The Summer of Winters

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  “I’m not going,” I said even before I knew I’d made the decision.

  “Of course you’re going. Now I don’t have time for your games, just get in—”

  “Mom will be home from work soon. Someone should be here to tell her what happened. If she gets here and finds everyone gone and all that blood in the living room…”

  “Fine, but stay in the house until your mother gets here. Then tell her what happened, and you two hustle over to the hospital pronto.”

  Then Julie was in the car and peeling away. I stood there and watched the car until it was out of sight, then I turned slowly and gazed at the Moore house next door. The Chevrolet was parked at the curb; Mr. and Mrs. Moore were working the same hours today so they’d carpooled in the Pinto so Brody could have the Chevy if he needed it. Paige was over there right now, all alone with her big brother.

  And what was I going to do about it?

  ***

  I went back inside, noticing for the first time the blood smeared on the door jamb, and hovered by the phone, wondering if I should call the police. At one point I picked up the receiver, my finger hovering above the zero, then I hung up again. I was going to tell, that wasn’t in dispute, but I wanted to tell Mom first.

  In the meantime, Paige was alone with a killer.

  I remembered that Mrs. Moore had given my mother her number, and I rummaged in the kitchen drawer that my mother called the “junk drawer.” Everything in creation ended up in that drawer—burned potholders, receipts yellowed and faded, old Polaroids, action figures missing arms or legs or in one case a head, rubber bands all knotted up in one big ball, broken knickknacks…

  And my mother’s address book.

  I quickly looked up the Moore’s number and dialed it, gripping the receiver so tight that it caused my fingers to cramp. I would invite Paige to come over and wait with me, and when my mother came home maybe I could finagle it so that Paige could come to the hospital with us. I was scared for my brother, of course, but I was even more scared for Paige.

  The phone rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. I let it ring at least twenty times before hanging up and redialing. Again, there was no answer. Fear lashed at me like a belt, and I slammed the phone down. I went back outside and stared next door. Why were they not answering the phone? I knew Brody and Paige were over there.

  I started across to the Moore’s. I should have just called the police, but I was having my first lesson in how panic affects a person’s decision-making ability.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I pounded on the front door for at least five minutes, but no one answered. I stood there, shifting indecisively from one foot to the other, like I had to go to the bathroom. I rapped on the door some more, until I thought my knuckles were going to bleed. Desperate, I gripped the knob and tried to turn it. The door was locked.

  Glancing around the neighborhood, which seemed unusually quiet and deserted, I wondered what to do. I was seized with stomach cramps, a terrible dread settling over me like a heavy wet blanket. I had to get to Paige; I just knew it.

  I trotted around to the rear of the house, climbing onto the back porch and knocking on the door there. Still no answer. I stood on my tiptoes to try to see through the glass panels in the top of the door, but a thick curtain prevented me from doing so. Placing my ear again the wood I strained to hear any sound from inside, but there was nothing.

  Only that wasn’t entirely true. There was something, a faint noise like someone crying, but it wasn’t coming from inside the house. It was coming from somewhere to my right, in the tangle of bushes that separated the Moore property from ours.

  I didn’t hesitate. I leapt from the porch and ran to the bushes, practically diving into one of the tunnels, paying no heed to the scrapes and scratches I got from the branches slapping into my face. I didn’t even pause to consider where to search; I seemed to know where to go instinctually. I went straight for the tunnel that dead-ended in the collapse. I could see furrows in the dirt, indicating someone had recently squirmed underneath the deadfall into the open cavern beyond. I dropped to my stomach and followed suit.

  I could definitely hear crying now, and I was sure it was Paige. I dug my fingers into the dirt and pulled myself further, slithering along like a snake. One of the thorns above me snagged my shirt and pulled it up around my neck, slicing a long gash down my back just above my spine. I didn’t slow down or cry out. I scurried out from under the deadfall and stood up…

  And what I saw did make me cry out. Lying on the ground not far from me was Paige. Her head was turned away from me and she was sobbing. Her shorts were down around her ankles, and though she was covering herself with her hands, I could see blood. The sight was like something out of a nightmare, but even in its horrified state my brain couldn’t entertain the notion that this was anything other than stone-cold reality. I wanted to look away…and yet I couldn’t see to look anywhere else.

  At least until I realized that Paige’s wasn’t the only sobbing I was hearing.

  I turned my head slowly, and my neck creaked like a rusty hinge, or at least it seemed so to me. On the far side of the cavern, sitting on the dirt with his knees pulled to his chest, rocking back and forth, was Brody. Tears streamed down his face, and his eyes were glassy, staring off into nothing. He muttered to himself but I couldn’t make out the words.

  What I felt was not the burning rage I might have expected, or even the smoldering shame that would come later. At that moment all I felt was a bone-deep cold that froze me to my very core. “What did you do?” I said in a low, husky voice that I almost didn’t recognize as my own. It was no child’s voice, as my childhood was officially over.

  Brody jerked, as if not aware of my presence until I spoke. He stared at me with vacant eyes. “I didn’t mean to do it, I swear. We were just going to play another game of Show and Don’t Tell. I just…I got carried away this time. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”

  “You’re sick. There’s something wrong with you.”

