Chapter Text
In the root cellar, Billy dreams.
American history, third period. Leon Czolgosz’s just murdered President McKinley at some kind of big fair. In real life, in his real class, there was no odor of gunpowder and blood, but there is down here, now. It's strong and delicious. Everyone's bodies reeked of sweat and pulse and growing hair, soured soft pussy and cotton and unwashed gym-class ballsack, flowery laundry detergent. Hair products and imperfect deodorant, copiously applied. Harrington is two rows over, two seats up. Scrunched into his chair, his big shoulders curled over his textbook. Frowning at it. Tammy Thompson's opening a bottle of nail polish behind her own propped-up book so she can fix a chipped edge. Everyone can immediately smell the acetate, wrinkling their noses; in the dream it smells wonderful to him, sweet on his tongue, the way bleach has started to taste.
“Miss Thompson, this isn't cosmetology school!” Mr. Wozniak says, snapping his fingers up at the front. “Put that away!”
“But Mr. Wozniak,” Thompson protests. “It’s yearbook pictures today.”
“Irrelevant,” Mr. Wozniak says.
“They literally can't see your hands?” Harrington murmurs. Beside him, somebody smothers a laugh.
“What's that, Mr. Harrington?”
“Nothing,” Harrington says, quickly.
When the teacher turns away, Harrington sighs. Slouches in his seat. Tips his head back far enough that their eyes accidentally meet. It's not Harrington who looked away first. It almost never was. In the dream, though, Billy can look and look. And look, and look, and look. The devil doesn't mind about this part of him. Maybe appreciates how useful it is.
Get up, it says, eventually.
Billy opens his eyes.
The ceiling is flat. The shelves loom above his stretched body, empty glass jars, old toolboxes. He can see in the cold damp dark, see the mice and the spiders, the spiders’ molted husks. It’s still winter, so most of the small many-legged things are lifeless, dead or inert, but even the remaining insects don't touch him while he's sleeping. Or rather while he's lying still, awake and sightless and gone. But how would a bug know the difference? The first time the devil put him on a wet floor he thought they might come and cover him, even dig into his motionless skin, climb into his ears and nostrils while he couldn’t move to move them, but they never have; there's something so wrong with his flesh that even flies won't approach it. In this case he's not complaining. It's the smallest kind of mercy not to be crawled on. Though what would it matter, really.
Billy gets up.
Tonight it's a man at the grocery store. Furthest edge of the lot. Fumbling with his keys in the dark, paper bag tucked to his hip, heavy with who knows what. Human food, tasteless and uninteresting anymore. Snow dusts the ground and leaves their footprints in two lines: one approaching the other, then following, perpendicular becoming parallel. He did learn a few things in school.
“Hey,” Billy says.
The man startles. Drops his clattering keyring. “Let me get that for you,” Billy says.
“Thanks,” the guy says.
Then he looks at Billy's shirt, his bare filthy arms, and blinks.
I told you, Billy thinks, with resignation. I told you, I need to be cleaner if you want me to do this. I need to be clean and look normal. Be dressed right. But you never fucking listen to me. Do you?
Pain lances through. Answer enough. It's like an icepick straight to the skull, so sharp and pure his eyes water and overflow like he's crying. But he stays standing; the pain comes from the same thing that keeps his legs steady no matter what, that wouldn't let him fall.
Yes, sir.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir. Fuck you, sir. Sometimes he feels he's almost made the devil laugh. Almost feels it might be capable. This might be something he's only imagining.
“I'm,” Billy says, choked up. “Sorry to ask. But I… need some help.”
“Look, man,” the guy says. “I can't give you money for drugs.” He rifles in his shopping bag. Takes out a loaf of bread, like Billy would want that soft, sawdusty garbage. “But you can have this,” he says, tentatively. “If you're hungry.”
“That’s really kind,” Billy says. “I'm starving.”
The streetlight above them flickers. Then goes out.
The first one was both easiest and hardest. Hardest, because somehow the devil didn't yet know all the many things that people might try, the ways they might bargain or fight, surprise them both, all the different kinds of pleading and twisting away. Because Billy hadn't yet experienced watching someone break their own hand to try and get out of the ropes and kick out of the trunk. Since then he's seen everything. He's been punched in the throat and the groin and the stomach, he's had girls’ long nails rake his arms. But he heals unnaturally quickly. Nothing phases him anymore.
Easiest, because he was still senseless through it, barely awake from the transformation. So deeply subsumed under the devil's power that he sleepwalked unaware through the whole thing. A freebie. And someone he knew: Heather Holloway, from school. Under her wool hat, her mostly-dried hair had smelled appetizingly like chlorine from swimming her laps at the indoor pool. A few snowflakes were drifting down. Christmas had just come and gone.
