Chapter 39
The sky is lush, violent. The sunset seems premature and disruptive, even this far into the season.
I recite directions to Dick Face as he swings the wheel with visible relish.
I can almost feel the amped-up strength radiating off him.
I recognize it. I felt stronger than I had any right to be, too, recently.
It isn’t possible to recall the sensation of it.
You can’t remember what it’s like to feel well while you’re sick; they are opposing forces.
I am oddly grateful, for a moment, that I got to feel that wellness, though, even if briefly. Even if under terrible circumstances.
Dick Face slams the car into park a block away from Joel’s house.
The engine growls to itself until he shuts it up with a nonchalant push of the ignition button.
“Watch and learn,” he tells me, over his shoulder.
He’s already out of the car, on the sidewalk, rolling his shoulders like he’s going into the boxing ring.
I claw at the door, unable to find the handle for a slippery moment.
Then I do, and I spill out and go down on my hands and knees in the sodden lawn—grass pricking my baby-bird skin, my bones crying out their suffering.
How will he do it? Does he even know? Or will he draw inspiration from the moment?
He begins to hum. A warm, inviting sound, a sweet melody.
He turns in a slow circle, smiling pleasantly.
The hum evolves into a song, a phrase. “Come on out, now, everyone,” he sings.
“Come on out now, everyone, and join the dance. . . .” It’s catchy—the chorus of a vaguely familiar rock song.
Probably his own. He raises his voice and now doors are opening all down the street.
People come out of their houses, onto porches, down onto the grass.
They don’t follow the lines of their front paths or the sidewalk.
One middle-aged man is in nothing but baggy boxer shorts and socks, hairy belly on display.
Two teenaged girls trail after their mother, who is holding a calendar in one hand, a pen in the other.
Everyone is smiling, everyone looks a little bit blissed out, unreachable.
They don’t seem to feel the cold, the wind that’s clicking together the smallest branches of the trees that line the sidewalk.
Dick Face revolves toward me. I have gotten to my feet again, am staggering toward him.
He winks and then he’s walking to Joel’s house, his tiny army of blank-eyed followers filing after him.
I feel the pull of his song, too. I feel my body’s response to it, the willingness of my muscles to nudge me after it.
Don’t be there, I pray. Don’t be there. You went out. You went to the grocery store. Please don’t be home.
But he is home. I know when we are three-quarters of the way there.
I can hear the cello through Dick Face’s song.
The baritone roll and hurry of a triumphant, virtuosic piece with flying runs, a hundred notes pressed into them, muted to something milder by the walls and closed windows.
He sounds happy. I feel, arrogantly, that it is because of me.
All of this is because of me.
Dick Face stops on the mossy brick leading to Joel’s little gray house, beneath the Japanese maple with its sparse remaining leaves curled and almost black.
The sky is bleeding gorgeously now, having lost some epic battle, night closing quickly over the gore.
The air breathes out in heaving, wintry gusts.
Dick Face stops singing and the cello soars into the taut silence.
“Huh,” he says, “A musician!” He listens for only a second. “Brahms was such a prick, though. Such a fussy little prick. Couldn’t stand him.” And then he calls, “Come out, hunter!” His voice seems to grow, expand, filling the whole evening.
The cello stops short.
No, no, no, no, I think. Do something, I tell myself. Do something.
But I am just one of my father’s pawns now.
I am standing a few paces behind him, my feet frozen slabs below my shaking legs, my knees turning to pebbles.
Is my throat closing? I want to yell, but I can hardly suck a thin breath into my lungs.
Behind me, the neighbors shift slightly, and there is a clatter as something, maybe the pen, falls from captivated fingers.
Cars driving by clunk to sudden stops. An SUV parks crookedly in front of the house, and someone stumbles out and joins the party.
Joel opens the front door, still holding his bow in one hand.
He steps out onto the stoop, and he is beautiful, lit up in his white T-shirt and gray sweats, all clean and big and gentle looking.
My nose, a numb wedge, is leaking. My eyes are leaking. I am dripping terror and sorrow on myself, and I forget to move my hands to wipe it away, or maybe I can’t move my hands anymore.
For a moment, he seems completely baffled. Then his eyes find me. I see him take in my muddy pajama pants, my bare feet. And now he looks alarmed. He moves, he wants to come toward me, but Dick Face holds up a hand.
“That’s close enough.”
“Who are you?” Joel asks.
Dick Face laughs. “Is this a joke? Do you really not know?”
