The Digger's Rest (36 page)

Simon listened silently as he knelt down tend
to Deck’s leg and looked to Mitch. “We’ve got to get him into the
stream and wash the blood off, as soon as possible,” Simon said,
with certainty in his voice, as if he knew what Mitch would do
before he did.

Mitch understood and knew they had to cover
it up. Everything inside Mitch told him that thing in the pit was
not Malcolm Farthing and nothing…nothing would let him stand by and
watch that poor sick kid swing for it.

Mitch looked back to Simon, his green cat
eyes intent with another decision he’d just made. “I…” he stressed,
“…am going to do this and it’ll make me an accessory to murder. If
we’re caught, Deck and I will both go to jail, but I didn’t pull
you out of Holy Family to sacrifice you to a jail cell. I don’t
want you to have any part in this. Do you understand me?” he said,
pointing his finger commandingly at him.

Without hesitation, Simon looked back into
Mitch’s eyes, his big blue eyes resigned and more adult than Mitch
had ever seen them before and said, “Where you go, I go. There’s no
other way for me.”

Mitch took a deep breath and let it out,
wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “Just promise
me that if we’re caught you’ll let me protect you and save
yourself.” Mitch looked to Deck, his face smeared with dirt and
tears. He understood the pact, and nodded. He would shield Simon,
too, for what Mitch would do for Mal. The pact was sealed.

“
Okay, see if there’s anything in the
tent we can scrub him with, brushes, rags, soap, anything,” Mitch
said and turned back to Deck. “Can you help me carry him?” Deck
nodded, still shaking from both the physical and emotional trauma.
He knew what was at stake and would do what he had to.

After they got Mal back to the tent, they
dressed him with whatever they had, bundling the bloody clothes
they’d found along the path to burn in the furnace at the inn.
Simon gave him his tee-shirt, Deck’s over shirt, Mitch’s socks and
khaki shorts, then carried him, still bound, to the SUV.

Chapter XV

IVY

I know a girl from a lonely street

Cold as ice cream but still as sweet

Dry your eyes, Sunday girl . . .

J’ai peur que fait, Sunday girl.

(I’m afraid of what you’ll do, Sunday
girl.)

Sunday Girl

………
As performed by Blondie

Pacing back and forth outside the kitchen
door, Mitch waited for Deck to come out, listening to the muffled
voices coming from within. “…a coma! I want to go!” he heard Ivy’s
shrill voice shout, then Deck’s.

“
I’m as worried as you are, but there’s
nothing you can do tonight. He’s quiet and not in any pain. It’s
the best we can hope for until the tests come back
tomorrow.”

Mitch’s conscience got the better of him. He
couldn’t just stand there and let Deck take it all on himself. He
pushed through the door. Deck turned, fear coming into his eyes
again. “I don’t think…” he said when he first saw Mitch come
through the door, then when he saw Mitch’s face, just shook his
head, threw up his hands and quietly went out though the back
door.

Ivy was leaning against the sink, her arms
crossed, her face flushed with confusion and concern for her
brother. When she looked up at Mitch, her eyes changed from worry
to fury as he walked up to her. “I just want to tell you how sorry
I am. I’ll do anything I can to help,” he said softly, shaking his
head and looking down, trying to avoid her icy stare.

“
Haven’t you done enough!” she shouted
at him,

“
Please, I just want to help,” he said,
ready to take whatever he had to.

“
We don’t need your help, and I don’t
want it. Why don’t you just leave?” she hissed at him. “Look what
you’ve done! You come here and destroy our lives. Now my brother is
lying in a hospital bed because of you and your little expedition.”
He looked up at her and saw the pure hatred in her eyes. “You want
to help? Get out! Go back where you came from and leave us alone!
Get out!” she shouted as she came at him. “I hate you! I hate you,”
she screamed, pounding on his chest.

Mitch grabbed her by the arms, trying to hold
her still. She was hysterical, her face almost purple with rage.
Without thinking, he pulled her close and kissed her, hard on the
mouth, then let her go.

