by Henry Turner
All this time I’m looking round the car. Trash is everywhere. But I didn’t see no pens or pencils, nothing sharp. There ain’t nothing made of glass, nothing made of metal.
He’s saying I didn’t tell but I yell I did, that I told Daddy to call the cops if I ain’t back soon. I couldn’t really talk ’cause I hurt so bad, and I was confused ’cause I was also trying to look all round the car, down near my legs and feet to see what might be lying there.
I told my daddy! I told my daddy! I yell.
No, you didn’t, Billy, he says.
I’d hit the dashboard when he smacked me around, and the glove compartment fell open. Right inside it in a mess of papers I see a screwdriver.
I was shaking and he saw it. He smiled, leaning at me.
I couldn’t move. Turned my eyes to’m.
How did you find out, Billy?
I yelled.
I yelled as long and loud as I could, right in his face, and he jerked back, looking like I’d shot him. Then I jammed forward, tore at the glove compartment, and ripped through faster than I ever done. Right then like a miracle I had that screwdriver in my hand, and I was leaning over at him, jabbing it at his eyes.
He caught my hand and tore it lose. Then he looked at me his face all horrible and yelled, YOU LITTLE SHIT!
I felt the first time my head hit the doorjamb, but not all them other times.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I woke up sitting on a chair in a dark room. My head hurt and for a while I couldn’t open my eyes, and I just sat there. I was crying, I could feel that. And my pants was wet. I pissed’m, ain’t sorry to say. Didn’t know where the fuck I was, scuze my language. All I knew was that my arms and legs hurt because I was tied to the chair, and the rope was biting real deep into my wrists and my legs. I could tell my face was all fucked up, not just ’cause it hurt, but I could feel it all swollen, like a dough lump sitting on my face, kind’f stretching it over, know what I mean? And all round my mouth was tape, prob’ly duct tape, wound round maybe four/five times, so I couldn’t make a sound.
I couldn’t just remember all what happened. Last thing that came to me was walking down to Gurpy’s house, but then slowly in my head it all came back, and I could see myself at the table with’r, and Hodsworth showing up, and us in the car, and him talking and hitting. But after that it weren’t so clear like I say, ’cept I knew I’d told him everything.
I got an eye open. What I could see, sort’f half-see ’cause my eye would only go half-open, was my lap and the floor, just a brown, bare wood floor. But there was so much blood on my lap I started to cry again.
How the fuck had this happened to me?
Scuze my language.
I think a minute passed, more like five or ten. Though it hurt a lot I raised my head and got both eyes open. Room was dark. There was a bed there, almost behind me, I could just barely see it. Windows were covered, some sort of wood sheet, nailed up. A closet, and a box of drawers, one drawer open, empty. That was it. Like a house nobody lives in.
Downstairs, I ain’t said this but it’d been happening all along, was noises. Somebody was creeping around. Moving things. I heard the wood creak like it does in empty houses made of wood, and them creaks went everywhere, creaking the ceiling and the walls, too, ’cause there weren’t nothing to muffle it, no carpets. Made me glad I hadn’t moved. ’Cause I thought it was prob’ly the fucker downstairs, Hodsworth, I mean, and I’ll be damned if I wanted him to hear me.
Now I’ll say what happened next. There was sound on the stairs, foot stomps. Then in the hall outside, I figured it was a hall out there, and it was, I seen later.
Then the door banged open.
I let my head drop. I can’t tell you how I felt. You can’t know. But what happened, all that happened, was the fucker came crost the floor, grabbed ahold my hair, the front of it, and jerked my head up. Like I said, my eyes was closed, and no matter that it hurt so much, I did not move a muscle, and didn’t make a sound.
Fucker could’f punched me and I wouldn’t’f moved.
That’s how scared I felt.
But none of that mattered. Fucker thought I was dead, is what it was. Looking back now I know he did.
I thought he’d slit my throat, and for some reason in my head I was saying, Go ’head, fucker, go ’head, fucker, over’n over, not ’cause I wanted it, but thinking that made me brave.
