Page 28 of Bent Heavens

Liv retched. This was too much when she could still hear and smell the skinner. She aimed her throat at the lawn, then managed to choke back the sick surge. Doug was probably right, which meant one more confirmation of Lee Fleming’s theories: The feces-covered punji spikes of Abyss made sense after all. Liv coughed to clear her throat. She knew Doug’s concern by how close he edged.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said gently.

“How? Doug, no.”

“I won’t get too close. Lee used to water the saplings, right? I know I saw a rolled-up hose somewhere.”

She coughed some more, wiped her mouth, and nodded. Doug—thank god for Doug. How had she taken him for granted for so long? He was patient and quiet until she felt stronger, and then they walked together into the shed, where they refilled the water bowl and decided in low voices that Liv would acquire more chicken and bananas, and Doug more Pop-Tarts and candy. It was a good distraction from the skinner’s writhing. This must have been what had kept her dad going despite a whole town’s disbelief and disdain: having a course of action was energizing, even rejuvenating.

Wednesday came, growling around every corner. Would she tell someone about the skinner today? An adult who might take action? Did every hour she didn’t put her into some legal jeopardy of which she couldn’t even conceive? Yet she didn’t. Still sizzling like acid at all edges of her conscience was fury over what the thing had done to her dad, fury at the sacrifices it had forced upon her and her mother.

Until she could create a clearer picture, it seemed wise to behave normally, so that day after school, she joined the cross-country team in the locker room. Monica, via artificial warmness, was predictably cold, but Liv was otherwise affectionately received, and she had to cover the tears that sprang to her eyes. In this room, with these girls, in these clothes, she could almost imagine that everything was the same as it had been last year.

Running was hard. Just five days without exercise and it felt like her heart, like the skinner’s, hung vulnerable outside her body.

She was over two hours late to the Armory. She followed the trail of a long, green hose and found Doug squatting at the end of it. The concrete floor was dark gray, wet from having been sprayed down. The skinner was wet as well, having received the same crass cleaning.

“Hi,” Liv said.

Doug nodded but didn’t look at her. He kept spraying. Foam sloshed along the room’s perimeter. Liv pet down her hair, stiff from dried sweat. There was an alien presence in this room, and yet the atmosphere felt like the previous week’s check of the traps: Doug upset and her saddled with the duty to make it better.

“Sorry,” she said. “I went to practice. I thought I—”

“You want to jog around in circles with your friends, be my guest.”

It was a dart into her chest. He made running sound so meaningless. And it was; there was no arguing the point. Doug, however, knew nothing about the burdens of keeping up appearances. Doug Monk could go straight home after school if he liked. No one expected anything of Doug Monk. Liv evened out her breathing, hoping to diffuse the pain in her chest.

“It looks good,” she offered.

“The floor?”

“It.”

Not only was the skinner clean, it had consumed its fill of food and water for a second day. The organs visible under its translucent skin seemed to have brightened and quickened. Its bruises had smoothed into duller, less alarming colors, and Doug had wrapped its ravaged left ankle in gauze and medical tape. Smaller white spots of bandage dotted the alien where the worst of its wounds had refused to heal—wounds that Liv and Doug had dealt.

The skinner chirped.

Liv thought it had to be a sign of returned health. She shut the door and came closer. One factor contributing to the skinner’s seeming return of vitality was that Doug had replaced the dead bulbs overhead with bright new fluorescents. Pockets of the shed long obscured were as bright as if painted white. Doug had pushed Lee’s power tools into a corner and lugged most of the tables behind the Armory to be disassembled. Overnight, the place had become twice the size, ready to accommodate two people’s full ranges of movement. Why they might need so much space worried Liv.

Doug seemed to sense it. He sat against the wall and studied her. He looked different. Not mad, exactly, but no longer patient, either. It looked as if he were trying, and failing, to understand how cross-country practice had served her any purpose.

“Don’t be scared,” he said.

“I’m not,” she lied.

“In a way, I’m glad you’re late. Gave me time to think. I’m sure you want to tell your friends about this, or your teachers, or your mom. Or the cops. I get it. But we cannot—we cannot—tell anyone. There’s stuff we’ve got to figure out first. Important stuff.” He grimaced at the skinner. “Look at this thing. We’re never going to be able to communicate with it in a normal way. It can’t tell us anything.”

“What would it tell us?” She felt young and stupid.

“Jesus, Liv. It might know stuff.”

She locked her jaw shut, abashed. “About Dad.”

Doug raised his eyebrows as if to say finally. He clasped his hands.

“What it could tell us,” he explained, “is if your dad’s still alive.”

Dad, alive. Did she repeat these words aloud, or were Doug’s words echoing off the walls? Regardless, she frowned at the sound. The idea was obscene, little better than dragging Lee Fleming’s corpse from a grave and proclaiming that he’d come home.