Roy walked his bike with his head thrust forward, shoulders hunched, muscles corded in his neck, as if he expected someone to strike him hard on the back of the head. Even in the fast-dwindling, purple-amber light of late evening, the sudden sprinkle of sweat on his forehead and upper lip was visible; darkly glistening jewels. “You can’t trust hardly anyone, hardly anyone at all. Even people who’re supposed to like you can turn on you faster than you think. Even friends. People who say they love you are the worst, the most dangerous, the most untrustworthy of all.” He was breathing harder, talking faster by the moment. “People who say they love you will pounce when they get the chance. You gotta always remember that they’re just waiting for the opportunity to get you. Love’s a trick. A cover. A way to catch you off guard. Never let down your guard. Never.” He glanced at Colin, and his eyes were wild.
“Do you think I’d turn on you, tell lies about you, snitch on you to your parents, things like that?”
“Would you?” Roy asked.
“Of course not.”
“Not even if your own neck was in the wringer, too, and the only way you could save yourself was to snitch on me?”
“Not even then.”
“What if I broke some law, some really serious law, and the cops were after me and came to you with a lot of questions?”
“I wouldn’t snitch on you.”
“I hope you wouldn’t.”
“You can trust me.”
“I hope so. I really hope so.”
“You don’t have to hope. You should know.”
“I gotta be careful.”
“Should I be careful of you?”
Roy said nothing.
“Should I be careful of you?” Colin asked again.
“Maybe. Yeah, maybe you should. When I said we were all just animals, just a bunch of selfish animals, I meant me, too.”
There was such a haunted look in Roy’s eyes, such a knowledge of pain that Colin had to look away.
He didn’t know what had sparked Roy’s diatribe, but he didn’t want to pursue the subject. He was worried that it would lead to an argument and that Roy would never want to see him again; and he desperately wanted to be friends with Roy for the rest of their lives. If he blew apart this relationship, he would never get another chance to be best buddies with anyone as terrific as Roy. He was positive of that. If he spoiled this, he would have to go back to being a loner; and now that he had experienced acceptance, companionship, and involvement, he didn’t think he could go back.
For a while they walked in silence. They crossed a busy side street under a canopy of oak trees and entered another block of the alleyway.
Gradually the extraordinary tension that had given Roy the appearance of an angry snake began to seep out of him, much to Colin’s relief. Roy lifted his head and let his shoulders down and stopped breathing like a horse at the end of an eight-furlong race.
Colin knew a bit about race horses. His father had taken him to the track half a dozen times, expecting him to be impressed with the amount of money wagered and with the sweaty manliness of the sport. Instead, Colin had been delighted by the grace of the horses and had spoken of them as if they were dancers. His father hadn’t liked that and had thereafter gone to the races alone.
He and Roy reached another comer, turned left, out of the alley, and pushed their bicycles along an ivy-framed sidewalk.
Look-alike stucco houses lay on both sides of the street, sheltering under a variety of palm trees, skirted by oleander and jade plants and dracaena and schefflera and roses and cacti and holly and ferns and poinsettia bushes—ugly houses made elegant by California’s lush natural beauty.
Finally Roy spoke. “Colin, you remember what I said about how a guy sometimes has to do things his buddy wants to do even if he himself maybe really doesn’t like it?”
“I remember.”
“That’s one of the true tests of friendship. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess so.”
“For Christ’s sake, can’t you at least once in a while have a firm opinion about something? You never say a flat yes or no. You’re always ‘guessing.’ ”
Stung, Colin said, “All right. I think it’s a true test of friendship. I agree with you.”
“Well, what if I said I wanted to kill something just for fun and I wanted you to help me.”
“You mean like a cat?”
“I’ve already killed a cat.”
“Yeah. It was in all the newspapers.”
“I did. In a cage. Like I said.”
“I just can’t believe it.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Okay, okay,” Colin said. “Let’s not go through the whole argument again. Let’s pretend I swallowed your story—hook, line, and sinker. You killed a cat in a birdcage. So what next—a dog?”
“If I wanted to kill a dog, would you help?”
“Why would you want to?”
“It might be a popper.”
“Jeez.”
“Would you help kill it?”
“Where would you get the dog? You think the humane society gives them out to people who want to torture them?”
“I’d just steal the first pooch I saw,” Roy said.
“Someone’s pet?”
“Sure.”
“How would you kill it?”
“Shoot it. Blow its head off.”
“And the neighbors wouldn’t hear?”
“We’d take it out in the hills first.”
“You expect it to just pose and smile while we plug it?”
“We’d tie it up and shoot it a dozen times.”
“Where do you expect to get the gun?”
“What about your mother?” Roy asked.
“You think my mother sells illegal guns out of the kitchen or something?”
“Doesn’t she have a gun of her own?”
“Sure. A million of ‘em. And a tank and a bazooka and a nuclear missile.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Why would she have a gun?”
“A sexy woman living alone usually has a gun for protection.”
