Bone White Page 17

  But my excitement was premature after all. A subtle breeze swayed the tree branches and exposed a flash of dark blue aluminum hull. The $200 boat we’d restored a couple years ago was solidly in place. Right where we’d left it.

  I quickly curbed my sudden discouragement, reminding myself that this meant the boat was there for me to use. This was actually a good thing. Not as good as Garrett getting help, and it would be more than a little difficult getting through the stretch of densely wooded, hilly land between me and the vessel, but it was better than nothing. Between the beaches, the shoreline became a sheer cliff, dropping straight down at least ten or twelve feet to the water. Not the best terrain to navigate for someone in my condition. In fact, it would have been a difficult hike even if I had full use of both my legs. But, then again, I’d never been tested like this before.

  I looked back out over the lake, hoping to see a light from a boat, a dark shadow on the water, something. But, there were none. The thin mist that hovered above the gently rolling water was unbroken. Nobody was on the lake yet. It was still too early, but I knew the mindset of a fisherman. Being a Saturday morning, someone would be coming by at some point. I just hoped that whoever showed up wasn’t the man with the bolo knife.

  Fresh blood was seeping through my sock, urging me to rest my ankle again. I needed to sit down, take some weight off it, but I really didn’t want to be sitting out here in the open while I waited for a boat to come by. I was already feeling vulnerable just standing out by the water’s edge without any cover. I looked back up at the snack shop and shivered from the early morning chill against my bare skin. With its broken windows, I’d be able to hear a motor before it got too close. That would certainly give me enough time to hobble out and wave them down.

  What the hell.

  I’d give it a half hour or so, and if nobody came by, I could always get in the water and try to make my way along the rocky shoreline to the boat. It would be treacherous, but what hadn’t been over the last twelve hours or so? Even if I didn’t have the energy to paddle the boat very far, simply shoving off and floating out into the water might be better than staying here. I would definitely be out in the open and vulnerable then, though the one thing I had in my favor was the man’s weapon of choice. The bolo knife. A weapon like that required a face to face encounter in order to use it, and I was sure I could make that difficult out on the water, broken ankle or not.

  I turned and started limping up the narrow path that led up the slight hill to the snack shop. There was as much grass growing in the disappearing path leading up to the small concrete-block building as there was on the beach. With apprehension already settling into my chest, I could only imagine what kind of condition the inside of the building would be in.

  Chapter 51

  She wondered if the boy knew the woods as well as she did. Doubted it. If he did, then he would have most certainly used one of the hiding spots that she knew of, and she hadn’t found him in any of them. As it was, he could be anywhere, and that meant the questions were coming faster than she could answer them. In fact, she didn’t have any answers at all. What direction was the boy going? Was he heading toward the road? Making his way to the lake? Or was he going in another direction entirely, one that wasn’t so obvious?

  She also wondered if her father had gotten out of the church soon enough see which direction the boy had gone? Or if he was searching as blindly as she? This led to her wondering where her father had looked and where he was now. She might not be smart, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good to search where he already had. Unless the boy had backtracked, of course. He could have gotten turned around in the darkness.

  Her brow furrowed, and the familiar pain behind her left eye was making a comeback. Always did when she was thinking too hard. And tracking the boy down was proving more difficult than she had thought.

  In swift arcs, she used the hatchet to clear a path in front of her. Not because she had to. The brush wasn’t all that thick. She simply wanted to. She wanted to sever the brambles and force them to die at her feet. She marveled at how effortlessly the blade cut the small branches, like it was slicing through nothing but the early morning fog. She silently thanked her father. He always kept his tools sharp. A dull blade made the work more difficult, he always said. Keep it sharp and let the blade do the work for you. Now she understood.

  Her anger at the boy hadn’t subsided. If anything, it had only intensified over the last hour. Tromping through the wet forest had left her waterlogged, cold and miserable. So with each sapling that fell by the wayside, she imagined it was the boy falling to the soggy ground, cut down by her own hand. And the pleasure she got from it quieted the pain in her eye.

  Lately, she had been wanting more and more to help Father with his work. Fantasized about it really. The smell of his work clung to him and would hover in their room after he would leave her. After she was done being a woman for him. It would linger in her nose, and once she was sure he was gone, she would do that thing. That thing she didn’t need him for. All the while, dreaming of doing the work. The screaming. The blood. The sounds of the lawnmower blade hacking away at meat and bone. The desire always left her body trembling and her sheet damp.

  Sometimes afterwards, as she gave her heart a chance to calm itself and allowed her breathing to return to normal, she wondered what her mother would think. Would she be proud? She didn’t think so. She didn’t think her mother would be proud of her at all. Father hadn’t had the time to teach Mother the way he’d taught her. If he had, then maybe. Surely then, Mother would be proud.

  But now, the only parent she had left, the one whose praise she craved, was her father. And this was her chance to show him. Show him that not only did she have the desire, but she was capable. She could make the boy dead. Section him off. Harvest him. Do all the work that needed to be done.

  Father would be proud. At first, he would be angry with her for leaving the church, but then he would be proud of the great job she had done. She did not think he would punish her this time. Definitely not this time. He couldn’t. Not if he saw that she had been a good helper. A good pupil. Not if she caught the boy. Not if she cut him down like a sapling.

