The Summer I Died: A Thriller (15 page)

Out of nowhere,
I started crying again. My emotions were bubbling like a tar pit. Tooth had cried some, too, but mostly he was just mad. Somehow I knew that without him I would have broken down and given up long ago. He wasn’t optimistic, but he wasn’t giving up yet either.

“
Don’t worry,
”
he said,
“
when I get loose I’m gonna kill him. I’ll feed him to his own damn dog.
”

“
My parents are in Providence
and
Jamie thinks I’m at your house. What are we going to do? We can’t just sit and wait for a park ranger. You need to get to a hospital.
”

“
I know, I know. But these chains
.
.
.
I can barely move.
”

“
So we’re done.
”

“
Maybe not. Can’t think like that anyway. Look, they lock into these steel plates in the wall, and maybe if we pull hard enough we can start to loosen the mortar around them. But be careful, I cut my wrist already.
”
He started writhing again, yanking the chains from the wall. He rocked back and forth with all of his body, careful not to let his neck take too much of the weight. We both did this for several minutes until we grew tired. Then we stopped and leaned back against the wall.

My eyes had adjusted enough I could
finally
see the poster on the door. A sunset, a fucking joke. Something to get his victims thinking about life, I suppose. But I didn’t think about life, I thought about pain, and how we’d stand up to it, and how long I’d go before giving in to it, and how long before I accepted my inevitable death.

I could also see the swelling of Tooth’s face, which had blown up like a bunch of grapes.

“
It’s no use,
”
I said.
“
I’m tired.
”

“
Okay, let’s take a rest, conserve our strength.
”

I knew he said that for me; I knew he’d go all night if he could.

Some time went by and we didn’t say anything. We tried to break the chains again and when that failed I resorted to sniveling. Tooth calmed me down and started talking to me about comics.
“
You know, I never read Silver Surfer. What does he do?
”

I knew he was trying to get my mind off the present, and although it didn’t work, I appreciated the effort.
“
He rides a silver surfboard and saves people.
”

“
Yeah? That’d be nice about now. How come people are always saying Batman is the shit? I don’t get it. I mean, I like Batman and all, but he’s not like Spider
-
man or Ghost Rider or anything, he’s just a guy with gadgets.
”

“
But that’s why he’s so cool. He’s just a normal guy with guts and skill. A regular Joe who doesn’t take shit from nobody, minds his own business, makes some bad choices once in a while, but ultimately does the right thing. A true hero.
”

I thought about Batman, the Dark Knight, and how easy it would be for him to escape these chains. He’d have some gadget on his belt or up his sleeve that would melt these cuffs and then he’d
torment
his captor
and make him pay
. I had nothing in my pockets, and Skinny Man had our gun. Tooth had his cell phone but neither of us could reach it. What a cruel joke.

“
Hey,
”
Tooth said as he rocked against his chains,
“
let’s work on the chains a bit longer. We gotta keep it up if we plan on getting out of here.
”

“
Yeah,
”
I agreed, but before I could start he spoke.

“
I’m sorry, Roger.
”

“
For what?
”

“
For this. For getting us captured by a bloodthirsty lunatic.
”

Wasn’t much to say to that so I just nodded like an idiot.

We worked at the chains again but it was the same old song and dance
—
they weren’t budging. I quit pulling and put my head against the wall and tried to find a comfortable position
to rest in
. Normally I would have found leaning against a cold stone wall on par with getting kicked in the back, but I was sapped of morale and energy. I barely remember shutting my eyes before I was out.

I saw my parents. They were standing outside
of
a jail cell, shaking their heads at me. Their look of disappointment ate away at me like acid and I felt ashamed and embarrassed, though I wasn’t sure why. My mother pointed a
n accus
atory
finger at me and frowned. My father put his arm around my mother and looked away. Why was I in jail? What had I done? Nobody spoke to me or tried to offer any assistance. I was alone.

Tooth came into the room and sidled up next to my parents like they were his own. He was beaten black and blue, his sunken eyes glaring at me with malice. There was a large purple scar wound around his neck, as if he’d been strangled. Like a magician, he pulled a barking rottweiler out of thin air and
began
to open the door to my cell. The dog
, wild and enraged,
started drooling and snapping at me in anticipation of a meal. But before the door opened wide enough for the dog to pass through, Tooth reconsidered his action. He stopped and said,
“
If you can hear me, just pretend you’re asleep.
”

My parents puffed away in a cloud of dust, as did the jail cell and Tooth, and in their place a naked man covered in tattoos danced in the glow of a candle. The dog appeared behind him, its head following his movements.

The man looked like an enchanted stick bug as he floated across the ground, his
lanky
legs bending like straws. He held something ovoid in his hand, something he repeate
dly tossed in the air and cooed
to each time he caught it. As the vision became clearer, I saw it was a human head covered in dirt. It was Tooth’s head!

No, it wasn’t.

It was the woman’s head.

And I suddenly realized I was no longer asleep.

