The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (21 page)

Without another sound, the two friends moved
into the carnival, looking for trouble.

She sat in the darkness, dragging on her
cigarette, daring the cancer to hurry up and finish her off. She wanted to die
tonight, but she got something else instead.

She saw the large figure outside her screen
door, a beat up ball cap sat on his head, advertising farm equipment.

“May I come in?” he asked.

“Whatever you’ve got to say can be done from
where you’re standing,” she replied.

“Give me a break, lady,” the demon said,
walking in. “I was just trying to be courteous.”

“Such tidings don’t become you,” she replied
without missing a beat. She was well beyond fear.

He sat down beside her, lighting his own
cigarette. “I know, I know. A demon with manners is nothing more than a
contradiction in terms. Sorry, I was just trying to make you feel comfortable.”

“I’m as comfortable as I’m going to be,” she
replied, exhaling smoke.

He grinned at her. “Yeah, talking to mortals
with a deadly disease is a whole new ballgame. So long as they’re not all whiny
and willing to do whatever they have to do to stop death, those are boring. But
ones like you,” he said, pointing at her with his two fingers holding his
cigarette. “You guys are balls to the wall. You know you’re dying and it don’t
mean shit! Very refreshing!”

“I’m glad to have pleased you; why are you
here?”

Smoke escaped from his nose. “You’re giving
us mixed signals, Margaret. We are starting to wonder whose side you are
rooting for.”

“I’m on my son’s side.”

“Which would be my side, by default.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His laughter filled the kitchen. “The blind
ignorance of a mother has always tickled me in my most intimate areas.”

“Fuck you,” she growled.

“No,” he said with a pointed finger. “Fuck
you. Did you really think you could control this game? Your son is nothing more
than a punk. He’s a dime a dozen for my side, no work at all. It was the girl
you were supposed to deliver, which you pretty much have.”

“That’s where you’ve lost sight of the ball,”
she replied, taking a drag of her own smoke. “You’ve expected my son to make
the wrong decisions, forcing Sarah down the wrong path, but my Jake isn’t going
to do that.”

“Oh, I’ll take that bet,” the demon said with
a dark giggle. “You going to put your soul in on this wager?”

“Yes,” she said, stamping out her cigarette.

“Done,” he replied, disappearing in a whiff
of smoke.

The revolving clowns came to a slow stop and
the teenagers climbed out. Everyone was holding hands except Sarah and Jake.

“Where next, party-goers?” Johnny asked as
they made their way off the ride, towards the games.

Vendors beckoned them with big prizes for a
small amount of money. “Get your girl a giant panda for a buck,” one of the
greasy carnys called to them from his booth, tossing a basketball into the air.

“Give this a try,” said a woman with no
teeth, pointing to glass plates. “Bounce a quarter onto the glass and keep whatever’s
beneath it.”

“Fuck that,” Johnny said as he pulled Kara
past the games. “Let’s go on some more rides.”

“Hell ya,” Kara replied with a smile.

The rest of the group started to follow
Johnny and Kara.

“Gimme your flask,” Johnny whispered to Jake.
“We need to start getting’ these bitches drunk.”

Jake pulled the flask from his boot without
saying a word. He popped the cap and took a long swig before handing it over.

“Damn son,” Johnny said as he looked around,
wondering if anyone in the crowd had noticed Jake’s vagrant act. “You’ve got
balls of steel.” He quickly grabbed the flask and showed it to Kara with a
smile.

A carny with a  farm implementation hat waved
his hands at Jake and Sarah, getting their attention from behind his stand.

“This girl matters, doesn’t she?” he asked.

Jake looked at Sarah, “Uh, yeah, of course
she does.”

“You wouldn’t ever do anything to
intentionally hurt her would you?”

A long bridge spanned across the teenagers'
eyes.

“No, never.”

“Well, then,” the carny said with a nasty
smile. “Prove to her that you care. Give me a dollar and play this game.”

“Alright,” Jake mumbled as he fished a dollar
out of his front pocket.

The carny grabbed the green paper out of
Jake’s numb hand in a flash, replacing it with a pellet gun. “All ya gotta do
is shoot the heart out of the target,” he explained as he pointed at a piece of
paper eight feet away from them. It was a white sheet with a relatively large
red heart in the center.

Jake took the gun, aimed at the heart, and
squeezed the trigger. Pellets spit out of it like a machine gun, ripping
through the right side of the heart.

