Three Truths and a Lie

by Brent Hartinger

  Hidden pots jangled and clattered in the ferns all around us. We’d forgotten about the fishing line that Mia had strung around the yard—Galen’s alarm system—and now we were hopelessly entangled in it. Mia had been right when she’d said it would be invisible in the dark. Now we’d called more attention to ourselves than if we’d just turned on our flashlights.

  Once free from the fishing line, we started up the dirt road. The mud wasn’t as bad as earlier in the day, but we still needed to walk on the rocky bulge in the middle of the road, and that meant going single file. I went first, and Liam followed, walking in my footsteps. I had the gun, and it felt unnaturally heavy in my hand, like it was made of lead or gold.

  At least the rain was holding off.

  We walked for a long time without either of us saying anything. The only sound was the crunch of rocks under our feet, and the dripping of water in the trees all around us. I was so sick of the rain forest and the Chinese water torture of its endless drip, drip, drip. I kept imagining I could feel someone watching me, their eyes trained on my every move. But no one could’ve been watching me all that time. It was impossible. To do it, they’d have to be able to fly, or somehow move silently through the trees.

  Before long, the rain forest came to an end. The meandering desolation of the clear-cut stretched out in front of us. Once again, the mud was worse here with no trees to block the rain.

  I stopped, scanning the flattened landscape. Before, I’d felt comforted by the clear-cut, by the fact that there was no place for anyone to hide. But it was dark now, the perfect camouflage. Maybe our stalkers had night-vision gunsights—I’d seen some of those in the sporting goods store. And whether it was the Brummits or drug dealers, they probably had guns too.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Liam said softly.

  I nodded in the darkness. I wanted to believe him, but I was less than twenty percent sure he was right.

  I didn’t smell Galen’s piss anymore. Now it was Liam I smelled on my skin, the lingering musk of the sex we’d shared. That made me feel a little better.

  I started forward again, gravel crunching. My palm sweated against the grip of the gun in my hand.

  Halfway across the clear-cut, Liam asked me, “When was the last time you thought you might die?”

  I knew what he was thinking by asking me this. He had all the same scary thoughts I did about what might happen to us. And if we had them, why not say them out loud? It was like how doctors in the Middle Ages used to drill holes in the heads of those they thought were possessed by demons: better to let the demons out into the open air than have them knocking around inside our skulls.

  “I had a sore throat last year,” I said. “It was really, really bad. It hurt so bad just to swallow that I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t even drink. I kept getting sicker and sicker until I could hardly breathe. I had to go to the emergency room. The doctor told me that I was dehydrated and put me on an IV drip. Then he told me that if I hadn’t come to the emergency room when I did, if I’d waited even a few more hours, my throat probably would’ve closed completely, and I would’ve suffocated.”

  Liam nodded in the dark. I felt kind of stupid that, until now, the closest I’d come to dying was a really bad sore throat.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I was on a plane once when it lost power,” he said. “For a while, we were in free fall. Everyone, all the passengers, thought we were going to die.”

  “Really? That must’ve been terrifying.”

  “It was. But it wasn’t like this. Like now.”

  “How was it different?”

  “Because we were powerless. There was nothing any of us could do to stop it.”

  I smiled. “And that’s different from now, how exactly?”

  “The difference,” he said, “is that we’re the ones in control now. And if we run into the person who did all this to us, we’re going to make him pay.”

  His voice was so strong and confident, even next to the vast emptiness of the clear-cut. It actually gave me chills.

  I’ve been saying all along—I’d thought all along—that Liam and I were so much alike, so much in a sync. But that wasn’t entirely true. Maybe Galen had been an alpha, determined to be in charge, but in his fussy, nervous way, Liam was an alpha too. He was much less obvious about it than Galen, but when it came to the big things, he knew exactly what to do, and he usually got his way. Why hadn’t I seen it before? He had this quiet certainty that was almost breathtaking. Maybe that’s why he’d butted heads with Galen in the first place—because they were two alphas. But there was no conflict with me, because I had no problem letting him be more dominant. In fact, I liked it, especially right then. It was comforting, sexy even, knowing he was there with me, that he knew what to do, that he seemed so unstoppable. But it didn’t mean we weren’t still connected in a very real way, that we weren’t two halves of some kind of a single whole. Don’t they say that with twins there is always one dominant one?

