1

The night of the barbecue would change everything. The last hurrah of summer 1988 opened another door, and many who were in the know, or who could ever conceivably trace back the coming events to a meeting in the woods, wouldn’t have known then to stop it. Wouldn’t have known then about the four boys with the VHS tapes, the old man waiting in the corn just east of the place called Fenway, or the cop sitting for a beer at Up the Creek.

Nobody could change things. And Reedy Creek would roll on from that night like a tire with worn treads over a gravel belt.

2

The funny thing about growth was how the developers planned to keep the pockets of wilderness that had made Reedy Creek indisputably closed; there were berms of greenbelts and copses of trees shading the yards of Deermont from Havenmount, and fleeced within those new asphalt paths trying to hype that fitness craze propelled by Hanoi Jane and the girl from Grease that Croak had pictures of next to his bed.

Tonight the paths were deserted. The unease that came with walking blind kept the boys together behind Randy. But even Adam couldn’t totally denounce that sort of closeness to nerves. Or not just nerves. What happened this summer, what happened with them, with the place they created at Fenway, it was a magical bond. A thing that was just as real as the beer being drunk behind them or the corn being harvested that even brought them together in the first place. And this walk into the woods made him realize that. This was the culmination of what they found in Fenway, and what they forged as a result. Danny could gripe all he wanted about Adam’s homerun, he could, but it would not have amounted to anything. Had he thrown the curve and really snapped his wrist like Guidry, maybe Rice wouldn’t have taken him yard, and maybe they would have never gotten the inclination to go beyond the deadfall. The inclination had never struck before then. That was the strangest part. Here they were, the four of them, beyond the scope of parental obligation, and they’d never once thought to ask what might be in those trees. Why was that?

Because it had to be natural. Coaxed by events rather than prompted by yearning. They were his thoughts but they didn’t sound like his words.

They could see the back porch lights beyond the embankment ahead, just bobbing in the darkness, disembodied spirits in the forest. The conversations from Deermont were muted now, but they could still kind of see the flashing police lights throwing up fingerlings into the sky like confetti. Adam clutched his bag. He hated the silence, but he understood the guys didn’t have any words to utter. They were nervous. But they were excited. How could they not be? This was their answer to Mr Wilson, to Mr Perkins, to those animals lying dead in the clearing and the farmhouse behind with the strange, vibrating metal door into the cellar.

“Big crowd for such a small order. I ain’t in the business of shelling out happy meals.”

The guy was leaning against a tree. For a moment he remained invisible, just that hanging voice, maybe an echo from a backyard get together. And then Adam saw the lighter flicker and the end of his cigarette burn a seething red. In that crimson light he saw Lazarus’s face, his eyes curious and lit with the ash of his smoke like pinpointed rubies. He stepped forward. He was wearing combat boots, the kind whose tongues flopped out over the laces and kept the cuff of one’s jeans (usually worn and torn) contained inside the footwear’s peculiar orbit. His long hair dangled over his face so that the part of him that had given him his nickname was mostly hidden by streams of what looked like tar in the darkness.

“Hey man, thuh—thanks for meeting me out here.”

Adam had never heard Croak’s brother stutter, no matter how brief it was. And he heard in Randy’s voice the same staccato that had given Cory his nickname.

“Like I said, guy pages and asks for two dime bags and I made the trip without this mysterious voice ever mentioning he’s on babysitting duty. What the fuck is this, comrade?”

“My little brother and his friends, they wanted to score some shit from you as well…but…but they didn’t think you’d make the trip for a bunch of—a bunch of muh—muh—minors.” The stutter returned. Adam couldn’t blame him. Up close, Lazarus was one ugly fucker, the kind of guy you saw at a bus station who coaxed the unspoken vow to turn your life around so as to avoid the grim choices he must have made to end up the way he had. It was a depressing thought, but the image of the guy was one that could haunt you. It could linger. It had in Reedy Creek.

“Well why the hell didn’t you say so?” He sprang forward so fast Pug thought he might topple backwards off the path. Lazarus plodded out of the shadows and into the last remaining light, his cigarette perched between his lips and his eyes darting to each boy like one with a thousand questions trying to find the most pertinent one to ask first. “I’m anything but inhospitable. Look, I only brought the dime bags. I do have a veritable pharmacy, but the inventory’s not as mobile as it once was since an ornery old motherfucker put the shop into the impound. Or wherever it is cars go to die in shitburgs such as this.”

Adam’s fists clenched. He didn’t know if Scarface suspected it was his grampa behind the wheel, and maybe now that didn’t matter. But his veritable pharmacy didn’t matter either, and the longer they stood around pretending it did the more time the Fenway Four might get cold feet and blow this popsicle stand. He could tell Pug was on the very edge here. He could. And Croak was no better. He didn’t tell his friends how he might even bring the subject up to Lazarus, and in all honesty, he hadn’t truly thought it out either. There were no rehearsals. As he followed behind Randy, the most he could do was ensure his feet didn’t trip over each other, and when he did hear the tapes in his bag knock against each other, he just felt sick to his stomach. Whatever magic had made Fenway was not a part of the surveillance. That was a different kind of devilry.

“We’re not here for weed.”

Randy turned and looked at Adam, his brow furrowed. Danny bit his lower lip and Pug only looked down at his feet.

“That so, little man? You didn’t strike me as one who’d meddle with the nose candy, or some pill poppin’. Not a handsome little fucker like you, pardon the French.” When he smiled Adam saw the scar on the left side of his face knot up by his lips; it was something he would always remember.

“Nah, I’m not into the stuff you sold Robert Wilson.”

He saw Lazarus’s eyes, so giddy at first, turn to uncertainty as Adam pulled off his backpack, letting the strap dangle from his fingers.

“Yo, Adam, what are you doing?” Randy said. He wasn’t angry. He was confused, yes, and at the same time he understood it was his reputation on the line because he’d made the call.

“No, it’s alright man,” Lazarus said, still looking at Adam, calculating him. It was an appropriate term, because the machinery was turning inside the guy’s mangled head. They all knew it. Could see it. “Here, take these. On the house. Call it a fire sale since I had to fire my Chevy.” He tossed Randy the baggie with both knots of marijuana inside. “Get lost, bud. Enjoy the evening. Get high enough to make those fireworks seem like the Russkies are invadin’ Red Dawn style.”

Randy stood on the path, his legs slightly bowed, clutching to the baggie with indifference. He only looked at Lazarus, unsure of what to do. Almost frozen.

“Fuck off, Swayze. Let me have some alone time with the little dudes.”

“I cuh-can’t just leave my brother here with…with you.”

“Well ain’t that swell. So now cause I sell a little pot to bored townies I’m a kiddie diddler? That it?”

“No, I uh—I didn’t say that.” Randy’s stutter was more pronounced now, and even in the looming darkness Adam could see the stark whiteness spread across the guy’s face.

“Randy…it’s okay, man. It’s okay,” Croak whispered. “We’ll be okay.”

“No,” Randy said, this time a little more resolute. “Look, man, I didn’t mean to offend, but I’ll just hang back right here. You do what you gotta do, and I’ll be here and I won’t say a word. I swear.”

