by Ellery Fenn
Lisa glided into the clearing, and I rushed to greet her, every cell desperate to touch her, to hold her, to be with her forever. I stopped myself before we touched. Her face was twisted in worry.
“What happened?” I asked.
Pat walked in behind her and awkwardly waved. I returned the gesture before focusing my attention on Lisa.
Her voice was hollow. “It was no use. All that work with the journal, with the papers at school, threatening him, giving it to the police, it was all for nothing.”
“How?”
“His dad bribed the detective.”
A growl forced its way up my throat. “What?!”
“I can’t believe it. I have no idea where to go from here. I mean, is there anything we can do?”
I rubbed her arm where I held her in place. There had to be something we could use against him, something we had that he didn’t.
“Pat’s driving us back to the shed. Clarisse managed to convince her parents to let her go.”
“School?”
“Teacher’s day. I think having a couple hundred kids gossiping about a rapist was beginning to wear on them.”
“It’s been hell,” Pat confirmed as I stuffed my reserves of fish into my bag. “Clarisse didn’t go yesterday, so they worked out it was her, and she’s your best friend. So, I’m guilty by association.”
We started for his car. “I’m sorry,” Lisa said. “I shouldn’t have brought you into this.”
“Don’t apologize. You’re my friend. That’s what I’m here for.”
She gave him a small smile. “I always thought you put up with me for Clarisse.”
“Hell no. Maybe at first. But you’re actually pretty cool.” The chains hanging from his belt jingled as he walked.
“Thank you,” I said.
He glanced at me in surprise. “You’re welcome.”
The drive to his house was short. Clarisse met us there.
“Finally,” she grumbled. “Your parents have been giving me dirty looks out the window.”
“Sorry about that. Mrs. Pressman told Mom what happened in school.”
“I always hated her class.”
They blocked me from view as we ran to the shed. Nothing had changed. The spray paint, the loveseat, the dust. Pat perched on the workbench. I sat next to Clarisse on the couch, my knee touching Lisa where she floated in midair.
Pat donned a bandanna and passed an extra to Clarisse.
“Sorry,” she said as she tied it over her face. “So, what’s going on? Pat just said it was something to do with the journal. What did the cops say?”
Lisa shook her head, reluctant to repeat it. “Mr. Allan bribed them. It’s no use.”
“What?!” Clarisse jumped to her feet. “I knew he was slimy. A bribe! I hate the police. What’s the point if you can just pay them off? The only way we’d get him now is if he confessed.”
Pat snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”
He was right. Doug didn’t even believe he raped those girls. He needed to see from their eyes. From our eyes.
“There’s got to be something,” Clarisse said.
Lisa sighed. “I have no idea what it would be. Now he gets to live free and we have to be dead knowing what he did.”
That was the greatest difference between us. Life and death. Strength and power. I stole a glance at Lisa. I’d never considered that we might fail. What would that mean for our eternity?
“What if, now hear me out,” Pat said. “He’s not in jail ‘cause they think you’re still alive out there, or if you’re dead it was the elements or something.”
“Your point?” Lisa folded her arms over her chest.
“Now this sounds terrible. But what if- god it’s awful. I’m sorry Corrie, but what if… Clarisse told me that you have to keep eating to stay alive. Or alive-dead, whatever. What if you… stopped eating?”
“What?” Lisa yelled. “You want to kill her just to get Doug in jail? Not a chance.” She refused to meet my eye.
“Possibil’ty,” I said.
Clarisse shook her head. “What about her hair? And they’d do an autopsy and find a bunch of rotting salmon in her stomach. And besides, you really think Doug’s going to get blamed for it? He’d probably say some random psycho did it. Or she did it herself. The crime scene’s gone. There’s no getting it back.”
“It was just an idea,” Pat said defensively.
“Well it’s a real bad one,” Lisa snapped.
“This is ridiculous,” Clarisse said. “Damn, that Crocker fella’s a great lawyer. I mean, obviously a terrible person, but a great lawyer. He’s deflected everything we throw at him, explained it away and left Doug looking like the victim. There’s so much evidence. A smarter detective, or a dumber lawyer, and he’d be in jail already.”
“If only we could get new people on the case,” Lisa said. “Or go around them entirely.”
I rubbed the tips of my fingers together. “Forget cops.”
“What?” Clarisse said.
Fire burned in my chest. If the law wouldn’t take care of him, we would. He hadn’t consulted the cops when he killed us, and we wouldn’t consult them now.
“Cops don’t care. Won’t help. Get revenge ourselves. We’re powerful.”
Lisa frowned. “What do you mean? You’re not saying we’d kill him?”
I shook my head. “We need confession. He needs to feel our pain.”
To feel our pain. To suffer as we had. The shed was silent as we four pondered the suggestion. I would retrieve his confession at any cost.
“Huh.” Clarisse leaned against the workbench. “Now this I like.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this,” Lisa said. She looked at Pat. “We’re going to need a Walkman.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Doug
I sat slumped in the living room, eyes glued to Ryan’s Hope when the doorbell rang.
“Coming!” Mom called. She opened the door, but I didn’t hear any voices. “Doug? Come here.”
