The Accidental Siren (24 page)

“Don’t follow him. It’s what he wants.”

“I’ll take care of him,” I said. “You stay
here. For real this time.”

She nodded. “Careful, kay?”

“I’m always careful.”

I followed the path to a clearing the size of
my bedroom. A green ladder rose from the ground to a camouflaged
deer stand strapped to an oak tree. Trent was leaning against the
rungs, unarmed, a warped lid to a garbage can strapped to his chest
like body armor.

Danny was kneeling at the center of the
clearing. His hunting vest hung from his arms like dead, neon
flesh. My old camera was on a tripod, watching me. A cat struggled
to free itself from the bully’s tremendous grip. It was
Dorothy.

“Let her go, Danny.” I stepped forward... so
did Trent.

Dorothy thrashed–back arching until her ears
touched her tail–then surrendered, reluctantly, to Danny’s
impossible hold. I saw the source of the metallic clink. In the
bully’s left hand, a Zippo lighter; in his right, a firecracker,
stolen–no doubt–from the night we filmed the war scene.

“Danny!” I shouted, but Trent was on top of
me in eight brisk stomps. He grabbed my nightshirt’s collar and
held me against his chest. Behind him, in the shadows between the
trees, A.J. stood with his eyes on the ground.

“Age...” I said. But he didn’t look up.

Without a word or chance to bargain, Danny’s
nose puckered against his lips. He flipped Dorothy belly-up, held
her ribcage beneath his pit, and forced the firecracker into her
anus. She trashed wildly, dicing his left wrist with her claws,
then he lit the fuse.

I screamed. I beat my fists into Trent’s
chest.

Danny clenched the shrieking cat, turned his
head, closed his eyes.

Behind me, Mara gasped.

* * *

The explosion was muffled, but the damage was
clear.

Danny dropped the cat and snatched the camera
by the tripod. His eyes were locked on the girl behind me, clenched
in a steel scowl. “Let’s go,” he said to the others, then looked
away and scampered into the brush.

Trent looked at Dorothy, her front paws
swimming wildly above her, then back at me. I saw in his expression
a glimmer of sadness as if he didn’t believe Danny would actually
go through with it. He released my collar, veered a wide circle
around the dying cat, and ran away.

I looked past the deer stand and through the
trees; A.J. was gone too.

To call an event “indescribable” usually
shows the writer’s lack of imagination. But how does one recall in
writing the absolute decimation of a little girl? What word other
than “indescribable” befits the horror in the heart of the boy who
loves her? How does one use the word “shriek” to capture the sound
a cat makes when it’s tail is dangling by a dirt-crusted
tendon?

There was no consolation, no words of
encouragement I could offer as Mara scooped up her writhing cat,
her arms soaking the blood from it’s open rear.

I tried to touch her shoulder but she pushed
me away. She clasped her hands, bowed before the cat and blood and
God, and she prayed.

“Mara...” I said.

She crossed herself. She opened her eyes and
looked at the cat as if the healing-power of prayer would be
instantaneous. She rubbed Dorothy’s matted mane to calm her. And
when it became clear that the prayer wouldn’t work, she bit her
lower lip, closed her eyes, and sang.

It was a simple tune, a lullaby this time,
familiar, though I couldn’t hear the words.

My mind pushed back the vile sight to make
room for the nuance of Mara’s quivering voice. In the moment, I
suppose I assumed Mara was trying to sing Dorothy to sleep, but
then she stopped, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to my knees.
“Make it work, James,”
she said, tears pooling in the
corners of her eyes, leaping to her cheek with every blink.

“Make what work?” I asked.

“I have powers, you said.
I’m special.
If I’m special, how do I fix her?” She turned back, hair curtaining
her face, naked knees pressing divots in the dirt. And from her
lips came a soothing rendition of
Somewhere Over the
Rainbow
, her gentle vibrato besting Judy Garland with every
note.

Mara scrunched her face as if she was bending
spoons. Her hands hovered over Dorothy, stroked Dorothy, shook and
shook
and shook
Dorothy as she poured her special powers–the
best she knew how–into healing her pet.

Her voice never wavered, but by the end of
the last verse, the cat was dead.

