The Shibboleth Read online

  His sound, his scent—the feel of the man—is all over her. If I was incarcerado, I would shiver. His passage inside her rings, echoing, like the moments after a gigantic bell tolls, the air still vibrating. He got in her head. He came in and did exactly what I’m doing now.

  She thinks about this incident more often than she’d like, and she can’t remember why. It puzzles her. It’s sent tendrils out into her awareness, this memory. It’s such an invasion, what Quincrux and I do.

  God help us, we’re monsters.

  I almost pull out of her then. But she wanted to Tase me. Like a fat kid wants a slice of chocolate cake.

  I move on, back and back, running through her mind. She’s done the usual evils—cheated on her husband, on her taxes, on tests. She shot a man who broke into her house, killing him, and instead of remorse, she felt a great joy at her accomplishment and bragged about it to her friends. She boxed in college and oh … here’s something interesting, another woman she loved with all her heart. A fellow student. And they screwed like rabbits for a month until they fought, over money of all things, and Kay struck her lover in the face. And that’s the image burned into Kay’s memory of her Jill. They’re in a bedroom somewhere in Chicago, and the sounds of the city hum and rattle and clank and honk through the open window while Jill, naked, sits heavily on the bed and stares wide-eyed at Kay. Jill’s mouth is open, and her hand’s at her cheek.

  Kay knew in that moment that she’d destroyed something wonderful in a fit of rage. But she hardened and resolved to live with it. To use it. Just like that. With her knuckles still stinging from the blow—just seconds after—Kay’s righteousness solidified in her at that moment, like a hand covered in Krazy Glue strangling a human heart.

  I go beyond that, further into her history, when she was a girl and, strangely, she wasn’t such a tremendous bitch. The time before the blow that sent Jill reeling, she was different. She was sweet and insecure and confused at her attraction to both men and women, and maybe that point when she struck Jill changed her life forever in a direction she never wanted to go.

  There’s one last ringing moment, and I enter it. It’s bright like an overexposed photograph, fuzzy around the edges, and the light is hazy and she’s on the beach, suffused with joy. Just a girl. Waves fall sluggishly on the shore and the sun is bright but not too hot and her father is holding her in his brown arms and tossing her high in the air, so high she feels like she’s flying but not scared, not scared at all, because her father would never drop her. Never ever. She’s laughing and giggling and he’s throwing her high and that memory is so bright and full of love and pain and joy it’s almost impossible to bear. He would be dead in months, her father. But she has this memory.

  Something in me twists and suddenly her joy is mine and washing over me, and it feels so good, like cool water on a brutally hot day. Like the morphine drip they had me on in the hospital. I never want it to end, this memory of Warden Kay Anderson’s. I want it to go on forever.

  I live in it and have no awareness of time, because I could stay here until the world ends. Beyond the end of all things.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  It’s like being yanked out of a wonderful dream, or splashed with water. It’s like being Tased.

  Booth stands over me, furious. I glance at the warden, and her eyes are open; she’s got the thousand-yard stare. Her hands twitch. Her lips are parted, mouth open, facial muscles slack.

  He grabs my arm and yanks me up. My body is loose and uncoordinated, and I’m having a hard time getting it under control. There’s part of me, a very important part of me, that still hasn’t figured out where I am. And Booth is unimaginably strong, it seems. He sets me on my feet and roughly shoves me toward the door, but I manage to stop the movement and watch him.

  He approaches the warden, checks her pulse. Then he rushes out of the room, knocking me to the side of the door with his passage. In a moment, he’s back, holding a first-aid kit. He breaks the packet of smelling salts under her nose. She twitches, starts, and then shudders awake. She sits upright, blinks heavily. Glares about the room until her gaze settles on me. She looks as though her mouth has flooded with lemon juice.

  “Get off me, Horace,” she says to Booth, pushing him away. “I must’ve nodded off.”

  “I hardly think—”

  “You’re not paid to think,” she says. “You’re not good at it, anyway. But if you must know, I’ve been sleeping poorly, like everyone else in this damned country. The insomnia epidemic. So. I must’ve—” She looks at me, eyes narrowing. “I must’ve nodded off.”

