The Scream Read online

“And wearing women’s underwear,” Jake added.

  “If I were you, man, I’d be lookin’ at people like The Scream. That’s where the real danger is.”

  Jerry’s mouth opened, closed. Something inside him, already propped up tenuously, sagged a little more. Yke had hit the mark, all right; it wasn’t pretty, but it had the advantage of being true.

  Because rock music had always been a target, born with a bull’s-eye on it. It was confrontational by nature. It was music to get laid by, to take drugs by, to dance to, and question authority by. It demanded your body, your heart, and your soul. It was born to piss parents off.

  And that was, to Yke’s way of thinking, an extremely positive thing.

  But The Scream were a different story entirely.

  “What do you know about them, man?” Jake asked.

  “About as much as anyone,” Yke replied. “Which means hardly anything at all. I mean, nobody even knows what their real names are! Tara Payne? Rod and Alex Royale? Oh, sure!

  “And that’s just the beginning.

  “I mean, we spent six weeks on the road with them; and in all that time, I never exchanged so much as a howdy-do with anybody in the band. The only time you ever saw ‘em was on their way to the stage, on their way back from it, or on their way in or out of the limo.”

  “Friendly people.” Jake laughed.

  “Fuckin’ weird people, if the truth be known.” Yke rolled his eyes and made an uncharacteristically sour face, remembering. “It wasn’t just that they were private. It was more like you were watching a secret society, you know? Like they were up to something heavy, and they’d have to sacrifice you to Kali if you found out too much or something.

  “And that’s just it.” He leaned forward, strangely adrenalated by the topic. “They were scary. You know the kind of shit they sing about—demon worship, sacrifices, fucking the devil, and all that crap?

  “Well, I’ve seen a lot of metal bands. They’re my contemporaries, right? And a lot of them bring that shit into their shows. But when you’re watching it, you know it’s an act. It’s like watching Vincent Price on the late late show. You know, sinister laughter and all that.” He let out a wide-eyed BLOOO-HAH-HAH-HAH! that made the waitress look over and Jerry wince, then continued.

  “But The Scream are different, man. You get the feeling that they really believe it.

  “And anyone who really believes in that shit is not well in the head.

  “They’re twisted.”

  “What about Tara?” Jake asked, unable to restrain a sophomoric leer.

  “Oh, Jesus, she’s a case,” Yke went on. “Have you ever seen her act?”

  “Just some pictures and videos.”

  “I’ve seen her,” Jerry cut in. He was leering, too, albeit sickly.

  “Well, anything you’ve ever heard about her is true,” Yke said. “She could give a dead man a boner just by walking past the graveyard.”

  Everybody laughed, but that wasn’t the end of it.

  “I’m serious!”

  “We believe you.”

  “Yeah, but it’s scary.” Yke made a point of emphasizing the word. “It really is. Because it’s not a healthy thing. It’s almost supernatural, you know?

  “I mean, being on the road with that chick was the weirdest six weeks of my life, without a doubt. But I couldn’t get anywheres near her; and I’m not so sure I’m sorry. There’s something really truly dangerous about her. Like a fucking black widow. You know what I mean?”

  “They eat their mates.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. Like, if I let her blow me, I’d count the inches as they came out of her mouth, just to make sure they were all there.

  “But if she offered to, there’s no way in hell I’d be able to refuse her, even thinking what I think. If she wanted me, I’d be hers, and she could do whatever the fuck she wanted.”

  “That is scary, now that you mention it,” Jake said.

  “You’re goddamn right,” Yke asserted. “And the worst thing was the effect that it had on the kids. I mean, we had fucking riots sometimes: all these sexually frustrated fifteen-year-old dudes going nuts on each other, and you just knew it was because of that chick and that group.”

  “And, of course,” Jerry moaned, “some asshole had to line them up for Rock Aid.”

  “Which asshole was that?” Yke inquired, slowly grinning.

  “It wasn’t me, I guarantee you. If it was up to me, they wouldn’t even be able to get a deal. They do, they honestly do scare me. I don’t trust them at all. They give the industry a had name. They’re like the Khmer Rouge of rock and roll.”

