The Summer of Winters

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  “Gum. I just wanted some gum.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Mike. I know you were looking for that hairclip that fell out of my pocket the other day.”

  My throat was suddenly dry and scratchy, and I tried to swallow but couldn’t work up enough spit. I felt like if I didn’t get to the bathroom soon, I was going to wet my pants like I’d done in kindergarten once. Or twice. Fear like I had never known spread cold tendrils throughout my body. Surely Mike wouldn’t hurt me out in the open in broad daylight, but if he was truly responsible for the things that had been done to Sarah, there was no telling what else he was capable of.

  Brody began to knead my shoulders, as if he were giving me a massage, only it felt more like he was trying to poke holes through my flesh. “There’s no need for you to deny it. I’ve known since Sunday that this conversation was inevitable. You must be thinking some pretty awful things about me.”

  I could think of nothing to say to that, so that was exactly what I said—nothing.

  “Listen Mike, thing about that hairclip is, I found it at the movie theater Saturday night. When I came back out into the lobby after using the bathroom, it was lying on the floor by the ticket booth. I picked it up, thinking I’d turn it in to management so they could put it in the lost and found or whatever, but then through the glass doors I saw that bully messing with you so I just stuck the hairclip in my pocket. I kind of forgot about it, and the next day when I got dressed, it was mixed in with my change from the night before and I just grabbed it up with the coins. That’s why I had it.”

  Here Brody paused and looked intently into my eyes, as if trying to judge my reaction to his story. I wasn’t sure if my expression conveyed skepticism or doubt as I couldn’t seem to control my facial muscles. He seemed to want some response so I just mumbled, “Uh-huh.”

  “So you see, I had absolutely no way of knowing that hairclip belonged to Sarah Winters. Then after you and Paige found her body…well, I was scared to tell anybody about the hairclip because I thought they might suspect me of having done those terrible things to that little girl. Just like you did.”

  I stammered for a moment. “I, um, I just…well, I kinda thought…”

  “Yeah, I know what you thought. It’s okay though, it’s what anyone would think. So I panicked and threw the hairclip out. I know I probably should have given it to the police, but it wasn’t like it was really evidence or anything. I mean, I found it before she got abducted. I just don’t want people looking at me the way you’ve been looking at me, like I’m some kind of psycho perv or something.”

  I found myself unable to meet his gaze. “Sorry.”

  “Like I said, it’s okay. I just wanted to clear up any misunderstanding there might be. And you do understand now, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “For real? I want to make sure you really believe me.”

  I forced myself to meet his gaze this time. “Yeah, I believe you. It was stupid of me to think you might have... Anyway, I’m sorry I went through your stuff.”

  “Forget about it, buddy. It’ll be our little secret.” Here Brody paused, chewing on his bottom lip. “Speaking of secrets, you haven’t mentioned the hairclip to anyone, have you? Your mother, my sister?”

  “No.”

  “Good, how about we keep that just between us?”

  “Sure, cross my heart,” I said, then made an X over my chest with a forefinger.

  “Great, that’s just great. I’m really glad we had this talk.”

  Brody finally released his grip on my shoulders, and I was sure I was going to have bruises. He stood up, hesitated, then leaned back down and kissed me on the forehead. It was strange, and his lips seemed to leave residual heat like a fever on my skin, a heat that spread rapidly down my face and neck and into my torso. Like an infection.

  I stood there, watching Brody walk back to his own house, feeling worse about the situation than ever. Everything he’d told me made a kind of sense, and yet there was something that bugged me.

  The hairclip. I’d read all the news articles and watched most of the TV coverage, and the police had never mentioned Sarah’s hairclip. So if he’d really found the one he had at the movie theater Saturday night, how did he know it belonged to the dead girl?

  It was possible Paige had mentioned it to him. She had, after all, seen the body, but she’d glimpsed it for only a second before running off to throw up. What were the chances she’d noted the hairclip then later said something about it to her brother? Didn’t seem all that likely to me.

  Much as I didn’t want to believe it, my conversation with Brody had cemented my conviction that he had murdered Sarah Winters.

  And yet I still didn’t have any proof.

  Chapter Eight

  The next month passed with excruciating slowness for me as I tried to decide what to do. I waffled several times between telling my mother what I suspected and keeping quiet. I might have told, but I’d heard her and Julie rhapsodizing one day about what a nice boy Brody was, how they wished all teenagers could be like him. How could I tell my mother that he was a cold-blooded killer without any evidence?

  I hung out with Paige almost every day, either over at her house or at mine. We played a lot of board games, watched TV, occasionally even played hide-and-seek indoors, which was never as much fun (plus she wasn’t receptive to my idea of having Ray go hide then not go looking for him). Brody had gotten a part-time job working at Hardee’s so he wasn’t around as much, which was fine with me.

  Gradually the town of Gaffney was starting to return to normal. The murder of Sarah Winters was no longer dominating news coverage, and since there had been no more abductions or deaths, people were beginning to speculate that the girl had been killed by some deranged drifter just passing through town. I supposed it was easier to believe that than thinking the monster was still among us, maybe right next door, just biding his time before snatching his next victim.

