Shadow of the Past

by Thacher Cleveland

  Joe’s hand was still on his arm, but all Mark wanted to do was shake it off and run as fast as he could. Finally Joe spoke, his voice going back down to normal.

  “You need to fix it, get rid of it, and get it done, because I am tired of this shit. You wanna act like Mr. Tough Guy? Fine, you solve your own messes, okay? I’m telling you right now, I’m not bailing you out of jail and I’m sure as hell not going to let you throw your life away. You’re going to graduate, get a job, and start acting like a responsible fucking adult. Anything else is just unacceptable, okay? I’m not going to deal with it anymore.”

  “Like you’ve dealt with it at all,” Mark muttered, slipping out of his grasp and heading for the back door. Mark made it halfway before Joe grabbed him and spun him around.

  “I mean it,” Joe hissed at him. “I am not going to go through some crazy rebellious teen bullshit. You fix this. You make it through, or there are going to be some broken promises in this house. Clear?”

  Mark did his best to screw up a mask of defiance, but all it did was make his face throb even more. “Clear?” Joe said again, louder, and giving Mark a shake.

  “Clear,” Mark said, just letting go.

  “Good,” Joe said, letting Mark’s arms go. “Now go to bed. It’s fuckin’ late.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mark didn’t go to school for the next couple of days. He and Joe only spoke of it that Monday morning when Joe poked his head in the door to the attic room and yelled, “You going to school?”

  “No,” Mark called down. He’d been sleeping off and on as the emergency room doctors directed him too, although he was more exhausted than he was tired. “Fair enough,” Joe called up closing the door.

  His head still throbbed, but did with less intensity when he was lying down, so he had stayed that way for most of the day. He flipped channels for some of the time but mostly just stared up at the ceiling, the TV just droning background noise. He thought about getting up and getting something to eat, but decided against it. He drifted off to sleep a couple of times, but thankfully, he didn’t dream.

  Exactly when he thought it would, the phone rang. Mark thought about letting the machine downstairs get it, but then decided against it.

  “Hello?” His voice was dry and cracked.

  “Mark? Is that you?” Christine said.

  “Yeah, it’s me. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” she said, obviously confused. “I was wondering what was up with you. I missed you today.”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, turning his attention to the far window.

  “So . . .” she said a few moments passed. “Were you just ditching or what?”

  “No, I . . . I got into an accident.”

  “Oh my god! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just didn’t feel like being in school, and my Uncle was cool with it, so . . . y’know.”

  “Mark, what happened?” she said.

  “I had an accident on the V on the way home last night. Nothing major. I just sprained my wrist, and got a little bit of a concussion. I’m okay, just not really school material right now.”

  “Oh my God, why didn’t you call me last night? Or this morning?”

  “I didn’t want to bother you,” he said, twisting the phone cord around his fingers. This was going exactly as he thought it would, but it still made him nauseous.

  “Bother me?” she said incredulously. “Mark, stop it. Why would you think telling me about an accident would be a bother?” Her voice lowered, became more serious. “Were you embarrassed? I mean, I’m not going to think less of you because you had some accident.”

  “It’s not like that,” he snapped. “It’s not like I was hot-rodding or anything like that. I was hit by a fucking car!”

  “Oh my god!” she gasped. “And you’re okay? Thank god you weren’t hurt worse.”

  He heaved a long sigh, annoyed that he had been still prideful enough to blurt that out. “I didn’t get this hurt by getting hit by the car.”

  “Then how--” she started, but he cut her off.

  “Look, I’m only telling you this because I want you to be careful, okay? I don’t want to make a big deal about this or anything. I just want to make sure that you’re okay.” He paused again, and thankfully, she didn’t interrupt.

  “This car that hit me ran me off the road, and then someone got out and beat the crap out of me with a bat or something. That’s what fucked me up.”

  He couldn’t even hear her breathing on the other end of the line.

  “Are you serious?” she whispered.

  “I couldn’t kid about this if I tried,” he said closing his eyes.

  “Mark . . . oh God, I thought this was over. How could--”

  “You thought what was over?” he said, taken completely by surprise.

  “There hasn’t been anything about the killings or anything in so long, I just thought that finally it was safe.”

  “Look,” Mark snapped, cutting her off, “this and that other thing have nothing to do with one another. This was just some stupid, macho bullshit, okay? That other thing, you don’t have to worry about it, okay? That’s my problem, not yours.”

  “Mark!” she shot back, “You don’t get the monopoly on being worried about people getting killed, okay? I mean, how do you even know that this doesn’t have anything to do with it. I mean, you . . .”

  “I? I what?”

  “It’s like you said before, how you’re the only link between the two, and then this happens.”

  He could feel it boiling up in him, and as much as he tried to keep it down it exploded out of him.

  “It was Jack, okay! God damn! It was Jack, I saw him, but I’m not going to say anything because that’s just . . . I’m just not going to do anything, okay? He beat me. He won. He’s the alpha-fucking-male. I was stupid to think he would just let shit go, and I was stupid to get involved in that macho shit when I knew, I fucking knew that he’d just take it further. So yeah, I get that the only thing to think if I get attacked is that some crazy killer is after me, but I told you that wasn’t the case, alright?”

