Magic Terror (18 page)

“You call that a nosebleed?” Mrs. Sunchana’s wide face had grown pale. Her hands were shaking.

Bob Bandolier shut the door and waited for them to retreat up the stairs.

Outside, white breath steamed from his father’s mouth. “You’ll need money.” He gave Fee a dollar bill. “This is for today and tomorrow. I hope I don’t have to tell you not to talk to the Sunchanas. If they won’t leave you alone, just tell them to go away.”

Fee put the bill in his jacket pocket.

His father patted his head before striding down South Seventh Street to Livermore Avenue and the bus to the Hotel Hepton.

5

Fee paused again on his way to the Beldame Oriental, feeling dazed, as if caught between two worlds, and stared down into the moving water.

A huge man with warm hands was waiting to pull him into a movie.

6

Most of the seats are empty. The big man with kind eyes and a flaring mustache looms beside you. He puts his arm around your shoulders. A Negro boxer knits his forehead and batters another man. Mrs. Sunchana accepts her crown. She looks at him, and he whispers
nosebleed.
God’s arm tightens around his shoulders and God whispers
nice boy.
The cat chased the mouse on whirling legs. I know you’re glad to see me. God’s hand is huge and hot, and the gray slab of his face weighs a thousand pounds. You came back to see me. With Robert Ryan, Ida Lupino, and William Bendix. You could hear Jerry’s ghost sobbing in the black-and-white shadows. Charlie Carpenter sat in a long quiet church and turned his attention to God, who chuckled and took your hand. Candles flared and sputtered. Mrs. Sunchana bowed her head at the edge of the frame. You don’t remember what we did? You liked it, and I liked it. Why did God make lonely people? Answer: He was lonely, too. Some of my special friends come to visit and we go into my basement. You’re the special friend I go to visit, so you’re the most special of all the special friends. There is a toy you have to play with now. Lily Sheehan takes Charlie Carpenter’s hand. Here it is, here’s the toy. Lily smiles and places Charlie’s hand on her toy. Unzip it, God says. Come on. Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel. You see it, here it is, it’s all yours. You know what to do with it. Little dear one. God is so stern and tender. Have a cigarette, Charlie. It likes you, can’t you see how much it likes you? Random Lake is a pretty nice lake. I need you to help me. Here we are, on Fenton Welles’s long lawn. If you stop now, I’ll kill you. Hah hah. That’s a joke. I’ll cut you up and turn you into lamb chops, sweetie-pie, I know how to do that. But here is the envelope marked
ELIJAH,
here are the photographs. Every one of those soldiers has one like mine, a big thick one that likes to come out and play. The dog jumps up from Fenton Welles’s lawn and you smash its head in with a stick. You are kissing a long kiss. Smoke from his mouth fills the air. God placed both hands on the sides of your head and pushed your head down toward the other little mouth. Hello, Duffy’s Tavern, Duffy speaking. Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy. Welcome to the Adventures of. The roaring in his ears. He pushed the big thing into his cheek so he would not gag, but God’s hands raised his head and lowered it again. Charlie and Lily kissed and Lily’s penis threshed out like a snake. A woman should put your mouth on her breast, and milk should flow. I’m all the soul you need. The second you take it in your mouth, it moves—it twitches and shoves itself upward. God’s pleasure makes Him sigh. His hand around yours. Now kiss. They are burning photographs, the smell is harsh. The taste is sour burning. Wait for it, the music says. Mrs. Sunchana covers her face. The world bursts into flame. From up out of that long thing, all the way up from its bottom, from the deep bottom of the well, it rushes. God presses His hands against your head. You open your mouth and smoke and drool leak out. If he wanted, God could drown the world. Maxwell House Coffee Is Good to the Very Last Drop. The tiny Arab man on the lip of the huge tilted cup. What is in your mouth is the taste of bread. The taste of bread is warm and silky. To be loved. Charlie in his good suit rides the train, and the girls stare. Bunny is good bread. A normal girl is attracted by a handsome man. Invisible blood, God’s blood, washes through the world. Charlie Carpenter rides across the lake and water mists his lapels. You can lean back against God’s giant chest. His hand strokes your cheek. Jack Armstrong eats Wheaties every day. The boat slides into the reeds. Water-music, death-music. God rubs your chest, and His hand is rough. Make big money selling Christmas cards to all your neighbors. The hotel business is America’s business. Don’t you think that they all take towels, the big guys? The best hamburgers come with the works. Charlie shoved the boat into the reeds, and now he strides across the lawn to Lily’s house. Oh the face of Charlie Carpenter, oh the anger in his stride. You could be crushed to death. This man is holding on. The little Arab clings to his giant cup. What grows out of him is not human, that thing is not human. His arms surrounding you, blue rose, little blue rose.

