Tim
liked
those kinds of stories.
And, Will admitted, it was fun hearing him tell them.
“Yeah, so the priest had his way with the virgin. And when she was deflowered, she was sealed up in the wall, in the very bricks of the cathedral .
.
.”
“Like the Cask of Amontillado,” Narrio said.
“Very good,” Tim said good-naturedly. “Go to the head of the class.”
Will cleared his throat. “Dead?”
“What?”
“The girl .
.
. she was sealed up dead?”
Tim shook his head.
“No, bozo, alive, of course. That was the whole point. She had her mouth covered —”
“How?” Narrio asked, no longer smiling.
Tim grinned. “Some were gagged .
.
. but some had their mouths sewn up.”
“God,” Narrio said.
Another stop, and Tim waited while the car whistled and wheezed.
“Almost there, boys and girls,” Whalen said.
“But why?” Will asked. “What was the point?”
Tim shrugged. “Who knows? Part of the deal with the devil. I guess it has to do with all that god-awful terror, all that fucking fear. You know, just getting diddled by some fat old priest is bad enough. But, man! Being buried alive in a church? Somehow, the virgin’s fear must have made the black magic work .
.
.”
Now Whalen leaned close.
“You know, I read something like that …”
Will had the image in his mind-effectively conjured by Tim. He saw the priest fitting the last brick into the wall, closing the small chamber where the young girl — probably no older than those schoolgirls sitting at the other end of the train — writhed in her chair.
And she probably tried to scream .
.
. and only tears came.
“Yeah,” Whalen said. “There’s an old town in Denmark that was attacked by Vikings or somebody. I don’t remember. And when they stormed the town, climbing over the walls of the fortress town, they discovered that the wall was filled with bodies, young boys and girls —”
“Nice,” Will said, starting to feel a bit woozy.
“Every year the town added a body. It was the same kind of thing, some deal they had with the
dark forces
.”
“I guess it didn’t work,” Tim said.
Whalen shrugged. “Maybe they stopped doing it. I dunno.” Then he laughed. “It’s like a mortgage. Once you get involved in the deal, you have to keep it up.”
Then why the hell are we doing this? Will thought.
But he knew the answer to that.
Because we don’t believe any of this crap. And this is how we show we’re above it all. Above religion. Above superstition.
Like taking a dare.
The train stopped again. The schoolgirls got up and left. But not before the less homely one turned and looked back at them.
She smiled. Interested.
“Forget it, sister,” Tim muttered to them.
They all laughed.
The girls left.
“We switch next stop,” Tim said. “We gotta take the Coney Island el for two stops, and then we meet Kiff.”
“If he’s there,” Will said. “If he doesn’t have too many loose wires.”
“Fuck it. He’ll be there, Will. Don’t worry about it.” Narrio was still crouched forward, as if Tim or Whalen were still telling spooky stories around the old campfire.
He said something.
“They did this stuff, with the virgins and everything” — Narrio paused —”to make the magic work?”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “Sure.”
Narrio nodded. “They were like — what? Sacrifices?”
“Right, Narrio,” Whalen snapped. “My, aren’t we sharp today?”
Narrio grinned. A bit. There had been too much fun and laughing for him to deflate entirely. But Narrio’s face clouded over again. Will watched him, curious, wondering what he was going to say.
“Well, we’re doing the same thing. Right? We’re going to try and summon a spirit, right?”
“Getting nervous, Mikey?” Whalen scoffed.
And for once, Will appreciated Whalen’s tone. This was all for grins, okay? thought Will. A goof. A story to tell everyone back at school.
Our trip to the Twilight Zone.
“B-but then what are we going to do?”
“What do you mean?” Tim asked.
Narrio rubbed his chin. He had a shadow there, a real beard that could use two shaves a day.
“Those were sacrifices. Are
we
going to sacrifice anything?”
Will looked at Narrio’s eyes, dark, almost squinted. There was still a hint of a smile on his face. But it was fading, fading —
Until it was gone.
And Tim exploded, laughing, punching Narrio in the side, coaxing back a full-blown grin.
“How the fuck do I know? Goddamn Kiff has the” — he put his face right in front of Narrio’s — “fuckin’ instructions.”
Everyone was laughing.
“But don’t you worry, Mike.” Tim made a sweeping gesture with his hand as if he were a fat lady swearing off another piece of chocolate layer cake.
“We won’t lay a finger on any virgins.”
“Speak for yourself, Hanna.” Whalen laughed.
And then, with the laughter mixing with the screeching dead-end stop of the train, Will saw that they were there.
* * *
10
Kiff was there, dressed in scruffy civvies — no sport coat and tie — with a nasty-looking puss on his face.
“Looks like he’s really hurting after being kicked out,” Tim said.
The lanky redhead waved at them from across Ocean Parkway. Will followed Tim, who was running across the wide avenue, with Whalen and Narrio behind.
“Where the hell have you been?” Kiff said.
Kiff was dressed in faded, worn khakis and a plaid shirt that looked as though it belonged to his father. He wore dingy sneakers that were coming apart in three or four places.
