“Do I look like his mother?”
“With a little makeup you could.”
“Bite me.” Dylan scoffed. “What time do you got?”
“Five minutes after four.”
“He better get his ass here, fucking pronto. We’ve got a game in five hours.”
When James chuckled at Dylan’s response, the camera shimmied and filled the screen with white and dark blurs. His laughter subsiding, he aimed the camera back toward his best friend.
The massive wooden door on the far left corner of the room burst open and clapped shut. Dylan pivoted on his heels and gave a sigh of relief when he saw Greg striding toward him. Greg glanced conspiratorially around the weight room, his arms pressed tightly against his sides.
“Did you get it?”
“Who’s the fucking man now?” Greg grinned, opening his left hand.
The camera zoomed in on a pair of two long hypodermic needles sitting in the middle of his fat pasty hand. The wide pleasing grin on his face was full of more shit than his father’s.
Dylan hissed. “This better be the right shit, Wide Load.”
“The guy said this is the maximum dosage. That fucking quarterback won’t have a chance to shit or wind his watch by the time we get to him.”
“Hold this fucking thing.”
The camera shifted, filling the screen with another series of dizzying blurs. When it was righted again, James stepped out from behind the camera and sat down on the edge of the weight bench beside of Dylan; he wore a slate-gray tee shirt and purple shorts that molded nicely against his thick muscular legs and thighs. They removed a long strand of bright-yellow rubber tubing from their front pockets and ordered Greg to fasten the tubing around their biceps.
After he did what was demanded of him, Greg retrieved the camera and continued filming. Dylan and James gazed at each other, their eyes bright and unflinching as if daring the other to go first. They knew what they were doing and now that they’d gone this far there was no turning back; it was now or never.
They said something under their breath, plunged the thin sharp needles deep into the crook of their arms and pressed the plunger with the pads of their thumbs, their tight angry grins stretching across their bruised purple faces as their grips on the needles grew tighter and stronger to combat the river of fire streaming through their veins, a fire that was so illegal and yet oh so right that they couldn’t contain the sudden onrush of adrenaline pumping through their bodies and before Greg could utter a word Dylan and James tossed the spent needles across the room and rose up on their feet slapping each other across the face first Dylan then James and back to Dylan and then back to James again each slap inciting a more louder animalistic response that was almost too absurd to watch. Dylan slid himself on the slanted weight bench and gripped the weight bar with his thick muscular hands and lifted all two-hundred and sixty pounds as if they were a pillow; James plopped down on a half-stool and gripped the middle of a second weight bar stacked with the same weight as Dylan’s and began to pull it repeatedly toward his chest their faces red from exertion; they dropped their weights onto the floor and leaped to their feet, their teeth vibrating under the escalating chorus of animalistic grunts issuing from deep in their throats as they glanced at the camera like hungry feral beasts attacking the not-so-soon to be survivor of a cheesy found footage film.
Dylan killed the DVD, slid the tray open, retrieved the disc and slid it back into the case. James stacked his arms across his chest and stared down at the floor to hide the perturbed expression on his face. Greg grinned with satisfaction, pumped his fists in the air and stood next to Dylan whom held the disc between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his face split by a wide lipless grin.
The sunlight filtering through the windows caught the tiny diamond ring on Lacey Graham’s left hand clamped tightly across her mouth; a fresh tear streamed down her cheek. Harry gazed up at them, his face disfigured by a mix of fear and surprise. Kevin gazed down at the tip of James’ left boot, his brain clouded with seething hatred.
Marilyn Graham had been killed for discovering her boyfriend had used illegal PEDs to win his way to a state championship and possibly make him a five-star recruit that all the big colleges would’ve killed for. And no one would be the wiser.
“We’re all adults here.” Dylan chuffed, then said. “I think we know what happened after that.”
“I wonder what your stepfather would say if he were here right now?” Kevin declared.
“I doubt he’d even care.”
Kevin shook his head, watching the glow of triumph dissipate from their faces. He thought he saw something moving along the wall behind Greg’s left shoulder, but he wasn’t sure; the pain pressing against his skull made it hard for him to want to turn around. He glanced up at Dylan, his mouth set in a hard line.
“He was pretty concerned with why you didn’t say hello to them.” He wiggled his finger at Lacey and Harry. “You didn’t want to say anything to them because then you would’ve asked them about the disc and they wouldn’t been able to tell you because they didn’t know about it until I’d mentioned it earlier. Hell, I didn’t even know about the disc until Marilyn tol–”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It isn’t going to matter anymore.” Greg said to Dylan. “We ought to kill them and get the hell out of here.”
“You killed Marilyn the night before you were supposed to get your picture taken with the team. You were late getting back to the school because you didn’t want people to notice that Marilyn was missing and that you were nowhere to be found so not everyone would put two and two together.” Kevin said, pushing himself up onto the edge of the couch.
“Shut up.”
“You realized the disc was missing the next day after your argument and you were afraid she was going to find out what you did and get back at you by telling everyone. When she refused to give it up,” Kevin continued. “you took her out to Taylor Run Road, tied her to the fence and cut her throat and waited until you could come back and retrieve the disc.”
