Forever Twilight, Patrick Sean Lee [christmas read aloud txt] 📗

He had a gun and he was headin’ our way. What was we to think? He your boyfriend or somethin’?”

“Bernie says it’s dangerous out there,” the youngest-looking of the girls chirped. She and at least two of the others were innocent enough looking, but from the appearance of the old man, they wouldn’t be for much longer, if they weren’t already. The thought of what was going on in this den disgusted me. I glanced at her as she spoke, and then looked back at the man.

“Where is he?”

He slowly pointed backward over his head at the doorway across the room. “He’s fine like Celia said. Just put the gun down.”

“Yeah, right.” I waved the pistol at the frightened girls. “Get into that room. Hurry it up! You,” I said swinging the gun back at him and the girl beside him, “stay put. Keep your hands up.”

The girls scurried around them and disappeared into the room where Peter was. Which of them was Kayla, I wondered, the one who’d leapt out of the bushes as he walked by, and hit him, ‘too hard’? What kind of rat-hole existence could this be, where a disgusting old man...How long had they been in this house?

“Put your hands behind you on your heads. Get in there,” I said in a threatening tone. They slowly did as I instructed, the girl he called Celia shooting him a quick look as she turned.

A study, or what must have been before they arrived and tore it to pieces. A desk in front of the window that looked out onto the street. Cluttered with candy wrappers and Coke cans, several lying sideways, long-dried contents spilled all over the papers and trash and adult magazines around them. An aluminum ball bat leaned against the nearest corner of the desk.

The first three into the room stood huddled together in front of a black leather couch, eyes the size of full moons peering at me as I followed Bernie-Beast and Celia into the room.

“All of you sit down…you two, keep your hands behind your heads.” They immediately did as I told them. The man and Celia moved slowly forward, and then joined the others, crowding onto the sofa beside them.

“Move down, goddamit,” he said angrily to the girl who’d been on her way out the front door when I’d surprised them. She put a shoulder into the small girl beside her and shoved hard. Finally they managed to get themselves situated, and they locked their eyes on me.

I glanced around the room in search of Peter. He lay semi-conscious, stuffed on his back in a small alcove to my left, his legs stretched out, one hand on his face.

“Peter!”

He opened an eye and groaned, and then tried to sit up at the sound of my voice.

“No, no. Just stay still. I’m here. You’re safe. Lie still.”

He fell back, wincing, uttering a louder groan when his head met the hardwood floor. I couldn’t help but notice a little pool of blood that had oozed from the back of his head after he’d been dumped in here. I turned my head to the group on the sofa.

“You,” I snapped at the youngest girl, “go find a bottle of water and a clean cloth…if there is one in this filthy place. Hurry!”

She sprang from the couch and ran out of the room. I should have followed her. I didn’t, I couldn’t. If she returned with a gun…I’d do it. My first impulse was to shoot the old man—maybe his companion as well—she was probably as lacking in any civility and morals as he. I caught his eyes as the sound of Sammie’s or Jude’s or Kayla’s—or whatever name she went by—footsteps echoed back through the open door. His brow was lowered, and I knew he was sizing me up, running through his mind how he could overpower me the moment I turned to help Peter.

“Don’t even think about it,” I spat at him. He simply glared at me.

One of the younger girls asked me in a shaking voice If I intended to kill them.

“Maybe. Just sit still and be quiet. You,” I said pointing the pistol at Bernie-Beast’s companion, “ get up and move around the far side of the desk with your hands up. Get over to my friend.” I took a step backward so that I could keep an eye on both her and Bernie-Beast. She glanced up at him again, and then rose and began walking around the desk with her hands raised. She approached the alcove where Peter lay, and then stopped.

Yeah, now what?

I could feel it—she waiting for the right moment to leap the few feet separating us and knock the gun from my hand. I shot my eyes back and forth between her and the old man, and, still pointing the gun at him, slowly walked to the desk and grabbed the bat, raising it across my body. If she moved…

The girl rushed back in with a bottle of water in one hand, an old tee-towel in the other.

“Put it on the desk.”

She quickly laid the water and towel onto the desktop.

“Now, go back out and find some iodine or hydrogen peroxide or something.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll go,” Celia said, taking a step forward.

“No you won’t. Get back where you were.”

“Get the brown bottle out of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom,” Bernie-Beast ordered the young girl. “Make it snappy. Git!” He was so unlike our beloved Charles. I thought again about just shooting him, and being done with him. Maybe it was just the presence of the two youngest girls that stopped me.

To Celia hovering over Peter, “Get the water and towel, and then help Peter into a sitting position. Carefully.”

She retrieved the two items, staring coldly over at me as she did, and then walked back to where Peter lay.

