Our Lady Chaos, page 18
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
“What is it, Benny?” asked Mike as he stepped into the hall.
“Greg! Greg’s in trouble!”
“Scott! I need you!” roared Mike, stabbing his legs into his jeans.
7
Greg stared at Mason through the windshield of the GTO, still turning the key, still trying to get the engine to start, despite the fact that nothing worked—no lights, no starter, nothing.
Mason smiled at him as if they were old friends, then shook his head. “It will not start, Greggy.” He ran a loving hand across the GTO’s smooth, cherry red paint. “Such a beautiful car. It’s too bad we must leave it.”
Greg convinced his hand to let go of the key. He sat back in the driver’s seat, watching as Mason Harper walked toward the driver’s window. “What… What do you want?”
Mason grinned and tapped on the glass. “Can’t we have a civilized conversation?”
Greg slammed his thumb on the switch mounted to the left of the ignition. Nothing happened.
Mason cocked his head to the side and grinned. “I’m a little bit offended that you think I’d miss a panic button. I am a professional, you know.” He twirled his hand as if rolling down a window. “Come on. Let’s palaver.”
Greg shook his head.
“Fine,” Mason sighed. Moving with a lazy grace, he pulled a short-handled sledgehammer from the backpack he wore looped over one shoulder. “I learned this trick from my new friend Denny. You might want to look away.” When Greg didn’t move, he shrugged and swung the hammer, smashing the driver’s side window to smithereens. “Let’s talk about art, Greggy.”
Chapter 7
1979
1
September 1979
After dinner, Eddie sneaked down the basement steps to the damp cellar that had become his refuge. Nothing about Uncle Gil’s farm was fancy, and the cellar of his house was no exception. The small space had a dirt floor and packed walls of raw, black earth. But all that worked in Eddie’s favor, and he liked that shovel marks still showed in the musty earthen walls from when the pit had been dug.
Auntie Margo spent very little time down in the dark, and when circumstances required her downstairs, she never strayed from the base of the stairs, standing between the two shelves full of homemade canned goods and canning supplies. It was as if she feared the gloomy basement as much as Eddie once had. He grinned at the thought of an adult scared to go into any darkened space.
The furnace stood in the exact center of the dirt floor, forming a wall between the base of the steps and the far end of the basement. On the other side of the heater was a dark, damp space that smelled of wet earth and dust, and that was where Eddie kept his collection.
It was his very first collection, and it wasn’t great, but it was his. He stored it on a scarred wooden desk so scratched up and dented it looked as though it had lost a fight with a threshing machine. When he could, he sneaked downstairs and played with individual pieces of his collection.
Eddie’s new life was a lonely one.
It’d only been three years since that day in the principal’s office, the time he’d first seen the collection that had sparked him. His collection seemed nothing like that one…nothing as good as Principal Skinner’s. He had no old books, no shiny trinkets, no cool models of muscle cars, but he liked what he had. He enjoyed brushing their artificial hair, dressing them, posing them, and he enjoyed telling them whispered stories based on what had happened at school—and sometimes stories of what he wished had occurred, instead. His collection contained a beautiful array of—
“Dolls!” shouted Uncle Gil.
Eddie started, his heart racing, and then he froze, his arm straight out almost touching his black-haired Barbie, the one with the pretty red dress.
“Are you playing with dolls? Why in the hell would you be playing with that shit, rug-rat?” Uncle Gil’s voice filled the basement, seeming to suck all the air out of the room and dropping the temperature at least twenty degrees.
Eddie stared at the black-haired Barbie just beyond his fingertips. It didn’t matter to him that one of her hands was messed up—melted as if someone had left her too close to the stove or a hot plate—or that the dress was smudged with dark and foul-smelling gunk. None of that mattered.
What mattered was that she was his.
“Edward James Mitchell!” Uncle Gil’s voice cracked like a whip. “You better stop ignoring me, brat, or you know what happens next.”
“It’s… It’s my collection. They are… They are my friends.” He said the last bit only a hair’s breadth above a whisper.
