Psycho Save Us (14 page)

Shannon trembled
in her arms beside her.  Kaley tried to say, “Don’t look,” but all that came
out was “Nuh huk.” 

“Fucking move,”
said Oni.

They shuffled
through the kitchen, passing into another hallway where a bedroom door stood
wide open.  They moved past it.  Kaley chanced a glance, saw a pair of legs on
the bed, the torso hanging off the other side, and a blood spatter against the
wall in a pattern that reminded Kaley of fireworks, the trails they left behind
when their various arms fell back to earth just before they winked out.

“Fucking
move
,”
Oni insisted.

Shannon
sniffled.

They moved into
the living room, where the real havoc had happened.  Four men lay dead in
various positions—one sitting in a chair, one on the floor with his arms up
across a coffee table, one near the door (almost made it), and one crumpled in
an odd, upside-down fetal position between a recliner and a TV stand.  The closest
one to Kaley was the one sitting in his chair—probably had been standing until
blasted backwards.  He rested comfortably now, looking ready to watch tonight’s
football game.  His right hand was hanging off the armrest.  He had a gun on
the floor beside that hand (almost made it).  Two bullets had ended him, one to
the chest and one that tore through his face, ripped off half his nose and
exploded one eye socket.  Blood and mucous leaked out of the socket like fake
movie blood.  Strangely, Kaley thought,
Looks like
White Ninja Meets
Shaolin Crane
got it right
.

It was shock. 
Shock that was somewhat tempered by the strange sense that most of these men
weren’t entirely dead yet.  There was still something inside them, something
that lingered.  It would someday terrify Kaley to consider that, once
she
died, she might linger inside her own body as well, and she might potentially
feel everything the coroners and the morticians were doing to her—removing her
intestines and replacing them with newspapers, the whole embalming process, et
cetera—perhaps right through the burial and everything.  Every piece of these
people was alive.  The smallest biological pieces were living, all the cells,
all the bacteria inside the stomach, it still had a purpose.  And, on some
level, the brain was still working.

I don’t want to
die like this
,
she thought, looking over at the man crumpled between the TV stand and the
recliner.  He was still inside there, his spirit or his soul or his thoughts or
whatever still lingering. 
Not like this
. 
When I die, I want to
die
!

A part of her
worried that Shan felt it, too, that tenuous place between life and death.  Her
Nan had once told her something that was supposed to be helpful, although Kaley
wasn’t sure what it meant: “To be living is to be dying, and to be dying is to
be living.”  It had made sense, yet was senseless, and it was all she could
think of as she looked at the blood leaking out of the crumpled man’s ears and
nostrils.  The hole at the center of his head, surprisingly, wasn’t leaking at
all. 
He’s dying
…
so he’s still living
. 

“Move,” Oni
reminded her.

And so they
did.  They moved a bit more quickly now at his urging.  The gun touched Kaley
once at the back of the head, and twice at the back of Shannon’s.  They moved
around an easel that had fallen over and hustled out the front door into a
dark, secluded neighborhood that she wasn’t sure she recognized.  Two orange
streetlights were all that lit the street, which was surrounded by briars,
bushes and brambles. 
Where are we?  Where did they take us?

“Move,” Oni
said.  “Over there.”  He used his gun to gesture to a narrow patch of woods she
didn’t recognize.

Kaley obeyed,
and kept her hands cupped over Shannon’s eyes because there was still one more
body in the yard, just beyond the doorstep.  He was facedown, two bullet holes
in his back and one in his head.  He didn’t have a gun anywhere near him, just
a pocketknife in his hand but unopened.  He looked like he had crawled a bit
because the blood trail was smeared behind him, all the way up to the
doorstep. 
Almost made it
, Kaley thought. 
All of them
. 
Almost
made it out
. 
But Oni drew down first
.

