Extremities: Stories of Death, Murder, and Revenge Read online

  “Where’re you going?” That was a strange thing for him to do. But I wasn’t worried. Don was the most cautious person on the planet. He even washed his fruit. He buckled his seat belt when he was moving his car from the driveway to the garage. He was Mr. Careful.

  “Right across, man. I’m going right across. It’s all in the timing.” His voice sounded flat and far away. Another truck blew by, drowning Don’s next words.

  “Stop kidding around.” A ripple of worry flashed through my guts. “Come on. Let’s get going.” I moved closer to the fence. But it was silly to worry. Whatever Don was doing, I knew he wouldn’t go down the hill and step onto that highway. I would have bet anything on that.

  I would have lost.

  “Here I go!” Don screamed. He let out a whoop and took off.

  “No!” I grabbed the fence, frozen. Beneath my fingers, the metal vibrated from the rumble of the traffic.

  Below, Don was crossing the interstate. I had no idea why he was doing it. He ran straight for the other side, speeding up or slowing down a bit as he went, lane by lane, across one of the busiest strips of road in the state. It was almost like some damned video game. Horns blared all over the place. The scream of tires tore through the air as drivers slammed on their brakes, though there wasn’t a prayer that any of them could stop that quickly. A white Taurus nearly ran off the shoulder as it swerved around Don. A red Camaro, the driver holding a phone to his ear, blew past Don, inches from his back, never slowing.

  Don hurdled the center barrier without pausing, just getting out of the way of a black Nissan wagon. His shirt rippled from the wind as the wagon passed him. There was nothing in the fast lane. He jogged through the middle lane seconds after a Mustang shot by, tires squealing, leaving twin tracks of rubber on the road. Don reached the slow lane, still looking straight ahead.

  He nearly made it.

  Maybe, just maybe, he would have been okay if it had been a car that ended his run. A car might have cost him just a few months in a cast if the driver had braked hard enough and fast enough. Maybe. But it was a truck that hit Don. I suspect the driver didn’t even feel the jolt. Don sure as hell felt the jolt. Standing on the other side, clutching the fence, even I could feel the jolt.

  * * *

  Jennie looked lovely at Don’s funeral. God forgive me—that’s what I kept noticing. There I was, hearing a minister explain how this was all for the best and beyond anything we could understand. There I was, trying not to look at a box that held the crushed remains of my best friend. Don was gone, I didn’t want to be there, and Jennie looked lovely.

  Jennie was near the front, across the aisle and several rows ahead of me. She was wearing a simple dress that draped her body and clung to it in ways that made me want to reach out and run my hand against the fabric.

  I forced myself to look away from her. Don was dead. I still couldn’t believe that my best buddy had lost a game of tag with a truck right in front of my eyes.

  A flicker of motion drew my attention. Jennie had tossed her head slightly, throwing her black hair from her shoulders. In the sunshine streaming through the church windows, her hair seemed both to gleam and to swallow the light. It was a hypnotic mix, absorbing and reflecting the beams in ways that made my mouth grow dry. It was almost as if sunlight existed only so Jennie could bathe in it.

  Around me, everyone was rising to sing a hymn. The church was filled with adults and with Don’s friends from school. The air was thick with the scent of too many flowers. We all lifted our voices and sang about crossing one last river. Maybe that was a poor choice of hymns, but nobody seemed to notice. I sneaked another glance at Jennie, watching her throat move as she joined in. Her neck was smooth and soft. There were too many voices for me to pick hers out, but I suspected it was like honey and stardust.

  I looked at the coffin. My mind knit a scene where the polished wooden box suddenly flew open. Don, badly put back together by an undertaker who knew it would be a closed-casket service, sat up and said, “One more chance. I know I can make it. And this time, you’re coming with me, pal.” He pointed at me, one finger extending from the mush that had been his hand. Then he put the hand on the edge of the coffin and stepped out.

  I shook my head, physically trying to fling the image from my mind. It flew off, but I knew others would come to fill the space. I knew all too well that my mind would never run dry of horrors.

