Crucifax Read online

  "Oh, not much. Just kinda hanging out, y'know?"

  "Sounds like you've got company. Having a little party, George?"

  "Well, yeah, I guess." George swallowed a giggle.

  "Guess they'll just have to take care of themselves tonight, huh, George? What do you want to talk about?"

  "Urn, I guess about you."

  "'About you'?" someone in the background croaked. "Tell her to suck your fat one, dude! Sheezis."

  "Okay," Erin said, trying not to laugh, too. "You want to know what Fni wearing, George?"

  "Yeah."

  "I hope you like lace, because I'm wearing a lace bra. Black lace. You can almost see my nipples through it. If I touch them and make them hard, maybe… you want me to do that, George?"

  "Yeah, touch 'em."

  " Touch 'em'?" someone rasped.

  "Radical!" another said.

  One of them guffawed.

  The voices were suddenly silent.

  Erin pressed the receiver a bit harder to her ear because she couldn't even hear George's breathing anymore.

  One of the boys said quietly, "What… was that?"

  Another: "Did the lights just… dim?"

  Their voices were so hushed that Erin frowned and sat up a bit straighter on the bed.

  "Something's…" George said, swallowing hard, "something's over…"

  Erin's grip tightened on the phone, and for some reason it suddenly occurred to her that she had left the sliding glass door open, the front door, too, and all the windows….

  "George," she finally said, "is anything wrong?"

  George said, "Something's… over the… house…."

  The receiver clattered to a hard surface, and the pinched sound of hurried movements came through the earpiece: thumping feet and bumped furniture. No voices; they were silent.

  "Hello?" Erin said, her phone voice gone; she sounded timid.

  There was no reply.

  Her next thought entered her head like a bullet, with such suddenness and ferocity that for a brief instant she thought she was having a heart attack and clutched her chest with one hand, sucking air into her lungs:

  Sweet Jesus, something's happened to the kids.

  The receiver slipped from her hand as she shot from the bed and out of the room, not really sure where she was going, just needing to move, just move because a snake had just crawled through the middle of her; that's what it had felt like, a snake.

  She went to the patio with visions of mangled cars and fractured bones jutting through torn flesh. Leaning both hands on the railing, she took deep, slow breaths, thinking, Please, God, let them be all right, let them both be all right, they're all I've got, please…

  Erin thought she should probably call somebody because something—she didn't know what, but something—had just happened to her—anxiety, maybe?—that was making her think stupid things and scare herself. She would call someone and just talk, that's all, she just needed to… but she'd already called George….

  Her thoughts took on a hazy glow for a moment, and she felt vaguely confused.

  Something's… over the…. house, George had said.

  Erin looked up at the sky.

  Nothing.

  When she went back in the bedroom and lifted the receiver to her ear, she heard a dial tone and felt, for a second, as if she'd just bitten down on a lump of aluminum foil.

  She hung up the phone and sat on the bed again. Her hands were still trembling.

  Erin picked up the phone again and dialed Kyla's number.

  Just to talk…

  Four

  As Erin listened to the endless burring of Kyla's telephone eleven teenagers came to a silent halt in the parking lot of Fantazm. A couple holding hands unlaced their fingers and stepped away from one another; two broad-shouldered guys, whose laughter had boomed across the lot as they got out of a big four-wheel-drive pickup truck, seemed to forget what had been so funny as they turned their eyes upward; their smiles melted away to frowns as their heads leaned back.

  Kevin Donahue was sitting on his motorcycle surrounded by six of his friends—his only friends, really, not counting Mallory, and she was different—when the buzzing started. One of the guys—either Mark or Trevor (Kevin wasn't sure because remembering had suddenly begun to feel like looking down the wrong end of a telescope)—had just asked him something about the band, something about getting a gig at Fantazm, and Kevin had been about to say… what had he been about to say?

