Slices (18 page)

“I’m
sorry I fucked up, just please, please — ”

“Isaiah.
Isaiah,
listen.”
He took the boy’s head in his hands, waited until those lost
eyes focused on him. “I didn’t come back here for the
money. Okay?”

“Then
— why did you?”

Tom
pulled him closer, kissed him fiercely on the cheek. “For you.
I came back to get you.”

Isaiah
just stared for a second, into eyes just inches away from his own.
Then, tentatively, carefully, his lips found Tom’s, a kiss as
light and unreal as the brush of a moth’s wing.

There
was a knock at the door. Danny’s voice — “You guys
okay in there?”

Tom’s
head jerked up. “Yeah. We’re fine.” He looked
searchingly at Isaiah. “You still feel sick?”

Isaiah
nodded unhappily. “Yeah. I’m gonna — ”

He
pulled away, crawled into the bathtub, his body convulsing.

There
were sparks in the air, a scent like ozone. Tom could feel the hair
on his arms standing on end. The lightbulb overhead went out like a
gunshot.

The
not-liquid spilling out of Isaiah’s head pooled and swirled in
the bathtub, luminescent and numinous. Isaiah stared into it.

“He’s
killing us,” Isaiah said.

“What?”
Tom said, instantly alert. He moved over next to Isaiah, staring into
the tub, like a crystal ball, like tea leaves. “Who’s
killing us?”

“Sean
is. See?” He poked a finger into the spreading Rorschach stains
and stirred them. “Tonight. Late. We’re sleeping. Drunk.
He’s got a knife and he’s cutting us and cutting us —
”

That’s
why he wanted us to come here,
Tom thought.
That’s
why he’s so keen on getting us drunk. Partying all night.

“What
about Connor?”

Isaiah
frowned, his eyes distant. “Connor’s not talking to Sean
any more,” he says. “He’s not talking to
anyone
anymore.”

Tom
nodded. “The knife. Where is it now?”

“In
his bag.”

“Isaiah
— it’s not going to happen, okay? I won’t let it
happen.”

“There’s
so much blood, Tommy.”

“You
stay here, all right? You stay here and drink water. Water’s a
pure element — it can’t hurt you, it’s the same
here and in Faerie. You stay here and drink water.”

“Where
are you going?” Isaiah asked desperately.

Tom
stood up. “To finish this,” he said.

“How
is he?” Danny asked.

“Bad,”
Tom said flatly. “I have to take him back.”

“Back
— to the fairy circle?” Danny said. “Fuck, really?”

“I
don’t have any choice, do I?” Tom snapped. “He’s
not gonna make it if I don’t.”

“Jesus.
Poor Isaiah.”

“So,”
Sean said carefully, “what about his share?”

Tom
turned and stared at him. “He doesn’t need it,” he
said. “We split three ways.”

Sean
nodded. “All right,” he said.

“Danny?
That all right with you?” Tom said, still looking at Sean.

“Yeah.
I mean, I guess, yeah.”

“All
right. Let’s do this.” Tom walked over to where the
briefcase was.

“You
want to count it out now?” Danny asked incredulously.

“I
just want it done with.” He opened a drawer on the nightstand
and pulled out the phonebook, the Gideon Bible, and tossed them on
the bed. “Here we are. Pen and paper.” He brandished the
pad of hotel stationery. “I’ll count out the money.
Danny, you write down the totals and I’ll check your math.”

“You
don’t trust us, do you?” Danny grinned.

“Frankly?
No, I don’t. I don’t trust Sean at all, and you know
what? I don’t trust you when you’re with Sean. I’m
sorry, but I don’t.”

Sean’s
eyes didn’t change. “I thought we were in this as
friends, Tom.”

“I
think I’d rather be the one to count the money,” Danny
said slowly.

“No.
All right? I count the fucking money. We wouldn’t have it right
now if not for me, and I say
I
count it. Okay?”

“Tomcat’s
got claws,” Sean said. “Who knew?”

“—
Go ahead, Tommy, if that’s
the way you want it,” Danny said quietly.

Tom
opened the case and counted out the stacks of bills. It took a long
time, longer than he’d thought. He did it very carefully, very
deliberately, letting them watch every step. And they did watch, like
lions watching a gazelle.

When
all the accounting was done, he said, “Danny, I need to borrow
your car. Get Isaiah back to the circle.”

