Jamey Wright hated his father. When he heard people say you might hate your parents, but you still also always love them somewhere deep inside, Jamey knew that didn't apply to him. When he looked deep inside to see how he really felt about his father, all he found there was hate.

There were plenty of reasons why Jamey should dislike his father. He was bossy, never laughed at anything, yelled often. He was only interested in church and work. His guiding philosophy in life seemed to be that anything fun would result in personal inadequacy, which would lead to eternal damnation. If Jamey got less than an A on his report cards, he was grounded for a month, so he could study and make up the grades. He didn’t allow Jamey to go to dances, didn't let him play video games, only let him watch TV five hours a week and only shows that none of his friends were watching. And he wasn’t allowed on sleep overs, which didn’t matter since he didn’t have any friends anyway. Those were all reasons he might dislike his father, but still have some love left over.

But the reason Jamey hated his father was because of the hitting. Because of the nights locked in his room, hearing his mother trying to reason with his father, and then hearing her cry and beg for mercy. Because of all the times his mother had had to cover bruises on her face with makeup, and the lies she had had to tell the women at church about tripping on the stairs or slipping on the sidewalk when makeup wouldn't cover the bruises. Because of the bruises on Jamey's own body, in places where school teachers would never notice. Because of the fear. The only thing that made life bearable for Jamey was that his father was often out of town on business. When his father was gone, his mother laughed more and was more lenient, and life was a kind of paradise.

Jamey's father expected him to attend every single dumb, boring activity that was sponsored by the church, especially the dumbest, most boring activity of all, the weekly Bible study at Pastor Parks’ house. It was at the Bible study that Jamey met Martin Parks, the pastor’s son. Martin was a few years older than Jamey, a high school senior. Martin wore his hair just long enough, his jeans just tattered enough, and the slogans on his T-shirt just offensive enough to be considered inappropriate by Jamey’s dad, which immediately made him one of the most interesting people in the world to Jamey. Martin had a little five-pointed star and some strange symbols tattooed to his wrist, which Jamey thought was cool. And Martin missed church just as often as he attended, which was considered shocking for the son of the pastor, and made Jamey envious.

Martin didn't generally participate in the Bible study at his father's house. The day Jamey met Martin, he did. His father didn't seem particularly pleased to see him there, but he didn't tell him to leave either. Martin sat on the opposite edge of the circle from Jamey, flipping idly through the worn paperback "God's Modern Word" Bible his father handed out to Bible study participants who hadn't managed to bring their own. Occasionally Jamey noticed Martin staring at him. Jamey stared back, and Martin smiled -- one of those "who-gives-a-shit" grins -- and almost succeeded in making Jamey laugh.

At one point, Reverend Parks asked Jamey to read. The text was Deuteronomy, and the pastor had been rambling on about how the Law set Israel apart from the nations as preparation for their role in bringing salvation to the world, blah, blah. Jamey was paying more attention to Martin making faces, when the pastor tapped him on the head and said, "Jamey! Please read Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 10."

Jamey opened up the gilded King James study Bible his parents had given him on his twelfth birthday, and read:

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.

After the Bible study was over, most of the other kids took off, their parents parked in front of the pastor's house waiting. Soon, it was only Jamey left, wondering why his mother hadn't arrived to pick him up yet.

"You wanna hang out in my room?" asked Martin.

Jamey nodded and followed him up creaky steps to a door adorned with a huge yellow poster bearing six-inch-tall black letters that shouted, "STAY OUT!" Martin pulled out a little key hanging on a chain he wore around his neck, unlocked the door, and motioned Jamey in. Jamey's mouth gaped in amazement as he saw the contents of the room. Posters covered every inch of wall space, mostly eye-popping, psychedelic posters for heavy metal rock bands like Satanic Virgins, Shooting Spree, and ÜberDeath. It was sensual overload for Jamey, who had never seen such strange, forbidden images and now saw them everywhere he looked: naked women with enormous breasts wearing red devil horns and riding pitchforks, a werewolf with an enormous, erection (visible only in silhouette, but which Jamey could not stop staring at), zombies with bloody faces gorging on the entrails of corpses, rock musicians in black robes gesturing obscenely in front of giant pentagrams and pictures of Satan. The room was cluttered, clothes, magazines and CD's tossed helter-skelter onto every available floor, dresser, bed and shelf space, and the room smelled musty and bitter, like cigarette smoke but not quite.

