HEX (39 page)

Neither Steve nor Jocelyn had slept. Jocelyn had not wanted to go back to Black Spring, so they checked in to the Ramada Inn at Stewart International Airport, where Mr. Hampton was staying. Steve wasn't in any condition to see how Jocelyn was doing. At the breakfast buffet she looked like she was suffering from a bad case of the flu. She spoke in disjointed sentences. In her shock, she had completely forgotten Black Spring protocol: The witch kept cropping up in her string of babble, and at one point she announced to her father, “Katherine did it.” Mary, who dealt with Jocelyn's malleable confusion in a surprisingly professional way, tried to calm her without contradicting her, and finally took her to the ladies' room.

“God, what a dreadful mess,” Mr. Hampton said. His eyes were red-rimmed and he hadn't shaved. Steve had always liked Jocelyn's father, but he and Jocelyn had never been able to make their extended families a full part of their life—and now their two worlds, which lay miles apart, were sliding over each other in ways that felt most unnatural. “Steve … who is this Katherine that Jocelyn keeps going on about?”

Steve had been unable to say anything to his wife. While his mind kept replaying the critical moments in an eternal loop, he was threatened by a pain of such terrible magnitude that he quickly slipped back into his safe state of semiconsciousness. But at least this last bit had registered.

“I don't know,” he said. And even though he understood at that early stage just how unfair it was to have to lie about the death of his son, he heard himself twist the truth with disconcerting ease. “She's in shock. Her sense of time is all mixed up. I wondered whether she may have known someone named Katherine in the past?”

“I don't know.” Suddenly the old man began to cry. He bent over the table and grabbed Steve's hands with trembling fists. “I can't believe it. Tyler, suicide? I mean, why? Did you and Jocelyn really not see … anything … coming?”

As he spoke these last words, he shook Steve's hands fiercely.
No, sir,
Steve wanted to say, suddenly enraged.
Our dog was hanged in a tree last month, higher than any normal man can climb, and we had a couple of boys tortured in the town square. It was a kind of town fair, actually. But golly, we sure didn't expect anything like this. Tyler was such a …

Suddenly he knew what his father-in-law was about to say, and a terrible panic clutched at his throat because he didn't want to hear the words spoken out loud. Yet they were, and it was like salt being rubbed into his gaping wounds: “Tyler was such a lively boy.”

Yeah, such a lively boy, that Tyler, what a terrific kid he was. Why are you speaking about him in the past tense, you moron, as if he were no longer here, as if he were something that had already happened, closed and gone? What a lively boy. “Help me, Dad,” he asked, and what did I do? What did I do?

Slowly Steve shook his head. “I don't know, Milford.”

“And he really didn't leave a note or anything? I don't need to know what's in it, but it would do me good to know it existed.”

“No. I don't know.” Where the hell were Jocelyn and Mary? Steve wanted,
needed
this moment to be over.

Mr. Hampton pulled his frail hands back and cast his eyes down. “Is it possible that Tyler did that to his little brother himself? That it was a kind of … fit of insanity?”

Steve had to bite down hard on his already battered lips in order to control himself. With a trembling voice he said, “I don't know, Milford.”

*   *   *

THEY WERE TAKEN
to a small room to speak with Matt's doctor and a hospital psychiatrist. Warren Castillo was with them, too, to offer the necessary support … and to keep an eye on the both of them. Jocelyn seemed to be a bit more present than she had been that morning, and she didn't disclose any confidential information. Instead, she started to sob, making abundant use of the box of Kleenex on the side table.

After the anticipated questions, most of which remained unanswered, the doctor said, “There's one other sensitive matter I would like to discuss with you. At the present time, there is no available donor cornea for Matt. The sooner we help him, the greater our chances of fully restoring his sight. Would you consider allowing us to use Tyler's cornea for his brother?”

Somehow Steve had expected this, but it shocked him nonetheless. The psychiatrist said, “You don't have to answer right away. Take your time and think about it. Perhaps this is a way of imparting some meaning to his death, as terrible as it is.”