“Billy?” she'd said, looking shocked, when he came around the corner of the chain-link fence of the parking lot. He'd stepped forward—it had, with his foot—and she'd stepped back.
“Heather,” he'd said. “I need your help.”
Heather had stared at him. Chewing the inside of her cheek, glancing to the gate. The single weak floodlight at the corner of the building. Terrified, but not mindlessly. A smart girl. Maybe he'd told the devil about her, some kind of perverse intercession. Maybe that's why she was first. He doesn't remember, if so.
“Did you really… do it?” she'd said, at last. Her voice tremored.
“No,” Billy had said. The devil had shaken his head vehemently. “You know me, Heather. We were friends, kinda, weren’t we? I really need your help. Nobody believes me. I'm—I’m in danger.”
“You swear to god,” Heather says. “You really didn't…”
“It was a total accident,” Billy’s voice had said. The intonation had been all wrong; it made mistakes, early on, using his vocal cords. Too high, too low, too soft, too loud. And then he was crying. Crying real tears with a face he couldn't even feel. Inside he'd been laughing. Floating like a leaf. The devil had hurt him so badly half an hour ago that he still felt electrocuted. Everything buzzed. “It was an accident, just a crazy accident, a prank, Heather, please believe—”
He'd blinked, and then he was placing her bound body gently onto the floor in a basement he didn't recognize. A place that smelled like sulfur and black earth, old burnt things. She'd whimpered, waking up.
For a moment, Billy had thought with certainty: no. He would not.
Then the pain returned, tenfold. His body pissed helplessly as it shook through him. Something even worse followed it: the picture of his promise. Heather had writhed on the floor and begged while the devil showed Billy what he’d sold his soul for. A bargain was a bargain. He’d gone away for a little while, and Heather had gone away, too, and returned joined up, and then he'd untied her, and walked her to the stairs.
With Heather he took Heather’s parents, and Allison Carter, also from school. Allison had run, but only a little ways. Then a man Billy half-recognized, who spent most evenings crouched on the curb near the liquor store, who'd fought like a bear on fucking steroids. His life looked like shit but he'd obviously wanted to keep it. Then it was an old woman, then an old man. Next two people from a motel miles up the road, strangers from another city; Billy took them away in their own car and then gave the keys back when they were finished, so they could go and do their own recruiting. He couldn't drive his old car, of course: it was gone. Gone for the same reason that he had to always wear a hat, hide far out of town, and never go anywhere crowded or in daylight, anywhere he might be recognized. It feels like the devil is making him uglier and uglier even as his strength grows and grows, which he doesn't mind, unless he looks in mirrors, or sees someone's disgust. Sometimes he forgets he has a body left at all.
Time passes slowly. Or disappears in chunks of hours and days. His memories of things are being jumbled; he can see Heather's childhood sometimes, her klutzy mom singing and dancing and laughing in the kitchen, hip bumping the table. Since Heather brought her parents in, sometimes he can see their memories too, stirred together like soup: Heather's mother's mother was a drunk who'd yank her daughter's hair when she brushed it. Maybe they can see all that shit of his. He hates the idea but there's nothing he can do about it. Right now he's waiting the sun out in an old tornado shelter at an abandoned farm. The devil doesn't care if it breaks his bones or drops his unconscious body right down into dried rat shit; it definitely doesn't care if his memories embarrass him.
He's dreaming of a party, at least.
Someone's brought nitrous. The balloons smell cold inside. Void. Hagan's done way too many. Making himself stupider and stupider, not that anyone would notice. He really can’t ever do himself the favor of not opening his mouth. Jackie's offering more around.
Now Harrington's doing one.
“Fuck!” he laughs. He holds a palm to his ears like they're throbbing. Cracks up. Bounces twice off his heels, straight at the ceiling, like he's pogo’ing at a punk show. Everybody shrieks with delight. “Fuck, ow,” Harrington giggles.
He waves off another hit and wanders away. Touching the walls with one hand like he might tip over. Billy follows him down the hallway, a few steps behind. He did then, too. It's all the same. Harrington stops at the end of the hall, by the closed bathroom door. Billy never knew whose house it was. “Whadyou want,” Harrington says, back to the wall. “More advice about my… feet?”
“Why,” Billy says. “God knows you won’t take it.”
“Should you maybe be a podiatrist?” Harrington muses, the absolute freak. “Is that a good job?”
He’s fucking toasted.
“You’re really the life of the party tonight,” Billy says. “Back on your throne.”
Harrington's eyes are like a doll's when he’s high, the middles bigger than horse chestnuts, the same perfect brown color.
“Come the fuck on,” Harrington says.
“You sure can't take a compliment, either,” Billy says.