“Wait a minute.” Harry winced. “Are you telling me that you murdered my niece because you wanted to win a fucking football game?”
James shifted on his left foot, gnashed his teeth together in a furious grin and whipped the back of his right hand hard across Lacey’s left jaw. The sound echoed across the house like thunder and sent her flying back into her brother’s arms, throwing a small curtain of hair across her right cheek.
“She died because she stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.” Dylan said, pressing the barrel of the gun against Lacey’s head.
“Fuck you.” Harry fizzled, clutching onto his sister.
When Lacey brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, swiping at the tiny bib of blood on her chin, Dylan raised the pistol and shot Harry Kline above the right eye. The report cracked across the house, echoed off the walls and resonated against the windows. Kevin threw his head to one side and squeezed his face together to brace himself against the loud buzzing sound resounding in his right ear.
Harry’s eyes went wide for a moment as his head snapped back between his shoulders again. Soft red pulp, vulva-pink brain matter and tiny skull fragments sprayed out the back of his head and stained the couch. His head slumped forward, exposing a large entrance wound three inches above the base of his neck.
Lacey screamed, rose up to her knees and cradled her brother’s head in her spindly brown arms; hot tears streamed down her face. Greg crouched down behind her and clamped his thick pale hand across her mouth to muffle her screams but she elbowed him and threw herself back across her brother’s corpse. He staggered back but not too far, his jagged yellow teeth set in a thin tight grimace.
“No!” She screamed, her face warped with shock. “Oh, God no. No, no.”
Kevin took a few deep breaths to fight the wave of nausea and fear churning inside of his gut. A sense of guilt suddenly overcame him as if this had all been his fault. If
he’d gone to Erica’s house instead, none of this would’ve happened. He considered pulling her away from Harry’s corpse but he didn’t see how that would make things better or spare him from a bullet.
“You son of a bitch.” Lacey bellowed.
She leaped off the floor, lost her footing and toppled face-first onto the floor; her dress fluttered as a burst of air exploded from her lungs. Dylan pressed the barrel against the back of her head and pulled the trigger.
The gun barked, sending a second blast across the house that shook the picture frames on the wall, rattled the windows and aggravated the pain still pressing against at Kevin’s skull. A geyser of blood exploded into the air and came back down as the bullet struck the back of her head; her body twitched as a puddle of brownish-yellow liquid poured out from under her dress and spilled across the floor. The stench of gunpowder and sweat permeated through the house like the bad stench it’d become a few minutes ago.
Kevin loosened his grip from the floor and, his body surging with a mixture of fear and anger, clenched his hands together until his knuckles turned white. Greg glanced at him from the corner of his eye, drew the scent of Kevin’s slow rising anger deep into his lungs, crouched down into a half squat and waved his hands back and forth as if motioning for Kevin to take his first and final swing.
Something quivered in the corner of his right eye, making rapid-fire tapping noises against the wall on the other side of the room. The giant deer head hanging on the wall above the fireplace swayed like a pendulum, its beady black eyes glinting like wet marbles.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” James roared.
The deer head flew off the wall and sailed across the room, its beady black eyes glinting with something other than light. Before he could turn to realize what was happening, Greg grunted as the trophy’s furry brown skull struck him in the back, knocking the wind and his legs out from underneath him. He gave an exhausted wheeze, doubled over and face-planted onto the floor; his arms and legs spread out from his sides as he gave a loud wheezing cough.
James ducked and hit the floor in a push-up position and Dylan dove onto the left side of the couch; the disc fell from his hand and slid under the couch.
The flying deer head bumped the edge of the television, spreading a branch of spider-legged cracks across the screen and struck the wall behind the living room window punching out a wide hollow impression in the plaster and slid down to the floor. Dylan scanned the room, his eyes wide and blazing with fear, rolled off the couch and onto the floor. He scrambled to his feet and crawled across the room toward the kitchen like a mirage.
Kevin snatched a quick breath, rose up on his knees and grappled for Dylan’s right foot when something struck him from behind. He grunted, his bones jolting with fresh bolts of pain, and landed in a heap next to Lacey Graham’s cold motionless corpse. He rolled onto his back, sighing through clenched teeth and tried to wriggle himself free from his attacker’s grasp.
He stared up in time to see James rising up on his knees. He felt the boy’s right hand clutching the meaty part of his left shoulder, pinning him to the floor and reared his left fist back. He crossed his arms, linking his wrists together and raised them up and across his face.
The boy’s fist struck the back of his left arm. Kevin curled up into a ball, pressed his feet against James’ chest and pushed him across the room; James’ teetered back, his eyes wide with fear as his arms and legs flailed wildly out from his sides.
Kevin heard a grunting sound from behind him and peered over his shoulder, heart thudding inside of his throat. Greg was hunched over, pushing himself from the floor one side at a time. His body still bristling with anger and agony, he rose up on his feet and kicked the big boy hard across the face sending him back onto the floor like a bug blindsided by a windshield.
His arms slumped against his side, he scanned the room, eyes wide with horror. The mingled cloud of gunpowder and expended bowels wafting into his lungs without permission, something moved in the corner of his left eye. He leaped back, fists poised and ready and peered into the left corner of the room.
