Spilled Blood

41

Where was Johan?

Olivia felt helpless without any way to reach him. She couldn’t sit and wait as he threw his life away. When night fell, she knew she had to move quickly, and she knew where to go. She slipped out of her window, ducked through the wet streets of St. Croix, and borrowed a rusty Grand Am from the garage of one of her friends. She turned on her brights as she reached the highway. Her tires kicked up spray behind her like an ocean wave. Kirk’s house was ten minutes away, and with each mile closer to him, her terror climbed up her throat.

She parked on the shoulder near 120th. When she got out, a wave of rain slashed her chest. She ran for the dirt road, where she stopped and stared into the hole between the trees. It felt like descending into a monster’s cave. She smelled the smoke of a log fire and a wave of pine. The wind was fierce. With her hands shoved in the pockets of her jeans, she took tentative steps into the darkness. Her feet sank into the ooze. Her hair became wet ropes on her face.

Branches from the dense woods scraped her face. The constant patter of rain drowned out the other noises of the forest, and she worried that if someone were nearby, she wouldn’t hear them until their breath was on her neck. Her brain fed flashbacks from a horror movie, but it wasn’t a movie. In the invisible night, she found herself back in the belly of the train car as the boys assaulted her. She glimpsed quick, stabbing reminders of what she’d buried in her mind. She felt the crush of their hands on her skin, holding her down. Her body rattled on the metal floor with hammering jolts of pain.

It’s not real.

She wanted to go back home, but she couldn’t.

She hiked step by step like a blind girl. When her knee collided with something hard, she stopped and pawed with her hands, running her fingers along wet steel. It was a car, parked deep in the soft mud under a canopy of brush. She reached into her pocket and yanked out her keys; she had a penlight on the chain. It cast a feeble light, but it was enough to show her the license plate of the vehicle. She recognized it. The car belonged to Glenn Magnus.

Johan was here.

The car was empty, but when she laid a palm on the hood, she felt the heat of the engine. He hadn’t been here long. She still had a chance to catch him. She opened her mouth to shout his name, but she caught herself and bit her tongue to stay quiet. She couldn’t let anyone know they were here. Even so, she felt his presence nearby, like a wi-fi signal connecting them. All her old feelings came back, as strong as ever. Memories of the two of them in the corn field last summer supplanted the black memories of the train car. She felt him holding her as they made love. Her first time. His, too, he said. His body was on top of her, and his heaviness was arousing.

Olivia walked faster. She needed to find him.

She reached Kirk’s house steps away from the black river. It was flooded with light, but she saw no one moving inside. She recognized Kirk’s pick-up parked near the garage. He was home. Or was he? The stillness bothered her. She expected the music of a party, or boys’ voices, or the squeals of stupid girls who didn’t know better. Instead, the house was as silent as a tomb.

She crept closer, exposed in the glow of the garage lights. If Johan could see her, she hoped he’d break cover and call her. No one did. She walked past the truck to the front-porch steps. Loose boards groaned as she climbed them, and she winced at the noise. At the front door, she cupped her hands by her face to stare inside the house. The living-room lights were on, and the place was a mess. Someone had torn it apart. Two drawers of a file cabinet were open and had been emptied onto the floor, which was strewn with papers and photographs. A desktop computer lay on the floor; its metal side had been stripped open.

What the hell?

Olivia backed away and retraced her steps off the porch. At each window, she saw more signs of a frantic search, but she saw no one alive. Not Kirk. Not Johan. She reached the rear corner of the house backing up to the wilderness and the river. The window on the corner looked in on a small bedroom, ten feet by twelve. She saw the high-school textbooks on the laminate desk and figured that the room belonged to Kirk’s brother, Lenny. He had a lava lamp, glowing with floating orange clouds. Dirty clothes covered the floor. There were posters tacked on the wall, all of naked porn stars. Front. Back. On their knees. It was disgusting.

On his bed, immediately below the window, she saw other photographs, too. Photographs of her.

Olivia felt violated all over again. She saw herself in the swimming pool at school. On the street outside her mother’s clinic. On her front lawn in St. Croix with Tanya. Wherever she’d gone, he’d been there with her. Spying. Lenny had been following her for weeks.

She recoiled from the window, and as she did, a hand clapped over her mouth from behind. Another hand snaked around her waist, and she felt dirty fingers on her bare stomach.

