Slices (11 page)

“Wait.
Wait.” Mark grabbed the notebook back. “There, right
there, that’s your handwriting, right? Oh man.” He
laughed. “I must have looked at this page a dozen times.”

“David
moves out,” David said. “Mark, what is this? What’s
going on?”

“I’ll
tell you. I’ll tell you everything, okay? Just — okay,
yeah. That makes sense. ‘David moves out.’ So you found
the notebook at some point, and you wrote that, but then if you had
moved out, you never would have found it. So, yeah. That’s the
contradiction. Okay, look. I can’t cross that out — you
figured that out already, right?”

“Mark,
I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking
about.”

“Just
shut up and listen. I can’t cross it out, but I can change it.
Here, two weeks later, I’ll write ... ” He grabbed a pen
out of the glove compartment. “Mark talks David into moving
back in.”

“Yeah,
so? I mean, that’s why we’re here, right? To get the last
of my stuff.” He frowned. “Wait. That’s not right,
is it?”

“It
is now. But you remember? You remember finding the notebook, and —
”

“You
can change things.” David grabbed it back. “I do
remember.” He stared at it, afraid to open it. “How long?
How long have you been doing this?”

Mark
took a deep breath. “About six years. I can show you how to do
it. We can figure out who you’re going to do it to.”

“Wait,
what? Do what to?” He stared at him, and then said, “That’s
right. That’s right, I figured it out. You — all the shit
I’ve been through while your life has been perfect — you
did it. You did all this to me. All of it. Everything!”

Mark
reached a hand toward him. “David, it’s not .... ”

“Don’t
fucking touch me!”

Mark
sighed. Reached for the keys, and killed the engine.

“It
took me a long time to figure it out,” he said after they’d
sat in the dark for a while. “There’s got to be —
there’s got to be balance. That’s what the first notebook
I found said. Somebody wrote all this down, how to make the books,
how to use them. There’s got to be balance. You can’t
just write down good things, or they don’t come true. It
doesn’t work. There has to be bad things, too.” He held
the notebook face down in his lap, running his hand over the spine.
“It’s been so hard not talking to you about this.”

“Go
on,” David said, barely keeping himself calm.

“I
figured out,” Mark said slowly, “that — the bad
things didn’t have to happen to me. It could — be someone
close to me. Someone I cared about.”

“Oh.
You
care
about me,” David said. “You’ve been using me as a
dumping ground for all the shit that should have been happening to
you, so that, what? You could be
president?
Is that right?”

Mark
sighed. “David, this hasn’t been easy for me —

“Sure!
Sure it has! It hasn’t been easy for
me,
Mark. It hasn’t been easy for my
sister
— you remember her, the one you killed?”

Mark
blinked. “Oh. David, Megan always had a weak heart. I just —
she just died a little sooner than she would’ve, that’s
all.”

“That’s
all?
That’s
all?”

“I
know you must be upset. I’m going to make it up to you. You
just — we’ll make you a notebook. It’s easier than
you might think. Then you can have any kind of life you want. All you
have to do is — ”

“No.
No. I’m not letting you — you
used
me, all this time. I thought we were friends.”

“We
are
friends. This wouldn’t have worked if I didn’t care what
happened to you.”

“Stop
saying that! You’re done, you understand me? Give me that
notebook!”

“David,
it’s not that simple — ”

“Give
it to me!”

He
tried to pull the open notebook out of Mark’s lap.

Mark
grabbed hold and pulled back —

Something
happened. Something that struck like lightning, that nearly tore the
car apart.

David
woke first. There was a hum in the air, a smell like ozone. His head
was screaming in pain, a pain that pulsed in time with his heart. His
fingers danced with sparks as he pulled off his seatbelt.

Still
clutching his prize, he fumbled the door open, took one last look at
his best friend, and ran off into the night.

“David,”
Mark said on the phone days later. “I’m — a little
surprised to hear from you. I don’t recognize the area code.”

“Michigan,”
David said. “Don’t bother looking it up. I’m not
going to be here long.”

“When
are you coming home?”

