She made a small sound that meant “go on.”
“I don’t know. I was remembering. Being a kid and things.”
“That’s good.” She moved her hand, made that small sound again. “Go on…”
But with neither fear nor anguish, he felt he had nowhere to go.
He came out of sleep to lights and the stench of burning.
The luminous spider above him blinked off: the redhead lowered (and as he did, Kidd recognized him) one hand from the chains hanging to his belly. In the other, this time, was a slat from an orange crate.
An iridescent beetle disappeared from a sudden black face (also familiar) above a vinyl vest, shiny as his former carapace.
The arched pinchers of a scorpion collapsed: “Hey,” Nightmare said, “I think they’re about awake.”
Kidd’s arms were around Lanya. She moved her face against his neck; then moved it again, sharper, deliberate now, conscious.
Two dozen scorpions (most were black) stood in a ring against the grey morning.
Kidd recognized Denny between one bony, brown shoulder and a fleshy black one.
Then the redhead swung his stick.
Lanya shouted—he felt her jerk against his shoulder. She also caught the end of the slat.
She got to her knees, still holding the stick. Her eyes were wide; her cheek kept hollowing.
Kidd pushed up to his elbows.
The redhead started to move his end of the stick back and forth.
“Cut that shit, Copperhead.” Nightmare hit the stick with his knuckles.
“I just wanted to make sure they were awake,” the redhead said. “That was all I wanted to do. That’s all.” He pulled the stick.
Lanya let go.
Nightmare squatted slowly before her, resting his wrists on his torn knees, with heavy hands, drooping between, balanced by muscle-builder forearms.
“Man,” Lanya said, “if you’re trying to scare hell out of us, you’ve about succeeded.”
Kidd didn’t feel scared.
Lanya, sitting back On her heels, held her left arm with her right hand, moving her thumb over the knob of her elbow.
Kidd pushed the blanket from his legs and sat up cross-legged.
Naked in the chained circle, he figured, was better than half covered.
“I got better things to do than scare you, lady. I just wanna talk.”
She took a breath, waiting.
“How’s he doin’?” Nightmare bobbed his head toward Kidd.
“What?”
“You doin’ pretty well with him?”
“Say what you want to say,” she said, and touched Kidd’s knee. She was scared; her fingers were icy.
Nightmare’s forehead, large pores and heavy creases, creased more. “The other one. You got rid of the other one, huh? That’s good.” He nodded.
“Phil…?”
“I didn’t have much use for…Phil? That was his name, huh?” Nightmare’s smile moved his lips more to the side than it curved them. “Guess you didn’t either. So you don’t have to worry now. What about it? I asked you before.” Suddenly he ducked his head and, from his thick neck—the half-braided hair falling from it—lifted a loop of chain.
It wasn’t the optical one.
Reaching forward, Nightmare placed it around Lanya’s neck. His fists hung from it like clock weights. The half-inch links creased her breasts at the nipples. One fist went up, one down.
“Hey, man…” Kidd said.
Copperhead flipped the stick against his hand, watching Kidd.
Kidd looked up: the leopard-freckled, bearded, and redheaded spade was taller and narrower than Nightmare and, for all Nightmare’s barbell muscles, looked stronger.
Nightmare’s fists stopped, one on Lanya’s belly, one on her breast: he watched her.
She watched back, her jaw flexing. She took her hand from Kidd’s knee, put both fists around the chain, up near her neck, and ran them down, so that her left one pushed Nightmare’s high one away. “Take it off,” she said. “I told you once, I don’t want it.”
A thin, dark woman in the circle, bare breast pushing aside her vest flap and chains, shifted her weight. Someone else coughed.
“What about him?” Nightmare said and didn’t look at Kidd. “What you gonna do when we take him? This one’s comin’ with us, lady.”
“What do you guys…?” Kidd stopped. Anger, fascination, and a third feeling he couldn’t name braided together from his brain’s base into his belly and below.
“Take it off,” Lanya said. “I don’t want it.”
“Why?”
“I just want to stick to my guns. I don’t that often.” Then she gave a funny laugh. “Besides, your costume designer’s cruddy.”
Nightmare snorted. A few people in the circle laughed too. “What about yours?” somebody else said. But Nightmare lifted the chain. Scraps of her hair fell from the links.
Then the scorpion swiveled, boot toes tearing grass. “Here.” The chain went over Kidd’s head. Nightmare’s eyes were traced with coral. His vest had apparently come apart at one scarred shoulder and was laced now with rawhide.
Nightmare began to pull the chain.
Cold links slid down Kidd’s right nipple. Nightmare’s fist came up against his left breast, warm and rough. “Okay?” Nightmare squinted. There was something wrong with his eyes’ focus, Kidd realized, irrelevantly.
“What am I supposed to do with it?” Kidd said. “What is all this supposed to mean?”
“Don’t mean nothin’.” Nightmare let go. “You can take it and throw it in Holland Lake if you want.” Then he rocked back and stood. “I’d keep it if I were you.”
The circle broke.
Nightmare at their head, big shoulders rocking, big arms swinging, the scorpions filed away. A few glanced back. Ten feet off, a girl who could have been white or black and a tall black boy began to laugh loudly. Then, as though inflated too fast to follow, an iguana ballooned luminously, translucent in the grey-light. Then a peacock. Then a spider. The scorpions wandered into the trees.
“What the fuck,” Kidd asked, “was that about?” He felt his neck where there were three chains now: the optic, the projector, and this new one—the heaviest.
“Nightmare gets it in his head sometimes that he wants certain people…”
The timbre of her voice made him look.
“…get certain people into his nest.” Scrabbling in the blanket, she came up with her harmonica, put it down and scrabbled some more.
“He wanted you before, huh? What’s with Phil?”
“I told you, he was my boyfriend for a while before I met you.”
“What was he like?”
“He was a black guy, sort of bright; sort of nice, sort of square. He was here checking out scenes, about like you are…” Her voice muffled for the last words. He looked again: her head was coming out the top of her shirt while she tugged the bottom down over her shaking breasts. “He couldn’t really make Calkins’ thing that well. He couldn’t make Nightmare’s either.”
The edge of the blanket was tented with the orchid beneath. Reaching for it, Kidd noticed nearly an acre of charred grass across the meadow. Smoke wisped along the edges. That hadn’t been there. He frowned. It hadn’t.
“People liked him down at the commune, I guess. But he was one of those people you get tired of pretty quick.” He heard the fly of her jeans rasp. “Nightmare’s funny. It’s sweet of him to ask, I suppose, but I’m just not the joining kind. With anyone.”
Kidd slid his hand into the orchid’s harness, clicked it closed. The burning smell was very strong. He spread his chewed and enlarged knuckles, flexed his scarred and blunted fingers—
—tickling his shoulder.
He sprang up, whirling, and crouched.
The leaf rolled down his shoulder, fluttered against his knee, spun on to the ground. Gasping, and with thudding heart he looked up the leaning trunk, over the great bole at the stump of some thick, major branch, at bare branches and branches hung with ragged tan, at crossed twigs like shatter lines on the sky.