Skull Session

. . . Everything that has to do with salvation possesses, among other things, a sinister, unfamiliar character; it always includes the superhuman. It is a specifically human trait to find joy in destruction.

—ADOLF GUGGENBUHL-CRAIG

Prologue

S
TEVE SWUNG A CAST-IRON SKILLET
through the door of a
cupboard, spraying the kitchen with broken glass, and Dub ducked back
s
through the doorway. In the dining room he stood picking splinters of glass off his
shirt, trying to sort out the clash of feelings in his chest.

When they'd come up the hill and Dub hadfirstglimpsed the house, he'd been
startled by the sight, momentarily transfixed: the slanting light of late afternoon,
the grand forlorn tall chimneys and weathered shingle walls, the September woods
all around shot with streaks of bright color.
Scary, but beautiful,
he thought,
puzzled at the paradox of conflicting impressions.

Steve had just come in and started wrenching doors off the cabinets and
throwing them through windows. Earlier he had been talking about how all the
shit in your life built up inside, and how trashing the abandoned house would be
perfect way to let it out. Watching him now, Dub could easily believe it: Steve's
mouth kinked in a weird smile that seemed to have as much pain as happiness in
it; and the way his eyes bulged from exertion, he did look like he had some kind of
pressure in him.

A pot bounced off the doorframe and almost hit Dub, so he left the dining
room and headed into the huge room at the center of the house. Why thefuck had
he even come up here? Partly it had to do with Steve, who talked too much and
moved his hands and feet too much and came from a crappy family and bitched
about being poor, and inspired in Dub a mix of admiration and pity that added
up to a desire not to let him down when he proposed the idea. Partly it had been
curiosity, he decided: It might be nice to try throwing things around, let out all the
anger and frustration or whatever. Or at least let him know if he had all that stuff
inside or not.

And yet now he couldn't bring himself to smash anything. He was too
nervous, too appalled at the damage, almost paralyzed. When they'd firstcome
in he thought he'd heard a noise somewhere inside, and he couldn't get rid of the
feeling that somebody was in here with
them
—
watching, listening. Plus the house
was wrecked so badly, to the point where he didn't think it could be just high
school kids like him and Steve, he could almost believe the talk about weird rituals
up here, or maybe poltergeists. Now every muscle in his body was drawn too tight,
his senses on guard, everything made him jump.

Horrified and fascinated, he wandered aimlessly in the main room, just
looking. The room was as long as a tennis court and two stories tall, and like the
rest of the house was several feet deep with a mash of clothes and appliances and
broken furniture and smashed paintings and books and stuffed animal heads. The
walls had been broken open in places, too, leaving chunks of plaster and broken
boards on the floor.

Dub prodded a stuffed wolf head with his toe, and then jumped as it rolled
toward him and seemed to cock its glistening eye at him. He moved away.

The wolfs frozen snarl brought back a disturbing memory: the time when he
was eight and he had climbed a tree out in the woods and after a while a bunch of
dogs had come by, a German shepherd and Sue Boardman's collie and a little
yellow mutt and Jamie Klein's black Lab. They weren't at all the same friendly
pets he'd wrestled with and thrown sticks
for
—
somehow, roaming wild, out of
view of their owners, they had changed back into pack hunters. Every movement
taut and purposeful, they combed through the woods lookingfor things to kill, ears
upright, faces different from their usual sappy expressions. More like that wolf
head. As he watched, theyflushed and caught a rabbit, tossing it up in the air and
then pulling it to pieces. What would have happened if he'd been on the ground
and they'd seen him?

Now, as he listened to Steve in the other room, the thought occurred to him,
Maybe people could change the same way those dogs did.
How else could
they wreck a house in this totally fucked-up way} And what else could they do
when they got that different, that dangerous?

Dub shivered at the thought. That's where he disagreed with Steve, he
decided: If there was stuff like that down inside you, maybe it wasn't such a good
idea to let it out.

But despite the tension, despite the twisted, broken mess around him, there
was still that other thing he'd felt from the moment he'd first seen the
place
—
a
good feeling, he decided, having to do with how
beautiful
things were, how
mysterious.
Now the sun had gone down, and through the tall windows he could
see the sky, striped purple and peach. And below it the woods had darkened so
that it felt like he and Steve were on the edge of another world. They were only a
mile or twofrom home and yet they might as well be on a desert island: The heavy
forest in the waning light had an ancient, timeless look to it, like the jungle in
Jurassic Park,
eerily beautiful. And the house was beautiful, too, despite being so
fucked
up
—
the fading red light gave the big room a somber, stately quality, like
the inside of a church. With the same sad feeling churches had, too, always a poor
dead fesus pinned to the wall somewhere.

Dub picked up a heavy crystal vase and looked through its fluted glass at the
fractured remains of sunset, puzzled by his own internal state as much as by the
effects of light. Like his vision, his thoughts seemed especially lucid, unfamiliar
and exciting. As if your mind changed when you were away from other people, or
did something new and forbidden, or maybe when the light changed as night
began to
fall
—

He jumped involuntarily as out of the corner of his eye he saw something bigfly
through the dining room door, hit the near wall, and drop to the floor. It was
getting too dark to see well, but hefiguredSteve must have thrown the broken-off
back of the antique settee he'd noticed in
there
—
the upholstered, wood-trimmed
back would have made that kind
o/Tcnock-thump
noise when it hit. Although it
would have been hard to throw that far.

Now Steve was really going
wild—
it almost sounded like two or three guys,
or someone much bigger and stronger than Steve. Something in the dining room or
kitchen crashed so loud Dub's whole body jerked in response, and then there was
a rending noise, like nailed-together boards being pried apart. Dub set the vase
down carefully, realizing he'd really rather go home now.

"fesus, Steve, take it easy," he called. He tried to put a laugh in his voice so
Steve wouldn't get pissy about it. Steve didn't answer, but suddenly the noises
stopped, everything but a strange, rhythmic sound, like someone sawing.

"Steve?" Dub squinted across the big room, not able to see clearly into the
doorway thirty feet away, realizing that it got dark quickly here when the sun
dipped below the trees. A wave of anxiety sent ice into his veins, and he started to
walk back toward the door, suddenly shaky. "Hey, man, maybe we ought to get
going," he said.

Halfway to the door he came close to the thing that had been thrown and now
lay tumbled and shapeless against the wall, and he saw what it was. It was Steve.

He turned to the dining room doorway and saw the vehement movement
inside, and instantly became empty of thought. Worst of all, the lens of strange
beauty was gonefrom his eyes, and all that remained was the ugly, animal light of
fear.

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