The Devil of Echo Lake (29 page)

Afterward, Rachel cleaned up. Jake offered to help, but she shooed him away, so he took the chance to make his exit while Billy was outside having a smoke under the stars. Jake stood beside him on the front steps for a moment before asking, “You’re not gonna offer me one?”

“I noticed you stopped smoking after your girl took off,” Billy said. “Most people, it’d be the other way around.”

“I didn’t tell you she left.”

“Man, it’s written all over you.”

“Well, she didn’t like me smoking.”

“Yeah, it didn’t suit you, anyway. I hope her leaving didn’t have anything to do with me showing up at your place.”

Jake considered telling him that hell yes, it had a little something to do with that, but refrained. After all, the guy was breaking out in a rare case of empathy. He just said, “It might have sped things up a little, but she would have gone anyway.”

Billy flinched slightly, or was that just smoke in his eyes? Then something new and sweet occurred to Jake, and he smiled. He asked, “That why you’re smoking outdoors now? Because you noticed I stopped?”

Billy shoveled some snow aside with the instep of his boot and said, “Nah, I just like a little fresh air with my cancer these days.”

They exchanged a smile.

Billy swayed slightly and said, “Actually, the air’s not helping like I thought it would. I’m feeling a little light on my feet. That wine must be good, ‘cause I can hold my liquor.”

Jake frowned and put a hand out to steady Billy’s shoulder as the singer sat down on the church steps. “You’ve been getting a lot of fresh air lately,” Jake said. “How’s that going?”

Billy fixed his eyes on the center of Jake’s chest and bobbed his head up and down. “Good,” he said, “It’s going good.
Really
fucking good. I sit there and listen, the flute gives me the melody and I find the chords. I’m getting a lot of songs.”

“No kidding.”

“Yeah. I’m never gonna let Rail touch them.”

“I guess that’s good… Billy?”

Billy’s faraway stare floated from Jakes chest to his eyes.

“If Rail’s the Devil,” Jake said, “who’s the piper at the pool?”

“I dunno. I think he might be my soul,” Billy said with a laugh.

“I don’t get it.”

“Me neither. But I thought I’d lost my soul, and now, out there in the woods, it’s like I’m finding it again. Like, check it out: I can’t find my pills, right? Don’t know where I put ‘em. And it doesn't even fuckin’ matter. That should be a
crisis
for me, but I’m doing alright. Because I found my soul.” Billy laughed again.

“I’m happy for you, Billy.”

“Thanks, Jake. I talked to the ghost, too. Olivia? She says the thing in the woods isn't the Devil. I think it’s Pan—you know the old Greek god?”

“Yeah, I know,” Jake said, thinking that Billy was wading farther into the deep end with each step, talking not only to the Devil now, but to a ghost and a god as well. If only his own experience hadn’t touched on these possibilities, it would have been a lot easier to dismiss the man as a burnout.

“Maybe Pan was her muse, and now he’s mine.”

“If it’s helping you to look at it that way, and not making you paranoid, then it’s probably an okay interpretation of what you’re going through.”

“Do you think?”

“I do.”

“That makes me feel better about it. You’re really the only person I can talk to about this. Rachel helped me get in contact with Olivia, but she doesn’t remember anything. She was in a trance at the time, and I don’t think I trust her enough to tell her what I’m doing out there in the forest.”

“Keeping your cards close. That might be wise. You’re in a vulnerable place.” He slapped his car keys against his thigh to indicate that he was going.

Billy looked up at him and said, “So, Jake. Do you think you could record my new songs?”

Jake laughed and looked at the pine boughs above.

“When Trevor’s not around. Just me and my guitar.”

“In the woods?”

“No, in the studio.”

“When?”

“How about you come back tonight after he leaves? It’s still early.”

“So much for a night off.”

Billy looked down.

“No, it’s cool. I don’t have anything else going on. I’ll come back in an hour or so.”

“Thanks.”

Jake thought Billy looked pretty stoned. Maybe he was. So what? As long as Billy didn’t expect him to go back into those woods in the dark….

At home Jake opened a beer and sat down on a couch that felt far less familiar than the one in the control room. He tried to watch TV. Most of an hour had passed when he looked down at the bottle in his hand. It was still full. He drank some. He remembered breaking up with Lori Vandercross in High School. Every song on the radio at the time had magnified and articulated his suffering.

