by Rachel Rust
A splintering screech fills the air. I look through the front doors just as the ceiling over the back wall collapses onto the floor. A wave of hot air rushes out the door. I twist away, covering David’s body with my own.
I wave the little girl away. “Go sit with your friends.”
She obeys and hustles over to the other girls. She sits and puts their hands in hers.
“David!” I slap his cheeks a few times. “Please wake up. We have to go!” I stand over his head and hook my hands under his arms. It takes all my effort to drag him the thirty feet to the girls. By the time we make it, the front porch of the bar is on fire—the exact spot where he had just been lying.
I crawl to the limp little girls and check for a pulse. Tears well in my eyes as their hearts beat against my fingers. They’re alive…somehow. I move back to David. “Dammit, wake up.” I shake his shoulders. I barely got three little kids out of a building, no way can I get all of them and a full-grown man back to the pickup a mile away. I need him to wake up. I need him to help me.
“David,” I yell into his face.
“David,” a small voice says next to me. The little girl in the blue dress is holding his hand again.
Together, we continue to call his name. She holds his hand. I beat up on him—slap him, shake him, pound his chest.
When his eyes open, I’m about to hit him again. He flinches. I laugh and cry and hug him. “Oh my God.”
He sits up and puts a hand to his neck.
“You got drugged.”
“By who?” His voice is cracked and dry.
“Mateo. Who else? And he’s probably still around here so we have to go, right now. How do you feel?”
“Tired.” David looks down at his hand being held by the blue dress girl. She smiles at him. He smiles back and then looks at the other two girls. “You saved them.”
“Yeah, I saved them. I—” My hand flies to my mouth. I saved them. “Shit.” I pound my fists on the ground. “You were supposed to save them, not me! That’s why Mateo knocked you out. He was trying to keep you from saving any of the girls—he didn’t want you to make your eighth save.”
David places a hand on my mine. “It doesn’t matter who saved them, only that someone did. Don’t worry about me. I’ll survive…” He smiles a little. “After I die again.”
I shake my head, unable to laugh at his attempt of humor. I look at my phone. “We still have eleven hours. A lot can happen in eleven hours. But first we need to get to the pickup and back to town.”
David stands, and he seems mostly okay, mostly sure-footed.
“We’ll have to carry them,” I say. “Can you do two at once?”
He kneels down and scoops up one unconscious girl in each arm. They both open their eyes as they’re lifted. They look at the flames of the building and then lay their heads on David’s shoulders, eyes closed. I scoop up the girl in the blue dress and we set off. Through the ditch where we’re assaulted with branches. Then down the overgrown road with weeds snagging our legs and shoes with every step.
By the time we get to the pickup, the girl in the blue dress is asleep and has grown to three hundred pounds in my arms. My shoulders ache. My back aches. We pile them into the truck, on the bench seat between us. They all three curl together and sleep.
“I think they’ve been drugged, as well,” David says.
“We have to get them to a hospital. Where’s the closest one?”
“In Red Oak, fifteen minutes west of here.”
“Go.”
He starts the truck and peels away from the side of the road. We head back toward the main highway and I watch my phone, waiting for service to come back so I can call the police. At the highway, David turns right. He floors it and the truck is going over eighty miles per hour when I get my first flicker of phone service. But then it goes away. No service.
“Shit,” David says.
I look up. My heart stops. Mateo’s white Suburban is parked along the shoulder and standing in the middle of the road is Mateo with a gun pointed at us.
“Turn around,” I yell.
Instead, David presses harder on the gas pedal. We speed toward Mateo, and I realize he’s going to hit him. My eyes squeeze shut, anticipating a grotesque impact.
There’s a loud crack of a gun, and I scream, throwing myself over the girls.
“Hold on.” David slams on the brakes and his pickup swerves, sending the girls and me hard against the back of the seat. The vehicle shudders sideways to a jerky stop.
Shakily, I lift my head and peek through the bottom of the windshield. I look David up and down. “Were you shot?”
