“It’s Dave,” Jessica gasped. Charlie took a deep breath, forcing herself back into the present.
“Come on, help me,” she said She stepped forward and grabbed at the fabric, pulling on whatever she could reach.
“You’re kidding. I’m not touching that thing.”
“Jessica! Get over here!” Charlie commanded, and Jessica came reluctantly over.
“Ew, ew, ew.” Jessica touched the suit, then recoiled. She gave Charlie a flat look and tried again, yanking her hands away as soon as she touched it. “Ew,” she repeated quietly, then finally screwed her eyes shut and took hold of it.
Together they pulled, but nothing happened. “I think it’s stuck,” Jessica said. They shifted positions and finally heaved the mascot out of the cramped space. The fabric caught on stray nails and jagged wood, but Charlie kept pulling. At last the creature was out, splayed heavily on the ground.
“I definitely don’t think Dave faked his own death,” Charlie said.
“What if it’s not him?” Jessica peered carefully into the face.
“It’s him.” Charlie looked at the dried blood soaked into the mascot’s fingertips. “The spring locks might not have killed him right away, but this is where he died.”
They could see Dave’s body through the gaps in the costume, and the wide carved eyes of the mascot head showed through to his face. His skin was desiccated and shriveled. His eyes were wide open, his face expressionless and discolored. Charlie moved closer again. Her initial shock had passed, and now she was curious to see more of him. She probed carefully at first, in case some of the spring locks inside might still be waiting to snap, but it was clear that they’d already done their damage. The locks had been driven so deeply into his skin that the bases of each were flush against his neck; they looked like part of him.
Charlie studied the chest of the costume. There were large tears in the yellow fabric, which had gone green and pink with mold in patches. She grabbed hold of the sides and pulled the gap open as wide as she could. Jessica watched, fascinated, her hand over her mouth. Skewers of metal protruded through his entire body, dull and crusted with his blood. And there were more complex parts, twisted knots of gore with many layers of machinery that stuck out from his body. The suit’s fabric was stiff with blood, too, yet the man didn’t seem to have rotted, despite the year that had passed.
“It’s like he’s fused with the suit,” Charlie said. She tugged at the mascot head, trying to pull it off, but gave up quickly. The gaping eyes stared up at her, behind which was the dead man’s face. With the light directly on him, Dave’s skin appeared sickly and discolored. Charlie felt a sudden rush of nausea. She pulled back from the corpse and looked up at Jessica.
“So now what?” Jessica said. “Did you want to give him a foot massage, too?” She abruptly turned her head away, gagging at her own joke.
“Listen, I have class in …” Charlie checked her watch. “About an hour. Did you still want to do some shopping?”
“Why can’t I have normal friends?” Jessica groaned.
We are learning all the time. Hopefully at least some of you are learning right here in this class.” Dr. Treadwell’s students laughed nervously, but she continued over them; it had apparently not been a joke. “When we learn, our minds must decide where we will store that information. Unconsciously we determine what group of things it is most relevant to and connect it to that group. This is, of course, only the most rudimentary explanation. When computers do this, we call it an information tree …”
Charlie was only half listening; she knew this already and was taking her notes on autopilot. Since their expedition to Freddy’s the day before, she hadn’t been able to get the image of Dave’s body out of her head: his torso and the gruesome lace of scars that had covered it. When he was alive, he’d shown them off to her, boasting of his survival. While he never told her what had happened, it must have been an accident. He used to wear those suits all the time. She could see him now, before all the murders, dressed as a yellow bunny and dancing merrily with a yellow bear … she shook her head suddenly, trying to get rid of the image.
“Are you okay?” Arty whispered. She nodded, waving him off.
But the dead man in the field—that wasn’t an accident. Someone forced him inside. But why? Charlie restlessly tapped her fingers on her desk.
“That will be all for today.” Dr. Treadwell set down her chalk and stalked off the auditorium stage with a purposeful step. Her teaching assistant, a flustered graduate student, scurried forward to collect the homework.
“Hey, do you have any time to go over some of this?” Arty asked Charlie as they gathered up their things. “I’m in a little bit over my head in this class.”
Charlie paused. She’d promised to make up her first date with John, but she wasn’t meeting him for over an hour. Now that she’d been to Freddy’s, Charlie almost felt like she was on familiar ground, even if it was soaked in blood.
“I have some time now,” she told Arty, who lit up.
“Great! Thanks so much, we can go work over at the library.”
Charlie nodded. “Sure.” She followed him across the campus, only half engaged as he explained his difficulties with the material.
They found a table, and Charlie opened her notebook to the pages she’d taken down today, pushing them across so Arty could see them.
“Actually, do you mind if I sit next to you?” he asked. “It’s easier if we’re both looking at the same thing, right?”
“Oh, yeah.” Charlie pulled her notes back over as he came around and sat next to her, scooting his metal folding chair next to hers, just a few inches closer than she would have preferred. “So, where did you get lost?” she asked him.
“I was telling you on the way over,” he said, with a hint of reproach in his voice, then cleared his throat. “I guess I understood the beginning of the lecture, when she was reviewing last week’s material.”
