The Empty Ones (10 page)

I held my hand up in front of me. I didn't have any lights on in my room, so it was lighter outside than it was inside. I moved my hand between me and the window and stared at the outline of it. I wiggled my extra pinky. I clenched my fist—that's what made my finger hurt the most—and I didn't feel anything. I did it again. And again and again. I clenched my fist so hard I could feel my fingernails digging into my palm. The palm hurt, but not my extra pinky.

It had stopped hurting.

It had never done that before.

Not
ever.

I jumped up and threw my door open and ran into the hallway and down the stairs and through the living room and right into the kitchen. Mom was making something on the stovetop, so the whole house smelled like burning pans. I ran up to her and grabbed her from behind.

“It doesn't hurt anymore!” I yelled into her butt.

She turned around and laughed. She grabbed me under the armpits and lifted me up in the air. She put me on the dining room table and I couldn't stop giggling. I wiggled my skinny, single-knuckled little digit for her. Her eyes went wide.

“Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“That's great, baby!” she said.

Her voice was all thick, like she was about to cry or start yelling.

“I'll tell you what,” she said, and she smiled funny. “I
was
making tuna and mac 'n' cheese…”

I stuck my tongue out involuntarily.
Tuna tastes like Dad's feet smell.

“But since it's a special occasion, and all,” she continued, “why don't I order a pizza instead?”

I thought for a minute. I was supposed to be mad at her for something, or maybe she was supposed to be mad at me for something, but I kept opening and closing my hand and it didn't hurt and I couldn't remember what we were mad about.

I nodded a bunch. I couldn't stop smiling.

So we had pizza and it was really good. Pizza is always really good, especially when it has pepperoni on it, but not when it has olives. Stacy likes olives, because Stacy is only six and she's too young to know better. We got to order the pizza in halves, so half was mine. I said pepperoni only, but there were nasty border olives, sneaking over the cheese from Stacy's side into mine. I made her a deal: I'd pick off her gross sneaky olives and trade her for any pepperoni that tries to get across to her side. She agreed. She thinks the pepperoni is too spicy.

We even got to stay up an extra half hour watching
Power Rangers
. Stacy said she should get to be the pink Power Ranger and I had to be the yellow Power Ranger, which is dumb. Why would you want to be the pink Power Ranger? She's always getting beat up. I said I wanted to be the red Power Ranger, and she told me that was just for boys; so I said fine, if I had to be a girl I'll be Rita Repulsa; and I made my fingers into claws and chased her upstairs.

We brushed our teeth. Well, I brushed mine. Stacy just put her toothbrush in her mouth for a minute without moving it, then she spat it out. She said the new toothpaste is too spicy. I stared at her for a moment, then slowly explained to her that it was cinnamon flavored and cinnamon isn't spicy, like pepperoni. But she wouldn't listen.

We got into our pajamas. Mine had motorcycles and cars and trucks on them. Stacy's had stupid ponies and some stars. I don't really understand how we can be related. I heard from Jackie that there's a thing called an affair that means your sister isn't really your sister, even if your parents say she is. I'm pretty sure Stacy is an affair. But I still like her okay. Dad says I was pretty dumb when I was six, too. Maybe she'll grow out of it.

I fell asleep when I wasn't paying attention. But I woke up because it was too bright. Even for morning. I thought somebody had turned on a light, so I shoved my head under my pillow and looked out through the gap between the pillow and the bed. There was a light out there, all right, but it wasn't like any of the ones in our room. I tried looking at the light, but it was like looking at the sun. I couldn't see anything, I could just feel it hurting my eyes. But there was something behind the light, or maybe in it. I knew it was there even if I couldn't see it, like when you're playing hide-and-seek and you just know somebody's in the closet. It was like a bunch of lines that lined up wrong; like corners that ended in themselves, and squares that were bigger than they looked. I don't know. It was just weird, I guess.

