Helens-of-Troy (16 page)

“Story of my life,” Ryan said. “I guess
we’re looking for a ruby slipper sticking out of a rock pile. That
ought to narrow it down from whoever else we find here.”

“You really can’t help it, can you?”
Ellie asked sarcastically, her stomach beginning to churn at the
thought of what they might really find.

“Easy, Goth-Chic. I’m just playing the
odds. The more we talk about it, the less likely it is to
happen.”

“Mr. Tough-Guy-Folding,” Tom said under
his breath.

“I’m not folding. That’s not part of my
game plan.”

“Game plan?”

“I’ve been running possible plays over
in my head. If this were a ball game, I would see the opponent
coming at me. I’d have to make a split second decision how to get
by him. And if that didn’t pan out, I’d measure the amount of pain
I’d have to take when he hit me, and get ready to suck it up. Right
now, I don’t know if there’s some maniacal serial killer lurking
behind that porta-shitter up ahead, waiting to kill us. If there
is, I don’t know how much he weighs. So the pain is questionable. I
do know it’s about a hundred yards away. I can run that in 15
seconds. How about you guys?”

Tom and Ellie looked at each other and
shrugged.

“I’m a goner,” Tom admitted.

“This is why you need me, in case there
was ever any doubt,” Ryan told them.

“We should have brought shovels,” Ellie
said, looking around the yard. There were piles of stones ranging
from pebbles to boulders all around them.

“Negative, Goth-Chic,” Ryan continued.
“Again you need me. Here’s what we do. We take a look around and
apply the rule of bird shit.”

“The rule of bird shit?” She glanced at
Tom for a clue.

“Don’t look at me,” Tom replied. “I
don’t know where’s he’s going with this.”

“Listen and try to keep up. As you can
see, all the rocks in here are covered in bird shit. If anyone had
come in here and dug an area up, say to bury something, they would
have had to disturb the rocks. Clean rocks equal dead body. Bird
shit equals we can go home.”

“That actually makes sense,” Ellie
admitted.

“Okay,” Tom said, “but what if he just
dumped the body and ran?”

“If he didn’t bury her and she’s just
lying there, she’ll reek,” Ryan offered. I know it’s cold but it
even if she froze solid last night, this winter sun would be giving
her a little defrost factor. Thawing rotten meat still
stinks.”

“Are you trying to make me barf?” Ellie
asked. “Maybe we’d be better off keeping our opinions to
ourselves.”

The three teenagers combed the dusty
yard for almost an hour before giving up. In the end, the only sign
of death they had found was what appeared to be the remains of a
large bird.

“Well, that was useless. We found
squat,” Ryan summed up. “Let’s head back, give them the good news
and then grab some grub at the Topaz. I could murder a
burger.”

“I’m kind of hungry myself,” Ellie
admitted. “Now that I’ve got my appetite back.”

“What do you think really happened to
her?” Tom asked, as they slipped back out through the hole in the
fence.

“Some perv. It happens all the time,”
Ryan said. “I mean, what else could it be? No kid strays far from
home on Halloween. It goes against the ritual. Stan was right about
that.”

“What do you mean?” Tom
asked.

“It’s a total freak show out on the
streets. Kids don’t want to put up with all that bullshit. The
objective is to get the candy and go home.”

“Your theory is sound,” Tom agreed.
“Greed over gore.”

Ellie hesitated. “Okay listen, don't
think I'm weird or anything, I know this is going to sound really
strange. I had a dream about her the other night. That’s why I
asked you guys about the bridge. In my dream, I saw this old wooden
one over a small brook, no pun intended. It was one of those
covered ones like you’d see on the cover of an old Western
novel.”

“You had a dream about Brooke? That’s
weird. You don't even know her,” Tom said.

“You should be dreaming about what I
look like naked in the shower,” Ryan teased.

Ellie gave Ryan a pained
look.

“Or not,” he offered.

