Blood Will Out

by Jo Treggiari

  The squeal of brakes was earsplitting. A camouflage-painted pickup truck swerved, fishtailing over the road as the driver spun the wheel and plowed into a metal garbage can, coming to a screeching stop in a flurry of broken glass and flying trash.

  A great hulking shape wearing green khakis hurled itself from the truck’s cab. Lynn and Ari skipped backward to the sidewalk. Ari almost tripped on the curb.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “Sourmash.” So called because he distilled his own whiskey.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sorkin Sigurson yelled. He pointed a filthy finger at the traffic lights. “That light was red, you stupid bitches.”

  Ari felt Lynn tense up beside her. She threw her arm out to hold her friend back and watched as her pink scoop of ice cream toppled and fell.

  “Fucking redneck alcoholic hillbilly meth-head freak,” Lynn muttered, foregoing her nouveau British slang. “How dare he call us stupid!”

  “Just keep walking,” said Ari, but Sorkin was blocking their path. He looked back at his truck, idling at an angle half on the sidewalk, at the road now littered with refuse and glittering chunks of glass.

  “My headlights!” he roared, running over to check the front end. “My freaking BMW adaptive frigging headlights!” His swarthy face had turned purple, his eyes bulged. “Twenty-five hundred apiece,” he moaned. “Rocky, you’re my witness, right? These bitches ran out in front of me.”

  Ari’s heart dropped like a stone.

  Until then, she hadn’t noticed the other man in the truck, even though he was only a few feet away. He was slumped low in the seat, one arm dangling from the open window, his greasy head lolling. Sourmash’s bellow made him jerk like a marionette and then shrink down even further.

  “Rocky, get your sorry ass out here and help me wrangle these girls!”

  Ari had seen Rocky around, a skinny, shaky man who followed Sourmash like a whipped dog. He shook his head and mumbled something incomprehensible. Ari could see his Adam’s apple going up and down like an elevator, and he picked a crusty sore on his lip. Drunk or high, she thought.

  “I’ll fucking get you, you kusser!” Sourmash yelled, pounding on the hood of the truck. From the venom in his voice, Ari guessed that was some kind of Scandinavian insult. She was glad she didn’t understand it.

  Lynn shook with anger. “I told Mom she should have let me order the pepper spray,” she said. “I’d use the whole can on him.”

  His head whipped around and he fixed them both with a beady eye. And then he was suddenly within arm’s length. Gunk was spattered all over his shirt and pants. His fingernails were caked with something black and he smelled really bad, as if he’d been sleeping outside all week.

  “I’ll report you to the cops. I’ll sue your parents. It was red. You were walking on red,” he yelled.

  “It was about to change,” Ari blurted out. “You weren’t even near the intersection and you were speeding.” Shit, what’s wrong with me! She pressed her lips shut.

  Sourmash made a sound like a wounded bull and some spit flew out of his mouth.

  “Cell phone?” Lynn said quietly.

  “Recharging at home. Yours?”

  “Nelly hid it ’cause Mom won’t get her one.”

  “Shit.”

  “You! Girl!” With horror, Ari saw that Sourmash was pointing a stubby forefinger at her. “How much do you have in your purse?”

  “Not five thousand dollars,” she said, staring at his hands. They were huge. She thought one of them could encapsulate her head, or wrap all the way around her throat and break her neck like a pencil.

  “I’ll take what you’ve got,” he snarled. “You can owe me the rest.”

  She was frozen in place, skewered by his finger like a bug mounted on a board. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lynn edge sideways a few inches, bristling with an energy that meant she was seconds away from breaking into a full-on panicked run.

  Good plan, but Ari couldn’t will her legs to move.

  Lynn bolted.

  She stopped a dozen yards past the truck and looked back. Ari had no trouble reading her lips. “Ari! What the f—”

  Ari shook her head; still her feet remained glued to the ground, as if she were in a nightmare. The air grew thick while Sourmash circled around her like a shark.

