Ashes (22 page)

"Killed anything with that yet?"

"Nope. But maybe I can get one of those
stripedy-assed chipmunks."

"Them things are quick."

"Hey, a little blood sacrifice is all it
takes."

"What do you mean?"

"Breaking it in right." Riley patted the
barrel of the gun. "Making them pay for messing with me."

Riley led the way down the trail, through
Dexter's pet cemetery and over the creek. Dexter followed in his
buddy's footsteps, watching the tips of his own brown boots.
October hung in scraps of yellow and red on the trees. The shadows
of the trees grew longer and thicker as the sun slipped down the
sky.

Riley stopped after a few minutes of silent
stalking. "What's up with your dad?" he asked.

"Not much. Same old."

"That must be a pain in the ass, seeing him
every other weekend or so."

"Yeah. He ain't figured out the game."

"What game?"

"You know. Love. Like you said."

"Oh, yeah. Gotta tell 'em that you love
'em."

"If he played the game, we wouldn't have
Social Services messing around all the time."

"Them sons of bitches are all alike. The
cops, the truant officers, the principal. It don't matter what the
fuck you do. They always get you anyway."

"I reckon so." Dexter's stomach was starting
to hurt. He changed the subject. "What was it like, with Tammy
Lynn?"

Riley's face stretched into a jack-o'-lantern
leer and he thrust out his bony chest. "Hey, she'll let me do
anything. All you got to do is love ‘em. I know how to reach 'em
down deep."

"Did she let you....?"

Riley twiddled his fingers in the air, then
held them to his nose and sniffed.

"What about the other stuff?" Dexter
asked.

"That's next, buddy-row. As soon as I want
it."

"Why don't you want to? I thought you said
she'd do anything."

Riley's thick eyebrows lowered, shading the
rage that glinted in his eyes. He turned and started back down the
trail toward the creek. "Ain't no damned birds left to shoot. Your
loud-assed yakking has scared them all away."

Dexter hurried after him. The edge of the sky
was red and golden. The forest was darker now, and the moist
evening air had softened the leaves under their feet. Mom would be
waking up soon to start on her second drunk of the day.

They walked in silence, Riley hunched over
with his rifle tilted toward the ground, Dexter trailing like a
puppy that had been kicked by its master. It was nearly dark when
they reached the clearing. Riley jumped over the creek and looked
back. His eyes flashed, but his face was nothing but sharp
shadows.

Dexter hurdled the creek, caving in a section
of muddy bank and nearly sliding into the water. He grabbed a root
with one hand and scrambled up on his elbows and knees, his belly
on the rim of the bank. When he looked up, Riley was pointing the
rifle at him. Dad had taught Dexter about gun safety, and the first
rule, the main rule, was to never point a loaded gun at somebody.
Even a dickwit like Riley ought to know that.

"You ever kill anybody?" Riley was wearing
his jack-o'-lantern expression again, but this time the grin was
full of jagged darkness.

"Kill anybody?" Dexter tried not to whimper.
He didn't want Riley to know how scared he was.

"Blood sacrifice."

Riley was just crazy enough to kill him, to
leave him out here leaking in the night, on the same ground where
Dexter had carved up a dozen animals. Dexter tried to think of how
Dad would handle this situation. "Quit screwing around, Riley."

"If I want to screw around, I'll do it with
Tammy Lynn."

"I didn't mean nothing when I said that."

"I can get it any time I want it."

"Sure, sure," Dexter was talking too fast,
but he couldn't stop the words. He focused on the tip of Riley’s
boot, the scuffed leather and the smear of grease. "You know how to
tell 'em. You’re the magic man."

Riley lowered the gun a little. "Damn
straight."

It was almost as if Dexter were talking to
the boot, he was close enough to kiss it. "Just gotta tell 'em that
you love 'em, right?"

Riley laughed then, and cool sweat trickled
down the back of Dexter's neck. Maybe Dexter wasn't going to die
after all, here among the bones and rotten meat of his victims. The
boot moved away and Dexter dared to look up. Riley was among the
thicket of holly and laurel now, the gun pointed away, and Dexter
scrambled to his feet.

