by Harper Shaw
She watched as he ran across the busy intersection. The first two cars stopped inches from hitting him while the second one got into a collision with one of the first. A third car came through and took Bruce cleanly off his feet. His limp body twirled through the air before thudding against the ground with a sickening crack.
Backing away and turning into the store, Rebecca held a hand over her mouth while she called 911 and waited inside the comic book shop. In case Faruq came, she remained there when the ambulances came and put Bruce onto a gurney. Since there was only one hospital in Hilton Head, she knew where to go next. After considering hotwiring Bruce’s car, she decided the best thing to do would be to take the extra time walking so as to not further implicate things for herself.
When she got to the hospital, Rebecca went over to the nurse’s station. Luckily, it was unattended, so she was able to gather information from what they had left on the desk and figure out which room Bruce was in. As she walked up, she saw Bruce connected to all sorts of wires, intubated, and bruised deeply. She didn’t enter, just hovered at the doorway and pretended to be walking away whenever hospital staff came by.
“You still never answered my question,” she muttered to the unconscious Bruce. She’d curse him if it meant he’d wake up faster. A hand appeared on Rebecca’s shoulder. She swung around quickly to find Chief Bradshaw. His brows were furrowed as he took her in.
“What are you doing here?”
“I can’t visit a dying friend?” she asked.
“From what the doctors tell me, he isn’t dying, just comatose. And from one of the more recent calls Bruce made to my office, I’m pretty sure you’re not friends.”
“Go figure…”
“Off the record, where were you?” Faruq asked. Rebecca shrugged instead of replying.
“If you want, though, I could show you something you might find interesting.”
Raising an eyebrow, Faruq nodded.
“I’m tired of walking, so we’re taking your car.”
They left the hospital halls, and Rebecca directed Faruq to Bruce’s shop. No one said anything about the comics strewn all over the floor as she led him back to the manager area. Here were less signs of a scuffle. They stopped at Bruce’s shrine to Jennifer.
“Wow,” Faruq said, his eyes going over the pictures, which he seemed to find even more interesting than the half-packed suitcase of money and comic books. “This is creepy,” he admitted.
“Isn’t it?” Rebecca took some photos from her bag. “And look at what else I happened to find?” She handed him some pictures of one of Bruce’s encounters with a prostitute.
“How’d you find these?”
“A little free detective work.”
“So…” Faruq looked through the pictures before again turning his gaze to those of Jennifer. Then he asked, “Where was Bruce the night Jennifer died?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I was trying to figure out when he ran into the street without looking both ways. He has to have something—if not everything—to do with it, though. I mean, the evidence is more than compelling.”
“You’re not wrong,” Faruq said. “It is all very suspicious, but there’s nothing to be done about it while he’s in a coma.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean until Bruce wakes up and starts talking, we don’t have anything to go on.” Rebecca noticed Faruq said we instead of I but didn’t say anything to him about it.
“I guess,” she agreed.
“I’m keeping these.” Faruq went through Bruce’s desk and found a plastic bag meant for comics. He dropped the photos Rebecca had into them. “And I’ll send someone with a camera to document this later. Stay out of trouble till it’s done. Won’t you?”
“Fine.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The bar beckoned to Rebecca.
It was the same one she’d visited with Bruce and Dennis just a few days ago. The same one where she had started the latest, and most successful-to-date, attempt to ruin her own life. It was truly going down the toilet now, she figured. She deserved to give herself a wake at the place where the end began.
She nearly fell asleep driving herself there. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had something to eat. Even less the last time she’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. Not to mention it seemed like every time she turned around, she was being attacked by the Shroud or sitting in one of Faruq’s cells.
Whatever. Her empty stomach would just hasten the drunk she intended to get on, which would, in turn, hopefully help her get some sleep. Who knew, maybe she’d find a willing body to lose herself in for the night, at his place, sparing her having to go back to the motel where the Shroud lurked.
