Divine_Scream (13 page)

“Thanks.” Jared took the mask and tank and headed out of the restaurant, all eyes on him. Once outside, he saw the silver crease running down from the sky in the distance.

“There she is,” he whispered.
The twin
.

The Mustang Shelby was parked out front, black and red paint job, like a robot black widow. Down the street by the bus stop, a man and woman screamed at each other. Their little girl cowered beside them, hands up to her trembling mouth.

It wasn’t the type of image Jared wanted to absorb before climbing into the driver’s seat of a car for the first time ever, feeling like a kid himself all over again, but he had to do this. He had Banch to worry about now. She wanted to save him, but he actually thought, for maybe the first time ever in his life, that he didn’t want to be saved.

He put the keys in the driver’s side door and a sad thought settled on him. With all the banshee had asked him about what he wanted in life, he hadn’t done the same for her. What would make Banch happy? What did she need?

Jared hoped there was still a chance to find out.

* * *

When Jared was ten years old…

His mom and dad argued more than ever. Had he not been so terrified by the prospect, had he not been so terribly young, had he not thought himself the defective piece of the machine that needed fixing, he would have embraced a divorce.

It was only a few days after his birthday and he was trying to ride his new bike. He didn’t have much experience without training wheels, but was happy he could ride on his own now. He took a spill and cut up his elbows earlier that morning, after which his dad kept at his side and wouldn’t let him pedal off alone—at first Jared loathed this, but then decided the extra attention wasn’t a bad thing.

“Bob,” said his mother from the front porch. “Why don’t you just let him go? He’s fine.”

“If this bike wasn’t such a hunk of shit, I might.”

She folded her arms against her pale green house dress. “You helped pick it out.”

“Yeah, from the rest of the used crap.”

The insinuation was clear. Jared’s father always griped that his mother needed a better paying job.

“You’re a prick,” she told him, and went inside.

His father just waved this off, but later, after they finished going up and down the block on his bike in awkward silence, he stormed back into the house. His father’s hands were plunged deep in the pockets of his jeans, which always meant he was pissed beyond all belief. His mother was taking out a casserole dish from the cupboard when he started in.

“You know that kid is the only reason I stay with your abusive ass. After you went out on me with that, that,
waiter
. I think you forget about that.”

His mother gently set the dishware on the sink. “You’ve reminded me enough these past six years, so how would I ever forget? Why not give it a damn rest? How about that?”

His father took a deep, exasperated breath and scowled. “Jimmy called me up the other day and asked if I wanted to play a little softball with the guys, like in the old days. But I couldn’t do it. I’m too afraid you’ll take the opportunity to go off and hump someone.”

His mother’s eyes glittered with a special kind of hate for her husband. “You are so childish it makes me sick to my stomach. Really, you do.”

“Oh,
I’m
the disgusting one?”

“What about Jared, you selfish asshole?” She pointed at him and Jared almost felt the sharpness of the gesture in his gut.

“And I’m also the selfish one? Wow, this is so eye-opening! I had no idea it was me fucking everything up. Well, let me let you in on a secret, Mary: Jared will be fine. A lot of kids have to live in two places. A lot of kids are completely happy that way.”

“Right.”

“I don’t need this crap anymore. You’re ruining all of our lives!”

“Why?” His mother slammed a fist into a cupboard. “How? Tell me! By just existing? You miserable bastard!”

Jared ran out then. His mother had never been so loud and his father had never sounded so
sure
about something in his entire life. Out of the door in a flash, Jared grabbed his new bike, hopped on, and took off. He pedaled down the sidewalk like he was going for warp speed, like maybe he could time travel somewhere in the near future when this fight had simmered.

