I swung the ax.
With an explosive clang, the two weapons collided in mid air, accompanied by angry screams and cracking handles. Then, either because the ax was heavier, or because of what I knew couldn’t possibly be in the hall with us, Skinny Man fell backwards and toppled down the stairs, the shovel arcing through the air with him. My momentum carried me forward and I fell down on top of him, losing the ax as I tumbled.
Still holding the knife, I rolled past him and into the wall at the bottom, spilling into the living room like dirty laundry. Pain erupted throughout my back, my vision blurred. My shoulders seemed to swell up before my eyes, and I was pretty sure my spine was sticking out the top of my head. The dog bite on my shin was gushing like a geyser. I looked up and found Skinny Man lying on the stairs, upside down, with his leg caught in the railing. Above him, the ax peeked out over the top stair, out of my reach. He swung the shovel at me but he was a couple feet too far away to hit me. I braced myself for it to come flying at me next, but he held on to it instead. Watching him watching me, I noticed one of the railing spokes had stabbed through his calf muscle, pinning him there like a fish on a hook.
He yelled, “You are in a heap of shit now. Only people who leave here are the ones marked paid in full, and I don’t see a receipt on your toe, now do I?”
And with that he punched through the spoke and broke it off from the railing. Standing up with the thin piece of wood impaling him, he reached down and took hold of the shortest end and proceeded to pull it all the way through and out the other side of his leg, grinning the whole while. Once the spoke was out, blood began to pool on the stairs and run down toward me. He took a step and winced, sweat flowing from his brow, and his face twisted in surprise. I guess he didn’t think his little trick would hurt that much, but from the way he was breathing through his clenched teeth, and the way he was now afraid to walk, he had obviously misjudged his own threshold for pain. Still, I was in no shape to make for the ax above him so I turned and limped toward the front door.
“Where you going, mama’s boy? You still have to atone for your crime. Hey, Butch!”
A loud bark came from behind me and I spun with my fists raised and ready. Butch came charging through the living room like a runaway train and slammed me into the door. Sharp teeth bit down on my hip and sank into my flesh, thrusting me into the door repeatedly. In excruciating pain, I wrapped my arm around his head and tried to shove the knife in his throat.
From the stairs, Skinny Man yelled, “No! Don’t you hurt him! I’ll kill you!”
But Butch was thrashing, and the knife missed its target and sank into his shoulder instead. With a yelp he burst back into the kitchen and disappeared, the knife still protruding from his body. My hip was filled with red hot gravel. Blood was seeping down my groin. Realizing I had to get out now, I reached up to undo the latch on the front door. From behind me I heard the Frankenstein clomp of Skinny Man shuffling down the steps, and a second later a shovel swooped over my head and took a chunk out of the lintel. I grabbed the handle before he could pull it back and wrenched it from his hands, swung it back at him with all my might. But I was hurt and beyond fatigued, and I misjudged the swing and hit the banister instead. The reverberation sent a shock wave up my arm and I dropped it on the floor. In an instant Skinny Man was on top of me.
“I’m gonna cut you up nice and fine,” he whispered in my ear as we struggled. I saw him go for the ax on his belt. “Hell, I didn’t ask you to come here, you did that on yer own. So many people always trying to come through my property, hike through my hills, drive through my woods. Nobody ever learns, do they?”
My shoulders felt like cornmeal and my punches had little effect. Getting a thumb up to his eye, I jabbed it in but it was a weak attempt. He pulled his head away and put me in a headlock and squeezed, still trying to undo the ax. Spots jumped before me; I was losing my breath. In a way, it felt good, like I would soon be asleep and in a better place. Again, I could see random images before me, the ever-present image of California that had lodged into my subconscious, a quick flash of Jamie when she was younger, holding her teddy bear, my father yelling at me for watching too many horror films. Then I saw another vision: Tooth, standing in the corner of the room. He was saying something to me. “Go for the leg, he’s hurt in the leg.”
