Aimes isn’t the only one to brighten with the fact we are escaping for the day. Rhett wears his smirk like one of the patches on his vest - wide, colorful, and hidden with meaning. Marxx’s face is blank with boredom. It’s a stark contrast to his counterpart. Even Dolph, a man of few words, seems bright and cheery standing next to Marxx. Which makes Marxx our pixie’s first target.
“So gloomy, Marxx?” Aimes’ voice is taunt filled. “Not excited to go see the only thing you’ve had between your legs in months?”
Rhett’s smile blooms, and tossing a leather vest to Lawless, he responds to Aimes’ remark. “At least the man has had something worth missing.”
“What did you call Lawless and I earlier?” I ask her, when the men keep walking, avoiding any retort Aimes may pull forth from the depths of her sarcasm basement.
“This lake thing,” Aimes skips over my question with one of her own. “Do you think Rhett would fit? We never really asked much about the lake itself.”
“Cute,” I tell her. “But we both know you’d jump in to haul him out if need be.”
“Think so?” she asks. Her lips form a tight pout, pondering what I’ve said. “Maybe, but only after a few minutes and the bubbles stopped.”
“Everyone knows this act you two put on is just part of your freakish idea of romance”—my eyes squint as they adjust to the sunlight bouncing off the metal boat docks—“and both of you would do whatever it took to save the other.”
Aimes makes a noise of neither agreement nor disagreement. In fact, it’s close to disgust. She does notice something I missed, per usual.
“It’s just us,” she states.
She’s right. Peyton nor my father are here. It’s just the six of us.
“Where is Peyton and Collin?” I ask the man helping Lawless untie the boat from the dock.
“I was told six. I take six,” he answers. “If you want, I’ll take five, maybe four.” He stares at Aimes and me with the innuendo.
“Wait,” Aimes steps on the man’s fingers holding the slackened rope. She doesn’t press her weight on them, but she has his attention. “What do you mean ‘take’?”
The man isn’t amused. Most aren’t when being dick-checked by Aimes, but he answers her.
“Take,” he begins. “As in, you get in boat. I drive it. I drive back. Take.”
“Thanks for using small words. Would have hated for you to hurt yourself.” Aimes removes her foot from his hand when he answers. “Just the same, I don’t think so.”
Marxx hasn’t missed the reason for her concerns. He shares a look with Rhett, something practiced and perfected. If Lawless is aware, he doesn’t act like it. He continues to help the man with the chores of the boat.
Dolph extends his hand to help Aimes and me into the rocking craft. Having before been on the receiving end of those well-timed, hidden glances, he too has caught their silent language.
“Get in,” he mouths the words, extending his hand with more urgency.
Lawless watches us climb into the boat. He stares at us over the head of the kneeling man Marigold sent to escort us to shore and then leave us. His posture and expression are flat. Neither hold any tension, any hints as to what is about to happen.
“We ready?” the forced help asks.
He doesn’t hide his annoyance with his task. Maybe if he had, they might have been nicer to him. Maybe.
Rhett smiles at the man. It’s the type of smile J.D. taught him. A smile taught to unnerve someone, but not enough to make them suspicious, not completely.
“I guess that’s a ‘yes’?” the man asks, with a little less hate in his voice.
Marxx steadies the boat, holding into place. Once it’s secure, Lawless pushes the man. He’s tilted off-balance, and as he sways, Rhett finishes the job.
With both hands, Rhett heaves the man off the dock before climbing into the boat as if nothing had just happened. He stretches his long legs along the back bench-styled seat without a care for the man screaming for help in the water beside us. Securing his shoulder-length black hair in a slicked-back style, he winks, and I’m reminded of the man he was before a high school changed him.
“Tell Queen Bitch we’ll get her supplies. We don’t need an escort,” Lawless shouts to the flailing man in the water.