  The conversation paused, uneasily. Yke and Jerry looked at each other, as if to confirm where the vibes had taken them.

  Then they looked at Jake.

  He did not look good at all.

  “Jake?” Jerry said, and Jake snapped back from the abyss into which he had been staring. “What is it? You look bad.”

  Which was true. Jake had picked up a little pallor to go with his grim expression. Yke expended a good second thinking about it before Jake spoke.

  “I was just thinking about the Khmer Rouge.”

  “The who?” Yke asked.

  “The Khmer Rouge.” He blinked, as if kicking an image back into his head, then swept an articulate gaze from Jerry to Yke. “A guy named Pol Pot led them through Cambodia, round about the time that Saigon fell. They declared Year Zero, the new beginning of time. And then they implemented a purge that was pure slaughter.

  “We don’t even know how many people they killed, but we’re talking easy seven-figure genocide. Couple of million people got stabbed, shot, gutted, clubbed, or starved to death in less than a year.”

  “That’s a charming story,” Yke said. “But what’s the point?”

  “I was just thinking”—Jake stared straight in Yke’s eyes—“that the average age of the Khmer Rouge was fourteen. It was an army of teenagers, man. Fucking kids.

  “And the deadliest army you’d ever hope to see. . . .”

  Los Angeles, California. A long-standing gang war erupts at a concert held by a thrash-metal band called Suburbicide. Seven die. Twelve more are hospitalized. It is the worst in a long chain of L.A. concert riots that have killed eighteen and injured hundreds so far this summer.

  Passaic, New Jersey. The naked, mutilated body of fifteen-year-old Cheryl Davis is found in a vacant lot near her home. She has been stabbed over thirty times. Authorities arrest five members of the “Satanic coven” to which she had belonged. They confess to the killing and to a slew of animal sacrifices, as “blood gifts for Satan.” They also admit to the use of PCP and “lots of loud heavy metal” in their rituals. All are between the ages of fifteen and seventeen.

  Lawrence, Kansas. Sixteen-year-old Denise May Smith bludgeons her stepmother to death after being forbidden to attend a Scream concert in Kansas City.

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thirteen-year-old Scott Wizotski sticks the barrel of his father’s .45 into the mouth of schoolmate Thomas Granger, also thirteen, and blows off the back of Granger’s head. Wizotski claims that Granger stole $130 worth of crack and over a dozen albums from him at a recent party and refused to give them back.

  Diamond Bar, California. Fifteen teenagers are brutally murdered at a party at the home of Dr. Lawrence Wyler. Dr. Wyler’s daughter, Cyndi, who is believed to have thrown the party in her parents’ absence, is not found among the victims. . . .

  * * *

  THREE

  The tip of the paintbrush dipped daintily into the burnt orange on the palette, came up with a fleck of color, and dabbed it onto the flaming circle taking final shape below. It augmented the billowing black outlines, the brilliant smoky red at the core, lending stormy nightmare texture to the holocaust image.

  “This,” Chris Konopliski said, “is pure genius, man. I hope you appreciate that.”

  “I’d appreciate it even more,” Ted replied, “if you’d let me see the goddamn thing.”

  “N
uh-uh. Not till it’s done. Bad juju.” Chris dabbed more orange onto the cloud: refractions of light, making it reflect more of the sky surrounding it. “Why don’t you just roll another joint and get off my back?”

  “Because I wanna see this masterpiece.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Because I can’t roll for shit, and you know it.”

  “Better. But still no excuse for laziness.”

  “Because I’m not apt to magically become a better joint-roller than you are in the next sixty seconds, no matter how hard I try. Because I want to see what you’re doing to my damn jacket. And because I’ll kick your farm boy ass. How’s that for three good reasons?”

  Chris yawned theatrically.

  The needle on the Sansui belt-drive had just dragged its way through the last of the latest from The Slabs, fevered metal ax-grinding and drum-barrage giving way to the dull rumble that signaled the end of the album. It was three-thirty in the afternoon on the last Thursday before the meat grinder known as public school resumed for another agonizing year. Outside, it was raining again, hard enough to steam the windows and make an ephemeral gray-green mosaic of the trees outside. Nice day for a funeral.

  Nice day, Ted thought, to stay inside and get stoned.

