Betwixt (38 page)

The wickling’s face dropped then and he stared vacantly in front of him. Then he covered his eyes with his hands and for a
moment just stood there.

“Raphael, I know you felt protective of Bleek, but he’s a cutter now. He’s evil. He wants to harm us. All of us.”

Moth knew it might be overstepping his bounds to insinuate danger, but he felt trapped and didn’t know what else to do. Raphael
rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

“Of course. Yes. I’ve been waiting for this. It’s the last thing I have to do. Now I’ll be released.” He scratched at his
arm and continued to stare in front of him. “Okay,” he continued, and opened the door wider. Moth saw a low couch, plants
near the windows, a coffee table, and pictures. Pictures everywhere. On the walls, stacked against doorjambs, in rolls on
the floor.

“Come in. We have to talk. I have to tell you some things.”

Raphael met Moth’s eyes.

“About where Bleek is?” He looked around hungrily. So this was what it was like … after.

“That, too.” The man started toward what Moth imagined
was a kitchen. Then he stopped and turned, the distance between them seeming to lend him strength. “And a lot of other things
you know nothing about. I’m going to make some coffee. Want some?”

Moth shook his head.

“Well, I do. We’re going to be here for a while. There’s a lot to explain.”

N
IX WAS LOST.
It wasn’t the darkness; he’d walked almost every trail in Forest Park a hundred times when he lived in the squat. It was
something else. A kind of confusion brought on by everything that had happened to him since he’d last been there. It was as
if his vision itself had changed. On dust he’d been single-minded, focused on getting from here to there. Only the departure
and the arrival were important. The road, with its lights and constant heartbreaks, with the loneliness he wore along with
that same coat, those same boots, Nix wanted to pass by as quickly as possible. So he found shortcuts and memorized his goat
path, blinders secure, head down.

Now the darkness opened up around him, revealing a world he had slowly shut down since he was a child. He remembered: this
was what it had been like to see, before he had trained himself not to.

The sky cleared and a half-full moon appeared, hung like a pendant above the hills. He walked. Minutes, hours later — he didn’t
have a clear sense which — he caught the reflection of something on a branch, a white piece of something, toilet paper. He
was near a camp. He stopped and listened and thought he heard the tinkle of a girl’s laugh. He moved toward it and saw the
glow of a fire reflecting on leaves. He whistled the warning tune Finn had taught him, then he was walking through the last
scrim of trees, and Finn, in red long johns and flip-flops, was heading toward him, thin arms outstretched.

“Nix, man, where’ve you been? We’ve been worried sick about you, dude.” Finn clapped his old friend on the back and then hugged
him tight. Had Finn always hugged him? He still wasn’t accustomed to being touched.

He let Finn disengage first, then nodded and smiled to Evelyn, who was crouching near the edge of the squat, her hands full
of suds, washing dishes out of a plastic washtub. She waved and smiled and Nix nodded back.

“I’ve been around.” He put his arm on Finn’s shoulder and smiled. “Getting my shit together. Miss you though, man. How’re
you?”

Finn shrugged and grinned. “Not bad. Evie got a job at Borders and we’ve pretty much just been saving money. Mac and cheese
like every night. We want to get a place. And I’m thinking
of going back to school. Engineering or computers or something. But hey — sit down.” Finn pointed to a camp chair near the
fire. “Want some tea or hot chocolate or something? Swiss Miss, dude. Little marshmallows —”

“No, no.” Nix laughed. “That’s all right.” He shook his head, still nervous but feeling calmer. The fire crackled and warmed
him, and he realized how tired he was, and tried to remember when the last time was that he had slept. Yesterday? The day
before? Did he — they — even need sleep?

Finn settled in beside him on a log, mug in hand. “It’s like I can’t go to bed without a cup of the Miss. Totally weird. Addicted.”
He winked at Nix. “Not anymore though, I gather. For you.”

Nix shook his head. “No.”

For a moment Finn’s eyes sharpened and Nix realized he was testing the truth of his statement. Then his gaze softened and
he smiled and took a sip of his cocoa.

