The Summer I Died: A Thriller

by Ryan C. Thomas

  Two bodies exploded out of the door, running full speed directly toward us.

  One was a woman, bound, gagged, covered in blood. The other was a thin shirtless man waving a hand ax in one fist and a saw in the other. My stomach lurched and I went rigid. I couldn’t move. My brain sort of refused to accept what it was seeing. Up was down, black was white.

  Instantly, both the woman and the man saw Tooth and me, and both went wide-eyed. The woman kept screaming, kept racing our way. The man went ape shit, his face twisting into furious determination.

  The gag on the woman’s mouth slid to the side and she wailed with all the energy of someone whose last attempt to live depended on it. It was deafening.

  She was almost to the edge of the yard, maybe ten feet from where we stood, when the man swung the ax down on her, wedged it into her skull with a loud crunch. Blood spit out like a fountain. Her body went into spasms but she kept running, bolting into the trees beside us.

  There was a loud bang.

  The gunshot shook me out of my trance and I pissed myself, screamed, and ran into the woods. I didn’t know where Tooth was, or who or what he’d shot at, and I didn’t care. I was pure adrenaline. I ducked low limbs and hopped boulders and ran right into the makeshift fence, which I’d forgotten about. I jumped up and grabbed the top of it when something plowed into me like a battering ram.

  It was the woman.

  Together, we fell to the ground, and I landed on top of her. She was out of her mind, mouth wide open, blood spurting from the ax in her head. Her eyes spun about like a robot’s with broken servos. She wailed, I screamed, she grabbed for me—I lost it. This wasn’t happening. I jumped off her. Screaming like a lunatic, I went for the fence again.

  Out of nowhere, one of the rottweilers clamped down on my leg and sank his fangs into my flesh, piercing my shinbone. I screamed for God to save me, to pull me from this blizzard of mayhem. I saw the trees go whizzing by my face, felt flesh tearing off my leg, saw the woman flip-flopping on the ground like a fish out of water, felt my head smack against the fence, saw the dog’s fangs snap near my throat, saw more trees whiz by, the dog again, the woman.

  A searing fire raced up my leg.

  The dog was thrashing me like a rag doll.

  I punched it as hard as I could in the face. I punched it again and again until I heard something crack. With a yelp it let go and dashed back toward the house. I reached down to my leg and ran my hand through the wetness running out of it, struggling to see anything through my own blinding tears. It didn’t matter; there was no way in hell I was going to look at it until I was safely away. If I saw my bones sticking out I’d have to stop to throw up.

  Thump thump went the woman on the ground. I stood up, scared so fucking senseless I couldn’t make a noise, white-hot pain blazing in my calf muscle. I wiped the tears away and looked around so fast I could barely make out anything. I kept expecting a hand saw to slice across my throat at any moment. Back toward the house, I spotted Tooth and the shirtless man swinging at each other, rolling on the ground. Next to them one of the rottweilers lay on the brown grass as still as a statue, a river of red running out of its neck.

  Like a jack in the box, the woman sprang upright in front of me and I fell down screaming nothingness. She had one hand on the ax and was trying to pull it out of her skull but it was stuck fast. I had this crazy image of her lifting herself off the ground with it, like in a cartoon. Her hair was coated in syrupy blood and little white bits that were either bone or brain. I kicked her in the stomach, sent her tumbling to the ground away from me. I never realized how fast I could run when I was scared to death, but I leapt up and scaled the fence so quick I doubt my hands even touched it.

  When I landed on the other side, my leg gave out and pitched me to the ground. Back from the yard, I heard a sickening thwack, followed by a grunt, and I knew Tooth had gone down for the count. I peered through the split logs that formed the fence and saw him on the ground, rolling ever so slightly. He put a hand to his head and moaned. The skinny guy was holding the gun, triumphantly, and I could tell he’d just beat Tooth with it. I lay still, watching, not believing this was happening. The man went and picked up his hand saw and gave Tooth a once over.