His front tire hit a deep crack in the concrete and he flew over the handlebars. In the remoteness, his parents were screaming, and above the sky also screamed, but with light blue and dark gray words. Everything ended in painful strobe lights. The breath had been knocked out of him and it took a few attempts to regain it. He rubbed some grit and pebbles off his cheek and saw his parents slowing down, winded and white-hot concern in their faces. He rolled over and his left leg cramped and made him cry out, more in surprise than in pain. His parents’ arms were disembodied things that stretched out for him, and he avoided their touch like poisonous tentacles from the deep. He broke away from them and ran for the house. Once he got back he shut himself in his room. They came back into the house a few minutes later. He could hear his mother slamming things in the kitchen and his father going on about the “piece of shit bicycle” again.

Jared hurried to his closet, thinking he’d take all his clothes and run away to show them, to make them feel horrible for this, but instead he rested his head against the closet door and gently pounded his skull there. “Don’t,” he whispered and pounded harder. “Don’t,” he said again. Harder. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

“DON’T!” He roared and slammed his head into the wood.
Don’t
. Thump.
Don’t
. Thump.
Don’t
. Thump.

He couldn’t tell when they came in, but he remembered his parents pulled him away from the closet before any real damage could be done.

“Don’t leave me,” he cried. “I need you both. You have to help me. Or something bad will happen again, like when I used to go to Bella’s.”

“Baby,” his mother began.

“No!” he hollered. “Don’t divorce! Okay? Don’t divorce. Don’t divorce. Don’t divorce. PLEASE!”

Jared sobbed for a long time, both his parents hovering protectively over him, and when he finally quieted his mom or his dad, he couldn’t recall which, said, “Of course we won’t do that. Of course honey. We’ll always be here together.”

Of course.

Jared had one moment of joy, though brief, about being in a Mustang—he’d really feared it would be a stick shift and if that were the case, the trip would have been near impossible, but the Shelby had a six-speed select shift automatic transmission. The driver could choose manual or automatic. This being the case, he gladly let the car shift for him.

The black leather and silver interior reminded him of something inside a Star Wars spaceship and it might as well have been, for he’d never bothered to pay attention to gauges and buttons in a car. That was the driver’s responsibility.

Now, he was the driver.

He checked the pedals. He was pretty sure the brake was in the middle. That’s how he remembered it, but hell, that was half his lifetime ago.

It will be half your lifetime forever…

“Shut up,” he told his brain and turned the key. Fear fell on him, heavy, cloying, dark, and unjustified. He imagined most people would enjoy sitting in a car like this, but its superiority petrified him. His heart thunder-trembled at the sound of the engine turning over. He took a couple deep breaths and wrapped his hands around the sleek steering wheel. It felt really good, much better than his Dad’s old station wagon.

He tapped the first pedal and heard no sound.
Good, that’s the brake.
Outside he checked the sky again for the crease. It made sense to drive the way he was pointed, whatever direction that was, and then he would turn left and keep going until the crease got larger in his view.

He placed the scuba mask over his face and tested the tank, which he’d leaned against the passenger seat. Air flowed out with a low hiss and he twisted the valve shut.

A couple cars passed by and it made him think about the world that had become involved in his and Banch’s problems. He wondered if telling the people to stay at the restaurant had been a good idea. What if he didn’t come back? Would they wait there forever?

And what about the rest of the city who happened to find themselves blacking out for no reason? What could they imagine was happening in these choked streets? The end of the world?

“You’re stalling,” he told himself, and placed his foot on the accelerator. The engine made a tremendous sound of effort, but nothing happened. “Oh, stupid.” He dropped the gear into drive and pressed again. The car lurched and a thick grating sound came from underneath.
Now what?

Realizing the cause, he shook his head in self-reproach and put the parking brake down. “Great, this trip is going to be just… splendid.”

The car moved forward and a thrill went through him. He was doing it. He was driving. He checked the mirrors, which he’d toyed with first and had them perfect. No other moving cars were in sight, which made things somewhat less stressful, he supposed. The light ahead turned red and he slowed to a stop.

He almost heard Banch in his head.
There isn’t time to be law abiding, dummy—go!

