What We Kill
Page 24
“That’s sick,” I say.
“Sick?” he laughs. “You want to know what’s really sick?” He pauses for effect, only accentuating how touched in the head he really is. “I stabbed the fucker, probably a dozen times. That’s what’s really sick.” He pulls the knife away from Marcy’s throat and slices it through the air over and over again. “Of course, freaking Calista had to go freak out and call 911. What a stupid bitch. What a goddamned stupid bitch.”
With his words, I see everything clearly. The greasy guy, Frankie, took the four of us to The Maze while Calista went with Running Man back to his house. The guy with the afro probably followed them, snuck into the basement window with the hopes of stealing some cash, found his handy work, then caught him upstairs doing to Calista what he did to everyone else who died in that house.
Running Man was going to slice up her beautiful face, like Tate wanted Marcy’s whole family to end up, so the guy with the afro killed him, most likely with the same knife he’s holding now. Calista was wigged out about everything and probably so scared out of her mind that the first thing she thought to do was call the police.
911.
That’s all it took. Just three little buttons on a phone was all it took, and Meadowfield’s resident crazy was come undone.
The guy with the afro reaches up and wraps his fingers around Marcy’s throat. “You know what?” he whispers. “It was kind of fun playing inside his guts. I think that’s the kind of fun I want to have again.”
“Go ahead,” says Marcy in a husky voice, her words dropping almost an octave. “But we know where Frankie is.”
The guy with the afro blinks twice and his knife hand falters a little.
“Yeah,” says Myers because it’s true. “We know exactly where Frankie is.”
The guy’s fingers loosen around Marcy’s throat. His forehead wrinkles.
“Let her go,” says Anders. “And we’ll take you to him.”
As for me, the rest of my to-do list sitting upstairs in Marcy’s kitchen suddenly gets a few last minute additions.
“Fine,” I say, although anyone who knows me knows that my voice is tinged with a thousand disturbing emotions all at once. “If that’s how it has to be, we’ll take you.”
68
THIS IS HOW IT ENDS.
69
THE NEXT MORNING, bright and early, the four of us go to the cops and tell them the truth. The Meadowfield police force is battle fatigued from having to deal with the fallout of Running Man’s reign of terror, and we almost feel bad that we add heaping platefuls to their misery, but there isn’t any other way. After all, it’s only been one day since an anonymous phone call was made from inside Dr. Viktor Pavlovich’s house which ultimately led to one of the most brutal and heinous serial murderers that Western Massachusetts has ever seen.
We’re just icing on top of that crazy cake.
It doesn’t matter that the truth we tell them is littered with fiction.
Most truths are.
Tate Cole had a vendetta against his family forever. Most of it was because he was messed in the head, and some small parts of it could have been because Marcy was trans. Whatever the reason, Tate wanted them all hurt or dead, and went to extraordinary lengths to talk three of his friends into skipping out of The Bellingham School once they all turned eighteen to get the job done.
They came to Meadowfield—Calista Diamond, a boy named Frankie Keller, and a third named Billy Yorns. The three of them delivered a pizza to Marcy’s house laced with a drug called Flunitrazepam—the date rape drug.
Calista, Frankie, and Billy never expected the Coles to be gone, or me, Anders, and Myers to be there with Marcy instead. We were only added excitement in an excitement-filled night.
After we were all drugged, the three of them took us in search of a good time which ultimately led to The Stumps. While there, Calista hit hard on Anders, but he wasn’t interested.
We even tell the police that there’s a video out there, probably sitting in the deleted files on Val Buenavista’s phone that proves what we’re saying is true. If they look hard enough, analyzing each image, frame by frame, they might even catch a glimpse of Dr. Viktor Pavlovich in the background. He was there that night, probably looking for his next kill way too close to home.
This is where our truth turns into fiction, but only a little, or at least that’s what we will tell ourselves for the rest of our lives.
We explain to the police that all eight of us ended up at Prince Richard’s Maze after the Stumps. Me, Anders, Myers, and Marcy, Frankie, Billy, Calista, and Running Man.
We were drugged, but we still remember pieces of an argument that mostly centered around who was going to get a turn with Calista first. In a rage, Dr. Pavlovich picked up a rock and bashed in Frankie Keller’s head. When he’s was through, he did the same to Billy Yorns.