“Did I do something? You’re like… constantly trying to wind me up again,” Harrington says, much more lucidly, like he didn't just fry his brain for a second. Like he hasn't been drinking beer after beer and liquor barely cut with orange juice, while Billy trailed along and watched him do it, watched him bump off the walls and dance and let any girl touch him. The reek of loneliness on Harrington is as palpable as wiggly lines rising from a pile of garbage in a comic strip, but he's still upright. Still going. Picked himself up, dusted himself off, turned the crank to make himself putter around like a toy. Now he’s sinking with that strange drunken gravity some people get, going past intoxication to another, clearer place. “You really want me to try it, right? Take a swing?” Harrington guesses. “What the hell for, man. I thought we were… cool. What for.”
“Why not,” Billy says.
In the dream the party's gone, now. The stereo thumps through the wall like they're inside a womb, but the laughter is missing. No more shouting, no more cans being dropped on the back patio, no more shrieks when someone sucks a balloon. Even the light is gone. They're standing in the dark together. A pair, a body and its shadow. Harrington's glowing just a little bit.
“Why would you want me to,” Harrington wonders. “Why would you want somebody to—hurt you.”
He’s asking himself. And he doesn't, didn't, seem aware of how childish it sounds, how insulting. Like a punch from those hands would be the end of the world.
“You gave it a good try,” Billy says, which is not what he said then.
Harrington's silent for a while.
Billy comes closer. In this kind of darkness, everything's soft. Soft-edged and hushed, traceable with fingertips, like you're underneath a blanket. “Hit me,” Billy murmurs.
“Jesus Christ,” Harrington says. He laughs incredulously.
“Do it.”
“I’m going crazy,” Harrington mutters. He's sinking against the wall, forgetting to keep his legs under him again. But his chin lifts stubbornly. “No,” he says. “Dickhead.”
He tips.
Just slightly. His hand touches Billy's shoulder. Not a push. He touches Billy like he's the wall. Like doing it will steady him. Like Billy could steady him. That realization pulls all the steadiness right out of Billy's body; makes him so seasick and dizzy he's suddenly plummeting from a height. He's had a fifth of vodka since he got through the door. Maybe that's why he does it. “Uh,” Harrington says, as he's kissed.
It isn't quite—
It's almost like Billy remembers. But it was blurrier, less distinct. More full of sensation: a palm under Harrington’s shirt, up his back. The edge of a tooth on a lip. And it happened without the crawling awareness of watching, being watched. The devil's seen all of this, of course. There's nothing skin can hide when it's peeled off. Harrington's mouth tasted like cheap diluted orange juice, paper-bitter from the carton. Pukey now, but somehow good then. The most incredible thing was that it had opened up, and for a moment Billy's tongue was inside him, inside his warm body. Let in.
Maybe it feels just this good, to the devil. When you stop squirming.
Harrington wakes first. His hands fumble up between them. Separating them. “Hey, um,” Harrington says, breathlessly. “It's, um, maybe the wrong—”
Now he pushes. Away.
Billy goes backwards, boiling. The rage is a tower of flame with a white-hot heart; Billy is burning alive. He shoves Harrington hard in the chest. Harrington's mouth was open, like he was still trying to say something else; when he's thumped into the wall he blinks and his brows furrow angrily. “What the fuck,” Harrington demands. He stumbles, rights himself, then suddenly shoves Billy three big steps backwards. Uses both of his hands to do it. “The fuck is wrong with you?” Harrington says.
“Fucking—bitch boy,” Billy hisses.
Harrington stares at him. Then elbows past. Billy grabs his wrist. “If you,” Billy tries.
“Get the fuck off me,” Harrington says, and wrenches free. “Fucking asshole.”
The party's back. Harrington disappears into it. Billy's heart pounds and pounds and pounds. Back then he'd been scared shitless at his own stupidity. Harrington was going to immediately tell someone. Everyone. When Billy came back into the living room, they'd all turn and point and laugh hysterically. It would get repeated and repeated. Eventually, someone would say it in front of their teachers. Coach. Dad.
Now, Billy opens his eyes. Contemplates the lone bar of weak sunset still projected onto the wall, from a gap in the seal of the dented old storm-shelter doors. The last part of the dream’s not scary anymore. It feels so far away it's almost laughable. He could kill everyone in that house if he was compelled to. His body's stronger than it ever was, and besides, he no longer has to go to school or to parties. There's only one thing he has left to do on earth and he's doing it. After that he's done. He no longer has to think about anything in the meantime except dreaming and recruiting, and occasionally convincing his owner to allow him a shower and a change of clothes. That particular fear might not ever touch him again.
The truly frightening part is the middle. Harrington looking at him, looking deep in. Like he could see into Billy's head, see the center, like a hideous Tootsie Roll pop. See what was coming for both of them. If he could've seen it, though, he would have killed Billy first with that baseball bat. Billy sure wishes to Christ he had.
More, the devil says.
It's getting harder and harder, Billy points out. My photograph is everywhere. All the diners and gas stations, the community bulletin boards. It's been broadcast on fucking television. I have to change cars all the time.