Kicking back, I hit the gaping wound on Skinny Man’s calf, rubbed the heel of my shoe down it and ripped it open wider. At the same time I scratched at his face and tore open the flesh under his eye. He lost his grip on me and I dropped straight to the floor, out of his hands. Groggy and gasping for breath, I lifted myself up as quickly as I could manage and kicked him in the chest, sent him into the bottom stair, which he tripped backwards on. Before he even hit the ground, he was pulling the hand ax free from its loop.
Knowing I was outnumbered two to one at that point, I unfastened the latch on the door and threw myself into the sunlight. I burst through the overgrown front lawn and made for the trees across the street.
CHAPTER 24
I was halfway across the lawn when I looked back and saw Skinny Man coming at me with the hand ax. With the wound in my leg I wasn’t able to run as fast as I needed to and he was gaining on me, either used to the pain in his leg or so afraid of what would happen if I got away he didn’t care. By the time I reached the street he was nearly on top of me, swinging the bloodstained blade at my head. I fell to the cement and rolled out of the way, rolling myself back onto my feet and swinging my fists at him. Again, he tried to play whack-a-mole with my brain, but I managed to get my arms up under his and deflect the blow, our forearms smashing into each other. I kicked at him and he jumped back, putting his weight on his bad leg, which stopped him for a second.
“Stop that crying,” he told me. “If you’re going to act like some fucking superhero least you could do is play the part.”
I hadn’t even realized I was crying; I was too intent on not dying to notice what was going on physically. But as soon as he said it I realized my face was awash in tears. My body was shaking and my legs felt deflated. In front of me, the shirtless, bloodied madman was smiling like he’d released the frightened child inside of me.
Frightened yes, child no.
“Where you gonna go?” he asked. “Nowhere you can run I can’t find you. Butch is a good tracker; he’ll find you in a heartbeat. Best if you just came back over here and took your medicine like a man. In case you forgot, I know where you live, mama’s boy.”
I had forgotten that he still had my driver’s license, that he knew where I lived. Could I make it to Bobtail before he drove to my parent’s house and killed them? Or would he pack up and disappear for a long time, only to resurface ten years from now on my front porch, his little ax in his belt, a new pair of dogs at his heels?
It was driving me mad. He had all his angles covered, knew all the ways to defeat his victim even when he wasn’t around.
“You gonna kill my family like you killed yours!” I screamed.
He stayed back and replied, “Wasn’t me, mama’s boy, I just follow directions, and besides, they were bad. Always snooping in my stuff, nosing around where they shouldn’t be, trying to steal things. That little bitch was trying to steal my soul, sell it to the highest bidder. Kids are the devil’s minions, ya know. But she learned right from wrong when I dragged her behind my truck till her face came off. Yeah, she knew not to do bad things then, with her eyes smeared on the road.”
“You’re fucking crazy!’
“Get back here! Don’t make me drive and pick up yer mama, ’cause I will. I’ll fuck her rotten on top of yer corpse. I’ll fuck her with yer severed limbs. You want that? Either one works for me, as long as somebody is keeping them happy.”
Again with the them and they talk, psychotic babble that would land him in an institution instead of the electric chair. Somewhere deep down I knew that I could never live with that. I couldn’t let him go free, not now, not ever. Murder was the only option. I knew that. In a wa
y I’d known it since waking up in the cellar; I’d been kidding myself it would never come to it. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore, I knew something was owed to Tooth and Jamie. . and myself, too.
As I reached the trees across the street, Skinny Man followed with the ax at the ready. Behind him loomed his house where I could only guess how many hikers and travelers had met their untimely ends in ungodly painful ways. It was almost as if I could look through the walls and see the ghosts of the unfortunate, Jamie’s dismembered torso on the ground in the dark, the empty chains where Tooth had suffered unthinkable pain.
“What’s it gonna be, superhero?”