James was lying across the deer head in an awkward recline, his arms and legs spread out from his body like a stick person. A pair of gnarled light brown antlers jutted out from his chest, poking through the front of his tee-shirt. Blood pumped the air, spreading a large dark-red bib across the front of his shirt and dripped onto the carpet.
He scanned the room in a desperate search for Dylan and found nothing but a faint carpet of sunlight smeared across the back door off from the kitchen. His heart sank into the pit of his stomach; a bitter aftertaste stung the back of his throat. A mixture of guilt and sadness washed over him; hot tears shimmered in his eyes, blurring his vision and cascaded down his cheeks.
I’m sorry, Mary. You trusted me to do this and I failed.
His ribs flooding with pain, Kevin heaved himself up from the floor, dragged himself out onto the front porch and listened to the distant whine of police sirens inching toward the house. He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and made a solemn promise to live his life to the fullest; no more wishing he was dead and resting peacefully in Heaven with Terri.
There was plenty of time for that. Plenty.
Besides, he had a lot of promises to keep to a whole lot of friends.
13
One Week Later
THE Lazy-Eyes Motel was a two-story slab of shit-brown stucco slapped along the outskirts of downtown Columbus that catered to a mishmash of junkies, prostitutes and other denizens of the criminal world. Its soft blue neon sign stood tall and proud beyond the carpet of lights that made up most of the city’s beautiful grandeur and spread its phosphorescent glare along the windowsills; the broad-shouldered vending machine sat on the end of the open sidewalk hummed with the rhythm of the crickets chirping in the darkness. The bright blue glow of a television seeped along the edges of the chintzy-pink curtains draped across the windows of Room 7 whose dented white door shared the same pockmarked fashion as all the others.
“The best channels ever, my ass.” Dylan Polk hissed, pressing his thumb hard into the television remote.
He sat across the edge of the bed, his legs stretched out in front of him. Dirt stains smudged the front of his tee-shirt, mingling with the finger marks of grease he’d gotten from the pizza he ordered yesterday. He wasn’t sure how much funds he’d had left but he assumed it wasn’t much; it wasn’t like he could take money out of his mother’s checking account without her or the cops knowing about it.
He’d been here for over a week now and had no plans of sticking around anytime soon. It was more fun to commit the crime than to hide from it; there were amenities when it’d came to be an escaped criminal. No more assigned bed times, no more getting up early for school; he was his own man now and he could do whatever he wanted.
He was about to flip over to the next channel when a familiar face flashed across the screen: his own. It was a sketch artist’s rendition of his face and the sloppiness that’d gone into it made him laugh. He set the remote on the bed and watched the news report with the same wide-eyed interest of a football fan waiting for their favorite team’s next move.
He wished they’d have used his senior class photo instead.
As the photo bloomed across the screen, the sleek brown-haired anchorwoman said, “It has been a week since authorities have been able to locate one of the remaining three boys responsible for the murder of Lacey Graham and her seventeen-year old daughter Marilyn and the victim’s uncle Harry Kline. He fled the scene last week before police arrived at The Graham residence to discover the two elders’ bodies lying dead in the living room along with the body of a second conspirator, an eighteen-year old boy named James McCord and seventeen-year old Greg Roberts. Roberts was arrested and taken to Southeastern Regional Jail where he committed suicide. If you have any information on Dylan Polk, please notify the—”
As the anchorwoman’s face flashed across the screen, he grinned from ear t
o ear and killed the television. The very thought that they were going to catch him seemed far-fetched at this point; if he stayed on the back roads like he’d been doing for the past few days they’d never find him. He sighed, laced his hands behind his head and leaned back against the headboard, his eyes gleaming with admiration.
“It’s not Acapulco or anyplace tropical but it’ll have to do.”
He chuckled again when the television flickered back on, repeating a phrase from the previous news report. He sat up and watched the sketch artist’s rendition of his face bloom repeatedly across the screen as if someone had looped the footage and left it running.
“For the murder of Lacey Graham and her daughter Marilyn.”
He thumbed the red square button on the top left corner of the remote again and killed the television. The footage disappeared. Once he set the remote back down, the television sprang to life once again.
“...and her uncle Harry Kline...for the murder of Lacey Graham and her seventeen-year-old daughter Marilyn...” The anchorwoman repeated as the photo bloomed repeatedly across the screen.
“Piece of shit television.” He grimaced, climbing out of bed.
He marched across the space between both beds (they only had a room with a double bed available) and over to the waist-high oak bureau sitting under the two rectangular mirrors fixed to the wall behind the television. He slid the television three inches to the left, stretched himself over the top and reached down behind the bureau. He grabbed the plug, yanked it out of the wall and draped it across the top of the bureau like a scarf he didn’t wear anymore.
When he raised his head, he stared into the right-side mirror and gave a terrified gasp. His eyes widened with fear as his lips quivered; the ecstasy once etched across his face sagged into a soft mask of complete and total terror. He spun around on the balls of his feet, his right hand clamped across the front of his chin; his legs carried him toward the floor, no longer able to hold the weight of his fear.
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