Council of Peacocks Read Online Free Page B

jogging
pants. No shoes or socks.”
    “How drunk are you, man? Are you taking those
pills again?” Josh was beyond uncomfortable now. None of this was
even vaguely familiar. How could he forget someone who’d been his
best friend?
    Brian hit him in the arm. Hard. “No! I’m not
drunk and I haven’t used those pills for years. I’ll have you know
the only reason I was ever on those pills is because of that night.
If you don’t believe me, ask Matt. He was there, too. He can also
vouch for Tommy being your neighbor. You’re the one with amnesia,
so don’t talk down to me!”
    Everyone stared at them now. Brian’s voice
became increasingly louder as he went on. Josh looked over at him.
Brian’s face was red and his veins were bulging, but the redness
had gone from his eyes. Whatever else he was, Brian was not
drunk.
    “I’m sorry,” Josh said as he rubbed the back
of his neck. “I don’t remember him being my neighbor, or my friend.
What happened?”
    “How can you not remember that party?”
Rebecca slid forward and handed Brian a Diet Pepsi. “I wasn’t even
there and I’ve heard about it. Weren’t there, like, twenty or
thirty black guys in green tracksuits or something?”
    “I heard they brought guns,” Matt said. Josh
was surprised to hear him speak. His voice sounded far away, like
he was talking in his sleep. “I remember seeing them. Sort of. They
looked eight feet tall. And he was your friend, Josh. You used to
skateboard with him until he had that knee surgery.”
    Knee surgery. For some reason that
rang a bell. A memory flashed through Josh’s mind: going to the
hospital with a skateboard signed by everyone in his class. He
could see himself giving it to a thin-boned pale boy he recognized
as Tommy Delonki. His head started to hurt.
    “How can I not remember him?”
    “Good question.” Brian cleared his throat and
sank back into the passenger seat, facing forward. “I’ll never
forget. Tommy ran out of the woods. He bolted past everyone and
went straight to you. You saw him and dropped your drink just as he
collapsed. You put a hand on his cheek, like he was a lover or
something, and Tommy just starts crying. ‘ They came back for
me ,’ he said. And you? You didn’t ask him what he was talking
about. You stood up and said ‘ I warned them.’ Then you
grabbed a log off the bloody bonfire and started off into the
woods.”
    “I ran into the woods with a flaming
log?”
    “Nuh uh. You didn’t run. You walked. Gave me
the damned creeps. Sobered me up, too. That’s why I followed you. I
saw what you did to them.”
    “What did I do to them?” Josh stared at his
hands on the steering wheel. They were shaking.
    “You killed them.” Brian took a sip of his
Pepsi.
    “I what?”
    Jan leaned forward. “What the hell are you
talking about, Brian?”
    “I saw it. And so did a few others. Only
nothing ever happened. And I mean there must have been like twenty
people around. But we never talked about it. No one went to the
police. How could we? See, those guys, they weren’t black guys.
They had….”
    Suddenly the image came back to Josh very
clearly.
    “They had wings.”
    ***
    No one spoke for a while.
    It was just as well. Josh had a lot to
process. Although he couldn’t recall the events leading up to the
deaths, he could clearly see himself at the party now. He heard the
whirl of air and the crackle of burning embers as he swung the log.
He could see his hands bashing heads, setting green wings on fire.
He also remembered how expected it was. It didn’t seem strange to
him at the time. He knew who they were, knew what Tommy meant by
‘ They’ve come back for me. ’ Now it was all a mystery.
    Brian finally broke the silence.
    “Is that what you were talking about?”
Brian’s eyes glazed over. “Back there, after the crash, you said
‘I’ve got a few secrets’. Was that what you were talking
about?”
    Josh shook his head. “No. Not even close. I
think we need to