Evil Walks
Chapter Two: Youth Gone Wild
“Never played by the rules, I never
really cared
My nasty reputation takes me everywhere
…
They call us problem child
We spend our lives on trial
We walk an endless mile
We are the youth gone wild
We stand and we won't fall
We're the one and one for all
The writing's on the wall
We are the youth gone wild.”
- “Youth Gone Wild” by Skid Row
After a half hour or so of interviewing
– most of which Haley would have to edit or bleep out due to vulgar
language – Johnny Wesson's cell phone rang. He pulled it out from
the pocket of his leather jacket and grimaced at the screen. “Damn,”
he grumbled. “I'm sorry; I have to take this.”
Haley pressed the off button on her
camera. “No problem,” she replied in what she hoped was a
nonchalant manner. “Do you mind if I get some footage of Deanna?
I'd like to hear what her perspective is on all this.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Johnny waved
her away as he was flipping open his cell phone, and immediately his
voice reverted to the same agitated growl he had employed when
talking to his daughter. “What the fuck went wrong this time?”
Haley took that as her cue to step
away. Deanna had invited her up to her room. Should she just go up?
Hesitant, she stood at the base of the stairs. Deanna was clearly not
a normal girl, and that intrigued her more than the idea of why
Johnny Wesson did what he did had. Haley had never been a normal girl
either, after all. She was almost done with her second year of
community college, but ever since middle school she'd had a difficult
time fitting in. Between shyness at a young age and her eclectic
style as she got older, Haley continually felt out of place, like an
invisible ghost, like this wasn't where she was meant to be.
Truthfully, she preferred to stay behind her camera and film the
world around her than really to be a part of it, since the camera
served as her shield and buffer. Somehow, Haley felt as though Deanna
would understand what that felt like.
Then again, she could only be setting
herself up to talk to another foul-mouthed, immature bitch exactly
like the one Haley had just interviewed.
As she put one wedge sandal-clad foot
on the bottom step, Haley got a weird prickly feeling on the back of
her neck. She turned to the left and noticed a door that was, well,
weird. No, weird wasn't the right word. Freaky and creepy as hell,
yeah, that was a more accurate term. The door had seven different
locks, including two deadbolts, a chain bolt, and three padlocks, and
it was covered in crudely painted symbols. The only symbol she really
recognized was a pentagram, but the other squiggles and arrows and
lines and whatever the hell didn't look any less unsettling. Haley
took her camera and recorded a few stills. Then, shuddering as she
turned away from the creepy-ass door, she ascended the stairs.
At the top of the stairs on the second
floor, there was a family portrait on the wall. A much younger and
clean-shaven Johnny Wesson was actually smiling in the picture. He
had his arms around a beautiful brunette woman, and with them were an
adorable toddler and a little girl who looked like she was dying to
get out of her frilly dress. Haley stared a moment at this glimpse
into the past, and then she headed toward the room with the sound of
Metallica's Black Album
blaring out of it. She took a wild guess that that was Deanna's
bedroom.
The door, which had
a poster of the Union Jack on it, was slightly ajar, and Haley
knocked on it. She had to knock a second time to be heard over the
cranked-up volume of “Enter Sandman.”
“Come in already,
bitch!” Deanna called out over the music.
Taking
a deep breath, Haley entered, the hazel eyes behind her hipster
glasses scanning across the room. Two bookshelves were crammed full
of graphic novels and CDs, and more comic books – wrapped in mylar
plastic with cardboard backing – were strewn across the floor. She
glanced over a few titles: Hellblazer, Swamp Thing,
Sandman, Lucifer, Fables, Preacher, Hellboy...
Things with lots of artsy and horror-style covers. A few issues of
Hellblazer, the most
predominant title, were framed and hung on the wall beside a giant
poster of John Constantine, a man with a cigarette in hand and a
long, tan trenchcoat. Deanna's own trenchcoat was flung haphazardly
on the floor beside her black Doc Martens, and Deanna herself was
sitting cross-legged in bed, smoking a cigarette, and reading an
issue of Hellblazer.
“Hey,” greeted
Deanna. “Sorry about the bitch comment. I thought you were my
brother.” She reached over to the speaker on her nightstand and
turned down the volume as the next track, “Sad But True,” started
to play. Beside the speaker stood a blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire, a
lit black candle, a star-shaped bottle of Angel perfume, and an
ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
Haley stood there
awkwardly. “Hey,” she echoed. “Can I sit down somewhere?” She
looked around for a chair but didn't see one among the chaos.
Deanna merely
smiled and gestured to the bed. “Make yourself comfortable,” she
said with a wink. An actual cheesy wink, along with a grin that
showed she knew exactly how cheesy she was being.
