Angel of the Underground Read online

  When we stop at an intersection and wait for traffic to pass, the windless heat catches up to me. We must have traveled well over a mile, and I can only hope our destination is near, as the sun is boiling me toward a stroke. After reaching a stretch that’s clogged with fast food restaurants, car dealerships, and private businesses, we coast into a parking lot that contains a small row of mom and pop stores. One of them is called 112 Video World. We climb off our bikes and lean them against the front window. Dennis chains them together, wipes sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, and opens the door for me.

  I step into the cold wonder of air conditioning with a massive sigh of relief. Dennis has an equal reaction, but I don’t think it’s related to the temperature dip. His sanctuary consists of rental movies that are packed top to bottom on wide shelving units. Packaged toys, comic books, and movie memorabilia cover every wall and ledge. The place looks like his room, only bigger.

  A flat screen television is airing a movie where one boy is helping another out from a pit of pint-sized creatures, but Dennis has no interest in it. He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me toward the DVD horror section.

  “I didn’t think this many movies existed,” I say. “Have you seen them all?”

  “Don’t I wish,” he replies.

  A young woman in a blue flannel shirt and yellow sweatpants walks out from a back room with a box of receipt paper. For some reason she’s barefoot. She playfully nudges Dennis when passing him and says, “Anything specific today?”

  “Nah. Just showing Robin your holy establishment.”

  “Don’t let him warp you too much,” the clerk says to me. When she walks behind the counter and starts fiddling with the receipt machine, I step closer to Dennis who’s squatting before the C titles.

  “How do you figure out which ones to pick?” I ask.

  “I start with something random and build a double feature,” he replies. “Two with ‘massacre’ in the title, two with meat cleavers on the cover, that kind of thing.”

  “What’s today’s theme?”

  “I don’t know. What mood are you in?”

  “A sad one. Can any of these change that?”

  “You know what always puts a smile on my face?”

  “Hopefully not Chopping Mall or Christmas Evil.”

  “Chopping Mall is awesome, but I meant this.” He hands me a box for a movie called C.H.U.D. The cover has a monster with bright eyes climbing out of a sewer. “The sequel’s called Bud the Chud, but it bites the big one so we’ll have to look for something else that’s city or sewer related.”

  I point out a box that has a screaming face stretched over a city skyline. “How about City of Blood?” Dennis looks over the cover, and approves by placing it on top of C.H.U.D.

  After close to a half-hour of watching Dennis scrutinize half the alphabet, we leave with a bag of four rentals. During the trip home, I feel confident that bonding with Dennis will lead to some outside activities along the lines of playing catch or going in the pool. I don’t bring up either, as I plan to ask him about each during whichever movie we watch first. When we arrive back at his house, however, Dennis’s joyful appearance vanishes when he sees a brown SUV parked crookedly in the driveway. Chunky rubber strips lead from the street to the back tires.

  “Shit,” Dennis mutters, “Barry’s home.”

  While we’re climbing off our bikes near the garage, Barry erupts from the front door and storms toward us. Despite his size, he moves awfully fast. Dennis, with no time to react defensively, is seized by his left ear and slapped in the gut. He crumples forward and coughs up a wad of phlegm that he spits on the lawn.

  Barry points directly at me and says, “You go inside!” Stunned, I forget how to move. I try to think of a way to keep his temper from worsening, but am afraid I’m what set him off to begin with. I am, after all, supposed to remain hidden. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, Robin! Now please, get in the house!”

  Jeremy opens the front door and says, “You heard the man! Get your bike stealing ass in here!” Barry attacks Dennis with an array of open handed punches. Dennis grunts as he takes the hits. I press my palms against my ears and start humming, but I can still hear Jeremy’s shrill laughter as he follows me into the living room. Not long after, Dennis fumes inside and heads straight for the basement. He rips open the door and slams it behind himself hard enough to make the chandelier swing back and forth.

  Barry, sweaty and out of breath, enters with the video store bag. He peeks inside and says, “What the hell is a C.H.U.D.?”

  “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller,” Jeremy says while snatching the bag. “Let me see what else they rented.” He too goes downstairs, but closes the door gently.

  Barry stands before me and puts his hands on his hips. I can’t bring myself to look him in the eye. Even though Dennis did something wrong on my account, he didn’t have to go through a beating by someone twice his size. Sister Alice has nonviolent ways of reprimanding us, and makes it clear that no person should ever physically harm another, since every conflict in the world could be resolved with dialogue.

  “I’m sorry,” Barry says, “but he knew bringing you out in public is a bad idea. I specifically said—”

  “Sit down, son,” Nathan rasps from his chair. “The doc warned you about that heart.”

  Barry drops down on the couch and sinks deep into the cushions. He maneuvers himself forward and props his elbows on his knees. “The point in taking you in is so the guy killing everyone doesn’t know where you are.”

  “I made the decision to go,” I say.

  “Honey, words could never describe the severity of your situation.” I nod in partial agreement, since my traveling through town in broad daylight, despite my need for distraction, was actually dangerous, but I can’t bear to hear any excuses for abuse. When I step toward the basement Barry adds, “Don’t even think about bothering him. He’s being punished.”