“I don’t need you to swear a fuckin’ thing, peckerhead. It’s not often I give Leave-Me-Alone discounts, and it’s not often when I do that my customer acts the royal asshole and disobeys a direct order. Now. Get. The. Fuck. Outta. Here. Comprende?”

Lazarus pulled up the hem of his hoodie. There was a gun in his waistband, the crotch sagging some as the weight of the Glock pulled the Levis down a bit to reveal gnarls of black hair trailing up his belly.

Randy’s momentum stuttered now. He didn’t say a word. He couldn’t. Adam could tell that now. And the pallid soapstone that had become his face had somehow washed into his clothes now; he looked sick, the way one might appear after receiving a grim prognosis. And in a sense that was just what was happening here. Randy back-pedaled at first, nearly losing his footing as he stumbled. Croak might have been able to tell better, but for a moment Adam thought the guy might cry. He still held onto that baggie, and he probably would hold it that way, out in front of him, as he staggered home with the guilt settling like a pit of lead in his stomach. And he’d probably sit in his room and wonder for the longest time if his little brother was okay, discouraging himself from going to the phone to call the cops because only then would it be real. Only then would he realize that he’d screwed up, and that whatever might have happened was his fault.

Lazarus let his shirt fall back over his pants. That answered one question. He had a gun. Pug and Croak watched Randy walk away. Only Danny and Adam focused on the guy in front of them. Lazarus flicked his cigarette into the trees.

“It’s about time.” He nodded toward the swinging bag. “That your admission?” He smiled.

“What?” It was all Adam could think to say. It was as if the air was let out of the woods.

“You need a ticket to see Reedy Creek’s Situation Room. And I take it you’re the little fuckers with enough balls to stomach the stink of Rotting-Row. Thought I noticed your sneaker prints on my floor. Clever to use your big bro to con me, but you could’ve just showed me the tapes, boys. This isn’t cloak and dagger. He wanted you to find them. He wanted you to watch them. And then you could decide for yourselves.”

“Wh—who?” Pug asked. He was more surprised than anyone that he was the one to pipe up. But this was not expected. Adam thought he’d have to find the balls to dole out a few threats. These were his leverage. The tapes left under his bed were his failsafe. He’d seen enough movies and TV to know how this worked.

“Best you let him answer that, buddy.”

Lazarus smiled again. Though it was kind, it would forever scar itself on the boys’ memories, and lurk there like the childhood ghost that it was.

3

He didn’t like this. Not at all. Because his control of the matter had already slipped. They were expected. There wasn’t a hint of surprise when he presented the tapes. No, to Lazarus, they were tickets. Danny looked at him with trepidation as they followed Scarface through the woods, stepping over tangled roots and feeling the squirm of mud around their sneakers. It was dark, but they felt confident Lazarus knew where he was going. He probably knew the Creek better than anybody.

“He does have a gun,” Danny had whispered.

“I think that’s the least of our worries now,” Pug added. “He wasn’t mad about the tapes. He was just upset we used Croak’s brother to set up the meeting instead of coming to him ourselves.”

How was he supposed to know? He thought he had Lazarus by the balls; he thought he had the whole plan staked out, but now that the momentum had ceded, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to peek beyond the shadows. What if you didn’t hit the homerun? What if it was Scarface’s Mystery Man, the One Behind the Door? What if he used you to hit that ball so damned hard into the woods you’d have to find a tape of Wilson snortin’ blow when you stumbled on the farmhouse? Normally he would have chuckled at the sentiment. But right now that sort of thinking carried merit.

“You boys have a flashlight? If we hear a bear it’s best we find its eyes so I can shoot it in the brain. A belly shot will just piss it off and I don’t feel like running. My cardio’s shit, so to speak.”

“Is he being serious?” Croak asked.

“Pulling our chains,” the Jew said. But he wasn’t quite sure. There was a bear in the killing field. They’d see it soon.

“Look, this quiet is killing me,” Lazarus said. “You’ve got your suspicions. I don’t doubt it. If we’re gonna hoof it east of southern Woodvine from here, we should break some bread, so to speak.”

Adam wanted to ask if the guy knew it was his grampa that smoked his G20. But why bring up dirt when he didn’t have to?

“Why are you helping us?” Pug asked, his voice underminded by his usual timidity.

“I’m not helping shit. I look out for numero uno. Me. Always have.”

“But you’re helping us.”

“No, kid, I’m helping him. If the Creek had a brain, he’d be it. If the Creek had eyes, he’d be those too.”

“But the Creek does have eyes,” Danny said.

“Good point, bucko.” Lazarus laughed. “Point of the matter is, you boys intrigue him.”

“Who?” Adam asked.

“I don’t speak for him. I do for him. Guys like me find it hard for respectable employment. He gave me a job here.”

“You’re a drug dealer,” Croak said, matter-of-factly, and a part of him regretted it the moment the words left his mouth.

“No, motherfucker, I’m the sugar in the gas tank.” Lazarus turned to say it, and in the moonlight that hadn’t been suffocated by the treeline the boys could see the contours of his cragged face lit an opulent white. Croak stopped dead in his tracks. They could hear insects chirping in the darkness; could hear a bird somewhere, pecking wood as a squirrel scurried from branch to branch. “Every party has a pooper. Don’t be it. Don’t be an asshole and judge. I’m doing what he tells me to do. Or why else would I be in this shithole? For the girls?” He turned and continued on. They could hear the traffic on Main now. They could see the lights intermittently through the tangle. Soon they’d cross Woodvine and hit the woods east through Fenway.

“I’m sorry,” Croak muttered. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Nah, and you wouldn’t, would ya, tyke? Cause kids don’t think about shit before it leaves their mouths. Cause mommy and daddy are there to scold. One day you’ll shoot off the mouth and somebody ain’t gonna be as lenient. Have you ever had the barrel of a nine-millimeter pressed against your forehead?”

Croak said nothing.

“You’re in the shit now, boys. I don’t know what it is Boss man likes about ya to keep those tapes out for you to see. I don’t, and I won’t question it. But you’re in the shit. Once you see, you can’t unsee.”

“Are you trying to scare us?” Adam asked.

“I’m being honest. I was a kid before. And I didn’t look like this then.”

They walked in silence for a little longer, crossed Woodvine where Robert Wilson drew his last breath, and disappeared through the arcade of pines that littered the entrance into Fenway. There was hardly any traffic. Everybody was back getting drunk on Deermont.

Fenway looked different at night. It was awash in the indigo blanket of evening, like a creeping fog; the grass was a roiling shadow beneath the brew of gossamer strands that converged in an outline over the clearing. Adam wondered if they’d ever play here again. This is the guy Pug followed to find Fenway in the first place, and here we are now, following the pied piper under the cloak of night to that damned farmhouse to see his boss man. The circle of life. He wasn’t sure he appreciated the poetry in the pattern; he wasn’t sure, anymore at least, if Fenway was even worth it if it meant finding tapes of the dead and bringing his grampa into the mix only so he could go crazy. This asshole made your grampa lose his mind. He balled his fists as they walked through the long grass. They’d have to weed whack it before playing again. That was a thought meant to keep him sane. And safe.

