Gone to the Wolves: A Novel

BERLIN 1991

She was gone before Cannibal Corpse took the stage. The faithful had mustered in full force that night, hundreds of German headbangers sardine-canned into a Kreuzberg club that would have been claustrophobic at eighty—but Kip knew Kira was leaving, doing just as she’d promised, taking advantage of the crush and confusion to make her escape. He felt it as an itching in his brain.

He had his back to the stage when the first roar went up, searching that sea of open mouths for anything out of place, any contrary current, someone small but determined pushing out through the crowd. Already the itching had given way to dumb animal fear. Kira had stood pressed against him for hours, resting her head on his shoulder, sometimes even taking his hand in both of hers—and now she was nowhere. He needed to find her. He stood groping for handholds in the smoke-heavy air, desperate to lever himself upward, to levitate for a fraction of a second above the beer-slick floor. He was stoned but just barely. A voice said something to him in German, politely but firmly, and he told it in German to go fuck itself.

The houselights went dim and the roar seemed to thicken, going heavy and anxious, the way it always did before the first riff dropped. Kip caught sight of something—a silver-blond head between two hulking bouncers, one of whom looked to be wearing a genuine spiked helmet from World War I. The air started strobing, fluttering against his eardrums, like it does in a car with the back windows cracked. This was Kira’s favorite moment: before the first riff, when every possible outcome is conceivable, when the show that you’ve imagined is the only show there is.

Something drifted across his field of vision: a Viking face, flat-nosed and bearded, its grinning teeth already slick with blood. By that point he could barely draw a breath. The crush was the law now. The German voice came again, less politely this time. He paid no attention. Someone punched him in the stomach and the room went bright and still.

Kira beside him, rapt with listening, craning her scrawny body up to see the stage. Kira six days earlier, in her first-ever snowfall, biting her lip to keep from looking happy. Kira the year before, asleep on a bus seat, her hair dyed some shade of greenish blue he didn’t have a name for, her small skull warm and certain in his lap. Kira smoking a cigarette that someone had thrown out of a limo on West Sunset. Kira smoking a menthol. Kira smoking a philly. Kira the night they’d gotten busted at the hot springs, floating facedown in the steaming dark, pretending to be dead.

When he came back to life the Corpse was in full glory. The Corpse of his youth, of his Florida childhood, shrieking and hammering, calling down air strikes, giving that dog-faced crowd the only thing it wanted. He’d forgotten how beautiful the transaction was: how uninhibited, how generous, how pure. He would never have fought the undertow on any other night, never have been such an idiot as to try to resist—but he had to see Kira make her great escape. He needed to see her go with his own eyes.

He summoned his last reserves of strength and willed his body upward. He saw a fire door pushed open, a pale-haired silhouette, the yellow of a traffic light, the purple of the street. It was snowing again. She wasn’t alone: at least two men were with her, maybe three.

That was all Kip saw. He sank back into the current like a fishing weight with his arms against his sides. Every other head in that basement was facing the opposite way. The urge to surrender was even more massive than the riffs behind him—and suddenly he did surrender. He’d seen more than enough. She was leaving him, leaving everything she’d been, stepping with a group of strangers out into the snow. Something inside him shifted, painfully but inevitably, as if his organs were returning to their natural positions. He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth and let relief run through him. He didn’t hate her, not now. In some sense he was grateful. She’d made a clean break. Kira always knew what she was doing.

A year would pass before he learned that she’d been taken.

1

Leslie Z had three strikes against him already: he was Black, he was bi, and he liked Hanoi Rocks.

That third strike especially was borderline suicidal on the Gulf Coast of Florida in the late 1980s, where even teasing your hair up was enough to get you stomped into applesauce by the bikers, or the skinheads, or some zit-faced banger in a Carnivore shirt. Having sex with boys, or wanting to, was a minor misdemeanor in comparison. Glam was out, death was in. But Kip Norvald had no idea about these mortal ruptures in the metal scene when he first met Leslie Z. He barely even knew what metal was.