  I’d told him before that I could see what he saw in Mia, but now I saw what Mia saw in him, why she’d ended up being best friends with him. He was like Galen, and she was attracted to that. Meanwhile, I was like Mia, less dominant, at least underneath where it mattered. That was probably why it had taken Mia and me so long to warm up to each other. Aren’t we usually drawn to our opposites? Don’t we sometimes clash the most with those who are most like us?

  It all made perfect sense.

  I kept walking forward. Up ahead, the clear-cut came to an end. We were approaching the rain forest again, that towering black wall. It looked even darker in the night.

  But Liam had given me my focus back, made me clear-headed again. Knowing that he was behind me, that he had my back, I followed the road into the forest.

  The branches of the trees interweaved over our heads. It really was like a cave.

  It was almost too dark to see, but I still didn’t dare turn on the flashlight, at least not yet, so close to the opening behind us. Of course water dribbled down from above. I could still smell Liam on my skin, and right then it felt like no matter how much water dribbled down from the moss and trees above, it could never wash that wonderful scent off me.

  Two sets of feet crunched on the gravel in the rise in the middle of the road.

  But then there was only one set of feet.

  “Liam?” I said, turning behind me.

  He wasn’t there.

  “Liam?” I said again, too confused to be scared. Had he gone off to pee? Why hadn’t he said anything?

  Now I was scared. The fear filled me in a flash, like compressed air into a life raft. I could barely breathe or even move.

  I remembered the gun in my hand. I forced it upright, pointing it around me, even as I somehow fumbled in my backpack for the flashlight.

  “Liam, this isn’t funny!”

  I finally found my light. I turned it on, slicing the misty forest with its beam. But I didn’t see Liam anywhere.

  He’d been right behind me on the road, so I took a couple of steps back, searching the undergrowth with my light.

  Liam was splayed out, back against the ferns, lifeless.

  Someone had cut his throat.

  19

  There was blood everywhere, all over the front of his shirt and jacket. But it all started at his throat. He’d been garroted. The slash was deep and terrible.

  “Liam!” I ducked down to his side. He was propped upright, held in place by the vegetation. But it didn’t look anything like he was sitting normally because his head was lolling backward into the ferns. That’s what made the cut on his throat so obvious.

  I put my fingers up to the wound on his neck, trying to staunch the flow of blood, but there was too much of it. It was everywhere, warm and sticky. It was all over his body, and now all over me. The smell was stronger than it had been with Galen, probably because there was more of it. It was this metallic, meaty tang that hung in the air, lingering in my sinuses.

&nbs
p; His body was still warm, but it wouldn’t be for long. I’d seen death twice before, and now I knew how it worked.

  Even so, this wasn’t like Mia and Galen’s dying. Those were both terrible tragedies, but I’d barely known the two of them. This was Liam, my boyfriend. Seconds before, I’d been thinking of him as part of me.

  I’d also been thinking of him as unstoppable, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  I was still afraid—terrified. But it was different now. Nothing made any sense. Without Liam, I felt lost.

  Who had done it? I jerked around, twitchy, like a fish fearful of the eagle that might be circling overhead, out of sight. Was the killer out in the forest, watching me even now? At first I assumed he had to be. But then I wondered if maybe we’d walked into some kind of trap—a taut wire stung between the trees, like the fishing lines Mia had stretched out across the yard. I looked around, pointed the flashlight everywhere, but I didn’t see anything. If it really was a trap, why hadn’t it affected me? Was it some kind of sharp pendulum that had swung in from the trees?

  The better question was what did I do now?