“But she doesn’t live alone,” Colin said. “Did you forget about me?”
“If some crazy rapist wanted to get his hands on your mom, he’d walk right over you.”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“Be serious. Does your mother have a gun?”
Colin didn’t want to admit there was a gun in the house. He had a hunch that he would save himself a lot of trouble if he lied. But at last he said, “Yeah. She has a pistol.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think she keeps it loaded. She could never shoot anyone. My father loves guns: ergo, my mother hates them. And so do I. I’m not going to borrow her gun to do something crazy like shoot your neighbor’s dog.”
“Well, we could kill it some other way.”
“What would we do—bite it?”
A night bird sang in the branches above them.
The sea breeze was cooler than it had been ten minutes ago.
Colin was tired of pushing the bike, but he sensed that Roy still had a lot to say and wanted to say it quietly, which he couldn’t do if they were riding.
Roy said, “We could tie the dog up and kill it with a pitchfork.”
“Jeez.”
“That would be a popper!”
“You’re making me sick.”
“Would you help me?”
“You don’t need my help.”
“But it would prove you’re not just a fair-weather friend.”
After a long while Colin said, “I suppose if it was really important to you, if you just had to do it or die, I could be there when you did it.”
“What do you mean by ‘be there’?”
“I mean... I guess I could watch.”
“What if I wanted you to do more than watch?”
“Like what?”
“What if I wanted you to take th
e pitchfork and stab the dog a few times yourself?”
“Sometimes you can be really weird, Roy.”
“Could you stab it?” Roy persisted.
“No.”
“I’ll bet you could.”
“I couldn’t ever kill anything.”
“But you could watch?”
“Well, if it would prove to you once and for all that I’m your friend and that I can be trusted...”
They entered the circle of light under a street lamp, and Roy stopped. He was grinning. “You’re getting better every day.”
“Oh?”
“You’re developing nicely,” Roy said.
“Am I?”
“Yesterday, you’d have said you couldn’t even watch a dog being killed. Today, you say you could watch but you couldn’t participate. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, you’ll tell me you could find it within yourself to pick up that pitchfork and make mincemeat of that damned dog.”
“No. Never.”
“And a week from now, you’ll finally admit that you’d enjoy killing something.”
“No. You’re wrong. This is stupid.”
“I’m right. You’re just like me.”
“And you’re no killer.”
“I am.”
“Not in a million years.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You’re Roy Borden.”
“I mean what’s inside me. You don’t know, but you’ll learn.”
“There’s no cat-and-dog killer inside you.”
“I’ve killed things bigger than a cat.”
“Like what?”
“Like people.”
“And then I suppose you moved on to even bigger things—like elephants.”
“No elephants. just people.”
“I guess with an elephant there’s problems disposing of the corpse.”
“Just people.”
Another night bird cried hollowly from its perch in a nearby tree, and in the distance two lonely dogs howled to each other.
“This is ridiculous,” Colin said.
“No, it’s true.”
“You’re trying to tell me you’ve killed people?”
“Twice.”
“Why not a hundred times?”
“Because it was only twice.”
“Next you’ll be saying you’re really an eight-legged, six-eyed creature from Mars disguised as a human being.”
“I was born in Santa Leona,” Roy said soberly. “We’ve always lived here, all my life. I’ve never been to Mars.”
“Roy, this is getting boring.”
“Oh, it’ll be anything but boring. Before the summer’s through, you and me together, we’re going to kill someone.”
Colin pretended to think about it. “The President of the United States maybe?”
“Just someone here in Santa Leona. It’ll be a real popper.”
“Roy, you might as well give up. I don’t believe a word of this, and I’m never going to believe it.”
“You will. Eventually you will.”
“No. It’s just a fairy tale, a game, a test of some sort that you’re putting me through. And I wish you’d tell me what I’m being tested for.”
Roy said nothing.
“Well, so far as I can see,” Colin said, “I’ve passed the test, whatever it is. I’ve proven to you that I can’t be fooled. I won’t fall for this dumb story of yours. You understand?”
Roy smiled and nodded. He glanced at his watch. “Hey, what do you want to do now? Want to go out to the Fairmont and see a movie?”
Colin was disconcerted by the sudden change of subject and Roy’s abruptly transformed attitude. “What’s the Fairmont?”
“The Fairmont Drive-in, of course. If we ride way the hell out on Ranch Road and then double back through the hills, we’ll come out on the slope above the Fairmont. We can sit up there and watch the movie for nothing.”
“But can you hear it?”
“No, but you don’t need to hear the kind of movies they play at the Fairmont.”
“What the hell do they play—silent films?”
Roy was amazed. “You mean you’ve lived here a whole month and you don’t know what the Fairmont is?”
“You’re making me feel retarded.”
“You really don’t know?”
“You said it was a drive-in.”
“It’s more than that,” Roy said. “Boy, are you in for a surprise!”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“Come on. Let’s go.”
