Scowler (19 page)

“You’re not how I expected.” The voice came from above. “Old chum.”

The staircase swooped upward from Ry’s feet. He traced
its route with utmost care and even then almost missed in the darkness the huge turquoise teddy bear sitting upon a middle step.

“Mr. Furrington.” Ry was both awed and heartbroken. “You’re big.”

Furrington’s head was easily the size of a kickball, his torso the dimensions of a bulging sack of laundry. His stiff outspread limbs, cute on a small stuffed toy, looked cadaverous on someone roughly the size of Sarah. Ry anticipated a tickle of joy but instead felt only wariness. Furrington looked—Ry hated to even think it—
used
. Perhaps he had been just as dirty nine years ago. If so, his smallness had hidden the grime. Now slick lines of filth shone along outliers of the washrag fur, while thicker whorls of plush sharpened into greasy points.

Though he had no neck, Furrington’s head rotated in Ry’s direction. Daylight glinted off the dusty marble eyes.

“Aye. So I am.” The British accent was still melodic. Ry watched the bear’s mouth for movement, but the sewed dashes remained fixed. Furrington raised an arm and looked at it. “Truth is,” he said, “I liked it when you were the only big ’un. Now that I’m big, too—well, I don’t much know what to do with meself. Not sure how it all came to pass. You?”

Ry had trouble finding breath. He nodded.

“Oh, yes? Bully, then. Want to let a bloke in on it? Who’s to blame for this awful mess?”

Ry opened his mouth and found it keening with sobs. He knew the answer, of course he did, but it was one too cruel to put into words. What he needed to do was turn away; this apparition was something to be sold off at a garage sale with no more than a twinge of nostalgia. But my God, how
could he deny his teddy bear, built to be squeezed, designed to comfort? He owed Furrington. Didn’t he? Love was love. Wasn’t it?

Ry contained his tears.

“It was time,” he replied. “Time did it.”

“Time, eh?” With a creak of fabric, Furrington’s head turned left, then right. Ry took these motions as evidence of deliberation, and when they stopped, he was sure that the bear was dead, and it had been he, Ry, who had murdered him with callous words.

A flicker of movement. The marble eyes caught the sun.

“Can’t say me old bean knows nuffing about time.” An edge of playfulness lifted the end of the sentence. “All’s I know is about friends. You and me, we’re still friends? Righty-right?”

Happiness happened so fast. Ry’s eyes watered and dripped into his reckless grin.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re friends. Of course we are!”

“Oh, aces.” Furrington’s voice trembled too. “Brilliant.”

With a little pig-snort of effort, Furrington rose from where he sat. Resting a fingerless paw on the banister for balance, he began to hop. One hop, pause; another hop, pause—the whole operation as silent as a sheet. Ry was distressed until he understood: Furrington’s left leg, the one Ry had chewed off in Black Glade to use for kindling, had not magically grown back, and Linda Colson’s sewing of the wound, so impressive when Ry had been ten, now looked like the crude X patterns of a budget surgeon.

Evidence of burning, though, was nowhere to be seen. It was a miracle Ry chose not to question—this was a second chance and he would take it. He went from seated to
kneeling, and found himself at an equal height to Furrington, or less so if you counted the bear’s dusty bowler. Ry turned his guilty eyes to his knees. A second passed, a fat and painful one, and then Ry felt a paw, light as wind, caress his neck.

“It’s been a long time,” Furrington whispered. “A long time spent in the dark.”

Part of Ry had known all along that the voice from the crater had been Furrington, yet he had brazenly ignored the teddy bear’s calls. Ry was and had always been a terrible friend.

“I’m sorry,” Ry said. “I didn’t know—”

“That I was down there? Oh, yes. And what a black and quiet place it was to be.”

Ry touched his forehead. The old wound had reopened.

“But you’re out now?”

“Indeed.”

“And can I—” Ry choked on the word.

“Yes, friend?”

“Can I …”

“Ask,” Furrington said. “You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

Tears washed down Ry’s cheeks.

“Can I hug you?” he cried. “Can we hug?”

“Dear boy.” Furrington’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “Why else do you think I’m here?”

Ry sobbed and threw his arms around the bear. Furrington rocked with the force of the embrace, but his cotton innards absorbed the worst of it. Face buried in the matted plush, Ry inhaled the sweat of decades. He cried and laughed and had a fleeting awareness that the harder he sunk his fingers into this being of cloth and thread, the more he became unstuck from the real world. But how little he cared!

“I’ve waited oh so long,” Furrington said.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Ry said.

“I as well. Oh, it’s so good—”

“Yes—”

“It’s like a dream—”

“Is it? Is it a dream?” Ry heard his own rising panic.

