by catt dahman
The other five went into the cellar. They carefully looked over the cellar. Nothing looked out of place. They moved junk and boxes and set them all over the soil, trying to make the cellar look harmless. Jill’s bandage soaked through with blood as she moved a rusty old rake and settled it over the other junk.
It was far too late, but Jill said they should have somehow gotten the bodies to the Watkins brothers’ cabin before burning it for further evidence. The enormity of that was hard to imagine, but then Jill figured it might have all worked out differently if they had thought of that. She shrugged and said, “But everything here looks good. No one would know people are buried in here.”
“Nelwynn would have been okay if we had done things differently,” Tiffany said.
“She would have anyway if not for Angel,” Meg said.
“Or you,” Angel shot back at Meg.
Jill stomped the last of the dirt in the corner and groaned, “Again? Stop blaming each other. I’m tired of everything.”
She turned and went upstairs where Cassie and Samantha reported no movement. She showered in record time, dressed, and took Cassie some clean clothing. As Cassie cleaned the stab wound and wrapped it, there was no less pain than before, and Jill gritted her teeth. “You’re a terrible nurse, Cassie; that hurts.”
“Be still. You’re just a terrible patient,” said Cassie as she smiled.
The rest cleaned up, and then Whitney brought Samantha clean clothes, and they sat around, eating the last of the potato salad, beans, and some hot dogs that Tiffany cooked in a skillet until each of the skins burst. After the work they had done, they were hungry, and the food went down easier this time.
“Good stuff,” Whitney said with her mouth partially full of the hot dog.
“After all that work, I was hungry,” Tiffany admitted. “I’m exhausted. This whole day’s been crappy.”
Long past midnight, they decided to sleep in shifts. Jill, Cassie, and Tiffany went to sleep, leaving the others to guard the cabin. Jill paused in the hallway. “Do you think he’s coming, Cassie? Really?”
“Yeah, we know he is. It’s okay. Maybe tomorrow night. We’ll get him, and then this can all be over. We’ll stay friends, won’t we? It’s not like Samantha said, is it? We three can be friends?”
“Always,” Tiffany agreed, “Jill?”
“Yeah, sorry. I have the worst feeling, like something is bad wrong. Does it feel that way to you two?”
Cassie nodded and said, “I feel like nothing is under control. We’re all so not together anymore. It’s like before when I had no friends. Everyone is so angry.”
Jill hugged her and said, “I’m your friend. Maybe it’s just worry over Randy. I hope so.”
Cassie couldn’t stop her anxiety. Something was very wrong and becoming worse. She felt it in her bones.
Chapter 10
It was sunup when Samantha screamed. A stream of sunlight crossed the room and settled on the bed as dust motes danced in the rays.
Jill yanked on her shorts, shoved her knife into her pocket, and ran, meeting Tiffany and Cassie in the hall. Cassie put a finger to her lips, indicating they should sneak downstairs even if there was a scream since they didn’t know what was happening.
Samantha ran to Jill and Tiffany and wrapped them in her arms, crying and unable to talk. She shook violently.
“What’s going on?” Tiffany whispered.
“We messed up. Big time. Oh, my God, we messed up, but we didn’t mean to, and it was an accident”
An accident. Jill flinched. Hadn’t she said the same thing after she stabbed John Wisdom in the throat and killed him? Hadn’t Angel said that about drugging her friends and the hikers dying? Hadn’t Meg said the same thing about Nelwynn? Raw sorrow hit Jill afresh as she remembered Nelwynn and her brainy good grades, slow sense of humor, and fears. Always, it was an accident. Always those words meant the worst had happened.
“You need to hear the story,” Whitney said as soon as the women were downstairs. She shook as she paced, moving violently and talked with her hands. “It happened just a little while ago. You need to sit down.”
Cassie looked suspicious, but she sat down in the kitchen and watched Whitney continue to pace. Samantha still cried into her hands, leaning with her butt against the cabinets.
Whitney began to talk.
They were guarding the cabin, and the sun came up, making them feel safe again. Meg and Angel kept drinking and were slightly drunk, but Whitney and Samantha were sober.