The touch of a boy’s hand set her off like a bomb. She drove her elbow backward into her attacker’s kidney, landing the blow so hard she thought the fleshy organ would squish out onto the mushy ground. She heard a yelp of pain and felt the hands loosen on her body. Free now, she spun, throwing her left fist, colliding with hard bone. It was the side of his skull. Another gasp. His hands flew in front of his face in self-defense. She shoved violently on his bare chest, and his legs spilled out underneath him, and he dropped flat on his back. His body was a mucky stretch of skin; he was naked. She swung her leg to punt his groin like a football kicker, but he squirmed away and covered himself, screaming, ‘No!’

She focused on his face for the first time. It was Lenny. She looked around, expecting Kirk and the other Barron boys to charge her. No one did. The two of them were alone.

‘Lenny, you bastard!’

On the ground at her feet, the boy wailed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Olivia, I didn’t know it was you.’ There was a dirty wool blanket near him on the ground, and he scrambled to cover himself. ‘Honest, I didn’t know.’

‘Where’s Kirk?’

‘I don’t know. He kicked me out. I fell asleep in the truck.’

‘Have you seen anybody else?’

‘No, nobody. I told you, I was sleeping. Something woke me up.’

Lenny struggled to his feet, clutching the blanket at his waist. His chest was scrawny, his arms like toothpicks. His eyes darted up and down Olivia’s body, and she realized that her nipples were pointy and visible through the soaked fabric of her shirt. She folded her arms over her chest.

‘How long have you been following me?’

His eyes widened. ‘What?’

‘You’ve been stalking me, you creep. I saw the pictures on your bed.’

‘It’s not what you think. I just like to see you.’

‘You’re repulsive.’

‘I’m sorry. Really.’

She watched him adjust the blanket around his waist and knew he was becoming aroused. She felt another urge to kick him between his legs. ‘Go put some clothes on.’

‘Yeah. Okay.’

Lenny brushed past her. The touch of his shoulder made her fists clench. He squeezed his fingers under the sash and pushed open the window to his bedroom. He climbed inside, and she looked away, not wanting to see his naked body. She heard him opening drawers, tugging out clothes. When he climbed outside again, he wore a flannel shirt and blue corduroys. He’d combed his wet, greasy hair back over his head.

Before he closed the window, she ordered him, ‘Show me the pictures.’

‘Huh?’

‘The pictures you took. I want to see them.’

He looked as if he wanted to run.

‘Reach in and get them, Lenny. Now.’

Lenny bent over the ledge, and he pushed together the photos on the bed into a messy pile. They were printed on ordinary copier paper, and he’d used a low-pixel camera on his phone. Most of the pictures were blurry. He handed them to her, and the rain began to soak into the colors immediately. The photos ran. The paper became flimsy mush.

She stared at each one, and as she did, she crushed it and threw it on the ground in anger. He’d been everywhere, hiding, watching. It wasn’t just outside. He’d spied on her when she was in her bedroom, from a tree near the river. She saw herself sprawled on her bed, reading. Drinking pop from a can as she did homework on her computer. Some were at night, as she got ready to sleep. Her in a towel, coming out of the shower. Her in her shorty nightgown. One, so blurry his hands must have been shaking, showed her nude in profile.

Olivia slapped his face, leaving a pink palm print on his cheek. Lenny didn’t say anything. He just stood there and took it.

She dropped the photos to the ground and began obliterating them under her shoe, but she stopped as she spotted a moonlit scene, so dark it was almost indistinguishable. Something about it screamed at her. She grabbed the pictures from the ground again. Frantically, she flipped through at least ten more photos, all apparently taken the same night. Most were too black or out of focus to see, but she found two that were bright enough to identify. In these pictures, she wasn’t alone. Tanya was with her. When she looked closer, she saw someone else, too.

It was Ashlynn.

The photos were taken in the ghost town.

‘You were there!’ she shouted. ‘You saw us!’

Lenny tugged at his flannel shirt, which he’d mis-buttoned in haste. ‘I was on the other side of the railroad tracks.’

‘Did you see everything?’

‘Yeah. I thought you were going to shoot her.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I know. I saw you leave.’

Olivia took him by the shoulders and shouted in his face. ‘You didn’t say anything? You let them arrest me? You let Kirk and those bastards come after me? You knew I didn’t kill her. How could you do that to me?’

