I WOUND UP AT THE CINEMA 21, an art house theater in northwest Portland. I liked to go to that neighborhood because it was what Mom called "in transition." Meaning Heidi's Olde Worlde Pastries had vacated the chalet-type building, and a General Gao's Szechuan Garden had moved in. There were ancient apartment buildings with rats in the dumbwaiters next door to brightly lit Austrian bakeries.
The Cinema 21 might have been due for an overhaul, but so far no one had tried. And honestly? I liked it the way it was. Reliable. Same neon starburst marquee, same bottomless popcorn for seventy-five cents a bag.
That night they were showing Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. It was supposed to be a good flick but I hadn't seen it yet, because it was a Bowie movie.
I was sick of Bowie by then. He was on every poster in every girl's locker, an impossible standard to live up to. But there was something comforting about him too. He changed everything about himself, his hair and makeup and name and even his voice, but he kept something in each. Self-assurance. Calm.
Even in the movie, when Bowie is supposed to be a suicidally brave POW in a World War II prison camp-with bad hair (shyeah, right)-and he's locked in a cage, muttering the words "I wish I could sing," because his character supposedly can't, there's this larger-than-life presence. He would never hit his sister. He would never cheat on his girlfriend…Well, yeah, he might, but at least he'd do it with style.
Dad used to hate Bowie. We watched him on TV once when I was little, and Bowie was in his Aladdin Sane phase then, with spiky red hair and a spandex jumpsuit. I don't remember what he sang. Some song about space. Or was it loneliness? The way he sang, it was the same thing.
Dad pulled on his beer that looked like golden water and said, "Do me a favor and change it to the Blazers game, will ya, son? I can't stand watching that faggot."
Since I was just a kid, I didn't know what "faggot" meant, other than not Dad. Which seemed like a good thing.
Even now, when I was eighteen, not Dad was something I had to work hard at every day. When my hair started coming in thick and dark like his, I dyed it green. When people started bugging me, I went to the mosh pit to thrash it out before I thrashed them.
Today was my first big fail.
I had hit someone I loved. She was bossy and ambitionless, but I still loved her.
For two hours during the movie, I thought it might be possible that I could still be a hero, like Bowie's character. But then the closing credits rolled, and ended, and a different kind of picture looped in my mind-one of me pushing my sister, over and over again.
Why did she have to keep picking at me? Do this, nimrod. Do that, nimrod. Sometimes I hated her.
But I never hit her.
What was Cilla doing now? Blabbing to Mom? Blabbing to any Denny's trucker about how I was turning out just like Dad? The instant she did, the half of the state that hadn't already written me off would write me off. I would go from being an asshole to being "just like my father."
That was something I wanted to avoid at all costs.
Outside the theater, a light rain had started to fall, making my mohawk flop over. Green dye trickled down my forehead and into my eyes, making everything look like an alien landscape from some cheesy sci-fimovie. I was walking past the narrow employees' parking lot behind the theater. I remember thinking, I wish I could get out of my skin for more than two hours, when I first felt the chill.
It wasn't a regular cold chill, or even a flu chill. It was worse than that. I'd felt it once before, when I'd been so terrified it felt like my blood had frozen.
There was a scuttling noise, then a high-pitched squeak, like a dozen rats on the move.
Noah.
Someone was calling me, and it didn't sound like Ziggy.
I stopped and looked. There was a line of beat-up cars, Pintos and Pacers, and behind that was a dumpster overflowing with stale popcorn and Red Vines and Junior Mints.
I couldn't see beyond the dumpster. It was too dark. But-and this was the weird thing-the darkness had an edge. There was normal stuff in front of it, cars and garbage cans, then just nothing. Whatever was calling me was inside that dark fog bank.
Noah, it said again.
I sniffed the air. Hops. It smelled really strongly of cooking hops.
Slowly, the dark cloud rolled closer. Whatever it touched looked as though it disappeared, as if the cloud swallowed it whole.
Clouds didn't freak me out. We had clouds that belched rain, hail, pollution, radioactive isotopes (Trojan Nuclear Plant)-even volcanic ash (Mount St. Helens).