Inside the restaurant, she pushed her way to the bar, grabbed a stool and ordered a beer and a shot before the bartender could even say hello. He set the two drinks before her and Rebecca went to pay him. Along with the cash she took out of her pocket, something else fell to the floor. She dropped some bills on the bar and bent to retrieve the object.
Her sobriety chip.
Rebecca’s hands shook. She hesitated to pick it up, as if it were a burning coal. Then, with resolve, she scooped it up and quickly hurried out the back of the bar, cocked her arm back and prepared to throw the fucking thing out toward the water.
“Coward,” someone said. Rebecca turned toward the voice, eager for the opportunity to pick a fight.
It was Monica. Rebecca froze. She blinked twice and shook her head. Monica was still there, leaning against the bar’s back wall, arms crossed. Her green eyes penetrated Rebecca with a look of accusation and pity. “Coward,” she said again. “But then what sort of a surprise is that? You’ve always been a coward.”
Rebecca trembled, her mouth dry, unable to speak. Some part of her knew she was crazy. Here was teenaged Monica standing before adult Rebecca. Yet Rebecca felt like a child. Try as she might to tell herself this visage was the result of her hunger and lack of sleep, the incriminating ghost refused to disappear.
Instead, it accused her. “Because of your cowardice no one knows what happened to me. Right? Because of your cowardice, my parents still don’t have answers.”
“It—it wasn’t just me,” Rebecca whispered.
“Yeah, peer pressure is such a bitch, huh?” Monica pouted, her voice thick with sarcasm. “Just goes to prove my point. You weren’t brave enough to take responsibility then. You’re not brave enough now. You know getting blitzed is just more cowardice. Don’t you? You’re not so self-deluded as to think this is anything but an attempt to cover things up. This time from yourself.”
“It’s all more complicated than that, Monica,” Rebecca managed to choke out.
“Aw, poor Becca,” the ghost mocked once again. “Afraid of having your little life ruined?” Then her tone changed to anger. “What about my life? Wasn’t that ruined?” Suddenly, Monica jerked her neck and there was a horrible snapping sound. Rebecca jumped, crying out. Monica slowly righted her neck. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t nice. But then, what you all did to me wasn’t very nice either, so…”
Rebecca’s eyes streamed tears. Monica came toward her. Rebecca feared being touched by this apparition, but she was rooted to the ground, unable to move. “Shh, shh,” Monica soothed, gently taking Rebecca’s face in her hands. Rebecca flinched but could not pull away.
“I’m sorry, Monica. I’m sorry,” Rebecca sputtered.
“Don’t apologize to me. I’m gone. But you can get past this. Try being brave. What’s the point in ruining your life like this? Righting the ship won’t be easy. But won’t it be better in the long run? You’re so close to either fucking things up for yourself forever or starting the path toward your own freedom.” The words cut through Rebecca, right to her heart. “Please,” Monica kept on, and her plea seemed to squeeze the air from Rebecca’s lungs. “Please, if you want to help me, if you want to make up for this horrible accident, figure this out. Redeem yourself.”
M
onica leaned in close. Rebecca closed her eyes, unable to meet Monica’s piercing green ones. She felt Monica’s lips brush against hers. A gentle kiss, like a forgiving angel. Yet it burned like a sin. Rebecca opened her eyes.
Monica was gone.
It took a few minutes for Rebecca to stop shaking. She used the bottom of her shirt to wipe away the tears from her face and ran a forearm across her snotty nose. She strode back into the bar and slapped her hands down on it, grabbing the bartender’s attention. “Do me a favor,” she called to him, “you see me in here again, refuse to serve me.” A look of confusion crossed the bartender’s face—after all, Rebecca hadn’t touched her beer or shot—but then he shrugged and gave her a thumbs up.
Rebecca looked at the drinks she’d ordered. Then she felt a cramp in her hand. She’d had it balled in a fist since Monica had appeared. She forced her hand to relax and stared at the chip in the palm of her hand.
