by Frank Redman
He also knew more about our lives than anyone else. Many times when Allister came at us outside, mad about something one of us did, or just mad at the world, if Billy was around he’d growl and bark, keeping Allister away.
Allister would cuss and yell and throw rocks or whatever he could find at the dog. Allister had a great arm and Billy would get hit a lot, but he’d never back down. After a few moments Allister would think we weren’t worth the trouble of a beating and just leave.
I don’t know where he went. I still don’t know if he ever had a job. He never talked about it and I never asked. Though now I know the income came from drug trafficking.
I wished that Billy was our dog and not a neighbor’s. He couldn’t get into our house.
Many times I’d sneak out at night and talk to him. I don’t know if he could hear me, see me, or smell me, but after I’d been outside for a few moments he’d come running over. A large tree by the house had been felled for firewood. I’d sit on the stump facing the house and Billy would sit next to me on the ground, leaning against my legs. I’d talk to him about Mom, about Chloe and Ben, about life, about how someday I would have kids and be an awesome father.
I’d also tell him I wished Allister would die.
He’d listen attentively, never interrupting.
Sometimes I’d get a weird feeling that he said something in response when I paused, but always thought it was just my crazy imagination. Regardless, he was a great therapist.
After ten minutes or so had passed in these sessions, scared of being caught I’d say goodnight to Billy, kiss the top of his head, thank him for spending time with me, and sneak back into the house. I’d look out the window by the front door and see Billy standing there. When he saw me inside he’d run off for home.
I heard Tyler’s nails click on the floor so I looked over the side of the bed to see what he was up to. He padded over to Ray, who was eating something I couldn’t see. He shared a bit with Tyler who wagged his tail appreciatively.
Content, the dog sniffed around the cab and then jumped back into Jenny’s bed.
I yawned and stretched out again, feeling the air from the fan on my face. My eyelids were heavy now, but I still knew I wasn’t going to fall asleep until I finished reliving the horrid scene that always haunted me.
It was like a release of sorts. Constant repression of the memories, led to pressure building and building over time until I could no longer hold them in. I begged God…
Each time, after watching the reenactment in my mind, the pressure would die down and I could sleep again. Sometimes I would have a semblance of peace for weeks, maybe even a few months.
I’m hoping Uncle Joe is right. I’m hoping getting this down on paper will have a more lasting remission from the torment.
Hoping.
Chapter Eighteen
I was outside playing fetch with Billy. The air was chilly as winter crept its way into being the prominent season. The sun warmed us with rays unimpeded by clouds and leaves on the trees. A light rain the day before left a soft dampness to the dead leaves on the ground.
Billy liked variety in playing fetch. Sometimes he would simply bring back the ball or stick or whatever and drop it at my feet, looking up at me expectantly, tail swishing happily.
Sometimes he wanted me to chase him. Sometimes he wanted to chase me.
Chloe and Ben were inside the house.
So were Mom and Allister.
I should never have left Chloe and Ben alone. I tried to always be next to them when Allister was home, which, thankfully, was not very often. But just that morning, he had smiled at me. He had a pleasant smile. I’m sure he was rather charming when he wanted to be. The smile shocked me. Though his smile was pleasant, it was never directed at me. It was a big deal. I didn’t know what to think, so I went outside to forget about it and avoid any further interaction.
Instead, I should have recognized that nothing good would be born from that smile. He smiled because he knew that he was going to kill Mom that day. Maybe he had planned to kill the rest of us too. Or it might have been a spontaneous decision. I don’t know.
He probably had the bad drugs in his pocket when he smiled at me. He knew they would kill her.
He knew.
I picked up the blue racquetball Billy dropped at my feet. We didn’t have any racquetballs so I don’t know where it came from. I guessed it must have been something Billy brought with him from his house. I threw the ball with everything I had. It landed just right on a rock which propelled it impossibly farther than the distance I could throw.
I remember thinking, Cool…
Billy was off.
I heard Chloe yell, “Ellie!” from inside the house.
Oh no…
I ran through the front door—
“Ellie!”
—and up the stairs.
“Mommy’s dead!” Chloe came running down the upstairs hallway from Allister’s bedroom. “He killed her!”
Allister chased her out of the room and bellowed in a voice that sounded inhumanly primal, “Get out of here you stupid slut!”
I don’t know if Mom was really dead. And I don’t know if somehow her death did it, or maybe drugs he had taken, or alcohol, but something caused Allister to go completely unhinged. I mean he freaked.
I fell to my knees in the hallway as I saw Chloe running for me. She wore a frilly yellow dress that waved in her wake.
“Ellie!” She was crying and screaming and hysterical all at once.
As if to cause the greatest damage to my psyche, my mind plays each ensuing half-second frame-by-frame in a maddeningly slow speed.
I opened my arms to catch her...
Chloe’s legs pumped furiously…
Allister roared something unintelligible…
I could feel Chloe’s fear. Her fear united with my own and seemed to manifest into a separate entity. Powerful. Demon-like. Fear.