  I lifted the gun again even as I swept the flashlight around in a circle. Droplets of water slithered through the beam like bacteria in a microscope. I heard irregular taps all around me as the water hit the undergrowth.

  I didn’t know Liam had been killed by a trap, so I called out. “Who are you? Show yourself!”

  No one stepped forward or said anything from the trees, just like I knew they wouldn’t.

  I couldn’t stay where I was. I was a total sitting duck.

  But what about Liam? I couldn’t leave him here in the woods.

  I shone my light down at him again. He stared up at the trees with marble eyes. Blood dripped from his neck down to the ground. It was barely falling two feet, but I swear I could hear it as it hit the moss. Blood was thicker than water.

  With Galen, I’d carried him back to the cabin on my shoulders. But how could I do that with Liam? I still had miles and miles to go before I even reached the highway, and I now knew for a fact someone was stalking me.

  I’m not proud of what I did next. Liam was my boyfriend, and I loved him. And after everything that had happened to us this weekend, I really had felt like we were more connected than ever.

  But now he was dead. That half of me, maybe even the dominant half, was gone.

  So I panicked. With no one to tell me what to do, no quiet confidence guiding me calmly through the rain forest, I did the only thing I could think of.

  I ran.

  At first I continued down the logging road, fumbling in the darkness, sliding in the mud. But then I remembered how Liam had been killed. What if it had been some kind of trap that had been set for us? Did that mean there might be more traps ahead?

  I turned and broke into the rain forest, in what I thought was the direction of the highway. Yes, maybe this was exactly what the killer expected me to do—maybe there was a trap waiting for me in here somewhere too—but I was tired of trying to understand someone I couldn’t see, someone I’d never even met.

  I ran through the forest. The ground was irregular, sloping downward, and the undergrowth was thick. I tripped on logs and vines, but the devil’s walkingstick was the worst. I ran into branches and stalks, their spiky thorns tearing at my clothes and skin. After one really nasty patch, I even stopped and considered going back to Liam’s body. If they’d killed him, they might as well get me too. But the cold, clear water that dripped down from above almost felt good now, soothing the hot scratches on my skin. Maybe it did finally feel like a baptism. In the end, I worked my way through the thorns and kept running.

  I burst out of the forest into a clear-cut. Even now, I was surprised and disoriented by the disappearance of the trees. The smell of mud was back, but this clear-cut was so fresh that I could also smell the sap seeping from the tree stumps like blood. With all the stumps in front of me, the ground was even more irregular than before. If I kept running, I was certain to trip and fall.

  A single tree stood in the field in front of me, about thirty feet away.

  Or was it a tree? The moon was still behind the clouds, and a mist hung in the air, obscuring everything. It was about the width of a tree, and it stood upright. But it had no branches, and the whole thing was oddly shaped and only about seven feet tall. It was too tall to be a stump, but not tall enough to be a full tree. Why would the loggers leave half a tree?

  Unless it wasn’t a tree.

  Maybe it’s a man, I thought.

  If it was a man, he was very tall, seven feet at least. He’d also have to be holding his arms against his body. But maybe the silhouette was rounded on top because that was his head.

  If it was a man, he was staring in my direction. If it was a man, it was as if he’d been standing there waiting for me.

  I wished I had my flashlight, but I’d dropped that and my backpack back on the road. I knew there was at least one other person in this woods other than me, and I also knew I didn’t want to run into him.

  “Is there someone there?” I said. I expected my voice to echo in the open field, but it didn’t.

  The tree didn’t move.

  “I mean it!” I said. “Answer me!”

  It didn’t answer.

  The highway was on the other side of this tree, still miles and miles away. I could try to walk around it, to the right or back toward the road, but what was the point? If that really was a person standing in the middle of the field, he already knew I was there.

  I started forward, weaving between stumps. The smell of sap was overwhelming. Somehow I could sense its stickiness, like the whole clear-cut was trying to stop me, trap me like an insect in flypaper. Or maybe it was the sticky blood on my arms and hands.

