The Sorrow King (5 page)

He took a sip of his ice cold beer and began reading his book. Sometimes he felt like he just read for the sake of reading. Tonight’s offering was some godawful fantasy novel with wooden characters and a hackneyed formula that had varied little since Tolkien. But he had a strictly enforced “read to the end” policy and he intended to do just that. Nevertheless, he was somewhat thankful when the pizza guy rang the bell.

The bell must have awakened Steven, who came stumbling out of his room looking somewhat dazed.

“
Hey there,” Connor said, carrying the pizza across the living room and putting it on the coffee table. He couldn’t remember the last time they had eaten a meal at the kitchen table that currently played host to a dying spider plant, assorted bills, and junk mail.

“
Hey,” Steven said.

“
Good job on that pizza ordering.”

“
Sorry. I fell asleep.”

“
It’s okay. It managed to find its way here.”

Connor threw open the top of the box and grabbed a slice. Steven opened the two liter and took a drink directly from the bottle, knowing that his father never drank soda, and sat down between the couch and the coffee table. Connor sat on the floor in front of his chair.

“
So,” he said through a mouthful of pizza, “how was your day today, besides the unpleasant morning news?”

“
It was strange.” He told him about Ms. Hennessy.

“
Really?” Connor said when he was finished. “I would never have guessed her the type.”

“
You know her?”

“
Yeah, she comes into the bookstore all the time. She is like, uh, an English teacher. I think more of them could spend a few minutes in a bookstore.”

“
You never mentioned seeing her.”

“
Well, if you’re wondering, we’ve spent more time talking about Kafka than we have about you.”

“
So no private parent-teacher conferences?”

“
Okay, you caught me. I actually hired her to spy on you. I don’t even think she has a real teaching degree but a small school like Gethsemane, you know, things slip through the cracks. And when I said that she came in every now and then what I meant to say was that she comes in every evening after school to give me her daily report. If she tells me something I don’t want to hear then I wait until you go to sleep, inject you with something so you stay that way, and then I fill your head with all kinds of subliminal messages. ‘Dad is good. Dad is great. I will always listen to Dad.’ That kind of thing.”

“
Sick bastard.”

“
It’s what I have to do to feel good about myself.”

“
By the way, if you see her again, tell her I think Smoltz deserved to get smacked.”

“
You know me—always a big violence advocate.”

Connor thought now would probably be a good time to have a discussion with Steven. He could use the suicides as a launch pad, to see if they were affecting him or if, hell, he didn’t know, to see if the boy had ever thought about killing himself, maybe, but he let the chance slip by. The silent eating had begun. Besides, if Steven wanted to talk about something, he’d bring it up.

Steven reached for the remote control and flipped on the TV, putting an even more definite end to their conversation. Connor took another slice of pizza and returned to his chair and his book. Periodically glimpsing away from the elves, wizards, and dark lords, he looked at Steven like he was actually going to catch any great emotion in a mostly deadpan face.

The boy was unreadable to a frustrating degree, he thought, knowing he was exactly the same way.

After his bountiful sleep and a good meal, Steven was full of energy. Already past midnight, this did not make the prospects of getting up for school the next morning very pleasant. He hadn’t heard his father retire to the bedroom yet but he felt sure he must be in bed by now. The man was usually like clockwork, one of the most routine specimens Steven had observed.

He grabbed a faded black hoodie with holes aplenty and zipped it up over his long sleeve t-shirt, hoping it would be warm enough. The hoodie had large pockets so he slid his portable disc player, loaded with the eels’
Electro-shock Blues
. He decided not to turn it on until he got outside.

Opening his door, his father surprised him. He was just coming out of the bathroom, ready to turn into his own bedroom.

Damn
, Steven thought,
just a minute too early.

“
Going somewhere?” Connor asked.

“
Just out for a little walk.”

“
Kind of late, isn’t it?”

He knew his father only said half the things he did because they were things he imagined a responsible parent might say. He knew just as well as Steven did there wasn’t any harm in him going out to walk the streets of Green Heights at this hour. Statistically, at the moment, he stood a better chance of killing himself than he did of being abducted or murdered.

“
I know it’s late but, well, I took that nap and I thought this would be a good way to burn off some energy so maybe I can get a little sleep before school.”

“
Always putting school first.” Steven couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

What followed was an awkward moment, Connor standing there scratching his thin brown beard and Steven standing there kind of dancing from foot to foot.

“
Well . . . is it okay if I go?” he asked.

“
Oh, yeah, just . . . stay out of trouble. Watch out for roving packs of skinheads, pedophiles, werewolves, vampires—you know, the usual townsfolk.”

“
You bet, I got everything I need—silver bullets, nuclear weapons, crucifixes—you name it.”

“
A plunger?”

“
As always.”

“
Excellent. You would have made a good Boy Scout.”

Steven thought about saying the anal sex would have been too rigorous but then decided against it. Even though his dad would have probably found it funny, there were just some things that shouldn’t be said. Who knew what would happen if their generation gap were truly bridged? Anarchy would probably follow. He didn’t want the world’s ruin to be in his hands at the expense of a joke.

“
So, you’re just going out walking, huh?”

For a second, he waited for Connor to tell him he was coming with him. If that happened, he would have to tell him the truth. That he wasn’t so much going out for a walk as he was going to creepily skulk around the neighborhood and wait for a certain nameless girl to make an appearance.

