Slash, p.14
Slash, page 14
“Just take it slow and steady,” Todd said. “Don’t panic. Your breath will come back to you. That’s it. Relax.”
After a quick inspection, they were all relieved to see Vince hadn’t been stabbed by the splintered wood or been turned into a human pincushion by the rusty nails that were everywhere. His jacket was ripped in several places and the back pocket of his jeans tore off when he was helped to his feet.
“Note to self,” Vince said, dusting himself off. “Do not lean on anything in this place. It was like falling through cardboard. The termites must have been feasting on the wall.”
“Them and everything else,” Jerry said.
“Guys, is that you?”
Bill and Sharon came trotting over.
“Where the hell did you guys go?” Jerry said.
“We came here and then we went back looking for you,” Sharon defiantly replied. “What happened to him?”
“He just fell through the rink’s wall. He’s fine,” Heather said.
Bill was out of breath. Todd couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his friend run. “You’ll never believe what we found.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Todd said. “We’re getting out of here.”
Sharon hefted his video camera. “Fine. But you’re making me a copy of that recording. And I’m keeping this.”
She opened up her hand to show them the iron cross in her palm. It looked exactly like the one in the video.
“How is that even possible?” Todd said.
“It was back there,” Bill said, pointing to the other side of the rink. “Looks like Fred really did put it back.”
“Or Otto’s ghost did,” Vince said, much to Jerry’s consternation.
“Don’t even go there,” Jerry said. “That’s dumb, even for you, Vince.”
“I’m not serious, douchebag,” Vince said. Sharon let him hold the cross. “I feel wrong even touching it. Suppose it really did belong to Otto? He would have worn this while ordering hundreds of people to be killed.” He quickly handed it back to Sharon.
“Might be worth something,” she said.
“Or it could be a cursed talisman or something,” Bill added. “There’s no telling what those Nazis were into and capable of.”
Jerry threw up his hands. “Ghosts. Talismans. Do you guys hear yourselves? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the stripper is the only one making any sense. I’m sure some skinhead freak will pay a lot for it on eBay.”
“Keep calling me a stripper,” Sharon said, pointing a sharp end of the cross at him.
“Can you at least try not to be a schmuck and call her a dancer?” Heather said sharply. Jerry waved her off.
Bill’s eyes were fixed on the dirt-encrusted cross. “The Nazis, at least those in the upper ranks, were into all kinds of magic. Who knows. Maybe the cross is cursed. It sure didn’t bring any luck to the people who killed Otto.”
Todd felt as if his head were going to split in half. “This is crazy. My car is parked in an abandoned garage way over that way. Where is yours?”
“Found a spot between a pair of dumpsters over there,” Jerry said, pointing in the opposite direction. “Heather and Vince should go with you. I don’t want anyone wandering around in the dark alone.”
“Maybe it belongs to the Wraith, who found it by Otto’s grave,” Sharon said, oblivious to everyone else. “Or the Wraith could be Otto’s son. He could have had a kid who was, thanks to some fucked-up genes, equally psycho.”
Bill’s hand covered his mouth. “Holy shit, you may be right.”
“Or one hundred percent wrong,” Jerry said. “In lieu of any real evidence.”
“There’s no point staying here and debating whose iron cross it is,” Todd said. “I got what I came for. Is there anything else you need from this place?” He looked at Sharon.
She licked her full lips and cast her eyes around the woods that had sprung from the untended grounds. “Sheri’s not here. Call me crazy, but I thought if I came here, I’d feel her, you know? But I don’t. This place is just wrong. Sheri would never hang around here if she didn’t have to. Maybe this little hunk of Nazi bullshit will help us find who killed her.” She pocketed the Nazi cross. “Maybe not.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
They were about to leave, breaking into two groups, when something cracked in the trees behind them.
Todd’s first thought was, The police heard us! They pointed their flashlights in the direction of the sound, but the trees in that area were tightly packed and impenetrable.
Leaves crunched. Someone was definitely walking toward them.
“Douse your lights,” Jerry whispered.
“Why?” Sharon asked.
“So whoever is out there doesn’t have an advantage on us. Just sit tight and we’ll see if he keeps on walking.”
Crunch, crunch, snap, crunch, crunch.
Whoever it was wasn’t trying to hide.
Vince took Heather by the arm and pulled her behind him.
A hulking shadow emerged from the tree line.
Todd snapped his light on. The shadow darted away before he could see who it was. He assumed it was a man because of his size. The man ran, but to them rather than away from them. Todd’s heart clogged his throat.
“Stand down,” Jerry ordered. “Police!”
The man kept coming. Every time they shined their light, he managed to dodge out of the way.
“I’m outta here,” Bill said. He was off and running before they could stop him.
“Bill, get back here,” Vince blurted.
The man in the dark skirted around them, heading now in Bill’s direction.
“Motherfucker,” Jerry hissed and set off running. The rest were right behind him.
“Bill!” Heather shouted.
Bill wasn’t answering. Todd was sure Bill didn’t have the ability to talk and run at the same time. If he paused to answer her, he wouldn’t be able to get going again. The shadow man was between them and their retreating friend.
