Torn

11

The police grilled them for hours.

“Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

“Was it like the monster in your song?”

“One kid died and your song got popular, right? Did you think your song would get even more popular if someone else died, too? Did you think it would be cool?”

Terms like “satan worship” and “cult sacrifice” were bandied about, making Devin fearful, frustrated, and ultimately angry. He worried that if they had dressed in trench coats or in Goth style they’d have been charged and convicted on the basis of fashion. He realized grimly that misunderstanding and suspicion were just as much part of the long-standing legend of rock as the fame and the money.

He wished Cody were here. Cody would love to see how much the police were freaking out, how desperate they were to find anything that would give the slaughter some kind of sense, some kind of order. He imagined Cody laughing at them, making up stories just for fun.

Yes, officer, we worship a fish god who lives in a giant lair beneath the sea. Your so-called goldfish-bowl castles are a mere echo of our god’s home. It does crave human blood at times….

Or the more familiar: The music made me do it. Voices in the song told me to kill our lead guitarist, so I figured, hey, what the hell. I mean, wouldn’t you?

It would be so simple to get them to believe anything. Anything except the truth. But that, Devin had to admit, sounded, even to him, even now, in the cold light of the small room they kept him in, the strangest of all.

One Word Ben was the first to be released, either because he was the only one who didn’t claim to see a monster, or because his one-word answers made things go faster. Cheryl was second. She was hysterical, and she’d only caught a glimpse of the thing in the men’s room, so her description was easily dismissed, both by the police and by her.

But Devin—Devin was the only witness to the actual murder. The only witness to both murders, and the only one who insisted on what he saw, who described it in unbelievable detail.

So they tested him for drugs, but since the results would take days, they grilled him for hours more, then tested him again in case they would be unhappy with the results from the first tests. Then they had a psychiatrist speak to him. Then they grilled him some more.

They wanted very badly to press charges, but when the crime scene photos and forensics came back, showing the hole in the bathroom ceiling, the shattered guitar, the thick scratch marks on the floor and walls, and the sheer strength needed to rip Cody’s leg off, they corroborated his story. And when Devin’s father, looking older and smaller than he’d ever seemed before, bellowed and threatened to sue, the detectives finally conceded that “something like” what Devin described might actually have occurred.

But on the way out, as if Devin couldn’t hear, they advised his father of their various theories: that the killer had threatened Devin in some way so that he was unwilling to give honest testimony, or that he was on drugs, or that he was crazy. When his father pushed, though, they admitted they couldn’t prove any of that. So, yes, they’d let him go, for now, but they wanted to know his whereabouts 24/7.

The car ride home was shorter but more grueling than his time at the station. His dad babbled about Columbine and asked him over and over about drugs, about gangs, about guns. The sharp, steady man had never seemed so clueless before, never felt so far away.

As they drove, the morning light seeping between the trees felt as brittle as Devin’s tired head. His sinuses were on fire. He had some sort of cold, maybe a fever.

It was only when his mother hugged him, warm and soft in a housecoat she’d worn since he was a child, that Devin realized how cold and stiff he felt. She looked at him, brushed his hair out of his face, and then quickly made an excuse to vanish into the kitchen to get him something hot to eat. They would talk later, after he’d rested. After she’d had a nervous breakdown or two.

Devin plodded up the stairs, entered the hallway bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and tossed them on the floor. Seeing the blotches of dried blood on the pants and shirt made him dizzy, but he managed to stumble into the shower. The burst of warm water soothed his skin and forced his shoulder muscles to relax; yet even though he stood there for a long time, something in him still stayed cold.

Cody was dead. Karston had been a blow, but Cody was different. He was more like a force of nature, and forces of nature shouldn’t die.

Until that moment, when Devin felt as if a part of himself was missing, he never realized how much he both hated Cody and loved him, how much he thought he was a jerk, an asshole, yet shared Cody’s opinion of himself, that he was some kind of god.

Devin stepped out of the shower. The sound of his parents arguing downstairs floated up through the heating vents. Their harsh whispers were short, angry, desperate. The details of the grudge match flew past him. He couldn’t care less. He went into his room and closed the door, silencing them.

He threw himself back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Eventually, he looked out the large window, where he caught the tops of the trees shifting in a hard wind. The woods seemed to go on forever.

A greater truth had suddenly opened up for Devin. It sat there in front of him, thick and black, utterly unknown and waiting to swallow him whole: a monster.

A monster had killed Karston and Cody. Not some wacky deformed homeless guy with a hatchet—a for-real, beyond-the-ken-of-mortal-understanding monster, or whatever you wanted to call something so strong you could shatter a solid body Les Paul against it without even slowing it down.

And it looked so damn familiar.

Even now he wanted to look under his bed, to make sure it wasn’t there.

Could it really have come from the song like Cody said? How screwed up was that? Was it created by the song, or did the song “call” to it? What were the rules? Were there any rules? Did it only take bad children? Was he safe? He didn’t feel safe.

Was Cheryl safe? Was One Word Ben?

Cheryl. The last time he’d seen her was when her parents took her out of the station. Her beautiful smooth skin was totally white, and there were deep red circles under her eyes. He had called to her, but she’d been far down the hall, being pulled into one of the interrogation rooms.

He grabbed his cell and punched her number on the speed dial.

“Hey,” she said in a flash. She sounded tired, as if he’d woken her.

“Hey,” he said back. “How are you?”

“Horrible.”

“Me, too. Your parents ever going to let you out of the house again?”

“I hope not. Yours?”