“I’m watching TV!”
She closed the door and walked slowly into the living room.
“What is this about?”
I pulled my eyes from the screen and was greeted by the rancid smell of death wafting from a black cloth in Mom’s hands.
“What is that?” I asked, covering my nose.
“It’s a slip.” She held it up by the straps, revealing the body of a shift, stained, torn. My heart faltered. It looked like the one Lisa wore. I remembered the feel of the silk on my hands. I gestured for her to hand it to me. It was the exact same.
“Who gave you this?”
“There was no one there.”
I glanced out the window.
“You’re going to explain what this means right now.”
My hand tightened around the silk until my knuckles were white. How? How did this get here? I headed for my room. “I don’t have to explain shit.”
“I’ve put up with days of you sulking around the house and running off with that lawyer every chance you get. And your bedroom. What happened there? What happened at Homecoming?”
I slapped her with my good arm. “You’ll keep out of it if you know what’s good for you.”
Tears pooled in her glaring eyes.
“Really? You going to cry now?”
“I’ve done a terrible job raising you.”
“No shit.”
I stormed upstairs and slammed the door behind me. The disaster in my room reminded me of the missing journal. The smell of the slip filled every inch of the room. My arm felt like it was dying.
Who did this? Why? To scare me? Make me think Lisa was dead? She couldn’t be dead. If she was dead, she’d be lying by the damn road.
I pulled at the slip but the pain in my arm kept me from tearing it. The sound of it crinkling in my hands was like footsteps on fresh snow.
I threw it into my garbage and tied the bag tight, ignoring the insistent agony of using
my arm. Even just having the smell covered by plastic was a relief.
I grabbed the trash bag and ran downstairs to throw it in the kitchen garbage. I tied that bag even tighter. The stench was barely noticeable now.
“I’m taking out the trash. You’re welcome.”
I closed it in the outdoor garbage can. Pickup was tomorrow. I could wait till tomorrow.
I walked back into the house and slowly up the stairs. Michael was the only one in this house that had anything against me, the only one that hated me enough. Maybe he killed her himself. Dragged her into the forest and finished her off.
I pulled open my door and went to sit on the mattress. My breath caught in my throat. Sitting on top it was the slip.
“No.” I couldn’t handle any more impossible things. “This can’t be happening.”
I threw the shift out the open window and slammed it shut.
I would’ve seen someone going from the garbage can to my room. They would’ve passed me. Unless I didn’t get it in the garbage in the first place. Maybe I missed.
There was a faint creaking noise, and a breath of wind touched my neck. The window was open.
I slowly turned to look at it, and there, draped over the windowsill, was the slip. And next to it, motherfucking Michael Myers.
No.
The springs of the mattress creaked as I crossed toward the silk that fluttered in the breeze. The scent touched me first. Rot, decay, death. I grasped the cloth and pulled it into my lap.
Exactly the same. Stained, stiff, torn in places, half the lace hanging from the neckline like cobwebs.
Things like this couldn’t happen. I knew I threw it out the window. I knew I closed the window. Yet here it was. My dresser couldn’t have moved on its own. The slip couldn’t have come back on its own. Lisa couldn’t have died.
My arm ached. If it was impossible then why was I leaking pus?
The window slammed shut. I jolted back onto the mattress. That window was too stiff. It never closed on its own before.
Sweat from my hand soaked into the slip.
How could I get rid of it? How could I make sure it stayed away? I’d burn it. That was it.
My sweaty hand slid on the door handle.
“Come on,” I muttered.
It wouldn’t open. The door was locked on its own again. I pushed at the lock, but it wouldn’t turn.
The window. I’d go out the window.
I pried at it with my good arm, and when that wasn’t enough, I used both. Pain shot through me, blinding me. It threw me to the floor.
I was trapped.
The papers from my desk rustled like there was a wind. They fluttered into the air, whirling around like a dust devil.
There was no draft, no breeze, nothing to make them fly. But they flew. Cold creeped down my spine.
Fine. I’d burn the damn thing here. I had a lighter in my jacket, somewhere in this mess.
With the slip pressed to my side by my bad arm, I dug through broken trophies and wood shards. The papers sped up, whirring overhead. I smacked them away, but I only had one hand, and they only got more insistent, faster, tighter, closer. One nicked the back of my leg. I could hardly feel the paper cuts that gathered on my skin. Not over the throbbing of my arm.
I frantically shoved aside the fallen trophy case. Where the hell was my jacket?
The sound of paper was joined by the sound of racing horses in my chest. They ran round and round me, shaking me, beating me, pummeling me to the ground. I was trampled.
There it was. I pulled the lighter from the pocket and flicked it open. A spark caught and immediately blew out. I curled around it, blocking the breeze with my body. It sparked again and blew out. Again and again a flame started, and again and again, it died.
I threw it across the room. “No!”
The papers circled me like a tornado. They sounded like hundreds of wings, beating, whipping relentlessly. The sound grew and grew until it was louder than the racing horses. It was almost like words.
You killed her, you killed her, you killed her, you killed her, you killed her.
I threw myself at the door and pulled at the handle. It wouldn’t even turn.
