The Summer I Died

CHAPTER 23

At the top of the stairs, I pushed the door open into the tiny alcove we’d first spied from the trees, and threw my hand over my eyes to block out the daylight. Overcast as it was, the natural light threatened to burst my pupils. The fresh air was like a plumbing snake unclogging my lungs. The smell of evergreen trees and mountain wildflowers made me want to rush out the door at full speed and kiss the ground. It was the best smell I had ever smelled, light and fresh, with hints of pine and sap, juniper and wild lilac. It smelled so safe. Briefly, I believed I could open my eyes and find myself back at home, this whole nightmare having been just that: a nightmare.

It took a few seconds for the ache in my pupils to subside before I could see what was around me. To my right I noticed the door to the driveway, and to my left was the opening to the kitchen.

From outside came Skinny Man’s voice: “I’m sick of this shit, we ain’t gonna find it and quite frankly I don’t care anymore. Just don’t expect any more gifts from me, you ungrateful mutt. Get away from that mound! That ain’t for you, you already had your fill of that one.”

The driveway door wasn’t a viable option or I’d be seen. Plus I needed to find a phone, dial 911, and get some authorities out here pronto. Maybe I could call O’Conners’ bar and tell the skinheads a bunch of eggplants were raping white women here? Knowing the police as intimately as I did, the skinheads would most likely get here quicker. Then again, knowing their kind, they’d probably see Skinny Man and join him in a beer.

Stepping slowly into the kitchen, I scanned the walls and table for a phone but didn’t see one. The blinds on the windows, coupled with the drab slate-colored clouds outside, bathed the room in a dark and gloomy grayness. The walls were covered in wallpaper from the disco era, a faded collision of orange and yellow and brown that reminded me of the puddle of filth on the floor downstairs. The counters were buried under flotsam and jetsam of all sorts: books, papers, dirty dishes, silverware, clothing, toys, bottles, and lots of tools like hammers and screwdrivers. A table sat pushed up against the wall, some dirty plates on it and a fruit bowl with a mostly brown banana in it that matched the walls. A puke green refrigerator hummed in the corner with pictures of Butch and the late Sundance stuck to it with magnets. Next to it sat a stove that looked like it had lost a fight with a jar of Ragu. Flies buzzed at the windows looking for a way out.

Being in the kitchen sent my stomach ablaze. The last thing I’d eaten were some eggs at my house before we set out for Bobtail. The refrigerator was sure to have food, I thought, but I didn’t open it. I didn’t trust any of the food in this house. I wouldn’t put it past Skinny Man to poison it somehow.

Ignoring the cramping in my stomach, I ducked low and moved across the kitchen until I was in front of the sink. Over it was a window that looked out into the backyard, and Skinny Man’s voice was coming through it loud and clear. “You bury that back up ’fore someone sees it. And don’t touch that one neither.” There was a pause. “Poor fella, he didn’t deserve to get shot like that. We were probably too quick with that fucking kid, felt like it was over before it began. Unsatisfactory, I tell ya.”

Butch’s black teeth marks in my shin were opening up once again and dripping blood down my ankle. The pain was sensational, making my head throb, but I ignored it and rose up slowly and moved aside the edge of the curtain. Outside, Butch was sitting on the ground under the swing set watching Skinny Man tamp down dirt on a freshly-dug hole. As usual, he had his shirt off, his tattoos like thick veins on his skin. The shovel he carried was different than the one in the stove downstairs. This one was newer, the handle still shiny yellow. On his hip, dangling through a leather loop that fastened to his belt, he wore the hand ax he had so recently removed from Mystery Woman’s skull.

The man was like a walking advertisement for the Tool of the Month Club.

Turning on the sink, I bent down and lapped up some tap water. There were hints of chemicals in it, possibly chlorine and other bacteria-killing agents poured into the reservoir by the city, but I didn’t mind. My throat was dry and sore and it was hard to swallow, but it was the greatest feeling in the world. I filled my empty stomach, gasped for breath, and did it again. Not for too much longer though, a few seconds tops, and then I turned it off. My body demanded more but the house was old, and I feared the pipes might knock and give me away.