* * *

We buried Dorothy away from the clearing,
two-feet down through a mess of roots and leaves. We laid beside
her the shredded pajama that lured us into the trap. We smoothed
the dirt with our palms, christened the ground with our tears, then
sat together on the incline.

Mara saw it first. Her wet eyes were focused
on a distant object, through the trees, just above the horizon. I
followed her gaze and saw it too–curved exactly as she imagined,
half-covered in evergreen trees, a cylindrical building on top of a
dune–
the hill from her drawings.

9. NIGHT TERRORS AND THE FLOODED CONFESSIONAL

We told Mom about Danny. We had to. I
explained the incident the best I could, though I cried through the
gory parts and used the word “dickface” at least once while
describing A.J.’s betrayal.

“You sweet, darling girl,” Mom said, sobbing
for Mara and holding her close.

“I’m okay, Mrs. Parker,” she replied as if
declining a second helping of potatoes. “Dorothy was a special cat,
but I’ll be fine!”

Dad talked Mom out of filing a police report,
claiming Danny was a disturbed little boy who only needed a push in
the right direction... not jail time. He even offered to call
Danny’s uncle to recommend a psychologist. “To help control the
violent impulses,” he said.

“It’s not just Danny,” Livy added.
“Sometimes, I hear voices in the woods...”

With Mom’s supervision, Dad armed himself
with a crowbar and overalls and marched to the mysterious hideout
as if he actually had a clue. I stood on my bed between Mara and
Livy. Together, we watched my Dad putter around the trees as if he
lost a contact. Mom pointed to a fresh candy wrapper and a trio of
discarded pop cans. They peered down The Great Divide, then
inspected the view of Mara’s window from various positions among
the trees. Dad used the crowbar to pry the wooden rungs from the
trunks.

Until the grownups deemed the property safe,
Mara wasn’t allowed out of the house without supervision, and I
wasn’t allowed to ride my bike to Whit’s.

“The weather man’s predicting storms all
week,” Mom told us that evening. “We’ll order pizza and camp in the
tower! I know how much you love watching the lightning over the
lake!” It was a nice offer, but nothing could compensate for the
dead pet and castle lockdown.

An hour later, I overheard a phone call
between Mom and Mr. Anderson. Whenever we went on vacation, the
social worker was Mom’s go-to friend for emergency respite care.
She asked him if he and his wife could take Fantasia for the week,
a testament to her underlying fear.

(There were three nights between our
adventures; three nights of sleeping with the remains of Mara’s
wonderful smell. The first night, her imprint was still visible in
the sheets like the taut white texture of a perfect snow
angel.)

Mara awoke the next morning and dressed
herself as if Dorothy had never died, tapping hangers on closet
rods to the beat of the FM stereo, gargling, rinsing, spitting...
just like any other day. She wore her smile so easily that I found
myself drawn to her usual giddiness, not mortified by the memory of
Dorothy’s inside-out asshole or the clouds looming on the
horizon.

The
Fairytale
premiere was twelve days
away. Arrangements were being made whether the movie was done or
not. Mom used her meager artistic abilities to fashion invitations
out of card stock and decorative strips of old 8mm negatives.

“Meet James Parker,

writer, director and editor of
‘Fairytale!’

Screening at the Grand Harbor Community
Center

hourly during the Lakeshore Celebration Art
Show!

Premieres Thursday, August 25!”

“That’s an awful lot of exclamation points,”
I said.

“There’s a lot to be excited about!” Mom
replied.

The movie was the only way to beat Ryan
Brosh. If it was a blockbuster, Mara would pick me. Every
scene–every shot and sound effect and line of dialogue–would
culminate into the vision that had lived in my head since the
beginning, and she would marvel at my writing ability and my
directing ability and the killer production value.

The movie was the only way to beat Ryan...
and I had let Danny distract me.

(On the second night, the smell of Mara’s
moisturized skin still clung to the fibers of my pillow, but my
restless sleep had loosened her shape from the sheets. Outside, it
began to rain.)

As if to reiterate the
Fairytale
deadline, Mom scheduled a back-to-school shopping trip to distract
us from the buried cat. Mrs. Greenfield came too and helped Mara
pick out a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper with a hot-pink kitten on the
front. “To remind you of the good times,” she said.