There was no direct lighting in the room; Martin had unscrewed the light bulbs from the ceiling sconce and instead fashioned a noose out of thick black yarn and hung a Pee Wee Herman doll there by the neck. The nightstand, reading and desk lights where all equipped with "black light" bulbs that gave whites and pastels an eerie, electric glow and plunged everything else into darkness. Martin brushed some luminescent briefs off of a beanbag chair and motioned for Jamey to sit down. Then he hit the button on a stereo, unleashing a torrent of pounding drums, growling bass and screechy, acidy lyrics. He lit a stick of incense and placed it into the mouth of an incense burner in the shape of a reclining skeleton. Then he unlocked a desk drawer with a key off the same necklace he'd used to open the door to his room, pulled out a plastic bag, pulled up a bean bag chair next to Jamey, and plopped himself into it with a great, orgasmic sigh of relief. The plastic bag had another smaller plastic bag inside, full of dried herbs, a few hand-rolled cigarettes, and a lighter with a picture of a naked woman on it.

Martin put one of the “cigarettes” in his mouth, lit up, and, after inhaling deeply, offered it to Jamey. Jamey had never seen a real reefer, much less actually tried one. He tentatively put it to his lips and puffed without really inhaling. As the bittersweet smell of pot filled the air, Martin lit two more incense sticks. Each time the reefer went back and forth, Jamey inhaled just a little bit more.

Eventually the air began to swim. Jamey noticed that Martin was talking. It sort of took him by surprise, because he had been focusing on the very interesting poster of the werewolf. But once he focused on Martin talking, he realized that every word was extremely important, perhaps the most important thing anyone had ever said to him.

“What do you think of my room?” asked Martin.

“Wow!” Jamey got excited, “I really like it.” He really felt heart-filled admiration. “I mean, I could never get away with this at my house. My dad would never let me get away with it.”

“You just gotta do what you wanna do,” said Martin, “Who gives a fuck what your dad thinks!”

Jamey was impressed by Martin's use of the word “fuck.”

“You don’t know my dad,” said Jamey.

“Who’s your dad?”

“Richard Wright,” said Jamey, “Everybody calls him Dick. The thin, bald guy who always wears a suit and black tie to church.”

“Ooh,” said Martin, “Mr. Uptight. The guy who always walks around like he’s got a big fat pole stuck up his ass?”

Jamey let out a big, freeing belly laugh. “Yeah, him. Mr. Uptight. If you think he’s a pain at church…”

Martin laughed too. “I wouldn’t put up with his shit. I’d arrange for him to meet the Boar Man. Yeah, the Boar Man would fix him.”

“What? Who’s the Boar Man?” asked Jamey.

Martin replied, “He comes from Hell.”

Jamey laughed.

Martin gestured for emphasis. “He has a giant head, the size of an elephant head, and he looks like a giant boar, with bloody tusks and a snout, and cloven hoofs for hands. He wears black robes, like a priest, and he carries a big black book, the biggest book you ever saw. The pages are singed from the fires of hell, and the names of his victims are written in it in blood.”

Jamey laughed again, though this time a bit nervously, when he saw that Martin had suddenly become quite serious.

“That’s a good one,” Jamey said.

Martin didn’t change his expression. “It’s OK,” he said coolly, “There’s no need to be afraid of the Boar Man, as long as he’s your 'friend.' As long as you have this to control him.” Martin went to the same drawer he’d pulled the marijuana out of, and drew out a small, black leather bundle tied up with string that looked like it’d been woven from human hair. He untied the bundle and pulled out a smooth stick in the shape of a Y.

“What the heck is that?” asked Jamey.

“That’s my magic wand,” Martin said. Jamey reached out to take it, but Martin pushed his hand away. Then he wrapped it back up into the bundle.

"That's REALLY good," said Jamey. He laughed.

