Ashes and Bones

by Dana Cameron

  “You can’t, you can’t do this! You won’t get away with it—!”

  I deliberately used challenging words. The frown appeared again, the pitch of his voice changed back to the almost querulous insistence. “I am getting away with it. This is going to happen—”

  I charged him then.

  From my half crouch, I tackled him, ran straight for his hips.

  The gun went off, then.

  The lights went on, then.

  The noise was unbelievable. I felt heat up my back, neck, but surprisingly little pain.

  We went down. The flashlight landed with a hard crack, the light out of my eyes, at last. I was on top of Tony now, and spots popped in front of my eyes, but that wasn’t important just yet. Didn’t need to see him to get in close, get control, isolate his gun, arms, legs, teeth.

  He tried to push me away, slammed his fist into my face even as I slid up his chest and, with both my hands, pinned his gun hand to the floor. He shouldn’t have tried to push me away, he should have tried to hold me close so my attacks wouldn’t have so much momentum. We grappled, and I kept trying to move up, get my knees under his armpits, to hold him in the mount. Tony threw wild punches, then tried to get my hands off his pinned wrist.

  I glanced up and saw his face for the first time in four years.

  He’d changed the color of his hair again—dark in Chicago, it was now back to what I assumed was his natural gray-white. Maybe that meant something to him. The beard was gone too; and his face was lined more than the tan skin weather-beaten, nearly toughened into leather. He was older, but he was stronger, too: He’d had a goal, after all. But it was the sharpness of his eyes that was so recognizable, and more than determination, an inhuman focus terrified me, brought me all the way back to Penitence Point, reminding me how helpless I felt then. The shock of those memories was sharp and fresh and suddenly I could feel the cold saltwater and desperation leaching the strength from me all over again.

  Sweat glistened on Tony’s face and I saw the scar I’d left on his forehead. I’d hurt him then. I was stronger now, too. I renewed my efforts.

  Outside, a man screamed. It was a terrible sound.

  Inside me, something died.

  Tony hesitated, for an instant. I slammed his fist to the ground. His fingers opened, and I couldn’t grab the gun but could I shove it away from us.

  He roared at the loss and writhed beneath me, trying to shove my face away. Keeping my left hand on him, I leaned with my right forearm against his throat. The feel of his struggles under me, as I leaned all my weight on his throat, was beyond satisfying.

  Tony turned red, but he was still resisting too much. He grabbed at my hair, but it was too short now for him to hold on hard enough and I brought my head low enough for a couple of head butts.

  That brought blood.

  I leaned down, my right forearm crushing his throat, pushing his head back against the floor—too high, but I couldn’t reposition myself. I could feel his breath against my ear, hear the guttural noises he made as he fought, or maybe that was an illusion, the gun’s report still ringing in my ears. I could feel the heat of his body beneath mine, felt his heart pounding next to mine. And every time he moved, I countered it, and if that didn’t work, I dug around in my bag of tricks for something else.

  His fingers in my face hurt like hell, but I had more tricks than I thought. He was not, was not, going to get away with this.

  He bucked, a desperate move, a reaction, unplanned, actually got me up off him a moment, but I’m not a small woman. I’ve always been tall, reasonably fit, but now thirty pounds heavier with more muscle than the last time we fought. There was nothing but lean and mean on me. I landed back on him, hard on his breast bone, and I heard the breath whoosh from his lungs. I posted, one leg out, to keep him from bucking me off entirely, but kept all my weight on top of him.

  Nolan was right: Fighting is just like chess and sex.

  It was only me and Tony, now, in the whole world.

  There was no thinking now, all the hesitation that I ever felt in training, that reluctance to hurt my sparring partner, had evaporated as soon as I’d heard that scream. No hesitation, no thinking, no future.

  A tiny part of me remarked quite distantly: It was pleasant, in its way, the not-thinking, the no-future…

  Enough. Work first.

  His arm was freed, now, after trying to get me off the top of him, and he tried to shove at me. It was a weak push, he was probably tiring, he wasn’t a young man and I’d done some damage.

