Blood Will Out Read online

  She spotted a black electrical cord stapled to the wall. It could be a phone line. Quickly she followed its path, trying not to feel as if she were chasing bait.

  It took courage she didn’t even know she had to creep through the doorway into the dimly lit adjoining room, but she ordered her feet to move as her eyes skittered around, checking out every dark cranny for an attacker. There was little furniture: a steamer trunk, the heavy lid open to reveal a heap of dark clothes—navy-blue sweaters and camouflage pants, all looking as if they belonged in the bins at an army surplus store. A heavy peacoat, furry with mildew, hung on a hook. It wasn’t a regular clothing hook; it was curved with a wicked point on the end, like something from a butcher’s shop.

  A picture of blue-eyed Jesus and his exposed bleeding heart hung on the wall. Beyond, a bed covered with blankets, and a bare-bulb lamp propped on an overturned milk crate. The shadows cast by the light animated the darkest corners and made her heart leap in terror.

  Keep moving, stay alert. There, the cord.

  She tiptoed across the room. Rough wood planks squeaked underfoot and the sound seemed deafening. The black cord ended in a frayed clump. She stifled a sob. No landline then. And where the hell was Stroud? She pictured him bound and gagged, helpless, in a closet maybe?

  She glanced at the bed and froze, sealing her mouth with her hand in an attempt to cut off the rising scream. There was someone there, beneath the piled blankets. A patchwork quilt with a design of red, yellow and orange leaves was tucked in tight, but one socked foot protruded. Sourmash?

  The seconds seemed to pass with agonizing slowness as she remained paralyzed in terror, the air molecular in her ears. She slid her foot forward. The figure under the covers didn’t move.

  She raised the stick in her fist, ready to strike if she had to, and stretched her other hand out, willing herself to touch the edge of the brightly colored quilt and twitch it aside. Six inches, two, her fingers hovered just short. She swallowed hard, her upper body half-turned in the direction of the front room, her weight on her toes, ready to run.

  Steeling her nerves, she gripped the edge of the quilt and pulled gently on it. Slowly the material slipped aside. Her breath left her throat in a gasp.

  A young face, dimpled. Mouth slackened. Eyes closed. “Stroud,” she croaked, dropping the stick from her nerveless hand.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I only looked back once when I reached the crest of the hill. The glow on the horizon resembled an early sunset but I knew it was the house fully alight. A few yards farther on, the farm road dropped into the valley and was swallowed by trees. The nearest neighbors were almost five miles away, hidden by another rise. Only a few wisps of smoke scudded across the darkening sky, and carried with them the inconspicuous smell of burning. People burn everything out here; no one would pay it any mind. It’s country folks’ way of cleaning up after themselves.

  I arranged them in their beds up in the attic under the pitched roof and moved my own little bed from the curtained hallway alcove to the far corner of the room. I pushed them all close together, as if we were a happy family. My bed would remain empty, of course, but I laid my pajamas out neatly anyway. I took some time to fold their hands in their laps, place Ma’s Bible nearby, even though I knew no one would ever see this tableau. I wanted to add it to my sketchbook later, so the appearance of it before I struck the matches was important.

  There was little blood. I was proud of that.

  I struck Pa with a blow to the back of the head while he was crouched over mending the chicken wire that went round the henhouse. He squawked once and toppled like a tree. I used the splitting maul. It’s a long-handled steel ax with one side of the head resembling a sledgehammer. I left him where he fell.

  Ma was in the kitchen doing the breakfast dishes when I crept up behind her. I’d taken some time to consider the knife and how good it would feel to hold it against her throat, but it was too risky, so my foster mother got the hammer too. I put all my weight into it, in the way Pa had shown me when we split firewood. It made a hollow sound when it landed, but my aim was good and it didn’t get stuck as it sometimes did when I hit against the grain. She swayed and turned to look at me. Her hands were lathered with dish soap and her mouth made an O. I’d never seen that expression on her face before. It smoothed out all her hard edges.

  “Ma’am,” I said.

  Her eyes opened very wide and time seemed to stand still, and then she just crumpled, dropping the plate she was holding. It was one of her best plates and it shattered on the wood floor. I didn’t bother to clean it up.