“Well, look at that,” the carny said with a
dirty smile. “You’re almost half way there, kid. Careful though, you just used
half your clip.”

Jake took aim at the top of the heart,
squeezed the trigger and brought the gun down in a hard loop, the other side of
the heart disintegrated. The red separated from the white and floated towards
the ground.

“We’ve got a winner!” the carny yelled into
the night. “Here ya go, sweetheart,” he said, handing Sarah a pink stuffed
animal of a troll. It was wearing a diaper and looked somewhat like a newborn
with beady dark eyes and an evil smile.

“Gee,” the carny said as he looked down at
the ravaged red paper. “I hope he doesn’t do that to your heart,” the carny
said, flashing her a dirty grin.

Sarah wanted to drop the ugly pink troll, but
couldn’t for some reason, so she simply ran off with it.

“I think you got yourself a high maintenance
girl,” the carny said to Jake as he ran after Sarah.

“Easy money,” the demon said as he adjusted
his hat, watching the teenagers run off into the darkness.

The other four teenagers walked past the
rides, laughing and flirting like only the young can. Two were hanging all over
one another; the other two were almost holding hands.

“Hey look, the carousel,” Jenny said with a
smile. “That’s my favorite ride.”

Drew pulled out his roll of tickets. “Let’s
go,” he  smiled back, as he did one of the bravest things of his young life. He
grabbed her hand.

“Okay,” she said, giving his hand a slight
squeeze.

“Let’s go ride some horses,” Drew yelled over
to the other two as they moved towards the line.

“Fuck that, man,” Johnny replied. “I’m taking
my girl on a good ride.” They stumbled off.

Drew let out a sigh as he watched them
disappear into the crowd. “I hope she knows what she getting into.”

“She knows all about Johnny,” Jenny replied.
“Kara knows exactly what she’s getting into.”

Drew replied with a shrug. “Looks like we're
next.”

The carny took their tickets and they made
their way to the ride.

They walked up to two empty horses. Drew
turned to her, put out his hand, and spoke in his best cowboy voice. “Could I
help you onto yer horse, perty lady?”

“No thanks, I can mount my stud just fine.”
Beautiful laughter escaped from her mouth as she jumped on the plastic horse.

Drew nearly tripped over his own horse as he
also started to laugh. Jenny grabbed his hand and helped him onto the fake
saddle.

The carousel started to turn as they looked
into each other’s eyes. The laughter stopped as they bent towards one another
and started to kiss. It was one of the most perfect moments in their young
lives.

Johnny led Kara to the Ferris wheel.

“I thought we were going on a good ride,”
Kara said as they got in line.

“I’ll show you what makes it good,” Johnny
said with a shark’s smile.

“I bet you will,” she replied, remembering
the flask of whiskey.

It wasn’t long before they got on the ride,
and he handed her the flask as soon as they started moving. “Drink up,” he said
as he pulled out his weed and started loading his one hitter.

“You’ve got all kinds of party favors,” she
said, taking a drink.

“You bet I do, baby.” He gave her the pipe
and lit it for her. She cleared it out as they reached the top.

“You got some lungs on you, darlin’,” he
said, reloading the pipe. The ride came to a stop as people got off.

She took another drink of the whiskey, as he
handed the pipe to her. “It’s your turn,” she said.

“No baby, I’ve had plenty. You need to catch
up.”

“Okay,” she said with a shrug, putting the
flask back between her legs and taking the pipe.

He lit the pipe and watched her take a deep
drag. “There ya go, baby,” he said with a smile. As the ride started to move
again, she finished off the rest of the load. He grabbed the flask from her
lap, took a quick drink and handed it back to her. “If you’re quick, you should
be able to clear the pinche one more time before we get back to the ground.”

“Think so?” she said, taking another drink as
he reloaded the pipe.

“If your lungs are as big as I think they
are,” he said, handing back the reloaded pipe. “Show me what ya got.”

She put the pinche to her lips and he lit it
for her again. Not only did she clear it out once again before the ride was
over, she also took four more drinks from the flask.

“You’re my kind of woman,” he said as he
helped the severely intoxicated girl off the ride and into the darkness.

Sarah ran track and had made it to state last
season. Jake had been a linebacker in football and was quite strong but not
particularly fast. Needless to say, he didn’t catch Sarah until she let him,
which was in the darkness of the parking lot where there weren’t many people.

He grabbed her arm. “Hold up!”

