The entity, p.10
The Entity, page 10
There was nothing shameful in being mentally sick, Billy thought. It struck like the flu or a dozen other diseases. It was just that there was no medicine for it. You couldn’t put it under a microscope and identify the bad cells.
His face tightened. Thinking about microscopes and cells reminded him of school, and biology, and all the things he hated. The smelly classrooms, like prison cells. The weird teachers, who got their kicks out of embarrassing you in front of the class—small-minded creeps with tiny lives and no hopes for anything better. How he hated them.
He hadn’t attended school in more than a week, but it didn’t bother him. He didn’t give much of a damn what they said or did to him. Anyway, what could they do? He was on the way to being sixteen, and soon he’d be able to cash out entirely—legit.
Still, Billy was pricked by worry. The timing was bad. Especially now, with his mother sick. He hated adding to her troubles. But after all, what did she really know about him? What his thoughts were—his dreams? What do parents ever really know? All she knew was that he was a car freak. She even made jokes about it with Cindy. Well, it was more than wrenches and grease that made him spin. He wasn’t going to end up in the pits. He had a goal. A big goal. And cars were just a tiny stepping stone toward getting there.
Billy’s eyes glazed. His hands remained idle in the soapy water as he considered the future—even bigger and better than Jed’s Uncle Stu. Now there was a success story. Not yet forty and the sole owner of the biggest used-car dealership in Carson. A six-acre lot with a fantastic turnover. Sometimes, more than a hundred cars on a single weekend. Uncle Stu made a fortune just sitting behind his desk, buying and selling. Yes, that’s where Billy was headed—his own dealership one day. And not way out in Carson. Brentwood, Westwood, maybe even Beverly Hills.
Billy looked out the window. Through the drizzle that streaked the glass he saw the blue bus turn onto the corner. No one got out. He looked at the clock. It was nearly six o’clock. What was keeping her? He hoped nothing had happened to her on the bus. Like getting one of her spells and seeing things. How awful to be sick that way. Billy knew from stories he had heard how people’s personalities changed. Sweet, tender people became twisted, silent brooding figures, lost in the shadows of the house, never went out, even began to smell bad. That was the horror: not the sickness, but the changes in the person. The person became different and you could grow to hate her; you could want to stay away from the very person you used to love.
Billy pushed the thought out of his mind. He could never leave her, no matter what.
His face stiffened as his thoughts gravitated to Jerry. Goddam beaner. Trying to act like he was somebody big. Bouncing around the country like a Vegas hot-shot then coming in on a one-night stand and using his mother like a—yeah, like a whore. Why did she let him? What the hell did she see in him? What was the big attraction? Damn greaser—
A dish smashed on the linoleum floor.
“Holy shit!”
Billy stooped to pick up the pieces. They were sharp and cold. He scooped them into a paper bag and dropped the bag into the trash can near the stove. He looked for other remnants on the floor.
A second dish smashed on the floor.
“Christ!”
What the hell was happening? Hurriedly, he piled the pieces onto some newspaper. The pieces were icy cold. The shards seemed to bounce around, almost weightless. He dropped them into the can. They clattered, broke, and bounced for a while. He put the lid firmly on the can.
“Billy!”
He turned. Julie looked at him from the shadows of the living room.
“What?”
“Look at me!”
Julie walked into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Her eyes were strange, pixie-like. Her hair stood out on end.
“What the hell you do that for?” Billy said. “Go comb it down.”
“I didn’t do it. It did it by itself.”
Billy stared at her disgustedly.
“You did, too,” he said. “Now go comb it down. I’m in no mood to play and Mom sure as hell won’t be when she comes back.”
“I didn’t—”
“Julie!”
Julie stared at him with an injured expression. Then her eyes glinted. She pointed at Billy.
“It’s happening to you, too,” she giggled.
Billy reached for his own hair. It wavered, distended, grew out from his head.
“You look like a clown,” Julie laughed.
“Goddam rain,” he muttered, combing his hair down.
“It still looks funny.”
He grabbed Julie by the arm, dragged her to the kitchen sink, and wet his comb. He ran the comb vigorously through her hair.
“Ouch! Billy!”
The front door opened and Carlotta entered. She looked tired, her whole body sagged, and water dripped from her coat and face. The sockets of her eyes looked lost in the shadows. She tried to smile, but found herself unable to.
“I’m sorry I’m so late, kids, the doctor—”
“That’s all right, Mom,” Billy said. “I bought some frozen ravioli. Got some milk, too.”
Carlotta nodded a weary thanks. She took off her coat and sat heavily at the kitchen table.
“How are you, doll?” she said to Julie.
“Okay,” Julie said, catching Billy’s warning glance. “Me and Kim were just playing.”
“Good, good,” Carlotta said, abstractly.
In her mind an endless series of nurses, doctors, and technicians walked around her while she lay on a cold leather table waiting for reasons she had not understood. She was glad to be home. The children gave her strength. But she was bone tired, hardly able to keep her mind on the meal in front of her.