  Dragging them up the stairs was hard even with the ropes I looped around their upper bodies. I made a simple pulley using the doorknob and stair rail as anchors for leverage and I heaved with a steady rhythm, as if I were competing in a tug-of-war, counting the thwacks their heels made against the steps. I knew from the piglets what dead weight was like, but determination gave me strength.

  For seven hours I contained the flames to the small area where they lay, dousing the surrounding boards with water so that the fire would not spread. I filled every container and bucket I could find, hauled them and lined them up in rows. I kept the window closed even though it was always hot under the eaves and the fire made it close to unbearable. I was trying to drive the temperature up as high as possible, turn the room into an oven.

  I had to cover my face with a wet towel when their skin began to fry. They made the same popping sounds as green, sap-heavy wood makes. The smell reminded me of a pig roast. I had wondered if their skulls might explode when their brains sizzled but they did not.

  Pa made those beds out of red maple and pine. Ma sewed the dense mattresses out of straw and striped cotton tick. I always hated how lumpy they were, the sharp ends of the straw sticking into my body, as if restful sleep were a sin. They went up like they’d been doused in gasoline. I was half-afraid the roof would catch before I had finished what I needed to do, but Pa had used hard hickory for the beams.

  The beds collapsed in a flurry of embers and sparks, and still I waited. It took the full seven hours. I needed this to look like an accident. “A stray spark flew from the fireplace.” “The old place went up like a torch.” “Timbers half-rotten. They didn’t stand a chance.” “That poor, poor child.” That’s what I wanted people to say.

  I took the pliers from my pocket. I’d chosen my top back molar. I got a good grip and wrenched and it came free with a ripping sound and a surprising gush of blood. I spat on the floor and tossed the tooth into the flames. I’d never been to the dentist in my life, but a child’s tooth was easily identified.

  Once the skeletons were exposed and nothing remained but a veneer of greasy blackened flesh, I broke the bones apart with the maul, scattering them around. Bone gets brittle and continues to burn if it’s agitated, leaving nothing but shards. This would happen naturally, but I thought it safest to hurry the process along.

  After I’d hauled the empty buckets back downstairs and stored them in the shed, I set fire to the woodpile that was braced against the outer wall of the house. I’d stacked it myself and the wood was well seasoned. It caught quickly, the pillar of flame crisping my arms and driving me backward. From there, the fire spread in all directions like some golden tornado, sweeping up everything in its path, leaping onto the old shingled roof. The walls must have been insulated with old newspapers or horsehair. I threw the splitting maul into the inferno so there wouldn’t be any sign of wrongdoing. I watched until I was sure there was no stopping it, and then I gathered up my pack, heavy with the jars of pickled hearts I could not abandon, and I walked away.

  I’m a couple of weeks shy of my fourteenth birthday and if everything has gone to plan, I have ceased to exist. A few teeth will be found among the bone remnants, but no way to tell if there were three bodies or only two.

  I pick a town at random. My eyes closed, finger poised above the map of the northeast.

  Albany. It sounds like a place I could
lose myself in. For a while.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was as if he were asleep.

  “Stroud? Stroud?” Ari murmured. He didn’t stir. Is he breathing?

  She wasn’t sure, but for a moment she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. For such a long time she had dreamed of it and now….In the dim light, his skin looked so pale, like marble. There wasn’t a mark on him. She placed a trembling hand on his cheek. It was cool. She pressed a finger against the vein on his neck, searching for a pulse that she couldn’t find.

  A tiny moan escaped her lips. Her thoughts tumbled like leaves in a windstorm as fright overwhelmed her, punching the air from her lungs. Stroud is dead. The fight-or-flight instinct took over and she ran to the front door.

