Beautiful City of the Dead (4 page)

"I went out and looked at the driveway. The scumpack had used some kind of lighter fluid that burnt but left no mark on the blacktop. Nobody but me had seen the fire. But standing there, I could still smell the smoke. Kind of sour and sweet at the same time.

"There was my final grade for bio. A burning F. 'See you next year!' That's what he yelled as he drove off."

So bio turned into a daily dose of torture.

Mr. Knacke had three or four different voices, as if there was a gang of Knackes inside him. Most of the time it was a flat droning noise, like an airplane heard from way far away. But sometimes it would explode into a screechy, scratchy yell, and he'd aim every kind of insult at the kids he called the "flat-liners." After he asked you a question, he'd make this beeping sound, like one of those machines in Intensive Care. And if you got it wrong, which was most of the time, then he'd buzz out the words "Brain dead! Brain dead!"

Once, when he passed back a really bad test, he stapled job applications from McDonald's on the ones that got Fs. "Would you like fries with that? Go on," he said, leaning in toward me so close I could smell him. "Try it! Say it, because that's where you'll be for the rest of your life."

I put up with it. What else could I do?

Like there was a girl called Michelle Eckers, who was born with one leg shorter than the other. And she had to clomp around or else wear these spasmo-looking shoes. And everybody knew. And some kids made fun of her, of course. But what could she do? Complaining wouldn't make her leg any longer. And what could I do about Mr. Knacke? Complaining wouldn't make him lay off with the insults and ranting and extra work.

So I did my time at school. And as soon as I could, I was out of there and back to Relly's house for more hard guitar slag and slippery bass groan.

"I
T'S A REAL GIG
," Relly announced. "The all-ages show at Waterstreet. There's five other bands and we have to go second. But we'll burn the place down. When we're done, there won't be anything left but smoke and ashes."

We only had a week to get ready. So we had to get the set list together fast, narrowing the songs down to a half-hour set. The big question was, Do we do any covers? We could do Zeppelin and Priest and AC/DC. But we also had original tunes. Relly's and mine.

Just a couple of days before the gig, we'd written our first tune together. Jerod had taken off at about eleven, driving back to his nice big house in Pittsford. Butt stuck around. He had nowhere to go, and nobody at home who cared how late he stayed out. And I knew my dad was working till close that night.

So we banged out the new tune. Relly's black surging riffs and my words. It was called "Ten Thousand Charms."
And all three of us agreed that we had to do the tune when we played out the first time.

"That's it," Relly said when we finally got the tune where we wanted it. Sometimes I thought the sound went on forever, up there in the shadows and weird peaks of attic roofline. Echoes above our heads. The traces of lost chords, broken riffs, whispers and screams.

"That's it. That's the sound I kept hearing in my head." He had that strange look again, half mystic and half maniac. "This song is the real Ghost Metal," he whispered. "Till right now, till tonight, it was just in my head. But now it's out. It's finally really in the world."

It was important to him that I understood what he meant by
ghost.
It wasn't cheap booga-booga horror or little kids on Halloween in old sheets. "Uh-uh," Relly said."
Ghost
is the old word for spirit. Like Holy Ghost. Spirit, not stupid scary-movie crot."

Butt shrugged. I guess he'd heard this routine before.

I said, "OK, so we do the tune?"

"Yeah. We do it last in the set. And we leave 'em all shaking and gasping for breath."

Butt gave his bass drum a couple of powerful kicks. That was his way of saying "Count me in, all the way."

"All right. We'll run it tomorrow with Jerod," Relly said. "And it'll be ready for Sunday."

T
HE NEXT DAY
, while we were doing some kind of idiot worksheet about blastulas and gastrulas, Mr. Knacke came down my aisle and caught a glimpse of a logo I'd drawn in my notebook. Scorpio Bone—in kind of spiky letters, like the name was made out of hunks of broken glass.

"What, pray tell, is Scorpio Bone?"

"It's a band," I said, feeling his invisible noose slip around my neck.

"What kind of music do they play?"

"Ghost Metal." The noose tightened.

