by Bryan James
Chapter 36 - Refuge
Kevin made it to Thad’s front door without thinking too much about where he was going or what had happened. He knocked but was frightened by the sound, the way it echoed off all the other houses and down the street. He worried someone might see him but he knocked again. He took his phone from his pocket, found Thad’s number, and dialed him. He heard the phone inside the house and the sound of movement.
“Hello,” Thad said.
“It’s Kevin. I’m outside. Can I come in?”
Moments later, Thad opened the door. He was dressed in a tank top, boxer shorts and was half-awake. Kevin stepped to him and grabbed hold of him in a hug. He squeezed tight because he didn’t want to let him go.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just hold me,” Kevin said.
Thad looked out into the street.
“We have to step inside,” he said.
They moved inside and Thad closed the door but Kevin didn’t let him go. He held him tight and began to cry into his chest, great sobs that rose up through his body and left his shoulders tense but fragile. He balled Thad’s thin shirt in his hands, felt his knuckles against Thad’s body. It felt ridiculous and yet there he was. Thad tried to calm him with some hushing sounds, took hold of the back of his head, let his fingers linger in his hair.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
Kevin tried to shake his head but his forehead was stuck there against Thad’s muscle. He felt saliva leaking from his mouth. How had he worked himself into such a state when barely anything had happened? Barely anything, what a thought, no it was something, and he was there in that house with them, his friends, well his friend Heather. He swallowed it down and pulled his head up to look Thad in the eye. He wanted to be close again, so close like they had been, and he didn’t want it to stop. He began to kiss at Thad’s lips but it was unexpected and Thad could barely respond.
“What is this? What’s going on?”
“It’s that boy Conrad,” Kevin said.
“What? What happened?”
“He tried to rape me. We fought. We had been drinking.”
“What? We should do something. We should call the police. I should go over there. Is he still in town?”
“No, and yes, and it doesn’t matter,” Kevin said. “The cops aren’t going to do anything because I got away. In fact he could probably charge me with assault, and like I said we had been drinking so people will think there is some kind of misunderstanding. I’m just another gay boy in a small town.”
“But I should do something,” Thad said.
“Like what? Are you going to crack his skull open for this?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Kevin thought for a moment that he was, that he had cried as much as he could, that it was over but then he felt a pain in his foot, some kind of weird pain that spread up through his body and he felt himself about to cry again so he put his head down against Thad’s shoulder.
“You’re safe now,” Thad said.
“Thank you,” Kevin replied.
“Let’s go to the bedroom and lay down. We should sleep and it will feel better in the morning.”
Thad began to push against him, turn him to the head to the bedroom but Kevin stopped him using as much of his strength that he could muster.
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Promise me you won’t go over there.”
“Why not?” Thad asked.
Kevin shook his head.
“Just promise me,” he said.
“Okay, I promise I won’t do anything.”
Kevin turned and they walked back through the house to the bedroom where he took off his clothes and got into bed. Thad walked to the other side and curled up behind him, his shirt still wet he tried to ignore it but couldn’t so he sat up, pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside before positioning himself again.
In the warmth of the bed their bodies quickly became one heat source and they both fell asleep. They were motionless for a long time until suddenly Kevin awoke with a feeling and had to escape Thad’s arms. He ran to the bathroom and sunk to his knees at the toilet. He vomited and it felt like every bad emotion was coming out of him. Thad got out of bed and moved to his side with a glass of water. He rubbed Kevin’s back, between his shoulders. Kevin took a moment to consider how lucky he felt before he took the glass and rinsed out his mouth. Thad smiled at him then did something Kevin wouldn’t have expected by giving him a brief kiss on the lips and hugging him.
“I hope I don’t have vomit on my lips,” Kevin said.
“I wouldn’t care if you did,” Thad said.
Maybe that’s what love is, Kevin thought, but it sounded too cheesy to say, and he had not really thought about it before but he loved Thad. He was a little afraid Thad didn’t love him back. But who else would do this? Thad helped him up to his feet and back to bed where they got into the same position. Kevin rested his head against the pillow, Thad’s body felt like a warm refuge against a cruel world.
Chapter 37 - The Body
Heather awoke in the middle of the night to the sound Kevin’s car door slamming shut and him driving away. She didn’t have any reason to believe something was wrong. In fact she was proud of him for leaving. She turned over amongst the blankets and into Simon’s body waking him enough that he rolled away and she moved against his back. He felt thin against her body. She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn’t difficult but it didn’t last long.
Another couple hours and she was awake with the sun, the birds, and a lingering cool air that reminded her of that coldest moment of the night and all of those men who had died, that Simon’s mother had possibly killed. They had been geriatric patients, possibly terminal, and yet despite who ever they were, however difficult they had been, she felt sorry that they died. She thought about the mistake she had made.
