Boone Read online

  He could hear things too well: the spiders in the walls spinning their webs, their tiny nimble feet racing across the floor. He could hear the maniacal shrill of his mother because he’d just cut off the heads of all her flowers.

  He remembered complaining to her once because he was hungry. They had a dog at the time, Jesse, that they’d had to put to sleep. His dad buried him out in the backyard by the trees.

  “You can go dig up, Jesse,” she’d answered, grinning. “There’s probably still some meat on those bones, if the maggots haven’t gotten it all yet.” She’d laughed and laughed, then disappeared into her room.

  “Frankie! Frankie! You get up here this instant, young man! I just barely planted those flowers! I know you’re hiding in the basement, so you’d better just get up here and take your medicine!”

  He could hear her muttering under her breath: “Goddamn heathenous monster.”

  “You know how much I paid for those down at the market? I’m not gonna tell you again! You hear me!”

  She was loud, her footsteps traipsing about, making the floor creak, or in his case, the ceiling.

  He wanted to trounce up there himself and put her out of her misery, or his misery, in the case. It was horrible because he was Boone. Boone the Great. Boone the Magnificent. He could create anything as long as he set his mind to it.

  Just lift that little baseball cap and try to tell me differently. Open up your mind and let me get a peek inside, nerf burger. It’s all right and ready to go, little man. You just gotta make it happen. Oh, yes! Yes, indeed! Make it happy, pretty boy Boone. You got the whole thing right there and ready to go. Here we are, spring chicken! Nobody knows but you and me. I’ll try to do it differently, see? I’m here for you, and I just want you to know that. Got it? Sent down from the skies to lie here with you, no matter how bad it gets. Make the whole thing sweet, okay, Booner? You realize it’s just me and you now, right? You got just enough. I see that now. By this light, and no other, the storm, the storm. Creation is happening right now under our feet, little man. Here, take my hand, you big lug, you big Boone-baby. And let me take care of it for you. Here. Watch.

  Halfway through, Boone realized this voice wasn’t his at all, and it was one he wasn’t imagining either. It wasn’t a lunatic voice. It was a normal, loving, supportive voice that was, for all he knew, outside of him, a face in the dark, one he couldn’t put a name to, not yet, but he would in time.

  It was The Divine Source, and it sounded like his father.

  Just what you’ve been striving toward, little man. Hot tamales. A new vacation. Light and years and lots of growing up to do. You know what I mean, Booner?

  Yes. Booner. Booner the Boner. Like after all this was over, and he’d gone to the foster home, and that boy, Andy, had called him ‘Momma Killer’ and ‘Booner the Boner.’ Boone had thrown him against the wall, kneed him in the balls, then locked onto his nose with his teeth and torn a chunk of flesh off his face, because that was the kind of stuff that happened when people got in your way. He’d grabbed fistfuls of dirt and shoved them down the boy’s mouth while Andy struggled and screamed. Someone had come and separated them, but not before Boone looked at Andy with a dribble of blood on his lip. He’d smiled at him. The boy held onto his bleeding nose, crying, and coughing up dirt.

  They paid. Booner made them pay, just like he was going to do to his mother.

  But for the moment, that it wasn’t happened.

  So, Booner, what are you gonna do when your mother is screaming at you to come upstairs this instant? What are you gonna do, little guy? Bury yourself further into this dirty mound of smelly, moldy clothes? Is that it? Bury yourself down here where the mice and spiders live, waiting for something to set you off again? It’s something really wonky tonky. Good for the creative juice. The juice that makes it worthwhile, Booner. Because becoming a Booner is really all very well and good, but Boner is good too, says the girl behind door number two. What we have for our finest contestant, Jim, is a carload of spending money and the Show You a Good Time Dancing Girls. Or, if the boy just wants a microwave oven, he can have that, too. Why don’t you put your momma in there, Boone, and see if the old bag explodes. That’s got to be good for a laugh or two, don’t you think? That’s worth the price of all the guilt she’s tried to bestow on you after all these years, isn’t it? Yes. Yes. I do, too. Yes, sir. Put that old hag in there, shut the door, and bake that bitch for about twenty-five minutes and see what happens. She has it coming. Put some texture to the rattrap. Don’t even wipe that hag off the counter. Watch her drip onto the floor and let the cockroaches have her.

