Black Wood

by Derek Flynn

  We. How interesting. How things had come full circle. I started out the acolyte to these two shining stars, and now, here I was being asked by one of them what we were going to do, while the other stood there in a catatonic state.

  Charlie was shifting uneasily on his feet. He looked like someone who was getting ready to bolt. Which, of course, he could have done. We both could. We could have run and left Sam for dead. Her prints were on the gun; the gunpowder residue was probably on her hands. She was done and dusted. No question. We could have gone home, rung the cops, told them everything. What would happen to us? Would they even do us for aiding and abetting? We didn’t aid anything. There was the money, sure, but – to be fair – if anyone was gonna take the fall for that, it was gonna be Charlie. He’d take the fall for the money – maybe do some small jail time – she’d take the murder rap, and I’d walk away whistling Dixie.

  So, why didn’t I do that? To this day, I don’t know. But I didn’t think about it for a second. I looked at Charlie and Sam, and I said, “Both of you, get out of here.”

  “What?” Charlie said.

  “You heard me. Get out of here now. Go home. Say nothing to anyone. Clean yourselves up. Sam, scrub your hands, your clothes, everything. Get any kind of fibres, gunpowder ... I don’t know, whatever the fuck ... off your clothes. Burn your clothes. Shower in bleach if you have to. Just get that stuff off you. Most importantly, nobody say anything.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Charlie said.

  “Never mind. Just do as I say. Get out of here. Now!” I couldn’t believe it was me talking. It was the most assertive I’ve ever been in my entire life. And it worked. They walked away. Oh, it took a bit more cajoling and persuading and the usual nonsense, but eventually they went. And left me, standing in the Black Wood looking down at Scarjaw’s dead body.

  Dead for three minutes, that is. Well, technically. I still don’t know how it happened. Did his heart restart, did I miss a pulse, was it faint? I don’t know. But, as I stood there looking at the body, wondering how the fuck I was going to get rid of it, he groaned.

  He fucking groaned.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  They make a lot of claims in High School, about how they prepare you for college, for life, for work. Funnily enough, High School doesn’t prepare you to deal with a nearly dead body with half its face hanging off, lying at your feet in the Black Wood. My mind was going overtime, running through every possible scenario. I could run, leave him there. Maybe he’d die, maybe not. But, either way, it’d be a mess. Someone would find him, dead or alive, and they’d want to know who did it. And if he lived, he’d come after us, that was for sure. I could round up Sam and Charlie and get them to help me. Take him to the hospital. That was probably the most sensible thing to do. But, then again, three High School kids coming in with a biker with half his face hanging off does look pretty suspicious.

  The more I thought about it, the more I thought about my part in our little trio. At that moment in time, I was the most powerful one of the three of us. I had taken control of their lives; I told them I would clean up their mess. As far as Sam and Charlie were concerned, Scarjaw was dead, and I was going to deal with it. If they knew Scarjaw was alive, I went back to being just a minor player again. And I didn’t like that. As I ran through the scenarios in my head, while Two-Face groaned at my feet, the more my mind became set on it. I needed to deal with this myself. Scarjaw was dead and, as far as Sam and Charlie were concerned, Scarjaw needed to stay dead. That was my secret now, and it was the biggest secret of all, one I could hold over them forever.

  But first, I needed to figure out what to do with Scarjaw. My first thought was to finish him off. Sam’s father’s gun was still lying there. I picked it up, felt the weight in my hand. I’d never held a gun before. I aimed it at Scarjaw, holding it well away from me. They always say that guns kick back so I steadied myself. I must have stood there for three or four minutes, stock still, the gun pointed at him. But, in the end, I knew I couldn’t pull the trigger. That wasn’t me. How far would you go? Not that far. But there were other ways. That wasn’t my way; my way was something more cunning.

  I pulled Scarjaw up from the ground and leaned him against me. His moaning grew stronger every step we took. It was pretty disgusting actually, bits of his face falling off. I didn’t know how he was even still alive or if he’d stay alive long enough to get where I needed to go. It was the longest walk out of the Black Wood I’ve ever taken, every step his dead weight on me and a groan from him. I can’t imagine what kind of pain he must have been in. I tried not to think about it, just stayed focused on reaching the edge of the forest. After what seemed like a lifetime, we finally made it to the car park. Scarjaw’s bike was still there; his henchmen had hightailed it on theirs. I put him on the back, took the keys out of his pocket and started it up.

  I’d never driven a motorbike before, but needs must. I headed in the direction of Pinewood Road, crawling along slowly and carefully, as much not to attract any unwanted attention as not to crash into a tree. When I finally reached the bar, I breathed the deepest sigh of relief of the day. I left Scarjaw on the bike and walked in the door. Funnily enough, despite the fact that I should have been shitting myself – as I had been earlier in the Black Wood – I wasn’t. I was extremely confident. I had a plan, and that plan was going to work. My new secret had emboldened me.

