The map that Ryan received had an area on the outskirts of town highlighted in yellow, indicating the streets they were to travel to get to their destination. The twenty-minute walk from the town hall would take the three of them out past the new subdivision and down a dirt road to the abandoned gravel pit.
“Could you have picked a map that takes us any further away?” Tom asked.
“We could take my car,” Ryan offered. “I have to go back to the school and get it anyway.”
“I think the idea is to look along the way,” Ellie reminded him. “The car would kind of defeat the purpose.”
“Don’t get lippy with me, Goth-Chic,” he teased. “I don’t think I pinky swore to secrecy last night.” He leaned over and gave her air kisses.
“Keep it up and I’ll start giving you a reason to sing a hurtin’ song,” Ellie threatened, looking sternly at him.
Ryan howled in laughter. “Is that your poker face, Goth-Chic? You could make me some money, Loser.” He flashed a finger “L” in front of her face. “Ellie’s got a royal blush,” he said in a sing-song voice.
“What the hell is up with you two?” Tom asked. “You’re giggling like a couple of girls.” He eyed the two of them suspiciously. Something had passed between them last night. Something he wasn’t a part of.
“Me’n’Goth were just talking,” Ryan shrugged, sensing he was crossing the line with Tom. Why should Tom care, he wondered? Unless Tom had a hard-on for Ellie. That would figure. Tom always went after the new girl in town. It had been the same with Jacey.
Ryan grew quiet and avoided Tom’s gaze as they continued down the road.
Their silence gave Ellie plenty of time to re-think what that evil girl had said. Evil-Girl. If she was destined to be Goth-Chic, Tara Wildman would forever be Evil-Girl in Ellie’s eyes. Evil-Girl and her Psycho-Dad. The whole hyphenated family. Maybe the Wildman’s hated everybody. Maybe they hated the whole-wide-world. Maybe it wasn’t personal after all.
“Where’s Jacey?” Ellie asked. She was trying to come to terms with the fact that if Tom and Ryan were destined to be her new best friends forever, then she was going to have to get used to the Jacey-Creature, like it or not.
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “She probably broke a nail or something and is waiting for elective surgery. How’s your stomach?”
“My stomach?”
“From last night. Are you feeling okay now?” he asked. “We looked for you after the game and your Mom said you left early.”
“Yes, thanks.” Ellie had forgotten all about the little excuse she had come up with to leave quickly. “I’m probably just getting used to the water here in Troy. The water is softer. I have a delicate stomach. And my head was pounding. How’s your shoulder, Ryan?”
“He’s fine,” Tom answered.
“She asked me. And it’s still sore. I can’t fully extend of my arm yet.”
“You can throw a pass if you want to,” Tom snapped, moving ahead of Ryan and Ellie.
“Glad you’re feeling better, Goth. I get the Jacey flu from time to time myself,” Ryan confessed, giving Ellie a nod.
“What’s wrong with Jacey?” Tom asked, turning around and facing them.
“Nothing,” Ryan said. “That’s the problem.”
Ellie laughed. Either Ryan knew of hidden flaws in the girl that she would pry out of him later, or her perfection bugged the crap out of him too. Either way, she couldn’t help but smile.
“Then let’s get off the Jacey subject,” Tom said irritably.
“Okay, okay,” Ryan said. “Anything to get you to morph back into Mr. Personality.”
“What’s up with him?” Ellie asked Ryan. All the guessing going around in her head was starting to drive her mental. “Do we need to take him to a chic-flick so he can cry?”
“Some people are put out, some people are not putting out,” Ryan answered. “Troy’s a town full of Trojans with no place to go.”
“Will you shut up, Ryan?” Tom begged. He turned and looked at Ellie.
She could sense he wanted to say something but couldn’t. “What?” Ellie asked. “What’s wrong? If she doesn’t want to hang around me, you can tell me. Tara didn’t seem to have a problem telling me.”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Tom tried to explain. “Jacey says she likes you. And Tara Wildman is as loony as her old man. Don’t pay any attention to her.”
“Leave Tara out of this,” Ryan warned Tom. “Tara hasn’t done anything to you or Jacey.”
“I don’t know if Jacey’d agree.”
Ellie stepped between them. “Okay, okay...let’s play nice. Tell me the truth. Why didn’t Jacey want to come, Tom?” she asked.
“Look… I didn’t want to say anything, but you guys just won’t let it drop. Jacey’s not mad at me and she’s not mad at Ellie. Okay, she’s kind of mad at me, but that’s got nothing to do with it. She said she didn’t want to come today in case we found a dead body.” He paused. “Happy?”
Ellie and Ryan gave each other looks that started off as fear and changed to disgust.