Allister reached back and fired a half empty glass beer bottle at Chloe…
The bottle cut through the air like a windmill…
Chloe lunged for me…
I tried to move my hand to block…
The bottle thwacked into the back of Chloe’s skull…
She let out a muted grunt like some kind of animal, a wrongness to the sound that should have been impossible for a spirited little girl…
The force of the impact propelled her into me and I fell onto my back, Chloe landing on top of me…
I smelled beer, thinking it was strange that Chloe smelled like beer…
Allister stood heaving at the other end of the hallway in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. The jeans had holes at the knees. They were unbuttoned. He had on the brown steel-toed boots he always wore. He knew how to kick just hard enough to cause immense pain without breaking bone.
A gun handle sprouted at a peculiar angle from the waistband, not getting enough support from the unbuttoned jeans. His right hand reached for the handle, fingers curling creepily slow.
Index finger, middle, ring, pinky, thumb…He pulled out the gun. He stared at us.
Chloe’s head was tucked under my chin…
I should have felt her heavy breathing. I felt nothing.
I hugged her, and said in a sing song voice:
“It’s okay, Chloe—”
I knew it was not…
“I’ve got you—”
I knew she was dead…
I felt a warm liquid roll down my neck. I thought it was lukewarm beer. I slowly moved a hand to my neck, not wanting to wake her even though a part of my mind knew she wasn’t asleep. I tried to wipe off the liquid.
My hand was covered in the red beer… No, that’s not possible.
Covered in blood.
The hallway was void of sound. As quiet as an undisturbed, ancient crypt. I smelled dust and cobwebs and spiders.
Then I heard multiple creatures shrieking in laughter like a pack of wild hyenas. Vertigo hit me and the walls and ceiling spun clockwi
se, ceiling, wall, floor, wall, ceiling... I blinked repeatedly to try to restore lucidity, to keep madness from consuming me. I felt tingly all over, then realized I was covered in the spiders—no, not spiders, just tingly. I banged the back of my head on the floor—thump thump thump—trying madly to regain rationality. Red and white spots popped in and out of my field of view. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them and after a few brief moments, they locked onto Allister.
He swayed left and right, seeming to fall off balance just standing, but then right himself gracefully. There was something wrong about his movements, like he was dancing to music only he could hear. He leveled the gun on us. It was steady.
I rolled Chloe to the side. Her limp arms plopped softly to the floor. Her shoes thudded on the wood. The back of her head was split open. I could see a jagged line of cracked white. Bone.
I stood—
Ben came out of his room. He’d been hiding and appeared when it got quiet.
I screamed, “Ben! Get—”
The gun boomed.
I saw Ben’s little body lifted up and fly back into his room from the force of the shot hitting him in the chest.
He didn’t make a sound. One second he was there in the hallway… and then he was gone.
The gun’s report was deafening in the closed space, causing a high-pitched ringing in my ears.
The air smelled burned.
I looked at Chloe; she had not moved. She’s dead, I told myself again.
Allister turned back to me. His face was stoic. I didn’t know what a madman should look like, but I thought there should at least be some form of emotion. Anger, amusement, sorrow, giddiness… something.
The revolver seemed huge. I’d never seen it before. Either it had been hidden, or Allister recently acquired it.
I wondered if Mom was really dead. Maybe she would get up and save me.
Then I turned and ran.
I tried to jump to the stairs to get out of sight more quickly.
The gun boomed.
My right leg landed awkwardly on the second step, twisting my ankle, and then I bounced-rolled down the rest of the stairs.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I seemed paralyzed. No, I could move my arms. I tried to stand, pushing up with my right leg. The pain caused me to drop back down to hands and knees.
I looked up at the top of the stairs. Allister stood on the landing. He swayed.
I tried to get up again, but I was too weak. So incredibly scared.
Allister descended. A silent monster.
A demon.
His steps were irregular. There was no rhythmic cadence normally seen when someone goes down stairs. One leg went out, hung there, then down, jolting his body. The next leg swung out, slightly to the side, down, jolt.
I froze. The movements were intimidating as hell. Inhuman. He looked to be moving in slow motion, but he covered a lot of space with each step, like he was going down two steps at a time.
Leg swung out, land, jolt.
I started crawling to the front door. I’d left it open when I ran into the house. Leaving the door open was something that always earned us a beating. Right then I didn’t care about the freaking door. I seemed to be moving in slow motion myself. It was only fifteen feet away.
It felt like fifty.
A crash behind me. I instinctively looked. Allister had fallen to the floor. The revolver slid away from him along the wooden floor. How did that happen?
The emotionless visage became enraged. He roared. No words, just roared.
I crawled to the door again, picking up my pace. With my hurt leg, I knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun him. A baseball bat leaned against the wall by the front door. If I could get to the bat and get a lucky swing…
Allister moved inhumanly fast, caught me by the neck of my shirt, and spun me on my back. He’d twisted his huge fist in my shirt, tightening the fabric, choking me.
I tried to pry his hand away, but it was behind my neck and I had little strength at that angle. Even if I had full strength, he was way stronger than me. I looked up at him.