Uncle Gil stomped toward Eddie, his thick-soled work boots sending up clouds of odor from the dark, rich earth. Eddie didn’t turn to face his uncle; he didn’t want to see Gil’s expression. It would be an ugly one, hateful.
“Look at me, brat!”
Eddie sensed Uncle Gil looming over him from behind; he imagined the man’s baleful glare heating the back of his neck like a sunburn. His mouth dried out, and that scratchy pressure that meant tears wanted to get out burned in his eyes. “It’s no big deal, Uncle Gil. I didn’t spend any money on these.”
“Are you telling me you stole these dolls, you little bastard?”
“What? No! No, no. I don’t steal, Uncle Gil. No, I found these in the dumpster out back of the toy store.”
“In the trash? You got into their garbage and slogged around like a hobo? You dug into their junk and took things they threw out, the crap that even that moneygrubbing Don Wiseman didn’t think were worth anything?”
Eddie turned halfway toward his uncle, just enough to steal a quick glance at Uncle Gil’s face. As expected, he didn’t think much of what he saw. “They were throwing them away anyway. And I—”
Uncle Gil wrapped Eddie’s bicep in a grip of iron and jerked the boy to his feet. “You look at me when you’re talking to me, brat,” he hissed.
“Suh-sorry, Uncle Gil.” He turned his face toward his uncle’s, but he couldn’t quite make his gaze lock on to the older man’s.
Uncle Gil gave him a brisk shake to punctuate his meaning.
“Sorry,” said Eddie, despising the tinge of whinging that laced his voice but unable to banish it. “I didn’t think it was hurting anybody if I took the stuff that they were throwing away. I didn’t think it mattered if stuff was in the trash. That’s not stealing, right?”
“Girly toys?” said Uncle Gil in a tone that rang like hot iron trapped between a hammer and an anvil. He gave Eddie another hard shake. “Dolls?”
“People collect these figurines, Uncle Gil. They can be worth lots of money.” Across the basement, the shadows twined and whirled as though a sudden gust of wind disturbed them.
“Dolls?” Gil’s face hardened like a slab of stone, slick and cold. His grip on Eddie’s arm tightened until his hand turned dark with trapped blood.
“I’m not playing with them! I… I collect them.”
Gil laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound—it was more akin to a rusty saw blade grating against bone.
“I’m not! I enjoy looking at them. Appreciating them.” That was a word Auntie Margo had taught him the previous week. It was what she called standing in the dining room and looking up at the fine china she had taken from his mother and father’s place.
Gil laughed again, and again it sounded more charnel house than comedy club. “Don’t bandy words with me, you little brat! Don’t pretend that you’re smarter than me…because let me advise you, boy, you ain’t.”
Eddie stood and waited—there was nothing more to do now, nothing more to say. Gil had already decided to punish him, probably before he’d said word one to Eddie.
“Nothing else to say?” Gil lifted an eyebrow. “And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’ll tell you this for nothing, Eddie, that’s the smartest thing you’ve done all night.” He punctuated the paragraph with another quick jerk of Eddie’s arm.
Gil shifted his gaze from Eddie’s face to the scuffed and marred desk and the figurines arrayed there. They weren’t all Barbies, a Ken doll, and two G.I. Joes also gazed up at him with plastic innocence. One of the G.I. Joes had Kung-Fu Grip, but the two middle fingers on his right hand had gone missing. Everything in his collection had at least one flaw—they had come out of a dumpster after all—and Eddie supposed one of the wealthy families across town had returned them, that a rich kid had decided they weren’t good enough to keep around and had ditched them in favor of a new and perfect version.
Gil’s eyes swept down the line and then right back up it. As his gaze came toward Eddie, his lips were moving as if he were counting under his breath. “Fourteen, brat? It’s bad enough that you’re playing with dolls, but fourteen of them? Why in the hell do you need fourteen? Ain’t the shame of a single doll enough for you? Ain’t dumpster-diving for one doll bad enough? Stealing a lone doll wouldn’t embarrass me enough down to the Elks?”
Eddie’s eyes tingled and burned. His belly started to ache the cold way it always did when something terrible happened, and his throat stung as if he’d swallowed broken glass.
