The Sorrow King (11 page)

She found it hard to concentrate on the TV. Her mind kept drifting to her party tomorrow night. Actually, she thought more about the people she had invited to the party. She thought about one person in particular—Derek Seymour. He was really the one she wanted to come. She had three or four friends she
knew
would come. Their boyfriends would probably show up. And she had invited some other random kids she didn’t know very well, making it seem less strange to invite Derek. She figured, as with most students at Gethsemane, they would come if they knew there was going to be alcohol there. And Mary intended to provide that. She spent most of the money her parents left for her; Carrie, Melissa and Shannon kicking in some cash of their own. Shannon’s older brother, a twenty-five-year-old burnout who still lived at home with her and her parents had bought it for them, as long as he could come. Apparently, he didn’t have any qualms about trying to ply a high school girl with liquor so that he could fuck her. Mary supposed she didn’t care as long as she wasn’t the one being fucked.

At least the invitation had made Derek aware of her existence.

It wasn’t that she was hideous or anything. She was average, if forced to describe herself. Not fat, not thin. Not really a single striking feature. And she was quiet so whatever personality she had wasn’t revealed at school. Derek was just as quiet. He sat in the back of her art class looking aloof and distant. Perhaps if he had been more verbose, she would have found it easier to talk to him but his quietness was heavy and seemed to clip any words that might have spilled from her mouth. She had made Carrie ask him to the party. Carrie was giggly and talkative and would say just about anything to anyone and she usually wasn’t very discrete about it. She was almost afraid Carrie would scare him off but she just couldn’t ask him herself.

Mary really hoped he would come to her party.

She finished her bologna sandwich and called Shannon to see if she wanted to come over and spend the night with her. The spider still spun its web in the back of her head and she didn’t think she wanted to be alone in the house. Shannon, one of five children, was always happy to spend an evening away from home.

Shannon’s mom dropped her off about an hour later. They ordered pizza and drank some beers from the now well-stocked refrigerator. They thought it would be both loathsome and funny to go to school the next day with a hangover, so they kept drinking, mixing the beer with an occasional shot of vodka. Shannon called her boyfriend and had a lengthy and involved conversation filled with teenage paranoia and fantasy. One minute, Shannon was certain Tyler was the one and the next minute, she was equally as sure he was sleeping with someone else. But by the time she clicked off her cell phone, she loved him, loved him, loved him and just couldn’t wait to see him at school tomorrow.

Shannon passed out on the couch sometime around ten and Mary managed to stumble up to her room where she set the alarm clock and promptly fell asleep.

Caught in the murky middle land between wakefulness and dreams, Mary felt something brush against her cheek. Her first thought was the spider she had seen in the garage. Somehow it had gotten inside and now rested on her cheek. Or maybe it was a different spider. It was spring, after all. Birthing season. Maybe a whole lot of them had hatched. Maybe the house was
infested
with them.

She brushed the tickle from her cheek and opened her eyes, now wide awake.

She was surprised, maybe even a little amazed, to see what was tickling her cheek.

Derek Seymour stood beside the bed, his hand pulled up against his chest as if he was shocked his touch had startled her. He stared down at her with his dark eyes.

“
I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “Just seeing you laying there . . . I had to touch you.”

She didn’t know what to think. She had to be dreaming. But the touch had seemed very real . . . And Derek seemed very real, standing there by her bed, looking plaintively down at her. What did he expect her to say? What
could
she say?

“
That’s okay,” she said, feeling kind of dumb. Thinking,
That’s all you could come up with?
“I think I’m still asleep.”

“
No,” Derek said. “You’re very much awake.”

But she doubted that. It had to be a dream. That was the only way any of this made any sense. If it was a dream, then what was she so nervous about? Anything could happen in a dream and there wasn’t really any harm done to anyone, was there? If it was a dream, she thought, then maybe she should just play along.

“
No, I have to be dreaming,” she said aloud, immediately regretting it, as though the power of that statement had the power of dissolving the dream.

“
Why does it have to be a dream?”

“
Because you’re here.”

“
And that seems strange?”

“
Yeah, we’ve never even talked before . . . Not that I haven’t wanted to.”

“
But we’re talking now. Would it help you if you thought it was a dream?”

“
I don’t know.” She pushed the covers from her body, suddenly hot, and realized she had fallen asleep in her clothes. Jesus, he probably thought she was a pig.

“
If this
were
a dream, what would you say to me?”

“
I don’t . . . I’m not really sure.”

“
Because I’ll tell you exactly what I want to say to you and I hope it’s not so different from what you would say to me. I think you’re beautiful. I’ve watched you since the beginning of the year. I’ve seen every move you’ve made. I’ve imagined us together. I’ve imagined touching you. And that’s exactly what I want to do now.”

Her mouth was now very dry.

“
That . . .” she said, short of breath. “That was almost exactly what I would say to you.”

“
Then come with me.”

“
Where are you going? Wouldn’t you like to get in my bed?”

“
The bed is no place for virgins. You don’t want to lose your virginity in your bed. Follow me.”

Her throat tightened.
Lose her virginity?
While she was honored Derek wanted to be the one to perform that feat (if it could really be called a feat) she didn’t know if she was really ready for all that. But, before she could stop herself, she was following him down the hall of her house, past Shannon passed out on the couch, toward the garage. Derek reached the door and put his hand on the brushed steel knob.

“
How ’bout out here?”

“
I can’t go out there,” she said, standing back from Derek as though he were the spider.