“Ew!” Ellie gasped.
“What did you say that for?” Ryan asked.
“That’s what she said. You wanted to know. Now you know.”
“Cohen didn’t tell us to look for a dead body,” Ryan said. “That would change things. Big time. He gets paid for that kind of shit, we don’t.” He looked at Ellie. “We should have taken the car so we can get the hell out of there if we need to.”
“I don’t think she’s dead,” Ellie said. “So don’t even go there.”
“How do you know?” Tom asked. “I hate to break it to you but there is that possibility.”
“I’m operating under the assumption we’ve had our quota of dead bodies this week,” Ellie offered uneasily. “Let me see the map, Ryan. I don’t know north from south in this town yet.”
Ryan handed it to her. “I’m not an expert on these things or anything, but we’re supposed to go search the gravel yard.” He pointed to a spot on the map Ellie was holding. “There, at the end of the yellow line. That’s the yard. Tom’s right, there are definite dead body possibilities there.”
“Gravel yards. They’re right up there with cement factories,” Tom explained.
“We are not going to find a dead body,” Ellie insisted. Brooke hadn’t been dead in her dream, but she couldn’t tell them that. “Trust me.”
“Seriously, Ellie,” Ryan said pensively. “What happens if we do find her, you know, hanging from a tree with her skipping rope around her neck or something? Do we cut her down? Do we leave her hanging there? What do we do?”
Ellie had no answer for him.
“You almost sound excited,” Tom noted. “Maybe Wildman’s right about you.”
“With Old Man Wagner,” Ryan continued, ignoring Tom, “I only had to pull the blanket back up over his face. He was ready to be taken away. Stiff, but ready. Touching a dead little girl would be...”
“Do you have to be so graphic?” Ellie asked, cutting him off. She looked to Tom for help.
“You’re lucky you missed the summer camp stories with him when we were kids,” Tom told her. “I still have nightmares from the ghost stories he made up. Especially the one about the axe murderer.”
“It could happen,” Ryan insisted. “What if...”
“Stop,” Tom interrupted. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that we do find her, and she’s not happily picking buttercups in a meadow. We’d have to take her pulse to see if she’s alive or dead. That much I know for sure. Other than that, we probably shouldn’t touch her. Cohen wouldn’t want us disturbing the scene.”
“Quit talking like you’re going to be conscious,” Ryan said testily. “I’ve seen you in a similar situation and I can tell you now, you’ll be out cold and it’ll be Goth-Chic and me taking care of ‘the scene’, Mr. Dead-Man-Fainting.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
“You two are talking like your Trojans are in
timate,” Ellie said. “Kiss and make up already.”
“So you got that earlier reference?” Ryan asked sheepishly.
“I’m not twelve, Ryan. I’m fifteen. Jacey didn’t put out and Tom’s pissed off. Yes. I got that reference.” She looked over at Tom who was avoiding her gaze. “Now will you two knock it off and get serious about this?” She hesitated. There was something she needed to know, but she was unsure if this was the right time to ask. “Have you guys lived here all your lives?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “Are you going to make that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Good. Do you know if there is a bridge by this gravel yard we’re headed to?” She tried to look at the map as she walked, but the motion was making her ill.
“No bridge. Why?” Tom questioned.
“Just curious. Is that the yard at the end of this road?”
“Destination dead body yard is indeed in our sight,” Ryan said.
Ellie paused for a moment and looked at the landscape. While they had left the residential area of town and she could see farm pastures up ahead, the area didn’t bear any resemblance to the location in her dream. As they reached the yard, all she could see around her were piles of rock. No bridge. No schoolhouse. Just rocks. She felt relieved and disappointed at the same time.
“Watch your step,” Tom cautioned, as he stomped over a ‘no trespassing’ sign. There was a hole in the wire fence as big as a bulldozer. Gaining entry to the area was not going to be a problem. “There’s rusted scrap all over the place. Every one up on their tetanus? Be careful what you pick up. It could be nasty.”
“Story of my life,” Ryan said. “I guess we’re looking for a ruby slipper sticking out of a rock pile. That ought to narrow it down from whoever else we find here.”
“You really can’t help it, can you?” Ellie asked sarcastically, her stomach beginning to churn at the thought of what they might really find.
“Easy, Goth-Chic. I’m just playing the odds. The more we talk about it, the less likely it is to happen.”
“Mr. Tough-Guy-Folding,” Tom said under his breath.
“I’m not folding. That’s not part of my game plan.”
“Game plan?”