  Chapter 52

  Luckily, the door to the snack bar wasn’t locked. In fact, there was no door, just an open space where the door had once been. Cautiously, I stepped through the opening and took it all in.

  Everywhere I looked, remnants of a once thriving business lay in ruin. Short stacks of white Styrofoam cups had toppled like bowling pins across the waist-high countertops. Dingy and water-stained napkins littered the cracked linoleum floor haphazardly, yet completely, scattered by the wind blowing through the broken windows. A tall stainless steel freezer had once gleamed brightly, but it now leaned solemnly in defeat, riddled with a million tiny divots. Buckshot. Four separate pieces of a metal window frame lay next to a pane of glass on the counter that separated the front area from the back. It looked as if someone had plans to replace the window before giving up and leaving it behind.

  Unfortunately, not everything in the place was from the business side of things. A soiled pair of pink panties, ripped, as far as I could tell, lay on the floor beside the counter. I wasn’t sure what it was until I saw the purple condom wrapper crumpled beside them. It was obvious, then, what had taken place. I wasn’t sure if it had been consensual or not, but decided to ignore the possibilities. Scrunching up my nose, I walked further in, kicking aside small piles of napkins and wrinkled leaves left over from the Fall.

  Despite glass missing in many windows, a heavy, pungent odor hung in the air. Its rankness was one that had become all too familiar during the previous night: the smell of rotting flesh. I remembered it coming from the calf’s head Garrett and I had found in the creek, but was more closely associated with the church’s basement, only this was worse. More rancid. The nauseating stench was about as welcome on my already queasy stomach as a bucket of pig intestines left out in the sun. I turned the corner
and went down a short aisle toward the source.

  The girl’s restroom was a nightmarish scene. It looked like someone had performed an impromptu science experiment. A dissection gone horribly wrong. Splayed out in the middle of a sticky black puddle lay some sort of unfortunate animal. It could have been either a beaver or raccoon, but the carcass was too decayed to make out any discernible traits. The matted hair had turned black from the dried blood that covered every inch of the animal. The limbs had been cut free from the body and laid neatly beside it. There was no tail that I could see, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been a tail at one time. From the looks and smell of it, the remains had been there for quite awhile.

  Holding my nose with one hand, I reached in and pulled the door closed with the other. But not before having to kick out the wooden doorstop that seemed to have been put there with a sledgehammer. In all actuality, the pool of thick blood had spread its way to the edge of the open door and literally glued the doorstop to the floor.

  With the door finally shut, I let out the breath that I’d been holding for the last twenty seconds. The breeze coming through the windows should certainly air the place out. Although, with any luck at all, my stay at the abandoned snack shop would be a short one, and I wouldn’t have to endure the odor for long.

  Feeling fairly optimistic that I’d lost the killer somewhere in the wilderness, I found an area up front that was relatively clean and grabbed a seat on the floor. And by clean, I mean clear of panties, condoms and dead animals. I sat with my back against the wall, eyes closed, listening for the sounds of activity on the water. Actually, any sound at all. From the lake, the woods or otherwise. I rubbed my ankle, trying to massage out the pain, but it only seemed to make it worse. In the time since I’d left the trench, the pain had been coming and going, alternating between a sharp pang and a dull throb. Right now, the sharpness was back, making its presence felt, and the cold chill in the air wasn’t helping.

  I stretched my leg out on the floor and allowed my head to rest against the cool concrete wall. In the silence, my mind drifted, wandering the halls of my recent memories, before eventually getting around to Becca. It was inevitable. I’d been putting it off, trying not to think of her at all, for fear of what might come out. But, I couldn’t do it any longer. I would have welcomed any happy thoughts, warm memories of her. But at this point, there was no place left in my fragile mind that could segregate the good from the bad, so I’d tried to block them all out instead.

  Now, try as I might, I found that one image kept intruding, pushing its way to the front of the line. It was her eye staring at me as I lay on the basement floor. No matter how much I forced myself to imagine her as she was before, it was that image that kept coming back. The bone, white as snow, sticking out of her eye socket like an arrow. Pointing at me. Accusing me. Reminding me that I had failed her.

  No. It was his fault, not mine, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. For the second time since I’d left the church, tears formed in the corners of my eyes. This time I didn’t even try to stop them. This time I let them flow freely down my cheeks, as I gave in to the shudders that wracked my body.

  Chapter 53

  The sound of footsteps on the linoleum brought me out of my reverie, catching the air in my lungs. My head snapped up, but I wasn’t quick enough to make the first move. A man was standing in front of me before I even had the chance to flinch. I started to scoot away before recognizing him, or not recognizing him was more accurate. It was a man, but not the man. Some of the air escaped my lungs, and my nerves settled slightly. I quietly cursed myself for letting down my guard a second time. I was pushing my luck, and couldn’t help but wonder how long it would hold out.