The hinges. I set to the task of pulling out the pegs with one hand. A fingernail broke. The hinges were stiff, hadn’t been oiled in years. Rust flaked onto my fingers. There was a quiet click. The door unlocked. I grabbed my keys and threw it open.
“What’s happening?” Mom asked.
My voice shook. “None of your business.”
She sniffed. “Do you know how many phone calls I’ve gotten from mothers in our congregation, confirming what was in that paper at school? I’m scared, Doug. I’m scared of what you’ve done, and I’m scared for you.”
I slammed her against the wall as I ran downstairs.
“Don’t go,” she called. “Just talk to me, please.”
The door slammed behind me. My car was in the driveway where it sat abandoned all week. After a few shaky tries, I got the keys in, and started it up. I drove one-handed.
The road was blurry beneath my tires. I took a trembling breath and was drowned in the smell of death. A glance in the rear-view mirror confirmed the slip was in the backseat. I let out a strangled scream and pressed down on the gas.
I passed every car I came across. The needle on the speedometer rose higher and higher. I scrounged a cigarette from the jockey box. I held it to my lips with a crippled hand and tried to drown out the smell of that goddamned shift. Trees and buildings flew past me.
I couldn’t spend another second in that crummy little town where everyone knew everyone and everyone was out to get me. Why? A week ago I was Lake Oswego’s golden boy, the star of the baseball team, everyone’s favorite. Sure, there were some girls that didn’t like me, but they kept their mouths shut. Not anymore.
My car wobbled as I took a corner too fast, turning the steering wheel hard with one hand.
That stupid town where everything was a minute apart. Where you went to school with the same people since you were a kid. Where reputation was everything.
The greenery faded into the distance as I crossed Sellwood Bridge and sped into Portland. The White Eagle waited open for me.
I slammed the car door shut, immediately relieved by the lack of that smell. My heart started to calm down.
I stumbled into the saloon. The brightness confused me before I remembered the time of day. A dozen or so people ate a late lunch, and the bar was empty except for a man slowly nursing a glass.
I took a seat at the far end of the bar away from him.
“Hey Doug,” the bartender said.
“Alek.” I carefully set my arm on the counter. It wouldn’t stop hurting. Why couldn’t it give me a break?
“You’re in here early.” He was a black-haired guy that couldn’t be more than twenty-nine.
“So are you.” My voice shook with pain. Now that I was in public the agony was relentless.
He shrugged. “Taking a few extra shifts. Emma’s expecting.”
“Awesome.” I clenched my jaw.
“We’re hoping for a girl.”
“Listen, can I just get a drink?”
“At this time of day?”
“Look, are you here to judge me or serve me?”
“Both.” He pointed at the chalkboard sign. “How about you get one of the lunch specials? You look like you could use something.”
“No! I want a drink. Tequila.”
“Not whiskey?”
“No. Not whiskey.”
“Alright, but you’re going to have to eat something first.”
“Fine.”
It was a few anxious minutes before a blonde waitress delivered a steaming bowl of tomato soup and a turkey sandwich. I watched her walk away.
“That’s Patsy. She works the day shift.” Alek wiped out a glass.
“Nice ass.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Nice girl.”
I shoveled down burning spoonfuls o
f soup.
“What brings you in here this early?”
The food didn’t help the pain, but I felt a little less shaky. “Things aren’t going so well.”
“Sorry to hear that. You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
He gave me my drink when I finished my meal. The tequila burned through me, quenched the pain, drew my mind away from my troubles. This. This was what I wanted.
Despite the familiar bartender, the daytime atmosphere was so foreign I felt like I was in a different building. I’d come to expect brawls, prostitutes, live music. Not this cheerful place where people came on their lunch break.
I stayed the afternoon. The food and drink, the sexy waitress, and the talkative bartender all kept my mind from the problems that waited for me in the backseat of the car. They slowly eased my nerves. It was my imagination, what happened at the house. Maybe I hurt my arm in baseball practice. The droopy man on the other end of the bar stayed as well, sipping on a glass of ice.
After the one glass of tequila, Alek kept me on light beer. Normally I’d be annoyed, but I wanted to stay as long as possible, and he’d kick me out if I got too drunk. He’d done it before.
At around five, Patsy came out from the kitchen in street clothes. A crop top and tight jeans. She sat at the bar and smiled at me.
“Gin and tonic?” Alek asked.
“Thanks Al.” She dug through her purse.
“That’s a strong drink for such a pretty lady,” I said.
“I can handle it.”
“Make that two, Alek.” I tossed her a smile. This was easy, natural. A bit of normal in a world of crazy. “My treat.”
“Well thank you.” She had a soft Canadian accent. “Mind if I sit by you?”
I shrugged.
“Two gin and tonics.” Alek handed us our drinks. I eagerly took a sip and let the heat spread through me. The tequila had worn off, and I wanted to be drunk.
“I’ve never seen you in here before,” she said.
“I usually don’t come this early.”
“I only work days.”
“Shame. Wish we’d met before.”
She smiled around the rim of her glass. “Me too.”
I leaned toward her. “We’d better start making up for lost time then.”