The Singing Bone (33 page)

To this, one of the police officers lifted a weary gaze. “Kid,” he said, “I wish this was a dream.”

  •  •  •  

When another nurse comes in to take Alice's temperature, she smiles brightly at Alice as if it's morning. “What happened to you?”

When the thermometer comes out, Alice smiles back. “A ghost broke a mirror in my house and I fell on the glass when I fainted.” She doesn't care what that sounds like. It's true.

The nurse stares at her, her mouth a small
o
shape.

Alice shrugs. “What's today?” she says. She can't remember. She doesn't know anymore if yesterday was Christmas or Easter.

“Sunday,” the nurse says. All business now.

Alice picks up the television remote and begins clicking through the channels. She stops at
The X-Files
. Alice has never seen it. She likes the music, the shadows, the use of the color blue, the way the bank robber looks appropriately shaky when he writes his note to the teller. She hopes the doctor doesn't come in before it's over. She wants to see how it ends. The agents are stuck in a time loop.

Hans looks over his shoulder at the crowd gathering. They're not here only to celebrate the New Year—they've come prepared for a midnight apocalypse. They're convinced that at the stroke of midnight, all the computers in the world will die, the banks will fail, the sky will go black. Perhaps the Martians will arrive. It's natural to the limbic brain, to the amygdala, Hans thinks. To our buried antenna. In the dark, in the shadows, in the depths, there is danger. He stops at the crosswalk. The night is warm, misty. It's already midnight in half the world and there are no reports of great failures; time has not stopped. No black hole has emerged. But Hans knows that nothing is real until it is experienced.

Doug Ramsey has agreed to be recorded but not filmed. The secrecy of the group is part of its allure, but this Doug Ramsey—he has his reasons for wanting to remain unknown. Hans searched the name online to see if he could find anything else out about his connection, but he only found that “Doug Ramsey” is a character from Marvel Comics with a mutant gene for reading and understanding language.

Doug confessed to Hans that he followed Alice, broke into her apartment, and stole her work papers and a journal and revealed the contents to Jack Wyck. And though Hans has promised to keep Doug's true identity a secret, he still refuses to tell his name. Hans entertains himself by thinking that perhaps Doug is not a real person. He's slipped into a skin or borrowed a body and reanimated it. Maybe he is a jinn or a wicked fairy. He has that look—Mr. Wyck's very own Renfield.

Hans finds the café off Union Square. He stands outside for a moment, collecting his thoughts. He dislikes Doug Ramsey and his ridiculous false identity, his inflated sense of purpose. As soon as he enters the café, he sees Doug. Doug's wearing a black sweatshirt, the hood pulled up. He's kept his dark glasses on, too. Hans sits down at the table with him. “Hello, Mr. Ramsey.”

The young man takes off his glasses. His eyes are gray, his skin pale. The light in the café is dim but warm. A candle sits on the table between them. “Mr. Loomis,” he says, leaning forward, his mouth set. “I'm glad we could meet tonight.”

“On New Year's Eve, even. Happy New Year,” Hans says.

Doug sits back and smiles. “How's the movie? I mean, have you gotten into all the philosophy yet? It's so cool. You met Jack.” Doug's teeth are crooked. No one has cared enough to take Doug to the orthodontist—to fasten his mouth with wire and plastic.

“The philosophy is influenced by the Order Templi Orientis,” says Hans. “Modern Paganism. Yogic philosophy.” When the waitress comes, Hans orders an Americano and a piece of apple pie. Doug only has a glass of water, so Hans gestures at the menu. “Would you like something to eat?”

