Bones are Made to be Broken Read online

  (get up)

  She didn’t want to. Tommy had done enough. But that interior voice wouldn’t let go.

  (this is your only chance)

  Patty raised her head again and vertigo clopped her one. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, repeated the process until she could, more or less, see clearly.

  (now get away)

  She looked at the idling cruiser, blinking against the headlights. She could just see the driver side door, open like an invitation. She started for it, not really thinking. She reached the bumper. Pulling herself up, a fresh burst of pain, like a fat, crackling lightning bolt, seized her and she went face first into the cruiser’s hot hood. She hugged her abdomen, but that did no good.

  This pain came from deeper. From where she fed on Tommy.

  (too much on too little)

  She’d always known she depended on Tommy’s feedings, that it made her stronger, sharper, kept her young-looking, without any of the drawbacks Tommy had as true undead, but she hadn’t really known the extent of that dependence, how much it sustained her.

  (hold out just hold out wait it out just like a junkie)

  The hood burned her cheek, the sudden cold-sweat on her brow dripping and sizzling on the metal. She pushed herself until she just leaned on the car, and used it to work her way around to the door. Another bolt of pain came, driving her to her knees.

  (c’mon c’mon)

  Tommy howled, an anguished scream from deep in the woods. He sounded like he did back in that bar, when they were both human and all was right in the world.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she breathed, and her voice was thick.

  Still, she turned towards the woods, away from the door.

  Get in the car. Get the hell out of here. Go to Nipton and kill that numbfuck deejay and steal his car. Don’t turn back.

  Not a scream this time, but a shriek. Pain. Tommy was in pain. Like all those years ago. And she’d acted without thought then.

  Patty was already moving before she caught herself, hugged herself as if to hold her body in place.

  What am I doing? I am done with this. I am almost free.

  What felt like a taloned-hand burrowed deep into her gut, and she projectile-vomited blood against the side of the cruiser.

  Can’t. I can’t. This isn’t something—

  But she couldn’t finish the thought. In the back of her mind, and two feet to her right, she sensed the door to her freedom, to the person she could’ve been, without Tommy and his secondhand power and the leash both he and it had put on her. The woman the good little girl would’ve grown up to be.

  And she was turning away from it.

  When the next shriek came, Patty got moving, getting to her feet, heading for the woods. When she reached the .38, she bent over to pick it up and didn’t fall.

  (vampire it’s a vampire)

  But the thought held no weight. Unimportant. More important was the power in his medallion, building him up, leading him after the creature. Every muscle and nerve sang in harmony.

  The creature stumbled and John leapt at it. St. Anthony brushed the top of its forehead and flesh hissed like hot grease. The smell was stupendous. The creature screeched and shoved him away, holding a hand to its head. John backpedaled and fell on his ass. The creature pulled its hand away. The darkness was gone except for the gleaming cores of its oil-drop eyes. A comet of scorched flesh arced across its brow.

  “Who the fuck do you think I am—Evil Ed?” it asked. Its voice was odd when drained of power, like it spoke around a throat full of snot.

  It bared its teeth as it straightened and its skin darkened, blending in with the shadows. “Gonna bleed you, man,” it said, its voice deepening, becoming thunder in Hell. “Gonna keep you alive long enough so you can feel every … fucking … drop.”

  It approached, slowly, and the darkness poured in around it like black water.

  John felt around behind him, finding a rock. As the creature reached for him, he swung the medallion—a part of him noting the way the darkness shrank away as the creature cringed. He brought the rock around and slammed it into the side of the creature’s face. Teeth broke like piano keys and it fell.

  John jumped onto it, straddling it, and brought the rock down again and again, holding the medallion above. Animalistic triumph seized him, made him howl as flesh gave and bones crunched. A tough, black fluid, like crude oil, flew in spatters.

  He tossed the rock away. His arm was slick to the elbow with the creature’s blood.

  The creature moaned beneath him, its head dented and broken.