“I’m
not.”

“We
need to talk about this.”

“We
are. We’re talking right now.”

“That’s
not what I — ”

“Mark,
just shut up. I’m just calling to tell you. My half still
works.”

“Really.”
Mark held his ruined half in his hands, fingers trailing along the
ragged edge of its broken spine.

“Does
yours?”

“Well.”
Mark actually smiled. “I don’t know, do I? We’re
not going to know until, let me see here, next April.” He went
and stood at his window, looking out at the world. “What did
you change?”

“Nothing
important. None of your business.”

“David,
you have to be careful.”

“No,
you have to be careful. You have to know that I have just as much
power over you as you have over me.”

“You
don’t have to turn this into a war.”

“It
already is. A cold war. You don’t dare change my future as long
as I can change your past.”

“David,
you can’t use the notebook. You don’t know what you’re
doing. This isn’t about you and me. If you change too much, if
it doesn’t make sense anymore, you could break the
world.”

“So
you’d better promise me, then,” David said, his voice
sounding weak and distant.

“Promise
you what?”

“You
leave me alone. I leave you alone. Put the notebook away and never
look at it again.”

“Even
if I promise, how will you know?”

“What?”

“I
can’t do anything with my half that would affect you until next
April. I could have already killed you and you wouldn’t know
until then, so what good would my promise do you?”

There
was nothing but distant crackling silence.

“David?”
Mark said.

He
heard a dull laugh. “I’m just going to have to trust you,
aren’t I?”

“David,
please come home. We can — ”

But
he was talking to a dial tone.

Months
later. April 9th. The day his half of the notebook ran out. David sat
in a bar, nursing the last cup of coffee he could ever afford. He
wasn’t even sure what state this was.

He
hadn’t slept at all last night, and was sure that he looked
terrible. Not that sleeping in the car had been doing him that much
good.

The
TV over the bar was talking about the war. It was talking about a
politician resigning after a sex scandal. It was talking about people
in New Orleans who still didn’t have homes to go back to. David
sat and watched it all.

You
could break the world,
Mark had said. But right now it looked pretty broken anyway. If the
world went away — would anyone miss it?

What
was his life going to be like after tomorrow? He’d gone over it
again and again in his head, and the only answers he kept coming up
with were that Mark would kill him right away, or make him wish he
had.

Today
was the last day. The last day he had any power at all. Had his
finger still on the trigger.

He
stared out the window for a long moment, watching cars drive down
darkened streets. He wondered if he could still see the stars if he
stepped outside; he wondered if the stars would still be there when
he was done.

The
bartender asked him if he wanted anything else; he asked for a shot
of bourbon, and a pen.

He
pulled the notebook out of his dirty bag and set it carefully on the
bar. He turned to the first page, took the shot, and uncapped the
pen.

“
Mark
burns the notebook,”
he wrote.

She
busied herself, unused to company, unsure what to offer the young
boy. Looked out the window at the boys who stood outside her broken
gate, young eyes staring up wide and worried at the house they had
thought was abandoned. At the house that had been abandoned until
she’d found it.

She
stoked the fire up, poking and prodding at red and dying logs with
the metal poker, watched the boy with his glittering eyes staring
back at her, and wondered how she must look to him. Something out of
a fairy tale, she supposed. Her skin was just beginning to line and
crack with age, and her hair was only streaked with gray, dry and
fine, pulled back in a tight frazzled bun. But still, she knew how
she must look to this pale young frightened thing.

“Those
your friends out there.” Her voice sounded odd. She’d
meant that to be a question, but her voice had been dead and flat; it
wouldn’t rise at the end, wouldn’t take flight. She’d
left it silent too long.

“Yes,
Ma’am,” he said, quiet, respectful. Afraid.

She
smiled, and even that felt strange after so long with no one to smile
at. “Did they dare you to come up here alone?”

He
hesitated, but answered her true: “Yes, Ma’am, they did.”

“Afraid
of strangers around here, then. Well, that’s good. That’s
a good thing to be. Sit down.”

