What We Kill

by Howard Odentz

  “Yeah, well, I can’t be here,” he says and turns around and walks away. Marcy watches him go. The pain in her eyes is so real that she might as well have pins sticking into them instead of the vision of an indifferent Anders.

  “Wait,” she says. “Anders, wait.” She hops off of the counter, dropping the pizza box to the floor, and follows after him. I don’t know if she is going to slap him or if he’s going to push her again and make her bleed. I don’t know anything except that a fat man, printed in red, with a chef’s hat and the Leaning Tower of Pisa behind him, is lying on the floor, staring back at me.

  There are secrets behind the twinkle in his cartoon eyes. There are secrets behind his fat man’s smile. What’s more, there are secrets in every single room of that cartoon tilted tower, in every nook and cranny, begging for me to come and look.

  I don’t want to look.

  I have to look.

  There are answers there. I can feel them screaming out to me in my head, but the screams are either so soft that I can’t hear the words, or they are so loud that the answers are muffled.

  As my fingers back up against the counter, trying to hold on to the ledge like a rock climber holds on to the scantest bit of rock sticking out of a cliff a thousand feet high, I know what I have to do.

  I leave the kitchen, too, but I don’t follow after Marcy and Anders.

  I go somewhere else.

  39

  MYERS IS CURLED up on Marcy’s bed, surrounded by her sea of clothes, covered in a pink blanket that may or may not have flowers on it. I can’t tell. I don’t even think I care. His eyes are open into slits, and he’s mumbling. I still don’t think he knows he’s in a bedroom or even in Marcy’s house. He’s flying somewhere through time and space. I only hope he’ll be able to find his way back home soon.

  I wade through her ocean of clothing to her floating laptop, pluck it free of panties and single socks that have long ago lost their mates in the abyss of the dryer where all second socks go, and pray that she doesn’t have her computer password-protected.

  She doesn’t.

  Big miracles come from the smallest of things.

  I sit on her laundry, cross-legged, with the laptop in front of me, and close my eyes. There is something that I have to search for, but I’m not sure what that something is. Random ideas shuffle inside my head, but none of them seem to fit together.

  The first one that rises to the surface is Bellingham. There’s a trifecta of connections there. Tate Cole is at The Bellingham School where he is supposedly locked away. I can picture him, with the same face as Marcy’s but much harder, and that sinister look he was always so good at hiding, but not good enough. That look—that narrowing of the eyes and the tiniest hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, was the look of someone who liked to cause pain in all sorts of ways.

  But my brain isn’t pushing me to search for him yet. If not Tate Cole, then that girl, Calista Diamond, is next on my list.

  I’ll never forget the way she stared at us back on Covington Circle in front of Running Man’s house, her head shaved and dotted with lines, screaming loud enough and long enough to wake all the dead people being pulled free of his residence. The reporter on TV said that she’s from Bellingham, too.

  That’s two for two.

  A shiver races through my body and I involuntarily whip my head around for fear that Myers isn’t lying on Marcy’s mess of a bed anymore. Calista Diamond is there instead, waiting for me to look at her so she can open her mouth wider than a human being should ever be able to open a mouth, and let free with a sonic bullet that will drop me on the spot.

  I shake my head to dislodge the horrific thoughts and involuntarily rub my left forearm. I’m again becoming painfully aware that there is a burn there that is crying out for more Neosporin.

  My fingers rest on Marcy’s keyboard.

  What am I searching for?

  What am I searching for?

  Two words pop into my head, so innocuous and unassuming that most people would never pay much attention to them. However, to me, there is something vital there.

  Pizza Depot.

  Pizza Depot in Bellingham is an hour away from Meadowfield. In Massachusetts geography that means it’s practically in another part of the state. I look down at Marcy’s keyboard and quickly type in a search. All sorts of weird things come up that have nothing to do with Pizza or Bellingham at all. Several entries down on the list, something a little eerie catches my eye. It’s a story about the Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hampshire. I don’t know why Pizza Depot is associated with The Pumpkin Festival in Keene, but I know all about what happened there.

  The temperature in Marcy’s room seems to drop several degrees as I press on the link.

  An article pops up from the Keene Sentinel. The story is two years old, but what happened there is still fresh in every New Englanders’ mind.

  The headline reads, ‘Riot decimates annual fall festival.’

  This is what follows:

  ‘Police in riot gear used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse a large crowd at Keene, New Hampshire’s 24th annual Pumpkin Festival Saturday night. Dozens of individuals were arrested, and ambulances were summoned to deal with a variety of injuries.

  “State and local public safety officials are on the scene and have been working to defuse the situation,” Mayor Christopher Flowers said. “We will continue to monitor the situation and provide any assistance necessary to our citizens.”

  It’s unclear at which point during the evening things took a turn, but there were reports of people being struck by flying bottles as attendees traded insults with the police, started fires, and overturned cars.

  “It’s like a rush,” Amanda Gagne, 18, told The Keene Sentinel Saturday night. “You’re revolting against the cops. It’s a blast to do things that you’re not supposed to do,” she added, describing the night’s events as ‘wicked.’

