Dead Girls

by Russ Trautwig

  His eyes darted through the woods, then back at the opening. He was almost marching, like a sentry, listening and watching for anything. He continued the same path over and over for what seemed like an hour, but when he checked the time on her phone it was just under ten minutes; noise at the mound opening pulled his eyes there from the screen. He pointed the shotgun, safety on, at the hole. Her auburn curls came first, then she lifted her head and her eyes looked okay, the same, safe. He relaxed a little. “Stand down soldier,” she said and winked. His heart melted.

  “So?” he asked.

  Kimberly stood up and started wiping the dirt from her knees. Then she brushed her hands back and forth to do the same. “It looks to me like someone is at least sleeping in there from time-to-time: And there’s animal hair, not surprising I guess, but well, looks like dog to me which I think would be surprising.” She held up the empty Ziploc bag she had brought which was now filled with a couple of handfuls of whatever she could scrape up from the floor of the mound. “There’s a blanket, a few water bottles and a rolled up sleeping bag. Here’s the craziest, there are stick figures painted all over the inside of the mound, thousands of them in all kinds of poses. They’re all red, could be blood.” Give me my phone I need to go back in a take a few pics.”

  Chris handed her cell phone over and once again she disappeared into the blackness. This time she was only gone a few minutes and emerged shortly. She gave her phone to him and encouraged him to swipe his way through the pictures she had just taken.

  “They look ancient except some are so vivid while some are faded: Looks as though they’ve been made at different times, some old and some newer,” Chris observed.

  “Here look at these,” she said taking her phone back and swiping to find the right ones. “Am I crazy or is that a stick figure of a guy singing into a stand-up microphone?”

  Chris shook his head from side-to-side. “Wow, that is crazy. Jimmy?”

  “No way of knowing, but you know I don’t believe in coincidences,” Kim said.

  “So, what’s our next move?” Chris asked, realizing he was still holding the shotgun he offered it back to her.

  Kim took the Remington and slung it over her shoulder. She had already holstered her pistol. “Let me check the other entrance, then we’ll talk,” she said.

  The two of them walked halfway around the mound to the east facing, smaller opening. It was not high enough for her to crawl on all fours through, so she did a military crawl on her belly to get in. She had the flashlight in her mouth and her pistol cocked and ready. Chris was beginning to feel the forest closing in on him, the wavering shadows were growing longer and would soon melt into the night. The only saving grace would be the full moon but that was still hours away from rising. Twilight would be a thing to reckon with.

  A sound to his left pulled his head in that direction and the Remington quickly followed the same course. He considered taking the safety off but for what? A random sound? A fox or a possum? He held back. He saw a red headed woodpecker flitting about nervously on a branch, as though in anticipation of some coming cataclysm.

  Then the noise was to the right, he swung the shotgun around but soon Kimberly was doing a reverse slide back out of the small opening. Her head was the last thing to appear and in some crazy dream world, Chris half expected it to be gone, blood spurting from the neck in a giant lighted fountain. But it was there. She got to her knees and stayed that way a moment or two while Chris alternated his attention between her and the rising darkness in the woods. The smell of wood burning had grown stronger, but it was still light out. The sun had not set, and the cornflower sky promised a beautiful night.

  “Midnight, that’s got to be it. I don’t know if it’s tonight, but from what I remember reading in your notes, there was something mythical about the burial of the day, the dawning of a new one, is that right?” she asked, from her position kneeling at the entrance to the mound.

  He nodded his head. “What did you find?” Chris asked, looking down at her but still, darting his gaze from side to side through the forest.

  “A few bones, maybe human, maybe not. I don’t think they’ll be back for a while if indeed it is tonight. I know you’ve been right about just about everything, so I have no reason to doubt your findings. I mean, there were a significant number of lives lost on the sixth of September through the years so that day has some significance, I’m sure. And the whole midnight thing from your notes would just seem to me to be the day after the killings: That leaves tonight.” Kimberly concluded as though that settled it.

  “So what? We stay here for the next seven hours and wait?”

  “No, I’m way too hungry. I say we go get a couple slices and then come back,” Kimberly said, finally standing and taking her shotgun back from Chris. She didn’t bother brushing the dirt off.

  “Seriously? You could eat now?” Chris said.

  “Hell yeah, I’ve worked up an appetite. Besides, we’ve got time to kill,” she said.

  Chris wondered how prophetic those words might be.

  Chapter LII

  Chris could not believe her spirits, her attitude seemed incongruous with their situation. They were sitting in Rocky Rococo’s Pizza and Pasta, a five-minute drive south of the island, and she had just told him a joke about a German shepherd biting some Gorilla’s balls off. She was laughing so hard that all he could do was roll his eyes and smile back at her. She had voraciously consumed her two slices and then one of his, and he had nibbled on the same slice for twenty minutes. There was a good chance that one or both wouldn’t survive the night, maybe she just didn’t see it that way or maybe she just didn’t care, he wasn’t sure which.

