Helens-of-Troy (18 page)

“Find the girl. Be a hero. Get laid.
What the hell was I thinking?” he wondered. “This was a bad idea.
I’d be having a better time at home with Betty and Stan.” It struck
him how true that statement really was.

He had parked the car at the far end of
the bridge. To get back to it, he either had to go back past the
bear, the mere thought of which was making him nauseous, or wade
through the water to approach the Toyota from the other
side.

“Betty always told me to stay away from
bears,” he said. “No coin toss necessary.”

He grabbed a broken tree branch from
the bank of the creek and measured the depth of the water. It was
about waist deep, and he knew he had a pair of old track pants in
the car trunk that he could change into after he crossed through
the algae infested liquid. He figured it would take about five
minutes to get from the creek to the Toyota. There was no current
to contend with to slow him down.

He stepped in and moved through the
cold, murky water, taking the stick with him in case he needed
it.

“Falling in is not part of the plan,”
he said, deciding to use the stick much like a blind person would,
to feel what was before his feet in the uneven creek
bed.

The stick hit something small, and he
used it to knock what ever it was out of the way. A dead fish rose
to the surface.

The more Ryan poked around, the more
dead fish floated towards him. “I never did like bobbin' for
apples,” Ryan sassed, his stomach beginning to churn.

He was almost across the water when his
right foot hit something that the stick had missed. A sunken tree
limb?

He used the stick to feel its width. It
was about two inches thick, he surmised. He straddled the object,
trying to step over it, but it was wider than he had initially
thought, and he inadvertently knocked it loose from the bottom of
the creek. It rose up between his legs.

The heel of a little red shoe floated
to the surface first.

“Oh my God. Oh. My. God. It’s a fucking
leg.”

The rising human limb startled him,
causing him to lose his balance. He fell backwards into the water,
barely managing to keep the flashlight above his head. He wiped his
face with his slime soaked sleeve as he strained to see the body in
the water. It was now rising, floating face up, right beside him.
He shone the light across it.

A water spider ran across the little
bloated face. Brooke’s face.

“Fuck me,” he said, turning his gaze
from her and scrambling up the adjacent edge of the
water.

The urge to vomit overwhelmed him, and
he spewed his downed super guzzler over the creek bank. For once in
his life he didn’t care if anyone saw him puking his guts out. This
was way worse than any story he could have dreamed up on a camping
trip with Tom.

He reached for his cell phone and
attempted to turn it on. No such luck. The water had shorted out
the battery.

“Now what do I do?” he
wondered.

He sat on a rotted tree stump, put his
hands in his hoodie pockets, and tried to figure something out. He
was unaware that he was being watched.

A pair of eyes, one blue and one brown,
were tracking him from the edge of the tree line that backed onto
the Wildman’s farm.

“I can’t just leave her there,” Ryan
thought. He slowly stood up and turned back in the direction of the
water.

The silence surrounding him was broken
by a deep-throated snarl from behind.

Ryan turned and shone the flashlight
into the direction the noise had come from. He saw
nothing.

“Who's there?” he shouted into the
darkness.

“Don’t touch her,” he heard someone
hiss.

Ryan looked around nervously. “Tom?” he
questioned.

Tom must have followed him out there.
That was the only explanation available, because the voice sure as
hell didn’t sound like Tara’s, and nobody else would know he had
come out to the bridge. “Quit pissin' around. Get over here and
help me. I've found Brooke.”

He waited for Tom’s voice to answer
him.

“Seriously, dude. This is no time to
try to get me back for anything stupid I did to you in the past.
How do we get her out of here? I don't want to touch her. Do you
have your cell phone, so we can call the cops?”

The hiss grew louder. “I said, don’t
touch.”

Ryan turned around. Before him stood a
teenager, about his age, but slighter in build and a few inches
shorter. His dark hair hung over his face, hiding his
features.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ryan asked. “My
mother? Nobody tells a Lachey what he can and can’t do.”

