Revelation Page 3

  In that moment, we found our fourth roommate.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JUNE 1990

  There was no clock, no sunlight or moonlight, no measured time for anything in the cell. There was only one way Harden could loosely keep track of time, which was by writing. As long as he wrote, they paid attention to him, and when they did, he used their interactions with him as a marker of time. He would sit at the desk and write the same amount at a sitting: eight pages. The click-click-clacking of the keys would be the only sound in the room, and it always made Harden think of a giant bug tapping at the door with spindly legs, trying to get in. That made him think of the creature that had teased his lips as he had awoken for the first time in this room. Whatever it was, Harden hadn’t seen it again. Likely waiting in a crack somewhere for that light to go out again.

  Once his eight pages were complete, he’d stack them neatly by the door. Always a moment later, the light would go out, the slat in the door would open, and the same voice would command him to stand in the corner and turn facing the wall. Once he did, the door would open and the pages would be replaced with some kind of food. Harden quickly learned the bucket they had given him was his toilet, and if he left the empty food trays and the used bucket by the door, those would be replaced with fresh supplies.

  Eight pages at a sitting. He tried to take the same amount of time per writing interval, though it was impossible to gauge. Mostly, he wrote to the cadence of his hunger, and he was always ready for a new meal by the time his pages were done. He figured it took him about six hours to write eight pages. He would do this for two sequences, then he would try to sleep. Try, because there was no bed, no sleeping bag. Just the clothes he wore and the dirt floor.

  In his calculation of time, Harden also had to account for the long, initial chunk of it consumed by his own screaming. Shouting, yelling, storming around the small room, banging on the door. Anything to get the attention of those holding him. This lasted perhaps half a day. There was also a period where he sat silently, shaking in the cool of the loose dirt, wondering if he was being missed by anyone. Wondering if he was due anywhere, if someone would alert the police to his disappearance. Two hours, maybe. And time scouring every inch of the room, every crack in every wall, looking for the slightest of vulnerabilities. An hour, perhaps.

  All told, Harden figured he had been in the cell for three or four days.

  Three or four fucking days.

  He wasn’t built for this. He wasn’t a Navy SEAL or Army Ranger. He couldn’t go with only whiffs of sleep for days on end, with maybe a thousand calories a day, with no change of clothes, no ability to get warm, and only faint, artificial light to live beneath. Harden wasn’t strong like that.

  As he lay on the floor in his self-designated period for sleep, Harden was praying for the millionth time that someone was looking for him.

  Who?

  My dad? he thought. Maybe. But it still might be too soon for him to know something was wrong.

  Jacob? No, not Jacob. Jacob is one of them now. He knows exactly where I am. Jacob is probably the one washing out my bucket.

  Emma. Hopefully Emma. Oh God, Emma. I hope you’re okay.

  But mostly Harden figured someone would be missing Derek. Derek came from money, and moneyed students don’t disappear for very long. Someone would be looking for Derek, and that might lead them to wonder where Harden was.

  That was the only thought keeping his sanity together. He had to believe in something other than his reality.

  He tried to find things for which to be thankful, though this was a struggle. The pain in his midsection had subsided, convincing him nothing was broken. His swollen lip was an annoyance, but it was, after all, a minor concern. Whatever had crawled in his mouth hadn’t returned. Most of all, he was thankful he was at least alive.

  Sleep wasn’t coming. Harden rose and prowled the cell again, looking for something—anything—new.

  It was hard to actually call it a cell, because it wasn’t that small. He walked the paces again, and again decided it was about fifteen by eighteen feet. Again, he walked every inch of it, scouring the concrete-block walls for any sign of give or wear, finding none. He scratched at the dirt around the edge, hoping he could dig his way to freedom, but the earth was unyielding, leaving him with only bloody fingertips. There were two spots where the dirt separated from the wall by a half-inch or so, but those did him no good. He figured whatever crawled into his mouth was hiding out inside one of those gaps.

