Slices (22 page)

“I
— yes. Yes. All right.”

“But
we’re going to do it my way. With whatever prices I set. Until
you earn
my
trust again. Clear?”

“ …
Yes. Anything. Yes.”

“I’ll
call you.” Will hung up.

He
looked out the car window.

He
could still remember when he’d brought Edgar to Harrison’s
house. And when he’d taken him away. The way it had stood up in
the passenger seat, pressed its face to the window, clambered
excitedly into the back and done the same thing, unable to sit still.
Excited like a puppy. For all Will knew, those were the only times it
had ever been in a car. He sat. He waited. Harrison’s house
wasn’t far away.

Bring
me its head,
Harrison had said. As if Edgar really was a dog, or a person,
something simple and straightforward to kill. All these years, and
Harrison still didn’t understand what he was collecting.

He
heard the sound of his passenger door handle rattling. He reached
over and opened it.

Edgar
reached into the car, held out his own head by the hair, and dropped
it onto the passenger seat. His other hand opened and let three small
staring ballerina heads drop to the floor of the car. His blind body
pulled itself up into the car.

Edgar’s
eyes snapped open.
“Billy,”
he said.
“Ride.”

The
old house had a thousand doors in it.

All
old houses do. You can see them if you know how to look: the noontime
shadow of a windowpane crawling with intent across a floor;
unmeasured angles of wall meeting wall; fireplaces grown chill with
unused years. Archways with unseen contours you can trace with a
finger in the cracks as brick grinds against brick in settling walls.
Some nights, and some houses are doorways entire, silhouettes against
the evening’s last light black on black like an opening into a
darker sky. You just have to look. An eye-corner glance will do, if
you don’t turn and stare and explain it away.

The
old house had a thousand doors, all safely shut and sheltered, and
all this begins at its simplest door, the one seen most often and by
the most eyes. The front door, solid and sober and white, and right
now, this moment, a young man is trying to match lock and key. His
movements, not sober, drift and sway like ocean waves. He and his
companion lean in close together, conspiratorially, like collapsing
walls, shaking with muffled and shushed laughter.

“Your
parents’ house?” the older of the two said incredulously,
between giggles. He acted as drunk as the boy, and an act was all it
was. “You’re actually taking me to your parents’
house?”

“Shhhh!
Shh shh shhh,” the boy said, still laughing himself. “It’s
okay, it’s fine, they’re not home. They’re gone all
weekend. We can stay up alllll night.” He lost himself to
laughter again.

The
other young man smiled sweetly, and something behind the smile came
loose and shifted around inside his skull. He could feel it, wrapping
itself back and forth in rattlesnake coils and waiting and waiting.
For right now, his face, his human everyday face, could smile and
talk and laugh, but later, in this boy’s room, the waiting
thing inside would stop waiting and then it would be time to do it.
Time to get it going on.

But
right now the boy smiled and Johnny Lee Edwards smiled back and
followed him inside and the house swallowed them both.

Timothy
— that was the young man’s name, and surely he was no
older than sixteen, seventeen? Too young to have been at a bar,
especially a bar like that one — Timothy fumbled for a
lightswitch, but Johnny Lee could still see perfectly by the
streetlight filtered through the front door’s tiny windows. He
reached out and took hold of Timothy’s shoulder, pulled him
backward and then pushed him against the shut door. He leaned in and
kissed Timothy’s cheek, his jawline, his throat.

“I’ve
never met anyone quite like you before,” he lied with one hot
breath against the boy’s ear.

As
it happened, he’d met exactly twelve boys like Timothy before.
Timothy would be number thirteen. Unlucky for him.

His
lips kept working against the boy’s throat and his hand started
to press between the boy’s legs. “Do you like that? Do
you?”

Timothy’s
soft gasps, little caught breaths, were answer that he did.

“Well?
You like that, don’t you? That’s right. You like it, you
little fucking faggot.”

“Huh?”
Timothy squirmed under his hands.

“Shhhh.
Nothing. I’m just talking, that’s all. Just talking to
you. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Ummm
— ” Timothy said, and made other small sounds of protest
in the back of his throat as Johnny Lee soothed them away with
shushes and soft kisses.

Little
fucking faggot,
Johnny Lee kept thinking, and smiling to no one.