“Lachey,” the teenager said. “French,
no? You’re all stubborn pricks, boy band members, or both. Go
home,” he snarled, showing his fangs to Ryan. “And don’t talk about
yourself in the third person. It’s just wrong.”

“Dude. Really. You should call my
barber.”

Ryan’s cocky demeanor was short-lived
as he watched the teenager walk upon the water, and pick Brooke’s
body up in his arms.

“Give her to me,” Ryan demanded. In his
head, he could hear Tom telling him not to touch the body, but
there was no longer much hope of keeping the crime scene intact.
“Good trick with the water walking, Incisor-Boy. But I’m guessing
you’re not a man of the cloth.”

“She’s mine,” the teenager warned. “Go
get your own girl.”

“Like I haven’t heard that one before.
I know who you are. You’re the dude in Goth-Chic’s dream. Sorry to
take away your meal ticket, Funshine. Hand her over before
I...”

“Before you what?” the teenager
laughed. “Before you kill me? Sorry. That film ended. We’re onto
the sequel now. Mortal.”

“Didn’t you ever listen to Journey?”
Ryan sneered. “The movie never ends, it goes on and on and
on.”

He rushed back into the water, throwing
all his weight towards the vampire. The ratio of weight to bone was
in Ryan’s favor, forcing the stranger to lose his grip on the
girl’s body.

“Tumbling dice," Ryan said as he
grabbed the vampire by the collar of his jacket.

“I told you to leave her alone,” the
teenager said as he turned and positioned his fangs within biting
distance of Ryan’s left hand.

“That’s my throwing arm, asshole,” Ryan
commented, taking his right fist and pummeling it into the
teenager’s nasal cavity. “Ambidextrous. Look it up.”

“Don't you know what I am?” the
teenager hissed. “You can’t kill me. I'll feed later tonight and
then I'll come back for you.”

“Feed on this,” Ryan said, grabbing his
own crotch. “Now, are you going to leave her with me, or am I going
to have to make you even uglier?”

“There’s only a half-quart left in this
half-pint anyway,” the vampire sighed. “Keep her. But you owe me,”
he warned Ryan, shaking his finger at him.

“Ooh, I’m shakin’. Tell you what. Next
time I’m in the neighborhood of 666 Hadesarootin’ Drive, I’ll stop
in for a bite. Or is that your line?”

A strong wind blew in from the west,
forming a mist upon the water. Ryan’s view of the teenager was now
non-existent. When it had passed, Ryan saw that the vampire had
vanished into the night, leaving him alone with the little
body.

“This has got to be the part where the
aliens come,” Ryan laughed aloud. The laugh was full of nervous
emotion, and even to Ryan’s own ears, it sounded like one only a
raging lunatic would let out.

He walked back to the creek and pulled
Brooke gently onto the grass.

“Now I know why Tom fainted when he saw
Old Man Wagner. Sometimes there’s only so much a guy can
take.”

His own consciousness left him, and he
collapsed to the ground.

Across the water, Ralph Wildman was
listening to a story his daughter was telling him. She was upset.
That Lachey kid had insulted her new haircut, and he hadn’t stopped
there. He had wanted to do things with her. Down by Stillman’s
Creek. She was pretty sure he went there anyway and was probably
waiting by the bridge, hoping she would change her mind. But she
wouldn’t, because Ryan had said Brooke’s body was down there, and
she wasn’t having anything to do with that.

Ralph went for his rifle.

Five minutes later, the long barrel of
Ralph’s firearm was jabbing into the good shoulder of Ryan Lachey,
who was lying next to the body of Brooke Quinlan.

“Get up,” Wildman said angrily. “I’m
not going to say it twice, you warped little prick.”

Ryan regained consciousness and
flinched.

“Wildman? Fuck, I never thought I’d say
this, but am I ever glad to see you.”

“Tara told me what you tried to do to
her tonight. She told me you knew where the body was.”