  Inside, a group of bikers sat around a table with worried-looking faces. Two of them were the henchmen from earlier who’d obviously filled the others in on the details. To say they looked at me with surprise would be an understatement. I stood in the doorway, ready to bolt if need be. Despite my newfound confidence, I wasn’t stupid. They all started to get up from the table.

  “Before you do anything,” I said, “Scarjaw’s not dead. I have him out front. But you need to listen to me. He needs to go to a hospital right now. Now, when you go to the hospital, you’re going to have to answer some awkward questions. The cops are going to get involved and they’re going to ask even more awkward questions. Someone will have to get arrested for this. We all know who did it but what you may not know is that her father is well-connected and well-respected in this town. He’ll do everything he can to get her off. That means when this comes to trial, all of Scarjaw’s dirty little secrets ... and all of your dirty little secrets ... are gonna be aired. The person who shot him will probably do jail time, but nowhere near as much as you might think. But all of you, you’re gonna do jail time too. So ... I would suggest you gather up your shit as quickly as you can, take Scarjaw to a hospital outside of Concord, leave him at the door, and disappear. There’ll still be questions but there’ll be no one around to answer them. He’s in pretty bad shape. I’m no doctor but I reckon he’s got some month’s healing ahead of him. That’s if he makes it. At some stage during those months, one of you needs to go back to the hospital, explain the situation to Scarjaw, and make sure ... when he can ... he disappears as well.”

  They were all still standing there, staring at me. I think a couple of mouths may have dropped open.

  “Are we clear on this?” I said. Nobody answered. “I can’t leave here until I’m sure we’re clear on this. I need to know you’re all gonna disappear tonight and that this town is never gonna hear from you all again. I’m giving you a chance here. Start over. Otherwise, this town is gonna bring down the biggest shitstorm you’ve ever seen on your heads. And I’ll help them ... I’ll tell them everything I know. And so will Charlie. You guys don’t stand a chance. So, once again, are we clear?”

  Murmured responses slowly turned into loud, reluctant affirmations. I didn’t say another word. I turned, walked out the door and headed straight for the main road, as fast as I could walk.

  ***

  And that was it.

  Charlie turned himself in the next day. As expected, he got a year in a correctional facility. When his attorney told the judge about Charlie’s grandfather, the old buzzard issued a court order that soci
al services call to check on him a few times a week. Between that and his neighbours, he was looked after for the year. It turns out Charlie never needed to worry. I heard he served eight months with good behaviour. But by that time I’d left. I never saw him again. I gather he stayed on in Gastown for a while after he got out. Got a job working in a fast food place there. His grandfather died a couple of years after. He was barely in the ground and Charlie disappeared. No one ever heard from him again.

  As for Samantha, she went back to her family. She told her parents she’d stay at a friend’s house that night. Harry Pierce never heard from his blackmailers again. And life went back to normal.

  I never saw much of Sam after that. It was inevitable, I suppose. There were no High School halls to run into each other in anymore and – if I’m to be honest – I think she went out of her way to avoid me. I left for college in the fall, as did she. Although not to the college her parents wanted her to go to. Instead of law school in Massachusetts, she enrolled in film school in California. I don’t know how she managed to pull that one off. Maybe she’d argued with them for so long or maybe they just gave up on her. Maybe they realised their dreams for her were never going to be her reality. And the rest, as they say ...

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “What the fuck is this?”

  It’s the last thing I expect to see when I walk in my front door. Something I dreamt many times of seeing when I walked in my front door, but not like this. Not today.

  Samantha, sitting in my chair at my desk, with my manuscript in her lap.

  “What are you doing,” I ask her. “How did you get in here?”

  “Your landlord let me in. I can be very persuasive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew you were up to something. I never trusted you ... I just knew. I saw all your manuscripts when I was here that night. I skimmed through them when you were in the bathroom. Saw my name all over the place. I needed to know what you’d written about in there. But I never thought ... this.”

  I take off my coat and hang it up as nonchalantly as I can and make my way into the kitchen. “That’s private,” I say. “It’s none of your business.” I start to make myself a cup of coffee.

  “Of course it’s my fucking business. It’s me.” She walks over and throws the manuscript on the counter top in front of me. “There was no body.”

  I avoid eye contact with her.

  “There was no body,” she says again. “He didn’t die. You took him back to the bar and they took him to the hospital.”

  “I don’t know that they took him to the hospital.”

  “But he didn’t die.”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Stop playing fucking semantics with me. You told me he was dead. You told me you buried the body.”

  “No. I told you I’d cleaned up your mess. And I did.”

  “You told me you’d buried the body. And you let me spend the last twenty years thinking I’d killed a man. Thinking at any minute that the cops were gonna break down my door and drag me away in handcuffs.”

  I turn my back to her and continue making the coffee. I can’t look at those eyes boring into me.

  “So, this is it?” she says. “This is the famous book that you were going to write. After all these years. Except, it’s not really, is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s me. It’s me and Charlie and you. Except, it didn’t happen like this.”

  “Memory is subjective. Besides, most of it happened.”

