Chapter One
Present Day
Philadelphia, PA
The hot coffee warmed Neal Ashford’s hands as he settled back in the alley off Twenty-third and Broad Street. He took a sip, letting the warm liquid run through him. Late spring nights could still be pretty chilly in the city, but it was at least feasible to sleep outside if the homeless shelters were filled up. You couldn’t do that in the winter.
Neal Ashford had been homeless for three months since being booted out of his apartment for failing to pay the rent. He was probably the sanest homeless person he knew. Unlike all the other homeless folks he’d met, he wasn’t a mental case, nor did he have a problem with alcohol or drugs. Well, at least not a serious one. He’d gone off the deep end when he lost his job at Harvey Industries thanks to their outsourcing program, but who wouldn’t? Neal had tried to land another position at a competing firm but was unable to. He was still having problems with his ex-wife, Linda, over custody of their twin daughters, and the combined alimony and child support payments were murder.
When he was a young man he used to ease his problems in the bottle and he’d taken to that again, only this time he didn’t stop until he was two months overdue on the rent. During that time he was still hustling for jobs wherever he could, even working a few under-the-table paying gigs, but it wasn’t enough to meet his living expenses. In short order his car was repossessed, a Sheriff’s Deputy served him papers on a lawsuit brought against him by his credit card company for failure to make payments, and then he was finally booted out of his apartment — locked out of it, actually. Assholes wouldn’t even let him get his stuff. He’d tried bunking with his ex-girlfriend, Mary, but she’d gone back to her husband. Former co-workers were no help.
Leaving Neal with no choice but to strike out on the streets.
He’d done okay so far. He’d found shelter at the YMCA and lived there for a month and a half. Once the weather began to warm up with the coming of spring, he’d ventured out and eventually became friends with another homeless guy who hung out near the convention center. Arnie Kolvak showed him the ins and outs of panhandling for change, hustling businessmen to remove snow from the windshields of their vehicles after light snowfall. If you hustled, you could make thirty, maybe forty bucks a day. Enough to eat and have plenty left over to pool together to rent a cheap room for the night.
Some nights, though, he had no such luck.
Neal sipped his coffee. Center City was bustling, and Neal wanted to head farther east to some more remote locations he knew of. There was an alley on Seventh and Vine that was pretty quiet. He’d slept behind a trash dumpster there one night last week and done okay. He was a good mile away from that alley now and he rose to his feet, his knee joints popping.
He started making his way down the alley. His shoes were ratted and worn, his jeans caked with dirt and mud, his army surplus jacket giving him warmth and a nice layer of cushion for those nights he did have to sleep outside. The jacket had deep pockets woven in the seams where he stashed items essential to his survival on the streets — a toothbrush and a roll of toothpaste, a comb, a stick of deodorant, a small handheld mirror, mouthwash, a wallet, the keys to his old apartment and car, a small address book, several pens, a Swiss Army knife. Stashed deep in another pocket was a wadded up blanket he’d swiped from the Salvation Army a month back; a further sources of comfort, if you could call it that.
He reached the mouth of the alley and looked both ways. The street was relatively deserted, but there was an SUV approaching from fifty yards away. Neal started crossing, sipping his coffee as he went. He’d just reached the curb when the SUV slowed down behind him. He heard voices coming from inside the vehicle — it sounded like kids — and then the rear passenger side door opened.
He looked behind him just as a couple of teenage boys ran up to him, their expressions malevolent, evil. Neal had them pegged on sight: middle-class white boys from the suburbs. He’d heard stories about teenagers that sometimes went on rampages, beating up homeless people for thrills, and he started running toward the opposite alley when they grabbed him.
“Come on, get him David, get him!”
Rough hands grabbed Neal’s jacket. He fought back, landing a fist against one smooth-shaven cheek. An arm locked around his throat and one of the kids loomed in front of him, looking pissed off. “Motherfuck,” he said. The kid reared back, fist clenched, and popped him hard in the face.
