Boone Read online

  The woman screaming, the other patients, the sound of chaos that would not stop . . .

  Kill it, and be free. Kill it, and feel peace. Kill it and know that you have earned your way into the Elect, Boone. You are worthy.

  It was threatening to tear his skull apart, the pressure building up inside, beating against the walls of his skull, intolerable, unbearable.

  “You don’t belong here. Never did. Wish I’d sewn up my breeding ground before I had you, little heathen. Do you have any consideration for the pain you put me through, what I did to bring you into the world? Does that make any difference to you at all, how you see your mother? You, the little doggy. Lucky to get the scraps we throw down from way up here. It’s terrible, horrible, I know, but you should know better. Momma’s worthless little doggy. Beaten to a nightmare pulp. Eating flies. Making fly-kabobs. You like them so much, you can eat them. Make spider ka-bobs, too, for all the good it will do you. There’s gotta be some protein there. Sure. Plenty of juice to suck off those dry, bulbous carcasses. You like that? You got used to it, didn’t you? We can dig up some old bones for you to gnaw on, too. Here, Jesse. Here, boy! How does that grab you? Let me hear you scream!”

  There was something better on the other side of this. There had to be. He’d found Isabelle’s body in the field on his way home. He knew his mother had done it. She’d killed the only thing he’d ever loved, the only thing that had tried to save him. Someone had told his mother about Isabelle, how she was helping him deal with the trauma and pain, and she’d taken care of that, hadn’t she?

  He’d seen her broken body there, covered in blood, as if his mother had wanted him to see it. She knew the path he would take home from school.

  Horrible mother. Worthless mother. Villainous and vile. Putting dirty clothes over you head to drown out your mother. That was the goal. That was all that mattered. Don’t even care.

  He had to extinguish it all, no matter what. Everything that uttered the slightest sound . . . to the highest, most painful scream . . . to the most inaudible whimper.

  ~

  Hindsight being 20/20, it wasn’t hard for Weasel Tarkington to think about what might’ve been. He should’ve never worried about McGovern. He should’ve found the flashlight, gone outside, and done everything he could to fix the generator. To hell with McGovern. The man didn’t care about anyone but himself, and now he was dead.

  It was hard to tell if that would’ve saved any lives or simply made the path for Boone brighter. It would have calmed the residents, sure, so who knows? Weasel was sure of one thing, though: things were working in Boone’s favor. The lights, the power outage, the phones, the cellphone signals. It was as if someone or some thing were clearing a path for him.

  Weasel looked to the windows, the pouring rain. Another lightning flash lit the world outside.

  Boone had gotten out of his room. He’d gone upstairs and confronted McGovern. He’d gone to the shed and gotten the axe. How he knew it was there was a mystery. But it had happened. Maybe someone had told him. That didn’t seem possible, but it was the only thing that made sense. Maybe Boone simply knew. It didn’t matter.

  Staring Boone in the face, his wet, matted lanky hair, his dark eyes and stubbly face, Weasel thought there was still a chance of reasoning with him.

  But the fear paralyzed him. When a 240 pound man carrying an axe, standing at six and a half feet, and covered in blood was staring you in the face, reason was the last thing on your mind. Weasel was trying to prepare himself for the inevitable. His nerves were frayed, his brain going into high alert. The smell of loose blood and bowels filled the room. He could smell Nancy behind him, her sweat and fear. No one had gotten though to the police. No one knew this was happening.

  One thing Weasel did know: no one was going to make it out of the Shepherd’s Grove Psychiatric Hospital alive.

  ~

  If you could not extinguish the atrocity, then it came for you. That was the philosophy in Booneland. Just as Boone believed his mother wasn’t altogether dead. Why would she continue to torment him after all these years? In his heart, she would be coming for him, decaying, fish-eaten carcass or not. She would be coming.

  Turn out the lights, and let the rain drive you, Boone.

  But the screaming didn’t stop, and they weren’t giving him much of a choice.

