Where Serpents Lie

Twenty-Seven

Hypok climbed into his van and leaned over to check himself in the rearview mirror. Even in the pale interior light he was pleased by the transformation: jet black hair brushed down over his head (boyish and dramatic), black mustaches and Vandyke tapering to a neat point (hip and musketeerish), the earring hoop in his left lobe and the long, bottom-flaring black sideburns (piratical and Presleyan). What more could you want? He’d started the shed three days ago, just after the Item #3 flop. It had taken that long for the whiskers to grow out enough to dye the same midnight black as his hair.

He took a giant swig off the generic tequila and set the bottle back in the center console. He checked his directions on the street map again, like a vacationer making sure he didn’t get lost: Leeward Place in Yorba Linda, a bit of a jaunt out the 91 freeway, birthplace of Richard Nixon and home to Item #4.

He hit the garage door control, waited the usual eternity for the thing to rise, then backed out carefully so as not to scrape the Saturn. Easy. Then into the driveway and a quick push on the shut button. He made a nifty little highway patrol — style turn, where you back up, crank hard, then crank the other way to reverse direction without a time-and-space-consuming three-point maneuver. He used another control to open the front gate and rolled confidently onto Wytton Street in the heart of old-town Tustin as the gate slid shut behind him.

It was 2:03 A.M. by Hypok’s watch, which, he knew, was two minutes slow. He started the turn off Wytton and his rearview caught the faint headlights coming up his street from way back in the night.

Wytton to B to First. The school, the church, the ball field. Darkness, streetlights and the private hiss of cars. Haif a moon. Then the 55 freeway heading north and east to get him to the 91.

Hypok felt strong right now, immensely strong, with the tequila pulling down all his nerves into one big muscle and the one big muscle under the control of his will. Strong fingers on window handle, strong arm as he cranked it down for the cool spring suburban air. Jazz on the radio, syncopated, mindless and happy. That’s what he liked about jazz when he was on a predation, the way it never got to the point, never hit the tonic note, just kept mincing along and got you more and more... agitated. He let the notes go into his ears and bounce off the knotted muscle of his nerves and imagined what happens when a bird lands on the snout-ball of an alligator submerged in water. Wham!

Up the 55, merging with the 91, low-lying fog in the basin of the river, tracts to the left and hillsides to the right, truck scales closed, the toll lanes offered for 25 cents but empty anyway, fast-food America anchoring the suburbs: McDonald’s, In-and-Out, Carl’s, Taco Bell. He gazed at his own gigantic face on a billboard and felt proud. Have You Seen This Man? Call 1-800-647-SAVE. He wondered for the thousandth time exactly when Item #3, the little toad, had peeked at him. Must be a problem with the hood. The next one could stare at him all it wanted, he thought. The big illuminated rectangle of his face stood out wonderfully against the dark hillsides, and it was the only one for miles, the reigning deity in this little corner of the American night. It didn’t look anything like him anymore, he thought, but that was good, like an advertisement for someone else.

Hypok veered gently to his left, flattening a dozen orange dividers that wobbled back upright in the wake of his van, then he sailed along in the toll lane for a few hundred yards just to see what it was like — he’d never used it and this was his chance — but at this hour with so few cars what was the benefit except the satisfaction of feeling those rubber stanchions bending under you like helpless pygmies and the comfort of knowing you were breaking the law and getting away with it? He trampled another ten pylons and settled back into the no-pay fast lane, jazz low on the radio, fog triangulated in his headlamp beams, generic tequila harnessing the tracers of his imagination and tamping them down in his brain like gunpowder.

He thought of the Item and its mother waiting for him on Leeward: ditzy blondes, both of them, the mom maybe thirty and the Item maybe seven or eight, with long spindly legs and lots of hair. Met them at church months ago, talked to the woman at the Single Parents meeting afterward a few times, Chloe the Item and Margo the mom, very trusting as you would expect people at church to be. He’d regaled Margo with tales of his beloved “Mike,” age five, living with his mother back in Texas. Even showed her a picture of him, courtesy of some Bright Tomorrows moron who’d foisted it off on him in a burst of motherly pride. My son, Alexander. He’d filed Chloe and Margo under the port-in-a-storm category, because they weren’t easy to research, like the Bright Tomorrows Items, and it took him two prowls into the assistant pastor’s office to view the Rolodex long enough to get the address and phone number, because Margo wasn’t listed in the phone directory. He kept maybe a dozen port-in-a-storms catalogued in his head, reserved for a situation just like this one: billboards of his face on all major county freeways, a composite drawing (not bad) distributed to post offices, neighborhood markets, health clubs, police stations, school offices and thousands of homes throughout Christendom; cops getting closer to him, pressure, pressure, pressure. The pigs called it proaction — that warthog Ishmael spelled it out, right on TV — and proaction was exactly what he was going to give them, courtesy of Margo, Item #4, Neighborhood Congregational Church — Praise the Lord! — and the port-in-a-storm file.

