Chapter 3: What Rough Beast

CHAPTER 3

What Rough Beast

Father found him on the way back from Kathy’s house.

A town car, freshly minted and fully loaded, pulled up to Jon on an empty street. It sparkled under the streetlights and the yellow eyes of its driver sparkled along with it. Jon’s father stepped out. Well-muscled and trim, he was always perfectly dressed with neat crisp lines. He never seemed to sweat or get dirty. He always knew what to say and how to act, to get what he wanted. Perfection clung naturally to him. From that perfection came a confidence Jon could never hope for.

Punishment was looming. Mother found the problems. Father corrected them. He towered over Jon like a giant. The teen shrank under his shadow. The elder fixed him with his eyes, seeming to drink in Jon’s every weakness before saying, “So you didn’t do as you were ordered.”

He let that dangle like a viper between them.

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

Jon’s head hung down, his ball cap shading all but the lower jut of his chin. He felt anger at having to be in this spot. What the hell does it matter if I went off with some friends? Then shame at having failed in other’s eyes. It was my job. I was told to do it. Then acceptance that he needed to be punished. Better take it then. Sooner it begins, sooner it’s over.

“I’m sorry,” he said in his patented whipped dog tone.

Father stared for a moment. His implacable gaze burned into Jon’s body. Once again, the boy was a failure. Once again, he needed to be punished. Father sighed.

“You’re sorry. Here’s what sorry gets you.”

He pulled a large monkey wrench from the trunk and walked over to the bicycle. He paused, waiting for an objection from Jon, then shoved his son aside and began pounding away. He smashed through the handlebars, bent the axle, broke the tire rims, ripped out the spokes, and snapped the chain.

Father backed away still perfectly dressed, not a hair out of place. “Bring this junk heap back home,” he ordered and drove off in his car, leaving Jon to eat his dust.

Jon hefted the bike and stumbled over the uneven cement blocks of the sidewalk. It was a long, savage haul at that time of night, with the temperature rapidly falling. The cold numbed his legs, while the weight of the bike bit into his hand and strained his muscles to their limit. Little weeds and sticky plants grew up between them. Jon cursed each one, then cursed his family, their house, and kept cursing until he had reached back to his great-great-grandfather. With every curse, he forgot some of his burden. Each spark of hate warmed him a little.

By the time he made it back home, the birds were chirping. He dumped the bike at the end of the driveway, right behind Father’s car. Hopefully the old man wouldn’t notice, would back over it and ruin some of that car’s perfection. Probably not, though. Father just didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. The best revenge Jon could hope for was to make the old man move the wreckage himself. He’d take whatever he could get. He went inside.

The jokes he and Michael had made earlier about the whorishness of the average Black Rock teenage girl had a germ of truth embedded at its heart. The most average example of that type lay sprawled before him on the living room divan. His older sister, Michelle, snored away. Blobs of puke were smeared down her pinhole-burn-ridden shirt and collected into a grimy pool on the antique oriental carpet. A half-empty Beefeaters bottle lay curled under her arm like an adored child.

She was the greatest whore Jon had ever heard of, except she never got paid. She sucked a new cock every other day. Alcohol was her mother’s milk. There wasn’t a drug that she hadn’t smoked or snorted. Track marks ran up and down her arms. Every one of her teeth had rotted out of her head and had been replaced with dentures.

All this decadence was abetted by their parents. They had let Michelle effectively drop out of school at twelve. Technically, she was enrolled under the Home-School Act in New York State, but no actual educating, except how to apply makeup, went on. All assignments and tests that the state required be submitted had been forged. Jon knew this because he had been forced to write a few papers for her. On her sixteenth birthday, they officially let her withdraw from her education requirements. Father had a party to celebrate the event where Michelle was presented with her first bong, a blue glass affair with her name emblazoned along the stem in rhinestones.