Suddenly, I stopped. With an early afternoon breeze kissing my blood-streaked, tear-covered face, I watched him come at me a little slower, as if he was wondering what my plan was. There was no plan though, just that I knew I had to kill him. I knew once and for all I couldn’t just run away; I had to seize the opportunity that had been given to me. Given to me by the dice, given to me by years of reading comics, given to me by something higher than my understanding allowed. Given to me by what I had seen in the hallway upstairs.
Do it now, I told myself. Do it while he thinks you’re too weak and scared to attack. For Tooth, for Jamie. Don’t think about it, just do it. Do it for what he took from you, from this world.
And so I did.
From every ounce of my being, hatred welled up like an angry sea, and I rushed him head on. I heard myself scream, “NOOOOO!” but it sounded very far away. Remembering my trick on the boy at the liquor store, I pulled out the gun from my waistband as I charged, and tossed it to him. Reflexively, he went to catch it. But before he could our bodies collided and flew to the ground and I cracked my forehead into his nose, felt his blood erupt into my eyes.
Without thinking, my hand went to the ax he was swinging and stopped its descent toward my neck. My other fist pounded his eyes, pounded his mouth, pounded his broken nose. His punches landed square on my face, though I barely took notice of them. In the melee, my teeth sank into his neck and tore out a chunk of flesh which I spit back into his face. Blinded and choking on his own blood, he flailed like an overturned beetle in a puddle, punching me and trying to get the ax free of my grip, trying to reach with his other hand for the gun which had slid to the curb. Another headbutt dazed him and I wrenched the ax free from his hand. He put both arms over his head to protect himself, and I saw that he was no longer laughing-he was terrified.
Our roles had reversed.
I got off of him and took a step back and just watched him for a few seconds. He took his hands away from his face and looked up at me, the gaping wound in his neck wet and wide like a second mouth.
“What are you gonna do, boy?” he said as blood bubbled out from the hole near his Adam’s apple. He forced a smile I knew was wreaking havoc with his nose, the same stupid grin he sported in the photo upstairs. Upstairs where something else had been with us. “You gonna kill me, here, in the middle of the road?”
I looked around at the surrounding forests. The odds of anyone coming through here were slim. People were already at work, summer school buses had come and gone. We were alone.
“You fucking mama’s boy. You fucking loser. What do you think you can do to me?”
I didn’t even care enough to listen to him; I just kept seeing Tooth and Jamie lying in pools of blood. Those images would be with me forever, ruining my life until the day I died. Would I ever sleep again? Would I ever be happy? No matter what happened in the next few seconds, I would never be the same. I knew I was about to go somewhere I had never dreamed possible. All because of this man, and his sickness, his twisted insanity that had turned me inside out.
Let’s go to California.
Tooth’s one and only goal in life: to get away from the shitty hand he’d been dealt and start fresh. Now he wasn’t in California; he was in a shallow grave in some lunatic’s backyard. I had to do this for him.
“Look at you, crying like a pansy. Shit, you can’t hurt me, you’re coming back to my place whether you like it or not.”
True, I was still crying, but it wasn’t out of fear anymore-it was for what I had lost, what I would never regain. What I had been made into, like so many comic book heroes I had hung on my walls growing up. I was crying because I was now a monster.
Roger Huntington was dead.
With tears dripping into my bleeding lips, I reached into my pockets and pulled out the dice that Skinny Man had been so fond of.
“We gonna play a game? That’s good, I like games,” he said.
I held them in my hand, two red dice that seemed at home in the smears of blood in my palm. Skinny Man was on his feet now, one hand over the hole in his neck, the other a fist by his side. He turned and saw the gun he’d been reaching for and began to hobble over to it. It was empty, but I didn’t care. I squeezed the dice against the ax handle and cleared my mind of anything and everything. Except California-I would go there one way or another.
I limped over to Skinny Man and waited while he bent down to pick up the gun. With a triumphant, “Ah,” he grabbed it, spun around and pointed it at me. And that’s when I swung the ax.