After all, murder was his thing.
Then he filled their pockets with stones and let them sink into Turner Pond.
We tell the police we hardly remember anything after that except for what Dr. Pavlovich put us through. It’s amazing how effortlessly the four of us lie to them. We lie because the truth can never come out.
Not ever.
I tell them that Running Man branded me with a triangle from Frankie’s Alcoholics Anonymous sobriety ring, which he obviously only wore for show. I don’t know why he burned me the way he did. I only remember the pain and waking up the next morning with a permanent scar on my left arm.
Myers tells them that Running Man was disgusted by the fact that he had a glass eye. It made him less than perfect. Running Man seemed all about perfection, so he took his eye from him.
Marcy tells them that Running Man was far more interested in her than in Calista because Calista seemed like she wanted it and Marcy seemed purer than that. She tried to fight him, but he succeeded in getting her pants off. It was only then that he realized that Marcy was genetically male.
Running Man didn’t want her anymore.
Anders’ tells them that that most of his clothes were gone. He doesn’t make up an explanation as to why. He doesn’t remember. No one can argue with that. Besides, his story sounds more realistic that way and realism is key.
Finally, we tell the police that when we woke up the next morning, we smelled fire and thought the woods were burning but they weren’t. We heard the town fire alarm and police sirens and thought that they were coming to save us in Prince Richard’s Maze, but they didn’t.
We were all alone.
Throughout the day and into the night, we slowly remembered the important parts of what happened to us. During that time, Anders got into a fight with Barry Kupperman at The Stumps, but all of that nonsense was just residual effects from the drugs. They don’t need to know the real reason.
Nobody does.
We tell the police that we spent the rest of the night scared out of our minds, not knowing what to do. Finally, early this morning we decided we had to tell someone.
That’s all of it.
That’s our lie that we tell the police.
We say it over and over again until we believe it ourselves, probably like Sandra Berman’s parents will always believe that one of those body parts inside Running Man’s house is from their daughter, regardless if she’s identified or not.
What we never tell the police is that we brought Billy Yorns to the woods to show him where we said Frankie was waiting for him.
We never tell them that I picked a rock up off the ground and smashed it into the back of his head, nor do we tell them that Myers took a turn, too.
We never tell them that Anders was next, and he relished every second of it.
We never tell them that Marcy struck the killing blow, hitting him more than a few times until her arms couldn’t hold the rock over her head anym
ore.
We never tell them that we dragged the bodies through Prince Richard’s Maze, scooping up handfuls of pebbles along the way, stuffing them in their pockets, and making sure not to touch our cell phones that were also with them, along with Myers’ eye.
We never tell them that we watched Frankie Keller and Billy Yorns melt away into the waters of Turner Pond, or that we knew the pond would be dredged anyway to confirm everything we said, or that it would all be pinned on Running Man.
We never tell them any of those things.
70
WOULD YOU?
The End
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my wonderful readers David Gilfor, Nick Gilfor, Shira Block McCormick, Tamara Fricke, Lauren Levin, Michelle Scalia, and my mother, Joline Odentz, whose nickname “Jolly” appears in every one of my books.
I would also like to give special thanks to Brigadier General Thomas Heath and the fine folks at the Enfield, Connecticut Police Department for spending the time to speak with me concerning matters I know nothing about.
Finally, I would like to once again give thanks to Lois Winston, Ashley Grayson, Debra Dixon, and the team at Bell Bridge Books for their tireless support.
About the Author
Author and playwright HOWARD ODENTZ is a lifelong resident of the gray area between Western Massachusetts and North Central Connecticut. His love of the region is evident in his writing as he often incorporates the foothills of the Berkshires and the small towns of the Bay and Nutmeg states into his work.
What We Kill, a taught thriller set in fictional Meadowfield, Massachusetts, is his sixth publication with Bell Bridge Books. Other works include the young adult zombie romps Dead (a Lot) and Wicked Dead, the thriller Bloody Bloody Apple, the creepy anthology Little Killers A to Z, and the holiday horror short story Snow.
The mysterious has always played a major role in Howard’s writing. He is endlessly fascinated by the psychological aspects of those who are thrown into thrilling or otherworldly circumstances.