“Downstairs fighting about something. I don’t know who’s going to win.”

“Did you talk to Cody’s family?”

Devin was surprised by the question. “No. I just got back.”

“I want to call, but I’m scared. Like it would make it more real.” Her voice was cracking. After a silence, she asked, “Was it real?”

Devin thought about it a second and said, “Yes.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a longer pause, but Devin didn’t think of hanging up. The silence was fine. Just knowing she was on the other end, despite the space between them, felt good.

After a while, Cheryl broke the silence. “It’s all over the chat rooms, you know. They’re thinking of canceling school Monday. There’s a radio station playing the song, creeping people out. There’s a video clip Judy sent me from the club. It’s got a great shot of…Cody…singing…and there’s more of those dust dots flying around.”

More silence.

“Maybe you should see it,” Cheryl said. “I’ll send it to you.”

Devin stood, walked to his laptop, and woke it. “I’ll take a look,” he said. “What do you think they are?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the angels from the song, the ones we’re supposed to lie to. Maybe Cody didn’t lie well enough,” she answered.

The e-mail was already in his in-box. With a click, the large video file started downloading.

He smiled a little. “You kidding? Cody was a great liar.”

“Yeah,” she said. Her voice cracked and trailed off. She started crying.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’d cry, too, but I’m too tired.”

“It’s not…it’s not just that he’s dead,” she said.

“Then what?”

“I don’t want to lie anymore either. There’s something I have to tell you. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you before. You’re so…good.”

He could feel her trying to pull herself together.

“What? What is it? Don’t leave me hanging.”

Her voice was halting. “No. Not now. I have to do it in person.”

He felt himself getting angry. He didn’t want to be angry—not now, not at her—but he felt it anyway. “No, just tell me. My brain is screwed up enough as it is.”

A pause, and then, “You’ll hate me.”

What the hell is she talking about?

“I couldn’t, Cheryl, not you.”

“You could. It’s about me and Cody.”

Silence. Devin felt that abyss open up in front of him again. The one that held the darker truths.

“We were together. After Karston died. Just once.”

Now it was Devin’s turn to fall silent.

“Devin? Are you there?” Cheryl said. “I need to hear your voice right now. I’m so scared. I just felt like I was lying to you and…”

Lying to the angels…

“I’ve got to go,” Devin said flatly.

“No, please. I need to talk to you.”

A feeling like a million fire ants chewing at his gut rose up in him.

“Yeah, well, right now I need some time,” he said. He felt cruel. He didn’t care. He pressed End and flung the phone into his bed, where it landed soundlessly against the folds of the bedspread.

It made sense, damn it. It made total sense. Cody was, well, Cody. Friendship or loyalty wouldn’t hold him back. It was Cheryl who was looking different to him now.

Two crooks and a slut…

The sound of his parents’ battle rose through the vents in his room. Shaking, Devin lay down on his bed, put his head in a pillow, and screamed. Once, twice, then when the third scream ripped his throat raw, he stopped.

Through the pillow, he heard his ring tone. Cheryl was trying to call him back. He turned the phone off, and the little light showing Cheryl’s number went dead. There was another beep from across the room, from his laptop. An image of Tunnel Vision filled the screen. Cody’s voice came through the speakers, low, harsh, and pointed:

No one’s pure, my love, love, love,

But if you cross the line,

Your deeds will call out to the wild,

And there won’t be much time.

Karston had stolen money from him. Cody had been amoral at best. Now Cheryl had cheated on him. That much of the song was right, no one was pure. But did it mean they were all condemned? What rules did the monster follow?

Monster. Maybe it was him. Maybe all the years he’d spent “straddling the fence” as Cody called it had welled up and out of him as this weird id-thing. Or maybe at least one of all the police theories was right, maybe Devin was psychotic, killing Karston and Cody himself and not remembering.

Curious, he got up and stepped closer to the screen, watching Cody twist in an impassioned performance with the rest of them dutifully backing. Cheryl was right; the dots were there again. They were swirling around Cody, focusing on his head, twirling frantically as if trying to get his attention.

The camera zoomed in for a close-up of the lead singer. Cody’s rough, handsome face filled the screen. The dots were still there, clearer now as they circled his mouth, his lips, the mike, the sources of the sound. There were ten, maybe fifteen, little transparent dots of light.

As he came to the end, they froze, and all at once flew away, as if it was too late and whatever it was they were trying to warn about would happen anyway.

Devin stopped the clip, backed it up, and played it again. Yeah, the specks were dancing around Cody, right until the end of the last verse. Then they took off, like little bats out of little hell.

First it had been him and Karston. Karston died. Now it was Cody and Cody died. What would the police make of this, he wondered? Dust. Same thing he would have before he’d seen the beast.

There were no dots dancing around him, though. None around One Word Ben. What about Cheryl? It was hard to say; she was furthest back in the shot, and there weren’t many close-ups.

He froze the screen and clicked through a frame at a time. It was digital video, and from a good camera, too, so the image was pretty clean. He tried to find a clear frame with Cheryl in it. Once he did, he captured the screen and opened it in his image editor. Using the magnifier tool, he zoomed in. There they were, circling her mouth, her head, her ears, as if infesting her with death.

Cheryl. Karston. Cody. Cheryl.

He zoomed in tighter. The image pixelated, broke up into little squares of different color and shading, but the light and dark still conspired to create an image. It wasn’t a clear picture exactly, more something that might be there or might not, like the face of the man in the moon.

Only this face didn’t look like the man in the moon.

It looked like Karston.