by Gen Griffin
“Speaking of being out here, are we going to stand around talking all day or are we going trail riding?” Ian asked. “I was kind of hoping to see how my new tires pull in the mud.”
“Hole is right here.” Addison pointed at the mud hole he'd been pulled out of.
“Yeah, and your Jeep is right there.” Ian pointed at the offending vehicle. “I don't have a clear run until you move it.”
“Consider it moved,” Addy replied. He grabbed two more beers out of the cooler and shut the back hatch on his Jeep. Passing one to Cal, he walked over to the driver's seat. “Before you put that behemoth in the hole, I'm going to have one more go at seeing if I can get through it. Who wants to ride?”
“I'll go.” Cal took both the offered beer and the passenger's seat in the Jeep. A moment later, they were right back where Addison had started the morning. Stuck in the mud.
Chapter 3
Sitting behind the wheel of the Ford with a beer in the cup holder and mud on the windshield, David was feeling fairly content. He watched his very drunk little cousin plow his over-sized toy of a truck into the shallowest part of the creek.
Tires spun and mud and rocks flew as Ian drunkenly hit the bank at exactly the wrong angle. The big truck bounced harmlessly back down into the water. Ian re-angled the truck and slammed the accelerator down onto the floorboards. The Dodge shuddered and flew up the bank with a belch of smoke from the exhaust.
David could see Addison laughing from the driver's seat of the Jeep. Cal had gotten out of the truck and was standing on the edge of the creek bank, commenting on something Ian had hit on his way up.
David waited until the water had settled back down and everyone was out of the way before he edged his own truck down into the water. He chose to creep through the water slowly and carefully rather than blasting through. Sometimes it was nice to show the others that the guy with the nicest toy didn't always win.
“Show off,” Addison jeered from his window. “You always make it look easy.”
“It is easy,” David replied cheerfully.
He moved to drive the Ford to the front of their little caravan, but Ian gunned the engine on the Dodge. He plowed straight ahead of David and onto the trail, nearly clipping a tree in the process. David shook his head as he waved for Addison to go in front of him. He hated being in the middle. He either wanted the very front of the line or the very back. Being boxed in by trees and trucks annoyed him. He liked having room to maneuver on the trail.
Addison's Jeep made a sudden and unexpected jerk to the right, splashing through a small mud puddle and spraying dirty water in every direction. David checked up with his brakes and laughed. He waited until Addison was clear of the hole before he gunned his own engine and plowed through, not caring when dirty water came through the windows and splashed him in the face. It felt good to be out in the woods, just blowing off some steam with the guys. David's truck bounced and clanged down the dirt trail, the accelerator steadily climbing against all better judgment.
He focused solely on maintaining control of his vehicle as the three trucks blew through curves and hills, wrapping through the wooded trails that he'd been wandering through since he'd been old enough to climb out the window of his father's crappy trailer.
As the speedometer began to creep towards 50 miles an hour, David noticed that Addison was dropping back away from the rear bumper of Ian's truck. David unconsciously eased his own foot off of the gas. The distance between his truck and Addison's increased from a couple of yards to a couple of car lengths. The distance between Ian's truck and Addison's Jeep increased trifold.
David could see that Ian was bouncing roughly from one side of the trail to the other. He couldn't tell if it was intentional or not. Ian wasn't a bad driver, but he wasn't exactly amazing behind the wheel either. David didn't blame Addison for wanting to allow some distance between the vehicles.
Ian didn't check up as he plowed through another mid-sized mud pit in the trail. The Dodge kicked sideways hard as it hit the slick surface. The rear end spun wide to the right, putting the truck nearly sideways on the narrow trail.
Ian spun the wheel hard, trying to correct the truck and bring it back straight. The front end of the truck began to pull back into the right position. In the split second before disaster struck, David would always remember thinking that he'd thought Ian had it under control.
Ian's brake lights flashed as he locked up his tires, sending the Dodge into a vicious skid on the trail. The bed of the shiny new truck clipped the trunk of a massive old oak tree on the side of the trail and went reeling out of control.