“Oh,” says Joel, his voice as even as ever. His doctor voice, calm under pressure, calm until the end. “You’re her father.”
I can see Dick Face’s smile in the line of his shoulders, in the toss of his hair. “I’m your destiny, Shit for Brains.”
“I didn’t— ” I squeak. I’m trying to tell Joel. “I didn’t— ”
Dick Face glances back toward me as though remembering I exist. “Are you apologizing to him? What the fuck is wrong with you? Aren’t you humans supposed to be loyal to family and crap like that?
I’m your family, kid, in case you forgot.
I’m your blood.” He gestures sharply at Joel.
“This is the psycho who’s been picking us off for fun. ”
I feel the zombies around us tense, perk up at Dick Face’s anger.
I feel my body like rotting fruit, eaten by parasites, flesh oozing off in chunks. My fingers won’t move, they’re stiff with cold, my lips heavy and useless.
“They’re zealots! Every single one of them. He doesn’t care about you—he thinks you’re vermin. He would squash you like a bug.”
I remember Joel telling me I wasn’t human, calling me a disease.
“I know,” he says to me now. “I know you didn’t do this.” He tries again to step forward.
“I said no,” Dick Face snaps, and Joel can’t move.
He winces. “What did he do to you, Tempest?” There’s fear in his face.
“Me?” Dick Face is grinning. “Wow. The two of you.” And to Joel, “What are you, a newbie? This is hilarious.” He does a sweeping gesture over Joel’s length, as though creating and dismissing him all at once. “It was you, asshole. You’re killing her. You can’t figure that out?”
“No,” Joel argues instantly. “That’s a lie.”
“Tell him,” says Dick Face, suddenly diverted by our little drama. “Before I kill him, tell him.”
I gasp. “I’m sorry! Yes. He’s right.”
Joel looks horrified. He strains against the prison of the air for a moment, falls still. “But you were fine!”
I shake my head slowly.
“You weren’t fine? You said you were fine.”
I’m silent except for my teeth, which click together spasmodically like the branches in the wind.
“Tempest! Why would you let me— ”
“Cute,” interrupts Dick Face. “But boring. We’re done. Okay. So. Now what?” He plays with his hair, lifts it back as though savoring the weight of it. I know that feeling. “How about . . . this: Take the bow.”
Joel lifts the bow.
“You seem like a strong guy. Break it.”
Joel snaps the bow in half and the wood splinters into sharp fragments. His face is agonized. “Why did it work?” he asks me through gritted teeth. “After all that time.”
“Because I love you,” I say.
And there it is. The thing I’ve been suppressing with all my might. The thing that has been true—destructively, imperviously, irrevocably—since the beginning. Might as well be honest, here at the end.
I see his eyes change, the terrible sadness in them.
“Al told me,” I say through my numb lips and jittering teeth. “He was right. When I let myself feel it, it weakened me.” What a cruel curse. And what bad luck, falling in love with the only man who can kill me back.
“Oh God.” His voice breaks. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, Tempest.”
“Holy shit,” Dick Face barks, half laughing.
“What is this, Romeo and Juliet?” He looks around like he’s expecting a reaction from his personal crowd.
There’s a crunch of metal on metal from the street as a car runs into another car at slow speed, then muffled yelling, followed by hypnotized silence as Dick Face hums a few bars and more newcomers join us.
There must be twenty people gathered here now, fanning out along the sidewalk, idling under the bare trees, collecting on the curb like recycling.
And they are all extras, I realize. Dick Face doesn’t even really need them.
Joel is helpless. They are just backup. They are just here because Dick Face was afraid.
He isn’t afraid anymore.
“This is for my son,” he says, his voice plunging and boiling. He’s suddenly very serious. “For Fabian. For the rest of the ones you killed. They were all I had left. I’m going to make this painful. For them.”
For Grub, I think. But Dick Face doesn’t even know about him. Will never know about him. And everything is different now. Everything has changed.
The woman to my left is edging forward a little as though trying to get close enough to Dick Face to soak up some of his light.
She has a streak of moisturizer on her nose.
Her hair is damp from the shower and goose bumps stand out on her skin.
I reach out and touch her arm. I try to meet her eye, but she seems to be looking right through me.
“Hey,” I whisper, “wake up.”
And her eyes click on mine. They focus. She looks startled.
Hope sears my chest.
Stupid, absurd hope.
But now Dick Face is saying, “You’re going to take that sharp end and push it into your skin. Right where your heart is. Nice and slow.”