“Hang
on,” Timothy said, pulling away.

“Am
I going too fast for you?” Johnny Lee said, his voice a low sly
murmur.

“No,
I just — no. It’s not that.” Timothy smiled his
slow shy smile and brushed his straight soft hair out of his eyes,
the same gesture that drew Johnny Lee’s attention back at the
bar. “I’ve got something for you.”

“I
bet you do.”

“Ha!”
Timothy turned and ran like a child on Christmas morning, and Johnny
Lee followed him into the kitchen. Off in the distance, he could hear
a train go by somewhere, hear cars pass and see headlights throw long
ghost trails on the ceiling, the world going about its business and
leaving them alone.

They
were in the kitchen now, and Timothy opened the refrigerator and let
cool air spill into the room. He rummaged for a moment and then
triumphantly held up an amber bottle.

“It’s
mead,” he said, in answer to unspoken question. “It’s
like a honey wine. I made it myself. Want some?”

Johnny
Lee let out one sharp breath as a laugh. “Sure,” he said.
“Why not.”

Timothy
reached up into high cupboards for glasses as Johnny Lee pulled a
pack of cigarettes and a book of matches out of his bag. He could
feel the weight of the knife at the bottom of his bag, the sharpness
of its edge untested but known as his fingers brushed past it. He
folded the book of matches back, trapped a matchhead against the
striking surface and pulled fast, pop and flare.

Timothy
turned and his smile fled. “You can’t smoke that in
here,” he said.

Johnny
Lee had the flame almost to the cigarette in his mouth. He froze.
“You’re kidding,” he said, but he shook the match
out, a lanky, lazy gesture. “Will you be in trouble with your
parents if I do?” he said, smiling. He slid the matches into
his pocket.

“Huh?
No. I mean, yeah, a little. I just don’t like it, is all.”

When
I open this boy up,
Johnny Lee thought,
and
he’s just steaming meat cooling down to nothing on sticky
sheets, I’m going to have that cigarette and blow smoke right
in his sightless face.
But
he just smiled and said, “No problem.”

Timothy
brushed past, closer than he needed to, and he poured them two
glasses. Johnny Lee took his, raised it in silent toast, and took a
drink.

“Good?”

“Yeah,”
Johnny Lee said, “yeah, it is,” and a few sips later,
finished it.

Timothy
finished his, and looked up at Johnny Lee and smiled shyly. “Do
you want to see my room?” He sounded like a little kid who
brought a friend home after school.

Johnny
Lee smiled even wider. “I,” he said with mock gravity,
“would
love
to see your room.” He could taste that cigarette already.

Timothy
took him by the hand and led him to the stairs. “Watch that
first step,” he said, and giggled. Johnny Lee was laughing with
him and didn’t really even know why. He felt light-headed,
almost giddy. He could feel his palm growing slick with sweat in
Timothy’s hand.

“I
feel — ” he said, only half-aware he was speaking out
loud.

“You
feel what?”

“Kind
of strange,” he admitted. The air seemed thinner here, the
walls closer together. He shifted his bag uncomfortably on his
shoulder.
Come
on,
he
thought.
Keep
it together. You can’t get it going on if you don’t keep
it together.
Timothy’s
hand closed tighter and tighter around his.

Johnny
Lee lost his grip on his bag and it slid from his shoulder. He
grabbed for it, missed, and it hit the step and rolled down, step by
step, and he could hear it thumping and sliding, but never heard it
hit bottom.

He
turned, and the house was darker than he remembered, and he couldn’t
see the foot of the stairs.

“My
bag — ”

“I’ll
get it later,” Timothy promised.

“I
don’t — okay,” Johnny Lee said. He tried looking up
past Timothy, into the dark. “I feel really strange,” he
said again. “That drink — ”

“Just
mead.”

“—
Something in the drink.”

“No.
It’s just this house.”

“The
house?”

“We’re
nearly there.”

The
walls felt coffin-close, brushing his arms on either side. He reached
out for something else to hold on to, found a banister railing, old
and splintery and rattling loose against the wall. It was better than
nothing.

“How
much farther — ?”

“Nearly
there.”

He
kept following, not really remembering where they were going or why.
He couldn’t keep a thought straight in his head. It was getting
harder and harder to lift each foot high enough to reach the next
step.

