Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

PROLOGUE

    I am back at the start again, back on Gin Lane again, a boy of ten with his whole life ahead of him. It is a hot summer morning, and breathing in the barely perceptible ocean breeze is like inhaling the air that rises up from the tip of a flame. The sun is new in the sky but already gives off a warmth that touches my face in the way it should in the hours that follow noon, not dawn. A sound comes from the inland side of the dunes, catching my ear. I turn to face it. The sound punches through the long roar and hiss of the Atlantic crashing in again and again just feet behind me. I hold still, warm sand shifting beneath my bare feet, and listen.
    I hear cries, big fear in a voice that sounds small and tinny. I see nothing, just the dunes and the great houses built upon them. I hear then the sound of a dog barking—this, too coming from somewhere behind those dunes, from the street beyond. These distinct sounds reach me in waves. They push against the sound of the ocean, fight it, are diminished by it. Still, I can hear them well enough to know something is wrong.
    I start toward them, still unable to see the road that is beyond the dune. I make it over the soft sand to the foot of the dune and hurry to climb it. I drop down to all fours and scramble for the top. Sand disappears below my hands and feet, but I persist and crest it and stumble down the other side to the small blacktop parking lot below, where violence waits.
    Asphalt crumbs lay along the broken edges of the lot, where sea grass grows wild. Pale yellow, the grass stands stiff in the August air and brushes my legs as I come through it. Each blade is just moments from combustion, a dry match head aching for the slightest friction.
    I see her then. She is a blonde-haired eleven-year-old girl, seated on the sun-warmed pavement in the middle of the empty seaside parking lot. She has just fallen from her bike, bare knees scraped, hands shimmering with blood. Stunned, she stares at the source of the barking, which sounds to me like automatic gunfire, short bursts of snarling and grunting that echo sharply off surrounding dunes and the fronts of the nearby houses.
    It is, I see now, a mastiff that is charging her, one hundred and twenty pounds of rabid viciousness. It is wild and enraged but focused and moves faster than anything should be able to move. But I am nearer to her than it. I know I can make it to her if I don’t let up.
    I continue toward her, throwing myself forward, one leg after the other. I feel the softened pavement shift beneath the balls of my bare feet. I haul it, my eyes on her, and when I finally reach her, when my out-of-control running turns to barely controllable slowing, the beast is only seconds away.
    I drop fast into a crouch beside her and grab her arm and try to pull her up to free the bike around which her legs are tangled. But my touch startles her. She looks at me suddenly, drawing away instinctively. Because she is looking at me she is not paying attention as the mastiff lowers its head like a plow and makes its last wide strides and takes a hold of her right leg with its jaws. It stops on a dime and scoops her up, its barks funneling down to a deep, feral snorting. Long strands of spittle break free from the foam hanging from its mouth and go flying like shrapnel. I feel it hit my face.
    The girl panics and grasps at me, looking down in horror at the animal tearing into her. She holds onto me with tremendous strength as it tugs on her. Her fingers dig into my arms. She screams and looks up at me. I see her eyes so clearly. They are all I can see.
    Behind us the ocean collapses on the shore. The sound of it is my only connection to sanity, to the world that existed just moments ago, before this burst of violence. I think in a split second that in the mouth of the beast, this girl seems like a ragdoll.
    Over the sound of the waves I hear an approaching siren. Blood and spittle fly in all directions through the air, arcs of milky-red. The girl screams again, a desperate shriek, and I cannot take it. I let go of her and grab hold of the dog by the collar and slide between them. I hook my fingers around the tube inside its throat and dig in till the tip of my middle finger and thumb meet.
    It takes just a second for the mastiff to gag and release her. But I have not harmed it, merely angered it. When it does release her it wiggles violently, like a game fish on a line, and I lose my grip and it snaps its jaws down on me.