down the hall, slide David’s bedroom door open without making one goddamn sound, and then stand there in the darkness. This is the tricky part: if David wakes up screaming, the Amandas will surely be here in a flash. If I play it too low-key, the boy’ll just be unpredictable, so I opt for the sudden menace that will gradually lead into the tell-me-everything-and-we-can-forget-all-this-happened.
I put the edge of my cane a half inch away from David’s neck. His chest rises and falls in quiet snores. He’s dreaming of one of the Amandas, but she’s not naked or anything. It’s one of those emotional dreams. She keeps bringing him his slippers and yelling at him. I touch his neck gently with my cane, and when he opens his eyes and gasps, I say, real calm and slow: “Don’t say a single motherfucking word or I’ll cut your fucking head off.”
Five minutes later, we’re on the roof. He’s shivering, still in his pajamas, and I’m doing the grim and menacing routine, even though he’s already so flustered it’s pretty much unnecessary.
“I’m sorry, mister. I’m really, really sorry,” he blubbers. “We won’t be f-fucking around with the Underworld anymore. I p-promise.”
“I’m not interested in your promises, David.” He shudders when I say his name. “Tell me how you linked with the inbetweener.”
“Who, Trevor? He came to me. At the—at the—at the bike store I work at. And he said to bring some people. So I took it to Brad. And his buddies. Trevor came to me though. I didn’t find him.”
“Did he tell you how to reach him ever? An address, a phone number? Anything?”
“No!” David’s teeth are chattering. A gust of wind blows past, and I feel a little twinge of sympathy for the kid. “He just kept coming by the bike shop and talking to me, and so we went for beers one night at the Red Edge in the Slope. And we got wasted, and he started talking about the Underworld, and at first, you know, I just thought he was freakin’. I thought he was crazy, you know? The Underworld. But I was drunk, too, and I just kept nodding and yessing him and he kept going and somewhere in there I realized he was dead-ass serious. He wasn’t fucking with me at all. And, I mean . . . the Underworld. Jesus. I just . . . so I, you know, I was interested. I wanted to know. I wanted to see it. I mean, death! That’s, like, that’s the final fucking frontier, man. Death.”
“Go on.”
He wipes his eyes with the tissue and snorts a booger back into his nose. “So then I got Brad and a few of the other guys in on it, and pretty much the same thing happened: we all went out for drinks, you know, got shitfaced, and they were all incredulous at first and it was like, no! But then, you know, the night progressed, and Trevor kept talking and talking and making sense in that freaky way . . .” David’s story comes to a crashing halt. “Trevor’s dead, isn’t he? Dead, dead. You killed him.”
Why this information is hitting home right now is anyone’s guess, but I don’t like the sudden manic look in David’s eyes. “He was already dead,” I say. “Mostly.”
“I don’t understand any of this!” David yells. “This is fucked up.”
“You ever see anyone else with him?”
“Look, I’m sorry! Okay? I’m sorry I broke whatever cardinal rule of life and death or whatever the fuck it is that we trampled on. I didn’t fucking mean to! I swear. And I will not tell anyone. Not a single person.” This is clearly a lie. It doesn’t take magic powers to figure out that at least one of the Amandas has been blubbered to already. And, depending on how slow the reality show pendulum swings, the other one’ll probably be enlightened to it in another week or so. If I were on the job, I’d give a damn, but I’m not, so I don’t. Let the kids have their little campfire fairy tales. I’m here for information.
“David, I’m not going to kill you, but if you don’t stop rambling and tell me what I want to know, I will hurt you.” This snaps him back into the present tense nicely. “Now: did you ever see Trevor with anyone else? A girl, perhaps?” I didn’t want to take it there, but when I say it, he immediately squints his face