  Well, I've got this friend whose brother's wife has a cousin who's the booker here at Fantazm, Kevin thought, but even if he gets us in, we'll just be playing for a bunch of goddamned even-tanned daddy-bought-its when what we really wanna do, I mean what we really fuckin' wanna do, is blow this valley off the map, make this fuckin' valley EAT METALLLL!

  He shook off his screaming thoughts as he got off his motorcycle. At first he thought the buzzing was from the lights that were shining down in pools on the parking lot, but it seemed to be inside his head. He stepped away from his bike, slowly looking around at his friends and at the few others on their way into the club. They were all looking up, and it seemed perfectly natural to Kevin that they should be doing so. He did the same—

  —and flashbulbs began going off in his skull, faster and faster until the flashbulbs became two blinking strobe lights, and the strobe lights became two piercing golden eyes, unblinking, searching, probing his mind, examining it like the eyes of a jeweler on a diamond.

  Kevin didn't realize he was walking farther away from his friends, crossing the parking lot with long, slow steps as he looked at the sky; neither did he notice the gentle, balmy breeze that was shifting his shaggy black hair. He kept his eyes on those clouds.

  The wings in his head were gone, and he glimpsed Mallory's face, her breasts, he heard his mother's voice—

  —can't you be like your little brother, he's only twelve and already he outshines you like you aren't even there—

  —saw his father slipping a stick of gum into his mouth to fight the urge to light a cigarette, not because he was worried about lung cancer or heart disease, but because "everybody at the office seems to be quitting—everyone in town, in fact."

  And he glimpsed their new car, that shiny fucking silver Mercedes Benz they'd just bought, not because they needed a new car, but because it was time to get a new one, every couple years without fail they bought a brand-new car, an expensive car, just so all their friends, all those doctors and directors and lawyers and producers, would know that they could, that they were af-fucking-fluent. Suddenly Kevin was filled with such tangible hate for them that it seemed if he leaned forward and vomited, it would all slap to the pavement in a steaming, viscous heap. But he didn't do that. Instead, he pivoted, kicking up one foot until it connected with something—anything, he didn't care what —and something cracked; he kicked again, still looking at the clouds, his teeth clenching hard now, burning in his gums, and something shattered, plinking in pieces to the ground.

  And it was gone, all of it; the buzzing, the images that had been shooting in one side of his skull and out the other, the hate for his parents that, for a moment, had burned hotter than ever before. Gone, too, was whatever reason there had been for staring at the sky.

  Kevin lowered his eyes and saw that the others were doing the same. He looked down and saw the frosty pieces of glass around his feet, saw the shattered headlight, and saw that it was attached to a brand-new shiny silver Mercedes Benz. No, it was silver only for an instant. It was really white.

  Just like theirs, though, Kevin thought, the flames of his hate flaring up for a moment.

  "Hey, Kevin," Mark called.

  They were walking toward him.

  The couple was holding hands again, making their way to the entrance of Fantazm; the two guys from the pickup truck were going in, too, glancing nervously over their shoulders.

  "The fuck you doing, dude?" Mark asked, closer now.

  Kevin's fists opened and closed at his sides
. He didn't know what he was doing or what had happened. He didn't know… well, at the moment, he didn't know much of anything. There were clouds in his head just like those in the sky; they weren't moving, they were just sitting there making everything dark.

  But he felt different. He felt as if… yeah, as if everything was okay, or was going to be okay. It had finally happened.

  What's happened? he thought, unable to find an answer.

  It didn't matter. Everything was going to be okay.

  He took a wrinkled cigarette from the pack he kept tucked beneath the belt around his blue jeans, and, poking it between his lips, he said, "Let's get the fuck outta here."

  "What?" Trevor snapped. "I thought you were gonna talk to the booker! Get us a gig!"

  "Not tonight."

  "Why?"

  Kevin left a swirling trail of smoke as he walked back to his bike, taking long strides.

  "We don't need him," he replied.

  "What?" Trevor stepped in front of Kevin, but the others remained behind. "I thought you knew the guy, you said you knew his brother-in-law and he could get us a gig here—I thought you wanted the band to play, man. Or are you just gonna keep talking about it and not do nothing?"