I went rigid, my breath caught in my throat. He was here, in the dark with us, with her head. There wasn’t any candle; it was the stove’s embers casting the light. Tooth was whispering so softly I could hardly hear him:
“
Don’t move
,
seriously,
don’t move.
”

Naked, the man rolled the severed head over his body, down to his balls and stuck his dick in its mouth. I shuddered; I was at a loss as to what to do. So I followed Tooth’s advice and pretended I was asleep, even though I was pretty sure he had seen me wake up. Through slitted eyelids, I continued to watch the freak show before me, horrified and mesmerized.

I could see the head’s lifeless eyes, its gaping mouth caked with dried blood. Just hours ago it had been alive, attached to a woman with a
real life
. Maybe a mother, maybe a wife, someone with dreams and childhood memories. Now it was just an object, a sickening prop that could no more scream than tell you its name.

“
I like it when you do that to me,
”
Skinny Man said to the head, still fucking its lifeless mouth. Then, placing the head on the ground, he began fondling himself. Faster and faster he went at it. Butch snuck up behind him and took the head in his teeth and ran back up the stairs. Still jerking off, Skinny Man came up to me and looked right at me, his hands still
stroking his erection
. I shut my eyes
completely, but even with my eyes closed, I could see him looking into my face.
The whiskers of his beard brushed against my lips, tiny needles poking their way into my mouth.
A tongue flashed out and licked my lips and I lost it.

I screamed.

That just made him laugh. He laughed and laughed and danced around some more with his dick in his hand.

Our game of opossum now exposed,
Tooth shouted at him
,
“
I’m gonna kill you
,
you dumb fucker!
”

But Skinny Man didn’t seem to heed the threat. He grabbed Tooth’s gag and tied it so tight I thought it would cut Tooth’s head in two.
“
Boy,
”
he sneered,
“
you yell at me one more time I will show you your insides.
”

Tooth mumbled but couldn’t form any words.

Holding himself
and moaning, Skinny Man
came on the floor. When he was done, he gave a little shiver and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
“
Now,
”
he said,
“
l
et’s see what we got here.
”

He reached up and turned on the light. The room looked like a slaughterhouse. The walls
were stained red, blood saturated
the floor, a mutilated arm lay near the dog dishes. Skinny Man was covered in prison tattoos, most of them faded. A couple of them showed
demonic
orgy scenes of animals raping women, or at least that’s what they looked like. He slithered over and stuck his hands in my pockets and pulled out my wallet. Opening it in front of me, he took out my driver’s license and licked it.
“
Roger,
”
he said and laughed.
“
143 Union Avenue. Let me guess, white picket fence, two-car garage. Does Mommy know what a bad boy you’ve been? Maybe I should stop in and let her know where you are.
”

“
No!
”
I screamed.
“
Stay away from her, you fucking maniac. If you touch her I’ll kill you.
”

“
Enough with the yelling already! You make too much noise. I hate noise.
”
With that, he put the gag back in my mouth
,
tying it tight until
i
t felt like my cheeks were tearing.
“
If I find these r
ags out again, I’m gonna wrap you with barbed wire.
”

Tooth was frantically trying to kick at Skinny Man, but the leg irons barely let him get his feet up.

He reached into my front pocket and played his fingers around near my balls.
“
And what do we have here.
”
He pulled out the pair of dice I had taken from my kitchen that morning.
“
Snake eyes,
”
he read, and rolled them around in his hand. Next, he fished around in Tooth’s pockets and took the cell phone. He threw it at the wall and it exploded like a firework. My
heart sank. Tooth stopped struggling
and hung his head. We’d been counting on the phone.

Sensing our defeat, Skinny Man did a little dance back toward the center of the room and stopped. He spun around and muttered something under his breath, looked back at us.
“
Any of you all see a head, about yay big, with white teeth, long brown hair, pretty mouth? It was here a minute ago.
”
Then he started laughing again, occasionally flicking his tongue at us.

He searched Tooth’s pockets once more, looking for anything he may have missed, and wound up with Tooth’s driver’s license.
“
David McNulty,
”
he said, reading it.
“
Thirty-two. Shit, you ain’t thirty-two. Where’d you get this, Boston?
”

Tooth mumbled.

Skinny Man punched him in the face.
“
You liar!
I don’t like liars.
”
He went and opened the door to the stove, bent down and reached inside. When he stood up, a pile of glowing embers sat on the fake ID, orange heat pulsating on the surface. They looked like little magic
gemstones. In his other hand he rolled the dice about.
“
Oh boy, oh boy,
”
he said,
“
been a while since I made a wager of any kind. You hear that rattle, huh, that’s luck being shook up like juice. You gotta mix it all together and get it just right or else you get too much bad luck and that’s no fun. Or you could get too much good luck, which might seem a good thing, but it just leads you on until it runs out and then you got nothing. Nope, gotta shake it up just right for this game. Roger, you want high or low?
”

I didn’t know what he was talking about.