"Is that so? Someone is clearly an imbecile." That was his favorite word.
Imbecile.
He said it like a Nazi general reaming out his flunkies. "Scorpions are arachnids. They do not have bones."

"Yeah, I know. It's just a name."

Some kids were snickering now, because they knew it was me and Relly's band. And the word had gone around that we were doing the all-ages show at Waterstreet that Sunday.

"That's moronic. Whoever came up with that name is a moron. And I suppose you're even more of a moron for thinking it so worthy that you'd draw it on your belongings."

I didn't say a thing. I could barely breathe. The noose pulled up hard and I knew he was going to keep on tightening it.

W
E HAD ONE LAST
practice before the show. "It's OK," Relly said, "that's the way it usually goes."

We'd sounded awful. Out of tune, out of sync, weak and unsure. "It's OK. If you sound too good before a show, that's always bad luck."

But I had some serious doubts. If I couldn't remember the changes to the tunes, we'd wander all over the place. If Jerod couldn't keep the words straight, we'd look like wanks, stupid amateurs. And we'd be standing there in front of a couple hundred kids. Even Butt, who was usually solid as a cement block, had seemed to lose it.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe we should forget this. You really think we're ready?"

This was the first time I'd seen Relly mad. "What are you talking about? We don't have any choice here. We're playing tomorrow and it's got to be perfect." When things got bad, Relly's voice got quieter, not louder.

"OK, OK," I said. He didn't exactly scare me. I mean, it wasn't like when my dad got all furious and went around the house breaking things. But I couldn't look Relly in the eye. I couldn't stand being there with him right then.

"I'll see you tomorrow," I said, grabbing the set list and my case and heading for the door.

W
E SHOWED UP ON
time, but of course everything took twice as long as it should have. Because there were five bands to get on and off in a couple hours, everyone had to use the same basic setup. Drums, amps, mikes. This was a pain, because we weren't used to the gear. But those were the rules.

They said we'd have a sound check. That was a joke. We stood on the stage for about five minutes before the sound man even noticed us there. And when we asked questions or said the levels in the monitors were too low, he didn't even bother to answer.

So it was looking pretty grizzly as the doors opened for the crowd. I was hoping nobody would show up. Then at least we wouldn't look like wanks in front of the whole world. No such luck. Some of the other bands had a pretty good following. And by the time things got rolling, the place was packed.

From where we were hiding, off to the side of the stage, Waterstreet looked even bigger than before. Hundreds and hundreds of kids were all milling around. Shouts, screams, laughter, arguments, greetings, and just plain talking. Even without the bands playing, it was way loud.

I didn't have butterflies in my stomach. It was more like a swarm of sharks churning around. My palms were sweaty. My legs were weak. And we weren't even on yet.

"Look," Relly said. "No matter what happens, we're still the best. Right? Doesn't matter what this crowd thinks. If they like us, fine. If they don't, that's fine too. We're still the best."

Jerod was all hyped up, and I guess he'd never looked better. Maybe being nervous was a good thing. He was practically glowing with excitement, talking about nothing, doing high-fives, kind of jumping around and dancing. Butt was silent. He kept looking at me as though he thought I was the weak link and if we messed up, the whole disaster would be my fault. Relly stroked his fingers over the fretboard of his Strat, like he was trying to calm the guitar down.

Then the first band went on. The crowd was screaming already. And I knew I didn't have long before it all was over.

It was impossible, at least for me, to really listen to the
first band. I mean I heard them. I knew they were playing. But I was so nervous I couldn't pay any attention.

I guess they were all right. The crowd seemed to like them. But nobody really listens to the opening act.

They did their last tune, which sounded to me like a retread of Sabbath's "Paranoid." And then we were on.

I
T STARTED OUT
OK. We were pretty together on "Hole in the Sky." Butt was solid. No matter how scared he was, he kept us together that day. And I was OK, too. Relly stretched out a little on the second tune. And Jerod finally got his stride on "Blood Drive," yelling and wailing and shaking like a wild man.