“
Yeah, I’ll probably go through the park and then swing back. That usually takes it out of me. Then I’ll go to bed.”

“
And you’ll be ready for school in the morning?”

“
Yeah. Of course. Did they ever call you at work today?”

“
Nope. Not a word. I guess you’re in the clear.”

“
Wouldn’t hurt to take a note tomorrow though.”

“
What, you want me to lie for you?”

“
You can leave it on the table.”

“
Can I tell them your gout was flaring up?”

“
I doubt they would even know what that is.”

“
Fine. I’ll tell them you had the plague but you’re all better now.”

“
Okay. Just so long as it has your signature on it.”

“
I can do that.”

“
Good night.”

“
Good night, Stevie.” Connor reached out and ruffled his hair. Steven could feel what the man wanted to say, he heard it in the silence—“I love you”—but it never came from his lips.

“
Be careful,” he said instead.

“
Sure thing. Tomorrow.”

“
Tomorrow.”

His father turned and disappeared into his bedroom, his fat book tucked under his arm.

Steven stepped out into the cold damp night air, turned on his CD player and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, lighting it up and looking at the clouds.

Stratus clouds tonight, blanketing out the sky. Because it was almost a full moon, the clouds glowed, looking like some kind of silvery fabric. Or an upside-down ocean, something liquid about them. Breathing smoke into his lungs, the nicotine beating away the fog of craving, he studied the sky, looking for anything unusual in the clouds.

But the only thing he felt was heaviness. Like the clouds weighed him down.

He trudged on through the night, looking at all the houses locked against the darkness, wondering if the red-haired girl lived in any of them. Voyeuristic to the core, Steven stared into every half-open curtain, looking for movement. This was natural,
healthy
voyeurism, he reassured himself. More like curiosity really. He couldn’t see himself actually approaching any of the windows and openly staring into them.

But what if he saw something really spectacular happening?

What if he saw someone taking their clothes off or having sex?

What if he saw someone being murdered?

What if he saw someone committing suicide?

It was that last thought that would surprise him the least. He was sure he was not the only one who was just waiting for the next suicide to happen. At this point, it seemed more like an inevitability.

But there wouldn’t be any of that tonight. And there probably wouldn’t be any of the red-haired girl either. He wondered where she was. Did she even live in Green Heights? He now knew she went to his school and wondered why he had never noticed her before. Had he been so locked into his self-pity he hadn’t noticed this perfect specimen of girlhood? It was possible but he didn’t see how that could happen. It seemed like his teen hormones overrode his self-pity at just about every turn. In fact, his lust seemed to drive his self-pity. The lusting, the stiffness in his pants, was usually followed by the thought, “I could never have that. She wouldn’t talk to me in a million years. And if she did, I would probably just find out that she is a vacuous waste.”

He turned right onto Woodlawn, walking toward the narrow blacktop path that led to the park in the middle of the block.

The water tower loomed over the park. It didn’t have anything painted on it. It just stood majestically over all the humble houses, that strange lunar white paint seeming to glow along with the clouds, a little red rod at the top blinking to alert any low flying planes it was there.

His shoes crunching on the blacktop, he looked into the park, a thin fog developing along the damp ground. He realized just how creepy deserted parks were at night. He half-expected it to be filled with the ghosts of children, laughing their spectral laughs as they played on the equipment that seemed so useless just sitting there motionless.

He tossed his cigarette on the ground and crushed it beneath his foot. He thought about how nice it would be if the red-haired girl were here with him. They would be all alone. He could find out about her. He could tell her some of the things bothering him. Like the dreams. And the name. Hell, not just the name. The notebook in general was beginning to disturb him.

Should he destroy it?

This evening, when he had awakened from his nap, he had written something else in it:

the water tower
was scrawled in the fat top margin and somewhere below that he had written,
obscura
.

He didn’t know what any of that meant although he was beginning to think there might be a grain of psychic power or something in the scribblings.

Or the boy’s name he had written could have just been a fluke. Maybe he had seen it in the paper or something. Maybe Jeremy Liven had made the honor roll or earned some kind of award and he had read about it. The mind did that, absorbed all kinds of things into the subconscious that the conscious mind was totally unaware of. Although he desperately
wanted
to believe in such things, he remained on the skeptical, cynical side. He had trouble placing any kind of faith in something he couldn’t prove. Never had he known himself to possess any kind of psychic power. In fact, the words “psychic power” made him want to laugh.

He wasn’t totally closed-minded on the subject. That was why he was here now. He didn’t know what the hell “obscura” meant so he had come here, to the water tower, thinking it had probably only manifested itself in his mind because he saw it every day. Okay, there
was
the water tower but there was also just the tiniest chance of seeing the girl. But he knew if he had not written anything in the notebook then he would not be here now, would have just put in a quick lap around the neighborhood, smoking and tiring himself out and distantly hoping to run into the girl rather than coming here to the park and thoroughly creeping himself out.

A swing creaked and he thought that was odd because he shouldn’t have been able to hear the swing squeak over the music.

But the music wasn’t playing. It must have stopped without him even realizing it.

Why would it have stopped? The CD wasn’t over and, even if it had ended, it would have looped back to the first track. And he knew the batteries were good. He hardly ever even used the player.