I was twice stopped for speeding on my way to the institute - tucked away in the countryside west of Montgomery - but badged my way clear. I arrived before one p.m. and pulled through the outer gate, the guardhouse breaking the circling monotony of fence and razor wire.
The main building was a brown, single-story concrete rectangle. The front third contained offices and kitchen facilities and had windows like slitted eyes. There were no windows in the “residential” section. A small exercise yard stood to the side, boxed in by walls topped with heavy mesh fencing. In the corner of the yard, facing the cream-colored wall, a tall and slender man stood with his back to me, appearing to conduct a symphony orchestra. He heard the sound of my vehicle and looked up. There was something wrong with his face, off-kilter. I passed by and pulled into the lot.
Dr Evangeline Prowse met me at the door. In her middle sixties or so, Vangie - the only name she’d acknowledge - had a serene face beneath a neat cropping of silver hair. Her eyes were dark and shiny as polished walnut. She had the loose-limbed gait of a retired marathoner, and a handshake hard and tight as a brick.
“Great to see you again, Carson. Jeremy’s been very calm of late, maturing, perhaps. I’ve been pleased to lift some of the restrictions on him, allow him more television, guests in his room.”
We walked the long hall to her office. Every fifty feet or so a button was recessed into the wall at shoulder height, the word EMERGENCY stenciled beneath it. It wasn’t referring to fires.
Vangie’s office was high ceilinged, with shelves bowed under books. There was another shelf behind the door, holding pieces of statuary, several drawings, a few pages in Plexiglas frames, a figure constructed of twisted pipecleaners.
“I don’t recall these,” I said, picking up a crude eye-like shape seemingly made of hardened Play-Doh.
“My curio shelf. Items created by residents.”
The eye was uninteresting. I set it down to read from a framed poem scrawled in thick black pencil. It rambled about a dog and a carrot and a red sky. I held up the poem.
“You’ve heard of folks who collect such things as a hobby; business, even?”
Vangie said, “We’ve had collectors trying to get our employees to smuggle out items from the residents. More often than you’d imagine.”
“What do you do when they try that?”
“It’s not illegal to solicit such items. Our staffers tell me they’re being pestered, I contact the people making the requests, if I can, and imply legal action. The naïve are scared off, others just laugh.”
“Ever heard of a fellow named Hexcamp?”
She thought a moment; nodded. “Marsden Hexcamp, of course. Serial killer, ran with a band of outcasts? Mansonesque kind of communal set-up, if I recall.”
“You don’t know much about him?”
She smiled. “He died before being incarcerated any length of time. When they’re out and about, they belong to you folks. When they get to where they can be mentally dissected, they’re mine.”
“You ever hear of something called the Hexcamp collection?”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. What is it?”
“No one seems to know. Something to do with art, I suspect.”
Vangie picked up the pipecleaner figure, something an elementary schoolchild might create.
“Most of what these folks call art is this kind of thing, Carson - simplistic, almost stunted, from an aesthetic point of view.”
“Stunted like their personalities.”
“Art is emotion, right? When you don’t feel normal emotion, you don’t create compelling art. These folks don’t create art, but mimic what they think art is. There are exceptions, of course. Now and then you’ll find a sample that’s interesting. I imagine there are a few pieces that are truly stunning - powerful, even.”
“But they’d be rare?”
Vangie set the twisted figure back on the shelf. “Oh my, yes, Carson. Extremely, I’d think. Are you ready to see Jeremy?”
A guard escorted me to the rear of the building. The doors were thick metal, with small slatted windows of mesh-encased glass. We stopped before Jeremy’s door. I looked through the slat and saw him sitting on his bed, reading. Jeremy showed no sign I was outside his room, but I knew he had heard our approaching footsteps. My brother had been endowed with alert senses, and each progressive year of incarceration honed them further.
“We want privacy,” I told the guard, meaning to keep the window slat closed. He nodded and opened the door.
My brother sat on his made bed, appearing absorbed in the text of his book. His neatly combed hair was the color of straw. Jeremy had our father’s delicate features and pale skin, but lacked our father’s size. Though Jeremy was six years my senior, I suspect most people would have made him for about my age, if not younger.
“What are you reading, Jeremy?”
He turned a page, not looking up. His light hair fell across his forehead and he brushed it back with pale, slender fingers.
“Black Sun. About a man and woman who destroy one another. It’s a comedy.”
He read another page, finger following the print. “How are things at the house, Carson? Your house on the beach, the one you bought with the money Mama left you.”
My heart sank. When my brother brooded about our respective places in life, it never boded well. I tried to wedge a smile into my voice.
“Things at the house are fine, Jeremy.”
