The grimmer, p.10
The Grimmer, page 10
“Why?” Vish said.
Rita laughed. “Most people hate where they’re from. But you’re probably at least a bit glad to be back, aren’t you?”
Vish didn’t answer. He put a hand to the middle of his chest, pressing in a bit, seeing if he could feel Farris’s teeth in his esophagus. By the time he was ready to say anything back to Rita, it was too late.
“I’m going to be making you talk a lot in here, so it’s okay if you’re a little quiet today. I just wanted you to know that your father’s mistakes are ones that he recognizes, and that it makes sense if part of you hates him right now for making you feel how you felt.”
“How did I feel?” Vish asked, annoyed.
Rita Goodis did something that made Vish feel sightly ashamed. She smiled, and apologized.
“I don’t know anything about you that you don’t know better yourself, Vish. It’s just the situation I’ve seen before. That’s all. Having a parent suddenly become unreliable can make it feel like your world is falling apart. Getting cut off from everything you know for two years is really painful.”
“Did you tell my parents to send me away?” Vish asked.
“No.”
“Did you tell them not to?”
Rita hesitated for a second. Just a second, before slouching a bit and lowering down from her perch on the desk, walking over to a mini fridge in the corner, and pulling out a Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar, which she opened and started to eat.
“I won’t eat in our real sessions,” she said. “And of course I told them not to send you away. I understand why they did it. I understand how your father couldn’t stand for you to be around him when he was unstable for another second. I understand that your mother had to pour everything she had into making sure you didn’t lose the house and everything, but I told them you’d be better off in the house with them. That wasn’t a professional opinion, it was just my opinion. Was I right?”
“Yes,” Vish said. “I barely talked to anyone outside of the classroom for two years. I started to hate my dad so much I pictured — I can’t even tell you what I pictured doing to him. And the only fun I could really have was hurting my mom’s feelings by ignoring her. Because they sent me to that place.”
“It wasn’t where they sent you, it was that they sent you away. We can talk about that here, and I can help you find ways to talk about it with your parents. And if you want to spend a session crying alone in my garage, that’s fine by me.”
“I wasn’t crying today. A ghoul spat his teeth into my mouth,” Vish said.
Rita Goodis stared at Vish and smiled, widely enough that her glasses moved. He could tell she wanted to laugh.
“Telling stories is another thing we can do in here. That sounds like a good one.”
“Just a joke,” Vish said, and then started talking about how he hadn’t been able to sleep all night after seeing his father leave with the suitcases Anji had packed for him, and how he’d used expired eyedrops to try to make his eyes look less bloodshot the next morning. Rita smiled, differently this time, and the conversation kept going for almost an hour.
Vish realized how good she was at making people talk right at the end, when he was in the middle of telling her something he’d never actually realized, let alone decided to talk about.
“When Mom and Dad sent me out there, just shipped me off without really asking me if I could handle staying at home, they made me get, really get, that I didn’t have control over anything. Not even where I slept. Maybe what I ate, but really only who I talked to. So I decided not to make any new friends at that school, not to even try, to only talk to the teachers and counsellors and everybody as much as I had to. Not a word more.”
“You’re talking to me, now,” Rita said. Not as though she was correcting him, just pointing it out. The cat, Buddy, jumped into her lap. The chair Rita was sitting on had felt pads on the legs so it didn’t scratch the floor: they were the same colour as the swatch in Vish’s wallet. Like everything else in the room, it made him feel comfortable, made him forget Mr. Farris.
“I guess I am. And I talked my parents into the job at the bookstore.”
“You did. So what does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Vish said. He searched around for the right answer, like he was in math class and his first guess had been wrong. Rita saw what he was doing and laughed.
“Not knowing is a fine thing, Vish. Not being sure. You weren’t right when you decided there was no point in talking to anybody, but you were sure about that at the time, right?”
Buddy leapt off Rita’s lap as she was talking.
