Boone Read online

  It was a dream come true.

  “How did you get out of the hospital?” he asked.

  He finished buttoning his shirt, was glad he’d left his shoes on because standing here buck-naked in front of a killer was hard to rationalize. Part of him was more stimulated than he could ever imagine. Another part of him was scared out of his mind.

  “I . . . I hope you’re not mad. I . . . I guess you could say I’ve . . . had a sort of fascination with you for a long time . . . since I was a kid. I . . . hope you’re not offended.”

  Boone didn’t say anything. He stood looking at the picture in his hands as if Miles weren’t even there.

  “You . . . you could take it as a compliment, you know? If . . . if you wanted to. I mean, it’s not like it’s an insult or anything.”

  Miles studied Boone for a long time, somewhat aroused, somewhat terrified. He had gone from love to fear in an instant.

  There was a moment of total silence, though, except for the rain on the roof, making splashes in the puddles outside. His own breathing was audible, but Boone just stood there. Miles’ belt was still on the floor, his gun. He could go for them, but as quickly as the man had moved, Miles wasn’t sure it was wise.

  What was he thinking, Miles wondered? More importantly, what was Boone feeling? Maybe he’d just wanted to come home, to see if anyone still lived here, to visit some old ghosts. Maybe he just wanted to reminisce and take a walk down memory lane.

  Boone turned to the open window. There was no glass. It had been broken out years ago. The rain was pouring from the eaves in sheets.

  He went to the window and tried to touch it. He set the axe by the sill, still holding onto the picture with his other hand. He cupped his free hand over the window, like he was trying to trap something there, but Boone’s hand moved through the window. He tilted his head, then pulled his hand back.

  Miles discreetly grabbed the gun from the floor and pointed it at Boone. His hands were shaking.

  The big man turned and looked at Miles. He was beautiful, rugged, dark, handsome, but beautiful. But Miles couldn’t stop trembling. An axe was no match for a gun, but the gun seemed very small then . . . and the axe very large.

  ~

  Boone didn’t know who this man was, or why he’d been naked. He didn’t know what he was doing, and didn’t much care. The words that came from him meant nothing.

  But there was something in him that reminded him of his childhood, a girl in there somewhere, locked in the flesh of what appeared to be a man. Because of it, Boone felt only confusion. This was like nothing Isabelle had ever taught him, but there was still silence here, and that was good, a golden stillness that was, in all aspects, sacred. The man did not threaten him.

  There were doorways. Boone acknowledged the doorways because in them was the screaming. But he’d put all that to rest back at the asylum. He’d been given the tool for a reason.

  There was finality in coming home that made him think of his mother. He wanted to see if her voice was still silent here.

  It was.

  But outside in the rain, it was not.

  He did not understand why his pictures were on the bureau, or what the man was doing with them.

  All he knew was that it was time to go. This man was invading his space, and Boone had wanted to experience it alone.

  For a second, he thought he’d seen the flies on the window again, heard them buzzing. He moved to the window and tried to cup them, but realized there was nothing there.

  Like his mother, the flies, too, were silent.

  In one swift motion, Boone dropped the picture to the floor, grabbed the axe, and strode out of the room like a wisp of shadow.

  ~

  The gun had been useless. Miles knew it would be. The job and his commitment to the job, demanded he stop Boone where he stood. That’s what all the training was for, but all the training hadn’t taught him how to deal with this particular situation.

  His hand was still shaking. His mouth was like desert sand. He’d gone from young deputy to little girl in an instant, and he realized how unequipped he was to be a deputy suddenly. He didn’t have the makeup for it. And that was okay. He wouldn’t do it, didn’t want to do it, and therefore made no commitment on either side.

  He could hardly speak. In all this time, he hadn’t even caught his breath. His heart was drumming so hard, he could hardly breathe. He’d been only inches away from the man he loved . . . and seconds away from being butchered.

  “Boone?” he managed to croak.

  There was no answer.

  “Boone, are you there?”

