The Legend of Devil's Creek, page 2
“Can’t say I’m surprised. You were always a worthless fuckup.”
Go to hell, you old asshole.
“No, you go to hell, you little fuck. Didn’t I always say you would end up like this?”
Tyler’s most vivid memories of his stepfather were of the son of a bitch beating the hell out of him with a thick leather belt. It happened all the time, on any bullshit pretext—especially when he was drunk, which was often. And he would grin as he beat Tyler, as if it were fun for him. As if it gave him pleasure. Tyler never understood why his mom stayed with the bastard, or why she didn’t at least call the cops, and remembered feeling bitter relief when he finally died of cirrhosis.
Tyler felt something hit him in the face. Struggling to open his left eye just a crack, he thought he saw—through the darkening, narrowing tunnel of his vision—the stranger holding his severed arm upright by the wrist, crouching as if ready to swing at a baseball. Tyler’s heavy eyelid dropped shut once more. Again the sensation of being hit hard in the face. But it didn’t hurt that much, and he didn’t have the energy to open his eyes anymore. He was so tired. Tired and sleepy.
“I let you sleep under my roof,” his stepfather went on, “and all you ever did was bitch and moan and fuck things up for everybody.”
It wasn’t your roof, asshole. That was my dad’s house, Tyler thought, now sitting cross-legged on the grey sand of a long and colorless beach, staring out beyond the crashing surf, across the dark water, to the featureless horizon. Where the hell is he, anyway? Tyler looked all around but saw no one. He was alone. Why don’t you show your face now, fuckhead? I’m not a little kid anymore, and I’ll fuck your shit up.
“You’re getting exactly what you deserve.”
Tyler sighed, laid back, and gazed up at the dreary overcast sky. Whatever, you old asshole. What time is it, anyway? It has to be really late. Gina’s going to have a fucking fit.
Comfortable on the soft sand, he let his eyes close. Man, I’m thirsty. Thirsty and tired as fuck. Maybe I’ll just take a quick nap here.
Experiencing a moment of clarity as his consciousness oscillated and flagged, he wondered why his mother never stepped in to protect him from his stepfather, or why she didn’t take him away to a place where the old man couldn’t have hurt him. She could see what was happening. Why didn’t she do something?
Out of the remnants of his disintegrating memory, the long-forgotten answer rematerialized. For the first time in many years, he remembered how one day, when he was still only five years old, he realized his mother didn’t want him around anymore. Didn’t love him anymore. He didn’t know why, but was sure it was his own fault.
He’d cried himself to sleep at night for weeks after his realization. Over time, he learned to repress the memory. But now it had returned with dreadful force, filling his heart anew with the profound sadness he so long ago displaced with burning anger. His eyes welled with tears.
“Exactly what you deserve.”
Shut the fuck up and leave me alone.
“But you are alone, Tyler.”
Damn. I am so damned thirsty. Cold soda sounds good. A big orange soda with lots of ice. Or maybe an orange slush, like the kind my real dad used to buy for me at the drive-in before he died. Those were good. He took a long, deep breath. I miss my dad.
A warm, dark tide crept up around Tyler, slowly engulfing and covering him where he lay. He watched its irregular mirrored undersurface climb higher and higher as he gradually sank away from it. It occurred to him that he should make some effort to swim to the surface to catch his breath. But he was just too tired. And though he still felt terribly sad from revisiting the painful secret of his childhood, he took a certain comfort in a distant memory of his real father—the two of them sitting on a park bench in the sun, smiling, sipping orange slushes through red-striped straws. Anyway, his arms didn’t hurt anymore. The pain had gone. That was good enough.
SEPTEMBER
TWO
Aubrey Island, Washington, was hardly an island at all. Its southwestern flank was separated from the mainland by nothing more than a narrow, mile-long tide flat—an isthmus of silt, sun-bleached clamshells, and patchy salt grass, bisected by a shallow serpentine channel through which the changing tides ran. Sparsely populated, it boasted only one small town, Port Baker, established during logging and fishing booms at the end of the 19th century. Outside of Port Baker, the population was largely made up of retirees and wealthy weekenders from the Seattle area, occupying pocket communities of beachfront cottages, with the less well-to-do living in relative isolation on the inexpensive land of the heavily forested interior.