She chewed slowly, hardly conscious of the food. The darkness at the window seemed to grow. The girls snapped at the crisp celery—a gift from Mrs. Greenspan’s vegetable garden. Carlotta leaned forward to quiet them, when she froze.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered.
Billy’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. He listened intently.
“No. What?”
“Under the house. Under the floor.”
Julie and Kim watched her. They wondered if it was a game. They quickly understood it was not.
“I didn’t hear nothing,” Billy said.
There was a low groaning in the foundations.
“Well, that sure wasn’t my imagination,” Carlotta said, a trifle shrilly.
They went outside. The water dripped from the eaves, the clapboards, and the windowsills. In the darkness the rain water flashed eerily as it fell. The water swirled under the house, where the foundations raised it off the muddy ground.
Under the house mold, decayed cardboard, and wet rope dangled from the soggy rafters. Billy squirmed beneath the narrow crawl-space; his flashlight made a beam of light shoot through the pipes and cement blocks, picking out pieces of wire and insects trapped in the glare.
“There’s nothing here, Mom!”
He stuffed rotted cardboard in the places where the pipes touched each other. Sawdust fell on his forehead. Sweat ran down his forearms. He grimaced, the insects crawling up his arms.
“It sounded like it was under the bedroom!” Carlotta called.
Billy made his way deeper into the darkness. He pushed the bricks, metal springs, and rusted pipes away from him. He leaned against a support. A low, metallic groan angrily shook the house.
“Billy! Are you all right?”
“Sure, Mom! It’s the bedroom supports!”
He leaned in, trying to find where the pipes and supports bent together. He stuffed old newspaper and clumps of cardboard into the joints. Then he leaned against the support. Nothing. No sound. It was deathly quiet in the darkness.
After half an hour his shirt was soaked through. His face was lined with dust and cobwebs. Strange mold clung to his trousers, a smell of something alien, like dust from metal. He extricated himself with difficulty through the opening and stood up under the umbrella Carlotta held. The rain fell around them both, holding them in its quiet, insistent patter.
“What was it?” Carlotta asked.
“The pipes against the support. I leaned on it and it made that sound,” Billy replied.
“Then what leaned on it before?”
Billy shrugged, brushing the cobwebs from his hair. Carlotta’s pretty face was softened by the distant street light, catching her forehead at an angle. She pulled a wet piece of cardboard from his shoulder. Billy looked closely at her face, her eyes, the expression deep inside them. He began to realize the depths of what she was going through.
“It’s an old house, Mom,” he said. “It probably shifted.”
“It sounded like somebody was moving in,” she said nervously.
Billy laughed.
“It stinks under there,” he said. “A rat died. Something’s rotten.”
They went inside. Billy changed his clothes, showered. Everything felt different. The house had changed. They were no longer alone in it.
Carlotta kissed the girls goodnight. She saw Billy go into his bedroom. She could not get over the unmistakable impression that things were different now. The atmosphere seemed thicker, charged in some way.
She turned off all but one light. The skirt and blouse slipped from her body. The doctor had warned her to get as much sleep as she could. It was no problem now. She felt like lead. She crawled between the sheets and closed her eyes.
Slowly she relaxed. Like a drug, fatigue made her limbs even heavier, her thoughts even slower. The impressions of the house faded farther and farther away from her. Only the heater made a noise from time to time. Shadows drifted quickly through her mind. Peculiar shadows, distorted and angry.
Carlotta drifted down into the core of herself. People she had known, things she had done, rose up about her, silhouetted, twisted, looking for her. A great lassitude enveloped her. She knew they were looking for her. Down through the corridors and empty yards, someone was looking for her. She saw his face, outlined by the strange lights. He saw her, came toward her, smiling . . . called her by name . . .
“Carlotta!” Franklin Moran said. “Well, whaddya think? Ain’t much, but it’s ours!”
Now they were legally married. Carlotta looked at the tiny room, a large bed jammed under the windows, a tiny kitchen visibly leaning in toward the bed.
“Come here, babe!” he said. “Let’s celebrate!”
“Jesus Christ, Franklin! It’s two-thirty in the after—”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha.”
He playfully threw her down on the bed. She was only sixteen. Sometimes his hands got rough with her. The rugged face, lined already, square and tough, became strange in front of her. It almost frightened her.
“Oh, baby,” he sighed later. “You are one swell—”
“Shhhhhhh. Don’t say that.”
He grinned. His muscular chest rose and fell evenly in the golden light. At times like these she loved him madly. She loved his vitality, his self-reliance, his muscular quickness.
“Okay,” he grinned again, patting her softly. “But it’s true. You are.”
There were two windows, both cracked. It was summer, and they kept the shades down. It was dark inside, but also mercilessly hot. Franklin liked to walk around in his shorts. Outside came the sounds of hammers, welding torches, and a radio which never stopped.