  We sat and bowed our heads in prayer. As the words slipped from my lips, memories of Don glided through my mind. He was always so cautious. When we went through town, he’d cross the street rather than walk past the wrong gang. He’d checked the air pressure in his tires more often than anyone on the planet. Now he was dead. But I envied his life. Quiet, careful Don had been dating Jennie. They went out for two months, almost from the time Jennie had come to our school.

  Head still bowed, I opened my eyes a slit and looked in her direction. I wondered if she’d ever worn that dress on a date with Don. What would it be like to touch those shoulders? How would it feel to hold her hand?

  I envied him, and I felt awful about it. That was the last thing I needed. I already felt awful about the funeral. I’d almost stayed home. At the first sight of the coffin, it took all my strength not to turn and run from the church. The funeral gave my mind too much to play with. And there was worse ahead. Far worse. I knew it was crazy. What kind of person is scared of a graveyard in the middle of the day?

  My kind, I guess.

  That’s my dark secret. I don’t know how or why I’d gotten this way. If I look back at my childhood, I can remember things and people and events, but I can’t recall feelings—not with any clarity. Somewhere along the line, I picked up a lot of fear. I didn’t like it. But I couldn’t help it. Stories I’d read or movies I’d seen stayed in my mind. Scenes of the dead rising terrified me, scenes of familiar people turning into monsters haunted me. Whenever I was alone with a friend at night, I’d almost see him shift and change into something hungry for my flesh. Walking down a dark street, I could hear the creatures stalking me. I avoided mirrors and basements.

  The tales of Poe, tales of being buried alive, entered my mind at the oddest moments. I’d imagine the school collapsing on me, burying me in rubble, leaving me scratching weakly at my prison, unheard by the rescuers who passed inches from my dying body. I’d feel my heart speed up when I went past the construction site on the south side of town, imagining a thousand ways I might slip into the pit and be suffocated by an avalanche of dirt. Buried forever beneath the new supermarket.

  The prayer ended. We raised our heads. The minister spoke more words. We rose and filed out. I watched Jennie. She walked up to Nick Ferrano, the class clown. Nick was behaving himself—no jokes today. I would have ripped his heart out myself if he’d tried to be funny. But he was as torn up as the rest of us.

  Jennie said something to Nick. He said something to her. She put her hand on his arm for a moment, just the lightest touch, almost like someone reaching for a box of cookies in a store but not yet sure if it was the one she wanted. Another twinge of envy flashed through me as I turned away from them and left the church.

  Don’s parents were outside, looking lost. I didn’t know what to say. I imagine nobody knew what to say. We filed past and shook their hands, and most of the girls cried, and most of the guys cried but tried to pretend that they didn’t.

  It was awful.

  After I reached the parking lot, I watched Jennie walk to her car. She looked just as good from the back. The black fabric swirled around her calves, weaving a spell over me. She was giving Nick a ride.

  I went to my own car and pulled in line with the rest of the people. The cemetery wasn’t far. After I parked and turned off the engine, I sat where I was, staring at the rows of headstones and wishing I’d never stumbled across late-night commercials for all those low-budget zombie movies. My mind filled with scenes of hands pushing through the ground, bursting free of the graves. I wondered if I could slip away, o
r slink down in the seat until the funeral was over.

  Nobody seemed to notice me. I sat, building up the nerve to watch them put the coffin in the ground. Jennie and Nick walked up the path to the grave site. Even from a distance, she stood out, a vision painfully lovely in this cold field of death.

  The graveside ceremony started.

  I watched from the car.

  The waiting hole swallowed the casket. And then, it was over. The crowd broke slowly. A few wandered off, a few more straggled away, then a large clump moved toward the parking lot.

  One old man stared at me. The woman with him whispered something. I could almost read her lips. “That was Don’s best friend,” she was saying. The man nodded. They must have thought I was too overcome with grief to leave my car.