Lazarus climbed down the deadfall and waited at the bottom for the boys. The Fenway Four.

“The fuckers put up cameras in these trees. Boss man had me cut their lines. Every time when they put up new ones. They pay Boss man to watch the Creek. They don’t pay him to know his secrets. Nope, those fuckers are never content with being in the dark. The animals are drawn here. Not sure why. Maybe they come to die. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. But Boss man leaves ‘em out. He leaves them so gawkers don’t meddle. And when they pile, we bury ‘em and wait for new ones. But your goddamn parents, those responsible assholes out in the real world, they’ve gotta know everything, don’t they? So they put cameras everywhere. They know you better than they know themselves. They want answers. All the time. And they didn’t have any for ol’ Rotting-Row. Couldn’t explain why the animals died here like they did. And they thought they had the right to know. But I’d cut the fucking wires every time until they finally gave up.”

Lazarus stood at the foot of the last pine, over the corpse of the poor crow that acted the gate between the woods and what he called Rotting-Row. The lights were on in the farmhouse, and the porchlight cascaded out over the field where the desiccated corpses infested the clearing in unruly tangles. Pug brought his arm over his nose and mouth. Even having seen it all before never made it easier. And the noxious humidity enveloping the area was somehow worse than seeing it.

“They just come to die?” Danny asked.

“They don’t come to live.” Lazarus only smirked. It wasn’t an answer. Maybe he didn’t even know. Above his head, on the tree’s bough, was a black lens with a frayed wire hanging loose. How many more might be on the trees did not matter. Not if Scarface had done his job.

“Well, shall we? Boss man’s gonna show you the real Reedy Creek. He never expresses interest unless he has a plan.”

Adam felt the bulk of the VHS tapes in his backpack and regretted everything: swinging at Guidry’s pitch, watching that ball sail into the woods, believing that it represented something far greater than the Creek. Maybe his future. But in the end it had brought him here. Brought them all here. And they were back. This is what they’d wanted. But he wasn’t so sure now.

4

Christ. You just left your baby bro back there.

What could he do? The guy had a gun. So what? Now you’re gonna go home and tell mom, what, that the neighborhood pusher’s hanging out with her son and it was your bright idea to leave him alone? That wasn’t something he could seriously think about. Because he knew he’d screwed up the moment he turned around and hit the path, heading back toward the lights and the sound of the party. He knew it. And he could very well lie to his mom when she asked if he’d seen Cory, but if the little shit didn’t return in a few hours, then what? At what point would he finally break?

Then just act cool. Just say you’ve been with Ange all night. You’ve been at her place. What Cory and his chums do isn’t your business. They’re kids. In the end it was the guilt that would eat at him. That was the truth. Yeah, and what about Pug, dumb ass? What do you think Ange will say when she hears you left him alone with Scarface?

He needed a smoke. But more than that, he needed to turn around. He needed to get those boys. If they wanted some weed, shit, he had some in his pocket now. He’d hand it over.

“Hey dickhead.”

The voice surprised Randy. He was so lost in his own thoughts he’d sort of just wandered blindly in the darkness of the greenbelt toward Deermont. But then he saw the lit embered ends of a couple cigarettes. He felt his pulse race. He wasn’t sure why.

“Just out for a stroll?”

“I guess. Who are you?”

There were some chuckles; the indeterminate grit of teenage angst. He knew a lot about that. Oh boy. Three lighters flicked up. Zippos, Randy thought. With cool chrome cases. Their faces flickered behind the flames, casting deep-set shadows in their brows. Randy knew them. Knew of them. The jocks who sometimes got high. Brad Jenkins, the dipshit in the Indians cap, still on now, always turned to the back, his angular chin jutting over the drooped collar of a white T; a guy named Oliver, whose freckles twinned the acne dotting his cheeks that would forever pock his face and probably leave him frantically concealing the shit; and Dave the lackey, a guy who didn’t say much unless Brad was around to back him up. All three here in the woods just outside the berms of a barbecue and Randy’s de facto safespace. They were up to no good. That much was obvious. Their faces were lit like jack-o-lanterns, and their eyes were orange beads.

“Where’s Angela?”

“I don’t know,” Randy said. “Probably home.”

“Are you retarded?” It was Brad, the flame still flitting in front of his face, dancing on his pupils. “I don’t mean no offense of course, if you are.”

“No, I…” He didn’t know how to continue. He wasn’t sure what Brad was on about.

“Look at you, man. You cut your hair. I remember when your locks looked like the tar they put on roofs, shit out the backside of some Mexican and left to drip. Looked like you had a skid mark on your head.”

“Brad, I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“How stupid are you, man? Seriously think about it.” Dave laughed. His lighter went out and he flicked it on again. They looked like three nightmarish carollers, their candles decked in the chrome plates of some devil’s fancy. “You think Ange wanted to go out with you? That it?”

Was this a jealous ex thing? Randy wasn’t sure. He clenched his fists for a moment, expecting a sudden burst of testosterone, but his balls had puckered so far up his pelvic bone the moment Lazarus stole any ounce of his manhood and dignity and sent him packing that trying to coax them back now would take more than a little gentle wishing. Ange had mentioned Brad last night. She’d said the guy was angry, said he was her usual type, the sort of boy she didn’t see much of in Provo, and the sort of boy her father would send out the door without so much of a word, but he was too handsy. And he called her Mormon-frigid whenever she pushed away any advances. Randy had laughed at that one. It had to have some merit, but he’d tasted her tongue in her house. He’d felt her flick his mouth with it, and he sensed some experience there.

“Man, I don’t want any trouble here. Look, if ya want, here’s a peace offering. Dime bag. Free of charge. You take it. I go the other way.” He took the baggie out of his pocket. And that left him thinking about Cory, stuck in the gut of the woods with a guy carrying a pistol.

“He is retarded,” Brad said, turning to Oliver. “Her fucking brother had pictures of her, of us, smoking up in the woods. He blackmailed her. Why the hell did you think she’d suddenly notice you out of the blue?”

He clenched the baggie tightly into his fist, feeling the weed, wanting so desperately to break the asshole’s nose but understanding the three on one ratio wasn’t working in his favor.

“You cut your hair on a dare, man. She doesn’t give a shit. You’re a fucking nothing, man. A greaser through and through. You can shove that dime bag up your corn hole. Ange told us enough’s enough. The deal was one date. And you’re taking her for a walk today? Are you some sort of stalker? That it?”

He didn’t believe Brad. He didn’t. Because Ange showed up at his house. Ange kissed him. Didn’t she?

“What next, man? Are you going to peep her through her window? You goin’ to watch her change while you fiddle your dick?”

“No man, I just…I thought she…” He thought she should what? He wasn’t sure. Because it had seemed authentic. He understood the date itself was grounded by his brother and his friends’ intention to score some bud, he did, but he thought he’d made some headway. He thought changing his look and letting her know the real him, the true Randy away from the self-loathing and the self-pity and the daddy issues would somehow convince her he was worthy of her admiration. And a part of him thought it worked. “Ange told you to come find me?”