  I didn’t know what to do. I was lame, scared shitless, and I was about to watch my best friend get hacked to pieces by some sick fuck. And worst of all, I knew if I made a noise I’d be next. There was nothing I could do. I wanted to scream, to run, to take that saw and cut that fucker’s head off and slice him into tiny bits. I wanted to kill him, his family, his dogs, everything in this world that was even remotely related to him. Instead, I closed my eyes.

  I would not watch my friend get hacked up. That would not be the last image I had of Tooth. And yet, I had to know. Swallowing my fear, I opened my eyes and looked again.

  The skinny man didn’t shoot Tooth. Instead, he kicked him in the gut and once more in the head until Tooth went still. Then he kicked him again just to be sure. Satisfied with his work, he bent over the dog that was lying on the ground nearby and put a hand on its head.

  “Motherfucker,” he said, looking back at Tooth, “I’ll kill you so slowly it’ll feel like an eternity. Shoot my dog. You fucking piece of shit.” He kicked Tooth again, whose unresponsive body took the blow with a dull thud.

  He pulled the clip out of the gun, and seeing it still had bullets, slid it back in and started walking into the trees, straight toward me. I lay down as flat as I could, pushed some leaves over my legs and in front of my face. I had on dark brown shorts and my black Silver Surfer shirt, enough to camouflage me, but certainly not enough to save me. On top of that, I could smell the piss on myself, and it was making me want to puke. I was a dead man and I knew it. As he walked toward me, I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes, I didn’t think of my parents or the comics I’d never draw. I just thought, please let it be fast, please let me not feel it. Then I started crying some more.

  He stopped a few feet from the fence, bent down, and picked up the woman he’d tried to behead. She was still alive, though I doubted she knew her name or what day of the week it was. She reached up to grab the ax and he swatted her hand away.

  “No no, my dear,” he said with a grin, “if you pull that out you’re likely to lose all your brains. You’d probably die pretty quick and we wouldn’t want that. We haven’t even started having fun with you yet.”

  I don’t know if she understood his words or not, but she frantically reached for the ax again, got hold of it and started to yank it out. He grabbed her hand, and in two swift motions, ran the hand saw across her wrist and lopped it off. It fell to the ground with a light thump.

  She wailed. All I could do was bury my face against the fence rung. When she stopped, I risked a look back up and could tell she was in another place. Not dead, just far away, farther than she’d been before, somewhere out past Mars. The man picked up the hand and waved it around. “Here, Butch, here boy.”

  Through the woods, the remaining rottweiler, the one with my blood smeared all over its mouth like clown makeup, trotted over and took the hand from its master. Carrying it in its teeth, it went back to the yard and lay on its belly, put the hand between its two front paws, and began eating it. Vomit raced up my throat but I forced myself to swallow it. Oh, God, please, I pleaded, I don’t want to die like this. Please. Please.

  Through the fence I saw the man’s feet step toward me, slowly, and my heart went wild. Did he see me? Did he know where I was? Would he pass by me and go looking for me? I gave in to tiny convulsions, shaking the leaves off me, my teeth chattering like a rattlesnake.

  A foot slid into the open space in the fence near my face and I realized he was climbing over. If I didn’t move he would land right on top of me, put his heels through my teeth.

  Breathe slower, Roger. For fuck’s sake breathe slower.

  I felt the fence move from his body weight, expecting a foot in my face any second. But nothing fell on me. Instead, he sai
d, “What the hell are you two doing on my property? Don’t you know it’s against the law to trespass? I got the legal right to shoot you, you know. Hey, I’m talking to you. Least you could do is look at me.”

  It was as if my body was under some magical spell; I couldn’t not respond. I rolled over and looked up. His upper body was bent over the fence so that his face was only a foot away from mine. His breath was acrid, hot. His unshaven black beard was peppered with bits of gray, and his dirty face was cracked and spotted with blood that I doubted was his own.

  The gun was pointed at my eye.

