The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (9 page)

Looking down, he saw the case of beer,
scooping it up, he grabbed a beer from the box and tossed it Johnny's way. "Head's
up!"

The can hit the ground in front
of Johnny with an exploding fizz.

"Mother-fucker!"

"Take your medicine and shut
the hell up," Jake replied.

Walking up to Drew, he sat down
beside him on the hood of the Ford, handing him a beer.

Drew replied to the beer by
handing Jake a cigarette.

Jake took the smoke, letting Drew
light it. "How you doing?"

"Better than
stud-muffin," Drew nodded his head over to Johnny.

"Yeah," Jake whispered.
"You messed him up."

Drew eyed him through bloody and
swollen eyes. "That surprise you?"

"No," Jake shrugged. "Well,
maybe the level you took it to was more than I expected."

"He deserved it."

"That goes without
saying."

They both chuckled lightly.

"So what now?" Jake
asked.

"I'm getting out of
here," Drew replied, exhaling smoke. "You can come with, but that
fucker ain't getting in my car."

"We can't just leave him out
here."

"Sure we can," Drew got
up, grabbed what was left of the case of beer and opened his car door.
"You coming?"

"Nah," Jake replied,
looking off towards town. "My house is about three miles off, if we cut
through the fields."

"If you feel like the
exercise, that's your call. You got enough beer for the haul?"

"Yeah, there's another case
back there not even open yet. How about you?" He pointed at the opened box
in Drew's hand. "There enough left in there to quench your thirst?"

Drew looked down inside the
cardboard. "Yeah, there are eight or nine left, so I'm good." He
looked back at his friend. "You sure you want to hoof it?"

"Somebody's got to look
after his sorry ass," Jake replied, looking back towards Johnny. "You
two have gotten in plenty of brawls in the past, but never this bad."

"Nope," Drew agreed as
he finished his beer.

"You guys gonna be able to
mend fences after this?"

Drew dropped the empty beer can
back into the box. "Is he ever going to be able to stop being an
asshole?"

Jake nodded his head as he looked
off, knowing his question had just been answered. "Alright, be safe on the
drive home," he turned and walked back towards the pond.

"After all the beer I've
ingested and weed I've smoked, how is that remotely possible?" Drew asked,
getting into his car.

Jake turned back, throwing up his
hands as he walked backwards. "Okay, how about good luck?"

Drew gave him a thumbs up as he
started up the old Ford. "That's more like it."

Johnny looked up towards Jake as
Drew sped off down the dirt road. "That fat fuck leaving us here?"

Jake nodded toward the North.
"We'll cut through the corn and be at my house in about an hour or
so."

"I'm in no fucking shape to
walk!"

Jake scooped up the un-open case
of beer. "I could split this with you and just leave them here then. I'd
rather carry twelve beers than twenty four anyway."

"God damn it!" Johnny
replied, slowly getting up and finishing the last of his beer. They both knew
Johnny would rather limp home than drink all by himself. "Gimme another
beer."

"You already finish that
one? Christ man, you drink like Drew."

"Half of it fizzed out on
the ground, cause you threw it at me, ya ass."

Jake shook his half empty can.
"Well, might as well start lightening the load now." He handed the
beer to Johnny, as he finished his can. "Open it up from the handle. It's
easier to carry that way."

"I know how the hell to open
it," he growled, quickly ripping open the cardboard and grabbing two
beers.

Jake took his beer, cracked it
open, and held it up for a toast. "Here's to long walks with good
friends."

"Fuck you," Johnny
replied, opening his own beer as he started walking.

Jake laughed as he followed after
him.

Drew cruised down the dirt road at an even
seventy miles per hour with his stereo cranking out a song by a band called
The
Dead Motorcade.
Their song fit Drew's mood perfectly, as it went on about
tainted love and how dying is easier than dealing with women.

He punched in the cigarette lighter and
fished out a cigarette from his pack of smokes.
"What the hell just
happened back there?"
  he thought to himself. He had felt like a bad-ass
at the time, beating Johnny down like the punk he was, but the more he thought
about it...

"Why did she stop me?" he looked at
himself in the rearview mirror. "Was it because---"

His words were stolen from him as the change
in the road suddenly demanded his attention. The road had curved off to the
left while he went straight, causing his monster Ford to dip down into the
ditch, and then back up into a field where soy beans were growing. Drew's car
dipped down as it went into the shallow ditch and then shot back up as it flew
into the beans. He could actually feel his ass lift off of the seat right
before his head slammed into the roof.

"Fuck!" he yelled, slamming on the
brakes. A broken cigarette hung from his lips as he tried to get control of his
vehicle, it would have been quite comical, if it hadn't been such a scary
situation.

The giant Ford headed straight for a gnarled,
twisted old crabapple tree that stood at the edge of the field.

