Blood Will Out

by Jo Treggiari

  “Ari!” he yelled, but she was screaming curses back at him, her blood thundering in her ears as she twisted and fought, using her muscles, her rigid fingers to tear at him. To destroy him.

  Jesse settled his weight more heavily, evading the punches she threw at his face. He gripped one hand by the wrist, and she arched her back and bit him in his fleshy palm. He cursed, letting go, and the small victory reinvigorated her. She struggled more wildly. His eyes alight with murderous rage, he tried to pin her arms again with his knees but she kept moving, snaking her torso and lashing out at him.

  They were both breathing hard. Her lungs were burning fire.

  “Stop fighting me, Ari,” he gasped out. A trickle of blood ran from his lip. She felt a huge surge of satisfaction—at least one of her blows had landed.

  She didn’t waste breath answering him; instead, she struck out with her hands, elbows and feet and felt the reassuring thud of connecting with his flesh. He was tiring. She just had to keep moving.

  He backed off. She leapt to her feet, staggering as a wave of dizziness overwhelmed her, and kicked him right in the balls. He fell to his knees and then his side, clutching himself. His eyes squirted tears.

  “For fuck’s sake, Ari,” he screamed. “It’s not me. It’s her. Her!”

  And now Ari saw her, rising out from the concealing shelter of the trees. Her—but not Dr. McNamara.

  Miss Byroade. Ari scuttled backward, past Jesse who still lay moaning on the ground. Miss Byroade moved so fast that Ari didn’t have time to shout a warning.

  There was a length of pipe gripped in her black-gloved hand. It swung back in a wide arc, and then connected with Jesse’s skull. He let out a high-pitched yelp and went still. Blood oozed down his forehead like a black slug. Miss Byroade stepped over his prone body, her eyes intent on Ari, the weapon held high.

  Ari felt the echo of excruciating pain on the side of her own head.

  “I knew you’d come, Ari,” she said with pleasure.

  And with a sharp inhalation that tore at her throat, Ari suddenly remembered everything. Those terrifying eyes, black pupils engorged so there was no iris visible, like a beast. She had seen that look before.

  She retreated, desperately searching the ground for her screwdriver or something she could use. There was nothing but twigs. She pulled her keys from her pocket and held them between her knuckles, the pointy ends spiking out. And then the librarian was on her, as wiry and sinewed as some feral animal, far stronger than Ari was, though her body was slight.

  She bore Ari over backward and they both fell to the ground with an impact that knocked the breath from Ari’s lungs. The pipe crunched against her wrist and she dropped the keys.

  Ari flailed desperately, her arms feeling heavy, her hands open not fisted, digging into the leaves and soil and hurling them at the snarling face above her. Bucking wildly, she lashed out. Miss Byroade grunted, and the pressure against Ari’s body lessened for a moment. Summoning a last vestige of energy, she threw herself aside and staggered to her feet. She backed away, searching for her keys. Too late she saw them in the grass behind the librarian.

  “I’ll be kind, Ari,” Miss Byroade said, with a ghastly grin, raising the pipe in her black-gloved hands.

  Ari was mesmerized by the gloves. She forced her gaze up to Miss Byroade’s face. Her cheeks were red with exertion, her teeth slick with blood from the gash on her mouth. It looked like she was wearing a kabuki mask.

  “Where’s Lynn?” she screamed. “What have you done to her?”

  “I’m going to take you to her,” Miss Byroade said, moving forward.

  Ari shook her head, feeling the terror rise and a scream lodge in her throat. Branches scratched the backs of her legs. The river was right there.

  There was nowhere for her to go.

  Miss Byroade lunged. The impact flung Ari into the air. She hit the ground and instantly the woman was on her again, slick hands tightening around her neck. She jerked her head back and forth, trying to break free. The white bundle was only a few feet away. She glimpsed black hair, a blue T-shirt, an arm. It was Lynn! Knocked out? Dead?

  She redoubled her efforts, bucking and thrashing as the librarian’s fingers constricted and she felt her awareness begin to slip away.