But all the fucker did, once he thought I was dead, was drop my head and go back out the door. It shut and I heard him lock it. I still didn’t move or open my eyes, even though I heard him going back down the stairs. But then I heard something good, the front door slam way down there, and then a minute later a car start.
I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it.
He was gone!
I looked over best I could, and from out the corner of my eye I saw there was a blanket piled on the bed. And right there, ’cause I could see better now, was a boy’s hand sticking out under it.
There was a boy on the goddamn bed!
I didn’t fuckin’ move, and then, though it hurt like hell, I tried to jerk around.
But nothing budged.
I looked round the room again. Looked at everything. I was waiting. In my head I felt cold, don’t know how else to say it. Had to feel cold. Was the only way to get out of there. My eyes went skimming over the door, the closet, the crisscross of shadows on the floorboards. I was looking for something I knew would be there. I was waiting to see it. Waiting for it to come along.
And even though I had that tape crost my mouth, I laughed.
I was done pissing my pants and crying, and I kept looking around and I was thinking. Thinking cold, because I knew what he was gonna do. I was thinking that the motherfucker thinks he’s smart ’cause he tied me to a chair and there ain’t no lights and the window is boarded, but the motherfucker didn’t think of who I am. He didn’t think how a boy who spent half his life busting in houses sure as hell could bust his way out, and thinking that and just about laughing at the fucker, ’cept maybe I was still crying, I was looking around to see what I could use to get the fuck out of there.
And then I seen it.
A nail poking up out the floor, its shadow crossin’ the lines of the floorboards, making a neat little X. Not no regular nail, neither. Big nail, one of them flooring nails, big fuckin’ hunk of steel.
It took me a minute to knock myself over, but with jerking my shoulders I went down with a big crash. And when I did that, the chair broke. Chair back broke off the seat. Fucker hadn’t counted on that! And that made the ropes a little loose on my legs, ’cause they was tied around the chair legs, which had shifted. So what I did then, by sort of churning my ass, was get over to that flooring nail.
I don’t know how long it took. When I got to it, it was behind my back, and it was hell getting that nail on the rope, which was nylon cord and hard to cut.
I scraped at the nail, gouging at it, and it was hard goin’ ’cause that rope was so tight I couldn’t feel my hands. But I felt the strands breaking. I kept yanking, and after maybe five minutes, they were off.
My hands were blue’n cut to shreds and I had to rub’m together for a long while before I could get the cord off my legs. All the while I kept saying, Come on, fucker, come on, fucker, ’cause it made me feel bold. And then I was on my feet, rope off me, and the tape off my mouth.
I was thinking how to get out when like from nowhere I look at the boy on the bed. There he was, on his back. Like I said, his hand was poking out of the blanket. Funny thing was, where most times a blanket rises up over your chest, on this boy, the blanket sunk low. I didn’t know what to make of that. And without thinking I went over and pulled it back.
I been sayin’ I was scared. Ain’t true. Whatever I’d felt earlier was nothing.
All I’m gonna say is the boy was dead. But what had been done to him I ain’t never seen before, even in a butcher shop.
I tossed the blanket back and turned away fast. I was sh
aking and mumbling, and in my head I was saying, The window the window the window, ’cause there was that covered window about eight foot away. And looking at it I grabbed up a piece of that chair, and using the chair leg and the nylon cord, I busted down the wood on the window, which was nothing but a sheet of Masonite, the thick kind.
It took me another minute to bash out the glass. Then I bashed out the frame. And then I was out that window and sitting on the roof under an eave, looking down into Simon Hooper’s backyard.
But I didn’t go nowhere, just sat.
I was so beat to shit I was ’fraid to climb down. I knew I might fall. So I was sitting. And it was still light out there, looked about six or seven, sun was starting to go down, maybe, and I could see the woods far over the tops of the houses, and next door was Simon Hooper’s like I said, and everything was quiet. Breeze was blowing over me, and I heard birds.