Dousing anxious fires was Furrington’s specialty. The bear pulled gently from the hug, and with his soft arms still tickling Ry’s ears, he gave the young master the full consideration of his unblinking brown orbs.

“Maybe that’s up to you, friend.” Furrington’s voice carried the warmness of a smile. “If it
is
a dream, I hope never to awake.”

“Me too. Me too.”

“My, my. Look at you. Just look at how you’ve grown.”

Then the world reasserted itself with a smash from the dining room. Ry snapped to attention and noticed for the first time the afternoon sun, how much time had passed since he had been struck unconscious. More sounds rang out, these from Marvin Burke, though only three lone escapees pierced the warm cocoon of the hallway: “fault—traitors—disobedience—”

This was enough to begin the unraveling. What he was doing here was shameful. His family was fending off execution and he was
hugging
. Ry could blame Marvin, but he could also blame himself—he was the one who had sat next to a galactic magnet while it took parts of his brain and loosened them like baby teeth. This was fact, this was science; Furrington was but a manifestation of his weakness.

“You,” Ry accused, pulling away.

Furrington’s marble eyes were unblinking.

“There’s little time, chap. I want to help.”

Ry held his head in his hands. “You want to confuse me.”

“Bloody hell I do. You’re me mate. I want what’s best, I do.”

“What’s best,” Ry moaned. “What’s best is you go away.”

“Go away? Why, I’ve a mind to pop you one.”

From the other room came a hollow crack like a fist or foot put through wood. Ry strained to see into the dining room but the angle of the door kept things hidden. There was blood on the floor, though, and that was real. Ry followed its drips and smears. A man had been killed. A real person, not a fantasy being, and he was lying on the front lawn, dead. Ry moved toward the dining room.

Furrington’s soft paw touched Ry’s arm. It was enough to stop him.

“Oh, friend. I helped you in the past, did I not?”

Reluctantly Ry nodded; the movement caused a few more repugnant drops of history to thicken between his eyebrows.

“There’s a bloke.” Furrington’s eyes glinted with dead constellations. “Now, I know I was never the smart one. But do as I say and get her out.”

It was vague, confusing. Ry pressed a palm to his aching head. “Who?”

As if in answer, Sarah slid her narrow body through the hallway door.

Furrington flew into the shadows as if lashed to a parasail. Ry assessed his sister, an awesome combination of twitching, flexing flesh when compared with an inanimate lump of cloth and stuffing. She came forward, her naked white toes dodging every single spot of blood. A cloth was still wrapped
around her right hand, but that infirmity had been superseded by her overall sickness. Her skin had a chalky pallor and her lips were scarlet. She held out her hands to grab hold of her brother for stability, but they floated upward. Ry reached, encircled a wrist, and brought it home.

This woke her with a gasp. Her body pitched.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I’m scared.”

“What’s happening?” Ry whispered.

“He’s yelling. He’s being really loud. Mom wants to take us to the doctor but he keeps saying no. Ry, I don’t want to go. I hate the doctor. But Mom wants me to. He says he’ll let me stay here inside while he takes you and Mom back to the field. That’s fine with me because I hate the doctor. Also, I threw up and he yelled. Ry, what happened to Phinny?”

“Nothing. Slow down. He’s fine.”

“He’s lying under the tree. I can see it from the living room.”

“He’s sleeping.”

“Ry! Don’t lie!”

What pain there was in adulthood, the chisel scrape of truth.

“Don’t think about it. I need you to listen.”

“He’s not
moving
.”

“Sarah. Look at me. Not the door. Me.”

Her eyes spun like pennies about to fall flat from their narrowing loops. Ry nodded quickly so as to set the hook of attention. When he spoke he was disheartened to hear a voice desperate for validation.

“I want you to look at the staircase.”

“Ry, no games.”

“Fuck. Sarah. Do as I fucking say. Look at the fucking staircase and tell me what you see.”

Her white cheeks and red lips pouted in silent suffering. But she did what he asked, turning her head all the way to her left. Ry did not follow her gaze. Instead he monitored her eyes as they tracked right, left, up, down.

“Now tell me what you see.”

“Stairs.”

“Nothing else?”

“Ry.”

“Nothing hiding on the stairs?”

“Please! Ry!” Tears sparkled at the corners of her eyes.

Ry gripped her shoulders and shook.

“You don’t see him? You don’t see a bear? A big blue bear with a hat and bow tie? He’s not there?”

A curtain of pity, heartbreaking for its subtlety, slid across Sarah’s face. Her tears stopped and the weak smile she conjured was almost motherly. When she spoke it was with a gentle reassurance.