  Brody began rocking faster, the tears falling more copiously. “I know. You have no idea how hard I’ve tried to resist the urge. I came up with Show and Don’t Tell because I thought maybe just by looking it might curb these feelings. And when that didn’t work…well, I tried to satisfy my desires elsewhere. You have to believe me, I didn’t want to hurt that Winters girl, but I figured better her than Paige. I thought if I could get it out of my system, just exorcise the demons or whatever…but it didn’t work. Actually just made the urges stronger.”

  I knew I should go to Paige, make sure she wasn’t seriously hurt, get her the hell away from her deranged brother, but all my attention was focused on Brody, my disgust and hatred honed like a laser onto his trembling form. My hands were clenched tight at my sides, and I knew that if I’d had a gun I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it. “You’re a monster. Barely even human.”

  “I need help, I know that.”

  “There’s no help for a piece of crap like you.”

  Brody buried his face in his hands and mumbled, “I wish I was dead.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Mike, stop it!”

  The voice startled me. Paige had stopped crying, pulled up her shorts, and was now huddled a few feet to my right.

  “Why should I stop?” I asked. “Your brother would be doing the world a favor if he offed himself.”

  “I mean it, shut up!”

  Ignoring Paige, I turned back to her brother. “Hey Brody, when my dad walked out on us he left behind this old-timey straight razor. I’ll be happy to lend it to you if you want to slice open your wrists.”

  Suddenly Brody was on his feet and bolting across the cavern, headed straight for me. I braced myself, sure that he was about to tackle me like a linebacker, but instead he pushed roughly past me and scrambled under the deadfall. I heard him thrashing through the bushes and then there was just silence.

  A silence that seemed to engulf the world. I didn’t hear b
irds chirping or wind sighing through the trees or cars on the street. In fact, for a moment I wondered if I had developed a case of hysterical deafness, but then I heard Paige sniffle.

  She was still huddled on the ground, her hands pressed to her lower stomach and her face a grimace of pain. I took a step toward her and nearly collapsed. Now that Brody was gone, the horror of what I’d discovered here in this leafy cavern crashed over me like a tidal wave, leaving me a trembling mess.

  “Are you okay?” I said, reaching out toward Paige.

  She slapped my hand away, and her eyes were suddenly spitting sparks in my direction. “Why did you say those things to him?”

  “What? Paige, he…he…”

  “I know what he did. I was there.”

  I tilted my head and stared down at her, my frown creating a crinkle between my eyebrows. “You didn’t…I mean, it wasn’t…”

  “You shouldn’t have said those things to him,” she shouted, then also pushed past me, crawling under the deadfall.

  I went after her, practically chasing her through the tunnels, but she was much faster. She went in through the back, which had apparently been left unlocked, and slammed the door before I could even scramble onto the porch. I beat on the door but she wouldn’t answer.

  Running around to the front of the house, I noticed that the Chevy was gone, which meant she at least wasn’t locked in the house with her brother. I noticed tread marks burned into the pavement as if Brody had peeled out of there in a hurry. I pounded on the front door for several minutes until she screamed at me to go away and mind my own business.

  Knowing of nothing else to do, I went back to my house, hovering by the phone, wondering if I should call the police. In the end I decided to wait. My mother should be home soon; I’d tell her everything and let her decide what to do next.

  ***

  It was after eight when my mother got home. I found out later that once she got to the emergency room, Julie had called the Limestone Mill and got word to my mother about Ray’s accident. Not wanting to waste time, she’d gone straight to the hospital, figuring I’d be safe at home until she could get there.

  When it became obvious that my mother wasn’t coming straight home, I’d set up camp by the living room window, staring across at the Moore house. If Brody came back, I’d have no choice but to call the police. I relaxed somewhat around five-thirty when Mr. and Mrs. Moore pulled up in the Pinto. I wondered if Paige would tell. Why wouldn’t she? I mean, Brody had done something truly repugnant. Of course she would tell.

  And yet when I thought about the look in her eyes as she yelled at me for telling her brother he should kill himself, I wasn’t so sure she would tell.

  But I was going to.

  When my mother got home, I ran out into the front yard to meet her. The sun had just set, leaving the sky a dark shade of indigo with tiny pinpricks of starlight. My mother was easing Ray out of the passenger’s side. He looked dazed, and his left hand was bandaged with so much gauze I couldn’t actually tell if he still had a thumb or not.

  “Oh, Mike, there you are. Help me get your brother inside. He’s all loopy from the pain medication they gave him at the ER.”

  “Mom, I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”

  “Not now, Mike. Your brother really did a number on his thumb, had to get ten stitches. I don’t know how in the hell I’m ever going to pay off this hospital bill, but that’s my problem. For now I just need to get your brother in bed so he can rest.”

  I opened my mouth to blurt out everything, but just then a police car coasted down the street and pulled up to the curb outside the Moore house. Mom gave it a cursory glance then turned her attention back to Ray. I watched a young police office, holding his hat in his hands, walk slowly to the door and thought, She told. She told after all.