Just to be safe I checked the window once more and found Skinny Man was still preoccupied. He hadn’t heard me. I let the curtain fall back and slid down to the floor again. My adrenaline was wearing off, my leg was aching badly, and the grimy tile floor suddenly felt very comfortable, beckoning me to put my head down and sleep. Each time I blinked I saw something different before me: my parents eating dinner, the waves of the Pacific, Jesus playing basketball. Then, like sap down a tree, my back began to drift toward the floor. I was falling asleep and couldn’t stop it. It felt so good.

No, you’ll die, I told myself, and Jamie will die too. Get up!

I slapped myself in the face and when that didn’t work I stuck a finger in the dog bite.

Sweet Lord the pain was intense, like someone peeling back a giant hangnail on my lower body. But it served its purpose. I woke up in a flash and crawled out of the kitchen, trembling as I held the blade of the ax in my hand to avoid any noise. It was damn near pointless since the leg irons jingled so loudly you could hear them in Vermont.

I crawled into a musty, wood-paneled living room that was likewise buried in shadow from drawn curtains. Standing up, fighting the pain in my shin, I saw a couch that looked as if it had been made out of hand-me-down clothes. A collection of notebooks and Polaroid photographs were strewn about on the cushions. I picked one up and immediately threw it down when I saw what it was a picture of. No amount of shaking my head would clear away the image of two little boys on a floor, naked. One had a rottweiler’s prick in his mouth, against his will. The other boy was mutilated, diced, and the second dog was feasting on the remains. Don’t think about it, I told myself. Think about Jamie, think about Jamie and about California and find a fucking phone. Just don’t, whatever you do, think about it.

A water ring-stained coffee table sat in the middle of the floor, covered with dirty dishes and a bowl full of keys. Car keys by the looks of them. Maybe ten different pairs. Quickly, I ran my hand through it, hoping to find Tooth’s Camaro keys, but came up empty. As I was turning away to continue my search for a phone, I noticed something else on the coffee table that made my heart leap.

Under an upturned magazine, poking out like a turtle’s head, was the black muzzle of a gun. I snatched it up and looked at it, and sure enough, it was a 9mm-Tooth’s gun. Shaking so badly I almost dropped the damned thing, I rested the ax against my legs, ejected the gun’s clip like Tooth had shown me and checked for bullets. It was empty. I rummaged about the coffee table in the hopes of finding ammunition but all I found was junk. With a sigh, I slammed the clip back in and tucked the gun in my waistband in case I came across any bullets later.

There was no phone in here either.

Next to a black pipe that ran from a hole in the floor up through the ceiling-no doubt from the stove in the dungeon-was a staircase leading upstairs. I grabbed the banister and hauled myself up. The guy had to have a phone somewhere, didn’t he?

At the top of the stairs I stopped and listened. Skinny Man was still out back talking to Butch and I figured if there wasn’t a phone up here my best bet was to run out the front door into the woods across the street and make for Bobtail. Once he noticed I was gone, he’d be all over the road looking for me, probably send Butch out through the woods just to cover all the trails. The ax would help me, but I was very tired, and its weight was hurting my shoulders. My eyes were stinging from lack of sleep, and fatigue was creeping back up on me.

The stairs ended at the start of a hallway with three rooms-what appeared to be two bedrooms on either side and a bathroom at the end. I went into the bedroom to my right, which turned out to be filled with various boxes of clothes and other belongings. Pocketbooks, backpacks, sleeping bags. There were even a couple bicycles leaning up against one wall. Again, the drawn shades cast the room in a thick darkness, and from what I could see it was phoneless. Cursing under my breath, I turned back toward the hallway and noticed a small knife lying on top of the dresser near the door. It wouldn’t hurt to have as many weapons as possible, I thought. I picked it up and held it flush with the ax handle, so that if I had to I could drop the ax and still be holding the knife.

That’s when I noticed the photo.

It was lying flat on the dresser as well, and behind its cracked glass was a family of three: a mother, father and daughter, all standing next to the swing set that Skinny Man was standing next to right now. The little girl was maybe six or seven, blonde, with a front tooth missing, and she looked happy holding her father’s hand. The mother’s smile looked forced, and dark circles under her eyes spoke of extreme stress. The father was. . well, the father was Skinny Man. The smile that stretched across his face was longer then the Rio Grande. Was this his family? Where were they now? Did they leave him, or did he butcher them as well?

