Whump!
The object hit the floor.
'What was that?' Megan called.
Carl yelled back, 'An artifact!'
Everyone came rushing around.
'A drawstring bag,' noted Victoria. ‘It’s leather. It looks medieval.'
'And full of something,' warned Alex.
Everyone kept their distance.
Carl crouched for a better look. ‘Is it a trap?’
‘No idea,' said Megan.
'Me either,' admitted Victoria.
'Then we can't risk opening it,' Carl said. ‘I sure wish it was food though.’
'Smell it,' Chrissie urged. 'Maybe it is food.'
Carl scowled at her. 'I'm not putting my face near it.’
'But what if it's food?' whined Chrissie.
‘Then you smell it.’
‘Carl’s right,' said Megan. 'We can't risk it. Not unless we're sure.'
‘Why is Megan in charge?' asked Chrissie.
'I'm not,' snapped Megan. 'Go ahead and open it. I'm not stopping you. I'm hungry too.'
Chrissie shook her head, unwilling to risk it.
As Carl stood, a surge of dizziness blurred his vision. He braced himself on the wall.
I have to eat right now or I'll collapse.
Retreating from the group, he found his hiding place and dug in the loose ice.
Where is it? I know I buried it here.
He checked his position. This was definitely the right spot, but his fish was gone.
Someone stole my fish.
He rested his forehead on the ice, furious at the loss of food and the betrayal.
What did you expect? They think you’re scum.
He went over to the Mayan calendar and kicked away the ice covering the scrotum bag.
He sat on the calendar, peeled open the bag, and tore free the items that looked the least likely to hurt his damaged teeth.
Tilting his head, one by one, he chewed and swallowed the four grubs.
They popped in his mouth like little parcels of vomit.
He shuddered at the vile taste.
Only two locusts and a lizard remained.
The locusts would torture his damaged teeth. The lizard might work. He pulled the lizard loose and held it up by the tail.
'Hey, what are you doing!' cried Chrissie. 'He's eating everything!'
Chrissie rushed over and looked into the bag. 'He's eaten all the caterpillars!'
Carl bit off the lizard's tail. He chewed it gently with his good teeth. It tasted better than grubs, but worse than fish.
Chrissie lunged for the lizard.
Carl kicked her away.
He didn't kick her viciously, more of a push really, but she was unbalanced and went sprawling backward.
'Hey!' yelled Victoria, rushing to help Chrissie up.
Alex strode into view. 'What’s going on?’
Carl dropped the lizard back into the bag. He set the bag aside.
'One of you stole my fish,' he said. 'I took what I was owed.'
Chrissie had dropped her icepick when she fell.
Carl picked it up.
‘That’s mine,’ pointed Chrissie.
'It’s mine now,’ said Carl. ‘I’ve earned it. I’m keeping it.’
'No, you won't,' said Chrissie, glancing around for support. 'He's a murderer!'
Only Victoria nodded.
'I've never murdered anyone,' said Carl, too sick to yell. 'And I wouldn't need an icepick to kill you, Chrissie.'
'See!' cried Chrissie.
'Let's vote again,' said Megan.
Carl lifted the icepick to get everyone’s attention.
'Vote all you want,' he said. 'I'm keeping this. You can’t stop me. Unless someone can take it from me.'
Chrissie and Victoria looked at Alex.
‘Sort this out yourself.’ Alex turned and went back to work.
'They're in this together,' declared Chrissie. 'I bet Carl ate his own fish.'
Carl ignored Chrissie. He finally had a tool.
I don’t care if they see what I’m doing now.
When he walked around the ice and started digging, he heard them assemble behind him.
He ignored their chatter.
They didn’t know a thing about him.
He could tell them the truth, but it wouldn’t change a thing.
He’d tried telling the truth before and it ruined his life. At his trial he'd admitted every gory detail.
He’d held nothing back.
He’d even told the jurors about that first conversation in Hank’s white Ford Mustang. They were parked outside the diner, waiting for Hank’s girlfriend to finish her shift.