“Ange told me to make sure you leave her the hell alone.”

“Brad, man, I really like her. I do. I didn’t do anything wrong with her…”

“Grab him.” It was all Brad said. Two lighters turned off, and before Randy could really do anything, his arms were pulled behind his back. Oliver was on one side, Dave the other. Brad approached him from the front, the flame still lit under his chin, flashing shadows by his nose. “You’re a—” Brad balled his fist and punched Randy in the gut, leaving him with a gasped oomph that nearly prompted him to throw up. “—loser, man. Angela said holding hands with you was like giving her daddy a hand job.”

“Brad, man,” Randy wheezed, “come on, lemme go.”

“You come by it honestly, don’t you?” Brad punched him in the gut again. This time Randy fell forward but Oliver and Dave kept him propped up. His knees wanted to buckle. “Your mother’s a whore. The town knows it. Bitch is with a new guy every night. Might have a condom shortage in the Creek soon. All because your mommy can’t say no.”

Randy had spittle on his lips; he stared up at Brad from a furrowed brow, his face strained, tears welling in his eyes. He hated his father. He hated him because he gave his mother that reputation. He did. She was the town slut because of him. He lurched forward, nearly breaking Oliver’s hold.

“Whoa, boy.” Brad socked him in the jaw, and for a moment Randy nearly blacked out. He watched the guy in the Indians cap wave his fist, as if he’d dusted his knuckles. “Found your trigger, haven’t we? Future rapist here’s a mommy’s boy.” He punched Randy again. This time he felt his nose explode; he heard a faint pop, and now he understood he would probably drift. Now he understood that wet feeling on his face was the calm that would nestle him to sleep. He could taste the blood on his lips. Could feel its warmth as it lapped his chin. The lighters were all off now. They were in the darkness, but even through his bleared eyes his vision swam and adjusted, seeing Brad’s frame as he leaned down in front of him. He could smell the guy’s cheap cologne, probably something he took from his father’s bureau. “You stay away from her. You hear me?”

Randy said nothing.

“Do you hear me?” Brad grabbed a tuft of Randy’s hair and pulled back his face. He could feel the stretch of his nose as it ballooned. “You don’t look at her. You don’t talk to her. You don’t walk by her house. She doesn’t exist for you. You go back to jerkin’ off to Poison or whatever trash you play in the darkness of your room and you stay out of our world. You don’t belong with us.” Now, even in the darkness, Randy could see the madness expressed in Brad’s eyes, like a rabid dog on a very short leash being poked by a stick. “Do you hear me?”

Randy said nothing.

“DO YOU FUCKIN’ HEAR ME?!?” He hit Randy again. The pain was instant, but the numbness was more overwhelming. Dave and Oliver let him go and he hit the path; the asphalt felt nice and warm against his sticky, expanding face. He could live down here. He really could. “DO YOU?” Brad kicked Randy in the ribs. Twice. Three times. Until Dave said “enough is enough,” and pulled the rabid dog back to gather his bearings. Randy listened to Brad breathe; he listened to the raspy bursts decrescendo and he understood the Shit-Kicking Concerto was finally at a close. He could taste blood. Keeping his knees tucked into his gut helped with the pain in his chest; he felt splinters of bone jabbing at his skin, and he wondered if a rib had snapped. He wondered if he would die here. All thoughts of Cory, of Angela, they were lost.

“So you’re deaf and retarded,” Brad said. He walked over and kneeled by Randy. He could only see the guy in the hat through squinted eyes, and even in spite of the darkness he was just a blur, a ghoul. He felt rough hands snatch at the baggie in his fist. He relented. There was no fight in him. Not now.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

Brad turned. Oliver and Dave had already hoofed it, probably back to the party. “You so much as think of Ange, I’ll finish what I started. Thanks for the peace offering.”

And he was gone. Randy touched his face, felt the warm blood on his fingertips, and he closed his eyes.

Just for a minute.

5

It was the hum. He could feel it in his gut like those power lines running up Main. Sometimes you could even hear the crackle of the electricity, and you’d wonder why the crows didn’t fall dead if they landed on the slack to watch the world below.

Adam thought of the dead crow, its ebony eyes, and for a moment he thought of the dream, the dream of the man with obsidian bird eyes watching him, watching the Creek, and he shook away the thought. Because it didn’t help. They’d never been here at night. The lights were on in the farmhouse.

“You live here?” Croak asked. He was still shaken having pissed off Lazarus about the drug dealer jibe, but the older guy had already moved past it. They were just in the kitchen. Even Scarface used the side door on the porch.

“It ain’t home. Nah, this is a way station.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Beanpole, they made this place what they need it to be so Reedy Creek runs properly. This isn’t a place, it’s every place. Way station to Watchtower. A backdoor. Whatever you wanna call it. But it ain’t home, or do you suspect cause of what I do that I’d live next to an above ground pet cemetery? I ain’t Stephen King, fuckface.”

“Sorry,” Croak apologized again.

“Look. I’m just the middleman. But color me impressed. I don’t usually slum it with babies, but you’ve got Boss man intrigued. I’d lead with that. You found this place. And you came inside. You found the tapes, and you watched them. You didn’t go to the cops, and you didn’t tell your parents.” He looked at Adam when he finished. “Grandparents can be cool, can’t they?” He smiled. “Unless they’re batshit insane and have heavy hoofs on the gas. No skin off my back. We re-build, kiddo. Don’t worry about it. I let the good times roll.” He ruffled Adam’s hair. He hated the feel of his hands over his scalp; he could sense the disdain in the guy’s touch. So he knew. But the good times, they weren’t rolling. Lazarus was pissed. It was in his eyes even if his mouth was implying otherwise.

Pug and Croak only looked at him. They weren’t sure what might come of it. If Lazarus held a grudge and grampa totalled his van, shit, the guy could leave his grandson with a busted grill as payback. Danny went to the fire rated door, the tuning fork under the stairs where the hum seemed to converge.

“So this is the backdoor?”

Scarface went to the door and stood there for a moment. The boy could tell he was uncertain. Maybe even a little afraid. And that proposition was daunting. Because this guy knew the gutters. Those types weren’t supposed to get scared. It was bad for their business.

“Be respectful,” he finally said. There was a level of reverence in his tone. It was something Adam hadn’t expected; he didn’t think the guy’s voice had that timbre, or that he’d lost it on the way to becoming Rebel Without a Cause. He touched the knotted skin on the side of his face. Adam knew the rumors about what happened. They all did. And they all knew not to bring it up. “Boss man helped me. Maybe he can help you too.” He exhaled and knocked on the door.

It was a tinny, hollow sound.

For a moment there was only silence. The old farmhouse groaned and croaked, showing its age, proving its wear, and somewhere beneath that odd hum kept its monotonous pace. Then there was a sound like a crank turning or a bolt being pulled. Adam couldn’t tell for sure. It sounded industrial, like something you’d hear on a ship. The guy on the other side of that door, Boss man, was on the Titanic.

It was a strange thought. And he trembled.

