Mrs. Howell, on the other hand, was still worried about her son and about Cassie. “Call me Jenny, dear,” she said. “Should I call your parents? Won’t they be awfully worried about you?”
Cassie smiled and explained that her parents were out for the evening, they’d gone into the city for a showing of one of her father’s favorite opera’s. Jenny insisted she stay over until her parents got home. Cassie didn’t mind. She didn’t want to be alone just then.
Joe reacted differently to this than he had to his stepson’s beating as well: the boy responsible had obviously been up to causing serious harm and over Mark’s protests, he called the police. The wait was short, but the questions went on forever. Sheriff Chuck Hanson believed in being very thorough, making sure that every detail was covered.
5
Andy moaned to himself and held his broken fingers to his chest. Mark had gotten lucky with one of his wild swings and forced his middle and index fingers all the way back to his wrist. It happened so quickly that Andy hadn’t even had a moment to react. The fingers breaking were like a jolt through his body and suddenly all lust had left him. He simply wanted to get away. He was scared for dear life when he heard Mark growling at him. It hadn’t sounded human.
He walked blindly through the woods, trying to remember which way his house was and praying that Cassie and Mark hadn’t told anyone. His dad would be pissed if he found out. His dad would get nasty.
William Phillips was a giant by any standards. He worked in the mills about twenty miles out of town and had since the age of sixteen, when he dropped out of school. Andy’s dad didn’t drink, smoke or curse. But he was hell with a leather strap. Willie believed in the old adage about sparing the rod and spoiling the child and he had never hesitated to prove it. Andy had more than his fair share of scars.
Years of heavy lifting and using chain saws to cut down the giant trees in the milling area had developed muscles the likes of which Andy had never seen outside of a muscular fitness magazine. His father used those muscles at home, too—whenever Andy back talked him or forgot to do his chores. Try as he might, Andy never could seem to remember his chores. But this, this would get him a beating like none he had ever experienced. Andy was scared, if they had told on him his life wouldn’t be worth spit.
6
They watched him as he stumbled around through the woods. The rage They felt was divine. They had seldom felt its like. He had hurt the One and that could not be permitted. He had to die.
They had always been in the woods, for as long as the woods had been there, They saw everything that happened, even when there was nothing to see. They would get Their revenge and it would be sweet.
With nary another whisper, They ran to where the one who had hurt Their friend, had hurt the others before tonight. They knew just what to do. They knew what he would fear. There, under those shrubs…
7
Andy finally sat down, whimpering like a wounded puppy. Maybe he deserved to get in trouble, one part of his mind whispered, hadn’t Tanya asked him not to? Hadn’t she begged him to stop?
She’d beat at his shoulders, she’d screamed at the top of her lungs and he’d done it anyway. Was that why she’d never come back to school?
No. Even as he asked himself that question, another part of his mind was answering him, a part that demanded nothing less than the truth. She hadn’t come back, because she couldn’t come back. He had pushed the truth far away and tried his best to bury it—just like he’d buried Tanya. He could not. No more than Tanya could come walking back into his life and forgive him.
He had murdered her. He’d slapped his hand over her mouth and kept it there, while he forced himself on her. She could no more come back and forgive him, than he could go to her and beg forgiveness. The only answer he would get would be the silence of the grave. Her grave, unmarked and untended. Just a dozen yards to his left, in his special place. Involuntarily, he looked over towards the spot.
And there she was, staring at him.
He screamed, long and hard. The birds nestled in their trees took flight at the sound, startled out of their rest. He heard them flapping madly, but it was a small sound in comparison to the beating of his own heart.
She stood before him without a shred of clothing, smiling serenely. He cowered before her, certain that she had come back to kill him. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Tanya, I couldn’t stop myself, I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t stop myself!” She looked down upon him, a smiling goddess of vengeance and he cringed, scraped the ground at her feet, writhed in the forced recognition of what he had done that night, four months ago. A thousand years ago.
She reached down, gently touching his head with her long delicate fingers. He trembled at the lover’s touch. She raised his head with gentle pushes on his chin, until he looked her in the face. She had lost none of her beauty, her silky raven hair still flowed across her shoulders and her angel’s face was unblemished in the pale light of the rising moon. Her full lips gleamed wetly as she helped him to his feet and, in her hazel eyes, the light shone back with a hint of amusement. He looked at her, awestruck by the sight of her perfection. This was the woman he had dreamed of so many times, the woman he had wanted to marry in those dreams. The woman that he had murdered. Tanya Billingsley looked as lovely in death, as she had in life.
Mesmerized by her beauty, he allowed her to move him like a puppet on its strings. She stood him up, dusted him off and took his hand in hers, all he could do was follow her mindlessly. When she wrapped her arms around his neck he knew that all had been forgiven. When she planted the tiny kisses on his neck, he knew that she loved him as well. And then she kissed him on his lips fully, passionately. He fairly swooned to be so close to her again, living out a fantasy that he had held so tightly for so long. He closed his eyes and felt himself starting to stir. He drew her close, into his arms and felt the rounded curves of her body, as she pushed eagerly against him. She stroked his hardness and he groaned with the need for relief. He opened his eyes to look upon her angelic face and saw the torn and ragged remains of what had once been a young girl named Tanya Billingsley.