Their paths crossed on the day the Furberold kid, Lindsey Grace, was officially listed as missing, which was also Kip’s first day at Venice High. Leslie was sitting at the back of the class, his spindly legs stretching into the next row, carving something into his desktop with a bullet from his belt. The homeroom teacher—whose name, GLADYS KRUPS, took up most of the blackboard—was introducing Kip to the class in an opiated mumble, mispronouncing his name, and he could feel himself starting to panic. What he wanted more than anything, that particular fall, was to be introduced to no one. He could barely meet his own eyes in the mirror. Now he sensed an out-of-body experience coming on, and his eyes went automatically to the classroom’s farthest nook: there they encountered Leslie Z, messing around with what Kip somehow knew, in his gut, was an actual bullet. Any farther from Gladys Krups and he’d have been in the next room.

Leslie looked creepy, unsavory, accustomed to violence—which was probably his secret to survival, because he also looked ridiculous. He was too tall for his desk and way too skinny for his clothes. His studded black leather jacket might have looked cool on someone else, but Leslie wore it draped over his shoulders like a cape. His T-shirt said MY OTHER T SHIRT IS THE SKIN OF MY DEFENSELESS VICTIM. His jeans were cut to ribbons just below the knee, where they disappeared into a battered pair of yellow rubber boots. Kip’s grandmother had boots like that: she used them for gardening. It cost him considerable mental effort to make sense of them on a six-foot-plus ectomorph in eyeliner and a tasseled paisley scarf. By any reasonable standard—by any Florida standard—Leslie Z should not have been alive. The sight of him made Kip momentarily forget who he was, and where he was, and the sequence of simple but nightmarish events that had gotten him there. For a count of ten he didn’t want to die.

Leslie Z had no clue about any of this, of course, and Kip would have eaten glass before he told him. He was a quarter of the way through his senior year when he washed up on the Central Gulf Coast, three weeks shy of seventeen, and he already had a long list of things that he hoped never to have to talk or even think about again. His goal for the year was to keep his mouth shut. His new classmates were dead ringers for kids who’d beaten him up in seven municipalities and counting: fidgety and slow-brained, corn-fed and sullen, impatient for the next bad thing to happen. Venice was a way station, a holding facility. His own survival strategy was simple—to render himself invisible until the second week of June.

It took ten days for Kip’s master plan to tank. He was tooling around his grandmother’s gated community two Saturdays later, on a banana-seat Schwinn he’d found in her garage, when the gods of fate saw fit to intervene.

It happened in seconds: he took a corner a little too hard, got a case of the wobbles, managed not to wipe out, then practically ran over Leslie Z. A man in a Confederate cap had him backed up against a Coke machine behind the public restrooms. The man cursed under his breath; Leslie stammered out hey in the voice of a five-year-old girl. Alarms went off in Kip’s bewildered brain. He braced his right foot lightly on the curb.

Leslie, right?

The least possible nod. Leslie Z.

I sit next to you in homeroom. Not next to you, really. More like off to the side.

Fuck off, fag, said the redneck.

I’m Kip Norvald.

I stand corrected, said the redneck. Fuck off, Kip.

I know who you are, mumbled Leslie.

Cool, Kip heard himself answer. What’s going on here, if you don’t mind my asking?

Slowly, mechanically, the redneck’s head revolved to face him.

"We do mind you asking."

The redneck said this in a thoughtful tone, as though Kip’s question had a certain merit. He had a red neck in the most literal sense, sun-blistered and tatted, and a ruby stud in one of his front teeth.

Kip got off the Schwinn. Things were taking a distinctly dreamlike turn. Mrs. Rathmore, one of his grandmother’s neighbors, glided by on her scooter and wished him a good morning. It was already late afternoon.

I’m going to have to ask you to stop what you’re doing, Kip said to the redneck.

Is that right.

That’s right. Or I call the police.

With what? said the man. Has your bike got a phone?