I poked my face farther out the gap between the pillow and the bed to get a better look at what was making the light, and I saw Stacy sitting upright. Her feet were dangling over the edge of her bed, and she was sitting up way too straight. She never sat like that. Her head was bent a funny way, too, like she was listening for something. Now that I thought about it, I could almost hear it too. It sounded like the ocean. Or maybe a bunch of oceans, all together on top of each other. And you could even sort of hear seagulls screaming, or maybe something else screaming, but it was also part of the waves. I closed my eyes and the noise stopped. I opened them and it started again.

I figured I had to be dreaming. But I think in Freddy Krueger movies they say you can't be dreaming if you know that you're dreaming? I don't know, I always close my eyes when Jackie watches those kinds of movies at her house.

I decided that I probably was dreaming, so I took the pillow off my head, tossed it on the floor, and sat up all the way.

The light moved. Or maybe it just changed shape—it was hard to look at it to tell. It seemed confused about the pillow on the floor. It moved toward my bed. I put my hands up in front of my eyes, to block the light but also to push it away if it came too close. But it didn't seem like it was paying attention to me. Just the pillow, and my bed, and everything around me
but
me.

Stacy shook her head, like she was trying to clear water out of her ear. The light snapped around and moved back over to her real quick. She sat still again. I could hear part of a song coming from somewhere. It sounded familiar, like what Mom used to sing to her when she was real little. But it wasn't in the same language, and that wasn't Mom's voice. It smelled like pancakes. Stacy flinched like somebody had slapped her. Then her eyes got bright, like there were little fires in there. My stomach started to feel funny. I got the feeling this was about to go from a weird dream to a bad dream. I stood up and crossed over to Stacy, making sure to give the light extra room. But it still didn't seem to care about me.

I put my hands on her shoulders, and she screamed.

I jumped back, and I screamed some too. She was screaming way too loud; I didn't think she could make that sound. But she was also trying to make words. She was yelling about the air in the forest and our old address. She laughed and cried at the same time, and then her words started bubbling. Clear, thick liquid that shimmered like a rainbow came out of her mouth and spilled down her chin, but it started turning black after a couple of seconds. Now it looked like the road when they first pour it out of that truck that builds roads. The road stuff ran down her neck, and where it touched her pajamas, they crinkled up like plastic in the microwave. The whole room smelled like a burning action figure. The black syrup stopped around her chest, and then it started going backwards.

This had to be a dream. Liquids can't go up.

But this stuff did. It climbed up her neck, and around her face, and now there was so much of it. It was all over her. I pulled my hands back before it reached her shoulders. Stacy wasn't making any noise anymore, but I was. I guess I hadn't ever stopped screaming.

The liquid was on the bed now, and little flames danced around Stacy's blanket. It went up so fast. When we went camping, it took Dad forever to light a campfire. He should just use whatever Stacy's blanket was made out of, because the whole thing was on fire now. I wanted to grab Stacy, but I somehow knew I shouldn't touch that black stuff. I wanted to run, but the light was between me and the door, and it was singing its screaming ocean song, and everything was too much. I couldn't do anything but scream, so I closed my eyes, and I screamed.

I don't know how long I was like that. Our room smelled like smoke so strong I could feel it filling my nose like water. Big hands grabbed me hard and yanked me. Then something was carrying me, and I could hear my mom yelling for Stacy. I tried to tell my mom that a light had come on and turned Stacy into part of the road, but only coughing came out. So much coughing there was no room for breathing. I fell asleep.

 

NINE

1978. London, England. Carey.

In case you're wondering: Yes, tar men can open doors. But they're shit at climbing stairs. Even dragging Meryll, me and Randall outpaced them easily. We took two landings for every one of theirs. There were too many of them in too narrow a space. They kept tripping each other, blocking each other, and slowly crawling over one another in their mindless desperation to reach us. By the time we made it to the street, we were soaked in sweat. Then we were just soaked.

I grabbed my crotch and gave the cabbie both fingers, but he still didn't stop.