“No, he missed us.”
Mateo walks toward us with a smile on his face. The grit of his shoes against the asphalt road gets louder as he gets closer. He motions with the gun for us to get out of the vehicle.
“Stay here and stay down,” David says. He’s out of the pickup before I can protest.
Mateo walks around to my side of the truck. He taps the gun against my window. “You, too, sweetheart.” He opens the door for me, dramatically extending his non-gun-holding arm in a gentlemanly manner. “After you.”
Next to the driver’s side window, David’s jaw is tense, as he watches his friend—his former friend—remove me from the vehicle at gun point.
I hop down from the cab and look back at the sleeping girls. “Don’t hurt them.”
Mateo ignores me and slams the door shut. He shoves me. We walk round the back of the pickup. He shoves me again, hard this time, and I nearly fall but catch myself at the last moment by grabbing the pickup’s back bumper. “Go stand next to your boyfriend.”
When I stand next to David, Mateo smiles wide and waves the gun. “Surprise!” Long gone is the persona of the shy, timid boy who prefers computers to people—the boy who sat patiently alongside me, teaching me about keeping my room safe with sage. The guy in front of us now is loose and self-assured, like he has no cares in the world.
“What do you want, congratulations?” David says dryly.
“You’re so fucking dumb!” Mateo sneers. “I tell you that every damn time, Davey. When are you ever gonna learn?” He walks up and points the gun directly at David’s face, but David doesn’t flinch. “Never. Trust. Anyone.” Mateo looks over at me. “She’s pretty. Prettier than any other Carpenter you’ve had to put up with.”
“So you really are Tommy,” I say.
Mateo smiles. “That was a long time ago, sweetheart.”
“You’re the one the voice warned me about in my room that night. They said to stay away from that boy, and I thought it was David, but it was you. Because you murdered them…the Moores and the Stillinger girls.”
He shrugs. “Again. It was a long time ago. I barely remember their faces.”
“You should,” I snap. “They should be burned into your mind, never to be forgotten.”
Mateo’s face contorted into an angry scowl. “Josiah Moore ruined my father’s business. You think that’s something you get away with in this town? Fucking with my family?”
I stare him down. “But you took their lives! And you messed up David’s in doing so.”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Mateo waves the gun in my face. I try not to flinch and fail. “She has quite a temper, Davey. But you’re not going to have to put up with her much longer, are you?” He glances at the sun that is just overhead. “Not much time left. And sadly…” He looks in the pickup truck. “You didn’t save them. Chessie did. She robbed you of your final save.”
“Go to hell,” David says.
“Not this time around, thanks to you and your inability to even save three little girls. You’ll be reborn again, and I’ll be reborn again. Another life for you, and another life for me.” He smiles widely. “Ain’t life grand?”
“Why did you kidnap the girls?” I ask, my face reddening with anger. “Why did you kill Amelia? She was an innocent little girl!”
“What are you hoping I say? That I’m a monster an
d that’s just what I do—kill little kids? Go ahead and think that if you want, but trust me, the truth is much better than that.”
“Then what’s the truth?”
“The truth is, killing people is so trite, anyone can do it. But sometimes it’s necessary.” Mateo sneers and paces in front of us. “Like dear ol’ Mom and Dad. Ready to take me in for a psych eval…something about”—Mateo waves the gun around—“homicidal tendencies. Oh, no, no, no, they had to go.”
“Jesus,” David whispers.
“You killed your own parents?” I ask.
“They weren’t my real parents. My real parents died nearly eighty years ago.”
I glare at him. “You still haven’t explained why you took those girls. They did nothing to you, so why’d you do it?”
“For Davey,” Mateo says with a smile. “You know what my favorite part is? His guilt over letting people get killed when he was only twenty feet away—right outside that house. God, it’s fun to see that guilt on his face…life after life after life. It doesn’t go away, and it never gets old. It’s always there, even when he smiles.” Mateo stops pacing and faces me. “That’s why I took those girls. They were bait. Davey’s always looking for people to save, but when he tries and fails…man oh man, it adds to his guilt to see more people die when he could’ve saved them.”