  And that was it. Good-bye, Don. Sorry I didn’t watch the end, but we were together for a lot of good stuff.

  * * *

  Life went on.

  Within a week, Nick and Jennie became the hot couple. Heads turned when the two of them passed down the halls. I’ve heard that girls like a guy with a sense of humor. Nick certainly had that. He could even get most of the teachers to laugh. Once, he’d made Ms. Weldon laugh in the middle of a sip of coffee. She nearly choked.

  The only teacher who never laughed was Mr. Loomis. I remember the time he said, “Nick, I don’t get your jokes. They’re just not funny.”

  Without blinking, without even pausing for a second, Nick shot back at him with, “Maybe you should take my class. It’s called Humor for Teachers.”

  That cost him a week of detention. He didn’t seem to mind. He joked about that, too: “Detention was great. What a learning experience. By the end of the week, I’d learned how to hot-wire a car, synthesize amphetamines, and buy a fake ID.”

  Time passed.

  I went on a couple of dates with different girls, but it all felt like nothing more than going through the motions. I hung out with other friends. The hole Don had left didn’t grow any smaller, but it moved further from the surface of my mind. I guess that’s the way the mind heals the really bad wounds. More time passed. Looking back, three things stuck in my memory. The first happened about a month after Don’s funeral. I think it was right after math class. My pen had leaked during class, so I stopped on my way down the hall to wash my hands. I ran into Nick in the bathroom.

  “Hey, you and Jennie are going out,” I said, just making empty conversation.

  “Nope. We’re staying in.” Nick replied, making a typical speed-of-light response. He was out of the bathroom before I figured out the joke.

  Maybe ten days after that, I passed him in the cafeteria. He was by himself. I guess Jennie had a class or something. She never seemed to join him for lunch. As I was walking by, Lou Watkins said to him, “So, you and Jennie getting serious?”

  I paused to catch his response. I was sure it would be hilarious. But all he said was “Yeah, I suppose.” He almost sounded sad.

  The third thing happened less than a week later. I was in chemistry and had reached for a beaker on the Bunsen burner before giving it enough of a chance to cool down. I’d yelled, tossed it clumsily from hand to hand, and ended up dropping it on the floor. As I blew on my fingers, I glanced over to my left and noticed Nick. He’d seen my whole juggling act. I knew he’d cut me up with some sort of comment.

  But he didn’t say a word.

  Maybe those three things wouldn’t have stuck with me, except for what happened next. That same evening, at 9:47, Nick Ferrano killed himself.

  No joke.

  * * *

  Less than two months after they’d buried my best friend, I found myself at another funeral. It wasn’t as bad. I guess the second time through anything is never as bad as the first. And to be honest, Nick wasn’t a close friend. He was just a guy I knew. He was just a guy who used to make us all laugh.

  Different church, same rituals. I sat near the back, knowing I would duck out this time and not even pretend to go to the cemetery.

  “It’s so very sad.” Jennie slipped into the seat next to me. The room grew warmer. She was wearing the same black dress she’d worn at Don’s funeral. For a moment—longer, I’m sure, than was proper—I admired her from up close. She didn’t seem to mind.

  “He…” I tried to get my thoughts together. “He had everything to live for.”

  “Yes,” she said. She put her hand on my leg.

  A shock ran from my knee to my groin. Part of me wanted to hold her and bury my face in her hair. Part of me would have been happy to die in her arms.

  “Were you two close?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “We were in a lot of the same classes. I guess I knew him since sixth grade, but we weren’t best friends or anything.”

  She looked right into my eyes. I had a strange feeling that I was taking a test. Her own eyes, her lovely eyes, seemed to reach into my heart.

  “I need to walk,” she said. “Will you walk with me when the service is over?”

  “Sure.”

  So we strolled from the church and talked and agreed to meet the next day. I’m not sure how it happened, or who asked the other out. But it seemed that I was going to have a date with Jennie.

  “Do you like movies?” she asked as we were discussing what to do.

