Take Your Turn, Teddy

by Take Your Turn, Teddy (epub)

  They drove on Interstate 25 for about thirty more minutes before reaching the little township he had left just a couple of weeks ago. In just that short time, the place had grown to feel less like home. Instead, it was something Strode wanted to avoid, like whiskey, the first alcoholic drink he had ever gotten drunk on.

  Just the thought of it made his stomach turn.

  The car rolled down a gravel road, and bits of rock chewed into the cracks of the tires. Strode took inventory of the familiarities, like the rusty train cars and rows of trees, and thanks to Abraham’s Abattoir, the smell of fresh blood. The copper smell followed them past the Abrahams’ house and to the driveway of the Starling house.

  Finch leaned forward, looking up at the house as the legend it was. Her eyes were wide, and maybe even a little afraid.

  She turned to Strode, “One step at a time.”

  Strode nodded. He could do this. He had to do this.

  Burklow decided to stay in his car in case Teddy came out running.

  Finch and Strode walked up the drive. Strode could feel the house watching him. It had sat alone, empty for over a year, and Strode thought it seemed to say, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Finch nearly lost her foot to one of the front porch’s gaping holes. Strode steadied her, and she was quick to smooth her hair back.

  Strode reached for the door handle, feeling as ready as he’d ever been. The doorknob barely turned.

  “It’s locked,” Finch said. “How can we get inside?”

  Finch began looking around the porch for a hiding spot for a spare key.

  Strode wasted no time, and with three hard kicks, the rickety front door fell to the living room floor. The mouth of the Starling house opened wide.

  “Jesus, Strode. What the hell are you doing? We can’t just break in.”

  Strode stepped inside and waved Finch aside. “We didn’t. I did. They’ll expect nothing less from the nut case cop.”

  Strode laughed while Finch looked at him with unease.

  Finch pulled her gun from her belt as Strode did the same. Finch pointed for Strode to take the kitchen and the back porch while she took the stairs.

  “Together,” Strode said.

  Finch nodded and followed Strode’s lead. He crept through the living room and saw that the record player’s needle was still sitting atop a vinyl record. The needle hung at the inside of the disc. When Strode came through after the Blackwoods’ deaths, it played “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”

  Only the Sgt. Pepper’s album was not the record loaded.

  It was Elton John.

  Strode fell to his knees and flipped through the music collection.

  “It’s not here. Why isn’t it here?”

  Finch crouched beside Strode. “What?”

  Strode tossed records aside. “The Beatles album. Sgt. Peppers. That album was on the last time I was here. Someone changed it. And the Sgt. Pepper’s album is gone.”

  “Teddy?” Finch asked.

  Strode nodded. “It had to have been. We might have already missed him.”

  Finch and Strode walked together, guns ready, and went up the stairs. Sneaking around was pointless. Strode had kicked the front door down and made a loud fuss over the records. Now, they had to stay together to have each other’s backs.

  The stairs creaked the whole way up. Strode stared into the office and imagined Mr. Warren giving his warning message right before he slit his own throat.

  Strode believed now that whatever had a hold on Teddy had a tight grip on Mr. Warren too. The room was empty.

  Next, Strode went for the room he knew was Teddy’s. Tally marks and a wall-splitting message that read “Hello” made the room feel even more harrowing this time around.

  “Was he talking to it all this time?” Finch asked.

  Strode nodded. “I think so.”

  They checked the other rooms, and they were clear.

  “I don’t understand,” Strode said. “Why isn’t he here?”

  Finch looked at the peeling, the cracks in the walls, and said, “I don’t think Teddy liked it here. Or even if he was starting to, I don’t think he did in the end. So, if he came back here, it was for something specific. It has to be more than the record.”

  Strode remembered the neighbor asking to keep him posted on Teddy because his daughter was his friend.

  The Abrahams.

  “We have to go to the Abrahams’ house.”

  Strode hurried past Finch and out the front door.

  Burklow cranked his window down and poked his head out. “Anything?”

  “Nothing,” Strode said. “We need to go to the Abrahams’ house.”