David realized that Ian's truck was going to flip a split second before its tires actually left the ground. He was powerless to do anything but watch as his little cousin's truck went over onto its side, rolled over on its roof and then came down heavily on the driver's side with a sickening crunch.
Looking back, David would never remember stopping the Ford or getting out of it. He didn't remember watching Addy smash the the passenger's window out of Ian's truck with his bare knuckles or the way Cal would later tell him that he had grabbed Ian by the shoulders and yanked him, mostly unharmed, out of the ruined vehicle.
What David would always remember was the screaming. Ian was screaming incoherently as they'd pulled him out of the truck. David tried to use his own shirt to stop the blood that was flowing from a shallow gash on Ian's chin and Ian shoved him away. “The-the-the-the-the- g-g-g-g-girl! W-h-h-hat happened to her-r-r? Where is she?”
“Girl?” Cal was the first to make sense of Ian's wails. “Ian, calm down.”
“The girl,” Ian repeated.
Cal grabbed Ian by the shoulders and pushed him roughly towards the passenger's seat of Addison's Jeep. “You're going to be fine.”
“The girl, Cal! Where is the girl?” Ian's eyes frantically searched the trail, spinning in all directions.
“There is no girl man.” Addison took a deep breath and stepped calmly up to Ian. “You must have hit your head. You were alone in the truck. Your girlfriend isn't here.”
“I-I-I'm not-t-t talking about Katie. The girl. There was a girl.” Ian blubbered the words so badly that David could barely understand him.
“I don't see a girl,” Addison said, still calm. “Dude, you lost control of your truck. You're going to be okay.”
“You're not listening. You don't understand. I hit my brakes. I had to hit my brakes-.”
“We saw that,” Addison said drolly. He moved Ian's arm up and down for him, checking to see if anything was broken. It didn't appear to be, because Ian ignored the gesture entirely.
“Addy, listen to me. David, please.” Ian focused his hazel eyes onto David's own dark green ones. “David there was a girl. I saw a girl. She was short. Maybe 13-14. Chunky. Dark hair. Dark skin. Hispanic, maybe? She had on a pink t-shirt and khakis. I saw her. I swear to God, I saw her.”
David hesitated, unsure what to say. He took a deep breath. “Ian, you're going to be okay.”
“I'm not...you're not...I saw a girl.”
“There was no girl,” David told him.
“I saw her. Right before I flipped, I saw the girl.”
“Maybe it was some kind of angel?” Addison suggested with a strained look of tension on his handsome face. “I've heard that sometimes people see strange things when they have bad experiences.”
“It wasn't an angel,” Ian said. He wiped bloody spit off of his chin with the back of his hand. “Y'all aren't listening to me. I know, I saw-.”
“Hey Breedlove, we have a problem.” All the inflection had gone out of Cal's voice.
David turned his attention away from Ian and saw that Cal had gone over to the wrecked truck. He was standing next to the edge of the cab and staring down with an expression of mute horror on his round face. His skin, always pale, had gone ghostly white.
David crossed the twenty feet between himself and Cal in the blink of an eye. “What's wrong?”
Cal opened his
mouth to speak but nothing came out. He swallowed visibly and closed his eyes. “Look down,” he said. “Under the edge of the cab.”
Like any obedient best friend, David unquestioningly did as he was told and looked down.
A small, almost disembodied brown hand was laying in the dirt beside the totaled truck.
Chapter 4
The dirt was wet and cold under David's palms. He felt dizzy and sick as he knelt on the ground and stared at the hand that was attached to the arm of the girl who was smashed underneath Ian's ruined truck.
It wasn't really all that small of a hand, for a girl. Fat palms and thick, meaty fingers. Light brown skin that was turning colors and swelling as he watched. Little half-moon nails that had been painted teal and silver and then chewed to a quick. Silver and teal were the colors for Possum Creek Middle School. He'd seen Gracie paint her nails the same way. One finger silver, the next teal and the one after that silver again and so on with the pattern until all the fingers and toes matched. David absently wondered if this girl had painted her toes to match or if she'd stopped with her fingers. He bet she'd painted her toes. Gracie always painted her toes.
