The Sorrow King (19 page)

“
You trounced him.” Or her, he thought. He really didn’t remember if Bambi was a boy or a girl and was about ready to ask his dad when the deer began twitching. “Jesus, I think it’s still alive.”

Connor started toward him. “I should probably call the police or something when we get home so they can come out and put it out of its misery.”

Steven felt sorry for the deer. He knew there wasn’t anything he could do to make it better but it felt wrong to leave it lying there. He thought he should tell it he was sorry or something, even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Taking a few steps toward the twitching deer, he jumped back when it stood up. And it didn’t just stand up on its four legs. It stood up on its two hind legs, reminding Steven of a bear, ready to attack. The deer walked over to him, swatting its hooved forelegs in the air, coming at Steven.

And it was hissing.

Or seemed like it was. It was an absurd vision, this deer coming toward him on its hind legs, its guts tumbling from its torn side, and hissing all the while. It was this absurdity that kept him frozen there, not quite sure of what he was seeing. But there was something horrific about it also. The fact that this deer could probably do serious damage to him if it actually caught him with its malevolent hooves.

“
Steven, get in the car.” Connor grabbed him by the arm and led him quickly back to the car.

They jogged the short distance, getting into the car and shutting the doors behind them. Steven felt silly, running from a deer. Once the doors were shut, Connor took the car out of park and they felt the deer ram the back of the car. Connor didn’t want to back up over it but he didn’t want to end up in the ditch either. Steven stayed turned around in his seat, staring out the back window at the deer. It launched itself up onto the trunk and began beating its hooves against the rear windshield, trying to break out the glass.

“
Get out of here, Dad!” Steven said, now terrified of the deer. This was the closest thing he had had to a physical confrontation since Georgie Bender on the playground in fourth grade.

“
Well, I don’t want to hit it,” Connor said. The car was at an odd angle. He couldn’t just gun it forward.

“
Who the fuck cares!”

Connor threw the car in reverse, pitching the deer forward. Steven saw its head smack against the rear window and got a very clear view of one eye, wide-open and crazed. Saliva was slimed all over the glass. Then Connor gunned the car forward and the deer slid off.

“
Jesus, what the hell was that?” Steven asked.

“
That was Bambi gone wrong,” Connor said, clearly not as shaken by this as Connor was.

“
That was zombie Bambi.”

Steven wanted the ride to end there. Part of him said that was enough adventure for the night and it had to end there. But that part was wrong. The deer was really just the beginning.

Going farther into Gethsemane was going farther into the fog. Steven hadn’t thought it could get any thicker but, driving through the quiet streets of their suburb, he found he was wrong. It became a thick white blanket and Connor mentioned something about how it would probably be safer to get out of the car and walk. The entire time, Steven kept imagining all that fog to be swirling around the water tower or moving toward the water tower. And maybe he was hallucinating all of it but he thought he saw odd, almost human shapes in the fog. Ghosts? His already spooked mind was probably just playing tricks on him. He wondered if his dad saw them too but didn’t want to bring it up. There was something about the subject of ghosts and deaths Steven just knew would take him back to the conversation and then he would have to start thinking about his own mortality again and he didn’t want to do that. Not on this night. This night that had been so pleasant otherwise.

Besides, maybe his mind wasn’t just playing tricks on him. Maybe he was the only one who could see the shapes. Maybe they were there only for him. He was the one who had written the names in the notebook.
The destroyed?
He was the one who had written about the water tower and something called Obscura. He was the one who had written the story. And maybe he was the one who was coming undone.

Although that was another reason to mention it to his dad, he still couldn’t bring himself to do it. It would either serve to verify his sanity or his insanity, all depending on what his father saw. But he felt almost certain his dad would have said something if he saw anything unusual.

Connor didn’t say anything until they pulled up into the driveway and got out of the car.

“
That is some creepy fog,” he said.

“
You saw them too?”

“
Like weird human things?”

“
Yeah.”

“
I just thought I was imagining them.”

“
Me too.”

“
But I wasn’t.”

“
Me either.”

“
What do you think that means?”

Steven shrugged his shoulders, coming up behind his father as they walked up the path leading to the front door. “I guess it doesn’t really have to mean anything.”

Connor unlocked the door and they went into the living room.

“
Do you ever get the feeling things just aren’t
right
around here anymore?” Connor asked.

There he goes again,
Steven thought. Trying to lead him into another serious conversation.

“
Right now, the only feeling I have is that I have to pee very badly.” And, with that, he walked to the bathroom.

When he came back out a few minutes later, his father was in front of the flickering TV. He knew something was wrong by the way his father just stood there in front of it with the remote control kind of dangling in his hand, like he had been so shocked by what he saw that he was frozen, unable to sit down. Steven turned his attention to the TV.

Something else had gone wrong in Gethsemane.

Seventeen

Graduation Night Part Two

Elise sat in the back of the auditorium with her friend, Carrie Bendrix, and her family. Carrie’s older brother was graduating and she had invited Elise to come along. Elise thought it might be a good idea. Ever since leaving Steven, she had trouble thinking about anything else.

How could she have told Steven she had left him out of self-preservation, because she
had
to, more than out of any problem she might have had with him? She knew he probably wouldn’t have understood that. But she had her secrets. So many secrets. And she didn’t think she would be able to stay with anyone with all those secrets in her head. She was afraid if she shared those secrets, then he wouldn’t want anything to do with her.

