Few things of note pass during the nights at this new house, despite what finds residence in the empty room upstairs.
The lethargy finds me again, and by the time I become aware, several days in the tattooed boy’s lifetime must have passed. The furniture has been unwrapped and assembled, and the rooms no longer look abandoned. The man inspects the attic only once but quickly leaves again, unsure why he is repelled by its strange emptiness.
It is morning. The tattooed boy is sitting at a table, and his father is cooking, steam lifting from various metal pots and pans. The boy does not look happy. He is wearing dark pants and a long-sleeved shirt he keeps pulling down over his arms. The tattoos that so fascinate me only seem to anger him. He does his best to cover them up so no one else sees, though there is nobody present but his father, who has seen them many times.
“School blows,” he says by way of greeting. I count the plates in the kitchen. Eleven.
The father sighs like he has heard this all before. “I know it’s going to take some time for you to get used to a new city and a new school, Tark, but you have got to meet me halfway on this one. Applegate has a lot of friendly people. Even my boss is nice, which is about as rare a thing as you can imagine.” He is attempting to be funny, but nobody laughs.
“Not really.” The boy bites into his bread with admirable ferocity, tearing a good chunk of it out with his teeth. I count glasses. Six.
“I’m sure things will be better today,” his father says encouragingly. The boy looks unconvinced and shrugs again. It appears to be his favorite habit. I count the spice racks that line the walls. Eight.
In the time it takes them to finish, I have counted the flower patterns on their wallpaper, the lights overhead, the knots in the ceiling, the kitchen tiles. I follow them into the car, where there is very little conversation. The tattooed boy fidgets uneasily on occasion and often glances over at his right, like something out of the corner of his eye puzzles him. But when he looks my way, all he sees is the window where other cars pass them by, swift glimpses of pedestrians, and other ordinary sights.
The car stops before a large building that says Perry Hills High. Beside it is another with a sign proclaiming it is Perry Hills Elementary. A series of corridors and walkways connect one to the other. A blond girl stands outside the main doors of the elementary school, a troubled look on her face. At eighteen, she is younger than she looks, though her manner and actions are those of an adult. Children stream past her to enter, but she ignores them, waving at both the boy and his father.
“Uncle Doug! Tark!” She is smiling, but the worry in her brown eyes does not match the curve of her mouth. “Tark, you’re going to be late for class!”
The boy groans but accepts her hug willingly enough. “I’m not one of your fourth-graders, Callie.”
“Sorry,” the young woman says, not sounding sorry at all, “but that doesn’t change the fact it’s already two minutes to eight.”
“Ah, crap. I’m out of here. See you later, Dad, Callie.” He hitches his backpack, and a tattoo briefly slips out again from underneath his shirt as he turns to leave. The young woman sees it but is unsurprised, though the worry on her face grows.
“How’s my favorite niece?” the man asks with a grin. “I must say—I expected the teachers here to be older. Why didn’t you tell us you were working for the faculty?”
The young woman blushes. “I’m a teacher’s assistant—not a full-fledged teacher yet. For now, I mostly get by with tutoring and babysitting, but Mom insisted on paying the rent ’til I leave for college next year.”
“Good to hear. And speaking of Linda, how is she?”
“Mom’s still with Doctors Without Borders. Still fighting malnutrition in Africa—and winning, if you believe the last email she sent me. She’ll be back just in time for Christmas.”
The young woman pauses, glancing behind her to ensure her cousin is out of earshot. “I’m worried about Tark,” she says, lowering her voice as if fearful others might hear. “I didn’t want to mention it in front of him. I had a feeling he was a little touchy on the subject. But it’s those…those strange tattoos on his arms.”
“I did my best to explain them to Mr. Kelsey, if that’s what you mean,” the man begins, but the young woman shakes her head adamantly, nervously tucking wisps of wheat-yellow hair behind her ear.
“All the principal told the other teachers—and all Mom told me, for that matter—was that his mother gave him those when he was only five years old. I never really knew Aunt Yoko, and I don’t want to hurt Tark any further and pry, but—something about those tattoos scares me. A couple of times I’ve looked over at him, and I could have sworn…”
“Could have sworn what?”
That his tattoos were moving is what she wants to tell her uncle, but she does not. She does not tell him that the boy feels wrong. She does not tell him that she cannot shake off the feeling that there is someone else in the room, watching, when he is there. She does not tell her uncle because she believes it to be a figment of her imagination, a mockery of her senses. It is the permanent ink staining her cousin’s skin, she tells herself, spreading across the canvas of her imagination. All these thoughts she keeps to herself and does not say aloud. What she says instead is this:
“I just want to know if I can do anything to help. He doesn’t seem to want any friends, and he always keeps to himself. Nobody’s been going out of their way to bully him or anything like that, but few people go out of their way to befriend him, either.”
“Tark’s been doing pretty well at home, considering,” the man says. “He stays in his room a lot, but he doesn’t listen to death metal or write about suicide or anything of that sort, thank God. Your cousin’s a good kid. I don’t want to pressure him into doing anything he’s not comfortable with yet. And for the record—he wasn’t abused by his mother. Not in the way you… He wasn’t abused. It’s a little complicated.”