  Another wave of anger swept through Kevin, and he bent down, slapped a hand to his boot, and, with a solid click, sliced the air in front of Trevor's face with his switchblade.

  Trevor held up both hands and backed up.

  "Hey, no, no, okay, Kev, okay, you say we don't need him, okay, man, but… we all wanna play, Kevin. You know?"

  The anger fell away in an instant, and Kevin slowly lowered his knife, folding the blade back in and slipping it into his boot again, blinking with confusion. He took a long drag on his cigarette and went to his bike.

  "Look," he said, putting on his glossy black helmet, the dark visor raised, "we're just… not ready yet, okay? We've gotta rehearse some more."

  "Not ready," Trevor muttered angrily.

  "That's right, not ready. We don't even have a fuckin' name yet." The bike started with an angry roar.

  "Where you going?" Trevor asked.

  Kevin slid his visor down. "I don't know," he replied as he drove away, putting behind him the arced neon sign that read fantazm.

  Five

  J. R. Haskell was torn from a peaceful dream of his dead sister with a scream lodged in his throat like a lumpy gob of phlegm and the echo of an unuttered cry in his head. He sat up in bed, his fists closed around clumps of the single sheet that was spread over him, his eyes wide, his chest filled with the feeling of something massive, enormous beyond his imagining, hurtling toward him, rushing over a vast distance at an incredible speed, leaving him nowhere to run, to hide, to find safety—

  —then it was a memory.

  He looked around his dark apartment, swallowing hard several times in succession; he knew that if his throat remained open for more than a second, his voice would tear from his chest in a desperate wail.

  And he didn't know why.

  There were no unusual sounds; the fan in the window was whirring quietly, and the refrigerator was humming, but nothing more.

  As he sat in bed the feeling disappeared quickly, like water being sucked down a drain. It left him weak, but wide-eyed and alert.

  J.R. got out of bed and went to the window. The fan blew warm air from outside over his bare chest. He was disappointed to see that it had not rained. Leaning a hand on the windowsill, he looked over his shoulder at the bed again. Any sleepiness he'd felt was gone. With a sigh, he went to the kitchen in his undershorts, took a can of beer from the refrigerator, and popped the tab.

  He leaned against the counter and stared at his bed through the kitchen door. He was anxious, that's why he couldn't sleep—because he was anxious about Tuesday.

  "J.R. the high school counselor," he muttered, lifting the beer in a toast to himself.

  He'd taught English and literature for three years at Santa Rosa High School in Northern California but quickly grew tired of faculty politics and the tedium of paperwork, the tap dance to avoid this irate parent group or that messy lawsuit. He didn't grow tired of the students, though; they were the reason he'd gone into education in the first place. He still wasn't sure why he'd left Santa Rosa, though. He missed the crisp air and the green surroundings. The pay was better in Southern California, however, and he liked the school.

  He wasn't sure he was going to get the job at first. The principal, Mr. Booth, a round-faced man with thinning rusty-red hair, had seemed uncertain of J.R.'s ability to handle the job. Booth was a bit put off by the fact that this would be J.R.'s first counseling job, and although he tried to be as diplomatic as possible, he pointed out to J.R. that he seemed a little too soft-spoken and passive to hold a position of any authority.

  J.R. was used to that sort of thing; he was five-foot-eight and had a wiry build and a boyish face with short, curly brown hair; people frequently underestimated him in many ways. He usually surprised them. He had managed to convince Booth that he was more than capable of taking on the job, though. Now he wasn't so sure.

  He sipped his beer and stared out the window at the murky night, confused by his sudden wakefulness. He knew he'd been dreaming but didn't remember the dream.

  Something about Sheila, he thought vaguely.

  He usually dreamed of Sheila when he was having doubts about something. Uncertain situations, such as his new job, reminded him that he had been unable to help her when she had needed it most. So what made him think he would be any use to a bunch of frustrated, horny, and maybe even desperate teenagers whom he was supposed to counsel?