“Hey, Evie!”

Evelyn Schmidt, a somewhat shy, dark-haired girl with plump arms and sloping shoulders and a supple, curvy waist protruding
slightly over tight jeans, looked up from her washing.

“Come over and join us, babe.”

“All right.” She hiked up her jeans, dried her hands on her
thighs, and picked her way over to the boys, joining Finn on the log, a little behind him. “Good to see you, Nix.” She nodded
at the boy and he smiled back.

“You too, Evie.”

Nix breathed deeply and exhaled. He might as well start now.

“Listen.” He looked both of his old friends in the eyes before he started. “I know I’ve been less than dependable in the last
while, but I’m cleaned up and, well, there’s something going on and I need your help.”

Neither Finn nor Evelyn spoke, but they were quiet, and he took it as a sign that they were willing to listen.

“Neve Clowes is missing.”

He was looking at Evie when he said it and the expression on her face — eyes wide and sad, but more than that, afraid — confirmed
to Nix that he had come to the right place.

“I came straight here because I knew that you’d be able to help.” He leaned in closer to the couple. “Evie, I knew you’d be
able to help me find her.”

Evelyn moved her eyes to Finn. After a moment, he nodded.

She looked back at Nix. “It’s Bleek.” Her voice was whisper soft, tinged by fear. “She’s been hanging out with Tim Bleeker.”
A sharper note edged in. “Oh, I should have spoken to her. I should have —” Her dark eyes were searching the ground in front
of her, and Finn reached a hand over to his girlfriend’s knee to comfort her.

“Baby, it’s not your fault. You know that. Neve has her own free will.”

“You don’t understand, Finn. It’s not like that. Bleek is, is different. Powerful. He … he makes you
want
to.”

Nix eased in, careful not to break his gaze from the dark-haired girl. He needed her to know they could trust him.

“It’s okay. I know how Tim Bleeker works. And I can help Neve. I just need to find out where she is.”

Evelyn looked up, startled, then focused her eyes on the firelit ground.

“Help her?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, man. I’m not sure Neve Clowes wants to be helped,” Finn said.

“No, she does, she does,” Evelyn corrected him.

“Listen,” Nix resumed, “you know he’s going to take her wherever it was he took you. You know,” he continued, “he’s going
to do to her whatever he tried to do to you. He’s going to finish it. Evie,” he said again when she still wouldn’t answer
him, “she’s already been gone a whole day.”

Evelyn suddenly looked up. “A day? That’s more than enough time.” She shook her head vigorously and there were the beginnings
of tears in her eyes.

Finn took one of her freckled hands. “If you don’t want to —”

But the girl seemed to have found her courage. “No. He’s not
going to do it again. Not to her. She’s what, sixteen? Jesus.” She swallowed and lifted her chin, looking directly at Nix.
“He’s in the tunnels. The Shanghai Tunnels? Under downtown? That’s where they are. I know it. That’s where he took me.”

The tunnels, he thought. That’s what Morgan said.

Evelyn’s mouth was tight and there were standing tears in her eyes but she wasn’t crying. Nix could see it. She was too angry.
“There’s an entrance down on First, right across from the river. It’s in the men’s room of a shit-hole bar down there. Some
guy’s name. Danny’s, I think it was called. There’s a door in the floor in the men’s bathroom and that’s the entrance we used.
I know there are other ones, but that’s the only one that I know of and there are so many drunks and junkies in there that
no one cares whether you never come out of the bathroom.”

Nix started to rise when Evelyn stopped him.

“You can’t go down there now. It’s not safe for you. It’ll be crowded now and no one knows you down there. You have to wait
till morning.”

“We don’t have time, Evie.”

“You don’t understand. You won’t even get past the first room. You have to go only when there aren’t people around. They’ll
think you’re a narc or something.” She leaned toward the boy, still grasping Finn’s hand. He was looking down now, at his
feet. “Look. This isn’t like some squat you’re happening upon. Really bad people are down there. They’ll hurt you.”

