Boys in the Valley(76)

“Take his eyes.”

Johnson looks from the boy to Poole. Despair and rage and pain fight for dominance within him when, suddenly, a million voices shriek the command which bellows through his mind, fills his blood, takes over his body.

He runs his tongue over crisp, flaky lips, and steps toward Poole’s bed.

The old priest stares up in terror. “NO!” he screams. “Johnson, stop this!”

Johnson bends over the bed, places his giant hands on either side of the frail head, and presses his thumbs against the priest’s eyelids.

“Forgive me, Father . . .” he mumbles, the words as garbled and incoherent as his mind.

“NO! No no no no . . .”

Then Poole shrieks, an animal wail of absolute pain and despair, as Johnson shoves his thumbs deeper and deeper into his skull.

The swarm sings its pleasure.





46


I WAKE IN THE DARK.

I don’t recall having gone to sleep, and figure I must have accidentally dozed off. Not wise, given the circumstances. But David and Andrew are here, so I know things are under control. The children are safe, taken care of.

Still, it’s odd that all the dormitory lamps have been extinguished. We should be keeping watch, staying vigilant. I need to get up. Speak with Andrew. Find out what’s going on, how long I’ve been sleeping.

“Peter. You’re awake.”

I look to the voice at the foot of my bed. A man sits there. A heavy, remorseful shadow.

I recognize him instantly.

“Dad?”

The moonlight through the window catches part of his face. He looks whole, healthy. Young. He’s smiling at me.

“Hello, Son.”

I look around the room to see if the others notice my father’s presence. I want to shake them all out of their cots and yell, “Look fellas! Look here! It’s my dad!”

I’m no orphan! I’d say, boastful. I’m not alone.

“Do you remember . . .” Dad shifts his weight on my thin cot.

I sit up fully, rest my back against the wall. I feel the chill air seeping through the nearby window, hear the whistle and moan of the hard wind.

The storm, I realize absently, has arrived.

“Remember what?”

My father looks down, as if thinking. He laughs a little. It’s good to see him happy, to see him smiling. Like it was before. “The first time we went hunting,” he says, “you were . . . what? Seven years old? A skinny thing. I gave you the gun and let go of the dog. The pheasants burst from the bushes like sparks from a fire.”

He looks up, dreamy-eyed. It’s one of the few nice memories we shared.

“You fired the gun and nearly fell on your ass.” He laughs, and I laugh with him.

“The sky was so blue,” I say.

Dad nods. “You killed your first pheasant that day.”

I don’t reply to this. I don’t remember killing a pheasant. I fired, but missed. Dad was angry. He yanked the gun from me. He said . . .

“I hear you want to be a priest,” he says, and I forget about the day we spent hunting. I wonder how he knows about this. I wonder if my mother knows. “It makes me happy, Peter. Really. We’re both happy for you. Proud of you.”

He leans toward me and the moonlight through the window catches his face fully. He looks as I remember him, but he’s also . . . distorted. Smeared. I close my eyes and open them. There he is, normal again. His face moonlit, but dappled with shadow. His eyes black pools.

“You were always wise beyond your years,” he says, but his lips do not move.

I try to see into the dark hollows of his eyes, but they’re endless. I know that if I stare hard enough, I’ll fall into them and keep falling, forever.

“You’re a dream,” I say. “You’re dead. You shot yourself, and then you burned.”

He doesn’t reply to this, but when his face catches the light again, the youthful skin is dark and flaky. His eyes white and lidless. His lips charred black.

“When I watched your mother die, I knew at that very moment that I was going to Hell,” he says. “It was like . . . like something opened up beneath me. A vast, cold abyss. And I knew—I fucking knew—right then, that no matter what I did with my life, no matter how hard I tried to set things right . . .”

He shuffles closer, grunting, his breath raspy, his movements jagged. I smell smoke and burned flesh. A blackened hand rests on my knee, staining my white blanket like charcoal.

“I would have always been standing over that chasm, Peter. That deep, terrible darkness.”

“Dad . . .”

“There would be no escaping it,” he says wearily. “Not ever. It would lie below every step I took, hiding under every bed in which I slept. Waiting. Waiting for my soul to untether from my body and fall, fall into that eternal chasm, to what lay beyond.”

He turns to look at me with his lidless white eyes and the moon-silver teeth and charred skin, he pushes closer and I shrink back, away from him, disgusted and afraid. His breath reeks like the grave. Like spoiled meat.

“So I gave the darkness what it wanted,” he says. “I fed it my soul.”

Despite his appearance, part of me badly wants to reach out to him. To hug him and hold him one more time. I miss him so much. But I know that’s impossible, so instead I beg, like the child I once was, for something I know in my heart I can never have.