It's a risky thing to bring up. The devil is not incapable of anything, including disposing of him and making this all for fucking nothing.
Need to grow, it says.
I want what we agreed on, Billy thinks. I want what I was fucking promised. I've done what you wanted, I've spread you around. I want what I have coming. I don't give a shit about anything else.
Pain.
Except for your plans, Billy amends. Yes, sir. I sure care about those. But you'll still have Heather, after. You have many others.
Not enough, it says. And then, like a wheedling piece of shit, it says, The gift depletes us.
I understand, Billy thinks. More.
Two people in one night. From different towns in opposite directions. The radius can't be too large, they'll need to come when they're called. But he can't spend every night in the middle of Hawkins, luring away smokers outside bars or catching drunks getting into their trucks; he's less recognizable than he was two months ago, not yet unrecognizable. The police are incompetent but often lucky.
The second guy's a crier. The front of his parka’s soaked with tears before Billy even gets him into the warehouse. His pants reek like shit. Billy uses tarps in the trunk, it’s not the first time.
“I'll give you anything you want,” the guy sobs, when the devil uses Billy's hand to uncork his mouth. “Anything. Money, my car, my—my whole bank account, anything you—”
“I have a prior arrangement,” Billy says. “Thanks anyway.”
Late February brings sheeting ice for days, soothing frigid weather that descends like a grey veil. People stay indoors and only pay attention to their chapped hands cupped around the car heater, curled around a cigarette. The devil allows him a Carhartt coat and a woolen hat, so he won’t look like someone out getting hypothermia. Someone you might call the police about. Billy brings the devil two people from a deli, workers in aprons who were taking bags out to the dumpster; while they go away he goes away too, hums while the devil make his eyes and his heart go blank, considers the fact that devil and deli are only one letter apart. There'll be no forgiveness for this, for anything, not ever, just oblivion. One long night lost behind clouds. It can't come soon enough.
Dig, the devil says, afterwards. At last.
Billy breaks into a hardware store, steals a pickaxe and a shovel, a lot of rope and tarps. He’d love to use the cemetery’s small backhoe instead, be in and out of there in two or three hours tops, but that would draw too much attention. He drives a stolen truck through the graveyard with its lights off, rumbling right over other people’s headstones, until he finds the right plot, which is easy to do even on a pitch-black night. The marker and half the mound is covered in flowers and teddy bears, half-melted greeting cards and handwritten notes with the ink washed away by sleet and snow. The fur on most of the toys is rotting from the freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing, but there are fresh ones, too. Someone’s left little figurines on top of the stone, smaller than action figures. Plastic shit everywhere. Billy scrapes all the mess away with the shovel and paces out the size of the mound in his boots, then starts with the pickaxe. It’s difficult with the ground half-frozen. But he could break his back, now, and probably get up in an hour. He swings the pickaxe hard enough to tear his shoulder and doesn’t worry about the ripping feeling, the needle-stings in the nerves of his hips.
When it’s loosened enough he shovels.
In their first place in San Diego they had a driveway on one side with a basketball hoop, and a strip of lawn between them and the next house’s asphalt. His mother wanted to dig it up and plant vegetables. His dad had said that was stupid, if she wanted to start a fucking commune she should have stayed behind with her old hippie roommates and killed herself on dope, too. Every spring they argued about it again. When Billy was seven she brought home a hoe and a child-sized shovel and they’d sweated for hours, digging a big patch up, laughing the whole time. He’d filled it in, later, put all the dirt back in himself, because she couldn’t. She’d had to lie down in her room with a cold washcloth over her face, bringing the swelling down. When Billy was done his dad had hit him three times with a belt and then given him grape Fanta for doing all that hard work alone.
He pauses when the shovel cracks wood.
Then keeps going. When he’s exposed enough of the coffin he squints up at the sky, looks at the cracked face of his watch. Two fucking hours to dawn. He takes a break to go get a crowbar and the tarps from the truck.
The lid pops and splinters, coming free.
Inside—
Billy crouches to look, squatting in the coffin with one foot by either hip. Dirt showers into the satin lining, gathers around the suited legs and still-polished dress shoes. The folded hands. The smell of formaldehyde hasn’t dissipated; it’s so rich and savory it makes his mouth water. The body’s bloating. The face doesn’t look the same. But it will.
A dead one, the devil says, almost curiously.
Yeah, no shit.
Pain, pain, pain.
You knew that, sir, Billy thinks, when he can think again. Testing it out. There’s no response. Billy—ignites. His face breaks into a terrified, nauseous sweat. He almost collapses. Rage makes him feel like a real puppet. Completely emptied of anything else. You fucking knew that, he thinks. You saw that. Are you telling me now that you can’t—
We can.
Swear it, Billy thinks, hysterically.