'I hate home invasions,' Carl had said, glancing at the glove box.
‘It’s not a home invasion if nobody’s home,’ said Hank. ‘Have you got a better idea?’
Carl tapped his bottom lip. 'Have you noticed Rebecca doing the banking?'
Hank shook his head.
Carl pointed inside the diner. 'She hides the money in that green handbag.'
'You want to rob Rebecca? We eat here every day!'
'Not Rebecca,' said Carl. 'I mean people who do their banking on foot.'
Hank thought about it. 'We’d need to find the right business. Learn their routine.'
'We won't even need the gun,' said Carl. 'It's just a bag snatch.'
'A bag full of cash,’ added Hank.
So they had.
Her name was Anita. Anita Broadwater. She worked in a used car dealership.
‘People get better deals buying cars with cash,’ Hank explained.
Anita carried that cash to the bank. They’d followed her for three days. On the fourth day her pattern changed.
'She's turning down a different street,' Hank warned.
'That's normal,' said Carl. 'I saw her boss sell three cars this morning. Today is perfect.’
They cruised after her like a great white shark.
Hank tapped the glove box. 'Show her the gun so she doesn’t fight.'
'No.'
'Take it.'
Carl ignored him. 'Get closer...closer.'
Anita reached a section of narrow sidewalk before a bus stop.
'Now,' said Carl. 'Cut her off.'
Hank swerved into the curve.
Full of adrenaline, Carl thrust open the door to block her path. He jumped out and came face-to-face with Anita.
She didn't run.
She didn't cry out.
She just froze.
Carl grabbed her bag and jumped back in the car.
He didn't realize he'd dragged Anita with him. She stubbornly held her bag's shoulder strap. Carl braced his shoe on the curb and pulled the bag with all his strength. He practically jerked her arm from its socket.
She still held on.
'Let go!' he yelled at her.
'I can't,' she cried.
'Shut the door!' yelled Hank.
'Let it go!' Carl yelled again.
'I can't!’ cried the girl. 'I’m stuck....'
At that moment, two things happened. Carl spotted the bag's shoulder strap twisted around Anita's wrist. She wasn't stubbornly holding the bag. The bag was holding her.
As Carl saw this, Hank hit the gas.
'Stop!' Anita screamed.
'Wait!' shouted Carl, 'She's caught on the—’
Hank powered away from the curb.
Carl felt the massive tug of Anita being yanked from her feet. The bag wrenched from his grasp. The car door swung toward his leg. He shoved at the door to save his leg, but he needn't have bothered.
The door couldn't shut because of Anita's bag.
The bag’s strap was snagged on Carl's seat controls.
The door bounced open and Carl saw Anita dragging beside the car.
Oh, God no.
All he could see was her face.
She screamed the same word over and over: 'STOP!'
'She's caught,' yelled Carl. 'Stop!'
&nbs
p; 'Fuck her!' yelled Hank.
Carl punched Hank with adrenaline-fueled strength. Hank's head shattered the driver-side window. His hands fell from the steering wheel.
Carl yanked up the handbrake. The car skidded. Carl bounced off the dashboard and out his open door. He tumbled from the car the moment it stopped moving.
He found himself lying beside Anita.
Gently, he untwisted the strap from her wrist.
'Carl.'
Carl looked up into a gun barrel. Blood streamed down Hank's face.
Hank aimed the gun across the passenger seat, out the door, and straight into Carl's face. 'Get back in the fucking car.'
Carl shook his head.
He heard the first police siren.
'Fuck you then!' yelled Hank, curling his finger on the trigger.
All at the same time, as the gun went off, Carl slammed shut the car door and covered Anita with his body. He never knew if Hank's bullet passed through the car door. Hank roared away before Carl even lifted his head.
When he did lift his head, he peered around for the police car. The siren sounded deafening. Almost on top of them.
Only then did Carl realize.
The loud keening wasn't a police siren.
It was Anita.