Gil shook him again. “Boy, if you think this silent treatment cuts bread with me, you are in for a shock.” Despite the vicious abuse he laid on Eddie’s arm, Gil’s voice sounded calm, uninterested.
Eddie opened his mouth to say something, though he didn’t have a clue what, but as if Gil had been waiting for him to do so, the man snapped his arm back and forth at that moment, hard enough Eddie thought his shoulder would pop. Eddie’s teeth slammed together on his tongue, and tears flooded his eyes from the pain of it.
“Gotcha there, brat. Didn’t I just?” Gil snickered like the biggest, meanest bully in school.
Eddie thought he tasted blood, and his wounded tongue throbbed to match the diesel engine in Gil’s old tractor. His eyes smarted, but he’d decided that he’d be damned before he’d let Gil drive him to tears. He remembered standing in Principal Skinner’s office, about that hole he’d imagined being inside of himself, and as in many instances since, Eddie shoved his fear, his rage, and his sadness into that big hole.
Uncle Gil watched his expression as a cat might watch a bird. As Eddie began to feel calm and numb—the way he wanted to feel—Uncle Gil’s eyes lit up. “Don’t you do that, brat. Don’t you do that thing you do! I’ll make it hurt if you do, and I can do that without losing a wink of sleep.”
Eddie looked up and met his gaze, feeling an icy numbness rolling through his body. His eyes no longer felt hot and itchy, his throat was no longer scratchy, and his stomach no longer hurt. He could almost convince himself he didn’t care what Uncle Gil would do.
“Ah, now. Now you done it, brat. You look at me that-a-way, there’s gonna be some tap dancing. You know that.”
“Gil? Are you down there?” asked Auntie Margo. She trod on the top step of the stairs but came no further.
“I am.”
“Well, what are you doing down there?”
Gil’s already tight grip on Eddie’s arm grew even more uncomfortable. “The kid and I are having a discussion.”
Auntie Margo descended another step, as timid as a young girl. “Gil…” There was no sound in the basement besides Uncle Gil’s bull-like breathing. “Gil, he’s only a kid.”
“He’s twelve!” Gil’s eyes never left Eddie’s, and his voice was as cold as a stone in winter. “Man enough to mad-dog me with his eyes.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I will be busy with the kid for a little while longer.” Gil’s tone had gone even colder, but his anger seethed beneath it. “But I can make the time after that for another discussion—you and me. Would you prefer that? Should I pencil you in for an appointment?”
Everything quieted for a moment, as though even the house held its breath. “No,” whispered Auntie Margo.
“Then I’ll thank you for getting your ass back upstairs and do them dishes.” Gil’s voice had taken on a more conversational tone, but menace still lurked there like a shark beneath the waves.
“Yes, Gil.” Auntie Margo’s steps retreated through the basement door, and she closed it behind her with a soft click.
Gil stood still for a moment, his gaze on the stairs and a self-satisfied grin on his face. Eddie shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and the spell broke. Gil’s gaze settled on him like a vulture alighting on a carcass. “Now, where were we?” He gave Eddie a little shake by the arm.
“Dolls,” said Eddie, enervated and uncaring.
“Ah, yes. The dolls… The girly toys you stole from the toy store. The baby dolls—”
“I didn’t steal them.”
Uncle Gil’s eyes widened, and his lips twitched as if to smile wider. Without saying another word, his other hand came whistling around and impacted the side of Eddie’s face. “That’s for smarting off. Should we go for another just the same as that? One to grow on, mayhap?”
Eddie stood as still as a statue, staring at him, and Gil’s self-satisfied smile faded a little. Eddie didn’t even lift his hand to his cheek.
“I’m not going to have no nephew of mine playing with dolls, and I ain’t going to have no faggot living in my house, either.”
The last accusation confused Eddie, though it also made him feel guilty, and he cut his eyes away. He had a vague idea that it was bad from having heard the older boys use it at school to pick on other kids, but he didn’t understand what it meant. He shook his head, just once, but once was enough for Gil.
His hand came whistling back for a return visit, this time rocking Eddie’s head to the side. Eddie’s anger burbled deep in his chest, but he shoved that into the hole, along with his other emotions.