She was rail thin from the substance abuse and her parents had invested in a portable IV rack, so they could inject her with nutrients whenever she passed out. At nineteen, she still looked good. The amount of slavering hormonal boys tramping through the house was testament enough to this, but that would soon pass. No one could abuse their body so much without it eventually collapsing into a wreck, or at least Jon hoped that was the case.

He felt a twinge of guilt at the schadenfreude of the idea of his sister turning into a bar hag. In a very real sense, she was as much a victim of her parents, as he was. This dead-end street her life was on had been foisted onto her by the pair. She may never really have had a choice. When a world of pleasure is tossed at you, it’s difficult to say no. Especially when you’re too young to know better. Still it was pleasure and not a similar pain that was constantly pounded onto him, and for that he was jealous. For that, he would have a little nasty fun at her expense. He needed a pick-me-up after witnessing his bike’s destruction.

Jon pulled a frozen hotdog from the freezer and thawed it a little by swirling it around in the toilet after he’d pissed in the bowl. He picked up an iron poker from the fireplace—the thing had been bricked up years ago, but they kept the paraphernalia lying around for some reason—and jabbed her with the poker. She stirred and blurted an incomprehensible phrase in a dreamy accent. He poked her again.

“All right, Ian,” she burbled, still three quarters unconscious. “Just gimme the shit, man. I’ll get you the money later. My daddy will give it to me.”

“No,” Jon said, barely suppressing an evil laugh. “You pay me now.”

“I’ll suck your dick. I’ll suck your dick. Just gimme!”

He shoved the soiled hot dog into her mouth and laughed as her filthy gums worked around it expertly. Eyes crusted over, she grunted in appreciation as she fellated the dead meat. Every time she shifted, a new foul smell wafted towards Jon. One way, vomit and stale beer. Another, a yeasty fish. Third, diseased semen. Fourth, spoiled mayonnaise.

“You’ve gotten bigger, baby,” she burped onto the hot dog.

Suddenly thirsty, he went back to the kitchen and poured himself some green apple Kool Aid from a glass pitcher.

“I forgot you weren’t cut. Sexy,” she burbled in a bad seductress voice.

It was disgusting and fascinating at the same time, like a horrific accident, impossible to tear your eyes away from. He slurped heavily from the glass as her tongue expertly worked along the meat stick’s edges. It was rhythmic, hypnotic in a way. The weird taste of the off-brand Kool Aid hung thick on his tongue.

“Are you gonna cum soon baby? I need. Need . . . ”

Reality became shiny along the edges. Some underpaid editor had over-saturated the colors. Things behind him? A door creek? Cold air? The world began to . . . No, not the world. His mind! His mind began drip-drip-dripping

plop

drip

drip

collecting

into a puddle of

nonsense at his feet

lights and boxers and monsters

in a pool of liquid rock, shaking sticks

waved and played and talked the stock market

then drank a bubbling milky scum from a big skull

Aya. They yelled. Hua. They barked. Ska. Ska

monoamine oxidase inhibitor their god

there was a man from Nantucket

who showed a left hand

until until

Plop!

Where the hell was he? His room? Yes, his room. It had to be . . . but. Oh Christ, he was tired. If he had slept, it couldn’t have been for long. He was naked in his bed on top of the covers . . . and his mother stood over him, frowning as usual. He covered up with his hands quickly.

“Oh, please, there’s nothing worth looking at on you.”  

She threw a piece of paper on his skinny chest. A note written in Father’s hand.

“It’s for yesterday,” she said. “An excuse for school.”

“Yesterday?” he said weakly. “I went there yesterday.”

She stuck her face close to his, snarling contempt. “You got home late two nights ago and literally slept all of yesterday. Lazy asshole. I would’ve woken you up, but Father said to let you lie around. Not today, though. Get up and get out.”

A day? A whole day gone? He flipped his feet over the bed and tried to stand, but his legs were spaghetti. Jon’s face hit the hardwood floor. His arms barely had the strength to push himself into a sitting position.

“Hurry, I don’t have time to mess around with you,” his mother yelled and stormed out. “I have to take your sister to her school and check up on Michelle at the hospital. She almost choked to death after she fell asleep eating a hot dog.”