He
looked back, tried again to see to the foot of the stairs, filled his
head with vertigo. Felt lost and weightless and turned back to
Timothy, no longer able to tell if they were headed upstairs or down.

“I
gotta stop,” he said, and he sank sideways to the floor,
sitting down as best he could between skintight walls. “What’s
going on? Where are we?”

“I
told you. It’s this house.”

“I
don’t understand.” Johnny Lee leaned his head against the
wall. It felt cool and clammy against his cheek.

“So
what was in your bag?”

“What?”

“What
did you have in your bag for me? A gun? A knife? What?”

“What?”
Johnny Lee turned toward the voice in the dark. “Nothing, I
didn’t — what do you mean?”

“Yeah,
I thought so. It’s okay.” Timothy squeezed his hand. “I
know the way you were looking at me. I read the papers. They’re
looking for you, you know.”

“—
The police?”

“What?
No,” Timothy laughed. “No, not the police.” He
squeezed Johnny Lee’s hand again and then let go.

“Where
are you going — don’t leave. Don’t leave me here.”
Johnny Lee tried to get to his feet and couldn’t.

“It’s
all right. I’m not going anywhere.”

Johnny
Lee heard him doing something.

Tapping.
Just tapping his fingers on the walls.

“Come
out,” Timothy said. “Come out, come out, wherever you
are.”

“What
are you doing?”

“Come
out, Mr. Splitfoot,” Timothy said. “Come out, Razortouch
and Hookwyrm.”

The
air seemed to freeze around the shape of these words. Johnny Lee felt
like he couldn’t draw another breath.

“Come,
Skitterkin, come, Snaptooth. Come out, Bleeding Tommy.”

“What
are you — who the fuck are you talking to?”

“Shhhh.
Shh shh.” Timothy crouched down next to Johnny Lee and took a
handful of his hair and pulled it back. “Shh. I have to call
them all by name, in the right order, or it won’t work.”

“You’re
fucking crazy,” Johnny Lee said, struggling for breath.

“Well,
I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you?” Timothy let him
go and patted him on the head. Started up the tapping again, right
next to Johnny Lee’s ear.

“Come,
Shiverhands and Spiderfingers. Come out, Bone Preacher and Dire
Bride. Come, Skinless Jack.”

He
kept going. Johnny Lee wasn’t listening anymore. He was
listening to something else —

Something
shifting, coming loose, behind the walls. Something moving unseen. He
could feel the world and sky below them, spinning on uncaring, while
this house followed its own rules and things came unstuck.

He
could hear sounds that he somehow suddenly knew, with perfect
clarity, were rooms scraping and shifting into place like tumblers in
a lock. The inside of the house opening up into somewhere else.

And
he could hear other sounds in the walls. Wet, dragging sounds, and
muffled whispers. A music box grinding tunelessly backward and
forward. Something rattling to get free like a moth trapped in a
light fixture. Something dripping. Something hissing. All of it
closer as Timothy kept tap tap tapping and whispering names.

Anyone
else in Johnny Lee’s place might have gone just a little crazy.
Not real,
he thought
fiercely.
This
isn’t happening.
Somewhere
in the back of his head he wondered how many of the dozen boys had
thought that.

They
weren’t alone. The darkness was like a solid thing now,
everywhere close, his eyes filled thick with it, but he could feel
the pressure and presences, crowding him even tighter against the
walls.

Something
giggled. Something else shushed it. Tiny furred and barbed hands
reached out and brushed his face, his arms.

“Stop
it,” Johnny Lee said, and his voice wouldn’t raise above
a whisper. “Stop it. Get off me.”

“This
the one?”

The
voice was close, too close, and it was deep and relaxed, comfortable
in its power.

“This
is him,” Timothy said.

Johnny
Lee was shaking. Shaking his head no.

“Let’s
have a look at him, then,” the voice said.

Something
came even closer, and Johnny Lee could see, now, that it was opening
its mouth, something in its mouth glowing with murky green chemical
light; closer now, and he could see that the glowing thing in its
toothless mouth was a single huge bulging eye, its cracked lips
peeling back like eyelids, its own eyelids stitched shut with heavy
black cord over empty eye sockets.