by Adam Vine
He’d been partially eaten.
***
“No, no, no,” Jay shouted, running to his truck and burying his face in the bloody mess. Bea followed and held him in her arms, her own face welling with tears. Jay reached a hand out to steady himself, but slipped and fell. Rob and Ry got there just in time to catch him.
A man was hiding in the bushes of Mr. DeLucio’s front yard.
I tried to speak, but my throat closed and my words came out a shallow, croaked whisper. “Jay…” I said, then again, louder, “Jay. Jay! GUYS!” Jay, Ry, Rob and Bea all turned to look where I was pointing.
The man hiding in the bushes wore a ratty, mud-caked sweatshirt with the hood drawn, dark sunglasses, a short beard, and a pair of old jeans. His face was slathered with mud and his hands were covered in blood.
“That’s him,” Bea said, her sorrow melting into instant rage. “Th-the guy that was f-f-following me!”
The man tried to run, but his foot caught on a root. Ry and Rob didn't hesitate. I heard the lurker’s breath leave his body as Rob tackled him. The lurker's voice was surprisingly gravelly and high-pitched. “Wait! Stop! It wasn’t mine! He eats them for the gains. The Protein! Protein!”
Ry tried to grab his other arm and hold him down, but the man squirmed free, kicking Rob in the nuts and scrambling back to his feet. The lurker bolted for the end of the street, but Jay, finally snapping out of his daze, intercepted him. Running at full speed downhill, Jay leaped and caught the lurker square in the chest with a flying tackle. They both toppled to the ground.
Ry and Rob both dove to pin the lurker’s arms and legs while Jay straddled his chest. “KILLED MY DOG!” Jay screamed, fists blurring down, crashing into the man's face over and over again.
“PIECE OF SHIT!”
“KILL YOU!”
“MY DOG!”
“MY DOG!”
“Popeye…” Jay’s rage fell to a heart-wrenching sob. His words devolved into blubbering incoherence. He stopped hitting the lurker, opting instead to grab him tiredly by the shoulders, and attempt to bash his head into the sidewalk.
I didn’t think Jay would stop until the man was dead. His face was destroyed, a leaking, crushed-open pulp, all black and red from the mixture of blood and unwashed filth. He didn’t move.
“Jay, stop!” Bea’s cry, distant and hollow. “Don’t kill him!”
Jay let go and leaned back to catch his breath. He noticed something on the man’s face and leaned down again with a puzzled expression. He picked something dark and stringy off the bloody ruin of the lurker’s chin – a piece of his beard. The beard was fake, a stick-on.
A sickening look slacked Jay’s features as he pulled the hood down off the man’s head, letting spill a brittle, unwashed tumble of dishwater grey hair.
Jay gagged. Bea stopped crying. Ry and Rob both let go of the man and fell back onto the asphalt, their faces twisting in revulsion. All of us stared. My only thought was, Of course. Because the person Jay, Rob and Ry were pinning wasn’t a man.
It was Apple.
***
Jay and the hometown boys froze as they realized the person they had beaten halfway to death was a woman. Somehow, Apple was still conscious. She took advantage of her attackers’ shock to recover her feet and make a break for it.
Even stumbling and bloody, she was inhumanly fast. Ry and Rob chased her down the street, but she had too much of a lead. Jay didn’t bother following. He stared at his own bloody hands, heaving with sobs, until Bea wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the back of the neck.
“I’m so, so sorry, baby,” she said. “It’s going to be alright. Shh. Shh. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Jay shook his knuckles out and said blankly, “I let her go. Why did I let her go? She ate my dog. She ate...” His voice broke and he fought to hold back tears. “Who does that? What kind of sick psychopath eats an innocent little puppy? He was my family…”
“Shh. Shh. I know, baby. I’m here,” Bea said, holding his face against her chest. “Drew, go inside and get a blanket.”
“What do we need a blanket for?” I said.
Bea shot me a look like I was the most useless waste of air on the planet and tilted her head towards Popeye’s remains.
“Oh,” I said. The guts didn’t shock me. In fact, the only thing I felt was numb. But I realized it probably wasn’t the same for them. She called him baby.
“Now,” Bea said.