It was hard to keep his excitement contained. Hypok thought about the ten grand, delivered to him that night by one of the Friendlies. What a sweet, secret delight it was to know that he had been instrumental, first in ruining the reputation of Crimes Against Youth sergeant Terry Naughton, and now in fleecing him out of ten thousand more bucks! And that on top of the $30,000 Naughton — Mal — had coughed for his original customs. Talk about a smiley face. That money would go a long way now, especially with his snakes no longer eating up a hundred dollars’ worth of vermin a week along with the occasional boxes of kittens or puppies he’d get free in the classifieds, so long as he promised a good home for them. After quitting Bright Tomorrows, he’d live on Mal’s money. A cop’s money. Tax free. He was commissioned. He was golden. He was changing. He was there.

He really was there. He pulled onto Leeward and proceeded west to the correct number. It was easy to find because they were right out there on the curbs, in reflecting black and silver paint: 239. He drove past, made three right turns and pulled alongside a little park to settle himself. He cut the engine and got out the bottle. He liked the way the liquor warmed up in the center console, down there where the engine heat seeped through the plastic. He thought about Mal again. What would the inmates do with him if he went to prison? It was hard to imagine the wrath. He took another drink. Idea: would law enforcement pay for information on the continuing exploits of T.N.? What if he contacted this Ishmael fool, for instance, the one on the TV press conference, the proactive prick, and told him he had additional information on the accused? Interesting. But would the cops pay up enough to make it worth his while? Idea: take it one step further. What would Mal do if he threatened to expose his latest request to the Sheriffs? Maybe that’s how to get the last few drops of blood out of Naughton. Wait until he finds out who his dream girl is. Make him sweat awhile. Daydreams can be so exciting, he thought, especially at 2:38 A.M. on a damp May morning.

He took another swig, for luck, then worked on a pair of latex gloves and started up the van.

Thirty seconds later he was sitting outside Item #4’s house, engine off, neighborhood still, moon low over the uniform roofs of uniform houses, his heart slamming inside his chest like a dragster with a blown rod. He put some cinnamon drops on his tongue. He pulled off three eight-inch lengths of duct tape and stuck them inside his jacket. The glass cutter and toilet plunger, the rim of which was smeared with petroleum jelly for a sure fit on the window glass, sat in his lap. He put the Hiker’s Headlight on and arranged the lamp up on his forehead, equidistant from each eye, a snug, cyclopean organ just waiting to illuminate prey. He knew the Item’s room was in the back and he knew they didn’t have a dog. It was just a matter of getting over the gate without waking up the world, then he’d be home free. He got out and quietly pressed the door shut, nudging it into its latch with his hips.

Fifteen steps to the gate, arms at his sides and plunger tucked up under his armpit. Calm strides, but assured ones, the stride of a man on familiar ground. Then the gate getting closer, closer now, closer still, Hypok running the last five steps, long eager steps like the high jumpers take in the Olympics — one, two, three, four, five — then the swing of his right leg and the heave of his left, plunger held before him for balance, and he was atop the rickety grapestake fence, pausing for just one moment like a sentence delayed by a comma, then he shifted his weight and drew himself together to spring off with hardly a sound, just the brief swoosh of a body falling through space then the muffled air-cushion tap of athletic shoes on concrete as Hypok landed apelike and crouched on the side walkway by the trash cans, his eyes adjusting to a new gradient of darkness, moonlight only, his ears tuned to every sound in the night, his heart pounding hard and a voice inside snickering, clean.

