The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (25 page)

The coyote surged forward, knocking Lloyd to
the ground as they rolled and bit one another. Lloyd regained his feet and shot
towards the house, allowing the coyote to get a wicked bite on his right leg.

Lloyd yipped in pain, but he was there, he
was at the hole, climbing through. The coyote got two more good bites in on
Lloyd’s back as he scampered beneath the porch.

Bloodlust carried the coyote right after
Lloyd, but his shoulders were too broad to get through. As soon as Lloyd was
under the porch, he flipped around, coming at the coyote from above and quickly
clamping down on his throat.

Lloyd’s teeth sank into soft tissue and
artery as he started to furiously shake his jaws back and forth.

The coyote ripped itself loose, took four
steps back, and then fell over and died.

Lloyd looked at it from the safety of his
hole, and when he was certain it was dead, he climbed back out and started
making his way to the Simmon’s farm again, much slower than before and with a
bad limp.

The wind blew a scent towards Lloyd from the
house, making him stop and look back for a moment. Faint traces of Frank and
his dead family floated to Lloyd's nose. This had been their old house. The
house they lived in when Lisa disappeared. The house where Beth had hung
herself.

Lloyd bowed his head to the ground for a
moment and then was back on his way.

Johnny came out of the house and could see
the motorcycle coming down the road towards him. He held his knife down behind
him and went to meet the surprise visitor.

“How many fucking people am I going to have
to kill tonight?”

The words came out of his mouth and seemed to
turn right around and punch him in the face. He blinked several times as
memories of the woman that got electrocuted at the carnival, the guy he stabbed
for no real reason, and the old lady in the house floated around in his head.

He looked back at the farmhouse. He had
beaten her pretty bad. Why had he done that?

“Because she’s got a mouth on her that just
never stops,” he told himself.

The anger he felt tried to boil up again, but
the weight of his actions stopped it from taking over.

“You’re not such a bad guy,”
Jenny had said to him once, before he used
her and threw her away.

Then another mental punch hit him in the face
as thoughts of his father crept to the surface. The image of his old man lying
there, blood pooling around his head with his eyes looking in different
directions. At the time it had seemed hilarious, now all it did was make his
throat dry. He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the dryness, but it didn't
help, it just hurt.

The motorcycle pulled up in front of him,
stopping.

Margaret  pushed herself up off her knees,
leaning up against the kitchen table. Her chest was on fire and her legs felt
like lead weights, but she dragged herself forward. She pushed herself from the
table and shuffled toward the wall where the rifle was hanging.

Her knees almost gave out, but luckily she
hit the wall, and was able to use it as support. Leaning up against it, she
wheezed, trying to catch her breath.

Looking up, she saw the rifle. The bike was
getting closer; it would be pulling into the drive at any moment. She reached
upwards and her ribs screamed, nearly making her pass out. She held her breath
and tried to ignore the pain.

She got her hand on the weapon, pushing
upwards to get it off the hooks. A ragged groan escaped her lips as the rifle
came loose and almost fell out of her grip.

The butt hit the floor but she managed to
keep a hold of the barrel. Leaning up against the wall, she flipped the gun
around and used it as a cane as she made her way out to the porch.

The motorcycle had just come to a stop in
front of Johnny.

“Now or never,” she thought to herself as she
raised the rifle.

The man climbed off the bike. He said
something to Johnny, but she couldn’t tell what.

The rifle was too damn heavy for her to hold
it steady. She took a step forward, so the barrel pressed against the screen
door.

“Thank God, the door latch caught for once,”
she thought to herself as she flipped the
safety off.

“Is everything okay, here?” Frank asked as he
put down the kickstand and got off the bike.

Johnny recognized him from earlier at the
carnival. He had been talking to Jake. They were sitting on the park bench,
talking like they were old buddies.

“I’m not such a bad guy,” Johnny said.

“Excuse me?” Frank asked, smelling the liquor
on Johnny’s breath.