  I tried sliding my right leg up, just a little, to reach the gun, but that was a mistake. Tony grabbed my elbow, pulled my arm mostly off his neck, which probably hurt him like hell and didn’t do my elbow any favors either, slamming into the floor like that. I landed almost on his face, but he was too busy trying to breathe to think about biting me.

  His hand slipped and mine shot up. I didn’t bother going for the throat, this time, but the face.

  I didn’t reach the eyes—he grabbed my arm again before I could get that far—but I sunk my fingernails into the flesh of his cheek and, as he pulled down, I raked…

  Tony screamed. An ugly noise. Pleasing.

  Maybe it was the pain or the sight of his own blood that inspired him, but he finally did what he should have done all along. My balance was off, with my left arm stretched so far out, and he shoved his hand under my right armpit and pushed so that I was forced to roll to the left.

  I brought my knee up straight away, aiming right for his groin, but he’d done almost the same thing, and I smashed my knee right into his. The bones met at exactly the wrong angle, and pain shot up my leg. I screamed.

  It shocked me and I hesitated, trying to get my bearings, trying to see through the tears. Better to get up than stay down, not when you can’t see what you’re going to do next, not when you can’t see where he is…

  Tony was standing, but facing the wrong direction. I think he realized for the first time that the lights had come on, and he grabbed the gun. That gave me the extra second I needed to stumble to my feet. I tried to step toward him, but the pain in my knee was blinding.

  Tony turned, brought the gun up. It shook, but I could tell by his eyes that he wasn’t lost yet.

  I brought my hands up, half to distract him, half to get them in front of me for what was going to happen next.

  But I had no idea what was going to happen. If he shot, he could still miss, I reasoned. He’d probably get a few shots off before I got to him, and one was bound to hit me…

  In the kitchen, the cellar door opened with a crash, its crappy, rusting hinge shrieking an announcement. It scattered Artie’s tools and the kitchen chairs all over the place.

  Tony turned to see what it was.

  It was Brian. Coming out of the basement. Fear and wonder on his face. A pry bar in his hands.

  Tony raised the gun, pointed it at Brian.

  And that was it.

  Something clicked inside me.

  I don’t remember what happened, not really. I don’t know when I started to move, couldn’t have told you what was going to happen if you’d asked me. I don’t remember looking anywhere but at Brian, but I must have: All I remember was his face. I couldn’t have just put my hand out, found a weapon instantly under my fingers. I don’t remember feeling the desperate pain in my knee, I don’t remember the ringing in my ears.

  All I do remember is Brian staring, a horrified look on his face, at Tony and then me. I remember total silence, save for the metal mechanical noises of the gun as Tony prepared to fire, but it couldn’t have happened that way, could it? There had to have been breathing, screams, footsteps, something. But I don’t remember anything like that.

  This must have been what happened: I picked up the heavy black rubber electrical cord for the new washer and dryer. Nearly an inch thick, bent in half to a length of about two feet, and neatly tied with white plastic ties, it fit my hand perfectly. One thing I do remember now is the weight o
f it, now, how all that lovely, copper wiring gave it the perfect heft.

  It came into my hand. I pulled my arm back and swung it like a mace. Its chunky skull-shaped plug arced through the air, and landed heavily on the side of Tony’s head.

  I heard a crack.

  Too bad, I thought: The four stubby prongs were facing outward. Next time, then.

  Tony dropped like a sack of potatoes. Straight to the floor, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

  I raised my hand again. Brought the heavy cord up and lined it up with the back of Tony’s unmoving head—

  “Emma! What the hell—?”

  Brian was still there, the crowbar in his hand. Suddenly all the pain that I’d remembered having came shooting back, invading my bones and muscles, and I wished for the silence, the numbness I’d felt before.

  The second blow went awry, across Tony’s back, before I dropped the cord and staggered toward Brian. I stopped, remembering, and turned. I found the gun, made sure that it was fast, and replaced the safety. I put it into the drawer, automatically imagining Sophia coming over and finding it.