  The door was just as impenetrable—the metal slat could only be opened from the outside. Where the hell had Coyote found a place like this? he wondered. But each time he asked himself this question, he came to the same conclusion. Coyote didn’t find this place. He had it built.

  Where?

  Only one place made sense. Harden had to be somewhere deep inside the School of the Revelation. Harden had been inside the School plenty of times, but never heard about a containment facility. Still, it was the only place that made sense. And if he was somewhere deep beneath the School, that meant there were many people wandering around above him. Did most of them even know Harden was there?

  Maybe they’re all upstairs having a good laugh right now.

  Harden stared at his fresh tray of food on the table next to the typewriter, still untouched. It was either breakfast or dinner—he didn’t know since the food was always the same. Chipped beef, canned vegetables, and a stale roll. The tray always had a plastic fork, a napkin, a bottle of water, and a plastic vase with a tall, beautiful flower in it. It was an Alstroemeria, also known as the Lily of the Incas. It was the symbol of the Revelation. Coyote told his followers it symbolized the beauty and the fortitude of the movement, but Harden knew the truth. He knew it because Harden himself had come up with the idea.

  Every flower has a message behind it, and the Alstroemeria stood for devotion. Coyote liked the message that it sent, so it became the logo of the Revelation. Coyote demanded devotion.

  Harden finally ate his food and then stripped naked. He used the bucket, squatting over it to eliminate the previous round of chipped beef. He flattened out the napkin and used it to wipe himself, then he took a small amount of water from his bottle to wash his body. It didn’t do much, but it gave him a fleeting sense of being both clean and alert. He shook his clothes—imagining the days-old grime flinging off them—and then dressed again. It was his routine. Routines helped.

  He sat back down in his chair and looked at the half-filled page rolled in the typewriter. Writing was also his routine. He didn’t know what Coyote was doing with the completed pages he’d submitted and wondered if it was all some kind of exercise in futility, as though the words he set on the paper were just supposed to keep him preoccupied before they sliced his throat as they had Derek’s.

  As he massaged his left hand before positioning his fingers above the keys, Harden wondered how many words he would be able to put down before he died.

  After breaking the window, we all left the apartment with Coyote . . .

  CHAPTER NINE

  SEPTEMBER 1989

  After breaking the window, we all left the apartment with Coyote, hanging our heads low and suppressing our smirks as we walked into the night. A handful of students milled about the broken glass shards and pointed upward, while others were catcalling to the partygoers above. No one knew what the hell was happening, which suited us just fine. It wasn’t until we finally turned the corner that I felt a mix of relief and shame. We were too old to be doing such stupid shit, but we were too young to grow up. Looking back, I should have held onto that feeling as long as I could.

  The late-night air was the perfect temperature on my skin, like an old thin sweater worn just for its touch. We walked on with no particular purpose other than we were awake and alive, which I guessed would sustain us another block or so.

  “I was on my way to Benny’s,” Coyote said. “That sound good?”

  We all nodded. Of all the bars within walking
distance of the campus, Benny’s was the crappiest. But the bouncers there didn’t care how bad your fake ID was, so Benny’s was always a good default choice. To save daycare costs when I was young, my mother enrolled me in kindergarten when I was four, lying about my age. So I’ve always been young for my grade, and seemingly the only college senior still relying on a fake ID to get into bars.

  Two blocks and one fake ID later, we were seated in the back corner of the aging establishment. It seemed darker than usual, as if the light from the dusty overheads wanted nothing to do with the place. Jacob collected cash from each of us and returned with two pitchers of beer. I took a sip and immediately knew he bought the cheapest kind he could and pocketed the rest of the cash.

  “My girlfriend is meeting us here,” Coyote said.

  Derek took one sip and then turned to Jacob. “You better have some change left over, because this tastes like piss.”

  “Calm down,” Jacob said. “I’m saving the rest for a couple more pitchers.”

  “Quality, not quantity,” Coyote said.