  “No,” he whimpered, into the laundry. “I don’t want to go upstairs. I don’t. I want to stay right hear and listen to the spiders in the walls.”

  Yes. There were plenty of spiders, juicy-sized spiders to make a boy proud. They made pretty sounds, too, and that was good. He liked those sounds.

  “GODDAMNIT, FRANKIE, YOU BETTER GET YOUR FUCKING ASS UP HERE THIS MINUTE!”

  He whimpered again, an ugly whimper, weak. Something ghastly and terrible was coming for him, some giant, molting, disgusting creature, shedding its skin, and it was going to do something terrible. Oh, yes. You’d better believe it, Frankie Wankie. It was coming in the worst possible way.

  “FRANKIE!”

  He was crying now.

  I’m gonna pull your wings off, Mother. I’m gonna make it worse than impaling you with darning needles. I’m gonna flush you down the toilet.

  “FRANKIE!”

  He cowered. He grabbed a pair of his father’s sweats and wrapped them around his head. He could feel her voice, like a whining, shrilling drill, boring, wheedling through the sweats and into his cranium. He could hear it in there, in stereo, stabbing his eyes, penetrating his eardrums. He could see himself like a cartoon character, smoke spilling out of his ears, ‘boxed’ as they say in England, like two giant hands on each side of his head, lifting him out of the moldy smelly clothes like a vice, turning, turning, squeezing his skull together, his legs kicking in the air, the pressure on his head tightening until he burst like a grape, his brains splattering across the basement walls.

  “FRAAANKIIIIEEEEEE!!!!”

  The basement door banged open. Stomp-stomp-stomp came her tread down the stairs. For a small woman, she could make a lot of noise.

  His ears were bleeding. Warm liquid spilled down his cheeks from both sides of his head. Was that real, or was he imagining it?

  “Where are you, you worthless little monster! Come out where I can see you, devil child!”

  He shook and shook. He tried to bring more clothes on top of him, muffling her voice.

  “You worthless piece of shit, where the hell are you?”

  It wasn’t enough that he’d cut the heads off every flower, but that he’d soaked them in gasoline, then put them on the front porch and torched them. He wondered what she’d discovered first: the ashes on the porch or the headless flowers in the garden. He’d been busy, because it had been a lot of flowers, pretty flowers: petunias, gardenias, daffodils, and marigolds. But they didn’t look pretty now.

  A hand reached through the clothes and grabbed his arm, yanking him out of the clothes. His head was pounding to the whistle-blowing sound of her voice.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, huh? You sadistic little bastard? You need your fucking head examined? Is that it?”

  He couldn’t hear anything. It was just a siren sound, like sheep bleating in his ears. His head was screaming, and she was pulling him this way and that, his arm rubbery and pliant. She slapped him across the face, splitting his lip open, then yanked him forward, dragging him up the stairs and through the living room. She dragged him out onto the front porch and picked up a handful of the ashes, rubbing them into his face.

  “You see that? You like destroying my things? Is that it? Here! Don’t turn away from me. Eat it! EAT IT! You made it, you EAT IT!”

  Boone had no choice. He couldn’t fight her. When he was e
ight, he wasn’t big enough to do defend himself.

  He opened his mouth, ate the ashes, and swallowed, just like he’d done to the boy in the foster home.

  ~

  Boone woke up in his bed in the asylum. The rain was loud against the window. The day had darkened, but he hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep. He didn’t like his dreams, because he always dreamed of home.

  He breathed easier once the nightmare began to fade. A coat of sweat plated his neck and chest.

  He reached over and turned the light off, plunging the room in darkness, and that made him breathe easier.

  The lightning flashed. They hadn’t had snow in Shepherd’s Grove for a while, but they’d been getting a good, steady dose of pounding rain.

  ~

  He must’ve gone back to sleep because he still had the pants around his head, and he was screaming. His mouth tasted like gasoline from the ashes his mother was making him eat. He was thrashing back and forth in bed.

  It was not yesterday, Boone, or the day before. It was over twenty years ago, and there isn’t anything to worry about, okay? Not anymore. It’s all right. It really is. She’s dead and gone. You took care of that, remember?