Despite its quaintness, Port Baker boasted a small but thriving liberal arts college founded shortly after the town’s establishment by a community of Benedictine monks. Saint Jerome Emiliani College—called “St. Jerome’s” by its 600 or so students—occupied a grassy hundred-acre rectangle of land on the gentle slope of a hill bordering the northwest edge of town. Eight L-shaped upper campus buildings, which housed the main library, offices and lecture halls, formed two quadrangles, each encompassing twin rows of sprawling, seventy-year-old Yoshino cherry trees, the delicate pink blossoms of which attracted scores of camera-wielding tourists each spring. The school’s four Gothic Revival dormitories were situated on the adjacent lower campus, along with courts and grass fields for intramurals. Port Baker’s two-block-long waterfront main street, its ferry terminal, and the long arc of Broughton Cove were all visible from most parts of campus.
Nearly halfway across the lower quadrangle from his dormitory, Justin Riddley paused to enjoy the view on a sunny Indian summer day. Below him, a forest green and white Washington State ferry, its radar arrays rotating in silent tandem on their high pedestal mounts over the aft bridge, was pulling away from the Port Baker Ferry Terminal, its main engines rumbling, churning a white froth in the growing gap of emerald water between the ship’s stern and the end of the dock. The morning sailing for Downtown Seattle.
The maple leaves had just started to turn, and the air was filled with their musky aroma. Riddley inhaled through his nose as he gazed out over the water. He found the natural beauty and fresh air of St. Jerome’s a welcome change, having just transferred from a gigantic and charmless university situated in a sun-baked concrete patch of California urban sprawl. In stark contrast with his former school, St. Jerome’s was a postcard of his childhood daydreams of what college should look like. Brick buildings draped in English ivy, walkways lined with enormous old trees, and a library with tall stained-glass windows and wood-paneled reading rooms filled with the musty scent of ancient books. This was his first day of class at St. Jerome’s. The beginning of the fall semester.
Continuing his uphill walk toward Beale Hall, the location of his first class, Riddley felt the queasy tickle that hit his stomach on every first day of school going back to kindergarten. The anticipation and uncertainty always got to him. And it was all the more intense this year because he was in an unfamiliar environment—an entirely new campus. He worried about the possible difficulties of his transferring to such a small school as a junior. He hoped he would be able to break through any existing social demarcations and make new friends.
In that regard, his former school presented a very different set of challenges. Knowing nothing of the social landscape of campus, Riddley moved into the dorms as an incoming freshman, learning too late that the vast majority of social activities were focused around the Greek system. His roommate and immediate neighbors in the dorm were foreign students who, while perfectly polite, spoke limited English and made no effort to interact. Otherwise, the dorms seemed largely populated by quieter types who focused on their studies at the expense of everything else. But that was the world Riddley had come from—the quiet, socially stifled cliques of his high school’s pre-college honors classes. It did little to satisfy his growing desire to spread his wings.
His social circle was so small that he could sometimes go for days without recognizing a single familiar face anywhere on the vast campus: in the cavernous lecture halls, in the immense cafeterias, in the labyrinthine libraries. On weekend nights, he would sometimes stare out the open window of his tenth floor room, down onto the six square blocks of the nearby Greek system with its late-night buzz of activity, its loud music and tiki torches, its throngs of partygoers crowding open-air decks. He wondered what fun they were having over there, tried to imagine what it was like. It made him feel lonely. Worse, it drove home the unsettling fact that, even though he was almost twenty years old, he’d never been in a romantic relationship.