I went inside and watched them through the street-side window of my room, the blinds half-drawn. The sun was bright and I knew they couldn’t see in.
I slid the camera out of its hiding place behind my spinning CD rack where I kept my vintage PlayStation horror games. There were a few photo slides left in it, enough to get one decent picture of Bea and Jay hugging down on the sidewalk. I watched the cool chemicals develop, reds and blues and yellows fading into their true colors, then slid the fresh Polaroid into my front-right pocket behind my wallet.
They see you.
***
“You okay?” Jay asked Bea. He was finally starting to collect himself. His voice had grown cold and his eyes were locked on the tiny lump underneath my comforter, which I’d taken from my bed and draped over the hood of Jay’s truck to cover Popeye’s body.
Bea shook her head no. “That woman. Drew and I saw her downtown. I thought she was a man. What the hell does some homeless bag lady want with me? And why would she kill your dog?”
“There are some sick people in this world,” Jay said.
I didn’t want to interrupt them, but I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. “That was Apple,” I said.
Bea’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“Apple, from the pictures, who lived here in '93.”
Carter, who had joined us when I came back outside, crossed his arms and nodded.
“What the hell’s going on?” Bea said.
“Trust me. I didn’t see it at first, either. But it’s her. She’s still around. Carter met her at A.A.”
“Sorry about your dog, bruh,” Carter said. Jay took both of Carter’s hands and shook them profoundly, but said nothing.
“I’m gonna kill that bitch!” Bea fumed.
Two staggering figures appeared from around the corner of Escalona and Sunny Hill Drive. It was Rob and Ry. They were both wheezing and sweaty, their faces red from exertion. Ry was nursing a bloody lip with one hand. Apple was nowhere in sight.
“She was… (huff) god damn, she was fast,” Ry said when he and Rob reached us. “I almost (huff) (huff) got her (wheeze). Punched me in… (wheeze) the face.”
***
“Apple followed me at least twice. And I’m pretty sure she was the one who tried breaking into your garage. But what motive would she have to stalk me? Or to kill Jay’s dog, or sleep in your basement, or do any of that other stuff? None of this makes sense,” Bea said.
We'd gone back inside and sat on the living room couches, examining my notebook where I’d scribbled my thoughts about the pictures. Everything – my theories, my evidence, all of it – had been turned upside down.
“And what I’m saying,” Carter said slowly, talking with his hands, “Is that before we go jumping to any more conclusions about who’s guilty or not, we need some explanations for the unexplained parts. Explain the masturbation socks on Bea’s car. Explain the pictures of our basement in DeLucio’s bedroom. Explain the muddy footprints you saw, Thunder. Were they a lady’s shoe size?”
I thought about it. “I don’t remember. But I don’t think so. Not that it would matter. The sweatshirt Bea pulled off her was a man’s. Apple disguised herself as a man. She could’ve easily put on men’s shoes.”
“Or maybe those are the only clothes she has. She is homeless,” Natalia said.
Carter dismissed her with a wave. “The situation is more complicated than we thought. I don't know, guys. Maybe we should stop assuming that Bea’s stalker and the one sleeping in the basement were the same p
erson. Maybe we should rethink all of this.”
“So, what are their motives?” I said.
Natalia seemed to agree with Carter. “Yeah, babe. That sounds pretty far-fetched. It was definitely the same person. We just don’t know who; Apple, or DeLucio?”
Bea’s eyes scanned the room. Quietly, she said, “I’m with Carter. That cop told us your neighbor raped Apple. Maybe she doesn’t care about us at all, and never did. Maybe she was following him.”
Carter folded his hands in his lap. “And why would she do that, Bumble Bea?”
“She wanted revenge against the person who hurt her. Maybe, to stop him from hurting someone else.”
“And what about Jay’s dog? Last I saw, there was a dead dog outside on the hood of Jay’s truck. If Apple didn’t do that, who did? ‘Cos it seems to me, if she did, she’s probably not some kind of vigilante fulfilling a twenty year-old vendetta.”
Jay cringed and buried his face in his hands. “Fuck.”
Bea shrugged. “It could have been coyotes.”