“Wildman. This is not what it looks
like. Brooke was already dead when I got here. And that little girl
of yours is bi. As in polar. I want you, I don’t want you. She
can’t make up her mind. Is Mrs. Wildman like that?”

He tried to stand up, but Wildman
pushed him back to the ground.

“What was it you said earlier? About me
being bored and wanting to shoot something in the head?” Wildman
raised the barrel dangerously close to Ryan’s face. “Give me one
reason why I shouldn’t unload this rifle into that sick, demented
brain you have, Lachey. It would save us taxpayers the cost of a
trial.”

This wasn’t good, Ryan knew. Of all the
people that had to stumble across him and the body he himself
stumbled upon, it would have to be Wildman. Someone who really
couldn’t give a shit whether he lived or died under the best of
circumstances. Ryan had to think fast. One wrong word and it could
be lights out forever. Then he remembered. Ping-pong.

“Because seeing me in the electric
chair would give you an orgasm,” Ryan sneered “Fuckwad.”

CHAPTER TEN

Tom walked nervously down the Maple
Street lane past Ryan’s house and over to Ellie’s place next door.
The thought of having to tell Ryan he wanted to talk to Goth-Chic
alone made beads of sweat form on his forehead. He still wasn’t
sure what had gone on between Ryan and Ellie the night before. Had
Ryan tried to make a move on Ellie? The idea was making Tom’s ego
take a bruising. He had never lost a girl to Ryan, and the mere
thought that maybe this time he might, was preying on his
self-confidence.

What Tom did know, was that somehow, in
the past twenty-four hours, he had managed to get two totally hot
girls mad at him. This was not good. He tried running the scenarios
over in his head, searching for an answer that might get him out of
at least one doghouse.

Jacey, he knew, would get over it.
She’d give him the silent treatment for a few days, maybe even a
week, but eventually she would crack and they would be friends
again. He would try to score with her once more, and he would be
turned down again, and the pattern would continue until it drove
him to a wet dream.

Goth-Chic, on the other hand, was a
wild card. He had no history with her to rely on. She might be one
of those girls who remained pissed-off at him and never looked his
way again. “That would suck,” he admitted, taking a deep breath as
he reached for the doorbell. There was just no way to read girls,
to know in advance if they were the forgiving kind. “Come to think
of it, none of them are the forgiving kind,” he said to himself. He
braved the spiky rosebush pathway at the far side of the LaRose
house to get to the front door without being seen.

Helena opened the door a few moments
later. She couldn’t help noticing that Tom looked disappointed. “I
know the feeling, Tom Williams. I was expecting someone else
myself. But for the record, it isn’t good for a woman’s ego to have
that smile of yours fade so fast. I take it you want to see
Ellie?”

Tom nodded. He noticed that Helena had
changed from the blue jeans she was wearing earlier in the day into
something slightly dressier. A little too dressy for lounging
around the house, he thought. More like something he imagined she’d
wear out for dinner at Chez Delphine if his own mother were any
sort of guideline. This could be good. This could mean the two moms
were going out somewhere and he’d have Ellie all alone
tonight.

“She’s upstairs. Come on through to the
kitchen, and I’ll get her,” Helena said. She motioned for Tom to
follow her. “Where's your partner in crime?”

“I don't know where he is,” Tom
answered. His guilt eased up somewhat. That much was true. Ryan’s
car hadn’t been in the Lachey driveway.

Unlike Ryan, he had never been inside
the big white LaRose home before. It smelled of fresh-baked pie.
Not “company-is-coming-over-and-let’s-spray-some-air-freshener”
scent, but real homemade pie. He hadn’t smelled it in his own home
since his mother went back to work at the hardware
store.

As he walked through the hallway, he
noticed pictures of Ellie and Helen, taken years ago, hanging on
the wall. He wanted to stop and look at them, but Helena was moving
too fast. He took a quick glance at a larger portrait. Ellie hadn’t
changed much. Her eyes were big as saucers when she was a kid, just
like they were now. He smiled, knowing the size of the human eye
never changes from birth to death.