He saw for the first time
how creepy the clearing was, with the trees spreading knotty arms
all around and the laurels crouched like big animals. The place
was
alive
, hungry,
holding its breath and waiting for the next kill.

"Tell you what," Riley said, growing taller
in the twilight, a looming force. "Come here tomorrow after school.
Be real quiet and watch from behind the bushes. I'll get her all
the way."

Dexter nodded in the dark. Then he
remembered. “But tomorrow’s Halloween.”

“
What the hell else you got
to do? Go around begging for candy with the babies?”

He couldn’t let Riley know he was scared.
“No, it’s just—”

"Better fucking be here," Riley said.

Dexter ran down the trail toward home, his
stomach fluttering. He was half scared and half excited about what
he was going to witness, what he dared not miss.

Mom was slumped over the kitchen table, a
pile of empty beer cans around her chair. An overturned bottle
leaked brown liquid into her lap. Dexter hurried to the bed before
she woke up and asked for a goodnight hug or else decided he needed
a beating for something-or-other.

The next day after school, he went straight
from the bus to the clearing. The sky was cloudy and heavy with
dampness. He heard voices as he crawled on his hands and knees
through the undergrowth. He looked through a gap in the branches.
Riley sat on the ground, talking to Tammy Lynn, who was leaning
against the big oak tree.

Tammy Lynn's blonde hair was streaked with
red dye. She already looked fourteen. Her chest stretched the
fabric of her white sweater. Freckles littered her face. She had
cheeks like a chipmunk's, puffed and sad.

Riley rubbed her knee beneath the hem of her
dress. He glanced to his left at the bushes where Dexter was
hiding. Dexter gulped. His stomach was puke-shivery.

"I love you," Riley said to Tammy Lynn.

She giggled. She wore lipstick, and her mouth
was a thin red scar across her pale face. Riley leaned forward and
kissed her.

He pulled his face away. She touched her
lower lip where her lipstick had smeared. Riley's hand snaked
farther under her dress. She clamped her legs closed.

"Don't, Riley," she whispered.

"Aw, come on, baby."

"I don't want to."

"Hey, I said I loved you. It's okay to do it
if I love you."

"I'm scared."

Riley stopped rubbing her. He spoke so low
that Dexter barely heard. "Pretend you’re a princess and I’m a
prince, and we’re in a fairy tale. Don't you love me?"

Tammy Lynn lowered her eyes. Riley cupped her
chin and tilted her face up. Her cheeks were pink from shame or
fear.

"Don't you love me?" Riley repeated, and this
time he was wearing his jack-o'-lantern face. Tammy Lynn nodded
slowly. Dexter's stomach felt as if he'd swallowed a handful of hot
worms.

"If you love me, then you owe me," Riley
said. She shook her head from side to side, her hair swaying
against her shoulders.

Riley suddenly drove his hand deeper under
her dress. Tammy Lynn gave a squeal of surprise and tried to twist
away. Riley grabbed her sweater and pulled her towards the ground.
Bits of bark clung to her back.

"No," she moaned, flailing at his hands as he
wrestled her to the ground. One of her silver-polished nails raked
across Riley's nose. He drew back his arm and slapped her. She
cried out in pain.

Dexter hadn't counted on it being like this.
He almost ran out from under the bushes to help her. But he thought
of Riley and the gun. Dexter could barely breathe, his gut
clenching like he was going to throw up, but he couldn't look
away.

Riley pinned her down with one arm and moved
between her legs. He covered her mouth and Tammy Lynn screamed into
his palm. They struggled for a few seconds more before Riley shoved
away from her. He stood and fastened his pants. Tammy Lynn was
crying.

"I told you I loved you," Riley said, as if
he were disgusted at some cheap toy that had broken. Then he looked
at the laurels and winked, but Dexter saw that his hands were
shaking. Dexter hoped they couldn't see him. The shiver in his
stomach turned into a drumroll of tiny ice punches.

Tammy Lynn was wailing now. Her dress was
bunched around her waist. Scraps of leaves stuck to her ankle
socks. One of her shoes had fallen off.

"Works like magic," Riley said, too loudly,
his voice a hoarse blend of triumph and fear. “I told you I loved
you, didn’t I?”

