The Sorrow King (21 page)

Jesus. What the hell was it he wanted to do? What was it he
could
do? He felt so powerful and powerless at the same time.

Should he go see Elise? That was what he
wanted
to do, wasn’t it? He wanted to go to her house and pull her out of it and hug her and hold her and tell her they didn’t have to worry about sex because if it meant losing her by his side then he didn’t need it. That was what he wanted to do but there was some faint glimmer of pride that wouldn’t let him. He was hurt and broken and she had known he was hurt and broken but she had spat him out anyway.

Fuck her,
he thought.
Fuck her. Fuck Dad. Fuck everyone.
Maybe he would just go get into his truck and take off driving until he ran it out of gas, leaving all the people needing fucked behind.

He didn’t know what else to do so he took off running through the fog that had become more of a mist. He ran as fast and as hard as he could, the cool water droplets washing over his face. He ran thinking it would tire him out. Thinking if he could just physically exhaust his body then his mind would have to be somewhere close behind. He ran until his legs felt like crazy stinging rubber and his lungs burned. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore, without direction, without hope, without future.

It didn’t surprise him, when his body demanded he stop, that he stood in front of the water tower.

Nineteen

Morning Dream

Steven sat down on the park bench, feeling the familiar press of the wood slats against his ass. Meditatively, he stared at the spectral tower, wanting whatever secrets his mind kept from him to come spilling from his head, to burst into life before his eyes. Knowing, knowing this was not possible. Knowing that no matter how much he wanted to taste the secrets they would remain forever out of reach. Sitting there on the bench, he knew so many things were not possible and this was part of that never ending despair the water tower wanted to dump on him, polluting his soul, sullying him for his adult life. He didn’t think he had ever felt this lonely and now there was his body, a sometimes friend, betraying him also. Telling him it needed rest. Rest. And before he knew it he had closed his eyes and brought his legs up on the bench so he could lie there and listen to the wetly swirling air and the eerily soft buzz of the water tower, using the humidity as a blanket and thinking . . .
knowing
he was never going back.

Between sleep and dreams—always a tricky, fuzzy state—he didn’t know exactly what he was not going back to. Maybe it was his house. Maybe it was Elise. Maybe it was childhood. But that was how his thoughts came to him. As lazy half-grasped things he had absolutely no control over.

Sleeping. Waking. The surf drawing away from the beach.

He started, his body jerking.

He felt something on his leg.

He tried to open his eyes. He wanted them to bolt open but they didn’t want to. The night was too thick, his lids stuck to his eyeballs like heavy clots of syrup. Finally opening them, he looked down at his leg and was nearly sick with fright.

There was something clinging to it.

He kicked his leg but the thing wouldn’t let go. It was a sticky white mess, roughly the length of his shin, running from knee to foot, and it had a vaguely human form.

Steven reached down with his hands, pulling at it, yanking it free and tossing it to the side.

What the hell was it?

Whatever it was, part of it still stuck to his fingers. He flicked his hand and then wiped it on his pants.

He was off the bench now, ready to run, except the thing in front of him was changing, growing. And it was so small he didn’t feel as frightened of it as he was when it had clung parasitically to his leg.

Slowly, it became more substantial.
My God,
Steven thought,
it looks like a giant glop of come.
It was . . .
humanizing
 . . . before his very eyes. It lay on the ground, curled up into a fetal position, and when Steven approached it slowly it unfolded itself and looked up at him, standing up on its feet and growing to nearly half Steven’s size.

The sight of the thing made him retch. It looked kind of like him. It had his eyebrows and maybe his hair color but that was where the similarity stopped. One of its eyes was missing, replaced with blackish ooze. Its arms were two different sizes and the right arm, the smaller one, was equipped with something like a bird’s claw, giant curved talons arching out from it. Half the scalp was missing, revealing a cracked skull and, beneath that, a pinkish throbbing brain. The thing smiled, baring a mouth filled with tiny razor sharp fangs. Steven turned to run.

“
Why are you running?”

This stopped Steven. He didn’t know why. Ah, that tricky dream logic! If it
was
a dream. But the dreamer never hardly knows he is dreaming.

He turned around to face the thing.

“
Daddy?” it said, with an elongated blackish tongue.

“
I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“
But I think you do.”

“
I assure you I don’t.”

“
Come on, that girl squeezed me out. You know, the one with the nice tits. Elise.”

“
This is crazy.”

“
Yeah, she shot me out of you. Don’t deny me now. Do you think I’m hideous? I saw you almost recognized me for what I was over there on the bench. A big pile of come.”

“
That’s not how it happens.” Suddenly, maybe it was the dream, he felt the need to explain the whole reproductive cycle to this thing just so it knew how crazy its proposal was. Or maybe just to reaffirm what Steven knew was reality and truth.

“
You don’t know how anything happens. You spend too much time in your room, in your head. The girlie jerked you off and out I came, fertilizing the field and the moonlight. Some kids get to feel a woman’s cunt before they come out but I got some cold grass. I guess I can’t get a break. I told you, she squeezed me out. She squeezed me out of you.” After it said that, one of its ears fell off as though it was a piece of dandruff. “Damn,” it mumbled, scrounging to pick up his ear.

The thing angered Steven. It was the way it talked about Elise. It was its crazy sense of biology, saying things Steven knew could never be true. He could crush the thing. He was sure of it. And for the first time in his life, dream or no dream, he felt murderous. He ran at the small monstrosity and kicked it in the stomach. The kick tore a giant moist gash in the thing’s foamy flesh. It took a staggering step backward, dropping its good hand down to try and hold in its guts as they tumbled from the wound.