  “Don’t touch that! You could get hurt!”

  I looked at Brian, and frowned: stupid.

  “Are you okay?” His face was sweaty, dirty, but not a scratch on it—

  Beloved.

  And then the realization that he was safe, that he was whole, that nothing I’d been thinking had come to pass, that it wasn’t going to happen flooded me. The disbelief that follows waking from a nightmare, that none of it was real, took my breath away.

  Hysterics. There wasn’t enough breath in me to feed my aching body, fuel my tears, talk, and keep life going, but thank God for autonomic muscles. We clutched at each other, repeated sentences back at each other.

  I looked down and there was dirt and blood all over his hands, his knees. I realized the blood had been there before I’d hurled myself at him.

  “What happened? There’s a man, outside—was it him? The scream—what did he do to you?”

  “Shhh, it’s okay. Temple has—”

  My chest constricted. “Oh, Jesus, Brian, how did you ever get away from him? Did you kill him?”

  “What? No, Emma, he helped me. He got the—”

  “No, he was working for Tony, the big blond guy, he got here so fast—he was on the video! Where is he now?” I looked around wildly.

  Brian held on to me, tried to keep my tenuous grasp on reality together by physically holding me. “Video? Joel’s video? No, he wasn’t—yes, maybe he was on the video, but he was here, keeping an eye on us. He was the one who took care of that someone outside—I came home and found them fighting. He yelled for me to get to you. It was the other guy who screamed.” He looked down at his torn-up hands, as if seeing them for the first time. “The doors were jammed, I couldn’t get in. I went in through the bulkhead, to the basement.”

  “No key?” The key was usually on the rack with the spares. It was there now.

  “No key. Crowbar. No lock now, either.”

  A crash in the dining room. We looked: Tony was up, covered in blood. He shoved the air-conditioner out of the window. Before I could move, he threw himself out down to the driveway.

  Brian and I untangled ourselves, stumbled toward the window. I shoved myself through, got hung up on a ragged piece of torn-out windowsill. Brian was smarter, went for the back door, pulled the wedges out, found the locks.

  “Derek! Temple! He’s getting away!” I screamed. I pulled myself back through the window and tried to tear the snagged fabric off the splintered wood. No luck—then it gave. “Temple!”

  There was no sight of him. No sign of the stranger Tony claimed was waiting for us outside.

  I heard a gargantuan bellow down the street, saw Brian run down the driveway. I tore out the back door, took the steps two at a time, and hit the gravel before I remembered I was barefoot, knee screaming. I didn’t care, there was no way Tony was going to get away from me.

  Headlights were coming down the street toward us. I could hear sirens now, but the car coming toward me was no cop car. Derek was down the street, where the car had come from, now charging back after it.

  Tony shot out from behind the old oak tree to our right. Headed for the car—he was going to get away.

  Brian and I started after him, but the car didn’t slow down.

  Tony ran in front of the car and seemed to pause.

  The car never slowed down. Plowed right into him, and then over him. Dragged him a bit, before something—a shirttail? A finger?—gave and Tony’s body fell away behind. Something—shock, perhaps, or a chunk of Tony getting wrapped around the axel, I hoped—made the car veer. It almost cleared the ditch, but instead, slammed into the far side of it.

  I watched as the back of the car flipped up, nearly made it to ninety degrees, before gravity claimed it and the rear end fell back down, leaving the car upright. Whoever was inside had probably experienced a full-body chiropractic adjustment but didn’t go through the windshield when the car slammed into the ditch.

  I reached out for Brian, waited for Temple to join us. He didn’t stop, but went straight through to the driver’s side of the car. He tried to open it, couldn’t do it, slammed himself against the window. That only made him bellow the louder.

  “Derek! The door—don’t worry about it! The cops will be here in a second, they’ll get him out!”

  “The police are on the way, man!” Brian shouted. “You’ll hurt yourself!”