  “Oh my God, I love that one, don’t you?” she said, wiping the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin and then pushing her amber curls back behind her ears. She looked up at him for approval, her eyes inviting but distant.

  Chris nodded, smilingly. “You know there’s a chance I’m wrong, right?”

  “Fuck, there’s a ninety percent chance you’re wrong, of course. There’s also a ten percent chance you’re right and we both get eaten,” she said, and then threw him a wink, when she saw how quickly the smile ran away from his face.

  “Seriously, something bad could happen, to you or me,” Chris answered, and then washed down the bite he had not been able to swallow with his Coke. It stuck in his throat, so he drank some more, and it seemed to get on.

  “Maybe you should go back to the room,” Kim said, appearing to size him up through half-squinted eyes. This had long since ceased to be a ‘by the book’ FBI operation and Chris knew she was way off the grid now, but still, she was not going to put a citizen in harm’s way if he wasn’t up to the challenge. Chris was not a trained agent, he was a stock trader, a laborer, not a police officer, and he knew she worried about that.

  “This is my battle just as much as yours, actually it’s more mine. I’m going,” hoping the look of determination he had pasted on his face was convincing. He stared straight into her eyes and knew he was falling in love with Special Agent Kimberly Watson. He got goosebumps and a brief chill, but in a good way. He had a sudden compelling urge to explain his behavior the night before. He liked the look she gave him in return, it might have been forced, but she seemed contented.

  “Okay then,” she said and held out her hand to shake.

  “About last night,” he started, without taking the hand she offered.

  “It’s okay Chris, you don’t need to explain anything. It happens all the time, two people working so close with one objective can sometimes confuse dependency and attraction. I was too forward,” she said after pulling her hand back. She did not pull back her eyes from him though, just the opposite, they dove deeper inside him to swim around and see what was there.

  “No, that’s not it,” Chris said. “I am very much attracted to you, Kim, I just…” he paused, thinking how best to word it. “I just don’t deserve this, you, not now, not yet. I have to get some
other things straight in my life first and I think that begins tonight.”

  “Your son?” she asked, and their eyes remained locked in a mental embrace.

  Chris nodded and reached his hand across the table. She took his hand, this time with a warm consuming clasp, not a handshake at all. She gently stroked the back of his hand with her fingertips, almost tickling it. Then she grasped his index finger in her hand and rubbed it up and down, subliminally arousing them both. When she realized, she pulled her hand back awkwardly.

  “Let’s go, I want to be in position long before the witching hour,” Kim said, grabbing the bill off the table and heading to the cashier.

  Chris sat another moment, seeing things perhaps as clearly as he had in a decade. His life really did all begin anew tonight, he thought, or end. Out the window, the last rays of the September sun were disappearing over the hills to the west. His nighttime fears would have plenty fodder to feed on tonight, he thought. He strapped his backpack on and followed her out.

  Chapter LIII

  In the waning hours of the day, The Cleaner contemplated his existence. He had served The One faithfully and fully for near his entire time on this earth. He had never questioned or rarely questioned truth-be-told, any request or any service. He had wondered about a few of the more recent decisions, that much was true. The rock star was never stable enough to take his place, that had been a failure. And the other one, his friend, had always been too dangerous to allow life to, and yet they had. The One had dealt with the first mistake, repaired it, and replaced the apprentice, with a mere boy, yes, but hadn’t he been a boy when chosen? Now it seemed to be left to him to deal with the second mistake and that, of course, had to be tonight, the fates or The One had chosen the hallowed hour of midnight on this sacred day.

  Their symbiosis was indeed undeniably absolute. He was not certain that tonight was the night but there was a certain finality about the direction The One had allowed things to proceed, not for him of course, he was The One, the finality was aimed at his faithful servant. Returning to the lair this evening, the true lair, seemed to be the final cog that would spin all the wheels. He thought perhaps the apprentice had hastened it all somehow but in the end, did that matter?

  He was flying with the eagle for the last time. He didn’t even think the great bird would stick around to see the result, it was already ordained. He allowed himself an unusual moment of self as they flew, and he wondered what came next. He was more a mortal man at this moment than he had ever been, wondering about the finality of life on this earth and the promise or possibility of a life after this life. He was after all born of mortals, all be it dramatically flawed ones, and distorted from that existence to this one by a power that even this new altered being could not comprehend. Had The One always been, would he always be? He thought that right now, in this place, the answer had to be yes or none of this mattered. If not then his whole life, a lifetime equivalent to more than two mortal ones, had been a sham, a waste, worse yet, inconsequential.

  He would finish the fool off tonight and send him the way of his wife. He would have liked to do the boy first but there was no time, the man was getting stronger every day. He thought that perhaps he would feed on the man although he knew The One would not, he would only want the woman. He needed far more feedings than The One now, that’s how he knew it was all coming to an end. In the beginning, the taking of one life, one killing, would last all year and he would be strong and vital and vibrant. He could shift into anything, almost as well as The One although right now that smacked of blasphemy. Then over time, he required two then three and then four. His needs had eclipsed the needs of The One and that could not be, would not be allowed to last. Lately, he was barely able to go a month without losing strength, losing his abilities, becoming obsolete.

