The Orchid Eater (24 page)

He saw no
trails. The ground kept folding into gulleys or ridges, deceiving him when he
most needed trustworthy footing. Several times he fell and sprawled flat,
taking advantage of the momentary stillness to listen. No sirens howled, no cop
radios blared, but he might have run too far to hear anything. He thought not,
though. His hearing was acutely sensitive tonight. It seemed as though he could
hear crickets in the grass, waiting silently for him to move on. The infinite
mindless patience of the insects inspired him.

He moved in
a kind of overdrive for a time, a trance state that kept him from harm. In the
moonlight, everything became very clear and obvious, even luminous. The
individual plants had distinct personalities; they whispered to him of shelter,
or cried out harsh warnings. He had not stepped into any cactus, though it grew
everywhere here; it and the poison oak had voices unlike those of the other
plants. He heard them long before he stumbled into them.

But that
alien easiness passed eventually. He began to feel more himself again. Too much
so, maybe. Every muscle ached.

It seemed
that hours had passed before he came in sight of houses again, but it might
have been only minutes. He had circled around Shangri-La to approach it from the
southern corner. Squinting at streetlights, he blundered into barbed wire and
backed off, gasping, with a gashed hand. Thoughts of tetanus coursed through
him; his jaws were tight already, his teeth grinding so loudly that he feared
they would draw his pursuers. He went crashing through brambles and came out in
a clearing, sensing a faint trail in the dust at his feet. A spark of light
glinted beyond a tumble of rocks. He moved toward it, following the trail to a
high clump of bushes where it ended in a cavelike clearing among the brush.
Interlaced branches closed over his head; the moon appeared broken between
them, but there was enough light to show that the place had been hollowed out
and trampled down. It was large enough to let him stand. His eyes were level
with a small opening in the thicket, where branches had been bent and woven to
make a frame, like a wicker porthole. The shelter was a hunter’s blind, from
which one could await the coming of deer, but it should have been facing the Greenbelt. Instead, when he looked through the hole, he saw only a lamppost and the thin
strands of barbed wire cutting him off from the street.

Under that
light was a house. Parked in the driveway of the house was a black van. Not the
one he had driven in tonight, though. Sal’s van.

He was still
holding the crowbar, after all this time. He flung it deep into the bushes, as
if it were poisonous. What if they caught him with it? Then he thought, what if
this was a police blind, built for watching Sal’s house? They must know what he
was up to, dealing drugs and molesting boys. If they came here tomorrow to
resume their vigil, and found the crowbar with his fingerprints on it—the same
crowbar used in the burglary—what then?

Jesus, he
had to get it back.

He crouched
and looked after the crowbar, but everything was tangled and murky among the
broken sticks. Something pale lay flattened on the ground below the branches.
He touched it, and heard paper crinkle. It was a magazine. Seeking clues, he
dragged it out where the mingled lights of street and moon could fall upon it.

The pages
were stiff and brittle as a stale tortilla, glued together from nights of dew,
grittily gummed by the elements. A musky, moldy smell rose from the pictures.
It was hard to see clearly here, but he knew what he was looking at. Bodies.
Besides being crinkled and so horrible to touch that he could barely bring
himself to leaf through it, the pages were selectively mutilated. Photographs
of penises, gleaming wet, going into cunts that were equally glistening; and
women with their mouths open, taking in other cocks; or gripping them, more
than one woman, more than one man. Little of this was entirely new to him—he
had Scott to thank for that. But wherever men appeared, the pages had been
scratched and torn. Their testicles were missing, ripped away, nothing but
holes there. On the opposite sides of those pages, the same holes found awful
correspondence in the models’ faces; whole parts of their limbs and abdomens
had been eaten away. By teeth or nails or acid.

Acid . . .

That’s the
trouble. I’m full of acid. It’s dissolving me.

He could
feel it burning through him, a fire in his brain and nerves. He was already
crouched and in position—he had only to open his mouth and vomit a thin string
of bile on the magazine. He couldn’t avoid seeing that trove of desecrated
flesh as his guts seized and spasmed. Now stomach acids burned through those
rips and tears. The tears he squeezed out were acid, too, etching trails down
his cheeks.

The cave of
weeds was engulfing him. He thrashed free of it, finding his feet, reclaiming
the open night again, running. The barbed wire didn’t faze him. He slid between
the strands without a scratch, only pausing to look down Shoreview Road toward
the house they had burglarized earlier. When was that? How many people had he
been since then, his mind running riot as he raced through the hills? Had
everything happened on this one night? Wouldn’t it ever end?

Two police
cars sat before the trespassed house, rack-lights spinning. When he saw them,
his heart nearly stopped.

Worse, the
metallic brown car was parked in front of Edgar’s house.

I sure hope
you didn’t go home, Edgar.

He took a
circuitous detour back to his home, staying out of the cops’ sight.

Only his
mother’s VW sat in the carport. It must have been earlier than he thought, or
Jack’s Volvo would have been there. He unlocked the door and let himself into
the darkened house, wondering if a call to Edgar would tip off the police.

As he
switched on the upstairs light, all thoughts of Edgar vanished.

It’s another
hallucination, he told himself. I’m having a nightmare. I may never wake up.

The solid
glass dining room table had been smashed into ten thousand pieces; lethal
shards covered the yellow carpet and chairs, making a gleaming ruin. As he took
a numb step forward, he discovered that the mirrored wall also was shattered,
though a few pieces clung there still, returning his horrified stare.