“Peter, huh?” she said. “He your little bedmate?”

“Shut up and do what I told you.”

I kept the bat at the ready as she set the water and cloth aside, and then knelt down at Peter’s side. Using both hands she grabbed his shirt at the shoulders, trying to force him into a sitting position.

“I said carefully!”

“He’s fuckin’ heavy!”

“Move behind him where you can lift him instead of jerking him!”

“Bitch.”

She struggled with his weight, standing over him then, legs spread on either side of his shoulders. She grunted.

The girl running for disinfectant burst back through the doorway with a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She lurched to a stop, lifting the bottle up at me.

“Take it to her,” I said flicking the tip of the bat in Celia’s direction. “Then get back onto the sofa.”

It was all too apparent, Peter was in bad shape, how bad it was hard to tell. His eyes were slightly open, but glazed, his strong shoulders slumped forward once she’d gotten him into a sitting position. The old man had said that they didn’t need or want him any longer. I could see why. Peter would have been the only other male in the house. If I hadn’t arrived…they wouldn’t have had to murder him. He looked as if he was dying.

“Get the water, peroxide, and cloth. Clean the wound. If he cries out, you die.”

My attention had been focused on Peter and the girl for much too long. Only seconds, but more than enough time. I whipped my head back to the man, still sitting, fortunately for him, with his hands locked loosely behind his head.

“Which of you hit him?”

The girl sitting nearest him lowered her head; the others turned theirs to her.

God help her, maybe my age? Disheveled brown hair that hung to her narrow shoulders. Pleading eyes when she looked up at me. For the first time I noticed a large reddish splotch on her left cheek. The mark of a fist sometime in the recent past, most likely, and probably not from one of his other playmates.

“Yeah, she did it, the little fuck. Give me the gun if you don’t have the guts to do it. I’ll shoot her,” Bernie-Beast said mockingly, a sneer on his face. “I told her to go out an’ just knock that shotgun outta’ your boyfriend’s hands.”

“Liar!” the girl said. “Don’t shoot me, lady, please!”

“I’ll bet you did, mister. And I’ll bet you would kill her, too, right after you did me in.” I addressed them all. “Are you all insane? Living here with this monster?”

“It ain’t so bad,” the youngest replied. “We got food, and Bernie takes care of us.”

I’ll bet he does.

I wanted to vomit, but turned my head back to Celia behind Peter instead. He was awake, wincing with each daub of the towel on his head.

“Ow! Ow! That’s enough!”

She stopped rubbing and brought her eyes up to me. “He’s got a knot the size of a lemon, but the cut don’t look too deep. He’ll be okay in a little bit. Why don’t you get him on his feet and get outta’ here? We was fine till he showed up. Where you two from, anyway?”

“Peter? Look at me.” I ignored her screechy voice. Peter opened his eyes halfway again.

“Hi, kiddo,” he croaked. “What took you so long? God my head hurts.”

“I ran,” I answered with a little laugh and then a relieved smile.

“Where…are we?”

“Just a house…” I left him and raised my eyes to Celia, who had his back cradled against her chest. “Get up. Get away from him. Go back to the couch.”

She snarled at me for a few seconds, and then pushed him forward until she could rise unhindered by his body to her feet. Peter rocked backward for an instant, but finally gained his balance. She took a step. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the movement of Bernie-Beast in my distraction. Hands lowering, his body leaning forward.

I barely turned my head as I raised the hand holding the pistol pointing at him, and I pulled back on the trigger without blinking an eye.

Bernie-Beast

 

The bang! sent the seated girls into a fit of panic and screaming.

Celia, though, went absolutely nuts! She let out a screech that could have—well, should have—awakened the dead, and bolted straight toward the sofa and Bernie-Beast, knocking into me when she passed by like a rocket.

“Bernie!”

The other girls simply wanted to get away from him. They ran in a jumbled, screaming mass to the far corner of the room where they stopped, the youngest burying her head into the chest of the girl beside her, hands covering her ears, crying.

Bernie-Beast had slumped forward, off the sofa, onto the floor in a heap after the bullet struck. Now it was his turn to groan. He writhed a little, grasping his side, aagh-aahing in pain.

I’d missed his heart or lungs, which in a way saddened me. The bullet had struck him too far down and to the right of a vital organ. Tragic.

Celia landed on her knees beside his curled-up body, throwing her hands to his face. “Oh Bernie! Oh Bernie!”

He would die, I knew. Without a doctor, he would soon enough bleed to death with a lead slug inside his body. As it turned out, however, such a gift to the new world wasn’t to be. Celia shoved his hands out of the way, peering for an instant