Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book

by Adrian Birch

  “We have to get this out of here right now.” He gave my husband a hard look. “Shawn, buddy. I hate to ask you to do this, but I need a hand. I can’t get it into my rig on my own. I got pretty strict orders to clear this out before the crowd comes through after the game.” He nodded in the general direction of the football field. “And everyone’s on their way now.”

  Shawn was silent. He took one step backward.

  Then he threw up all over a changing bench.

  Instinctively, I put a hand on my husband’s back while he retched. I didn’t know what else to do. I glanced at Ian. He looked completely at a loss.

  “I’ll help,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Shit, Ashley,” he began, “you don’t…”

  “I can do it,” I said.

  I stepped toward the body before I could lose my nerve. Ian looked extremely uncomfortable, but I could tell he knew he didn’t have any other choice but to accept my help.

  I pulled two gloves from the cardboard box in Ian’s medical bag and put them on.

  “Shit,” he said, again.

  “Just tell me what to do. What do I do?”

  Ian took a deep breath. “All right. Shit. You take the ankles. It’s not far. Let’s just hurry and get this over with. Goddamn it, Ash. I owe you.”

  I tried not to think about what I was doing. I tried to tell myself that this was no different than a dead animal or a dummy.

  But as I clutched the body’s ankles, the tendons and bones beneath the skin felt so human and lifelike that I started to feel dizzy. I tried to breathe, but I hadn’t expected the smell to be so strong. It was definitely the smell of rotten flesh. I wondered if maybe the rancid smell was coming from the swollen testicles; after all, they did look like they were rotting or maybe turning gangrenous.

  I had to do something to distract myself so I wouldn’t throw up. I was desperate not to let Ian down. I knew that my sister wouldn’t have been able to do this, and somewhere deep inside I’d always understood that Danielle couldn’t ever really let herself imagine what Ian must have gone through in the war. I wondered if, by helping him now in this unlikely way, maybe I could somehow show him that I knew his life contained unspeakable horrors that my sister couldn’t comprehend.

  “What do you think happened to him?” I asked Ian.

  I didn’t actually care what had happened, not at that moment. But I couldn’t think of any other way to get my mind off the smell and the body’s sagging, loose weight in my hands as we shuffled through the locker room.

  “I have no idea,” Ian whispered. “He must have been trying to peep through the window. And then I guess he fell through the glass.”

  “But what about his…?” I started, but I couldn’t finish. “Why is it missing?”

  I could barely bring myself to ask about the missing penis, and I couldn’t even begin to mention the bloated testicles. They appeared at the point of bursting as the body swayed between us.

  Ian gave me a look of total perplexity and shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “It’s one of those carnies!” Though Mrs. Whipple was still crying, she was obviously in control enough to make this last proclamation as she held the locker room door open for us, shuddering. “They’re all on drugs!”

  The hardest part was lifting the body into the back of Ian’s SUV.

  Ian laid the shoulders on the tailgate while I kept hold of the ankles. I’d managed to control my nausea, but now my arms were burning. I didn’t even want to think about letting the body drop or the sound of it hitting the pavement. Ian climbed into the back and pulled the shoulders from the inside, and then, finally, I could let go. I looked around the dark lot outside the gym. I didn’t think anyone saw us, but I could hear the crowd from the game moving in our direction.

  “You okay?” Ian asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’m real sorry, Ash,” he whispered. “Really.”

  “It’s okay.” I tried to smile. “I need a drink,” I laughed, “but I’m okay.”

  Now Ian laughed, too, obviously relieved that I’d been able to handle it. Maybe he was even a little impressed.

  After laughing, though, he added earnestly, “Technically, you weren’t supposed to see any of this. Right?”

  “Right,” I nodded. “Of course. Okay.”

  * * *

  I helped Shawn wash the splattered vomit off his shoes while Mrs. Whipple hurried to sweep up the broken glass.

  I bought a Sprite from the vending machine for Shawn, which he said helped his stomach, but I had to hurry him out of the locker room before the cheerleaders arrived.