  It was a good room to stay inside and get stoned in, as well. Ted had made it his own, stuffed it with the accoutrements to his teenage wild life. Posters of rock bands, movie monsters and scantily-clad women smothered the walls. Stacks of albums, comics and Fangoria magazines covered the floor. Lunatic doodads were everywhere: Japanese robots, Don Post masks, Ooze-Its, Ick-Men, Head-Popping Action Figures, fart machines, eyeball glasses, chattering teeth, Garbage Pail Kids, and Flesh-Colored Muscular He-Men of the Universe. If it was weird, stupid or potentially disturbing, he had three of it.

  It was more than a behavioral problem.

  It was a way of life.

  Ted Adams-Hamer was a tall, skinny sixteen-year-old, with long dark curly hair shaved down to sidewalls an inch above the ears, and with a coppery skin tone all around that had little to do with the sun. In the gene war between his mother and the father he’d never met, the Invisible Dad had won by a clear margin. Ted looked more like Jake than he did like Mom; and he and Jake were only related by common-law marriage.

  But that was enough to scuttle me down to this godforsaken pisshole, Ted noted glumly. This was not an original thought. He bitched about it every time things got boring, or gloomy, or drearily hot or cold or wet, for well over a year now.

  Ever since, in fact, the moment Jake and Mom sealed his fate that night at the ironically named Old Homestead Steak House on Ninth Avenue, on the upper lip of the meat district in good ol’ NYC. . . .

  “Hey,” he’d said, dropping his fork onto his plate. The biggest, best filet mignon he’d ever tasted lay before him. Too bad his goddamn appetite was gone; the flavor of bile overwhelmed it. “Thanks a lot, man,” he continued. “I’m really glad you guys bothered to ask me first.”

  “We’re asking you now—”

  “You’re not asking me anything, Mom!” He slammed his fist on the table, once, hard, making the silverware bounce and spilling a dollop of Coke Classic onto the white tablecloth. “You’re telling me!”

  “Come on, honey—”

  “No, he’s right,” Jake cut in. “It sucks, but he’s right.” Then to Ted he said, “We have pretty much made up our minds.”

  “Well, that’s just great!” Ted stormed. “It’s good to be a real contributing member of the decision-making process! ‘Hey, Ted! Guess what! You’re gonna have a little baby somethin’-or-other!’ ‘Hey, Ted! Guess what! We’re packing you off to Pennsylvania!’”

  “Oh, lord,” Mom lamented, her own steak looking lone-some now.

  But Big Bad Jake was strong; and evidently, Ted had just hit a nerve. “Listen,” he said. “I know how you feel—”

  “Oh, do you, now!”

  “Yes, I do. You’re not the first person in this world who was ever packed off to someplace he didn’t want to go. If I were you, I’d be ticked off too. It’s not fair. And we should have talked to you earlier. But I’ll tell you right now, sport, life gets like that sometimes. You know?”

  Ted was incredulous. Rage had made a bug-eyed rictus of his face. He stared down at the fist that had lingered at the end of his right arm, tried his damnedest not to cry. He managed to stop the tears. But there was no way to stop the words. “Well, that’s real fuckin’ easy for you to say, isn’t it?”

  “TED!” Mom cried. She was not a big fan of foul language, and she was pretty torqued out by the whole scene already. Somehow, that made him feel better. Share the pain.

  “No, it isn’t.” Jake stared straight into Ted’s eyes. “Not at all, man. Not at all. This whole thing is jerking me around, too. If it was just me, things would be a whole lot simpler. Believe it. But it isn’t just me anymore, or you, or your mother. It’s all of us.”

  Jake had then proceeded, in excruciating detail, to describe just why they all had to move to the armpit of the universe. The litany was impressive: money, privacy, space, consolidation, money, fresh air, nature, money, true love, safety, the end of struggle, money, the future, the baby, money, his career, the band, the family, and money.

  “Besides,” Mom said gingerly, “you’re always complaining about how much you hate your room, the lack of privacy, the lack of space, the crowds . . .”

