Misfits, p.20
Misfits, page 20
“I never worked with them.” Dredd spat blood on the filthy tile.
“Okay, how did you end up working for them?”
“Piss off, twerp.”
Mick jumped up and kicked Dredd in the ribs. His body went rigid. They heard the ropes straining to keep him bound.
“Hurts like hell, right?” Mick said. His heart was racing. “Steel-tipped boots. If you want some more, just keep not answering my questions. I can kick you in that same spot over and over until my boot comes out the other side.”
Dredd was drawing in great gasps of air. His face was locked in a pained grimace. Mick figured he must have hit a nerve or something with how long it took Dredd to recover. Marnie watched it all in silence. She’d shifted on the counter and was mostly in shadow.
“What’s the deal with you and the Melon Heads? Or what was the deal? They burned your place down. Looks like they don’t want you back.”
“Shit.” Dredd tried to push himself up with his forehead and failed. He collapsed back to his side. “I figured they would.” He narrowed his gaze at Mick. “You should be the one tied up. You’re the one who ruined everything.”
Marnie dropped the lighter she’d been rolling from hand to hand. When she slid off the counter to retrieve it, her face was caught in the light. Dredd’s eyes went wide. “You’re the one who was raped. Dammit, I knew you were familiar. Mary something. Maybe if you’d kept your legs closed, you’d be home now and not worrying about when they’re gonna eat you alive.”
Mick’s anger rose high and fast, the instant blossoming of pressure intense enough to send him to the brink of a blackout. Next thing he knew, Marnie was pulling him back and Dredd was groaning. Dredd had a gash under his right eye that wept blood. “Stop!” Marnie said, their noses practically touching. “Or you’re going to kill him.”
His foot hurt from kicking Dredd and he was gasping for breath. “You don’t…talk to her…you hear me?”
Dredd could only moan.
It took a while for Mick to settle down. Marnie stood by him with her hand on his chest. She led him into the living room. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” she whispered.
“We can’t stop now.”
“I’m worried what will happen if we don’t.”
The dark room smelled like dust and mildew. A rat chittered somewhere in the gloom. Mick checked on Dredd to make sure he hadn’t found a way to set himself free.
“Look, I got mad. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“But will you let him go when we get what we need?”
He knew what she was implying. He was sorry for scaring her and he should have told her just that, but instead he said, “Yeah. Let the Melon Heads find him. Not my problem.”
“Just…just don’t do that again. Okay?” Marnie hugged herself. “You scared the heck outta me.”
“I don’t know if it’ll make you feel any better, but I’m scared, too.”
She kicked at something on the floor. “It kinda does.”
“Can we go back in and get the hell out of here now?”
She led the way back into the kitchen. Mick wished he could tell her everything he was feeling but it just wasn’t in him. The fact that he admitted he was scared was enough. Dredd’s breathing had settled and he had stopped moaning.
“Ready to talk now?” Mick said.
“Yes,” Dredd said, his eyes still closed. When he opened his mouth, Mick saw that he’d chipped two of his front teeth with his boot. What he thought would have given him some measure of satisfaction actually made him recoil.
“Start from the beginning then. What happened after the Melon Heads killed your brother? Why didn’t you just stay away?”
Dredd squirmed, not to get away, but to find a way to get his face off the floor. Mick grabbed the ropes and rocked him onto his stomach and back.
“Just untie me, Mick.” Dredd didn’t sound like himself anymore. He sounded lost and tired.
“I will after you tell me everything.”