She yanked free of him. “What are we going to
do? Why did this happen? Why were you out there that night? I went on walks at
night all the time and never ran into you before. Why that one time?”

"Because my mother told me to be
there,"
he thought to
himself. “I don’t know,” he lied. “But we have to deal with this now. No more
running.”

“So you aren’t going to run from this?” she
asked, getting right in his face. “You’re going to stand up and be a man about
this?”

“Yes,” he said, holding his ground.

“You’re going to help raise this child?”

“Of course.”

“You’re going to throw away your youth and
grow up in the span of nine months?”

“Yeah,” he said, throwing his hands into the
air.

“You’re going to stop partying and make your
main focus our child?”

“I said yes.”

“Changing diapers at one in the morning on a
Friday night, instead of drinking or getting high?”

He took a step back. “Uh, sure, whatever
needs to be done.”

She stabbed at him with her finger. “You
piece of shit! You’re just going to disappear, aren’t you?

“Sarah?” A voice said from the darkness.

She spun around as the image of her father
walked out from the shadows of the parking lot.

“Are you okay?” he asked, walking forward.
Her mother was right behind him. “Who the hell is this?”

Sarah’s father made a beeline for Jake. They
were roughly the same size and Jake was never one to back down from anyone, but
this was definitely a new situation for him. Luckily Sarah stepped in-between
them.

“Everything is fine, daddy. We were just
talking.”

“You weren’t talking, you were yelling,” he
replied to his daughter. “What the hell did you do?’ He asked Jake.

“Talk to me, not him!” Sarah demanded.

Jake stepped forward with an outstretched
hand, not knowing what else to do. “Mr. Hendrix, it’s me, Jake Simmons from
down the street. I’m sorry if I angered you. Me and Sarah were just talking.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sarah said as she
covered her face. “Just get out of here.”

Jake stood there for a minute, not sure what
to do. “Okay,” he replied. “I’ll call you later.”

“Why would you do that?” Sarah’s father asked
Jake as he walked off, knowing full well what kind of guy Jake was. “Why would
he do that?” he asked Sarah. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Sarah lied, grabbing her father’s
hand, which always melted his heart. “Let’s go get some cotton candy.”

Johnny led Kara away from all of the lights
and people.

“Where are we going?” she asked, nearly
falling over her own feet in the darkness.

“We’re about to go on the best ride there
is,” he replied, pulling her forward.

“There’s no rides out here,” she slurred. “I
need to sit down.”

Johnny looked back to where they had come
from. “I guess this is far enough out.”

“Uh-huh,” Kara replied as she sat down on the
ground. “Where are we?”

“No man’s land, baby.”

“Okay,” she said as her head swam in the
night. Her mind swayed in and out of awareness. She was almost asleep when she
noticed something tugging on her shorts. She reached down. “Stop,” she mumbled.

“Shh,” someone replied as she lost grip and
felt the cold ground on her legs. “Johnny?” she asked.

“That’s right, baby,” he replied, pulling her
panties off.

“No,” she whispered. “Stop it.”

“You know you want it,” he was on top of her
now, forcing her legs apart. She tried to stop him but she was so wasted, she
just didn’t seem to have any strength. It seemed like forever before it was
over. When he was done he climbed off her and just walked off. Leaving her on
the ground like a corpse.

She curled up into a fetal position and
wondered how things went so terribly wrong. She should have listened to Jenny
after all.

Johnny buttoned up his jeans and lit a smoke
as he walked back towards the park. He looked back briefly at where he left the
bitch but couldn’t see any movement. He knew it would take a couple of minutes
for her to clean up, if she hadn’t passed out.

“I’ll give her five minutes,” he said, taking
another drag on his cigarette.

Movement caught his eye and he turned to his
left as someone moved towards him.

“Who the fuck?” he said loudly into the
darkness.

“Take it easy,” said a figure that slowly
moved towards him. “Saw your flame, and thought I could get a light. A man with
a  ball cap came out of the darkness, an unlit cigarette hung from his lips.

“Sure,” Johnny said as he held up his lighter
and lit the stranger’s cancer stick.

“So,” the guy wearing the ball cap asked.
“What you up to out here?”

“Just finished gettin’ lucky.”

“Congratulations. Is she conscious?”

“Hell if I know.”

They shared a chuckle.

“You like knives?” the stranger asked, taking
a long drag on his smoke.