We can, the devil says, and then it casually punches a drillbit hole through Billy’s brain and his bowels at once, and Billy turns his head and has to vomit black ichor into one cupped hand to keep it off—off of—off the body beneath him. He chokes and spits and then wipes his hand against the wall of dirt beside him, smears more on his clothes. Loose cold dirt crumbles down and piles into the coffin around his feet. We can.
Yes, sir.
With the tarps and the rope he wraps the body up, gets it out. It’s easy to heft up, less heavy than a living person, but also less intact; the tarp leaks fluid in a slow stream into the back of the truck bed. Billy's gentle, carrying it. Doesn't want to put his hands through anything.
There’s an old steelworks outside town; so far, of all the places they’ve hidden, it’s the devil’s favorite. Billy’s, too. High chain-link fences, lots of outbuildings to hide his various cars in. It’s cold and cavernous and soaked with chemicals. Even the soil tastes beautiful. Lead and arsenic, aluminum, drippings of natural gas from old unsealed pipes, machine lubricant and filthy congealed grease; Billy sometimes kneels and licks up the opalescent water that gathers in the sub-basement. He brings the body down there now, unwraps it, and spends a long time looking at all of it, undressing it, folding the suit and the discolored undergarments neatly, peeling away the white dress shirt that’s been yellowing and stiffening as the skin against it starts to dissolve. It’s been a very cold winter, so that’s gone slowly. There’s so much left. In such relatively good condition. All the lengthened fingernails, the eyelashes on the greenish, meatily softening cheeks. The eyes themselves are glued shut, and probably not much is left behind them but liquid, so Billy doesn’t try to open anything. There’s a ridged seam on one side of the scalp, a tight line of staples. Nine. Pinched together and then caked with makeup, disguised with a combed-over part in the hair. Of course, it’s not grown back together. How could it? Of course it wouldn’t have healed.
Billy rests the body in the middle of the tarp. Naked and fetal, sluglike. Something partly digested. It'll change soon. It'll change. He lies down at the edge of the plastic beside it and closes his eyes. Waits for it to happen.
Dreams.
He’s standing behind the gym, smoking. They all smoke there, even though it’s a great way to piss off coach and immediately earn fucking laps. They watch out for each other, mostly, unless they decide not to for whatever petty-ass reason, but Harrington’s the one you watch the closest. If he drops his cigarette you’d better drop yours immediately. He has a sixth sense. One time the guys were busting his balls and he'd been smiling and taking it, and then he'd knelt and shoved his unfinished cigarette right under his sneaker heel and started fussing with his laces, and less than half a second later coach came around the corner and caught everyone but him. Four guys ran laps, and Harrington sat and drank Gatorade, because coach didn’t see the fifth butt.
“Fucking prick,” Hagan had muttered. Billy had grunted like he agreed. Stared at Harrington’s bobbing throat as he swallowed from his squeeze bottle and then grinned and toasted them with it.
In this dream there’s nobody around. Just Billy and the brick wall he’s leaning on, one foot propped up. Harrington comes out, fumbles a hand up into the crack where they hide a lighter. He doesn’t give Billy more than a nod until his cigarette’s lit and he’s had a long drag off it. He shuts his eyes during, savoring his shitty little Winston like a girl in a commercial.
“Fuck me,” Harrington sighs.
“Lakeview’s gonna fuck all of us on Sunday,” Billy says. “I don’t think Nowicki’s preschool teacher taught him right from left.” Harrington snorts. Opens his eyes, puts the cigarette to his lips again. “Maybe we pass the hat, get him a tattoo on each hand.”
“I’ll try anything,” Harrington says, morosely, and exhales in a slow stream. There’s a heavy damp patch around his t-shirt neck, which is a giveaway for what he must’ve been doing last night: he seems to sweat like a pig when he’s a little hungover. Billy thinks about pulling the shirt off over his head. Twisting it up and wringing it out and sucking the wet spot, sucking and sucking the cotton until it rubs his lips raw, and ashes his cigarette with his fingertips. “So what the hell’s your deal?”
“What’s my deal?”
“Yeah,” Harrington says. He dangles his own cigarette, leans his shoulders back onto the opposite wall. His hairy thighs are so pale it’s like summer’s never been here, like it’s always mid-October in Indiana, forever. “Feels like you’re somewhere else today.”
Billy takes a slow inhale, makes a slow exhale.
“You give a shit where I am?”
“No, it’s fine with me if my offense blows, the game’s a reward in itself,” Harrington says. “Yeah, it matters. You good?”
“Shipshape,” Billy says. “Aye-aye, cap’n.”
“That’s like, the least convincing thing you’ve ever said,” Harrington frowns. “Are you okay or what? If you have to sit out, sit out.”
Billy snorts. Ashes his cigarette.
