13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors (13 page)

From behind the curtain that split the
room, the cage rattled and bounced around until a corner of the
cage moved beyond the curtain and jutted into our side of the
room.

Strings walked over to the cage and
pushed the curtain aside. “I might have overfed it.”

The chupacabra, now four times bigger
than this morning, filled the cage. It peered at us through its
white eyes and thrashed around. It bit at the cage and hissed when
its fangs failed to penetrate the metal grates.

“
Crazy, right?” he
said.

● ● ●

VIVIAN
appeared in the kitchen wearing a purple cape made of felt and
my dad’s fedora propped crookedly on the back of her head. She
asked us to pretend we were walking in the woods and found her near
a tree, which we did. I don’t remember what happened when we were
supposed to have stumbled upon her, but it didn’t matter, because
the distraction was welcome.

Maria did not want to hear what
Strings had in his basement. For some reason I needed her to give a
shit. But she didn’t, and she made me feel stupid for bringing it
up. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“
It’s real,” I said. “I’m
telling you, it’s legit.”

She ignored me as she stood by the
kitchen table folding and organizing laundry into lopsided
piles.

“
Let’s go,” I
said.

“
Where we
going?”

“
To see it.”

“
I don’t think so,” she
said. “I’m not going anywhere near that scumbag’s
house.”

I bit my tongue. I walked across the
kitchen to the refrigerator, opened it. I moved containers around.
After a while I said, “Amy’s a slut.” I closed the refrigerator and
leaned against the door and loosened my tie.

“
What? Amy who?”

“
Fat Amy. Strings fucked
her. So did Dirty Richie.” Amy was Maria’s best friend since
kindergarten. She was also Vivian’s godmother.

Maria’s eyebrows met at the bridge of
her nose in a sharp V. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“
No one’s perfect,” I said.
“That’s all I’m saying. Strings? Okay, he’s not all there. But you
talk about him like he’s a pedophile.”

Maria threw a hand up between
us.

“
Enough. This is
ridiculous. Can we talk about something else? How was
work?”

“
I’m going to give notice.
I’m done.”

“
You’re kidding,
right?”

“
Nope. I can’t do it
anymore. It’s like working for Satan.”

Maria stood looking at me with her
mouth open. I wanted it to be something we decided together, and
later celebrate, but she wouldn’t hear it. I made money, and in her
mind, that was enough reason for me to stay. But it was killing me.
Every day at that desk, with each cold call I made, I died a
little.

Vivian shot into the kitchen before
Maria got the chance to tell me how selfish I’d been.

After dinner, I cleaned Vivian up, and
then read her stories before bedtime. It didn’t take her long to
fall asleep on my lap. Maria came into Vivian’s room and asked if I
minded if she went for a run. I said I didn’t. She left the room
without looking at me. I sat with Vivian on my lap for a while,
absently kissing the top of her head. I laid her in bed, surrounded
her with her favorite stuffed animals, and slowly backed out of her
room.

When Maria got home, she headed
straight for the shower.

Twenty minutes later, Maria appeared
in a fitted white T-shirt and red cotton athletic shorts that
showed her strong thighs. She was towel-drying her hair. I stood up
from the worn brown leather chair in the corner of the room. I had
a gym bag packed with a few things at my foot.

“
Just for a day or two,” I
said. “We need to cool off.”

“
If that’s what you
want.”

“
I’m tired of
fighting.”

“
Where will you
go?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a
hotel.”

We stared across the room at one
another for a while. She looked upset, but I knew she wouldn’t
cry—at least not in front of me. She was too proud.

Eventually I took a step toward her.
She backed away, turned and closed the bathroom door behind
her.

● ● ●

STRINGS
stood in his driveway, a beer in one hand and the
handle of a retractable leash in the other. He wore a loose
wife-beater that displayed his hairy chest and back. He was always
hairy—the one teenage friend that could buy alcohol without getting
carded—but now he looked like a bootleg Teen Wolf.

He acknowledged me with an uptick of
his chin.

“
What’s with the bag,
fuckface?”

I looked down at the bag. I stared at
it a while, thinking about what it meant, and wondered if Maria
knew I was lying about going to a hotel.

“
I needed to get away,” I
said.

“
Where you
going?”

“
Thought I’d crash here, if
that’s okay.”

Strings looked away toward the end of
the leash, then back at me. He scratched his head with the hand
that held the beer. “Aw, man. I don’t know, bro.”

“
Why not?”

“
Pamber,” he said. “We just
got back together.”

As though on cue, Pamber pushed
through the back door. A skinny redhead, her pruned face reminded
me of the shrunken apple heads I made with Vivian at Halloween. She
always looked to be fighting a migraine, or
constipation.

She looked me over—an obvious
up-and-down—as she sashayed over to Strings and leaned into him.
Her head tucked between his hairy neck and shoulder, she focused
her tiny black eyes on me.

I returned her gaze. After a while I
cracked a smile.

“
Congratulations,” I
said.

“
For what?” Pamber
asked.

I waived my index finger at the two of
them. “For whatever that is.” She stared at me with a blank
expression.

“
Nino wants to know if he
can stay with us,” Strings said.

“
Hells no,” Pamber said.
She said it without a moment’s consideration, the whole time
staring right through me.

Strings looked at her, then back at
me. He shrugged. “Sorry, bro.”

“
No worries.” It was a kick
in the nuts. I didn’t have a Plan B. But there was no way I could
stay with them anyway. Pamber was creepier than the
chupacabra.

