When We Were 8

by catt dahman

  “Do you know why I shot Angel?” Meg asked Jill.

  “Because pruning is a necessary evil.”

  Meg winked, which was out of character. Jill felt like she had gained a few minutes of time. She might figure out how to save Charlie and herself.

  “I’m hungry,” Meg said. She sat with her pistol at the ready.

  Whitney, Cassie, and Jill made a giant breakfast: over easy eggs, crispy hash browns, sausage patties, biscuits, and red-eye gravy from a mix. They chattered as they worked, commenting on the food and hoping that Meg would put the gun away. Jill and Charlie ate, swallowing the food but not tasting it.

  Charlie asked Meg, Whitney, and Cassie questions about small parts of their lives: asking Whitney about her students, Cassie about her home and working at the diner, and Meg about how her work was going. It was casual and simple, but he tried to humanize the women. He ran possibilities through his head and used all the psychology he knew to force Meg to see the women as valuable and as close friends.

  Jill drank her coffee and said she was going out onto the porch; she glanced at Charlie, but Meg shook her head and said, “I’ll go with you. Whitney?”

  Whitney nodded and said, “I can handle things here. She sat across from Charlie. “He won’t move.”

  “Beautiful day,” Jill said. She, Cassie, and Meg stood on the porch.

  “Yeah, you know we can say Randy got my gun and did those things. Only Charlie is a problem. He’s the big problem, you know. He’s a loose cannon. He isn’t one of us.”

  “Meg, he doesn’t want me to go to prison, so I think he’d keep quiet and support the story,” Jill said. “He can keep secrets.”

  “Yeah, I like to hedge my bets. I’ve been thinking. Tiffany is going to be a problem. We can't trust her with her being so crazy. She’s a mess.

  On the other hand, Samantha did a very bad thing, but it was an accident. Who would you prune? The loose cannon or the one who killed Tiffany’s husband or the crazy one?”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Cassie agreed with Jill. “We can trust everyone. Sammie is cool. Tiffany will come around. Charlie is smart and will protect Jill. We’re in the clear.”

  “Meg, Cassie, Jill, come here, NOW.” Whitney motioned them to hurry. “I hear noises upstairs.”

  “Tie him,” Meg ordered Whitney.

  Once Charlie was tied to the chair, the rest mounted the stairs and stopped outside Mike’s bedroom. Cassie opened the door.

  The bedroom was difficult to understand. Fingers lay like sticks along the floor. There was a piece of scalp with blonde hair, matted with blood and a blob of fat. Slimy blue intestines were drawn across the room and coiled. Various other globs of flesh and yellow fat were thrown against the walls, and blood soaked the bed, sprayed the walls, and even peppered the ceiling. Jill saw a back molar on the blood-soaked rug.

  Naked, Tiffany stood, covered in blood, grinned, and said, “Pruned.”

  “What have you done?” Jill asked.

  “I pruned like Meg said,” Tiffany answered.

  “Stop saying that.” Cassie gagged from the smell and the sight of body parts. Her heart ached as she already missed Samantha.

  “Sammie?” Jill sank to a chair and closed her eyes for a few seconds. Beautiful prom queen, Samantha was nothing but coils, globs, and blood splatters. Her bones showed through flayed skin. Jill cried and found the tears wouldn’t stop pouring from her eyes.

  “Jill, did you not see the painting that Mike added in his bedroom?” Meg pointed to the wall where the room was empty of furniture. It was the only blank wall in the room except for a stunningly gorgeous painting of four rose bushes. One pink, one white, one yellow, and one red. They were painted so realistic that they looked as if they could be touched and smelled. Close to them in the painting were several other deeply pruned rosebushes. Other rosebushes dotted the background and were hard to discern.

  “He decided four would be his magic number, for some reason we don’t understand,” said Meg as she pointed. “That pruned one is Nelwynn. That one is Angel. That one is Samantha. The last one is one of us, right? And the ones that are flourishing are the last four standing. Jill, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry Tiffany, but the ones in the back must be Joey, Charlie, and Rex, John, Jenny, and so many….”

