Torn

7

The funeral parlor was cheap and dark. A huge stain on the thin, crappy carpet gave off a moldy smell, and everywhere you walked, the floorboards creaked. Some of the bulbs in the lamps had blown, and the surface of the old paneling peeled in spots, revealing bits of straw-colored Masonite beneath.

But Karston—Karston looked even worse. His face was gray, and whoever had worked on the corpse had put eyeliner on him, badly, so he looked like some old-style glam rocker. The blue polyester suit he was stuffed into must have been worn last at his middle-school graduation, when he was two or three inches shorter.

It didn’t matter to Karston, though. Karston was dead. If there was any kind of afterlife or whatever, Devin hoped it was at least a place where Karston wouldn’t be afraid anymore. Or embarrassed. Or ashamed. Or picked on.

As he stood and stared at the body, Devin became aware that his own suit felt really hot, and the too-tight shirt neck was suffocating. If he puffed out his neck, he might be able to get the button to pop.

“Come on, you keep standing there like something’s going to happen. Sit with me,” Cheryl said, tugging at his arm. She looked funny in a black dress. It flattered her figure, but that seemed wrong under the circumstances. Her eyes were puffy from crying.

Devin nodded numbly. He let her lead him to the third row of folding seats, in front of his parents, where they sat down together.

As he settled, or tried to, Devin felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing, patting. “Stay in your seat,” his mother said, eyeing whoever came in. “Just stay down, Devin, please.”

She’d been such a wreck after getting called back in the middle of her short vacation to learn that her home had been invaded, not only by some killer, but by scores of police. They’d grilled Devin for hours. He told them about the Slits, but nothing about how strange the attacker had looked in the shadow, except to say he was short, stout, and strong.

They said the damage in the house looked like standard vandalism, but it didn’t look that way to Devin. A heavy end table had been splintered into firewood while a shelf of his mom’s Hummel figures was left untouched. There was a shoulder-high crack in the plasterboard right next to a full-size mirror that hadn’t been smashed. There were tears high up in the wall and even on the ceiling. But he supposed the police knew what they were doing.

After all, what was standard vandalism?

Still feeling hot and antsy, Devin looked around. Toward the back were a bunch of kids from Argus High School. Devin figured they didn’t even know Karston, but were just here to gawk. Half were in street clothes, which Devin thought disrespectful, but at least they all wore the green armbands that had been given out in school in memoriam. He hadn’t been back to Argus yet himself, but he knew that was all anyone was talking about. The story of the murder was the biggest thing to hit town in years.

“Look at the flowers my mother sent,” he whispered to Cheryl. “They’re huge and gaudy. Bigger than the ones from his mother. It’s embarrassing.”

Cheryl shrugged a little. “They’re beautiful. But yeah, tacky. Aren’t all the flowers tacky? Try to calm down.”

“It’s just…it’s just…I guess seeing him again made me realize he’s dead,” Devin said. “I’d sort of forgotten that part.”

“Yeah,” Cheryl said. She took his hand and patted it, trying to make him feel better. But he didn’t. Even her hand felt uncomfortable. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

Isn’t it? Are you sure? If I had jumped out when he called me the first time, instead of waiting, Karston might still be alive.

He looked around again. Seeing Torn’s keyboard player a few rows back, Devin managed a weak wave of his fingers.

“There’s One Word Ben,” Devin whispered to Cheryl. “But where the hell is Cody? He should be here.”

“His little brother has a fever. They had to find a sitter,” Cheryl said.

Devin was about to ask how she happened to know that when, with a loud creak of floorboard, Cody stepped in, looking totally surreal. He had on a dark suit and black T-shirt, but no tie. His savage white hair was actually de-spiked and combed into a part, like he was some lame gangster wannabe.

He cracked his neck, then walked up to Karston’s mom, leaned forward, and whispered to her.

At least he’s being respectful.

She didn’t seem to be paying much attention to whatever Cody was saying. She looked drugged or drunk, but maybe it was grief. Cody straightened and motioned for Devin to join him at the casket.

He felt a pull from Cheryl’s hands and heard an exasperated whisper from his mother, but ignored both and went back up to the casket for what was probably the tenth time. After Cody crossed himself, they stood side by side, facing the body.

“Check out my hair,” Cody whispered. “You believe what my stepmother made me do to it?”

