Empire of Lies (12 page)

She thought of turning on the car's headlights so she could see the road, but then that struck her as stupid, too. If there was some kind of bad guy out there, the headlights would lead him right to her. She had gotten a glimpse of the road when the flashlight swung over it. She had seen that it was a broad path, more than wide enough for a car. She thought if she went forward carefully, she could keep to it, keep away from the water and the snakes and frogs, and get to a place where she could make sure the flashlight belonged to her friends or to someone else who was all right.

Serena nerved herself with a big breath. She inched forward along the side of the car, keeping her fingertips on it the whole time. When she got to the front of the car and had to leave it behind, it was terrible, a terrible moment. She could barely take her hand off the hood, could barely force her feet to keep moving. It
wouldn't have been so bad, she thought, if it wasn't for the frogs. They were so loud and slimy-sounding. And it sounded as if there weren't just frogs out there, either. It sounded as if there were animals growling, too, and other things she didn't even know the names of, or want to know. Also, she thought, it wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the shapes of the trees like phantoms watching her, and the silhouettes of the branches like grasping fingers. And it wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been so dark, too dark to see even two steps ahead of her, even by the light of the pale quarter moon.

But somehow she managed to keep going, to keep sliding her feet forward ever so carefully over the packed dirt, farther and farther away from the car, deeper and deeper into the darkness until—there it was!—the flashlight again, and not that far away now, not far at all. In fact, now, she could keep it in sight as she moved toward it. That gave her more courage. Another few sliding, cautious steps, and she heard voices—male voices. She was almost sure it was her friends. That gave her even more courage. She took another few steps. And now she heard the words:

"Just forget it."

It was Jamal's voice. What a relief! The tension flooded out of her with a sigh. She put her hand to her chest and her small shoulders sagged and her eyes fluttered upward:
Whew!
Now she felt much better, much more confident. As she came forward another step or two, she even started rehearsing the shit she was going to give the boys for abandoning her in the car like that, scaring her crazy like that. You don't just do that to someone, she was going to say. You don't just leave them out in the middle of a fucking swamp like that, assholes.

But then she saw them.

She saw the white boy first, the boy she'd been dancing with. The flashlight was right on him, right on his face. He was kneeling in the shallow swampwater with his head hanging down and his hands clasped together in front of him. Serena didn't understand what she was looking at for a second, but then she did. Because then she saw Jamal. The flashlight touched him, too. He was standing right behind the white boy. His arm was lifted straight out. He was pointing a gun at the back of the white boy's head.

The other four boys were all around, shadows hulking on every side of the kneeling boy—like forest ogres, Serena thought—with the quarter moon looking down on them through the silhouetted branches. The water came up over the boys' shins. Serena could hear them slosh as they moved. And she could see that one of them—she didn't know which one—had a knife. A big, horrible hunting knife. He kept jabbing it at the white boy's clasped hands and his face. The silvery blade would flick into the light, gleaming, and then dart back into the darkness.

Serena gasped—and then she clapped her hands over her mouth to keep the sound in so they wouldn't hear her. The frogs were so loud—there were so many millions of frogs and their belches were so constant, so incredibly loud—that she hoped they covered any noise she might make. But she could hear the voices of the boys, their low, murmuring voices and the sloshing sounds they made when they moved. They seemed almost to be part of the swamp noises, like the million frogs.

"You think you did something? You think you gave us trouble? We didn't even lose a wink of sleep," Jamal said. He was trying to sound high and sneering, Serena thought, but she could hear him choking back his rage. "You didn't do anything, and now look at you."

The white boy didn't answer. He kept his hands clasped in front of him. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving. He was praying, Serena thought. She could see his hands twisting together fretfully. His whole body was shivering.

"Fuck you—tell me!" Jamal yelled suddenly. The rage was suddenly thick and ragged in his voice.

The kneeling boy went on praying silently. Jamal growled and whacked him with the gun. He whipped the barrel across the kneeling boy's head. It made a ripe, hollow sound. The boy grunted and tilted over, splashing as he reached down into the water to brace himself against a fall.