The second they heard someone sneaking in the back door, stealthily creeping around, all four reacted, preferring to handle things rather than calling the other three and alerting Randy, the intruder, that they knew was coming for them.
“Only we saw there were two of them.”
“Two?” Jill gasped, “and how could that be?”
The women didn’t know but thought that maybe Randy had a friend with him. Whitney and Angel grabbed one, and Samantha and Meg got the other. Meg used her pistol and subdued one man quickly; he put his hands up and let them tie his hands, refusing to fight. Whiney stabbed the other one, but he jerked away, and her knife only caught his shoulder. Luckily, he gave up, and they tied him up as well.
“Then, we turned on the lights so we could face Randy and his friend,” Whitney said.
“And? What made Samantha scream?” Cassie asked.
“That was later,” Whitney made a motion with her hands to wait while she caught her breath.
In the light, the four women stared at the captives and were perplexed. Two other men sat in the study where they had been taken and tied to chairs. The men and the women looked at one another, and each side tried to form proper questions.
“We didn’t know what to do. We figured we had to come get you, but for a while, we had to talk and try to make sense of everything,” Whitney went on.
They dragged one man tied in his chair out to the hallway and began questioning him about why he was there and what he had seen and done, and then they tried to figure out what was happening.
Whitney reminded them again that Meg and Angel were very drunk and Angel had been using pills again. “You didn’t get her entire stash, Cassie. She outsmarted you. Her eyes glittered, and she sang to herself, turned the radio on low and danced. She acted a lot like she did when the hikers died.”
“Again?” Cassie asked. “What fresh hell is this? Why? Why does she keep doing this shit? Drugs again?”
“Again,” Whitney repeated.
It was a while before Samantha, Whitney, and Meg noticed that Angel was gone, and their first thought was that she passed out. The second was that she had gone to get the other women. Instead, it was far, far worse.
In the study, Meg found that Angel had partially untied and undressed the man and was trying to have sex with him while he was still tied to the chair. “She was all over him. It was obscene,” Whitney said. “We didn’t know what to do or think; we were still trying to process why they were here. It was crazy.”
They dragged Angel out of the room, almost to the point of her screaming, but Meg had demanded they get things sorted before waking the others. They went back to the living room and argued about what to do.
“It was my fault. I walked back to check on the men, and the one Angel had partially untied, got up and out of the chair, and when I walked around the corner, he grabbed me. I get that. He was scared and freaked out. I understand that, but at that very second, I thought it was Randy grabbing me, and I…I just turned and shoved my knife into him as hard as I could,” Samantha cried harder, sliding to the floor.
Something made Jill hesitate to go to her friend and sooth her, and so she asked, “And?”
Whitney took over again. They actually tried their best to stop the bleeding and save his live because it wasn’t Randy, but within a few minutes, it was over.
“We’ve done it so many times that it feels like nothing now. I don’t feel a thing, thanks to Mike and the shit he caused. Nothing. But this time,
I felt the world stop. I felt like dying. Samantha, she just knew and saw, and she screamed.”
“Which brings us to now,” Cassie said. “What are we missing, Whitney? I know there’s more. It wasn’t Randy, right?”
“They were worried about us. About you. They came to check on you.”
Jill tilted her head. “Who?”
“They just came to see if you were okay, and all of this went so wrong….” Whitney wept openly.
Jill half-stood and saw that Cassie understood something and looked very sad and that Tiffany was completely lost and confused. Jill had a terrible feeling. She had an inkling.” I asked, Who?”
“Jill,” Cassie warned. Her face was a mask of sorrow.
Jill heard Whitney answer, and she slipped in the chair as dark spots filled her vision and the room spun. Her legs went to jelly, and she slid downwards. The edge of the table caught her temple, and the pain was surprisingly cold and clear.
As she passed out, Jill heard Whitney’s response.
“It was your husband, Jill. Charlie. And Tiffany’s husband, Joey.”
Chapter 11
Jill awoke with a damp cloth on her forehead; she was on the sofa, and Cassie looked at her with worried eyes. “Was I out long?” Jill asked.
