PillowFace

by Kristopher Rufty

  Carlee?

  “My God, is that you?” The shape ran around the car and into the flush of the headlights, revealing her to be who he’d suspected, and looking better than he could have predicted. Carlee. Though it was only last night, it felt like months since he’d seen her last. She kneeled in front of him, looking up into his eyes. He was tall for his age, but still not taller than her, so seeing Carlee below him, and where he could gaze down at her, was an incredible feeling. It almost made him forget that he probably looked like Michael Myers from the opening of the original Halloween.

  His clothes were stained with a blend of dirt and blood. His hair, matted with sweat, twisted and coiled about his head like a nest constructed by a bird blind in one eye. And he stunk. Reeked. An odor reminiscent of a sewer, or a leaking septic tank on a summer day.

  None of that seemed like it mattered to Carlee. If she’d noticed the aroma or his appearance, she hadn’t given it a second thought. Grabbing his arms, she wrenched him against her pleasing chest and hugged him. “What happened to you? Were you attacked? Did someone do this to you?”

  At first he resisted the urge to tell her what was going on.

  But, it didn’t last.

  He began unveiling the sinister tale through a muffled voice obscured between her breasts. She didn’t bother moving him, or adjusting, she only waited, listening. Surprisingly, he found it easy to confess his actions over the past few days to her. Of course he’d left out the parts where he’d fantasized about molesting the dead girl. He felt Carlee could do without that fact.

  When he’d finished coming clean, he felt sick, because in his mind it hadn’t seemed that bad, almost like a movie he’d cut together in his imagination with people he knew as the cast of characters. The monsters were supposed to be fake. Make believe. But hearing it aloud, and from his own voice, it had finally become extremely authentic.

  He couldn’t believe all he’d done. All he’d allowed Pillowface to do.

  And yet, considering all of that, he still couldn’t hate him for it.

  “Jonesey did this to you?”

  He nodded. When he’d told her the boss that she and Haley shared had been demanded to bring him to the house, she had seemed appalled, but not surprised. They agreed that he probably wasn’t involved with the others, but he wasn’t entirely innocent either. His role in all this was very confusing. When Joel confessed to killing him in self-defense, Carlee didn’t even blink an eye.

  “And, Haley’s with these people now, but we don’t know what they look like?”

  He nodded. It was impressive that she’d believed everything he’d said without the slightest hesitation. That was when he knew he truly loved her.

  “We should call the police,” she said.

  “No,” he said. His voice was raspy as if he’d been at a concert screaming all the lyrics. “If they see the cops coming they’ll kill her for sure. They’re holding out for me to get there before they do anything, and I don’t know what they’ve done with Pillowface, but he may not be able to stop them.”

  “Shit.” She looked at the black sky as if the answers were perhaps aligned amongst the stars. Joel wished they were. Then she brought her pitiful expression back to him. “We can’t go get her out of there. They’ll kill her and us at the drop of a hat. We’re totally fucked.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “What? Do you have a plan?”

  “Not really, but maybe we can come up with something together?”

  “We should really call the police. Maybe get them to meet us at the end of the road. They can infiltrate the house, raid it. Get her out of there.”

  “Right, and shoot everyone in the house.” Carlee looked distressed. She chewed at her lip as if it were gum. “I want to save Pillowface, too, and get him out of there and on his way before the cops show up.”

  “Even after what he did to Tonya? You still think he’s a good person?”

  Knowing that Carlee would find it hard to understand what he was about to say, he tried to quickly organize it in his head. “Something about him is a lot like me.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. I’m not saying I could do the things he’s done and I’m sure what I don’t know about is just as bad, if not worse. But, there’s a connection. I know he’s good at heart, but somewhere along the way, he lost it.”

  “And you think you’ve helped him find it?”

  “I think we’ve helped each other more than we both realize.”

  “Because you’re alike?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I accepted him, and he accepted me. No judgment, no discrimination. Just two people, two friends, trying to adapt to what the other person is.”

  She smiled. “You’re pretty slick, you know that? I always knew you were something special.”

  He blushed. A rush of heat ignited the back of his neck, and reddened his cheeks. He felt extremely proud of the fact he’d caused her to say that.

  Carlee was quiet a moment. Then she said, “Okay, if we do this, we have to construct a solid plan. It’s crucial that we stick to it, no matter what.”

  “I agree.”

  “All right. Let’s talk this out, quickly. Because, I doubt we have much time left.”

  He agreed with that, too, but had a strong feeling they were already too late.

  (II)

  The barbwire hurt, but not as bad as it should. Maybe she’d become so numb that she couldn’t feel it, or possibly she was already dead and could no longer feel pain. She guessed the real reason the barbwire didn’t poke her that bad was because Face had been the one to bind her wrists to the chair before disappearing to a corner of the room where it was hard to see him.

  Simple as that.

  He liked her. She could tell that even if he hadn’t confessed it, but so could everyone else, which was why they’d been so hateful to him. She also knew it was why they were going to torture her and Joel severely, just to prove a hellacious point to Face for coming here in the first place.