Dredd sighed a wet sigh. Blood dribbled from his mouth as he spoke. “No one believed me. No shock there. My parents thought I’d made up a huge lie to cover up whatever Dylan had done. I cried all through Christmas dinner, but they kept telling me to calm down and tell the truth. When he didn’t come back that night, they called the cops. I was sent upstairs to my room when the cops came to the house, but I snuck out and listened to them from the top of the stairs. I listened to my parents give their report and I learned a hell of a lot. Dylan had gotten this girl pregnant. She went to St. Mary’s on the other side of town. He’d been freaking out ever since he asked her if she was going to get an abortion and she said no. My parents were trying to talk to her parents, but they wouldn’t give them the time of day. Said Dylan was an unfortunate mistake, but they would handle it. Dylan realized he was going to be a dad and it hit him hard. My parents thought Dylan had skipped town with the girl. Her name was Sandy. That’s where the cops should look first. I knew better. If they went then, maybe they would have found some blood or even his bike out on Dracula Drive. But I was just a little kid, and no one gave a shit what I thought.”
Dredd seemed to relax, lost in memory. Mick knew not to interrupt. Let him talk it out.
“A day after that, they organized a search party. By that time, I’d decided there was no point in telling anyone what had happened. In fact, I stopped talking altogether. They were never going to find him. My parents, they were beside themselves. I’d never seen my dad cry before. I watched them cry for a week, holding each other as if their closeness was the only thing keeping them from flinging off the planet as it spun. And you know what? They never hugged me. Dylan was gone, but they might as well have lost both sons. He was all they could think about. And since I wasn’t talking, I just kind of faded from their lives. My grandmother came to stay with us. She took care of me, but it wasn’t the same. After a while, they called off the search and all that was left to do was hang up flyers all over town. I sat in the back seat while they drove around, posting those damn flyers on every telephone pole, tree and corkboard they could find. It was my job to hand them a fresh box of flyers when they ran out. We had a load of them on the floor next to me.” Dredd took a deep, ragged breath.
“It took six months for the drinking to get real bad. Both of them. The marriage didn’t make it another year. In their parting shot before they split, they sent me to Blanders for an evaluation. I still hadn’t said a word, not even in school. I was creeping everyone out, but I didn’t care. Our family was over, so why not chuck the reminder of what we once were in a mental home?”
“Jesus,” Marnie hushed.
That made Dredd grin. “Jesus? He never came to save my soul, I’ll tell you that much. The shrinks pulled me into session after session, trying to break down my wall. I just stared at them like they were a turd that fell out of a spaceship. That’s exactly how I pictured them. It helped me stay in character. Dr. Space Turd One, Night Nurse Space Turd, Space Turd Shrink With Garlic Breath. They talked a lot of shit. In my mind, I just flipped them off, shouting, ‘Fuck you!’ over and over. They couldn’t hear it, but I could, and that’s all that mattered.
“I’d been in a couple years when this kid Tommy Aikens gets a week eval because he tried to OD on pills. At least that’s what they thought. He just got some bad shit, but his parents thought an attempted suicide sounded better than OD because their son had a shitty dealer. I see him walking the hall one day in the paper slippers they give the new residents. I couldn’t see myself, but I’m sure it was the first time my face changed expression in all that time. Tommy was Dylan’s best friend. I’d known him all my life. He kinda scared me the way all the older kids at the time did, but he’d never wrestled me down to fart in my face or tripped me when I passed by like Dylan’s other jerk friends.”
Mick had to keep himself from checking his watch. It was impossible to tell if it was day or night in the sealed house. “Sounds like a real nice guy,” he said, dripping with sarcasm.
Dredd glared at Mick. “He wasn’t a shit like you, I’ll tell you that. Anyway, we end up in the rec room and he starts telling me his story. I sit there listening like always, but now I’m itching to talk back. I look around to make sure none of the staff are watching us and say so softly he could barely hear me, ‘The Melon Heads killed Dylan.’ It felt funny, talking after all that time. My voice sounded different, like it didn’t belong to me. My throat hurt, too. I realized saying a thing like that in a nuthouse isn’t the best way to gain someone’s trust. Somehow, I knew Tommy would understand. And I was right, judging by the way he got whiter than Casper’s ass. He sat back in his chair like I’d just punched him in the chest. ‘Why would you say that?’ he says. ‘’Cause I saw it.’ He looked guilty all of a sudden and couldn’t look me in the eye no more. ‘I can’t believe he did it,’ he says. ‘Did what?’ Then he got real quiet, and said, ‘But then why are you here?’
