With a wrench I could make a go at it, but with nothing but a dog collar I was back to square one. At this point I was a firm believer in making do with what I had. If a wrench was what I needed, a wrench I would have to make. So taking my new wonder tool from my belt loop, I turned it over in the wan sunlight, thought about how to modify it. I stuck the flat end of the buckle under an exposed lip in the wall plate and bent it upwards. You’d be surprised how strong the metal of a dog collar buckle is. Small and thick, it damn near refused to give. I was forced to bend down and use both my legs and shoulders, thrusting my body up before it started folding. The pain this caused the palms of my hands was excruciating.
I kept at it till I had folded it at about a sixty degree angle, forming a V. Once bent, no amount of prying by my bare hands would open it, which hopefully meant it was strong enough to counter the screw’s resistance. The nut, to my surprise, fit snuggly in the V. There was no time to ponder the convenience of it all—I just gave the collar a hard turn. With the screw rusted to the hinge, the nut began to give. My heart was beating fast, my tongue hanging out in some stupefied expression of determination. I twisted harder, till my back cracked like a brick of firecrackers, until the nut spun free. I grabbed it and twisted it, spun it faster and faster until it fell to the floor. Then ramming my palm against the bottom of the screw, I shoved it up and out of the top of the hinge. I pulled the clamp apart and let it swing back against the wall.
Rubbing my neck, I felt the cheese grater scars the collar had inflicted. Terrified as I’d been, I hadn’t even noticed how it had eaten away my skin.
Clomp, clomp, clomp.
Footsteps echoed above me and before long dust was trickling down from the beams overhead. My heart did zero to sixty in one second, slamming against my ribs, trying to escape my body. My stomach was doing somersaults. If Skinny Man came down right now I was a goner, my legs still shackled as they were. I thought about slipping the collar back on and putting the handcuffs back, but loose enough that I could pull free if I needed to, but I knew he’d never be fooled. The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs. He took out his keys and unlocked the door. I froze.
The door didn’t open.
“Butch,” he said, “get yer ass out here and stop trying to get in the garbage. Sometimes you piss me right off. Always cleaning up after you. C’mon, get out here now. Now sit and listen up. We got a lot to do today and I’m gonna need your help so stop messing around. First thing we gotta do—what the? Where’s your collar?”
My heartbeat went from sixty to one hundred. He knew! Trying desperately to be quiet, I put my arms over my head and slid down out of the waist chain and stood back up a free man but for my feet. Quickly, I sprawled out across the floor, and reached for the big ax that lay in the light spilling in under the door. It was close, my fingertips brushing against it, but I couldn’t get a good grip on it.
“Did you leave it downstairs?”
The door at the top of the stairs opened. Stretch, I told myself, stretch!
“It better not be festering in your food.” His footfalls bumped down the wooden steps.
Stretch! Just a little more!
Footsteps halfway down the stairs now. My fingers touching the handle but not enough to grab it. More steps, closer, near the door. Another couple steps and he’d be here. My fingers, walking on the handle, inching it into my grasp. There!
I worked it backwards with my fingers, grabbed the hilt like Babe Ruth and stood ready to swing. My heart was beyond miles per hour; it was doing warp speed. My palms filled with so much sweat the ax kept sliding around. Then Skinny Man stopped.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Did you bury it? Jesus Christ, you did, didn’t ya? That’s the millionth collar I’ve bought you this year. If you buried this one too, I’m gonna make you regret it. No, I don’t want to hear your excuses. Do you think I’m made of money or something? Shut up and let me talk for once, you don’t always need to interrupt. I’m not gonna buy you another so I suggest you go out and dig it up. Whatdya mean, ‘Help you?’ Why should I help you, you did it? Do you see me in the backyard digging up the dirt with my hands, dropping my shit in it and covering it up? When was the last time you saw me do that? Yeah, okay, Mr. Wiseguy, but aside from that, you’re the only one who buries shit out back. I swear it’s like you got the O-C-D. I couldn’t find the butter last night, did you bury that, too? What happened to the butter? Probably resting in a shallow grave out back, I bet. God, you make me so mad. No, I will not help you go look for it. Why should I, give me one good reason?”
There was a pause. I stood waiting, my sweat dripping down the ax handle.
“You better hope I don’t find anything else I been looking for out there. I swear, why you gotta bury everything is beyond me.”
He went back up and closed the door. Then the driveway door opened and he and his maniacal mutt drifted away. Thank God for insanity, I thought. With those two out of the house, I figured I had a couple minutes to improve my situation. I glanced at the ax. From the dim light I could see it was still covered in blood, most likely my sister’s, but I forced the image out of my head. What was important was that it was sharp and it was heavy.
Enough adrenaline was coursing through my body I felt I could jump to the moon. But it was also making me shake and I needed steady hands if I was going to get out of this alive. I took a couple deep breaths until my ability to focus returned.
I raised the ax over my head and brought it down on the chain connected to the leg irons.
CHUNK!
Metal and dirt resounded off the walls as the weapon struck. Weapon, I thought. Was it wrong I saw the tool as a weapon? I guess I always saw tools as weapons because of the horror movies I’d seen, but this was different; I honestly could not find another use for the instrument in my hands other than chopping someone up.
CHUNK!
I hit the chain again, tiny bits of dirt spitting up at my face. I hit it a third time and a fourth time and a fifth, fearing that each bang would bring Skinny Man running down the stairs with a knife in one hand and butter in the other.
CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK!
The chain broke, just a little, but I was able to slip the broken link off the rest of it. The leg iron was still attached to my ankle, but I was mobile. I hit the other chain that connected the other leg iron as hard as I could. Two times. Three times. Then the blade bit through one of the links and I separated the cuff, still on my leg, from the chain.
I was free. Totally free.
First thing I did was listen for signs of Skinny Man outside. I could barely hear him, so next thing I did was go to the basement door and check the knob, which I already knew was locked. Using the ax, I slipped the blade into the door jamb and worked it like a crowbar. The cheap wood buckled easily with a loud crunch and the knob cracked out and fell to the floor. Again, I listened to see if the noise would bring Skinny Man but I could still hear his voice coming from outside.
Like a man playing with dynamite, I cautiously opened the door and placed a foot on the first step. The wood groaned under my weight, my leg iron chain jingled. Sunlight came through under the door at the top of the stairs, a bright blue that caught the dust motes and swirled them about like an enchanting spell. I took another step, listening to my heart pump a tribal drumbeat, squinting into the sunlight. How long had it actually been since I’d seen this much natural light? Two days? Three? More? Before I could take another step I heard something that nearly caused me to drop the ax.
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.
&nb
sp; 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 sunlight 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. The stove, its small door open with the shovel still sticking 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 only 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 don’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 anymore, 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, but 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, with 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 to
o 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 Woman’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.
The Summer I Died: A Thriller Page 16