“Pressure’s really getting to you, huh,” Billy says. “You gotta bench me to feel like top dog again? Need that easy win?”
“Arguing with you is easy?” Harrington wonders. “Be serious. I can tell your shoulder’s fucked.”
Fury tastes as crisp as windshield fluid smells: ethanol solvent, minty-sweet additives. It flooded his mouth then and made him want to retch. It floods his mouth now and makes him long for a swig of something blue right from a gallon jug. In the dream Billy crowds him against the wall, jaw rigid, air puffing out of his nose; Harrington weirdly lowers his long-lashed eyes and then lifts them again, and puts his own cigarette to his mouth. “I’m actually trying to give you a break, dude,” Harrington says, and puffs smoke neatly out of the corner of his lips, instead of right into Billy’s face, like he could have. Like Billy would've. “You wanna overwork it and really hurt yourself, be my guest. You can get one of those giant foam fingers and warm a bleacher seat.”
”Shove it up your ass,” Billy says, through his teeth.
Harrington doesn’t get belligerent back. Just snorts and shifts to go, like he’s done and over it. Their shoulders bump together. It's not a hit, not even a body check, just contact, a quick sway inside Billy's space like Harrington’s doing his usual stupid jazz footwork. Harrington's body brushes his and then it slides away. Yesterday night dad twisted Billy’s arm behind his back and held his head under the tap, because he’s been told about wearing eyeliner like some cocksucker in a band, he’s been told. He’s been told.
Footsteps.
Billy wakes up.
It's night again; he's slept the day away beside a corpse, and nothing happened. Nothing's any different. He lies tense and silent, listening, but the footsteps are even and unhurried. Two of them, theirs. He can feel it. He sits up.
Sir?
He didn't expect witnesses. He doesn't need a peanut gallery. He doesn't know why the devil would send them.
Two people come down. The first is Heather's mother, stringy-haired, vacant-looking, in the dress she was wearing for dinner when Heather brought her in. The second is the motel guy, eyes fixed in the middle distance, cardigan hanging loose on his shoulder. They stand at the edge of the tarp like they're waiting in line.
What is this, Billy thinks, blankly.
Test.
Heather's mother lies down.
Panic.
Billy crawls to grab her shoulders, trying to force her upright, but she's limp as a fucking fish. She won't stand. Now the motel guy's fucking getting down next to her. Mary, mother of god, he's so fucking stupid, why didn't he think—no, sir, no, that's not, that isn't what—you promised me, you promised, Billy thinks, this isn't what you promised, this isn't what I asked for, this isn't it, sir, please sir, please please, it's me, sir, it's me, it’s what we agreed, you said me, you said it would be me, I've been good, sir, I've worked hard, you promised, please sir, PLEASE sir, you stupid fucking bastard, you piece of shit, it's all I ever asked, sir, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—
Heather's mother's mouth opens like she's shocked for a second.
And then she—pops.
A wet balloon sound. A flap of skin slaps him across the face and slides down his neck. He can't—a sound can't even come out. He's—
Observe, the devil says.
It's like a knife slitting an undercooked omelette. Her insides slide out like runny eggs and make a pool around her, evacuating her dress and heels, sliding down Billy's body and across his legs and away in one writhing gelatinous mass. She soaks into his jeans. The outside of her begins to melt and bubble, tendons jerking free from bone, fat congealing, glistening muscle starting to sort itself into slippery sections, leaping and squirming like fish in a bucket. And then the second one opens, the motel guy, a wet red sea of him puddling up like lava, and the bodies merge into a stream, a mashed unctuous ribbon that weaves and jerks across the floor and then slides around—around the body, the corpse, encircling it, squeezing it inside like a python. Cocooning it. Now pressing so hard that the fluids merge, that the doughlike body is kneaded out of shape and back into it, pulsatingly pumped with blood, and Billy's crying as he watches, wet arms wrapped around his jelly-smeared knees, crying loud and hideously like a baby, wailing with snot running out of his nose and into his mouth, though it's hard to say quite why. In about an hour Harrington wakes up and screams.
At first it's like he doesn't know anything. Doesn't even know how to work his arms and legs and lungs. After that first echoing uncanny shriek he lies unbreathing and motionless on the floor, eyes fixed on the ceiling, and Billy's frozen-stiff body startles and unlocks to get to him; Billy crawls through the bile and leftover bone shards and touches Harrington's face, pats it, but air doesn't seem to be getting in. There's nothing happening inside him. No pulse, even.
Billy frantically thumps his naked, hairy, pink-skinned chest. Thumps it with a closed fist; Harrington's heart suddenly lurches and kicks. He's all newborn, firm-bodied and flushed and perfectly whole, coated in bloody film like he's come from the womb. Even his stitches are gone. Unneeded.