“How do you like this, huh, babe?” he said. “Beats Pasadena by a mile, don’t it?”
“Yes. I told you.”
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“I’m not sad. I’m just—”
“What?”
“Nothing. Money. What are we going to do for money?”
“Don’t worry,” he laughed. “Have I ever let you down yet?”
“No, but—”
“You better believe it,” he said, his eyes flashing.
Carlotta sensed she had best say nothing. When he felt good, he was one step away from losing his temper if anybody crossed him.
The bathroom was behind a storage shed of acetylene tanks downstairs. To get to it, Carlotta had to walk through the racks and the rags and endure the stares of the two mechanics. She had to knock on the wall before she turned the corner, because often they used it without closing the door.
Then she became pregnant, and her belly was swollen.
“Hey, minister’s daughter,” said Lloyd, the mechanic with the wool cap. “You sure you ain’t never been kissed?”
“She only sixteen?” asked the shorter mechanic.
“Franklin sure got himself some young pussy,” Carlotta heard.
She went upstairs quickly. It had been three months since she had left Pasadena with Franklin. At the time, it seemed adventurous. But the two mechanics below frightened her, and they seemed to drag even Franklin down into a mud that threatened her, too.
Franklin’s job was to procure used parts any way he could. Then they rebuilt large auto parts and sold them as new. They had to quickly size up the prospective customer and figure out how much trouble he might cause.
As Carlotta’s belly grew larger and larger, she stayed inside more and more. The illness confined her to bed for longer and longer periods. Franklin grew restless. He wanted his girl back. She was no fun. She wouldn’t do it any other way except the way she couldn’t now.
“Hey,” he coaxed. “Come here, babe.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The doctor said.”
“Fuck the doctor. You’re not that pregnant.”
“I am. I don’t show it, but I am.”
“What’s with you? You never used to be like this.”
“Things are different, Franklin—”
“Damn right they are.”
Somehow it was a relief, being separated from him in this way. Yet when he took his clothes off, the light golden, streaming in through the closed shades, she could not help but appreciate his body. His stocky shoulders, a powerful neck, and squared head. His legs were long for his torso, his hands large and strong, his genitals full and weighty. She liked to run her fingers over his chest. She liked the changes she caused in him.
But the pregnancy was hard on her. The doctor told her she should have waited a couple of years. She felt she was invaded, bloated from the inside. She felt she was being transformed into something else. At times she could not bear being touched.
Slowly Franklin’s temper grew shorter and shorter. She became almost frightened of him. It occurred to her he knew other girls. Yet what could she do?
One night he came in the door reeling.
“Pastor Dilworth’s daughter,” he said. “I would like to show you something.”
She knew immediately he was drunk. Or worse.
“You’re loaded,” she said, disgustedly.
He took off his clothes. He was proud of his erection.
“How about that?” he said, swaying. “Hah?”
“Look at you. You can hardly talk right.”
“Come on, babe. I want you and me to—”
“Leave me alone. You think I’m going to take that stuff when I’m eight months pregnant? Is that what you think?”
“Oh, Jesus,” he said, stumbling into the room, knocking over a lamp. He laughed at the sound of the crash. “I married me a frigid wife.”
Carlotta leaned back against the wall. For the first time the sight of her husband, sitting on the bed, ready for love, naked, disgusted her. It was grotesque, repulsive. Suddenly she wanted to go home. But there was no home for her anymore.
“Come here, Carlotta,” he whined.
“No, I can’t. Leave me alone—”
“Jesus,” he said, suddenly lying down on the floor.
He pulled the blanket down from the bed, wrapping it around his shoulder.
“Frigid,” he mumbled. “She’s frigid, Franklin. Poor Franklin.”
Gradually he fell into a deep slumber. She felt the life stir within her. It, too, seemed grotesque suddenly. She was trapped. Her whole life had suddenly squeezed itself into no future at all.
Across from the machine shop was a dusty road and, across from that, a wash: a concrete ditch twenty yards wide. The banks were also slabbed with concrete. The only water which trickled by was in a slimy green groove in the center. It was here that Franklin picked up their money. On Saturdays they raced their bikes for a fifty-dollar pot, and Franklin usually won. The only worry was the police.
One day two patrolmen came to see Lloyd. He was suspected of dealing in amphetamines. There was a search warrant. Lloyd leaned against the vise, twirling the handle, while the police searched the drawers. There was an infinite number of drawers, cabinets, files, not to mention the screws, bolts, machine parts, and rags in fire-proof cans.
Carlotta heard their voices while she lay on the bed inside.
“Let’s see what’s upstairs,” said one patrolman.
“You better not,” Franklin said. “You only got a warrant for the shop.”
“I got a warrant for this address, kid.”
Franklin ran up in front of them.
“You stay out of my house, you bastards!”
She heard one patrolman say to the other, “I didn’t care for that remark, did you?”
“Not at all. Listen, punk. You going to open the door or am I going to use your head to open it?”
