The Summer I Died: A Thriller

by Ryan C. Thomas

  Sweet Lord the pain was intense, like someone peeling back a giant hangnail on my lower body. But it served its purpose. I woke up in a flash and crawled out of the kitchen, trembling as I held the blade of the ax in my hand to avoid any noise. It was damn near pointless since the leg irons jingled so loudly you could hear them in Vermont.

  I crawled into a musty, wood-paneled living room that was likewise buried in shadow from drawn curtains. Standing up, fighting the pain in my shin, I saw a couch that looked as if it had been made out of hand-me-down clothes. A collection of notebooks and Polaroid photographs were strewn about on the cushions. I picked one up and immediately threw it down when I saw what it was a picture of. No amount of shaking my head would clear away the image of two little boys on a floor, naked. One had a rottweiler’s prick in his mouth, against his will. The other boy was mutilated, diced, and the second dog was feasting on the remains. Don’t think about it, I told myself. Think about Jamie, think about Jamie and about California and find a fucking phone. Just don’t, whatever you do, think about it.

  A water ring-stained coffee table sat in the middle of the floor, covered with dirty dishes and a bowl full of keys. Car keys by the looks of them. Maybe ten different pairs. Quickly, I ran my hand through it, hoping to find Tooth’s Camaro keys, but came up empty. As I was turning away to continue my search for a phone, I noticed something else on the coffee table that made my heart leap.

  Under an upturned magazine, poking out like a turtle’s head, was the black muzzle of a gun. I snatched it up and looked at it, and sure enough, it was a 9mm—Tooth’s gun. Shaking so badly I almost dropped the damned thing, I rested the ax against my legs, ejected the gun’s clip like Tooth had shown me and checked for bullets. It was empty. I rummaged about the coffee table in the hopes of finding ammunition but all I found was junk. With a sigh, I slammed the clip back in and tucked the gun in my waistband in case I came across any bullets later.

  There was no phone in here either.

  Next to a black pipe that ran from a hole in the floor up through the ceiling—no doubt from the stove in the dungeon—was a staircase leading upstairs. I grabbed the banister and hauled myself up. The guy had to have a phone somewhere, didn’t he?

  At the top of the stairs I stopped and listened. Skinny Man was still out back talking to Butch and I figured if there wasn’t a phone up here my best bet was to run out the front door into the woods across the street and make for Bobtail. Once he noticed I was gone, he’d be all over the road looking for me, probably send Butch out through the woods just to cover all the trails. The ax would help me, but I was very tired, and its weight was hurting my shoulders. My eyes were stinging from lack of sleep, and fatigue was creeping back up on me.

  The stairs ended at the start of a hallway with three rooms—what appeared to be two bedrooms on either side and a bathroom at the end. I went into the bedroom to my right, which turned out to be filled with various boxes of clothes and other belongings. Pocketbooks, backpacks, sleeping bags. There were even a couple bicycles leaning up against one wall. Again, the drawn shades cast the room in a thick darkness, and from what I could see it was phoneless. Cursing under my breath, I turned back toward the hallway and noticed a small knife lying on top of the dresser near the door. It wouldn’t hurt to have as many weapons as possible, I thought. I picked it up and held it flush with the ax handle, so that if I had to I could drop the ax and still be holding the knife.

  That’s when I noticed the photo.

  It was lying flat on the dresser as well, and behind its cracked glass was a family of three: a mother, father and daughter, all standing next to the swing set that Skinny Man was standing next to right now. The little girl was maybe six or seven, blonde, with a front tooth missing, and she looked happy holding her father’s hand. The mother’s smile looked forced, and dark circles under her eyes spoke of extreme stress. The father was . . . well, the father was Skinny Man. The smile that stretched across his face was longer then the Rio Grande. Was this his family? Where were they now? Did they leave him, or did he butcher them as well?

  Truth was, I didn’t really care. I put the photo back on the dresser and left.

  Skinny Man’s voice carried up to me as I went across the hall and peeked into what was arguably his bedroom. “Soon as I finish this up you’re gonna help me take care of that troublemaker down there, make him wish he was his friend, and I want you to help me out and not give me any lip. What do you mean do him fast? I don’t want to do it fast. We been too hasty with these fuckers. We gonna take our time and do him right.”

