Splattered

Ten: Trudging Home

They walked home through the woods, with Keltie still soaked in blood. Marty took her the back way (to approach the gorge from Pleasant street, in her current state, would have been madness), which put them on a route Keltie had already been familiar with for years. There was the playground, of course, and the football field. The opening in the trees. And yes, the path to the old stone bridge.

Daylight faded as they walked. Shadows began to crowd the trees, thicker and thicker, until Keltie could barely see the path. Squinting, she searched for the bridge. They were almost upon it. Had to be. As if to beckon them, a cold evening wind swept through the dead limbs. Keltie shivered, but doubted Marty would offer to put his arm around her. He hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the school. Why should he? She had just murdered his sister and was now tacky with her blood. The more interesting question was this: Why didn’t she—Keltie—feel like a girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown? What she had just done, the things she had shouted…utterly maniacal all. She should be gibbering in a corner somewhere, not doing an evening stroll, a nature hike, worried more about flies nesting in her blood-matted hair than her mind cracking open and exploding like an old basement boiler.

Because someone in pain needed you to help her, and you did. It wasn’t easy, but you did.

“It was easy,” Keltie said, hoping Marty wouldn’t hear. “I gotta be crazy, because it was so easy.”

They crossed the bridge. Keltie looked into the water, which was black with night. All the wet weather brought it up high, the way it had been so many years ago. Indeed, its strong current threatened to overtake the bridge and perhaps wet the feet of crossers by. Remembering everything that once happened here, Keltie looked into the water. She looked into the water and felt nothing.

***

Marty did not take her directly to the detention center. It might have been worth doing just to see the look on Mrs. Cobb’s face, Keltie thought, but no, he took her to the shed where she’d encountered him earlier, slaughtering his mannequin. Once they were inside, with the door closed, he at last deigned to speak.

“Wait here,” he said in a toneless voice. “I’ll get you clothes and some water to wash the blood.”

Keltie agreed, and minutes later he returned with a duffle bag and a plastic bowl filled with hot water. He then waited with his back turned while she undressed from head to foot. Vera’s blood proved stubborn. It took several more minutes to get enough of it off that she could with minimal confidence walk back to her room without terrorizing anyone. Inside the bag was a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt. Marty had also rather thoughtfully included a hat to cover the worst of her mangled hair. He insisted on walking her to her room, though she felt hardly in need of such chivalry. In any case, they found the halls dimly lit and deathly quiet. The night was still young, but on Sundays most of the students retired to their rooms early.

They met only one girl out wandering. Marty was leading her up a back stairwell (where someone’s candle, no doubt left over from mass, stood flickering in a naked window) when all at once Keltie heard footsteps. She looked up to see a face that—of course—she knew. Sadie’s.

“Hello, Sadie,” she muttered, hoping the other would ignore her.

“Hello Kel…WHOA! f*****g awesome!”

Keltie covered her face and tried to get by. “Excuse me, please.”

“You look like f*****g Carrie White! Sincerely! I love it!”

“Yeah,” Keltie nodded.

“Was there a costume party somewhere?”

“Yeah.”

“f**k!” Sadie barked. “I wish I could have gone! I would have dressed up like the goblin king from Labyrinth!”

“Yeah,” Keltie said, rolling her eyes. “You would have definitely nailed that s**t to the wall.”

“f*****g-a I would’ve!”

“Gotta go now, Sadie.”

She and Marty went to her room. Keltie grabbed a fresh towel, then told Marty to wait while she went down the hall to shower. She returned twenty minutes later with said towel wrapped around herself to find the Filipino boy brooding at the window. His reflection hovered outside like a ghost. Keltie looked at it, finding nothing to ascertain. She’d seen sheets of bond paper with more emotion.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, the words rising up almost too fast to understand what they were for.

“Why?” Marty asked.

“I should be trying to comfort you. But I don’t know how.”

“You’ve done plenty today already.”

Was there a nip of accusation in his voice? Keltie tried to tell herself not, but it was impossible to be sure. Marty’s reflection remained blank. His eyes were a million miles off.

“Therapy isn’t my thing,” she said. A rather useless image of the school psychiatrist floated in her thoughts. What she and Marty were dealing with at the moment ranged just a tad beyond the pipe-smoker’s depth.

“I don’t need therapy,” the other came back with.

“Okay. So what do you need?”

Marty turned around. The distant expression on his had flown. “I need,” he began.

If you say ‘a cold beer’, or make some other stupid joke I’m kicking you right the f**k out of this room.

“I need for Bolt to die, Keltie. Preferably in the most horrible way possible. I need for Bolt to die.”

“Because of the life he forced Vera to lead?”

“Absolutely. Her and others like her. So I’m leaving tonight. I want to find him and kill him.”

Keltie took a seat on the bed. A long time passed before she could muster a reply. Or perhaps it only seemed that way, for when she raised her head, Marty was still there, and still looked ready to fight. “Auribus teneo lupum,” she whispered.

“What?”

“It’s Latin. Means I hold a wolf by the ears.”

“I don’t understand.”

She shrugged. “It’s all right. Just a little something I caught while accidently paying attention in class.”

“Well it’s funny you should mention wolves,” Marty said, leaning his butt against Penelope’s old study desk. “I won’t be here tomorrow. There’s a town to the east. South of Cleveland. It’s called Howling.”

“Howling?” Keltie repeated. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It isn’t very big. But there’s another vampire there. One Vera used to talk about. Whenever she wanted to contact Bolt she went through him.”

“And let me guess: You’re going to force him to spew up his master’s whereabouts. Make him spill his guts. Figuratively at first—“

“And then literally,” Marty finished.

She looked at him like he was nuts. “What makes you think you can do that?”

The reply that came did nothing to swerve her expression. Quite the reverse. “I don’t have a plan yet,” Marty said sheepishly.

“Don’t say that to the guy when you see him.”

“I’m sorry!” he barked, making her jump. “Who the f**k am I supposed to be, anyway? Abe Van Helsing? I can’t…” Keltie watched his eyes close for a moment. “Kill vampires,” he all but vomited out with disgust.

“I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I need to, anyway. Once Bolt finds out about Vera he’ll be coming straight for me.”

He sent her a grave look. “And he won’t play around this time. He’ll break right through your window.”

“I know. It’s time to disappear.”

“You mean run away?”

Keltie almost laughed at his worried countenance. Instead, she rose from the bed (with the towel still her only protection from pure nakedness), and took a seat next to him on the desk. “Not a chance,” she said. “But we need a plan. A good plan.”

Marty shook his head. “Better than good. It needs to be perfect.”

“Don’t push it. There’s no such thing as perfection.”

“No? Keltie, haven’t you ever ordered the spinach lasagna from Sbarro’s?”

“Um…no. But I will if we live long enough to have a real date.”

She studied him with incredulity. Food. After what had happened today, they were talking about food. But at least Marty no longer looked ready to cry. He was, in fact, smiling for the first time in about twelve hours.

“Go back to your room,” she said. “Shower. Get some clean clothes in a bag. Take a nap. I’ll meet you at the shed at”—she checked the Ben and Holly clock—“say four-thirty?”

“I’ll be there.”

After he’d gone, Keltie dropped her towel and slipped under the covers of her bed. She did not think sleep would come. Half an hour later, though, she was in dreamland. Floating without a map, without a plan. Or in other words, going about business as usual.

Hapless, helpless, and brutal.