Homer laughed and Selma tensed. The laugh was an older laugh. Less of the lost child. More of the man who had gone to prison.
“They ran one of the IV lines into the next room. But … you know what’s really funny? I mean really fucking funny, Aunt Selma?”
“Tell me,” she said, and her throat was so dry that her voice cracked.
“Before they put the IVs in … they swabbed my arm with alcohol. How stupid is that? I mean…”
He burst out laughing, his body trembling against hers.
“They’re stupid people,” said Selma, trying to soothe him.
“Yeah. That was rich. That was really something. Afraid I’d get an infection.”
“There’s was a chance you’d get a stay of execution,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. It was all about my comfort and protection.” He chuckled again. It was older still. A small, dark laugh. Even so, he still lay on the floor with his arms around her. His voice was still soft.
“What happened then?” she asked, not knowing what else to say.
“They started a heart monitor. That’s part of the show, I guess. Watching to see the blips. He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive … ooooooh, he’s dead.” He gave her body a squeeze. “The other convicts told me how it works. They give me a shot of sodium somethingorother to put me out. Some kind of barbiturate. Then some kind of muscle relaxant that paralyzes everything. And then something else to stop the heart. They say it takes about an hour, but the dope is supposed to drop you under right at the start. But they don’t do it right then. No, they open the curtains and start the show. Other side of the glass is a big room filled with all kinds of people. I recognized a lot of them from court. Family members of the people the Red Mouth took. The Black Eye saw and marked each one. They were there to see me go, and they’d probably been working up to it, eating their hate, convincing themselves they had the juice to do this, to see me strapped down and pumped full of death. The Black Eye looked into each one of them, and there was nobody—no-fucking-body who was carrying enough hate to get them through this. The Red Mouth was laughing inside me, ’cause we knew that this was going to fuck them up six ways from Sunday. They were all going to take a little bit of me home inside their heads, and I was going to be standing by their bedsides when they went to sleep, and I’d be pulling on their sheets every night until they died. That’s one of the things the Red Mouth gives me. I’m inside their heads, and I always will be. And when they looked at me through the glass, they saw someone so much more powerful than them that they could see they were just specks of bird shit floating in the universe.”
Selma said nothing. She continued to stroke his hair, though now the effort required deliberate effort. This was not the Homer she had cuddled as a baby, or the teenage boy on the cusp of manhood that she had held when he cried in the night. This was the one who was in the newspapers, and she did not know how to speak with him. So, she stroked his lank hair and listened as the monster told his tale.
“The reporters were different. There were a few of them there. I heard they had to win a lottery to get in, so they probably felt lucky as shit. They’re a lot different. They’re not afraid of the Black Eye or the Red Mouth. They love them. Almost like I do, but in a different way. Like Baptists and Presbyterians. Same religion, different churches. Without the Black Eye, they’d be lost. Just like me. Without the Red Mouth, they’d be reporting on car shows and hog contests. I didn’t mind them there. I could see the Black Eye on their foreheads. I felt like I was Jesus looking down and seeing Peter and John and Simon.”
Homer was quiet for a moment, and Selma tried to predict where his mind had gone. The old house creaked in the cold wind. She hoped that it would cave in and bury them both. Right here, right now. With Homer in her arms.
Dead by Christmas. That was too far away.
“Then things got weird. The other convicts said that doctors didn’t usually give the injections. Something about some oath they took. Or some law. I’m not sure. But Dr. Volker was running the whole show … and Volker … now there is one motherfucker who knows everything about the Black Eye. I saw it on his forehead the first time I went into the infirmary. Fucking Angel of Death got nothing on that prick.”
“What do you mean?” asked Selma.
“A lot of people tried to get me to open up, to admit shit. Like I was that stupid. Not him, though. He knew. From the first time I met him, he knew who I was. He never said so, but I know that he knew about the Black Eye and the Red Mouth.”
“Was he … was he like…?”
“Like me?” Homer thought about that for a long time. “Yeah. Not really, but yeah. It was there in his eyes. The Red Mouth had whispered its secrets to him, and probably a long time ago. He had that lived-in look, like someone who was at peace with the voice. It’s crazy … but I kind of admired him. Prison doctor and all. Getting paid to stick the needle. Everybody watching. Biggest audience you can imagine. Papers and TV. Witnesses there to see him perform.”