“I said stop!” Jerry barked.
The shadow man kept running.
Bill let out a strangled gasp. The sound of his body hitting the ground was impossible to miss.
The shadow man would be on top of him in seconds.
Jerry’s legs pumped as fast as they could go.
The clouds parted, the dull yellow haze of the moon piercing through the clouds and bathing the grounds in eerie, jaundiced light. Bill was on his back, scrambling like a beached crab to find cover.
Sharon overtook Jerry for the lead, her long muscular legs traversing the uneven terrain like a gazelle. Her right hand went into her pocket.
Pop!
The hard thwack was immediately followed by the shadow man collapsing face-first onto the ground. Jerry, Todd, Heather and Vince caught up to her. She used both hands to hold the gun, pointing it at the prone man. Bill had stopped moving, staring wide-eyed at the fallen man.
“What the hell did you do?” Jerry howled at her.
Her reply was colder than a reptile’s gaze. “Hopefully, I just killed the Wraith.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Give me the goddamn gun,” Jerry roared. He went for the gun. Sharon jerked her arms away, stepping around him and keeping its sights on the prone man.
“No!”
“You just shot a man in the back.”
Sharon sneered. “What are you gonna do, arrest me?” The gun wavered slightly in Jerry’s direction.
Todd’s friend didn’t back down. “Actually, I am. I’ll bet my life you don’t have a license for it either.”
“Just keep back,” Sharon ordered all of them. Vince and Heather took a few uneven backward steps. Todd was too shocked to move. He stared at the man on the ground, keeping his beam on his back, hoping to see it rise and fall.
“I think he’s dead,” Todd said.
“Jesus,” Bill yipped. He still hadn’t gotten up and his feet were inches from the man’s outstretched hands. He scooted farther away, tucking his legs close to his body.
Heather said, “Sharon, honey, just give Jerry the gun.”
“Not until I know he’s dead,” Sharon snapped.
“We don’t even know who the hell he is,” Jerry said.
Sharon pulled the hammer back on the .38. “We all know who it is.”
“No, we don’t,” Jerry said. “Take a look around you. People have been coming here for years, drinking, fucking and spray-painting every bare piece of concrete and wood.”
Her lips pulled back in a snarl. “I know it’s him.”
“You can’t know,” Heather said, her soothing tone in direct contrast to Jerry’s caustic demeanor.
“He came right for us,” Sharon said. She kicked the man’s shoulder. His upper body shifted, but that was all.
“I…I don’t know about that,” Vince said. “It looked to me like he was running away from something. We just happened to be in the way.”
Sharon’s eyes grew wide, “What are you saying, Vince?”
“If he’s the Wraith, what was he running from?”
Jerry held his hands up so she could see he didn’t have his service revolver. “Just let me check him out. Can you do that?”
Sharon shifted, leaves crunching under her feet. She was at a loss for words, and that scared Todd even more. They heard a shifting in the grass back from where they’d come. Sharon jerked her arm away from the man, aiming the gun into the darkness.
No one spoke or moved for an interminable beat of time. The sound didn’t repeat itself.
“I think I just heard him trying to breathe,” Bill said.
With Sharon distracted, Jerry moved in. Todd rushed to the man as well. He heard Heather shout, “Don’t!”
When he looked up, Sharon had the gun trained on him and Jerry.
“Help me get him on his back,” Jerry said.
Todd fumbled for the man’s pant leg and belt loop. Together, they turned him over. Bill, who was now on his knees, shined his light on the man’s face.
“He’s just a kid,” Vince said.
Todd wanted to scream.
Judging by the baby fat on the man-child’s cheeks, and blooming acne, Todd figured he was sixteen, seventeen at most. His long bangs slid to the side of his forehead. Blood bubbled on his lips.
Jerry dipped his head to the boy’s mouth, his ear close to his lips.
“He’s still breathing.”
Todd watched helplessly as Jerry unzipped the boy’s coat. Blood was everywhere. He was wearing a black final girl T-shirt, Ash’s face rendered in a cartoon, the silhouette of the Hayden behind her.
“What the fuck did you do?” Todd said to Sharon.
She still held the gun but her hand was shaking. “I thought….”
“If he was the Wraith, that would mean he would have been, what, ten goddamn years old when he killed your sister?” Todd leaped to his feet and snatched the gun out of her hands. Sharon spun away, emitting a strangled gasp. Heather ran to grab onto her.
“Dammit! I’m losing him,” Jerry said. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it to Todd. “Hold this.” Todd saw Jerry’s gun secured in the shoulder holster. He noted that Sharon saw it too.
“Don’t even think of it,” Todd warned her.
She buried her head in Heather’s shoulder.
Jerry administered CPR. Todd helped Bill to his feet.
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Vince said.
“We have to call for an ambulance,” Bill said. He took his phone out of his pocket, but he was so nervous, it slipped from his fingers.
“I’ll call,” Todd said. He handed Jerry’s coat to Vince and went to his back pocket. His other hand held Sharon’s gun that was getting heavier by the second. He tapped his phone’s screen with his thumb, lighting it up. “Shit. I’ve got no bars.” He tried anyway, tapping 911. Nothing happened.