  In any case, the townspeople were starting to relax, breathe easier. A false sense of security, some might have called it, but the imminent threat no longer seemed to hang over Gaffney like thunderclouds. My mother and Paige’s met and decided that we would be allowed to play outside again, as long as we remained in the backyard of either my house or hers. Ray, however, was still not allowed outside without adult supervision, which led to a lot of tantrums and pouting. Mom held firm.

  I must admit, even I started to relax. Maybe what Brody had told me about finding the hairclip in the movie theater was exactly what had happened. He certainly didn’t seem dangerous. The deranged drifter theory began to look more and more plausible to me. I had almost decided that I’d invented the whole thing in my mind like one of my backyard games.

  Until that afternoon in the bushes.

  ***

  Paige and I had been playing in my backyard for almost an hour when she said, “Let’s explore the tunnels.”

  “What?” I said, even though I knew exactly what she meant.

  “The tunnels that run through the bushes between our houses, let’s explore them.”

  “I’ve already been through ’em all, not much to see.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. We can pretend we’re plunking.”

  “We’re what?”

  “Plunking. I think that’s what they call it when you explore underground caves.”

  I looked uneasily toward the house. “I don’t know. We’re supposed to stay where we can be seen from the back porch, remember?”

  “Isn’t this the time of day your babysitter watches her show?”

  I bristled at the use of the term “babysitter.” It implied that I was in fact a baby. “Yeah, so?”

  “Do you really think she’s gonna be checking up on us while her show’s on?”

  “She could during the commercials.”

  “Okay then,” Paige said with a shrug, “if you wanna be a chickenshit about it, we can keep playing freeze-tag.”

  That was more than I could t
ake. First she’d implied I was a baby, now she was calling me a chickenshit. I’d show her. I took her by the hand and started pulling her toward the bushes. “Come on.”

  ***

  It was easy to believe we had entered a cave once we stepped through the break in the foliage. The bushes here grew so close together that they almost completely blocked out the sun, running the entire property line and being at least twenty feet thick from one side to the other. In many places the shrubbery was so entangled that no one could possibly get through, but in other places the bushes grew just far enough apart to create these passageways with leafy green ceilings. The main tunnel we found ourselves in led straight across to the Moore’s backyard, but there were many other tunnels that branched off from it, creating a virtual maze. However, I was as familiar with the terrain as I was my own room, and I led her on a meandering route back toward the front of the houses.

  “This is really neat,” she said, following along behind me, holding on to the tail of my shirt. “Bet this might have been part of the Underground Railroad back in the olden days.”

  I laughed at the notion. After all, these tunnels wouldn’t have served much purpose in the quest for freedom unless getting from the front yard to the backyard was an important leg of the journey. Still, it was kind of exciting to think Harriett Tubman may have once led slaves along these very paths on their way toward liberation. Maybe I’d have to work that into a new game.

  “See this?” I said, indicating a short tunnel that dead-ended in a snarled mess of thorny vines and branches. “It used to lead to this pretty big open circular area, kind of cool like a room, but last winter we had a heavy snow and it caused some of the bushes to cave in, blocking the way.”

  Paige walked up to the dead-end, peering through the branches. Then she dropped to her knees right in the dirt, examining the foot-wide gap between the bottom branches and the ground. “You know, I think we can still make it through if we crawl on our bellies.”

  “With all those thorns? We’d get cut to pieces, not to mention filthy.”

  Paige didn’t argue or try to convince me, she just stretched out flat on her stomach and started wiggling under the branches and vines. She moved with surprising speed, and before I could even call her name she’d crawled out of sight, my last glimpse of her the beat-up blue sneakers she always wore disappearing under the deadfall.

  I dropped to my knees and crouched down, watching her shimmy her way through the narrow crawlspace. “Paige, come back here.”

  She didn’t answer, didn’t pause. Part of me did not want to follow her, but the other part of me again heard her calling me chickenshit, and I scrambled onto my stomach and started after her. I kept my head down and felt like I was inhaling dirt, which I probably was, but I didn’t want to look up and see the thorns hanging over me. I could feel them tugging at my shirt, and one poked at the back of my neck. I clawed at the ground, dragging myself along, going slower than Paige, suddenly worrying about things like snakes and ticks, not to mention the vengeful spirits of runaway slaves killed along the Underground Railroad.

  It probably took me no more than a minute to crawl out from under the deadfall, but it felt like a lot longer. I stood up and dusted off the dirt that caked the entire front of my body as best I could. Paige was standing in the center of the open area, staring at her surroundings with an expression of awe. It appeared that while the snow had caved in part of the passage way here, it had not touched the circular “room” itself. Although the ceiling may have been a bit lower, I couldn’t be sure.

  “This place is awesome,” Paige said in a quiet voice, as if she were in a library. Or a church.

  I looked around, seeing the area as if through her eyes, for the first time. And it really was the first time I’d seen the place since before that snow. It was pretty awesome. “Yeah, it’s like a cave.”

  “Or a clubhouse,” Paige said excitedly. “With it being so hard to get to and everything, this could be our secret place.”

  “Secret place?”