Being
careful not to step on any comic books, Haley made her way over to
the bed and, after brushing aside a battered copy of American
Gods, gingerly sat down on the
edge of the bed. She started an attempt to be cool and casual by
saying, “So, um...” Well, that was a failure.
Deanna
leaned over to the open and curtainless window and blew out a puff of
smoke. Haley took a good long look at Deanna – from her ripped
black jeans, vintage Mötley
Crüe
concert tee, and leather motorcycle jacket, up to the three pairs of
gunmetal hoops in her ears, and finally to her hair. Ugh, that hair.
It was at that awkward, growing out almost to the shoulders length
from a former pixie cut, and the ends were still blonde from a bad
peroxide job. Despite her, um, taste of style, Deanna had a skinny
but toned, athletic figure and a really pretty face under her hot
mess of makeup. Prettier than she was, Haley thought self-consciously
as she glanced down at her own chubby figure.
Deanna turned back
to her, and the gleam in her green eyes said that she knew Haley was
checking her out. “Want one?” she asked, offering Haley a
cigarette.
Haley shook her
head, causing her red ponytail to bounce. Then she recalled a detail
from her pre-interview research on Johnny Wesson. “Wait,” she
said. “Aren't you a minor? You're like seventeen, right?”
Green eyes blinked
in confusion. “Yeah, so...?”
“So you shouldn't
be smoking or drinking,” Haley responded in a voice that strongly
implied the word “duh.”
Rolling her eyes,
Deanna scoffed, “OK, Mom. As if I give a fuck.”
“It's just--
You're so young,” said Haley, trying not to sound like a prude or
too judgmental, “yet you're smoking and drinking and working for
your dad's company... How do you do that and high school? With that
many cigarettes, wouldn't you get caught?” Silently Haley added
that the smell alone ought to give her away.
Deanna took another
drag before explaining that she'd dropped out and gotten her GED more
than a year before.
“Why would you do
that?” inquired Haley in confusion. Sure, high school sucked, but
it was something everyone had to suffer through. She certainly had.
Deanna shrugged and
flicked ash out the window. “Needed more time to work for Johnny
and my side jobs,” she answered nonchalantly, like it were
perfectly obvious. “Plus they wanted me the fuck out of there after
all the damn fights I was getting in.”
“Oh.” Haley
didn't know what to do with that. Deanna was less relatable than
she'd hoped... “So, um.” Haley tried to ignore how awkward she
sounded. “You do work for your dad?”
“Damn right I
do.” Deanna grinned proudly. “I'm one of the best.”
“At hunting
ghosts?” Haley didn't bother hiding her disbelief. “So you
believe in-- in--”
“In ghosts?”
finished Deanna. She nodded, her expression solemn. “I bloody well
do. Nasty fuckers, ghosts. Not to mention the specters, poltergeists,
apparitions, phantoms, phantasms, banshees, ghouls, wraiths,
revenants, yadda yadda, all of them bastards pretty fucked up.”
Haley couldn't
prevent herself from scoffing. “You can't be serious!” she
exclaimed. “Those things don't exist!” She pointed a
scarlet-painted fingernail at a rather graphically ugly monster on
the page of Deanna's comic book. “You've been reading too much of
this horror crap!” Immediately she regretted her words, since
Deanna was obviously offended.
“And you have
definitely proof that they don't exist?” Deanna retorted. “Because
I have proof they fucking do. The monsters might not be under your
bed, Haley, but they are out there.”
“You can't...”
“No, you can't
understand,” Deanna insisted, her green eyes flashing. She was so
serious, so passionate about this that Haley felt bad about saying
anything.
“OK, I'm sorry,”
she apologized. “I respect that you believe in that kind of stuff,
even if I don't.” She shifted uncomfortably on the bed.
Deanna softened,
and the left corner of her mouth curved upward into a half-smile.
“Thanks,” she said. “So if you don't believe in this shit, then
why interview Johnny for your little vlog?”
Haley mulled over
her response before speaking. “I just thought it would be
interesting to do a video on someone who spends so much of his life
working with, well, that kind of thing... Do you really call your dad
by his first name?”
“Hell, yeah.”
Deanna had finished off her cigarette and was already lighting a
second one. “I'll call him Dad the day he deserves it.”
OK, stay away from
the daddy issues, Haley reminded herself. That's bound to be even
messier than the freaky ghost crap. Oh, speaking of freaky... “By
the way, what's the deal with the weird door downstairs?” inquired
Haley, though she wasn't convinced she really wanted to know the
answer.
“Ah, that.”
Reluctantly Deanna admitted, “That would be the door to the
basement. There's, well, there's dangerous stuff down there.”