His nostrils flared. A visible vein in his temple pulsed impossibly fast. He was biting his tongue. A thin line of blood trailed down his chin. A drop fell into my open my mouth. I reflexively tried to recoil, but I couldn’t move. Hot blasts of fetid breath buffeted my face as he exhaled forcefully.
His feral eyes swung up from me and his head snapped from side to side as if urgently looking for someone in a crowd. Sweat fell from his head into my eyes. It stung, but I didn’t want to close my eyes. I couldn’t close my eyes. I ignored the pain.
His eyes settled on a small table within arm’s reach. He grabbed a hacksaw, raised it over his head, roared, then brought it down on me.
I blocked the blow with my left arm. Thankfully the thin blade gave some, but it still sliced my flesh to the bone. My arm lit up with the abrupt awareness of fire-hot flame. My scream came out as a hoarse exhale. I tried hopelessly to kick at his legs with my one good leg.
He brought the hacksaw down on me again.
And again.
And again.
Blackness flowed over my vision as my consciousness began slipping away. I couldn’t breathe. I no longer felt the pain of the hacksaw cutting into me. I no longer felt anything.
I heard a vicious wolf-like snarl behind me, it seemed way off in the distance, then saw a flash of white. My body was pulled roughly forward and then thrown. I slid a few feet across the floor on my stomach.
Billy had run through the front door and launched himself at Allister’s chest. The force caused Allister to fall backward, bringing me with him as his hand had caught in my shirt.
Stars floated in my vision. My hearing was muffled, as if someone covered my ears. I could only hear faint ringing. I felt dizzy. My brain shutting down from a lack of oxygen.
Then my surroundings rushed at me as if I fell head first from a ten story building. The world snapped into place.
Blood pooled quickly under my left arm. My neck hurt and I couldn’t swallow.
Billy growled and snarled as he tried to get at Allister’s throat, who was lying on his back with his arms desperately fighting to keep Billy away.
A shiny object on the floor caught my eye. I had landed close to Allister’s gun.
I heard a yelp and saw Billy fly across the room.
Allister had gotten his legs under the dog and was able to kick him away. He scrambled to his feet.
I scrambled to the gun.
He’d either forgotten about me and the gun, or wasn’t concerned. He probably didn’t think I had the guts to use a gun.
Billy growled ferociously and barked at Allister from a distance.
I picked up the gun and made it to my feet. I’d never held a gun before. The metal was surprisingly heavy, and warm. I had to use both hands to make sure it didn’t slip out of my bloody grip. I couldn’t squeeze with my left hand, but I could use it to help steady. I could see chunks of raw flesh cut up on my arm, but the pain hadn’t returned yet. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. But I was relieved for the time being.
Allister had picked up the baseball hat.
Billy backed up a few feet and stopped to growl violently. He was in a low stance, ready to launch at Allister again. Then he looked at me, stood, turned slightly and backed up another couple of feet, away from the door, and resumed growling. Billy was leading Allister away from me.
Allister waggled the bat as if readying for a pitch and stepped toward the vicious dog. His eyes were mad with rage. Not of this world. His arms were bleeding badly, and he had scratch marks on his face.
He remembered me and turned to see where I was.
Billy barked wildly to regain Allister’s attention.
Allister turned back to Billy.
I moved to a spot a few feet directly behind Allister, so that he would have to completely turn around to see me. I wanted to shoot him in the back. I needed to shoot him in the back.
&nb
sp; I wish I would have.
Billy looked at me—no, stared through me. I knew he was going to give his life for me.
I heard someone yell inside my head at a volume so loud I jerked, ELLIE! RUN!
Then there was an ear-piercing yelp as Allister swung true on Billy’s skull.
Allister turned to face me.
I brought up the gun and pointed at him, hoping maybe I’d get lucky with a shot and slow him down so I could do my best to run away.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Click, click, click, click, click.
Once I started I couldn’t stop. I fired the remaining four shots of the six-shooter and tried to keep shooting.
Allister was on the floor. A large red circle grew in the middle of his stomach. Blood poured out of a hole in his throat.
My first shot miraculously hit him in the torso. The gun recoiled up, I fired again, striking the neck. Both hits were beyond my ability to make. My aim was guided somehow. It didn’t make sense.
After each shot, I didn’t know to bring the gun back down again. My next two shots went over his head. I could see bullet holes in the ceiling.
Billy lied motionless on the floor. The top of his head was deformed.
He had knowingly and willingly sacrificed his life for me. Giving up his life so I could escape the monster named Allister Raven.
I shuffled numbly to the front door. I didn’t bother going upstairs. I knew Chloe was dead. I knew Ben was dead. I knew Mom was dead.
I wished I was dead.
But then a small feeling rose within me, little more than a suggestion, that maybe I was saved for a purpose.
I limped outside.
Billy’s blue racquetball was on the ground a few yards away.
I limped up to it and stared down at the ball. I squatted, dropped the gun, and picked up the ball. I could still see a small spot of moisture leftover from Billy carrying it in his mouth, returning for another game of fetch.
I cried.
Chapter Nineteen
I sobbed silently, tears streaming down my cheeks, my body convulsing in short, quick shudders. I faced the back wall of Ray’s cab and tried my hardest to be quiet.