I didn’t buy any of it. “Coyotes? In broad daylight, Bea? Coyotes put Popeye on the hood of the truck? Look guys, we don't know any of this for sure. Maybe Skoakland was lying about the rape. Or he's remembering it wrong. I mean, he doesn't remember finding a skull? Or taking pictures with it? But he remembers a drunken conversation twenty years ago?”
Bea glared at me. “What’s next, you gonna blame me for getting stalked, too, Drew?”
“Whoa. Don’t put words in my mouth,” I said.
Lying whore.
Bea pointed a finger at me. “DeLucio was a predator.”
I rolled my eyes. “Listen, Ms. Expert At Logical Reasoning. Even Skoakland didn’t think Mr. DeLucio was capable of hurting a fly, and they knew each other for twenty years.”
Bea rubbed her temples. “Drew, you’re not even taking a position. You’re flip-flopping just to flip-flop. If you’re not going to help us figure this out, then stop talking.”
That made my blood boil. “Is that a joke? I’m the only one who’s been figuring out what’s going on, before today. You guys couldn’t have cared less. All you wanted to do was get wasted and laid.” Lying whore. Lying whore.
“I am going to slap your face off.”
I presented her my left cheek. “Go ahead. Right here. Lay one on me. Knock me out.” I dare you, you lying whore.
Carter put a hand between us. “Guys, stop.”
But Bea wasn’t done. “Look dude, I don’t care what you think, but according to the cop you’re friends with, DeLucio was a criminal. Just yesterday, you were totally convinced he was the sole – let me repeat, sole – guilty party. Now you think he was just some innocent peeping tom? That a woman was stalking me? Like you said, Drew. What’s her motive?”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t involved, Beatriz. I’m changing my opinion because of new information. Maybe you should try it, Ms. Brilliant Fucking Scientist.”
Carter butted in again. “Let’s agree to disagree and move on. We’re getting off-topic.”
I wiped the sweat from my brow. “No, we’re not. This is all relevant to my original point that Mr. DeLucio never intended to hurt Bea. We made an assumption, and we were wrong. Look at the facts, Beatriz. Fact: Apple was hiding in the bushes today outside our house. Fact: She's slim and fast, just like you described the guy from the other night. Fact: She ATE JAY'S DOG! She was covered in blood! And you don't think this proves that it was her? Are you insane?”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you. Look, buddy. We don’t actually know she was the one who killed Popeye,” Bea said heatedly. Jay choked back a sob. “I’m sorry, Jay, but we don’t. And I’d punch someone who was chasing me in the face, too. It doesn’t prove anything.”
Bea’s insistence on purposefully obfuscating the point was making me angry. “She’s mentally unstable, Beatriz. There wasn’t anyone else involved. DeLucio was a red herring. He was only interested in this house because he thought there were dead people buried in the basement, and a possibly supernatural force that was contacting him. Occam’s fucking Razor.”
Bea scoffed. “Supernatural forces? Occam’s Razor? Jesus, Drew. Do you hear yourself?”
She thinks I’m crazy. Oh, God. It finally happened. She finally sees me for what I am. I am crazy. I’m out of my goddamned mind. No wonder she hates me.
“I hear myself perfectly fine. And I stand by everything I’ve said,” I said coolly.
Lying whore. Lying whore. Lying whore!
Bea groaned and scraped the side of her jeans. Once she had collected herself, she said, “What’s this really about? You seem to have a lot of pent-up hostility towards me, and you’re using this tragedy – which isn’t even about you, it’s about Jay – to vent. Is it because of what I said yesterday? Are you going against me on all this because you’re mad at me?”
“What did you say to him yesterday?” Jay said, finally looking up from his hands.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I'm trying, rationally, to figure this out,” I said.
Bea folded her arms. “I don’t believe you, but fine. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Bottom line, I agree with Carter. I think it was more than one person. I don’t know why. But I’m willing to bet they were all former students who lived here. This house changes people, and not for the better. Maybe we should all take a break from it.”
“Whoah, what? I never said all that,” Carter said.
My spine prickled. “Take that back, you lying whore.”
“Drew, calm down,” Carter said.
