The Music of Razors (28 page)

It was him. It was really him. She was really seeing this.

And the longer she looked the more undeniable it became. And the more undeniable it became the more she saw. It was a systematic paring away of the credible with the incredible, a space in the yard filling itself in with more and more detail, each moment permitting her to perceive new elements more impossible than the last.

Walter was a twelve-foot eyeless werewolf.

“Jesus!”

One second the wolf had Suni by the throat, his face reddening like his head was going to explode, and the next, Suni simply slipped through those massive fingers and dropped to the ground, coughing and gasping.

In a voice with more bass than rolling thunder, Walter had said,
“Crap.”

“Hey! What’s going on over there?” One of the neighbors, a potato of a man in shorts and a raggedy house shirt, was standing on his lawn scrutinizing Suni.

Blearily Suni looked up, and Hope saw just how much being thrown through the window had cost him. He’d been deeply gashed all over, particularly along the sides. At the rate he was losing blood he’d be unconscious before too long; maybe dead. He was already looking dangerously pale. She wanted to run to him, but a vital part of her didn’t want to give Walter the chance to disappear.

“Go back to bed!” Suni shouted. “Go on! Fuck off!”

“What?”

Shakily, and with great effort, Suni got to his feet. He walked toward the neighbor. “I said go back to bed. We’re in the middle of something.”

Hope called Suni’s name, instinctively moving to climb out the window and stopping short at the presence of jagged glass.

The man realized his neighbor’s kid was walking around naked, and started to laugh.

Suni stepped out of the darkness of his own yard, and into the light cast by the neighboring garage. His wounds looked horrific in full light. He was trailing blood all over the driveway.

With a sudden flick Suni threw blood in his neighbor’s face, stopping the laughter dead.

The man’s expression wrestled between shock and rage.
“You…you little…!”

“I have AIDS.”

The world went quiet enough to hear insects.

The man wiped his face. It left a translucent smear down one cheek. He looked as if he was about to say something, then turned and walked back inside without a word. A few seconds later Hope heard him call to someone named Joan.

Suni walked back to where Walter—now a little boy again—was standing. Suni looked down at him, but Walter didn’t seem to be aware of him. His eyes were closed, hands by his sides.

He looked just like he did in all those photos. The ones with the dog, and that ice-cream photo, and the one where he was splashing around in a wading pool with Dad. For the first time Hope had a sense of family history, of things existing before she did. Not just an intellectual appreciation of the facts, but a deep and true knowledge of where things had come from, where she had come from, who her parents were, and who they had been. Just by looking at the little blond boy standing with his eyes closed in that nighttime garden, and knowing this was the face they remembered their son with, this was how they remembered Wally; that this was the boy they had both given their lives for.

Suni nudged Wally in the shoulder, coughed, and said, “Hurry up.”

“Walter?” Saying his name, talking to him, felt like the strangest thing Hope had ever done.

The little boy only turned his head slightly, acknowledging her, but keeping his eyes closed. “Don’t look at me.”

She swallowed. She didn’t know what to say, where to begin.

“We need to talk,” he said. “It’s very important.”

She nodded, grateful. “Okay…okay, sure…” In the moonlight all the blood made Suni look oil-covered. “Suni…we need to get you to a hospital.”

Suni looked down, resignedly. “Sure.” And ran.

It was quiet again. Walter turned his head toward her. “Hope…”

Suni was going to bleed to death.

“Shit.” She almost went out the window after him, hands stopping half an inch from impaling themselves on the glass. “Walter…Walter…” Her hands were hovering inches above the glass, flexing like they were wondering what they were supposed to do. “This’ll just…”

“Hope, this is more important.”

Her pulse rate was rising. If she didn’t move now she might not be able to find him, and then…if he died it’d be her fault. “He needs a doctor. Please don’t go.”

She flew off the bed, ran out the door, and through the garage. There was no sign of Suni anywhere, save for the blood trailed on the driveway. Out on the narrow street, dogs barking close to the hill, it was easy to follow the trail he’d left: around the corner, past all those nice safe houses, and toward the quarry. Still wearing the ’scope, she ran the distance, hoping to catch up but never catching sight of him. Once the wet speckled trail hit the grass, and disappeared into the dark beyond the boom gate, following it became a matter of faith.

More than once she thought about leaving Suni, about going back, about Walter. She wanted to touch him, to know he was real, to hear what he had to say after all this time. Even if she’d lived in fear of it all her life. She wished Suni would just stop running, would let her call an ambulance, let her fix him, let her get on with her life.

She wanted to talk to Wally. She had to. Since she was little she’d been living in the shadow of him, never knowing why her parents had given up so much, why they’d changed so much from the happy people they’d been in all those photos, never truly knowing if they loved her or just needed her, never knowing why her life had turned out the way it had. Walter would know. He’d have the answers. She had to get back. But she couldn’t let Suni die. She’d just have to be quick about it.

She jumped the gate and was immediately flanked on both sides by the oppressively dense foliage that bordered the houses. In the moonless dark cast by the overhanging trees, she moved quickly up the hillside, sneakers slipping in the truck tracks, waving mosquitoes from her face. Rounding the first bend she spotted Suni up ahead and running wounded, back slashed and shining blackly. He was in no condition to be moving like that, and yet he was pushing himself.

She tried to pick up her pace, calling out for him as she went; telling him he was going to die if he didn’t stop and get to a hospital.

But still he kept running, barefoot over the broken ground.

