With the rooms literally spotless, Spencer and Holly both took turns with the shower, and wasted absolutely no second scrubbing with the soap and shampoo they both brought along with them. It took them both approximately ten minutes each. They dried off, put on their new light clothing, hers a pink hoodie sweatshirt and black white-striped track pants with ordinary sandals, his a Nantucket Nectars tee, brown khakis and tennis shoes. All of their victim's belongings were thrown in the bags along with them—wallets, combs, accessories, cell phones (they remembered to take the SIM card out first) but they had pocketed their car keys. They each took a handkerchief and wiped down anything they remember touching. They also remembered to clean up what little blood had been shed in the attic, which was hardly a task at all compared to what they had slaved through earlier.
The sky's hue was evolving to a bluish tint, the sun was approaching. The bodies had been dismembered and in bags, the cutlery, empty bottles of Drano and H.P., bloodied clothing, every shred of evidence had been confined into the gym bags thrown in right next to the weighed-down trash bags, and the rear door slammed home as Spencer got into the driver's seat and Holly joined him shotgun. He revved the vehicle to life, drove off down the path where they first entered, and turned right going west.
They had a mini-debate on whether or not they should stop to get Kirsten's car on the way. Spencer said would be the smart thing to do but Holly objected due to the fact that it contradicted the story: Kirsten told Willy about her uncle's barren house, and Willy took Spencer and drove out to the bar where she and Kirsten would drive over to meet.
“If that were the case, wouldn't it make more sense for you to drive us over there since she knows—or knew—where it is?”
“No,” Holly said, slightly annoyed by his insulting tone, “because Willy was just supposed to drive us over to the carnival and then Kirsty came up with the idea of going to her uncle's house. It was a last minute thing. We didn't think to go back and get our car.”
Spencer added to it almost automatically. “Then we went to the house and got drunk, got stoned, Willy and Kirsten really took a liking to each other...”
“And then they fucked...”
“And then we fucked...”
“We fucked all night until it tired us to sleep...”
“And then the next morning they disappeared without a trace.”
“Probably to go and start a new life together for all we know.”
Holly looked at him with a face that gleamed pure admiration. Spencer returned the same gaze.
“So then I guess we're walking from the house?” Spencer said.
“Trust me, it'll be good for the convincing factor.”
Spencer drove down the eastward path, fighting the urge—and I mean really fighting—to keep the pressure on the gas pedal five miles above the speed limit, and only five miles. Taking the risk to get pulled over was, needless to say, out of the question. A ghost of a thought took form and quickly evaporated that they could take care of the cop as well—one of them could go for the walkie-talkie on his belt and the other just stick him in his aorta—but again, it was only an image conjured in his gray matter and a laughable one at that, and that's the way it was going to stay. For the time being, at least.
Once they passed the bar, with Kirsten's car parked in the lot along with one or two others, Holly proceeded to navigate Spencer towards the house.
It took a few miles; he looked at the time on the dashboard of the stereo and saw that they had fifteen more minutes until six. Somewhere in the back of his head, a gentle, composed part of him arose sending messages, or rather a serene radiation towards his paranoia—under control but feeling it rise—the message had said Relax. This is your special night. And what a success it turned out to be. Hell, success is hardly the word for what this is. This went light years beyond what you originally anticipated, wasn't it? Remember to be alert, do not let your guard down, but remain cool and don't try to outrun the sunrise. It's light enough out here for people to see anyway, dumbshit. Jeez, I hope she was right about this cliff she's talking about.
It took a few miles, when finally they reached a panned-out, thin rural community far in the distance, and almost immediately after that was in their sights, Holly instructed him to make a hard right, then a left, right, left, left...they were driving through more meadows, forests, land that looked ignored, barren, forgotten...and then finally to the cliff. Spencer relaxed, this was a good spot and a good disposal method; better than what Willy had in mind. No roads other than the one they headed on which technically wasn't even an official road, it was a moldy path fortunately in the shape of a one-lane road, trees, rocks, the wide blue raging, splashing river dominating all that they saw before them, and barely an entity in sight.
Spencer parked a guesstimation of ten yards from the ledge of the cliff. He and Holly both looked over their shoulders to see if they had been overlooking anything before they were about to perform the final task of this mission. Evidence was in place, bodies were in place, all belongings thrown in save for the keys which Spencer needed in the ignition. After a quick scan and noting everything was in place, Spencer looked at Holly. Holly looked back. They both nodded simultaneously at each other and exited the vehicle.
The river was probably eight to nine miles across, with nothing in sight on the other end but rocky cliffs and the everlasting row of trees that ran along the line. Holly told Spencer that the shore was downward slant that began at ten feet, but with the vehicle's weight ratio, it would sink down to the floor of the river which rested at least one hundred feet down by the day's end.
It was their first time doing anything like this, and he was fairly certain that it most likely wasn't as easy as it looked in movies. Placing a heavy rock down on the gas pedal, having the rock drive a straight line toward the cliff and flying off the ledge; he would place a bet that it required a little more than that. He patiently and hurriedly tried to find a rock.
“What are you doing? Come here and help me.” he heard Holly say behind him.
“I'm trying to find a—“
He turned around and the sight froze him dead in his tracks. Holly was already in the rear of the SUV, pulling out a fence post driver from her gym bag, and from the look of it it appeared pretty weighty. Spencer furrowed his eyebrows in confusion and then dashed to go assist her.
“This is for the gas pedal?”
“Yeah, it's for the gas pedal. Kirsty had this all planned out, remember? She was no chump.”
And she certainly wasn't at that, thought Spencer.
