“Would you mind if I stopped over sometime next week? Maybe we can go to a movie, or dinner?”
I could tell he was a little embarrassed to ask, by the way he stared at his feet while talking, kicking at the gravel with his boot. It had been a long time since I had been on a date with anyone. I didn’t have the heart to tell him no outright, knowing if I said it, he might take it out on Chase the rest of the day. I would never hear the end of it.
“I’ll have to see what my schedule is like, but sure,” I lied.
The excuse was going to be easy; all I would have to do was tell him I was busy that night, and every night till he stopped asking. Eventually he would get my drift and move on.
He smiled back at me, elated I hadn’t turned him down. In his excitement, he nearly skipped back to the truck. I saw them pull away back down the small road, spraying gravel behind the row of houses. It had turned out to be an interesting day. As intrigued as I was about meeting my first Sayner, I was pretty sure I never wanted to meet another one again. Even though I came away unscathed, I worried what would happen if I ever met one without Chase or Derrick around. That look was still haunting me, and I needed a bath to wash it away. I was already looking forward to the quiet night alone.
2.
I could feel the tension melt away in the tub. Marinating in the hot water, I tried to forget about everything that had happened during the day; the sickeningly sweet couple, Derrick asking me out – but most of all, the Sayner. I had never been so petrified. The look on his face when he stared at me was a lasting memory.
I was relieved that it was over and I didn’t have to deal with it for the rest of the night. Tonight was my time. I could fall asleep in the tub if I wanted, immersed in the bubbles. With my eyes closed, I was so close to it, anyways.
I could hear the faint sound of “MMMBop” playing in the background. It took a moment to pull myself away from the edges of sleep, to figure out it wasn’t just in my head that I was hearing Hanson. It was my phone ringing, and Chase was calling. I couldn’t have chosen a more annoying song to remind me how I wanted to pull my hair out sometimes when I talked to him. He managed to pick the most inopportune time to disturb me, while I was steeping in the heat. He probably wanted to take another jab at my response to the Sayner earlier today. It really was the last thing I wanted to talk with him about. I was trying to relax, and there was no way I was going to be interrupted.
The phone fell silent after it ran through the chorus a couple of times. The voicemail could pick it up, and I’d deal with him tomorrow. I didn’t feel like rehashing the day’s events with him. I closed my eyes again, breathing in the steam from the lavender-scented water, trying to go back to my peaceful state. The chorus picked up again on the phone, blaring the voices of three little boys who hadn’t even hit puberty yet. I think one of them was still in diapers when they wrote the song. I knew that if Chase was going to insist on calling me over and over, I was going to have to answer – or at least get out and turn off the phone, preventing him from continuing his banter. My moment was ruined, and the phone was on its third cycle through. If I was getting out, I was going to make sure he knew how livid I was.
Quickly, I threw on a towel, trying to keep from slopping water all over the floor. The chill from the central air running on high throughout the house raised goosebumps on my skin. I wasn’t concerned about a nosey neighbor peeking in a window, considering I hadn’t opened them in years Most of the blinds were weather-worn from the sunlight, and I suspected they would fall apart if I made an attempt to open them now. I felt the water run down my legs as I made a dash across the worn carpet. I managed to grab the small phone with one wet hand on the fourth time through. I was going to have to change the ringtone after hearing it that many times.
I could hear Chase breathing heavily on the other line. I had heard this sound before when he had been in trouble, or had done something he was about to ask me to get him out of. I knew I was going to have to give up my night of solitude and tend to his mistake. Worst case, it would be getting him out of jail from a bar fight he managed to get involved in again.
“Emily! Oh, thank God you’re there! Oh my God, I don’t know what to do.” There was no hiding the panic in his voice.
“What did you do, Chase?” I was blasé in tone in comparison. I’d done this dance too many times.
“There is so much – Oh my God, it’s bad. I was drinking and he – and I – I’m so scared. You have to help me,” he said, his voice in hysterics.
“You need to slow down. I can’t understand you. Did you get into a fight? Were you arrested?”
I was waiting to find out which station I would need to pick him up from. From past experience, I knew that getting worked up over these things was pointless. Chase usually panicked enough for the both of us.
“No. No police. Please don’t call the police. I can’t go to jail. I can’t. My job. Oh God! I didn’t see him. It was an accident.”
“If it was an accident, you need to call the police; they can–”
“I hit the Sayner with my truck! He’s in really bad shape. I think he’s alive, but he won’t wake up. I can’t tell Derrick. I’ll lose my job. I can’t call the police, or they’ll arrest me for drinking and driving.”
I felt my jaw drop open in shock. Chase had gone beyond the usual brawl, and had dived into deeper waters than even I could tread. I had just spent the last hours trying to forget about my encounter with the Sayner, and now I was being pulled into a possible whirlwind of trouble over him. I had to think quickly and make sure Chase took care of this on his own. I wanted no part.
“What am I supposed to do? I’m not a doctor. If it’s that bad, you need to take him to a hospital. They can fix him up. I’m sure he won’t even tell them who you are.”