  She was quiet again, and it gave Mark time to reflect on what a totally stupid ass he was.

  “God, you stupid boys and your macho horseshit. I’m so sorry that it bugged you so much that I was worried for you, but I was, okay? I don’t think it’s so fucking unreasonable. Especially with that’s happened. People getting killed is actually kind of scary, y’know?”

  “Christine,” he said, trying to find a way to squirm into his bed. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m scared too, okay?”

  “Fine,” she said, sniffling, and then she hung up.

  She sat and looked at the phone for a long time. Anger at him for being a dick wrestled with concern about his accident, and it looked like they were going to stay locked in battle for a while. It was bad enough some teenage head case wanted to hurt Mark so badly he’d run him off the road and attack him, but having to worry about some murderer on the loose was getting to hard to ignore. As much as she hated to admit it, she’d been waiting for either some report on the news to tell her that the killer was caught or for someone that wasn’t a friend of Mark’s to get killed.

  She was wondering if she could call back and apologize or wait to see if he would when her phone rang. He hopes that he’d snapped out of his self-pitying funk were dashed when she saw the name on the ID.

  “So what’s the verdict?” Steve said on the other end of the line before she could even say hello.

  “What?” she said. “Oh, you mean with Mark?”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d have called him already, and your number is easier to dial.”

  “Really?” she smirked.

  “Well, it sounded good on paper,” he chuckled. “So is it the flu, the kissing disease, what?”

  “Actually, it’s a lot worse than that. He told me he got into an accident on the way back from my house on Sunday night.”

  “You’re kidding,” Steve said,
sounding less concerned than she’d have thought. “He drives like an old lady on that thing.”

  “Well, it wasn’t his fault,” she said, her temper rising. “He was run off the road and attacked with like, a bat or something.”

  Steve made a low whistle. “Jesus, this doesn’t have anything to do with the whole specter of death thing lurking about, does it?”

  “No, he told me that it was Jack that did it, and he definitely seems crazy enough for something like this.”

  “Most definitely. In fact, one of his goony little friends was giving me the stink eye in class today. I thought he was just going to ask me out or something.” He paused, and then added, “Mark’s okay, right? He’s not in the hospital or anything, is he?”

  “No,” she said. “He just has a sprained wrist and some stitches, he said. Of course, knowing him, he could be paralyzed from the waist down and he wouldn’t tell me because he wouldn’t want to be a bother. Why does he do this? I just want to . . . I dunno. It’s very frustrating.”

  “Mark can be a very frustrating guy. I mean, he’s real sweet and all, and I love him to death, but he’s so closed off, y’know? We were friends for years before he told me about his parents, and I remember when his aunt died, he just shut down. He didn’t say a thing to me about it.”

  “That’s so sad,” she murmured.

  “Don’t let it get you down. You’re really the best thing that’s ever happened to him, it’s just that your timing sucks.”

  “I feel bad,” she said. “We kinda had this fight about it when I called him, cause I was all freaked out he was hurt and I think he got pissed off that I jumped to the whole ‘people getting killed’ thing.”

  “Oh, I doubt he could stay mad at you. Just give him a little space and he’ll calm down. Trust me, guys love space. Why do you think guys like science fiction so much? Space.”

  “Okay, okay,” she chuckled. “I’ll give him his space. It just goes against my grain, that’s all.”

  “Well, you can go against my grain any day, okay?”

  “Riiiiight,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind. But anyway, what about that history paper? Did you find your notes for it? I’m kind of in a bad way here.” Thanks to the late start of the school year and covering a completely different time period at her old school she had found herself almost completely lost in the history class she was in. Steve had the same class last year and had volunteered some of his notes to help her out.

  “Really? How bad a way?”

  “Steve.”

  “Right. No, I think I’ve got them. Do you want to come over sometime and I can go over them with you? My handwriting’s really bad but I’m sure I can make up some kind of Rosetta Stone for you.”

  “Sounds good. How about Friday? I don’t think Mark is going to be up for doing anything.”

  “Sounds like a plan. How about you come over here, we get some pizza and get our learn on.”

  She opened her mouth to say yes, but paused. “Steve, do you think Mark would be okay with this?”

  There was a pause from Steve as well, and when he spoke again, he actually sounded like he wasn’t just joking around.

  “I understand what you’re saying, and yeah, Mark may find this to be a little . . . I dunno, a little something. I mean, you and I have had lunch a couple of times by ourselves without anything weird happening, so I think we’re okay.”

  “Yeah. Should we tell Mark? I mean, it’s no big deal, and if I was seeing anyone else, I wouldn’t even think to mention it, but . . .”

  “It’s Mark, I know what you mean.” After a moment, he said “Look, I’m not going to go out of my way to tell him. With all of this other stuff going on, he doesn’t need anything else to stress and obsess about. If you want to tell him, though, that’s fine with me.”

