by Michael West
“Nothing.” Danny knelt down and shoved items back into his pack. “You’ve got the girls scared shitless as it is with all your bullshit.”
Robby pointed back at what was left of Dale Brightman. “This isn’t bullshit.”
Danny was on his feet again. “Lower your fuckin’ voice.”
“We need to tell ’em something,” Paul said, still looking through his eyepiece.
Danny looked at the blinking red record light and his face flared. “Quit wasting the battery,” he said. “We’ll need the light.” He grabbed the lens, trying to jerk it away.
“I don’t think you get it.” Paul backed off, his face still pressed against the rubber square of the eyepiece, his naked eye shut. “A kid is dead, killed with a knife. Your knife is gone. For all we know, the killer is still out here with us and the more I get on tape as evidence, the better it will be for you.”
“Yeah, okay,” Danny said, matter-of-fact, as if Paul had just offered him a soda. Sean and Mick had seen the knife, and, even though they wouldn’t mean to hurt his case, they’d be obligated to tell the sheriff as much. A dead boy, killed with a knife. A living boy who had a knife, then didn’t. While nobody was looking, the prosecution would theorize, he’d gone off into the corn, killed Dale, then ditched the murder weapon. People had been executed with less. He could see the headlines now: Football Hero Kills Track Star. It was bad.
Paul watched these thoughts play across Danny’s face. “Look,” he told him. “I know there’s no way in hell you did this.”
Skip lit another Marlboro; the smoke drifted off to merge with the fog. “There’s no way in hell I did this either, Rice.”
Paul glared at him, tried to control his own temper. He too was having difficulty. “Anybody could have done it, just like anybody could have taken Danny’s knife. That was one of the objects of the game, right? Take somebody’s stuff without them knowing it.” He turned the camera once more to Danny. “I only want to help you if I can, and this is the only way I know how. Please, let me do it.”
Danny pushed a hand up his face and through his hair. He looked back at the crucified silhouette. “We should take him down from there, cover him up.”
“Whoa ... bad idea,” Robby urged, looking around as if he expected something to jump out at him. “Tampering with evidence, blah blah blah ... Look, can we just go?”
“We can’t just leave him like ...” Danny glanced at the shadow cross, not really wanting to see it again. “... that.”
Smoke plumed from Skip’s mouth and nose as if a bomb had gone off in his brain. “I’m sure as hell not touchin’ it.”
He tried to push past Danny. Danny grabbed him by the shirt and threw him back against Dale and the cross. It shuddered, the chains rattled and slapped against the wood, Dale’s head rocked back and forth. A leaf, clotted with blood, was dislodged from his mouth. It fell onto Skip’s shoulder and he brushed it away as if it were a poisonous tarantula, jerking forward and arching his back out in disgust.
“It is Dale Brightman.” Danny stood in his face and Skip tilted his head to the side as if he were afraid of being kissed. “And now that you’ve touched him, help us get him down.”
Robby held his head in his hands. “What the fuck are you doin’, Danny? You’re contaminating a crime scene!”
Danny did not look at him. “We’re not leaving Dale like this. Paul can take video of ... how he looks.”
“Robby already did,” Paul told him. “The camera’s been recording this whole time.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard, “That’s what the cops would do anyway. They’d take pictures, then they’d take him down.”
“What about the girls, and Sean?” Paul asked, thinking of Deidra in the darkness and fog, tacking Sean’s name to the question for persuasion. “Any second now, they’re gonna wonder why Robby isn’t back yet and come lookin’ for us all.”
Danny nodded. “Robby, go back and tell ’em we’re fine. I sure as hell don’t want ’em to see this. We’ll take him down quick. With three of us, it shouldn’t take long. But we’re not saying anything about what’s happened until we get the girls back home safe.”
With reluctance, they agreed.
Robby walked back into the mist toward Deidra while they took Dale Brightman from the cross. Paul used his jacket as a shroud. The night air was chilly against his naked arms, but the denim had been covered in blood. He set the camera on the ground, a rock lifting it to the proper angle to give them light and record the event. Later, if necessary, the police could see what they had done, could know they had taken the time and the care to do it. No murderer (or murderers) that brutal would show such respect.