Leslie let out a breath. Maybe we could all just kind of—

Kip was still trying to figure out what to say when he punched past the redneck, barely missing his face, and slammed his fist into the Coke machine. Its front wasn’t glass but it shattered like glass. Cold air snaked up his arm. His vision had gone blank—white with flickering geometric patterns, like the screen of a busted TV—the way it always did when he had one of his episodes. Things went silent and white, then dim, then inky black, then back to normal. All in less than a second. He felt no pain at all.

Shit on this, said the redneck. I’m gone.

He pushed away from Leslie, made a lazy lunge at Kip, then crossed the little parking lot and ducked into the bushes. There was a cutoff in there—a narrow dirt track, always slightly muddy, that Kip had thought he was the only one to know about. He was shaking now, which usually happened afterward, and beginning to feel things again. Mostly what he felt was fear. He pictured the redneck coming back from somewhere with a gun.

Wow, said Leslie.

I guess.

Kind of fucked up, aren’t you, son. Or maybe you’re just stupid.

You’re welcome, Kip said, pulling his bike up off the pavement.

Your hand is bleeding.

Yeah, Kip said, willing himself to stop shaking. That happens sometimes.

Excuse me?

Kip didn’t answer. It was too much to explain. Leslie sat down on the curb and closed his eyes.

How about you, man? You okay down there?

Leslie passed a hand gingerly over his face. There were tiny purple crosses on his fingernails. You want the truth, Norvald? I’ve had better days.

I believe it.

"He believes it," said Leslie.

What was that all about?

That was Harley Boy Ray. He was selling me weed.

Oh, said Kip.

Now he gets it. Now he starts to understand.

I don’t actually, said Kip. He’d bought marijuana himself—half a dozen times, maybe—and it had never involved being assaulted behind a public restroom by a man with a rhinestone in his teeth. But he asked no more questions, not then, because the icy wave of shame that had dogged him every waking moment since he could remember, waiting for him to make the slightest miscalculation, the least social misstep, had already come thundering down.

Shit. Sorry about that. It’s just—it kind of looked as if—

Ray does beat me up sometimes, if you want to know the truth. Leslie looked past him now, across the parking lot. It’s situational.

Kip had no idea how to reply. A breeze stirred the treetops. Mrs. Rathmore scootered by again.

Norvald, Leslie said, apparently to himself. Kip Norvald.

That’s me.

What kind of name is that?

Nothing. He reminded himself to breathe. It’s a nickname.

Leslie nodded for a while, squinting down at his shoes, as though Kip had told him something unexpected. Kip expected him to ask what his given name was but he did no such thing. He just sat on the curb. Kip pretended to inspect the back tire of his Schwinn.

Got a smoke, Norvald?

What? The wave hit him again. No, man. I wish.

I wouldn’t mind taking a spin on that bike you’ve got there.

Kip couldn’t tell whether Leslie was being sarcastic or not—a problem he’d soon be having with him on an hourly basis. Seriously? On this piece of crap?

That’s the one.

Be my guest.

He found the Schwinn an hour later, lying on its side in the carport of a mud-colored bungalow on Madrugada Drive. Leslie himself was standing in the bungalow’s picture window, wearing some kind of housecoat, staring thoughtfully out at the burnt-looking lawn. He opened the front door just as Kip was reaching for the bell.

Hey there, Norvald.

What the fuck, Leslie?

Z, said Leslie, stifling a yawn.

I don’t even—

What the fuck, Leslie Z.

He yawned again and shuffled back inside. Kip lingered on the threshold, an old habit, trying to get a read on what kind of domestic situation he was about to step into. The house smelled like pot smoke and marinara sauce and cloves—and also, in some way he couldn’t put his finger on, like the past. It was musty and dark. He felt a sudden urge, standing there with the sun on his back, to turn around and grab his bike and go. That forgotten-seeming bungalow, with its motionless air and mottled carpeting and peeling paisley wallpaper, was quite possibly the most melancholy place that he had ever been.