“It was then I knew that my brother had told Tommy about his plan to feed me to those things. I got mad as hell, but I couldn’t blow my cover. Not where people could see me. So, then I just said, ‘He tried. They didn’t take me.’”
Mick had been walking around Dredd while he told his story. He got to one knee so he could see his face. “How come the Melon Heads left you alone and didn’t go after you?”
“I don’t know. Tommy sure as shit didn’t know, either. It’s not like you can sit down with those maniacs and ask them. You should ask yourself the same question. Didn’t they have a chance to take you and left you alone?” Dredd snorted, spitting more blood. “Who the fuck knows with them.”
Marnie said, “Why was your brother going to…give you to them?”
“Tommy said that the Melon Heads would take care of your problems if you offered something in return. With Dylan, he wanted them to snatch Sandy. Fucking Dylan. He was willing to have them murder that girl and his own kid.”
“How would they know to get his girl?” Mick asked.
“You give them a picture. Or actually, you give old man Fennerman a picture. He’d give it to them and they’d find her. That guy had a bond with them I couldn’t come close to. Dylan and Tommy ran into Fennerman one day while out looking for a place to get stoned in the woods. They were already drunk and didn’t realize they’d gone to the one place in this town you should treat like toxic waste. Fennerman liked Dylan and it was also during a drought and he needed something to give to the Melon Heads. They were growing restless. In comes my shithead brother.”
“All they need is a picture and they wait for your brother’s girlfriend to come around Dracula Drive?” Marnie asked.
“They’re not just out there by Dracula Drive, you know. They have eyes all over town. Sandy would have just disappeared one day. As it is, she lost the baby and left for college two years later. If she only knew how close she came to getting eaten.”
Mick offered Dredd a drink from the flask he had in his back pocket. Dredd’s voice had been getting hoarser the longer he spoke. He had to pour it in Dredd’s mouth. “What the hell is this?”
“Some old Bailey’s I found in the trailer. It’s that or nothing.” Dredd coughed, the bitter hot booze singeing his throat. When he settled down, Mick asked, “Two more questions and we’re done here. One – how did you become their watcher or whatever you were? Two – where do they stay most of the time?”
Marnie looked over at him. “Why do you want to know where they stay?”
Mick put a finger to his lips. Dredd couldn’t angle his head to see Marnie. He took a deep breath and said, “Tommie told me all about Fennerman and how the old man had been a kind of gatekeeper for the Melon Heads for like, forever. The day Tommie was supposed to leave, I asked him how to get there. He drew a map on the inside of a Monopoly box. I was in that madhouse for another six years. By the time I got out, I had that map memorized. You want to hear the funny thing?”
There was nothing Mick could find even remotely funny about the story. “What?”
“I went in there sane. I was shook up and maybe had some PTSD, but I was just a normal kid. By the time I got out, I knew my brain was all twisted. What normal person fantasizes every minute of the day about meeting the man who deals with the monsters who killed his brother? Who were supposed to kill him instead? I knew it was crazy, but I was crazy. Probably still am. First thing I did when I got out was run away from home. My parents had moved to Shelton by then. I’m not sure how hard they looked for me. I could tell the day I left the asylum they didn’t want any part of their damaged goods. It took me a while, but I found Fennerman. He was impressed the Melon Heads let me get that far into the woods without at least trying to scare me off. When I told him what had happened, he said, ‘They must have marked you in their minds for some reason.’ When I asked him what reason it could be, he just shrugged and said, ‘You might as well ask me to read a shark’s mind. Who knows?’”
Dredd paused and looked to Mick. “Can you please untie me? I can’t feel my hands or feet.”
“Talk faster, then,” Mick replied coolly.
