The Sorrow King (6 page)

Pulling it out of his pocket, he squinted his eyes to look at the LCD readout. It was, technically, playing. There weren’t any kind of error messages and he could hear the disc spinning around inside it. He turned the volume up all the way. Still nothing.

Maybe my headphones are just fucked up.

He heard another sound and forgot all about his player.

Standing at the foot of the water tower, he stared up at it, the sound filling his head, rising in volume.

It was a loud hum, deep and trembling. He felt it beneath his feet and behind his eyes, vibrating just below his skin.

The wind picked up, swirling the mist around the empty playground, sweeping it over the damp, richly scented earth. The mist caressed his chilled cheeks as he stood, hypnotized, drinking in every detail of the mammoth water tower.

The base was fat enough to drive two trucks into. Widely corrugated metal. A utility-type door. A ladder led up to the mushroom-like top of the tower. Standing there, he thought he could almost see inside it, through the metal. Only it wasn’t filled with pipes and pumps and water, all the things he thought would probably be inside a water tower. Rather, it was filled with blackness. Emptiness.

Inside the water tower was a void.

Maybe not just any void, either. Maybe The Void.

Suddenly, he felt very cold. He turned to look behind him, at the rest of the park, certain something horrific was going to sneak up behind him. Yes, sneak up behind him and force him into the tower.

What he saw was something else entirely.

The sky dropped.

The heavy blanket of clouds slowly closed down over him, kissing the lighter mist of the playground, joining it, mingling with it, and then, just as quickly as it had fallen, it picked itself back up, swirling around the tower.

He breathed in the cold air and his blossom of fear exploded. He couldn’t take it anymore. The sense that something was going to swallow him up was overwhelming. He took off running back toward his house amidst a din of barking dogs and night birds chirping in the distance.

Only it wasn’t night anymore.

It was very early dawn and school would be starting in a couple of hours.

How had he been out here this long? He hoped his father wasn’t aware of it. He would be freaking out right now if he was.

The only thing he wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed. He thought about not getting up for school in the morning but knew he would.

There was someone there he had to see.

Five

What Ken Saw at the Water Tower

The bleating alarm woke Steven up. Actually, it didn’t so much wake him up as rouse him from his stupor. After coming home from the park (
the water tower
) he had sat in his bed and thought very hard about not thinking. It didn’t work as well as he had hoped but eventually his brain settled down into something that was slightly vegetative without being as satisfying as real sleep. Now he figured that was probably a good thing. If he had actually fallen asleep he didn’t know if the alarm clock would have woken him up or not.

He looked down at his clothes, making sure they didn’t have any offending stains on them, went into the kitchen to get a Coke and some Doritos remains, and rushed out to his truck. His dad’s car was still in the driveway and he didn’t think much of it. It was after seven now. Bookhaven didn’t open until ten but his dad was normally there by nine. He was usually up at this hour but maybe he had decided to sleep in. Or maybe he was off today. That was one of the perks of being manager. He worked long hours but was able to take random days off when he could grab them.

Realizing he forgot his note, he dashed back into the house to grab it off the kitchen table.

He must have woken his dad up while leaving because Connor was wandering around the kitchen in a daze, his tattered brown bathrobe hanging from his slight frame.

“
Forgot this,” Steven said, raising the note. “In a hurry. See you later.”

“
Have a good day at school,” Connor called.

Steven hopped into the truck, the vinyl seats cool against his skin, and sped off to Gethsemane High hoping he would be able to stay awake all day, hoping he would get to see the girl, and hoping no other students had killed themselves.

Connor decided he didn’t need to go to work that morning. There were three people on the schedule and one of them was the assistant manager, Lori. He felt perfectly comfortable leaving her in charge. She didn’t sound surprised when he called to tell her he wasn’t coming in. This was usually the case whenever things were all caught up.

He lounged around the house, finishing the bad fantasy book and sipping coffee. After he finished the book, he sat in his old brown chair, staring around the room. He was capable of doing this for hours at a time. Just letting his brain go completely empty and staring at his surroundings, waiting for some kind of inspiration to strike. Usually, this inspiration was nothing more grandiose than cleaning the house or preparing a dinner more elaborate than pizza.

But he didn’t think he was going to do any of that today. Today he thought he would go to the park and chat with Ken Blanchard if he was still in town. Ken Blanchard was better known around town as Drifter Ken. He was an older guy, a wino, probably, who drifted from town to town. There was something about him that reminded Connor of Tom Waits. Maybe it was the roughness of his voice, the way he sucked at unfiltered Camels, or his hair that rose from his scalp in insane brown-white curls. Normally, he wore a faded black trench coat and Connor had thought he was just some pervert the first time he had seen him a number of years ago. He had seen him in the park last week but was in too big a hurry to stop and talk.

He hoped he was still there. Ken provided nice, earthy conversation and was always grateful for the Thermos full of Irish coffee Connor brought with him. Eventually, the authorities would hassle Ken, usually for dozing off on the park benches, and he would move onto the next town. One time after catching Ken asleep on the bench, Connor had offered to let him stay at the house but Ken had told him he had a room at a seedy hotel on the edge of town, the Hide-a-Way, and that he had just drifted off because he was old and tired and possibly a bit narcoleptic.

Connor brewed another pot of coffee, a black espresso roast he had stolen from the bookstore, poured it into a large stainless steel Thermos, and added a couple generous shots of whiskey before capping it and giving it a little shake. Then he was out the door and headed to the park, the midday sun bright against his eyes.