Neal saw stars and, before he could collect his bearings, he was punched again. He felt blood spurt out of his nostrils. He felt himself start to go down but a pair of hands held him up. They started to drag him to the car. “Come on, you worthless piece of shit,” one of the kids muttered. Neal opened his mouth to scream and something was shoved into his mouth, stifling it. He tried to spit it out but a hand was holding it in. As he was pushed into the vehicle, another pair of hands managed to wrap a bandana around his mouth, tying the gag firmly into place. Car doors slammed. “Okay, let’s go! Let’s go!”
The driver pulled away from the curb and headed down the street. A pair of guys were in the rear of the vehicle and they went to work on Neal the minute he was thrown into the SUV, forcing him to the floor. One began tying him up with what felt like rope while another one — the guy who’d punched him in the face — leaned close to him. “Gotcha, you fucking dirty piece of shit!” He looped another fist down into his face.
That single blow was the opening of a floodgate as fists were rained down on him, striking him everywhere — the face, back, chest, stomach. A booted foot struck him repeatedly in the small of his back and Neal screamed through the gag. His arms were tied behind his back at the wrists, and his feet were tied together at the ankles. He rolled on the floor of the vehicle, trying to escape the blows, but they held him down and beat him, laughing all the while until he finally blacked out.
* * *
When they got him back to Scott Bradfield’s house in Spring Valley, David Bruce had to threaten to kick the crap out of them if they didn’t shut their fucking holes. Steve Downing was giggling like a goddamn kid, and Gordon Smith was making sounds of disgust. The homeless guy had shit his pants shortly after they started whaling on him while they were still in Philly, and David had shouted for Gordon and Steve to stop. Steve had kept kicking the guy, though, and David had to grab the idiot by a lock of his hair and haul him back. “He’s knocked out, fuckhead,” he’d said. “Stop it! You want to kill him?”
Steve had stopped and settled back against the window. Steve was a walking cliché; guy was a chick magnet and dumber than a stump. The middle seat of the SUV had been hauled out months before, giving them a nice little area to play in as Scott piloted the vehicle back to Lancaster County. The homeless guy was lying on the floor like a sack of shit, bloody and stinking like a goddamn cow.
And now Steve and Gordon were breaking up in laughter again as David and Scott carried the homeless guy out of the SUV. “Shut the fuck up!” David hissed. He glared at him. At six foot one with a lean build, David could be intimidating when he had to be. A lock of brown hair fell over his forehead.
“Okay,” Steve said, his laughter quickly stopping. Gordon averted his eyes from David and turned away.
“Open the fucking door,” Scott said. He was dragging the homeless guy, pulling him from beneath his armpits.
Gordon went to the guesthouse that was situated at the rear of the Bradfield property and opened the door. Scott had unlocked it earlier. Scott and David carried the homeless guy inside and the rest of them followed.
The light was turned on and Scott turned around. “Turn the goddamn light off!”
More laughter from Steve and Gordon. The light was turned off. Gordon sounded bored. “I bet your girlfriend wishes you’d behave like that,” he said.
“Fuck you, Gordon!”
“Girls, girls,” Scott said. Despite the pitch dark inside the guesthouse, David knew his way around. It had once served as a real guesthouse by the former own
ers, but Scott’s parents hadn’t had much use for the extra living space since buying the estate. The guesthouse itself was approximately twelve hundred square feet of living space. The carpet had been torn out years earlier, the furniture removed, and the living room was now a bare room with wood floors. Scott’s dad once used it as a workroom, but Mom had made him move his stuff to the basement. Probably so she could keep an eye on him. Guy was always working anyway. If David had a wife as good-looking as Scott’s mother, he wouldn’t be working so much. He’d be banging the old lady more often. Maybe that’s why Scott’s mom was such a bitch most of the time.
“Girls, girls, yourself,” Gordon said. He was Scott’s height, but slightly stocky with dark hair and a wide face. When he wore his glasses he looked like a scholar. He knelt down on the floor by the unconscious homeless guy. David saw him check his pulse by putting an index finger to his neck.
“He still alive?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, he’s alive.”
