by D. Melhoff
The mattress was small, and their bodies radiated heat off one another like two furnaces set to smelt. After almost an hour of brushing legs and bumping elbows, Scott abandoned the bunk’s bottom level and climbed up top, crawling onto the second mattress and collapsing on Chase’s sleeping bag, too hot for covers anyway. Gradually, the image of Dominique and Erin faded behind its wall of smoke, and before long, Scott drifted away. Not into sleep, for sleep is the gentle tide that washes over those who arrive at the end of the day and deserve easy, untroubled rest, but into unconsciousness—the shoals of the disturbed—where the waters are black and full of storms.
10
An old train station shimmered in waves of sunlight. Deserted, skeletal, barely standing. All of its safety notices had been ripped away like wheat-paste flesh torn off a rotting carcass of bolts and two-by-fours, and above its ticket cage—still flapping from a rusty pole—a star-spangled flag had faded into a shadow of its former self, no longer red, white, and blue, but a de-saturated spectrum of grays. It was a ghost platform in a ghost neighborhood. Behind it, the rails were operational, but nobody stopped here anymore. The trains sailed right through, dividing the city and providing little relevance to those who lived there aside from acting as a vague landmark and forming the basis of the eternal schoolyard debate about who lived on the wrong side of the tracks. Except here, there was no right side. Here, there was only wrong and wronger.
Scott crested a hill a mile away, running.
The station hovered tauntingly in the distance: an unreachable speck worlds away, never drawing nearer, yet somehow close enough to count the holes that the termites and beetles had bored into its planks for generations.
More details appeared like a pop-up book. He wasn’t bolting through an empty field anymore. There were houses around him. Blue-collar houses with old fence posts that had been crying for paint jobs since the early sixties; mailboxes stuffed with yellow adverts; barren flowerbeds and lawns flush with festering patches of ragweed and dandelions. The air was dry enough to choke on, and the blistering heat shone down as every particle of moisture in Scott’s body gushed out of his forehead and armpits like water spewing out of a fire hydrant.
Something was tailing him—gaining on him. He had to keep pushing, keep sprinting for the tracks.
He checked over his shoulder, and sunlight burned into his retinas.
No time to stop, he thought, tripping over his feet. C’mon, keep pushing. Hurry.
“Watch out!” a voice screamed.
Scott whipped around and the dream cut to a monstrous steam engine plowing straight for him. He leaned back just as the fifty-ton locomotive bulleted past, its freight cars grazing the tip of his nose as a steam whistle let out a long, bloodcurdling skweeeeeee!
The wind blasted Scott backward. He collapsed flat on his ass, and a jolt of pain plunged into his right leg. Looking down, he saw a gash along the outside of his calf where branches of blood coasted through his leg hairs like lava amid a mountainside of scorched trees. He struggled to his feet, grunting, and tested the leg with a little weight. If that doesn’t get infected, he thought, it’ll be a miracle on par with the birth of Christ.
“Need a Band-Aid?”
There was that voice again.
A silhouette appeared in front of him, blacked out by the sun.
The person stepped forward: it was a little girl with dark-brown skin and curly black hair. She wore a pink backpack, a pink dress, and matching pink-and-white runners, all of which were faded enough that they must have belonged to another child before her—either an older sibling or some generous soul down at the nearest Salvation Army donation center. Her limbs were long and skinny, but her cheeks bulged with baby fat. The fact that she was missing one of her front teeth made her pudgy smile even more darling.
Scott tried speaking, but his mouth was stuffed with cotton balls. He looked around, heart racing, and watched as the train rocketed along the tracks for miles in either direction.
“Here.” The girl slung her pack off her shoulder.
Scott watched, mute, while she unzipped the bag and began rooting around inside.
“You should watch where you’re going, y’know,” she chastised. “Look both ways.”
He glanced over his shoulder and surveyed the locomotive snaking west at sixty miles an hour. Houses flickered through the gaps in the graffitied train cars, tempting him forward, calling to him from the other side of the tracks. Jump through to freedom, sucker, c’mon, c’mon. Come and get squashed.