“I said the dream was strange, not
totally out of the question,” Ellie snapped back. She turned to
Tom, hoping for a sympathetic ear. “I saw her. Out there
somewhere.” She paused for a moment. “I think there was some sort
of old school or something off in the distance. It wasn’t in town.
It was out in the country somewhere. At first I thought it might be
around here, but nothing looks familiar.”

Tom stared at her. He could see the
aura back around her, turning a purple shade as she told her story.
It turned deeper as she became more agitated and lightened up when
she was collecting her thoughts. It mesmerized him. He wanted to
ask Ryan if he saw it as well, but then again, he didn’t want Ryan
thinking he had totally lost it over her. Maybe he and Ellie were
connecting in a way Ryan could never understand. He secretly hoped
they were.

“I saw her wearing that costume even
before the cops had the picture of her,” Ellie informed them. “She
was calling my name, asking me to find her and then poof, they were
gone.”

“Poof?” Ryan laughed, and then howled
like a wolf to add a bit of drama to the tale. “Oh, Goth-Chic. Save
me. I don't want to die,” he teased in a falsetto voice. “POOF me
already.”

Ellie’s face grew grim. She was tiring
of Ryan’s wolf impersonations. They reminded her of the wild dog
she met in front of her grandmother’s house. “That's not funny. I’m
serious, Ryan.”

“You said ‘they’,” Tom pointed
out.

Ellie nodded her head. “There was this
kid ... well not a kid exactly ... some guy about our age. He was
really, really, pale, and he had these fangs.”

Ryan laughed even harder. “Are you
trying to tell us he was like a vampire or something? Goth-Chic,
what have you been smokin'?”

Tom hit one side of Ryan, hoping he
would lighten up. Ellie hit the other side of him, hoping he would
shut-up.

“Damn it. Watch the shoulder, people.”
Ryan cried, rubbing it.

“I’ll give you something to howl
about,” Ellie promised.

“Ignore him, Ellie. He's just being an
ass.” Tom tried to put his arm around Ellie in a feeble attempt to
calm her down. He felt a static shock as he touched her, and
immediately pulled back. “Ow! Man, the air is dry
today.”

Ryan had heard the snap. “Stop
shuffling your feet, dude.”

Tom looked down. “It shouldn’t have
happened. I’m wearing rubbers.”

The boys looked at each other and
laughed.

“One will do, dude,” Ryan
snickered.

Ellie groaned. While under different
circumstances Tom’s attempted touch might have made her warm and
fuzzy, i.e., before she met Jacey, it certainly didn’t now. It had
been a stressful morning, and she knew they were being juvenile to
blow off steam, but they weren’t taking her seriously and it was
really starting to annoy her.

“
Please,” Ellie pleaded with
them. “You guys are the only friends I have here. I know this
sounds crazy, but I swear I’m not making it up. There really was a
vampire, or someone who looked like a vampire, in my dream. That’s
all I’m saying.”

“Okay. I really was being an ass.” Ryan
admitted. “Goth-Chic, there are no such things as vampires. Not in
Troy. Reality check time. You'd have to have to be living in a town
with blood pulsing through its veins to attract them. You’re not.
This ain’t New York, New York.” He posed for her, snapping his
fingers as he began to croon “We go to sleep in a city, that
doesn't wake up.”

Tom laughed. “Dude, you’ve do have the
pipes.”

“Fine. Forget it. I knew I shouldn't
have told you. I knew you wouldn't understand.” She looked at the
two of them and wondered why she had even attempted to tell them
her story in the first place. “Thanks for your support,” she added
sarcastically. “I’m out of here.”

“You don’t know where out of here is,”
Ryan laughed.

Ellie turned and glared at him. “I have
the map, Brainchild. That is why I DON’T NEED YOU. I can find my
own way back.” Her pace quickened as she headed back down the
road.

Tom and Ryan looked at each
other.

“What do you make of that?” Tom
asked.

“She's a chic,” Ryan shrugged. “I don't
try to understand them.”