Devin looked over his shoulder and saw Cody’s parents walk in with a few of his brothers and sisters. His father was tall and broad. He’d been some kind of athlete years back and even now had no paunch. His stepmother had insanely curly hair and a few of the kids had a familiar wild glint in their eyes. Despite the glint, Devin had always been disappointed by how normal they all seemed compared to Cody.

“Your hair looks like crap,” Devin said stiffly. “Is that what you want to talk about?”

Cody looked at him a second, then shook his head, deciding to let it go. “Nah. Got good news for you. You know our two friends, Nick and Jake from the Slits?”

“Yeah?”

“My dad just got the call. They arrested them with like two sacks of crystal meth. Even if they can’t pin the murder on them, they’re gone, man, gone for a long, long time. Rumor is they’re ratting out their brothers for reduced sentences, so even the rest of the Slits won’t care what happens to them.”

Cody slapped Devin in the shoulder and grinned. “We’re clear, man, free and clear!”

Devin should have felt relieved, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “Shh! It’s Karston’s funeral! Keep it down.”

Cody made another face, then forced a more somber expression to his features. They both stood there awhile, looking at the dead boy. After it started to feel too long, Cody said, “Well, you know, this does kind of solve our other problem. Now you don’t have to fire him.”

Devin flushed with anger. Words forced their way out as he desperately tried to keep his voice low in the funeral parlor. “How can you be such an ass?”

The last word was loud enough to earn a “Shh!” from someone in the front row.

Cody pulled him away from the casket. Devin shook his arm free and kept walking, out into the quiet lobby where the moldy smell was only slightly dampened, then through the glass doors and out onto the sidewalk, where the sky was dark, the wind cool, and cars rolled by, going about their business as if no one had died at all.

Cody popped out of the door behind him. He came up, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out toward Devin. There was a time when Devin had pretended he smoked, to impress people like Cody, but that time had passed. He shook his head no.

Cody popped one in his mouth, lit, and took a drag. “Look, Devin, I’m not saying it’s a good thing. I didn’t not like Karston or anything. I wouldn’t wish that on people I hated. Man, his face looks like putty. But we’re here now, and sooner or later, here is where we’re going to have to move on from.”

“Yeah, well, you ever stop to think that if maybe you hadn’t borrowed money you couldn’t pay back that we might not be here? That Karston might be alive? Or if I hadn’t helped you that you’d be dead now instead of him?” Devin said.

Cody took a step back. “Whoa. Now that’s cold.”

A few Argus kids stepped out from the funeral parlor. One was listening to something. Seeing Cody and Devin, he stopped and gave them the thumbs-up.

“Torn rocks!” he said. He pulled out an earbud and held it toward them. Even with the tiny volume, Devin recognized a few beats from “Face,” the MP3 they’d finally made with his bass line. Devin told Cody it was Karston on bass, and Cody didn’t bother to question it, maybe because the rumor that the “dead kid” was playing on it gave the cut some steam.

“All right!” Cody said, grinning back and playing some air guitar.

A girl in the group wearing a red hooded sweatshirt said, “When are we going to hear the haunted song?”

“The what?” Devin said, scrunching his face.

The girl shrugged. “That song you were playing the night he died.”

“How did you…?” Devin started, but Cody cut him off.

“Soon! Soon!” he said. Then he slapped Devin on the shoulder and said, “Hey, I forgot to mention, I fixed your song.”

“Fixed?”

“Here’s a preview!” he said to the group. Playing his best air guitar, he screeched:

I’m lyin’ to the angels,

Lyin’ to the angels…

Devin shoved him. “Stop it! We’re in front of a funeral parlor!” When Cody didn’t respond immediately, Devin shoved him again, harder.

“Oh yeah, right. He’s right, you know. Catch you later!”

Smiling and nodding, the group wandered off.

Devin glared at Cody.

Cody made his face sheepish and sad. “You’re right. That was wrong. That was really wrong.”

“The haunted song?”

“I had nothing to do with that. Nothing. It’s a chat room thing. I don’t know where they got it,” Cody said, but he looked like he was lying. He tossed his cigarette down and stomped on it. “But why not take advantage of it? It’s like the Blair Witch.”

Before Devin could quit Torn in disgust, One Word Ben and Cheryl emerged from the funeral parlor. Cody nodded at Ben. “You still in? You can pick up the bass.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah.”

“All right!” Cody shouted, again too loud.

“In? In with what?” Devin asked.

Cody smiled. “We’ve been invited back to Tunnel Vision. A whole night’s ours if we want, for a tribute to Karston. We’re going to need at least twenty minutes to do a full set.”