Eight steps, right turn: window. Plunger on. Cutter scratches a loose circle around the suction cup, pane rasps quietly as it breaks away. The hole is clean. Michael Hypok: craftsman. His latexed hand reaches inside for the slider latch. There. Up unlocks, so he eases up. The window slides in the channel with hardly a sound if he does it slowly, and he does it very slowly so the Item can remain in dreamland, and when the window is finally open and a brief pause tells him that no one is stirring not even a mouse, he hoists himself into the opening and in the faint white moonlight his supple body pours to the bedroom floor like cream dispensed from a pitcher.

He turned on the Hiker’s Headlight and found the bed. Item #4 was sleeping deeply, lost in a comforter, just its little head with all that blond hair showing. He looked down and admired it for a long minute: all the innocence, all the joy, all the magnificence it would inspire. But, work to do.

Then he heard something in the darkness to his right.

The light blazed on and he stood there looking at this thing, Margo Gayley, Christian single mother, in the doorway wearing a pink robe and a terrified expression, holding something small in her hand.

She pointed it at his face. He had already begun to crouch and coil when he heard an aerosol hiss and saw the red mist jet overhead. He leapt just as she lowered the can, but he was already up, midair, and he took a load of the stuff on his neck.

His eyes burst into flames just as his hands closed around Margo’s throat. He drove forward. He couldn’t open his eyes because of the heat. She made an awful gagging sound. He felt both their bodies slam back into a flimsy panel that gave way and let him fall down on top of her, hands powerfully locked on this thin throat, and he felt a bunch of what had to be clothes falling on his back as he forced her head down as far as it would go. He focused every cell of his burning, outraged strength to drive his thumbs all the way back to his fingers. He put his weight into it, his neck and back, his hips and legs, everything dedicated to the meeting of thumb pads and fingertips. They were already close to touching. He’d never heard a sound like she was making, part whimper and part screech but mostly this dry clicking sound like muscles flapping against each other. He released his thumbs for just a second to move them higher up, where the bones and glands were, then smashed down again with ferocious force. He felt her fingers on his wrists, but they had no power. She was kicking up violently with her knees but he’d landed between them and all he had to do was keep his groin jammed up tight against hers and her knees couldn’t even touch him. He could hear Item #4 screaming and feel it thrashing his back with something, but neither mattered a bit right now, only the rrr... rrr... rrrrrrrrrrrrr coming from his own throat. Then a sudden muted crunch and his thumbs almost met his fingers and the woman relaxed so Hypok throttled her still harder until there was no resistance left, just accepting flesh and this screaming thing behind him lashing his back with what felt like a belt.

He whirled. The Item shot out the door and into the house. Hypok rose with shaky legs and followed it. It ran down the hallway and around a corner. Hypok made the corner in three long strides, just as it flew out the front door. Hypok followed it into the little front yard, into the misty morning air, but he stopped short and thought about the van. How far away from it could he get — his life force, his escape, his freedom? Fuck it, get the Item! It was hauling down the sidewalk, loose T-shirt rippling and tiny feet a blur beneath it, like how the chickens used to run when his mother chased one down for dinner. It wasn’t screaming, it was just moving and moving fast. Get the van, then get the Item!

Ten steps and he was there, flinging himself through the door, turning the key in the ignition where he had left it, throwing the tranny into first and gunning the gas all at once. The van jumped forward. He hunched over the wheel and flipped on the brights. There it was, flailing straight down the sidewalk, growing larger in the bright beams, shirt waving like a flag at a ballpark, hair flying out everywhere.

The van ate up the distance. The Item looked back, eyes dark and shining. It looked like an animal just before you run over it. Hypok lurched past it, then threw the van into park and slammed through the door. But it cut across the lawn on a diagonal, away from him. He heard its scream pierce the heavy air. It screamed again. A light went on in the house it had passed, the house on the lawn of which Hypok now stood, eyes burning and heart pounding, watching his future scooting away from him like a rabbit. Like a bad dream. Then another light, one house back of him. Then another, from the house it was running to. Like every damned household in suburbia knew he was here. Up the walkway to the porch it scurried, while Hypok could only watch in mute, furious heartache as the door opened and Item #4 vanished from the moist darkness into the warm welcoming light of a cozy Orange County home. After the Item was inside, two heads appeared in the doorway, looking at him. Then the man stepped onto the porch and crossed his arms. Ward Fucking Cleaver in boxers. The woman was probably already on the phone.