  She wrenched at the handle. She knew it was not locked but still she wrestled with it for precious moments, sobbing, blinded by tears. Outside, it was a little lighter now, and she could see the rough semicircular track gouged and scarred by heavy tires, the ground hard as iron from the dry summer. She followed, praying it led to somewhere safe. Fifty yards farther along, concealed in the shadow of some trees, was Sourmash’s camo-painted truck. Ari lurched into a deep tire rut, flung both hands out, failed to catch her balance. She remained on her stomach, staring at the back window of the truck. Empty. Her eyes traveled over to the cluster of trees, the hilly terrain beyond it. He must be out there somewhere. She struggled to think clearly.

  The muddy track seemed to widen just ahead. Surely that was more than just a deer path. It must lead to a main road. Where else would it go? She slowly stood up, completely disorientated. Maybe it just led further into the wilderness? Exactly how far out was she? She tried to visualize what the outlying areas around Dempsey Hollow looked like. Farmland, woods, strip malls and box stores on the outreaches. The nearest town, Ross, was about twenty miles away; Wallace, twenty-five in the opposite direction. They were both picturesque, historic, much like Dempsey Hollow. Quiet, sleepy, safe places. At least, they used to be.

  The sun would rise at her back, so that was east. She was currently facing west, and that meant that the track, which headed roughly north, could, in fact, join up with the North West Road, which traveled through her hometown, linking all the neighboring towns like beads on a string.

  She watched the truck. Nothing stirred. No noise but the wind whuffing over the hills, the strident music of bugs that echoed the tautness of her nerves.

  She inched forward, half-crouched, limbs heavy, her heart in her mouth. The bumpers and wheel wells were caked with dried mud. She rose up, feeling her thigh muscles protest. There was no deer in the back this time. Just a bunch of filthy sacking and a ton of empty beer bottles. She circled the truck and peeked in through the partially open passenger window. A smell like firecrackers hung in the air.

  It was still dark, the window glass fouled with more mud, but she caught a glimmer of something metallic.

  The keys dangled from the ignition. Ari’s chest heaved. She could drive out of here. Checking once more over her shoulder, she ran around to the driver’s side and carefully opened the door. The overhead light came on.

  At first she thought it was just a huge pile of dirty clothes heaped on the seat. But then she saw a hand, fingers curled. She stared at it, the swollen knuckles, the grime jammed beneath each yellow nail, furred wrists poking from his khaki jacket. Her eyes traveled up to the ruin above his neck. And the gun propped up against the steering wheel, pointed at his face. Or where his face had been. Suicide? She remembered the boom she’d heard earlier. It had been a gunshot, not thunder. She could see something obscenely red, like a mound of hamburger meat, and the waxy curve of one ear.

  Once she’d noticed these things, her eyes flicked back and forth to each in rapid succession. The blood spattered across the vinyl of the passenger side, the white shards of bone, a mess of glistening pink and gray, which had hit the right side of the windshield and dripped down onto the dashboard. His brains, she thought, but outside his skull. Everything forcefully rearranged and displayed. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, suppressing a hysterical giggle. One eyeball hung loose against his ruddy cheek and she was mesmerized by the sheer wrongness of it. She took a deep breath, gagging on the sour, meaty smell of the air, unable to turn away or shut her eyes and wanting more than anything to do both those things. The rest of his face was mercifully hidden by his broad-brimmed baseball cap, but it didn’t matter. Her imagination did the work for her. Something foul spilled across her tongue and finally she did retreat, swallowing convulsively, her fingers gripping the side mirror as the ground seemed to tilt under her shoes. Somehow she managed not to vomit. She tottered a few steps away and sank to the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees and hugging them close to her chest, feeling cold and hot all at the same time.

  She tried to process.

  What happened here? Did Sourmash kill Stroud in some drunken spree gone wrong and then blow his own head off? Her stomach churned. She clenched her teeth and fisted her hands, breathing shallowly through her mouth. Remorse? It was sickening but it made sense.

  The hairs on her body were still standing up. She craned her neck and peered through the open car door.

  Sourmash hadn’t moved. He’s definitely dead, right? She shook herself. Yes, of course. This wasn’t a horror movie, even though it felt like one. No one was coming back from a head wound like that.

  Unless they were a zombie. Her laugh, watery and nervous, definitely sounded on the verge of hysteria. If she gave in to it, she’d never stop.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Cruelty is everywhere. Endings. Waste. Our bodies are so temporary. Our lives, short threads easily snipped off. Death comes like a thief in the night and steals us away. But not me. I made a pact with Death a long time ago.