That woke him. “What? Is she alright?”

“What do you care?” she stepped into his doorway and considered him intently.

Long ago, Jon had mastered the art of the unintelligent blank stare. A man under as much enemy scrutiny as himself needed a defensive mechanism, a fallback face to deflect any suspicion. It was a masterful expression. Blank unintelligent surprise with a touch of sadness at the corners. The eyes mutely crying how can you suspect me? It had gotten him out of more than one jam. This time, Mother bought it.

“Father is down there now threatening a lawsuit. They’re trying to put her in rehab or some Narcotics Anonymous bullshit. We’ll have to slam the sue hammer down on them.”

His younger sister appeared briefly behind her mother’s legs and stuck her tongue out at him, then ran down the stairs giggling with evil intent. His mother burrowed into his blank face, mentally trying to tear it away and expose some dark guilt. Her brow furrowed and lips pinched in concentration, but the eternal enemy, time, got in the way. She glanced at her watch and stomped off. The front door slammed. Now that the source of tension had evaporated, blackness claimed Jon.

He snorted awake sometime later, still sitting propped up against the bed. The alarm clock was blaring, must have been for hours. He wiped the crud from his eyes. 11:30. Christ, half the day gone. Well, no point in going now. The way punishment worked at the school, missing part of the day was as bad as the whole of it, so he might as well take full advantage. The malaise affecting him earlier had washed away. A few minutes of stretching later, he felt absolutely great. Ready to take on the world.

The clothes he had been wearing were thrown in a pile by his closet. Like everything else, he had no memory of taking them off. Jon did an inventory. Jeans, T-shirt, underwear, socks. Sneaker- singular. Sneaker? Where was the other one? Damn it. He franticly began digging through the mess that was his room. In the closet, under the bed, by the dresser, around the desk. Nothing. He had to find it.

Not that he even liked them. They were just another reminder how his parents cheapened his life. All his pals, even broke-ass Louis, had Nikes. And what did Jon’s affluent parents bequeath him? KangaROOS, a knock-off Australian brand in ugly grey with pink trim. Their only distinguishing feature was a little pocket and zipper on the side. The pocket might sound pretty cool, but it was too small to hold anything thicker than a dime. Essentially it was just a useless zipper to spice up the look of a poorly stitched shoe.

Still, there would be hell to pay if it was lost. He could feel his mother’s tongue lashing against his back already, yelling at him for hours. Maybe buying him an even worse pair if that was possible. He scoured the living room, the last place he remembered being, but there was nothing. All of the puke had been expertly scrubbed out of the carpet and couch. Maybe they’d found the sneaker and tossed it somewhere.

The rest of the downstairs also yielded nothing, so he hit the upper floors. Perhaps Catherine had taken it. That would explain her laughter earlier. He kicked open her door. Decorated in the style of a fantasy princess, her room was full of pink and white, silk and lace. The bed was the most comfortable around. The TV was prominently displayed with a horde of plush animals surrounding it. Every Barbie accessory a little girl could want was crammed in there. Every top-of-the-line ballerina accouterment, batons for twirling, and makeup as well as jewelry for when they hit the child pageant circuit. Everything was beautiful and spotless. He hated it. And as far his rooting could tell, there was no sneaker.

Michelle’s room, actually a converted attic space, was locked up tight. The only way in was a ladder that extended from a pull-down rope. Jon had never seen up there. He’d only smelled dubious odors wafting down.

That left his parents’ room. A place he feared to tread. He creaked the door open, half-afraid some booby trap would swing out and decapitate him. It was pleasantly arranged. Nothing audacious. The decor was almost muted. Catherine’s room was far more extravagant. It wasn’t until he opened drawers and closets that the decadence shined. Designer clothes, racks of fashionable shoes, expensive scents, tasteful jewelry, a drawer full of Rolexes. The St. Fonds did not practice self-denial.

