19

She screamed as the moon lowered down to the earth. Its white surface gave way to a gaping mouth that screamed back. Betty was fusing to her hands in messy knots of scar tissue, her strings weaving into Fiona’s flesh like sutures. A huge eye opened in the guitar’s center and stared lovingly back at Fiona. The moon’s crag-mouth hung open, and inside of it, she heard the sound of slithering coils. Something flicked its forked tongue at her and hissed.

Fiona sat up with a gasp, tangled in sweaty sheets.

Above her stretched the pressed tin of the warehouse ceiling. Around her, the room was lit powdery blue by the early morning coming in through the huge windows.

The night replayed in her brain, and she rubbed her face.

Peter lay on his stomach next to her, snoring softly. This close, Fiona could see the tattoo that took up his entire back, a diagram of the solar system. Each planet was surrounded by ancient-looking symbols and emitted concentric circles from it, like sound waves. They met between his shoulder blades, in a black triangle with a chord in white at its center. The mathematical symmetry of it all was messily divided by ragged red welts left by her fingernails.

Fiona stood, mind reeling, and nearly tripped over one of his boots. Around them were strewn clothes, condom wrappers, and an empty bottle of wine they’d drank straight from the bottle. As she surveyed the scene, the rest of the evening came back in a blast of sense memory.

She shook her head. She couldn’t believe it.

She’d been with him. She’d spent the night with him. It had been incredible, everything she’d been waiting for, but still, it hadn’t been part of her plan, and…

Spent the night…

Panic lanced her. The unthinkable. The ultimate trouble. She found her jeans, dug through the pockets, recovered her phone. Twenty new text messages, twenty-two missed calls, all starting at eleven on the dot. Not just from her parents, but from Rita, Caroline, Filip Moss, and Calvin Hokes. She didn’t listen to the voicemails, but what little of the texts she scanned told her what she needed to know—her parents were looking for her. People were worried.

In a daze, she found her clothes and bolted.

The air outside Peter’s corner of the loft felt especially harsh and cold as she yanked on her jeans mid-stride. She was fully dressed as she hit the bottom stair and had her phone pressed to her ear by the time she was out the door.

Less than one ring in, it clicked on. “Hello?”

“Mom.”

“Fiona, where the hell are you?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She did her best to cobble together a bullshit story with the pieces she had in place. “Band practice ran late last night, and then there was a party, and I didn’t want to wake you up—”

“Cut the crap, Fiona,” snapped her mom. “Calvin told us he was covering for you. You’re not playing guitar in any band.”

“Shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, just…” She stopped dead and stared back into the blocky heap of warehouses. She’d left Betty on the roof last night. She’d been so absorbed with finally being with Peter that she’d entirely forgotten about Betty. It felt wrong, abandoning her guitar so soon after she’d felt such a powerful new connection between the two of them. And given how conflicted she was feeling, she’d need a good Betty session before the week was out.

She squinted into the urban collage. Would she even be able to find her way back to Peter’s place on her own?

“Fiona!”

“Right, sorry! I’m on my way home!”

She ran, following signs and using the tall buildings downtown to guide her, finally swallowing her pride and asking for directions from a couple of sour-faced old men playing dominoes outside of a deli. Eventually, she found her way back to Central Station and bought a ticket. The whole time, she mentally apologized to Betty, and to Peter. It wasn’t her fault, she swore. She would be back. Things had just happened too fast last night. She needed to sort this out.

She sat on the platform, waiting the hour until the next train to Hamm came rolling through. Her head in her hands, she reviewed the night in her mind, wrestling with the warring emotions that the memories stirred up.

So much of it scared her. The tuning, the way it had affected him, the way it made her feel—it was terrifying.

Suddenly, all of the aspects of Peter that she had considered cool and savvy felt inherently dark. He wasn’t just strong of will, he was supernatural. Were Fiona’s friends just sucked in by his well-made music, or were they under his command? She’d always appreciated the idea of his ancient music book, so long as it came with this huge grain of salt. Now that there was no question in her mind, she felt deeply upset by it.

But…

But she’d never felt this way before, about anyone. Fiona’s respect for his talent and resolve had elevated to amazement. Last night, finally having sex with him, she hadn’t felt brainwashed or tricked, she’d just wanted him, plain and simple. She hadn’t felt horny, she’d felt alive. She wanted to call it love, but that only reminded her of the adorable warmth she’d felt for Horace, which came off as immature and hackneyed by comparison.

And on top of it all, as frightening as it was, she wanted to get better at his craft.

