Tom Piccirilli - A Choir of Ill Children

B A N T A M B O O K S

NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND

For Michelle, who gives me a reason
Id like to thank the following people for their friendship,
support and encouragement over the writing of this novel:
Jack Cady, Lee Seymour, Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini,
Gerard Houarner, Matt Schwartz, Caniglia,
T. M. Wright, Simon Clark, and Tim Lebbon
Extra special thanks to Jeremy Lassen and Jason Williams,
who heard the weird song

W E MOVE IN SPASMS.

My brothers because they are conjoined at the frontal lobe, and mebecause for me there is no other way to continue moving.

They have three throats and three bodies, three intertwined minds and many feelings, but only one voice. They even have a lover, Dodi Coots, who sleeps at the foot of their king-size bed with the back of her hand brushing Sebastians ankle. Her breath is tinged with bourbon and chocolate, a few strands of hair wafting against the corners of her mouth.

She does for them now what I always did for themempties their bedpans, feeds each separate mouth, helps them into their fresh pajamas, gives them sponge baths, and assists them in brushing their own teeth, which remain white and perfect from what I can see.

They dream, sweating with their immense brow furrowed, and they tell me their fantasies in whispers. Each mouth forms a different syllable, framing an independent idea, with an individual limit of emotion. Sebastian is full of malice, Jonah with regret, and Cole speaks of love and nothing but love, no matter how hideous his words. They murdered a six-year-old child, or so they said. Theyre vague about it. On occasion they make it sound like they killed him, and at other times it seems they only discovered him. I can find no body or evidence, no reports of a missing kid, while I listen to their murmured descriptions every night, and still Cole speaks of love.

Its happened before. I once found a dead boy in the swamp.

My brothers face one another with no need to move their lips, conversing inside the single massive bald head and fractured mind. Silently they argue and debate and agree, lying on the bed, nostrils flaring and their hands sometimes flapping. Since birth theyve stared into each others eyes, sharing the same blood flow and coursing neurochemicals. They have only one epiphysis cerebri, also known as the pineal gland, which was called the third eye by ancient peoples who believed it to have mystical properties.

This impedes their mammoth brains capability to produce the hormone melatonin, which regulates daily body rhythms, most notably the circadian rhythm of the day / night cycle. Their points of view are skewed by the endless intimacy and proximity. Only inches from one anothers noses, breathing the mutually stale air, unable to see much of anything except each others grimacing faces. As in blind children, they cannot differentiate between morning and midnight.

When they talk to me, they often speak in the first person, and its sometimes difficult for me to discern who is saying what and whether they all feel the same way.

Dodi coos in her sleep. She sighs and purrs, stretching so that her thigh drips moonlight across the floor. Dead leaves brush against the window, tapping softly. She creeps upon my brothers and tastes each of them in turn, stiffly swabbing the bulging curves of their forebrain, sweeping across the trinity of their stunted, twisted bodies. Knuckles brush the headboard, and four sets of feet whirl and kick.

I force myself not to look and end up staring at the wall instead. As the moon descends it draws their writhing shadows into focus, and I see the amazing things she does with every pliable cusp and muscle as they utter her name with flicking tongues. A name full of bitterness, reluctance, and wonder.

Her mother, Velma Coots, gave Dodi to me in trade for digging some screw worms out of her two cows and fixing the roof of her shanty. The years of humidity and rain and Spanish moss bleeding into the wood had rotted it to tissue. My brothers and I are the richest men in the town of Kingdom Come, Potts County, and still the conjure woman found it necessary to pay me. The price didnt matter to her, I knew. Only the service and finality of exchange.

Dodi got into my truck holding a small bundle of dirty clothes in her lap and didnt say a word. I wasnt even sure she could speak until she woke me one night, between all of their legs, caged by their bones, hidden under all that flesh, and whimpering, Jesus, help me now and at the hour of my death, you bastard.

Its not something you want to hear. Other men might have argued or refused Velma Coots, which is why she did not trade Dodi to anyone but me, and why I didnt dig screw worms out of anybody elses cows but hers. The conjure woman stood in her yard beside water elm and loblolly pine, with her chin jutting, waiting to see what might happen next.

I waited too. My father killed himself because he could not accept backwoods swamp water ways like this, even though hed never left Potts County himself. He fought the tradition of his own past and paid his price for it.

I shook my head and drove off with Dodi. No matter what I had to do, I would not end up like my father.

W E MAY HAVE A SISTER TOO, BUT I CANT BE certain. Our parents never said anything to me about it, but there are odd indentations along the left side of my rib cage, pointed and with attitude, which could be a womans features.

Or they could be bruises and welts that never faded from some childhood scuffle. Or knife scars from the drunken brawls in the back of barrooms. Or perhaps fingernail scratches from one of the roadhouse gals I cant remember. They are beautiful and unforgettable when the icy beer and triple boilermakers wear down the spiked edges of the world enough to become bearable for another minute. The middle-aged women slow dance with me across the wet floor of Leadbetters, denying their anguish as we move, in spasms, out to the parking lot and into the back of my truck.

J ONAH HAS FALLEN IN LOVE WITH SARAH, WHO IS doing a student documentary about my family.

Shes been staying in the house a couple of weeks now, along with her cameraman, Fred. She tries to interview me but thinks Im only another witless Kingdom Come swamp rat losing my mind to 160 proof moonshine. Shes got the high lilt of a Jewish American Princess straight from the Gold Coast of Long Island, but she enjoys passing herself off as an East Village bohemian.

Theres a tattoo on her hip that peeks out whenever she stands on her toes to fix the cheap halogen lights and the aluminum parabolic reflectors, but I cant make out what it might be. Its not sharp work, and the colors already appear faded. Her navel is pierced, which I find sort of sexy. Theres a slight scar around the piercing from where infection had set in. Shes the kind of girl who might smuggle hashish in the binding of D. M. Thomass The White Hotel. Sarah wants to be eccentric but just doesnt have the stomach for it.

Being around my brothers terrifies her, and she cant hold back her staggering nausea. Sebastian chuckles as she grows pale talking with them, doing her best not to gag but still turning a nice shade of green, swallowing down her bile. She talks about the Sundance Film Festival, repeating the words like a mantra.