self-pity, because by enumerating and dwelling upon my limitations, I
will be digging a hole so deep that I’ll never again be able to crawl
out of it.
I’ve got to be something of a cold bastard to survive, live with a
chinkless shell around my heart at least when it comes to grieving for
the dead. I’m able to express my love for the living, to embrace my
friends without reservation, to give my heart without concern for how
it might be abused. But on the day that my father dies, I must make
jokes about death, about crematoriums, about life, about every damn
thing, because I can’t risk-won’t risk-descending from grief to despair
to self-pity and, finally, to the pit of inescapable rage and
loneliness and self-hatred that is freakdom. I can’t love the dead too
much. No matter how desperately I want to remember them and hold them
dear, I have to let them go-and quickly. I have to push them out of my
heart even as they are cooling in their deathbeds. Likewise, I have to
make jokes about being a killer, because if I think too long and too
hard about what it really means to have murdered a man, even a monster
like Lewis Stevenson, then I will begin to wonder if I am, in fact, the
freak that those nasty little shitheads of my childhood insisted that I
was: the Nightcrawler, Vampire Boy, Creepy Chris. I must not care too
much about the dead, either those whom I loved or those whom I
despised. I must not care too much about being alone. I must not care
too much about what I cannot change. Like all of us in this storm
between birth and death, I can wreak no great changes on the world,
only small changes for the better, I hope, in the lives of those I
love, which means that to live I must care not about what I am but
about what I can become, not about the past but about the future, not
even so much about myself as about the bright circle of friends who
provide the only light in which I am able to flourish.
I was shaking as I contemplated turning the corner and facing the
Other, in whose eyes I might see far too much of myself. I was
clutching the Glock as if it were a talisman rather than a weapon, as
though it were a crucifix with which I could ward off all that might
destroy me, but I forced myself into action. I leaned to the right,
turned my head-and saw no one.
This perimeter passage along the south side of the attic was wider than
the one along the east flank, perhaps eight feet across; and on the
plywood floor, tucked in against the eaves, was a narrow mattress and a
tangle of blankets. The light came from a coneshaped brass desk lamp
plugged into a GFI receptacle that was mounted on an eave brace.
Beside the mattress were a thermos, a plate of sliced fruit and
buttered bread, a pail of water, bottles of medication and rubbing
alcohol, the makings for bandages, a folded towel, and a damp washcloth
spotted with blood.
The priest and his guest seemed to have vanished as if they had
whispered an incantation.
Although immobilized by the emotional impact of the longing in the
Other’s voice, I could not have been standing at the end of the box row
for more than a minute, probably half a minute, after the creature had
fallen silent. Yet neither Father Tom nor his visitor was in sight in
the passageway ahead.
Silence ruled. I heard not a single footfall. Not any creak or POP or
tick of wood that sounded more significant than the usual faint
settling noises.
I actually looked up into the rafters toward the center of the space,
overcome by the bizarre conviction that the missing pair had learned a
trick from the clever spider and had drawn themselves up gossamer
filaments, curling into tight black balls in the shadows overhead.
As long as I stayed close to the wall of boxes on my right side, I had