But there was something different about this one-and it wasn't just the smell. First, there was the frost, which seemed to inject itself right into my heart and spread through my veins. If I wasn't still breathing, I would've thought I'd been turned to ice. But breathe I did, and dark green clouds came out of my nose like frozen bile.
This cloud was poison. And it was sucking me in.
Noah!
The voice was more urgent now.
Let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you what I've already done and what I'm about to do to everyone you love.
The cloud came closer with a skittering noise, advancing, retreating, changing shape, as though something inside it-several things-were fighting to get out.
Help us, Noah!
Girls' faces, half formed, came to the front.
And then that whispering, disembodied voice again: Shall I tell you about them? How they died alone and afraid? Their terror fed me. It made me strong.
Slowly, I started to back away. I was getting sick, that was it. I hadn't been sleeping enough. No wonder I was imagining things.
Watch, Noah. Witness.
Then came the one I'd been fearing. The girl from the poster without a name or a reward or Last Seen Wearing. I knew what she was going to say.
Please!
Oh god. I wasn't sick. I wasn't sleep-deprived. That thing-that toxic darkness-had consumed the Disappearing Girls.
I should've run. But I couldn't move. I could only stand and watch what I half knew was coming next.
When Please Girl's face disappeared, another didn't appear right away. The inky darkness started to twirl, then locked itself into dreads. Another face flashed across the front of the cloud, screwed up in agony. I heard the scream from my head clear down to my toes.
That thing had Evan.
I didn't even think. I charged forward. "Hey!" I said. "Let him go!"
I hadn't gone two steps before-bam!-I tripped on a speed bump and went down hard, banging my forehead on asphalt.
Red blood and green dye dripped into my eyes like an insane Christmas garland. I needed to see what was going on, but my head was so heavy it was like an anchor.
I had to get to my feet and charge that cloud. I had to save my friend.
Help me, Noah!
And then, from somewhere above me, came a light. It was golden and warm. "Sing, lad!" it commanded.
Not golden light, I realized. Yellow. Egg-yolk yellow.
"Huh?"
"Sing! Sing now!" And that was when I realized my pounding head had a backbeat. Without looking up, I opened my mouth and sang about fear, and failure, and all the things I'd been worrying about for most of my life. If I had to give the song a title, I would've called it "You Don't Got Brain One."
I was too confused even to stand up, but all the ways I'd failed people? That I remembered.
I sensed the thing stopping. I closed my mouth and wiped the red rain from my eyes. I managed to get to my knees and look up. I hoped I wasn't too late.
The dark cloud had retreated. It hovered behind the dumpster, waiting for something-I didn't know what.
It wasn't calling to me anymore, wasn't screaming, and there were no faces inside. But it was still dangerous. And it still had Evan.
Ziggy gripped me by the forearm and helped me to my feet. "You okay, lad?"
I charged forward. "That thing has my friend!"
He locked my arm with his tiger grip. I couldn't shake him off. "It's not that simple. You can't take it on directly or it'll swallow you too."
"I can't just leave him there!"
"Easy, old boy. The Marr hasn't swallowed him completely. Not yet. He's safe in bed. If you called him at home right now, you'd get him. He'd wonder why you woke him up."
"I don't understand. I just saw his face!"
"The Marr can work slowly, son. It can take its victims a piece at a time."
I put my hands on my knees and sucked air. "So he's fine?"
Ziggy didn't say anything. He wouldn't meet my eyes.
Even though I was so freaked out I was sweating poison, I started to take in more details of the monster cloud.
Clack! I thought I saw a claw reaching out, testing.
"How do we get rid of it?"
He shook his head. "You mean completely? Don't be stupid." He pronounced it shtyou-pid. "You can never get rid of the Marr. It's a part of life."
I sniffed the air. The hops smell intensified. Slowly, that thing, that Marr, began to creep forward again.
"All the same, best not to stick around," Ziggy said, and pulled me by the elbow down the street. "Come on, son. Time to regroup and form a battle plan."
"Sure. Just a sec." I turned around and flipped that thing off.
Yeah. I know. Real mature, not to mention dangerous.
But damn did it feel good.