  Last year’s pumpkin festival set a world record by lighting 50,596 jack-o-lanterns.’

  A strange, uneasy feeling washes over me. I had nothing to do with the riots up in Keene. I’ve never even been to any of the pumpkin festivals there, even though they are within an hour of Meadowfield. Still, when they happened, I remember feeling so unsafe. Now I knew that bad things could darken good places like Keene, New Hampshire.

  Or Meadowfield.

  I scroll through the pictures of the devastation in Keene, where cars were overturned and dozens of people were sent to the hospital, until I find why Pizza Depot is connected with the riots.

  There is a picture of the Pizza Depot delivery truck parked there, along with a dozen other food vendors, selling funnel cakes and candied apples. I click on the picture, and it fills up Marcy’s screen.

  Immediately, I push Marcy’s computer off of my lap, stand, and go to her disaster of a desk where a house phone sits in its cradle. I snatch it up and go back to the computer, squinting as I look at the numbers painted on the side of the truck next to a red picture of a fat chef and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  I take a deep breath, jab at the phone, and wait.

  “Hello, Pizza Depot,” says a man’s voice. He sounds both rushed and annoyed at the same time.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Um, do you deliver?” I feel like a little kid making a goof, asking if this guy’s refrigerator is running, because if it is, he should go and catch it.

  “What’s the address?” says the guy on the other end of the line. He probably gets the same call a hundred times a day. The people ordering are probably fat, neglected teens, whose mothers are named Beryl and smoke pot all day long while pretending to talk to their spirit guides. They probably order two pizzas at once—one Hawaiian and one with everything on it.

  “21 Primrose Lane,”
I breathe into the phone.

  Immediately, I can feel a wave of anger flow through the receiver along with a barrage of words worthy of any truck driver. “In fucking Meadowfield, Massachusetts?” the guy hisses. “I don’t need this shit. You’re goddamned lucky your phone number is blocked, kid, or I’d be calling the cops. For the hundredth time, we don’t fucking deliver to fucking Meadowfield.” The man growls like he may actually have sharpened teeth in his mouth. “Grow up and stop with the prank calls. If you call here one more time, I’ll kill you.”

  Then the guy from Bellingham’s Pizza Depot hangs up on me, like I now know he’s hung up on someone else dozens of times before who has pranked him to deliver pizza to Marcy Cole’s house.

  I know who, too.

  Of course I do.

  40

  TATE.

  I hate Tate. I’ve always hated Tate.

  The years have stretched between us, but his memory is still there, vivid enough to leave an acrid taste in my mouth.

  I want to spit it out, but there’s no place to spit in Marcy’s bedroom. Instead, I swallow something gooey and take a deep breath. My heart starts thumping faster and faster in my chest.

  Is Tate out? How the hell else would there be a pizza from Pizza Depot in Bellingham in Marcy’s house? Her parents, sure as shit, didn’t bring it. They’re not even home. They’ve been gone since yesterday, down at the Indian Casino.

  If not Tate, who else would bring a pizza from an hour away and leave it in Marcy’s kitchen, three quarters eaten?

  For all I know, Tate could be in the house right now, hiding in a closet or squirreled away downstairs with Marcy’s goldfish, ready to jump out at any moment, holding a butcher knife and more than willing to cut.

  I feel scary invisible eyes at my back.

  This time, I don’t whip my head around. I know that Myers is still there, murmuring to himself, lost in clouds. Instead, my fingers glide across Marcy’s keyboard again, but this time I don’t look for pizza. I look for something much, much worse.

  The Bellingham School.

  A bunch of stuff comes up all at once, along with images of the town of Bellingham and the Quabbin Reservoir, the largest body of water in Massachusetts. The Quabbin provides most of the drinking water for the state. It touches the edge of Bellingham at one corner, before running alongside Apple, Hollowton, and some other places that I would never be caught dead visiting.

  I scroll through the entries, my eyes jockeying back and forth as the words spill out of the screen, until I find what I need—the Bellingham School’s main phone number.

  I pick up Marcy’s house phone again, and for a second time, I make a call to a town that I haven’t thought about in years—until today.

  The phone rings four times before somebody answers. “Bellingham,” says a woman on the other end of the line. “How may I direct your call?” At first, I don’t know what I’m going to say, and the silence lingers between the two of us until it starts to have heft and weight.

  “Um . . . ”

  “Hello?” says the woman. She sounds a little rushed and even more annoyed, like the man from Pizza Depot. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi,” I say, and then I lie, because lying is something that we have all perfected. “My brother is a . . . a student there. I was hoping I could talk to him?”

  I’m tempted to hang up the phone. I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m doing. Still, I need to know if Tate is there, all comfy and cozy with his spork and his pudding, or if he is somehow here in Meadowfield, a twisted Michael Myers who has escaped from his maximum security mental health facility, killing a dozen people along the way, all so he can bring a pizza to his sister.