  I skulk downstairs, wondering how to mind Barry and check in on Dennis at the same time, and decide to pay him the quickest visit possible. I gently knock on Dennis’s door, but he doesn’t answer, most likely because nobody likes to be seen crying. I open the door an inch and whisper into the slit, “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.” Dennis doesn’t respond. I open the door a little more and nearly fall backward when I see his face.

  Dennis’s right eye has already turned shades of black and blue. A purple welt on his cheek appears ready to explode. His upper lip is cracked and encrusted with blood. He looks desperate for care, but I’m not sure how to extend him any. Hugs go far in rectifying some problems, but I don’t know Dennis well enough to hug him, so I sit down on his bed close enough for our knees to touch. I watch for his reaction, to see if he’s too upset with me to have me this close, but his watery eyes remain focused on the TV. I follow them to a menu screen for Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. Before long, he presses a remote control button that starts the movie.

  After a slow forming New Line Cinema logo, a narrator tells of hapless victims who once fell prey to a cannibalistic clan of serial killers. When the narration concludes, a sledgehammer rises. A woman’s screaming face fills the screen. The sledgehammer swings forward. A vicious white splat forms the title. Between credits, a filthy, hulking man slaps down the woman’s severed face onto a workbench, cuts the skin into pieces, and stitches them back together. Dennis leans forward with a grin, as though death has fulfilled him.

  “Why does this make you happy?” I ask.

  He replies, “Because I’m not her.”

  Someone in the hallway clears his throat. Fearing Barry’s arrival, I bounce away from Dennis and look to Nathan with mild relief. He’s standing in the door frame with his lips curled over his teeth and his eyes sunken in a gloomy haze. “Come upstairs,” he says to me, “we need to talk.”

  I follow Nathan upstairs, which takes quite awhile since he can only manage one slow step at a time. In the living room, a
wooden chair is already set before his recliner. Two full glasses of lemonade are waiting on the end table. When I sit down, Nathan eases into his recliner and hands me a sweaty glass. I haven’t had a drink since biking through the sun, and I suck down half before realizing I must look like an animal. Nathan waits for my final swallow before saying, “We’re not bad people.”

  “No, sir,” I reply.

  “We just need to make sure you keep a low profile.”

  “I understand, but I’m not used to hiding.”

  He rotates his wedding band a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, releasing a steady stream of breath. “About this morning.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “Aside from Lori, who’s not much of a personality, there hasn’t been a female presence in this house since my wife had a stroke two months ago.” He leans to his left and pries out a wallet from his right pants pocket. He opens it, sorts through a plastic accordion, and extracts a small picture that he hands to me. On a park bench, seated beside an impossibly young Nathan, is a youthful woman with light hair and dark glasses. Their hands are entwined and they’re smiling.

  “Come this September, Gail and I will have been married fifty-four years.” The baby monitor on the TV stand crackles. A moan sounds within the white noise. “You’d have liked her. She once had an association with God. When she was in her late teens she was in practice to become a nun, but then she met a certain churchgoer.” He softly puts a hand on his chest. “We courted quietly for several months, and were on the verge of calling it quits so she could continue with her vows but . . . you see, she became pregnant.”

  “With Barry?”

  “No. With a child who didn’t survive the repercussions.” He motions to continue, but pauses and looks away from me. “You might be too young for this.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He focuses on my eyes, as if trying to survey the damage the past several days have caused me, and decides to continue. “Gail was too afraid to tell her Mother Superior, so she trusted the help of a priest whom she thought would protect her. Instead, he took their conversation to the roof of her convent and shoved her over the edge. She hit concrete, shattered her skull, cracked her spine, and crushed the baby. She’s been nearly blind and has limped ever since.”

  “That priest was defrocked and imprisoned, I hope.”

  “He’s still active. She tried turning him in, but he said she had attempted suicide. Case closed.” Nathan stares angrily off and grinds his false teeth. “The church has ways of protecting their own.”

  “Not all priests cause harm, for what it’s worth.”

  “In any event, last night I felt a bit of warmth return to this house, and I followed it downstairs to the source.” He places his hands in his lap while his bottom lip quivers. “My apologies. It’s a lapse I won’t make again.”

  I return his photograph and say, “I’m flattered you thought of me in such a way, but I’ve already forgiven you.” He exhales through tight lips. When a tear escapes from his left eye, I decide it’s best to move on to a new subject. “What time should I be ready tomorrow?”

  “For?”

  “Church. I need someone to take me, but I don’t know what time anyone gets up on Sundays.”

  “Do you think it’s wise to go?”

  “Any church will do. Please. I need it now more than ever.”

  “What time do you normally attend?”

  “Eight.”

  “Make it nine and we have a deal. Barry will be waiting.” He winks at me and leans close to say in a hushed tone, “Go back to Dennis. There’s no need for him to suffer because my son went off the deep end.”

  “Thank you for understanding, sir.”

  Nathan nods with a proud huff and waves me away.