The door pulled inward and the smell that followed was earthen: dank and humid, cavernous, emitting something from a deep place that had never seen sunlight. The boys would all pull up different memories: Croak thought of a well from back home, a well the stories told (and so they always would) gobbled up a young boy out flying a kite whom the authorities never found, because that’s the way the stories were supposed to work to keep the kids too afraid to venture close; Pug smelled the old Pirates ride at Disneyland, its docking station showing the verisimilitude of a southern bayou in Gator Country; the Jew smelled a basement he and his buddy Tony used to check out at Tony’s cousin’s apartment near the Hudson where rumors sported an old flood had drowned a bunch of people who were now haunting the joint, and who, the caretaker services maintained, appeared sometimes as voices in the drainpipes calling to be saved in the gargled enunciations of the doomed; and Adam smelled the closet he and his mom hid inside when the men in the suits came, the closet in his parents’ room where the hamper was tucked in the dark corner and the damp towels had that cloying stink, and he remembered his father’s screams while the men spoke so calmly, and he wondered for so long what they were doing, and what that popping sound was that he would soon learn were his daddy’s fingers breaking one by one.

The place on the other side of the door was old stone. There was a domed light on the ceiling, illuminating the arched stairway leading into the cellar. But that wasn’t right. There wasn’t just a mere cellar down there, somewhere the old owners here stored wine. No. There was something else.

The hum was louder now. Almost beating, percussive, ebbing and flowing in great waves to prove some sort of consumption requiring plenty of power. That’s what the sound was: power.

And there was a man. The Boss man. Standing under the light, his face shadowed beneath the brim of a fedora so that his eyes looked like muted beads, and his teeth flashing white in a great mad grin that had the boys thinking of the Joker from the comic books.

Adam thought about the man in his dream. The man in the hat with the crow’s eyes, sitting on the stoop over the animal graveyard. Just watching. Pug thought about the man in his dream, the man with the gunnysack of videos. I’ve got your secrets to sell. This man’s eyes were normal. And knowing. But the coincidence was uncanny. The Creek threw those curveballs in spades.

“Finally,” he said. “I was wondering when your curiosity would get the better of you. Cause it always does.”



6

“Name’s Grimwood.”

He held out his hand. It was bony and white, like the cadaverous paw of something from a Vincent Price flick, but he was warm. When Pug took him in his grip, the man’s long fingers nearly lapped his pudgy nubs to stab into his own palm; and his grip was strong and commanding, something one expected of a farmer or mechanic, somebody who constantly worked with his hands and had developed that adaptive strength to plow or change tires.

“It’s good to be formal. Manners are a thing of the past, so if the new generation should venerate proper etiquette, we may just bring back a semblance of conduct. Yes.”

The boys each took his hand but said nothing. They were afraid. The man’s eyes remained beady shadows beneath the cap, and his chin was pronouncedly sharp above the stiff collar of his shirt. Adam couldn’t tell how old he was, but his first impression was that he was ageless, that he was emerging from his crypt like Bela Lugosi, but when he spoke his voice wasn’t old. It seemed young. Like talking to Lazarus but without the edge that proved his character was morosely crafted as a result of what happened to his face and what the world turned him into.

“Yes, yes. I’d say, cat’s got your tongue, but realize the context in which we stand: an old house whose foot is smattered by the dead. Not a carnival, is it, but a requirement. Here you are, though. The boys of summer. The Baseball Four. Oh how I’ve watched you play this summer. The crack of the bat, the pop of the mitt. A welcome sight for sore eyes. Come, come, we’ll make our formal announcements away from this destitute shack and its wary stink. I do apologize Henry’s brought you the back way, but it is fitting considering I left the tapes for you to find here. The circle closes.” Grimwood chuckled. It was a hearty, kind sound, and it let the air out of the space a little. “Henry. You have somewhere to be, haven’t you?”

Lazarus, whose real name was Henry, only nodded his head. “Yes, Mr Grimwood.”

“Off you go then. Boys. Follow me. We’ll make our real introductions downstairs. There’s something I wanted to show you that might make sense of some of your questions. Curious boys always have questions, do they not?”

The Fenway Four stepped inside the masonic lobby under the cast-light where the earthen damp left cloying marks in their noses and the metal door snapped shut behind them. The stairway down was well lit and like something out of a fairy tale; the arcade of stone above was like the subway in New York, Danny would think, and the wide corridor below reminded him of one of the old platforms where the whoosh of the coming train would push a hurricane into the basement and flap out trench coats and ladies’ dresses in a torrent of flapping fabrics.

The boys followed the man in the fedora. Not sure why but compelled to do so. Because this was the answer to the tapes in the bag. They all knew it, in spite of the reservations that had them leaving the world they knew. The familiar world. The comfortable world. The world they’d never really return to.

The corridor below the house was wide and very official. It was an observation the Jew would make, and he’d later recall how he felt like they were inside some office building. When his dad did accounting at a firm in Manhattan when Danny was a few years younger, he remembered his dad bringing him to the building to hang out while he finished some last minute paperwork; though the exterior of the place was opulent, covered in sheet glass the color of thunderheads, the inside had the sterility of any hospital, its pallor and unassuming boringness a clue to the morbidity and monotony of adulthood. This was the same. It was an office space. There were some tables. A refrigerator was plugged in and hummed in the corner next to a kitchenette with a working sink and Formica countertop, new enough to make the cabinetry upstairs on the main floor seem ancient. The walls away from the stone stairway had sheetrock in places where the area was partitioned. The corridor went for a long time. The space was not just contained under the farmhouse. The boys could tell. It extended far beyond, and considering Lazarus (or Henry) had conceded this was the backdoor, then the assumption was there had to be a front door as well. The hallway was lit by fluorescents, and they hummed in a polyphonic tone with the greater surge of power that must have been some sort of generator. Danny wasn’t sure the farmhouse was even a part of the Creek’s grid, so if this enormous space was beneath the abandoned place, it would require a lot of power to keep the ball rolling.

“What is this place?” Pug’s voice was awestruck. Because they never expected this; they’d expected a typical cellar, a place with compacted clay floors and an old boiler or coal chute, something you’d find in any mid-western shack dating back to the earliest years of the century before Wilson took the Americans to Europe to fight for democracy and the U S of A became a big player in global affairs.

“This is Watchtower,” Grimwood said ahead of them. “A prototype, if you will. An extension of something far more public, Horace.”

Pug stopped. The formal introductions hadn’t been done yet.

Grimwood, sensing the confusion behind him, stopped as well and smiled, flashing his mad grin again, that array of white teeth that in a certain light looked filed into points. Like fishhooks. He looked at each of the boys with eyes lit white by fluorescent beads. “Horace, Adam, Danny, and Cory. I know each of you. I’ve watched you for a long time. It’s why I’m glad you found the VHS tapes.”

“How?” Danny said. It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.

“How, young Mr Greenfield? I am particularly good at what I do. I am paid to see. And in Watchtower I see all.”

Grimwood opened the door ahead of him and they could hear the churning of a machine. Many machines.

