Generation Loss (32 page)

But
when I looked at my finger, I saw a grayish smudge. Not dirt, more like the
residue left when you kill a silverfish, greasy and dark. I sniffed my finger:
no smell. I wiped my hand on my jeans, stood, and trained the flashlight on the
tree.

The
jumble of sticks was about ten feet above me, caught in the crotch of two large
branches that splayed into smaller limbs, their stiff needles shaking in the
wind. The tree held other things as well. A torn bag, hanks of dead grass.

I
walked toward it. When I stepped outside the circle of turtle shells, something
cracked beneath my boot. I bent to pick it up.

An
antler, mottled white, thin and slightly curved, with tiny ridges along one
edge where it had been gnawed by an animal. I ran my finger along it, felt
hardened shreds of tissue like splinters of wood, then held it to the
flashlight.

My
mouth went dry. I'd spent enough hours thirty years ago, photographing myself
with a lifesize model of a human skeleton to know this wasn't an antler.

It
was a human rib.

I
turned it to clearly see the Crosshatch of teethmarks at one end, panicked and
flung it into the darkness. I spat on my fingers and rubbed them frantically on
my jeans. Then, clutching the boat hook, I walked the last few steps to the
pine tree and slowly raised my flashlight until, at last, I saw what was there.

A
body. What remained of it, anyway, caught in the crook of the branches like a
burst trash bag. A T-shirt and ragged jeans still clung to it, the shirt
dangling so I could see the faded Nike wing emblazoned on the chest. What I had
taken for sticks was a tangled mass of bones, blotched with dried shreds of
sinew. Part of the ribcage protruded through the T-shirt. What I had taken for
dead grass was black hair, matted with leaves and hanging from something that
resembled a deflated soccer ball.

I
backed away, my boots sliding on slick rock and moss.

I'd
just seen Martin Graves.

25

I
stumbled back to the road. I'd seen bodies before—I'd sought them out, back in
the day—but nothing like this.

No
animal could have dragged that body into the crotch of a tree. Denny Ahearn
had—but why?

The
wind whipped up from the sea, carrying gusts of rain. I took a few deep breaths
then swallowed, tasting salt and blood. I spat, leaned on the boat hook and
willed the throbbing in my head to stop. A few hundred yards below me,
buildings yawned black in the gathering dusk—all save that one house with its
malign yellow windows. I thought of what I'd just seen in the tree, and of the
other tangled mass by the first quarry's edge.

Yellow
light pulsed. Someone whispered my name.

Cass,
Cass.

It
never ends. It's always 4 am. beneath a broken streetlamp. And afterward every
step, every drink, every person whispers the same thing: You didn't fight.

Until
now.

I
swallowed some whiskey and gulped another Adderall, hefted the boat hook, and
started toward the house.

Denny's
compound consisted of several outbuildings scattered between stunted trees. A
few buildings had been repaired with plywood or driftwood. Others were little
more than cellar holes patched with drywall and plastic sheeting, roofed with
sheets of blue Styrofoam.

One
building, an old barn, had been more carefully renovated. Its doors were open.
I shone the flashlight inside and saw a small tractor and stacks of plastic
storage containers, a chainsaw.

I
moved on. The ground was slippery. There was rubble everywhere. Granite
obelisks and broken columns, an arm as tall as a man. Cemetery figures of
angels and grieving women. On each the same symbol had been painted: two
concentric circles with a dot in the center.

I
realized then what I had seen on the standing stone by Denny's abandoned bus.

Not
a bullseye: an eye. And every single one held a blotched green star.

Sleet
rattled against the outbuildings. I crouched alongside a low shed with a wire
run. A gleam showed through windows covered with blue tarps, and I could hear
the low murmur of birds roosting inside. A henhouse.