“Yeah,” Vish said. “And I was wrong.”
“Not knowing is better than being wrong. We’ll talk about other stuff neither of us know next time you’re here.”
Vish petted Buddy on his way out of the room, putting his thumb on the diamond pattern between the tabby’s eyes, which blinked closed.
When he left Rita’s house, it was through the front door, not the garage. Waiting for Anji to arrive in the car, Vish sat on the steps and read from one of the Manly Wade Wellman books, only glancing up once when he saw movement in the high fir trees across the street, in a big undeveloped lot.
It was something white, high on the incline, behind a tree. A face. Farris’s mask? Farris? Vish clutched the book like a weapon. Then, just before it fully vanished behind the tree, he noticed that the face was framed with long dark hair — and in that face, there was the glint of the sun reflecting off a septum ring.
Chapter 13
Vish insisted on biking to the French Cultural Centre for the show after dinner, even though it was all the way downtown, and even though Munish Maurya promised to make sure that no one saw him being chauffeured. Vish did go out to his dad’s car, but only because he thought his house key might have slipped out of his jeans there: he looked around the passenger seat for a few seconds, checked the floor, then felt dizzy for a second and closed his eyes.
Vish was shocked to wake up with his head drooping toward the floor on the driver’s side, jerking up to smack the back of his head on the steering wheel. He’d felt a little dizzy on the ride back from Rita’s, but this was the first time he’d ever fainted. It was Farris’s teeth. He knew it. He had to talk to Gisela.
Vish sat up, remembered putting his house key in his desk drawer downstairs, and got out of the car. He made sure he looked relatively normal in the bathroom mirror before going upstairs again.
“I just want to go alone. No reason,” Vish said, as he returned the car keys to his dad. His mind felt blank for most of the pedal downtown, except for a vague fear that Mr. Farris would appear before he could see Gisela again and ask what to do. He was using the blue ten-speed he’d gotten at a garage sale ages ago, even though it was too big for him back then, no matter how much he adjusted the seat. He fit it perfectly now, and it took downhills so well that Vish could feel the wheels starting to steer themselves, to lean into curves before he did.
Neither of his parents had asked about how the session with Rita had gone, and while Vish understood that he’d been tricked, on some level — the non-appointment had most definitely been an appointment — he felt too good about talking to Rita Goodis to want to spoil it with any sort of complaint or conflict with his parents. And if his dad was offering him driving services that came with a promise to stay out of sight, it meant Munish Maurya was very happy with him indeed.
Vish straightened up as he passed the baseball diamond after the big downslope curve on High Road, taking control back from the bike before passing over the railroad tracks. He stuck to quiet streets as soon as he could get off High. While he pedalled, Vish knew he was pushing any thoughts of the teeth away as soon as they came up. He knew that even if he couldn’t feel their weight in his gut any longer, they were in him, and Mr. Farris had forced them in there. And he knew that not thinking about what had been done to him was a way to keep from falling apart completely before he could talk to Gisela.
Vish locked his bike up two blocks away from the French Cultural Centre, a blue-and-white converted church with three minivans parked illegally in front of it. He didn’t know why he parked so far away — maybe to preserve some illusion that he could have driven there? Older kids — high school seniors — were loading amplifiers, guitars, and drums up the steps, grunting and stretching their hands. Vish crossed the street casually, so he could look into the centre, which was almost empty. His Casio told him it was eight-thirty, right on time, but the brightly lit room contained only a few arguing band guys and one silent kid he recognized, Barry Montague, sitting behind a folding table with a beige money box in front of him. Barry had played third trombone in band class, but mostly he talked and was told to shut up in class. There was no sign of Gisela.
“Hi,” Gisela said, from right behind him. Instead of jumping, Vish walked a few steps rapidly away from her, before turning around. Gisela was wearing a large black hoodie with Meat Puppets across the front, and both her hands were shoved into the pockets. She had done something different with her eye makeup that Vish couldn’t come close to describing or understanding, but it looked cool. He thought about commenting on it but didn’t know how.