He tries to smile again. “Thank you for being concerned, Callie. I was worried you wanted to talk because his teachers told you Tark was being disruptive in class or getting into fights with the other students. He’s been seeing a therapist, and he’s still a little moody around other people, but he’s improving.”
The young woman nods. “Okay. I just—I just wanted to be sure.”
“I would appreciate it if you could keep an eye on him whenever you can, though. Moving here was a little tough on Tark, and he could use a friend.”
“Or an overbearingly fastidious older cousin to boss him into having a social life,” the young woman finishes. The man laughs at this, but as he walks away after one last hug, I can see that his brows are drawn together and his eyes are tired.
After he leaves, the young woman stands there for a few more minutes until a bell rings and rouses her from her trance. She wraps both arms around herself and shivers before turning to enter, pulling the large doors closed behind her.
• • •
I spend the rest of the day counting. There are two janitors roaming the school grounds. There are sixteen rooms in the building. There are thirty students in the tattooed boy’s class, and most ignore Tarquin in the same way Tarquin ignores them. Once, a girl beside him asks for notes from Mr. Spengler’s history class from the day before, and he looks at her in a way that makes her uneasy. Still, she persists.
“Your name’s Tarquin, right? That’s an odd name.”
“It’s the name of some Roman emperor everyone’s pretty much forgotten,” the boy says, hoping she will take the hint.
She does not. “My name’s Susan. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Texas,” the boy lies. “Home to beloved exports like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, mad cow disease, and bullets. I collect mannequin legs and spider bites. A race of super-ferrets live inside my hair. They hate water so I shower with an umbrella. I eat bugs because I’m allergic to fruit. I wash my hands in the toilet because sinks are too mainstream. Anything else you want to know about me?”
The girl gapes at him. Her friend nudges her away. “Just ignore him, Nat,” the girl whispers. “He’s weird.”
Nobody else bothers him for the rest of his classes. The boy prefers it this way.
There are thirty-two students in one of the elementary-school classrooms next door. Of these thirty-two, one giggles when she spots me.
“Is there something funny you would like to share with the class, Sandra?” The teacher does not sound happy.
“There’s a pretty girl at the back of the room, just standing there,” the girl objects, pointing straight at me. It is the other students’ turn to laugh.
“Don’t make up stories, Sandra. Pay attention,” the teacher says, and the girl obeys, though she cranes her head to look in my direction whenever the woman doesn’t see, still grinning at me.
Soon the teacher leaves, and the yellow-haired, eighteen-year-old girl from before takes her place. As part of the lesson, she wheels in a large cart.
“Mrs. Donahue’s still out on maternity leave, so it looks like you guys will be stuck with me for another week,” she says with a grin. “I promised last time we’ll be conducting our own experiments in static electricity, right?” The students sit up, interested.
The tattooed boy is done with his own classes for the day, and at that moment he is passing through the hallway, where he stops to watch his cousin at work. The young woman sees him and smiles, and the boy lifts a hand in greeting. She gestures at him to enter the classroom.
The little girl, Sandra, is the first to see the tattooed boy. The smile slowly slides off her face.
“This is my cousin, Tarquin Halloway. Say hi to Tarquin.” A chorus of “Hi, Tarquin’s” echoes around the classroom. “He’ll be assisting me in this experiment.” Tarquin shakes his head, waving his hands to show just how terrible he thinks the idea is. “Don’t be shy, Tarquin. Class, would you like Tarquin to help out today?”
Another choruses of yeses from the class, and a whimpered “no” from the girl called Sandra, whom no one hears.
The boy does not know which is worse: social activity, however brief, or turning his cousin down and losing face in a classroom full of ten-year-olds. In the end, he sighs and opts for the former.
The young teacher brings out several lightbulbs and dozens of combs. The boy places his backpack on her desk.
“I’ve wrapped all the bulbs in transparent tape because I know some of you are all thumbs—yes, Bradley, that means you.” More students laugh. “I don’t have enough lightbulbs for everyone, but I do have enough combs, so I’ll be dividing you all into groups of four.”
The students troop up to take the lightbulbs from the cart, until only one remains on the teacher’s table. The teacher’s assistant gives each student a plain silver comb. “Now, we’re going to need absolute darkness. Shut all the windows while I turn off the lights.”
This is done promptly, and from inside the dark there are whispers and giggles, until a flashlight switches on. The young teacher sets it at the edge of the table, light trained up at the ceiling. I begin to count. One bulb, two.
“This is the best part. Bend your head my way, Tark.” She picks up a comb and runs it briskly through Tarquin’s hair. The boy looks resigned to his fate. The students giggle again.
“You can rub the comb against your sweater or anything fuzzy if you’d like, but make sure to do it for as long as you can and let it charge up.” Some of the students copy her movements; others all but scrub their combs against their shirts, switching hands when the first one grows tired. Three, four.