“Didn’t I tell you about that, rug-rat? Did I not mention what it would cost you to shake your head at me?” He leaned closer, his foul breath on Eddie’s cheek, in his nose. “Did I not teach you this lesson already?”
Eddie stood frozen, and Gil shook him hard by the arm.
“Cat got your tongue, orphan boy? Answer me proper.”
“Yes, sir, Uncle Gil.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Uncle Gil, you told me not to shake my head at you; you told me that every time I did, I’d earn a smack in the chops.”
“That’s right, I did, didn’t I? And yet, here you are doing it again. Maybe I didn’t tell you hard enough last time, eh?”
“I…”
“Well, brat? You what?”
Eddie hitched his shoulders up toward his ears and then let them drop.
“I don’t want it said that I don’t give you a chance to speak on your own behalf, brat. If you got anything to say, say it. It’s a free country.”
Eddie started to shake his head but caught himself in time. “No, sir.”
“No, what?”
“No, sir, I don’t have nothing to say.”
Gil stared at him for the space of five breaths, eyes squinted almost shut, his mouth pursed as if he were trying to find an excuse in Eddie’s expression, in Eddie’s manner, that would justify a sterner punishment. Then his grip relaxed a teensy bit around Eddie’s bicep, and he opened his eyes. “Well, that’s okay, then.” His gaze swept across the wooden desktop. “Then let’s get back to these dolls you stole.” He turned his face to Eddie’s and glowered at him.
“Yes, sir,” said Eddie. But I didn’t steal them.
“That’s better, boy, but I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you didn’t steal them and that I’m a moron for insisting that you did. Am I right?”
There was no safe answer, no way for Eddie to defend himself. It was almost as if Uncle Gil could read his mind.
“Almost got you there, didn’t I?” Gil said with a nasty smile.
No, you didn’t, thought Eddie. I am smarter than you, Gil. You are a moron.
“Well, I don’t suppose I can fault you for your thoughts, boy.” Gil tipped him a wink. “But let’s get back to them dolls. Let me tell you why going in the toy store’s dumpster and taking these out is stealing. That dumpster is on that store’s property, right? And what’s in that dumpster belongs to that store, right? It’s not trash until it gets pushed out at the dump, and even then, all of it belongs to the county since they own the dump. Get it, boy? You see how that is stealing?”
“Yes, sir,” said Eddie, fighting to keep the sullenness out of his voice.
Uncle Gil flashed a tight little smile. “You’re getting good at that, brat.” He spun Eddie toward the desk. “So, tell me what possessed you to steal these dolls from the toy store. What kind of faggot are you?”
Almost involuntarily, Eddie shrugged. “I don’t even know what that means,” he whispered.
Gil laughed, and again, Eddie heard the butcher’s bone-saw in it. “It means the guy who wants to sleep with guys, Eddie. Now you know what it means.”
It perplexed Eddie. He knew about sex, but he wasn’t sure if just sleeping with someone was having sex. It seemed that if that was the truth, then all those sleepovers he’d been to meant… He never had a sleepover at a girl’s house. Maybe I am a faggot.
Gil laughed again, and his eyes twinkled. “Come on, brat, you’re twelve. Don’t tell me you don’t know what ‘sleeping with someone’ means.”
“You mean a sleepover?” Eddie tilted his head away from his uncle. Can you really read my mind, asshole?
Gil’s laughter died, and the twinkle left his eyes. He stared at Eddie for another moment, as if he were unsure whether Eddie was making fun of him. “Girls play with dolls, Eddie. Girls and faggots. So, which are you?”
Eddie’s gaze slid away from Uncle Gil’s and to his collection arrayed on the desktop. His eyes lingered on the G.I. Joes and the Ken doll.
“Them G.I. Joes is okay, but that Ken doll…he’s just a sissy, anyway. Yeah, he’s a man doll, but he’s a man doll for girls.” He gave Eddie a little shake, but compared to the ones at the start of the conversation, it hardly registered. “Which are you? Are you going to answer me, brat? Girl? Faggot?”
“I’m… I’m your nephew.”