  “I know what you are,” he breathed, seizing a broken branch. He wound the medallion around the tip and raised it like a spear. “And I sure as shit know how to kill you.”

  She stumbled and fell and didn’t scream only because she didn’t have enough air. Her labored pulse beat at her vision, made her body lurch. The .38 hung from her hand like a weight, but she didn’t let go.

  (mistake)

  She stumbled and her side hit a tree. She blinked and saw the cop, straddling Tommy, beating at him with a rock in one hand, while the other held the mini-lantern. What the fuck was that? A crucifix?

  She watched the cop toss the rock away and pick up the branch.

  (leave him leave this he deserves it)

  Her torso burned, but she didn’t know if it was from the pain or something else.

  “I know what you are,” the cop said, winding the lantern around the branch. “And I sure as shit know how to kill you.”

  He hefted the branch.

  (let him let him LET HIM!)

  She didn’t know she was going to fire until the sound battered her ears and the recoil surged up her arm. The cop fell, screaming and holding the mess that his hand had become.

  (stop this turn around)

  Hugging her abdomen, she stumbled towards them, taking in the scene. The cop, cradling his hand, gaped at her. She ignored him and approached Tommy. His arms and legs moved weakly, almost independently of each other. His face was a ruin. Beside him, the branch, now in half, with what appeared to be a glowing medallion.

  (shove it in his mouth and blow his fucking head off)

  She felt that tug in the back of her mind: Patty. Patty, help me—

  She shook.

  (leave him leave this it’s not too late)

  And then the cop steamrolled her.

  “Bitch!” he bellowed, driving her to the ground and driving already-broken bones into soft and vulnerable places.

  (everyone thinks I’m a bitch today)

  She spewed blood into his face as he strangled her with his good hand and tried to pull the .38 away with his bad one. He head-butted her and suns exploded in her eyes. Gagging, she pressed the .38 between them and emptied the cylinder.

  The cop stiffened, the pressure on her throat instantly gone. He was gaping at her again, but she didn’t think he really saw her.

  (nothing new there)

  He crumpled in a way that reminded her of balled paper and fell to the side. She gagged on snot and blood and pain.

  That steel fishhook in her head: Patty, I need you.

  Her hands clawed at the dirt, pulling herself around.

  The medallion. Get the fucking thing away.

  She saw it, still glowing, and crawled towards it. When a fresh wave of pain crashed into her, she didn’t stop. Behind her, making the soundtrack, the cop moaned as he tried to hold his guts in.

  She picked the medallion up and hissed as it burned in the center of her palm. A St. Anthony medallion. Was the church she’d gone to, all those years ago, called St. Anthony’s?

  (who gives a fuck)

  That tug in the back of her head: Away. Get it away from me—

  She held it a moment longer, as if undecided, but she knew, deep down, the decision had been made.

  She threw the medallion away.

  Later, she lay on her side, staring at nothing. Consciousness came and went, the pain ebbing and flowin
g like the tide. She had no idea how much time passed, only that it was still dark when the cop was finally killed.

  “Here, honey,” Tommy rumbled behind her. His voice cracked and gargled oddly. His wrist, cut open and already welling with his blood, appeared in front of her eyes.

  She stared at it, then forced her eyes closed. Let me suffer. Let me die. Then the other part of her, now a permanent fixture, spoke up:

  (you haven’t begun to suffer yet)

  “C’mon, honey,” Tommy coaxed. “You need this.”

  She opened her eyes and the wrist was still there. She licked her lips and hated herself for it.

  (your suffering’s just begun)

  She gripped Tommy’s wrist and, shaking, brought it to her mouth.

  Survivor’s

  Debt

  IF GHOSTS EXIST, WHY?

  I remember the way his eyes looked. The blood covering his face was completely secondary to that dull stare. It was the look of a man who glimpsed hell, or was, perhaps, realizing he’d never escape it.