Serena wanted to cry out. She wanted to scream at them,
Stop it! Stop it! What are you doing to him?
But she was so scared, it felt as if the fear had dissolved all the energy inside her, all the will. She couldn't scream. She couldn't do anything but stand there and stare with her hands pressed to her mouth.

And then Jamal said, "Do it," and they killed him—they killed the white boy as he leaned over with his hand in the swampwater. The boy with the knife grabbed the white boy's short blond hair, yanked his head up, and drove the hunting knife into his throat with terrible force. He ripped the blade to the side, dragging it free. Serena saw pieces of the white boy fly out into the air through the flashlight's glow. She saw black blood gout from him and splatter in the water. The white boy made a sick, gurgling sound. The boy with the knife flung the white boy aside, and the white boy pitched face-first into the water with a splash. The million frogs went silent. Everything was silent all around them. There was only the sound of the white boy convulsing and thrashing in the water. The water flew up, drops winking silver in the moonlit night. Then the boy subsided and sank down so that only the ballooning back of his shirt showed at the surface. The other boys hulked over the sunken body like forest ogres. The million frogs began to belch and croak and mutter again. The quarter moon went on watching through the branches. The phantom trees stood guard.

A moment before, Serena couldn't scream. Now the scream was forced out of her. She shuddered and bent forward with the
thrust of it rising from her belly. She hugged her belly and the scream came retching out. Only at the last second did she cut the sound off, fight it down, but still, a high syllable of it broke out of her, out of her open mouth.

The boys heard it. They froze where they were standing shin-deep in the swamp. They cocked their heads, listening.

"Shit!" said the boy with the knife. "What was that?"

The boy with the flashlight jabbed it in the direction of the road. The beam cut through the trees and landed about ten feet to Serena's left. The boy started panning the light toward her. Serena could only stand there rigid and bent, clutching her middle, holding in her scream.

Run!
she thought. And she
did
run. She broke out of her stance and tore up the dirt road with her arms flailing. She didn't know if the flashlight reached her. She didn't know if the boys saw her. She just ran with the breath hot and harsh in her throat and the hot, harsh tears streaming down her cheeks—ran until she reached the Caddy and grabbed the door, which was not quite shut, and yanked it open and hurled herself inside.

She pulled the door closed quick as she could to kill the toplight. She pulled it shut as quietly as she could. She sat in the backseat staring wildly through the windshield. She could feel her tears. She could hear her hitching, high-pitched sobs.

A second passed—and then she saw the flashlight beam. It was coming out of the swamp, moving toward the road. All the boys were coming up out of the water.

Serena dropped down onto the backseat. Quickly, she swiped the tears from her eyes. She curled up into the position she'd been in when she first came awake. She clutched her hands in front of her mouth. She couldn't stop trembling. She couldn't stop whimpering.

A twig snapped. She could hear the boys approaching the car. She could hear their voices.

She heard one of them say, "If she saw us, dude, we gotta do her. I mean, that's all."

Then they were at the window. She could hear their voices right above her. She knew they were looking down at her through the glass.

"She's still out." That was Jamal.

"I don't know. I heard something."

"So did I."

"Fucking kidding me?" Jamal said. "There's, like, a million fucking creatures and fuck-knows-what out here. It could've been anything. Probably, like, a bird or something."

"Could've been a bird. Kinda sounded like a bird, I thought."

"Listen to this shit," Jamal said. "It was probably just some fucking thing got freaked."

"I don't know. I mean, if she saw something..."

Serena lay curled on her side, listening to them. She was so scared, it seemed impossible she wouldn't tremble or cry and give herself away. With all her will, she made her body another thing from herself, a dead thing. She huddled deep inside her body as if she were hiding in it, as if she were some sort of worm hiding inside a big body-shaped shell. Inside the shell, she was trembling and whimpering and crying, but outside, her body was another thing from her, and lay so still it could've been a corpse. Even her tears had stopped falling.