He heard the distinct ripping sound of cardboard and looked back to see the little girl clutching a box of purple Band-Aids.
“Good thing Mom makes me pack ’em, huh?”
Scott didn’t move. He watched the girl peel the plastic away from the adhesive side of a bandage and lay it carefully across his gash. May as well use a stick of Juicy Fruit to plug a crack in the Hoover Dam, he thought. She stripped another bandage and laid it parallel to the first, covering the laceration.
“What’s your name?”
Scott.
“I’m Desiree. ’Case you’re curious.”
Desiree laid down a third bandage and judged her work. The leg didn’t feel any better, but at least it was “cute” now. Scott flexed his knee and cringed. He straightened up, taking a few paces back and forth, and turned to face the railroad.
“Where are you going?”
Away.
“You better wait for the train this time.” Desiree giggled, and Scott thought there was something intelligent and mature in the sound of it. “And don’t try the bridge,” she added, catching him glancing at the overpass that stretched above the tracks. “I walk home from school all the time, and even with the train, this way’s faster.”
Scott massaged his neck and rubbed the bags under his eyes. He winced. His right cheekbone felt tender, and as he patted it, he remembered the painful bruise that had already begun to flower.
“Y’know,” Desiree said, zipping up her backpack, “Mom says I shouldn’t talk to strangers. But Ms. Cartier says strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet. I think Ms. Cartier is right.”
The girl gave Scott an amiable smile. He paused, feeling the cotton start to dissolve in his cheeks. He was about to return the smile—
When sunlight flashed across his pupils, brighter than before. He cringed, shielding his face in the crook of his elbow, and then peeked over his arm and caught sight of something dreadful behind Desiree.
BWOOM, shwick shwick…
The train cylinders thundered in his ears.
BWOOM, shwick shwick…BWOOM, shwick shwick…
Scott gaped in horror—every pint of blood in his veins running cold—as a terrible figure slunk out of the shadows of the nearest street and came stalking into the light.
The Pursuer.
He watched it approach, but all he could hear was the beating train cars behind him. He was up against a hot steel wall, all two hundred pistons pumping loudly enough that his eardrums could burst any second.
The Pursuer pressed closer, doubling speed, and Scott caught another glimpse of little Desiree turning around—her well-worn pink dress drifting in tandem—to look at whatever it was that had her new friend so spooked.
NO!
Pain seared across Scott’s leg as the Pursuer raced through his memory. He gushed with new throes of sweat, tendons and ligaments tightening around his bones, until finally his mouth swung open just as the locomotive’s steam whistle let out another bloodcurdling skweeeeeee!
11
As Scott tossed and turned to the sound of the deafening steam whistle, Chase heard nothing but crickets and nightjars from thirty feet above Storybook Square. His watch ticked to 2:00 a.m. on the pile of clothes beside him. At 2:01, a bar of moonlight streamed through the window of the zip-line tower, illuminating the network of cables and counterweights that swayed from the platform’s pulley system and jingled like Jacob Marley’s portentous chains.
“Why
don’t you ever cuddle with me?”
“Because cuddling implies I like you.” Chase offered Kimberly a wry smile from his spot against the wall, aware that she was too ditzy to detect the sincerity in his voice.
“You like parts of me.” She smiled and pushed her naked breasts together.
Bingo, he thought. Poor girl could get locked in a grocery store and starve to death. “Oh, you know I do.” He stood up and pulled his pants and underwear on at the same time—a benefit of having removed them together—and reached for his V-neck.
“I’m seeeerious.” Kimberly swiped Chase’s shirt off the floor and tugged it over her head. The fabric was baggy enough that it dangled below her stomach and nether regions. “We’ve been hooking up for two summers. Why do you always put your pants on the second it’s over?”
Damn if she’s getting more persistent.
“I don’t like flopping all over the place,” Chase said. “And the mosquitoes—you see those suckers? Last thing I need is a bunch of vampire bites all over my pecker.”
“Okay, wise guy, then cuddle me with your pants on.”