Roy climbed onto his bike and pedaled away. Colin followed, off the sidewalk and into the street, from lamppost to lamppost, through alternating patches of shadow and light, pumping his legs hard to keep up.
When they reached Ranch Road and headed southeast, away from town, there were no more street lamps, and they switched on their headlights. The last traces of the sun had disappeared from the westward edges of the high-flying clouds: Night had arrived. Chains of gentle, treeless, pitch-black hills rose on both sides, silhouetted against a gray-black sky. Now and then a car passed them, but most of the time they had the road to themselves.
Colin was not on good terms with darkness. He had never lost his childish fear of being alone at night, a weakness that sometimes dismayed his mother and never failed to infuriate his father. He always slept with a light on. And right now he stayed close to Roy, genuinely afraid that if he fell behind he would be in extreme danger; something hideous, something unhuman, something hiding in the impenetrable shadows of the roadside would reach out for him, seize him in ghastly claws as big as sickles, tear him from his seat, and devour him alive with a noisy crunching of bones and splattering of blood. Or worse. He was a devoted fan of horror movies and novels, not because they dealt with colorful myths and were crammed full of movement and excitement, but because, to his way of thinking, they explored a sobering reality that most adults refused to take seriously. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, decaying corpses that would not rest peacefully in their coffins, and a hundred other hellish creatures did exist. Intellectually he could dismiss them as mere beasts of fantasy, denizens of the imagination, but in his heart he knew the truth. They were out there. The undead. Lurking. Waiting. Concealed. Hungry. The night was a vast, dank cellar, home to that which crept and crawled and slithered. The night had ears and eyes. It had a horrible, scratchy old voice. If you listened closely, tuning out your doubt and keeping an open mind, you could hear the dreadful voice of the night. It whispered about graves and rotting flesh and demons and ghosts and swamp monsters. It spoke of unspeakable things.
I have absolutely got to stop this, he told himself. Why do I do this to myself all the time? Jeez.
He rose slightly from the bicycle seat to gain better leverage and jammed his thin legs down hard on the pedals, determined to stay close to Roy.
His arms had broken out in gooseflesh.
7
From Ranch Road they turned onto a dirt track that was barely visible in the moonlight. Roy led the way. Over the crown of the first hill, the track became a narrow footpath. A quarter of a mile farther on, the footpath turned north, and they continued west, pushing their bicycles through coarse grass and sandy soil.
Less than a minute after they left the path, Roy’s bike light went out.
Colin stopped at once, heart leaping wildly like a startled rabbit in a cage. “Roy? Where are you? What’s wrong? What’s happened, Roy?”
Roy walked out of the darkness, into the pale fan of light that spread in front of Colin’s bicycle. “We’ve got two more hills to cross before we reach the drive-in. No sense struggling with the bikes any further than this. We’ll leave them here and pick them up on the way back.”
“What if somebody steals them?”
“Who?”
“How should I know? But what if somebody does?”
“An international ring of bicycle thieves with undercover operatives in every town?” Roy shook his head, making no effort to c
onceal his exasperation. “You worry about more goddamned things than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“If somebody stole them, we’d have to walk all the way home—five or six miles, maybe more.”
“For Christ’s sake, Colin, no one even knows the bikes are here! No one’s going to see them, let alone steal them.”
“Well, what if we come back and can’t find them in the dark?” Colin asked.
Roy grimaced, and he looked not just disgusted but demonic. It was a trick of light; the headlamp’s glow illuminated only the sharp edges of his features, leaving most of his face in darkness, so that he looked distorted, less than human.
“I know this place,” Roy said impatiently. “I come here all the time. Trust me. Now will you come on? We’re missing the movie.”
He turned and walked away.
Colin hesitated until he realized that if he didn’t leave the bike, Roy would leave him. He didn’t want to be alone in the middle of nowhere. He put the bike on its side and switched off the lamp.
The darkness enfolded him. He was suddenly acutely aware of a thousand eerie songs: the incessant croaking of toads. just toads? Perhaps something much more dangerous than that. The many strange voices of the night rose in a screeching chorus.
Fear washed through him like bile spreading from a pierced gut. The muscles in his throat grew tight. He had difficulty swallowing. If Roy had spoken to him, he could not have replied. In spite of the cool breeze, he began to sweat.
You’re no longer a child, he told himself. Don’t act like a baby.
He desperately wanted to bend down and switch on the bike light again, but he didn’t want Roy to discover that he was afraid of the dark. He wanted to be like Roy, and Roy wasn’t afraid of anything.
Fortunately Colin was not entirely blind. The bike light was not terribly powerful, and his eyes adapted quickly to a world without it. Milky moonlight spilled across the rolling land. He could see Roy loping swiftly up the hillside ahead.
Colin tried to move; he couldn’t. His legs seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each.
Something hissed.
Colin tilted his head. Listened.
The hissing again. Louder. Closer.
Something rustled through the grass a few inches from his foot, and Colin bolted. It might have been only a harmless toad, but it gave him the motivation he needed to get moving.