Truth was, I didn’t really care. I put the photo back on the dresser and left.

Skinny Man’s voice carried up to me as I went across the hall and peeked into what was arguably his bedroom. “Soon as I finish this up you’re gonna help me take care of that troublemaker down there, make him wish he was his friend, and I want you to help me out and not give me any lip. What do you mean do him fast? I don’t want to do it fast. We been too hasty with these fuckers. We gonna take our time and do him right.”

I had to find a phone or get out now. In the bedroom, a large four poster bed sat among heaps of more clothing, magazines, notebooks, photographs, and a broken acoustic guitar. On the nightstand beside the bed was a glass of water and some crumpled up pieces of paper. Hanging on the post of the bed was a beat up Red Sox cap. I walked over and took it off, looked at it and knew instantly it was Tooth’s. Holding it brought back the recent events I was trying so hard to block out. The torture, the pain, the way he’d fought till the very end. The way I’d cried and cried through it all, praying the dice would ignore me. We had set out to shoot beer cans and smoke weed, just two friends trying to hold onto a childhood that was slowly disintegrating with age. And then. .

I rolled up the hat and put it in my back pocket. Given a choice, Tooth would have taken this hat to the grave with him, and I figured I could do that much for him.

Something crunched under my foot as I moved back to the door. I looked down and saw a collection of plastic prescription pill bottles, maybe twelve in all, scattered on the ground. A few were empty, were missing their lids, some lone pills resting nearby, but most were full. I picked one up and read the label: Clozapine. Never heard of it. I didn’t know what the drug did, or what it was for, but it sure as shit wouldn’t surprise me if it had something to do with psychosis. The date on the label was over a year old. I picked up another, also still full, and saw the date on it was also a year old.

I dropped it back down to the floor, next to a child’s doll with wiry blonde hair.

I gave the room a final once over and didn’t see a phone anywhere. Okay, I decided, the fucker doesn’t own a phone, time to leave by the front door and run as fast as possible on my rotting leg to Bobtail.

In the hallway again, I took a breath and steeled myself for the journey. I was moving toward the stairs when it hit me that the backyard was suddenly quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that scares the shit out of new parents. Rushing into the bathroom, I slid up next to the window that looked out over the backyard and, barely breathing, pulled back the corner of the blind. I looked out toward the swing set.

Skinny Man was staring right back at me.

The curtain fell out of my hand as I plastered myself against the wall, my heart slamming against my ribcage. At the same time, Skinny Man let out a bloodcurdling wail that sent squawking birds flying from the trees, a wail that raced from the swing set to the driveway door.

And then he was inside the house and rushing though the kitchen, knocking pans to the ground. I heard him in the living room, screaming, a clatter of falling objects bouncing in his wake. A shadow exploded up the stairs, followed by a body that was swinging a shovel like a crack addict frantically looking for a pinata full of drugs. Then he saw me, and in his wide ape-shit eyes, though I was at least fifteen feet away, I swear I saw the trembling reflection of a man with nothing more to lose: myself.

He stopped at the landing, maybe stunned, maybe collecting his strength, maybe hearing voices, who knows. My body was shaking, both in fear and anticipation, and I thought of Jamie downstairs, and what I had to do for her. I thought of Tooth and the way he died. I thought of myself and how unfair it all was. A silence passed between us, him staring at me, me staring back, like two gladiators in ancient Rome. There was no noise but our eager breathing. He was pissed, outraged that I had escaped, outraged at himself most likely. With a spit-drenched roar, he raised his shovel and rushed at me.

“Ahhhhh!”

Without thinking, I charged him with the ax, holding it high like a reaper taking souls, screaming unholy nonsense and simply beyond concern of catching a shovel to the skull. And that’s when I saw something that nearly made me stumble, something behind Skinny Man that I knew couldn’t be real, something that gave me a renewed burst of speed.

I swung the ax.

With an explosive clang, the two weapons collided in mid air, accompanied by angry screams and cracking handles. Then, either because the ax was heavier, or because of what I knew couldn’t possibly be in the hall with us, Skinny Man fell backwards and toppled down the stairs, the shovel arcing through the air with him. My momentum carried me forward and I fell down on top of him, losing the ax as I tumbled.

