Loss (9 page)

Despite himself, Billy gazed at the object tucked in the corner of the room. At first glance, it seemed far too short and thin to be a bow—more accurate, he thought, to call it a walking stick. It was black and polished to an opulent sheen, its ends tapered to narrow points. It was beautiful to look at, almost hypnotic, like fire. It couldn’t have been carved from an ordinary tree, not something that marvelous, that radiant.

“The tree it hails from, the Wattieza, is long extinct,” said Death. “But even when its siblings filled the land, this particular wood was already ancient.”

“No string,” Billy murmured. “No arrows.”

“It requires neither of those trappings,” said Death. “As you already know.”

And he did. Billy didn’t know how he knew it, but he understood it to be true—just as he understood that it belonged in his hand. He found himself walking over to it, reaching out to touch it before he could tell himself otherwise. His fingers stroked the polished wood once, lightly.

A shock of power jolted him, searing every nerve. With the pain came a burning clarity: The Bow was an extension of the White Rider, a tool that would bring disease to the world.

Among other things
, Death murmured in his mind.
But as with the other Riders, you will learn as you go.

With a yelp, Billy jerked his hand back, knocking the Bow to the ground. It landed on the linoleum floor with an unceremonious thump.

“That’s no way to treat such a relic,” Death commented.

Billy slowly backed away from the fallen staff. Death, and flying horse/cars, and the Ice Cream Man, and the Conqueror, and an unstrung bow that would let him spread sickness through the world. He shut his eyes and wrapped his hands over his head. Enough. He was done. He could barely handle his own life, such as it was; he couldn’t also cope with the supernatural.

“I thought you wanted to escape your life, William.”

He did, but not like this. He whispered, “Take me home.”

A touch of frost on his shoulder, and then a popping sensation in his ears.

“Jiggety-jig,” Death said, sounding terribly chipper.

Billy opened his eyes to find himself standing on the steps outside his front door. Thank God they hadn’t had to get back into the horse/car.

“Usually,” said Death from behind him, “Riders prefer to ride.”

Billy’s hands squeezed into fists. “I’m no Rider.”

“Thou art the White Rider, William Ballard. Thou art Pestilence, Bringer of Disease. Go thee out unto the world.”

“I don’t want to be Pestilence!”

“It matters little what you want. The Conqueror tricked you into agreeing to wear the Crown when the time came. That time is now.”

No
, Billy thought desperately.
No. No. No
. In his mind, he saw the Ice Cream Man with his waxy brow, saw the silver circlet winking around the folds of skin and lanky hair. Desperate, he said, “But he’s still wearing the Crown.”

“True,” Death agreed cheerfully. “But as you have seen, he’s fallen down on the job. It’s up to you to pick up the slack. Or, if you’d rather, you can convince him to get out of bed.” A chuckle, like the sound of soil eroding. “Either way works for me.”

“No,” Billy said through gritted teeth. After having denied Death once—no way would he ever ride a horse, especially Death’s horse—doing so again was slightly easier. Perhaps facing his mortality (or, more accurately,
everyone’s
mortality) helped him put things in perspective. “I don’t care what you say,” Billy insisted. “I’m not doing it.”

With that, he dug out his house key and jammed it into the lock. The knob turned, and he stormed inside.

“Don’t forget your Bow,” Death called after him.

Billy slammed the door and jerked the locks in place, then tore down the hall to his room. Buds secure in his ears, music blasting on the iPod, he buried himself in his blankets, his clothes and shoes still on, and he hid himself from the world.

***

Famine stepped out from the shadows, black separating from black. The echo of the front door slamming still rode the air. Turing to face the Pale Rider, she huffed, “That didn’t go well at all.”

Death winked at her. “Trust me.”

Chapter 8

The Only Reason Billy Heard the Alarm Go Off . . .

. . . was because one of his ear buds had popped out overnight. His iPod was still blaring his five-star playlist, but over the sounds of My Chemical Romance was the insistent beeping of his clock, telling him that it was 6:30 in the morning and therefore time to start the school day.

