Ultimate Sacrifice

by S. E. Green

  There is nothing funny about that party favor.

  “There he is,” Wade says and I turn to see Kevin in the corner, leaning up against the house, making out with some girl.

  Wade steps into the back yard. “I’ll get him.”

  I hold up my hand, “No, let me,” and weave my way through the pack of freshmen. I tap my brother on the shoulder.

  “What?” he growls before realizing it’s me and jerking away from his make out session. “What are you doing here?” he mumbles.

  I lift my brows. “I think the question is, what are you doing here?” I look down at the necklace hanging around his neck. “That isn’t funny.”

  Kevin shrugs. “They were handing them out at the door.”

  I sigh. “Kevin, what are you doing?”

  The girl slinks her body up against my brother’s. “What does it look like he’s doing?”

  I turn to say something to the girl at the exact second Kevin shoves her, hard, and her back hits the house. “Get off me,” he snaps.

  “Kevin!” I gasp and reach for the girl as he turns and stalks away. “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  Her eyes tear up.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry.”

  Some guy slides past me and wraps the girl in a hug. “I told you he was bad news.”

  I watch him console her, wanting to stay, to apologize again, to tell them both my little brother is not bad news, but instead I find myself stepping backwards through the crowd, staring at the two of them, unable to comprehend my brother just shoved her.

  Shoved her hard.

  I turn and search the crowd, but I don’t see Kevin, instead eyes, tons of eyes, are focused on me. Wade steps up and gently, he clasps my fingers. “He’s in my car,” he tells me. “Let’s go.”

  We don’t say a word as Wade leads me from the party and I am more than aware that everyone is staring. They all think my family are Devil worshipers. They think we killed Michelle. They just saw my brother become violent with a girl. Someone is probably going to post pictures or film of this tomorrow.

  There is no excuse in the world that justifies what he just did, and my brain naturally circles with: Is that the first time that’s happened?

  He’s sitting in the back of Wade’s car and I open the door. “What were you thinking?” I ask.

  Kevin folds his arms and turns away. “Just leave me alone.”

  “You can’t sneak out, especially not with everything going on right now. Not to mention you’re on restriction. Plus you certainly should never hit a girl.”

  Kevin doesn’t respond, just continues looking away, seething.

  “Kevin—”

  He whips around. “Shut up!” he screams. “Just shut the fuck up! Leave me alone. You don’t know anything!” He grabs the door and rips it from my hand to slam it closed, and I stare in shock at the side of his face.

  For the first time ever, I’m actually scared of my little brother.

  I THINK ABOUT Kevin all night long. He used to be such a quiet boy, more sensitive than anything. Shy even. It’s only within the last couple of years that he’s become so withdrawn. So angry.

  Images roll through my brain. Kevin down at our pond fishing, just staring at the water. Sitting alone in his room listening to music. Crying when he heard our parents fighting. Shoving that girl. Yelling at me with so much fury in his voice that it shocked me mute.

  I need to tell Dad. He needs to know Kevin shoved a girl.

  I swing my legs over the side of the bed and head into the kitchen. I round the corner and there stands Mom. Relief slams into me and I don’t say a word, I just race over and throw my arms around her.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Please,” I plead, my bottom lip going straight into wobbling mode. “Please don’t leave again.”

  She kisses my hair. “I won’t. I promise. I left my phone here, otherwise I would’ve answered your calls.” Her arms tighten, warm and snug, rocking me side-to-side just like she used to do when I was a little girl, and my chest pinches with how much I missed her.

  I tell her all about what happened with Kevin and she assures me her and Dad will address it. She makes me breakfast and we visit, and it’s like everything is normal. Like our whole lives aren’t under a giant microscope right now. Like she hasn’t been gone for the last day and a half. Finally, I tell her about my conversation with Mark and then I hold my breath and I wait.