  “Yeah, usually,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t want to go to a horror film. Two of the five movies showing at the mall were horror. “What would you like to see?”

  She smiled. “You choose.”

  I chose a comedy. It probably wouldn’t have mattered what we saw. I really didn’t pay much attention to the movie, not with Jennie sitting next to me. As we left the theater, I asked her, “Want to grab a burger or something?”

  She shook her head. “I’d better get home. But let’s do something tomorrow. Okay?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Me, too. I had a really nice time with you.” She smiled and touched my cheek for a moment with her warm, soft fingers. She seemed happy to be with me.

  On our second date, half-afraid I’d destroy the magic by dissecting it, I asked her, “Why me?”

  “Most boys are so dull,” she’d answered. “You have something special inside. I can tell.”

  That didn’t make much sense. I didn’t feel special. But I didn’t press her for an explanation. I wasn’t going to reveal that all I had inside me was a lifetime of irrational fears. I wasn’t going to lose her by exposing my flaws. I dropped the subject.

  And just like that, we became the couple who turned heads. I guess people wondered what a stunning girl like Jennie was doing with someone like me. Not that I was a loser or a nerd or anything, but I certainly wasn’t going to be voted most popular, or any of the other desirable mosts. Maybe “most likely to pass unnoticed” or “most average.”

  Average guys didn’t date girls like Jennie. But there I was. And I wasn’t going to question my luck. As much as I liked to know answers, as much as I always tried to find the reason behind things, I didn’t risk asking her again.

  And there were other things to wonder about.

  It was funny. We spent a lot of time sitting in my car, just parked and talking. At first, I was so distracted by dark thoughts that I’m sure I rambled and babbled like an idiot. I especially remember one evening when I looked out the side window past Jennie’s head, suddenly thinking of that ridiculous story children tell—the one about the guy with the razor-sharp hook in place of a hand.

  “What’s the matter?” Jennie asked. “You seem distracted.”

  “Nothing.” How could I tell her?

  “I like it here,” she said. “It’s so dark and quiet.”

  “Yeah. Sure. But sometimes…” I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t. I waited for her to question me, to ask again. But she said nothing more about it.

  A week later, at the same spot, I found myself caught again in thought. But this time, I paused in surprise when I realized that no dark images had spoiled our evening. For an hour or mo
re, as we sat and talked and kissed, I’d not been visited by thoughts of razor-sharp hooks or walking corpses.

  Maybe I was getting used to being out in the night with her. Maybe Jennie was giving me new confidence. The perfect example is almost too embarrassing to explain. We’d decided to rent a movie. We were going to watch it at my house. Jennie was kind of funny about that. I think she didn’t want me to meet her parents. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of me or because of them.

  There were two video stores in town. I don’t like the one near my house. They have an old cardboard figure of Freddy Krueger in the front aisle. I knew this was ridiculous, but I always got a little shiver when I walked past it, as if I felt it would spring to life and slash me. I guess I was sort of like Don that way, except he was always trying to avoid real dangers while I was trying to avoid the demons that sprang from my mind. Don would avoid walking across a storm grating because it might break while he was on it. I’d avoid the grating because something might reach through from below and drag me into the moist depths of the sewers. So, because of that stupid cardboard figure, I usually went to the other store to rent videos.

  Then, one day, on the way home from school, I found myself driving past the video store with Jennie.

  “Let’s get a movie,” she said.

  “There’s another place down the road,” I told her. It was almost a reflex. I was used to coming up with quick excuses to mask my fears.

  She put her hand on my arm. “That place never has the new movies. They have a better selection here.”

  “I guess they do.” I circled the block and parked in front. As we walked into the shop and up the aisle, I noticed that the tremor, the subtle undercurrent of fright, was missing. I stopped to look at the cardboard figure. I didn’t see something that was going to leap to life and shred me—I saw nothing more than a slightly blurred life-size photograph of an actor with a nice makeup job.

  I took Jennie’s hand as we strolled through the store. “I like being with you,” I told her.

  “I get so much from being with you, too,” she said.