‘I – I don’t know. I thought, like, if they tried you or something, I could be a hero, you know? I could come forward and save you.’

‘You bastard.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ he moaned.

‘Did you see who killed Ashlynn?’

‘No, no, I got the hell out of there. I left right after you did.’

Olivia tried to decide if she believed him. She struggled to rein in her emotions. Everything she’d been through, everything she’d suffered, it all could have been avoided if Lenny had opened his mouth. ‘Was it you?’ she asked. ‘Did you shoot her?’

‘No!’

She folded the wet photographs and shoved them in her pocket. ‘You’re going to talk to the police tomorrow, Lenny. You’re going to tell them what you saw.’

‘Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.’

‘You’re going to tell them what Kirk did to me, too.’

Lenny shook his head. ‘Oh, fuck, Olivia, you know I can’t do that. He’s my brother!’

Olivia stared closely at Lenny’s face and saw for the first time that he had fresh bruises and dried blood on his skin. ‘Did Kirk do that to you? Is that how your brother treats you?’

‘I deserved it. I’m a loser.’

‘You’re a loser if you don’t help me.’

‘Kirk’s done everything for me. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.’

Olivia knew she was on the losing end. Even if Lenny loved her, he loved his brother more. Or feared him more. ‘Where is he?’

‘I don’t know. Why are you here? What’s going on?’

‘I’m trying to stop something bad from happening.’

‘Like what?’

‘Someone getting killed. Where is Kirk, Lenny? His truck is still here. If he didn’t leave, where did he go?’

‘I told you, I don’t know.’

‘You said something woke you up,’ Olivia said. ‘What was it?’

‘I think I dreamed it. It sounded like gunshots.’

‘Gunshots? From where?’

‘In the woods near the river.’ Lenny covered his mouth with both fists. ‘Oh, fuck.’

‘Come on, we need to check it out. Do you have a flashlight?’

‘Yeah.’

Lenny slithered back inside the window to his room and emerged with a red Maglite. Olivia grabbed it from him and shot the beam toward the river. The light lit up the streams of rain. She took his dirty hand and dragged him with her toward the woods. Where the trail dove into the trees, she spotted deep boot prints filling with water. She listened, but the spattering rain covered up every other noise. The river shouldered in front of them like a fat snake.

‘What’s down here?’ she asked Lenny.

‘Nothing.’

She heard it in his voice. He was lying. She stopped and turned the light into his face. He put up a hand, covering his eyes. Rain poured through his acne and his cuts.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘I don’t know. Kirk says he’s got something big down here. He doesn’t let me come with him.’

Olivia led them through the mud. The river slapped against the bank beside them. She had no sense of how far they’d gone. She didn’t like the idea that Kirk was out here somewhere or that she might run into him alone. She thought about switching off the light, because it was a beacon for anyone else in the woods, but without it, she might as well have closed her eyes.

Snap.

She stopped so quickly that Lenny bumped into her. A twig broke under someone’s foot. She swung the light off the trail, and she stifled a scream as the beam lit up a boy’s face, no more than ten feet away.

There he was, frozen between the flaky trunks of two birch trees.

‘Johan,’ she whispered.

His face was shock white. ‘Olivia! What are you doing here?’

He crashed toward her through the weeds. They felt like lovers as they embraced, the way they’d been in the summer. The light of the flashlight danced crazily. Behind them, Lenny was almost invisible in the night.

She read the terror in his eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

When he didn’t answer, she studied him from head to toe with a flick of the light. His wet sneakers were splashed in red. So were the cuffs of his jeans. ‘Oh my God, Johan, what did you do?’

Lenny saw the blood, too. ‘Kirk.’

Johan took her hand. ‘We have to get out of here right now. It’s not safe.’

‘Kirk!’ Lenny screamed again. He grabbed the flashlight out of Olivia’s hand and dove off the trail, swallowed up by the darkness. He shouted his brother’s name over and over.

‘Quick,’ Johan said. He had his own flashlight, and he switched it on. ‘We have to hurry.’

Olivia felt a strange calm. ‘I have a car. We can’t take yours, they’re looking for it. Let’s go.’

They hadn’t traveled twenty yards before she heard an anguished cry. It was Lenny, somewhere in the woods behind them. She didn’t stop. She didn’t ask Johan what Lenny had found, and she didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was that they were together.

They kept on running.