by Rick R. Reed
Quite simply, the sound had paralyzed them. She and Peter had become like animals trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car, unable to move, scarcely able to draw breath. They were easy pickings for Paul Tuttle, who suddenly appeared in the kitchen door.
The three stood staring at one another for a few seconds, seconds that seemed like hours. Then Paul Tuttle swung his baseball bat back and forth between his hands, a grin playing about his lips.
“Hi,” he finally said. “I’m Paul Tuttle.”
Peter and Marlene jumped at the sound of his raspy, uneven voice.
Marlene’s first reaction after he spoke his name, was to laugh. It can’t be. Paul Tuttle? C’mon, he isn’t even real. He’s a story, like the woman who wanted her golden arm back in a story Mother used to tell me. He’s a legend. Oh sure, there had been a Paul Tuttle, but to believe he’s still hanging around in the house where he supposedly killed his family fifteen years ago is too ludicrous to believe.
But what choice did she have? She peered at him, trying to match the features with the photo of the boy she had seen in the newspaper accounts of the crime. It was impossible to tell anything definitive here in the dark. Plus the man standing before them was dirty; heavy stubble that just missed being a beard covered his face.
And then she got her first good look at the bat. She remembered reading how the family had been killed by “trauma to the head with a blunt object.” But it wasn’t the information from the newspaper article that caused her to gasp while she stared at the bat.
It was the fact that the bat wore a dark stain. A stain that was most likely blood.
Once she realized what she was looking at, and the fact that, ludicrous as she might have thought it, Paul Tuttle was indeed standing before them, she became putty in his hands. All the fight, all the instinct to flee, drained out of her as she realized the horrible danger she and Peter were in.
And where is David? Is he already dead? Bile rose in her throat at the thought.
“Why don’t the two of you just step in here and join your friend?” Paul Tuttle had asked. His question seemed as reasonable as Erin’s mother asking them in for a glass of lemonade on a summer’s day. It was this reasonableness that made the whole thing so chilling.
He grinned. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
There was no question of refusing him when he raised the baseball bat high, brandishing it. And so, like dumb animals to slaughter, Peter and Marlene had followed him in the kitchen.
He had bound and gagged Marlene first.
She wondered if he sensed that if someone was going to try escaping, it would be her. Indeed, Peter had not snapped out of his earlier deadened reaction. He had seemingly gone mute, becoming a zombie of sorts. He took direction well from Paul and didn’t move a hair as Paul pulled the rope tight around Marlene’s wrists and ankles.
She kept imploring him with her eyes. Run! Jump Tuttle! Do something…don’t just stand there! But she knew Peter was too afraid, knew he didn’t have the strength. Knew that Peter had, indeed, gone into a mild state of shock that might ultimately result in their deaths.
And what of David? Was it already too late for him?
Now, Paul Tuttle walked in circles around where the three of them lay on the kitchen floor. Around and around he went, humming “Red River Valley” to himself as he made the circuit. The song had never sounded more chilling…or insane.
Suddenly, he stopped. Standing at their feet, he stared down at them. “You guys are trespassers. You know that?”
Marlene swallowed. What was he doing? Waiting for them to answer?
“I had a nice little life set up here. Didn’t have to worry about nobody, y’understand? They had all forgotten me.” Paul was quiet for a moment. “And then you went and ruined it!”
Marlene flinched as Tuttle screamed this last part, his voice bellowing, resounding off the walls in the empty house. She flinched again when he began banging his bat into the cupboards, breaking them and causing some to fall from the wall with great crashes.
“You all ruined my life with your little game and your little stories! I was safe here! Safe! Do you hear me?” Paul slammed the bat down into the floor inches from Marlene’s head. She squeezed her eyes shut and found she couldn’t breathe for several seconds.
“You, all of you, have to pay. I can’t stay here anymore, and I can’t let any witnesses live. Do you understand that?”
Marlene wished she wasn’t gagged, so she could reason with him. She wanted to tell him that what he was doing was stupid, would only serve to get him in more trouble. Didn’t he know that two members of their group were still out there? Didn’t he realize what that could mean?
Sadly and with terror, she knew he didn’t care about that. Crazy men weren’t rational.
Paul Tuttle drove his point home when he began banging his bat into the wall, causing a fine powder dust of plaster to rise as he broke through the wallpaper and the wall beneath it, leaving holes that exposed the raw wood and studs.
At least he wasn’t beating them to dust with his bat. Not yet.
Finally, he stopped, gasping from his outburst. The sour sweat on his body permeated the air. The rapid rise and fall of his chest bore testimony to what his labor had taken out of him.
Marlene found it hard to breathe in the fine haze of plaster dust Paul had stirred up. As she struggled for air, she heard a groan. It wasn’t from Paul Tuttle, and she knew it wasn’t from Peter.
David was alive! For an instant, relief and a quiet joy spread through her, warming her. And for a few seconds, it obliterated her terror.
But Paul Tuttle had heard the groan, too.
As he walked over to where David lay, Marlene closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the fury in his face, didn’t want to see what she dreaded was coming next.