As Mara hopscotched across the laminated
tiles from the pens to the markers to the triple-hole punches, Livy
seemed unusually fixated on her. When Mara discovered the perfect
pencil box, Livy scoured the shelves for one just like it.

My sister wasn’t the only person with her eye
on Mara. One man, twenty-something, accidentally plowed his
shoulder into a rack of backpacks because he was more interested in
a twelve-year-old girl than his path through the aisle... reminding
me again that “Mara” and “public” don’t jive well.

Mom and Mara broke into their own clique and
meandered toward the jewelry cases. “Isn’t back-to-school shopping
fun with the kids?” Mom asked.

Livy and Mrs. Greenfield joined them at the
earring display. Livy worked a pair of sterling-silver hoops
through her lobes and dangled them in front of Mara. “Cute?”

“Totally cute!” Mara replied and twirled the
display. “I wish I had piercings. The social workers won’t allow
it.”

Livy looked to Mom. “Hey, Ma,” she said. “Are
these cute?”

She nodded. “Very!”

“Think I should get ‘em?”

“That’s what allowances are for!”

Livy rolled her eyes, but decided they were
worth the eight bucks.

The outing concluded with a power surge. A
peal of thunder shook our check-out lane, and for ten seconds, the
lights went out. Livy screamed. The rest of us laughed.

That evening, Mrs. Conrad braved the rain and
dropped Whit off at the castle for some much-needed editing time.
In my room, he tossed a cellophane bag of white powder on my lap.
“Released it early,” he said. “It’s sellin’ like crazy.”

“Who’s buyin’?” I asked.

“Nerds from computer camp.”

I read the price tag. “Two bucks a pop?”

“First taste is free,” he said. “Best-friend
discount.”

I laughed, then dropped the sweet temptation
in my dresser drawer and slammed it shut. “I haven’t touched candy
in a month,” I said.

Whit finagled a mess of cords from the
hammock beneath his chair. “My VCR broke,” he said and plopped the
wires beside the TV.

“What? How?”

“You left an open bottle of cola next to
it.”

“And you spilled it?”

“Looks like we’re stuck with your
equipment.”

I held up the wires and spread them between
my hands like a mangled spider web. Composite cables, S-Video
cables, a giant phone cord... “What am I supposed to do with all
these?” I asked.

“Extras. We gotta finish this thing in less
than two weeks, so I brought the works.”

I showed my friend a rough cut of the first
five minutes of our film (though I turned away during the opening
monologue with Dorothy). As The Girl approached the entrance to the
Red Room, I paused the video and awaited Whit’s response.

He picked up his left thigh and manually
crossed it over his right. The motion gave him an aura of awkward
sophistication. “It’s good,” he said. “It’s really,
really
good.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Now we gotta finish it.”

(The rain was unrelenting on the third night.
As the lightning threw tree-branch shadows across my walls, I
pressed my nostrils against the mattress and breathed her fading
scent. At one AM, the real Mara woke up screaming in the opposite
room.)

Four days after Dorothy’s death, as the sun
was still hiding beneath the horizon and the rain was still
spilling in broken reams from the gutters, Mara made her
escape.

* * *

She wore a cream-colored tank top, my
favorite with the thin, vertical pleats. Her shorts were denim with
purple stitching, a broken belt-loop, and a hole in the back left
pocket. Braided pigtails brushed her collarbone. A taupe bath towel
served as a homemade knapsack, tied at the top, bulging with the
bare necessities as if she was a cartoon runaway.

“Mara?” I rubbed my eyes and took a second
step into the parlor.

“Shit,” she whispered. Her shoulders fell
slack and she turned around.

“Mornin’ to you too.”

“Go back to bed, James.” Her eyes jumped
between me–standing like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in my undies
and plain-white tee–and the gate to the foyer stairwell.

“Are you runnin’ away?” I asked.

She took another step toward the stairs, then
hesitated. “I don’t care if you tattle, but can you give me a
ten-minute head start?”

“Wait...” I shook my head to fight the
sleepiness, then asked, “Where are you going?”