  The woman at The Bellingham School sighs and recites a practiced line. “Students are not allowed incoming calls. They can only make outgoing calls between 10am and noon or 5pm to 7pm.”

  “Oh . . .” I say. My eyes are squeezed shut. I don’t want to see Tate rush into Marcy’s room, a bloody knife in his hand because he’s already gutted her and Anders. I don’t want to see him swing his arm wide. If he’s going to kill me, let him kill me. I don’t want to fight. I want it over with.

  “It’s important,” I breathe into the phone. Part of me wants to blurt out that I’m in Meadowfield, an hour away, and I think that Tate is no longer in the building with her. He’s in the house with me.

  “Who is your brother?” the woman asks, but she does it in a hushed voice like she’s breaking the rules and if she gets caught, then she’ll lie, probably as effortlessly as me.

  “Tate Cole,” I breathe into the phone. I can feel the awkward untruth slithering out of my mouth like one of those slimy earth worms that squirm at the end of fishing hook owned by a master baiter.

  “I’m going to transfer you over to Tate’s counselor,” she says. The words don’t make sense at first—Tate’s counselor. Why would he have a counselor? Is he at camp?

  The phone on the other end goes quiet except for a gentle humming. After a moment, I hear a click and someone picks up.

  “Guidance,” says a man’s voice. “This is Eddie Bick. How may I help you?”

  “I . . . I was hoping to speak to my brother,” I lie into the phone. Every fiber of my being is screaming for me to hang up right now, but I don’t.

  “Call-out hours are between 10am and noon or 5pm to 7pm,” says Eddie Bick like the receptionist before him. “We don’t allow incoming calls.” I must sound like a 10-year-old girl to him because he punctuates his standard riff on calling privileges at The Bellingham School by saying, “Do your parents know you’re calling?”

  I don’t know what to tell him, and once again, every cell in my body screams for me to hang up right now, but I don’t. Instead, I say, “It’s really important.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says “Thems the rules.” Those last three words are uttered in such a flippant way, all I can think is that he sounds more like his name should be Epic Dick instead of Eddie Bick. Thankfully, Epic Dick makes an epic gesture of good faith. “What’s your brother’s name?”

  “Tate,” I delicately whisper into Marcy’s house phone.

  “Tate Cole,” he says. “And you are?”

  I don’t stop to breathe. I don’t stop to think. I say the first lie that crawls onto my tongue. “Mark Cole.”

  “Okay, right,” says Eddie Bick, not missing a beat. “Sure. I’ll leave a message for Tate to call home at the normal calling hours. He’s playing ping pong right now and killing it.”

  Eddie Bick uses such choice words that I almost flinch.

  “Okay,” I say into the phone and slowly hang up. Only then do I realize that I’ve been holding my breath through that whole brief conversation.

  Tate’s not in Meadowfield. He’s not here.

  He’s not gripping the handle of a bloody knife in his fist.

  He’s far away playing ping pong and ‘killing’ it.

  During call-out times, about the only thing he’s doing is making prank phone calls to local pizza shops to ask if they have Prince Albert in a can, because if they do, they should let him out.

  At least I know one thing for sure. Tate didn’t bring pizza from Pizza Depot in Bellingham here to Meadowfield and Primrose Lane.

  Still, if not Tate, then who?

  41

  “PLEASE TALK TO me,” I hear Marcy say. She’s in her parents’ room with Anders. The door is open, but not all the way. I lean against the wall outside, not really meaning to listen to their conversation, but listening anyway.

  There is silence and then a deep sigh. Finally I hear Anders’ voice. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcy tells him. “What do you want to say?”

  I feel like I’m doing something wrong. I have no right eavesdropping.
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br />   After an uncomfortably long silence, Anders says, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “You’ve been hurting me for a long time,” she says. Her words are soft yet rock hard.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Just as I imagine how Tate Cole would sneak around the house, I crouch down and slide my back along the wall until I can peek through the crack between the door and the doorframe. This is so wrong, but like watching endless speculations about Viktor Pavlovich on TV, I can’t look away.

  I’m addicted.

  Anders is on the floor with his legs drawn up to his chest. He’s still not wearing his shirt. I don’t know why. He’s been exposing every part of himself today—inside and out.

  Marcy is sitting on her parents’ bed, leaning forward. Her elbows are on her knees and her beautiful curls are hiding her face. Anders isn’t far from her. If he wanted to, he could reach out and touch her leg.

  He really could.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” he says. “You . . . you’re . . .” his words trail off.

  “I’m what?” she says, and suddenly I feel like being where I am, listening to them talk, is violating a sacred trust that the four of us have. We’re all too close for that. We’ve been through everything together. I make a lame effort to get up and leave—to be anywhere but right there, but in reality I don’t move an inch.

  “Marcy,” says Anders, talking softly like she did before, saying words that should be screamed from the rooftops. “I care what happens to you.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s all I have.”

  He’s lying. I know he is. He’s doing the same thing we all do, to ourselves, to each other, to faceless people in Bellingham who work at the State School and supposedly watch Tate Cole, but obviously not well enough as he’s still making prank phone calls.