  “You plan to kill my husband? And one of us? Who? Tiffany? Cassie? Whitney? Me?” Jill demanded. She was upset over the painting and the loss of Samantha. She wondered how Tiffany could have done it, but Tiffany’s face was blank with shock, and her eyes were dark pits.

  “I pruned two. Tiffany pruned one. I suppose anyone one of us might decide who and how to prune the next one. We have to discover who it must be.”

  “Tiffany because she’s lost her mind. She can go,” Whitney said.

  “Is that truly how we decide? A blight on a leaf and we clip them? No, we have to seek the answers deep within,” Meg said.

  “What about you, Meg? You’ve been clipping a lot. Maybe you should go,” Cassie suggested. “You don’t get to decide alone.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe it should be Jill ‘cause she’ll take it badly losing her husband.”

  “Or Whitney just because she messed up on guard duty like the rest of you did,” Jill said. On shaking legs, she grabbed Tiffany and led her to bathroom, left the bathroom door open, put Tiffany in the shower, and scrubbed her clean. After toweling Tiffany dry, Jill dressed her and felt as if she were dressing a doll with clothing far too large. Tiffany didn’t say another word.

  Jill sat, pretending to help Tiffany drink some tea but leaned close to Charlie.

  “If I can make a diversion of any kind, I want you to haul ass out of here. Go get help. Get to safety, and let me die here if you have to after everything that’s gone on, but please get yourself to safety,” Jill begged Charlie.

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “Please. I have a better chance if you’re not here. Keeping you alive keeps my hands tied. I can’t depend on Tiffany now, and Cassie, she’s not as strong as I need her to be. The other two will make a try for me, I think. I need you safe so I can fight back. They’re going for Tiffany or me for sure. And you, of course.”

  “Jill, I love you.”

  “I don’t see how, and I love you, too. Please give me a chance to save us both. Run when you can.”

  Charlie only closed his eyes a second and didn’t argue anymore.

  Sleep was hard to come by because either Whitney or Meg stayed awake all night with one of the others to watch for Randy, and it was clear they didn’t trust Cassie and Jill alone together any longer. When Jill asked what the story would be now, Meg shrugged and said she was still working it out with Whitney.

  The plan was changing, and only two were involved. Cassie stayed oddly quiet, and Jill prayed that meant she was thinking and trying to find a way out of this. As much as Jill tried, she couldn’t erase the view of the room where Samantha was ripped apart.

  Jill didn’t hate Tiffany; she knew Tiffany was in deep shock and was not behaving rationally. That didn’t lessen losing Nelwynn, Angel, and sweet, loving Samantha. And Joey.

  The night began with a hard rain that grew more fierce and violent as the hours passed. The thunder and the beating of the water on the roof competed to see which would be the loudest and most frightening. The tempest set their nerves on edge as Meg paced the rooms.

  “Mike loved me most,” Meg said.

  “Did he? Are you glad?” Jill asked.

  “What does that mean? Did he touch you? Only those untouched are the roses that can remain,” Cassie said, causing Meg’s eyes to go black with anger. Jill thought Cassie’s remark was brilliant.

  As the night dragged on, the thunder caused them to jump frequently, Meg often went to Mike’s room before she returned to pace, curse, and rub at her head. Her nerves were shattering quickly, and Jill whispered to Cassie that they had to do something.

  Late, but before midnight, Meg marched Tiffany upstair
s so she said they could look for signs in the painting. Jill’s begging didn’t stop Meg.

  “Whitney, she’s crazy. She’s had too much trauma, and something triggered this. She’s sick, and she needs help. A state hospital. You have to listen,” Charlie said.

  Whitney’s eyes wavered slightly when she heard a gunshot over the thunder’s crashing. She demanded they go to Mike’s room where the shot came from.

  As Jill entered the bedroom, she fell to her knees beside Tiffany and began crying, cradling the ruined head.

  “How could you?” Cassie demanded.

  Meg motioned with her pistol, waving it around, and then she pointed to the beautiful painting. Someone, most likely Meg herself, had written three on the painting. The red roses had been marked out with the scribbles of a black marker, taking away the blooms and essentially pruning the bush.