  The ground tilted suddenly and they crashed into the stream, frigid waters closing over her head as the breath was snatched from Ari’s lungs and blackness filled her eyes.

  She spun and writhed. Utterly helpless.

  The librarian pulled her to the surface and pressed her thumbs against Ari’s windpipe. Her head felt as if it were going to explode. She struggled to get her feet under her, slipped, gasped and swallowed water. Her hands gripped Miss Byroade’s wrists, easing the pressure against her throat. She kicked out and landed a solid blow, and finally she tore free.

  Her clothing was soaked, heavy. She tumbled head over heels, unable to fight the inexorable power of the river. Her elbow hit a protruding rock with a crack she felt in her teeth; pain flared along the length of her arm, and then it went numb, hanging useless. Something ripped at her, clung. Miss Byroade had a hold of her again. Ari thrashed and her head smashed into something solid. Suddenly her wrist was free, but she was disoriented, weak. She swirled within the current, unable to fight against it. It would be so easy to give up.

  All around was blackness. She was at the bottom of the well again. The surface miles above her head. She stared blindly at nothing. A stream of bubbles poured from her nose and she watched them dance, and then float upward. Her eyes followed the flight of a bubble. She remembered being told in lifeguard camp that that was how you orientated yourself underwater. That way was up.

  She kicked her legs, feeling a desperate surge of energy propel her forward, fighting to reach the surface before the air gave out, battling against the current, hardly feeling the impact as her body repeatedly slammed against the rocks.

  Her eyes filmed over. Her lungs were empty. And now her leg was caught. She reached for the wavering light above her. How far? Her hands opened and clutched at nothing. And then finally her head broke the surface, and cold air streamed across her face, and someone had her by the leg and was pulling her from the water.

  She choked, gasping, and threw up, and then finally she could take a breath. Deep and pure, it hurt her lungs like a shard of glass and still she gasped until she had filled them again.

  She collapsed on the muddy bank, chest heaving, water pouring from her nostrils. She had nothing left with which to fight and she lay there waiting for death to arrive. She could hear someone else breathing loudly. After many moments, she raised her head and looked beside her.

  Jesse, with a purpling bruise on his temple, lay on his back. His fingers were still clasped around her calf, and near him, Lynn, so pale and sick-looking, curled on her side. Their hands were linked together, making a human chain, and she felt something almost like warmth travel from their bodies into hers, as if their veins were connected.

  There was no sign of the librarian.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Hi. Ari?” said a voice from behind her. It was so whispery soft that it took a moment for it to permeate.

  Ari turned around. Miranda Taylor was standing with one hand on the back of the park bench. She looked like she needed the support to stay upright. Ari recognized the expression in her eyes immediately. That stricken, empty, hopeless expression. Oh yeah, she knew what that looked like.

  “Can I?” Miranda said, pointing to the bench.

  “Sure.” Ari moved over a little bit to make room. She had come here almost every day for the past three weeks. It was around the corner from Dr. Barker’s office, and she liked the view. It overlooked a long swoop of grass that disappeared at the horizon line. The kind of soft, gentle hill she and Lynn would have rolled down as kids or sat in the middle of making dandelion crowns. There were no trees, no bushes, no buildings anywhere on it. Nowhere for anyone to hide. It made her feel calmer.

  The
police and ambulance had shown up within twenty minutes of Ari calling them from the phone in the kitchen. It had taken her longer than that to stagger from the house back to the creek. The leaden weight of her body, the weakness of her limbs had surprised the hell out of her and she’d had to take frequent pauses to catch her breath. Neither Lynn nor Jesse could stand up without reeling. Her parents had cried, even her father. Uncontrollable sobs and since then, many hugs, apologies, check-ins and assurances that felt comforting but at the same time oppressive, like a really heavy blanket.

  Just breathing the air, listening to birdsong, from a vantage point where she could see three hundred and sixty degrees, helped temporarily lift the claustrophobic feeling that regularly debilitated her.