The elements had not been kind to her earthly remains, she had putrefied and withered in the last four months. He pulled back from the lips against his mouth and the tongue that had danced inside of his own. He saw the living creatures that crawled across her face and felt the wriggling bodies of maggots writhe across his tongue and teeth. He saw the sunken pits where her eyes had been and felt the wormy flesh and jutting bone of her pelvis grind across his own in a mockery of lust. As he tried to step away, mind numb with horror, she pulled him close one last time and suggestively pushed her tongue into his ear.
In the place where Summit Town had stood almost two centuries ago, history repeated itself. Tobias Andrew Phillips, descended from the legendary Stoney Miles on his mother’s side of the family, ran shrieking mindlessly though the woods, all the way to town. Stoney had been burned across his body; Andy simply felt his brain catch fire. He hardly felt the twigs and stones that lashed his body. He barely even noticed when he ran face first into an ancient red oak and he never even heard the screeching of tires on several of the late night streets, as he ran all the way to the sheriff’s office.
Deputy Alan Fisk had never before seen a man so terrified, or so repentant of his sins. He looked on in amazement at the small giant before him, with eyes as wide as saucers and hair whiter than the first snow of winter and hardly recognized him as Andy Phillips. Just the same, when he heard the boy’s confession, he read him the Miranda and locked him in a cell.
He had to put the sheriff on hold when one of the other deputies turned out the lights in the cellblock. He’d never before heard a man scream as shrilly, either. Andy seemed to have developed a fear of the darkness in record time.
Early the next day, Sheriff Hanson found Tanya Billingsley’s moldering corpse just exactly where Andy said he would. Andy would later refuse his right to counsel and plead guilty t
o murder in the first degree. He never told anyone what he’d seen that night after trying for his second rape. Hanson had to admit he’d never seen anyone so eager to go to prison. He wished with all of his heart that he did know what the boy had seen; if he could bottle it, he could sell it to the City’s police and retire on the profits.
8
They laughed merrily at the jest and found the boy’s reaction of such rare humor that They let him live. He wouldn’t hurt the One again; it was likely he would never hurt anyone again. Also, the Folk were not without mercy, he had been repentant. And there were those among Them, that believed he would punish himself for as long as he lived. Oh, how They loved a good joke. They’d have laughed all the harder, to know that Andy had killed himself two weeks after he was sentenced to fifteen years in the state Facility, (the minimum that the state would permit in a case of admitted murder).
Reportedly, after fourteen nights of screaming nightmares, he screamed a name loudly and threw himself off of the railing on the fourth floor of the Waltsburg Maximum Security State Penitentiary’s cellblock E. No one was quite certain what the name he called had been, but Tanya seemed like a good guess. He landed headfirst. Emmanuel Jorge De Carlo, a lifer in prison for the shotgun murder of seven parishioners at the Holy Mother Catholic Church in the city, was later heard to say he’d never seen a more flawless swan dive.
With Their habitual enthusiasm, the Folk prepared for another span of watching, guarding the One. But, oh how They laughed that next day, thinking of Their wonderful jest. They never considered that some might blame Mark, however irrationally, for the death that They had caused.
9
Mark had never met Tanya Billingsley, had only heard her mentioned once or twice, but he attended her funeral just the same. Tyler needed the comfort of a friend. He had been close with the girl.
Tyler was one of those rare people who never seemed to care what others thought of him. When he had heard of Andy’s crushing defeat at the hands of Mark, he’d told everyone in the school, laughing merrily and adding to the story with each telling. When he’d heard that poor Tanya had finally been found, he had cried without embarrassment, right in the middle of the auditorium. Mark often envied him that freedom of feeling. He suspected that such a freedom must be very liberating.
Tyler cried again as they lowered Tanya’s remains into their final resting place. Mark held him and hugged him fiercely when he needed the embrace. For once, no one made any comments about his sexual preference, or about his weight. Not even Tony, who stood close by.
Tony stood numbly, unaware of those around him, as he attended the funeral. Andy and he had talked just last week, during the visiting hour at the County Jail. Andy had told him exactly what he had told the police, almost word for word. Frankly, if he’d been asked what the weather was like he, like as not, would have given the same response again. His poor feeble mind had been shattered. Tony had trouble believing that Andy, of all people, was capable of rape and murder. He had serious difficulty accepting the facts, even when it was Andy who told him. He felt very little for Andy, possibly the same affection a hunter feels for his favorite bird dog, but certainly no more than that; he felt even less when Andy went on to tell of his fight with Mark in the woods.
He couldn’t care less that Mark had won. He knew the fucker had it in him; he’d known it since he first saw him, waddling into the school with his neck tucked between his shoulders like a turtle. It didn’t matter at all. Except…Except, that Andy and Tony’d had a few falling outs in their time and Andy always won. And if Mark Howell could take out Andy, who had in his time taken out Tony, didn’t that mean that Mark could, possibly…? No. Not a chance.
