The Legend of Devil's Creek, page 23
“And Riddley and Sandhurst, you two just do what we’ve been practicing. Keep it simple. Set yourself up for rebounds on both ends, and get your arms up to block any shot you can. If you see a shot you want to take, go for it. Otherwise just grab the boards and feed them out to one of us, okay?” Then to Riddley alone, “Be the bully, man. Dominate these frat guy finance bitches.”
He gave Riddley a slow-motion punch to the chest to drive his point home. Riddley nodded, trying to think of a way to shake off his pre-game butterflies. Just don’t fuck up, he told himself. Please, please, please don’t fuck up. The referee blew his whistle to signal game time, sending a shiver from Riddley’s shoulders to his toes. Shit. Here we go.
Riddley lined up at the left forward position, his heart pounding. Lazko lined up at center and, as play began, got a finger on the tip-off, pushing the ball right to Riddley. Oh, shit. Riddley scrambled to control the ball just before the opposing forward got to him. His movements felt clumsy. Eyes bugged out, he tossed the ball back to Chapman who’d moved up behind him. First disaster averted. Thank you, God. He took up position near the hoop, ready to jump for a rebound, as Chapman brought the ball up. His legs and feet felt so heavy, he wondered if he’d even get off the ground.
Chapman faked a drive, pulled up, and shot a jumper from near the foul line. Riddley thought he’d burst from adrenaline as Chapman’s shot hit the rim and bounced high in the air. In his discomposure, with all his strength, Riddley jumped up for the rebound, only to see that he was the only player on his side of the hoop who had jumped at all, and that the ball had arced and come down well to the other side. He felt foolish, and looked around to see who’d noticed his stupid move. Meanwhile, Sandhurst recovered the rebound and fed it out to Boyd, who immediately took and made the shot.
Riddley began to shake off his nerves and get his head in the game after a few laps up and down the court. Settling into his role, he began to focus more on playing the game than on not screwing up. Things began to go well. In the first ten minutes, he recovered two rebounds and was in the fight for another three. He was feeling good about his effort.
But then, when they were on offense, and Boyd held the ball near the top of the key, Riddley made brief eye contact with him before deciding to turn and run over to his usual spot under the hoop. And Boyd, thinking Riddley was signaling that he was making a move for the hoop, threw a hard pass that Riddley never even saw. It passed behind him and out of bounds.
“Riddley, what the fuck?” Boyd shouted. Riddley turned, having no idea what had happened. “Open your eyes, dude. Shit. The ball was coming to you.”
Riddley was mortified. It had never crossed his mind Boyd might actually pass him the ball. His fear, his lack of confidence, took hold again, and he was back to focusing on not screwing up. Not looking stupid. And within another minute, scanning the sidelines to make sure Catherine hadn’t come to watch instead of keeping his eye on the ball, he collided with Lazko, who was defending Net Present Value’s point guard as he dribbled over the top of the key, effectively setting a brutal pick on his own teammate. They both fell to the ground as Net Present Value scored.
“Shit, Riddley! Watch what the fuck you’re doing!” Lazko got up and hopped away with a slight limp. Riddley followed, feeling utterly incompetent—worse than ever.
The rest of the game didn’t go as badly. Riddley grabbed two more rebounds and got his hand up to block a shot. But it wasn’t enough to make him feel better. He was rattled by his fuckups, by the criticism, and was sure Boyd and Lazko were irritated that he was even on the team. He wished he could really contribute, instead of being someone they had to tolerate and compensate for. Even more, he wished he’d never agreed to join the team in the first place.
In the end, Team Bongwater won by eight. After the game, Chapman proposed they get beers at the Frigate Bird. “No, I have stuff to do,” Riddley said, his face long.
“You played a good game,” Chapman said. “Four boards and a blocked shot. Good stuff.”
“Yeah man, good job,” Sandhurst said.