Charlie laughed. “So, basically you want to review everything new from today.”
Arty nodded sheepishly. Charlie started from the beginning, pointing at her notes as she went. As she flipped through the pages, she noticed her own scribbles in the margins. Charlie leaned in closer, where harsh outlines of rectangles lined the bottom of the page. They were all colored in, like slabs of granite. She stared at them with a sensation of déjà vu: they were important. I don’t remember drawing that, she thought uneasily. Then, It’s just doodles. Everybody doodles.
She turned the page to the next segment of the lecture, and a strange alertness rose at the base of her neck, as if someone might be watching her. There were more doodles in the margins of this page, too, and the next one. All of them were rectangles. Some were large and some were small, some scribbled and some outlined in so solidly that her pen had wet the paper through and torn it. All of them were vertical, taller than they were wide. Charlie stared, tilting her head to see from different angles, until something pinged inside her.
Sammy, she thought, then, Is this you? Does this mean something I don’t understand? Charlie glanced at Arty; he was staring at the paper, too. As she watched, he turned the page again. The next pages were the same. They were filled with neat, clear notes, but little rectangles were squashed into every available spot on the page: stuffed into the space between bullet points, crammed into the margins, and tucked away where lines came up short. Quickly, Arty flipped the page back. He looked up at her and smiled, but his eyes were wary.
“Why don’t you try the first problem here?” Charlie suggested.
Arty bent over his worksheet, and Charlie stared down at her notebook. Her mind kept returning to her father’s house, and the shapes she’d drawn only made the impulse stronger.
I have to go back.
“Are you okay?” Arty leaned in cautiously. Charlie stared down at her notebook. Now that she’d noticed the rectangles, they seemed more prominent than the notes; she could focus on nothing else. I have to go back.
&n
bsp; Charlie shut the notebook and blinked hard. She ignored Arty’s question, shoving the notebook into her backpack.
“I have to go,” she said as she stood up.
“But I’m still stuck on the first problem,” Arty said.
“I’m sorry, I really am!” she called over her shoulder as she hurried away. She bumped into two people as she passed the circulation desk but was too flustered to mutter an apology.
When she got to the door, she stopped, her guts twisting. There’s something wrong. She hesitated, her hand suspended in the air, as if something was blocking her path. She finally took hold of the knob, and instantly her hand felt fused to it, as if by an electrical current. She couldn’t turn it, and she couldn’t let go. Suddenly, the knob moved on its own; someone was turning it from the other side. Charlie yanked her hand away and stepped back as a boy with an enormous backpack brushed past her. Snapping back into the moment, she slipped out before the door could swing shut again.
* * *
Charlie sped toward Hurricane, trying to calm herself as she drove. The windows were cracked open and wind was rushing in. She thought back to Treadwell’s lecture earlier in the week. At every moment, your senses are receiving far more information than they can process all at once. Maybe that was Arty’s problem in class. Charlie gazed at the mountains ahead, the open fields on either side. Watching them go by, she began to feel like some restraint had been loosened. She’d been spending too much time in her room or in class, and not enough out in the world. It was making her jumpy, exaggerating her natural awkwardness.
She rolled her window down farther, letting in the air. Over the field to her right a few birds were circling—no. Charlie stopped the car. Something is wrong. She got out, feeling ridiculous, but the last few days had put her on a hair trigger. The birds were too large.
She realized they were turkey vultures, and some of them were already on the ground, cautiously approaching what looked like a prone figure. Could be anything. She leaned against the car. Probably just a dead animal. After another moment, she turned back toward her car in frustration, but didn’t get in.
It’s not a dead animal.
She clenched her teeth and started to the spot the vultures were circling. As she got closer, the birds on the ground flapped their wings at the sight of her and soared away. Charlie dropped to her knees.
It was a woman. Charlie’s eyes went first to her clothing. It was ripped up, just like the dead man Clay Burke had shown her.
She leaned over to check the woman’s neck, though she knew what she would find. There were deep, ugly gouges from the spring locks of an animatronic suit. But before she could examine them closely, Charlie stopped, horrified.
She looks just like me. The woman’s face was bruised and scratched, which obscured her features. Charlie shook her head. It was easier to imagine more of a resemblance than there really was. But her hair was brown and cut like Charlie’s, and her face was the same round shape, with the same complexion. Her features were different, but not that different. Charlie stood up and took a deliberate step back from the woman, suddenly aware of how exposed she was in the open field. Clay. I need to call Clay. She looked up at the sky, wishing for a way to keep the vultures at bay, to protect the body. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the dead woman. “I’ll be back.”
Charlie started off to her car, then broke into a run, faster and faster across the field until she ran like something was right behind her. She got in and slammed the door, locking it as soon as she was inside.
Panting heavily, Charlie thought for a second. She was about halfway between Hurricane and the school, but there was a gas station just down the road where she could call Clay. With a last glance at the spot where the body lay, Charlie pulled out onto the road.
* * *
The gas station seemed to be empty. As she arrived, Charlie realized that she had never actually seen anyone fueling up here. Is this a working gas station? The place was old and shabby, which she had noticed in passing, but she’d never stopped to look around. The pumps looked functional, though not new, and there was no shelter above them. They simply stood on concrete blocks in the middle of a gravel driveway, exposed to the weather.