She turned to Finn and he looked up at her, his eyes sad. She returned to Nix.

“He’s trying to make her OD. But for whatever reason … I don’t understand it. I’ve never understood it, he needs us —” She
caught herself. “He needs the girl to do it herself. It’s some sick thing in him or something. He won’t force it on her. He’ll
just keep her there until she does it to herself. And then … and then I don’t know.” Her eyes fell. “I got out before then.”

Nix stopped and thought about what Evelyn was telling him. If it was true, that Bleek needed the girl to do it herself, was
it because of Bleek’s own history? His mother was kept in unwilling isolation, on dust, in the limina. Perhaps, he hypothesized,
the cutter didn’t want to do what had been done to him. Which would mean — Nix tentatively allowed himself the thought — Bleek
had some kind of a conscience? Small, misshapen, but real? He wasn’t sure how this would help him, but he tucked it away and
again addressed Evelyn and Finn, who were both lost in the campfire’s flames.

Nix couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“How? How’d you get out? And where were you?”

Finn shook his head. “Too much, man. This is bringing up too much.”

“No,” Evelyn replied, her eyes fixed. “No. I want that asshole caught. I don’t remember where it was. Somewhere farther, beyond
that first room. No one was there. Except
something … something woke me up. It wasn’t Bleek. He had gone somewhere. Something else. When I woke up, all I remember is
that there were all these tunnels leading off in different directions. Like in a star shape.” She forked her hands out to
indicate lines radiating. “Or something. It was really confusing. I didn’t know which one to choose, so I just … walked. And
eventually I was outside. I was so fucked up I don’t even remember opening that last door. I just kept thinking: Follow the
light, Evie, follow the light. I kept saying my own name. And the next thing I knew I was under the Burnside Bridge. I swear.
It was like I just … appeared there. A couple of times I even went back there to try to get in” — she glanced away from Finn
— “and there was this grate thing there, but it was locked.”

“But didn’t he try to stop you?” Nix asked. “Keep you from leaving?”

“Bleek?” Evie looked sad. “No.” And that’s when she started crying. “No, he didn’t try to stop me. I mean, he tried to coerce
me; he told me I didn’t
really
want to leave him, but he never, like, grabbed me, or tied me up or anything, or even locked the door. It was like it wasn’t
interesting to him to just capture me. He wanted me to
want
to be there. And Neve is doing it, too. It’s like he won’t — can’t — do anything unless we let him.”

Finn was shaking his head and Nix noticed he was crying too.

“No, baby. No.”

“Yes, Finn. It’s true.” She turned back to the dark-haired boy. “You have to wait until morning, and then if you go you have
to be very, very careful. I don’t know what Bleek would do to you. I don’t even know what he wants with Neve, why we were
there in the first place. And in the Shanghai Tunnels? No one but tourists and junkies go there. But you can’t go now.”

“No, dude. You need sleep,” Finn said.

It was true. Whatever was heading his way, he needed to rest to endure. He — his body—was tired. “Yeah, okay,” Nix agreed.

He sat while they made ready for bed, Evelyn spreading out a few blankets in the red tent to the left of the blue one they
slept in. Nix sat in his chair, watching the fire.

“But the teeth. Evie, you said something once about the teeth —”

“Yeah, that was weird. I guess it was some kind of hallucination or something.” She started to zip open the lining of the
tent, motioning for him to climb in. “They weren’t exactly sharp. More like pointy. Like yours.” She tipped her head and Nix
felt a clamp of panic in his gut. He ran his tongue over his teeth. He’d never thought of his teeth as pointy. But were they?
Had the inhabitation already started to wear on him?

“You need to go to sleep now, Nix. We’ll wake you up before dawn. Then you can go down. When the sun rises it will be better.”

“C’mon, buddy.” Finn helped his exhausted friend from his
seat and led him toward the red tent. Nix imagined soft blankets cupping him. He longed to sink into them, but he couldn’t
stop thinking about the tunnels, and that room Evie described.