  Something is different about her now. She looks … older? Meaner? She’s all teeth and tits and gristle.

  “You.” She jabs a clawed finger at me. “Saturday privileges revoked until further notice. Computer privileges suspended.” She looks at her desk calendar. “July tenth is the next family visitation day. If you have not spilled everything you know about the incidents on that video by then, you can tell your mother and brother not to bother showing up.”

  “Warden,” Booth says. “I don’t know if that’s—”

  She shifts her gaze to him and then runs her tongue over her teeth in an unconscious gesture. “Zip it,” she says, very distinctly. He does.

  “You are trouble, Shreve. You have always been trouble.” Kicking her feet, she rolls her chair away from the TV and back to her desk. “Take this cart back to AV.”

  She straightens her papers on her desk as I unplug the cart and Booth helps me to move it into the hall. I can feel the pressure of her gaze on my back.

  I push the cart into the hall and let the door swing shut behind me.

  “What have you done?” Booth asks, his voice empty. It’s beyond disappointed. It’s almost as if he expected it.

  What have I done?

  I don’t know.

  Something horrible.

  TWO

  –flooding my mouth with saliva at the sight of mince pie with ice cream and mounds of peanut brittle—food covers the table while the Christmas tree flashes blue and white and red in circuits and patterns as momma pulls one beautifully wrapped present from beneath the tree and smiling hands it to me saying “only one present on Christmas Eve, honey” and I unwrap it with trembling hands and inside there’s the dolly we saw at the five-and-dime, rosy-cheeked and unwinking, and I love her love her love her love love

  daddy takes my hand and we go out into the hard-frozen night and look at the nativity, the baby Jesus nestled so snug in his cradle, the dead grass crackling under my feet and a familiar smell in the air and I can feel the rough texture of daddy’s hand from planing boards all day at the mill but so gentle and kind and he looks up and I follow his gaze to the heavens and something soft and cold lands on my cheek and I realize it’s snowing, fat snowflakes and then the air turns white in a million flakes like a storm of blessings in the mind of God and daddy whispers, “A white Christmas. O, lord, what majesty, a white Christmas,” and holding me up in his arms and his breath on my face like peppermint and tobacco and I can only breathe and cry and wish this feeling could go on forever, forever and ever go on–

  We pass through Administration, and the kid sits there next to a desk where a fat woman in a floral-print dress asks him questions in a soft, cloying voice. Her name is Mildred Clovis; she’s fifty-three years old and loves the baby Jesus with all her heart. She’s never left Arkansas in her whole life. She adores fried chicken and church and the two get kind of mixed up in her mind. She’s never eaten a salad and thinks Muslims are devils placed on Earth to torment the living and execute Satan’s evil plan to win human souls. She has a penchant for angel figurines. She weighs 215 pounds and stands five foot three. She has sex twice a year with her husband—once on his birthday and once on their anniversary. More would be ungodly. She fantasizes about chocolate when he’s on top of her.

  Today, she’s very, very concerned with a particular boy’s welfare; you can just hear it drip from her voice.


  “Honey, you ever had the measles? No? TB?”

  –oh lord this poor boy, Jesus save him–

  He shakes his head but turns to watch Booth and me walk by. No expression touches his face. He just watches, implacably, holding his hands loosely in his lap, looking like a boxer resting in the corner of the ring.

  He’s older than me, but not by much, and he’s got the lean and wary look of the abandoned. I don’t even have to peep him to know that he’s had a hard life, but I go in to peep him anyway. You can’t ever be too sure that Quincrux, or the Witch, isn’t staring out of those eyes.

  It’s like hitting a brick wall. There’s no way in because something is already there.

  A Rider.

  As long as Booth is with me, I’m safe from the general pop.

  I get a lot of hard stares walking through the Commons. Kids haven’t been sleeping well, and that’s made the general pop turn mean. Who knew not getting enough sleep would make kids so damned ornery? Couple of boys caught me at the pisser two days ago and decided to practice drumming. On my face.