Autopilot kicked in. He shut off the alarm. He shut off his iPod. He pulled the remaining bud from his ear. He staggered out of bed and made his way to the bathroom, where he peed like a racehorse. He was vaguely aware that he was still in yesterday’s clothes, sneakers and all. Whatever. He stumbled back to his room. And standing in the doorway, he stared at the long black bow lying atop his unmade bed.

He blinked, and blinked again.

The bow was still lying on his bed.

As he stared at the polished limb, two things hit him like Eddie’s fists: One, everything that had happened last night, from Death appearing at his door to seeing the Ice Cream Man in a hospital bed in Greece, was real; and two, the Ice Cream Man—the Conqueror, the decrepit White Rider of the Apocalypse—was not only real but had tricked him when he was a kid.

And because of that, he now had a bow that magically appeared on his bed.

A consolation prize, perhaps, but still a good one.

The Bow waited on his bed, daring him to pick it up.

Death had told him that he was to use the weapon to bring disease to the world. He snorted. Yeah, he was supposed to use his magic bow with its pretend bowstring and imaginary arrows to shoot people. That was insane. Clearly, he’d gone crazy somewhere along the way, and now he was having some weird revenge fantasy.

Thou art the White Rider.

He shook his head at the thought. He couldn’t even bear the idea of riding a horse, let alone shooting people with arrows brimming with sickness.

It’s amazing to see just how far you people go to lie to yourselves.

Billy stood in the doorway to his bedroom, Death’s taunt echoing in his mind, and he stared at the unstrung bow on his bed. And he allowed himself to consider the possibility that he wasn’t insane and that the Bow was real.

One way to find out. He walked into his room and reached for the Bow.

Just before his fingers would have brushed against the polished wood, he felt a jolt of power spiking from the limb like a live wire. He jerked his hand away and scrambled backwards.

On his bed, the Bow waited.

It was real. And more than that: It was dangerous.

Breathing hard, Billy scrubbed his fingers through his hair and stared at the black wood. Inanimate objects couldn’t smirk, he told himself, and yet that’s exactly what it looked like the Bow was doing.

“Go away,” he whispered. It had appeared by magic; it could leave by magic as well. “Get out of here. Abracadabra. Shazam.”

The Bow didn’t move.

Thou art Pestilence.

No.

Billy ran out of his bedroom and yanked the door shut. Panting, he called himself three kinds of stupid for running away from an unstrung bow, but that didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t going back in his room. Not now. Not yet, at any rate.

Down the hallway, his grandfather’s door opened. As the old man wandered out, Billy was hit immediately by the toxic stench of urine and sweat. Scrunching his face against the smell, he saw that Gramps was plastered in yesterday’s clothes, and the pants were darker by the crotch.

Billy bit back a curse as he remembered Gramps screeching and running into his bedroom last night. Instead of getting his grandfather ready for bed, he’d left with Death and paid a call to the Ice Cream Man. Of course Gramps had peed himself; Billy hadn’t even bothered to get him into an adult diaper.

This was his fault.

Billy, already tense to the point of snapping, clenched his fists and ground his teeth and counted to five before he pasted a tight smile on his face. It didn’t matter that he was in the middle of freaking out over a magic Bow and being charged by Death; he had to take care of his grandfather. “Come on, Gramps. Let’s get you clean.”

The old man let Billy walk him to his room and strip off his clothing. At least he wasn’t fighting this morning; if anything, today he was like a life-sized doll, allowing Billy to dress him quickly, if mechanically. Billy then stripped the single bed and bundled all the soiled laundry into a tidy pile by the corner. He’d leave a note for his mom, telling her to grab the dirty things from Gramps’s room and to make sure he got a bath.

Done with his chores, he said, “All set, Gramps.”

His grandfather stared at him, or at a spot just over Billy’s eyes. And then he said, “Mark.”

“No, Gramps,” Billy said, trying to be patient. “Not Mark. Billy. I’m Billy.”

“Marked,”
his grandfather wheezed.

“Yes, Gramps.” Uneasily, Billy wondered if the old man was trying to say “Malarkey” and couldn’t remember the word.

“Marked so’s you won’t get lost.”

“Yes, Gramps.”

“You find your way,” said his grandfather, shaking a finger at him. “You find your way, and you come back home.”