He kicked some loose leaves toward her and
walked down the trail. He would want Dexter to follow so he could
crow about the conquest. But Dexter's muscles were jelly. He
couldn't take his eyes away from Tammy Lynn.

She sat up, her sobs less forceful now. She
slowly pushed her dress hem down to her knees, moving like one of
those movie zombies. She stared at her fingers as if some tiny
treasure had been ripped out of her hands. Tears streamed down her
face, and a strand of blood creased one side of her chin. Her lower
lip was swollen.

She stood on her skinny legs, wobbling like a
foal. Her dress hung unevenly. She looked around the clearing with
eyes that were too wide. Dexter shrank back under the laurels,
afraid to be seen, afraid that he was supposed to help her and
couldn’t.

Blood ran down her legs, the bright red
streaks of it vivid against her skin. Drops spattered onto the
leaves between her feet. She looked down and saw the blood and made
a choking sound in her throat. She waved her hands in the air for a
moment, then ran into the woods, not down the trail but in the
direction of the road that bordered one side of the forest. She'd
forgotten her shoe.

Dexter lifted himself from the ground and
stared at the dark drops of blood. Rain began to fall, slightly
thicker than the mist. He parted the waxy laurel leaves and stepped
into the clearing.

Blood. Blood sacrifice. On Halloween, when
anything could happen. The clearing was alive again, the sky
waiting and the trees watching, the ground hungry.

Dexter felt dizzy, as if his head was packed
with soggy cotton. He knelt suddenly and vomited. When his stomach
was empty, he leaned back and let the rain run down his face. That
way, Riley wouldn't be able to tell that he had been crying.

He looked down at the shoe for a moment, then
stumbled down the trail toward home. He expected Riley to be
waiting by the porch, the sleeves rolled up on his denim jacket,
arms folded. But Riley was gone. Dexter went in the house.

"Hey, honey," Mom said, not looking up as the
screen door slammed. She was watching a rerun of "Highway To
Heaven."

"Find your rabbit?" she asked.

"No."

"Dinner will be ready soon."

"I'm not hungry. I'm going to my room."

“
You ain’t going
trick-or-treat?”

“
I don’t want
to.”

"You sick?" She glanced away from the
television and looked at him suspiciously. The smell of old beer
and the food scraps on the counter brought back Dexter's
nausea.

"No. Just got some homework," he managed to
lie through quivering lips.

"Homework, like hell. When you ever done
homework? Your clothes are dirty. What have you been up to?"

"I fell at school. You know it was
raining?"

"And me with laundry on the line," she said.
As if it were the sky's fault, and there was nothing a body could
do when the whole damned sky was against them. She looked back to
the television, took two swallows of beer, and belched. He wondered
what she would give out if any trick-or-treaters dared come down
their dangerous street and knock on the door.

On the television screen, Michael Landon was
sticking his nose into somebody else's business again. Dexter
looked at the actor's smug close-up for a moment, then tiptoed to
his room. His thoughts suffocated him in the coffin of his bed.

Maybe he should have picked up Tammy Lynn's
shoe. Then he could give it back to her, even if he couldn't give
back the other things. Like in Cinderella, sort of. But then she
would know. And that was like fairy tale love, and Dexter didn’t
ever want to love anything as long as he lived.

Anyway, Riley had a gun. He thought of Riley
pointing the gun at him, that moment in the woods when he thought
the tip of Riley’s boot would be the last thing he ever saw. The
boot, the shoe, the blood. Dexter finally fell asleep to the sound
of whatever movie Mom was using for a drinking buddy that
night.

He dreamed of Tammy Lynn. She was splayed out
beneath him in the clearing, the collar tight around her neck, the
leash wrapped around his left fist. She was naked, but her features
were formless, milky abstractions. He was holding his knife against
her cheek. Her eyes were twin beggars, pools of scream, wet horror.
He woke up sweating, his stomach shivery, his eyes moist. He’d wet
the bed again.

Rain drummed off the roof. He thought of the
blood, watered down and spreading now, soaking into the soil. Her
blood sacrifice, the price she paid for love. He didn't get back to
sleep.

He dressed just as the rain dwindled. By the
time he went outside, the sun was fighting through a smudge of
clouds. The air was as thick as syrup, and nobody stirred in the
houses along the street. The whole world had a hangover.