He found Leslie in the bungalow’s tiki-themed kitchen, making himself a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich. No one else was home, apparently. Leslie offered him a can of Dr. Pepper in an absentminded way, as if his being there were the most natural thing in the world. Years later, once Kip knew Leslie Aaron Vogler the way you can only know someone you’ve seen die and come back to life on the floor of your bathroom, he would realize that stealing the bike had just been Leslie’s way of inviting him over. He was as solitary as Kip was, maybe even as lonely, and he wanted someone to bear witness to the high point of his day: the hour and a half—never more, never less—when he played records on his parents’ stereo.

The system was a mid-seventies Marantz 1060, hands down the most beautiful object in the house, with one pair of speakers behind the magenta-and-turquoise sectional in the sunken den and a second down the hall in Leslie’s bedroom. This meant that he had to cross the entire house to flip his LPs, but he didn’t seem to mind. The setup spoke well of Leslie’s parents, it seemed to Kip—of their permissiveness, not to mention their income—and he fought back a pang of resentment. He pictured them as kindly, even-keeled progressives who just so happened, judging by the prominence of Liberace and Lawrence Welk in their record collection, to have slightly campy taste in music. As Leslie fiddled with the EQ, Kip found himself wondering where the two of them were, and what they did for a living, and why their spacious home was so neglected-looking. The longer he thought about it, the more baffling it seemed. He couldn’t make the pieces fit together.

Good to go! Leslie sang out, jumping up and bobbing ahead of Kip down the hallway like some kind of flightless bird. Kip had never seen him move so fast before. They made it to the bedroom just in time for the opening lick.

What is this? Kip shouted.

Leslie shot him a wild leer and passed him the sleeve. Five men in lipstick and wedding-cake hair, tarted up in heels and scarves and bangles, any one of them hotter than the best that Venice High School had to offer. The platinum blond in the middle, who was obviously the singer, made Kip uncomfortable in a way he didn’t want to think about. He set the sleeve down gingerly on the bedside table, sure by now that he was getting in over his head. It was time to go home.

The feeling ebbed, however, as the song built toward its chorus. Something was definitely happening. The music didn’t do much for him, not yet, but it clearly did something for Leslie. His eyes had rolled back in his head and his torso was twitching. He looked like someone walking on hot coals. Watching him get off on those tinny riffs and plastic vocals, sappy though they were, made Kip’s throat go tight with envy. He’d never seen anyone enjoy anything that much, not even drugs. He hadn’t known that kind of joy existed.

"Hanoi fucking Rocks," Leslie said once the needle had lifted.

Hell yes!

Leslie regarded him coldly. You didn’t dig it.

What? I haven’t even—

Spare me the song and dance, Norvald. It’s not like I’m surprised.

You’re not?

He shook his head. You’ve got no sense of beauty.

Leslie strolled back down the hall, in no particular hurry now, and put on the A side. The first song kicked in soon after—three descending chords, manic and bitchy, with a moderate frosting of distortion—but Leslie was nowhere in sight. Kip sat cross-legged on the floor with his head against the side of Leslie’s bed, feeling the minutes slip by, doing his best to get his brain back up to speed. There was plenty to process. He let his eyes wander, barely listening to the music, and tried to pretend that the bedroom was his: the blood-colored walls, the slasher movie stills taped to the door, the tiny gymnastics trophy on the desk in the corner—HON MENTION GRADE 6—and the closet full of rumpled, extravagant clothes. He picked up the sleeve again and studied the band: if there was one thing the men in that photograph showed no trace of, it was the desire to disappear. He came to understand, somewhere between I Want You and Kill City Kills, that he desired everything that photograph represented, everything that Leslie’s room contained—the gypsy scarves, the eyeliner, the shamelessness, the self-indulgence. He wanted to live in that bedroom. He wanted to have already lived there for years.