Simon awoke a few minutes later and rolled into her. They stared each other in the eye and smiled. He reached up and touched her face before pushing away and getting out from under the blankets. Dressed in his boxer shorts and undershirt he went out onto the roof through an access hatch and to the edge where he pissed off the side. She rolled her eyes and let out a moan because she would have to find a more subtle way of doing things for herself.
After taking care of their morning rituals as best they could they dressed and headed into the house to find something to eat. Simon was in the lead by the time they got to the kitchen. He saw Conrad’s body there and stopped. He turned on Heather trying to stop her and block her view of the body but he was unsuccessful. She let out a scream of desperation and panic. He took hold of her and turned her away.
Once he knew she couldn’t see the body he left her and went to it. He half expected it to move as he got closer but it didn’t. This is real, he told himself. The puddle of blood was large and encircled over half the the form. There was a smell of blood in the air. He could pick out the iron but didn’t know the names of the other things he was detecting.
Poor bastard, he thought, but it serves you right. He moved to the edge of the pool of blood, squatted and tilted his head to see Conrad’s face. This was no practical joke, bodies don’t just vanish like in video games. It was there before him and he would probably have to do something with it.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Really?” he asked.
“Should we call the cops?” she replied.
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I think we should check the house first. Whoever did this might still be here.”
She looked to him, her brow furrowed, her eyes narrowed in on him. “We know who did this,” she said. She turned to him and the to the body. “There’s so much blood,” she said, “and it smells.”
He stood and walked to her, led her out of the room and back to the front door of the house where he stopped her. He looked her in the eye.
“We can’t do anything for hi
m,” he said, “it’s all about us now. We have to do this right. It was probably my mother.”
“Probably?”
“It could have been Kevin,” he said. “We don’t know why he left in the middle of the night. Maybe they had an argument or a fight and this is what happened.”
“Kevin wouldn’t harm him. He wouldn’t stab him like that.”
“We don’t know for sure. You should call him.”
She thought to do what he said. She thought to call Kevin and ask him, or better yet have him come back, but she stopped herself as she thought about the fact that all of her phone’s data was being recorded somewhere, logged for future use. It would be the same for Kevin. Maybe he did kill Conrad and maybe he didn’t, maybe he’d be back later that morning having decided to face the consequences but she doubted it. She told herself she wouldn’t get him involved without proof and there was a much more likely suspect somewhere else in the house.
“I can’t call him,” she said. “If he didn’t do it then I don’t want him to get involved. We can’t be sure of anything.”
“Fine,” Simon said. “But I have to find my mother.”
“I’m going with you,” she said.
They walked through the rest of the first floor and satisfied that it was empty they considered the door to the basement momentarily before realizing just how dark it would be even with the sun coming up so they headed upstairs to what was Kevin and Conrad’s room. Hand in hand they stepped into the room together to see the blankets had been disturbed, most of them were against the wall but what looked like the top blankets were turned and pulled out toward the middle of the room. There were empty beer cans, a half empty bottle of whiskey, and a black duffel bag.
Had there been a fight? He thought about what Conrad was like in juvenile detention and he thought about Kevin. No, he told himself, I can’t believe I can see a pattern here, there’s no rhyme or reason. Heather began to leave when Simon stopped her. He gripped at her fingers and pulled her back towards himself.
“The bag,” he said.
“Leave it,” she replied.
“I can’t. We’ve come too far.”
“What are we going to do with it? What are we going to do with his body?”
“We can bury it,” he said.
“We can’t,” she said, “we can’t just get rid of his body. Maybe your mother did it, maybe she’s got blood all over her, and we should turn her into the cops.”
“No,” he said.
“”Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be right. People would still think I did it and she’d be covering for me. Or maybe even if they think she did it she’d go to jail. They might kill her. She’d never make it. No, we have to get rid of the body.”
“How?” she asked.
He was stunned by the simplicity of the question and tried to recall any lessons he had learned from real life and from television. He thought through all the processes and their flaws. He knew if there was a body it was murder but without a body it was just a missing person case, and better yet few people knew Conrad was living at the house, and even if he was, even if they did, that he was trying to leave.
Simon walked to the duffel bag. It was half open so he pulled it the rest of the way and looked inside to find socks, underwear, a pair of jeans, and there on the bottom under some kind of cardboard was something else. He pulled out the clothes and the board. There in bottom of the bag was his phone, cash, bottles of prescription drugs, a bag of marijuana, and jewelry.
“Look,” Simon said.
Heather walked to where he stood and looked inside the bag. She reached inside to the money first, picked it up to feel the weight of it, and then she touched the drugs. There were a few ounces of marijuana. And jewelry. Did he steal this from Lucy? She let out a sigh of relief.
“I’m going to go check on my mother,” he said.
