The Devil's Alphabet (5 page)

“Go Vols,” Pax said. It was the first thing he’d been able to say aloud since leaving his father’s. “My dad …,” he said.

“Your dad’s going to be fine. Just lay down, P.K. If you need to throw up, there’s a bathroom next door.”

Deke left the door ajar when he stepped out. Pax lay on his back and breathed deep. The ceiling fan hung high, high above him, the blades turning slowly.

The blades slowed, came to a stop. Then the room began to turn.

He gripped the bed and closed his eyes.

The day the Changes started, they were riding Pax’s fire-engine red Yamaha four-wheeler, ripping up and down the gullies behind Deke’s place. It was the second week of July, a few weeks after Paxton’s fourteenth birthday, 90 or 95 degrees. They didn’t hear the siren until Pax shut off the engine to give Deke a turn. It didn’t sound like a cop car or a fire truck. Had to be an ambulance, though ambulances didn’t come up to Switchcreek much. Deke, scrawnier and a head shorter than Paxton, hopped on the back of the ATV and put his arms around P.K.’s waist.

When they reached the road Deke hopped off to listen—that way!—and they drove a quarter mile until they saw the ambulance parked in the driveway and two EMTs walking up the steps to the house. Jo Lynn’s house.

Pax didn’t remember getting off the ATV, or walking into the house. He didn’t remember seeing another car in the driveway, though his dad’s Crown Vic must have been there, because his mother was in the living room, her arms around Jo Lynn’s shoulders. Jo had called her right after she dialed 911.

The EMTs were in the back bedroom, where Jo’s mother lay. Agatha Whitehall had run a fever for days, Pax learned later. Jo Lynn hadn’t been home that week, hadn’t even known her mother was sick; Agatha and Jo hadn’t gotten along for years, and lately Jo lived mostly at Paxton’s house. It was only because she’d gone home to retrieve more clothes that she found Agatha screaming. Her head was going to explode, Agatha said. Her bones were on fire.

When they wheeled her body into the living room, Paxton’s mother turned Jo’s face away and pressed the girl to her, smoothing her hair and shushing her. She was the only one who could hold Jo like that.

The sheet didn’t quite cover Agatha. She lay on her side, legs bent, white knees poking out. As they wheeled her to the doorway one of the EMTs leaned across her body to lift her knees out of the way while his partner backed the gurney out. The wheels dropped onto the second step with a clank, and the sheet slipped from her face.

Agatha hadn’t been a beautiful woman. Too much like a naked bird: wiry body, hawk nose, a pinched, smoker’s mouth. Now her skin was salt white, the new skull and jaw stretched into a permanent scream. Blood soaked her nightgown where the growth of the new bones had outpaced her skin.

The first wave of transformations and near-transformations would follow the course Agatha had set. First fever, then the parched skin like dried clay. After a couple days the bones would begin to stretch and rearrange, the body churning all available fat and protein into new growth, sometimes two inches a day. They’d call it Argillaceous Osteoblastoma, but that designation would be made obsolete a couple weeks later when the beta transformations began. In late August the symptoms would morph again, and all the victims would be charlies.

Argos, betas, charlies. Those names hadn’t been in use yet, of course. Only at the end of the summer, after the Changes halted as suddenly as they began, would the scientists and newspeople settle on Transcription Divergence Syndrome. TDS-A, then B and C.

The EMTs tugged the sheet back over Agatha’s face and
carried her to the ambulance. Deke and Pax were too stunned to talk. “Shee-it,” Deke whispered.

In a week the same change would be coming for him.

“I got hit by this wave of, of emotion,” Pax said. He sat across from Deke at his kitchen table, elevated on a barstool they probably kept around just for visitors his size. “I looked at my father and I just felt…”

What? Love, or something like it. Connection. The eggshell had cracked open, and for a moment everything had run together; he’d forgotten who was Paxton and who was Harlan. The feeling was exhilarating and suffocating at once. A child’s emotion: love indistinguishable from total immersion.

Pax shook his head, laughed to cover his embarrassment. “I don’t know,” he said. “It was very weird.” He rolled a near-empty Coke bottle between his hands. He’d slept for nearly four hours and woken up thirsty. Even now he was still deeply freaked out.

“I’m so sorry,” Deke said.