  Burklow nodded. “Okay. Where’s that?”

  Strode pointed through the trees. “It’s the house just before this one.”

  “There wasn’t a car in the drive,” Finch said.

  Strode tried to think fast. Where could Teddy be going?

  “There’s one more place we can look—the abattoir at the end of the road. The Abrahams own it.”

  Strode stared down the Starling house as he backed out of the drive and said, “I hope you sit here all alone and rot away to hell.”

  5

  Abraham’s Abattoir sat amongst the grim, grey clouds with the tall rows of corn behind it. Some of the leaves were bright and alive, while the others seemed just a step away from death’s icy grasp.

  Strode felt somewhere in between the two.

  The copper smell of blood was unmistakable, and the sound of squealing pigs sent a chill down Strode’s spine. He could see the dread on Finch’s and Burklow’s faces. Finch was anxious but focused. Burklow was outright sweaty and pale like he was going to be sick.

  Deciding he was the leader on this mission, Strode straightened up, shook off his own angst, and said, “One step at a time, guys.”

  Giving advice felt foreign to Strode, but he tried to look and sound as confident as possible. But as he stared up at the big aluminum center of animalistic gore, Strode realized he hadn’t been to Abraham’s since the night of the Warrens’ deaths. Strode remembered how afraid he was to be alone at the abattoir that night. Like a child, he envisioned the cornstalks curving into hands, ready to catch whoever came running by. Everything was evil at night. Strode thought he’d spend that entire night praying some dipshit teens didn’t make him go running into the cornfield.

  The bloodied massacre that called him away turned out to be far worse. That was a haunting that had followed him ever since, a haunting he knew would always plague him.

  Strode studied the metal can of a building and tried to remember where the door was. An officer ahead of him made him walk the grounds before he staked it out that fateful evening over a year ago.

  Off to the left there was a matching metal door that had a small window cut out. Strode cupped his hands around the glass and peeked inside.

  “Okay,” Strode said. “This is it.”

  Just as Strode reached for the door handle, it eased itself open. It didn’t screech like the old doors in the Starling house. It was more like a hollow whine. The metal, he supposed, was the cause of that. Everything was old and weak in the Starling house, but things were sturdy and already bloodied in the abattoir. An image that seemed to say, “Others have dared and failed, and you will too.”

  Uncertain of where Mr. Abraham was, Strode decided to stay quiet in case they could get the jump on Teddy. Strode put a finger to his lips, instructing the others to do the same. Both officers nodded and pulled their guns from their belts.

  The three of them crept through the abattoir, with the potent smell of blood intensifying with each step. The cement floor hummed below as the grinder churned through thick muscles and fat. In the distance, there was a ripping noise. It was the same kind of sound that came when he bit into Maggie’s glazed chicken wings. It was meat tearing from the bones.<
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  The walls were a dull grey but had a yellow tint to them. It was like something dark had splattered them, and the cleaner could only lift so much. That’s how Strode’s mind worked; even on his good days, the stains of trauma entombed him.

  The three officers passed what looked like Mr. Abraham’s office. It was an ill-lit closet space with a single chair and square desk. There were papers scattered across the desk and the floor, and he had left several filing cabinets ajar. Above the desk was a picture of a woman with long white-blonde hair that framed her face in loose waves. In her arms, she held a baby wrapped tightly in a polka-dotted blanket.

  Burklow came behind Strode and said, “That’s a sweet picture.”

  Strode nodded, “I think her name was Lynn.”

  Strode stopped himself, with the help of a fierce look from Finch, from saying she had died.

  Either way, Burklow seemed to have caught the was in Strode’s sentence, and he turned out of the office without the others.

  Guilt didn’t linger. It sank its teeth right into Strode.

  Before Strode had a chance to try to reason with it, he heard the switch-click of a cocked gun.

  “Fuck,” Burklow said.

  Strode’s eyes met Finch’s, and he took a hand and lowered it, telling her to hide. For the first time in the hundreds of hours they had worked together, Finch followed Strode’s order, which meant she too thought it was the right call.