  “No, it didn’t. I didn’t know you were spying on me when I was getting changed. If I had, I’d have kicked you in the balls. As for sleeping with you ...” She skims through the pages and stops at a page that she’s earmarked. “What about this? I will simply say that we drank deep of each other that night, and were sated. You sick fuck. I never slept with you.”

  “You stayed over.”

  “On the couch. I was exhausted, and I fell asleep on the couch. Nothing happened.”

  “No, but it should have.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see? It would have been the perfect ending for the book. You and me together in the end.”

  “Despite the fact that ... It. Never. Happened.”

  “People interpret events differently. Memory is malleable.”

  “No. Things happen the way they happen. It doesn’t matter what way you remember it. That doesn’t change the way it happened.”

  “What about police line-ups? People claim it was a certain person, it turns out it wasn’t them at all. People give police descriptions of suspects that are nothing like them. But the victims are convinced they’re right.”

  “You’re trying to convince me that this is what happened? You’re trying to convince me that I slept with you, I just don’t remember it? I might forget what I was wearing on a certain day, but I’m not going to forget that I slept with you. Although, my mind would probably try. What about that night I caught you outside my window?”

  “That happened.”

  “I know it happened. But not the way you wrote it. You were jerking off outside my window.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “I bet you don’t.”

  “If that’s the case, how come you let me in?”

  “I let you in because you were threatening to jump off the roof if I didn’t. I let you in and you started blubbering like a girl, telling me how you wanted to be my friend.”

  “That’s what I wrote.”

  “You made it sound like you were some kind of criminal mastermind who came up with the whole plan to get in with Charlie and me. Self-actualising, whatever the fuck that means. I let you into our circle because I thought you could be useful. Jesus, I could sit here all night arguing with you. What’s the point? You’re crazier than a bag of hammers.” She stops talking and stares at me. I see a light go on behind her eyes. “Oh my God. There is no blackmailer, is there? It’s you. You did all this.”

  I don’t answer. She grabs me by the shirt and starts shouting in my face.

  “You did this, didn’t you? You sick fuck ... why?”

  I push her away.

  “Because I had to see you!” I shout at her. “It was the only way to get you back into my life.”

  “Pick up the phone like a normal person, you fucking freak.”

  “Don’t call me that. Besides, you wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Not unless there was something in it for you. Not unless something was at stake. So I had to. I tried to find you so many times. And I saw you once, in that TV movie you talked about. But by then it was already a few years old, and you’d already divorced him and changed your name. So it was still too late. And then, out of nowhere about six months ago, I saw you in a photo on one of those social-networking sites. You were at a party with your husband. Someone had even put your name up. After that, it was easy to track you down.”

  “But why? Why all this?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, Samantha? After everything? It was always only you and me. Charlie ... Charlie was a distraction. I thought for a moment it might be about the two of you, but I realised pretty soon, it wasn’t you and him, it was you and me. It was always meant to be, it was always meant to come to this moment ... here ... now.”

  I can see she’s not really listening; she’s running over the events of the past few weeks in her head.

  “So the guy in the mall?” she says.

  “I hired him.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t want me following him. Oh my God. And you never went back to Concord?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  “But there was nothing there. There was no body ...”

  “No, but ... I suppose, I was curious. Curious about what it would be like if there had been. Where would it be? Would people have been a
ble to find it? I mean, there would have been a body had it not been for a quirk of fate.”

  “A quirk of fate? You mean the fact that he was still breathing when we left? A fact you forgot to mention.”

  “It’s not like I had much opportunity. You avoided me for the rest of that summer. And it was only a few weeks and then you were gone to college and I never saw you again.”

  “Oh, like you had any intention of telling me. You wanted to hold it over me like some sick power game.”

  “No, you’re twisting what we had.”

  “Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you? There is no ‘us’. There’s just you ... a sad, pathetic loser who pretended to bury someone and then pretended to blackmail me about it. And there’s me ... the fucking nutcase who actually trusted you.” She brandishes the pages at me like a weapon. “All this ... these are just your twisted fantasies ...”

  “I wrote what happened ... mostly ...”

  “That never fucking happened. You know that. What else did you make up ... what other lies did you tell? How much of it was real and how much did you make up?”

  “I don’t know. It’s ... it’s all blended into one now. I don’t know what’s fact and what’s fiction anymore. But ... it doesn’t matter. Lies for the sake of a beautiful illusion do not taint the soul.”

  “What?”

  I repeat it.

  “I don’t know what kind of bullshit you’re spouting at me, but nothing you say is going to excuse what you did.”

  “The things I did, the things I said, they were for the sake of a beautiful illusion.”

  “What fucking beautiful illusion?”

  “Us ... our friendship.”

  “No, no, no. No relationship, no friendship. Nothing. You were useful to me for a very short period of time. I used you, you understand? I used you because you were useful to help me do something. And I thought you had helped me cover something up. Now I find out that that wasn’t the case, so I find out you weren’t even as useful as I thought you were.”