  One morning in winter, I opened the grain barrel. It was bitter cold and still dark. My boots crunched through hard-frozen mud in the trail I’d made from the house to the barn. Bats swooped in the gray sky searching for furtive insects, their night extended, daylight held prisoner for a couple of extra hours. Ma had sent me for some bran to stir into the oatmeal we ate every morning during the winter months. She never salted it. It lay like soupy plaster in the bowl and set like concrete in my belly but it kept me full.

  I pried the lid off and there on the bottom was a huge brown rat, its pink tail coiled behind its fat haunches like a snake, its belly bloated. I recoiled in disgust, and as I did, it came for me, narrow teeth bared. It must have been very desperate to attack a human but attack it did. I ducked as it scrabbled to the top of the barrel, balanced there for a moment and then launched itself at my face. I felt the pinch of its claws against my neck, the warm-blooded weight of it, and then a lucky, wild swipe dislodged it onto the floor. In an instant all the barn cats were upon it—a frenzied swarm of orange, black, brown and white fur, a furious hissing like steam escaping from a kettle. Slowly the hisses subsided to meows and wet, smacking sounds. And afterward nothing remained of the rodent but its wormy tail, which was carried around triumphantly by one of the kittens for the rest of the day.

  You might think that I am like one of those cats. You would be right. I am the hunter in the shadows. But I am also the rat—cornered, and forced to play my hand too early.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A surge of determination shocked the hell out of her. She stood up, looked back at the cabin. The dark windows seemed to stare back at her. No need to go back in there, though she felt weird and sad about leaving Stroud alone. He’s dead too. You can’t help him, her brain whispered, and she shook her head violently, trying to clear it. She needed a plan. Her eyes fixed on the keys dangling from the ignition. Could she…? She’d have to move Sourmash. He was a big man: two-fifty, maybe even three hundred pounds. She’d heard of mothers who lifted cars off their trapped children. Somehow they found the strength, and so would she. Should she just haul him out and leave him in the dirt? It didn’t feel right. She thought of Stroud tucked up in bed
. And the truck was the scene of a crime or something. Desperation made the decision for her. She had to get out of here. The seat was bench-style; she could just move him over to the passenger side.

  She could feel the cold of him, even through his heavy hunting coat, though he couldn’t have been dead for very long. He was heavy and the angle was awkward. She withdrew her hands, wincing as his limbs fell against the seat with a dull thud, went around to the other side of the truck and opened the door. Pulling on his upper torso was easier than pushing him up and over the gear stick. Shit. She registered that it was a standard. She understood the mechanics of how to drive a manual shift but she’d only done it once, at the lake with her cousins in their beat-up Cabriolet. How hard can it be? If she had to, she’d just pop it into first and drive. But before that she had to make room. She found an oil-stiff rag on the truck floor and threw it over Sourmash’s pulpy head. Then, steeling herself, she grabbed fistfuls of his coat and heaved. Her grasp slipped and she fell backward, landing heavily on the rocky ground. She felt something break in her back pocket and drew out Stroud’s cell phone. The glass screen was spiderwebbed. She considered tossing it but decided not to; maybe the battery was not completely dead. She stowed it in her hoodie pouch and grabbed onto Sourmash again, slipping her hands under his arms this time. He seemed to weigh a ton, but slowly he slid forward onto the passenger seat. She closed the door, went back around to the driver’s side, and yanked and shoved his legs until she’d managed to push them out of the way. Would rigor mortis stiffen his body in this uncomfortable, graceless pose, his right leg bent at an unnatural angle, his arm contorted behind his back? Even though she knew he was dead—and it was Sourmash—it still seemed…undignified that she should see him like this. Worse than if he was naked.

  Her brain was going all over the place. His brains went all over the place. She breathed hard through her nose. Don’t think about it. Focus on getting out of here. Of driving faster than you’ve ever gone before even if it is only in first and just hope that a cop will pull you over for shitty driving before you get too far.