“I thought I had taken care of you.” He whispered just loud enough for Marlene to hear the words choked out through panting breaths. “I guess you need a little more, just to make sure.”
Marlene opened her eyes in time to see Paul raise the bat high above his head, his face intent with concentration, with rage. She turned her head away, bringing her shoulders almost up to her ears, wishing she didn’t have to be a witness.
It was then the sirens cut through the night like a woman’s scream.
CHAPTER 15
Help Arrives
Wailing sirens joined with searchlights and whirling blue flashes from atop patrol cars that swept the house with light. The stench of cinder dust filled the air as the cars sped to the house, braked suddenly, and sent up clouds of the stuff. Deep voices and the squawk of short-wave radios competed with the sirens.
The policemen stormed the house, just like in the movies.
Marlene watched mutely as Paul Tuttle rushed to the window, bat clenched in one hand, the other hand grasping the window sill for leverage as he leaped into the night. She wished she could cry out, scream to the police that he was escaping, but the gag prevented that. So she prayed the policemen surrounding the house would see him. He would head for the woods, she knew…woods that had probably become comfortable friends to him over the years, woods whose layout he would know as well as she knew the streets of her own neighborhood.
At last, two uniformed officers rushed into the kitchen, soon joined by others. One of them—a young officer with straight blond hair and a moustache—shined a flashlight on Marlene and her two friends as they lay bound on the linoleum. She squinted at the sudden light.
The policeman whispered, “Oh, my God,” as he squatted beside them and pulled the gag from Marlene’s mouth. “What’s going on here?” Incredulity trailed his words like smoke.
Marlene breathed in, grateful to have the filthy rag out of her mouth. “It’s Paul Tuttle,” she gasped. “He did this to us.”
The blond officer looked back at his partner, a heavyset man with glasses and a big nose, as if to say, “You believe this?”
“It really was Paul Tuttle,” Marl
ene said as the officer untied her bound feet and ankles. “And he’s out there somewhere! You can’t let him get away this time!” All at once and completely unexpectedly, Marlene was crying. The salt of her tears ran down her face; her nose started to run. She was horribly embarrassed. How would she handle things if she was blubbering like a baby?
Marlene sprung to her feet the minute she was able to. “I’m going to go out there and help them look.”
The heavier policeman grabbed her arm. “Just wait a minute there, young lady. We can’t just let you run out on us like this.” He softened his tone. “You’ve been through a lot. You need to take it easy, give our medics a chance to look you over and make certain you’re okay.” His gaze flickered from Peter, who was still bound on the floor, to David’s inert form. “And we need to get your friends taken care of ASAP.”
“But he’s out there!” Marlene screamed, her voice higher with hysteria. “You have to get him!”
“Do you realize how many officers are in this area right now? If anyone’s running through those woods, he won’t get far.” He placed gentle hands on Marlene’s shoulders, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Really. We’ll catch him. Now, don’t you worry about a thing but taking care of you. Understand?”
Marlene slowed down, looking back at her friends. A third officer had untied Peter, and he was struggling to stand. When Marlene’s eyes met his, Peter quickly cast his gaze down toward the shadows on the floor. Marlene could tell he was humiliated. He was probably already thinking up an excuse for his weakness. She wanted to tell him he didn’t need an excuse. What they had been through together was excuse enough for anyone, teenager or adult.
It was David who really concerned her. As the officers freed his wrists and ankles, he just lay there. The blond policeman took a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at David’s face, trying to remove some of the clotted blood. He looked back at his partner. “Where are the parameds, Gus? Shouldn’t they be here by now?”
Gus shook his head. “Far as I know they were right behind us. What can you tell me about his condition?”
“Severe blow to the head.”
“Bad?”
“Hard to tell with all the blood. You know how head injuries are.”
Marlene’s knees were slowly turning to water as she listened to the policemen talk. She gripped the wall for support.
As if on cue, a young Asian woman and a massive guy with dark curly hair, both wearing dark blue uniforms, hurried into the room. They carried a stretcher between them.
Marlene whispered a quick prayer, imploring that David be all right. One paramedic squatted beside David and attached an oxygen mask over his face, then began taking his vital signs. Her partner wrote them down on a chart.
As they loaded David onto the stretcher, Marlene spoke up again. “Tuttle hit him with a baseball bat…aluminum.” Her voice was thin and whispery.
The heavy policeman, the one called Gus, gave her and Peter a swift look. He gestured toward the paramedics. “Kids, you go with them.”
The paramedics started to take David outside. As they were passing Peter and Marlene, Peter finally said something: “Is he gonna be okay?”
The guy with the curly hair answered. “We’ll see. We’re gonna get him right down to City Hospital and do everything we can for him.”
His partner looked Peter and Marlene up and down, concern creasing her features. “Time to get you two out of here. From the little I’ve heard, it sounds like you’ve both been through a lot. We’ll get you guys checked out, just to be on the safe side.”