Perform.
The word hung in the air, impossibly ugly.
“He only opened up to me once,” said Homer. “Just once. It was the only time I was alone with him. After that spic shanked me in the yard and I had to get stitches. Wish I’d killed that spic. Ah, well … Anyway, I’m cuffed wrists and ankles, face down on his table, and Volker’s stitching me up. Then he bends forward and says, ‘I know.’ Just like that. Two words, but man, they said everything.”
“Was that all he said?”
“No … but that was enough. I got it. He was telling me that he could hear what the Red Mouth said. What else could it mean?” Homer pulled away from her and sat up, resting his bare back against the door frame. The blood on his chest was clotted and dark and he scratched at it with a fingernail. His eyes were hidden by the shadows cast down from his heavy brow, but Selma could feel them on her. Boring into her like slow drills.
Selma licked her lips. “What else did he say?”
“Just one more thing. He said, ‘After you go, you won’t be gone. You’ll be with us forever. You’ll know forever.’” Homer shook his head. “I wanted to thank him. It was the only nice thing anyone’s said to me since they busted me.”
“Are you sure he meant—” She stopped herself.
Homer nodded. “I know what he meant. He hears the Red Mouth. He knows what it means to live forever in the sight of the Black Eye. He was telling me you know, you see. That was decent of him. I thanked him and told him I’d like to shake his hand. But someone else came in the room, so that was that. We were never alone again after that.” He paused. “Except for a split second in the execution chamber. Doc Volker bent down to check the IV, and he shifted so that I could see his face. He mouthed the same words: ‘You’ll know forever.’ Then the warden gave the signal for the circus to start. I … don’t remember much after that.”
Selma looked down at the bloodstains on her robe. She tried not to flick a glance toward the cellar door, but failed. Homer caught it and his face tightened for a split second. Was it humor? Annoyance? Shame? She had no way to judge.
“Is that what happened?” she asked. “Did the doctor … rig things? Did he fake your death so he could get you out?”
Homer chewed his lip. Or so Selma thought until she realized with sick horror that he was sucking up some drops of dried blood.
“Has to be,” he said. “I don’t know how … but somehow he pulled a Gypsy switch and next thing I know I’m waking up in a fucking body bag in a funeral home. Scared the living shit out of the guy who unzipped me. He was chewing gum and listening to some lame-ass Celtic music shit when he pulled down the zipper and there I was. Eyes open, grinning at him. At least I think I was grinning.”
A look of confusion crossed Homer’s face and Selma waited it out. The walls shuddered under a cold blast and the windows rattled like false teeth.
“I remember being hungry. So … insanely hungry. I’ve never been that hungry before. Not until … not until…” He ran his fingers across his bloody abdomen.
“What did you do?”
He leaned forward into a slanting beam of dusty light. Now his face was completely Homer Gibbon. The newspaper Homer. There was no trace of the child or the young man.
“The Black Eye opened,” he said softly. “The Red Mouth told me what to do. And it was clearer … God … it was clearer than ever.” As he spoke these last words his eyes drifted shut. The way a connoisseur’s would when savoring the delicate flavors of a piece of perfectly prepared lamb. The garlic and rosemary, the tarragon vinegar, the mint. The blood.
“Did you kill Doc Hartnup?” Selma asked, and it cost her a lot to ask it. Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to ball them into fists around the flaps of her robe. “Did the, um … Red Mouth … tell you to do that?”
“Yes,” he said, soft as a whisper.
“God.” Her voice was softer still. Tiny. Almost not there.
“And the woman.”
“Woman?”
“I think she was Russian. Came to clean the place. Came just in time.”
“Oh, Homer…”
“I had to.” He opened his eyes. “The Red Mouth was screaming at me. Not whispering. Not talking. It was screaming!”
“And Mildred Potts?”
“Who? Oh … her.” He nodded. “I never … in the past … I never heard the Red Mouth speak so soon after. But I got hungry.”
“‘Hungry’?” She echoed the word, almost fainting at what it now meant.
“I was full … stuffed from.…” He let his voice trail off, and looked away with a half smile. “I was full and I was still hungry. You wouldn’t understand.”
The phone rang.