“Why are you doing this to him?” I ask. “Why punish him even more? Just let him be.”
“No, sweetheart. I told you, friends don’t banish friends to hell. And that’s exactly what Davey’s been doing to me. He knows if he saves eight people, he’ll be redeemed and I’ll be fucking doomed. Doomed! What kind of friend is so selfish that he saves himself and fucks over his best friend?” Mateo’s eyes narrow and he looks at David. “We could live forever, you and me. Life after life. Immortal, doing whatever the hell we wanna do. But no. You have to be all moral and screw things up for me, huh?”
“You’re the selfish one,” I say.
Mateo raises the gun to David’s head.
“What are you gonna do, shoot me?” David asks. “I’m dead at midnight anyway.”
Mateo shrugs. “I’ll shoot your knee cap. That’d be a hell of an ending for you, wriggling around in pain.”
“Go ahead and shoot,” David says. “I’ll die and I’ll come back. You can kill me a hundred times over, but I will make up for what happened that night, and I will stop you from ever being able to hurt anyone else ever gain. I might have been intimated by you a hundred years ago, but not anymore.”
Mateo rolls his eyes. “You were always such a bore, Davey.” He points the gun to David’s knee.
“Stop!” I shout.
Mateo ignores my plea and continues to speak to David. “What you did back in 1912 really gnaws at you, doesn’t it? You sat outside in the dark as I killed all those people. And the memory’s been chippin’ away at your sanity ever since, constantly wishing you could go back and save them. And every time you fail to save someone in a new life, it devours you a little more.” He grins. “So I can’t wait for our next life to see how this failure affects you.”
Mateo points the gun at me.
“No!” David jumps in front of me as the gun goes off. He drops to a heap at my feet.
I scream and collapse down next to him. Red blood oozes from beneath his shirt, creating an ever-expanding scarlet circle in the material. It’s so thick and dark, I can’t even tell where the bullet entered. A sob emits from deep within me, exiting as a scream that echoes off the belt of trees that line the road.
I cradle David’s shoulders and head in my arms. My vision is cloudy from tears. His skin pales, he chokes trying to speak.
“Shhh,” I say, stroking his face. “I’m here. Just hold on, I’ll get an ambulance.” But I’m lying. There’s no phone service. And the front of his shirt is now completely soaked, warm blood seeping onto my arms and lap, pooling on the asphalt. How much more blood could a body even have? I sob into him, holding him tighter as if a firm grasp can keep him from slipping away.
He doesn’t deserve any of this! I scream in my head, scrambling for a solution. Something that will make things better, something that will set it all right. But I come up with nothing but anger and pain and fear.
A touch on my cheek startles me. David caresses my jaw. His mouth opens, as if trying to communicate. He smiles slightly and suddenly I understand.
He saved me.
I’m his eighth save.
His hand drops, limp to his side, and his eyes go vacant. I cry and hug him harder. “No,” I plead and scream. “Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me.”
A noise in front of me jerks my head up, and I expect a gun to be pointed at my face. But Mateo has dropped the gun. His eyes are looking past me, but they’re blank. It’s like he’s not there anymore. He flickers in and out like an old movie reel that’s been spun one too many times.
My arms start to tingle. A white mist emanates from within David, like tiny beams of white from every pore. He grows lighter in my arms, fading out from sight and being. The white mist turns into a light, the intensity of it as strong as the sun, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes. And when it dissipates, David is gone, and I’m left holding air. The blood is gone from the road and from my clothes…as if David had never even been here.
The asphalt road in front of me cracks open and I jump to my feet. The jagged fissure expands in Mateo’s direction. Mateo begins to crack, as though something inside him is splintering from the inside out. His skins dries and splits like parched clay. The ground under him rips wide open, revealing an ink-black cavern. He falls into the dark depth, and the road immediately reseals after he disappears.
