They Did Bad Things

by Lauren A. Forry

  Oliver climbed into the car and tossed the diary on the passenger seat. It smelled of wet dog and lager, but to Oliver the Land Rover was the most beautiful thing in the world. It must’ve been Caskie’s or MacLeod’s, but either way it didn’t matter to him. A dead man’s car had become his salvation. As he adjusted the seat, he noticed a sheet of paper plastered to the windshield. Hollis’s handwriting, the ink wet and running from the rain. The jagged top of the page indicated it had been torn, maybe from the notebook Lorna had been looking for. And while Oliver couldn’t make out most of Hollis’s scrawl, he could tell it was a list of names, the one at the bottom double underlined.

  Jen

  Oliver turned the ignition key while still staring at the note, but when the engine started, the wipers immediately went into motion, and the paper was lost to the wind.

  He managed to get the vehicle turned perpendicular to the dumpster, and that was when he saw Ellie, like a ghost appearing from nowhere. In the distance, he couldn’t make out the details of her face, but her shoulders were hunched forward, a bull ready to charge. But he had a car. She had nothing. Oliver gave her a two-fingered salute, then threw the car into gear.

  The windshield shattered. A brick lay on the hood. And Ellie was running at the car. He covered his face as a second brick penetrated the driver’s side window, hitting him in the head. Shards of glass rained over him. Oliver lost the vision in his right eye. He tried to scramble into the passenger seat but had trouble getting over the gear box. His hand slipped on the diary. Ellie opened the door and clawed at his legs, trying to drag him out. He grabbed the diary and shoved it down his shirt, then stretched out an arm, fingers brushing against the passenger door handle. He almost had it when a sharp pain exploded in the back of his thigh.

  Turning as far as he could, he saw the handle of the corkscrew protruding from his leg. Ellie ripped it out and stabbed his other leg. Oliver screamed and kicked, hitting her in the face with the heel of his boot, and felt something crunch. Ellie cupped her nose with an animalistic growl, giving him enough time to open the opposite car door and tumble to the ground, head first, like a child falling down a slide. The corkscrew remained in his leg and he instinctively pulled it out and dropped it in the mud.

  “You fucking bitch! You weren’t even that good a lay!”

  He supported himself against the house as he tried to get to his feet, but as soon as he put weight on his left leg, it collapsed in pain. He tried the right. Even leaning was too much.

  Ellie was coming for him, squeezing her thin body between the car and the dumpster. He found a rock on the ground and hurled it through the nearest window of the house. The glass shattered and he broke out the rest with his elbow and tried to hoist himself through. Hands grabbed him, helping, but when Lorna’s face appeared, the shock caused him to let go.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Give me your hands!” she shouted.

  With a shout of pain, Oliver obeyed and forced weight onto his feet so he could push himself up through the high window. Something pulled him from below. Ellie had latched on and was dragging him down. He wanted to kick but couldn’t get his leg free.

  “Don’t let go,” he said to Lorna. “Don’t let go.”

  Lorna tugged at his arms, regaining ground lost to Ellie. His chest rested on the sharp edge of the windowsill, but he was almost there. A little farther and his center of gravity would tip him into the house. Lorna removed one hand, reached into his shirt.

  “Lorna.”

  She removed the diary. Oliver met her eyes. He knew what she was about to do, but he didn’t want to believe it. She would help him. Someone always helped him.

  “Lorna. Please.”

  She let go.

  Maeve

  16 hours prior

  The tire iron struck the back of Hollis’s head with a sickening thwack. Whatever he’d been about to say never left his lips. One moment his eyes had been hazy and pained. The next they were lifeless. Maeve hadn’t known the transition could be that quick. The tire iron trembled in Lorna’s hand as the rest of his body hesitated, a belated shutdown of the system, like a computer powering down. Then he fell face down in the mud. Maeve imagined him breathing mud into his lungs, then blinked and remembered that wouldn’t be a problem. Hollis wasn’t breathing.

  “We have to get him back to the house.”

  Maeve wasn’t sure who had spoken, but she tasted rain on her tongue and realized it had been her.