The El Camino
and the Expedition that had brought them here were both parked side by side in
the yard.  She thought,
Which one will we take?
  The answer was
neither.  They kept moving towards the woods, away from the vehicles and the
street. 
Where is he taking us?  We can’t get far on foot
. 
Somebody
will call the police about the gunshots
.

But on
consideration, Kaley figured that wasn’t likely, either.  This street was
desolate, like the world in that movie
Book of Eli
, and while the center
of the Bluff could be a ghost town this late at night, especially with it this
cold, she knew that this wasn’t anywhere near the center of the Bluff. 
Where
are we?  How far outside Vine an’ English did they take us?

Barefoot and
trembling in the cold, the two girls walked ahead of their last surviving
captor.  They stumbled when Shannon stepped on one of many discarded bottles
and it rolled beneath her foot.  Kaley’s feet were fine stepping on twigs and
sharp fallen branches, because she went barefoot everywhere around their
neighborhood, unless she was traveling far, and so her feet were hard and
callused.  But she worried about Shannon, who never went around the
house
without both socks and shoes on, much less anywhere else in the world.

“Move,” came the
same command as ever.  “Move.”

They stepped
around a piece of corrugated steel that lay half buried in the soil.  Kaley
glanced across the street to the only other house around.  It was a boarded-up structure
on the verge of collapse, as many were in the Bluff (but she still didn’t think
this was the Bluff), and had various designs and phrases spray-painted, including
one that said
FUCK
KASIM REED
,
and another that just said
CRIPS
.  A crack house, probably, one
condemned and belonging to everyone and no one.  There were no lights on in the
house.  Nobody to pay the light bill. 
No help’s comin’ from there
, she thought.

There were a few
clouds out now, though the moon still shone true.  There was a dampness in the
air.  Kaley predicted rain within the next hour or so, but that wasn’t her
charm at work.  Or was it?  She’d often predicted when it was going to rain,
grabbing a raincoat and tossing Shannon hers on mornings when there had been
nothing but skies as clear as the water in heaven. 
But it won’t rain for
long
. 
Just a drizzle
. 
For half an hour, no more
.

They walked
about forty steps into the woods before Oni hissed, “Stop!  Wait here.”

They did.  Kaley
turned to look at him.  After a few minutes, Shannon reached up with quivering
hands and slowly pushed her big sister’s hands away from her eyes so that she
could have a look around.  Kaley almost resisted, but figured,
What’s the
hurt now?

They were in
deep darkness, barely able to see each other’s face in the pale moonlight and
what faded orange glow made it through the trees from the streetlights.  Nearby,
there was a large rock covered in lichen.  Except for their breathing and a dog
barking a mile or more away, there was no sound.  Not even twigs fell out
here.  The silence was inutterably complete.

Kaley chanced a
looked up at Oni, who seemed to sense her look even though he never glanced at
her.  “We wait,” he said.  His tone made it a warning.

Part of Kaley
wondered if Oni had the charm, too.  Then she decided that, no, that wasn’t
possible.  Anyone blessed with the extreme empathy that the charm granted could
never be doing what he was doing.

Kaley reached
out and hugged Shannon, who had started whimpering loudly.  She wanted to say,
“Shhhhh.”  Such a simple appeasement, requiring no articulation at all, but with
the gag still in her mouth she couldn’t even give her sister that much.  Part
of her reached out for her mother, trying to pray or wish some kind of heroic
action on her part.  But another part of her knew that was eternally hopeless. 
We’re all alone
. 
We’re going to be sold or killed or something
.

A little over an
hour ago she had been buying groceries and playing White Ninja with her little
sister.  Back then, ten thousand years ago, it seemed like that was all there
was, all there would ever be.  Kaley had grown up hearing gunshots late at
night, had gotten used to them, but none of it had ever been directed at her or
hers.  She had survived just fine, not getting mixed up in the gang nonsense,
and, for all her mother’s faults, neither had she. 
We were fine an’ clear
.