  All the crap that happened last year pissed off a lot of people. Ox and Fishkill got tickets to the Farm. Sloe-Eyed Norman got hurt beyond repair—he’s now got a new tenant upstairs: the Witch. Police and feds came in and turned Casimir upside down.

  No one has forgiven me for not getting in trouble. The TV called me a hero, and no one forgets that. Everyone here knows I’m not.

  You can do anything in juvie, but the minute they think you’re getting special treatment? You’re meat.

  We pass through security into B Wing, where I still live in the cell that Jack and I shared. They replaced the crumpled toilet at the taxpayer’s expense but had maintenance unbend the mangle of my stool and bed, pulling the metal back into place. Everything wobbles a little.

  Booth nods at the security guard,

  –goddamn woman didn’t even say thanks when I opened the–

  who presses the appropriate button and the door to my cell swings open and we enter.

  Booth doesn’t dick around, hemming and hawing. “What in the Sam Hill was going on back there?” he asks. “What did you do to her?”

  “Who says I did anything?” I used to deny everything on principle, back when I was dealing the sweet stuff. Now I want to draw him out.

  “Don’t play titty-baby, Shreve. We both know you’re so beyond that.”

  Never been a titty-baby. “And you? I wish you’d stop playing ignorant. You see the kid in Admin?”

  “Yeah?” Booth’s smooth face hitches, his eyes narrowing, lips drawing down into a line. “What about him?”

  I sit at my wobbly stool and straighten the few comic books, sketch pads, and novels I have on my desk.

  “You didn’t notice?”

  Booth gives me this dumbfounded look, mouth slightly open.

  “Last year? Quincrux? The Witch? Oh, sorry, her name was Isla Moteff. Remember them?”

  He shakes his head as if trying to clear it but pulls his hands in tight to his thighs in balled fists. Not a good sign.

  “You remember them taking us in the yard? Quincrux took me and you. He got inside! You remember?” I’m surprised to find myself yelling, spit flying everywhere. “Remember? Huh? When the Witch took Jack? Remember that? You remember drooling and walking around like a zombie when he was in you?”

  “I—” Booth is getting pissed. “What does this nonsense have to do with the boy in Admin?”

  I look at Booth—really look at him—and consider making him understand. I did that once to Jack. I huffed and I puffed and blew down the doors of his mind and went inside and showed him what I needed him to see. Booth is strong. But I am stronger. I don’t even need to have the contest to know that I could rip down his defenses and go on some crazy redecorating spree inside his noggin.

  But I won’t. Not that.

  Except he has to look that in the face before he can even begin to understand the Riders.

  I start again. “I don’t know how to explain it, Booth. But you have to believe me. Quincrux and the Witch are … mind readers. Telepaths, maybe. But worse than that. They’re demons. They can possess you.”

  “Shreve, you sound insane—”

  “It’s true. Think about it. Jesus Christ, Booth, a year ago you looked totally different. Look at you. Look!” I point to the dimpled mirror in the bathroom. “You use to give a shit about your appearance. Hell, you were sparkly.”

  His eyes crinkle, and he puts his hands on his hips. “No, I wasn’t. That’s a damn-fool thing to say, boy.”

  “Your hair was all slick and your nails were shiny like a woman’s and for chrissake you used to tuck in your shirt, at least.”

  His hands involuntarily go to his waist, begin shoving his shirttail into his pants, stop.

  “We’ve been through the same thing, you and me,” I say, softer now. I try to make sure there’s no sneer on my face, but crap, I can’t ever be sure. It’s like it lives there. “They got in our heads and possessed us. Made us do what they wanted. But when they do that, it leaves something behind. It’s like it can infect you.”

  “This is all just crazy talk. No one can possess someone else like a demon—”

  “I can.” I say it loud enough to stop him. He’d been raising his hand to make his point, the soft pink of his palms contrasting with the deep brown of his skin. His hand remains there, tenuous, like some bird caught in flight, and his eyes widen as he looks at me not because I’m doing anything—I’m still firmly incarcerado—but because I’m going to and some part of him knows it.