  She doesn’t take a single second to think about anything that I said and instead launches right in, “Vickie, I can’t believe you went to see Mark again. I know he’s been cleared by the cops, but that doesn’t mean you should feel comfortable going to his trailer. I know you’ve heard the rumors he’s a little off, but you don’t know the half of it. Granted your dad and I are older, but we all grew up together. I’ve known, we’ve known Mark a very long time. I’m not going to detail out every single thing, but he even spent some time in a mental institute. He had a break down when he was still in high school and wound up spending nearly six months in a hospital. Why do you think the cops haven’t followed through on his many theories? They know his history.” She shakes her head. “It broke your PaPaw’s heart when that happened.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Your PaPaw, he was like a father to all of us who really didn’t have one. Bee-Bee’s dad was an alcoholic, Edwin’s died when he was just a boy, Mark’s left a very long time ago, and you know how much my father and I don’t get along.”

  True. Mom’s father lives only one county over and according to her, they’ve been in a fight for decades. I think I’ve maybe seen him twice in my entire life.

  Mom laughs a little. “We used to tease your PaPaw that he should open a home for wayward kids. He’s got a big and wonderful heart, and it broke when Mark had that mental snap. Your PaPaw visited him nearly every day in the hospital. I think since then he’s come to terms with the fact that he just can’t help everyone.”

  I think about all of that for a few seconds and seem to have only more questions. “Why would Bee-Bee marry Mark? Why would Dad hire him? In all that has happened, why hasn’t this mental hospital thing become public? Why would he be given permission to see Michelle? Why—”

  “Vickie,” Mom interrupts me. “Mark was sixteen and those records are sealed. To be honest with you, I fully expected some reporter somewhere to find that information out by now and spin it however they wanted. Luckily, that hasn’t happened. The last thing I want is for him to be a pariah in all of this.”

  “How did he even end up with Bee-Bee and working for Dad?”

  “Despite Mark’s fragile mental health and his ongoing paranoia about pretty much everything, Bee-Bee loved him dearly. Their relationship was constantly tumultuous, though, and when they eloped, we all knew it was only a matter of time. They just couldn’t make it work.”

  I shake my head. “But why did Dad hire him if he was so unstable?”

  “Because no one else would, and your dad has a lot of PaPaw in him. A very big heart.” Mom gives me a gentle look. “What happened to Michelle is horrifying, but it’s not part of some greater plan like Mark thinks. You can’t convince yourself of that. Some despicable, insane person took that little girl into the woods and slaughtered her. We have to trust that the cops will figure out who.”

  BY LATE MORNING dad has gone to bid on a possible new job, and I’m in the garage cleaning. With his recent lull in business I figured it’s the perfect opportunity to organize his cluttered work area. Plus, it’ll give me something to do so I don’t sit around thinking, and he’ll be surprised when he gets home. He’ll smile. He’ll be happy.

  I feel like it’s been forever since any of us has smiled.

  It takes me over an hour just to do the right side of the garage, taking things off their shelves, wiping down, restacking. Then I go to the left, clearing out his tools, separating them into groups, and filling his many toolboxes. T
here’s a few items high up, and I grab his step ladder to reach. I slide a box over and something tucked behind catches my attention. Coming up on my tip-toes, I stretch and reach and pull the item free. It’s a bag full of twine, like the kind PaPaw uses over on his goat farm.

  Like the kind that was used to bind both the goat’s hooves and Michelle’s wrists and ankles.

  I hear a car rolling up the driveway, its tires crunching over the gravel, and I scramble down from the ladder. Dad’s truck slows and parks, and right behind him is another car that I realize—with a shot of panic—belongs to Detective Crandall.

  “Vickie?” Dad says in confusion, climbing from his truck.

  Yanking the bag of twine behind my back—and at the same time not sure why I am—I tuck it down inside my shorts and cover it with my T-shirt.

  Dad takes a hesitant step toward me, his eyes tracking over the inside of the garage and everything that I did. I watch as his gaze lingers on the positioning of the ladder and trails up to the top shelf where I just was. Where I found the twine.