He was digging through Father’s shoe trees, filled with Testoni Italian leather shoes, when he heard a click. His elbow had hit a concealed button along the line of the wall, invisible to the naked eye. The back of the closet dislodged from its base and retracted a quarter of an inch. He pushed and the back slid to the left. There was a small alcove with an electric hum.

Inside was filled with monitors, each displaying a different room. There must have been a hidden camera hook-up riddling the house. As he looked closer, there were multiple views of every room, each from a different angle. No stone was left unturned. No blind spots were obvious. His room was there. Catherine’s as well. The attic, the bathrooms (ugh), the master bedroom, the kitchen, the basement. Two even displayed the back and front yards. These all connected up to a high shelf, full of VCRs recording every movement. Jon had never suspected anything like this.

A padded fold-out chair was in the corner, next to a Waterford glass and bottle of—he picked it up—Glenlivet Nadurra. The label identified it as an eighteen-year-old single malt. Jon didn’t know much about liquor, the smell nauseated him, but made the educated guess it was expensive.

He flipped the chair open and plopped down, holding the bottle by the neck, taking in the enormity of the find. This room wasn’t supposed to be here. He knew the architectural specs, the original ones from the 1920s he had come across in his research, and every square inch was accounted for. All of the rooms were roughly of the same dimension as originally designed. Or were they?

He moved his hands across the walls. Solid yellow pine on both sides. The nails and studs seemed to be aged the same as well, but the shelves holding the VCRs and monitors were made of plywood, and were screwed in, not nailed. The screw heads were shinier, obviously having been added at a later date. Logic dictated that this little room had been a detail added to the original blueprints at the orders of his great-great-grandfather, who went through workmen like toilet paper. How many other little rooms were there?

He unscrewed the whiskey and took a snort, then suppressed a blob of vomit. How could people drink that shit? He’d take a slug of Mountain Dew over that piss any day of the week. He had an emergency stash of the soda in the back of his own closet, which of course his parents knew.

So they had been watching him his whole life. Every cry, every panic attack, every imaginary conversation, every masturbatory incident, everything. It must be how they knew about Louis. They wouldn’t have had to read his journal. They probably knew about Kathy too. Course he didn’t remember ever dialing Louis from his house, but his memory wasn’t perfect. Maybe he should rewind the tape. How far back did they go? He popped one out. It was a specialty job, very expensive, and contained enough tape to last twenty-four hours. He returned it to the machine and pressed record.

He looked closer at the screen, was the definition good enough to pick up phone calls? Each of the monitors had a joystick that allowed the camera angle to be adjusted, a little button on top zoomed the image in. He pushed it in on the rotary phone at his little desk—another way they screwed him, everyone else had a touchpad phone extension. Yeah, the picture was clear enough.

Movement caught his eye. The front door swung open. In sauntered his mother and a stranger. He was tall and bald of pate with a black goatee, dressed in a cream-colored turtleneck and black slacks. The stranger had the same bearing Father did, command and obedience. Jon zoomed in on his mother’s face. There was something odd about it, she was almost giddy?

“Make yourself at home,” she said, surprising Jon. He didn’t realize the cameras included sound.

“I will,” the man replied. His tone was dusky and thick. A heavy smoker’s voice, with a faint trace of a French accent. “And I’ll have a drink as well.”

“Of course!” his mother tittered and scurried off like a schoolgirl. “I think we have some Privilège Cognac left.”

The man seated himself at the dining room table and threw a manila folder, thick with papers, on it. Mother returned with a glass and a bottle and stood over him, pouring. As she served, the stranger’s hand crept up her leg, feeling the muscles in his hard grip, then slipped it up under her skirt. Her teeth gnashed together and lips fluttered. In pleasure? In pain? Impossible to tell at this angle.

“You’ve been keeping yourself fit,” he said.

“Oh yes.”

“Absolom?” came the dark voice of Father.

They turned, Jon jumped. So intent was he on the scene, he didn’t notice the patriarch’s entrance. This would be interesting. A fight? A murder? An orgy? But it was none of the above.

