Chapter Fifteen

Let's get some sheets, ” said Trevor. “That mattress is pretty dirty. ”

“How about a fan? ”

“Yeah, and a coffeepot. ”

Zach smirked. “Gee, I feel so domestic. ”

“Well, if you don't want to. . . ” Trevor looked sidelong at Zach, then stared at the floor in embarrassment.

“Hey, hey, joking. I've never set up housekeeping with anyone before, is all. ”

“It makes you nervous? ” A small line appeared between Trevor's brows as he frowned. It seemed to cost him an effort to understand moods and motivations that would have been immediately obvious to most. Zach guessed Trevor was probably the most weirdly socialized person he had ever met.

“It makes me hyper. ”

“Want some Excedrin? ”

That was Zach's favorite thing about weirdly socialized people: anything that popped into their heads usually made it out of their mouths. “No thanks, I'm fine, ” he said, and they caught each other's eye and started laughing.

In the giddy rush that followed waking and more fucking, they had put their clothes on and driven downtown with the idea of getting something to eat. Instead they had wound up in Potter's Store, wandering the dim, dust-scented aisles, browsing through the shelves crammed full of junk and plunder.

Zach watched Trevor's hands plunge into a bin of fifty-cent clothing, sorting out only the black items and quickly discarding them, finally selecting a single plain T-shirt. Zach thought of grasping those hands, of turning them over and kissing the palms.

But Potter's Store was full of old rednecks, mostly the reformed drunks from the Salvation Army who ran the place. Zach supposed they were used to trendy kids thrift-shopping, but he had no desire to attract extra attention. Hell, these people weren't just Christians, they were probably Republicans. If the right kind of G-man flashed a badge at them, they'd not only tell him anything he wanted to hear, they'd lick his asshole clean while they did it. Goddamn John-Wayne-loving John-Birch-worshiping good country people.

“What are you scowling about? ”

“Oh. ” He looked up into Trevor's face and forgot it all. “Nothing. ”

Their eyes locked on each other, and for a long moment they might as well have been back in bed, tangled in the sweaty blanket, stewing in one another's juices. Then Trevor glanced over Zach's shoulder. “Hey, there's Kinsey. I bet he'd let us take a shower at his house. ”

“Feed us too? ”

“Maybe. ”

“Go for it. ”

Trevor grabbed his coffeepot and Zach his fan, and they slipped through the aisles and homed in on Kinsey's tall form like two hungry cats who know which porch to go to.

Kinsey sat at his kitchen table and listened to the shower blasting away. It had done so for thirty minutes now, and though the bathroom was way at the other end of the hall, the kitchen windows had begun to fog up. If they went on much longer, his zucchini-mushroom lasagna would be ready to come out of the oven and he would have to eat it by himself. The house was getting unbearably hot and muggy.

He went into the hall and switched on the air-conditioning. From behind the bathroom door he could hear water hitting skin, the rattle of the shower curtain, a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. Were they making love in the steam and spray? Were they crying in there?

He did not even try to guess where the nasty-looking cut on Zach's lip had come from, or why Trevor wasn't carrying his sketchbook.

Kinsey had been surprised when they came up to him in Potter's Store all rumpled and bright-eyed and reeking of sex, as obviously connected as if they were clutching hands. Of all the things Kinsey might have predicted for Trevor's first week in Missing Mile, getting laid was not among them. But he had sent Zach out there, and now here they were. He wondered if he had averted something, or only made the house dangerous for two boys instead of one.

Kinsey hadn't been feeling very good about his own judgment since yesterday, since hearing that Rima had cracked up her car and died on the highway outside of town. It must have happened right after she left the Sacred Yew. If he hadn't been worrying about the stupid dinner special, if he'd taken the time to talk to the girl, to ask the right questions, or better yet, to listen. . .

(“Listen? Ask the right questions? ” Terry had raged at him. “You fuckin' hippie! You caught that bitch with her hand in the fuckin' till. ”

“But maybe if I'd given her the money—”

“THEN SHE WOULD HAVE BOUGHT MORE COKE! Give it up, Kinsey! Give it the fuck UP! ”)

In his heart Kinsey knew Rima had probably been a lost cause. But her mindless, meaningless death made him wonder how far his good intentions could reach, how much he could ever do for these lost kids he wanted so much to help on their way.

Well, time would tell. This was Kinsey's unofficial philosophy on nearly all matters that did not require his immediate attention.