When it was finished, they followed the trail of broken stalks back through the fog. It occurred to Paul that a quiet had consumed everything – the voices of insects, the whispering of stalks, even the dry crunch of rocks and dirt at their feet. The entire world seemed void of sound. It made him grow even colder and he shuddered.
The gray vapor darkened and swirled as Deidra burst into the oasis of light they carried with them. There was fret behind her eyes and she pressed against Paul, filled his nose with the scent of her perfume. He welcomed her warmth and the taste of her kiss, wishing they were back in the safety of her bed, wishing they’d never left it.
“What happened out there?” she asked.
Paul shrugged. “We tripped over each other in the dark and Skip thought it was a riot.”
“Where’s your jacket?”
“I lost it. Didn’t want to take time to look for it in the fog.”
Deidra studied his face, his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
She frowned, pushed her lips against his ear. “I thought we weren’t going to keep secrets from each other?”
Paul looked over her shoulder. “I’m not keeping it from you.”
She turned, saw Nancy and Cindi shiver in the light from the camcorder, then gave her attention back to him.
He pointed to his camera and whispered, “Later.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad,” he said, then kissed her earlobe.
“Everyone all right?” Danny asked. All things considered, his voice sounded strong and steady.
Nancy shivered. “No.”
“Excuse me, why don’t you guys just get over it already” Cindi said, “’Cause I’m really tired of this mindfuck you’re all pulling.”
Robby, who’d been giving Sean’s vitals and wounds a thorough inspection when they arrived, looked up at her and smiled. Unlike Danny, however, his voice seemed shaky, his smile uneasy. “Could you possibly be more vague, She Bop?”
“If you call me She Bop one more time, I’m gonna beat your head in.”
Paul could see the hurt in her eyes and wondered is she knew how visible it was. Then again, maybe she wasn’t trying to hide it at all. Maybe she had it there for Robby to notice.
She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “Let me guess. You’re clueless about the laughing and voices we heard back there.”
Robby’s face went slack and he shot a glance up to Danny.
“Back where?” The steadiness in Danny’s voice flickered a bit.
Cindi swept the mist with her arm, more than a little pissed off. “I don’t know. You take the camera ... thingimibob and leave us standing here in the dark, and the cold, and the –”
Nancy broke in, “Oh, stop being such a wimp, would you?” She looked at Danny, visibly tense. “We heard you guys screaming and laughing out there in front of us, and, as soon as Robby left to check on you, we heard voices and laughing behind us. I thought Skip was running from you guys or something ...” She pointed in the direction of Dale’s body and the cross. “... but then you came from over there.”
While everyone else was staring at one another and the mist, Skip walked over to his backpack and removed his silver canteen. He drank deeply, then spewed the liquid into the fog, coughing. He brought the
canteen over to the camcorder lamp, pouring its contents through the beam of light in a scarlet stream. “What the fuck?”
Cindi turned up her nose. “Gnarly!”
Mick readjusted his glasses on his nose, smiling at Skip’s misfortune. “Fruit juice go bad?”
“Cold water,” Skip said. “Now it’s fuckin’ warm and ... red!”
“It’s been in your backpack all day,” Mick laughed uneasily. “And your canteen’s probably full of rust or something.”
This reasoning made sense. Rust had tinted the water red and a day in the sun had warmed it. It really did make sense. And yet, as he watched the thick, backlit stream flow from the canteen, all Paul could think was ... blood. His mind quickly shook that grotesque thought off, however. It was impossible.
Skip finished pouring the –
BLOOD!
– tainted water onto the ground and threw the flask down beside it. Whatever the liquid actually was, now that it had been in his canteen, he wanted nothing to do with either, just as Paul had wanted nothing to do with the jacket.
“Let’s just get moving.” Danny told the group, anxious to get Sean to help, even more anxious to be out of the cornfield.