  By now everyone who had been watching the football game was passing through the parking lot on the way to the fair. No one seemed to have a clue about what had just happened. My sister was there with Haley, waiting for Tyler to finish showering.

  “They won! Tyler scored!” Danielle waved, surprised to see us. “What are you guys doing here? I thought Ian was taking you straight to the beer garden.”

  “He got called to the hospital on the way, so he dropped us off here.”

  Technically, I wasn’t lying. I just wasn’t sure what Ian did or didn’t want me to say, even to my sister.

  Haley skipped over to me, totally hopped up on excitement for the fair. I remembered feeling the same way when I was a kid.

  “Aunt Ashley!” She slammed into me and gave me a hug. I hugged her back tentatively. I’d washed my hands and arms three times in the locker room, but I was still hesitant to touch my niece after what I’d just done. “Are you going with me to the carnival tonight?” she pleaded.

  “Tomorrow!” I said.

  It was so hard to say no to Haley. Over the last couple of years my niece had turned into this blond-haired, wide-eyed kid who was kind of small for her age, just like I’d been at nine. I got to play the role of the fun, slightly reckless aunt when I was with her. Last year at the fair we’d spent hours playing the same pinball horse-racing carnival game I used to be addicted to as a kid, and I’d taught her how to cheat by tipping the machine.

  But there was no way I was going to do anything tonight other than have a drink as soon as possible—an even stiffer one than I’d planned on earlier.

  “But I want to play that horse game!” Haley whined.

  Danielle cut in, saving me. “Aunt Ashley and Uncle Shawn are having an adults’ night tonight,” she announced. “I’ll take you to the horses with Grandma and Grandpa.”

  Haley looked up at me, pouting. It was annoying, but still I felt guilty for letting her down.

  “Tomorrow we’ll play the horse game,” I promised. “Just you and me.”

  “You guys want a ride over?” Danielle asked. “Tyler’s still gonna be a while.”

  “I feel like a walk,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you over there.”

  It felt weird just traipsing off to the fair after everything that had happened. Someone had died, and I’d just helped carry his body with my hands. It all felt completely unreal. I guess the right thing to do would have been to go home, have a sober, contemplative evening, and try to make sense of what had happened, but I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being stuck alone with Shawn way out there in our quiet little house. I needed to be around people—a lot of them. I needed to get rid of the image of the mutilated body. I could still feel its weight in my arms. I was also really hoping to catch up with Ian later and find out if he’d learned anything about who the guy was, or what had happened to him, or why we’d had to rush the body away so fast.

  Shawn and I joined the crowd making its way to the fairgrounds. I expected him to object to continuing on to the fair, but he just walked along beside me silently. He still looked pretty pale.

  “How are you?” I asked, folding my arms against the chilly evening air.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  He didn’t really look at me.

  I knew he was embarrassed that I’d been the one who had to help Ian. That w
as why he wasn’t saying anything. I was pretty sure he wanted to just go home but was too ashamed to insist on it if I wasn’t going to suggest it first. Or maybe he also just really wanted a drink.

  * * *

  When we reached the beer garden, Morgan wasn’t even there yet. She was always late. I should have known.

  I texted her, and she replied right back:

  b ther soon wait 4 me

  So there was nothing to do now but wait around with Shawn’s friends, who of course had been at the beer garden for at least an hour by then. Jason Gibbs was already mostly drunk. Right away he bought both Shawn and me a beer.

  Jason was a few years younger than us. I used to babysit him. He was always a little jerk as a kid. He used to try to take Polaroids of me peeing through the bathroom window from outside. He was the basketball star in high school, but no one from Muldoon ever gets a scholarship anywhere, so he worked at the mill for a while with Shawn. Now he was a highway patrol cop. The fair kept cops busy in Muldoon; I had no idea how he’d gotten the night off. For a while, I hoped that maybe he’d influence Shawn to go to the patrol academy, too.

  Shawn drank his beer down faster than I’d ever seen him drink. I bought the next round, getting a vodka tonic for myself this time.