  “I don’t give a toss about the police! The malignant bastard tried to knife me!” He groped around on the ground, found a stone, and smashed the window open.

  The cops arrived just as Mr. Temple succeeded in pulling a very large man through a very small car window.

  Chapter 19

  I SPENT A LOT OF TIME AT THE HOSPITAL AFTER that. It’s not like they could let me into ICU to see Tony, and of all the people there—cops, detectives, doctors—I didn’t think he’d want to see me. I went all the same. Brian wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but I couldn’t see any way around it. Tony was still out of it, attached to all those tubes anyway. I had to do something, so I sat in the waiting room when I finished with school for the day. I tried to figure out what I would say to him, when I finally got the chance, that seemed to be the most important thing, so I stopped pretending to do work and brought a notebook with me and wrote.

  At first my journal was completely random, like I was just trying to make the whole thing make sense—or go away completely. An exorcism or an imposition of order? Both and neither, page after page it came and it all boiled down to a few troubling and enlightening thoughts.

  Against what seemed all logic to me, I felt guilty. Oddly, it wasn’t over the fact that I had tried to kill Tony, but that he had come back for me. If I’d been smart enough or strong enough, I could have prevented the terrible things he’d done to everyone around me, couldn’t I? If I hadn’t provoked him somehow—what was I, to deserve such rage?—in the first place, it wouldn’t have been an issue. It went against every fiber in my being, and yet the guilt remained and I could make no sense of it.

  And I felt rage that even hurting Tony didn’t dissipate. Part of it was the realization that he would never understand my anger, would always see it misplaced, with the skewed logic of insanity. I would never be able to show him how wrong he was, how much he deserved to be punished for what he did, and that injustice ate at me. I would always be the villain, to him.

  Part of it too, was that he had succeeded: He’d made me see what I was capable of. I’d gone to bad places, places I never wanted to visit again. Tony had told me once, a long time ago, that we were the same. Maybe he meant that everyone is capable of going into the dark; he ran to it, embraced it, and then showed me I wasn’t immune to it either.

  As much as that scared me, I knew I’d do it all again, if I had to. If anyone tried to hurt me or my family—the one I was born into, or the one I chose—I’d drop civility in a heartbeat. As illogi
cal as my guilt was, that thought cheered me, because the final thing that Tony taught me was that I left the dark of my own free will.

  My writing helped to sort out what had happened that night. The police came, signaled by the alarm company that the phone lines had been cut. They had been delayed, however, by the two fiery car wrecks that happened to occur at the far ends of town. It seemed that Tony had more than just this pair of accomplices, but they faded into the woodwork, and Tony wasn’t talking. Cut off the head…

  Finally, about a week later, it was over. The nurses came out and told me, when Tony finally died. No one claimed his body. The nurses wouldn’t stretch the rules enough for me to go in and see him, so that was it. He’d never hear what I had to say now, not the questions, not my explanations. Not my apologies. Now I had nowhere to put my guilt in all this, much as I knew logically, I didn’t deserve it.

  It took me a long time to stop crying. No one kicked me out of the hospital. The cop who was there seemed to understand that I needed to know for sure Tony was gone, and asked sympathetically if someone could come and pick me up. I had already decided that I was going to pull it together on my own, and get home under my own steam, if nothing else. It’s all about the small triumphs, for me, right now. Hey, if it’s small or nothing, I’ll take small and be thankful for it. For now.

  The sun was down by the time I got home. The lights were on in the house—I think Brian still prefers to burn the electricity rather than have the shadows too close these days—and seeing that brightness helped a little. Like a good deed in a naughty world…maybe there was something to Merchant, anyway. I’d have to reread it again. I knew there were some truly dark places inside me, and I needed to start lighting those single candles. Marty had given me the name of a good shrink—it was no surprise; she always knew the best of everything—when we’d gone out for margaritas and reconciliation. I’d already made my first appointment with her.

  I decided to keep my journal, and not throw it out right away. I’ve got a lot of work to do with it.