  Miranda didn’t say anything for a few minutes but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. Ari was just thankful that her mind was quiet for once, and that the sun was warm on the back of her neck.

  She scratched at the crook of her elbow where the cast stopped and the itching drove her crazy.

  “How are you?” Miranda finally said, her eyes going to the cast. And surprisingly, it sounded like she gave a damn. “We miss you at school.”

  Ari was doing her classes online on a trial basis.

  “A month, two, three, whatever you think works,” her dad had said. Ari thought that there might come a day, sooner rather than later, that routine—that everyday sameness—might be better than this limbo. Besides, she had started pining after the smell of the pool and even the chatter of the cafeteria.

  “Everything is different now.”

  Ari shot her a quick look, noticed the swelling under her eyes, the papery look of her skin, the way her hands jittered—too many tears, too little sleep, too much coffee. She’d been picking at her cuticles too. She followed Ari’s gaze and shoved her hands into the pockets of her baggy jeans.

  “I want to know. How you are.”

  “I feel like shit,” Ari said, tired of pretending otherwise. “My body hurts. I can’t sleep. I cry all the time.” Admitting it actually made her feel like she could make it through five minutes without crying. Or perhaps she’d used up her quota already in Dr. Barker’s office.

  Miranda took a deep breath and then sighed so loudly Ari figured she was completely unaware of doing it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I said some stupid things to you. I thought worse stuff about you.”

  Ari felt uncomfortable. She’d been equally superficial. “That’s all right. I mean, bigger picture and all…”

  Miranda gave a hollow laugh that turned into a sob somewhere along the way.

  “Are you scared?” she asked. “Even now?”

  “All the fucking time,” Ari said.

  Miranda shifted uneasily.

  “You’re not pretending,” she said, “that everything is okay.”

  “I don’t think I could pull it off.”

  “My parents say I need to move on from Stroud’s death. The funeral was last week and there was that assembly and the bouquets and candles in front of the school…but no one is talking about him. It makes him seem even more dead. It makes it feel as if he was never alive.”

  She turned a tear-stained face toward Ari. “If we do that, then it’s like she won. She erased him.”

  Ari took Miranda’s hands in her own.

  “Not as long as you remember,” she said. “As long as we remember.”

  * * *

  Ari walked into the café and scanned the room. It was the awkward time between breakfast and the lunch crowd and most of the chairs were empty. There were reporters crawling all over the town, but so far Captain Rourke had been able to keep her identity secret—she, Lynn and Jesse were listed in the news articles only as “three teenage victims.” She knew it was just a matter of time though. They—the survivors, not victims, her brain reminded her—were visibly injured and suffering from shock. People were talking. Jack Rourke had already given a bunch of interviews as the grieving best friend.

  Ari grabbed a cup of coffee with her uninjured hand and slipped creamer and a cinnamon bun into her pocket, nodding to Frances behind the counter. The woman’s face was full of concern. Ari had avoided her bathroom mirror that morning like every other morning, but she knew she still looked bad. She forced a smile. A purple sunrise, Lynn called it.

  “Mom told me to come down for some coffee therapy,” she said.

  “Okay, love. She’s baking in the back. Lynn’s been here for a bit, nursing a cappuccino,” Frances said and blew her a kiss.

  Lynn was tucked in a corner bench by the window. Her head was down and Ari took the opportunity to really look at her, noting her pallor, curved posture and trembling fingers. Lynn had never looked petite to her before.

  It’s weird, Ari thought, moving slowly across the floor, how much physical abuse we can take. Her whole body was bruised and battered, her left arm broken in four places, strips and chunks of skin missing from her knees and elbows. But none of that hurt as much as the knowledge, felt bone-deep, that Miss Byroade’s actions had killed the childlike, innocent parts of them.

  She cleared her throat, not wanting to startle her friend, put her mug down carefully on the table, and once she saw recognition in Lynn’s eyes, she slid in next to her and slipped her arm gently around her thin shoulders.