  “You should have kept running,” he continued. “Lot of places to hide in these woods. Probably could have hidden from me. Then again, that leg looks pretty bad. Butch would have sniffed you out in no time. He’s good with tracking, and better at catching. I trained him myself. Yer friend back there, I’m gonna make him pay for shooting my dog. And seeing as how I got his gun, too, you can either come back over here quietly, or I can just shoot you now. Don’t make a whole bit of difference to me.”

  For the first time I looked at my leg. The muscle was ripped open and I could see the muscle striations inside. A small chunk of flesh was torn off and the blood was starting to coagulate just a little. It was so dark it looked like oil.

  “Well, what you gonna do, boy?”

  His eyes were wild in his gaunt face, his teeth dark yellow, the prison tattoo on his neck was faded but looked like Jesus on the cross pissing on a woman. Mary, it was Mary. And it wasn’t piss. He was insane, sick, and two seconds away from splattering my brains all over the ground. What’s worse, he was enjoying himself.

  “Please . . . please . . .” was all I could manage.

  “Please nothing. You should have minded yer own business and stayed away. No one to blame but yerself now.”

  I was a piss-drenched child looking at the boogey man. “I won’t tell. I swear to fucking God I won’t tell.”

  “Boy, if you don’t shut up and get over this fence you won’t be able to tell because yer mouth will be hanging from that tree over there. Now get up! And stop crying!”

  I stood up, sobbing like a girl. I should have let him shoot me, should have taken it fast and clean. But it’s not that easy. You don’t just concede defeat in these circumstances. You take every second you can find and use it to pray for another few seconds. Hope is a cruel bitch.

  I climbed over the fence, smearing my blood all over it, and trembled as I stood next to this demon with a gun. On the ground, the now handless woman with the ax in her skull lay staring into oblivion. I envied her.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  I turned around, half expecting a bullet in the back.

  “Now march.”

  Struggling against my shock, I put one foot in front of the other and started walking toward the house, dimly aware of the crunching sounds coming from the dog as it gnawed on the hand and bit through the small finger bones. The last thing I remember was feeling a slight sting on the back of my head.

  Blackness.

  CHAPTER 11

  As I swam into existence, I smelled wet cement and mold, heard rain falling outside. My leg was throbbing and my head hurt like Nomar had used it for batting practice. I went to put my hand against it to feel for a lump, but my arm wouldn’t move. I flexed my fingers to make sure it hadn’t fallen asleep and it was working just fine. Slowly, my vision cleared and I took in my surroundings, which consisted mainly of shadows and cement walls. Something cold and hard ringed my neck and I shook my head to free myself from whatever it was.

  Excruciating pain exploded inside my skull, so intense I didn’t dare scream. I stayed still until my eyes stopped watering, and the pain ebbed, and then I glanced down to see what the hell I’d tried to shake off and noticed the chains.

  Chains?

  Have you ever played dodgeball, and had someone hurl the ball at you at mach 5, knowing no matter how fast you move you’re still going to take it head on? That’s how I felt as the very recent past came back to me like a line drive to the nose. When it hit me, and I realized where I was, my body went into a frantic, yet restrained, dance—restrained because the chains that were binding me offered little in the way of movement.

  I also noticed I was biting down on something soft that smelled and tasted like oil and ancient piss. I tried to push it out of my mouth with my tongue but it was tied tight around my head, probably the only thing holding my brains in.

  “Roger, relax, it’s no use.”

  I knew that voice. It was Tooth. Tooth was here with me somewhere. I turned to my left and saw him standing a few feet away. Looking at him, I suddenly knew what my own situation was like. Around his waist, a chain was wrapped tight and fastened to a metal plate in the wall behind him. His hands were handcuffed to the waist chain on either side. A metal collar, like something from an S and M whorehouse, was padlocked around his neck and connected by a chain to the metal plate as well. Two leg irons, again chained to the wall, kept his legs from moving. A brown stained rag was wrapped around his chin, as if he’d not been able to shake it all the way off.

  “The chains are too tight and the cuffs are sharp,” he said. “Don’t bother fighting it or you’ll hurt yourself.”