"Shit!" Drew had managed to slow it
down considerably from the speed he was at when he first flew off the road.
Unfortunately, he still hit the crab tree with enough force to slam his head
into the steering wheel, as his hand smacked the headlight switch. He lost
consciousness as the car engine died and the headlights went out.

As everything went silent, the cigarette
lighter popped out, ready to do its job.

They walked side by side, drinking. Within
fifteen minutes they were walking less than one hundred yards from Drew's wrecked
car. The dark, cloudy sky masked it from their vision as they walked right by.
They discarded two crushed cans of beer like they were aluminum beacons leading
to the wreak, completely oblivious.

The demon followed after them, flowing around
the cornstalks of the first field and the soybean plants of the current field
as a gray mist. It trailed behind, weaving back and forth between the plants as
the teenagers walked down the rows of the crops. The monster wasn't sure if
anything else interesting was going to happen or not, but he had a hunch
something was right around the bend that was going to take things up a notch.
Noticing Drew's wrecked car in the distance, the creature chuckled to himself
at the other two's ignorance of their wounded buddy, well Jake's buddy at
least. That got ideas stirring in its mind dealing with the immediate future. 

Jake handed Johnny a new beer as well as
himself, as they walked past their wounded friend and on towards an old,
abandoned house with more history than both of them put together.

"Why doesn't somebody knock this fucking
relic down?" Johnny asked as they moved towards the old building, dabbing
his still bleeding nose with his T-shirt.

"Bad Mojo, supposedly," Jake
answered.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Place is cursed, you remember."

Johnny chuckled. "This is the house
where the little girl was never found, right?"

"That's a funny thing?" Jake asked.

"Well, the parents killed themselves
right after the press started slinging shit, right?"

Jake cocked his head as he looked at Johnny.
"I still don't see what's funny."

Johnny threw his hands up. "They must
have been guilty if they killed themselves, ya dumbshit."

"Spent a lot of time studying the case,
right?"

"Don't have to," Johnny took a long
drink of his beer. "That shit is OJ simple. Just because the glove don't
fit, don't mean I didn't co-mmit murder!" He laughed at his half ass
rhyme.

Jake pulled out a cigarette. "The wife
killed herself, not the husband."

"Bum a smoke," Johnny said, holding
out his hand. It wasn't a question, it was a goddamn command.

Maybe it was everything that had happened so
far that night. Maybe it was how Sarah had reacted to everything Jake had said
or done or not done that night. Maybe it was just Jake getting sick and tired
of Johnny's bullshit. Maybe it was the demon, pressing on Jake's emotions.
Whatever it was, Jake had had enough, and Johnny was the only target in sight.

"When was the last time you bought a
pack of smokes?"

Johnny actually took a step back in surprise.
"I supply the weed, man."

"That I usually give you money for, you
worthless shit!"

"What the hell is your problem?"
Johnny asked. "You got the same hair up your ass that Drew does?"

"Yeah, I do, you asshole."

Johnny looked genuinely confused now.
"You wanna screw Jenny too?"

"No, you dumb-ass! I think you deserved
to get your ass kicked for all the nasty shit you said about her."

"I was just trying to let Drew know what
kind of girl she really is."

"Bullshit!" Jake gave him a hard
shove. "What you did, didn't have anything to do with but you."

They looked at one another, sizing each other
up.

Johnny threw his can to the ground, raising
his arms up. "Go ahead, then motherfucker. I'm already limpin' like a beat
dog, this is your best shot to take me down."

"On your best day," Jake lit up his
smoke. "I'd still mop the floor with you, and you know it."

Johnny took a hard swallow. "Put your
money where your mouth is, buddy." He suppressed the urge to cough up
blood, barely.

The demon smiled from the sidelines, some
more fun shit might happen after all.

"Here's your smoke," Jake flicked
the lit cigarette at Johnny, hitting him in the chest, ambers bouncing off his
shirt like a cheap bottle rocket.

Johnny stood dead still, looking at his old
friend.

Jake reached into the case of beer, grabbing
a handful of cans and throwing them out onto the front yard of the old house.
"This is your cut of the beer that you didn't pay for." He threw out
another handful. "Drink up and have a good time all by your
lonesome."

"You're leaving me out here? Where am I
supposed to crash?"

Jake pointed at the old cursed house.
"That seems like the closest thing to a home you're ever going to find.
You might as well get comfortable now."

"Gonna leave me out here with the
wolves?"

Jake had already started to walk home, but he
turned for a brief instant. "You are a wolf." Jake's footsteps faded
away as he walked off into the darkness.

The demon seeped into the back-window of the
old house, already setting a plan into motion.

"Whatever," Johnny said, picking up
the burning cigarette and taking a deep drag. Gathering up the beers that were
left for him, he took them up to the battered, rotting porch. He looked at the
dilapidated house with a nod. "Story of my life." He wiped his bloody
nose yet again.