Halfway through the second guitar solo on the sixth track, Kip heard Leslie’s world-weary falsetto in his ear. ‘Self Destruction Blues,’ kid. It’s right there in the name.

Where have you been?

I’ve got to be alone when I listen to ‘Love’s an Injection.’ It’s kind of my ritual.

Kip nodded without opening his eyes. He was trying hard, in that moment, to feel the thing Leslie was feeling. Loud though they were, the guitars somehow sounded like toys. Not a bad thing, necessarily. Track five had something to do with blowjobs, which was cool.

These guys ever come to Florida?

Never. Leslie let out a sigh. Their drummer died two years back. His car flipped on a beer run with one of the dudes from Mötley Crüe. You know the Crüe?

Obviously, Kip said, relieved to hear a name he recognized. They kick ass.

"They suck ass, said Leslie. Nikki Sixx is a junkie. Vince Neil can’t sing for shit. They spend more time on their bangs than they do on their songs."

The same thing could be said of Hanoi Rocks, it seemed to Kip. But he kept his mouth shut.

"Listen to that freaking drum fill, Norvald. Puh puh puh puh puh."

I don’t know much about metal, to be honest.

No shit.

I’m into classic stuff, mostly. Like Creedence Clearwater—

Leslie made a violent retching sound.

Come on, Leslie. You can’t possibly be saying that the record we just heard is better than—

Kip got in exactly sixteen words in the next twenty minutes. Leslie’s reaction to his heresy went far beyond simple righteous fervor; it was almost Pentecostal. He was passionately devoted to the boys in the band—especially their Keith Richards lookalike guitarist, Nasty Suicide—but he was just as obsessed with the guitars that they played, the pedals they humped, even the offset printing process used to make the album’s sleeve. That made Kip feel like he’d stepped into the wrong house again. But he also felt grateful, at that touch-and-go stage in their mutual courtship, to have discovered what the magic topic was.

Hear that high-end fuzz, Norvald? That’s an Aria Saber run through a Cry Baby wah, with an Ibanez Tube Screamer at the finish. It’s all Nasty plays now. Shut up and listen. Hear that sticky sustain? That’s the Aria trademark. They’re one of Asia’s top-rated producers, the best of the best, and the Saber is their Mustang, their Testarossa, their DeLorean X. Chamfered cutaways, Norvald. Seymour Duncan pickups. Crystal shaping. Are you hearing what I’m hearing?

What I’m hearing is—

"Listen to Nasty bend at the end of this riff. Right there. Are you even listening? That’s a semi-recessed Floyd Rose whammy. Nasty keeps a lit cigarette tucked into his headstock. Never even smokes it, kid. Just lets it fucking burn."

Leslie chattered all the way through, barely pausing for breath, like a golf announcer at the U.S. Open. He knew every lyric, every key change, every drum fill, every solo. By the time the side was over Kip was starting not to hate it. He opened his eyes to find Leslie standing in front of a pentagram-shaped mirror on the far side of the room, staring forlornly at his kinky hair.

I need a straightener, he murmured. The Guardians won’t let me.

The who?

"The Guardians, Norvald. You’re not paying attention. The legal entities whose property this is."

Kip deployed his trademark noncommittal nod. Leslie made a monster-movie face at his reflection.

Do you ever listen to any non-metal stuff? Kip heard himself ask.

What are you even talking about?

I’m talking about other kinds of music, that’s all. Kip could feel himself wilting. Like Prince, maybe, or—

Or who, exactly? Stevie Wonder? The Sugarhill Gang? LL Cool J? Leslie’s voice had gone tight. What exactly are you getting at, Kip? What’s the subtext here? Should my musical taste maybe be a bit more ghetto?

"What does the Z stand for?" Kip said, desperate to change the subject. He’d noticed, coming in, that it said VOGLER on the mailbox.

"It stands for me, Norvald. Because it’s my name."

"Just the letter Z? That’s it?"

Let’s talk about you for a while. What the fuck is your deal?

