Vile Blood (12 page)

Her fingers mimicking his now and she felt a moment’s eviscerating shame that she hadn’t been to see him as he lay dying, too much of a coward to face the
anguish.

The razor came apart and she laid the silver blade on the palm of her hand. It was shaped like a little anvil, her skin visible through the
irregular
hole in the middle. She lifted the blade between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand and rested her left wrist palm-up on the edge of the bathtub. She pumped her fist a few times and watched the veins rise.

Skye placed the cutting edge of the blade against her wrist, the metal cool on her skin. She’d watched enough TV to know the most effective way of killing herself was to slice
her wrists
vertically.

She closed her eyes for a moment, offering a silent apology to Minty for rewarding her kindness in this way, and then hacked at her wrist with the blade. She cut deep enough to pierce the skin, blood welling up and flowing down her arm, but saw she hadn’t opened the vein.

Lining the blade up for a second attempt, she felt something stir within and with it came a surge of energy, like a throttle had been turned, and the hand gripping the blade was filled with a strength that wasn’t her own. The hand lifted the cutting edge away from her arm, and even though Skye resisted, she knew The Other was in control, forcing her fingers open, the blade tumbling and landing harmlessly on the tiled floor beside the curly feet of the tub.

Skye sobbed, trying to retrieve the razor blade, but both her hands gripped the side of the tub, locked in place, blood from her wrist leaking onto the enamel and dripping into the bath water.

The front door banged open as Minty entered the apartment, high heels drumming to the bathroom door. “Skye? Honey?” Minty said, knocking.

“I’m taking a bath,” Skye said, her voice almost comically high-pitched.

Minty burst in, mouth bruised from sex, make-up smeared, hair by Vampira, saying, “Sorry, baby, gotta pee in the very worst way.”

Hitching up her dress as she rushed across to the toilet, falling onto the seat with a clatter, drilling a stream of urine into the bowl.

“Oh, God, that is good. Donny wanted a morning quickie, and we were busy when the hotel manager just came right into the room—a most ill-mannered man—and said there was a problem with Donny’s credit card, and we were escorted out, and Donny dropped me off here on his way to the airport, the pee-pee about tricklin’ down my legs.”

Yanking toilet paper from the roll, she stared at Skye. “Jesus Christ, honey, you look like hell.”

Skye slumped back in the tub unable to control the tears streaming down her face.

Minty wiped herself and, still sitting on the toilet, spotted the razor blade lying on the floor, and even though Skye tried to hide her cut wrist beneath her other hand, the older woman craned forward and saw a drop of blood floating in the water like an accusing question mark.

Minty, smelling of booze and man, reached across and embraced Skye saying, “Oh, baby, oh baby.” And Skye just let go and sobbed, holding onto Minty who stroked her hair saying, “Nothin’ and nobody is worth that baby. No way.”

“I’m sorry,” Skye said.

“It’s okay.”

Minty lifted a towel and dabbed at Skye’s face. She found a box of Band-Aids by the basin and tore one from its wrapping.

“Give me your arm.”

Skye obeyed and Minty dried the skin around the cut and applied the Band-Aid.

“There now.”

She stood and looked at Skye long and hard. “You get yourself dry and I’ll make us some breakfast and we’ll talk this out.”

Minty left the bathroom and Skye heard the mini-explosion of a match being struck, and the kiss and suck as Minty got busy on a cigarette, followed by the clamor of pans and dishes in the kitchen.

Skye pulled the plug and stood out of the bath and dried herself. As she toweled her arm the Band-Aid lifted, and she saw the cut had closed and all but disappeared. She shrugged on the white robe hanging behind the door and headed for the bedroom. The best thing she could do was to pack up her things and leave town. Do as Gene commanded.

But doing that without saying goodbye to Timmy was impossible for her. Then she realized what day it was. Project day. The day Timmy presented his tower. Their tower. Surely she could risk seeing Timmy for a few minutes?

Skye dried her hair and
pulled on
her clothes. When she slammed the front door Minty shouted something about breakfast but Skye didn’t hear her.