“Five minutes. You’re heavy, especially with my knees ruined.”
Jill sat up slowly, fighting the spinning of the room and a throbbing headache. On one side of the room, Samantha wept by herself. On the other side of the room, Tiffany sat, eyes blank, staring into nothing. It was a classic case of acute shock, and someone had wrapped her in a blanket.
“Don’t.”
Jill brushed away Cassie’s hand and stood, wobbling. Taking a deep breath, she walked to the hallway, Cassie hobbling after her. It was a relief but a painful, horrible relief to see that the man on the floor with his throat cut was Joey, Tiffany’s husband. Jill wiped her face with the back of her hand. She didn't know how sweet, kind Joey could be dead and in the hallway.
No matter who it was, she would have felt the terrible sadness; it wasn’t right or fair. Nelwynn. Joey, Sweet Joey. What would Tiffany do now, Jill wondered. She bit her tongue and let Cassie hold her arm so that she didn’t pass out again. Jill heard a noise, a keening, but as Cassie’s grip tightened, Jill realized she was making the noise and stopped as she took a deep breath. “Joey, my, God. Tiffany, how can she? We. What?”
“Take your time,” said Cassie, her face white.
It had to be a nightmare, but Jill suspected it wasn’t; instead, fate or karma was repaying them for what they had done for years. She steadied herself with a hand on the wall and felt Cassie’s hand on her back, steady and protective.
Jill turned the handle and let herself into the small study. She wanted to run to Charlie and hold him; she wanted to tend to his stab wound and kiss him, and she wanted to get him and run away, but she couldn’t do any of that. Meg sat on one side of the room between Jill and Charlie, and Angel sat on the other. Meg probably had sat there for over an hour, her pistol was aimed at Angel, but it didn’t waver.
“Meg?”
“Hi, Jill, I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry. It was an accident.”
An Accident.
“I guess so. We need to untie Charlie and sit and talk this out. We can fix this, right?” Jill asked. Her voice wavered as she tried to remain calm and save her husband’s life.
Charlie met her eyes with confusion. Jill saw that a lot had clicked into place in his mind, that he had some answers, more questions, but loved Jill with all his heart.
“I don’t think so. I think we’re past that. It’s always me or Angel, isn’t it? Screwing up?” Meg asked.
“I think we’ve all done terrible things, but I think we’ve all been mentally and emotionally abused, haven’t we? Groomed? Like Whitney said?” Jill tried.
“I dunno.”
Jill forced herself to look away from Charlie and at Meg. “We were abused in a way.”
Angel, who hadn’t spoken in over an hour, suddenly laughed, tossed her head back, and said, “Abused? You haven’t the faintest idea. My dad…he liked to mess with my sister. He really did some bad things to her, and she was the princess. Perfect princess. I always wondered why her and not me? Why did he pick her? Was it because I was fat and ugly? I was terrified of that, but I was also so envious of her.”
“My, God,” Jill whispered.
“Uncle Mike listened, and he understood. He let me sit in his lap, and he petted my legs and my chest. He held back; he said he couldn’t. He said I wasn’t the right one. I wanted it to be me, and I didn’t want it to be me. I wanted both. Why couldn’t I be his favorite, either? Why not me? Never me.” Flowing tears stained Angel’s pretty face, and her eyes became red.
“He was sick, Angel.”
“I wanted so much to make him love me most. I guess a shrink would say I’m still looking for male approval by screwing every man I find. And then there was Nelwynn whom I honestly loved.”
Charlie’s eyes widened as more pieces clicked into place.
“I know,” Jill said. She saw that Charlie was listening and trying to understand. She hoped he knew she was trying to settle things and save their lives.
“I wanted Joey to like me best, more than Tiffany. But he didn’t like me.”
“He loved Tiffany.”
“Yeah. I’ve ruined everything,” Angel told Jill. “I knew he didn’t want me. He was tied up mostly. That wasn’t fair. Was it?”
“Not really. You knew he was Tiffany’s. You’re just upset, Angel,” Jill kept talking, feeling Cassie urge her on.