Rebecca abandoned the drinks, untouched and carefully returned the chip to her pocket. For the first time since she’d rushed out the back of the bar, she managed to take a deep breath. A cool breeze was blowing off the ocean, which heightened her senses and clarified her mind. She kept the windows of her car rolled down as she sped out of the restaurant’s parking lot.
Jennifer and Chad’s deaths had to be related, she thought. If she was convinced Bruce had killed Jennifer—and she was pretty sure of it—then Bruce had to have some sort of motive for killing Chad as well.
Jealousy? Had Chad been a potential rival for Jennifer’s affections? Perhaps Jennifer had worked her feminine wiles on Chad off and on over the years in order to force him to maintain his silence? After all, he’d been the hardest to convince to keep their secret. Maybe Jennifer’s ongoing methods of coercion had finally been too much for poor, obsessed Bruce to take.
It was a short drive to her destination—a place she hadn’t been in a decade—the beach house where Monica had died.
Half expecting Monica’s ghost to pop out at any minute, Rebecca slowly walked toward the house. Maybe because of what had happened there, or maybe because of the economics of the last decade, the house had clearly been abandoned for several years and fallen into disrepair. She remembered it had been kind of an old and crappy house even in 1979, and the years hadn’t treated it kindly. Shutters hung askew. Some of the windows on the first floor had been broken into by homeless people or kids looking for a place to get high.
Tonight, it was dark and silent, but in her mind, it pulsated with light and life. She recalled how it once shook with the force of teenagers who thought they were invincible. She thought she could hear the bass rhythm of “My Sharona” playing on the radio, through which she and Jennifer and Monica had jumped and twirled. She imagined she could see her teenage self through the window, one arm around Dennis as they rocked back and forth singing “The Piña Colada Song” at the tops of their lungs.
She shook her head at the memories. She wasn’t here to relive the good times. They’d been short-lived, anyway. She forced herself to make her way around to the back of the house—the scene of the crime. She had to see where it happened one more time. It was the first step toward bringing this nightmare to an end.
Arriving at the back of the house, she looked up at the second-floor balcony. She remembered the argument between Monica and Chad that precipitated everything. She remembered Monica storming out of the house onto the balcony, a red Solo cup of beer in her hand. She was drunk and stumbling, but not out of control.
Chad had pursued her. “No!” Monica shouted at him. “Get away, get back, get back!”
Rushing from him, she had caught her foot on the tripwire and gone over. Chad had called out to all of them. They had rushed down to Monica, but she was clearly dead. Amid the cries and terror, Jennifer and Dennis had led the way in arguing for them to cover it all up. Bruce had been persuaded first. Then Rebecca crumbled. She winced even now, remembering how she had then helped pile on Chad, ultimately convincing him to also cover it up.
“Alright, Monica,” Rebecca said to the empty air containing so many dark memories. “It’s all going to end soon.” Rebecca turned to go.
And came face to face with the Shroud.
Chapter Thirty-Five
An axe arced at Rebecca’s head. She barely managed to throw herself backward and out of the way, her momentum sending her sprawling onto her ass. The Shroud hoisted the axe again and brought it down. Rebecca rolled to the right and let her momentum bring her to standing.
Bouncing on her toes, ready to move any way she needed to, she confronted the Shroud. The axe came at her again, but she was ready, reaching up over her head and catching the axe’s handle just above the Shroud’s hands. They struggled for control of the weapon. The Shroud was taller than Rebecca and strong. She could feel herself starting to lose the contest.
With a shout, she kicked out and her foot connected with the Shroud’s knee. She felt it give a little and the Shroud went down, yanking the axe from Rebecca’s hand. Rebecca raised a fist to strike, but the Shroud was fast, blindly slashing the air with the blade. A sharp pain lit like a fire in Rebecca’s left thigh, shooting all along her leg. She stumbled away from the Shroud until her back collided with the house.
