Page 54 of Going Home in the Dark

“I don’t like this,” said Spencer, and Rebecca said, “We should call it a night and go home,” as they followed Ernie and Bobby into Liberty Park.

To the left and right, ghouls, ghosts, men with goat skulls for heads, and fiends of many kinds popped up as though spring-loaded or shimmered into existence as holograms or were sitting on benches, holding snow cones full of fake shaved ice.

“That hot dog is totally coming back on me,” said Bobby as he kept moving.

“What’s happening?”

“This isn’t right.”

“This is so wrong.”

Although they openly expressed their misgiving, they progressed as if they were one organism, pacing one another without hesitancy. In their lives leading to this moment, they had suffered a similar sense of abandonment by the families that should have loved them and held them close. Each had reacted by keeping a certain distance from the social circles of which others their age were a part. After all, if you couldn’t trust your parents, if they were so high on their lives that they couldn’t find their way down to yours, how could you put your faith in people who weren’t even part of your family? So you told yourself that your eccentricities were the things about you that made you unlovable, the very things about yourself over which you had little or no control—your appearance, your intelligence, your natural enthusiasms—and you emphasized those qualities until they were no longer your weakness and became your strength, your armor against the world. If then you discovered others like you—nerds in a world of cool kids—there could be an end to loneliness at last and the birth of a group purpose that was a civilizing force. All of that, however, did not explain why the four amigos continued toward the pavilion like one creature with eight legs. They were individuals, defiant enough to take satisfaction in being outcasts in a world of sheep. Yet they proceeded as if they were lemmings, sleepwalking toward a cliff rather than racing toward it.

They reached a flight of four steps. They climbed them. They were aware that some force compelled them, and they didn’t like it. They suspected they could resist whatever magnetism drew them, but they surrendered to it because in this case capitulationwas more interesting. The primary way high intelligence complicates life is that it inspires endless questions and the determination to answer them.

They stepped inside. The raised bandstand was at the far end of the building. In the center of the dance floor stood a tall man with a thick neck and broad shoulders, his back to them. Something lay on the floor in front of him, but his form and the carousel of revolving lights and shadows made it difficult to deduce what he was standing over.

Like all of his kind, he possessed an uncanny sense of how long to wait in order to have the greatest dramatic effect before turning toward his audience. The fact that he was holding a severed head by its hair and that the head appeared to be real also contributed to the impact he had on those who’d been drawn here to him.

Although only Bobby had gone into the parsonage weeks earlier and seen Wayne Louis Hornfly in the library armchair, the other three amigos knew who this must be, which was a tribute to Bobby’s talent to describe a character and which in part explained his great success as a novelist.

Even in these kaleidoscopic fragments of swarming light and shadow, they could clearly see the severed head had chubby cheeks, kind features, and a look of heartbreaking innocence. The murdered person who once possessed it had surely been a nice and harmless individual. The amigos most likely all knew—and certainly Rebecca did—that they would never be able to forget this face. One day years from now, perhaps at the altar on their wedding day or at Adorno’s after a nice lunch, this image would flash into mind with sickening impact and sort of ruin the moment.

“This is a warning,” Hornfly said, shaking the severed head so it dripped more copiously on the dance floor. “You have periodically continued your surveillance of Pastor Larry and been researching his past as best you can. You have asked questions of people who knew nothing, and you should be glad they knew nothing, because if they’d known something, we would cut off allyourheads after gouging out your eyes. You saw something you were never meant to see, Pastor Larry running through the cemetery at night. You went somewhere you had no right to go, down into the church basement where those poorly constructed men were lying naked, a mistaken creation about which we are much embarrassed. You must stop now or you will be stopped in an exhibition of the most gleeful violence of which we’re capable, and we are capable of gleeful violence greater than you can imagine with your limited human brainpower.”

Everyone was silent for a moment. The mirrored globes revolved overhead, and beams of light directed at them fractured into lacy patterns that swept around the dark pavilion. Music often enlivened this place, but there was no music now. Ernie Hernishen lamented the lack of music, for a nice tune would help settle everyone’s nerves. It is a mystery what inspires us to take the path in life we choose, but it might have been here that Ernie decided to be a songwriter.

Rebecca was the first to speak to Hornfly. “Don’t you think this warning of yours is more extreme than it needs to be?”

The monster did not take this criticism well, which monsters seldom do. “You are obstinate mules. Like all mules you will die like dogs if you don’t stay in your stable where you belong.”

“May I make an observation that might be helpful?” she asked.

“You have nothing of value to give us.”

“Just the same, I suggest that before you use similes to make your point, you think them through. Mules die like mules, not like dogs. And generally speaking, neither mules nor dogs are kept in stables.”

“I see you shaking,” Hornfly retorted. “Don’t think I don’t see you shaking.”

“It’s a little chilly tonight,” Rebecca said. “Anyway, take the time to think through your similes. We’ll wait.”

Bobby said, “How do we know that’s a real head?”

Although Hornfly had a face that distorted any expression into one that was hard to read, there was astonishment in the killer’s voice. “We are not a genotype that makes empty threats.”

“Genotype?” Spencer asked. “What’s a genotype?”

“He just gave us a clue,” Ernie said.

“How do you spell that?” Rebecca asked. “With anaor ano?”

“What is wrong with you?” Hornfly demanded. He stepped aside, revealing a headless body on the floor. “This will be you if you poke your nose in where noses don’t belong. Are you all insane?”

“No, no,” Spencer assured him. “We are just some kids who’ve been kicked around and dumped on pretty much since we came into the world, and we’ve had enough of it.”

Bobby said, “We’re not going to take it anymore. We’re not going to be called names and laughed at and just keep our heads down. We’re not going to find monsters in a church basement and scurry away and do nothing about it.”

Rebecca said, “We’re not going to be intimidated by some lumpy orange-eyed monster with a wriggling beard and three names like a serial killer, some stupid genotype who rips the headsoff innocent people just to make a point.” She spoke with passion, although in truth it was not just her stirring speech that caused her three amigos to tremble and to feel that their bladders were full. “We have been the objects of endless mockery and vitriol and plain old meanness, targeted by barbarians who express their feelings for us with their fists, with hair pulling and shin kicking, abandoned by the people whose highest responsibility was to take care of us when we were little and vulnerable. But at last, we have someone. We have each other. We’re amigos. We’ve been through the wringer, nothing more can be wrung out of us. Andyou”—she imbued the pronoun with cold scorn and contempt—“youstand there with a severed head, trying to look sooo scary, thinking you can bend us to your will, terrify us so much we’ll turn tail and run. Well, that shows how clueless you are, becausewe don’t even have tails, you despicable turd.”

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