  “Yeah, our secret clubhouse that only the two of us know about.”

  I liked the sound of that. All my life I’d felt like I was on the outside looking in, not quite a part of anything; it might be nice to belong to a secret club, even if there were only two members.

  Paige walked around the circumference of the “room.” “You know, there’s an old sofa and loveseat in our basement that was there when we moved in. I could bring the cushions over here, make some places for us to sit so we’re not plopping our behinds right on the ground.”

  “Yeah, and we could bring some cards, maybe some other games.”

  Paige came walking over to me, a strange smile curling her lips. “Speaking of games, I got one we can play, and this place will be perfect for it.”

  “What game?”

  “It’s called Show and Don’t Tell.”

  I frowned. “I’ve played Show and Tell in school, but I’ve never heard of Show and Don’t Tell.”

  “Well, it’s not really the kind of game you can play in school. It’s more a private game.”

  “How do you play?”

  The strange smile reappeared, and I wasn’t sure it was a smile I cared for. “First, you have to drop your shorts and show me what you have down there, and then I’ll drop my shorts and show you what I have.”

  The first thing that popped into my mind was Sarah Winters, the bloody ruin between her legs, and I made a gagging sound before I could stop myself. I could see by her expression that I’d hurt Paige’s feelings and I quickly said, “I don’t wanna play that game,” but that didn’t seem to help.

  “Why not? You think I’m gross or something?”

  “Not, it’s just…I don’t think we should play a game like that. It seems…wrong.”

  “It’s a lot of fun, honest. And all you do is look. Touching is against the rules.”

  I started to say something, come up with some other excuse, when I suddenly had a thought. A horrible, gut-wrenching thought. “Who taught you this game?” I said, my voice loud and sharp.

  “What?”

  “Who taught you Show and Don’t Tell? Who else have you played it with?”

  “N-nobody.”

  “Don’t lie, just tell me.”

  “I made it up, just now,” Paige said, but she seemed frazzled and her face had turned red. “If you don’t wanna play, that’s fine, but you don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”

  My suspicion burned in my brain like a cancer, but I forced myself to calm down, speak more softly. “It’s just, if you did play it with someone else, you could tell me, you know.”

  Paige stood there in silence for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip and fidgeting from one foot to the other. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, seemed just about to speak when we heard her mother calling her name from next door.

  “Oh, gotta go,” she said, then suddenly stepped forward and kissed me on the corner of the mouth. “See you later, alligator.”

  Then she was on her belly again, scurrying under the deadfall. I stayed rooted to the spot for several moments after she was gone. I thought about everything she’d said, the game she’d wanted to play, her discomfort when I demanded to know who had taught her this game.

  My thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and I felt like I might throw up at any moment.

  All I knew for sure was that I needed some guidance. And I could think of only one place to get it.

  Chapter Nine

  I figured Julie would have a fit if she knew I’d left the yard by myself, but I couldn’t very well tell her I wanted her to take me here; I’d never be able to explain why. Besides, it was only a few blocks from the house. Hopefully I’d be back home before she even noticed I wasn’t in the backyard. I just hoped Ray didn’t come looking for me and sound the alarm.

  I needed to be quick, and yet I stood on the sidewalk out front for five minutes or more, just shifting from one foot to the other, staring up at the bu
ilding. I’d passed the place a gazillion times in my lifetime, but never really paused to give it much consideration. After all, Gaffney was just full of churches.

  Of course, this was the town’s only Catholic Church.

  Sacred Heart, a small church compared to others in the area, held a certain mystery being as it was the only island of Catholicism in a sea of Southern Baptists. I had heard some of the kids at school saying they doused you with water as soon as you walked through the door and taught that you had to love Satan to truly be Christian. Of course, I was smart enough to realize that those rumors were probably all bull.

  Probably.

  So I wasn’t afraid of having water dumped on my head like pig’s blood from that movie Carrie or being forced into Satanism, not really, and yet I hesitated to walk inside. What if some kind of alarm went off, alerting everyone that an intruder had entered? After all, I didn’t belong here; I wasn’t Catholic.

  Not that I was entirely sure what religion I was, or if I was any religion at all. I’d asked my mother the question once and she’d answered that we were a family of Pragmatists. I had no idea what that meant, but I figured it was something like Presbyterians which I’d heard were pretty much like Baptists only they would raise their hands and wave them in the air while singing hymns.

  In any case, I’d seen on TV and in movies that Catholic churches had this thing where you could go sit in this little closet and tell a priest all your darkest fears and secrets and he wasn’t allowed to tell anybody else about it. Sort of a lawyer/client thing. I figured this would be my best bet to get some advice on how to handle the Brody situation.

  Finally, after a few deep breaths and a mental pep talk, I walked up the steps to the church’s double doors. The sign out front listed the times they held confession, and I was here at one of those times. I wondered if there would be a lot of people and I’d have to wait in line. I hoped not, because the longer I had the wait, the greater the likelihood that I might chicken out. Plus, I didn’t want to run into anyone I knew, although I didn’t think I knew anyone Catholic. Then again, I couldn’t be sure; Catholics kind of looked like everyone else.