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There was a gentle touch at Cross’s elbow. “Sir, you need to sit down. The service is about to begin.”
Cross turned and looked down at a boy on the cusp of manhood. The boy’s eyes were rimmed with white, and tension hunched his shoulders. Cross also saw the physical similarity with the man on the stage.
“You must be Sean,” Cross said, and was taken aback when the boy gasped, fell back a step, and dropped to his knees.
“God be praised! You’ve come! My prayers—”
Cross grabbed him roughly under the arm and pulled him to his feet. “Jesus, kid, cut it the hell out,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. The boy looked confused.
“But . . . Aren’t—”
“No . . .”
“But you knew my name . . .”
“Yeah . . . because . . . never mind. Ankle it.” He pulled the teenager toward the doors. The music stopped.
Cross glanced back at the stage and saw Sharon frowning out over the congregation. She spotted him and stiffened. Hanlin froze, looked directly at Cross, and then Cross realized that the human skin didn’t contain a human. An Old One had crawled inside. Terror choked him. He hustled the boy out of the theater.
Outside, he spotted his reflection in the glass doors and quickly made adjustments. He hated going into churches. With the beard removed and the hair shortened, he turned back to Sean. “Okay, kid, what were you praying about?”
“Shouldn’t you know—”
“Pretend I don’t.” Dropping an arm over the teen’s shoulder, Cross hustled him down the street. Behind him the door banged open and the fat man came rushing out.
Cross hurriedly flagged down a cab and thrust the kid inside. “Step on it,” he ordered the driver. Cross glanced out the back window at the receding figure of the factotum.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
Cross looked over at the kid. “You hungry? Of course you’re hungry. Kids your age are always hungry.”
SILVERWARE CLATTERED AGAINST PLATES; THE WAITRESS AND THE COOK sang out a call-and-response Blue plate, Order up. Cross indulged in a piece of cherry pie à la mode, a slice of devil’s-food cake, and a cup of coffee while the kid wolfed down the pot roast, slurped a Coca-Cola, and poured out his story.
“Ma died
two years ago. Pa was really sad. Then Sharon came to the mission, and they started walking out together. They got married seven months ago.”
Cross’s attention drifted. He was focused on that damn thing wearing the people suit. Wondering how to fight it. Wondering if he could win. Wondering if it would end with him splintered and weakened yet again.
“. . . make me brush her hair.” Cross’s focus snapped back to the boy, who was red-faced and looking embarrassed, which made the smattering of pimples on his cheeks stand out all the brighter. “In their bedroom, when Pa would be downstairs reading.”
“Were you really brushing her hair, or is that a euphemism?”
“Pardon?”
“Another way to say fuck,” Cross said.
The boy went white, then red again, and took a large gulp of pop. “N . . . no,” he stammered. “I only touched her hair.”
“Tell me about that ring.”
“She had the stone in that silver setting when she showed up . . .”
My husband gave it to me. Cross flashed back to the conversation on the footbridge. No, not a twofer. Hanlin’s a dupe. It was Sharon and the Old One just finding a convenient meat puppet, he thought.
“And she made the band out of her and Pa’s hair.” The boy’s words seemed etched in the air.
Another memory surfaced—Sharon carefully removing her hair from his shoulder. “What did she do with the hair in the brush?”