  Thunder ripped across the sky.

  His armpits were sodden. He could barely hang onto the gun his palms were so sweaty and slick.

  Miles let out a deep breath. He was not surprised to look down and see that he’d pissed himself.

  ~

  The entire experience left Miles visibly shaken, and it wasn’t until Boone walked out that he realized the stress had gone right to his legs.

  His knees gave out, and he crumpled to the floor.

  The taste in his mouth was pure fear, and it took him a minute to collect himself. Boone had not only been here, but the man had left him alive. Miles had no idea how that was possible.

  Maybe he’s waiting for you in the patrol car, he thought.

  That was possible. Maybe he should see if he could stand and get his thoughts in order first.

  The deputy side of him finally took over. He was going to have to take a trip to the hospital. He was going to have to call Wally. He wondered if the chief had been trying to get a hold of him yet.

  Mile shook his head, got to his knees, managed to stand, then got his belt on. He holstered his gun. He grabbed the flashlight from the dresser. He could smell the urine staining his trousers. He’d emitted more than one bodily fluid without emitting the most vital. That was some sort of victory.

  Miles walked down the hall and onto the porch, the rain coming off the eaves. Thunder rumbled, and he looked at the car. The wheels hadn’t been flattened. The windshield was intact. For some reason, he expected the car to be sabotaged, but it was fine.

  There was no sign of Boone.

  ~

  He put the flashlight on the seat next to him. He grabbed the radio, then put it back. Instinct told him he should call it in, but another part hesitated, thinking he would give it more time. Boone was on the loose, but there was something bigger going on. He could feel it in the air. Boone was on a mission. Something bigger than he and Miles, bigger than Miles’ infatuation, and bigger, certainly, than all of Shepherd’s Grove.

  He would not call in what had just happened. He would take a drive out to the hospital first. He wasn’t sure what he would find there, but he had a grim suspicion. One thing he knew . . . he had to do everything in his power to make sure no harm came to Boone. A divine source was at work in Shepherd’s Grove, and Miles longed to be a part of it in any way he could.

  ~

  He could hardly see the hospital through the trees and the dark, the headlights lighting the way. The windshield wipers were squeaking against the window, having hardly any impact on his visibility.

  He could feel it before he approached, the silent aftermath of Boone. Every light was out. Every window was a shimmering black rectangle.

  The hospital looked like a dormant monster waiting for Miles to step out of the car, so it could devour him. The wings stretched out on each side, three floors, red brick, and plenty of windows. He could imagine one window, like an eye, watching him, the door and the porch like a giant maw.

  Miles parked the cruiser, left the headlights on, and stepped out into the rain. He pulled his gun and hurried to the porch.

  There was a dead woman in a wicker chair to his right. The front door was open. He had the flashlight in his other hand and panned the beam beyond the door. He stepped within. He went to the main central nurses’ station and looked for the light switches along the wall, the switchboard. He
flicked them up and down. Nothing.

  There was a coolness to the air and something else . . . a smell. A fresh smell like wet pennies.

  Wet pennies in the rain, he thought. Only this wasn’t wet pennies. It was blood and carnage, and it was strong.

  The hallway was dim. There was a faint, flickering glow coming from one of the rooms down the hall.

  “Hello?” he called.

  A cold feeling, like a lizard, crept along his spine.

  “Mr. McGovern? Anyone?”

  He continued down the hall and noticed the blood splatters, small ellipsis and curls along the hallway. There were bloody footprints. Bare feet. By the size, they could only be Boone’s.

  There was a body up ahead, slumped against the wall, a doctor. A huge gash had been opened in his chest. The blood had pooled down his front and all around him. Miles didn’t bother checking for a pulse.

  After another twenty feet, he came to the common room. The door had been ravaged, a light flickering inside. Candles, he thought, pushing the door open with the flashlight, taking note of the damage. Some candles were still burning, low and faint, but the stench was very strong now.