“Oh,” she said. “There he is.”

Ry’s heart stopped. He squeezed his sister harder.

“You see him? You really see him?”

“Yes.”

“You really see the bear?”

“Yes! I see the stupid bear!”

He nearly laughed in mad glory. But then doubt asserted itself. How the hell was he to know if she was telling the truth? He could not force it, not from a girl smart enough to know that the one thing grown-ups wanted to hear more than anything else was a happy lie.

“That’s fine. That’s great. Thank you.” Ry smiled in a way
he hoped was soothing. “Now pay attention. I need you to get out of here. I need you to run and this time I mean it.”

Her face crumpled along lines of genuine fear.

“We can’t,” she whined. “Phinny tried and he’s still out there on the lawn.”

A shout from the other room killed an argument. Then footsteps; Marvin was coming. Ry held Sarah tighter and put his face inches from hers. From the darkness of the staircase he could see the twinkle of marble eyes, and he felt a bolt of nerve. His spine straightened in a way that it had not since fifth grade, during those few months that he had been the smartest, craftiest kid in the entire class if not the whole school. It was a feeling he had missed.

The footsteps snapped across the dining room tile.

“You wait until we’re in the back forty and then you run.” Ry’s own voice stunned him, so cold and strong. He remembered the blood spatters all over the front porch. “Go out the back. Cut across the lawn, get on the road, go southwest. Go to the Stricklands’. Got it?”

He almost made one more demand: Take White Special Dress with you. But it was impossible for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that, once she had it, she would never let it go, not even if Marvin was bearing down on her and the dress was impeding her every step.

“No, Ry, I’m dizzy. I’m sick. My hand.”

A shadow fell through the crack in the door, an array of lines: legs, arm, shotgun.

“You can do it.” The four words just came to him, and he placed them gently before his sister. It was verbatim what Furrington had said to save Ry from certain death in Black Glade, and Ry was not surprised to find that the words still
worked. Shining through Sarah’s gummy eyes was a glint of the absolute faith she had in her brother. Then the hallway door opened, the gust lifting strands of her tear-heavied hair.

Marvin’s skin was patterned in streaks of war paint, evidence of hurried efforts to wipe away blood. His beard was snarled into bright thatches of coagulation; even his glasses were tinted pink. Finding Ry up and moving appeared to be something of a surprise, and he paused to give his son an appraisal.

“Thought you’d never get off your ass,” he grunted. He noticed Sarah, and his swollen eyes bulged. “Why aren’t you lying down?”

Ry stole a glance at the stairs. Furrington remained crouched and watchful.

“Water,” Sarah croaked.

Ry thrilled to the cunning falsehood coming from this angel face.

“Then ask your mother. No, get back on the couch. No more getting up.”

Sarah glanced at her brother once more, a bit of a risk, but what heart-stopping valor Ry sensed within those clouded eyes. She turned and stumbled back the way she had come. Before disappearing around the corner, her entire body tilted, and Ry wondered if she might be laying it on a little thick. If so, what a girl. He started to turn to Furrington to see if he’d noticed.

Marvin fit the butt of the shotgun into his armpit so that the muzzle pointed at Ry’s shoulder. There was something victorious in the black gap of teeth visible over the man’s curling lip. Marvin lifted his bloodstained right hand. In it was
a brand-new box of spark plugs. Marvin shook it once and it rattled like shotgun shells. Everything they needed, it turned out, was in the palm of one huge and hairy hand.

T
he spark plugs were difficult to remove from their cardboard packaging. “I killed a man,” he kept saying. “With my bare hands I did it. And now I can’t get these stupid things out of a stupid box.” None of them had ever heard such insecurity from Marvin Burke, and each new failure was linked to what he had done to Phinny Rochester. “No one can pilot a tin can like this,” he said while crashing the Beetle across the brutal ditches and sudden shoulders of the McCafferty Forty. “Not even me, and I’ve killed.” The car got stuck twice, the wheels spun in place, and it took orchestrated rocking—with Ry at the back bumper pushing—to continue their nightmare momentum. It took three times as long to drive to the crater than it took to walk. “The farm is mine and that means the rock is mine. Understand? That’s why more than anything I had to kill.” Ry and Jo Beth sat silent, he in the passenger seat and she in the back. They wanted nothing more than to forget Phinny’s grotesque demise, but Marvin’s obsession filled the air of the car with a slaughterous stink. When they finally reached the crater’s edge and turned the car around, Ry was the first to scramble into the blistering white sun. Marvin followed, mumbling murder, as if the only way to minimize the violent boundary he had crossed was to talk it to death.