She
gestured to a kitchen chair, one of two that remained in the set. The
others had been broken a long time ago, long before she ever found
this house. The boy took the chair. She took the other and watched
him.

“What’s
your name, then?” she asked her visitor.

“Toniele.”

“Pretty
name for a pretty boy. Mine’s Jasper. At least, that’s
what people call me.”

“Oh.”

“No;
you say, it’s nice to meet you, Jasper. Or if you want to stand
on ceremony, you say, it’s a pleasure to make your
acquaintance, Miss Jasper.”

“ …
It’s a pleasure to
make your acquaintance, Miss Jasper.” He said the words slowly,
carefully, as if he thought they were magic, as if he thought this
was ritual. Maybe he did, she thought. Maybe he did.

“So
what brings you fine young boys out all this way?”

“Raishaillion
says there are people in the abandoned places who know things. He
says that’s why grownups don’t want us coming out here.”

“Raishaillion?”
There; that was a proper question. Her voice was remembering things,
now, broken wings mending and stretching.

Toniele
just gestured one bone-thin and delicate hand toward the window. One
of his friends.

“Ahhh.
If he’s so smart, why isn’t he the one up here asking me
questions, then?”

Toniele
had no answer.

“Maybe
he’s smart enough to know better than to come bother an old
woman like me. You think so?” She was smiling as she said it,
and Toniele started smiling, too, against his better judgment.

“So.”
She leaned across the table. “What is it you want to know? What
kind of things do you think I know about?”

Toniele
said something, but it was too gossamer-thin a sound for Jasper’s
tired old ears to catch. “What? I can barely hear you.”

“—
I want you to tell me about
the monsters.”

“Monsters?”
Jasper scowled. “What monsters?”

“You
know.” Toniele sighed with the impatience that only the very
young have. “The monsters. The ones who look just like people.”

“Oh,”
Jasper said, letting it hang between them. “Those monsters.
Aren’t you a little old to be believing in monsters?”

“Why
isn’t there any food in your kitchen?”

“I
just moved in. I said, aren’t you a little old for stories?”

He
looked at her a long moment. The light from the fire was the only
light in the room. “No.”

“Hmmmm.
All right. Well, then. Tell me what you know. And I’ll tell you
how much is true. And you can see if you believe me.”

Toniele
lit up. “Okay. They say monsters built the roads.”

“Well,
now. I don’t know if I believe that, do you? The roads go on
and on and I don’t think they ever stop, so maybe they never
started, either. I don’t think anybody built the roads.”

“Oh.”

“Now,
don’t look so discouraged. We’ve only just started.”
Jasper’s throat was parched. She would have given anything for
a cup of tea, but she didn’t dare. “Tell me what else you
know.”

“They
say — they say monsters kill babies.”

“Oh,
yes. Oh, I’m sure that’s true. They’d hardly be
monsters if they didn’t, don’t you think?”

“Sure.
I guess. Raishaillion’s heard that monsters — ”

“Now,
I’m not talking to Raishaillion, now. He was too scared to come
inside, remember? You were the brave one; I don’t care what
Raishaillion’s heard, you tell me what you know.”

“Okay
… I’ve — I’ve heard that monsters have dark,
dark skin, so they can hide in the shadows better.”

“Oh,
yes. Not as pale as you, pretty boy.”

“And
that they get old fast. That they only live a few months.”

“Yes,
I think that sounds about right. Yes. What else?”

“I’ve
heard that they’re — that they’re warm. And that
their hearts move.”

“Move?
You mean they get out and move around?”

“No,
no!” Toniele laughed. “You must have heard. That they
move. In and out, like this.” He demonstrated, little fist
pulsing. “And that their lungs are always moving, too, even
when they’re not talking.”

“Yes.
Yes, I’ve heard all that, too.”

“That’s
creepy.”

There
was silence in the kitchen for a moment. Nothing but the crackling of
the fire.

“What
else?”

“They
used to … eat animals. The whole animal, not just the blood.
Right down to the bone. They had the teeth for it, too, small and
rough and just for tearing and tearing. Animal teeth.”