  Miles knew the scene wasn’t going to be welcome, but he was not prepared for what he saw.

  As the door opened further, the entire room became visible. He could almost see how events had unfolded by the way the bodies lined the floor. The blood was shimmering black in the candlelight. White, bloodless faces, their eyes opened wide in horror, stared at Miles accusingly.

  The sight froze him where he stood. The tingling sensations of each tiny hair stood on end across his body. His brain embedded each image, each face, of people he knew and recognized: Weasel Tarkington, Nancy Kessler, Louis Spillbourghs. Some patients as well. The black man, Jacks, was on the floor, facedown, and all Miles could think of was, Boone. Boone did this.

  He’d disposed of some quickly, dismembered others, and decapitated some.

  Driven by the storm, Miles thought.

  That was all he knew. Something had happened, a trigger perhaps. Something had set Boone into this frenzy, this power-driven will to butcher, but damned if Miles knew what it was. The man had killed his mother twenty years ago, but no one since, no one until now, and now, in one night, he’d slaughtered dozens.

  How could the man have moved so fast? No phone call, no sound of alarm. The power lines had been down, just as Wally had told him, but they’d also called out earlier, and everything had been fine then. Could the big man have moved that quickly?

  And now, because of Miles, Boone was still out there.

  And the night was young.

  ~

  It began somewhere in the back of Boone’s mind, only to Boone, it seemed outside of him at the same time, a clarion call reaching out from across the fields and farmlands of Shepherd’s Grove. He thought of it as the Giant Chatterer, a colossal disturber of peace, yammering away like some ceaseless, hybrid hyena that wouldn’t shut up.

  From the corner of his eyes, Boone thought he saw something move out of sight from behind the trees, a gangly arm and leg, a pronounced spine, pushing it’s way through the skin of its back. It was the small gnome-like child following him from bole to bole. He’d seen it earlier at the sanitarium when he’d stepped out onto the porch but had no idea what it was or why it was here.

  Boone turned away.

  Through it all, in the clouds, in the trees, above the sky, were a thousand voices taunting him, making fun, egging him on, challenging him.

  Boone understood his purpose more and more:

  “Boone . . . Boone . . . a troubled young man . . . ”

  “Pick it up and EAT IT!”

  “Maybe he likes to watch, fly-kabob!”

  “ . . . killed his mother with his own two hands . . . ”

  —screaming—

  He had no idea about any of it. He had no idea who the man had been, but he hadn’t disturbed Boone, and that was good.

  “Boone . . . a terrible deed . . . ”

  “I said ‘Get up here right NNOOOWWW!!’”

  “Boone, do you wanna see how the old man does it, how he gives it to his old lady?”

  “FRAAAANKIIIEEEEE!!! FRANKIE BOOOONNE!”

  “I heard he got away. Slaughtered all those people at the sanitarium.”

  “Let him try to come around here. Let him just try. I’ll have a couple pieces of buckshot waiting for his ass.”

  “They should have killed that boy twenty years ago. They should have hung him right then and there for killing his mother. They should’ve done it in front of the entire town for all to see. Hanging’s too good for that boy.”

  “Lots of town gossip on that kid. Tons. But there you have it. One way or another, everyone’s time comes.”

  There was the sound of shattering glass, screeching brakes, wailing sirens. It had come from the thunder. It began with his mother, the need to destroy him, wanting him gone, dead from her womb. That would have made her happy. She’d been trying to destroy him from the moment of conception.

  “No one wants you to be happy, Boone. No one wants that. They’re all against you. You and me, both, Son. So, you have to keep fighting . . . to be free.”

  This was his father, and what he continued to hear was his mother in the background, even then, trying to drown him out.

  Boone doubled-back after the officer left. He’d walked back to the house and gone down into the basement. The rainwater was coming through window, flooding across the floor. He was determined to find a sanctuary, the only one he’d ever known.

  There was a chair, and he sat in the darkness with the axe across his lap, listening to the rain. The noises and all he’d heard outside had quieted.