True.  They were
fine and happy until tonight. 
I should’ve known when I saw that white man
. 
I should’ve known that something wasn’t right about tonight
.  Then, she
corrected herself. 
I did know
. 
I knew and I did nothin’ about it
. 
Now Shannon and I are
—

Are what?  What
was going to happen to them?  Kaley knew, just like she had known about the
pale white man.  And, just like inside Dodson’s Store, she didn’t want to admit
it to herself that she knew where all of this was going.  She was ignoring
something else her charm was telling her.  It was there, just in her periphery,
a monster in a dream that somehow the dream told you wouldn’t hurt you as long
as you didn’t look at it, if you didn’t even think about it.

Instead, Kaley
retreated to meditating on what
might
help them.  Mom was out of the
question. 
The cops?
  She wanted to believe that.  Officer LeBlanc at
English Avenue Middle School was certainly the kind of police officer one could
trust to care, but the cops at EAMS knew the kids personally, and that’s why
they had always seemed so caring, especially LeBlanc.  Other cops wouldn’t car
as much.  Kaley knew enough about how the world worked to know that Officer
LeBlanc and others from EAMS wouldn’t be the ones assigned to track her and her
sister down. 
Some detectives or somethin’
. 
People who don’t even
know us
. 
Will they care?  They’re supposed to
.

That wasn’t
reassuring.  Kaley had lived in the Bluff all her life.  She had seen how the
police treated everyone who lived in Vine City and on English Avenue, had seen
how they viewed her and her kind with skepticism.  She had seen the dull,
listless faces of the officers who took Ricky’s statement when he’d reported
that their house had been broken into and two men he knew had made off with
their TV and a CD player before he could catch them.  It was the same look the
two policemen had given Jamal Rhinehardt on Beltway when he’d described the three
Crips that beat the tar out of him.  Disinterested, mandatory, and dutiful; all
these words she’d learned from EAMS, and all these words described the police
in an around the Bluff.  No one would never accuse them of being passionate
about their jobs.

Who, then?
she thought. 
Who’s
gonna come for us?
  The immediate and obvious answer was no one.  Mac, the
clerk at Dodson’s, would almost assuredly report it, but he wouldn’t and
couldn’t
be expected to pound the pavement. 
Especially now that we’re not in the
Bluff
.

So now, Kaley
was down to the ultimate conclusion.  I
have to get us out of this
. 

She glanced at
Oni’s gun, but he kept it in his left hand, away from her. 
By choice?
she wondered. 
Is the gun in his far hand because he senses an ulterior motive
in me?
  Oni seemed like a thug, but Kaley sensed he had a mind of meddle. 
He was one who liked to interfere with others’ schemes, thus developed
counter-schemes of his own.  Not brilliant, but sharp.  After all, he’d gotten
the trust of the other kidnappers, hadn’t he?  They’d trusted him so much they
hadn’t had time to draw down and return much fire.

So she wouldn’t
be able to reach the gun.  So what to do, then?  Kaley thought about a
distraction, or of just rushing him.  Yes, rushing him.  Her mind was
alternating between sluggish and harried.  In that moment, rushing Oni seemed
like a plan.  It was no great plan, but at least it was a plan.  If she got
lucky, she might even be able to scramble for the gun. 
If I take him by complete
surprise, he might even drop it or something
.

Kaley made her
decision.  They were alone out here and if she could tackle him at his legs, it
might give Shan the chance to run. 
That’s all I need to give her
. 
A
chance to run
. 
Out here in the dark, Oni will never find her
. 
A
Black Ninja vanishing in the night
.

She raised her
hands away from her sister, having to pry Shannon away with both her arms and
her heart.  Kaley sent waves of assurances, and when their eyes met in the
moonlight, Big Sister made Little Sister understand what she must do.  They
nodded.  There was an understanding, a shared plan.  Kaley would tackle him,
potentially sacrificing herself, and Shan would run.  It was a horrible yet
persuasive idea.  Persuasive, because Shan would survive.  That was what Big
Sister was for.  That was what she functioned for.