He opened the oven door and poked at the lasagna with a fork. A sullen little cloud of steam rose from its pale greenish surface. It was still a bit wet, but by the time Trevor and Zach finished whatever they were doing in the bathroom, he thought it might be cooked through. Kinsey sliced a loaf of whole-grain bread, spread it with butter, opened a bottle of sweet red wine, and began to brew a pot of strong coffee.

He might not be able to help them, but at least he could feed them well.

Zach stared at the huge green lump of food on his plate. Trevor was eating automatically, his fork rising and falling, his green lump quickly disappearing, washed down with cup after cup of black coffee. He had grown up in an orphanage; he could probably eat most anything put in front of him.

But Zach just couldn't get started. Though he was usually disposed to like things that began with Z, he thought zucchini might be his least favorite vegetable. It was soggy and nearly tasteless, with only a faint unpleasant flavor like chlorophyll tinged with sweat. If dirty socks grew on a vine, Zach thought, they would taste like zucchini.

The casserole or whatever it was Kinsey had tried to make reminded him of the food in the comic Calvin and Hobbes that would jump off the plate and hop across the table or down the kid's shirt making noises like blurp and argh. But Zach was too polite to pull a Calvin face. Instead he poured himself another glass of wine and wished he were back in the shower with Trevor's hands reaching around to soap his back, with his open mouth sliding across Trevor's wet slippery chest.

“Can I get you something else? ” Kinsey asked him.

“No, thanks. I guess I'm just not very hungry. ” In truth, Zach felt slightly nauseated after staring at the green lump for so long, but the wine seemed to be settling his stomach. He caught an odd look from Trevor and remembered that asking Kinsey to feed them had been his own idea. It was a mistake he wouldn't make again.

“You must eat out a lot in New York, ” said Kinsey, and Trevor shot him another look: New York?

“I try to live cheap, ” he told Kinsey.

“I thought that was impossible in New York. ”

“Rent control, ” said Zach helplessly, with no real idea whether they had such a thing in New York City. Trevor stared hard at him.

I'll explain later, he thought, trying to telegraph it into Trevor's head, and poured himself more wine.

No sooner had they bid Kinsey good night and walked across the overgrown yard to the car than Trevor said, “New York, huh? ”

Zach's head was spinning from the wine and the joint they had smoked after dinner. He leaned against the Mustang's fender. “I'll tell you about it when we get home. ”

“Tell me now. I don't like being lied to. ”

“I didn't lie to you. I lied to Kinsey. ”

“I don't like lies at all, Zach. If that's really your name. ”

“What? Did I just hear that from the lips of the famous Trevor Black? ” Trevor looked away. “Look, I told you I was on the run! I can't just go around telling everyone the truth! Now get in the car. ”

“Can you drive? ”

“Of course I can fucking drive. ” Zach pushed himself off the fender and lost his balance, almost fell headlong into the grass. Trevor caught him and he leaned into Trevor's arms, slipped his arms around Trevor's waist. “Don't be mad, ” he whispered.

“Are you okay? ” Trevor asked.

Zach hadn't eaten anything all day, and he had drunk most of the big bottle of wine. He imagined it sloshing around in his stomach, mingling with all the come he'd swallowed, sweet ruby red swirled with salty pearly white. Zach thought again of the green lump of lasagna and almost lost it, but he couldn't stand for Trevor to see him puke.

“I'm fine, ” he said. Muffled against the front of Trevor's shirt it came out as one slurry word. “I just got a little drunk. It's nothing. ” He felt Trevor's body stiffen, remembered that Bobby had been drunk on whiskey when he killed the family. To Trevor, the words I'm drunk, it's nothing must sound both stupid and cruel.

Well, they'd find ways to deal with these pitfalls and land mines, even if it meant plowing straight through them. Zach wasn't planning to go on the wagon anytime soon.

And why the hell not? he thought. He liked alcohol-usually-but it wasn't vital to him like pot, wasn't essential to his body chemistry. You're not in New Orleans where drinking's de rigueur, not anymore. Why not just forget about the stuff and make him happy?

Because I don't WANT to!!! his mind raged in the voice of a cranky three-year-old. I LIKE to get drunk sometimes, there's nothing wrong with that, it doesn't make me beat people or punch them or kill them! It just makes me...

What?

Well, get laid, for one.

He knew it was true; he had almost always been drunk when he went cruising in the Quarter. It helped him gloss over all sorts of things, like the look on Eddy's face when she saw him chatting up some pretty, empty-headed creature of the night, the fact that he would just as soon spit in Death's eye as wear a rubber, the knowledge that he just didn't give a good goddamn about much of anything beyond hacking and having orgasms and watching slasher movies and thumbing his nose at the world.

Except that now he did. And it seemed as good a time to say so as any.