“No, I mean the dream thing. Do you
think she's for real?” He noticed that the aura around Ellie had
disappeared.

They started to follow her, keeping
their distance.

“You know I want to love them all, and
it goes against every throb in my cajones to have to say this, but
dude, some of them are just whacko,” Ryan said. “If you need one
for whacko-sex, fine. But I have Tara for that.”

“Ellie might be wacko, the jury’s still
out...but maybe we should pretend to believe her and see how far it
gets us.”

“You mean, you. How far it gets you.
Leave me out of your little love-scapade. I’ll be the dude who
comes back to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“Never underestimate the emotions of a
grateful family.”

“It’ll never happen. This fantasy thing
you have with the LaRose women.”

“Maybe. But while we’re referencing
images on the weird radar, check this out. I think I know the
bridge Goth was talking about. It sounded like the one out on
county road three. The one over Stillman’s Creek. There’s that old
abandoned Amish schoolhouse out past the pasture. I took Alison
Fuller there once.”

“Get out!” Tom questioned. “Alison
Fuller is way out of your league.”

“Okay. I tried to take Alison Fuller
there once. She spent the night asking me to hook her up with
somebody else.”

“What did you want to go there for?
That’s by Tara’s place.”

“Moonlight. Water. Isolation.
Stillman’s Creek is the perfect make-out spot. You have to admit it
sounds like the place she described. Maybe Goth-Chic's onto
something.”

Tom stopped in the middle of the
street. “Vampires, dude?”

“I'm just sayin'... if you haven't
lived in Troy all your life, there's no way you'd know about that
bridge. You've got to hike around through Wildman’s property to get
to it since they blocked off the old highway road, but it’s still
there. Let's do it, man. Let's go and check it out. Maybe we’ll
knock down Wildman's mailbox while we're at it.”

“I think you're more whacked than Ellie
is. What's your beef with Wildman, anyway? If you’re going to marry
his daughter some day, you’ve got to bury the hatchet.”

Ryan faced Tom and raised his fist.
“Ugh. I am not going to marry Tara Wildman. I’m not going to marry
anybody,” he said seriously. “I am going to my grave a single dude.
But since you asked, my current beef with Wildman is simple. It’s
about this missing kid. He told half the town that he thinks I did
it.”

“Let it go, dude,” Tom demanded,
surprised that Ryan had threatened him. “I was just joking
around.”

The “zone” look that Ryan had shown
Helena yesterday morning had now reappeared on his face as his
attempts to contain his inner rage failed.

“Yeah? Well, Wildman
wasn’t.”

CHAPTER NINE

Ryan had just turned the corner onto
Main Street when he noticed Tara coming out of the Scissors Salon.
She was strolling towards the Topaz listening to her iPod with her
headphones, and didn’t hear the roar of the Toyota’s
engine.

Ryan reviewed his options. This might
be his chance to kill two birds with one stone. First of all, if
Tara felt like hanging out with him, he’d have a reason to go out
to Stillman’s Creek without saying a word about any vampire
hunting. The less said about that, the better. Second, he might
even get lucky.

He pulled the Toyota into the vacant
parking space just before the restaurant.

He leaned on the horn to get her
attention. “Tara, do you want a ride somewhere?” he
asked.

Tara turned towards the noise,
revealing the results of her newly shorn hair. Seeing Ryan, she
smiled and walked back towards his car.

“You got your hair cut again,” he
commented, trying to hide the disappointment in his
voice.

“Do you like it?” Tara asked hopefully.
The hairdresser had cut it shorter than she had wanted, but had
definitely delivered on the punk look she was after.

“At least you left your bangs alone,”
he shrugged, secretly wondering what army barber reject they had
recently hired at Scissors. To him, her hair looked like it had
been buzzed.

“I guess that’s a no,” Tara
pouted.

“Give me a break, Tara. I’m just a long
hair fan,” Ryan tried to explain.