Launching the boat from the dock, Dolph starts to laugh. It’s a soft sound at first. So soft, it’s almost hard to hear. It tests the air around us before building in sound. Soon, the whole boat is filled with it. Each man, in his own pitch, joins the laughter. It fills the space around us, trailing behind us over the roar of the motor.
For a moment, they forget the tension they have been drowning under for these past months. For a moment they are just boys, laughing over a prank they have pulled. For a moment, I almost forget everything we are leaving and everything we have left. It’s just a moment, but I’ll take it.
Chapter 33
Their bikes are exactly where we left them. Each one parked in their normal row, waiting as if time had stopped the day we ran from the beach. They didn’t start as if time had stopped, but with verbal coaxing and cooing from their owners, they each roared to life.
“Just like a lady,” Rhett shouts over his pipes. “Pout when you leave them, but hot to ride when you get back.”
“You’re disgusting.” Aimes shakes her head, but no one missed the smile she gave him or the wink he sent to her.
“Where to?” I ask the general crowd. “I missed the directions she gave.”
“Really?” Marxx is watching me, peering deeper into some part of me where he thinks he’ll find some answer.
“Really…” I let the word hang, unsure of what he’s suggesting.
Marxx’s face forms the lines of suspicion before hiding his eyes behind his dark sunglasses.
“She said for us to go back to that daycare. The one where you were stabbed by the punk. She even asked to make sure you and Aimes were with us when we went.” Marxx is still watching me, but his eyes are hidden as he talks to me. “Any reason why she’d want you to be there?”
“Other than trying to get us all on a boat to be dropped off and then picked back up at random?” Aimes inserts herself into Marxx’s line of sight. “Or maybe, because she’s bat shit crazy and has wanted Hells gone from the moment we arrived? Or maybe, she’s just super jealous of all of Hells’ new scars and figured why not add a few more? I don’t know, Marxxie poos. What do you think?”
Marxx swings his leg over his black beast without another word. He doesn’t spar with Aimes. Not because he’s intimidated by her or of what she may say to him. He doesn’t join in because he’d rather just punch you than talk to you. Marxx was never a man of many words. Aimes uses too many.
“Careful, Marxx,” I say to him, when Aimes slides into the truck. “You remember what happened to the last man who tried it with me at the daycare?”
“Murder!” Aimes shouts gleefully from her seat.
“It was a lucky shot,” Marxx tells me, but it earned me a small smile.
Lawless waits till I have the truck backed out and ready to follow them. He doesn’t seem to be brave enough to ride behind me anymore. The memory brings a smile to my face when I turn the truck to follow them onto the road.
“What’s the smile for?” My partner in crime asks.
“Just thinking of all the times I’ve scared them with my driving,” I tell her, still wearing the smile.
Aimes whispers in a theatrical style, “Murder!”
It’s the last words we share. We ride in silence. Each of us lost in our thoughts over what last night revealed and what Marigold is trying to reveal. More importantly, what’s waiting for us at the daycare we left. We didn’t dispose of the corpses. We didn’t clean the sins created there – ours or his. They wait for us, now. The blood will be thicker. The scents will be heavier, and we will be made to pay, one way or another.
The driveway is exactly how I remember it. The large holes jar my shocks, despite my best effor
t to avoid them.
“It’s fine. I don’t need all my teeth.” Aimes is grasping to the dash for support from being bounced around inside the cab of the truck.
“Your teeth are safe,” I assure her, when we come to a stop.
We both sit in silence, staring at the building we thought was only a memory. We had hoped it was just a spot in time, locked behind the many doors we’ve invented to keep such places safely stored away. As the clowns return our stare, those doors start to rattle, rattling my courage with them.
“I really don’t want to do this.” Aimes has melted to the long bench seat, trying to hide from what is before us. Her fears are robbing her of even the smallest shred of bravery. “Why is it every time I think we have met the definition of crazy, life has to go and redefine it for us?”
“It shouldn’t be as bad this time.” I ease out of my battlewagon knowing she’ll have to follow. “Everything should be dead.”
