by Chris Morey
Drew wasn’t moving, but his belly kept rising and falling and bloody snot bubbles clustered up and popped under his nose. After about a minute he sat up and wiped his face and looked at the blood in his hands like there was some kind of message written in there.
“He looks hurt,” I said. “We gotta take him somewhere.”
“Nothin’ a good piece of pussy won’t fix.” David shoved past Austin and Ethan and lifted Drew up by the arm. “Ain’t that right, Drew?”
Drew didn’t answer or fight back anymore. Let David walk him over to Rickety Kristy. Even helped him with his clothes. Blood ran down Drew’s neck and chest and dripped down onto Kristy but she didn’t wipe it away—just lay there and stared up at them, even smiled again.
I wanted her to stop smiling so bad I thought about kicking her in the mouth. Anything was better than that smile and that laugh just then.
“Looks like you need to get in the mood,” David said, then kicked the backs of Drew’s knees so the guy dropped down and nearly on top of Kristy. “Here. Nice ain’t they?”
David grabbed Drew’s wrists and shoved his hands over Kristy’s chest. Made him squeeze and rub.
Kristy giggled and mumbled something I couldn’t understand.
“Look at that. You see? All ready to go now.” David stood and took a step back but stayed right there close by.
Kristy’s eyes followed him, but they moved back to Drew as he started crying and shoved himself into her. Blood rained down from his face and freckled her and when he started moving his hips, Kristy reached out to David and whined.
Drew only went for about a minute, maybe less. He dropped down on top of her and cried, then rolled off and lay there beside her.
Kristy rolled over too and started to crawl. Her legs didn’t work too good. Dragged behind her, the leg braces digging lines into the ground as she went.
David looked right at me and smiled. Smiled as wide as I’d ever seen. I thought about turning and running but I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. It wasn’t like I could hide from my own brother. I dropped to the ground and curled myself into a ball. Made it as hard and tight as I could. The only sound I could hear in there was my own breathing and heartbeat.
And then hands were on me. I curled up harder but it wasn’t any use. Before I knew it I was on my feet and being dragged across the way toward Rickety Kristy who still crawled, still whined.
“Quit bein’ a baby,” David said and slapped me. Slapped me so hard I think I can still taste his hand sweat. “This is your Christmas present. Somethin’ special before I move away. You like it, don’t you?”
I shook my head. Couldn’t stop crying. I knew my brother could be bad sometimes, but never like this. It was like he got possessed by something, like in that movie, and it was controlling him. I didn’t want to look at his face because I was scared of what I might see there. So I kept my eyes on Kristy. She crawled away slowly, grunting and mumbling. Her ass was pointed at me, round and pale and covered in zits around the crack.
That’s when I saw the blood on her thighs. And something else. Something white. Dead grass and leaves stuck to it as she was crawling off.
I had my eyes on her when David yanked my pants and boxers down. She hadn’t gotten too far so that when David shoved me from behind I tripped over my pants and landed right there on top of her. I’m ashamed to say it, but nobody had to get me going the way they did with Drew. And my hard-on stuck right in-between her butt cheeks, slid down right into the bloody part.
I know now that I didn’t actually get inside of her. I didn’t know any better then and had never touched a female before so I thought I was doing it. Didn’t matter if I was or wasn’t because Rickety Kristy got to screaming the second I landed on her. Screaming as loud and hard as I had ever heard from anyone. Birds exploded out from the treetops and took off toward the clouds like even they knew things had gone too far and didn’t want to witness another second of it.
I had no experience with girls. In my mind this was sex, and as bad as it was and as awful as that scream was, I couldn’t keep myself from finishing. Never even got started and still finished before the birds had gone a mile. I gasped and shoved off her and crawled away backwards. I saw the mess I made on her and I turned and threw up in the dirt.
“Shut her up, David,” Ethan said. “Somebody’s gonna hear that shit.”
Rickety Kristy kept screaming. Louder and louder it seemed. She wasn’t crawling anymore, like she ran out of energy, and just lay there on her stomach and screamed into the dirt. Dead grass puffed up from her mouth with each holler.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” Austin ran at her and slapped his palm over her mouth then quickly jerked it away and made a hissing sound. Shook it like he touched a hot stove top. “She bit me. That fuckin’ retarded bitch bit me!”
And he kicked her in the side. Hard. She acted like she didn’t feel a thing and kept on screaming. Barely took a breath.
I sat there and watched with Drew next to me. He was sitting up now too and we shared a look at each other a few times. I could tell he didn’t know what to do either. I didn’t know if I wanted her to stop screaming or to keep it up. If she screamed hard and long enough someone might come over and help her. If they helped her, then they could help me and get me the hell out of there, but then I looked down at myself and saw the blood on me and I knew she had to stop. She had to stop because I was just as bad as any of them there in those woods that day. A good person wouldn’t have gotten hard the way I did. A good person wouldn’t have stared at her tits as they bounced and a good person wouldn’t have left a mess between her legs.
“Make her stop, David.” I said this. The second it left my lips I hated myself for it. I think Drew hated me too because he gave me a look like he smelled something bad on me.