He doesn’t look like us, Will thought. From high school senior to bum in one day.
“What do you mean, a-hole? We’re here, so let’s get going.”
Kiff’s face fell, and Will knew he had bad news to tell.
“I didn’t get us anything,” he said.
“What?” Tim said. “What! You didn’t get any booze? Why not?”
“The old fart wouldn’t sell it to me.” Kiff gestured across the street to a small liquor store. “He did other times but, damn, today he wanted more ID.”
“Great,” Whalen groaned.
Tim looked really upset.
“I wish I had known, Kiff. I could have lifted something out of my old man’s supply. But now — shit .
.
.”
“There’s another store,” Kiff said, “right off Shore Parkway. We could try there before we go down to the rocks.”
Rocks? Will wondered. What rocks? I thought we were going to a beach .
.
.
“Okay,” Tim decided quickly. “We’ll try that.”
There was a sound above them. Whalen looked up at the elevated subway. Then he turned and said, “There’s a train coming, guys .
.
.”
“Let’s go,” Kiff said, grinning again, and he led them up the stairs to the subway — the el — taking awkward, giant steps. Will and the others were slower, carrying their books bundled by tight elastic straps or, in the case of Narrio, dragging his heavy book bag. Will guessed that they all had brought the absolute minimum number of books needed for the weekend.
But they had to bring something.
They got to the platform just as the subway train pulled in.
“Come on,” Kiff yelled.
There was only one working turnstile, so they had to wait for the machine to swallow their tokens, and then turn and spit them onto the platform.
Kiff hurried onto the train and held the pneumatic doors open.
“Come on!” he yelled.
Will pushed his way through the sluggish turnstile. He saw the engineer looking down, watching what was holding up his train.
But then Whalen — the last — got through and darted into the car just as Kiff let the doors whoosh shut. Will leaned against a placard advertising the World’s Fair that had just closed. The orange and blue was faded, and the globular Unisphere looked dopey.
The train lurched away, sending them all reaching for poles and straps on the nearly deserted train.
Deserted, Will guessed, because who’d take the Coney Island train on a windy fall day? Who wants to go to the seashore today?
He plopped down on the street grinning, a bit breathless, and he faced the windows that looked out to the sea.
It was choppy out there. The sky had turned gray .
.
. not exactly threatening, but all the blue was gone, replaced by a full gray-white haze. The water looked even darker than the sky, except for the white tongues of foam that dotted it everywhere. He saw a few large boats rocking in the water.
Some ships have to wait out there for days, his grandfather had told him.
Grandpa knew about these things. He had worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, building ships, big ships. Until one day he wasn’t watching and a girder went flying right at him.
There was a closed coffin at the funeral.
And Will’s brother, Danny, said it was because Grandpa had been cut in two.
In fact —
Danny seemed to enjoy telling him that.
“Cut him right in two, Will. And that is why they won’t open the coffin.”
Danny was away at Georgetown University. Spending more time with the Jesuits.
And Will was just as glad.
Except when Dad got bad. Real bad, dark, and lost and —
“Hey, look!” Kiff yelled, swinging from his pole as if he had already been drinking.
“There’s the parachute jump.”
The great metal structure, looking like the skeleton of a giant mushroom, floated past them. It was the tallest thing outside, taller than the housing developments, taller than the roller coaster. It even looked taller than the new Verrazano Bridge. The parachutes were clustered near the top, the head of the mushroom. Will saw the silk chutes — real silk, it was rumored — fluttering in the wind.
“Too bad it’s not open,” Tim said.
“Yeah,” Whalen echoed.
The train stopped.
The Coney Island stop.
Right next to Steeplechase Park, in front of the immense white building.
Steeplechase
.
The Funny Place
, the sign said.
The building was mostly glass, like a giant greenhouse, with the wood frame all painted white. It was a giant building, strange and bizarre, unlike anything else. And inside, there were giant wood slides polished to a glistening patina by decades of fannies sliding down them. And colorful giant cylinders that turned as you tried walking through them.
Will remembered being real small and watching his dad try to crawl through, laughing, falling .
.
.
It scared him.
And people fell on each other, tumbling in slow motion as though they were human laundry. And when you came out, there was a chaos-loving clown with an air hose. He shot a spray of air at the girls, sending their skirts flying above their waists.
Steeplechase.
And there were rides, like the huge metal horses that sped around the outside of the building. A carousel with balls, is what Danny called it. The rearing horses slid on metal tracks, oh so fast, too fast, as if it wasn’t safe to go
that
fast.
And it probably wasn’t.
People had gotten hurt. Some said Steeplechase was dangerous. And the parachute jump was part of it. That
had
to be dangerous.
Even the sign, the symbol of Steeplechase, looked dangerous.
Will looked at it now. The big face above the word.
As the subway clicked and wheezed, ready to push on to the next station.
It was a human face. But only just. It was a man with an acorn-shaped head. He had his slick hair parted right in the middle, left and right. It looked like a misplaced moustache, oversized .
.
. weird. And he had a grin, a terrible grin that went literally from ear to ear. All teeth. And big fat red lips.