Before he could even say it, I knew that he was going to try to bring him here. Chase had always brought home wounded animals when we were kids, asking mom and me to fix them up. Sometimes it would be a bird with a broken wing, or a squirrel with part of its tail missing. On occasion, the house felt like a zoo, keeping so many wild animals in cages. Sometimes they made it, and we could set them free; other times, we had to explain to him they were just too far gone. He had never done well when we lost one, but it never stopped him from trying again and again. This was just another injured animal he wanted me to clean up and send on its way.
“They are not going to help him, and you know that,” he said. “All the hospitals around here are run by the Vesper. He has a better chance being left in the parking lot than there. I’m almost to the house, anyways. Please, just come out and tell me if you can do anything.”
I wanted to tell him to just leave him in the parking lot. Maybe some poor sap other than Chase would find him and do whatever needed to be done. There was a pleading in his voice, though, that I always had a hard time of turning down. The last thing I wanted was to keep telling him no. The second to last thing I wanted was a disgusting Copperback in my house. I knew that if he was almost here, there was no way to get him to take him somewhere else. If Chase had been drinking that much, it was a good idea for him to bring the Sayner here, anyway. It was better than him driving all around town at this time of night and getting pulled over –or worse. The cops could overlook a bit of alcohol, but they would never overlook a body in the bed of the truck, even if it was a Sayner. I could at least see how badly he was hurt. It was probably just a few scrapes, or a bump on his head that had knocked him out. Chase had a knack for over-exaggerating. I could clean him up and deposit him back on the Carter property before they even knew he was gone.
I gave in. “Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Thoughts of how this would play out ran through my head while I was dressing. Although earlier the Sayner had not shown that he would threaten me, I still had no trust for him. There were enough horror stories surrounding Sayners that went on killing sprees. People had been attacked when they least expected it because they thought they c
ould trust them. Chase was putting too much faith in thinking that this was a good idea.
I was willing to look, but there was no way he was to stay here past the length of time required. I didn’t want to end up on the 10 o’clock news as another murder victim.
By the time Chase got to the driveway, I had managed to at least track down shorts and a T-shirt, throwing together anything I could find at the last minute. As he started backing up, I noticed that, for his inebriated state, he was actually driving fairly well. He managed to narrowly miss the shrubs dividing our driveway from our neighbors – a task he had issues with even sober. He also was able to get the truck relatively close to my porch, although at one point, I had to throw my hands up to stop him from turning my Cavalier into a heap of metal under his pickup.
The humidity clung to my skin and started to make me sweat all over again. My hair was still soaked, but I didn’t have time to do anything with it except pull it out of the way into a ponytail. It was going to be a tangled mess in the morning. I hadn’t even turned on the porch light. There was no reason we had to alert the neighbors to our late night errand. It would be hard to explain to them what we were doing.
The Sayner was difficult to see, but there was enough light coming from the kitchen to catch a glimpse of the blanket-covered body in the back of the truck when Chase pulled the tail down. Maybe this creature had already died, and all this was for nothing. Chase hopped up into the back to pull back the blanket, checking for any sign of life.
“Is he breathing?” I asked. I crossed my arms, hoping Chase could see my disapproval.
“I think so, but he doesn’t sound good. I think we can roll him over and use the blanket to carry him in. I need your help. He’s a lot heavier than he looks.” He had already started to lay the blanket out to use as a stretcher.
“Wait. Where exactly do you think you are going to put him? There is no way I want his blood on anything.”
“He can go down in the basement. We can pull out the sleeper and put him there for now. You were going to toss it anyways.”
Actually, he was supposed to toss it. He had complained that I took up too much space in the living room with my “girly” things, and needed some privacy. I had always thought that was what his bedroom was for. The basement was full of junk that had been collecting over the years, but he managed to clear enough to make a small room for himself at the foot of the steps, complete with a sofa and TV. He had even gone to the trouble of erecting bare drywall – to partition it off from the damp laundry room, with its stacks of dusty boxes – and hanging a dim light from the ceiling. It had been a work in progress that he never finished, another project I had to clean up after.
Since he had moved out, the sleeper sofa was too heavy for me to move out to the curb, and he promised to get it out one day. It actually came in handy a few times, when he decided to crash over for the night, seeing as he took all his belongings to his apartment, including the bed. I never bothered to bug him about it. I figured I would one day, when I had decided to clean everything out down there. However, I wasn’t ready to sift through those memories boxed up in the dark just yet.
I hadn’t moved any closer to the truck to help him. I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest, just like earlier that day. Even though the Sayner wasn’t moving, I was still scared that he would jump up and attack the both of us in the moonless night. Chase could see I wasn’t going to help unless he gave me some kind of reassurance that it was safe.
“He’s passed out cold. If it makes you feel better, you can take his legs, and I’ll stay up by his head, in case he wakes up.”
Chase’s words weren’t the most comforting, but this was going to take longer if I just kept standing there. I pulled myself up into the back with them. The shadows covered most of the body, and I could only make out the silhouette. The two of us were able to flip him over onto the outstretched blanket and pull up the corners around him. Sliding him out of the back was the easy part, but Chase wasn’t joking about how heavy he was. We nearly dropped him out the back end on his head, a sure way to kill him. I considered letting it happen for a moment.