“I got it,” David said and jumped on her, turned her around so her tits were back up.
“Watch her, man. She bites fuckin’ hard.” Austin was still shaking his hand and grimacing so his dirty braces were showing.
David hit her. He hit her as hard as he had hit Drew, maybe harder. She kept on screaming, though. Blood shot up out of her mouth as she did it but she didn’t let that slow her down any. So David hit her again. Then Austin kicked her again. Ethan joined in.
This time I could look away, even though those tits of hers were bouncing while the boys beat on her. I turned my back to them and faced the woods that led to downtown Bergstrom. I could still hear the Christmas music but didn’t hear any sign of help coming. Probably because it was Christmas morning and everybody was with their families safe in their warm houses.
The screaming stopped after about a minute and a half. But the sounds of them beating on her kept going for another five. I turned enough to see Drew, still sitting next to me, and he was crying and shaking his head with his hand over his mouth. Watching.
“Drew?”
“Killed her. They f-fucking killed her.”
“What?”
By the time I turned to see what he was talking about, David was already walking toward me. His hands were bloody all the way up to about half his forearm. Some blood was on his face too. He was blocking the way so I couldn’t see Kristy, not all of her anyway. I could see her feet and shins and leg braces on one side of David, some hair and one hand on the other. Austin and Ethan stared down at her with faces I couldn’t read. Looked scared to me but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t be sure of much of anything anymore.
“Stand up,” David said to Drew, and Drew did it without hesitating. David looked at both of us, then at his own hands. They shook and I could hear he was breathing fast. “Wasn’t supposed to happen. Wasn’t part of my plan.”
Me and Drew just stood there quiet. Austin came running up behind David with wide eyes and his mouth open.
“What we gonna do now, David, huh? What the fuck we gonna do now?”
“We have to get rid of her,” Ethan said. “Now. Fast before anybody comes out here and finds her
. She was screaming loud enough someone had to hear.”
David made us all help. We didn’t have shovels so we had to use our hands. Scooping out dirt like a pack of dogs. Took a long time to get it deep enough and by the end my hands were numb and cut up and bleeding. Rickety Kristy fit in the hole almost perfect, like she was a gummy candy and the hole was the package she had come out of. We just about had her covered up again when David stopped us, jumped up and pulled a bush out of the ground, roots and all. He shoved it over her body and we finished with the dirt, that bush over her like some kind of gravestone. I wondered if the roots would shove into her, same way we all did.
Nobody said a word. We got in the car and David drove everyone home and not one boy said goodbye or even made eye contact. Before we made it home, David stopped by the creek and washed himself off, but I could still see the pink on his skin. When we got home I ran straight to my room and crawled under my blankets. I didn’t think I’d ever leave from there again. Ended up falling asleep and didn’t wake up until the next morning. I didn’t know what to expect when I walked downstairs and sat at the breakfast table.
But everything seemed to be normal again. Mom and Dad were there, drinking coffee and watching the news. David was eating cereal and talking about college, told our parents his hands got cut up because we met up with the guys, played some street football and Drew tackled him too hard so they both went tumbling into the curb.
§
I kept thinking David would pull me aside and talk to me about it or say something like, “You tell anyone and I’ll bury you by that retard out there,” but he never did. I expected the police to come knocking on the door and say they found Rickety Kristy under that bush and that they knew we did it and that we would spend the rest of our lives locked up. But that never happened either. I figured most people who commit crimes like that and get away with it probably feel pretty damn good about themselves, but not me. Just made me feel worse, like more of a bad guy. If getting caught and paying for what we did would make the nightmares stop, I would have gladly let them lock me up.
I heard somewhere someone say that time heals everything. Can’t remember where I heard it, TV most likely, but whoever said it was right. At first I didn’t think I’d ever be the same again, but after a while, I started to forget about Rickety Kristy. Nobody in town seemed to care too much about her going missing, and even her own parents didn’t cause a huge stink about it. Most likely happy to get rid of her so she couldn’t be a burden anymore. So there was not much talk of her missing in town. By Halloween the following year it was almost like nothing ever happened.
I started high school that year. Met Audrey and had me my first girlfriend. She came over for Thanksgiving and met my parents and David who came back home for the holidays. He had gone off to Lubbock for school and said he was liking it and doing good. I was nervous to see him, nervous he’d say something in front of Audrey that was inappropriate, but he didn’t. He played nice the way he always did when other folks were around besides just me and him and his buddies.
I didn’t see Austin, Ethan, or Drew that entire year. They had graduated the same year as David so I figured they went off to school somewhere too. I hoped they did. If it was up to me I would never see them again.
Everything seemed normal again. As normal as it was going to get anyway.
Until Christmas morning.
I was the first one awake. Sun hadn’t even come out yet. Had another bad nightmare, first in a while. Started thinking they were gone for good until Christmas Eve night, when Rickety Kristy, dressed in a Santa outfit, came spilling out of the fireplace and dragged those braced legs across the floor as she came for me. Laughing. Laughing and screaming all at once. I woke up covered in sweat like I used to and got up since I couldn’t sleep anyway. Figured I’d watch some TV until the rest of the house woke up and we could go on with our Christmas.