Johnny stepped forward and stabbed Frank
right in the stomach.

“I’m a bad ass, is what I am,” Johnny said
with a smile, pushing Frank off his blade and to the ground.

Johnny stepped forward and stabbed the other
man.

“Damn it,” she whispered as she cocked the
rifle and took aim.

Johnny pushed the man down to the ground.

She held her breath, closed one eye, aimed
for the back of his head, and squeezed the trigger.

Back in her heyday, Margaret  had been quite
the deadeye when it came to hitting the target, but that was a long time ago,
and age has a way of eroding almost everything, not to mention the agony she
was in. Needless to say, her aim was off.

Instead of hitting Johnny in the back of the
head it ripped through the side of his neck, opening up a major artery.

Johnny was just about to say something to
Frank when the pop of the rifle went off and suddenly he had trouble breathing
and his shirt was getting all wet.

His hand went to his neck and when he looked
down he saw the blood. It was coming out of him like a stuck pig.

He looked back at the house and saw Margaret
push open the screen door with a rifle in her hands. She sat down heavily on
the steps, raising the rifle to take aim at him again.

Johnny panicked, not knowing what else to do,
he took off towards the cornfield, trying to find cover from the crazy old
bitch with the gun.

Margaret  watched him run. She could see the
blood on his shirt as he ran by the porch light.

“He’ll bleed out soon,”
she thought, letting the rifle drop to the
ground.

She could see the man that had been stabbed
slowly rising from the ground. Slowly he made his way towards her. She didn’t
raise the rifle, nor did she let go of it.

Once he got in the porch light, she relaxed
her grip on the rifle. “Hey, stranger.”

“Are you okay?” Frank asked.

“No,” she replied plainly.

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll call
911,” he said, passing her as he went inside.

She sat and tried to get control of her
breathing, hoping the pain in her chest would subside soon. She could hear
Frank talking on the phone.

He came back out and sat down beside her. “An
ambulance will be here as soon as possible. They’re pretty backed up from the
tornado earlier.”

“Understandable,” Margaret said with a nod.
“So what brought you out here?”

He shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

She looked down at his stomach. He had his
wound covered with his hand. “That’s gotta hurt.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I saw it coming at the
last minute and tried to twist out of the way, so it’s not as deep as it could
have been.”

“Ain’t we the banged up pair?”

He smiled at her. “Just like the old days.”

"He had your dad's old
switchblade."

Frank looked off the way Johnny had run with
a quick exhale through his nose. "I should know better than to be
surprised by that." He looked back at Marge. "How did you know what
my father's knife looked like?"

"He showed it to me once," she
whispered.

Frank kept looking at her, wondering when
good old Max would have shown her that damn blade.

“How much do you know?” She was desperate to
change the subject. Besides, she didn't think she had much time left, and the
current conversation would take up way too much of the limited time she had
left.

“That this has something to do with you and
Jake, and that’s about it.”

“He got Sarah Hendrix pregnant earlier this
summer.”

“That’s a strange pairing,” Frank said with
raised eyebrows.

“This is all about the baby.”

“The demon has some kind of plan for this
child?”

She nodded her head. “They were anticipating
that Jake would leave her high and dry, but he won’t do that.”

“So, he’s said he will stick by her?”

“Not yet, but he will. I’m not even sure he
knows she's pregnant yet.”

Frank looked out into the darkness. He could
see Lloyd limping towards them from the field. “We’re getting too old for
this.”

She grabbed his hand. “You have to help him.
You have to make sure he does the right thing.”

He looked into her eyes. “I will.”

“I wish things would have been different
between us.”

He rubbed her hand with his thumb. “We were
young and stupid, we never had a chance.”

“The child growing up to be something other
than the demons’ pawn, that will be my redemption.”

“Redemption for both of us,” Frank nodded.

She smiled at him. “You climbed out of that
hole a long time ago, Frank Tyler.”

“I won’t be out of that hole until you are,”
he replied.