He turned
around slowly, afraid to see more. Deep gouges scarred the dark blue walls, in
sweeping arcs as wide as a man’s reach. Dishes and crystal lay shattered on the
floor; at the foot of the fridge was a clotted pool of sauces and jellies,
swimming with the curved wet shards of broken jars. Raw hamburger, flank steaks
and a whole chicken lay thawing on the linoleum. The oven door had nearly been
wrenched from its hinges. He looked hesitantly into the living room and saw
that the wood and glass shelves had been toppled. Albums were ripped from their
sleeves and strewn about; the reel-to-reel was buried in festoons of tape. The
white sofa and matching chairs were slashed open like members of a massacred
family, plush foam and padding spilled everywhere.

He switched
on the light for the lower landing before descending. Halfway down the stairs,
he knew he shouldn’t go any further. What if the intruder was still inside? He
should run for the cops right now, while they were in the neighborhood. On the
other hand, they might smell the acid burning through him and instantly throw
him in jail.

But could
that be any worse than this?

More gouged
lines ran above the stair railing. The door to the master bedroom was open. He
could smell spilled perfume and powders. Clothes had been torn from the closet
and shredded. The mattress, hauled from the bed, was covered with dirt and
strewn with petals. His mother’s orchids were destroyed, pots overturned and
broken. The thought of her grief at this scene made him burst into tears.

He shut off
the light, unable to bear the vision, and went on weakly to his own room,
expecting a scene of complete devastation as he opened the door. It would have
been far more reassuring than what greeted him.

His room was
almost untouched. Almost. A few books were off the shelves; then he remembered
loaning them to Edgar. His desk seemed less cluttered, but at first glance he
couldn’t tell what was missing.

He looked at
the walls, wondering if by some mysterious power, the gorgeous painted moon had
saved him.

It hadn’t.
Not completely.

Beneath the
moon, among the layered green hills, a foot above his pillow, the intruder had
carved a hole. Three inches in diameter, roughly circular, it looked like a
cave in one of the magic green hills—but a cave that could hold only horror.

He
approached fearfully, because it had the look of a place in which something
must be hiding.

Down in the
dark hole, a rounded shape. It looked hard and metallic—not soft or wet or
poisonous. Safe to touch. His first thought, ridiculous, was that it was an
avocado. He put his hand in slowly, closed his fingers on the thing, and took
it out.

He had only
seen hand grenades in movies. This looked like one of those. Unreal.

Then he was
walking down the stairs, scarcely seeing the slashed walls and shattered
mirrors in Ryan’s room. Ryan’s back door opened onto the patio, where Jack had
installed a redwood hot tub. Mike went down the stairs between the houses, out
into the brush, and laid the grenade in the dirt beneath a sage bush, where he
could find it again if he had to. Where it could explode without destroying the
house.

Or what was
left of it . . .

From here,
he turned and looked up at his home. A strong wave of
déjà vu
washed
through him.

It was the
view he’d hallucinated earlier. In the bushes, looking up. He recalled a light
coming on in his mother’s room, a shape behind the bamboo curtain, blinds
closing. That room was dark now.

From
outside, knowledge of what the house held felt unbearable. Everything looked
peaceful and normal; he could almost imagine that nothing had changed.

But the
worst had happened. One night not so long ago, his key had fallen into a
monster’s hand. The monster had finally used it. What else was there to fear?

What else
but . . . the monster’s return?

Thoughts of
monsters were ridiculous, the dregs of a ludicrous hallucination. A man had
done this, one with a face and a name. Who? Stoner had the grenades, but Sal’s
brother Lupe had vanished with the key. Were they working together?

His brain
felt raw and bloody. Nothing made sense.

Shouldn’t he
confess now? Wasn’t this finally the time to admit to Jack and his mother
exactly
how
he’d lost the key? What was he confessing, after all, except that
he had gone into the house after dark, when he’d been warned not to. That was
such a small transgression, his original mistake. Sure, things were more
complicated now, but why keep piling lie upon lie? The whole clumsy edifice had
to collapse eventually under its own ungainly weight.

For the
moment, he felt locked into the pattern he had helped create. He was more
concerned about fitting into that structure, enhancing its apparent reality,
than with tearing it apart just now. Maybe there would be another time for the
truth, a better time, later.

But not
tonight. Not with cops around and acid percolating through his bones and Edgar
in hiding . . .

No way.
There had been a good chance for honesty before tonight, an option of
confessing and getting the locks changed. But that was in a simpler, more
innocent time. The amount of blame that would fall on him now, after this
incident, was inconceivable.

It was
almost a relief to realize that the police would finally be involved. Let them
take care of it. He would stick to his story.

The only
trouble was, when the cops came around they would see no windows broken, no
doors forced. Then his mother would remember the lost key and the blame would
fall on him anyway.

He had to
keep things straight. They must
seem
to make sense, so that no one would look any deeper. The real
secret of the key must remain hidden. He knew what had to be done, and how to
do it.

Looking up
at the house, his eyes went dry.

No use
crying, boy, he told himself. You’re going to have to do it: cover up a
monster’s tracks because they overlap with your own.

He walked
back up to the patio. Since Jack had only recently finished building the redwood
tub, tools were still scattered about. It didn’t take long to find the prybar
Jack had used to wrestle the staves into position while he worked the metal
straps around the tub.