Martin laughed back at him, and handed Jamey the reefer again. It was so tiny now Jamey could barely hold the part that wasn't burning between the very tips of his index finger and thumb. He'd been afraid the smoke would make him cough or feel sick, but it hadn't. Actually, the more he inhaled the better he felt, like he could breathe in all the pain of the whole world, and breathe out nothing but peace and harmony. He took in the deepest drag yet, making the fire scorch the tips of his fingers, and causing him to drop the butt. He focused on the butt, smoldering on the floor, and watched Martin pick it up with a pair of tweezers and put it to his lips.

"So how can we arrange for the Boar Man to meet my dad?" exhaled Jamey, giggling.

"You drink some communion wine from the altar of a church, and you go to a cemetery at night. You kill a cat and mix its brains with the ashes of a dead man, and write the Boar Man's name and your name on a piece of paper. Then you take off all your clothes and lie down naked in the graveyard, with your head toward the rising moon. And you say the magic words, over and over again until dawn."

All of this sounded eminently reasonable to Jamey. "OK, let's do it," he said.

"OK."

At that, Jamey and Martin heard heavy footsteps on the staircase. Jamey lost track of what Martin was doing. He was moving very quickly, getting up, shuffling stuff around. Jamey realized he was putting the pot away. There came a knock at the door, and Jamey half expected it to open. (Jamey's father always came in and out of his bedroom without knocking.) But the door stayed decisively shut and the voice of Pastor Parks came through. "Jamey, your mother's here to pick you up."

Jamey got into the car with his mother without saying a word. He wondered if his mother could smell the marijuana on his breath or his clothes, but she seemed absorbed in her own world, and didn't say a thing. She just stared straight ahead at the road while she drove, with an odd, tense expression. When she turned her head briefly to check both sides at an intersection, he noticed an ugly bruise above her left cheekbone. It was about the size of a golf ball and turning brown in the center and flamingo pink around the edges.

"Why were you so late?" he asked.

"Your father and I had a discussion," she replied.

"Mom, what happened to your face."

She hesitated for a moment before answering. Then her face crinkled into an apologetic smile and she replied, "I'm a klutz. I tripped on the stairs. But I'm OK, really." She turned away and was careful after that about how she turned her head.

Jamey wasn't sure he believed in the Boar Man, but he knew now that he wanted to believe.

The next time his father went on a business trip, Jamey asked his mother permission to go on a sleep over at his friend Martin's house.

"You know how your father feels about sleep overs," she said.

"Well, we don't have to tell him, do we?" asked Jamey.

She smiled. "Well, you'll be at the pastor's house, so I'm sure he'll take good care of you. OK, it'll be our little secret."

Life at the pastor's house was strangely chaotic. There were no organized meals; Martin and Jamey were simply encouraged to raid the fridge for whatever scraps they could find. Reverend Parks made an occasional appearance out in the open where everybody could see him, but, like a beaver, he spent most of the time out of sight in his den. Mrs. Parks seemed to be constantly in and out, running errands here or there. She departed at about six thirty, for "an outing with the girls," promising not to be back until very late. So Martin and Jamey more or less had the run of the house.

It was a warm September evening. After they had finished eating some leftover chicken, Martin pulled a chair up to one of the counters. "Shh!" he said, putting his finger to his lips, "I'm not supposed to know where this is!" He got on top of the chair, reached up above one of the cupboards, and pulled out a jar. Inside the jar were some keys, and one of the keys was labeled "church side entrance -- spare." Martin slipped the key into his pocket, put the jar back in its place, climbed back down, put the chair away, and winked knowingly at Jamey.

They gathered supplies in Martin's room. Martin loaded stuff into a canvas backpack hand-decorated with his own sketches of pentagrams, skulls, pictures of the devil, and the logos of his favorite rock bands. Into the backpack went the marijuana supplies, the leather bundle with the Y-shaped branch, and a small portable stereo and some CDs. "So we can listen to some tunes in the graveyard," Martin explained. Last but not least, he pulled out two jars, one full of some foul, questionable looking brownish-red substance. "Cat brains," he whispered. The other jar was full of whitish-gray ashes. “The dust of a dead man.”