Father sat across from the stranger, unperturbed by where the newcomer had lodged his right hand. The bald Frenchman, named Absolom, squeezed harder. Mother was paralyzed. Her fingers ground into the table varnish.

“What brings you here,” Father asked in his calm commanding manner, “besides a cheap distraction.”

Absolom chuckled to himself and pushed the folder over. “We think we may have found the perfect place. The Osbourne Canning Company has a few acres that they need to get rid of. It’s close, isolated, but not too isolated. Has that special tint we require. They bought it originally as equity to borrow against for a further business venture. On paper it looks like prime land, until you realize what’s actually there.”

Father glanced at the papers then laughed long and loud. “That’s a novel way to handle a loan. Very admirable in fact. Sneaky and bold, simultaneously.”

“It was all financed through a bank in Wisconsin. They must have sent an inspector, but he was either bribed off or was an idiot.”

“Or something else.”

“Quite,” came the grinning reply, his hand clutching deeper under the skirt, pulling out a groan from Jon’s mother. Father was absorbed by the paperwork. “Still the loan went through. Now, fifty years later, the business is about to go under, so they need to raise some capital. It’s perfect for what we want. Now that the great—”

“Enough proselytizing. Let’s focus on details. The asking price is still pretty high considering the area. What about the structures? How are they holding up?”

“Left to decay. The company just needed the deed to the land. They didn’t maintain it, couldn’t build on it, now they can’t get rid of it. Wear and tear, lot of vandalism, but that’s not important.”

“No, it isn’t,” Father agreed. “Still, there’s no reason we should get raped here.”

“Be as unfair as you want. The thing’s a millstone to them. I’m almost certain we’ll be the only bid. May I?” The Frenchman nodded to Jon’s near-drooling mother.

“Hmmm? Oh,” Father said absentmindedly. “Help yourself.” Then leafed over the next page.

Absolom manhandled her back into the kitchen. She screeched hysterically with joy, as her skirt was roughly ripped away and he ravaged her over the sink.

She submissively took the pounding, gasping in pleasure over the dirty dishes. Eventually he loosed his sperm and fell back, red face and swearing. Absolom had cum so hard that he lost control of his legs and fell, bare ass streaking across the linoleum. Jon’s mother just stood there quivering.

Father leaned against the doorframe, the snifter of cognac swirling between two fingers, dark amusement smeared on his face. “Having fun there?” he asked his fallen comrade. The other just laughed, still completely spent.

“You two’s fuckplay has fired me up,” Father growled, and grabbed his wife by the throat, forcing her to bend backwards over the counter, “though I prefer the front hole.” And he plunged in, rough and bestial.

Jon couldn’t tear himself away. It was an erotic car wreck. There was a dark hilarity in watching a parent you despise get hate-fucked. Still, there was something fundamentally wrong about watching family members having sex. Okay, it was a natural biological urge everyone indulged in, but his instincts revolted at the sight of his parents below.

“No, no. The ass, the ass, mon ami,” Absolom chided, still lying on the floor. “Never was a passage created that could give such pleasure as that noble channel. No slimy cunt ever fulfilled me as much as a beautifully tight anus.”

Father finished with a roaring bellow and several short hard pelvic thrusts. His wife’s face had gone purple from his grip on her throat. He threw her aside and staggered, a few stray specks of semen spat into the sink. Onto his younger sister’s favorite dish, Jon noted. His mother fell to the floor as well, gasping for air, hand massaging her neck, staring up at Father in fear, excitement, and adoration.

No one could blame Jon from taking that second slug of whiskey. This time he barely flinched at its bouquet. His parents’ kinks were something he didn’t want to know about. It actually wasn’t that much of a surprise. He had caught some clues in the past. Discarded sex toys in the trash and the like. However, that didn’t mean he wanted to be slapped in the face with a bird’s eye view. It also blew up a popular theory of Jon’s that his mother acted like she did towards him out of sexual frustration. Clearly not the case. That bummed him. The thought of her misery darkly lightened his own.