“
This is no way to treat your first born.”

Steven broke into laughter, the murderous rage leaving him. “This is fucking crazy. You don’t
exist
. I’m dreaming. I have to be.”

“
You keep telling yourself that. I’ll tell you what I am.”

“
Fine. You tell me. And maybe I’ll let you live.” That was a hollow threat, Steven knew. He was walking away as he said it.

“
I’m part of your undoing.”

He turned to face the disgusting little thing. “There
is
no undoing. There is
no
undoing. There are no predictions. That water tower . . .” Here Steven pointed to the water tower, absurdly tall and menacing. “Does not have any kind of special fucking powers. It is not a portal. There is no Jackthief. There are no ghosts and nightmares are only nightmares. Now leave me be.”

While speaking, the thing had moved incredibly close to Steven. He didn’t know how it had closed the distance in such a short span of time.

“
I just want to go home,” it said plaintively.

“
You don’t have a home.”

“
My home is in your head.”

And before Steven realized it, the sick come creature was climbing up his pants leg.

“
Just let me get back in your head and I’ll come out when you fuck that girl proper.”

Steven dropped down to the ground. This thing sapped him of any strength he had left.

“
Fuck her hard for me and then me and your dad can tear this fucking world apart.”

“
What the hell are you talking about?” Steven was now on all fours, climbing along the grass, drool running out of his mouth, acidic bile churning in his throat. He felt like throwing up. He clamped his hands over his throbbing head. Between his fingers, he felt the thing’s meaty breath on his ear, smelled its rot, the stinking death of his own come.

“
Yeah, your dad’s a bad man. A
very
bad man.”

“
No . . .” But Steven had a hard time speaking. His tongue had grown heavy. He felt the thing sliding between his fingers, into his ear, wrapping its twisted little arms around his brain.

“
Repent,” it chanted. “Repent. Repent. Repent at the tower. The tower forgives all. But it won’t forgive your dad, not after what he’s done.”

And Steven had reached the water tower. He touched it with his fingertips and felt its hum beneath them.

Yes,
he thought.
There are ghosts here. There are ghosts everywhere. My father
is
a very bad man and when I see Elise again I’m going to fuck her because this thing inside me has to come out.

The cool metal of the tower took away the nausea, took away the fatigue. The tower took away so many things.

When he woke up or slipped back into consciousness or whatever carnival act his body was calling it these days, he stood at the tower in the early morning sun, touching its surface. He pulled his hands away. His right hand hurt very badly. More specifically, the fingertip of his right index finger hurt very badly. He held it up in front of his face. The tip of the nail was all bent back and the flesh was bloody. He wondered how he had done that.

Standing there, he wondered a lot of things. Like what he was going to do with his day. He wasn’t going home. He didn’t really know why at this point. He just knew he wasn’t going there. The sky was a bloody red, waiting for the sun to burn off the clouds, layers of stratus looking like skin stretched over ribs.

Steven decided he would walk. He would walk and wait for things to happen. Something was trying to undo him. He didn’t know what exactly. He wasn’t even sure what an undoing entailed. There had been a lot of undoings in Gethsemane the past several months, if that was what it meant. But he didn’t think it was. He thought it was something different. And he was even starting to get the feeling now, maybe, it would be something miraculous.

Twenty

Cumulonimbus

The dream had left him even more shaken. He didn’t know how that was possible. The second he had pulled away from the water tower, he had felt exhausted. Exhausted in so many ways. Mentally exhausted. Physically exhausted. Psychically exhausted.

He was tired of this little neighborhood. He wanted to go back to the field where he and Elise had gone, even if she wasn’t with him. There was still the urge to go to her house, drag her out, show her he wasn’t some kind of sex crazed maniac, show her he was there for her.

Fuck her. Fuck her hard.

He shook the thought, the lingering afterthought, out of his head.

He wanted to show her that he wanted more than just her sex. He had, after all, gone nearly eighteen years without it. He didn’t think it would kill him to wait a little longer. Of course, he knew he wasn’t going to go to her house. He wasn’t going to tell her all those things.

He began walking back home, keeping his eyes cast ever upward at the clear June sky, the clouds now gone, marveling at how quickly the weather in Ohio could change but thinking if it stayed just this way forever then it would be perfect.

Except . . . without the Deathbreakers in the clouds there wasn’t any protection.

It’s all nonsense,
he told himself.
It’s all over. It was all bullshit, anyway.

Once he reached the end of his block, he could see his house. His father’s car wasn’t in the driveway. That was only natural. Steven’s running out had probably distressed him. Steven imagined him waking early this morning and, noticing Steven wasn’t in his room, driving off to work where he could drown all his negative thoughts in productivity. Productivity, something that at least had the faint glimmer of being a positive activity.

Patting his pocket to make sure his keys were still there, he unlocked the door of his truck and slid into the already warm cab, thinking it would be a perfect metaphor for feeling trapped if the damn bag of bolts didn’t start. But it did. It started on the first try and drove him out to the old field without a single hitch.

He didn’t go directly to the field. He spent some time driving around the outskirts of Gethsemane. He always liked this time of year. The plants and trees had just reached full bloom and there was something about those first splashes of green that seemed oh so refreshing. The fields were freshly turned and some of the crops, mostly corn or soybeans, were beginning to peek their baby heads from the soil. The days had not yet turned brutally hot and humid as they would in July. It was pleasant almost all the way around. Except Steven found it hard to be pleasant.