  Derek eyed Coyote. “You a senior?”

  Coyote nodded. “Math major.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.”

  “It’s amazing, actually. I just don’t know what I’m going to do with it.”

  I knew the feeling. The uncertainty of not knowing what you wanted to do with the rest of your life was a pervasive annoyance compounded greatly by the sound of time whooshing by.

  “You could work for the Pentagon,” I said. “Developing weapons. You seem to have a knack.”

  Coyote smiled. “I hope the broken window won’t get you into trouble.”

  “Oh, we’ll make sure your name gets mentioned if we do,” Derek said. “You live downtown?”

  Coyote took another swig of his beer and shook his head. “It seems as though I’m currently homeless.”

  The three of us exchanged glances before looking back at him.

  “How so?”

  “Well, not exactly homeless. But in search of a place. My girlfriend and I got an apartment together this year, but her parents freaked out and refused to pay her tuition until I move out.”

  “So you left?” Jacob seemed incredulous that an education could be more important than a woman.

  “Of course I did,” Coyote said. “I can still be over there, can’t I? I just can’t have all my stuff lying around in case her parents come to visit, which is way too often.” He shrugged it off. “I’m staying at the University Inn until I find a place.”

  The three of us absorbed this information, and I assumed they all came to the same conclusion as me. Or maybe I was just presuming. I think to myself now: What if I hadn’t said what I did next? Would anyone else have? Maybe not. God, how different things would have been.

  “Actually, we’ve been looking for a roommate,” I said. “Got a nice fourth bedroom in our place, and we could use some help with the rent.” I looked at Jacob’s face, and he slowly nodded in agreement. Derek’s face was expressionless. I think he caught some kind of scent of Coyote that night, some kind of whiff of a predator hiding in the tall grass, stalking.

  Coyote acted like I just offered him nothing more than a piece of gum. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? I won’t be there much anyway. I’ll be with—”

  Coyote suddenly looked to his left, and my gaze followed his.

  “I’ll be with her,” he said, gesturing to the woman approaching the table.

  It was the first time I saw Emma, and I felt immediately pulled back into the ninth grade, where a girl’s crooked grin and flashing eyes were enough to make me fall in love. There was just enough light in the room for me to watch her emerge as if out of fog. As she approached, the first thing I noticed was her long hair falling forward over her shoulders. It was a dirty blond with plenty of kinks in it, styled just enough to look messy, giving her a look of happy restlessness. She was small and thin, and she wore faded, tight-fitting jeans and a loose blue top that spilled over her like a rain shower. She looked over at our table with perfect confidence, and, as I imagined her bright green eyes lingering on mine a bit longer than anyone else’s, I couldn’t help thinking Emma was the type of woman over whom men killed each other.

  “New friends?” she asked, giving us all a collective smile.

  “New roommates, actually,” Coyote replied, grinning. “Gentlemen, this is Emma.”

  We quickly introduced ourselves. I was the only one who rose from the table.

  “Oh,” she said to me as I sat back down. “You’re the Frisbee guy.”

  “I am indeed.” God, did I sound stupid.

  She bent over into my face and placed her nose just inches from mine. “Open up. Let me see.”

  My skin flushed and I was grateful for dim surroundings. I opened my mouth, and she peered in a bit more. I pointed to my new tooth and prayed like hell my breath wasn’t toxic.

  “Very nice,” she said, putting her index finger under my chin. “They did a good job. Would have been a shame to mess up that smile.” She gave me a subtle wink. I closed my mouth and tried to think of something to say, but nothing came.

  Jacob tried his best to get her to sit down next to him, but she managed to squeeze between Derek and Coyote instead. Derek poured her a beer.

  “So we just met your boyfriend here,” Derek said. “And now it seems he’s moving in with us.” He glanced at me long enough to tell me he wasn’t sold on the idea. “Are we taking a big risk?”

  She smiled and patted Coyote’s arm. “Coyote’s a good person. He just has certain needs.”