“I’ve been running possible plays over in my head. If this were a ball game, I would see the opponent coming at me. I’d have to make a split second decision how to get by him. And if that didn’t pan out, I’d measure the amount of pain I’d have to take when he hit me, and get ready to suck it up. Right now, I don’t know if there’s some maniacal serial killer lurking behind that porta-shitter up ahead, waiting to kill us. If there is, I don’t know how much he weighs. So the pain is questionable. I do know it’s about a hundred yards away. I can run that in 15 seconds. How about you guys?”
Tom and Ellie looked at each other and shrugged.
“I’m a goner,” Tom admitted.
“This is why you need me, in case there was ever any doubt,” Ryan told them.
“We should have brought shovels,” Ellie said, looking around the yard. There were piles of stones ranging from pebbles to boulders all around them.
“Negative, Goth-Chic,” Ryan continued. “Again you need me. Here’s what we do. We take a look around and apply the rule of bird shit.”
“The rule of bird shit?” She glanced at Tom for a clue.
“Don’t look at me,” Tom replied. “I don’t know where’s he’s going with this.”
“Listen and try to keep up. As you can see, all the rocks in here are covered in bird shit. If anyone had come in here and dug an area up, say to bury something, they would have had to disturb the rocks. Clean rocks equal dead body. Bird shit equals we can go home.”
“That actually makes sense,” Ellie admitted.
“Okay,” Tom said, “but what if he just dumped the body and ran?”
“If he didn’t bury her and she’s just lying there, she’ll reek,” Ryan offered. I know it’s cold but it even if she froze solid last night, this winter sun would be giving her a little defrost factor. Thawing rotten meat still stinks.”
“Are you trying to make me barf?” Ellie asked. “Maybe we’d be better off keeping our opinions to ourselves.”
The three teenagers combed the dusty yard for almost an hour before giving up. In the end, the only sign of death they had found was what appeared to be the remains of a large bird.
“Well, that was useless. We found squat,” Ryan summed up. “Let’s head back, give them the good news and then grab some grub at the Topaz. I could murder a burger.”
“I’m kind of hungry myself,” Ellie admitted. “Now that I’ve got my appetite back.”
“What do you think really happened to her?” Tom asked, as they slipped back out through the hole in the fence.
“Some perv. It happens all the time,” Ryan said. “I mean, what else could it be? No kid strays far from home on Halloween. It goes against the ritual. Stan was right about that.”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked.
“It’s a total freak show out on the streets. Kids don’t want to put up with all that bullshit. The objective is to get the candy and go home.”
“Your theory is sound,” Tom agreed. “Greed over gore.”
Ellie hesitated. “Okay listen, don't think I'm weird or anything, I know this is going to sound really strange. I had a dream about her the other night. That’s why I asked you guys about the bridge. In my dream, I saw this old wooden one over a small brook, no pun intended. It was one of those covered ones like you’d see on the cover of an old Western novel.”
“You had a dream about Brooke? That’s weird. You don't even know her,” Tom said.
“You should be dreaming about what I look like naked in the shower,” Ryan teased.
Ellie gave Ryan a pained look.
“Or not,” he offered.
“I said the dream was strange, not totally out of the question,” Ellie snapped back. She turned to Tom, hoping for a sympathetic ear. “I saw her. Out there somewhere.” She paused for a moment. “I think there was some sort of old school or something off in the distance. It wasn’t in town. It was out in the country somewhere. At first I thought it might be around here, but nothing looks familiar.”
Tom stared at her. He could see the aura back around her, turning a purple shade as she told her story. It turned deeper as she became more agitated and lightened up when she was collecting her thoughts. It mesmerized him. He wanted to ask Ryan if he saw it as well, but then again, he didn’t want Ryan thinking he had totally lost it over her. Maybe he and Ellie were connecting in a way Ryan could never understand. He secretly hoped they were.
“I saw her wearing that costume even before the cops had the picture of her,” Ellie informed them. “She was calling my name, asking me to find her and then poof, they were gone.”
“Poof?” Ryan laughed, and then howled like a wolf to add a bit of drama to the tale. “Oh, Goth-Chic. Save me. I don't want to die,” he teased in a falsetto voice. “POOF me already.”
Ellie’s face grew grim. She was tiring of Ryan’s wolf impersonations. They reminded her of the wild dog she met in front of her grandmother’s house. “That's not funny. I’m serious, Ryan.”
“You said ‘they’,” Tom pointed out.
Ellie nodded her head. “There was this kid ... well not a kid exactly ... some guy about our age. He was really, really, pale, and he had these fangs.”
Ryan laughed even harder. “Are you trying to tell us he was like a vampire or something? Goth-Chic, what have you been smokin'?”