Pax smiled. “You can stop saying that now.”

“Your daddy’s stuff must be pretty strong,” Donna said. She stood at the counter, chopping green onions and red peppers and scraping them into a huge stainless steel bowl. “It hit you pretty hard.”

Pax laughed. He couldn’t help it. She was chopping vegetables and talking about this … stuff that was oozing out of his father’s body as if it were no stronger than an extra-strong shot of whiskey.

“So this has happened before, then?” Pax asked. “Not just with my dad?”

“It happens with all of the charlie men,” Deke said. “The old ones, anyway. There’s only about twelve of them in town. But your dad, I’d been told he was dry. He hadn’t … produced like that before.”

“Produced,” Pax said flatly.
She wants to milk me like a cow
. “Produce what?”

Deke shrugged. “Nobody knows what it is,” he said.

Donna said, “The charlies call it the vintage. Usually only the younger charlie boys handle the old men, they don’t seem to be as affected.”

“Though even they use gloves when they’re siphoning,” Deke said. “Good thing you didn’t swallow any. Usually a touch doesn’t do much. When I got some on me—”

“Wait a minute,” Pax said.

“—I just got a little nauseous. But your daddy’s stuff really knocked you on your ass.”

“Wait—they’re
sucking
this stuff
out
of him?” He didn’t try to hide his disgust. He looked from Deke to Donna, then back to Deke. “You’re shitting me.”

Deke looked uncomfortable. “The old men can’t carry the vintage around with them,” he said. “Makes ’em crazy. You got to get it out of their bodies or they, I don’t know, overdose on it.”

Pax shook his head. “So the boys take it. And then what do they do with it?”

Deke looked at Donna. She shrugged.

“What, damn it?” Pax said.

Deke said, “It’s some sex thing. Rhonda sells it to the chub boys. And the chub boys take it because they think the stuff has some effect on the girls.”

“You’re shitting me,” Pax said again.

Deke started to smile, but then seemed to recognize that Pax was starting to panic. “I don’t know. Rhonda’s probably selling ’em a bill of goods. Does it matter? Let ’em do what they want—it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

“Not you, maybe. Me, I got knocked on my ass. I could have overdosed. You didn’t even call Nine-one-one, you called them, those chub boys.”

“Come on, Pax,” Deke said. “They know how to handle it. Call the paramedics, they’d try to check your dad into a hospital.” He turned over one big palm. “It’s clade business. A charlie thing.”

“Like hell it is. This is a father thing.”

“And you’re his son, now?”

Pax sat back from the table. He thought about saying, “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” But he knew what he meant. Pax hadn’t called his father in years. He hadn’t planned to come back to Switchcreek until the old man’s funeral. He just never planned on the wrong person dying.

Pax stood. “You know better than anyone, Deke.
He
sent
me
away.”

“Where are you going?” Deke said.

“Just take me to my car.” He turned toward the door. His head still felt light from the dose, but he could move fine. Mostly fine.

“Come on, P.K.,” Deke said. “You can’t just walk away every time you—”

“Cut this out, both of you!” Donna said.

Pax blinked at her. Deke started to open his mouth and she shushed him.

“We’re all going to sit down and eat dinner,” she said. “Whether you like it or not.”

The two men sat back down. When she turned back to chopping the vegetables, Pax raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t piss off an argo woman holding a knife,” Deke said quietly, but of course his voice carried through the house.

Pax said, “We’re not done talking about this chub thing.”

“Didn’t think so,” Deke said.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, one of the chub boys was waiting for him at his father’s house.

It was the blond one, spiked hair like a patch of dried straw. He sat behind the wheel of a new-looking Toyota Camry parked in the driveway. Metallic green paint job, shiny rims, everything gleaming in the morning sun. Pax pulled past the car and parked between it and the house.

The boy sat with his elbow propped on the window, heavy bass thumping from the stereo. He nodded at Pax through the windshield, and kept smiling as Pax walked over to him. The music was some kind of slowed-down hip-hop, old stuff that sounded like eighties rap.

“You mind turning that down?” Pax said. He had to shout to be heard over the music.