Anita lost so much skin that the hospital needed to grow new skin to replace what Carl and Hank had stolen.
The police arrested Carl on the scene. They caught Hank two days later with Anita's shoe wedged under his car.
No money was recovered.
There never was any money.
Anita had been walking to the bus stop to visit her parents for the weekend. Her bag contained clothes, not cash. She'd been just a dozen paces from the bus stop when Carl had blocked her path.
Anita's honest testimony cut both ways. Carl's actions had both hurt her and helped her. But he'd hurt her a lot more than he'd helped her. He received a reduced sentence, but the guilty verdict labeled Carl a homicidal sadist who enjoyed torturing teenage girls by dragging them behind his car.
That's what the media portrayed.
That’s what the newspaper clipping in Carl’s bottle claimed.
And now Carl had found another bottle.
With a final well-aimed stab, the bottle came free.
Carl wiped off the clinging ice and turned around. As expected, everyone stood watching. It seemed he'd spent most of his life being watched.
Why should it change now?
No one spoke. They all just waited as Carl uncorked the bottle and withdrew the paper.
He scanned the top few lines.
'It’s an email,' he said. 'To Glen.'
'What does it say?' asked Victoria.
Carl folded the paper in half, and then in half again. 'I don't care. If Glen wanted me to know he would have told me himself.’
'Read it out,' demanded Chrissie.
Carl flicked the folded paper at Chrissie. It whizzed through the space between them and hit her shoulder. She snatched for it, but missed.
'Asshole,' Chrissie said as she knelt and unfolded it.
Megan looked at Alex.
Alex dismissed the paper with a wave. 'I know everything I need to know about Glen. I won't let them mess with my head.'
'But what if it's important?' asked Megan.
For the first time, Carl saw Alex lose his temper at Megan. Alex pointed around to their burial mound. 'Glen is dead. He was our friend. He saved our lives. They murdered him. How important can it be compared to that? Those bottles are just tormenting us. You're supposed to be the smart one, Megan. Don't fall for their tricks.'
'It's an email from Glen's sister,' announced Chrissie. 'She says Glen murdered their father.’
Everyone went quiet.
Chrissie said, ‘He murdered their father, sold their family home and then stole all the money. She says she hates him and wishes he was dead.'
'She got her wish,' said Alex bitterly.
Megan shook her head. 'That can't be true.'
'Why not?' asked Chrissie. 'We hardly knew Glen.'
'Of course we knew him,' said Carl.
'Did you even know he had a sister before he died?' asked Chrissie.
Carl and Megan shook their heads.
'A person capable of killing his own father can do anything,’ said Victoria. ‘We're lucky he's dead.'
Carl grabbed Alex's shoulder, but Alex didn't react.
'Why would Glen do that?' asked Megan.
'Why would his sister lie?' reasoned Chrissie. 'Carl’s newspaper clipping was real. I bet this email is real too.’
Carl walked away, wishing he'd never found the bottle. Alex followed.
A safe distance from the others, Alex said, 'I wasn't expecting that. He practically admitted it to me though.'
Carl nodded slightly. 'Glen was right. We're all being punished.'
'To death?' asked Alex. 'We've been sentenced to death? All of us?'
Carl looked into the ice. 'Only the ice knows, and it's not speaking any language I can understand.'
Chapter Eighteen
Carl had never needed a shower more in his life.
He itched everywhere.
His skin wanted to shed from his body. That's what it felt like anyway. Like he'd wake up in the morning to find a cast-off shell of himself.
His palms itched the most. Working helped. He worked with whichever hand itched the most.
He swapped hands again now.
It’s about the size of a cigar box, he thought, studying the object in the ice.
No one had spoken much since Glen's secret emerged. The email from Glen's sister shocked everyone. Carl refused to dwell on it. The Glen he chose to remember wouldn't be tainted by the sick minds who invented this place.
Alex came to collect Carl's ice. Neither Chrissie nor Victoria came near Carl. Even Meagan seemed wary.
Alex offered Carl the water bottle.