Hans watches Doug's face as he orders a grilled ham and cheese. He can't be more than twenty—it must be Jack Wyck's special age. That tender spot just between childhood and adulthood when one still believes one has perfect judgment. He thinks of that time in his own life—his own quest for truth, the backpacking trip he'd taken through the Alps. He might have died in the wilderness, but somehow it was the only course of action available. His mother had just died. His father was overseas, working in another country, married to another woman. He remembered the moment he had decided to find a home for himself, to return to a city: He stood on a peak in the Monte Moro Pass at the end of a summer day, and as he looked down at the wildflowers, the pines, the meandering roads and paths, and then above at the blue sky, the snow, the steep cliffs, he understood that there was no truth—just the place in between truth and nontruth, there was only this, this incredibly beautiful world—and that he could choose to believe that meaning existed through a higher power or that the world was wild and dangerous and random.

Doug Ramsey is still wondering, but he is seeking, and Hans thinks at least that's something. But what a strange place to seek a truth—not in the beauty of the external world, but inside the deranged mind of a man convicted of fraud and homicide.
What folly
, Hans thinks.
What criminally dangerous folly
. Is the child who ventures into the forest alone, who speaks to the wolf as if he were harmless—is that child a rebel, a victim, or a simpleton? The answer, of course, is that the child is all three. We all are.

When Doug finishes ordering, Hans smiles. “Well,” he says. He sets a small travel tape recorder between them. “Shall we begin?”

Doug nods. He shifts in his chair and fiddles with a straw, pulling the paper down and pushing it back up until it rips. He's not used to so much attention. Jack Wyck must know this. Jack Wyck has used it. So will Hans. Hans presses the recorder's red button and asks, “How did you come to be a member of the Wyckian Society?”

“Yeah,” Doug says, gathering his thoughts. “So I'm really interested in crime. A couple of years ago now, I met these guys on a crime site. Like, an unsolved mystery kind of site? And there was a thing about Wyck. I got really intrigued, you know? I mean, there are so many layers to this thing.” He shakes his head.

“What did you find so interesting?”

“Well, at first, it was just that there was this group of really pretty girls who were, like,
murderers
. But then I started talking to these other dudes about the philosophy aspect. And I found out there are all these clues that Wyck is more than human—like an angel or something.”

“If he was an angel, do you think he'd be in jail?”

“No. Not like that. He's—let's see—” Doug looks around the café. There are not that many customers—a couple in the back corner, a woman with a book by the window. He leans towards Hans. “He's, like,
locked
in human form on earth.” Doug cups his hands around an invisible ball. “He's caught. He's—” Doug sniffs and wipes quickly at his nose.
Cocaine?
Hans wonders.

“It sounds like something from a comic book.” Doug stares at him.
Something from a comic book.
Hans rarely makes a misstep like that. “What I mean when I say that is that there is a mythology about him—the way that Batman has a mythology.” Who did Hans expect to meet tonight? A philosopher?

“Yeah. Or the X-Men.”

“Exactly as the X-Men,” Hans says, smiling. “It is assumed that the X-Men are bad—they are mutants—but we know that they are saviors.”

“
Yes
.” The food has arrived. Doug eats quickly, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“Could you tell me about that? Is Jack Wyck human?”

“Yeah, for now. Until he ascends.”

“When will that be?”

“When the truth is known.”

“What is the truth?”

“That he is innocent.”

“But isn't it a fact that he was convicted of fraud?”

“He believed in what he was doing. He thought there was a real chance that Robert Smith was alive, and when he discovered he wasn't, he came up with the imposter plan.”

“Do you think he had any part in the murders?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Are you not at all worried that you might be helping a madman?”

“People don't understand him.”

“Does it not bother you that he is considered a person of interest in the cases of several missing women?”

“He doesn't know anything about that.”

“Have you not been made aware of the fact that Jack Wyck was never in Vietnam—that he lied to everyone about his past?”

“He didn't lie.”

“No?”

“That was his experience.”

“What do you mean?”

“He's not always in the same body.”

“So he can change form?”

“Not at will. It just happens.”

“He has no control over it?”

“He's learning to take control.”

“And he is choosing to stay inside of a man who is behind bars?”

“He says it's the safest place for his eternal soul right now.”

Hans sits back in his chair, folds his hands in his lap. “Ah,” he says. “I see.”