  This was what he’d wanted to experience: time alone in the only place that had ever been a refuge from the screaming.

  ~

  Though Boone wanted to stay in the silence and not think about anything, the sounds began, a white noise cacophony that drowned out the hammering rain. He could hear the town conspiring against him, the voices of his mother and father.

  Boone looked up. It grew brighter in the room. A television was mounted on the wall, an old-fashioned one with two sets of dials on the right and two large antennas sticking out the back. The screen was the static snow of a no transmission signal turned on high volume, so loud that, for the first time in years, Boone put his hands to his head. He closed his eyes, thinking about Isabelle, and tried to drown out the noise, but it only grew louder.

  Boone opened his eyes and noticed another television, this one right next to the other. They popped up randomly. He saw them everywhere, white noise, white light. Boone rocked back and forth in his chair and grabbed the axe, hurrying up the stairs.

  But the kitchen was filled with them, embedded into the walls. Some were moving, like malleable rubbery things, laughing at him. They had mouths on their screens. Some were shaking, hopping up and down. They turned into strange rubbery faces, and they took up every square inch of the house. Boone saw them on the refrigerator. He saw them on the walls. He saw them in the windows, old-fashioned television sets. They were on the floor, the screens staring up at him like white tiles.

  Boone swung the axe, taking out one on his left. Glass shattered. Sparks flew. He took out another, then another. They exploded like tiny bombs sending smoke into the air.

  The channels began to change, and he saw different faces, homes, places, settings. All of them emitting a jumbled garbled mess of words words and more words. Meaningless, senseless gibberish: “Boone Boone Boone,” they said. Graffiti in the bathroom, phalluses on the wall. Boone is in Hell, one phrase read. Burning with his mother! Ditties, lyrics, songs on playgrounds. It was everywhere. Poems, messages in notebooks. And gossip, the gossiping and lies that had no end.

  He took the axe and smashed the screen to his right, showing some pimply-faced teenager, mocking him. He took the axe and smashed the one to his left, showing some old lady gossiping to her friends about wha
t a devil child he was. He took out one television after another, not realizing that he was simply tearing through the plaster in the walls, and oftentimes, swinging at empty air.

  Voices, hallucinations, audible tones, penetrating his skull, trying to break through. It was under his brain, wedging beneath his skull like some diabolical worm.

  The lightening flashed; a peal of thunder cracked. The rain poured heavier, louder.

  Boone smashed more walls, taking out the framing.

  “Boone, Boone, a troubled young man,” the chant went on.

  He could see game shows, The Price is Right, Family Feud, and old ones like, Let’s Make a Deal. Advertisements came and went, the volume turned up more. Insurance ads, car ads, ads for soda pop, razors and shampoo. Ads for breakfast cereal, restaurants, beer, and sporting events. Ads for pizza and fast food joints, how smoking can kill you, and a million others.

  The volume continued to rise, and Boone was wielding the axe now like some crazed leviathan, a whirlwind of raw, sweating, glistening power, moving like a blur.

  Now, there were girls screaming at him, women screaming at him, holding their hands over his ears, and screaming: “Kill them all! Kill them all! Kill them, Boone! Kill them all!” More sirens, wailing, white noise, and static. Music being turned on high. Screeching tires, bad breaks, shattering glass.

  The only way to rid the bedlam was to silence it. To kill everything around him that made the slightest sound. It was the only way.

  Boone stopped and looked around him. He was panting, breathing heavily. Glass sparkled in the gloom. Pieces of television sets, broken plastic, were all over the floor. He had calmed somewhat, but there was still plenty going on outside, beyond the house, beyond the river. It was calling to him from every house in the street. Every dwelling place.

  Even downtown.

  And it was getting louder.

  He had to kill them all. Every living thing in Shepherd’s Grove must be silenced, must be destroyed. It was the only way. Whether they slept in their beds at night, whether they taped their mouths shut. It didn’t matter. It was the people he began to zero in on.