Chase was out of excuses. It’s only the second night of the summer, he reminded himself. Don’t piss her off yet, or you might be sleeping alone for God knows how long.
He didn’t have a strict ban on cuddling, either—more like a PTSD-related aversion. Ever since he and his previous girlfriend, Chloe Richardson, had been caught 69’ing by Chloe’s father junior year, Chase had made it his personal philosophy to “get off and get out” as quickly as possible. He’d learned that the hard way. Ian Richardson had thrown a dozen punches that left a series of welts the size of golf balls on both of his arms. And shockingly, Chase recalled, that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst had been when the old man had told his daughter (all while staring at Chase as he scrambled to slip on his underwear) to pull up her pants and raise her standards. Sadly, that was the last time Chase had seen Chloe, which still ranked as one of his biggest regrets to date. He had liked her. Genuinely liked her. And maybe it wasn’t fair that he started treating girls like Kleenexes after that, but hey, he reasoned, if he was the standard fathers were warning their daughters about, he might as well earn his reputation.
“Cooooome heeeeere.”
“I’m comin’, I’m comin’.”
Chase sat down and slid his arm around Kimberly. Shit, that feels weird. She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed, whispering, “Mm. Much better.”
They stayed that way for a minute, then two. Every time Chase tried closing his eyes, however, all he could picture was Ian Richardson unbuttoning his flannel sleeves and creeping up behind them. “Pull up your pants and raise your standards, girl. Let me at this no-good slacker.” So he stayed awake, hugging Kimberly and stealing her body heat while fantasizing about other potential Crownheart hookups. I’ve already slept with Nikki and Cynthia. Denisha would be fantastic if she wasn’t with Lance, and Brynn—well, Brynn’s tough to gauge. We haven’t made it past second base yet, but I’d like to believe anything’s possible. Still, maybe I’ll wait and see how Scott fairs with her first. And what about that Japanese girl? Miko or Mai or whatever? Never had Asian takeout before. That could be interesting.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Kimberly whispered.
“Oh, not much. Just you.”
Kimberly looked up, and the moonlight spilled over her perfectly round face. Chase caressed her cheeks, shelving his thoughts about the other counselors for later, and pinched her rock-hard nipples. She let out a quiet moan, and his fingers trailed lower, all the way to her bikini line—
Clack-clack-clack.
Something tapped Chase’s hand.
He looked down and saw a small rock, no bigger than a quarter, wobbling beside his thumb. He ignored it and continued exploring Kimberly’s hips and thighs.
Clack-clack-clack. Then another. Clack-clack-clack.
“What’s that?” Kimberly whispered.
“Huh?”
Clack-clack-clack.
“There. The rocks. Someone’s chucking them in the window.”
As if on cue, a pebble came soaring through the open window and struck one of the metal pulleys, ricocheting off the wall and clack-clack-clacking across the floor.
“Pst,” Chase hissed over the sill. “Dumbass. Do not disturb.”
Silence below. He listened for a second, and when no one responded, he wrapped his arm around Kimberly’s neck and slipped her a French kiss, trying to rekindle their spark.
Clack-clack-clack.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
Chase hopped to his feet as another rock sailed through the air and pelted him in the ribs. “Shit. Why that son of a bitch…”
He stuck his head out the window and looked around.
It was dark at the base of the tower, and he couldn’t spot anyone in the shadows. “Who’s there?” he called.
No reply. No movement, no rustling.
“I said who’s there. Roddy? Lance?”
A pebble lobbed through the void and caught the tip of Chase’s ear, stinging like a hornet.
“Motherfu—ow. You think this is funny? Jesus Christ, are you gonna be sorry.” He tore himself away from the window and rushed for the staircase.
“Where are you going?”
“To teach somebody some manners.”
“Forget it,” Kimberly said. “The door’s locked, and there’s no other way up. Come cuddle instead.”
Fuck that, Chase thought. “Two minutes. This punk’s gotta learn some respect.” He plunged into the stairwell and rounded the balustrades with a wood-splintering crack. The steps creaked and groaned beneath him as he thumped down the circular flights—rounding the landings—and gripped the railing for balance. A sliver sunk into his hand, and he let go, grimacing, and leapt down the remaining stairs before finding a rusty hasp in the darkness and ripping it back, forcing the door open with a firm heave.