  This man wasn’t nearly as large or as young as the derelict thug from the church. Dressed in rugged khakis, grey flannel shirt and brown hiking boots, this man could have easily been my grandfather. An old floppy fly-fishing hat hid what looked to be thinning white hair, while shielding the kind, hazel eyes peeking out from an impressively thick and equally white beard. He had a universally familiar air, like he was not only somebody’s grandfather, but probably a damn good one.

  I scrambled from the floor, hampered by the inability to put much weight on my ankle.

  “Whoa, it’s alright, son,” the old man said, his arms outstretched in a calming manner. “Sit. Sit.”

  But I was already up and leaning my back against the wall. With filthy hands, I started to wipe the dampness from my eyes and cheeks, an optimistic grin tugging at the corners of my mouth. I wanted like hell to think positively for once, relieved that I was no longer alone. The old guy seemed harmless enough, but more than that, he was the kind of old man anyone would feel comfortable turning to for help. But, after the night I’d just had, my senses were still somewhat alert. Maybe they always would be.

  “Name’s Henry Allen,” the old man said, letting his hands drop to his sides. He stepped closer, stopping just short by a couple feet. “Was fishing off the bank up there a ways. Saw you out on the beach, not getting along too well. Thought I’d come and see if you needed some assistance.”

  I offered a poor attempt at a smile, but just couldn’t pull it off. I was happy to see him, though I’m not sure the same could be said for the old man. The more he looked me over, the more his eyes narrowed. The warmth in his features cooled and growing concern put a crease his brow. I detected a change in the winds.

  “Now that I got ya close up, uh, I’m seeing you got more wrong with ya than a hurt leg.” He nodded toward my arm. My eyes followed his gaze, and drawing my arm in front of me, I saw what he was seeing. My shoulder and the entire right side of my shirt were covered in blood, Becca’s blood, drying to a deep burgundy. The sight of it was like a knee to the groin.

  “You in some sort of trouble, son?” The inflection in his voice told me at least some degree of skepticism had entered his thoughts. I couldn’t quite blame him, considering the condition he’d found me in. He was probably wondering if he should even be getting involved, and there was nothing I could say that would erase that doubt. At least nothing short of a lie.

  I pulled my eyes away from the blood and looked the old man straight in the eyes. I wanted to tell him everything. Let it all out. The horror. The fear. The whole fucked up story. But, I didn’t feel like we had the time. A story like the one I had to tell couldn’t be told without prompting a hundred questions. The fewer questions I had to answer, the sooner we would get out of here. And the sooner we got out of here, the better. So for the time being, I thought it best not to even mention that the blood wasn’t mine.

  “You have no idea,” I said, shaking my head. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

  “I got my truck parked up the shore a ways,” he said, gesturing toward something beyond the snack shop’s walls. “About a hundred yards or so. Pretty thick bush between here and there, but there’s an old fisherman’s trail that cuts through. If you think you can make it to the truck, I can get ya to a hospital. ‘Bout twenty minutes from here.”

  “I can make it,” I said, pushing off the wall and stepping toward him. Hell, I’d made it this far. What was another trek through the wilderness at this point? At least this time I’d have an actual destination to get to, and wouldn’t just be wandering around aimlessly. I’d have a guide and a path, just as long as our path didn’t cross the killer’s.

  Having decided I could walk on my own, Henry turned and started for the door he’d come through, not even waiting for me. There was an anxiousness in his manner now. A sense of urgency.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” I asked, using the countertop for support as I followed my new best friend like a puppy dog. Maybe his phone would be better. Or, at least his service.

  “No,” he said. “No, I don’t. The grandkids are always telling me I need to get one, on account I’m getting’ so old and spend so much time out here by myself. But, I think they’re just afraid I’m gonna up and die out here one day and nobody’d ever find me.�
�� He chuckled, but I didn’t get the joke. In fact, death was probably something I would never find humor in again.

  Henry was a couple of steps from the open doorway when he stopped abruptly, then took a startled step backward. He nearly ran into me and I stumbled back a step myself.

  “Well, hello there, friend,” Henry said, with that same grandfatherly chuckle. “You startled me.”

  Alarms went off in my head, because I knew he wasn’t talking to me. My heart rate shifted into overdrive, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I leaned to the side to see who the old man was talking to. My stomach immediately leapt into my chest.

  It was the man from the church.

  The man who had killed Becca.

  The man who had followed me all this way to kill me.

  Chapter 54

  The raincoat was too big on her, and the hood hung down almost over her eyes. She’d been fighting with it all night, but the rain had finally stopped. She slipped the jacket off and draped it over a large rock where she’d be able to find it later. It felt good to be rid of the extra weight. But now, the leftover rain clinging to the shrubs and tree limbs was slowly dampening her sweatshirt. Soon, it would be saturated. Then she would be, too. Soaked to the bone. Still, it felt better without the raincoat, and she didn’t miss it one bit. Even the hatchet that had been growing heavy in her hand felt lighter now.

  The new day had broken with still no sign of either the boy or her father. She had covered all of the woods between the church and the road, the direction she’d seen them both go. Checked all the places she would have hidden if she were on the other end of the hunt. She knew someone could only hide for so long. At some point, they would have to move on. She’d seen footprints here and there, places where it looked like someone had been, but she was no tracker and didn’t know the first thing about using the information she was gathering.