  Had Meg not changed it, it might have meant that Meg was through killing after Tiffany and Charlie, but there was still Cassie, Jill, Whitney, and Meg. And since in Meg’s mind there could be only three, another one of them had to be killed, according to Meg’s rules.

  “We have to jump Meg,” Jill whispered to Cassie.

  “She’s alert. Whitney is backing her on this, and I’m beat up, Jill. I can take either now. I know you can’t.”

  “We’ll all die,” Jill complained

  While Meg and Whitney moved Tiffany’s corpse out of the room, Cassie took charge and gave orders in whispers, pausing only to argue a few points. Her knees were so taut and tender that she had trouble moving very fast. She needed Jill to do something, and she quietly clarified it.

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “It has to be now. It’s raining. Things always go well when the rain comes. You have to do it. For once, just once, please trust your life to me,” Cassie begged. “I’m not nearly as irrational as they are.”

  “I know. What if it doesn’t work?”

  “It has to, Jill, you and Charlie just better do your parts perfectly.”

  Before Jill could argue, Cassie picked up a beautiful rose-colored vase and threw it at the fireplace. Anther trinket followed, exploding on the bricks.

  Meg and Whitney both stormed into the room.

  “I’ve pruned plenty of useless branches, and I want my credit!” Cassie screamed and ran to the bed to knock the Tiffany lamp to the floor. She ranted, listing people she had killed, saying how well she did it, listing stomach-churning details that were true and long since buried. She resurrected the worst and tossed them.

  Jill hurried to Charlie, and with numb fingers, she untied him, knowing she had seconds before Meg and Whitney came for her. Cassie made a lot of noise and distracted the other two women, but time was short. The knots were loose only because Whitney had tied them fast, not taking the time to do a good job.

  They moved quietly but fast. Charlie went out the front door so he could run away, stop, hide, and wait until Whitney stopped searching, and then he would go for the highway, no matter how long it took.

  Jill had to wait a second at the open back door, and then she called, “I’m coming” as she ran outside. They might not think Charlie was ahead of her, but it was possible they would take her bluff. They had to cover that base. She could hardly see for the streams of rain, but her feet and body remembered the way the trail went.

  Several times, she slid back as much as she moved forward, but she kept running and climbing. It would take a while to get to her goal, but they needed that time. Meg was close behind, and twice bullets sang off rocks, painfully peppering Jill’s skin. The rain kept Meg from having a clear view of her target.

  Stop shooting, Meg,” Jill called out, finally making it to where she had to be.

  “You stop running.”

  Jill stood atop the cliffs that overlooked the deepest pool in the river, a place that Meg loved to dive from but that Jill was always scared to try.

  “Now what? We know you can’t jump. Hey, besides, it’s Cassie that’s getting pruned, not you. Come on back, Jill. We’re keeping you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t jump, either,” said Meg as she taunted her.

  In a flash of lightning, Jill saw that Meg still held her side arm ready to fire. Taking a deep breath, Jill ran off the cliff and fell to the pool below. It was even colder than the rain and shocked her as she sank, but she popped back up, was caught in the rapids for a few minutes, and then swam to the muddy bank. The descent was every bit as terrifying as she worried it would be.

  When she could stand without shaking, she walked back over the trails and to their campfire area. For a second, she had a terrible fear as she saw a figure, but then she saw it was Cassie, she ran to her, and they hugged and cried a long time.

  Cassie couldn’t run with her injured knees, but she had been able to get to one place for what she needed and then to a second place she promised Jill she would go. At the bottom of the cliff, she had a perfect view of Meg and Jill.

  Angel thought that she was a great archer, and Cassie didn’t want to burst her bubble, but Cassie was far better, and even with the rain that she took into account, she aimed, waiting for the lightning to show the women. Meg jumped, and Cassie let an arrow fly, strung a second, and let it go. Both were killing shots, and she knew it. It was one of the few skills she retained from childhood.

  They walked back to the cabin, making only one small stop.

  Whitney was peering out the back door.

  “She’s not coming back. She was pruned.”