But just then a vehicle swept around the corner of Kinsey's street and came screeching toward them. A pickup or a four-wheel drive from the sound and size of it, though it was going too fast to tell. Its occupants hung out the windows, all hairy limbs and big bullish heads with John Deere and Red Man caps wedged down firmly over the brow ridge. “FUCKIN' QUAAAAAARES, ” they heard, and a fusillade of silver beer cans sailed out into the slipstream and came clattering around them in the hot, still night. The truck was already disappearing over the next hill.

The boys had been drinking beer, Zach observed. A fine fascist-owned beer with a bouquet hinting at toxic waste and a crisp, golden, piss-like undertone. . .

He smelled the warm stale beer leaking onto the asphalt, saw a submerged cigarette butt dissolving in one of the little puddles, and lost it. He pushed away from Trevor and sprawled headlong over the curb and vomited in Kinsey's yard. It felt marvelous, like the release of some crushing pressure, like vile crimson poison flooding out of his system. He felt the palms of his hands connecting with the earth, felt energy flowing up into his arms and through his body in huge, slow, steady waves. He was plugged into the biggest damn battery of all.

When he was able to raise his head, Zach saw Trevor staring at him like some interesting but faintly repulsive bug. Zach crawled away from his puddle of vomit and sat shakily on the curb. He took off his spattered glasses, wiped them on the tail of his shirt, Trevor sat down next to him.

“Do you know how many times I saw my dad get sick from drinking? ” Trevor asked.

“A bunch, I guess. ”

“No. Just once. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened, though, if he'd had a few more shots before Momma came home that night. What if he'd made himself sick and passed out? What if Momma could tell somehow that he'd drugged us? ”

“It sounds like Bobby was pretty much unstoppable. ”

“Maybe. ” Trevor shrugged. “But maybe one more shot would've knocked him out. Maybe Momma would have taken me and Didi away. ”

“I guess it's possible. ” More than anything, Zach wanted Trevor to put an arm around his shoulders, wanted to lean into Trevor's solid comforting warmth. But he wasn't sure if Trevor was mad at him. “I used to hope the same thing when my parents would go on a binge, ” he said. “I'd think, Just a couple more drinks and they'll pass out. They'll shut up. They won't hit me anymore. But once they got on a tear, they usually stayed on it for a while. ”

“And you caught the worst of it. ”

“Yeah, unless they had something better to do. ”

“Then how-” Trevor turned to Zach, spread his hands wide. The expression on his face was half disgust, half genuine bewilderment. “How can you drink now? You saw what it did to them-how can you do it too? ”

“Simple. It doesn't do the same things to me that it did to them. ”

“But—”

“But nothing. Remember what you said last night? The still doesn't have a choice about making liquor; the choice is up to the person who drinks it? Drinking didn't make my parents act like that. They were like that. I'm not. ”

“So where does that leave my father? ” Trevor's voice was quiet, but deadly.

“Well. . . ” This was the all-important question, Zach sensed. If he answered it wrong, he could forget about drinking around Trevor-which meant he could forget about Trevor, because he wasn't going to start letting someone else do his thinking for him. And if he answered it too wrong, he wondered if he might see his blood decorating Trevor's knuckles again.

“Maybe Bobby was trying to tamp down his anger, ” he said. “Maybe he was trying to make himself pass out before your mom came home. ”

“You think so? ”

He wants to believe that. Is it cruel to encourage him? I don't think so; hell, I'd want to believe it if I were him. It might even be true. “I wouldn't be surprised, ” said Zach. “You know he loved you—”

“No I don't. I know he loved them. He took them with him. He left me here. ”

“Bullshit! ” Zach didn't care about giving the right answer now; this line of reasoning made him too angry to worry about getting hit. “He wasted everything they ever could have done, could have been. The only life he had a right to take was his own. He robbed them. ”

“But if you love someone—”

“Then you want them to be alive. What's to love about a cold, dead body? ” Zach caught himself before he went too far on that track. “Bobby fucked up your life pretty good, but at least he let you keep it. He must have loved you best. If you were dead, twenty years of drawings never could've existed, and I couldn't be loving you, and you couldn't even be wondering about all this—”

“What? ”

“I said, you couldn't even be wondering—”

“No. The other part. ”

“I couldn't be loving you, ” Zach repeated softly. The words felt so strange in his mouth; they had slipped out before he had even known he was going to say them. But he didn't want to take them back.