7

It was like stepping into Houston. The fabled Houston so often referred to by astronauts: Houston, we have a problem. Because it was a bowled room with near tiered seating. At least Danny thought so. And there were TV monitors on the back wall, whose height because of the layered construction was nearing two stories. And in the middle of the room, still below the boys as they entered from the corridor, but higher than the base of the monitors’ wall, were two long tables with VCRs and Commodores rattling information in streams, two men at the keyboards, both with coffees from the kitchenette and both smoking cigarettes. The room was infused with both smells. Neither turned to look at the boys. They sat and watched. Croak would imagine their eyelids being propped open like that guy Alex in A Clockwork Orange. He didn’t like the thought because a part of him figured neither man could see anything beyond the television screens, that they’d somehow adapted to a form of blindness to the reality around them not being transmitted by coaxial.

Pug saw a newsroom when he walked in. He would imagine Larry King or Walter Cronkite standing at the helm with this place at their backs, detailing the results of George Bush’s VP pick (his father was steadfast in believing the Republicans had the election in the bag after Reagan’s terms). But instead of the random crowd shots of registered voters and campaigners, those TVs were broadcasting Reedy Creek. He could tell the difference. Because most screens were relaying feeds of the BBQ on his street. He saw Wendy, still with Chels, parading down the block, his mother chasing behind her, probably chastising her for the denim cut-offs she’d changed into if the reaction wasn’t particularly strong for her khakis. And in another screen he saw his father standing at a foldable table, holding a paper plate. He was speaking to Avery, Croak’s mom. Pug saw him touch her shoulder, his fingers remaining far longer than he thought they should have. Your dad’s just being kind. It’s the way he is. But even then it didn’t seem right. Because they just met, tonight, they just met and learned they worked at the same place, but they’re talking now like they’ve met before.

“Bernard and Steve. Both in my employ, like Henry, but not exactly fit to socialize. They wouldn’t do well as errand boys.” Grimwood chuckled. “So they run the Situation Room.”

“What the fuck is this place?”

Danny’s voice rose. Adam would recall their conversation on the phone, listening to his friend fight back the tears after he’d found the camera in his parents’ room; the nature of that conversation was bubbling to the surface now, those same elemental and guttural feelings finding blossom like weeds. The cameras have to feed somewhere. Somebody has to be watching.

Bernard and Steve were.

“I will forgive the language. You are far too young to speak to your elders that way. But I can assume a lot of emotions are occurring right now.”

“You’re damn right!” Danny nearly screamed. “All of the cameras, all of them in the Creek, you can watch them here. This is where you watch… this is where you made these,” he grabbed the pack from Adam, shaking it for a moment before retrieving a cassette, “snuff tapes.”

“Calm down,” Croak said.

“Shut up! I found a goddamn camera in my parents’ room. So did Pug. So did you. So don’t fucking tell me to calm down. These two pricks might be watching your folks. Might be watching your mom, Croak. Watching her in the shower. You ever think of that?”

The two men at the tables did not turn. One took a sip of his coffee, slowly, and returned the mug to his surface and flicked the end of his cigarette into the full ashtray ahead of him. They both breathed methodically, almost in sync. The visual was jarring.

“Grimwood,” Danny turned, his eyes vicious and full of hate. Adam remembered those eyes. They were the same way in the farmhouse when he’d attacked him; he was comported by an irrational impulse then, and now that same light had returned, that light illuminating the madness that can sometimes withdraw one from sanity. “What is this? Why did you bring us here? Why did you leave the tapes?” He wanted to ask more but Pug took him by the arm and held him. For a moment there were tears, but Danny wiped them away before they could fall. He wouldn’t give Grimwood the satisfaction.

“I know only what I know, Danny. I run a private security outfit. I’m on a need-to-know basis, and from what I’ve gathered, Reedy Creek is a federal operation testing a surveillance experiment on a small town. That’s a fancy way of saying the federal government wants access behind closed doors. But perhaps their fears are grounded. In 1968, Olean, New York installed cameras along its main street. Times Square followed a few years later. Why? To deter crime. If you’re being watched, you’re behaving. Law abiding because your behavior is monitored. But it forces criminality into the shadows. Private behavior is far different than public.” He looked at Danny specifically. His eyes were calculating. The boys would later say he could probably see through you and into your inner motivations, that he was some sort of psychic, but Pug would laugh and call it preposterous even as he decided if it was a good character trait for his Seller of Secrets in his story. “And it’s private behavior the officials are concerned about. What if this test project had been attempted in the 50s? Would we have disclosed the intent of Soviet spies, of turnkey citizens like Julius Rosenberg? Have you boys heard of the Manhattan Project? I would think so. I’d imagine schools are still good for imparting some history. The Cold War, Reagan’s Star Wars initiative, all predicated on private acts of espionage that relayed state secrets to the Soviets, including information about the atomic bomb. And we’ve sent good men to die in proxy wars while the Russians control the strings. Would this experiment have solved that? It’s a worthy question. But it’s not why I brought you. You found cameras in your parents’ rooms. But I haven’t activated their feeds. I see every name that comes to Watchtower.”

“Except for my parents,” Adam finally said. He’d listened to Grimwood with an uncertain fascination, watching the stroke of brilliance flash in his eyes as he spoke; the room smelled of coffee and smoke, but it was inundated with information, with the potential for information, and the prospect of what could be achieved down here was inviting and exciting. Each boy would feel that.

“Pardon me, young Mr Kramer?”

Adam looked at Danny and then nodded: “I didn’t find a camera in my folks’ room. I’m guessing cause you left the tapes for us to find, that you wanted us to do a little investigating. So we did. You probably watched. Just like you watched us play baseball at Fenway.” He gestured toward the monitors. “We found cameras everywhere. Cameras we’d never seen cause we weren’t really looking for them. And I guess that’s why it works. Why you can hide them in a room…because people don’t expect it. But there weren’t any cameras in my house. Why?”

“Because I receive names from the E10 council, and your father is a respected member of its inner sanctum.”

“So?”

“So, Adam, the names I’m sent by the council have all turned up dead. Or have you not noticed?” His madman smile flashed again as he gestured toward the bag of tapes. “Which brings me to why I’ve brought you down here. Let me show you something.”

8

If his father had any part of this, was there to oversee its complicated production, Adam would be sick. And he knew the way his friends looked at him would change. Because this was big. This place, this room of TVs and computers, of cables and stacked paper and newsprint, the stink of smoke and coffee, the eerie silence of men watching in the shadows those candid actions of people behaving in private the way people behaved when nobody was around. Robert Wilson and that guy Colin Perkins, who Croak met a few times when he came to the door to take his mom out. But was that before he snorted cocaine? Was that before he talked to Henry “Lazarus” the Pusher and carted home a baggie of goodies procured from a Chevy van now rotting in some car graveyard?

He watched Grimwood walk toward the two men watching the wall of screens. You dreamed about him. Or somebody like him. Was that strange? Was anything strange anymore? They lived in a town with a bunker beneath housing the world’s largest surveillance endeavor west of the Berlin wall. Anything was possible. Adam understood that now. The tall man, lanky and with a purposeful stride, leaned toward the man on the right. Steve or Bernard? He wasn’t sure. The man did not turn. He was just a back to the boys, a bush of tousled black hair, like tar under these lights. The man only reached for a new cigarette, lit it, then took a deep drag. Smoke rose above his head in tendrils. The man’s arm darted forward to the Commodore’s keyboard; the reaction was instinct. The man’s head did not turn to watch what he was doing.