I guess I had been rubbing my tired eyes as I walked down the hall from my bedroom to the living room because I felt it under my feet before I saw anything. The blood. Soaked up in the living room carpet and squashing between my toes as I stepped into the room.
I think maybe I screamed but I can’t remember. I just know that within a minute or so Mom and Dad were there with me, all three of us staring at the living room. We were silent at first, the only sound the soft Christmas music playing from the radio. Then Mom screamed and ran toward the tree that was soaked red with David’s blood. His entrails were wrapped around it in a pink-and-red spiral, and organs dangled like ornaments. Two scooped-out feet, only the skin and a layer of meat left, hung just above the fireplace. Nailed to the wall there. Filled with small pieces of coal like black gravel. Legs and arms kept the fire burning and let off a smell like cooking breakfast sausage, crackling and popping as the blood roasted. My brother wasn’t my brother anymore. The rest of him was whole—well, almost whole—and it stood at the end of the room, propped up against the wall. His head, neck, and torso. Cut open and stuffed with coals, bigger chunks than what filled his feet. His skin was stretched about as far as it probably could have been and swelled to bursting. His cheeks bulged out like a hamster’s storing food in its mouth. In place of his eyes were two jet-black coals, crammed into his sockets. His skin was as pale as snow, and as I stood there looking at him, “Frosty the Snowman” came drifting in from the other room. If I would have had a magic hat, I might have placed it on David’s head to see if he’d wake up.
Mom was on the floor getting her hands and knees bloody as she kept on screaming and yelling my brother’s name. Dad was down there with her trying to calm her down even though I could tell he was on the verge of screaming louder than she was. He kept his gaze away from the room, kept them on Mom whose eyes slid across every inch of it.
I guess maybe I was too shocked to really react the way I should have. Or maybe deep down I expected something like that to happen after what we did. But I stepped closer to David, spun in a circle and looked at the mess bit by bit. I said before that the coal-stuffed, gory snowman that used to be David was nearly whole. I found the last part perched up at the very top of the tree. Or the last three parts, rather. I never checked, but I’m willing to bet that the skin bag had two round coals in place of what used to be there. The tree’s tip must have been jammed as far in as it could go because the last part was sticking straight up. Same way it did when it took a swim inside Rickety Kristy.
“Why?” Mom said. The word came out harsh and broke up in a way you know had to hurt her throat. Her eyes were as red as the blood soaked into the carpet underneath her. “Why would anyone do this?”
Dad held her and shook his head, his face pressed into the top of her head and hidden behind her messed hair. I think he was cussing but I couldn’t make out his words.
Over the fireplace, maybe a foot above the skin stockings, was a word spelled out in Christmas lights. Small nails jammed into the wall so the wire could hold onto something and form the right letters. Multi-colored. The kind that blinked in a pattern.
Naughty.
§
“You’re not making any sense,” Dad says. “David couldn’t … My boys are good boys and they wouldn’t …”
I tell him everything. Every detail I can remember. No use in keeping secrets anymore. I know he’ll see the truth real soon. Before the day is over. Any second now as far as I know. Dad just stands there and studies the floor like it has answers for him. I know he’s trying to make sense of it all, how his sons could ever be a part of something as awful as what we did.
Audrey lets out another scream and snaps Dad out of it. He throws me another look like he’s trying to decide if I’m still his son or not, then turns his back to me and runs back toward the bedroom. Before he can get there, Mom comes running out with her cell pressed up against her ear, then pulls it away and stares at the screen.
“There’s no signal, Burl. How can that be?”
“I know exactly how,” I say. “Nobody can help. All we can do now
is try and beat him.”
“Beat him? Beat who?”
“That’s enough of this shit, Bobby, goddammit. You hear me? Enough!”
“What’s going on here?” Mom says and dials 9-1-1 again but gets the same result as before.
“You probably don’t know what happened because the other guys moved away after that Christmas. After what happened to David.”
“Shut your mouth, boy!” Dad shoves me but I only stumble a few steps back.
Mom’s eyes ping-pong between Dad and me. Audrey screams my name and the Lord’s and begs one of us to make the pain stop.
“They moved away because they thought he wouldn’t find them. But he did. I found out where they went and looked into it and sure enough they’re all dead. Every one.”
“I swear on my life, Bobby, if you don’t stop this horse shit right now!”
“Who are you talking about? And what … what has any of this got to do with your b-brother?”
“Ethan went off to Oklahoma. They found him under a Christmas tree three years ago. Chopped up and stuffed inside twelve boxes. Each one weighed down with coal. You know what the boxes were wrapped in?”
“Bobby … please. Please … that’s enough.” Mom holds her phone with both hands at her chest and shakes her head slow.
“His skin. Cut and folded and taped around each of those boxes. Wrapped up tight. Silver tinsel spread out on the ground in front of it all to make out the word Naughty.”