What happened to that boy was the worst I’d ever seen, even worse than Tommy Evans, and that was bad enough. And even though my head was beat so bad I was dopey, I knew there was other boys in the house. Dead or alive, they was there.
And what could I do?
I could maybe climb down. Maybe get a neighbor or a cop. But they all knew me, knew me the same as Dryker did, and I couldn’t say if they’d believe me, even beat up like I was. None of’m liked me or trusted me one bit, ’cept maybe to steal what they got on their porches.
But anyway, that weren’t even it. What mattered most was the motherfucker.
Hodsworth, I mean.
’Cause he went out.
And when he came back and didn’t find me, and knew I’d seen the dead boy, who was the boy they later learned was from Georgia ’cause I ain’t never seen him before, well, when the motherfucker saw that, what would he do?
He’d kill’m all. That is, kill’m if they was still alive.
I felt scared now with what I was thinking, ’cause I was scared to go back in there and look for the boys, and I knew I couldn’t do it, didn’t have the heart, and I cried.
Then I turned around and got on my knees and pulled out a piece of wood from the window, piece of frame ’bout ten inches long, and stuck with broken glass caulked in tight that didn’t bust out when I’d hit it with the chair leg. Figured it might hold.
I knew the door inside was locked with a bolt so I had to pick another window that would let me into a different room. That was easy, just a slide over the roof. Before going I made the sign of the cross, while I was looking in at the dead boy.
Then I slid on over.
Window was locked, one of them swivel locks screwed to the top of the lower frame, in there behind the glass. So what I done was take that frame piece and poke out a little glass in front of that swivel lock, and it broke pretty clean and quiet.
Then I reached my fingers in, turned the swivel, raised the sash, and went inside.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Where I was weren’t a room but a stairway, and I was at the top on the landing looking down the stairs, which was narrow and had no carpet on’m and led steep down to a shut door. I held that piece of frame up and out, pointed like a dagger, sharp glass on it rising up sort’f like a fish fin, and I went down.
Door down there was unlocked and I swung it slow and even, but it still creaked. Every step I took cracked and echoed ’cause there weren’t no carpet and no furniture anywhere to muffle nothing. Every little sound seemed loud enough to shake the house, but I went on, so scared I was damn near falling on my face.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was just looking for boys, and didn’t know where they was. I moved real slow, bobbing my legs up and down, same as how my daddy used to walk coming home late from the bars. So with that frame piece raised high like a butcher knife, there I was creeping, my face all bumpy-blue and bloody, and I must’f looked crazy.
I went through halls and saw nothing, ’cept here and there a cardboard box of junk in an empty room or a chest of drawers with no drawers in it prob’ly drug in from an alley nearby, but nothing nowhere else. Food wrappers on the floor, and beer cans. I did see a mattress with no sheets and no blanket in one room, front room, prob’ly also drug from an alley. But there weren’t no lights inside, just what come in the windows in some of the rooms, and most of the windows was covered, so it was everywhere dark.
Then a new room come up I looked in, and in there was a box and I looked in it.
I saw vials.
Lots of’m, like maybe two/three hundred. Medicine vials, I mean, like Doc Shatze hands out, orange with white caps. It was all I found. But that made sense to me, ’cause I knew the motherfucker sold’m to the kids, so’s here’s his stash, I figured.
It felt like hours was going by and I was crazy scared and I was going on, knowing I was losing time. I heard sometimes a car outside come by slow and I froze waiting to hear it pull up but one never did, and I breathed again. And I started thinking I was wrong comin’ back in and there was no one in here, and it was like my ass started itchin’ and my legs got all trembly just wanting to run the hell out.
But then I stopped.
I thought of something.
I was down on the first floor then, I’d been all through the third and second.
What did Richie say?
The basement. The cellar. He’d worked on it. Shored up wherever leaks was with concrete, places water might get in, ’cause Miss Gurpy said she was ’fraid of floods. And he’d done it, so he said, till his gear all got took, including that bag of concrete we found at Miss Gurpy’s.