7

THE STORY OF THE LEAVES

His mother had a nosebleed from her mouth. The boy put his hand in the water to stop her from going, and a cloud swarmed out of the leaves and darkened all the water like a stain.

THE STORY OF THE MOVIE

Charlie Carpenter and Lily Sheehan held hands and looked out of the screen. Kiss me, Lily said, and the dead boy leaned over and kissed it by taking it into his mouth. Every day the same thing happened in the seats of the Beldame Oriental. The end of the movie was so terrible that you could never remember it, not even if you tried.

THE STORY OF THE NOSEBLEED

When Mrs. Sunchana saw it, she said, “Do you call that a nosebleed?” His father said, “What else could you call it?”

THE STORY OF THE MOVIE

Lily Sheehan wrapped her arms around Charlie Carpenter the way Someone wrapped his arms around the dead boy. Something grew between her legs and from that Something Charlie Carpenter did take suck. We remember folds of gray flesh. Whenever the warm silky fluid shuddered out, it tasted like bread.

THE STORY OF THE BLUE ROSE

Charlie Carpenter rang Lily Sheehan’s bell, and when she opened the door he gave her a blue rose. This stands for dying, for death. My daddy met the man who grew them, and when the man tried to run away my daddy shot him in the back.

THE STORY OF THE MOVIE

After a long time, the movie ended. Robert Ryan lay in a pool of blood, and a rank, feral odor filled the air. Lily Sheehan closed her front door and a little boat drifted away across Random Lake. A few people left their seats and walked up the aisle and swung open the doors to the lobby. My entire body is buzzing, with what feelings I do not know. In my hands I can feel the weight of plums in a coarse sack, my fingers retain the heat of—my hands tingle. No other world exists but this, with its empty seats and the enormous body beside mine. I am doubly dead, I am buried beneath the carpet, strewn with flecks of popcorn, of the Beldame Oriental. My heart buzzes when the enormous man pulls me tight into his chest. The story of the movie was too terrible to remember. I say, yes, I will be back tomorrow. I have forgotten everything. Words from the radio gong through my mind. Jack Armstrong, Lucky Strikes, the Irish songs on Saint Patrick’s Day when I was sick and stayed in bed all day and heard my mother humming and talking to herself while she cleaned the rooms we lived in.

THE STORY OF MY FIRST VICTIM

The first person I ever killed was a six-year-old boy named Lance Torkelson. I was thirteen. We were in a quarry in Tangent, Ohio, and I made Lance hold my erection in his hand and put the tip against his face. Amazed by sensation, I cried out, and the semen shot out like ropes and clung to his face. If I had kept my mouth shut he would have been all right, but my yelling frightened him and he began to wail. I was still shooting and pumping—some of it hit Lance’s throat and slid down inside his collar. He screamed. I picked up a rock and hit Lance as hard as I could on the side of his head. He fell right down. Then I hit him until something broke and his head felt soft. My cock was still hard, but there was nothing left inside me. I tossed aside the rock and watched myself stay so stiff and alive, so ready. I could hardly believe what had happened. I never knew that was how it worked.

8

A sudden change in air pressure brought him groaning out of the movie. His entire body felt taut with misery.
She’s dead,
he thought,
she just died.
Into his bedroom floated the odors of beer and garbage. The darkness above his bed whirled itself into a pattern as meaningless as an oil slick. He tossed back his covers and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. The shape in the darkness above him shifted and rolled.

Everything in his room, his bed and dresser, the toys and clothes on the floor, had been thrown into unfamiliarity by the white light that filtered in through the gauze curtains. His room seemed larger than in the daytime. A deep sound had been reaching him since he had thrown off his blankets, a deep mechanical rasp that poured up from the floor and through the walls. This sound flowed up from the earth—it was the earth itself at work, the great machine at the heart of the earth.