Tom hit one side of Ryan, hoping he would lighten up. Ellie hit the other side of him, hoping he would shut-up.
“Damn it. Watch the shoulder, people.” Ryan cried, rubbing it.
“I’ll give you something to howl about,” Ellie promised.
“Ignore him, Ellie. He's just being an ass.” Tom tried to put his arm around Ellie in a feeble attempt to calm her down. He felt a static shock as he touched her, and immediately
pulled back. “Ow! Man, the air is dry today.”
Ryan had heard the snap. “Stop shuffling your feet, dude.”
Tom looked down. “It shouldn’t have happened. I’m wearing rubbers.”
The boys looked at each other and laughed.
“One will do, dude,” Ryan snickered.
Ellie groaned. While under different circumstances Tom’s attempted touch might have made her warm and fuzzy, i.e., before she met Jacey, it certainly didn’t now. It had been a stressful morning, and she knew they were being juvenile to blow off steam, but they weren’t taking her seriously and it was really starting to annoy her.
“Please,” Ellie pleaded with them. “You guys are the only friends I have here. I know this sounds crazy, but I swear I’m not making it up. There really was a vampire, or someone who looked like a vampire, in my dream. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Okay. I really was being an ass.” Ryan admitted. “Goth-Chic, there are no such things as vampires. Not in Troy. Reality check time. You'd have to have to be living in a town with blood pulsing through its veins to attract them. You’re not. This ain’t New York, New York.” He posed for her, snapping his fingers as he began to croon “We go to sleep in a city, that doesn't wake up.”
Tom laughed. “Dude, you’ve do have the pipes.”
“Fine. Forget it. I knew I shouldn't have told you. I knew you wouldn't understand.” She looked at the two of them and wondered why she had even attempted to tell them her story in the first place. “Thanks for your support,” she added sarcastically. “I’m out of here.”
“You don’t know where out of here is,” Ryan laughed.
Ellie turned and glared at him. “I have the map, Brainchild. That is why I DON’T NEED YOU. I can find my own way back.” Her pace quickened as she headed back down the road.
Tom and Ryan looked at each other.
“What do you make of that?” Tom asked.
“She's a chic,” Ryan shrugged. “I don't try to understand them.”
“No, I mean the dream thing. Do you think she's for real?” He noticed that the aura around Ellie had disappeared.
They started to follow her, keeping their distance.
“You know I want to love them all, and it goes against every throb in my cajones to have to say this, but dude, some of them are just whacko,” Ryan said. “If you need one for whacko-sex, fine. But I have Tara for that.”
“Ellie might be wacko, the jury’s still out...but maybe we should pretend to believe her and see how far it gets us.”
“You mean, you. How far it gets you. Leave me out of your little love-scapade. I’ll be the dude who comes back to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.”
“I thought you didn’t care.”
“Never underestimate the emotions of a grateful family.”
“It’ll never happen. This fantasy thing you have with the LaRose women.”
“Maybe. But while we’re referencing images on the weird radar, check this out. I think I know the bridge Goth was talking about. It sounded like the one out on county road three. The one over Stillman’s Creek. There’s that old abandoned Amish schoolhouse out past the pasture. I took Alison Fuller there once.”
“Get out!” Tom questioned. “Alison Fuller is way out of your league.”
“Okay. I tried to take Alison Fuller there once. She spent the night asking me to hook her up with somebody else.”
“What did you want to go there for? That’s by Tara’s place.”
“Moonlight. Water. Isolation. Stillman’s Creek is the perfect make-out spot. You have to admit it sounds like the place she described. Maybe Goth-Chic's onto something.”
Tom stopped in the middle of the street. “Vampires, dude?”
“I'm just sayin'... if you haven't lived in Troy all your life, there's no way you'd know about that bridge. You've got to hike around through Wildman’s property to get to it since they blocked off the old highway road, but it’s still there. Let's do it, man. Let's go and check it out. Maybe we’ll knock down Wildman's mailbox while we're at it.”
“I think you're more whacked than Ellie is. What's your beef with Wildman, anyway? If you’re going to marry his daughter some day, you’ve got to bury the hatchet.”
Ryan faced Tom and raised his fist. “Ugh. I am not going to marry Tara Wildman. I’m not going to marry anybody,” he said seriously. “I am going to my grave a single dude. But since you asked, my current beef with Wildman is simple. It’s about this missing kid. He told half the town that he thinks I did it.”
“Let it go, dude,” Tom demanded, surprised that Ryan had threatened him. “I was just joking around.”
The “zone” look that Ryan had shown Helena yesterday morning had now reappeared on his face as his attempts to contain his inner rage failed.
“Yeah? Well, Wildman wasn’t.”