“Since when has that stopped them from trying to eat us here, lately?” Aimes mutters, doing exactly what I knew she would do.
The only thing worse than being stuck in your fear is being stuck in it alone, in a truck, in the middle of nowhere.
“What are we doing here?” I ask the ones who are waiting for us.
No one looks excited to be back here. Dolph keeps his eyes on the area around us, searching for any movement our loud arrival may have caused. Rhett is pulling out the large vinyl bags we keep stashed in their saddle packs for supply raids. He also is doing anything he can to not directly look at the building.
“There’s supposed to be a shed somewhere behind the place.” Dolph offers. “Leigh said it’s where they hide the things they can’t carry so they can come and get them later.”
“You and Leigh, now?” Aimes makes a clicking sound with her tongue when she asks, trying to shine her armor.
“Did Marigold send us or did Leigh?” I ask, skipping over Aimes’ attempt to change the whole conversation.
“Marigold,” Marxx interjects. “Leigh came later. Told us where to look to save us time.”
“Well isn’t Leigh just full of advice of where to look, these days,” Aimes said it to the group, but it’s me she’s staring at when saying it.
“Let’s just go.” I stare into the windows watching us. “Anything to avoid going back in there, even if the suggestion came from Leigh.”
There’s a sound of agreement from those around me. We imagine there can’t be anything worse than what we left in those rooms. We were wrong, again.
The white wooden fence runs the length of the property’s space. It’s decorated with the same tumbling clowns around large letters and numbers. The artist at the time had no idea how their vision of playful charm would be turned into sinister warnings, but it has, and we should have listened.
Lifting the handle, Rhett cautiously waits before we enter the yard. We are straining to hear even the faintest of sounds, any sound which may hint we aren’t alone. Anything to give us a clue of what secrets these long, white boards are keeping from us.
Lawless braces himself, securing his gun with both hands and tilting his head to level the sights. He’s waiting for Rhett to pull it open fully, exhaling the air in his lungs, Rhett does.
Nothing rushes us. There’s no crescendo of growls or cries from beyond the grave. The scent the air whirled around us with the forced motion, we know that smell.
It was faint before now. I marked it to being from the building; the fragrance of past travesties clinging to the bricks with shame. It wasn’t, but it belonged to travesties, just the same.
Lawless lowers his gun and his head with what he is seeing ahead of me. Rhett braces against the wooden gate for support, peering over his arm into the space I cannot see. Watching the two of them, it’s enough for Marxx to step back, not eager to join his brothers. I’m a different type of calamity. I have to see.
Lawless doesn’t try to stop me. Rhett, sensing my approach, slides to give me room to fit through the opening. I receive my wish.
The side yard contains the playground. It holds the normal swings, teeter-totters, and slides one would expect to find. What it also contains is someone’s warped attempts to keep the place filled.
Children of various young ages fill the landscape with their jaws hung open, stuck in silent screams. Their bodies are tied and fastened to the structures with ropes and cords of different colors. Children, with their legs scattered below them from rotting, swing as the breeze moves what’s left of their decayed bodies on the yellow plastic pieces. The slide is covered in birds feasting on the scraps of the flesh left on the children who were posed to climb its ladder. The slide itself has lost its playmate. Arms are all that remains, holding onto the metal sides with the wrists secured in place. The owner rests in a discarded pile at the base, having smeared the metal with dark colors upon their escape. A head has rolled away from the boy on the teeter-totter, resulting in its headless torso hoisting the slumped body of a girl into the air.
“I’m glad you shot him,” I whisper to Aimes, who has come to stand beside me.
I’m unwilling to let my voice carry to these once cherished children. I’m unwilling to disturb whatever it is we are looking at with mixtures of anger and disgust.
“Me, too,” she tells me. “Me, too.”
Rhett points towards a small building across the yard. “Must be the spot.”
“Of course, it’s through the valley of death,” Aimes sighs.
