The Summer I Died: A Thriller (26 page)

I heard a moan. And it came from Jamie’s room.

My gut felt like lead, my knees buckled, I spun around and fell to my ass. It couldn’t be. She was dead, I had listened to her die. Oh God, my sister was alive, and I was suddenly so terrified I couldn’t bring myself to go back down the few steps I
’d
ascended. She moaned again, a guttural, confused tone that reminded me of a cat I
’d
once seen crawl into the woods and die after getting hit by a car. Then she coughed and went silent.

I sat for a few seconds, slowly going out of my mind once more, losing any sense of control I had maintained to this point. I felt my shoulders shaking and my head bobbing a bit. I saw the waves in California come back like a tsunami, rolling over me with oblivion. At some point, I could feel myself rising and walking over to the door that hid my sister, though my mind was beginning to drift away somewhere else, erecting defense barriers to deal with what I was about to see.

Oh God, oh please God, oh please don’t let it be bad. Oh, Jamie, I’m sorry, please don’t let it be bad.

I stepped into the room. Everything was black, cast in shadows. The windows had been covered with spray paint or marker or something. A
putrid
smell hit me full
on and would have caused me to vomit had I not already been breathing death for so many days. Still, it was stronger in here than where I’d been. If you painted the walls with a thousand years of decayed flesh, that’s the smell I was experiencing.

Through the distant noises from the backyard and the wind blowing by the windows, I could hear the shallow, labored breathing of my sister from somewhere not far away.

“
Jamie?
”
I called.
“
Please, Jamie, if you can hear me, just make a small noise.
”

There was no reply other than her raspy breath. Feeling around the door jamb, I located a switch and flicked it on, but it did nothing. I walked through the room, sweeping the ax handle in front of me in case there were any traps or sharp objects. I cleared a path through a collection of metal objects that littered the floor, some little, some big, all indistinct.

As I got closer to one of the blackened windows, I could hear Jamie’s breathing getting louder. The stench grew more caustic. Paint was flaking off one of the nearest windows, and some light drizzled through enough that I could see her silhouette. Unlike me, she wasn’t chained to a wall but rather lying on the ground. I stopped a few feet away, afraid to see her up close.

For one thing, from where I stood the shape on the ground looked too small to be Jamie.

I took another step.

Candles had been placed on the floor in a circle around her, most of them now burned down into puddles of wax–-like Mystery Woman, I thought.

Another step.

My foot nudged something and I caught a flash of reflected sunli
ght from a small blade. Assuming
it was a
knife, I reached down to pick it up and felt many more sharp blades resting near my feet. Knives, handsaws, nails, barbed wire, a hammer, a circular saw blade, several blunt objects that were sticky, lots of rags. I also picked up something smooth and light, and held it up into the thin ray of sun falling through the window.

It was a human bone. And that’s exactly when Jamie’s body lurched.

I jumped back and landed on something sharp, cutting open my hand. In front of me, Jamie’s body bounced up and down like a fish out of water, arcing into the sunlight and slamming back down into shadow. Up and down, up and down, and breathing as if a small rodent was trying to run down her throat. Chains jingled and hit the floor while she thrashed, held tight to what looked like stakes driven into the ground. I caught strobing glimpses of her body in the light. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t anything
—
a creature that had crawled out of hell, asphyxiating on earth’s atmosphere.

With my hands walking over all the blades, I crawled backwards to the door, my breath caught, the whole while thinking there was no way that thing was my sister. Still clutching the ax, I found my way out the door back into the room I had called home for too long, stood up and took it in. Th
e stove, its small door open with
the shovel
still
s
ticking out, the
fire long since dead. The hedge cutters leaning against the wall. The various devices Skinny Man had left on the table. The bloodstained chains dangling from the wall. The pile of gore in the dog dishes at my feet, with Tooth’s jaw sitting
like a crown
on top. The sticky puddle of skin from Mystery Woman, who had been so close to freeing us, if onl
y she’d had a few minutes more.

The dice. On the floor near the door, sitting in the sunlight. Two red cubes of terror that had saved my life.

I picked them up, held them in my hand. My number had never come up. Was it luck that had spared me? Or something else? Tooth’s father’s words ran around my mind once more: Got to have a purpose in life.

I put the dice in my pocket. I d
on’t
know why, it just felt right, like I was acknowledging something higher than myself, something ethereal. I think maybe I figured they’d protected me this far, it might be good to have them around.

I saw California again. It came in bursts like that now. One minute I’d be staring at so much blood and horror, the next I was watching the Pacific. I couldn’t control it
a
nymore, something more instinctual was taking over.
The sensation of sand between my toes, the smell of salty air in my nose, the susurration of waves in my ears—it was all too real.
Part of me wanted to sit down and enjoy it, b
ut instead I headed up the stairs. The thing that used to be Jamie was still alive.

I needed to call for help.

CHAPTER 23

At the top of the stairs, I pushed the door open into the tiny alcove we’d first spied from the trees, and threw my hand over my eyes to block out the daylight. Overcast as it was, the natural light threatened to burst my pupils. The fresh air was like a plumbing snake unclogging my lungs. The smell of
evergreen
trees and
mountain wildflowers
made me want to rush out the door at full speed and kiss the ground. It was the best smell I had ever smelled, light and fresh, wi
th hints of pine and sap, juniper and
wild lilac
. It smelled so safe. Briefly, I believed I could open my eyes and find myself back at home, this whole nightmare having been just that: a nightmare.