  And then, much later, I remember that cold gale, the way you imagine the wind off an ice floe must feel, blowing through me—not around me, but through me—and slamming the door in my face, separating us, forcing me to listen to the screaming on the other side.

  I need to get this down. I can’t avoid thinking about Billy and what happened in Buffalo any longer. When was the last time I’d slept? I can’t remember. I lie awake at night in my museum of a widow’s house. Sometimes a tingle, like pins-and-needles, shoots down my arm. Sometimes pressure, like a cinderblock weight, settles on my chest. I feel these things and I keep my head down, literally and metaphorically.

  I do not believe in ghosts.

  But I’m very afraid, just the same.

  The memory I return to most, in spite of all that followed, is Billy Kinson coming back for the first time.

  I’d been sitting on his front stoop for five hours. It’d been raining four of those hours, coming in with sunset and making a warm June evening feel like a chilled March morning, and my knee was a solid coil of pain. A long time for an old man, in spite of the dubious cover provided by the aluminum overhang.

  He pulled into his driveway and killed the engine. He opened his door and then just sat there, slumped beneath the interior light. He appeared shrunken, more fragile—a man staring ninety in the face instead of seventy. I could see the top of his shaved head and, as was often the case, I thought of Maggie. The way Maggie laughed at the vain way he’d attempted comb-overs back in the ‘90s before just shaving it all off.

  And, suddenly, I didn’t want to stand here anymore; didn’t know why I had come in the first place. He’d said over the phone that we’d talk when he got home—ignoring my angry shouts of from where? from WHERE?—so why was I here? Why was I shivering like some old stray in the rain? Why was I acting like some love-struck teenager, the kind I’d seen in my classes since Reagan’s first term?

  Billy slammed the car door and made his slow way up the driveway to the front walk. He reached the steps and then just stood there.

  “Billy?”

  He looked up at me and I saw those eyes for the first time. There’s a scene in the original Night of the Living Dead, where a zombie gets into the farmhouse the heroes have holed up in. When the zombie attacks, the camera comes in close to the actor’s face. His eyes are locked on something out of the frame. For that brief shot, any viewer believes: this thing is dead. This thing is soulless.

  Billy Kinson had those eyes. They had me locked even as they seemed to be staring through me. It made me want to look over my shoulder.

  Blood coated his face, now running wet under the rain and an errant thought—He drove home looking like that?—shot across my mind.

  “Silva,” he said and you might’ve thought he hadn’t spoken in millennia.

  “What the hell happened to you? And don’t sell me that sick sister bullshit, either. I’m not Pat Slayton.”

  His gaze never wavered. “My responsibility.”

  He started up the steps, slow dragging movements of his feet. “Come inside, Silva. We need to talk.”

  And it was only five weeks prior I thought he was having a heart attack as we sat in the teacher’s lounge, a forkful of microwave pasta frozen in his hand, staring off over my shoulder.

  “Billy?” My voice was loud, too loud, carrying over to the rookie teachers. “Billy?”

  “They’ve been waiting for me,” he said—softly, wonderingly, still staring.

  I spun around, but saw nothing but the Pepsi machine and the rookie teachers—two girls and a boy, staring at us as if we’d flashed them our dicks.

  I turned back in time to see Billy launch from his seat and sprint for the door. He exited just as the late-bell rang, signaling the change to seventh period.

  I cursed and got up. Billy’s room was on the first floor, mine on the third, and I’d never get to both before the second bell.

  I’d have to wait until the end of the day to see what the hell was going on.

  But when I went down to his room, I found the floater substitute tidying up the desks. When I went to the office, Pat Slayton—another school relic—told me Billy had taken an emergency leave. An old sister, Pat told me. She’d had a stroke.

  Billy was an only child.

  He’d washed his face and changed his shirt, but he still looked older than he was, thinner and frailer. He’d missed a dob of blood; it rested, perfectly centered, on the lobe of his left ear, like a ruby earring.

  We sat at his kitchen table. A dangling lamp with a stained-glass shade provided the only illumination.