The hand had a tarnished steel ring on her left hand ring finger. A cheap thing set with three glass stones. The stone on the right had sprung loose of its prongs. David wondered if the stone had been lost before or after she'd been crushed to death by Ian's truck.
Ian had been telling the truth. He'd seen a girl. He'd seen a girl and he'd tried to stop.
“Move,” Addison said to him brusquely. He'd finished attaching the chains to the flipped truck. He intended to roll the truck off of the girl. David had doubts about whether or not the plan would work. The Dodge was resting with its tires in the trees and the roof of its cab facing the trail. In order to bring the truck back over onto its wheels, Addison was going to have to completely flip the vehicle back over, first onto its roof and then onto its wheels.
“She's dead,” David said flatly as he stood up on shaking legs. He walked around to the rear of the truck.
Addison hesitated midway between the Dodge and his Jeep. He swallowed once, rubbing one hand down through his woolly blonde beard. “I know, but we have to try.”
He and David exchanged a silent look of perfect understanding. Ian's phantom girl, the girl who owned the hand, was dead underneath the Dodge. But they had to try to save her anyway. If anyone asked later, they would have to be able to say they had tried to save her.
Addison got back behind the wheel of the Jeep. He put it in reverse and slowly began to ease the Jeep backwards. The chain that connected the two vehicles tightened but nothing happened. Addison gave the Jeep more gas. As its tires began to spin, the Dodge began to grudgingly lift, pulled backwards by the angle of the chain and the momentum of the Jeep.
The sheet metal side of the truck screamed as the chain bit into it. The smell of burned engine fluids hung heavy in the air. He could see a slick black puddle absorbing into the dirt underneath the engine compartment. Engine oil mixed with antifreeze.
The Jeep's engine was whining unhappily. The smaller SUV was struggling to bring the truck up and over. David could just barely see a bloody leg on the ground underneath the cab of the pick-up.
“Help me,” Cal said from beside him.
David turned and watched numbly as Cal grabbed the Dodge by the underside of the frame and began pushing upwards on the vehicle. It was a stupid thing to do. He'd be crushed if the chain broke.
“David!” Cal snapped at him.
David's trance broke and he stepped up beside Cal. Together, they strained along with the Jeep until the Dodge grudgingly tipped back over and crashed down onto its roof, freeing the girl.
Addison continued pulling the Dodge backwards until it was resting on its roof, several yards away from the girl.
“Is she alive?” Cal had his eyes squished shut. His skin was a ghastly shade of green. “Please tell me she's alive?”
David forced himself to look down at the girl.
Dead people were supposed to look peaceful. That was the one lesson David had learned after attending an even dozen funerals. Dead people looked like happy wax statutes. Happy, sleeping wax statues.
This girl didn't look peaceful. She didn't look happy. She sure as hell didn't look like she was sleeping.
She actually looked a lot like the overgrown wood spider that Gracie had made him kill yesterday. Much like the spider he'd crushed with his boot, the girl been flattened by the sudden impact of the truck hitting her. Her legs and arms were splayed out in all directions. Her left leg had a jagged hunk of bone sticking up through the knee. Tendons hung limply outside the skin. Ian had said her hair had been dark, but David really couldn't tell. It was long and thick with blood. Her skull had crushed like a split melon when the weight of the truck had smashed her into the hard packed ground that existed just below the loose dirt of the trail. David was pretty sure the bloody gray chunks in her hair were bits of brain and skull.
“I think I'm going to be sick,” he told Cal.
Cal's eyes popped open in surprise as David turned to the side and threw up all over a palmetto bush on the side of the trail.
Two seconds later, Cal was on his knees beside him throwing up on the same plant.
Chapter 5
“She is really dead, isn't she?”
Addison was kneeling down next to the smashed body, his forefingers pressed against her neck so he could officially check her non-existent vitals. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to call an ambulance.”
Cal reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He activated the screen with a swipe of his fingers and was preparing to dial 9-1-1 when Ian reached over and pulled the phone out of his hand.