Silence answered him as his solo status
started to set in. "Wonder if there is a chair in there somewhere,"
he reached for the small door knob, expecting it to be locked.

The old rusty handle spun in his hand like it
was recently greased, the door creaked back about six inches before bumping
into something and stopping. A slight, musty smell blew across his face as the
old air in the house quickly escaped from its dark prison.

Johnny stood, looking at the doorknob,
wondering why he had opened the door in the first place.
"I can just
sit on the porch steps,"
the thought to himself.
"I don't need
a Goddamn chair."

His cigarette dipped down towards the ground,
hanging loosely from his lips, smoke trailing into his eyes, suddenly some
ashes joined in.

"Shit," Johnny rubbed at his eyes,
taking  a step back.

"Maybe there's a bed in there you can
crash on later,
" a
voice in his head added.

He stumbled away with the wave of his hand.
He had no intentions of going to sleep anytime soon. He had at least eight more
beers to drink.

"What's the problem, bro?"
the voice asked.
"You chicken
shit?"

Johnny answered the question by taking three
quick steps and giving the door a hard kick, breaking the top hinge, making the
door flutter like a broken butterfly wing for a moment before leaning against
the wall, like a drunk, like Johnny.

"Wendy," Johnny said in his best
Jack Nicholson voice, strolling into the old house. "I'm home."     

Taking a deep drag from his smoke, he looked
at the room from the flare of the smoldering cigarette. Nothing but an empty
room glowed in orange for a brief moment.

"Ain't nobody here but us
chickens!" he said with a giggle and then took a big gulp of his beer.

He was the only thing making any noise, but
movement suddenly caught his eye in the hallway to his left. Big, like a
person, not some damn squirrel.

"Who the fuck?" Johnny growled,
taking an involuntary step back.

Creaking wood was all that answered him,
which could mean something, or nothing.

It was one of those rare moments, where the
next few seconds would decide the totality of a person's life: embrace the fear
and run like hell, or stick out your chest and face whatever it is lurking in
the shadows.

The enigma of this particular  situation was
a coward's way was the right way. Some things aren't worth pursuing, regardless
of how brave it makes you. Expecting a drunk teenage bully with a bruised ego
to figure that out was near impossible.  

Taking the road less traveled, Johnny sealed
his fate.

"Get out here, asshole!" he stormed
into the back bedroom, running right into the missing little girl's room.
Yellow, wrinkled drawings still fluttering on the walls.

"What the hell?" he asked, looking
at the drawings of unicorns and rainbows, and stick figure portraits of a long
dead and broken family.

"I didn't kill her," a voice said
from behind Johnny.

Johnny spun around, ready to fight, but the
dark figure was sitting in the corner on the floor.

"Nor did my husband," the shadow
said. "Do you believe me?"

Johnny was quiet for a moment, unable to find
his voice as his stomach got cold. He took a deep swallow and replied.

"What the fuck do I care?"

The shadow cocked its head. "Because if
I was a killer, perhaps you would be in danger."

Johnny let out a small laugh. "Not from
the likes of you."

"Certain of that?" the shade stood
up, nearly as tall as Johnny and what he would classify as a hot older woman.

"Hell ya," Johnny took the last
drag of his smoke and flicked it at her. " If you can't protect your own
daughter, what the hell have I got to worry about?"

"You're quite the bad-ass, aren't you,
Johnny?"

"Why don't you come over here and find
out?"

I've got a better idea," the shade finally
came closer, holding up a bottle of Dead Ace Whiskey in one hand. In her other
hand a ball cap advertising farm equipment loosely fell from her fingertips.
"How about we have some fun?"  She used the neck of the bottle to
push off the straps of her summer dress, and with a sexy shifting of her hips
it fell to her ankles.

Johnny smiled.

Consciousness came back to Drew like a
night-fever: out of nowhere and not particularly wanted. He made a noise that
was a cross between a snore and a buzz-saw right before his eyes opened.

"Shiiiiit," he hummed as his head
started to hurt, looking up at the rearview mirror, he saw a smashed, bloodied
face looking back.

Finding the door handle, he pushed open the
door and fell out onto the dirt and bean plants that his beast of a car had run
over.

He laid on the ground for a while before getting
up, making sure he had no broken bones.

"Shouldn't move after a collision,"
he said out-loud. "Could have a spinal injury and not even know it."
He looked around for a moment. "Guess it's a little too late for that now."

He sat down in the front seat of the old
Ford, leaving the door open with his feet still in the dirt, the dim dome light
made about as much luminance as a firefly.

Running his fingers through his sticky,
bloody hair, he let out a loud sigh. The beer he had been drinking was now laying
on its side on the floorboard of his car.

Picking it up, he could tell there was maybe
half a swig left swirling around in the bottom of the can. He downed it and
then threw the can to the ground, crumpled.