  While J.R. was a student at Berkeley, his little sister was living at home and going to high school in El Cerrito, about thirty miles away. Sheila had been a rebellious girl, always coming home with a strange new hairdo, outrageous clothes, questionable friends, and once with a black rose tattooed on her shoulder. J.R. liked her because of her rebellious nature, rather than in spite of it, because he understood it. While their parents had always been regular churchgoers, they embraced their religious beliefs with greater fervor as they grew older, and they pushed them on Sheila. She was simply trying her best to maintain a distance from her parents' rigid beliefs and keep an identity of her own. When J.R. tried to explain that to Leonard and Marjorie Haskell, his words fell on deaf ears. So he tried to let Sheila know he thought she was okay and that she could be whatever she wanted if she stayed out of trouble.

  One night, J.R. was awakened by a phone call from his mother. She was in tears, babbling about Sheila being out of control. He got dressed and drove to El Cerrito. He heard the shouting before he was halfway up the front path.

  Marjorie Haskell had found her daughter in bed with a girl. The girl had been kicked out, and Sheila was on the sofa getting a loud and tearful lecture from her mother about what an evil sickness homosexuality was and how much damage she had caused by bringing it into their God-fearing home.

  Sheila was sleepy-eyed and half-smiling, obviously on something. J.R. assumed it was marijuana.

  "Oh, J.R., she was vile!" Marjorie said to him. "Absolutely vile, that woman who was here. She laughed—if you'd only heard her—she laughed when I found them! Black shaggy hair, and those tight leather pants, she was… she…" Marjorie burst into more sobs.

  "Where's Dad?" J.R. asked.

  "He's in the bedroom praying."

  Jesus, he thought.

  He took Sheila to a nearby Denny's, wanting to get her out of the house before Mom and Dad realized she'd been taking drugs. She sat across the table from him in a sleepy haze.

  "What've you been taking, Sheila?"

  "Mm, nothing much."

  "What?"

  She wouldn't answer.

  "Look, Sheila, I know I told you to be your own person and all that, but come on—be realistic. You're living in their house."

  Her face wilted. "Do you think I'm sick and evil?"

  "No, of course not. I'll admit, it was a surprise to f
ind out that… you're…"

  "A lesbian."

  "Yeah. But I don't think anything is sick and horrible if it makes you happy, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Now, whatever you may think of Mom and Dad's beliefs, that's the way they are, and this hurts them. Why didn't you do it somewhere else, for Christ's sake?"

  "We couldn't go to her place."

  "Why?"

  "Her… well, her boyfriend had company."

  "Her… she has a… I don't understand."

  Sheila smiled, became more animated. "They're so cool, J.R. They don't care that I'm just a teenager, that I hate school—they think I'm okay! They're like that with all the kids."

  "Kids? How old are these people?"

  "I don't know. In their twenties, I guess. Hard to tell."

  "What did they give you? What kind of drugs?"

  She shrugged. "Some kind of hash, I think."

  "You're not even sure?" He paused to choose his words carefully. "Look, Sheila, you know I love you, right? I'm not telling you this because I think you're a bad kid, but because I care about you. Lay off the drugs—be really careful, okay? And I think it might be a good idea to stay away from these people. They don't sound so cool to me."

  "But they're fun, they're—"

  "Sheila. Until you're on your own, you're going to have to make some compromises."

  She looked away from him and muttered, "You're just as bad as they are."

  J.R. didn't want to leave her, but he had to go back to school. He could see both sides of the problem but thought Sheila was the more vulnerable. He stayed in close contact with her for a couple weeks, but after that she was seldom home when he called.

  "I don't know what we've done wrong, J.R.," his father said on the phone one evening. "Maybe we're being punished for something, I don't know. She's hardly ever home anymore, refuses to go to church, and sometimes she doesn't even go to school. She won't talk to us anymore, so we don't know what she does when she's gone. We've left it in the Lord's hands. That's all we can do."

  J.R. tried to tell them that wasn't all they could do, but they wouldn't listen.