  I go in, not full strength, but enough to give his whole chassis a good rattle. He’s got his defenses up, but I am to Booth as Quincrux is to me, a dragon dwarfing his little castle. I breathe fire and screech and crap in the moat before tearing at the wall, just to let him know I’m serious.

  For an instant, I see the image of a fish swallowing a smaller fish swallowing a smaller fish, and I laugh.

  He’s got some defenses, Booth does.

  –he’s more than gristle, Ilsa. But no matter. Round one is over, Mr. Cannon. And round two will tell all–

  Maybe Booth senses my moment of doubt—he’s like me, right? Just not as strong—and he steps toward me where I stand in front of the door to the cell’s bathroom. He’s fast, despite the fact he’s gone all slovenly. So it’s there that we have the battle.

  I blow out the windows of his mind, and he rocks back on his feet as if he’s been hit by an invisible shock wave. I’ve knocked him totally senseless, so it’s easy now to slip behind his eyes and start working the levers and walk his body past mine, into the bathroom, and to the mirror.

  His face is wearing my sneer when it says, “I can do this to you. You can do this to others. But Quincrux is still out there. And worse. The Riders. They’re coming here.”

  Booth has sprung a leak. Blood pours from his nose in great gouts, discoloring his once-thin mustache.

  He recovers quickly, and he pushes my mind out, hard.

  Before I know what’s going on, before I’ve recovered from that moment of dislocation that comes with being put back in the box everyone comes shipped in, Booth has me by the neck in one big hand. The other’s moving too fast to see until it comes to a dramatic stop in my stomach and I fall to my knees. All I can do is gape in wonder at the stars zigzagging at the edges of my vision and work my mouth open and shut to try to say something. But of course, I can’t because sound needs air to vibrate through to be heard and Booth took all the air in the world with him after he punched me in the gut, turned on his heel, and left my cell.

  And I didn’t even get to tell him about the Rider.

  It’s night, after lights-out, and Kenny in 16 is screaming again in his cell, crying and screaming, and the rest of the wards begin hollering too, moaning. No one sleeps in Casimir anymore. No one closes his eyes. There’s just the watchful, sleeplessness night after night.

  They’re pumping our food full of saltp
eter now, but the boys still masturbate furiously in the dark, and occasionally you’ll hear a cellmate yell, “Souza’s rubbing one out, again!” and then a rough, desperate laughter followed by more howling. Screaming. Gibbering.

  There is no sleep. No rest. Not for the wicked.

  THREE

  I miss Jack. There’s no getting around it. I miss Vig and Coco and freedom, but I miss Jack.

  Especially times like now, morning, when the cell doors swing open and the cry and clatter of a thousand delinquents rises to fill these gray cinder-block walls and the whole world stinks of Pine-Sol and mold and cheap laundry soap, the heavy breath of a penitentiary.

  Sometimes I feel like my head is too full, my heart too empty. I have no one to watch for. And this terrible gift has given me knowledge of things that no kid from the trailer park perched on the big piney woods should ever know. It’s a burden I used to share.

  In general pop, we assemble for mail call. There’s a new bull today, one I’ve never seen before. He shuffles through a stack of letters, calling out names. Brendan, Buxton, Cacciatori, and then, surprisingly, Cannon.

  A letter.

  I snatch the proffered envelope and dash to the table nearest the wall. Its return address is in Washington, DC.

  Shreve,

  Sorry I haven’t written you more often. There’s been a so we’ve been busy. It’s kinda weird here. We go to class in the morning, but we’re taught by what they call “employees” and there are all over the place. I don’t feel totally safe just because the “employees” don’t truly seem to care if we learn or not. We’re tested regularly, but it’s never about the school assignments. They’re more . The food is okay and some of the other kids are great – I gotta tell you something. I’ve got a girlfriend! She’s so incredible, but I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re reading my letters to you. But yeah, man.