Peter began following the woman. Marlene realized that he was probably still in shock. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to go with them, to get some kind of help…whatever it was they did for people who were in shock. Kept them warm, maybe.
As for herself, she couldn’t leave until Paul Tuttle had been found. She just couldn’t. “I’m staying here,” she announced. The paramedics looked back at her, surprised. She guessed they weren’t expecting a challenge.
Marlene attempted to smile at them, to show them she was all right. “I should be here in case the police need any help. Who’s going to answer their questions if we all go running off to the hospital?”
The paramedics had no answer. Somewhat reluctantly, they continued out of the house with David on the stretcher. Peter followed morosely behind.
* * *
From the front porch, Marlene watched the lights of the ambulance die away as the van sped down the road. Who would have thought that one of their clubs could come to an end like this? What would this do to their friendship? Marlene shook her head as the red lights winked out when the ambulance dropped on the other side of the hill.
The Tuttle property was alive with policemen carrying flashlights, searching the periphery, shining their beams into the trees. A few officers checked under the front porch, others looked through the overgrown bushes that hugged the house.
A crowd of people had gathered across the street, waiting to see what all the excitement was about. Their faces seemed to come alive for an instant when the whirling police car lights illuminated them, only to dim when the lights faded away. Marlene wondered how many of them had been here on another night, fifteen years ago, watching.
She closed her eyes for an instant, wishing for just one second that her mother was here with her. And if not her mother, then someone…someone to wrap a pair of comforting arms around her, to tell her that everything was going to be okay. Someone to take over for her and free her from this terrible responsibility of worry.
Where was Roy? Where was Erin? Were they the reasons the police showed up when they did? Likely, very likely. Marlene had to admit to herself that Erin’s idea of getting help was probably the best thought any of them had had since they first stepped foot in the Tuttle house weeks before.
Marlene had always considered Erin to be an airhead, too pretty for much other than decoration. But Marlene was wrong about her friend. She hoped Erin was all right and that she was someplace safe.
Marlene’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a dark blue Crown Victoria. The car sped up to the house, siren blaring, blue light whirling on the dashboard, kicking up a fine spray of cinders. It slammed to a halt only a few feet from where Marlene stood.
A thin man, bordering on gaunt, emerge from the driver’s side of the car. Marlene recognized him as the chief of police, Alexander Nesbit. He had come to her school during the D.A.R.E. week last spring. He took off his tortoiseshell glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. Once he put his glasses back on, he surveyed the scene.
In the meantime, a man and woman appeared from the back seat of the car. The woman had red hair pulled into a bun. She seemed nervous and frail, as if at any moment she would collapse into sobs and tremors. The man next to her had dark, wavy hair, also wore glasses, and squeezed a cigarette burnt to the filter between his left forefinger and thumb. He looked as if he was imitating a man trying to be strong and not succeeding.
Marlene, in her dazed state, tried to figure out where she had seen these people before. They looked so familiar. Her question was answered quickly as a third person got out of the car.
Roy! She watched as his eyes wildly searched the yard and everything around it. His head whipped about as he looked.
“Is she here?” she heard him say, and Marlene’s heart sank.
He spotted her standing on the porch and rushed over. Marlene thought for a moment he was going to embrace her. When he got close enough to her, she could see clean streaks on his face, evidence of tears he had cried.
“Roy…” Marlene began.
“Is she here? Is Erin here?” He sounded winded.
“No, it was just us: David, Peter and me. David and Peter have gone—”
“Where’s Erin?”
Marlene said, “I don’t know, Roy. I thought she was with you.”
Roy gulped. His lower lip quivered, but he took a deep breath and held back the new batch o
f tears that were so obviously on their way. “She was with me, but she sprained her ankle, or broke it, I don’t know which. And I had to leave her to go get help.” He looked at Marlene, his eyes bright and shiny in the darkness. “I only meant to leave her for a few minutes. But when I came back, she was gone.”
“Well, maybe she found her way out—”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Roy shrieked. Several of the police officers turned to look. “She hurt her ankle! She probably broke it! How could she go anywhere?”
“Where did you say she was?”
“She was in the woods, right over there.” Roy pointed to the trees and undergrowth that made up the hillside behind him.
Marlene looked at the dark shapes of the trees. Then she looked to the policemen, all diligently searching the yard for Paul Tuttle. “He isn’t here,” she could have told them. “He’s in the woods…the very same woods where Erin is alone, now. Alone and with no way to run.”
She pulled strands of hair out of her eyes. What now?
What now?
CHAPTER 16
Erin Alone
If she could just make it a little farther….
Erin was safe now. She was sure of it. Earlier, she had heard the sirens and could just make out the lights of the patrol cars over the top of the hillside. The sounds and light brought the night alive, and Erin was very glad her ordeal was over. She only hoped her friends had gotten away with as little damage as she had.
But right now, that damage was causing her a lot of pain and making the progress of a snail look fast compared to the speed she was traveling. Her ankle had swollen and continued swelling as she waited for Roy to return. It had gotten larger than she would have imagined it ever could. She almost expected it to explode, the skin was so tight.