Danny
nodded. “Keys are on the nightstand.”

Tom
paused on his way to the bathroom. He stepped closer to Danny and
said, “You can come with us. If you want to see Isaiah off. Or
you can stay here, have a few drinks with Sean. Suit yourself.”

“Think
I’ll stay here, then,” Danny said.

Tom
sighed. “Which one of us do you trust? Me or Sean?”

Danny’s
eyes narrowed. After a long moment, he said, “Sean.”

Tom
shrugged. “Like I said — suit yourself.”

He
leaned over and latched the briefcase shut on his share of the money.
He glanced over at Sean, who was stuffing his cash into his backpack.
Tom leaned past him, reached inside.

“Hey!”
Sean said. “What the fuck?”

His
hand closed around the handle of the hunting knife, and he pulled it
free of its sheath, out of the bag.

“I’m
borrowing this, too,” Tom said, holding it up. “That all
right?”

For
a second, just a second, Sean looked genuinely startled. Then that
lazy, lizard smile snapped back into place. “Suit yourself,”
he said.

When
he and Isaiah were just a few miles down the road, Isaiah was staring
into the mirror of his sun visor. “He’s coming,” he
said. “He’s following us.”

Tom
shot a glance at his own mirror, but whatever Isaiah was seeing, it
wasn’t happening yet.

“He
knows something’s wrong,” Isaiah said. “He’s
stealing a car. He’s coming after us.”

“Sean
is?”

Isaiah
didn’t answer.

Tom’s
foot pressed down a little harder on the accelerator.

They
should be okay until morning. Nothing went wrong.

Both
Sean and Danny saw the money, felt it in their hands. The illusion,
the glamour, should last until morning. Then they’d know —
their cold hard cash turned to phonebook pages and Bible scraps, like
fairy gold turning to straw in the morning light. Follow the coin.

They
should have a headstart. No way of knowing how far ahead Isaiah was
seeing, though. He drove faster.

The
briefcase was at Isaiah’s feet. It seem like such a small,
ridiculous amount of money, now, too little to nearly die over, much
too little to lose seven years with Isaiah over.

He
reached the edge of the woods, where they’d parked before.

“How
far behind us?” he asked. “When does Sean get here?”

Isaiah
looked at him blankly. He was too far gone, too Fae-lost, to
understand the question. Beautiful golden boy, burning fever-bright,
like an angel falling.

He
drove right off the road, knowing the car wasn’t made for it,
praying the trees were far enough apart. Isaiah laughed and grabbed
hold of the dashboard like a safety bar in a carnival ride.

He
took the car as far as it would go and abandoned it, engine still
running. Sean’s knife tucked into his belt and the briefcase in
one hand and Isaiah’s hand in the other, he ran, branches
whipping his face until he reached the clearing.

He
dropped the case and tried to catch his breath.

“I
see you,” Isaiah said. “I see you and Sean and Danny
coming to get me. Is that what happened? Was that today?”

“Isaiah.
I’m so sorry. This is going to hurt.”

“What
is?”

“Hey.
Hey, look. See the coin? Watch.”

He
flipped his silver dollar back and forth across the knuckles of his
left hand, his right reaching for the knife.

“Keep
watching, Isaiah,” he said. “It’s magic.”

And
he drove the knife into Isaiah’s stomach. The coin fell and he
let it go, forgotten.

He
grabbed hold of Isaiah’s shoulder. “You’re not
dying,” he whispered. “You’re
not
dying. I have to bleed it out of you, everything you ate, before I
take you back there. You won’t die, I won’t let you.”

“I
— it doesn’t even hurt,” Isaiah said, watching the
moonlight smoke spill out and pool at his feet.

“I
told you, it’s fucking magic, okay?”

The
music was swelling around them. They could both hear it. The steps of
the dance calling out.

He
could do this. He could. Cold iron knife in one hand, to claim back
Isaiah’s St. Christopher medal. Handcuffs — he looped
them through the briefcase handle, chained his left wrist to Isaiah’s
right. Yes.

Maybe
in seven years, Sean would still be waiting for them. Maybe. Maybe
he’d be dead by then. Maybe the world would change so much in
seven years, none of this would matter.

None
of it mattered now, except the dance, and Isaiah’s hand in his.

“Ready?”
he asked him.