Unconsciously, he stomped the gas pedal and the car roared ahead. He busted through three red lights, not even watching for cross traffic. He checked over his shoulder and the crease had changed position in relation to him.

“Okay, left,” he said, and put on the blinker.

He turned left and built speed. Thoughts of crashing immediately went away as something sucked the breath from his lungs. He pawed open the valve on the oxygen tank. When he didn’t feel much air he turned the valve some more, but the flow was as free as it was going to get. His lungs just weren’t opening all the way.

He squinted at the path ahead, feeling faint. Shapes lay in the street. He tapped the brake. The world wobbled; the planet was a balloon ready to fly away and get caught around the neck of a carousel horse, the universe one giant merry-go-round. Vertigo gripped him tighter. He feared he might vomit into his scuba mask.

That’d be pretty.

He tried to focus again. The shapes in the street looked like clothes. He shrugged and pushed the gas.

Then one of the heaps of clothes lifted and he saw a young woman’s face, her mouth going in and out like a wounded trout washed ashore.

“Oh shit!” He jammed on the brake with both feet and the Mustang fishtailed with a screech of its tires.

Silence and jagged heartbeats. Hisses of stale air. The engine’s slow purr.

He wanted to feel victory for stopping in time, but he’d almost killed someone. His head fell against the steering wheel and he blacked out. He came out of it right away though and searched around in a panic. Twenty or thirty people were scattered around the street. They must have left their cars and collapsed. There was no way he could drive around them all, even if he knew what the hell he was doing behind the wheel. He’d have to change routes.

The car had stopped diagonally and he had to crank the wheel a bit to turn it—the cranking reminded him of his dad driving—he’d seen that before, that cranking of the wheel, and wondered how it might feel. Now he was doing it.

“I’m
doing
this,” he said. A smile almost formed on his lips, but then his lungs collapsed in even farther and he wheezed.

He took a side street ahead and floored the gas until the next crossing. Took a left and moved around parked cars with caution. Some affected people lay in the street here too, but most had made it to the sidewalk before subsiding. Jared kept driving, grateful for how wonderful the car handled, not that he had anything to compare it to. Impulsively he made another left and came back to Valley View Street. It wasn’t as bad over here. He looked at the sky and the crease had grown larger, gotten closer.

Jared screamed.

A plastic garbage can splintered and flew into the sky as though fired from a cannon. He’d veered off the road, and then overreacted and jerked the wheel. The tires skipped along and the Mustang went sideways. He righted the path but went into another left turn.

Was that a mistake?

He scanned dizzily outside. The air from the SCUBA burned his nostrils. Once again he wanted to throw up but the crease loomed over him now and that gave him focus. He sped up, made another harsh left, the car skidding, the engine growling.

Then all at once he couldn’t see the crease anymore.

He jammed on the brake and nearly smashed headfirst into the steering wheel. He tapped the buttons on the door handle, searching for the driver’s side controls. The window made a futuristic humming sound as he rolled it down. The silver crease, like a metallic spinal column of some invisible Godzilla sized robot, hung directly above this area. He breathed out in relief and also noticed his lungs felt full. Everything around him increased in color and the dreamlike state vanished. He was in a safe place, off of the choked streets. He’d soon have to return to them though, without the luxury of a car.
This is only the first leg of your trip
, he remembered Banch telling him.

With that thought of her, he spotted her twin.

The banshee sat against an old brick building with real estate signs plastered all over its façade. She pushed up from the wall and marched over to the car. It was Banch all right, but at the same time it definitely
wasn’t
her. Jared had to look away to keep from staring too long. This Banch had no hair and most of her scalp ran with waves of third degree burn scars. She had no eyebrows and her uniform looked different. The outfit was more revealing than his Banch’s, but in a sad way; her breasts were hardly covered in some type of quasi corset, and she had a black tutu on with silver glitter in its folds. She came to stand in front of the car, an unceremonious slump in her posture.