  “Give me that!” he roared, grabbing at her shopping bag. “You owe me.” She tried to hold on to it but he ripped it loose, inspected the contents with a sneer and then tossed it in the back of the truck. Could she elude him? Grab the dress and run? It was just out of reach. Three hundred dollars down the drain. Rocky was apparently passed out with his trucker cap pulled down over half his face. Not that he’d be any kind of help.

  Suddenly, she was possessed by a white-hot fury. How dare he do this? How dare he take from her?

  Go for the eyes—and the balls—if he comes any nearer. She was wearing soft, broken-in ballet flats with no toe protection. Could she get her keys out of her purse before he was on her? Use them as a weapon? She fumbled at the clasp with stiff fingers.

  “Ari, I’m calling the police,” Lynn yelled. “The po-lice!”

  “What are you going to do about my lights?” Sourmash demanded, ignoring Lynn, who was pretending she had a cell phone. His finger stabbed at her again, and Ari jerked back and dodged to the left, finally shocked out of immobility. She got the truck between them, feeling instantly safer. She could evade him all day if she had to. Taking the opportunity, she hooked the shopping bag with one finger, hitching it over her shoulder.

  A tarp draped on top of a hulking mass in the back lifted in a gust of wind and slipped to the side. Staring back at her was the bulbous eye of a deer, the head hewn from the body. Its skin had been removed in a neat segment from the neck down to the hooves, and the belly cavity was split wide open. Broken ribs gleamed like the bleached planks of an old boat, and there was a warm, rich smell that reminded her of raw hamburger. Her stomach churned. And then a hand clamped tight on her arm. She jumped, feeling her stomach ricochet into her throat.

  “Ari,” Lynn yelled in her ear. “Run, goddammit!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At first I couldn’t see the path, but now it is clear to me when the transformation began. It began the first time I held a knife and knew it was for cutting.

  I’m not a fan of all that psychological Freudian mumbo jumbo: blaming my parents; blaming my trouble with toilet training; blaming the world. Sure, my teenage mother had some drug and alcohol problems and some issues with anger, and Ma and Pa Cosloy weren’t ones for hugging and kissing, but they clothed me, they fed me, they sheltered me.

  I can’t picture my birth mother, though I was told we share the same intense expression, the same bold eyes, which first pierce and then slide away when our gaze is met. Shifty-eyed, Pa Cosloy used to say. I was also told that when I was brought to the hospital, not yet five years old, deep-bruised and suffering from a dislocated arm and various broken bones, I did not go home again. I went straight into care and then one year later to the Cosloys for fostering. Not so much because they longed for a child but because they needed an extra pair of hands around the farm. My mother went to jail.

  These people do not get the blame.

  Nor do they get the credit for what I am becoming now.

  I practiced on the chickens, wanting to see how all their parts fit together. They weren’t as smart as Ferdinand but there were lots of them. It was simple enough at first to blame foxes when Pa or Ma found a hen’s head in the trough or a clutch of feathers in the yard. I was young though, and I didn’t have the smarts to hide my tracks for long, not then. It didn’t occur to me there was anything wrong with it. It is the way of the world. The dragon devours the maiden; the knight kills the dragon. The wolf eats the pigs; the woodcutter slays the wolf.

  The chickens were disappointing anyway. They didn’t fight. They went limp almost as soon as I picked them up, squawking in a way that begged me to wring their necks, a
nd their fluid was thin and watery, drying to mud-brown. Nor was there enough of it. I wanted something that would stain a surface with dull crimson, like the bull’s blood they used to mix into linseed oil and paint the barns with. Unfortunately, we had no cows.

  I was beaten for it, of course, but I didn’t care. I could cast my mind out from my body like a lure from an unspooling fishing line, think of other things, fixate on a burst of color beyond the gray shed or the rough bark of the stump I leaned over with my pants down around my ankles.

  Pa had a system to his beatings. First being, he sent me out to cut a willow or birch stick.

  “Bring me back one about yay big,” he’d say, pointing to his thumb, two inches thick, “and make sure it’s got plenty of spring in it.” That’s where they got the phrase “rule of thumb,” did you know? Used to be law a man couldn’t beat his wife or children with a stick that was thicker than his own thumb.