“Sorry,” she said.
“For spying on me from the woods?”
“Yeah.”
“You followed me from the bookstore?” Vish asked.
“Of course I did,” Gisela said. “Farris came to your house last night. I’m trying to make sure you’re safe. Plus, wherever that was you went isn’t far from my place.”
“Your place?” Even though Vish knew that Agastya lived above the shop with Moby, and that was it, he’d somehow envisioned another apartment downtown where Gisela had a stack of books, clothes, and some sort of untidy sleeping area. Basically the kind of apartment he’d want for himself.
“I have a little cabin in the deeper woods on some property Isla bought. You can see it sometime,” Gisela said, as though inviting him to her place was no big deal. She pointed expectantly to the entrance of the Cultural Centre. “I think we’re too early, but I could use some water or a Coke or something. You want?”
“Let’s go somewhere to talk before the show starts,” Vish said. “More happened.”
“What more?”
“More with Mr. Farris,” Vish whispered. Behind one of the minivans, a snare drum case fell to the cement and burst open, cueing a lot of swearing.
“Did you lose the charm? If you did, you better find it,” Gisela said. She walked past Vish and gestured with her head that he should follow her. Just as Vish started after her, he saw two guys run up the steps of the cultural centre enthusiastically and then stop dead when they saw how empty it was inside. It was Danny and Matt. It was Vish’s first time seeing Danny in two years and he was shocked to see how different he was: taller, yeah, but he’d always been tall. His skin was clear and his bones were sharp, his always-greasy hair now looking messy in exactly the same way the guys’ hair in the guitar magazines looked messy. His weird friend was now undeniably good-looking. And Vish couldn’t help thinking of him as his friend. Him and Matt both.
Matt ran unevenly, but quickly, and Danny’s run was really just a long stride that covered as much ground as a normal run. Looking into the empty hall, Danny laughed and then started coughing. Matt smacked him on the back. They did not see Vish behind them, and soon Vish was walking quickly after Gisela, who was jaywalking across the intersection.
“I don’t know if this charm works at all,” Vish said, trying to talk between breaths. Gisela walked fast when she wasn’t slowed down by Agastya. “He was waiting for me in the dark. In a garage. I touched him by accident and he — he filled my mouth with his teeth, like he was pushing in pieces of gum.”
“That didn’t happen,” Gisela said, stopping. “I watched you go into that place. You weren’t followed.”
“He was in there already,” Vish said. “I’ve been trying not to think about it, because you said you’re counting on me, and you can’t count on me if I’m totally crazy, which is what I’ll be if I think about being full of someone else’s teeth. Him or one of his nachzehrers, filling my guts. Even saying that out loud makes me feel and sound crazy, doesn’t it?” A laugh escaped Vish. He hadn’t meant to laugh.
“Why are you closing your eyes? Vish? What are you doing?”
Shutting his eyelids was even less on-purpose than the laugh. They came down over his eyeballs like blinds, the string yanked by someone else. Vish could feel Gisela’s arm on his shoulder, could hear her voice saying his name, but he suddenly wasn’t with her.
He was with Mr. Farris. In Mr. Farris.
At the highest peak of a fir tree, Mr. Farris was looking down at his feet and the earth, a hundred feet below him. Vish was looking through Mr. Farris’s eyes. He couldn’t hear Gisela anymore: only the sound of the wind. It was cooler up here. Mr. Farris was now looking farther, to the lake, where a pale green light pulsed up into the dusk. Vish heard Mr. Farris’s voice, but knew that it was his own lips that were moving.
You and me, Vish. Can you hear the rest of them?
“Vish!”
As a thousand, ten thousand, twelve thousand five hundred voices rose in a single scream in Vish’s ears, coming from the guts of Farris, coming out of Vish’s own centre, Gisela was standing above him, with her hand cocked back to slap him. He was kneeling, he realized, and got up just as Gisela’s hand was swinging down. The slap got him in the arm.