Suni felt like he was like coming home, running like this, naked and dying. Nothing hurt. The shivers and the chill helped cut through the fog that was trying to envelop his brain, but he wouldn’t allow himself to pass out. He wanted to be awake for the final flight, to feel the cold wind cut as it swept over him, as he sailed down. As he flew back to where he belonged.

Wings at last.

She made it to the top with her lungs raw and her eyes streaming. She found him close to the other side of the quarry, facedown on a hard white plate of dried mud the trucks used as a congregation point during the day. She watched him pick himself up and continue staggering forward, leaving a man-sized Rorschach blot where he’d lain. Again she called out to him, and again he just kept running. She ran after him, her sides smarting more now for having stopped.

Suni had made it to his boulder—the one he always sat on when he came here—climbed it, and struggled uncertainly to his feet.

The city sprawled below: a sparkling tablecloth—first the scattered lights of the suburbs immediately beneath them, and then the ever-thickening stipple toward the city itself.

Whether he had paused to take in the sight, get his breath, gather his final thoughts or was just struggling to think straight, it didn’t matter; she made it to him before he leapt and locked both hands around his wrist.

“Suni. Don’t.”

“Why?”

“What you’re feeling is because of the ’scope.”

“So?”

“So come down. Please.”

“I don’t think you get it.”

“Come down.”

“You really don’t get it.” He shook her hand free. “I have to go.”

He turned away. She grabbed him again. He didn’t move. “Okay,” he said, and climbed down from his boulder. “You stopped me. Well done.” His chest and legs were powdered with a paste of blood and dried white mud.

“Suni…”

“What will you do now?”

She was still wearing the ’scope. “I’ll make you right.”

The join between Suni’s forefinger and thumb collided with her throat at the same time as his right leg got behind hers. She went down, winded, and Suni was on top of her again.

“You’re not enjoying this, are you. It’s unpleasant. It’s uncomfortable. Things are passing through your head at a mile a minute, most of it you’re probably not even aware of. What I’m doing to you now is fighting for space among all the good memories you’ve got of me. You’re drawing comparisons between me—your friend—and your father, a dead wannabe rapist. Part of you is rearing up, wanting to kill me on principle, another is lying down, allowing me to do what I want because you think you know me. Your dignity is wrestling with the fact that you think I’m not really responsible for what I’m doing. Don’t you get it? There’s no clarity in any of that. There’s no peace. Most of each day is spent in a low-grade state of what you’re experiencing now, crawling through a thousand tiny battles. It’s misery, Hope. And it all rests on just one thing: fear. Of one sort or another. And once you wipe that away, I tell you there’s nothing left. And that’s what we’re all about, Hope. Fear and pointlessness and fear. There is absolutely no use in us being here. So leave me alone. Please.”

Sometimes Hope still wished her grandmother would come visit her, though she’d been dead ten years. She missed her lavender smell, the smell of linoleum and sunshine that had filled her house, the quiet simplicity of her life. Hope wished she could turn around one day and there she’d be, her grandmother, just for a second. Just to see her again and say good-bye.

That’s what looking at Suni was like. A final, stolen glance at the face of a friend you knew to be dead and gone for good.

She swallowed, and nodded, and he let her go. He started climbing back up his boulder. She got to her feet.

“Suni?”

He turned.

Her claws went in through his face, twisting, groping upward for the cerebellum

and Suni’s horrors came

fear of who I am fear of what they’ll do fear of being found fear of discovering who I am fear of what I think fear of what has gone fear of what is fear of what will be fear of being alone fear of pain fear of surprise fear of rejection fear of dismissal fear of failure fear of comparison fear of

she pulled out

gasping

Why was she looking at the sky, listening to echoes?

i hate myself i hate myself i hate myself i hate myself i

Thinking meant fighting. Her hand pulsed. She wanted it off her. She had meant to return what she had taken, but she had only taken more, taken every last thing that was hiding in every corner of his mind. She had just taken on board everything he had.

She was so confused she wanted to be sick.

She had to get up.

Suni was stumbling backward, arms splayed and legs stiff. He bumped into his boulder, plopping down suddenly and awkwardly against its rough surface.

fear of other people’s laughter fear of embarrassment fear of fear of fear of fear of fear of fear

Hope struggled to her feet. She could feel her brain shifting alignment, back and forth, the world slurring with it, the tracking of her eyes all wrong, moving out of sync with the tracking of her head. God how she wanted to be sick.

i hate myself i hate myself i hate myself i hate myself i

Suni’s every foul memory, every unuttered scream, roared inside her head. She couldn’t escape the distorted face of his mother. The ’scope was starving. It wanted more. It wanted what was in her own head. The ’scope wanted to eat the fears of the mind that controlled it, eating and re-eating in an endless self-destructive loop. It wanted to self-destruct, to self-consume, to become something more. She felt its ravening want. It wanted to sabotage everything it had unwillingly been created for. It wanted to re-create itself. It wanted to be complete.

It wouldn’t have her. Hope was unloading it now.

I don’t want to be me I don’t want to be me I don’t want me want me want me to want me to want me to hate want me to hate me hate me hate me hate me hate me hate me hate me hate

It’s funny, Hope found herself thinking, blinking away tears, I always come back to digging…

i can be good i can be good you’ll see you’ll see i can be good you’ll see i can be you i can be you i can be you

i can be you you’ll see

The cargo of Hope’s hand and head pulsed. She wanted it off her. She couldn’t place something like that back into someone’s mind. Not an enemy, especially not a friend, not anyone.

I’M BETTER THAN THIS

If I’m not digging in the ground…
(moving silently forward)
I’m digging in people’s minds…