It took a few seconds for the ache in my pupils to subside before I could see what was around me. To my right I noticed the door to the driveway, and to my left was the opening to the kitchen.

From outside came Skinny Man’s voice:
“
I’m sick of this shit, we ain’t gonna find it and quite frankly I don’t care anymore. Just don’t expect any more gifts from me, you ungrateful mutt. Get away from that mound! That ain’t for you, you already had your fill of that one.
”

The driveway door wasn’t a viable option or I’d be seen. Plus I needed to find a phone, dial 911, and get some authorities out here pronto. Maybe I could call O’Conners’ bar and tell the skinheads a bunch of eggplants were raping white women here? Knowing the
police as intimately as I did, the skinheads would most likely get here quicker. Then again, knowing their kind, they’d probably see Skinny Man and join him in a beer.

Stepping slowly into the kitchen, I scanned
the walls and table for a phone
but didn’t see one. The blinds on the windows, coupled with the drab
slate-colored
clouds outside, bathed the room in a dark and gloomy grayness. The walls were covered in wallpaper from the disco era, a faded collision of orange and yellow and brown that reminded me of the puddle of filth on the floor downstairs. The counters were buried under flotsam and jetsam of all sorts: books, papers, dirty dishes, silverware,
clothing, toys, bottles, and lots of tools like hammers and screwdrivers. A table sat pushed up against the wall, some dirty plates on it and a fruit bowl with a mostly brown banana in it that matched the walls. A puke green refrigerator hummed in the corner with pictures of Butch and the late Sundance stuck to it with magnets. Next to it sat a stove
that looked like it had lost a fight with a jar of Ragu. Flies buzzed at the windows looking for a way out.

Being in the kitchen sent my stomach ablaze. The last thing I’d eaten were some eggs at my house before we set out for Bobtail. The refrigerator was sure to have food, I thought, but I didn’t open it. I didn’t trust any of the food in this house. I wouldn’t put it past Skinny Man to poison it somehow
.

Ignoring the cramping in my stomach,
I ducked low and moved across the kitchen until I was in front of the sink. Over it was a window that looked out into the backyard, and Skinny Man’s voice was coming through it loud and clear.
“
You bury that back up ’
fore someone sees it. And don’t touch that one neither.
”
There was a pause.
“
Poor fella, he didn’t deserve to get shot like that.
We were probably too quick with that fucking kid, felt like it was over before it began. Unsatisfactory, I tell ya.
”

Butch’s black teeth marks in my shin were opening up once again and dripping blood down my ankle. The pain was sensational, making my head throb, but I ignored it and rose up slowly and moved aside the edge of the curtain. Outside, Butch was sitting on the ground under the swing set watching Skinny
Man tamp down dirt on a freshly-
dug hole. As usual, he had his shirt off, his tattoos like thick veins on his skin. The shovel he carried was different than the one in the stove downstairs. This one was newer, the handle still shiny yellow. On his hip, dangling through a leather loop that fastened to his belt, he wore the hand ax he had so recently removed from Mystery Wom
a
n’s skull.

The man was like a walking advertisement for the Tool of the Month Club.

Turning on the sink, I bent down and lapped up some tap water. There were hints of chemicals in it, possibly chlorine and other bacteria
-
killing agents poured into the reservoir by the city, but I didn’t mind. My throat was dry and sore and it was hard to swallow, but it was the greatest feeling in the world. I filled my empty stomach, gasped for breath, and did it again. Not for too much longer though, a few seconds tops, and then I turned it off. My body demanded more but the house was old, and I feared the pipes might knock and give me away.

Just to be safe I checked the window once more and found Skinny Man was still preoccupied. He hadn’t heard me. I let the curtain fall back and slid down to the floor again. My adrenaline was wearing off, my leg was aching badly, and the grimy tile floor suddenly felt very comfortable, beckoning me to put my head down and sleep. Each time I blinked I saw something different
before me:
my parents eating dinner, the waves of the Pacific, Jesus playing basketball. Then, like sap down a tree, my back began to drift toward the floor. I was falling asleep and couldn’t stop it. It felt so good.

No, you’ll die, I told myself, and Jamie will die
too. Get up!

I slapped myself in the face and when that didn’t work I stuck a finger in the dog bite.

Sweet Lord
the pain was intense, like someone peeling back a giant hangnail on my lower body. But it served its purpose. I woke up in a flash and crawled out of the kitchen, trembling as I held the blade of the ax in my hand to avoid any noise. It was damn near pointless since the leg irons jingled so loudly you could hear them in Vermont.

I crawled into a musty, wood-paneled living room that was likewise buried in shadow from drawn curtains. Standing up, fighting the pain in my shin, I saw a couch that looked as if it had been made out of hand-me-down clothes
.
A
collection of notebooks and
Polaroid
photographs
were strewn
about
on the cushions
. I picked
one up
and immediately threw it down when I saw what it was a p
icture
of. No amount of shaking my head would clear away the image of two little boys on a floor, naked. One had a rottweiler’s prick in his mouth, against his will. The other boy was mutilated, diced, and the second dog was feasting on the remains. Don’t think about it, I told myself. Think about Jamie, think about Jamie and about California and find a fucking phone. Just don’t, whatever you do, think about it.

A water
ring-stained coffee table sat in the middle of the floor, covered with dirty dishes and a bowl full of keys. Car keys by the looks of them. Maybe ten different pairs. Quickly, I ran my hand through it, hoping to find Tooth’s Camaro keys, but came up empty. As I was
turning away to continue my search for a phone, I noticed something else on the coffee table that made my heart leap.