  “Oh,” Whitney said, “that’s okay, I guess. The three of us, right?”

  “So it is.” Jill made fresh daiquiris. She passed them around, and they drank heavily.

  “This is good,” Whitney said. “She was getting gun-happy.”

  Jill made her another one.

  “I better slow down. I feel dunk. Drink. Drunk. Some’in. Stomach…ooohhhh,” muttered Whitney.

  Jill leaned over the table and said, “Meg marked that painting for us until there were only three roses, right? That’s one for Cassie, one for me, and one for my husband who’s going for help. You missed him. Only three.”

  “Tfree? Whitney frowned. Her eyes wavered.

  “Yeah. You had to be pruned. If you weren’t with us, you were against us, right? Pruned.”

  Whitney collapsed and died shortly after; anti-freeze poisoning couldn’t be detected in the daiquiri. Cassie and Jill sat together on the sofa, wrapped in blankets, and waited.

  Chapter 12

  Cassie and Jill, sharing a hospital room with Charlie, listened to the news. None of the three had explained much except to say they became aware the other girls were attacking hikers and other people, and then they were attacked themselves and fought for their lives.

  Charlie did his best when questioned to hold up the stories and recite how Meg and Whitney killed everyone and that Cassie’s shot was fortunate. He said that none of them were sure why Whitney drank the antifreeze, but he felt that Whitney expected there to be a murder-suicide for the grand finale. While Jill and Cassie cried and claimed they were mostly unclear on times and exact events, Charlie related everything he remembered in careful sentences and with insights into what had happened.

  They pinned most deaths on Angel, Whitney, and Meg because they fit the situations the best, but Jill and Cassie seemed so confused about events, times, and people that the investigators decided that other than Charlie, the two women were almost useless to the case as witnesses.

  It was good that what they had told about Angel was true: the drugs and behavior. No prints were on Meg’s pistol except hers. She had killed Nelwynn and Tiffany, and it would be easy to blame her for Samantha’ death as well. They blamed Whitney and Meg for Joey’s death to dignify Samantha’s memory.

  Charlie described what he had learned about Mike. Bodies in the cellar were recovered for weeks afterwards, but those bodies were easily blamed on Mike, Whitney, Meg, and Angel. The attorney, Mr. Delany, agreed that a desi
re for the money was a possible motive as well. Over two million dollars was involved.

  The doctors claimed that injuries, head wounds, trauma, and shock had left the three survivors hardly able to answer anything factual, and that was the best defense of all.

  On television, the talk was all about the cabin, and reporters said that Meg, Angel, Nelwynn, Samantha, and Whitney had been abused by Mike Orinston, and even some of girls had been groomed to kill, suggesting that three of them had murdered scores over the years, and bodies were still being located. Randy, who had crawled a few feet into the brush to die, never came after the women.

  Psychologists theorized that the women turned on each other, and Angel’s extensive drug collection added to that idea. Little sympathy was wasted on the Watkins family.

  Other than to the FBI who came in to help with the case, the three survivors refused to talk about their ordeal. One of the agents reported, “Those young people are so screwed up that they don’t know what happened or who did what. It’s like they fell into a rabbit hole.”

  In the end, the experts made the pieces fit as best they could and called it a closed case. Meg’s father accepted it all, often nodding that something fit in his mind, and he understood that Meg was very sick.

  Cassie was called a hero for saving Jill, which was fine by Jill. That incident alone kind of made the casework and also helped pin everything on Mike and his three protégées. Samantha, Nelwynn, Tiffany, and Joe were referred to as victims. Everyone was content to blame one man and three women for all the murders, and no evidence appeared to implicate Cassie and Jill other than to show they were forced to do as the rest ordered. Jill’s wounds and Cassie’s wounds gave them a defense.

  Jill read about terrible cases in the newspaper that eventually pushed the case about her to the back pages, but she had no desire to read most of those articles.

  After the case was closed, Jill and Cassie sold the cabin for a ridiculously low price and didn’t care. They received their inheritance, and it helped Jill expand the veterinarian clinic and helped Charlie set up as town psychologist.