  Kind of an odd statement. “Such as?” I asked.

  She mulled this over a bit before speaking. “Well, he’s the smartest person I’ve ever met, and he’s pretty easy on the eyes, so he has a huge ego as a result. You’ll need to tell him how beautiful and brilliant he is every few days. Maybe even more often.”

  Everyone laughed, including Coyote. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “He’s got a lot of money,” she continued. “And he’ll always offer to buy you things. Don’t be insulted by it, but don’t take advantage of it either. He doesn’t ever want to feel like he’s buying your friendship.”

  Coyote nodded, but didn’t smile.

  “He snores, but he’ll probably be at my place most nights, so you won’t have to worry about it. And you should pray we don’t ever break up, because he can brood like no one I’ve ever seen.”

  “That’s a pretty accurate profile,” Coyote said, and even in the darkness of the bar I saw the tension in his jaw. “Is that all?”

  Emma shook her head, appearing to decide whether to continue. She took a sip of her beer, slowly wiped her lips, and then looked directly at him. “Coyote is a man who requires great things to happen to him. He needs to be challenged, and if the challenge isn’t there, he’ll go looking for it, wherever it may be. Good or bad.”

  Her honesty startled me, and I looked over at Coyote, who wore no expression whatsoever on his face. Jacob and Derek were silent.

  She looked around the room before leaning in across the table, beckoning us all to do the same. Faces hovering close to one another, she whispered to us. “Also, don’t expose him to bright light. Don’t get him wet. And whatever you do, never, ever, feed him after midnight.” She flashed a quick grin, grabbed her beer, and leaned back into the booth.

  It was a joke, but looking back, comparing Coyote to a Gremlin turned out to be a pretty accurate insight.

  CHAPTER TEN

  OCTOBER 1989

  September slipped into October with barely a good-bye. I made it through the first three weeks of classes with a kind of numbness that I blamed on being a senior with no real sense of what the hell I was going to do with my life. It’s a disconcerting feeling to be twenty years old and feel like you’re running out of time.

  Coyote moved in, and it didn’t take long to see the evidence of his disproportionate wealth to ours. Expensive clothes, fancy cookware, and a thi
rty-inch TV that weighed about two hundred pounds and cost, or so he told me, over a thousand bucks. Coyote exuded money like a politician does bullshit. He wore it outwardly but with a sense of comfort and style, so that it buttressed rather than defined him.

  Most impressive of all, he had a car. And not some piece of junk, but an emerald-green BMW 325xi. Though Derek and Jacob both came from comfortable middle-class families, neither of them had cars at school. Few students did—Wyland was small and accessible on foot, and there was little in the town worth visiting.

  Jacob accepted Coyote like a puppy going home from the animal shelter with a new owner. I think Jacob was attracted to the doors Coyote could open for him, by which I mean he saw Coyote as a vehicle to get laid. Jacob was a decent looking guy with an athletic build, but lacked severely in the personality department, so most weekends Jacob ended up either alone or with some vapid sorority girl who inevitably never saw him again. My guess is Jacob hoped Coyote could help him find a woman like Emma. Stupid, stupid Jacob.

  Derek was different. I could see Derek trying to make up his mind about Coyote. He didn’t need Coyote’s money to help with the rent, and I imagined he secretly would have been content having the fourth bedroom of our apartment sit empty all year. Before Coyote arrived, Derek was the most charismatic one of our group, and, though he didn’t date with the fast-food mentality of Jacob, it wasn’t because he lacked interest. Girls loved Derek, but he preferred the steady certainty of a monogamous existence rather than the pinball frenzy of weekend hookups. He’d recently got out of a yearlong relationship, and the past few weeks were the longest I’d seen him survive without being in love. Derek was the sensitive one, which is why I think he didn’t immediately take to Coyote like Jacob did. It wasn’t jealousy. I think Derek was the first to detect that Coyote had something nasty and festering deep inside him.