Skulls (16 page)

“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was an angry whisper.

“My dad kicked me out,” he told her. His stomach hardened into a knot when he saw her expression didn’t change.

“That’s your own stupid fault. What did you think was gonna happen when he came home and found you wasted?”

He didn’t know what she was talking about. He shook his head and stared at her. “What—”

“Don’t give me that shit, Jake.” She stomped her foot. “Not only are you drinking yourself into oblivion, it’s obvious you’ve got something going on with some bitch named Sharon.”

He got to his feet and waved his hands. “No, no, no.” He started to tell her who Sharon was, then realized he couldn’t. Sharon smiled at him. She pulled her shirt away to reveal her breasts. “I can’t—”

Cass waved him off. “Neither can I, Jake. Whatever is going on in that stupid head of yours is your problem now. You need to get it fixed.” She shoved him away and he stumbled to stay standing. “I’ve been waiting forever for the person I thought you were, but you clearly had me fooled. You’re just as screwed up as everyone else out here.” She wiped at her eyes and went back to the ladder.

She stopped a few rungs up and looked down at him. “I might as well date Chris for all the difference it makes.” The arrow loosed, she climbed the rest of the way to her room. She pulled the ladder up behind her. Without looking at him, she slammed the window shut.

Jacob stared up at the window. The lights went out. His stomach roiled with the taste of sadness and rage. His world flickered with gray and he staggered toward the fence. Sharon whispered she loved him.

“I love you too,” he said aloud as he opened the gate.

He staggered out into the front yard and drifted down the street. Images of axes and bloody tarps obscured his vision. He cut across the high-dollar yards and headed for the woods.

He knew of one place where he would always be welcome.

Chapter Twenty-Two

He peered over the gate and watched as Cass and Jacob argued. Their words drifted to him through the cold night air.

He saw Cass shove Jacob and climb away, up the ladder. Her last words were a more grievous blow than the gentle push. She’d gone into her room and shut the window. He saw the lights turn off as Jacob stood there in a fury. Though he doubted the boy could see her, the man spied Cass at the window. She hung back, just inside. She was hidden in the shadows as she peered out at him.

Jacob staggered from the yard, talking to himself. The gate squealing as he opened it. He waited a few moments making sure Jacob hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention. After Cass left her vigil, he followed Jacob.

He kept a safe distance behind as the boy slipped through the neighboring yards and headed off toward Sudderth. Jacob didn’t bother to look as he crossed the road. He stumbled like a drunk toward the trees on the other side.

He stayed behind him the entire way. He made little effort to conceal his presence. He was certain Jacob was too caught up in his own world to notice he was being followed. The man walked easily. He was confident he knew where Jacob was headed.

He would go to the bunker.

Jacob proved him right. He approached the covering foliage and saw Jacob slip through the thick branches to disappear inside. The sound of rustled leaves drifted out, followed by the muffled thud of the hatch hitting the ground. He waited a few moments until he heard Jacob’s tentative steps on the wooden rungs of the ladder. He could hear him muttering to himself. Once the woods went silent, he worked his way through the foliage and stared into the open bunker.

The darkness was all encompassing. He could see nothing in the blackened well of the bunker. He stood quiet until he heard a lilting sigh from inside. It was followed by a muffled thud.

His mask hid a grim smile as he climbed into the bunker. Once inside, he sealed it shut.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jacob opened his eyes as thunder rumbled above. He was cold. His head was filled with a maelstrom of morbid dreams. He stared into the dim light as a million images screamed for his attention. He saw the smooth earthen walls of the bunker and realized where he was.

Sharon smiled. Dozens of others lurked in the shadowed background of his mind. He knew them as intimately as he knew himself. His head was full of death and dreams.

Assailed by the dead, he noticed quite a few of the niches lay empty. He glanced about and spied their skulls nestled in piles around him. Their blackened sockets appeared sated.

He climbed to his feet. The dank world spun around him. He stumbled into the wall and barely managed to stay upright. His eyesight flickered under a wash of gray. Tiny drops of color emerged every once in a while.

Sharon whispered her love and he felt stronger. Still shirtless, he was caked in mud. He didn’t even notice. He only felt a cold that seemed to burrow deep inside his bones.

He said farewell to the gathering of skulls and latched onto the ladder. His hands trembled. The gentle streaks of sunlight above called to him. He sought the light. Barely able to grasp the rungs, he struggled to make it to the top. He fought with the closed trap door.

Jacob finally managed to open the hatch. He crawled from the bunker and slithered like a snake under the foliage. He moved toward the sunlight. He collapsed when he reached a glowing pool of it. It filtered through the canopy of trees above.

He soaked in the sun as shadows of the dead drifted past his vision like roiling storm clouds. When the chill eased from his body, he headed off. He stumbled down the hill toward town. His stomach growled as he walked, but he didn’t notice.

Kill me
.

Dennis’s voice echoed inside his head. Jacob laughed and went on. Dennis’s wish had already been answered. Sharon hovered before him. Her sad smile wrinkled her lips. She kept pace with him and showed Jacob her breasts. He walked with his arms stretched out before him as he reached for her. She stayed just beyond his grasp.

A splotch of color tainted the gray. He remembered walking toward Cass the same way during their game of
Zombie
. The memory didn’t last long. Terrance’s mewling scream returned the world to its lifeless shade. Katie’s tears washed the memory away.

Jacob continued on. He battered his way through the clustered trees. Without any conscious thought to his direction, he lost himself in the visions. After a while, he found himself in the Downs.

He was dirty and disheveled. There was mud caked across his bare torso as he staggered across the main thoroughfare. Horns screamed and tires squealed. Drivers slammed on their brakes to avoid hitting him. He didn’t care.