“
Why can’t you come out here with me, Mary? I’ll be gentle.”

“
No, it’s not that. It’s the garage.”

“
Yes, the garage is a good place to lose your virginity. It’s dirty. It smells. And when we’re finished, you can go climb back into your bed and smell the last scents of your innocence.”

“
There are spiders out there.”

“
There aren’t any spiders in the garage.”

“
No, there are. I saw one earlier . . . and I didn’t kill it. I really should have killed it but I . . . I just couldn’t.”

“
Come out with me. If we see a spider,
I’ll
kill it. Okay? A spider’s not going to hurt us.”

“
Okay,” she said. “But I don’t know if I want . . . what you want. I mean, we can fool around or whatever.”

“
Remember, Mary, this is a dream. You can do anything you want in a dream and you’re still going to wake up the same person.”

“
This is too real to be a dream. You said yourself that it wasn’t a dream.”

“
Then why don’t you touch me to find out if I’m real?”

She took a couple steps toward him. He turned the knob and opened the door. She continued to follow him. If it was a dream then the spider couldn’t hurt her and Derek wouldn’t be able to hurt her either. Still strangely separated from reality, she wanted it. She wanted whatever it was he had to give her and, looking at him back into the darkness of the garage, she didn’t think she cared what happened. She just wanted to feel his hands on her. She wanted him to paw her. She wanted him to take her however he wanted to take her and if it was bad then she could just wake up from the dream and it would all be over. She would just be little virgin Mary, pining for boys that didn’t have any interest in her.

Now they stood in the darkness of the garage, a milky yellow light from the streetlamps filtering in through the windows.

She went to him.

Felt his warmth against the palm of her hand. Looked into his warm and pleading eyes as he put his hands against her cheeks and pulled her in for a kiss.

Yes
, she thought. This was what she had wanted for so long.

Their lips met. While his tongue played against hers, she felt something in her hair, distracting her, ruining the moment. He broke the kiss, pushing her slightly away from him so he could run his eyes over her body. She reached her hand into her hair, pretending to casually brush it behind her ear.

She felt a ticklish squirming and pulled her hand around in front of her. A spider wriggled on her fingertips. She jerked with shock and threw it on the floor of the garage, grinding it against the cement with her socked foot, forgetting she wasn’t wearing shoes. It felt especially wet and sticky against her sole.

“
There now,” Derek said. “You got your spider and you didn’t even need me.”

“
Can’t we go inside?”

“
No, not yet. Not until you’ve been fucked.”

“
Then do it.”

Derek grabbed her, turning her around so she could see their reflections in the driver’s side window of the SUV. He pressed himself against her ass, turning her head so he could kiss her. Their mouths locked again, only this time she didn’t know if she liked it so much. His tongue choked her, going too far into her mouth, all the way to her throat. She coughed and he pulled his tongue out.

But it felt like it was still in her mouth.

She looked at her disgusted face in the window.

A spider, thick and black, clung to the corner of her lips.

Beyond her reflection, in the cab of the SUV, she saw more spiders, crawling everywhere. They covered the seats and the dashboard. They spun webs between the ceiling and the windshield.

She gagged and felt their spindly legs in her throat.

Derek grabbed her, pulling open the car door and shoving her inside. He climbed in on top of her and she felt the spiders everywhere, tickling her eyes, filling her mouth, scurrying under her clothes, crawling down her throat and into her belly. She had a coughing fit but the coughing didn’t make anything better. Derek wasn’t there anymore. The spiders had devoured his skin, bursting through his body, obliterating him.

Everything faded out.

Shannon woke up the next morning, wondering if she had been dreaming about the sounds coming from the garage. Had the car really been running all that time and, if so, why? She could understand a little warming up but Shannon was pretty sure she had first heard the car sometime before dawn.

When she opened the garage door, a nauseating wave of exhaust hit her and she immediately suspected what had happened. She had, after all, had suicide on her mind since the beginning of the school year. She rushed over to the SUV. She saw Mary slumped over in the seat. Shannon had her cell phone in her hand, now thankful for her communication addiction. She called 911, turning off the ignition and hoping there was some life left in Mary.

While the dream spiders crawled their way down Mary Lovell’s throat, Steven woke up from his sleep. Looking down at the notebook in his hand, he thought maybe he had been in more of a trance state rather than actually sleeping. It seemed he had written a story called “The Jackthief.” But he knew he didn’t have time to read it just yet. It was time for his evening walk.

Stepping out into the swirling mist, he had no idea tonight was finally the night that he would talk to Elise Devon. Had he known that, he wouldn’t have been thinking about the water tower or the clouds or the dead or the strange story he had written in his notebook while unconscious.

Ten

Steven Meets Elise

Out into the cool night, a Marlboro between his lips, the smoke mingled with the mist, filling his lungs.

Aimless. He felt like he didn’t have a single direction other than the water tower and he didn’t have any idea what that meant. He didn’t think he knew what anything meant anymore. He hadn’t thought it was possible for the world to get any worse after his mom died but, struggling against the mist and the increasing wind, scrabbling toward the tower, he had the harsh feeling that it had.

Why did his dreams always leave him feeling like this?

Things had gotten worse. Much worse. He couldn’t pinpoint a single thing and that only increased his feeling of hopelessness. Yes, there were the suicides. Those were concrete. But, would anyone ever know the real cause of the suicides? No. He didn’t think they would. The suicides were not even the real reason for his dispassion. It was just a feeling, all-pervasive, and he didn’t think he would ever know why he truly felt any certain way.