Deidra’s hand moved to Paul’s shoulder, gripping it lightly. She said nothing, just studied him with curious eyes, but he could tell she saw the fear in him. He offered her a lame grin, then slowly moved to take up his position on the stretcher.
Together, they moved into the haze.
Nineteen
Nancy whirled around, stared into the darkening fog behind them. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Robby asked.
“I keep hearing things.”
The comment was ripe for one of Robby’s comebacks. Instead, he turned pale. “What kinds of things?”
“Like whispering or something. And then it sounds like someone’s moving in the corn. I hear these footsteps, like one right after the other.”
“I heard ’em too,” Cindi told them; she now held Nancy as tightly as Nancy had been holding her. “You guys, something is definitely out here with us right now.”
“It’s just animals or somethin’,” Danny said. “As long as you can’t see them, they probably can’t see you either.”
And then Deidra did see something. It registered in the tail of her eye, a flutter in the misty air, like the lazy flap of large wings.
Crow’s wings?
Dark patches stained the sheet of fog; silhouettes, large enough to be classmates, but hunched over, their movements in some way unnatural. When Deidra jerked her head in their direction, she found nothing but haze. There was no doubt that they were real, however.
She still felt their eyes upon her.
“What is it?” Paul asked.
“People.” The word hung in the air like the mist that surrounded her.
One by one, the others looked at Deidra, then in the direction of her gaze.
Danny squinted. “Where are they?”
She gave a slight nod toward the thickening mist. “Out there.”
“How many?” Paul wanted to know.
Deidra shrugged. “Two, I think.”
“Friends of yours?” Danny asked Skip.
Was that actually fear Deidra heard in his voice? Danny ... afraid? She gripped the stretcher’s wooden frame, her knuckles white as the haze.
“Could be.” Skip squinted, tried and see something through the gauze. “We’d planned to fuck you up good on the way back, and they were just gonna do it for fun before, to help me out. After you used his balls for punting practice, Dorr’s gonna wanna get some payback for himself now.”
Deidra’s gaze shifted to Paul, appraised his face for some clue as to what was happening. She’d learned its language over the years; the look in his eye, his coloring, the pout or turn of his lips, the way his ears turned red when he was angry, embarrassed, or horny. There were times when she could decipher an entire story before he uttered a word. In the dimness, however, his wide eyes shimmered like drowned stars and his face spoke an alien tongue. The closest translation she could find was panic.
What did you see out there?
They crept between the rows. A few more hours and they would be clear of these cornfields, on a road, or in one of their own backyards. Deidra also clung to the hope that someone called 911, that help was on the way, hope that the blades of a Lifeline helicopter would fan off this mist and carry them up, up, and away to safety. After that, Paul could fill her in on what had really happened.
She looked back into the haze, her hand still clutching the stretcher’s wooden frame. Once again, she felt the distant watchers, stares that fused contempt with utter amusement. Coyne and Dorr, waiting out there in the darkness, looking for the right moment to pay Danny back in full for the embarrassment they’d suffered at the quarry. And if they were high, or ...
Drunk. You can say it.
... or drunk, who knows what they might be capable of. Drugs, drink, and temper were not a pleasant cocktail.
You were famous for it.
Yes. She had been.
Deidra lowered her head, watched her shoes rise and fall in the blackness like plunging pistons, watched the breath puff from her lips and nostrils in tiny frozen clouds. But if it were Coyne and Dorr out there, why would Skip be nervous? They were his friends, after all. What could he possibly have to fear from them?
Unless he’s worried it’s not them.
The flapping wings. She didn’t like that blur of motion, tried to tell herself she’d only imagined it, but she knew she hadn’t. Her heart was a pain in her chest. Her whole body ached in anticipation of something. What it was she did not know, but she could sense its coming in the misty air.
Do you know how ridiculous you sound? So you saw some flapping wings? Big fucking whoop! You’ve been seeing these crows all day, right? Well, those guys were standing out there and a crow flew by them. End of story.