The fat boy grinned at him, but didn’t reach for the stereo. His close, pink scalp showed between those carefully gelled and sprayed strands. Pax wanted to punch this guy in the mouth, a straight-arm right through the open window. It was a pleasure to know something so certainly, spoiled only by the equally certain knowledge that the chub could break him in half.

Pax leaned on the car and felt the vibration of the speakers through the sheet metal. He smiled and said quietly, “You’re going to be bald by thirty, dough boy.”

The chub’s smile vanished. He punched a button to silence the music and said, “What was that?”

“Thank you,” Pax said. “Much appreciated.” He glanced back at the house. It looked the same as the other day: door shut, drapes closed. “Your buddies inside?”

The chub regained his grin. “Nosirree, Cuz. Just me. Hey, you feelin’ any better today? Or a lot worse?”

“Fine, thanks.” Pax looked back at the house. “So.”

“Yeah?”

“You can leave now.”

“Nah, that’s okay.”

Pax stared at him. “Listen, you can’t just sit here in my dad’s driveway.”

“Well I been doing it all night. Where you been, anyway? I was here from eight o’clock on.”

Pax straightened. This kid had been staking out the place all night? What must Harlan have thought? “Listen, I’m going inside and I’m calling the cops.”

“Aw, come on now, you can’t do that to family.” He smiled. “Aunt Rhonda says we’re cousins. Your momma was a Pritchard, and her granddaddy was my daddy’s granddaddy’s brother.” He worked a stubby pinky into his ear. “Or great-granddaddy.”

“What’s your name?”

“Clete Pritchard.”

Pax didn’t remember any kid named Clete. He would have been six or seven years old when Pax left.

“Well listen, Cuz,” Pax said. “You got about two minutes before the cops get here.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll be waiting for ’em right here, then.”

Pax wheeled away from the kid before he really did punch him. He strode back to his car, and behind him the music started again. Pax retrieved the plastic grocery bags from the backseat and carried them up to the front porch.

The door was unlocked. Pax went inside without looking back and closed the door behind him. He could hear the
whump, whump, whump
of the Camry’s bass. Clete wasn’t going anywhere.

Pax walked into the living room. His father wasn’t on the living room couch, but the ripe smell still filled the air.

“Dad?”

He walked down the hallway. His father’s bedroom door was closed, but the bathroom door hung open. The room had been renovated: the old toilet had been replaced by one with a huge seat like a car tire; sturdy metal handrails had been fastened to the walls on each side of it.

Pax heard the clatter of something metal. He backtracked to the front door, then made his way to the kitchen.

His father sat wide-legged on a chair nearly swallowed by his huge body, a comb in one hand and scissors in the other. He wore the same robe as before, but his hair was wet. A hand mirror lay on the table, and there were long chunks of black hair scattered over the table and floor.

After seeing his father yesterday Pax would have thought he was too big to move on his own, much less walk to the kitchen and wash his hair. And now he seemed even larger. The skin of his face, baggy before, stretched tight over his cheeks and forehead. The blisters on his face were shiny and pink.

His father blinked at him. “I thought I made you up.”

“No such luck,” Pax said.

“Here,” his father said. He worked the scissors from his fat fingers. “I can’t see the back of my head.”

“I don’t know how to cut hair.”

“It’s just hair, Paxton,” his father said. He shoved the scissors toward him. “Snip snip.”

Pax set the grocery bags on the table. He took the scissors by the blades. “There’s a guy”—he almost said chub—“sitting out front in his car, watching the house. He said his name is Clete Pritchard.”

His father grunted.

“Did you call the police?” Pax asked.

“Paxton, that’s one of Rhonda’s boys. He
is
the police.”

“What’s he doing out there? He can’t just … sit there.”

“You going to cut my hair or not?”

Pax stepped behind him, and his father bent his head. Up close, the damp black hair was shot with gray. His father didn’t have to do this. Surely he could find somebody in town or in Lambert who could come in and cut hair.

His father grunted impatiently.

Pax wiped the handle of the scissors on his jeans and picked up the black plastic Ace comb. He smoothed the hair over the rolls of fat at his father’s neck, careful not to scrape the necklace of small white blisters just above the robe’s collar, and began to cut.

“You were here the other day,” his father said.

“Yesterday.”

“That’s what I meant. I woke up and you were gone.”

A minute or so later his father said, “When are you going back to—back to where you live?”