  “Whoa, Ashley!” Jason “clinked” his plastic beer cup to my drink. “Somebody’s partying tonight!”

  “It’s been a long day,” I confessed.

  Jason tapped Shawn’s arm. “You better watch your wife, bro. It’s fair time. She keeps going like that, might end up with somebody else’s dick in her ass. Not saying whose—I’m just saying.”

  I tried to glare at Jason and express as much of my annoyance as possible, but I was distracted by whatever spiked hairstyle he was trying to pull off. A couple strands kept idiotically bobbing up and down over his horsey face whenever he laughed. I don’t think he was aware of it.

  Shawn finished the last of his second beer. “You might end up with somebody’s dick down your throat, dude,” he said. Some of his color had come back. “And I’m saying whose. Mine.”

  “Charming, as ever,” I said to both of them. I didn’t mind that Shawn had actually sort of stuck up for me, even if it was by threatening his friend with forced fellatio in the middle of ordering more beer.

  “I don’t know, bro,” Jason said without taking his eyes off me. “We have a history, me and Ashley. She told you, didn’t she? She used to beg my parents to go out of town. She said I had the biggest cock of all the kids she babysat for. When they got home, she used to be, like, ‘No, Mr. And Mrs. Gibbs, you don’t owe me anything. Little Jason took care of all my needs.’ Your wife’s a nympho, bro! Seriously!”

  Apparently my husband thought the high-pitched voice Jason used to impersonate me was the funniest thing in the world. Shawn was laughing, then Jason started laughing at his own joke, and that only made Shawn laugh harder. Apparently it was much easier for Shawn to put the locker room out of his mind than it was for me.

  “No, dude!” Shawn said. “You don’t even know! I mean, she kind of is a nympho!” My husband laughed hilariously at this revelation.

  All I’d wanted was to have a drink and to try to calm down a little. And now I had to deal with this.

  The worst part was that I didn’t even know what to say. I thought about bringing up how I knew Jason used to whack off to Tina Frame’s picture in the yearbook, but I didn’t have it in me. I was too mentally fried. I just sat there shaking my head like some prudish idiot.

  “Ashleeeey!” Morgan’s arms suddenly wrapped around me from behind, almost knocking me off my barstool.

  I stood and hugged her back, spilling my drink. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Morgan was already completely tanked. She gave me a big, whiskey-tainted kiss on the cheek. It was weird how happy I was to see her. For a moment I almost started to cry.

  “You and me,” Morgan said, shaking her hips with each word in a little drunken dance, “are going to…”—she held up the back of her wrist, stamped with a green T—“the Bryce Tripp concert!”

  Jason scoffed. “Bryce Tripp’s a fucking faggot.”

  “And we’re leaving these two losers—” Morgan traced a circle in the air, then pointed at Jason’s and Shawn’s faces “—right here in the fucking lame-ass beer garden.”

  Morgan displayed her stamped wrist again, then tilted her head coyly, held out her tongue, and, like an inebriated pole dancer, gave her wrist a long, sexy lick.

  Jason glanced at Shawn.

  Morgan grabbed my wrist and pressed it against hers, transferring the green T concert stamp. We used to do this same thing years ago so one of us could sneak into the movie theater for free.

  Before I could finish the last of my drink, Morgan was pulling me away. I didn’t even so much as wave to Shawn before leaving him there.

  On the way through the carnival, Morgan hung on my shoulder and whispered, “I’ve been sleeping with Jason.” She made a gagging sound. “Gross, huh? I know, I know.”

  “Morgan!” I was surprised. She had a great body, but I’d always been the one with the more or less cute face. She was always trying to prove that she was attractive by sleeping with one guy or another, but I hadn’t expected she’d stoop so low as to sleep with Jason. “Why him?”

  “It’s okay, Ash,” she said. “Because I’m already cheating on him!” Morgan snorted a laugh. “Don’t tell him! It’s way more fun cheating on him than it is sleeping with him!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh with her.

  “You’re fucking crazy,” I said. But hearing about her antics was making me feel a little better.