Dredd closed his eyes and recounted the rest. “Fennerman took me in, showed me their ways. Said he’d been doing it since he was marked around my age. Someone had to keep the Melon Heads happy in those woods. Sure, they sneak around town, but the woods is where they prefer to be. Out of sight, out of mind. He told me they came with the Pilgrims, castoffs in a new world that needed healthy people to build a country. If you had a baby with a birth defect, you left them to the woods. Some survived to nurture the babies. Soon enough, they were having babies with each other. The deformities only got worse with each inbred generation. They might not look human anymore, but they still have human brains. They have their own language and their own rules. The old man said he’d lived by two rules with them and things had been just fine. Feed them. And most of all, don’t hurt them. They have a pack mentality and are very protective of one another.”
“That we know,” Marnie said. She backed into a corner of the room, wedging herself between countertops.
“Sometimes, if you fed them something special, they’d do a favor in return. I never asked them for no favors, but the old man said he’d had several people over the years brave the trip to his place to ask for something of the Melon Heads. My brother was one of them. The bigger the offering, the bigger the favor. Guess he thought I was big enough to kill a mother and fetus.” He broke into a wet coughing fit, the cords on his neck protruding. At one point, his eyes started to flutter. Mick worried he’d pass out on them, so he gave him another shot of the schnapps.
“What happened to the old man?” Marnie said, soft as a mouse.
“He did what all old men do. I came by one day and he was dead in his bed. Had a smile on his face, too. We should all go like that. Way I figured it, even though it seemed like he lived a pretty hard life, if he could go out looking like that, it mustn’t have been so bad. I buried him out back, seeing as he had no family or friends. House gave me the creeps, though. So I found that cabin. First night, I left a couple of big steaks hanging outside my door. I tied them up in a pretty complicated knot. They were gone in the morning, the knots all untied neatly. I knew then the Melon Heads had found me. I’ve been out there ever since. Now, thanks to you, I can’t go back there again.”
Mick was tempted to kick him again. The last thing he wanted to hear was Dredd reminding him of what he’d done…or undone. Instead, he asked flatly, “Okay, maybe you are crazy. Where can we find them?”
“You don’t want to go there. Besides, they’d never let you get close. Remember, I told you they have eyes everywhere.”
“You can tell me, or I can end this now.” Mick pulled the Bowie knife he’d had sheathed behind his back.
Dredd glared at him. “I believe you’d use that.”
“It’s good to believe.”
“Might as well tell you. They’ll make sure you’re not my problem anymore.”
“So, tell us where they hide.”
“I’ll do what Tommy did for me. Untie my hands and I’ll draw you a map.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The pain radiating up and down Chuck’s arm and into his shoulder was excruciating. It wasn’t close to enough to overpower the agony of seeing his parents murdered by the Melon Heads. He supposed they trashed his house just as they’d done to Dredd’s, robbing him of his family and home.
They were huddled in a tool shed in a strange yard. It reeked of old grass and gasoline. They’d listened to sirens blaring off and on for several hours, way off in the distance. Things had settled down some time ago, the night ringing with cricket song. At one point, Chuck just broke down and cried. Heidi and Vent wrapped their arms around him. He was surprised at how little he cared that his friends had to watch him bawl like a baby. Then again, he’d never known loss so complete that adolescent cool meant less than nothing.
Now he had his head in Heidi’s lap, his good arm hurting from lying on the hard, cold floor. Vent had somehow managed to fall asleep. Chuck was too focused on listening for anyone snooping around the shed to close his eyes for even a moment.
“I’m so sorry, Chuck,” Heidi said.
“It’s not your fault.” He would have felt completely cored out if he hadn’t had anger and despair to fill the void.
“I wonder if they’re at my house now.” She sounded afraid, but also as if her mind were somewhere else. It might have been shock settling in.
“I don’t think so. Believe it or not, I think they’re too smart to stick around this long. They know when to strike and when to retreat. They’ve done their damage for now.”
“We have to warn my parents. I can’t just let them sit there not knowing they’re a target.”
“We will. In the morning. I’m sure what happened to my parents will be in the news.”
