Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Sweeney nodded and Buzz slapped his back hard enough to make him pitch toward the brink, but held onto an arm to keep him in place.

“This where you do all your victims?” Sweeney said, staring at his own feet.

“Victims?” Buzz said and sounded genuinely surprised. “Ain’t you got a complex? You fuck our woman and you’re the victim?”

“I didn’t,” he started to explain and gave up immediately.

“You’re no victim, Sweeney,” Buzz said. “You gotta stop telling yourself that. That’s one of your main problems. You are what you think you are. No one ever tell you that?”

“Why’d you bring me here?”

“For your own good, son,” and there was that trace of down-home accent again. “You needed some air. And this is where you come when you need some air. You feel it?”

He let go of Sweeney and tilted his head back, took in a deep noseful, closed his eyes and shook his head.

“This is one of my favorite places. Thought I’d share it with you. You got to get out of the tombs from time to time, son. You’ll become one of those people.”

“My son’s back there,” Sweeney said, then regretted mentioning Danny.

“Yes, he is,” Buzz said. “And it’s one thing to want to be with him. And it’s another to want to be like him.”

He took Sweeney’s chin and cheeks in his gloved hand and said, “You’re one of us now, son. And you’re starting to make some bad choices. For you and for the boy.”

“I’m not one of you,” Sweeney said.

Buzz squeezed in on the cheeks. “You fuck our woman,” he said, “you’re one of us.” Then he started to pull Sweeney’s face forward over the lip of the cliff. “Otherwise,” he said, “what you did would be a problem.”

He let the words hang, then he released the face and patted the bruised cheek, grabbed the front of Sweeney’s shirt and pulled him back to where the others were standing next to their bikes, waiting.

“I think you know most of the family,” Buzz said and he started pointing to each in turn. “Mouse, Turtle, Monkey, Rabbit, the Elephant — also known as Tubby — Crabs, Bear, Fluke, the Ant, Roach. And this here is Piglet. You be good to Piglet and Piglet will be good to you. That right, Piglet?”

Piglet was small and a little sick-looking, with ashen skin and thin, straggly hair. His eyes were too small for his face, but it was probably the stubby, upturned nose that accounted for the name. In general, he looked greasier, more feral than any of the others by a factor of two or three.

Piglet didn’t give an answer and Buzz smiled as if he really hadn’t wanted one.

“Boys,” Buzz said, “you all remember Sweeney.”

Nobody moved except for the one called Monkey, who bobbed his head and showed some caramel teeth.

“Once we get to know you better,” Buzz said, “you’ll get your name.”

Sweeney looked around the precipice. There was nowhere to run but back down the trail and they’d be on him in an instant. He had a sense that Piglet would love an excuse to toss him off the mountain.

“Now, listen,” Buzz said, moving between Sweeney and the rest of the clan. “This is not gonna work out unless you trust us. What you got to do here, you got to make a leap. You got to ignore your own common sense and throw in with us, son. ’Cause whether you believe it right now or not, we’re the best thing that’s happened to you in a long goddamn time.”

Buzz waited for an argument but Sweeney kept his mouth shut.

“And we’re the best thing that’s happened to your boy. We’re sure as hell a shitload better than those fuckers down in the tombs. That shithead Peck and his little bitch of a daughter. They are poison. They’re the last people can help you and Danny.”

He was baiting but Sweeney wouldn’t rise to it.

“Couple days, you’re gonna look back and see that Buzz was right. And you’re gonna thank me for doing what I had to do. You’re just lucky we found you in time. You trust me, Sweeney, things are gonna get better. You’re one of us now. Isn’t that right?”

Buzz didn’t bother to look, but Sweeney was sure that all the Abominations were nodding this time. Even Piglet.

“’Course you’re one of us,” Buzz said. “You helped yourself to a piece of Nadia and you had your first ride. Just one thing left for you to do.”

Sweeney had been waiting and now here it was. Some kind of initiation. Something awful and lasting. They were going to take turns beating the life out of him or they were going to pin him down and cornhole him. They were going to cut him or brand him or maybe drag him down the mountain, tied to the back of Buzz’s hog.

“It’s nothing major,” Buzz continued. “And it’s nothing to be scared of. It’s symbolic, s’what it is.”

Sweeney picked out Fluke because he looked like the slowest and the dullest. Piglet was smaller but it was obvious he was pure psychotic. He tried to play it out in his head. He’d wait till they pulled out their knives or their ropes, then he’d charge the Fluke. He’d run head down and try to hit him midsection, drive the wind out. Then he’d go for the knife and, if there were any chance, mount the Fluke’s bike and head for the trail.

But no one took out a knife or a rope and no one unhitched his jeans. Buzz came up to him and once again draped an arm over his shoulder. He began to walk Sweeney to the opposite side of the precipice, where some scrub brush was growing against the wall of shale that stretched another hundred yards into the sky.

“See, Sweeney,” Buzz said, “we come up here every now and then. Get some fresh air and commune, you might say, with the natural world. Now last time we come up, we left something here.”

He let go of Sweeney’s shoulder and sank into a squat. He picked up a fallen branch and used it to push back some of the overgrown scrub. And in the mountain face behind, Sweeney saw a small hole cut into the granite, a little hollow that led into a cavity of some kind. It wasn’t big enough to be called a cave. It was more like a burrow, a lair of some sort, fit for a fat possum or unusually small bear.

“We need you,” Buzz said, “to scoot on in there and get it.”

Sweeney stared at him.

“Don’t worry,” Buzz said. “You won’t get stuck. It opens out once you get inside.”

“What is it?” Sweeney asked.

“That,” Buzz said, “would ruin the surprise. You gotta trust me.”

Sweeney took a step forward, went down on one knee and tried to peer inside the hole.

“You want me to climb in there?”

Buzz nodded. “Like I said, it gets bigger once you’re in.”

“I bet it does.”

“You go in. You get what we want. You come out.”

“I come out.”

“You come out. Right. What the hell you think?”

“I think,” Sweeney said, “that once I’m in you’ll block up the entrance and laugh your asses off while I suffocate.”

Buzz looked back toward the tribe.

“You really got a low opinion of us,” he said. He reached in his boot, pulled out a small box of kitchen matches, held them up for Sweeney to see, like he was about to do a magic trick. Then he tucked them in Sweeney’s shirt pocket and said, “You’re a real paranoid fucker. Nobody’s going to block you in there.”

“I’m not going in.”

Buzz smiled and said, “Like you weren’t coming with me in the first place. But here you are.”

Sweeney just shook his head.

“Time you understood something, son,” Buzz said. “I can be your savior. Or I can be the scariest fucking nightmare you ever had. I’ll go either way. Whatever’s required to take care of my family. So get in the fucking cave. ’Cause if I have to, I’ll send Piglet in there with you.”