I don’t know what you mean, Kip sputtered as the wave came crashing down. I just came because my bike—

You live with your grandmother?

He nodded.

What’s up with your folks?

Cool cover, said Kip, pointing at an LP on the windowsill.

It was actually the ugliest cover he had ever seen: a crudely airbrushed rendering of a zombie in a purple robe, one eye dangling from its socket, with a look on its face that could best be described as befuddled. The band’s logo was unreadable to Kip’s untrained eye, but the title was printed in generic block letters: SCREAM BLOODY GORE. There was nothing even remotely appealing about that cover, nothing sexy, nothing cool. It looked like a Tales from the Crypt illustration copied by a seventh grader. Leslie smiled and shook his head. Forget it, kid.

Let’s put it on.

Seriously, Norvald. You’re wasting your time.

What is it?

That’s Chuck’s record. Chuck Schuldiner. His mom goes to our church.

That explained everything. The album was the vanity project of some local bowlcut, recorded on a boombox and put out with money scrimped and saved from mowing lawns. But Kip was nonetheless impressed that a record—any record—had been made by someone who knew someone that he knew. Things like that just didn’t happen, at least not to him. He grabbed the LP and passed it to Leslie.

I’m giving you a public service announcement, Norvald. This one is above your pay grade. This one hurts.

But the look on Kip’s face must have swayed him, because he went down the hall without another word and put the record on. Kip sat back and closed his eyes and listened to Leslie’s bare feet on the runner. This time there was no warning, no preamble, no preliminary crackle. Leslie dropped the needle with studied accuracy onto the first bar of the third track on side A: Denial of Life. Kip was officially on his own now. He’d been kicked into the deep end of the pool.

It hit him too fast to make sense of at first: a pelting hail of hammered notes, a low-end hiss, an epileptic bass line. His body reacted before his brain did, shifting reflexively into fight-or-flight mode, legs and arms and spinal column clenching. The sound was massive, domineering, relentless. This music was to Hanoi Rocks as an aircraft carrier is to a rubber ducky. He felt physically sick.

Then the shrieking kicked in. It sounded like someone trying to sing a nursery rhyme while being burned at the stake. The singer could have been angry, or ecstatic, or in excruciating pain—there was no way to know, because the lyrics were impossible to decipher. Horror films were Kip’s only point of reference, and not just because of the airbrushed zombie on the record’s sleeve. He was being offered the same purifying fear, the same catharsis, the same revelation midnight slasher movies gave: that everything wasn’t going to be all right. Not now and not ever. And that made perfect sense to him.

Once the needle had lifted, Kip sat back and waited. Leslie came waltzing in with a grin on his face, obviously expecting to find a charred and smoking carcass—but Kip met his eyes calmly. He felt nauseated but his mind was clear.

My father’s in prison.

Prison? said Leslie, bobbing his head to cover his confusion. What for?

For hurting my mother.

Leslie opened his mouth and closed it. Right, he said finally. Okay.

Kip had already told him more than he’d told anyone else except the Greater Tallahassee Police Department and the case worker he’d been assigned, but he could see that he’d have to keep going. What surprised him most was that he didn’t mind.

I got sent here, you know—here to Venice, I mean. It wasn’t optional.

Me too.

Kip looked at him. He wasn’t getting it.

I don’t know what you’ve heard, Leslie, but it wasn’t because of bad grades or skipping school or selling pot or anything. Kip took in a breath. My grandmother said she’d take me. She went to the hearings and filled out the paperwork and did the interviews. I still have a call every Tuesday at six.

Leslie just stood there.

You remember what happened, Kip said. Back there with your dealer or whatever.

Kind of hard to forget.

There’s this thing that— Kip bit down on his tongue for a few seconds. That hits me sometimes. It just comes out of nowhere. My dad has it too. He tried to speak slowly. It happens when things get— I don’t know. Fucked up somehow. Like back there. With the Coke machine and all that.

I’m listening.

