What chance would any kid have with Caine as father and Diana as mother? Diana laughed softly. And could not later recall the exact moment or the exact reason that her laughter turned into bitter tears.
Edilio stood completely still in the hallway outside of Roscoe’s room.
He could barely breathe.
What could he say? What could you say to a boy who was going to die? The terrible truth was that he could do nothing for Roscoe. It was good that Roscoe was calling to God because only God could save him. Edilio could not.
And what Edilio had to do next would destroy Roscoe’s last hope.
Edilio looked at the plywood. Three half sheets, each four by four feet. A hammer and nails. Two-by-fours.
It had to be done. It had to be. Roscoe—the things inside him—could not be allowed to escape.
Edilio dragged the first sheet across the dark hallway and propped it against the door.
“I hear someone out there!” Roscoe yelled.
“It’s me, Roscoe. It’s Edilio,” he said.
“Edilio! Please, can you help me?”
Edilio opened the box of nails, grabbed the hammer, lined the nail up so it would go through the plywood into the door molding.
“Roscoe, there’s nothing I can do, brother. I have to . . . You’re going to hear some hammering.”
“What?”
Edilio slammed the hammer into the nail. He had to be careful; it was dark, and operating by feel alone was a bad way to hammer nails.
This was going to take a long time.
“Roscoe, I have to do this, man,” Edilio said.
“You’re going to lock me in here and let me die?”
Edilio hesitated. “Yes.”
“No way. No way. No!”
“And I have to do the same thing to the window, man.”
“Edilio, no. No, man. You don’t want to do this.”
“No, I don’t want to do this,” Edilio said.
Roscoe fell silent as Edilio nailed the remaining plywood in place. Edilio propped the two-by-four against the plywood and nailed it into place. The other end he nailed into the floor with massive long nails that took forever to hammer in.
Outside in the fresh air, Edilio steeled himself for what came next. He leaned the ladder against the building and with some difficulty wrestled a sheet of plywood up the ladder. He was going to fall and kill himself, he thought, and it would be justice, wouldn’t it?
Roscoe was there at the window. His face was ghostly in the pale moonlight. “Isn’t there anything . . . ?” Roscoe pleaded.
“Sam can’t even kill the things,” Edilio said. “He tried but he couldn’t. I can’t let them hurt more people.”
“Yeah,” Roscoe said. He nodded, jaw so stiff his teeth were cracking audibly.
“Sorry, man,” Edilio said. He slapped the wood into place against the window, resting it precariously on the narrow sill.
“Tell everyone I was ever mean to that I’m sorry,” Roscoe said, his voice muffled now.
“You were never mean to anyone, man. You were a good guy.” Edilio winced, realizing too late that he was using the past tense. He quickly drove in the first nail. He hit his thumb with the hammer. The pain was stunning.
He welcomed it.
Orc woke to a headache and shivers.
He was facedown. On the sand. The surf was lapping at his legs, covering his feet, gently surging to wash over his calves.
His head was a single giant ball of pain.
There was sand in his mouth. Sand in the cracks between the pebbles that formed his skin.
He could see the bottles. Just a few inches from his head, empty. Not even a tiny little drop left.
He was still drunk, he had not slept long enough to sober up. But he was no longer blacked-out, brain-dead drunk.
He was naked. That surprised him a little. But he had vague memories of ripping his stained, filthy clothes off and rampaging like a wild animal through the water. Bellowing.
There was no one to see him anyway. No one around. No one was going to hang around when Orc went crazy.
Scared of me, Orc thought. Surprise, surprise. Orc the monster, all covered in his own crap and staggering and lurching through waist-high water trying to get clean, scared people.
He decided to go look for another bottle, quick, before it all came rushing back into his head but it was too late because it was all coming back now.
He got to his knees. He might be a filthy, disgusting drunk, but he was still strong.
He’d have to walk naked through the dark streets. What did it matter? He wasn’t a boy, he was a monster. A naked Orc was just a curiosity for people to laugh at. One more thing for people to find disgusting.
He tried to stand up but somehow ended up rolling onto his back. He vomited. It dribbled over the side of his face, over the last patch of human skin.
There were stars in the sky. They kind of swam around and sometimes doubled and blurred.
Here he was: Charles Merriman.
He hated himself. Hated himself so much. He had what he deserved: cold sand and colder water and pain.
Why couldn’t he just die? He deserved to die. He needed to die. If there was some kind of God up there looking down at him, then God was wanting to throw up.
Of course God probably liked doing stuff like this. Charles Merriman was probably, like, his favorite person to beat on. Yeah, it was, like, I’m going to give this kid a violent drunk for a daddy, and a dumb dishrag for a mother, and I’m going to make it hard for him to even learn to read, and then, just when he’s starting to finally get some respect, I’ll turn him into a monster.