  Why had he come here? That was the million dollar question. She thought back to Joel’s erratic phone call the other day. He’d called her and told her about the maniac in the backyard, and she hadn’t believed him. If only she would have. He’d been asking her for help, but she had ignored him and told him to handle it, and this was how he’d handled it.

  It was all her fault. She should have taken him seriously. He’s a kid for christsake. He pulls shit like this all the time. She glanced around the room again. Yes, if she would have at least listened to what he had to say that morning there was a good chance that none of this would have happened.

  She tried to avoid looking at the broken glass where Alan was still lying, but couldn’t help herself. Gazing at his crumpled body, she felt as if her heart had been smashed with a hammer. His death was her fault too. She wasn’t even going to be optimistic about it. He was dead. There was no possibility he’d survived such a brutal throw.

  When Carp had returned with the bags, Buddy ordered Face to strap her down. She was glad it had been him; because he’d been so gentle with her, but she despised him most of all because of how much he’d tainted her brother’s innocence, and also because he’d been the one who’d killed Alan.

  If she got the chance, she would kill Face first.

  Buddy stepped out from the kitchen, running a wet hand through his hair. It looked as if he’d been running water in his hands and splashing his face. His camera sat on the end-table, the mask on top. He took them, walked to the center of the living room, and positioned the mask back on top of his head, the plastic face aimed at the ceiling. He twirled around. The camera was nestled under his arm, his hands out in front of him. With each hand he extended his thumb, but kept the four fingers tightly together. Then, matching up their poses to form a square, he held them straight out, squinting one eye as he observed the layout of the room through the small opening he’d made.

  My god, she thought, he’s setting up the shot.<
br />
  As if approving, he lifted his eyebrows and nodded. “Not too shabby. The room’s layout is perfect. Flat walls on each side, a good solid foundation in the middle, and plenty of room to work with.”

  He looked at Haley. She quickly glanced in the other direction, but knew he’d already caught her staring.

  “Were you wondering what I was doing with my hands just then?” He repeated the motion.

  “Not really,” she said.

  Ignoring her answer, he responded as if she’d invited him to explain. “See, these old cameras only film in 4x3, full frame. So, I have to frame up the angles like that just to make sure everything I want to shoot will fit on the screen. Make sense?”

  “Perfect,” she said, but couldn’t care less.

  Carp stuck his head into the room from the patio. “There’s some gas cans half full in their shed. Want me to take one of them next door and douse the place?”

  Buddy seemed to think on it a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, but don’t light it, if the neighbors see smoke before we’re gone it’ll be trouble.”

  “All right, you got it.”

  Then he was gone just as quickly as he’d arrived.

  Finally, Haley had to ask. “What do you plan on doing to us?”

  Buddy gazed at her from over his shoulder, his wicked grin prophetic to the madness behind it.

  “Why are you doing this to us? We didn’t do anything to you!” As pathetic and hopeless as she sounded, what she’d said was the truth. They hadn’t done a damn thing to them, yet here they were, enacting punishment as if they had.

  Buddy whipped around so quickly, Haley gasped. “Those are just hollow sentences girly, because you have done more to us than others. While we were overseas, fighting a pointless war over oil prices, you sat here, in this luscious house with air conditioning, three large meals a day, working a goddamn overpaying nine to five job while people that worked harder than you could ever imagine protecting you had to sleep in holes dug in the sand with the constant risk of being pricked by scorpions.

  “And while we’re killing ourselves for you; you sit here in this luxury complaining about how prices are going up on milk. Whining about how it’s a little hot and humid out today or my expensive car just doesn’t have the padded seats like I wanted.” Foamy spit fired from his mouth as he unloaded on her.

  Face somberly appeared from the shadows as if he was curious.

  “We marched through sandstorms with temperatures in the hundreds. Our padded seats were broken crates in the back of a Jeep. We had no cereal and hardly any milk to complain about. Just dehydrated meat, old bread, and nearly boiling water to drink.”

  “I’m sorry…okay? I knew it was bad over there, but…I had no idea….”

  Buddy stopped her right there. “Bad over there?” He laughed as if revolted. “You didn’t just honestly say it was bad over there.”

  She had, but now wished she’d kept her fucking mouth shut.

  He looked at Face. “Did you hear that?”

  Pillowface nodded once, folding his arms over his chest, across his torn open shirt.

  “She said it was bad over there.” Buddy nearly collapsed with insane laughter. It stopped abruptly, his mood returning to the frenzied state it had been. “I was promised I’d be a big hero to my country if I went over there. Hell, we were all promised that.” Face nodded again. “Those promises were shit, just words.” His voice allayed, becoming a husky whisper. “Lucky for me, I was a filmmaker, so I got to experience the true horrors of war through the lens of a camera. Which made it like make believe, surreal.” He smiled. “Safe. But, now that we’re back at home, there are no more empty promises, no more fairy tales.”

  “Wuh-what are you talking about?” she asked.

