CHAPTER FOUR

He steps out of the shower, pauses. He stands and listens. The silence seems loud as a cacophony. It reminds him of something—

The silence.

—that he hates.

The silence drips. He listens and thinks back—

««—»»

The boy from Bath, Ohio, is hiding. He hides a lot.

It’s a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. His mother is always nice but he doesn’t see her much since the divorce.

There are dead animals in the yard. Little pieces of them, all in the little places he has buried them.

For some reason, the little animals help him feel something he’s never felt before:

Power.

Stray kittens and small stray dogs mostly, and sometimes he’d read ads in the back of the paper. There’s a section for PETS, people who are moving so they have pets to give away. Gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters. The boy picks them up, promises to take good care of the animals, and then he kills them. But he likes the dogs and cats the best, because he can see their eyes better.

It’s the look in their eyes just before they die, the tiniest glimmer: fear.

They fear him, and their fear gives him power.

But right now he is hiding because he knows his father has just gotten home.

And the boy from Bath, Ohio, knows that he will have the same look of fear in his eyes—just like the animals—when his father eventually comes into the room.

It is the boy’s fear that gives his father power.

So the boy remains, hiding behind his bed, and listening to the awful silence until he hears—

click

—the door click open.

“I’m back,” his father says.

««—»»

—and listens and thinks back and listens.

Enough, he thinks.

Weakling.

He fears the past, and he knows that his own fear makes him weak. Like—what was his name, back in eighth grade? Gil Valeda, the jock. “No way. You’re a weakling—”

And his father: “Don’t be such a weakling! Be a man!”

No, it can only be the fear of others.

The fear in their eyes.

The power it gives him.

Sometimes he even tells them what he’s going to do to them. It makes their eyes beautiful with fear…

He cranks off the shower’s annoying drip, dries off, then walks out into the quiet room. He dresses slowly, glancing around at the small room’s insignificance. A cheap lamp and a cheap dresser. A Magic Finger’s Massage box on the head board. But the word resurrection comes to mind when he spies the Gideon’s Bible on the writing table.

She took the fruit thereof and did eat it, he thinks.

He puts the hot plate in his leather bag, a few utensils, his Flair pen and one of his knives.

Thick, musty curtains part at the brush of his hand. Beyond the high window, the city teems in flecks of light and winter dark. Feel the fear, comes the plush, rich thought. It’s as though he is speaking to the world beyond the smudged window glass.

He pauses only for a moment to glance at the blood-sodden bed. Then he leaves the room and closes the door behind him.

“I’m back,” he says aloud.

— | — | —