24

The knife was too heavy for
Junior
and even though he had both his little hands wrapped around the handle, the weight of the metal dragged his arms down so the tip of the blade snagged on the thick carpet and Junior
stumbled
and fell face-first into the slippery mess that
spilled
from the belly of the fat man.

He heard laughter—Mama’s and Pa’s—and strong hands lifted him and set him on his feet, and he had blood on his bare toes and he felt something sticky like jelly on his cheek. He wanted to cry but he didn’t.

He was aware of the dark looming mass of his father above him, a man who didn’t hold his shape when Junior looked at him directly, but who was always there, at the corner of his vision, like a stain on the air.

Pa prodded him in the back and said, “Go on, now. Get it done.”

Junior stepped around the man with the tubes falling out of him, reminding him of the corrugated pipes on the automatic pool cleaner that spent its day chugging beneath the blue shiny water of some faraway motel. He stood level with a coffee table and the severed head of the black haired lady stared at him from beside a can of Diet Pepsi and a magazine with pictures of pretty people, the pages smeared with thick blood. Flies orbited the head, feeding at the torn flesh of the throat, then hovering, buzzing.

Now that Mama and Pa had stopped laughing, the whine of the flies was the only sound in the room. And then he heard little sobbing noises and rounded the coffee table to see the naked little girl—maybe four years old, a year younger than Junior—lying on the carpet beside what was left of her mother.

The girl’s hands were tied behind her back and her mouth taped shut. She was breathing though her nose and her eyes were big and blue and wide open, staring at him.

Mama knelt beside the girl and caressed her hair, looking up at Junior, smiling her beautiful smile, a sunbeam piercing a gap in the closed drapes and touching a finger to Mama’s hair, making it look like it was aflame.

“Come, my baby, come,” Mama said.

Junior stood over the girl, the knife hanging down, and Mama took both of his hands in one of hers—her fingers dark with blood—and lifted the knife until the blade hovered over one of the girl’s big eyes.

“You know what to do?” Mama asked.

“Yes, Mama,” Junior said.

Mama took her hand away and Junior used all his strength to lift the blade a few inches, staring into the little girl’s eye that was wet and blinking and twitching, and he put his weight behind the blade and fell onto the girl, feeling the knife snag for just a moment, then he sank down with the disappearing blade until his bottom hand struck bone, resting on the girl’s forehead, the little hairs of her right eyebrow tickling his skin as hot blood welled up and covered his hands.

Junior let go of the knife, which stayed stuck in the girl’s head, and sat down on his backside, looking up at Mama who wrapped her arms around him and said in the sweetest voice in the whole wide world, “Oh, we are so
proud
of you. So, so, proud.”

And in that moment, smelling Mama’s perfume mingling with the blood and the drug smoke, Junior had been happier than he ever knew he could be.

Junior Cotton opened his eyes, stared up at the stained ceiling, and it took him a moment to understand where he was. Then he knew.

Five years and three months and three days and three hours and four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. And counting.

He lay, feeling the power that the
memory
had given him filling his body, listening to the sounds of the building waking around him. Clanking, crying, screaming, moaning. The reverse of the night before, when the place had subsided into silence.

Junior sat up, his movements more coordinated now, like his body had begun to heal itself while he slept. He touched his palm to the pentagram on the wall, the blood dried almost black, and felt the hairs on his arms rise, as if from a static charge.

He lifted his shirt
and used it to rub
at the pentagram. The blood smeared a little, but the rubbing didn’t erase it. Junior levered himself to the side of the bed and stripped off his shirt, marveling at how wasted and hollow his body was, his ribs hard corrugations beneath his papery skin, blue veins patterning his skinny arms. He stood, swayed, then walked. Still slow, still clumsy, but more certain than the night before.

He sidestepped the wheelchair and reached the stained, lidless
john.
No cistern, just a pipe jutting from the wall, a foul-smelling puddle dripping down the plaster where the
rotting
metal disappeared into the brickwork.

Junior knelt, felt
rust
in his knees and ankles. Slowed his breath and dipped the shirt into the black water in the toilet. Levered himself to his feet and returned to the bed. He wiped at the pentagram, the wet cloth breaking down the blood, washing it away.