"No way!" exclaimed Jamey. He couldn't help himself, but he started laughing. "Really?"

Martin didn't answer. He slipped the jars carefully into the backpack, and then slid the backpack on. They made their way to the door of Reverend Parks' study. "Dad, we're going out! I'm taking the car! We'll be back later!"

"Fine!" Reverend Parks' answered through the door.

That was it. Jamey was shocked. No hassles. No grilling. Just "Fine!"

By the time Jamey and Martin made it to the church, it was dark out. Nothing ever happened at the church on a Friday night. The abandoned church parking lot was lit by two street lamps. Martin unlocked the side entrance and they slipped inside.

Martin shouted as loud as he possibly could, "HELLO! GOD? ARE YOU HOME?"

This seemed like an incredible travesty, but incredibly funny at the same time. They both laughed uncontrollably. They ran down the hallway from the side entrance, past the pastor's office, around a corner, and then down another hallway to the sacristy. The sacristy door was unlocked, and Martin threw it open. There were rows of choir robes hanging there on portable clothes racks; piles of hymnals and service books; and stacked up rather haphazardly next to a small metal sink, the communion ware: fancy silver plates and ornate chalices. Martin led Jamey forward through the sacristy to a door on the other side, and threw it open. And there they were, looking out into the sanctuary.

Jamey had never seen the church from this perspective. He had always only see it from the pews, so there was something frightening and strange about entering from here, from where the pastor entered every Sunday. Martin swaggered up to the altar, looked up and shouted again, "GOD? ARE YOU IN HERE?" His voice echoed "Here! Here! Here!" "Come on in!" said Martin, "Don't worry, there's no one here and no one can hear us."

Jamey followed Martin in. Martin stooped over and opened a cupboard-sized door on the back of the altar. Inside, there were plastic bags full of the thin, crispy, white communion wafers, and several bottles of dark, red wine. One of the bottles had already been opened and been re-corked. Martin picked the bottle up off the shelf, pulled the cork out, and took a swig of it. Then he handed it to Jamey.

Jamey studied the label. He'd never seen a bottle of wine this close. The only time he had ever tasted wine was at communion. He sniffed it, and smelled the thick, bittersweet aroma.

"What? Are you some kind of connoisseur?" smirked Martin.

Jamey laughed. He drank a couple of mouthfuls, when Martin pulled the bottle away.

"Here," he said, "Let's do this properly."

He strode into the sacristy and returned with one of the communion chalices. He plopped the chalice onto the altar and filled it with wine. Then he raised the chalice high, as if making a toast, and said, "Hic est sanguis meus!" and took a big swig out of it. Then he handed it to Jamey, and said, laughing, "Here, drink up. This one's official!"

Jamey took the chalice, and drank up the rest of the wine, and then Martin took the chalice and refilled it again. On Sunday morning, when he'd tasted the communion wine the strange tingly warmth of it had only ever stayed just briefly in his mouth and throat. But now it was filling him up, radiating through his whole body. It made him feel relaxed and good natured. Life was good he thought. And then he thought of his father.

"Screw him!" he said suddenly, surprising himself at how loud he had said it.

"That's right!" said Martin, "Screw them all!"

Martin had sat down on top of the altar. Jamey heaved himself up and sat down next to him, and they passed the chalice back and forth, taking turns drinking out of it. Each time they emptied it, Martin filled it up again from the bottle.

"You don't know what's like to have an asshole for a dad," said Jamey.

"Oh, I think I do!" said Martin.

"What are you talking about? Your dad let's you do whatever you want."

"My dad's pathetic," replied Martin, "And your dad's got a big fucking pole up his ass. So let's not talk about them any more. It's spoiling the mood."

"Well, what should we talk about?"

"Have you ever sworn in church, REALLY LOUD?" Martin raised his voice at the end, so that his voice echoed through the sanctuary, "...Oud, oud, oud!"

"No," said Jamey giggling.

"Come on! Shout it out!" Martin kept coaxing Jamey until he finally shouted, "SCREW HIM!" and the sanctuary echoed back, "...Im, im, im!"

"You can do better than that!"