Isaiah
nodded.

“Okay.”
He took a deep breath. Stared into the circle as the circle stared
into him.

“Ready,”
he whispered. “Steady. Go.”

And
they were gone.

And
with that, Matthew turned his back and ran. Into the woods.

He
ran far and fast, and he might have just imagined the voice he heard
calling after him. By the time he reached the deep and sunless heart
of the forest, he couldn’t remember, as he lay on the forest
floor, whether anyone had been chasing him, couldn’t remember
why he’d been running at all, except that his aching,
pulled-tight legs told him that it was good to run, it was good, and
with a moment’s rest they would be ready to run again. But his
heart told him there was no more need to run, nowhere left to run to.

I’m
never going back,
he thought over and over again,
I’m
never going back,
the
thought automatic, as simple a consequence of his flight as his
pounding heart and his never-full lungs. Never going back.

His
eyes started to focus, at last, in the deep gloaming; soft fingers of
sunlight brushing aside branches and leaves, the merest cracks in a
canopy of the greenest black. He knew this place, after all, or he
thought he did; he took it all in with wide eyes for the first time
and remembered it all.

The
only sounds here were lazy, ponderous, gentle sounds. A bee hung low
in the warm afternoon haze, and he watched it unafraid, listened to
the dull electric razor sound of its wings cutting the air. Birds
sang sweet and unseen, and a hundred eyes watched him from the dark.

He
had never seen trees like this before, trunks thick enough for hide
and seek and leaves broader than his hand, but he was still sure he
knew the place. He felt years younger and free to really play at
last, and he wanted to climb every tree and turn over every rock.
This was, at last, The Woods, just like in every fairytale. He knew
this place, whether he’d been here before or not. Every boy
did.

He
remembered the second time he’d been to Disneyland —
how many years ago, now? The first time he’d been in a
stroller, and no-one had thought he’d remember it, but he did —
he knew the second he was on Main Street that Tomorrowland was
this
way, Frontierland
that
way.

His
heart remembered, just as his heart told him now that the ravine was
just a short run to his right, that just a little ahead was the
tallest tree he could climb, and the deepest lake off to his left, a
good long walk away, and some distance beyond that, the caves.

He
made for the ravine first, stood staring down in wide-eyed breathless
delight at the river deep below.

He
sat down at the edge, kicking his small feet and some rocks over the
side, could faintly hear a distant splash when the rocks hit. There
was sky here, sky without a single plane or powerline, and he lay
back in the tall grass and stared up at it, blinking against the
brightness.

On
sudden impulse, he emptied his pockets. He had a simple black plastic
comb, and he wouldn’t be needing that anymore — over the
edge it went. No more haircuts here. His hair could grow long and he
could tie sticks and feathers into it if he wanted to.

He
pulled out the wallet next, and threw away the receipts he never knew
what to do with — he let the wind have them, and the wind
carried its new toys away. After a moment, he tossed the money over
the side. He had a few dollars saved up, enough for some trading
cards and maybe a Slurpee, but there was nowhere to buy anything
here, so it didn’t matter.

He
hesitated again before taking apart the wallet, and if it had been
real leather he might have saved it for something. He had made it at
a summer camp in a well-traveled wood, a woods with well-marked
tracks and cabins, a woods entirely unlike this one. The wallet was
threaded together with a cord made of some dumb plastic, and so over
the side it went.

The
only thing he kept was the pocket knife, the one his father had given
him. It led to one of his parents’ famous arguments, since his
mother was sure he’d cut off a finger or worse with the single
folding blade hidden in its bone handle. But his father had held fast
and said that a boy needed to have a good knife, and that this was,
in fact, the very knife he had carried as a young man. Matthew
carried it everywhere now, especially when he was out in the backyard
playing at being a hunter or an explorer, so he was sure he’d
need it here.

He
laid his head back down in the long grass. He was still very tired
from all the running he’d done, and even though it was still
just afternoon, he was already thinking about sleep.

He
was wondering if it might rain, and whether he could remember how it
said to build a lean-to in those Boy Scout books his Mom had bought
for him at a garage sale, and whether he felt like trying to go all
the way to the caves and whether wild animals might already be living
in them, when the events of the day all got to be too much for him
and sleep finally came for him, carried his thoughts away like
useless scraps of paper in the wind.