“I love you too, ” said Trevor. He leaned over and kissed Zach full on the mouth. Zach's eyes widened and he tried to pull away, but Trevor held him tight. He felt Trevor's tongue sliding over his lips, worrying at the corners, and finally he gave up and opened his mouth to Trevor. They had already exchanged most of their other bodily fluids; he supposed a little puke wouldn't make much difference.

At last Trevor relented and just held him. Zach felt his shakes beginning to recede, the raw burn of bile fading from his throat.

“So you're really on the run? ” Trevor asked after a while.

Zach nodded.

“And you told Kinsey and Terry you were from New York? ”

“Well, I don't think Kinsey believes me. But that's what I told them, yeah. ”

“You want to talk about it? ”

“Could we get in the car first? ”

“Sure. ” Trevor reached for the keys, and Zach surrendered them without argument. “We ought to get going anyway, before those rednecks decide to come back and kick our asses. ”

Zach laughed. “Hell, if they did, Kinsey could just come out brandishing his casserole and scare 'em off. ”

Trevor got a feel for the Mustang quickly. He had once had a brief job driving cars from place to place, reasons unspecified and questions not encouraged by the management. Most of them had been scary old junkers or boring Japanese cracker-boxes, but this car was fun to drive. Its engine was loud but smooth, and its wheels chewed up the road like a vicious little wildcat worrying a blacksnake.

There was a sour taste in his mouth like fruit juice gone bad, the ghost of Zach's recycled wine. To Trevor it wasn't much different from having the flavor of Zach's sweat or spit or come on his lips. If you loved someone, he thought, you should know their body inside and out. You should be willing to taste it, breathe it, wallow in it.

He got off Kinsey's road, found his way to the highway, then took a side road that wandered off into the country.

“I like the way you drive, ” said Zach.

“What do you mean? ”

“Fast. ”

“Just talk to me. ”

“It has to do with computers, ” Zach warned.

“I figured as much, ” Trevor said darkly.

They drove for an hour or more around the outskirts of Missing Mile, past dark fields, deserted churches and railroad crossings, small neat houses lit warm against the night. They passed the occasional bright store or honkytonk joint, swerved to miss the occasional wet splay of roadkill on the hot blacktop.

Zach told his tale without interruption from Trevor, save for an occasional question. When he finished, Trevor's brain was spinning with unfamiliar terminology, with arcane concepts he had never believed possible, but many of which Zach claimed he had already done.

“You mean you could get information about anybody- and change it? Could you get information about me? ”

“Sure. ”

“How? ”

“Well, let's see. ” Zach ticked off possibilities on his fingers. “Do you have any credit cards? ”

“No. ”

“Ever had a phone in your name? ”

“No. ”

“How about a police record? ”

“Well. . . yeah. ” Trevor shuddered at the memory. “I got picked up for vagrancy once in Georgia. Spent the night in jail. ”

“I could get that easy. Erase it, too. With your Social Security number I could probably get your school and social-services records. And your standing with the IRS, of course. ”

“I doubt the IRS has ever heard of me. ”

Zach laughed softly. “Don't bet on it, boyfriend. ”

They took a roundabout route back to Violin Road. By the time Trevor parked the car behind the house, it felt very late. The clouds had blown over and the sky was a brilliant inverted bowl of stars. Zach saw the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the faint soft skirl of the Milky Way, which pretty much exhausted his store of astronomical knowledge. But he stared up into the universe until he was dizzy with infinity, and he thought he could see the great bowl slowly revolving around them, order born of chaos, meaning born of void.

They pushed their way through the vines and entered the dark living room. The house felt very calm and still. Even the doorway to the hall had gone neutral. It was as if some charge had been switched off, as if some current had been interrupted, though the lights still worked. They brushed their teeth in the kitchen sink, fitted the sheets from Potter's Store onto the mattress in Trevor's room, undressed and lay together in the restful dark, their heads touching on the single pillow, their hands loosely joined.

“So I might bring ghosts into your Me, ” Trevor mused, “and you might bring feds into mine. ”

“I guess so. ”

Trevor thought about it. “I believe I'd take my chances with the ghosts if I were you. ”

“I was hoping you'd say that. ”

And I guess I'll take my chances with the long arm of the law, Trevor thought as he rolled over and fitted himself into the curve of Zach's body. Harboring a fugitive is bad enough- they probably have a special punishment if you fall in love with one. He found that the idea of committing a federal crime didn't faze him much. The thought of being in love still seemed far stranger.

Zach had broken all kinds of laws, he supposed, but Trevor had never had much regard for laws. Few of them made sense to him, and none of them worked worth a shit. He had managed to avoid breaking them very often simply because he didn't have many bad habits, and most of the ones he did have happened to be legal. But if any suit-wearing, mirrorshaded zombie dared touch a hair on Zach's head, or set foot inside the boundaries of Birdland...

