Daryl Gregory - The Devil's Alphabet

Pax didn’t even try to fight back. When he was on the ground he tried to curl into a ball. When they held him against the car it was all he could do to raise his forearms to deflect some of the blows, but even that token of defiance seemed to anger Clete more. At first Pax had tried pleading with them-God knows what he tried to say-but soon he gave up trying to speak. He didn’t disassociate. He didn’t retreat to some safe place in his mind. He didn’t endure . The pain seemed to turn him inside out like a reversible coat. All the nerves on the outside. Every thought was the same thought, over and over: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

He walked back past his old bedroom to the guest room. Without turning on the light he found the bed and gingerly lay down. Sleep seemed impossible now. Each strained muscle insisted on reporting in, each cut and bruise jostled to inscribe its name and serial number on his brain. His head throbbed. Incredibly, none of these sensations drowned out the ache he felt for his father. The craving was still there, skulking like a coyote outside the circle of a fire.

We don’t live in our bodies, he thought. We are our bodies. A simple thing, but he kept forgetting it.

In the morning he heard someone rummaging through the kitchen, clinking dishes and closing cabinets. He managed to walk down the hallway and found them setting out bowls and pouring candy-colored cereal from a box he didn’t recognize. A plastic gallon jug of milk sat on the counter.

“Don’t you guys ever knock?”

One of the girls yelped in surprise; then both of them erupted into quacking laughter. It was the first time he’d seen either one of them laugh.

“You scared us!” one said, and the other said, “We’re not ready! Go back!”

He raised his hands and stepped back around the corner. “I hope you’re not using milk from the fridge,” he said. “I can’t vouch for anything in there.” Come to think of it, there hadn’t been anything in the refrigerator but condiment bottles. The girls must have brought their own milk and food.

After a few minutes they ushered him into the kitchen and sat him down at the table. One of them-the one in the yellow floppy dress-tucked a napkin into the neck of his T-shirt. The napkin dropped off a second later and he put it in his lap.

The cereal was generic, some kind of Froot Loops knockoff. “I hope you didn’t steal this,” he said.

“It’s ours as much as anyone else’s,” the other girl said. She wore a red T-shirt and jeans torn at one knee.

“Tell me, which one are you?” he said to the girl in red. “Sandra?”

“I’m Rainy,” she said.

“Okay, red shirt Rainy, yellow dress Sandra. Whatever you do, don’t change clothes.”

He chewed the cereal, the pain in his jaw and the alarming looseness of two of his teeth making him go slow.

“You know,” Pax said to Rainy, “you’re named after my mother.”

“Lorraine,” Rainy said. “She died in the Changes.”

“That’s right,” Pax said. “You know, my mom loved your mom a lot. Like a daughter.”

“We know,” Sandra said breezily.

After perhaps a minute Rainy said, “You said you could tell us stories about her,” she said. “At the funeral.”

“Oh, right. Your mom.” He started to beg off, but then he got an image of Jo Lynn at these girls’ age, eleven or twelve years old.

“Once we were at the Bugler’s,” Pax said. “The checkout woman accused me of trying to shoplift a Chunky candy bar. Do you know about Chunky’s? They stopped making them for a while.” The girls looked at him. Quizzically? Patiently? He couldn’t tell. “Anyway, I’m standing there petrified, but your mom got mad- so mad. She lit into the woman, whipping out words I couldn’t even pronounce.” He shook his head. “It was like watching Jesus in the Tabernacle. The clerk didn’t know what to say back, she was just sputtering.”

“What happened then?” Sandra asked.

“Jo slapped down a dollar and didn’t even wait for the change. And then-” He shrugged, smiling. “Then we just strolled out of there.”

Rainy said, “But you were trying to steal it.”

“No! Well, okay, yes. But that was stupid; I shouldn’t have tried to do that. The point is, no one was going to accuse one of her friends of a crime. Your mom would have defended me either way, because she’d already decided-”

He looked down at his cereal bowl, a sudden emotion closing his throat.

“Decided what?” Rainy asked.

He thought: She’d already decided he was a good person.

“Nothing,” he said. He picked up his spoon, put it down again. “She just thought that that’s what friends do.”

Sandra said, “Your face looks worse today.”

He laughed. “Thanks.”

“Really, it’s a lot more colors,” she said.

Pax said, “Isn’t anybody wondering where you are? Did you tell Tommy you were coming here?”

The girls exchanged a look. Pax had started to identify common facial expressions-the way their lips tightened and relaxed; the fractional droop of an eyelid, the slight downward jerk of a chin-but for most of those expressions he could no more interpret them than translate wind into words. But that look was easier-almost always it was Sandra checking in with Rainy, following her sister’s lead.

Rainy said, “Where we go ain’t anybody’s business-”

“-especially Tommy,” Sandra finished.

Something in their tone alarmed him. “Girls, is Tommy… Is he hurting you?”

Sandra looked at Rainy. Rainy said nothing.

Pax said, “Look, if something’s happening-or if something happened that night your mother died? You can tell me.”

Rainy said, “We were asleep.”

“Maybe somebody came to the door. Did you hear anyone come in? Maybe in the morning-”

“We were asleep,” Rainy said. She got up from her chair and began stacking the bowls.

“Did you ever hear her argue with Tommy?” Pax asked.

“Only all the time,” Sandra said quietly to her cereal.

“Mom argued with lots of people,” Rainy said. “They weren’t as smart as her, and that got on her nerves sometimes.” She carried the bowls to the counter and started running water in the sink.

Pax said, “What did she argue with them about?”

“Everything,” Rainy said.

Sandra nodded. “Pretty much.”

“It’s hard to be smart,” Rainy said. “Lots of people want things to be the same as they always were, but they can’t. You can’t do things the old way, not after the Changes. Life is different than it used to be.” She sounded like she was quoting. “You have to take a stand. You have to follow your own moral compass.”

“That’s true,” Pax said. “You have to do the right thing. Even if it’s hard.” He looked at Sandra and said, “If you’re scared of someone, if you’re afraid to speak, you can tell me, I can protect you.”

Rainy turned around, looked at his face, his arms. “You?”

The girls packed up their things about 1:00 p.m. and vanished into the woods, promising to return with more food. Pax set himself the goal of walking down the driveway to the mailbox. He hadn’t gone twenty yards before he’d broken into a sweat. He felt ancient, and something was wrong with one of his ribs; whenever he stepped a certain way pain shot up the right side of his chest, paralyzing him for a few seconds.

He heard a car pull into the drive and he stepped off the driveway, readying himself to-what? Fight? Run? He could barely walk. Then he saw it was Deke’s Jeep, and he put a hand against a tree and waited, trying to catch his breath.

Deke stopped the car and climbed out. He looked distraught. “Sweet Jesus on a stick,” he said.