  “You’re not a vet, are you, Silva?” he said, leaning over the table, a tumbler in his hands. A bottle of rum sat between us.

  “Knee kept me out,” I replied. “You know that.” The shadows were deep, pressing against my back. I’d been in Billy’s house more times than I could possibly begin to count, but it was a stranger’s house to me now. The creaks and groans of the foundation settling seemed stealthy and ominous, reminding me of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. I could imagine this house, empty, creaking in the exact same way. Whatever walked there walked alone.

  Billy finished his drink. “I do remember that.” He poured himself another knock and offered the bottle to me. I’d finished mine without even being aware of it. I felt no warmth in my belly, no fire in my throat—just cold. Billy had gotten me a towel but it hadn’t helped.

  “Billy …” I said, but couldn’t finish. Too many questions, too much confusion.

  “I never knew them,” he said. “Not then.

  “I was stationed at Khe Sanh, a combat base east of Laos, in 1968. In April, after four months of being sniped at by Charlie from here-there-everywhere—they were like fucking Whack-a-Moles; the guy next you could be gone because he picked his crotch at the wrong time—relief was finally being brought in. I was 3rd Brigade Marines and we were ordered to clear a way. We were deep along the trails when a blocking force shelled us.”

  He took a drink. “It’s not like the movies. You don’t hear the shell until it’s already too late. We were scattered, disoriented, and then they opened fire from their foxholes.

  “No idea which way was front or fucking back because every-thing looks the same to an American kid in the jungle, everyone’s firing everywhere, and here came these assault rifle rounds—seven-point-six-two millimeter; I’ll never forget that number. Saw a guy opened up like a water balloon full of blood right in front of me, and then the shooter’s looking dead at me and I started wondering, how old are you? Like, in the States, could you even drive a goddam car? Are you that old? He was just an NVA blue-uniform regular, but I, in that millisecond, was frozen by the idea that a kid who couldn’t shave more than once a week was gonna open me up. His little Chinese rifle was aimed at me and I could see into the bore and I couldn’t shake that thought out of my head.

  “And then this big cornhusker batted me aside, yelling, ‘W
anna play Guns, fucker? I’ll show ya some fuckin’ guns!’ And he cut the kid down. I don’t think he even knew what he was saying, or that he saved my life.”

  Billy cleared his throat. “He didn’t know me, or vice versa. We were just guys. It’s hard to make friends when you’re keyed up alla time. We protected each other when we could, but that’s training.

  “So the reg that was gonna kill me got killed, but doing that only opened the way for the sheller to aim. The guy had been firing all around, but now he had something to aim for, y’know?

  “The cornhusker’s tapped out—he had one kill in ‘im and then he was just like me, with no idea what the hell was going on. He would’ve caught up, we both would’ve, and joined the main fight, but it didn’t work out that way. The sheller fired.”

  He finished his rum and set the glass down. “So these three other guys—a black guy, an Italian, and an Irishman; Jesus, it’s like the start of a bad joke—tried to shove the cornhusker outta the way. I got batted aside again, only harder. I cracked my head on a tree, but it was enough to save me.”

  He sighed and it had a watery quality to it. “Those four guys … they got tangled up. It was such a fuckin’ Polish fire drill … The shell tore them apart.”

  His voice grew thick. “Later I found out who they were. While I was recuperating. The cornhusker was Brian Spuken. The black guy was Daryl Espirito. The Italian was Anthony Tormentato. The Irish kid was Larry Haloran.”

  He stared at the empty tumbler. “Took me years to get over it. They saved me and I didn’t even know if they knew that before they died. The first few years, I tracked down their families. Visited the graves. Didn’t bring me any closure, though. Something like that never does. Got me divorced, though. I was too loony tunes to be good to anyone.”

  “How …” I cleared my throat. “Did you get over it?”

  He nodded. “After a while. Time does it. Getting my college education helped. Becoming a teacher helped more. Distractions. Meeting you and Maggie. That helped, too.”