Carl covered his exposed nerve with Glen's chewing gum. He tilted his head sideways to drink.
Alex knelt to collect the chips. 'How's your mouth?'
'Worse,' replied Carl. ‘I shouldn’t have used my teeth. It was a stupid idea.’
And it wasn’t the first time.
Carl had unbolted garden shears to make a knife when he was a kid.
To kids back then, knives were tools, not weapons. Tools for transforming sticks into spears. For carving initials into trees. For poking strange things found under logs. Not for turning live humans into dead humans.
All Carl’s friends had pocket knives.
In desperation, Carl raided his father's toolshed.
He had every intention of fixing his mother's shears, but he'd overlooked his father's ability to smell mischief from a hundred paces.
As nine-year-old Carl admired his handiwork, his father pounced.
'Those are you mother's.'
Carl spun, getting the biggest fright of his life.
'I-can-put-them-back-together,' he rushed out.
In the gloomy toolshed, his father's face was unreadable.
'Let me see,' his father said.
'I didn't break them,' said Carl, handing over the two little daggers. 'I just took out this bolt, see? I can put them right back together.'
Carl's father gripped one like a knife. He tested its weight in his hand. He raised an eyebrow.
'You're only half finished,' his father said. 'Get a rag and clean these. Properly. Oil them so your mother finds them better than how she left them. After that, get your coat and come fetch me.'
Carl panicked. His punishment never involved leaving their home before.
Normally his mother would intervene, but she’d taken Joshua to buy his first school uniform.
'Where are we going?' Carl asked.
'To buy you a pocket knife,' replied his father from the door. 'I’m not counting the lawnmower blades every time I want to cut the grass.'
Carl got his knife. Knives back then were different. Carl's blade was designed for
safety, not stabbing. The handle was designed for comfort, not concealment.
Carl's boyhood knife was a tool.
The knife clipped to Alex's pocket was a lethal weapon.
A weapon designed for silently slitting throats behind enemy lines. It didn't seem the kind of knife that any young person, especially someone as bright as Alex, needed to possess.
Why does Alex carry a weapon like that?
Curious, Carl asked 'Did your dad give you that knife?'
Alex glanced up from his work. 'No. It's just Mom and me.'
'Where's your dad?'
Alex shrugged. ‘Mom had me when she was sixteen. All my cousins are still little kids.'
‘So your Mom gave you the knife?’
'She doesn't know I have it. I bought it.'
'Because of your leg?'
Alex stood up. 'Why do you think that?'
'The knife looks new,' replied Carl. ‘Maybe after someone or something hurt your leg, you went and bought that knife.'
'Makes sense,' admitted Alex.
Carl said, 'I saw those same scars on your shoulder and back too. That's not from a shark attack. What the hell did that to you?'
Alex stood up. He bent and straightened his mutilated leg as though talking about it made it hurt more.
'My own stupidity,' he replied. 'But I'll never make that mistake again. Next time I'll be the one doing the damage.'
Carl nodded.
He'd been wrong about Alex. He'd been wrong about the knife. That knife was exactly the tool Alex needed. And Carl couldn't help but wonder who would learn that lesson the hard way.
#
Chrissie hacked at the ice like a drowning woman trapped under a frozen lake.
Crystal shards erupted like mini-explosions.
'Chrissie,' Carl said.
She seemed in a trance.
Carl raised his voice. 'Chrissie.'
Chrissie stopped and seemed disoriented.
After a moment she acknowledged him. 'What?'
'I'm sorry for kicking you. I didn't mean to hurt you.'
'Yes, you did.'
'I didn't,' repeated Carl. ‘And I’m sorry about your kid too. I understand why you need to get out so badly.’
‘You understand?’ Chrissie studied him. ‘Do you have children, Carl?’
Carl wanted to apologize, not start a fight.
'No.'
'Any family?'
'I have a brother.'
'Older or younger?'
'Joshua is four years younger.'
MELT: A Psychological Thriller Page 17