I take the lead, as always. Not out of bravery. It’s pure habit at this point.
We don’t speak as we pass the collection of broken dolls. I try not to even look at them, but as Aimes said, dead does not always mean safe. It’s the same when we make it to the shed. Even as unsettling as the sight is, it’s more unsettling to turn your back to it.
Dolph’s mind doesn’t only see the tragedy, he sees something else as he stares at them. “We should bury them,” he whispers over the shame their story brings him.
“Nothing left to bury.” Rhett casts a side glance to the monuments, but returns his gaze quickly to the door of the shed Marxx is trying to open. “If you moved them, they would fall apart on you. You’d have nothing but pieces to carry.”
“So, we just leave them?” Dolph asks the other man.
“We just leave them,” Rhett tells him. “You’ll make it worse for yourself if you try. They are already dead. They don’t care. But if you move them, that conscience of yours you’re trying to settle, will be dealing with deeper issues when they fall apart on you.”
“Not to mention what they may leave on you,” Lawless offers, trying to settle Dolph’s unease. “Some things you just don’t need to know.”
Dolph isn’t settled. He looks to me for support. I have none. Shaking my head, I silently agree with the other two. I have enough dead children stored in my haunted heart. They already dance and play together in their groups. They don’t need to make new friends.
“It’s empty!” Marxx’s voice pulls me back. “It’s fucking empty!”
Marxx is roaring with his anger. He kicks the door of the shed closed, letting his wrath explode upon a solid surface. The reverberation of the wood sends the birds scattering from their feast.
“Why would she send us out here if there’s nothing in here?” Marxx roars again, completely forgetting the dangers which could be near us.
“Because it was never about the shed,” I whisper, not out of fear of what’s around us, but the fear of what’s in front of us. “It was never about the shed.”
I watch as the many black birds begin to resettle around the corpses of the children. They perch on the secured bones of the children’s shoulders, anchored in angles to the swings. They rest on exposed skulls tossed back on unsupported necks, pulling long strands of hair from what’s left of their once delicate scalps. Black eyes watch us, waiting to see what we mean for them, but it’s what they mean for us that has caused us to be sent here.
“What are you t
alking about?” Marxx demands from behind me.
I stand in the middle of it all. I stand exactly where Marigold pictured me standing when she stressed to Marxx to have Aimes and I present. I stand, seeing this scene, not as it stands, but as it stood the day it was constructed.
Pinky didn’t do this. His insanity wasn’t this deep, nor were his reasons centered around the toddlers. For him, it was all about his first love. This, this is about something darker. Something Marigold wanted me to see.
This isn’t about the death she has framed, wilting to dust like the roses on a desk. This is about the life she thinks she can preserve.
“She thinks she could have saved them from this. She wanted us to see this could have been different. In her mind, these children, this is what could be happening; playing with their friends instead of dead and decaying.”
“What?” Marxx asks, not sure he heard me.
Aimes did. “Oh, shit.”
“What?!?” Marxx is practically raging at us, unclear of what we are talking about.
“Where did you leave April?” Aimes asks Rhett.
Rhett tenses upon hearing the little girl’s name. “With Leigh,” he answers with confusion. “She wasn’t feeling well this morning so Leigh said she would take her, and she could play with Wren. Wren had something she wanted to show her while we were gone.”
“Oh, shit,” Aimes says, again.
I’m already running towards my truck before she can finish her thought. My feet match the pace of my heart as my lungs fight to keep up with the demand I have placed upon them. It was never about the shed. It was about teaching us a lesson and we walked right into her classroom without blinking.
The men don’t ask about my panic. They don’t question as Lawless starts his bike without a glance to spare them. They don’t pause, but follow him out, fighting to stay faster than the grill of my large truck.
“Why won’t they hurry?” Aimes demands, frustrated with our failure to see the bigger picture.
The Risen Series | Book 5 | Defiance Page 23