  Boone had backed up several people against the wall. Two of them were in wheelchairs. Three of them stood facing him. The woman who had been screaming was now whimpering into her hands.

  “Boone,” the small man said. “Booner McGooner. You remember, right? You remember that snake you found and let go down by the stream out back? It was a pretty day then, Boone. You remember? You didn’t want anyone to touch that thing. Just you. Everyone thought you were going to kill it, but you didn’t. You treated that thing like a flower. You remember, Booner?”

  Boone looked at the man for a minute. The woman was looking at him with wide, round eyes, her skin pale, even in the dark of the candlelight. Her face was glossy with sweat.

  The words meant nothing to him.

  ~

  Weasel had reached his breaking point. Maybe it began with thoughts of Les and Nancy and what he’d seen when the lights went out. Maybe it had turned into something else altogether by trying to do the right thing and how the dark had paralyzed him, his frustrations with the generator, the lights, and Les.

  The footsteps of the forest had finally caught up with him.

  But in all of that, his fear broke by the big man standing in front of him. Boone was operating on a level Weasel couldn’t quite comprehend. Weasel had broken, and broken, he’d begun to whimper.

  Looking up into the towering figure of Boone, he actually felt sorry for him. That might seem ridiculous given the circumstances, but it was true. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to realize something was going on inside of Boone beyond the complicated motivations of a serial killer or a sociopath. The man was in torment. He wondered if he knew these people were even people. The gentle giant had snapped. The murdering boy he’d been, the reason he’d been brought him to the hospital twenty years ago, was here now.

  He remembered the rumors; it had been all over town: the time his mother had taken his hand and burned it on the stove because he’d given her the salutary finger. Weasel looked at that hand now, and even in the candlelight, he could see the scars there.

  Boone didn’t participate in school, didn’t listen, didn’t speak, because all he could see were the dark, soulless manipulations of his mother. He’d drawn pictures of dead things. He’d sat in the hallway, holding his hands over his ears and screamed at himself, frightening every child in school.

  Looking at him, Weasel could almost understand. Something else was driving him, a dormant monster that had woken only to find the world too loud and chaotic for its own survival.

  Boone switched the axe from one hand to the other and raised it above his head.

  Weasel reached behind him and grabbed Nancy’s hand. He closed his eyes and prayed for Boone to be merciful.

  ~

  When he was done in the common room, he took to the halls and found several white noise squawk boxes that tried to stop him . . . all to no avail. He went upstairs and found people cowering in the juvenile wing, several nurses, and another doctor. Boone eliminated them all. He disposed of Nurse Rosemary, Nurse Agrippa, Desmond, and anyone else who stood in his way. He took out Colette.

  The faces in the window were disappearing one by one, but when he got to the children, something happened. They were not screaming or crying. One actually came up to Boone and wrapped her arms around his legs. He saw Isabelle in the juvenile wing, an older version of herself, but with the same silver hair and blue eyes. She put her arms out on either side of her, barricading the children, who were looking over and around her at Boone.

  “Not here, Boone,” she said. “These children are not your enemy. They’re your followers.”

  He didn’t understand, but it didn’t m
atter. He trusted Isabelle.

  He looked at her for a long time, then turned and headed down the stairs. He walked out into the main hall, then stepped outside. He stood on the porch for a while and listened to the rain.

  The entire asylum was dark and quiet.

  Boone closed his eyes.

  The wails had stopped.

  But it wasn’t over. Far from it.

  He savored the silence. But it wouldn’t last long. It never did.

  Boone stood for a minute longer, then stepped off the porch, and into the rain.

  PART II:

  BOONELAND

  Chapter 5

  Call it love, Miles thought.

  What else was it? There was no other name that he was aware, so it must be love.

  Miles Madigan had been obsessed with Frankie Boone for as long as he could remember, all the way back to when he was in school and someone told him he was sitting at Frankie Boone’s desk.

  “What?”