Sitting there waiting for the train, she realized she made music constantly—drumming her fingers, humming, foot-tapping out rhythms. Small music, maybe, but music nonetheless. It felt necessary to her, just like using Betty to unleash her emotions felt necessary on a larger scale. The past couple of times she’d gotten deeply angry, at Horace and Tess Baron, she’d felt raw power surging inside of her, pounding along to the beat of her heart. Music had always been her way of communicating with the universe, or at least understanding it. And now, just as she’d always felt the right of rock and roll, the organic beauty of guitars, drums, and vocals, she felt this.

Her phone buzzed. It was Peter, texting her.

PV: You left.

F: I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be back, I promise.

No response. Her heart ached at his simple confusion. She wrote the longer text, explaining that she’d told no one about last night, that she needed to put her parents at ease. Still nothing.

The train rolled in, and she climbed aboard. As the readout in front listed the stops—Markus Boulevard, Wright, Locke, Warden, McFerrett, and Hamm—she closed her phone and did her best to clear her head. She couldn’t get too caught up in his silence. There were more immediate concerns.

…

The house was quiet as she entered. Maybe the coast was clear. “I could kick your ass right now, I swear.”

She winced—should have known better. Her mom was just doing that “silent but deadly” Mom routine. Resigned, she turned to the living room and found her mother on the couch. But while Fiona had expected her to be stiff and angry, Kim Jones just looked bedraggled and beside herself. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair stood out in all directions. She stared at the floor between them like it was a disappointing Christmas present.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” said Fiona. “This was my bad, entirely. I should have texted you.”

“You lied to me,” said her mom feebly. “I was so excited to see your band. I kept thinking of asking to hear one of your songs. Have you burn me a CD. But I didn’t want to pressure you.”

“I know,” said Fiona, leaning against the doorframe. She was trying to keep her cool, but her mother’s tone of voice made her choke up. Getting screamed at would be far better than this level of disappointment.

“I called everyone last night,” said her mom. “I woke up people in the city who I haven’t talked to in years, asking if they’d seen you. I’ve emailed your picture everywhere.”

“Look, Mom, I know I screwed this one up. I promise, the night just ran late, I had a beer or two, and my phone died.” She stepped into the living room, holding her arms out in front of her. “I’m okay. Everything’s okay. It’s like you say to Dad, I’m a big girl. I can handle myself. But this was my bad, totally, and I’m so sorry. It’ll never happen again.”

Her mother finally looked at her, and Fiona saw her eyes soften. She smiled. This wasn’t irreparable. It might be okay.

The door opened and slammed, and they both turned to see Robert Jones stalking down the hallway. “Honey, I asked Bart and Darren if they could keep an eye—” He saw Fiona, and his face went violet with rage. “Well, well. Look who decided to show up.”

“Dad, I’m so sorry,” Fiona said quickly, hoping to cut off his anger. “I’m totally at fault—”

“You’re a sorry excuse for a daughter is what you are!” bellowed her father. “Is this how we raised you to act, Fiona? Staying out all night, breaking your mother’s heart, lying to my goddamn face?” Fiona reared back as her father closed in, spit flecking out of his mouth. “You tell us we don’t need to worry about you, and then you just disappear! And when we ask your friends about your band, well, surprise, surprise, it’s not real! Yeah, that’s right, Calvin told us. No band, no shows, no practice space, all a big lie that you made that nice boy play along with, taking advantage of his feelings. You were just using that poor kid as a smokescreen while you were wandering off to meet some guy, huh?”

“Robert, please!” sobbed her mom.

“Kimmy, don’t defend this girl!” he shouted. “Remember how upset you were last night? Fiona, I wish you’d been here. I wish you’d seen the kind of hysterics you were putting your mother through. Whatever fun you were having, whatever shit you were snorting and guys you were hooking up with, I hope they were worth giving your mother a panic attack!”

Fiona clenched her fists and put them to her temples, trying to keep herself from freaking out. The sounds of her father yelling and her mother protesting were becoming noise in her head, and every second of it hurt worse than the last. Her body shook. Tears stung her eyes. She’d almost had it under control. It had almost been okay. And now he came here, accusing her of wanting to hurt her family.

“So who is it, huh?” shouted her father, shoving his face in hers. “Who’s this cool friend of yours who you’d rather knock boots with than let your mother sleep at night knowing you’re safe?”

That was it. Her dad wanted the truth? He could have it. What was he going to do, anyway?

“The Pit Viper,” she snapped, turning to face him.