With a crunch, it wedged into the right side of his face, splitting open his cheek, lodging in his jawbone and exploding his teeth out toward the lawn. The thick blade locked his upper and lower jaws together so that the gurgle of surprise came straight from his throat. Both his body and the gun fell to the ground, bounced on the cement. I put my foot on his face and yanked out the ax, which came loose with a squeak. A fountain of blood spit up around the white, exposed bone. He reached up for me, but I grabbed his hand, placed it on the road, and swung the ax at it. The blade went straight through with one clean cut. I tossed the hand out toward the middle of the road. The only sounds he seemed able to make were grunts and blood-filled coughs. I grabbed his other hand and swung the ax down on it, taking it off in two chops. He was looking at me with more fear than I had ever seen a man convey before, and I wanted to end him right there, but I owed something to Tooth and Jamie. So I swung the ax at his bare chest and it sank into his breastplate with a thud. His body lurched, and he tried to grab me but his stumps couldn’t get a hold. I pulled the ax out and watched blood ooze from the fissure in the bestiality tattoo covering his chest
“You did this!” I screamed. “Why! Why did you do this!” I was crying so hard it was like looking through saran wrap.
Something over my shoulder caught his attention, and I spun around as a brown station wagon drove down the street. It came at us slowly, as if it was concerned about hitting us. Maybe it thought we were a couple kids wrestling or something. But then I saw recognition in the driver’s eyes, a small old lady with pearl white hair. She slammed on the gas and sped away.
I looked around me and saw the forest and the street, but at the same time I was having those flashes of California-the beach, the palm trees, so free, so warm, beckoning for me to stay, to never go back to New Hampshire. But I wasn’t finished.
Skinny Man sat up waving his arms like two snakes, his half-butchered head tilted to the side. My tears were stinging my eyes now, I could hear myself crying. I swung the ax again, swung it into his shoulder and began to take his arm off of his body. I had to pull it out and repeat it several times before I got through the bone, before the arm actually came off, after which I tossed it out into the street near the hands. His eyes glazed over and I knew he was near death, so I swung the ax at his head and sank it into his forehead over his right eye. The skull split wide open, the eye fell out. He fell back to the ground with the ax still protruding. His legs kicked a little, and he blinked at me with his left eye while his mouth tried to form words. I dropped the dice onto his chest and screamed. At first no sound came out, as if I’d forgotten how to use vocal cords. Then, in one giant rush of air, my scream erupted into the heavens above. I screamed so loud it hurt my own ears. I screamed until my muscles burned with exertion. I screamed with everything I had in me, purging m
yself of every ounce of sanity. I screamed for so long I tasted blood. I was still screaming, my head thrown toward God, when the police car pulled to a stop several feet down the road.
CHAPTER 25
“Get on the ground right now!”
I kept screaming, my tears dripping on the cement like rain. The cop was ducked behind his car door, arms outstretched, with his gun aimed at me. He clicked the radio receiver on his shoulder and spoke quickly, “Officer needs assistance, now! I’ve got a ten-fifty. . uh. . a ten-thirty-seven. . fuck, I don’t know what I got! Somebody just get to Highridge Way right now!”
“Teddy? That you?” came a static-laden reply. “Hold on, I’m on my way.”
“I said lay down, motherfucker!” he yelled, turning his attention back to me. “Don’t make me fucking shoot you. Get on the ground and kiss the fucking dirt or I will empty your brains onto the road. NOW!”
He could have started firing for all I cared. I was somewhere else. I was in California eating ice cream and drawing superheroes.
Again he called over his radio. “I need an ambulance out here right now. And somebody tell the chief.” Slowly, he came around the door with his gun still trained on my head. Probably he wanted to shoot me, get a medal for his bravery, win a trip to the capital to meet the governor. “Stop fucking screaming and lay down, I will not tell you again!”
Did he really think I was listening to him? Hell, did I even care if he shot me at this point? Yeah, I guess I did. Truth was, part of me was just tired, both physically and mentally, to the point I’d been seeing things for a while, but the other part of me knew that Tooth and Jamie would want me to live. I didn’t want to die; I was just too messed up to do anything about it.
The Summer I Died Page 17