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Linger Longer

Owen could still feel it in his hand, the Old Timer penknife. It had two blades—one longer, pointier, with what he thought was a cool angle to it. A clip point blade, it was called. The second was smaller, a pen blade . Each opened at opposite ends. He always felt the smaller blade, the pen blade, was strange—too short, too stumpy, to be of much use anywhere.

(That’s why it was the one he always used.)

He still remembered buying that knife. He’d gone to a flea market with his father that morning over across from Peddler’s Village. Owen hoped to love something someday the way his father loved flea markets, and he went with him every week because it was one of the few times he might see his father be happy, one of the few times when he wasn’t yelling at him, when he wasn’t sad or angry or fed up with his son and his wife and the world around him. At the flea market, Edgar Zuikas would be generous, too, buying for his son most of whatever the boy wanted: old comic books, used paperbacks, some weird Star Wars toy.

At the market, every week, they passed by a table operated by a man with a big bushy black beard and long hair pulled back in a ponytail, and this table was a bounty of violent delights: ninja stars and nunchucks and M80 firecrackers, empty hand grenades and stun guns and Zippo lighters. (It’s where Nick bought his Jack Kenny–branded lighter.) Plus, there was always a big Plexiglas case full of knives: Swiss Army knives, weird fucked-up fantasy daggers, hunting knives, kunai throwing daggers, and of course, switchblades and butterfly knives.

One day, when he was twelve years old, Owen got it in his head that he wanted a knife of his own.

So he asked his father, and Edgar said, to his shock, “Sure. Boy like you could use a good knife.” And so they went to the bearded man’s table.

Owen said that he wanted one of the butterfly knives.

And his father laughed, said no, that’s not the knife for him. “Flipping that thing around, you’ll cut your goddamn pinky finger off. No, I think something like this is more your speed—” And Edgar Zuikas pointed to the Schrade two-blade Old Timer penknife at the very bottom of the case, a knife that was hard to see given how it was obscured by the much larger, flashier blades in the case.

Owen knew not to fight his father on this.

And a knife was a knife was a knife.

So he said okay, and his father bought that Old Timer penknife for Owen. Upon conclusion of the sale, the bearded man said, and this is another thing Owen would never forget, “?‘ And the angel sent his blade into the earth, and the vine of the earth was cut. ’ Book of Revelation, dontchaknow. Jesus is Lord and Jesus is among us, thank you for your purchase, friends.” Owen’s father, not a particularly religious man, just said “Okay, thanks, pal,” and off they went.

That memory came back to him full-fledged, in Technicolor stereo sound, as he stood there in Marshie’s room, staring at the blood-soaked suicide girl.

Even as the others fled—

Owen remained.

He eased toward the door, Lore having already fled through it—

But paused.

The girl was at the wall where Hamish stood, and she clawed at it, wailing and thrashing about. Then she froze, and slowly, her head craned toward him.

“ Do you love me? ” she asked in a small, raspy kitten’s voice.

“The knife,” he said quietly. “The knife you used. The photo, on the computer—” He gestured toward the screen, but found nothing on it. The glass had cracked in a spiderweb pattern. But it had just been on …

“ Knife, ” she repeated. Then in her hand, there one appeared, suddenly—

Not his knife. Not the Schrade Old Timer. This was a boning knife, the thin blade curved like her returning smile.

“Why did you have a photo of that knife? The Old Timer. I…I had one just like it.” Just, juuuuust like it . With the red on the blade and everything. “I don’t understand. You have to help me understand.”

She took a step toward him. Then another.

A trail of red, viscid footprints behind her.

“ Knife, ” she said again, holding up the blade so that the metal caught the glow from the blinking string lights.

“I wanted to be loved, too. I wanted to be something to someone.”

Her smile dropped again even as she stepped closer. The next words were like the grinding of a millstone. A grinding, crushing sound.

“ We can d-d-diiiiie together, ugly and alone .”

He nodded in agreement.

He felt something shift inside his mind. Almost like the air around him when he stepped off that staircase into that hallway. Inside him, his mental furniture shifted. Rooms moved and doors opened.

Owen was about to step toward her—

When someone grabbed him and dragged him backward through the door.