"HELL!" "...Ell, ell, ell!"

"That's right!"

"PISS!" "...Iss, iss!"

"Good one!"

"SHIT!" "...It!"

"OK, enough of the sissy swear words. How about FUCK CHRIST!"

Jamey dissolved into a heap of giggles. "I can't believe you said that in a church!"

Martin poured the last bit of wine out of the bottle into the chalice, and let Jamey finish it off. Before leaving the church, Martin used a cork screw from the sacristy to open another bottle of wine, and emptied it to about the same level as the first bottle, re-corked it, and put it back under the altar. "Here, have some more," he said to Jamey, offering him the chalice one last time.

As they left the parking lot, it occurred to Jamey he might ought to be worried about Martin driving his dad's car, having just drunk more than his share of a whole bottle of communion wine. But the warmth he felt through his entire body was still rising. Every muscle was relaxing: in his thighs, his calves, his biceps, his upper back and neck. His head felt light. Sort of like swimming, he thought. It's like breathing under water, like being a fish, he decided.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To the cemetery," replied Martin.

Most of the rest of the night was something of a blur to Jamey. He had strange memories of lying on his back, the moist grass tickling his skin, out in the cool, autumn night air, looking at stars through the branches of a tree. That was the cemetery, he remembered, there had been tomb stones and monuments that looked eerie and ghost-like in the starlight. There had been that bloody jar and the acrid smell of the ashes. He also remembered firelight. It cast weird shadows that seemed to come alive and move of their own will. He was sure there had been a campfire, because he remembered seeing Martin facing away from him on the other side of it, taking his shirt off. He remembered smoking more pot, and writing his name in blood on a piece of paper, under spindly, complex, strangely elegant symbols, and burning the paper in the fire. And he remembered repeating strange words, “portarum,” and “Nebiros Dominus…” and a bunch of other stuff he couldn’t remember.

One thing that especially stuck in his mind was his memory of carving his name onto a Y-shaped stick like the “magic wand” Martin had showed him earlier. He remembered Martin saying something like, “This is what you use when you’ve had enough of Mr. Uptight." But he couldn't remember Martin telling him how to use it. Martin had warned him, "Whatever you do, don’t break it, don’t lose it, and don’t let anyone else touch it.”

Then there had been one last thing that could only have been a dream, he thought, because it had been so strange and terrifying. He remembered hearing horrific bleating and screeching noises, and a trampling commotion all around him, like a herd of wild animals. He remembered feeling paralyzed by fear, seeing the half moon and the stars blotted out by a crowd of strange shadows looming over him, and a smell that made him want to vomit. He also remembered the tallest, darkest, foulest shadow of all crouching down over him and sniffing at him. That shadow had glowing red eyes, and when it lifted its great, giant head and turned its face up for a moment, silhouetted in the moonlight he saw two giant tusks and a great, furry snout.

Jamey woke up in Martin’s bed, wearing nothing but his underwear. He felt sick to his stomach. Martin was lying awake on the floor in a sleeping bag, staring at the ceiling. The room was dark, but there were thin shards of bright light leaking in through the thick, black curtains covering Martin’s windows. Jamey saw the red numbers of a digital clock on Martin’s dresser. It said “1:39 P.M.” Had he slept through the whole morning and dreamed everything?

The rest of the day passed painfully slowly. Martin was sullen and irritable; almost the opposite of the gregarious, talkative way he’d behaved the night before. He insisted on doing nothing but listen to more Heavy Metal and smoke more pot, and lounge in the beanbag chairs in their underwear for most of the afternoon. They eventually got dressed and wandered downstairs into the kitchen, where they made tasteless bologna sandwiches on white bread and mayonnaise. No one seemed to be home. Jamey felt a mixture of boredom and anxiety, and intense longing for his time with Martin not to end. Eventually it did end; Martin drove Jamey home in Pastor Parks' car. They never spoke about what happened the night before, leaving Jamey wondering what in fact had been real and what had been drug-induced fantasy.