“Breathe,” Billy orders, but Harrington still doesn't. Billy opens his mouth by pinching his cheeks, and scoops a finger inside, but it's clear. Billy thumps his chest harder. Then ducks down. Seals their lips together.
Blows.
Harrington inhales from him. Like Billy’s filling a balloon. They do it three times: in, out. Taking from each other.
He coughs.
Billy turns him onto his side, pounds his back, and now Harrington vomits a thick stream of fluid. Mostly water, some blood and other things. It smells organic. Rancid, but organic. Billy rubs thoughtless circles around and around on his back, smearing the blood and melted fatty oil that coats him, and pats him, and Harrington vomits again, and then goes limp. But he's still breathing this time. In and out, shuddering with each one. He whines faintly while he does it, as if maybe it hurts. “It's okay,” Billy says, curled around his back, feeling warmth radiate off his body. Proximity to the blood-boiled temperature of him is horrible, the way it makes Billy's cold skin prickle and sweat, but his heart's beating. It’s beating so hard. The proof is worth the sensation. Billy rests a cheek and ear against his bicep, huddles against him like a fucking girl trying to cuddle; Harrington seems kind of dazed, maybe he won’t notice, won’t remember later. “It's okay, you're… fine,” Billy murmurs.
Harrington says nothing. Just stays limp. Billy has to pull him upright like he's a giant, heavy infant. One arm around his torso, one hand braced carefully around the back of Harrington's head. Cradling his skull. “Harrington,” Billy says, looking into his eyes. “You in there?”
Harrington’s big ludicrous eyes blink. And blink, and watch Billy’s face. His pink mouth’s parted for air, and there’s color in his cheeks, and Billy can’t not stupidly smooth a thumb across one. His hands are tremoring. “Gotta get you cleaned up,” Billy says. He carries Harrington up the stairs, the Carhartt wrapped around his waist like a towel. It’s a wreck anyway. Harrington shivers violently the whole time, even when Billy gets him strapped into the front seat of the truck, climbs in the other side, and turns the engine over. Harrington’s teeth are chattering like crazy, and his body’s jumping like he’s having a seizure, and Billy is a fucking moron or something, worse than the devil is, because somehow it didn’t occur to him right away that Harrington might be freezing. Naked and barefoot and covered in slime in fucking March.
Billy cranks the truck heaters up. Closes the vents on his own side. “Dumbshit,” Billy mutters, at himself. He reaches over compulsively and pats a hand over Harrington’s gooey head, like you'd do to a dog, while Harrington shivers more and licks his teeth and stares back without a sound, slumped against the window. But a feeling's rising in Billy's guts, a strange swooping lurch that's almost pleasurable.
Harrington’s—cold. Like a real person. The devil did it.
There’s a farmhouse he uses sometimes; the old owner is part of them, so he doesn’t do anything at all or even notice when Billy sleeps in the cellar or stores things in his shed. He doesn’t do anything now, when Billy carries Harrington up his creaky stairs and fills the bathtub and washes Harrington from head to foot with a sponge and warm water, warm enough that he finally stops quivering, but not so warm that the devil jolts Billy angrily in the brain a bunch of times. A few times, but not a bunch. Billy barely pays attention to it; he’s got to keep Harrington from sliding down and drowning himself, or knocking his head into the tile. Harrington doesn’t seem to know how to work his neck or his knees or anything. Billy drains the tub and rinses him off with a bucket and then dries him off everywhere, ruffles his hair and dries inside and behind his ears, in his armpits, between his legs and behind his knees, between his toes, and Billy’s hard the whole time, stiffer than a fucking board, rubbing the crotch of his jeans against the side of the tub just by necessity, fumbling to reach everything, but Harrington doesn’t seem to notice at all, and then Billy gets him into the farmer’s old ratty pajamas and tucks him into the farmer’s unmade bed.
Harrington lies there flat and doesn’t close his eyes until Billy cautiously uses his fingertips to close them for him. And then Harrington breathes slowly and steadily, chest rising and falling, for the next thirteen hours. Billy stands still and watches the entire time.
The devil is fairly quiet, right now. Distant. Maybe it’s possible for the devil to get tired. An interesting new idea.
After thirteen hours, Harrington stirs. His fingers twitch on top of the blankets. And then he rolls over, onto his side, and tucks a hand under his pillow, and makes a long, ragged sigh. “Harrington?” Billy says. Harrington stiffens. He opens his eyes, slowly. Then jerks up and scrambles backwards against the headboard in a startled panic, and Billy sits next to him, catches one of his flailing hands. “Hey, Jesus, you fucking lunatic, calm it down,” Billy says. “You’re alright, you’re—”
Harrington pants like an animal. Disoriented, wild. Claws at his own face. Billy holds his other hand, then, too. Holds them both down in his lap, on top of his legs. Harrington's chest heaves. They stare at each other. There’s a thin pink scratch down Harringon’s cheek, under his eye, where he caught himself with a fingernail. It's blatantly obvious now, up close, that Harrington has no idea who Billy even is. “I'm… Billy,” Billy says, eventually, trying it, though it currently seems pointless. “You're Harring… you're Steve.”