Maybe the old man was talking to himself, telling himself not to go wandering out of the house. Or maybe he was just rambling because he had Alzheimer’s and that’s part of what people like him did. Billy forced himself to smile placidly. “I hear you, Gramps. Want some breakfast?”

With those words, Billy slipped into the comfort of routine. He led his grandfather into the kitchen and helped him into a chair at the small table. He served Gramps orange juice in a plastic cup, fed him overly buttered toast, and cleared the plate when only crumbs remained. He walked the old man into the family room and got him settled in his favorite chair, then he turned on the television to a
Wheel of Fortune
rerun.

“I have to get ready for school now, Gramps.”

“Hmmm.”

“Mom will be up soon. If you need anything, she’ll be here.”

“Hmmm.”

Billy took that as both agreement and approval, so he retreated to the bathroom. He’d almost forgotten about the Bow and the White Rider and Death, almost slipped quietly back into his life—but then he splashed water on his face and looked at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. And he froze.

There was a blotch of white in his hair.

He leaned closer to the mirror, his gaze locked on the splat of white staining the lock of hair dangling over his forehead. It wasn’t the pristine brilliance of new snow but more like the paleness of dandruff flakes: The color had been dried out, leached away, leaving the strands empty.

Dead.

Hair is dead
, he thought wildly,
it can’t just turn white overnight no matter what happens in movies, it can’t it can’t it can’t—

And yet, it had.

His fingers shaking, he reached a hand up and touched the white lock. The hair felt like . . . well, hair. He finger-combed it back, but when he removed his hand the lock slumped back over the center of his forehead.

It hung directly over the spot where Death had touched him the night before, commanding him to remember the Ice Cream Man.

Marked
, his grandfather had said. And he’d been right.

Billy ripped off his clothing and jumped in the shower. He tried to scald away the white hair, then scrubbed it with a ton of shampoo and rinsed until the water ran cold. He towel-dried his hair hard enough to make his scalp scream. But when he wiped away the steam in the mirror, the stark-white patch winked at him.

For a long moment, he did nothing but stare at his reflection and get caught in the undertow of physical stress: the headache throbbing behind his eyes; the acid churning in his belly; the muscles of his shoulders and neck and back tensing to the point of rigid pain. It hit him in waves, bruising him and leaving him breathless.

Brush your teeth.

The thought was simple and direct, and he grabbed on to it to keep from drowning.
Yes, brush your teeth and get dressed. It’s a school day. Get ready for school.

And so he managed to brush his teeth without giving into panic. Maybe his breathing was a whisker shy of hyperventilation, but at least he wasn’t curled in a ball under his blanket and wishing the world would just go away.

Besides, Billy couldn’t hide in bed; the Bow was still resting on his cover when he returned to his bedroom.

Get ready for school,
he told himself again. And so he did. He grabbed clothing and got dressed in baggy jeans and a hoodie. He went back to the bathroom and stared at the white patch in his hair, and then he slowly pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt until his hair was completely hidden and his face was obscured with shadow.

***

Keep Your Head Down.

Billy’s mantra had never been more appropriate. Hood pulled down to his nose, he slunk from class to class and did his best to be invisible. Even so, his morning was peppered with the usual taunts that ranged from “asswipe” to “zitface,” punctuated with the occasional shove. Normal stuff, at least. He breathed; he pretended he was numb to the physical pushes and the verbal punches. He survived. (And the pop quiz in second-period bio was surprisingly easy.)

After bio, Marianne walked with him to the lockers. She frowned at his raised hood and asked if he was okay. He really didn’t know how to answer that, but he smiled and shrugged and said that it could be worse. He supposed that was even true.

During English, as his teacher went on and on about the Shakespeare, Billy thought about a man with a melted face and rotten teeth.

“Tell me,” said the Ice Cream Man, “would you like to ride the white horse?”

Billy never did get that ride. He remembered that now, sitting at his desk and staring at the poorly spelled insult about him that had been etched into the plastic tabletop: That fateful day in the playground, after he’d agreed to wear the Crown, he’d been so terrified that he’d run screaming to his mother. He’d found her blinking sleepily on the park bench, and she’d held him as he’d wailed. He’d been too scared to say why he was upset, so instead he told her that his belly hurt and he wanted to go home. No horse ride for him.