“Ta-da!” the young woman says, and taps her comb against the lightbulb. There is a faint sputter, and inside the bulb, little lights begin to dance briefly at its center before winking out, like small handmade fireflies. Five, six.
There are several oohs and aahs, and more bulbs begin to spark and twitch around the room as students press their combs closer. Seven, eight.
Nine.
Nine
bulbs, all bearing strange little fireflies.
“That’s how normal electricity works, too, but to a much greater extent, of course. Otherwise, you’ll have to keep brushing your hair thousands of times just to watch a half-hour episode of your favorite show.”
No
nines.
Not-nine,
Nevernine.
The girl named Sandra eyes me strangely.
“Whenever you do things like comb through dry hair, or wear socks and shuffle your feet along a really fuzzy carpet, you generate what’s called static. Remember what we talked about last time, about electrons? One way to move electrons from one location to another is by—”
NO
NINES!
The teacher’s table rattles, like something has taken hold of its legs and is knocking them hard against the floor.
No nines
no nines never
nines NO
NINES NO
NINES
NO NINES!
The lightbulb on the young woman’s table ex
plodes
without warning.
At the same time, the flashlight trained on the ceiling catches on a face there, a woman hanging upside down. Tarquin jumps back, mouth open.
There are gasps and cries of surprise, of fear. Somebody switches on the lights.
It is the young woman. She stares down at the misshapen bulb on her table, the glass irrevocably and inexplicably crushed, the tape still wrapped around what remains of its shape.
Though the air is warm, the tattooed boy is white and shivering, trying to pull more of his shirt around himself. The glow around him grows marked, and the tattoos hiding underneath his clothes ripple. It is almost like a shadow is rising out from them, snaking past his chest and neck.
“How—how—” The young teacher stutters, then remembers the sea of inquiring faces before her. She checks the ruined bulb hastily and seems relieved that none of the glass has flown out of the tape. “This is why you mustn’t try this at home without any parental supervision,” the young woman finishes, but it is clear that she herself is distressed over what has happened, though she fights hard not to let it show.
The boy’s shivering has also passed. Color returns to his face, but he, too, is unnerved. The peculiar shadow seeking to fold itself around him has disappeared.
“Experiment’s over for now! Who can tell me what the difference is between a positively charged atom and a negatively charged one? Brian?”
The lessons continue until the bell rings again and the children file out of the classroom, eager to be off. “I want everyone to leave the room through the back door!” the young woman warns. “Just to be on the safe side, in case there’s glass on the floor that needs sweeping up!”
“I’m sorry,” she tells the boy after most of the students have left. “I have no idea how that happened.” The boy’s backpack has fallen off the table, some of its contents spilling out: one binder, three books, and two sharpened pencils. The young woman bends to pick them up.
“Oh, these are good, Tark!” She holds up the binder, now opened to pages of quick sketches and rough drawings: landscapes, animals, miscellaneous people.
The boy snatches it back. “Thanks,” he says, more embarrassed than angry. He stuffs it back into his bag. “I really gotta go, Callie. There’s a shrink waiting to see if I meet her minimum requirements of crazy.”
“Stop that,” the young woman says with a natural firmness that she often adopts with her charges. “You’re not crazy, so stop saying you are.”
The boy grins at her. Something unnatural lurks at the corner of his eyes, something not even he seems aware of. “Sometimes I wish I could believe that, Callie. But my own mother’s batshit crazy, and I’ve seen so much other strange crap in my life that there’s no doubt I’ll be following in her footsteps soon enough.” He glances up at the ceiling again, but there is nobody there. “I don’t think your attempts at immersing me in the sanity of the general population’s hive-mind are going to work here, but thanks anyway.”
“Tark!” But the boy has already walked out of the room, a hand raised in farewell.
The young woman sighs, sinking into her chair. She picks up the broken bulb and turns it sideways. There is no doubt that the glass inside has been smashed, like a hammer has been violently taken to it. A shield of tape still holds some of the shards in place.
“What happened to you?” she whispers, her tone wondering. She lifts it to get a better view and sees her own slightly distorted image on the surface, tiny and unfocused.
As she watches, another reflection within the bulb moves beside her own.
She gasps, whirling around.
“Miss Starr?”
It is the girl called Sandra. The young teacher’s heart is pounding. “Sandra! You startled me…”
“She’s really sorry,” the child says sincerely.
“Who is?”
“The girl who broke the lightbulb. I know she’s sorry. It’s ’cause you brought nine a’ them. And she really, really doesn’t like the number nine.”
The young woman stares at her.
“I still like her better than the other lady, though.”
“The other lady?”
“The lady with the strange face. The one with Mister Tarquin. She scares me.”
She skips out, leaving the young woman staring after her, and on her face I can read her terror.
There is a crackling sound. Something is on the floor, trapped underneath a table leg. It is a piece of paper from the tattooed boy’s binder.
The young woman picks this up with shaking hands. Unlike the other detailed drawings the boy has drawn, this is a mass of uneven loops and spirals. It is a rough drawing of a lady in black wearing a pale white mask, one half-hidden by her long, dark hair.