She closed her eyes, put her head on his
shoulder, and died.

Lloyd came up to them and sat down.

Frank kissed Margaret good-bye and then
looked at his old friend.

“Looks like you had a rough night, too.”

Lloyd yawned and then they both looked at the
black SUV that was coming down the road towards them.

Johnny ran into the corn, holding onto his
neck as blood spurted out like a half broke sprinkler.

“Go back and finish it!” A voice screamed in
his head.

He shook his head furiously as he fell to his
knees. He just couldn’t catch his breath.

“What a panty waste,” a voice said in front
of him.

He looked up and saw Jenny, crouching down,
glaring at him.

“What’s a matter, stud? You can only handle
half conscious, teenage girls? Some old lady is too much for you?”

He shook his head harder, trying to get up,
but fell to his side instead.

Jenny suddenly turned into the carny with the
farm implementation ball cap.

“Fucking lost cause,” the demon said,
grabbing the switchblade from Johnny's hand, then turning and walking away.

Johnny passed out from all the blood loss and
a few moments later died.

The old Indian growled up to the curb with a
choke before Jake killed it. He climbed off the cracked leather seat and made
his way to the old folks home. He lit up a cigarette right before stepping in,
taking a couple of minutes to finish it before going in.

The old bike seemed to watch him as he burned
up his cancer stick. Its paint was faded and chipped in a couple of places. The
chrome was tarnished and even rusted in a couple of spots. He blew smoke out of
his mouth, swearing he could hear oil hitting the pavement from beneath its
pan.

“Leaky fucker,” he said, throwing his smoke
to the pavement and crushing it out.

He smiled at the nurse as he walked past her,
she didn’t smile back. He didn’t like coming here, surrounded by old people
that acted like zombies, staring off into nothingness as they waited to die.

“So this is what it's like in the end,”
he thought to himself.
“What a shitty way
to go.”

He picked up his pace, he wanted to get Frank
and get him outside and away from this cemetery.

Walking past a catatonic lady in a wheel
chair, he was quite surprised when she grabbed his wrist.

Her cataract eyes stared at him like the
glare of a dead fish. "You're the reason my Drew is dead," she rasped
through teeth-less lips. "You got my grand-boy killed."

Cold seemed to creep through her hand and
into his wrist. It felt as if he had plunged his arm into the arctic sea all
the way up to his shoulder.

He could've yanked free of her grip easily,
probably spilling her onto the soul-less, bleached stained linoleum floor, but
his arm was already numb and beyond his control from the intense cold. His arm
still looked the same, but he had as much control over it as he would a frozen
solid salmon.

"I-I'm sorry. I should have been a
better friend," he stammered, as her stagnant breath somehow still reached
his face, even though he was high above her. "He was a good man," he
was starting to shiver from the chill. "Knowing him has made me a better
man. A stronger man."

She released her iced death grip, grinning
slightly. "Don't you fret, young man. You'll have your chance to put your
money where your mouth is." She slipped back into a catatonic state.

Without another word, Jake stumbled away from
the wheelchair bound oracle, his mind spinning, rubbing his burning cold arm.

Frank was in a very dangerous place.
Physically he was asleep in his bed at the retirement home. They had moved him
here about a week ago from the hospital. He had survived the knife wound and
was now stable, but in his weakened state he was no longer able to live on his
own, so this was his new home. Dogs were not allowed in the retirement home as
pets of course, so when Frank slept, he was on his own.

Adding to the dilemma was Frank's weakened
physical state followed him into dreamland, lessening his prowess as a fighter,
making him miss his old warrior pal Lloyd even more. If this would have been
his sole obstacle, he most likely would have been able to adapt. After all, he
had been losing his fighting edge for quite some time now, being in his
seventies. He had changed his tactics to using his mind more than his fists
against the fiend in dreamland for years now. If he had to change his tactics
to rely even more on the mental and less on the physical aspects of the
confrontation, he most likely would have been able to pull it off.