  He did, but it didn’t stop the nightmares.

  He must’ve been screaming and thrashing or making some sort of noise because someone was shaking his shoulder.

  Boone thrashed again, jerked awake and looked around, eyes wide. Jacks was looking at him, frowning.

  “Hey, Booner,” the man said. “Just sit tight. You’re having a bad dream, a dozer. You okay?”

  His eyes were wild. His hair was a mess, but the sight of Jacks calmed him. Boone didn’t speak often, but he did then. He said, “Screaming.”

  “Yeah, you were screaming all right. Had a dozer. Short for bulldozer, short for doozie. That’s what my dad used to call a real bad nightmare. A dozer. ‘You done had a dozer, Jacks,’ he’d say to me, and he was right every time.”

  “Dozer,” Boone said.

  “Land sakes, the boy can talk,” Jacks said, smiling. “Continental breakfast on the house, Booner. Doctor would give you some brownie points for that one.” Jacks padded his leg. “You okay?”

  Boone nodded.

  “You’re not one to have bad dreams, Boone. Can’t remember the last time you did. Can you?”

  Boone shook his head. “Ashes,” he said.

  “Ashes?”

  Boone nodded.

  “What about ashes?”

  “Ashes and gasoline.”

  Jacks looked at him and raised his eyebrows.

  “Kinda early for the med-cart, but maybe we can make an exception. It might help you sleep. Didn’t want to stay in the common room and watch t.v?”

  Boone shook his head. To Jacks, he was nothing more than a scared little boy.

  “No meds yet,” Boone said.

  If Jacks didn’t know any better, he’d say it was the most Boone had spoken in weeks, maybe even months.

  “You sure?”

  Boone nodded.

  “Okay. Well, if you need anything, just holler. I gotta lock the door behind me, okay? You sure you’re all right?”

  Boone nodded again.

  “Okay, momma killer. Just so you know.”

  Boone frowned. “Don’t call me momma killer.”

  “Huh? Hey, you okay? You must be hearing things. I didn’t call you momma killer. That wouldn’t be good for the orderlies to insult the patients now, would it? I could lose my job.”

  “Wanted peace,” he said.

  “I hear that. Look, if you’re hearing things, I gotta tell them. You know that, right? I would never call you names, Boone. I like you. You’re my friend, you got that?”

  Boone nodded. “Got it,” he said, and actually managed to smile. To Jacks, it made him look ten years old again.

  ~

  “Boone, Boone. When justice is served, what will you do? Run away far and never come home? Little Boy Booner is now all alone.”

  “Boone? Did you change your underwear after you shit your pants?”

  “Boone, have you been playing with dead things again?”

  “Boone, my mommy told me you were gay. Is that true? Cause I never see you with a girl.”

  But, for the moment, the voices had been drowned out. He was alone, alone with the rain, and that was all that mattered.

  Lightning flashed outside the window.

  Thunder sounded, and the storm moved closer.

  Chapter 2

  The daily routine at the Shepherd’s Grove Psychiatric Hospital looked like this: up by 7am with breakfast in the cafeteria. Exercise, activities, and television until lunch at 11:30am to 12:30pm. More activities, examinations, group therapy, private therapy, family visits, arts and crafts, and dinner by 5pm, followed by television and more family visits, depending on the patient. Fewer families made their appearances due to the weekend storm, but when evening came around again the following Sunday, the patients and staff of the hospital hunkered down for the evening and waited out the storm.

  Boone wanted to enjoy the television again, but he was a little apprehensive because of what had happened the day before. Swiss Family Nightmare was still fresh in his mind, though the common room was one of the only places he enjoyed being.

  He took his usual seat at the back on the barstool. They were watching some talk show he didn’t recognize.

  It didn’t matter, though, because the screen faded the second he sat down, and a face appeared, the smoky silhouette of a young boy, like a shadow. The face came out of the right side of the screen and smiled at him.

  Boone looked around, but no one was reacting to the boy in the television. He looked back at the screen. A gnome-like child was coming all the way out of the television now, setting its hands on the television stand.

