The dissonance, p.28
The Dissonance, page 28
The Cole-thing gestures at the ceiling, and sets off a resounding bang. It’s as loud as a thunderclap, but indoors. People, confused about what they’re hearing, start to look around. A few of them spot the Cole-thing standing at the back of the sanctuary.
“Oh Jesus,” someone says, their voice sick with horror at the sight.
The Cole-thing gestures at the ceiling again, and then again, sounding off more thunderclaps.
“He’s got a gun!” Owen yells.
Finally, the congregation begins to panic. There’s shouting, and screaming, and the roar of too many bodies trying to move at once. People stampede the doors. Some make it out. Others fall and are trampled. Owen and the Cole-thing stand out of the way and let it happen. The Cole-thing keeps its eyes closed and traces green characters in the air. Owen’s seen him do the trick before, but it’s every bit as interesting now. More interesting, really, because a couple of the characters look familiar. Is he just getting used to seeing them? Or has he seen them somewhere before? The latter feels correct, because the sight fills Owen with a sense of déjà vu. Anyway, it makes a nice distraction from his own discomfort as people continue to struggle toward the exits.
Owen’s so interested, so engrossed in the magic trick, he doesn’t notice the one man who isn’t running, despite the fact that he’s sitting only a few feet away in the back pew, next to a Black woman who appears to have fallen asleep. This man stands and turns toward Owen. He’s tall, broad, and handsome like a cartoon character, his square jaw clenched as he reaches for something in his suitcoat.
Here’s the good guy with the gun. He has his pistol out of his coat pocket by the time Owen sees what’s happening. The Cole-thing must see it, too, because it stops its closed-eyes magic trick and flicks a hand at the man with the gun. There’s another bang as some invisible force hits the man and sends him sprawling backward over the pew behind him. He falls with a cry, and there’s a sound of wood cracking with the force of his impact.
Owen looks at his abductor, then at the place where the man disappeared from view. The man doesn’t get up. Whatever the Cole-thing did seems to have incapacitated him.
The sanctuary is mostly clear. A few rumpled figures litter the aisles, either unconscious, too injured to move, or dead. Only four people remain slumped in the pews—two men and two women. They look like they’re asleep. The Cole-thing leans over the back pew and lifts the closest sleeper—the Black woman who’d been next to the dead good guy with the gun.
“Is that what we’re here for?” Owen says. “Just her?”
“Not just her,” the thing says. “Get the man at the front. The tall one next to the other sleeping woman.” It points.
Owen moves forward on shaky legs to the pew indicated. He finds a skinny woman in a black dress. Her bare arms are sleeved with tattoos and her ears are gauged. She leans against a tall, handsome man with blond hair, a small bow of a mouth, and a patrician nose that should be homely but somehow isn’t.
The Cole-thing, apparently having finished carrying off their first prisoner, returns to the church to help Owen pick up the beautiful man. As they carry him toward the church doors, toward Cole’s station wagon, Owen glances at the remaining two sleepers.
“What about them?” he says.
“Leave them,” the Cole-thing says. “Their part in this story is over.”
1999
Field Trip
Athena
Around 1 a.m. on the night before the field trip—the one that would take Athena and her friends out of this world and into another—Athena woke from a light sleep, to the sound of a tap at her bedroom window.
With a few quick hand motions, she conjured a ball of eldritch green light and sent it to part the curtains and illuminate the window. Hal stood on the other side of the glass, waving. Athena got up and opened the window. The seal of the air-conditioning broke, and a rush of July heat smacked her the rest of the way awake.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“I’m here to rescue you,” Hal said.
“From what?”
“Um. The boredom of a good night’s sleep?”
“Sleep isn’t boring for me.”
“Come on. Let’s go for a ride.”
He smiled at her, and she knew she couldn’t say no to him. Not when he smiled at her like that. She told him to give her a minute and meet her out front. He gave her two thumbs-up and disappeared into the dark around the side of the house. She shut the window, put on some jeans, pulled her hair out of its bonnet and into a loose ponytail, and went out the front door as quietly as possible.
Lorna’s convertible stood at the curb, top down, Hal stationed in the driver’s seat. He’d inherited the car, his mother’s sole surviving possession, after last summer’s fire. The intervening year had not been kind to the vehicle. These days, in addition to the physical shortcomings like a lack of rearview mirrors, the instruments had gone wonky, too. Sometimes the fuel gauge picked a spot and stayed put, regardless of the tank’s contents. The speedometer lay limp most of the time, only fluttering up from the baseline when Hal floored the accelerator.
If anyone else had asked her to get in this car, Athena would have refused, gone back inside, and gone to sleep. But for Hal, she climbed into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt.
“I guess Brofur was busy tonight?” she said.
Hal had been dating Cynthia Brofur most of the summer. Athena had barely seen him for the last several weeks, aside from Dissonant lessons at Marsh House.