Oh, sure,
he thought
. Let's take the best of both of them and turn it into one son. There must be some sort of logic hidden here, but if there is, it's beyond me.
Yet he immediately said yes because it was the obvious thing to do.

“And you, ma'am? What do you think?”

Jocelyn wiped her eyes. “If you're okay with it, Steve, then let's do it. Tyler would have given anything for Matt.”

There was a disquieting moment in which both the doctor and the psychiatrist said nothing. Warren raised his eyebrows and observed them carefully. Jocelyn took no notice since she was crying again. But Steve understood: They didn't believe her. Like Jocelyn's father, they were convinced that Tyler had turned on his brother with the caulking gun before he killed himself. Warren saw it, too, and was satisfied. Steve felt his heart tear in half. His son, his Tyler, had been forced to take his own life against his will, bewitched by a power far too great to comprehend, a power that had gotten to Matt as well, and they all thought Tyler had been crazy. Just some sorry-ass, fucked-up teen with a lust for blood, like the ones who ended up in the papers.

It was that profound injustice that made Steve cry for the first time: long, swelling sobs from a deep, dismantling grief. And just as he had not been able to comfort Jocelyn earlier on, so was she unable to comfort him now. They sat side by side in their chairs, alone and lost in their sorrow, and Steve didn't know if he would have been able to receive her comfort even if she had offered it.

Warren ushered them away to the hospital's Hudson View Cafe. The large window overlooked the wooded parking lot with the river flowing lazily behind it. The enormous Christmas tree on the circular drive was waving back and forth as the daylight wound down to dark. The warm spell of the morning had been dispelled by a raw, cold December evening. Not so far away, in the mortuary in a different part of this building, was his son, naked and dissected, and by now the anatomical pathologist would be removing all his vital organs.

“I'm so terribly sorry,” Warren said, “but there are a few practical matters that we have to deal with before Knocks & Cramer show up and start organizing the funeral. Do you want Tyler cremated or buried?”

“Buried,” Steve said almost straight out, and Jocelyn stared at him, astounded.

“Steve…”

They didn't have funeral insurance, although money was not a problem. Steve had always believed that they were not the kind of people who attached any symbolic value to the grave. They had told each other in the past that they wanted to be cremated after their death—hypothetically speaking, of course, the way you'd say these things when death seemed far away. But now he suddenly saw their friends and family coming home with them after the cremation ceremony and digging into the salads and quiches they had brought, just as Tyler was being shoved into an oven. The heat would scorch and blacken his soft skin, singe his hair, and in a matter of minutes break down the muscles that had formed the body of his son for so many years. Nothing would be left of Tyler but a pile of ash and smoke that whirled out of a chimney and was carried away into the cold, until his molecules settled on the roofs of a thousand houses. That was more than Steve could bear, and he knew that he wanted to keep his son close to him no matter what.

“We're going to bury him,” he said again.

“Oh, Steve, I don't know…” Jocelyn said. “Tyler always wanted to get away from Black Spring, to discover what's out there. Wouldn't it be better if we scattered his ashes, at some proper place…?”

But Steve refused to give in. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was a selfish choice, but it felt important, as if something from the outside was inspiring him and he was obeying that inner voice.

“I want to keep him with us, Jocelyn. I want to be able to visit him.”

“Okay, I'll let you decide,” she said. It was Tyler, after all; if Matt had died, she would have made the decision.

“Where do you want to bury him?” Warren asked.

Next to Fletcher in the backyard,
Steven thought suddenly, and he felt his body turn to ice.

“In Black Spring.”

“I was afraid of that,” Warren sighed.

“That a problem?”

“No. Of course not. You'll get every opportunity to do it your way, you can count on it. We're just worried—to say the least. Katherine's patterns have changed and it's freaking out everyone in town. We don't know what to expect.”

“Warren, Tyler must have heard her whispering somehow. That's the only reasonable explanation, right? It was a horrible accident.”

Warren lowered his voice. “She attacked Robert last night.”