  Motioning to himself, then to Face, he said, “A world where normal people are trained to execute men, women, and children on sight, at the drop of a hat.” His voice was rising again, “And we’re not supposed to feel a goddamn thing about it, because we’re told to leave our conscience at the door, to stifle all human emotions and feelings.” He laughed. “And we did. We were damn good at it, too. Then when we had to come home, our new president flashed his money around and gave us a pay-off to walk away. We took it, but were sickened with ourselves for doing so. Now we have our own ways of making people see, making them understand.”

  He took a deep breath. “This is no longer your America, this is a holocaust.” He walked to her chair, leaned over, and put his face directly in hers. “A killer they made me…a killer I shall be.”

  She held his stare, not daring to look away. She was too afraid of what would happen next. He’d been on the border of a massive collapse into violence for the last several minutes. This close to his eyes, she could see the abandonment on the other side of them. A pure hatred boiled inside of him so severely that she could feel its heat through her clothes.

  He was forsaken.

  And, he had others that agreed with his program. She didn’t know how many members of this cult there were, but she didn’t doubt for a second that Buddy couldn’t find more who suffered from the same illness as he did. The inability to shut it off. She’d heard about this sort of thing before. Shell-shock. Kill-mode. Becoming so entrapped they didn’t know how to find their way back to normalcy. She couldn’t help feeling a tinge of pity for them.

  But when she looked at her wrists, pricked and bleeding from the barbwire, and knowing they’d set her up as their next victim, that pity quickly took a hike.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  (I)

  Carlee let Joel out of the car in front of Tonya’s house.

  “Wait,” she said, rolling down the window.

  He walked back, leaning into the car through the window. He held the shovel away from the car to avoid scratching its paint. He was suddenly just inches from her lovely face.

  “Take this.” She leaned over, lined her lips with his, and kissed him. Joel tensed up. She ran her hand along the back of his head, and through his hair. His skin lit up with gooseflesh. Then she slowly pulled away. “Good luck.”

  Nodding, he groaned some kind of response.

  She smiled. “You really are something, I hope you know that and never forget it.”

  “So…So are you.”

  It was her turn to blush. “Thank you. I know you mean it, too.”

  He did, with all his heart.

  Able to speak rationally, he added, “Be careful.”

  “I will. You too.”

  For the first time since its conception, Joel felt that their plan wasn’t going to work. He wanted to put an end to it, to tell Carlee she was right in wanting to call the police, but she had already driven away by the time his tongue could pronounce the words. He watched her taillights flash red, then disappear around a pine tree as the car turned onto the driveway.

  Too late now.

  He had to go through with his part. He stood on the road another moment before he could will himself to move. He ran alongside the fence, around the back of Tonya’s yard, and circled around to his own. From there, he listened. He heard the faint thump of Carlee’s car door shutting. Unease flapped in his stomach.

  Gotta do this. Can’t be a pussy. I need to be a man for Haley and for Carlee.

  He bolted across the yard to the side door of the basement. He was inside quickly and silently, being careful not to let the tongue on the door click as he eased it shut. He didn’t slow down his pace until reaching Pillowface’s sleeping area. All looked fine. The deflated mattress was where it should be. In fact, nothing looked out of place except for the man who should be down there.

  Joel had expected as much.

  Leaning the shovel against the wall, he wished he could hold on to it. He’d bonded with it, and it had helped save his life. But, the shovel was much too big to take with him, so he had to leave it behind.

  He looked around. Spotting the chainsaw on the floor, he decided against taking it for the same reason as the shovel. They we
re too heavy to carry up the side of the house. But the machete would do fine. A feeble grin formed on his face as he searched for it. After a minute of quick hunting, he gave up on trying to find it. Then he spotted the weapon Pillowface had devised while spending his time in the basement. It sat on an old rag and now had the handsaw blade attached to the back support.

  What is this thing?

  He didn’t have time to ponder its possibilities. He ran over to it, snatched it up, and checked the density of the blade. It was sturdy, but thin enough that he should be able to use it.

  Then Joel backtracked out of the basement, circling around to the other side of the house. He looked up at Haley’s window. A part of him expected to find the window had been boarded up like in Night of the Living Dead, but it was still as he’d left it. Earlier, he’d been terrified over the broken screen, and now he was thankful. It was his way in; otherwise, he’d have been out of luck.

  He checked the saw, again. It should be able to slide under the window so he could pry it open. He hoped so. He’d only have one hand to do it with since the other would be holding him up and keeping him from falling.

  He took a deep breath, draped the looped strap over his shoulder, and began climbing up the gutter.

  (II)

  Buddy ducked down as if under fire from the sudden chimes. His wide eyes became even wider, but this time, there was fear in them.

  “What was that?”

  “The doorbell,” said Haley matter-of-factly.

  “Shut the fuck up. I’ll be getting to you in a second.”

  “I can hardly wait,” she muttered.

  Ignoring her, Buddy looked at Face. “Do you think Carp would pull some shit and ring the doorbell?”

  Face shrugged.

  “Me neither.” He turned back to Haley. “Who are you expecting, girl?”

  She could probably guess who it was. Instead of informing Buddy of this, she only mimicked Face’s response and shrugged.