He turned another page; I knew he was no longer reading the book. “No termites or structural problems? No sagging roofline or dry rot of the pilings? It does sit on pilings, doesn’t it? So you can look down on people?”
“Yes, Jeremy, it sits on pilings. Like all of the houses on the beach.”
“Do you think Mama left you the money to buy the house because you sat with her while she died?”
“That’s probably part of it.”
He threw the book aside, aimed the full fire of his blue eyes into mine. “Then tell me this, Carson: YOU WATCH ONE WOMAN DIE AND GET A HOUSE ON THE BEACH. I WATCH FIVE WOMEN DIE AND GET STUCK IN HERE. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?”
“Jeremy -”
“BY ALL RIGHTS I SHOULD HAVE FIVE HOUSES ON THE BEACH.”
He grabbed my wrist, yanked me beside him on his bed, patting my hand while speaking in our mother’s voice.
“Thank you so much, Cah-son, for watching me die, it’s been so en-tuh-tay-ning. Heah’s a big fat wad of money yo daddy made befoah he came home and beat the living shit out of Jeremy. Why don’t you buy yourself a nice house on the beach an’ if you ever get the chance, dear, dear Cah-son, please go piss on your brotha Jeremy for me. Bein’ dead ah won’t get the chance no more.”
Jeremy jumped from the bed and paced the small room. He caught sight of himself in the soft Mylar mirror, his image imprecise, shivering. He winked at his reflection, then spun to me.
“Tell me about li’l Ava. Why did she spit in your face.”
“You know what happened last year. It was stress. She needed to get away for a while, Jeremy. That was all.”
He grinned. “She was your first, right? I don’t mean the -” he pumped his hips at me like a hunching dog - “hunh-hunh-hunh kind of first: OH MY GAWD, HONEY, hunh, hunh, hunh, YOU’RE BETTER THAN A FISTFUL OF VASEL-INE! Hunh, hunh, hunh. I mean she was your FIRST LITTLE LOVE? Two hearts squishing together as one, all that stuff.”
“We were close, Jeremy. We’re…still close.”
He dashed across the room, jumped on the bed, sat cross-legged beside me. “But if it’s really LOVE, how could she forsake you like that? AH SURE DO LUB YOU, CARSON, BUT GOSH A WILLY I SURE GOT A NEED TO SEE FORT WAYNE BEFORE I DIE.”
He leaned over, cupped his hands around my ear, whispered, “They betray our love, don’t they? If she loved you she wouldn’t have left you. You know it, Carson. IF THERE WAS ANY THING TO YOU, SHE WOULD HAVE STAYED.”
He was twisting our family horrors, using his blind and misdirected hatred of our mother.
“Screw you. You don’t know love.”
“I know BETRAYAL. Here’s all LOVE IS, Carson -” He jumped from the bed and stood in front of me, frantically jerking his hips as his head lolled to the side.
“Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…”
“Stop it, Jeremy.”
“…hunh, hunh OH GAWD, BAYBEE, hunh, hunh…”
“I said to stop it.” I felt anger flash through my cells like electricity, fighting it, not willing to let him do this to me again.
“…hunh, hunh, hunh, OH PLEEEEASE, CARSON, hunh, hunh, hunh, I WANT TO COME ONCE MORE BEFORE I GO, hunh, hunh, hunh…”
I stood and grabbed his shoulders, shook him. “You little bastard, I’ll…”
I heard the door open and looked over. On the threshold stood the man I had seen gesturing in the air in the exercise yard. His face looked like he’d been pulled from his mother’s womb with Vise-grips, the left cheekbone indented where it should have projected. His skin was coarse. His hair was thick and black and uncombed. He stared at me like we knew one another and made a wet, amorphous sound.
Jeremy squirted from my grasp, took the man’s elbow, pulled him into the room. “What perfect timing, just as Carson and I were discussing COMING, here comes my good friend. Carson, this is one of our most talented residents, a man you should meet…Trey Forrier.”
The guard stepped through the door. “Earlier this morning, Mr Ridgecliff requested Mr Forrier be brought down for a visit. It’s a reward we allow your brother, since his behavior has improved the past couple of months. If you don’t wish Mr Forrier here, Mr Ryder, he doesn’t have to be. He’s never acted out in any way, if you’re concerned.”
“Never acted out” was the guard’s way of telling me Forrier wouldn’t try to kill me the minute the door closed; a distinct possibility with many of the residents.
“No,” I said. “It’s fine. Let Mr Forrier stay.”
The guard nodded and closed the door. Forrier continued to stare at me. I got the impression he stared at a lot of things.
