Shelley was remotely disgusted by Ephraim’s behavior, but also fascinated. Ephraim’s psychosis had some weird narcotizing effect. He wondered: If he cut around Ephraim’s head until he hit the initial incision, could he tear his scalp off? Just like the Indians used to do. If so, would Ephraim even care?
The notion that he could be here for hours, hacking into a willing victim, sectioning Ephraim apart piece by piece, was thrilling in the extreme… and if things kept swinging his way, he wouldn’t have to dispose of the body as he’d done with Trixy. Once he’d relished Ephraim’s death, extracted from him the secrets Kent had witheld—and once Max and Newton were dead, too, a task he foresaw as daunting but still achievable—once they were all dead, Shelley would have their bodies all to himself. He could arrange them around the fire, posing their limbs and thumbing their stiffening faces into expressions he couldn’t quite comprehend, playing with the blood that wept like treacle from their wounds… or he could cut them to pieces and reorganize them—different heads on different bodies—insulting them in death by disgracing their corpses, which would be funny, terribly funny, so funny that the giggles started to rise in his throat again. Afterward he could leave them to the insects: their bodies would become shelter and nourishment for beetles and slugs and worms. Yes, they’d be worm food.
But Shelley had to be careful—the other two would soon return. Shelley thought he could hear their voices near the fire pit. He bit his lip, thinking.
Finally he said: “Wait here, Eef. I’ll be right back.”
He shambled around to the generator, rocking it to see if any gas was left. There was. He descended into the cellar and found an empty mason jar. Then he popped the valve on the generator and drained gasoline into the jar.
He returned to Ephraim and said: “I can’t cut it out, Eef. It’s too sneaky. The only way to get it is to burn it out.”
Ephraim’s eyes were very white and wide in the bloody mask of his face. Shelley’s words came to him as a revelation. They were the most sensible words anyone had ever spoken. Fire purifies all.
Shelley set the jar next to him.
“Burn it out, Ephraim. It’s the only way, my friend.” Shelley touched Ephraim’s twitching face with great tenderness. “You know that, don’t you? You’re my very best friend.”
Ephraim swallowed. For a moment it seemed he would bat Shelley’s grublike fingers away—but they dropped of their own accord. Shelley handed Ephraim his barbecue lighter.
“That’s okay,” Ephraim said, pulling out his Zippo. “I’ve got my own.”
Ephraim picked up the jar and held it over his head. It hung there a moment. His face shuddered as if under the pressure of deep internal forces, then it went slack.
“Thank you, Shelley,” he said. “You’re the only one who gets it.”
Ephraim’s hand tipped downward to saturate his flesh with gasoline.
38
BY THE time Newton and Max ran back to the cabin, Ephraim was on fire.
A towering cone of flame enveloped the body of a boy who suddenly looked small, shrunken, and trapped within it.
They bolted into the clearing only to check up by degrees: their feet lagging like cars rolling to an awkward stall. Their horror inspired inertness.
Ephraim was on fire.
A swiftly charring effigy. Their minds collectively yammered at them to do something but dear God, what could they do? The idea of shouting at him to stop, drop, and roll seemed quaintly absurd.
The flames swept up from Ephraim’s shoulders in orange wings. He was glowing and ephemeraclass="underline" he might lift off the ground like an ember swirling up from an open fire. His flame-robed arms oared in lopsided circles. The sound of his legs scissoring the air was like sheets of very fine silk being ripped apart. Horribly, Max could see that he was inhaling the fire: flames were crawling down into his lungs, igniting them.
Ephraim crumpled to the ground. His legs kept kicking as if he were trying to step over a low obstacle.
When they finally acted, it was too late—had it ever not been too late? Max dashed into the cabin, heedless of the men lying dead inside, grabbed a sleeping bag, ran back, and dropped it over Ephraim, where he lay curled in a thatch of crabgrass. Plumes of meaty smoke drifted around the bag’s edges. One of Ephraim’s feet jutted from under the bag. The soles of his boots had fused into a smooth black sheen that resembled a slick drag-racing tire. A single point of flame danced on the tip of his boot.
When Max pulled the sleeping bag back, it was obvious at first glance that Ephraim was dead. The heat had curled his body up like when you toss a cellophane packet into a fire: his thighs were tucked tight to his chest like a child in the fetal position. His kneecaps appeared to be heat-welded to his forehead. His clothes were either burned off or fused through grisly alchemical processes to his skin. He was charred all over like something left too long in the oven. His features were erased the same way a mannequin’s would be if someone had taken a blowtorch to its head.
“Oh, Jesus,” Newton said. “Oh, Eef, Eef…”
Merciless bands of iron clapped around Max’s chest. His breath came in shallow jaggedy bursts. The shock was such that he could only stare at the body, coring a hole into it with his eyes.
“Where the hell’s Shelley?” Max said.
Max’s left eyelid developed a weird tic: the muscles kept clenching and releasing; it looked like he was trying to wink but couldn’t quite get his face to cooperate. He felt the anger boiling out of him—which was how he figured it must always happen. Pressure turned fear into rage as surely as pressure turns coal into a diamond. Fear was an internal emotion: it got trapped inside of you. You had to let it out. For that you turned to rage, the ultimate external emotion.
All rage ever needed was something to focus on—was this how Eef had gone through life, fighting this rage that was a kissing cousin to pure madness?
Shelley rounded the cabin. Seeing him, Max’s chest hitched in sudden shock—hic!
Max thought Shelley looked as if someone had located a hidden zipper down his back, tugged it down, and skinned thirty-odd pounds of meat from his bones before zippering the sagging shell back up again. He couldn’t help but notice the blood on his hands.
“Hey, guys.” Shelley waved chummily. The tone of his voice was faintly mocking.
“You.” Max leveled a finger at Shelley. “Where were you?”
“No place special.”
Shelley’s gaze fell upon Ephraim. If he exhibited any emotion at all, it was dry revulsion: the look a passing motorist might give roadkill.
“Where the fuck…” Max said, his words coming out in great livid gasps, “…were you?”
Shelley shrugged with his hands in his pockets: a carefree, maddening gesture. Huge boils the size of cherry bombs throbbed on his neck where his adenoids should’ve been.
“Stay away from him,” Newt whispered to Max. “He’s sick with it.”
But Max’s rage was all-consuming. The reek of gasoline wafted off Shelley. He’d done something.
“What did you do, Shel?”
Max thought: What did any of them really know about Shelley? He was a lanky, furtive boy who kept to himself with an inner intensity of evasion and secrecy. The other boys tolerated him but nobody would call him a friend. They didn’t make sport of him—not because he wasn’t mockable, with his thick-lipped vacancy and stunned inability to comprehend the simplest jokes.