“Wait, I have a different carrier,” Vince said. “With the money I pay those assholes, it better work out here.”
Todd and Bill watched Vince try his phone, frown, and try again. “I’ve got no signal.”
“Come on, kid, breathe!” Jerry said, moving to chest compressions. With each push of his hands, more blood frothed from the kid’s open mouth.
Heather was crying, telling Sharon not to look. Todd couldn’t help noticing that Sharon hadn’t shed a single tear. She watched Jerry try to revive the boy with cold, narrow eyes.
Jerry kept at it for several minutes. The boy emitted a wet gurgle and that was all. Jerry rocked back on his heels, his sweat steaming on his flesh, and wiped his brow with his forearm. “He’s gone.”
Heather wailed with a fresh burst of tears. She held onto Sharon for dear life. Sheri’s sister said, “Are you sure?”
With unmasked fury, Jerry said, “What the fuck do you think? If I had cuffs on me now, you’d be on the ground eating dirt.”
“I never saw a dead body before,” Bill said.
“Haven’t you ever been to a wake?” Vince asked.
Bill shook his head. “I can’t handle shit like this.” He turned from the boy and walked away, running his hands through his hair in silent agony.
“When’s the ambulance coming?” Jerry asked.
“We can’t get through,” Todd said. “Where’s your phone? I’ll give it another shot.”
“Inside breast pocket.”
Jerry’s phone was almost the size of a tablet. Todd turned it on but got the same results. “Now what do we do?”
“You all get out of here and find the police or a signal, whichever comes first. I’ll stay here.”
“You shouldn’t be alone,” Vince said.
“I won’t be,” Jerry said. He got up, unbuckled his belt and snapped it off. Prying Sharon away from Heather, he spun Sharon around and pinned her arms behind her back. When she tried to break free, he jabbed the back of her knee with his knee and brought her down. Seconds later, her hands were bound at her back. “I can’t trust her trying to get away if I let her go with you guys.”
“You don’t have to be so rough with her,” Heather blurted.
“I can get rough if I need to,” he replied coolly.
“I bet that’s the only way you can get off,” Sharon snarled.
“If I want to hear wisdom from a murdering stripper, I’ll ask you.”
“Stop it, Jerry,” Heather implored him. Sharon was her friend and she saw Sheri’s sister in a much different light. In a way, Todd couldn’t blame her. But Sharon had just shot a teenager in cold blood and had apparently zero remorse.
“Heather, go with Vince and Todd and Bill and get help. Please.”
“I don’t want to leave her with him,” Heather said to Vince.
“Heath, what do you think he’s gonna do? She just killed someone. He’s a cop. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Vince took hold of her hand and squeezed. Fat tears rolled down Heather’s cheeks.
“Come on, Bill,” Todd said. “We need to get out of here as fast as we can.”
Bill didn’t move.
Todd looked to Jerry. “How the hell are we going to explain this? Will you get in trouble?”
Jerry exhaled, the long plume of fog misting before Todd’s face. “I’m fucked, Todd. Trespassing and allowing someone to murder a child. There’s no way out of that.”
For a split second, Todd almost suggested they leave the Hayden and not tell a soul what had happened. He stopped himself, realizing the sheer stupidity and foolishness of such an idea. You couldn’t simply walk away from murder. Not when it was witnessed by six people, one of them being a lawman.
A child. Sharon had killed a poor, misguided child.
How misguided had they been? Six adults should have known better than to come here. Todd should have known his friends would follow him once he’d told them his plan. He had an excuse. He was broken. He wanted, no, he needed every last bit of Ash he could find.
He couldn’t help feeling Ash’s disappointment. Sharon said she didn’t feel Sheri here. Ash was a part of the Hayden, just as real as the SD card she’d left behind. She was here, watching them. He knew it. And he felt ashamed.
“I’ll take the gun,” Jerry said.
Todd looked down at his hand, jolting as if finding he was holding a rattlesnake. “Oh. Here.”
“Better let him hold onto it,” Sharon said.
“I said shut up,” Jerry snapped.
Heather was about to pipe up but Vince guided her away, whispering something in her ear.
“Bill, let’s go,” Todd said, his brain calculating how long it would take to get to his car and find the police station.
“You see that?” Bill said.
“See what?” Todd asked.
“I don’t think the kid was alone.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jerry jerked Sharon to her feet, keeping his hand on the belt. It looked painful, but Sharon didn’t so much as grunt.
“See? Over there.”
The pall of sickly moonlight barely lit up the fallow fields of the Hayden. Todd had to squint into the gloom to see.
“Right there,” Bill said. Todd followed his outstretched finger.
Sure enough, there was another figure enshrouded in darkness, making its way to them, but slowly. Jerry pointed his flashlight at the figure, but the light fell far short.
“Follow my light,” he called out.
The person started to run.
They waved their flashlights as a beacon.
“What are they gonna say when they see their friend is dead?” Bill asked.
“We’ll deal with that when it happens,” Jerry said. He turned to Todd. “Looks like you’ll have one more.”
“That’s fine.”
“You shouldn’t be drawing him to us,” Sharon said. Jerry yanked on the belt.
