The gravel crunched softly under our feet as we approached. I played the flashlight around the car but everything looked like it had from far away: filthy and torn and bloody. I shone the light in a wide radius around to see if there was anybody or anything weird around us, but I couldn’t make out anything that I hadn’t already expected to be there.
The rag top on the car was cut to ribbons. I couldn’t tell what tool had been used on it. Hell, it almost looked like someone had done it with their bare hands, which was just silly. It had been torn in such a way that you couldn’t see through the windows. All the torn flaps were dangling on the inside and were all you could see through the bloody smears.
There were only two ways to see inside the car. One was to stand on tiptoes and lean far over the top of the car and peek inside. I shivered at the sudden image of giant, bloody hands suddenly coming out through the hole and yanking me inside headfirst. And I could hear the splash of my blood hitting the leather seats and windows. Barrett would have a hell of a time cleaning the seats if that happened.
I decided that was maybe not the best idea.
The other option was to open the door, yank it as hard as we could and run back 20 steps and shine the flashlight through. That seemed like the puss way to do it but it certainly had its merits.
I told Barrett that’s what we were doing.
He was all for the puss/coward option. To no one’s surprise, least of all his own.
He started protesting when I told him that he was going to be the one to go open the door while I stood back with the flashlight. A hurried, whispered argument ensued where I told him he was going to do it because it was his car, he had the keys and I had the flashlight. His offer of the car for my 16 birthday present didn’t really make that big of an impression on me at that point. I told him if he didn’t do it that I was going back inside and going to bed and he could just drive home.
That pretty much put an end to it.
I had the flashlight trained on the front passenger door while he slowly leaned over as far as he could to open it. He was standing by the front tire so that nothing could come out and eat him. His hand shook in the light of the flashlight but I’ll give him credit for actually doing it. He put his hand on the door and looked at me. I nodded and he nodded back. Then he pulled the handle and yanked the door back as fast as he could and ran back to me in about a half second flat.
There was nothing in the front seat.
I muttered some choice profanity.
“Now what?” He looked at me blankly as he asked it.
I looked at him, “What do you think? Now you do the back door.”
“Crap.”
He scuttled back to the car, taking a wide path from where we were standing so that he could approach the car from the front. He closed the front door with a satisfying thud and then reached for the back door. With his hand on the release he looked at me again to make sure I was ready. I nodded and he yanked this one open as well, pulling it wide and doing the run back to me.
The hanging soft top was in the way.
“I can’t see anything, Barrett,” I said.
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
I looked at him in disgust. It was obvious he’d about reached the limits of what little courage he had. I strode forward purposefully and pulled the top out of the way so that I could see. A stench rolled out of the car at me and I jumped back so fast that I landed on my ass. The pain in my leg woke up and let it be known that it wasn’t happy about it.
“What happened, Duke? What’d you see?” Barrett called from ten feet back. He didn’t move an inch closer to help me.
I didn’t answer him. Didn’t even hear him, honestly. I got back to my knees, barely, wincing at the pain in my thigh. I had eyes only for what I’d seen in the car. I was still on my knees as I reached in, using the hand holding the flashlight to pull aside the flaps and the other to reach inside the darkness. I could hear Barrett behind me whimpering and whispering my name. It was like a small buzz at the back of my head.
My reaching hand slid across the wet seat, grasping for what I’d seen. It was getting wet and covered with the slime that was on the seat. Reaching inside that car, that maw of darkness, was like putting a hand into Hell itself. I kept expecting something to grab my hand and pull me in. I’d fight heroically but in the end it would get me and I’d disappear into the car and never be seen again. My fate would be whispered around the Acres in spooky little campfire tales.
But my hand finally touched the edge of the fabric. I went forward a little more to get a better grip on it and gave it a firm tug, saying a quick prayer of thanks to God that nothing tugged back. It slid across the seat toward me and I slowly got it out of the car, keeping it at arm’s length. I stood up and took it back to Barrett, gripping it in my fist and holding it in front of me. We looked at it silently and I dropped it to the ground. My arm from my elbow to my fingers was coated in cold blood. The smell of copper filled the air and I could veritably taste the blood in the back of my throat.
Barrett turned to the side and violently threw up on the ground. I turned my head quickly. I can’t stand puke. If I watched him do it I was likely to do it, too. It was hard enough keeping my dinner down as it was. I grabbed a towel off of mom’s clothesline and cleaned my arm off as best I could. Yes, we had a clothesline in the front yard. Stuff it.
He stopped and the smell of bile now filled the air, combining with the blood to create just an awesome scent. I shuddered, breaking out into a cold sweat.
“Do you recognize it?” He asked me.
I gave him a look of disgust. “Of course I do, dumbass. Don’t tell me you don’t?”
“No,” he shook his head vehemently. Then he sighed. “I do. How’d that get here? What’s going on, Duke?”
I didn’t answer him. Lying in its own pool of blood in front of us on the ground was a letterman’s jacket from Litchville High. The Litchville Lions logo was prominent on the sleeve and on the front was a last name written in script. Even though it was a common name there was only one of them on our football team. He was the quarterback. The jacket was soaked in blood and the white lettering looked red in the light of my flashlight, but it was still very easy to read.
The name stitched on the jacket was Smith.
5.
We sat in the small yard by the trailer staring at the jacket on the ground a few feet away from us. Neither of us could take our eyes off it for very long. We sat on the patio chairs that mom had strewn haphazardly in the yard on the edge of the road. She occasionally liked to get drunk and stumble out here and throw stuff at passing kids. The neighbors had gotten tired of calling the cops on her so most days if mom was out here everyone knew not to walk by. Except for that stupid Marsters kid.
I’d been smacked from a few of her rocks myself, so I could see why we weren’t liked in the neighborhood.
Barrett kept opening his mouth to say something but nothing ever came out. I think he was trying for something witty but the well had evidently run dry. I’d turned off the flashlight and we were sitting there in near total darkness. Which was a little unnerving. Occasionally the moon would escape the cloud cover and give us a little bit of light but that almost made the darkness worse.