Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) (2 page)

Her mother climbed into the passenger's
seat, a wan smile on her face. "No, dear, Derek was in Boston,
remember?"

Boston. Right.That whole big thing.

"He's been here every day, sweetie," her
mother said, "waiting by your side."

"He'll be sorry he missed your awakening."
Her father started the car and checked his mirrors again. "You can
call him when you get home, but I want you to rest,
sweetheart."

"Yeah," Lily said, laying her forehead
against the heat of the window. "Sure."

CHAPTER TWO

The dreams had been
getting weirder lately, but that wasn't the worst of it.

Gideon was ready when the sheriff kicked his
door open. He'd been ready since he'd heard the old man's car
pulling up out front. The noise of wheels on gravel was subtle, but
his body reacted to it the same way it reacted to the soft 'click'
before his stereo's alarm clock went off, flooding his system with
adrenaline and a cold urgency that propelled him out of bed. It
would take his father between twenty and thirty seconds to get from
the street to Gideon's room, and in that time the heavyset young
man had pulled on and laced up his steel-toed work boots.

That's all he needed to do. He'd been
sleeping in his clothes for years.

Sheriff Bill Cermak knocked the bedroom door
open with a kick, a dark look on his face. Gideon hadn't been
absolutely certain that the man who had adopted him would barge in
first thing. There was never any consistency to it, but some county
business had kept the old man out until five in the morning, and
when Bill was working overnight he always came home in a devil's
mood.

"What the fuck did I tell you about your
goddamn room?" A swipe of his hands knocked the chair with Gideon's
backpack on it aside.

"Dad,I--"

The sheriff picked up the chair and slammed
it down again with a sharp wooden crack. "I told you to clean up
this piece of shit last night, boy!"

Gideon took a half-step back and felt his
lip curl in contempt, feeling an itchy heat rising up his back. The
sheriff's temper wasn't always so rough, but work had kept Sheriff
Cermak out every night this week, and every night he'd come home in
a fouler mood. Gideon had been anticipating this confrontation, had
played it out in his head again and again. Sometimes it ended in
violence. Sometimes he was cool and collected and logical while his
foster father raged and pouted.

"I don't know why you care, you're not the
one living in here."

The sheriff's ruddy face darkened. "What'd
you say?"

Gideon stood firm, even though he knew he
shouldn't. The social worker at the school said as much, told
Gideon and his father that their best bet was to just avoid each
other, to avoid antagonizing each other, but his father's behavior
filled the young redhead with disgusted contempt. Bullies were
pathetic, and he couldn't help but see Bill Cermak's inability to
deal with him peacefully as an admission of weakness. There was
some part of himself that exalted in his ability to reduce the
Sheriff of Laton to an unthinking idiot brute.

"You don't even have to come in here if it
bothers you so much, why--"

"This is
my
house, and I'll go
where I damn well please!" Teeth bared, Bill picked the chair up
again and slammed it down powerfully enough that the wooden
cross-bar beneath it splintered and split, legs out
akimbo.

Gideon stumbled back, tripping over the side
of his bed to splay across the mattress. The sheriff stared at him
for a long moment.

He pulled the brim of his hat low over his
eyes and tucked his chin to his chest. "Clean this shit up."

Gideon stared, mute, jaw slack, as his
father backed out of the room. He remained very still until he
heard the door to Bill's room click closed, and gave it a
three-count before standing up.

He picked his backpack up from the ruins of
the smashed chair, brushing splinters off its straps, and slung it
over one shoulder. He grabbed the torn-sleeved denim vest, patched
with various punk and heavy-metal band logos, from the closet
doorknob.

"Fuck you, dad, you clean it up."

He paused, reflecting that the old man
actually might. Bill might be a big dumb ogre, but sometimes after
an outburst his adoptive father had these weird moments of
contrition. He'd fix a door he'd torn from its hinges, or he'd buy
a new window to replace one he'd broken.

Like that helped. Like that made it better.
Like that unsaid what had been said. Like that took it all back, or
made up for a single god-damned thing.