“Couldn’t tell you,” Hal said. “We broke up.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Athena said.
He smiled a little as he started the car, and she looked out the window so he wouldn’t see her smile in turn.
When they were a couple of blocks away from the house, he turned on the stereo. He had his Discman hooked up through an adapter in the tape deck, and turned the volume up to noise-violation levels. They drove through town, arms out the open windows, breeze and velocity tangling their hair. Athena settled in to the simple but effective sensations of loud music and forward momentum. The AFI CD in the player set her heart racing, the way music only worked when you were young and your emotional nerve endings remained intact. Twenty years from now, Athena would forget the name of the band, and the lyrics to the song, but she’d never forget feeling free and invincible at forty mph, with only good things ahead—or how that thrill died when the car turned onto Haven Street, coughed, sputtered, and died.
“Uh,” Hal said.
“What’s wrong?” Athena said.
They were losing speed. The street, lined with closed stores and restaurants, appeared deserted, the entire town asleep. They came to a red light and Hal stopped the car.
“Stupid fuel gauge tricked me,” he said. “I thought I had more gas.”
“Citgo’s up the street,” Athena said, and pointed. “Do you have any money?”
“My wealth isn’t, shall we say, currently liquid.”
Athena dug into the pockets of her jeans, and produced a crumpled bill.
“Is this enough to get us home?” she said.
“Yes?”
“You have no idea.”
“I do not,” he said.
“Do you have a gas can?”
“I don’t even have a rearview mirror.”
“Then we get out and push. Station’s only another couple of lights down.”
He put the car in neutral, and stood by the open driver’s side door as Athena stationed herself behind the trunk. The light turned green and they leaned into the push. The car rolled. Sweat formed on her brow, in her pits, on the back of her neck. Her left leg cried out in protest and her back complained.
“What do we do if the next light is red?” Hal said.
“Try to hop in and hit the brake,” Athena said. “Or run through and hope for the best.”
“Like a motherfucking outlaw,” Hal said. “I like it.”
The car rolled past a strip mall, and a closed liquor store, and the town cemetery. As they passed the cemetery’s darkened gravel driveway, blue lights flared and a siren chirped. A sheriff’s deputy, waiting for late-night mischief-makers.
Hal got into the car and shifted into park. Athena walked up beside him as the cruiser pulled in behind.
“If he asks,” Hal said, “we’re on a date tonight, were on our way home, and ran out of gas.”
Athena’s face, warm from the effort of the car push, flushed warmer still.
“I thought this was a date,” she said, mock indignant.
His mouth remained open as he tried to decide how to respond.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “Are we in real trouble?” Despite the flush in her face, she couldn’t stop an icy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d snuck out of her parents’ house to go carousing, and now the cops were involved. Athena’s parents had coached her on how to behave around police officers—always do exactly what you were told; never argue; be polite, even if you weren’t doing anything wrong. They’d told her to always treat every interaction with the police as life-or-death.
Hal leaned over to the glove box and opened it. A bottle of Wild Turkey fell out onto the floorboard. The icy feeling in Athena’s gut spread through her body as Hal swept the bottle under the seat and out of sight, then grabbed his insurance paperwork from the box.
“Of course not,” Hal said. “Let me do the talking.”
The deputy climbed out of his cruiser. Hal caught Athena’s eye and winked.
“Good evening, deputy,” he said, leaning past her.
Athena turned. She knew all the deputies in town, but this one she knew better than most: Deputy Jordan McCormick, her old neighbor, who’d graduated Clegg High in May and joined the department right after. She relaxed a little.
“Car trouble?” Jordan asked.
Hal launched into his spiel about their date, the myriad problems with his car (including a faulty fuel gauge, which he intended to fix at the earliest opportunity), and how they were on their way to remedy the gas problem now. McCormick listened to all of it with a half-smile, then turned to Athena.
“This true?” he said. “You on a date with this miscreant?”
“You’ve seen the pickings in my class,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”
Jordan’s half-smile remained firm through Athena’s weak joke before he returned his attention to Hal. “I could write you a ticket for all the things wrong with this car, you know. Or, I could be a decent human being and lend you my fuel can to get some gas and get you home.”
“Do we get to vote?” Hal said. “Because I vote for the second choice.”
Jordan got the can from the trunk of his cruiser, directed Hal to remain with the car, and then walked with Athena to the Citgo up the road.
“Athena Watts dating Hal Isaac,” Jordan said, once they were out of earshot.
“He’s a good person,” Athena said.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t. You can do better, though.”
“You’re just being nice,” Athena said.
“I’m not.”
They arrived at the gas station and Athena gave her crumpled money to the deputy. He handed it back.
“This one is on the Sheriff’s Department.” He swiped a credit card through the reader and knelt to put the nozzle into the top of the gas can. “So. You’ll be a senior in a few weeks?”
