Harvey - Pulse

HEAVY HANDS pull him from a skim of sleep, a blind scramble for the door handle and the backseat of the car, vinyl rough on his face as hes dragged across it. He wriggles like bait on a hook, cold air pimpling bare skin, the mouth of the trunk grinning wide and deep. And then hes dropped inside, a blur of features flashing at the edge of the frame before the lid slams shut and the voices recede and he huddles against a spare tire, smelling the cold rubber and grease, retreating into the womb while the radio gets turned up and the voices rise and fall, bubbles of laughter giving way to a gentle rocking in the springs, low moans in rhythm, building.

He hears his mothers sigh, long and circling down, whispering her pleasure, whispering her sadness, whispering her fear, whispering apologies to the son shed never see again. A second voice breaks the surface, a mans, muscular and pulsing, calling Daniels mother by her first name as he wraps his hands around her throat and claims her life.

Easy now, Violet. The man speaks like he strangles, in smooth, velvet strokes. Little more, little more. Thats it. Now, down you go.

And then it grows still. A rattle of keys and the dry cough of an engine. The car begins to roll, picking up speed as it tumbles forward. Daniel pulls up his legs and kicks at the wall of the trunk with both feet. As the car goes airborne, the eight-year-old is birthed all over again, this time into the backseat of a 58 Buick.

* * *

Daniel Fitzsimmons opened his eyes and scanned the bumpy terrain of the schoolyard, the fall of the gulley that led to the street, faces in the windows of a bus as it toiled past. When youre different, really different, you know it. You wear it like a second skin, one youd give anything to slip even if just for a moment. But you cant. Youre inside the game and the games inside you and it runs your head and messes with your mind and theres no way back, no way forward, no map to normal. No matter what anyone tells you. At least not in this life.

Hed known all this before he was ever capable of knowing. It worked in his blood like a fever, surging and ebbing, keeping him off-balance, at odds, adrift in a sea of shifting depths. Then his mother died. And no one suspected the truth but him. No one ever would. And now he was ten.

Hed never been much of a talker. After the crash and the hospital and the rest of it, his world shrank to a single pointjust him and his brother. Barely a word for well-meaning foster parents, cow-eyed teachers and counselors. Not a scrap for any of the kids in any of the schools. It wasnt a surprise then that he had no friends. And if you had no friends on a schoolyard in Dorchester, you sure as hell had enemies.

Joey Watts was older. Thirteen, fourteen. Big, dumb as a hog, hard in the chin and eyes. Suspicious, greedy, scared of the world, and pure bully. He came up behind Daniel as he sheltered against a wall, waiting for the bell that would take them into class. Daniel could feel the bullys approach, tracking it in his head in some way he didnt yet understand. Watts stopped a few feet away, measuring. Then he stepped forward and popped Daniels cap off his head. Watts snickered. Three of his pals were watching and snickered as well.

Freak, the bully said.

Fitzsimmons the freak, his friends echoed.

Daniel bent for the black-and-gold Bruins cap. His hand found a rock, hard and smooth, shaped to a purpose. Daniel gripped it and felt its curve while something stirred in his chest, something ancient and evil, blessed and sublime. The young warrior in him wanted to strike out even as the old man within counseled patience. The enemy still lay hidden, not yet ready to be named.

Daniel let the rock slip from his fingers and picked up the cap. As he straightened, Watts lashed out again, catching Daniel in the ribs with a boot. He fell forward, pulping his face against the pavement and splitting his lip to the meat. He tasted blood rich in his mouth and heard his mind whisper as it whirred, spinning fast, stopping at the nexus of a certain time and a certain place. The pale sun shifted behind some clouds and the air grew bitter. Daniel wiped his face and raised his eyes to his tormentor, piercing him to his essence, fixing him to his fate.

You drowned her. You didnt mean it. You were just being mean. But you did it.

In a stroke, Daniel had slipped inside Joey Watts, two now one. He saw the bully as a boy, in the summer of his eleventh year, standing nipple deep in the cold waters of the Quincy quarry, pushing down on the head of nine-year-old Jeannie Jameson. Daniel watched her mouth fill as she went under for the last time, felt the grim thrill that coursed through Wattss body as the little grub thrashed and kicked and her life streamed away in a string of tiny bubbles. And then everything blurred, a final fingernail scratching the back of Wattss wrist before her limbs went soft and sloppy and sank.

You watched them try to revive her on the rocks, Daniel said. And then you left with your pals.

He reached out to touch Watts, but the boy reared back, nostrils flaring, a wild look in his eyes. And then he ran, the others with him. No shame was so great they couldnt bear, anything to be distant from those eyes and the god-awful truth that lived therein.

Twenty years distant, Joey Watts would climb over a railing on the upper deck of the Tobin Bridge during rush hour, take one look at the pale-ribbed water below, and jump like a motherfucker. In his studio apartment, the cops would find a woman dead in a bathtub along with a note about Jeannie Jameson and that summer day at the quarry. Theyd also find Daniels initials scrawled all over the walls. No one would ever make heads or tails out of that part of it. No one ever could.

The playground in Dorchester was empty; the wind stilled. A bell tolled, calling Daniel to class. By the time he slipped into his seat, hed chalked up the whole thing with Joey Watts to his imagination. The lead in his belly, however, told a different tale. Whatever had taken hold of him was still there, submerged in the blood, waiting.

Six years later, it would resurface.