  I had to find a phone or get out now. In the bedroom, a large four poster bed sat among heaps of more clothing, magazines, notebooks, photographs, and a broken acoustic guitar. On the nightstand beside the bed was a glass of water and some crumpled up pieces of paper. Hanging on the post of the bed was a beat up Red Sox cap. I walked over and took it off, looked at it and knew instantly it was Tooth’s. Holding it brought back the recent events I was trying so hard to block out. The torture, the pain, the way he’d fought till the very end. The way I’d cried and cried through it all, praying the dice would ignore me. We had set out to shoot beer cans and smoke weed, just two friends trying to hold onto a childhood that was slowly disintegrating with age. And then . . .

  I rolled up the hat and put it in my back pocket. Given a choice, Tooth would have taken this hat to the grave with him, and I figured I could do that much for him.

  Something crunched under my foot as I moved back to the door. I looked down and saw a collection of plastic prescription pill bottles, maybe twelve in all, scattered on the ground. A few were empty, were missing their lids, some lone pills resting nearby, but most were full. I picked one up and read the label: Clozapine. Never heard of it. I didn’t know what the drug did, or what it was for, but it sure as shit wouldn’t surprise me if it had something to do with psychosis. The date on the label was over a year old. I picked up another, also still full, and saw the date on it was also a year old.

  I dropped it back down to the floor, next to a child’s doll with wiry blonde hair.

  I gave the room a final once over and didn’t see a phone anywhere. Okay, I decided, the fucker doesn’t own a phone, time to leave by the front door and run as fast as possible on my rotting leg to Bobtail.

  In the hallway again, I took a breath and steeled myself for the journey. I was moving toward the stairs when it hit me that the backyard was suddenly quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that scares the shit out of new parents. Rushing into the bathroom, I slid up next to the window that looked out over the backyard and, barely breathing, pulled back the corner of the blind. I looked out toward the swing set.

  Skinny Man was staring right back at me.

  The curtain fell out of my hand as I plastered myself against the wall, my heart slamming against my ribcage. At the same time, Skinny Man let out a bloodcurdling wail that sent squawking birds flying from the trees, a wail that raced from the swing set to the driveway door.

  And then he was inside the house and rushing though the kitchen, knocking pans to the ground. I heard him in the living room, screaming, a clatter of falling objects bouncing in his wake. A shadow exploded up the stairs, followed by a body that was swinging a shovel like a crack addict frantically looking for a piñata full of drugs. Then he saw me, and in his wide ape-shit eyes, though I was at least fifteen feet away, I swear I saw the trembling reflection of a man with nothing more to lose: myself.

  He stopped at the landing, maybe stunned, maybe collecting his strength, maybe hearing voices, who knows. My body was shaking, both in fear and anticipation, and I thought of Jamie downstairs, and what I had to do for her. I thought of Tooth and the way he died. I thought of myself and how unfair it all was. A silence passed between us, him staring at me, me staring back, like two gladiators in ancient Rome. There was no noise but our eager breathing. He was pissed, outraged that I had escaped, outraged at himself most likely. With a spit-drenched roar, he raised his
shovel and rushed at me.

  “Ahhhhh!”

  Without thinking, I charged him with the ax, holding it high like a reaper taking souls, screaming unholy nonsense and simply beyond concern of catching a shovel to the skull. And that’s when I saw something that nearly made me stumble, something behind Skinny Man that I knew couldn’t be real, something that gave me a renewed burst of speed.

  I swung the ax.

  With an explosive clang, the two weapons collided in mid air, accompanied by angry screams and cracking handles. Then, either because the ax was heavier, or because of what I knew couldn’t possibly be in the hall with us, Skinny Man fell backwards and toppled down the stairs, the shovel arcing through the air with him. My momentum carried me forward and I fell down on top of him, losing the ax as I tumbled.