He turned off the kitchen monitors. Enough of that. Their voices still drifted in from other cameras, but it was lower, babbling. He was probably stuck there for the duration. Out of boredom he chugged a third shot and began playing with the joysticks. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Wait! What was that?

In the basement monitor, near a far corner was a sneaker. No, not a sneaker. His sneaker. He zoomed in. The little zipper on the side confirmed it. How the fuck did it get down there? He knew that, no matter what state he was in, there was no way he would’ve entered that dank hole.

The rewind button was pushed. The image of the basement spooled backwards. Nothing, nothing, nothing. It was like a slug negotiating a staircase. Was that . . . ? Nope, just his mother taking out a load of laundry, his younger sister dancing behind her in ballet shoes, then walking backwards up the stairs. Time zipped on. She came back down and put the laundry in. Then nothing. Nothing stirred, not even a mouse. It wasn’t until the very end, the last minute of tape that he saw—

Four figures in black hooded robes carrying his naked body. Weird marks were painted in red up and down his frame, circling the genitals and nipples. His face had been coated with a white paste. One figure held his clothes and accidently dropped the sneaker. Then they went upstairs.

He leapt to the other cameras and rewound those tapes. After frantic pushing and waiting, he pieced together a few more scenes. One was him being hauled through the living room. No one’s face was visible. His older sister still lay there, hotdog dangling from her mouth. Another scene had him being propped up in the shower. The red and white body paint trickled down the drain. Finally, he was tossed onto the bed and his clothes thrown in a corner.  

Okay . . . okay . . . calm down. Wipe away the cold sweat. Another shot? Hell, make it two. Regrettably, the terror of what he’d uncovered chased away any effects of the alcohol. Was it some perverted sex thing? What were those symbols? Assuming two were his parents, who were the others? Absolom seemed to be a new arrival, so that, at least, left two others. His parents didn’t have any friends that he knew of. A statement that spoke volumes about them.

Then he heard his name from a live camera. Clear as a bell, his mother had said, “Jon.” The rest was garbled by distance from the camera. He flipped the monitors back on. The three of them were standing, pants pulled back up. His mother wearing a different skirt. Absolom was examining an earthenware bowl while the others drank cognac.

“ . . . will happen like we wanted to,” Father was saying.

“I’m worried,” his mother said. “The way he’s been acting is troubling.”

Troubling? Troubling how? In what manner? Hadn’t he gone along with whatever they told him? And if they were troubled, what would they do to him— beyond, apparently, what they were doing while he was unconscious. No sleep tonight.

“I know better than you do. No woman could understand what a boy goes through. You’ve never had to do it yourself.”

“But . . . ”

“That’s enough,” Father ordered and she immediately shut her mouth.

Absolom gave up the bowl with a wink. “It is good,” he proclaimed. “Just what the physician ordered. Now, when can it be delivered?”

“Later,” Father said, handing his wife the item. “Put it in the safe.”

Safe? What safe? Jon’s mother nodded and ascended the stairs. To his horror Jon realized she must be coming into the master bedroom. He fumbled over the chair and, as quietly as he could, replaced the concealed door. Retaking his seat, he peered at the bedroom monitors. His blood froze.

Mother was already in the room. She stood at the end of the bed and was staring at the closet. Long minutes dragged by and she just stood there. Motionless, looking, listening. He held his breath and clutched the bottle close like it was a comfort animal. Finally, eyes still on the closet, she began to move to the head of the bed. She flipped up the ugly picture over the headboard. It was some Blake print of a nearly naked guy doodling with an old-fashioned compass. Underneath it was a safe embedded in the wall. It was rather modern with a computerized keypad, Jon had no idea when they could have had it installed. As she jabbed in a key code, Jon pushed the picture in as close as he could, mentally repeating the numbers over and over. The bowl was deposited and the room restored.