“Sure,” Johnny replied, as his mind wandered
to the stash of weed in his front pocket. He felt like firing up the good
stuff, but he didn’t want to share it with this fucking weirdo.

The weirdo pulled a small glass bottle out of
his back pocket and took a drink from it, immediately getting Johnny’s
attention.

“You like tequila?” he asked, holding up the
bottle.

“Sure.”

He handed the bottle over to Johnny. “I got a
switchblade for sale, if you’re interested.”

Johnny took a big swig of the hard liquor.
“How much?”

“Twenty,” the stranger answered as he took
his bottle back, taking another drink.

“Let’s see.”

The man pulled the knife out of his other
back pocket and handed it to Johnny.

Johnny looked it over and then pushed the
button. The blade shot out from the side. “Is this thing from the 50’s?”

“It’s a classic.”

“Too dark to tell if there’s any rust.”

The stranger suddenly had a small flashlight.
Johnny held the blade close to his face. “A little banged up, but not too bad.
Definitely dated though, I’ll give you five bucks.”

“C’mon!” replied the stranger. “Check out how
sharp the blade is. When you pushed the button it popped right out. They don’t
make springs like that anymore. It’s worth at least fifteen.”

“Seven, final offer.”

“Twelve.”

Johnny closed the knife and handed it back.
“See ya.”

He let out a heavy sigh instead of taking the
blade back. “Fine, seven bucks.”

Johnny stuck the switchblade in his back
pocket and reached for his cash. He pulled out a single bill. “Shit,” he said
as he opened it up. “All I’ve got is a five.”

“Mother-fucker,” the stranger said as he
grabbed the money out of Johnny’s hand, turned and walked off.

“You shouldn’t talk to an armed man like
that,” Johnny said to the man’s back with a smile.

“Eat shit,” the stranger replied, disappearing
into the night.

Johnny chuckled as he took another drag from
his cigarette, thinking about the twelve dollars in his other pocket. “What a
sucker,” he whispered into the darkness.

He threw down his spent smoke and pulled out
his weed, loading his pipe. He looked back to where Kara was. “You about ready
to head back?”

No answer. Smoking the weed out of his pipe,
he took a couple of steps towards her, trying to peer into the darkness. “C’mon
Kara,” he called. “The carnival’s gonna be closing in less than two hours.
We’re runnin’ out of time.”

He might have heard a soft whimper but wasn’t
sure. He   pulled out the flask of whiskey and took a deep drink. “Fuck this,”
he said, turning around and heading back towards the lights of the carnival. In
the near future he would be questioned about Kara’s whereabouts, but he would
never know her true fate.

Frank and Lloyd slowly made their way through
the carnival. Frank tried to reach out with some sixth sense, trying to
pinpoint the evil. It didn’t work that way and he knew it, he just didn’t know
what else to do. “I’ve got to take a break, boy,” he told Lloyd as he made his
way to a bench. A teenage boy sat at one end of it, smoking a cigarette. He
looked familiar but Frank couldn’t quite remember who he was. Frank sat on the
opposite side, trying to keep Lloyd as far from the foul smelling smoke as
possible.

“Evening,” Frank said with a smile as the
young man glanced at him.

“Hey,” he replied with the nod of his head.

They sat in silence for a moment as Frank let
his knee rest.

Frank turned to the teenager. “I can’t quite
recall your name, but I’d swear we’ve met.”

“It’s been quite some time since we’ve
crossed paths,” the teenager replied with a smile. “I look pretty different
now.” He reached over and held out his hand. “Jake Simmons.”

“Jake?” Frank replied in amazement as he
grabbed the young man’s hand. “I haven’t seen you since you were around ten.
Looks like those cigarettes haven’t stunted your growth.”

“Guess not,” Jake said with a chuckle.

“So, how have you been?”

The question brought reality crashing back
onto Jake’s shoulders. “I’ve seen better days.”

“Your mom?”

Jake looked down to the ground and nodded his
head. “She just keeps on truckin’.”

“She’s a strong lady.”

“You have no idea,” Jake replied as he put
out his cigarette.

“Oh yes I do,” Frank said with a smile. “I
grew up with your mother. We’ve known each other since the old days.”

“Really?” Jake looked at the old man with
surprise. “She never mentioned that.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Why’s that? You got some old stories I might
find interesting?”

“No, nothing like that,” Frank lied.

The two fell into silence as memories flooded
their minds.