  Still holding the knife, I rolled past him and into the wall at the bottom, spilling into the living room like dirty laundry. Pain erupted throughout my back, my vision blurred. My shoulders seemed to swell up before my eyes, and I was pretty sure my spine was sticking out the top of my head. The dog bite on my shin was gushing like a geyser. I looked up and found Skinny Man lying on the stairs, upside down, with his leg caught in the railing. Above him, the ax peeked out over the top stair, out of my reach. He swung the shovel at me but he was a couple feet too far away to hit me. I braced myself for it to come flying at me next, but he held on to it instead. Watching him watching me, I noticed one of the railing spokes had stabbed through his calf muscle, pinning him there like a fish on a hook.

  He yelled, “You are in a heap of shit now. Only people who leave here are the ones marked paid in full, and I don’t see a receipt on your toe, now do I?”

  And with that he punched through the spoke and broke it off from the railing. Standing up with the thin piece of wood impaling him, he reached down and took hold of the shortest end and proceeded to pull it all the way through and out the other side of his leg, grinning the whole while. Once the spoke was out, blood began to pool on the stairs and run down toward me. He took a step and winced, sweat flowing from his brow, and his face twisted in surprise. I guess he didn’t think his little trick would hurt that much, but from the way he was breathing through his clenched teeth, and the way he was now afraid to walk, he had obviously misjudged his own threshold for pain. Still, I was in no shape to make for the ax above him so I turned and limped toward the front door.

  “Where you going, mama’s boy? You still have to atone for your crime. Hey, Butch!”

  A loud bark came from behind me and I spun with my fists raised and ready. Butch came charging through the living room like a runaway train and slammed me into the door. Sharp teeth bit down on my hip and sank into my flesh, thrusting me into the door repeatedly. In excruciating pain, I wrapped my arm around his head and tried to shove the knife in his throat.

  From the stairs, Skinny Man yelled, “No! Don’t you hurt him! I’ll kill you!”

  But Butch was thrashing, and the knife missed its target and sank into his shoulder instead. With a yelp he burst back into the kitchen and disappeared, the knife still protruding from his body. My hip was filled with red hot gravel. Blood was seeping down my groin. Realizing I had to get out now, I reached up to undo the latch on the front door. From behind me I heard the Frankenstein clomp of Skinny Man shuffling down the steps, and a second later a shovel swooped over my head and took a chunk out of the lintel. I grabbed the handle before he could pull it back and wrenched it from his hands, swung it back at him with all my might. But I was hurt and beyond fatigued, and I misjudged the swing and hit the banister instead. The reverberation sent a shock wave up my arm and I dropped it on the floor. In an instant Skinny Man was on top of me.

  “I’m gonna cut you up nice and fine,” he whispered in my ear as we struggled. I saw him go for the ax on his belt. “Hell, I didn’t ask you to come here, you did that on yer own. So many people always trying to come through my property, hike through my hills, drive through my woods. Nobody ever learns, do they?”

  My shoulders felt like cornmeal and my punches had little effect. Getting a thumb up to his eye, I jabbed it in but it was a weak attempt. He pulled his head away and put me in a headlock and squeezed, still trying to undo the ax. Spots jumped before me; I was losing my breath. In a way, it felt good, like I would soon be asleep and in a better place. Again, I could see random images before me, the ever-present image of California that had lodged into my subconscious, a quick flash of Jamie when she was younger, holding her teddy bear, my father yelling at me for watching too many horror films. Then I saw another vision: Tooth, standing in the corner of the room. He was saying something to me. “Go for the leg, he’s hurt in the leg.”

  Kicking back, I hit the gaping wound on Skinny Man’s calf, rubbed the heel of my shoe down it and ripped it open wider. At the same time I scratched at his face and tore open the flesh under his eye. He lost his grip on me and I dropped straight to the floor, out of his hands. Groggy and gasping for breath, I lifted myself up as quickly as I could manage and kicked him in the chest, sent him into the bottom stair, which he tripped backwards on. Before he even hit the ground, he was pulling the hand ax free from its loop.

  Knowing I was outnumbered two to one at that point, I unfastened the latch on the door and threw myself into the sunlight. I burst through the overgrown front lawn and made for the trees across the street.