The real problem was the drugs. They were
giving him all kinds of things for the pain, which was dulling his mind while
he slept. If they dulled his brain enough, he wouldn't be able to dream at all,
which actually kept him safe from the demon. But once the narcotics started
wearing off, the dreaming would start, but his mind would still be sluggish and
his perceptions in the dream would be warped. That was where the real danger
was. He couldn't fight or think properly, which essentially put him at the
mercy of the monster. Needless to say, the demon was having quite the enjoyable
time with Frank at the moment, because the drunken dreaming was happening right
now for Frank.

He stumbled through the halls of the old
folks home, bouncing off the walls like a pinball as he moved much faster than
his mind could handle. The fiend's laughter seemed to be coming from every
direction, so he wasn't even sure he was going away from the beast or toward
it.

"C'mon Franky, What's your rush?"
The voice was behind him. "Let's have a beer, like the old days!"

Frank looked back and saw Spider a few steps
behind him.

"I knew it," Frank slurred,
stumbling over something since he wasn't watching where he was going anymore.
He waved his arms like a cartoon character for a moment and then went crashing
to the floor.

Spider howled with laughter, pointing at
Frank as he lay on the floor, his hospital gown tangled up behind him, leaving
him exposed.

"Oh boy, does it shrink up that much
when you get old?" It asked, holding its thumb and finger about an inch
apart. "Or has it always been that small? That would explain why Marge
left you then, wouldn't it, little Petey?" More howling laughter followed.

Frank pushed himself up on his elbows, trying
to think of a way to escape, or at least a good comeback, but his brain was so
fuzzy. He doubted he could even say his own name right now.

"No, no, don't get up," Spider
leaned down. "I'll come to you, it's the least I can do." He loomed
above him. "With it being your last few moments alive, I also figure I
should finally come clean about the whole Spider charade that you've been
hounding me about all those years. You were right, it was me the whole
time."

"Why?" Frank asked, stalling for
more time.

"Well, just because you were such a
horrible failure in 'Nam didn't mean I was ready to give up on you. You see,
some people are born with a natural disposition to get involved in this little
cosmic war of good and evil." He pointed at Frank. "And you were one
of those special little people, and I just wanted to make sure you landed on
the right side of the fence. After 'Nam it was obvious that you were a slow
learner and needed some special attention." Now he pointed to himself.
"Thus came the Spider," now he pointed back to Frank. "To the
fly." He chuckled for a brief moment.

"But then I left."

Spider nodded. "And went back to Storm,
which is where everything was going to happen anyway. I would have sent you
back there regardless, I was just hoping to have you a little more evolved by
that time."

"What for?"

Spider looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Because of Sarah and the baby. All of this has been preordained, you
silly little man. You were just one of many pawns in the game. You were
supposed to be one of the good guys, I intended to change that, but you stayed
a loser after all. Aren't you just so proud of yourself?"

"My wife, my child," Frank's mind
was getting clearer, his plan was working. "Why did you kill them?"

Spider held his hands out, motioning Frank to
slow down. "Now, I didn't kill them. That wasn't a lie when I told you
that."

"You had Jack do it!"

"Still, I didn't do it myself, so I
never lied to you about that."

"As if that makes a damn bit of difference."

"That's true," Spider said with a
shrug. "I've got to admit, I really thought that was going to do the trick
with you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Killing your kid and then helping
convince your wife to commit suicide was supposed to make you angry at God,
bringing you back to me." It looked off down the hall. "It seemed to
do the opposite though, go figure." He looked back at Frank. "Most of
the time you mortals do the most obvious things, but every once in awhile you guys
surprise the shit out of me. I think you hold the record in that
department."

"I knew you were behind it as soon as it
happened," Frank replied. "I guess you don't know us mortals as well
as you think."

That put a spark of anger in Spider's eye.
"I think the time for talking is over, old man."