Fiona watched her father’s rage fizzle out, leaving stark horror behind. “What…what did you say?”

“The Pit Viper,” said Fiona. “I’ve been spending every Saturday with him for weeks. And I’m sleeping with him.”

In the following silence, Fiona could hear her father’s watch ticking and the fridge humming in the next room. Everything hung still, like the moment before a bass drop.

“Fiona, what have you done?” whispered her mother.

“Oh no,” wheezed Robert Jones. “He’s…oh no.” He fell back into a chair, his mouth opening and closing again and again. Fiona’s mother rushed over to him, grabbing his hand. Fiona observed him for a moment longer, righteous in her rage, and then walked up to her room.

…

The next day, she found herself on a social desert island. Her parents were gone when she came down for breakfast. She saw Caroline and Rita ahead of her as she biked to school, but when Caroline glanced over her shoulder and saw Fiona, her two friends exchanged a quick sentence and sped up. In chemistry, Horace sat at the other end of the room and refused to look at her. She eventually texted Peter saying, This is a lot and I need time to think about it, but still she got nothing.

But while Fiona didn’t want to talk to any of them, having no one to talk to was killing her. If only she had remembered Betty. Betty would understand.

As she walked the halls of school, her father’s shocked, horrified face kept running through her mind. He wasn’t just angry about her sleeping with Peter, Fiona realized, he was genuinely scared. But why? He’d put the boots to that boy years ago like it was nothing. Why was he afraid of him now?

Filip Moss’s comments outside the club came back to her and piqued her curiosity. She thought she’d been there for the entire story—the whole sordid affair, as Peter had called it— but dear God, she’d been nine at the time. Maybe there were other facts surrounding the deaths at the mill that Fiona hadn’t heard about, evidence that made her father petrified. She needed to know more about what had happened when the Pit Viper had come to Hamm—

She stopped herself mid-thought, her sneakers skidding on the school hallway’s linoleum floor. Not the Pit Viper, Peter. He had a name, like anyone else. He was a man, scratch that, her man, and even if he was strange and powerful and a little scary, she’d seen his eyes sparkle with joy and felt his hands seize her with desire. She couldn’t get sucked into the madness of the crowds, casting him as the shadowy phantom in her town’s past. He was Peter, and he was hers. If she was going to investigate what had happened at the old mill, it had to be for his sake, too.

After school, she went to the Hamm Library, a single-floor building just off Main Street with a mural on the side featuring Dora and Pikachu reading Dr. Seuss together. Fiona hadn’t been there in ages, but Mrs. Dirshowitz was still the librarian and still called her “Fionaroni” when she walked through the door. They hugged, and Mrs. Dirshowitzloudly remembered the day she’d spent helping Fiona finish her project on the Ivory Coast the night before it was due. It was exactly as Fiona had imagined it; she felt momentarily relieved that nothing ever changed in Hamm.

“I was wondering if you had old Herald archives here?” asked Fiona.

“Oh, of course!” said the busy older woman, motioning for Fiona to follow as she strode through the shelves. “A library this small, collecting newspapers is pretty much all we do. Well, that and loan our ten copies of Fifty Shades of Grey to unsatisfied Hamm housewives.” She wagged her eyebrows at Fiona, who responded with an exaggerated grimace.

Through an Employees Only door near the back of the building and down a flight of stairs, Fiona discovered an endless basement lined with cobwebby shelves. Hundreds of dusty books and old boxes cluttered every rack, along with busted typewriters, ancient boxy computer monitors, and dinosaur-necked transparency projectors. Fiona couldn’t help but blink in surprise—she’d had no idea the archives of the place were so vast. It reminded her of Peter’s loft set to reading rather than music.

“If they’re before 1945, they might be downstairs in the sub-basement,” said Mrs. Dirshowitz as she pointed Fiona toward a wall of shelves labeled Herald Archives.

“They’re after 1945,” said Fiona, a little disappointed she wouldn’t get to see the basement below this one, which no doubt housed a race of hyperintelligent rats and a mummy or two.

She’d expected microfilm that she could turn in a viewfinder, like in a detective movie, but no such luck in Hamm—the newspaper archives were actually old papers, stacked so thick and tightly that each cardboard box of them must have weighed a hundred pounds. They were also, Fiona soon found out, stored and labeled in no particular order, and she suffered through multiple back-twanging box retrievals and one big spider crawling across her hand before she found the right ones.