“All those
symbols on there...” Haley shuddered just thinking about how
foreboding they looked. “They're not Satanic, are they?”
Taking her
cigarette out of her mouth, Deanna let out a wry laugh. “No, no,”
she replied with another roll of her eyes. “Those sigils are
protection against evil. No devil-worship here. Fuck, no.”
“Oh, good,”
Haley sighed in relief.
“But,” Deanna
started to say, and her green eyes shone as the flirty little smirk
from before made an appearance. “But if you want to see something
magical...” She leaned over to her nightstand and opened up the
drawer.
Haley snorted and
echoed, “Magical? Really? Really?”
Deanna withdrew a
deck of Rider-Waite Tarot cards and held them up. “Want to see our
future?”
“Our
future?” Haley parroted Deanna's words yet again and rolled her own
hazel eyes.
“Yours and mine,
together,” replied Deanna playfully as she shuffled the cards. Then
she put five cards face down before Haley. “Pick one.”
Haley stared,
trying to make sure the girl was serious. “Really?” she said
again.
“Pick one,”
Deanna insisted.
“OK, OK.” Haley
gave in and grabbed a card at random. She flipped it over: The
Lovers.
Deanna's
grin broadened. She really was quite beautiful when she smiled – a
genuine smile. “That's a sign,” she explained gleefully. “Lovers
– you and me, together. We should hook up.”
Haley blushed
bright red, red as her dyed hair, dropping the card. Before she could
respond, a voice from behind her stated in an exasperated tone, “It's
a trick, you know.” Haley whirled around to see a tall boy in jeans
and a hoodie with brown hair in desperate need of a haircut standing
in the doorway.
“It's
a trick,” he repeated. “They're all
The Lovers, every card in the deck.”
Haley flipped over
the other cards and discovered that they were all indeed The Lovers.
Deanna scowled at the boy as he strode over to them. He kicked
Deanna's Doc Martens out of the way and stole one of her cigarettes.
“What the hell?”
was all Haley could manage to say.
The boy, who
towered over them, lit his cigarette with Deanna's lighter and
explained, “It's my sister's version of a pick up line. It's how
she got two of my girlfriends to make out with her.”
“Shut the fuck
up, Jared,” hissed Deanna.
“And the third to
sleep with her,” Jared continued, deadpan.
Haley's jaw dropped
to the floor. She wasn't certain if she was more upset about the dumb
con or that Deanna was the kind of person to steal her brother's
girlfriends.
“Everyone in our
family is pretty fucked up,” Jared said matter-of-factly. He
brushed his too long bangs out of his eyes, revealing his prominent
brow.
Deanna sighed.
“It's true,” she conceded. “We're all fucked up.”
“Yep.”
The siblings took a
drag of their cigarettes in unison. Haley was speechless.
“Anyway,”
continued Deanna defensively, “it's not my fault you like to date
older girls with a bicurious tendency, and Jane only used the both of
us to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. I was taking a bullet for you,
really.”
“Whatever, jerk.”
Jared had the same green eyes Deanna did, and he rolled them in the
same manner.
Haley finally spoke
up, crying out, “Wait, wait, you're what, twelve? And you're
smoking? You have to realize there's something wrong with that!”
“I'm actually
fourteen.”
“Yeah, but he and
I started smoking when I was twelve,” added Deanna, as if that
improved things.
“Because of those
comic books you're obsessed with, with the guy who fights demons and
smokes a lot,” Jared commented, as if that explanation made
everything justifiable.
Deanna glared at
her younger brother and snapped, “They're graphic novels, bitch.”
“Whatever you
say, nerd.”
“You're a nerd!”
“Your face is a
nerd!”
“Oh my God, you
two are going to die of lung cancer!” Haley shrieked, interrupting
their banter. “Do you not see the problem with this?!”
The Wesson siblings
gave her a look filled with pain and loss. “It's a lot better than
the death we have coming to us,” Deanna admitted softly.
“I...” Haley
didn't think she could deal with this craziness anymore, but
something in Deanna's eyes made her want to stay. Something in
Deanna's haunted expression made Haley want to save Deanna from
herself, even though her better judgment was warning her, screaming
at her to get the hell away now as fast as she could.
She took out her
camera from her purse. “Um, hey, why don't I film interviews with
the both of you for my vlog, and you two can explain why your life is
so, um, different?”
“Heh, different
is right,” remarked Jared as he sat down beside Deanna on the bed.
Deanna's smile
started to return. “Damn, we brought the mood down, huh?” she
said. “I'll tell you anything you want to know Haley.”
But Haley wasn't
sure what exactly she wanted to know anymore.
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