We dragged him across the concrete just to get him to the door. The already worn blanket tore along the bottom where it was scraping. The smell was nauseating, to say the least. I wasn’t sure if it was the blanket or the body that was putting out the odor. The blanket in his truck had been used for who knows what, and I was trying to banish the thought of what it may have come in contact with since it had last been cleaned.
I was surprised that Chase was even able to get him into the truck by himself. I could feel the sweat pouring down the sides of my face just from the weight. The heat of the night made it worse. Crossing the threshold, he slid well across the linoleum the few feet to the basement stairs. It was a bit tricky walking backwards down the staircase, holding my end of the bundle, but it was better than hitting his head on every other step if Chase were to have done it. Besides, there was no way I was taking his end.
Dumping him on the floor, I waited for Chase to pull out the bed, but was still too scared to pull back the tattered blanket. My imagination was running wild over what would happen if I did. It was best to leave that to Chase, once we got the body up.
On the count of three, we hoisted him up onto the bare sheets. The comforter and pillows had been stripped, and more than likely were residing at the apartment Chase occupied now.
The Sayner was too long for the bed, and his mud-encased boots hung off the end. There was a fire burning at my back and arms and legs from all the heavy lifting. I was sure Chase didn’t find it nearly as difficult, considering he lifted things this heavy almost every day. During the entire process, we were both quiet and focused on the task at hand. I had to break the silence, or I was going to worry myself to death. I was in no hurry to see what horrors lay beneath the blanket.
“How exactly did you hit him with your truck? Were you just not paying attention?”
“I don’t know.” The intoxication was beginning to show. “I was at the bar and had decided to leave early. I had gotten in and backed up and felt the truck hit something. When I got out and looked, he was lying on the ground. His face looked pretty bad, but I couldn’t see if anything else was wrong. I panicked. I don’t even know what he was doing out there that late. He should have shifted.”
He was right. I had never seen any Sayner be struck unless copper was involved. The shift was a defense mechanism they had that could allow them to dissipate to a sand-like state before taking a hit. Copper was the only weakness they had, and it would stop the shift in its tracks. It had been the reason they had avoided most of the gunshots in Sayner, Wisconsin. The copper-jacketed bullets were the only ones that made an impact, sticking to their victims and taking them down.
Chase was getting caught up again with his guilt. What with that and the beer, I knew he was going to break down at any minute. Right now, I couldn’t deal with it. Drunk or not, I needed him to be there with me. He was asking a lot, and I wasn’t going to do this alone.
“Well, let’s see what you brought me. I’m not making any promises, but it really can’t be that bad if you just backed up into him.” I was hoping I was right – not just for Chase’s sake, but my own.
I held my breath as he pulled away the blanket. It was worse than I could have imagined. I would have gasped, but I couldn’t inhale what I was already holding in. I could hear Chase make a gagging noise from the smell of blood and dirt mixed together, holding back anything his stomach wanted to expel. I had never seen anything so horrific in person.
He had been right. The Sayner’s face looked like it had taken the full force of the truck. The left side of his face had taken on the appearance of a purple sack of potatoes. His eye was a crescent, and almost lost in the swelling. The bruising ran up the left side of his cheek bone to a knot above his eyebrow. It was hard to see where the damage started and ended, since a gash from the knot had covered that side of his face with dar
k crimson blood. There were other minor cuts on his face that had bled freely across the bridge of his nose and both lips.
The right side didn’t look nearly as bad. His mouth was partway open, pulling in air, and I could see the blood that formed at the corners of his mouth and between each pearl tooth. It still didn’t look bad enough to die from, but looking at the rest of him, I could see why Chase should be concerned.
Patches of semi-dried blood clung to his shirt, probably from dripping off his face. There was a hole in the right side of his shirt, and I could see a gash running from his side and across his abdomen. What else was left of his shirt was tattered and soaked. Something metal in the wound reflected the light. Whatever it was, it was stopping the flow enough that he wasn’t laying in a pool of his own blood.
Moving down to his lower half, there wasn’t any blood, which was a good sign, but there was something else wrong. Though his right leg looked fine, his left foot was twisted awkwardly outward. I didn’t have to pull back his filthy pant leg to know it was broken.
“I don’t think you did this with your truck; I think someone might have beaten you to it,” I said, trying to make him feel better about this.
“Why do you think that? I hit him pretty hard.”
“I think some of his face may have been your fault, but I think he was ugly before that.”
I knew it was wrong to make jokes right now, but it was hard not to. It’s how I coped with any situation. It made dealing with a crisis easier. Chase wasn’t laughing. He was still in shock. I tried to explain it in as simple terms as possible. “There is something in his side. I think it might be copper. I don’t think anything on the back of your truck would break off, would it?”
He was still confused, but so was I. Something happened to him before Chase backed up into him. I don’t think it really mattered anymore who had done what. Chase was here now with the Sayner, and he felt responsible.
“You can still fix him up, right? We got him here. I still don’t want him to die.”
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