Trevor didn't know what might happen then. But he thought there would be great damage and pain. After all, this house had tasted blood before, had tasted it again today.

He thought it might be getting a taste for the stuff.

Somewhere in the hazy zone between night and morning, Zach opened his eyes a crack and squinted into the darkness. He had no real sense of the room around him, of where he was at all. He only knew that he was still mostly asleep and about half-drunk, that his head was throbbing and his bladder was painfully full.

He pushed himself off the mattress and stumbled into the hall. At the end of it a soft light glowed like a beacon. All he had to do was make his way to that light and relieve himself; then he could fall back into bed and sleep until the headache was gone.

Zach shuffled down the hall naked and barefooted, trailing a hand along the wall for balance, and entered the bathroom. One of the forty-watt bulbs in the ceiling fixture buzzed fitfully, giving off a dim, flickering light. He stepped up to the toilet bowl and urinated into the small pool of dark muddy-looking water. The sound of his pee hitting the stained porcelain seemed very loud in the silent house, and he hoped he wouldn't wake Trevor.

Trevor. . . asleep in the next room, in Birdland. . .

Zach was suddenly wide awake and very conscious of where he was. His stream of urine dried up. As he let go of his dick he felt a single warm drop slide down his thigh. The ghost of cheap red wine still swirled in his brain, making him dizzy, making him aware of just how easy it would be to panic.

But there was no need. All he had to do was turn, step away from the toilet, and—and he knew he hadn't shut the door behind him when he came in.

Though he had been mostly asleep, he remembered groping past it, hearing the knob rattle against the wall. The hinges were caked with rust and could not have closed silently. But though Zach had heard nothing, the door was now shut tight.

He swallowed, felt his throat click dryly.

Well, you live in a haunted house, you're going to have doors shutting themselves once in a while. But that doesn't mean anything in here can hurt you. All you have to do is walk over and turn the knob and you're out of here.

(and don't look at the tub)

That last thought came unbidden. Zach threw himself at the door, clawed at the knob. It slipped through his fingers and he realized that his hands were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his bare chest and made himself try again. The knob would not turn, would not even rattle in its moorings. It was as if the workings of the lock had fused.

Or as if something were holding the door shut from the other side.

He yanked at the door with all his strength. Though he could feel the old wood bowing inward, nothing gave. He wondered what would happen if he managed to tear the knob clean out of the door. If there was something in the hall, would it come rushing in through the hole and engulf him?

Zach let go of the knob and stared around the bathroom. The ancient linoleum had begun to curl at the corners, exposing the rotting wood beneath. The peeling paint was streaked from ceiling to floor with long rusty watermarks. The bare shower curtain rod was cruelly bowed, the bottom of the tub glazed with a thin layer of filth, the black hole of the drain ringed in green mold. He thought of pounding on the wall, trying to wake Trevor to come get him out of here, but the tub was set into the wall that adjoined their room. He would have to lean way over it, or climb right in.

He looked quickly away from the tub, and his gaze fell on the mirror over the sink. It reflected his own pale sweaty face, his own wide scared eyes, but Zach thought he saw something else in there too. Some subtle movement, a rippling in the surface of the glass itself, a strange sparkling in its depths as if the glass were a silver vortex trying to draw him in.

Frowning, he moved closer. The cold lip of the sink pushed against his lower belly. Zach leaned closer until his forehead was nearly touching the glass. It occurred to him that the mirror could simply explode outward, burying razor-shards of glass in his face, his eyes, his brain.

Part of his mind was cowering, gibbering, begging him to get away. But part of him-the larger part-had to know.

One of the taps twisted on.

Hot liquid gushed into the sink, splashed up onto his belly, his chest, his hands and arms. Zach jumped back, looked down at himself, and felt his well-trained gag reflex try to trigger for the second time that night.

He was covered with dark streaks and splotches of the blood that was still globbing out of the faucet, pooling in the sink. But this was no fresh vivid crimson like the blood from his lip yesterday. This blood was thick and rank, already half-clotted. Its color was the red-black of a scab, and it stank of decaying meat.

As he watched, the other tap turned slowly on. A second fluid began to mingle with the rotting blood, a thinner fluid, viscous and milky-white. The odor of decay was suddenly laced with the raw fresh smell of semen. As they came out of the faucet, the two streams twisted together like some sort of devil's candy cane, red and white (and Black all over. . . wouldn't Trevor love to put this in a story? ).