The screens all changed. There was only a brief flicker. The boys hadn’t counted the monitors, but Adam figured there could have been fifty. Maybe even a hundred. And they all switched images simultaneously. Footage of the BBQ was gone.

“I brought you boys here because one can only stew so long in bile before seeking some light. I witness a world of darkness. All the time. My job is the investigation of the gutters, of those choices people make when the world they know is at their back; everybody is guilty of sin. Everybody, but sin itself is a provocation of judgment, so people, those all around you, perform for the world their best selves, and reserve their fall for those of us with eyes to see their corruption.”

“You don’t have to watch,” Danny said. He was looking at all the screens, at the images now flickering there. “Maybe that’s your shame, Mr Grimwood.”

“Your innocence is so rewarding, Danny,” Grimwood said with a smile. “It’s why I watched you four. Your baseball games are of partial credit to what saved my judgment of Reedy Creek.” He looked up at the screens. All of them. And the flickering images started to take shape. What the boys saw up there, above the heads of the faceless Watchers at the desk, smoking away and sipping coffee in timed intervals, was a familiar Audi parked at the curb in front of Mr Sub as pedestrians walked this way and that, enjoying the sun, enjoying the waning days of summer.

“Mr Wilson,” Pug said.

“Robert Wilson’s name was sent to me by the E10 council a month ago.”

“Why?” Danny asked.

Grimwood did not answer him. His eyes, so wise, flitted from screen to screen. The Audi just sat there, unperturbed, while its owner most likely enjoyed a Meatball Supreme inside Mr Sub. One of his last. And then the boys saw it. The car was parked in a way that angled its front bumper on the lower corner of the screens, below the lamppost upon which the camera was mounted. Adam remembered seeing that camera. A tall man, similar in stature to Grimwood, but adorned in a black hoodie, walked alongside the Audi and dropped something from his pocket. Adam saw that distinctly. The man reached inside his pocket and intentionally dropped something onto the curb by the Audi, forcing him to get down on his haunches.

“Is that…Lazarus…I mean Henry?” Croak asked.

“Somebody would like you to think so,” Grimwood answered. “But Henry is in my employ. And his services rendered did not include cutting Robert Wilson’s brake lines.”

The man in the hoodie stood up; he was holding something silver in his hand. It was what he pulled out of his pocket. To Adam it looked like a Swiss Army knife. But that really didn’t matter. The man that wasn’t Lazarus, but who clearly wanted those watching the footage to think he was, only exited the bottom of the screen, leaving the Audi alone in its spot for a moment longer before the man the boys watched snort lines of white powder on Adam’s little television climbed into the car, depressing its shocks, and veered out onto Main where he would pick up speed leading onto Woodvine before realizing his brakes were a no go and the post across from Fenway’s entrance would be his door to Heaven. Or maybe Hell.

“My God,” Croak muttered. Their hearts were all beating in tandem. The pulse, the tension, it was understandably palpable.

“Do you have the tape…the tape of the accident?” Pug asked. He was still looking at the screens, all of them now showing the empty spot where Mr Wilson would never park again.

“It wasn’t an animal,” Grimwood said. “The story in the Post was incorrect. There are patterns to inhumanity. A cause and effect. Robert Wilson’s brake line was compromised, but to assume that was enough to finalize a deed about which your intent has sought to discredit someone with the culpability of the crime would leave to chance the effect of the sheared brakes. No, the man in the hoodie, the man masquerading as Henry, understood Robert Wilson would have attempted to turn off Main but realized his brakes were not responding. So he would remain on the straightaway to Woodvine, where he would be able to cross paths with the accelerated vehicle and persuade its direction off course.” Grimwood cleared his throat. “That video was already requested by the E10 council, in the hopes they could procure any damning and incriminating footage. By your father, in fact, Adam.”

Adam’s face flushed. He hated his father. Hated him. Hated what he was and why he brought his family to this place. This place of secrets and evil.

“Why Mr Wilson? I mean, what did he do, why did he deserve this? If it was drugs, your guy, err…Henry sold him the…the cocaine.” Croak’s voice broke several times. But it was an admirable question.

Grimwood stared at Croak for a long time, his eyes questioning but expressing very little emotion; they weren’t vacant, but almost all knowing, the sort of eyes belonging to one with answers to every secret, whose boredom of a kid’s curiosity was exhausting in and of itself. The old man looked up toward the two manning Watchtower. “Steve. The next one please.”

New footage rolled. This time the boys watched the man they’d seen on Adam’s TV, the other guy Croak recognized having met him a couple of times at his front door. Colin Perkins. This footage was of him getting into his Ford and driving into the roiling darkness of early evening on the offshoots that apparently served the veins to the construction crews expanding Reedy Creek. And the boys saw the husk lying in the road. Unmoving. They knew from the Post that the guy had hit a deer, but that wasn’t the truth either, was it? No, because the deer was already dead. It was placed in the road as a block, and certainly somebody wearing a hoodie had probably tried the same trick on Perkins’ ’87 Taurus, dropping a knife and cutting the brake line, probably not the whole way through but enough so that it would eventually snap like a tight guitar string. And then that Ford, that Ford driven by a man who was nice enough to bring flowers twice to Croak’s front door, swerved to miss that carcass in the road that could have been cargoed to the spot from Rotting-Row itself, and the Taurus flipped like a tinker toy and that kind man with just the smallest bit of recession at his temples crashed through the windshield before the footage terminated.

“Steve. The next one please.”

A hand darted to the keyboard by instinct. And the screens changed again, the film different; this time of a man the boys all knew in an instant. His face was plastered all over the front page of the Post this morning. The man was at the countertop at the General, talking to that pretty girl who filled prescriptions. Adam couldn’t remember her name, but Danny would, he would remember thinking the Darling surname was more than poignant considering her pretty eyes gawking out from the aisles of pill bottles. In motion he was just as ugly as the still photo the Post decided to use; the guy OD’ed and maybe they were watching the transaction that got him the pills or whatever it was he’d taken to end up a bloated corpse. They watched him wave his arms and stagger back from the counter, as if pleading. And maybe he was. Maybe he was begging for a secret stash; maybe he was threatening the pretty girl, but when he retreated he did so with his tail tucked between his legs. The guy went to the payphone outside the drugstore and he stood there a moment, stood there in contemplation, unaware that he would be dead soon. That his life would be snatched and that there was nothing he could do about it. He made a call on that phone and then hopped into his pick-up truck. The footage changed, the same way it had in Wilson’s house, perhaps by motion sensitivity or something. Now the ugly guy was in a bathroom, most likely his bathroom, doubled over the toilet and retching, one arm draped over the side of the scummy tub.

And then the image froze.