“So what do we do?” Robby asked, and Deidra nearly screamed at the sound of his voice.
Danny continued to look into the depths of the fog. “We keep going.”
Deidra nodded, tried on a relieved grin. Sure we keep going. Sure. ’Cause it’s Dorr and Coyne out there. Danny’s not scared of them. After all, he kicked their asses single-handedly, didn’t he? Her body shuddered against the chill of the night air. Why was it so cold? She hadn’t heard anything about it being this cold tonight.
“HEY ASSHOLES!”
Deidra’s entire body jerked as if she’d stepped on a live wire. She saw Danny, Skip and Paul whip their heads around and followed their example.
Cindi flipped her blonde mane into Nancy’s face as she yelled into the mist. “YOU’RE A COUPLE O’ WASTED, INBRED FREAKS. YOU KNOW THAT?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Every muscle in Robby’s neck tightened, turning down the volume he wanted to project. “You trying to get us all killed?”
Paul flashed him a look of disapproval.
Robby didn’t see it, but Deidra did. Her fingers bore down on the wooden pole and her nails bit into its bark. She glanced back into the gray veil. Who did the guys think it was out there?
“Get bent,” Cindi told Robby, then bellowed more taunts into the darkness. “GO BACK TO FUCKIN’ YOUR PIGS, BANJO BOYS!”
“Shut up, you stupid bitch!” Skip screamed through clenched teeth, but his voice was far too strained to be threatening.
“What did you say?” Cindi gave him her patented icy stare. At least she had stopped yelling at –
The shadows with the flapping wings?
– whoever was watching them. Skip ignored her, but Cindi pressed him. “What did you just say to me?”
“I told you to shut the fuck up!”
“You called me a bitch.”
“No, I called you a stupid bitch, and the more you keep jackin’ your jaw, the more you prove me right!”
She sharpened her eyes. “If you weren’t holding that stretcher –”
Deid
ra held up her free hand, every muscle in her back and arm a tight band of rubber. “Cin, just do what he says and shut your mouth for once!” She looked at Skip, then Paul, then her eyes flew to Danny. “You’re all totally freaked, and I wanna know why. We all need to know why. Right now.”
“No you don’t,” Danny assured her.
Nancy spoke up, nearly groaning the words, “Danny ... what’s going on?”
He looked at her. There were smudges of dirt on her pale cheeks. He could see the confusion in her eyes, could tell she was close to tears, and was suddenly embarrassed he’d kept their find a secret. The girls were in this mess with the rest of them, they should know. “We found a body.”
“A body?” Cindi repeated with skepticism.
Nancy’s fingers rose to cover her mouth. “Jesus.”
“Let’s just get the fuck outta here,” Skip whispered, watching the fog with a kind of captivated fear. “Why are we standin’ here talkin’ about this shit?”
Deidra looked to Paul. “Who was it?”
He came close to revealing all they had seen in a panicky glut; Dale on his wooden cross with his corncob eyes and mouth full of blood-soaked leaves, how part of him had been smeared onto Paul’s own jacket, but he wanted to spare her those horrors. He’d hoped to spare her any horror at all. “Dale Brightman. He was dead.”
By dead, Deidra knew Paul really meant killed. “You trying to get us all killed?” Robby told Cindi. Killed. The word echoed through the caverns of her mind, became louder and louder until she thought her head might just do a Scanners. The ringing soon faded, however, and the word itself changed, became murdered. Dale Brightman had been murdered by what – whoever was out there watching them now.
“You guys are still trying to scare us, right?” The pilot light in Cindi’s eyes flickered as she scanned the boys’ faces, then, as she saw they were telling the truth, it went out all together. She said nothing. For the first time since Deidra had known her, Cindi was completely speechless.
Nancy blinked a single tear onto her cheek. “Who would kill Dale?”
Before anyone could venture a guess, Sean stirred in the stretcher. His eyes sprang open and his body tensed. He rolled back and forth in the towel slings and screamed, crazy howling shrieks that exploded from his throat in long, echoing waves. He sounded like an inmate from an asylum.