  “We have to get him back to the house,” she repeated. “Before Oliver and Ellie see him. Lorna? Lorna.”

  Lorna finally looked up when Maeve touched her arm.

  “This was step one, remember? We did it. Step one.”

  “We did it,” Lorna said.

  “Step one. For Callum.”

  “For Callum,” Lorna repeated.

  Together they looked down at Hollis’s body. If only it could sink into the mud, Maeve had thought. Sink and disappear into the earth.

  “We have to go through with the rest of it now, don’t we?” Lorna asked. “It can’t end here.”

  Maeve placed her hand on Lorna’s shoulder. “Final girls, remember?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lorna whispered.

  “Don’t be.”

  “Hm?” Lorna looked up.

  “You said you were sorry. Don’t be. We owe this to Callum.”

  “Right.” Lorna nodded and tucked the tire iron into her jacket. Then they dragged Hollis together, carrying him back to the house through the conservatory and into the study, where they were almost caught by Ellie. They’d had just enough time to hide behind the bar with Hollis’s body as Ellie came in and fixed herself a drink. They hid right beneath her among clean glasses and bottles of tonic water, lying perfectly still on the rubber mats, Hollis between them, as she mumbled to herself. Maeve thought then that they were done. That Ellie would come behind the bar for a drink, or even gaze over the side, and spot them there. That months of careful planning would be over in an instant. Ruined, as so many things were, by Hunt the Cunt. But then Ellie walked into the conservatory and out again, leaving the study, ignorant of their presence. They hadn’t been caught, and it had been that giddy exhalation that had pumped Maeve full of adrenaline and made her think they could do this after all.

  Lorna, though, remained grim as they continued their journey upstairs. A reflection of the sullen, moody girl Maeve had first met decades ago. Maeve could see the doubts written across her face, and she had no words to make Lorna feel better. They positioned Hollis on the bed and shoved the bloody tire iron underneath it.

  “Okay, okay,” Maeve had sighed, looking everywhere but at Hollis’s body. “What else do we have to do? I have to go fuck up the cars. You have to finish double-checking the other rooms. Caskie did a good job with Hollis’s. God, I feel like I’m actually there. I can’t believe that I saved that many pictures of Caldwell Street. Do you think I’ll be able to get them back?”

  Lorna remained silent, staring at Hollis’s body. Maeve accidentally glanced at Hollis again and cringed, tasting vomit at the back of her throat.

  “It was his fault as much as the others. All those drinks, remember? It’s like you said. Hollis said he’d keep an eye on Callum. He didn’t. Let’s finish up and get to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  “You’re right.” Lorna nodded. “This is what I wanted. This is what I planned for. What we planned for.” She squeezed Maeve’s hand. But as Maeve turned to lead Lorna from the room, ready to leave Hollis until they would “discover” him tomorrow, Lorna pulled away and returned to the body. Maeve thought she was praying over him until she reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out: a small notebook. She started flipping through it.

  “What’s that?” Maeve asked.

  Lorna paused, reading something. Her eyes went wide and she inhaled sharply. She tore out pages, ripped them in half. Then crossed to the room and hoisted the window.

  “Shh!” Maeve his
sed as the window creaked. “Lorna!”

  She tossed paper down toward the dumpster below.

  Maeve ran across the room and grabbed Lorna’s wrist. “What are you doing? Lorna? Lorna!”

  Lorna shuddered, her body relaxed, but she remained at the window, watching the pieces of paper disappearing into the darkness below.

  “Just in case Oliver or Ellie decide to search the body. They don’t need to find Hollis’s notebook.”

  “You could’ve just burned them. What if Oliver or Ellie heard that?”

  “Sorry.” Lorna left the window open but drew the curtain. “I wasn’t thinking. I just . . . wasn’t thinking. Sorry.”

  “And that’s why we both need to get some rest. Come on. Let’s go do what we need to do.” Maeve sighed and took one last look at the room before flicking off the light.