  CHAPTER 24

  I was halfway across the lawn when I looked back and saw Skinny Man coming at me with the hand ax. With the wound in my leg I wasn’t able to run as fast as I needed to and he was gaining on me, either used to the pain in his leg or so afraid of what would happen if I got away he didn’t care. By the time I reached the street he was nearly on top of me, swinging the bloodstained blade at my head. I fell to the cement and rolled out of the way, rolling myself back onto my feet and swinging my fists at him. Again, he tried to play whack-a-mole with my brain, but I managed to get my arms up under his and deflect the blow, our forearms smashing into each other. I kicked at him and he jumped back, putting his weight on his bad leg, which stopped him for a second.

  “Stop that crying,” he told me. “If you’re going to act like some fucking superhero least you could do is play the part.”

  I hadn’t even realized I was crying; I was too intent on not dying to notice what was going on physically. But as soon as he said it I realized my face was awash in tears. My body was shaking and my legs felt deflated. In front of me, the shirtless, bloodied madman was smiling like he’d released the frightened child inside of me.

  Frightened yes, child no.

  “Where you gonna go?” he asked. “Nowhere you can run I can’t find you. Butch is a good tracker; he’ll find you in a heartbeat. Best if you just came back over here and took your medicine like a man. In case you forgot, I know where you live, mama’s boy.”

  I had forgotten that he still had my driver’s license, that he knew where I lived. Could I make it to Bobtail before he drove to my parent’s house and killed them? Or would he pack up and disappear for a long time, only to resurface ten years from now on my front porch, his little ax in his belt, a new pair of dogs at his heels?

  It was driving me mad. He had all his angles covered, knew all the ways to defeat his victim even when he wasn’t around.

  “You gonna kill my family like you killed yours!” I screamed.

  He stayed back and replied, “Wasn’t me, mama’s boy, I just follow directions, and besides, they were bad. Always snooping in my stuff, nosing around where they shouldn’t be, trying to steal things. That little bitch was trying to steal my soul, sell it to the highest bidder. Kids are the devil’s minions, ya know. But she learned right from wrong when I dragged her behind my truck till her face came off. Yeah, she knew not to do bad things then, with her eyes smeared on the road.”

  “You’re fucking crazy!’

  “Get back here! Don’t make me drive and pick up yer mama, ’cause I will. I’ll fuck her rotten on top of yer corpse.
I’ll fuck her with yer severed limbs. You want that? Either one works for me, as long as somebody is keeping them happy.”

  Again with the them and they talk, psychotic babble that would land him in an institution instead of the electric chair. Somewhere deep down I knew that I could never live with that. I couldn’t let him go free, not now, not ever. Murder was the only option. I knew that. In a way I’d known it since waking up in the cellar; I’d been kidding myself it would never come to it. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore, I knew something was owed to Tooth and Jamie . . . and myself, too.

  As I reached the trees across the street, Skinny Man followed with the ax at the ready. Behind him loomed his house where I could only guess how many hikers and travelers had met their untimely ends in ungodly painful ways. It was almost as if I could look through the walls and see the ghosts of the unfortunate, Jamie’s dismembered torso on the ground in the dark, the empty chains where Tooth had suffered unthinkable pain.

  “What’s it gonna be, superhero?”

  Suddenly, I stopped. With an early afternoon breeze kissing my blood-streaked, tear-covered face, I watched him come at me a little slower, as if he was wondering what my plan was. There was no plan though, just that I knew I had to kill him. I knew once and for all I couldn’t just run away; I had to seize the opportunity that had been given to me. Given to me by the dice, given to me by years of reading comics, given to me by something higher than my understanding allowed. Given to me by what I had seen in the hallway upstairs.

  Do it now, I told myself. Do it while he thinks you’re too weak and scared to attack. For Tooth, for Jamie. Don’t think about it, just do it. Do it for what he took from you, from this world.

  And so I did.

  From every ounce of my being, hatred welled up like an angry sea, and I rushed him head on. I heard myself scream, “NOOOOO!” but it sounded very far away. Remembering my trick on the boy at the liquor store, I pulled out the gun from my waistband as I charged, and tossed it to him. Reflexively, he went to catch it. But before he could our bodies collided and flew to the ground and I cracked my forehead into his nose, felt his blood erupt into my eyes.