  Pa methodically counted out twenty-four lashes of the stick; three blows for each dead hen. I could feel the trickles running down my calves. My buttocks throbbed with a pulse like a heart. Pa waited for me to haul up my pants and gestured that I sit down. It was uncomfortable to do so but I didn’t question him and I managed not to wince as my weight settled into the deep cuts cross-hatched on my skin. I watched him fill his pipe, the slow, measured motions of his hands as he tapped out the golden flakes of tobacco, and waited for him to speak.

  There were no questions about my well-being, no concern. I had done a bad thing; he had meted out punishment; justice had been served. That was the way his world ran.

  He understood me not at all. Bodily pain was nothing to me. By that point I had been beaten many, many times. Being locked in the slaughter shed for four nights without food or blankets and only the pig water trough to drink from was nothing. I was made of nothing. I observed; I considered; I went to the dark, safe place in my head and I burrowed there like an animal.

  “I thought you understood. I can’t abide waste,” Pa said. “Your Ma neither.”

  The chickens were going to be killed anyway, I thought. Who cared when?

  I waited. Usually once I’d had my beating, the matter was done and not spoken of again. We might go to church twice that Sunday if it was necessary; I might have to empty the outhouse buckets, haul a ton of clean earth and lime, or clear rocks from the south field until my muscles were so weary I couldn’t hold a fork. But he clearly had more to say. I looked at his fingers, the hard yellow calluses like cheese rinds, the white marks from squeezing the whipping stick so tightly. My fate lay in those broad hands with thick black hair matting at the wrists. I tried to predict my future. I was like a baby bird resting on his palm. Would he let me go or would he close his fingers around me and crush my fragile bones?

  “Go in the shed there and fetch me the gun on the wall,” Pa said, rubbing his hand over the top of his balding head and then replacing his cap.

  I admit that a flicker of fear, sharp yet thrilling, ran through me, but I did as he asked. The shed held stacked logs, tarpaulins and small garden tools, broken furniture in need of fixing, traps for winter hunting and, set on hooks above a small window, a rifle. I lifted it down carefully—Pa used to say an unloaded gun was as good as no gun at all—and brought it to him.

  “This was my first firearm,” he said. “Given to me when I was about your age.” He looked directly at me, which was rare. “Had more sense than you do.” His eyes fluttered away again as if he couldn’t bear the sight. “This here’s the safety.”

  He popped the cartridge out and showed me the bullets arranged like small golden eggs inside. “You’ve got a round of five in here.” He clicked it back in and drew the bolt back. “Safety’s still on,” he said, thumbing it. I nodded to show I understood. Hot excitement flooded my veins. He handed me a heavy box with more bullets and I tucked them into my pocket.

  “You can shoot anything wild.” His eyes found mine again and I forced myself to meet his gaze, though I hated being looked at. “Try to kill it with one, maybe two shots. Keep your gun clean and dry; come to me when you need more ammunition.”

  And then he handed it over.

  I had never felt such power.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Forty-seven times she’d stumbled around the circumference of the cistern, using a rough, wet, crumbling patch on the wall to mark the beginning of her route. Although her legs were trembling, she couldn’t stop herself from moving. Sitting down felt like giving up; walking and counting gave her sluggish brain something to focus on. Plus, she hoped it meant she wouldn’t pass out again; that had seemed too much like drowning. Twenty-five toe-to-heel paces from start to finish. Roughly twenty-five feet in circumference. It felt smaller, cramped, this round space, as if the walls were pushing in, as if sooner or later she would be crushed between the bricks. Forty-seven times twenty-five was what? She couldn’t begin to remember how to do multiplication.

  “And who the fuck cares anyway, Ari!” she yelled, kicking aside the flurry of dead leaves in her path. She should worry about the things she did know. The cold, hard facts.

  It had gotten no lighter. The pain in her head was gone but her eyes were still bothering her. Vision fuzzed, sparks like a lightning storm behind her lids when she closed them. She’d bashed into the wall a couple of times, scraped the skin from her shoulder and knuckles.

  She was pretty sure she had a concussion.

  No one could hear her. She’d yelled help, fire, rape over and over again, scrabbled on the ground for rocks or something heavy enough to dislodge the cover at the top. There was nothing with any kind of heft, even if she’d possessed the strength and been able to avoid being brained when it fell back down to earth.