  The boy nodded. Miles couldn’t remember his name, just that he had blond hair and blue eyes. “Yeah. That’s where Frankie Boone used to sit. Everybody knows that.”

  He’d been no older than nine, but when the boy told him what he did, his arms broke out in gooseflesh. He’d fallen in love with the desk, spent a year drawing heart-shapes onto it, along with Frankie’s name, sometimes he and Frankie’s name together. He had to erase them quickly, however, so no one found out, but it had been love then.

  At twenty-three, almost fifteen years later, and a deputy of the Shepherd’s Grove Police Department, it was still love. Only better. Miles had been holding an Olympic torch for Boone for all these years, and it was only burning brighter.

  He could still remember the songs they sang: Boone, Boone, a troubled young man . . . killed his mother with his own two hands. They sang it on swing-sets. They sang it jumping rope. They sang it on the merry-go-round and tried to scare the younger kids with it. Instead of the bogeyman, they’d chant: Boone is coming for you. Boone is coming.

  Miles had the ditties memorized by heart. He wrote them in his notebook. He sang them on his way home while driving the patrol car. He longed to be a part of Boone in any way he could. He knew it wasn’t normal. It couldn’t be love when it was obsession, could it? But Miles liked being obsessed with Boone. In his opinion, it was better than love.

  He would parked far enough away from the hospital, where he could watch Frankie from a distance. He would sit and fantasize about him. His heart raced every time he saw Boone walking the grounds. He did not always see him, but sometimes he did, and when he did, he would unbuckle his pants and masurbate.

  He’d cut out every newspaper clipping he could find. He’d made copies, just so he had spares. Any mention of Frankie Boone, and Miles added it to his scrapbook. He kept them in a binder in his apartment. He’d written songs and poems, professing his love, all in the name of Frankie Boone. He’d kept his secret for over fifteen years. He’d been caught only once, when his mother found a similar scrapbook under his bed while cleaning his room.

  When he got home from school, she’d asked him about it. When he denied it, looking at the ground, she’d slapped him, wondering why he’d keep such filth. She’d made him get rid of it, burned it right in front of his face. He’d stood there, trying not to cry, but unable to. Tears streamed down his face. It was like setting fire to a piece of his soul, and she’d grinned like a mad demon the entire time.

  He and Frankie were destined to be together. He knew that in his heart. They had a deeper connection, parallel lives. He’d known from the moment he’d watched the flames curl around the edges of his scrapbook, the newspaper clippings. He’d never sat down and talked to the man, sure. He didn’t have to. He and Frankie were connected on a deeper level.

  Boone had killed his mother. That was the only difference. Miles could never bring himself to commit such a heinous act. But he’d thought about it often, especially at eleven years old. When he’d been watching the flames destroy the only love he’d ever known, the only love he’d wanted to know, he believed he could’ve killed his mother.

  He’d driven out to the small house on Ashbury Lane. Abandoned now and overgrown with rot and mold, Miles liked to tidy up the place as best he could. He’d driven off teenagers and vandals. One time he’d stopped a couple of drunken teenagers from trying to burn it down.

  He knew people used the house to throw parties and have sex, but it worked for Miles. He would say he was checking out the ole Boone place, making sure no one was vandalizing it. Some people over the years had paid their respects with wreaths, flowers, tabloid pictures, newspaper clippings, all in honor of Boone. Miles preserved the shrine of dirty secrets for the town of Shepherd’s Grove, but more importantly, for himself. It was his duty to keep it safe. Except for the crude graffiti on the outside and the broken windows, he’d done a pretty good job.

  Miles Madigan had been on the Shepherd’s Grove Police Department for almost four years now. He wanted to protect Frankie, to keep his memory alive. He wanted access to his life. Shepherd’s Grove was an otherwise unsullied town off 6,347, according to the latest census, but Frankie Boone had put it on the map. The news had gone nationwide. The Wide River Valley had become legendary with tales of Frankie Boone and his mother. They knew his name in Wheatridge, Keenesburg, Idlewild, and Old Hartford. When people visited from out of state, it was often the first question they asked:

  “Is this where that boy killed his mother?”