Zach felt hysterical laughter bubbling up in his throat. Tom Waits's drunken piano had nothing on this bathroom. The sink was bleeding and ejaculating: great. Maybe next the toilet would decide to take a shit or the bathtub would begin to drool.

He looked back up at the mirror and felt the laughter turn sour, caustic, like harsh vomit on the back of his tongue.

But for certain familiar landmarks-his green eyes, the dark tangle of his hair-Zach barely knew his own reflection in the glass. It was as if a sculptor had taken a plane to his face and shaved layers of flesh from the already prominent bones. His forehead and cheekbones and chin were carved in stark relief, the skin stretched over them like parchment, sickly white and dry, as if the lightest touch would start it sifting from the bones. His nostrils and eye sockets seemed too large, too deep. The shadowy smudges beneath his eyes had become enormous dark hollows in which his pupils glittered feverishly. The skin around his mouth looked desiccated, the lips cracked and peeling.

It was not the face of a nineteen-year-old boy in any kind of health. It was the face of the skull hiding beneath his skin, waiting to be revealed. Zach suddenly understood that the skull always grinned because it knew it would emerge triumphant, that it would comprise the sole identity of the face long after vain baubles like lips and skin and eyes were gone.

He stared at his wasted image in fascination. There was a certain consumptive beauty to it, a certain dark flame like that which burns in the eyes of mad poets or starving children.

He put out his hand to touch the mirror, and the lesions began to appear.

Just a few tiny purplish spots at first, one on the stark jut of his cheekbone, one bisecting the dark curve of his eyebrow, one nestled in the small hollow at the corner of his mouth. But they began to spread, deepening like enormous bruises, like a stop-motion film of blighted orchids blooming beneath the surface of his skin. Now nearly half his face was suffused with the purple rot, tinged necrotic blue at the edges and shot through with a scarlet web of burst capillaries, and there was no semblance of beauty to it, no dark flame, nothing but corruption and despair and the promise of death.

Zach felt his stomach churning, his chest constricting. He had never obsessed about his looks, had never needed to. His parents had usually avoided fucking up his face too badly because it might be noticed. He still had faint belt marks on his back and two lumpy finger joints on his left hand from breaks that had healed badly, but no facial scars. He'd never even had zits to speak of. He had grown up with no particular awareness of his own beauty, and once he realized he had it and learned what it was good for, he had taken it for granted.

Now watching it rot away was like feeling the ground disappear from under his feet, like having a limb severed, like watching the knife descend for the final stroke of the lobotomy.

(Or like watching a loved one die, and knowing you had a hand in that death. . . Zach, do you love yourself? )

The faucet was still gushing, the sink clogged nearly to overflowing with the twin fluids. A small black pinhole had appeared in the center of each lesion on his face. As he watched, the dots swelled and erupted. Pain zigzagged across the network of his facial nerves. Beads of greasy glistening whiteness welled from the tiny wounds.

Zach felt a sudden, blinding flash of rage. What the hell was the white stuff supposed to be? Maggots? Pus? More come? What kind of cheap morality play was this, anyway?

“FUCK IT! ” he yelled, and seized the edges of the mirror and ripped it off its loose moorings and flung it into the bathtub. It shattered with a sound that could have woken all of St. Louis Cemetery. The faucet slowed to a trickle, then stopped.

Zach took a deep breath and put his hands to his face, rubbed them over his cheeks. His skin was smooth and firm, his bones no sharper than usual. He looked down at his body. No huge blossoming bruises, no cancerous purple lesions. His stomach and hips were hollow but not emaciated. Even the spatters of rotten blood were gone. Nothing felt abnormal but his scrotum, which was trying to crawl up into his body cavity.

His shoulders sagged and his knees turned to water. Zach put a hand on the edge of the sink to support himself. As he did, he saw movement in the tub, something other than his own motion reflected in the fragments of broken mirror, a swinging motion that seemed to sweep across the glittering shards, then back, then across again...

He stared at it, unable to look away, yet terrified that soon his eyes and his mind would piece together the gestalt of all the infinitesimal reflections. He did not want to know what hung there, swinging in the mirror. But if he looked away, it might be able to get out.