A few minutes of walking, enjoying the early afternoon light, brought Connor to the park. He had always wondered why they had chosen to build the park around the water tower. It was an eye sore. There was something altogether rather “unpark” about the utilitarian nature of a water tower. The tower was on the north side. The whole park was fenced in with a rusted chain link fence. Winter was still hanging on and the park was not the most attractive of places. The grass had yet to fully green. It was a muddy yellow-brown. The baseball field was overgrown and also muddy. The swing sets and merry-go-round, not having been painted for the summer, were dingy and looked cold, more mud gathering under them in the ditches worn by the feet of children.

He spotted Ken sitting on one of the park benches facing the tower, his back to the playground and the baseball field. Connor waved his hand in a greeting. Ken waved back.

“
It’s a beautiful day, huh?” Ken said as Connor drew closer.

“
Yeah, it sure is. I just couldn’t bring myself to go to work.”

“
I know the feeling. Sometimes I think I’m lucky being retired. I get to enjoy as many days like this as I can before I die.”

“
Yeah. Lucky.” Connor pressed his hand to the bench, inspecting it for moisture, before sitting down. The sun had yet to burn the morning damp out of the air and it was still cold. Ken had his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat. He looked exactly the same as when Connor had last spoken with him, probably a year ago.

“
So, how you holding up?” Connor asked Ken.

“
Oh, you know. I’m gettin on.”

“
Seen a lot of the country?”

“
Yeah, I’m doublin back now.”

“
Headed home?”

“
Somethin like that.”

“
Where is home, anyway?”

“
Back east.”

He decided not to press the subject. Ken had a ridiculously cryptic way of speaking about his past, like anything he said could get him into trouble.

“
I brought a little something to warm you up.”

He sat the Thermos on the bench between them, unscrewing the outer cap that doubled as a cup and pulling a second, chipped ceramic mug from his roomy coat pocket.

Ken looked at the Thermos and rubbed his hands together. “Ah, some of that Irish coffee of yours?”

“
You bet.”

Connor poured the coffee into the cups, taking his and sipping it, the whiskey adding another dimension of warmth to it. More than just his hands and his stomach, the whiskey spread through his entire body. He crossed his legs and leaned back on the slatted wood bench. The two men sat in silence for a few minutes, Connor looking at the water tower and all the low ranch houses around the neighborhood. He had always enjoyed the aesthetic diversity amongst the structural similarities. Some of them bordered on being run down, others were kept immaculate. His was probably somewhere in between.

“
So how long you in town for this time?”

“
Can’t say for sure but I don’t think I’ll be here too much longer.”

“
Gotta move on?”

“
Somethin like that. I don’t like to stay any place too long. Besides, the police usually start hassling me after about a week.”

“
Yeah. Why is that?”

“
They say I’m loiterin but I sorta thought parks was made for that kind of thing. I guess they have other ideas. You know, the park ain’t really for outsiders. I guess that’s what they’re really trying to say. These small towns. Always suspicious of strangers.”

“
Yeah. We’ve had some bad times lately.”

“
The suicides?”

“
You’ve heard about them?”

“
Yeah. I mean they ain’t exactly made national news yet. Hadn’t heard about them ’til comin back here. Once I got back it was kinda hard not to hear about ’em.”

“
So what are people saying?”

“
I don’t think they know what to
think
, let alone what to say. It might be the first time in the history of small towns when the folk don’t have a strong opinion about somethin.”

“
It’s not so black and white, is it? Are they blaming rock music, yet?”

“
Course. Rock music, Satanism . . . them’s the usuals, I guess. Then there’s other things—conspiracy stuff, you know. Government’s testing somethin in the waters. Subliminal messages on the television. Then there’s the moral stuff—divorce, homosexuality . . .”

“
Which kid’s parents were divorced and which one was gay?”

“
The first one’s was divorced, apparently. I didn’t hear which one was queer.”

“
Hm.”

“
Peer pressure. I heard that one at a diner last night. The kids at school, you know.”

“
People are blaming the school for the kids killing themselves?”

“
Been speculated. I’m just repeatin what I heard.”

Ken took a healthy sip from the ceramic mug, reached into his deep coat pockets and pulled out a rumpled pack of unfiltered Camels. He offered one to Connor but he said, “No thanks.” Ken held the pack up to his lips and pulled one out before lighting it in a very trained and expert motion.

“
So, you have any ideas?” Connor asked him.

“
Ideas about what? I got all kinds of ideas.”

“
The suicides.”

“
Yeah, I have an idea. It’s sort of why I can’t stay around much longer.”

“
So what’s your idea?”

“
This town’s poisoned.”

This statement surprised Connor. He knew Ken was about as spiritual as
he
was, which was to say about two steps from atheism and yet, he found something vaguely spiritual or at least superstitious in him saying the town was poisoned.

“
What do you mean the town is poisoned?”

“
I don’t know exactly . . . It’s kind of like, have you ever gone back to someplace you used to go all the time? Someplace you really liked? And it just looked . . .
different
? You know, it just didn’t feel right? Like the people there were more hostile or, hell, I don’t know, maybe the lighting was just different or somethin. Ever had that happen to you?”

“
Yeah, sure. There was this bar in Cincinnati I used to go to all the time during my college days. You know, it was a place for us pretentious people to get together and talk about arcane and relatively unimportant things. There were enough of us so we could pretend they mattered. Anyway, I went there with Steven’s mom a couple years after dropping out and only stayed about five minutes. They’d added big screen TVs, there were a lot of jock-type people there. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be anymore.”