“And when were you going to mention that to me?” Devin asked.

Cody shrugged. “I was like, trying to respect your grieving process. I’ve been waiting for you to bring up Torn, man. But you didn’t.”

“It’s cold,” Cheryl said as she slid next to Devin and shivered. He opened his jacket and wrapped it half around her, but he kept staring at Cody.

“What else has been going on without me, Cody? If you didn’t tell them about the song, how could they know about it? There isn’t even a recording.”

He felt Cheryl stiffen. There was something strange about the way she and Cody looked at each other.

“Yeah, there is,” she said quietly.

Devin stared at her. “You started that rumor?”

She shrugged. “All my friends heard the story and everyone kept nagging me. So I told them what you saw in the shadows and all. And I put the video on our site….”

Devin’s brow furrowed. “The one you took of me singing the song.”

For the second time, Devin was about to quit in frustration, when a creaking voice like a dying animal called to them from the door.

“Get out of here!” it said. “How dare you stand around like a street gang in front of my son’s funeral! You don’t have any damn respect! Nothing!”

Karston’s mother staggered toward them. As Devin had thought, she was drunk. She wore an ill-fitting black dress, and the edges of the shawl wrapped around her shoulders lifted in the breeze. Strange, but he’d never seen her standing before. Even in the funeral parlor, she never got up. Now he could clearly see how short she was, and that there was something wrong with her back that made her wrinkled face lean forward from a curved neck. As she walked, it looked like her angry, accusing face was coming closer all on its own, without her body.

“You make me sick. Thieves and a slut! You’re all worthless!” she shouted. “That should be you in there, all of you, not him! He never hurt nobody in his life, nobody! And he idolized you! He was too stupid to see what you really were.”

They were all silent, terrified, ashamed. Even Cody.

We’re sorry! Devin was about to say, but the words never made it out.

“You killed him!” she shouted. “Killed my boy.”

She lurched forward and swatted Cody in the shoulder. Maybe it was because he happened to be closest, maybe because his white hair color made him easier to see. He moved his hands to block further blows, but none came. Instead, she sneered, spun, walked across the street, and entered a bar.

The four of them watched her go, staying silent until the wooden, windowless door of the bar swung closed.

Cody nudged Devin. “Hey, why don’t you go in there now and offer to buy the bass?”

He started laughing. It was so stupid and ridiculous, Ben started laughing too. Even Cheryl snickered before she stopped herself.

“I don’t believe you,” Devin said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe any of you.”

He pulled back, swung, and punched Cody full in the mouth. Cody stopped laughing and staggered back.

“Hey!” he snarled. He wiped his mouth and looked at the blood on his fingers. “Hey!” he said even louder. He tensed, pulled back, ready to swing.

Devin just stood there, as if saying, Go ahead, do it.

But he’d helped Cody against the Slits. And Cody needed him for the band.

Cody dropped his fist, then wiped his mouth again.

Cheryl leaped between them. “There was something weird on the videotape,” she said. “That’s what started the rumor.”

“Something weird?” Devin said, exhaling to calm himself. Is she using bright and shiny objects to distract me now, too?

“I’ve been wanting to show it to you, but you seemed so out of it, the timing didn’t feel right. I’ve got it here,” she said. She stepped a few cars down to her parents’ white Lexus, popped the trunk, and pulled out her camcorder. All four gathered around the tiny color LCD viewscreen. Devin and Cody sneered at each other when they accidentally touched.

The picture was easy enough to see. There was Devin on his stool, picking at the strings of the Ovation. Karston was leaning against the wall behind him. At first it didn’t seem like anything was strange, but then he noticed some tiny, swirling spots, first near the guitar’s fretboard, then near his mouth, then around his head, and Karston’s, too. They were small. Unless you were looking for something, you’d never see them.

“See?” Cheryl said.

“Isn’t that cool?” Cody said, grinning again.

But One Word Ben shook his head and said, “Dust.”

Devin nodded. “Yeah, I saw it on one of those Ghost Hunters shows. Dust gets in the lens and a bunch of loser geeks think it’s spirit orbs or something.”

Cody turned to him, annoyed. “Don’t ruin it! Don’t tell anyone that! This is great for us! We can play the song at Tunnel Vision!”

Cheryl looked at Devin, waiting for his judgment.

Devin shrugged. “But it’s dust.”

Just dust. As in ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Only this dust swirled, spun, and seemed to dance in tune to the music.