She focused now on escape. She grabbed a rock from near her feet and smashed it through the window nearest her, quickly throwing herself inside and landing on the cold linoleum of the house’s dark kitchen. There was a thwack! Rebecca glanced over her shoulder to see the axe embedded in the windowsill.
She leapt to her feet and immediately regretted it. Pain squeezed every inch of her left side with the strength of a vise grip. Adrenaline rushed in to fight the pain and order her to fucking run. She could hear glass shattering and tinkling to the floor as the Shroud used the axe to clear away the rest of the windowpane.
In a half-limp, half-sprint, she took off deeper into the moonlit house. Her path spat her into the living room, whose walls were covered in graffiti. The only objects in the room were a tattered and broken couch and a trashcan someone had hauled in to use as a firepit. Nowhere to hide, nothing to improvise as a weapon.
Just get out! she shouted at herself.
The front door was just a few feet away. She closed the distance, but just as her hand landed on the doorknob, she sensed the Shroud closing in. She spun around just in time to step out of the way of the axe’s deadly descent. It lodged deeply in the wood of the front door.
The Shroud struggled to yank it free and Rebecca used the moment to slip past it and claw her way up the stairs to the second floor.
While the Shroud attempted to free the axe, Rebecca had a few extra moments to put some distance between them. Upstairs, she glanced around frantically. Then she hurried into the master bedroom. On the other side of the room were the glass doors to the balcony.
Rebecca pushed open the sliding glass door. She took a few steps onto the balcony, ran her hands over the bloody wound in her leg, and then flicked some blood onto the wooden slats.
Then she slipped back inside the house and threw herself into the bedroom’s closet. Trying to control and silence her breathing, she crawled to the back of the walk-in and listened. She could feel her jeans leg getting damp with blood, but that was something to worry about later. Goddammit why didn’t I buy a gun before confronting Bruce? she berated herself.
No time to worry about that now. The sounds of struggle downstairs had stopped. The Shroud must have been able to unstick the axe.
She strained her ears. Dimly, she heard the Shroud’s heavy boots making their way up the stairs. There was a creak of various other doors opening as the Shroud made its deliberate search of the floor. The exploration could have only taken a minute or two, but to Rebecca it felt like an eternity.
Then the Shroud’s footsteps made their way into the master bedroom. Rebecca put a hand over her mouth to muffle her breathing. Her heart jackhammered against her ribs, her pulse sounding so loudly in her ears she was sure the Shroud could
hear it.
Through the crack at the bottom of the closet door, she could see the Shroud’s shadow move past. It was heading for the balcony. Take the bait, she thought. She crawled toward the front of the closet, heard the change in sound as the Shroud’s boots left the carpeted bedroom for the wooden balcony.
She needed the Shroud to get farther outside. Then she could ease the closet door open and slip away.
But the Shroud’s footsteps went no further. She could hear a rustle of the slicker it wore. It must have bent down to examine the blood.
She heard another wooden clump, followed by the soft whisper of the boot stepping back onto the bedroom carpet. Her gambit failed.
Rebecca was leaning up against the closet door. She glanced down at the thin bar of light coming in from under the door. The Shroud’s shadow passed by once again, and the footsteps receded.
Had the Shroud given up?
Smash! The axe blade came crashing into the closet door mere inches above her head. Long splinters rained down on her. The axe retracted and then came through again, this time just in front of her nose. It was all show. The Shroud could have yanked the door open, but there was nowhere for Rebecca to go, now, and the Shroud didn’t just want to kill her. It wanted her afraid. Well, it was working.
In terror, she crawled once more toward the back of the closet, her hands grasping for something, anything, that could be a weapon. But all they touched was the bare lumber of the closet floor.
Smash! Smash! The door continued to shatter under each of the Shroud’s blows.
She spun to face the rapidly deteriorating closet door, pressing her back against the closet wall. As she did so she felt the two-by-fours beneath her give slightly.