And, much as he hated the thought, there seemed to be something between Howell and Cassie. And maybe the fact that he had saved her from what would have likely been the same fate that Tanya had suffered had brought them closer together. Maybe, Hell.
It wasn’t like he considered Cassie his property, or anything, but the thought of her with that fat turd did nothing for his self-esteem. Fat turd? Doesn’t Mark seem a great deal more fit, lately? Isn’t he standing a little taller and looking more fleshed out across his shoulders and chest, than around his gut and butt these days? And, dammit all, he really liked Cassie. He wanted to ask her out, maybe to the Halloween dance down at the town square.
He looked over to where the minister was finishing his little sermon about ashes and dust and spied Cassie looking at him. He nodded to her and was rewarded with a small smile. She looked more uncomfortable than Howell did and Howell was the one who was comforting that little shit, Tyler. Another two points, he respected Mark for being willing to risk the shit that would fly at school, when the word of THAT got around. He heard the hollow thumps, as the Billingsley family placed handfuls of dirt atop the coffin where their only child would spend the rest of eternity and walked over to where Cassie stood. Her smile grew weaker, but friendlier, as he approached.
“Hi,” she started, “haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah, I’ve been kinda busy, talkin’ with Andy’s family an all that. His dad’s really torn up, he blames himself for Tanya’s dying.”
Her pretty little eyebrows pulled together at that one. “Why? He couldn’t know what A-Andy had been doing.”
He noticed the nervous little stutter in her voice when she mentioned Andy and knew then that the story of him trying to get at her was true. Tony couldn’t help wondering if he’d have stood up to Andy in the same situation as Mark. “I guess he figures he should have done that ‘birds and the bees’ talk with him. He said they never even talked about it. Mister Phillips’ is kind of heavy into religion, didn’t think it would be appropriate.” People where starting to leave and Pete was motioning to him, he smiled and waved a small good-bye to Cassie. She replied with the appropriate terms and they parted. He wished he could talk to her, about how he felt about her, about everything but he knew this wasn’t the right time. Looking up towards the heavy, sodden clouds above, he walked a little faster. The sooner he was home in the warmth of his house and out of the chilly October air, the better he’d feel.
10
Cassie moved closer to Tyler and Mark. Tyler smiled wanly and gave her a fierce hug. She hugged back with equal emotion. She’d never really liked Tanya, she felt the girl was a vicious little prick-tease, shouldn’t talk that way about the dead, girl, but she knew that Tyler had been close to falling for Tanya, hard. And she loved Tyler with all of her heart, to see him hurting, for any reason, was to be hurting herself. He cried against her shoulder and she held him, whispering nonsensical words of comfort to him and stroking his lifeless hair. He had always been her confidant and she had always been his, now she could only offer comfort and she did so without hesitation.
Looking past Tyler’s head, she saw Mark, who understood instinctively the relationship that she and Tyler shared. If he was jealous of their friendship, he hid it well. She thanked him silently for that and he nodded, smiled, just before he turned away to leave them in peace.
His smile said it all, he’d see her later if she felt the need to talk. For now Tyler’s needs were the most important.
11
The woods were his new thinking grounds; he could sit back and talk to his elusive little imaginary friends and they would comfort him. He rambled on for quite a while, before he finally grew tired and slipped into a comfortable, deep sleep.
In his dreams, she came to him again as she always did when he was weary of life or just frustrated. She pleased him in a thousand ways, she teased him in a hundred thousand, before he felt himself release his seed into her. As always, she smiled and left only moments after they were finished. He knew they were only dreams but they always felt so real. He leaned against his favorite stone in his sleep, never aware that, in the real world, that stone had slashed his face with a will of its own. The Stone looked different than before, larger, more anchored in the real world. He’d have left the woods and never s
et foot in them again if he’d known the history of that thin blade of rock.
While he slept They touched him, caressed him, changed him. He felt only the pleasure of his dreams, not the hands that reached through his skin as if it were water and caused the small transformations in his very flesh and bone. Had he thought about it, he might have realized that his recent weight loss had all occurred in strange spurts and only after he slept in his special place. If he’d thought about it. Most of his thoughts, sleeping and waking, were only for Cassie.
CHAPTER THREE
1
Tyler was fast on the rebound and Mark was increasingly convinced that nothing short of his own death would ever keep his friend down for long. He was in fine spirits indeed by the time Halloween showed up that year. It was unseasonably warm for October in Colorado, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the last chance for a little fun in the world beyond their houses, without the added weight of a heavy coat.
When Mark opened the door he stared Death in the face and Death was smiling toothily. “Yes, I’m here to ask if you’d like to sell you immortal soul in exchange for eternal life,” Tyler said as he swished past Mark into the living room.”Hi, Joe! Hi, Jenny!” he called as he swept over to where Mark’s mom was sitting. He looked over at Joe, dressed in his traditional Dracula costume and started speaking. “Now, Joe, don’t let this seem like a REFLECTION on your character.” Joe and Mark both winced at that one. Tyler turned to look at Jenny, dressed in a red bodysuit and wearing high-heeled red boots, that ran up to mid-thigh. She finished the costume with a pair of horns and a pointed tail.
Under the Overtree Page 8