  As we passed the Tilt-A-Whirl, I whispered, “So who are you cheating on him with, then?”

  She held a finger to her lips. “Shhhhh. Not saying.”

  “Who? Tell me.”

  “Not saying!”

  Morgan bounded ahead. I had no idea who her mystery guy was, but, since she wouldn’t tell me, I worried it might be someone married. Knowing Morgan, though, I’d find out one way or another before too long. She never kept a secret.

  She was already through the concert gates, waving at me to follow her in.

  Suddenly I pictured the body in the locker room again. I’d managed to forget about it for a little while, but now the image of its mouth hanging open came back to me. I’d kept glimpsing its teeth while helping Ian carry it.

  Even without that memory threatening my resolve, it was hard to work up enough nerve to sneak into the concert. We weren’t kids anymore, and I’d be mortified if I got caught now, as an adult—especially tonight. I even knew the woman collecting tickets and checking stamps. Her husband was one of the truckers at the company I worked for.

  Morgan gave me a shrug from the other side of the gate. Then she impatiently waved me in again.

  “Hurry up!” she yelled.

  I stepped forward, trying to keep as far from the counter as possible, holding up my wrist with its faint green T. I’d never been as good as Morgan at playing things cool.

  Of course, the woman collecting tickets recognized me.

  “Ashley! Hi! I thought you weren’t going to the concert?”

  “Hey, Helen,” I smiled nervously. She already suspected me, I could tell. “Well, my friend bought me a ticket,” I said awkwardly. “We came in earlier? I just went out for a sec to say hi to my niece.”

  I had no idea where these lies were coming from or how believable they were.

  “Well, let’s see that stamp of yours.”

  My heart was pounding. This was so absurd. Someone had just died and here I was about to get caught sneaking into a concert by some musician I didn’t even care about whose bus had blocked my car in.

  “I’m gonna be late!” I joked nervously.

  Helen took my hand and examined the stamp. This was it. I glanced around. What would she do? Call security guards? I saw one guy standing at the entrance to the grandstands with his arms folded. I was pretty sure he
was already looking over at me.

  “That’s what I thought,” Helen declared, inspecting my stamp. “Ashley!” She frowned and clucked her tongue. “You’ve almost worn your stamp off already! I can barely see it. Here.” She plunked her rubber stamp into the inkpad and gave me a fresh T. “Enjoy!”

  As soon as I was through the gate, Morgan grabbed my arm and hurried me toward the grandstands.

  “You totally thought fucking Helen Sandburg was going to arrest you or something, didn’t you!” She laughed at me. “I saw the look on your face! You did! Always such a good kid.” She squeezed my neck. “Ah, that’s why I love you.”

  I hated that Morgan thought about me as someone with so little self-confidence, but it was true. I let that asshole Jason treat me like shit. I let Shawn belittle me after I’d just wiped his own vomit off his shoes. And now I was afraid sweet, wouldn’t-accuse-a-fly-of-buzzing Helen Sandburg would turn me in to the cops. It was a good thing Morgan loved me, however much of a pushover she thought I was.

  I was suddenly determined to get completely wasted.

  The concert was packed. It was disorienting to see the rodeo grounds transformed into a music venue and filled with so many people from out of town. I led Morgan all the way to the standing-only area in front of the stage. We must have missed all the opening acts because Bryce Tripp was already playing. He was sitting on a stool wearing boots and a sleeveless shirt, looking like an underwear model with a guitar and a cowboy hat. I thought he was even wearing makeup.

  He was singing some ballad that nobody seemed to know except for a small group of middle-aged women I didn’t recognize. They were each holding up a cigarette lighter and swaying idiotically.

  Pretty much everybody else was at least as drunk as they were, but more restless. A couple of guys I recognized from Biggs, the next town over, started yelling at the stage.

  “Hey dick-lick! Pick it up, pretty boy! Too fucking slow!”

  Bryce Tripp seemed to get the hint. He called out to his backup band, slung on an electric guitar, and started playing a much faster song. The only lyrics I could catch were “beer” and “bullets.”