  Marjorie Davies was knitting in her wheelchair. She wasn’t watching t.v. Hector Mansfield, an older man with bright red carrot hair, was watching the television and laughing. Boone saw nothing funny in the shadow boy, so Hector must be seeing something different. The same was true for Victor Crabtree, Stacy Rigby, and Gary Mannering.

  Boone shifted uncomfortably in his seat for the second time in two days. He stood up, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving trails of sweat along his thighs. It was getting warm suddenly, making it hard to breathe.

  Desmond, another black orderly, stood just behind him. Not nearly as big as Jacks, Desmond was short and wiry, his hair patching gray. Like all orderlies, he wore a simple white uniform with white pants and top.

  “Hey, Boone. How’s the morning treating you, big fella?”

  Boone nodded but said nothing.

  “You definitely don’t have the gift of gab, do you, Boone? That’s all right. I can talk enough for both of us.” Desmond looked at him a while longer. “Hey, you okay? You look a little peaked.”

  Boone turned to the television and pointed.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t blame ya,” Desmond told him, following his gaze. “Them talk shows is horrible. Disease, spreading nothing but negativity. Brings out the worst in people, I think. Don’t teach anyone anything positive at all. And that one’s the worst. My mom used to watch that Ricky Lake and Jerry Springer. Couldn’t stand those shows. Horrible. That’s one thing wrong with America right? That and Donald Trump!” Desmond slapped his thigh and burst into a fit of cackles. When he was done, he said, “You wanna go back to your room, Boone?”

  Boone shook his head.

  “Take a little stroll or something? I’d be glad to walk you along. How ’bout down the main hallway?”

  Again, Boone shook his head. He turned to the window, motioning to the rain.

  “You wanna go outside? Shoot Boone, you want us both to drown? Ain’t nothin’ out there but wet and water. They won’t let me take you out when it’s like this. Warnings say we gotta stay indoors.”

  Boone clenched and unclenched his fists, looking one way down the hall then the other.

  “Hey, you know what? I
bet we can hang out on the porch. I think Mrs. Grabowski is out there. That woman could sit through a blizzard and be just fine if you threw an afghan on top of her. Let’s go see what we can do, Boone.”

  Boone followed Desmond into the hallway. They ran into Nurse Rosemary, a small, pencil-shaped woman in charge of the first floor. She gave her consent, though she didn’t look happy, probably because Boone had her by two hundred pounds and an extra two feet.

  “I believe you scare the crap out of Miz Rosemary, Boone,” Desmond said. “Gives me the giggles every time. I like seeing that woman rattled. Springs up the big round peach blossom in my cheeks, so it does. Come on, Boone, let’s get you some fresh air.”

  Desmond led him down the east wing, where doors lined the hallway. The floor was a glossy white. The windows revealed a cold, lazy gray drizzle. Boone looked behind him and noticed a shadow, a hand reaching around the nearest open door. The gnome-like creature was following him.

  “You okay, Boone?” Desmond asked. “The rain giving you a bad spell?”

  Boone looked at Desmond. His heart was beating like a trip-hammer. His palms were sweating. He closed his eyes and swooned.

  “Come on, Booner, let’s get you some fresh air.”

  Boone heard it again. Not his name, but Desmond calling him Boner and thought of pushing his face into the dirt until he couldn’t breathe. Or in this case, the water outside.

  They made it to the main door, which Desmond had to unlock from the inside. Desmond put the keys in his pocket and motioned for Boone to step outside.

  Boone stepped onto the porch. The rain was noisome, but it calmed him instantly. The cooler air was a relief. He took a deep breath and swooned just slightly.

  Desmond reached out and took his arm. “Easy there, big fella. You go tumbling on the porch, you might cause the first earthquake in Shepherd’s Grove.”

  Boone got his equilibrium back and opened his eyes. It was nice to see the rain. Now that he could concentrate on it, it was like the relentless sizzle of very loud bacon in a pan. It was coming down in sleets beyond the porch. Mapleton Drive, leading up to the asylum (Boone always thought of the hospital as an asylum or sanitarium thanks to his mother), was slick with rain. There were small puddles forming by the elm trees, and the manicured grass was already drowning in an inch of water. The clouds were dark, unbroken, solid slates of gunmetal gray.