Lonely days became lonely weeks, then lonely semesters. His parents had always promised that college would be the best time of his life. A time when he would really come into his own. But it was passing him by while he stagnated in the backwater that had become his world. With each day, he grew more anxious that he was missing a once-in-a-lifetime window to experience things he was sure were critical to his development. The anxiety made it harder and harder for him to sleep, and his sleeping problems made him all the more anxious.
Finally, one day toward the end of his second year, he woke up and thought, fuck this. He would move to a school where the boundaries of social fiefdoms weren’t so complete and insurmountable. With the mixed blessings of his parents—they were thrilled their son would be living closer to home, yet troubled about his leaving a school that offered major courses of study in many of the hard sciences—Riddley filled out the application, packed up his room, loaded a rental truck, and transferred nearly twelve-hundred miles, sight unseen, to St. Jerome’s.
*****
Riddley’s first class was “Introduction to Philosophy.” He wasn’t especially interested in philosophy. But the curriculum of his freshman and sophomore years was science-heavy, since his parents convinced him to start off pre-med, and his new academic counselor at St. Jerome’s had told him he needed more liberal arts credits to fulfill graduation requirements on time. He chose the course mainly because its timing didn’t conflict with that of other classes he wanted to take.
He was the first to arrive. The classroom was typical: chalkboard, portable podium, uneven rows of worn chair-desks. But Riddley’s eyes beamed with delight when he saw a wall of tall windows opposite the door. The view out over Port Baker and Broughton Cove was spectacular. From here, he could still see the ferry he’d watched depart the terminal five minutes earlier, now well offshore and steaming south for Seattle, a long white wake trailing its stern.
The scent of the air in the room reminded Riddley of the basement and rectory hallways of the old Lutheran church his family went to when he was a kid—hints of long-dried coffee spills, old varnished wood, and chalk dust. He chose a desk near the windows, but close enough to the middle of the room that he would hopefully blend into the crowd and evade notice, just in case the instructor turned out to be one of those pains in the ass who liked to call on people at random.
A girl with a nose ring, knit cap, and worn red backpack walked in and took a desk next to the door. She turned to Riddley, smiled as she said, “Hi,” and then waited for his response. When all he could muster was a tight-voiced “Hello,” she turned her attention to pulling a notebook and pen from her backpack. Cute, thought Riddley, but sort of hippie looking. At least she’d acknowledged him. When he was a freshman in California, no one so much as made eye contact with him, let alone spoke to him, the whole first week of school.
For a few minutes, it was just the two of them sitting in silence. And as the silence wore on, Riddley felt his stomach tighten. I should talk to her. I should say something. Something funny but casual. Or just casual. Why risk trying to be funny? I could ask her what she’s majoring in. No, that’s too clichéd. I should say something else first, then transition to asking about her major.
Before Riddley could think of anything suitable to say, a tall guy with a hard facial expression walked in and, without even glancing at either Riddley or Nose Ring Girl, sat down at a desk at the front and center of the classroom. Silent, he stared down at the green folder he’d placed on the desk in front of him. Riddley gave up on the idea of talking to Nose Ring Girl now that someone else was there.
Over the next several minutes, another dozen students arrived, taking desks here and there around the classroom. Riddley’s face lit up when he saw a striking brunette stroll in and sit two desks away from him. He camouflaged his examination of her by pretending to scan the room looking for the clock. She had a very pretty face. And while her clothes were simple and understated, she made them look classy. It was something in the way she carried herself. But what really hooked Riddley were her eyes: kind brown eyes, down-turned, with the slightest trace of sadness. Beautiful.
The room was quiet in what Riddley guessed was the collective, tense anticipation of the first day of school. He was just sliding into a daydream about meeting the pretty brunette at a party when he was jolted from his trance by several loud male voices in boisterous conversation out in the hallway. As they came nearer, one of the voices struck Riddley as oddly familiar. It said, “Dude, if you ask me that again, I’m gonna beat your ass.”