He shrugged the shirt back on, tucking the wet hem into his pants, rescued the scalpel from under the pillow,
keeping it hidden at his wrist,
and lay with his arms at his sides. As he heard the yelps of rubber-soled shoes on the tiles of the corridor, and the clanking of the key in the lock, Junior understood the significance of the memory, remembered the power of sacrificing a child.

25

Gene, opening the passenger door of the cruiser for Timmy, looked right past the girl on the sidewalk outside the school. He only realized it was Skye when Timmy shouted her name and ran toward her, too late for Gene to stop him.

It wasn’t just that he was distracted (the show-and-tell had dragged and he’d already fielded two
menacing
calls from Drum) there was something different about her. The way she stood, loose limbed, as balanced as an athlete, none of the shyness and reticence of the Skye of old. Effortlessly she lifted Timmy and hugged him.

Gene said, “Put him down,” walking toward them, Skye looking at Gene over the boy’s shoulder, staring him right in the eye as she held Timmy, who was gabbling on about how everybody had admired the tower.

“I said put him down.”

Skye’s eyes tracking Gene’s hand as he lifted his shirt, fingers resting on the butt of the Glock.

Her eyes darkened with a rage that had Gene taking a step back. Something entered her, some force that seemed to swell her body and later he would swear he saw the bones of her face shifting beneath her skin, her features thickening, her eyes sinking deep into her skull.

“Ow, Skye, you’re hurting me,” Timmy said.

And all at once it was over and she slumped, letting the boy slide down to the sidewalk, and it was old Skye who stared up at Gene through her lank blonde hair.

“Go and wait in the car, Timmy,” Gene said.

“But I thought you said Skye was gone?”

“You heard me.”

Skye ruffled the boy’s hair. “Listen to your daddy, Timmy. I’ll see you later.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The child went to the car, dragging his sneakers on the sidewalk, untied laces snaking after him.

“What are you doing here?” Gene asked, stepping in close.

“I just wanted to see him,” she said, watching Timmy clamber up into the patrol car.

“I though we had an understanding? That you’d leave town?”

“I need to wait till Friday.”

“Why?”

“That’s when I get paid.”

“I’ll bring you money. Tonight at Earl’s. Okay?” She nodded, eyes unfocused. “Stay away from Timmy.” She looked at him. “I mean it, Skye.”

She turned and walked away, just a girl in a T-shirt and jeans on a
sun faded
small town sidewalk. Gene started the car and as they passed Skye Timmy waved. Gene didn’t look back.

26

The food had the texture and smell of fecal matter, Junior glimpsing it on the spoon that advanced relentlessly toward his mouth,
forcing himself
to keep his jaw agape and his eyes unfocused.

“Open
wiiiiiiiiiiiide
now, that’s a
good
boy,” Alfonso crooned, filling Junior’s mouth with the vile pap, Junior battling to control the gag reflex.

He felt the food on his tongue, lukewarm, slimy. Felt it dribble over his lips and dangle from his chin. Alfonso wiped at Junior’s face with a paper napkin and reloaded the spoon, another unspeakable mound incoming.

Junior went deep into himself, into the mosaic of memory that was slowly reassembling, the commissary and its demented
lunchers
fading away, as he saw his mother studying herself in the rearview mirror of a car, a yellow wheat field stretching to the horizon where it met a Kodachrome sky. Mama applied lipstick, a demure shade of pink, and she grimaced at the mirror, checking that no lipstick stained her perfect white teeth.

The grimace turned to a smile as she saw him watching her. “How do I look?”

“Beautiful,’ he said, and it was true.

“Mnnnn. But do I look
good
?” she asked.

“Oh yes, Mama, you do.”

“Do I look like a good Christian lady worthy of the kindness of strangers?”

“You do, Mama.”

“Well, come on then,” she said, dropping the lipstick into her purse and clicking it shut with a sharp snap. Her manicured nails were varnished with something almost colorless. She stood up out of the car and a hot breeze caught her, and she put a hand up to the headscarf that held her golden hair in place.