Jake had died mid-April, she remembered. The night she’d seen her father beat up the Pit Viper had been the second week of May. But when she found the papers for that May, she found nothing more than the usual fluff pieces and nationwide coverage. She read a police blotter from late April mentioning a noise complaint filed against the mill, and she read a piece on its permanent closure in the beginning of October that included one of the Goring family saying that the property held “too many bad memories.” In between, the paper was a Frankensteined mess, torn apart and stitched together. Multiple articles were clipped out of the pages or blacked out with marker. There was no mention of Jake or Geraldine Brookham, no op-eds or letters to the editor from concerned townsfolk about the club rats invading their streets. No nothing.

Fiona harrumphed. It made no sense. This was Hamm, a place where Keller’s brother driving drunk that one time was the stuff of legend. How could a town this small and insular not cover the biggest thing that had ever happened to it?

Back upstairs, she approached the front desk, where Mrs. Dirshowitz was checking out a stack of children’s books for a dad and his son. When she saw Fiona, she grinned.

“Find everything you were looking for?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” said Fiona. “Mrs. Dirshowitz, do you know why there are no records of all those parties they used to have at the Goring Steel Mill?”

The bar-code scanner in Mrs. Dirshowitz’s hand froze. Then she quickly went about checking out the books and handing them to the little boy across from her.

“I’m not sure what you mean, Fionaroni,” she said in a tight voice.

“Remember, the Goring Steel Mill used to host these big raves?” she asked. “My cousin Jake, he passed away at one of them.”

The librarian’s eyes followed the dad and son as they walked out. “Uh-huh. Right.”

“Well, he doesn’t even have an obituary in the Hamm Herald, and I wanted to—”

The minute the door closed and they were alone, Mrs. Dirshowitz turned on her with robotic coldness, all emotion gone from her face. “Fiona, I don’t know why you’re asking me about such a morbid part of this town’s history. I’m so sorry about your cousin, we all were, but you shouldn’t dig up old stories you don’t really understand. It doesn’t help anyone.”

“I…just wanted to find out what happened,” said Fiona, taken aback by the kind woman’s harsh tone. “Do you know something?”

“I know that your father is a good man,” said Mrs. Dirshowitz, emphasizing the last two words. Good. Man. “And tonight, when you walk home and don’t get mugged or harassed on the street, you should thank your lucky stars he was ready to do what he did for this town.”

…

“Tell me everything you know about him.”

Fillip Moss looked away from the glass counter filled with doughnuts and glanced over his shoulder at her. “Hey, Jones. What are you talking about?”

The word “Peter” sprang to her mouth, but she swallowed it. “The Pit Viper,” said Fiona softly, hoping the other customers at Chance’s Country Bakery wouldn’t hear her.

Filip clicked his tongue. “Ah. Yeah, hold on. You want a doughnut?”

Once he’d gotten them coffees and himself a box of a dozen (a dozen doughnuts, dear God), Filip led Fiona to the picnic table farthest away from the local moms and other teenagers sitting outside in the crisp autumn morning. Fiona watched silently as he wolfed down two doughnuts in seconds. It didn’t escape her that the last time she’d gone to Chance’s had been with Horace, when they were in the throes of having just slept together and all was right in the world. Now, here she was watching a jock hesher pound frosted stomach cancer, wondering if her whole life was a lie.

Finally, after washing down his cheekfuls with a slug of coffee, Filip leaned forward and began speaking to Fiona in a conspiratorial whisper.

“So, some of my friends in middle school weren’t from Hamm,” he said. “Because of the outreach work my mom did, I got to know this crew of kids who went to school in McFerrett. They were super cool, but a lot of them were poor as shit, and they came from rough areas where there wasn’t a town council. I didn’t give a fuck; I thought it was awesome. They were hardcore, and good people, and taught me about stuff that didn’t happen in Hamm. And they knew some of the guys who used to party at the old mill.

“Our parents just saw them as these invading hordes, but the Hamm club rats were these kids’ siblings or their siblings’ friends or whatever. Since a lot of them were poor, their older brothers and sisters were working the parties for extra cash— slinging pills and weed, sometimes selling sex or whatever.” Her grimace must have broadcast a little louder than she had intended, because he pointed an irritated finger at her. “Yeah, not very pretty, I know, but these guys didn’t grow up with families like ours, okay? They weren’t doing charity trips on their Saturdays, they were the charity cases. All the stoner dudes from the city and the university wasting their parents’ cash at the old mill on the weekends—that was their ticket out. Put together a big-enough wad and run away somewhere, start a life. It was good money, as far as bad money went.”