Curses were hurled from a dozen car windows as he staggered down the sidewalk, unaware. The shops open for business, the sidewalks were busy. The gathered tourists practically leapt aside to avoid him. They pressed against the storefront windows as he walked by. He muttered and laughed. A perverse smile was smeared across his lips. They wanted nothing to do with him.

He felt a rough hand shaking him as he neared the Wal-Mart. It drew him a little out of the gray. He stopped and stared at the faces that loomed before him.

“Dude, Cass was right. He is seriously flamed out.”

Jacob looked at who’d spoken. A deep memory grasped at recognition. He pulled a name from his mind after a moment. Glenn. It meant little.

His eyes shifted to the other two. He remembered their names in turn, attaching them to their faces.

“No doubt, man,” Chris replied, waving his hand before Jacob’s face.

“He’s gone frickin’ crazy.” Dee shook her head. Her eyes were wide.

Jacob squinted at them until the gray retreated further. “Hey,” he said. The word was little more than a crackled whisper.

“You all right?” Dee asked as she found a safe spot to stand behind Chris.

Jacob nodded. He didn’t even look at her. “Yeah.”

I’m yours, now and forever.

“Yeah,” he repeated with more energy and started to walk on.

Chris grabbed his arm. “Hey, dude.” He snapped his fingers. “Cass is really pissed at you.”

“She’s also worried,” Dee added, earning her a nasty glare from Chris.

“Yeah. She thinks you might have had something to do with Jenks,” Glenn told him. He moved around to get in front of Jacob.

The name reverberated inside Jacob’s head, but he didn’t know where he knew it from. He stood there silently, trying to remember. Glenn opened his eye wide and gave him a funny look.

“You know, Old Man Jenks, the psycho killer up on the hill.” Glenn pointed towards Jenks’s property. He turned Jacob’s head to follow his finger. “Someone took an axe to the old guy.”

The sentence struck home. Jacob’s eyes went wide and turned to stare at Glenn. “The old man is dead?”

Glenn glanced over at Chris, who circled his finger at his temple, reinforcing Dee’s assessment of Jacob’s mental state.

Glenn nodded. “Yeah, last night, man. Someone hacked him up real good like they really, really, really hated the old dude. The news said they couldn’t even identify the body, it was so messed up. They only knew it was him because of how big he was and those damn overalls he’s always wearing.”

The words were barely out of Glenn’s mouth before Jacob raced off down the sidewalk. Passersby were scattered left and right. He left his friends behind as he barreled across the street, nearly causing an accident. He left the drivers to bluster.

Jenks was dead
.

The thought was like a scythe that cut through the chaff of dead memories. If the old man was dead, the police would search his property and find the bunker. They’d take the skulls away. Jacob couldn’t let that happen.

He growled and ran faster. They were his now and no one was going to steal them from him. Katie shrieked her defiance. Sharon reminded him she was his forever.

The old man had given the skulls to him. Jacob wasn’t going to let his death take them away. They were his. His alone.

Determined to get to the bunker before anyone stumbled across it, he ran until he couldn’t breathe.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jacob forced his body to go on. His chest was on fire. His throat burned. Just when he thought he couldn’t go any further, he found himself at the barbed wire fence. The bunker was just on the other side.

He leaned against the fence and gasped for air. He let his eyes roam through the trees. There was no one there. He waited until he caught his breath before crossing the fence.

He did his best to stay low as he made his way to the bunker. As quiet as he could be, he crept through the sheltering foliage. How would he manage to carry all the skulls? He sighed as he thought about it, not even sure where he could take them.

Figuring he’d work it out later, he slipped under the greenery and cleared the lid of the bunker. He yanked it open and set it aside. More tired than he’d ever been, he carefully made his way down the ladder. Each rung was a trial he nearly failed. He clung to the ladder at the bottom. His hands ached from the effort.

The ethereal voices of the skulls called to him. Their presence was a soothing balm against his pains. He reveled in it.

Then he heard another voice.

“Welcome back, Jacob. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Jacob froze when he heard the muffled words. His hands were locked on the ladder. He glanced upward. The square of light seemed so far away. His legs trembled and threatened to give out. He knew he could never make it up the ladder in time to escape.

The browns of the earthen bunker were clear in his eyes as he turned to meet his fate. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw what awaited him.

Set upon a chair before the altar of skulls, sat Cass. She was bound and gagged. Her brown eyes screamed at him over the stripe of duct tape that held her mouth shut. His eyes drifted downward and his face flushed. She was naked. The image registered in slow motion. He pulled his gaze away in a rush. It landed on the black mask of the killer who stood beside her.

The man just watched as he stumbled back against the ladder. Jacob wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real. Was it a figment of the dead’s imagination, filtered through his eyes?

The giant of a man was covered from head to toe in black. The only hint of color lay in the figure eight of the mask. It revealed his dark eyes and the light skin around them. The leather apron hung stiff across his barrel torso. It draped all the way down to his leather boots. In his gloved hand, he held the axe Jacob had seen so many times before. Its sharpened edge was pale in the dim light.

“I-I thought you we-were dead,” Jacob stammered.

“Are we ever truly alive?” the man asked in response. His free hand gently stroked Cass’s hair.

Trapped in the bunker, Jacob felt the call of the skulls. No matter what happened here, he knew there was safety in their eyes. He saw his world graying as he listened to their ethereal peals. Sharon’s face settled over Cass’s, blurring the two into one. In the background, Terrance pleaded to live while Katie screamed her last.

“Did you like your gift?” the man asked. A smile squirmed beneath the mask.