He came into the living room. Pale moonlight covered the carpet and chaise. Sleeping Jude had curled into a dark knot, from which only the points of her ears protruded. All the furniture looked as if it would float away if he touched it. The bedroom door had been closed. The earth’s great chugging machinelike noise went on.

The sound grew louder as he approached the bedroom door. A great confusion went through him like a fog.

He stood in the moonlight-flooded room with his hand frozen to the knob and gulped down fire. A certain terrible knowledge had come to him: the rasping sound that had awakened him was the sound of his mother’s breathing, a relentless struggle to draw in air and then force it out again. Fee nearly passed out on the spot—the cloud of confusion had left him so swiftly that it was as if he had been stripped. He had thought his mother was dead, but now she was going to have to die all over again.

He turned the knob and opened the door, and the rattling sounds not only became louder but
increased in size and mass.
Inside the Beldame Oriental, you paused while your eyes adjusted to the darkness. Lightly
counter pointing the noises of his mother’s body attempting to keep itself alive came the milder sounds of his father’s snores.

He stepped into the bedroom, and the shapes before him gradually coalesced and solidified. His mother lay with her hands on her chest, her face pointed to the ceiling. It sounded as if, length by length, something long and rough and reluctantly surrendered were being torn out of her.
Face up on the mattress to the right of the bed, clad only in white boxer shorts, lay his father’s pale, muscular body, an arm curved over the top of his head, a leg bent at the knee. A constellation of beer bottles fanned out beside his mattress.

Fee wiped his hands over his eyes and finally saw that his mother’s hands shook up and down with the rapid regular quiver of a small animal’s heartbeat. He reached out and lay his fingers on her forearm. It moved with the same quick pulse as her hands. Another ragged inhalation negotiated air into his mother, and when he tightened his hold on her arm, invisible hands tore the breath out of her. The little boat his mother rowed was now only the tiniest speck on the black water.

His mother’s body seemed as long as a city block. How could he do anything to affect what was happening to that body? The hands curling into her chest were as big as his head. The nails that sprouted from those hands were longer than his fingers. Her chin separated volumes of darkness. His mother’s face was as wide as a map. All of this size and power shrank him—her struggle erased him, breath by breath.

The hands on her breasts jittered on. The sounds of taking in and releasing air no longer seemed to have anything to do with breathing. They were the sounds of combat, of scores of men dying at either hand, of heavy feet thudding into the earth, of shells destroying ancient trees, of aircraft moving through the sky. Men groaned on a battlefield. The air was pink with
shell burst. Garish yellow tracers ripped across it.

Fee opened his eyes. His mother’s body
was
a battlefield. Her feet trembled beneath the sheet; her breathing settled into a raspy, inhuman chug. He reached out to touch her arm again, and the arm danced away from his fingers. He wailed in loneliness and terror, but the sounds coming from her mouth obliterated his cry. Her arms shot up three or four inches and slammed down onto her body. Two fingernails cracked off with sharp popping sounds like the snapping of chicken bones. The long yellow fingernails rolled down the sheet and clicked together at the side of the bed. Fee felt that whatever was happening inside his mother was also happening to him. He could feel the great hands reaching down inside him, grasping his essence and tearing it out.

For an instant, she stopped moving. Her hands hung in the air with their fingernails intertwined; her feet were planted flat on the mattress; her hips floated up. Her feet skidded out, and her hips collapsed back to the bed. The sheet drifted down to her waist. The smell of blood filled the room. His mother’s hands fell back on her breasts, and the rumpled sheet turned a deep red which soaked down to her knees. At her waist, blood darkened and rose through the gathered sheet.

Something inside his mother made a soft ripping sound.

Her breathing began again in midbeat, softer than before. Fee could feel the enormous hands within him pulling harder at some limp, exhausted thing. Groans rose from the ruined earth. Her breathing moved in and out like a freight train. His own breath pounded in and out with hers.

Her hands settled into the sides of her chest. The long nails clicked. He looked for, but did not see, the broken fingernails that had rolled toward him—he was afraid to look down and see them curling beside his naked feet. If he had stepped on them, he would have screeched like an owl.