A rush of wind tears through the trees behind me. I spin around and a pair of eyes stares back at me. Except this time the eyes are not glassy and I’m not dreaming. From just off the road, Amelia’s brown eyes stare back, her small form translucent and pale. Next to her, a taller girl stands in a long, old-fashioned dress. Her hair is blonde and shoulder length, partly tied back with a bow.
“Lena,” I whisper.
She clasps hands with Amelia, and they both give me a little smile. With the next gust of wind, they’re gone.
The space around me goes still and quiet. There’s nothing but asphalt, trees, and sky. And a pickup full of toddlers.
I remain motionless for a long time, unable to process what just happened. David’s really gone. I wasn’t able to save him. My muscles all contract, ready to release a scream of sheer agony into the world. But I force calmness. The girls need me. So, with shaky limbs, I hoist myself into the driver’s seat of David’s truck. I have to get them to safety.
Except the keys aren’t in the ignition. Shit. I check the floor and the seat around me. Nothing. The asphalt outside where David had just been lying is clear. No David. No blood. No keys.
“Oh no.” They must have been in his pocket, and now that he’s gone, they’re gone. And I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with drugged kids.
I eye Mateo’s Suburban, and even though the thought of driving it makes me want to puke, he might have left his keys inside. The vehicle in which the girls had been kidnapped is now my only option of getting them home safe. Irony’s a bitch sometimes.
But as I open my door, a small black car appears over the hill, headed straight for us. The little car honks and Samantha’s arm begins waving out the driver’s window. David’s truck had shuddered to a stop in the middle of the road and is now blocking both lanes of traffic.
“Where’d you learn to drive?” she yells. “Get that heap of junk outta my way!”
“Samantha!” A wave of relief courses through me. I jump out of the truck and run toward her. She grimaces, but before she can say anything snotty, I yank open her door and grab her arm. “Come quick! You need to help me.”
“What the hell?” She yanks free from my grip but puts her car in park and follows me to the pickup. The driver’s door is open, and I point to the three little bodies. “Holy
shit.” Her eyes widen, and she looks back at me. Her hands fly out and push my shoulders, nearly sending me back onto my butt. “Why do you have them? What the hell did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. David and I found them!”
“Where?” She looks around. “Where is he?”
“He’s…” My mind is a scramble of emotions and adrenaline, and I can’t think up a cover story on the spot. “I don’t have time to explain. But please, you have to help me. I don’t have the keys to David’s truck, and I need to get the girls to a hospital. Let’s put them in your car and—”
“No,” she says with an immediate shake of her head. “I’ve gotta go get my dad. He’s at a bar a few towns over. He passed out and they said if he’s not picked up in twenty minutes, they’re going to call the cops and he cannot go to jail again. I have no money to bail him out this time.”
“Dammit, Samantha. These kids need help!”
“I realize that,” she snaps, walking to the pickup.
I watch with arched eyebrows as she reaches under the steering wheel and yanks free a jumble of wires. She fiddles with them for a while, and then, suddenly, the truck roars to life.
“Oh my God, that was…awesome.” Without realizing what I’m doing, I give her a hug. “Thank you!”
“Get the hell off me.” She pushes me away and sticks a finger in my face. “And do not tell anyone that I know how to hot-wire a car. My dad gets into enough trouble. People don’t need to know what he does in his free time. Got it?”
I knock her hand away from my face. “Yeah, I got it.”
With a speaking look, she gets back into her car, the tires squealing as she peels away.
I jump back into the pickup and the girls are still asleep. Somewhere, they have parents who are about the get the best news ever. I stuff down the pain of losing David, and with my short legs barely reaching the pedals, turn the vehicle around and speed down the highway.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I’m seated on a hard, plastic chair in the ER waiting room when Grandma’s voice cuts through the air. “Chessie! Oh my God, Chessie!” She yanks me to my feet for a full body inspection, as though she doesn’t trust that the doctors have done their job.