“We aren’t going to fucking beat on him anymore, you got it?” Scott Bradfield said. His blue eyes reflected the intensity they were obviously all feeling. David could see sweat dot his brow and gleam in his blonde crewcut. “We beat him too damn much in the SUV coming back here. I want him to last a long time, okay?”
“You got the ropes?” Gordon asked.
“Here in the corner,” David said. He took two steps toward the wall and knelt down, feeling for them. Four coils of rope lay nestled there, ready to be deployed.
“Let’s get him tied up,” Scott said.
They did it. Despite their teenage dysfunction, they could work together very well when the task called for it. Like tonight’s abduction. That had gone off without a hitch. In fact, it had been downright perfect.
They’d been planning this for weeks. It had been Scott’s idea to go to downtown Philly and pluck a homeless person off the streets and bring him back to the guest house where they could have some fun with him in relative seclusion, and it was a damn fine idea. Scott’s house was on ten acres of land that bordered against the woods. His nearest neighbor was down the road a ways, but far enough away that they wouldn’t suspect anything. Scott’s parents surely weren’t going to suspect anything because they were never around.
The plan was to grab a homeless person, get him to the guesthouse and keep him there for however long it took him to die from whatever injuries he sustained from repeated beatings administered by Scott and his friends.
There was no use in doing any of that happy-slapping bullshit, or going on a wilding spree. Too many idiots got caught doing that and wound up going to prison for it. And the ones that filmed themselves doing it — well, they deserved to go to prison. Stupid fucks. That wasn’t going to happen with Scott and his friends. If you do everything in private, nobody will know. And they could still have fun.
And besides, they could bury the body when they were finished. And they would do it the right way, too. Wrap it up in garbage bags so it wouldn’t leak and the animals wouldn’t get the scent, and they would bury it four, maybe six feet deep.
Scott inspected the ropes when they were finished. They’d tied the homeless guy up tight, binding his lower legs and thighs, his arms. Guy wasn’t going anywhere. If he woke up, no way was he going to be able to lift himself into a sitting position, and if he did, he couldn’t go anywhere. Door would be locked from the outside, and the guest house was far enough into the back yard that nobody would see anything through the windows anyway.
“Think we should find something to tie him to?” Gordon asked. They were standing around the unconscious man.
“Why?”
“Suppose he gets to his feet and bashes his head against the window or something?”
Scott had thought of that but didn’t think it was likely. “I don’t think that’ll happen. Besides, if he does, he’s only going to hurt himself worse. Maybe even kill himself.”
“Still, he could try.”
“You could board the window up,” Gordon suggested.
“Then I’d have to board the others up and my dad’ll wonder why they’re boarded up!”
“Yeah, and it’ll take him six months to notice,” Steve said.
True. Still, Scott felt they could get away with leaving the windows un-boarded for now. “He’ll be fine for tonight. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
And with that, Scott Bradfield led his friends out of the little guesthouse set off deep in his back yard, leaving an unconscious Neal Ashford alone and trussed up.
Chapter Two
Tim Gaines was sitting by himself on a bench in the quad at Spring Valley High School reading a book — Back From the Dead by Richard Long — when Scott Bradfield and David Bruce walked by with those two losers they hung out with, Gordon Smith and Steve Downing.
Ever since that day six years ago when Scott, David, and Steve had beaten him up in that field off Cedar Street and tried to force him to eat a dead possum, Tim had done everything he could to avoid them (and the reason they’d tried to force-feed a dead possum to him was because they were moronic pricks who thought that if you read vampire novels — Tim had just discovered Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot and had been reading it in study hall that day — you were probably a vampire yourself. Complete idiocy, but that was how people who lived in this goddamn town seemed to think). Naturally, he’d told his parents what happened when he arrived home. He’d still been sobbing and throwing up in the bathroom when his mother arrived home from work and he’d collapsed in her arms, barely able to speak. When Dad got home from his job as a Web Designer in Lancaster and learned what happened to his only child, he’d been furious. He’d called the police. Ten minutes later, a squad car was parked in front of their duplex and an officer was taking a statement. “I want that little sonofabitch arrested!” Dad had said, his voice shaking.