Downstairs there was laughing. When Mother joined them, it was suggested that they all go out for steaks, drinking, and dancing. The proposal was roundly applauded and the trio left. After emerging from the hidden hole, the first thing Jon did was flip the picture and yank the safe open. Inside, there was about ten-thousand dollars, two .45 automatic pistols, various deeds to properties around the city, a very detailed genealogical chart of the St. Fond family, and the bowl.

The outside of the bowl was fired red earthenware with a thick glaze. Crude symbols were etched all through it, then painted in white. Intersecting lines and circles mainly, with pluses and Os darting inside and along the closed sections of the lines. One fat wave ran all along the bowl, connecting every symbol. The inside was something else entirely. The bottom half was inlaid with a convex shaped bone, possibly a skull cap. Scrimshawed on it was a complex circular pattern, much more skillful than the outside.

The pattern was a series of concentric circles, each with runes or glyphs or just decoration that Jon couldn’t decipher. The center was an ugly face, grimacing up at the world with a pleated knife for its tongue. Two clawed hands clutched a human heart. Four squares surrounded the center, each depicting a monstrous face. Two animal skulls snarled out at the rest of the circles that were all filled with bizarre symbols. They became smaller and smaller, until you needed a microscope to see the images.

Jon couldn’t see much point to the item, but he assumed it wasn’t for anything good. He quickly became much more interested in the charts. Once unfolded, it spread across the whole of king-sized bed like an extra comforter. Hundreds of names and dates were recorded on the yellowed paper, right up into modern times, with the addition of a 5th cousin born only two weeks ago from a family branch in Louisiana. Many of his relatives were still in France, it seemed.

Jon knew his family’s origin was French. He had some famous ancestor who wrote various important books on geology and ballooning—well “important” to people who cared about any of that stuff. Benjamin Franklin had had a brief correspondence with the man, and their letters were warehoused at the National Archives. The extent shown on the chart, however, surprised him. Obviously, his parents still kept in touch with the extended family, but Jon had never been exposed to them. He did remember one trip his mother had made to France, about three years ago, along with his younger sister. He’d been told the trip was something to do with her feminist business, but that may have been a lie.

Mildly curious, he looked for his own name and found it listed with his two sisters. Above it, he saw his parents’ names and something odd. It seemed his mother’s maiden name was St. Fond as well. A further line connected her to a branch of the family residing in Key West. His parents were cousins . . . distant cousins, but still blood related. Was he the product of incest? The thought nauseated him. He saw many other such pairings all across the chart. Yuck.

So, what to do? There was money. He could run. But where? The only place that might be a refuge was Michael’s house. Well, Michael’s room. The rest of that family was disinterested in him. Louis and Kathy might be able to help him out as well. Then he remembered that Kathy’s parents had something to do with archeology and historical junk. Perhaps they could shed light on this weird thing.

He grabbed a Polaroid camera from his parents’ closet and shot twelve photos of the bowl. As for the cash, he grabbed about a hundred dollars, a little back payment for the abuse he had suffered. He thought about taking more but decided to leave the rest. If he needed to run, then he’d grab it. Maybe there was some possible non-sinister explanation for all this. He laughed at himself. Highly unlikely.

The bowl was shut back up in the safe and the painting restored. The problem was how to erase himself from the tapes. He couldn’t just leave them off, that would attract suspicion, but now they were un-synced. Several of them would stop before the rest. Maybe they would automatically rewind and start over, some of these machines did that. Or perhaps no one would look at the tapes. After all, his parents couldn’t go through them every day, could they? Then if he stayed away from the house, that would give them the incentive to look at the tapes and see what he had discovered.

Screw it. He could go round and round like this forever. Jon stopped all of the tapes, retrieved the sneaker from the basement—doing his ritual, running as fast as he could in and out of there, the sick feeling gripped him harder now—then rewound all of the tapes back two hours and hit record. If they checked, he would still be seen leaving the master bedroom. A risk he had to take.

After grabbing a few juice packs and granola bars from the pantry, he zipped off down the road to meet his gaming buddies. But somehow the adventures of Crixen Runeburner were dim and lifeless that night.