The little building attached to the station might have been painted white once, but the paint had worn down to reveal gray boards underneath. It seemed to be tilting slightly, slipping on its foundation. There was a window, but it was filthy, almost the same color gray as the building’s outside walls. Charlie hesitated, then went to the door and knocked. A young man answered, about Charlie’s age, wearing a St. John’s College T-shirt and jeans.
“Yeah?” he said, giving her a blank stare.
“Are you—open?”
“Yeah.” He was chewing gum and wiped his hands on a grimy rag. Charlie took a deep breath.
“I really need to use your phone.” The boy opened the door and let her in. There was more space inside than she’d thought. In addition to the counter, there was a convenience store, though most of the shelves were empty and the line of refrigerators at the back was dark. The young man was looking at Charlie expectantly.
“Can I use your phone?” she asked again.
“Phone’s for customers only,” he said.
“Okay.” Charlie glanced back at her car. “I’ll get gas on the way out.”
“Pump’s broken; maybe you want something out of the cooler,” he said, nodding at a grimy freezer with a sliding glass top and a faded patch of red paint that must once have been a logo. “We’ve got Popsicles.”
“I don’t want—fine, I’ll take a Popsicle,” Charlie said.
“Pick out any one you want.”
Charlie leaned into the cooler.
Pale, glassy eyes stared back at her. Beneath them was a furry red muzzle, its mouth open and poised to snap.
Charlie screamed and hurtled backward, banging into the shelf behind her. Several cans fell off the shelf and rolled across the floor. The sound echoed in the empty space.
“What is that?” Charlie yelled, but the boy was cackling so hard he was gasping for breath. Peering back inside, Charlie realized that someone had placed a taxidermic animal in the cooler, maybe a coyote.
“That was great!” he finally managed to say. Charlie drew herself up, shaking with rage.
“I would like to use your phone now,” she said coldly.
The boy beckoned her to the counter, all smiles, and handed her a rotary phone. “No long distance, though,” he warned. Charlie turned her back and dialed, walking toward the cooler as the phone rang. She peered in the top, studying the stuffed canine from the high angle.
“Clay Burke here.”
“Clay, it’s Charlie. Listen, I need you to meet me. It’s another …” She glanced at the young man behind the counter, who was watching her intently, not trying to hide the fact that he was listening. “It’s like that thing you showed me before, with the cows.”
“What? Charlie, where are you?”
“I’m at a gas station a few miles from you. Looks like someone painted an outhouse.”
“Hey!” The boy behind the counter straightened for a moment, taking offense.
“Right, I know where you’re at. I’ll be right there.” There was a click from the other end.
“Thanks for the phone,” Charlie said begrudgingly, and left without waiting for a reply.
* * *
Charlie crouched again where the woman’s body lay. She looked anxiously up the road for Clay’s car, but it didn’t appear. At least the vultures hadn’t returned.
I could just stay in the car until he gets here, she thought. But Charlie didn’t move from her spot. This woman had died horribly and been abandoned in a field. Now, at least, she didn’t have to be alone.
The more Charlie looked at her, the harder it was to dismiss the resemblance. Charlie shivered, even though the sun was warm on her back. She was filling with a cold, crawling dread.
“Charlie?”
Ch
arlie spun around to see Clay Burke, then sighed and shook her head.
“Sorry, I got here as fast as I could,” he said lightly.
She smiled. “It’s okay. I’m just on edge today. I think that’s the third time I’ve jumped in the air when someone said my name.”
Clay wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on the body. He knelt carefully beside it, scrutinizing it. Charlie could almost see him filing every detail away. She held her breath, not wanting to disturb him.
“Did you touch the body?” he asked sharply, not looking away from the corpse.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I checked to see if she had the same injuries as the man.”
“Did she?”
“Yes. I think—I know she was killed the same way.”
Clay nodded. Charlie watched as he got up and circled the woman, dropping down to look more closely at her head, and again at her feet. Finally, he turned his attention to Charlie again.
“How did you find her?” he asked.
“I saw birds—vultures—circling above the field. I went to check.”
“Why did you go to check?” His eyes were hard, and Charlie felt a trickle of fear. Surely Clay didn’t suspect her.
Why wouldn’t he? she thought. Who else would know how to use the spring locks? I bet he could come up with a million theories about me. Twisted girl avenges father’s death. Acts out psychodrama. Film at eleven. She took a deep breath, meeting Clay’s eyes.
“I checked because of the body you showed me. It was in a field—I thought it might be another one.” She kept her voice as steady as she could. Clay nodded, the steely expression slipping from his face, replaced by worry.
“Charlie, this girl looks like you,” he said bluntly.
“Not that much like me.”
“She could be your twin,” Clay said.
“No,” Charlie said, more harshly than she intended. “She looks nothing like my twin.” Clay gave her a puzzled look, then comprehension dawned.
“I’m sorry. You had a twin, didn’t you? Your brother.”
The Twisted Ones Page 7