But Riddley knew that was bullshit, and that they were just trying to cheer him up. He had no interest in having to face everyone, especially Boyd and Lazko, over a table at the Frigate Bird for the next several hours. He just wanted to go home and hide. After another minute or two of brushing off Chapman’s entreaties that he join them, that’s exactly what Riddley did.
He moped his way across campus, shoulders slumped, with the distinct feeling passersby could see right through him, could see that he’d just been humiliated, could tell he was a fucking loser. As if things weren’t bad enough, the keycard reader on the dormitory’s side door was broken, so he had to walk all the way around to the main door, parading himself, in his pathetic state, through the busy front entryway for all to see.
At last reaching the door to his room, he allowed himself a sigh of relief. He inserted the key, turned the knob, and swung the door open. What he saw next left him frozen and bewildered. Crickets. Live crickets. Dozens and dozens of them, all over his room. On his bed, on his desk, on the floor, in his shoes, in his coffee cup. Some hopping, most standing still. And there, in the middle of everything, neatly laid out in the very center of the floor, was a dirty white t-shirt. Riddley stood there, wondering what the hell. Then it dawned on him: Boyd. That son of a bitch, Boyd.
THIRTY-ONE
Two days later, the whole gang sat around in the dingy living room at Boyd and Lazko’s house, finishing off two frozen pizzas and drinking cheap beer Chapman brought over, as Lazko watched a cable shopping channel segment featuring tanzanite jewelry.
“Lazko, what the hell are you watching?” Chapman asked at a lull in the conversation.
“I like it.”
“You’re baked. Come on, put the game on or something.”
“I like it. Get your own fucking TV”
Chapman shook his head and rejoined the conversation. “So assuming, for the sake of argument, that the legend is real, what drove McNeil’s ghost? I mean why did he kill so many people?”
“Maybe he was exorcising his own demons,” Boyd said.
“Exorcising or exercising?” Riddley asked.
“Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense,” Chapman said to Boyd. “You’re an idiot.”
“Revenge,” Lazko said, without taking his eyes off the TV.
“That might explain the murders of the people who bullied or abused or killed him,” Riddley said. “But half the people he murdered had no connection to his own life or death, right? How do you explain that?” he asked, with an answer already half formed in his mind—something to do with a desire for control in a poor child who never had any in life. “Maybe he liked the power trip. Like Bacavi said, everybody likes to feel like they have power and control. Murdering people must give you quite a feeling of control. I mean, control over life and death is pretty much the ultimate, isn’t it?”
“Can you really call it murder, considering who his victims were?” Sandhurst asked.
“Yeah, no shit,” Chapman said.
“I think he was trying to protect the weak—like other children—who may have been in situations similar to his own,” Catherine said. “Other victims of abuse.”
“Makes sense,” Sandhurst said.
“And stopping the legacies of abuse for other children, so that their lives would be better, and the lives of those children’s children, and so on down the generations,” Chapman said. “A positive effect on future generations equals McNeil’s immortality. But then, if he was a ghost, you’d have to assume he knew there was life after death.”
“So?” Boyd asked.
“So his killing spree wouldn’t have been motivated by any compulsion to create immortality for himself. Maybe he just saw the value of improving the lives of the women and children who were being abused.”
Lazko coughed. “Fucking come on. What are you, Sigmund Freud now?” Lazko said. Chapman threw an empty beer can at him.
Chapman’s comment about legacies made Riddley wonder whether the island was different today because of the nearly century-old murders. Was it a better place because of them? Had the killer actually broken chains, legacies of evil? Had he, in effect, done people a tremendous favor? If those assholes hadn’t been murdered, would their great-grandchildren be getting drunk and beating their own wives and children even now?
“Maybe he thought he was battling evil,” Catherine said. “Remember, he was only a child when he died. So his motives may have been very simple, based on a child’s immature understanding of his world.”
Lazko groaned and threw his head back onto the seat cushion of the couch. “How much longer do I have to listen to this shit?“
“Maybe he was just angry,” Sandhurst said. “Full of hate.”