  Strode stepped out, his gun still pointed. The dark hall only allowed a spotlight of light, and into that light stepped a man holding a gun with Burklow just at the other end of it.

  Burklow was calm. Strode thought Burklow appeared more rattled by his mentioning the dead wife than the firing end of a loaded gun in his face.

  Strode knew the man. He was John Abraham.

  Strode held his gun in one hand, and with the other he tried to steady Mr. Abraham.

  “Take it easy, John.”

  Mr. Abraham held his eyes on Burklow. The end of the dark steel barrel was only centimeters from the Three Oaks officer’s sweaty, wrinkled forehead.

  “John, it’s me, Officer Strode.”

  The man didn’t budge. Strode could see the sweat around his eyes, and worse, the desperation in them. Whatever he was doing, Strode knew he had good reasons, to him at least, to see it through.

  “Drop your gun,” Mr. Abraham ordered.

  Strode only hesitated for a moment, and then he let his gun fall to the floor.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Mr. Abraham said. “We’re going to the next room over.”

  Mr. Abraham sighed but held his focus. “If we do this the easy way, only one of you has to die slowly. The other, we can make it quick.”

  “We?” Strode asked.

  The man turned the gun on Strode.

  “Come stand beside him. I’ll get behind the two of you and tell you where to go. If either of you steps out of line, I’ll shoot.”

  Strode wasn’t sure Mr. Abraham had it in him. He never knew him well, but everyone else in town did. He was the town’s handyman, and he befriended each family that came to the Starling house.

  In Strode’s hesitation, Mr. Abraham pressed the gun to Burklow’s head. “I will shoot him. I will do it.”

  Mr. Abraham’s voice was frantic. Even when he was trying to be authoritative, Strode could hear his fear. He did as the man said.

  “Good,” Mr. Abraham said. “Now, we’re going to go back to the main room where you came in. On the far right, there’s another hall.”

  The men trudged through the abattoir, and Strode’s stomach turned at the smell of the blood. It worsened the longer they were there. The most disturbing part was that he couldn’t tell exactly where the smell was coming from, because it was everywhere in the abattoir.

  The sounds of rotating gears worked against Strode and worsened the hammering in his heart. Focus. Focus. Strode looked for a way out, but he was in the dark.

  Just as Mr. Abraham said, on the far right was another hall. Down it was a series of grisly stalls with butchered carcasses. The bright colors of the flesh and the wetness of the blood told Strode that someone had caught Mr. Abraham in the middle of his work.

  Strode knew Teddy was there. Where else would a killer take comfort than in a place of slaughter?

  Toward the end of the hall was an empty stall. Mr. Abraham put the gun to Burklow’s back and shoved him in.

  Across from Strode was another. “You, in that one,” Mr. Abraham said to Strode.

  Strode obeyed, eyeing the drain at the center of his enclosure with a dark rim circling it.

  Mr. Abraham stood between Burklow and Strode, waiting. After a moment, Mr. Abraham closed his eyes, and with sheer terror and a heavy tremble in his voice, said, “Which one do you want?”

  Strode stood in the pin and could see over the ledge and to the way they came.

  Already blood-soaked from god knows what was Teddy Blackwood. Beside him was a dark figure, far taller than Teddy. Its eyes gleamed in hunger, and Strode noticed the bright whiteness of them had shifted to a slightly yellowish hue.

  “I’ve done my part. Everything you need is here, the drain, the saws,” Mr. Abraham said.

  Strode noted the long, jagged-edged teeth of a saw on the other side of Burklow’s stall.

  “Now, please. Don’t make me watch.”

  Teddy smiled. “You know, sometimes, when we have an audience, the meal is even more fulfilling. It’s like the victim’s fear soaks up all the fear around them, and it cooks with their own.”

  Teddy wasn’t even armed. Strode looked to Mr. Abraham, holding the rifle, the only thing keeping him and Burklow in their confinement.

  “John, what are you doing? You have a daughter. She needs you,” Strode pleaded.

  The figure standing beside Teddy hissed.