So that was it.
Down there.
If a boy was here, that had to be the place, ’cause it’d be all solid with concrete over everything, and like a prison.
I went back through a hall and into the kitchen, and there on the wall was a door. It had a big bolt, a slider. That’s all. No padlock, and nothing needing a key. But on it there was a key ring on a nail, and I figured it was prob’ly for doors down there, doors that needed keys. So I took it, the key ring. And then I pulled the slider and opened the door.
I ain’t gonna tell you ’bout the smell that come up ’cept to say you don’t want to smell it. That was the first thing I saw, I mean noticed. It was all dark down there, but here’s a thing. There was one of them utility lights hanging from the ceiling by a cord, hanging right there over the stairs, kind’f light with a plastic cage over the bulb, yellow plastic. So I unhooked it. Had to hop up to do that. And now I got it in my hand. I flicked it, and on it went. I put the frame piece under my arm, careful not to cut myself, and I held my nose. And taking the steps one at a time, went down slow.
Basement weren’t like upstairs, there was lots of stuff in it. Lots of boxes. A big table was there, old one, and another table upended on top’f it, and between the legs there was lots more boxes. I didn’t look’n the boxes. Some sawhorses was around too, I remember that. Against the wall, stone wall, all painted white and made’f big lumpy stones with mortar churning out’f’m, was a washer and a dryer still with the exhaust tube coming up out the back and fixed to a window. The window was painted white, or nailed over in white board, it was too dark to tell which. But I knew the washer and dryer was busted, ’cause the doors was gone on both of’m, and inside where the clothes go was full’f trash. Otherwise I seen the ceiling was covered with lots of rusty metal pipes for water and such, and there was posts made of the same lumpy stones holding up the ceiling, and I seen all this with that utility light I was holding, and the back door, too, which had boxes scattered near it on the floor, maybe ready to be took outside.
But none of that was what I wanted to find. I was looking for locks, and when I got to the back of the basement there was an old door made’f heavy planks and big heavy iron cross brackets fixed with rivets, and on it was three big padlocks, and I stopped. I didn’t want to move, and the smell was so bad there it made my eyes water.
I flashed the light on the locks and seen they was all bright silver and new, and they was
all made by the same company. So I flashed the light on the key ring and found the three new keys with the same name.
This room I was looking at, it was where you might put your lawn tools, your mower and such. That’s what the room was.
I stood there another minute because I couldn’t open it up yet. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see that boy on the bed, or nothing like’m.
But when that minute was done I took the keys and one by one opened the locks and unhitched’m, and tossed’m down. Then I held my breath and swung the door wide and put the light in, and there was Jimmy Brest sitting a yard away, tied to a widow’s chair, staring at me.
He was alive.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I ain’t gonna tell you nothing about how he looked, or if he was wearing anything, or most’f what he said. If you wanna know so bad go ask’m yourself, or go read what the police made me tell’m. What I will say is when he first saw me he didn’t have no idea who I was, or how the hell I could be there, but when I told’m, and I had to tell’m six/seven times ’cause that’s where he was at, he started calling me names again.
Can you believe that fucking shit?
All he could manage was a mumble, and his mouth weren’t taped over ’cause he could yell his head off in there and not get heard. And mumbling like he did, his head lolling low and his chin on his chest, arms tied behind him, he was cussing me like I said.
At first I just thought he’d gone crazy, and I ignored him ’cept to say I had to cut the ropes. But then something came into my head and I understood. So I knelt right beside him and I put my mouth right up to his ear and I said, Jimmy, I ain’t with Hodsworth. You get me? I ain’t here for’m. You see my face, he beat me, too. I’m here to get you out, boy. So quit cussin’ me.
I had to say that maybe ten times. And when he finally got it he looked at me. And long as I live I will never forget the look he had. I’m standing here trying to tell you how it was, but I can’t. A human being don’t get that look. Sometimes a dog does. I mean a dog at the pound when it knows what’s coming, and if I ever see’t again I’ll die.