“Well, whatever motivated him, I still think Bacavi would say the killer was still created by the fear of death,” Catherine said.”
“How’s that?”
“You have to go one level deeper. If the killer was McNeil’s ghost, possessing someone’s body or whatever, then it’s probably safe to assume he was turned into a killer by the evil actions of his stepfather, the evil bullying of the town delinquents, the evil neglect of the island community, and so on, right? And if you assume Becker’s theories are true, that those kinds of evils are themselves driven or even ultimately created by the fear of death and the desire for immortality, then the murders were a downstream result of the same things.”
“You sound like a professor.”
The conversation was blown off track by a long, loud fart from Lazko. Some time later, Boyd looked up from his beer. “Riddley, I’m not kidding, you need to get it together if we’re going to win many games this year.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chapman said. “He’s new to hoop, dickhead. Give him a fucking break.”
Riddley’s heart stopped. There it was, his big secret flaw. Inexperience. The ugly and embarrassing truth, out in the open for all to laugh over.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Boyd said. “You’ve never played basketball before? How do you grow up without learning to play basketball? What did you do through your whole childhood, play with dolls and shit?”
“Fuck off Boyd,” Chapman said.
Boyd shook his head with a demeaning feigned expression of disbelief. Chapman’s continued defense only made Riddley feel worse. Not only was he the newly outed loser who hadn’t played the same reindeer games all other red-blooded American boys were expected to play as they grew up, he was also apparently such a pussy that Chapman felt compelled to stand up for him when Boyd was essentially calling him a loser to his face. And all this in front of Catherine. Riddley wanted to melt into the couch and disappear.
Chapman did his best to change the subject, and the conversation finally moved to other things, but it was too late. The damage was done. Boyd left the room to take a piss. Sandhurst leaned forward and, doing his drunken best, slurred, “Fuck that little prick, Riddley. Throw it back at him. Fuck that guy.” Then he gave one emphatic nod of his head. It made Riddley feel a little bit better, but not much.
A little while later, Lazko, drunk and stoned beyond sense, stumbled off to bed and Catherine went home. As soon as she was out the door, Chapman turned to Sandhurst. “Dude, why are you going all Stonewall Jackson on Catherine?”
Sandhurst’s response was alcohol-slow. “What?”
“Why are you brushing her off?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Please. You know she has the hots for you.”
Riddley felt an icy knife pierce his heart. His shoulders grew heavy. He slumped forward. Could it be true? Of course it was. He’d been in denial.
“She has a boyfriend,” Sandhurst said. “Bob, or whatever.”
“You know damn well she doesn’t give a shit about that guy. He’s barely even in the picture. And you know she’s all into you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then what’s with all the ‘Sandhurst, be a gentleman and walk me home’ bullshit recently? She doesn’t ask me or Riddley. And she was looking your way the whole time tonight. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”
“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be good.”
“Wouldn’t be good? What are you talking about?”
“I’m not the right guy for her. I’ve been trying to tell her that.”
Riddley was relieved to hear this, but still jealous of her attraction to someone other than himself.
“Not the right guy? What does that even mean?”
“It’s a long story. I’m not ready for a relationship right now.”
“For shit’s sake, what is with you guys?” he said to both Sandhurst and Riddley. ”Are you living in closets or what, man? Shit.”
“Well, somebody had better step up, or she’ll end up going back to her old abusive fuckhead of an ex-boyfriend,” Boyd said.
The word ‘abusive’ caught everyone’s attention and they all turned to Boyd with uniformly confused expressions.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Chapman asked.
“You guys haven’t noticed her walking around campus with that mullet-headed townie dipshit lately? Her old high school boyfriend? He still lives on the island.”
“Why did you call him ‘abusive’?” Sandhurst asked, his enunciation suddenly clear and crisp.
“Because he used to smack her around when they dated in high school. You guys didn’t know that? He’s a total cock. The jealous type. Control freak.”
“He smacked her around?” Chapman asked, his eyebrows furrowing, his nostrils flared.