Secrets are a dangerous thing. For whatever
reason one has of keeping them, it is always possible they will get loose and
cause that person grief and sorrow. It is out of fear that people don’t share
such things. A problem arises from this in that sometimes the information that
is hidden could help the people that are not privy to it. It can help them to
make the right decision or prevent them from making the wrong one. It is for
these reasons that secrets are the tools of evil. Always have been, always will
be.

If Frank had shared his past with Jake,
perhaps Jake would have told him of his mother’s commands of meeting Sarah in
the field, and what had become of it. Frank would then have then known the
young man in front of him was a pawn in the war of good and evil, but instead
he knew nothing more than before he had sat down.

“Jake!” a voice called out from the crowd.

Johnny made his way towards Jake. “Let’s get
the fuck outta here, man. It looks like a bitch of a storm is coming.”

Jake noticed the distant storm for the first
time. The wind was already starting to pick up. “All right,” Jake said as he
stood up. “Take it easy, Frank.”

“Be careful, boys,” Frank replied, watching
the two young men walk off.

“If something is going to happen tonight,”
the old man said to Lloyd, looking at the sky. “It better happen soon.”

Lloyd watched the people walk past them
silently.

“My gut tells me Jake is involved in whatever
is going to happen.”

Lloyd looked at his old friend for a moment
and then turned to the direction where the two teenagers had gone.

“I suppose I could just be grasping at
straws, since we’re running out of time.”

Lloyd got up and started forward, pulling on
his leash.

“All right, all right,” Frank said as he got
up and they started after the two young men.

Johnny looked up at the dark clouds. “This
fucking sucks! God damn storm is going to ruin the rest of the night.”

“We can just sit in the car and party,” Jake
replied. “God knows I need to get drunk.”

“Yeah, and every time we have to take a piss,
we’re gonna get drenched.”

“I suppose we could just go home.” The idea
sounded better than what Jake had expected. Besides, maybe his mom could give
him some further insight on his new situation; that was basically all her damn
fault.

“Oh, real funny, mother-fucker,” Johnny
replied. “It could be the end of the fucking world and I still wouldn’t go home
early on a Friday night.”

Jake nodded his head, unsurprised by his
friend’s reply. It didn’t matter what time he got home anyway, his mother would
still be up regardless. “Hey, where’s Kara?”

“Hell if I know. After I got done shagin’ the
bitch, she just disappeared. I was probably too much for her and she had to go
pass out somewhere.”

“I imagine it was more the weed and booze
than your studliness. Hopefully she caught up with Drew and Jenny.”

“Fuck her man, she was a dead lay.”

“What the hell’s your problem?” Jake asked.
“You got lucky, why do you have to bad mouth her ten minutes later?”

 Johnny turned back. “What? You jealous or
something?”

“Forget it, man.” Jake said with a sigh.
“Let’s just find Drew and get out of here.”

Up ahead of them were four boys from a nearby
rival town. Jake was about to tell Johnny to be cool, but Johnny had already
opened his mouth.

“You pussies better get home before it starts
raining,” he said loudly as they came up on the group. “If you get wet you’ll
start crying for your mommies.”

“Fuck you, asshole,” the biggest one replied.

Johnny pointed at him as he started walking
faster towards the group. “What you just say?”

“You heard me, prick,” he started making his
way towards Johnny, his buddies right behind him.

“Yeah, well, do you hear this?” he held his
hand up and the switchblade clicked open.

The group of boys stopped moving forward.

“C’mon now,” Johnny waved them forward with
his knife. “Show me what you bitches are made of.”

“You’re fucking nuts, man,” one of them
replied as they moved to the side and then walked on.

“That’s what I thought,” Johnny said with a
smile as he put his knife away.

“What the hell was that, man?” Jake asked.

“Just havin’ a little fun, that’s all.”

“I’m not going to jail just cause you feel
like being a dumbass.”

“Will you relax?” Johnny said as he lit up a
smoke. “We’re gettin’ outta here anyway.”

“We’ve got to find Drew, first.”

“Ah, forget fat boy. He can get a ride from
the bitches.”

Normally Jake wouldn’t have considered
leaving Drew behind, but the knife show had changed things. They had to get out
of the carnival as quickly as possible. Their pace increased as they made their
way towards the parking lot. The thunder in the distance seemed to increase
with each step the bad boys took, and the wind seemed to press into their faces
like an angered bully.

Steve went up to the concession stand to pay
for the cotton candy as Linda looked into her daughter’s eyes.