  There were physical needs she had to address. Finally, after stalling for as long as she could, she had picked a place to pee and now the sour scent mixed with the earthy smells. It made her feel like an animal, as if she were losing herself in tiny increments. If she died here, would she smell like the mouse that died behind the kitchen wall? A sweet gassy odor that had lingered for days.

  Which would kill her first? The concussion? Probably not, since she was still upright and ambulatory. Starvation? She could go a couple of weeks probably before she had to eat her fingers. But thirst? “Oh yeah, dehydration,” she said. “That’ll take me out in a few days.” A crazed laugh escaped her lips. How long had she been down here already? She was parched. She licked a brick. It tasted like moldy cheese. She could drink her own urine—she knew it was sterile from some survivor TV show—but she had nothing to collect it in.

  Her head wound had stopped seeping, and the ooze of blood glued her hair against her scalp just above her ear. She scratched at it. The lump on the back of her head had already shrunk down. Pressing it felt like a bad bruise, like something she might sustain from falling on hard ground. But the serious deep wound by her ear? How had that happened?

  Something clicked into place like a key in a well-oiled lock. She’d been lying on her back when she came to. The ground beneath had been cold, very cold, all her body heat leached away into the soil. So she’d been lying there for a long time. And now she remembered hearing a voice, low-pitched, the words a distorted buzz, and seeing a thick length of metal, a pair of smooth black hands—gloves? leather? rubber?—then a shock of excruciating pain in her skull, a sharp shove against her chest, and she’d been falling. She recalled the silhouette getting smaller and smaller and then the dull thud as she hit the ground. She must have fallen boneless, close to unconsciousness before she even landed.

  She blindly felt for the wall and sank down against it. The terror came howling back, wiping her mind of everything but one question: Who? She was suddenly breathless; her heartbeat juddered in her ears. Her hands were lumps of ice.

  Who would do that to her? Who was crazy enough?

  Sourmash. You owe me, he’d yelled. There’d been a look in his eyes, something hard and predatory that had made her think she was one step away from ending
up like the deer in the back of his pickup.

  She knew one thing: he’d be coming back for her if he wanted her to pay. He wouldn’t leave her here to starve, would he? He’d want her to know that it was he who put her here, and then he’d exact retribution of some kind. Did he just want her to beg him for her life? In his sick mind she deserved to be punished, but how far would he take it? He was a hunter. He was a drunk. He’d hurt her. She wanted to kill him. She furiously blinked away the tears, scrubbed at her face with her hands and straightened her back, realizing that her eyes had adjusted. She could see the dirt grimed into her knuckles, the bricks, a giant drift of dead leaves in the middle of the shaft like a pile Lynn would make. Far above her was a sliver of something that could be the moonlit sky. The cover must not be on all the way.

  She looked at her sneakers extended in front of her. Then, at the opposite wall. She scooted forward, reaching for the bricks with her toes and pressing her hands against the wall behind her. It was too far. For a moment she’d thought that maybe she could brace herself on either side and scootch her way up, but she couldn’t span the distance with her body. A pro basketball player couldn’t have done it.

  Something white-hot broke open inside her and filled her veins with adrenaline. She had to get out of here. She had to try something. Anything! She stood up and slammed her shoulder into the wall as if she could break it down. The impact knocked her back to her knees. The image of a bird beating itself to death against a window blazed in her mind but, clenching her jaw, she pushed it away. She stood up again and took a run at the wall, trying to defy gravity and force her body up toward freedom. Her fingers slipped from the bricks. But she did it over and over, possessed by fury and fear. Eventually, battered, shaking, her head splitting again, she sank down on the ground. Three fingernails had broken off at the quick. She stuffed her fingers into her mouth to ease the sting, tasted iron. She gathered an armful of dead leaves, mounding them around her in an attempt to comfort herself. There was a rank smell that reminded her of roadkill. She felt something heavy in the pile and lifted it out. A bone! She hurled it away in disgust. An animal that had fallen down and then starved to death? One of Sourmash’s kills? Would bones be all her parents ever found of her?