Angel of the Underground. David Andreas
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know what always puts a smile on my face?”
“Hopefully not Chopping Mall or Christmas Evil.”
“Chopping Mall is awesome, but I meant this.” He hands me a box for a movie called C.H.U.D. The cover has a monster with bright eyes climbing out of a sewer. “The sequel’s called Bud the Chud, but it bites the big one so we’ll have to look for something else that’s city or sewer related.”
I point out a box that has a screaming face stretched over a city skyline. “How about City of Blood?” Dennis looks over the cover, and approves by placing it on top of C.H.U.D.
After close to a half-hour of watching Dennis scrutinize half the alphabet, we leave with a bag of four rentals. During the trip home, I feel confident that bonding with Dennis will lead to some outside activities along the lines of playing catch or going in the pool. I don’t bring up either, as I plan to ask him about each during whichever movie we watch first. When we arrive back at his house, however, Dennis’s joyful appearance vanishes when he sees a brown SUV parked crookedly in the driveway. Chunky rubber strips lead from the street to the back tires.
“Shit,” Dennis mutters, “Barry’s home.”
While we’re climbing off our bikes near the garage, Barry erupts from the front door and storms toward us. Despite his size, he moves awfully fast. Dennis, with no time to react defensively, is seized by his left ear and slapped in the gut. He crumples forward and coughs up a wad of phlegm that he spits on the lawn.
Barry points directly at me and says, “You go inside!” Stunned, I forget how to move. I try to think of a way to keep his temper from worsening, but am afraid I’m what set him off to begin with. I am, after all, supposed to remain hidden. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, Robin! Now please, get in the house!”
Jeremy opens the front door and says, “You heard the man! Get your bike stealing ass in here!” Barry attacks Dennis with an array of open handed punches. Dennis grunts as he takes the hits. I press my palms against my ears and start humming, but I can still hear Jeremy’s shrill laughter as he follows me into the living room. Not long after, Dennis fumes inside and heads straight for the basement. He rips open the door and slams it behind himself hard enough to make the chandelier swing back and forth.
Barry, sweaty and out of breath, enters with the video store bag. He peeks inside and says, “What the hell is a C.H.U.D.?”
“Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller,” Jeremy says while snatching the bag. “Let me see what else they rented.” He too goes downstairs, but closes the door gently.
Barry stands before me and puts his hands on his hips. I can’t bring myself to look him in the eye. Even though Dennis did something wrong on my account, he didn’t have to go through a beating by someone twice his size. Sister Alice has nonviolent ways of reprimanding us, and makes it clear that no person should ever physically harm another, since every conflict in the world could be resolved with dialogue.
“I’m sorry,” Barry says, “but he knew bringing you out in public is a bad idea. I specifically said—”
“Sit down, son,” Nathan rasps from his chair. “The doc warned you about that heart.”
Barry drops down on the couch and sinks deep into the cushions. He maneuvers himself forward and props his elbows on his knees. “The point in taking you in is so the guy killing everyone doesn’t know where you are.”
“I made the decision to go,” I say.
“Honey, words could never describe the severity of your situation.” I nod in partial agreement, since my traveling through town in broad daylight, despite my need for distraction, was actually dangerous, but I can’t bear to hear any excuses for abuse. When I step toward the basement Barry adds, “Don’t even think about bothering him. He’s being punished.”
I skulk downstairs, wondering how to mind Barry and check in on Dennis at the same time, and decide to pay him the quickest visit possible. I gently knock on Dennis’s door, but he doesn’t answer, most likely because nobody likes to be seen crying. I open the door an inch and whisper into the slit, “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.” Dennis doesn’t respond. I open the door a little more and nearly fall backward when I see his face.
Dennis’s right eye has already turned shades of black and blue. A purple welt on his cheek appears ready to explode. His upper lip is cracked and encrusted with blood. He looks desperate for care, but I’m not sure how to extend him any. Hugs go far in rectifying some problems, but I don’t know Dennis well enough to hug him, so I sit down on his bed close enough for our knees to touch. I watch for his reaction, to see if he’s too upset with me to have me this close, but his watery eyes remain focused on the TV. I follow them to a menu screen for Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. Before long, he presses a remote control button that starts the movie.
After a slow forming New Line Cinema logo, a narrator tells of hapless victims who once fell prey to a cannibalistic clan of serial killers. When the narration concludes, a sledgehammer rises. A woman’s screaming face fills the screen. The sledgehammer swings forward. A vicious white splat forms the title. Between credits, a filthy, hulking man slaps down the woman’s severed face onto a workbench, cuts the skin into pieces, and stitches them back together. Dennis leans forward with a grin, as though death has fulfilled him.
“Why does this make you happy?” I ask.
He replies, “Because I’m not her.”
Someone in the hallway clears his throat. Fearing Barry’s arrival, I bounce away from Dennis and look to Nathan with mild relief. He’s standing in the door frame with his lips curled over his teeth and his eyes sunken in a gloomy haze. “Come upstairs,” he says to me, “we need to talk.”
I follow Nathan upstairs, which takes quite awhile since he can only manage one slow step at a time. In the living room, a wooden chair is already set before his recliner. Two full glasses of lemonade are waiting on the end table. When I sit down, Nathan eases into his recliner and hands me a sweaty glass. I haven’t had a drink since biking through the sun, and I suck down half before realizing I must look like an animal. Nathan waits for my final swallow before saying, “We’re not bad people.”
“No, sir,” I reply.
“We just need to make sure you keep a low profile.”
“I understand, but I’m not used to hiding.”
He rotates his wedding band a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, releasing a steady stream of breath. “About this morning.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“Aside from Lori, who’s not much of a personality, there hasn’t been a female presence in this house since my wife had a stroke two months ago.” He leans to his left and pries out a wallet from his right pants pocket. He opens it, sorts through a plastic accordion, and extracts a small picture that he hands to me. On a park bench, seated beside an impossibly young Nathan, is a youthful woman with light hair and dark glasses. Their hands are entwined and they’re smiling.
“Come this September, Gail and I will have been married fifty-four years.” The baby monitor on the TV stand crackles. A moan sounds within the white noise. “You’d have liked her. She once had an association with God. When she was in her late teens she was in practice to become a nun, but then she met a certain churchgoer.” He softly puts a hand on his chest. “We courted quietly for several months, and were on the verge of calling it quits so she could continue with her vows but . . . you see, she became pregnant.”
“With Barry?”