Harrington licks his teeth again. Then yawns widely right in Billy's face. Billy forgot to clean in there, he realizes. Harrington's mouth is still full of blood.
Harrington’s stomach rumbles, which is another good sign. But he doesn't seem to know he has to feed himself. Billy has to put the crackers right on his tongue like the fucking eucharist for him to start chewing. Has to bring the cup of water right to his lips. Harrington doesn't remember to use the toilet, later; he lies in bed staring at the wall with a finger in his mouth and pisses his pajama pants. But he can stand and walk now, clumsily, so Billy strips him and stands him in the shower and hoses him down while Harrington stares wetly and blankly at him, soaked hair over his eyes like a dog’s, like this is some kind of terrible betrayal.
“You're fucking useless,” Billy tells him.
Billy doesn't bother washing the sheets or worrying about the bed. Just leaves the house. He grabs Harrington a change of clothes and winter gear, thick socks and a heavy coat and boots that are almost big enough for his long canoe-shaped feet. He wraps a scarf around Harrington's neck and jams a hat on him, then finds himself a new barn coat and a scarf of his own, mainly to cover his face.
Warm, the devil warns.
It's a fucking… it's a disguise, sir.
The devil says nothing. Billy takes the old guy's car and drives them into town.
He hasn't been in downtown Hawkins in daylight since December. March looks like shit everywhere. Muddy stacks of ice, dead shrubs. Another store by Melvald's is boarded up. Loch Nora looks the same. Just uglier. Big dead lawns, those fancy turnaround driveways.
Billy cruises by Harrington's house, slowly, and then loops around and parks then across the street. He watches Harrington, who's busy holding his fingers in front of the one open heating vent. He's playing with his own hands like they're new, tracing each finger together, spreading them wide, making a fanned shape, turning them over to look at the palms. Pressing them together, then sticking them practically inside the vent, because he must still be cold. “Acting just like a dumbass baby, aren’t you,” Billy says, curiously. “There's really nothing going on up there.” Harrington glances at him. But he doesn't say anything, or do anything, or give any indication he knows what Billy's saying. Just sits with his fingertips stuck into the vent holes. He doesn't even look over at his own house with any sign of recognition. Billy sighs and cranes his neck to do it for him. Then stiffens.
Oh, shit.
The Harrington house is dark. There's a for-sale sign stuck in the lawn.
Billy shouldn't risk it, but. He gets out of the car. Harrington watches him through the window like a hawk, brows furrowed. Billy goes up the driveway and knocks on the side door and waits, and nobody comes; he scans the street and then ducks around the back of the house, peers in a curtainless window. The dining room's empty. No furniture. Not so much as a box. There goes the fucking plan.
He can't leave Harrington here after all. Not in the state he's in. It'd be the same as leaving him back in his coffin.
Billy stands staring vacantly for a while, thinking, and then goes back around the house. When he sees the car he jerks in surprise and breaks into a run; he flings the driver's side door open and crawls in and yanks Harrington away from the passenger window, holds his suddenly blooded face in both hands, and Harrington makes a horrible noise and grabs Billy back. Digs nails into his wrists. Billy's heart feels like it’s popping open, like a giant exploding fertilizer-stuffed rat. “What the fuck!” Billy screams at him. A bright red stream’s leaking out of Harrington’s nose and into his mouth, down the chest of his coat. “What the fuck is wrong with you, why would you—”
He was beating his fists and face against the window. Still trapped in his seatbelt. Maybe just because he's too stupid to know he can open the door.
Harrington hangs onto Billy like he's got claws, and makes the hurt noise again. “Fuck!” Billy says, enraged enough to almost—to throttle, to—but instead he wipes Harrington's bloody nose off with a sleeve, hands trembling. Touches around his head, his forehead, pushes his hat off and his hair back to look at his scalp. It—he doesn't look like he did it very hard. Maybe just caught his nose wrong while he flailed. Nothing’s even very bruised. Fucking helpless piece of shit. Billy shoves him upright again and grips the wheel to keep his hands occupied somewhere. Looks down the street. There's someone two houses down looking out the window. Billy yanks his car door shut, starts the engine, and peels them away. “Now I have to trash this car, dumbfuck!” Billy hisses. “You fucking happy now?”
In the passenger seat, Harrington sits slumped. He snorts some bloody snot back in and glares at Billy in silence.
Then he slides his hand across the gap in their seats and puts a hand on Billy's arm. Billy glances down, shakes him off. Harrington does it again. Billy wordlessly knocks him away. Before they even pass the Arby's, Harrington’s hand is back. It stays there no matter what Billy does.