  ***

  After Ray was in bed, my mother made us some sandwiches but I wasn’t in the mood to eat. I didn’t feel the urgency to tell now that I knew Paige had told, but I worried that Paige would also tell that I had been there in the bushes. And when there was a knock at the door fifteen minutes later, my stomach cramped. My mother answered and Mrs. Moore was standing there, looking like she’d just been through a tornado. Her hair was disheveled, one side of her blouse untucked, and she was wearing just one shoe. I braced myself for what she would say, but the words that came out of her mouth were not what I expected, and they were like a sock to the gut.

  “He’s dead, my boy’s dead.”

  My mother put her arms around the other woman. “Brody? What are you talking about?”

  “The police just left, said Brody was in an accident, drove the Chevy off the T-bridge. Said someone needed to go make a positive ID of the body.”

  She said more but the words were lost as she dissolved into a fit of sobbing that seemed almost painful. My mother cradled the woman’s head to her chest and glanced at me. “Go to your room.” When I didn’t immediately move, she snapped, “NOW!”

  I walked on numb legs out of the living room, pausing once to look back at my mother and Mrs. Moore. Then I went into my room and closed the door.

  ***

  Paige stayed with us that night while her parents went to identify the body of her brother.

  I tried to get her alone so that we could talk about what had happened, but she refused to even look at me, let alone speak to me. My mother didn’t think anything odd about her behavior, figuring she was just grieving.

  Which, of course, she was, but I knew her emotions were a lot more complicated than just that. She shouldn’t have kept it all bottled up inside.

  But I couldn’t get her to talk to me.

  ***

  I didn’t attend Brody’s funeral. His parents buried him in Columbia, and my mother couldn’t get the time off work to take us, but she did send flowers.

  Paige seemed determined to keep her brother’s secret, so I decided to keep it as well. After all, he was dead. What more harm could he possibly do?

  Even having lost my innocence, I was still terribly naïve.

  ***

  The untimely death of a teen would normally have been big news in a small town, but it was kind of overshadowed by the disappearance of Tracy Bright. Paranoia and fear took hold of the community once again and didn’t really let up until near the end of autumn.

  I was never certain if Brody had done anything to Tracy since she was never found, dead or alive. To this day, what happened to her remains a mystery.

  As far as I know, no one ever made the connection between Sarah Winters and Brody Moore. Apparently no one ever found the hairclip among his belongings. Perhaps he really had thrown it out like he’d said, or maybe Paige found it and got rid of it to cover for him.

  Paige and I never hung out again. When school started back, we were in the same class, but we might as well have been strangers. She never partook in the ridicule heaped on me by my peers, but she never came to my defense either.

  The rape and murder of Sarah Winters remained one of the worst tragedies in Cherokee County history, at least until the serial shootings a couple of years back. It certainly has never been far from my mind. I had a lot of experiences in this town, some bad and some good, but one of the reasons I have never been back here since my mother died is because everywhere I turn I see that summer.

  The summer of Winters.

  Epilogue: Can’t Go Home Again

  When Mike finished, silence followed for several minutes. Justin opened his mouth a couple of times as if he were going to speak but apparently couldn’t find the words. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “And you’ve never told anyone this before?”

  “No, not until just this moment.”

  Justin placed a hand on his partner’s shoulder and squeezed. “Oh baby, you’ve been carrying that around all these years. It explains a lot, actually.”

  “Some days I almost forget, almost feel normal, like none of that ever happened. But other days, the guilt eats at me
like acid.”

  “Mike, you have nothing to feel guilty about. You did nothing wrong.”

  “I should’ve told somebody!” Mike said with such vehemence that spittle flew from his lips. “I knew what Brody was capable of and I said nothing. How am I ever supposed to be able to forgive myself for that?”

  “You were eleven years old. How could you expect yourself to be able to know the right thing to do in a situation like that?”

  “But what about the years that followed? I mean, I didn’t stay eleven. There’s no excuse for my continued silence.”

  “Once Brody was dead, what would have been the point of telling? It was over.”

  Mike barked a sharp laugh that was devoid of humor. “That’s what I tried to tell myself, but I know better now. And so do you. I mean, do you really think it was ‘over’ for Paige? Her brother committed suicide—and even though the crash was determined to be an accident, I have no doubt he ran the car off the bridge on purpose—after doing…that to her. There’s no way it didn’t have ramifications, mess with her head. If I’d told, maybe her folks would have made sure she got some help and didn’t end up the way she did.”

  “What do you mean? What happened to her?”

  “As we got older, she just got wilder and wilder. Not that original a story, really. Bad crowd, smoking, drinking, pot. In high school she started dating this abusive bastard that treated her like a punching bag. At least that was the rumor going around school, and at the Senior Prom he beat up on her right there in front of everybody because he said she’d been giving some other guy the eye. Police came and hauled him away. Of course, I wasn’t there to see any of this, but I heard all about it. Crazy thing is she didn’t press charges and didn’t break up with him. And you know who that asshole was?”