  “Okay. I didn’t even ask if he was going to be in school tomorrow but maybe I’ll bring it up.”

  “That’s cool. And besides,” he said, switching into some weird, European accent, “I promise it won’t get weird, baby.”

  “What was that?” she laughed.

  “That was my Austin Powers!” he indignantly. “What, no good?”

  “I think you need to workshop it, that’s all.”

  “So that’s the way it’s going to be, huh?”

  “Looks like,” she said with a smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was Friday when Joe put his foot down and made Mark go to school. Mark tried to get him to hold off until the next Monday, but it was clear Joe’s charitable streak had been worn thin. Mark stared at his face in the mirror in his room for ten minutes before Joe began leaning on the car horn as he waited in the driveway. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t look so bad, but he wasn’t that self-delusional. Between getting the shit kicked out of him, the laying in bed for days straight, and his newfound aversion to food and sleep, he was a wreck. One of the bruises on his check was an odd mix of yellow and purple, and his eyes were baggy and bloodshot. If it weren’t for the bandage on his wrist, he’d probably have been able to pass for just being tired or sick, but as it was, he was sure everyone would be wondering what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into this time.

  Joe grumbled at him when Mark finally got into the car, but he didn’t care. If his back didn’t still feel tight and compressed, he’d have walked the mile and a half, but Joe had actually offered (if “I’m driving you to school” can be considered “offering”). On the drive, Mark tried to convince himself not to be so self-conscious. It was ridiculous to assume that people wouldn’t have anything better than him to talk about, but at the same time he was sure that Jack and his cronies had done their share of gloating to select people, most likely about “what they heard” or some other thin lie to cover their involvement.

  His stomach clenched at the thought of seeing them again. Any joy he may have had about handing Jack a beating was long gone. They’d reasserted themselves, and now it was just a matter of time before they let that be known in a more public forum.

  Or they could just try to kill you again.

  “Keep out of trouble,” was all Joe said before he drove off, and Mark couldn’t even come up with a smart remark before he sped off. It was probably for the best.

  When he finally found Christine, he wasn’t sure how she was going to react, but she kissed him and gave him a hug. “I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She pulled away from him to examine the damage. “How’re you feeling?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, as they walked down the hall towards class. “My back hurts a little, but I’m okay.” He’d been hoping that his disappearance would have made folks forget about his little jaunt to the police station but apparently disappearing for almost a week and showing back up bruised and beaten up just added fuel to the fire of speculation.

  “It doesn’t look too bad,” she lied with a smile, and Mark tried to smile back.

  “How’s the scooter?” she asked.

  “Not totaled, but I think the wheels might have gotten bent. Not to mention the body damage.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. I have no idea how I’m going to afford to pay for it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” she said with a less than convincing smile.

  Oh yeah, because if there’s anything that Mark Watson knows it’s figuring things out, right?

  “Oh geez,” Steve said, when he met them outside for lunch. “The way she made it sound I thought you were in a wheelchair or something. I got worse than this when I fell of that thing of yours.”

  When lunch was over, Mark felt the panic from earlier in the morning begin to rise. He had been dreading gym all day, even though he was going to get out of it for the next few weeks or so.

  Oh Jesus, can you be more of a girl? Why don’t you just cry and run and hide? You won’t even have to be in the locker room with him, and it’s not like he’s going to grab a piece
of gym equipment and try to finish the job.

  It’s true, he was being ridiculous, but all he could see is those eyes, and it made his back twinge in pain.

  Mark slinked into the gym, gave his note to Coach DiMarco, and sat high up on the bleachers. He tried to do some Algebra but couldn’t keep his mind focused on the book. When everyone started lining up in squads, Mark found himself staring at Jack as he casually sauntered to his spot and sat down, his back to him. There were no threatening glances or wicked smiles his way, just casual indifference.

  Mark was about to turn back to his homework when he noticed Victor staring at him. When he saw that Mark noticed him, he turned away quickly, shuffling his feet and missing a step before falling into place.

  Aside from Vic’s glance at the beginning of class, no one, not even the Coach or any of the other classmates (including Steve) paid Mark any attention. When the class was over, Mark took up a spot by the door as the other kids got changed.

  Mark couldn’t help but freeze with panic when Jack and Victor came up the stairs before everyone else. He looked away, trying to see if the Coach was anywhere nearby, but he was nowhere to be found. Jack just leaned casually on the wall across from Mark, looking down at the floor. Eric, however, was fiddling with the straps on his backpack and pacing back and forth.

  Steve was the next person up the steps, and judging from how out of breath he was, he had taken the steps at least two at a time.

  “Hey,” Steve said to Mark, and then turning to stare at Jack and Vic.

  “What?” Vic finally snapped at Steve. Other kids had come up the steps by now, including Jack’s other two friends.

  “You know what. You fucking thugs,” Steve snarled.

  “Go fuck yourself, fairy,” Vic sniped with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “Whatever. Why don’t you guys try to kick my ass, huh? Oh wait, it’s not the middle of the night and you don’t have a bat or anything.”