The
main house was about fifty feet away. At the back stretched a small, windowless
addition, its shingles raw and unstained. I recalled what Toby had said about
building a darkroom. There were solar panels on the roof, and a jerry-rigged
water system—plastic tubing, oil drums, a large metal holding tank. I headed
toward the rear of the house.

As I
drew close I could hear music. Woodsmoke wafted through the icy rain. I
approached one darkened window and then the next, and tried to peer inside.

It
was hopeless. Sheets of plastic opaque with grime had been nailed across each
window. Everything stank of urine and that now-familiar reek of musk and fish.
At the back of the house I found a liquid propane tank and a woodshed. I
continued to the other side.

Windows
boarded up with plywood; flapping bits of plastic. Something crunched beneath
my boots—a pile of eggshells. I took a few more steps and halted by a big
wooden box, about five feet tall, no lid. I shone the flashlight inside and
shaded my eyes, dazzled. It was filled with splintered plate glass.

I
killed the flashlight and headed for the front of the house. I clutched the
boat hook as tightly as I could, and edged toward the steps.

A
figure stood in a pool of light by the open door.

"Hello,"
he whispered.

He
was a good six inches taller than me, broad shouldered and muscular, his face
gaunt, clean shaven. He wore a brown tweed jacket with frayed sleeves, wool
pants tucked into gumboots, a white cotton shirt pocked with tiny holes. His
white hair hung in two long, tight braids to his chest. Around his neck was a
heavy silver disk inlaid with turquoise and threaded on a leather thong.

He
said, "Are you looking for someone?"

He
had the face of an aging WASP ecstatic, with high cheekbones and deepset eyes,
wide mouth, sharp nose. I felt sucker punched, not just by his beauty but by
the sudden dreamlike sense that I knew him, that this had happened already and
something—drugs, drink, my own slow spin into bad craziness—had kept me from
seeing the obvious.

Then
he lifted his head, and I knew.

He
had eyes the color of dark topaz. In the left one, just below the iris, was a
spray of green pigment like a tiny star.

Stephen
Haselton wasn't Gryffin's father. Denny Ahearn was.

No
one had bothered to tell me. And of course I had never asked.

"I—yeah,"
I stammered. "I'm, uh—are you Denny? I'm a friend of Toby Barrett's."

"Toby."
He repeated the name in a whisper; a cultivated voice, less Maine than Boston
Brahmin. His big hands shook in a slight palsy as he looked past me into the
rain. "Is Toby here?"

"He's—he's
on his way. He had to do something at Lucien's house." I remembered
Aphrodite's death, and nausea gave way to a rush of adrenaline. We—I—have a
message for you."

"Come
in out of the rain." He held up a hand. "But you must leave your
staff outside."

He
pointed at the boat hook. I hesitated, then leaned it beside the door.

"You're
a friend of Toby's?"

I
nodded. He bent over a stack of firewood beside the door, picked up three
enormous logs as though they were made of Styrofoam.

"I
thought he closed up the house a few
weeks ago," he said and straightened.
"I wasn't expecting him." He stared at me, licked his lips, then
whispered, "And you are ... ?"

"Cass."
My voice broke. "Cassandra Neary."

"Cassandra
Neary.”

His
mouth parted in a smile. My skin prickled. There was a dark blue line along his
upper and lower gums, as though he'd outlined them in indigo Magic Marker.

"Please,
please—come in," he whispered. He stood aside so I could pass.

Everywhere
were mirrors. Big mirrors, small mirrors, beveled mirrors in gilded frames,
tiny compacts and those big convex eyes you see at the end of driveways. They
covered the walls and hung from every corner. Mirrors, and hundreds of snapping
turtle shells. Music played on a turntable, Pink Floyd, "Set Your Controls
for the Heart of the Sun." A hurricane lamp was the only illumination.

"This
is where I live." Denny dropped the logs beside a woodstove, then gestured
at the ceiling. "Do you see?"

The
ceiling was covered with CDs, silver side down so that I stared at my own
reflected face in hundreds of flickering eyes.