Now, sitting in the dark apartment in the aftermath of losing the girl he had believed he would marry, letting the photons from their cheap TV wash over him for no other purpose than to keep the silence out, he found he was grateful for the lack of emotional triggers in the flat, dry hip-hop beats and ego trip rhymes ricocheting around the room.

A hot blonde VJ in a Santa hat appeared amid swirling graphics. Jake didn’t know what she was talking about. He flipped the channel, landing on a car commercial. Early morning golden sun, winding California coastal road, chiming anthem-rock guitar lines designed to evoke a yearning for wide-open spaces, or more likely a yearning for the sleek black car that was cruising through them. Jake felt a drop of moisture hanging from his nose and was surprised to find that he was crying.

*  *  *

Snow swirled in the headlights of the Pontiac on the secret dirt road to the studios. The accumulation silenced the already quiet winter woods. For a fleeting second, Jake saw a spotted deer standing at the side of the road when his high beams turned the animal’s eyes into violet-tinted mirrors. He startled, pumped the breaks, and fishtailed the unwieldy vehicle.

He sat there with his heart hammering until the deer bounded across the road and into the woods. Having lost traction and momentum in the dead stop, he backed the car up to flatter ground and got a running start on the steep hill up to the church. As he cleared the top, he saw Trevor Rail’s BMW still parked under the tallest evergreen, right where it had been when he left.

Jake considered turning around, but decided that would be just chickenshit. Rail might have seen his headlights by now or heard his engine working hard up the hill. He would want to know why Jake was here. Best to walk right in and give an excuse for coming back. He could say he wanted to grab a rough mix cassette of the edits he’d been obsessing over.

Maybe Rail would leave while he was dubbing a copy. But the church looked dark. The stained glass cast a weak, dirty glow onto the snow. It reminded him of the yellow light of dying batteries in a flashlight, struggling and failing to erase the shadows of the guardian pines. Jake was thinking,
That light can’t hold a candle to the moonlight
, when it struck him that it
was
candle light.

He turned off the headlights thirty yards or so from the church and parked behind the shed where Buff kept a snowplow, a chainsaw, and some shovels. Hiding the car only increased his anxiety. If Rail found it tucked out of sight like that, no excuse about rough mixes would do. But hiding suddenly felt right.

He thought again about whether or not his headlights had hit the church windows. Probably not. And the snow under his tires would have masked the sound of his approach far better than the usual gravel. Maybe Rail
didn’t
know he was here. He opened the car door and immediately realized that he didn't have to worry about being heard. Bass pulsed out of the church loud enough to remind him of the dance clubs in Miami. If he could hear it from here, it had to be deafening in there.

He cut a wide approach to the building keeping his footprints in the shadows of the trees. When he had halved the distance between the shed and the church, he recognized the song. It was “I Know It’s There.”

Twenty-one

Billy thought he saw a flash of lightning behind the stained glass. Maybe it was in his head. He was not enjoying the game, but he thought it might get better. He felt buzzed and luxurious in his skin. Trevor Rail’s voice was small and far away, as if it came to him through the talk back mic in headphones, but he wasn’t wearing headphones. In fact, Rail must have been shouting to be heard at all over the blasting pulse of the music. Billy knew he had heard this song before, but he couldn’t place the title. It made him horny. Who
was
this anyway? It sounded so familiar. He tried to focus.

A heavy rope swung before his eyes like a hypnotist’s chain. But where was the watch?
I Like to Watch
, he thought. That was one of
his
songs. Oh, right!
This
was one of his songs, too. One of the new ones that he didn’t care about anymore. Not since he started writing with Pan in the forest.

The rope was tied in an elaborate knot around a pair of wrists. A pair of hands poked out of the coarse bouquet. One of the fingers was wearing his platinum ring, but it looked too big for the finger. Shaggy black hair brushed the collar of a leather jacket.
That’s mine, too
. Between the hem of the jacket and a bunched up pair of faded black jeans, a pale ass was exposed in the candlelight. He had the vertiginous sensation of having been pulled out of his body, viewing himself from behind and above. But that wasn’t quite right. There was something familiar about the body beyond his hair and clothes.