Behind him, the hinges of the door shrieked. Zach spun around, muscles tensed, ready to fight whatever was coming for him. He saw Trevor framed in the doorway, tousled and sleepy-eyed, his face half-bewildered, half-scared. “What are you doing? ”

“How-” Zach swallowed hard. His mouth and throat had gone dry, and it was difficult to speak. “How'd you get in? ”

“I turned the knob and pushed. Why did you shut yourself in here? ”

Speechless, Zach pointed at the sink. Trevor followed the direction of Zach's finger, then shook his head. “What? ”

Zach stared at the sink. It was empty, stained with nothing but dust and time. The square of plaster above it where the mirror had hung was paler than the rest of the wall. Trevor noticed it too. “Did you-” He saw the broken mirror in the tub and frowned. Then his eyes fell on the bent shower curtain rod and he looked quickly back at Zach, away from the faintest of shadows slowly twisting on the wall. He wrapped his long fingers around Zach's wrist and pulled hard. “Get out of here. ”

They stumbled into the hall, and Trevor yanked the bathroom door shut behind them. He stood for a moment with his eyes closed, breathing hard. Then he shoved Zach down the hall toward the kitchen, grabbing his arm and hustling him along when he didn't move fast enough.

“Hey-what-don't—”

“Shut up. ”

Trevor groped for the kitchen light switch, pushed Zach toward the table, then sat down and buried his face in his hands. Zach saw that Trevor's shoulders were trembling. He reached out to massage the tightly wound muscles, but Trevor went even stiffer, then reached up and slapped Zach's hands away. “Don't touch me! ”

Zach felt as if his heart had been plunged into ice water. He backed away from the table, toward the kitchen door. “Fine! You don't want me here, your ghosts don't want me here! Maybe I'll just get the fuck out! ” He glanced around the room, trying to locate the bag containing his laptop and OKI. It was leaning against the fridge, and he would have to walk back past the table to get it. His glasses were still in the bedroom too. So much for grand exits.

But Trevor didn't even look up. “I do want you here. I think they do too. Sit down. ”

“Don't tell me what to—”

“Zach. ” Now Trevor raised his head. His face was haggard; his eyes had a dazed, shell-shocked gleam. “Don't give me any shit. Please. Just sit down and talk to me. ”

Unmollified but curious, Zach pulled out the other chair. He didn't want to leave, but he hated being pushed away. “What do you want to talk about? ”

“What did you see in there? ”

“All kinds of shit. ”

“Tell me. ”

Zach told him everything. At the end of the telling he found himself angry again, but not at Trevor. He was mad at the house, as mad as he had been when he broke the mirror. Fuck its pathetic funhouse scares, fuck its cheap moral judgments. He wanted to knock Trevor over the head, drag him out of here forever, then get on Compuserv and score two plane tickets to some remote sundrenched Caribbean island.

When Zach had finished talking, Trevor didn't say anything for a very long time. His right hand lay flat on the tabletop, fingers splayed wide. Cautiously, Zach put his own hand over it, and Trevor didn't pull away this time.

“What did you see? ” Zach asked finally.

Trevor stayed silent for so long that Zach thought he wasn't going to answer at all. Then he looked up at Zach. His pupils were enormous, and so very black against the paleness of his eyes.

“My father, ” he said.

Neither one of them felt like going back to sleep. They stayed in the kitchen talking about other things, anything but the silent house around them.

Trevor was still visibly upset, so Zach tried to distract him, asking about comics he liked and hated, trying to get him to argue about politics. (Zach believed in trying to undermine, subvert, and chivvy away the vast American power structure in as many tiny ways as possible, while Trevor opined that it was best to either go out and blow shit up or simply slip through the cracks and ignore the system altogether. ) When Zach mentioned his idea of wiping clean the police records of every drug offender he could find, Trevor interrupted. “Could you. . . ”

“What? You want to smoke another joint? ”

“No. Could you show me some of that computer stuff? ”

Zach smiled evilly, flexed his fingers in front of Trevor's face, and assumed a bogus Charlie Chan accent that had always driven Eddy into paroxysms of annoyance. “Where would honorable boyfriend like to go? Citibank? NASA? The Pentagon? ”

“You can break into the Pentagon? ”

“Well, that'd take some work, ” Zach admitted. “Hey, I know what. Let's see if the power's really turned on! ”

“You mean break into the electric company? ”

“Sure. ”

“But if it's on, won't they notice and turn it off? ”

“We're not gonna change anything. That is, unless you want to. We'll just take a look. First we need a number. ”

Before Trevor could say anything, Zach had his laptop and cellular phone arranged and assembled on the table. He dialed 411, waited, then spoke: “Raleigh. . . the number for Carolina Power & Light, please. ” He scrawled it on one of his yellow Post-its and showed it to Trevor.

