Brandon took a step back. “Christ, are you kidding me? Maybe we should get outa here and get you to the emergency room.”
I shook my head. “Come on dude, it’s just a dislocation, and this was your idea. Remember?” I held my left arm out. “Now hold this, and hold it tight.” He did hold it, and I snapped the finger back in place. It hurt, but I knew it would hurt worse tomorrow.
“Hey, we’re off to a good start, huh?” Brandon said. He chuckled under his breath, and I smiled back.
“Worst is over,” I said. Brandon’s blue eyes held mine steadily, and I thought he was about to speak but he remained silent. In the days since that night I’ve spent many hours wondering what was on his mind. Did he know the worst was most definitely not over? Yes, I think he did.
“It’s this way,” Brandon said. He finally broke eye contact with me and we walked deeper into the woods. The moonlight was bright but it wasn’t our only guide—thank God for smart phone lights. Both of us held our cells out, shining the way as we carefully trudged through the dense foliage. We batted branches away from our faces and marched through the thick weeds, raising our knees high to clear the debris. When we were kids, we had stomped down numerous trails through the growth that we could have navigated in the dark but now, everything looked the same and the trails were long gone.
For the first time in years, I thought of the voice that had spoken to me the time I had chased the ball into the woods. Mr. Bleaker, my childhood nightmare reminding me that as long as I drew breath, he would haunt me. I listened, certain I would hear my old friend again. In the distance, a dog barked every few seconds as if on cue and all around us, the crickets sang their song, but I heard no voices. The monsters of my youth were not here. If they were, they were not speaking. Perhaps they were listening, I thought and shuddered.
“Why would this guy move here?” Brandon asked.
I doubled my efforts to catch up. “The woods?”
“No, this town … uh, no offense.” He added.
I chuckled. “None taken, and I have no freaking idea why he would move here.”
“Holy shit. Ho-ly-shit!” Brandon said. He stopped abruptly, and I ran into him.
“Sorry,” I mumbled but he wasn’t listening. He simply stood there, staring forward while I hid behind him. I looked over his shoulder and finally recognized our tree. It was unmistakable. A giant oak with four thick branches that rose up into the darkness like an inverted pyramid. Our tree house was gone, and in its place stood something out of a fairytale. The weeds and bushes around the tree were gone and replaced with a white picket fence surrounding freshly mowed grass. Expertly manicured rose bushes grew in all four corners of the fence and their vines crept out along the pickets like long, prickly fingers.
Our rickety homemade ladder, that had needed the nails re-hammered every few days, was nowhere in sight. Instead, an ornate spiral staircase rose up from a bed of daisies to the new house that had replaced our childhood hideout. Where we had built our tree house with thrown together scraps of mix-matched wood and tin, this new structure was a beautiful handcrafted masterpiece that looked like it had been ripped from the pages of a Tolkien fantasy. An oak handrail made from sanded and stained tree branches with a matching wood-deck wrapped around the six full-size walls like the porch on a scaled down replica of a civil-war-era cotton plantation. Curtains hung in the windows and a large brick chimney rose out of the shake shingles to the branches above. I wondered how I hadn’t seen the chimney from my house.
“Is this real?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t …” I began but my words disappeared. They sounded meaningless just then, and they died without ceremony.
Brandon led the way. He swung open the gate, and although it looked new, its hinges screeched loudly into the night. A flock of birds squawked their disapproval but the woods were otherwise still. We walked down the stone path towards the staircase and then without hesitation, we ascended.
When we reached the top, I could feel the porch lean slightly down to the earth twelve feet below and was thankful the handrail felt solid. Halfway around the porch, we approached the door. It was solid wood, rounded on top with a matching rounded window of etched glass. It’ll be locked, I thought, but it wasn’t. I wished it had been, but it wasn’t.
Brandon looked back at me and then turned the knob. The door swung open and we both entered. Several solar powered lamps hung from the ceiling and cast everything in a faint glow. While the outside of the tree house resembled something out of Narnia, the inside looked more like a cluttered toolshed. Boxes stood in one corner, piled to the ceiling and more boxes lay scattered on countertops and shelves.