“Rachel?” he murmured.

“She’s not here, Billy!” Rail shouted in his little headphone voice.

Rail stepped between Billy and his doppelgänger, holding another length of rope, which also hung down from the ceiling. He pulled on it with both hands and Billy watched the bound figure before him rise. Rail handed Billy the rope and said, “Hold this tight!”

Billy did as he was told, watching fascinated as Rail picked up a tube of lubricant in his right hand and squirted a glob of it into his latex gloved left hand. Then he reached down and caressed the cleft of buttocks framed between jacket and jeans. Billy noticed his own charcoal-gray boxers stretched between his doppelgänger’s thighs. He was surprised to feel the jeans he was wearing tightening around an erection at the sight. He grasped the rope tighter. The rough threads dug into his palms.

Rail smiled at him—the man’s teeth looked like a stone wall polished by a sandstorm. “Come on, Billy,” he said, “Come on and fuck yourself. Merry Christmas! It’s what you’ve always wanted. Fuck yourself, Billy. Do it.”

Billy tugged his jeans free of the button with one hand, the other still holding the rope.

*  *  *

Jake had found a view of the big room through the kitchenette window—one of the few that weren’t stained. It was enough of a view to see that Rail was spending his night off from the job of record producer exploring a sideline as a porno director. Jake couldn’t see a camera in the room, but neither did he see Rail’s gun, so apparently this evening’s festivities were the sport of consenting adults. Billy had probably forgotten all about the acoustic session. He
had
seemed high when he’d asked about it.

Jake felt uncomfortably like a voyeur for watching whatever this weird shit was they had gotten up to after more wine and probably some of Rachel’s pot. He was about to go back to his car and head home before the still falling snow made that difficult when he saw Rail tie the other end of the rope into a noose and slip it over Billy’s head.

Billy didn’t resist. Perhaps he had experimented with this technique before. Even Jake had heard of it, but it was notorious for tragic mishaps. In Billy’s present condition, it could not be okay to let him do this. What the hell was Rail thinking? Was he there to spot Billy, or was he trying to kill him?

Jake started for the front door. But as soon as the thought of intervening formed in his mind, so did the image of Rail holding him at gunpoint and tying him up as well. Why couldn’t all those candles just set off the fire alarm? That would at least get Eddie up here.

Jake circled the building and considered climbing the tall pine tree nearest the second-story bathroom window. But that was crazy. The branches up top were probably too thin, and he knew his athletic limits. He would only end up badly scratched and covered in sap before having to give up. And time would be wasted. Fortunately, when he tried the side door off the control room—the one Billy most often used to embark on his afternoon walks—he found it unlocked.

There were no candles burning in the control room, but the recessed lights had been dialed down to a yellow-brown haze. The red and green LEDs on the console and outboard gear sparkled like a Christmas tree. The glass doors to the big room were closed, but he could see Billy and Rachel through them when he peered between the speakers, hunched low over the console. He craned his neck until Rail came into view.

Rail was standing in front of Rachel with his latex gloved fists held together before him in imitation of her own bound hands. He was sweeping his hands toward the floor, presumably to demonstrate that she should do the same. But it wasn’t working the way Rail intended. Rachel was too out of it to get the instructions, her eyes flickering between a squint of pain or pleasure and an upward rolling motion, her irises disappearing under mascara-smudged eyelids. She didn’t look like she could focus on Rail at all.

In frustration, he grabbed her forearms and pulled them downward. High above them on the catwalk, the thick rope slid over the arm of a heavy boom stand weighted with sand bags. The stand acted as a pulley, and Billy was lifted up on his tiptoes by the noose around his neck. The expressions on their faces told Jake that this act of leverage brought Billy deeper into Rachel while simultaneously cutting off blood and oxygen to his brain.

Rail let go of Rachel’s arms. They rapidly swung back up above her head as Billy came down again onto his heels. Rail held something too small to make out under Rachel’s nose. He cracked it with his thumb and she jolted into a momentary state of alertness—eyes widening, nostrils flaring—and shook her head. Ammonium nitrate. Having restored her to consciousness, Rail demonstrated the mechanism to her again. This time, she took up the rhythm of her own volition.