How the hell are you supposed to hail a cab in this godforsaken country? Wait, hold on, here's another one.…

“Hey! Hey … fuck you!”

Nothing.

I tried jumping up and down; I tried throwing beer cans at their windshields; and, obviously, I tried swearing. I was all out of ideas, and I could not get these guys to stop for us. We had been standing out in the cold London rain, Meryll slowly dying in Randall's arms, for five minutes. They must have thought she was passed out drunk or high, and didn't want her puking in the back of their precious cabs. That's the only reason I could figure why they weren't stopping.

“Carey, come on, man…” Randall said.

He shifted Meryll in his arms. She was a little pudgy, sure, but she wasn't a big girl. Couldn't have been more than a buck fifty. But she still kept slipping right out of Randall's hands. It's harder than you think, dragging an unconscious person around. That's one thing I've had
a lot
of experience doing.

“Switch with me,” Randall said.

“You think you can do this better?” I was almost offended.

But shit: I was getting nowhere. Might as well hold the chick for a while. Maybe she'll wake up right then and see me bundling her up like fuckin' Clark Gable and she'll fall uncontrollably in love with me and we'll fuck right on top of stupid Randall's ugly shirt collection.

Or she'll just die on the street. Then the tar men will come bustling up out of that maintenance stairway half a block back and melt you into a puddle of liquid asshole.

I looked down at her face. Her eyes were closed. Big fake eyelashes, one hanging loose from the edge of her eyelid. Too much mascara, the rain making it run down her cheeks and into her black lipstick. Her dark, wet hair matted to her skull. She had great skin. Pale, of course—she was English, after all; poor thing couldn't help but look like a sickly eggshell—but, you know, in a hot way. I turned her face a little and got another look at her neck. Maybe it was the dim lighting, or maybe I had been panicking back in the tunnels, but the burns didn't look so bad. I mean, they looked
bad
. They didn't look
good
. But they didn't seem as dire anymore. I swore, when I first saw them, that they were so deep I could see her fat and muscle bisected at the edges of those massive fingerprints. But I must have been hallucinating. They weren't much more than skin-deep. Just an angry pink sunken bit, not a gaping hole in her neck.

Shit. Maybe we
can
go back to the Clark Gable shirt-fucking fantasy.

A whistle loud enough to deafen God.

For a second I thought another tar man was going up, and all the muscles in my body knotted into tight little balls. Then I saw Randall with one hand in the air and two fingers in his mouth. One of those obnoxiously cute old-timey London cabs boated over to the side of the road, soaking Randall's legs in puddle-water.

Something croaked. It appeared to be coming from my arms.

Yes. She was awake!

“Hegh…” she said, and wound up doing a sort of coughing hiccup. She tried again: “He … got one.…”

Oh, no. Oh, god dammit, seriously?

“Yeah, but I softened them up for him,” I pleaded. But she was already fading.

And I could see it now: Visions of heroic Randall wrestling cabs to the side of the road like a fucking horsebreaker. Pile-driving automobiles into submission and dragging her buxom body to safety. Then
they
would fuck on
my
ugly shirt collection.

Screw it. At least she's alive.

I dragged Meryll to the cab while Randall held the door open for us. The heels of her clunky black boots scraped along the pavement. I handed Randall her head, took her legs, and together we shoved the wad of girl into the far end of the backseat. Then we piled in after her and shut the door.

“You boys were at the show, eh?” The cabbie was a squat guy, face like somebody'd punched a potato.

“What?”

“The punker rock show, at the Rainbow? I been hearing about it all night. Heard you animals tore up all the seats and threw 'em at the band.”

Fuck me. Is that what happened? And I missed it?!

“Yeah, just coming from the show,” Randall confirmed.

He does this voice sometimes, mostly to cops or those half cops that try to bust you for jumping turnstiles. It was tired, a little respectful, and laced with just a hint of regret. Swear to god, boy deserves a gold statue.

“It got pretty out of hand at the end, and our friend wasn't feeling so good, so we figured we should get out of there,” Randall finished.