She nodded and looked back into the bag as she moved her hand to the opposite side and began to feel around. There was something solid there, long and cold. She shook her head before opening the bag more fully to see a pistol stuck at the end of the bag with the barrel up. She touched it again, then picked it up. It was heavier than she had ever imagined. It felt wrong just to hold it.
There was so much power in that little, simple tool. She looked it over, kept her finger away from the trigger and the end of the barrel pointed away from her body. She checked the safety and saw that it was off. She found the cylinder release and opened the gun. The gun was loaded with two bullets.
She heard Simon talking to his mother and headed back her way. She snapped the cylinder back in place and put the gun back in the bag that she picked up and carried to the doorway. Simon was there with his mother. She had blood on her hands and clothes.
“We shouldn’t let this out of our sight,” she said.
“Good thinking,” he replied.
He led his mother down the hall, down the steps, and she followed him. They went into the living room and he put his mother in the corner. He turned to Heather and scratched at his head.
“What do we do now?” he asked. “We don’t have any shovels. We don’t have a car. There are police at my house. I’m probably wanted for murder, and we have a dead body who used to be my cellmate in juvenile detention and my mother most definitely murdered him.”
Chapter 38 - Marcus
Together Simon and Heather wrapped Conrad’s body in blankets and dragged it to the basement where they put it in a dry spot. They put two more blankets over the pool of blood in the kitchen before returning to the living room where they sat against the wall, neither of them felt like eating despite the noises their stomachs made. It almost felt like justifiable suffering for what they wanted to do. They had talked out a plan of calling Kevin back and having him take them to buy a used car with some of the cash, then they would drive across the country, figure out some way to get new identities and start a life somewhere else. Simon’s mother would come along with them.
They were lost in their thoughts and fantasies when the sound of a motorcycle broke their dreamlike state and pulled them back to reality. The roar was getting closer. They looked to each other and then to the windows. Heather got to her feet first but Simon was the first one to the door. He opened it and stepped out onto the porch to see a motorcycle pull up in front of the house. The man on it was large, broad shouldered and dressed in leather. He didn’t have a helmet. He wore a bandana, had long hair, and a beard.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Simon replied.
They watched as the man turned off the engine and dismounted from the bike. He looked to them and began to walk their way. He didn’t hesitate as he stepped up onto the porch. The sound of his boots echoed along the wood and out into the yard. He stopped a few feet away from them and took off his sunglasses. They looked up into his blue eyes and for a moment they thought they saw a kindness there before his face hardened and he clenched his jaw.
“Hello,” Simon said.
“Hi,” Marcus replied.
“Who are you?” Heather asked.
“I’m Marcus. I’m a friend of Conrad’s,” he answered.
They looked to each other before introducing themselves.
“He gave me this address. He said he was in trouble.”
“Uh, yeah, he is. I mean he was. He actually just left,” Simon said.
“He’s not here anymore,” she added.
“Really, because he told me to meet him here. I expected him to be waiting.”
“Well, actually, the police came and got him,” Heather said.
Just the presence of the man made them nervous. He smelled of gasoline, motor oil, and weed. When he moved his arms his exposed biceps flexed in definition. He seemed like an unlikely friend of Conrad’s and yet there was sincerity in his voice.
“He’s being questioned,” Simon added.
“Do they have anything on him?”
Marcus turned and walked along th
e porch to the window where he looked inside the house for a moment before looking back to them. The noise of his boots had kept them from talking.
“We don’t know,” she said.
“We only just got here.”
“Really?” he asked.
He stood up and took a cigar from his jacket pocket along with a lighter. He unwrapped it and stuck it between his teeth. He lit the cigar.
“I’ve been up all night. I rode all the way here from the city. I thought he’d be here. Is this place some kind of hide out?”
“I told him about this place when he said he was in trouble. We were in juvenile hall together. He was my cellmate.”
Marcus puffed on his cigar a few more times and walked to the stairs, looked out into the yard. He took his phone from his pocket and looked back at them.
“I’m just going to leave him a message,” he said.
Heather looked to Simon and then to Marcus. She wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She didn’t want to exist. They were caught. Somehow the fates had conspired against them.
Faint at first but increasingly recognizable was the sound of Conrad’s phone inside the house. Marcus turned and looked to the door. He pointed and turned his head in confusion before he stepped past them and opened the door. The phone continued to ring. He stepped inside and began to walk towards it. Heather grabbed at Simon and motioned for them to leave.
“My mother,” he said.
They moved into the doorway and looked for his mother but they didn’t see her. Marcus moved to the bag and the sound ended. Heather remembered the gun inside and panicked.
“He left that here. That’s why we came. We’re picking that up for him,” she said.
Marcus stepped back toward them, puffed at his cigar. He crossed his arms and looked around at the walls.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said.
“Really?” she asked.