  His face looked like roadkill. Dried, crusted blood flaked around every orifice. A small rivulet of crimson meandered down his cheek and disappeared under his chin before it dripped onto his shoulder. What was happening to us? One thing was certain: I was no longer high.

  My eyes were adjusting to the gloom and I could see the room somewhat clearly now. Four concrete walls, a dirty concrete floor, cross beams above us with a single light bulb in the middle. A basement. On the right wall, a rusty black boiler chugged quietly, its pipes extending into the ceiling like antennae. Directly across from us stood a door with a cheap gold knob. Pinned to it was a poster of something I couldn’t make out. Against the left wall, at the base, a pair of dog dishes sat surrounded by bits of food. Now that I saw it, I could smell the food as well. It smelled like rancid garbage, and I figured for a man who claimed to love his dogs, he sure didn’t care about them enough to buy some high quality Iams. Next to the dog dishes was an old wood burning stove, the kind used to heat up kettles in the 1800s, its pipe extending up through the ceiling. A tiny wooden table sat next to that with some tools—pliers, box cutters, nails, hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, etcetera—hanging on the pegboard above it.

  I looked at Tooth again and tried to speak through the rag but was so scared I couldn’t find any words to say.

  “Listen to me,” he said, “this is no joke. We’re in real trouble here. This guy is fucking crazy and I think he killed that woman. I don’t know what to do, but I sure as fuck know if we don’t do it fast we’re going to die. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, the surrealism of the moment numbing me. I was scared. Too scared to even care about the absurd number of mosquito bites that were itching like mad.

  “I’m scared, too,” he said, as if reading my mind, “and if you need to cry, go for it, but I’m going to need you to be awake and aware when he comes back. I need to get him to release us somehow. As soon as he does I’m going to jump him. You run for that door and don’t stop until you get the cops. My cell phone is in my back pocket. I’ll try and flip it to you, but if I can’t get to it, grab it and run. You understand?”

  I nodded again and felt my brain slosh about in my cracked skull. I didn’t remember being hit but I must have been cold-cocked with the gun.

  “He left a few minutes ago, after he chained you up. I pretended I was asleep so I could think. I’m betting he went back for the woman’s body.”

  Last time I had seen the woman she’d been alive, at least physically. I wondered if he would finish her off, but suddenly remembered him saying something about playing with her first. Oh no, I thought, oh shit. My breathing raced and my blood pumped rapidly. He wasn’t going to kill her; he was going to torture her.

  Was he going to torture
us? Or was she an ex-girlfriend or something, someone who in his twisted mind deserved to be tortured? I knew the answer to that one instantly. We were chained up, in a basement, in a madman’s house. I started sobbing. I didn’t want to die.

  “Shh,” snapped Tooth. “I hear something. I think he’s coming back.”

  Shuffling footsteps grew louder from behind the door, each one followed immediately by a thumping sound. When they got just outside the door they stopped. Keys jingled briefly, began working the lock, and the door flew open.

  Covered in a mess of blood, the man—Skinny Man—stood in the doorway like an angry demon late for an appointment. Sweat glistened on his bare chest, which pumped with fury. He put the keys back in his pocket and picked up a bundle of something near his feet. As he dragged it into the room, I saw it was our mystery woman. Her eyes were glazed, her body limp, and I couldn’t tell if she was alive or not. The ax was still sticking out of her head.

  He dragged her over to the dog dishes and slumped her on the ground. Clink went the ax as her head hit the ground. I started dry heaving at the sight of it.

  After he was sure she wouldn’t move, he came over to me and stuck his face in mine, our noses touching. The collar kept my head from turning too far away, and every time I moved he moved with me, laughing like I was the funniest thing in the world. He grabbed my nose and squeezed it hard. My sinuses felt like they were being crushed and my eyes teared up. Struggling did nothing; he held fast and kept laughing. With the rag in my mouth I couldn’t breathe and I knew this was it, this was how I’d die. Spots jumped before my eyes.