  And Rachel began to do her Mom-thing, dredging up every petty crank and bitch of big-city life that Ted had ever mouthed off about. She was good at this; raising Ted had long been the focal point of her life, and when she needed to he swore she could remember every lunch she’d packed for him since first grade. It made him wish he’d kept his mouth shut more often.

  And he hated to admit it, but an eensy-weensy part of him had been thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be the End of Life as He Knew It to bug out of the big city at this tender age.

  Because the bottom line was that Ted was no fool, and Ted knew that the crowd he ran with was by and large destined to do hard time. Jimmy was stabbed in the bath-room at school just last Tuesday, Jules was busted, Elmo and Carl had been packed off to Rikers Island for some bull-shit joyride through Queens that the cops called grand theft auto and which he had come this close to being in on, and he was beginning to feel a little like one of the faceless drones in Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” marching lock-step down the conveyor belt, then face-first into the meat grinder. . . .

  Ted looked across the table at Mom and Jake, who were trying so hard to make nice. Hell, maybe having Jake as a surrogate father-type wouldn’t be so bad. Mom would be happier. He was light-years past any of the other guys she had brought home over the years, most of whom were real dicks. He was famous; and that meant free records and free concert tickets and hobnobbing with Robin Leach and stuff. Maybe Ted could pick up some farm girls in fame’s afterglow. Maybe he’d get laid more often. And they’d have a lot more money on Jake’s meal ticket.

  And besides, they looked so guilty. . . .

  He’d sat there, wearing a mask of sullen silence that was more stubbornness than artifice, until Mom had said the magic words. “Honey, c’mon. Don’t you think you’ll like having a whole mountain in Pennsylvania?”

  He had smiled then, begrudgingly sly.

  “I’d like it better on a motorcycle.”

  There was, at this moment, a big black Harley down in the garage. Hell of a guy, that Jake. Mom, too. They were a peach of a pair. Two best slave drivers you could ever hope to meet. And generous, too. The Harley was beautiful, and a dream to ride.

  But he wasn’t quite sure if it made up for the indignities of exile in Cowtown.

  Especially given the people he had to work with.

  “Oh, come on, man,” Ted bitched. “Don’t be an asshole. Let me see it.”

  “Okay, okay.” Chris sighed and set down his paintbrush. “But only because you’re such a little weenie and I need to get stoned. Throw me th
e smoke.”

  Ted took the rolled-up baggie out of his back pocket and tossed it onto the bed, then moved to Chris’s side. The artwork in progress on the back of his jean jacket lay before him, unveiled at last.

  “Oh, wow,” he said. “That’s really beautiful stuff, man. Sincerely. You’re an artist.”

  “Oh, wow,” Chris mocked him. “As if I didn’t know that.”

  But that was just the kind of guy Chris was.

  * * *

  Ted had met Chris on his first day at Northern Lebanon High, just five days short of a year ago. It had been a day just like this one in fact, capping off a miserable Memorial Day weekend; in the thirty-second run from the car to the door, Ted’s clothes had adhered completely to his skin. He found himself cold, wet, disoriented, and nervous as hell. Life had never sucked quite so badly.

  The hallowed halls of Northern Lebanon didn’t help. Everybody was so goddamn straight there. Compared to the New York City schools, it was like fucking Pippi Longstocking High. Droves of clean-cut boys and girls roved past, eyeing him with frank disdain even though he was downright conservatively dressed by his own standards: clean straight-leg jeans and two-tone gray denim jacket, white shirt, the boots without the chains. He’d even forgone the silver skull earring, opting for a simple dot of gold.

  No dice. For the first time he caught a whiff of what it might be like to be a black dude surrounded by whites who ask, “So, hey, how’s it feel to be a nigger?”

  And then, in the depths of his despair, an apparition had rounded the corner to appear before him: a beefy guy with scraggly brown hair in a black leather jacket and mangled jeans, being led down the hall by a pair of Joe Fridays in suits. He didn’t appear to be struggling . . . in fact he was grinning . . . but they had him by either arm anyway.

  “Had to start the year out right, didn’t you, Konopliski?” said the Joe Friday on the right.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Smith,” the kid replied. “Nothin’ like a gestapo escort to get my motor runnin’.”

  “Shut up,” said the Joe Friday on the left with an unfriendly jostle.