  I finish my drink, put the glass on the end table, and head downstairs to Dennis. On the way past Jeremy’s room, I hear a movie playing that can only be one we just rented, which means Dennis will be free to go outside without him. I turn into his room, where he’s sitting on his bed and holding a wet rag to his cheek. His eyes remain fixed on the TV, even when I sit beside him and say, “You’re not punished anymore. Want to go out back and do something?”

  “The asshole watching our movies will follow,” he replies. “If I see him, I’ll murder him.”

  “We could be quiet.”

  He moves the rag to his split lip, hisses through clenched teeth, and slaps the bed in three hard successions. He clearly needs time alone, at least until his pain subsides, so I oblige him. Determined to breathe fresh air, I put on my new bikini, tiptoe past Jeremy’s room, grab a large towel from the bathroom, and head upstairs. Nathan is half-reclining in his chair, his eyes closed. I tell him I’m going to the pool, but he responds with a sentence from a dream that makes no sense to me.

  Outside in the still-ascending heat, I dunk my feet in the foot bath and climb up a three-step ladder to the pool deck. I touch my toes to the cold water, sit on my towel with my feet emerged, and watch a leaf glide across the surface. When I tilt my head toward the sky to absorb the sun, the back door opens. I whisper a prayer that it isn’t Jeremy, and open my eyes to find Dennis approaching. I cover my bare stomach with a loose part of the towel when Dennis rests his arms on the pool’s frame. “So anyway,” he says, “what did you think of the video store?”

  “Impressive,” I reply.

  “Sorry I made you stay in the one section.”

  “I don’t mind. I’m actually curious as to why you like those movies. I thought they were made for budding psychotics.”

  “They’re therapeutic. They kill people so I don’t have to.” He starts bouncing awkwardly, as though he has to go to the bathroom, but he’s actually taking off his sneakers and socks without using his hands. After dunking his feet in the bath, he climbs up and sits beside me. He looks at the sun, squeezes his eyes tight, and without warning pulls off his shirt. When he leans back to toss it near the bench, his smooth stomach dips under the curve of his rib cage. I’ve only seen shirtless men during locker room interviews on ESPN, but with no fourth wall barricading Dennis’s naked torso, I feel a tickling twitch in my belly that’s much more soothing than the constant wrenching of recent days. I put my crucifix charm in my mouth and kick my feet in and out of the water, but neither action can diffuse the quivers in my stomach.

  “Jesus doesn’t mind when you eat Him?” Dennis asks. I let the crucifix drop from my mouth, but can’t keep my legs from kicking. As much as I love Sister Alice for her three years of raising me, she omitted a few necessities in preparing me for the real world, such as adolescent aches over pool dress. “Can you swim?”

  “Probably not,” I reply.

  “Everyone’s got to learn some time.” He slides into the water and tenses at the cold. He bounces around the pool’s circumference, to avoid a small mass of dirt in the middle, and stops before the ladder when returning to me. “Just ease yourself in and don’t panic. Remember, you’re taller than the water.”

  As I stand up to climb down the ladder, Nathan walks out back with a cordless phone. He holds it out to me and says, “It’s for you.”

  Who else would call me but Sister Alice?

  “Save my place,” I say to Dennis, and hurry to Nathan for the phone. The excitement I feel from potentially swimming switches gears to a more familiar source as I grab the phone. “Hello?”

  “Robin,” Sister Alice says with relief. “I got worried when I didn’t hear from you.”

  “I’m sorry. Your phone’s been busy and things got hectic. How are you holding up?”

  “As well as I can. A few days ago you kids were running circles around me. Now the house is so . . . empty.”

  “Any word on when we can come home?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll keep praying my hardest.”

  “You and me both.” A sudden wind lashes through the mouthpiece. “Are you outside? Did I catch you at a bad time?”

&n
bsp; I walk around to the side of the house so Dennis can’t hear me. “I’m near the pool and just saw a boy half naked and my stomach went crazy. Does that count as lust? If it does, I’m in big trouble.”

  Sister Alice laughs emphatically. “You’re growing up, sweetheart. You’ll be attracted to boys, and boys will be attracted to you. As long as you don’t physically act on your desires, you’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, good. Because I don’t want to miss out on swimming to make penance.”

  “Then don’t let me stop you. Go on and have fun.”

  “No-no-no! That’s not what I meant! I want to talk to you!”

  “Call me afterward, okay? Enjoy your stay.”

  “Okay. I promise I’ll call you right after.”

  “Deal.” We make kisses and hang up.

  I eagerly turn from the side of the house to a scene that destroys every ounce of my delight. Jeremy is standing atop the pool deck with his private parts pulled from his shorts. “Either vacuum that shit up,” he says, “or I’ll hose your ass down.”

  Dennis, still in the water, scrambles as far away as he can and says, “It’s your turn, dickhead!”

  Jeremy lets loose an arched stream of urine that sends Dennis hopping over the side of the pool as though he’s avoiding a live grenade. I sneak back into the house and attempt to call Sister Alice, but am again greeted by the answering machine. I feel awful for not speaking to her when I finally had the chance, and prepare to face an afternoon of staring at walls as punishment.

  * * *

  About an hour after dinner—the saltiest Chinese food I’ve ever eaten—Dennis comes into my room with a look of complete despair. His face is so pale the bruises stand out tenfold.