  Crandall steps up beside him and takes everything in as well.

  “I-I was just doing some cleaning,” I tell them both.

  Dad’s eyes come back down from the shelf to land on mine. I try to read what he’s thinking, but I can’t figure it out.

  “Detective Crandall has asked if he can search the garage again,” Dad tells me.

  “Oh.” I take a step to the side, careful to keep my back from their view. “I’ll just leave you two alone,” and I keep right on side stepping until I’m outside.

  On instinct, I turn toward the woods to go to PaPaw’s, and then I stop. No, I don’t want to go back in there. And I don’t want to go to the house either, so I head to the pond instead. The drop cloth, Michelle’s clothes, the murder weapon . . . everything is still missing. If the cops can find those things, they’ll find the killer. I glance back to the garage.

  Dad seemed alarmed I was cleaning.

  Of course he was alarmed. Crandall follows him home to search the garage only to find me in there cleaning it out. I would’ve been freaked, too. The question is, why is Crandall here again? What is he looking for this time? Did someone tip him off that something is in our garage? I think about the cleaning I just did. There wasn’t anything unusual in the garage. Not even the twine currently stashed down my shorts.

  Unless this twine is from the same bag that was used during the murder.

  We’re being framed—why does my brain keep cycling back to that? This bag of twine could be the same bag used in Michelle’s murder. It could’ve been planted. It could be exactly what Crandall is up there looking for right this very minute.

  Or I could be turning into Mark with my own paranoia.

  Okay, going with paranoia, if someone did this and stashed everything on our property to make us look guilty, where would it be?

  Slowly, I turn and my eyes fall down to the water, murky now from the recent rain.

  The pond.

  It would be in the pond. Someone sneaks onto our property, steals what they need, murders Michelle, puts the evidence in a bag, and sinks the bag right here in our pond.

  Yes, the pond.

  “YOUNG MAN, YOU have lost all privileges,” Dad says to Kevin.

  “We’ve already removed the computer from your room and taken your phone,” Mom adds, “and now Summer League as well.”

  “Oh, I see,” Kevin spouts off, “as long as you’re disciplining me, you get along.”

  “That’s enough,” Dad reprimands him. “Now go get that other phone I know one of your friends lent you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kevin comes right back.

  Dad doesn’t answer, just jabs his finger down the hall.

  A couple of tense seconds goes by, and then Kevin spins away and stomps off toward his bedroom. He passes me in the kitchen and the glare he gives me is so intense I back up a step. “Nice going, rat.”

  I do feel bad, I don’t normally “rat” on my brothers, but this needed to be done. Kevin is out of control.

  Mom turns toward Dad. “What was Crandall looking for this time?”

  “I don’t know, but it seemed like something specific. It didn’t come across as a random search. It’s almost like they were tipped off.”

  “Tipped off to what?”

  “Who knows?” Dad looks across the living room and into the kitchen at me. “When you were cleaning my garage did you find anything unusual?”

  Yes, twine, that may or may not have been used in Michelle’s murder. But of course I say instead, “No.” There’s no way I’m telling them about that. Knowing my parents they would turn it in to the cops.

  “By the way,” Dad tells me, “I appreciate you cleaning, but please don’t do that again. Uncle Jerry and I have our workspace just the way we like it.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  Kevin stomps right back out, through the kitchen, and into the living room. “What am I supposed to say, what am I supposed to do when people ask me about all of this? Everyone thinks we worship Satan.”

  “Kevin,” Dad steadily responds. “I understand. You’re—”

  “Why can’t things just go back to being NORMAL?” he shouts, and my parents cut me a look.

  They want me to leave, so I nod and take that as my cue to head back to my room. It’s finally dark out. They’re going to be busy with Kevin for a while. This would be a good time for me to drag the pond.