“Clayton Miller,” Grimwood said. “One of the last names given to me by the council. Dead. Not a car accident but drugs. They took advantage of his sickness. He was very sick.”

“Why are you showing us this? Why the hell did you bring us here? We’re kids!” It was Danny. He was yelling, staring at Grimwood with a ferocity that served him well in New York if the bullies came running.

“Would the Soviets have gotten the atomic bomb if I’d been watching Julius Rosenberg?”

“How the fuck would I know?” the Jew retorted.

“Manners, Danny. Reedy Creek is a scenario of what ifs. What if the council presiding over this experiment has ill intentions? What if they are Soviet spies? Turnkeys of the sort taking out specific targets for reasons unknown? What if they aren’t just turning corn to fuel in that great factory up north? What if this is a different sort of Manhattan Project? What if the names I’m given are onto what’s truly going on? What if what if what if?”

“My dad isn’t Russian,” Adam said, his heart racing. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he knew the guys would blame him. They all understood his dad was warped. They’d read some of the stuff he’d written, the stuff that made him some sort of an important guy in Boston. So important the men in suits came to beat the living shit out of him. They were all in shock. The curiosity of what might exist behind the steel door disappeared to the reality of all they were seeing. None of it seemed real. None of it. Just an hour ago the world was simpler. Now they’d been in the basement and watched the Creek through a microscope, but one that perceived secrets. Adam wanted to leave. To leave and never come back.

“I have a proposal.”

Pulses racing. Every screen on the two-storey wall showing the distorted image of a man draped over the toilet, probably minutes from his death.

“Reedy Creek is broken. And I want you to help me fix it. Like Henry, I would like you to be my eyes on the outside. The cameras see, but they do not know. They cannot act. Something is happening in this town they do not want me to know about.”

“We’re just kids,” Danny said again. This time his voice was tremulous.

“Adults would not suspect you. Their world and yours intersect only briefly. But they expect their concerns are not your own. You would be rewarded of course.”

The boys said nothing. Could say nothing. It was so unexpected. Everything about this. The summer’s mystery had come to a close only to reveal something with a far meaner shape.

“I’ve watched you long enough to know you require counsel before coming to any decision. I respect the noble gesture of reasoning, and you four have conducted yourselves with more maturity than most adults when it comes to policy making. It was never my intention to expect an answer here. In this of all places.” His madman grin. “I would suspect you’d like to see the fireworks. One last summer hurrah, in spite of all you’ve learned in the mad scientist’s dungeon.” Grimwood laughed; it was an awkward sound contrasted against the squiggled image of a man in the possible throes of death multiplied a hundred times over. “I do wish you’d come to me sooner. But I had to let your discovery remain organic. If the idea had been mine from the get go, you would not have found the incentive to explore. Come, come with me. There are many tunnels in Reedy Creek. And I think I know of one that leads right to Deermont Road.”

9

Randy staggered home just as the fireworks were bursting in the sky. He wasn’t sure for how long he was out, for how long that gritty asphalt had been his pillow, but when he did come to the raucous chatter on Deermont hadn’t abated and he could still hear the jubilation from the greenbelt.

He held one arm across his chest where Brad had kicked him. He could only breathe out of his mouth, and even then the sound was staccatoed and broken. His nose was busted. He knew it. He could feel the turgid pull as his clogged nostrils stretched what felt like a mile off his face. People’s heads were craned upwards, watching the red and blue and orange flickers of fireworks as the kids still out on the street plugged their ears to the concussive pops. It was the perfect diversion. He would imagine he looked frightening. Like something that had crawled from the grave.

Did Cory make it home?

It was a sudden thought. Perhaps something to help ward away the pain.

He walked up his front yard and by the large willow, behind which he’d spy on Ange in her two-piece. But those were memories now, weren’t they? You thought just by cutting your hair that it would somehow make you different…tolerable? You’re retarded. You will always be your father, no matter how hard you try not to be! He opened his front door, the percussive beat of the fireworks tattooing the heavens like the world’s worst throbbing headache. He could feel their clanging persistence between his temples; could feel them vibrating the bridge of his nose, knotted in a cluster of blood and pulsing “now you’re ugly again” awareness. He hoped he would be alone, hoped his mom was out either craning her neck with the others or filling her Rolodex with yet another name. But the TV was on. He grabbed the Newell post and pulled himself up the first stair, feeling the stiffness in his midsection, the pull in through his shoulders.

“Randy? Cory?”

It was his mom’s voice. He didn’t answer. He walked up the stairs as fast as he could, trying so hard to ignore the pain. To ignore that goddamn anger, the belief that insisted he could be something different, he could be what Angela wanted, he could be worthy of something beyond self-pity. But who was he kidding?

“How was the barbecue? Cory? Randy?”

He heard her get off the couch; it was just his luck she wasn’t trying her chances with another of the Creek’s Casanovas, another of those pricks with cheap flowers and even cheaper compliments, who looked at Avery Hopson not as the mother she was but a set of legs and tits. He was at the top of the stairs when she wheeled around the hallway and looked up at him.

“Randy, did you not hear me? How was the barbecue? Where’s your brother? Randy?”

He stopped for only a moment. She knew there was something wrong. She knew because he must not have looked right. His hair, shorn to look like Tom Cruise when he juggled cocktails, was pulled back in tufts and probably had blood in it. Maybe his shirt was ripped. He couldn’t tell. Didn’t care, to be honest. Maybe you should just let her help. Maybe you should just let her be your mom. It was her noble role in life, and he had denied her that fulfillment ever since dad had up and left. Ever since she decided to uproot the family and come to Reedy Creek.

“Oh my God…Randy…” She bounded up the stairs two at a time. He tried to escape her but she was too fast. Too goddamn fast. He could see his door. His way out. His retreat to darkness.

He felt her fingers glide off his shoulder. “Randy, what happened? My God, what happened to you? Your face?”

Now they were just words. Even if she did care, even if this was authentic, he didn’t think he deserved it. You are what you are, Randy. Cutting your hair, trying to help your bro and his friends, that wasn’t really you. No, you’re a creature of the darkness. You hide behind masks. Because look what happens when you try to reveal yourself. Just look. You’re a fucking mess!

And now he was angry. Now he didn’t care about his nose or his ribs or the blood on his face that had dried and glued crusted pebbles from the path in the woods.

“Get off me!” It hurt to scream but he could use that. He could.

“Randy, oh my God, who did this to you? Who? Who?”

He got to his bedroom door. His mom was crying. She was frantic. He turned to look at her as he opened his door. There was so much blood. He could tell just by the way she looked at him. By the horrified expression that wasn’t quite revulsion but had for just a moment made her not his mother but like one of them, them, those who’d punish him for being something he wasn’t. Them, those Creekers who played the welcome wagon and used his face as a fucking drum. He retreated into the darkness of his room as his mother clawed at him, her crying in bursts now. She sounded like that when dad left. But she used to do it in her own room. She retreated to her own darkness. He shut the door on her, pushing her back as he slid down the door to brace it shut. She hammered on the door.

“Jesus, Randy, who did this to you? Randy? Please, let me help you…please…”

Randy Hopson couldn’t be helped. He was broken.