Still holding the knife, I rolled past him and into the wall at the bottom, spilling into the living room like dirty laundry. Pain erupted throughout my back, my vision blurred. My shoulders seemed to swell up before my eyes, and I was pretty sure my spine was sticking out the top of my head. The dog bite on my shin was gushing like a geyser. I looked up and found Skinny Man lying on the stairs, upside down, with his leg caught in the railing. Above him, the ax peeked out over the top stair, out of my reach. He swung the shovel at me but he was a couple feet too far away to hit me. I braced myself for it to come flying at me next, but he held on to it instead. Watching him watching me, I noticed one of the railing spokes had stabbed through his calf muscle, pinning him there like a fish on a hook.

He yelled, “You are in a heap of shit now. Only people who leave here are the ones marked paid in full, and I don’t see a receipt on your toe, now do I?”

And with that he punched through the spoke and broke it off from the railing. Standing up with the thin piece of wood impaling him, he reached down and took hold of the shortest end and proceeded to pull it all the way through and out the other side of his leg, grinning the whole while. Once the spoke was out, blood began to pool on the stairs and run down toward me. He took a step and winced, sweat flowing from his brow, and his face twisted in surprise. I guess he didn’t think his little trick would hurt that much, but from the way he was breathing through his clenched teeth, and the way he was now afraid to walk, he had obviously misjudged his own threshold for pain. Still, I was in no shape to make for the ax above him so I turned and limped toward the front door.

“Where you going, mama’s boy? You still have to atone for your crime. Hey, Butch!”

A loud bark came from behind me and I spun with my fists raised and ready. Butch came charging through the living room like a runaway train and slammed me into the door. Sharp teeth bit down on my hip and sank into my flesh, thrusting me into the door repeatedly. In excruciating pain, I wrapped my arm around his head and tried to shove the knife in his throat.

From the stairs, Skinny Man yelled, “No! Don’t you hurt him! I’ll kill you!”

But Butch was thrashing, and the knife missed its target and sank into his shoulder instead. With a yelp he burst back into the kitchen and disappeared, the knife still protruding from his body. My hip was filled with red hot gravel. Blood was seeping down my groin. Realizing I had to get out now, I reached up to undo the latch on the front door. From behind me I heard the Frankenstein clomp of Skinny Man shuffling down the steps, and a second later a shovel swooped over my head and took a chunk out of the lintel. I grabbed the handle before he could pull it back and wrenched it from his hands, swung it back at him with all my might. But I was hurt and beyond fatigued, and I misjudged the swing and hit the banister instead. The reverberation sent a shock wave up my arm and I dropped it on the floor. In an instant Skinny Man was on top of me.

“I’m gonna cut you up nice and fine,” he whispered in my ear as we struggled. I saw him go for the ax on his belt. “Hell, I didn’t ask you to come here, you did that on yer own. So many people always trying to come through my property, hike through my hills, drive through my woods. Nobody ever learns, do they?”

My shoulders felt like cornmeal and my punches had little effect. Getting a thumb up to his eye, I jabbed it in but it was a weak attempt. He pulled his head away and put me in a headlock and squeezed, still trying to undo the ax. Spots jumped before me; I was losing my breath. In a way, it felt good, like I would soon be asleep and in a better place. Again, I could see random images before me, the ever-present image of California that had lodged into my subconscious, a quick flash of Jamie when she was younger, holding her teddy bear, my father yelling at me for watching too many horror films. Then I saw another vision: Tooth, standing in the corner of the room. He was saying something to me. “Go for the leg, he’s hurt in the leg.”

Kicking back, I hit the gaping wound on Skinny Man’s calf, rubbed the heel of my shoe down it and ripped it open wider. At the same time I scratched at his face and tore open the flesh under his eye. He lost his grip on me and I dropped straight to the floor, out of his hands. Groggy and gasping for breath, I lifted myself up as quickly as I could manage and kicked him in the chest, sent him into the bottom stair, which he tripped backwards on. Before he even hit the ground, he was pulling the hand ax free from its loop.

Knowing I was outnumbered two to one at that point, I unfastened the latch on the door and threw myself into the sunlight. I burst through the overgrown front lawn and made for the trees across the street.