  Present

  Once they’d killed Hollis, Maeve thought it would be easy. Dragging his body through the house, positioning it on the sofa upstairs. She had made it through these actions without being sick. But the violence of that act had been hidden by the night. Two quick hits with a tire iron, and it had been over.

  This was not quick. This seemed to have no end. Ellie kept bringing the brick down and down and down. The brown eyes Maeve had once so admired were gone. So were his cheekbones, his chin. His teeth. No one would ever see his face again because there was no face to see.

  A red puddle formed around what remained of his head, mixing with the mud. Ellie stood over him, the blood and bone-spattered brick in her hand, fresh stains on her skin and clothes. A pause hung over them all, a vacuum created now that Oliver—this force that even in his absence had dominated much of their lives—had been eradicated for good. Maeve looked at his hand, which twitched as the nerves received their final signals from a brain that no longer existed. How long they all stood there, each adjusting to the vacuum in her own way, she would never know, but when she made eye contact with Ellie, the moment ended like the crash of a wave against the shore. Lorna took Maeve’s hand.

  “Run.”

  Pp. 98–120

  not to get sidetracked, but all this took me years, you know. Years of tracking down their old diaries, old witnesses, old friends. Squeezing the truth out in droplets from the five themselves. And I’ve put it together as best I could. I admit some details may be wrong, but the key facts, the important facts, can all be verified. If anyone would care to bother.

  So let’s talk about that. Fucking. Party.

  It should have been no different from any other party in the house’s history. Remembrances of raucous nights were so ingrained in the muscle memory of 215 Caldwell Street’s nicotine-stained walls that a pulsating heavy bass beat could sometimes be felt on quiet Sunday mornings. The house fed on empty glass bottles stashed in the mouth of its disconnected gas fireplace. It breathed clouds of cigarette and weed smoke. And, like the monster it was, it gorged on the numerous sweating bodies that lingered inside. Brief moments of tranquility could be found in the clear air of the back garden, but those who escaped would eventually return inside, driven by the need for another drink, another toke, another kiss.

  It’s easy to picture that night—the most beautiful night of 1995. Earlier in the evening, every pub with garden seating had been packed to capacity, the chatter and laughter of hardworking folk, students and regulars, mingling in the air like prayers to heaven. But after 11:30, the last straggler headed home or to a club while tired bar staff cleared sticky glasses from the picnic tables, able to enjoy the night’s tranquility for the first time since they came on shift. If anyone was out in the garden of the Byeways pub, and it’s likely there was, they would’ve heard the music drifting up from Caldwell Street, the bass thumping away even at that distance.

  The sounds within the house were exponentially greater. A mate of Oliver’s acted as DJ and kept the music flowing through a series of boom boxes hooked up to speakers the size of mini-fridges.

  Maeve tripped over the cords as she maneuvered from room to room, looking for some place or some group where she could fit in. She’d been left wandering ever since Lorna declared her night done and disappeared to her bedroom. Maeve muttered half-heard “pardon me’s” as she walked through the crowd, the cheap white wine in her tumbler sloshing over her hand as she forced her way through the bodies that filled the kitchen. She glanced at the picked-over pizza boxes, but only a few gnawed pieces of crust remained. After an elbow to her breast, she stumbled into the back garden, where the music was muffled and the smoke less dense. She hadn’t realized how dry her eyes had become until they watered in the fresh air. She pictured her mascara running down her cheeks; not wanting anyone to mistake her watery eyes for tears, she made her way through the high grass to the old chair by the fence. The green plastic bent under her weight, the legs sinking into the soft ground of the marshy corner. She tried to lean back but the chair tipped, so she settled for leaning forward, her glass cupped in both hands as the skirt of her sweat-stained yellow dress rode up her thighs.

  From her position, she could watch the party unfold through the windows of the house. People she didn’t recognize talked, smoked, and kissed. Backlit by the house lights, they looked like profiles in silhouette. A shatter of glass and burst of laughter made her wince.

  “So much for your rules.”

  Maeve fell back. Her shoulder scraped the rough wood of the garden fence, but she managed to stay upright and save her drink.