Strings tugged at his leash. A second
later a small Chihuahua mix trotted up to his ankles.

“
You remember
Queenly?”

“
Sure.”

Strings crouched down and scooped
Queenly in one arm while unhooking the leash from her pink studded
collar. He handed the leash to Pamber, warning her to be
careful.

“
Trouble likes me,” she
said.

Strings looked at me and nodded. “He
does,” he said. “He really does!”

“
I have a way with wild
things,” she said. She pecked Strings on the mouth and ran her
fingers through his chest hair while looking at me. When she was
gone, I shuddered and turned to Strings.

“
Really, man?”

“
What?”

“
Really?”

“
I love her,” he
said.

I turned away. He sounded like an ass,
but I wondered if he thought I was the ass for showing up with my
bag.

“
She know about the
chupacabra?”

“
Of course,” he said.
“Trouble loves her.”

“
Trouble?”

Strings nodded. “What do you
think?”

“
Beats the alternative,” I
said. The night before he enthusiastically settled on the name
“Turd of Diablo.”

“
And she’s cool with
it?”

“
Oh yeah,” he said. He
walked past me and stood at the end of the driveway. He scanned
McBride Street. It was one-way, but he examined both directions. He
turned back to me. “She’s gonna take him on a walk.”

I reached out and cupped his forearm,
causing some beer to slosh out of the bottle. “You can’t bring that
monster into the streets. Are you fucking nuts?”

“
Relax. I spoke to Primo.
He said Trouble’s acting crazy because he needs to pee.”

“
He said that?”

He pulled his arm of out my
grip.

“
Yep.” He gulped down the
last of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He
tossed the bottle into his neighbor’s overgrown lawn.

“
You tell Primo how big he
got?”

Strings shook his head. “I didn’t
wanna get into all that.”

“
Listen, man, I’m not
sticking around for this. Good luck.”

He followed me into the street. I
stepped into my Jeep and keyed the ignition. WBLS was spinning
Frank Ocean’s “Lost.” I lowered the radio.

“
What if he gets
loose?”

“
He won’t get
loose.”

“
But what if he
does?”

Strings held up Queenly with one
hand.

“
This one gets
sacrificed.”

“
I’m serious.”

“
I’m not worried about it,
bro.”

He stepped away from the Jeep. I
shifted into first.

“
I’ll call you later,” I
said.

● ● ●

I
spent the night between two bars. After, I parked on Beach
9
^th
Street and smoked a joint. I hadn’t heard from Strings and
wondered if they managed the walk okay. I decided to go
check.

I adjusted my seat and hit the
ignition. The air against my face felt good on the way to Strings’s
house.

I was barely out of the driver’s seat
when Queenly bolted from out of the neighbor’s yard and leaped into
my arms. She trembled under my touch. I never understood that about
Chihuahuas. Were they cowardly or perpetually cold? I rubbed her
head between her ears.

“
Did those assholes forget
about you?”

The lights inside the house blinked
into darkness, followed by a tremendous crash. I imagined Strings
falling blindly into those dishes piled everywhere and chuckled.
What a dumbass.

Then Strings cried out.

I stumbled back and ran to my Jeep. I
set Queenly in the trunk as I fumbled for my lug wrench.

I turned in time to see the chupacabra
explode through the side door in a shower of splintering wood. The
beast did not look the same. He stood six-foot on his hind legs,
his feet long and clawed, and his barrel chest curved toward the
sky. His fingernails, like the spine of knives along his backbone,
were long and white. I was definitely looking at a monster. My
stomach went queasy.

I inched my way to the other side of
the Jeep and watched him lower to all fours. He sniffed at the
ground, then raised his head and let out a long, terrible roar that
rattled the Jeep. I lost control of my body. I was sure that the
chupacabra would hear my knees shaking like maracas and come after
me.

Perhaps Queenly took note of my
involuntary trembling, and the fact that I’d wet my pants, and
concluded I wasn’t the guardian she’d hoped for. She leaped over
the tailgate like a Kamikaze and bolted into the street.

The monster followed her with a steady
gaze, but didn’t pursue her. After a moment, he stood on his hind
legs and sniffed the air before running off in the opposite
direction, a hulk of rippling muscle. I saw him hurdle a fence and
continue into backyards. It wouldn’t be long before he reached Mott
Avenue, the busiest street in the area.

I slid down against the Jeep and sat
with my back touching the rear tire, clutching the lug wrench in my
sweaty palms.

I thought about Strings and figured he
was dead. I dry heaved between my legs and turned toward the house.
I knew there was no way I could go in there alone, so I called
Kenny and told him everything.

“
He’s dead.”

“
You sure?”

“
He has to be.”

Ten minutes later Kenny turned onto
McBride Street like a stunt driver, his black Audi kicking up rocks
and dust as it skidded to a stop an inch from my Jeep.

He popped the trunk and slid out of
the driver’s seat. Kenny took my face in his hands.

“
This better not be a
joke.”

When I didn’t say anything, he said,
“Okay,” and nodded. He bit down on his lower lip until his mouth
disappeared into a thin line across his face. A shadow fell over
his eyes. He flew across town on my word, not knowing what to
expect. I could tell he hoped for the best, but prepared for the
worst. A true soldier.

He reached into the trunk and lifted
the lid of a large metal toolbox. He removed its inner tray. He
handed me a headlamp and a gun wrapped in an oiled shop rag. I
unwrapped the gun and stared at it.