"From
AOL," he explained. "I go to the post office in Burnt Harbor a few
times a year. They always have lots of them. Do you know what a dream catcher
is? Those are light catchers."

He
stared at me, mouth split in that awful livid smile. He tilted his head to gaze
at the ceiling, and his face reflected beside mine in those myriad eyes.

"I
see you," he whispered.

"Yes,"
I said. "I see you too."

I
crossed the room. On one wall hung a turtle shell the size and shape of a
shield, painted with two almond-shaped eyes. A carefully drawn green star
gleamed in one of them.

"They're
sacred," said Denny. He picked up a small snapping turtle shell. His
palsied hands trembled as he touched it to his forehead, reverently. "All
turtles, but especially these."

I
noticed that the turquoise in the silver disk he wore was carved in the shape
of a turtle. I said, "They—they must mean something."

He
nodded. "The turtle is the bridge between worlds, earth and sky. They
carry the dead on their backs. It's my totem animal."

"You
chose it?"

"No.
It chose me."

"Where
do you find them?"

He
replaced the little shell on a table covered with others just like it. All
faced the same way, to where a 8x10 was propped against a piece of driftwood, a
faded black-and-white photo of a beautiful young man, long haired, smiling. His
arms were around a fresh-faced girl in a much-patched denim shirt covered with
embroidery, her dark hair falling into her eyes. She gazed at him with such
unabashed joy that I had to turn away.

"They
live in the quarries here," whispered Denny. "Lakes and quarries and swamps.
They eat the dead, did you know that? So that they can be reborn."

I
glanced around. I didn't know what would be worse—to see some sign that Kenzie
had been here, or not.

There
was a sofa and armchair, a few
tables, an old turntable and rows of LPs.
A wooden drying rack hung above the woodstove. Tucked into a corner was a
propane-fueled refrigerator, a slate sink with an old-fashioned hand pump. A
stale smell hung over everything, sweat and marijuana mingled with woodsmoke
and the underlying stink of fish and musk.

There
were lots of books. Joseph Campbell, Carlos Castaneda, Terence McKenna.
The
Whole Earth Catalog,
the
Anarchist's Cookbook.
Photography books. A
copy of
Deceptio Visus.
I opened it and saw Aphrodite's elegantly penned
inscription inside.

For
Denny, who longs to see the Mysteries With love from One who knows Them

There
were other photography books, and numerous tomes on folklore and
anthropology—including, of course,
The Sacred and The Profane.
I picked
it up.

"You
know that book," said Denny. It wasn't a question.

He
touched the volume with a trembling hand. His fingertips were dark pink, as
though they'd been dyed.

"To
emerge from the belly of a monster is to be reborn," he whispered.
"The beloved passes from one realm to the next and is devoured to be
reborn. When I found her they had been at her already for a week. But there is
no death. You understand that. I always knew that you understood."

He
bared his teeth again in that blue-veined smile. "I told him to send you.
Because you're the girl who shoots dead things. So I knew you would come."

He
lifted a shaking hand and pointed to another book. As though sleepwalking, I
knelt and drew it from the shelf.

DEAD
GIRLS PHOTOGRAPHS BY CASSANDRA NEARY

The
pages were soiled and worn from being pored over. I turned them slowly, while
Denny stood above me and watched.

"Hannah
gave me that," he whispered. "As a present. She thought it was better
than Aphrodite's book."

I
stared at all those portraits of my twenty-year-old self, all those
speed-fueled pictures of my friends. On every page, in every one, he'd effaced
the eyes with White-Out then drawn another pair with a tiny green star in each.

I
turned to the last page. There, beneath the Runway colophon and a small
black-and-white photo of me in torn jeans and T-shirt, were three carefully
formed letters in black ballpoint ink.

ICU

I
fought to catch my breath. What I felt was so beyond damage it was like a new
color, something so dark and terrible it left no room for sight or sound or
taste.