I shut the door behind me and almost screamed when I saw the figure standing behind the door.
“Nice one,” Brandon said and flashed his light across a cardboard cutout of Boba Fett.
I stared at the life-size figurine and let out a shaky sigh of relief. “Jesus Christ, Boba, you scared the shit outa me.”
Along with Boba, there were cutouts of The Swamp Thing and the Predator and various movie posters covered most available wall space. The original Die Hard poster with a young Bruce Willis and the exploding Nakatomi Towers in the background hung next to the door over a leather recliner. Next to that were the posters for the first two Terminator films and one for the original Jaws. I panned my light around the room and found it to be a shrine to the movie industry. Posters for the movie Sling Blade, The Night of the Living Dead, Stand by Me, ET and the original Star Wars trilogy filled up the remaining wall space.
Centered above the fireplace, hung one of those brackets meant to mount a TV. There was no television yet but on the mantle below sat a bright red Swingline stapler and a framed issue of Rolling Stone with some band called Stillwater on the cover. At the time, I did not make sense of them.
“This place is insane!” Brandon said.
“Yeah,” I said and sat down on the leather couch and flexed out my sore finger.
“This place is the ultimate man cave. I think it’s nicer than any house I’ve ever lived in.”
I laughed at that humorlessly while thinking the same thing. Brandon sat down in the recliner under the Die Hard poster and leaned back.
“It’s a little nicer than the last time we spent the night in here, huh?” he said with a huge, drunk smile stretched out across his face.
“Just a bit,” I admitted. I leaned back in the couch, following Brandon’s lead. “That was quite a night.”
“No doubt … you saved our ass,” he said.
I shrugged. “I almost killed that bastard,” I said, thinking of Brandon’s pedophile neighbor.
“Forget that pervert … maybe you shoulda killed him.”
I nodded. “Maybe …”
“That was one crazy night,” Brandon said, pulling us both back from our memories.
I laughed aloud at the absurdity of it all. “I wonder where that piece of shit is now.”
Brandon shook his head. “He should be locked up.”
“Yup, but he’s probably not,” I said. “He’s probably surfing the net right now for … whatever sick shit he’s into.”
Brandon nodded his head. “Like I said, maybe you shoulda killed him.”
We made eye contact briefly until he pretended there was something on his phone that needed his attention. I got up from the couch and wandered around the tree house.
“We should probably get going,” Brandon said, but he didn’t get up. In fact, he readjusted himself in the recliner and stretched out. I leaned against a bench top and sighed. The pain in my hand was beginning to cut through the alcohol buzz.
“I wonder what’s in the briefcase,” Brandon said. He smiled up at me, his hands behind his head and his feet up in the recliner.
“Huh?”
He sat up in his chair and dropped is feet to the floor. “There, between the boxes.” He pointed to a mix-matched stack of cardboard boxes. Between the two stacks, sitting upright was a leathe
r case. To me, it looked more like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag than a traditional briefcase. I reached for it and lifted it out of its hiding place. Behind me, I heard the recliner squeak as Brandon stood up. “You gonna open it?” he asked.
“Should I?”
“Yeah man, go on,” he said impatiently.
I pulled the leather strap from its catch and opened the case. I remember the feeling I had just before I looked inside; my pulse pounding painfully in the back of my head and the alcohol in my system threatening to hit the eject button. I’ve seen enough movies to know, the only thing you put in leather cases like that one are drugs or money.
“What is it, man?” Brandon asked, his voice raising an octave at the end.
“Oh Jesus,” I said. “It’s money … a shitload of money.” I reached in carefully, as if it were dangerous and grabbed a tightly wrapped stack of bills. I pulled out a couple of tightly wound stacks and waved them at Brandon.
“Are those hundreds … are they all hundred dollar bills?” he asked. He had both hands clasped under his chin and I realized he looked more nervous than I had ever seen him. And that made me nervous.
I thumbed through the stacks quickly. “Yeah, I think so. There must be sixty or seventy stacks of hundreds in here.”