“
You bastard!” she shrieked, drawing
back violently in disgust, black rage in her eyes, and slapped him,
hard across the face. He didn’t flinch. He just took it. She
slapped him again, this time with the full force of her body behind
it. He looked up at her, his own anger welling up uncontrollably
from a place below his waist.

Before he could stop himself his own hand was
in motion slapping her back, the full measure of his large hand
landing on her cheek, spinning her hard against the sink
behind.

She turned back to him, flying at him like
some wild thing, throwing herself against him, tearing at his hair,
clawing at his face. “I hate you! I hate you!” He grabbed her by
her wrists and closed his eyes to keep her from doing any real
damage. The next thing he knew her lips had found his, pressing
hard, her tongue forcing his mouth open and felt himself being
pushed back onto the large block kitchen table, the full weight of
her on top of him.

***

Upstairs Deck had just closed his door, not
hearing anything from downstairs. He was so worried about Malcolm
and what could come of it, he’d completely forgotten about the bite
on the leg that Malcolm had given him.

He couldn’t get that image out of his mind,
Malcolm, his Malcolm charging at him like a…like a…wolf. He would
never have believed it, still couldn’t believe it. Looking into his
brother’s eyes as he leapt was like looking into the face of
madness itself.

His leg started to throb and he looked down.
His pant leg was torn and bloody. His head started to spin. He
started to shiver and had to sit down. He barely made it to the
chair before he collapsed, the throb in his leg suddenly turning to
a shooting pain that seemed to take his leg right out from
underneath him.

When his head settled, he took off his boots;
undid his jeans and pulled them down from the waist, wriggling out
of them to avoid having to stand up again. The jagged bite mark
almost made him faint. It was larger than he would have imagined
and deeper. The dried blood around the edges had turned black and
the inside was weeping thick, yellow ooze. His sock was soaked with
it.

He reached into his bedside table and took
out a wad of handkerchiefs, dabbing it dry then tying it closed
with what was left. He had to make it to the bathroom to clean it
out.

Holding on to the table, the bed post,
the wall, whatever was sturdy in his path, Deck worked his way
around the room to his bathroom and sat himself down on the toilet
seat.
That poor sad boy.
Could
Mal have really done that to him, torn him limb from limb, into
pieces like…a butcher?
Not his
Malcolm.
Deck’s mind didn’t want to believe it, but
his heart told him it was true. He’d seen it with his own eyes,
Malcolm covered in blood not his own, and the way he’d come at him.
Mal would’ve torn his throat out if Dr. Bramson hadn’t hit him from
behind, and he was his own brother. He’d killed that boy and if it
hadn’t been for Dr. Bramson thinking as quickly as he had, he’d
have killed him, too.
Did we get it
all?
he wondered about the blood. He didn’t know. He
had to count on Dr. Bramson’s cool head and experience.

Even as he sat there, his own blood and ooze
leaking out of his leg, he couldn’t get that picture out of his
head. The way Malcolm looked, seething, ferocious, his teeth bared
like…an animal’s, and all that blood, on his face, in his hair.
Fuck, he was covered in it. He must have ripped that boy’s flesh
from his body with his own teeth.

Deck’s vision began to narrow, he was going
gray. He grabbed for the sink ledge to hold himself up. With what
little strength he had left he hoisted himself up to the sink and
vomited. His head stopped spinning, but then his leg ached, burning
like fire.

He opened the medicine cabinet over the sink
and grabbed what he could; an antiseptic, iodine, gauze and tape
before letting his weight take him back down to sit on the toilet.
He went to take off his sock. It was already stuck to his foot with
the drainage from the wound.

Gritting his teeth, he gave it a pull,
wanting to cry out loud but managed to keep it to a low whimper. He
wrapped his foot in a towel from the bar beside the tub and poured
the antiseptic over it. The foam it released sent up a cloud of gas
into his face that made him want to vomit again, thick with the
smell of infection.