Having considered the possibilities, Gideon
stooped and felt around under his box-spring. He retrieved a small
cellophane package containing plant matter he would much rather his
father not discover and slipped it into his pocket.

His hands were shaking. He closed his eyes
and calmed himself, willing them to stop.

He stepped into the hall, eyes on the
sheriff's door at the other end, but it was the one next to his
that opened.

"Are you okay?" Dale asked.

It was obvious that Dale and Gideon weren't
blood-related. Where Dale was ruddy, blond and rail-thin, Gideon
was of thicker build, overweight, with pale skin unsuited to the
Chihuahuan Desert and a shock of red hair that was just as out of
place. Where his younger brother differed from either Gideon or his
father, though, was in temperament. The grade-schooler was quiet,
shy, meek, traits that Gideon strongly suspected were due to the
near constant conflict he had to live alongside.

He tried not to feel bad about it, tried to
tell himself that the young boy just took after a mother he could
scarcely remember. Sometimes that worked. The rest of the time he
just blamed Bill.

Gideon held a finger to his lips and turned
away, creeping down the hall towards the living room. He heard
Dale's door close quietly behind him, and carefully slid open the
glass door leading to the ranch-style home's side patio.

He squinted as he stepped out into the
orange Texas dawn, grabbing his bike from where it lay against the
fence.

Fuck this shit. Fuck it. He did not need
this shit. There was no way he was going to sit through Mrs.
Criske's first period algebra, not in this mood.

"Fuck it," he said, taking a few steps
before hopping onto his bike.

***

"You shoulda kicked his
ass," Juan said, smacking a fist into his palm. "Fuckin' fascist
bastard. That's what I would have done."

Hugh nodded and rested his forehead against
the guard-rail. "Fuck cops, man. Your dad's like all the rest.
Ain't no difference."

Gideon took a long slow draw off of his
one-hitter, held it in for a three-count, then slowly exhaled.
"He's worse, man."

"Yeah," Hugh took the pipe from the redhead.
"He's like, fucking, king cop in this shit-burg."

While Juan was nearly emaciated-looking and
Gideon overweight, Hugh was almost rotund from a diet that
consisted chiefly of soda and snack-cakes. He refused to cop to
more than husky.

The pot wasn't really helping. Gideon was
feeling calmer, but more depressed. He stared past his boots
towards where the water-tower's girding cast a shadow across the
gravel far below.

"Not about that," Gideon said. "He's like,
my dad, right? But not my dad."

"Oh," Hugh said. "Because you're, like,
adopted. I got it."

"I feel you, man." Juan patted Gideon on the
back. "It's like... Richard's not my dad either, you know? Just
some fucker who married my mom."

Gideon swung his feet idly. "It's not the
same. Richard, like, he taught you to shave, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Man, when I was twelve? I tried to get
fucking Bill to show me how to shave, and he just fucking yelled at
me to get out of the bathroom."

"Cold, bro." Juan glanced sideways at his
friend. "Yo, what the fuck you talking about, peach fuzz? You don't
need to shave."

Gideon's face reddened, and he let out a
sharp laugh. "Asshole!"

Hugh ducked back as Gideon made a lumbering
swipe towards Juan, careful not to drop the pipe as the slimmer
Latino rolled away along the tarnished steel walkway surrounding
Laton's water-tower.

When he got tired of chasing his friend
around, Gideon sat back down and reached into Hugh's bag. "Ew, what
the fuck is with this old-man beer?"

"It's what my dad likes to drink, man."

Gideon suppressed a shudder as he pulled the
can's tab. "Nasty shit."

"Better than that hipster shit you
like."

The redhead just took a swallow, then passed
the can to Juan.

Juan examined it speculatively. "No it
ain't."

"Fuck ya both, then," Hugh said, grabbing
the can back from Juan.

Gideon's smile faded as he watched his
friends tussle. They didn't get it. Not really. Juan had grown up
without a dad before his mom remarried, but at least he had his
mom. Bill had always only looked after Gideon grudgingly, like it
was a job, like he didn't really care about his son. Bill was
different with Dale, but Gideon couldn't remember if things had
been different before his wife Linda had died. He liked to think
so.