“Totally. She told me about it back when we were dating. I think it was her way of warning me about him in case we ran into each other in town. You really didn’t know about that?”
“No, asshole, I didn’t know about that.”
“Why the hell would she go back to an ex-boyfriend who hit her?” Riddley asked.
“She’s needy.”
“Needy?”
“There are two types of women in this world,” Boyd said.
“Is that right?” Chapman asked, rolling his eyes.
“Strong and Needy. Catherine is needy. Think about it. She has never not had a boyfriend as long as any of us have known her. Not for a single day. She didn’t dump me until she had another douche bag all lined up to take over at midnight on the same fucking day. You do the math. She needs a boyfriend to give her strokes. Make her feel good about herself. She has low self-esteem or whatever. It’s what makes her so easy to manipulate.”
“Huh?” Riddley felt utterly ignorant.
“It’s also probably why she makes herself throw up.”
“Wait a minute—what? She’s bulimic?”
“Bullshit,” Sandhurst said.
“Well, I mean, uh—” Boyd’s expression turned sheepish. “You guys didn’t know about that either?” His voice was subdued, guilty.
“It’s true,” Chapman said. “I’ve seen her do it. Or heard it, anyway. But I don’t think she knows we know.”
“I’ve heard her do it twice,” Boyd said. “Once at her parents’ house after we’d shared a big pizza at the Frigate Bird, and once after she cooked me dinner at her house. She wasn’t drunk and she wasn’t sick. And she has way too much faith in the soundproofing of bathroom doors.”
Riddley couldn’t believe what he was hearing. To his eyes, Catherine was close to perfect. Beautiful, smart, funny, confident, sweet, athletic. She came from a stable family. Her parents were oral surgeons. She was the type of person everyone wanted to be. The idea of her having self-esteem issues, let alone an eating disorder, was absurd.
“What’s his name?” Chapman asked Boyd.
“Whose?”
“The ex-boyfriend, dipshit.”
“Oh, uh—I can’t remember.”
“Think!”
The sudden volume of Chapman’s voice startled Riddley. Chapman looked furious.
“Vickers,“ Boyd said.
“Vickers who?“
“No, Vickers is his last name.“
“What’s his first name?“
“Don or something. No, Dale. Dale Vickers. That’s it. I can point him out to you the next time we see him. Catherine said he’s actually a good guy deep down.”
“My ass.”
“No, really. She said he means well but has a lot of anger in him. That he’s a victim of his past or whatever. I guess he came from a pretty rough family. Like some of us.”
“I don’t hit women.”
An hour or so later, Sandhurst seemed as drunk as Lazko had been when he went to bed. Everybody else was at least halfway there. But Riddley’s buzz didn’t do much to blunt his bad feelings over again being criticized by Boyd, being reminded of Catherine’s crush on Sandhurst, and over the likelihood of Catherine drifting back into the embrace of an abusive ex. He thought about going home and going to bed, but knew it wouldn’t help him any. He’d just lie there staring at his ceiling, unable to sleep, riding the torrent of his anxieties. So he stayed, hoping the tone of the evening would turn and eventually cheer him up.
He went to the kitchen to grab himself another beer out of the fridge. Opening the door, a small plate caught his eye. A paper plate. On it sat a small piece of uncooked salmon in plastic wrap. Riddley stared at if for a moment, thinking how much he loved grilled fresh salmon, when an idea flashed through his mind that made him nearly burst out laughing and smile so hard his eyes grew moist. Instead of a beer, he took the fish, tucked it under his shirt, tiptoed back through the living room and on over to the bathroom. Nobody paid him any notice.
He locked the door and turned on the water tap to preserve the illusion of his normal use of the toilet. The bathroom had a second door that led directly into Boyd’s room. Nobody was in Boyd’s room when Riddley entered the bathroom. But just in case, he turned the knob of the second door as slowly and quietly as he possibly could, pushing it open no more than a centimeter to take a peek. The room was still vacant, the light off, the bedroom door three-quarters of the way shut.