The following morning, Jamey woke up with a scream stuck in his throat. He had had one of those nightmares that made horrible sense for as long as he was sleeping, but fell into fragments between his fingers once he woke up. He remembered that he and Martin had been sitting naked on the ground in front of a blazing white fire, and there had been things crawling out of the fire. He saw a cat walking backwards, its tail twitching, the back of its head open and its brains missing. The ashes of the fire were clumping together and forming things: a blackened hand, a foot, and a nose attached to a forehead. Then he was standing in his bedroom, looking into his dresser mirror. Instead of seeing his bedroom in the reflection, he saw the sanctuary of the church, and behind his reflection he saw the reflection of Martin Parks smiling at him. There were nonsense words written on the surface of the mirror in blood: “Suem siugnas tse cih.” He touched the mirror and traced the letters backwards with his finger, and as he traced, the letters disappeared. Then he wrote other nonsense words on the mirror with the blood on his finger: “Thgirw Hcirdla Semaj.” He heard a horrible screeching noise, almost like someone screaming, but not quite human, and things rattling around inside the walls of his house. The shrieking came from inside his closet. That was when he woke up.

Jamey’s heart was pounding so hard he could feel it leaping in his throat and hear it throbbing in his ears. He sprang up, flailing his arms and legs about. The gray light of dawn was filtering through the blinds of his windows. He looked at the dresser mirror, and saw just a plain reflection through glass that was still clean from the last time his mother had dusted it. He stared at the closet door, and heard silence. The only sound in his room was the gentle “tick, tick” of the second hand of his alarm clock. He turned on the nightstand lamp and, his heart still thumping wildly in his chest, he slowly got out of bed and approached the closet. He turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door, and inside he saw nothing. Except for what usually belonged in his closet. But his eyes fell on the jacket he had worn the night before. And then he remembered, there was something in the jacket. He felt inside it and found something protruding from one of the pockets in the liner. He pulled it out and saw that it was a leather bundle tied together with string that looked to be woven from human hair. And when he undid the string and unwrapped the bundle, there he found a stick shaped like a Y, and along the edge his name carved in it.

He nearly leaped out of his skin when he heard a sudden rapping on his door, and then the voice of his mother saying, “Jamey? Are you up? It’s time to get ready for church...”

It was a strange Sunday. The church service had seemed more odd and empty than usual. Pastor Parks went through the motions, preaching another boring sermon that was different and yet just the same. The most exciting part of the service was at communion when, for a few suspenseful moments, Jamey wondered if Pastor Parks had noticed anything awry. If he did notice something, he gave no indication of it. As Jamey accepted a sip from the communion chalice, there was a dreadful moment when he almost failed to stifle a laugh that would have left him spewing the contents of his mouth all over the pastor. He’d had to contort his face into an awful grimace. He had hoped to see Martin in church, but it was one of those many Sundays when there was no sign of him.

The worst part of Sunday was after church, when his father returned from his business trip. Jamey was lying on his bed with the bedroom door closed, studying the strange “magic wand” he only vaguely remembered making with Martin in the cemetery, when he heard the slamming of the front door downstairs followed by his father’s unmistakable, heavy, clumping footsteps, and the sound, rising up through the bedroom window, of a taxicab pulling away from the front curb. He heard his mother’s effusive greetings, followed by his father droning on about what a miserable trip it had been. He heard the sofa creak the way it usually did when his father sat down on it, and then his mother lugging the heavy suitcases up the stairs. Jamey quickly wrapped the wand up in its bundle, and was just closing the bottom dresser drawer he had stashed it in when his mother tapped his door and said, “Your father’s home, come say hello to him!”

Jamey went down to the living room, where he saw his father reclining on the sofa, reading the Sunday edition of USA Today. He could see, from the expression on his face, that he was in a fouler mood than usual, which meant tread carefully. They exchanged the expected, cautious pleasantries, Jamey asking him how his trip and been, and him responding in a demeaning way, and glaring smugly as if daring Jamey to talk back at him. Jamey just smiled and said it was nice to have him back, and excused himself to his room, all the while imagining what it might be like to see his father on the bloody tusks of the Boar Man.

