filled the room with buzzing, white noise, but that one voice cut through the cacophony like a shaft of sunlight through the clouds.

              My eyes shot to Abby. She nodded.

              "Give it to me," I rasped. "Quick."

              Rivet had a glass of my homemade hooch ready. He moved to tilt my head back. I gnashed at his fingers.

              "Fuck off, Ray," he snapped. Avoiding my teeth, he gripped my chin and jerked until I was staring at the ceiling. Something warm and bitter poured into my mouth. I shut my lips against it. Shook my head violently. Snarled.

              I choked on the liquid, gagged, then swallowed. It burned my throat.
Poison.

              Rivet wrenched my jaw open and Jennie poured more hooch into my gaping maw.

             
Bastards! Assholes!
Fuckers trying to kill me. I'd show them. I'd fucking tear their throats out. I'd drink their hot blood and chew and chew and chew their flesh until their bones snapped.

              They told me later that this moment was where my eyes turned pink and my curses became incoherent, gutteral snarls. At the pinnacle of my madness, Vitala siezed me in fullness. For just a moment, I was a zombie.

              Then the alcohol began entering my bloodstream and I slowly, ever so slowly, reverted.

              Fifteen minutes later, it was all done. I looked around the room, at Jennie's and Rivet's and Theo's faces, their concerned expressions, and for a heartbeat I hated them all.

              Then that was gone, too, and I was myself again and drunk as a trailer park on Christmas. Abby was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear sobbing from the living room.