  I turn some music on in my room so they think I’m sleeping or reading or something, pop the screen on my window, and climb out. With the twine in my back pack, I head over to the garage, grab a fishing pole, a heavy sinker, and a big hook, then make my way down to the water.

  I also grab my Uncle Jerry’s hunting knife because even though it’s been a full week since the murder and my dad seems to think whoever did it is long gone, I just need the extra assurance a weapon gives.

  I grew up on a farm surrounded by men. I’ve known how to use guns and knives from pretty much as far back as I can remember. I’m not intimidated by them, and I wouldn’t hesitate in using a weapon to defend myself if need be. Yes, Dad thinks the killer is probably gone and all of this will be dying down soon, but I’m not convinced. If Mark believes in this series of rituals, I would think others out there do as well.

  I make it to the pond a few minutes later and take a few seconds to look around. County Road is clear tonight, but even if there were reporters, they wouldn’t be able to see me through the thick trees.

  I look down to the dark water next. I really have no clue how to drag the bottom. It’s about ten feet deep in the middle and roughly the size of half of a football field. I figure I’ll cast the weighted hook and then slowly drag it across, repeating until the entire area is covered.

  If by chance someone sees me, I’ll say I’m night fishing. It’s a little odd, Kevin doing this would be more believable, but it is a plausible explanation. I’ve fished plenty, it’s not like I haven’t.

  So for the next two hours I work in the dark, casting, dragging, sweating in the summer heat. Stopping every so often to look around and make sure no one is watching. I have no clue if I’m right and really have no clue what to do with the items if I find them—I can figure that out later. I probably should burn them, but they’ll be too water logged to catch fire. Whatever I decide, as long as it’s off this property, my family will be okay. Better yet, if I can think of some public place to dispose of it.

  The landfill immediately pops into my mind. That’s an option. I’ll put everything in a bag and dump it at the landfill. They incinerate every few days, and that will permanently dispose of the evidence. Yes, the landfill.

  I have about three more casts to go, and then I’ll be done. I press the release on the pole, throw the line, depress, and begin to drag. Over, over, over the bottom. It bumps across rocks and vegetation and then gives a rough snag on something heavy. My heart leaps, and carefully, very carefully I beg
in to reel in whatever I have caught. I watch the dark water as my line bisects the calm current and leads up to my spool. Whatever I’ve snagged is heavy. Drop cloths are heavy as is, but water logged, even more so.

  Then it appears, a black bag, with my hook snagged in the corner of it. I keep bringing it in and quickly glance up to see if anybody is watching. When the black bag hits the bank, I drop to my knees, and with shaky hands, work the tie open.

  And there, inside, sits exactly what I thought. A drop cloth with gray paint and a wadded up pile of Michelle’s clothes, all stuffed inside of a water proof zip lock bag. Water proof. Whoever put this here wanted to preserve the evidence.

  There’s also a brown hardbound book with a pentagram emblem on the front. I rotate the zip lock bag, trying to see the title of the book, and in the faint glow of the moon I catch the words SATANIC BIBLE embossed over the pentagram. Those two words alone, and whatever might be inside the pages, sends a distinct shiver of fear clawing up my spine.

  I turn the bag side-to-side and over, but I don’t see a weapon of any kind, which means it is still out there somewhere, but at least I have these things and the twine. I’ll get rid of it all and begin searching our property for the weapon.

  I COULD TAKE my dirt bike to the landfill, but it doesn’t have a headlight and nighttime on our country roads is like being in cave without a head lamp. Not safe at all.

  I walk into the master bedroom to find Mom sitting up in bed reading. I hear a shower going in their connecting bath and despite the fact I need to get out of here and dispose of what I found, hope still surges through me. Dad’s in there taking a shower. Mom’s out here reading. They seem like they’re back to normal. Hopefully, they talked through things and made up.

  Mom looks up from her book and flashes me a tired smile. “What’s up? I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was, but can I borrow your SUV?”

  She glances over at the clock sitting beside her bed. “It’s ten o’clock at night.”