  And so here he was, two days since a feeding and he was already looking forward to another. The blood and meat of the man would not sustain him long, but it would help. The One, however, did not need this feeding and as such would not partake, it was already decided. The woman, on the other hand, the one they thought of as the intruder, The One would feed on her. Oh yes, she would be powerful, so powerful that he would not share. He wanted this tainted meat all to himself. Her flesh would nourish him for a long, long, time.

  As they settled in for the night, there was nothing to do save the waiting. He might lose his mortal life tonight, but he might, just might, be relevant one more time on his journey to immortality.

  Chapter LIV

  At half past seven, the darkness in the woods was black and shapeless. It would be hours before the half circle of a moon would rise above the trees and give them form. In Chris’s mind, fear was fertile, like an asexual cell, splitting and multiplying over and over and over. He followed close behind her, he could reach out and touch the Remington hanging down the back of her jacket and splitting the letter F on it in half. The twigs and brambles scratched his legs as they navigated the pathless thickets in the dark.

  There was a screw inside him that just kept turning as they walked on, winding him tighter and tighter until he thought his very fiber would snap if just one more turn came, but they kept coming. Just when he thought he couldn’t take another step, like his feet had found wet cement each time he had to pull his shoe up, it was harder and slower, but he did it. The clear crisp whistle of a Northern Cardinal came from somewhere up ahead. “I know, I know, thank god,” he whispered into the dark, knowing he was speaking to his wife, and it steeled his resolve.

  As they neared the opening, the temperature seemed to drop precipitously. Chris looked up and found the first pale star in the Western sky, twinkling a white welcome, or warning. He silently said the first-star poem in his head and made his wish. From this side of the woods, they were looking at the mound the long way, the small opening was around the side on their left and the big opening around to the right. “As good a place as any,” Kim said, and pulled the shotgun off her shoulder. They were positioned just behind a small sandstone outcrop that jutted from the earth like a broken femur sticking up through the flesh of a thigh. They sat next to each other with their backs against the rock, Kim cross-legged and Chris with his legs sticking straight out and his right ankle resting on his left.

  “Whatever happens,” the Special Agent started, “I want you to know that it’s been a pleasure spending time with you, you’re quite a man, even though I know you don’t think so.” She held her hand out to him, palm up and he took it.

  “Likewise, Kim, you’re the most amazing thing that’s happened to me in ten years,” he said. “So, what do we do now? Do you think he’s in there, It’s in there?” Chris asked.

  “Doubt it,” she said. “I guess we wait until midnight and see what the hell happens then.”

  “Is it cold, or is it me?” Chris asked as a shiver coursed through him.

  “It’s freakin freezing,” Kimberly said and pulled the collar of her windbreaker up around her neck with her free hand. The sky above was inky blue and freckled with stars now. “Much colder than it should be in early September, I think, even for Wisconsin,” she added.

  They sat that way, holding hands, and listening in the dark for anything, their senses heightened by the adrenaline that continued to flow unabashedly through them. They didn’t speak anymore, not for that hour, but the silence between them was a bond. Her hand had the miraculous effect of easing Chris’s normal fear of the dark, it was somehow less foreboding even though it was indeed far darker than the underpass of the FDR Drive. The cold, however, that was something else, and her hand did little to stem its chilling effect. Chris was surprised at how it made him feel. A man learns something about the cold when he sleeps outside in New York City in February, but this cold penetrated his heart somehow, not just his bones.

  He dropped her hand and rubbed his hands together briskly to warm them with the friction. Time was passing very slowly. It was not yet nine thirty. Suddenly a sound in front of them and to the left sent a new surge
of adrenaline pumping heat through him that immediately chased away the cold. Sweat appeared where chills had wracked him moments before. He could tell from the stiffening muscles next to him that she had heard it as well. She held her hand up to him to signify ‘don’t move’ and then pressed a finger to her lips to indicate silence.

  Kim took the shotgun from the ground by her side without a sound and held it out in front, ready to pump and shoot if necessary. Something was walking, toward them, slowly, maybe two somethings. Chris did not like this helpless feeling, he slowly began to slip his hand inside his Nike bag that was on the ground next to him, when the first of three whitetails ambled into view. He let out the breath he had been holding with an audible sigh. It puffed like a cloud in front of his face and then dissipated. Kimberly moaned next to him. A second deer appeared and then a third younger deer, probably born this spring, came into view. They walked on, oblivious of the people there. A few weeks till hunting season and these three would be quick to go, Chris thought.

  Once the deer had passed, Chris slowly stood up to look at the mound. His head just came over the top of the outcropping. Everything was quiet, everything was still. There were not so many noises in the cold September woods as there were in the warm summer months, no cicadas, no crickets. He did hear the hoot of an owl from time-to-time. It was a peaceful, comforting sound. And then it began to snow.