That’s what this looks like now.
Only there are no mirrors, and I can see step after step, endless ladders like train tracks, each of them framing a narrow glimpse of here, another Marbury, a Glenbrook, Marbury again, the inside of a Cadillac, Marbury, that fucking cop, inside a barrel, the fucking inside of a plastic barrel and I am there, cramped among the bones of the friends I love, a dirty fucking bed where I am tied down, bleeding, Freddie Horvath’s hands on me, fuck this place, fuck this place, fuck this place.
And out of the infinity that expands before me, a throng of ghosts, faceless and bleak, run toward me, step after step, in the bed, in the barrel, Marbury, another Glenbrook, the barrel again. I am tied down on top of a bed, a naked photograph of Jack where I must be asleep, so don’t wake me up. This all must be inside his head. The ghosts coming and coming, out from my hand, out from my mouth, and I finally see among them a boy’s face.
Seth.
I cannot breathe. I am hanging by my neck, my hands tied behind me, kicking, kicking so hard my shoes come off, my pants begin to fall off as I twist in a circle, winding and winding, a spring, facing the sun, the tall trees around me, silent in the brilliant light of afternoon.
I can smell the hangmen.
And then I see Seth in Marbury, and he is a boy—a real boy—not a ghost at all, but it is a different Marbury, and I can remember it. It was like this.
Someone is screaming and screaming.
Quinn Cahill.
I look away from the image frames.
I force myself.
Shut my eyes.
Close my hand.
Make it stop.
The door slams shut.
I hear music.
An accordion.
* * *
I didn’t wake up until the following night.
Later, Ben would explain how he alone carried me tied to his back down the ladder, using rope they found in Quinn’s garage. He’d wrapped it beneath my armpits, across my chest. He shrugged apologetically and showed me how the nylon cord had cut marks into the flesh around his shoulders.
They refused to leave me up on the roof, even if they did believe, at first, that Jack was dead.
Everything hurt.
It felt like my ribs had been broken.
Maybe I was dead, I thought. Nothing made sense. The last thing I remembered was breaking up the fight between Ben and Quinn, and now here I was, lying on my side on a sweat-soaked cot, staring at what looked like someone’s kneecaps right in front of my face. And I swear I could hear the faint sound of accordion music coming from somewhere.
“Ben! He opened his eye. Jack’s waking up!”
Griffin’s voice was a rasping, urgent whisper.
“Shhh!”
I couldn’t see where Ben was standing. Only knees. They looked like clay faces where all the features had been pressed down into nothing. But they were staring at me.
I couldn’t focus on anything but the little gold hairs on Griffin’s bony kneecaps.
I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn’t move.
Why can’t you understand me, Griffin?
I am talking to you, kid, listen to me.
But I wasn’t talking.
He couldn’t hear me.
I shut my eyes.
“Hey! Jack?” Griffin lowered himself to the edge of the cot. He shook my shoulder and I opened my eyes again. “Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”
That was a trick question, right?
“Um. No. What happened?”
“You fucking did it again, Jack.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m thirsty, Griff.”
I heard him pop open a plastic jug that sat on the floor beside my cot. And then I could see Ben, leaning against the wall, pressing an ear up to the seam where one of the windows had been sealed over and covered by a blackout curtain.
He concentrated on listening, but he watched me as I drank.
There was music, so faint. And then it stopped.
“I heard it, too,” I said. “It woke me up. It’s the Rangers coming.”
I couldn’t sit up. I spilled more water onto my bed than I got into my mouth. Griffin kept one hand on the base of the jug to steady it.
Ben moved away from the window. He looked tense, ready for a fight.
“Next time, you’re going to fucking kill yourself.”
What could I say?
It wasn’t my fault.
Wrong, Jack. Everything was my fault.
“You mad at me, Ben?”
He exhaled and got down on the floor next to Griffin.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I’ll be okay. What happened?”
And I noticed that the hand I’d been using to tilt the jug of water had been wrapped up in what looked like a sock. Medical tape wound tightly around my palm and knuckles.
“What’s this?”
The boys looked at each other, like they were both trying to figure out which of them had the better explanation.
Griffin took a drink and recapped the jug. “You’ve been knocked out since last night. I don’t even need to tell you, but we thought you were dead for good this time. You remember going up on the roof?”
I kind of did. Not really.
“There was shit coming out of your hand, Jack,” Ben said.
“What kind of shit?”
Griffin shrugged, shaking his head, as though he didn’t know what to say.
Then I thought of something, lifted my head. It made me dizzy.
“Where’s Quinn?”
“Fuck,” Ben said. “There were ghosts, Jack. Hundreds of them. You know how I feel about those fucking things. They were all coming out of you, like you were setting free a swarm of bees or something, like bats from a cave, going everywhere. It freaked the shit out of that kid.”
I remembered.
“Did you see that boy? The kid named Seth?”
Ben shook his head, but Griffin said, “I saw him, Jack.”
“I didn’t watch them. I can’t,” Ben said. “That fucking Quinn started screaming. Like he was looking straight into the worst nightmare you could ever have. And, next thing, he tried to jump off the fucking roof. I pulled him back and then he tried to do it again. So I punched him. I’m sorry, Jack, but I had it with that fucking kid after he put his goddamned hands on Griff, and so I beat his fucking face.”
I guess I saw that coming from the beginning.
Ben swallowed, like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “Then Quinn just jumps down the ladder. That was right when you collapsed, Jack, and the ghosts were scattering everywhere. The noise was insane. And then that fucker just ran away. I looked over the side of the roof for him. I saw him come out the door and go running down the street, carrying his speargun and yelping like a fucking dog.”
I took a deep breath. I thought about asking the boys to help me up, but I didn’t want them to think they’d be carrying me, watching out for me like I was going to be some kind of cripple. So I gathered every bit of will I had and pushed myself up into a sitting position. I put my feet down on the floor.
My head spun so bad I was sure that I was going to pass out. Ben and Griffin were still talking to me, telling me something, but I couldn’t hear anything they said over the rushing tide in my ears.
Don’t fall down. Don’t fall down.
I stood up, holding on to the waist of my shorts and slurring my speech like a drunkard. “The lens. Glasses. He didn’t take them, did he?”
“The pack’s under your bed,” Griffin said.
I aimed myself for the block divider in front of the shower and took wide steps until I could catch myself on it.
It was like walking across the deck of a boat in a storm.
I heard Ben, behind me. “Jack?”
But I ignored him. I didn’t want any goddamned help.
I turned the shower on and got under it. It felt so cold.
Then I was suddenly looking at the backs of my hands, how they were holding me up on either side of Quinn’s floor drain, a black metal grate the size of a baseball. It looked like a planet floating between my dirty, bandaged hand and outspread fingers.