Brandon’s eyes grew comically wide. “How much is that, a million dollars?”
“Close enough,” I said in a daze. “Close enough.”
“Oh Christ … do ya think it’s drug money?” Brandon asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know … maybe … probably.”
“We gotta get the hell outa here,” Brandon said. “Like, right goddamned now.”
I ignored him while I tried to count the stacks of bills. “A hundred and ten,” I mumbled. “A hundred and ten stacks in here, dude. That’s 1.1 million dollars.”
“Over a million … you sure?”
I nodded my head. The world seemed to spin and suddenly, I wished we weren’t in a tree house. “That’s five-hundred and fifty-five for each of us.”
Brandon looked at me sharply. “Wait, you wanna take it?”
“Hell yeah I wanna take it. Don’t you?” I couldn’t comprehend a world where we didn’t take the money, and Brandon’s reluctance caught me off guard. “A million dollars.” I reminded him.
“It belongs to somebody … and you can bet they won’t just let it go.”
“Do you wanna leave it? Do your really just wanna leave it?” I asked. “Just put it back with the rest of that junk and go back to your old life.” We stared at each other and suddenly I felt like a little boy arguing with his best friend.
“We didn’t find it in a ditch or the trash … this is someone’s property. That’s stealing.”
I unwittingly tucked the bag under my arm like a running back preparing to defend the ball against a prying linebacker. “Ok,” I said, exhaling loudly. “You make the choice. If you wanna leave it, we will. Or we take it and split it down the middle ... no more money problems for the rest of our lives, man, can you imagine?”
Brandon shook his head at me and that made me angry. “You said you were doing good, making good money. You paid off your house and you have that pretty girlfriend. What more do you want?” Our voices were rising, and I moved to the window. I thought I saw a flash of light in the trees, maybe the reflection of moonlight off a piece of metal, but whatever it was, it had disappeared and, once again, the forest appeared still.
“What more do I want!” I said, “I don’t have shit, I want a life. And maybe I want to quit that stupid job and get out of this goddamned town. I’m busting my ass, and for what? A shitty little two-bedroom house with a bad roof and stained carpet. You got out; this is my chance ... probably my only chance.”
“That’s bullshit!” Brandon said. He took two steps towards me and spoke softly, almost pleadingly, “You were happy. You said you were happy.”
“I will be now!” I said. “And what about you, man? Think about your family. Brandon, think about your son.”
Brandon dropped his gaze for a moment and I could tell he was relenting. “All r—” The door to the tree house opened with a crash, cutting off Brandon’s words.
A man, late forties or early fifties, stormed through the doorway. He wore a Hard Rock Café: Hollywood t-shirt tucked into his khaki cargo shorts. His slicked back gray hair fell across his face as he made his entrance. “What the hell are you kids do—” The words stopped coming but his mouth hung open in surprise. He seemed to be expecting kids and not a tattooed former marine and his friend.
The next moment happened in a flash. Brandon spoke first, “We’re sorry, we were just …” but nobody was listening.
I stepped towards the man, and his eyes dropped to the bag in my hand. There was a moment of recognition, as he must have understood what we were doing and he put his hands up in a calm-down gesture. I couldn’t stop now, I thought. The bag was mine. The money was mine.
I swung the bag in a high arc and brought it down on the old man’s head. He tried to raise his arms to block the blow but he was just a second too slow. The million-dollar case struck him in the temple and he crumbled to the wood floor without grace.
The world fell silent, my heavy breathing the only sound in the room. “Oh Jesus, man, what did you do?” Brandon asked. The panic radiated off his skin in waves.
My arm tingled from the impact, and I knew my shoulder would be killing me tomorrow. The man lay on the floor, his head tilted back and his eyes open. They looked back at me, glassy and dead. My stomach turned and the whiskey in my belly threatened to revolt. Despite this, I leaned down to check the old man’s pulse, holding the case of money tight against my thigh, like it was an anxious puppy I didn’t trust to run off. I kept my hand on his neck for what seemed an eternity, but there was nothing.
“Is he alive?” Brandon asked.