"Look at her. She's dead to the world," said Jamal. "You saw her. She was so fucking drunk. She'll be passed out for hours."

"I always thought we should just fucking do her, just to be sure."

"Shut the fuck up!" Jamal hissed. "You want her to hear you?"

The other guy's voice dropped to a whisper. "I thought you said she was dead to the world."

"Come here, asshole."

Serena heard footsteps on pebbles and dirt as the boys moved away from the car. They went on speaking in lowered voices. She had to strain to hear them, but she could still make out most of what they were saying.

"We have a plan," said Jamal. "The plan's the plan."

"Yeah, but we were supposed to lose her before we did anything. That was the plan."

"It's
still
the plan. Only she passed out, that's all. It's the same thing. The plan was only him. He's taken care of. There's a whole story about him so no one will ... you know: come around, come looking. People would look for her. The cops would look for her. That's a whole different thing. That's not the plan."

Another boy spoke. "What if the cops, y'know, like, interrogate her—whatever?"

And another boy: "Right. What if she goes to the cops? I mean, if she saw something on TV about this or something..."

There was a pause—as if Jamal was thinking it over, deciding whether the other boys were right or not, whether he should kill her or not. Serena, lying curled on the seat of the car, was startled by a small squeaking noise. After a second, she realized it was coming out of her own mouth. She forced herself back down, deeper away from the surface of her body. She lay in darkness there, waiting for Jamal to decide.

"Nah," Jamal said finally. "It's the same as before. It's the same plan. If she goes to the police, we'll know. She can't go to them without us knowing. We'll take care of her then, if we have to. For now, it's the same as before."

"Except she was here. That's not the same."

"She's dead to the world," said Jamal.

"Not dead enough for me," muttered another boy.

Another boy laughed.

"Fucking clowns!" said Jamal, and he laughed, too. "Get in the car. Let's get the fuck outta here."

There were footsteps again. The doors of the green Cadillac opened, and the boys piled in. Three got in front, and two got in back with Serena. They shoved her legs roughly off the seat to make room.

"Drunken skank. Get out of the way," one of them said.

She groaned as if she'd been asleep and sat up reluctantly.

"Where are we?" she murmured sleepily.

"Nowhere," said the boy next to her. "You're crunked. Just keep sleeping it off."

Serena stole a peek at him through half-closed eyes. It was the boy with the knife, the boy who had cut the white boy's throat. She could feel his haunch against her haunch, his arm against her arm. She could smell the musty boy-smell of him, a sweat smell now, and the dank smell of jeans wet with swampwater.

She laid her head against the window and pretended to go to sleep.

The engine started. The car backed over the dirt road. Serena laid against the door in a misery of fear, smelling the smell of them, feeling the touch of the boy who had cut the white boy's throat.

Somebody turned on the radio. There were drums like the footsteps of a giant running after her and a street-black voice like a machine gun threatening machine-gun violence in rhyme.

They drove with the music blaring all the long way back to the city.

For a long time after Serena finished talking, I couldn't answer a word. I sat at the kitchen table and looked at her—that's all. I tried to appear calm. I kept my hands folded on the tabletop. I kept my expression more or less impassive, maybe a little fatherly, a little stern. I showed her nothing of what was inside me: the smothering awareness of catastrophe, my sense that the walls of catastrophe were closing in on me while my mind scrabbled like a rat looking for the exit.

I kept picturing that boy, the white boy, his throat cut, his blood spewing into the moonlight, his body flopping in the swampwater. This was bad stuff. Big trouble. For her and for me, too. This was going to mean cops and courtrooms and killers with a grudge and maybe even jail time for Serena somewhere down the line. There'd be media, investigations, people digging into my past, people talking about my past in newspapers, on television. Cathy would wonder why I hadn't told her I was coming to see Lauren. The kids would hear that Serena was their half sister. The kids would hear all kinds of things, and my neighbors would hear. I could feel the walls of it closing in, and my mind was scrabbling for a way out. But I sat there, trying to look calm.