“I am.”
Jill told Angel, “I think Mike is to blame.”
Angel nodded. “He knew. He knew that he couldn’t touch you, Jill, or Cassie because you’d have told. He couldn’t touch Sammie or Tiffany or Whitney, either. Not Nelwynn, either. He could smell it…the weakness. The neediness. He knew who would be a willing victim that would keep secrets.”
“Probably,” Jill said, “and that’s smart for you to realize. He was a sick man.”
“He wanted the secrets to come out and for us to know what he was. He wanted the truth to remain. He may have been a bad man in some ways, but he also had a good side,” Meg said.
Jill nodded. “Okay.”
“Have you ever had rose bushes? Mike helped me plant tons at my house when we were younger. You know how gorgeous our yard is. All kinds of roses. And sometimes he would take the clippers and snip off a rose and then most of the stem. He cut it back to a horrible, ugly, little thing with big thorns and only a few twigs. I hated that,” Meg said.
Jill listened.
Meg continued talking, “Mike explained that we had to cut them far back and make them ugly because then the next season, they would grow better and have double the blooms. He did the same with us: he cut us, too. He cut us back, and he cut and cut. Then, he died, but he had wanted to be sure that the next season would provide the best blooms of all.”
He cut us back,” Angel repeated.
“He cut you back, Angel. You saw yourself as ugly growing up, but you weren’t. You were just confused. Later, you became so beautiful because he had pruned you back so much. But even though you’re beautiful inside, you have bugs and a fungus or something. You didn’t bloom pretty,” Meg said.
“I couldn’t,” Angel said.
“And sometimes we have to dig up a rosebush and let it go. You did so many bad things….”
“I couldn’t help it, Meg. It was an accide….”
Her words never came out because Meg pulled the trigger. Angel’s face took a small hole under her left eye, and the back of her head splattered the wall.
Cassie held Jill upright and Whitney and Samantha ran into the room, both screaming, and Tiffany stayed in her chair with her thousand-mile stare. Meg motioned with her pistol that Jill could walk over to Charlie.
Jill walked over to Charlie and hugged him, covering his face with kisses and apologizin
g. Her face looked hurt and shocked. “I want to untie him and dress his wound,” she told the others.
Meg shook her head. “I have the gun. I don’t want to prune any more roses, Jill.”
“We understand. Let’s just take him to the living room and fix him up, okay?”
Meg nodded absently, and Jill untied Charlie, kissed his face and helped him to his feet. He looked over her gauze-wrapped hand and at the lump on her temple.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asked.
“No, not at all, but we’re trying to be okay. Hang in there with me,” Jill pleaded. “So many bad things: Mike.”
“I get the gist. Things are unravelling fast,” Charlie said, he glanced at Meg and gave Jill a look. “I take it that Angel messed up, huh?”
“She sure did. Nelwynn was an accident. Angel was a bad rose,” Meg said without emotion.
“I can tell. She did bad things, right?” Charlie asked, trying to get Meg to connect with him.
Tiffany didn’t look up, but the rest sat around Jill and Charlie.
As if nothing had happened, Meg told Charlie the story of the Watkins brother: how they might be killers, that one raped Angel and attacked the women, and that they had fought back against the perverts. She said that one of the brothers had escaped, and they felt he was coming back to kill them. She said Nelwynn had slipped off an embankment. She suggested that they toss Joey into the river so none of them got into trouble. “You don’t want Jill going to prison, right?” Meg asked. She told the story just as they had rehearsed.
“No, Of course, not. I’ll help,” Charlie said. He winced as Jill cleaned his wound, added cream, and bandaged it. “Samantha thought it was that pervert grabbing her. I understand.”
“See? He gets it,” Jill said. She hoped Meg would calm.
“A man can’t be a part of us,” Meg said.
“Mike was,” Jill said.
“We have to think about that,” Whitney said. “I’m not sure what to do now. Tiffany, let me help you upstairs. You look rough, Hon.” Whitney pulled her up, and Tiffany walked without speaking or looking around. She was no more than an atomoton. “You, too, Sammie. You need sleep.”