“We can't,” Ian stammered. “We c-c-can't call the police.”
“What?” Cal stared at him, utterly dumbfounded.
“We have to,” Addison said. “She's dead, Ian.”
“She's d-dead. Yeah. I g-g-get that.” Ian's pale eyes were frantically flickering around the trail. “She's dead. W-w-we can't help her. She's not dying. She's dead.”
“Ian...” David was starting to wonder if Ian really had gotten some kind of concussion when he'd flipped the Dodge. The other boy had spent the last 20 minutes alternating between throwing up, crying and babbling incoherently.
“My m-mother is going to lose her m-m-mind,” Ian burst out. “My D-d-dad died in a drunk driving accident less than a year ago. Now I've gotten drunk and killed some girl with his truck. She's going to flip out. She'll never forgive me.”
“Shit,” Addison muttered under his breath. “Ian, we don't have a choice-.”
“What if we do?” Ian interrupted him mid-sentence. “W-w-what if we do have a choice?”
“You're losing me.”
“I don't know who that girl is. I don't think I've ever seen her before. Have you?” Ian asked.
“Um, no. I don't think so,” Addison admitted.
“How about y'all?” Ian turned to Cal and David. Desperation was shining in his glazed eyes. “Y'all know her?”
“You already know we don't,” David said flatly. “We've been over this. I've never seen her before. Cal's never seen her before. You've never seen her before. Addy's never seen her before. We don't know who she is.”
“Maybe she's not anybody,” Ian suggested, sounding halfway desperate and halfway thoughtful.
“She has to be somebody. Nobody can be no one.” Addy stared down at the girl's body with unmistakable misery and sympathy.
“Maybe she's not important enough for anyone to care about.” Ian took a deep breath and visibly gathered his nerve. “Y'all hear me out. If we call the cops, we're screwed. Our collective fucking gooses are cooked. And by cooked, I mean deep fried.”
“No matter what happens, we're still not as bad off as her.” David nodded down at the dead girl. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at his cousin. He didn't care for the turn this conversation was taking.
<
br /> “Speak for yourself.” Ian practically spit the words at David. “You're not the one who was driving the truck that killed her. You're not the one who's going to be going to jail.”
“Ian, it was an accident. You're not-”
“No one is going to care that I hit her on accident!” Tears broke free of Ian's eyes. He was shaking as he sobbed. “The lady who killed Dad didn't mean to kill him neither. She drank a bottle of wine at her grandkid's baby shower and plowed through the damned median. She's in jail, David. She's going to be in jail for at least 10 years. Ain't no one cared that it was an accident. Ain't no one going to care now that this was an accident.” He slammed his sneaker into the ground near the dead girl's head. He was bawling now, snot and tears running down his impossibly young face.
Addison, David and Cal exchanged a solemn look. Addison broke gaze first, staring down at the ground. He took a deep breath. “Y'all know, I'm fucked too.”
“What?” Cal looked at Addy in surprise.
“Ian won't be the only one getting hauled off to jail. I'm going to get arrested too.”
“For what?” Cal demanded. His face was beginning to regain some color. “You tried to save her.”
“I don't exactly have a glowing personal record, Cal. I got kicked out of the Navy because I got shitfaced drunk and wrecked a forklift while I was supposed to be loading a boat. I should have been given a dishonorable discharge. I talked my way out of the dishonorable, but it won't be that hard for anyone real interested to find out what happened.” Addison rubbed both hands over his face and sighed. “Ian may be drunk, but I'm the one who bought the alcohol.”
“You're not 21 either.”
“Right. And since I'm under age too, Annabeth Hanley is going to catch her own charge for selling me liquor without I.D.” Addison looked guiltily down at the dead girl at his feet and then back up at his friends. “Y'all know I'll take the fall. If that's what I have to do, so be it. We should just tell Uncle Frank and the rest of the cops that I was the one driving Ian's truck when it rolled. Let all the blame fall on me. Y'all go sober up for a few hours, I'll call Uncle Frank after the sun sets and tell him I borrowed Ian's truck, flipped it and killed someone. Considering my track record, they'll buy it.”