Jeremy said, “Trey, this is my brother, Carson, who I saved from Hell.”
I held out my hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, Mr Forrier.” He didn’t seem to notice.
“Trey keeps to himself a bit, Carson. Don’t you, Trey? You keep your own counsel?”
Forrier’s mouth quivered and bubbled out a string of wet sounds.
“Is he saying something?” I asked Jeremy.
“He’s saying you have the face of a man who is kind. Trey’s very attuned to faces, to shapes. His is, well, somewhat unusual. Not greatly, I mean, it’s not like he’s the Elephant Man or something. I think he makes too much of it.”
Forrier did the strange motion again, like waving a baton for an orchestra. “Did he ever conduct?” I asked, observing the ritual.
Jeremy grinned. “Some say he conducted several rather artistic little adventures.”
“What does he say?”
“That he likes it here. He has no hunger. And on that note, brother, I’m hungering for my little gift.”
I looked toward the door. “The guard…”
“Is down the hall. He walked away a minute ago. Gimme, gimme.”
I reached into my pants and extracted the recharger, a black plug scarcely larger than a matchbox and a couple feet of coiled cord. Jeremy spun away, adjusted his bedding for a second. When he returned the device was gone. He looked down at my belt, where my cellphone was affixed.
“Let me see yours, Carson. I think it’s nicer than my model. I’d show you mine, but it takes a little time and a lot of grunting.”
I handed him my phone. He dandled it in his hand, pushed a few buttons, shined it on his shirtfront. He did a commercial-announcer’s voice. “And you call anywhere and everywhere for one low monthly fee. Bet my plan’s better.”
“How can you use a phone, Jeremy?” I asked. “The charges?”
“I think it’s illegal, a clone or whatever.” He jiggered his eyebrows, winked. “Probably why it was never reported missing.” He flipped my phone back.
“You have your end of the deal, Jeremy,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows, perfect innocence. “There was something more?”
“A location.”
Forrier was staring at me. When I looked at him, he turned away. Jeremy walked to the mirror, studied his splayed reflection, fingercombed back his blond hair.
“Sometimes life doesn’t work out as it’s planned, brother. Sometimes you get what you want. Sometimes you just get hunh, hunh, hunh. It’s my nappy time. Trey, say goodbye to Carson.”
Jeremy’s games seemed endless, but I resisted the useless urge to protest. There was nothing to do but return to Mobile and hope he had a change of heart. I was a half-hour south when my cellphone chirped.
Jeremy’s voice was loud. “It works so much better with a full charge, Carson. I could probably call all the way to heaven, say hello to dear Mama. Not that she’d take the call, of course.”
“Something you want, Jeremy?”
“You don’t think Trey was going to send his mask into the hands of just anyone, do you, brother? He wanted to see you, make sure you were the type to understand. He likes you, a rare honor.”
“He wanted to see if I was the type to understand what?”
“History, brother. You got a pen with you? I’ve got some directions you might enjoy.”
Ninety minutes later I carried a pick into a brushy field thirty miles north of Mobile. The skeleton of an ancient farm implement rusted away in the weeds. Insects rasped in the tall grass. Per my instructions, I found the concrete foundation of an old house, and walked south, counting steps to a small cairn above an old well. Sweating hard in the sun, I began levering away rocks with the pick.
Twenty minutes later I brushed dirt from an old leather suitcase. I felt like weeping, but did not know why.
At home I sat the case on my table and stared at it through the span of two beers before finding the nerve to open it. The lock was corroded and I slit the brittle leather with a linoleum knife. Inside was a succession of sealed plastic bags. The final bag was padded with scraps of red tissue paper. I reached through the paper and freed the mask.
Larger by half than the normal human face, the nose was a sharp ridge, the cheekbones exaggerated and protruding. The finish was glossy, anthracitic black. White-painted shards of broken glass formed the teeth and bordered a red wound of mouth. The eyeholes were circled in white, giving the mask a look of insane anger. A trick-or-treater wearing the mask would reap baskets of candy, anything to get that kid off the porch.
The foundation of the mask was, surprisingly, papier-mâché. In the fifth grade my class had built a piñata, and I knew strips of paper had been soaked in a flour-and-water glue and overlaid, building the mask to an approximate one-inch thickness.
For a split second I considered bringing the mask to my face. But it occurred to me that evil might be less action than essence, a dark and infective poison needing only a deep breath at the wrong time. I pushed the mask into a waiting box, closed it tight, and crept to bed. Sliding beneath the covers I noticed a lamp left burning in the living room. I’m too tired to get up and turn it off, I told myself, knowing it was a lie, that with the mask finally free of the earth, the house needed all the light it could muster.