And Jay, “Yeah, take it easy, buddy…”
Natalia hit me hard in the arm. “What the hell’s wrong with you, you jerk?”
Bea was the last of the group to respond. My cheeks were already molten red when she told me in a low, steady voice, “Fuck you, Drew. Tell us more about how you hate women.”
I felt Jay’s hand on my shoulder. “Stop it, Bea. He doesn’t hate anyone. We’re all under a lot of stress. But Drew… Mayhem… man, what’s up? I know you guys ain’t seein' eye to eye, but that was uncalled for. Bea’s your friend. You need to apologize to her.”
“I’m not his friend,” Bea said, standing up to leave.
I tried my best to sound sorry. “Oh, no. Don’t go. Please. That would be terrible. We totally need your wonderful, educated insights, and stuff.” Okay, no, I didn't.
The door slammed. Bea was gone. Carter and Natalia rushed after her, both staring knives at me as they followed her outside. Once we were alone, Jay studied me through tear-tired eyes and shook his head.
I fidgeted, feeling my nerves exploding. “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know. I don’t. I. I. I. Jay, I think I’m having a panic attack.”
Jay whistled and packed me a bowl.
***
I bid Jay and the hometown boys farewell a half hour later. Bea was waiting outside for us with Carter and Natalia. She didn’t say anything to me.
I shook Jay’s hand. “You got your dog?” I didn’t want to say your dog’s corpse or the body. I thought that might come off as insensitive, and I was already on thin ice with everyone.
“Yeah. I’m gonna bury him on my pop’s farm, under the tire swing, next to Princess. No offense, man, but I don’t think here is the place,” Jay said. There were still tears in his eyes.
“Oh, before I forget.” He took out his wallet and put a crisp, hundred-dollar bill in my hand. “Get yourself a new comforter, huh?”
I don’t want your money, you goddamned snake. “Thanks, pal. I appreciate it,” I said, giving him a sympathetic smile.
“Hey, what are you up to next weekend? Thinking I should come down again. Bring a few ounces and a case of forties. Make sure all this blows over.”
I pretended to think about it. You’ll come back, but it won’t be to hang with me. It’ll be to hook up with Bea. She was my girl. But you took her. You deserved what happened to that stupid dog.
“Next we
ekend works. Classes start tomorrow, but hit me up.” I offered my hand for Jay to shake, but he pulled me in for a hug.
“You gonna be all right?” Jay said.
I’m fat. I’m ugly. I’m a virgin. I’m mentally ill. I’m a burden to my friends and family. Actually, forget that. I don’t have any friends.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I’m more worried about you, man.”
“Ah,” Jay said, shrugging and throwing a gap-toothed grin at the sky. “Happiness comes and goes, y’know? It’s like a wave. Never matters how low you get, because it’s always gonna be there to lift you back up when the time’s right. Popeye’s gone to a better place. He’s up there chasing tail in doggy heaven.”
“I’m sure he is, man.”
Rob and Ry were next to say goodbye. “Been real, Drew,” Ry said.
Rob added, “Been real real, Mayhem.”
Last to say goodbye to them was Bea, who offered Jay one of her traditional hand-made bracelets. “This is for you,” she said, placing it in his palms. “Took me a few nights of staying up until dawn to make it. But, I wasn’t sleeping anyway, so…”
Jay took it and hugged her. “You’re so sweet. I’ll hang it in my room.”
“Nah fool. Hang it in your grow room. It’ll make the buddies grow,” Ry said.
Bea shrugged. “It’s not a good luck charm or anything. You know I don’t believe in that bullshit. It’s just something to remind you I’ll be thinking about you.”
I scowled and pretended to stare at the sun.
Jay climbed into his ice cream truck and keyed the ignition. The engine coughed and sputtered to life.
Rob, being the skinniest of the three, climbed in next, taking the middle seat with a defeated “Whup.”
“Isn’t the middle seat for faggots?” Ry said.
“I don’t have an answer for that,” Rob said.
After everyone left, I didn’t call Officer Skoakland to tell him about Apple hiding in the bushes.
***
My cell phone rang an hour later while I was playing video games on the couch. It was Jay.
“I feel like shit, man.”
“Why? What happened? Are you guys still on the road?”