Juan opened his mouth and let a loud belch
echo forth. Hugh gave him a high five, then yelped as he leaned too
far over, and the flesh of his thigh under the hem of his jean
shorts rolled over out of the water-tower's shadow and onto the
sun-baked hot-side.

Gideon stifled a smirk, and stared down at
the gravel far below again. "What are you guys thinking of doing
after graduation?"

"I'm going to head up to Odessa and get some
puss-ayy." Hugh stuck his tongue out.

"What, like with a whore?" Juan said.

"No!"

"Ain't nobody fuck your dumb ass for
free."

"That's not what your mom said last
night."

Juan stopped laughing. "Hey man, don't talk
about my mom."

"Your mom's hot," Hugh said.

"Not cool man."

"To be fair--" Gideon started.

"You both shut the fuck up," Juan said.

"You know who else is hot?" Hugh said.
"Lily."

"Baker?" Gideon asked. "I heard my dad
saying that she's out of the hospital."

"Oh shit yeah," Juan said. "Too bad her
boyfriend would kick your ass if you made a move."

"I ain't afraid of him." Hugh said."Punk-ass
bitch."

"Nah," Gideon said. "Derek's okay. He's
cool."

"Man, no he's not." Hugh made a sour
face.

"Just because he's not a dick like Barny
doesn't mean he's cool," Juan said.

"I've never had a problem with him." Gideon
said. "Derek. Fuck Barny."

"He's still a fucking sheep, like the rest
of the assholes in this town," Hugh said.

"Yeah, fuck this town," Juan said.

"Fuck it," Gideon said, not talking about
the town. "I got to get to class."

"Why?" Hugh snorted.

Gideon didn't answer, grabbing his backpack
and swinging down to the water-tower ladder, frustration and
annoyance buzzing in his skull. Hugh and Juan were probably going
to kill the whole day on the tower, drinking and smoking, throwing
rocks at the windows of the model houses nobody ever looked at
across the tracks. Gideon had spent most of his junior year with
them there, talking bullshit philosophy, listening to them talk
about girls they wanted to bang, wasting away the hours.

It didn't feel like enough anymore. It was
just... pointless. Superficial. This was it, senior year, and all
Gideon could see ahead was this yawning abyss of shit minimum wage
jobs in a world that was circling the drain. He wanted to help, to
do something to make the world a better place, but with school,
with Bill, with everything, he just felt powerless.

But what Juan and Hugh were doing, what he
used to do... it just felt like killing time, waiting to get old so
he could stop giving a shit.Waiting for the world to end.

Gideon dropped the last few feet to the
gravel and grabbed his bike. He spared a last glance up towards his
friends, then past them, past the water-tower to the Church of
Christ Everlasting billboard. Religion was, in his opinion, just
another snake-oil panacea sold to keep the sheep blind to the wolf
in their hen-house, or some shit, and Evangelical mega-churches
were even more full of it than most. No matter how progressive they
pretended to be.

It always brightened his day to see the
phallus someone had spray-pained on church-founder Reverend
Carter's lips. The sheriff had, of course, suspected Gideon, going
so far as to check his hands for spray-paint, but there hadn't been
any proof. Like he wouldn't wear gloves.

Gideon's eyes narrowed as he gazed at the
billboard. Someone had added something to it. Shading his eyes with
his hand, he was able to make out some kind of geometric symbol
between Carter's eyes, circles and triangles connected with
straight lines. It didn't look like paint... it looked like someone
had taken a blow-torch to it.

He smiled as he hopped on his bike. That was
pretty cool, whoever had done it, whatever it meant.

***

As if the dreams
weren't bad enough, a dull aching headache dominated Lily's first
day back to school.

"I wanted to come back Monday," she said,
"Just making it up and down the stairs was a huge deal."

Derek slipped an arm around her shoulders.
Though they'd been on the phone every night since she'd woken up,
the first time they'd managed to see each other was when he'd
picked her up for school.

"I'd have stopped by to see you, but your
dad said you needed your rest." He lowered his visor against the
rising sun, orange light painted across his lips and chin.