I kept my eyes pretty much on the Ibanez. There was no way I could look out at the crowd without melting down to nothing. I stayed with Butt, laying down the heavy bottom. I played off of Relly, doubling lines, snaking around his riffs. And I listened to Jerod through the monitors, especially on the words I had written. It was so weird to hear them that big, that strong, blasting out over a couple hundred kids.

We had three songs to go when the Ghost Metal thing started to happen.

The crowd was with us. We might not have been the top of the bill. But they heard what we could do. And they
were starting to like it. Relly finally shook off the fear and let himself go. I glanced over at Butt and now he, too, was pouring himself totally into the noise.

So I guess I was ready at last. I was safe there on the stage. Which is very weird. Safe even though everyone was looking at us. I was free too, which is even stranger. Free to make the biggest throb in the world.

We tore through "The Ocean," the old Led Zeppelin tune. And the crowd was screaming. We went right into "Scar Monkey," and as Relly laid on the riff hard and heavy, I finally heard his Ghost Metal thing. We were loud, huge, strong as a thunderhead. And still, inside the monstrous noise I swear I could hear this ringing silence.

I looked over at him and he gave me one nod. That was all. He nodded as if to say, "Yeah, that's it, that's the sound." The song rose like a sea monster out of some churning waves. The crowd went crazy, guys banging their heads against the invisible wall and girls glowing as the spotlights swept over them. And I went into that empty secret place, just me and Relly.

And then we were on our last tune, "Ten Thousand Charms." We ground like huge millstones squeezing out lightning and thunder. It was better than ever. It was the best we'd ever sounded.

The most amazing thing was to hear my words roaring out of the huge PA system. I'd kept those words secret,
bottled up, for a long time. And now Jerod, beautiful Jerod, was wailing them for a couple hundred kids.

The crowd loved it. Or maybe they loved us. I don't know. It's all a jumble in my head. Did they hear the Ghost Metal silence, too? The roar and the nothingness inside the roar? Did they hear my words? I mean really hear them? I don't know. Did they get the feverish, swelling buzz like us? Who's to say?

But they sure made noise when we were done. They yelled and clapped and whistled and some were pushing up against the stage, like they wanted to touch Relly or Jerod. Like we had some magic that maybe might rub off.

I could hardly look at the crowd, it was so intense. I wanted to run, to escape all those surging bodies and crashing waves of noise. Jerod loved it, prancing around, accepting the applause. And Butt was thrilled, too, wearing a big doofy smile.

And Relly? I figured this would be his moment. I thought he'd stay onstage for as long as they'd let him, soaking up the good feeling.

But he was gone.

The next couple of minutes were all a blur. The MC came out and was hyping up the crowd for the next act. I think Jerod threw himself off the stage and was sucked into the crowd. Butt gave us a last blast of drumstick dynamite and headed backstage.

But where was Relly?

I followed Butt to the so-called dressing room. It was chaos. Four other bands were there, and some kids had snuck in from the crowd. People were yelling and swaggering around, chugging Mountain Dew, joking, huddling in little clusters, eating pizza, and acting like a pack of maniacs.

No sign of Relly, however.

His Strat was in its case, so I knew he'd come through the dressing room. But why had he run off so fast?

I cornered Butt and said, "Where'd he go? Why'd he take off?"

"Down that way," a girl wearing way too much purple mascara told me. "I think I saw him go down the back hall."

S
O
I
WENT
. I followed.

The hallway was long and dim, with about a thousand band names scrawled on the concrete walls. The back door was open. Outside was an alley. A couple of dumpsters and a stack of black plastic garbage bags. Two kids were hanging around there, smoking.

"Did you see Relly?" I asked.

"Who?"

Running out of the alley, I had a choice. Left or right on this empty back street. I kept asking myself,
Why do I need to find him?
What was the big deal? If he wanted to run off, that was his business, right?

It was one of those cold, hard, early winter days when the sunset painted the whole sky red. In one direction was the burning glow. In the other was shadow.

I ran with the sunset at my back. This was a section of the city I didn't know. And on a Sunday afternoon, it was empty, even desolate.
How can I possibly find him
? I kept
asking myself.
And why?
He ran off for a good reason. If he wanted to be with us, with me, he would have stayed at Waterstreet.