  “Hey, sweetness,” she said, hugging Lynn quickly and then moving away a little.

  “Too much and I feel like I’m going to shatter in a million pieces,” Lynn had told her. “Just knowing you are nearby is enough. Just knowing you came for me.”

  Lynn straightened her posture and took a deep breath.

  “So how was your session with old Barker?”

  “He’s good at getting me to tell him how I feel. He talks around things. It makes it easier.”

  “He’s got me meditating. He’s gonna Zen all the punk rock right out of me.”

  They both laughed and Ari felt the tightness in her chest loosen a little.

  “Sleeping better?”

  “Sure,” Lynn said. “You?”

  They both knew that Lynn slept with the light on and all her windows open. Ari had told her dad to leave the blackout shutters up, and she often woke to find herself curled up on the floor.

  “Yup.”

  They smiled at each other, recognizing the lie.

  Fake it till you make it.

  Dr. Barker had mentioned sleep aids, but Ari didn’t ever want to sleep that deeply again. She wanted to be aware. At all times.

  Lynn slid her hand into Ari’s and they laced fingers.

  Life was full of gaps, Ari realized, like a worn carpet. And somehow they’d have to fill the holes themselves, and rebuild something solid enough to hold them both. She looked at their linked hands. This was a good true thing. A strong thing. In this moment she felt like nothing could ever break their friendship apart. They were bonded.

  “Jesse,” Lynn said, nodding toward the door.

  He spotted them, grinned and limped over.

  They’d become a trio without even discussing it. Since everything had happened there hadn’t been a day that they hadn’t spent together. Not doing anything in particular, just hanging out, not even talking that much.

  “I just ran into Miranda,” Ari said, grabbing an extra cushion from a neighboring chair. She’d bruised her tailbone while she was in the water. Then, considering, she amended it to, “I mean, I think she was waiting for me. It wasn’t random or anything. She thought I could help or something. I feel so sorry for her.”

  “Stroud was still an asshole,” Jesse said, taking the chair across from their bench. “Now it’s like he’s a saint or something. Even the kids he treated like shit are going around all teary-eyed.”

  “Better that than that he be forgotten,” Ari said slowly. “And all anyone remembers is that he was some kid who was murdered. Most of them don’t even know his name.” She blinked hard until the tears receded.

  “Jack Rourke is totally pissed he had no idea what was going on. It’s kno
cked him off his block,” Jesse said with a satisfied grin. “Don’t ever tell him he made the suspect list for a hot minute.”

  Ari shook her head. “I should have known he didn’t have the smarts,” she said. “But I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.”

  “How are you?” Lynn asked Jesse, touching the back of his hand briefly.

  He smirked and gave their stock answer. It almost felt like the password for a secret club. “We survived. That’s always a good day.”

  “So,” he continued. “Did the doc ask you about your chronic bed-wetting?”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” Ari said with a wan smile. It was just a joke, but she couldn’t help but think of the trifecta of warning signs for serial murderers. Bed-wetting, fire-starting, pet killing—just some of the knowledge she had acquired in the last month.

  “What? Mine asked me. I never did wet my bed, but he seemed so disappointed I told him I did.”

  Lynn flicked some coffee foam at his face. He raised his hands in mock surrender.

  “Anything come back to either of you?” she asked. Part of Lynn’s self-prescribed therapy was piecing together all the different parts of the puzzle that was Miss Byroade. Time was divided into Before Miss Byroade and After Miss Byroade.

  “I remembered how I got to the cabin,” Ari said. Dr. Barker also used hypnosis and relaxation techniques. Until today they hadn’t yielded results, but this time, something clicked, and another small door opened in her brain. Once she’d been able to visualize where she was on that Friday afternoon, the images had come, rolling out like a strip of film.

  “And?”

  “I should have been smarter. I mean, it just sounds ridiculous now that we know.”

  “Hindsight,” Lynn said, “is a motherfucking bitch.” She fiddled with her bracelet, and Ari checked for her own as well.