On Monday when he got home from school, Jamey knew something was wrong from the pale, tearful expression on the face of his mother, who was waiting for him in the kitchen. His father sat at the kitchen table, with a cool, hateful expression on his face. He leaned forward tensely in his chair, like a tiger getting ready to pounce.

Jamey’s heart began pounding, but he mustered a nonchalant greeting. “Hey, Dad!”

“Your father came home from work early today,” his mother said.

His father produced the bundle containing Jamey’s magic wand. It was disheveled and the string had been undone and wrapped loosely around it. “What is this?” his father asked crisply, anger crackling around the edges.

“Your father knows about your sleep over with Martin,” she said, her voice trailing off.

Jamey’s mind began to race ahead. His father “knew” about the sleep over? What did he know? How much could he know? Jamey looked at his mother with a sinking expression of betrayal and despair. She shrank back as Jamey’s father pounced, grabbing him violently by the arm and yanking him toward the door leading from the kitchen into the hallway, saying something about it being time for him and Jamey to have a talk alone.

During the beating, Jamey’s mind strangely went to one of those hard-boiled thriller movies he’d managed to watch on rare, unsupervised Saturday afternoons. He was like the spy in The Eagle Has Landed and his father like a Nazi interrogator. The thought of it actually made him laugh for a moment, which made his father even angrier and the beating worse. Jamey was proud of the fact that even though it was the worst beating he had ever received, he never cried and never said a word. He never betrayed Martin. The stick was just a stick, he cried, just something he’d picked up somewhere and taken a liking to. It would have made Jack Higgins proud.

He remained stoic as his father snapped the stick in two and took it out to the garbage. There was no dinner for Jamey that night. His mother was not allowed to come up and see him in his room. It was just as well. It was less painful for Jamey just to lie in bed very still, and let the pain gradually drift away.

He struggled to understand how he had lost this battle. His father had likely come home early just to search Jamey’s room for drugs or sexy magazines, or whatever else he imagined Jamey hoarded in there. That was just like him, Jamey thought. He’d probably threatened his mom, maybe even hit her. That was probably why she had spilled their “little secret.” It did not matter, Jamey thought to himself. He could profit from this time to plan his revenge. His father had won this battle, but it didn’t matter what Heaven, Earth or Hell Jamey had to move in order to do it, he would make another magic wand. This time he would make it stronger, he would hide it better. And the Boar Man would come, he thought. So he thought.

Jamey just lay on top of the covers of his bed as darkness descended like the blissful unconsciousness of sleep. But Jamey’s sleep was not unconscious, it was filled with strange dreams. Just as he had Sunday morning, he woke suddenly, with terror trapped in his throat. But this time, he found himself in pitch dark in the middle marches of the night.

There were strange noises in the dark. There were things clattering throughout the house; strange knockings and rattling that emanated from the walls. It was too dark to keep any sense of where he might be or which way he was facing, but then he heard a horrible, growling, squealing, screeching sound. It was muffled at first, and sounded, as it had in his dream, like it was coming from somewhere close, like behind the closet door. It sounded like a human scream, but not quite human.

Jamey's breathing came in deep, short gasps. His heart writhed. He felt nauseous and clammy with sweat. He wanted to get up and run. He wanted to turn on the light. He wanted to call for help. But he couldn't get up, he couldn't move, and he couldn't even scream.

A deafening commotion arose, the sound of drawers popping open, windows sliding up, air vents groaning and cracking. The shadows came to life, black things moving in the blackness, leggy things scuttling across the floor, slimy things scaling the walls and the ceiling, flapping, hissing things in the air that brushed his face as they passed, scaly things writhing into his bed, around Jamey's ankles and over his wrists. The closet door rattled and shivered and sizzled, like a teapot boiling over. With a cracking sound like a canon, it flew open, slamming against the wall, and shadowy things pushed through.

Jamey was blinded briefly by a thin beam of light. He blinked and shielded his eyes, until the light shined in other directions and the darkness engulfed him again. Then he saw only a baleful, stupid face with fish-like eyes and a gaping, lipless, toothless mouth, and, held aloft, a lantern made from a human skull.