“Ow!” Vish said.
They were in the Safeway parking lot. Vish saw a familiar face, the old Knox school librarian, Mrs. Herron. She was loading her groceries into the back of an old Tercel with a dog and her son in it. She was staring at Vish and Gisela.
Gisela started to laugh, as though Vish had made a joke so amazing she had just had to slap him on the arm.
“Ha! I know!” Vish said to Gisela, whose smile only made her look more terrified. He hoped the fear wasn’t visible to Mrs. Herron. He waved to her.
Mrs. Herron waved back and made the kind of suggestive, cutesy smile adults make when they see two teenagers on what could possibly be interpreted as a date. Before Vish could think of what expression would be appropriate to beam back at the librarian, Gisela grabbed his arm and pulled him along with her down the sidewalk.
“We have to get to the lake, right now,” Gisela said. “When did this happen?”
“Like, three, four hours ago.”
“He can’t hurt you, he knows that. Even if you touched him first, he must be too afraid of Isla’s spell to really . . . I didn’t think he’d be desperate enough to try something like this. He’s trying to — to take you. To inhabit you. It’s not hurting you, not hurting your body, so he must think he can get around the charm that way,” Gisela was saying, walking even faster now, talking as though she didn’t want an answer.
“I don’t understand.”
“He can’t take a bite of you, but he made you take a bite of him. It’s a huge risk: if he’d drawn a drop of your blood, the protection you carry would have burst him into atoms. But he was careful; he’s trying to draw you into his body, leave your body out here as a shell, free for the taking for one of his nachzehrers. Did you see something through his eyes just now?”
“I think so.”
Gisela grabbed his arm and started to hurry him along faster. It probably looked like they were late for a movie at the Paramount, like their date had moved on from the parking lot. Vish, stupidly, thought about that instead of what Gisela had just told him. Her hand on his arm just below the sleeve of his t-shirt, her cool palm on his sweating skin, seemed more important, for a second, than the teeth he swallowed that were basically eating him from the inside out, absorbing him into the body of a ghoul.
The restaurant patios on Bernard were crowded and noisy, the Kelly O’Bryan’s overflowing with teenagers and college kids, even the wall outside the Willow, where the bikers hung out, crowded and social with older bearded men and some women covered in tattoos and denim. Greycat Books and Agastya’s apartment were a block behind them. Gisela hadn’t slowed down, taking Vish right through City Park, through the dark underpass that he used to be scared of when he was a kid, and finally onto a patch of beach that wasn’t occupied by anyone. About fifty feet away, a family was packing up the end of a picnic dinner, paying no attention to them. Gisela led Vish across the white sand, littered with bottlecaps and Dubble Bubble wrappers, and stopped just at the shoreline.
“Keep walking,” she said.
“What?” Vish asked.
“You can take your shirt and pants off, if you care, but you need to get into that lake, right away. Vish, how could you just hang around and have a casual evening after what happened? This could be too late.”
“You said I was right not to overreact after seeing Farris in my own backyard. You said that he wouldn’t try to hurt me, and you’ve shown me — you and Isla, if she’s even real — illusions that seemed just as real as what happened in that garage. But you’re saying this one is real. Real for real.”
“We should have been even clearer about you not touching him. Never touching him,” Gisela said.
“It wasn’t on purpose. He was waiting for me in the dark, and I just reached ahead and my hand kind of —” For the first time, Vish remembered that his hand hadn’t stopped when it had encountered Mr. Farris’s chest. It had sunk in. Just as Farris’s teeth were inside him, his hand had been inside of Mr. Farris.
I touched him first, Vish thought. I invited him into me.
“This isn’t your fault. It’s ours, mine and Agastya’s. Is that clear?” Gisela seemed to have guessed exactly what he was thinking.
