The Troop

37

SHELLEY WAITED until Max and Newton went down to the beach before climbing out of the cellar. The gauzy afternoon light stabbed his eyes like cocktail swords. The dark suited him now.

Last night, he’d lain in the cellar and dreamed of darkness slipping over the world. A forgiving dark: you could do things in that kind of blackness and get away with it. Nobody would ever see you. They would only feel you, and you could feel them.

Shelley found Ephraim lying on the picnic table. The sight was a pleasant one. It meant his game was progressing nicely. In fact, it appeared to have entered endgame stage.

Shelley swayed lightly on his feet with a dreamy look on his face. “Nobody loves me,” he warbled, “everybody haaaates me…”

He ran a finger down the gash on Ephraim’s face. When the boy didn’t stir, he pushed the tip of his finger into it. His nail broke the gummy glue of blood. His finger moved inside the wound. He pushed harder, grunting lightly. His fingertip went through Ephraim’s cheek into his mouth—for a thrilling instant he felt the smooth enamel of his teeth.

Ephraim’s eyelids cracked open. Shelley withdrew his finger. It came out with a gooey sound, like pulling your finger out of a pot of wallpaper paste.

“Shel? You don’t look so hot.”

Shelley supposed he didn’t. At some point last night, he’d crept out of the cellar to eat the long timothy grass growing around the cabin. Down on all fours like a cow at its cud. This morning, he’d chased a plump pigeon along the beach, screaming and frothing at the mouth. The foam falling from his lips was white, tinted with green from the grass; it looked like the spume that washed up at the North Point jetty.

He hadn’t caught the pigeon, but later he’d fallen asleep and dreamed that he had. In the dream, he’d torn its feathered head off—but not before eating the black jewels of its eyes as it struggled frantically in his hands—laughing and hissing as the bird’s head separated from its body. He’d awoken to find his belly swollen to match his dream. The skin was pocked with lumps that looked like fledgling anthills.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” Shelley asked dully. “The worm.”

Shelley noticed the yellowish tinge to Ephraim’s eyes. It was as if the oily madness in his brain had leeched into his corneas.

Ephraim’s upper lip quivered. His chin went dimply as a golf ball. “It’s still inside me, Shel.”

“Is that so?”

“Can’t you fuckin’ see, man? Can’t you see it?”

The pleading note in Ephraim’s voice was auditory honey sliding into Shelley’s ears. He furrowed his brow and stared intently at Ephraim—then he drew back suddenly. His head swept side to side, a sad and solemn gesture.

“I’m afraid so. It’s still there. Didn’t you do as I said?”

Ephraim’s mouth twisted into a furious snarl; it was quickly replaced by a scrawl of breathless panic. “I tried! I did exactly what you said. You got to get it out.”

“Why couldn’t you do that?” Twisting the knife in a person’s psyche was nearly as much fun as twisting it in living flesh, Shelley had found. “Is it because you’re weak, like everyone says?”

Ephraim wept silently, clutching at Shelley. “I can’t do it. It’s sneaky.” Leaning to one side, he spat a reeking sack of blood onto the grass. “Can’t… I can’t…”

Shelley’s expression remained placid—hesitant even—but a mad light capered behind his eyes.

“Want me to get it for you?”

“Do you have a knife?”

Shelley nodded. “Of course.” He had a Buck knife with a five-inch blade, an inch and a half longer than the Scouts’ official limit.

“Do you really see it, Shel? The worm?”

After a beat, Shelley said: “I saw it, Eef. It was in back of your eyes for a moment. A ripply thread behind the whites.”

Ephraim made the most wretched, delightful sound Shelley had ever heard.

“You’ve got to get it out of me. I can’t stand it.”

“Okay, Eef.” Shelley smiled, a happy camper. His teeth looked much bigger now with the gums peeling back. “But first, you have to say one thing.”

“What?”

“You have to say please.”

“Please.” Ephraim clutched at the hem of Shelley’s pants, squealing. “Please.”

Shelley stifled his giggles—they built in his stomach like effervescent soda bubbles, rising up his throat in a hysterical wave. He didn’t find any of this genuinely funny; not at all. Ephraim had offered him a rare gift. The rarest. It took so much to penetrate the senseless jelly that enrobed Shelley’s brain—took so much to make him feel. But now he was feeling so, so much—needles of light streamed across his vision, unearthly and pure like a rift into Heaven.

He snapped the blade of his Buck knife into position. “I’ll do it, but only because we’re friends.”

A look of pitiful gratefulness came over Ephraim’s face. “Yes,” he breathed. “Get it out.”

Shelley’s eyes cut down to the beach. No sign of Newt or Max. He’d sharpened the knife the night before their trip. He was scrupulous about such matters. You could split a doll’s hair with the blade—split it into thirds.