How can that be? It hasn’t
been more than a few hours.
He held back his gag
reflex until the feeling passed, then poured the iodine. It stung
him so bad he was sure he’d faint, leaning his head on the sink
ledge until it passed. Then with what little energy he had left, he
covered the gaping wound with the gauze and used the tape to pull
it closed, reinforcing it with strap after strap of tape. It took
him a while to recover, but when he did, he used all the strength
he had left to drag himself over to his bed, pull back the covers
and slide himself in. Then he closed his eyes.

Chapter XVI

SEAN

See me, Feel me, Touch me, Heal me…….

Tommy

……
...As performed by The
Who

Deck opened his eyes the next day,
still in the clothes he went to bed in. He thought it had all been
a bad dream, Malcolm, the murdered boy and…his leg, then he pulled
back the covers. He still had the bandage on his leg.
God, it wasn’t a dream.
But at least
he could be grateful that the pain was gone.

He got up and undressed on his way to the
shower, unwrapping the bandage when he got into the stall. The
wound had stopped leaking and had sealed itself shut, but it was
still black around the edges and had started…flaking. Small, thin,
black discs of dried skin came off on the bandage, falling onto the
shower floor as he moved his leg, but at least it was closed and
didn’t hurt. He felt nothing at all around it, dead flesh.

As he washed over it with the washcloth, more
flakes, and he could see that the skin underneath was black too,
and green. He took the antiseptic bottle again and dowsed it. It
foamed again, but there wasn’t the same infected smell as there was
the first time, and he sighed a deep breath of relief.

When he got out of the shower he
treated it with more iodine and rewrapped it tightly, then dried
off and got dressed to go down stairs to do…
What? What am I supposed to do now?
His first
thought was to go back out on the dig, assuming Dr. Bramson would
still have him. “But why?” he asked himself. “Because you owe him,”
was his first answer. “You owe him for saving your life. You owe
Simon for thinking quickly and cleaning Malcolm up before they took
him to the hospital so no one would ever know what he did to that
boy.” He was sure Dr. Bramson would agree. “They would have to act
like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, so no one would get
suspicious. They’d agreed to something. What?…something…a stone had
fallen from one of the walls or the tower and had hit Malcolm on
the head, that was how he got knocked out. He heard Dr. Bramson
tell the doctors that when they took him to the hospital, and
that’s what he told Ivy when he came in,” but it all seemed so
muddled and cloudy, like a thick fog had rolled through his brain
and was just then clearing in the daylight.
Yes that was it, I remember now.
It was
settled.

He would take Ivy to the hospital so she
could see Mal for herself then go back to the dig. He looked at the
clock on his bed side table. It was ten o’clock. He had to talk to
Dr. Bramson before anyone else did, and Simon. They’d all agreed it
was a rock and as long as they didn’t find any blood, nothing could
be proven. Malcolm would be safe and Ivy would never know. No one
was ever to know.

When he went down stairs, Mitch and Simon
were waiting for him in a booth. He went over and sat down with
them. He was so preoccupied with what they were going to do that he
didn’t even notice the scratches on Mitch’s face and neck, like
he’d been scratched by a cat. “Listen and say nothing,” Mitch said
to him in a deep serious voice. “This is what we’re going to do…”
and he outlined again the plan they were going to stick to.

It was just as Deck had remembered; a rock
had fallen from the lower tower. Malcolm was working underneath it.
It struck him on the head.

Mitch was sure that he and Simon had scrubbed
all traces of blood off Mal in the stream and since they’d each
donated a piece of clothing, there was nothing left to connect
Malcolm to the murder. It was just lucky that he’d had another pair
of shorts in the tent for when it got hot.

As far as he could figure, Malcolm was clean,
and even if there were microscopic traces of blood on him, they’d
have no reason to test for it since they’d taken him to the
hospital on the opposite side of Exton from where the boy was
killed, not to mention that the way the boy was killed would lead
the police to look for an animal and not a human.

As long as Mal stayed in a coma and didn’t
come back as the thing they’d seen, it was pretty well covered all
the way around. But what none of them could explain to each other,
or themselves, was what had really happened.