Mr. Wyck decided that from now on it was best that Alice stay at the house when they went to the Smiths. They were all getting ready to go, and Alice was standing at the foot of the stairs in a black dress, holding a role of masking tape. “I need to mark your spot,” she told Mr. Wyck, who was standing by the front door, “so I know where you're going to be the next time we do this.” He watched as she came towards him, ripping off the tape. She leaned down and put it on the floor next to his shoe. She stood and looked at him. “Are we clear?” she said. “We can go now.”

“Oh, Genie,” Mr. Wyck said, when she turned to find Mr. Wyck's white fur vest to put on.

“What?”

“There's been a change in the script.”

“Seriously?”

“Your mother and father miss you. You have to go home.”

“In the play or in the play?”

“She means in the Smiths' part of the play or in the play-play,” Trina explained.

“What?”

“She's asking if she really has to leave,” Molly said.

Mr. Wyck thought. “Just in the Smiths' part. See . . . ,” Mr. Wyck came towards her, smiling, laughing. She thought he should be more serious about a last-minute change. “You had to go home because everyone misses you so much.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“Uh huh.”

“But I'll miss the babies.”

“There will be more babies in the play.”

“All right. I guess. If you say so.”

Alice liked the idea of everyone missing her
so much
, but at first she didn't know what to do with all the time. She followed Stover around, asking him about the set. Sometimes when she did this, he'd turn and put his arms around her, wrapping her in a big hug. He patted her on the back and whispered into her hair. “You're not really in a play, Alice,” he said. He lifted her chin and stroked her cheek and kissed her on the forehead. He didn't try anything else because Alice had announced one night that her character was beyond sex, beyond the physical realm. They all had been having sex, and Alice had just sat up and said it and left.

Alice and Stover recorded new songs and cooked meals. Alice went around the house collecting clothes she liked: one of Molly's skirts, a hand-knit poncho that belonged to Trina, the rest of Allegra's discarded dresses. She put them all in the big claw-foot tub and dyed them black. She hung them out to dry—over the rails of the back porch, on the clothesline, in the shower, draped across radiators and banisters. Her hands were stained. She ran the black dye through her hair, and it stayed if she didn't wash it out.

Not that anyone would get it, but Alice was researching her character. She kept a journal and made lists of things that Other Alice might do:
Cigar box full of black marbles; walk barefoot in snow.
She let Stover read a few lists one day.

“Are these poems?” he asked, turning the pages of her journal over.

Alice shrugged. “Sort of.” She was examining the ends of her hair. The black dye made it flat and dry. She took the journal from Stover.

When Mr. Wyck came back, he looked down at Alice's clothes. “Whose funeral?” he said. Alice twisted at her hair with her fingers and got up. “You used to be so gorgeous,” he called after her. “Skin like milk, lips like rosebuds.” His voice trailed off like he was bored. Lee snickered.

Stover put an arm around Alice. They went out front and sat on the steps, smoking. “You're still gorgeous, Al,” Stover said.

Alice waved her hand at him. “Who gives a shit?” she said. “Everyone's trying to be gorgeous. I like this.” She held out her hands. She wore the once-white gloves that Molly had worn on Halloween. She'd cut the fingers off and dyed the gloves black. Her fingers were tinged with black dye.

The next day, when everyone left again, Alice and Stover stayed at the house to keep an eye on things. Whenever they left, someone always had to stay at the house to keep an eye on things. That's what they said:
Keep an eye.
Alice never knew what needed to be watched. Mr. Wyck started calling her The Creeper because she'd gotten so quiet, but she was only looking for what needed to be watched. “He'll make you leave soon,” Lee said when they were alone together. “He's sick of you.” They were sitting in the dining room. Lee was doing lines and Alice was shuffling the tarot card deck. “I've seen it before. You need to do something nice for him.”

“Like what?” Alice said. She was knitting Mr. Wyck a sweater. Sage green, heavy, with soft wool she'd bought with some money she found in one of Lee's socks. It was a surprise for Christmas.