I shushed him and placed my ear to the man’s face, but I couldn’t detect even the slightest breath. I looked up to Brandon and he could see it on my face. He stepped back and put a hand over his mouth. It made him look young, like the boy he once was.
“What did you do?” he asked. There it was. There was the question.
“It was self-defense … I was protecting us.” I meant Brandon and me, not me and the money but I could see the doubt on my friend’s face. I stood up and held the case behind my back.
“We need to get help before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late,” I said.
He stared right at me but he wasn’t looking at me. “We need help,” he said again, turning for the door.
I reached out for him, just missing. “Brandon, wait!” He ignored me and raced through the door towards the spiral staircase. I followed him into the night and just as we reached the top of the stairs, our feet tangled. There was one moment, where everything was still ok, Brandon still stood in front of me, and then he was falling. He went headfirst over the side, his feet not touching a single step.
He didn’t cry out. There was only a dull thud and a snapping sound like a tree branch breaking in a stiff breeze. I stood amongst the trees at the top of the steps for an hour, or maybe just a second, before jumping down the steps two at a time. My best friend lay in the grass, his arms and legs splayed out and his head bent much too far to the right.
I rushed to his side and dropped the case. Several stacks of bills fell out and I carefully placed them back in the case and secured the latch. Brandon stared back at me with wide terrified eyes.
“Oh, Brandon,” I said, crying, “Why did you do that?”
He opened his mouth, and I saw blood coated his teeth and lips. He tried to speak but there were no words, only blood. It came from his mouth and nose and I wiped it away with my hand. A tear fell from his eye, which brought tears to mine.
“I’m so sorry. I love you, brother,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. Then before I could change my mind, I placed my hand tight over his mouth and nose. He stared up at me, and I wanted despe
rately to close his eyes, but I refused to let my best friend die in the dark.
Brandon died slowly, and after finally closing his eyes, I stood up and looked at the blood on my hands. I wiped them off on my jeans and grabbed the bag at my feet. I ran back up the stairs and into the tree house. It looked different than I remembered. Besides the dead body, the fairytale mystique was gone. The smell of urine was strong and I looked furtively at the dead man. His bladder had let loose.
Everything had happened so fast. So much carnage in such a short period of time, it didn’t make sense. It all seemed too easy. I picked up my phone and was surprised the battery was still good. I began to dial 911 and froze. Too much had already happened and none of it could be undone. I pressed the cancel button and put the phone back in my pocket.
“Sorry, mister,” I said to the dead man and I meant it. I never wanted him to die—I didn’t want anyone to die—I just wanted the money. There was work to do if I wanted to make this right, but I had to be careful, and I had to act fast. I reached under the man’s armpits and lifted him up, while the muscles in my lower back protested angrily. His feet bounced across the wood slats of the tree house as I pulled him through the doorway. We reached the top of the staircase, and I lifted the dead man up. He was heavy, literally dead weight, but I managed to wrestle him into a standing position. Briefly, I wondered if the guy had any Weekend at Bernie’s memorabilia stashed in one of those boxes, and I laughed aloud. In the dark woods, amongst two dead bodies, it sounded crazy, so I cut it off.
Before I could have any second thoughts, I pushed the dead man down the stairs. He dropped hard and I heard his stiffening body hit each step with a thud. He landed violently to the ground below, his face buried in the dirt, his legs, twisted and broken, rested on the bottom steps. It had to look like an accident, and I thought it did.
I stepped back into the tree house and began to wipe down anything Brandon and I might have touched. I wiped down the boxes where we had found the case of money and the mantle above the fireplace. After some thought, I brushed down the recliner and the leather couch. It was getting late and the impending sunrise began to feel like a deadline—my desire to work quickly clashed with my fear of making a mistake. I stood in the doorway of the tree house and looked over the room, paralyzed by the notion that I was forgetting something, something that would bring this whole thing crumbling down on top of me. It was no longer just stealing. This was murder. I understood that. I didn’t mean to kill that man, but I had, and now I was covering it up. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
The Complete Bleaker Trilogy Box-set Page 8