Filaria Read Free

come to terms with the fact that he might never find anyone to spend his days with. Not that there were any days left to worry about now. His shot with Crystal, if it had ever existed, was certainly long gone, diminishing into the past just like his hopes of reaching home were diminishing right now. How many countless nights had he dreamt of Crystal: the smell of her skin; the grime on her hands; the sneer of dismissal that set her beautiful lips thinner when he tried to be funny?
    He would never see her alive again. He would never see anyone again.
    The car slowed. The hallway split, left and right. He looked over at McCreedy. Phister would have picked right. Without a word of consultation, McCreedy chose left. They rumbled onwards, down more unfamiliar paths.
    Fervently, Phister hoped Crystal was safe, warm and breathing out there, somewhere, perhaps even back home.
    Stumbling up suddenly from the moss bed, and heaving ragged breaths, she had gone over to the doorway. And turned back. The image of her from that moment would never leave Phister. Never. She’d been a broken thing. Broken . No longer even a girl, the bones of her face collapsed, structures of her wondrous physiognomy fallen in on themselves, streaked with dirt, tears, and snot. Lurching, hanging from the jamb to shout at Simpson Lang (was he still in the room? Phister never was sure, though he had looked; was not sure now, remembering): “Don’t follow me! I wanna be alone! I’m leaving this fuckin hole! I wanna fuckin die !”
    No one got up. Certainly not Young Phister. Because he weighed seven hundred pounds. He weighed four tons. Four tons of inaction.
    He just watched her go. The last time he saw her.
    Several of those who had been loitering on the landing outside the moss room — Lenny, Penelope, and Cassandra, the mute — told Phister as the lights were coming on the next morning (well, Penelope and Lenny did, anyhow) — that they hadn’t seen Crystal at all. Hadn’t seen her run past, hadn’t heard her shouting or crying. But she sure wasn’t in her cot when they checked. Simpson, brooding, half-asleep in his own little cubby, dried blood on his cheek, hadn’t seen Crystal since leaving the moss room. She wasn’t anywhere. Headachy, hungover, unsure, the group managed to work each other up into a state of genuine concern.
    “But she’s run off before?”
    “Yeah. Only for an hour or two. And then she was just hiding.”
    “Maybe she’s just hiding now.”
    “Where?”
    “She said she was leaving? Where can you go?”
    “And she said she wanted to die ?”
    “Yep. Fuckin die, she said. This time I wanna fuckin die .”
    “What about those bloody rags that Jeb found last week, in the glower room, behind vent twenty?”
    “What about them?”
    “ What bloody rags?”
    “Rags with shreds of flesh on them. Maybe there’s a connection?”
    “Aw, shit . . .”
    So they told others that Crystal was missing: bleary-eyed folks, only now heading to their rooms. Trying to impart the urgency they felt, and Boy Harbour overheard. He stood against the wall, one foot flat behind his butt. Boy Harbour ate no moss and felt sanctimonious because of it. He said, “A scream, in the middle of the night. But you mossheads was messed up, as usual. I heard terrible screams.”
    This comment — predictably dire, and given in a mean-spirited tone, that being Boy Harbour’s leaning — nevertheless caused a collective intake of breath and exchanged looks. Something horrific had happened! Phister felt the certainty of this in his gut. Biting the inside of his cheek, he watched Cassandra — who could read lips as well as anybody could listen — respond to the story with equal alarm. Crystal was in trouble . She had done some rash and foolish act. Had she run away? Or was she taken ?
    Sensing an audience — and loving the drama of a missing person — Boy Harbour lifted his voice: “Worms the size of pinky fingers live in your stool out there. The