  “Sure is, ma’am,” Miles would say, like a proud father. “And if you look straight ahead, you can see the house he grew up in. And there’s the mighty Miramac, cutting straight through it all, the raging river her body is still floating down to this day, though I’d say the catfish have gotten to it by now and plucked it to the bone.”

  It had been that way for years, but it had also quieted down some. People moved on.

  Except for Miles.

  The worst thing he’d done was cut off his sister’s pigtails. He’s been thirteen at the time. The experience had been more than he’d hoped for. Marjorie had gone nuclear. She stood in front of the mirror sometimes for hours, tugging at her short hair, trying to make it grow back, tears pouring down her face. She’d wept for days, and Miles had received the beating of his life.

  After his father had gotten through with him, he made it a priority never to touch the scissors again. Marjorie had beautiful, honeysuckle locks. She’d spent days randomly punching him in the arm as hard as she could. Because she was so small, it barely hurt, but Miles had felt terrible about it.

  What had he done with the braids, his mother asked? Flushed them down the toilet, he’d said. That warranted another slap. Marjorie had to wear her hair like a boy’s until it grew out. The heckling at Granger Elementary School went on for days.

  Miles was no Frankie Boone, that was certain. Instead, feeling guilty, he’d helped Marjorie with her homework until she got all A’s. He did her chores around the house. By the time the whole episode had blown over, they’d actually gotten closer. As her hair grew out, she’d give her brother doe-eyed looks of love, even sit by him on the couch while the family watched t.v. and put her head on his shoulder.

  He loved his sister. That was no secret, and he’d grown, like many older brothers, protective of her.

  But it all came to a screeching halt one night at the dinner table:

  “How do people become serial killers?” he asked.

  His dad paused, fork halfway to his mouth. He looked at Miles and frowned. His mother looked down at her mashed potatoes and shook her head, then looked up, watching her husband carefully. Miles thought she was smiling because she knew if this got out of hand (which it did), his father would beat him like he’d done when he’d cut off Marjorie’s pigtails.

  “Why on earth would you ask a question like that?” his mother asked. “And at the dinner table? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Yeah, what’s the matter with you?” Marjorie said, think
ing it was all in fun.

  “Don’t talk like that,” her mother said.

  His dad frowned. The skin on his forehead turned red. He was stout, his shirts bulging with each contour of muscle. It wasn’t hard for Miles to imagine him making violent love to his mother while admiring himself in the mirror, like that fruitcake in American Psycho. Short-cropped black hair, thick dark eyebrows, and a square jaw, the man looked his meanest when he was deep in thought . . . like he was now.

  The anger and disappointment radiated off him in waves. Miles could feel it.

  “Why would you ask a question like that, Miles?” his father asked, sitting back in his chair. His eyes looked almost black, boring into Miles like he was a piece of meat.

  Miles took a gulp. His mouth was dry. A bead of moisture gathered across his forehead. He could feel the eyes of his father violating him, like he wanted to rape his soul.

  Yes. Why did you ask a question like that, Miles?

  “Because of Frankie Boone,” he said.

  His father frowned again, took his napkin and tossed it on his dinner plate. He wasn’t done with his meal, but he looked done with it now.

  “We don’t talk about things like that at the dinner table, Miles,” his mother said. She cut another piece of meatloaf, making a ghastly sound with the knife as it scraped the bottom of the pan.

  His father looked at his mother. Miles felt the air thicken. It was hard to breathe, like a stifling humidity had just entered the room.

  Miles looked at his father. The man was giving his mother the same look, like he wanted to rape her, like he would do it in front of the children. It turned him on, Miles saw. The man flushed red in the cheeks, along his neck. If the kids hadn’t been there, he would’ve taken her right there on the table.

  “What makes you so curious about Frankie Boone?” his father asked, turning toward him.