  When I was twenty or so feet away, the tree moved.

  It was a man. He stepped down off something, a stump probably, which had made him look a lot taller than he was.

  He wasn’t any taller than me. I could see the body more clearly now, how perfect his posture was. But in the darkness, I still couldn’t see his face. Or maybe it was a she, not a he—I couldn’t see clearly enough to make that out either. I’d only assumed it was a guy because they looked so tall.

  The person walked toward me. Mud squished underfoot. My fear was back, stronger than ever, filling me, paralyzing me again.

  “Stop!” I said. “Don’t come any closer!”

  The figure didn’t stop. It kept walking right toward me, until he was finally close enough for me to make out his face.

  “Hello, Rob,” he said quietly.

  It was Liam.

  20

  “Liam?” I said. “What are you doing here?” Closer now, I could see that he was still drenched with blood. The gash on his neck was deep and sickening.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he said.

  “But . . . you were dead. I saw your body. I felt your blood!”

  He reached up and peeled the cut right off his neck. He held it up like a discarded snakeskin. How was that possible?

  “I thought that was a nice touch,” he said matter-of-factly. “And the warm blood? Know how I did that? A pouch strapped to my body. It’s real blood, by the way. Mine. I thought I might need it, so I brought the equipment and drew it this morning. When I strapped it on right before we left the cabin, my body heated it to exactly the right temperature. Wasn’t that clever?”

  “Why would you fake your own death?” Was this some way he’d thought of to outwit whoever was harassing us? No. Even as I was speaking, the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in my mind.

  It had been Liam all along. He’d killed Galen. He could’ve slipped the hammer from the kitchen table into his jacket right before we followed Galen and Mia to the Brummits’. Then when I got stuck in that patch of devil’s walkingstick, he’d hurried on ahead to the Brummits’ cabin. Mia had been inside, but Galen had gone outside to shoot up. Liam had snuck up on him from behind.
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  And he’d put the rat poison in the cereal too, knowing that Mia would pour herself a bowl eventually.

  But none of this made any sense! Liam was the one who had suggested that the harasser was one of us in the first place. More than that, I loved him. And he loved me. We were one.

  Weren’t we?

  “It was you,” I said. “All along.”

  “Of course it was me,” he said. “Who else could it have been? Mia and Galen are both dead. The Brummits? That was always such a stupid theory. A drug deal gone bad? Better, but what kind of small town drug dealer do you think is smart enough to pull all this off?”

  “But . . . why?”

  “Why do you think? You already know the answer. You learned it this weekend. It surprised me that it even came up.”

  I thought back. What had I learned this weekend that would possibly explain why Liam would kill his best friend and her boyfriend?

  “Come on,” he said. “Think it through.”

  “I am thinking it through!” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Here’s a clue. Think about Mia’s lie.”

  “Her what?”

  “During the game. Three Truths and a Lie? She said it was a lie, but you and I both knew it was the truth.”

  “The man she hit on the bike?”

  Liam smiled. And then I knew he’d been awake in the loft, pretending to snore while Mia and I had talked. He’d heard everything we said.

  “But what does . . .” I took another look at Liam. It was no man Mia had hit, and he hadn’t died in the hit-and-run, like she’d thought. “That was you?” In the dark, Mia had mistaken a boy for a man.

  He didn’t need to nod. I already knew I was right. It seemed I’d mistaken a man for a boy. An angry, psychotic boy.

  “But she was your friend,” I said. “Why didn’t you say anything? How did she not know?”

  He looked off into the night. “When it happened, she wasn’t my friend yet. I did tutor her, like I told you. But I’d made a point to be her tutor. Like I made a point to become her friend. Her best friend. That night she hit me with her car, she could’ve killed me. She sent me to the hospital, to six months of physical therapy. I told my parents I lost control of my bike. I never told anyone what really happened, or that when Mia stopped, I saw her face.”