He wolfed down another doughnut almost angrily. She made a point of keeping quiet, waiting until he was ready to talk again. Filip was spilling his guts, and it was taking something out of him.

“Anyway,” he continued, calmed, “so I’m, what, nine? And the two kids, your cousin and that Geraldine Brookham chick, they OD. Our parents freak out. And I start overhearing my mom talking about how they’re going to do something, put a stop to this. I’m too young to know what’s up, I just know that there are dead kids and it’s sad. So, then I hear her talking about someone called Pit Viper. I’m freaked out, because who the hell is called Pit Viper? Sounds like a bad guy.

“Then, the town clears up. My mom is all happy, and we start eating out on Main Street again. But then my mom does another community outreach thing in McFerrett, and she’s there to talk about neighborhood watch or whatever, and there are all these people angry at my mom. They’re saying she knows something about their kids just vanishing.

“So, I talk to this kid Jaime, who I was always really close with. I’m like, ‘What happened?’ and he’s like, ‘My brother’s gone, the Pit Viper took him.’ Now, Jaime’s brother Keith was a bad dude, a real piece of shit honestly, so it wasn’t like Jaime was too crushed about not getting beat up and called ‘faggot’ all the time. Besides, the kid’s eight. But Jaime’s mother is pissed. She keeps asking about that ‘last party,’ and my mom is doing a really bad job at sounding innocent. And I figured out that this Pit Viper guy had done something really bad, and maybe the Hamm town council had something to do with it.

“But that’s not the end of it. Because Jaime’s brother Keith? He was found dead a few months later. He and a bunch of the other people who disappeared. None of them were discovered nearby, of course, so there was nothing that could tie them to the old mill or Hamm or whatever. Ravers run away and OD all over the fucking place, right? But a bunch of those kids, not all of them but some of them, they died. The rest, I don’t know. But as I got older, I got sort of curious about it. Where’d all the other kids go? Jaime was long gone, so I couldn’t ask him, which sucks. Wish I knew where he got to. Anyway, it was obvious my mom didn’t want to talk about it. So, I go online, do a late-night search fest. But it’s like I told you: there’s no public record of the old mill, even in the reports of local kids disappearing. The Pit Viper’s nowhere to be found, which doesn’t surprise me, but the old mill? Those parties were legendary, and it was where they found a deceased youth. But there’s nothing. It’s like the place never existed.”

Filip devoured his fifth and sixth doughnuts and drained his coffee, like getting that big secret out into the open left a hole in his belly that he needed to fill. Fiona sat there with coffee cooling in her hand and mentally digested his story.

“Why haven’t you told anyone this before?” she finally asked, feeling her stomach churn.

“Why do you think? Because it means my mom—” He sighed, shook his head, and rubbed his eyes. “Our families, Jones…it means they were a part of this awful thing. When I finally asked my mom about it, she burst into tears and asked me to never tell anyone. Because they did it, Jones. I assume you know? Yeah, look at you, you know. They paid that dude, and he disappeared the club rats somehow. Anyway, my mom was racked with guilt. She figured they’d paid the guy to get rid of those kids, he’d done his job, it was over. It’s all so shitty, you know? And now the Pit Viper’s back, and everyone’s so into him. And if they only knew…” He sat back and eyed Fiona, suddenly suspicious. “Why are you asking, anyway? What’d you find out?”

“I just remembered him from when we were kids,” she said, deciding to keep her cards close to her chest for now. “After you mentioned there were no records of him online, I looked into him at the library and started to get creeped out. Figured I’d ask.”

Fiona could see Filip’s expression getting harder by the second. She had always assumed that his stonerdom had left him somewhat stupid, but his piercing gaze said otherwise. He didn’t buy her bullshit story, and it made her anxious.

“That all?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, uncomfortable under his eyes. “Look, I should go.”

As she biked back to school, Fiona felt her skin crawl. It wasn’t just Filip’s campfire-story tone of voice, or the way he’d said that the club rats from the mill had shown up dead, or the way he’d seen right through her at the very end. It was something else he’d said, something that didn’t fit right with what she knew for a fact.

She figured they’d paid the guy. He’d done his job. It was done.

Peter had never been paid. He’d said so at the winery sign. Fiona had always assumed it was a Hamm town council decision—send Robert, Edgar, and Darren to take care of things rather than give this creep their money. But if Harriet Moss thought he’d been paid, then her money had gone somewhere.

But where?

Fiona had a hunch. But it was the last thing she wanted to believe.