Tim and his friends were arrested that evening. But then a strange thing happened.
They were released to the custody of their parents and the next day, when charges normally would have been filed, the Township declined to move forward on it. Steve, David, and Scott received warnings from the police and the school district had suspended them for three days. Dad had been furious and threatened to complain to the Pennsylvania State Police, but then Scott’s parents stepped in. They’d threatened to sue them if they continued pursuing what they claimed were “erroneous, false, and libelous charges” against their son. Only then had Dad backed down. The Bradfield’s were one of the wealthiest families in Spring Valley. They lived in a seventeen room mansion on ten acres of land just north of the little airport that mostly serviced private planes and the occasional corporate jet; Tom Bradfield was the CEO of a Financial Planning firm in Lancaster; his mother was a high ranking executive with a construction company. They had the available legal and financial resources to ruin the Gaines family, Dad explained to Tim a week later at the dining room table. “We can’t afford a lawsuit like this, Tim,” Dad had explained. He’d looked defeated and angry that night. So had mom. “Even though we can probably prove our case and win, the cost of doing it would be prohibitive. We’d lose everything in the process, but if we lost the case…”
Tim Gaines was a smart kid and he understood. The next morning Tim, his parents, the principal of Spring Valley Elementary School, and the School District Superintendent had a meeting. Because the School District was facing a possible lawsuit from not only the Gaines family, but from the parents of the other boys involved in the assault, they saw no choice but to allow the boys back into school. “But I want to assure you that they are being placed on new schedules that will keep them away from your son for not only the remainder of the school year, but during middle school and high school as well.” The Superintendent was a man named Dr. Roth. Tim thought he looked like a mad scientist. He was bald with wispy strands of graying hair sprouting on the sides of his head and a bushy mustache and eyebrows. “We’re going to arrange for separate transportation for your son when school let
s out in the afternoon as well.”
And that was the arrangement that was made. For the past six years, Tim rarely saw Scott Bradfield, David Bruce, and Steve Miller. In the afternoon, a school administrator drove him home (his father dropped him off in the morning). And when he entered Spring Valley Middle School and, later, Spring Valley High School, he was on a different bus altogether than the three boys. Likewise, their class schedules were so different that the few times Tim did manage to catch a glimpse of his tormentors, they were either on the other side of the building, or the school itself.
Tim kept his head down, eyes to the book as the boys passed by. He knew school administrators were still on their vigilance in keeping them in check, and despite occasionally running into them at school — and very rarely after school — they had not attempted to harass or assault him again. Instead they’d relied on others to do their dirty work for them.
As the boys passed by, Gordon called down to him. “Hey Count, what’s happening?”
Tim ignored him. They’d been calling him Count Gaines ever since that incident, and despite being reprimanded by the school, the nickname had stuck and spread throughout the student body. Thanks to them, the dimmer bulbs that attended Spring Valley High School thought he was either a vampire or a warlock.
A moment later, Gordon walked back to Tim and stood in front of him. “Another vampire novel, Count?”
“This one’s about zombies,” Tim said. While the three original boys were forbidden by the school district to have any contact with Tim, this edict was not extended to their cronies. As a result, shortly after that original incident, Scott Bradfield and David Bruce had started a rumor that Tim was a devil worshipper. Of course, it didn’t help that Tim liked horror movies, horror comics, and horror novels, and that he was into goth clothing. For a brief time during seventh and eighth grade, the rumors resulted in harassment from students who didn’t even run in the same social circles as Scott Bradfield and his friends. His locker was broken into, the contents destroyed. Notes containing obscene messages were left in his folders and schoolbooks. A lame attempt at a pentagram was drawn in felt pen on the locker of a classmate and blame was laid at Tim’s feet. Unfortunately a new guidance counselor, who wasn’t aware of Tim’s history, believed the accusations and mounted a campaign of new harassment and intimidation toward him. This only encouraged some of the more straight-laced, preppy kids to pick on and harass Tim whenever possible.
Back From The Dead Page 2