Thus far, the graduation had been pretty boring. She had never been so thankful Gethsemane was such a small town. The graduating class was just under a hundred and it was still painful to hear the principal read off all of their names as they walked up the aisles. Several times she found herself wanting to go to sleep. She was already thinking of excuses she could use to get out of going to any graduation parties with Carrie. She didn’t think she wanted to spend the night watching Carrie get trashed before going off with some boy, leaving her to fend off some other boy and his bad jokes or personality he had stolen from the television. It was thoughts like those that made her want to run to Steven’s house. Run there and tell him she was sorry and she wanted to be with him but there were just a few things she needed to tell him first.

No. She didn’t think she could ever really do that.

Maybe when she was older she could find someone she could confide in but she was only fifteen and still had a lot of growing up to do. Whoever she decided to tell all her secrets to would have to be there for life. She would have to know they were going to be there. And however exciting her teen romance was, she knew it was just that, teen romance. The thought of finding the person she was going to spend the rest of her life with at such a young age was unrealistic.

Once all the graduates took their places on the risers behind the podium, the principal, Mr. McFee, shared a few words before giving the microphone to Sasha Barnette, the salutatorian. Sasha read her prepared speech in an overly annunciated tone that told the audience she had taken a year or two of communications and drama. Her speech was about change and how the youth of America, especially small towns like Gethsemane, had to work to bring about change. Elise could sense the older people in the auditorium debating with the girl in their heads. Gethsemane was a town, Elise felt, that probably only reluctantly let black people live there. And not too many at that. “Change” was a bad word in Gethsemane.

To finish her speech, Sasha uttered something ridiculously corny like, “We are the future!” and went to take her seat to the right of the podium.

McFee returned, speaking again about the school year. About all the troubles both the staff and the students had faced and how they had worked through those troubles as best they could and how those troubles were, hopefully, over now. Then he introduced the valedictorian, Bradley Shank, making him sound like the well-rounded golden boy he no doubt wanted people to believe he was. Straight-A student all through high school. Starting quarterback for the Musketeers for the past two years. Involved in tutoring and community service. An active participant in the local Lutheran church. Elise knew all of that was mostly bullshit. Bradley was a guy who got drunk and stoned on the weekends and date raped as many underclassmen as he could get his apelike hands on. As for the grades . . . well, it was easy to cheat when most of the smart kids were afraid of him. But, Elise thought, this wasn’t a wedding. McFee wasn’t a reverend, asking if anyone objected. He made it seem like objection was unthinkable. Like this was clear cut, as simple as destiny or fate. It made Elise want to puke.

Bradley, smiling, shook McFee’s hand and approached the podium, continuing to beam out at the crowd. Elise would give him that much, his smile was certainly charismatic. He was probably one of those people you could spend most of your time hating but when they actually approached you all of the hate just melted away. She wouldn’t know, since he had never spoken to her. So that left her with just the hate and she was fairly comfortable with that. He was, after all, really just a member of the disappearing senior class. This would probably be the last night she would ever see him unless he became one of those losers who came back to the school to visit the football coach and all the other teachers who helped him pass without really trying at all.

Bradley began his speech. He had bothered to memorize his and didn’t even have a piece of paper or cards to read from. His speech was about duty, of all things. About how the youth had a duty to their school, their families, their church and their country. His speech was twice as long as Sasha’s and Elise thought she was going to have to get up and walk out into the hall just so she didn’t actually fall asleep.

And then Bradley Shank blew his head off.

Her first thought was that someone had shot him. She thought that was weird, wanting to assassinate the valedictorian. And then she saw the gun in his right hand as his body, a bloody pulp of head at the top of it, slumped to his left.

There was a moment of stunned silence that seemed long but was, in reality, probably less than five seconds.

Elise stood up, along with the rest of the auditorium. The crowd didn’t know where it wanted to go. Half of them ran up toward the stage, offering to help. Half of them ran out into the halls, just wanting to be away from it. This was the thing they had read about in the papers. This was the thing they had seen on the news. This was the thing that was happening at their children’s school. This was not a thing that was supposed to happen to them. This was not a thing they were supposed to see.

She couldn’t take her eyes from the stage. McFee had removed the gun from Bradley’s hand, a black pistol, and stood there staring at it, like it could go off again if he didn’t apply this appalled scrutiny. Someone else had taken a graduation gown and draped it over Bradley’s body. There was a cop on stage, speaking into a radio that seemed comically large, and Elise heard sirens rapidly approaching the school. The psychologists who had become fixtures milled about in their sweaters and tweed coats, their expressions predictably blank.

Through all of it, the only thing she could think about was Steven. Where was Steven? She wanted him close by her and realized she was terrified for him and she didn’t really know why.

On her left, Carrie nudged her. “We’re getting out of here.” Her face had gone pale and Elise remembered one of her more fevered accounts about how she had blown Bradley in the bathroom at a friend’s party.

Once in the hall, the air was one of confused shock. The hall was crowded with people but none of them seemed to be moving in one direction. They shuffled around under the fluorescent lights. Elise felt very faint.

“
I need to go outside, Carrie.”

Carrie just kind of stared at her like she didn’t know what she was saying or even that she was talking.

Elise reached out and grabbed her arm, shaking it. “I need to go,” she repeated.

“
Yeah, yeah, okay . . .” Carrie nodded her head, absently lifting her purse closer to her and digging out her cell phone. For a moment, Elise wondered what she planned to do with it—call all their friends? Then Elise realized Carrie probably didn’t know what she was doing. She was just doing something she had done a million times before. Something familiar. Something comfortable. The hall exited into the parking lot. It was conceivable Carrie fished her phone from her purse every day she passed this spot.