"How did Marge know my father's
knife?" He was running out of things to slow the demon down.

"Oh yeah, now that is a good one,"
the demon had something in his hand now, shaking it at him. "The night
your coworker's car broke down and you had to walk home, making you a couple
hours late to get home, you remember that?"

Frank nodded his head.

"Marge was going to meet you out at your
house, and she did. When she pulled up, she saw the light in the garage on and
guessed you were in there. She went inside and found your dad in there instead.
They talked for a little while, then he pulled his knife, put it to her throat
and raped her," he ended his words with his famous Spider smile.

Frank's mind cleared even more, but no words
came from him as he glared at the demon.

"It went on for quite awhile too,"
Spider put the thing he was holding up to his lips as he recalled the memory.
The item was the switchblade, of course. "A good hour or so, and she
screamed and squealed the whole time! Quite the drama queen, if you ask me. Oh,
and your mom woke up during it all, didn't do a thing. Just lay there and
listened, like a pervert. So much for mom just being an innocent victim,
huh?" This time its grin looked like something you'd see on a goofy clown.

Frank's mind was now clear, and he wanted to
fight the monster in front of him more than anything, but he knew he had to use
his head, not his fists. There was no way he could defeat it right now, on his
back with a knife in his face.

Spider pressed the button on the switchblade.
The opening click echoed down the hallways.

"Dying time, old man," the demon
said, no longer smiling.

Frank forced himself to consciousness as the
knife moved forward. He could feel the blade starting to pierce his neck and
the demon growl in anger as he slid out of dreamland just in time.

Detective Snider sat in Frank's room,
watching him sleep, wondering if his gut was correct on this one.

The night of the tornado left more questions
than answers when it came to the murderous rampage of Johnny Cooper. Most of
the physical evidence had been swept away with the rain and wind of the storm,
but the interviews that had been conducted since then had supported that Johnny
had been the sole killer that night, other than the twister. There was just one
little piece that didn't fit, which is what brought him here now, waiting in
front of the elderly man for almost an hour, waiting for him to wake up.

Frank started to stir, slowly opening his
eyes, surprised by whom he saw sitting before him.

"Detective," the old man said,
rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "What brings you to this neck of the
woods?"

"Don't mean to be a pest, Frank."

"Nonsense," Frank replied.
"What can I do for you?"

"I was looking over the report from the
officers at the scene that night at Margaret's farmhouse, and I saw some
conflicting information."

"What's that?" Frank smiled like
Detective Snider was his favorite nephew.

"The report briefly mentioned a dog at
the scene that had been wounded in a fight with another dog or perhaps a
coyote."

"That's right," Frank confirmed.

Snider nodded in agreement. "The
officers at the scene assumed it was Margaret's dog, but when I took a closer
look at the records, it was actually your dog."

"That's correct," Frank confirmed
with a nod.

Snider looked at his notepad. "According
to your statement, you drove your bike out to the Simmons farm out of concern
from what Jenny Rodgers told you about where Johnny was headed."

"That's true."

"So how did your dog get out
there?" Snider asked. "There was no way you could have brought it on
your motorcycle, so how did it get out there?"

The old man and detective looked at one
another in silence.

"I've heard the stories about dogs
making their way back home over hundreds of miles, but how could your dog have
known where you were going? And even if it did, how would it have known to cut
through the fields to reach the Simmons farm? If it was following you, wouldn't
it have taken the same path you did on your bike? Wouldn't it have just
followed its nose to you? Cause if it did, it would have taken it half the
night to get out there. The police would have got there before the dog."

"It didn't follow him," a voice
said from behind the detective. "We saw him on the side of the road,
limping along. We knew it was Frank's dog, so we stopped and picked him
up."

Detective Snider turned and saw that it was
Jake who had answered his question as he walked into Frank's room. He had
already spent time talking with the kid about that night, torn with taking it
easy on him with the death of his mom and working him over. After all, he had
been Johnny's best friend, so who better to interrogate?