Steve and Jocelyn stared at him in shock.

“Don't worry, he's fine. We've all been knocked for a loop, that's all. We just don't get it—it looked like a deliberate attack.”

“Why would she do something like that?” Jocelyn asked, and her voice, already quavering, now broke. “Why did she kill Tyler, Steve? I try not to think about it, but I keep seeing it over and over again, him hanging there … and then I see Matt stuffing those mushrooms into his mouth … That wasn't him, you know;
she
made him do it,
she
wanted to take Matt away from us, too.… And every time I try to remember Tyler's face, I can't … all I can see is
her
face, and her eyes are open … and she's looking at me…” Tears were spilling down her cheeks. “Oh, Steve, help me please, hold me now, would you?”

Help me, Dad
.

Steve did. He took her in his arms and held her as she cried inconsolably into his shirt, but it did nothing for him. It felt like he was hugging a hunk of dough. All the while he kept looking out the window at the people walking down the circular drive in the howling wind, possessed by their own ghosts and evil memories. But they were going home, and their reasons for being in the hospital would slip away from them; at home, their children would be waiting for them under the Christmas tree. Steve suddenly saw before him a gruesomely clear image of children floating in big jars of formaldehyde under pine boughs; naked, swollen children's corpses in yellowish water, and one of them was Tyler, his eyes bulging and reflecting the Christmas lights.

*   *   *

TYLER'S VIEWING WAS
on Tuesday. Because the only funeral home in Black Spring was at the Roseburgh home for the elderly, they opted for the sun parlor at the back of the Quiet Man. Tyler had always enjoyed going there to have root beers with his friends, and the bartender told Steve with tears in his eyes that he had always been an exemplary and charming sight.

Jocelyn's confusion hit an all-time high on Monday afternoon. She started imagining that none of these terrible things had really happened and having panic attacks. Steve had found her in her Limbo where she was pulling the strands out of the carpet one by one. Dr. Stanton had given her an antipsychotic in the evening and she had slept for the first time since Friday, which was at least a slight bit of progress.

Pete urged Steve to divide his attention among the remaining members of his family. He knew in his mind that his friend was right. Jocelyn was in a state of total collapse and Matt wasn't getting any better. Although the cornea transplant had been a success, there was no real sign of awareness. Yet Steve was unable to give his youngest son or his wife the attention they needed and probably deserved; his mind was overwhelmed by thoughts of Tyler.

Earlier that morning, Tyler had been taken to the Quiet Man in a light-colored, modern, plywood coffin. Steve and Jocelyn were both there and had spent a moment alone with him before the closing of the coffin later in the day. Tyler was dressed just as they had wanted him to be, in jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, and his favorite cardigan—the same clothes he would have worn in life. The mortician had really done a fine job on him. Even the bruises from the rope, which Steve knew ought to have been visible on his neck, were gone.

He was so beautiful. His son. His Tyler.

He looked as though he were sleeping. So peaceful. So alive. An uneasy feeling crept over him that Tyler was
really
asleep and just waiting to open his eyes, stretch, and step out of his coffin. But the gentle throbbing of the generator underneath the cooling bed shattered that illusion. Tyler was decomposing from the inside out, a process that could only be slowed down a little. If you were to pull up one of his eyelids, you'd see a Styrofoam ball staring back at you; the pathologist would have pushed it in to fill up the socket.

Laurie arrived. Her parents hadn't been able to get off work for the viewing, she said, but they'd be at the funeral. Steve cried with her and then accompanied her inside.

“Can I … touch him?” she asked after a while.

“Of course, sweetheart,” Steve said. She carefully took Tyler's hand in hers but quickly let go, startled perhaps by how cold and stiff it felt.

Yes, that's how it is,
Steve thought.
You can let him go. It will hurt for a while, but your life will go on. Next summer you may have a new boyfriend, and Tyler will be nothing but a painful memory that gradually fades.

“I just don't understand it,” Laurie sobbed, wiping the tears from her eyes with her sleeve.