The two youngens flipped open the driver's side door. Holly grabbed the eight-foot long pole and used it to pin down the break pedal, smothering the rigged pedal at the bottom against it while Spencer put the vehicle in cruise control and stuffed the metal post driver in between the edge of the driver's seat and the gas pedal, which fit snug as a bug and literally floored it. Spencer flinched at the sudden roar the engine made, as if it were impatient and eager to burn some rubber and some fuel when it was being held back. Holly told him to get back, where Spencer backed off more than enough to keep himself out of harm's way, then Holly released the branch.
The 2013 Excursion charged off for the end of the world like a bull uncaged and bolting in a rage to ram into the first human it saw. Spencer and Holly watched and sprinted after it as it drove what must have been doing at least forty when it fled right off the ledge of land and disappeared off the other side and into thin air, listening as the roaring of the infuriating engine quickly went from ear-splitting to distant. They stood by the edge and saw in enough time to see the SUV driving down an invisible road that led straight down vertically into the surface of the river. The impact was heart-pounding, deafening, shocking...entrancing. The butt end stuck out and took little time for the vehicle to sink down below the river's surface and out of existence. Spencer and Holly watched as the air from inside rose to the surface in a violent boiling, like watching a massive pack of piranhas attacking their prey. The
y stared until the churning reduced to a few tiny bubbles, and watched as the last one—the last shred of evidence which was a morsel of air—had rose as a dome on the water surface, and then burst into nothingness.
A cascade of images, like a collage of home videos caught on a Super-8 began to play in Spencer's head. He was an exceptional human being, a jerk off sometimes, but also a king among men; a god among mortals. And he loved him. He loved him like one devoted brother to another, blood-related or not.
“She was awesome,” Holly said. Spencer's heart almost skipped a beat. Again, the same exact thoughts ran through their noggins at whatever they'd been facing. Whatever he was experiencing, she experienced the same. Thick as thieves, they were. Thick as fucking thieves. “She kind of felt like an older sister, you know?”
Spencer nodded, and took him a while to answer. “Yeah.”
There was a pause. Staring out into the river, taking in the beauty of the scenery.
“He killed people,” he heard himself say. “I mean, he killed people that didn't deserve it. He killed girls he dated; he killed this one kid that didn't do anything to him, as far as I knew he was a legit, straight-arrow kid that did nothing to him. He just talked him into going somewhere and then butchered him...because he didn't like him. Flat-out, he said he just didn't like him.”
Holly nodded weakly.
“She was the same way,” she said. “She told me that her first was this 'burnout loser' that got the notion that she liked him and drew him a picture and taped it on her locker as a birthday present. She took him out to a creek and bashed his head in with a rock. Then she started killing other girls she didn't like, she said it was mostly 'more burnouts' but they never did a thing, never so much had the heart to swat a fly.”
Spencer shook his head.
“That's not me, you know?” Spencer said, after some thought. “I thought I could do it, you know...” He tried fighting the stutter, hoping she would pick up what he was trying to blurt out. “With...you know...you?”
Again, she delivered another weary nod, but looking at him fixedly.
“I couldn't either. Killing a human was killing a human, regardless what their background is, or so I thought before...”
Spencer turned to her, feeling his eyebrows jump when he heard for the first time since the episode that one of them came out and said what their objective was to be, simple and blunt.
Holly turned her glare back to the world.
“...but I think there should also be a code for this. A code I will certainly honor.”
“And so will I.”
She looked back at him, blankly. Spencer looked back, enjoying the enrapturing effect those Bambi browns had on him. What was once two amber orbs of captivating godliness possessed nothing but pure, clean innocence switched sides like a rotating door that flipped one-eighty to reveal genuine, fiery adrenaline burning, exploding with an unmistakable intent—and appetite—for great, brutal, destructive slaughter towards a human being...gently, and with soothing caress rotated back to the sweet, delicate, breathtaking big amber pupils that easily stole men's hearts, knowing when you looked into them that the divine, angelic soul behind those windows that she respected and loved life and everything it had to offer.
“We better go back to Kirsty's uncle's house and make it look like we spent the night there. Rattle the blankets, get some dishes out and what not.”
“Good idea.”
“And then afterwards we're gonna go to this diner to call the cops.”
“Cool.”
They stole one more glance down at the river where their friends had now resided and then turned to walk off down the trail.
“Are you hungry?”
Holly turned to him with a blank look.
“Fuckin’ famished,” she said, smiling afterwards.
“Once this is all done and we're cleared, I know this awesome place, it's called Schirk’s Original Waffle House. They have these homemade waffles that are to die for.”
Spencer extended a hand, which Holly stared at it briefly in minor skepticism, then let it pass and comfortably took it as they walked.
“Do they have blueberry waffles?” she said.
“Of course!” he said. “But you gotta try their bacon-filled waffles.”
“Um, ew?”
“I’m serious! They also have banana, Hawaiian, pecan, coconut, chocolate-chip, apple, fried, potato, fried-potato, cheese, onion, chicken, pickle, mayonnaise, spinach, jalapeno, pork, beef, shrimp, rice, pepperoni, hamburger, sausage, anchovies—for a little extra, I think they have this special where you can choose up to five of those and throw ‘em all in one—ooh, you know what? Don't quote me on this, but I hear they even have ackee waffles.”
“Ackee? Didn't I hear that was banned from the U.S.?”
Spencer shrugged.
“Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.”
They continued to amuse and laugh with one another as they set for east on foot, joining hands and watched as the top of the sun's head began to peek over the horizon through the trees.
THE END
Kill the Cherry Page 15