  “Jesus, Callum. Who said you could sneak up on people like that?”

  “Sorry.” He sat on the ground beside her. It must’ve been damp, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “I thought you were upstairs.”

  “I was, but it’s hard to think straight in there.”

  Maeve pretended not to know what he meant and sipped her warm wine, telling herself she didn’t mind the taste.

  “I thought Ellie got you some of those strawberry things you like?”

  She shrugged. “I had one. Other people took the rest.”

  A new song came on, and those within the house cheered.

  “Not what you expected, is it?” he asked.

  She watched the people enjoying themselves so effortlessly. So unselfconsciously.

  “It is,” she said. “It really is.”

  Many seconds passed. In the course of an average moment on an average day, those seconds would’ve felt like the life of a fly, there and gone with hardly a passing thought. But this was not an average moment on an average day. Each second grew heavier than the last, weighing on each of them in different ways until even breathing became too painful.

  “Maeve.” His voice cracked the silence. She kept her eyes on the windows, pretending she was in there and not out here.

  “Maeve, I wanted to talk to you about something. Something that’s been on my mind. That’s been bothering me for a while.”

  Oliver stepped in front of the window. Inside the house, Maeve had sweated terribly. Despite the amount of deodorant she’d sprayed on, her makeup ran and her armpits stank. But Oliver looked immune to the heat and smoke. His face glowed. Every time he smiled, Maeve hated herself.

  “Maeve? Are you listening?”

  She’d forgotten about Callum there on the ground, sinking in the mud. “I’m sorry.”

  “Right, but what I was saying was—”

  “No, I mean I’m sorry if you ever thought I was flirting with you or if you thought I was leading you on.” She fixed the strap of her bra. “You’re a nice guy and all, and a really good friend, but I don’t like you that way. I never have, and I don’t think I ever could.”

  She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. She wasn’t sure if she could ever look at him again. But she heard him stand up. Heard him brush off his jeans. Heard him say, “This had nothing to do with you, actually? But fine. Whatever. It’s fine.”

  She stared at the ground as he left. Listened as his feet stamped across the garden. When she could raise her head, the house had
already absorbed him, the anonymous throng of bodies making him one of their own. Oliver’s face, though, remained at the window, clear and bold. Brazen, as Lorna might say. He chatted up a girl while Maeve downed the rest of her warm wine and wondered how she might extract another bottle from within the house’s depths.

  In a comfortable corner of the downstairs spare room, cluttered with the useless junk left by previous tenants, Hollis was having no such problems while he chatted with a few of the lads from the nearby technical college.

  “No, see, I wasn’t arrested.” He waved a can of Carling as he spoke. “It was a security guard that spotted me. He thought it were a real fox and the bloke panicked. Saying he couldn’t believe someone would be so cruel to an animal. I tried to calm him down, but he was in such a state, I had to cut it down and show him it were fake. Well, taxidermied. And then I ended up admitting I’d nicked it from the science hall. And that’s what got me in front of the dean.”

  “So they expelled you?” asked the lad with the buzz cut.

  “That or get arrested, and I didn’t want a record. Worst part is that the guard was so embarrassed, he spread this rumor that I’d gone and gutted a living fox and was thrashing it around like some sociopath.”

  “And you want to be a guard after all that?” Buzz Cut asked.

  “Nah, mate. I want to be a real policeman. Help out kids like me that get the short end of the stick. ’Cause I was one of them right? I know how they think and . . . Callum. Hey, Callum!”

  Hollis caught sight of his lanky housemate skulking past the door and waved him inside.

  “Oi, this is my mate Callum. He lives here, but he’s not like that wanker out there.” He nodded toward the front room. “You had a drink yet?”

  “I was actually going to bed.”

  “But I haven’t seen you all night. Come on then. Have a seat. It’s rough out there with that lot, aye, but we’re all right in here, aren’t we?” He handed him a can of Strongbow. “Was keeping that for you from the rest of the vultures out there.”

  “Cheers.” Callum took a seat with the unopened can, looking unsure what to do next.