  “She needs you, John. Lynn is gone. She needs you.”

  Mr. Abraham shook his head. “It’s too late, Strode. They’ll take her from me anyway.”

  “It’s not too late, John. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to become a killer. Let us go, and you can still see your daughter. Don’t go away, making your daughter think you’re a murderer.”

  Burklow nodded. “Listen to the man.”

  Teddy laughed. “Mr. Abraham is in far too deep. He has been for some time.”

  Strode ignored them all and held his eyes on Mr. Abraham. “I can help you. I can make sure she is taken care of. Fuck, I will take her myself. This doesn’t have to end badly for her.”

  Mr. Abraham kicked his rubber boots in the ground and quivered. “You don’t get it, Strode. I’ve been in it for so long. I helped him. I helped him hide the bodies and clean the blood from his clothes. Then he killed them all, and then himself. I thought the shadow was gone that night, but it was only waiting for someone like Teddy.”

  The shadow’s hissing grew louder, but Teddy only laughed.

  Strode inched closer to Mr. Abraham, with his hands raised in surrender. “John, who did you help?”

  Mr. Abraham’s eyes glistened with tears.

  Strode played back one part of Mr. Abraham’s confession. He killed them all and then himself.

  Now Strode sounded desperate, “Mr. Warren? You helped Mr. Warren hide bodies?”

  Strode’s eyes zipped back and forth as he started putting it all together.

  “Jackie! John, what happened to Jackie?”

  Mr. Abraham lowered his gun and said, “The shadow made him kill her. All of them.” Mr. Abraham fell to his knees. “And I helped him. I thought he was sick. And now, they’re going to take me away.”

  “Hold them there,” Teddy ordered Mr. Abraham.

  “Don’t do this,” Strode said.

  Steady tears fell down Mr. Abraham’s cheek. “You’ll make sure she’s taken care of? That she’s safe?”

  “Yes, J
ohn. I swear. Just don’t make this worse.”

  Mr. Abraham turned the barrel of the rifle to the underside of his stubbly chin.

  “No!” Strode yelled.

  The gun fired.

  Strode hurried to his feet and retrieved the rifle. When he rose, Teddy stood on the other side of the cold barrel and gripped his hand around it.

  Strode looked into his silver eyes, and Teddy smiled.

  “Where is the Abraham girl? Where is Ali?” Strode asked.

  Teddy’s smile widened, and at that moment Strode knew nothing was left of the sweet boy he had searched for. Teddy had become just like the being he served. He feasted on suffering and blood.

  “Are you going to shoot me, Strode?” Teddy asked. The stone color of his eyes warmed to a soft brown. His voice lost its edge and reinstated its innocence.

  Strode shook his head. “You’re not Teddy Blackwood. You’re just a shell of him. A cruel killer, who had everything taken from him, so now he takes from everyone else.”

  Strode could see Burklow moving in his peripherals, which he knew meant Teddy could too. Strode pressed the gun to Teddy’s face, “Don’t move.”

  The shadow hissed and slithered from behind Teddy to Burklow’s stall.

  “I’m warning you. If that thing hurts him, I’ll shoot you square in the face,” Strode said.

  Strode was pleased to see some alarm in Teddy’s face.

  Good, Strode thought. He’s not invincible.

  “The hunger is heat for us, Strode. If we don’t eat, we burn.”

  Strode could see shiny, pink flares of skin on Teddy’s forearms.

  Teddy nodded. “And that’s a mild one. Without the bodies, the death, the blood, it’s constant heat.”

  “You let it make you into that, Teddy,” Strode said.

  “You could never understand. You’re always alone. Friends help friends. I help the shadow eat, and it heals me and gives me strength.”

  Burklow charged at Teddy, wielding a carcass saw. From the shadow figure emerged a three-dimensional skeletal hand. It pressed on Burklow’s shoulder and into his skin. Steam arose from the heat and Burklow screamed a blood-curdling cry.

  Strode didn’t hesitate. As soon as Teddy ran at him amid the chaos, he pulled the trigger.