The air went stifling hot, choked with a sewage smell, and the darkness grew crowded. Claws reached at Jamey from every direction, tearing at his clothes and clutching his limbs. As the skull lantern bounced he caught terrifying glimpses of gnashing, razor sharp teeth, deformed, inhuman bodies, and pieces of human beings. He saw blood stained trophies of human bones, toes, arms, scalps or intestines worn or carried aloft on pikes. Something grasped him by the throat and pushed his head up against the wall, pinning him so he could not move and growling through rows of spiny teeth.

In the eerie light of the skull lantern, he saw a tall, shadowy figure emerge through the closet door, so large it had to draw itself in and bow down in order to pass. Its head was fully one third the size of its whole body, with red, glowing eyes and huge, darkly stained tusks curling up from under a wrinkled, furry snout. Under its right arm it clutched an enormous, black, leather-bound book. It shrieked and roared, and deftly opened the book with cloven hooves, and held up a particularly blood-splattered page so Jamey could see under the skull lantern, clearly written in his own hand, his full Christian name: James Aldrich Wright.

With dreadful, magical deftness, it closed the book and drew from the folds of its embroidered robes a black, jagged dagger that glinted like obsidian. As it moved closer, Jamey saw its eyes, round and pupil-less and bulging from sinewy sockets, with no hint of emotion except the savoring of futility. The hands and claws holding him fast began to unbutton and tear at his clothes, undressing him. Jamey imagined this was how one undressed a corpse, not caring what it thought. He knew he would soon be dead.

As the Boar Man coiled its arm for the strike, Jamey's last fleeting thoughts were of how he had been betrayed by his feelings: his hunger for freedom; his loneliness; his unrequited hatred. It was pitiful that in the end he should lose everything through carelessness, through not having hidden a little leather bundle someplace his father would never have thought to look.

His last thought was that God might save him from the Devil. “Well, screw that,” he thought, “Screw him!” He did not want God's mercy anyway. The thought that God and his father were somehow in league, that when God triumphed over the Devil in the end it would mean his father getting away with having made Jamey's and his mother's lives a misery; it was the likelihood of that, more than the thought of death or damnation, that sent the tears streaming down Jamey's face.

The Boar Man screeched deafeningly. The blade flashed. There was a stabbing pain. This was the end, thought Jamey, he was dead.

But the pain did not end, and he was not dead, and then came the shock and the realization that of course death would not come suddenly. Of course these demons preferred torture to death. The Boar Man shuddered and roared with laughter. It pulled the dagger out of Jamey's right side, from that tender spot just below the ribs, and it bellowed three distinct human words: “Porta nondum claudetur!” Jamey gasped for breath, he felt dizzy, and his limbs went cold. He lost consciousness.

When he woke it was morning, and the sun was actually shining through his windows. The room appeared quiet and undisturbed, just as it had been when he’d gone to sleep. His clothes lay scattered on the floor. He looked down at his body. There were bruises but no blood. There was pain and stiffness and the numbness of depression. The bruises might have been left by the Boar Man. Jamey would have preferred that. But wasn't it more likely that, unlike his father, the Boar Man was just another bad dream?

It was in gym class later that day at school, as he undressed in the locker room, that he saw something odd on his right side, just under the ribs. He stared at it, trying to get a better look. He touched it gently with his fingers. It felt rough like a scab. He craned his neck to look as closely as he could. Under the bright florescent lights of the locker room, he could not deny that he saw, right where the Boar Man had stabbed him, an odd scar in a shape like the cloven hoof-print of a pig.

Jamey remembered those four words spoken by the Boar Man. He wrote them down on the palm of his hand: “Porta nodum cladetor.” He asked a girl at school who spoke Spanish if she knew what the words meant, and she said it sounded like Latin, and she thought 'porta' might mean 'door.' His history professor, Mr. Crowley, understood Latin, so Jamey asked him what the words meant.

“Where did you hear that?” Mr. Crowley asked.

“I saw it in a book,” Jamey lied.

“Odd thing to find in a book, if it's what I think you're saying,” said Mr. Crowley, “'Porta nondum claudetur' means 'The gate shall not be shut yet.'”

If you've made it this far reading this story, maybe you'd like to read an alternative ending