“You have a good memory,” she said.
“Imagine you have big plans after graduation. College in some big city.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Ask me again after you’re old enough to vote or buy a gun.”
Jordan finished filling the can, put the nozzle back on its hook, and tightened the lid of the can before he stood. They started back to the car and Athena tried to find her next words. She must’ve misunderstood. There was no way this older boy—man—was flirting with her.
“Maybe I will,” she said. “Ask you, I mean.”
He smiled again, but it was fleeting, and quickly replaced with a frown. “You understand you’re the reason Hal isn’t getting arrested tonight?”
She stopped walking. “No. I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t want anything going on the record that could affect your future,” he said. “But your friend reeks of booze. You must’ve noticed. You do the driving on the way back, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, as she started walking again. She hadn’t smelled anything in the car, but she wasn’t a drinker, so she wouldn’t know, would she? Did Hal always smell that way, and was she just used to it?
“Consider making some new friends,” he said. “Guy like that will ruin your life if you let him. I’ve seen it happen to other girls we went to school with. Girls who got stuck.”
“Thought you didn’t want me to leave,” she said.
“I sure as shit don’t want you trapped here, either,” he said.
They came back to the car. Deputy McCormick poured the donated gas into the tank and sent them on their way. Athena drove, as promised. Hal stayed oddly quiet, as if cowed, waiting for her to speak.
“I didn’t know you’d been drinking tonight,” she said at last.
“You couldn’t tell?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Where’d you get it?” she asked. Hal had been living with Professor Marsh and Peter since his mother died, and as far as Athena knew, Marsh didn’t even keep alcohol in the house.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“You asked me to get in a car with you when you were drunk. That’s not okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should’ve told you.”
“Don’t apologize. Promise me you won’t drink and drive again.”
“I’ll think it over, Mom,” he said.
“Jordan could have arrested you,” she said. “He didn’t, because he didn’t want me to get in trouble.” She pulled the car over to the curb and killed the engine. “Take this seriously, okay?”
“I hear you,” he said.
“And the next time you ask me on a midnight drive, I don’t want it to be because you’re drunk and sad you broke up with another girl.”
She started the car again, and drove the rest of the way back to her parents’ house. Hal remained cowed and quiet. When she got home, Athena parked and got out, then remembered something else the deputy had said.
“Promise me something,” she said.
“Haven’t I promised enough for one night?” Hal asked.
“Promise me we’ll get out of this town, and that once we’re gone, we’ll stay gone.”
“Try and keep me here one day—no, one hour—after graduation.” He looked out the window and seemed to realize where they were. “Are you calling it a night?”
“We have an early day, remember?” Athena said. “The professor said he’d leave without us if we’re late.”
“Bullshit,” Hal said. “He can’t leave without you.”
“You’re welcome to test that assumption,” she said. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
“What about me?” Hal asked.
“I’m not sneaking you into the house.”
“I’m not suggesting any funny business.”
“Good,” she said, meaning the opposite. “Sleep in the car. You’ll be okay to drive by the time you wake up.”
“I can’t sleep on the living room couch?”
“Good night, Hal.”
“Wait wait wait,” he said. “Before you go.”
She let go of the door handle and turned back to Hal with a sigh.
“What?”
“Can you show me the sign for air again? I’ve been trying to remember and I’m drawing a total blank.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to remember, and when you’re with me, I sort of can.”
She leaned over, so close she could smell the sweat on his body. It was somehow both repellent and irresistible at the same time. She gently took his hands into her own. She lifted them both, then positioned his fingers just so.
“Hold like this,” she said, dizzy with the scent of him. “And then, just…” She slowly put his hands through the motions. At first, nothing happened, but by the time they finished, yellow-green light trailed their fingers through the air.
Hal smiled. “There it is,” he said.
She let go of his hands, but more slowly than she had to, her fingers sliding along his until they were separated once more.
“My fingers always feel so tingly after you do that,” he said, flexing his hands.
“Okay weirdo,” she said. “Good night for real.” She shut the driver’s side door, jogged across the lawn, and slipped back into her parents’ house. She waited until she’d undressed and gotten back into bed to let the night wash over her. Deputy McCormick wasn’t wrong to be concerned about Hal. He’d always been a slacker and a goof, but since his mother had died, there’d been a new intensity to the goofing off. A hard edge.
But tonight, at least, Hal was safe. In fact, he was just outside in Lorna’s car. She closed her eyes and conjured him lying with his seat reclined, the top and windows down, his arms crossed over his chest like a vampire in an oversized coffin.
What was love but the willingness to endure unpleasantness for another? Cynthia Brofur might’ve been Hal’s latest make-out partner, but tonight Hal slept in a car because Athena had told him to.
She flexed her hands in the darkness. She hadn’t admitted it in the car, but moving his hands through the motions of a Dissonant sign made her fingers all tingly, too.