Storybook Square was pitch-black.
Chase paused in the doorframe, listening for movement.
Nothing came. He stepped out of the tower and guided the door shut, hearing the quiet click behind him. With his spine pressed against the wall, he edged around the building toward the spot from where the rocks had been shooting into the window. If the bastard’s still here, he thought, breathing silently through his mouth, I might be able to get close enough to make a tackle.
Something crackled around the curve of the building.
Oh yeah. The asshole’s here, all right. He ground his teeth so hard that the molars squeaked. Get ready. Three, two, one…go!
Chase flung himself around the bend and blasted into the area below the tower’s window.
No one was there. Just the dark, empty streets of the cobblestone square.
“Come on.” His eyes squeezed into slits. “Roddy? I know it was you.”
Nobody answered. The camp lay still under the cover of night, humming with the faint whine of mosquitoes.
“Joke’s on you, you lonely bugger,” Chase shouted at the clearing. “I hope you brought your porn stash, cause that’s the closest you’re getting to any action this summer!” The echo of his voice—“Action this summer…action this summer…action this summer…”—made him laugh, and he relaxed his shoulders and let out a sigh. Meanwhile, the mosquitoes seemed to multiply, their lithe legs dancing on the back of his neck, their papery wings beating an unsettling frequency into his ears as high as a dog whistle. He swatted the bloodsuckers away and shuffled around the base of the tower, thinking, Get some sleep, dude. Whoever it was took off. You’ll sniff out the loser tomorrow.
Chase yawned, completing his 360-degree patrol of the tower, and arrived at the entrance again. The door was rocking in the wind, and without thinking, he reached out and put his hand on the knob, steadying it.
Hold on. His hand froze. I closed this door. I heard it click.
Then, for no reason his mind could fully rationalize, he swooned with unexplainable fear. He to
ok one tentative step inside, and then he dove into the shadows, his heartbeat thrumming as he bounded up the steps two at a time. It’s Roddy or one of the other guys screwing with me, he told himself. It’s gotta be. But despite his attempt to stay calm, he couldn’t. He ran as fast as possible, vaulting over the stairs and calling out, “Kimberly? Kimberly? Everything okay?”
No one replied. His head crested the final landing, and he scrambled into the room at the top of the tower.
Kimberly was standing on the launch platform with her back to him.
Chase rushed forward. “Kim? Kim, is anyone else up here?”
He reached out and touched her shoulder, but something was wrong. Her whole body turned at once—not turned, swiveled—like a puppet dangling by a thread. Her toenails scraped across the floorboards, and for the first time, Chase saw the silhouette of a wire looped around her neck. She wasn’t standing. She was suspended from the zip-line apparatus by a cable strung around her neck.
Chase sucked back a horrified breath—filling his lungs like fire bellows and igniting a scream in the depths of his stomach—when a cable flew over his throat and cinched across his skin. His hands seized the cord and tried yanking it off, but the person behind him had the advantages of both surprise and a pulley system.
Gears ratcheted above him, and his feet started rising off the floor. “N-No—” he choked, but the world was already vanishing. His body jerked through the air, and he felt a warm rush of wind on his face as the pulleys dragged him to the lip of the launch platform.
“L-Let…g-go…” he stuttered, somewhere between a rasp and a wheeze. “Ggghaa!”
Kimberly hung in front of him, her head sticking out of the window while her lower body kept her anchored inside the room. The cable jolted again, and her corpse began twirling in slow motion, like a zombie ballerina on point.
“Pretty, isn’t she?” a voice whispered in Chase’s ear. “As pretty as the other girls?”
Chase was a gasp away from fainting, unable to scream for help. Something sharp touched his cheek, and the voice continued whispering, muffled amid his chokes and sputters. Darkness closed in around him, and seconds later, an unexpected pain broke through the asphyxiation, followed by a short, sickening lurch before everything went black.