“But isn't that just their office? ”

“It isn't just anything. It's a seed of information. Now watch what we can grow from it. Turn off that light. ”

Trevor got up and flipped the overhead switch. Now the kitchen was lit only by the soft silver glow from the computer screen. Zach dialed some more numbers. Then his fingers flew over the keys with a rapid-fire staccato sound. He pointed at the screen. “Check this out. ”

Trevor leaned over Zach's shoulder and saw:

: LOGIN: LA52

PASSWORD:

WC? RA

WC%

“What's that? ”

“COSMOS, ” Zach said reverently. “AT& T's central data bank. ”

“Wow. ”

“Yeah. So-” Zach typed a few more characters, then entered the phone number he'd gotten from directory assistance. “We get a list of all Carolina Power & Light numbers. Including their computer dial-ups. Including accounts. ” Even as he spoke, this information was scrolling down the screen.

“How did you get into COSMOS in the first place? ”

“Stolen username and password. ”

“Isn't that dangerous? ”

“The guy I stole 'em from doesn't even know I exist. All I stole was information. It's still there for him to use. ” Zach looked up from scribbling another number. “That's the beauty of cyberspace. You can take all the information you want, and nobody loses anything. ”

“Then how come you're in so much trouble? ”

“Well, since They don't even like you ripping off information, just imagine how irate They get when you start siphoning money out of Their bank accounts. ”

“They? ”

“The Conspiracy, ” said Zach darkly. “Hang on-” He was dialing again, then typing rapidly. “Okay! We're in! ”

“Now what? ”

“Now I figure out how their system works. ” Zach scowled at the screen, tapped a few keys, snarled his fingers into his hair and pulled it down over his face. The light from the screen turned his face bluish-white, accentuated the hollows beneath his cheekbones and around his eyes. “You can do a search for either a name or an address. Let's try McGee, Robert. . . ”

“I think the bills would've been in Momma's name. Bobby's credit was pretty bad by the time we left Austin. ”

“Okay. . . McGee, Rosena. . . ”

“How do you know my mother's name? ”

Zach looked up. His eyes were wild, his mouth slightly open. “Huh? ”

“I never told you her name. ”

“Oh. Well... I guess... uh... I guess I read those autopsy reports in your bag. ”

Trevor grabbed Zach's shoulder and shook it. He felt Zach cringe a little, and the feeling was more gratifying than he wanted it to be. “Don't you have ANY FUCKING RESPECT FOR PRIVACY? ”

“No. ” Zach spread his hands helplessly. “I'm sorry, Trev, but I don't. I was interested in you, and I wanted to know about you. The information was there, so I looked. ”

“I would have shown you—”

“You would now. You wouldn't have yesterday. And I wanted to know then. ”

“Great. ” Trevor shook his head. “Welcome to the instant-gratification generation. ”

“Guilty as charged. You wanna look at these electric bills or not? ”

“Did you find one? ”

“Not yet. Hang on... nope, nothing in either of your parents' names, or yours either. But here's the account for the Sacred Yew. ” Zach gave a long, low whistle of appreciation. “Outstanding balance of $258. 50. . . let's shave off that zero, what do you say? ”

“I don't think Kinsey would—”

“Too late. $25. 85, that looks better. Let's see... Buckett, Terry. . . no, he's all paid up. ”

“I thought we weren't going to change anything! ”

“Oh. ” Zach looked up at Trevor, grinning like a possum. “I'm just raising a little hell. You wanna see some real changes? ”

“No! Just find the damn house! ”

“Okay, okay. Don't get your panties in a knot. . . Rural Box 17, Violin Road, Missing Mile. . . ” Zach typed in the address. “Uh-huh. . . Service cut off 6/20/72. ”

“So that means. . . ”

“That means the house is making its own juice. ”

The kitchen suddenly flooded with stark white light, and they instinctively clapped hands over their eyes. Just as they peeked through their fingers and saw that no one was standing near the switch, the room was plunged back into darkness. Then the light again, for a few searing seconds. Then black.

“LEAVE IT ON! ” Trevor yelled. “GODDAMMIT, LEAVE IT ON! ”

The kitchen stayed dark. Trevor shoved his chair back so hard that it fell over, crossed the room in three strides, and slapped the light switch on.

“Leave it, ” he said. Zach would not have wanted to argue with that voice.

He logged off the power company system and shut his computer down. They'd raised enough hell for tonight.

“Let's go back to bed, ” he said. What he really wanted to say was Let's get the fuck out of here. But Trevor had been waiting to do this for twenty years, and Zach had only known him for two days. If he wanted to be with Trevor, this was where he would have to be. For now, anyway.

But this place won't get to keep you, he thought as he crawled back into bed with Trevor, settled his chin into the hollow of Trevor's shoulder, draped his arm across Trevor's bony rib cage. When all this is done, you're coming with me. That much I swear.