I was six the first time. Everything just goes white. White and empty. Like a blank piece of paper. I don’t— He shook his head and tried again. It’s more like—I don’t know. Like the lights all come on, all at once. It’s too much. So I can’t even see. He was breathing hard now. "It’s not something I do—that’s not what it feels like. It’s something that happens to me."

Right, said Leslie. He didn’t sound as if he was agreeing.

"Then things go back to normal. I don’t even know what I’m going to find, most of the time. Kip let his eyes close. But I always find something."

Something bad, Leslie said. Something crazy.

Kip didn’t answer. His head felt enormous and light.

How often does this happen? Is it like narcolepsy, or—

Not every day or anything. Kip kept his eyes shut. Maybe like once a month.

Holy shit.

It started when things kind of went—off at my house, I guess you could say. When they got sort of stressful.

With your parents, you mean? Did they—

It was just something inside my head then, or inside my chest. Nobody noticed. But I was always—I don’t know. Waiting for it to happen. I even had a name for it.

A name?

Kip nodded. I called it the White Room.

The White Room, Leslie repeated.

The funny thing is, I’m more scared of it than anybody. Especially now.

I’ll bet, said Leslie. You’re basically telling me you’re a homicide waiting to happen. A multiple homicide. The next Bernie Goetz.

That made Kip look up. Leslie’s face was unreadable.

Bernie who?

Remind me never to go to the post office with you. Or on a bus. Or anywhere, basically.

Listen to me, man. I’m just—

When you’re ready to blow up the school, I’d appreciate a heads-up. I’m not ready to die yet. The Guardians just got me my own VCR.

Kip passed a hand slowly over his face. You’re making a joke out of this. Okay.

I don’t have any problem with domestic terrorism—I want that on the record. I’m just asking for a little advance notice. A couple of hours.

He stared hard at Leslie for what must have been a minute. Leslie never cracked a smile.

I wouldn’t mind blowing it up, to be honest, Kip said.

"And you’ve only been here for a week and a half, Norvald. Imagine how I feel."

That was a good moment. Kip felt all right about having mentioned the White Room. He felt almost proud. It lasted until the next thing Leslie said.

There’s a rumor going around about you.

A rumor? Kip murmured. He knew what was coming.

I guess that’s what you’d call it. About why you got sent here. Leslie hesitated. What I heard was, your father—

This Schuldiner kid, Kip said, pointing at the zombie. He goes to your church?

Leslie blinked at him. His mom does. Chuck lives up near Orlando.

What’s the name of his band?

Death.

Excuse me?

That’s the name. He sat down next to Kip and picked up the LP and pursed his lips. A subtle humming carried to them from the hallway. The stereo, Kip decided. Behind it he seemed to hear the sound of voices. Leslie was less freaked out by the White Room than Kip would have expected—a lot less. Maybe he still didn’t understand.

You liked this one, huh? Leslie squinted at him. Don’t bother answering. You’ve got that look on your face like you just took a dump.

I don’t even know what just happened.

Leslie touched a finger lightly to his temple, like a mentalist trying to read someone’s mind. Chuck plays a B.C. Rich Intruder run through a Boss DS-1 into a Marshall Valvestate with a built-in chorus feature. That’s how he gets that gnarly high end.

I don’t care how he gets it.

Leslie gave one of his congested-sounding chuckles. "Fry my nuts in acid, kid. You liked it."

Leslie’s parents turned out to be as ancient as their stereo. They were sitting on the living room sofa when Kip and Leslie came out, contentedly watching the turntable turn. Kip wasn’t sure who they were at first: they were old and pale and dainty, and they were dressed much too warmly for Venice. They were dressed for Minneapolis–Saint Paul.

This is Kip, announced Leslie, sliding Scream Bloody Gore back into its sleeve. He’s Mrs. Cartwright’s grandson.

Mrs. Vogler told Kip that it was delightful to make his acquaintance. Mr. Vogler nodded dreamily, still smiling at the stereo. That was their entire