Hypok walked back to the van and drove away, unconcerned that Ward would remember his plates, stolen months ago from an out-of-commission Audi near the Bright Tomorrows building in Irvine.

He was a mess. His eyes burned, his lips and nostrils burned, his neck burned, his right thumb was sprained and he had absolutely nothing to show for himself. He held up his right hand and looked at the latex glove, fingers torn and peeled back, a yawning hole over his palm. Same with the left, but no palm hole. He noted that his lucky snake bracelet was gone, fuck, probably ripped off in the disagreement with the mom. God knew how many fingerprints he’d left behind, but he was clean, they couldn’t match prints with nothing, the pinheads. Margo Whatsername wasn’t going to be fingering anybody for a while, either.

Driving slowly, he signaled his occasional lane changes, trying to get his nerves to settle a little. He drank more tequila, but that did the opposite of settling nerves, it just taunted him with its warmth and courage and it made him feel again that consolidation down there in the naughty zone, morning wood, which he’d been hoping to deal with in some depth before the sun came up. It made him want sex; it made him want... well, everything.

He headed east on the 91, out of Orange County, where he figured some kind of APB would be on the cop waves. Not enough traffic on the roads to feel safe, yet. Just before the county line he saw another billboard of himself. It really wasn’t a bad rendition of his old look. He thought it might actually be a help to him now, transformed as he was into dark-haired, hip and poetic sideburn and earring man. It was a decoy. He watched himself watch himself until the sign turned to reveal the insipid stop smoking announcement on the other side. He wondered what the names of the bones were he’d crushed in the mom’s throat. Whatever. That thumb was sore.

Getting off on Maple Street in Corona, he then went north to the park. Hypok had scouted the place as a possible Item release site, but it was too crowded, too many people, no privacy. Of course it was closed now, but he parked anyway and wandered across the damp grass toward the drinking fountains and rest rooms. Stooped over the fountain he let the water loop up into his eyes and blinked them a lot until the burning eased up. Then lips and nose. He pulled off the gloves and rinsed them, then poured some of the wet gravel from the fountain bed into them and tossed them on top of the outhouse. Then he giggled.

He sat on a picnic bench for a while and listened to the park birds. He yawned. Then he climbed up onto the table and stretched out on his back, with his elbows on either side of his head and his fingers laced beneath it to form a pillow. Let the traffic get going before you head back home, he thought. Another hour or two.

Then his little cowboy pj’s were down around his knees and Collette and Valeen half hidden under the sheet were giggling and oohing, inspecting, probing, playing. All he wanted to do was relish their touch and his feeling, lie there and pretend he was sleeping though they all knew he wasn’t. Yes, that would be enough, to just stay there forever, enfolded within the smells of his sisters and the sheets and the bewildering wonders of being four years old and loved so much and feeling so sweetly, deliciously, mysteriously good, peeking out the window where the Missouri sky held a full orange moon and, one night, a pretty little rat snake on the sill illuminated by the porch light looked through the screen at him.

Hypok woke up, startled and aroused. He watched the traffic heading out Maple to the freeway. The headlights were still on but the first light of morning had turned the world gray. This wasn’t Missouri. He looked down at his pants and rolled over, trying to hide what could not be hidden forever, imagining a way to express what had to be expressed. Fully expressed. Soon. He was sad, frustrated and furious.

A few minutes later he was back in his van, heading for home. The traffic was heavy from Riverside into Orange County and there wasn’t a way on earth they would spot him.

About halfway there, he got an idea.

No time for a long predation. No time for the port-in-a-storm stuff. It took weeks to get those right.

But he wanted action and he wanted it now and he was going to get it. God, he needed it. He was aching: heart, head, balls, thumb. When they’ve put your face all over the freeways, you know your time in that place is short. You’ve got to act. Hypok decided to just go get some live bait and go hunting. Like back in Wichita, but simpler, something irresistible. He’d had the idea before.

He brought out the tequila and took a long, warm gulp. Most good. Then he turned the jazz back on low. He imagined the big County of Orange Animal Shelter, right off I-5. He’d shopped there occasionally for free dogs and cats for Moloch, but he hadn’t been there in months.

How much is that doggie in the window?