The talk stopped as the new arrivals reached the open doorway. The first to walk in was a six-foot tall, black-haired man in a stretched out white undershirt and blue jeans. Riddley recognized him immediately. It was Andrew Chapman. They’d been classmates at a suburban Seattle-area high school, and had even played on the same soccer team in the seventh and eighth grades after Chapman’s family moved up from Nevada. But after soccer, they saw little of each other. Riddley took refuge with the quiet honors students, while Chapman ran with the troublemakers and dropouts.
Though Chapman had always been kind to him, Riddley nevertheless found him intimidating. In high school, Chapman was dominating and outspoken. He had a major authority problem and chip on his shoulder, and was notorious for causing all sorts of trouble. Nevertheless, Riddley had envied Chapman for his confidence and status as a sort of social chieftain, and always harbored a desire to be closer friends with him. He was pleasantly surprised to see that Chapman had gotten his shit together and made it to college.
Chapman was followed through the doorway by two other guys, one of whom was of average height and thin build, the other probably six-foot-two and a beefy two-hundred-twenty-or-so pounds. The smaller of the two had meticulously styled hair and perfectly pressed, expensive-looking clothes, while the bigger guy, whose mop of blonde curly hair was a lopsided and sleep-flattened mess, wore a frayed t-shirt and sweat pants bearing drips and smears of dried white paint. As they made their way toward the back of the classroom, Riddley, seized by awkwardness and suddenly afraid to speak, looked down at his desk so he’d have an excuse for not saying hello if Chapman noticed him. Chapman led the trio to neighboring desks in the back corner. The big, disheveled blonde asked his well-dressed companion to let him borrow a pen. It sounded more like a demand than a request.
Risking a quick glance back at them, Riddley caught Chapman’s eye.
“Riddley!” Chapman said as he smiled and raised his chin in surprised recognition. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Riddley took a secret delight in the pleased tone of Chapman’s greeting. But before he could answer, he was startled by a loud “Good morning, class!” from the sour-faced professor striding through the door. He headed straight for the chalkboard, without bothering to turn and look at the students.
“I am Professor Bacavi, your instructor for this course,” he said, as he scratched out his last name in inordinately large capital letters on the chalkboard, his hand moving in quick, aggressive jerks. Finished writing, he stood for a moment with his back to the class, still facing the chalkboard, as if contemplating his own name. He wore the standard navy blue slacks, white dress shirt, and navy blue tie that Riddley gathered was the uniform of St. Jerome’s male faculty members. He carried nothing with him but a large stainless steel thermos with attached cup.
Turning on his heels to face the class, he scanned the faces of his new students. He was surprisingly young. Riddley figured him for mid-thirties, and thought the name Bacavi sounded Greek or Italian, though his face looked more Mexican, or maybe even Native American. His hair was cropped short, and he held his compact, barrel-chested frame in a steady military posture, head back and shoulders stiff. His expression was neither warm nor friendly.
“You in the back,” Bacavi said, pointing to the smaller and more neatly dressed of Chapman’s companions. “Why are you here?”
After a three-second pause, Chapman’s confused-looking friend began to answer, “Uh, I signed up for—”
“Stand up when you address your professor!” Bacavi shouted, his face reddening in perfect complement to his suddenly furious expression.
Holy crap. Riddley’s heart skipped a beat, then sank. A hard-ass sociopath academic. Great start. He felt the urge to urinate.
Chapman’s friend was speechless, his mouth frozen open, eyes wide. He stood up slowly—as if at gunpoint—as Bacavi glared at him. The room was so completely silent that Riddley could hear the quiet scuff of clothing fabric in motion as Chapman’s friend rose from his chair.
For two seconds that seemed an eternity, professor and student stared at each other. Then, just as Chapman’s friend opened his mouth to speak again, the sound of a stifled laugh blew out of Bacavi’s nostrils, and his face broke into a huge, toothy grin. He clapped his hands together.
“Damn! I couldn’t hold it! I’m just messing with you, guy. Oh, man—you should have seen your face.”
Riddley heard one or two hushed expletives whispered from behind him as the entire room exhaled in collective relief.
